THE PYRAMID OF THE THREE TRAININGS
THE PYRAMID OF THE THREE TRAININGS
Developing wholesome mental factors requires the complete transformation of our current negative mental states. In his teaching on the four noble truths, the Buddha presents the blueprint to achieve this, the noble eightfold path, which itself encompasses the three trainings of ethics, concentration, and wisdom.
Although traditionally illustrated by the Dharma wheel, the three trainings can also be represented as a pyramid. The base of the pyramid is ethics, upon which the two sides of the pyramid rest—one side is meditation or concentration, and the other is insight or wisdom. Meditation and wisdom can only stand upright upon the base of ethics. In reality, all three are mutually dependent. Without meditation, wisdom is dry and intellectual and ethics are tight and lifeless; without wisdom, meditation progresses slowly and ethics are clumsily applied. We need not have the direct understanding of emptiness for it to benefit our practice; just reminding ourselves that everything is changeable and interdependent can enrich meditation and increase the motivation to act in an ethical way.
What do we speak of when we speak of ethics? One aspect of ethics is the rules of discipline for different levels of Buddhist teachings. In this context, however, we are speaking of ethics in terms of the commonsense morality—caring for one’s fellow beings and foregoing harm—that is characteristic of every society and religion. Buddhism has many ways of enumerating those actions to adopt and those to avoid, but they all boil down to benefiting others and refraining from harm.
The second of the three trainings, concentration, is crucial to leading a wholesome life. Concentration not only focuses the mind to help it penetrate the deeper views of reality, it also gives rise to physical pleasure and makes the mind more emotionally balanced. Many of the people who come to the Dharma center in London are slowly turning away from the frantic pace that city life demands and creating the space to follow a spiritual path. Stepping out of the whirlwind is the first step to developing a more focused mind, and the basis for future training in the more refined states such as calm abiding (Skt. shamata, Tib. shiné), a deep mental stability that can be sustained effortlessly for long periods of time.
Again, the third training, wisdom, need not be developed through formal Buddhist study. People who have well-developed knowledge of other technical disciplines often take easily to the precise explanations of emptiness given in the texts. A good store of practical wisdom—the understanding of appropriate behavior and of how the world works—can also take us far. The more profound and subtle levels of wisdom, such as the understanding of selflessness and the realization of emptiness, will build on these.
In general, negative emotion is spontaneous. It can arise without apparent reason, sometimes so strongly it is impossible to control. Wisdom, on the other hand, ripens slowly in dependence on rational analysis and meditative stability. Thus, we need to employ the tools of both the experiential and the intellectual aspects of our minds to attain our goals, with ethics as our base.
Positive Mental Factors in the Second Zone
THE NOBLE EIGHTFOLD PATH IN THE THREE ZONES
Mental factors that are less subtle than the three root who ;lesome ones, but probably still too subtle to be perceived, can be placed in the second zone of increasing subtlety. They are: loving-kindness, altruism, compassion, constant mindfulness, constant application to long-term goals, and calm abiding.
Nonattachment, nonhatred, and nonignorance are a long way off. They are the qualities that will shine through when we have eliminated all the unwholesome mindstates that currently cloud our minds. To do that the Buddha explained the path we each must take, the eightfold noble path. The aspects of the path related to verbal or physical actions—right effort, right speech, right action, and right livelihood—are antidotes to the unwholesome mental factors in the third zone. The mental factors related to the other four aspects belong in the subtler zones 1 and 2. We can place right mindfulness and right concentration in zone 2 and right view and right thought—the most subtle aspects of the path—in zone 1.
With right effort, right speech, right action, and right livelihood we are trying to restrain from wrong actions and perform virtuous ones. With right mindfulness and right concentration, belonging to the second zone, our mind training goes beyond restraint from harmful actions to actually trying to control the mind. Mindfulness, in this context, means being mindful of the nature of impermanence and aware that all contaminated things—including our body and our existence—naturally bring suffering.
Right concentration is more than mere freedom from gross distraction and dullness. This concentration can easily focus wherever we direct it, with clarity and stability. This is a fundamental base for the development of compassion and altruism (mental factors of the second zone) and the realization of emptiness (in the first zone).
This second-zone mind of calm abiding is defined as a mind that is totally free from subtle dullness. Even when we learn to focus our minds, we may still experience laxity and dullness, which means that we have not yet attained calm abiding. Calm abiding has great clarity and intensity.
When more fully developed, these mental factors will lead to the development of the mental states of the first zone—nonattachment, nonhatred, and nonignorance. The first zone corresponds to the last two aspects of the noble eightfold path, right view and right thought. Right view is understanding reality, which from a Buddhist perspective is emptiness. Right thought is the other facet of the path, compassion and love.
COMPASSION AND SELF-CONFIDENCE
Loving-kindness, altruism, and compassion are important in the second zone because the corresponding second-zone unwholesome mental factor, self-centeredness or self-concern, is one of our primary mental afflictions. The self-centered, selfish mind is driven by and created from ignorance of the relationship of the law of cause and effect. The best antidotes to this mentality, which assumes that our own welfare is always more important than that of others, are the minds of loving-kindness, altruism, and compassion.
We need to distinguish here between the self-centered mind and the self-confident mind. Buddhism asserts that the self-centered mind is a wrong mind, but this has nothing to do with having self-confidence. Without confidence in our actions, such as our practice, we will be unable to achieve what we want to achieve, whether this be simple peace or full enlightenment.
In the same way, when traditional Buddhist texts state that the source of all suffering and problems is self-centeredness, they are not advocating self-neglect. The Buddha says in his first discourse, “The two extremes should be abandoned.” One of those extremes is self-neglect.
