Persistence and Cognitive a Ention in Udayana's Ātmata Vaviveka

Persistence and Cognitive Aention in Udayana’s Ātmatavaviveka David Nowakowski Many Buddhist philosophers in India were concerned with defending a rad- ical thesis in metaphysics: nothing which exists can persist; that is, nothing can exist for more than one of the single smallest instants of time. Because on this account everything exists for only a single moment, the view is known as universal momentariness. Udayana, writing in the Nyāya tradition of Brahmanical (so-called Hindu) philosophy, devotes the first chapter of his Ātmatavaviveka (“e Inquiry into the Reality of the Soul,” ĀTV), composed around , to the refutation of the momentariness thesis, and to establishing the contrary view that things can and do persist over time. In this paper, I will be examining just one of Udayana’s arguments against momentariness, namely that because we are unable to cognitively aend to non-existent things (such as the son of a barren woman, or the horn of a rabbit), it is impossible for the Buddhist to know that everything is momentary. My main concern in this paper is to answer this question: What is the role of considerations about cognitive aention in arguments for or against the permanence of inanimate objects, in classical Indian philosophy? In the course of answering this question, I will examine related topics concerning the manner in which we cognitively aend to particular objects, and limits of such aention. In section , I explain the terms and concepts required to properly state Uda- yana’s claim. In section , I provide a brief overview of the theory of inferen- tial reasoning in classical India, and situate the Buddhist’s demonstration of momentariness (which Udayana will refute) within that theory. And in section , I examine one of the arguments which Udayana deploys against the inference for momentariness, which turns on our inability to cognitively aend to non-entities. Unpaing the Claim: Topics and Terms Udayana makes the following claim, in the course of his refutation: e Buddhist is unable to know the momentariness of everything that exists, because it is impossible to cognitively aend to non-existent things. To properly understand this D N — W S Page of claim, we must consider four terms: the Buddhist, momentariness, non-existence, and knowing. In this section, I will explain each of these in turn. e Buddhist Udayana’s discussion in the ĀTV is structured, in a style typical of Sanskrit philosophical texts, as a conversation between the defender of the correct view (who speaks in Udayana’s own voice) and an objector, who must be disabused of his various false notions. Here, the objector is trying to defend the Buddhist momentariness thesis. Various actual philosophers in the so-called “Buddhist epistemologi- cal tradition,” including Dharmakīrti (th c.), Dharmoara (th c.), Jñānaśrīmitra (late th c.), and Ratnakīrti (early th c.) argued for the momentariness thesis on the basis of existence.¹ While the arguments offered by the objector in the ĀTV oen resemble those of these actual Buddhists, Udayana’s text almost never quotes any of these Bud- dhist philosophers directly. e objector, then, is not any particular individual, but rather a generic advocate of Buddhist views. So by the expression “the Bud- dhist,” I will refer to this literary construct, and not to any historical person. Momentariness e momentariness thesis seems to be a development of the Buddha’s teaching that “everything is impermanent” (sarvam anityam).² In this statement, the rel- evant distinction is between being permanent (nitya) and impermanent (anitya). To be permanent is to exist forever—a condition Udayana and his fellow Nyāya philosophers aribute to God, universals, space, ether, and atomic substances, among other things. To be impermanent is simply not to exist forever, that is, to cease to exist at some point in time. e Naiyāyikas would cite ordinary, com- posite material substances as prime examples of impermanent things. Universal impermanence, then, is simply the claim that all of the things which allegedly be- long to the first group (God, universals, atoms, etc.), if they exist at all, originated at some time and will cease to exist at some time. e issue of impermanence must be distinguished from the separate, though related, issue of momentariness. An entity is momentary, just in case it exists for ¹at is, “existence” is the reason property (H) in the formal statement of the inference, as I discuss in section below. ²at the momentariness thesis is a later elaboration is evident, inter alia, from the intra- Buddhist debates concerning the view which extended at least until Vasubandhu, writing in the fih century A.D. Alexander von Rospa () provides a lucid account of the early development of the momentariness thesis. D N — W S Page of P? M? E Yes No X exists forever. No No X exists for a finite but extended duration. No Yes X exists for only a single instant. Table : Permanence and Momentariness: ree Alternatives