Montana Freethinkers

Submitted to Dr. Alan Sponberg for Buddhist Psychology (Religious Studies 495) The University of Montana
7/30/04

To understand what the 2500-year old tradition of Buddhism has to offer contemporary psychology, one must understand the varying descriptions of the relationship that the mind has with the body.Far from presenting a solid, dogmatic view of the mind-body relationship, Buddhist schools have set forth a variety of doctrines, ranging from the functional dualism of Theravadin (Teaching of the Elders) Buddhism to the citta-matra (mind-only) doctrine of Yogacara Buddhism.Central to each of these doctrines, along with those of Madhyamaka (Middle-Way) Buddhism, are the historical texts of the Pali Canon [1] .These texts, combined with the direct experiences of historical philosopher-contemplatives, formed these schools of thought.An examination of these three schools of thought leads to an appreciation of the logical, historical, doctrinal, and experiential examination of mind and body by Buddhist thinkers.Though not a comprehensive examination of mind and body in Buddhist thought, by understanding these three theories of mind and body in Buddhism and exercising the practices that are said to lead to them, one may unlock the psychological teachings of Buddhism.These teachings are meant to go beyond theory to become part of one’s lived experience.Before examining the Buddhist theories the ground must be laid by understanding the non-absolute nature of the principles that guide philosophers and psychologists in the West.Given the Western principles and the Buddhist theories, an example of the difficulties arising in the Western philosophy of mind will further show the importance of dialogue between Buddhism and Western science for a coherent understanding of the mind.

Western psychology has endeavored to divorce itself from the speculations of philosophy, seeking alliance with the hard sciences of physiology and chemistry.This paper, however, is very much a philosophical essay, seeking to restate the importance of philosophy in psychology.As Buddhist Psychologist and Philosopher Padmasiri De Silva emphasizes, the fields of philosophy and psychology are in no way distinct. [2] Instead, just as “two bundles of reeds were to stand one supporting the other, even so” [3] psychology is dependent on philosophy, and philosophy is likewise dependent on psychology.It may also be argued that Western psychology is not separate from an underlying set of metaphysical beliefs, those described by B. Alan Wallace as the doctrines of Scientific Materialism. [4] These metaphysical beliefs treat the mind as emergent property of the physical brain, leading all theoretical inquiry into the mind toward the physical processes that are said to underlie all mental activity.Therefore, despite the lack of evidence for the mind being nothing other than physical activity, the introspectionist techniques of Buddhism and some Western psychologists are generally dismissed without examination.   An understanding of the foundations of the Western perspective will prove profitable to understand differences and counterarguments presented in the Buddhist philosophies to follow.

Not only is this a philosophical essay, but also it confronts some of the very metaphysical questions deemed inappropriate by the Buddha himself.To make his point against metaphysical speculation, the Buddha told the parable of the man pierced by a poisoned arrow.The poisoned arrow represents the condition of samsara (the cycle of life, suffering, death, and rebirth). If the man insists, before receiving medical treatment, on knowing who shot the arrow, and of what clan he is, what kind of bow he was using, what the bow string and the shaft of the arrow were made of, from what kind of bird the feathers on the arrow came, and so on, he will die before his thirst for knowledge is satisfied. [5] Likewise, if we distract ourselves from the path to enlightenment by trying to settle these disputed cosmological and metaphysical issues we may well fail to be healed from birth, ageing, dying, grief, sorrow, suffering, lamentation and despair.The Buddha concludes this story by instructing the student, Malunkya, to, “remember what is undisclosed by me as undisclosed, and what is disclosed by me as disclosed." [6]

However, the Buddha’s analogy may not make such sense to Westerners, as we do not realize that such an arrow has pierced us.For the Westerner, it is more easily accepted that we are either at the will of a God who will do with us what He chooses, or that we are at the will of the impersonal material universe, from which we derive sustenance in life and will remerge with at death.These views fundamentally deny the condition of samsara described by the Buddha.As such, the Buddha’s admonishment of metaphysical inquiry ought only apply to those whose beliefs facilitate the rest of the Buddha’s teachings.Like a man using one thorn to remove another thorn stuck in his side, metaphysical speculations in the service of breaking down false philosophical principles such as those prominent in the West may be profitably undertaken.These philosophical principles are based on a long history of metaphysical speculation, dating back to the pre-Socratics and culminating in the Enlightenment period of 18^th and 19^th century Europe.

