Some Remarks on Conceptualization and Transcendent
Experience
Thusness commented: "It is a good article... ...In the article
there is no obsession or singling out clarity as independent and
existing by itself. "Being" here is understood within/from the
context of anatta, process, verb, no locus and without agent. His
term of "being" is not to single out from the ever dynamics of
appearance but rather understood from the standpoint of non-action.
Would be better if there is integration of total exertion
(dependent origination) into it; makes the article more
complete."
http://www.evertype.com/misc/vitakka.html
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Some remarks on
conceptualization and transcendent experience Home
This paper, written originally in 1988, was an excursion
into theology -- or perhaps “noetology”. It was an attempt at
commentary proper, rather than at disinterested
analysis.
It is a basic tenet of Buddhism that suffering arises from false
notions of self. Individuals perceive themselves as separate
entities, autonomous yet dependent on their world, experiencing
change and continuity. The uniqueness of each moment of existence
is distorted by the filter of a self which categorizes and
interprets those moments, judging them good or bad and fighting a
useless battle to keep the good and shun the bad. The nexus for the
introduction of false notions of self into experience is the point
at which experience is conceptualized. Enlightened consciousness
results when these false notions are no longer imposed upon the
perceptual process.
It should be noted that both E. M. Hare
[Sutta-nipāta 1944:134] and Hammalava Saddhatissa
[Sutta-nipāta 1985:107] have
mistranslated mantā asmi as ‘all the thoughts “I
am”’ and ‘all thought of “I am”’ respectively. A better reading
would
have mantā <mantar ‘thinker’
(< Sanskrit *mantṛ) and take the
deictic ’ti as setting off the
phrase mantā asmi as translated above.
(Cf. Neumann’s translation “Ich bin’s, der
denkt”, ‘I am the one who thinks’.
[Sutta-nipāta 1911:299]) The Commentary to
the Sutta-nipāta, however, explains this phrase
by mantāya:
Here the dative mantāya would also prove
difficult for Hare and Saddhatissa’s readings, where we should
expect *manā asmi (formanāya
asmi) ‘of the thought “I am”, since we
have mano ‘thought’ opposed
to mantā ‘wisdom’, as I think the Commentary has
it, or even manta (<
Sanskrit mantra) ‘charm, doctrine, Holy
Scripture’. [Cf. Childers 1875:238-39, and Rhys Davids
& Stede 1979:520-22] In any case, I find the present suggested
reading more in keeping with the spirit and the sense of the intent
of the text, and with the goals of the tradition
generally.[2] It is the conceptual attachment of
agent to action (yaṁ maññati taṁ mantar), resulting from
the initial separation of agent from action, which the Buddha
attacks in the Kālakārāma-sutta, not whether or not
there exists a thinker at all.
Yet there is no suggestion that a universal (albeit Vedāntist)
ontological interpretation of aham asmi ‘I am’
would be rejected, though such a rejection could be inferred, I
think, in the readings of Hare and Saddhatissa. J. G. Jennings has
remarked that “[t]he an-attadoctrine so strongly
emphasized by [Gotama] declares the transience of individuality,
yet insists upon an ultimate or fundamental unity”. [1974:571]
While the Pāli commentarial tradition would doubtless reject a
Vedāntist claim of an essential unity to Reality, I see no reason
to think that a radically non-attached, Liberated notion of “I am”
is instrinsically inconsistent with Buddhist teachings. Pure being
is neither conceived nor attached, It just Is, and if there is for
“me” only “being”, then, it seems, “I am”.[3] The conceptual attachment of
agent to action results from an initial
(erroneous) separation of
agent from action.
He is ‘disarmed’ (visenibhūta) with respect to all
views based on what has been seen, heard, or conceived; he is
liberated, has laid down his burden (pannabhāro, having,
perhaps, “enlightened” his load!), and is without desire. There is
no self to be concerned for.
