An interesting post, and Hamilton has an interesting thesis. I wonder, though, can it account for texts like the Anattalakkhana Sutta, the structure of which seems to me clearly to imply that the 5 skandhas exhaust the categories of existence, such that when you've run through them, you've covered all the possibilities.
I would interpret the Anatta-lakkhana Sutta differently. It does not exhaust the "catergories of existence" (which would be something like bhāva-lakkhana) as you say, but it does exhaust the possibility of anything included in the khandhas being one's atta, or ātman. This is because the ātman is brahman, and it has those three characteristics: being, consciousness, and bliss. It is eternal. Anything which is dukkha rather than sukha, or anicca rather than nicca, cannot be the ātman - it is not mine, not my self, I am not that (c.f. the Vedantic mantra "tat tvaṃ asi"). Everything included in the khandhas is marked by anicca and dukkha, and is therefore anatta and not atta.
Hamilton reminds us that by far the majority of religious practitioners in the Buddha's day were seeking the "Truth" in terms of the nature of ātman. Nothing that can be included in the khandas - ie nothing that is a product of the apparatus of experience - can possibly be that ātman which is at the same time brahman because experience itself is impermanent and therefore disappointing. This is incidentally why the lakkhanas are usually presented in this order. Put another way, nothing which is saṃsāra (dukkha) is included in nibbāna (sukha) - I'll expand on this in my post on Friday looking at the Dhammapada 1st 2 verses.
Clearly if you understand the spiritual life in terms of ātman, then the Buddha is saying you have a problem because it cannot be found in experience. What then? Is it found in Nibbāna? Some people argue that yes it is, but there is nothing in descriptions of Nibbāna to suggest this.
The funny thing about this is that almost no westerners conceive of the search for meaning in life in terms of the Vedantic ātman - it is quite a foreign concept. We may cling to vestiges of Christian theology, but we're as likely to conceive of our spiritual seeking in psychological terms, or simply to be confused about what we seek. Hence some of us interpret ātman as a kind of psychological entity and refer to it as "ego" which is totally wrong (I've written about ego as a term in previous posts). Or we may be nihilistic in which case anatta becomes quite a dangerous idea.
This all seems to reinforce the notion that the anatta doctrine really cannot be correctly understood without a firm grasp on what was meant by ātman at the time. This requires some study of the early Upaniṣads (especially the Bṛhadāraṇyaka and the Chāndogya) or at least an understanding of the ideas in them. As Gombrich has observed in several articles it appears that the Buddhists became disconnected from the mainstream religion around them before the Pāli Canon was written down. They seem to have lost the sense of being in dialogue with the Vedantic (and other) sages of the Buddha's day, and therefore made some doubtful conclusions about what he had been saying. Many suttas (such as Anatta-lakkhana Sutta) make a lot more sense once you understand who the audience was, and what kinds of assumptions, both spiritual and linguistic, they might have been making.
Fantastic post. Here is are two points I walk away with (hope I got them right): (1) Khanda as a "mass of fuel" (2) Viewing "arising in dependence" is best thought of as the process of consciousness ("the apparatus of experience") vs material (ontological) components arising in dependence.
Is that close?
In your EXCELLENT interview on Secular Buddhist Podcast, I think you said that Sue Hamilton is not doing Buddhist scholarly work any longer. Could you tell us a little about her and what she is doing now?
I'm very much appreciating your enthusiasm today after an embattled week which I probably did not handle very well. Sigh.
Yes. I think you have the gist of it. This was a revelation to me, and continues to unfold in my understanding. I discuss it with many people, some of whom juust say "yes, of course" as though it is bleedin obvious; while others are puzzled and not convinced. I think of it as the key to understanding the Buddha's ideas.
I did get in touch with Sue and she was quite gracious in her reply. I'm not quite sure what she does these days, though I gather it involves gardens. Her husband died a few years ago - here's his obituary in the Guardian.
This post has a label 'Skandhas' but it isn't showing up in yr label cloud. I persist in my suggestion that maybe a label for skandhas/ experience/perception (or something that relates this subject) would be useful. So much good writing gets lost at the back of a blog. Thumbs up for yr new use of 'see also' linking to posts with a same theme, such as 'experience & intention'.
