Buddhism and Deconstruction

Towards a Comparative Semiotics

Dr Youxuan Wang, Wang Youxuan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781136845802
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This is a semiotic study of a corpus of texts that Kumârajîva (344-413 CE), Paramârtha (499~569 CE) and Xuanzang (599~664 CE) transmitted from India to China, featuring a critical reading of the Dazhidu Lun (T1509, Mahâ-Prajñâpâramitâ-upadeúa-Úâstra), San Wuxing Lun (T1617, Try-asvabhâva-prakara.na), and Guangbai Lun (T1571, Catu.húataka-úâstra-kârika). Focusing its attention on the Mahâyâna Buddhist notion of samatâ, it identifies a Buddhist semiotics which anticipates Derrida's invocation of the notion of the Same in his deconstruction of binary oppositions.

1

Three grades of understanding in the Hīnayāna analytic system: A structural study of the list of seventy-five factors

In this book I will focus my attention on the semiotic implications of the literary legacy that Kumārajīva, Paramārtha and Xuánzàng have left with us. The three great translators saw themselves as Mahāyānists, but they were also specialists in the Hīnayāna Buddhist doctrines.¹ Kumārajīva began his religious career as a student of Abhidharma long before he studied Prajñāpāramitā and Madhyamaka. Paramārtha was the first to introduce systematically to China the Vijñānavāda branch of the Mahāyāna system, but he was also the first to translate Vasubhandu II’ Abhidharmakośabhāśya into Chinese. Xuánzàng was the most prolific translator of the Prajñāpāramitā and Vijñānavāda literature, but he was just as productive in his translations of the Abhidharma texts. Each of these three translators has left with us a sizeable collection of texts that belong to the Hīnayāna Buddhist tradition.

In two senses a preliminary study of the Hīnayāna Buddhist system is compulsory for a serious engagement with the Mahāyāna Buddhist texts. Firstly, Mahāyāna Buddhist philosophy emerged in the history of Buddhist doctrinal development partly as a critique of some Hīnayāna motifs. It would be difficult to grasp the subject matter of Mahāyāna Buddhist texts without a knowledge of the writings of their opponents. Secondly, the Mahāyāna Buddhist system inherited from the Hīnayāna Buddhist system a rich legacy of technical vocabulary. Although critical of Hīnayāna doctrines, the Mahāyānists were just as much thankful to the Hīnayānists for having systematised a set of categories of thought for the interpretation of the Buddha’s original teachings. Many concepts that are theoretically elaborated in the Hīnayāna Buddhist texts continue to thrive in the Mahāyāna Buddhist philosophical discourse.

It is not my intention to conduct a comprehensive review of the entire Hīnayāna Buddhist system here. A systematic treatment would demand a much larger space than a short chapter of a small book. Our purpose is to get a general picture of the most fundamental philosophical concerns characteristic of this system. I hope to achieve this purpose by looking at a particular doctrinal sample. Up to a certain point I believe that a part of a fully developed system will in some significant ways reflect the whole. A case in point is the list of seventy-five dharmas under five categories. The use of lists for itemising categories of thought and enumerating the characteristics of existential factors under these categories is a salient feature of the Hīnayāna analytic texts. This particular list accompanied by analyses has been considered to be the definitive statement of Sarvāstivāda metaphysics, and many of the Sautrāntikas’s disagreements with the Sarvāstivādins revolve round the logical implications of setting these categories as generic names for five paradigmatic classes of existential factors. Hence, the present study of Hīnayāna semiotic thought is concerned only with the Sarvāstivāda and Sautrāntika writings extant in the Chinese sources.

In what follows, I will first examine the principle of coherence that provides the logical basis for the structure of this list. I will pay particular attention to the questions of why these five categories have emerged as a complete classification of all the existential factors and what Hīnayāna epistemological concerns have been expressed in the structure of the list. Then, I will examine the notion of existential factors in the Hīnayāna critique of naïve realism. The Hīnayāna philosophers did not develop lists of existential factors as catalogues of sensible objects in the empirical world. Instead, they were drawing a distinction between the actual and the nominal by setting these factors against the sensible objects. Finally, I will take up the semiotic strand in the fabric of Hīnayāna onto-epistemology. The opposition between the nominal and the actual as encountered in the analyses of the factors is based on a distinction between two types of sign: nimitta that is linked with the merely nominal and lakṣaṇa that hints at the intelligible. It is interesting to note that the list also considers the question of the sign in language.

