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Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c16: Chapter X. The Psychology of Consciousness

Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c16

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Contents

Chapter X. The Psychology of Consciousness

1. The Abhidhamma Piṭaka

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SAVE as regards the development of a doctrine of relations, there is practically no advance in the *Abhidhamma Piṭaka* on the psychology of the two earlier Piṭakas as regards anything save classification and analysis, and this advance is often a doubtful improvement. Formulae and definitions make up the stock in trade of the Abhidhamma books, which, if ever they served any effective purpose, must have been supplemented by oral discussions, and which are largely intelligible to-day, in so far as they have any definite meaning, merely in the light of the explanations of Buddhaghosa, which need not always reflect the views of the compilers.

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The analysis of consciousness in the *Dhammasaṅgaṇi*¹ is essentially motivated by ethical considerations. Consciousness is analysed into eight types of good consciousness, and twelve types of bad consciousness, which are applicable to human beings *in primis* but also to infra-human beings, the gods, and other celestials, but not to beings in the more ethereal Brahma- or Rūpa-lokas, worlds of attenuated matter, or the sphere in which matter no longer has any existence (*arūpaloka*). Thirdly, there is ethically indeterminate consciousness. In each case the consciousness is judged ethically not as causing a result, but as the effect (*vipāka*) of earlier action, and a curious result is thus developed, which is not known to the *Sutta Piṭaka*. The term good is restricted to felicific or causing welfare; the welfare caused is reckoned, wherever and whenever experienced, as neutral, and is not treated as itself felicific, but is classed as neutral or indeterminate (*avyākata*,) being neither good or bad.¹

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¹ In addition to the Intr. see *Buddh. Psych.* ch. vii. That the Piṭaka is earlier than the bulk of the *Milindapañha* as those assumed is neither probable or proved save as regards the later parts.

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¹ As indeterminate rank also matter and Nirvāna, and Kiriyā, action as consciousness leading to no results; it arises during the actual process of sensation (Asl., p. 294); its characteristic form is the consciousness of the Arahant which is unproductive of Karman (pp. xci. ff. 156 ff). The Mahāsaṅghika doctrine that all Karman entails moral result (*vipāka*) is refuted (KV. xii. 2) as is the Andhaka and Uttarāpathaka view that error is unmoral (KV. xiv. 8), and the Uttarāpathaka view that dream consciousness is unmoral (KV. xxii. 6). Cf. KV. xxii. 3 (p. 360, n. 1); *Compendium*, pp. 19, 235 f).

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There is not much psychological insight here, nor much more in the distinction between phenomena of the self and those that are external (*bāhira, bahiddhā*), which merely places the spheres of the six senses, including mind, against the spheres of the six sense objects, including mental objects, or the distinction of aggregates of the self as against those which are external, which merely sets the five aggregates making up the individual against the aggregates which are referable by other persons to their selves, but the distinction deserves notice as it is the nearest approach made to that between subjective and objective, from which it obviously differs in essentials. Attention (*manasikāra*) is mentioned among neutral states, but it is only from Buddhaghosa that we have a threefold aspect, the adverting of sense; the adverting of mind, ensuing on sense; or the linking of mind with object as a charioteer links the horse and the chariot, an interesting echo of an Upaniṣad reminiscence. Memory is mindfulness, bearing in mind, the opposite of superficiality and obliviousness, but no light is shed on the problem of forgetfulness or reinstatement, and we are left merely with the suggestion that consciousness reminds itself of what it has, implying the involution of the past in the present, as a treasurer details his revenue to the King.

