by Rebecca Radnor
When John Wheeler posted a series of articles to soc.religion.eastern in May 1991 arguing that Madhyamika Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta were "essentially the same philosophy," the group pushed back. The most substantive response came from Rebecca Radnor — writing under the name J.C. — a researcher at Northwestern University whose knowledge of Indian Buddhist philosophy was grounded in both practice and scholarship.
Radnor's reply does not simply disagree. It reframes the question. She argues that the comparative enterprise itself is the problem: that cherry-picking doctrinal similarities across traditions ignores context, chronology, genre, and the specific human questions each tradition was trying to answer. The equation of atman with self and Buddha-mind with Mind, she writes, "does not take into account the context — i.e., the particular questions that these doctrines tried to answer."
The heart of the post is a careful exposition of the Four Noble Truths and the Five Aggregates — not as abstract doctrine but as a practical analysis of suffering. Where does craving arise? How does karma work through memory and volition? What is the role of mental volition (samskara) in perpetuating the cycle of conditioned existence? These are the questions Radnor places at the center, because they are the questions the Buddha actually placed at the center.
The post also contains a precise note on translation and genre: the English word "suffering" distorts dukkha; the word "self" cannot carry atman; the teaching "your own mind is Buddha" (hsin) must be read as upaya — skillful means adapted to the student — not as a metaphysical claim about an absolute Mind. "The more we add the more we see there is more to add," she writes of the comparative project. "The more pressing question is how it is possible to construct an all-encompassing view by putting together finite bits of doctrine."
The post closes with some garbling in transmission — a common artifact of early Usenet, where posts occasionally looped back through mail gateways with duplicated fragments. The substance is complete; the final lines have been omitted where they repeat earlier material.
Rather than trying to find the one universal answer to life, I wonder if we should begin by distinguishing between matters of existence and matters of comparative religion and philosophy, which is an academic issue.
Matters of existence, or if you like, questions about one's life, begin here: the selection of certain doctrines and the reason why we selected those bits implies we already know what the truth is. If this is the case, why all the comparing? The more pressing question is how it is possible to construct an all-encompassing perspective from finite elements. The more we add the more we see there is more to add.
As for the why of all this: why do we feel compelled to gather pieces of information for the purpose of finding "truth"? If we are really concerned with understanding our life, shouldn't we begin here?
I will use Sanskrit transliterations instead of the Pali. The Buddha is supposed to have said that life is suffering (dukkha — this word also implies anxiety, fear, and discomfort, not just physical agony). The cause of this First Noble Truth is the Second: thirst or grasping (trshna). In order to uproot dukkha one must bring grasping to an end (nirodha) — the Third Noble Truth. And the remedy is the Eightfold Path (marga). If we may begin with suffering, this indicates our actual state of being, not theories. We constantly feel pushed and pulled in all directions, responding with nervousness and anger. One who is concerned with the human condition will want to understand the nature of this life, not gather information about ultimates.
The question is what brings about this thirst. And included in all this is our need to formulate systems of truth so we may ground ourselves in this uncertain world. Can we see that this grasping of words is part of the problem? Not having security, I wish to attain it somehow. And while we're busy looking we never come to see the nature of our grasping.
The Buddhists have a very simple yet profound analysis of our psychophysical being: the Five Aggregates (skandhas). These are:
The Five Aggregates
Rupa (matter and form) indicates the material form of our bodies and the things around us.
Vedana (feeling) is our response to stimuli — either pleasurable, painful, or neutral.
Samjna (perception) is our recognition of any phenomenon.
Samskara (mental volition) indicates our volitional tendencies due to memory traces.
Vijnana (consciousness) is simply our being conscious of something.
Using this paradigm we can see how suffering arises. Material form is necessary since it is the meeting between a perceptual instrument — the eye — and a perceived object — shape and color. Feeling occurs as a reaction: repulsion (pain from touching a hot object), or desire. This reaction is in part induced by recognition of an object. Mental volition comes into play when you remember a pleasurable experience and intend the same experience again. Consciousness is simply the being conscious of something.
