chapter 5 (article by victoria lysenko).pdf

BUDDHISM IN KASHMIR62

Is there a mind-body problem in Buddhism?ìNoî and ìYesî in the East-West perspective

Victoria Lysenko, Institute of PhilosophyRussian Academy of Sciences, Moscow

To the question proposed in the title one could give a typically Buddhist ìmiddle wayî answer,that is, the problem is there in some respects, and it there in some other respects.

The mind-body problem, formulated in different forms, such as ó Is the mortal body (‹ar∂ra)the same thing as the life-principle (j∂va)? Is the mortal body one thing and the life-principle anotherthing? ó has come to us from the Buddhist Påli canon. But it seems to belong neither to the Buddhahimself nor to the Buddhist circles. In fact, these and other formulations of the mind-bodyproblem were known from the bråhmaƒa-‹ramaƒa milieu outside of Buddhism, and were set aside bythe Buddha as pertaining to the so-called indeterminate (avyakata / avyåkæta) questionsìaccompanied by suffering, distress, despair, fever, and not leading to disenchantment, dispassion,cessation; to calm, direct knowledge, full awakening, unbinding.î

As this standard Buddhist formula shows, the ìindeterminate questionsî didnít have for theBuddha any soteriological value. Why? Because, according to him, they were based on themetaphysical presupposition of a permanent self (Åtman). For the Buddha, any assumption ofpermanence was irrelevant because, to state it as briefly as possible, his starting point was oneísexperience of oneís impermanent states. The Buddhaís own approach to the mind-body problem,as far as we can judge from the Nikåyas, may be interpreted as a ìphenomenologicalî andìexperientialî in as much as it gives an account of whatever bodily or mental states one isexperiencing in oneís meditation.

In my opinion, the importance of bodily factors in the Buddhist explanations of ordinaryexperience is connected with the importance attributed to the awareness of the somatic elementin the Buddhist meditational practices. This very awareness, in its turn, may be due to the fact thatthe Buddha himself successfully practiced the dhyånas only after having restored his health brokenby a harsh asceticism. The famous sati / smæti, mindfulness meditation, starts from mindfulnesswith regard to the body. It is in the meditations of the sati type that his phenomenological analysis ofwhat is there, in oneís experience, might be initially developed.

A cognitive experience extending from ordinary perception to the highest states of ìknowledgeand visionî (¤å¤a-dassana) is at the centre of the Buddhist soteriological project. This orientationon knowledge is quite natural for it is through knowledge that one can reach emancipation,as well as it is through ignorance or corrupted knowledge (avidyå) that one got enslaved into thecircle of rebirth (sa≈såra).

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As true knowledge constituted by an insight into reality (ëknowledge and visioní / ¤å¤a-dassana, praj¤å) is obtained through the ascending meditative states, it is the meditation that hasbecome a model and a starting point for the analysis of the ordinary cognitive experience in theNikåyas. Here, the phenomenological approach was applicable only to the actually developingcognitive experience. In this regard, the mind-body problem seems to be irrelevant as it makesno sense to inquire into the origins of phenomena. Whatever their origin ó bodily or mental, whatmatters for the Buddha is their being pure facts of experience ó the dharmas. It is through experiencethat one can know whether objects are exterior or interior. Individual experience is interpreted interms of the processes (santåna), as against the so-called ìsubstantivistî and ìessentialistî theoriesof a permanent self (Åtman).

Let us return now to the avyåkæta question mentioned in the beginning of the paper:Is the mortal body (‹ar∂ra) the same thing as the life-principle (j∂va)? Is the mortal body one thingand the life-principle another? As we see, the terms used for ìbodyî and for ìsoulî are, respectively,‹ar∂ra and j∂va. But, as a matter of fact, neither of them was characteristic for the Buddha and theBuddhists in their talks about body and mind. In Buddhism, the term ‹ar∂ra refers mainly to adead body, or to relics (the relics of the Buddha were called ‹ar∂ra). To designate a living body, theBuddhists used the term kåya. As for the term j∂va, it doesnít mean ìsoulî in the Suttas, but acombination of factors that keeps the body alive ó vitality (åyus), heat (u¶ƒa) and discernment(vij¤åna). These three factors were evoked by the Buddhist Mahåkå‹yapa against the so-calledìexperiments of Payasi with a dead bodyî. As Mahåkå‹yapa said: ìa body endowed with vitality,heat and discernment is lighter and more pliable than a dead body, just as a heated iron ball,endowed with heat and hot air, is lighter and more pliable than a cool oneî (D. II.334-5).

