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Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c9: Chapter IV. The Philosophy of Spirit and Nature

Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c9

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English

Contents

Chapter IV. The Philosophy of Spirit and Nature

1. The Negation of the Self

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THE strong divergence of views between the Buddhist schools on the doctrine of the self suggests inevitably the conclusion that the teaching of the master was deficient in clearness of expression, and that the way was left open for the development of divergence of opinion. We may readily believe that the Buddha’s chief aim was to teach men to end their misery, and that he laid stress on the negation of the self in the sense that he recognized that for man to aim directly at the welfare of his self is the surest means of defeating the end of attaining that absence of desire which means, in the Buddhist view, happiness. The most effective therapeutic against the folly of seeking to gratify longings was the realization that there was no truth in the doctrine of a permanent self.

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However this may be, the Pali Canon treats the doctrine earnestly and seriously, making no concession, voluntarily at least, to the doctrine of the self, for we may, of course, dismiss mere popular expressions, which it would have been impossible to eradicate from the language. It is impossible to understand the arguments to prove this result without realizing that the conception of a self accepted from older speculation by the Buddhists treated it as permanent, possessed of bliss, and autonomous; the Buddhist contention is that nothing empirical can possibly be endowed with these characteristics, and that, therefore, nothing empirical is the self. In another form the argument takes the shape of a contention that, whatever is permanent, cannot be subject to modification, and stress is laid also on the moral argument; all misery arises from the delusion of self which causes man to strive to profit himself and to injure others.

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The doctrine of the characteristics of the non-ego are effectively set out in the sermon at Benares;¹ matter cannot be the self, for if it were, then the body would not be subject to disease and one would be able to control one’s body at pleasure, the self being assumed as autonomous. The same argument is applied to the other four aggregates constituting the spiritual nature of man, the feelings, perceptions, dispositions, and intellect; in each case they cannot be equated with the self. Then it is pointed out that the body is shifting and ever in change, and that it therefore is ever accompanied by misery; accordingly it cannot be the self, and the same argument is then repeated of the other aggregates. Then, it is added, when a man realizes that all these things are not the self he turns away from them and by the extinction of desire he attains release. An interesting form of the argument is given in the Mahānidāna Sutta of the Dīgha Nikāya,² where three hypotheses are selected for investigation. The first is that the soul is feeling; to this it is replied that feelings are threefold pleasant, painful, and neutral; that they are impermanent, succeeding one another; and that they are products and certain to pass away. If then, when a pleasant feeling is experienced, the conclusion is arrived at: ‘This is my soul;’ then when a painful feeling supersedes it one must conclude: ‘My soul has passed away’. To call, therefore, feeling the self is to make out as self a thing which is impermanent, blended of happiness and pain, and liable to begin and end. Secondly, the hypothesis is made that the soul is neither feeling nor is insentient—that is, doubtless, the soul and the body are identical. But this contention is defeated by the simple consideration that where there is no feeling it is impossible to say: ‘I am’; that is, a soul without self-reference has no meaning. Thirdly, the soul is regarded as not identical with feeling but as possessing feeling; but this doctrine is also rejected, on the ground that, were feeling of every kind to cease absolutely, then, there being, owing to the cessation, no feeling whatever, no one could say: ‘I myself am.’ Therefore, the conclusion is drawn, one should lay aside these false views of the self, and thus save oneself from desire and attain complete rest. The same doctrine appears in a tedious scholastic form in the other Nikāyas,¹ where, by the use of permutations and combinations, twenty theories of the possible identification of the soul with one or more or all the five aggregates are enunciated and disapproved. A dialogue between Sāriputta and Yamaka in the Samyutta Nikāya develops the same theme; the self is not to be found in any of the aggregates or in their combination, and the realization of this has the usual practical effect of leading a man to final peace. The doctrine is consistently carried out; when the Buddha is asked who has feeling or other sensation, his answer is to point out that he does not assert that any one feels, but that there is feeling, which is a totally different proposition. Similarly it is not correct to ask who undergoes old age and rebirth.² Indeed, if one is to assert that anything is the self, it is really more correct to give the name to the body, for that may endure for as much as a hundred years, while consciousness in all its forms is impermanent, in constant flux, comparable to the ape in the forest which seizes one branch, only to let it go and grasp another.³ The constant change is illustrated by the metaphors of the fire or the movement of water.⁴

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¹ MV. i. 6. 38 ff.

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² ii. 66 ff.

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¹ MN. i. 138, 300; SN. iii. 66; iv. 34; Vin. i. 13.

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² SN. ii. 13; 62.

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³ SN. ii. 94 f.

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⁴ Cf. MV. i. 21; SN. i. 133; iv. 392 f.; and iv. 157. So in Herakleitos.

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Interesting and drastic form is given to the idea in a saying of the nun Vajirā, who was approached by the tempter Māra and asked: ‘By whom is the person (satta) produced? Who is the creator of the person? Where is the person who comes into being? Where is the person who disappears?’ The nun is too wise to be misled by the tempter; she points out firmly that there is no such thing as a person, but merely a collection of changing aggregates, and she illustrates her meaning by the simile of the chariot, which is merely the name for a collection of various parts. The doctrine forms the subject of deliberate elaboration in the Milindapañha, where the king is instructed by Nāgasena by means of the parallel of the chariot, and shows that the name Nāgasena denotes no soul, but is merely an appellation of the five aggregates which constitute the empirical individual.⁵

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⁵ SN. i. 135; Mil., pp. 25 ff., where Walleser's re-arrangement of rôles (PGAB., p. 120) is clearly wrong.

