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Sectarian "pseudo-selves"

Posted: Sun Jul 11, 2010 8:46 am
by EricJ
Woot for alliterative titles. :D

I've been reading Buddhist Thought in India by Edward Conze (which I will be quoting liberally, so please forgive me). I'm not sure whether or not his scholarship is considered dated at this point in time, but I find his book very thought-provoking and informative. It certainly appeals to my speculative side, which might be a negative thing since speculative thoughts about kamma and rebirth within the context of anatta kept interrupting awareness of the breath. Luckily, I recovered quite well today and am looking forward to some serious time on the cushion for the uposatha.

This brings me to the point of my post. Conze's chapter on 'Doctrinal Disputes' among the 'Sthaviras' opens with a description of Puggalavada/Pudgalavada teachings. He explains reasoning that led this school to posit the existence of a real Self (puggala). [I have added numbers by the quotes to delineate each reason and I have omitted the reasons which don't relate to the topic I want to discuss]
Buddhist Thought in India, Part II, Chapter 2.1 wrote:1. To the Vatsiputriyas transmigration seemed inconceivable without a person...If there is no person, who then transmigrates? Who else could wander if not the person? For it is absurd to say that it is the Wandering (samsara) which wanders...

2. There are, further, in each individual a number of factors which outlast the fleeting moment...A similar reasoning [there must be an "I" which is the subject to "a number of factors which outlast the fleeting moment] may also be applied to karmic actions, and their retribution. It is the same person ["person" being puggala, the real Self] who first acts, and then reaps his reward or punishment. [kammic formations, both in terms of this life and future lives]
The non-Puggalavadin schools, and Conze himself, vehemently [and rightly, I think] rejected this self-view. However, Conze immediately moves on to another point, which is really what I want to discuss.
Buddhist Thought in India, Part II, Chapter 2.1 wrote:I sometimes suspect that their [the Puggalavadins'] main crime consisted in acting like the boy who honestly said that the emperor had no clothes on. Everyone else knew that this was so, but pretended that it was not.

The urge to deviate from the strict Abhidharma interpretation of anatta was felt in many sections of the Buddhist community, alike among Sthaviras, Mahasanghikas, and Mahayanists, and I do not see how one can avoid the conclusion that the Theravadin orthodoxy narrowed the original teaching so as to make it logically more consistent with itself. So strong indeed is the practical and theoretical need for the assumption of a permanent factor in connection with the activities of a 'person', that in addition to the Pudgalavadins other schools also felt obliged to introduce it more or less furtively in a disugised form, though the word 'self' remained taboo at all times...

Personal 'continuities' [as defined by Conze, "the activities, past, present and future, which in mutual causal interrelation, constitute a continuous and uninterrupted series, it is a stream of consciousness which remains identical with itself in spite of the perpetual change of its elements..."] perform at least two functions of 'self' in that (1) each continuity is separate from others and (2) is constantly there, though not permanent...they [Sthaviras] took great care that this chain of events, though continuously replacing constituents, should be constantly there, and that no interstices should interrupt the continous flow of causality...In order to definitely eliminate the disruptive effect of such gaps, the later Theravadins put forward the theory of 'life-continuum' (bhavanga) which is subconscous and subliminal...Likewise the Sautrantikas taught the 'continous existence of a very subtle consciousness' and also the Mahasanghikas had a basic (mula) consciousness and believed that karma matures in the subconscious mind where thought has no definite object.

The hankering after a permanent personality hardens still further when another sect, the Samkrantikas, teach that the skandhas transmigrate from one life to another. Or when the Mahisasaka distinguish three kinds of skandhas, those which are instantaneous, those which endure during one life, and those which endure until the end of samsara. Concepts like these were designed to escape from the straitjacket of the Abhidharma, and try to establish the equivalent not only of an empirical but also of a true self...

[Conze goes on to describe various consciousnesses and concepts which were proposed in various schools in order to explain in an impersonal, dhamma-centered way the issues the Puggalavadins 'explained' by proposing a person]

All these theoretical construction are attempts to combine the doctrine of 'not-self' with the almost instinctive belief in a 'self', empirical or true. The climax of this combination of the uncombinable is reached in such conceptual monstrosities as the 'store-consciousness' (alaya-vijnana) of Asanga and a minority of Yogacarins, which performs all the functions of a 'self' in a theory which almost vociferously proclaims the non-existence of such a 'self'...

