INTRODUCTION TO THE  STUDY OF BUDDHIST PHILOSOPHY

SEMINAR SEVEN

TEXT VII. The Elder Tålaputta addresses his mind[1]

“Tålaputta said:

[0] When indeed shall I dwell alone, companionless in mountain caves, seeing by insight all existence as impermanent? This thought of mine, when indeed it will be? When seeing by insight that this body is impermanenr, a nest of death and disease, assailed by death and old age, shall I dwell alone in the wood, entirely rid of fear? When shall I, a sage wearing a torn robe, in yellow robes, unselfish, without sinful inclinations, having struck down desire and hatred and delusion, dwell happily, having gone to the wood? When seeing by insight that this body is impermanent, a nest of death and disease, assailed by death and old age, shall I dwell in the wood, rid of fear? When shall I possess of calmness, by wisdom see innumerable sights, and sounds, smells, tastes, things to touch, and mental phenomena as blazing mass? When this thought of mine will be? When shall I regard as no more than wood and grass and creepers these innumerable mental phenomena (dharmas)? When , hearing in the mountain cavern the cry of peacocl, shall I, rising up, give thought to the attainment of the undying[2]? When indeed it will be?

[1] For many years I have been begged by you: “Enough of this dwelling in a house for you” – why therefore are you urging me on, mind, now that I am wanderer? Having given up all, in the family circle friends and dear ones and kinsmen, in the outside world sport and delights and the strands of sensual pleasure, I have entered on this; even then are you not pleased with me, mind? “Dwelling in the grove, which resounds with the cries of peacock and herons, revered by leopards and tigers, give up longing for the body; do not fail,” – so you used to urge me, mind. “With insight see properly that impermanence is suffering, that emptiness is non-self[3], and that suffering is death; restrain the mental wanderings of the mind,” – so you used to urge me, mind. “Be a forest-dweller and one who lives on alms-food, be a cemetary-dweller and one who wears rags from a dust-heap; be one who remains in a sitting position always delighting in shaking off,” – so you used to urge me, mind. Mind, when you urge me to the impermanent and unstable, you are acting in the same way as a man who, having planted a tree, wishes to cut down that very tree at the root when it is about to fruit.

[2] Formless one,[4] travelling far, wandering alone, I shall not do your bidding now. For sensual pleasures are painful, bitter, very fearful. I shall wander with my mind turned only on quenching. I did not go forth because of bad luck, nor from shamelessness, nor because of a mere whim, nor because of banishment, nor because of my livelyhood, but because I agreed to your suggestion, mind.

“The state of desiring little, and the abandonment of disparagement, and quieting of suffering are praised by good man” – so you urged me then, mind, but now you go according to your previous practice. Craving and ignorance, and various sorts of pleasant things, and pleasant sights, and happy experiences, and pleasing things and the strands of sensual pleasure have been rejected; I would not be able to swallow back what has been vomited up.

Everywhere I have done your bidding, mind; I have not made you angry in many births; and yet that which has its origin in the self[5] is because of your ingratitude; there has been journeying-on for a long time in the suffering caused by you.

Only you, mind, make us brahmans, or kshatriyas, or kingly seers[6]; one day we become vaishyas or shudras; existence as a god too is because of you alone. Not now will you injure me again, time after time showing me a masque, as it were; you sport with me as though with a madman. And yet how have I ever failed you, mind?

[3] Formerly this mind wandered where it wished, where it liked, as it pleased. Now I shall control it properly, as the hook-holder controls an elephant in rut. But the Teacher made this world appear to me as impermanent, not firm, without essence. Make me enter the Conqueror’s[7] Teaching, mind. Save me from the great flood which is very hard to cross.

This is not as it was before for you, mind. I am not likely to return to your control. I have gone forth in the Great Seer’s[8] Teaching; those like me do not suffer destruction.