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There is, indeed, no doubt that for the Canon the position is essential and fundamental, though we cannot say that it was really so for the Buddha himself. But it was obviously difficult even for the early teachers of the orthodox doctrine to make the tenet which denies any soul fit effectively the doctrine that there is recompense of deeds; such recompense no empirical observer could dream of placing normally in this world, but the reward or punishment must come later. The early Buddhists accepted this idea of the continuance of existence in some sense or another; they denied energetically the doctrine of utter destruction, which was evidently current in their day, and the chain of causation is a theoretical explanation of the mode in which the continuance of existence is carried on. But, granting the truth of the doctrine of the act (karman), are we to reconcile it with the absence of a self? Naturally it was not left to western scholarship ‘to attempt to find a loop-hole through which at least a covert or esoteric belief in the soul and in future life (that is, of course, of a soul) can be recognized, in some sort of way, as part of so widely accepted a religious system’.¹ Honest disciples were evidently perplexed, and no wonder, at the discrepancy of the two teachings; if there were no self, was this not equivalent to destroying effectively the whole basis of the doctrine of action?

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¹ Rhys Davids, SBB. ii. 189.

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It cannot be said that the attitude adopted in reply by the Buddha of the Canon is precisely satisfying. He is asked: ‘If the body is not the self; if feeling, perception, dispositions, and intellect are not the self, then who is affected by the works which the not-self has performed?’ The Buddha reproves the questioner: ‘Shall one who is under the dominion of desire think to go beyond the mind of the master?’² A little more definite is the result achieved in the case of the monk Sāti, who³ though an adherent of the faith, ‘went so far as to tell the Buddha that he must, as he admitted transmigration, have meant that the Viññāṇa did not really depend upon, was not really bound up with, the body, but that it formed the link in transmigration. In perhaps the most earnest and emphatic of all the Dialogues, the Buddha meets and refutes at length this erroneous representation of his view.¹ But there are defects in the refutation, which is certainly earnest enough. Sāti maintains that consciousness or intellect (viññāṇa) transmigrates without alteration (anañña), while the Buddha argues that consciousness comes, e. g., from the eye and coloured matter in the case of visual cognition (cakkhu-viññāṇa), and similarly in other cases. Now, if we are to understand, as does Professor Rhys Davids, this argument as disposing of the idea of some permanent or continuing element in transmigration, we are compelled to assume that the Buddha adopts the doctrine that from the eye and coloured matter there is produced consciousness without any previous consciousness existing. Such a doctrine, it is clear, if pressed, inevitably leads us to the conclusion of Ajita Kesakambalin which asserts the destruction of the self at death, or to the heresy of Makkhali Gosāla, which denies the existence of the act.¹

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² SN. iii. 103.

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³ MN. i. 256 ff. ; SBB. ii. 87, n. 3. ; Mrs. Rhys Davids, Buddh. Psych., pp. 15 f.

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¹ For these schools see ch. vii, § 1; for the doctrine of consciousness, ch. x, § 3. Cf. Poussin, JA. 1902, ii. 262, 281, n. 2.

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It will not do to rescue the Buddha at such a cost, and the true solution appears to lie in recognizing that the error of Sāti was not in asserting that consciousness transmigrated, but in asserting that it transmigrated unchanged (anañña). This accords in fact excellently with certain other passages which are evidently orthodox. In the Saṃyutta Nikāya ² the Buddha denies equally the doctrines: ‘He who feels is identical with the feeling’ or the reverse; ‘The soul is identical with the body’ or the reverse; ‘All exists’ or the reverse; ‘He who acts reaps the result’ and ‘One acts; another reaps’, declaring that his doctrine is a mean, and enunciating as the solution the well-worn chain of causation. Now the chain of causation explains clearly enough the possibility of change in the consciousness, for it does not contemplate an autonomous consciousness persisting unchanged, but allows the determination of its content by extraneous objects of consciousness, which, of course, adequately show that there is alteration. To what extent, of course, this argument was realized fully in the Canon is uncertain; but, if this view be accepted, it has the great merit of explaining the assertion in the Mahānidāna Sutta¹ that there is descent of the consciousness into the womb of the mother preparatory to rebirth. ‘The animistic implication adhering to this term (i. e. descent : okkamissatha) would, of course, have no significance for Buddhist doctrine,’ we are assured, but the assurance appears to beg the question, and is certainly not effectively supported by the fact that Buddhaghosa adds the qualification ‘so to speak’. There are in fact two different points involved, and, even accepting Buddhaghosa’s addition, only one of them is affected. The phrase ‘descent of the consciousness’ certainly implies a continuity of consciousness between the old and the new lives, and it may imply that this consciousness was accompanied by some form of body, if we take the word ‘descent’ literally; in fact the schools differed on this point,² and Buddhaghosa is consistent with his own view in negating the question of a corporeal accompaniment of the consciousness. But this has nothing to do with the far more important animistic implication, namely, that there is a continuity of consciousness, which the Buddha seems frankly to admit. The conclusion gathers strength from the amusing tale of the worthy Godhika,³ whose suicide is approved in the Canon because disease prevented his successful maintenance of trance. The evil Māra is represented in the form of smoke as searching for the rebirth consciousness of the sage, but as failing to find it, since it has utterly disappeared with his attainment of Nirvāṇa. Here again, if we press the idea, we have a visible consciousness that is—one with some sort of material body—but, letting this point pass as fanciful, we still have absolutely clearly the assertion of some measure of continuity, and nothing but an absolute disinclination to depart from a cherished theory can explain the attempts to get rid of the incident as a form of Buddhist humour, a device which has been seriously overworked. The truth is that there is a consistent body of evidence proving that even in the early school there was a recognition of the necessity of finding some means of continuity if the doctrine of the act were not to fall into disrepute, and if remembrance of former births were to be possible.

