A BUDDHIST MANUAL
Psychological Ethics,
FROM THE PALI
OF THE
DHAMMA-SANGANI
Translated by CAROLINE A. F. RHYS DAVIDS, M.A.
VII.
On the Buddhist Philosophy of Mind and Theory of
Intellection.
It would have been the greatest possible gain to our
knowledge of the extent to which Buddhism had developed
any clear psychological data for its ethics, had it occurred
to the compilers of the Dhamma-Sangani to introduce an
analysis of the other four skandhas parallel to that of the
skandha of form. It is true that the whole work, except the
book on r ti p a m, is an inquiry into arupino dhamma,
conceived for the most part as mental phenomena, but
there is no separate treatment of them divided up as such.
Some glimpses we obtain incidentally, most of which have
been pointed out in the footnotes to the translation. And
it may prove useful to summarize briefly such contribution
as may lie therein to the psychology of Buddhism.
And, first, it is very difficult to say to what extent, if at
all, such psychological matter as we find is distinctively
and originally Buddhist, or how much was merely adopted
from contemporary culture and incorporated with the
Dharma. Into, this problem I do not here propose to
inquire farther. If there be any originality, any new
departure in the psychology scattered about the Nikayas, it
is more likely to be in aspect and treatment than in new
matter. Buddhism preached a doctrine of regenerate
personality, to be sought after and developed by and out
of the personal resources of the individual through a system
of intellectual self-culture. Thrown back upon himself, he
developed introspection, the study of consciousness. But,
again, his doctrine imposed on him the study of psychical
states without the psyche. Nature without and nature
within met, acted and reacted, and the result told on the
organism in a natural, orderly, necessary way.^ But there
was no one adjusting the machinery.^ The Buddhist
might have approved of Leibniz's amendment of Locke's
'
Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu '
in
the additional phrase *
nisi ipse intellectus.' But he would
not thereby have exalted vinnanam, cittam, or mano
to any hypostatic permanence as prior or as immanent.
He would only admit the priority of intellect to particular
sensations as a natural order, obtaining among the pheno-
menal factors of any given act of cognition.
Psychological earnestness, then, and psychological in-
quiry into mental phenomena, coexisting apart from, and
in opposition to, the usual assumption of a psychical
entity : such are the only distinctively Buddhist features
which may, in the absence of more positive evidence than
we yet possess, be claimed in such analysis of mind as
Appears in Buddhist ethics.
Of the results of this earnest spirit of inquiry into mental
phenomena, in so far as they may be detached from ethical
doctrine, and assigned their due place in the history of
human ideas, it will be impossible, for several years, to
prepare any adequate treatment. Much of the Abhi-
dhamma Pitaka, and even some of the Sutta Pitaka, still
remains unedited.
Of the former collection nothing has been translated with
the exception of the attempt in this volume. And, since
Buddhist psychology has an evolution to show covering
nearly a thousand years, we have to await fresh materials
1
Cf. Mil. 57--61. 2 Sum. 194.
from the yet unedited works of Buddhaghosa, the Buddhist
Sanskrit texts, and such works as the Netti-pakarana,
Professor Hardy's edition of which is now in the press.
Meanwhile there is an increasing store of accessible
material which might be sifted by the historical in-
vestigator.
There are, for instance, in the Dhamma-Sangani several
passages suggesting that Buddhist scholars, in con-
templating the consciousness or personality as affected by
phenomena considered as external, were keenly alive to the
distinction between the happening of the expected and the
happening of the unexpected, between instinctive reaction
of the mind and the organism generally, on occasion of
sense, and the deliberate confronting of external phenomena
with a carefully adjusted intelligence. Modern psychology
has largely occupied itself with this distinction, and with
the problems of consciousness and subconsciousness, of
volition and of memory, involved in it. The subject of
attention, involuntary and voluntary, figures prominently
in the psychological literature of the last two decades.