Mountains, seas, rivers, the earth, the four directions, the intermediate points, the nadir and the sky, the three planes of existence, are all impermanent and assailed. Where having gone, mind, will you delight happily? What will you do to one who has firmness as his aim, my mind? I am no longer under your control, mind. Never would anyone touch a bellows with a mouth at each end, much less the body flowing with nine openings.

In a cave and on a mountain crest, frequented by wild boars and antelopes, or on a grove sprinkled by fresh water by rain, having gone to your cave-house, you will rejoice there. Birds with beautiful blue necks, with beautiful crests, with beautiful tail feathers, will delight you as you meditate in the wood. When the sky-god has rained, when the grass is four fingers high, when the grove is in full flower, like a cloud, I shall lie among the mountains like a tree. It will be soft for me, like cotton.

But I shall act as master. Let whatever is obtained be sufficient for me. Therefore I shall make you as supple as an unrelaxing man makes a bag of catskin. But I shall act as master. I shall bring you under my control by my energy, as a skilled hook-holder an elephant in rut.

[4] With you well-tamed and standing firmly, like a trainer with a straight-running horse, I am able to enter on the blissful way frequented by those who guard the mind. You will be well guarded by me, well-developed by mindfulness and free from all existences.[9] Having cut off by wisdom the follower of the wrong path, having put him back on the right path,[10] having seen the passing away and the coming into existence of the origing, you will be the heir of him who proclaims the best.[11]

Mind, you led me around the world, as it were, under the influence of the four-fold distortion.[12] Now you do not associate with the merciful sage, the cutter of bonds and fetters.[13] Like the deer roaming at will in the variegated grove, having entered the delightful mountain wreathed in clouds, I shall rejoice there on the uncrowded mountain; you, mind, will certainly perish in the clutches of samsåra.

Whatever the happiness men and women experience who live according to your desire and will, they are ignorant, being under Måra’s control, delighting in existence, your servants, mind.

SEMINAR VII: What is speaking to what? The dualism of mind and “I”, and the dualism of two minds; the beginning of Buddhist philosophy of mind

In this conversation the Elder speaks to his mind in the first person singular. His “I” is a mere grammatical term (device?) denoting the subject in the verbal sentence and as such cannot be substituted for by “he” or “it”. Addressing his mind the Elder naturally uses the second person, but speaks about the mind in the second and third person (as about “you” and “it”) and about himself in the first and third person. Himself he conventionally denotes by “I” which, however, does not connote any relation to the transcendental Self (in the sense of åtman in ancient Indian philosophy, religion, and mythology). So, “I” is used in a purely empirical sense, and when the Elder says “my mind”, “my” here is used in the same way as in “my nose” or “my tooth”. Thus, so far all is clear, but what is mind and what is “I” in our text (note, by the way, that to ask “what is “I”” is by no means the same as to ask “what am I”). The text answers:

• Mind is that which thinks (intends, wills, desires, etc.) in which sense it is considered (as it was shown in seminar I) the sixth organ of sense (and also the fifth aggregate of individual existence).
• “I”(but only in the above shown sense) is “I” that think, but not “I” which thinks (mind in the first person).

Mind is not I, for on one hand, mind is only one, thinking thread in the span of my individual existence, while on the other hand mind is not “I” in the sense of transcendental Self.

At the same time is does not follow from the second answer that  I am my mind, for if it were so it would have rendered superfluous the problem of mind (not of “I”, of course!) as the central problem of Buddhist philosophy. On the contrary, in so many places of the text we see most definitely how persistently I and mind are opposed to one another. So, for instance, when the Elder says that his mind is well guarded by him and will be free from all existences (becomings), this directly suggests that it is he who guards and yogically cultivates it, but that it is his mind which will be free from all (future) becomings. Although this may also suggest that his mind will be free because of his being free, or as it were “together” with him. It may even be deemed that, by the same token, that it is freedom of his mind that will make him free from all future becomings. And lastly from this may follow that all future becomings are mind’s becomings. At the same time, I and my mind can be opposed to one another with regard to that very freedom, as we read about it the text (VII,[4]) where the Elder says: “I will be blissful and free, while you, mind, will remain (here) and certainly perish in the turmoil of samsåra.”