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² ii. 75 f.; 17, 20, 23, 60; iii. 135; TDC., p. 60. Cf. also AN. iv. no. 77; MA. i. 6; MKV., p. 269.

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¹ DN. ii. 63; SBB. iii. 60, n. 1; cf. SN. ii. 13, 91, 101.

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² See below, ch. xi, § 2.

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³ SN. i. 120 ff. ; cf. ii. 66; iii. 124 ; Mrs. Rhys Davids, Buddh. Psych., p. 21; JRAS. 1903, p. 590. Cf. DN. iii. 332 ff. On former births, cf. DN. i. 81; Itivuttaka, p. 99.

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There is, indeed, strong proof of this in the *Milindapañha*,¹ a text of unblemished orthodoxy, in which the question of continuity and moral responsibility is energetically put. The text asserts with extreme precision the doctrine that the only individual is the collection of changing aggregates, but it recognizes the necessity of continuity, and for this it provides by the doctrine of the continuity of consciousness in change throughout life and on to the next life, the death and the new life being made simultaneous. The idea is helped out by a wealth of illustration; the milk turns to curds, butter, ghee; the being transmigrates neither as the same nor as another. It is hardly necessary to emphasize the point; the most orthodox of texts finds it necessary to supply a real link of connexion and does so with fair effect, a result later more completely achieved in the Sautrāntika school.²

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¹ pp. 40 ff.

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² See below, ch. ix. § 3.

2. Personalist Doctrines

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Although the doctrine which denied a self was certainly orthodox, from the point of view of the Pali Canon, it is certain that other Buddhists were perfectly contented with the conception of a true person (*pudgala*) which for all practical purposes may be regarded as an effective self. We need not accept from them, any more than we do from the advocates of the not-self, the view that their opinion was precisely that of the Buddha; it is sufficient to accept the obvious fact that they represent one branch of the early Buddhist belief, although not the branch which finally prevailed in the philosophical schools. It is important to note that the comment on the *Kathāvatthu*, where the heresy of the belief in a person occupies the first place, ascribes the doctrine to the Sammitiyas and the Vajjiputtakas within the schools and to many teachers outside the Buddhist community; the Vajjiputtakas are reckoned in the orthodox tradition as the first of the seceders, a valuable hint of the antiquity of their doctrine.

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The hint is confirmed by the occurrence in the *Saṃyutta Nikāya*¹ of the Sūtra of the burden-bearer. We learn there of the bearer of the burden, the burden, the taking up of the burden, and the laying down of the burden; the burden is the five aggregates viewed as modes of clinging to existence (*upādāna*); the taking up is desire which leads to rebirth; the depositing is the laying aside of desire; the bearer is the individual the person (*pudgala*) of such and such a family. He, it is, who on enlightenment, having laid aside his heavy burden, does not take up another, but attains Nirvāṇa. Now it is possible to explain away the Sūtra, as do Buddhaghoṣa, Vasubandhu, Candrakīrti, and Yaçomitra; but it is equally obvious that it is mere explaining away, and that the author of the Sūtra did not entertain the view that the person is nothing save the five aggregates as these authorities insist, and all those who maintain that the Sūtra accepts a person are justified, including Uddyotakara who argues from it that the Buddhists in accepting the doctrine of the non-ego were contradicting their own master. To say that the aggregates are the bearer is to contradict the text, and the preservation of the doctrine of the person in the Canon is the most striking proof of its authenticity.

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¹ iii. 25; cf. AKV. 474 b5 (Burnouf, *Intr.*, p. 507); Minayeff, *Recherches*, p. 225, n. 2; BCAP. ix. 73; NV., p. 342; Poussin, JRAS. 1901, p. 308; JA. 1902, ii. 266 ff.; Hardy, JRAS. 1901, p. 573.

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There are other passages which permit of a similar rendering; the Buddha declares there are four kinds of persons, he who applies himself to the good of another not of the self, &c.;² the self is declared to be the lord of the self, the witness of its good and evil, in the *Dhammapada*,³ and it is clearly no adequate answer to argue that the self is nothing but the thought (*citta*), for that is merely a question of phraseology. What we recognize in such expressions is the fact that there is a dominant element in the individual, the object of taming, and we find in the *Milinda-pañha*⁴ the analogous conception in the intellectual sphere; the intelligence (*viññāṇa*) is compared with the guardian of a city, who, seated at the cross roads, watches the coming of men from diverse directions.

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² AN. ii. 95; PP., p. 54; KV. comm., p. 8.

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³ 160 compared in AKV. and BCAP. with 35: *cittassa damanaṃ sādhu*; MKV., p. 354.

