Best Namarupa translation

My sincerest apologies for taking so long: I have quite a bit going on at the moment. A the same time, no post anywhere along this thread is something easily responded to. So, I can’t just send one off in between other tasks.

First, I really would like us to be able to consult Bhante @sujato 's post on why he refrains from interpreting EBT ontology through a subjective-objective paradigm. (Moderators! Anyone! Help, please!) I’m sorry. I know I’m guilty of having introduced my views in previous posts precisely with that paradigm, and that has only added to the confusion. I think it’s more appropriate to speak of internal-external: it maps onto subjective-objective quite nicely, without all the baggage of Western conceptions of objective reality. (I think this was Bhante’s point in his post.)

Of course, I’m going with the idea of internal-external in the EBTs as referring to dhammas pertaining to oneself and dhammas not pertaining directly to oneself, respectively. (See here for an excellent article on the subject.)

Without reference to subjective-objective, then, I’m saying that viññāṇa is internal and that nāmarūpa is wholly external, which is definitely not what the common interpretation of nāmarūpa. Nevertheless, I am having trouble reading DN 15 in any other way.

Yes, and that’s the only conclusion to be had if we hold on to more traditional models of mind. But I wonder if that’s the case. I grant that it’s really hard to even conceptualize the mind model we’re considering, but that doesn’t mean it’s not accurate. Honestly, without performing a search, don’t most if not all of those definitions of nāmarūpa appear in so-called proto-abhidhammic texts? What might that say about their origins? What do the more narrative, anecdotal suttas say?

I would say that they do, in fact: just as they also fall under the rūpakāya as well. Because they aren’t simply tokens by which we recognize things, they are simultaneously constitutive of those things–they are the make-up of those things; they inhere within them.

The sticking point is when we conceive of nāma as being located in our heads. The Vedas didn’t, and taking the text on face value we have no reason to assume DN 15 does either. The ākārā and so on represent a relationship obtaining between nāmakāya and rūpakāya, both of which (and, thus, the ākārā, too) are located within the object. Sorry, I said I wouldn’t use that word. Well, it’s all external.

The main difference I see between the Buddha’s concept of nāma and the Vedic concept is that the former demystified language and linguistic designations by saying that these named weren’t part of a holy language bequeathed to us by God when He created all Creation but were sāmaññanāma: designations held in common, determined by custom and tradition. For practical purposes dealing with daily use of names and the perceptive process, there is very little difference insofar as, from the perspective of a given speaker, the name came inherently with the object, in all likelihood long before the person’s birth. That is, it is not a product of the person’s head, but its origins lie without. The dynamic differs from the Vedic concept only in the demystification, no more.

Lastly on this point (because it is an important point you’ve brought up, one which had me tossing and turning for a while), we have to distinguish between the DN 15 model and the “tiṇṇaṁ saṅgati phasso” model of mind. They are not the same, though there’s much they hold in common. In tiṇṇaṁ saṅgati, indisputably internal mentation (viññāṇa) would seem directly constitutive of phassa; in DN 15, the gap between them is more explicit. That is, in the former model, it is easier to interpret the contact as being between internal and external worlds. In DN 15, however, I would argue that the contact is between nāma and rūpa, by way of the ākārā etc. Again, a dynamic wholly external to the person in question.

BB uses it in the notes to his translation of DN 15. SO does Peter Harvey. Check Piya Tan (here), who, in addition to citing all three, uses it too himself.

Indeed, but it’s not only rūpa which represents the outside elements, it’s nāma too:
Anusaya Sutta (SN 18.21): imasmiñca saviññāṇake kāye bahiddhā ca sabbanimittesu
Apagata Sutta (SN 18.22): imasmiñca saviññāṇake kāye bahiddhā ca sabbanimittesu
Bālapaṇḍita Sutta (SN 12.19): ayañceva kāyo bahiddhā ca nāmarūpaṃ

These three are obviously parallels and have to be viewed as a whole, but the inescapable conclusion would seem to be that viññāṇa is internal, while both nāmarūpa (fully inclusive of both) is external.
The traditional assimilation of nāmarūpa to the five aggregates is what has us turned around.

Again, I don’t think subject-object is useful or helpful when looking at EBTs: it only breeds confusion. I didn’t come to this on my own; again, this is Bhante @sujato’s. But it’s like the proverbial overturning of the candle or however it goes: he’s right. And the closest we can come to an isomorphic paradigm in the early texts, as far as I know, is internal-external which strictly speaking still isn’t really the same thing.