Without addressing our own issues, it is impossible to understand what is going on for anyone else. The Buddha says, “Whoever loves himself will never harm others.” Those who know exactly what causes pain or happiness for themselves—not intellectually but from the heart—will understand that it is the same with others. Love for both self and others is a deep love, requiring great wisdom and insight. In Sanskrit the word for this kind of love is maitri; in Pali it is metta.
Positive Mental Factors in the Third Zone
To achieve enlightenment we need the direct realization of emptiness and bodhichitta, and to realize these we need compassion, loving-kindness, and concentration. These might be too subtle for us right now, but there are mental states that we are quite capable of developing. These are the mental factors of the third zone. The ones I have included in the chart on page 82 are: mindfulness, calmness, equanimity, friendliness, joy, confidence, and optimism, as well as a correct understanding of cause and effect. Of course, this is not exhaustive, and I’m sure you can add many more positive qualities to the list.
Some of the positive qualities of mind in the third zone are associated with our emotions—such as friendliness or optimism—and others are associated with cognition—such as equanimity or mindfulness. One side develops our emotional health, the other side helps us fully comprehend the working of the mind, improve its positive qualities, and reduce the aspects that bring unhappiness.
Friendliness is not just showing a smiling face to others no matter what we feel; it means developing a warm, friendly character deep within, in relation to ourselves as well as others. Friendliness is an effective way of dealing with very gross problems such as loneliness or fear of loss. It creates strong connections with the society we live in and provides emotional sustenance for ourselves and the people we come into contact with. If loving-kindness is the simple wish for others to be happy, friendliness is the attitude we show toward others triggered by this most precious mind. Social isolation is a big problem these days. I read an article by a Western psychologist explaining why the problems of depression and loneliness are increasing in the West. Of all the factors he discussed, the one that made the greatest impression on me was the lack of belonging that many now feel. In the past, individuals belonged to a particular church, which brought a sense of community. Sadly, in current times this feeling of community is rapidly diminishing. Social interaction is very important in preventing loneliness and making us feel interconnected with our world, and friendliness helps break down the walls of isolation.
A calm mind is also crucial. Think about how our mind chases objects now, how we so easily become obsessed with things, exaggerating their qualities. Obsession is the opposite of calmness—it is a mental state of agitation. When clinging and obsession are present, we lose our mental balance. Calmness combined with mindfulness gives rise to the bud that will bloom into the flower of calm abiding.
I find optimism very useful in dealing with gross mental problems such as low self-esteem. Of course, all of our lives have negative aspects, but this is always only a partial picture. If we look into our situation honestly, we will see much to be optimistic about. For instance, we all have a unique and wonderful opportunity to develop ourselves. Understanding this great potential will naturally lift us out of feelings depression or low self-esteem. We can see that, even among people we have met personally, many beings have great minds—great wisdom and great compassion. These people are human beings like us and have developed their qualities using bodies similar to our own. The techniques they have used may be the same as those we are studying here. Like this, we can remind ourselves that the negative aspects of our existence are only a small part of our lives. Keeping things in perspective and recalling all the positive aspects of our lives, a great sense of optimism will grow.
Mindfulness, another important mental factor in the third zone, helps us both develop our meditation and deal with gross delusions. Resentment, anger, and vengefulness can never thrive if we practice mindfulness. Merely being mindful of what we are thinking acts as a mirror and give us the space to examine what is going on inside.
Mindfulness is also an antidote to the mind that obsesses about the past and future. Of course we need to prepare for the future, and memories are very important, but it is a kind of sickness to constantly dwell on what has happened before or what might happen next. Past memories and future daydreams can pollute our minds by preventing us from attending wisely to what is right before us. Present-moment awareness can also calm our minds as a preparation for meditation.
When I am feeling a bit low, I sometimes think about how everything is changing all the time, and it really raises my spirits. I can see that if I put effort into whatever is troubling me, it will make a difference. Things will change, regardless, because everything is impermanent, but I can recognize in addition that I have the ability to make it change in the way best for me. This kind of mindfulness I find very uplifting.
WORK TOWARD LONG-TERM GOALS
Our goal is genuine compassion, so while we are making effort to develop these minds of the third zone and rid ourselves of our immediate problems, we need to keep our long-term goals in our mind. Keeping our motivation high and broadly aimed eliminates the possibility that we will become caught up in the seemingly trivial actions we all must perform each day.
Developing true compassion takes a long time. It will happen only if we remind ourselves continually that although at the moment we are working at developing positive qualities—mindfulness, calmness, a good character, friendliness—our long-term aim is the attainment of bodhichitta.
From the very beginning it is important to have a strong long-term motivation and to see that the positive attitudes we are developing now are part of a much bigger plan. There is no solution that can solve all our problems immediately—even the different aspects of the mind we are now developing will take time to arise together as the causes for bodhichitta.
Mindfulness shows us the picture—what is happening in our activities or our thoughts—but neither mindfulness nor the other third-zone positive mindstates are the main antidotes to the deep-seated unwholesome mental factors such as attachment, anger, and jealousy. Whether they are manifest in our mindstreams at present or only there in potential, these positive mindstates are the tools to develop the more profound positive minds of loving-kindness and altruism.
EPISTEMOLOGY: CONCEPTION AND PERCEPTION
BUDDHIST EPISTEMOLOGY is the systematic investigation of the nature of knowledge: its scope, base, and reliability. It looks at the scope in terms of how far knowledge can go toward understanding reality, the base minds from which knowledge can grow, and whether knowledge can serve as a reliable source for an individual to completely understand reality.
Buddhist epistemology was first taught systematically and explicitly by the Indian scholar Dignaga (ca. 450 A.D.), and then by his commentator Dharmakirti (ca. 625 A.D.) in the Commentary on Valid Perception (Pramanavarttika). As I have mentioned, although Nagarjuna and his disciple Aryadeva wrote texts on epistemology much earlier, this was not done in any structured or extensive way; thus Dignaga and Dharmakirti are considered the founders of Buddhist epistemology and logic.