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⁴ p. 62.

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The contention of the personalists is supported by arguments of a dialectical character; they appeal, of course, to the obvious difficulty of any real action of Karman if it is held that the individual who suffers is not he who sinned; but they use also the contention¹ that the Buddha would not have condemned the proposition that the Tathāgata does not exist in Nirvāṇa, unless the Nirvāṇa were existence, and they contend, of course, that Nirvāṇa is real, which doubtless accords with the general tone of the Canon itself. Another scholastic contention is based on the refusal of the Buddha to answer the questions: ‘Is the Jīva the same as the body? Is the Jīva different from the body?’ In its original sense the questions may have referred to the issue of the identity of the vital principle (jivitendriya) and the body; but the argument of the personalists treats it as applying to the person (pudgala) and the five aggregates, and they contend that, if the person were really no more than an insecure method of describing the five aggregates, the Buddha must have accepted as correct the identification of the Jīva and the body. They can appeal also to such declarations as the doctrine that the doer of the deed is neither the same as, nor different from the sufferer of the penalty; the person who has a sensation is neither the same as nor different from the sensation.² Similarly the person is neither identical with the aggregates, nor yet is he distinct from them; the relationship is properly described as ineffable (avācya), a position which forms the subject of attack by the Madhyamaka as well as by Vasubandhu.³ Its merits, however, are obvious; it mediates, in the best Buddhist manner, between phenomena with a basis and the permanent unchanging self of the Brahmanic tradition. It accords also, though the point seems not to have been noted, with the position asserted by Sāriputta in his discussions with Sāti,¹ for there we find that the Tathāgata is declared neither to be the five aggregates nor to be different from them. In truth the doctrine of the purely phenomenal self was one which presented interminable difficulties, and it is characteristic of the lack of serious attempt to deal with these difficulties in the orthodox school that the Canon makes no effort on its own doctrine to explain the phenomena of memory, leaving the problem for later definition.

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¹ Poussin, *Bouddhisme*, p. 162 citing Nāgārjuna on MK. xxii. 13, but Walleser's trs. does not give this.

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² SN. ii. 20, 23, 61, 76.

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³ MKV., p. 283 (cf. p. 64, n. 3); BCAP. ix. 60; Wassilieff, *Bouddhisme*, pp. 252, 270; the Saṃkrāntivādins appear (p. 258) as antiphenomenalists; MA. vi. 146; AKV. in Poussin, p. 163, n. 2 (theory of Vātsīputrīyas Sāmmitīyas).

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¹ MN. i. 256 ff.

3. The Empirical Self and the Process of Consciousness

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The account of the empirical self given in the Canon is in the highest degree naïve, and, if it is an advance on earlier thought, that is merely because in the Upaniṣads mysticism pervades the ideas, and observation is at a discount. The possibility of precise and effective observation in Buddhism was in large measure annulled by the ethical aspect given to all psychical states; throughout Buddhist philosophy states of mind are looked at as essentially good or bad, a point of view which is fatal to precise psychology.

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As we have seen it is difficult to form any precise picture of the nature of consciousness as it appeared to early Buddhism; that it was an ‘intermittent series of psychic throbs associated with a living organism beating out their coming to know through one brief span of life’ is a conjecture² based on the instruction of Sāti alone, and doubtless misrepresents that text. No other passage in the Canon even suggests that thought is to be treated as an intermittent series of thought-flashes or of mental electrification of the organism. We are, in fact, in the presence of primitive ideas, and to interpret them in the terms of modern psychology is fundamentally to misrepresent, though doubtless largely to improve, the doctrine of the Canon.

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² Mrs. Rhys Davids, *Buddh. Psych.*, p. 16, whose collection of matter is as valuable as her theories, dominated by an obsolescent psychology, are unsubstantial; cf. Barth, RHR. xlii. 72.

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Intellect (*viññāṇa*) is undoubtedly the chief term which comprehensively covers mental phenomena in the Canon, as might be expected from the earlier Brahmanical tendency to use the word in this generic way. It represents such unity as there is in the self of experience. Synonymous with Viññāṇa, according to Buddhaghosa and to usage, are Citta and Manas, but there are obvious preferences in use; Viññāṇa often occurs in special connexion with sense cognition; Manas again is, in accordance with Brahmanical usage, preminently the intellectual function of consciousness, and Citta the introspective aspect of self-examination, but these are only nuances. From Brahmanical tradition the compound Nāma-rūpa serves to denote spirit and matter, specialized normally to denote the concrete individual, in which both are united, while the old term self (attā) constantly occurs in those phrases which are the source of its reflexive use in grammar, when the person is divided mentally into a dominant part and its object.

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By a division,¹ which seems to have no precedent in Brahmanical texts, and which has certainly no merit, logical or psychological, the individual is divided into five aggregates or groups (khandha), the Sanskrit equivalent of which means ‘body’ in the phrase Dharmaskandha in the Chāndogya Upaniṣad. The first is Rūpa, which denotes simply matter, or material quality, and covers the elements and their compounds; the term aggregate has obviously considerable appropriateness as applied to the complex admixture which makes up the human body, and it is clearly absurd to infer from it any conception of constant dynamic conditions in the body, which, indeed, is treated by the Canon as relatively stable and long-lived.

