Prolegomena to an Inquiry into Buddhist Imagination

Avinash Jha

Imagination in Philosophical Discourse

In a fundamental sense, imagination connotes a removal from reality. In ordinary language, imagination is distinguished from perception, belief, action by the criterion that the object of imagination is non-existent. We imagine something which is not present or which is not the case. It is for this reason that artistic creativity is closely linked to imagination. We create something new in artistic practice rather than perceive something which is present. What is philosophically interesting is that even when we perceive or reason about something which is present, a removal from reality is required as a first step. A certain distancing from an object is a prerequisitefor grasping that object. Artistic activity is no different. A removalfrom reality is effected in order to return one to a transformed reality. The term ‘kalpana’ is used extensively in the ordinary meaning of imagination while the same term as well as ‘vikalpa’ is used interchangeably in philosophical literature for the broader philosophical concept of imagination.

Philosophical usage of ‘imagination’ beyond mere imagery, images, or supposition can be found in western philosophy as well. The role of imagination in perception is considered crucial by Hume and Kant. Boththese philosophers conceive of imagination as a connecting or uniting power which operates in two crucial ways. First, it connects two different objects of the same kind, and secondly, it connects two different perceptions of the same individual object. Kant described imagination as a ‘hidden art in the depths of the human soul, whose true operations we can divine from nature and lay unveiled before our eyes only with difficulty’ (1997, A141–2/B180–1). [Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason]. The subsequent inquiries into imagination and perception (and action), however, remain segregated from each other in modern scholarship.

In this paper, we focus on the Buddhist understanding of everyday experience and role of imagination in it and not so much on art, or specific creative acts, except to make some speculative suggestions towards the end. There are several difficulties or challenges for suchan undertaking, apart from the usual interpretative challenges involved in working with Indian philosophical theories. ‘Vikalpa’ as athematic focus of enquiry has been absent both in the tradition and inmodern scholarship as well. It is taken for granted as implicit conceptual tool for making epistemically relevant distinctions, but rarely explored independently1. Secondly, Buddhist philosophy has gone through multiple divisions and several shifts in discourse over its life. Modern scholarship attends to various parts of this tradition inaccordance with the shifting discourses and emphases of philosophically current views of interest in the west, which is natural. Certain significant parts of the tradition, most notably Abhidharma, has begun to attract scholarly attention only recently. Usually the scholarship on these various parts of the tradition is separated from one another and deals with the local issues of interpretation. For example, the scholarship on the so-called ‘logicalschool’ of Buddhist philosophy has hardly any mention of Abhidharma developments. One is left in the dark as to the continuity and integrity of the philosophical tradition and the different phases of philosophical developments appear as various attempts at Buddhist apologetics. Partially as a result of this, various comparative exercises pick up one part of this tradition and juxtapose it with recent modern developments based on conceptual similarities while ignoring systemic differences.

There are new developments taking place in modern scholarship and someof them are helpful and encouraging for further enquiry. It may not beinappropriate to make a mention here of David Shulman’s new book2. Shulman seems to be concerned about a generative or productive imagination which creates something more than real and which pervades various activities and preoccupations of ordinary lives. This

1 Scherbatsky’s brief essay on ‘Kalpana found among his papers posthumously isone exception that I am aware of as far as modern scholarship is concerned.2 David Shulman, More than Real: A History of Imagination in South India, Harvard University Press, 2012.

generative aspect of imagination is best exemplified in literary works. He takes us on a wonderful tour of stories, literary works, dramas and poems with careful expert guidance and shows the work of this generative imagination in the characters and personas, in the poet’s self-reflective imagination and in how the audience participates in both. The book makes a historical claim of a philosophical revolution in south India in sixteenth century which catapults the traditional appreciation of generative powers of imagination in philosophies and literary works into a popular ontology. The concept of ‘bhavana’ which stands for imagination in this context is different from ‘vikalpa’ or ‘kalpana’.

Shulman’s work raises some methodological questions and claims which have been dealt with only parenthetically in the book. Some methodological statements occurring in the book seem less than obviousand would require a full discussion of historicism and significance ofphilosophical (or metaphysical) theories.

Our own approach is to strive for a cogent philosophical articulation of a possible Buddhist viewpoint on imagination and its role in understanding human experience as a whole. For this, we first need to tackle the problematic of imagination within the Buddhist tradition. We take the Buddhist philosophical tradition to have an implicit integrity which stems from the insights of the Buddha into human existence. But we cannot claim a special access to truth in the words of Buddha or in certain meditational experiences. Such an articulationas this has to be subjected to whatever is deemed to be a proper philosophical examination and tested against our ordinary experiences and against other philosophical and scientific theories, like one doeswith any other philosophical theory.

While not going into the debate on historicism here, there is this question about the legislative power of philosophies and theories. If we want to study Buddhism from the standpoint of future, from the viewpoint of what it can contribute to the future of humanity, and notonly from the standpoint of what has been its contribution to human culture and human history, then we can’t take Buddhism as a ready-madesystem from the past. Buddhism has to be able to develop ways of

comprehending the present and provide paths for the future. This requires its discovery and development as a comprehensive and rigorousphilosophy. In the western academia if there is one discipline which has resisted incursion of diversity and study of non-western viewpoints it is philosophy. Not only is non-western philosophy largely absent from its syllabi, curricula, and research programs, it is also the discipline with least representation of women and non-whites. In other words, philosophy in the west still remains as euro-centric as ever.

