Reading rūpa (phenomeno)logically

Because I read everything that academics publish on the Heart Sutra, I see a lot of translations of the Sanskrit word rūpa (Chinese: sè 色). The most common translation of the word is "form", but one often sees it translated as "body" or, especially in relation to Tibetan Buddhism, even as "matter". Even when selecting "form" many translators and commentators appear to have substance in mind. Over the years I've become convinced that this must be incorrect.

I've written about rūpa before, especially in the context of the skandhas, based on extended essays on the khandhas in Pāli found in Vetter (2000) and Hamilton (2000). As I noted in my previous essay, the modern definition of rūpaskandha has been influenced by an ancient mistake in the Khajjanīya Sutta (SN 22.79), which related the word to a verb ruppati "to strike" (Skt rupyati), when in fact it was meant to be rūpayati "appearing", a denominative extrapolated from the noun. However, the denominative doesn't occur in Pāli, which may explain the incorrect etymology that follows from ruppati.

In this essay I want to try to show the utility of what I'm now calling a "phenomenological approach". I had been calling it "epistemic", but I realised that the focus is phenomena and the cessation of all phenomena in meditation. The result is certainly a kind of knowledge, prajñā, but the focus is on phenomena and prajñā appears to be context dependent. I believe, but cannot yet prove, that the cessation of experience in meditation, and the subsequent contentless awareness (aka emptiness), were common knowledge in ancient India. Contrary to the perennial philosophy, I do not believe that all religions point to a single truth. Rather, I believe that each sect interpreted contentless awareness in their own way, giving us a multitude of religions all based on one kind of experience, but quite diverse in how they understood the meaning and significance of contentless awareness.

We can begin with dictionary definitions, but in order to understand rūpa we need to see how it is used in context. I will argue that, in a Buddhist context, we should always at least try to understand it in terms of phenomenology. In this view, rūpa always means "appearance" whether visual or across sensory modes.

The noun rūpa refers to "any outward appearance or phenomenon or colour" (Monier-Williams). Mayerhofer (1976: III 70-71) tells us it means "appearance, colour, shape, beauty". According to William K. Mahoney (1998: 247, n.5), the word is based on the verbal root rūp "to exhibit" or "display"; however, there is no such root in W. D. Whitney's The Roots, Verb-forms and Primary Derivatives of the Sanskrit Language. Monier-Williams does include an entry for rūp but states the verb is probably a denominative, which is to say that the verb rūpayati means "to appear; appearing" since, in this case, it derives from the noun rūpa "appearance". As noted there is an unrelated root √rup "to harm" which forms a third person singular indicative rupyati "he/she/it harms" (Pāli ruppati). For example, in the Sutta Nipāta someone who is deprived of kāma is sallaviddhova ruppati "hurt as though pierced by an arrow" (Sn 767).

In Pāli, rūpayati and ruppati became confused. This may be because rūpayati doesn't occur in Pāli until the medieval commentaries began to be composed (likely by people knowledgeable about Sanskrit or, at least, grammar). Around one third of the occurrences of ruppati in the suttas occur in the Khanjjanīya Sutta. I've previously noted that I became aware of this because in the Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā we find:

yā śāradvatīputra rūpaśunyatā na sā rūpaṃ... tathā hi śāradvatīputra yā rūpaśunyatā na sā rūpayati | (Zacchetti 2005: 393)

Śāriputra, that absence of appearance, is not appearance... since the absence of appearance does not appear.

And the same is true of the other skandhas (vedanā does not vedayati and so on). As it happens this is the line immediately preceding the opening line of the core passage of the Heart Sutra. What comes next is the question "And why is that?" (tat kasya hetoḥ) and the answer is the now famous lines (though in their generally unfamiliar original form ): "For, Śāriputra, appearance is not different from emptiness; " (na hi śāradvatīputra anyad rūpam anyā śunyatā).

Given this as a starting point, we now need to look more closely at how the word is used in a Buddhist context.

Buddhist Usage

The Buddhist account of sensory perception is spelled out in some Pāḷi texts, e.g. The Loka Sutta (SN 12.44):

And what, monks, is the origin of the world. Conditioned by eye and appearances, visual discrimination occurs. The three together are contact. With contact as condition, valence occurs; with valence as condition, desire occurs; with desire as a condition, grasping occurs; with grasping as condition, becoming occurs; with becoming as condition, birth occurs; with birth as condition, aging and death occur: grief, lamenting, misery, depression, and despondency are born. This, monks, is the origin of the world.

Katamo ca, bhikkhave, lokassa samudayo? Cakkhuñca paṭicca rūpe ca uppajjati cakkhuviññāṇaṃ. Tiṇṇaṃ saṅgati phasso. Phassapaccayā vedanā; vedanāpaccayā taṇhā; taṇhāpaccayā upādānaṃ; upādānapaccayā bhavo; bhavapaccayā jāti; jātipaccayā jarāmaraṇaṃ sokaparidevadukkhadomanassupāyāsā sambhavanti. Ayaṃ kho, bhikkhave, lokassa samudayo.

This pericope is repeated for each of the sensory modes.

