I would like to use a quote from Spiny Norman to kick this off, but please be aware that it is somewhat taken out of context (by virtue of me using it in this new context in this new thread). Its original context was not at all anything about this new issue that this thread is to address.
If there have been past threads on this and if anyone can find the links, please post them here. Thank you. With that, the quote that I'm using as a springboard.
In the original context, unless I read it very wrong, this quote encourages another user to analyse his interpretations of the Teaching, as they seem to imply a consciousness that is the source of all. I've bolded two of the words, because they reminded me of the following historical Buddhist disagreement.Spiny Norman wrote: ↑Wed Oct 05, 2022 3:18 pmDid Buddha teach connecting with "source consciousness" as the goal?
A historical trivium: there is/was a sort of consciousness in Buddhism, according to some sects, that "is/was" called the "root consciousness" (mūlavijñāna). That seems similar-enough a word to "source consciousness," but we oughtn't take me pointing this out as being in defense of the notion of a "source consciousness" as a Buddhist teaching. What Spiny_Norman was incredulous towards I find myself likewise incredulous towards. Consciousness has no singular source, being dependently originated. As such, we will see that "root consciousness" is not understood historically as the singular and particular "root of all consciousness" amongst those various groups who have held the doctrine over the course of Buddhist history. Rather than referring to a hifalutin "ground of consciousness," the term "mūlavijñāna" is a special name for the manovijñāna (Pāli: manoviññāṇa) in the East Asian Cittamātra tradition. I think that there is good ground to suspect that this usage is inherited from the former, now-extinct, Mahāsāṃghika sects. The next post I submit for this thread will address this hypothesis of mine. This alternative name references the manovijñāna's role in some non-Theravādin models of cognition, wherein the faculty itself neither perceives nor senses, and furthermore also wherein the bodily vijñānadhātus (Pāli: viññāṇadhātus) themselves neither perceive nor sense.
By "bodily vijñānadhātus," I refer to the cakkhuviññāṇa, the sotaviññāṇa, ghānadhātu, jihvaviññāṇa, and kāyaviññāṇa to the exclusion of the manoviññāṇa, otherwise known as the particular consciousnesses associated with the five bodily sensory faculties, the five being in Chinese and (dubiously back-translated) Sanskrit: 眼耳鼻舌身界 and *cakṣuḥśrotraghrāṇajihvākāyadhātavaḥ.
In what sense do these five not sense and not perceive? After all, they are "senses." Surely senses sense, no?
Part of the exegesis of those sects which posit a mūlavijñāna is actually completely in-line and complementary to what the Therāvadin argues for in the aforementioned Kathāvatthu debate, inasmuch as I've recalled the Kathāvatthu material correctly.
To summarise salient points of similarity that I remember, the faculty is spoken of as lacking the consciousness and the consciousness as lacking the faculty. In the instance of the eye, the eye itself lacks the characteristic of being the mind that beholds. Thus the eye itself does not perceive, cannot perceive, nor does or can it "see," for "seeing" is a variety of fivefold bodily perception and refers to the conscious registration of sensory data. The eye has no mind of its own. The mind has no eye of its own. The eye is part of a conscious being, but is not itself a conscious being and is not that being's consciousness. Similarly, in the instance of eye-consciousness (cakkhuviññāṇa now, not just "the cakkhu"), the eye-consciousness itself is not the eye. The same principle still holds. How? In those schools wherein the language of "mūlavijñāna" is used, to the best of my knowledge, the term is framed in light of the below points of dissimilitude that contrast with the above similarities.
Instead of any one of the three that make mutual contact with one another, namely 1) the internal sense field, 2) the external object, and 3) the viññāṇadhātu, the faculty of the internal sense field, the consciousness, and the object collaboratively generate, via their contact, a stream of "bare cognition" that registers the difference between disparate bits of "raw sensory data" concerning the object specifically. To clarify this term that I've put into quotation marks, "raw sensory data," I need to explain that "raw sensory data" is my language. I'm not translating a technical term here. "Bare cognition," however, is being used by me here as a translation, one specifically of the term "純然注意," which can be translated more-literally as "the pure flowing mentations." This is what is produced by the meeting of the three insofar that the sensorial fields of the five bodily senses are concerned. The "bare cognition" is simply "the pure flowing mentations," which are none other than "only what is seen," "only what is smelt," "only what is tasted," "only what is heard," and "only what is felt," these five being the cognitions associated with the five bodily consciousnesses.
It is not being used in a completely-identical manner to the Theravādin usage of the term "bare cognition," which in the context of Theravāda often translates material akin to the Pāli term "viññātamatta," or "only the known" (see "...in what is seen..." from the Bāhiyasuttaṁ at Ud 1.10), but it gets strikingly close IMO.