Something of a Paradox

There is a very rich legacy of Buddhist art especially in synchronic arts like sculpture and painting. We know of Bamiyan Buddhas and of Gandhara art which flourished for centuries. There are so many other examples including Tibetan art. However the transmission of Buddhist thought that we inherit is so acetic in character that it is difficultto imagine how art could possibly have formed a part of this tradition. The question arises whether Buddhist thought could possiblyhave space for such practices of imagination as arts or whether the flourishing of art was despite the intrinsic non-artistic character ofBuddhist thought. We have something of a paradox on our hands.

There is a traditional Buddhist story about a magician who meets his end through his own doing, or undoing. Before a crowd of curious onlookers he draws attention to scattered remains of a dead animal lying around in the form of bones and claims that he can bring them back together to the form of the animal. He goes ahead with his trick and various bones of the dead animal are gathered together in a momentto reveal the skeleton of a lion. Having impressed the crowd, he makesthe further move of putting flesh on the skeleton and succeeds. Now heclaims that he can put life back into the lion. People around him are scared and tell him to back off. He is drunk on his powers and goes ahead while people flee. The lion does indeed come alive and devours the magician.

This is a story about imagination – its powers and its danger. Imagination is an inherently dynamic force which weaves a world aroundus with words, concepts, images. There is a danger of getting lost here, of getting engulfed by the very world that we have helped create. In the earliest phase of Buddhism, in Buddha’s oral discoursesas recorded by later generations, this power is understood as ‘prapanch’. Prapanch or papanch (in Pali) points to proliferation or spread of concepts drawing from ‘panch’ which signifies 5 (or 10) owingto its association with the stretched palm(s) with its five fingers spread out. Papanch is used widely in the language with meanings of ‘spreading out’, expansion, diffuseness and manifoldness. It is used metaphorically also in the sense of ‘illusion’ and metaphysically in the sense of the manifest world. In the context of Buddhist Sutras, itcharacterizes the tendency toward proliferation in the realm of concepts. When we say ‘concept’ here, it includes any possible form ofmeaning or ‘expression’, all of which are constructs of imagination.

How can a system of thought which privileges the dynamic character of imagination in its accounts of the arising of meaningful world ends upbeing so ‘unimaginative’ as to lack an account of the significance of art. One obvious clue to this lies in the very story that we have recounted above. Imagination sets up traps that we need to avoid and get out of. It leads us on by proliferating our desires for objects which do not exist in a real sense and therefore remain forever unattainable. There is an apparent culprit within Buddhist thought which is known as the doctrine of ‘two truths’. It states that there are two kind of truths - Parmarthic satya and Samvritti satya, which is normally translated as ultimate truth and conventional truth. Sammuti sach is false in the ultimate sense. It is relative, conditional truth. This is precisely the self-perpetuating realm of imagination and action, which is the world or samsara. Truth about samsara is pammathic sach. First of such truths is ‘dukkha’, known as the first noble truth.

The idea is that what is revealed to us in perceptions and reasoning is consensual or relative truth whereas the ultimate truth is revealedonly through higher order insights. When this doctrine takes an ontological turn, it ends up in the conception of an ultimate reality

and another fictional reality laid on top of it. This can be further interpreted as the distinction between appearance and reality. So the imaginative constructs become appearances which are false. What remains unexplained in this line of interpretation is that we are talking about ‘two truths’ and not truth and falsehood. Another problem with such interpretation is the fact that transmission of ultimate truth is also by way of words, concepts and images, all constructs of imagination and therefore, forms of consensual truth. Moreover, Buddhism is committed to a non-dual conception of reality and the duality emerges as essential component of the epistemic process. But the duality is not just epistemic either. This will become more apparent when we look at the conception of Avidya or primal ignorance below. Avidya is the condition for origin of the ‘image’ and ‘samsara’. The doctrine of ‘two truths’ has undergone several reformulations in the history of Buddhist thought.

This doctrine emerged as part of the wave of systematization of the Buddhist thought which is known as Abhidharma or Abhidhamma. Abhidhamma is the third basket of the Tripitak. First two baskets are the Sutta Pitaka (oral discourses of the Buddha as recorded later and collected and adopted as authoritative in a series of large assembliesof monks) and the Vinay Pitaka, which is about the codes of life whichapply to monks. Abhidhamma literature is a large corpus. Some sources mention the existence of 18 schools of Abhidhamma. What we have the documentation for are two bodies of literature or two lines of transmission. One body of literature which is in Pali went south and east wards to Sri Lanka, Burma and other countries and came to be known as the Theravada Abhidhamma. Another body of literature which isin Sanskrit flourished towards north and north west. At the beginningof Christian era, Kashmir was a major centre for scholarship for what came to be known as Sarvastivada Abhidharma and this particular schoolof thought was known as Vaibhasika. This later subdivided into four major schools of thought. But the Pali and Sanskrit traditions are notexclusive traditions. They existed in between these geographical regions in the rest of Indian peninsula up to the time of Nalanda and Vikramshila, but disappeared after 12th century AD without leaving any textual traces of Buddhist philosophical discourse except in the textsof opposing schools. Apart from the Sutta Pitaka and the Vinay Pitak,

these two lines of development also share several early Pali Abhidhamma texts as springboards for further diverse developments.