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The distrust of the value of these lucubrations is increased when we come to the elaboration of a distinction between Rūpa, material form or matter,² which is underived (*no upādā*) and which is derived (*upādā*). The topic gives us as underived Rūpa the sphere of the tangible, that is those elements which are appreciated by touch, namely the earthy or solid, the lambent or fiery, and the gaseous or aerial elements or Mahābhūta, ‘great beings’ in the traditional phraseology, and the fluid or moist elements. This simply denotes as ultimate realities, grasped save water by the sense of touch, these four elements, and is clearly simple and natural. But the dependent Rūpa includes (1) the senses, vision, hearing, smell, taste, body sensibility (replacing the skin of the Upaniṣads as regards touch); (2) sights, sounds, odours, tastes, but not the object of touch; (3) the faculties of femininity, masculinity, and vitality;¹ (4) intimation by act and by speech; (5) the element of space; (6) buoyancy, plasticity, wieldiness, three qualities of matter, and integration, maintenance, decay, impermanence,—four phases in the coming into and going out of being of matter; and (7) bodily nutriment. The simple explanation of the classification is that these various classes have all something to with matter, and in that sense are matter qua derived. The senses themselves are subtle matter, and invisible; their objects are immediately bound up with matter; the faculties bound up with life are an aspect of matter as it appears in the matter aggregate of the individual, and intimation by act and speech are introduced into the classification on the same ground of connexion with the material side of the empiric self, while bodily nutriment is explained in the same way. The inclusion of space² is interesting, and a novelty; it appears in the Canon as if it were a fifth element, and, of course, it would be absurd to imagine that it appears as derivate matter, because it was a pure form of intuition or a mental construction. But the difficulty disappears when we consider that the element of space like the following seven items is intimately connected with matter. Space is necessary for the movement of matter, and can just as well be placed under derivate matter as can the qualities of matter and the four stages of its coming into being, state of being, decay, and impermanence, which it may be noted agree with the Sautrāntika doctrine of the four, not three stages, in being.

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² That matter is meant in a Berkeleian sense (*Compendium*, p. 272) is quite absurd; see above ch. ii. § 1. It is contradicted by DS., §§ 1185 ff. ; KV. xxii. 8 (citing MN. i. 190).

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¹ See ch. ix. § 3.

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² See ch. ix. § 2.

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The most interesting point undoubtedly is the suggestion that touch is in some way more directly in connexion with matter than the other senses, although it is asserted not to perceive the cohesion of water, but only the other three characteristics, so far as present in it. But the idea is not explained or developed, further than by Buddhaghosa’s illustration which makes the other senses and their objects relatively speaking cotton balls striking on cotton balls on the elemental anvils, while touch is the hammer which smites through the cotton balls to the anvils. To claim this as an anticipation of the doctrine of the development of the other senses from touch is clearly unwise.

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We owe to the *Dhammasaṅgaṇi* an attempt to make concrete the vagueness of the term dispositions (*saṅkhāra*) by a long list of states classified under it, to which we have already alluded.¹ The term comprehends in effect every mental condition, including attention and volitional states which is or may be aroused as the result of past experience on the occasion of any impression of sense or idea. Such an understanding, it is plain, is without psychological value, and it is a proof of the lack of investigation on an empirical basis that no serious attempt is made to dispense with the perfectly indefensible doctrine of the five aggregates. But a beginning is being made to express more intelligibly the problem to the extent that a division of mental phenomena into those of thought (*citta*) and thought properties (*cetasika*) is found;² under the former rank the five forms of sense cognition, the activity of mind (*manas*) cognition, and representative cognition, while the latter covers the other three aggregates of feeling, perception, and dispositions. Matter, and the uncompounded element, Nirvāṇa, which agree with the three aggregates mentioned as not being of thought, disagree with them in not being thought properties; we thus have the aggregate of intelligence set up definitely as thought; the other three aggregates as thought properties; and independent of either category the classes of matter of all kinds, including the matter aggregate of the individual, and the uncompounded element, Nirvāṇa, and from this is derived the fourfold division which is accepted in mediaeval Buddhist texts, such as the *Abhidhammatthasaṅgaha* (12 cent. A. D.). In the Abhidhamma itself the *Kathāvatthu* gives a list of states which evidently are intended to cover the sphere of the other three aggregates and to be treated—whether all or some of them is not stated—as coexistent accompaniments of thought. The separateness of the four aggregates is thus being undermined, the intelligence aggregate being given the central position and designated as thought while the others are made its accompaniments.