These philosophical principles, denying samsara and rebirth, are inseparable from the Western views of mind and body.To those brought up in the Western context of Judeo-Christian Monotheism and/or secular scientific realism, these views form a bedrock of understanding the world that must be carefully reexamined before attempting to study the foreign observations found in Buddhism.Westerners have developed predispositions to separate between self and other, to reify phenomena, and to avoid seeing the process, change, and impermanence held by Buddhists as being central to reality.

In Choosing Reality: A Buddhist View of Physics and the Mind and The Taboo of Subjectivity: Toward a New Theory of Consciousness, Buddhist scholar B. Alan Wallace provides a lucid historical account of the evolution of Western scientific and metaphysical thought.His goal in these books is to call into question our contemporary view of Scientific Materialism by showing the religious, social, and otherwise unscientific roots of its underlying doctrines.He further argues that while these doctrines have been instrumental to the development of modern science, they ought to be seriously questioned in light of failures in both quantum physics and the philosophy of mind.According to Wallace, philosophy in the West and the beginnings of scientific materialism began with Thales in the early 6^th Century BCE.From him and other early Western thinkers came the principle of Monism, the doctrine that there is only one ultimate substance (principle or archê) from which all existence emanates.   From this principle, Reductionism naturally followed, which states that total understanding of the one ultimate substance will lead to understanding of everything it composes.A forerunner to the next four principles of scientific materialism is Realism, which was established in The Bible and retained without question by later thinkers.In it God is said to have created the world prior to and thus independent of man. [7] Hence, any assertion that reality may be in any way dependent upon an observer was denounced a priori.These principles are meant to explain only the external world (phusis) and as such the internal (psyche) is left unexamined, so in Greek and early Christian thinkers a dualism of body and mind was accepted.While they were certainly interested in the mind, its workings were regarded as a mystery beyond the full understanding that could be accomplished regarding the physical world.So Western philosophers continually focused on developing greater instruments and methods for the examination of the physical world while leaving examination of the workings of the mind to religious theorists.Concerning early Western attempts to describe the mind; Wallace states, “there is little evidence that they developed any sophisticated means for refining the attention.” [8] Without refined attention, any examination of the mind is like viewing the cosmos through an unfocussed telescope.

In the 5^th Century CE the West entered the Middle Ages, a period marked by the end of the Roman Empire, the rise of feudalism, and general social unrest.In the rise and spread of Catholicism in this period, the Church claimed not merely spiritual authority but total intellectual reign over its adherents, making further metaphysical speculations all but impossible.This period ended with the Renaissance (14^th Century), a resurgence of scholarly inquiry aimed at the great works of the Greeks, and the Protestant Revolution (in 1517 Luther posted his 95 Theses).The combination of these shook the social, political, and religious grounds of the day enough to reestablish desire for new ideas.The rebirth of inquiry in this period, both within and beyond the walls of the Catholic Church, gave rise to Modern Philosophy and the Scientific Revolution.It is in this period that the next principles emerge.The principle of Universalism, stating that the laws of nature (or God’s Laws) must hold always and everywhere came through the early stages of the Scientific Revolution. This contradicted Catholic dogma, which held that both God and Satan could at any time intervene in mundane affairs.Objectivism, a natural extension of realism and universalism followed.This principle states that the world out there, created prior to man and set in a mechanistic motion, could be fully known through careful inquiry, discounting any creative process in observation.Physicalism, likewise an extension of prior principles, states that knowledge would come from inquiry into the outside world because only physical objects and processes exist.Finally, to close the door on Catholic and other forms of mysticism and open wide the floodgates of modern science; René Descartes introduced the Closure Principle.Descartes held that the whole of existence in the world could be explained by purely worldly causes.However, the human soul/mind as well as the miracles of the bible were held to have causes beyond the world, and were therefore excluded from his mechanistic explanation.It wasn’t until Leibniz asserted that the will of the soul and mechanical movements of the body were predetermined by God to harmoniously follow alongside one another that the closure principle was completed and accepted as a principle of scientific materialism.Throughout the development of these principles it is clear that there is tension with the Church, both Catholic and Protestant Sects, but this was generally alleviated through the careful wording of philosophers and scientists to make clear that they did not intend to extend their principles into the soul/mind, which was until the 19^th century strictly within the domain of religion. It has only been in the 20^th century that these principles have been made to apply to the mind, reducing it to an objectively understandable emergent property of the physical brain.