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¹ Beckh (Buddhismus, ii. 81 f.) compares the three imperfect conceptions of self as body, made of mind, and made of ideas (saññā) in DN. i. 195 ff.

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Of the four psychical aggregates the first in the stereotyped order is feeling (vedanā), a term wide enough to cover sensation but predominantly indicative of pleasure or pain. But, in addition to these two aspects of feeling, there is recognized a third which is neutral; pleasure has stationariness as pleasant, change as unpleasant, the opposite applies to pain, while neutral feeling has knowledge as pleasant, ignorance as unpleasant, a statement which is not enlightening. The psychological heresy of neutral feeling is prompted doubtless by ethical considerations, for it is the aim of man in his process of attaining perfection to rid himself of all positive feeling of any kind. The term aggregate applied to feeling is obviously intended to indicate that the individual is constantly experiencing one feeling after another.

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Perception (*saññā*), covers both sense-perception and the wider form of perception which takes place, not through the sense, but by the agency of mind; the former in the technical terminology of the *Vibhaṅga* is resistance-perception (*paṭigha-saññā*), the latter designative perception (*adhivacana-saññā*), denoting, for instance, the understanding through speech of the mental state of another, although an alternative interpretation assigning to this form of perception the giving of names to objects cognized by sense is suggested by Vasubandhu.¹ The term aggregate here is presumably collective, but the mention of Saññā along with Viññāṇa is otiose and decisive proof of the lack of psychological interest or acumen of the observers.

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¹ AKB., pp. 50 f. ; above ch. iii. § 1. This simple sense is found e. g. MN. i. 293; Mil., p. 61; Asl., p. 110; the term, however, also denotes higher mental activity; its ambiguity is due to the complex function of mind in sense-perception and higher ideation; cf. Oldenberg VWW., pp. 69 ff. In SN. v. 315 resistance-perception is asserted of internal and external things (*dhammas*).

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Fourth in the complex is the aggregate of dispositions (*saṃkhāra*), a term which is explained as denoting that which compounds what is composed, whether matter or psychic, a definition peculiarly without value. The vagueness of the term is illustrated in the Abhidhamma,² where some fifty mental constituents are subsumed under it, and generally any other causally induced incorporeal phenomena exclusive of the other three psychic aggregates. The root conception is doubtless the impressions resulting in dispositions,³ predispositions or latent tendencies, which will bear fruition in action in due course, but in the Abhidhamma at any rate it covers will, attention, application, concentration, zest, faith, energy, mindfulness, insight, rectitude, modesty, discretion, disinterestedness, no covetousness, no malice, grasp and balance and various other groups. The explanation is simple enough; the category, having a vague sense, served effectively to cover all those mental activities for which the division had no obvious and convenient place; but it hardly needs remark that such a procedure is at once proof of the paralysing effect of tradition, and proof of lack of psychological interest. Dispositions, however, it must be remembered may be physical as well as mental, and the term Saṃkhāra in the sense of product of disposition is used, like Dhamma, to apply to the empirical world as consisting of compounded things. In psychic application the term aggregate is obviously wholly appropriate.

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² Below, ch. x. § 4.

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³ The denial of this in *Kindred Sayings*, i. 158, n. 4 is clearly invalid, Cf. Aung, *Compendium*, pp. 273 ff. where they are treated as concomitants performing their respective functions in combination. When applied to matter (*rūpa*) physical causes are, of course, meant: the interpolation of ‘mental’ in the trans. of the comm. in *Buddh. Psych.*, p. 51 makes nonsense of the comment, and is wholly illegitimate, agreeing as it does with Franke’s (DN., pp. 307 ff.) view of Saṃkhāras as ideas only.

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The last aggregate is Viññāṇa, and, as it is credited with appreciation of feeling as well as perceptive power, it is clear that, even in this collection of terms, it is practically is wide enough to include both perception and feeling. This is admitted in a dialogue in the Majjhima,¹ and no defence of the failure to revise the fivefold division seems possible, unless we accept the hint of Buddhaghosa which suggests that the breaking of intellect into four aggregates was intended to emphasize the doctrine of non-ego. But in their account of Viññāṇa the early teachers do develop a more elaborate psychology of perception than is found in the Upaniṣads, which were concentrated on fundamental philosophical issues and not on empirical psychology. But we must not exaggerate their defects as compared with the Canon.² The senses had already been distinguished and enumerated as five, although those of smell, taste, and touch are subordinated in consequence to that of sight, and touch in particular is not accorded its due importance. But the idea of a central unity, with its abode in the heart, by which sense-impressions are co-ordinated and comprehended, is enunciated, and it is possible that the question of the comparative activity of sense or sense-object had raised interest. In Buddhism, if we find more interest in the object than in the subject, the value of psychological investigation was marred by the love of symmetry which involves the determination to fit each sense into the same mould, in place of allowing each its appropriate distinctions.

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¹ i. 292 f.

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² Mrs. Rhys Davids, Buddh. Psych., pp. 57 ff.; Oldenberg, VWW., pp. 69 ff., 83 f.

