Buddhist Steps to an Ecology of Mind:
Thinking about 'Thoughts without a Thinker'
William S. Waldron
I. The 'Dependent Arising of the World' as Phenomenology of Experience
The Dependent Arising of Cognitive Awareness
III. The Dependent Arising of
Awareness (vijñana) of Difference.
IV. Circular Causality Brings Forth
a World: Biology
V. Circular Causality Brings Forth a World: Buddhism
Cognitive Awareness Arising from Consensual Communication
VII. The Cognitive
Unconscious as Embodied Structuring of Experience
VIII. The Cognitive Unconscious
as Generative Matrix of our 'Common World' References
For there is suffering,
but none who suffers; Doing exists although there is no doer.
but no extinguished person; Although there is a path, there is no goer.
There is no such thing as the subject that thinks or entertains
We are but whirlpools in a river of ever-flowing
water. We are not stuff that abides,
but patterns that perpetuate themselves.
- Norbert Wiener
Ludwig Wittgenstein has succinctly expressed what became
one of the central challenges of Indian Buddhist thought:
One of the most
misleading representational techniques in our language is the use of the word
'I,' particularly when it is used in representing immediate experience, as in
'I can see red a patch.' It would be instructive to replace this way of speaking
by another in which immediate experience would be represented without using the
Indian Buddhist philosophy addresses the same issue, but
for the purpose of liberating sentient beings from such 'misleading' notions as
an 'I,' and our bondage to this world of repetitive behavioral patterns-i.e. samsara-that
such ignorance entails. To this end, Buddhist philosophy attempts to articulate
not only how we can usefully speak about immediate experience without reference
to internal subjects (atman), but also how we can account for the genesis of this
'world of experience' without recourse to supernatural agencies. These two notions,
that of no-self (anatman) and the dependent arising of the world (pratitya-samutpada)
through its own interactive processes alone, are arguably the most distinctive
features of the traditional Indian Buddhist world view. Yet as any teacher of
Buddhism knows, these ideas, and their subtle implications, seem extraordinarily
difficult to comprehend. We are so bound by our ingrained notions of selves, substances
and entities that denying them seems to defy common-sense.
One of the great
ironies of comparative philosophy is that most modern people already think in
such terms in certain contexts: as a matter of course, most scientific accounts
of causality lack anthropomorphic agents altogether. Such phenomena as gravity,
chemical reactions, even most biological processes, are normally understood in
terms of complex yet orderly patterns of interaction and organization which occur
'by themselves,' bereft of either external controlling agents or internal experiencing
subjects. Analyzing human experience in such purely impersonal terms, however,
seems to preclude the very dimension of immediate experience we seek to understand
since it excludes from the outset notions of selfhood and subjectivity, the apparent
sine qua non of experience itself. That is, while science is quite capable of
discussing the world without a maker, it is still searching for appropriate ways
of discussing thoughts without a thinker. Fortunately, Indian Buddhist analyses
of mind are already expressed in a philosophical language which avoids the postulation
of experiential subjects without diminishing the importance of the experiential
dimension-a language which therefore provides rich opportunities for dialogue
with scientific approaches to understanding mind. This is possible because there
is a growing consensus in Western thought and science that we may understand ourselves
and our world more deeply if we think in terms of patterns of relationships rather
than of reified essences or entities-if we think, in short, in terms of dependent
This essay explores such possibilities by focusing upon two core
concepts, the dependent arising of our 'world of experience,' and the notion of
vijñana, 'discerning cognitive awareness' or simply 'consciousness,' ultimately
arriving at their crucial confluence in the Yogacara concept of the alaya-vijñana,
a form of subliminal cognitive awareness that serves as the 'unconscious structuring
of the world.' We will draw upon ideas from such modern fields as general systems
theory, evolutionary biology and cognitive science in order to elucidate these
ancient notions, resulting in provocatively different, yet to our mind more evocatively
contemporary, interpretations of these key Buddhist concepts. Rather than pursue
a simple point-by-point comparison between these traditions, however, we seek
to draw out their commonalities by engaging in an inductive, almost phenomenological
inquiry into the possibilities of speaking about experience 'without using the
personal pronoun.' This approach, perforce, focuses upon thematic, even phenomenological,
coherency at the expense, we are aware, of historical particularity.
both the argument and structure of this essay, we will focus on a number of areas
where Indian Buddhist thought converges with current trends in scientific approaches
to mind: (I) They both focus on patterns of dependent relationships rather than
on actions of independent entities, (II) within which cognitive awareness (vijñana)
is understood as a process which arises in dependence upon conditions, rather
than a faculty which acts by cognizing objects. (III) Cognitive awareness arises,
moreover, triggered by differences within a circumscribed cognitive domain, rather
than as the perception of objects within a pre-existing external world. (IV) These
cognitive domains have arisen through processes of circular causality (feedback
systems), brought about in large part by those very discernments of differences.
(V) Such differences themselves only arise within a larger classificatory context,
through unconscious processes pre-formed by linguistic categories rather than
through conscious processes performing rational procedures. (VI) This'linguistification'
of human mental processes gives rise to a symbolic self, arising out of the reflexive
possibilities of language rather than reflecting the existence of substantive
souls. (VII) Finally, the notion of a 'cognitive unconscious' epitomizes all of
the above points: it develops through evolutionary processes of circular causality,
which give rise to forms of awareness without an experiencing subject, by means
of which our world of experience is continuously yet unconsciously mapped, classified
and constructed. This unconscious structuring of experience, both perspectives
submit, imparts the cogency of human experience, with its deep sense of subjective
coherence, without relying upon essential or substantive causal agents, either
external or internal. In this way, at least some Buddhist thinkers and some modern
scientists have reached some consensus on ways to think about 'Thoughts without
I. The 'Dependent Arising of the World' as Phenomenology
The classical Indian Buddhist conception of causality2 is singularly
expressed in the simple formula of dependent arising:
When this is, that comes
to be; with the arising of this, that arises. When this is not, that does not
come to be; with the cessation of this, that ceases. (M II 32)
formula, 'when X is, Y arises,' states that certain conditions (X) are the generative
matrix within which other conditions (Y) come to be. Whatever exists comes about
dependent upon its enabling conditions and persists as long as such conditions
persist. The Indian Buddhists observed that we can best understand complex causality-how
things come to be-by understanding the systemic relations in which they are embedded
and the patterns of dependence upon which they arise, that is, their 'dependent
arising.' As we shall see, this formula subsequently became the basis for a model
of circular causality in which certain patterns of conditions feedback upon themselves,
reinforcing their own evolutionary processes. Within this deceptively simple formula,
however, lies much of the distinctive Buddhist vision of the world, some of whose
implications the remainder of this essay will attempt to draw out.
its most important implications is that it dispenses with the notion of fixed
entities or unchanging essences altogether. Instead of asking how independent
entities act within or upon an objective world, the view of dependent arising
asks "under what conditions does such and such a phenomenon arise?,"
or, more elaborately, "what complex of conditions operates in what recurrently
patterned ways in order to typically give rise to what kind of phenomena?"
3 This is akin to shifting one's perspective from that of the audience enthralled
with the personal drama on stage to that of the crew concerned with the supporting
operations backstage. In other words, our attention on independent agents acting
on independent objects, the entrenched grammatical syntax of conventional language,4
is turned toward an investigation of the complex, processual and interactive arising
of things. But this focuses our attention upon patterns of arising rather than
on actions of agents; and patterns are relational, not substantive, and arising
is dynamic, not static.5 The Buddhist dismissal of selves, essences or unchanging
entities, therefore, does not arise from logical propositions derived from first
principles, such as 'all is change,' as much as it follows from the form of the
question being raised, "how do things come to be?" -a point which is
all the more obvious by a similar disavowal of essences,6 entities or substantive
selves7 in modern science.
This is the conceptual framework, the causal syntax
if you will, within which most earlier Buddhist analyses of mind took place. It
is an approach to describing and understanding experience as it arises. It is,
in a word, a phenomenology of consciousness. In order to appreciate this perspective
and its larger implications for Buddhist philosophies of mind, we will examine
the arising of vijñana, of 'discerning cognitive awareness,' or simply,
II. The Dependent Arising of Cognitive Awareness
and perceiver specify each other.
- Francisco Varela, et. al., The Embodied
Classical Buddhist analysis of mind dissects phenomenal experience into
its basic constituents, each of which, consonant with the view of dependent arising,
arises in dependence upon other causes and conditions. This is well exemplified
in the concept of vijñana (P. viñña?a)'cognitive awareness'
or 'consciousness,' the central most concept in Buddhist understanding of mind.
Although the Buddha8 generally declared that "Apart from conditions, there
is no arising of cognitive awareness" (M I 258), each specific form of cognitive
awareness arises in conjunction with particular factors: "Visual cognitive
awareness arises dependent on the eye and (visual) form" (S II 73). That
is, when an object appears in a sense-field, impinging upon its respective sense-organ,
a moment of cognitive awareness (vijñana) arises.9 Sense-object and sense-organ
(or faculty) are thus correlatively defined: a visual object, by definition, is
that kind of stimulus which can impinge upon an eye. The same is true for all
six modes of human cognitive awareness: visual-, auditory-, olfactory-, gustatory-,
tactile- and mental-cognitive awareness. All arise depending upon the concomitance
of their respective organs (or faculties), the five senses and mind,10 with their
corresponding classes of stimuli.
Cognitive awareness (vijñana) is,
moreover, a result of discernment. Vijñana is commonly defined in Abhidharma
era texts as "the discrete discernment [of sense objects]," 11 a definition
emphasizing the disjunctive sense that the prefix 'vi-' (cognate with Latin 'dis-')12
lends to the verbal root 'jña,' 'to know.' We will return to this sense
of discernment shortly.
Although it is common to speak of cognitive awareness
as if it actively cognizes objects, in the syntax of dependent arising cognitive
awareness does not actually cognize anything-it simply is the awareness which
arises when the requisite conditions come together.13 Vasubandhu, author of the
fifth-century Abhidharma-kosa, makes precisely this point:
The sutra teaches:
"By reason of the organ of sight and of visible matter there arises the visual
consciousness" : there is not there either an organ that sees, or visible
matter that is seen; there is not there any action of seeing, nor any agent that
sees; this is only a play of cause and effect. In the light of [common] practice,
one speaks, metaphorically, of this process: "The eye sees, and the consciousness
discerns." But one should not cling to these metaphors.14
To cling to
the 'metaphors' of agents and actions-as if, for example, hearing were listening
and seeing were watching-obscures the radically depersonalized model of mind expressed
by the notion of no-self (anatman). In other words, to interpret vijñana
as an act of cognition rather than an occurrence of cognitive awareness is to
ignore the syntax of dependent arising, which takes no active subject. Once again,
the traditional Buddhist denial of a substantive, unchanging entity may be seen
as less a metaphysical position than a function of its mode of analysis.15 Cognitive
awareness is not something 'someone' does. Like an act of nature, cognitive awareness
This entails a number of important implications. Cognition, in these
terms, is neither purely subjective nor wholly objective. Like a transaction that
takes place between individuals, cognitive awareness occurs at the interface,
the concomitance, of a sense-organ and its correlative stimulus. Cognitive awareness
is thus neither an exact 'mirror of nature' which reflects things 'as they are'-since
what constitutes an 'object' is necessarily defined by the capacities of a particular
sense organ; nor is it a unilateral projection of a priori categories-since the
cognitive capacities of a sense organ are also correlatively defined by the kinds
of stimuli that may impinge upon it. In other words, the 'subjective' sense-organs
and 'objective' stimulus necessarily function in relation to, and are only intelligible
in terms of, each other.16
On the one hand, this is just common sense, and
nearly tautological: of course perception is based upon our means of cognition.
We can only perceive what we can discern, and what we can discern depends upon
our means of perception. On the other hand, the implications of this relational
view of cognition continue unfolding as we continue asking that quintessential
Buddhist question: under what conditions does discerning cognitive awareness arise?
For discerning cognitive awareness is not only an event that occurs temporally,
but one which equally depends upon relational distinctions-and relational distinctions
are hardly substances. Following the implications of this 'insubstantial discernment,'
our epistemology based upon dependent arising begins to get slippery indeed.
III. The Dependent Arising of Awareness (vijñana) of Difference.
operates only on difference. All receipt of information is necessarily the receipt
of news of difference.
- Gregory Bateson, Mind and Nature
We know we are
entering a different view of the world when we read the following statement in
an early Buddhist text:
The eye, arising, does not come from any place; perishing,
it does not remain in any place. In this way, the eye exists after having been
non-existent and, after having existed, disappears.17
Such passages call out
for clarification, and not only for those unfamiliar with Buddhist thought. And
yet, as we shall see, these notions follow quite logically from the basic perspective
of dependent arising.
I will use the analyses of Gregory Bateson, biologist,
cyberneticist, and anthropologist, to enter into the subtle implications of an
epistemology based upon dependent arising-from the idea that all phenomena are
necessarily in flux, to the airy notion that not only do they neither exist nor
not exist but that their discernment necessarily depends upon insubstantial classificatory
grids or 'mapping.' In his popular book, Mind and Nature, Bateson analyzes cognitive
processes by comparing them to a simple electric switch:
[T]he switch, considered
as a part of an electric circuit, does not exist when it is in the on position.
From the point of view of the circuit, it is not different from the conducting
wire which leads to it and the wire which leads away from it. It is merely 'more
conductor.' Conversely, but similarly, when the switch is off, it does not exist
from the point of view of the circuit. It is nothing, a gap between two conductors
which themselves exist only as conductors when the switch is on. In other words,
the switch is not except at the moments of its change of setting, and the concept
'switch' has thus a special relation to time. It is related to the notion 'change'
rather than to the notion 'object.'
