My next post will cover some of the same points—you beat me to it by a few days! (But my discussion is not in terms of two truths; there's only partial overlap, so I'll proceed...)
I suspect the ineffability of bodhi is no different from the ineffability of the taste of chocolate. In other words, this is just qualia...
But in the case of bodhi, unlike chocolate, people go on to eff what they have just declared ineffable, at great length. And their effing always involves big metaphysical claims. And if you point out that those claims are implausible, they retreat to "it's ineffable, and moreover you haven't had the experience, so you're not qualified to discuss it."
I originally added a coda similar to your last point. I've had many people try to shut me up, or stop me asking questions, by referring to the ultimate truth and it's ineffability. Now I'd just say there is not ultimate truth...
I've had someone tell me that from the point of view of the ultimate truth there is no pain - I was quite keen to stab him in the leg with my ball-point pen to test his awakening, but managed to stop myself. I think a few more of these loquacious effers should be put to the test >:)
Do we have the beginnings of a new Buddhist technical jargon: fu, woo, eff... All dharmas are, like, meh...
Really enjoyed your point about all experience being ineffable rather than it being a quality of spiritual or higher experience. A softly spoken truth that shakes the world.
Your article got me thinking about the Buddha, and several Bramhas and Devas appearing and disappearing from and to their respective realms. On the one hand the story follows the experience of the Buddha or celestial being to another realm, and at the same time there is a sense that the story continues in the realm that they have left. Not sure if I've explained that well.
I must admit that rather than two truths I've always thought of enlightenment as a correct understanding of what is happening and perceptible anyway - we have a view about our experience that does not match the actuality in much the same way as the earth centred universe with its celestial spheres was a mismatch when close observations were made.
When we focus on the chariot and its parts we start asking questions like: is the chariot real or not? Is there a chariot apart from the parts? Is there some essence of chariot? And we come to strange and speculative conclusions. In effect we must invent something like the Two Truths to account for the paradoxes that arise....
If we reframe the question in terms of experience then we already know that our mental states are neither real nor unreal—these kinds of dichotomies don't apply to experience.
How, then, do we differentiate hallucinations from "true" perceptions?
The chariot problem is not a matter of paradoxes and is subtler than you have described because duration and change is involved. Consider an auto assembly line. At what point on the assembly line do assembled parts become "a car"?
Perception is not just a matter of sensation and "experience" is not just the sum total of all sense objects/sense faculties/sense consciousnesses.
We structure the "something" out there with a web of mental concepts such as "a car", "myself", "sense object", "sense faculty", and "sense consciousness", or even "something" itself. Pure sensation without structuring conception is functionally impossible.
Our world consists just as much of this web of concepts as it does of whatever might be beyond that. In fact the case of an hallucination suggests that this web is essentially independent of any "sense object" that two of us can mutually agree is out there. And when we are hallucinating, this hallucination is our world.
As I have been taught the Two Truths, this collective web of conceptions has no independent reality apart from the mind that creates them. Nor do the individual parts have independent reality from each other or from the web in total. Any putatative separation between a sense object, a sense faculty, and a sense consciousness is only conceptual, and there is no such thing as raw, unconceptualized, experience.
This is the Ultimate Truth.
The "ignorance" that causes "suffering" is the habitual mental belief that the web of conceptions has an independent reality of its own and apart from us.
However, this web of conceptions has the appearance of "interdependent" coherence and we must deal with this "mere appearance" of coherence whether we believe it to be real or not,
This is the Relative Truth.
Just like we must deal with any hallucination we may be having, whether it is "real" or not.
We differentiate hallucinations from other types of perceptions by checking them against experience more generally, especially in discussion with other people about their perceptions. If we hear a voice, but no one else is visibly or tangibly present, or the other people present do not hear the voice, then we have a disparity. We may decide it is God, or a demon, or random firings of neurons, but it is the disparity that alerts us (or others if we are caught up in it) to the question of whether the perception of sound is related to an external object, or not. Note I can explain this without using the words "real" or "exist" or "true".
I do not argue that the chariot is simple or unchanging (notice!). What I argue about the chariot is that it is irrelevant. What the bhikkhunī Vajirā says about in the locus classicus it is that it is a metaphor for the arising of the experience suffering. Read my post on the Chariot Simile (link in the post) if you still have doubts about this. You might also need to check that post where I distinguish between pain and suffering - see the footnotes.
When I use the word "experience" I, like most Buddhists, include manas the mental sense. So your point about all the mental aspects of experience are not extra to what I was saying, but already taken into account. Indeed I'm slightly puzzled to find you separating them out and not sure what the point of that is. Have I not said many times that experience is neither subjective or objective, but arises in dependence on sense object, sense faculty and sense consciousness?
So often we try have the argument we want to have, rather than the one that is on offer.
Your version of two truths is in direct conflict in some way with most (all?) of the versions that I reviewed while writing this. But then there are so many mutually contradictory versions that any examination of a particular version is bound produce contradiction.
If our false perceptions cause us to suffer then in what sense are they true at all? Are they not simply wrong? Your "relative truth", then, is just an error, which is how the Pāli texts treat it. So we're down to one truth at best.
The fact is that we can make the point you make about the nature of experience without referring to Ultimate truths or reality.
My main beef with people claiming to give expression to the ultimate truth is that it can only be a dogma unless you are enlightened. If you aren't then it's just an idea - which is not an ultimate truth, but a relative one. Language, we are told, cannot grasp the ultimate truth, so any statement in language is at best relative. There is no way to proclaim an ultimate truth in a media which by nature is relative. Here we have an interesting Catch22 situation, in which nothing sensible can be said about the ultimate truth, if we accept that the ultimate truth exists. Many people cite Wittgenstein at this point...
So we have a "relative truth" which is not true at all, and an "ultimate truth" that can be at best relative. And we're getting nowhere fast.
One of the great problems which I identified above is that if you think you know what the ultimate truth is then how can you possibly examine your experience in an unbiased way? Meditation, even Buddhism as a whole, becomes about proving a dogma, rather than paying attention and remaining open to what you find.
Discussions and especially dissent are shut down by insisting that only this can be true, and nothing else - we call this "fundamentalism". So in terms of Buddhist practice the terminology of "ultimate truth", while effective for evangelical purposes, is a practical disaster!
I'm reminded of Padmasambhava's heart advice to constantly repeat the phrases: I do not have, I do not know, I do not understand. The very notion of proclaiming the ultimate truth is the antithesis of these.
"All lineages of Tibetan Buddhism today claim allegiance to the philosophy of the Middle Way, the exposition of emptiness propounded by the second-century Indian master Nagarjuna. But not everyone interprets it the same way. A major faultline runs through Tibetan Buddhism around the interpretation of what are called the two truths—the deceptive truth of conventional appearances and the ultimate truth of emptiness. An understanding of this faultline illuminates the beliefs that separate the Gelug descendents of Tsongkhapa from contemporary Dzogchen and Mahamudra adherents. The Two Truths Debate digs into the debate of how the two truths are defined and how they are related by looking at two figures, one on either side of the faultline, and shows how their philosophical positions have dramatic implications for how one approaches Buddhist practice and how one understands enlightenment itself."
So the two truths doctrine is not a unitary idea, but creates a "major fault line" in Tibetan Buddhism. And Mādhyāmikas have a major difference of opinion from Abhidharmikas... etc.
And we have this oxymoronic phrase "deceptive truth". Let me reiterate that a "deceptive truth" is not a kind of truth at all. To call an error a kind of truth is itself an error. We have to ask why we've ended up calling an error a kind of truth! Because this is incoherent nonsense.
Other examples of this same problem are found throughout the literature of Buddhism and Buddhist Studies. If such divisions and arguments go back hundreds of years, then it is surely time to rethink the whole proposition!
I wanted to fill out my answer to Karmakshanti and acknowledge that on Facebook my friend Gambhiradaka makes a very similar point.
The idea that the Two Truths is about the nature of experience is more consistent with my view than might have been obvious from my previous answer. Though I maintain that an error of perception is still an error; and that calling it a kind of truth is incoherent.
I've been composing my thoughts on this again to see how the development of the idea, at least its early stages, might provide a more satisfying critique. The bewildering complexity of Mahāyāna doctrinal disputes has no attraction for me, but the early history of the idea is quite revealing.
I think it's crucial to understand that the idea of Two Truths emerged in an Abhidharmika milieu that was disputing about whether dharmas were real or not. Even when the TT doctrine gets back on track it cannot shake the legacy of Abhidharma Realism. Even Nāgārjuna seems to have had to accept it as Buddhavāca and rather than doing what I suggest - dropping it altogether - he had to accommodate it. Thus rather than subtracting the accretions and getting back to the simple idea that dharmas are mental events and paṭicca-samuppāda applies only to the arising of dukkha (or loka, or pañcakkandha, or experience, the terms are all synonymous); Nāgārjuna and his contemporaries who expressed themselves in sūtras had to try to get beyond the real/unreal dispute by adding something. The irony is that Nāgārjuna is clearly familiar with the early Buddhist tradition regarding this since he cites a Sanskrit version of the Kaccānagotta Sutta. But he is stuck with paṭicca-samuppāda as a theory of everything!
What they added was this notion of śūnyatā. Nāgārjuna more or less admits that śūnyatā is just paṭicca-samuppāda. However the domain of application has expanded, and the nature of objects and dharmas has become an issue. The notion of śūnyatā deals with all of this. And it must be admitted that śūnyatā is an elegant solution to this problem. Completely unnecessary from an early Buddhist view in which the problem does not arise, but given the circumstance a very elegant work around.
This problem of legacy doctrines and ad hoc patches has been piling up for centuries. I seriously doubt we can ever get back to the original teachings of the Buddha, but where we can identify historical accretions and the intellectual problems that they have created, then I think we can revert the Dharma back to an earlier release.
Where debates have raged, or even bubbled away, for centuries inconclusively, then we must begin to suspect that it is the result of confusion. It is too easy to choose one or other sectarian explanation without looking more deeply at the problem vertically. At the very least we need to get sectarian advocates to explain why they believe one version and not another. One of the traditional ways of stimulating such debates is to tell the sectarian that they are wrong, and get them to defend their position. I see the post above as being in that spirit.
"Legacy doctrines and ad hoc patches" is a splendid summary of the problem.
I come at this from the other end, namely sorting out what my own school (Nyingma) has to say about it. Ju Mipham's work from the late 19th century is probably the last substantial contribution to the debate (and is regarded as canonical by the Nyingma).
I think he has some important insights, but they're hard to tease out because the whole thing is couched in wrong terms (of existence and non-existence). In Tibetan discourse, this is traced to Nargarjuna; it's interesting to learn that the problem goes back much further.
The great virtue of Tsongkhapa is that his story is conceptually coherent. I think it's wrong, but at least it makes enough sense that you can argue against it, whereas most of this stuff such billowy metaphysical verbiage that you can't.
My Meaningness work is an attempt to rip out all of the existence/non-existence legacy code and to build a new conceptual platform to support the worthwhile insights that the tradition has produced since.
Hi David. I hope it's clear that Nāgārjuna accepted that existence and nonexistence (asti/nāsti) don't apply. MMK 15.7 I think, but it's in my paṭiccasaumppāda essay.
As far as I understand him, he did OK. But then he had legacy issues as I've said. But then again, nothing like the legacy issues we have!
Yes I think the legacy code analogy will bear more consideration. In the meantime did you see my translation of some Buddhist doctrine into the slang I've been picking up from you?
everything is, like, wtf? everything is, like, meh... stuff is non-woo. (Dhp. 277-9)
Yes, Nagarjuna said "neither existence nor non-existence", but in saying that he made it already too late. Subsequent Madhyamaka was thereby forced to be all about the things he said didn't apply.
Just found your twitter feed! Oh dear, I hope I'm not being a bad influence on your diction. My Lamas would not approve! (I love your translation, though.)
As with Paul, I too “enjoyed your point about all experience being ineffable rather than it being a quality of spiritual or higher experience.”
You wrote: >> "So experience, all experience, is ineffable. And in fact probably all of us have had life changing experiences after which we have never been the same. We shouldn't make a big deal out of that in the case of bodhi. The ineffability of experience is a simple truism, not a profound Truth. I think the tendency is to emphasise the mystical aspects of bodhi, and for someone like me it makes it seem impossible."
But if you will forgive me for saying so, it seems you are simply recapitulating the Heart Sutra ;)
Your essay did remind me of two sayings of Frank Herbert: "the mystery of life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced", he also said: "forget mystery and accept love. There's no mystery about love. It comes from life."
Whether the Two Truths theory points to two levels of reality that REALLY exist or not, is there no value in employing it expediently to prevent the habitual reaction of confusing the admittedly mundane ineffability which is the very essence of direct experience (of anything) and the mental and emotional constructs we develop in the wake of that fleeting ineffability?
Perhaps one may end up reifying Reality (giving it a capital 'R') just so we can knock it down and say it wasn't really real after all. In denying the relative truth of the two truths, perhaps we we may throw the baby out and just end up keeping the bathwater? What say you: has the Two Truth concept any value as upaya?
Thank you for the very thoughtful post. I will be bookmarking your blog and subscribing to your feed.
@David – just read your 'Effing the Ineffable' – I was about to write that same review ;)
I sincerely hope I am not recapitulating the Heart Sūtra. Having studied it in English and Sanskrit I must say that it makes very little sense to me. Perhaps you could say more.
I don't see how you can get around saying that something which is wrong, is true. How is that helpful? What is the value there?
I'm not much interested in the concept of upaya. Again I think people had only to make up this concept because of apparent paradoxes.
I will certainly pardon your reference to the Heart Sūtra if you will pardon my almost total disinterest in the Mahāyāna and it's struggle to come to grips with the legacy code problem :-)
If you have no interest in the Mahāyāna or upaya, you will certainly not find my blog of any interest whatsoever.
>>"I don't see how you can get around saying that something which is wrong, is true. How is that helpful? What is the value there?"
One need not assert that something wrong is true, but one can say to someone holding an even more gross conception - "for the moment, look at it this way" in order for them to break those notional bonds that must be broken before further clarity can arise. That is the use of upaya - which I don't see as arising from the need to cope with paradox.
I will gladly pardon your complete lack of interest in the Mahāyāna ;) - which I do not see as struggling with the legacy code problem (though, as a coder, I love the analogy).