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The canonical¹ doctrine of perception runs: ‘Depending on eye, in consequence of visible matter (*rūpa*) arises eye-consciousness; the concourse of the three is contact; on account of contact arises feeling’, and then the remaining psychical aggregates are enumerated or some equivalent of mental development, as for instance in the *Milindapañha* the series after contact is given as feeling, perception or idea, thought or will (*cetanā*), abstraction or concentration (*ekaggatā*), sense of vitality (*jīvitindriya*) and attention (*manasikāra*).² Occasionally the matter is simplified by making the contact of two factors only, the eye and visible matter in the case of sight.³ The third factor involved is clearly, as later discussion suggests, the consciousness, which is always an essential part of the individual, in the form of attention directed towards the eye,⁴ and, when this aspect is omitted, we may assume that it is done merely for the sake of simplicity, not as deliberate modification of the theory, or that it was believed that the physical contact of matter could create intelligence. The theory is plainly one of naïve realism; two physical contacts presided over by consciousness operating in the appropriate sphere produce the mental results of feeling; perception; disposition, in the shape doubtless, if we may supplement the texts, of an impression of the precept, its feeling aspect and volitional reaction; and consciousness. In the process of consciousness falls the essential aspect of the work of mind; the five senses, of which in the Canon sight and hearing preserve their old pre-eminence, touch being still ignored as of primary value, have separate spheres and do not interfere one with another; mind, however, is its resort and shapes their field and range;¹ in more modern terminology it succeeds immediately to simple visual cognition and produces an apparent unity and simultaneity in the perceptions which we have. Mind also is the active element in the perception or comprehension of ideas as opposed to sense-precepts. But, though central and special in function, it often ranks simply as if it were a sixth sense, and it has a physical basis, undefined in the Canon, just like a sense.

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¹ SN. ii. 72; iv. 68, 86; MN. iii. 281 ff.; Sumaṅ. i. 183. Later analysis adds light and space (*Caḷistamba* in MKV., p. 567) or (KV. i. 6. 23 f.) light (cf. NP., p. 80). Cf. SDS., p. 16; Poussin TDC., pp. 20 f.; Oldenberg, *Buddha*[^5], p. 271; MV. i. 21; AK. iii. 2. In the case of mental perception, mind serves as sense and act of attention.

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² Mil., p. 56; at p. 60 the series after *cetanā* has initial and applied attention (*vitakka*, *vicāra*) to which p. 63 adds consciousness (*viññāṇa*). See also DS. 62 (i-vi); ch. x. § 4; SN. ii. 244 f.; iii. 225 ff. has desire; DN. ii. 308 ff. also both forms of attention.

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³ MN. i. 111 f.; 256 f. (ch. iv. § 1); SN. ii. 97; that this is not seriously meant is shown in SN. iv. 67, for at 68 the three appear, and Mil., p. 60 has two, but p. 56 the three. Curiously enough the point is ignored in *Buddh. Psych.*, pp. 63 f.; *Psych. Ethics*, p. 5, n. 2. The estimate of the value of Buddhist psychology in *Buddh. Psych.*, p. 61 is not to be taken seriously.

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⁴ MN. i. 190 has *samanvāhāra*, act of attention; so MK. xxvi. 4, 5; KV. i. 6. 23 f. has attention and a physical medium, e.g. light; in the case of mind it is *vatthu* which Geiger (PD., p. 81) would render ‘matter’ in general.

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¹ MN. i. 295; SN. v. 218; cf. MKV., p. 33; VM. in Warren, p. 297; Asl., p. 400; KV. xviii. 9; Wassilieff, Bouddhisme, p. 280. See also Therag. 804 ff.; DN. ii. 338; MN. iii. 300; SN. v. 74; AN. v. 30; Mil., pp. 54, 86; KV. ii. 7. 5; PD., p. 81.

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Detailed effective analysis of the sense apparatus is lacking; the idea of doors of sense appears only metaphorically, and is suggested by the ‘openings (suṣayaḥ)’ of the Upaniṣads, and the question of the knowledge of like by like is not touched upon expressly until Buddhaghosa, and does not appear to be known to the early schools. The lack of curiosity is explained effectively by their pre-occupation with ethical considerations, and secondarily by the lack of positive science in the contemporary intellectual sphere. Amid the many allusions to human activities in the Canon we hear of practically nothing scientific, save the pseudo-science of astrology and the practical art of medicine, which unquestionably deeply coloured the outlook and method of the Buddha as the great healer of human evils. It is this preoccupation with ethical needs which explains the psychological laxity which uses the term Dukkha to denote psychological feeling as painful, and the misery of the world which is implicit in pleasure, if that is the pleasure of the senses leading on to rebirth. But importance certainly attaches to the recognition of the fact that feeling is inseparably bound up with perception.

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Of the process of ideation the Canon has nothing systematic to tell. Initial consideration (vitakka) is distinguished from further reflective investigation (vicāra); attention (manasikāra) and reflection are insisted upon, while ethical considerations emphasize the importance of mindfulness (sati) which is also associated with memory as the condition of it, but there is no attempt to explain memory. Self awareness, deliberate intellectual activity leading to self possession (sampajañña) is also important in an ethical aspect, while in other terms regarding investigation stress rests on the element of volitional effort in inquiry (vicaya, vīmaṃsā, cintā). Ethical again is the motive which discourages such deliberate speculation (cintā) on the range of Buddhaship, the intuitive powers of one sunk in meditative ecstacy, the working of the act, and the nature of the world.¹ For higher intellectual activity we find the terms gnosis (jñāna) and insight (paññā), the latter fated to be deified in the later conception, but either term may be used of inferior knowledge. In Jhāna and Samādhi we have forms of that deep concentration in meditation which are essential elements in the latter stages of the path of salvation. Their importance is great, and like the other terms for the higher knowledge they indicate the essential nature of such knowledge, an intuition of the whole quite distinct from a discursive process of reasoning.