The Suttas are very clear about the fact that neither mind nor body exist apart and canfunction independently in as much as they are different facets or, rather, functions involved in thesame process that makes up individual existence. Even in the life-principle, or j∂va, which outsideof Buddhism is often regarded as a synonym of Åtman, we always find some combination ofphysical, somatic and mental factors. In fact, there is no sharp distinction between physical, somaticor mental events: all of them are regarded as mutually dependent, co-arising and co-determiningfactors of cognitive experience. The j∂va is neither the same as the mortal body (‹ar∂ra) nordifferent from it, as their relationship is that of mutually-dependent process. In modern terms,one can say that the mind in Buddhism is always regarded as ìembodiedî, ìenactiveî and ìsituatedî.This approach draws Buddhism nearer to some modern cognitive theories like that of F. Varelaand his colleagues1.

There is another interesting aspect of the Buddhaís approach to the mind-body problem.

1 Francisco J. Varela, Evan Thompson, Eleanor Rosch. The embodied mind: cognitive science and humanexperience. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1991.

IS THERE A MIND-BODY PROBLEM IN BUDDHISM? ó VICTORIA LYSENKO


The avyakata question is qualified by the Buddha as improperly formulated, primarilybecause it involves some linguistic and conceptual constructions which make us believe thatmodes of verbal expression are the modes of reality itself. The questions ìwhat is X?î andìwhose is X?î imply an ontological opposition between subject and object. So, the problem itselforiginates because a verbal expression projects its own meanings as a form of reality.

I would like to remark in passing a striking resemblance of the Buddhaís criticism with regard toordinary modes of verbal expression using the personal pronouns ìIî, ìmineî etc. to Wittgensteinístheory of linguistic games as used by his followers to treat a mind-body problem as a pseudo-problem, related to linguistic constructs.

As already mentioned, the Buddha is fully aware of the mind-body problem as it wasformulated by his contemporaries. There is, according to him, a false view (di¢¢hi) that j∂va is identicalwith body, and another view that j∂va and body are different entities. In terms of Western philosophywe have before us a clear statement of monistic and dualistic positions with regard to the mind-bodyproblem. The monistic position may be interpreted either in materialistic or in idealistic sense.The first one is equivalent to the statement that the living principle depends on the body andcan be reduced to it ó in the Buddhist vocabulary this position is called the ucchedavåda /thedoctrine of annihilation. The second one boils down to the statement that the body dependson the living principle in the Buddhist terms ó sassatavåda / the doctrine of eternal soul,or eternalism.

What is unacceptable to the Buddha is well expressed in these very terms: the ucchedaconveys the idea that the living principle is destroyed after the death of the body, the sassatathat the living principle is eternal and immutable. This does not mean that the Buddha denies theexistence of the soul, or Self, though his teaching is known as the anåtmavåda (a doctrine of non-Self). What is meant by non-Self is the absence of any constant substance behind the everchanging phenomena of experience. In modern terms, the Buddha offers a phenomenologicalapproach which may be understood as an anti-substantialist and anti-essentialist solution of themind-body problem. This interpretation gives sense to his criticism of the sassatavåda and theucchedavåda, both of which being based on the substantialist idea of Self.

Instead of the substantial integrity of a person, the Buddha proposes a model of series of causallyinterdependent experiential events ó the so-called dharmas. The causality is thus at the centerof the Buddhist account of experience.

Many causal factors are taken in consideration and they are said to produce their effectby their co-arising (sahajåta) condition, supporting each other and consolidating each other (likesticks in a tripod supporting each other), or acting as a foundation for each other (in the same way asthe earth acts as a support or foundation for trees); or coming together at one time and place(a sprout is produced by many factors coming together ó sprout, soil, an appropriate temperatureand humidity conditions etc). So, a standard causal explanation of perception in the Suttas takesthe following form:

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Visual discernment (cakkhu-vi¤¤åna) arises as dependent on the eye (indriya) and visibleshape-color (rµupa); the coming together of the three is contact (phasa); from contact as conditionarises Feeling (vedanå); what one feels one cognizes ... (e.g. M.I.111).

The phenomenological account of the psycho-somatic experience is conceptualized andclassified in a number of terms, like skandha, nåma-rµupa, prat∂tya-samutpåda and differentclassifications of the dharmas: as åyatana, dhåtu, citta-caitta, etc.

Among them, the closest to the mind-body problem seems to be the nåma-rµupa. Nåma(literally, name, symbol) is often associated with the mental, while rµupa with the material and bodilyfactors. However, we have no reason to believe that it is a kind of Cartesian dualism of substances.