I'll look into it. I tweaked the label cloud a while back so it doesn't show unless I've used a label more than once. I've used 241 different labels now and it's getting crowded!
I've always linked backward to previous posts though usually in context.
Anyway thanks for your continued interest! Hope you'll enjoy some of the stuff coming up for 2012 as I have lots of new material!
Happy New Year 2012 to Jayarava :-) I wish you good progress with your article on anatta.
2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 & 2011 were pretty good blogging years for you too !
Your posts about Khandhas are mostly labeled under Dependent Arising, except that one about Vedana which I can't seem to find, even under the label 'experience'. Maybe the Khandha label isn't showing up in the cluster cloud as it has not been attributed to enough posts i.e. more than 3 posts? Assume that most people will not look closely at any more than fifty or so labels, and will skim through to find what they are looking for i.e. use labels as approximations rather than exact descriptions? Possibility of a google search application for your blog?
Thanks for taking the time to reply in such depth. Personally, I find dialoguing useful for clearing up my misunderstandings etc.
I continue to ruminate over phenomenology/khandas/experience, most recently on why vedana should give rise to craving in the Dependent Arising sequence and why vendana in the khandha sequence should be attributed with a three position response (+ve, - ve, neutral). A 3-way switch. An almost immediate reflex. Almost pre-conscious, almost unconscious. Difficult to detect, difficult to observe & difficult to suspend. ........."The Pali word vedanā does not signify emotion (which appears to be a complex phenomenon involving a variety of concomitant mental factors), but the bare affective quality of an experience, which may be either pleasant, painful or neutral." - Bikhu Bodhi
I was just wondering if there was any medical, secular & scientific evidence to this notion of a 3-way switch?
I now understand why Buddhist phenomenology places this 3-way switch in vedana & before the khandhas of perception, mental formations & consciousness.
One of Four Establishments of Mindfulness, Exercises 11 & 12 'Obersvations of Feelings'(feelings here means Vedana, no?) Satipathana MN10... just be mindful of, just observing, just noting.
I assume it's best to calm down & slow down this 3-way switch, if one is to enter into a less reactive & more equanimous relationship to one's sensory data input (I include 'thought' as the six sense), to cultivate the capacity to see (smell, touch, hear, taste, think) but without being caught by what we see.
Yes, I generally enjoy the dialogues stimulated by my blog, and it often helps me to clarify my thinking and better articulate it.
I think of vedanā not as a switch but as a slider which has two poles: attraction and repulsion. It can sit in the middle, but this isn't a third pole. There's no word for "neutral". In Pāli it is adukha-m-asukha (a dvandva compound with a euphonic 'm') meaning "not dukkha and not sukha". This is not quite the same as neutral, it really means that we can't make up our minds about whether sukha or dukkha predominates.
Here's how I understand out situation. Delusion about our nature makes us equate happiness and well being with the presence of pleasant feelings, and absence of negative feelings. Hence when notice a pleasant feeling we want it to last (it doesn't) and/or we want repeat it (we can't). We live our lives pursuing pleasant and avoiding unpleasant. This might have worked for us 10,000+ years ago in our hunter-gatherer phase but civilisation has mucked it up by making pleasant things constantly available, and allowing us to insulate ourselves against many pains. This jams the pleasure seeking circuit of our brain wide open, dulls us to subtlety and causes us to go to extremes of pleasure seeking.
And so it goes. Talking about it terms of emotions is difficult because as I've said the ancient Indians conceived of emotions in a totally different way to us.
In terms of attraction and repulsion I'm not sure if there's any research but the basic feelings/emotions are all either pulls (sexual desire, hunger, thirst) or pushes (anger, disgust, fear). Then we get rewards for obtaining what we want or avoiding what we don't want, (joy, satisfaction, satiation) and "punishments" for not obtaining what we want or getting what we don't want (sadness, frustration). Research into the pleasure circuits of the brain illuminate this - it's moderated by Dopamine and endogenous opioids. Emotions have only recently become a subject of scientific study: Joseph Le Doux and Antonio Damasio are the pioneers.