But it is not till the centuries of post-Aristotelian and of
neo-Platonic thought that we see the distinction emerging
in Western psychology contemporaneously with the develop-
ment of the notion of consciousness.^
In the history of Buddhist thought, too, the distinction
does not appear to have become explicitly and consciously
made till the age of, or previous to, the writing of the great
Commentaries (fifth century). A corresponding explicitness
in the notion of consciousness and self-consciousness, or at
least in the use of some equivalent terms, has yet to be
traced.^ Buddhism is so emphatically a philosophy, both
in theory and practice, of the conscious will, with all that
this involves of attention and concentration, that we hardly
1
Cf. Siebeck,_op. cit., ii., pp. 200, 353, 388
^ In the Maha Nidana Sutta Gotama discourses on sihi
conscire by way of nama-rupa. See in Grimblot's *
Sept
Suttas,' p. 255.
look to find terms discriminating such notions from among
other mental characteristics. We are reminded instead of
Matthew Arnold's well-known remark that as, at Soli, no
one spoke of solecisms, so in England we had to import the
term Philistine.
But, whereas it is the Atthasalinl, written from the
standpoint of a later elaboration of thought, that makes
explicit what it holds to be the intention of the classic
manual, the latter work lends itself without straining to
such interpretation. I pass over Buddhaghosa's comments
on the limitations and the movements of attention repro-
duced below, pp. 198, n. 2, 200, n. 1, as derived very possibly
from thought nearer to his own times. Again, with re-
spect to the residual unspecified factors in good and bad
thoughts—the '
or-whatever-other-states '^
— among which
the Commentator names, as a constant, manasikara, or
attention—this specifying may be considered as later
elaboration. But when the Commentary refers the curious
alternative emphasis in the description of the sensory act'^
to just this distinction between a percipient who is pre-
pared or unprepared for the stimulus, it seems possible
that he is indeed giving us the original interpretation.
1 See below p. 5, n. 1 ; also Asl., pp. 168, 250, etc. The
definition given of manasikara in the 'ye-va-panaka'
passage of the Commentary (p. 133) is difficult to grasp
fully, partly because, here and there, the reading seems
doubtful in accuracy, partly because of the terms of the
later Buddhist psychology employed, which it would first
be necessary to discuss. But I gather that manasikara
may be set going in the first, middle, or last stage of an
act of cognition—i,e., on the arammanam or initial
presentation, the vithi (or avajjanam), and the
javanam ; that in this connexion it is concerned with
the first of the three ; that it involves memory, association
of the presentation with [mental] *associates,' and con-
fronting the presentation. And that it is a constructive
and directing activity of mind, being compared to a
charioteer.
2 Below, p. 176, nn. 1, 2.
Again, the remarkable distinction drawn, in the case of
every type of good or of bad thoughts, 'relating to the
sensuous universe,' i.e., to the average moral consciousness,
between thoughts which are prompted by a conscious
motive,^ and such as are not, seems to me to indicate a
groping after the distinction between instinctive or spon-
taneous intellection, on the one hand, and deliberate,
purposive, or motivated thought on the other.
Taken in isolation, there is insufficient material here to
establish this alternative state of mind as a dominant
feature in Buddhist psychology. Taken in conjunction
with the general mental attitude and intellectual culture
involved in Buddhist ethical doctrine and continually in-
culcated in the canonical books, and emphasized as it is
by later writings, the position gains in significance. The
doctrine of karma, inherited and adopted from earlier and
contemporary thought, never made the Buddhist fatalistic.
He recognised the tremendous vis a tergo expressed in our
doggerel
:
* For 'tis their nature to.'
But he had unlimited faith in the saving power of nurture.
He faced the grim realities of life with candour, and
tolerated no mask. This honesty, to which we usually add
a mistaken view of the course of thought and action he
prescribed in consequence of the honesty, gains him the
name of Pessimist. But the hope that was in him of
what might be done to better nature through nurture,
even in this present life, by human effort and goodwill,
reveals him as a strong Optimist with an unshaken ideal of
the joy springing from things made perfect. He even tried
to *pitchfork nature ' in one or two respects, though
opposed to asceticism generally—simply to make the Joy
1 Cf. below, p. 34, n. 1. The thoughts which are not
called sasankh arena are by the 'Cy. ruled as being
a-sankharena, though not explicitly said to be so
(Asl. 71).
more easily attainable by those who dared to *
come out.'