It provides a substratum for the activities of a 'continuity' over some length of time, and acts as the bearer of 'psychic heredity'. In that it accounts for the cohesion between the causally interrelated moments of one 'continuity', it gives rise to the illusory notion of an 'individual' or 'person'. It also acts as a receptacle for all the seeds which will bring fruit at a future period...
I bolded the last part of this melange of excerpts because it seems like a nice summary of the reasoning behind the development of depersonalized, seemingly permanent dhammas performing the functions of supposed "selves." Mainly, it seems these schools wanted to explain the mechanism of becoming with relation to individual kamma production in the context of depersonalized samsaric existence.

One concept I find particularly confusing/strange is consciousness continuity. I have a few impressions (based on my limited knowledge) which seem to contradict the idea of consciousness continuities as separated from other khandas. I have read repeatedly that consciousness arises from the contact between sense base and sense organ. Upon death, contact ceases and therefore consciousness, with respect to one particular life/being, should cease. Consciousness continuity seems to imply that consciousness can exist without a base.

At the same time, I can see the other side of this issue based on the relationship between the nidanas. Consciousness arises as a result of sankharas, which are themselves conditioned by ignorance. In this case, the base for the arising of consciousness would be the sankharas. After consciousness, comes name and form. However, Conze, in his discussion of paticcasamupada, proposes that "what is more certain is that also the scholastics did not regard the links as merely consecutive, but as simultaneously present in one and the same experience." This seems to have some basis in the suttas.
Nalakalapiyo Sutta wrote:It is as if two sheaves of reeds were to stand leaning against one another. In the same way, from name-&-form as a requisite condition comes consciousness, from consciousness as a requisite condition comes name-&-form...
Additionally, these 'continuities' as proposed by various schools (according to Conze) have the quality associated with self-view of being 'constantly there.' That seems to imply that consciousness is not arising or falling, just persisting. Can something truly be constantly there whenever it must be caused by something else before it can arise?

So, here are the issues I would like to address in this topic.

1) Is Conze correct in his assertion that most schools, including the Theravada (he specifically mentions bhavanga as well as the cross-sectarian notion of luminous mind as interpreted to the point of 'pseudo-selfhood'), have developed pseudo-selves?
2) If so, to what extent has the Theravada engaged in this type of speculation? How has the Theravada (both its sutta-based and Abhidhammic forms) 'answered' the questions brought up [in this topic at least] by the Puggalavadins?
3) Is consciousness continuity possible? How?
4) If consciousness continuity and pseudo-self is impossible or wrong view, what replaces it (conceptually) if anything?
5) Is the development of 'pseudo-selfhood' the natural result of trying to explain the process of kamma fruition, one of the unanswerables mentioned in the suttas?
6) Anything else you guys would like to add. :D



As a side note, after reading the 'Doctrinal Disputes' chapter, I started thinking about similes for samsara/individual kammic input which could avoid pseudo-self view. Here is what I came up with, and I'd like to know what you guys think:

Samsara/conditioned existence is a really, really complex rubix cube (conventionally, of course). Within the rubix cube, there are smaller rubix cubes (representing the conventional web of causes and conditions, of which we are a part) which are connected to and inseparable from the entire matrix. Kamma operates within this rubix cube matrix, and is this model's equivalent of the person who manipulates a rubix cube. Whenever we act in ways that produce kammic results, the rubix cube (in this case, one of the smaller rubix cubes within the matrix) is manipulated. It's face is turned this way, or that way, giving the rubix cube a new face (kammic result). At the same time, the movement of this particular rubix cube affects the entire rubix cube matrix, since everything is linked together as cause and condition. So, the smaller rubix cube (which is really not isolated from the rest of the matrix ultimately, but only by ignorant perception) acquires a new appearance. Or the rubix cube's components are shifted into various spaces within the matrix, and a new seemingly discrete, microrubix cube is formed based on the ignorant making of wholes (becoming). There was never an actual, discrete, smaller rubix cube outside of perception of it's place/appearance before it is affected. Nibbana, in my view could be a couple of different things.