Personally, I too am really big on āhāra as a metaphor (and I really like how you roped taṇhā into it too). However, I must respectfully disagree with the idea of “subject-object cognition where one eats and consumes other things.” I’m nowhere near as familiar with the Vedas as you, but it sounds very Vedic to me and jibes with what little I know. But, as I see it, the Buddha’s strategy was to completely do away with the subject-object dyad, as seen in Saṁyutta Nikāya 12.12, the Moḷiya Phagguna Sutta:

Ko nu kho bhante viññāṇ’āhāraṁ āhāreti.

Āhāretî ti ahaṁ na vadāmi.

I’ve got a few of extended mind articles by David Chalmers and some others which make some statements which are surprisingly close (in my view, anyway) to what we see in DN 15. I didn’t want to upload so much potentially extraneous material if it wasn’t warranted. But I have it if anyone’s interested.

One last point I think we should keep in mind regarding how DN 15 relates to material from other suttas: as evidenced by the nid āna introducing the sutta, DN 15 is an unapologetic polemic directed at other (competing?) views on dependent origination (as well as competing views of liberation, as demonstrated in the final paragraph). This, coupled with the fact every single one of its seven sections (Paṭiccasamuppāda, Attapaññatti, Naattapaññatti, Attasamanupassanā, Nattasamanupassanā [present only in the Chinese versions], Sattaviññāṇaṭṭhiti, and Aṭṭhavimokkha) is either wholly unique to this sutta, or is somehow unique in its manner of presentation, tells me that its author(s) were intentionally seeking to set themselves apart from other interpretations of fundamental conceptions of dhamma.

Peace.

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No worries or need to apologize on any delay! It is quite the topic.

Now that you’ve mentioned ideas of objective reality and ontology, I have a clearer picture of what you mean by subjective-objective dichotomy, and agree that the baggage from those concepts is sticky here. I agree that internal-external is a more specifically Buddhist way of talking about this experience as well, going off of translation and so forth. However, forgive the pushback here on those terms being a proper solution. I would tend to disagree that the terms ‘subject’ and ‘object’ must or even automatically do imply those ontological assumptions, and that the alternative terminology (‘internal’ vs. ‘external’) doesn’t imply them and provides a solution; “external” is much more explicitly harkening to notions of an outside reality after all, and the terms can, to me, easily impose ideas of “my world here” vs. “their world out there, existing.” I also see a difference between subject-object and subjective-objective: the former refers to the relationship between consciousness and that which is cognized, whereas the latter can refer to a divide in reality that is personal as opposed to a reality that is ultimately true, existent, or independent. I see no place for the latter in Buddhism personally, whereas the former, no matter which terms we use, I find to be a recurring theme. There is the dichotomy, but without the ontological assumptions, which seems to be what you’re trying to separate here. Please correct me if I’ve sorely mistaken you!

You mentioned that the drive for subject-object cognition, metaphors of eating, etc. seem very Vedic, as opposed to Buddhist, to you—which is fair, considering they are Vedic. But in Vedic cosmogony (which maps onto cognition and “psychology” for lack of a better term), the subject-object duality is not one between a subject and a supposed external objective world necessarily, but one of self-cognition or something much closer to “extended mind” in some ways (but still with its own collection of metaphysics and ontology, of course).
(There is no one metaphysical or ontological system in Vedic thought, and some of those questions seem equally irrelevant to the more experiential divide between cognitive subject and object in earlier thought especially. Just wanted to clarify this).
I find it significant that the Buddha pulled so many Vedic terms relating to these cognitive models when teaching his system to people, many of whom were educated brahmins or contemplatives, and paṭiccasamuppāda itself is one of the prime examples of that. I’m not sure if you’ve read Prof. Joanna Jurewicz’s paper Playing with Fire: The pratītyasamutpāda from the perspective of Vedic thought or where you stand on it if you have, but I find she quite convincingly shows that the Buddha’s nidānas (specifically the twelve in her article) are a formulation of the pre-existing Vedic cosmogonies with cognitive implications, stripped of the ātman and monistic Absolute. I also find the heavy emphasis on nāmarūpa and viññāṇa being co-dependent a response to later Brahminical soteriology and metaphysics, and maybe one of the Bodhisatta’s key insights in realizing the path to Nibbāna (as described in DN 14 or SN 12.65). The nidāna to DN 15 does set the scene in a major Brahminical center of India (Kuru) where much of these ideas originated and dominated. Taking all of this into account, the subject-object divide between cognizer and cognized seems, to me, more appropriate a description of the de-ontologized / phenomenological experience, and its relationship to Vedic thought is not, in my current view, opposed to Buddhism; rather, the metaphysics or ontological ideas that emerge out of it are the main opposing forces (but still not in the Western notions of objectivity as far as the Vedas go; the divergence is instead monistic and non-dual, or absolutive).