• eye and appearance give rise to eye-discrimination
• ear and sound give rise to ear-discrimination
• nose and smells give rise to nose-discrimination
• tongue and tastes give rise to tongue-discrimination
• body and tangibles give rise to body-discrimination
• mind and dharmas give rise to mind-discrimination

In the Sabba Sutta (SN 35.23) and elsewhere, these twelve items (eye and appearances, etc.) are called āyatana and they are everything (sabbaṃ). In the Pahāna Sutta (SN 35.24), the twelve āyatana are to be abandoned (pahātabba). In terms of understanding, and therefore translating, rūpa, we can see that rūpa stands in the same relation to the eye as sound does to hearing, or the body to the sense of touch. Certainly, in this context, rūpa is not "body".

Note that, for in each sensory mode, there is no consideration of the object being sensed; rather, we have the sensory organ (eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind) and something (appearance, sound, smell, taste, touch, dharma) that crosses the space between us and the object so that it contacts (phassa) our sensory organ and causes the arising of discrimination (viññāna). Here, then, rūpa is not "the object of perception", it is the medium through which visual objects are perceived.

In modern terms the something, the medium, related to the visual sense, is simply the light reflecting off the object and striking the eye, from which we extract visual information concerning the colour, shape, contrast, edges, etc of the object. While we can think of rūpa as reflected light, it would be anachronistic to use this concept in talking about early Buddhist religious doctrines. The ancient Buddhists do not seem to have thought in terms of reflected light facilitating seeing. Rather they thought in terms of a vague "visual appearance" emanating from the object and striking the eye to create a moment of visual awareness.

Evameva kho, bhikkhave, assutavā puthujjano cakkhusmiṁ haññati manāpāmanāpehi rūpehi (SN IV 201)

Thus also, monks, the uneducated hoi polloi are struck in the eye by pleasant and unpleasant appearances.

If rūpa were the object of perception, then being "struck in the eye by an appearance" (cakkhusmiṁ haññati rūpehi) is not vision, it's a trip to the hospital. There is no object that strikes the eye and gives rise to pleasure.

Corā gāmaghātakāti kho, bhikkhave, channetaṃ bāhirānaṃ āyatanānaṃ adhivacanaṃ. Cakkhu, bhikkhave, haññati manāpāmanāpesu rūpesu; sotaṃ, bhikkhave…pe… ghānaṃ, bhikkhave…pe… jivhā, bhikkhave, haññati manāpāmanāpesu rasesu; kāyo, bhikkhave…pe… mano, bhikkhave, haññati manāpāmanāpesu dhammesu. (SN IV.175)

Monks, "like thieves who attack a town" is a way of talking about the six external senses. Monks, the eye is attacked (haññati) by pleasant and unpleasant appearances; the ear..., nose.., the tongue is attacked by pleasant and unpleasant tastes; monks, the body... the mind is attacked by pleasant and unpleasant thoughts.

From all this we can deduce an important definition:

rūpa is to the eye as sound is to the ear

This is a general definition of rūpa in a Buddhist context. Making analogies was a very popular method of inferring knowledge in ancient India, so it is fitting that our general definition of rūpa should emerge from an analogy. Rūpa is not, and cannot be "the body", since in this context "the body" is part of the scheme as kāya (literally "a collection") and is in a different category, i.e. the category of sense organs, not the category of sense media. Moreover, rūpa cannot be the object of vision, since the object itself striking the eye does not result in vision, usually the opposite. Rather, we visually know an object (cakkhu-viññāṇaṃ) by seeing the light reflected from it. This reflected light is conceptualised in Pāli as "appearance" (rūpa).

However, this definition raises a problem in terms of how rūpa is used in other terms, notably rūpaskandha and nāmarūpa. In these terms rūpa is traditionally defined as meaning "the entire physical universe" and "the body". And neither of these definitions offers much in the way of coherent interpretation. How can one word mean both "visual appearance" (and definitely not "body" which is kāya), "body", and "the entire physical universe"? My answer is that it cannot. It does not. This interpretation is old, but it misses the point.

So how does the phenomenological reading help here?

Rūpakkhandha

As noted in previous work on rūpakkhandha, the traditional definitions are based on incorrect information, especially the folk etymology in the Khajjanīya Sutta (SN 22.79). As Sue Hamilton (2000: 70) noted: "there is no text which gives a full and clear account of what is being referred to by the term khandha.". Still, there is another way in which rūpakkhandha is defined, in the Mahāhatthipadoma Sutta (MN 28) that carries a little more weight and is more amenable to metaphysics:

Katamo cāvuso, rūpupādānakkhandho? Cattāri ca mahābhūtāni, catunnañca mahābhūtānaṃ upādāya rūpaṃ. Katamā cāvuso, cattāro mahābhūtā? Pathavīdhātu, āpodhātu, tejodhātu, vāyodhātu.Katamā cāvuso, pathavīdhātu? Pathavīdhātu siyā ajjhattikā, siyā bāhirā. Katamā cāvuso, ajjhattikā pathavīdhātu?