From these "pure flowing mentations" of "bare cognition," the mūlavijñāna functions as the basis for conscious experience of this external world. The sense faculty, the object, and the consciousness are transformed into "flowing mentations." What, once again, are the "flowing mentations?" None other than the objects of the triple-meetings of the aforementioned five senses, with the important addition of the triple-meeting of the sixth base: manas.
In the sūtras to the Śrāvakasaṃgha known as variously "the EBTs," "the early sectarian canons," etc. including the Pāli Canon, dharmas are the object of the sixth base. However, all of the objects of all of the bases are also referred to as "dharmas" (Yes, even in the Pāli Canon!) even though they interact with diverse bases. Why is this? Why are all of the five sensual objects called dharmas when dharmas are also considered to be exclusively the object of one sense? Because they are, in addition to whatever else they may be, the objects of the sixth base.
The mūlavijñāna functions as the lynchpin of awareness, experience, and even what we might call "conscious experience inherent in being aware" in this regard. The cognition of the mūlavijñāna as the sixth base is not "bare" in the way that the cognitions of the five bodily senses were. It has the tendency to contain imputations, interpretations, and associations, and indeed even afflictions and poisons as well, in the case of the ordinary worldling. The afflictions and poisons that assail the worldling are afflictions and poisons of the sixth consciousness particularly, the mūlavijñāna, the manovijñāna, as the bodily sensory cognitions lack the sophistication and reflexivity to be "greedy" and suchlike. As such, there is one consciousness to be purified of affliction, the manovijñāna. The consciousnesses associated with the ear, eye, etc., are already pure. It is the complex of the manas that obsesses and fetishizes the senses. The senses do not do that of their own accord. Similarly, it is the complex of the manas that contains the necessary complexity for angst, specifically the angst associated with belief in, laudation of, and reliance upon the false doctrine of "the ātman."
Venerable Vasubadhu says that:
(*Vijñaptimātratākārikāsiddhiśāstra T1585.1a7)由假說我法
有種種相轉
彼依識所變
此能變唯三
Following the false doctrines of "the self" and "the dharmas,"
there come the manifestations of the proliferous nimittas.
Those (nimittas) depend upon and are transformed by consciousness,
and they can be transformed in only three ways.
(T1585.18c24)四煩惱常俱
謂我癡我見
并我慢我愛
及餘觸等俱
有覆無記攝
隨所生所繫
阿羅漢滅定
出世道無有
Four afflictions are always accompanying one another,
called "self-delusion" and "self-view"
and also "self-conception" and "self-attachment."
Continue this up to "accompanied by contact" and the rest.
They (i.e. the afflictions) are obscured and indeterminate.
Wheresoever the place of birth is, they are bound there.
In the case of the Arhats within the samāpatti of cessation
and those upon the world-transcending path, they do not exist.
The "they" in the last line here, at "they do not exist," refers to the four afflictions outlined at the outset of the first quatrain.
(T1585.37a6)依止根本識
五識隨緣現
或俱或不俱
如濤波依水
[...]
是諸識轉變
分別所分別
由此彼皆無
故一切唯識
Depending on the basis of the root-consciousness,
five consciousnesses, according to their conditions, manifest
complete or incomplete,
like how the undulations of the waves are dependent upon their (respective) waters.
[...]
These manifold (five) consciousnesses transform
into manifestations of differentiation and into those things that are differentiated.
Following from these, those things are nonexistent.
This is the reason why it is said "only consciousness."
In the second-last line of the above quatrain, "those things" refers to the various differentiated manifestations of sensory cognition, i.e. "sensorial experiences." It refers to "the vision of the cat," and does not refer to the cat. The raw sensory data generated through the encounter between the cat and the senses meets with the mind as one of its objects: a dharma, or more precisely a stream of dharmas. The manifestations of sensorial experiences that are arisen dependent upon the meeting of the manodhātu, the dharmadhātu, and the manovijñānadhātu is referred to in the Chinese tradition as "似塵識," or "consciousness as the objects." They are contrasted with "external dharmas." These "internal dharmas," associated with "internal contact" and involving the mental manifestation of the sensorial objects of the five senses were arisen of those five bodily consciousnesses. These dharmas encounter the sixth consciousness, manas, and the consequence of this triple-meeting is the manifestation, within the mind, of that "differentiation" that delineates "the things that are differentiated." This is none other than what we conventionally refer to as "conscious (sentient) experience." The manovijñāna does double-duty, appearing both as 1) the manifestations of "consciousness as the objects" and 2) also serving as the source of the discursive, conceptual, reflexive, and interpretive associations that accompany these objects that consciousness appears (to itself) as.