I'm more or less completely ignorant of the Satipaṭhāna Sutta and it's details. It seems to me that it attracts a great deal of conflicting interpretation and this has put me off approaching it - though I have Anālayo's book on my shelves. If I wanted an authoritative reading I imagine that's where I'd go. Where a text is hopelessly encumbered with mutually exclusive interpretations I think we're made a wrong turn! If something is not clear then I tend to want to back up and start again.
Yes. I think it is useful to take a kind of Tai Chi approach to being pushed and pulled by our reaction to the senses - neutralise and/or redirect the energy around the pivot of a strong sense of physical groundedness and attention to structure. (or something like that) The Pāli texts also talk about how we're intoxicated (māda) with the senses, and we need to sober up (appamāda).
I've done a Google search on my name and khandhas and only found 2 raves. I've added the label to them. You've a made a bit deal about it, but I'm puzzled by which raves you mean? I hardly ever talk about the khandhas because I don't really understand them or find them useful. But if you have any candidates for that label do let me know.
Best Wishes Jayarava
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
[Image]Sue Hamilton's book Early Buddhism a New Approach is not an easy read, but it is very rewarding. I found in it a doctrinal confirmation and clarification of my intuitions about the Dharma. I had been asking myself - what is it that arises in dependence on causes? (Jayarava Rave 8 April 2008) My answer had shifted from "things" to "experiences". This is reflected also in my translation of the Buddha's last words: "all experiences are disappointing..."
Central to Hamilton's book, and building on her earlier published work is a re-examination of the canonical references to the khandhas (Sanskrit skandha). These are typically described as encompassing the whole human being - there is nothing outside of the khandhas. Hamilton demonstrates that actually the khandhas are not meant to literally encompass the whole being, but do make up the minimum required apparatus for experience: hence "apparatus of experience". I like this little phrase and its implications very much.
A quick digression here to a suggestion by Prof. Gombrich about the translation of khandha - again from the Numata Lectures and appearing in his forthcoming "What the Buddha Thought". Khandha is most often translated by words such as aggregate, group or category, or (by Conze) as 'heap'. Gombrich points to the Pāli term aggikhandha meaning "a blazing mass". Khandha often occurs in the compound upādānakhandha where it is frequently translated as "aggregates of clinging". Gombrich links it to the extended fire metaphor used by the Buddha and suggests "blazing mass of fuel" (upādāna meaning literally fuel.) The khandhas, then, are a mass of fuel which, as the Fire Sermon ( Ādittapariyāya Sutta literally: The way of putting things as being on fire) tells us are on fire with the fires of greed, hatred and delusion.
The khandhas then are part of the mechanism keeping us in saṃsara, they are the "mass of fuel" that burns, and Nibbāna is the extinguishing of that fire - though the fuel itself can remain at this point as the term upādi-sesa-nibbāna "extinguishing with a remainder" suggests. It is rather a squeeze to fit every facit of the human being into just these five categories, and Hamilton manages to make a lot more sense of them as a kind of minimal requirement for experience - she takes the idea of nothing existing outside the khandhas as a metaphorical reference to the fact of experience: that everything we can know comes to us through the senses.
To have experience at all we must have a living body (rūpa). This is the vehicle for consciousness and the locus of experience. Without a living sensing body we would not receive sensory data - recall that the sense organ must be involved for contact to take place.
Having met with sensory data (vedanā) we process it: we become aware of and identify the sensation (saññā), we categorise it and name it (viññāṇā), and we respond affectively to it (saṅhkāra). This is a very cut down psychology, a minimalist account of consciousness, but it contains all that is necessary for continued experience, that is to say for continuation in samsara. And this is the process, this continuation in samsara which the Buddha constantly tells people is the focus of his teachings. Asked about all manner of metaphysical and philosophical teachings, the Buddha replies that he only teaches about the process of experience and how to end it.
