I can't say I've fully digested your commentary, but I find myself wondering if this was indeed originally two lists, but with the first one being avijjā - saṅkhārā - viññāṇa - nāmarūpa. This list would have the general import that spiritual ignorance gives rise to unskilful habitual patternings that condition consciousness such that it creates a sense of separate individuality (clinging to consciousness and form). That sounds like a reasonable explanation of how experience of a self comes to be, without mistreating any of the terms used.
The second part of the list might originally have started with rūpa (but more in the sense of the physical body) following on to the six senses, contact, etc. Even if it didn't originally start with rūpa, the second list seems to make sense on its own terms, once nāmarūpa is excised from it.
I can imagine some scholar-monk looking at the second list and concluding that it might be describing two lives (with jāti & jarā-maraṇa being the second) and deciding to append the separate list as a "prior" life, in the process fudging the difference between rūpa and nāmarūpa. (I may have been that monk in a past life.)
Leaving aside the question of evidence (this is just a hunch that could lead to a search for supporting evidence), I think this gets around the problem of factors being their own cause. What do you think?
I'd love to research this, but sadly the urgent business of making a living is calling for my attention.
Dear Jayarava, when I saw your headline, I was hoping for an answer, but you only posed the question! For what it's worth, here is my understanding.
The pañcūpādanakkhandas and dependent arising can be understood as two windows on the phenomenon of karma. Sankhāra has a narrow meaning in pañcūpādanakkhandas, as "volition." Elsewhere, including the chain of dependent arising, it has the more general meaning of a karmic cause / karmic effect. Bhikkhu Anālayo's article on sankhārā in the Encyclopaedia of Buddhism is very good on this. So Sankhārā sometimes includes all the 5 khandas, and sometimes is almost a synonym for nidāna. This fits with common sense and neuroscience. Sankhāra may be the decisive moment when I choose to take the cake, but the body is already salivating, vedanā feels anticipatory pleasure, saññā knows what kind of cake it is (one of my favorites), and viññāṇa, attention is focused if not yet obsessed. The specific sankhārā is the wish to take the cake. It is either tied up in the [delusion of?] a self with free-will, or else it is simply the operation of the brain rehearsing the action of reaching and grasping for cake, which would be a mental karma. In the five aggregates, I now believe that viññāṇā consciousness is the climax of dukkha in the sense of the "established consciousness" which is trapped in one of the other aggregates, in the senses or sense objects, or in underlying tendencies, and therefore goes on to rebirth. In science terms this would relate to how consciousness makes continuity and the autobiographical self. To make sense of nāma-rūpa in dependent origination, you have to pick the appropriate nuance of sankhārā and viññāṇa. Think of sankhārā in the broadest sense as the karmic process leading to rebirth, and viññāṇa as this rebirth consciousness which is trapped in its objects. Dependent on them, nāma-rūpa. Sorry I have not thought so deeply about nāma-rūpa. The practical meaning I use is simply, **the individual**, comprised of mentality and materiality. Or as a center of experience which has a material substrate and experienced by mind. Not sure which scholar suggested that meaning, maybe Sue Hamilton. Best to you Ayya Sobhana
"However elsewhere we find viññāna arising in dependence on the āyatanas (the six sense faculties and the six sense objects). This suggests we can have sense faculties, which includes the eyes, before we have a body."
Is it really such a surprise to you that one spoken sound can function as more than one word with different definitions and concepts and different uses?
Vijnana is used in the twelve nidanas as the transmitter of karma and memory from the previous life. That is all its function is. That is why action is what conditions it and why it conditions namarupa. If you wanted to get really absurd with you're literalism, you could ask how action can take place without consciousness or a body! Obviously, that isn't what the twelve nidanas are trying to explain.