As they have been interpreted in the West, the principles of scientific materialism assert that 1) the world is ultimately knowable as purely physical entities and processes, and 2) scientific inquiry (based on the accepted principles) is the best tool for gaining knowledge about the world. A third assertion often made is that only the scientific description of the world is absolutely correct, while other descriptions are weakened by vagueness and/or subjectivity.These assertions have become a sort of common sense among working philosophers and psychologists.As stated, however, while they have proven to be of great utility in the exploration and understanding of the world, indeed the universe, they present a hindrance in the exploration of the mind on its own terms (ie. subjective experience or phenomenology).Any claim that the principles of scientific materialism are in some way absolute truths is refuted as one examines their sources, seeing the speculative, pragmatic, and sometimes religious, nature of their origins.Likewise, one must be careful not to assert that one’s religious beliefs that result from direct experience are absolute truths, as “[l]ike the practice of science, all such [religious] practices are theory laden…” [9] So one must not simply disregard the principles of scientific materialism out in favor of this or that religious doctrine, but must instead seek to understand both in order to develop a dialogue through which greater understanding may come.

The early theoretical roots concerning the interaction of mind and body comes in the earliest texts of Buddhism, the Pali Canon.The theories expressed in these texts are indeed theory laden, and most central of these theories is that of samsara mentioned already.Further, It is from these texts that the earlier description of metaphysical inquiry is taken (given the basis of samsara, further metaphysical inquiry is to be avoided).A full inspection of the development of the doctrine of samsara is not possible within the topic area of this essay, nor is it necessary, as the mere ability to question the doctrines of scientific materialism as they have been internalized by most of the West should prove sufficient to allow meaningful understanding of this work.The Buddha himself did not focus heavily on justifying accepted metaphysical doctrines; nor did he go out of his way to refute wrong views of his time.The Buddhist teachings are meant to enter into one’s ethical and meditative practice, and only then to be judged.The Buddha did not put great effort in describing the fine distinctions between the mind and body, but instead indicated that through deep meditation, one gains sufficient understanding of the issue. [10] The resulting description of mind and body in early Buddhism is one of neither dualism nor monism, but a pragmatic description of both distinctions and interdependencies.

There were at the time of the Buddha schools of thought that did attempt to present a monistic metaphysics, both of materialism and of idealism.One such monist encountered in the Pali Canon is the materialist prince Payasi who sealed a criminal man in a jar and allowed him to die in an attempt to directly observe the life-principle (Pali: Jiva) as the jar was opened. [11] Payasi’s assertion was that if the life-principle (that being something other than the physical body itself) cannot be observed, it must not exist.Maha-Kassapa, arguing the Buddha’s position, states that just “as the prince’s attendants do not see his life-principle ‘entering or leaving’ him when he dreams, he cannot expect to see the life-principle of a dead person ‘entering or leaving.’” [12] While dreaming, the prince’s life-principle, or mind, is clearly not situated in his physical body as it is while waking, but this is not objectively detectable.Hence, the life-principle is not to be understood as a physical thing separate from and animating the body, but instead as an invisible phenomenon necessary for name and form (Pali: nama-rupa) to come into being.