Again, I really apologize if this whole section has been a sheer misapprehension of your point on my part!

The above out of the way, I agree! Subjective-objective in terms of objectivity etc. has no place here in my mind. I’ve heard of Bhikkhu Anālayo and others referring to ‘interconnected subjectivity’, which I find could be a much more appropriate description of the Buddhist perspective. For nāmarūpa, I see it is the object of consciousness, which is therefore wholly external in one sense, and yet consumed by pure subjectivity in another. As you say, this is not the most common understanding of the term. That is, consciousness is entangled in nāmarūpa, which we could say is ‘external’ in these terms (a useful image from the suttas I’ll mention a couple more times lol).

This is a good line of questioning to pursue! If by proto-abhidhammic you mean vibhanga and veyyakarana type of suttas which analyze and describe things in more detail, I would say so, because that’s the nature of any definition in the suttas; things are defined in those types of suttas and used elsewhere. Most examples of nāmarūpa “in the wild” refer to the Brahmanical idea of it being the manifest world of external things. The few exceptions, if any, where it refers more specifically to a particular individual being can still be subsumed under this understanding, which is the proper understanding of the term IMO. That is, an individual being is still external to consciousness, and consciousness “plants” itself into nāmarūpa for re-birth. So nāmarūpa in that sense is still not “(internal) mind and body”, but rather “individual chunk of nāmarūpa with consciousness” and the external nāmarūpa to that which is of the same nature.

This also agrees with the Vedic understanding of the term, and it maps onto the Buddha’s use of paṭiccasamuppāda as a re-formulation and repurposing of Vedic cognitive models stripped of any inherent agent (and instead conditioned). In Vedic cosmogony, the ātman or creator—the cognizing subject—creates nāmarūpa and then inhabits it in order to continue cognizing [itself]. That is, nāmarūpa is external and inclusive of both the conscious individual inhabited by the ātman (and therefore external to it) and all of the external things cognized by it. Note too that the ātman is said to be consciousness in the BĀU. This also points to consciousness being entangled in nāmarūpa; in fact, this notion of the ‘tangle’ was asked by a brahmin who wanted to know how to escape or untangle it—it’s a pre-Buddhist notion. The Buddha simply says that the solution is not consciousness existing independently from nāmarūpa, but the mutual cessation of each.

This is a good point; although mental and cognitive, the things we cognize carry these traits within themselves experientially. Being within consciousness, these traits are still subjective (as are all things), but the nāmakāya may be more appropriately conceived of as with rūpa rather than applied to rūpa, as you point out. (This is also in response to your later point on the sentient body and external signs/nāmarūpa).

To contribute a bit to this same idea, I’d add that nāma is tied to an inherent creative power in vāc (speech). Similar to the logos in Greek philosophy (found in the New Testament and identified with a divine power), the Creator naming and speaking things into existence imbues them with their inherent identity. Ultimately, all things have one name and one form: that of the Absolute, the pre-creative (unmanifest) power, the Creator, etc.—and the later soteriology saw knowledge and union with that as the goal. In de-mystifying this, the Buddha is driving the sword deeper into the ant-hill to uproot and polemicize later Brahmanical notions of metaphysics, ontology, and (perhaps most importantly to him) soteriology.

I don’t see these as contradictory or distinct. We have to remember that DN 15 specifically says that nāmarūpa is dependent on viññāṇa and in a mutually supportive relationship right before its description of phassa. I agree that one could interpret the MN 18-style definition of phassa as supposing a different model of mind or ontology, but I wouldn’t agree the definitions themselves do. Either way, consciousness must be ‘entangled’ in nāmarūpa, and nāmarūpa must, in a sense, ‘collide’ with itself for there to be contact. I see what you mean though, and perhaps you’d still disagree.

According to the Buddha, we don’t know any of the Veda until we become arahants! So we’re in the same camp.

