MERELY CAUSE AND EFFECT

The Imagined Self and the Literalistic Mind

VASUBANDHU’S DISPROOF OF THE TRANSMIGRATING SELF (AKBH III.18)

Vasubandhu is well known for his extensive, brilliant argument defending the Buddha’s doctrine of no-self, which takes up the entirety of chapter IX of the AKBh. We ended our last chapter with the finale of that argument, we will begin the next chapter with its opening, and we will refer occasionally to other moments within it as well.¹ For this chapter, our goal is to grasp not the twists and turns of that argument, but only its motivating structure in Vasubandhu’s characteristic appeal to the nature of cause and effect. With that in hand, we will be able to see how the same motivation that disproves the self holds together a range of positions across the AKBh. The core of the argument may be discerned in what serves as Vasubandhu’s first draft, a kind of compact edition of the argument, which he includes in his chapter III.² We will begin with this argument, and then examine two passages—on “view” (dṛṣṭi) and on “atoms” (paramāṇu), respectively—that will together display how Vasubandhu uses the doctrine of no-self as the touchstone for a properly Buddhist approach to causality, the nature of existence, and the interpretation of scripture.

The concise no-self argument opens with a challenge from a non-Buddhist, who sees an opening, in the context of chapter III, in the fact that Buddhists affirm rebirth:

Now, in this case outsiders [non-Buddhists], having grasped upon the view of a self, declare: “If it is accepted that a living being transmigrates to another world, then a self is proven.”

One counters this: There is no self. [III.18a1]

What kind of self?

That kind of internally functioning person does not exist, who is imagined to abandon these aggregates and appropriate others. Thus the Lord has said:3 “There is action and there is fruit, but no agent is perceived who casts off these aggregates and appropriates other aggregates, because this is counter to the stipulated meaning [saṃketa] of dharma. In this situation, the stipulated meaning of dharma is just what is dependently originated—elaborated as ‘when this exists, that arises.’ ”⁴

What is at issue here is a question that arises often in beginning Buddhist studies: How can Buddhists believe in reincarnation, but reject the soul? What reincarnates, if not the soul? Of course, the Buddhist view is defined by its acceptance of both no-self and rebirth, so Vasubandhu is prepared to explain how this can work. His central point is that there is an erroneous assumption embedded in the question. Not only is the notion of a self or soul mistaken in itself, it is unnecessary. It contributes nothing to the explanation of rebirth. All that is necessary for rebirth is the aggregates, the skandhas, which make up what appears to be the self. Instead of thinking of a self that takes on a body-and-mind complex, think of a body-and-mind complex working, causally, to produce another body-and-mind complex. This is how the basic elements (dharmas) that make up the person work: “When this exists, that arises.” One mental event leads to the next mental event. One physical form leads to the next physical form. You don’t need an “agent” to account for the succession of events in this kind of linear causal description. You don’t need a self that appropriates these elements. All you need is the natural, internal functionality of the elements themselves.

What’s more, if we imagine that the rebirth of the person depends upon the self or soul’s having moved from one locus to the next, then there must not only be a self over and above the aggregates; there must be an “internally functioning person” that keeps its identity as a person after death, until rebirth. That is, the soul that is reborn would need to have its own, causally efficient identity that is independent of its previous and subsequent body-and-mind complexes. But outside of the aggregates (which include mental events and karmic imprints), it is difficult to say what such a “person” would be.

In the final chapter of the AKBh, Vasubandhu meets a great many objections to the view that he advocates—defending the notion that the aggregates, understood causally, can indeed account for our intuitions about the nature of memory, personal identity, perception, action, and moral recompense. In particular, he critiques Buddhists who maintain belief in a “person” over and above the aggregates. Here, in chapter III, the point is made concisely by quoting the Buddha’s view that a description of rebirth requires action and result, but does not require an agent. This, he says, is the point of the Buddhist teaching of dependent origination.

Vasubandhu moves directly from the basic defense of no-self to a clarification of why this is not, in fact, a denial of rebirth. One might think that if there is nothing to be reborn, then there should be no rebirth. Yet the Buddhist position is not, he says, that there is nothing at all that transmigrates; it is that there is no self over and above the aggregates. Vasubandhu therefore emphasizes that the self is not “denied” entirely, but is just made into a “figurative designation” (upacāra) for the aggregates:

But then what kind of self is not rejected?

But that which is only aggregates. [III.18a2] But if that which is only aggregates is figuratively called “self,” it is not rejected. It is thus that the aggregates-alone transmigrates to another world. But it is not that a complete [prāpta] aggregates-alone transmigrates there. Conditioned by defilements and actions, it proceeds to the womb as the intermediate-state continuum, like a light. (18) [III.18b–d] For the aggregates are momentary; they are not able to transmigrate. But brought into being by defilements and actions, defilements alone approach the mother’s womb as a continuum known as the “intermediate state.” In this way, it is not a fault to say of a light, though momentary, that it moves to another place as a continuum. Therefore it is accepted that although the self does not exist,5 the continuum of aggregates, conditioned by defilements and actions, enters the mother’s womb.⁶

Once it is established that there is no self, it may be asked whether it is truly accurate to say that the aggregates transmigrate. If we are looking to transcend the figurative and provide the literal truth of the matter, Vasubandhu admits that, although when we speak of the self transmigrating we are truly referring to the aggregates, in fact the aggregates do not really transmigrate either. For they are momentary and ever-changing. No aggregate “transmigrates,” for that would mean that it exists in two different places at two different times. What transmigrates, then, is a continuum of aggregates. The continuum of aggregates, the causal series, exists, but never all at once.

As we have discussed at length in the previous chapter, Vasubandhu differs from the Sarvāstivādins on the reality of past and future events, and so he gives a different account of the figurative reference of a word like “transmigrates,” which refers to a continuum. For the Sarvāstivādins, the true referent of such a term is complexly made up of past, present, and future entities in relation to one another. For Vasubandhu, the separate entities are causally related, but they only appear to exist as a unit by virtue of their having been joined through the conceptual-linguistic act of reference. The continuum exists as the figurative reference for what “transmigrates.” In reality, though, there is no agent of transmigration and no unified entity that persists through time.

As an analogy, Vasubandhu speaks of how a flame, which is in fact made of countless momentary explosions, and which may be passed from one wick to the next, in fact appears as a single, ongoing “light.” In the same way, the countless momentary “defilements,” which have originated out of previous actions and defilements, continue and move to a new set of aggregates with the appearance of a single, ongoing “intermediate body.” Thus there is no “intermediate body,” but there is a continuum of entities that may be said to “transmigrate,” in the sense that, joined together conceptually across time, the continuum is said to be in different bodies at different times.

We have here, in brief, the key conceptual nexus for Vasubandhu’s AKBh. The self is imposed upon the aggregates, and the aggregates are thus only figuratively referred to, collectively, as an agent acting in time. In the same way, a range of doctrinal positions may be characterized as figurative impositions upon changing elements. Again and again Vasubandhu insists that what appear to be agents and their actions are in fact “merely cause and effect,” and must be understood as operating in this way if we are to recognize not how things merely appear, but how things really are. In the next section we will see this causal analysis applied to the apparent unity of the agent of perception and cognition. In the final section of this chapter we turn to Vasubandhu’s brief disproof of the eternality of atoms. There, we see how Vasubandhu’s notion of “merely cause and effect” works with simultaneous, as well as chronological, groupings of elements. These different kinds of falsely appearing “wholes” are critiqued in parallel terms, even using the same analogies, of whirling firebrands and lines of ants.

Throughout, Vasubandhu is showing that what requires explanation is not the reality of the combination of entities, but only the appearance of their combinations. Thus the arguments for atoms based upon their necessity for the support of part–whole relations (mereology), like the arguments for the apparent activity of the perceiving eye, will be shown to depend upon an overly literal reading of scriptures and an overly simplistic reliance upon what are ultimately only deluded, conceptual-linguistic constructions. With these issues in place, we will be prepared to proceed, in the next two chapters, to see how this view coalesces into Vasubandhu’s distinctive articulation of the relation between words, mind, and reality in Yogācāra.

THE SAUTRĀNTIKA VIEW OF PERCEPTION, COGNITION, AND AGENCY (AKBH I.41–42)

A crucial set of discussions that illuminate Vasubandhu’s abstract theory of causality grow as offshoots from a main argument about cognition and perception, and we should not think of them as merely opportunistic digressions. The causal arguments gain their impetus from this frame, and return to reframe it as well. As we have seen and will continue to see, arguments about the nature of causality, scripture, and the mind are conceptually intertwined throughout the AKBh. Attention to this kind of argumentative embedding therefore helps to reveal Vasubandhu’s motives and modes of philosophical engagement along with the particulars of his arguments. It is helpful, therefore, to follow Vasubandhu’s line of argument quite closely, and elucidate each twist and turn, as I will here (the full passage studied in this section is translated in appendix C).

