...I have to confess that I realized when I wrote that I was being irrelevant about your "ought" problem. The fact was that I had no ideas at all on what you were getting at, but the ambiguity of "duty", and the fact that duty is quite as certain as Scientific Truths -- that is to say, not certain at all -- did cross my mind. So that is what I wrote about. Now that you expand the matter with examples and illustrations it seems to me that this use of ought = must = is is the essence of the scientific inductive mauvaise foi. It is equivalent whether I say "he ought to be there by now" or "he will be there by now", and this appearance of the future tense gives the show away. The scientist works from present certainties to future probabilities: "If this litmus paper is dipped in this acid it (probably) will turn red". The scientist does not doubt that this is litmus paper and that this is acid (it says so on the bottle; it comes from a respectable firm; we have just shown it by experiment; etc. etc.), but in theory at least, he doubts the future, that this will turn red. But the scientist's mauvaise foi is that he doesn't doubt the future in practice, and his way of slipping from doubt about the future ("this ought to turn red if the past is anything to go by") to certainty about the future is to assume tactictly that ought to = must ("this must turn red unless we are to throw doubts on the whole of Science, which of course is unthinkable") = will certainly ("this will certainly turn red -- how could it do otherwise?"). All that is then needed is to assume that an absent or future event ("he will be there by now" = "if we ring up we shall find that he is there now"; or "this acid will turn this litmus red") is a present event ("he is there now"; "[this] acid turns [this] litmus red") and the trick is done. So long as we are thinking of induction this ambiguity is inherent; but if we agree with Husserl and Sartre that there exists
un type d'expérience privilégiée qui nous mette immédiatement en contact avec la loi,[1]which is not "une science inductive", then it may be mauvaise foi to deny that "ought to be" = "is". Sartre again: --
Mais il importe peu que le fait individuel qui sert de support à l'essence soit réel ou imaginaire. La donnée "exemplaire" serait-elle une pure fiction? Du fait même qu'elle a pu être imaginée, il a bien fallu qu'elle réalise en elle l'essence cherchée car l'essence est la condition même de sa possibilité.[2]For this reason I cannot share your mistrust of logical principles. For my part I cannot see that you can escape from induction (as you suggested could be done by yoniso manasikára) unless you allow that Sartre and Husserl are right in this matter. (The great mistake is to suppose that "All swans are white" and "All determinations are impermanent" are similar statements. The first is purely inductive, and can be thought even though not all swans are white; whereas the second is reflexive and cannot be thought unless all determinations are impermanent, for the good reason that were not all determinations impermanent there could be no such thing as thinking, and a fortiori no possibility of thinking either "all determinations are impermanent" or "not all determinations are permanent".) Perhaps I go too far in suggesting that you don't allow Sartre and Husserl are right; but I get the impression that though you (quite correctly) deny absolute validity to inductive argument you have a lurking suspicion that every pefectly respectable eidetic or structural statement has a disreputable dash of inductive blood in its ancestry. I do not quite know whether you would openly proclaim this, admit it only to your best friend, admit it only to yourself when alone, refuse to admit it at all, or hotly deny it and denounce it publicly as a piece of propaganda emanating from the Vatican or Kremlin.
On the matter of induction, whether there is any way of getting universally valid propositions, the discussion in the note of pp. 213-4 of your Visuddhimagga translation is of interest as overlooking a statement by the Buddha (M. 90): --
Natthi so samano vá bráhmano vá yo sikideva sabbaññassati sabbam dakkhíti, n'etam thánam vijjatíti.[3]In the note the Pur. says: --
So, although it [i.e. the Blessed One's knowledge] occurs with all dhammas as its object, it nevertheless does so making these dhammas quite clearly defined, as though it had a single dhamma as its object.This gives me the impression that it is trying to say that reflexive knowledge has as its object a single essence or law (if you will excuse the word -- I notice Sartre has used it in a quotation above), which nevertheless is applicable to all dhammas. The note, I note, says that the meaning of inferential (anumánika) knowledge is that it is doubtful: if this can be taken as saying that one can legitimately doubt inductive knowledge (the case in question is clearly inductive) -- i.e. that it is only probable -- then Husserl has been anticipated by several centuries. Had you noticed this? Does anumánika include deduction? Or is no distinction between inductive and deductive inference made? Or is it made in a different way?