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¹ Buddh. Psych., pp. 92 f.; AN. iv. no. 77.

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The view of intuition as the source of true knowledge, and at the same time a decisive cause of emancipation from rebirth is characteristic of Buddhism as of the Upaniṣads, and explains why in neither do we find any serious contribution to epistemology. The Buddha, like the sage of the Upaniṣad, sees things as they truly are (yathābhūtaṃ) by a mystic potency, which is quite other than reasoning of the discursive type. The truth of his insight is assured by it alone, for it is obviously incapable of verification in any empirical manner. But the Canon does not treat intuition (paññā) as being wholly distinct from, and unconnected with, discursive knowledge; not only does the term continue to be used for the lower forms of knowledge, but stress² is laid on the fact that intuition is intimately connected with intelligence (viññāṇa), perception (saññā), and feeling, or, as it is elsewhere put, it is allied to deliberate and searching mental appreciation (yoniso manasikāra). But from intelligence intuition differs by reason that the former is to be understood, the latter to be cultivated and developed; in other words, by means of exercises of concentration, which form an essential part of the way of salvation, a high degree of intuitive power is to be attained, surpassing any mere understanding, a condition styled also complete knowledge (pariññā) and elimination (pahāna), the latter characteristic emphasizing the elimination of empirical factors of any kind. It may then be regarded as ‘that effort of intellectual sympathy by which the mind can place itself within the mobile reality of things’ in Bergsonian phraseology.

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² MN. i. 292 ff.; Buddh. Psych., p. 133.

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Of the psychology of will and the emotions the Canon has almost nothing systematic. The dependence of volition on desire and of desire on feeling is elaborated in the chain of causation but without psychological insight or purpose. The connexion of thought and action is close (cetanā, saṃcetanā); thinking, one acts by deed, word, or thought,¹ a distinction of modes emphasizing the element of purpose as essential to characterize the moral quality of action. The planning out of a course of action or deliberate resolve is denoted by Saṃkappa, a fashioning or moulding. The union of intellectual activity with attention and pleasure, the product seems to be denoted by the term Piti, for which zest is perhaps the best rendering available.

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¹ AN. iii. 415.

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Of emotions we have merely popular classifications especially the threefold divisions into appetite (lobha), with its congeners, greed, lust, passion, &c.; aversion (dosa) with its congeners, anger, hate, malevolence, &c.; and delusion (moha), which is regarded as ignorance or confused consciousness. In the usual schematic fashion there are opposed to these disinterestedness (alobha), amity (adosa), and intelligence (amoha),² the last being sometimes treated as equivalent to intuition (paññā). But more importance attaches as part of the exercises of the path of salvation to the generation of feelings of friendship or love (mettā), of sympathy with suffering (karuṇā), and of sympathy with happiness (muditā).³ But these again are treated as ethical elements, not psychologically.

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² AN. i. 134 f.

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³ AN. i. 183.

4. Matter and Spirit in the Universe

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On the nature of matter the Canon is practically silent; it accepts from Brahmanical tradition the four elements, earth, fire, air, water; on the vexed question of ether (*ākāsa*) it now counts it with the elements, now omits it from the list, while in the Abhidhamma it is severed from the four elements, which are treated as underived matter, and made a derivate.¹ From the nature of the meditation of the infinity of ether or space, we see that its conception is what remains when all material things are eliminated from the field of experience. In what manner the elements were conceived in early Buddhism there is nothing to show, nor have we any reason to treat as primitive the later atomic view. What is clear is that every material thing is a compound (*saṃkhāra*), which may, as in the case of the body, endure for a long time, but will nevertheless ultimately pass away. Things are impermanent (*anicca*); in early Buddhism they are not literally momentary, a refinement of later thought.

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¹ DS., §§ 638, 722; *Psych. Eth.*, pp. lviii, lix; MN. i. 423; ii. 17.

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Matter exists not merely externally to us, but also as an aggregate (*khanda*) in the empiric individual; the connexion of body and spirit is clear to the insight of the saint, but it is not explained to us, and doubtless was accepted as an obvious datum, connexion and interaction raising no difficulty. There is no suggestion that matter always forms an aggregate of some spirit; the *Milindapañha*² with perfect orthodoxy emphasizes that matter exists as independent of spirit.

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² pp. 136 f., 271. Cf. KV. xvi. 8; ix. 3; vii. 7, 8; xii. 3, 4, all passages showing matter as independent.

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The universe consists of innumerable world systems, each equipped with earth, heavens and hells, and each system or sphere is divided into three regions (*avacaras*), worlds (*loka*) or layers (*dhātu*), the first the realm of desire (*kāma*), the next of matter or material form (*rūpa*), the third that without form (*arūpa*).³ In the first are hells or purgatories eight or more in number, while others exist between the spheres (*lokantarika*; the animal world; the abode of ghosts (pretas); the abode of Asuras or demons; which make up the places of punishment (apāya); then comes the abode of men and then six abodes of gods (devalokas). In the second we have the Brahma-lokas, sixteen in number of sections according to the number of the gods free from desire who abide there; entrance to these is assured to those who practice the four Meditations, and to those who are non-returners among the disciples, and who will therefore attain Nirvāna in heaven in lieu of rebirth on earth.¹ In the world without matter we find the place of those who carry out the Formless Meditations; thus he who frees his mind from any thought save that of infinite space is reborn in such a world, abiding there in that mental condition; he that has attained to infinity of consciousness or intelligence (viññāna) abides in such a world; and so with the world of nothingness, and of neither ideation nor non-ideation.