The framing question is the nature of an element called “view” (dṛṣṭi). The sūtras include numerous passages in which the Buddha speaks of various views, especially views that need to be abandoned in order to attain liberation, and the correct views of those on the path. Abhidharma takes on the responsibility of explaining and accounting for such statements with technical precision. Since a view is causally relevant in its own distinctive way, views constitute a dharma with its own class category. For the Vaibhāṣikas, views are classified as kinds of discrimination (prajñā), which is an ever-present mental element. The class of views partially overlaps the class of “knowledges” (jñāna).7 Discrimination (prajñā) is the term used for an enlightened being’s wisdom once purified of defilements. Until that point, the “ignorance” (avidyā) represented by false views remains the root cause of rebirth.⁸ Ignorance is, after all, the first of the twelve links in the chain of dependent origination. The causal importance of views on the path should be understood as a crucial motivation behind the well-known Buddhist distaste for a distinction between “reasons” and “causes.” This is a complex issue that will occupy us here and in subsequent chapters. We will see here that Vasubandhu’s arguments on the nature of dṛṣṭi somewhat imply that his opponents have forgotten the crucial, causal aspect of a properly understood Buddhist “view.”⁹

Vasubandhu begins his study of the dharma called “view,” which appears in the first book of the AKBh, by asking just what the “views” are. For the Vaibhāṣikas, they include nine varieties: eight that are mental objects (dharmadhātu) and one that is the view of the eye (table 3.1). We, too, use the same term “view” for a doctrine and a visual perspective, and this section interrogates the question of whether such usage reflects a genuinely consequential similarity in nature, or merely two meanings for the same word.¹⁰ The majority of Vasubandhu’s discussion here will argue that the eye should not count as having a view, but before turning to that argument he runs through the eight mental objects (dharmadhātu) as a way of framing and characterizing the nature of a view. These eight varieties include five false views (about which more in a moment), two views attributable to specific categories of practitioners, and one view that is called “worldly right view,” which is defined as “good, defiled discrimination [prajñā], associated with the mental consciousness.” This definition describes an ordinary being’s correct mental observations.

TABLE 3.1   Nine Kinds of “View” (dṛṣṭi), Based on AKBh I.41

KIND OF “VIEW”	ACCURACY	DHĀTU CLASSIFICATION
1.  View of the eye	N/A	Eye sense organ (caksurindriya)
2.  View with respect to the existing body (satkāyadṛṣṭi)	False views	dharmadhātu elements—i.e., mental objects
3.  View that is grasping the extremes	"	"
4.  View of negation [of the truths]	"	"
5.  View that holds “high” to be “low”	"	"
6.  View that considers a cause [of liberation] what is not a cause [of Liberation]	"	"
7.  Trainee’s view	Relative to attainments on the path	"
8.  Nontrainee’s (Arhat’s) view	"	"
9.  Worldly right view	Associated with mental consciousness only	"

Vasubandhu mentions in this passage that he will treat the five false views later on, in his chapter on the defilements. Let us briefly turn to that later passage to provide further framing for the questions at issue here. The most important, paradigmatic “view” is the wrong view called the “view with respect to the existing body,” satkāyadṛṣṭi, which refers to the mistaken view of self. Vasubandhu explains this view as follows:

The view of the self or the view of things possessed by a self are “view with respect to the existing body” [satkāyadṛṣṭi]. “Existing” means that it is. The point is that the clump, or body [kāya], is a combination, an aggregate [skandha]. What exists as this body, the “existing body,” is the five appropriative aggregates. It is expressed in order to preclude the idea of eternality and the idea of a sum. For this grasping of a self precedes them. The compound “existing-body-view” [satkāyadṛṣṭi] is to be understood as meaning “the view with respect to the existing body.” All defiled perceptual objects are seen with respect to the existing body. But just the view of the self or of things possessed by a self are called “the view with respect to the existing body.” As it goes, “This view with respect to the existing body is neither the self nor the things possessed by a self.” As it is said, “Wherever Bhikṣus, Śramaṇas, or Brāhmans perceive the ‘self,’ all they perceive is the five appropriative aggregates.”¹¹

The basic error for all unenlightened beings is the false imposition of a self upon the aggregates, which are merely collections of ever-changing entities. This error is given the name “the view with respect to the existing body” in order to foreground the real substratum upon which a false “view” is imposed. Many distinct elements that “exist” only momentarily are taken together, as a sum, to be an unchanging and eternal self. Two mistakes—imposing temporal and psychophysical unity—Vasubandhu says, depend upon the “grasping of a self.” In fact, for ordinary beings everything is perceived in some way with respect to the self—either as part of the self, or as distinct from but known by the self. Since everything appears as self or other, satkāyadṛṣṭi could, in fact describe every ordinary perception. But the term is used, more narrowly, to describe the more fundamental error upon which the other errors are based. When we discuss “views,” then, we must keep in mind this foundational “view,” which is the erroneous imposition of a self upon the aggregates.

Notice that the correct title for this error is not the “view of the self” (although that expression is used to explain it) but rather the “view with respect to the existing body,” because when we speak of the “view” we are brought into awareness of the error. Here “view” implies the imposition over and above what is real. “Existing” (meaning existing only momentarily) and “body” (meaning an assemblage, an aggregate) describe, respectively, temporal and psychophysical characteristics that we fail to see properly when we are unaware that our view is a view. This is the meaning of the Buddha’s saying that this view is “neither the self nor the things possessed by a self”; the view that takes things to be the self and the things possessed by the self is really the view with respect to an ever-changing group of discrete entities. This distinction between what a view takes to be and what a view really views is evident as well in the other standard false views. I will not detail them all here (see table 3.1), but as a further example we may note how the second wrong view, “the view that is grasping the extremes” is (like all perceptions) dependent upon the more fundamental grasping of the imagined self:

The view of the permanence or the view of the destruction of that very thing imagined as the self is the “view that is grasping the extremes,” because of grasping eternity and destruction.¹²

Here again the term “view” provides the occasion for distinguishing between what is really there, which is an action of grasping, and the apparent reality, which is the permanence or destruction of the imagined self. Even to speak of these as “views” implies an awareness of this distinction between what we might call appearance (viewing-as) and substratum (viewing-of).¹³

Vasubandhu’s works show an astonishing sensitivity to the ways we ascribe reality and terminology to entities in our experience and perception. A constant theme is the need to distinguish between viewing-as and viewing-of, so often conflated in our ordinary experience and language. In his argument against Vasumitra’s view of time, we saw Vasubandhu defend a distinction between an object of a memory, which is a mental object, and the object in the world that is remembered but no longer exists. This is to distinguish two different perspectives upon the same view: the view of an object that does not exist and the view as a present memory. Now, the essence of “wrong view” is explained as the view of the aggregates as the self. When we turn to Vasubandhu’s Yogācāra treatises, we will see this distinction enshrined in the most fundamental metaphysical structure of that tradition, the Three Natures of reality. But already we can see the conceptual apparatus at work.

To return to the passage from the first book of the AKBh, Vasubandhu presents a critique that will imply that the ninefold list of “views” provided by the Vaibhāṣika (see table 3.1) is incoherent—that it fails to accord with its own rules. It might seem that, in arguing so, Vasubandhu has set himself rather an easy task, for we may question whether the list is really supposed to be coherent. It could be just a list of things that one (or, to be more specific, the Buddha) sometimes calls a “view.” In fact, to say this would be to come fairly close to Vasubandhu’s own position—as he will argue later on. Before that, though, he draws out the details of the list as well as the justification the Vaibhāṣikas provide for their classificatory scheme, displaying thereby how they indeed purport it to be systematic and rational. The Commentary, in this way, is Janus-faced: it does, in fact, provide a comprehensive and detailed account of the Vaibhāṣika system of Abhidharma philosophy; but in doing so, it lays bare the conceptual limitations of that system.

Here Vasubandhu uses the rather elegant and sensible Vaibhāṣika explanation of the choice of “worldly right view” as a launching pad for his critique of the notion that the eye has a view:

Now, why is the worldly right view said to be associated with the mental consciousness? Because: a thought produced with the five consciousnesses¹⁴ is not a view, because of being indeterminate [atīraṇa]. (41) [I.41c–d] For a determinate [santīrika] view is arisen from close consideration [upadhyāna]. And this is certainly not the case for discrimination [prajñā] produced with the five consciousnesses. Therefore it is not a view. So too for the others: neither defiled nor undefiled discrimination is a view.

In that case, how is the eye, which is indeterminate, a view?