Hamilton is saying, in effect, that later Buddhist tradition have taken this teaching a little to literally when they say things like: "These are the five aspects in which the Buddha has summed up all the physical and mental phenomena of existence". [Nyanatiloka : 98] Everything is not literally summed up, it is just that this is the necessary apparatus (to use Hamilton's terms) for all experience. All of experience - of whatever kind - is sensed, processed and acted upon through the khandhas. It is in this sense that the set is a complete description of the human being, not literally. It makes the assumption that we are what we experience, and as I have discovered, any attempt to get behind experience to confirm it involves some other sensory experience. One image that occurs to me for this is that we cannot get behind the mirror to see if anything is there because we always see a new mirror.
All this is not to say that some kind of objective world does not exist. I think the level of consensus that is possible on what is being experienced suggests very strongly that there is some kind of objective world. However I would argue that since we must always rely on our senses in any attempt to establish the status of the objective world, that such attempts are meaningless - they cannot provide a definitive answer one way or the other. I've come to believe that it was this that the Buddha was trying to get people to understand. Take for example the short Sabbaṃ Sutta in the Saṃyutta Nikāya. In this text the Buddha says that "the all" (sabbaṃ) is the eye and forms, the ear and sounds, the nose and smells, the tongue and tastes, the body and the felt, the mind and dhammas. (SN 35.23 = Bodhi : 1140). There is nothing outside of this "all". This is an explicit confirmation of what I've been saying. To take this to be an ontological statement - that outside of this "all" there is nothing - is to miss the point. It does not make sense as ontology, but as an epistemology it is very useful. All that we can know are 'objects' of the senses (including the mental sense), that is to say all we can know is what we experience - and the khandhas are the apparatus of experience.
I think this has profound implications for how we practice and teach the Dharma. For one thing I think we should abandon talking about dependent arising in terms of "things arising in dependence on causes" - there are no things only experiences. It would be more accurate to say that "experiences of things arise in dependence on causes". This then allows us to focus on the experience of dependent arising, rather than trying to locate some object which is arising. So many of our metaphors for dependent arising involve "things". But because of the way we function - through and only through experience - there are in effect no things arising.
References Bodhi. 2000. The connected discourses of the Buddha : a translation of the Saṃyutta Nikāya. Boston : Wisdom Publications. Hamilton, Sue. 2000. Early Buddhism : a new approach. The I of the beholder. Richmond, Surrey : Curzon.Nyanatiloka. 1980. Buddhist dictionary : manual of Buddhist terms and doctrines. (4th ed). Kandy, Sri Lanka : Buddhist Publication Society (2004 reprint). image: JAKIMOWICZ Fabien - belfry clock mechanism
9 Comments
Close this window Jump to comment formAn interesting post, and Hamilton has an interesting thesis. I wonder, though, can it account for texts like the
Anattalakkhana Sutta, the structure of which seems to me clearly to imply that the 5 skandhas exhaust the categories of existence, such that when you've run through them, you've covered all the possibilities.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Hi Alan,
I would interpret the Anatta-lakkhana Sutta differently. It does not exhaust the "catergories of existence" (which would be something like bhāva-lakkhana) as you say, but it does exhaust the possibility of anything included in the khandhas being one's atta, or ātman. This is because the ātman is brahman, and it has those three characteristics: being, consciousness, and bliss. It is eternal. Anything which is dukkha rather than sukha, or anicca rather than nicca, cannot be the ātman - it is not mine, not my self, I am not that (c.f. the Vedantic mantra "tat tvaṃ asi"). Everything included in the khandhas is marked by anicca and dukkha, and is therefore anatta and not atta.
Hamilton reminds us that by far the majority of religious practitioners in the Buddha's day were seeking the "Truth" in terms of the nature of ātman. Nothing that can be included in the khandas - ie nothing that is a product of the apparatus of experience - can possibly be that ātman which is at the same time brahman because experience itself is impermanent and therefore disappointing. This is incidentally why the lakkhanas are usually presented in this order. Put another way, nothing which is saṃsāra (dukkha) is included in nibbāna (sukha) - I'll expand on this in my post on Friday looking at the Dhammapada 1st 2 verses.