Abhidhamma: Bhanga, Bhavanga and Vibhanga (Thoughts without a Thinker)

Abhidhamma sought to develop a systematic account of human experience and existence taking its cue from Buddha’s discourses. What is ‘impermanence’ in Buddha’s discourses is analysed as the ‘momentary’ nature of existence. This is known as the doctrine of ‘ksanbhanga’ or just ‘bhanga’. Each moment arises and it then disappears. World is created and destroyed in every moment with no substantial continuity. This break between the moments is known as the ‘bhanga’. Before we canaddress bhanga, we need to address the conception of moment. Mental phenomena in Indian schools of philosophy including Buddhism is analysed in terms of a succession of experiential moments. This momentis neither an ‘instant’ nor is it a clocked duration however small.

Mental phenomena cannot be instantaneous, because they have the character of following one after another. The idea of the instantaneous comes from the idea of a point on the continuous line and therefore implies infinite divisibility of time and leads to Zeno’s paradoxes of motion. Instants are points on a continuous line and therefore between any two instants, there would be infinite numberof other instants. In contrast, minimal duration of an experience, a cognition for example, must have temporal parts. Otherwise we cannot conceive of a succession of experiences. So the moment has to have duration. But a moment must have synchronicity as well. This is because all the contents of an experience, say a cognition, must be present at once to constitute an experience. We cognize something synchronously. We do not have to wait till the end of a duration to infer what we have experienced. This is similar to our understanding any utterance or sound. The utterance is synchronously available and is characterized by a succession. Moment therefore has to be understood as synchronous duration. This is derived from the nature of experience. The difference in Abhidhamma, and Buddhism, is that there is no substantial continuity between moments. A Nyaya analysis, for

instance, will have Atman as a substance which persists through a succession of experiential moments. Experiences are properties of this Atman. This usage of ‘moment’ is not foreign to certain usage in English language. Ponder the following usage: ‘my big moment has arrived’, ‘the Gramscian moment’, ‘a moment of history’. Such usage make rigorous sense if we think of ‘moment’ as synchronous duration.3

Abhidhamma presents an analysis of experience without the experiencer or thoughts without a thinker. This analysis is in terms of four parmarthic dhammas - citta, caitasik, roop and nirvana. Citta is the thought without a thinker. A succession of cittas, citta santati, is ahuman individual or any animate form. In formal terms, human individual is erupting and dissolving on a discontinuous temporal line. In its formal features, this is similar to the line of sounds which constitute meaningful speech in Vedic or post-Vedic grammatical thought. This discrete line of experience is called bhavanga in Abhidhamma. Abhidharma thinkers considered an analysis of experience in terms of the dharmas as the only ultimate account of “how things really are” (yathabhutam). Vibhanga is this process of analysis itself. Dharma or dhamma is the basic category of Abhidhammic thought everywhere. There are two kinds of dharma – parmartic dharmas and samvritti dharmas. Samvritti dharmas constitute our world of experience and through vibhanga we can discern the ultimate reality which we know in the form of parmarthic dharmas. An ontologisation of Buddhist thought takes place in the Abhidhamma as a result of which dharmas can be viewed as ultimate ‘things’ that exist. The focus of Abhidhamma theorizing is towards the parmarthic and was strongly embedded in monastic life and meditational practices which are geared towards enlightenment and nirvana.

Such an interpretation makes the distinction between parmarthic sach and samvrtti sach into a firm duality of opposition. It would seem that the two major schools of Buddhist thought that arose later were responding at least partly to this problematic. Madhyamaka, founded byNagarjuna from the Andhra region and Yogachar, founded by Asanga from the current day Peshawar are those two schools. These two are also the

3 This analysis of the concept of ‘moment’ as synchronous duration has been developed by Navjyoti Singh.

two major philosophical articulations of the Mahayana Buddhism, or theGreat Vehicle Buddhism, in this first half of the first millenium. With them arise new interpretations of the doctrine of ‘two truths’ and the concept of ‘vikalpa’ is developed and employed in significant ways. Vikalpa or Kalpana is the concept for imagination used in the entire philosophical tradition. Nagarjuna directly attacked the ‘thinghood’ of dhamma and propounded the doctrine of emptiness or void. He claimed that the distinction between the ultimate and the conventional truth is itself conventional. Asanga sought to balance the ‘thing’ and the ‘void’, with a doctrine of three-fold nature of phenomena. For our purposes of a philosophical exposition of imagination though, the key thinker is Dignaga, who makes his appearance around 500 AD.

Dignaga: Nirvikalpa, Vikalpa, Sankalpa (The Space of Imagination and Action)

The concept of Vikalpa or Kalpana is central to Dignaga’s formulation that distinguishes between two fundamental form of awareness – perceptual awareness and conceptual awareness. Perceptual awareness orNirvikalpa pratyaksa is defined as that awareness which is devoid of imagination – kalpanapodham. This is the awareness which is the sourceof ‘the new’ in experience. This is also the awareness which marks thecausal trigger for any awareness whatsoever. Dignaga does not directlyrefer to the doctrine of ‘two truths’ nor does he refer to the category of ‘dharma’. What he presents instead is the doctrine of two pramanas or sources of knowledge. He is an influential figure in Indian philosophy for his pramana theory and has left a mark on subsequent philosophical discourse of all schools of thought. In modern scholarship he is read mainly as a theorist of knowledge but weread him mainly as a theorist of experience. This will also enable us to see the continuity between the discourses of Theravada Abhidhamma and his own formulations and mark the differences between the two in philosophical terms. For example, he may seem to have abandoned the Abhidhamma discourse of ‘dharma’, but the object of perceptual awareness in his scheme is defined as ‘sva-lakshana’ (self-

characterised) which is the exact description of parmarthic dharmas inAbhidhamma.

