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Old 06-28-2011, 02:01 PM   #33
ElisasAUG

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Oct 2005
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Buddhadasa used the term svabhava often.

Imo, from a meditative perspective, there is svabhava. For example, the element of consciousness is the element of consciousness. Consciousness can be experienced as arising & passing, unsatisfactory and not-self, but, apart from that, it cannot be broken down in experience. Consciousness has the nature consciousness (rather than 'self') as its svabhava.

The Buddha broke up observable experience into the five aggregates, six elements, six sense bases, etc. The individual constituants of these seventeen natures have their svabhava, namely, the eye has the svabhava of eye, the ear has the svabhava of ear, feeling has the svabhava of feeling, etc.

As the Buddha said: "Why is it called feeling? Because it feels, thus it is called feeling", etc. That feeling 'feels' (rather than is a 'self') is its svabhava.
Thanks Element -- this is interesting and useful.

It occurred to me after reading your post that one reason "inherent existence" sounds like word salad is that it's a clunky translation of a Sanskrit term.

Bhava I understand as "becoming", while I guess sva refers to "self" or "ownership". Interestingly, though, I see that in Chinese it gets rendered as zi-xing (自性) -- and this word "xing" (性) means something more like "nature" or "property". So maybe there was some slippage in translation there too.

Sarvastivada: stuff has an "essence".
Nagarjuna/Madhyamaka: not

Nagajuna's short coming is he falls into the intellectual. I'd buy that, yes. Occupational hazard of philosophers...
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