Studies in the Origins of Buddhism c8.36

c8.36

The leading emphasis of the sutta is on the practice of spiritual life, though it contains incidentally a good deal pertaining to theoretical beliefs. Man is conceived as a complex of ‘Kāya’ and ‘Viññāṇa’.¹⁸ This represents a perceptibly earlier stage of analysis than the doctrine of the Five Khandhas, of which there is no mention here. It will be incorrect to suppose that there is no occasion for mentioning that doctrine, since, according to the context just referred to, the Bhikkhu, after he has attained to mental purity and quietude, proceeds to the attainment of ‘Knowledge-vision’ (Ñāṇa-dassana) and thus realizes his own nature as kāya-cum-viññāṇa, and, now, if the doctrine of the five khandhas were the ruling dogma about the nature of man, this opportunity should clearly have been availed of in order to mention it. The omission becomes all the more glaring if we remember that the enthusiasm of those who held the theory of the Five Khandhas was for some time so great that they insisted upon introducing it even where the excuse for doing so was slight. Besides, between the view of man as Kāya-plus-Viññāṇa and the view of him as a complex of the Five Khandhas in its standard interpretation there is a clear gulf fixed by the difference in the meaning of viññāṇa. In the former it is “consciousness as individualized through embodiment”, in the latter it is ‘perception regarded as one of the four aspects of empirical consciousness.’ This reflects not only increased psychological analysis but also a changed epistemological standpoint.