I have never looked to Buddhism for 'Truth', but for meaningful ways of dissolving errors of perception and conception. This being so, I have never been concerned with the teachings of the historical Buddha as such (except as they serve the aforementioned function), but I find all sorts of things useful for paradigm deconstruction, even things which are not inherently true and real, just temporarily useful in getting beyond an obstacle. Sometimes a doctor stabilizes a patient using medications not important for the patients real problem, but which make the patient more likely to survive the necessary surgery to follow. That, for what it is worth (and it may not be worth much) is my take on Upaya.
As for the Heart Sutra, I am merely referring to the fact that it puts the onus on the ineffability of direct perception right in the realm of mundane life and removes it from a quasi-mystical realm of perfectly enlightened beings and their intentions to 'save' the world. It decouples the ego from the pretension of being the source and recipient of some ineffable mystical experience and from the concept of merit acquisition. It just seemed to me that such concepts were mirrored in your post. Forgive me if I misunderstood.
I think it's clear that something about the way we relate to our experience is problematic, including (many would say especially) they way we relate to the experience of selfhood.
I wholeheartedly agree about not looking to Buddhism for Truth. And yet here we have two Truths. One of them is the Ultimate Truth! Do you not find this problematic? I do. One need not assert that a helpful or tactful lie is true, but the theory of Two Truths does precisely this! In fact I have a sneaking suspicion that they were thinking in terms of the other meaning of S. sat, i.e. 'real'. Which is even more problematic!
The trouble with your doctor analogy is that the procedure or drug used to stabilise a patient has to be effective. What is the positive effect of the Relative Truth? Why do I need that particular kind of reassurance? What problem is the Two Truths solving, that was not apparent to the compilers of the Pali Canon? My conjecture, based on accounts of early Buddhist philosophy by people like Noa Ronkin especially, is that it dates back to the arguments over whether dharmas are real or unreal. If you can explain another way to get from the early Buddhist position to the Two Truths, then I'm all ears. That's what this is about from my point of view.
My sense is that you're not really connecting your argument to the Two Truths, but are arguing for skilful means more generally. I'm not arguing against skilful means, I'm arguing against the Two Truths - both of them, not simply the Relative, but the Ultimate as well!
I do not put the onus on ineffability - I merely point out (rather like David on his blog) that if one did insist on it, then one would have very little to say about anything, and one could certainly not make categorical statements about the Ultimate Truth. Could one?
No. I mention in passing that the nature of all experience is to some extent ineffable, but this has not got in the way of our religion to any great extent - we have vast corpus of literature which describes the experience of bodhi and it's after effects. And I still have plenty to say, so I'd be a fool to insist that my subject is ineffable.
My opinion is that the Heart Sutra does the opposite, that it pushes Buddhism towards the mystical through employing paradox. Because to say that 'rūpa IS śūnyatā' and 'śūnyatā IS rūpa' is paradoxical, not to say illogical (these statements are no more good Sanskrit grammar than they are English).
The Heart Sutra is open to, and has produced, a thousand different interpretations. What it is is a floating signifier for whatever doctrine one holds dear - even for my scepticism. But we stray somewhat from the main topic with this.
Anyway thanks for your comments. The comments that get long replies are the one's I like - even if I disagree. I learn more and get to see how my arguments hold up to scrutiny. Whereas agreement is usually a very short conversation: "I think X". "Me too". Game over. So while we may disagree I've found it helpful (I probably need to say this more often!)
Regards Jayarava
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Anonymous said...
Hallo Jayarava
Nice blog Long time I have been thinking: the theorie of the two truths must be true, and understanding the ultimate truth is 'understanding things as they really are'. Now I doubt and even see the dangers of it. I explain : in discussions in Theravada-circles about what meditation-method is the best, some Mahasi-style vipassana teachers (for example U Pandidat) state that their method is the best and even only path because in this vipassana the objects of meditation are paramatha dhammas; and in samatha-styles it are 'only' conventional truths (concepts) such as 'the breath' or colors etc. that are the object. An arrogant opinion!
About the theorie in Theravada: it occurs after the Pali-canon is closed, even Buddhaghosa did not use it. In for example the Abhidhammattha Sangaha (8th century or later) about which Bhikkhu Bodhi in his translation (not totally correct) states "According to the Abhidhamma philosophy, there are two kinds of realities - the conbventional (sammuti) and the ultimate (paramattha) ... Ultimate realities, in contrast, are things that exist by reason of their own intrisic nature (sabhava) ... Only by means of wise of thorough attention to things (yoniso manasikara) can one see beyond the concepts and take the ultimate realities as one's object of knowledge. Thus paramattha is described as that which belongs to the domain of ultimate or supreme knowledge."(p. 25/26)
Do you know the essay THERAVADA VERSION OF THE TWO TRUTHS by KARUNADASA? See skb.or.kr/down/papers/094.pdf
Rests the possibility that the theorie of the two truths is - as a skilful means - useful for some buddhists in their path; I still think it is. For exemple as a kind of soteriologic staircase: (1) conventional view on reality (2) ultimate view on reality; and (3) anatta (in Theravada) or sunyata (in Mahayana)
To end: Im not sure about the "BECAUSE" in your conconlusion "The early Buddhists had no need of a Two Truths theory because they understood the domain in which paṭicca-samuppāda applies" I agree with both ideas of you but not with the causal relation you put between them.
In my view it is dhammas that together form the view or perspective that we cannot but have.
They consist of concepts and images arranged in the mind-sense manas and the Buddha was only interested in them because they led us either into suffering or away from it, either into practice or away from it.
Hence Right View - which consists of dhammas - is the view that leads to our transformation (into a Buddha.)
In short, they are always there, always having an effect, so we better be aware of that fact, if we want to be happy - do I move towards this mental image of an ice-cream? - do I act on the view of that person that I have got? - what is my perspective on what leads to happiness?
For more, see: http://www.mahabodhi.org.uk/dhammas.html
So I agree: the ontology of dhammas is irrelevant to that, in fact a distraction from dealing with the ones we have.
Thanks for stopping by. We seem to be largely in agreement, though I'm not familiar with the way you express your opinions. On what do you base your view of dhammas?
On your website you say one thing which I disagree with: "It is important to realize that Buddhism isn’t saying there is an ‘objectively existing world out there’ that the dhammas are re-presenting. "
Contrarily I think early Buddhism is saying just this - it is a form of transcendental realism: objects of the senses are real, but we cannot know them directly. Dhammas arise in dependence on sense object and sense faculty meeting in the presence of sense consciousness. You seem to be defining sense object out of the process and denying it a role in cognition.
I do not agree that this is impossible to confirm in experience - in Buddhism inference is also a kind of experience (a dhamma)! We do not have direct contact with objects, but we can infer things about them from experience - from the regular and repeatable nature of experience. Also from shared experience. Indeed I go so far as to say that early Buddhism makes no sense if their are no objects of the senses that are independent of us. I don't use the word noumenal for objects - because I think it has the wrong connotations. As I wrote recently.
We confirm the existence of independent objects in experience when we do simple tasks like learning the way to the shop. The same action leads to the same experience (finding the shop), and this is confirmed by other people in their experience (who also visit the shop). The only sensible thing to say is that the shop is an object which is independent of our observing it. That we only ever experience it as arisen dhammas is not to say that we do not have experiences which confirm the speculation.
There's nowhere to comment on the webpage you link to so I'll say here that your translation of Dhp 1 is deceptive.There is no word or sequence of words which correspond to "all that we are" for instance. In fact what the verses say is somewhat more restrained. What is says is this:
mano pubbaṅgamā dhammā manoseṭṭhā manomayā "Mind precedes experiences, mind is best, experiences are mind-made.
Translating dhamma as experience. I see in your note you read "all that we are" as translating dhamma. But this is just wrong. Even by your definition of dhammas it is wrong.
Where did you get you idea about the derivation of seṭṭha? The word means "best, excellent". There's no relationship with seti - they're from different roots! Seti is from √sī, while seṭṭha is related to Sanskrit śrī and probably from √śri. This is confirmed by the Patna Sanskrit Dharmapada which has manośreṣṭhā.
You really do need to learn Pāli - as I've said to you before!
In trying to re-jig the verse in your own terms you seem to have strayed too far from the original. If you define manas as "that which creates a perspective on dhammas" it doesn't really alter the translation. You would just be saying that "the process that provides us with a perspective on dhammas, precedes the dhammas themselves." This not necessarily a straight forward philosophical proposition either, but it at least does not distort the Pāli beyond recognition. I would read this as saying don't focus on the content, focus on the process. In fact it could be read as saying that the mind exists independently of its content, which is not uncontroversial.
My view of dhammas is based on trying to understand the Satipatthana Sutta from commentaries on it, failing, and then looking into my own experience for the answer. It has evolved over a number of years based on three criteria:
1) How do things work in my experience? 2) How does any proposition tie in with the rest of what I know about the Dharma? 3) Where in particular does paticcasamuppada fit in?
I am assuming that paticcasamuppada applies to kaya, vedana, citta and dhammas and their inter-relationships. This is as far as I know an original proposition, but the more I think of it the more it seems obvious. How else would they relate?
I experience concepts and images in my mind, and they seem to lead me in one direction or another, towards or away from understanding, towards or away from obsession, and so on. These therefore must be dhammas.
The Buddha divided his domains of mindfulness into four areas: kaya, vedana, citta and dhammas I imagine for a good reason. Each has a separate bearing on our happiness and so needs to be dealt with separately.
Citta and manas (which perceives dhammas) are therefore distinct aspects of mind. The first constitutes our emotional and mental state (craving, hatred, the process of thinking, concentration, etc) and the second is our perspective at a particular time.
If citta and manas weren’t distinct we wouldn’t be able to change our perspective by thinking about it, and our state of mind could not respond to our views (e.g. we would not get irritated when we had the view that ’this person is a nuisance’)
When I said: "It is important to realize that Buddhism isn’t saying there is an ‘objectively existing world out there’ that the dhammas are re-presenting.," I think I would now leave that phrase out as speculative ontology. All I would say now is that the Buddha probably wasn’t interested in the ontology of kaya, vedana, citta and dhammas, but only in the fact of their being observable conditions that had a bearing on happiness / suffering, which is why we should attend to them.
On Dhp 1:
mano pubbaṅgamā dhammā manoseṭṭhā manomayā "Mind precedes experiences, mind is best, experiences are mind-made.
I got ‘all that we are’ from http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/sbe10/sbe1003.htm Thinking about it, it isn’t all that far away from ‘our experiences.’ It could be ‘all that we experience.’
I was just trying to make the point that perhaps this phrase means ‘our perspective creates our experiences’ rather than ‘our state of mind creates our experiences,’ as the ‘mind’ in the verse is manas rather than citta.
Most people seem to assume that what is meant by manas is ones state of mind (as it is often repeated in dictionaries / commentaries that manas and citta are interchangeable.)
The derivation of seṭṭha: I got that wrong (using Digital Pali Reader I think☺)
I could do with some Pali tuition. Can you get it in Manchester?
Yes, I think you are right about applying paṭiccasamuppāda to those areas of experience - though what do you think is original about this?
Funnily enough citta and manas are often very difficult to distinguish in the texts, and reputable translators like Bhikkhu Bodhi treats them both as "mind". They are often used interchangeably - which is why the dictionaries say they are. It's just a fact, rather than a deficiency of the lexicographer. One has to stop and think about the context of any occurrence of words like dhamma, citta, mano etc to decide exactly what is meant. Sometimes it remains ambiguous even after considerable thought, and even centuries of argument!
This is why I am suspicious of neat and tidy summaries like yours. It fails to convey the complexity and ambiguity of what is in the texts. And why I keep encouraging you to learn Pāli. (BTW I don't know Manchester at all so couldn't advise you on finding a Pāli instructor there, but it's not so hard to teach yourself - I did).
The distinctions between citta and manas and viññāna seem to emerge over time. I think you are right about citta being the broad content of our experience and our responses to it, but wrong about manas. I think you've interpreted it to fit your theory, not the other way around. In the more developed presentations manas is just that which perceives dhammas - and no more as far as I can see. Perspective, as you define it would seem to be an aspect of citta.
I think your argument is interesting, but it is a creative reading of texts which are difficult to understand - there are many interpretations, yes? You can't argue that this is what the Buddhist tradition (let alone the Buddha!) meant without showing why and how. You've not done this. All you've done is come up with yet another plausible interpretation. I'd be more interested if it wasn't apparent that you don't really understand how the terms are used in the context of the texts that purport to represent the tradition.
And I must say with some emphasis that to interpret the Dhammapada verse as containing a definite and unambiguous reference goes beyond what the text itself tells us. The two words dhamma and manas are really quite vague. This is one of those times when we are really not sure what is intended.
Is experience 'all that we are'? Would this not be a subtle distortion of the situation towards ontological certainty?
In the final analysis I am not that interested in creative interpretations of ambiguous and vague texts from a modern point of view. Speculations abound. I'm more interested in trying to get into the world-view of the time and to understand it from within. Is there some general hermeneutic principle which can help to unravel the paradoxes? My blog is partially a record of my explorations of this possibility. Some argue that this too is a speculative exercise, but we have an imperfect record of something in the texts, and language is a window on the mind. And in any case it keeps me occupied.
Understanding the texts in translation by contrast gives you a window on the world-view of the translators. I think this shows in the work of all scholars who approach the texts only in translation (and there are many of them).
Can I just correct you. You say: ’In the more developed presentations manas is just that which perceives dhammas - and no more as far as I can see’ That is my view too.
Even though citta and manas are used interchangeably in the texts, in the Satipatthana Sutta citta and dhammas are distinct, and because manas is linked with dhammas, that makes citta and manas distinct. This is just logic.
It may be that over centuries they have been muddied together. I am just working on understanding the one text.
You say: I'd be more interested if it wasn't apparent that you don't really understand how the terms are used in the context of the texts that purport to represent the tradition. And I must say with some emphasis that to interpret the Dhammapada verse as containing a definite and unambiguous reference goes beyond what the text itself tells us. The two words dhamma and manas are really quite vague. This is one of those times when we are really not sure what is intended.
This is precisely my point. The tradition is vague about the meaning of these terms. This does not, in my book, mean though that they are inherently vague. I believe they have a specific meaning, which remains to be uncovered.