...I have been visited in quick succession by two elderly red-faced and rather gloomy Englishmen. The first came with the Matara Bank manager and said nothing. The Bank manager (who came about the usual affair) is interested in meditation, and both in Rosicrucianism (about which I know nothing). The conversation turned to the belly bhávaná, whereupon I employed my well-tried expedient of saying that, never having practised it (which already damns it a little) I can say nothing about it, but that it seems to be suspect on account of the claims of quick results that are put out by its advocates. This line is far more effective than the volumes of words and quotations and counter-quotations that are normally hurled to and fro. The second Englishman, who recently came in contact with Buddhism through F. Allen, says he (my visitor, not F. Allen) is a failure in life because he has tried Christianly to love his fellow men, and the only reaction he gets is resentment. A kind of Albert Schweitzer gone wrong. I told him to ignore his fellow men, and he seemed much relieved at my advice. Earnest and rather gushing. I fear I am unable to maintain such conversations at the emotional level that seems to be expected. Not uninteligent (he remarked that the West has lost its faith in its religion and that it is a fearful thing to be born in such conditions -- rather Dostoievskian) but why do people take life so seriously?
I should be interested eventually to read your Netti and Petakopadesa translations -- perhaps you might send your written MS (if legible) when you have typed them (or even a carbon copy, if you are making one). The authorship of the Petakopadesa is no doubt a matter of dispute amongst scholars: may I suggest that you write a learned note to the effect that to judge from the form of the present editions Laurence Sterne seems to have had a hand it in?
Still infested with elephants by night, large, medium, and small.
P.S. I find there is an orchard growing on the palm tree behind the kuti. How did that get there?
[EL. 149] 13.iii.1959
Perhaps there will be more to be said about my latest change of orientation at some later date, but for the present I shall limit myself to this. In my recent letters I said that the subject and the object are divided into a gratuitous and (in the non-arahat) a necessary part, and that the necessary part of the subject is "I", whereas in the object it is "mine"; but this must be corrected -- it is "my --" in both. In other words, the object is "my book (or whatever it is )", and the subject is "consciousness (or presence) of my book". This means that "I" is to be found neither in subject nor in object. With this (further) correction I now see my change of orientation as an abandonment of one of the four ditthis: viññánam attato samanupassati,[1] and so on. If this is so, then it is a more important change than it seemed at first sight (and therefore the more welcome). I think I had largely inherited this ditthi (I am not sure which of the four) from Sartre, in whom the soi (or moi) is always in some way associated with consciousness, rather than with the object. For Sartre, I think, "Je suis" expresses the conscience (de) soi, the conscience non thétique (d')elle-même[2]; and he says (in L'Imaginaire) that a conscience is itself an object in reflexion, and, from L'Être et le Néant I gather that this object is the soi. But I am not concerned to analyze Sartre's ditthis in this letter.
One result of my change of orientation is that I have had to revise (yet once again -- are you surprised?) my interpretation of the Múlapariyáya tetrad. I had based my interpretation (or attempted to) on the Kummer structure, but now that I find that Kummer is valid for the arahat no less than for the non-arahat, this won't do. (I mean that though Kummer shows that maññaná is possible -- since maññaná is a form of choice -- he [or it] does not show that it is necessary. Kummer does not show why there is maññaná.) I am by no means dissatisfied with my new interpretation (which does, in fact, have certain features in common with its predecessors). But prepare yourself for a shock -- the tetrad is not a tetrad at all, it is a triad. The first three (pathavim maññati, pathaviyá maññati, and pathavito maññati) tell us what we conceive, and the last (pathavim me ti maññati) tells us how we conceive it. The first three refer, as I now think, to rúpa, náma, and viññána respectively, which are the three layers in all experience. In the objective layer (pathavim maññati) we conceive the material object itself as mine (my book); then in the intermediate layer (pathaviyá maññati) we have the description (náma, adhivacana) of my book; and finally in the subjective layer (pathavito maññati) we have presence/consciousness/existence of my book. Nowhere at all do we find "I"; yet all this "my" keeps on pointing to an "I", but in vain -- there is no "I" to be found.