Again, I agree on (a) the Buddha removing this sort of ontological and metaphysical speculation from phenomenological experience, and (b) the Buddha removing notions of self / agency in terms of an actor. But I would say that the Brahmanical soteriology also aims to remove the subject-object dyad, just in a different way. This is why/how the Buddha could find so much common ground: both schemas ended up seeing the ignorance, desire, and suffering inherent in our search for feasting on and cognizing things. The Brahmanas/Upanisads look to find a solution to this as a problem, not encourage it. There’s a reason Moliya Phagguna asked those questions though: we have an inherent drive for and experience of this dyad. Rejecting it and denying its existence is not the strategy of the Buddha; he seeks to undermine and correct it, because it is conditioned by ignorance. Phenomenologically, the experience of subject-object is and is manifest; it is merely conditioned, and not by knowledge of how things actually work: that’s the problem. For the Buddha (and the Vedas) to map out that experience and describe its relationship to suffering is a necessary step to then correct the mistake by describing the reality of the situation and the escape from it via true knowledge. Moreover, as I said earlier, the problem is not cognitive subject-object, but subjective-objective and the plethora of implications or assumptions that may come along with any terminology we use, including internal/external.

I am interested! Feel free to DM them to me or wherever you find appropriate to link to them.

Apologies for another long reply. No rush for any response on my end! Thanks again for the pertinent subject matter and being a great conversation partner!

Mettā

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Wow, there’s a lot here. I’m just going make a few remarks, and then I need a couple of days (at least!) to offer something more thoughtful.

I didn’t really grasp a lot of the first half (the “pushback”). I think that’s due to my ignorance of the Vedas, the inherent difficulties in verbal communication (especially in the electronic medium), and (probably mostly) the subtlety of DO. I suspect that, if it weren’t for the first two, we’d find we mostly agree.

I have to admit that I am in love with this new theory I’ve stumbled upon, but I’m inventing it as we post. So, first, let me thank you for the dialogue. (And also state that you absolutely cannot stop this before we reach a resolution!) I know it’s probably quite radical sounding in this early stage–and I’m aware that, at some point, I will have to make room for additional internal mental content than merely perceptive consciousness, but I am not prepared to relinquish so soon. To do so prematurely will run the risk of reverting to the same old nāmarūpa, mind-body paradigm, and I truly believe DN 15 is positing a significant departure from that: how far is the question.

I will say that I see most of the cognitive activity in DN 15’s auxiliary DO chain.

I will get those articles to you in the next week or so. I’ll send pdfs with passages highlighted that sort of show what connections I’m making and perhaps why. This is all new stuff I’m studying in school which may lead to a thesis, so, again, I appreciate your providing a workout partner.

Off the top of my head, I can say that your “external to consciousness” has a ring to it. However, I don’t think the tinnam sangati model is the way to go. Something more radical is being proposed.

Anyway, thanks for your participation. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.

Peace.

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I think so too! My ‘pushback’ was almost sheerly terminological, i.e. that I don’t see a problem with the terms ‘subject-object’ nor an inherent solution in ‘internal-external,’ but I do see the problems in ‘subjective-objective,’ as well as all of the ontological or metaphysical assumptions people may pack into their interpretation of any terms one uses, whatever they may be; no term is impervious to the force of subjective connotation or idiolectical assumptions.

As for the Vedic references, the purpose of those was just to try and demonstrate that I don’t see a contradiction in terms of Vedic eater-eaten (subject-object) cognitive models and the Buddhist ones. I see a contradiction in the metaphysics and ontology, again, but not in the metaphors and terms themselves as imported to Buddhism. We may be coming at this from the same angle but misunderstanding one another due to the language though. Vedic cosmogonical narratives were used to symbolize and understand subject-object cognition, existence, and salvation from the Manifest/Created/Dual world into the Unmanifest (or similar ideas) in later Brahmanical soteriology—and already hinted at since the later Rgvedic period.

On that note, I realized it may prove helpful to our discussion to clarify my comments on the Vedas/DO (including the ‘chain’ in DN 15):
Following the research of Jurewicz, Gombrich, Bausch, etc., I understand paticcasamuppāda to be a re-purposed and more accessible formulation of the pre-existent, Vedic models of cognition and existence— expressed via metaphor and cosmogony and related to later Brahmanical soteriology and purification practices—intentionally stripped of the abstract imagery and the prior notions of a metaphysical or ontological monistic Absolute and/or of an agent/ātman (self/essence/etc.) present in those Vedic models, and as oriented instead to demonstrate conditionality and dependency in regards to samsāric existence in more concise language.
(That’s a long sentence lol.)