All this is involved with the idea of karma — that is, Krishnamurti's "conditioning." I have a pleasurable experience; there is remembering; and based on this memory I want more. This "I" that craves for experiences and metaphysical certainty is the "stream" of the aggregates that "continues" if we do not understand the process of memory, volition, and craving. Do you see the danger? Do you see the central role of mental volition in most of our problems, including prejudice and psychological projection?
So rather than trying to find the one universal answer to life, can we begin with our present situation? This means when we're angry we feel the anger both in our minds — the images related to this reaction — and in our bodies — the tension and contraction felt. And as we look deeper we see the interconnection between body and mind. When we become aware, then we can clear our minds, uprooting some of the garbage that keeps us suffering.
The Problem with Comparative Philosophy
So, to further clarify: the above does not mean we should stop doing comparative philosophy, but we must understand the boundaries of this endeavor. If you engage in studying doctrines, understand that this is an academic or intellectual affair, and that one must be aware of the presuppositions brought to the study. Without this awareness we are liable to project our own culturally biased perspective on the subject matter.
Case in point: the analysis that equated the doctrines of Vedanta, Madhyamika, and Zen did not take into account the context — the particular questions these doctrines tried to answer. Of course you can say they were trying to find truth, but that does not clarify anything. You equate atman with self and Buddha with Mind, implying that the differences are merely semantic and that all these words refer to some underlying reality. Where did you get this notion of an absolute Mind underneath our everyday minds? This is really a Western-biased view, with some connection to the notion of an unconscious (i.e., Freud). If we have an individualistic perspective there results some need to find an unchanging foundation for our mundane experience of transience.
As for assuming statements like "your own mind is Buddha" mean some absolute like Brahman — do you know the concept of upaya, or skillful means? This indicates that any teaching must be applicable to the state of the pupil. This is also the reason why one of the major tenets of Mahayana is to try to perceive the spirit of the teaching, not the literal meaning. Citing text after text with examples of how phrases indicate an absolute self takes these words out of context and distorts meaning.
Most English translations already distort the sense of the text. If you do much translating you will understand that there is no one-to-one correspondence between words of different languages. There is really no English equivalent for sunyata, pratityasamutpada, hsin, tao. M. Sprung in his translation of Candrakirti's Prasannapada keeps noting in footnotes how the English is not capturing the sense of many passages. This being the case, how can someone jump from culture to culture — not only spatially but chronologically — and claim that some of the key concepts all mean the same thing?
There is also the question of genre. Indian Buddhist literature is divided into types, and one major distinction is between religious literature and philosophical ones. That's why Nagarjuna can sometimes write about a "positive" aspect of reality while in his philosophical writings he posits nothing. I believe the Tibetan tradition recognizes this, if not practices it — so it is not surprising that Tibetan Buddhist poetry talks about a "One Mind" as the source of all things. Keep in mind that Tsong Khapa equates dependent co-arising with emptiness; thus he does not posit an entity.
In short: if we pursue the study of other religious systems the first requirement is not to project culturally biased categories upon them.
Colophon
Rebecca Radnor (writing as J.C.) was a researcher at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois when she posted this piece to soc.religion.eastern on 8 May 1991. She was one of the more consistent scholarly voices on the group in its early years, regularly bringing Pali and Sanskrit technical vocabulary into discussions that risked collapsing into vague cross-cultural synthesis.
The post is a reply to a thread begun by John Wheeler of Ready Systems, who had argued in several posts that Madhyamika Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta were ultimately the same philosophy. Radnor's response does not simply dispute this — it questions whether the comparative enterprise itself is philosophically coherent, and redirects the conversation toward the existential concerns at the heart of the Buddhist tradition.
The final paragraphs of the original post contain a partial duplicate of the opening argument (an artifact of Usenet transmission) and have been omitted here. The substance of the argument is complete as given.
Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026. Original Message-ID: [email protected].
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