Now this interpretation of the Múlapariyáya fits in nicely with several other Suttas, as I hope to show you. The Múlapariyáya starts with pathavim pathavito sañjánáti...pathavim maññati. What other Sutta speaks of saññá and maññaná together? There is this one, which I must quote from memory: yena loke lokasaññí lokamání, ayam vuccati ariyavinaye loko... cakkhuná loke lokasaññí lokamání, sotena...[3] etc. This brings out the point (correctly made, as far as it goes -- by Sartre) that the senses (or body) are to be found either dans le monde -- i.e. (negatively) as what is implicated by the orientation of the world, -- or, au milieu du monde -- i.e. as material things in the world, perceived by other senses: in no case can a sense appear to itself. Thus, in this Sutta, cakkhuná loke is the eye as a material thing in the world, and cakkhuná...lokamání is the material eye as the reason for there being a conceiver of the world; lokasaññí is the material eye as the reason for there being a perceiver of the world. From this I am led to think that cakkhuñca paticca rúpe ca uppajjati cakkhuviññánam[4] must be regarded as a description of the contact of what I can, with another eye, another sense, see as an eye (in the world) with what I can see as a coloured thing (in the world). By this I mean that since this is the only way in which a sense (an eye) can directly appear as an object, this description must be regarded as a scene witnessed (or imagined) by another similar sense. (There is a Majjhima ? Sutta[5] which I can't locate, that seems to confirm this. Hitherto this Sutta has been rather a stumbling block to me, but not now.) And there is also another reason for this. The eye, reflexively described, is what is pointed to or indicated by perception, i.e. as presupposed by perception; but the bahiddhá áyatanas are all given as already perceived (colours, sounds, smells, tastes, touchables, ideas) before the contact has taken place -- "the eye meets colours", as it were. But if the eye is presupposed by perception, the description should be "the eye meets matter, as a result of which contact there are colours". So I think the eye and its object, in this description, are seen (or imagined) as if from an outside point of view. Now rúpe/colours is a báhiráyatana, whereas the eye is ajjhattika. But I have tried to point out that the eye subjectively does not appear at all (which is why the description of phassa must be made as if from an outside point of view). In consequence of this, the opposition ajjhattika-báhira is not the same as the opposition subject-object that we have between viññána and námarúpa. Here, viññána is the presence or existence of the descriptable (náma) material object (rúpa). [Viññána can be the object of reflexion (though it is not soi), whereas the eye or the body cannot.] Ajjhattika/báhira (of the áyatanas) is self/world, whereas viññána/námarúpa is Subject/Object, but Self and Subject, as I now see, are quite different, as also are world and object. [The ajjhatta/bahiddhá of the Satipatthána Sutta simply is, I think, mine/others.] For this reason the relationship between the body and viññána is given in the Suttas by the simile of a jewel on a thread -- i.e. purely as juxtaposed (the point being that viññána, to be described, must be seen reflexively, whereas the body, to be described, must be seen non-reflexively as a material object, and the two cannot be brought together at the same level). This brings me to the Sutta (again quoted from memory): Iti káyo, bahiddhá ca námarúpam: itthetam dvayam.[6] You will notice that káyo is not called ajjhattiko in relation to námarúpa's bahiddhá -- for the reason that káyo is itself a material object in the world with the peculiarity that it coincides with what is indicated by the conception, orientation, or organization of that námarúpa; and neither of these is subjective (i.e. viññána). Similarly in this passage from M. 109: Evam kho, bhikkhu, jánato evam passato imasmiñ ca saviññánake káye bahiddhá ca sabbanimittesu ahamkáramamamkáramánánusayá na hontí ti.[7] Here the body is saviññánaka (as before it was coupled with námarúpa) -- i.e. is accompanied by but is not itself, viññána or subjectivity, and the word ajjhattike is again notably absent.
But there is a further point. The body (or senses) in its mode as a material object perceived (or imagined) by other senses, is in the world. This is important; for it is the correlative to the description of the material body (or senses) as the reason, or instrument, whereby there is a perceiver and a conceiver of the world. (Reflexively described the eye is, in fact, the perceiver and conceiver of the world -- the attá --: but neither reflexive eye nor attá is to be found.) As soon as conception of the world (lokamaññaná) ceases, so, of course, does the world -- and at one blow the body (or senses) ceases both as what is indicated by the conception of the world (i.e. the phantom perceiver and conceiver) and as a thing in the world. (Remember that attá and loka are correlatives -- attá is what is indicated by loka.)
