Dharma as mental event

The earliest strands of Buddhism seem to avoid any ontological speculation, and dharma - in the sense of the object of manas - has no particular status viz a viz reality. Indeed I'm not convinced that they even thought in terms of 'reality'. However over the years dharma did take on an ontological cast. So much so that Nāgārjuna spends much of his important work the Mūlamadhyamaka Kārikā (MMK) demolishing the idea. In this essay I attempt to show the progress of this change. Dharma as mental object is the most important and characteristically Buddhist use of the word dharma, but it perhaps the most difficult to translate. Some of the definitions of the philosophical term 'qualia' might fit, and 'noeta' has been suggested though choosing Latin terms is not always helpful to an English speaker. To render it 'things' is misleading in my view, and 'mental objects' is inelegant. In fact many authors leave dharma untranslated in this case.

Why should the word find an application in this sense? To answer this we need to take a step back and reconsider the Buddhist view of consciousness (Sanskrit vijñāna; Pāli viññāṇa). Consciousness is always 'consciousness of ', the Buddha did not allow for a free floating entity called consciousness that was waiting to be aware of something (see JR: What is Consciousness?) - consciousness is dependently arisen, and this is the most important application of the principle of conditionality. In particular consciousness arises in dependence on contact between a sense organ and a sense object. Particularly with reference to the mental sense (manas) the object is called 'a dharma' - and this specifically includes the information garnered from the other five senses. So a sight object gives rise to sight consciousness, but this sight consciousness in turns becomes the object of the mind sense, it is itself a dharma. As we've seen over the past two weeks the primary meaning of dharma is foundation. Here the dharma acts as a 'foundation' to vijñāna since vijñāna arises in dependence (in part at least) on sense objects. We can see, then, that dharma in this sense is related to words for cause (hetu, paccaya) and condition (nidāna, upanisa, bandhu).

Now the main interest in the early suttas is on vijñāṇa not on dharmas; that is, on the subjective pole of experience rather than the objective. So for instance the processes which enable us to have experiences - the five skandha (P. khandha) - are mentioned frequently and treated quite exhaustively. The nature of dharmas is only given cursory attention if any. The reasons for focusing on the mind are pragmatic because it is the insights into the functioning of mind that are liberate us.

However, the lack of definite statements about dharmas in the suttas left a lacuna that became very attractive to a certain type of mind - and unfortunately they were frequently the same people who preserved the texts and were the chief textual authorities and exegetes.

The first step was the abhidharma. Abhidharma is an interesting word. PED gives 'special dhamma' as it's chief sense, but under abhi- they say the primary meaning is "that of taking possession and mastering" which suggests that its meaning would be impossible to guess from the etymology (which is not uncommon). What the abhidhamma is, is an analysis of the Buddhadharma and in particular of the dharmas themselves in the sense I am exploring now. The abhidharmikas were concerned with identifying the types and categories of dharmas both mental and physical, and the interactions between them in creating consciousness. I must confess at this point that I have never really studied abhidharma, and don't have much interest in it. Presumably the original intent grew out of injunctions in meditation texts such as the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta to observe the arising and passing and away of dharmas. However the subtle shift of the attention from the moon to the finger meant that the dharmas themselves, rather than their contingency per se moved into focus, and this seems to me to be a fundamental error.

Another issue which has plagued Buddhism presumably from the moment the Buddha died is whether it is possible for any of us to have the experience he had. While he was alive to say yes he seems to have inspired huge confidence. I presume that the shift to the view (exemplified in Peter Masefield's flawed work Divine Revelation in Pali Buddhism [1]) which says that without the physical presence of a Buddha awakening is not possible was a gradual giving way to pessimism, rather than a sudden collapse of confidence. However one of the motivations, as I understand it, behind the abhidharmika's efforts was to understand awakening - to intellectually keep the possibility of liberation alive.