You say: You can't argue that this is what the Buddhist tradition (let alone the Buddha!) meant without showing why and how. You've not done this.
I know that. I have hardly begun to explain my ideas in the few lines I have written on this blog. I admit it though, I am going for a neat and tidy solution. That is because I am really tired of the Buddhist tradition being unclear about what terms like vedana, citta and dhammas mean, and people thinking that somehow that is alright.
The Buddha talks about gocara sampajana - clear comprehension of domain, which I think is relevant here. To me that involves clearly comprehending what each of these areas are in our experience, so that we don’t mix up feelings and emotions, or the content of a view (dhammas) with the way that we are holding it (citta.) This is a really important practical point
I do believe that the Dharma can be understood simply and elegantly (while admitting that due to paṭiccasamuppāda working with a multiplicity of conditions involves dealing with a degree of complexity.) To say a bit more about how I see things, I am applying paṭiccasamuppāda in particular to the relationships BETWEEN kaya, vedana, citta and dhammas, and this seems to explain many things.
For instance, that citta is conditioned by kaya, vedana and dhammas, helps explain how emotion arises. It is largely a reaction to vedana, but also dhammas in the form of how ones perspective (whether that is ‘spiritual’ or ‘worldly’) modifies ones emotions, and how grounded one is in ones body has an effect as well.
However, when I explain this to people they often don’t get it, and I think this is because they are stuck in a mindset that looks for
One word = one meaning
(for instance vedana = sensation)
But if you look at vedana from the viewpoint of paṭiccasamuppāda it is a different thing depending on what is conditioning it, namely:
Conditioned by kaya – kayika vedana (sensation) Conditioned by citta – samisa / niramisa vedana (worldly or spiritual feeling) Conditioned by dhammas – cetasika vedana (mental feeling or mood)
So what I am arguing is that seeing things from the viewpoint of paṭiccasamuppāda retains their subtlety. If we try to cram the meaning of vedana into ‘sensation’ we lose its other meanings.
You say: Perspective, as you define it would seem to be an aspect of citta.
No, (mental) perspective is the view that manas ‘sees’ through dhammas, just as a visual perspective is the view that the visual sense sees through visual objects.
There is, in my view, a difference between holding a perspective and the perspective itself. The fact of the perspective existing is dhammas. The fact of it being held in the mind is citta, if you see what I mean. Citta is the aspect of mind that chooses the perspective, holds it (perhaps lightly or perhaps dogmatically,) and thinks about it (vitakka / vichara,) turns it over in the mind, and eventually dismisses it or retains it depending on the evidence. And I think in this regard panna, as the ‘active’ aspect of wisdom, is to be associated with citta (thinking, reflecting and meditating) whereas the wise perspective, once arrived at is to be associated with dhammas. Hence I think the Theravada is right in thinking of citta as ‘thought.’ It is the PROCESS of thought. But it is wrong in excluding emotion from citta, because it is also the PROCESS of emotion. This is a point which reputable academics like Margaret Cone and Sue Hamilton both seem to miss, as they take the view that citta is not emotional, despite the evidence from the Satipatthana Sutta that citta can be ‘with lust’ ‘with hatred’ and so on, and that Peter Harvey in his 8 pages on citta in The Selfless Mind lists many emotional aspects. They might benefit from thinking about citta more as I have indicated above.
You say: Is experience 'all that we are'? Would this not be a subtle distortion of the situation towards ontological certainty?
There is a whole complex raft of argument about the meaning of experience in my book that I would need to express to preface answering this question.
BTW Have you read this Rave from 2008? Communicating the Dharma.
Why do you mention this in particular, Jayarava?
You say: Is there some general hermeneutic principle which can help to unravel the paradoxes? My blog is partially a record of my explorations of this possibility. Some argue that this too is a speculative exercise, but we have an imperfect record of something in the texts, and language is a window on the mind. And in any case it keeps me occupied. Understanding the texts in translation by contrast gives you a window on the world-view of the translators. I think this shows in the work of all scholars who approach the texts only in translation (and there are many of them).
I have gained a lot from your explorations. I think philology is very useful in giving a perspective on the dangers in the misuse / misreading of words (and more, I’m sure.) IMO there is nothing inherently wrong in speculation. Doesn’t Buddhaghosa say that if you speculate correctly that leads to wisdom, but if you speculate incorrectly it leads to folly (sorry I can’t remember the exact quote.)
However, I think there are possible dangers in philology, as there are with philosophy, seen from a Buddhist soteriological perspective.
If a philologist says ‘The two words dhamma and manas are really quite vague. This is one of those times when we are really not sure what is intended,’ they are being truthful to philology. Which is great. But the danger is that they just stop there.
A Buddhist practitioner need something clear and unequivocal to practice, and so though statements like this may be true from a philological point of view, they aren’t very helpful to the practitioner, and may undermine their faith that there is something clear to practice. That is one of the reasons why I am working on clarifying these terms, and have sought to come up with a coherent theory based both on the insights of philology but also, when that fails, on how things seem to work in (my) experience.
I hope this helps you understand my perspective better.
Can I just say that when someone says something, as you have done, and I contradict them, only to have them come back and say "but that's just the point I was making" there are some possibilities:
1. I have misunderstood 2. they have not communicated clearly enough. 3. all of the above.
Since I still think that you are saying something different to me I'm forced to conclude in this case that option 2 is definitely a a part of the answer.
There's one other logical fallacy I'll point out. You say that in the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta (SpS) that citta and manas are distinct because dhammas are related to manas. And that this is logical. Let's look at this "logic".
At the beginning is the unstated assumption that citta and manas are two different things. Since dhammas are the object of manas, and manas and citta are different, then references to dhammas are references to manas and not citta. SpS uses the terminology citta and dhammas: therefore the SpS is making the distinction that you made as an unstated assumption at the beginning.
However you could short circuit all that logic and just state your assumption: "manas and citta are two different things". There's no logical operation you can do that can disprove it because it is inherent in the operation - no matter what logical operations you do you will always conclude that citta and manas are different because you've made it implicit in your worldview. So logical, yes, to a point. But there is no logic to your tacit assumption, and the logic just doesn't work if you drop that assumption.
As I say it is not at all obvious that there is a distinction between citta and manas in any given text - and as skilled a translator as Bhikkhu Bodhi almost always translates both as mind (thereby obscuring the distinction unless you read the Pāli). Try starting with the assumption that they are not different. The fact that citta is mentioned instead of manas in the list kaya, vedanā, citta, dhammā is not significant any longer. In fact is makes more sense to assume a significant overlap of the semantic fields of citta and manas in this context. Dhammas are the content for both processes. If the objects of citta are something other than dhammas, then what are they?
The Buddhist tradition IS unclear about some of its terms, and you are not the first to try to impose order on them: that started before the common era with the disastrous Abhidhamma project (more on this on Fri 21 Oct 2011). Dhamma is also a very vague word with 6 different senses.
There is no "neat and tidy solution". One has to acknowledge the ambiguity and work with it rather than polarising and fixing the meaning in the present - which in an apparent contradiction you criticise a few paragraphs on!
It was you who directed my readers to your website, and I was showing my readers that you got some things badly wrong on that page - logically, conceptually and linguistically - on that page and to be cautious. As to your overall thesis, well I'm sorry to say that the page in question is so flawed that I'm not inspired to follow up.
We can learn much from the system building of the past. Over arching systems are unlikely to solve the problems we've inherited. I prefer to take a hermeneutical approach - i.e. forego constructing a system and read texts from a particular interpretative stance. My approach is also to deconstruct artificial reductive systems and structures imposed on an organic body of narrative which is a collation of several distinct oral lineages.
Just for the sake of argument - can you quote where Sue Hamilton says that citta excludes emotions?
The answer is 1. I think you have misunderstood what my view is (I also may not have communicated it clearly enough.)
I take my understanding from the PED, that ‘the mind fits the world as the eye fits the light, or in other words: mano is the counterpart of dhammā.’ (http://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/philologic/getobject.pl?c.2:1:3860.pali) You must have thought I was saying something else.
On the subject of ‘logic,’ you have missed a crucial point. This is not logic based on an original assumption I have that "manas and citta are two different things," but logic based on what came out of the Buddha’s mouth in the SpS. There the Buddha differentiated between being mindful of citta and being mindful of dhammas. I cannot but see that he therefore meant "dhammas and citta are two different things" and therefore by extension, because manas is the counterpart of dhammas, that "manas and citta are two different things." To defeat this argument you would need to argue that the Buddha was saying we should bring mindfulness to two things which were in fact the same.
You seem to be asking me to have blind faith in Bhikkhu Bodhi because of his reputation (as in “believe -that manas and citta are the same - and you will be saved”) No disrespect to Bhikkhu Bodhi but, on the basis of what the Buddha says in the Kalama Sutta I do not 'go by reputation,' etc. but only when I know for myself, with an eye to what ‘the wise’ might think (which, by the way, I also see as what the texts might say: my view from experience needs to be open to be corrected by the texts - so I am not just going on experience,) that something leads to good and not to harm, will I do it. I do see the blurring of manas and citta into one as leading to confusion and therefore to harm (for the reasons implied below.)
You say: If the objects of citta are something other than dhammas, then what are they?
That is simple if we think of manas and citta as distinct. The objects of citta, when seen from manas, are dhammas.
Suppose we are in a certain state of mind. That state exist - as a cetasika within citta – whether or not we call it anything. But then we call it something - hatred. We are assessing it as something in particular, and when we do that we are we are assigning a dhamma to that state, in the form of a concept (it could equally be an image, as when we are imagining something that isn’t there.)
The faculty of manas is therefore the place where ‘labelling’ happens - partly through the process of sanna or recognition - where the labels are dhammas.
When in the SpS the Buddha says: ‘the monk contemplates the dhammas in the dhammas in the case of the five hindrances,’ what I think he is saying is:
‘look at the mental states you have got going on in citta’ ‘how are you assessing them?’ ‘are you assessing them correctly (i.e. as hindrances to progress,)
in other words… ‘do you have a dharmic perspective on your mental states?’, and part of that perspective is: ‘if they are harmful, how do you get rid of them?’ and so on. (hence the connection with Dhamma as path)
So the faculty of manas is where us our perspective / understanding / assessments happen. That includes our labelling of and perspective on citta (e.g as 'craving' 'skillful' 'liberated'), on vedana (e.g labelling as ‘pleasure’ or ‘pain’) and on kaya (e.g. labelling as head, foot, hand, tense, relaxed, etc.) To have such a perspective on them manas necessarily needs to be distinct from each of citta, vedana and kaya.
I'll explain the context of my reference to Sue Hamilton. I wrote to Margaret Cone (who is working on the new PED) last year with a question. I said:
‘I am trying to establish whether citta is heart and mind or just "thought." The old PED definition seems to be saying that the use of "thought" for citta came up in later scholastic language.
‘It is only in later scholastic language that we are justified in applying the term "thought" (to citta) in its technical sense,’
But Sue Hamilton seems to be saying that the use of "heart" was developed by the Abhidhamma:
‘It is perhaps because citta is a general qualitative indicator that the Abhidhamma and commentarial traditions developed its association with the heart as a psycho-affective centre.’ [Hamilton. S. (1996) Identity and experience: the constitution of the human being according to early Buddhism. LUZAC Oriental. 113-114.]
Sue Hamilton also suggests that: ‘the association with the heart does not imply, as it might in the West, that citta is thought of in the sentimental terms referred to (in the PED definition.) In pan-Indian thought the heart is associated with one’s mental faculties.’ [Ibid.]
Are the PED and Sue Hamilton at odds here? I would appreciate hearing your views on the above, including what the current PED has to say on the matter?’
Margaret replied:
‘I am afraid I do not agree at all with the old PED definition, and find Sue Hamilton much more convincing. The more occurrences of the word I read (and I read all of them!) the more sure I was that we are talking about 'thinking'.
My article in DOP II will give the following:
1. the process of thinking; thinking; thought; thoughts; intention; state of mind; (cf S. Hamilton, 1996, pp. 105 114);
2. a single thought; a thought-moment; a moment of consciousness;
3. (n., nom. pl. ~å, ~åni, or mfn. ? see Sadd 227,1 foll. and 229,2 foll.) mental state, type of consciousness; or connected with thinking or with thought; mental;
I was concerned to avoid any suggestion of a static, continuing thing, and to emphasise that citta is an anicca process. So 'heart' and 'mind' seemed to me to give the wrong idea.
yours,
Margaret Cone’ (permission to reproduce obtained)
So do you think by this quote Sue Hamilton is excluding emotion from citta?
Rat's! I responded to this once and somehow it got lost.
So the first point is that we have to take Margaret Cone's word for the definition of citta. She is the leading expert, and I know something of her methods from talking to Dhīvan who has ongoing tutorials with her. She will literally have read every occurrence of the word, and in multiple recension of the Canon. However we don't have to leave it at that, and I'll come back to this.
I note, however, that Nyanatiloka's Buddhist Dictionary, and Bhikkhu Bodhi both seem to agree with Cone: manas, citta, and viññāna are synonyms. Later distinctions notwithstanding.
Moving on, I would ask the question: what is an emotion?
As far as I know there is no simple definition of emotion, and no agreement on what constitutes the basic emotions we all share. Emotion as a word came into English only in the 16th century. It meant "agitation" at the time.
I think the notion we currently have of emotions is largely a product of the Romantic reaction to the Enlightenment, filtered through the Psycho-analytic movement. This helps to explain the nebulous definitions. And let's pause to recall that our Buddhist teacher is profoundly influenced by the Romantics.
Should we expect to find this Romantic/Psycho-analytic notion of emotion in the Pāli texts? Or perhaps we should phrase the question: why should we expect to find this notion of emotion in the Pāli texts?
Here we come up against a problem in the history of ideas. Our notions about emotions are culturally conditioned. If the Buddha had notions about emotions they too were conditioned, but by a very different set of conditions!
I don't know, but my experience of the texts tells me that the Buddha would not have seen "emotion" as a thing or category. He would have seen emotion as an experience comprising bodily sensations, hedonic reactions, and mental activity. This means that emotion is not a fundamental category. Emotion in the modern sense of the word would be distributed over all four paṭṭhānas. Indeed this is how contemporary scientists see emotion as well. Far and anger are indistinguishable physiologically speaking. It is the accompanying thoughts that distinguish them. So I start to wonder whether emotion is a coherent category from a modern point of view, let alone 2500 years ago.
