Reflections on the attention given to mental construction

·期刊原文
Reflections on the attention given to mental construction
in the Indian Buddhist analysis of causality
By Frederick Streng
Philosophy East & West
V. 25 (1975)
pp. 71-80
Copyright 1975 by University of Hawaii Press
Hawaii, USA

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"Causality" has been analyzed in a number of ways for a variety of purposes by reflective people in both East and West. One concern has been to describe the ordinary use of the term "cause" in everyday speech. Another has been a consideration of the logical necessity in a causal relationship. A third focus is an empirically based description of the necessary and sufficient conditions that exist for the occurrence of an event, while still another is metaphysical explanation of the power or efficacy in a cause to achieve an effect. There is about the last two, a characteristic, on which I want to focus in this article since it highlights a central element in the Indian Buddhist analysis of causality. This characteristic is that a concern for an empirically based description of conditions or a concern to explain the nature of the causal force carries with it the assumption that one is describing an extralinguistic reality. The concern in this article is to analyze several (and sometimes contradictory) Indian Buddhist statements on causality in the context of the Buddhist goal of release from suffering, with its concomitant warning against attachment to conventions of speech and naive-realistic habits of experience.

I suggest that besides analyzing particular propositions on causality in terms of what they signify and their logical consistency with each other -- as has been done by scholars -- it is important to analyze the instrumental value of the statement on causality for the Buddhist religious goal of eliminating suffering. More particularly, this analysis focuses on the relation of intellectual claims to a state of mind (consciousness). It assumes that the claims made are understood best when an investigator is conscious that while any symbolic expression may become, to some extent, independent of the human matrix in which it was conceived, it has participated in certain existential assumptions about experience. Here we focus on the context of the Buddhist questions and answers about causality that recognizes "nonattachment" as the purpose of the discussion on causality rather than simply an intellectual clarity based on common usage or naive-realistic conventions regarding causality. To focus on this issue I will (1) describe some key elements of the formulations on causality in both Hiinayaana and Mahaayaana Buddhism in India, (2) analyze the role of thought (image-ing) itself in some important Buddhist statements on causality, and (3) discuss the notion of the twofold truth in Buddhism as a way of understanding different expressions of causality within the Buddhist effort for release from suffering.

I

"Causation" is a central problem in Buddhism because it deals directly with the question of whether a person has the power to shape his future. Two exis-

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tential questions that arise are: Is a person simply a product of a force (or forces) independent of human activity? If human beings are not totally (determined by an external force, is there a regulatory order to which one is responsible when exercising freedom?

In answering these questions the Buddha (as remembered by the Buddhist community) used the notions of karman (action-force), hetu (cause) and pratyaya (condition) that were common intellectual currency. However, there was also a rejection of certain assumptions current at the time, namely, that there was an external substance which was manifested in multiple forms and that there were several permanent substances that combined to provide the many forms.

The heart of the Buddha's claim was that all existence is intrinsically impermanent -- not just changing superficially; thus, existence was more the pulsating congeries of associated sequence patterns than a series of projections of something more fundamental (that is, a divine creation or manifestation of a universal spirit). These associated sequence patterns might be called a universal law if by doing so this "universal law" is not hypostatized into an eternal force prior to human action (karman). For, it is karman that is itself both the product and initiator of existence. The arising, maintenance, and dissolution of existence is an orderly sequence, which should not be seen as a universal substance nor simply a mental projection onto something else. Rather, it is a relationship which coordinates the momentary factors (dharmas) as they pulsate in and out of existence. This relationship of associated sequence patterns was formulated as pratiityasamutpaada (dependent co-arising) and was instrumental religiously as an explanation of the cause of suffering. To know the cause of suffering was essential to the elimination of suffering -- the goal of the Buddha's dharma.