Clearly if you understand the spiritual life in terms of ātman, then the Buddha is saying you have a problem because it cannot be found in experience. What then? Is it found in Nibbāna? Some people argue that yes it is, but there is nothing in descriptions of Nibbāna to suggest this.
The funny thing about this is that almost no westerners conceive of the search for meaning in life in terms of the Vedantic ātman - it is quite a foreign concept. We may cling to vestiges of Christian theology, but we're as likely to conceive of our spiritual seeking in psychological terms, or simply to be confused about what we seek. Hence some of us interpret ātman as a kind of psychological entity and refer to it as "ego" which is totally wrong (I've written about ego as a term in previous posts). Or we may be nihilistic in which case anatta becomes quite a dangerous idea.
This all seems to reinforce the notion that the anatta doctrine really cannot be correctly understood without a firm grasp on what was meant by ātman at the time. This requires some study of the early Upaniṣads (especially the Bṛhadāraṇyaka and the Chāndogya) or at least an understanding of the ideas in them. As Gombrich has observed in several articles it appears that the Buddhists became disconnected from the mainstream religion around them before the Pāli Canon was written down. They seem to have lost the sense of being in dialogue with the Vedantic (and other) sages of the Buddha's day, and therefore made some doubtful conclusions about what he had been saying. Many suttas (such as Anatta-lakkhana Sutta) make a lot more sense once you understand who the audience was, and what kinds of assumptions, both spiritual and linguistic, they might have been making.
Best Wishes
Jayarava
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Fantastic post.
Here is are two points I walk away with (hope I got them right):
(1) Khanda as a "mass of fuel"
(2) Viewing "arising in dependence" is best thought of as the process of consciousness ("the apparatus of experience") vs material (ontological) components arising in dependence.
Is that close?
In your EXCELLENT interview on Secular Buddhist Podcast, I think you said that Sue Hamilton is not doing Buddhist scholarly work any longer. Could you tell us a little about her and what she is doing now?
Saturday, December 03, 2011
Hey Sabio
I'm very much appreciating your enthusiasm today after an embattled week which I probably did not handle very well. Sigh.
Yes. I think you have the gist of it. This was a revelation to me, and continues to unfold in my understanding. I discuss it with many people, some of whom juust say "yes, of course" as though it is bleedin obvious; while others are puzzled and not convinced. I think of it as the key to understanding the Buddha's ideas.
I did get in touch with Sue and she was quite gracious in her reply. I'm not quite sure what she does these days, though I gather it involves gardens. Her husband died a few years ago - here's his obituary in the Guardian.
Best Wishes
Jayarava
Saturday, December 03, 2011
Dear Jayarava
This post has a label 'Skandhas' but it isn't showing up in yr label cloud. I persist in my suggestion that maybe a label for skandhas/ experience/perception (or something that relates this subject) would be useful. So much good writing gets lost at the back of a blog. Thumbs up for yr new use of 'see also' linking to posts with a same theme, such as 'experience & intention'.
Thanks
Adam
Saturday, January 07, 2012
Hi Adam
I'll look into it. I tweaked the label cloud a while back so it doesn't show unless I've used a label more than once. I've used 241 different labels now and it's getting crowded!
I've always linked backward to previous posts though usually in context.
Anyway thanks for your continued interest! Hope you'll enjoy some of the stuff coming up for 2012 as I have lots of new material!
Regards
Jayarava
Saturday, January 07, 2012
Happy New Year 2012 to Jayarava :-) I wish you good progress with your article on anatta.
2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 & 2011 were pretty good blogging years for you too !
Your posts about Khandhas are mostly labeled under Dependent Arising, except that one about Vedana which I can't seem to find, even under the label 'experience'. Maybe the Khandha label isn't showing up in the cluster cloud as it has not been attributed to enough posts i.e. more than 3 posts? Assume that most people will not look closely at any more than fifty or so labels, and will skim through to find what they are looking for i.e. use labels as approximations rather than exact descriptions? Possibility of a google search application for your blog?
Thanks for taking the time to reply in such depth. Personally, I find dialoguing useful for clearing up my misunderstandings etc.