In the abhidharma the idea of what a dharma is begins to take on form. Scholars are quick to point out that they do not see a definite ontology here. [2] It is not that the abhidharmika's set out to establish the nature of a dhamma, but in creating their lists of dharmas they provided an opening for those with a more ontological bent. What they do is create finite lists which they present as exhaustive - there are these kinds of dharmas and no more. That the different abhidharmikas came up with overlapping but often quite different list tells us much in retrospect. The definiteness of these lists was problematic. By the time of the commentarial tradition in 5th century Sri Lanka a dharma has become a thing - which may well be why this is the favoured translation of dhamma in contemporary times.

The various early schools of Buddhism (the tradition records eighteen names) each had their own collections of suttas, their own vinaya, and their own abhidharma. Since the sutta collections vary mostly in how they are arranged it is presumed that these stem from a common stock [3]. Each surviving vinaya shows a little more variation - especially in the number of pratimokṣa rules and in how elaborated is their account of the Buddha's life. Each abhidharma however has a significantly different take on the subject - though of course all shared a method and aimed at the same goal.

The Sarvāstivādin abhidharmikas seem to have gone further down the ontological road than any other Buddhist groups. Their very name means 'everything exists' (sarva asti). They held dharmas to be substantially existing elements of reality. Just how far they gave strayed from the Buddha's teaching is brought into focus when one considers that Nāgārjuna is thought by some scholars to have written his stark and decisive polemic, Mālamadhyamika Kārikā (MMK), in response to the Sarvāstivādins. [4] Amongst other aims Nāgārjuna comprehensively dismantles the twin notions of existence and non-existence. Neither apply. If Nāgārjuna appears nihilistic it is perhaps because he was writing against a pernicious form of eternalism. In any case we can read MMK as an attempt to wrestle Buddhism back on track - away from any interest in the nature of reality, and back to an interest in the nature of experience. It is terms of experience, not in terms of mysticism or paradox, that we need to understand that 'things' neither exist nor non-exist, because those 'things' are our mental processes which have no ontological status, no substantial being. Indeed in what sense can any process be said to 'exist'?


Notes

1. In my unpublished essay 'Did the Dhamma Die with the Buddha' I critique Masefield's method which seems to have ignored or obscured any evidence which contradicted his thesis. By demonstrating that counter examples are readily available in his source - the Pali texts - for all of his major claims, I show that his over all thesis that no-one could attain enlightenment after the Buddha died is wrong.
2. To some extent I am relying on Noa Ronkin's Early Buddhist Metaphysics as a survey of attitudes of other scholars to this issue, particularly chapter 2 (p.34ff).
3. However the variation in the organisation of the collections argues for a late date for the collections themselves, ie there was no 'canon' until quite some time after the Buddha - which seems to contradict traditional narratives of the canon being settled at a council held immediately after the Buddha's death.
4. I think some scholars argue that what the Sarvāstivādins meant by 'svabhāva' was not inherent existence, but something more like individual characteristic. Buddhist texts are seldom fair to the ideas of their opponents, nor to the people who hold different ideas (who are regularly portrayed as fools). So if Nāgārjuna was misrepresenting the Sarvāstivādins this was consistent with the tradition, though it seems to me that in writing polemics one is usually motivated by an actual perceived error. In any case the points he makes about existence/non-existence seem to me to be important and useful.
   

Bibliography

• Cox, Collett. 2004. 'From Category to Ontology: the Changing Role of Dharma in Sarvāstivāda Abhidharma.' Journal of Indian Philosophy. 32: 543-597.
• Gethin, Rupert. 2004. 'He Who sees Dhamma sees Dhammas: Dhamma in Early Early Buddhism.' Journal of Indian Philosophy. 32: 513-542.
• Ronkin, Noa. 2005. Early Buddhist Metaphysics : The Making of a Philosophical Tradition. London: Routledge Curzon.