The formulation of dependent co-arising was important for analyzing the responsibility of human beings for their present experience of suffering, while allowing for the possibility of freedom from those forces that provide the conditions for present suffering. Existence, as a general concept, then, can be considered as collective karman, any segment of which arises depending on the arising of certain coordinated factors. Here there is no question of ending the primal cause, because the assumption of one "thing" producing "another" is avoided altogether in the assertion of the radical impermanence of all things. Rather, the questions of causation focus on (a) when can associated sequence pattern be identified as an (even momentarily) sustained entity? and (b) what are the identifiable concurrent occasions in which (momentarily) sustained entities arise?

These questions arose when the Buddha's dharma denied permanence to three things that are often considered stable and enduring: (1) the ego, (2) the world, or basic elements that constitute the world, and (3) a transcendent reality, for example, god, or an eternal spirit released from the flux of existence. In what, then, does one find continuity and the cause for change? The Buddhist

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answer was "dependent co-arising." It provided an understanding of the cause of suffering and of the possibility for its dissipation. While there are a number of different (and sometimes contrary) expressions of the meaning of "dependent co-arising," both Hiinayaanists and Mahaayaanists agree that the comprehension of this truth about life is basic to release from suffering. [1]

Several Buddhologists have made it clear that there are several foci in the Indian Buddhist material regarding the function of the dependent co-arising assertion. [2] The concern in the present analysis is not to detail the variety of concerns, expressions, and meanings of this assertion but to recognize that sometimes there was more of a concern with the psychological conditions for the arising of suffering in individuals as related in transmigration, or to the experience of suffering; other times the notion of dependent co-arising referred to the arising, sustenance, and dissipation of any moment of existence in a cosmological sense; while at still others it was used to focus on the effective procedures for eliminating the bonds of attachment to any mental supports like doctrines, ideas, or intentions. In all cases, however, the affirmation of dependent co-arising expresses that the pulsating congeries of associated sequence patterns are both effective and orderly, while at the same time it rejects the notion that all phenomena, derive their actuality from an eternal primal cause or essential ground. Thus, the notion of dependent co-arising at a practical level affirms that it makes a difference to live in ignorance or enlightenment and that becoming enlightened is not arbitrary or without cause.

In light of this rejection, causation was not discussed in the suttas or Abhidhamma in terms of a substance that was known by a quality or property and that then changed or acted on another substance to activate change. Rather, the affirmation of dependent co-arising indicated that regular continuity could be affirmed without an appeal to an independent agent or self-substantiated reality, which caused something "other" to take on its quality or property. This revised the commonly expected one-directional movement of power from a prime substance to another independent substance, by perceiving cause as a multiple-directional convergence. At this point one may ask: But, what is it that converges? And the reply is that as long as one separates the substance of "what" in the question from the act of converging, one is superimposing the notion of an independent real entity on an impermanent flux of associated sequence patterns -- a superimposition that the concept of dependent co-arising was attempting to avoid.

At this point it might be fruitful to ask whether the elimination of the notions of an independent substance or agent and of a change from the distinctive characteristics of one substance to those of another does not, in fact, also eliminate a common-usage notion of causality. In a basic way, I believe that one must answer "yes." However, in saying this, I am not suggesting that this eliminates all notions of regularity in the arising of existence, or, on the other extreme, that human activity (karman) is totally predetermined. Rather, the

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Buddha and his interpreters are asking us to extend the notion of regulated continuity. They ask that we include in our understanding of causation not only the common rule of thumb notions of continuity that identify persistence of characteristics in a serious object, or the difference appearing in the same "thing" which result from causal forces. They suggest that we also include in our understanding of regulated continuity those factors found in human consciousness, especially different ways or levels of being conscious. To take dependent co-arising seriously, then, we need to be aware that the "we" used to indicate a subject of cognition is not an independent subjective reality, nevertheless, at a common-language level of awareness the term "we" is useful to distinguish a subject from those things recognized at the same level of awareness as "not we." To be conscious of this factor of common-language-conditioning is important in order not to superimpose an expectation of independent being-ness on this notion of "we." One of the functions of the early Buddhist sutta descriptions of dependent co-arising is to avoid mistaking the common sense experience of "we" or "self" for a primal and unchanging source of our experiences -- a common mistake, according to the Buddhists.