And this regenerating nurture resolves itself, theoretically,
into a power of discrimination ; practically, into an exercise
of selection. The individual learner, pervious by way of
his *
fivefold door '
to an inflooding tide of impressions
penetrating to the sixth door of the co-ordinating '
mind,'
was to regulate the natural alertness of reception and per-
ception by the special kind of attention termed y o n i s o
manasikara, or thorough .attention, and by the clear-
eyed insight referred to already as y a t h a b h u t a m
sammappaniiaya datthabbam, or the higher
wisdom of regarding *
things as in themselves they really
are '
—to adopt Matthew Arnold's term. The stream of
phenomena, whether of social life, of nature, or of his
own social and organic growth, was not so much to be
ignored by him as to be marked, measured and classed
according to the criteria of one who has chosen '
to follow
his own uttermost,'^ and has recognised the power of that
stream to imperil his enterprise, and its lack of power to
give an equivalent satisfaction.^ The often-recurring sub-
ject of sati-sampajannam, or that '
mindful and
aware ' attitude, which evokes satire in robust, if super-
ficial, criticism, is the expansion and ethical application of
this psychological state of prepared and pre-adjusted sense
or voluntary attention.^ The student was not to be taken
by surprise—'evil states of covetousness and repining
flowing in over him dwelling unprepared '
—until he had
'. . . The nobler mastery learned
"Where inward vision over impulse reigns.'4
1 Settham upanamam udeti . . . attano uttarim bhajetha
(A. i. 126).
2 Cf. M. i. 85-90 on kamanam assadan ca adinavan ca
nissaranam ca . . . yathabhiitam pajanitva.
3 See below on guarding the door of the senses,
pp. 350-353. Also note on D. i. 70 in 'Dialogues of the
Buddha,' p. 81.
4 George Eliot, 'Brother and Sister.'
Then indeed he might dwell at ease, strong in his
emanciiDation.
Step by step with his progress in the cultivation of
attention, he was also practising himself in that faculty of
selection which it were perhaps more accurate not to
distinguish from attention. Alertness is never long, and,
indeed, never strictly, attending to anything and every-
thing at once. We are reminded of Condillac's definition
of attention as only an '
exclusive sensation.' From the
multitude of excitations flowing in upon us, one is, more
or less frequently, selected,^ the rest being, for a time,
either wholly excluded or perceived subconsciously. And
this selective instinct, varying in strength, appears, not only
in connexion with sense-impressions, but also in our more
persisting tendencies and interests, as well as in a general
disposition to concentration or to distraction.
Buddhism, in its earnest and hopeful system of self-
culture, set itself strenuously against a distrait habit of
mind, calling it tatr a - 1 at r a bhinandini^—'the
there-and-there-dalliance,' as it were of the butterfly. And
it adopted and adapted that discipline in concentration
(s a m a d h i), both physical and psychical, both perceptual
and conceptual, for which India is unsurpassed. But it
appreciated the special practice of ra,pt absorbed concen-
trated thought called Dhyana or Jhana, not as an end in
itself, but as a symbol and vehicle of that habit of selec-
tion and single-minded effort which governed 'life accord-
ing to the Higher Ideal.' It did not hold with the robust
creed, which gropes, it may be, after a yet stronger ideal:
*Greift nur hinein ins voile Menschenleben,
Und wo Ihr's packt, da ist es interessant ?'
*Full life ' of the actual sort, viewed from the Buddhist
standpoint, was too much compact of Vanity Fair, shambles
1
Cf. Hoffding's criticism of Condillac in * Outlines of
Psychology' (London, 1891), p. 120.
2 M. i. 299.
and cemetery, to be worth the plunge. It had, on the
other hand, great faith in experimenting on nature by a
judicious pruning of everything it judged might wreck or
hinder the evolution of a life of finer, higher quality. If
we, admitting this intention, look on the frequent injunc-
tions respecting what 'was to be put away' (paha-
t a b b a m )i
from the life of each disciple, whether by
insight or by culture, whether by gentle or by forcible
restraint,^ not as so much mere self-mortification and
crippling of energy, but as expressions of selective culture
for the better 'forcing' of somewhat tender growths, we
may, if we still would criticise, appraise more sym-
pathetically.