In the sense of seeing a form. For the eye sees forms. [I.42a]15

This opening gambit begins by asking why “worldly right view” is said to be associated with mental consciousness alone. In the dhatu system, there are six consciousnesses, one for each sensory organ and one for the mind. Vasubandhu poses the question why mental objects may be considered “views,” but not the other five consciousnesses—those associated with the sensory organs. In answer, the Vaibhāṣika replies that a view is something “settled” or “determinate”; it must have arisen from “consideration” (upadhyāna). Objects of perception, whether defiled or not, are not decided in this way as the result of cognitive activity, and so they are not properly “views.”

This sensible suggestion certainly fits with the other seven mental objects (especially the wrong views), which are the result of deliberative mental activities. But it sparks the question why, if being “settled” in this sense is their criterion for inclusion in the category, the Vaibhāṣikas include the eye. In answer, the Vaibhāṣika must admit that the eye has a different criterion for inclusion: “In the sense of seeing a form.” The eye, unlike the other elements in this category, is included because it sees visual objects—clearly, a legitimate, though different, meaning for the word “view” (dṛṣṭi). What you see and what ideas you come to hold in mind seem like different kinds of “view.” As a first thought, we might distinguish them by saying that the eye’s “view” is a literal meaning of the word, whereas calling someone’s doctrinal errors their mistaken “view” is only figurative. As he often does, Vasubandhu will seek to dispense with the literal interpretation.¹⁶ In any case, the fact that both ideas can be expressed with the same words (“vision, perspective, view”) is not a justifiable reason to classify different entities under the same head. To classify them together implies that they share the same inherent nature (svabhāva), which they cannot if they must be characterized differently. The commentary therefore frames the Vaibhāṣika category as inconsistent on its own terms—or, at best, sloppy.¹⁷ It also sets up a problem in the nature of the term “view” that requires resolution: how to account for, and distinguish between, the view acquired by the eye and the view that is a settled idea.

Vasubandhu’s analysis will resolve both the problem of the two different classifications, and the problem of the proper interpretation of the term. He accomplishes this by reconceiving the ostensibly literal meaning of the term “view” as it applies to the eye as figurative, in exactly the same figurative way that it applies to “worldly right view.” Explaining this allows “worldly right views” to include the view—the “vision”—of the eye. The arguments used to establish this reflect the causal reasoning and patterns of scriptural interpretation we saw Vasubandhu employ in his response to the Vaibhāṣika position on the reality of the three times. Here we will see how this characteristic approach weds him to a view of the nature of perception and knowledge that presages his later Yogācāra positions. Yet the way this argument rehabilitates the category “view” (dṛṣṭi) under its new interpretation shows that Vasubandhu is not attempting to overturn the systematic, Ābhidharmika approach to the Buddha’s teachings—on the contrary, he presents his interpretation as the most consistent and logical system available for Buddhists.18 Above all, it makes sense of the Buddha’s having placed views in the causal stream, as reasons that are causes of conditioned and conditioning mental events. Thus Vasubandhu’s analyses of perception and the mind are intended to facilitate a causally realistic explanation of the relationship between the Buddha’s teachings, properly understood, and the attainment of liberation that they are supposed to cause.

FALSE REASONS FOR SAYING THE EYE “SEES”

As Vasubandhu moves into his project to reduce the vision of the eye to the vision of the mental, he begins with a dialogue in which the commentary sets itself against the Vaibhāṣika doctrinal position advocated in the verse. Here is one of the famous moments in which Vasubandhu includes the word kila, meaning “so they say,” within his verse, indicating that even while writing the verse he was willing to express misgivings about this position.¹⁹ Vasubandhu seems to have been wedded from the start to the idea that it is consciousness that “sees,” not the eye organ. Yaśomitra’s commentary names this a Vijñānavāda argument—a name that is later given to the Yogācāra tradition.²⁰ Whether or not we wish to ascribe this doctrinal identity to Vasubandhu at this stage, there is no doubt that he foregrounds this argument with rhetorical panache, and seems thereby to be drawing out a critique implicit in the verse itself. Yet the argument is framed, as I have already mentioned, as a search for a consistent svabhāva for the dharma called dṛṣṭi, and it will culminate in an explicit advocacy of a position attributed, again, to the Sautrāntika.

Instead of attempting to sort out the issues of doctrinal affiliation, therefore, let us examine Vasubandhu’s own philosophical procedure:

If the eye sees, then so also the other sufficient conditions for consciousnesses should see.

Certainly not every eye sees.

Which does, then?

One with a corresponding [consciousness]. [I.42b1] It sees when it is accompanied by consciousness; otherwise it does not.

Then it should be said that just that consciousness sees, with the eye as the support.21

The first line sets up a refusal of the Vaibhāṣika distinction between the eye organ and the other organs—if the eye sees, so should the other organs, since they all provide the conditions for consciousness. Vasubandhu’s proof that it must be the consciousness that sees will come later. Yet by using the word samaṅgin, which I’ve translated as “sufficient conditions” (more literally, “that which possesses the requisite parts”), Vasubandhu immediately pushes the opponent to come clean about the fact that the eye is not, in truth, capable of being a “view” just on its own. It must, of necessity, have a corresponding consciousness.²² Thus it is the opponent who is forced to put forward consciousness as the crucial condition for an eye’s being a “view.” But if this is the case, Vasubandhu replies, how can you attribute the “view” to the eye, as opposed to the consciousness? Clearly the reason the eye is called “view” is because it is associated with the consciousness, and not the other way around.²³

Once this argument is in place, the Vaibhāṣika position is fatally wounded. The discussion that follows will not challenge the predominance of the mental in the characterization of “views.” Eight of the nine “views” in the Vaibhāṣika list take mental objects, and even the exception relies upon a consciousness for its identity as “view.” Instead, the Vaibhāṣika argues against the possibility that the consciousness may be what is referred to with the term “view.” These arguments reveal further, deeper, mistaken presumptions on the part of this system, and Vasubandhu pursues them to their root.

The initial reason that the Vaibhāṣika believes a “consciousness” cannot be considered a view refers back to characteristics of consciousness itself, namely, that it is formless and therefore unobstructed by physical entities. If consciousness were the one to “view” a visual object, there would be no limitations to its capacity for visual awareness:

It’s not that with it as support, the consciousness [I.42b2–c1] sees, so it can be able to be unaware.

Why?

It does not see form, they say, where there is something intervening. (42) [I.42c2–d] For, they say, it does not see a form covered by a wall, etc. For if the consciousness were to see, since it is not subject to resistance [pratigha], there would be no resistance where there is a wall, etc., so it would see even a covered form.24

Clearly vision is limited by the positioning of the eye. The theory of vision at play here holds that the eye organ (made of a kind of subtle physicality, not just the eyeball) comes into contact with the visual object—which is why we cannot see a hidden object. Consciousness, however, is nonphysical. So, the Vaibhāṣika opponent says, if vision were a capacity of the consciousness rather than the eye, it could not be limited by its positioning. We should then expect to be aware of all visual objects everywhere. Such a viewing mind would not be “able to be unaware” of anything. Since, however, we cannot see through walls, we may be sure that it is the eye, not the mind, that sees.

This argument reveals that the Vaibhāṣikas are thinking of the “view” of the eye in terms of its range of sight, its scope of activity. Perhaps we should think of the eye’s view as something like the view from your bedroom window. The physical, mechanical limitations of the eye, and its spatial location, provide the scope and character of its view. Yet to take this analogy to its conclusion, we must forget what the Vaibhāṣikas have just admitted, which is that the eye is only called “view” when it is actively engaged with a consciousness. When no one is home, there is no consciousness actively engaged with your bedroom window’s “view,” so at those times it should not be considered, literally, a “view.” When you brag that your bedroom has a beautiful view, you are speaking figuratively. Your bedroom sees nothing.

With something like this in mind, Vasubandhu proceeds to show that the supposed problem, that the mind does not share the physical limitations of the eye’s range of vision, is a red herring. Since the eye is indeed a crucial, causal condition—the “support” (āśraya)—for vision, the eye’s limited scope is inherited by the consciousness by which it is supported. The eye consciousness cannot arise with an awareness of anything that the eye cannot see:

No, the eye consciousness does not arise with respect to something covered, so how will it see what does not arise?

How then does it not arise?

Since the eye is subject to resistance, the state of seeing something does not come about with respect to what is covered. So for the consciousness, too, it does not arise; it operates by means of a single sensory object, which joins it as support [āśraya].25

Why then would you say that the eye, like the bodily sense organ which meets its object, does not see it to the extent it is covered?

Because it is subject to resistance.

And how is something seen which has an interposition by glass, fog, veil, or water?

That is not a case where, because it is subject to resistance, an eye fails to see a covered form.

