This short work sets out to explore certain aspects of the Buddha's Teaching recorded in the Pali Suttas. Its manner of doing so, however, may seem unfamiliar in the prevailing atmosphere of scientific common sense. And in fact its aim is also to suggest that the Suttas will necessarily remain incomprehensible so long as common sense is taken for granted, and to exemplify what may perhaps be found a more fruitful way of approach. But it makes no claim to finality.
What, exactly, did the Buddha teach? That he taught the way to nibbána or extinction there is no doubt at all. But what is extinction? We are told (Anguttaranikáya X,i,6) that extinction is cessation of being, bhavanirodha. We shall not be surprised, therefore, to find that the Suttas are largely devoted to the analysis of being. And the key to an understanding of the Suttas is undoubtedly recognition of the fact that they are centered on a hard nucleus of ontology -- things 'must be seen, with right understanding, as they are' (Khandhasamyutta vi,7). But how, in fact, are things? The answer is really very simple:[2] things are as they appear; for how else could right understanding ever see them as they are? If a thing can appear, however, it can also disappear; and this shows that it must appear to something that does not disappear. To what does it appear? It appears to me. It seems, then, that a thing as it appears is only part of a total situation, the other part of which is myself; and since to understand a thing as it is I must study its appearance (and disappearance) I must consequently not ignore that total situation; but I cannot investigate the total situation without investigating myself. Thus there can be no understanding of things as they are without self-observation. It is precisely because of its blindness to this fact that natural science is compelled, in the last analysis, to invoke the mysterious notion of common sense.
The professional rationalists, however, do not hold undisputed sway. Their unreasonable claims that reason can explain all things have always been questioned, and of late years particularly by the phenomenologists. This school (which is comparatively little known in the English-speaking world), basing itself on the absolute reflexive certainty of the Cartesian cogito ergo sum, understands that phenomena show themselves for what they are and that since they do not conceal any reality behind their appearance they can be studied and described simply as they appear. The fact will at once be plain that the remarks above on the Buddha's Teaching were not made in ignorance of such doctrines. And indeed, as regards method, the present work owes a particular debt to the writings of Jean-Paul Sartre, one of the leading exponents of the school. If this work should be found to throw light in dark corners, the fact of such indebtedness may be of value as indicating a possible way of transition from traditional Western ideas to the Buddha's Teaching. What follows, however, is not a treatise on phenomenology as such, and it supposes that other sources will be accessible to those who find difficulty in adapting themselves to an unaccustomed way of thinking. Moreover it should not be presumed that an acknowledgement of indebtedness necessarily implies agreement at all points with the writings concerned: the present work, in fact, goes further than they; nor does it accept them as unquestionably authoritative. In certain matters, indeed, they are thought to be[3] mistaken. This needs emphasizing; for though they may seem to provide a means of access to the Buddha's Teaching they are not in any way regarded as supplanting it.
Common sense may denounce as scandalous and highly unlikely the view of things that eventually emerges, namely, that my manifold possibilities at every level of generality are always all existing at once, and that they continue to be so on the express condition that they do not appear as such but as so many rival intrinsic probabilities -- as an objective world. But, after all, the phenomenon of precognition is antecedently no less unlikely in the eye of reason; yet, by the ultimate standards of reason itself, to wit, statistical exclusion of chance, it is a well-established fact. And on the view of things that emerges (and particularly after the discussion of equivocal premonitions in Appendix VII) it seems that we may be able to describe the possibility of precognition as a regular structural feature of experience. On the same view of things we find that we cannot describe the future as predetermined. If phenomenological ontology should be capable (as it seems it might), not only of accomodating such an awkward fact as precognition, but also of reconciling it with indeterminacy in a single coherent picture, it would certainly enjoy a decided advantage over the rationalist view, which is here at a complete loss. This,[4] however, is no absolute criterion; for the Buddha's Teaching is concerned with bringing an end to being, not with description for its own sake; and the final appeal in deciding on one line of approach rather than another can only be to whether or not it leads to extinction. But each must determine this for himself.
Acknowledgement of indebtedness must also be made to Dr. Ross Ashby's admirably lucid book (see References), which sets out to account for the stability of animal behaviour in physiological terms by making use of the principles of cybernetics. This book has clarified and crystallized certain ideas and suggested several fruitful lines of thought. But it will become clear that the basic assumptions of such an approach -- common sense, the study of behaviour from outside (valid only for other people's behaviour), the physiological view of feeling -- are quite unacceptable.
The work consists of a short essay followed by a series of appendices. In the essay matters are presented with extreme simplification and generality, and expansions and qualifications are omitted that would be indispensable in a longer account. In the appendices, however, certain descriptions have been developed in greater detail, but with less regard for orderly presentation. They are intended as threads to guide readers who have not been discouraged by the essay and who want to pursue matters further. There is no direct exegesis of the Suttas, and though (for example) most of the individual terms of the usual formulation of dependent arising (paticcasamuppáda) will be recognized in one place or another, such formulation is not discussed specifically. Nevertheless it is hoped that this enigmatic Sutta statement, as well as others, will seem less arbitrary in the light of what is said. A Pali-English Conversion Table of principal terms will be found at the end.
Ceylon, April 1957
1. All explicit references are to the Pali Sutta Pitaka.
2. Two passages are quoted from Chapters XXV & XXIX respectively of Pascal's Pensées.
3. The following modern works, though not specifically quoted, are relevant:
W. Ross Ashby, Design for a Brain, Chapman and Hall, London, 1952.4. The work alluded to in Appendix V will have been the following:
J.-P. Sartre, Esquisse d'une Théorie des Émotions, Hermann & Cie, Paris, 1939.
_______. L'Être et le Néant, N.R.F., Gallimard, Paris, 1943.
_______. L'Imaginaire, N.R.F., Gallimard, Paris, 1948.
A. Eddington, New Pathways in Science, Cambridge, 1935.5. On the limitations of inferential argument the following work may be consulted if desired:
Bertrand Russell, Human Knowledge: its scope and limits, George Allen and Unwin Ltd., London, 1948.
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Footnotes:
[1] NOT FOR PUBLICATION. This article is out of date (1.vi.1961), and partly misleading, particularly as regards Dhamma. There is, however, a certain amount, particularly some of the analysis of action and presence/absence in the later appendices, that remains valid. It has to do with the three sankhatalakkhanas (see Anguttara Tikampálá). For 'field' read 'thing' throughout. The notion of craving = gradient of feeling is false and misleading. In some passages 'degree of consciousness' will do instead of 'gradient of feeling'. There can be feeling (in the arahat) without craving. [Back to text]
[2] [From here to the end of the paragraph:] Confusion. [Back to text]
[3] ['thought to be' is pencilled out and written in is:] certainly. Ñv. [Back to text]
[4] [From here to the end of this paragraph the typescript is crossed out in pencil.] [Back to text]