If I have dwelt at some length on a side of Buddhist
psychological ethics which is not thrown into obvious relief
in our Manual, it was because I wished to connect that
side with the specially characteristic feature in Buddhist
psychology where it approximates to the trend of our
own modern tradition. There, on the one hand, we
have a philosophy manifestly looking deeper into the
mental constitution than any other in the East, and giving
especial heed to just those mental activities—attention
and feeling, conation and choice—which seem most to
imply a subject, or subjective unity ivho attends, feels,
wills and chooses. And yet this same philosophy is
emphatically one that attempts to '
extrude the Ego.' If,
on the other hand, we leap over upwards of 2,000 years
and consider one of the most notable contributions to our
national psychology, we find that its two most salient
features are a revival of the admission of an Ego or
Subject of mental states, which had been practically
extruded, and a theory of the ultimate nature of mental pro-
cedure set out entirely in terms of attention and feeling.3
1 See, e.g,, below, p. 256 et seq.
2 Cf. the Sabbasava Sutta and passim, M. i., especially
the Vitakkasanthana Sutta.
3 I refer to Professor Ward's *Psychology,' Ency. Brit.,
9th ed.
And yet the divergence between the two conclusions,
widely removed though they are by time and space, is not
so sharp as at first appears. The modern thinker, while
he finds it more honest not to suppress the fact that all
psychologists, not excepting Hume, do, implicitly or ex-
plicitly, assume the conception of '
a mind ' or conscious
subject, is careful to '
extrude '
metaphysical dogma. That
everything mental is referred to a Self or Subject is, for
him, a psychological conception which may be kept as free
from the metaphysical conception of a soul, mind-atom,
or mind-stuff as is that of the individual organism in
biology. In much the same way the Buddhists were content
to adopt the term attabhavo (self-hood or personality
—for which Buddhaghosa half apologizes^)
—
ajjhat-
tikam (belonging to the self, subjective^) and the like,
as well as to speak of cittam, mano and vinnanam
where we might say *
mind.' It is true that by the two
former terms they meant the totality of the five skandhas,
that is to say, both mind and body, but this is not the case
with the three last named. And if there was one thing
which moved the Master to quit his wonted serenity and
wield the lash of scorn and upbraiding, and his followers
to use emphatic repudiation, it was just the reading into
this convenient generalization of mind or personality that
'
metaphysical conception of a soul, mind-atom, or mind-
stuff,' which is put aside by the modern psychologist.
And I believe that the jealous way in which the
Buddhists guarded their doctrine in this matter arose, not
from the wish to assimilate mind to matter, or the whole
personality to a machine, but from the too great danger
that lay in the unchecked use of atta,^ ahankara,
attabhavo, even as a mere psychological datum, in that
it afforded a foothold to the prevailing animism. They
1 See below, p. 175, n. 1. 2 Ibid., p. 207, n. 1.
3 Svayam (this one) is nearly always substituted for
atta as a nominative, the latter term usually appearing
in oblique cases.
were as Protestants in regard to the crucifix. They re-
membered with Ste. Beuve :
*
La sauvagerie est toujours
la a deux pas, et, des qu'on lache pied, elle recommence.'
What, then, was their view of mind, as merely pheno-
menal, in relation to the riipa-skandha or non-mental part
of the human individual? We have considered their
doctrine of external phenomena impingeing on and modi-
fying the internal or personal r u p a m by way of sense.
Have we any clue to their theory of the propagation of
the modifications, alleged in their statement^ to take place
in relation to those factors of personality which were
a r u p i n , and not derived from material elements—the
elements (d h a t u's), namely, or skandhas of feeling, per-
ception, syntheses and intellect ? How did they regard
that process of co-ordination by which, taking sensuous ex-
perience as the more obvious starting-point in mental experi-
ence, sensations are classed and made to cohere into groups
or percepts, and are revived as memories, and are further
co-ordinated into concepts or abstract ideas ? And finally,
and at back of all this, tcho feels, or attends, or wills ?
Now the Dhamma-Sangani does not place questions of
this kind in the mouth of the catechist. In so far as it is
psychological (not psycho-physical or ethical), it is so
strictly phenomenological, that its treatment is restricted to
the analysis of certain broadly defined states of mind, felt
or inferred to have arisen in consequence of certain other
mental states as conditions. There is no reference any-
where to a '
subjective factor ' or agent ivho has the
cittam or thought, with all its associated factors of
attention, feeling, conception and volition. Even in the
case of Jhana, where it is dealing with more active modes
of regulated attention, involving a maximum of constructive
thought with a minimum of receptive sense, the agent, as
conscious subject, is kept in the background. The inflexion
of the verb2 alone implies a given personal agent, and the
1 See answers in §§ 600, 604, etc.
2 Bhaveti, viharati (cultivates, abides) ; p. 43 et seq.
Commentary even feels it incumbent to point him out. It
is this psychologizing without a psyche that impressed me
from the first, and seemed to bring the work, for all its
remoteness in other respects, nearer to our own Experiential
school of and since Locke, than anything we find in Greek
traditions.
