Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c16.s3.1

c16.s3.1

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.