We referred earlier to the Sarvastivad Abhidhamma which flourished in the north and northwest of India. Vaibhasika school of thought which flourished in Kashmir split into several schools which were contestingeach other. Our historical knowledge of these developments is quite fluid though at the current time. Dignaga belongs to this line of transmission though he migrated from Kancheepuram in South India to Nalanda and appears to have been part of a different school of Buddhism in his early life there. His early text ‘Alambanpariksha’ is very much in the Yogachar tradition. His magnum opus, Pramanasammuchaya though, is consciously written in a more universal manner avoiding metaphysical commitments specific to different schoolsso that thinkers from different persuasions could adopt it. This is the reason for hyphenated school identity of Dignaga as Sautrantika-Yogachar in modern scholarship. Moreover, Dignaga does not set out to chart the exact path of enlightenment, but rather to provide a generalexplanation of the sources of true knowledge. In fact, his discourse of paramana was so universal that thinkers from non-Buddhist schools were forced to respond to his theory and take it into account. By limiting the number of pramanas to just two, perception and inference,he also put Buddhism on a more secure philosophical footing. There wasno reason to rely on the authority of Buddha’s words as such. His philosophy also accords a powerful position to truth by means of reasoning by declaring anumana or inference as one of the two pramanas.

This is especially interesting because anumana works with imaginative constructs or vikalpa. While these imaginative constructs are ultimately fictions, we can move from one imaginative construct to another in a secure fashion by means of valid inference and this inference can lead us to successful action in the world. Therefore, the conventional realm is not a realm of falsehood. It is populated not only by truths of reason, but also the nirvikalpa pratyaksa or perceptual awareness devoid of imagination. We can in fact see the conventional realm as the realm of construction and reconstruction of truth.

What has been found problematic in his thought down the ages and rightup to current scholarship is the sharp distinction between the perceptual and the conceptual awareness. It is because of this in factthat Dignaga’s thought is not foundationalist. Perception or pratyaksacould have served as a ‘foundation’ of knowledge in the traditional sense, it there could be a necessary connection between what is perceived and what is constructed, whether logical or ontological. Butthere is no such connection. Knowledge which is in the realm of conceptual constructions can never seek an epistemological justification on the basis of the knowledge that is given in experience, that is, in nirvikalpa perception. Nor can it seek ontological justification on the basis of an object given in experience. The identity of being and knowing no longer holds. There is apparently an unbridgeable gap between the thought-less experience and thought.

It is this gap which is the space of imagination and action. In the last chapter of this work, Dignaga offers the theory of apoha which seeks to explain the effective use of concepts or language without conceding that concepts or words correspond to something in reality. In other words, it is a theory of kalpana. In common understanding as well as in realist theories like Nyaya and Vaisesika, words or concepts signify something that is common among various instances. For example,the word ‘red’ denotes something that is common among various instances of things that are coloured red. Dignaga’s claim is that what the word ‘red’ does is to distinguish something from everything else that is not red. At the root of what seems like the unifying powers of words where one single word brings together a set of possibly infinite instances together into a jati or universal lies the process of differentiation. Anyapoha, or distinguishing from the other,is the engine which drives conceptualization and verbalization. This is the process of kalpana and the products of such processes are imaginative constructs. We imbue these constructs with a substantial reality which they do not possess. But this is not something that we do out of choice. This is a kind of manufacturing defect that we are born with. In fact, being born is synonymous with having this manufacturing defect. This is the concept of Avidya or primal

ignorance in Buddhism. But for this ignorance, or avidya, there would not be any birth, suffering, death.

Removal from reality which is the mark of imagination, is the very condition of the existence of conscious life. The doctrine of Avidya is articulated by Buddha at the very beginning of Buddhism. In the light of later philosophical developments we can interpret avidya in terms of the origin of imagination. The realm of conscious life or samsara, is the conventional realm, which is the space of imagination and action. This is also the space of construction and reconstruction of truth and therefore the space of philosophical endeavors.

Avidya and the Origin of Kalpana

If one types ‘bhava cakra’ (wheel of becoming), or Avidya, on google image, thousands of colourful artistic representations in a circular form will appear where myth, philosophy, history, and nirvana merge together and avidya figures at the top of the circle. In the most general explanations of the arising and ceasing of the phenomenal world in Buddhism, avidya figures as the first link in the chain of causation. The classic statement of this is the Paticca-samuppada-vibhanga Sutta: Analysis of Dependent Co-arising from Samyutta Nikaya (http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn12/sn12.002.than.html, for original Pali version see http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sltp/SN_II_utf8.html#pts.002 )and it goes like this:

Dwelling at Savatthi... "Monks, I will describe & analyze dependent co-arising for you.

"And what is dependent co-arising? From ignorance [Avijjya=Avidya] as a requisite condition come fabrications saṅkhara=samskara]. From fabrications as a requisite condition comes consciousness [viññaṇa]. From consciousness as a requisite condition comes name-&-form [namarūpa]. From name-&-form as a requisite condition come the six sense media. From the six sense media as a requisite condition comes contact [phasso=sparsa]. From contact as a requisite condition comes feeling [vedana]. From feeling as a requisite condition comes craving [taṇha]. From craving as a requisite condition comes clinging/sustenance [upadana]. From clinging/sustenance as a requisite condition comes becoming [bhava]. From becoming as a requisite condition comes birth [jati].

From birth as a requisite condition, then aging & death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair come into play. Such is the origination of this entire mass of stress & suffering.