Epistemology in Buddhism is not merely the study of knowledge for its own sake, but is aimed at bringing the seeker an understanding of how sentient beings can overcome their problems and eventually experience liberation—the cessation of suffering and its root causes. Dignaga and Dharmakirti’s explanations of epistemology are not just empirical data, such as one would find in science—although of course much within their explanations concurs with Western science. The difference between them is the motivation. In the case of Buddhist epistemology, this knowledge is acquired solely to develop the understanding that counteracts and eliminates our fundamental confusion.
Buddhist thought recognizes two basic kinds of mental experience: the experience in which the mind accesses its object directly, and the experience in which the mind relies on another mind to access its object.
These two states roughly correspond to perception and conception, terms most speakers of English would understand, although not always precisely, and certainly not in the context of the Buddhist analysis. If you feel that a concept is a thought and a perception is more direct, more correct, then you are getting there, but even so, as we will see, there’s a great deal more to it than that.
Dharmakirti defines conceptual cognition as “that consciousness that apprehends the object indicated by words in relation to the actual thing.” Here we see a close connection drawn between thought on one hand and language and concepts on the other. In the definition, “words” refers to both language and concepts. In Tibetan the term for “word” is dadun, literally the “object of concept.” That is not to say that a concept is the same as a word. An intermediary mind helps the mind as a whole access its object, and that can take the form of an image or an idea, as well as an actual word or label.
For example, think about a particular table, perhaps the one in your living room. When you think about the table, the image of the table will probably arise in your mind. That image can never be more than a representation of the table. A thought about the table is not the actual table. Between your consciousness and the actual table you are thinking about is the intermediary image of the table you have evoked.
However, the concept of table is more than just the intermediary process that occurs between the mind and the actual object; it also encompasses what we me; an when we say “table.” Our subjective representation of a table is not directly connected to reality because it is constructed by language and concepts. Thus, a conceptual mind is fiction rather than reality—it is made up by our minds. The concept is a subjective representation of an object that relates the object to other objects in the same class and is understood by society to be a whole. It is not the direct expression of the object.
Let’s break it down a bit. We all relate to the concept of table. It represents an object with properties shared with all kinds of things—wooden tables, iron tables, simple tables, ornate tables, coffee tables, dining room tables—that have specific parts—legs, top, and so on—and function as table. This is a mental concept. The concept does not arise from the side of the table itself, but is part of our linguistic construction of table.
In reality there is no actual table that shares all the properties of every other table. We assume a common “table-ness,” but that essence is fiction. The representation of the table in the conceptual mind is separate from the real table, and furthermore this fictional entity, table, that we hold is superimposed over any “real” individual table we are investigating. Our experience of a table is predominantly a projection, an abstract generality.
That does not mean the table does not exist. The object we call “table” sitting in front of us at this moment does exist, but the “table” of our conceptual mind only exists as a generality, because it is a mere conceptual construct.
CONCEPTUAL THOUGHTS ENGAGE THROUGH ELIMINATION
In the common division of existent things, Buddhist philosophers distinguish two categories: impermanent and permanent (which are categorized from the side of the object) or affirmation and negation (which are categorized from the side of the subject—the mind apprehending the object).
Although the former division is more widely discussed, in some ways the latter is more important because, from a Buddhist perspective, we can never know an object without the involvement of mind, and thus without some degree of subjectivity. Therefore, this twofold division contains objects that can be known by affirmation and those that can be known by negation. I would like to look at these now.
The conceptual mind does not apprehend its object through a positive recognition but by eliminating all other objects that are not that particular object. Therefore, in Buddhist epistemology the conceptual consciousness is construed as negative in nature, as it arises from a process of elimination.
For example, if I say “apple” to you, the image of an apple will come into your mind. According to Buddhist thought, it arises through the systematic negation of all things that are non-apple. If I qualify my concept by saying “green apple,” your mind will refine the generic image, and my saying “That large green apple you have just eaten” will further refine it. Still, there is no direct perception of that just-eaten apple. The concept remains an elimination of all the stored memories of what is not that apple and a generic construct of what is that apple.
This process occurs through the use of a linguistic sign—a word or label. This is more than just seeing an apple and sticking on the mental label, “apple.” The process is much more subtle than that. It is virtually impossible for ordinary people such as ourselves to have a direct perception of an object, unadorned by conceptual process. Even if we have no conscious discursive thought about the object, we engage in this mental process of object classification.
The negation process of conception has parallels in the way Buddhist practice is pursued. For example, this page is impermanent, but our minds presently perceive it as permanent, at least on a moment-by-moment basis. We need to eliminate the misconception that it is permanent to perceive it accurately. In this case, the concept of permanence is the object of negation. That is similar to the way the conceptual mind operates, though in this case we need to consciously intend the negation. Without negating its permanence we will never see its impermanence—either as a concept or, at a very advanced stage of meditation, as a direct perception.
We are categorizing things all the time. We classify objects as beautiful, ugly, tall, short, and so on. Moreover, our categories depend on our cultural context—so in one culture “beautiful” might be equated with tall, slim, blond, and blue-eyed, while in another it might be fat and bald!
We are also constantly making value judgments—good or bad, fair or unfair, right or wrong. Observing our personal instinctive dialogue of judgment is a very interesting exercise because value judgments as categories are particularly removed from the object at hand and say more about the perceiver than they do about the object. By looking at them, we can learn a lot about our minds. According to Buddhist epistemology, we arrive at our judgments—which are concepts—by elimination. On the basis of all of our accumulated conditioning, we decide that something is good by eliminating all that is not good.
CONCEPTUAL THOUGHTS ARE ALWAYS MISTAKEN
The conceptual mind apprehends its object through negation, therefore it is considered a mistaken mind. Although it is a construct based on a linguistic, generalizing process that has little to do with the actual object before us, this is not the way we see it. According to our view, the object of our conceptual consciousness is real and accurate. This is a mistake.