The Buddha seems not to have been very systems oriented. We can see time and again that he refuses to answer big questions, but remains focussed on the way that our reactions to sense experience cause us to suffer. As such he's mainly interested in the pleasant/unpleasant aspect of experience, and the pull/push this creates in us. He's really only interested in attraction and aversion. Are these even emotions in our sense of the word? We experience attraction and aversion viscerally and mentally. And it's even possible to mismatch the two domains. My suspicion is that we now call emotion would all get lumped into the category of papañca by the Buddha.
On reflection I don't find it remarkable that scholars who work independently (like Cone and Hamilton) come to the same conclusion: that citta means thought, but includes intention.
This is a relatively easy hypothesis to disprove. All you have to do is provide us with a reference to citta in a Pāli text where it unequivocally refers to the emotions. This would need to not be dependent on a particular interpretation of citta, but be the only possible conclusion from the context.
So my own thinking now is that citta is 'thought' (both etymologically and in use in the Pāli texts); and the modern concept of emotions is probably and unsurprisingly not found in the Pāli.
I think the discussion has highlighted another difficulty amateur scholars face. We tend not to see our own cultural conditioning. This makes it very difficult indeed to reason from personal experience and come to a valid conclusion about what a 2000 year old text might be saying.
But don’t you say yourself in your blog on ‘Philological Odds & Ends VII - Mind Words’ that;
The root √cit is defined in the dictionary as "knowing; thought , intellect , spirit , soul", but also "to perceive , fix the mind upon , attend to , be attentive , observe , take notice of"; and "to aim at , intend , design; to be anxious about , care for; to resolve". So √cit concerns what catches and holds our attention on the one hand, and what we move towards on the other; or, what is on our minds, and what motivates us (emotions are what 'set us in motion'; emotion comes from an old French word emouvoir meaning to 'stir up'; ultimately from Latin from ex- 'out' + movere 'to move').
But of course it is artificial to isolate ANY experience from its supportive conditions, so emotion (let’s just use the term for now, as we understand it, in this era) as ‘a whole’ will include, as you say, elements from all four patthanas, as these go on all the time ‘in parallel’ with each other. Thought too is no doubt the same. It will have a bodily aspect, a feeling tone (probably neutral,) a movement (in citta) and dhammas. So it doesn’t make sense to single out ‘emotion’ as not being a coherent category, nothing is a coherent category. ‘Thought’ isn’t a coherent category either!
The main problem I have with interpreting citta as ‘thought, but including intention’ is that it makes the process of citta bhavana too much into a cognitive exercise. Practitioners look into dictionaries for guidance, and then interpret their practice in those terms, and I notice that Maitreyabandhu in ‘Life with Full Attention,’ when he talks about mindfulness of citta, talks about it predominately in terms of working on the stories we tell ourselves. But as well as that, mindfulness of citta is surely also about the metta bhavana (which he goes on to cover in a separate chapter.) It is about the transformation of what we, in the twentieth century, call emotion (and I don’t think the Buddha would put metta in the category of papanca, which I assume is always unskilful.)
You seem to contradict yourself. On the one hand you say ‘All you have to do is provide us with a reference to citta in a Pāli text where it unequivocally refers to the emotions’ but you have already disallowed ‘emotion’ as a coherent category (because in its modern sense it is distributed over all four paṭṭhānas.) So what you ask is impossible.
I think you are right that the notion we currently have of emotions is largely a product of the Romantic reaction… etc. But that notion probably differs from what, if the Buddha were alive today, he would mean by emotion, as I am sure he would use that term because it is part of the discourse of the day. So I think we need to use that term – and not avoid it as Margaret Cone does in her definition of citta, and in doing so giving too cognitive an impression of ‘mind.’ – We need though to give a full account of its range, and it seems simple enough to talk about skilful or unskilful emotion. ‘Emotion’ is nebulous, in the popular imagination, and in dictionary definitions. It includes a wide range of forms, such as sentimentality, worrying about ‘my’ feelings, ones heart going out to people, getting angry, and so on.
We just need to understand these forms from a dharmic point of view and divide them into different categories with different degrees of skilfulness and involvement with ‘self.’ Once we have done that - become clear about the whole field of ‘emotion’ and are able to express it - then I think then there is no danger in talking about emotion. Sue Hamilton doesn’t think citta should be thought of in sentimental terms, but perhaps it is the modern non-dharmic associations people have with emotion that she wants to distance citta from, rather than the more skilful forms of emotion, such as the brahmaviharas.
One last question: if he was living today, how would the Buddha use the word ‘emotion’? I assume he would have to use it.
"I think excluding emotion from citta is a BIG mistake."
So? Who is excluding emotion? Not me. All we are saying is that citta is 'thought, intention'. This much is clear, and I think you are very far from providing any evidence to the contrary except your personal opinion, which has been shown to be flawed in a number of different ways.
As scholars we have to work from the evidence, not from what we want to see! Staying with the evidence is not sophistry - it is the scientific method. You conjecture that citta includes emotion, then someone shows you that linguistically and textually this is not correct, so if you are intellectually honest you have to come up with a new conjecture. If you refuse to accept the evidence what you have is not knowledge, but mere religious dogma. I sympathise with having to let go of a dogma, but one must follow the evidence.
The simple phrase "mettaṃ cittaṃ" is not what we are looking for. "A thought of love/loving" is a perfectly serviceable translation. No. We need a text, and an unequivocal one.
If our view of emotion is significantly different from the European view 400 years ago, and I think most reasonable people would accept that both the Enlightenment and the Romantic reactions to it (including Psychoanalysis) have definitely changed our view of emotion, then must at least consider the idea that the Buddha did not view emotion in the way that we did. The question then becomes how did the Buddha talk about emotions? And mostly he doesn't seem to talk about them as a category. To answer your last question there isn't a word for "emotion" that I can see. As I have said I don't think emotion is even a category, in Pāli.
My conjecture is that most of what we now include under emotion - the froth of feelings and thoughts - would come under the heading papañca. So I do not exclude emotion at all. I certainly reclassify it, according to my understanding of the world view represented by the Canon. You can refute me quite easily, by presenting evidence to the contrary. I'm quite open to having my mind changed by evidence. Which I have done since writing the earlier blog. This is one of the entertaining things about this form of publishing, one can see the mind changing over time, however glacially.
With respect to mettā why don't you have a look at the locus classicus: the Karaṇīya Mettā Sutta. You won't find √cit and you will find √man.
e.g. Mātā yathā niyaṃ puttaṃ āyusā ekaputtam anurakkhe Evam pi sabbabhūtesu mānasam bhāvaye aparimāṇaṃ
Like a mother’s own child, [she will] protect that only child with her life Thus for all beings the mind should become infinite.
The canon makes a clear distinction between physical sensations(kāyika), and mental sensations (cetasika). C.f. the Salla Sutta (SN 36.6, S iv.207). So your argument about thought not being a coherent category is wrong on two counts: there is a distinct set of words for thought, and the category is distinguished from bodily experience.
My sense is that you are clutching at straws, arguing from an entrenched position but with very little in the way of evidence behind you. I don't think you've conceded a single point to me, have you? So this isn't a conversation that is going to bear fruit for me. You only want to convince me of your opinion, and now over some quite long responses I've set out why I find your opinion unconvincing: on linguistic grounds, on text critical grounds, on historical grounds. My impression is that you have too much invested in being right to ever change your mind. So around and around we go, and my arguments are like water off a duck's back. It's not a dialogue, it's just you defending your thesis by rejecting any contrary evidence. Now that is sophistry.
I have a new Rave out today which provocatively criticises the Abhidharma as a whole, and I am expecting to get some comments on that. I like to respond to all comments on the current Raves. So I'm calling a halt to the discussion, and this will be the last comment I publish on this thread. I tend to allow myself the last word as the publisher.
I'll leave you with this quote that I appended to my Rave on Conjecture and Refutation (which I recommend that you read).
"When you find evidence that directly contradicts your favourite idea and you have to switch modes, switch paradigms to a different concept, that's real progress...". Professor Paul Olsen (Columbia University). The shifting face of a 200-million-year-old mystery. BBC News 13 Oct 2011.
Best Wishes Jayarava
Friday, October 21, 2011
[Image]FOR SOME TIME I have wanted to write a critique of the Doctrine of the Two Truths. The task is potentially a large and difficult one because there is no single version of the idea that is universally accepted, and the history of its development is complex. Some version of the idea of Two Truths is accepted by most schools of Buddhist thought, but they do not agree on the details. An in-depth exposition on the subject would be a long book project.[1] However I think a single wrong step begins the path that leads to all versions of this theory. Therefore I may be able to head them all off by identifying that step and suggesting reasons why we should not take it.
In broad outline the idea of Two Truths says that there are two ways of understanding the world. In the conventional (samvṛti) sense the world is just as it appears to the unawakened. So, for instance, we find the world to be a relatively reliable place where the laws of physics and chemistry apply; where we are born and die; where we interact with people. And yet, according to this theory, this conventional world is not real. Taking the world to be real is why we suffer. Buddhist theorists came up with the idea of an ultimate (paramārtha) truth, the perception of which is liberating, and the understanding of which is liberation—those who see things this way see things as they really are, i.e. they see Reality (with a capital R). Many different explanations of this duality are supplied throughout the history of Buddhist philosophy. I'm going to go out on a limb and argue that all of these explanations are wrong. So, I'm probably mad, or deluded, but bear with me.
Let's begin at the beginning, or as close to it as we'll ever get. We do not find the idea of Two Truths in the Pāli suttas, nor, so far as I am aware, in the early Buddhist texts preserved in other languages. So we cannot cite any Pāli sutta in defence of this idea. And this is, unsurprisingly, my first point. The idea is a later development. If the early Buddhists did not feel the need for such a theory why did later Buddhists invent it? (This is a question worth asking for many other ideas as well!).
I have argued for some time now that paṭicca-samuppāda is not a Theory of Everything.[2] Not only does paṭicca-samuppāda not explain the universe and everything in it, it was never intended to be applied beyond the arising of experiences in the mind i.e. dukkha (literally: disappointment, dissatisfaction; suffering)—dukkha is our experience. The 'things' that arise in dependence on conditions are none other than dhammas, and these are the objects of the mind sense. The early texts have little or nothing to say about the ontological status of these dhammas. Indeed the early Buddhist texts explicitly argue that ontological terms like 'existence' and 'non-existence' do not even apply (especially the Kaccānagotta Sutta. S ii.16). This is not to say that non-mental phenomena are not conditioned, or that cause and effect are not observed. They are. But this was not, so far as we can tell, the Buddha's insight, nor his teaching. So much should be familiar to readers of this blog. [and if this is not familiar then please read the essay referred to in footnote 2.]
Perhaps because their non-Buddhist contemporaries were deeply interested in ontology, such issues also came to occupy the minds of Buddhists. Not content to leave the dhamma as an indeterminate 'mental thing', what I refer to deliberately vaguely as 'an experience', they began to speculate on the nature of dhammas. Where they real? Where they ultimate? How long did they last? The answers to these questions were from the beginning irrelevant to the Buddhist program of practice. But in some cases they came to occupy centre stage of Buddhist discourse—so much so that many people today talk about the goal of Buddhism as "insight into the nature of Reality". [Google that phrase] The trouble with asking such questions is that people are rarely satisfied with not coming to a conclusion. I suspect that one only asks such questions when one already considers there to be a definite and preferable answer. A lot of time and energy is then wasted over competing opinions about something that is simply not relevant.
I understand the early Buddhist response to the question of whether dhammas are real or unreal to be that the question was neither answerable nor relevant, so even attempting to answer it is pointless. By extension I take the appearance of answers to this question to be one of the limits of what we I think of as early Buddhism.
It is a relatively straightforward proposition to argue that the external world is not dependent on my seeing it, for it to have form. It is harder to believe that the entire universe blinks out of existence and back into existence each time my eyelids close and open, than that the Buddha was talking about was the world of 'subjective' experience. In fact even the terms 'subjective' and 'objective' are out of place here since the 'world' the Buddha was talking about arises from the condition of both sense object and sense faculty—that world is neither subjective nor objective. In any case I have found no reference in any early Buddhist text to the reality or unreality of sense objects, nor any mention of it in secondary literature which discusses the early Buddhist world-view. Sense objects are always part of the process of unenlightened consciousness, but there is no speculation on their nature.
However if I close my eyes then my mode of perception has changed, and my experience of 'the world' has radically changed. This probably leaves the world itself unchanged. I say probably because I do not know and I do not believe I can know the world except through my senses. This leaves me uncertain, and unable to come to any firm conclusion. So neither materialism or idealism in the strict senses are intellectually honest. All I know for certain is that I have experience of something; I find the experiences I have problematic; and early Buddhism tells me that the something is not the source of the problem.
This pragmatic position avoids any argument about relative and ultimate. Such a duality is simply unnecessary. But once we begin to take sides, to insist that dhammas must either be real or unreal, or worse that objects in the world are real or unreal, then we come into a dilemma because neither stance makes sense in light of the nature of perception.
If we begin to apply the paṭicca-samuppāda as a theory to everything, if we apply it not only to the arising of experiences in our minds, but to the arising of what we suppose to be objects in the putative world, then we create a problem. I have discussed this problem with respect to the simile of the chariot. In this case we lose sight of the fact that the chariot is a metaphor for how our 'world'—that is the world that we experience, not the world as ontological reality—is conditioned by the meeting of sense faculty (indriya) and sense object (dhamma) in the present of sense awareness (viññāna). The chariot is not the point of this story and neither is the world of sense objects. The main point is made in the seldom quoted statements that follow the simile: "apart from dukkha nothing arises, and apart from dukkha nothing ceases". When we focus on the chariot and its parts we start asking questions like: is the chariot real or not? Is there a chariot apart from the parts? Is there some essence of chariot? And we come to strange and speculative conclusions. In effect we must invent something like the Two Truths to account for the paradoxes that arise. Plainly the chariot exists and is in a sense 'real', since we perceive it; but it can't be really 'real', or solidly existent because we know it to be merely a conglomeration of parts. Clearly it cannot be both real and unreal, both exist and not-exist at the same time, so... there must be two distinct truths about reality: at one level it is real and at another unreal.[3]
If we reframe the question in terms of experience then we already know that our mental states are neither real nor unreal—these kinds of dichotomies don't apply to experience. If we remove the sense object, the sense faculty or awareness from the equation our experiential world ceases or fails to arise (that being, this becomes etc.). While the three factors are present, then there is both the experience and the experiencer. The khandhas are just another way of breaking up the experience and making the same point. [See The Apparatus of Experience] When we limit our domain to experience then dualities like real/unreal or existence/non-existence simply and straightforwardly do not apply, and we do not create paradoxes.