There are tens of such formulae in Sutta Pitaka and the elements of analyses often overlap. For example, one finds another statement in the Samyutta Nikaya itself which goes like this:

Because of eye and material objects, brethren, arises visual consciousness; the meeting of the three is sensory impingement, because of sensory impingement arises feeling; because of feeling, craving; because of craving, grasping; because of grasping, becoming; because of becoming, birth; and because of birth, decay and death, grief, lamentation, suffering and despair arise. This is the arising of the world.

There is yet another formulae from Madhupindika Sutta where “because of feeling, craving” is expanded to elucidate this process further, that goes like this:

Visual conciousness (cakkhuvinnanam), brethren, arises because of eye and material shapes; the meeting of the three is sensory impingement (phasso); because of sensory impingement arises feeling (vedana); what one feels, one perceives; what one perceives, one reasons about; what one reasons about, one turns into papanch; what one turns into papanch, due to that ‘papancha-sanna-sankha’ assail him in regard to material shapes cognizable by the eye, belonging to the past, the future and the present. (repeated for six sense organs including manas)

The wheel of becoming is not meant to convey that the process has terminals in time, that the process starts with avidya and terminates with suffering. Nor does the ‘cycle’ here imply a return in time to where we started. This style of explanation only serves to point out the recursive character of causal processes. The processes which are described here exist from beginningless time and are oriented towards nirvana. The time of Buddhism is certainly not cyclic time, nor is thetime of other Indian philosophies. Our interest right now is not in interpreting the wheel of becoming.

What we are interested in here is building another such wheel or cyclewhich elucidates the process of imagination and action based on Dignaga’s formulations. In the process, we also hope to elucidate as to how an epistemic category like avidya can function as a causal link

in the ontological sense. The first part of this process is Nirvikalpa-Avidya-Kalpana.

Dignaga offers the concept of ‘nirvikalpa pratyaksa’, which is understood as cognition without any conceptuality. Sometimes nirvikalpa pratyaksa is equated with sensation.4 This interpretation has to be challenged since, first of all, unlike sensation, nirvikalpais not available to mind for interpretation. It is impossible to conceptually appropriate it for reflection. Secondly, for Dignaga, nirvikalpa is a source of true knowledge and therefore a primary locusof truth. The same cannot be said about sensation.

Nirvikalpa can be understood as the true knowledge given in experience, if we follow Dignaga’s formulations. According to this formulation, our empirical experience is seen as always to be constituted by two elements – nirvikalpa and vikalpa. Nirvikalpa is that element of our experience which we take for granted. It is the unexamined or unexaminable part of any experience. Because it is the ground from which we examine or can examine any part of our experience. It also implies that any experience is suffused with a sense of its own truth. It accounts for our sense of reality in ordinary experience. Sva-lakshana, which is the object of nirvikalpa, is reality entering us. But it is momentary. It is the starting point of any experience. Our empirical experience is something that follows it – anu-bhava. Nirvikalpa is the moment of ‘bhava’ or actual concreteparticular happening which is followed by experience and ultimately action. But we seek to return to this experience to understand it or to grasp it or simply to enjoy it.

When we talk about ‘reality entering us’, we are speaking of an impacton the sense organ, for example, light falling on our eyes. Impact is caused by a force. If we limit our explanation by the principle of causal closure of matter, which is one of the foundational principles of modern science, this force will lead to a chain of material happenings in the brain and so on. This makes the experience which follows light falling on our eyes an epi-phenomenon and it becomes

4 Richard Hayes in his influential work Dignaga on Interpretation of Signs adopts this interpretation.

impossible to understand how such an impact on our sense organ can lead to a cognitive experience. In other words, how this impact can become information? For this impact to lead to information the force has to be negated, the causal force of the impact has to be suppressed. If there is an explosion near our ears, we do not understand the sound. The impact is so overwhelming that we do not understand anything from this sound. We are only thrown back by the impact. To understand any sound, to be able to give a meaning to any sound, we have to be able to bracket out its physical impact.

Negation or suppression of the causality of the impact leads to the formation of an ‘image’ in the mind. A separation of an ‘image’ from its own causal origin takes place, but at the same time a connection of this image to its causal origin is retained. This image therefore seems to correspond to a real external object.

Seen in terms of Abhidhamma dhammology, the moment of nirvikalpa couldbe the moment when citta dhamma appropriates the roop dhamma. Object of nirvikalpa is sva-lakshan according to Dignaga which is also a description of dhamma in Abhidhamma. There is a grahya-grahi bhava between the citta dhamma and roop dhamma. ‘Bhava’ here can be understood as a form which comes from what is considered to be ‘the universal verb’ in Buddhist thought. It is the most generalized verb which includes all other verbs in itself. In other words, this is the root form of ‘happening’ according to Buddhism. In the following moments an image-with-an-object is created. As a part of this process memory enters the citta. Memory is caitasika – another one of the parmarthic dhammas. Here also there is grahya-grahi bhava between caitasika and citta. Citta is momentary and succeeds one after anotherwith bhanga in between. Other dhammas keep getting embedded in citta in succeeding moments and in this way structures of experience can be constructed and elucidated. Completion of this process is the ordinaryperception – clear perception. Abhidhamma gives a 17 moments analysis of clear perception.

As a matter of fact, it is difficult to see what exactly Dignaga’s nirvikalpa corresponds to in the 17 moment schema. There is a different division of the process of experience here from the

standpoint of worldly truth or pramana. Abhidhamma is operating from the standpoint of parmarthic sach. But it may be possible to use the formal insights of Abhidhamma in elucidating the process of perception, imagination and action from the standpoint of pramana. Oneof the problems in this regard is to understand the 7 moments of action within the process of perception.