It is true that each of the four formless skandhas is
defined or described, and this is done in connexion with
the very first question of the book. But the answers are
given, not in terms of respective function or of mutual
relation, but of either synonyms, or of modes or constituent
parts. For instance, feeling (vedana) is resolved into
three modes,^ perception ( s a n fi a ) is taken as practically
self-evident and not really described at all,^ the syntheses
(sankhara) are resolved into modes or factors, intellect
(vinnanam) is described by synonyms.
Again, whereas the skandhas are enumerated in the
order in which, I believe, they are unvaryingly met with,
there is nothing, in text or Commentary, from which we
can infer that this order corresponds to any theory of
genetic procedure in an act of cognition. In other words,
we are not shown that feeling calls up perception, or that
the sankharas are a necessary link in the evolution of
perception into conception or reasoning.3 If we can infer
1 See pp. 3-9, 27-29.
2 It is on the other hand described with some fulness in
the Cy. See my note s.v.
3 Cf. the argument by Dr. Neumann, 'Buddhistische
Anthologie,' xxiii, xxiv. If I have rendered sankhara by
*syntheses,' it is not because I see any coincidence between
the Buddhist notion and the Kantian Synthesis der Wahrneh-
mungen. Still less am I persuaded that Unterscheidungen
is a virtually equivalent term. Like the *confections' of
Professor Rhys Davids and the 'Gestaltungen' of Professor
Oldenberg, I use syntheses simply as, more or less, an
etymological equivalent, and wait for more light. I may
here add that I have used intellection and cognition inter-
changeably as comprehending the whole process of knowing,
or coming to know.
anything in the nature of causal succession at all, it is such
that the order of the skandhas as enumerated is upset.
Thus, taking the first answer (and that is typical for the
whole of Book I. when new ground is broken into) : a
certain sense - impression evokes, through *
contact,' a
complex state of mind or psychosis called a thought or
c i 1 1 a m . Born of this contact and the '
appropriate
'
cittam, now (i.e., in answer 3) called, in terms of its
synonym, representative intellection (manoviniiana-
dhatu), feeling, we are told, is engendered. Perception
is called up likewise and, apparently, simultaneously. So
is '
thinking ' ( c e t a n a )—of the sankhara-skandha. And
* associated with '
the cittam come all the rest of the
constituent dhammas, both sankharas, as well as specific
modes'^ or different aspects^ of the feeling and the thought
already specified. In a word, we get contact evoking the
fifth skandha, and, as the common co-ordinate resultant,
the genesis or excitement of the other three. This is
entirely in keeping with the many passages in the Nikayas,
where the concussion of sense and object are said to result
in vinnanam =cittam = the fifth skandha. 'Eye,' for
instance, and '
form,' in mutual '
contact,' result in *
visual
cognition.'
In the causal chain of that ancient formula, the
Paticca-samuppada,^ on the other hand, we find
quite another order of genesis, sankharas inducing cogni-
tion or thought, and contact alone inducing feeling. This
mysterious old rune must not further complicate our
problem. I merely allude to it as not in the least support-
ing the view that the order of statement, in the skandhas,
implies order of happening. What we may more surely
gather from the canon is that, as our own psychological
thought has now conceived it,4 the, let us say, given
1
E.g., ease.
2
E.g., the 'faculties' of mind (ideation) and of pleasure.
3
Given below on p. 348 [1336].
4
Professor Ward, op. cit.
individual ' attends to or cognizes ( v i j a n a t i ) changes
in the sensory continuum, and is, in consequence, either
pleased or pained' (or has neutral feeling). And, further,
in any and every degree of conscious or subconscious mood
or disposition, he may be shown to be experiencing a
number of *
associated states,' as enumerated. All this
is in our Manual called a cittuppada—a genesis of
thought.