What is it then?

The eye consciousness does arise in the case where sight has no impediment even with respect to a covered form. But where there is an impediment, it does not arise. In that case, because it does not arise, the covered thing is not seen.²⁶

Here Vasubandhu explains that what is “covered” for the eye will never appear to the eye consciousness, because the eye consciousness only takes its object through its support (āśraya), which is the eye. The eye cannot attain a “covered” object,²⁷ and so cannot pass an unattained object on to the consciousness.

In reply, the opponent raises the question of how, under this interpretation, there can be a “view” through transparent media such as water and fog. This is, indeed, a problem for a theory of visual sensation that relies upon the notion of contact between the organ and its object, but it is not entirely clear why this question is a challenge to Vasubandhu’s conceptual reclassification of “view.” Perhaps the idea that the consciousness, not the eye, “sees” is being taken by the challenger to imply that an eye under this description is passive and inert. Under such an interpretation, the eye’s “view” might ordinarily be thought to be a kind of active motion toward contact with its object. The challenge would then be that a passive eye, which is not an agent of sight, should not be able to penetrate a pool of water and gain “contact” with objects (for instance) on the bottom of a river. Alternatively, this challenge may be here simply because Vasubandhu has set up a binary distinction (covered vs. not covered), which invites the posing of exceptions to the rule. In either case, Vasubandhu is able to resolve the quandary without delving into the precise workings of the organ, by making a further distinction for the eye, between what merely “covers” the object (which would include a transparent medium) and what is a definite “impediment” to sight (such as a wall). That distinction, however it works for the eye, will allow the right objects to be transferred to the consciousness.

What this segment of the argument establishes is that although the “range of sight” interpretation of “view” may raise some intuitive problems for the active operation of vision, it is inconsequential to the question of whether it is the eye itself, or the consciousness, that should be granted the “view.” With these challenges expended, and Vasubandhu’s notion of the consciousness as what “sees” established as the most sensible, the discussion can turn to the interpretation of scripture:

What then of the sūtra that says, “Having seen forms with the eye …”?

Here the intent is [that one sees forms] with this as support—just as he says, “One should know dharmas with the mind [manas],” and the mind is not cognizing dharmas, because it is past.

What does then?

The mental consciousness. Or, the supported action is referred to figuratively as the support, as in “The stands cried out.” And as in the sūtra that says, “Known by the eyes, forms are desired, beloved,” and they are not cognized by the eyes. And it is said in the sūtra, “The eye, O Brāhman, is the doorway for seeing forms”; by this is meant that by the doorway that is the eyes, the consciousness sees. In this case he does not say “doorway into seeing,” because it does not make sense28 to say, “The eye is the seeing for seeing forms.”²⁹

Here Vasubandhu leads off with a figurative reading of a direct statement from the Buddha that the eye is what sees. What he means, Vasubandhu says, is that the eye is the support (āśraya) of seeing. To read the text literally would require a contradiction within a clearly unified doctrinal system. For the Buddha also says, in a parallel statement, that the mental organ (manas) is what cognizes dharmas. But this is not possible, because there is no independent organ called the mental organ; the mental organ is nothing other than the collection of the six consciousnesses from the previous moment.30 The mental organ is therefore an organ only in the figurative sense that it, like the sensory organs, provides the support for a consciousness—the mental consciousness. Whenever anything is cognized, then, the manas is already past. As discussed in the chapter on the three times, Vasubandhu denies that a past entity can provide a generative causal action in the present. The mental organ may provide the support for cognition, but the cognition itself is performed by the mental consciousness.

Since a direct reading would issue in an inconsistency, Vasubandhu invokes a standard hermeneutic method and suggests an alternative intention. He then provides two further texts that necessitate this very same figurative reading of the Buddha’s words about the perception of the eye. In the first case, he presents a passage where the Buddha says that forms are “to be known by the eyes” (cakṣurjñeyāni)³¹—whereas knowledge is an activity that is only available to the mental consciousness. In the second, rather elegant, case, the Buddha has called the eyes “the doorway for seeing forms.” If the eye performed the seeing itself, then it would hardly make sense to say that it was the doorway into seeing; it would be the house. In both of these cases, he says, “that which has the supported action is referred to figuratively [upacaryate] as the support.” In both cases, the eye is referenced directly, but the evident meaning, the figurative referent, is what the eye supports: the cognitive activity of the mental consciousness.

Ironically, this reading flips our earlier figurative assumption on its head. We said above that the “view” of the eye was literal and the mind’s “view” of mental objects was figurative. Now it seems that, given the assumptions of the Ābhidharmika perceptual and cognitive system, we must take the “view” of the eye as a figure for the “view” of the consciousness. It turns out that the view of the eye is, like the view from your bedroom window, only a conduit for consciousness, which is what actually “sees” the form. Yet the word “see” implies an eye, does it not? Is it not, therefore, also figurative to say that the consciousness “sees” forms? Consciousness cognizes; does it also see? These questions would imply, in the view of some philosophers, a vicious circularity in the notion that the direct meanings of words can be deemed “figurative,” if figurative uses of terms are deemed parasitic on, and hence reliant upon, their direct meanings. But here we see that Vasubandhu is content to describe even the view of the eye as a figure for a mental event. In his Yogācāra work, the Triṃś, he says that all things are only figurative references to mental events—a clear generalization of this usage.32 We are not there yet, but already Vasubandhu is using the term upacāra to refer to the ordinary use of a term. As Vasubandhu explains next, here the point is that it is important not to get caught up in the words. The “seeing” and the “cognizing” are just two different terms for the activity of consciousness:

If the consciousness sees, what cognizes, and what is the difference between them?

Consciousness of a form just is “seeing” it. In this way, if it is said that some discrimination [prajñā] “sees,” it also “discriminates”; and if it is said that some consciousness “sees” it also “cognizes.”³³

For consciousness, as for discrimination, it can be said that it “sees” whenever the object that it takes as a mental object is a visual form. By bringing “discrimination” back into the argument here Vasubandhu brings the full argument home: just as the Buddha refers figuratively to the eye when he means the mental consciousness, he refers figuratively to the “view” when he means discrimination. There is no “seeing” or “view” apart from the mental events that take them as their objects. There is no difference in activity between “seeing” and “cognizing” for a consciousness, or between “seeing” and “discriminating” for a discrimination. The alert reader may sense a parallel here between this argument, which reads “view” as a figure for the activity of mental events, and the argument against the self, which reads “self” as a figure for the continuum of aggregates.³⁴

As a last stage in this argument, Vasubandhu responds to a new objector, in such a way as to sharpen his position and clarify its significance:

Others say: If the eye sees, then what else, aside from the eye that is become the agent, may be called the “action of seeing”?

This is unacceptable.³⁵ For if it is granted that the consciousness cognizes, and in that case there is no difference between the agent and the action, then for the other case it should be accepted just as it is in that case. It is said that the eye “sees,” because it is the support for the seeing eye-consciousness. Just as, it is said that a bell “resonates” because it is the support for the resonance.

But then it obtains that the eye cognizes, since it is the support for the consciousness.

This does not obtain. “The seeing consciousness” is a convention in the world. For when it has come about in this way, it is said that the “form is seen,” not that it is “cognized.” Also, the Vibhāṣā says, “ ‘Seen’ [dṛṣṭa] is said when the eye, completed, is experienced by the eye consciousness.” Therefore it is said just that the eye sees, not that it cognizes.36

The new objector proposes a distinction between the eye as agent (kartṛ), which is said to “see,” and the action of that agent. It seems a logical point. Sometimes the eye sees, and sometimes it does not. What distinguishes these times?³⁷ More importantly, this objection raises once again the specter of Vasubandhu’s seemingly having posited an inactive or inert eye; such an eye would still need some additional element or characterization to bring its nature of “seeing” to fruition. Vasubandhu rejects this distinction based, once again, on an analogy to the mental consciousness. If we grant that the consciousness cognizes (and it is assumed that we do), then we must grant (he says) that in that case, at least, there is no possibility to distinguish between the agent and the action. Why should this be? Well, as we have already seen, the mental organ cannot act as the agent of a present action, because it is past. Only the mental consciousness exists to “cognize,” so in this case there can be no distinction between agent and action.³⁸ But if the mental consciousness can be both agent and action of cognition, the eye consciousness can be both agent and action of sight: “For the other case it should be accepted just as it is in that case.”

