## 1. History of the Issue




Buddhist conceptions of mind evolved from early attempts to offer a 
systematic account of human experience as described in the large body
of discourses attributed to the Buddha. The Buddha offered an account
of the human individual as a composite of various psychological and 
physical elements that challenged the prevailing philosophical views,
dominated by the Upanisadic idea of an enduring, substantive 
self (*atman*). This aggregated view of persons became 
the object of early and extensive scholastic debates as Buddhists 
sought to explain how we come to mistakenly apprehend an unchanging 
and enduring self in a stream of causally interconnected phenomena. 
The notion that the habitual patterns of behavior which condition 
human existence are the direct result of an entrenched and abiding 
belief that we are (or have) an enduring, unchanging, and independent
core or self, sets this aggregated view of persons apart from all 
other philosophical accounts of personal identity in classical India.



### 1.1 The Not-Self Doctrine




In one of his earlier discourses, the Buddha declares that we ought 
to regard any form of sensation and consciousness, whether 
"past, future, or present; internal or external; manifest or 
subtle...as it actually is...: 'This is not mine. This is not 
my self. This is not what I am'" (*Majjhima 
Nikaya* I, 130).




This rejection of a permanent self as the agent of sensory and mental
activity posed a significant challenge for the early Buddhists.
Indeed, if there is no agent (*kartr*), and if actions
(*karman*) are merely transient events arising within a
continuum of causally interconnected states, then how is the efficacy
of karma or rebirth to be explained? Historically, at least one
Buddhist school, that of the Vatsiputriyas or
Pudgalavadins ('personalists'), does appear to
endorse the reality of persons as conceived in reliance upon the
collection of aggregates (see
 SS5.5
 for a detailed discussion). 




Disagreement among modern interpreters of the not-self doctrine attests to
the difficulty of providing a definitive account of this core aspect 
of Buddhist philosophy. Thus, the early Pali scholar Caroline 
Rhys Davids (1924, 75) thought that the way Buddhists understood 
and used the term consciousness was not very different that the way 
Upanisadic philosophers talked about the self. Similarly, 
Isaline Horner (1936, 145) suggested that some canonical passages 
(e.g., *Anguttara Nikaya* I, 149-50) actually 
provide support for the notion of self as an 'unchanging 
witness' (Pali *sakkhi*, Skt. 
*saksin*), a view also defended in a recent 
philosophical reworking of the notion of 'witness 
consciousness' by Miri Albahari (2006). Although he 
acknowledged the confusion generated by the tendency to attribute to 
early Buddhism something analogous to the Upanisadic doctrine 
of self, Edward Conze nonetheless asserted that one's true identity 
is that of an Absolute, which he presumed to be none other than the 
Buddhist view of consciousness (1962, pp. 43, 127). Perhaps the most 
detailed attempt to support a two-tier understanding of the doctrine 
of not-self comes from Kamaleswar Bhattacharya (1973, 64 and 
*passim*), who forcibly argued that the denial of self in 
Buddhism most often targets common views such as those that associate
the self with the psycho-physical aggregates, and not the 
metaphysical notion of self. 




The prevailing view, however, is that such interpretations are 
tenuous. Indeed, later Buddhist traditions develop specific 
notions, such as that of mind-stream, life-continuum mind, and 
repository consciousness (*citta-santana*, 
*bhavanga-citta*, and 
*alaya-vijnana*, respectively) precisely in
order to avoid the metaphysical implications of the traditional notion
of self. Extensive critiques of the attempt to find support in the
canonical literature for the existence of a higher self, perhaps
equated with consciousness, are found in Warder (1970), Collins
(1982), Kalupahana (1987), Harvey (1995), and De Silva (2005).
Vasubandhu's *Treatise on the Negation of the Person*
(*Pudgala-pratisedha-prakarana*, which forms the
9th chapter of his *Abhidharmakosa*) provides one of most
detailed Buddhist critiques of the personalist view (also targeting
Brahmanical conceptions of self) (see  SS5.5).
 




Thus Harvey (1995, 22) argues that the notion of a 'self which
witnesses' most probably refers to deeper aspects of
consciousness (*citta*) acting as 'conscience.' In
a similar vein, Collins (1982, 87-115) delineates several points
supporting the not-self view as the correct account: (1) the
metaphysical notion of self as eternal and unchanging is actually just
plain erroneous (a defect of speculative opinion); (2) taking the body
to be the self is a mistaken view; (3) consciousness itself is not the
self; (4) it is impossible to speak of a self apart from experience;
(5) a false sense of self may be acquired from the habitual use of
pronominal forms such as 'I' and 'mine.'
Furthermore, in his detailed and thorough analysis of Buddhist and
Brahmanical views on personal identity, Oetke (1988) interprets the
not-self doctrine as reflective of a "revisionary" metaphysics which
denies not a self as such but rather the self as something qualified
by the property of being the subject of experience or as the referent
of such subjective experience. 


The denial of a permanent self, as well as the refusal to treat 
persons as referring to anything real and permanent, forms an 
integral part of the Buddhist analysis of consciousness. The frequent
use of indexicals such as 'I' (*aham*) and 
'mine' (*mama*) does not indicate that the Buddha 
accepts the conventional reality of persons either. Rather, as 
Collins (1982, 72) suggests, a good way to avoid such 
misapprehensions is to offer more elegant translations of Pali 
and Sanskrit compounds in which the term self (*atta*, 
*atma*) is used. For instance, 'master of 
himself' (*attadhina*) could be also rendered 
as 'free' or 'independent,' 'at peace 
with himself' (*khematta*) could be translated as 
'tranquil,' while 'self-guarded' 
(*rakkhitatta*) could be simply translated as 
'prudent'.




The centrality of the not-self doctrine in Buddhist thought is 
explained on the basis of its pragmatic role in guiding the adept on 
the path to enlightenment. Furthermore, the 
not-self doctrine provides a justification for treating endurance, 
independence, and self-subsistence as neither desirable nor 
attainable, but rather as what they are: mistaken notions resulting 
from the habitual tendency to construct an identity from a stream of 
physical and subjective phenomena. The Buddhist claims that our sense
of self as an autonomous being is imputed, and our attribution of 
inherent existence to it habitually acquired (see *Samyutta 
Nikaya* IV, 102; *Majjhima Nikaya* I, 130), just
as Hume claims that a self is never apprehended in the series of 
perceptions that are characteristic of the mental domain (the 
parallelism between the Buddhist and Humean reductive analyses of the
self is explored at some lenght in Giles 1993, Tillemans 1996, 
and Kapstein 2001). This routine misapprehension of the discrete 
phenomena of experience as a self leads to a dualistic perspective: 
things appear and are categorized as either objective (thus external,
but empirically accessible) or as subjective (thus internal, and 
immediately accessible to consciousness). Puzzled by this dualistic 
outlook, we cope by constructing an imaginary self as the permanent 
locus of experience. 




This imaginary self, usually conceived in substantial terms as an
unchanging reality behind the changing phenomenal world, is in effect
the root cause of the pervasive ignorance which afflicts the human
condition. From a metaphysical point of view, however, the not-self
doctrine extends beyond the domain of subjective experience, to
characterize all phenomena. Indeed, it is not just persons that are
said to be selfless but all the elements of existence as well. To
appreciate the uniqueness of the Buddhist not-self doctrine scholars
sometimes contrast it with the two most common alternatives:
eternalism and annihilationism (or physicalism). The eternalist,
usually the Upanisadic philosopher, claims that the innermost
part of ourselves, the subtle and abiding self, sometimes equated with
pure consciousness, exists for all eternity even as the ordinary
person undergoes constant change, ultimately resulting in his or her
demise. At the opposite end of the spectrum we find the physicalist
who sees human nature as contingent and finite. The Buddhist
perspective, called the 'middle path between extremes' or
simply the 'middle way' (*madhyama-pratipad*)
offers a very different account of human existence: what we routinely
call ego, self, soul, individual personality, are merely conventional
terms that do not apply to anything real.


### 1.2 The Soteriological Dimension of the Not-Self Doctrine




In espousing the doctrine of not-self with its aggregated view of 
persons, the Buddha claims to be offering a solution to the problem 
of human suffering. Not only is the idea of a permanent self a 
conceptual fiction, but adopting such a view leads to grasping after 
notions such as 'I,' 'me,' and 
'mine' with deleterious effects for our psychological 
well being: attachment to such a fictional 'I' is the 
root cause of a range of negative emotions, including selfishness, 
craving, hatred, conceit, and ill-will. These negative emotions, in 
turn, fuel the general feeling of unsatisfactoriness that pervades 
the unenlightened human condition, and ultimately are responsible for
all the troubles that ordinarily afflict our world. The not-self 
doctrine offers not merely an enlightened metaphysical perspective on
the ultimate nature of things, but also an effective remedy for 
eradicating ignorance and achieving *nirvana*, the 
*summum bonum* of the Buddhist path and the antithesis of 
cyclical existence (with the caveat that Mahayana Buddhist 
traditions generally place less emphasis on 
*nirvana*, focusing instead on the enlightened and 
compassionate attitude of the Buddhist saint or 
'*bodhisattva*').


## 2. Basic Principles




In his first public discourse, known as the *Turning of the Wheel 
of Dharma* (Pali *Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta*, SN 
56, 11), Siddhartha Gautama, the historical Buddha, lays out what is 
considered to be the foundation of Buddhist doctrine and practice: 
the middle path approach to understanding the nature of phenomena. At
the level of affect the middle path steers clear of the extremes of 
indulgence and austerity, while at the mental level it avoids the 
extreme metaphysical positions of eternalism and annihilationism. 
Thus, the middle path "leads to insight and wisdom, produces 
calm, knowledge, enlightenment, and 
*nirvana*" (*Samyutta 
Nikaya*, V, 420). Following his exposition of the middle 
path, the Buddha proceeds to outline the four noble truths and the 
eightfold noble path, which together represent the most basic aspects
of Buddhist teachings. The middle path, thus, is intended both as an 
ethical method and as a primer for correct reasoning. In this second 
sense, the middle path relies on a particular understanding the 
nature of reality as being marked by, or displaying, three specific 
characteristics (*tri-laksana*): 
unsatisfactoriness (*duhkha*), impermanence 
(*anitya*), and the lack of an abiding self 
(*anatman*). 


### 2.1 The Three Marks of Existence




The general leitmotif of Buddhist teachings, which is also the first 
of the four noble truths, is the realization that unsatisfactoriness 
or suffering (Skt. *duhkha*, Pali *dukkha*) 
is a pervasive aspect of conditioned existence. With the recognition 
of this fundamental truth about the nature of phenomena comes the 
realization of the cause of discontent and of its finality (the 
second and third noble truths, respectively). Lastly, undertaking the
course of action that leads to its cessation (the fourth noble truth)
forms the basis and the main motivating principle of the Buddhist 
path. 




1. Unsatisfactoriness (*duhkha*). As the first mark of 
conditioned existence, unsatisfactoriness presents both an 
opportunity and a challenge: as an undesirable condition, 
unsatisfactoriness itself is a motivator for its own overcoming. But 
without a proper understanding of its root cause, unsatisfactoriness 
can become a source of aversion (toward unpleasant states) and of 
grasping (after pleasant states). The cause of this 
unsatisfactoriness is ignorance (*avidya*), understood 
not simply as lacking knowledge about particular states of affairs, 
but rather as a basic misunderstanding about how things truly are. 
The Buddhist Abhidharma traditions break this unsatisfactoriness into
three categories: 


* unsatisfactoriness proper
(*duhkha-duhkhata*), which comprises such
common discomforts as aches and pains as well as mental states such as
sadness and unhappiness;
* the unsatisfactoriness of compounded phenomena due to their
impermanent nature (*samskara-duhkhata*),
which explains why even apparently pleasant and desirable states are
ultimately a source of discontent on account of their conditioned and
impermanent nature;
* the unsatisfactoriness inherent in change
(*viparinama-duhkhata*), which captures
the sense of distress that follows the realization that pleasant
sensations and mental states of delight change as the objects upon
which they depend change (see also *Samyutta
Nikaya*, IV, 259).




2. Impermanence (*anitya*). As the second mark of existence,
impermanence pervades all compounded phenomena. It forms an integral
part of the theory of momentariness
(*ksanikavada*), which asserts that phenomena
do not endure for more than a moment. In the *Shorter Discourse to
Saccaka* (*Majjhima Nikaya*, I, 230, 35), the Buddha
explains that all formations (feeling, perception, etc.) and in effect
all things are to be regarded as impermanent. 




3. Not-self (*anatman*). This Buddhist view of the 
impermanence of all phenomena works against the natural tendency to 
assume that knowledge and experience are attributable to a self that 
is permanent, stable, and unchanging. Instead of reifying each moment
of existence, and operating with the assumption that continuity is 
the hallmark of our lives, the Buddhist view presents a fluid account
of experience as an ever-changing stream of psycho-physical events. 
This dynamic model of human existence comprises the five classes 
of phenomena the Buddha referred to as the "aggregates of 
grasping" (*upadana-skandha*), on account of 
our tendency to grasp after and identify with them (see 
 SS2.3).
 These classes of phenomena are to be understood purely in causal 
terms, and not as the attributes and activities of a substantive 
self. There is no self or substantive mind that either supervenes on or 
exists apart from these aggregates. Rather, as the term 
'aggregate' suggests, the Buddhist tradition introduces a
new and unique way of talking about human experience by avoiding the 
metaphysical pitfalls of reification.


### 2.2 The Principle of Dependent-Arising




What is the relationship between thoughts, or even thoughts about
thoughts, and actions? The Buddhist answers this question by
introducing a new theory of causality based on the principle of
dependent-arising (*pratityasamutpada*). All things,
including all cognitive events, arise in dependence upon a multitude
of causes and conditions. Thus, the Buddhist appears to reject both
top-down (viz., cognitivist) and bottom-up (viz., strongly
determinist) approaches to cognition: thoughts are neither prior to
actions, and thus causally determine them, nor do they lack causal
force, and are thus epiphenomenal. The best known formulation of this
principle captures the sense of transience and interdependence of all
phenomena: "This being, that becomes; from the arising of this,
that arises; this not being, that does not become; from the ceasing of
this, that ceases" (*Majjhima Nikaya*, II, 32).


### 2.3 The Five Aggregates




The Buddhist tradition conceives of the human individual as 
consisting of five types of aggregates that serve as the bases of what we
ordinarily designate as persons: (1) material form or body 
(*rupa*); (2) sensations (*vedana*); (3) 
apperception (*samjna*); (4) volitions or 
dispositional formations (*samskara*); and (5) 
consciousness (*vijnana*). This aggregated view of 
persons informs all aspect of Buddhist thought and is indispensable 
to any account of cognition. Thus, in replacing the agent or 
cognizing 'I' with a play of causal factors resulting in 
momentary cognitive events, the Buddhist tradition treats the 
cognizing agent as merely another way of referring to the embodied 
and dynamic functioning of the five aggregates. The specific nature 
of these aggregates is the subject of the Abhidharma descriptive 
analytic (see 
 SS3).
 Following Vasubandhu's *Treasury of Higher Knowledge* (AKBh 
*ad* I, 14-16), the five aggregates may be defined as 
follows:



*Form*. The first collection of aggregates, form or 
materiality (*rupa-skandha*), stands for objects regarded
as compounded entities (*samskrta*). Form is 
understood to be 'compounded' in only one of the two 
senses in which compoundedness can be interpreted: that of being the 
product of causes and conditions (the other refers to entities that 
are produced by putting parts together). The category of form also 
includes the sensory systems, which from an anatomical and 
physiological point of view are material forms.