Sense organs, as we have already noted,
admit only news of difference and are indeed normally triggered only by change,
i.e., by events or by those differences in the perceived world which can be made
into events by moving the sense organ. In other words, the end organs of sense
are analogous to switches. They must be turned 'on' for a single moment by external
impact. That single moment is the generating of a single impulse in the afferent
The switch exists, as a switch, only at the moment of switching,
otherwise it remains indistinguishable from the rest of the circuit. Our sense
organs function similarly, Bateson avers: they only operate relative to, that
is, are only triggered by, changes in stimuli, i.e., by events. Bateson is not
simply parroting the ancient platitude that 'everything changes.'19 Rather, he
is suggesting the more fundamental notion that change is constitutive of perception
itself. Without change, there is no perception. Hence, to even speak of perception
is necessarily to speak of events-and this is to speak in terms of dependent arising.
A cognitive event is a function of the interaction between sense organs and their
correlative stimuli. Perception for Bateson, as cognitive awareness for the Buddhists,
is fundamentally processual.
But it is also discriminative. Recall the definition
of cognitive awareness (vijñana) as "the discrete discernment [of
sense objects]." Just as the impingement of a sense organ that gives rise
to a moment of cognitive awareness is a temporally distinct event, so too does
it depend upon a contextually distinct difference. Bateson illustrates this as
I commonly make a heavy dot with chalk on the surface of the blackboard...
to achieve some thickness... If I move my finger across the spot, the difference
in levels is very conspicuous... What happens is... an event, a step function,
a sharp change in the state of the relationship between my fingertip and the surface
of the blackboard. This example, which is typical of all sensory experience, shows
how our sensory system... can only operate with events, which we can call changes...
In the case of vision, it is true that we think we can see the unchanging... the
truth of the matter is that... the eyeball has a continual tremor, called micronystagmus.
The eyeball vibrates through a few seconds of arc and thereby causes the optical
image on the retina to move relative to the rods and cones which are the sensitive
end organs. The end organs are thus in continual receipt of events that correspond
to outlines in the visible world. We draw distinctions; that is, we pull them
out. Those distinctions that remain undrawn are not.20
Just as the switch
does not exist, for the circuit, except while the switch is switching, so too
distinct stimuli do not exist, for a cognitive system, except insofar as they
involve contextual differences. This is not to say that 'differences are perceived'
(which would abandon the syntax of dependent arising), but rather that an awareness
of difference is constitutive of perception in the same way change is. To even
speak of perception is to necessarily to speak of awareness of differences.
of differences, however, cannot arise outside of a context, since differences
occur between phenomena. "To produce news of difference, i.e., information,"
Bateson observes, "there must be two entities," since "each alone
is-for the mind and perception-a non-entity, a non-being." 21 An absolutely
isolated object would be imperceptible, like an animal which stays perfectly camouflaged
as long as it does not move. That is, just as switches only arise momentarily,
differences only arise contextually. Contextual differences, however, have no
singular location. Bateson thus continues:
Difference, being of the nature
of relationship, is not located in time or in space. We say that the white spot
is 'there,' 'in the middle of the blackboard,' but the difference between the
spot and the blackboard is not 'there.' It is not in the spot; it is not in the
blackboard; it is not in the space between the board and the chalk.... When I
wipe the blackboard, where does the difference go?... Difference is precisely
not substance... difference... has no dimensions. It is qualitative, not quantitative.22
Since awareness of differences arises contextually rather than independently,
and is episodic rather than enduring, it has no substantive existence. Not being
a substance, it neither comes nor goes anywhere. The scriptural passage cited
earlier in this section thus answers Bateson's query, "where does the difference
go?" : as an object of awareness, "the eye, arising, does not come from
any place; perishing, it does not remain in any place." The arising of cognitive
awareness, which arises in the interface between the sense-fields and sense faculties,
is axiomatically both momentary and discerning. All phenomena, the Buddhist sutras
state, are evanescent like "A dew drop, a bubble, a dream, a lightning flash
or a cloud."
Bateson's ideas also suggest an interesting approach to
the elusive notion of dharma found in the Abhidharma traditions (roughly 200B.C.E.-600C.E.).
Although Abhidharma has many dimensions, we shall consider it here only insofar
as it is a "phenomenological psychology" whose "primary concern...
is to understand the nature of experience, and thus the reality on which it focuses
is conscious reality, the world as given in experience." 23 Abhidharma, in
this respect, represents an attempt to systematically analyze mental processes
in terms of experiential events-and it is these momentary24 and distinctive events
that are called dharmas.25 While dharmas have often been interpreted as elements
of existence, as if they referred to substantive constituents of an objective
world, we suggest an interpretation in the terms of dependent arising of cognitive
awareness described above. A dharma refers, that is, like the sensation of the
spot on the chalkboard, to each momentary and distinct aspect of experience insofar
as it is perceptively involved in the arising of cognitive awareness. Thus it
logically follows from our mode of analysis that dharmas arise from nowhere and
go nowhere. That is, like the distinctions triggered by Bateson's finger on the
chalk spot, dharmas have no actual substance nor any singular location; they are
neither a 'something' nor a 'nothing,' ontologically speaking.26 Consistent with
our previous analysis: without change or distinctions, there are no dharmas.
is this notion of dharmas-as distinct phenomena which lack location and substantive
existence, that evanescently arise from nowhere and go nowhere-that became the
basic unit with which Abhidharma analyzes and describes the arising of cognitive
awareness and other processes of mind. That is to say, that insofar as every one
of the conditioning factors that instigate a moment of cognitive awareness themselves
become events that give rise to cognitive awareness, they become dharmas. No dharma
can therefore be distinguished by itself; "there must be two entities,"
as Bateson says. Otherwise, each dharma would itself be indiscernible. To even
speak of dharmas then is necessarily to speak of a context of distinctions. These
are, of course, the same conclusions we drew above with our analysis of perception,
except that they may now also be reflexively applied to the systemic differentiation
between the terms of analysis themselves. Abhidharma, in other words, is a "metapsychology,"
which self-consciously "deals with the various concepts and categories of
consciousness as the primary objects of investigation." 27
will return to this notion of reflexivity below, we must point out here one further
implication from the logic, the causal syntax, of dependent arising. While dharmas
may ultimately refer to experiential phenomena, what counts as a dharma in any
system of description must always be distinguished from other dharmas. Dharmas
cannot therefore refer to independent, self-sufficient entities. Or rather, and
more precisely, we cannot speak about the 'true nature' of a dharma outside of
a given system of analysis.28 This relativizes the notion of dharmas have any
truly independent 'distinguishing characteristic' (AKBh ad I.2b; svalak?a?a),29
and marks our departure from most orthodox Abhidharma systems.
We thus come
to the surprising conclusion that while these distinctions do not refer to substances
or entities, either ontologically or epistemologically, they are nevertheless
constitutive of both perception and the entire system of knowledge based upon
dharmas. Without such distinctions, there can be no such knowledge. Knowledge
thus depends not just upon the arising of an awareness of difference triggered
by an impingement of a sense organ, but even more fundamentally upon the classifications
implicit in any such distinction. The arising of cognitive awareness is therefore
not just correlative to our sense organs or faculties, but also to the very possibilities
for such distinctions that are enstructured in those organs and faculties in the
first place. We cannot help seeing something as red rather than blue, hearing
pitches as high or low, feeling distinct textures or disparate temperatures, or
smelling odors enticing or odious. Since such distinctions are constitutive of
cognitive awareness, the classifications they depend upon are also indispensable
for any arising of discerning cognitive awareness (vijñana). As cognitive
scientists Lakoff and Johnson point out:
Categorization is ... a consequence
of how we are embodied.... We categorize as we do because we have the brains and
bodies we have and because we interact in the world the way we do... What that
means is that the categories we form are part of our experience. They are the
structures that differentiate aspects of our experience into discernible kinds.
Categorization is thus not a purely intellectual matter, occurring after the fact
of experience. Rather, the formation and use of categories is the stuff of experience.30
Our cognitions and distinctions, and the implicit schemas that inform them,
thus constitute our experienced 'world.' While the map may not be the territory,
our world is unavoidably a mapped world.31
Thus far, we have analyzed the
arising of discerning cognitive awareness, of experience without a subject, as
a discrete event, first temporally, as a process which occurs when some stimulus
impinges upon its correlative sense organ or faculty, and then epistemologically,
insofar as those stimuli are contextually distinguished in dependence upon some
embedded and implicit system of distinctions. Our further inquiry into the conditions
for the arising of this world of experience will proceed from this, leading into
two initially diverging, but ultimately converging, directions: first, we will
examine the co-evolutionary processes whereby sense organs and faculties come
to be correlative with the stimuli they are receptive to, the so-called 'structural
coupling with the world;' and, dependent upon that, how the classificatory schemas
embedded in these faculties become inseparable from language use, which is itself
inescapably intersubjective. These two directions will be reunited in the notion
of the 'cognitive unconscious,' a dimension of mind resulting from the intertwined
co-evolutionary processes of our neurological, linguistic and social lives. This
development implies that transient and insubstantial events, such as the discrete
awareness of differences "not located in space and time," can, over
time, give rise to the phenomenal world we collectively inhabit-bodies and all.
These processes involve, however, a series of vicious circles-in which thoughts
without a thinker lead to acts without an actor, and a world without a maker,
which leads on to further thoughts, etc.-from which we can hardly find respite.
IV. Circular Causality Brings Forth a World: Biology
In mental process,
the effects of differences are to be regarded as transforms of the difference
which preceded them... ifferences... and their trains of effects in promoting
other differences become material of information, redundancy, pattern, and so
- Bateson, Mind and Nature
How then can there be causality without
agents? And, more specifically, how is it that our sense-faculties came to be
receptive to the particular types of stimuli that impinge upon them, which together
give rise to our world of experience? Our capacities for such awareness of distinctions
did not arise uncaused, nor are they without their own consequences. They developed
in dependence upon previous kinds of experience and in turn condition the kinds
of experience, the kinds of cognitive awareness, that may arise in the future.
The momentary arising of the discernment of differences is thus part of a larger
feedback cycle in which "the effects of differences are to be regarded as
transforms of the difference which preceded them." These two notions-circular
causality, in the form of recursive feedback processes, and epigenesis, wherein
the results of previous events serve as the basis for succeeding ones-comprise
another area where Buddhist philosophy has much in common with scientific models
of causality, particularly those of cognitive science and evolutionary biology.
In both perspectives, these models turn our attention away from independent acts
of isolated entities and toward particular patterns of interaction that give rise
both to immediate forms of cognitive awareness and, in the long run, to the living
forms we all embody. That is, this circular causality operates at both micro and
At the micro level, as we have seen, discerning cognitive awareness
arises whenever our sensory organs are impinged upon, as, for example, through
the incessant tremor of the eyes which continuously gives rise to visual cognitive
awareness. The very processes of living ensure that there is virtually no time,
even during sleep, when our sense organs are not being impinged upon in some fashion.
Our pulmonary and respiratory systems alone prevent that. To speak of living therefore
is necessarily to speak of the continuous changes in our skin cells, blood vessels,
neurons, etc., which continuously impinge upon our senses and hence continuously
give rise to moments, however faint, of cognitive awareness. This inseparability
between cognitive processes and the processes of living led biological philosophers
Maturana and Varela to effectively equate the two: "living systems are cognitive
systems and living as a process is a process of cognition." 32 In other words,
the processes of change are equally constitutive of life and of the arising cognitive
The reverse, of course, is also true. The cognitive processes inseparable
from living continuously bring about changes in the organism. All cognitive processes,
by definition, involve some neural response, some organismic activity. As Capra
puts it in his Web of Life, "the human nervous system... interacts with the
environment by continually modulating its structure." 33 That is, there is
no cognition without a simultaneous change in the structure of an organism, in
their cells, neurons, etc. Hence, Capra reverses the equation of cognition with
life to say that "the structural changes in the system constitute acts of
These two notions-that living entails continuous cognition
and cognition entails continuous modification of living structure-introduce an
important causal reciprocity between the structure of sense organs and the arising
of cognitive awareness. That is, stimuli are always impinging upon the sense organs,
giving rise to forms of cognitive awareness; and these processes continuously
but subtly modulate the structures of these organs, which in turn influence their
receptivity to subsequent stimuli. As we know from Hebb's rule in neural pathways,
the occurrence of cognitive processes reinforces their underlying neural structures,
increasing the likelihood of them reoccurring in conjunction with similar processes.
This causal reciprocity between cognition and structure provides, then, a working
definition of a living system: An organism is something that maintains its organization
by continuously reinforcing its own structures through its cognitive, that is,
living, processes.35 Maturana and Varela have thus coined the term 'autopoiesis,'36
roughly 'self-making,'37 to express how organisms "transform matter into
themselves in a manner such that the product of their operation is their own organization."
38 Cognitive systems, living systems, and autopoietic systems are here virtually
These reciprocal or autopoietic processes take place not only
at the micro level of cognition, but also at the macro level of evolution. Both
evolutionary biology and the view of dependent arising articulate models of circular
causality to describe how things come into being over the long term through recursive
feedback processes.39 Briefly,40 evolution occurs through differential reproductive
success, a process whereby creatures who reproduce more prolifically pass on more
of their heritable characteristics. This depicts "A circle of positive feedback"
in which whatever differences lead to greater reproductive success are steadily
reinforced over time. Complex structures are gradually built up by the successful
changes or modifications of each generation, both by their proliferation through
greater reproduction, as well as by becoming the basis for each succeeding generation.
As an epigenetic41 process, therefore, "every evolutionary step is an addition
of information to an already existing system." 42 In this fashion, the structures
of all life, including human life, have come into being conditioned by an immensely
long, complex and unending series of transformations over countless generations.
As biological creatures, this means that the very minds and bodies we embody today
reflect the gradually accumulated results of reproductively successful interactions
between our forebears and their natural and social environments.43
upon interactive relationships, however, radically alters our ideas of what exactly
'evolves' in much the same way that our analysis of the dependent arising of cognitive
awareness alters our ideas of who exactly cognizes.