As long as the dichotomy persists between apple and non-apple, or whatever our conceptual mind is apprehending through this elimination process, there is no way to overcome this fundamental mistake. Thus conceptual consciousness can never reflect reality as accurately as a perceptual consciousness.
A conceptual thought is merely a fiction projected onto an object or event and depends on socially shared assumptions. A table does not think of itself as a table—it does not think that it is wooden and comes from Ikea, or that its function is to hold a computer. These are all assumptions we attach to the object. In fact, the term table is a conventionality that exists in the English-speaking world. It has no reality based in the actual object. The assumptions we layer on objects arise from the social process of language acquisition and the habit of labeling our sense stimuli in certain ways over and over again. We want to buy a table, we plan the purchase in our minds, and we feel the table we want to buy is a real table, while in fact “tableness” is a fiction created by the conceptual mind and nowhere to be found.
Our experience of objects as real and our acceptance of the terms commonly used for such objects as natural are the two key factors for the formation of the conceptual mind. Superimposed on the real table is this combination of memory and socially constructed generalization that ignores the fact that one object labeled table is entirely separate and different from another object labeled table. In reality all physical objects are unique, individual things. In the realm of reality, this concept of table does not exist within all things we call tables; we superimpose it upon the object.
CONCEPTUAL THOUGHTS PROVIDE COGNITIVE CONTENT
Mistaken though they are, conceptual consciousnesses are vital to our lives and well-being. They provide the elaboration necessary for us to make sense of the raw data of the direct sensory consciousnesses. Only a conceptual mind can categorize objects; only a conceptual mind can analyze and discriminate; only a conceptual mind can plan—in short, only a conceptual mind can “think.” Because of that, conceptual thoughts are very useful.
On one level they are always mistaken, misrepresenting the real world. On another level they are vital for sentient existence. They help us to apprehend things and events not apparent to our sensory consciousnesses, either because of their subtle nature, because of their temporal location—meaning they happened in the past or are still to happen—or because of their physical location—meaning they occur too far from our sense consciousnesses for us to apprehend them. In such circumstances the conceptual mind is the only way we can connect with those things and events.
As discussed above, we must strive to realize objects such as subtle impermanence and selflessness if we are ever to experience the complete cessation of suffering and its origin. Dignaga and Dharmakirti assert that such knowledge can only arise through conceptions. At our stage of development we cannot directly perceive subtle impermanence, thus the conceptual mind is the only tool we have to connect us to this truth in any way. Therefore, it is important to keep conceptuality in perspective. While we must understand that concepts always contain an element of error and do not reflect reality accurately, thinking is nonetheless crucial to our spiritual development.
IMPLICATIVE AND NONIMPLICATIVE NEGATION
If you asked a Gelug master about nonimplicative negation, he or she might just say that it is the most important thing you can ever know. It is such a strange term, and yet it is so important! Without understanding nonimplicative negation, it is impossible to understand ultimate reality.
The difference between the two types of negation lies in whether the negation causes something else to be implied in its place. Hence we have the terms implicative and nonimplicative. If you go to university where there are two choices, full-time or part-time study, and you tell a friend that you are not studying full-time, this is a negative statement. However, through this negation you imply a positive statement—that you are studying part-time. Thus your statement is an implicative negation. If I tell you there is no honey in the kitchen, that too is a negative statement, but it does not imply anything positive, such as the fact that there is sugar, or coffee. This is a nonimplicative negation.
Gendun Drub defines nonimplicative negation as:
…That which is realized through an explicit elimination of an object of negation and does not suggest some other positive phenomenon in place of its object of negation.23
In other words, a nonimplicative negation eliminates whatever needs to be eliminated without implying that anything exists in its place. To state that I don’t play football does not imply that I do play tennis.
This may sound a little silly to you, but nonimplicative negations become crucial when we seek to understand emptiness or selflessness. We are all trying to understand emptiness (at least I hope we are!). But what are things are empty of? When we realize that all phenomena are empty of inherent existence, do we simultaneously realize that they possess other qualities? The insight into emptiness brings no such implication. There is nothing beyond, not even something called “emptiness.” It is the same with selflessness. The very word directs us to the absence of a self, but it does not imply that something else exists.
Meditating on emptiness is a long and profound process. The object we are trying to negate is quite crude early on, but slowly it becomes more and more subtle. If, at the end of our analysis, we are left with anything positive at all, the analysis has gone wrong. Our negation should be nonimplicative. When our mind realizes an object’s ultimate nature, its absence of inherent existence, what it realizes is just a mere absence of inherent existence and absolutely nothing else. If, when inherent existence is negated, anything remains—even something profound, like a realization of dependent arising—that mind does not have a true understanding of emptiness.
HOW THE MIND GENERALIZES
Conceptual consciousnesses are mistaken in that the mind takes something generic and assumes it is specific. Superimposed upon the perception of a book, for instance, is almost always the concept of book, which helps us interpret the object but denies us direct access to it. There are four types of generalizations the mind makes about objects:
1. collective generality
2. categorical generality
3. meaning generality
4. sound generality
Getting a clear picture of these four points can really help us see the process by which we superimpose and the mistakes this process can bring. The effect of these mental mistakes is huge. In fact, the ways we react socially and individually to our world are dominated by these first three generalities.
A collective generality is really another name for the density of whole, a topic that comes up in the next chapter. In this context, however, we are focusing on the way the mind elaborates on the original sense data. Collective generality refers to the assumptions we make about the completeness of an object. For example, when we watch the news on television, we only see the top part of the anchorperson’s body, but we assume the existence of his or her waist and legs. This is a conception rather than a perception. Our experience tells us that a person has all these parts, so if we see one part, we assume the others will follow. This is something we rarely question, and in most cases experience does not contradict it. However, this mistaken mind can harm us—even on a mundane level. Once, I was helping to renovate Jamyang Buddhist Centre after the building was first purchased, and I stepped on some old linoleum in a deserted upper-story room. I had assumed there was solid floor beneath, but in fact the floorboards were rotten—a collective generality that could have seriously injured me.