*Feeling*. The second collection includes the aggregates of 
sensation or feeling (*vedana-skandha*) and defines the 
quality of the impressions that result from contact between the sense
and its object. Sensations are generally divided into pleasant, 
unpleasant and neutral and depend on the sensory modality in which 
they originate. As internal mental states, sensations are both 
conditioned by, and conditioning of, the habitual tendencies of past 
karmic activity. 



*Apperception*. The third collection of aggregates consists of
apperception (*samjna-skandha*), and refers to the 
capacity to comprehend the specific marks (*nimitta*) of 
phenomenal objects. The characteristic mark of a phenomenon is its 
distinctive quality. The term itself is a derivative from 
*sam* + *jna*, meaning 'to 
understand,' 'to be aware of,' or more 
appropriately 'to make intelligible' or 'to cause 
to be understood,' thus indicating the causative function of 
perception predicates. As a synthetic mode of apprehension, 
apperception is caused by a multiplicity of factors including 
memories, expectations, dispositions, etc. In this generic sense, 
apperception might be understood as broadly equivalent to the 
Aristotelian *sensus communis*, the faculty that binds 
together the sensory input into a coherent representation of the 
object, or to Kant's notion of the transcendental unity of 
apperception.



*Volitions*. The fourth collection of aggregates includes 
dispositional formations or volitions 
(*samskrta-skandha*). Volitions are primarily 
responsible for bringing forth future states of existence. They 
include all the conditioned factors that are intrinsic to 
consciousness (*samprayuktasamskara*) as well
as factors that are dissociated from consciousness 
(*viprayuktasamskara*). Support for the view that 
mental factors dissociated from thought are to be included in the 
category of dispositional formations is found in the 
*Samyukta-Nikaya* (V, 450): "Delighting in 
such volitional formations, they generate volitional formations that 
lead to birth, generate volitional formations that lead to aging, 
generate volitional formations that lead to death, generate 
volitional formations that lead to sorrow, lamentation, pain, 
displeasure, and despair." Volitions, thus, are habitual 
latencies that predispose and motivate an individual to have a 
certain type of experience while at the same time conditioning the 
response to that experience.



*Consciousness*. The fifth and last collection contains the 
aggregates of consciousness (*vijnana-skandha*). In 
contrast to apperception, consciousness is defined as the impression 
(*vijnapti*) of each object or as the bare apprehension 
of each object. Glossing on this definition, later Abhidharma 
commentators treat consciousness (*vijnana*) as 
referring to an awareness of the object alone 
(*vastumatra*) (see Yasomitra's 
*Vyakhya ad* AK I, 16). Unlike sensation 
and apperception, which apprehend the specific characteristics of 
objects, consciousness acts as an integrating and discerning factor 
of experience.




In the schematic analysis of the five aggregates only form is a
physical aggregate *stricto sensu*. While sensations,
apperception, and volitions *can* acquire an objectual aspect,
they are not empirical objects proper. Thus, a sensation such as pain
is not reducible to the physical substrate, say a finger, in which it
is instantiated. Rather, as object-oriented cognitive aspects,
sensations, apperception, and volitions are included in the broader
Abhidharma category of mental factors (*caitasika*).
Furthermore, the empirical approach that characterizes the Buddhist
analysis of materiality does not imply physicalism, at least not in
the sense that everything is or supervenes on the physical. Rather,
materiality is analyzed as being reducible to the phenomenal content
of experience. Thus, the formal properties of material objects are
analyzed either in terms of how they are impacted by contact or as
factors that oppose resistance. These properties, however, do not
extend to the atoms themselves, which according to the Abhidharma form
the building blocks of materiality. As monadic units the atoms are
seen as devoid of any formal properties
(*rupana*). It is only as atomic compounds
(*samghatastha*,
*samcita*) that atoms are subject to the same properties
of resistance and destruction as composite material entities (see 
 SS4.2).
 


## 3. Consciousness and Cognition




Speculations on the nature and function of consciousness have a long 
and complex history in Indian Buddhism. In the canonical literature 
the term that most often translates as consciousness 
(*vijnana*) is synonymously used for designating 
'mind' or the 'life principle' in the most 
generic sense of those terms. In a technical sense, consciousness 
designates either the type of awareness that arises depending on any 
of the six sensory domains (*ayatana*) or awareness as 
one of the five aggregates of existence. In addition, consciousness 
is also listed as one of the twelve factors or causes 
(*nidana*) in the chain of dependently arising 
(*pratityasamutpada*) phenomena. However, it is only
in the Abhidharma scholastic that we come across systematic attempts 
to understand the dynamic processes of consciousness and cognition. 
Indeed, the Abhidharma synthesis may be rightly viewed as a theory of
consciousness (cf. Piatigorsky 1984, 8).


### 3.1 Overview of the Abhidharma Synthesis




A few clarifications about the origins and scope of the Abhidharma
scholastic are necessary before we explore its analysis of mind.
First, as the name suggest, the Abhidharma ('about'
(*abhi*) + 'the doctrine' (*dharma*),
usually translated as 'higher doctrine') is concerned with
the notion of *dharma*, its central and most difficult
concept. Depending on the context, a *dharma* may be taken to
designate either the body of teachings attributed to the Buddha or a
basic element or unit of existence and/or experience, better captured
by the notion of phenomenon. In the Abhidharmic analysis of mind and
mental constituents, a *dharma* most closely refers to a
temporal instance in the stream of cognitive events, which is
momentary and discrete, that arises together with a moment of
cognitive awareness (a *vijnana*). In this extended
sense, a *dharma* designates both an indivisible unit of
experience and an object of conceptual analysis, which means that
factors contributing to the arising of cognitive awareness can in turn
become objects of reflective inquiry. 




A large body of literature concerned with examining the received 
teachings had emerged roughly three centuries after the death of the 
Buddha (ca. 150 B.C.E.). The origins of the Abhidharma schools are 
thus traceable to the diverse interpretations of the Buddha's 
teachings. Two main branches of Abhidharma 
are extant: that of the Theravada ('Doctrines of the 
Elders'), which became dominant in Sri Lanka and southeast 
Asia, and that of the Sarvastivada (the 'All Exists 
School'), which flourished in North India and provided the 
basis for the development of later Abhidharma and Mahayana 
schools in India, and later on in Central and East Asia. The 
foundational texts for these two branches of Abhidharma are the 
*Kathavatthu* ('Points of Controversy') and 
the *Mahavibhasa* ('The Great 
Commentary').




The four main schools of Indian Buddhism emerge almost exclusively 
from the Northen branch of Abhidharma. The 
*Mahavibhasa* itself is associated with 
the first of these schools, the Vaibhasika 
('Follower of the 
*Vibhasa*'). The other three schools are
those of the Sautrantika ('Follower of the 
Sutra'), Madhyamaka ('Middle Way School') and 
Yogacara ('Practice of Yoga School'). The 
Sautrantika doctrines survive primarily in later texts such as 
Vasubandhu's *Abhidharmakosa* ('Treasury of Higher 
Knowledge,' ca. 360 C.E.) and Vimalamitra's 
*Abhidharmadipa* ('Light of Higher 
Knowledge,' ca. 500 C.E.). The Madhyamaka School is associated 
with the emergence of the vast corpus of 
*Prajnaparamita* ('Perfection of 
Wisdom') literature and with the works of the prominent 
Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna (fl. ca. 150 C.E.), 
principally with his *magnum opus*, the 
*Mulamadhyamakakarikas* ('Verses on the 
Foundation of the Middle Way'). Lastly, the Yogacara,
which became the dominant philosophical school in India from the 5th 
through the 12th century traces it origins to the encyclopedic work 
of Asanga (ca. 315-390) and his half brother Vasubandhu 
(320-380). Asanga is credited with the authorship of the 
*Mahayanasamgraha* ('Compendium of the 
Great Vehicle') and the encyclopedic 
*Yogacarabhumisastra* 
('Treatise on the Stages of the Practice of Yoga,' most 
likely a compilation by various authors). Vasubandhu is the author of
some of the most influential works of Indian Buddhist philosophy, 
which include, apart from his *Treasury of Higher Knowledge* 
(written from a Sautrantika perspective) such seminal texts as 
the *Madhyantavibhagabhasya* 
('Commentary on the Separation of the Middle from 
Extremes'), the *Trisvabhavanirdesa* 
('Teaching of the Three Self-Natures'), and the pithy but
influential *Vimsatikakarika* 
('The Twenty Verses') and 
*Trimsikakarika* ('Thirty 
Verses') (see 
 SS6.3
 for a discussion of the main arguments for idealism presented by 
Vasubandhu in the *Twenty Verses*).




A wide gulf separates works such as Vasubandhu's *Treasury of
Higher Knowledge*, a foundational text for most of the
philosophical developments of late Indian Buddhism, from the simple
and pragmatic teachings of the Buddha. The Abhidharma scholastic
evolved from mnemonic lists (*matrka*) that were
initially intended to work as summaries of various topics discussed in
the canonical texts. These lists were usually structured around five
main categories: form or matter (*rupa*), mind or
consciousness (*citta*), mental constituents (*caitta*),
conditioned factors dissociated from consciousness
(*cittaviprayukta samskara*), and unconditioned
elements (*asamskrta*) such as cessation or
nirvana. In composing his *Treasury of Higher
Knowledge*, Vasubandhu mainly relied on three Abhidharma texts:
Dharmasri's *An Epitome of Abhidharma*
(*Abhidharmasara*), Ghosaka's *The Nectar of
Abhidharma* (*Abhidharmamrtasastra*)
and Katyayaniputra's *Method of Knowing*
(*Jnanaprasthana*) (see Frauwallner 1963, 1971a,
1971b). From these three works Vasubandhu adopted his categorical
classification of Abhidharma topics according to the five
aggregates. The analytic models of the five categories and the five
aggregates represent, thus, "an attempt to record exhaustively
all the elements of being and order them systematically"
(Frauwallner 1995, 146). Such efforts were not new: indeed, the
Buddhist attempt mirrors similar undertakings in the Brahmanical
tradition. A good example of such undertakings is the
Samkhya scheme of the mental and physical elements and
their derivatives. 


### 3.2 Sensation and Perception




The Sanskrit term most commonly associated with sensory activity, 
*indriya* ('sensation' or 'power'), is
found in the *Rg Veda* (I, 55; II, 16), a collection of hymns 
dealing with various religio-philosophical topics central to the 
Brahmanical tradition. Here the senses are likened to lesser deities 
acting on behalf of Indra, the king of the gods, as messengers to the
lower realms. As manifestations of Indra's specific powers, the 
senses thus understood correspond to his capacity for knowledge 
(*buddhindriya*) and action (*karmendriya*). This 
early mythological narrative in which lesser deities are the agencies
of sensory activity in humans bears some structural similarity to 
Descartes' account in his *Treatise of Man* and 
*Passions of the Soul* of the animal spirits which flowing 
from the pineal gland control the activity of sensation, imagination,
as well as bodily movements. In the Upanisads, this 
mythological account gives way to a philosophically nuanced view of 
sensory activity as the direct result of contact between the self and
the world. According to the Upanisadic understanding of 
perception, the senses are created from the substance of 
sense-objects and with the specific purpose of revealing the latter. 
The revealing agent, however, is the self (see *Katha 
Upanisad*, I, iii, 4).




Buddhist authors, unlike their Brahmanical opponents, make a clear 
distinction between the activity or faculty of sensing 
(*indriyagocara*) and the medium which implements it, as for 
instance in distinguishing between the faculty of vision 
(*caksurvijnanadhatu*) and the visual 
system (*caksurdhatu*). Moreover, the senses are 
conceived as receptacles of experience 
(*indriyadhisthana*) rather than 
physical organs interacting with empirical objects. Instead of 
treating the senses as the faculties of an internal agent, the 
Buddhists regard them as instruments or mediums joining together the 
external spheres of sensory activity with the internal spheres of 
perception (see *Abhidharmasamuccayabhasya*
*ad* I, 4.). In the *Treasury of Higher Knowledge* 
(AKBh *ad* I, 17), Vasubandhu provides the following list to 
account for the causal relations that obtain between the sensory 
systems and their bases or domains of activity 
(*ayatana*): 





|  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- |
| *The manifest* | *The locus of origin* | *The cognive support* |
| 1. visual awareness  | 1. visual system  | 7. visibles (e.g. color and shape)  |
| 2. auditory awareness  | 2. auditory system | 8. sound |
| 3. olfactory consciousness  | 3. olfactive system  | 9. smell |
| 4. gustatory consciousness  | 4. gustatory system | 10. taste |
| 5. tactile consciousness  | 5. tactile system  | 11. touch |
| 6. mental awareness  | 6. cognitive system  | 12. mental constituents = *dharmas* |




Thus the Buddhist accounts for sensory activity and cognitive 
awareness by reducing experience to its contents and analyzing it in 
terms of its constitutive elements and functions. In the often quoted
formula of dependent arising (see below 
 SS3.3),
 any of the six types of cognitive awareness in the first column 
arises in dependence upon a corresponding element in columns 2 and 3.
Thus, instead of construing cognitive awareness as the activity of an
abiding self, the Buddhist uses the notion of 'aggregate'
in the original sense of the Sanskrit term *skandha*: 
something which is fashioned by the collective combination of 
multiple causes and conditions (see AKBh *ad* I, 7). These 
constitutive parts, which collectively make the psycho-physical 
continuum that we ordinarily associate with persons, exist as part of
a causal continuum of interdependently arising phenomena. 


### 3.3 Mental Proliferation




Ordinary mentation is bound up with expectations, judgments, and 
desires. The Buddhist philosophical term used for describing the 
state of ordinary mentation is *prapanca* (lit. 
'fabrication,' usually translated as 'conceptual 
proliferation')[see *Samyutta Nikaya*, IV, 72]. We 
don't simply apprehend an object. Rather, we apprehend it as the 
locus of a multiplicity of associations: in seeing a tree we perceive
an entity made of trunk, branches, and foliage but also something 
that can provide shade and lumber. In perception we are ordinarily 
assailed by a stream of conceptualizing tendencies, which have their 
ultimate source in linguistic conventions and categorizing practices.
These conceptualizing tendencies overwhelm and distort the perceptual
experience.




In the canonical literature conceptual proliferation is associated 
with sensory activity rather than consciousness [see *Samyutta 
Nikaya*, I, 100, IV, 52; *Majjhima Nikaya*, I, 
65]. These proliferating tendencies, which are sustained by a 
constant flow of sense impressions, give rise to the common sense 
conceptual schema that informs our ordinary, habitual coping 
practices. Thus cognition, in its perceptual aspect, has a dual form:
subjectively, it discloses a bare consciousness that merely attends 
to the flow of sensations; objectively, it corresponds to each 
specific domain of empirical awareness: visual objects to visual 
awareness, sounds to auditory awareness, etc.




