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Nalanda origins of Deconstruction






When I first read the following passage, I had to double-check to make sure I wasn't mistakenly reading a book of Deconstructionism [starting with Nietzsche], Post-Modernism, Structuralism or Semiotics. No! This was written in ancient India. Over 1700 years ago. It is one of the lost tomes of Nalanda which no Indian could read for 800 years. Legend has it that it was this book that inspired the foundation of Zen school of philosophy at Shaolin Monastery- a minor branch of that great banyan which continued to thrive even after the "Doom of Nalanda". Can you name the book?

Magnifique!!

We need to ask a further question- Are the aforementioned schools of western text criticism plagiarized [which meand published without any acknowledgement] from the Philosophy generated in Nalanda university? The books may have been lost in India, but were easily available in Japan, China etc where Jesuit missionaries had strong presence and undertook voracious manuscript collecting activities since the 17th century.

The reader is advised to see the previous post on the Troin manuscript to evaluate the evidence for the above transmission of Indian texts on the eve of the Age of Enlightenment.


''Words are employed to express meanings but they are dependent upon discriminations and memory as cause, and upon the employment of sounds or letters by which a mutual transference of meaning is possible. Words are only symbols and may or may not clearly and fully express the meaning intended and, moreover, words may be understood quite differently from what was intended by the speaker. Words are neither different nor not different from meaning and meaning stands in the same relation to words.

If meaning is different from words it could not be made manifest by means of words; but meaning is illumined by words as things are by a lamp. Words are just like a man carrying a lamp to look for his property, by which he can say: this is my property….a man becomes attached to the literal meaning of words and the illusion that words and meaning are in agreement….Just as objects are seen and discriminated in dreams and in visions, so are ideas and statements discriminated erroneously and error goes on multiplying

The ignorant and simple-minded declare that meaning is not otherwise than words, that as words are, so is meaning. They think that as meaning has no body of its own that it cannot be different from words and, therefore, declare meaning to be identical with words. In this they are ignorant of the nature of words, which are subject to birth and death, whereas meaning is not; words are dependent upon letters and meaning is not; meaning has no substratum. Anyone who teaches a doctrine that is dependent upon letters  is a mere prattler, because Truth is beyond letters and words and books.

This does not mean that words and books never declare what is in conformity with meaning and truth, but it means that words and books are dependent upon discriminations, while meaning and truth are not; moreover, words and books are subject to the interpretation of individual minds, while meaning and truth are not. But if Truth is not expressed in words and books, the scriptures which contain the meaning of Truth would disappear, and when the scriptures disappear there will be no more disciples and masters… and there will be nothing to teach. But no one must become attached to the words of the scriptures because even the canonical texts sometimes deviate from their straightforward course owing to the imperfect functioning of sentient minds. Therefore, let every disciple take good heed not to become attached to words as being in perfect conformity with meaning, because Truth is not in the letters

When a man with his finger-tip points to something to somebody, the finger-tip may be mistaken for the thing pointed at; in like manner the ignorant and simple-minded, like children, are unable even to the day of their death to abandon the idea that in the finger-tip of words there is the meaning itself

Priests and popular preachers who are given to ritual  and skilled in incantations… They should not be honored, for what one gains from them is emotional excitement; it is not the Dharma. By their clever manipulation of words and phrases, being the mere prattle of a child… it stupefies the mind. He only confuses the minds of his hearers with his dualistic views. Not understanding meaning, he has no deliverance to offer others.''

-Lankavatara

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