As we have seen, cognitive
awareness arises with the concomitance of an appropriate stimulus, an 'object,'
and its respective sense-organ or faculty. Cognitive awareness is a function of
all of these togther, neither of them separately. They are also correlative: the
kind of stimulus that may impinge upon a sense-organ depends upon the structure
of that organ. Humans, for example, cannot see ultra-violet light or hear ultra-sonic
sounds; bees and bats can. Taking an organism's eye-view, Maturana and Varela
therefore argue that "perception should not be viewed as a grasping of an
external reality, but rather as the specification of one." 44 That is, what
constitutes the 'world' or 'environment' for any given organism depends upon its
specific cognitive structures, since it is these that specify its 'cognitive domain.'45
Biologically speaking, then, we cannot speak of an independent, objective world
that organisms have access to, because "the domain of classes of interactions
into which an organism can enter constitute its entire cognitive reality."
46 To even speak of a 'world' therefore is necessarily to speak of a cognizing,
that is, an interacting organism. Without an organism, there is no 'environment,'
without cognitive interaction, no 'world.'47 In this sense, and consonant with
the view of dependent arising, "world and perceiver specify each other."
48 As Capra notes, "cognition, then, is not a representation of an independently
existing world, but rather a continual bringing forth of a world through the process
of living." 49
Defining the 'world' or 'environment' in this way-as that
which comes into being for any given organism through the arising of it cognitive
domain-is also used to describe the processes though which beings or species evolve
or come into being over time. What constitutes an 'environment' for any organism,Tooby
and Cosmides argue, are only "those particular aspects of the world that
are rendered developmentally relevant by the evolved design of an organism's developmental
adaptations." 50 And it is "this developmentally relevant environment"
they continue, "the environment as interacted with by the organism-that,
in a meaningful sense, can be said to be the product of evolution." 51 Thus,
as with our analysis of cognitive awareness, evolutionary theory also shifts attention
from the arising of entities to the patterns of interaction. "What evolves,"
Maturana and Varela observe, "is always a unit of interactions," 52
neither the organism by itself, and certainly not the environment alone, but the
organism-in-environment. In other words, it is patterns of interaction that evolve,53
representing "the evolution of the cognitive domains." 54 And, similarly,
the evolution of its cognitive domain is the evolution of the 'world'-for that
specific kind of organism. In this way, a distinctive world is gradually built
up in accordance with the distinctive structures of each living system through
its entire history of organism-environment interactions, a process Maturana and
Varela call a 'structural coupling with the world.' Just as with the arising of
cognitive awareness and the functioning of living systems, the evolution of species
is seen as the coming into being of specific patterns of interaction rather than
the arising of independent entities. As physicist Norbert Wiener notes, "We
are not stuff that abides, but patterns that perpetuate themselves." 55
V. Circular Causality Brings Forth a World: Buddhism
The Elder traced a
circle (cakka) on the ground and spoke thus to King Milinda: "Is there an
end to this circle, sire?"
"There is not, revered sir."
so, sire, are those cycles (cakka) that are spoken of by the Lord: 'Visual consciousness
arises because of eye and material shapes, the meeting of the three is sensory
impingement; conditioned by sensory impingement is feeling; conditioned by feeling
is craving; conditioned by craving is kamma [karma]; vision [chakkhu, lit.: eye]
is born again from kamma' - is there thus an end of this series?"
is not, revered sir." ....
"Even so, the earliest point of [samsaric]
time cannot be shown either."
- Milinda's Questions.
We may now better
appreciate some of the implications of the formula of dependent arising, whose
cyclic nature warranted the appellation 'sa?sara,' literally 'the going around.'
This latter is traditionally taken as the course of an individual's nearly infinite
series of lifetimes; in modern Buddhist vernaculars it simply refers to this life.
As with evolutionary theory, this theory of circular causality applies equally
well to both temporal dimensions,56 and the twelve factors57 of the series of
dependent arising-often depicted in the famed Wheel of Life (bhava-cakra) on walls
of Buddhist temples throughout Asia-are typically so explained. The cyclic and
epigenetic nature of this causal model is epitomized in the reciprocal relationships
between cognition and structure, that is, between cognitive awareness (vijñana)
(and its closely associated activities58 ) and the multiple senses of sa?skara
(Pali sankhara), the various structures and activities comprising human embodiment,
which also serve as the basis for cognitive awareness. These two concepts, with
the crucial addition of the cognitive and emotional afflictions (klesa), constitute
the dynamic core of our conditioned, cyclic existence-of sa?sara.
no adequate translation for the term sa?skara. It has both an active and a nominal
sense, 'the act of forming' as well as 'that which is formed.' In its broadest
sense, most phenomenon in the world are considered sa?skaras insofar as they are
compounded or put together.59 Thus, sa?skara also comprises the various structures
supporting living processes, insofar as these are constructed from past actions.
In other contexts, the term refers to the constructive activities in the present,
being virtually synonymous with intention (cetana), the defining characteristic
of karma, actions that accrue consequences.60 Sa?skaras are, like organisms which
continually modulate their own structures, both continuously and simultaneously
conditioning and being conditioned by ongoing experience. This is crucial for
understanding the dynamics of cyclic causality depicted in the series of dependent
Near the beginning of the formula, (2) sa?skara refers to the various
physical, mental and emotional structures or complexes continuing from past lives,
which condition the arising of cognitive awareness at the time of rebirth. In
a sense that virtually equates them, Buddhists considered (3) vijñana a
sine qua non of life, whose advent and departure mark the beginning and end of
a particular lifetime.61 Thus the next step in the series, the arising of the
(4) psycho-physical organism (name-and-form, nama-rupa), depends upon these cognitive
processes in order to develop. On the other hand, cognitive awareness also depends
upon some kind of psycho-physical basis (in this world62 ), so there is an explicitly
reciprocal relationship between the arising of cognitive awareness and its psycho-physical
basis.63 With the gradual growth of the organism, the conditions for complex cognitive
processes develop, epitomized in next set of factors-(5) the six sense-spheres,
(6) contact (or sensation), (7) and feeling-which are themselves instigated by,
or even effectively equated with, the cognitive processes as a whole.64 The series
has thus far depicted how the various cognitive structures-the sense organs and
their specific sense-faculties-enable and condition the arising of cognitive awareness
and has indicated the first, affective responses to it.
But to be circular,
cognitive awareness must also give rise to new actions which reinforce these structures.
The sensations and feelings elicited by cognitive awareness thus give rise to
the next chain of processes-(8) craving, (9) grasping and (10) becoming-which
eventually reinforce their own enabling structures. That is, it is the karmic
actions (here 'becoming') instigated by the afflictive (klesa) attitudes of craving
(ta?ha) and grasping that perpetuate and reinforce the very structures65 that
bring about 'the arising of the world' (S II 73).66 S II 101 similarly states
that when there is pleasure in, or passion or craving (ta?ha) for the sustenances
(ahara) of sentient beings who are already born or who desire to come to be (sambhavesina),
consciousness becomes established and comes to growth. Wherever consciousness
becomes established and comes to growth, there is a descent of name-and-form.
Where there is a descent of name-and-form, there is growth in the karmic formations
(sankhara).67 Where there is growth in the karmic formations, there is the production
of future renewed existence.
In short, the series of dependent arising depicts
a recursively cyclic process between the constructed complexes (sa?skara), cognitive
awareness (vijñana), and the constructing afflicted actions these both
enable and elicit: for as long as the cognitive processes give rise to sensation
and feeling, then craving and grasping will tend to arise, which in turn tend
to elicit the intentional afflicted activities, the karmic actions, that ultimately
create and sustain the structures (sa?skara) that constitute further existence
and the 'arising of the world.' And for as long as these structures persist, they
provide the conditions that both enable and conduce to further cognitive and afflictive
processes, and so on. This model of circular causality-enabling structures that
give rise to cognitive awareness, which in turn elicit the afflictions that instigate
actions which reinforce those very structures, etc.-is, I submit, the core of
the pre-Mahayana Buddhist world view.68
These process are not merely cyclic,
of course. They are also 'epigenetic' in that specific bodily structures and dispositions
have been continuously 'built up'69 from past experience and activities, 'countless
lifetimes' as the Buddhists put it. These epigenetic processes, propelled by the
feedback loops of circular causality, do not concern the evolution of independent
entities considered separately from some external world, but rather reflect the
continued replication of patterns of interaction, such as expressed in the various
formulations of dependent arising. It is these patterns whereby cognitive or living
systems come into being, their dependent arising, that constitute the 'product'
of evolution. In this sense, both evolutionary biology and Buddhist thought analyze
the causal relations underlying momentary cognitive processes and long-term evolutionary
processes in a similar fashion: the 'arising of the world' for an individual,
its ontogeny, as well as for a species, its phylogeny,70 can be equally well understood
as the 'arising of the world, the 'bringing forth' of specific cognitive domains,
out of the dynamic vortex of cyclic causality.
This reciprocal causality between
our cognitive activities (vijñana) and the structures of our bodies and
minds (sa?skara) radically revises our understanding of the role mental processes
play in evolution, the second trajectory of our discussion indicated above. We
have just suggested that the interaction between cognitive awareness and its supporting
structures, which entails continuous modification of these structures, is also
causally effective at a developmental or evolutionary scale. That is, our evolved
structures reflect the accumulative history of our varied forms of cognitive activity
as much as vice versa (i.e., not only do sa?skaras condition vijñana, but
vijñana conditions sa?skaras). We might dwell on this a moment.
we recall, each form of cognitive awareness arises conditioned by sensory (or
mental) stimuli within its cognitive domain, as well as by the psycho-physiological
structures (sa?skara), the sense organs or faculties, which have been built up
by previous karmic activities. These faculties are themselves only receptive to
particular kinds of stimuli, whose categorical distinctions are constitutive of
that form of cognitive awareness in the first place. As Lakoff and Johnson note,
"The categories we form are part of our experience," 71 not something
added on. And since, in the epigenetic causal processes outlined above, the activities
following the arising of cognitive awareness reinforce the very structures (sa?skara)
that support them, this means that the particular implicit and innate classificatory
systems that condition cognitive awareness themselves become important factors
in the further development of living structures (sa?skara). Living forms have,
in effect, 'enstructured' their cognitive maps, their capacities for cognitive
discernment, through the extended epigenetic processes of circular causality.
This is true at the individual level, in our neural pathways, for example, as
well as at the level of the species, as in evolutionary development. As anthropologist
If evolution by natural selection is the source of our mind's
a priori structures, then in a sense these structures also derive from experience-not
the immediate, short-term experience of any single developing organism, but rather
the long-term experience of an evolving population ... Evolution, then, is the
result of innumerable experiences, accumulated through an almost unimaginable
length of time. The a priori human mind, seemingly preprogrammed and at least
somewhat independent of personal experience, is actually nothing more than the
embodiment of experience itself.72
To the extent that this is so (and evolutionary
processes are most commonly seen in just these terms73 ), this means that the
systemic categorizations and classifications underlying our cognitive systems
have had important causal influences on human evolution in their own right. But
classifications, we remember, refer to patterns of relationships, not properties
of substances, to maps not territory. That is to say, that the distinctions that
constitute our cognitive processes-which have no spatial location and come from
nowhere and go nowhere-were indispensable conditions for the dependent arising
of our minds and bodies. In Buddhist terms, the dharmas that are discerned are
constitutive conditions for 'the arising of the world,' not just epistemologically,
which is obvious, but ontologically as well. Without discernment, there is no
cognitive awareness (vijñana); without cognitive awareness, and its associated
activities, no conditioned structures (sa?skara); and without conditioned structures,
no bodies and minds. In short, there would be no distinctively human embodiment
without the classifications and categorizations constitutive of the arising of
distinctively human forms of cognitive awareness itself.
And what is the most
influential source of human categorization and classification, whose distinctions
have no spatial location either inside or outside of our brains,74 which represents
patterns of intersubjective interaction that have "evolved spontaneously,"
75 and is, furthermore, one of the most salient features of the physical and mental
structures of human life? Language. "The major structural and functional
innovations that make human brains capable of unprecedented mental feats evolved
in response to the use of something as abstract and virtual as the power of words
....," biological anthropologist Deacon intones.76 "The physical changes
that make us human are the incarnations, so to speak, of the process of using
words." We are not only the results of what we have thought, felt and done,
but, above all, of what we heard and said. We are, in short, the word become flesh.
VI. Cognitive Awareness Arising from Consensual Communication
manner and sensory means by which living things construe their environment will
be the same media through which the environment-'the world'-gives itself back
to them ... Language is a primary medium through which humans inhabit their world.
Language names what the world is, and the world complies, delivering itself back
to us through our own namings. Languages are indeed like habitats.
Paden, Interpreting the Sacred
We may now more directly approach the quandaries
raised at the outset of this essay: how, absent any external agent or internal
experiencer, could our cognitive structures, built up through multi-generational,
evolutionary streams of organism-environment interaction, ever give rise to the
phenomenal world we inhabit? How, in other words, does 'our world'-which includes
language and thought, self and society-emerge out of these systemic interactions
and their long-term accumulative results?