Dharma - Buddhist Terminology

In this essay I want to try to get across the breadth of the word dharma (Pāli dhamma) as used in early Buddhism. Last week I took a diachronic (across time) approach, this week will be synchronic (looking at one point in time - more or less). Various different schemes have been proposed which divide the semantic field of dharma into various sectors some find more than a dozen 'meanings' of dharma. Almost every introductory Buddhism book will have something to say about this. However since my starting point was the 2004 issue of the Journal of Indian Philosophy dedicated to 'dharma' I'll use the scheme from there. In the JIP Rupert Gethin describes six categories in which the word dharma is used in early Buddhism.

1. Teaching
2. Good conduct
3. Truth
4. Nature or Quality
5. Natural Law
6. Mental or Physical State

I adopt his categories but I am not entirely convinced by Gethin's approach to the content discussed under each heading and will say more in context. Though I've adopted his headings most of these glosses are my own.


Teaching

As I mentioned last week (Dharma - Early History), it has been argued that the Buddha might have been reluctant to adopt the term 'dhamma' to describe his teaching. However, this does not seem to have lasted long. In fact along with sāsana, dharma is probably the most common noun for it - for teaching the usual verb is deseti (which more literally means 'to point out'). Dharma as teaching refers both the content of the teaching and to the form of it (i.e. the texts).

Gethin here cites (p.516) the nine aṅgas or limbs of the teaching, that is the nine kinds of text which are spelt out in the texts themselves: suttaṃ, geyyaṃ, veyyākaraṇaṃ, gāthaṃ, udānaṃ, itivuttakaṃ, jātakaṃ, abhutadhammaṃ, vedallaṃ which he translates as "discourses, chants, analyses, verses, utterances, sayings, birth stories, marvels, and dialogues". (at e.g. M i.133ff).



Good Conduct.

Here the word is used as an adjective. In my research on confession I showed that confessing a wrong-doing restores a person to the ethical path so that they behave yathādhamma or dharmically. (see Attwood Did King Ajātasattu Confess to the Buddha). Gethin cites examples of dharma in the instrumental case (indicating how an action is carried out) which seem to mean something like conforming to the norm. For instance kings must rule dhammena or by the dharma, which we take to mean ethically. [1]

Another use of dharma in this sense comes in the word dharacārin (this is the neuter form of the word: m. dharmacārī/ f. dharmacāriṇī). Carin means 'one who fares', or 'one who behaves', and dharma is used here in an adjectival sense 'dharmically'. I avoid common renderings such as 'righteously' because of the heavy Christian overtones (it always makes me thing of righteous indignation, which is not dharmic). The implication is that a dharmacārin conforms to the ethical precepts and to right view. (Of course in the sense of a member of the Western Buddhist Order we must qualify this: we undertake to conform ethically - including the precept to abstain from micchādassanā or confused views - and we do our best to repair breaches, but we don't claim to be perfect!)


Truth

This for me is the most problematic category. Gethin seeks to show that this is different from the category of 'natural law', but in fact his examples make better sense if we do not translate dharma as 'truth'. Gethin suggests that there is some truth about "the world or reality" which is taught by the Buddha, but I've become wary of this kind of approach which I associate with Western philosophy. What the Buddha taught about, from my point of view, is the processes of experience, not about some external reality. You could argue that by reality we mean the processes of experience, but this invites confusion because by 'reality' we almost always mean the substantial or ideal world beyond and underlying experience. The truth about experience, if there is such a thing, is simply that it is governed by pratītya-samutpāda. This is not a (metaphysical) Truth as I understand it. In fact far from being a dogma, it is the insight that we Buddhists seek, rather than the knowledge we already possess. That we believe it to be true, does not make it Truth.


Nature or Quality

When the Buddha is about to die he says: vayadhammā saṅkhārā, appamādena sampādetha. I have commented on these words at length in my essay the The Last Words of the Buddha. Vayadhammā is a compound vaya + dhammā (plural). 'Vaya' (Sanskrit: vyaya) means both 'decay' and 'death', so I have translated it as 'perish' since this has almost exactly the same connotations (and similar etymology, both being from a verb i 'to go'). Dhamma here denotes 'nature' and I translate it by adding the suffix -able to give 'perishable' - by which we understand that something perishable has perishability as a characteristic, or is of a nature to perish. The translation is then: all experiences are perishable. Dharma is routinely used in this kind of way to indicate the nature or quality of something. This probably relates to the more basic meaning of foundation. Gethin quotes the phrase

yaṃ kiñci samudayadhammaṃ sabbaṃ taṃ nirodhadhammaṃ ti [2]

Very literally we might translate this as: "All those somethings which have the nature to arise, have the nature to cease". Or better: everything that can arise, will cease.