Another monist encountered in the Pali Canon is Sati, a disciple of the Buddha who contended that consciousness is identical to the (immaterial) self and thus independent of any physical reality.He further contended that the same consciousness is unchanging and is reborn. [13] This view is rebutted by the Buddha, arguing that consciousness is dependent upon conditions such as objects and the eye-organ for eye-consciousness or sounds and the ear-organ for ear-consciousness.Contemporary Buddhologist, Dr. Walpola Rahula, indicates that the view expounded by Sati falls very close to the doctrine of a substantial Self, or Atman, which the Buddha did clearly reject. [14]

The view that Buddhism is a philosophy of substantial dualism is likewise false.An argument for this is made by D. J. Kalupahana and subsequently refuted by Peter Harvey. [15] Kalupahana’s assertion is that the Buddha’s teachings do indicate ‘substance’, which is imperceptible and underlies and supports material objects.He likewise derives from the Buddhist sutras that citta (mind) is a substance upon which mental states are dependent.However, Harvey contends that these interpretations of the Buddhas teachings are ultimately unfounded, as the Abhidhamma (one section of the Tipitaka) makes clear that the material phenomena described by the Buddha are those that can be directly detected (via touch, taste, smell, etc) and that citta itself is one’s experienced state of consciousness, rather than an underlying basis upon which mental states may arise.

The resulting positive assertions of Buddhist mind-body relation are thus of the examination of experience, or phenomenology.The distinctions between mind and body are roughly identical to those made in the West: mind is formless/shapeless and intentional (it takes an object); body is extended in space, having shape and color, and takes no object.The mind acts upon the body via vocal or bodily intimation, defined as the “state of bodily tension or excitement… making known a citta [mental state]” [16] This is not to say that non-physical mind contacts and alters physical matter, but rather it “modulate[s] the way in which aspects of matter arise.” [17] However, rather than hypostatize mind and body as separate substances and confront the problem of interaction (as done in the West), the Buddhist texts retain the mere phenomenological descriptions of each.In this view the mind is the force which creates, though not ex nihilo, our experience of matter.Body likewise acts upon the mind, as mentioned above, as outside objects which present themselves to the sense-organ (itself bodily) to create sense-consciousness.In this respect, the doctrine is one of functional, though not substantial, dualism.

The most important aspect of the Buddha’s teaching on mind and body, however, is the interconnectedness of the two.The Abhidhamma states that the mind and body interact in the following ways: 1) they are conascent, born together; 2) they are mutually dependent in there arising, like sticks in a tripod supporting one another; 3) they support one another as the earth supports a tree; and 4) each is present and non-disappearant in the other, meaning that there is no pure experience of the physical free from mind, nor any pure mind free of physicality. [18] While mind free from physicality is held to be possible in deep meditative states and at nirvana, the investigation of mind becoming free of the body and the ensuing ontology of nirvana and samsara in the Pali Canon is too great a task at present.Suffice it to say that in normal circumstances, the teaching of dependent co-arising (Pali: paticca-samuppada) presents the answer to the mind-body question in early Buddhism.Here, the Buddha states that “[j]ust as friend, two bundles of reeds were to stand one supporting the other, even so consciousness is dependent on name-and-form and name-and-form is dependent on consciousness… if one of those two bundles of reeds is drawn out, the other one would fall down, and if the latter is drawn out the former will fall down.” [19]

