The Buddhist Unconscious

The Alaya-vijñana in the context of Indian Buddhist Thought

William S Waldron, William S. Waldron

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• Print ISBN:
  9780415298094
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134428854
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Buddhism

This is the story of fifth century CE India, when the Yogacarin Buddhists tested the awareness of unawareness, and became aware of human unawareness to an extraordinary degree. They not only explicitly differentiated this dimension of mental processes from conscious cognitive processes, but also offered reasoned arguments on behalf of this dimension of mind. This is the concept of the 'Buddhist unconscious', which arose just as philosophical discourse in other circles was fiercely debating the limits of conscious awareness, and these ideas in turn had developed as a systematisation of teachings from the Buddha himself. For us in the twenty-first century, these teachings connect in fascinating ways to the Western conceptions of the 'cognitive unconscious' which have been elaborated in the work of Jung and Freud. This important study reveals how the Buddhist unconscious illuminates and draws out aspects of current western thinking on the unconscious mind. One of the most intriguing connections is the idea that there is in fact no substantial 'self' underlying all mental activity; 'the thoughts themselves are the thinker'. William S. Waldron considers the implications of this radical notion, which, despite only recently gaining plausibility, was in fact first posited 2,500 years ago.

Part I
THE BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT OF THE ĀLAYA-VIJÑĀNA

1
THE EARLY BUDDHIST BACKGROUND

The three marks of existence

Dissatisfaction, dis-ease, and suffering, in Pāli dukkha (Sanskrit: duḥkha),¹ that ubiquitous quality of our conditioned existence,² is the leitmotif of all Buddhist teaching, its cessation its overriding purpose.³ Understanding the conditions that bring about this suffering, and undertaking the activities that lead to its cessation, constitute the contents and aims of the buddha-dharma, the teachings and practices passed down in the name of the Buddha.⁴ The fundamental causes of this dissatisfaction and suffering are ignorance (P. avijjā; S. avidyā), a basic misunderstanding of how things actually are; craving or thirst (P. taṇhā; S. tṛṣṇa) for pleasure and for continued existence; and the unhealthy actions (akusalakamma) these first two bring about. This essay on the development of a Buddhist concept of unconscious mental processes afflicted with such delusions and desires is nearly exclusively concerned with the dynamic interplay between these basic causes, which constitute the contents of the second Noble Truth, the Arising of Suffering.

Ignorance is traditionally defined as regarding what is impermanent as permanent, what is suffering as pleasure, and what is non-self as self, since, the Buddhists insist, what is impermanent, filled with disease, and devoid of intrinsic self-identity, cannot afford any independent and lasting satisfaction.⁵ Ignoring these basic realities, we nevertheless attempt to escape from such transience and such suffering, and to attain permanent and pleasurable states by identifying ourselves with and becoming attached to what are ultimately impermanent and unpleasant phenomena. Clinging to their apparent solidity and stability, we bind ourselves to such phenomena, and thereby increase and perpetuate our own deluded existence. As the Buddha⁶ declared:

Whoever…saw anything in the world that seems lovely and pleasant as permanent, saw it as happy, saw it as good, saw it as health, saw it as safety, they made craving to grow. They in making craving to grow made the basis [of existence (upadhi)] to grow; in making the basis grow, they make suffering grow; in making suffering to grow, they were not liberated from birth, from old age, from sufferings, from sorrows, from despairs – yea, I declare, they were not liberated from ill.

(S II 109. PTS)

Above all, we reify or substantialize the continuity of our lives, imagining that there is, or we are, a permanent, substantive self, an unchanging locus of experience which can enjoy permanent, pleasurable states. We mistakenly think, as the Buddha put it:

That which is this self for me that speaks, that experiences and knows, that experiences, now here, now there, the fruition of deeds lovely or depraved, it is this self for me that is permanent, stable, eternal, not subject to change, that will stand firm for ever and ever.

(M I 8 PTS)⁷

In the Buddhist view, however, no such permanent, unchanging self can be found. Instead, our ever-changing mental and physical processes are likened to a stream that arises, flows, and passes away depending upon nothing but the various conditions that create and sustain it. The processes which constitute human existence are categorized into five groups, which the Buddha called the “aggregates of grasping” (upādāna-khandha) since we tend to identify with and grasp onto them as our “self.” These are the aggregates of form, feeling, apperception, karmic formations or volitions, and cognitive awareness or consciousness (rūpa, vedanā, saññā, sankhāra, viññāṇa). As the term “aggregate” indicates, however, these are not independent elements or entities in and of themselves but rather distinct classes of processes. None of them should be conceived of in relation to a permanent self (S III 46), nor should such a self be conceived of apart from these processes, for all of them are characterized by the so-called three marks of existence: impermanence, dissatisfaction, and non-self.⁸

Nevertheless, we tenaciously cling to such notions of a self, and to the objects that seem to support it, imagining they somehow secure lasting satisfaction. Ironically, it is just this preoccupation with a self, with identifying something as “I” or “mine,” that, in the Buddhist view, brings about suffering, not ease, bondage, not liberation. As the Buddha observed,

He regards feeling as self…apperception as self…volitional formations as self…consciousness as self, or self as possessing consciousness, or consciousness as in self, or self as in consciousness. That consciousness of his changes and alters. With the change and alteration of consciousness, his consciousness becomes preoccupied with the change of consciousness. Agitation and a constellation of mental states born of preoccupation with the change of consciousness remain obsessing his mind. Because his mind is obsessed, he is frightened, distressed, and anxious, and through clinging becomes agitated.