Then, as explanation, Vasubandhu reiterates the interpretation that the eye is figuratively referred to as the agent because it is the “support” (āśraya) for the eye consciousness. To explain this further, he gives the example of a bell, which is said to “ring” even when it is not engaged in any “action,” but only provides the “support” for the sound. I find this quite a useful analogy to explain how Vasubandhu makes sense of the critique that sees the eye as passive. He says that an eye sees in just the same sense that a bell rings: they are neither active nor passive; they are causally enlivened supports for further causal results. The language of agency, as we will see him articulate in a moment, is entirely figurative.³⁹

The follow-up question provides Vasubandhu an occasion to clarify a methodological issue in the application of his hermeneutic principle. The questioner asks whether, since the eye is said to “see” because it is the support for the eye consciousness, it should not also be said to “cognize,” because it is the support (indirectly) for the mental consciousness. This hypothetical is a kind of slippery slope reductio ad absurdum. If we start referring to things by their supports, it asks, does not meaning fall away? We may as well say that eyes know, because the eyes are causal supports for cognitions. Vasubandhu’s response here is to cut off the slide with an appeal to worldly conventions. What we see is not, ordinarily, called “cognized,” whereas what we cognize is called “seen” (as in, “I see”). For good measure, even the Vaibhāṣika’s own source text, the Vibhāṣā, is cited as an example of this conventional understanding of an eye’s “seeing” as referring to the consciousness that it generates.

Vasubandhu is not trying to say that our patterns of linguistic application must follow the rule of “refer-to-the-support-as-an-agent,” nor is he saying that all support-relations may properly be made into figures of agency. The interpretation of the figurative usage is descriptive and not prescriptive, local, not generalized. The Buddha’s language needs to be understood in accordance with the linguistic traditions of his audience members. Thus, this discussion of the nature of ideas, refracted through a discussion of perception, yields a philosophical point about the nature of the contextualization of scripture within linguistic conventions.

Having read the foregoing in this way, we can see that the last section of the argument reconstitutes the full debate as a stand-off between the Vaibhāṣika and the Sautrāntika—the main rivals in the AKBh—on ground that has already been covered:

But it is said that the consciousness “cognizes” form by the mere fact of its presence [sānnidhyamātreṇa], as the sun is the “maker of the day.”

On this, the Sautrāntika says: Why carve the ether? For, conditioned by the eye and forms, the eye consciousness comes about. In that case, what sees, and what is seen? For it is passive [nirvyāpāra], merely dharmas, and merely cause and effect. With regard to this, figurative terms are used by choice with a conventional meaning: “Eye sees, consciousness cognizes”—one should not be attached to them. For the Lord said, “Do not be attached to the popular etymology, nor rush to accept the world’s ideas.”40

But this is the established position of the Kashmiri Vaibhāṣika: the eye sees, the ear hears, the nose smells, the tongue tastes, the body touches, the mind cognizes.⁴¹

In response to the argument that a “view” is an activity that refers, figuratively, to the causal story of an eye bringing about a consciousness, a final claim is advanced that this somehow violates the nature of consciousness, which is to illuminate whatever appears in its purview by virtue of its nature. This interpretation compares consciousness to the sun, which “makes the day” by its very presence. Here we return to the idea of agent and object, but in this case it is the consciousness, rather than the eye, that performs its agential action upon its object of illumination.42 This claim may be compared to the fourth argument for the times discussed in the last chapter, which relied upon the subject–object quality of consciousness—that it is “intentional,” in Brentano’s sense of being “about” something, something that must therefore exist. Here we will see Vasubandhu dismiss the notion that the intentionality of consciousness—at least as it shows up in our ordinary use of words—may be used as proof of the true nature of entities. These words are only figurative, and the consciousness itself is not truly “intentional”—it is “merely cause and effect.”

Vasubandhu’s response comes from the mouth of the Sautrāntika: across the AKBh, one evident reason, if not the reason, for the name of this position is that “one who follows the sūtras” (sautrāntika) will not accept the authority of the Vibhāṣā, which is not scripture (sūtra) but scholarly treatise (śāstra).⁴³ So we should expect a sūtra quotation to counter the Vaibhāṣika view (though, ironically, Vasubandhu has also just cited the Vibhāṣā to support his own view). What is fascinating is that the quotation cited is not about “cognizing” and “seeing,” but is rather a hermeneutical principle articulated by the Buddha, which supports a figurative reading of the scriptures: “Do not be attached to the popular etymology, nor accept the world’s word meaning.” The implication is that the Vaibhāṣika view is a “worldly,” popular interpretation—just the kind of critique we would expect from a “Sautrāntika.” But perhaps more important than simply citing the scriptures to support his view, this passage cites the scriptures to justify reading ordinary terms figuratively. One who truly understands the scriptures, the Sautrāntika says, is one who is not misled by them to construct an edifice out of figurative material: “Why carve the ether?”

The term upacāra, which I have been translating as “figure” and “figurative reference,” has a uniform meaning here and across Vasubandhu’s works. It is, quite simply, reference to an unreal entity. Suppose I say, “That boy is a lion!” There are many potential interpretations of this sentence. What is not at issue, though—what sets us in search of a figurative meaning in the first place—is the clear fact that the boy is not literally a lion; there is no lion there. Figurative reference, for Vasubandhu, is where something is intended other than the object of direct reference.44 As we have seen in each case where this kind of figurative interpretation is proposed, all that is necessary in order to prove that such an indirect reference is intended is a proof that the direct reference would issue in a mistake or contradiction (which we cannot attribute to an enlightened Buddha). In order to prove that the Buddha could not mean to say that the manas, the mental organ, “cognizes,” all that is necessary is a proof that the mental organ cannot cognize. What is left, then, is to decide upon the proper reference, the accurate interpretation of the intention. To attempt to make sense of the direct reference when an indirect reference is intended is to “carve the ether”—to attempt to systematize unintended referents.

Vasubandhu makes the identical complaint (“The Sautrāntika say, ‘This is to divide the ether’ ”) in his second chapter, when he is critiquing the Vaibhāṣika view of the four characteristics of conditioned entities (saṃskāra): arising, duration, transformation, and destruction.⁴⁵ These four, say the Vaibhāṣika, are distinct dharmas that adhere to, and “activate,” other conditioned entities (they are what make “future” events come to be “present,” “present” events come to be “past,” and so on). Vasubandhu critiques this view at length, and we will not engage in the details here. What is of great interest in that passage is how he accuses the Vaibhāṣikas of reifying merely linguistic entities like non-Buddhists do, and he calls this mistaken reification a “non-Buddhist false concept” (tīrthakara-parikalpitā).⁴⁶ Vasubandhu says there is no distinct dharma of arising, but rather many instances of conceptual/linguistic construction (vikalpa) in which someone notices a thing that did not exist now come into being, and then says of that thing that it is “arising.” The terms parikalpita and vikalpa, which I translate as “false concept” and “conceptual/linguistic construction,” respectively, are crucial terms for Vasubandhu. They indicate conceptual fabrications that play no role in the flow of real, efficient causality. They are, for Vasubandhu, the crux of a characteristically Buddhist view, and they play a central role in his Yogācāra works.

The Vaibhāṣika evidently relies too much on linguistic structures, reifying them rather than seeking the genuine meanings implicitly intended by them. This is equally true in the passage on “view” under current consideration. For Vasubandhu—for the Sautrāntika—there is no reason to say, just because the world speaks of the eye “seeing” and the consciousness “cognizing,” that there must be a real activity, performed by the eye, that we call “seeing,” and another real activity, performed by the consciousness, that we call “cognizing.” Language can be misleading. The truth of the matter, the substratum, is merely the causal story of the eye organ, visual object, and consciousness. These elements are “passive [nirvyāpāra], merely dharmas, and merely cause and effect.” In the end, Vasubandhu does not resist the critique that things under this description are not “active.” If entities are properly understood, their transformations can occur without the superimposed, conventional understanding of action-with-an-agent. The “agents” and their “activities” are only figures that, once understood, dissolve, in the same way that the falsely viewed “self and things possessed by the self” dissolve in the light of the true causes of the “existing” things that are brought together into a “body.”

I mentioned at the start of this discussion that Vasubandhu’s causal argument would apply back to the frame, and we can now round out this section by engaging that application. Recall that the argument about the nature of the eye, which was a “view” only when accompanied by consciousness (sabhāga), arose in response to a challenge to the notion that “worldly right views” were limited to the mental consciousness. Now that it has been made clear that all views, all viewings, are performed by consciousnesses, and are only figuratively ascribed to agent sensory organs, there is no reason left to limit right views to mental views. That is, whereas surely we will wish to distinguish between views that are “settled” due to deliberative mental activities and views that are generated through perceptions, that distinction does not make one or the other category “worldly right views.” Both kinds of “view” are mental events—consciousnesses—that are figuratively referred to as actions performed by an eye.