The first notable divergence, or apparent divergence, from the teachings in the Pali Canon on the mind-body relationship came from the Vijnanavada (Knowledge/Teaching of Mind) School of Buddhism.This school began around 150 C.E. with the Sandhinirmochana Sutra, [20] and was further developed from the writings of the Asanga (4^th Century CE) and his younger brother Vasubandhu.This school confronted the mind-body issue through intense focus on the mind (vijnana) in meditation.According to Professor Brian Hoffert, the Vijnanavada School systematized the works of Asanga and Vasubandhu “with the aim of devising a theoretical framework that would have therapeutic use in the practice of meditation.This school was thus called the Yogacara, or practice of meditation school.” [21] According to Hoffert, the focus on the mind is not meant to be taken to the extreme of idealism, or mind-only on the metaphysical level, but is instead meant as a form of upaya (skill in means) to break students from all clinging to the supposed physical world. [22]

The Yogacara School’s focus on the mind consisted of a dissection of the terms citta, manas, and vijnana, which in earlier schools had been used synonymously to refer to vijnanaskanda (the aggregate of mind).However, Asanga defines these as three different and distinct aspects of the mind aggregate. [23] Citta is explained to be the alayavijnana (storehouse consciousness) in which karmic (meaning ‘by one’s actions’) bijas (seeds) are stored.It is from here that the Yogacara School explains that all of reality emanates with the often misconstrued doctrine of cittamatra (mind-only).Manas is that which within citta, or alayavijnana, obscures true knowledge, or stains the citta, with false ideas. [24] It is the rational or intellectual faculty of the mind, both in the positive sense of actively producing feelings or wishes, and in the negative sense of passively ordering reality (incorrectly from the absolute perspective) based on habit and conditioning. [25] Vijnana consists of the raw, pre-linguistic experience of the six forms of consciousness as accepted throughout Buddhism: sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell, and mind. [26]

Given this three-level division of the mind, Yogacarins present a complete phenomenological description of how we come to have experiences. Vijnana is the most superficial aspect of the aggregate of mind, the experience of colors, sounds, tastes, etc.Vijnana is the direct consciousness, or bare phenomenon, free of the labeling or discrimination of the manas.Manas then sorts out or schematizes such phenomena, adding labels so that they may be understood as a particular part of one’s reality.In most people the shift from bare phenomena to sorted and labeled ‘objects’ happens too quickly to observe, but through meditation, specifically vipassana (insight) practice based on the Satipatthana Sutta (Four Foundations of Mindfulness Teaching) [27] , one may quiet the labeling activity of the manas to experience direct consciousness, or bare phenomena.“From where do these phenomena arise?” asks the meditator, for they must have a source and a cause.The answer given by Yogacarins is alayavijnana, a storehouse consciousness that is separate from the continual flux of phenomena and resulting nama-rupa and contains both the bare phenomena of the vijnana and the discriminating activity of the manas.

Geshe Michael Roach, in his teaching on “How Karma Works”, describes the Yogacara School’s theory using the example of an encounter with an angry boss (replacing any Tibetan terms for the equivalent Sanskrit).(1) Fundamentally there is the alayavijnana in which all of one’s karmic bijas (seeds) are stored, including those responsible for the angry boss; (2) each seed naturally grows and turns-over [28] to create a vijnana (3) the vijnana is the bare phenomena [29] of red (face) and sound decibels (yelling); and then (4) manas gives labels (angry boss yelling at me) and interprets these labeled objects as a particular aspects of reality.According to Geshe Roach, this explanation is carried so far by the Yogacarins that even our perceptions of our physical sense organs are only vijnana (bare, insubstantial phenomena) emanated from the alayavijnana.Karmic seeds produce the perceptions (vijnana) of such things as our eyes and ears; our incorrect interpretations caused by manas lead us to interpret them as physical objects, separate from the mind; and this act (karma) of interpretation plants a new seed (bija) to be incorrectly interpreted the next time a perception of eye emanates. [30]