When asked about the bases for good or bad human experience, the Buddhists discussed this in terms of various and multiple changing conditions. For example, the sutta formulations of transmigration that finally took the form of twelve "causes" (nidaana, conditions, bases) focuses on the dependence of one cause on another. The Abhidharma literature discussed the dependent co-arising of existence in terms of elemental "synergies" or conditioned factors of existence (dharmas) that pertain to what we would call today both conscious and unconscious as well as extrasensory elements. Here we find the concern in the early Buddhist expression to avoid reification of concepts appropriate for the conventional sense experience of "self" when analyzing the bases of the self-experience at a more profound level. The recognition of the limitation of conventional formulations for depth analysis of causation continued throughout the centuries of Indian Buddhism; for, the early Mahaayaanists, as expressed in the Praj~naapaaramitaa literature, rejected the Abhidharma concern to identify the dharmas as the basic constituents of existence because from the Mahaayaanists' perspective the attempt to identify the "own-nature" (svabhaava) and the "own-characteristics" (svalak.sa.na) of dharmas was an unfortunate drift back into essentialist thinking. Thus, to apprehend a "cause" in terms of one factor having its "own-nature" in relation to another having its "own-nature" was seen to go against the original intention of the dependent co-arising notion. This rejection of identifying self-substantiated elements which were thought to be in causal relations with each other is seen in the Maadhyamika school of Buddhism, for example, when Naagaarjuna identifies dependent co-arising with "emptiness" (`suunyataa) and maintains that the early formulation of "That being, this becomes" cannot obtain when either existing things (bhava) or dharmas are thought to have self-nature. [3]

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II

In discussing causality in the Buddhist context, we must note a concern that is also found in contemporary philosophical language analysis to examine the common usage of the terms for causality, but which is, at the same time, also quite different from it. This is the recognition that thought or thinking (citta) itself is a contributing factor in the arising of phenomena. The formation of mental units of experience is seen as a significant force in what can be identified, for purposes of philosophical discussion, as a causal process. This is significant for understanding the character of the Buddhist effort to examine the conditions for the arising and dissipation of existence. It means that the activity of examining those conditions is not regarded as simply getting a mental copy of an assumed external, or objective, process. Rather, the existential formation of concepts about causality is itself a causal process. The Buddhists recognized that there were a variety of ways in which one could be conscious of causality, and some were judged to be more superficial while others were profounder. Both Hiinayaanists and Indian Mahaayaanists, regardless of their disagreements about what characterized a superficial or profound analysis, agreed that a profound understanding of causality required that an investigator become deeply self-conscious of the role of making mental images in the arising of phenomena -- including ideas about causality.

This concern for the implicit force of mental images both to bind a person to illusory expectations and to establish an inertia for subsequent bondage is already seen in a concern for "right view" (sammaadi.t.thi) at the beginning of the Noble Eightfold Path. Especially views that assumed the extremes of "It is" or "It is not" were criticized by the Buddha and his followers. In the Kaatyaayanaavavaada Suutra, [4] for example, the Buddha explains that knowing the truth of causality means not fixing the mind on the tendency of involvement in statements that assume independent and self-substantiated reality such as "This is mine" or "This is not me." Such formulations carry tendencies (anu`saya) of consciousness which station or support (prati.s.thiti) the mental flow and thereby "coagulate" the impermanent and "empty" factors of existence into "things" to which the flux of impermanent energy becomes attached in terms of "I, " "mine," "not me," "It is," or "It is not." This is a very subtle but powerful form of attachment, which requires special training to overcome. If a person is not aware of the involvement with the tendencies of ideas to hypostatize the impermanent flow of existence, he (or she) will be participating in the "empty" (impermanent) but effective attachments of image-ing. Such a person will assume that ignorance is simply a lack of information and seek to know the causal process as something external to him (or her). With these expectations, one will not perceive that to know causality requires an investigation of the mental construction process whose latent tendencies for delusive fabrication of external "things" must be overcome to perceive the lack of substantiality in the process.