The implication, which I draw, is that “worldly right views” should include all of the consciousnesses—all five sensory consciousnesses, together with the mental consciousness. The distinction between sensory and cognitive consciousnesses was founded on a mistaken understanding of the relation between sensory organ and consciousness; but since the sensory consciousness is both agent and object in every act of “seeing,” the experience of perceptual objects becomes just another form of ordinary awareness. Ostensibly, the goal in this passage was to prove that the eye should not be included in the view, so the category needs fine-tuning. But the more significant result is that perception is wrapped into consciousness, and words that describe literal sensory activity are to be taken as figurative. As we saw in his denial of the ongoing “existence” of past and future experiential objects, Vasubandhu believes that sensory objects and mental objects have no genuine (present) reality, because they have no causal effects outside the mental events that appear to “appropriate” them. Here we see that in order for a “view” to be causal, it must be an aspect of a causally efficient mental event. In fact, that mental event just is the discrimination of the “view”—the viewing-as-if through an eye what is a viewing-of an act of awareness. The awareness does not see through the eye, however. It is “supported” by the eye in the sense that it has been caused and hence shaped by it, but the eye itself is in the past by the time the awareness arises. Perception, therefore, contains an inherent falsity: we seem to be perceiving things in the present which are in fact past causes of our present discriminations. This notion, too, will be of great significance when we turn to Yogācāra in the chapters that follow.47

CLARIFYING CAUSALITY AGAINST ATOMS (AKBH III.100)

The final passage to discuss in this chapter helps to round out Vasubandhu’s notion of causality and its relation to his appeals to figurative reference. In a passage from chapter III of the AKBh, Vasubandhu defends the model of a seed coming from a sprout as the paradigmatic, perhaps the only, true form of causality. In the last chapter we referred to Vasubandhu’s linear approach to causality in his critique of mutual causality; in this passage we have a clear exemplification of what that means.⁴⁸

The issue in dispute in this passage is the non-Buddhist, Vaiśeṣika view of atoms. We began this chapter analyzing Vasubandhu’s argument against the self, which hinges on the fact that it is possible to break down the apparent whole, the combination of bodily and mental events, into its constituent parts, the skandhas. The Buddhist tradition rejects as mere designations (prajñapti) all entities that can be divided up, either physically or conceptually, into component parts. Abhidharma is centrally focused on identifying just what the basic components are out of which apparent wholes, such as the self, are really made. Things that are substantially real (dravya), as Vasubandhu explains, are those things that you cannot break down any further into their constituent parts. Real conditioned things, then, must be partless.

The partless components that make up the physical world are called “atoms” (paramāṇu). They are the ground-level reality that accounts for everything that we sense in the world around us. For this reason, atoms and their relation to perception are crucial to the Abhidharma account of the world, and the topic of just how atoms work arises on several occasions in Vasubandhu’s oeuvre. Here, the argument begins as a disproof of the eternality of atoms, but in response to the opponent’s counterargument, it ends up disproving the possibility of wholes inhering in, or existing over and above, their parts.

Vasubandhu reiterates the main points in this argument in his Twenty Verses Commentary, and it was upon that text that the Buddhist epistemologists relied for many centuries in their arguments against non-Buddhists.49 Here we will see that this crucial argument for Buddhist epistemologists recapitulates points that we have already seen at work in Vasubandhu’s view of causality: causality alone is the test of the reality of the entities in question; the relation between perceiver and perceived is reformulated in accordance with a unitary causal line; that causal line is distinct from the way things appear as well as the way we ordinarily talk; and, thus, the way we ordinarily talk is reinterpreted as “figurative,” referring only indirectly to the true line of causes.

As with the previous examples, my goal is to reveal the method of argument along with the particulars of Vasubandhu’s positions, so we must begin with the frame in which the argument is set. The context here is the discussion of the cyclical creation and destruction of the universe; according to Buddhist belief, the universe collapses at the end of a cosmic era, and this process of collapse includes three successive destructions. After these destructions, for a period no bodies remain, and as Vasubandhu says, no physical entities exist at all, since during this time living beings exist only in mental absorption.⁵⁰ In this context, the non-Buddhist raises an objection that atoms, the basic units of all things, must persist even after the universe is destroyed:

Now, what are the destructions?

There are three repeating destructions: by fire, water, and wind. [III.100ab] Since in one absorption [dhyāna], living beings equally come together there, it is the “coming-together” [saṃvartanī, i.e., destruction]. The heat destruction is from seven suns; the water destruction is from rainwater; the wind destruction is from a tumult of wind. And thereby, not even the subtle parts of the receptacle worlds [bhājana] remain.

But with respect to this some non-Buddhists accept: “Atoms are eternal. They remain then.”

Why do they accept this?

“Lest there be the appearance of coarse things without seeds.”⁵¹

The non-Buddhist argues that atoms must remain, and exist eternally, because they must serve as the building blocks, the basic elements, out of which things of the next world are to be made. The belief in the eternality of atoms is a Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika view, so we can be sure that Vasubandhu is arguing directly with their position—but the larger question of the nature of atoms in the construction of perceptible objects is of great importance to the Sarvāstivādins as well.

In the last chapter we noted that the Sarvāstivāda approach to time (“block time”) served as a response to the problem of continuity (or, as Vasubandhu would say, apparent continuity) in a world made up of impermanent entities. The appeal to atoms as building blocks is a way of addressing the parallel problem in space. For both Nyāya-Vaiśeṣikas and Ābhidharmikas, it is crucial to have basic elements that are by definition the smallest entities, but that have particular qualities that allow them to be combined into the larger entities that we perceive. Atoms block an infinite regress in the explanation of the composition of perceptible objects. Without them, you can never build your way back to ordinary objects, what the opponent calls “coarse” objects.

Among Buddhists, there are important controversies about just how atoms combine into larger perceptibles (we cannot perceive individual atoms), and just what those perceptibles are. Vasubandhu lays out a range of positions on this topic in AKBh I.43, indicating especially the difficulty of explaining how partless atoms come into contact. For instance, it is argued that if an atom a₁ comes into contact on one side with atom a₂ and on the other side with atom a₃, then atom a₁ has at least two sides, which are parts. On the other hand, if atom a₁ does not have sides, then what would prevent atoms a₂ and a₃ from occupying the same space? In that case, all atoms would end up occupying one point of space.

Vasubandhu declares his own allegiance (“This Bhadanta’s opinion should be accepted”) to the notion “They do not touch, but where there is no interval, there is the idea [saṃjñā] of touching.”52 This is a strange position, since (as Vasubandhu’s critic Saṃghabhadra will argue) it may be taken that two things with no interval do, in fact, touch. But perhaps we have learned enough of Vasubandhu’s views to discern his point: the notion of “touching” as an activity, in which each entity serves as both the toucher and the touched—all entailed by the verb “they touch” (spṛśanti)—is a false construction, unnecessarily imposed upon the mere existence of atoms that happen not to have any space between them. Just as temporal events may succeed one another in a line, without requiring that we call one truly “past” and other truly “present,” physical entities may exist without their apparent relations to one another adding new entities to our ontology, which we call distinct actions and events. Thus, although atoms in particular configurations may be implicated, causally, in the production of the idea that they touch, it is not required that such a causal story include, as one of its realities, an action called “touching.” Such a view of the nature of perception was, of course, adopted by the pointillists Seurat and Signac and others, who argued that their works, made of dots of color visible close up, proved that the image was composed by the eye and mind of the beholder.⁵³

The argument on atoms from AKBh III makes no direct reference to this previous argument, but it builds upon the issues by targeting, specifically, the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣikas. The Nyāya-Vaiśeṣikas are realists, meaning that they believe that the combinations of atoms create real things—in this case, the things of the world—and that the atoms out of which these things are made must also exist, eternally. Vasubandhu targets the notion that the combination of atoms is necessary as the basis for larger, perceptible entities—a view that is directed at the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣikas, but takes in any Buddhist who is leaning toward the reification of relations among atoms—by arguing that there is no good way to make sense of the relation of parts to wholes. All that is necessary, he will say, is the causal series of separate atoms, overlaid by ideation, by false conceptualization. Thus he accepts the notion that there must be a “seed”—that is, a cause—of the new universe, but he does not see why that seed must be the atoms:

Surely the seed is said to be the wind that has sentient beings’ distinctive powers, born from karma. Or, the wind that is associated with the destruction will become its cause. The Mahīśāsakas cite a sūtra, “The seeds were carried by the wind from other worlds.”⁵⁴

There is wit in this response. It is an intentional misreading of the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika opponent’s use of the term “seed.” The opponent had said that there must be atoms even after the final destruction, because without them there would be no possibility of the world resuming again; atoms serve as the “seed” of the new entities. Vasubandhu suggests that there are other options: the seed might be a wind produced by the karmic imprints of living beings; it might be the wind that caused the final destruction in the first place; or it might be an initiatory cause brought from another world. The idea of a seed is, of course, just a metaphor for both Vasubandhu and his opponents; neither really thinks that the universe starts from a seed, per se.55 But the irony is that, having said that atoms must serve as the “seed” for new entities when the universe comes back into existence, the opponent has inadvertently endorsed a metaphor of seed-to-sprout causality, which is contrary to the parts-to-wholes causality that Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika atomism in fact supports.