A categorical generality is a generalization the mind makes based on the category an object fits into. This can be a useful conceptual shorthand, but it can also be very harmful, as when we judge an entire race of people based on a stereotype.
No two objects are identical. Even if they are the same shape, color, and so on, they are two different entities. If you have two glasses in front of you, they may look identical, but of course they are different glasses; they are composed of different atoms. However, it would be impossible for the mind to keep up if it had to newly label every object in the universe every time it encountered one, and so we categorize. I have used glass as an example, and I know that you have no trouble imagining one. If I ask a friend to buy me a carton of soymilk at the shop, I know she won’t come back with dog food. Placing objects into manageable categories is an essential role of the conceptual consciousness.
The worrying side to this mental process is that by categorizing, we may deny the unique integrity of the object. We may pigeonhole, reduce to stereotypes, or at worst, judge a person based on our generalized assumption about a group. The prejudice—racial, sexual, or whatever—that is the cause of so much of the world’s suffering is probably the most dangerous manifestation of this. People under the influence of prejudice need no deep philosophical understanding in order to hate. If people with a particular bias—against a race, religion, sex, or skin color—see someone in that category, they react based on the categorical generality they are making. It colors and distorts their perception.
A meaning generality is another term for the generic image the mind creates. We have already covered the way the conceptual mind functions through image and language. Here the focus is the mental image that arises in place of the perception. As we have seen, the conceptual mind creates the image through negation, systematically eliminating everything that is not its object. So if I ask you to imagine an apple, the image that arises in your mind is everything that is not non-apple. No matter how specific that image might seem, it is not the actual object—it is the meaning generality. Say we both met His Holiness the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala in 1995 and I remind you that he shook your hand—a singular and powerful experience you are not liable to forget. That image may be strong and vivid in your mind, but it is still a meaning generality, a counterfeit of the actual event. In fact, we don’t even remember real events at all for the most part; we recall our previous meaning generalities.
Sound generality is much the same, but based on sound. Think of your favorite song. In your mind you may hear it playing, although in reality of course it is not. This is the conceptual mind producing a sound generality based on memories of listening to the sound. Again, for the most part this process is harmless, but because the mind is not apprehending the object exactly in accordance with reality, a fundamental mistake exists that can cause problems.
These generalities operate continually in our minds. They shape our opinions and color our entire world, and yet we are rarely aware of them as such. Although this topic is complex, we should seek to understand it, for the misunderstanding that skews our view of the world, no matter how subtle, causes mistakes that can lead to suffering.
As beings of the physical world, we are fortunate to not only possess the ability to make sense of our external environment, but also to possess the five sense faculties by which we can gather accurate information about it. According to Buddhist epistemology, although perception is not solely the realm of the sense consciousnesses—on certain occasions the mental consciousness can directly perceive sense data—nevertheless our sense perceptions are the main tools by which we gain impressions of the external world.
Perception can be defined as “a mental event that can apprehend its object positively, engaging the object as it is.” This refers mainly to our five sense consciousnesses. I walk down a street and see a person on the other side, hear the traffic, smell the flowers in the park, and feel the cool breeze. I am also eating an ice cream cone. These mental events—seeing, hearing, tasting, and so on—engage the object—the person, the noise, and so on—directly and positively. At this level there is no elimination or indirect apprehension.
Of course, things do not remain so simple for more than an instant. Immediately the mind begins to label things, and feelings and stories arise. The person is a friend, the traffic is loud, the breeze is cold, and so forth. This is the conceptual mind’s process of enhancing the initial perceptions, but they are not in themselves perceptions.
Intuitively, when we see an object, hear a sound, or ascertain something with any of our other sense faculties, we assume that it exists exactly as we perceive it. But all Buddhist schools assert a discrepancy between the world as it actually exists and the world as we perceive it. There is even a school that denies the existence of the objects of the external world entirely.
ASPECT
When we apprehend an object through direct perception, we assume we are ascertaining the actual object. We see a house and we think there is nothing between the actual house and our perception of it. But this is not so.
Among the schools of Buddhist thought, there is actually no clear agreement on what we actually see. In order to get an idea of the complexity of this issue, we need to examine the assertions of each of the four philosophical schools. For our purposes, we will limit our analysis to the first three schools, excluding the highest school, the Madhyamaka, as it really complicates the picture.
According to the Vaibhashika school, the least subtle of the four schools, our consciousness has direct and unmediated access to the object. However, the Vaibhashika also assert that we are unable to perceive an entire object with a single consciousness. If you think about it, this makes sense. We see an apple and think we are seeing the entire apple. In fact our eye consciousness has only taken in the color and shape of the part of the apple we can see, not its back or bottom, or the smell and taste that make up the complete object.
But apart from that, say the Vaibhashika scholars, a real apple exists, and that is exactly what our eye sees. For that reason we call the Vaibhashika a realistic school. This is not because they have an exclusive claim on the truth, but because they proclaim that things are real in the sense of having an intrinsic essence.
This assertion is strongly refuted by the other schools. First, say the others, this assumes a chronological impossibility, for according to the Vaibhashika, the existence of the apple and the apprehension of the apple would have to happen at the same time. This would eliminate the possibility of cause and effect, which by definition is sequential. If the apple and the pprehension of the apple were simultaneous, then the object could not be the cause for the mind that apprehends it, which, according to the other schools, is absurd.