An inevitable outcome of this dual aspect view of perception is the 
tendency of most Buddhist philosophy of mind toward metaphysical 
idealism, since the diversity and manifoldness of the perceived world
suggest not a rich and variegated ontology, but a profligate mind. 
Alternatively, the Buddhist philosophy of mind could be interpreted 
as a type of phenomenology, since it argues that empirical awareness 
opens us to a world that is not entirely free from our own mental 
propensities (see 
 SS5.4
 and 
 SS6.3).
 It is primarily on account of this proliferating tendency of the 
ordinary mind that notions such as self and other are superimposed 
upon the constant flow of phenomena. Such superimpositions are the 
main cause for the reification of perceptual content, leading to the 
all too familiar propensity to operate with notions such as existence
and non-existence, self and other. As the Abhidharma traditions 
maintain, concepts are superimposed upon the constant flow of 
phenomena in dependence upon the presence or absence of stimuli at 
the sense-doors.


### 3.4 Consciousness




The canonical literature presents us with a standard formula for the 
dependently arising phenomenon of consciousness:



> 
> 
> Dependent on the eye and forms, visual-consciousness arises. The
> meeting of the three is contact. With contact as condition there is
> feeling. What one feels, that one perceives. What one perceives, that
> one thinks about. What one thinks about, that one mentally
> proliferates. With what one has mentally proliferated as the source,
> perception and notions resulting from mental proliferation beset a man
> with respect to past, future, and present forms cognizble through the
> eye (*Majjhima Nikaya*, I, 111-112).
> 




As this passage illustrates, a specific type of consciousness 
accompanies each of the sensory modalities, in this case the 
experience of visual awareness. No one element in this nexus of 
interactions has causal priority. Rather, these associations between 
perception and thinking are due to the habitual tendency of the mind 
towards conceptual proliferation, for as the Buddha declares in his 
discourses, the perceptual experience of ordinary people is replete 
with mistaken apprehensions. Note that while sense, object, and 
conscious apprehension come together as a consequence of past 
habituations and other conditioning factors, the ensuing cognitive 
awareness appears to both sustain and be sustained by these factors.




Now, in the canonical literature consciousness 
(*vijnana*) is treated as a synonym of apperception 
(*samjna*) [see *Sutta Nipata*, 538, 
806]. This lack of clear dissociation between apperception, 
understood here as the empirical apprehension of phenomena, and 
consciousness as the apprehending faculty, is made obvious by 
frequent references to *samjna* as being the 
cause of attachment to agreeable physical objects and mental states. 
Furthermore, apperception is often contrasted with wisdom thus 
suggesting that what is meant by it is not sensory activity proper 
but rather the awareness that bears upon it. Likewise, 
*vijnana* does not denote consciousness as a 
cognitive phenomenon distinct from sense perception. Rather, it 
refers to the consciousness of a specific sense modality (e.g., 
visual-awareness, auditory-awareness). Because the mental faculty is 
also regarded as a sensory system, the type of awareness that bears 
upon it is termed mental or 'introspective awareness' 
(*manovijnana*). The arising of consciousness, thus,
depends on sense perception, but it also depends on attention, since 
sensory activity alone does not give rise to perception. The latter 
activity requires attending to the stimuli: the amorphous mass of the
sense data gives rise to a percept only when sensation is coupled 
with attention. In the formula of dependent arising that we encounter
at several places in the canonical literature, consciousness is said 
to arise in dependence upon the sense and the physical object. But 
the appearance of phenomena itself depend in turn upon this empirical
awareness. Thus, the Buddha declares:



> 
> 
> Mind and body condition contact. By whatever properties,
> characteristics, signs or indications the mind factor is to be
> conceived, in their absence...would any grasping at the idea of the
> body factor be manifest? No, Sir...By whatever properties the mind
> factor and the body factor are designated, in their absence...would
> any grasping at the notion of sensory reaction be manifest? No,
> Sir. By whatever properties, characteristics, signs or indications the
> mind factor is conceived, in their absence is there any contact to be
> found? No, Sir. Then, Ananda, just this, namely mind and body, is
> the root, the cause, the origin, the condition for all contact. I have
> said: 'Consciousness conditions mind and body'
> (*Digha Nikaya* II, 63, 2-21).
> 




Passages such as this present a metaphysical picture of mental and 
psychological individuation as arising in dependence upon the 
activity of empirical consciousness. Consciousness, however, is not 
treated as the direct cause for the manifestation of body, feelings 
and perceptions. Rather, the Buddhist tradition assigns this causal 
role to the four elements. The structure is one of mutual entailment: 
on the one hand, feelings, perceptions, and volitions are caused by 
contact resulting from intentional states of cognitive awareness; on 
the other hand, the psycho-physical aggregates in turn condition the 
manifestation of consciousness.




Thus, the Nikayas do not offer a comprehensive picture of 
consciousness as a distinct phenomenon, but only as something that 
arises and passes away as a result of the activity of all the other 
psycho-physical elements. Its characteristic aspect is determined by 
the sensory system with which it happens to be associated. Thus, the 
distinctive aspect of visual consciousness is determined by the 
makeup of the visual sense and not by any intrinsic properties of its
own.




The rejection of an immutable self abiding in each individual seems 
to have undermined all attempts to analyze consciousness on its own 
terms. Even though the Sanskrit term *vijnana* 
(which in the Upanisads designates consciousness as an abiding 
characteristic of the self) is adopted by the Buddhists as an 
appropriate designation for consciousness, the interpretations found 
in the Nikayas and the early Abhidharma deny its immutability 
and instead regard it as indistinct from perceptual cognition. At 
this early stage in the development of a Buddhist theory of mind, 
*vijnana* still retains its double meaning: (1) that
of 'consciousness' as a factor in the chain of 
dependently arisen phenomena that is essential for the continuity of 
the karmic process; and (2) that of 'cognition', a 
faculty that is associated with each of the five sensory modalities 
and with the mind [see *Samyutta Nikaya*, III, 87; 
*Majjhima Nikaya*, I, 292]. In later Abhidharma 
traditions, such as those of the Sautrantika and 
Yogacara Schools, consciousness is discussed mainly in 
relation to the aggregates of cognition 
(*vijnanaskandha*), which are primarily the senses 
and the mental faculty [see AKBh *ad* I, 16a].




Already in the earliest strata of the canonical literature we find a 
tripartite model of cognition in which a clear distinction is made 
between the phenomenal world, its mode of apprehension, and the 
specific type of consciousness by which it is apprehended. However, 
what is meant by world (*loka*) in this context is not an 
external reality of physical entities and processes, but the 
phenomenal world of perception (*lokasamjna*) 
that arises in dependence upon the proliferating activities of mind. 
Thus, the notion that consciousness acts as a causal condition for 
the appearance of phenomena, while not a direct rejection of 
external, mind-independent objects, does seem to anticipate the 
idealist tendencies of the Yogacara School (see 
 SS6.3).
 


### 3.5 Intentionality




In the canonical literature intentional acts are often assimilated to
karmic tendencies in such a way as to suggest that intentions or 
volitions (*cetana*) are not separate from the 
propensities generated by past experience. Abhidharma traditions, on 
the other hand, operate with the assumption that all cognitions are 
inherently intentional. Indeed, for the Vaibhasika all 
types of consciousness are intentional: they are about an object that
must necessarily exist. However, a detailed account of intentionality
is only found in later philosophical developments associated with the
Buddhist logico-epistemological school of Dignaga and 
Dharmakirti (see 
 SS7.3).
 




For instance, in the *Treasury of Higher Knowledge* (AKBh 
*ad* I, 1ab), Vasubandhu defines action (*karman*) as 
volition (*cetana*) and its ensuing result. However, the 
action in fact comprises two distinct types of activity: the volition
itself and the intentional act (*cetayitva*). 
Furthermore, the action itself, conceived as a dual process of 
volition and its result, in fact consists of three discrete stages: 
bodily, verbal, and mental action, corresponding respectively to the 
basis of the action (or how it is realized), its own nature, and the 
cause which prompts it. Each of these three stages, although 
apparently separate, are in fact the same action viewed from three 
different angles. From the perspective of its basis, the action is 
grounded in the body, which serves as its instrumental medium. From 
the perspective of its nature, an action consists in its verbal 
and/or habitual expression. Finally, as far as its motivation is 
concerned, an action finds its ultimate cause in the realm of the 
mental. Thus conception and verbal expression, represent forms of 
activity that manifest an individual's intention to express certain 
ideas or engage with a certain object of experience. This 
intentionality springs from continuous residual impressions 
(*vasana*) resulting from past associations of names
with the things they designate. 




In explaining the relationship between volition and action, 
Vasubandhu points to traces left by past volitions to demonstrate 
that intentional acts are not entirely determined by the present 
volition. For example, the intention to break a rule of conduct such 
as not lying, is conditioned both by the present volition and by 
traces left by similar volitional acts. In his *Treatise on 
Action* (*Karmasiddhiprakarana*, III, 2, 40), 
Vasubandhu expands on his idea that impressions of past experience 
are instrumental in effecting the karmic continuum that constitutes 
the individual personality, by appealing to the notion of receptacle 
consciousness (*alaya-vijnana*). A receptacle 
consciousness (as the name suggests), can form the basis for the 
reception of consciousness traces 
(*vijnanavasana*), whereas a self, if 
conceived as a singular and immutable agent, is incapable of 
providing such a support. For Vasubandhu and all followers of the 
Yogacara theory of consciousness, the analysis of 
intentionality cannot be properly conducted without reference to this
receptacle consciousness, a subliminal form of cognitive awareness 
that serves as a basis for all the propensities, habits, and 
tendencies that inform and direct individual actions (see 
 SS5.4).
 


### 3.6 Attention




Nearly all discussions that focus on the type of consciousness that 
is associated with a specific perceptual occasion (e.g., visual 
consciousness with an instance of visual perception), seek to answer 
the question of causal priority (which is prior, sensation or 
cognitive apprehension?) by examining the nature of contact itself. 
Thus, whereas in the Nikayas contact (*sparsa*) is 
the primary cause of the arising of cognitive awareness, in the 
Abhidharma it becomes a derivative aspect of empirical consciousness 
itself (or indeed a *dharma* in its own right) (see 
*Visuddhimagga* XVII, 223-225; AKBh *ad* III, 
30). However, the mere presence of objects in the range of perception
does not by itself give rise to cognitive awareness. For the content 
of experience to enter the domain of awareness, attention must be 
directed to whatever is sensed. For this reason, attention 
(*avartana*), understood as the mind's turning toward a 
certain object, is not a key term in the canonical literature, where 
various cognitive functions are treated as distinct forms of 
consciousness. The term becomes significant in the Abhidharma, where 
the generality of consciousness is replaced with more concrete mental
functions that perform specific tasks. However, Buddhaghosa in the 
*Atthasalini* maintains that while consciousness can
arise without attention, it cannot arise in the absence of an 
objective cognitive support (cf. Williams 1981, 230).




The role of attention in cognition becomes obvious if we take into 
account the fact that the mere coming together of object, sense 
faculty, and consciousness is not sufficient for a cognitive event to
arise. Rather, cognition occurs only when consciously attending to a 
given object. In normal circumstances, the senses always process a 
steady and continuous stream sensory impressions. But this sense data
becomes a concrete object of apprehension only when attention is 
directed toward specific regions of the perceptual field. Why is it 
that causation must be understood from the perspective of 
consciousness? Because, given the generally pragmatic concerns of the
Buddhist explanatory account, consciousness is central to effecting 
the changes that are necessary for an individual engaged on the noble
eight-fold path to make any real progress. Thus, whereas contact 
cannot be prevented so long as consciousness (*citta*) 
inhabits, and is conditioned by, the mental constituents 
(*caitta*, *caittasika*), feelings and perceptions that
result from contact are within the purview of consciousness.


## 4. Mind and Mental Phenomena




In the Buddhist philosophical vocabulary there are at least three 
terms for what is ordinarily designated as 'mind': 
*manas* ('mental power' or 'mental 
faculty'), *vijnana* 
('discernment' or 'consciousness faculty') 
and *citta* ('mind' or 'thought'). The
term that most generally translates as 'mind' in the 
Abhidharma traditions is *citta*. But *citta* also 
denotes thought and it is usually used in conjunction with the 
'mental constituents' (*caitta*) with which it 
stands in a reciprocal relation. Thus, whereas *citta* denotes
the subjective aspect of the mental domain (e.g., a state of pure 
awareness), *caitta* refers to specific cognitive states, such
as sensations, perceptions, feelings, volitions, etc. These mental 
constituents are understood specifically as cognitive domains 
(*ayatana*) or as sensed textures that mold our 
experience and give it its qualitative aspects--the phenomenal 
character of "what it is like". Note that in works such 
as Buddhaghosa's *Visuddhimagga* and Vasubandhu's *Treasury
of Higher Knowledge*, *manas*, *vijnana*,
and *citta* are used more or less synonymously as designating 
the same mental reality (cf. Lamotte 1938, 15). However, in the 
*Mahayanasamgraha* (I, 6), Asanga takes 
the three terms as designating different realities: *citta* is
said to stand for the Yogacara notion of receptacle 
consciousness (*alaya-vijnana*), *manas*
refers to the mental domain and its afflictive tendencies, and 
*vijnana* to the six types of cognitive awareness 
(bodily, sensory, apperceptive, etc). 


### 4.1 The Two Dimensions of Mind




The Buddhist analysis of mind and mental phenomena relies on the
expansive taxonomies of the Abhidharma traditions, which seek to
explain human experience by reducing it to its most fundamental
elements. These elements (e.g., sensations,
volitions, etc.) are effectively the irreducible units of experience
that any analysis of persons must ultimately reveal. Breaking every
experience down to its irreducible constituents holds the key to
understanding both the dynamics of the mental and the resulting
activities that are associated with the karmic process. But the
ultimate aim of this reductive analysis is its overriding
soteriological (or even therapeutic) concern: mapping the mental
domain so that afflictive tendencies
(*klista-manas*) may be properly identified and
countered.




An important, and perhaps unintended, consequence of this project of 
reductive analysis is that momentariness is revealed to be not only a
principle of the nature of reality, but also (and more significantly)
of cognitive awareness itself. In the formula of dependent arising 
(quoted above in 
 SS3.3),
 the awareness that arises in conjunction with the activity of a given
sensory system is itself impermanent and momentary: visual awareness 
and visual object, for instance, are both events within a mental 
stream of continuing relations. The question that Abhidharma 
philosophers must confront is precisely what accounts for the sense 
of recollection that accompanies these cognitive series. In other 
words, if discrete, episodic cognitive events are all that 
constitutes the mental domain, how does appropriation and grasping, 
for instance, occur? The causal account, it seems, gives only an 
incomplete picture of the mental, for even as the Sanskrit term for 
cognitive awareness, *vijnana*, conveys the sense of
differentiation and discernment, it is not exactly clear how such 
discernment also sorts between an inner and an outer domain of 
experience. Indeed, consciousness is not merely a faculty for 
discerning and sorting through the constitutive elements of 
experience, but itself an event in a series of interdependent causes 
and conditions. As we shall see below, it is only later with the 
development of the Yogacara notion of reflexive awareness, 
that this issue is properly addressed.