All experiences, including the experience of self-hood, are formed this way: from an interaction of our mind, sense faculties and sense objects. And all experiences are characterised as impermanent, disappointing and insubstantial. We may think that a pleasant experience equates with happiness, but we find the experience is fleeting, and it isn't repeatable, which we take to mean that we are unhappy. We grasp after pleasure, but can never be satisfied and the harder we pursue pleasure the less pleasure we experience. It is not that there is no experience, just that we fail to understand the nature of experience. And experience has only this nature. Awakening, I would say, is awakening to the nature of experience.
It's not that conventionally something exists, but ultimately it doesn't—if we are using words like exist, true or real then we're applying the theory in the wrong way and/or in the wrong domain. Because we are, or should be, talking about experience of things rather than the things in themselves, we have no need of two different truths. Only those who attempt to stretch the application of the paṭicca-samuppāda beyond it's intended domain require two truths.
The other aspect of the Two Truths that us insisted upon is that the ultimate truth is inaccessible to words: "Reality is ineffable". Words do a fair job of communicating about objects and ideas. But when it comes to experiences... no experience can be communicated in words. We can say that we have had an experience; we can say how we explain and/or interpret that experience; we can say how we feel about having had that experience; we can say how the experience changed us: but with mere words we cannot communicate the experience we've had. This is true of every single experience. So experience, all experience, is ineffable. And in fact probably all of us have had life changing experiences after which we have never been the same. We shouldn't make a big deal out of that in the case of bodhi. The ineffability of experience is a simple truism, not a profound Truth. I think the tendency is to emphasise the mystical aspects of bodhi, and for someone like me it makes it seem impossible.
So this is my mad thesis—that all Buddhist philosophers (including the modern Theravāda) are barking up the wrong tree with this business of Two Truths. If we take paṭicca-samuppāda in its natural domain, there is no need to go down the route of inventing this dichotomy because we do not meet the paradoxes that arise from the misapplication of the theory. The early Buddhists had no need of a Two Truths theory because they understood the domain in which paṭicca-samuppāda applies. We have no need of it either, in fact it is probably a hindrance.
~~oOo~~
Notes A good overview of the subject is: Thakchoe, Sonam, 'The Theory of Two Truths in India,' The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2011 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). Online: plato.stanford.edu. [though of course the theory developed outside India as well!]. See also Ñāṇavīra. 'Paramattha Sacca.' Notes on Dhamma. p. 27-33. Online: www.nanavira.110mb.com.For an extended treatment of this topic see my long essay: Is Pāṭicca-samuppāda a Theory of Everything? This is based on a close reading of the Kaccānagotta Sutta (S ii.16). I've covered some of the same ground in this blog: A General Theory of Conditionality? (31-12-2010)Paṭicca-samuppāda - A Theory of Causation? (24-12-2010) Action and Intention II. (17-12-2010)If you are at all tempted to invoke Quantum Mechanics at this point then I suggest that you read my essay: Erwin Schrödinger Didn't Have a Cat. I don't think QM has anything helpful to say to us about this issue because conclusions about the nature of single sub-atomic particles do not apply when several septillion of them conglomerate at room temperature.
33 Comments
Close this window Jump to comment formAwesome.
My next post will cover some of the same points—you beat me to it by a few days! (But my discussion is not in terms of two truths; there's only partial overlap, so I'll proceed...)
I suspect the ineffability of bodhi is no different from the ineffability of the taste of chocolate. In other words, this is just qualia...
But in the case of bodhi, unlike chocolate, people go on to eff what they have just declared ineffable, at great length. And their effing always involves big metaphysical claims. And if you point out that those claims are implausible, they retreat to "it's ineffable, and moreover you haven't had the experience, so you're not qualified to discuss it."
Friday, August 05, 2011
Hi David
Thanks :)
I originally added a coda similar to your last point. I've had many people try to shut me up, or stop me asking questions, by referring to the ultimate truth and it's ineffability. Now I'd just say there is not ultimate truth...
I've had someone tell me that from the point of view of the ultimate truth there is no pain - I was quite keen to stab him in the leg with my ball-point pen to test his awakening, but managed to stop myself. I think a few more of these loquacious effers should be put to the test >:)
Do we have the beginnings of a new Buddhist technical jargon: fu, woo, eff... All dharmas are, like, meh...
Look forward to reading your post.
Friday, August 05, 2011
Nice one Jayarava
Really enjoyed your point about all experience being ineffable rather than it being a quality of spiritual or higher experience. A softly spoken truth that shakes the world.
Your article got me thinking about the Buddha, and several Bramhas and Devas appearing and disappearing from and to their respective realms. On the one hand the story follows the experience of the Buddha or celestial being to another realm, and at the same time there is a sense that the story continues in the realm that they have left. Not sure if I've explained that well.
I must admit that rather than two truths I've always thought of enlightenment as a correct understanding of what is happening and perceptible anyway - we have a view about our experience that does not match the actuality in much the same way as the earth centred universe with its celestial spheres was a mismatch when close observations were made.
Friday, August 05, 2011
When we focus on the chariot and its parts we start asking questions like: is the chariot real or not? Is there a chariot apart from the parts? Is there some essence of chariot? And we come to strange and speculative conclusions. In effect we must invent something like the Two Truths to account for the paradoxes that arise....
If we reframe the question in terms of experience then we already know that our mental states are neither real nor unreal—these kinds of dichotomies don't apply to experience.
How, then, do we differentiate hallucinations from "true" perceptions?
The chariot problem is not a matter of paradoxes and is subtler than you have described because duration and change is involved. Consider an auto assembly line. At what point on the assembly line do assembled parts become "a car"?
Perception is not just a matter of sensation and "experience" is not just the sum total of all sense objects/sense faculties/sense consciousnesses.
We structure the "something" out there with a web of mental concepts such as "a car", "myself", "sense object", "sense faculty", and "sense consciousness", or even "something" itself. Pure sensation without structuring conception is functionally impossible.
Our world consists just as much of this web of concepts as it does of whatever might be beyond that. In fact the case of an hallucination suggests that this web is essentially independent of any "sense object" that two of us can mutually agree is out there. And when we are hallucinating, this hallucination is our world.
As I have been taught the Two Truths, this collective web of conceptions has no independent reality apart from the mind that creates them. Nor do the individual parts have independent reality from each other or from the web in total. Any putatative separation between a sense object, a sense faculty, and a sense consciousness is only conceptual, and there is no such thing as raw, unconceptualized, experience.
This is the Ultimate Truth.
The "ignorance" that causes "suffering" is the habitual mental belief that the web of conceptions has an independent reality of its own and apart from us.
However, this web of conceptions has the appearance of "interdependent" coherence and we must deal with this "mere appearance" of coherence whether we believe it to be real or not,
This is the Relative Truth.
Just like we must deal with any hallucination we may be having, whether it is "real" or not.
Sunday, August 07, 2011
Hi Karmakshanti,
We differentiate hallucinations from other types of perceptions by checking them against experience more generally, especially in discussion with other people about their perceptions. If we hear a voice, but no one else is visibly or tangibly present, or the other people present do not hear the voice, then we have a disparity. We may decide it is God, or a demon, or random firings of neurons, but it is the disparity that alerts us (or others if we are caught up in it) to the question of whether the perception of sound is related to an external object, or not. Note I can explain this without using the words "real" or "exist" or "true".
I do not argue that the chariot is simple or unchanging (notice!). What I argue about the chariot is that it is irrelevant. What the bhikkhunī Vajirā says about in the locus classicus it is that it is a metaphor for the arising of the experience suffering. Read my post on the Chariot Simile (link in the post) if you still have doubts about this. You might also need to check that post where I distinguish between pain and suffering - see the footnotes.
When I use the word "experience" I, like most Buddhists, include manas the mental sense. So your point about all the mental aspects of experience are not extra to what I was saying, but already taken into account. Indeed I'm slightly puzzled to find you separating them out and not sure what the point of that is. Have I not said many times that experience is neither subjective or objective, but arises in dependence on sense object, sense faculty and sense consciousness?
So often we try have the argument we want to have, rather than the one that is on offer.
Your version of two truths is in direct conflict in some way with most (all?) of the versions that I reviewed while writing this. But then there are so many mutually contradictory versions that any examination of a particular version is bound produce contradiction.
If our false perceptions cause us to suffer then in what sense are they true at all? Are they not simply wrong? Your "relative truth", then, is just an error, which is how the Pāli texts treat it. So we're down to one truth at best.
The fact is that we can make the point you make about the nature of experience without referring to Ultimate truths or reality.
My main beef with people claiming to give expression to the ultimate truth is that it can only be a dogma unless you are enlightened. If you aren't then it's just an idea - which is not an ultimate truth, but a relative one. Language, we are told, cannot grasp the ultimate truth, so any statement in language is at best relative. There is no way to proclaim an ultimate truth in a media which by nature is relative. Here we have an interesting Catch22 situation, in which nothing sensible can be said about the ultimate truth, if we accept that the ultimate truth exists. Many people cite Wittgenstein at this point...
So we have a "relative truth" which is not true at all, and an "ultimate truth" that can be at best relative. And we're getting nowhere fast.
One of the great problems which I identified above is that if you think you know what the ultimate truth is then how can you possibly examine your experience in an unbiased way? Meditation, even Buddhism as a whole, becomes about proving a dogma, rather than paying attention and remaining open to what you find.
Discussions and especially dissent are shut down by insisting that only this can be true, and nothing else - we call this "fundamentalism". So in terms of Buddhist practice the terminology of "ultimate truth", while effective for evangelical purposes, is a practical disaster!
I'm reminded of Padmasambhava's heart advice to constantly repeat the phrases: I do not have, I do not know, I do not understand. The very notion of proclaiming the ultimate truth is the antithesis of these.
We cannot have our cake and eat it too.
Sunday, August 07, 2011
Just to fill out the picture a little more I note this book and abstract:
Thakchoe, S (2007) The Two Truths Debate: Tsongkhapa and Gorampa on the Middle Way. Wisdom Publications, Boston.
"All lineages of Tibetan Buddhism today claim allegiance to the philosophy of the Middle Way, the exposition of emptiness propounded by the second-century Indian master Nagarjuna. But not everyone interprets it the same way. A major faultline runs through Tibetan Buddhism around the interpretation of what are called the two truths—the deceptive truth of conventional appearances and the ultimate truth of emptiness. An understanding of this faultline illuminates the beliefs that separate the Gelug descendents of Tsongkhapa from contemporary Dzogchen and Mahamudra adherents. The Two Truths Debate digs into the debate of how the two truths are defined and how they are related by looking at two figures, one on either side of the faultline, and shows how their philosophical positions have dramatic implications for how one approaches Buddhist practice and how one understands enlightenment itself."
So the two truths doctrine is not a unitary idea, but creates a "major fault line" in Tibetan Buddhism. And Mādhyāmikas have a major difference of opinion from Abhidharmikas... etc.
And we have this oxymoronic phrase "deceptive truth". Let me reiterate that a "deceptive truth" is not a kind of truth at all. To call an error a kind of truth is itself an error. We have to ask why we've ended up calling an error a kind of truth! Because this is incoherent nonsense.
Other examples of this same problem are found throughout the literature of Buddhism and Buddhist Studies. If such divisions and arguments go back hundreds of years, then it is surely time to rethink the whole proposition!
Monday, August 08, 2011
I wanted to fill out my answer to Karmakshanti and acknowledge that on Facebook my friend Gambhiradaka makes a very similar point.
The idea that the Two Truths is about the nature of experience is more consistent with my view than might have been obvious from my previous answer. Though I maintain that an error of perception is still an error; and that calling it a kind of truth is incoherent.
I've been composing my thoughts on this again to see how the development of the idea, at least its early stages, might provide a more satisfying critique. The bewildering complexity of Mahāyāna doctrinal disputes has no attraction for me, but the early history of the idea is quite revealing.
I think it's crucial to understand that the idea of Two Truths emerged in an Abhidharmika milieu that was disputing about whether dharmas were real or not. Even when the TT doctrine gets back on track it cannot shake the legacy of Abhidharma Realism. Even Nāgārjuna seems to have had to accept it as Buddhavāca and rather than doing what I suggest - dropping it altogether - he had to accommodate it. Thus rather than subtracting the accretions and getting back to the simple idea that dharmas are mental events and paṭicca-samuppāda applies only to the arising of dukkha (or loka, or pañcakkandha, or experience, the terms are all synonymous); Nāgārjuna and his contemporaries who expressed themselves in sūtras had to try to get beyond the real/unreal dispute by adding something. The irony is that Nāgārjuna is clearly familiar with the early Buddhist tradition regarding this since he cites a Sanskrit version of the Kaccānagotta Sutta. But he is stuck with paṭicca-samuppāda as a theory of everything!
What they added was this notion of śūnyatā. Nāgārjuna more or less admits that śūnyatā is just paṭicca-samuppāda. However the domain of application has expanded, and the nature of objects and dharmas has become an issue. The notion of śūnyatā deals with all of this. And it must be admitted that śūnyatā is an elegant solution to this problem. Completely unnecessary from an early Buddhist view in which the problem does not arise, but given the circumstance a very elegant work around.
This problem of legacy doctrines and ad hoc patches has been piling up for centuries. I seriously doubt we can ever get back to the original teachings of the Buddha, but where we can identify historical accretions and the intellectual problems that they have created, then I think we can revert the Dharma back to an earlier release.
Where debates have raged, or even bubbled away, for centuries inconclusively, then we must begin to suspect that it is the result of confusion. It is too easy to choose one or other sectarian explanation without looking more deeply at the problem vertically. At the very least we need to get sectarian advocates to explain why they believe one version and not another. One of the traditional ways of stimulating such debates is to tell the sectarian that they are wrong, and get them to defend their position. I see the post above as being in that spirit.