Although we began analyzing cognition
in terms of the concomitance of sense-faculties and sense-objects, it should be
clear that the developmental history of an organism determines more about its
present cognitive processes than do the stimuli it responds to.77 It is, after
all, its particular cognitive capacities that specify its specific 'cognitive
domain.' Complex organisms have, moreover, developed a reflexivity in which forms
of cognitive awareness arise in response to stimuli that are internal to the organism
itself, bringing forth an 'inner environment' that is as much a part of its total
cognitive reality as any apparent external one.78 In the complex nervous systems
in human beings, in particular, this reflexivity eventually gave rise to a distinctive
cognitive domain comprised of systems of intersubjective communication utilizing
symbolic modes of expression, i.e. language.79
In his sweeping book, The Symbolic
Species: The Co-evolution of Language and the Brain, Terrence Deacon argues that
what distinguishes human beings is not so much the size of our brains as its special
mode of organization: human brains support systems of symbolic reference. Symbolic
reference differs from other modes of reference :
Because symbols do not directly
refer to things in the world, but indirectly refer to them by virtue of referring
to other symbols, they are implicitly combinatorial entities whose referential
powers are derived by virtue of occupying determinate positions in an organized
system of other symbols.80
In other words, symbolic systems are self-referential
in the same way as the classificatory systems we analyzed above are: their individual
items are distinguished by the disjunctive differences between them,81 and interpreted
in accordance with systemic rules of relationship, i.e. grammar.82 Language, it
is clear, is the mode of symbolic reference par excellence.
Our symbolic or
linguistic capabilities did not, of course, spring fully formed out of the head
of Zeus. They too are part of the accumulative, constructive and interactive processes
of evolution whereby cognitive processes condition living structures, which in
turn condition further cognitive processes and so on.83 As symbolic communication
'dependently arose' in early hominid species it became a powerful evolutionary
force in its own right, radically and irrevocably changing the structures and
processes of the human brain.84 This momentous change centered on an increasingly
enlarged prefrontal cortex, where such symbolizing processes are apparently concentrated.85
As language use and this 'prefrontalization' mutually reinforced each other, the
symbolic-linguistic mode of cognition which is dependent upon them came to dominate
other, originally nonlinguistic, processes. "Brain-language co-evolution
has significantly restructured cognition from the top-down ...," Deacon argues,
its secondary effects have also ramified to influence the whole
of human cognition. Human beings approach the world of sensory stimuli and motor
demands differently from other species... even when our symbolic-linguistic abilities
Human cognitive processes, even simple sensory ones, in
other words, unavoidably arise in dependence upon our 'linguistified' brain. Language,
then, along with the systemic distinctions upon which it depends, is not something
added onto human cognitive processes. Systemic symbolic thinking is constitutive
of normal human cognitive processes.87
This prefrontalization of human cognition,
however, is fraught with unintended consequences, consequences that follow from
the very nature of linguistic symbolification. As classificatory systems based
upon mutually dependent yet disjunctively defined terms, languages are largely
conventional; they have no natural correspondence with their referents and hence
never really 'get at' reality. Just as searching for the definition of a word
in a dictionary only leads to other words, the meaning of a term in any symbolic
system depends more upon other terms than on the 'things' themselves. The things
themselves remain outside the system of symbolic reference, not in the superficial
sense that symbols or words stand for something else, but in the deeper sense
that what they stand for is primarily determined by how they are defined within
the system as a whole.
Language is therefore not only a result of the long-term,
interdependent feedback cycles of evolution. The self-referentiality of symbolic
reference also inevitably gives rise to its own feedback cycles. "[S]ymbolically
mediated models of things..," Deacon notes, "exhibit complicated nonlinearity
and recursive structure as well as nearly infinite flexibility and capacity for
novelty due to their combinatorial nature." 88 Therefore, to the extent that
organisms 'specify their cognitive domains' through their specific cognitive capacities,
the cognitive domains of human beings are inescapably informed by the recursive
and self-referential cycles of linguistic symbolification.89 "We cannot help
but see the world in symbolic categorical terms," Deacon declares, "dividing
it up according to opposed features, and organizing our lives according to themes
and narratives." 90 This linguistification of human cognitive processes thus
represents a physiologically enstructured, dominating cognitive strategy characterized
by compulsive yet creative recursivity, based upon words that are defined interdependently
and systemically, rather than independently or substantively, and whose ultimate
meanings are conventionally determined. No wonder Deacon ambivalently observes:
"we are not just a species that uses symbols. The symbolic universe has ensnared
us in an inescapable web." 91
Buddhist analyses of mind also connect
reflexivity, and the linguistic categorizations associated with it, with cognitive
processes (vijñana) that have been built up through the accumulating, epigenetic
cycles of dependent arising. These are closely associated with 'mental' cognitive
awareness (Skt. mano-vijñana; Pali mano-viñña?a) the only
cognitive modality not directly based upon a sense faculty but upon the faculty
of mind (mano or manas).92 Its reflexivity and recursivity also depend upon the
reciprocal relationships between sensory cognitive awareness, non-sensory (symbolic)
'objects' such as thoughts or ideas, and the ensnaring web of conceptual proliferation
(Skt. prapañca, Pali papañca) entailed by language use.
cognitive awareness arises in conjunction with two kinds of events. First, the
occurrence of any of the five forms of sensory cognitive awareness instigates
a reflexive mental awareness of that initial awareness.93 An awareness that something
is blue, for example, arises (for most Indian Buddhist schools) in two discrete
steps: first, a simple sensory awareness without 'self-awareness' arises, followed
immediately by a mental cognitive awareness that is reflexively aware 'that such
and such a cognitive awareness has occurred.'94
This reflexivity is closely
related to speech, considered in early Indian thinking as the language of thought
and ideas.95 The second class of objects that instigates mental cognitive awareness,
dharmas, thus includes reflection or thinking (both considered sa?skara of speech,
vitakka-vicara vacisankhara, M I 301), which arise in conjunction with mind (manas),
the faculty that supports mental cognition.96 The reflexivity that mental cognitive
awareness provides is therefore typically bound up with its linguistic capacities.
But, like language itself, this tends to initiate endless rounds of recursivity,
that is, papañca (prapañca), mental or conceptual proliferation:97
Dependent on the eye and forms, eye-consciousness arises. The meeting of the
three is contact. With contact as condition there is feeling. What one feels,
that one apperceives. What one apperceives, that one thinks about. What one thinks
about, that one mentally proliferates. With what one has mentally proliferated
as the source, apperceptions and notions tinged by mental proliferation [papañca-sañña-sankha]
beset a man with respect to past, future, and present forms cognizable through
the eye .... mind-objects cognizable through the mind.98
In other words, what
one cognizes, one apperceives; what one apperceives, results in conventional linguistic
usage (vohara),99 which becomes a condition for further cogitation, conceptualization
and mental proliferation, which in turn serve 'as the source' for more cognition
and apperceptions regarding the objects of cognitive awareness, and so on.
concepts and classification are thus not only inseparable from most processes
of cognition, but they also give rise to a runaway recursivity in their own right,
perpetuating our 'inescapable web.' Indeed, conceptual proliferation is so utterly
entangled in its own reciprocal relationships-with (1) contact100 (which sometimes
conditions the arising of cognitive awareness), (2) apperception101 (which always
accompanies it) and (3) thought itself102 -that it is often a synonym for phenomenal,
cyclic existence as a whole.103
The most deeply entrenched source of these
recursive possibilities, which also doubles back to instigate its own linguistically
generated recursivity, is no doubt our sense of self as an enduring, experiencing
agent. As one text declares, the notion "'I am' is a proliferation; 'I am
this' is a proliferation; 'I shall be' is a proliferation." 104 Thus, not
only is "the label 'I,'" according to Bhikkhu ña?ananda, an "outcome
of papañca," 105 but the very thought 'I am' is also, according to
the Sutta-nipata, the root (mula) of proliferation itself.106 In other words,
as long as the thought 'I am' persists, so long will endless cycles of apperceptions,
conceptual proliferation and further apperceptions, and so forth, keep spinning.
This sense of self, however, derives its compelling cogency, its enduring
and endearing allure,107 from the same social and linguistic matrix other words
and symbols do: symbolic representation.108 Like language, this symbolic self
is a product of massive interdependency; like other relational phenomenon, it
has no substantive existence in time or space; and like all symbols, it simultaneously
appears autonomous and disembodied. More idea than thing, this symbolic self is
nothing if not virtual. "It is a final irony," Deacon concludes,
it is the virtual, not actual, reference that symbols provide, which gives rise
to this experience of self. The most undeniably real experience is a virtual reality....
its virtual nature notwithstanding, it is the symbolic realm of consciousness
that we most identify with and from which our sense of agency and self-control
Indian Buddhists could hardly have said it better. The irony,
of course, is that this symbolic self is at the 'root' of proliferating ideation,
the matrix of runaway recursivity in which, by all appearances, we are all ensnared.
VII. The Cognitive Unconscious as Embodied Structuring of Experience
theory of dependent arising and evolutionary biology, we have seen, both depict
long-term co-evolutionary relationships through which certain cognitive processes
gradually become 'enstructured' into physiological and psychological structures
(vijñana, etc., condition sa?skaras) structures which largely condition
how subsequent forms of cognitive awareness may arise (sa?skaras condition vijñana).
And so it is with both language and the symbolic self that language enables. They
are both complex results of interdependent processes which have, over time, become
enstructured into enduring physiological and psychological structures, and which
continuously influence the arising of cognitive awareness.
Like habits, such
enstructuration is thought to occur for reasons of efficiency, a process which
makes them increasingly automatic. Deacon declares:
It is the goal of most
cognitive processes to make information processing unconscious and automatic-as
quick, easy, and efficient as possible-because these sorts of processes take comparatively
little in the way of neural representation and energy to manage, compared to the
active adaptational processes we experience as consciousness.110
example, of the enormous complexity involved in a simple conversation: hearing,
talking, breathing, moving, remembering the last few words, anticipating the next,
parsing it all while simultaneously assessing emotional responses and observing
body language, and so on.111 All these processes are cognitive in the sense that
they entail modulations, however slight, of the underlying neural and physiological
structures of the organism. But they need not, indeed cannot, all result in or
require conscious awareness. Most of them involve underlying neurological processes
that have become 'unconscious and automatic,' only some of which lead to conscious
awareness-both of which, however, must occur simultaneously, constantly informing
and influencing the other, without which even simple conversation would be impossible.
We must distinguish, therefore, between those immediate but intermittent processes
of discerning cognitive awareness accompanied by attention, and the underlying
but continuous processes operating automatically. These latter are subliminal,
arising outside of immediate conscious awareness. We must, therefore, analyze
the arising of cognitive awareness into both subliminal as well as supraliminal
This distinction was already intimated in the early Pali texts
in two distinct formulas for the arising of cognitive awareness:
on eye and forms visual cognitive awareness arises.112
Depending on sankhara
(sa?skara) cognitive awareness arises.113
It was left, however, to Indian
Buddhists of the Yogacara school (ca. 2nd-7th century C.E.), some fifteen centuries
before Freud, to explicitly distinguish between the forms of supraliminal cognitive
awareness (prav?tti-vijñana) that arise in conjunction with present stimuli
accompanied by attention, and subliminal forms of cognitive awareness, subsumed
under the term 'alaya-vijñana' (roughly 'store-house' consciousness), that
arise in conjunction with more enduring psycho-physiological structures (sa?skara).114
This Buddhist 'cognitive unconscious,' however, is no more an experiencer,
agent or enduring subject than was cognitive awareness in the earlier model. It
still has all the qualities and qualifications mentioned above: "it is related
to the notion 'change' rather than to the notion 'object' rather than to the notion
'object' ... admit[ting] only news of difference," 115 it grows and develops
through the accumulating, epigenetic processes of cyclic causality, and its cognitive
domain constitutes a particular cognitive reality, a dependently arisen 'world
of experience'. Specifically, it denotes a form of discerning subliminal awareness
that arises from moment to moment in dependence upon specific kinds of stimuli,
i.e., the enduring physiological and psychological structures (sa?skara) whose
ongoing processes underlie all sentient existence. Put the other way around, since
these sa?skaras are continuously being modulated in the very processes of living,
they provide the ever-present stimuli through which subliminal forms of awareness
arise in each and every moment of life.116 In this sense, and like simple vijñanas
before it, the alaya-vijñana is virtually equated with the continuity of
samsaric existence itself.
What are these structures that give rise to subliminal
cognitive processes (alaya-vijñana) And how do they together continuously
'specify a cognitive domain,' gradually building up and 'bringing forth' our multi-dimensional
world of human experience?
According to the Sa?dhinirmocana Sutra, one of
earliest Yogacara texts to elucidate this concept, this form of subliminal cognitive
the mind with all the seeds matures, congeals, grows, develops,
and increases117 based upon the two-fold substratum118 (or: appropriation, upadana);
that is, (1) the substratum of the material sense-faculties along with their supports
(*sadhi??hana-rupindriya-upadana), (2) and the substratum which consists of the
predispositions toward conceptual proliferation in terms of conventional usage
of images, names, and conceptualizations.119
This dense passage recalls and
rather formidably reformulates what we have just seen: that there is an intimate,
and accumulating, relationship between bodily sensory awareness, conventional
linguistic usage (vohara)120 and the runaway recursivity of prapañca, conceptual
proliferation. Here, however, all these processes are said to be subtle and "difficult
to discern (du?pariccheda) even by the wise ones of the world." 121
model articulates the underlying structures, the infrastructure as it were, through
which all forms of cognitive awareness-both subliminal and supraliminal-are thought
to arise. Elaborating on this, the Yogacarabhumi describes how these predispositions
(vasana) toward conceptual proliferation help bring forth a subliminal awareness
of an 'external' world. That is, subliminal cognitive awareness (alaya-vijñana)
continuously arises in conjunction with (1) the living sense-faculties and (2)
the predispositions instilled by past linguistic experience, conceptualization,
naming, etc., bringing forth as its cognitive domain an 'external world' outside
of immediate awareness.122 We live, that is, in a 'world' whose predominant structuring
influences-linguistic and physiological structures built up over time through
extended organism-environment interaction-we cannot fully discern. This is, if
I am not mistaken, nearly exactly the current notion of the 'cognitive unconscious.'123
As was suggested above, there also must be a continuous and simultaneously
reinforcing relationship between sub- and supra-liminal cognitive processes in
order for even ordinary human activities such as conversations to occur. This
relationship, this 'intrapsychic causality,' if you will, is also accumulative
in the epigenetic sense we have already discussed, i.e. experience builds upon
itself. That is, on the one hand, all supraliminal cognitive processes are said
to simultaneously arise based on subliminal cognitive awareness (alaya-vijñana),124
which arises on its own physiological and psycho-linguistic bases. In other words,
our present experience is already continuously and simultaneously informed by
the classifications implicit in all forms of cognitive awareness, which now, however,
are seen to occur unconsciously and automatically. On the other hand, the arising
of supraliminal cognitive awareness also continuously modulates or transforms
the forms of unconscious cognitive awareness themselves, implanting 'seeds' (bija)
or impressions (vasana) as the texts say,125 which in turn condition the forms
of supraliminal cognitive awareness, and so on. In modern terms, the neural networks
that enable any specific form of conscious perception to occur are themselves
always modified by repeated instances of those same types of perceptions. These
reciprocally reinforcing and gradually accumulating processes, however, take place
not only simultaneously, ceaselessly and mostly automatically, but also, in large
And, as our earlier analyses also suggest, if linguistic
categories and classifications underlie all forms of cognitive awareness, subliminal
as well as supraliminal, then we are susceptible to the same conceptual prolixity,
the endless, ensnaring recursivity that language entails, at unconscious levels
as well. Accordingly, our sense of self-enabled by and arising out of the reflexivity
of linguistic and symbolic representation-has also become so enstructured that
it, too, occurs 'unconsciously and automatically' in nearly every moment of mind.