What we have done here instead is to begin building an argument from avidya in terms of suppression of causality leading to imagination. Avidya in Buddhism is an interesting concept because what in effect isbeing said is that the origin of knowledge (conceptual, worldly knowledge) lies in ignorance. The revealing function of knowledge is possible because of a previous concealing function. Our ordinary perceptions become possible because perception is mute as regard its own causal antecedents. Absence of causality in the data of perceptionlead Hume to attack the notion of causality in his famous argument. But we are making an exactly opposite point.5 Perception itself is not possible without the absence of causality. Absence of the awareness ofcausal antecendents of our experiences leads to the formation of imageand to ascribing a power of representation of reality to this image. In this way we can establish the connection of Avidya with the origin of imagination. A corollary of this could be that there is always a dark portion in knowledge, that is, in worldly knowledge, which is responsible for making that knowledge possible. Another way of understanding this is that any body of knowledge is bound to have unstated commitments submerged within it which constitute its ground.

Apoha: Meaning by Negation

In the previous section we have outlined how the separation of an image from a supposed object takes place. This image can be called thegrasped object. This separation happens in a context which is already thickly populated by other images. In other words the appearance of the new experience happens in an already existing meaningful world. This experience needs to be assimilated into this meaningful world. 5 This argument is inspired by Hans Jonas essay ‘Perception and Causality’ re-published in his “Phenomenon of Life: Toward a Philosophical Biology”.

The first separation of an image has to be accompanied by an integration of this newly forming image into a pre-existing sea of images which exist in complex relationships among themselves.

This happens by the constitution of another object which is termed thedetermined object. This is nothing but the process of coneptualisation. The procedure of formation of this determined objectcan be explained by Apoha theory. Usually this theory is treated as a theory of universals or as a theory which substitutes for a theory of universals. According to this theory, concepts and words do not designate something common that exists among various instances of the meaning of that concept. Therefore, ‘cow’ does not refer to some object ‘cow’ but is formed by the exclusion of all non-cow. Meanings are determined by exclusion of other meanings.

Dignaga’s thought was developed later in debate with other schools of thought like Nyaya, Vaisesika, and Mimamsa. Later Buddhist thinkers tried to respond to these criticisms and added new concepts. Most important among these thinkers was Dharmakirti. Dharmakirti notes thatonly a general concept or image is presented to the inferential awareness. This generalized mental image is treated as if it were a real particular which can be acted upon. This process is termed ‘determination’ or ‘adhyavasaya’.

Dharmottara extends this to perception, i.e., he introduces this disjunction between the object that appears to awareness and the object that we act on to the case of perception6. Jnanasrimitra furthermodifies Dharmottara’s scheme to state that whatever is determined is conceptual and whatever is not determined is nonconceptual. This leadsto his formulation that conceptualization and determination refer to the same thing. It is just that the word ‘conceptualisation’ or ‘vikalpa’ is occasioned by connection with words and the word ‘determination’ or ‘adhyavasaya’ is occasioned in connection with action7. What becomes clear through these conceptual developments in

6 Dharmakirti, Nyayabindu with Nyayabindu Tika of Dharmottara, Translated into Hindi by Srinivas Shastri, Pratham Pariccheda.

Buddhist philosophy is that conceptualization and action are inextricably linked.

There is a common way of presenting the problematic of perception in contemporary philosophy in terms of the opposition between “seeing” and “seeing as”. At first sight, the Buddhist framework seems to fall into this schema neatly. Nirvikalpa is “seeing” and Savikalpa is “seeing as”. As we analyse further taking into account the other pramana, anumana, and also the process of ‘determination’, a more complex picture emerges, which we can put down as following:

0 Seeing something

1 Seeing something As something

2 Seeing something As Sign of something else

3 Seeing something As If it were something else

In this rendering of the conceptual structure of perception, the “zeroeth” step, “seeing something” represents Nirvikalpa. The next, “first” step is our ordinary perception or Savikalpa. The second step is Anumana where something else is inferred on the basis of perceivingsomething. The last step which is expressed in terms of “As if”, points to the process of ‘determination’ or adhyavasaya, which introduces the element of action in the process of perception and experience.

It is this element of “as if” that enters here in the process of perception that we term ‘enactment’.

Enactment: the Materiality of Imagination

Based on all preceding analyses, the basic proposition that I would like to advance and defend is that to imagine is to enact. And then toconstruct a dynamics of perception, action and imagination based on this proposition. But this remains a project for the next retreat.

7 McCrea, Lawrence J. And Patil, Parimal, Buddhist Philosophy of Language in India: Jnanasrimitra on Exclusion, Columbia University Press, 2010

We can get a glimpse of what ‘enactment’ may mean through the example of the phenomena of placebo. Placebo is the fake medicine which is administered to patients that occasionally proves effective as a cure.This has to be taken into account whenever a new drug is tested. Though the phenomena is recognized in modern medicine, it remains unexplained, except in popular discourse as the action of faith. This explanation begs the question since we do not know how faith can cure illness.