The whole purpose of the twelve nidanas is to be a theory of how rebirth takes place without recourse to a first cause, a deity, or no cause at all. Hence, the vijnana in the twelve nidanas likely is the vijnana of the previous life acting as a condition for the arising of the present life. Also, saying that it implies that consciousness is the primary cause for the body ignores the fact that the twelve nidanas are not a complete presentation of the birth process. In the case of humans and animals, etc vijnana joins with other conditions, like a fertile female, etc to allow a birth to take place. So the twelve nidanas are not arguing that consciousness is the progenitor of material form. This sort of trouble is created by taking things out of context and not considering them fully.
Unfortunately there's little evidence to support the two lists theory proposed originally by Frauwallner I believe. Dhīvan looked at this in his M.Phil thesis. Though as I say it may be that Jurewicz's parody argument makes it work better.
I'm not sure about the possible confusion of rūpa and nāmarūpa, but nāmarūpa is a word with Vedic history.
But the problem of out of sequence definitions seems to persist.
With no disrespect intended, I think what you are describing are post-hoc rationalisations, and actually the whole thing is just a philosophical mess. While I follow the argument it doesn't solve the problem of out of sequence definitions.
Saṅkhāra is another word I do not understand. But Sue Hamilton does seem to do better at explaining the khandhas. Though I think even she admits that the order of them is an unsolved puzzle - viññāna should certainly not be at the end of that process if indeed the five are a sequence at all. Are they portrayed as a sequence in the suttas?
I'm not saying, by the way, that it is not possible to say sensible things about these issues. Obviously you've made sense of them in a way. But the suttas do not make sense without considerable help from us. And that leaves me with a number of unanswered problems!
No, I'm not surprised that a word can have two meanings. It is more common than not. But having two different meanings is not quite the same thing as having one meaning but that single meaning being defined different ways in different texts. Which is the case with nāmarūpa.
My problem is not with viññāna per se, but with multiple conflicting descriptions of how nāmarūpa arises; with the multiple different sequences in which it arises. Which you shed no light on.
You say: "The whole purpose of the twelve nidanas is to be a theory of how rebirth takes place without recourse to a first cause, a deity, or no cause at all."
No it isn't actually. I have heard that suggestion before, but it's not what the suttas say. I have yet to find any sutta saying that the nidānas explain rebirth at all. Most commonly say that this model explains the arising of this whole mass of suffering (evametassa kevalassa dukkhakhandhassa samudaya: e.g. S ii.22 ), or something similar. I would be interested to see a sutta where the nidānas were "a theory of how rebirth takes place without recourse to a first cause, a deity, or no cause at all".
You are describing the Three Lifetimes Model (TLM) of the nidāna chain. This is not canonical either - I won't invite you to supply a reference in this case, because I am fairly certain that there are none. The TLM is a post-canonical invention which suggests changing priorities and understanding in the Buddhist community. Many Buddhists, including Bhikkhus Ñāṇavīra and Buddhadasa, explicitly reject the TLM on the basis that it is not canonical, and because it contradicts the description of the Dhamma as akaliko. I also reject the TLM.
Without the TLM then we have the problem that I describe, along with numerous other inconsistencies and contradictions. And since the TLM does not occur in the Pāli Canon then we have to assume that the problems were relevant for the authors of the suttas. It may we be that the TLM was invented to solve exactly these kinds of problems!
I think it is you that doesn't have a full grasp of the context. Certainly you don't seem to be aware of the extent of the canonical or scholarly accounts of the nidānas. As often happens when I question orthodoxy, you're just parroting unsophisticated dogma back at me. I don't find it particularly helpful. I cited half a dozen references: have you read any of them?
I would encourage you to move beyond popular presentations of Buddhism and start reading the Pāli texts for yourself. If you can't (or won't) learn Pāli then the Wisdom Publications translations are usually reliable. I think you will find it rewarding. But it might mean you have to start questioning some of those dogmas.