Yaṃ ajjhattaṃ paccattaṃ kakkhaḷaṃ kharigataṃ upādinnaṃ, seyyathidaṃ – kesā lomā nakhā dantā taco maṃsaṃ nhāru aṭṭhi aṭṭhimiñjaṃ vakkaṃ hadayaṃ yakanaṃ kilomakaṃ pihakaṃ papphāsaṃ antaṃ antaguṇaṃ udariyaṃ karīsaṃ, yaṃ vā panaññampi kiñci ajjhattaṃ paccattaṃ kakkhaḷaṃ kharigataṃ upādinnaṃ. Ayaṃ vuccatāvuso, ajjhattikā pathavīdhātu. (MN I 185)

And what, comrade, is the branch whose fuel is appearance? It is the four great "beings" (bhūtā) and the appearances dependent on them. And what, comrade, are the four great "beings". The elements (dhātu) of earth, water, heat, and wind. And what, comrade, is the earth element. The earth element may be internal or external. And what, comrade is the internal earth-element?

That which is internal to oneself and is hard (kakkhaḷa) or solid (kharigata) when grasped, such as: head hairs, body hairs, fingernails, teeth, skin, flesh, sinews, bones, marrow, kidneys, heart, liver, diaphragm, spleen, lungs, intestines, bowel, stomach, excrement

And the proper attitude to all this solidity is

taṃ netaṃ mama, nesohamasmi, na meso attā (MN I 185)

This is not mine, I am not this, this is not the essence of me.

This is all usually construed in a metaphysical framework because our Theravāda informants tell us that they believe that it concerns metaphysics (based on their traditional commentaries on the Abhidhamma). This reinforces the sectarian idea that rūpakkhandha is substance generally. As I say, I no longer believe this to be true or even plausible.

A lot of this material comes either from the general Indian background at the time of the second urbanisation (from ca 600 BC onwards) or from Brahmanism. We learn a lot about the conception of the elements from Vedic texts. For example, the idea of the element of tejo "heat", is not simply "fire". Rather, the element of tejo is conceptually connected to actual flames, but also to the sun, anything hot, and digestion. Fire might be the prototype that defines the category, but clearly the category itself is not composed only of "fire". Moreover, the general word for fire is agni (Pāḷi aggi).

This language of prototypes defining categories and membership of the category being based on similarity to the prototype comes from George Lakoff's expansion on Wittgenstein's family resemblances, especially as set out in his book Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things (1987). I've often cited Lakoff's work on metaphors, but his approach to categorisation is useful here. The "beings" (bhūtā) in this view represent prototypes (or models) by which the categories are defined. Earth is the conceptual model for defining solidity, water for cohesion, heat for transformation, and wind for movement. We could still define these in ontological terms (leading to metaphysics), but we can also define them experientially (leading to phenomenology).

For example, if we grasp some hair we will have an experience of solidity or resistance. Hair is an example of "earthiness" because the solidity of hair is analogous to the prototype of solidity, i.e. the earth. Moreover, although Buddhaghosa goes into similar detail about where we experience "earth" in the body (Vism XI.27 ff), it's clear that this is not an ontology (i.e. not an account of real things) and not intended to be an ontology; this is a meditation practice. Making it into an ontology was a project of later Buddhist monks who seem to have completely missed the point (perhaps because they didn't meditate).

This means that we are not forced to read rūpakkhandha (metaphysically) as "the body" as Vetter and Hamilton suggested. We might even say, given comments on rūpa above, that it would incoherent to think of rūpakkhandha as "the body". There is no doubt that we can experience solidity in our body as well as outside it, but our body is not the prototype for solidity, earth is the prototype.

This opens up the possibility of reading rūpakkhandha phenomenologically, in which case the way the word is used ought to reflect the basic meaning, i.e. appearance. I take rūpakkhandha to refer to the "appearance" of sensory experience across the six sensory modes. Here rūpa is a metonym for appearance across the sensory spectrum: appearance, sound, smell, taste, tangibles, and thoughts (rūpa, saddo, gandho, raso, jivhā, phoṭṭhabbo, dhammo).

Nāmarūpa

Like rūpakkhandha, there is a long tradition of treating nāmarūpa as an ontology. In this ontology we divide the world into "physical" and "mental". We have Pāli technical terms for these categories, viz. kāyika and cetasika. These terms are adjectives meaning "concerned with or pertaining to the body (kāyo)" and concerned with thought (ceto). Theravāda exegetes take kāyika to be another metonym for the entire physical world, along with with rūpa. This is a dualistic ontology that simply divides the world into material and non-material. We are quite familiar with this dualistic ontology in Europe, because it was central to our intellectual tradition. For Descartes, for example, this dualism allowed a place for God in an otherwise materialistic universe.

That said, we can make a valid epistemic distinction between what we know about what goes on in our body and what we know about the world. This is the distinction between internal (ajjhattika) and external (bāhirā). The distinction is epistemic because we get different kinds of information from our different senses. Interoception gains us knowledge of our internal physical state, and exteroception knowledge of the external world. We may well infer metaphysical conclusions from such knowledge, but we don't have to. We can think of this as a basic distinction between the kinds of knowledge we can have and how we get it. And, notably, different people infer different metaphysics apparently from the same kinds of experience (especially where meditation is concerned).