A possible explanation could be that the cure is not effected by the material fake pill which is taken by the patient but by what the pill signifies, namely ‘cure’ or ‘health’ or ‘absence of affliction’. Mechanism of this process is ‘enactment’. We enact the meaning ‘cure’,that is we act as if the pill were a cure, like actors in theatre act as if they were kings and queens. Except that the action here is within our body, the body is acting upon itself. The result is that the illness is cured in a statistically significant number of cases. Even when we take real medicinal pills, a part of the cure is effectedby enactment. This is patient’s contribution to the cure. It is widelyrecognized in medical practice that patient’s willingness to be cured and her openness to the medical practitioner are important factors in cure. Such phenomena may receive some psychological explanations, but the interface of psychology and biology remains a mystery because the materiality of imagination is not understood.

When we perform any action in the world, it is preceded by an action of the body on itself. In fact, any conscious movement has to be preceded by such an action of the body on itself. If we are sitting and want to get up, first the body has to act on itself. This action of body on itself is preceded by thought of action. What I am suggesting is that these three, the thought of action and the action of body on itself and action in the world, form a continuum. Thinking,understood as imagination, is enactment. So we have first the action of the world on the sense organ, which is perception. This is followedby action of the individual on itself, which is imagination. Finally, action of the individual on the world, which is action which transforms the world – kalpa to nirvikalpa to vikalpa to sankalpa and

back to kalpa. This is the wheel of imagination which has to be charted out.

Another example of materiality of imagination is society. Social objects, like any ordinary objects of our experience, are samvritti dharmas or conventional/consensual objects. They are constructed by imagination and it should be possible to construct a dhammology of social objects which would explain the constitution of society.

Yet another example of materiality of imagination would be art, which was the starting point of this essay. Art is of course the paradigmatic example of a work of imagination. It is a kind of second order imagination. Works of art first of all carve out a material space by drawing a boundary which demarcates it from the space of ordinary life. This can be a stage, or it can be a canvas, or an uninterrupted time-span. Within this space there is an interior time and an interior space where a story plays out which we enjoy and whichallows us to reflect back on our ordinary lives. The process of perception, imagination, and action that we have described in this paper is a world-making process. Art can perhaps be understood as making a world within a world. In theatre, sometimes we have a play within a play which has been called meta-theatre. This play within a play is used to reflect on the art and significance of theatre itself.We can say that in the Buddhist scheme, a play is actually a play within a play. A work of art can be a lesson in how the world is constructed. Could it be that art is the placebo for the social body?

References:

I have not been able to give complete in-text references. Following are some of the sources used for this paper. As regards the discoursesof Buddha or the Sutta Pitak, it is available on many websites. www.accesstoinsight.org is one of them where original Pali version (inRoman script) is also available along with the English translation. I have given in-text references for specific texts used in the paper.

BOOKS:

Buddhist Philosophy

Aniruddha, Abhidhammasangaho (2 Volumes), In Pali, Edited and Translated into Hindi by Ramshanker Tripathi, Sampoornand Sanskrit University, Varanasi, 1991.

(A central text of the Theravada Abhidhamma tradition. A key text to understand the abhidhamma causal analysis of the 17 sequential momentsof perception.)

Vasubandhu, Abhidharmakosh with Abhidharmakosh Bhashya, Translated into Hindi by Narendra Deva, Hindustan Academy, Allahabad, 1971.

(A major Abhidhamma text of the middle period in the Vaibhasika-Yogachar tradition by a major figure.)

Asanga, On Knowing Reality: “Tattvartha” chapter of Asanga’s “Bodhisattvabhumi”, Translated into English with an Introduction by Janice Dean Willis, Motilal Banarsidas.

(A text by the founder figure of Yogachar school of thought important because of material on ‘vikalpa’. Chronologically and philosophically Asanga and Vasubandhu (half-brothers) stand somewhere between the Abhidhamma and the later thought of Dignaga and his commentators.)

Hattori, Masaki (Ed), Dignaga on Perception: Translation and Commentary on the Pratyaksa Khanda of Pramanasammuchay, Harvard University Press, 1968.

(Annotated translation with detailed notes of one of the two most relevant chapters of Dignaga’s Pramanasammuchaya for this paper, another one being the chapter on Apoha theory in the same work.)

Randle, H. N., Fragments from Dinnaga, Motilal Banarsidas, 1981. (Originally published by The Royal Asiatic Society, London, 1926)

(One of the earliest modern sources for Dignaga’s thought based on translation of texts from various other schools of Indian philosophy which refer to or quote Dignaga’s works. Fragments of Dignaga’s work in original Sanskrit is preserved only in such quotes by other Indian philosophers. The rest has been recovered mainly in Tibetan translations.)

Dharmakirti, Nyayabindu with Nyayabindu Tika of Dharmottara, Translated into Hindi by Srinivas Shastri, Pratham Pariccheda.

(Dharmakirti’s summary work on Pramana theory. Most influential interpretation of Dignaga’s epistemology.)

Dunne, John D., Foundations of Dharmakirti’s Philosophy, Wisdom Publications, Boston, 2004.

(A contemporary interpretation of Dharmakirti.)

Matilal, B. K., Perception: An essay on classical Indian theories of knowledge, OUP, 1981.

(Gives an account of the 1000 years long Nyaya-Buddhist debate on theories of knowledge with constant reference to modern analytic philosophy. A good source for exploring Dignaga’s relation with Bhartrahari’s thought in context of the idea of ‘vikalpa’.)

Matilal, Bimal Krishna and Evans, Robert D. (Ed.), Buddhist Logic and Epistemology: Studies in the Buddhist Analysis of Inference and Language, D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1986.

(Contains several important papers on Apoha theory.)

Nnanananda, Bhikkhu, Concept and Reality in Early Buddhist Thought: An Essay on ‘Papanch’ and ‘Papanch-Sanna-Sankha’, Buddhist Publication Society, Kandy, 1971.