This account of the mental in terms of the irreducible units of 
experience or *dharmas* is not without it problems (see 
Piatigorsky 1984, 181; Waldron 2003, 52). If what we take to be mind 
and mental phenomena are in fact discrete and momentary series of 
cognitive events, how are we to account for those elements in the 
mental stream that appear to subsist and continue? The dual use of 
*vijnana* in the early Abhidharma literature to 
designate both a momentary discerning faculty and a persisting 
sentience, simply masks the problematic: a descriptive account of 
*vijnana* in terms of a succession of momentary
cognitive events, which alone are real and causally efficacious,
cannot explain how past events outside the immediate causal series can
affect the present. In its second use as pure consciousness or pure
sensation, *vijnana* takes on the role of
explanans. The possibility that this secondary sense of
*vijnana* could be mistakenly taken as suggestive of
an abiding, enduring reality, explains in part why the Abhidharma 
psychological vocabulary includes terms such as *pudgala* 
('individual' or 'person') and 
*citta-santana* ('mind-steam').


### 4.2 Cognitive support (*alambana*)




In the canonical literature, afflictive tendencies resulting from the
accumulation of residual habits are seen as a pervasive aspect of the
mental life even for the Buddhist adept. In
the *Majjhima-Nikaya*  (I, 433), for instance, we see the
Buddha instructing his disciples about the latent nature of such
afflictive underlying dispositions as the 'self-view'
(Pali
*sakkayaditthi*, Skt. 
*satkayadrsti*). The example given here
is that of an infant who has a latent disposition toward manifesting the
view of personhood despite presently lacking such a notion. Using 
this example, the Buddha then contrasts the state of the infant with 
that of a mature person who, not having learned about the not-self 
doctrine, habitually holds the view that she is or has a personality.





Afflictive tendencies are not the only factors conditioning the 
arising of cognitive awareness. The Abhidharma tradition also 
identifies various types of limitations imposed upon the senses by 
virtue of their natural constitution and the natural constitution of 
their apprehended objects. Vasubandhu, for instance, describes three 
types of resistance by which objects limit the activity of a given 
sense (see AKBh *ad* I, 14):


1. Resistance pertaining to obstructions
 (*avaranapratighata*), exemplified by the fact
 that a body or any of its anatomical parts obstruct the manifestation
 of a similar body in that very same place;
2. Resistance pertaining to the object
 (*visayapratighata*), exemplified in the case of
 vision by fact that its activity is impeded by the absence of light,
 as when night restricts vision. Interestingly, in his example,
 Vasubandhu refers to the supposed difference between the human and
 the bat eye: the absence of light might obstruct vision for humans,
 but it facilitates vision for bats. Obviously, Vasubandhu could not
 have been aware that bats navigate by means of a sonar system rather
 than some special type of night vision.
3. Resistance pertaining to the causal support
 (*alambanapratighata*), exemplified by the fact that
 the mind and mental states are restricted by their objects (this
 refers to the fact that the mind can only apprehend abstract mental
 objects and not empirical entities).




As this account of the types of limitations that restrict cognition 
demonstrates, the Abhidharma tradition seems unambiguous about the 
ultimate basis for cognition: this is to be found in the sensory 
domain itself, given that cognitions change following modifications 
at the level of sense rather than in the mind (see AKBh *ad* 
I, 45ab). In the case where changes in the mental stream occasion in 
the absence of any sensory stimulus, these are said to be the result 
of unconscious traces of past experience rather than endogenous to 
mind itself.




The Abhidharma analysis of the proper basis for the arising of 
cognition reveals another important aspect of the Buddhist cognitive 
model: cognition follows the sense rather than the object (see AKBh 
*ad* I 28ab). This is obvious, for instance, in the specific 
terminology used to describe conscious cognitive activity: thus, a 
consciousness which accompanies seeing is designated as "visual
consciousness" (*caksurvijnana*) rather 
than "consciousness of the visible" 
(*rupavijnana*). Seeing or having conscious 
visual experiences is the result of being endowed with a visual 
system even as the seeming transparency of the experience of seeing 
might suggest that visual awareness is of the object itself.




The notion that cognition has its basis in the sense rather than the
object is of tremendous philosophical import for the Sautrantika
and Yogacara Schools, whose philosophical perspectives are
best described as phenomenalism. Thus terms used to designate physical
objects (*visaya*) are replaced with terms which
designate cognitive aspects (*akara*). For the
Yogacaras in particular, the denial of the existence of
external objects may be interpreted simply as a rebuttal of the
tendency to assign ontological status to empirical objects outside, or
independent of, the cognitive events in which they are instantiated
(cf. Lusthaus 2002, 121), a view reminiscent of Berkeley's likeness
principle. Similar reasons are at work in the Yogacara
perspective of epistemologists like Dharmakirti, who take the
view that consciousness is inherently intentional, a position which
has been recently termed 'epistemic idealism' (which is
contrasted with 'external realism,' presumably the
position adopted by the Sautrantikas) (Dunne 2004, 59; see also
Dreyfus 1997; 2007). However, insofar as Dharmakirti is primarily
concerned with epistemological issues, his commitment to the notion
that we are immediately aware of our cognitive states holds regardless
of whether he adopts an idealist or a phenomenalist stance (cf. Arnold
2008, 5 and *passim*).


## 5. Theories of Mind




The traditional model of mind found in canonical literature undergoes
several systematic developments with the rise of the various
Abhidharma schools. Among the most significant theories to emerge from
these systematic appraisals are the Theravada theory of the
life-continuum mind (*bravanga-citta*), the
Sarvastivada theory of appropriation (*prapti*)
in the mental stream, the Sautrantika theory of seeds
(*bija*) in the mental stream, and the Yogacara
theory of repository consciousness
(*alaya-vijnana*). In addition, we will also
look at Vasubandhu's critical response to the Pudgalavadins, and
the issue of whether the reality of persons can be ascertained at the
conventional level without undermining the metaphysical underpinings
of the Buddhist not-self doctrine.


### 5.1 Mind and Causation




As we saw above 
 (SS2.2)
 in the dynamic process of dependently arising phenomena that 
encompass the five aggregates, cognitive awareness 
(*vijnana*) plays a double role: it is both the 
stream of conscious episodes that characterize the life of the mind 
and, at the same time, the principle of continuity of awareness, by 
virtue of which some sense of identity is maintained over time (cf. 
Johansson 1979, 63f; Krizer 1999, 195f). Thus cognitive awareness 
provides the basis for further cognitive activity, while also 
supporting the formative karmic activities 
(*samskara*) of sensation, perception, volition, 
etc. that perpetuate the life cycle.




The double function of this cognitive awareness as a conditioned and 
conditioning factor within the overall dynamics of the five 
aggregates is explained in causal terms by means of an analysis of 
the underlying factors that play a role in the arising of each 
cognitive event. The lists of the types of causes, conditions, and 
results in the Abhidharma discourse of causality vary only slightly 
from school to school. The classical Sarvastivada theory of
causality, for instance, explains the patterns of conditioning 
through the intermediary of six causes (*hetu*) and four types
of conditions (*pratyaya*), as follows (see AKBh *ad* 
II 49-73):




Causes


1. connected (*samprayukta*)--ensure that each moment of
mind is connected with its corresponding mental factors;
2. simultaneous (*sahabhu*)--arise to simultaneously
produce the same effect while also mutually interacting (such as when
a latent disposition for joy and an external cause of joy, produce a
succeeding moment of joy);
3. homogeneous (*sabhaga*)--produce the experience
of continuity or duration;
4. pervasive (*sarvatraga*)--refers to ignorance about
the true nature of things as the primary cause of cyclical
existence;
5. retributive (*vipaka*)--correspond to the global
influence of past karmic activity;
6. efficient or instrumental (*karana*)--gives
rise to cognitive events following the coming together of sense,
object, and corresponding type of cognitive awareness, such as in the
visual experience of a patch of color.





Conditions


1. causal condition (*hetupratyaya*)--this includes all
the causes mentioned above except for the instrumental cause;
2. homogeneous and immediately antecedent condition
(*samanantarapratyaya*)--which pertains to all past and
present mental content;
3. cognitive support condition
(*alambanapratyaya*)--this can be any mental object
or mental factor;
4. predominant factor condition
(*adhipatipratyaya*)--this refers only to the instrumental
cause.




Detailed accounts of causality such as this are usually followed by
lengthy debates about the precise nature and role of these patterns of
conditioning. For instance, on the model of the homogeneous and
immediately antecedent condition (no. 2 above) a particular *dharma*
conditions that arising of a *dharma* of a similar type: a moment of
joy, therefore, may only give rise to another moment of joy. What this
model cannot explain is how karmic maturation can arise from causes
that are different, especially when the fruit of karmic activity is
not the result of immediately preceding causes but of a heterogeneous
and temporally distant causal chain (see Waldron 2003, 65
and *passim*). It is precisely this sort of issues that
precipitated the development of notions such as the mind-continuum
(*citta-santana*) and receptacle consciousness
(*alaya-vijnana*). More to the point, Abhidharma
philosophers were pressed to counter the possibility that latent
dispositions could persist in an unexplained way in the mental stream
so that even skillful thoughts, for instance of generosity or
loving-kindness, could not be free of them. The alternative scenario,
in which the causal chain might be interrupted by a single thought,
for instance of enlightenment, is no less puzzling: such an
interruption could bring about sudden enlightenment.




Incidentally, developments in Chinese Buddhist thought linked with 
the *Platform Sutra* would arrive at precisely such a 
conclusion: that enlightenment is not a gradual but an instantaneous 
process. Thus, advocates of the gradual path of cultivation (Skt. 
*bhavana-krama*, Chinese *chien*) would 
henceforth debate proponents of sudden enlightenment (Skt. 
*yugapat*, Chinese *tun-wu*) such as we find, for 
instance, in the Great Debate of Lhasa (ca. 792) between the Chinese 
and Korean Ho-shangs teachers and the highly scholastic Indian 
tradition of Yogacara-Madhyamaka represented by 
Santaraksita and his disciple Kamalasila 
(see Demieville 1947, 1952, Gomez 1987, Lai 1987, McRae 1987, 
Gregory 1987, Ruegg 1989).


### 5.2 Life-Continuum Mind




The challenge posed by the need to account for the continuity of mind
in the absence of an enduring, substantive self, was met with mixed 
success by early Abhidharma authors. Thus, most Abhidharmikas 
understood mind primarily as a species of mental cognition and, as 
such, explained the continuity of the mental stream as a successive 
series of cognitive events conditioned by such factors as karmic 
formations, appropriation, and mind itself.




The Theravada authors extended this account of the continuity of
the mental stream by introducing the notion of mind as factor of 
existence (*bhava-anga*). Thus, for the 
Theravadins, this life-continuum mind became just another factor
conditioning the arising of cognitive awareness. The new formula for 
this dependent arising of cognitive awareness suggest a significant 
departure from the basic canonical account. As Buddhaghosa 
notes in the classical compendium of Theravada Abhidharma, the 
*Path to Purity* (*Visuddhimagga* XV, 39), 
"mental awareness arises dependent on the life-continuum mind, 
mental content, and attention". But continuity in the 
life-stream is also supported by the body, even though it is possible
to assume the absence of *bhava-anga* in states of deep 
meditative absorption (cf. Collins 1982, 246). Outside these rare 
states of absorption, the *bhava-anga*-mind or mind as 
factor of existence is essential for continuity in the life-stream. 
The most common tropes used in this context are those of a stream or 
beads strung together on common thread. Collins sums up rather well 
the imagery used for explicating the function of the life-continuum 
mind:



> 
> 
> The Theravada concept of *bhava-anga*, then, is
> this: [...] the identity and continuity of one karmic unit--of
> one 'person' or 'individuality' within a
> lifetime, and of a single series of them [...] is guaranteed by the
> existence of moments of *bhava-anga*-mind, which occur
> whenever there are no moments of mental process, of conscious
> functioning. Each of these *bhava-anga*-mind moments, of
> course, is itself a separate, temporally 'atomic' existent
> (1982, 247).
> 




Modern interpreters have proposed that we regard the function of this
life-continuum mind as being primarily subliminal, although its 
precise operations are not clearly specified. Thus, Cousins (1981, 
28-30) and Nyayatiloka (1980, 27f) suggest that the principal 
function of *bhava-anga* may well be that of either 
accessing or carrying forth the dispositions, habits, and essential 
characteristics of the person. As such, it may not be a conditioning 
factor for the arising of cognitive awareness, but rather merely a 
subliminal level of mental processing.


### 5.3 Appropriation in the Mental Stream




In seeking to reconcile the Abhidharma analysis of mind, and its 
synchronic model of momentary cognitive events, with the diachronic 
phenomenon of karmic activity, the Abhidharma philosophers came up 
with different solutions. The Vaibhasika (also referred in
the literature as the Sarvastivadins), solved the problem 
of the continuity of karmic potential by proposing an ontology of the
constitutive elements of reality (or *dharmas*) as existing in
all three temporal dimensions: past, present, and future. On this 
ontological model, *dharmas* do not change, only their temporal 
condition does. The principal reason for adopting this peculiar 
ontology is the theory of the momentariness 
(*ksanikavada*) of all phenomena: if nothing 
endures for more than a moment how, then, can a cause that is no 
longer present lead to a manifest result? Similarly, if the 
accumulated karmic potential from past experience is no longer 
present, how could it affect the present condition? But in 
postulating the existence of the constituent elements of experience 
throughout the three temporal dimensions, the 
Sarvastivadins simply shifted the Abhidharma problematic: 
having presumably explained what accounts for the efficacy of 
accumulated karmic potential, the question now is why a karmic result
arises at one time rather than another? [for detailed discussions of 
Vaibhasika ontology and its analysis of mind see Williams 
1981, Bastow 1994, and Cox 1995] 




The Vaibhasika solution consists in the introduction of a 
new type of *dharma*, that of appropriation (*prapti*), 
whose persistence in the mental stream is not due to any other 
factors, including the results of past actions, but rather to its own
capacity to replicate itself. The presence of a factor of 
*appropriation* in the mental stream thus ensures the karmic 
efficacy of past causal chains. It also explains why mental factors 
and events remain associated with a given mental stream. This new 
dharma of appropriation is classified as being dissociated from 
thought and as neutral; it is also classified as being one of the 
determining factors for differentiating one mental stream from 
another (see AKBh *ad* II 35). Furthermore, it explains why 
certain dispositions, such as aversion, persist in the mental stream 
of an individual (because appropriation follows the initial 
experience of a first moment of aversion), and how it is possible to 
overcome such dispositions (when appropriation is associated with 
factors that condition non-aversive states of mind). In both cases, 
the concept of appropriation provides an account of continuity in the
mental stream that goes against the stipulations of the Abhidharmic 
principle of the momentariness of mental states. Thus, the 
Vaibhasika solution to reconciling the theory of causality
with the theory of the momentariness of all phenomena rests on a 
notion that itself defies explanation, prompting traditional critics 
such as Vasubandhu to ask whether appropriation is a real entity or a
merely conventional one, and in the end to dismiss it altogether (see
AKBh *ad* II 36cd). 


### 5.4 Seeds in the Mental Stream




The theory of seeds (*bija*) in the mental stream, which
is associated with the Sautrantikas, represents a direct response
to the Vaibhasika efforts toward an unified account of
causality and momentariness. A 'seed' in this case stands
for two sets of phenomena: (1) latent dispositions underlying the
karmic process; and (2) the capacity or power of certain causal chains
to bring about a given result. Unlike the Sarvastivada
concept of appropriation, the notion of seeds is used here only in a
conventional sense and thus does not designate any real element of
existence whether associated with, or dissociated from, thought.
Taking memory as an example, Vasubandhu explains the metaphorical use
of the notion of seeds in the mental stream as simply designating
"the capacity for recollection to arise originating from
experiential knowledge" just as, for instance, sprouts have the
capacity "to produce a grain of rice from a previous grain of
rice" (AKBh *ad* V 1d-2a).