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The forming of mental images, then, is a pivotal point in the perception of the nature of causality in terms of dependent co-arising. The central issues were to formulate the discussion of causality in such a way as to avoid a naive mental projection onto an assumed self-established external reality and to develop processes or states of consciousness whereby one could be at attentive to even the most subtle forms of attachments -- including attachment to the "right views" on the path to enlightenment. Thinking or consciousness (terms such as citta, manas, vij~naana are used in overlapping ways) is a force and a matrix in which existence arises and in which enlightenment takes place. It is the fulcrum for both samudaya and praj~naa. In Sa.myutta Nikaaya (II, 121 ff.) freedom-through-wisdom (praj~naavimukta) is discussed in terms of knowing the dependent co-arising character of the supports (sthiti) of phenomena and the nature of their cessation through the absence of the conditions requisite to their arising. [5] Cessation of existence means "to break the causal sequence patterns" by "starving" the factors that jell into attachments. This is done by methodical attention (manasikaara yoni`sas) to the arising-dissipating character of phenomena and to the "occurrences of factors" (dharmas) that constitute phenomena. The sutta description of the Buddha's enlightenment includes an analysis of the process of phenomenal-arising, and this provided the basis for the effort seen in the Hiinayaana Abhidharma literature to specify with greater precision the units of experience and the relations between them as they arose and dissipated. The effort was to specify the supporting conditions that were needed for the arising of existence in order to avoid a naive attachment to common knowledge experiences of the self and habits of thought. By giving attention to the constituent factors (dharmas) of common experience, the Abhidharma masters sought to clarify the law of dependent co-arising, not as a thing-in-itself, but as an orientation needed for allowing a release from philosophical claims and common experience of a permanent self. By clarifying the process of dependent co-arising, they could attend to the avoidance of those factors that caused both attachment and the arising of existence.

Similarly, the early Mahaayaanists (as expressed in the Praj~naapaaramitaa Suutras and the Maadhyamika school) insisted that whatever is without support becomes tranquil. However, they severely criticized the Abhidharmists for their attention to the description of dharmas and the analysis of the arising and dissipation of existence, since -- for them -- such attention was still part of the illusory mental game of hypostatizing a dependently co-arisen name into a thing external to the linguistic system. For the Mahaayaanists, the descriptions of constituents of existence (dharmas) and the analysis of dependent co-arising were conventions that were useful only for communicating with people who were on a low to moderate level of insight. To state the highest level of image-ing about the pulsating, arising, and dissipation of the phenomenal world, one had to say that there was "no arising" and "no dissipation"; for all things, constituent factors, and causal relations are empty -- they themselves have dependently

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co-arisen. In order to avoid the incipient tendency of the mental processes to establish (prati.s.thiti, station) the consciousness in an illusory "thing" the Mahaayaanist negated the very statements of the Hiinayaana Abhidharmists that the later expected to use as food for enlightenment. Thus, according to the A.s.tasaahasrikaa Praj~naapaaramitaa, thinking remains clear (prabhaasvara, translucent) as long as it remains nonobstructed. [6] To aid in keeping thought clear, a person is asked to regard the teaching of the perfection of wisdom as unproduced, as nonthought, as nonapprehension (anupalambha) of all dharmas. In the Vajracchedikaa Praj~naapaaramitaa, the Buddha tells Subhuuti that the bodhisattva "should produce an unsupported thought, i.e., he should produce a thought which is nowhere supported" (prati.s.thita). [7] In both Hiinayaana and Mahaayaana, then, there is a recognition of the role of image-ing in the arising of existence and in the elimination of suffering (illusion), and of the need to know the nature of dependent co-arising in such a way as not to hypostatize images of causality into substantive-substantive entities.