The body, whether it be that of another person or one’s own, or anything thought to be physical and thus separate from the mind, is nothing more than an emanation of the mind in Yogacarin thought.Further, the preoccupation of discriminating mind from body, sense from sense-organ, etc. is the detrimental activity of the manas.Such discriminating activity, insofar as it is based on wrong understanding of this process, ‘stains’ the alayavijnana with mental seeds that will ripen into further wrong understanding [31] (thus more dualism, reification of the Self and physical world). “In a sense, subject-object dualism is the ‘villain’ for Vasubandhu the way inherent self-existence was the ‘villain’ for Nagarjuna. [32] And just as the Madhaymikas called on emptiness to deal with their problem, the Vijnanavadins [Yogacarins] called on consciousness-only to handle theirs.” [33] Emptiness for the Yogacara School is the lack of any separate seed for the object and the perceiver.The mind that perceives the angry boss and the angry boss himself come from the same karmic seed, each is empty of having any separate substance; they are the same stuff (your mind). [34]

The identification of Yogacara as either “the Buddhist school of idealism” [35] or teaching “a kind of ‘expedient means’” [36] depends on one’s understanding of alayavijnana.A favorable assessment acknowledges that the Yogacara School saw a problem with the explanation of the person as nama-rupa and attempted to most succinctly correct it.Accepting the previous teaching of the aggregates of nama-rupa as constantly changing, they concluded that no aggregate could develop an understanding or impression of dukkha (most commonly translated as ‘suffering’, but also meaning ‘unsatisfactoriness’, ‘frustration’, ‘unhappiness’, ‘anguish’, and ‘dis-ease’). [37] Thus, drawing on the teachings of the Pali Canon they conceived of the alayavijnana, which is in some sense nothing other than the Tathagata-garbha (the womb in which Buddhahood develops). [38] The tathagata-garbha is separate from the constant flux of nama-rupa and is itself eternal, unchanging, and hence capable of retaining the impression of suffering and turning that into the impetus for buddhahood.The tathagata-garbha is not an atman or a substantial Self, but is the realization of nirvana as the perfectly pure reality innate in all. [39] This intense focus on the mind stresses two great elements of Buddhism: the extreme importance of our actions (karmas) and the innate possibility for buddhahood for all.Rather than blaming such inconveniencies as the angry boss on the outside world, reacting ignorantly to the angry boss, and planting new staining/ignorant seeds, one sees all perceptions as emanating from one’s mind.This emanation is due to past actions; knowing this one seeks to replace each stained seed that has come to fruition as a perception with a pure seed, eventually purifying the entire alayavijnana and attaining buddhahood.Our ignorance is thus a product of our attachment, at the gross level to the world itself and at subtler levels to aspects of our mind.The result of ignorance is discriminating the world as divided between ‘out there’ and ‘in here’, failing to recognize the meaning of Reality as it truly is. [40] “Even Nirvana and Samsara’s world of life and death are aspects of the same thing, for there is no Nirvana except where is Samsara, and no Samsara except where is Nirvana.All duality is falsely imagined.” [41] Further, even the teachings of emptiness, non-duality, tathagata-garbha, and similar notions are not the Truth, but pointers toward Truth, which must be realized within one’s consciousness. [42]

Criticism of the Yogacara School alayvijnana doctrine is made extensively within Candrakirti’s Madhyamakavatara (Introduction to the Middle Way).Indeed, Candrakirti accuses adherents to this school of departing from the path of Nagarjuna and groups them with other non-Buddhist theorists, saying “the Vijnanavadins are only to be condemned, having no skill in the use of wisdom (prajna) because they have not looked into the intention of the doctrine of emptiness.” [43] However, later writers ease the criticism of Yogacara, or Vijnanavada, such as the position of Mkhas-grub-rje [44] (1385-1438 CE) that only the Madhyamaka doctrine has final meaning, while the cittamatra doctrine is of provisional meaning. [45] Candrakirti’s criticism holds true though for those who do not see this final/provisional meaning distinction, a failure he accuses Vijnanavadins of making.