The theory of seeds in the mental stream thus provides a mode of 
talking about causality that does not exclude the notions of latency 
and disposition. By applying the organic imagery that is associated with 
seeds and sprouting to mind and mental phenomena the 
Sautrantikas open the door for an understanding of mentation as 
a dynamic and creative process. A causal account of the mental 
conditioning has thus been supplemented by a dispositional account of
mental states (even though ultimately these dispositions are not 
really true factors of existence). Furthermore, given the association
of intentional mental states with consciousness or cognitive 
awareness, cognitive events are regarded as the main force sustaining
and perpetuating the life cycle, even though Buddhist traditions also
admit that in certain states of meditative absorption there is no 
mental activity. For the Sautrantikas it is the body with its 
sense organs and various other conditioning factors that are 
appropriated in consciousness, ensuring thus that some type of 
mentation whether in a conscious, subliminal, or subtle mental form 
(viz., dreamless sleep), is always ongoing. A debate only arises when
considering the causal mechanism that permits the emergence of 
consciousness from cessation.




The debate between the Vaibhasikas and the 
Sautrantikas concerning the emergence of consciousness from the 
attainment of cessation casts further light on the theoretical 
positions of these two schools regarding the nature of mind and mental phenomena. 
Drawing from the canonical literature, Buddhaghosa describes the 
attainment of cessation (Pali, *nirodha-samapatti*) 
as "the non-occurrence of consciousness and its concomitants 
owing to their progressive cessation" (*Path to Purity*,
23, 18; Nanamoli 1956, 824), in which progressive cessation
stands for all three types of activities (viz., physical, mental, and
verbal). The Vaibhasika position is that in the attainment
of cessation there are no mental events. Given the 
Vaibhasika's commitment to the causal account of the 
homogeneous and immediately antecedent condition 
(*samanantarapratyaya*), which states that mental events have 
as the necessary condition for their occurrence an immediately 
preceding mental event within the same mental series, he must answer 
the following questions, clearly identified by Griffiths (1986, 61): 
Does the last moment of consciousness prior to the attainment of 
cessation "posses an immediately antecedent and homogeneous 
condition but is not itself one?" And, conversely, does the 
first moment of consciousness following the attainment of cessation 
occur "without an immediately antecedent and homogeneous 
condition while itself being one for the moment that follows 
it?"




The Vaibhasika answers these questions, again, by appealing
to the theory of the trans-temporal existence of *dharmas* and the 
possibility of a temporal separation between an immediately 
antecedent condition and its effects: thus, even in the case of 
longer (that is, non-momentary) temporal discontinuities in the 
mental stream, the causal principle of the immediately antecedent 
condition ensures that consciousness arises again from an instance 
similar to the one that preceded the attainment of cessation (cf. 
Griffiths 1986, 63).




The main point of disagreement between the Vaibhasika and 
the Sautrantikas concerns the possibility of causation at a 
distance: that is, whether it is possible for the cognitive awareness
preceding the attainment of cessation to serve as the immediately 
antecedent condition for the arising of consciousness after 
cessation. In assuming that mental activity is absent in the 
attainment of cessation, the Vaibhasikas explain continuity
in the mental stream by appealing to the principle of causation at a 
distance, specifically by relying on their trans-temporal view of 
dharmas. Furthermore, for the Vaibhasikas, given that they
accept the existence of past *dharmas*, the thought of cessation 
(*samapatticitta*) becomes the immediately antecedent and
homogeneous condition for the thought of awakening 
(*vyutthanacitta*). 




For their part, the Sautrantika accept neither causation at a 
distance nor the existence of constitutive elements of experience in
all three temporal dimensions. Rather, as Vasubandhu and his 
commentators Yasomitra and Sthiramati argue, the consciousness 
that emerges immediately following the attainment of cessation has as
its cause the physical body: this is because mind and body are in a 
constant and reciprocal relation of causation, that is, "the 
mind and the body with its perceptual systems mutually seed one 
another" (AKBh *ad* II 44d; Poussin 1980, vol. I, 212). 
Other Sautrantikas, such as Vasumitra, content that in effect a 
subtle form of consciousness continues even after the attainment of 
cessation, for to assume otherwise would be equivalent to claiming 
that life can continue without consciousness (an untenable position 
for the Buddhist).




The Vaibhasika rebuttal to the notion that some subtle 
form consciousness persists even after the attainment of cessation 
points to the tripartite nature of the dependently arising cognitive 
phenomena: cognitive awareness, being inherently intentional, is 
always directed toward an object, and whenever there is contact with 
such an object there is feeling and apperception. In response, the 
Sautrantika insists that not all contact leads automatically to 
sensation (as is the case with advanced contemplatives such as the 
Arhats) and furthermore that the notion of attainment itself 
(*samapatti*) in fact implies the presence of a conscious
state of the attainment of cessation. That state of attainment is not
sustained by any substantive elements of existence (viz., the 
trans-temporal *dharmas* of the Vaibhasika) but rather by 
the thought of attainment itself (*samapatticitta*). It 
is this thought of attainment that prevents, for as long as a 
meditator is able to sustain it, the arising of any other thoughts. 
The attainment of cessation, then, is simply a temporary state of 
non-mentation.




Neither the theory of appropriation nor that of seeds in the mental 
stream seem to offer a satisfactory account of non-mentation. The 
limitations of the two views are clearly spelled out by Sthiramati 
(see Tika *ad* AKBh VIII, 33): First, in the case 
of the Vaibhasikas, consciousness or the arising of 
consciousness cannot have as its immediately antecedent and 
homogeneous condition the cessation of consciousness for that 
violates the causal principle itself, even assuming that body and 
sensory systems provide a basis for this arising. Second, by claiming
that consciousness can indeed arise from the body and its sensory 
systems, the Sautrantikas fall short of identifying the specific
cause which assures (on the basis of the causal principle of the 
homogeneity of the species) that consciousness arises at precisely 
the right moment. Even assuming that mind and body seed each other 
prior to the attainment of cessation, there is no causal mechanism to
explain why a particular type of consciousness arises and not 
another: in the absence of a cause that ensures the homogeneity of 
the species, with just the body and its sensory systems as the basis,
any type of consciousness could arise, rendering the causal process 
random and arbitrary. The function of the causal principle of the 
homogeneity of the species is precisely that of ensuring that, say, 
when visual system and visible object come together, it is visual 
consciousness rather than auditory or olfactory consciousness that 
arises [for a detailed analysis of the complex issues surrounding the
attainment of cessation, see Griffiths 1986, 66 and *passim*].



### 5.5 Repository Consciousness




The theoretical developments that led to the notion of repository 
consciousness (*alaya-vijnana*), which is 
associated with the Yogacara School, are already 
foreshadowed in these Abhidharma debates about how best to 
account for continuity in the mental stream and the efficacy of 
accumulated karmic potential. The notion of repository consciousness 
appears perhaps for the first time in Asanga's 
encyclopedic work, *Stages of the Practice of Yoga* 
(*Yogacarabhumi*, cf. Schmithausen 1987, 12, 
18). The new type of consciousness, closely connected with the living
body, retains much of the original use of *vijnana* 
to designate both consciousness and cognition. The function of the 
repository consciousness is explained in a seminal Yogacara
work such as the *Sutra Explaining the Profound Meaning* 
(*Samdhinirmocana-sutra,* V. 2, Lamotte 1935, 230) 
as having the primary function of 'descending' in the 
mother's womb, 'appropriating' the sensory systems and 
their respective cognitive support, and thus creating the 
predisposition toward mental proliferation (cf. Waldron 2003, 95 and 
*passim*).




The Yogacara thus explains the cognitive process as a 
maturation of the flow of discrete elements of consciousness. This 
flow of consciousness, which the Sautrantikas call 
mind-continuum (*citta-santana*), ultimately supports all
types of perceptual activity, including self-awareness. In its 
indeterminate state, this flow of consciousness is the repository of 
all non-aspectual types of cognitive awareness 
(*nirvikalpa-jnana*). This repository mind is said 
to arise together with all the seeds, thus suggesting the imagery of 
a repository of all the elements of consciousness and cognition. 




In the *Compendium of the Great Vehicule* 
(*Mahayanasamgraha*; hereafter MSG), Asanga 
defines the receptacle consciousness 
(*alaya-vijnana*) as the basis or support of 
that which is cognizable (*jneyasraya*) and 
explains the term 'receptacle' (*alaya*) as 
suggestive of a double function: (1) that of acting as a repository 
for the afflictive tendencies, and (2) that of providing the causal 
potentiality of the *dharmas* themselves (MSG I, 1-5). 
Furthermore, the receptacle consciousness is described as having the 
uncommon characteristic of being the seed for the sense spheres (MSG 
I, 59): the obvious implication here is that our experience of the 
world is as perception reveals it. And since the sense spheres are in
effect seeded by this receptacle consciousness, the world we inhabit 
is ultimately a minded world.




In his analysis of consciousness in the *Thirty Verses* 
(*Trimsika-karika*, I, 1) Vasubandhu
treats apprehending subject and apprehended phenomena are emergent 
properties of the threefold transformation of consciousness 
(*vijnanaparinama*). This transformation 
begins when the maturating seeds of consciousness take the form of 
perception and thought processes. Following this process of 
maturation and in dependence upon the repository consciousness there 
evolves a reflexive awareness whose object is none other than this 
subliminal or repository consciousness itself. This theory of 
cognitive emergence presumably provides a better account of the role 
that the residual forces of past cognitions play in 
'seeding' the repository consciousness. It is the 
dynamics of these residual forces which ultimately generates the 
intentional forms of cognitive awareness that support all other forms
of cognitive activity. 


### 5.6 Persons: Reductionism and Supervenience




One group of Buddhist philosophers, the Pudgalavadins (lit. 
personalists), usually identified with the 
Vatsiputriyas, seem to have advocated the view that 
persons can be said to conventionally exist, insofar as they are 
conceived in dependence upon the five aggregates and the six types of
cognitive awareness (cf. Priestley 1999). The Pudgalavadins took
persons to be as real as the collection of aggregates and regarded 
them as neither identical nor different from the aggregates. Direct 
accounts of the Pudgalavada doctrine survive primarily in the 
critiques of their opponents (and in three short texts preserved only
in Chinese and in the 
*Sammitiyanikayasastra*).




Vasubandhu offers what is perhaps the most detailed account of the 
personalist theory in his *Treasury of Higher Knowledge*, 
along with a refutation of the Brahmanical view of persons advocated 
by the Nyaya-Vaisesika philosophers. The relevant 
section of the text, the *Treatise on the Negation of the 
Person* (AKBh IX), begins with the standard warning that clinging
to any substantive view of the self is detrimental to one's progress 
toward liberation. Insofar as the notion of "self" or 
"person" is retained this should not be taken to 
designate anything other than the aggregates.




The arguments that the Pudgalavadins advance in support of the 
reality of persons may be summarized as follows:


1. Persons, which exist in dependence upon the aggregates, are real
just like fire, which is conceived in dependence upon fuel, is
real.
2. The reality of persons is ascertained by means of perception or,
more specifically, by the apperception that accompanies each
apprehension of an object. That persons are real is demonstrated by
means of an unexplainable perception, since persons are
perceived.
3. Things such as persons can be real without having a separate
identity, that is, without having either substantive existence or
being conceptually established upon substantive entities (viz., the
aggregates).
4. Persons exist ultimately insofar as they are dependent upon the
aggregates, which are ultimately real.




In introducing the views of the personalists, Vasubandhu draws a 
distinction between the substantive and the conceptual view of the 
self. Thus, if 'person' (*pudgala*) is taken to 
designate a substantive entity that is separate from the bundle of 
the five aggregates and unconditioned, then that cannot be the 
Buddhist view (*per contra* that is the Brahmanical view of 
the self). On the other hand, if the notion of 'person' 
designates a collection of aggregates, then it is admissible to talk 
about persons being conventionally real (for detailed discussions of 
Vasubandhu's critique of the personalist view see Duerlinger 1993, 
2003). Drawing on some contemporary discussions in the philosophy of 
mind, Siderits (2003: 89-96) makes a good case for taking the 
Pudgalavadins as proposing something analogous to the notion 
that persons non-reductively supervene on the aggregates.


## 6. Mind and Metaphysics


### 6.1 Dialectics and the Not-Self View


A common stylistic feature of the Buddhist canonical literature is
the use of similes and parables, of which perhaps the best known is
the simile of the raft. In the *Middle Length Discourses*, the
Buddha is seen explaining to an old man that his body of teachings is
like a raft: it serves the purpose of crossing over (viz., from the
shore of afflictions to that of nirvana) and should be
abandoned once the crossing has been effected (*Majjhima
Nikaya*, III, 22; Nanamoli & Bodhi 1995,
228f). The simile of the raft marks the pragmatic (Jayatilleke (1963,
357) calls it 'utilitarian') approach of the Buddha's
teachings, and is also suggestive of a core aspect of Buddhist praxis:
the notion of expedient means
(*upaya-kausalya*). Ganeri has recently proposed that
we identify the nature of Buddha's discourses as being essentially
protreptic, similar to the Stoic exhortation which invites the adept
to reconsider and rethink her ethical and metaphysical position
(cf. Ganeri 2007, 100 and *passim*). Thus, the notion of
expedient means--this specifically Buddhist
protreptic--operates as a cautionary device against the tendency
to assume that Buddhist doctrines may be seen as articulating a
particular type of metaphysics whose principles are to be examined
without any appeal to context or target audience.


It is primarily in response to the Buddha's use of expedient means
(and the expansion of the Buddhist canonical literature with the
advent of Mahayana sutras) that Abhidharma traditions
develop the hermeneutics of two truths: depending on scholastic
affiliation, doctrinal positions are henceforth classified as either
in need of interpretation (*neyartha*) or as already
possessing the definitive meaning (*nitartha*) (see
Lopez 1988, and contributions therein).


The hermeneutics of two truths is central to Madhyamaka dialectics
and its deconstructive analysis of key metaphysical concepts,
including those of causation, essence, and the self. In
the *Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way*
(*Mulamadhyamakakarikas*; hereafter MMK),
Nagarjuna extends the notion that phenomena lack intrinsic
existence (*svabhava*) to apply to the self, which is
usually conceived in dependence upon the five aggregates (MMK, IX,
12). While considering various ways of conceiving of the self (viz.,
as distinct from the psychophysical aggregates, as unchanging, as a
unifying principle, or as an agent), Nagarjuna concludes
that none of them actually make sense on account of the fact that
nothing can be said to be prior to the cognitive activities of seeing,
hearing, etc. (MMK, IX, 7, 10). A metaphysical self, conceived as an
abiding and substantive entity, is therefore inconceivable.