Tuesday, August 09, 2011
"Legacy doctrines and ad hoc patches" is a splendid summary of the problem.
I come at this from the other end, namely sorting out what my own school (Nyingma) has to say about it. Ju Mipham's work from the late 19th century is probably the last substantial contribution to the debate (and is regarded as canonical by the Nyingma).
I think he has some important insights, but they're hard to tease out because the whole thing is couched in wrong terms (of existence and non-existence). In Tibetan discourse, this is traced to Nargarjuna; it's interesting to learn that the problem goes back much further.
The great virtue of Tsongkhapa is that his story is conceptually coherent. I think it's wrong, but at least it makes enough sense that you can argue against it, whereas most of this stuff such billowy metaphysical verbiage that you can't.
My Meaningness work is an attempt to rip out all of the existence/non-existence legacy code and to build a new conceptual platform to support the worthwhile insights that the tradition has produced since.
Friday, August 12, 2011
Hi David. I hope it's clear that Nāgārjuna accepted that existence and nonexistence (asti/nāsti) don't apply. MMK 15.7 I think, but it's in my paṭiccasaumppāda essay.
As far as I understand him, he did OK. But then he had legacy issues as I've said. But then again, nothing like the legacy issues we have!
Friday, August 12, 2011
Hi David
Yes I think the legacy code analogy will bear more consideration. In the meantime did you see my translation of some Buddhist doctrine into the slang I've been picking up from you?
everything is, like, wtf?
everything is, like, meh...
stuff is non-woo.
(Dhp. 277-9)
Friday, August 12, 2011
Yes, Nagarjuna said "neither existence nor non-existence", but in saying that he made it already too late. Subsequent Madhyamaka was thereby forced to be all about the things he said didn't apply.
Just found your twitter feed! Oh dear, I hope I'm not being a bad influence on your diction. My Lamas would not approve! (I love your translation, though.)
Friday, August 12, 2011
As with Paul, I too “enjoyed your point about all experience being ineffable rather than it being a quality of spiritual or higher experience.”
You wrote: >> "So experience, all experience, is ineffable. And in fact probably all of us have had life changing experiences after which we have never been the same. We shouldn't make a big deal out of that in the case of bodhi. The ineffability of experience is a simple truism, not a profound Truth. I think the tendency is to emphasise the mystical aspects of bodhi, and for someone like me it makes it seem impossible."
But if you will forgive me for saying so, it seems you are simply recapitulating the Heart Sutra ;)
Your essay did remind me of two sayings of Frank Herbert: "the mystery of life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced", he also said: "forget mystery and accept love. There's no mystery about love. It comes from life."
Whether the Two Truths theory points to two levels of reality that REALLY exist or not, is there no value in employing it expediently to prevent the habitual reaction of confusing the admittedly mundane ineffability which is the very essence of direct experience (of anything) and the mental and emotional constructs we develop in the wake of that fleeting ineffability?
Perhaps one may end up reifying Reality (giving it a capital 'R') just so we can knock it down and say it wasn't really real after all. In denying the relative truth of the two truths, perhaps we we may throw the baby out and just end up keeping the bathwater? What say you: has the Two Truth concept any value as upaya?
Thank you for the very thoughtful post. I will be bookmarking your blog and subscribing to your feed.
@David – just read your 'Effing the Ineffable' – I was about to write that same review ;)
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Hello Bodhiyana
Thanks for your comments.
I sincerely hope I am not recapitulating the Heart Sūtra. Having studied it in English and Sanskrit I must say that it makes very little sense to me. Perhaps you could say more.
I don't see how you can get around saying that something which is wrong, is true. How is that helpful? What is the value there?
I'm not much interested in the concept of upaya. Again I think people had only to make up this concept because of apparent paradoxes.
I will certainly pardon your reference to the Heart Sūtra if you will pardon my almost total disinterest in the Mahāyāna and it's struggle to come to grips with the legacy code problem :-)
I'll take a look at your blog as well.
Regards
Jayarava
Saturday, August 13, 2011
If you have no interest in the Mahāyāna or upaya, you will certainly not find my blog of any interest whatsoever.
>>"I don't see how you can get around saying that something which is wrong, is true. How is that helpful? What is the value there?"
One need not assert that something wrong is true, but one can say to someone holding an even more gross conception - "for the moment, look at it this way" in order for them to break those notional bonds that must be broken before further clarity can arise. That is the use of upaya - which I don't see as arising from the need to cope with paradox.
I will gladly pardon your complete lack of interest in the Mahāyāna ;) - which I do not see as struggling with the legacy code problem (though, as a coder, I love the analogy).
I have never looked to Buddhism for 'Truth', but for meaningful ways of dissolving errors of perception and conception. This being so, I have never been concerned with the teachings of the historical Buddha as such (except as they serve the aforementioned function), but I find all sorts of things useful for paradigm deconstruction, even things which are not inherently true and real, just temporarily useful in getting beyond an obstacle. Sometimes a doctor stabilizes a patient using medications not important for the patients real problem, but which make the patient more likely to survive the necessary surgery to follow. That, for what it is worth (and it may not be worth much) is my take on Upaya.
As for the Heart Sutra, I am merely referring to the fact that it puts the onus on the ineffability of direct perception right in the realm of mundane life and removes it from a quasi-mystical realm of perfectly enlightened beings and their intentions to 'save' the world. It decouples the ego from the pretension of being the source and recipient of some ineffable mystical experience and from the concept of merit acquisition. It just seemed to me that such concepts were mirrored in your post. Forgive me if I misunderstood.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Hi James
I think it's clear that something about the way we relate to our experience is problematic, including (many would say especially) they way we relate to the experience of selfhood.
I wholeheartedly agree about not looking to Buddhism for Truth. And yet here we have two Truths. One of them is the Ultimate Truth! Do you not find this problematic? I do. One need not assert that a helpful or tactful lie is true, but the theory of Two Truths does precisely this! In fact I have a sneaking suspicion that they were thinking in terms of the other meaning of S. sat, i.e. 'real'. Which is even more problematic!
The trouble with your doctor analogy is that the procedure or drug used to stabilise a patient has to be effective. What is the positive effect of the Relative Truth? Why do I need that particular kind of reassurance? What problem is the Two Truths solving, that was not apparent to the compilers of the Pali Canon? My conjecture, based on accounts of early Buddhist philosophy by people like Noa Ronkin especially, is that it dates back to the arguments over whether dharmas are real or unreal. If you can explain another way to get from the early Buddhist position to the Two Truths, then I'm all ears. That's what this is about from my point of view.
My sense is that you're not really connecting your argument to the Two Truths, but are arguing for skilful means more generally. I'm not arguing against skilful means, I'm arguing against the Two Truths - both of them, not simply the Relative, but the Ultimate as well!
I do not put the onus on ineffability - I merely point out (rather like David on his blog) that if one did insist on it, then one would have very little to say about anything, and one could certainly not make categorical statements about the Ultimate Truth. Could one?
No. I mention in passing that the nature of all experience is to some extent ineffable, but this has not got in the way of our religion to any great extent - we have vast corpus of literature which describes the experience of bodhi and it's after effects. And I still have plenty to say, so I'd be a fool to insist that my subject is ineffable.
My opinion is that the Heart Sutra does the opposite, that it pushes Buddhism towards the mystical through employing paradox. Because to say that 'rūpa IS śūnyatā' and 'śūnyatā IS rūpa' is paradoxical, not to say illogical (these statements are no more good Sanskrit grammar than they are English).
The Heart Sutra is open to, and has produced, a thousand different interpretations. What it is is a floating signifier for whatever doctrine one holds dear - even for my scepticism. But we stray somewhat from the main topic with this.
Anyway thanks for your comments. The comments that get long replies are the one's I like - even if I disagree. I learn more and get to see how my arguments hold up to scrutiny. Whereas agreement is usually a very short conversation: "I think X". "Me too". Game over. So while we may disagree I've found it helpful (I probably need to say this more often!)
Regards
Jayarava
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Hallo Jayarava
Nice blog
Long time I have been thinking: the theorie of the two truths must be true, and understanding the ultimate truth is 'understanding things as they really are'.
Now I doubt and even see the dangers of it. I explain : in discussions in Theravada-circles about what meditation-method is the best, some Mahasi-style vipassana teachers (for example U Pandidat) state that their method is the best and even only path because in this vipassana the objects of meditation are paramatha dhammas; and in samatha-styles it are 'only' conventional truths (concepts) such as 'the breath' or colors etc. that are the object. An arrogant opinion!
About the theorie in Theravada: it occurs after the Pali-canon is closed, even Buddhaghosa did not use it. In for example the Abhidhammattha Sangaha (8th century or later) about which Bhikkhu Bodhi in his translation (not totally correct) states "According to the Abhidhamma philosophy, there are two kinds of realities - the conbventional (sammuti) and the ultimate (paramattha) ... Ultimate realities, in contrast, are things that exist by reason of their own intrisic nature (sabhava) ... Only by means of wise of thorough attention to things (yoniso manasikara) can one see beyond the concepts and take the ultimate realities as one's object of knowledge. Thus paramattha is described as that which belongs to the domain of ultimate or supreme knowledge."(p. 25/26)
Do you know the essay THERAVADA VERSION OF THE TWO TRUTHS by KARUNADASA? See skb.or.kr/down/papers/094.pdf
Rests the possibility that the theorie of the two truths is - as a skilful means - useful for some buddhists in their path; I still think it is. For exemple as a kind of soteriologic staircase:
(1) conventional view on reality
(2) ultimate view on reality; and
(3) anatta (in Theravada) or
sunyata (in Mahayana)
To end: Im not sure about the "BECAUSE" in your conconlusion "The early Buddhists had no need of a Two Truths theory because they understood the domain in which paṭicca-samuppāda applies"
I agree with both ideas of you but not with the causal relation you put between them.
Joop
Sunday, September 18, 2011
In my view it is dhammas that together form the view or perspective that we cannot but have.
They consist of concepts and images arranged in the mind-sense manas and the Buddha was only interested in them because they led us either into suffering or away from it, either into practice or away from it.
Hence Right View - which consists of dhammas - is the view that leads to our transformation (into a Buddha.)
In short, they are always there, always having an effect, so we better be aware of that fact, if we want to be happy
- do I move towards this mental image of an ice-cream?
- do I act on the view of that person that I have got?
- what is my perspective on what leads to happiness?
For more, see:
http://www.mahabodhi.org.uk/dhammas.html
So I agree: the ontology of dhammas is irrelevant to that, in fact a distraction from dealing with the ones we have.
Cheers
Mahabodhi
Monday, October 03, 2011
Hi Mahābodhi
Thanks for stopping by. We seem to be largely in agreement, though I'm not familiar with the way you express your opinions. On what do you base your view of dhammas?
On your website you say one thing which I disagree with: "It is important to realize that Buddhism isn’t saying there is an ‘objectively existing world out there’ that the dhammas are re-presenting. "
Contrarily I think early Buddhism is saying just this - it is a form of transcendental realism: objects of the senses are real, but we cannot know them directly. Dhammas arise in dependence on sense object and sense faculty meeting in the presence of sense consciousness. You seem to be defining sense object out of the process and denying it a role in cognition.
I do not agree that this is impossible to confirm in experience - in Buddhism inference is also a kind of experience (a dhamma)! We do not have direct contact with objects, but we can infer things about them from experience - from the regular and repeatable nature of experience. Also from shared experience. Indeed I go so far as to say that early Buddhism makes no sense if their are no objects of the senses that are independent of us. I don't use the word noumenal for objects - because I think it has the wrong connotations. As I wrote recently.
We confirm the existence of independent objects in experience when we do simple tasks like learning the way to the shop. The same action leads to the same experience (finding the shop), and this is confirmed by other people in their experience (who also visit the shop). The only sensible thing to say is that the shop is an object which is independent of our observing it. That we only ever experience it as arisen dhammas is not to say that we do not have experiences which confirm the speculation.
There's nowhere to comment on the webpage you link to so I'll say here that your translation of Dhp 1 is deceptive.There is no word or sequence of words which correspond to "all that we are" for instance. In fact what the verses say is somewhat more restrained. What is says is this:
mano pubbaṅgamā dhammā manoseṭṭhā manomayā
"Mind precedes experiences, mind is best, experiences are mind-made.
Translating dhamma as experience. I see in your note you read "all that we are" as translating dhamma. But this is just wrong. Even by your definition of dhammas it is wrong.
Where did you get you idea about the derivation of seṭṭha? The word means "best, excellent". There's no relationship with seti - they're from different roots! Seti is from √sī, while seṭṭha is related to Sanskrit śrī and probably from √śri. This is confirmed by the Patna Sanskrit Dharmapada which has manośreṣṭhā.
You really do need to learn Pāli - as I've said to you before!
In trying to re-jig the verse in your own terms you seem to have strayed too far from the original. If you define manas as "that which creates a perspective on dhammas" it doesn't really alter the translation. You would just be saying that "the process that provides us with a perspective on dhammas, precedes the dhammas themselves."
This not necessarily a straight forward philosophical proposition either, but it at least does not distort the Pāli beyond recognition. I would read this as saying don't focus on the content, focus on the process. In fact it could be read as saying that the mind exists independently of its content, which is not uncontroversial.
Regards
Jayarava
Monday, October 03, 2011
Hi Jayarava
My view of dhammas is based on trying to understand the Satipatthana Sutta from commentaries on it, failing, and then looking into my own experience for the answer. It has evolved over a number of years based on three criteria:
1) How do things work in my experience?
2) How does any proposition tie in with the rest of what I know about the Dharma?
3) Where in particular does paticcasamuppada fit in?
I am assuming that paticcasamuppada applies to kaya, vedana, citta and dhammas and their inter-relationships. This is as far as I know an original proposition, but the more I think of it the more it seems obvious. How else would they relate?
I experience concepts and images in my mind, and they seem to lead me in one direction or another, towards or away from understanding, towards or away from obsession, and so on. These therefore must be dhammas.
The Buddha divided his domains of mindfulness into four areas: kaya, vedana, citta and dhammas I imagine for a good reason. Each has a separate bearing on our happiness and so needs to be dealt with separately.
Citta and manas (which perceives dhammas) are therefore distinct aspects of mind. The first constitutes our emotional and mental state (craving, hatred, the process of thinking, concentration, etc) and the second is our perspective at a particular time.
