BUDDHISM IN KASHMIR 62

Is there a mind-body problem in Buddhism?

No and Yes in the East-West perspective
Victoria Lysenko, Institute of Philosophy
Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow
To the question proposed in the title one could give a typically Buddhist middle way answer,
that is, the problem is there in some respects, and it there in some other respects.
The mind-body problem, formulated in different forms, such as Is the mortal body (arra)
the same thing as the life-principle (jva)? Is the mortal body one thing and the life-principle another
thing? has come to us from the Buddhist Pli canon. But it seems to belong neither to the Buddha
himself nor to the Buddhist circles. In fact, these and other formulations of the mind-body
problem were known from the brhmaa-ramaa milieu outside of Buddhism, and were set aside by
the Buddha as pertaining to the so-called indeterminate (avyakata / avykta) questions
accompanied by suffering, distress, despair, fever, and not leading to disenchantment, dispassion,
cessation; to calm, direct knowledge, full awakening, unbinding.
As this standard Buddhist formula shows, the indeterminate questions didnt have for the
Buddha any soteriological value. Why? Because, according to him, they were based on the
metaphysical presupposition of a permanent self (tman). For the Buddha, any assumption of
permanence was irrelevant because, to state it as briefly as possible, his starting point was ones
experience of ones impermanent states. The Buddhas own approach to the mind-body problem,
as far as we can judge from the Nikyas, may be interpreted as a phenomenological and
experiential in as much as it gives an account of whatever bodily or mental states one is
experiencing in ones meditation.
In my opinion, the importance of bodily factors in the Buddhist explanations of ordinary
experience is connected with the importance attributed to the awareness of the somatic element
in the Buddhist meditational practices. This very awareness, in its turn, may be due to the fact that
the Buddha himself successfully practiced the dhynas only after having restored his health broken
by a harsh asceticism. The famous sati / smti, mindfulness meditation, starts from mindfulness
with regard to the body. It is in the meditations of the sati type that his phenomenological analysis of
what is there, in ones experience, might be initially developed.
A cognitive experience extending from ordinary perception to the highest states of knowledge
and vision (a-dassana) is at the centre of the Buddhist soteriological project. This orientation
on knowledge is quite natural for it is through knowledge that one can reach emancipation,
as well as it is through ignorance or corrupted knowledge (avidy) that one got enslaved into the
circle of rebirth (sasra).
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As true knowledge constituted by an insight into reality (knowledge and vision / a-
dassana, praj) is obtained through the ascending meditative states, it is the meditation that has
become a model and a starting point for the analysis of the ordinary cognitive experience in the
Nikyas. Here, the phenomenological approach was applicable only to the actually developing
cognitive experience. In this regard, the mind-body problem seems to be irrelevant as it makes
no sense to inquire into the origins of phenomena. Whatever their origin bodily or mental, what
matters for the Buddha is their being pure facts of experience the dharmas. It is through experience
that one can know whether objects are exterior or interior. Individual experience is interpreted in
terms of the processes (santna), as against the so-called substantivist and essentialist theories
of a permanent self (tman).
Let us return now to the avykta question mentioned in the beginning of the paper:
Is the mortal body (arra) the same thing as the life-principle (jva)? Is the mortal body one thing
and the life-principle another? As we see, the terms used for body and for soul are, respectively,
arra and jva. But, as a matter of fact, neither of them was characteristic for the Buddha and the
Buddhists in their talks about body and mind. In Buddhism, the term arra refers mainly to a
dead body, or to relics (the relics of the Buddha were called arra). To designate a living body, the
Buddhists used the term kya. As for the term jva, it doesnt mean soul in the Suttas, but a
combination of factors that keeps the body alive vitality (yus), heat (ua) and discernment
(vijna). These three factors were evoked by the Buddhist Mahkyapa against the so-called
experiments of Payasi with a dead body. As Mahkyapa said: a body endowed with vitality,
heat and discernment is lighter and more pliable than a dead body, just as a heated iron ball,
endowed with heat and hot air, is lighter and more pliable than a cool one (D. II.334-5).
The Suttas are very clear about the fact that neither mind nor body exist apart and can
function independently in as much as they are different facets or, rather, functions involved in the
same process that makes up individual existence. Even in the life-principle, or jva, which outside
of Buddhism is often regarded as a synonym of tman, we always find some combination of
physical, somatic and mental factors. In fact, there is no sharp distinction between physical, somatic
or mental events: all of them are regarded as mutually dependent, co-arising and co-determining
factors of cognitive experience. The jva is neither the same as the mortal body (arra) nor
different from it, as their relationship is that of mutually-dependent process. In modern terms,
one can say that the mind in Buddhism is always regarded as embodied, enactive and situated.