In regards more specifically to DN 15, there are several things to note, considering the above:

  • The sutta is set in Kuru, part of the Vedic heartland where Brahmanism originated and dominated, and outside of the Buddha’s normal teaching area.
  • The sutta is one of the relatively few that talks about the mutual conditionality of nāmarūpa and viññāna, a rather technical polemic against Brahmanical ideas, especially contemplative/(pre)Upanisadic ones (which would be of particular interest to brahmins interested in Buddhism, perhaps).
  • The sutta also talks about nāmarūpa in the context of the ‘tangle’ of the SN—asked by a brahmin (and Vedic deva in a parallel)—and it refers to nāmarūpa as both that into which consciousness settles, and in relation to external contact; this is precisely the use of the term in the Brahmanical cosmogonies almost to the T, but with the sutta replacing an agent or ātman with a conditioned thing.
  • This same chain appears in Snp 4.11, potentially a conversation with a brahminical ascetic (but this is much less certain afaik; some reasoning would be the questions about nāmarūpa which are almost always from brahmins and the mention of a meditative state that appears to be a formless one related to Brahmanical soteriology).
  • The sutta goes into lists of quite nuanced notions of an ātman, many of which seem rather Upanisadic and Brahmanical (such as an infinite, formless ātman and variations of it, etc.).
  • The DN, as a whole, is generally quite eager to respond to Brahmanical ideas with the Buddhist ones (though again, this is a less solid argument).

Also, I have a feeling that the 8 liberations mentioned at the end are of Brahmanical origin. That is, that I think it’s likely that the Buddha learned them with his former teachers in the Upanisadic(?)/contemplative Brahmanical circles. This is because they lack (explicit) jhāna and instead move into / heavily emphasize the formless attainments, and they seem somewhat similar to the development of the kasina meditations, which Wynne has quite convincingly shown (IMO) to be of Brahmanical origin; one focuses on certain aspects of form, elements, colors, etc. and transitions into formless states from there. The other thing they have an affinity to is the brahmavihāras (which were understood as pre-Buddhist and obviously relating to Brahmā), specifically the one on ‘the beautiful’ which is sometimes understood as referring to mettā and the connection between these and the formless spheres. All in all, I feel pretty confident that these come from a pre-Buddhist (and very likely Brahmanical) source, adopted by the Buddha as a useful practice.

Joanna Jurewicz, in the paper I linked, also argued that the title mahānidāna may be a play on the Vedic sense of ‘nidāna’ which refers to the connection / explanation between things, and could (in a context like this) be used to mean the ātman in connecting personal cognitive experience with metaphysical soteriology; for the Buddha to give his great (mahā) nidāna is quite the surprise: there is no ontological nidāna connecting these things, and it is simply a conditioned and absurd cycle driving one into dukkha; this could then be a further hint at the polemic. Nevertheless, the titles of suttas can be quite late and there are many potential explanations other than this one.

Some other quick connections: nibbāna as the extinguishment of a flame could very well be (in one sense, considering it is used in many different ways intentionally) playing off the idea of the Absolute = Agni, fire, burning, etc. in Vedic cosmogony/metaphor related to metaphysics and soteriology; the non-dual Absolute identical with the ātman is ultimately related to Agni in many ways (and subject-object cognition is ultimately Agni cognizing himself, hence the soteriology is to attain a form of non-dual merging with this force, resulting in lack of subject-object cognition). The Buddha instead speaks of the extinguishment of fire; the death of Agni altogether. Also, the only other place where “nāmakāya” appears (to my knowledge) is in conversation with a Brahminical contemplative in Snp 5.7.

All of the above in mind, I really do think that Vedic thought and metaphor are extremely relevant to understanding paticcasamuppāda in its socio-historical context, and the purpose the longer formulations like those of DN 15 or the twelve nidānas fulfilled (as opposed to the ones starting with craving or the plain four noble truths). Of course, I’ve only described some of my reasoning for this being directly relevant to and visible in DN 15; for a broader overview of the connections to Vedic cosmogony and cognitive models, see Jurewicz’s rather brief (but dense and genius!) paper on this topic.