Now we come to Báhiya. I have never been able to make good sense of this Sutta (Udána I,10); but it all seems now to fall into place beautifully. Yato te Báhiya ditthe ditthamattam bhavissati...viññáto viññátamattam bhavissati, -- from your ceasing to conceive when you perceive (i.e. what is seen is merely seen, and not seen as mine) -- tato tvam Báhiya na tena -- there will no longer be a reason or instrument (whereby there is a perceiver and a conceiver of the world) -- yato tvam Báhiya na tena, tato tvam Báhiya na tattha -- from the ceasing of the instrument there will no longer be a body there (in the world) -- yato tvam Báhiya na tattha, tato tvam Báhiya nev'idha na huram na ubhayamantarena, es'ev'anto dukkhassáti[8] -- from the ceasing of the body there (in the world) there will no longer be the ajjhattikáyatanáni upon which depends phassa, upon which depends náma (cf. M. 109), upon which depends námarúpa saha viññánena (note that the triad: -- here [idha] / beyond [huram] / in between [ubhayamantarena], corresponds in different order to the Múlapariyáya triad: -- accusative [here] / locative [in between] / ablative [beyond]), and cessation of (conception of) viññána, náma, and rúpa, is the end of suffering. It is an incidental matter of satisfaction that these two Suttas (Múlapariyáya and Báhiya), both of which employ grammatical cases (accusative, locative, and ablative in the first, and instrumentive in the second) to convey their meaning, should have come clear together. Perhaps next week they will become unclear again together (but I hope not). Note that in a Málunkyaputta Sutta in the Saláyatana Samyutta, the wording of Báhiya is repeated, and in the expansion it is made clear that the six senses are what is referred to.
Some revisions of what I said in my last letter about the p.s. I now think the non-arahat has the whole thing, whereas the arahat has from avijjá to vedaná with the maññaná removed (which of course turns avijjá into vijjá), and none of the terms beyond (alternatively, he has none). This means (i) that bhava must be understood as ceasing with the attainment of saupádisesanibbánadhátu, and (ii) játi and the remainder must be understood as what the non-arahat is liable for at any moment. In a sense this gives me a two-fold interpretation of the p.s. -- avijjá to bhava, and játi to the end....
14th. Thank you for your letter from Vajiráráma. No doubt the ola leaf Petakopadesa contains the same confusion as the printed texts -- I imagine it is a rather venerable muddle, and even if you sort it out and restore sense to the text (and render to the Dígha Commentary what is the Dígha Commentary's), nobody will accept it, and you will be regarded as a tamperer with the Tradition.
Ven. Ñánaloka seems to be spreading his wings a bit; he is collecting quite a crowd of pupils; is the twelve-year-old samanera going to live at the Hermitage?
I am glad to hear the belly battle is in full-swing -- it sounds rather Falstaffian to me.
So Mr. M. has discovered The Heart of Buddhist Meditation, has he? He made no mention of it to me, but I rather imagine it is just his cup of tea. You are quite right: Alam (as our Venerable Teacher called him) and the Heart are infallible signs. I preferred my mute Rosicrucian.... I don't know what it is about Vajiráráma, but it is extraordinarily difficult to think there at all -- one's head feels stuffed with cotton wool.
[EL. 150] 24.iii.1959
Many thanks for your letter and for the Netti. ...I have only just glanced at the Netti, but it seems quite promising. The translation of sutta by "thread" is to be encouraged -- no doubt you are aware of the passage in the First Párájika of the Sutta Vibhanga about this.
...The elephants which are apparently terrorizing us are a herd of about fifty. In sheer bulk this is rather formidable -- what does one elephant weigh? I have been suffering from this elephantiasis (surely the correct usage of the word -- infestation by elephants?) on and off for the last month. Though they go away when they see a light or hear a cracker, they still come to within twenty or thirty yards of the kuti -- the light, or a torch, is hidden by the trees beyong that distance, and the cracker has to be fairly close to them to be effective. The other morning (4 a.m.) they were in the jungle about fifty yards beyond the privy, where I had an appointment. So I went out duly armed with hurricane lamp, torch, and crackers. They seemed to be getting closer as I was squatting there, and I was obliged to interrupt proceedings to let off two crackers and shine the torch, before they would go away. If they had come any closer I think perhaps I should have had an even quicker and more complete motion than I did in fact have. On the subject of elephants: -- I note that in your Vis. Mag. trsl. you describe the elephant created by the Ven. Thera (suffering from some vipassaná upakilesas) as putting its trunk into its mouth and trumpeting; but does an elephant put its trunk into its mouth to trumpet? I don't know; but it seems possible that what the text might actually mean is that the elephant used its trunk in place of its mouth, i.e. by uttering a sound with it. What do you think?
