On Being Mindless: Buddhist Meditation and the Mind-Body Problem
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On Being Mindless Bibliotheca Indo-Buddhica Series No. 196 On Being Mindless: Buddhist Meditation And The Mind-Body Problem Paul J. Griffiths Sri Satguru Publications A Division of Indian Books Centre Delhi, India Published by : Sri Satguru Publications A Division of Indian Books Centre Indological and Oriental Publishers 40/5, Shakti Nagar, Delhi-110007 (INDIA) email: [email protected] Website: http://www.ibcindia.com/ © 1986 by Open Court Publishing Company All rights reserved. No part of this work covered by the Copyrights hereon may be reproduced or copied in any form or by any means- Graphics, Electronics or Mechanical including photocopying, micro- fiche reading without written permission from the publishers. ISBN 81-7030-606-X First Indian Edition : Delhi, 1999 Published by Sunil Gupta for Sri Satguru Publications a division of Indian Books Centre, 40/5, Shakti Nagar, Delhi-110 007, India and printed at Mudran Bharati,Delhi-110 009 For my father CONTENTS On Being Mindless ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xi INTRODUCTION xiii CHAPTER ONE THE ATTAINMENT OF CESSATION IN THE THERAVADA TRADITION 1 1.1 The Theravada Tradition 1 1.2 The Nature of the Attainment of Cessation 5 1.3 Methods of Reaching the Attainment of Cessation 13 1.3.1 Soteriological Methods and Soteriological Goals 13 1.3.2 Obtaining Cessation: The Basic Unit of Tradition 17 1.3.3 Contextual Analysis 19 1.4 Evaluations of the Attainment of Cessation 27 1.5 Debates on Emerging from the Attainment of Cessation 31 CHAPTER TWO THE ATTAINMENT OF CESSATION IN THE VAIBHASIKA TRADITION 43 2.1 The Vaibhasika Tradition 43 2.2 The Significance of the Treasury of Metaphysics 46 2.3 The Attainment of Cessation in the Treasury of Metaphysics and Its Commentaries 58 2.3.1 The Vaibhasika Position 60 2.3.2 The Sautrantika Position 63 2.3.3 The Debate between Vasumitra and Ghosaka 67 2.4 Critique of the Positions 70 Contents CHAPTER THREE THE ATTAINMENT OF CESSATION IN THE YOGACARA TRADITION 76 3.1 The Yogacara Tradition: History and Texts 76 3.2 The Yogacara Tradition: Key Philosophical Ideas 80 3.2.1 Ontology: Representation and Mind 80 3.2.2 The Functioning of Mind 84 3.2.3 The Store-Consciousness 91 3.3 The Eightfold Proof of the Store-Consciousness 96 3.3.1 The Impossibility of Appropriating a New Body 97 3.3.2 The Impossibility of Origination and Simultaneous Functioning of the Sense-Consciousnesses 99 3.3.3 The Impossibility of Clear Mental Consciousness 100 3.3.4 The Impossibility of Mutual Seeding 101 3.3.5 The Impossibility of Action 101 3.3.6 The Impossibility of Physical Experience 102 3.3.7 The Impossibility of Mindless Attainments 103 3.3.8 The Impossibility of Death 104 3.4 Critique of the Yogacara Position 104 CHAPTER FOUR THE ATTAINMENT OF CESSATION AND THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM 107 GLOSSARY 114 ABBREVIATIONS 117 APPENDIX A: The Place of the Attainment of Cessation in the Soteriological Path of the Abhidharmakosabhasya 120 Contents APPENDIX B: Debates on the Re-emergence of Consciousness from the Attainment of Cessation in the Abhidharmakosabhasya [72.19-73.4]: Sanskrit Text, English Translation and Annotation 122 APPENDIX C: The Eightfold Proof of the Store-Consciousness in the Abhidharmasamuccayabhasya [11.18-13.20]: Sanskrit Text, English Translation and Annotation 129 NOTES TO INTRODUCTION 139 NOTES TO CHAPTER ONE 144 NOTES TO CHAPTER TWO 162 NOTES TO CHAPTER THREE 173 BIBLIOGRAPHY: TEXTS 184 BIBLIOGRAPHY: WORKS CITED 193 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In completing this work I accumulated intellectual debts to so many people and institutions that it is now beyond my powers to remember what I learned from whom, much less to fully acknowl- edge all of it. The acknowledgements that follow are therefore neces- sarily incomplete. Trinity College, Oxford, provided me with a stimulating intellec- tual environment for five crucial years (1975-80), and gave me train- ing in both Theology and Sanskrit, skills which were instrumental in making this work possible. The Buddhist Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin gave me the freedom to develop my inter- ests in Buddhism in my own way during 1980-83. I am grateful to the Harkness Foundation for generous financial support during 1980 -82, and to the University of Wisconsin for providing me with a University Fellowship in 1982-83. It was this financial support which made possible the speedy completion of my PhD dissertation, on which this book is largely based. Finally, the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago has, since August 1984, provided me with an intellectual setting that is both relaxed and exciting: an ideal place for the completion of this study. I am especially grateful to Frank Reynolds, Wendy O'Flaherty and A. K. Ramanujan, all of whom have gone