Again, we are not forced to read nāmarūpa as an ontology or as rooted in a particular kind of metaphysics. I think we can read rūpa here as appearance also. Note that as a nidāna, nāmarūpa is conditioned by viññāṇa, which I have defined as "discrimination of the object ". I have contrasted this with saññā which is "recognising (and thus naming) the experience". Two different kinds of knowledge, both sharing the etymological root jñā "to know".

In the Mahānidāna Sutta (DN 15) we find a curious variant of the nidānas. In this sutta, viññāna is the condition for nāmarūpa, but nāmarūpa is also the condition for viññāna. In the usual presentation of nidāna doctrine as an ontology (a way of dividing up reality) this doesn't make any sense. How can two things mutually condition each other? Conditionality requires the presence of the condition for the effect to arise. If the effect is also the condition for the condition, then conditionality ought to break down. Thus, at face value, in an ontological reading, this sutta is incoherent.

In a phenomenological reading viññāna involves identifying the object of experience from the experience of it. We can do this because the experience has a sui generis quality (or a sabhāva; Skt svabhāva). We know from the inside that greed and generosity are different, that anger and love are different. And such differences are essential to Buddhist soteriology because they influence how we act and, therefore, where we are reborn. This in turn either supports or undermines our attempts to end rebirth (the ultimate goal of all Buddhist traditions). As we know from considering the khandha doctrine, viññāna depends on the appearance (rūpa) of a sensory experience and putting a name (nāma) to it. In a sense ,then, viññāna and nāmarūpa are two different ways of talking about the same aspect of sensory experience.

Another aspect of the ancient account of sensory experience is that when an object is discriminated we name that discrimination according to which sensory mode it occured in:

yaññadeva, bhikkhave, paccayaṃ paṭicca uppajjati viññāṇāṃ tena teneva saṅkhaṃ gacchati. cakkuñca paṭicca rūpe ca uppajjati viññāṇaṃ, cakkhuviññāṇanteva saṅkhaṃ gacchati... (MN I 259)

Whatever condition gives rise to a discrimination, it goes by that name. A discrimination arising on the basis of the eye and appearances, goes by the name "eye-discrimination"...

I think we cannot overstate the importance of this. "Goes by that name" translates saṅkhaṃ gacchati. If, for example, there is a viññāna dependent on cakkhu and rūpa, then the name (nāma) of that is cakkhuviññāna. How do we know that it is a cakkhuviññāna? Because we perceived it via the eye and because it has the appearance of a visual percept. Vision is different from other modes of perception, i.e. vision has a sui generis character than enables us to distinguish visual sensory experience from other kinds of sensory experience.

We may notice that all these doctrines that Theravādins treat as ontologies are simplistic. The idea that just five categories cover all possible phenomena is overly simplistic. The fact is that these doctrines are mostly meditation practices rather than ontologies. They are subjects to contemplate in an attempt to gain liberation, not existential explanations. They all seek to undermine our conviction that sensory experience is the acme of being, because the authors were familiar with the idea of the cessation of sensory experience and possibly with the experience of cessation.

Early Buddhists (and Prajñāpāramitā Buddhists) did not, for example, make much of the contrast between pleasant and unpleasant sensory experiences. Clearly there is some discussion of these in relation to karma and rebirth. But the much clearer contrast is between any sensory experience (kāma) and no sensory experience (aka nibbāna, suññatāvhāra).

What the Mahānidāna Sutta appears to argue is that discrimination of the object and its name and appearance are much the same thing. That if they really are two different processes, then they coexist. And this is a phenomenological argument, based on epistemology; it is not a metaphysical argument based on inferences drawn from experience.

Conclusion

In this essay I've tried to make two co-existing arguments. On one hand the traditional interpretation of rūpa is incoherent in many ways, largely because it is misinterpreted as "body" or "substance". This seems to be due to a tendency towards metaphysical speculation in the post-canonical period (and up to the present). On the other hand, a phenomenological reading of rūpa as "appearance" stops short of inferring a particular metaphysics and avoids the kind of incoherence that we see in, for example, Theravāda orthodoxy.

We notably conclude that: rūpa is to the eye as sound is to the ear.

In a Buddhist context, then, rūpa means "appearance". In modern terms, this amounts to reflected light, but I have tried to avoid the anachronism of attributing knowledge of physics to the Iron Age authors of the Pāli suttas. The translation "appearance" is a much better reflection of the state of their knowledge of the physics of visual perception.

I have tried to show that we can retain this approach to better account for the idea of rūpakkhandha. Here, also, rūpa means "appearance" but in a more general way. And the same applies to nāmarūpa. 

I believe that this means we are not forced to take the metaphysical speculations of Theravādins, or any other Buddhists, seriously. We can, and I argue that we should, read these passages as concerned with phenomenology in the service of soteriology. Early Buddhists did not speculate about the nature of phenomena or the nature of reality. Because they can, and did, reduce sensory experience to the point where from their point of view it was completely absent (suñña), they were simply not interested (at first) in the nature of experience, they were interested in the implications of the cessation and absence of sense experience in meditation. 

~~oOo~~

Bibliography

Hamilton, Sue. 2000. Early Buddhism: A New Approach. London: Routledge.