If citta and manas weren’t distinct we wouldn’t be able to change our perspective by thinking about it, and our state of mind could not respond to our views (e.g. we would not get irritated when we had the view that ’this person is a nuisance’)
When I said: "It is important to realize that Buddhism isn’t saying there is an ‘objectively existing world out there’ that the dhammas are re-presenting.," I think I would now leave that phrase out as speculative ontology. All I would say now is that the Buddha probably wasn’t interested in the ontology of kaya, vedana, citta and dhammas, but only in the fact of their being observable conditions that had a bearing on happiness / suffering, which is why we should attend to them.
On Dhp 1:
mano pubbaṅgamā dhammā manoseṭṭhā manomayā
"Mind precedes experiences, mind is best, experiences are mind-made.
I got ‘all that we are’ from http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/sbe10/sbe1003.htm Thinking about it, it isn’t all that far away from ‘our experiences.’ It could be ‘all that we experience.’
I was just trying to make the point that perhaps this phrase means ‘our perspective creates our experiences’ rather than ‘our state of mind creates our experiences,’ as the ‘mind’ in the verse is manas rather than citta.
Most people seem to assume that what is meant by manas is ones state of mind (as it is often repeated in dictionaries / commentaries that manas and citta are interchangeable.)
The derivation of seṭṭha: I got that wrong (using Digital Pali Reader I think☺)
I could do with some Pali tuition. Can you get it in Manchester?
All the best
Mahabodhi
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Hi Mahābodhi
Yes, I think you are right about applying paṭiccasamuppāda to those areas of experience - though what do you think is original about this?
Funnily enough citta and manas are often very difficult to distinguish in the texts, and reputable translators like Bhikkhu Bodhi treats them both as "mind". They are often used interchangeably - which is why the dictionaries say they are. It's just a fact, rather than a deficiency of the lexicographer. One has to stop and think about the context of any occurrence of words like dhamma, citta, mano etc to decide exactly what is meant. Sometimes it remains ambiguous even after considerable thought, and even centuries of argument!
This is why I am suspicious of neat and tidy summaries like yours. It fails to convey the complexity and ambiguity of what is in the texts. And why I keep encouraging you to learn Pāli. (BTW I don't know Manchester at all so couldn't advise you on finding a Pāli instructor there, but it's not so hard to teach yourself - I did).
The distinctions between citta and manas and viññāna seem to emerge over time. I think you are right about citta being the broad content of our experience and our responses to it, but wrong about manas. I think you've interpreted it to fit your theory, not the other way around. In the more developed presentations manas is just that which perceives dhammas - and no more as far as I can see. Perspective, as you define it would seem to be an aspect of citta.
I think your argument is interesting, but it is a creative reading of texts which are difficult to understand - there are many interpretations, yes? You can't argue that this is what the Buddhist tradition (let alone the Buddha!) meant without showing why and how. You've not done this. All you've done is come up with yet another plausible interpretation. I'd be more interested if it wasn't apparent that you don't really understand how the terms are used in the context of the texts that purport to represent the tradition.
And I must say with some emphasis that to interpret the Dhammapada verse as containing a definite and unambiguous reference goes beyond what the text itself tells us. The two words dhamma and manas are really quite vague. This is one of those times when we are really not sure what is intended.
Is experience 'all that we are'? Would this not be a subtle distortion of the situation towards ontological certainty?
BTW Have you read this Rave from 2008? Communicating the Dharma.
In the final analysis I am not that interested in creative interpretations of ambiguous and vague texts from a modern point of view. Speculations abound. I'm more interested in trying to get into the world-view of the time and to understand it from within. Is there some general hermeneutic principle which can help to unravel the paradoxes? My blog is partially a record of my explorations of this possibility. Some argue that this too is a speculative exercise, but we have an imperfect record of something in the texts, and language is a window on the mind. And in any case it keeps me occupied.
Understanding the texts in translation by contrast gives you a window on the world-view of the translators. I think this shows in the work of all scholars who approach the texts only in translation (and there are many of them).
Regards
Jayarava
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Hi Jayarava
Can I just correct you. You say: ’In the more developed presentations manas is just that which perceives dhammas - and no more as far as I can see’ That is my view too.
Even though citta and manas are used interchangeably in the texts, in the Satipatthana Sutta citta and dhammas are distinct, and because manas is linked with dhammas, that makes citta and manas distinct. This is just logic.
It may be that over centuries they have been muddied together. I am just working on understanding the one text.
You say: I'd be more interested if it wasn't apparent that you don't really understand how the terms are used in the context of the texts that purport to represent the tradition.
And I must say with some emphasis that to interpret the Dhammapada verse as containing a definite and unambiguous reference goes beyond what the text itself tells us. The two words dhamma and manas are really quite vague. This is one of those times when we are really not sure what is intended.
This is precisely my point. The tradition is vague about the meaning of these terms. This does not, in my book, mean though that they are inherently vague. I believe they have a specific meaning, which remains to be uncovered.
You say: You can't argue that this is what the Buddhist tradition (let alone the Buddha!) meant without showing why and how. You've not done this.
I know that. I have hardly begun to explain my ideas in the few lines I have written on this blog. I admit it though, I am going for a neat and tidy solution. That is because I am really tired of the Buddhist tradition being unclear about what terms like vedana, citta and dhammas mean, and people thinking that somehow that is alright.
The Buddha talks about gocara sampajana - clear comprehension of domain, which I think is relevant here. To me that involves clearly comprehending what each of these areas are in our experience, so that we don’t mix up feelings and emotions, or the content of a view (dhammas) with the way that we are holding it (citta.) This is a really important practical point
I do believe that the Dharma can be understood simply and elegantly (while admitting that due to paṭiccasamuppāda working with a multiplicity of conditions involves dealing with a degree of complexity.) To say a bit more about how I see things, I am applying paṭiccasamuppāda in particular to the relationships BETWEEN kaya, vedana, citta and dhammas, and this seems to explain many things.
For instance, that citta is conditioned by kaya, vedana and dhammas, helps explain how emotion arises. It is largely a reaction to vedana, but also dhammas in the form of how ones perspective (whether that is ‘spiritual’ or ‘worldly’) modifies ones emotions, and how grounded one is in ones body has an effect as well.
We can think of this as:
Kaya being, citta becomes, and,
Vedana being, citta becomes, and,
Dhammas being, citta becomes
all happening at the same time.
However, when I explain this to people they often don’t get it, and I think this is because they are stuck in a mindset that looks for
One word = one meaning
(for instance vedana = sensation)
But if you look at vedana from the viewpoint of paṭiccasamuppāda it is a different thing depending on what is conditioning it, namely:
Conditioned by kaya – kayika vedana (sensation)
Conditioned by citta – samisa / niramisa vedana (worldly or spiritual feeling)
Conditioned by dhammas – cetasika vedana (mental feeling or mood)
So what I am arguing is that seeing things from the viewpoint of paṭiccasamuppāda retains their subtlety. If we try to cram the meaning of vedana into ‘sensation’ we lose its other meanings.
continued next entry...
Regards
Mahabodhi
Monday, October 17, 2011
continued from previous entry...
You say: Perspective, as you define it would seem to be an aspect of citta.
No, (mental) perspective is the view that manas ‘sees’ through dhammas, just as a visual perspective is the view that the visual sense sees through visual objects.
There is, in my view, a difference between holding a perspective and the perspective itself. The fact of the perspective existing is dhammas. The fact of it being held in the mind is citta, if you see what I mean. Citta is the aspect of mind that chooses the perspective, holds it (perhaps lightly or perhaps dogmatically,) and thinks about it (vitakka / vichara,) turns it over in the mind, and eventually dismisses it or retains it depending on the evidence. And I think in this regard panna, as the ‘active’ aspect of wisdom, is to be associated with citta (thinking, reflecting and meditating) whereas the wise perspective, once arrived at is to be associated with dhammas. Hence I think the Theravada is right in thinking of citta as ‘thought.’ It is the PROCESS of thought. But it is wrong in excluding emotion from citta, because it is also the PROCESS of emotion. This is a point which reputable academics like Margaret Cone and Sue Hamilton both seem to miss, as they take the view that citta is not emotional, despite the evidence from the Satipatthana Sutta that citta can be ‘with lust’ ‘with hatred’ and so on, and that Peter Harvey in his 8 pages on citta in The Selfless Mind lists many emotional aspects. They might benefit from thinking about citta more as I have indicated above.
You say: Is experience 'all that we are'? Would this not be a subtle distortion of the situation towards ontological certainty?
There is a whole complex raft of argument about the meaning of experience in my book that I would need to express to preface answering this question.
BTW Have you read this Rave from 2008? Communicating the Dharma.
Why do you mention this in particular, Jayarava?
You say: Is there some general hermeneutic principle which can help to unravel the paradoxes? My blog is partially a record of my explorations of this possibility. Some argue that this too is a speculative exercise, but we have an imperfect record of something in the texts, and language is a window on the mind. And in any case it keeps me occupied. Understanding the texts in translation by contrast gives you a window on the world-view of the translators. I think this shows in the work of all scholars who approach the texts only in translation (and there are many of them).
I have gained a lot from your explorations. I think philology is very useful in giving a perspective on the dangers in the misuse / misreading of words (and more, I’m sure.) IMO there is nothing inherently wrong in speculation. Doesn’t Buddhaghosa say that if you speculate correctly that leads to wisdom, but if you speculate incorrectly it leads to folly (sorry I can’t remember the exact quote.)
However, I think there are possible dangers in philology, as there are with philosophy, seen from a Buddhist soteriological perspective.
If a philologist says ‘The two words dhamma and manas are really quite vague. This is one of those times when we are really not sure what is intended,’ they are being truthful to philology. Which is great. But the danger is that they just stop there.
A Buddhist practitioner need something clear and unequivocal to practice, and so though statements like this may be true from a philological point of view, they aren’t very helpful to the practitioner, and may undermine their faith that there is something clear to practice. That is one of the reasons why I am working on clarifying these terms, and have sought to come up with a coherent theory based both on the insights of philology but also, when that fails, on how things seem to work in (my) experience.
I hope this helps you understand my perspective better.
Regards
Mahabodhi
Monday, October 17, 2011
Can I just say that when someone says something, as you have done, and I contradict them, only to have them come back and say "but that's just the point I was making" there are some possibilities:
1. I have misunderstood
2. they have not communicated clearly enough.
3. all of the above.
Since I still think that you are saying something different to me I'm forced to conclude in this case that option 2 is definitely a a part of the answer.
Monday, October 17, 2011
There's one other logical fallacy I'll point out. You say that in the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta (SpS) that citta and manas are distinct because dhammas are related to manas. And that this is logical. Let's look at this "logic".
At the beginning is the unstated assumption that citta and manas are two different things. Since dhammas are the object of manas, and manas and citta are different, then references to dhammas are references to manas and not citta. SpS uses the terminology citta and dhammas: therefore the SpS is making the distinction that you made as an unstated assumption at the beginning.
However you could short circuit all that logic and just state your assumption: "manas and citta are two different things". There's no logical operation you can do that can disprove it because it is inherent in the operation - no matter what logical operations you do you will always conclude that citta and manas are different because you've made it implicit in your worldview. So logical, yes, to a point. But there is no logic to your tacit assumption, and the logic just doesn't work if you drop that assumption.
As I say it is not at all obvious that there is a distinction between citta and manas in any given text - and as skilled a translator as Bhikkhu Bodhi almost always translates both as mind (thereby obscuring the distinction unless you read the Pāli). Try starting with the assumption that they are not different. The fact that citta is mentioned instead of manas in the list kaya, vedanā, citta, dhammā is not significant any longer. In fact is makes more sense to assume a significant overlap of the semantic fields of citta and manas in this context. Dhammas are the content for both processes. If the objects of citta are something other than dhammas, then what are they?
The Buddhist tradition IS unclear about some of its terms, and you are not the first to try to impose order on them: that started before the common era with the disastrous Abhidhamma project (more on this on Fri 21 Oct 2011). Dhamma is also a very vague word with 6 different senses.
There is no "neat and tidy solution". One has to acknowledge the ambiguity and work with it rather than polarising and fixing the meaning in the present - which in an apparent contradiction you criticise a few paragraphs on!
It was you who directed my readers to your website, and I was showing my readers that you got some things badly wrong on that page - logically, conceptually and linguistically - on that page and to be cautious. As to your overall thesis, well I'm sorry to say that the page in question is so flawed that I'm not inspired to follow up.
We can learn much from the system building of the past. Over arching systems are unlikely to solve the problems we've inherited. I prefer to take a hermeneutical approach - i.e. forego constructing a system and read texts from a particular interpretative stance. My approach is also to deconstruct artificial reductive systems and structures imposed on an organic body of narrative which is a collation of several distinct oral lineages.
Just for the sake of argument - can you quote where Sue Hamilton says that citta excludes emotions?
Monday, October 17, 2011
The answer is 1. I think you have misunderstood what my view is (I also may not have communicated it clearly enough.)
I take my understanding from the PED, that ‘the mind fits the world as the eye fits the light, or in other words: mano is the counterpart of dhammā.’
(http://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/philologic/getobject.pl?c.2:1:3860.pali)
You must have thought I was saying something else.
On the subject of ‘logic,’ you have missed a crucial point. This is not logic based on an original assumption I have that "manas and citta are two different things," but logic based on what came out of the Buddha’s mouth in the SpS. There the Buddha differentiated between being mindful of citta and being mindful of dhammas. I cannot but see that he therefore meant "dhammas and citta are two different things" and therefore by extension, because manas is the counterpart of dhammas, that "manas and citta are two different things." To defeat this argument you would need to argue that the Buddha was saying we should bring mindfulness to two things which were in fact the same.
You seem to be asking me to have blind faith in Bhikkhu Bodhi because of his reputation (as in “believe -that manas and citta are the same - and you will be saved”) No disrespect to Bhikkhu Bodhi but, on the basis of what the Buddha says in the Kalama Sutta I do not 'go by reputation,' etc. but only when I know for myself, with an eye to what ‘the wise’ might think (which, by the way, I also see as what the texts might say: my view from experience needs to be open to be corrected by the texts - so I am not just going on experience,) that something leads to good and not to harm, will I do it. I do see the blurring of manas and citta into one as leading to confusion and therefore to harm (for the reasons implied below.)