The Sautrantika and Chittamatra schools introduce the concept of aspect (Tib. nampa) in their discussions of how objects are perceived. The aspect is the reflection of the object that becomes the direct perception. It is an intermediary between the object and the mind, and as such behaves in the same way as a conceptual consciousness. We see blue, but what is it that differentiates blue from yellow before the conceptual consciousness labels it? These schools say it is aspect. The aspect of blue is both caused by the “real” blue color of the object and its representation in the visual consciousness.
It is obvious that an object cannot physically be present within a consciousness. However, according to these schools, the object can cause an impact—a mark or a reflection—on the consciousness. This is like leaning on a freshly-painted wall. Your arm is not left on the wet paint, but the mark of your arm is. According to these schools, this is a necessary part of the process of perception—without it, there is no base for discrimination.
The difference in assertion between the Sautrantika and Chittamatra schools does not revolve around whether the sense consciousness needs an intermediary, but around the status of the external object. The Sautrantika school assumes the external object exists, and the Chittamatra school refutes this. According to the Chittamatra, the aspects of color or taste that arise within our consciousness do not come about as a result of an impression from a real external object, but rather are produced by our own latent internal tendencies, or imprints. There is no experience of an external object without taking into account the mind that experiences it. Object and subject are one entity in that the table and the mind experiencing table arise at the same time from the same source.
Although having very different ideas about the subject/object relationship, both schools assert that a perception cannot arise independently of the object it perceives. Therefore perceptual aspects have a direct one-to-one correspondence with the objects they represent. A perceptual consciousness will arise only if there is an actual object, and therefore it can be said to hold the object itself. And so an eye sense consciousness apprehending a blue color is said to hold the actual blue even though it is only aware of the aspect of blue rather the blue itself.
Furthermore, an aspect is not something separate from consciousness. It is both a representation of the object in a consciousness as well as the actual consciousness that sees the object. Because of this double nature, it is said that the aspect has the appearance of the external object but the nature of consciousness.
The concept of aspect is also of great importance for these schools in that it opens the inquiry into self-cognition (Tib. rangrig),24 or how the mind can apprehend itself. In relation to self-cognition, scholars such as Dharmakirti and Dignaga speak of two types of aspect, objective and subjective.
Objective aspect focuses on the object—the color blue, for instance—whereas the subjective aspect focuses on the eye consciousness itself as it apprehends blue. In any perception, two things happen simultaneously: the object is reflected in the consciousness—the objective aspect—and the consciousness is aware that the process is happening—the subjective aspect.
p height="1em" width="1em" align="justify">Almost all of the schools besides Vaibhashika—Sautrantika, Chittamatra, and Svatantrika Madhyamaka—assert that subjective aspect is a valid mind and that it is synonymous with self-awareness or self-cognition. They consider its presence absolutely necessary to trigger future recollections of the object. Dharmakirti says that cognition is self-luminous, which means that at the same time that the eye perceives blue, it is aware—self-aware—that it is perceiving blue. The meaning of self-luminosity is similar to that of the English term apperception, which means the mind’s awareness of itself. These three schools assert that the mechanism by which we hold an object from one moment to the next is self-cognition.
The subjective aspect of a mind cannot be a different entity from the mind itself. If it were, for example, one mind looking at a separate mind, we would find ourselves in an infinite regression—for a mind apprehending an object, there would need to be a second mind aware of that mind, but that second mind would require a third mind that was aware of that one, and a fourth, and so on, ad infinitum. The subjective aspect is the same mind but a different aspect. The subjective aspect of an eye consciousness is the eye consciousness. It is the mechanism within the eye consciousness that allows the mind to later recall it.
COMPARING PERCEPTUAL AND CONCEPTUAL MINDS
At this stage it is worth reviewing the two main divisions of consciousness, perception and conception, and expanding upon them. The chart below details this.
engages in its object positively, by affirmation engages in its object negatively, by elimination
engages in its object as it is (without exaggerating) does not engage in the object as it is
engages in a real object does not engage in a real object
is generally very accurate is always mistaken
does not provide any integrative content provides integrative content
A perception apprehends an object without any labels or stories. It is not mistaken, unless there is some short-term physical problem, such as when we squeeze our eyes shut and see two moons. In contrast, as we have seen, conceptual minds are always mistaken with regard to their object.
It is not the role of the perception to identify the object; it apprehends only raw data. The conceptual mind then immediately adds the content and discriminates one object from another: eliminating what it is not, and identifying what it is, labeling it, and categorizing it. This process can also quickly arrive at a judgment about the object: good or bad, beautiful or ugly, friend or enemy, and so on.
Basically, all phenomena are either impermanent or permanent—there is no other alternative. Impermanent things depend on causes and conditions to come into existence and make up most of the things of our world. Permanent things do not function, nor do they depend on causes and conditions. Permanent things include states such as emptiness or concepts such as time. They do exist, but are unchanging, which is not to say they are eternal—they are not—but while they exist, they are not subject to cause and effect.
Impermanent things are also called positive or established, referring to the way the mind apprehends them, whereas permanent things can be called negative or eliminative.
Perceptions apprehend impermanent things positively. The eye sees a book—an impermanent thing—or the ear hears a sound. Conceptions apprehend permanent things. We can see how time and maybe emptiness may be permanent, since they are somewhat abstract to us right now. But what about the mind that apprehends a beautiful sunset? Surely a sunset is an impermanent thing? The actual sunset is, but not so the image of the sunset that the conceptual mind apprehends. That image is permanent, because it cannot perform a function and does not change moment to moment while it exists.
The sense consciousnesses operate without interpreting their apprehended object. When the eye sees something, there is no elimination process. According to some Buddhist schools, between the object and the consciousness is the aspect, which has a direct one-to-one relationship with the object and hence is nonmistaken. The sense consciousness sees the object directly and positively. The conceptual consciousness in contrast apprehends its object indirectly, through mediation, and negatively, through elimination.