Of thought or of thinking. There seems to be a breadth
and looseness of implication about c i 1 1 a m fairly parallel
to the popular vagueness of the English term. It is true
that the Commentary does not sanction the interpretation
of contact and all the rest (I refer to the type given in the
first answer) as so many attributes of the thought which
*
has arisen.' The sun rising, it says, is not different from
its fiery glory, etc., arising. But the cittam arising is a
mere expression to fix the occasion for the induction of the
whole concrete psychosis, and connotes no more and no
less than it does as a particular constituent of that
complex.^
This is a useful hint. On the other hand, when we
consider the synonymous terms for cittam, given in
answer 6, and compare the various characteristics of these
terms scattered through the Commentary, we find a con-
siderable wealth of content and an inclusion of process and
product similar to that of our *
thought.' For example,
'cittam means mental object or presentation (aram-
manam) ; that is to say, he thinks ; that is to say, he
attends to a thought.'2 Hence my translation might well
1 Asl. 113. I gather, however, that the adjective ceta-
sikam had a wider and a narrower denotation. In the
former it meant 'not bodily,' as on p. 6. In the latter it
served to distinguish three of the incorporeal skandhas
from the fourth, i.e., cittam, as on pp. 265, 318—citta-
cetasika dhamma. Or are we to take the Commentator's
use of kayikam here to refer to those three skandhas, as
is often the case (p. 43, n. 3) ? Hardly, since this makes
the two meanings of cetasikam self-contradictory.
2 Ibid. 63.
have run : When a good thought . . . has arisen . . , as
the object of this or that sense, etc. Again, cittam is
defined as a process of connecting (sandhanam) the
last (things) as they keep arising in consciousness with
that which preceded them.^ Further, it is a co-ordinating,
relating, or synthesizing (sandahanam);^ and, again,
it has the property of initiative action (pure carikam).
For, when the sense-impression gets to the *
door '
of the
senses, cittam confronts it before the rest of the mental
congeries.^ The sensations are, by cittam, wrought up
into that concrete stream of consciousness which they
evoke.
Here we have cittam covering both thinking and
thought or idea. When we turn to its synonym or quasi-
synonym m a n o we find, so far as I can discover, that only
activity, or else spring, source or nidus of activity, is the
aspect taken. The faculty of ideation (manindriya m),
for instance,^ while expressly declared to be an equivalent
(vevacanam)of cittam, and, like it, to be that which
attends or cognizes (v i j an a t i), is also called a measuring
the mental object—declared above to he cittarn.^ In a
later passage (ibid., 129), it is assigned the function of accept-
ing, receiving, analogous, perhaps, to our technical expres-
sion '
assimilating '
(sampaticchanam). In thus
appraising or approving, it has all sensory objects for its
field, as well as its more especial province of dhammas.^
These, when thus distinguished, I take to mean ideas,
including images and general notions. And it is probably
1 Asl., pp. 112, 113.
2 Cf. the characteristic—samvidahanam—of cetana
in my note, p. 8.
3 The figure of the city-guardian, given in Mil. 62, is
quoted by the Cy.
4 See below, p. 18, and Asl. 123.
5 It is at the same time said to result in (establishing)
fact or conformity (tathabhavo), and to succeed sense-
perception as such,
6 See p. 2, n. 3.
only in order to distinguish between mind in this abstract
functioning and mind as cognition in its most comprehensive
sense that we see the two terms held apart in the sentence :
'
C i 1 1 a m cognizes the dhammas which are the objects of
mano, just as it cognizes the visual forms, etc., which are
the objects of the senses.'^
When c i 1 1 a m is thus occupied with the abstract func-
tioning of m a n o^—when, that is, we are reflecting on past
experience, in memory or ratiocination—then the more
specific term is, I gather, 7iot cittam, but manovin-
nanam (corresponding to cakkhuvinnanam, etc.).
This, in the Commentarial psychology, certainly stands
for a further stage, a higher *
power '
of intellection, for
* representative cognition,' its specific activity being distin-
guished as judging or deciding (santiranam), and as
fixing or determining (votthappanam).