Lakoff, George. 1987. Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things. Chicago University Press

Mahony. William K. (1998). The Artful Universe: An Introduction to the Vedic Religious Imagination. State University of New York Press.

Mayrhofer, Manfred. (1976) Kurzgefaßtes etymologisches wörterbuch des Altindischen. A Concise Etymological Sanskrit Dictionary. Heidelberg: Carl Winter. Universitätsverlag.

Vetter, Tilmann. 2000. The Khandha Passages in the Vinayapiṭaka and the Four Main Nikāyas. Wien Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.

Modern Interpretations of the Khandhas: Intro and Rūpa

Thanks to a benefactor I was able to purchase a copy of Tilmann Vetter's The Khandha Passages, which came out in 2000. The book is largely what it says, i.e. a collection of Pāli passages related to the khandhas in a single volume. It came out in the same year as Sue Hamilton's book Early Buddhism: A New Approach (2000). In this essay (in two parts), I aim to summarise and critique aspects of Vetter's overview of the khandhas (2000: 19-82) and to compare and contrast with Hamilton's overview (2000: 72-84). The aim is to create a synthesis based on these two indepth, nonsectarian studies. In part one I'll introduce the topic and cover rūpakkandha.

Vetter is aware of (cites) Hamilton's earlier book on the khandhas, Identity and Experience (1996) but he makes little use of it and (surprisingly) says that there has been no comprehensive study of Pāḷi khandha passages. Identity and Experience is an edited version of Hamilton's doctoral dissertation and looked at every occurrence of the khandha in the four Nikāyas. Vetter includes the uses of khandha in the Vinaya and perhaps this is what he means by "comprehensive". Pāli as a language and the ideas conveyed in it both exist in layers. A comprehensive account would include comments on the diachronic as well as synchronic uses of the word. Hamilton, with some justification, treats the Nikāyas as a single chronological unit; Vetter, with less justification, treats the Vinaya as part of the same chronological unit. While there is minimal evidence for stratification in the Nikāyas, there is some. Unfortunately, Vetter proposes a chronological development of the relevant terminology but does not attempt to tie this to the chronological development of the Nikāyas. 

In some places the five khandhas are only four (Vetter 2000: 15, n. 12), i.e. rūpa, vedanā, saññā, and saṅkhāra (e.g. AN. 4.16). Also, the five khandhas appear to have been unknown to the original compilers of the Dīghanikāya or Aṅguttaranikāya. Vetter mentions these two facts in passing and moves on, since they are incidental to his project. However, such discrepancies really ought to catch our attention and motivate us to explain them. 

In Pāli, there are two terms for the five items collectively: khandha and upādānakkhandha. Sometimes these two words are synonymous, though sometimes they are opposed (e.g. Sn 22.48). However, upādānakkhandha is by far the most common term. Vetter takes this to mean that the collection of five khandhas came first (sans-label), then were labelled upādānakkhandha, which was later abbreviated with khandha (2000: 19). This is of course possible but the rationale for it is weak. What if the kandha/upādānkkhandha is a sectarian difference? Or geographical? 

Vetter overlooks or ignores Richard Gombrich's observations about the word khandha when used in words such as aggikhandha and dukkhakhanda (1996: 67-9). Gombrich placed the term within the context of an extended cognitive metaphor: EXPERIENCE IS FIRE (Cf. Lakoff and Johnson). Buddhist texts make broad use of this metaphor to characterise sensory experience and the khandhas are another way of talking about experience. And in the context of fire, upādāna takes the meaning "fuel". The khandas, in this view, are the fuel that supports the fire that is experience. A key to this is the Ādittipariyāya (SN 35:28), in which the Buddha is made to say "everything is on fire" (sabbaṃ ādittaṃ). And what is "everything", it is the sense faculties and sense objects (i.e. rūpa qua appearance rather than substance), i.e. sensory experience is on fire (compare this to the Sabba Sutta, SN 35.23 and the subsequent suttas). From Hamilton we know that "dukkha is not contingent to experience. Rather, one cannot have experience that is not dukkha" (2000: 68) and "dukkha is better understood as the fact of experience" (71). Note that Gombrich was Sue Hamilton's PhD supervisor and he was strongly influenced by her conclusions about the khandhas. 

Hamilton notes: 

"The term [khandha] is not one used by any of the other religious teachers of the day, and they are hardly explained in any coherent way anywhere in the Sutta Piṭaka: there is no text which gives a full and clear account of what is being referred to by the term khandha. (2000: 70. Emphasis added)

Nevertheless, khandhas are mentioned frequently in early Buddhist texts and form an essential part of later Buddhist metaphysics (especially in accounts of Prajñāpāramitā). I outlined the etymology and meaning of word khandha (Skt. skandha) in an essay in 2013: Pañca-skandha: Etymology and Dynamics. The etymology is obscure, but seems to relate to the idea of "branch" and, in particular, the way the torso branches into limbs and the arm branches into five fingers. Hamilton (1996) notes that, in Vedic, skandha means "trunk" as in the trunk of a tree, but she provides no references for this. I have also proposed that the word prapañca relates to this branching of the arm into five fingers. I often refer to pañcakkandha as "the five branches of experience".