Rµupa is not synonymous with physical matter: being a part of person (pudgala), it constitutesan animated, living matter, a body as abode of sensitivity, sensate material stuff (Lusthaus).It is not accidential that rµupa is often associated with resistance ó pratighåta. The four primaryelements (the mahåbhµuta) which are often mentioned as the most important instances of rµupa, are,as a matter of fact, not external substances as such but properties characterizing different typesof our sense-reactions to their mode of action: the element of earth is the property of solidity,the element of water ó liquidity and flow, the element of fire ó temperature, the element of wind ótouch. According to Dan Lusthausís pertinent remark, rµupa is more essentially defined by itsamenability to being sensed than its being matter, in terms of its function; ìwhat it does, notwhat it isî (Dan Lusthaus, Buddhist Phenomenology: A Philosophical Investigation of YogåcåraBuddhism and the Chíeng Wei-shih Lun. Routledge, 2002, page 183).

Rµupa is also presented as a skandha ó the first among the five groups of dharmas which wereaimed to explain individual experience without postulating of any constant substantial self.As a skandha, rµupa includes, besides the four primary elements (mahåbhµuta) mentioned above,their derivatives: 1) indriyas ó different somatic and mental faculties, and 2) objects (visibleforms, sounds, smells, tastes, tangible things). Symptomatic enough is that the most importantchanges in course of the development of the Buddhist doctrine occurred in the rubric of indriyas.To the five traditional sense-organs (eye, ear, nose, tongue, body) mentioned in the earlier partsof the Nikåyas, later, in Abhidharma literature and Abhidharma philosophical schools, were addedsuch indriyas as femininity, masculinity, sensations of pleasure, displeasure, satisfaction,dissatisfaction, indifference, faith, effort, memory, mindfulness and discernment and some otherpurely mental phenomena (in total 24 factors).

It is clear that the Buddhist authors of these lists did not really care about a strict demarcationbetween the categories of physical and mental phenomena. Therefore, we can say with certaintythat the Buddhist rµupa is in no way comparable to a material substance in the dualist systems likethat of Descartes. Even the classification, known as nåma-rµupa, does not entail a demarcationbetween bodily and mental factors. What was then the purpose of these Buddhist classifications?What unites all these heterogeneous somatic and mental phenomena into the rubric of rµupas?



In what do they differ from other groups of skandhas, referred to as nåma (normally these arevedanå, sa≈j¤å, sa≈skåra and vij¤åna)?

The skandhas from vedanå to vij¤åna are said to be directed towards the objects. InWestern philosophical terms, we may call them intentional, while the rµupa factors are notintentional. Some rµupas are objects (like visible forms, sounds, smells, they are sense-data inWestern terminology, not external physical things); some rµupas are instrumental forms of experience,like six indriyas, etc. I cannot go into further details of this quite interesting and challengingquestion. For the purpose of this paper it will suffice to say that relationship between rµupa and otherskandhas is not that of material-mental, body-mind, or even object-subject (Sue Hamelton).I propose the following solution: rµupa-skandha contains what is not a subject or, rather, an agent(gråhaka) of experience (graha) ó it includes objects and instruments, the subject being thevij¤åna-skandha (or group of cognitive discernment, a synonym of citta) accompanied by mentalauxiliaries ó vedanå (sensation), sa≈j¤å (verbal and conceptual identification) and sa≈skåra(karma-based factors like intention) skandhas (united by the category of caittika-dharmas).This repartition of roles fits well with the traditional opposition between vij¤åna and nåma-rµupaattested in the Suttas where a person (pudgala) is often understood as an interaction notbetween nåma and rµupa, but between cognitive discernment (vij¤åna) and nåma-rµupa (D.II.32,63-4, III.9-10).

It is also lately illustrated by Vasubandhu to justify the order of the skandhas in AKB I. 22:ìRµupa is the pot, vedanå is the food, sa≈j¤å are the seasoning, the sa≈skåra are the cook, andthe vij¤åna is the consumerî.

Thus, there are three kinds of interactive and mutually supportive factors: 1) somatic andpsycho-somatic (rµupa), 2) mental (nåma: vedanå, sa≈j¤å, sa≈skåra ó they are often classified ascaitta) and 3) conscious (vij¤åna, citta). This proves that we have to do not with a simplepsycho-somatic dualistic interaction as some scholars believe, but with a more complicatedprocess in which a plurality of factors is involved and which could hardly be subjected to thisquite simplistic mind-body division. Moreover, it seems to me that for the Buddhist thinkers afterthe Buddha, as well as for the other Indian philosophers, the distinction between the subject andthe other factors somehow dependent on it, including not only somatic but also mental elements, ismuch more important from the soteriological perspective than the distinction between mind andmatter, mind and body.

This becomes evident if we take the examples of puru¶a and prakæti in Så≈khya, wherethe prakæti incorporates intellect, mind, reasoning (buddhi, manas, aha≈kåra) ó all that what we inthe West are used to associate with the subject. The same is true for the opposition of Åtmanand anta¨karaƒa in Advaita etc. It is namely this very point that makes a remarkable contrastwith the Western philosophical tradition. In Buddhism the role of subject is played by differentmental dharmas under different circumstances, but among the skandhas it seems to be the vij¤åna.