Thus, just as with the passage on “view” discussed above, Vasubandhu sets his opponent in an awkward self-contradiction.⁵⁶ First they say you need atoms to exist as seeds for the new combined entities, then they say they do not really mean seeds. Since they have used their words carelessly, they are placed on the defensive, and must explain their theory in detail:

Even so, they do not accept that the arising of a sprout, etc., is from a seed, etc.

What then?

From just their own parts, and from theirs in turn, and so on down to atoms.

What is this capacity of a seed, etc., in a sprout, etc.?

Nothing anywhere aside from drawing together their atoms.

And why, again, do they accept this?

Because it is not logical to have an origin from a different class.

Why is it not logical?

Because it would have no rule [aniyama]. It will not come about because of a rule of capacities, as in the arising of sound and what is cooked. For the variegated is a quality but not a substance, because things of a similar class are seen to arise from substances of a similar class, such as a mat from grass, and a cloth from thread.⁵⁷

In response to the idea that the “seed” of the new universe may be some wind or other coming from another universe, the opponent explains that Vasubandhu has misunderstood the point; the argument for atoms is not based upon causality from seed to sprout, but rather from part to whole. This is, after all, the point of atoms—to explain things through their components. The opponent goes farther, however, in response to Vasubandhu’s implicit interpretation of his use of “seed,” and denies even that sprouts are caused by seeds. Vasubandhu is thus taken as adopting the “seed-to-sprout” analogy as a real example of how causes work. Even this analogy is wrong, the opponent says, because both sprouts and seeds are made up of their parts; there is, for the opponent, no linear causality. This is somewhat ironic, of course, because Vasubandhu also does not take seeds and sprouts to have causal capacities per se. They provide a metaphor for the linear causality of dharmas. Still, seeds and sprouts are the model for Vasubandhu’s preferred mode of causality, and they become the opponent’s target.

The opponent introduces the notion of causal “capacity” (śakti), and says that the only “capacity” that may be attributed to seeds and sprouts is their ability to hold together their atoms. But the seed has no causal capacity with relation to the sprout. The idea that causation works from part to whole instead of from whole to whole is not entirely unfamiliar in contemporary, reductive interpretations of scientific theories. If I say, for instance, that the object ice is produced by a particular molecular structure in H₂O, then I am employing the causal mode from parts to whole. We might wish to say that what is really happening when ice melts is that an increase in heat causes the bonds in the molecules to change to a state in which they make up water instead of ice. To be fair, the notion of capacity adduced by the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika opponent articulates causal directionality in reverse; the ice would be said to have the power to unify the H₂O molecules. I suppose gravity is a better modern scientific example here. To apply the analogies to the Buddhist case, Vasubandhu’s position would be that water and ice and the gravitational force of a given planet are only apparent realities, with no inherent nature of their own. They appear to arise and interact with other objects only because of the accumulated specific states of their molecules.58

Why does the opponent think that the notion of a sprout arising from a seed is incoherent? Because it would require that an entity arise from something of a distinct class. The principle adduced here is Like produces like.⁵⁹ Maybe seeds could produce seeds, and sprouts sprouts. But how can seeds produce sprouts? This rule applies not to qualities, but to substances. Given that sprouts are new entities, distinct from seeds, they are understood as distinct substances, which cannot be produced by substances of a different kind. If causality is a rule-bound function of entities, there must be proper classes in which entities produce their causal results. To have causality traversing those boundaries would be to have a rule-free, and hence irrational, causality with no explanatory power.

Vasubandhu does not argue against this rule.60 He does not argue that seeds can cause sprouts, or that substances can be caused by substances of different classes. Rather, he criticizes the notion that the supposed combinations of entities are, in fact, entities at all. His view is that since we can give no good account of causality at this level (agreeing, then, that seed-to-sprout causality is not properly rule-governed), it must not really be happening. (We are here only one step short of the full argument for the illusion-like nature of all things, as we will discuss in chapter 5.) Nonetheless, the opponent’s argument provides a crucial opportunity for Vasubandhu to disprove both the realist approach to parts and wholes, and the distinction between substances and qualities. The sprout may not be the causal result of the seed, but this is not because they are both caused by their atoms; it is because both are only ideas:

This is illogical.

What is illogical about it?

That something unproven is taken for the reason.

What about it is unproven?

“That a mat is from grass, whereas a cloth is from thread.” For as they are brought together, they are taken as an idea [saṃjñā], like a line of ants.

How can that be?

Because one does not conceive of a cloth when there is contact with a single thread. For what in that case prevents the existing thing being conceived of as a cloth?

Given that it is incomplete, a part of a cloth should not be a cloth.

In that case, a cloth must be only an assemblage. What, other than a thread, is a part of a cloth?⁶¹

This first critique targets the example adduced by the opponent to prove that substances are produced by objects that share their nature: a mat of grass, and a cloth of thread. Here the idea is, apparently, that the same configuration—being woven together—will bring about different entities, when their substance is distinct. Thus it is the substance, not the configuration (or the activity), that determines the produced entity. Vasubandhu is not criticizing the distinction between the two entities, but rather their reality as wholes. He does not think the mat and the cloth exist as more than “ideas” (saṃjñā). Let us grant that a “line of ants” is nothing but an appearance, an idea imposed upon many distinct and unrelated creatures (there is no line over and above the ants that make it up). In the same way, a cloth can appear to exist over and above its threads, even though it does not. Vasubandhu proposes that a cloth is nothing but an assemblage—what else, he asks is there to a cloth, except threads? The cloth, then, is not an additional entity with its own nature and causal capacities. Its unity is an illusion.

In order to support this thesis, Vasubandhu interrogates the causal capacities of a single thread. It may be proposed that the threads alone cannot produce the thought of a cloth, so there must be some other entity there that can produce such a thought. But Vasubandhu’s point is that we know what is there; it is an assemblage of threads, none of which is capable of producing the thought of a cloth:

When looking at the contact among multiple supports, where the contact is only with the fringe, one should conceive of a cloth—or never. For the sensory organ does not come into contact with an intermediary power. And when coming into contact by stages with parts that are being touched by the eye, there should not be cognition of parts. Therefore, because coming-into-contact by stages engages with parts, the thought is also with respect to parts, like a firebrand circle.62

Given that we only perceive threads in succession, there is no way to justify the perception of a cloth as something additional, over and above those threads. For, Vasubandhu asks, if you do not perceive the cloth in the fringe, when will you perceive it? No matter how carefully we look at a single thread of a cloth, we will never sense the “cloth” until we take in the aggregate; this shows that there is no additional entity that can be sensed with the eyes. At the same time, however, it is noticed that we do, in fact, perceive a cloth, in spite of having only had available to us the distinct threads in a particular formation. What’s more, not only do we perceive the cloth, we fail to perceive the distinct threads! This fact justifies the comparison with a whirling firebrand. Like the line of ants this is an example where we are expected to agree: there is clearly no real entity corresponding to our perception of a circle of light. Yet what we see is a whole, made up of parts that we know exist, but fail to see. Vasubandhu’s readers would not need to be told of the evident similarity here to the false idea of the self.

Next Vasubandhu criticizes as internally incoherent the use of the thread-to-cloth causal structure proposed by the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika theory as evidence of cause and result sharing the same nature, or class (jāti):

The form of a thread does not appear in cloths that are manufactured [jātikriyā] out of different forms (colors), etc. If it has the nature of a variegated form, then there is an origin from a different class;63 and if it is not variegated, one either does not see the thread among those next to it, or one sees variegation.⁶⁴ Where the manufacture is also variegated, there is extreme variegation. Furthermore, given the difference in the shining of the glow in the beginning, middle, and end of a fire’s radiance, it does not appear from contact with its form.⁶⁵

In Vasubandhu’s theory, the combination of different entities is simply a function of false conceptualization. But the opponent believes that there must be real entities that we perceive. Against this view, Vasubandhu proposes a problematic example for the proposed theory: How do you account for a cloth composed of differently colored threads? The cloth must appear as variegated. But what creates the variegated color? The threads are not individually variegated; each thread is its own color. If you have a rule that like produces like, you cannot allow that a blue thread produces a variegated cloth. If the solution is proposed that there is one cloth called “variegated” in color, that requires that the opponent ignore the sameness of the color of the blue threads next to one another in a blue patch of the cloth. If it is argued that we do not see this patch, but only the whole, this supports Vasubandhu’s point that we do not really see entities as they are. If it is argued that we in fact see many different small “cloths,” some only blue, some variegated, then this opens up a vicious regress: there is variegation to the construction of variegation (it is inconsistently variegated).