precisely a single instant of time, before immediately ceasing to exist. Momen- tariness is a much stronger claim than mere impermanence. Mere impermanence leaves open the possibility that a thing could persist for some finite but extended interval, while momentariness is the denial of that possibility. Combining these two pairs of terms, we have a three-fold classification, into which every entity X must find a place, as shown in table . We note that momentariness and permanence each logically preclude the other, while non-momentariness and impermanence each leave open both possibilities with regard to the other term: Something which is non-momentary might or might not be permanent, and something impermanent might or might not be momentary. e weak claim that “everything is impermanent” (sarvam anityam) is simply that nothing is of type , leaving open the question of which things (if any) are of types and . e stronger claim “everything is momentary” (sarvaṃ kṣaṇikam), advanced by Udayana’s rivals in the Buddhist Yogācara school, is that everything is of type . Udayana himself is commied to the view that nothing is momentary, which is to say, everything which exists belongs either to type or type .³ Various intermediate positions are, of course, also logically possible. ³ere are at least two considerations which show that Udayana is commied to “universal persistence.” First, it is implied by Udayana’s critique of the positive concomitance in the Buddhist’s inference from existence in ĀTV I.A (which I discuss in my dissertation). If Udayana acknowl- edged anything which was both existent and momentary, then he would be unable to claim that positive concomitance (anvaya) between existence and momentariness was unestablished; his Bud- dhist rival could simply point to that momentary existent thing as the requisite similar example. Second, universal persistence follows from Udayana’s metaphysics of destruction, which will be involved in the refutation of the Buddhist’s second inference, from the inevitability of destruction, in ĀTV I.. A thumbnail sketch of the argument is as follows: . Causes and their effects must be co-present, at the time of the arising of the effect. e prior absence of the pot is among the causes of the pot. (Insert any other finitely- persisting entity in the place of the pot.) . e pot is among the causes of this posterior absence/destruction. e prior and posterior absences of the same thing cannot be co-present. erefore, the pot must persist for at least two instants of time (with a different one of the two temporal absences being present at each of those two instants). D N — W S Page of . Non-Existence Before examining Udayana’s arguments about our knowledge of, and reference to, non-existent objects, it will be helpful to clarify what it means for something to be non-existent. Within the ontological framework Udayana inherits from the Vaiśeṣika philosophical tradition, there are two distinct levels on which we could explain the expression “X does not exist” or “X is not” (tan nāsti).⁴ According to the Vaiśeṣika philosophers, every item necessary for giving a complete account of the world is contained within one of seven categories (pa- dārtha): substances, qualities, motions, universals, individuators, inherence, and absences. ese categories may, in turn, be grouped in various ways. I will consider two possibilities for interpreting “X is not” within the Vaiśeṣika ontology inherited by Udayana: the distinction between positive beings and absences, and the distinction between real entities and unreal non-entities. Once these two options are on the table, I will consider the usage of Udayana’s Bud- dhist opponent in this section of the Ātmatavaviveka. e diagram in figure , on page , will help to organise this discussion. e first major division is between absences (the seventh category) on the one hand, and positive beings (the other six categories) on the other. Positive beings, Udayana explains, are “the cognitive objects of cognitions whose cognitive ob- ject is expressible without a negative particle,”⁵ including the ordinary particulars which comprise the first three categories, along with the other metaphysically necessary entities (universals, individuators, and inherence) which make up the next three categories. Absences (abhāva), the cognitions of which are (necessar- ily) expressed with a negative particle,⁶ are genuine, locatible, causally efficacious features of the world, which can be directly perceptible under the appropriate conditions.⁷ Nevertheless, they are intimately connected with the positive beings which comprise the other six categories, in that every absence is “the absence of X,” where X is some specific absentee (pratiyogin). For example, we might find the absence of a pot, or the absence of blue color. ⁴ere is actually a third interpretation of non-existence on the Vaiśeṣika model, namely the lack of a relation to the genuine universal “existence” (saāsambandha).

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