Regarding Western presentations of impermanence, this cartoon might be appreciated: http://tinyurl.com/3bzcorc
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
[Image] A diagram of the traditional 12 nidānas and explanations from Pāli and Chinese Āgama texts. Click for a larger image. TODAY I WANT TO EXPLORE the rather mysterious term 'nāmarūpa' in a Buddhist context. The word has a history pre-dating its use in Buddhist texts, but I don't have space for a fully fledged archaeology. Most of us will only be familiar with the received tradition which defines what this word means, but there are problems with this tradition, and when we begin to explore it things are less than clear.
The word is most often translated as 'name and form', though one also sees such variants as 'sentient-body'. It is the fourth of the 12 nidānas. However nāmarūpa is a difficult term to pin down precisely. For instance it does occur in the truncated nidāna sequence in the Mahānidāna Sutta, but unlike the other terms it is not defined in that text.
Elsewhere in the canon the nāma in nāmarūpa is defined in terms of: vedanā, saññā, saṅkhārā, phassa, and mansikāra. However saṅkhārā precedes nāmarūpa in the nidāna sequence, and both phassa and vedanā follow it. So this does not make sense. Another fairly well know definition , found in the Chinese Āgama texts according to Roderick Bucknell (1999) and in the Pāli (S ii.3) equates nāmarūpa with the five khandhā: rūpa is the four elements (catumahābhūta: paṭhavī, āpo, tejo, vāyo; earth, water, fire, wind) while nāma is the remaining khandhas, i.e. vedanā, saññā, saṅkhārā and viññāna. This is no better. Again, vedanā comes later; and both saṅkhārā and viññāṇa come before. I'm left wondering why the tradition would explain things this way. I find that the simplified popular presentations of this material make a certain kind of sense, but in reading the Pāli Canon and examining the texts that sense drops away, and I'm left feeling puzzled. There is no coherence. I'm aware of a few modern attempts to rationalise this term and will gloss some of them. Eric Frauwallner (1973) observed that a sequence beginning with taṇha was quite common and concluded that the nidāna sequence was originally two shorter sequences. This has become a popular notion. Unfortunately it doesn't appear to solve the problem of cross-over in the definitions. The shorter versions of the sequence may equally be an abbreviation as an elaboration. Even so this only places the confusing aspects of the sequence together into the second group. Frauwallner's hypothesis doesn't help us solve the problems of interpreting nāmarūpa.
Dhīvan Thomas Jones, in his 2009 M.Phil thesis, has taken a slightly different approach. He notes that the Suttanipāta contains another (better) candidate for a primitive nidāna sequence in the Kalahavivāda Sutta (Sn 168-170) with synonymous but different terms to the standard model. This sequence begins with nāmarūpa, and leaves out viññāṇa which helps, but includes sāta-asāta (pleasant and unpleasant) as an equivalent of vedanā which still leaves us with a contradiction if this is part of the definition of nāmarūpa.
One of the most interesting developments of recent times is the attempt by Joanna Jurewicz to show that the terms in the nidānas were deliberately chosen as a parody of Vedic cosmogony. Richard Gombrich (2009, esp. ch.9) has taken this idea and wedded it to Frauwallner's 'two sequence' explanation to suggest that the original list was the short sequence from taṇha onwards, and that this was extended using terms from the Vedic lexicon to form a deliberate parody of Vedic cosmogony. Dhīvan Thomas Jones has shown that this not unproblematic, mainly because there is no evidence to show that Frauwallner's sequence is primitive. The same kind of process might have occurred with the Kalahavivāda Sutta (or something like it) as the nucleus of a teaching on becoming, that was given an ironic twist so that it could also serve as a parody of Vedic cosmogony. This is reasonably plausible, though of course there is no sign of cognizance of such a strategy in the Buddhist tradition itself, so if this is what happened it was almost immediately forgotten by the tradition which adopted it. Such forgetfulness is not easily explained with reference to teachings of such central importance, especially in the face of open and explicit criticism of Brahmins elsewhere. However, the context shows that the commentarial tradition (including those suttas which comment on the sequence) is not internally consistent, so something has gone wrong somewhere.