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¹ Above, ch. v. § 3; see ch. x. § 4.

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² The term occurs first in DN. i. 213; the later use appears in the *Paṭisambhidāmagga*, i. 84; *Vibhaṅga*, p. 421; DS., §§ 1187 ff. The Rājagirikas and Siddhatthikas deny *cetasikas*; KV. vii. 3. The Vaibhāṣika view ingeniously makes *citta* as *Vijñāna* the grasping of bare fact (*vastumātra*), *caitasa* as grasping particulars; AKV (Burn. MS.) f. 28ᵃ, MKV., pp. 65, n. 3; 74, n. 6.

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The love of generalization and definition of the Abhidhamma writers leads inevitably to the extension of their statements to those worlds which are above man; the study of the animal mind is neglected, though its importance is obvious, since rebirth as an animal in consequence of previous sin is a very frequent occurrence, and only a little less unpleasant than rebirth in a hell or purgatory. But animals though capable, the *Milindapañha* tells us, of reasoning in a discursive way, cannot attain intuition and therefore are debarred from salvation. On the other hand, the gods are essentially sublimated men, and rebirth as some sort of god in one or other of their worlds is the legitimate desire and end of the ordinary man who desires longer, more serene life, and is not yet worthy of seeking to become delivered as an Arahant. The doctrine is early, but the details are reserved for the idle theorizing of the Abhidhammas Sanskrit and Pali, though in strictness what is recorded is as in the case of the rest of the system not theory, but the account given by that intuition which is the source of enlightenment and of all our insight into the things, which are hidden to the ordinary powers of reason. Matter and feeling are found together in the world of desire; matter still persists in the sphere of unconscious beings, which is attained in the third Jhāna by adepts; feeling is there absent, but alone is found in the sphere of the immaterial world (*arūpaloka*).

2. The Milindapañha

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The *Milindapañha* which is interesting for its strict adherence to the denial of any true soul (*jīva, puggala, vedagū*) incidentally insists on the separateness and necessity of the senses;¹ the alleged soul is repudiated precisely because it, in theory autonomous, can only use a specific sense to obtain the corresponding sense experience, while, if it were really autonomous, it could use any of the senses or dispense altogether with the use of any of the sense organs while in fact there can be no sense experience if the sense organ is removed, a contention which may conceivably have been directed against the contemporary Sāṃkhya school. The relation of sensation to the functions of mind is then investigated, the issue being whether sensation issues commands to ideation or ideation bids sensation to act. The question is quaint, and the answer negates either view; in place we have the explanation of the constant succession of the activity of mind on sense perception in inclination or natural tendency, as when rain water runs away down a slope; in existing structure as when in a walled city there is but one means of ingress and egress; in habitual process, as in the order followed by the wagons of a caravanserai; and in practice, as skill is gained in the arts of writing, arithmetic, and valuation.

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¹ Mil., pp. 55 f.; 86 f.; 57 ff.

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As regards cognition the ideas of initial and sustained mental application (vitakka, vicāra) are illustrated by similes pointing to the application of attention followed by the repeated pulsations of attention thus applied. The analysis of cognition is of importance in emphasizing the simultaneity of the elements involved; the contact, feeling, perception, conceived intention or volition (cetanā), initial and sustained attention, which are here united as supervening on the three factors—once reduced to two—of sense organ, object, and intelligence directed to the sense, are asserted to be simultaneous, the factors being capable of distinction but not experienced successively or in isolation any more than the flavours employed in the making of a sauce by the royal cook. Later analysis denied the simultaneity, substituting instead swift succession, doubtless in accord with the Nyāya view.²

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² Mil., pp. 62 f.; 56, 63. For the later view, see Ledi Sadaw, JPTS. 1914, p. 149, and cf. KV. ii. 7; xvi. 4.