I realize that kamma- and uppatti-bhava are pre-commentarial -- if I said they were commentarial, that was a slip. I should not now at all equate these two with pour-soi and en-soi. Your comment that, grammatically, the word "I" is the subject of a verb is pertinent. Actually, I was in doubt whether it would, in fact, be better to call attá (which is identical, as I see it, with "I" -- attá, "self", is sometimes more of a rationalization than "I") the "subject" (and the ajjhattikáyatanáni "subjective") and loka the "object" (and the báhiráyatanáni "objective"), rather than viññána and námarúpa. I was going to ask you your opinion in this matter. But if attá is the subject, then viññána is not. But how, then, to distinguish (in English) between consciousness and its árammana[1], name-and-matter/form? Internal and external, perhaps? But even this is not satisfactory, since consciousness is the thing's presence or existence, which can hardly be called internal (internal to what?). The confusion comes about from our normally translating "there is consciousness (of) my book" into "I am conscious (of the) book", and this tends to pull consciousness out of the picture towards "I". I have thought of a simple simile to illustrate my earlier mistake of (partly) identifying "I" with consciousness. If it is not pressed too far, I think the simile may be found useful. Here it is. Suppose that I take a photograph of someone who is talking to me. When the photograph is developed and printed I have a picture of only one person -- the person who is talking. But (especially if the person happens also to be pointing with his finger to me while talking) the picture indicates another person, namely, the person who is being talked to (and pointed at), that is, myself. In other words, "I" am the significance of the picture, and "I" am its significance by my absence from it. In other words again, "I" appear in the picture negatively. Now Sartre has said that consciousness is the negative of the thing. And this, in a sense, is correct. But what I have been assuming is that (in the simile) the picture of the person talking to me is the positive and I-who-am-being-talked-to-by-the-person is the negative -- and therefore "I" am consciousness. But any photographer will point out my mistake -- the negative of the picture is not the photographer but the same picture, with light for dark and dark for light (and "I" -- the photographer -- am just as much absent from the photograph's negative as from the print or positive). You see how it goes? Námarúpa is the positive picture; but it has a negative in two senses -- the photographic negative, which is viññána, and the photographer (the perceiver and conceiver of the world), which is "I" or myself, attá. (If you point out, correctly, that námarúpa has a [teleological] significance for arahat as well as for puthujjana, then I must admit that the simile is inadequate -- the particular "I" or "my" significance of the non-arahat's námarúpa is additional to its teleological significance. And this, incidentally, is where Sartre goes wrong -- he confuses the teleological significance of things [POUR] with the additional pathavim-me-ti significance [MOI/SOI].) In view of all this, I shall probably abandon all attempts to find a pair of words to replace subject-object as a description of viññána and námarúpa -- I now think the expression bahidhá námarúpam refers to námarúpa as loka or as corresponding to the báhiráyatanáni, and not as "object" of consciousness.
M. 28 is the Sutta I was thinking of -- thank you.
In view of my reorientation I no longer equate tanhá with Sartre's manque (see above on his confusion of the teleological and the personal), but perhaps would still translate it as "want"....
...P.S. If attá ("self" or "I") is as much absent from the positive (námarúpa) as from the negative (viññána), is it not then proper to say that viññána is as much bahiddhá as námarúpa (considered as loka)? Not quite; for the reason that just as námarúpa is the árammana of viññána, so attá or "self" is the árammana of self-consciousness [attá is a kind of ajjhattika námarúpa]. Thus the árammana "námarúpa or loka" is bahiddhá to the árammana "attá or self", whereas viññána [i.e. the consciousness (of) námarúpa] is bahiddhá to self-consciousness. Viññána is not therefore directly bahiddhá to attá. Self-consciousness is, of course, no more to be found than self.
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[148.1] a type of privileged experience that puts us immediately in contact with the Law [Back to text]
[148.2] It does not matter much whether the individual fact that serves as support for the essence is real or imaginary. Is the "exemplary" given a pure fiction? From the very fact that it could be imagined, it must indeed have realized in itself the sought-for essence, for the essence is the very condition of its possibility. [Back to text]
[148.3] There is no monk or divine who knows all, sees all, at once: that is not possible. (M. ii,127) [Back to text]
[149.1] He regards consciousness as self. [Back to text]
[149.2] The non-thetic [i.e. non-asserting] consciousness (of) itself. [Back to text]
[149.3] That by which, in the world, one is a perceiver of the world and a conceiver of the world, that is called 'world' in the noble discipline... by the eye, in the world, by the ear... etc. [Back to text]
[149.4] With eye and forms as conditions there arises eye-consciousness. [Back to text]
[149.5] In pencil is written: M. i,190. [Back to text]
[149.6] Thus (there is) the body and externally name-and-matter: thus this is a duality. [Back to text]
[149.7] Monk, for one who knows thus and sees thus there are no inclinations to the conceit of 'I-making' and 'mine-making' in this body with consciousness and externally in all signs. [Back to text]
[149.8] For these passages see L. 121 (2.vi.1965). [Back to text]
[150.1] Basis, object. [Back to text]