III

The central role of mind (citta) in the Indian Buddhist discussion of causality is not surprising in light of the religious function of this discussion. The statements on causality were not meant to be a general theory of causality about changes in objective phenomena, for example, the genesis and demise of dinosaurs. Such a concern with objects alone would be regarded as a second-level abstraction from the experiential and moral consciousness of human beings. The description of the arising of existence in terms of pratiityasamutpaada is an account of the arising and dissolution of acts of consciousness. Thus, it is not surprising that a study of causal relations in Buddhism requires an integration of what is studied in the West as three separate disciplines: morality, psychology, and metaphysics. To the extent that this is true, an analysis of causality in Buddhism requires a consideration of the quality of the consciousness that perceives itself coming into existence.

The distinction between perception of truth and entanglement of oneself in figments of one's imagination places a great concern on the manner in which one perceives the problem of the arising and dissipation of existence. To understand causality (pratiityasamutpaada) one must recognize that one is projecting an intention to fix or station causality; thus, causality cannot be imagined simply as external forces applying to a self or a group of independent entities whose characteristics are transferred to each other by causal connections -- as assumed in the image of a cue ball moving other billiard balls. Rather, to perceive causality one needs to free one's thought. Such freeing is not just the exchanging of one thought for another, or even the total elimination of thought, as if it were some inherently bad entity separate from nonthought. It is a realization that all thought is participation in, and construction of, interdependently

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arising phenomena. Thus, the thought about causality that is conventional and tends to keep one bound to his own "obstructions" participates in the same reality of dependent co-arising as does the highest expression of the truth of dependent co-arising; while at the same time there must be made a practical distinction between these two kinds of truth for purposes of realizing an "un-obstructed awareness" of the dependently co-arising-dissipating of existence.

Both early and later Indian Buddhist expressions regarding causality rejected a mechanistic, deterministic notion of causality and at the same lime rejected an approach that was limited to common knowledge observation and reason. Instead, the consideration of causality included a subjective factor that was spoken of in terms of attachment, desire, or ignorance. The reality of causality was therefore not conceived of in terms of conceptual understanding simply; it assumed that all modes of consciousness were not basically approximations of conceptual understanding. The subjective element, then, avoids not only conceiving causality as a network of impersonal stimuli proceeding in a cause-effect linear way, but also avoids considering causation as simply a verbal reality. This is to say that the highest level of perceiving causality is not simply a conceptual (verbal) scheme that analyzes necessary consequences entailed in prior events or distinguishes causal connections in terms of power to produce change or in terms of necessary connections. As important as descriptions may be, they also may be no more than image-ing that reinforces the illusion of self-existent entities or permanent actualities. This is not to say that the propositions that are claimed to communicate the highest truth were all equally good or bad. To the contrary the development of various Buddhist schools in India indicates that some formulations were regarded by some Buddhists as more useful than others. The concern here is to indicate that the notion of causality was not analyzed apart from a recognition of a subjective participation in the forming of that notion.

The sensitivity to this subjective participation is one aspect of the concern to distinguish between two kinds or levels of truth in Indian Buddhism. The conventional level provided statements that gave some understanding to the conditioned nature of existence, but these were not full expressions of the impermanent nature of existence. In the Paali suttas they were called neyattha (whose meaning needs to be drawn out), [8] and were statements that referred to common knowledge subjects and activities. However, these statements tended to conceal the fact that there were no real subjects or activities that could be said to exist apart from each other. Thus, other kinds of statements, niitaartha (having its meaning drawn out), were needed; these were more precise in describing the flux of life in terms of dharma, nidaana, and pratyaya. The niitaartha statements no longer concealed an implicit projection of an independent personality that could effect results independent from an assumed subjective act. That is to say, the Hiinayaana schools (and especially the Abhidharma masters) regarded the descriptions of the arising and dissipating of existence in terms of apprehending

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dharmas and causal conditions to he nonconcealing. However, it is exactly these statement's that the Buddhists, now identified as early as Mahaayaanist, labeled as sa.mv.rti (concealed). The Mahaayaana adepts, however, maintained the distinction between at least two levels of truth, [9] saying that the highest truth (paramaartha satya) is nonimagined, nonproduced, not apprehended. From this perspective there were no things produced or dissipated, and no production (arising) and no dissipation.