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On the subject of higher knowledge an interesting development is made in the exposition of a series of types of minds, as a reply to the difficulty suggested by the fact that, though omniscient, the Buddha was not always consciously so, but had the power to know anything to which he might direct his attention. The seven stages are those of the ordinary sensual man; the man who has entered on the path to salvation; the man who has so far progressed that he has but one more life on earth to live before he will attain the end; the man who will attain the end in heaven; the Arahant or enlightened man; the Pacceka or individual Buddha who knows but does not preach enlightenment; and the omniscient Buddha, who is actually or potentially all-knowing. Insight again is discriminated from reasoned thinking (*yoniso manasikāra*) as elimination as opposed to mental grasp; the latter is ascribed to sheep, goats, oxen, buffaloes, camels, asses, but these representatives of animals are denied insight or intuition. Again, awareness is attributed to intelligence (*viññāṇa*), discernment to intuition (*paññā*), and among the results of intuition are placed as assured miracles like the power to move through the air, or travel in an instant to the Brahma-world, situated at four months’ journey of a falling body from the earth.¹

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¹ Mil., pp. 102 ff. ; 32, 39, 82.

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Mindfulness (*sati*) appears definitely here in one place as equivalent to memory, and the grounds of it are given as sixteen,² in a manner which exhibits no trace of any serious investigation. They are (1) extraordinary effort, as when former births are called to mind; (2) outward aid, that is, being reminded by others; (3) impression caused by importance of the occasion or pleasure; (4) impression made by pain; (5) similarity of appearance; (6) difference of appearance; (7) knowledge of speech which produces memory on being reminded by others; (8) a sign, e.g. a mark on a bullock; (9) effort to recollect on the prompting of others; (10) calculation, as in the knowledge acquired in writing that such and such a letter follows another; (11) arithmetic, as when accountants do big sums by their knowledge of figures; (12) learning by heart, as in the case of reciters of the scriptures; (13) meditation, as when a monk recollects a temporary earlier experience; (14) reference to a book, as to a law; (15) a pledge, as when a man recollects from seeing pledged goods the occasion; and (16) actual experience, as when one remembers what one has seen, heard, tasted, &c. There is, it is clear, practically no appreciation whatever of the nature of the problem.

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² Mil., pp. 78 ff. There are actually seventeen causes, which are to be reduced to sixteen. Cf. KV. i. 8; the Uttarāpathakas hold that mind in recalling is without object; ix. 6. For the Nyāya view. cf. NS. iii. 2. 44.

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There is also given out in a late chapter a theory of dreams, which describes six kinds of men who experience them, he who is of a bilious, windy or phlegmatic humour, he who is influenced by a god, he who habituates himself, and he who does so in the way of prognostication, the last sort only of dreams being true. The prognostication comes about not by the action of any person, god or man, but it enters the mind of the sleeper of itself, and is explained to him by one skilled in omens, just as such a person prognosticates from external signs such as pimples. Dreams take place in ‘monkey-sleep’, a state between waking and deep sleep. But the theory, naïve in its acceptance of popular belief in divine action and in the autonomy of prognostication, is interesting incidentally; it is explained that there is no dream in deep sleep for thought (citta) has then entered into, and become one with the Bhavaṅga, and in that state thought does not act, and, being inactive, it does not experience pleasure or pain, and dreaming is impossible in such a condition. The Bhavaṅga, or stream of being, is a conception barely known in the Abhidhamma, and there not explained, but it evidently has already here the sense of a continuum which is not conscious, but from which consciousness emerges, and which may therefore be reckoned as sub-conscious.¹

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¹ Mil., pp. 297 ff.; on Bhavaṅga, NP., p. 91; Tika-Paṭṭhāna, in Compendium, p. 267, n. 1; ADS. iii. 8. In AN. ii. 79 bhava appears with the other three aggregates, matter, feeling, ideation, covering perhaps consciousness and the dispositions. On the Nyāya view of dreams cf. ILA., pp. 66 f.