The characteristic of something is the foundation (dharma) on which our knowledge of it rests.


Natural Law

By natural law we mean the natural law: pratītyasamutpāda (Pāli paṭiccasamuppāda). The idea that the universe was a harmonious interconnected whole goes back to the earliest Indian religious texts. It is apparent in the Ṛg Veda. For Buddhists it was 'only natural' to take up this idea and give a Buddhist account of it. [3] The simplest expression of paṭiccasamuppāda is:

imasmiṃ sati idaṃ hoti imasmiṃ asati idaṃ na hoti
While that exists, this exists. When that does not exist, neither does this.

Confusingly the pronoun in every case is idaṃ [4] meaning 'this' (something present to the speaker) - the Pāli is not making a this/that distinction though it is always present in English translations. It is more like the sort of syntax you see in computer programming languages: "while this, this; when not this, not this."

However the strongest association is with the twelve-fold chain of nidānas (source, cause, origin). In this formulation each preceding link is the cause of the succeeding one. Later Buddhists interpreted the links as spreading over three life-times, though this is not present in the earliest texts, nor are the twelve links clearly a circle - they more naturally are a chain except that the last two links are birth and old-age/death which, according to virtually all Indian religions, follow each other repeatedly. Other version of the chain exist with different numbers of links - significantly the chain in the Mahānidāna Sutta (DN 15) has ten links. [5]

Sangharakshita, drawing on work by C.A.F Rhys Davids and Dr B. Barua has given prominence to another kind of conditionality - which he calls spiral as opposed to the other kind which is cyclic - the locus classicus is the Upanisa Sutta (SN 12.23; PTS: S ii 29) (see especially Sangharakshita 1993 and 1967). It has been argued that upanisa, which is used in this sutta as a synonym of nidāna, is the same word as the Sanskrit upaniṣad with virtually the same meaning: secret connection (See for instance: Jones 2009). In this version of conditionality one link in the chain leads to another in a progressive and cumulative manner so that one reaches the state of knowledge and vision of reality (yathābhūta-ñāṇadassana) and continues on to the destruction of the āsavas (aka awakening). Bikkhu Bodhi (1995), writing in response to Sangharakshita, follows the Nettipakarana, a Pāli exegetical treatise, in calling this type of conditionality 'transcendental dependent arising' (lokuttara-paṭiccasamuppāda).

Another relevant term here is dhamma-niyāmatā which we can translate as "the lawfulness of reality" (cf Jones 2007). Jones says that this is, in effect, a way of referring to paṭiccasamuppāda and that it is synonymous with "cosmic order in all its forms". An aspect of this is the Buddha's life story. It is said that every Buddha's life story follows exactly the same pattern and that this is dhammatā - the rule, or natural order.


Mental or Physical State

While many uses of dhamma are important, in some ways this is the most significant use of dhamma. Here dhamma is the 'foundation' for consciousness - recall that for Buddhists consciousness is always consciousness of something. Dhammas are the objects of the mind (mano; Sanskrit. manas), which includes the information from the five physical senses as well as purely mental phenomena as memory, abstractions, and imagination. This use will be the subject of my next post. I will try to show how the way Buddhists understood dhamma in this sense subtly changed over the years creating splits and resulting in some brilliant polemics which have themselves become canonical.