(S III 16 f.)

This is, of course, a vicious circle: in craving for what is “happy, good, healthy and safe,” in imagining a self that enjoys them, we inadvertently increase the conditions that lead to suffering, anxiety, and distress. For as long as there is craving for and attachment to self, the Buddha declared, so will there be further distress, in response to which there will be further actions that lead to further distress and so on. It is, in short, our misguided desires for some truly lasting, satisfactory existence within this conditioned world, along with the actions taken to secure it, that keeps us continuously bound to the repetitive cognitive and behavioral patterns called “samsara.” The way out of the vicious cycle, the Buddhists suggest, comes through understanding their underlying causes – the interactive dynamics between ignorance and grasping, the actions they instigate, and the results these lead to – and gradually reversing their deleterious results. And this is the fundamental aim of the formula of dependent arising.

The formula of dependent arising

The relationship between action and mind, and mind and action, has intrigued philosophers and mystics for millennia. What is the relationship between our actions and our thoughts, our awareness and our behavior? Do thoughts always direct behavior, or is it, perhaps, the other way around? Does one have priority over the other? Is one fundamental while the other merely epiphenomenal? Early Buddhist traditions considered either of these alternatives objectionable and depicted instead a reciprocal relationship between mind and actions, a relationship in which our past actions affect our present states of mind, our present states of mind affect our present actions, and these present actions in turn affect future states of mind. This reciprocal relationship, perhaps the earliest conceptualization of what we now call feedback, is depicted in the well-known formula of dependent arising (P. paṭicca-samuppāda; S. pratītya-samutpāda), arguably the most distinctive aspect of early Buddhist thought and one whose ramifications will continue to unfold throughout the history of Buddhist thought.

In this chapter we will examine this formula and its implications at some length, not only because the notion of dependent arising expresses the core of Buddhist thought – that all phenomena arise in dependence upon other phenomena – but also because the multifarious formulations of dependent arising (in its varying lengths and alternate members) touch upon all the key concepts and problems later associated with the ālaya-vijñāna model of mind. We will therefore use this formula of dependent arising to provide the basic framework for our extended examination of the meanings and functions of viññāṇa (S. vijñāna) – as both “consciousness” and “cognitive awareness” – as well as its complex and interactive relationship with action, that is, karma, and with the cognitive and emotional afflictions (kilesa; S. kleśa) that instigate these actions.

To adumbrate our argument, viññāṇa (S. vijñāna) as described in the various formulas of dependent arising exhibits two discrete aspects or functions: as “consciousness” and as “cognitive awareness.” The first refers to viññāṇa as an underlying sentience which flows in an unbroken stream of mind throughout multiple lifetimes, while the second refers to viññāṇa in terms of six modalities of cognitive awareness which momentarily arise in conjunction with discrete cognitive objects. Although the early texts evince no overt distinction, let alone discordance, between these two “aspects” of viññāṇa, such a distinction can be – and in later commentaries nearly always was – discerned through careful textual and conceptual analysis. This distinction is crucial to our reconstruction of the development of the ālaya-vijñāna for two reasons. First, subsequent Abhidharma analyses of mind focused primarily upon manifest cognitive awareness, making the aspect of viññāṇa as “consciousness” conceptually problematic – a situation to which the ālaya-vijñāna was, in large part, a response. Second, the two “aspects” of viññāṇa that are discernable in these early texts also clearly foreshadow the bifurcation of viññāṇa (vijñāna) in the Yogācāra school into a subsisting, subliminal, and accumulating consciousness, represented by the ālaya-vijñāna, and the momentary, supraliminal forms of awareness, represented by “manifest cognitive awareness” (S. pravṛtti-vijñāna). We thus find the antecedents of these later notions in the earlier Buddhist texts.

These two “dimensions” of viññāṇa are also closely related to a similar distinction among the cognitive and emotional afflictions (P. kilesa; S. kleśa), between their persisting, latent forms as underlying tendencies (P. anusaya; S. anuśaya) and their momentary, active forms as “manifest outbursts” (P. pariyuṭṭhāna; S. paryavasthāna) – a distinction that became problematic in Abhidharma discourse for much the same reasons vijñana did. This eventually led the Yogācāra school to conceptualize a distinct strata of unconscious self-grasping called “afflictive mentation” (S. kliṣṭa-manas), one that roughly parallels the ālaya-vijñāna itself. We will thus also briefly examine the role that these self-centered afflictions played within the early Buddhist doctrines. Together, they articulate a vision of circular causality between consciousness, the cognitive and emotional afflictions, the activities these instigate, and the results that they collectively accrue, a vision expressed in the series of dependent arising.