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Volition² receives little further explication. The term Cetanā is defined as having the characteristic of being conceived and the being prepared, but the terms are obscure; the illustrations of one who prepares and gives poison to others with the result that both suffer pain suggest that it denotes deliberate intention followed by effectual action. The doctrine also occurs that involuntary evil is more blameworthy than voluntary, as a man who intentionally seizes a mass of hot metal suffers less than he who does so unawares.

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² Mil., p. 61. Conation (viriya—indriya) is recognized in DS., § 13. On Cetanā cf. Compendium, pp. 235 ff.

3. Buddhaghosa and the Sarvāstivādin Schools

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In the scholasticism of Buddhaghosa and of his contemporary Buddhadatta, as well as more developed in mediaeval Pali texts, we find the doctrine of the Bhavaṅga elaborated. In describing the process of consciousness (*viññāṇa*), Buddhaghosa enumerates fourteen modes of process,¹ namely, in reconception; in subconsciousness (*bhavaṅga*) as in sleep, &c.; in adverted attention (*āvajjana*); in the five modes of special sense impressions; in recipience of them; in investigation; in determination; in complete apprehension; in registration; and finally in death. At the end of registration, then, the process once more becomes that of the stream of unconscious being, until circumstances arise to cause adverting once more to supervene. The lapse of the last subconscious thought (*citta*) is decease, but immediately there arises conception and the stream of being flows on uninterrupted unless a man attains enlightenment. The *Abhidhammatthasaṅgaha* presents us with a complex theory by which in an act of perception seventeen moments in succession are involved, but its psychological value is minimal. On the part of mind in sense cognition Buddhaghosa has much to say, but with decided inconsistence; at one time he maintains the simultaneity of the action of mind and of the sense, at another makes the sense impression the necessary basis of the action of mind.² He does not raise any question of the existence of a medium for sense impressions other than touch, and he is naïvely realistic in conception as to the action of matter on spirit. The doctrine that like must be known by like is first recorded by him, but as old, and he indicates that the practice of saying that one sees length or shortness is derivative, the truth being that touch gives us these matters, and sight colour alone.¹ The organ of touch, he insists, is diffused through the whole body, for otherwise we could not have the great variety of tactile experience which we actually do possess. He first records the heart as the seat of the mind.

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¹ VM. xiv; Buddhadatta, *Abhidhammāvatāra*; *Buddh. Psych.*, p. 179; *Compendium*, p. 126.

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² Asl., pp. 73, 263; *Compendium*, p. 259, n. 1.

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¹ Asl., pp. 317 f.; 311 f. Cf. ILA., p. 191. That the doctrine of like by like was borrowed by Greek thought from India (Buddh. Psych., p. 143, n. 2) is absurd.

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In the realm of thought Buddhaghosa has an interesting doctrine of the relations of perception (saññā), intelligence (viññāṇa), and intuition (paññā). He compares them ² to the different reactions provoked by the sight of precious metals in a child, which sees in them coloured objects; in a citizen who recognizes in them utilities with exchange value; and in an expert who can tell their origin and fashioner. On the topic of zest or interest (pīti) he has much to say,³ and he illustrates the superhuman powers which are possessed by a person in such a state.

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² On MN. i: 292.

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³ Asl., p. 115; VM. iv.; Buddh. Psych., pp. 187 ff.; Compendium, p. 243.