Specifically, this sense of self not only arises in reference to the ongoing forms
of subliminal cognitive awareness (alaya-vijñana), but it is also associated
with the linguistically expressed processes of conceptual thought :
(manas) whose mode (akara) is conceiving (manyana) 'I-making' (aha?kara), the
conceit 'I am' (asmimana), always arises and functions simultaneously with the
alaya-vijñana ... That [mind] has the mode of taking the alaya-vijñana
as [its] object and conceiving [it] as 'I am [this]' (asmiti) and '[this is] I'
We may now more fully appreciate the poignancy of our
human condition, that inescapable web woven by nothing more than a 'virtual self,'
the conceit 'I am.' As we have seen, the systemic classifications underlying all
human cognitive processes have informed and instigated intentional activities
that, in the long term, have been as instrumental in shaping the contours of human
evolution as our more obvious physiological features. This linguistically-based
symbolic self, unconsciously embedded and virtually real, has played no less a
role in the coming to be of our entire 'world of experience.' This is because
it is our behavior, the actions (karma) arising out of the dynamic interaction
between (1) our physical embodiment, (2) the constructive influences of language,
(3) our embedded sense of selfhood (all these being mostly subliminal), and (4)
our supraliminal forms of cognitive awareness, that are most causally important,
most effectively ensnaring. For these are indelibly informed by self-grasping.
In commenting on the idea of unconscious predispositions of speech (abhilapa-vasana),
the commentary to the Mahayana-sa?graha states that manifest cognitive awareness
arises in regard to expressions of selves (atman) and phenomena (dharma), and
so on, due to the special power (sakti-vise?a) of the predispositions of conventional
expressions (vyavahara).127 That is to say, the conventional expressions of everyday
speech (vyavahara), which delineate the world into innumerable discrete objects
and categories, subtly condition the way in which awareness of those objects arises.
The kinds of cognitive experiences people have, the categories of 'things' we
see and touch are indelibly influenced by the expressions and figures of speech
to which we are habituated.
The most influential of these unconscious predispositions
of speech is undoubtedly the view of self (atma-d???i), which accompanies all
cognitive processes, continuously distinguishing self and other.128 But, the Yogacarabhumi
warns, as long as one "is not freed from the bondage of perception in regard
to phenomena (nimitta)," then so long will all our forms of cognitive awareness
be influenced by these afflictive dispositions toward the sense "I am,"129
colored by the discriminations between 'self' and 'other.' And insofar as these
instigate karmically consequential actions, this ingrained self-view-virtual or
not, unconscious or otherwise-will continuously perpetuate the cycle of samsaric
existence, keeping us ensnared in the vicious cycle of dependent arising.
symbolic self, in other words, although generated out of the vortex of the linguistic
recursivity underlying all cognitive processes, from the unconscious level up,
has compelling causal efficacy in its own right.130 And this is true both within
a single lifetime, that is, ontogenetically, as well as in the traditional Buddhist
conception of multiple lifetimes, that is, (after a fashion) phylogenetically.
In more modern terms, Deacon intimates the powerful punch this symbolic self effectively
As symbolic reference and symbolic minds co-evolved from the non-symbolic...
so do the levels of self-representation that constitute our experience bring themselves
into being in a moment-by-moment coevolutionary process. As the symbolic process
can be the co-author of our unanticipated brains, so can the symbolic self be
the co-author of the component neural processes that support it. We live in a
world that is both entirely physical and virtual at the same time.131
The Cognitive Unconscious as Generative Matrix of our 'Common World'
our lives in this shared virtual world ... The doorway into this virtual world
was opened to us alone by the evolution of language.
-Terrence William Deacon,
The Symbolic Species
We now reach the last leg of our inquiry into the arising
of the world of experience bereft of any external agents or internal subjects.
Why, we must ask, if the 'world' co-arises with our cognitive systems, do we seem
to live in so much the same world? How is it that we collectively 'bring forth'
our shared world of human experience?
The short answer is, again, language;
or rather, the common influences that language imparts on the activities, the
karma, of human beings which, in turn, bring about common results. We live in
this 'shared virtual world,' as Deacon puts it, in large part because "the
evolution of symbolic communication... created a mode of extrabiological inheritance...
[that] is intrinsically social," one that evolved "neither inside nor
outside brains, but at the interface where cultural evolutionary processes affect
biological evolutionary processes." 132 That is, we have similar kinds of
cognitive processes because they developed historically through continuous interaction
between human beings, giving rise to our common bodily forms with our species-specific
propensities toward cultural and social conditioning, and the dominating influences
of linguistic classification, conceptualization, nominalization, and so forth,
through which we collectively yet unconsciously bring forth a shared world of
With allowances for the issue of rebirth, this is largely compatible
with mainstream views of causality in the Yogacara tradition. Indeed, in one sense,
this merely articulates the social, cultural and biological dimensions already
implicit in the theory of dependent arising. But it took some one thousand years
after the time of the Buddha for these implications to be become explicit within
Indian Buddhist thought. Again, it is the Mahayana-sa?graha (MSg) of Asanga which
explicitly articulates the connections between the social nature of language,
its common influences upon human behavior, and the similarities of 'worlds' which
MSg I.60 states that the subliminal form cognitive awareness
(alaya-vijñana) which subliminally 'brings forth a world' based upon the
predispositions to categorization, etc., exhibits both shared or common and uncommon
The common [characteristic of the alaya-vijñana] is the seed
of the receptacle world (bhajana-loka). The uncommon [characteristic of the alaya-vijñana]
is the seed of the individual sense-spheres (pratyatmikayatana).
In most Indian
Buddhist traditions, indeed in ancient India in general, this 'receptacle' world
in which we all dwell arises from the accumulated actions (karma) of numberless
sentient beings.133 Asanga elaborates on this, stating that it is the common and
uncommon actions of sentient beings that create the inanimate (bhajana-loka) and
animate worlds (sattva-loka) respectively,134 while the commentary to the MSg
comments that without this shared aspect of subliminal cognitive awareness (alaya-vijñana),
there could be no receptacle-world which is the basis for the shared usage of
animate beings.135 At first blush, this may seem rather farfetched, but it is
well in accord with the terms of our earlier analyses. Moreover, the sense that
the similar cognitive domains of sentient beings 'bring forth' a common world
was already deeply implicit in the Buddhist notion of karma. It is the common
influences of language that hold these all together.
The commentary to this
[The statement:] 'The common [characteristic of the alaya-vijñana]
is the seed of the receptacle-world' means that it is the cause (kara?a-hetu)
of perceptions (vijñapti) which appear as the receptacle world. It is common
because these perceptions appear similarly to all who experience them through
the force of maturation (vipaka) that is in accordance with their own similar
Simply put, our 'world'137 appears to us in similar ways because
we have similar karma to experience it similarly. But to what extent do our actions
make this 'experienced world' similar? And how or why do we come to have similar
In general, this simply unpacks part of what karma means in the classical
Indian world-view: similar actions lead to similar results. All members of the
same species are born into similar kinds of bodies which are largely brought about
by past karma, by the structural transformation incurred from innumerable past
actions. Since our bodies are similar, the actions, the karma they resulted from
are also similar. And since these similar bodies have similar cognitive structures,
which both facilitate and circumscribe what we can normally see, feel and think,
they 'bring forth' a common cognitive domain, a human 'world' that is distinguished,
for example, from that of cats, bats or gnats. In other words, our common 'world'
is produced by our common causal history, embodied in the similar structures and
processes of our cognitive capacities. As the commentary states, "perceptions
appear similarly to all who experience them ... in accordance with their own similar
These species-specific cognitive structures include, quite prominently,
an 'extrabiological inheritance' that arose "neither inside nor outside brains,
but at the interface where cultural evolutionary processes affect biological evolutionary
processes," i.e. language. It is language that provides the means through
which the 'common aspects' of the alaya-vijñana give rise to a 'common'
receptacle world. As a medium for sharing, conceiving and expressing experience,
language provides the common focus for similar kinds of cognitive processes to
arise, processes that tend to provoke similar responses138 which, in turn, typically
give rise to similar results. That is, actions that are informed and instigated
by similar conditions and similar intentions give rise, over the long term, to
a similar world. And this is the similar world in which we are 'ensnared.'
is just because our cognitive structures are constituted by linguistic predispositions
that cognitive awareness is always subject to language's endless recursivity (prapañca).
The 'predispositions or impressions of speech' (abhilapa-vasana), which have the
'special power' (sakti-vise?a) to give rise to manifest cognitive awareness (vijñana)
in regard to expressions of selves (atman), dharmas, and actions, etc. are never
fully "used up" (anupabhukta), MSg I.61.2 explains, because "the
seeds of the impressions of language give rise to conceptual proliferation since
beginningless time," without which, the text continues, "the new arising
of the impressions of language would be impossible." In other words, this
linguistic recursivity is the generative matrix from which endlessly springs forth
our symbolic world, one that virtually supercedes the physical world we apparent
The reciprocal feedback processes that language invites thus
operate at a variety of levels, not only synchronically-between the alaya-vijñana
and supraliminal forms of cognitive awareness-but also diachronically, between
our previous linguistic experience and our present proclivities conditioned by
the 'impressions' of language. These operate both within a single lifetime, and,
in traditional Buddhist terms, over multiple lifetimes. What the MSg is now describing
is a third, unconscious yet thoroughly intersubjective, feedback system, which,
like the other two dimensions of circular causality, continuously proliferates
and perpetuates samsaric existence, but, unlike them, bridges the individual and
collective experience of the 'world,' connecting our similar karmic activities
with the similar 'worlds' these activities bring about.140
Since the recursivity
that symbolic communication facilitates is "intrinsically social," and
has evolved "neither inside nor outside brains," then our commonality
of worlds, dependent upon our common species-specific cognitive structures, is
ultimately inseparable from our commonality of cognitive awareness, dependent
upon our common linguistic, symbolic structures. That is, Deacon declares, since,
symbolic reference is at once a function of the whole web of inferential relationships
and of the whole network of users extended in space and time... a person's symbolic
experience of consciousness ... is not within the head ... This [symbolic] self
is indeed not bounded within a mind or body... [it] is intersubjective in the
most thoroughgoing sense of the term.141
These mostly indiscernible processes
reflect and reinforce the cultural, social, and cognitive worlds we inhabit, not
just as individuals but even more importantly as social beings, since "language
is a primary medium through which humans inhabit their world." 142 Indeed,
languages are like habitats, because they give rise to the inexhaustibly proliferating
processes (prapañca) of classification and conceptualization (vikalpa)
through which we habitually, nearly unavoidably and mostly unknowingly engage,
construct and perpetuate the 'world' which simultaneously sustains and ensnares
us. It is our unconscious habits of body, speech, and mind to which we are habituated
that give rise, in the long term and in the aggregate, to the habitats we inhabit.
And, this, we suggest, is as true for some twentieth century evolutionary biologists
and neuroscientists as it was for fifth-century Yogacarin Buddhists.
suggests, we venture, that we all have a larger share in the common construction
of our 'world' than we commonly realize. For if we are not actually trapped inside
our heads, but are causally as well as cognitively intersubjective through and
through, it matters a great deal which particular concepts, categories and classifications
we produce, proclaim and protect. We can and must strive, that is, to collectively
unravel the "common bonds" (sadhara?a-bandhana) that ensnare us, "difficult
to cut (du?heya) and difficult to fully comprehend (du?parijñeya)"
143 though they may be. It would make a world of difference.
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1. Much of the research for
this paper was carried out under a grant from the Japan Society for the Promotion
of Science, and with the generous assistance of Otani University. I would also
like to thank the following scholars for their comments and criticisms of the
seemingly endless series of drafts of this essay: David Carpenter, Jeff Dunham,
David Germano, Leslie Kawamura, Miyashita Seiki, Robert Morrison, John Spackman,
and Dale Wright.
2. This is, unavoidably, a generalization. There were numerous
schools which often differed in their interpretations of dependent arising. We
seek to express here an equitable common ground.
3. There are many passage
in the Pali texts such as the following: "'Who, now, Lord, is it who craves?'
'Not a fit question,' said the Exalted One. I am not saying [someone] craves.
If I were saying so, the question would be a fit one. But I am not saying so.
And I not saying so, if you were to ask thus: 'Conditioned now by what, Lord,
is craving?' this were a fit question. And the fit answer there would be: 'Conditioned
by feeling is craving.'" (S II 13).