Bhikkhu Ñāṇananda’s translation of this passage proves
problematic. [1974:9-11] For the sake of brevity and simplicity, I
will make a neutral reconstruction of this passage using just the
verb karoti ‘to do’ as an example, since it is
first the construction which is in question. “Iti kho
bhikkhave katvā kātabbaṁ kataṁ na maññati akataṁ na maññati
kātabbaṁ na maññati kattaraṁ na maññati.”Ñāṇananda would
translate this so: “A Tathāgata does not conceive of a thing to be
done as apart from doing; he does not conceive of ‘an undone’; he
does not conceive of a ‘thing-worth-doing’, he does not conceive
about a doer.” This “thing to be done apart from doing” is offered
by Ñāṇananda as an alternative to the sense given in Buddhaghosa’s
Commentary to the Aṅguttara-nikāya, which, according
to Ñāṇananda, takes the words
(Buddhaghosa’s original reads
Ñāṇananda prefers to treat the formally
ambiguous daṭṭhā/diṭṭhā as ablative of the past
participle (so katā from kata)
“giving the sense: ‘as apart from [doing]’; and, ‘[kātabbaṁ
kataṁ]’ taken together, would mean ‘a [do-able] thing’.” He
suggests that the absolutive forms sutvā, mutvā,
and viññātvā are “probably a re-correction
following the commentarial explanation”, and that the
ablatives suttā, mutā,
and viññātā evince the most correct reading.
[Ñāṇananda 1974:10 n.1] I am not certain that his revision is
necessary. F. L. Woodward’s translation seems to follow Buddhaghosa
with respect to the verbs suṇāti, maññati,
and vijānāti: “[Doing] what is to be [done], he
has no conceit of what has been [done] or not [done] or is to be
[done], he has no conceit of the [doer]”; but he
readsdaṭṭhā as the nomen
agentis: “[A] Tathāgata is a seer of what is seen, but he
has no conceit of what is seen”. [1933:27] Following Buddhaghosa, I
would suggest that “Tathāgato katvā kātabbaṁ kataṁ na
maññati” etc. should read ‘Having done what is to be
done, the Tathāgata does not conceive of what is
done; he does not conceive of the undone; he does not conceive of
that which must yet be done; he does not conceive of a doer’.
‘Conceive’ (maññati) here means ‘to make a concept of’.
Important too is the translation here
of kātabbaṁ. There is really no reason to
suggest that Buddhaghosa would have the gerundive be taken in an
obligatory sense ‘should be done’, or
the valued (read judged!) sense of
‘a thing-worth-doing’, as Ñāṇananda has taken it. [1974:10-11, 10
n.1] The context does not require that the form be understood as
a participium necessitatis, but only as a future
passive participle. According to Manfred Mayrhofer, the meaning of
the future passive participle “ist die des ‘in Zukunft getan werden
müssenden’”, ‘is that of “that which must yet be done”’.
[1951:174] Ñāṇananda’s obligatory “should” is unnecessary, for the
deed which “is to be done” comes about through the exigencies of
causality. That the Tathāgata is beyond causality is not taken into
consideration by the forms of Pāli grammar, but he is nonetheless
certainly free from obligation and evaluation. The deeds of most
individuals are causally effected, and the point of the text is
that once a deed is done, the Tathāgata is no longer concerned with
it, or with the deed undone, or the deed yet to do, or the doer. He
is concerned only with the doing, and only in the moment in which
it is done. It is fairly easy to see that Ñāṇananda’s “thing to be
done as apart from doing” is an attempt at just such an
understanding, though I think the textual revision of absolutive to
ablative is unnecessary.
[1] I prefer here the reading
of papañca as ‘obstruction’ or ‘hinderance’ to
the commonly met with ‘obsession’. Here I follow Rhys Davies’
suggestion that papañca is at least semantically
related to *papadya ‘what is in front of the feet’,
where he compares Latinimpedimentum (though
Sanskrit prapadya should give
Pāli papajja). [Rhys Davies 1979:412] An obsession is
an obstruction, but not all obstructions are
obsessions. Cf. also above, in the passage taken
from the Madhupiṇḍika-sutta,
where papañceti is taken in its sense as derived
from Sanskrit prapañcayati ‘to describe at
length’,
from prapañca ‘diversity’. Back
to text.
Aṅguttara-nikāya.
1888. Aṅguttara-nikāya. Vol. 2. Edited by
Richard Morris. London: Henry Frowde for the Pali Text Society. 6
vols. (1885-1910).