Bucknell (1999) summarises Reat who sees nāmarūpa as referring to objects of consciousness: nāma refers to conceptual (adhivacana) and rūpa to sensory (paṭigha). As Bucknell points out this view is criticised by both Peter Harvey and Sue Hamilton. However Reat's suggestion would fit nicely with Dhīvan's model of the development from a nucleus - the primitive nāmarūpa qua objects of consciousness giving rise to 'contact' (phassa) makes some sense. Hamilton's view is that nāma "should be taken to refer to abstract identity and [rūpa] to physically (though not necessarily visibly) recognisable identity." (p.151) For Hamilton nāmarūpa is closely tied to viññāṇa as is shown by the Mahānidāna Sutta (DN 15) that links the two of them in a mutually conditioning relationship. Reat and Hamilton's positions are subtly different, but not incompatible I think. What is clear is that once we move away from simplified popular presentations of Buddhist doctrine, there is no single and coherent understanding of what this term means or represents. And this is a continuing quandary because it suggests that we have lost touch with the spirit of the texts. If we no longer understand key terms (and I would suggest that saṃkhārā is another candidate for this category) then there is a discontinuity. Being stuck with the term we have come up with different and mutually incompatible explanations, but this only adds to the sense of confusion (rather like commentaries on the Heart Sūtra which are all from incompatible sectarian points of view).I have no better explanation to offer. No theory, and no sense that any one of the existing theories has recover the lost meaning of the term.Another issue with nāmarūpa and its place in the 12 nidāna chain is that it suggests that viññāna is a precondition for form, which the received tradition usually treats as the physical body. Although Buddhists complain when they perceive consciousness being treated as an epiphenomenon of the brain, they apparently have no problem believing that the body is an epiphenomenon of the mind. Not even the Three Lifetimes Interpretation can save us from this conclusion. The Mahānidāna Sutta (D 15) nāmarūpa and viññāna are mutually conditioning, but this doesn't really help us. However elsewhere we find viññāna arising in dependence on the āyatanas (the six sense faculties and the six sense objects). This suggests we can have sense faculties, which includes the eyes, before we have a body. It seems to me that the received tradition has lost the thread somewhere along the line. Buddhists usually gloss over these kinds of inconsistencies and do their best to make sense of them. And unfortunately there is no scholarly consensus on what nāmarūpa might have originally meant in a Buddhist context. Perhaps it's time to rethink this strategy of papering over the cracks?~~oOo~~ [I'll be away from 2-9 Sept]
Bucknell, Roderick S. (1999) Conditioned Arising Evolves: Variation and Change in the Textual Accounts of the Paṭicca-samuppāda Doctrine. Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, 22 (2), 312-342, Frauwallner, E. (1973). History of Indian Philosophy. (Vol. 1). (V. Bedekar, trans.) Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.Gombrich, Richard. (2009) What the Buddha Thought. Curzon.Hamilton Early Buddhism a New Approach. Jones, Dhīvan Thomas. Paṭiccasamuppāda in Context: The Buddha in Debate with Brahmanical Thinking. M.Phil Dissertation. Cambridge University [unpublished] Jurewicz, J. Playing with Fire: the pratītyasamutpāda from the perspective of Vedic Thought. Journal of the Pali Text Society, 26, p.77-103
9 Comments
Close this window Jump to comment formI can't say I've fully digested your commentary, but I find myself wondering if this was indeed originally two lists, but with the first one being avijjā - saṅkhārā - viññāṇa - nāmarūpa. This list would have the general import that spiritual ignorance gives rise to unskilful habitual patternings that condition consciousness such that it creates a sense of separate individuality (clinging to consciousness and form). That sounds like a reasonable explanation of how experience of a self comes to be, without mistreating any of the terms used.
The second part of the list might originally have started with rūpa (but more in the sense of the physical body) following on to the six senses, contact, etc. Even if it didn't originally start with rūpa, the second list seems to make sense on its own terms, once nāmarūpa is excised from it.
