Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c16.s3.12

c16.s3.12

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.