This approach draws Buddhism nearer to some modern cognitive theories like that of F. Varela
and his colleagues
1
.
There is another interesting aspect of the Buddhas approach to the mind-body problem.
1
Francisco J. Varela, Evan Thompson, Eleanor Rosch. The embodied mind: cognitive science and human
experience. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1991.
IS THERE A MIND-BODY PROBLEM IN BUDDHISM? VICTORIA LYSENKO
BUDDHISM IN KASHMIR 64
The avyakata question is qualified by the Buddha as improperly formulated, primarily
because it involves some linguistic and conceptual constructions which make us believe that
modes of verbal expression are the modes of reality itself. The questions what is X? and
whose is X? imply an ontological opposition between subject and object. So, the problem itself
originates because a verbal expression projects its own meanings as a form of reality.
I would like to remark in passing a striking resemblance of the Buddhas criticism with regard to
ordinary modes of verbal expression using the personal pronouns I, mine etc. to Wittgensteins
theory of linguistic games as used by his followers to treat a mind-body problem as a pseudo-
problem, related to linguistic constructs.
As already mentioned, the Buddha is fully aware of the mind-body problem as it was
formulated by his contemporaries. There is, according to him, a false view (dihi) that jva is identical
with body, and another view that jva and body are different entities. In terms of Western philosophy
we have before us a clear statement of monistic and dualistic positions with regard to the mind-body
problem. The monistic position may be interpreted either in materialistic or in idealistic sense.
The first one is equivalent to the statement that the living principle depends on the body and
can be reduced to it in the Buddhist vocabulary this position is called the ucchedavda /the
doctrine of annihilation. The second one boils down to the statement that the body depends
on the living principle in the Buddhist terms sassatavda / the doctrine of eternal soul,
or eternalism.
What is unacceptable to the Buddha is well expressed in these very terms: the uccheda
conveys the idea that the living principle is destroyed after the death of the body, the sassata
that the living principle is eternal and immutable. This does not mean that the Buddha denies the
existence of the soul, or Self, though his teaching is known as the antmavda (a doctrine of non-
Self). What is meant by non-Self is the absence of any constant substance behind the ever
changing phenomena of experience. In modern terms, the Buddha offers a phenomenological
approach which may be understood as an anti-substantialist and anti-essentialist solution of the
mind-body problem. This interpretation gives sense to his criticism of the sassatavda and the
ucchedavda, both of which being based on the substantialist idea of Self.
Instead of the substantial integrity of a person, the Buddha proposes a model of series of causally
interdependent experiential events the so-called dharmas. The causality is thus at the center
of the Buddhist account of experience.
Many causal factors are taken in consideration and they are said to produce their effect
by their co-arising (sahajta) condition, supporting each other and consolidating each other (like
sticks in a tripod supporting each other), or acting as a foundation for each other (in the same way as
the earth acts as a support or foundation for trees); or coming together at one time and place
(a sprout is produced by many factors coming together sprout, soil, an appropriate temperature
and humidity conditions etc). So, a standard causal explanation of perception in the Suttas takes
the following form:
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Visual discernment (cakkhu-vina) arises as dependent on the eye (indriya) and visible
shape-color (rupa); the coming together of the three is contact (phasa); from contact as condition
arises Feeling (vedan); what one feels one cognizes ... (e.g. M.I.111).
The phenomenological account of the psycho-somatic experience is conceptualized and
classified in a number of terms, like skandha, nma-r upa, prattya-samutpda and different
classifications of the dharmas: as yatana, dhtu, citta-caitta, etc.
Among them, the closest to the mind-body problem seems to be the nma-r upa. Nma
(literally, name, symbol) is often associated with the mental, while rupa with the material and bodily
factors. However, we have no reason to believe that it is a kind of Cartesian dualism of substances.
Rupa is not synonymous with physical matter: being a part of person (pudgala), it constitutes
an animated, living matter, a body as abode of sensitivity, sensate material stuff (Lusthaus).
It is not accidential that rupa is often associated with resistance pratighta. The four primary
elements (the mahbhuta) which are often mentioned as the most important instances of rupa, are,
as a matter of fact, not external substances as such but properties characterizing different types
of our sense-reactions to their mode of action: the element of earth is the property of solidity,
the element of water liquidity and flow, the element of fire temperature, the element of wind
touch. According to Dan Lusthauss pertinent remark, rupa is more essentially defined by its
amenability to being sensed than its being matter, in terms of its function; what it does, not
what it is (Dan Lusthaus, Buddhist Phenomenology: A Philosophical Investigation of Yogcra
Buddhism and the Cheng Wei-shih Lun. Routledge, 2002, page 183).