Following his assumed pattern of historical development, Vetter opts to define the individual khandhas first (20-73) then the terms upādānakkhandha and khandha (73-82). He notes that outside of this context several of the terms have other uses and are defined accordingly. This is common in Buddhist literature. Sometimes context is all important in deciding how a word is being used. 

Vetter relies on the Khajjanīya Sutta (SN 22.79) for his definitions because it is "the only passage in Vinaya- and Sutta-piṭaka where an attempt has been made to 'define' all five items" (19). It will soon be apparent why this source is problematic, but in advance Vetter notes that the sutta is "late" according to his understanding of the development of the terminology (it uses the term upādānakkhandha). It's not clear what "late" means here (since Vetter has already asserted that the use of upādānakkhandha predates the use of khandha) and, as I noted, this is not connected with any of the descriptions of the chronological stratification of the suttas. This brings to mind Jan Nattier's quip about textual stratification:

"If I like it, it's early; if I specialise in it, it's very early; if I don't like it at all, but it's in my text, it's an interpolation." (2002: 49)

Vetter gives some obvious caveats—the text could be late, it is stylistically different, and definitions are inconsistent (19). Still, when it comes down to it, Vetter starts with this text and is much less critical than I would like him to be.

Rūpa

Vetter's definition of rūpa is the shortest of his book, which is focussed more on saṅkhāra and viññāna. I think this is a little unfortunate because some important nuances are lost in the process. Vetter (20) notes that rūpa is often defined with respect to the verb ruppati "harm, suffer". This definition is confused, precisely because of the passage found in the Khajjanīya Sutta which relates the five nouns that make up the khandhas to five verbs ostensibly from the same root. Abbreviating, we get:

Ruppatīti kho, bhikkhave, tasmā ‘rūpa’nti vuccati... Vedayatīti kho, bhikkhave, tasmā ‘vedanā’ti vuccati... Sañjānātīti kho, bhikkhave, tasmā ‘saññā’ti vuccati... Saṅkhatam abhisaṅkharontīti kho, bhikkhave, tasmā ‘saṅkhārā’ti vuccati...Vijānātīti kho, bhikkhave, tasmā ‘viññāṇa’nti vuccati. (SN III.86-7)

It harms, monks, therefore it is called "form", it feels, therefore it is called "feeling", it perceives, therefore it is called "perception", it constructs the constructed, therefore it is called "construct", it cognizes, therefore it is called "cognition."

Even with only my English translation anyone can see that something is wrong here. There is a pattern and the rūpa passage does not conform to it. The reason is that someone has misread the text. It is simply incorrect to derive rūpa from √rup "to break, to harm", which has a indicative form ruppati (Skt rupyati; causative ropayati). Compare a similar passage in the Large Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra:

tathā hi śāradvatīputra yā rūpaśunyatā na sā rūpayati | yā vedanāśunyatā na sā vedayati | yā saṃjñāśunyatā na sā saṃjānāti | yā saṃskāraśunyatā na sābhisaṃskaroti | yā vijñānaśunyatā na sā vijānāti | (Karashima et al. 2016, 21r–v).

“Therefore Śāriputra, what is empty of form does not form; what is empty of feeling does not feel; what is empty of perception does not perceive; what is empty of willing does not will; and what is empty of cognition does not cognise.”

Here, instead of a verb from √rup we find the denominative of rūpa, i.e. rūpayati "appears, forms". The expected Pāli form—rūpayati or rūpeti—does not occur in the Nikāyas. Examples of denominatives from Warder's Introduction to Pali (316-7) include sukheti "he is happy" (from sukha "happy"), tīreti "he accomplishes"  (from tīra "river bank, shore"), and udāneti "he speaks joyously" (from udāna "a joyous utterance") This tautological definition of rūpa does fit the pattern noted above: "it appears, therefore it is called appearance."

It's not just that rūpa is unrelated to ruppati but that the definition of rūpa in the Khajjanīya Sutta makes no sense. Vetter calls the Pāḷi etymology "doubtful" (20) but it's just wrong and it is not clear why he prevaricates on such an obvious mistake. However, this text does a lot of heavy lifting in his definition of rūpa. In fact, Vetter's understanding of rūpa as "body" appears to be based mainly on the Khajjanīya Sutta where, having mistakenly equated rūpa with ruppati, "harming", the text continues to ask "by what is it harmed? (kena ruppati). The answer is: 

sītenapi ruppati, uṇhenapi ruppati, jighacchāyapi ruppati, pipāsāyapi ruppati, ḍaṃsamaka-savātātapa-sarīsapa-samphassenapi ruppati. (SN III.86)

It is harmed by cold. It is harmed by heat. It is harmed by hunger. It is harmed by thirst. It is harmed by contact with flies, mosquitoes, wind, sun, and snakes.

Note that Bodhi (2000: 915) has opted to translate ruppati here as "deformed". One can see that he is trying to pun on rūpa as "form" but this falls flat in my view. Clearly this text suggests that rūpa means "body" and Vetter appears to rely on this text as his main support. But we've just shown that the author of this text was confused. This text is wrong about the definition of rūpa as ruppati (rather the rūpayati). The issue of what is harmed is not relevant given that "harm" is the wrong word. The question is what appears? In which case, why should we take this text seriously, let alone as definitional? Even with scripture, one has to evaluate the quality of sources. Not all suttas were created equal. 

