Hi Alan,
You don't seem to be reading what has been written.
alan wrote:Let's remember that Nanavira's statement was in reference to a position held by the commentaries, and he made it to point out why he had changed his practice. He is opposed to the prevailing ideology, and challenges it. Good for him. I like his attitude.
Was he correct in his logic? I haven't seen any argument here that convinces me otherwise. Sure have seen the same old emotional responses, however.
Before even examining his logic it might be useful to ask:
1. Is his representation of Mahayana thought ("Reality is the non-existence of things.") correct?
2. Is he actually representing the Commentaries correctly. He says: "...the average Theravādin, monk or layman, seems to take for granted that aniccatā, or impermanence, means that things are perpetually changing, that they do not remain the same for two consecutive moments." So is he criticising people who have studied the issues in detail, or those who haven't?
3. Was he aware of the extensive discussion on these points amongst the early Buddhist schools? I'm no expert on this, but I gave a summary above that indicated that these issues have been considered for over 2000 years. Not that that means that the answers from way back when were completely adequate, but it's clear that scholars from various schools were well aware of such problems, and proposed various approaches to it. I'm reasonably confident that the Abhidhamma text "Points of Controversy" will have a much more extensive and sophisticated discussion than this brief letter. I'll check on that when I have the opportunity.
I'm certainly not against well organised and reasoned critical analyses of the Theravada position(s). I've waded though a lot of material from Ven Nananandanda, for example, which I find quite interesting. You might have noticed that I've posted many quotes and some Sutta translations from him (more Suttas to come, it's very interesting to compare his translations with those from other scholars).
I'll leave the analysis of Ven Nanavira's logic to those more knowledgeable than me. Geoff/Nana seems to have just said that Ven Nanavaira's logic is faulty in the sense that it doesn't actually refute the Therevada position. And since Geoff clearly is no apologist for the Theravada position, perhaps you should take that seriously.
Mike