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Interest attaches to the suggestion that by Buddhaghosa an idealistic interpretation was given to aspects of sensation and feeling, in which earlier views saw the interaction of material and psychical factors; the Sautrāntikas as well as the Vaibhāṣikas, as we have seen, accepted the real interaction of matter and spirit. Is it possible that Buddhaghosa, who was, we know, trained in the traditions of India before he came to Ceylon, adopted a more idealistic position, and accepted in effect the Vijñānavāda doctrine of the object of perception as wholly ideal? It has been suggested ⁴ that this is the sense in which we are to read his exposition of the old formula: ‘Because of the eye and visible matter there arises visual consciousness; the collision of the two is contact; conditioned by contact arises feeling; what one feels, one perceives, &c.’ In Buddhaghosa ⁵ we have the explanation that in the phrase ‘matter strikes on form’ the latter words are ‘a term for the eye (i. e. the visual sense) being receptive of the object of consciousness.’ This is held to be ‘a clear attempt to resolve the old metaphor, or, it may be, the old physical concept into terms of subjective experience.’ Again in dealing with the simile of the Milindapañha, which compares the clash of object and organ with the impact of two cymbals and the butting of two goats, ‘we are told by Buddhaghosa to interpret eye by visual cognition and to take the concussion in the sense of function (kiccaṭṭhen’ eva)’, and he tells us that when feeling arises through contact the real causal antecedent is mental, though apparently external.¹

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⁴ Psych. Ethics, pp. liv ff.; 5, n. 2.; Walleser, PGAB., p. 117.

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⁵ Asl., p. 309.

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¹ Asl., p. 108; Mil., p. 60; Asl., p. 109. ² Psych. Ethics, pp. lxxviii ff.; Compendium, p. 277, where the attempt to claim for the Buddha knowledge of the function of the brain is ludicrous.

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It would not appear from these arguments that Buddhaghosa did more than recognize in cognition and feeling that there was always present a stream of consciousness which was subject to modification by external reality, the Sautrāntika doctrine, and this realism of Buddhaghosa is supported by the absence of any other suggestion that he regarded the world as ideal any more than did the Vibhajyavādins generally. We have indeed a remarkable proof of the realism of his thought in the fact that, whereas the Canon is silent on the point, he is express in asserting the existence of a heart basis which bears to mind the same relation as the sense organ does to the sense as psychic activity; it is the place where the door objects or sense impressions come, and are assimilated or received into unity.² Buddhaghosa thus is punctilious in insisting on the physical basis of mind as the most important of sense organs, and this contradicts any idea of his being prepared to deny the reality of the external world. Further doubt is thrown on the interpretation of Buddhaghosa’s view by the attempt to find in the Dhammasaṅgaṇi itself the view that the process of sense perception is not materialistically conceived. We are not told, it is pointed out, where the mutual impact takes place nor with what a distant object impinges. If Dhammas are conceived as states of consciousness, and Rūpa is conceived as a species of Dhamma, it follows that both the Rūpa, which is external and comes into contact with the Rūpa which is of the self, and also this latter Rūpa are regarded in the light of the two mental factors, necessary to constitute an act of sensory consciousness, actual or potential. But it is plain that the reasoning rests on wholly false assumptions, namely that Dhamma is conceived as a state of consciousness and Rūpa as a species of it in that sense; Dhammas include all things of every kind, material and spiritual, and Rūpa is matter. The simple sense of the Dhammasaṅgaṇi and the Canonical tradition appears to be that consciousness is directed towards the eye and object and assists, therefore, as a third element in the contact which produces feeling, perception, &c. The Majjhima Nikāya¹ indeed gives the three factors as the objects, the senses, and the act of attention, and this sense will adequately fit the views of Buddhaghosa and is entirely in keeping with the references in the Milindapañha.

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¹ MN. i. 190.

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The true theory, therefore, seems to be that the Sautrāntika doctrine, whether deliberately or not, takes effective cognizance of the difficulty, which the Canon ignores, of the nature of attention. In the anxiety to deny the existence of anything permanent, the Buddha in his response to Sāti² seems even to deny the existence of any such thing, by asserting that visual consciousness arises from the eye and the object; it is, of course, clear that no such doctrine was intended, for that would be in effect a materialism of which the spiritual is an epiphenomenon, but that the point of the Buddha’s rebuke is that the doctrine asserted by Sāti affirmed the persistence unaltered (anañña) of the consciousness (viññāṇa). The Buddha’s reply insists that, because of the dependence of the content of consciousness on the sense and the objects of sense, it is constantly changing. The Sautrāntika view fills the lacuna of explicit exposition of continuity by adopting a theory which enables it to appreciate the true sense of the Buddhist doctrine of perception.