However, the mistaken apprehension of a self in a stream of
causally interconnected cognitive events does not preclude endorsing a
conventional notion of self for ordinary individuals who lack a proper
understanding of actions and their consequences. Indeed, Aryadeva
(ca. 150 C.E.), an immediate disciple of Nagarjuna, invokes
the expedient means device to endorse precisely such a view: for
certain classes of individuals adherence to a conventional view of
self is more profitable than the denial of self. The not-self view,
claims Aryadeva, is primarily reserved for those of a superior
disposition, who alone can grasp the definite meaning of the Buddha's
teachings (cf. *Catuhsataka*, 12.12-14). However,
ultimately the Buddha's teachings are interpreted as endorsing not any
specific view, but rather the relinquishing of all views--which
is only possible in a non-positional awareness that captures the
paradoxical nature of the Madhyamaka dialectic (detailed discussions
of the Madhyamaka dialectic of emptiness as applied to the self are
found in Sprung 1979, Huntington 1989, Tillemans 1990, Garfield 1995,
and Westerhoff 2009).



### 6.2 Realism




Although all Abhidharma schools admit the ultimate reality of 
*dharmas*, only the Vaibhasika (or Sarvastivada) 
School contends that *dharmas* exist in all three temporal dimensions 
(past, present, and future). The main arguments for this view 
are found in the *Vijnanakaya* and the 
*Maha-Vibhasa*, as well as in Vasubandhu's 
*Abhidharmakosa*, where they are systematically debated 
and refuted. In all, three types of arguments are put forward to 
support the notion that the past and future basic units of existence 
(*dharmas*) are presently real:


1. The argument from cognition: Past and future *dharmas* exist because
of our ability to make past and future events the object of our
cognitive awareness.
2. The dispositional argument: The presence of dispositions (as
habituations resulting from past intentional acts) implies that past
and future *dharmas* associated with these dispositions must be
presently manifest.
3. The causal argument: past *dharmas* must be real and present for
otherwise they would lack causal efficacy in bringing about a present
effect.




A plausible rationale for the Sarvastivadin's 
assertion of the continuing existence of past and future 
*dharmas* concerns the first and third arguments: it is 
impossible to conceive of a non-existent intentional object or the 
causal efficacy of a non-existent *dharma*. Given the 
principle of momentariness, which states that things exist only as 
point instants, it would be impossible to explain the arising of a 
particular type of cognitive awareness in the absence of an already 
existing preceding cause. Cognitive awareness, which arises in 
dependence upon the object and the corresponding sense faculty, would
lack support if past *dharmas* were unreal. In his commentary to 
the verse portion of the *Treasury of Higher Knowledge*, 
Vasubandhu explains the standpoint of the Sarvastivadin as 
follows: 



> 
> Cognitive awareness (*vijnana*) occurs only if the
> objective correlate exists, not otherwise. If past and future were
> nonexistent then the object of cognitive awareness would be a
> nonexistent cognitive support (*alambana*). Therefore
> consciousness would not occur if its objective support does not
> exist. Furthermore if the past is nonexistent then how could there be
> in the future the effect of good and bad deeds? For the present cause
> of its fruition no longer exists at the time when the effect
> arises. Therefore the Vaibhasika maintain that past and
> future exist (AKBh *ad* V, 25; Poussin 1980, vol. IV, p.51).
>  




For the Vaibhasikas the justification for maintaining the 
existence of *dharmas* in all three temporal dimensions is provided by 
their causal theory of cognition: since cognitive awareness cannot 
arise in the absence of an objective support, the cognition must be 
causally related to the object. The object, therefore, must be real, for 
nonexistent objects lack causal efficacy (as we discussed in 
 SS5.1).
 


### 6.3 Nominalism




Nominalism is primarily associated with a specific philosophical 
position adopted by Buddhist philosophers of the 
logico-epistemological tradition concerning the ontological status of
universals. However, long before the development of Buddhist 
Nominalism, Buddhist philosophers had adopted what might be properly 
termed as a nominalist stance in regards to the nature of composite 
entities, including persons. Thus, discussions about the ontological 
status of the various elements of experience in the early Abhidharma 
traditions were already framed by the distinction between things 
that existed substantively (*dravyasat*) versus those that had
only nominal or conventional existence (*prajnaptisat*).




In the celebrated dialogue between the Buddhist philosopher 
Nagasena and King Milinda (often identified with the 
Greco-Bactrian King Menander I, ca. 150 B.C.E.), we come across one 
of the first references to the notion that an individual exists only 
as an appellation or conventional designation (Pali 
*pannatti*, Skt, *prajnapti*). As 
Nagasena declares in response to the King's question about who 
he is or what is he known as: "Nagasena and so on--is
only a generally understood term, a designation in common use. For 
there is no permanent individuality (or self) involved in the 
matter" (*Questions of King Milinda*, II, 1, 25). 
Nagasena's claim frames the nominalist tendency that is already 
at work in the Buddhist canonical literature: just as words such as 
'chariot' are used only when certain parts are arranged 
together to form a spatio-temporal entity we ordinarily designate as 
such, so also an individual (*satto*) is nothing but a 
conventional designation that applies to the five aggregates. 




Although Abhidharma philosophical views on the kinds of entities that
have only nominal existence range widely, it is generally agreed that
persons or individuals are always to be taken as nothing more than 
merely conventional designations established on the basis of the five
aggregates, the domains of perceptual activity, and their respective 
elements. Note, however, that Abhidharma philosophers do not deny the
physical reality of aggregated entities and persons. Indeed, 
materiality or form (*rupa*), which is also one of five 
collections of aggregates, is generally considered to be an external,
non-mental reality. Rather, the two-tiered approach to the existence 
of phenomena, which distinguishes between substantial and nominal 
existents, is meant to reject not the existence of extra mental 
entities proper, but rather the existence of all partite entities 
such as chairs, pots, and tables (cf. Kapstein 2001, 90 and 
*passim*; Siderits 2003, 33 and *passim*).




In the Abhidharma ontology only the atoms that compose the four 
elements are ultimately real. Thus, the theory of two levels of 
existents implies a philosophical perspective that is best described 
as reductionism. On this view, only partless entities (i.e., atoms) 
can be said to properly exist. The property-particulars of phenomenal
experience (the *svalaksanas*) are real only 
insofar as their atomic configurations provide a causal basis for the
arising of perceptual apprehension. But the Buddhist reductionist, as
Siderits (2003, 13 and *passim*) has clearly argued, is not an
eliminativist. Unlike the eliminative materialist who regards 
conventional, folk-psychological discourse about persons as 
unsupported by, say, neuroscientific data (and thus is willing to 
dispense with a theory of persons altogether), the Buddhist 
reductionist merely points to the conventional nature of persons as 
ordinarily conceived. Whether we consider the view of Buddhist 
personalists such as the Vatsiputriyas (or 
Pudgalavadins), who hold that persons non-reductively supervene 
upon the psychophysical aggregates, or that of Buddhist reductionists
who treat persons as conventional designations, a theory of persons 
is retained. 


### 6.4 Idealism




The Yogacara school, which is associated with the works of
the half-brothers Asanga and Vasubandhu, its founders and
principal exponents, is often identified by later Buddhist
doxographers as the Mind-only or Cognition-only School
(*Cittamatra* or
*Vijnaptimatra*), on account of its internalist 
epistemology. In texts such as Vasubandhu's *Twenty Verses: A 
Demonstration on Existence of Consciousness Only* 
(*Vimsatika 
Vijnaptimatratasiddhi*; hereafter VVS) and 
Dignaga's *Investigation of the Cognitive Support* 
(*Alambanapariksa*; and its 
*Vrtti*; hereafter APV) we are presented with a 
metaphysical picture of cognitive awareness or consciousness as the 
only ultimately existing reality. 




In the *Twenty Verses*, Vasubandhu offers an elaborate defense
of idealism. His arguments may be summarized as follows: Because
non-existing entities can be consciously apprehended, consciousness
must have ontological priority (VVS I, 1). The typical realist
objection to an assertion of this sort concerns the causal function of
perception: indeed, if mental content can be said to consciously arise
without any reference to external objects, then why does it arise at a
specific time and place and not everywhere and at any given moment?
(VVS *ad* 2) In his response, Vasubandhu appeals to the dream
argument: objects in a dream appear as having determined
spatio-temporal coordinates without there being any correspondence to
external realities. As he explains, dream objects arise in dependence
upon the transformation of residual impressions
(*vasanas*), stock examples of which include the
phenomenon of nocturnal emission of semen (VVS
*ad* 3-4). Similarly, to the objection that cognition 
must have a basis (*ayatana*) for its arising, Vasubandhu
responds by appealing to the theory of seeds in the mental stream: 
the physical object and the cognitive faculty which together provide 
the basis for the arising of a particular type of cognitive awareness
are now seen as an object-oriented cognitive aspect and its internal 
representation. It only seems as though a patch of color and the 
visual system which processes it are the basis for color qualia. In 
reality, claims Vasubandhu, it is the residual traces (viz., the 
transforming seeds) in the mental stream that take the form of 
tangible object and tactile sense (VVS *ad* 9).




A stronger objection, however, pertains to certain aspects of 
doctrine: if consciousness has the capacity to appear as bearing the 
characteristics of material objects, then what purpose do canonical 
teachings about the material bases for the arising of consciousness 
serve? The answer to the second objection is twofold: first, 
Vasubandhu appeals to the hermeneutical strategies of Buddhist 
schools such as Madhyamaka and Yogacara, which distinguish 
between direct and indirect meaning (thus interpreting earlier 
teachings as having only an implied meaning (*neyartha*),
which is only made explicit (*nitartha*) in the 
latter texts of the Mahayana, and in particular of the 
Yogacara tradition); second, Vasubandhu, relies on the dual
aspect theory of cognition with its internalist perspective (which 
regards the appearance of objectual aspects in cognition as the 
result of residual traces stemming from the receptacle consciousness)
(see VVS *ad* 10).




However, Vasubandhu's most compelling proof for idealism appeals to 
the method of mereological reduction: wholes, being merely 
collections of minimal parts, do not actually exist as perceived. But
wholes, which are extended objects, must necessarily be made of 
parts, the ultimate building blocks of which are the atoms. And since
atoms, conceived as partless point-instant are ultimately 
insubstantial, the realist argument for the existence of material 
objects as conglomerates of parts must be false (VVS *ad* 
11-14; for detailed discussion of some of these arguments, see 
Kapstein 1988; Tola & Dragonetti 2004, 98-110; Gold 2006).




Vasubandhu's refutation of the reality (and causal efficacy) of 
external objects *as spatio-temporal entities* raises some 
important mereological issues and has a number of consequences for 
perception:


1. For an external entity to be an object of cognition it must (i)
either be a whole (*avayavin*) made of parts but be more than
its parts put together, (ii) or be a non-combined set of contiguous
atoms, (iii) or be a combined set of cohesive atoms.
2. Vasubandhu rejects both wholes and combined sets (whether cohesive
or merely contiguous). Wholes are rejected by appealing to the
Buddhist reductionist principle which says that only the component
parts of an entity are real (aggregated wholes, on this view, are
not).
3. The rejection of combined sets rests on the refutation of
Vaibhasika atomism. For the Vaibhasika, who are
realists, atoms are both indivisible and also capable of aggregation
(specifically, in sets of seven atoms, with one at the center, and the
other six arranged so as to correspond to the six cardinal points)
(see AKBh *ad* I, 43).
4. In his refutation of atomism, Vasubandhu explains that for
combinations of atoms to form partite aggregated entities, the atoms
would have to be contiguous, and as contiguous atoms would be
confounded with one another. Two or more atoms in contact would appear
to have parts, which is by definition impossible (since atoms are
partless entities) (see AKBh *ad* I, 43). Thus, connection
among atoms implies loss of indivisibility, and since atoms by
definition cannot have (connection enabling) parts, so too aggregated
wholes must lack connection among their constitutive parts (it is
assumed that the connecting relation is transitive).
5. For Vasubandhu, thus, an ontology of impartite atoms cannot
explain connection. In other words, the reduction of compounded
entities to their component parts, and of those parts to their own
pars, is not logically supported by atomism. Thus, Vasubandhu
concludes (VVS *ad* 11) that admitting the existence of
partless entities as the ultimate building blocks of reality would
make it in effect impossible to explain the specific natures of
aggregated phenomena. Consequently, only partite entities
exist.
6. Other objections to atomism include the argument from mutual
obstruction: lacking parts, an atom could obstruct other atoms from
impinging on it, leading to the unwarranted conclusion that all atoms
could occupy the same region of space.
7. Thus, neither composite entities made of indivisible parts, nor
the indivisible parts themselves can provide a basis for cognitive
awareness. Physical objects (the collection of mid-size dry goods that
populate the realist's ontology) cannot exist as perceived and must
therefore be a product of conceptual elaboration
(*vikalpa*, *kalpana*).
8. Since atoms either alone or combined cannot provide a basis for
cognitive awareness, the perception of aggregated entities must be the
product of imagination (*parikalpa*).
9. The division of perception into direct (*nirvikalpa*, a
bare awareness without any discrimination) and indirect
(*savikalpa*, what we ordinarily call a percept, involving some
level of cognitive determination of the object), helps clarify
Vasubandhu's argument: at the level of bare awareness there is no
perception of composite entities; at the level of discriminating
awareness perception reveals a world of objects as wholes with
specific properties. Indirect perception, arises at a moment when the
external cause that occasioned the perceptual experience is not longer
present.
10. So by invoking the momentary nature of phenomena, and the two-tier
process of perception, Vasubandhu is able to demonstrate that the
determinate objects of awareness in fact lack an external cognitive
support.




In his *Investigation of the Cognitive Support* Dignaga
takes up, as the title suggests, one of the specific issue debated by
Vasubandhu in his *Twenty Verses*: what exactly should count as
an object of cognition? Dignaga's definition of the cognitive
support invokes the principle of the concomitance of cause and effect
(*karyakaranabhava*). Thus, for an object
to count as a support (*alambana*) for cognitive awareness
it must (i) produce a cognition, and (ii) that cognition must take the
form of the object (see APV *ad* Iad). In large measure
Dignaga follows Vasubandhu's line of argumentation in his
refutation of the realistic atomism of the Vaibhasikas (and
of the Nyaya-Vaisesika tradition). His innovations
consist mainly in appealing to the principle of the coexistence of
cause and effect and to the Yogacara theory of mental
aspects. As proof that internal aspects, which provide a basis for
cognition, arise simultaneously with cognition itself, Dignaga
cites the principle of the concomitance of cause and effect
(*karyakaranabhava*): although the causal
relation is understood sequentially, by virtue of the necessary
dependence of cause and effect, whenever a cause is present its effect
must also be present. The theory of cognitive aspects serves to
further demonstrate that it is the appearance of an internally
cognizable aspect that is the actual cognitive support. Because
cognitions which arise taking the form of an apparently external
object are the determining factor for the arsing of subsequent
cognitions, the external object (say, a visible entity) and the sense
faculty (visual sense) are merely projective aspects of this initial
aspectual cognition (APV *ad* VII b). 




Thus, Dignaga effectively argues that cognition arises bearing 
two aspects: that of the object and that of the cognition itself, 
such that cognition and cognized object are not different: they are 
both manifestations of cognitive awareness itself.