Rupa is also presented as a skandha the first among the five groups of dharmas which were
aimed to explain individual experience without postulating of any constant substantial self.
As a skandha, rupa includes, besides the four primary elements (mahbhuta) mentioned above,
their derivatives: 1) indriyas different somatic and mental faculties, and 2) objects (visible
forms, sounds, smells, tastes, tangible things). Symptomatic enough is that the most important
changes in course of the development of the Buddhist doctrine occurred in the rubric of indriyas.
To the five traditional sense-organs (eye, ear, nose, tongue, body) mentioned in the earlier parts
of the Nikyas, later, in Abhidharma literature and Abhidharma philosophical schools, were added
such indriyas as femininity, masculinity, sensations of pleasure, displeasure, satisfaction,
dissatisfaction, indifference, faith, effort, memory, mindfulness and discernment and some other
purely mental phenomena (in total 24 factors).
It is clear that the Buddhist authors of these lists did not really care about a strict demarcation
between the categories of physical and mental phenomena. Therefore, we can say with certainty
that the Buddhist rupa is in no way comparable to a material substance in the dualist systems like
that of Descartes. Even the classification, known as nma-rupa, does not entail a demarcation
between bodily and mental factors. What was then the purpose of these Buddhist classifications?
What unites all these heterogeneous somatic and mental phenomena into the rubric of rupas?
IS THERE A MIND-BODY PROBLEM IN BUDDHISM? VICTORIA LYSENKO
BUDDHISM IN KASHMIR 66
In what do they differ from other groups of skandhas, referred to as nma (normally these are
vedan, saj, saskra and vijna)?
The skandhas from vedan to vijna are said to be directed towards the objects. In
Western philosophical terms, we may call them intentional, while the r upa factors are not
intentional. Some rupas are objects (like visible forms, sounds, smells, they are sense-data in
Western terminology, not external physical things); some r upas are instrumental forms of experience,
like six indriyas, etc. I cannot go into further details of this quite interesting and challenging
question. For the purpose of this paper it will suffice to say that relationship between rupa and other
skandhas is not that of material-mental, body-mind, or even object-subject (Sue Hamelton).
I propose the following solution: rupa-skandha contains what is not a subject or, rather, an agent
(grhaka) of experience (graha) it includes objects and instruments, the subject being the
vijna-skandha (or group of cognitive discernment, a synonym of citta) accompanied by mental
auxiliaries vedan (sensation), saj (verbal and conceptual identification) and saskra
(karma-based factors like intention) skandhas (united by the category of caittika-dharmas).
This repartition of roles fits well with the traditional opposition between vijna and nma-rupa
attested in the Suttas where a person (pudgala) is often understood as an interaction not
between nma and rupa, but between cognitive discernment (vijna) and nma-rupa (D.II.32,
63-4, III.9-10).
It is also lately illustrated by Vasubandhu to justify the order of the skandhas in AKB I. 22:
Rupa is the pot, vedan is the food, saj are the seasoning, the saskra are the cook, and
the vijna is the consumer.
Thus, there are three kinds of interactive and mutually supportive factors: 1) somatic and
psycho-somatic (rupa), 2) mental (nma: vedan, saj, saskra they are often classified as
caitta) and 3) conscious (vijna, citta). This proves that we have to do not with a simple
psycho-somatic dualistic interaction as some scholars believe, but with a more complicated
process in which a plurality of factors is involved and which could hardly be subjected to this
quite simplistic mind-body division. Moreover, it seems to me that for the Buddhist thinkers after
the Buddha, as well as for the other Indian philosophers, the distinction between the subject and
the other factors somehow dependent on it, including not only somatic but also mental elements, is
much more important from the soteriological perspective than the distinction between mind and
matter, mind and body.
This becomes evident if we take the examples of purua and prakti in Skhya, where
the prakti incorporates intellect, mind, reasoning (buddhi, manas, ahakra) all that what we in
the West are used to associate with the subject. The same is true for the opposition of tman
and antakaraa in Advaita etc. It is namely this very point that makes a remarkable contrast
with the Western philosophical tradition. In Buddhism the role of subject is played by different
mental dharmas under different circumstances, but among the skandhas it seems to be the vijna.