* * *

The theory of dependent arising (paṭicca-samuppāda) seeks to understand the dynamic relationship between ignorance, the afflictions, and their ensuing actions, by analyzing the patterns through which they arise, persist, and pass away in dependence upon their supporting conditions. That is, the processes that perpetuate our conditioned existence are neither completely random nor completely determined; rather, they follow regular and discernable patterns of arising. It is these patterns that are expressed in the formula of dependent origination, an understanding of which was considered indispensable for reversing their deleterious consequences. The simplest expression of this arising in dependence on conditions is formulated as follows:

When this exists, that comes to be; with the arising of this, that arises. When this does not exist, that does not come to be; with the cessation of this, that ceases.

(M II 32)⁹

As we can see, this is formulated in two directions: the conditions that lead from the existence of one factor to the arising of the next (anuloma), and, in reverse order, the conditions that lead to their cessation (paṭiloma). This theory of causality is neither solely simultaneous nor exclusively sequential, it is a theory of concomitant conditionality: when X is, Y comes to be; when X arises, Y arises, and so on. In a text called Nidāna-vagga or the Sayings on Causes, the Buddha presents the traditional twelve-member series of dependent arising in this same fashion, first describing the conditions leading to the arising of this world of suffering, and then, in reverse order, those leading to its cessation:

And what, monks, is dependent origination? With ignorance as condition, karmic formations [come to be]; with karmic formations as condition, consciousness; with consciousness as condition, name-and-form; with name-and-form as condition, the six sense-spheres; with the six sense-spheres as condition, contact; with contact as condition, feeling; with feeling as condition, craving; with craving as condition, grasping; with grasping as condition, becoming; with becoming as condition, birth; with birth as condition, aging-and-death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, displeasure and despair come to be. Such is the origin of this whole mass of suffering. This, monks, is called dependent origination.

But from the remainderless fading away and cessation of ignorance comes cessation of karmic formations; with the cessation of karmic formations, cessation of consciousness; with the cessation of consciousness, cessation of name-and-form; with the cessation of name-and-form, cessation of the six sense-spheres; with the cessation of the six sensespheres, cessation of contact; with the cessation of contact, cessation of feeling; with the cessation of feeling, cessation of craving; with the cessation of craving, cessation of grasping; with the cessation of grasping, cessation of becoming; with the cessation of becoming, cessation of birth; with the cessation of birth, aging-and-death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, displeasure, and despair cease. Such is the cessation of this whole mass of suffering.

(S II 1)¹⁰

Although this twelve-member series was eventually to became the standard version, variations of it are found throughout the early Buddhist texts, many of which we shall examine below. The Nidāna-saṃyutta itself, however, briefly describes each of the twelve members or limbs (aṅga) of the series:

Ignorance (avijjā) is defined in terms of the four Noble Truths, as “ignorance concerning suffering, the origin of suffering, the cessation of suffering, and the path leading to the cessation of suffering” (S II 4). That is to say, one of the condi...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• ROUTLEDGECURZON CRITICAL STUDIES IN BUDDHISM
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• PREFACE
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• THEMATIC INTRODUCTION: A BUDDHIST CRITIQUE OF THE CONSTRUCTION OF SELF AND WORLD
• PART I THE BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT OF THE ĀLAYA-VIJÑĀNA
• 1 THE EARLY BUDDHIST BACKGROUND
• 2 THE ABHIDHARMA CONTEXT
• PART II THE ĀLAYA-VIJÑĀNA IN THE YOGĀCĀRA TRADITION
• 3 THE ĀLAYA-VIJÑĀNA IN THE EARLY TRADITION
• 4 THE ĀLAYA-VIJÑĀNA IN THE MAHĀYĀNA-SAṂGRAHA: 1. BRINGING IT ALL BACK HOME
• 5 THE ĀLAYA-VIJÑĀNA IN THE MAHĀYĀNA-SAṂGRAHA: 2. LOOKING BEYOND
• PART III APPENDICES
• APPENDIX I THE SERIES OF DEPENDENT ARISING: AFFLICTION, ACTION, AND THEIR RESULTS
• APPENDIX II INDEX OF RELATED CONTROVERSIES
• APPENDIX III TRANSLATION: THE PRAVṚTTI AND NIVṚTTI PORTIONS OF THE VINIŚCAYASAṂGRAHAṆĪ OF THE YOGĀCĀRABHŪMI
• NOTES
• BIBLIOGRAPHY OF WORKS CITED