A mental event is passive or active depending on whether a process is involved. The perceptual mind involves no process and therefore engages passively with its object. The conceptual mind, on the other hand, always operates through an intermediary and therefore engages actively with its object. A conceptual construct arises between the object and the mind—whether this be the label, the feeling of attraction or aversion, or any of the other sorts of elaboration that go on—the internal dialogue of comparison, judgment, and identification.
The perceptual mind only collects the raw sense data; the conceptual mind does everything else. The perceptual mind is like the latent image on the film in a camera—light rays hitting sensitized film. The conceptual mind develops and prints the film (and complains because it is out of focus!).
Usually, in our everyday lives, perceptual and conceptual minds work together. Directly perceiving a red traffic light and not going any further in the process is dangerous. We need the conceptual mind to label traffic light and red and enter into an internal dialogue that causes our foot to hit the brake. As we have discussed, however, the conceptual mind adds more information than is necessary, exaggerating and even getting it plain wrong. In reality, our partner is not the most wonderful person in the world (or the least), and this new flat screen TV will not be the key to never-ending pleasure.
Normally we experience the world around us without questioning it. Sights appear, sounds happen—they all become part of our experience, filtered, sorted, judged, and either filed or discarded. Unconscious of the mechanics of our mental life, we mindlessly develop attractions and aversions, we remember and forget, under the sway of mental addictions and habits. If we are ever to gain any control over this circus within our heads, we need to understand conception’s power, and the way consciousness creates the world we encounter. We need to liberate ourselves from servitude to the negative conceptions that now dominate us
Valid Cognition
PRAMANA
When direct perception is not mistaken with regards to its object, it is called valid cognition. In Sanskrit the term is pramana (pra MAH na; Tib. tsema), a term used in both Buddhist and non-Buddhist epistemology. Non-Buddhist schools generally use this term to refer to two things: an instrument for gaining knowledge of an object and the knowledge itself.
For Buddhist schools, pramana refers to knowledge itself. It is a nondeceptive cognition. Dharmakirti and Dignaga assert that a consciousness is only valid and correct if it is nondeceptive, and if that is so, then that consciousness is pramana.
In his Drop of Reasoning (Nyayabindu) Dharmakirti further states that valid cognition is a prerequisite for the fulfillment of all human purposes.25 All roads to enlightenment must cross the threshold of valid cognition, says Dharmakirti. There is no use looking for fulfillment and happiness in anything if it stems from a mistaken mind, because sooner or later suffering will result. Without pramana, we might seek chocolate ice cream but end up with chilis. Of course Dharmakirti is referring to much deeper levels of mistaken cognition than this, things like seeing others without the lens of self-interest and seeing phenomena without the distortion of self-existence.
On a common-sense level, we can all see the truth in this. Misfortunes sometimes seem to come “out of the blue,” but generally, when we suffer, we can identify mistakes we have made somewhere along the way. We make physical mistakes, such as not watching where we are stepping, or verbal mistakes, such as speaking without considering another’s feelings—but the mistakes that matter most are made with the mind. The much-quoted Buddhist teaching is that the root of all our problems is ignorance, and that ignorance is the fundamental mistaken mind. It is not a mind of spaced-out nothingness, or a mind that simply does not know, but an active mind of mis-knowing. Therefore, it is vital that we understand and develop valid minds while eliminating those that are mistaken.
A valid mind correctly differentiates between existent and nonexistent objects. It can see that the horns of a rabbit are nonexistent and that the table in front of us does in fact exist.
THE ETYMOLOGY OF PRAMANA
This Sanskrit term pramana is a precise technical term. Though I have not studied Sanskrit formally, I will try briefly to explain the term. Sanskrit words can be divided into base terms and either suffixes or prefixes. Grammatically, the word pramana can be split into the words prama, the base term meaning “knowledge-event,” and ana, the suffix, which in this case is the active agent meaning “to bring about.” Although pramana is generally translated into English as valid cognition, the term encompasses a broader meaning. The Western concept knowledge implies something enduring. In Buddhism, in contrast, knowledge is not static but momentary, and this is reflected in the use of the active term ana.
In the monasteries, as a learning tool, we divide the word slightly differently, into the syllables pra and mana. Pra has many different meanings depending on the context: among them “excellent,” “perfection,” “first,” and “newly.be dana means to measure, cognize, recognize, or apprehend. So pramana literally means to cognize perfectly, excellently, or newly. Different schools interpret this differently. Prasangika Madhyamaka scholars, for instance, read the pra to mean “main” or “prime.” For when it is taken to mean “first” or “newly,” then only the first moment of a mind can be valid, which is limiting. We will come back to this point below.
NONDECEPTIVENESS
For a consciousness to be nondeceptive, the outcome must be consistent with the intention, meaning the object we are seeking must be determined correctly. Suppose we are looking for our friend John in a crowd. He is tall, bald, and wears glasses, and we think we see him in the distance. The consciousness has apprehended its object. When we move to the other side of the room, we see that the shape we took to be John is in fact another man. However, directly behind him is John. We sought John and found him, so there is agreement between the goal and the outcome—the practical effect is nondeceptive—but there has been a deception of the intention in that our actual object differed from the object we cognized.
A valid cognition can be either a direct perception or an inference. Inferential valid cognitions are discussed below. For either kind of consciousness to be a valid cognition, it needs to be nondeceptive in two ways: in terms of its practical effect (you want A and you get A) and in terms its capacity to capture the object accurately.
This means that cognition is more than just getting things right—it is getting things right intentionally. The eye consciousness looks at the table and mind apprehends it, and there is no incongruity between the intention and the practical effect. However, there is no valid cognition between the eye consciousness seeing Dave and the mind mistaking him for John, since the intention and the practical outcome are not in accord.