You say: If the objects of citta are something other than dhammas, then what are they?
That is simple if we think of manas and citta as distinct. The objects of citta, when seen from manas, are dhammas.
Suppose we are in a certain state of mind. That state exist - as a cetasika within citta – whether or not we call it anything. But then we call it something - hatred. We are assessing it as something in particular, and when we do that we are we are assigning a dhamma to that state, in the form of a concept (it could equally be an image, as when we are imagining something that isn’t there.)
The faculty of manas is therefore the place where ‘labelling’ happens - partly through the process of sanna or recognition - where the labels are dhammas.
When in the SpS the Buddha says: ‘the monk contemplates the dhammas in the dhammas in the case of the five hindrances,’ what I think he is saying is:
‘look at the mental states you have got going on in citta’
‘how are you assessing them?’
‘are you assessing them correctly (i.e. as hindrances to progress,)
in other words…
‘do you have a dharmic perspective on your mental states?’,
and part of that perspective is:
‘if they are harmful, how do you get rid of them?’
and so on.
(hence the connection with Dhamma as path)
So the faculty of manas is where us our perspective / understanding / assessments happen. That includes our labelling of and perspective on citta (e.g as 'craving' 'skillful' 'liberated'), on vedana (e.g labelling as ‘pleasure’ or ‘pain’) and on kaya (e.g. labelling as head, foot, hand, tense, relaxed, etc.) To have such a perspective on them manas necessarily needs to be distinct from each of citta, vedana and kaya.
Mahabodhi
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
I'll explain the context of my reference to Sue Hamilton. I wrote to Margaret Cone (who is working on the new PED) last year with a question. I said:
‘I am trying to establish whether citta is heart and mind or just "thought." The old PED definition seems to be saying that the use of "thought" for citta came up in later scholastic language.
‘It is only in later scholastic language that we are justified in applying the term "thought" (to citta) in its technical sense,’
But Sue Hamilton seems to be saying that the use of "heart" was developed by the Abhidhamma:
‘It is perhaps because citta is a general qualitative indicator that the Abhidhamma and commentarial traditions developed its association with the heart as a psycho-affective centre.’ [Hamilton. S. (1996) Identity and experience: the constitution of the human being according to early Buddhism. LUZAC Oriental. 113-114.]
Sue Hamilton also suggests that: ‘the association with the heart does not imply, as it might in the West, that citta is thought of in the sentimental terms referred to (in the PED definition.) In pan-Indian thought the heart is associated with one’s mental faculties.’ [Ibid.]
Are the PED and Sue Hamilton at odds here? I would appreciate hearing your views on the above, including what the current PED has to say on the matter?’
Margaret replied:
‘I am afraid I do not agree at all with the old PED definition, and find Sue Hamilton much more convincing. The more occurrences of the word I read (and I read all of them!) the more sure I was that we are talking about 'thinking'.
My article in DOP II will give the following:
1. the process of thinking; thinking; thought; thoughts; intention; state of mind; (cf S. Hamilton, 1996, pp. 105 114);
2. a single thought; a thought-moment; a moment of consciousness;
3. (n., nom. pl. ~å, ~åni, or mfn. ? see Sadd 227,1 foll. and 229,2 foll.) mental state, type of consciousness; or connected with thinking or with thought; mental;
I was concerned to avoid any suggestion of a static, continuing thing, and to emphasise that citta is an anicca process. So 'heart' and 'mind' seemed to me to give the wrong idea.
yours,
Margaret Cone’ (permission to reproduce obtained)
So do you think by this quote Sue Hamilton is excluding emotion from citta?
Mahabodhi
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Rat's! I responded to this once and somehow it got lost.
So the first point is that we have to take Margaret Cone's word for the definition of citta. She is the leading expert, and I know something of her methods from talking to Dhīvan who has ongoing tutorials with her. She will literally have read every occurrence of the word, and in multiple recension of the Canon. However we don't have to leave it at that, and I'll come back to this.
I note, however, that Nyanatiloka's Buddhist Dictionary, and Bhikkhu Bodhi both seem to agree with Cone: manas, citta, and viññāna are synonyms. Later distinctions notwithstanding.
Moving on, I would ask the question: what is an emotion?
As far as I know there is no simple definition of emotion, and no agreement on what constitutes the basic emotions we all share. Emotion as a word came into English only in the 16th century. It meant "agitation" at the time.
I think the notion we currently have of emotions is largely a product of the Romantic reaction to the Enlightenment, filtered through the Psycho-analytic movement. This helps to explain the nebulous definitions. And let's pause to recall that our Buddhist teacher is profoundly influenced by the Romantics.
Should we expect to find this Romantic/Psycho-analytic notion of emotion in the Pāli texts? Or perhaps we should phrase the question: why should we expect to find this notion of emotion in the Pāli texts?
Here we come up against a problem in the history of ideas. Our notions about emotions are culturally conditioned. If the Buddha had notions about emotions they too were conditioned, but by a very different set of conditions!
I don't know, but my experience of the texts tells me that the Buddha would not have seen "emotion" as a thing or category. He would have seen emotion as an experience comprising bodily sensations, hedonic reactions, and mental activity. This means that emotion is not a fundamental category. Emotion in the modern sense of the word would be distributed over all four paṭṭhānas. Indeed this is how contemporary scientists see emotion as well. Far and anger are indistinguishable physiologically speaking. It is the accompanying thoughts that distinguish them. So I start to wonder whether emotion is a coherent category from a modern point of view, let alone 2500 years ago.
The Buddha seems not to have been very systems oriented. We can see time and again that he refuses to answer big questions, but remains focussed on the way that our reactions to sense experience cause us to suffer. As such he's mainly interested in the pleasant/unpleasant aspect of experience, and the pull/push this creates in us. He's really only interested in attraction and aversion. Are these even emotions in our sense of the word? We experience attraction and aversion viscerally and mentally. And it's even possible to mismatch the two domains. My suspicion is that we now call emotion would all get lumped into the category of papañca by the Buddha.
On reflection I don't find it remarkable that scholars who work independently (like Cone and Hamilton) come to the same conclusion: that citta means thought, but includes intention.
This is a relatively easy hypothesis to disprove. All you have to do is provide us with a reference to citta in a Pāli text where it unequivocally refers to the emotions. This would need to not be dependent on a particular interpretation of citta, but be the only possible conclusion from the context.
So my own thinking now is that citta is 'thought' (both etymologically and in use in the Pāli texts); and the modern concept of emotions is probably and unsurprisingly not found in the Pāli.
I think the discussion has highlighted another difficulty amateur scholars face. We tend not to see our own cultural conditioning. This makes it very difficult indeed to reason from personal experience and come to a valid conclusion about what a 2000 year old text might be saying.
Jayarava
Thursday, October 20, 2011
I'm pleased to see that my understanding of citta here is relatively consistent with what I wrote in March.
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Sounds like sophistry to me. Clever but not very wise.
So one example is 'mettam cittam.'.
No doubt you will be able to cleverly able to dismiss metta as a product of German Romanticism.
Can't you see the black hole this is leading into?
No positive emotion in the spiritual life. Just dry reason.
That is my fear.
I think excluding emotion from citta is a BIG mistake.
Mahabodhi.
Friday, October 21, 2011
But don’t you say yourself in your blog on ‘Philological Odds & Ends VII - Mind Words’ that;
The root √cit is defined in the dictionary as "knowing; thought , intellect , spirit , soul", but also "to perceive , fix the mind upon , attend to , be attentive , observe , take notice of"; and "to aim at , intend , design; to be anxious about , care for; to resolve". So √cit concerns what catches and holds our attention on the one hand, and what we move towards on the other; or, what is on our minds, and what motivates us (emotions are what 'set us in motion'; emotion comes from an old French word emouvoir meaning to 'stir up'; ultimately from Latin from ex- 'out' + movere 'to move').
But of course it is artificial to isolate ANY experience from its supportive conditions, so emotion (let’s just use the term for now, as we understand it, in this era) as ‘a whole’ will include, as you say, elements from all four patthanas, as these go on all the time ‘in parallel’ with each other. Thought too is no doubt the same. It will have a bodily aspect, a feeling tone (probably neutral,) a movement (in citta) and dhammas. So it doesn’t make sense to single out ‘emotion’ as not being a coherent category, nothing is a coherent category. ‘Thought’ isn’t a coherent category either!
The main problem I have with interpreting citta as ‘thought, but including intention’ is that it makes the process of citta bhavana too much into a cognitive exercise. Practitioners look into dictionaries for guidance, and then interpret their practice in those terms, and I notice that Maitreyabandhu in ‘Life with Full Attention,’ when he talks about mindfulness of citta, talks about it predominately in terms of working on the stories we tell ourselves. But as well as that, mindfulness of citta is surely also about the metta bhavana (which he goes on to cover in a separate chapter.) It is about the transformation of what we, in the twentieth century, call emotion (and I don’t think the Buddha would put metta in the category of papanca, which I assume is always unskilful.)
You seem to contradict yourself. On the one hand you say ‘All you have to do is provide us with a reference to citta in a Pāli text where it unequivocally refers to the emotions’ but you have already disallowed ‘emotion’ as a coherent category (because in its modern sense it is distributed over all four paṭṭhānas.) So what you ask is impossible.
continued below...
Mahabodhi
Friday, October 21, 2011
I think you are right that the notion we currently have of emotions is largely a product of the Romantic reaction… etc. But that notion probably differs from what, if the Buddha were alive today, he would mean by emotion, as I am sure he would use that term because it is part of the discourse of the day. So I think we need to use that term – and not avoid it as Margaret Cone does in her definition of citta, and in doing so giving too cognitive an impression of ‘mind.’ – We need though to give a full account of its range, and it seems simple enough to talk about skilful or unskilful emotion. ‘Emotion’ is nebulous, in the popular imagination, and in dictionary definitions. It includes a wide range of forms, such as sentimentality, worrying about ‘my’ feelings, ones heart going out to people, getting angry, and so on.
We just need to understand these forms from a dharmic point of view and divide them into different categories with different degrees of skilfulness and involvement with ‘self.’ Once we have done that - become clear about the whole field of ‘emotion’ and are able to express it - then I think then there is no danger in talking about emotion. Sue Hamilton doesn’t think citta should be thought of in sentimental terms, but perhaps it is the modern non-dharmic associations people have with emotion that she wants to distance citta from, rather than the more skilful forms of emotion, such as the brahmaviharas.
One last question: if he was living today, how would the Buddha use the word ‘emotion’? I assume he would have to use it.
Sorry you lost your last thread,
Mahabodhi
Friday, October 21, 2011
"I think excluding emotion from citta is a BIG mistake."
So? Who is excluding emotion? Not me. All we are saying is that citta is 'thought, intention'. This much is clear, and I think you are very far from providing any evidence to the contrary except your personal opinion, which has been shown to be flawed in a number of different ways.
As scholars we have to work from the evidence, not from what we want to see! Staying with the evidence is not sophistry - it is the scientific method. You conjecture that citta includes emotion, then someone shows you that linguistically and textually this is not correct, so if you are intellectually honest you have to come up with a new conjecture. If you refuse to accept the evidence what you have is not knowledge, but mere religious dogma. I sympathise with having to let go of a dogma, but one must follow the evidence.
The simple phrase "mettaṃ cittaṃ" is not what we are looking for. "A thought of love/loving" is a perfectly serviceable translation. No. We need a text, and an unequivocal one.
If our view of emotion is significantly different from the European view 400 years ago, and I think most reasonable people would accept that both the Enlightenment and the Romantic reactions to it (including Psychoanalysis) have definitely changed our view of emotion, then must at least consider the idea that the Buddha did not view emotion in the way that we did. The question then becomes how did the Buddha talk about emotions? And mostly he doesn't seem to talk about them as a category. To answer your last question there isn't a word for "emotion" that I can see. As I have said I don't think emotion is even a category, in Pāli.
My conjecture is that most of what we now include under emotion - the froth of feelings and thoughts - would come under the heading papañca. So I do not exclude emotion at all. I certainly reclassify it, according to my understanding of the world view represented by the Canon. You can refute me quite easily, by presenting evidence to the contrary. I'm quite open to having my mind changed by evidence. Which I have done since writing the earlier blog. This is one of the entertaining things about this form of publishing, one can see the mind changing over time, however glacially.
With respect to mettā why don't you have a look at the locus classicus: the Karaṇīya Mettā Sutta. You won't find √cit and you will find √man.
e.g. Mātā yathā niyaṃ puttaṃ
āyusā ekaputtam anurakkhe
Evam pi sabbabhūtesu
mānasam bhāvaye aparimāṇaṃ
Like a mother’s own child,
[she will] protect that only child with her life
Thus for all beings
the mind should become infinite.
The canon makes a clear distinction between physical sensations(kāyika), and mental sensations (cetasika). C.f. the Salla Sutta (SN 36.6, S iv.207). So your argument about thought not being a coherent category is wrong on two counts: there is a distinct set of words for thought, and the category is distinguished from bodily experience.
Friday, October 21, 2011
...
My sense is that you are clutching at straws, arguing from an entrenched position but with very little in the way of evidence behind you. I don't think you've conceded a single point to me, have you? So this isn't a conversation that is going to bear fruit for me. You only want to convince me of your opinion, and now over some quite long responses I've set out why I find your opinion unconvincing: on linguistic grounds, on text critical grounds, on historical grounds. My impression is that you have too much invested in being right to ever change your mind. So around and around we go, and my arguments are like water off a duck's back. It's not a dialogue, it's just you defending your thesis by rejecting any contrary evidence. Now that is sophistry.
I have a new Rave out today which provocatively criticises the Abhidharma as a whole, and I am expecting to get some comments on that. I like to respond to all comments on the current Raves. So I'm calling a halt to the discussion, and this will be the last comment I publish on this thread. I tend to allow myself the last word as the publisher.
I'll leave you with this quote that I appended to my Rave on Conjecture and Refutation (which I recommend that you read).
"When you find evidence that directly contradicts your favourite idea and you have to switch modes, switch paradigms to a different concept, that's real progress...".
Professor Paul Olsen (Columbia University). The shifting face of a 200-million-year-old mystery. BBC News 13 Oct 2011.
Best Wishes
Jayarava
Friday, October 21, 2011