Despite conflicting judgment s about what formulations regarding causation (that is, dependent co-arising) different Indian Buddhists regarded as the highest expression, they all recognized that life could not be properly understood (for purpose of voiding suffering) without seeing beyond the conventional views of causality. The usual common knowledge procedure for understanding causality is to conceive of causal relations as an intermediate force between two separate entities. For example, an agent and a result of an agent's action. This set of notions, however, from the Buddhist perspective is a mental projection imbued with illusory tendencies. It is a way of thinking based on an inertia that is self-perpetuating as long as the illusory tendencies inform the interdependent co-arising of existence. As long as one thinks in terms of self-existent entities, or of change of some more basic substance or substances which have an eternal nature, there is an effective "being stationed" (prati.s.thita) by a subject-object dichotomy.

This very procedure is an illusory way of dealing with the arising of "I-ness" as it is experienced when one seeks to learn the roots of moral acts and depths of attitudes. Of course, this conventional way of speaking is useful for certain rather superficial kinds of communication -- which communication itself might be the first step in overcoming illusion, for example, when saying: A person must want to be free in order to attain freedom. However, the tendencies of this kind of thinking are to crystallize the mental energy into separate entities which then easily become absolutized into opposites of positive and negative, or of eternalism and nihilism. When this happens, the common psychological expression it takes is that a person either says that all reality is himself, so that he is Brahman and all distinctions are illusions, or he is basically nothing. In the latter case, his sense of nothingness is often ameliorated either by identifying himself with a divine reality (through special means such as faith or a sacrament), or by trying to appropriate every object (that is, whatever is nonself) to his comprehension, and there by attempt to control it, as in science. In the "scientific" approach to overcoming this projection of nonbeingness, a person makes an extraordinary effort to overcome his anxiety about nonbeingness by mastering a projected objectivity through conceptualization.

The projection of the ego through a verbal (linguistic) ordering of the world is seen, then, to be an effective element in the dependent co-arising of existence. However, the hope of perceiving the nature of life exclusively in light of this very powerful force -- usually, in fact, defining the very procedure for knowing

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the nature of life through that aspect of human life -- is seen to be illusory. From this perspective, also, the discussion or analysis of causality itself requires a "self-consciousness" (a reflexive sensitivity) about the implicit tendencies to superimpose a structure of ego-anxiety that arises from a broad matrix of conditions (including past karman -- or cultural and individual inertia) onto the reflection about causality. The Indian Buddhists were aware, at least to some degree depending on particular judgments about different expressions, of their subjective involvement in a discussion of causality -- an insight that might continue to be fruitful in the contemporary discussion.

NOTES
1. See N. Dutt, Aspects of Mahaayaana Buddhism and its Relations to Hiinayaana (London: Luzac, 1930), p. 51 for references to the literature.

2. See A. K Warder, Indian Buddhism (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, l970), Chap. 5; N. Dutt, op. cit., pp. 50 ff.; E. J. Thomas, The History of Buddhist Thought (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1933), chap. 5; N. K. Jayatilleke, Early Buddhist Theory of Knowledge (London: Allen & Unwin, 1963), pp 445-457; E. Conze, Buddhist Thought in India (London: Allen & Unwin, 1962), pp. 144-158.

3. Muulamaadhyamaaka-Kaarikaas. See esp. chaps. I and XXIV.

4. Sa.myutta Nikaaya, II, 17 ff.

5. See A. K. Warder, op. cit., p. 134.

6. Sec. 307; See A. K. Warder, op. cit., p. 366; and E. Conze, trans., The Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousand Lines and its Verse Summary (Bolinas, Calif.: Four Seasons Foundation, 1973). p. 193.

7. E. Conze, trans., (Rome: Is. M.E.O, 1957) Serie Orientale Roma XIII, p. 73; Sanskrit text, p. 36.

8. See A. K. Warder, op. cit., p. 150-152, and K. N. Jayatilleke, op. cit., pp. 364-366.

9. The Yogacaarins designated three levels: parikalpita, paratantra, and parinispanna. See Warder, op. cit., pp. 438 ff., N. Dutt, op. cit., pp 50 ff.