out of their way to make me feel at home in Chicago. My intellectual and spiritual debts are more numerous. Trevor Williams showed me long ago in Oxford that it is possible to both be religious and study religion. Richard Gombrich introduced me to both Sanskrit and Buddhism, and gave me substantial encourage- ment during my early studies. When I first came to the US Frances Wilson acted as my kalyanamitra and guided me through the ad- ministrative complexities of a large American university. Minoru Acknowledgements Kiyota was gracious enough to act as my dissertation advisor at the University of Wisconsin in a field far from his own, and to allow me an unusual degree of freedom in pursuing my goals. He also opened my eyes to the range and quality of the work on Indian Buddhism currently being produced in Japan. To him I owe a special personal debt. From Geshe Sopa I learned what Tibetan I know, and learned something also of the depth and range of traditional Tibetan scholar- ship. Keith Yandell has provided me with continuous philosophical challenges and a personal friendship that has shaped my intellectual outlook in very important ways. Noriaki Hakamaya has been consis- tently generous in giving me both time and advice, and first showed me, in a series of seminars on the Mahayanasamgraha from 1981 to 1983, how best to study Indian Buddhist texts. Stephan Beyer may recognize many of the ideas in this study as closely related to his own. John Keenan will recognize that our fruitful disagreements about both Buddhism and philosophy continue. Finally, a special debt of gratitude goes to Delmas Lewis; without his conversation and friendship this book would not exist in its present form. My thanks are also due to W. W. Bartley III for reading the manu- script of this work and making helpful comments, and to David Ramsay Steele, Sue Olson and Lisa Zimmerman of Open Court for agreeing to publish this work and for doing so in such an expedi- tious and helpful manner. Portions of the first chapter of this work (in very different form) have appeared in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion (1981) and Religion (1983). A portion of the second chapter appeared in Philosophy East and West (1983). My wife has neither typed nor proofread this book; my daughter is not yet in a condition to type or proofread anything; but I am indebt- ed to them both for almost everything else. Chicago October 1985 INTRODUCTION This book is about the philosophical implications of meditative practice. More specifically, it is a case-study of certain infra-Buddhist controversies about the nature and implications of a particular, pre- cisely defined altered state of consciousness,1 attained by way of an equally well defined set of meditational practices. It may seem at the outset as though this has rather little to do with philosophy as un- derstood in the analytical traditions of the West: it may be suggested that we are instead dealing here, as Louis de La Valise Poussin put it, with: . Indian 'philosophumena' concocted by ascetics . men exhausted by a severe diet and often stupified by the practice of ecstacy. Indians do not make a clear distinction between facts and ideas, between ideas and words; they have never clearly recognized the principle of contradiction.2 Poussin was one of the greatest historians of Indian Buddhism the West has yet produced, and while he was clearly correct in his view that the practice of meditation was and is of fundamental importance for Buddhism, he was equally clearly incorrect, as I hope to show, in thinking that this resulted in any lack of clarity in philosophical ar- gumentation, much less in a failure to recognize the 'principle of contradiction'. It is upon meditative practice that the religious life of the Buddhist virtuoso is based and from such practice that systematic Buddhist philosophical and soteriological theory begins. The experiences pro- duced as a result of meditative practice have therefore historically been of great importance to Buddhist philosophical theory; it would hardly be an exaggeration to say that the whole of the magnificently complex edifice of Buddhist philosophy is a drawing out and sys- tematization of the implications of such experience. The Buddha Introduction himself (insofar as we can say anything about him; the historical problems associated with making judgements about the teaching of the historical Buddha are great) seems to have placed great emphasis on the significance of meditative experience and to have regarded it as both the origin and guarantee of his more strictly philosophical teaching.3 Rather than judging the significance of meditational practice in Buddhism to allow no place for clear philosophical analysis, a useful method of gaining access to the rationale and significance of some key Buddhist doctrines might be to examine their connections with those meditative practices with which they almost always operate in symbiosis.