Worse, Pāli has a number of words for body and Vetter says:

"[rūpa] was probably preferred to other words for body such as kāya, deha or sarīra, because it showed the body as attract to the eye, and as such causing attachment." (2000: 20. Emphasis added)

The etymological confusion notwithstanding, this is a poor explanation. This is a central Buddhist doctrine. Vetter has to guess at the meaning here precisely because this important and oft-used term is not defined by early Buddhists themselves and is not drawn from other religious teachings (unlike saññā, saṅkhāra, and vijñāna). But I think here he has guessed wrong. 

Rūpa doesn't primarily mean "body" and, as Vetter notes, there are a number of words that are consistently used in this sense (kāya, deha, sarīra) although curiously "body" is a derived sense the case of kāya "collection" and deha means "moulded". The etymology of sarīra is not clear. Generally, rūpa means "outward appearance" and early Buddhists used words for body when they meant body. For example, the sense of touch has body (kāya) as its organ and tangibles (P. phoṭṭhabbā; Skt. spraṣṭavya) are its objects.

In sensory terms, rūpa is to the eye what sound is to the ear, i.e. it is not the matter or substance of an object but the visual stimulus that reaches the eye considered independently of the object. Even though we may say "I hear a conch", we know this is shorthand for "I hear the sound of a conch". We don't hear the object, we hear the sound it gives off. Similarly rūpa as sense object is the visual impression that the object gives off, not the object itself. This aspect of Buddhist epistemology is thoroughly confused across the board of Buddhist exegesis. 

Of course, the context here is different. It is possible for rūpa to mean something else, but it strikes me as unlikely that it means "body" in any context. Vetter's argument is based on misreadings and guesses which does not inspire confidence. 

Sue Hamilton also translates rūpa as "body"; however, she adds: "It is not the matter of the body qua matter that is relevant, but that one's body is the physical locus of one's experience" (2000: 72) and "A central feature of the body is that it is the locus of the senses, which further emphasises that what is being referred to here is the living functioning body and not just its substance" (73). 

There is a question here regarding the nature of experience as understood by moderns and ancients. See for example my 2012 essay, The 'Mind as Container' Metaphor. It seems entirely natural in the modern Anglosphere to think of experience as occurring in a "theatre", as being internal to us and contained in our minds. This also a cognitive metaphor: THE MIND IS A CONTAINER. What I argue in that essay is that Pāli texts lack this metaphor. I have not seen any evidence that they had the metaphor of the body as container either, certainly not of experience. Here I think Hamilton's approach is problematic. It seems so obvious and intuitive to us what kind of thing that sensory experience is. But our views are socially conditioned and not as natural as we think. I'm not convinced by the "locus of experience" idea. But I also think it's an open question: my blog posts are fairly thorough but not peer-reviewed. I aim for them to be topics of serious discussion, not definitive statements.  

Part of the reason for taking rūpa to concretely mean "body" is that it is said to be composed of body parts. In Buddhist meditations, such as found in the Satipaṭṭḥāna Sutta (MN 10) or the Kāyagatāsati Sutta (MN 119), one contemplates rūpa in the body by imaginatively noting all the constituent parts including things like viscera and bones (one cannot directly experience one's viscera or bones, for example, so the practice must be imaginative). But note here that it is kāya (literally "the collection") that is treated thus, not rūpa. We've already seen that Buddhist definitions of jargon terms are highly context dependent. So the idea that a definition or understanding  of kāya is directly applicable without any caveats to a definition of rūpa in a whole different context is dubious at best. Both authors have made a rather devious manoeuver here and have hidden it with hand waving. 

Vetter and Hamilton (at much greater length) also observe that rūpa is defined as the four great elements, i.e. catumahābhūta: paṭhavī, apo, tejo, vāyu or  earth, water, fire, and wind. Here it is definitely rūpa in the context of the khandhas that is defined and we are back on track. Still, as Noa Ronkin points out: 

"[the elements] are not meant to give an account of matter as constitutive of external, mind-independent reality" (2005: 56). 

Rather the words are used metaphorically for aspects of experience. Earth represents solidity; water, fluidity and cohesion; fire, heat; and wind, movement. The temptation to read the mahābhūtas as synonymous with the Greek four element theory is strong, but early Buddhists were not theorising about metaphysics as the Greeks were. Strangely, given the thesis of her book, Hamilton notes the metaphorical use but seems to stop short of acknowledging the implications of it - i.e. that kāya does not appear to mean "body" in this context. It may at best mean the experience of body or embodiment. 

Generally speaking, then, rūpa is not an ontological term; it is an epistemic term. It refers to the visual appearance of objects, not to objects per se, nor to the matter they are made of (on which subject the suttas are silent). And most dictionaries seem to take this view also. On the other hand, some Pāli suttas clearly do use rūpa as a ontological term and consider it to mean "body", although this is associated with a mistaken folk etymology of ruppati. And this definition has crept into dictionaries as well. 