4. See Stern 1995, p. 79f: "In
the Philosophical Remarks, Wittgenstein... maintains that the subject-predicate
grammar of our everyday language has such a firm grip on us that we are usually
quite unaware of its influence. Because the grammar of ordinary language has been
shaped by the need to successfully manipulate our environment..., we usually understand
experience in subject-predicate terms: we say such things as 'I have a headache'
and take it for granted that the term 'I' refers to a subject, the self."
5. Since, by definition, essences do not change, they can have no obvious
causal effect in the world of change; an unmoving billiard ball does cause another
ball to move, only a moving one does. Essences are therefore metaphysical notions
unrelated to the endeavor to understand causality in the phenomenal world. In
slightly different terms, Wittgenstein suggests that "A wheel that can be
turned though nothing else moves with it, is not part of the mechanism" (Philosophical
6. Gombrich (1996, p. 1f) cites Karl Popper's remarks
on the non-essentialism and nominalism of modern science: "Popper, 1952,
vol. II, p.14: 'the scientific view of the definition "A puppy is a young
dog" would be that it is an answer to the question "What shall we call
a young dog?" rather than an answer to the question "What is a puppy?"
(Questions like "What is life?" or "What is gravity?" do not
play any role in science.) The scientific use of definitions... may be called
its nominalist interpretation, as opposed to its Aristotelian or essentialist
interpretation. In modern science, only nominalist definitions occur, that is
to say, shorthand symbols or labels are introduced in order to cut a long story
short.' Popper, 1974:20: '... essentialism is mistaken in suggesting that definitions
can add to our knowledge of facts...' "
7. 1. Many, if not most, scientific
works on brain and consciousness reject the notion of a "unified, freely
acting agent." For example, brain scientist Richard Restak (1994, pp. 120-121)
argues: "Brain research on consciousness carried out over the past two decades
casts important doubts on our traditional ideas about the unity and indissolubility
of our mental lives," particularly "the concept of ourself as a unified,
freely acting agent directing our behavior." Lakoff and Johnson (1999, p.
268): "The very way that we normally conceptualize our inner lives is inconsistent
with what we know scientifically about the nature of mind. In our system for conceptualizing
our inner lives, there is always a Subject that is the locus of reason and that
metaphorically has an existence independent of the body. As we have seen, this
contradicts the fundamental findings of cognitive science."
are serious historical questions concerning whether or to what extent the discourses
preserved in the Pali Canon represent the actual words of the Buddha. As these
questions do not directly affect the import of this paper, we provisionally accede
to their traditional attribution to the Buddha.
9. M I 190: "When internally
the eye is intact and external forms come into its range and there is the corresponding
engagement, then there is the manifestation of the corresponding class of consciousness"
Ña?amoli (1995, p. 284).
10. We will return to the seemingly anomalous
category of mental cognitive awareness below.
11. Abhidharma-kosa I.16. (Poussin,
tome 1, p.30. vijñana prativijñapti. Yogacarabhumi (Tib.189b4f)
has a similar definition: rnam par shes pa ni yul so sor rnam par rig pa'i mtshan
nyid gang yin pa'o. Perhaps the most common definition is "[one] cognizes
[or discerns], therefore it is called cognitive awareness" (M I 292. vijanati
ti kho tasma viñña?an ti vuccati.) In his Materials for a Dictionary
of the Prajñapramita Literature (1967, p. 352), Conze lists the following:
vi-janana, being aware, rnam par rig pa; vi-janati, is aware, becomes aware of;
vijanite, discerns, become aware of; vi-jña, discerning, rig-pa; vijñapti,
information; vijñata, be aware of, cognized, discerned, known, ses-pa,
rnam par ses-pa; vijñana, rnam par ses-pa, consciousness; vijñayate,
discern, ses; vijñeya, ses-par bya, discernible, distinct.
12. . Thus,
the standard translation of 'vi-' into Tibetan is 'rnam', 'different, distinct,
individual' (Das, p. 757) and into Hsüan Tsang's Chinese is 'fen,' to divide,
share, separate, distinguish' (Mathew's CED, p. 269, #1851).
13. As Rahula
points out, "Consciousness does not recognize an object. It is only a sort
of awareness - awareness of the presence of an object" (Rahula 1959, p. 23).
Milinda's Questions: "Because there are vision here and material shape, sire,
visual consciousness arises. Co-nascent with that are sensory impingement, feeling,
perception, volition, one-pointedness, the life-principle, attentionBthus these
things are produced from a condition and no experiencer is got at here."
14. Pruden, vol. 1, p. 118. Buddhaghosa similarly states in the
Visuddhimagga (XIX, 20): "He sees no doer over and above the doing, no experiencer
of the result over and above the occurrence of the result. But he sees clearly
with right understanding that the wise say 'doer' when there is doing and 'experience'
when there is experiencing simply as a mode of common usage."
15. . Wittgenstein's
attempt to forge a subjectless language entailed similar consequences: "It
is because a language designed for the sole function of expressing everything
that a subject might experience has no need for a term designating that subject
that one cannot refer to the subject of experience from within the phenomenological
language... From within, one cannot individuate a subject at all. The metaphysical
subject is not an object of experience, but a way of indicating the overall structure
of experience... The grammar of the phenomenological language ensures that all
statements about experience are expressed in the same-ownerless- way" (Stern
1995, p. 84).
16. Cf. Lakoff and Johnson 1999, p. 24f: "Color concepts
are 'interactional'; they arise from the interactions of our bodies, our brains,
the reflective properties of objects, and electromagnetic radiation. Colors are
not objective; there is in the grass or the sky no greenness or blueness independent
of retinas, color cones, neural circuitry, and brains. Nor are colors purely subjective;
they are neither a figment of our imaginations nor spontaneous creations of our
brains... Rather, color is a function of the world and our biology interacting."
17. Paramartha- sunyata-sutra (Sa?yukta, T 2. 92c16). As quoted in the Abhidharmakosa,
ad AKBh V 27b (Poussin, tome 4, p.59; Pruden, vol. 3, p. 814).
1979, p. 121; emphasis added in last three cases.
19. In his Philosophical
Remarks (#54), Wittgenstein makes the following remark: "What belongs to
the essence of the world cannot be expressed by language. For this reason, it
cannot say that all is in flux. Language can only say those things we can also
imagine otherwise." We take Stern's comments on this passage as admonitory
qualification for many of the points that follow in this essay: "Like the
solipsistic sayings, 'the world is my world' and 'only the present experience
has reality,' Wittgenstein regards 'all is in flux' as a philosophical pseudo-proposition,
an attempt to say the unsayable... But saying that we can't imagine it being otherwise
is to rule out the possibility that the proposition is false, and in so doing
we also eliminate the connection between language and world that gives the proposition
its sense." (Stern 1995, p. 162). These 'solipsistic sayings,' in other words,
may be constitutive conditions for what we can say without themselves being propositions.
20. . Bateson 1979, p. 107.
21. The entire passage from which these are
drawn: "To produce news of difference, i.e., information, there must be two
entities... There is a profound and unanswerable question about the nature of
those 'at least two' things that between them generate the difference which becomes
information by making a difference. Clearly each alone isBfor the mind and perceptionBa
non-entity, a non-being. Not different from being, and not different from non-being.
An unknowable, a Ding an sich, a sound of one hand clapping" (Bateson 1979,
22. Ibid., p. 109f.
23. . Bodhi 1993, p. 4.
24. . The Abhidharma-kosa
defines as momentary that which perishes immediately after it coming into being.
(AKBh IV ad 2b-3b; Shastri, p. 568; Poussin, tome 3, p. 4). There was of course
considerable disagreement as to what exactly constitutes a moment, whether it
was divisible and so on. See, for example, Kathavatthu XXII.8, the Abhidhammattha-sangaha,
(Compendium, p. 25; Nyanatiloka 1980, p. 34); AKBh ad II 46a-b (Shastri, p. 259;
Poussin, tome 1, p. 228).
25. From the root verb is 'dh?,' "to hold,
bear, carry, maintain, preserve, keep, possess, use, place, fix, etc." (SED,
p. 519). Derived meanings of dharma are "that which is established or firm,
steadfast, law, statute, prescribed conduct, duty, right, justice, virtue, morality,
religion, etc." (SED, p. 510). In the Abhidharma context it is traditionally
defined as that which 'holds' (dhara?a) its own mark. (AKBh ad I.2b; Shastri,
p. 12; Poussin, tome 1, p. 4: svalak?a?adhara?ad dharma).
26. . This is arguably
implicit in the perspective of dependent arising from the beginning: "He
who with right understanding sees the arising of the world as it really is, cannot
attribute non-existence to the world; he who with right insight sees the passing
away of the world as it really is, cannot attribute existence to the world"
(S II 17).
27. Piatigorsky 1984, p. 8.
28. Since dharmas are themselves
dependently arisen events, they are typically expressed in terms of patterns of
relationship (with the concomitance of X and Y, Z arises). But because the multiple
conditions for the arising of a phenomenon were themselves dharmas (X and Y),
the formula of dependent arising was fairly early on implicitly, or perhaps incipiently,
a system wherein the sense of each item was mutually and disjunctively defined.
That is, Buddhists fairly quickly came to recognize that they working with systems
of relationships rather than individual terms alone.
29. Harland makes a similar
point, citing then commenting on Saussure's 'principle of differentiation' (Saussure
1959, p. 117): "'The concepts are purely differential and defined not by
their positive content but negatively by their relations with the other terms
of the system. Their most precise characteristic is in being what the others are
not.' Such concepts are like holes in a net: specified by their boundaries but
empty in themselves" (Harland 1987, p. 15).
30. Lakoff and Johnson 1999,
18f; emphasis in original. Varela, et. al. a similar point: "The visual system
is never simply presented with pregiven objects. On the contrary, the determination
of what and where an object is, as well as its surface boundaries, texture, and
relative orientation (and hence the overall context of color as a perceived attribute),
is a complex process that the visual system must continually achieve... In the
words of P. Gouras and E. Zrenner, 'It is impossible to separate the object sensed
from its color because it is the color contrast itself that forms the object'"
(Varela, et. al. 1991, p. 167; emphasis added).
31. This is neither a variety
of solipsism or idealism, since discerning cognitive awareness is an emergent
process that arises conditioned by both sense organs and sense objects. Johansson
(1979, 28f) similarly concludes that in early Buddhism "there is no independently
existing world. The world is a dynamic process, constantly being produced and
deliberately constructed by our senses, our thoughts, and our desires... This
does not mean that we and the world are unreal or a mere illusion. The objects
are there but our perceptions of them are constituent and essential parts of them...
the cleavage into 'objective' and 'subjective' was never made; the subjective
process of image-formation was thought to be part of the object itself."
32. Maturana and Varela 1980, p. 13.
33. Capra 1997, p. 68; emphasis added.
See also Marvin Minsky, Society of Mind (1986): Brains "use processes that
change themselves -- and this means we cannot separate such processes from the
products they produce.... The principal activities of brains are making changes
in themselves," as cited in Varela, et. al. 1991, p. 139.
34. . Capra
1997, p. 267. Apropos our earlier analysis, we would use the passive voice here.
35. See Capra 1997, p. 218. "One type of structural changes are changes
of self-renewal. Every living organism continually renews itself, cells breaking
down and building up structures, tissues and organs replacing their cells in continual
36. Maturana and Varela 1980, p. 79f. In the words of Capra:
"Autopoiesis, or 'self-making' is a network pattern in which the function
of each component is to participate in the production or transformation of other
components in the network. In this way the network continually makes itself. It
is produced by its components and in turn produces those components" (Capra
1997, p. 162).
37. . Buddhists of course would be cautious in using the term
'self,' which in Indian philosophical contexts implies an unchanging essence that
can cause itself. This is clearly not what 'self' means in this context. 'Auto'
or 'self' has much the same nonmetaphysical sense as 'autopilot,' here suggesting
how these phenomena renew themselves through processes comprised of their own
38. Maturana and Varela 1980, p. 82.
39. 1. Theories
of reciprocal or causal causality are commonly used in investigating emergent
properties, how things come to be, particularly in evolutionary biology. It is,
instead, linear logic that is the problem: "How is the world of logic, which
eschews 'circular argument,' related to a world in which circular trains of causation
are the rule rather than the exception?... we shall see that logic is precisely
unable to deal with recursive circuits without generating paradox and that quantities
are precisely not the stuff of complex communicating systems. In other words,
logic and quantity turn out to be inappropriate devices for describing organisms
and their interactions and internal organizations" (Bateson 1979, p. 21).
40. . We cannot do justice to the rich and complex thinking on causality in
evolutionary theory. Nor is there sufficient space to explore its possible parallels
with Buddhist ideas of dependent arising. We have touched upon these elsewhere
41. We are adapting this term from embryology and extrapolating
it to developmental processes in general. Epigenesis generally "stresses
the fact that every embryological step is an act of becoming (Greek genesis) which
must be built upon (Greek epi) the immediate status quo ante" (Bateson 1979,
p. 52). Epigenesis is an important yet usually implicit correlate of circular
causality. The best biological example (outside of embryology) is the formation
of habits, whose neurological networks are gradually built up through repetition.
42. Bateson 1979, p. 22.
43. Carrithers 1992, p. 48f: "The notion
of an evolutionary ratchet is consonant with the idea of co-evolution, which suggests
that organisms may produce changes in the environment, changes which redound on
themselves, creating a circle of positive feedback."
44. . Maturana and
Varela 1980, p. xv.