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As the Abhidharma analysis developed, there arose a number of problems pertaining to
the explanation of the karmic causation of experience, that has gradually acquired a primary
importance. If a true reality is tantamount only to an actually present cognitive events (dharmas)
that a meditator can discover in his experience, how could we explain the karmic influences of
the past actions which are not discernable in ones meditation?
The problems of this kind have revealed the limitations of a purely phenomenological approach.
The difficulties that Abhidhrmikas came across in their explanations of karmic causation have
led them to some metaphysical and ontological developments in their theories. These theoretical
developments were aimed at the justification of a karmic continuity between past, present and
future experience. The total causal interdependence and interactionism of different factors of
experience has become a subject of more exigent scrutiny.
As the factors of consciousness arise both from homogeneous and heterogeneous conditions,
questions have arisen as to the possibility of re-emergence of consciousness after its cessation in the
nirodha-sampatti meditation or attainment of cessation: if the series of consciousness being
interrupted at the moment of cessation, from what it reappears afterwards in the absence of any
immediately previous moment of consciousness (samanantara-pratyaya)? Is it possible for the
moments of mental series to have an immediately previous moment in the series of some
non-mental factor? Other problems discussed by the Buddhist authors were a possibility of relapse
into defilement of those adepts who were supposed to be free of them, as well as an arising of
new mental states which had no precedent hetu/causes in the individual series (santna) etc.
The debates about the attainment of cessation and the related matters have been profoundly
studied by Paul Griffits in his book On Being Mindless: Buddhist Meditation and the Mind-Body
Problem. (Satguru Publications, 1986). As he pertinently remarks, the crucial question is whether,
without a substance-based ontology, without postulating an entity of which the mental and
physical events described by Buddhist theorists can be predicated, it is possible to make sense of the
observed facts of continuity of identity, of memory, of character traits and of beginnings and ends
(ibid., p.113).
In my opinion, the necessity of a substance-based ontology can also be explained from the
point of view of karmic causation. Along with a tendency to switch the emphasis from a direct
experience of the actually changing reality of dharmas to attempts of establishing a sort of
substantial basis for karmic continuity within personal series of momentary mental states,
a predominantly phenomenological approach in the Nikyas has been superceded by an
ontological and metaphysical conceptualization in the Abhidharma schools of Theravda,
Kashmiri Vaibhika and Sautrntika.
If we assume together with Kashmiri Vaibhikas that only the immediate perception and
especially the highest stages of meditation reveal to us the reality as it is, in that case we cannot duly
explain how the karmic machinery works: how karmic fruits are ripening (karma-vipka) and how
they are accumulated (karmopacaya).
IS THERE A MIND-BODY PROBLEM IN BUDDHISM? VICTORIA LYSENKO
BUDDHISM IN KASHMIR 68
Why? Because this karmic causation is not a matter of direct observation. It requires a
potential dimension of experience through which a continuity between an action, its past root and
its future fruit, between a karmic cause and its effect, could only be established. Kashmiri
Vaibhikas postulated a number of ontological (dravya) entities (dharmas) to explain the
continuity between potential and actual factors of karmic experience. I will just mention such
dharmas as prpti and aprpti (possession and non-possession), vijapti-rupa and avijapti-rupa
(indicative or non-indicative bodily and speech actions), as well as the idea of anuaya (potential
tendency).
For Sautrntikas, all these dharmas are just nominal and unreal, their karmic potential depends
on the mental factor of volition, but as the event of volition lasts only an instant, the continuity of
karmic efficiency is achieved through mental seeds (bjas) and vsans (perfumes) arising and
disappearing in a series (satati) of dharmas. The potential dimension of experience is already
there but still not fully legitimized. It has become legitimized with the Yogcras in the form of
laya-vijna a receptacle of the karmic seeds. In that way they have introduced a kind of
quasi-substantial ontological basis for their otherwise phenomenological picture. Of course, this
innovation does not concern the ultimate reality (parinipanna) but it seems to be indispensable
for the explanation of the samsaric, karmic experience relative to the paratantra level.
What is the connection between the mind-body problem and the recognition of the potential
dimension of experience? I will formulate it in the following way: in as much as Buddhist thinkers
based their psychological doctrines on the data observed in an immediate experience the
phenomenological approach was quite at place, from its perspective, as I have argued, the mind-body
problem makes no sense. Once they came across some extreme cases, like an attainment of cessation,
relapse into defilements etc. which could be explained only if some potential states of consciousness
are assumed (in the form of anuaya or bja) the problem arises as to how the causal relations
within each of the two sets (mental or bodily events) and between them can be established.
But as these problems were quite few in number, I have an impression that the mind-body
problem remains for later Buddhist thinkers a matter of quite marginal interest.