1.1. Dialectics in the structure of the five categories

The Hīnayāna philosophical discourse is analytical in its manner of presentation. In nearly every canonical text, we come across passages that enumerate categories of thought for the analysis of dharmas. If we look at the style in which these categories are organised we will have the impression that these analyses under the name of Abhidharma consist in a set of logical propositions and statistical figures. Sometimes the author of a particular text is defining the domain of discourse. Sometimes he is itemising the objects of a particular category. Sometimes he is assigning a predicate to a particular set of items. Sometimes he is specifying the number of items that can be predicated of a particular property. Traditionally, the term mātṛkā (matrix) is used to describe the genre of this type of text. Following modern conventions of symbolic notation, one might be able to translate the contents of these propositions into symbolic sentences, statistical tables and charts.

The list of Seventy-five Factors under Five Categories (see figure 1.1) is an example of such analyses. As the result of a continual expansion of categories, this list is first given its definitive formulation in Vasumitra’s Prakaraṇapāda (T1541, T1452), and its status as an authoritative statement of Sarvāstivāda taxonomy is established when it is adopted in Pāśva and Vasumitra’s Mahāvibhāṣā (T1545). The Taishō Tripiṭaka also includes a Chinese translation of the self-contained treatise Pañcavastuka (T1556) devoted to the analysis of this classification. Vasubhandu II’s Abhidharmakośabhāśya (T1558) begins with a detailed discussion of each of the seventy-five dharmas, and it is a Sautrāntika critique of the list as given in the Mahāvibhāṣā. Saṅghabhadra also takes up this problematic when he replies to Vasubhandu II’s critique in his Nyāyānusāra (T1562).

According to Vasubhandu II, the five categories of factors were broached to provide an account of the necessary conditions of possibility for the emergence of any identifiable factors.² This explanation has at least two implications. (1) The Hīnayāna analysts of dharmas wanted to provide a complete list of everything that counts as a dharma. Accordingly, we can read the entire set of items in the list as comprising the entire universe of the Abhidharma discourse. (2) They wanted to categorise all the factors that constitute the condition of possibility for the rise of any identifiable dharma. For instance, when thought (

, citta) is preoccupied with a material form (

, rūpa), a multitude of factors are simultaneously involved. These factors that accompany the rise of a particular dharma can be organised under the five general headings:³

Figure 1.1. Seventy-five Factors under Five Categories

A. Material Form (

, rūpa): This category includes ten sensible and one intelligible objects in the phenomenal world. The ten sensible items are aspects of existence that appeal to the senses. They are further divided into two types: the first five items represent the internal factors as they constitute the physical aspect of the perceiving subject and the second five items are external factors as they form the perceived aspects of the external world. Unlike the merely sensible, the unmanifest (avijñapti) is known only to the individual who experiences it at the very moment when it arises, and it is not perceived by parties who do not share the experience. As it is not out there for public gaze, it is named ‘the unmanifest’. As it has elevated itself above the merely sensible and is available to understanding, we might also treat it as the intelligible.⁴ The idea is that, when an identifiable item is to be given the status of dharma, it must appear either as a sensible or as an intelligible object in one of the eleven forms.

B. Thought (

, citta): At first glance there is only one item listed under this category, but the term citta is a generic name for consciousness at two different levels. The Prakaraṇapāda says that citta consists of the consciousness of the internal mind and the five types of consciousness regarding the external phenomenal world.⁵ The five types of external consciousness address the ten manifest and sensible items under the category of form, and the internal consciousness responds to the unmanifest but intelligible item. The Abhidharmakośabhāśya also draws our attention to the fact that, as the generic name for two types of consciousness, citta only represents the initial moment of awareness.⁶

C. Mental concomitants (

, caittas): The Sarvāstivāda writers cite the sūtras and argue that, accompanying the rise of initial consciousness in the mind, there will be a complex of mental states, which are generally moods, emotions, identifications, intentions etc.⁷ In Vasubhandu II’s list which follows the Mahāvibhāṣā the items under this heading are further divided into six types: (a) mahābhũmikas or mental states that will invari...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction: The pursuit of signs
• 1. Three grades of understanding in the Hlnayana analytic system: A structural study of the list of seventy-five factors
• 2. Undoing the Hlnayana Onto-epistemological categories: A semiotic approach to the list of eighteen points about emptiness
• 3. Three ways of looking at the un-arisen: The Same in Kumārajīva’s Madhyamaka system
• 4. Dialectic of construction and de-construction in the Vijnānavāda system: The Same in Paramārtha’s Shēlun system
• 5. Deconstruction of time in Dharmapāla’s commentary on Aryadeva’s Treatise in Four Hundred Verses: The Same in Xuanzang’s Faxiang system
• 6. Three ways of looking at the un-arisen in French deconstruction: Derrida’s conception of the Same
• Bibliography
• Index