Regards,
Eric

Re: Sectarian "pseudo-selves"

Posted: Sun Jul 11, 2010 9:05 am
by retrofuturist
Greetings Eric,
EricJ wrote:1) Is Conze correct in his assertion that most schools, including the Theravada (he specifically mentions bhavanga as well as the cross-sectarian notion of luminous mind as interpreted to the point of 'pseudo-selfhood'), have developed pseudo-selves?
Well I agree with this assertion personally. The Buddha never taught this notion of bhavanga.
EricJ wrote:2) If so, to what extent has the Theravada engaged in this type of speculation? How has the Theravada (both its sutta-based and Abhidhammic forms) 'answered' the questions brought up [in this topic at least] by the Puggalavadins?
I think Theravada undertook speculation primarily for the purpose of explaining the mechanics behind kamma and transmigration... a concept the Buddha never gave a particularly detailed account of. As for "answering" the questions posed by the Puggalavadins, they do this in the Points Of Controversy. Both groups kind of "talk past each other", which is often the case when different people have different doctrinal bases.
EricJ wrote:3) Is consciousness continuity possible? How?
I don't think that thinking of "consciousness continuity" is profitable, lest we fall into Sati's error - see MN38. There is no need.
4) If consciousness continuity and pseudo-self is impossible or wrong view, what replaces it (conceptually) if anything?
Nothing. (well that would be my preference... is that what you're after?)
5) Is the development of 'pseudo-selfhood' the natural result of trying to explain the process of kamma fruition, one of the unanswerables mentioned in the suttas?
Yes. Explaining that which was never explained in the suttas somehow became more important than what was in the suttas themselves. In the process, key doctrines the Buddha taught repeatedly (i.e. anatta, dependent origination) were diminished in importance, and often misrepresented against later frameworks. Consider here Bhikkhu Bodhi's words, "I also believe that the Commentaries take unnecessary risks when they try to read back into the Suttas ideas deriving from tools of interpretation that appeared perhaps centuries after the Suttas were compiled. " (from A Critical Examination of ~Naa.naviira Thera's "A Note on Pa.ticcasamuppaada")
6) Anything else you guys would like to add. :D
Only to say that along similiar lines you might also like to read "Buddhist Sects In India" by Nalinaksha Dutt.

Metta,
Retro. :)

Re: Sectarian "pseudo-selves"

Posted: Sun Jul 11, 2010 11:58 am
by Lazy_eye
EricJ wrote: One concept I find particularly confusing/strange is consciousness continuity. I have a few impressions (based on my limited knowledge) which seem to contradict the idea of consciousness continuities as separated from other khandas. I have read repeatedly that consciousness arises from the contact between sense base and sense organ. Upon death, contact ceases and therefore consciousness, with respect to one particular life/being, should cease. Consciousness continuity seems to imply that consciousness can exist without a base.
Quick question --

What about the oft-repeated objection that the formless realms demonstrate that consciousness can arise without physical form? How do the senses operate in this case, since there are no (physical) organs?

Just wondering how this works...

Re: Sectarian "pseudo-selves"

Posted: Sun Jul 11, 2010 12:04 pm
by retrofuturist
Greetings Lazy Eye,

On that question, I'd recommend reading the first several posts in this topic...

On External world. Some interesting quotes
http://www.dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=4936" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Metta,
Retro. :)

Re: Sectarian "pseudo-selves"

Posted: Sun Jul 11, 2010 12:09 pm
by jcsuperstar
here is an interesting article about the Puggalavadins

http://www.iep.utm.edu/pudgalav/

admittedly i have always found the Puggalavadin argument a bit convincing. it's also interesting how some of their ideas have manifested in modern Thai Buddhism. I've even seen ajahn Thanissaro compared to them. it is also interesting that they were pretty much the largest school of Buddhism in India, maybe we are the unorthodox, and just by luck of history made it through the years. :juggling:

Re: Sectarian "pseudo-selves"

Posted: Sun Jul 11, 2010 4:43 pm
by EricJ
Lazy_eye wrote:What about the oft-repeated objection that the formless realms demonstrate that consciousness can arise without physical form? How do the senses operate in this case, since there are no (physical) organs?