NOVELTY
If, as I mentioned above, one takes the first syllable of pramana to mean new, then a valid cognition must know its object newly. In fact Dharmakirti states that: “With respect to this, valid cognition is only that which first sees an uncommon object.”26
This element of novelty is quite important. Although a mental event that repeats previous information can be beneficial and may reveal correct information, because it is a repetition of a previous consciousness and therefore gives no new information, technically it cannot be a valid cognition. If it adds nothing new to the cognitive process, it is, in terms of cognition, irrelevant.
For example, according to most Buddhist epistemology, memory is not a valid consciousness, because it is a mere conceptual repetition of previous knowledge. There is no direct exposure to an object or event to ensure its validity, and so no matter how clearly and correctly we remember something, it no longer exists except as a mental fabrication. A nondeceptive mind must apprehend the object freshly. Thus memory can never be nondeceptive.
Gendun Drub wrote many commentaries on Dharmakirti, and he is one who claims that the pra in pramana definitely means new and therefore if a cognition does not reveal new information, it is not a valid cognition.27 This view is widely held, but it can lead to complications. Khedrup Je, one of Lama Tsongkhapa it s two main disciples, disagreed with the widely held view, arguing that novelty was not in fact a prerequisite for validity. He defined valid cognition instead as “the cognition that is nondeceptive with respect to the object that it [the cognition] realizes by its own power.”28
So what does by its own power mean? It means without the help of another consciousness. Some masters assert that this implies a new apprehension, because a second moment of apprehending an object depends on the first moment. This does not refer to the general way that any moment of consciousness always depends on the preceding one, but to the specific way in which subsequent cognitions of the same object become dulled, losing the power of that initial moment. Here, we are not speaking of the conceptual minds that come into being immediately after any perception, but the raw direct perception itself, in its second or subsequent moments.
Other masters say the second moment of perception is still valid, but differentiate it from the subsequent moments of mental apprehension, the conceptions about the object. For them the idea of “newly” excludes only conceptions and not subsequent perceptions. If your definition of valid cognition is a mind that apprehends an object “by its own power,” then second moments and so on can therefore still be novel if that apprehension is free of other minds—free, specifically, of conceptual superimposition.
INFERENTIAL VALID COGNITIONS
Within Tibetan Buddhism, it is generally agreed that there are only two sources of valid cognitions: perception and inference. Other philosophies also cite testimony, such as the words of a realized master, as a source of valid cognitions, or analogies that point to the truth, but these are disclaimed by most Buddhist scholars, including Dharmakirti and Dignaga.
As we’ve already seen, perceptual valid cognitions are simply our sense consciousnesses perceiving an object directly and correctly. To understand how an inference can be correct takes further consideration. Inference is a concept, and by definition concepts are mistaken minds, so is there a contradiction? We need to look carefully at the difference in meaning—within Buddhist philosophy, at any rate—between valid and mistaken. Some minds can be both.
Besides the usual twofold division of existent things into impermanent and permanent, there is also a division of phenomena into obvious, hidden, and very hidden things. Obvious things are things that we ordinary people can recognize without depending on inference, such as the everyday objects available to our five senses. However, our sense perceptions cannot apprehend hidden objects. To cognize such objects, we need inference.
The usual and very clear example of this is inferring fire from smoke. This is the example that eight-year-old monks love debating! When visible to our eye consciousness, fire is an obvious object. But it can also be hidden when, for example, there is a forest fire in the distance. All we see is smoke, but based on this appearance we can infer the existence of fire. This mind is valid because the mind accords with the object, although there is no direct perception.
It is the same with things like subtle impermanence or even our birthdays. We have no direct perception of the day we were born, not even a memory of it. We must rely on our parents’ honesty and birth certificates. Despite all that, we still seem convinced enough to celebra���te! Many of the really important ideas in Buddhism are hidden phenomena—emptiness, enlightenment, reincarnation, and so on. To understand and to finally realize such things definitely depends on inference.
The third category, very hidden objects, takes this all one step further. We can be certain that we are the product of our mother and father, but have no idea why we have a certain personality or why were born in a particular place. Buddhism says these things are due to karma, and at its most subtle level karma is a very hidden object. Very hidden objects can only be seen directly by a buddha and are thus penetrated by neither inference nor the direct perception of non-enlightened beings.
Through inference we can understand that we were born on such and such a date, which is a valid inference, but because it is a conceptual mind and not a perceptual mind it is still mistaken in that it does not apprehend its object directly. A conceptual mind is always a mistaken mind, even if it is nondeceptive. Seeing smoke and inferring fire is correct, or valid, but the mind that infers fire is also mistaken because it is conceptual and does not therefore directly apprehend its object.
Perceptions cannot apprehend concepts. My eye consciousness can apprehend the table in front of me but not the table’s emptiness. For this reason, the conceptual mind of inference is a vital part of spiritual development, where we naturally move from a shallow, intellectual understanding of the concept of something like emptiness to a deeper one, and then to a valid inferential cognition. Without this, we could never go on to realize emptiness directly, and enlightenment would be impossible.
The belief that because conceptual minds are mistaken they are therefore never valid is erroneous, for it leads to the verdict that realizing emptiness or enlightenment is impossible. Only through conceptual minds can we attain such states. In order to avoid the dangers of acceptance based on mere dogma, we must understand epistemology well and employ valid reasoning. To do that, we must examine perception—the phenomenon that bridges the conceptual mind and the external object.
Many masters make this fundamental point: if we trace all valid cognitions back to their origins, we arrive at perception. Eventually any valid cognition—perception or inference—must be validated by perception. Seeing smoke in the distance and apprehending that there is fire is mistaken in regards to its appearing object—we have no direct proof of fire—but valid because there is fire. But this inferential understanding is only possible through the valid perception of smoke. And we are only able to ascertain and accept this link between smoke and fire because we have previously perceived this causal relationship.
Perception and conception continually work hand in hand to bring us a complete picture of the world.
