PEI~SONALITY, CONSCIOUSNESS ANI) NII:tVANA IN EAI:tLY BUI)l)HISM PETER HARVEY THE SELFLESS MIND Personality, Consciousness and Nirv3J}.a in Early Buddhism Peter Harvey ~~ ~~~~!;"~~~~urzon LONDON AND NEW YORK First published in 1995 by Curzon Press Reprinted 2004 By RoutledgeCurzon 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Transferred to Digital Printing 2004 RoutledgeCurzon is an imprint ofthe Taylor & Francis Group © 1995 Peter Harvey Typeset in Times by Florencetype Ltd, Stoodleigh, Devon Printed and bound in Great Britain by Biddies Ltd, King's Lynn, Norfolk AU rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any fonn or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any infonnation storage or retrieval system, without pennission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN 0 7007 0337 3 (hbk) ISBN 0 7007 0338 I (pbk) Ye dhammd hetuppabhavti tesaf{l hetUf{l tathiigato aha Tesaii ca yo norodho evQf{lvtidi mahiisamaf10 ti (Vin.l.40) Those basic processes which proceed from a cause, Of these the tathiigata has told the cause, And that which is their stopping - The great wandering ascetic has such a teaching ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Dr Karel Werner, of Durham University (retired), for his encouragement and help in bringing this work to publication. I would also like to thank my wife Anne for her patience while I was undertaking the research on which this work is based. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 1 Key non-Buddhist concepts 1 Key Buddhist concepts 2 'Not-Self' and scholars 7 Sources 9 Methodology 11 Part I Exploring tbe Notion of Selflessness THE QUESTION OF SELF 17 Scholars who see a metaphysical Self in the 'early Suttas' 17 Uses of the word 'self' (alta) in the 'early Suttas' 19 Passages which might indicate the acceptance of a Self 21 Nibbiina as not-Self and not related to a Self 23 Self as 'not being apprehended' 24 A Self beyond 'existence' and 'non-existence'? 28 Proof of the impossibility of a Self 31 Buddhism and the Upani~ads on Self 33 The status of the 'person' 34 Why is Self not denied?: the Buddha and the Annihilationists 38 The 'I am' attitude: its cause, effect and its ending 40 2 THE MEANING OF 'NOT-SELF' 43 The role of viewing phenomena as not-Self 43 The criteria for Self-hood 46 Nibbiina and the Self-ideal 51 3 DEVEWPING A SELF WITHOUT BOUNDARIES 54 Living with citta as an 'island' 54 Developing a 'great self' 55 'One of developed self' 57 The Arahat as self-contained and 'dwelling alone' 58 The Arahat's boundaryless citta 60 The Arahat's boundaryless, self-contained self 62 4 PERSONAL CONTINUITY AND RESPONSmiLITY 64 The person as a continuity 65 Responsibility for actions 66 The stability of character traits over lives 68 What conserves character traits and the unity of the 'continuity'? 72 To what extent are 'continuities' isolated from each other and the world? 74 5 MY WORLD AND ITS END 78 The Self-world link and the meaning of 'world' (loka) 78 The Buddhist perspective on the world 79 The undetermined questions 83 The undetermined questions on the world 84 6 THE LIFE-PRINCIPLE AND THE BETWEEN-LIVES STATE 89 The undetermined questions on the life-principle 89 The 'life-principle' accepted by early Buddhism 91 Discernment and rebirth 95 The question of the intermediary existence (antarii-bhava) 98 The nature of the intermediary existence 102 The gandhabba: spirit-being of the intermediary existence lOS Part II: Saqasiric and Nibbinic Discernment 109 7 THE CENTRALITY OF DISCERNMENT 111 The nature and centrality of citta 111 A person as discernment and the sentient body 116 The vortical interplay of discernment and the sentient body 119 8 DISCERNMENT AND CONDmONED ARISING 122 The nature of the constructing activities 122 The conditioning of discernment by the constructing activities 124 The conditioning of discernment by ndma-rupa 127 Discernment as conditioned by attention 129 The conditioning of the sentient body by discernment 130 Conditioned Arising as an analysis of the perceptual process 134 9 DISCERNMENT AND THE PERCEPTUAL PROCESS 138 The perceptual process in the 'early Suttas' 138 The nature and functions of cognition (saiiiiii) 141 The activity of discernment (viiiiiiii}Q) 143 The functions of discernment in the Abhidhamma 'process of cittas' 145 The nature of viiiiiiii'Ja 148 The effect of karma on discernment in the perceptual process 151 10 BHAVANOA AND. THE BRlGHTLY SHINING MIND 155 Is the bhavailga concept ruled out by the 'early Sutta' world-view? 155 'Early Sutta' evidence for a bhavailga-type state 151 The meaning of 'bhavailga' 160 The roles of bhavahga 162 The brightly shining citta 166 Freedom from defilements 169 The shining