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Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c16.s3: 3. Buddhaghosa and the Sarvāstivādin Schools

Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c16.s3

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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.

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