I can imagine some scholar-monk looking at the second list and concluding that it might be describing two lives (with jāti & jarā-maraṇa being the second) and deciding to append the separate list as a "prior" life, in the process fudging the difference between rūpa and nāmarūpa. (I may have been that monk in a past life.)
Leaving aside the question of evidence (this is just a hunch that could lead to a search for supporting evidence), I think this gets around the problem of factors being their own cause. What do you think?
I'd love to research this, but sadly the urgent business of making a living is calling for my attention.
Friday, September 02, 2011
Dear Jayarava, when I saw your headline, I was hoping for an answer, but you only posed the question! For what it's worth, here is my understanding.
The pañcūpādanakkhandas and dependent arising can be understood as two windows on the phenomenon of karma. Sankhāra has a narrow meaning in pañcūpādanakkhandas, as "volition." Elsewhere, including the chain of dependent arising, it has the more general meaning of a karmic cause / karmic effect. Bhikkhu Anālayo's article on sankhārā in the Encyclopaedia of Buddhism is very good on this. So Sankhārā sometimes includes all the 5 khandas, and sometimes is almost a synonym for nidāna. This fits with common sense and neuroscience. Sankhāra may be the decisive moment when I choose to take the cake, but the body is already salivating, vedanā feels anticipatory pleasure, saññā knows what kind of cake it is (one of my favorites), and viññāṇa, attention is focused if not yet obsessed. The specific sankhārā is the wish to take the cake. It is either tied up in the [delusion of?] a self with free-will, or else it is simply the operation of the brain rehearsing the action of reaching and grasping for cake, which would be a mental karma.
In the five aggregates, I now believe that viññāṇā consciousness is the climax of dukkha in the sense of the "established consciousness" which is trapped in one of the other aggregates, in the senses or sense objects, or in underlying tendencies, and therefore goes on to rebirth. In science terms this would relate to how consciousness makes continuity and the autobiographical self.
To make sense of nāma-rūpa in dependent origination, you have to pick the appropriate nuance of sankhārā and viññāṇa. Think of sankhārā in the broadest sense as the karmic process leading to rebirth, and viññāṇa as this rebirth consciousness which is trapped in its objects. Dependent on them, nāma-rūpa.
Sorry I have not thought so deeply about nāma-rūpa. The practical meaning I use is simply, **the individual**, comprised of mentality and materiality. Or as a center of experience which has a material substrate and experienced by mind. Not sure which scholar suggested that meaning, maybe Sue Hamilton.
Best to you Ayya Sobhana
Monday, September 05, 2011
I'm so glad someone else thinks about these things. Makes me feel less like a Buddhist outcast. "No, really, read the texts!" I shout. No one listens.
Monday, September 05, 2011
"However elsewhere we find viññāna arising in dependence on the āyatanas (the six sense faculties and the six sense objects). This suggests we can have sense faculties, which includes the eyes, before we have a body."
Is it really such a surprise to you that one spoken sound can function as more than one word with different definitions and concepts and different uses?
Vijnana is used in the twelve nidanas as the transmitter of karma and memory from the previous life. That is all its function is. That is why action is what conditions it and why it conditions namarupa. If you wanted to get really absurd with you're literalism, you could ask how action can take place without consciousness or a body! Obviously, that isn't what the twelve nidanas are trying to explain.
The whole purpose of the twelve nidanas is to be a theory of how rebirth takes place without recourse to a first cause, a deity, or no cause at all. Hence, the vijnana in the twelve nidanas likely is the vijnana of the previous life acting as a condition for the arising of the present life. Also, saying that it implies that consciousness is the primary cause for the body ignores the fact that the twelve nidanas are not a complete presentation of the birth process. In the case of humans and animals, etc vijnana joins with other conditions, like a fertile female, etc to allow a birth to take place. So the twelve nidanas are not arguing that consciousness is the progenitor of material form. This sort of trouble is created by taking things out of context and not considering them fully.