In the second-last line of the above quatrain, "these things" refers to the five cognitive processes underlying these diverse manifestations and the uniquely mental impressions and reactions that accompany them. The mūlavijñāna becomes the house, rhetorically-speaking, of "bare cognition," "cognition as objects," and "associative cognition concerning objects." Through housing these three, it becomes respectively the house of contact, vedanā (hedonic tone/feeling), and tṛṣṇā (craving/desire, lit. "thirst"). The residence of bare cognition becomes the residence of contact as five cognitions appear as dharmas at the mind-base. The residence of "cognition as objects" becomes the residence of vedanā because the experience of these objects/dharmas are differentiated principally according to bliss and agony or neither. The Dharma is for the ending of saṃsāric agony. Saṃsāric bliss is merely future agony, and is only blissful relative to agony. This "consciousness (appearing) as objects," alternatively phrased as "cognition as the objects," is for the purpose of ending the twin agonies of 1) the bliss that is subtle agony and 2) agony's coarse modality. The last correspondence, the residence of "associative cognition concerning objects" becomes the house of desire. Through association concerning the objects, we fetishize the subtle agony of bliss and differentiate it from the easily-recognizable coarse agony. Through association concerning the blissful and agonizing experiences, which is to say the blissful and agonizing cognitions that manifest as our "mind's eye" or "mind's mouth" (etc. for five senses), we come to hate the agonizing and love the blissful.
Reading the last two lines contextualized, we understand how this text is arguing that the manifestations of the external world that appear via the mind are unreal, are "only consciousness," are "consciousness appearing as objects," and have at their root merely the transformation of raw sensorial data from the bare cognition of the bodily sense fields into "an object," "a dharma," or "an experience" engaged with and manifested within the "mental sense field," i.e. the threefold complex of the contact associated with the manas.
The excerpt ends with "This is the reason why it is said 'only consciousness.'" It is because of the nonexistence of the mentally-experienced sensorial world that it is said "only consciousness." The term "consciousness" is being used by the author of the Vijñaptiśāstra, Venerable Vasubandhu as translated by Venerable Xuánzàng, as a mutually-exclusive opposite with the term "existence." If it is merely consciousness, it is not "an existent," meaning here "a true direct experience of an external existent thing." It is "direct experience" of the external world that is "nonexistent" according to the above. It is nonexistent because existing as an external object is not, in truth, "only consciousness." Rather than "only consciousness," the process of perceiving something that is "existing (as an external object)" is consciousness interacting with an object as much as it is "consciousness itself." The immaterial objects of the sixth consciousness, being entirely consciousness, being "only consciousness," and being entirely dharmas and being entirely not, in truth, the various visibles, olfactibles, tangibles etc. that served as the caused for their production, are the nonexistent in the above. This is quite subtly different from saying something like "There are no external objects!" or saying "External objects are always entirely generated by the mind!", which are two very trendy misunderstandings of Vijñaptimātratā that are proliferated greatly in various circles.
Now, the "Connection."
Contrary to all of the above, despite the shared hermeneutic of "the eye can't think and the mind can't see," we see something entirely different argued of viññāṇa by the Therāvadins:
(from Buddhist Dictionary by Ñāṇatiloka Mahāthera)Viññāṇa:"consciousness," is one of the 5 groups of existence (aggregates); one of the 4 nutriments; the 3rd link of the dependent origination; and the 5th in the sixfold division of the elements.
Viewed as one of the 5 groups, it is inseparably linked with the 3 other mental groups (feeling, perception, and formations) and furnishes the bare cognition of the object, while the other 3 contribute more specific functions. Its ethical and karmic character, and its greater or lesser degree of intensity and clarity, are chiefly determined by the mental formations associated with it.
Just like the other groups of existence, consciousness is a flux (viññāṇasotā, "stream of consciousness") and does not constitute an abiding mind-substance; nor is it a transmigrating entity or soul. The 3 characteristics, impermanence, suffering, and no-self, are frequently applied to it in the texts. The Buddha often stressed that "apart from conditions, there is no arising of consciousness" (M 38); and all these statements about its nature hold good for the entire range of consciousness, be it "past, future, or presently arisen, gross or subtle, in oneself or external, inferior or lofty, far or near" (S.XXII, 59).
According to the 6 senses it divides into 6 kinds, viz. eye- (or visual) consciousness, etc. About the dependent arising of these 6 kinds of consciousness, Vis. M. XV, 39 says: "Conditioned through the eye, the visible object, light, and attention, eye-consciousness arises. Conditioned through the ear, the audible object, the ear-passage and attention, ear-consciousness arises. Conditioned, through the nose, the olfactive object, air and attention, nose-consciousness arises. Conditioned through the tongue, the gustative object, humidity and attention, tongue-consciousness arises. Conditioned through the body, bodily impression, the earth-element and attention, body-consciousness arises. Conditioned through the subconscious mind (bhavaṅgamano), the mind-object, and attention, mind-consciousness arises."
Can anyone contextualize the traditional classical Theravādin POV concerning these bolded sections?