citta and bhavailga 170 The Arahat's ever-shining citta 173 The shining citta and the Buddha-nature 114 The shining citta and the realms of rebirth 111 ll NmBANA AS THE TIMELESS 'SlOPPING' OF THE ENTIRE PERSONALITY 180 The nibbiina-element without remainder of upiidi 181 Nibbiina during life as not ever-present in the Arahat 182 The 'stopping' of the personality{actors during life 185 Nibbiinic 'stopping' and nirodha-samiipatti 187 Re-entry to the state of 'stopping' 188 Nibbiina during life as 'unborn', 'unconstructed' and 'deathless' 189 Nibbiina as a timeless object of insight 193 12 NIBBANA AS A TRANSFORMED STATE OF DISCERNMENT 198 Nibbiina as a form of discernment 199 Nibbiinic discernment as 'stopped', 'objectless' and 'unsupported' 201 Udiina.80 as a description of nibbiinic discernment 203 The nature of nibbiinic discernment 205 Unsupported discernment and nibbiina beyond death 208 The relation of nibbiinic discernment to the Arahat's normal state 210 Theraviidin perspectives 214 Alahiiyiinaperspectives 217 13 SEEKING THE TATHAGATA 227 The 'untraceability' of the tathiigata 228 The 'hard to fathom' tathiigata and Dhamma 231 The tathiigata as 'not being apprehended' 235 Nibbiinic discernment and the views on the tathiigata after death 239 14 CONCLUSION 246 Appendix: The Theory of the Process of Cittas 252 Notes 259 Abbreviations 274 Bibliography 277 Index and glossary 282 Charts 1. The 'process of cittas' in waking consciousness, according to Abhidhamma theory 146 2. The cilia-sequence in sleep 163 3. The cilia-sequence in meditative jhiinas 163 INTRODUCTION (1.1) This work is concerned with exploring certain key features of the world-view of early Buddhism: its attitude to notions of self and its understanding of the nature and role of viiinai}Q: 'consciousness' or 'discernment'. Both of these topics are of intrinsic interest in themselves, and exploration of them in early Buddhist literature both facilitates a better understanding of early Buddhism and adds a different perspective to the current debate on these topics. In order to carry out this analysis, though, it is necessary to have an under­ standing of certain basic concepts of early Indian thought. KEY NON-BUDDHIST CONCEPTS (1.2) Prior to Buddhism, the Brahmanical (proto-Hindu) tradition had started to produce compositions known as Upani~ads. In these, the spiritual quest was seen as, at heart, the quest for knowing the Self (Skt. iitman), which came to be seen as an essence underlying the whole of reality: both the external world and personality. It was not a personal 'self'. though, but lay beyond both body and mind, as a transcendent, yet immanent reality that was a person •s true nature. Lying beyond empirical individuality, it was a universal Self, the same in all beings. Such ideas were among those debated by the non-Brahmanical samaQOs, or religious wanderers, that the Buddha (circa 484-404 BC) moved among. One group of samaQOs was the Jains. They saw a person's true Self as the 'Life-principle' (.iiva), a luminescent iMer Self which lay within a person, trapped in matter until it was liberated. Such a 'Life-principle' was. unlike the Upani~adic Self, seen as an individual entity: each being had a sepanlte Life-principle. In Buddhist texts, though, the word atta (Pali) or iitman, meaning self or Self (Piili and Sanskrit have no capital 1 THE SELFLESS MIND letters) is used for all such concepts. Another sama1J(l group was the Ajivakas. These were fatalists who felt that there was a Life­ principle or individual Self that was impelled from rebirth to rebirth by an iron law of destiny. Another group, dubbed by the Buddhists as •Annihilationists', were materialists who held that a person was completely destroyed at death. In this, they were unlike the Brahmins, Jains, Ajivakas and Buddhists, all of whom believed that beings went through a series of rebirths, as humans, animals, or other kinds of beings. All but the Ajivakas also thought that how a person was reborn depended on the quality of their karma, or action. Simply put, good, unselfish actions were seen as leading to pleasant rebirths, and bad, selfish ones were seen as leading to unpleasant rebirths. All, though, sought to attain liberation from this age-old round of rebirths, so as to gain fmal peace in some form. In his summary of the religious scene of his day, the Buddha often grouped others under three heads: the 'Eternalists', who believed in some form of eternal Self or Life-principle; the •Annihilationists', who felt that a person is destroyed at death, and the 'Eel-wrigglers', referring to a group of Skeptics who felt that human beings were incapable of having knowledge of such matters as Self and rebirth.