Vasubandhu provides another example, that of a flame, which is similarly variegated—brighter in some parts, dimmer in others. Since we know that the flame is made up of countless tiny explosions of fire, perhaps we will be less likely to regard it as a “thing” or a real unity, than a cloth. But just like a cloth, the flame appears to us as a single entity. We know, however, that its unity cannot be the result of some perceived unity, because we do not perceive any unity.

A final example pushes the point made through the examples of the line of ants, the cloth, and the flame to a new extreme. Those examples showed that it was necessary that in each case an illusory “idea” be acknowledged to have been imposed upon a basis that consisted only of distinct elements. Just as entities are caused by the multiple conditioning factors of many distinct elements, their perception must be their combined effect.66 The new example is the mass of hair seen by someone with an eye disease. Here, unlike the other examples, in addition to the mistaken idea itself, the atomic entities that seemingly make it up also fail to exist. This example brings us closest to reality as Vasubandhu understands it, since atoms on their own are imperceptible, and it is only jointly that they produce anything perceptible:

Also, given that atoms are imperceptible, perception is of assemblages [samasta], like their causal origin,⁶⁷ and like the perception of a mass of hair for those with diseased eyes. A singular, atom-like hair for them is imperceptible.⁶⁸

Since there is no hair to perceive, it is certainly impossible that the experience of a mass of hair is due to the atomic units of hair out of which the mass of hair is composed. Masses of hair appear because of damage to the visual apparatus, not because of real hairs. It is clear that in this case, at least, the appearance arises unsupported by any hypostatized atomic units. By noting that there is no reason to believe in a real entity that is a “cloth” any more than that there is a “circle of fire” or a “mass of hairs,” Vasubandhu shifts the conversation about the nature of composite entities from the external to the internal realm, from the world of real, causal entities, to the world of false mental constructions. I cannot help seeing the connection between this passage and the discussion of “view,” in which the supposed “view” of the eye, and all of the senses, was relegated to the consciousness. Furthermore, the false appearance of hairs for the person with eye disease is the opening analogy in Vasubandhu’s Twenty Verses (Viṃś), his most famous Yogācāra work, and in that text he is again putting it forward as an example of an appearance that arises with no external substratum.

Finally, Vasubandhu brings his argument back home to the original argument about the impermanence of atoms:

And since the specific idea of the atom applies only to the forms, etc., the destruction of the atom is established when they are destroyed.

Since the atom is a different substance from the substance of the forms, etc., its destruction is not established when they are destroyed.

Its being different does not make sense, as long as there is no way to differentiate earth, water, and fire from their forms, etc., and those things that are grasped through touching the eye are perceived. And since there is no thought of wool, cotton, safflower, and saffron [kuṅkuma], etc., when they are burnt,69 the thought of them applies to differences of form, etc. The ascertainment of a pot with respect to what has arisen as cooked is due to the formation generality, like a line. Because there is no ascertainment for one not seeing the mark. What is the point of this childish prattling? Let it stand just so, uncontradicted.⁷⁰

Vasubandhu explains that the destruction of atoms at the end of the universe is proven by the fact that perceptibles—forms—do not survive. Of course, the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika proponent is still unconvinced, and suggests that it is only the forms, and not the atomic substances, that are destroyed. Vasubandhu responds by pointing out that if you want to say that we perceive real things, you are not permitted also to draw a distinction between the things perceived and their real substances. The reason we fail to see different kinds of cloth when they have all been burned to ash is that the means we used to distinguish them—their different colors—are no longer visible. If the forms were still there, and we could perceive them, then we would perceive them. This underlines Vasubandhu’s point that what seem to be perceived wholes must be only ideas superimposed on imperceptibles. The last example, of the “cooked” food in a pot, transfers this point about conceptually projecting differences across color patterns to conceptually projecting differences within a perceived entity changing over time. Vasubandhu’s critique of mereological part/whole identities works exactly the same in reference to characteristics attributed to entities due to their having changed through time, such as “being cooked.” There is no single entity, only a line of ants, a causal line projected by the viewer across distinct, though temporally adjacent, appearances.

CONCLUSION: VASUBANDHU’S PHILOSOPHICAL MOTIVATION

The notion of a unitary causal line is one of the most prominent patterns in Vasubandhu’s Sautrāntika argumentation, and it is easily identified across the texts from the AKBh discussed so far. I have entitled this chapter “Merely Cause and Effect” in order to bring attention to this notion: Vasubandhu appeals to causality as a full, satisfactory explanation of entities that only seem to be something more. When it appears that there is an agent and an action, and that the agent and the action are two separate entities, Vasubandhu argues that the entirety of the situation can be explained as merely cause and effect, only one entity causing another. Of course, it looks like there is an agent; the persistent, mistaken appearance of the self is a fact of our situation as conditioned beings in saṃsāra. We think we are independent agents, and it is difficult to speak of human behavior without implying that there is an agent self. But the Buddha tells us there is no agent, only actions and results, only strings of discrete, dissociated, if causally related, events.

The same can be said of objects and their qualities or their relations. We tend to think of entities as having specific natures that are unchanging, but also as having aspects to their identities that are changeable. Vasubandhu is extremely strict in rejecting the substantial reality of entities under this commonsense view. It violates the basic principle of Abhidharma, which is to reduce things to their primary units, so that each thing can be described according to its single nature, its one svabhāva. Two opposing qualities must, therefore, be attributed to two distinct entities. One entity cannot be described as one way (or at one time) x and another ~x. One entity cannot be different from itself. Read in this way, a thing just is its action, its causal relations, its appearance. This is why an object cannot be distinct from its temporal identity, which means that there can be no difference between a thing that is “present” and a thing that is “past.” A thing cannot not be producing the cause that it is in its nature to produce. It cannot be inactive and still be what it is. For this reason there is no sensible distinction between a real object and its present, its existence, any more than it is sensible to say that a thing exists in the past. Each thing does nothing but immediately produce the result it is its nature to produce.

It is not that things cannot be described otherwise; things of course appear to have agents and qualities and relations. Things appear to exist in combination. It looks like something exists over and above the string of discrete events; it seems like we can perceive the unity of causal streams. But Abhidharma analysis rules that if you want to say what is real, you must appeal to discrete entities that can be proven through appeal to scriptural authority and causal necessity. When Vasubandhu explains away the entities under consideration by saying that they are “merely cause and effect,” he is saying that, like a line of ants, and like the self, they have an appearance that conflicts with the reality of their true, causal nature. Those who tag those appearances and reify them, creating false ideas of real substances that persist through time, or of entities such as “arising,” which is temporarily a quality of every other entity, are allowing a proliferation of “non-Buddhist false concepts” (tīrthakara-parikalpitā).

It is therefore, finally, of great significance that Vasubandhu fells with the same causal reductionism not just the agent and object, and the object and its qualities, but also the appearance itself and its experiencer. Thus, the eye and its object, the perceiver and the perceived, are not distinguished in the “view” that is perception. Percepts are not distinct from the eye consciousness that takes them up as objects. This is true both as real objects perceived through the senses (because they no longer exist when perceived by the senses) and as mental objects that are thought to be distinct from the mind but in fact are, again, part of the unitary causal line that is consciousness. Objects, if they exist, do not exist in some new, distinctive way just because they are perceived. If they are perceived, that is because they are in causal relation to the perceiving consciousness. But the object itself just is. There is no “perceiver” and no “perceived”; it is merely cause and effect. The causal reduction here connects up a great many of Vasubandhu’s arguments.

The inclusion, within this causal reduction, of the perceiver and the perceived, both for sensory organs and for the mind, will reappear as Vasubandhu’s crucial contribution to the Yogācāra. It is what I will call the reduction of subjectivity. In his Yogācāra works the denial of an agent as distinct from an action, and of a perceiver in contradistinction from a perceived, and of a concept as distinct from its linguistic structuration, will be summarized as the principle of “nonduality” (advaya). The link between Vasubandhu’s Yogācāra understanding of nonduality and the causal linearity of the AKBh will provide a reliable indicator of the coherence of his oeuvre.71 The reduction of agency and the reduction of subjectivity are united in Vasubandhu’s famous, game-changing gloss of the persistent Yogācāra term “duality” as “grasper and grasped.” Before turning to this argument about the nature of perception from a Yogācāra perspective, however, we must, in the next chapter, turn our attention to a second, crucial pattern in association with this causal argument, which is Vasubandhu’s insistence on a “figurative” reading of Buddhist scripture.