Just wondering how this works...
Well, I don't know much about the characteristics of the formless realms, but it seems that beings in the formless realms have functioning "mind organs" (although these organs are are not based in physical matter and processes), which could act as the base of consciousness.

Re: Sectarian "pseudo-selves"

Posted: Sun Jul 11, 2010 4:49 pm
by EricJ
jcsuperstar wrote:here is an interesting article about the Puggalavadins

http://www.iep.utm.edu/pudgalav/

admittedly i have always found the Puggalavadin argument a bit convincing. it's also interesting how some of their ideas have manifested in modern Thai Buddhism. I've even seen ajahn Thanissaro compared to them. it is also interesting that they were pretty much the largest school of Buddhism in India, maybe we are the unorthodox, and just by luck of history made it through the years. :juggling:
Here's what Conze has to say...
Buddhist Thought in India, Part II, Chapter 2.1 wrote:All these arguments have the advantage of being easily understood. The Personalists seem to just reiterate the commonplace conceptions to which the ordinary wordling has become habituated. Prolonged meditation on the Dharma would, so the majority of the Buddhists believed, easily dispel their objections which would seem quite baseless on a higher level of philosophical profudnity and spiritual maturity. In that the reasoning of the Personalists makes no appreciable contribution to salvation, or to detachment from the world and its ways, we can appreciate why it was none too well received.

Re: Sectarian "pseudo-selves"

Posted: Sun Jul 11, 2010 5:30 pm
by Kenshou
I feel like some of the scrambling around for something to classify a pseudo-self, in antiquity as in the present, is due to kind of missing the point and taking the tool of not-self out where it doesn't belong. I've never understood the teaching of the five aggregates to be necessarily talking about anything more than experience, and therefore leaving the workings of the overall process somewhat undefined. The point being that there is nothing within our experience which is constant, and so for the sake of the path, nothing that should be clung to as a self or of a self. However, as far as we know there could be something outside of our experience yet connected somehow to the process of the arising of beings, who the hell knows? But then, practice will reveal that there isn't any such mysterious thing within our experience, so from the practical Buddhist standpoint, it doesn't matter.

I'm not making any particular assertion with that line of thought, but I think anatta is sometimes drug outside of it's intended bounds. There are lots of factors in the world, we don't completely understand what the heck's going on with all that, and the dhamma isn't really trying to explain it to us.

Re: Sectarian "pseudo-selves"

Posted: Sun Jul 11, 2010 6:52 pm
by mikenz66
Hi Eric,

This in an interesting issue that unfortunately is difficult for most of us to discuss due to lack of knowledge of the various abhidhammas/abhidharmas and commentaries of the early schools. It would be interesting to know the answers to questions such as the following (rather than discussion of members' opinions on the correctness or not of the views).

Were most other schools as explicit as the Theravada commentaries about the non-existence of any self anywhere?
"For there is suffering, but none who suffers;
Doing exists although there is no doer;
Extinction is but no extinguished person;
Although there is a path, there is no goer."

Visuddhimagga, XVI, 90.
Was there a lot of sympathy for the point of view that is expressed by Kenshou above and by some modern Theravada teachers (often those who dislike the Commentaries, such as Ven Thanissaro) that the Buddha only said that there was no self in the khandas, and so perhaps there is some sort of self elsewhere?

As I said, it's hard to know without being a scholar of early Buddhism.

Mike

Re: Sectarian "pseudo-selves"

Posted: Sun Jul 11, 2010 7:20 pm
by Kenshou
Was there a lot of sympathy for the point of view that is expressed by Kenshou above and by some modern Theravada teachers (often those who dislike the Commentaries, such as Ven Thanissaro) that the Buddha only said that there was no self in the khandas, and so perhaps there is some sort of self elsewhere?
Well to clarify, I wasn't trying to say that. Though I think that anatta does not rule out the possibility of there being outside processes that we are not privy to which have an influence upon the larger supposed structure of birth and death, this supposed influence would be not-self just like everything else. Self designations are all artificial when you get down to it anyway. This is a fairly minor point in this discussion though, so I guess I will stop here.