Vetter's definition of rūpa as "body" is an inauspicious beginning because it means that he leans into the idea of rūpa as "substance" rather than rūpa as "appearance". In fact he specifically rejects the definition as "visible form" (20). Where the word rūpa is equated with "body" is precisely where it is confused with Pāli ruppati in exegesis. And this mistake is not repeated in some other occurrences outside the Theravāda tradition. 

Conclusion

It's worth repeating that the khandhas are never clearly defined in the early Buddhist texts. One of the partial definitions is either based on a misreading (rupyati "harm" for the denominative rūpayati "appear") or it is a tautology "appearance is that which appears". Either way this is not helpful. That scholars conflate definitions and overlook context when it is convenient is not helpful either. Both Vetter and Hamilton make the issue seem more clear than it is. The one thing it seems rūpa cannot be is the body as substance. Whether Hamilton's reading of body as "locus of experience" is what was intended is moot, but I have doubts how this would fit the context since the relevant cognitive metaphor is missing from Pāli as far as I can tell.

Another problem I have with rūpa qua body, is how anyone can think that body makes a set with vedanā, saññā, saṅkhārā, and viññāna. The body and four terms concerned with mental functioning. Some Buddhists make an analogy with the term nāma-rūpa "name and appearance". However, as I pointed out in 2011 in my essay, Nāmarūpa, this term too is vague and can't really serve as an anchor for other definitions. The Pāli tradition is conflicted as to what constitutes nāmarūpa, a term borrowed from late Vedic literature. Furthermore, Buddhists more characteristically used a threefold division of the person into body, speech, and mind (kāya, vāca, citta) and speech does not easily fit into the khandha analysis (note the threefold division does not occur in Vedic literature, but it does occur in pre-Buddhist Zoroastrian literature). In addition, vedanā, saññā, saṅkhārā, and viññāna are all epistemic terms (in Buddhism) and if there is any pattern then rūpa should also be an epistemic term, i.e. appearance rather than substance. The set of khandhas cannot possibly accommodate "all phenomena" even if many Buddhists consider this plausible based on a very old tradition. Even if we follow Hamilton and reduce the scope of early Buddhist interest to just experience (as opposed to reality), there is still an explanatory gap between rūpa and the other four khandā (and missing vāca).

How do we know we have a body? Because we feel it and see it. Note that when these two channels of information get out of sync we have out-of-body experiences as Thomas Metzinger described in The Ego Tunnel. Feeling and seeing are sensory experiences. So our awareness of our body, as with all other instances of intentional awareness is subjective by definition. Moreover, one of the most common altered states that occurs early in meditation is that our sense of embodiment is affected. The body may feel very large, for example, or very light. Or we may lose our sense of being located in space. As we go deeper we may lose our sense of being extended or bounded in space. 

Later Buddhist traditions notwithstanding, I don't think "the body" can be what is meant by rūpakkhandha. I keep coming back to the basic idea that rūpa is to the eye what sound is to the ear. Clearly rūpakkhandha is some kind of abstraction or metaphor (perhaps a metonym) based on this idea. Lacking a clear definition, Buddhist traditions drifted into various interpretations based on the needs of sectarian doctrinal entailments. Making sense of rūpakkhanda may well be impossible given what we have to work with, at least in terms of first principles. The idea that it must make sense is plausible enough and I'm sympathetic to it, but it should be not become a defence of procrustean efforts to force the definition to fit. Similarly, I'm sympathetic with attempts to reverse engineer what kind of thing rūpakkhanda might be based on the hermeneutics of later, but still ancient, exegetes. But we cannot discount the possibility that they were just as much in the dark as we are. And we have to take into account that in the ancient world exegetes were firmly embedded in sectarian doctrinal systems. 

This level of confusion of terminology, definition, and application so close to the centre of Buddhist orthodoxy is fascinating. And it makes me wonder why I seem to be almost alone in being fascinated by it. I'm reading two professional academics on the subject (writing 20 years ago!), both of whom were trying to smooth over the inconsistencies and present what's in the suttas as a coherent discourse. But that is the job of theologians or religieux not the job of academics! Why are they not studying the content of the texts critically? This seems very weird to me. 

Next up the other khandas, but I haven't even started yet so don't hold your breath. 

Bibliography

Attwood, J. 2018. "Defining Vedanā: Through the Looking Glass." Contemporary Buddhism, 18(3): 31-46. https://doi.org/10.1080/14639947.2018.1450959

Bodhi. 2000. The Connected Discourses of the Buddha. Wisdom. 

Gombrich, Richard F. 1996. How Buddhism Began: The Conditioned Genesis of the Early Teachings. London, Athlone. Reprint New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 2007. 

Hamilton, Sue. 1996. Identity and experience: the constitution of the human being according to early Buddhism. London: Luzac Oriental.

Hamilton, Sue. 2000. Early Buddhism: A New Approach. London: Routledge.

Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. (2003). Metaphors We Live By. New Ed. University of Chicago Press.

Ronkin, Noa. 2005. Early Buddhist Metaphysics the Making of a Philosophical Tradition. Routledge.

Vetter, Tilmann. 2000. The Khandha Passages in the Vinayapiṭaka and the Four Main Nikāyas. Wien Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.