Whether the Yogacara ontology of mind is idealist or can be
interpreted as a type of phenomenalism depends of course on how one 
interprets one of its key technical concepts: the 
*vijnapti-matra* (lit. 'cognition only'
or 'nothing but cognition.'). May (1971) and Schmithausen
(1973) are among the strongest proponents of the idealist
interpretation. Schmithausen in particular claims that the idealist
formulation arose not out of purely theoretical or doctrinal concerns,
but rather as a generalization based on the insights derived from
meditative practice. In an innovative metaphilosophical essay on
Western idealism as seen through Yogacara eyes, Garfield
(1998) argues that idealism is a contrastive ontology, in which mind
and mental constituents are assigned a fundamental reality that is
denied to external objects. Thus, while Berkeley, Kant, Hegel,
Schopenhauer, and Bradley may hold different views on the nature of
mind, they all presumably agree on its ontological primacy. Likewise,
claims Garfield, regardless of how Yogacarins like
Vasubandhu conceive of the mind, to the extent that they ascribe to it
any sort of ontological primacy over external objects, they are
idealists in this contrastive ontological sense.




Wayman (1965) is perhaps the first scholar to have challenged the
idealist interpretation of the Yogacara notion
of *vijnapti-matra* routinely advanced by both
historical opponents, such as the Madhyamikas and orthodox
Brahmanical philosophers, as well as by early generations of Buddhist
scholars. His argument is that Yogacarins like Vasubandhu do
not really deny the reality of external objects; rather, they simply
content that cognitive activity can arise even in the absence of an
external object. Wayman's critique (reprised in Wayman 1996) has set
the platform for an entire generation of scholars who have argued
against the idealist interpretation of Yogacara ontology
(see Kochumutton 1982; Kalupahana 1987; Powers 1996; Lusthaus 2002;
Dunne 2004). 




There is no general consensus at present on how best to
represent the metaphysical position of the Yogacaras:
proposals vary from realistic pluralism, to pragmatism, neutral
monism, epistemic idealism, to a realist phenomenology on the model of
Husserl and Merleau-Ponty. Alternative interpretations present the
Yogacara school as a system
outlining a "therapeutic course of action (acara)
rooted in meditation (yoga)" (Anacker 1984, 194) or as providing
an account of the "unconscious structuring of experience"
(Waldron 2002; 2003: xi).


### 6.5 Phenomenalism




Something analogous to a phenomenalist stance is adopted by the 
Sautrantikas. In the commentary portion to the 
*Treasury of Higher Knowledge* Vasubandhu, arguing from the
perspective of the Sautrantikas, provides a phenomenalist account
of experience. On this view, form does not refer to the material
aspect of an independently existing entity but rather to how it is
phenomenally disclosed in perception. Form is thus defined as
something that can either be disrupted by impact or as something that
opposes resistance (*pratighata*). However, these
properties do not extend to the atoms themselves, which form the
building blocks of materiality. Although as monadic units the atoms
are seen as devoid of any formal properties, as atomic compounds
(*samghatastha*, *samcita*) the atoms
are subject to the same properties of resistance and destruction as
any other material entities.




The difficulty of reconciling atomism--a fundamental tenet of 
Buddhist metaphysics--with the phenomenology of perception is 
apparent in early Abhidharma debates between Realists (chiefly the 
Vaibhasikas) and the Phenomenalists (the 
Sautrantikas). The debate between the Vaibhasikas and
the Sautrantikas on the issue of whether the sensible qualities 
of objects (viz., color, shape, etc.) supervene on the atoms is a 
telling point. For the Vaibhasikas, secondary properties 
such as color (*varna*) are in fact substances 
(*dravya*) similar to the four great elements. For the 
Sautrantikas, color is a derived property that lacks the 
elemental nature of primary *dharmas* like fire, water, etc. 
Rather, secondary properties are treated by the Sautrantikas as 
potentialities that reside in aggregated entities. Moreover, the 
Sautrantikas conceive of atoms not as substantial impartite 
entities, but rather as the most subtle collection of material 
elements (see AKBh *ad* II, 22ab).




On this Sautrantika view, as presented by Vasubandhu, perceived 
material properties, both primary (e.g., solidity) and secondary 
(e.g., color) are in fact emergent properties of subtle collections 
of elements whose phenomenal properties reflect the constitution and 
function of the perceptual systems. For instance, fluidity in the 
case of water may be classified both as a primary property of water 
atoms and also as a secondary property reflecting a specific 
configuration of water atoms. The same atoms of water, when 
configured as ice, may produce the sensation of hardness instead of 
that of fluidity.




A phenomenal object is such that it affects an individual by 
occasioning different types of experience. For example, water causes 
the experience of wetness and fluidity, rocks the experience of 
resistance or hardness, irregular surfaces the experience of 
roughness, etc. The material aspect of the experienced object *as 
experienced*, although arising in dependence upon the activity of
the corresponding sense sphere, at the same time obstructs and limits
it: a wall limits movement, night restricts vision, etc. This is the 
typical phenomenological stance: physical entities are mind 
independent, but we have no way of knowing how they are in themselves
apart from the way we perceive and conceive them. 




An often quoted passage from the Abhidharma literature reads: 
"One sees the blue, but one does not see 'it is 
 blue'."[3]
 This statement captures an essential aspect of Buddhist 
phenomenalism: indirect perception, rather than providing a 
definitive picture of the content of non-conceptual awareness, 
instead distorts and misrepresents this content. The Buddhist 
preoccupation with the pure datum of experience is in large measure 
motivated by a deep suspicion of "any sort of theorizing about 
the world that we experience" (Matilal 1986, 315). This is one 
of the main reasons why philosophers of the logico-epistemological 
tradition invite us to go beyond our ordinary language intuitions.


## 7. Mind and Epistemology




Neither the canonical literature nor the early Abhidharma schools 
provide detailed accounts of the means by which we may discriminate 
between veridical and non-veridical states of cognitive awareness. 
Works such as the *Kathavatthu* (ca. 150 C.E.) do concern
themselves with the rules and the various types of debate and 
consider a wide range of views, but there is no systematic account of
the criteria that ensure certainty. For systematic treatments of the 
epistemological import of various states of cognitive awareness we 
must turn to the Buddhist logico-epistemological tradition 
(*pramanavada*) initiated by Dignaga (ca.
480-540) and Dharmakirti (ca. 600-660) [I will refer 
to these two thinkers, and to their followers, as 
'epistemologists' so as to highlight that their concerns 
are primarily epistemological]. It is generally agreed that this 
tradition sprang out of a growing preoccupation with issues of logic 
and language among those Buddhists who regarded polemical engagement 
with their Brahmanical opponents as vital to their philosophical 
enterprise (see Frauwallner 1959, Hattori 1968, Hayes 1988, Matilal 
1998). In spearheading his model of epistemological inquiry 
Dignaga (and following him, Dharmakirti) significantly 
changed the course of Buddhist philosophy in India. 




The two most influential works of the Buddhist logico-epistemological
tradition are Dignaga's *Collection on Valid
Cognition* (*Pramanasamuccaya*; hereafter PS)
and Dharmakirti's *Commentary on Valid Cognition*
(*Pramanavarttika*; hereafter PV).
Dharmakirti's work, essentially a commentary on
Dignaga's, is to be singled out as one of the most
outstanding contributions to Indian Buddhist thought, presenting a
definite account of what later generations of philosophers in India
took to be the normative Buddhist view. Dharmakirti influenced
the views of later Buddhist philosophers such as
Santaraksita (725-783), Kamalasila
(740-795), Jnanagarbha (8th century), Dharmottara
(750-810), Jnanasrimitra (ca.
975-1050), Ratnakirti (11th century)
Ratnakarasanti (11-12th century) and
Moksakaragupta (1150-1202).


### 7.1 Sources of Reliable Cognition




The Buddhist logico-epistemological enterprise rests on two 
major viewpoints: (i) the domains of language and conceptual thought 
are identical; and (ii) direct perception can in fact provide access 
to the simple, further irreducible, data of experience or the 
particular as such (the *svalaksana*). It is 
debatable, however, whether this position on the intrinsic validity 
of perceptual cognitions implies that the Buddhist epistemologists 
pursue a kind of epistemic foundationalism (akin to that of modern 
sense datum theorists) or, rather, that they are concerned with the 
intentional character of the phenomenal contents of experience (see 
Siderits 2004, Dreyfus 1996, Tillemans 1999, 2003, Coseru 2012).




Philosophers of the Abhidharma traditions had argued that our 
cognitive propensities are beginningless, each thought being merely 
the continuation of an endless series of previous thoughts, which 
constantly inform, influence, and direct the cognitive process (see 
AKBh *ad* III, 19). They maintained that these cognitive 
propensities are most vividly manifest in traces of memory and in the
activity of conceptual thought. The Buddhist epistemologists, 
however, came to reject both memory (*smrti*) and 
conceptual elaboration (*kalpana*) as reliable sources of
knowledge. These cognitive modalities were completely dissociated 
from direct perception, the only type of cognitive awareness that 
Dignaga regarded as warranted.




The Buddhist epistemologists adopt a parsimonious epistemology: only 
two sources or instruments of cognition (*pramana*)
are accepted are reliable: perception (*pratyaksa*) and 
inference (*anumana*). Dignaga gives a most basic 
reason why we ought to accept only these two sources as warranted: 
that is, because there are only two types of objects, those bearing 
their own characteristic mark (i.e., particulars) and those whose 
characteristic is that of universality (i.e., universals), each 
corresponding to a specific mode of apprehension (PSV *ad* I, 
2; Hattori 1968, 24, 79). What we have here is an attempt to 
translate the two fundamental categories of particular and universal 
back to their specific knowledge source: particulars to perception 
and universals to inferential reasoning. Dignaga, thus, appears 
to be claiming that all objects of cognition, whether external or 
internal, cannot be properly understood if separated from the types 
of cognitive events in which they are instantiated, a view best 
described as phenomenalism.


### 7.2 Epistemic Accounts of Perception




The Buddhist epistemologists limit warranted perception to direct,
unmediated experience only. Perception is regarded as necessarily
involving contact (*sparsa*, *sannikarsa*)
between the sense and the object. Dignaga (following Vasubandhu)
notes that perception is named after the sense rather than after the
object (see AKBh *ad* I, 45ab). Thus perception, following the
sense rather than the object, cognizes inexpressible particularities
or the object as a particular domain of experience. Indirect
perception, which is usually understood as involving some degree of
conceptual discrimination (*vikalpakajnana*) is not
treated as perception proper. Unlike their principal opponents, the
Naiyayikas and the Mimamsakas, the Buddhist
epistemologists do not regard indirect perception as an essential step
in the transition from pure sense data to full blown conceptual
apprehension. 




In his principal work, the *Collection on Valid Cognition* (PS
I, k5a-6cd; Hattori 1968, 27) Dignaga discusses what appear to 
be three distinct types of cognition under the rubric of perception: 
sense perception, mental perception, and perception of the yogi. 
Dignaga also admits self-awareness (*svasamvedana*)
as a distinct type of cognition, although there is some debate about 
whether this is to be interpreted as a type of perception (see 
 SS7.2
 for a discussion of *svasamvedana*). The disagreement 
centers on whether self-awareness should be understood as a dual 
aspect cognition (Nagatomi 1979) or as a new type of perception. 
Wayman (1991), following Hattori (1968), argues that it should, 
whereas Franco (1986, 1993) argues to the contrary. Franco bases 
his argument on a piece of textual evidence that appears to endorse 
the view that Dignaga takes the self-apprehension of internal 
states such as desire to be a case of mental perception. Drawing from
the commentarial literature on Dignaga preserved in Chinese, Yao
(2004) offers some compelling arguments as to why scholars, from 
traditional commentators such as Prajnakaragupta (ca. 800) 
to Franco appear to have consistently misunderstood the relationship 
between self-awareness and mental perception. Yao maintains that the 
resolution to the question of whether Dignaga does or does not 
accept four types of perception depends on correctly understanding 
the function of mental perception, which he takes to apply only to 
the direct apprehension of mental objects (2004, 63). Thus, for Yao 
mental perception (*manasa-pratyaksa*) and the mental 
faculty of cognitive awareness (*mano-vijnana*) are 
to be clearly differentiated, the first being just an aspect of the 
latter. Likewise, self-awareness and yogic perception too are taken 
to be just different states of this mental cognitive awareness (see 
Tillemans 1989; Steinkellner 1978, 1982, 1999; and Dunne 2006 for 
discussions of this issue).




Both Dignaga and Dharmakirti take objects of perception to 
have causal efficacy (see e.g., PV III, 3). What is generally termed 
perception is said to consist in a series of distinct cognitive 
events that are causally related. On this model of perception, 
contact between sense and object gives rise to a perceptual image 
(*akara*) which represents the specific 
characteristics of that object. The relationship between the 
perceptual image and the empirical object is one of similarity 
(*sadrsya*). The perceptual image is causally 
determined by the object, but the manner of its appearance is 
determined by factors that are intrinsic to cognition itself (see, 
e.g., PV III, 333-338). Although both Dignaga and 
Dharmakirti appear to adopt an empirical standpoint in regards 
to the status of external objects, their analysis of perceptual 
aspects reflects an internalist epistemology that denies the ultimate
reality of external objects (see PV III, 301-319; 
333-341; and Dunne 2004, 84-91). Dharmakirti's 
position regarding the reality of external objects is highly 
ambivalent depending on whether he operates from a Sautrantika 
perspective, which admits the existence of external objects, or from 
a Yogacara perspective, which denies their existence (for 
detailed discussions of this aspect of Dharmakirti's thought see
Dreyfus 1998, 83, 99; Dunne 2004, 53 and *passim*). 




There is some dispute as to whether or not Dharmakirti retains 
the causal model of perception in the case of internal objects. Thus,
Dreyfus (1997, 336f) takes the view that Dharmakirti is 
effectively compelled to admit that for a perceptual aspect to 
acquire cognitive status it must be interpreted. As such, it acquires
the status of an internal mental representation, which Dreyfus claims
to be "a highly uncomfortable position" for 
Dharmakirti given his commitment to the view that perception 
must be foundational for knowledge. 




In examining Dharmakirti's causal model of perception, 
Dunne (2004, 100) singles out numerical correspondence as the main 
issue in establishing how perceptual images come to correspond to the
material objects they represent: the perceptual image of the object 
is singular, but the object, as an extended entity, is made of an 
infinitesimal number of particles in accord with the atomistic 
ontology to which Dharmakirti subscribes. Thus, identifying the 
precise causal mechanism by which percepts relate to their 
corresponding empirical objects is further complicated by 
Dharmakirti's view of particulars. In maintaining that 
particulars (*svalaksana*) are partless, 
Dharmakirti is forced to admit that in perception we apprehend a
particular in its entirely, something that of course is not borne by 
empirical data: ordinarily, in perceving a given object, say a 
dragonfly, we only perceive its visible parts from our unique vantage
point; we do not perceive it in its entirety. 