45. See Capra 1997, p. 269f: "Living organisms respond
to only a small fraction of the stimuli impinging on them... In this way each
living system builds up its own distinctive world according to its own distinctive
structure... The range of interactions a living system can have with its environment
defines its 'cognitive domain'... one that is always dependent upon the organism's
46. Maturana and Varela 1980, p. 10f; emphasis added.
As the geneticist, Richard Lewontin points out, "An environment is something
that surrounds or encircles, but for there to be a surrounding there must be something
at the center to be surrounded. The environment of an organism is the penumbra
of external conditions that are relevant to it because it has effective interactions
with those aspects of the outer world" (Lewontin 2000, p. 48). That is, "Just
as there can be no organism without an environment, so there can be no environment
without an organism." (Lewontin 1983, as cited in Varela, et. al. 1991, p.
48. Varela, et. al. 1991, p. 172.
49. 1. Capra 1997, p. 267.
Tooby and Cosmides 1992, p. 84f.
51. "Evolution shapes the relationship
between the genes and the environment such that they both participate in a coordinated
way in the construction and calibration of adaptations. Thus, evolutionarily patterned
structure is coming in from the environment, just as much as it is coming out
from the genes." (Tooby and Cosmides 1992, p. 86).
52. Maturana and Varela
1980, p. 12.
53. Rose 1997, p. 229f: "Evolutionary stable strategies
within and between populations, whether or not they culminate in symbiogenesis,
require that the 'unit of selection' now cease to be an individual genotype or
even phenotype, and becomes instead a relationship between genotypes and\or phenotypes."
54. Maturana and Varela 1980, p. 12 "What evolves is always a unit of
interactions defined by the way in which it maintains its identity. The evolution
of the living systems is the evolution of the niches of the units of interactions
defined by their self-referring circular organization, hence, the evolution of
the cognitive domains."
55. Wiener 1950, p. 96.
56. This overlapping
of causal domains is widely found in scientific theories of causation, particularly
with circular causality, and complexity and self-organization theory. Bateson
1979, p. 164: "I shall assume that evolutionary change and somatic change
(including learning and thought) are fundamentally similar."
57. It should
be pointed out that there are so many variations of this formula in the early
texts that it is not at all obvious what the original formula may have been, if
indeed there was just a single one, or what exact form it may have taken. There
are variations in which certain terms are missing and others are added, or in
which the chain begins or ends with different factors. We may thus consider these
formulations less as exclusively defined cause and effect relationships than as
varied expressions of the basic theme of dependent arising, i.e. certain conditions
arise in dependence on appropriate combinations of other causes and conditions.
58. Vijñana is one of a set of processes which arise together in response
to similar stimuli. Feeling and apperception, for example, themselves considered
karmic complexes of mind (citta) (M I 301: sañña ca vedana cittasankharo)
are so associated with vijñana as to be virtually inseparable: "Feeling,
apperception, and cognitive awareness, these factors are conjoined, not disjoined,
and it is impossible to separate each of these states from the others in order
to describe the difference between them. For what one feels, that one apperceives;
and what one apperceives, that one cognizes." (M I 295; Ña?amoli 1995,
p. 389); terminology altered for consistency.
59. 1. Compounded of the prefix
'sa?,' 'with' or 'together with,' and a form of the verbal root 'k?,' 'to do or
make,' sa?skara literally means 'put or made together' or simply 'formation.'
In its widest sense, sa?skara refers to the entire phenomenal world, inasmuch
as everything has been formed from various causes and conditions. In the psychological
sense, sa?skara refer to the volitions, dispositions and actions that constitute
human life, both insofar as these are constructed complexes formed from past actions
and constructive activities formative of present and future experience. Edgerton
(BHSD, 542) describes sa?skara as "predispositions, the effect of past deeds
and experience as conditioning a new state," and thus as "conditionings,
conditioned states." Collins also stresses this dual sense: "Both the
activity which constructs temporal reality, and the temporal reality thus constructed,
are sa?skara." (Collins 1982, p. 202).
60. S III 60 defines sankhara
(the Pali equivalent of sa?skara) simply as a "group of intentions,"
(cetanakaya), i.e., intentions in regard to form, sounds, etc., the five objects
of the senses and mind, as does A III 60: "And what, O monks, are sankhara?
O monks, the sankhara are the sixfold group of the intentions (sañcetana)
in regard to material form (etc.)." When sa?skara refers to intentional actions,
these are actions that lead to karmic results: "Monks, I say kamma is intention;
having intended, one does kamma (action) through body, speech, and mind"
(A III 415).
61. As a factor of samsaric continuity, it is the 'stationing'
or 'persistence' (pati??hite) of viñña?a in this world that constitutes
the endless wheel of life and death: "Consciousness (viñña?a)
being established and growing, there comes to be renewed existence in the future"
(S III 143). "'I have said that consciousness conditions name-and-form ...
Were, aNanda, consciousness not to descend into the mother's womb, would name-and-form
coagulate there?' 'No, Lord.' 'Were consciousness, having descended into the mother's
womb, to depart, would name-and-form come to birth in this life?' 'No, Lord'"
(D II 62; PTS). "When, then, the three factors of life, heat, and consciousness
abandon this body, it lies cast away and forsaken like an inanimate stick of wood"
(S III 143; PTS)
62. Indian Buddhist cosmology includes non-corporal realms
of existence where cognitive awareness has non-corporal bases for its arising.
63. S II 114: "Just as two sheaves of reeds might stand leaning one against
the other, so too, with name-and-form as condition, consciousness [comes to be];
with consciousness as condition, name-and-form [comes to be]. With name-and-form
as condition, the six sense-bases [come to be]; with the six sense-bases as condition,
contact ... Such is the origin of this whole mass of suffering."
"Dependent on the eye and forms, eye-consciousness arises; the meeting of
the three is contact; with contact as condition there is feeling; with feeling
as condition there is craving." (M III 282; Ña?amoli 1995, p. 1131;
also M I 111). Nor, in fact, is this relationship always expressed in this sequence:
"Consciousness is dependent upon feeling born of visual contact." (M
III 260; Johansson 1979, p. 92). The Abhidharma-kosa also mentions cognitive awareness
(vijñana) in connection with these factors in the series. Based upon a
previous moment of vijñana, nama-rupa develops with its six organs and
the six sense-spheres (ayatana). Being impinged by an object (vi?aya), another
moment of cognitive awareness arises, and, through the coming together of the
threeBcognitive awareness, the six sense-spheres (ayatana) and a sense-object
(vi?aya)Bthere is contact, which conduces toward a pleasant feeling, and so on.
(AKBh III 28a-b; Shastri, p. 461).
65. "Karma, craving and ignorance
are the cause of sa?skaras in the future" (AKBh ad VI 3; Shastri, p. 887;
Poussin, tome 4, p. 137). Pruden identifies this passage as Sa?yukta T 2.88b9.
"Dependent on the eye-faculty and visual form, visual cognitive awareness
arises; the concomitance of the three is sense-impression. Depending on sense-impression
is feeling, depending on feeling is craving, depending on craving is grasping,
depending on grasping is becoming, depending on becoming is birth, depending on
birth, old age, death, grief, lamentation, suffering, distress and despair come
about. This is the arising of the world" (S II 73).
67. We shall point
out that most of the remaining factors of the twelve-member series are simply
replaced here by sankhara. I am indebted to Aramaki (1985, p. 94) for pointing
out the significance of this passage.
68. Vasubandhu describes this classic
account of cyclic causality in terms of one's 'mind stream': "the mind stream
(santana) increases gradually by the mental afflictions (klesa) and by actions
(karma), and goes again to the next world. In this way the circle of existence
is without beginning (anadibhavacakraka)." (AKBh III 19a-d; Poussin, tome
2, pp. 57-59; Shastri, pp. 433-34.)
69. "This body does not belong to
you, nor to anyone else. It should be regarded as [the results of] former action
that has been constructed and intended and now to be experienced" (S II 64).
Most of the important processes within the series of dependent arising, such as
vijñana and sa?skara, also often said to 'grow and increase.' See S II
65, 101 above.
70. Varela, et. al. (1991, p. 121) interpret these two dimensions
of dependent arising as roughly corresponding to phylogeny and ontogeny: "we
could say that such traces (karma) are one's experiential ontogeny ... Here ontogeny
is understood not as a series of transitions from one state to another but as
a process of becoming that is conditioned by past structures, while maintaining
structural integrity from moment to moment. On an even larger scale, karma also
expresses phylogeny, for it conditions experience through the accumulated and
collective history of our species." One of the main differences with evolutionary
theory, however, is that Indian Buddhists see the 'evolution' of mind is terms
of the continuity of individual mind-streams from one lifetime to the next, with
karma as the basic causal mechanism whereby transformations are transmitted from
one life to the next. In Darwinian thinking, this function is played by the interaction
between genes, the environment, and natural selection. In this sense, Buddhist
ideas are more akin to a form of Lamarkianism.
71. Lakoff and Johnson 1999,
72. Barash 1979, p. 203. Emphasis in original.
73. 1. See Deacon
1997, p. 352: "Some sort of positive feedback process like this has been
invoked by most theories of human cognitive evolution."
74. Deacon 1997,
p. 409f. (quoted in note 84 below).
75. Ibid., p. 110.
76. Ibid., p. 322.
77. Oyama 2000, p. 38: "The impact of sensory stimuli is a joint function
of the stimuli and the sensing organism; the 'effective stimulus' is defined by
the organism that is affected by it."
78. "There are organisms that
include as a subset of their possible interactions, interactions with their own
internal states (as states resulting from external and internal interactions)
as if these were independent entities, generating the apparent paradox of including
their cognitive domain within their cognitive domain. In us this paradox is resolved
by what we call 'abstract thinking,' another expansion of the cognitive domain"
(Maturana and Varela, 1980, p. 13). As Maturana points out (p. xxi), the notions
of 'inner'\'internal' and 'outer'\'external' are not, strictly speaking, part
of the direct phenomenological experience of an organism itself, but reflect a
"metadomain of description" from a larger perspective that is itself
based on the very reflexivity under discussion here.
79. "At a certain
level of complexity," Capra observes, "A living organism ... brings
forth not only an external but also an inner world ... linked intimately to language,
thought, and consciousness" (Capra 1997, p. 270).
80. Deacon 1997, p.
81. Cf. Wittgenstein 1975, p. 317: "If, for instance, I say such
and such a point in the visual field is blue, I not only know that, I also know
that the point isn't green, isn't red, isn't yellow etc. I have simultaneously
applied the whole colour scale ... It's such a system which is compared with reality,
not a single proposition" (Philosophical Remarks, Appendix 2, cited in Stern
1995, p. 99f).
82. Deacon elaborates: "[S]ymbols cannot be understood
as an unstructured collection of tokens that map to a collection of referents
because symbols don't just represent things in the world, they also represent
each other.... Because of this systematic relational basis of symbolic reference,
no collection of signs can function symbolically unless the entire collection
conforms to certain overall principles of organization.... [and] are organized
so as to form a logically closed group of mappings from symbol to symbol.... Thus
syntactic structure is an integral feature of symbolic reference, not something
added and separate" (Deacon 1997, p. 99f). It is grammar that provides this
83. As Capra points out, "As it keeps interacting with
its environment, a living organism will undergo a sequence of structural changes...
an organism's structure at any point in its development is a record of its previous
structural changes and...each structural change influences the organism's future
behavior" (Capra 1997, p. 220).
84. 1. "It is simply not possible,"
Deacon concludes, "to understand human anatomy, human neurobiology, or human
psychology without recognizing that they have all been shaped by something that
could best be described as an idea: the idea of symbolic reference" (Deacon
1997, p. 409f).
85. "[S]ymbol use itself must have been the prime mover
for the prefrontalization of the brain in hominid evolution" (Deacon, 1997,
86. Deacon, 1997, p. 417; emphasis added. See also p. 265: "Prefrontal
computations outcompete other cognitive computations and tend to dominate learning
in us as in no other species. In simple terms, we have become predisposed to use
this one cognitive tool whenever an opportunity presents itself, because an inordinate
amount of control of the other processes in the brain has become vested in our
prefrontal cortex. The way the parietal cortex handles tactile and movement information,
the way the auditory cortex handles sound information; the way the visual cortex
handles visual information, are all now much more constrained by prefrontal activity
than in other species."
87. Geertz 1973, p. 49: "As our central
nervous system - and most particularly its crowning curse and glory, the neocortex
- grew up in great part in interaction with culture, it is incapable of directing
our behaviour or organizing our experience without the guidance provided by systems
of significant symbols.... To supply the additional information necessary to be
able to act, we were forced, in turn, to rely more and more heavily on cultural
sourcesBthe accumulated fund of significant symbols. Such symbols are thus not
mere expressions, instrumentalities, or correlates of our biological, psychological,
and social existence; they are prerequisites of it. Without men, no culture, certainly;
but equally, and more significantly, without culture, no men."
1997, p. 434.
89. Maturana and Varela 1980, p, 50: "Through language
we interact in a domain of descriptions within which we necessarily remain even
when we make assertions about the universe or about our knowledge of it. This
domain is both bounded and infinite; bounded because everything we say is a description,
and infinite because every description constitutes in us the basis for new orienting
interactions, and hence, for new descriptions. From this process of recursive
application of descriptions self-consciousness emerges as a new phenomenon in
a domain of self-description, with no other neurophysiological substratum than
the neurophysiological substratum of orienting behavior itself. The domain of
self-consciousness as a domain of recursive self-descriptions is thus also bounded
90. Deacon, 1997, p. 416.
91. Ibid., p. 436. A web,
we might add, without a weaver. See also anthropologist Rappaport on language:
"It would not, indeed, be an exaggeration to claim that humanity is [its]
creation" (Rappaport 1999, p. 5).
92. 1. Derived from the Sanskrit root
'man,' "to think, believe, imagine, suppose, conjecture," manas (Pali
mano) is related to the Latin 'mens,' "mind, reason, intellect," and
ultimately to the English "mind, mentation," and "to mean"
(PED, pp. 515, 520; SED, p. 783.).