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As the Abhidharma analysis developed, there arose a number of problems pertaining tothe explanation of the karmic causation of experience, that has gradually acquired a primaryimportance. If a true reality is tantamount only to an actually present cognitive events (dharmas)that a meditator can discover in his experience, how could we explain the karmic influences ofthe past actions which are not discernable in oneís meditation?

The problems of this kind have revealed the limitations of a purely phenomenological approach.The difficulties that Abhidhårmikas came across in their explanations of karmic causation haveled them to some metaphysical and ontological developments in their theories. These theoreticaldevelopments were aimed at the justification of a karmic continuity between past, present andfuture experience. The total causal interdependence and ìinteractionismî of different factors ofexperience has become a subject of more exigent scrutiny.

As the factors of consciousness arise both from homogeneous and heterogeneous conditions,questions have arisen as to the possibility of re-emergence of consciousness after its cessation in thenirodha-samåpatti meditation or attainment of cessation: if the series of consciousness beinginterrupted at the moment of cessation, from what it reappears afterwards in the absence of anyimmediately previous moment of consciousness (samanantara-pratyaya)? ó Is it possible for themoments of mental series to have an immediately previous moment in the series of somenon-mental factor? Other problems discussed by the Buddhist authors were a possibility of relapseinto defilement of those adepts who were supposed to be free of them, as well as an arising ofnew mental states which had no precedent hetu/causes in the individual series (santåna) etc.

The debates about the attainment of cessation and the related matters have been profoundlystudied by Paul Griffits in his book On Being Mindless: Buddhist Meditation and the Mind-BodyProblem. (Satguru Publications, 1986). As he pertinently remarks, the crucial question is ìwhether,without a substance-based ontology, without postulating an entity of which the mental andphysical events described by Buddhist theorists can be predicated, it is possible to make sense of theobserved facts of continuity of identity, of memory, of character traits and of beginnings and endsî(ibid., p.113).

In my opinion, the necessity of a substance-based ontology can also be explained from thepoint of view of karmic causation. Along with a tendency to switch the emphasis from a directexperience of the actually changing reality of dharmas to attempts of establishing a sort ofsubstantial basis for karmic continuity within personal series of momentary mental states,a predominantly phenomenological approach in the Nikåyas has been superceded by anontological and metaphysical conceptualization in the Abhidharma schools of Theravåda,Kashmiri Vaibhå¶ika and Sautråntika.

If we assume together with Kashmiri Vaibhå¶ikas that only the immediate perception andespecially the highest stages of meditation reveal to us the reality as it is, in that case we cannot dulyexplain how the karmic machinery works: how karmic fruits are ripening (karma-vipåka) and howthey are accumulated (karmopacaya).



Why? Because this karmic causation is not a matter of direct observation. It requires apotential dimension of experience through which a continuity between an action, its past root andits future fruit, between a karmic cause and its effect, could only be established. KashmiriVaibhå¶ikas postulated a number of ontological (dravya) entities (dharmas) to explain thecontinuity between potential and actual factors of karmic experience. I will just mention suchdharmas as pråpti and apråpti (possession and non-possession), vij¤apti-rµupa and avij¤apti-rµupa(indicative or non-indicative bodily and speech actions), as well as the idea of anu‹aya (potentialtendency).

For Sautråntikas, all these dharmas are just nominal and unreal, their karmic potential dependson the mental factor of volition, but as the event of volition lasts only an instant, the continuity ofkarmic efficiency is achieved through mental seeds (b∂jas) and våsanås (perfumes) arising anddisappearing in a series (sa≈tati) of dharmas. The potential dimension of experience is alreadythere but still not fully legitimized. It has become legitimized with the Yogåcåras in the form ofålaya-vij¤åna ó a receptacle of the karmic seeds. In that way they have introduced a kind ofquasi-substantial ontological basis for their otherwise phenomenological picture. Of course, thisinnovation does not concern the ultimate reality (parini¶panna) but it seems to be indispensablefor the explanation of the samsaric, karmic experience relative to the paratantra level.

What is the connection between the mind-body problem and the recognition of the potentialdimension of experience? I will formulate it in the following way: in as much as Buddhist thinkersbased their psychological doctrines on the data observed in an immediate experience thephenomenological approach was quite at place, from its perspective, as I have argued, the mind-bodyproblem makes no sense. Once they came across some extreme cases, like an attainment of cessation,relapse into defilements etc. which could be explained only if some potential states of consciousnessare assumed (in the form of anu‹aya or b∂ja) the problem arises as to how the causal relationswithin each of the two sets (mental or bodily events) and between them can be established.But as these problems were quite few in number, I have an impression that the mind-bodyproblem remains for later Buddhist thinkers a matter of quite marginal interest.

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