Re: Sectarian "pseudo-selves"

Posted: Sun Jul 11, 2010 7:28 pm
by mikenz66
Hi Kenshou,
Kenshou wrote:
Was there a lot of sympathy for the point of view that is expressed by Kenshou above and by some modern Theravada teachers (often those who dislike the Commentaries, such as Ven Thanissaro) that the Buddha only said that there was no self in the khandas, and so perhaps there is some sort of self elsewhere?
Well to clarify, I wasn't trying to say that. Though I think that anatta does not rule out the possibility of there being outside processes that we are not privy to which have an influence upon the larger supposed structure of birth and death, this supposed influence would be not-self just like everything else. Self designations are all artificial when you get down to it anyway. This is a fairly minor point in this discussion though, so I guess I will stop here.
Thanks for the clarification. As I said, I don't think it's particularly interesting if this thread turns into a discussion of "which interpretation is correct", I was just trying to point out that there are these variety of interpretations and it would be interesting to know more about how the various early schools expressed them.

Mike

Re: Sectarian "pseudo-selves"

Posted: Sun Jul 11, 2010 7:32 pm
by mikenz66
Hi Eric,
EricJ wrote: 1) Is Conze correct in his assertion that most schools, including the Theravada (he specifically mentions bhavanga as well as the cross-sectarian notion of luminous mind as interpreted to the point of 'pseudo-selfhood'), have developed pseudo-selves?
Would you (or someone else) like to elaborate on how Conze sees bhavanga as "pseudo-selfhood"? I recall Ven Huifeng posted some material about how bhavanga was partly an answer to how the "cessation of perception and feeling" attainment could work, which other schools dealt with using "storehouse consciousness". I'll see if I can locate that, but unfortunately it may have been an E-Sangha thread.

Mike

Re: Sectarian "pseudo-selves"

Posted: Sun Jul 11, 2010 10:47 pm
by retrofuturist
Greetings Mike,
mikenz66 wrote:...Ven Thanissaro) that the Buddha only said that there was no self in the khandas, and so perhaps there is some sort of self elsewhere?
Where did venerable Thanissaro make such a claim?

Thanks.

Metta,
Retro. :)

Re: Sectarian "pseudo-selves"

Posted: Mon Jul 12, 2010 12:10 am
by mikenz66
Hi Retro,
retrofuturist wrote:
mikenz66 wrote:...Ven Thanissaro) that the Buddha only said that there was no self in the khandas, and so perhaps there is some sort of self elsewhere?
Where did venerable Thanissaro make such a claim?
Sorry, poor choice of words. What I should have said would be more along the lines:
"... the Buddha only said that there was no self in the khandas, but perhaps there is some sort of thingie elsewhere that he didn't talk about".

Ven Thanissaro clearly states that his position is different from that expressed by many others:
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/auth ... tself.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Books on Buddhism often state that the Buddha's most basic metaphysical tenet is that there is no soul or self. However, a survey of the discourses in the Pali canon — the earliest extant record of the Buddha's teachings — suggests that the Buddha taught the anatta or not-self doctrine, not as a metaphysical assertion, but as a strategy for gaining release from suffering: If one uses the concept of not-self to dis-identify oneself from all phenomena, one goes beyond the reach of all suffering & stress. As for what lies beyond suffering & stress, the Canon states that although it may be experienced, it lies beyond the range of description, and thus such descriptions as "self" or "not-self" would not apply.
In any case, it was not my intention to argue for or against any particular position. The intention was simply to provide a possible of example of how how some sort of "pseudo-self beyond the khandas", might be expressed in early Buddhism, which is the point of this thread, I think.

Mike

Re: Sectarian "pseudo-selves"

Posted: Mon Jul 12, 2010 12:15 am
by retrofuturist
Greetings Mike,
mikenz66 wrote:The intention was simply to provide a possible of example of how how some sort of "pseudo-self beyond the khandas", might be expressed in early Buddhism, which is the point of this thread, I think.
That's fine. I just didn't see any "pseudo-self" in Thanissaro Bhikkhu's teachings comments on the Dhamma, so was interested in clarifying what you may have seen in this space. Mind you, I've focused more on his writings on anatta than his writing on nibbana... so am speaking primarily in relation to the anatta material.

FWIW, I don't see any "pseudo-self" in the suttas either.

Metta,
Retro. :)