The affix d h a t u, whether appended to mano or to
manoviniianam, probably stands for a slight distinc-
tion in asjiect of the intellectual process. It may be intended
to indicate either of these two stages as an irreducible
element, a psychological ultimate, an activity regarded as its
own spring or source or basis. Adopted from without by
Buddhism, it seems to have been jealously guarded from
noumenal implications by the orthodox. Buddhaghosa,
indeed, seems to substitute the warning against its abuse
for the reason why it had come to be used. According to
him, the various lists of dhammas {e.g., in the first answer),
when considered under the aspect of phenomena, of '
empti-
ness,' of non-essence, may be grouped as together forming
two classes of dhatu .^ Moreover, each special sense can
be so considered (cakkhu-dhatu, etc. ; see pp. 214, 215),
1 Asl., p 112.
2 Cf. the expression suddha-manodvaro in my note,
p. 3. And on what follows, cf. pp. 129, 132, nn.
3 Viz., manovinnana-dhatu and dhamma-dhatu
see Asl. 153, and below, p. 26, n. 2. The term 'element'
is similarly used in our own psychology.
and so may each kind of sense-object. For, with respect
to sense, or the apprehension of form, they are so many
phenomenal ultimates—the two terms, so to speak, in each
sensory relation.
How far d h a t u corresponds to v a 1 1 h u—how far the
one is a psychological, the other a physical conception^
of source or base—is not easily determined. But it is
interesting to note that the Commentator only alludes to a
basis of thought (cittassa vatthu), that is, to the
heart (hadaya-vatthu), when the catechizing is in
terms ofmano-dhatu.^ His only comment on '
heart,'
when it is included in the description of c i 1 1 a m (answer
[6]), is to say that, whereas it stands for cittam, it
simply represents the inwardness (intimity) of thought.^
But in the subsequent comment he has a remark of great
interest, namely, that the '
heart-basis '
is the place whither
all the '
door-objects '
come, and where they are assimilated,
or received into unity. In this matter the Buddhist
philosophy carries on the old Upanishad lore about the
heart, just as Aristotle elaborated the dictum of Empedokles,
that perception and reasoning were carried on in *
the
blood round the heart.'
1 Cf. below, pp. 214, 215, with 209-211.
2 Asl. 264 ; below, p. 129, fn.
3 Asl. 140: 'Heart = thought (Hadayan ti cittam).
In the passage—" I will either tear out your mind or break
your heart "—the heart in the breast is spoken of. In the
passage (M. i. 32)—'* Methinks he planes with a heart that
knows heart" (like an expert) I—the mind is meant. In
the passage—*' The vakkam is the heart "—the basis of
heart is meant. But here cittam is spoken of as heart in
the sense of inwardness (abbhantaram).' It is interest-
ing to note that, in enumerating the rupaskandha in the
Visuddhi Magga, Buddhaghosa's sole departure from con-
formity with the Dhamma-Sangani is the inclusion of
hadaya-vatthu after 'vitality.'
The other term, 'that which is clear' (pandaram), is
an ethical metaphor. The mind is said to be naturally
pure, but defiled by incoming corruptions. {Cf. A. i.,
p. 10.)
It is possible that this ancient and widely-received
tradition of the heart (rather than the brain, for instance)
as the seat of the soul or the mind is latent in the question
put by Mahakotthito, a member of the Order, to Sariputta,
the leading apostle :^ '
Inasmuch as these five indriyas
(senses) are, in province and in gratification, mutually
independent, what process of reference is there,^ and who is
it that is gratified by them in common ?' So apparently
thinks Dr. Neumann, who renders Sariputta' s answer
—
*
The mind (ma no)'
—
hy Herz. This association must,
however, not be pressed. For in another version of this
dialogue more recently edited, Gotama himself being the
person consulted, his interlocutor goes on to ask : What is
the patisaranam of man o—of recollection (sat i)
—
of emancipation—of Nirvana?^ So that the meaning of
the first question may simply be that as emancipation looks
to, or makes for Nirvana, and recollection or mindfulness
for emancipation, and ideation or thinking refers or looks
1 M. i. 295.
2 Kim patisaranam. The word is a crux, and may
bear more than one meaning. Cf, Yinaya Texts (S. B. E.
xvii.), ii., p. B64, n. ; * Dialogues of the Buddha,' i.,
p. 122, n. Dr. Neumann renders it by Hort, following
Childers.
It is worthy of note that, in connexion with the heresy of
identifying the self with the physical organism generally
(below, p. 259), the Cy. makes no allusion to heart, or
other part of the rupam, in connexion with views (2)
or (4). These apparently resembled Augustine's belief:
the soul is wholly present both in the entire body and in
each part of it. With regard to view (3), is it possible
that Plotinus heard it at Alexandria, or on his Eastern
trip? For he, too, held that the body was 'in the soul,'
permeated by it as air is by fire (Enn. iv.). Buddhaghosa's
illustrative metaphor is 'as a flower being " in " its own
perfume.' I regret that space fails me to reproduce his
analysis of these twenty soul-hypotheses.