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² MN. i. 256. Cf. on the causation of cognition, ch. ix. § 4.

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We find also among the Sarvāstivādins a view of the nature of the process styled perception or ideation (saṃjñā), which gives that category a more effective content than it sometimes has in the older psychology.³ We must distinguish between the mere actual perception, for example, of blue, and the judgement ‘this is blue’ when the object is fixed by being given a name, so that we may treat perception as involving two kinds of contact, the simple one of resistance and one of denomination; it is tempting to assume that some such idea really underlay the distinction of resistance-perception and denominative-perception (*paṭigha-* and *adhivacana-saññā*) in the *Vibhaṅga*, but the view of Buddhaghosa is different.

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³ AK. iii. 30 with Bhāṣya (p. 50). Contra Vibhaṅga, p. 6 with comm.; SBB. iii. 59, n. 1; DN. ii. 59; Buddh. Psych., pp. 49 f. Cf. AKV. in Dharmasaṃgraha, 28 (p. 41); (Paris MS. f. 241a) in MKV., p. 74, n. 6.

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In general there is nothing very novel in the Sarvāstivādin psychology; the senses are material, each being divided into a principal consisting of a combination of pure and minute units while the accessory is made of flesh; the differences between the five depend on the difference of their atomic combinations. They possess each the power of natural perceptual discrimination, but it lies with intellect (*mano-vijñāna*) to exercise the function of discrimination of things as past, present, and future, and the power of recollection and recognition. Mind (*manas*), here appears in its usual rôle of co-ordinating intellectual activity, but the conception of the relation of sensation and mind is by no means clear of confusion. In its capacity as will the mind appears as Citta. Every act, feeling, or thought is accompanied by a latent state, which later comes to fruition, and thus bridges the gulf between the cause and the effect in the working of the principle of action. In the case of verbal or bodily action the impress is quasi-material (*avijñapti*).

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The details of the scheme are occasionally interesting; the sense of sight grasps not merely colour, but also configuration (*saṃsthāna*); e.g. long, short, round, square, high, low, straight, and crooked. The sense of touch appreciates the four elements, and also the qualities of smoothness, roughness, lightness, heaviness, cold, hunger, and thirst. These qualities fall under touch, because they represent the feelings generated in sentient beings by objects; thus thirst is caused by a touch which excites the physical body when the element of fire becomes active and predominates over other energies. In some of these dicta and in the general view the closeness of connexion with the Nyāya-Vaiçeṣika system is obvious.

4. The Classifications of Phenomena

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In all the schools great attention was devoted to classification¹ and division of phenomena, material and psychic, a process indicating in the view of the Mahāyāna some failure to realize the truth of the doctrine of momentariness, since the theories took the aspect of regarding existence as made up of temporary complexes, indeed, but of complexes derived from a number of irreducible factors, a conception really heretical.

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¹ Cf. McGovern, *Mahāyāna Buddhism*, ch. vii; DS. and AK.; for the developed Theravāda, ADS.; *Compendium*, pp. 237 ff.

