Saññá and viññána (perception and consciousness) may be differentiated as follows. Saññá (defined in Anguttara VI,vi,9 <A.iii,413>) is the quality or percept itself (e.g. blue), whereas viññána (q.v) is the presence or consciousness of the quality or percept -- or, more strictly, of the thing exhibiting the quality or percept (i.e. of námarúpa). (A quality, it may be noted, is unchanged whether it is present or absent -- blue is blue whether seen or imagined --, and the word saññá is used both of five-base experience and of mental experience.)
It would be as wrong to say 'a feeling is perceived' as it would 'a percept is felt' (which mix up saññá and vedaná); but it is quite in order to say 'a feeling, a percept, (that is, a felt thing, a perceived thing) is cognized', which simply means that a feeling or a percept is present (as, indeed, they both are in all experience -- see Majjhima v,3 <M.i,293>[15]). Strictly speaking, then, what is cognized is námarúpa, whereas what is perceived (or felt) is saññá (or vedaná), i.e. only náma. This distinction can be shown grammatically. Vijánáti, to cognize, is active voice in sense (taking an objective accusative): consciousness cognizes a phenomenon (námarúpa); consciousness is always consciousness of something. Sañjánáti, to perceive, (or vediyati, to feel) is middle voice in sense (taking a cognate accusative): perception perceives [a percept] (or feeling feels [a feeling]). Thus we should say 'a blue thing (= a blueness), a painful thing (= a pain), is cognized', but 'blue is perceived' and 'pain is felt'. (In the Suttas generally, due allowance is to be made for the elasticity in the common usage of words. But in certain passages, and also in one's finer thinking, stricter definition may be required.)
At Dígha i,9 <D.i,185>, Potthapáda asks the Buddha whether perception arises before knowledge, or knowledge before perception, or both together. The Buddha gives the following answer:
| Saññá kho Potthapáda pathamam uppajjati, pacchá ñánam; saññ'uppádá ca pana ñán'uppádo hoti. So evam pajánáti, Idapaccayá kira me ñánam udapádí ti. | Perception, Potthapáda, arises first, knowledge afterwards; but with arising of perception there is arising of knowledge. One understands thus: 'With this as condition, indeed, knowledge arose in me.' |
Saññá thus precedes ñána, not only temporally but also structurally (or logically). Perception, that is to say, is structurally simpler than knowledge; and though perception comes first in time, it does not cease (see CITTA) in order that knowledge can arise.[a] However many stories there are to a house, the ground floor is built first; but it is not then removed to make way for the rest. (The case of vitakkavicárá and vácá -- A NOTE ON PATICCASAMUPPÁDA §5 -- is parallel.)
The temptation must be resisted (into which, however, the
Visuddhimagga [Ch. XIV] falls) to understand
viññána, in the primitive context of
the khandhá, as a more elaborate version of
saññá, thus approximating it to
ñána. But, whereas there is always
consciousness when there is perception (see above), there is not
always knowledge (which is preceded by perception). The
difference between viññána and
saññá is in kind, not in
degree. (In looser contexts, however, -- e.g.
Majjhima v,7 <M.i,317> --
viññána does tend to mean 'knowing',
but not in opposition to saññá. In
Majjhima xv,1 <M.iii,259-60>[16] & xiv,8 <227-8>[17]
viññána occurs in both senses, where
the second is the complex consciousness of reflexion, i.e. the
presence of a known phenomenon -- of an example of
a universal, that is to say.)
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Footnotes:
[a] Cf. Bradley on judgement (op. cit. [Logic], T.E. II): 'I have taken judgement as the more or less conscious enlargement of an object, not in fact but as truth. The object is thus not altered in existence, but qualified in idea. ...For the object, merely as perceived, is not, as such, qualified as true.' And on inference (T.E. I): 'And our inference, to retain its unity and so in short be an inference, must...remain throughout within the limits of its special object.' 'Every inference, we saw, both starts with and is confined to a special object.' 'If, on the one hand, the object does not advance beyond its beginning, there clearly is no inference. But, on the other hand, if the object passes beyond what is itself, the inference is destroyed.' For Bradley, all inference is an ideal self-development of a real object, and judgement is an implicit inference. (For 'real' and 'ideal' we shall prefer 'immediate' and 'reflexive', at least in the first place.)
This will scarcely be intelligible to the rationalist, who does
not admit any experience more simple, structurally speaking, than
knowledge. For the rationalist, moreover, all knowledge is
explicitly inferential, whereas, as Sartre has pointed out
(op. cit., p. 220), there is no knowledge,
properly speaking, other than intuitive. Inference is merely
instrumental in leading to intuition, and is then discarded; or,
if intuition is not reached, it remains as a signpost. Rational
knowledge is thus at two removes from perception (which, of
course, is intuitive); and similarly with descriptive knowledge.
Intuition is immediate contact between subject and object (see
PHASSA); with the reflexive
reduplication of intuitive knowledge (see ATTÁ [a] & MANO [b]), this becomes immediate
contact between knowing (reflecting) subject and
known (reflected) object; which, in the case of the
arahat, is simply (presence of) the known thing.
Cf. also Heidegger, op. cit., pp. 59-62 &
212-30.
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