93. "Friend, these five faculties
each have a separate field, a separate domain, and do not experience each other's
field and domain, that is, the eye faculty, the ear faculty, the nose faculty,
the tongue faculty, and the body faculty. Now these five faculties, each having
a separate field, a separate domain, not experiencing each other's field and domain,
have mind as their resort, and mind experiences their fields and domains"
(M I 295; Ña?amoli 1995, p. 391).
94. Although from a later period
(5th century C.E.), the Abhidharma-kosa states that "visual-cognitive awareness
is aware of blue, but not 'that it is blue;' mental cognitive awareness is aware
of blue and aware 'that it is blue'" (AKBh ad III 30c-d.)
95. See Reat
1990, p. 305: "Language was thought of as a discovery of the inherent conceptual
relationships among things, so that from a very early period in Indian thought,
conceptualization was regarded as primarily a verbal phenomenon."
SN 834 speaks of thinking on the views in the manas (manasa di?higatani cintayanto)
and S I 207 of the "reflective thoughts of mano" (manovitakka). Johansson
1965, pp. 183, 186).
97. See ña?ananda 1971 for a book-length treatment
of this important concept in the early Pali sources.
98. M I 111f (Ña?amoli
1995, p. 203). Translation altered for terminological consistency.
the Buddha said (A III 413) "Apperceptions (sañña), I say,
result in conventional usage (vohara). As one comes to know a thing, so one expresses
(voharati) oneself, 'Thus I have apperceived.'" Rhys-Davids' Pali-English
Dictionary defines vohara as "current appellation, common use (of language),
popular logic, common way of defining, usage, designation, term." Vohara
is equivalent to Sanskrit 'vyavahara.'
100. A II 161: "Whatever is the
range of the six spheres of contact, that itself is the range of prolific conceptualization.
And whatever is the range of the prolific conceptualization, that itself is the
range of the six spheres of contact" (ña?ananda 1971, p. 21).
SN 874 states that "the series of prolific ideation is caused by apperception."
S IV 71 says: "All men who have prolific ideation go on proliferating when
apperceiving" (Johansson 1979, p. 192f).
102. ña?ananda describes
the reciprocity between the series of proliferation-apperception, papañc'a-sañña-sankha'
(which he interprets (5) as "concepts reckonings, designations or linguistic
conventions characterised by the prolific conceptualizing tendency of the mind")
and thought (vitakka) itself: "the word or concept grasped as an object for
ratiocination, is itself a product of 'papañca'. This, in its turn breeds
more of its kind when one proceeds to indulge in conceptual proliferation (papañca).
Concepts characterised by the proliferating tendency (papañca-sañña-sankha)
constitute the raw-material for the process and the end product is much the same
in kind ... Thus there is a curious reciprocity between 'vitakka' [thought] and
'papañca-sañña-sankha'Ba kind of vicious circle, as it were.
Given 'papañca-sañña-sankha,' there comes to be 'vitakka'
and given 'vitakka' there arise more 'papañca-sañña-sankha'"
(ña?ananda 1971, p. 25).
103. See Schmithausen 1987, p. 509ff, n. 1405,
and p. 522ff. n. 1425.
104. S IV 202f (Bodhi 2000, p. 1259).
1971, p. 11.
106. "With what manner of insight, and not grasping anything
in this world, does a monk realize Nibbana? Let him completely cut off the root
of concepts tinged with the prolific tendency (papañca), namely, the thought
'I am'" (SN 915-16; ña?ananda 1971, p. 34f). Translation altered slightly.
(katha? disva nibbati bhikkhu anupadiyano lokasmi? kiñci. Mula? papañcasankhayati
Bhagava manta asmiti sabba? uparundhe.) ña?ananda takes 'manta'as 'thinker'
rather than thought.
107. The Buddha give the following conception of a self:
"That which is this self for me that speaks, that experiences and knows,
that experiences, now here, now there, the fruition of deeds lovely or depraved,
it is this self for me that is permanent, stable, eternal, not subject to change,
that will stand firm for ever and ever" (M I 8).
Deacon suggests, "could not be attained without a means for symbolic representation"
(Deacon 1997, p. 451). See also ña?ananda 1971, p. 11: "The label
'I' thus superimposed on the complex contingent process, serves as a convenient
fiction of thought or a short-hand device... it is the outcome of papañca...
The ego notion is an extension in thought not faithful to facts."
Deacon 1997, p. 452.
110. Deacon 1997, p. 456.
111. In understanding speech
alone we are able to hear a continuous flow of sound, discern the discrete phonemes
which, together, make up the specific words, a sufficient number of which must
be held in short-term memory long enough to effectively parse their grammatical
role within the sentence. The sentence itself subserves the larger rhetorical
purposes of that speech act, which is itself embedded in a specific social or
pragmatic context. All the while, we are also attentive to all the non-semantic,
non-syntactic, yet nevertheless crucial communicative cues, such as changes in
intonation, rhythm, word choice, hand and facial gestures, body language, etc.
We are somehow aware of these all the time in any common conversation, despite
the fact that only one sound occurs at a time (Lakoff and Johnson 1999, p. 10f).
112. S II 73.
113. S II 2.
114. The distinctions between these two
forms of cognitive awareness are most succinctly stated in the Proof Portion of
the Yogacarabhumi: 1.a) "The alaya-vijñana has past sa?skaras as its
cause (hetu), while the arising forms of cognitive awareness, visual, etc., have
present conditions as their cause. As it is taught in detail: 'the arising of
the [forms of] cognitive awareness comes about due to the sense-faculties, the
sense objects and attention.'" This same distinction is also articulated
by Maturana and Varela's theory, as described by Capra: "cognition involves
two kinds of activities that are inextricably linked: the maintenance and continuation
of autopoiesis and the bringing forth of a world" (Capra 1997: p. 268).
Bateson, 1979 p. 121.
116. The Prav?tti-Portion of the Yogacarabhumi :1.b)B.2.
"The [alaya-vijñana] always has an object, it is not sometimes this
and sometimes that (*anyathatva). However, from the first moment of appropriation
[of the body at conception] for as long as life lasts (yavaj jivam) [its] perception
(vijñapti; Tib. 'rigs pa') arises always having one flavor (ekarasatvena)
[that is, homogeneously]. 1.b) B.3. It should be understood that the alaya-vijñana
is momentary regarding [its] object, and though it arises continuously in a stream
of instants, it is not unitary (ekatva)" (D.4a3-5; T.580a12-18).
Tib.: sa bon thams cad pa'i sems rnam par smin cing 'jug la rgyas shing 'phel
ba dang yangs par 'gyur ro. Sanskrit reconstruction by Schmithausen: *(sarvabijaka?
citta?) vipacyate sa?murcchati v?ddhi? viru?hi? vipulatam apadyate. This closely
parallels passages found in Pali texts, S III 53, D III 228: viñña?a...
viddhi? viru.hi vepullam apajjeyya. (Schmithausen 1987, p. 356, n.508).
Comprised of the prefix 'upa,' 'towards, near, together with,' plus the noun 'adana,'
"receiving, taking to oneself" (SED), upadana, like sankhara, may refer
to both an active process and a passive product, both a conditioning and a conditioned
state. It is not only 'grasping, attachment, finding one's support by, nourished
by, taking up,' but also 'fuel, supply,' 'the material out of which anything is
made,' or even 'substratum by means of which an active process is kept alive or
going' (Apte, p. 471; PED, p. 149. See also Schmithausen 1987, p. 72).
Schmithausen reconstructs the last phrase as *nimitta-nama-vikalpa-vyavahara-prapañca-vasana-upadana.
The import of this dauntingly long (and proliferating!) string of concepts is
well summarized in his definition (Schmithausen 1987, p. 357, n.511) of the first
item, nimitta, as "in this context, objective phenomena as they are experienced
or imagined, admitting of being associated with names, and being (co-) conditioned
by subjective conceptual activity (vikalpa), which has become habitual so that
it permeates all (ordinary) perceptions and cognitions" (Emphasis added).
120. See A III 413, quoted in note 99 above.
121. 1.b) B.1 (D.4a3-5; T.580a12-18)
of the Prav?tti-Portion of the Yogacarabhumi. The mental factors associated with
the alaya-vijñana are similarly subtle: "2.b) A. The alaya-vijñana
is associated by association (sa?prayoga) with the five omni-present factors connected
with mind (cittasa?prayukta-sarvatraga): attention (manaskara), sense-impression
(sparsa), feeling (vedana), apperception (sa?jña), and volitional impulse
(cetana) ... 2.b) B. "These dharmas, then, ... are subtle (suk?ma) because
they are hard to perceive (durvijñanatva) even for the wise ones in the
world." (D.4a3-5; T.580a12-18). See also TBh, 19. 14-15, ASBh, 21.9f, Hakamaya
1979, p. 71, n. 6, 7, and Schmithausen 1987, p. 389f. for an extensive note on
122. Prav?tti-Portion (D.3b7-4a3; T.580a2-12): 1.b) A.2. The
'outward perception of the external world, whose aspects are undiscerned' (bahirdha-aparicchinnakara-bhajana-vijñapti)
means the continuous, uninterrupted perception of the continuity of the world
based upon that very alaya-vijñana which has inner appropriation as an
object. 1.b) A.3. "Thus, one should know that the way the alaya-vijñana
[arises] in regard to the object of inner appropriation and the object of the
external [world] is similar to a burning flame which arises inwardly while it
emits light outwardly on the basis of the wick and oil, respectively."
Lakoff and Johnson 1999, pp. 9-15.
124. Sa?dhinirmocana Sutra. Ch. V. 4: "Visalamati,
the six groups of cognitive awareness, that is, visual cognition, aural-, olfactory-,
gustatory-, tactile-, and mental cognitive awareness, arise supported by and depending
on (sa?nisritya prati??haya) the appropriating cognitive awareness (adana-vijñana)
[a synonym of the alaya-vijñana]." The Prav?tti-Portion of the Yogacarabhumi
(D. 6a4-6; T.580c26-581a2): 4.b) B.1. The alaya-vijñana arises and functions
simultaneously with the [forms of] arising cognitive awareness, too.
The Prav?tti-Portion of the Yogacarabhumi (D.5a3-7; T.580b17-29): 3.c) In this
way one should understand establishing the arising [of the alaya-vijñana]
is by means of the alaya-vijñana and the [supraliminal forms of] arising
cognitive awareness being reciprocal conditions of each other: by means of [the
alaya-vijñana] being the seed [A.1.] and creating the support [of the forms
of arising cognitive awareness (prav?tti-vijñana)] [A.2.], and by [the
prav?tti-vijñanas] nurturing the seeds [B.1.], and [causing the alaya-vijñana]
to grasp the seeds [of itself] [B.2.].
126. The Prav?tti-Portion of the Yogacarabhumi,
4.b) A.1.(a). (D.5a7f; P.6a5f; T.580b29f, 1019c6f). This unconscious self-conception
accompanies all states of mind: 4.b) B.4. "The mind which was explained above
always arises and functions simultaneously with the alaya-vijñana. One
should know that until it is completely destroyed it is always associated with
the four afflictions (klesa, following Ch.) which by nature arise innately (sahaja)
and simultaneously: a view of self-existence (satkaya-d???i), the conceit 'I am'
(asmimana), self-love (atmasneha), and ignorance (avidya)." See Schmithausen
1987, p. 444, ns. 944f.
127. ad MSg I.58. U 397a24-b4; u 266b4-267a1; Bh.
336c5f; bh. 168b7f .
128. Ibid. Bh. 336c9f; bh 169a2: gang gis bdag zhes bya
ba dang / bzhan zhes bya ba'i bye brag 'dir 'gyur par byed do.
4.b) A.2. (D. 5b4-6; T.580c9-13).
130. See Deacon 1997, p. 453: "These
abstract representations have physical efficacy. They can and do change the world.
They are as real and concrete as the force of gravity or the impact of a projectile."
131. Ibid., p. 454; emphasis added.
132. Deacon 1997, p. 409f.
AKBh. ad. IV 1.a. (Shastri, p. 567; Poussin, tome 3, p. 1: sattvanam karmaja?
lokavaicitryam). Also ad II 56b, 57b. For the early Vedic sense of loka as a multidimensional
'world' constructed by human action, particularly ritual action, see Collins 1982,
134. The term sadhara?a here means "having or resting on the
same support of basis" (SED, p. 1202).
135. Bh 337a28ff; bh 169b5. See
also the Prav?tti-Portion of the Yogacarabhumi, I.5.b) A.1-3, where the alaya-vijñana
is considered the root of the inanimate and animate worlds coming into existence.
136. ad MSg I.60, U 397c12f; u 267a8-268a1.
137. Johansson (1979, p. 28f)
has collected numerous passages that equate 'the world' (loka ) with the 'world
of experience': SN 169: "the world has arisen through the six (senses, or
sense-modalities), it gives rise to knowledge (i.e. is known) through the six;
building on the six, the world is destroyed in six;" A II 48: "In this
very fathom-long body, with its perception and inner sense, I proclaim the world
to be, likewise the origin of the world and the destruction of the world, likewise
the method leading to the destruction of the world;" A IV 430: "These
five love-objects (kamagu?a) are called the world in the code of the noble one.
What five? Forms, cognized by the eye, longed for, alluring, pleasurable, lovely,
bound up with passion and desire, sounds..., smells..., tastes..., contacts;"
S I 39: "The world is brought up by the mind, swept away by the mind;"
A II 49: "there is no release from suffering without reaching the end of
138. 1. That the arising of consciousness, and the train
of responses that follow, occur in discernable patterns is the gist of the series
of dependent arising in general, as well as of many of the specific factors in
139. See note 89 above.
140. It is the "unbounded"
nature of symbolic media, in Deacon's terms, that "gives us the ability to
share a virtual common mind." (Deacon 1997, p. 427).
141. Deacon, 1997,
142. Paden 1992, p. 7.
143. Msg. I.60.