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The Theravādin classification, as we have seen, is based on the old doctrine of the five aggregates; it reckons under matter (*rūpa*) the strange miscellany recited above; under feeling it accepts the three classes of pleasure, pain, and neutral feeling, adding sometimes mental and physical sensation; under perception or ideation (*saññā*) we have the ideas corresponding to the five senses and to mind as the sixth; of dispositions or mental qualities (*saṅkhāra*) there are fifty-two divisions and of consciousness or intellect (*viññāṇa*) there are eighty-nine, classed from the point of view of the merit or demerit resulting. Of these the mental qualities alone are of sufficient interest to deserve mention. Seven mental qualities are common to every act of consciousness: mental contact, feeling, ideation, volition (*cetanā*), concentration, (*ekaggatā*), alertness (*jīvitindriya*), and attention (*manasikāra*). Six mental properties may or may not be present: initial and sustained application, deciding (*adhimokkha*), effort, zest, and impulse or conation (*chanda*). These thirteen are unmoral. There are fourteen evil mental qualities: dullness, impudence, recklessness, distraction, greed, error, conceit, hate, envy, selfishness, worry, sloth, torpor, and perplexity. There are nineteen virtuous mental qualities: faith, mindfulness, shame or prudence, modesty, discretion, non-covetousness or disinterestedness, amity or non-hatred, balance of mind, composure of body² or of mind, buoyancy of body or of mind, pliancy of body or of mind, adaptability of body or of mind, proficiency of body or of mind, rectitude of body or of mind. There are three forms of propriety or abstinence (virati), right speech, right action, and right livelihood; two illimitables, pity and appreciation; and one supreme possession, intuition.

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² That *kāya* here means the aggregates other than *citta* (*Compendium*, p. 96, n 3; Asl., p. 150 on DS., § 40) is very dubious. The contrast between ADS. and DS., § 62 as to *Saṅkhāras* is interesting as a token of elaboration.

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The Sarvāstivādin divisions, based on the distinction between uncompounded and compounded things, recognize seventy-two of the latter. Under matter they class five sense objects, five sense organs, and latent matter (avijñapti), the impression left by vocal or bodily action on the bodily organism. The mental element is single, though there are six forms of consciousness, the five senses and mind consciousness. There are forty-six divisions of mental qualities, corresponding to the dispositions of the Theravādins. Ten neutral elements are always present: sensation or feeling, ideation, volition, contact, impulse, intellect (mati), memory, attention, deciding (adhimokṣa), concentration (samādhi). There are ten good elements which are always present: faith, diligence, indifference, shame, modesty, non-covetousness, non-hatred, harmlessness, serenity, temperance or non-slackness. There are six great evil elements: dullness or nescience, intemperateness, indolence, disbelief, sloth or idleness, distraction or rashness. There are two non-virtuous great elements: shamelessness, immodesty. There are ten lesser evil elements, not present in all forms of sentiency, but only in those forms of life which are possessed of self-consciousness: wrath, hypocrisy, envy, jealousy, anguish, injury, rancour, deceit, trickery, and arrogance. Finally, there are eight miscellaneous minor (aniyatabhūmika) mental qualities: repentance, torpor, judgement (vitarka), investigation (vicāra)—that is initial and applied attention, cupidity, anger, pride, and doubt. Finally, there are fourteen miscellaneous elements classed as non-mental compounds (cittaviprayukta dharma). They are attainment, non-attainment, general characteristics (sabhāgatā), unconsciousness (asaṃjñitā), ecstacy with loss of consciousness (asaṃjñisamāpatti), continuation of this, equivalent to cessation of existence (nirodhasamāpatti), life, birth, continuance (sthiti), decay (jarā), impermanency (anityatā) words, sentence, and letters.

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This not very happy attempt at an objective description is accompanied by a subjective classification; this recognizes the five aggregates making up the individual, which correspond with the seventy-five things of the objective classification and the twelve bases (*āyatanas*) of mental action, namely the five senses, the five sense objects, the mind and ideas,¹ being the necessary materials for the functioning of consciousness, while the eighteen factors (*dhātus*) of consciousness consist of the twelve bases together with the six forms of consciousness, the five senses and mind. In the whole scheme as in that of the Theravādins we find little of philosophical insight or importance in this, clearly a very important side in its own eyes of the activity of the school.

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¹ TRD., pp. 31 f. ; ADS. vii. 8, *Compendium*, pp. 254 ff. For the relation of the Pudgala to them in the Vātsīputrīya view see Wassilieff, *Bouddhisme*, pp. 252 f. Cf. above, ch. iv, § 4.

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