3 S. v., p. 218. In the replies mano is referred to
sati, sati to vimutti, and this to Nirvana.
to memory,^ so sensation depends on thinking, on mental
construction (to become effective as knowledge).
It is, indeed, far more likely that Buddhist teaching
made little of and passed lightly over this question of a
physical basis of thought or mind. It was too closely
involved with the animistic point of view—how closely we
may see, for instance, in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad.
"When King Milinda puts a similar question respecting the
subject of sensations,^ he does so from so obviously
animistic a standpoint that the sage, instead of discussing
mano, or heart, with him, argues against any one central
subjective factor whatever, and resolves the process of
cognition into a number of '
connate ' activities. The
method itself of ranking mental activity as though it were
a sixth kind of sense seems to point in the same direction,
and reminds us of Hume's contention, that when he tried
to '
catch himself '
he always *
tumbled on some particular
perception.' Indeed it was, in words attributed to Gotama
himself, the lesser blunder in the average man to call
'
this four-elementish body ' his soul than to identify the
self with '
what is called c i 1 1 a m , that is, mano, that
is, vinnanam.' For whereas the body was a colloca-
tion that might hold together for many years, 'mind, by
day and by night is ever arising as one thing, ceasing as
another!'^
Impermanence of conscious phenomena was one of the
two grounds of the Buddhist attack. So far it was on all
fours with Hume. The other ground was the presence of
law, or necessary sequence in mental procedure. The Soul
was conceived as an entity, not only above cliange, an
absolute constant, but also as an entirely free agent. Both
1 Cf, the interesting inquiry into the various modes of
association in remembering^ given in Mil., pp. 78, 79, and
77, 78.
2
Mil. 54. He calls it vedagu (knower), and, when
cross-examined, abbhantare jivo (the living principle
within).
3 S. ii., pp. 94-96.
grounds, be it noted, are laid down on psychological
evidence—on the testimony of consciousness. And both
grounds were put forward by Gotama in his very first
sermon.^ The standard formula for the latter only is
reproduced in our Manual.^ And it is interesting to see
the same argument clothed in fresh dress in the dialogue
with Milinda referred to above. The point made is this
:
that if any one of the skandhas could be identified with a
self or soul, it would, as not subject to the conditions of
phenomena, act through any other faculty it chose. It
would be a principle, not only of the nature of what ive
should call will, but also of genuine free will.^ Soul and
Free Will, for the Buddhist, stand or fall together. But,
he said, what we actually find is no such free agency. We
only find certain organs (doors), with definite functions,
natural sequence, the line of least resistance and associa-
tion.* Hence we conclude there is no transcendent
'
knower ' about us.
Here I must leave the Buddhist philosophy of mind and
theory of intellection. We are only at the threshold of its
problems, and it is hence not strange if we find them as
bafiling as, let us say, our own confused usage of many
psychological terms—feeling, will, mind—about which we
ourselves greatly differ, would prove to an inquiring
Buddhist. If I have not attempted to go into the crux of
the sankhara-skandha, it is because neither the Manual
nor its Commentary brings us any nearer to a satisfactory
hypothesis. For future discussion, however, the frequent
enumerations of that skandha's content, varying with
every changing mood, should prove pertinent. In every
direction there is very much to be done. And each addition
to the texts edited brings new light. Nor can philosophic
interest fail in the long-run to accumulate about a system
1 Vin. i. 14; = M. i. 138, 300; S. iii. 66; cf. iv. 34.
2 P. 257 et seq,
3
Cf. the writer's article on the Vedalla Suttas, J. R. A. S.,
April, 1894. 4 Mil., loc. cit.
of thought which at that early time of day took up a task
requiring such vigour and audacity—the task, namely, of
opposing the prevailing metaphysic, not because problems
of mind did not appeal to the founders of that system, but
because further analysis of mind seemed to reveal a realm
of law-governed phenomenal sequence for which the ready
hypothesis of an unconditioned permanent Self super gram-
maticam was too cheap a solution.
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