Conclusion

From the relatively humble Vedic origins which I outlined last week (Dharma - early history) the term dharma became one of the most important in the Indian religious lexicon. My initial impression was that the Buddhist usage was so varied as to defy understanding - however my conclusion having written this essay is that almost all uses of dharma are comprehensible in terms of the basic meaning of 'foundation' in some applied or abstract manner. Perhaps it is appropriate therefore to found Buddhism on dharma? [Note since writing this I have re-read the latter part of Gethin's paper and he comes to more or less the same conclusion - I have therefore not entirely done justice to his views]

Though my approach this week has been synchronic we need to be aware that even within Buddhism the definitions and usage of words changed over time as well - I follow one thread of this change in next week's post. Despite being able to see the origins of usage, the many different ways dharma is used has resulted in considerable ambiguity and at times confusion. I believe, for instance, that the first section of the Diamond Sūtra (up to the first ending) is best understood if one holds the many definitions of dharma in mind almost simultaneously - because the text relentlessly plays on the ambiguity in a way which might otherwise be see as paradoxical. To my mind this section seems very close in spirit to the Pāli texts and the product of a mind which, like many ancient Indians and modern Westerners, enjoys punning very much.



Notes

1. The phrase here (p.516) is dhammena rajjaṃ kāreti - though PED suggests kāreti is 'build, construct' (kāreti is a causative of karoti 'to do, make'. Presumably the text is talking about building his kingdom?
2. Gethin doesn't cite the origin of the passage and I cannot locate it. Gethin translates (p.518): "the nature of everything whose nature it is to arise, is to cease".
3. I would make a distinction here: early Buddhism sees things as connected through conditionality. The idea of interconnectedness - that all things condition all other things - is in my view missing from early Buddhism and is supplied in the Mahāyāna from Vedic precedents. One of the most important metaphors for interconnectedness is Indra's net (indrajāla) and I suggest that it is no coincidence that the net belongs to the chief god of the Vedas.
4. imasmiṃ is the locative of idaṃ used in a temporal sense: to give the sense of "while this".
   
5. The different numbers of links has given rise to the theory that there were originally two different nidāna chains - one beginning with taṇha, to which was added one beginning with avijjā. Joanna Jurewicz has theorised that especially the early part of the chain was intended as a parody of Vedic cosmogny - Jurewicz's papers are difficult to get hold of, and even more difficult to read (a knowledge of Sanskrit is an advantage) but the details are summarised and discussed in Richard Gombrich What the Buddha Thought (esp Chapter 9). Note that, in his MA dissertation, Jones (Paṭiccasamuppāda in C0ntext) has cast some doubt on Jurewicz's thesis - hopefully he will publish before long.
   

Bibliography

• Attwood, Jayarava Michael. 2008. 'Did King Ajātasattu Confess to the Buddha, and did the Buddha Forgive Him?' Journal of Buddhist Ethics. Vol 15. http://www.buddhistethics.org/15/attwood-article.html
• Bodhi. 1995. 'Transcendental Dependent Arising : A Translation and Exposition of the Upanisa Sutta.' Access to Insight, June 7, 2009, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/bodhi/wheel277.html.
• Gethin, Rupert. 2004. 'He Who sees Dhamma sees Dhammas: Dhamma in Early Early Buddhism. Journal of Indian Philosophy. 32: 513-542.
• Jones, Dhīvan Thomas. 2009. Paṭiccasamuppāda in C0ntext : the Buddha in Debate with Brahminical Thinking. MA Dissertation, Cambridge University, unpublished.
• Jones, Dhīvan Thomas. 2007. The 'Five Niyamas', Sangharakshita, and the Problem of Karma. http://www.dhivan.net-a.googlepages.com/niyamasessay.pdf [See also another shorter version of this essay and some commentary on Dhīvan's website]
• Sangharakshita. 1967. The Three Jewels : an introduction to Buddhism. Glasgow : Windhorse Publications. (esp. chapter 13 : The stages of the Path)
  
• Sangharakshita. 1993. A Survey of Buddhism : its doctrines and methods through the ages. [7th ed]. Glasgow : Windhorse Publications. [1st published 1957]. (esp Chapter 1.14 Samsāra and Nirvaṇa)
  

image: dharma in various scripts: Devanāgarī, dbu can, Ranjana, Sinhala.