(It discusses the process of perception as described in Buddha’s discourses. It is considered to be the authoritative modern interpretation of the concept of ‘papanch’ in early Buddhist thought.)

Puhakka, Kaisa, Knowledge and Reality: A Comparative Study of Buddhist Logicians and Quine, Motilal Banarsidas, 1975.

(Presents a comparative study of the epistemology of Dignaga and Dharmakirti with that of Russel and Quine.)

Stcherbatsky, T., Buddhist Logic (volume 1 & 2), Motilal Banarsidas.

(First volume is an interpretation of Dignaga-Dharmakirti school. Second volume is translation of Dharmakirti’s Nyayabindu with

translation of excerpts from Nyaya thinker Vachaspati Mishra. This work published in Russia in 1929 was instrumental in generating lot ofnew research on Dignaga and Dharmakirti.)

Hayes, Richard, Dignaga on the Interpretation of Signs, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1987.

(Contains a translation of the chapter on Apoha from Dignaga’s Pramanasamucchay and an interpretation of this philosophy.)

Dhammajoti, Bhikkhu K L, Abhidhamma Doctrines and Controversies on Perception, Centre for Buddhist Studies, The University of Hong Kong, 2007.

(Covers certain key debates in the Sarvastivaada Abhidhamma.)

Waldron, William S., The Buddhist Unconscious: The Alaya-Vijnana in the Context of Indian Buddhist Thought, Routledge Curzon, 2003.

(An account of the development of the concept of Alaya-Vijnana in Yogachar school and includes translation of certain key portions of Yogacharbhumi.)

Siderits, Mark, et al (Ed.), Apoha: Buddhist Nominalism and Human Cognition, Columbia University Press, 2011.

(State of the art concerning modern scholarship on Apoha theory.)

McCrea, Lawrence J. And Patil, Parimal, Buddhist Philosophy of Language in India: Jnanasrimitra on Exclusion, Columbia University Press, 2010.

(Translation of a key later text Apohaprakarana along with a very good introduction to Dignaga-Dharmakirti tradition.)

Rao, Srinivasa, Perceptual Error: The Indian Theories, University of Hawaii Press, 1998.

(Only specialised modern work on perceptual error in Indian philosohies.)

Western Thought

Jonas, Hans, The Phenomenon of Life: Toward a Philosophical Biology, Northwestern University Press, Evanston, Illinois, 1966.

(Contains an excellent essay on ‘Causality and Perception’ among others.)

Agamben, Giorgio, Infancy and History: The Destruction of Experience, Verso, London,1993.

(Contains an essay on how historically experience and knowledge have been understood in the western philosophical tradition.)

Varela, Francisco et al, The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience, The MIT Press, 1991.

(A landmark book on the embodied cognition approach also containing a comparative approach with Buddhist philosophy.)

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, The Phenomenology of Perception

(Classic work on perception from a phenomenological standpoint.)

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, The Primacy of Perception and Other Essays on Phenomenological Psychology, the Philosophy of Art, History and Politics, Northwestern University Press, 1964.

Arendt, Hannah, The Life of the Mind, Vol. 1 Thinking, Seeker & Warburg, London, 1978.

(Good for reflections on the appearance/reality distinction in the western tradition.)

Polanyi, Michael and Prosch, Harry, Meaning, The University of Chicago Press, 1975.

(A rare contemporary western synoptic approach to perception, imagination, language and thought.)

PAPERS:

Cox, Collett, From Category to Ontology: Changing Role of Dharma in Sarvastivad Abhidhamma, Journal of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 32, Issue 5-6, 2004.

Thurman, Robert A. F., Buddhist Hermeneutics, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 46/1, 1978.

Peckhaus, Volker, Dignaga’s Logic of Invention, Lecture delivered on 22 December 2001 at the First International Conference of the New Millenium on History of Mathematical Sciences, Indian National ScienceAcademy, Delhi.

Chakrabarti, Arindam, Against Immaculate Perception: Seven Reasons for Eliminating Nirvikalpaka Perception from Nyaya, Philosophy East and West, Vol. 50, No. 1, Jan 2000, pp 1-8.

Kern, Iso, Object, Objective Phenomenon and Objectivating Act According to the ‘Vijnaptimatratasiddhi’ of Xuanzang (600-664), in “Phenomenology and Indian Philosophy” Ed. D. P. Chattopadhyaya.

Netz, Reviel, Imagination and Layered Ontology in Greek Mathematics, Configurations, Volume 17, Numbers 1-2, Winter 2009, pp. 19-50.

Singh, Navjyoti, Phenomenology and Indian Philosophy, Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research, Vol. VII, No. 1, 1989, pp. 109-32.

Singh, Navjyoti, “Foundations of Logic in Ancient India: Linguistics and Mathematics” in Science and Mathematics in Indian Culture, edited by A. Rahman, and published by the National Institute of Science, Technology & Development, New Delhi; 1984.

Strawson, P. F., Imagination and Perception, in “Freedom and Resentment and other Essays”.

Pendlebury, Michael, The role of imagination in perception, South African Journal of Philosophy, 15(4), 1996.

Hurley, Susan, Perception and Action: Alternative Views, Synthese, Vol. 129, No. 1, Perception, Action and Consciousness (Oct., 2001), pp. 3-40

Anderson, Michael L., Embodied Cognition: A Field Guide, Artificial Intelligence, 149 (2003), pp 91-130.

[Paper to be presented at CSDS Retreat December 2014]