Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c16.s2.3

c16.s2.3

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