I am not my mind also because, strictly Buddhistically speaking, I am all the five aggregates (skandhas) of individual existence, of which mind (in the broadest sense, that is also as consciousness and thought) comprises the first four: all but form (rüpa) is mind. There is, however, one quirk here, which makes somewhat tennuous the very opposition of I to mind, cenceived as the opposition of the form (or body) to the formless (arüpa). In VII, [2] we read: “Formless, travelling far, wandering alone, I shall not do your bidding now, mind.” This suggests the following: normally I possess the form (body) and being corporeal, I am dominated by my mind which is formless (and uncorporeal) by definition, that is devoid of any visual appearences and visibility (which are attributed to body and matter). But when I have attained to the state of yogic concentration on the formless (P. arüpa-jhåna, skr. arüpa-dhyåna) and thereby have become, myself, formless, I have also become as it were “equal” to mind as regards form. Thus, roughly speaking, in a normal state I am both mind and body, while mind is mind and nothing else. Whereas in a non-normal state of yogic concentration I am transformed mind and nothing else.

So, in the final – not yet final, still very far from it – analysis there are two minds in the early Buddhist philosophizing, untransformed and transformed, and, respectively, two I’s, corporeal and formless. It appears that this dualism of mind is complementary to the trivial philosophical dualism of “mind/body”, partly represented in Buddhist philosophy by the dualism of “form/formless”. I think that it is from the dualism of mind that the Buddhist philosophy of mind takes its origin. Then in this connection, I am the only place where those two minds coincide and where they can be yogically singled out from the whole complex of the psycho-somatic individual existence, and then separated from one another. This is very clearly shown in the episodes of our conversation in which the Elder’s mind treats “him” now as the same mind, now as other and different, now as no mind at all. So we read in VII, [1] how the Elder’s mind urges him “to restrain (by yoga) the wanderings of his (!) mind.” Or we may take the place in VII, [0] where the same mind, not yet yogically transformed, urged the Elder, quite wrongly, to stick to the impermanent and unstable worldly things. In another place the Elder reproaches his mind and says in VII, [2]: “Not now will you injure me again, time after time showing me a masque; you sport with me, mind, as though with madman.”

Thus the Buddhist philsophy of mind was born.

[One cannot help sensing something uncanny about this text; something in its tone and content is clearly of extatic hymns, dohas in Bengaly tantric Buddhism and even of some shamanic incantations. As if the recital of this address to mind were itself a mind-conjuring ritual.]

[1] As in VI, n. 1, pp. 100-105. According to this text Tåliputta was Shariputra’s pupil.

[2] Or “deathlessness” (P. amata, Skr. amrta) that has two meanings. In a general sense it is almost synonymous with complete liberation from all suffering. (So having taken decision to leave his palace and his family, the young prince Siddhartha said: “I am beating the drum of deathlessness”.) In the strictly yogical (dhyånic) sense it is, in the words of Ånanda, “the state of distancing from all sense desires; when the yogi progresses through the various stages of dhyåna ending in the cessation of all perception and feeling and annulment of all mental influxes”.

[3] It may be explained in the sense that emptiness (P. sunnata, Skr. sunyatå) and non-self, anatta are the same thing.

[4] See below, in the seminar.

[5] That is, in the wrong, mistaken idea of self.

[6] Great ascetics of the Vedic past, endowed with supernatural powers.

[7] Conqueror or Victor (P. and Skr. jîna), one of main epithets of the Buddha.

[8] Also one of the epithets of the Buddha.

[9] That is, from all future rebirths. This, however, may imply that rebirth is the rebirth of one’s mind, which would be buddhistically inconsistent.

[10] That is, the Noble Eightfold Path.

[11] That is, the Buddha.

[12] They are: distortions caused by senses, by feelings and emotions, by desires, and by wrong views.

[13] That is, the Buddha.