Wednesday, September 07, 2011
Hi Bodhipakṣa
Unfortunately there's little evidence to support the two lists theory proposed originally by Frauwallner I believe. Dhīvan looked at this in his M.Phil thesis. Though as I say it may be that Jurewicz's parody argument makes it work better.
I'm not sure about the possible confusion of rūpa and nāmarūpa, but nāmarūpa is a word with Vedic history.
But the problem of out of sequence definitions seems to persist.
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Dear Ayya Sobhana
No. No answers :-)
With no disrespect intended, I think what you are describing are post-hoc rationalisations, and actually the whole thing is just a philosophical mess. While I follow the argument it doesn't solve the problem of out of sequence definitions.
Saṅkhāra is another word I do not understand. But Sue Hamilton does seem to do better at explaining the khandhas. Though I think even she admits that the order of them is an unsolved puzzle - viññāna should certainly not be at the end of that process if indeed the five are a sequence at all. Are they portrayed as a sequence in the suttas?
I'm not saying, by the way, that it is not possible to say sensible things about these issues. Obviously you've made sense of them in a way. But the suttas do not make sense without considerable help from us. And that leaves me with a number of unanswered problems!
Best Wishes
Jayarava
Saturday, September 10, 2011
@Ben. Yes. I find the same thing. Popular presentations of Buddhism tend to trump what's in the texts. But then they do tend to make more sense, eh!
Regards
J
Saturday, September 10, 2011
@Charles.
No, I'm not surprised that a word can have two meanings. It is more common than not. But having two different meanings is not quite the same thing as having one meaning but that single meaning being defined different ways in different texts. Which is the case with nāmarūpa.
My problem is not with viññāna per se, but with multiple conflicting descriptions of how nāmarūpa arises; with the multiple different sequences in which it arises. Which you shed no light on.
You say: "The whole purpose of the twelve nidanas is to be a theory of how rebirth takes place without recourse to a first cause, a deity, or no cause at all."
No it isn't actually. I have heard that suggestion before, but it's not what the suttas say. I have yet to find any sutta saying that the nidānas explain rebirth at all. Most commonly say that this model explains the arising of this whole mass of suffering (evametassa kevalassa dukkhakhandhassa samudaya: e.g. S ii.22 ), or something similar. I would be interested to see a sutta where the nidānas were "a theory of how rebirth takes place without recourse to a first cause, a deity, or no cause at all".
You are describing the Three Lifetimes Model (TLM) of the nidāna chain. This is not canonical either - I won't invite you to supply a reference in this case, because I am fairly certain that there are none. The TLM is a post-canonical invention which suggests changing priorities and understanding in the Buddhist community. Many Buddhists, including Bhikkhus Ñāṇavīra and Buddhadasa, explicitly reject the TLM on the basis that it is not canonical, and because it contradicts the description of the Dhamma as akaliko. I also reject the TLM.
Without the TLM then we have the problem that I describe, along with numerous other inconsistencies and contradictions. And since the TLM does not occur in the Pāli Canon then we have to assume that the problems were relevant for the authors of the suttas. It may we be that the TLM was invented to solve exactly these kinds of problems!
I think it is you that doesn't have a full grasp of the context. Certainly you don't seem to be aware of the extent of the canonical or scholarly accounts of the nidānas. As often happens when I question orthodoxy, you're just parroting unsophisticated dogma back at me. I don't find it particularly helpful. I cited half a dozen references: have you read any of them?
I would encourage you to move beyond popular presentations of Buddhism and start reading the Pāli texts for yourself. If you can't (or won't) learn Pāli then the Wisdom Publications translations are usually reliable. I think you will find it rewarding. But it might mean you have to start questioning some of those dogmas.
Regards
Jayarava
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Regarding Western presentations of impermanence, this cartoon might be appreciated: http://tinyurl.com/3bzcorc
Tuesday, September 13, 2011