I continue to ruminate over phenomenology/khandas/experience, most recently on why vedana should give rise to craving in the Dependent Arising sequence and why vendana in the khandha sequence should be attributed with a three position response (+ve, - ve, neutral). A 3-way switch. An almost immediate reflex. Almost pre-conscious, almost unconscious. Difficult to detect, difficult to observe & difficult to suspend. ........."The Pali word vedanā does not signify emotion (which appears to be a complex phenomenon involving a variety of concomitant mental factors), but the bare affective quality of an experience, which may be either pleasant, painful or neutral." - Bikhu Bodhi
I was just wondering if there was any medical, secular & scientific evidence to this notion of a 3-way switch?
I now understand why Buddhist phenomenology places this 3-way switch in vedana & before the khandhas of perception, mental formations & consciousness.
One of Four Establishments of Mindfulness, Exercises 11 & 12 'Obersvations of Feelings'(feelings here means Vedana, no?) Satipathana MN10... just be mindful of, just observing, just noting.
I assume it's best to calm down & slow down this 3-way switch, if one is to enter into a less reactive & more equanimous relationship to one's sensory data input (I include 'thought' as the six sense), to cultivate the capacity to see (smell, touch, hear, taste, think) but without being caught by what we see.
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Hi Adam,
Yes, I generally enjoy the dialogues stimulated by my blog, and it often helps me to clarify my thinking and better articulate it.
I think of vedanā not as a switch but as a slider which has two poles: attraction and repulsion. It can sit in the middle, but this isn't a third pole. There's no word for "neutral". In Pāli it is adukha-m-asukha (a dvandva compound with a euphonic 'm') meaning "not dukkha and not sukha". This is not quite the same as neutral, it really means that we can't make up our minds about whether sukha or dukkha predominates.
Here's how I understand out situation. Delusion about our nature makes us equate happiness and well being with the presence of pleasant feelings, and absence of negative feelings. Hence when notice a pleasant feeling we want it to last (it doesn't) and/or we want repeat it (we can't). We live our lives pursuing pleasant and avoiding unpleasant. This might have worked for us 10,000+ years ago in our hunter-gatherer phase but civilisation has mucked it up by making pleasant things constantly available, and allowing us to insulate ourselves against many pains. This jams the pleasure seeking circuit of our brain wide open, dulls us to subtlety and causes us to go to extremes of pleasure seeking.
And so it goes. Talking about it terms of emotions is difficult because as I've said the ancient Indians conceived of emotions in a totally different way to us.
In terms of attraction and repulsion I'm not sure if there's any research but the basic feelings/emotions are all either pulls (sexual desire, hunger, thirst) or pushes (anger, disgust, fear). Then we get rewards for obtaining what we want or avoiding what we don't want, (joy, satisfaction, satiation) and "punishments" for not obtaining what we want or getting what we don't want (sadness, frustration). Research into the pleasure circuits of the brain illuminate this - it's moderated by Dopamine and endogenous opioids. Emotions have only recently become a subject of scientific study: Joseph Le Doux and Antonio Damasio are the pioneers.
I'm more or less completely ignorant of the Satipaṭhāna Sutta and it's details. It seems to me that it attracts a great deal of conflicting interpretation and this has put me off approaching it - though I have Anālayo's book on my shelves. If I wanted an authoritative reading I imagine that's where I'd go. Where a text is hopelessly encumbered with mutually exclusive interpretations
I think we're made a wrong turn! If something is not clear then I tend to want to back up and start again.
Yes. I think it is useful to take a kind of Tai Chi approach to being pushed and pulled by our reaction to the senses - neutralise and/or redirect the energy around the pivot of a strong sense of physical groundedness and attention to structure. (or something like that) The Pāli texts also talk about how we're intoxicated (māda) with the senses, and we need to sober up (appamāda).
Cheers
Jayarava
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Hi Adam
I've done a Google search on my name and khandhas and only found 2 raves. I've added the label to them. You've a made a bit deal about it, but I'm puzzled by which raves you mean? I hardly ever talk about the khandhas because I don't really understand them or find them useful. But if you have any candidates for that label do let me know.
Best Wishes
Jayarava
Tuesday, January 10, 2012