In the *Commentary on Valid Cognition* (PV III, 194--224)
Dharmakirti's addresses the issue of whether perception, as
a source of knowledge, apprehends distinct spatio-temporal entities as
aggregated wholes or aggregation is a conceptual construct and thus
outside the domain of perceptual awareness. Neither of these positions
is acceptable, for Dharmakirti, as is well known, follows
Dignaga in admiting only direct, non-conceptual types of
cognitive awareness under the rubric of perception: thus, wholes, that
is, entities composed or distributed over their parts, cannot be
perceptually apprehended. Commenting on this aspect of
Dharmakirti's philosophy of perception, Dunne (2004, 102) thinks
that in rejecting these two positions, Dharmakirti effectively
undermines his antirealist critique of the notion that perception can
apprehend real aggregated objects. In response to the objections of
his realist (chiefly the Naiyayika) opponent that by admitting
that perception has the capacity to apprehend aggregates as unitary
wholes he is thus forced to admit that universals too are perceptible,
Dharmakirti replies that "aggregation" does not refer
to the particular proper. Rather, it refers to a configuration of
particles such that it can causally support the arising of a
perceptual image without that image being in any way related to the
external aggregated object that supervenes on those particles (see
discussion of this issue in Dunne 2004, 103 and
*passim*).




As we noted above, Dignaga and, following him, Dharmakirti 
restrict perception to types of cognitive awareness that lack 
conceptual determination (*kalpanapodha*). But even
direct perception is not always warranted, given the possibility of 
perceptual illusions. For this reason, Dharmakirti adds a 
further constraint, by admitting as reliable only those perceptions 
that lack conceptual determination and also are non-erroneous 
(*abhranta*) (see 
*Pramanaviniscaya* I, 252). In fact, by adding
the qualifier 'non-erroneous' Dharmakirti is simply 
following an established tradition of excluding from perception 
instances of perceptual illusions of the sort produced by, say, the 
rapid rotation of a firebrand, or cases of sensory impairment as in 
cataracts. For perceptions to be reliable their object must be 
causally effective. The Buddhist epistemologist solves the problem 
of the efficacy of perceptions by adopting a representationalist 
stance: perception can only reveal its object by assuming its form. 
Thus, an intermediary realm of cognitive aspects 
(*akara*) is posited between perception and 
conception.




Attempts to define the nature of these cognitive aspects and their 
cognitive function are the origin of a lengthy dispute that cuts 
across doctrinal and scholastic boundaries. Thus Dignaga and 
Dharmakirti follow the Sautrantika and Yogacara 
Buddhists who maintain that cognitive awareness has an aspectual 
character: that is, cognition takes the form of whatever object it 
cognizes (a position known as 
*sakaravada*). The Vaibhasikas 
and some Madhyamikas take the opposite view: consciousness is 
mirror-like in its nature, reflecting an object without being 
modified by it (cf. Kajiyama 1965, 428; Moriyama 1984; Tillemans 
1990, 41f). The representational model of cognition adopted by the 
epistemologists resembles Western variants of representationalism as 
proposed by, among others, Descartes and Locke.




For Dignaga and Dharmakirti the apprehension of a 
resemblance (*sadrsya*) between different 
objects, which marks the transition from an indistinct perceptual 
experience to a distinct cognitive awareness, is in itself a form of 
conceptual elaboration. In keeping with the Abhidharma traditions, 
the epistemologists admit that perception is mediated by our internal
propensities as well as by the range of our perceptual systems. However,
they do not accept the reality of resemblance relations, even though 
they admit that cognitive aspects (specifically those by which an object is 
apprehended) are pragmatically effective. A difficulty arises when 
attempting to explain extension in the case of empirical objects, 
which are apprehended by means of a cognitive aspect. This difficulty
is overcome by adopting the Yogacara perspective on the 
self-revealing (*svaprakasa*) nature of cognitive 
awareness. On this perspective, each instance of cognitive awareness 
has a dual aspect: that of a subjective appearance 
(*svabhasa*) and that of an objective appearance 
(*visayabhasa*) (see *Collection on Valid 
Cognition*, PS I, k9a; Hattori 1968, 28). The subjective aspect 
(*grahakakara*) denotes the sense of 
intimation that accompanies each cognitive event, while the objective
aspect (*grahyakara*) captures the intentional 
character of cognition or its object-directedness. This dual aspect 
theory of cognitive awareness endorses the existence
of a meta-cognitive level of analysis, which explains why cognition does 
not happen "in the dark"; rather, it is always accompanied by 
self-intimation, by an experience of "what it is like" to
be apprehending a given object (cf. Ganeri 1999).


### 7.3 Reflexive Awareness and Intentionality




Buddhist authors are divided on the issue of the possibility of 
reflexive awareness (*svasamvedana*). In general, 
philosophers of the Dignaga-Dharmakirti school accept the 
reality of reflexive awareness in the classical Yogacara 
sense of self-luminosity (*svaprakasa*) and support 
their arguments with the example of a lamp that illuminates itself 
while at the same time revealing other objects. However, this notion 
that consciousness or cognitive awareness is inherently reflexive is 
rejected by Madhyamika authors such as Candrakirti (ca. 
600-650) and Santideva (fl. 8th century), who contend 
that consciousness cannot be thought of as being inherently reflexive, even on a
conventional level, since that would imply that consciousness is 
self-validating (see e.g., *Madhyamakavatara* VI, 
74-75). Candrakirti takes issue in particular with the 
characteristically Yogacara view that the object of 
cognition is not extrinsic to cognition, but is an aspect of that 
cognition itself.




Buddhist philosophers who take consciousness to be inherently reflexive are generally 
classified in the doxographical literature as 
Sakaravadins. Following Santaraksita's
*Ornament of the Middle Way* 
(*Madhyamakalamkara* 11-92) five 
epistemological positions may be identified on the nature of 
consciousness and the subject-object relation (see Kajiyama 1968; 
1978, 117-132; Blumenthal 2004, 91 and *passim*): 



> 
> 
> 
> |  |  |  |
> | --- | --- | --- |
> | i | Sarvastivada  | *dharmas*, external objects, and mental representations are real;  |
> | ii | Sautrantika | the external world exists but it is imperceptible; physical objects 
> exist only as a support for cognition, which can only apprehend mental representations; |
> | iii | Satyakaravada-Yogacara | cognition does not apprehend external objects but only perceptual and
>  mental aspects, which are real modifications of the mental stream; cognition is inherently reflexive; |
> | iv | Alikakaravada-Yogacara | only the reality of reflexive awareness can be ascertained; that 
> of cognitive aspects resulting from modifications in the mental stream cannot; |
> | v | Madhyamaka | neither reflexive awareness, nor internal
>  cognitive aspects, nor external objects can in any way be established
>  as possessing their characteristics intrinsically; all *dharmas* lack
>  inherent existence. |
> 
> 
> 




It suffices to mention that the epistemologists, who adopt an 
ontological position that most closely aligns with the 
Sautrantikas, take consciousness to be inherently reflexive 
and describe it not with the aid of mirror 
metaphors--consciousness as a mirror reflecting back the nature of
perceived phenomena--but rather with plastic metaphors in which 
consciousness is said to assume the form of whatever object it 
cognizes.




It is generally agreed that the main argument for reflexive awareness
is offered by Dignaga. As we saw above, Dignaga, following 
Vasubandhu, adopts a dual-aspect theory of cognition. Ultimately, 
the adoption of this theory reflects his commitment to an internalist
epistemology, which he develops at length in his *Investigation of
Cognitive Support*. But unlike his Brahmanical opponents 
(chiefly the Naiyayikas and the 
Mimamsakas), Dignaga is also committed to 
the view that the instruments or sources of knowledge themselves (the
*pramanas*) are not different from the ensuing
cognitions (*pramana-phala*). This view is
motivated, at least in part, by a radical and essential separation of
perception from conception. For Dignaga, as for all Buddhist
epistemologists, only perception can provide an empirical foundation
and a neutral ground for ascertaining the nature of particulars
(*svalaksanas*).




Dignaga's views may be summarised as follows (after his 
*Collection on Valid Cognition*):


1. The phenomenal content of a perceptual event is just the
internal aspect (*akara*) of that cognitive awareness
arising as the apprehension of external objects. The instrument or
source of cognition (*pramana*), in this case
perception, is not different from the object apprehended. Rather, as
Dignaga claims: "that which appears in cognition is the
known object (*prameya*), the reliable cognition
(*pramana*) and its result, are [respectively] the
subjective aspects [of the cognition] and the cognition
[itself]" (PS I, 10; Hattori 1968, 97).
2. Each cognition arises having a double aspect: it appears as an
apprehending subject and as an apprehended objected. In terms of its
appearance to itself, cognition manifests as self-awareness
(*svasamvitti*), which (as we saw above
in SS7.1) is one of the four modes of cognitive
awareness under the rubric of perception.
3. This subjective aspect of cognition
(*grahakakara*) is just the individual's
self-awareness as a cognizing agent, while the objective aspect
(*grahyakara*) captures the intentional
character of cognition or its object-directedness. Thus, for
Dignaga, just as for Husserl, perception is ultimately constituted
by intentional content.
4. In its double aspect as (i) evidential ground for knowledge and as
(ii) as a direct means for the apprehension of objects, perception is
ultimately the only warranted type of cognitive awareness.




The epistemologists who follow Dignaga's account of 
perception thus agree that cognitive awareness is a self-revealing 
type of cognition. As such it accompanies (by virtue of arising 
together with) each perceptual event. And perception, specifically 
any type of perception lacking conceptual elaboration 
(*kalpanapodha*), is associated with knowledge of 
particulars. It is precisely this aspect of Dignaga's theory of 
perception that is an object of criticism by Madhyamika 
philosophers like Candrakirti (see 
*Madhyamakavatara* VI, 72-78), even if only 
indirectly: Candrakirti's arguments target primarily the 
Yogacara doctrine of three natures. As explained in works 
such as Vasubandhu's *Trisvabhavanirdesa* and 
*Madhyantavibhagabhasya*, the three 
natures or forms of existence are:


* the imagined or the conceptualized
(*parikalpita*)--this stands for entities that appear as
having physical properties and spatio-temporal extension, but in fact
are just the products of imagination.
* the dependent (*paratantra*)--stands for things just
as they are: the causal flow of the ultimate elements of existence
and/or experience.
* the ultimate or the perfected
(*parinispanna*)--this is understood relationally as
the absence of the first nature in the second nature: that is, as a
pure awareness of the causal flow of experience devoid of any
conceptual elaborations.




For the Yogacaras all phenomena and all aspects of the 
mental domain can be subsumed under these there natures (cf. Nagao 
1991, 62 and *passim*). Similarly, Dignaga's 
understanding of direct perception 
(*nirvikalpa-pratyaksa*) as lacking any conceptual 
elaboration captures the sense of the perfected nature.




An axiomatic principle of all Madhyamaka philosophy, following 
Nagarjuna's *Foundation of the Middle Way*, is that 
all things, including all cognitive episodes, by virtue of being the 
product of cause and conditions, lack inherent existence 
(*svabhava*) and are thus empty 
(*sunya*). That is, nothing truly exits on its own, 
and no entity or mental state has its characteristics intrinsically. 
Candrakirti's critique of reflexive awareness, then, targets 
this notion that there is a class of cognitive events that are 
essentially self-characterizing: they reveal their own content 
without recourse to an additional instance of cognitive awareness. 
More specifically, Candrakirti rejects the notion that reflexive
awareness has this unique property of giving access to the pure datum
of experience (as Tillemans (1990: 49, n.109) observes, 
Candrakirti does not seem to want to concede that there is a 
difference between 'seeing' and 'seeing as,' 
and rests his criticism of reflexivity on the notion that all seeing 
is in effect seeing as).




It is precisely with the intention of answering critics like 
Candrakirti that Santaraksita identifies the 
character of cognition as being contrary to insentient objects: 
"Cognitive awareness arises as something that is excluded from 
all insentient objects. This reflexive awareness of that cognition is
none other than its non-insentience" 
(*Tattvasamgraha* 2000). In effect, 
Santaraksita simply follows Dharmakirti's 
critique of the physicalist claim that consciousness arises from the 
four elements. Dharmakirti rejects the physicalist view on the 
grounds that if the four elements, or a special transformation 
thereof, are the ultimate basis of consciousness, then consciousness 
ought to arise whenever the elements occur, which is to say 
everywhere (see Prajnakagupta's PVBh *ad* II, 35; 
Franco 1997, 171f). Even if consciousness were said to arise at a 
particular point in time, claims Dhamakirti, it cannot arise 
from something that is not sentient.




Similarly, Dharmottara, as an innovative interpreter of 
epistemologists' account of the reflexive nature of awareness, 
clarifies the issue by invoking in his *Commentary* on 
Dharmakirti's *Drop of Reasoning* 
(*Nyayabindutika*; hereafter NBT) the 
intentional character of cognition: what sets apart the occasioning 
of a cognitive event is that it accomplishes more that the causal 
process by which it arises allows for it--that is, it 
accomplishes its goal by revealing the object as the pragmatic 
outcome of cognition (NBT *ad* I, 1, 4.1). 
Dharmottara contrasts the intentional character of cognitive 
awareness with merely causal accounts of generation, such as is the 
case with seeds and sprouts: "Sprouts are not established [as 
the result] though their production is invariably concomitant with 
[causes like] seeds. Thus, even though a cognition arises as 
establishing a given object, it has the function of causing it to 
arrive as [its object] necessarily, by means of which its goal is 
accomplished." (NBT *ad* I, 19, 14.21). Elsewhere,
Dharmottara explains that the relation between cognition and object 
cognized is unlike that of elements in a causal chain, which exist as
the relation between producer and produced. Rather, it is like the 
relation between the establishing factor and what it has established 
(*vyavasthapravyavasthapakabhava*), that is, 
between reflexive awareness and the intentional object as intended 
(NBT *ad* I, 19, 15.3).




For the epistemologists, then, consciousness as *reflexive 
awareness* is not just another phenomenon in the chain of 
dependently arising phenomena: rather, it is precisely that which has
the unique function of disclosing itself in the process of revealing 
the other. For as Dharmakirti declares in the *Ascertainment 
of Valid Cognition* (PVin I, 55): "If ascertaining were not
itself [directly] perceived, the perception of objects would not be 
established."




The Indian Buddhist account of reflexive awareness has also been
interpreted as corresponding to certain positions in Western
philosophy. Thus, Paul Williams (1998, 234f) notes that
Santaraksita's assertion of the unity of consciousness
as reflexive awareness goes against the sort of reductive explanation
of cognition that discriminates between agent, act, and object or
cognizer, cognized, and cognizable. As such, it parallels Aristotle's
view of reflexivity as found in *De Anima* and, more recently,
the views of Brentano and Sartre, who contend that to talk about
consciousness as lacking self-intimation effectively amounts to
altogether denying the possibility of conscious awareness itself [for
a defense of the Madhyamaka critique of the notion of reflexive
awareness, drawing primarily from the reception of this debate in
Tibet see Garfield 2006]. Similarly, Arnold (2005a, 88; 2005b, 78)
proposes that the Indian philosophical debates concerning the nature
of *svasamvedana*, which he translates as apperception,
parallel Kant's discussion of the transcendental unity of
apperception, and indeed post-Kantian debates on the precise meaning
of this doctrine. Contrasting Dharmakirti's views on reflexive
awareness with Husserl's account of intentionality Dreyfus (2007, 109)
argues for the notion that perception, at least in meditative states,
displays something like a phenomenal type of intentionality. Recently,
Dignaga's understanding of reflexive awareness
has also been interpreted as being analogous to the notion of embodied
self-awareness developed by Merleau-Ponty in his phenomenological
account of perception (see Coseru 2012). On this view, the intentional
character of reflexive awareness may be understood as corresponding to
the immediate sense of embodied agency that is characteristic of
internal states such as desire, pain, etc.