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³ Cf. Kern, *Ind. Buddh.*, pp. 57 ff.; DN. no. 14; i. 195; 34 ff.; 215 ff.; MN. nos. 49, 129; *Suttanipāta*, iii. 10; on Asuras, SN. i. 216 ff.

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¹ Matter here is subtle; smell, taste, and touch do not exist, only sight, hearing, and mental co-ordination, KV. viii. 7. The abode of Asuras is denied as separate by KV. viii. 1 against Andhakas and Uttarāpathakas on the strength of MN. i. 73. For the gods as long-lived see AN. ii. 33.

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These conceptions are, of course, partly popular, borrowed from the contemporary Brahmanic view of heavens and hells, and partly philosophical in character. The Upaniṣads know a world of Brahmā of celestial delights which is the reward of the soul not yet fitted for emancipation by union with the absolute Brahman; the Buddhists improve upon this idea, and adapt it to the schemes of meditations which they take over from Brahmanism. That these views were accepted as true by disciples as well as the laity we can hardly doubt; the Canon represents the Buddha as visiting the Brahma-loka; he represents himself as having received a visit from Brahmā Sahampati; the gods, Brahmā and Indra especially, play a great part in the tradition, in subordination to the Buddha.² Was this irony? Did the Buddha himself, did the disciples know that there were no gods such as the Brahmins feigned? Or did they really believe in these gods, as superior beings, though not immortal, and not differing in essence from men, to whose place all men may strive? The answer must be in favour of their belief, in the absence of a single hint to the contrary in the texts of early Buddhism, and in face of the belief of pious Buddhists throughout the ages. If the master really laughed at these fancies, we must admit that it has been left to us to discover the fact. The course of Buddhist philosophy and religion has advanced under the conviction of the existence of all these beings, and it is not for an age which tolerates spiritualism to attribute greater reason to early India in the centuries before Christianity.

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² MN. i. 326; 458; AN. ii. 20; iv. 302 ff.; Kern, Ind. Buddh., p. 59; Beckh, Buddhismus, ii. 55 ff.

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Speculative questions on the infinity and duration of the world are among those to which the Buddha declined any answer; if he faced the problem whether there would still persist matter if all the spirits won liberation, he did not answer it; in all probability the idea never occurred to him.¹ He did believe, we are assured by the whole evidence of the Canon, in the doctrine of the periodic dissolution and re-evolution of the universe or the world systems; there are Aeons of evolution, of dissolution, and of both, an idea developed by Jainism at tedious length. Fanciful pictures of the process of evolution as one of decadence, possibly intended as such, are found in the Canon in the Buddha’s mouth, but they contain nothing of interest or value.²

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¹ Above, ch. ii. § 2; Oldenberg, *Buddha*,⁵ p. 387; *lokacintā* is deprecated; AN. iv. no. 77.

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² DN. i. 17 f.; iii. 85 f.; Mhv. i. 338 ff.; Kuhn, *Festschrift Vilhelm Thomsen*, pp. 214 ff.

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Of more interest is the possibility that Buddhism began its philosophical career with a doctrine of six elements, all real, whose interaction explained the existence of the world, to which it added the Nirvāṇa element, the state of release.³ There was a precedent for this in earlier thought,⁴ Pakudha Kaccāyana recognized the ordinary four, the soul, pleasure, and pain, but denied interaction, while Ajita, who asserted four elements only, admitted also tacitly the existence of space, into which the senses, creations of the elements, pass on death. To add the conception of consciousness to the four material elements, to subsume under it pleasure and pain, and to accept space would be a natural and logical construction. We have direct evidence of it both in the *Aṅguttara* and the *Majjhima Nikāyas*; it accords precisely with the conception of the nature of rebirth described in the *Dīgha Nikāya*, and, with the omission of space, is adopted in the later Pali scholasticism. In any case it is essential to note that early Buddhism in its admission of the four material elements was realistic, and also admitted that physical changes were based on such elemental permanent existences.

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³ *Itivuttaka*, 44, 51, 73; immortal element (*amatā dhātu*), AN. iv. 423 f.; SN. v. 139, 232; AN. iii. 356; Beckh, *Buddhismus*, ii. 54, 124 f. It is, of course, absurd to treat these elements as anything but absolutely real; cf. Aung, *Compendium*, pp. 255 f.

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⁴ See below, ch. vii. § 1.

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The distinction between the elements, in the world and as part of the complex which makes the individual, is well brought out in the *Majjhima*, where the latter are styled as appropriated, taken up, assimilated (*upādinna*); they are the matter which the consciousness assumes as the mode of continuing the existence to which it is bound by its earlier actions.¹

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¹ AN. i. 176; MN. iii. 239 f. ; DN. ii. 63 ; Ç., p. 244 ; NP., p. 75 ; Poussin, TDC., pp. 43 f.

Linked texts (21)