Obviously, the application and purpose of paticcasamuppāda is extremely multifaceted and this is only one critical lens of many we can use, but it is pertinent. In the Vedic models that it parallels, the drive for subject-object cognition (which ultimately is ignorant and causes suffering) is the major lesson of the whole thing when we remove the divine and metaphysical aspects layered on top (or built in). This switch to move away from speculative theory and refocus onto the aspects of older concepts that are more phenomenological, “rational,” and cognitive is an extremely common strategy of the Buddha, but always with nuance of course. Just as in the later Brahmanical models, the subject-object feeding frenzy is ultimately driven by delusion and desire, but for the Buddha the solution is not union with a non-dual Absolute, but rather the simple cessation of all the suffering that is that inescapable process—and this is what his reformulation points to IMO.

Apologies for dumping more text on you to sift through!! I feel bad! I thought this may contribute to clarify my perspective a bit more though. I don’t see it as disagreeing (or necessarily agreeing) with what’s been said here; it’s tangential. But I do think it will be very relevant to discussing DN 15 and nāmarūpa!

Mettā

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@Vaddha I promised these to you quite some time ago; I apologize for the delay.

These are the articles on extended mind I mentioned back on the “Best Nāmarūpa Translation” thread which I felt (for me, at least, anyway) threw some light on nāmarūpa issues specific to DN 15 viz. modern philosophy of mind theories on extended mind/cognition.

I would like to preface all of this by saying that it was Alex Wynne’s 2018 article, “Sariputta or Kaccāna? A preliminary study of two early Buddhist philosophies of mind and meditation” which started me down this rabbit-hole. Although I’ve heard some pretty resounding arguments against his very cut-and-dry bifurcation of the path here and elsewhere, I must say that I agree at least with his characterization of the Buddhist mind as expressed by Mahā Kaccāna in the Madhupiṇḍika Sutta as “embodied,” especially (though not necessarily exclusively, as Wynne seems to argue) in contexts (like DN 15) where the saḷāyatana is the primary mind model. And the concept of extended mind is of course just one of several outgrowths of the theory of the embodied mind.

Just to remind you, my idea is that the saviññāṇaka kāya and external nāmarūpa (or, sometimes, sabbanimttā) paradigm is at odds with the internal nāmarūpa of the five khandha model. You have argued quite nicely for their compatibility generally speaking, but I am still reserving judgement as to which (indeed, if either) is intended in DN 15: I don’t see how the two theories can inhabit the same philosophical space in that sutta. If my interpretation is correct, and, in DN 15, the three cognitive functions excluding viññāṇa otherwise included in nāma (vedanā, saññā, and saṅkhārā) in the five khandha model are indeed relegated to the external world ( à la the external nāmarūpa model), then the question becomes, “What mental functioning is then left to take place in the head?” According to DN 15 (again, if I’m correct), only phenomenal consciousness.

Anyway, I read the articles and highlighted what was of interest to me for my records: I would like to maybe write a response to Wynne’s article at some point. Perhaps you will notice things I overlooked–in which case, please be kind enough to share your thoughts.

The articles list as follows:

  • Andy Clark and David Chalmers, “The Extended Mind”: This is the article that kicked everything off regarding the idea of mind or cognition not being reducible or limited to what transpires in the head.

  • Andy Clark, “Material Symbols”: This article is recognized as the one in which Clark really establishes the role of language in extending beyond the interior of the agent’s head. I must admit it was far too technical for me, and I understood it only very generally. Maybe you can do better and explain it to me.

  • Anna M. Borghi et al., “The embodied mind extended: using words as social tools”: This article, as the title implies, seeks to connect more explicitly the ideas of embodied and extended mind, and thereby buttress shortcomings in the arguments of both, by treating words as social tools: just as tools extend the range of the body, words as tools extend the range of the mind as the operate socially. I have more articles on this social aspect of language (as an intersubjective extension of cognition) which I haven’t yet read. I would say the socially-derived nature of language emphasized by the Buddha over and against the divine nature of Sanskrit posited by the Vedas is significant here. (Again, this one, while better than Clark’s, was filled lots of technical jargon which wasn’t so directly useful to me; I really just took from the concluding sections.)

  • David Chalmers, The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory: Huge book by Chalmers where he lays out his (and others’) theories on consciousness. I highlighted the introduction–where, among other things, he carefully distinguishes psychological (nāma) and phenomenal (viññāṇa) functions of the mind, how they interact, as well as areas where the lines blur and the psychological and the phenomenal seem to overlap (like manasikāra)–and the sixth chapter–where he goes more into depth on the interaction between the psychological and the phenomenal.

  • David Chalmers, The Puzzle of Conscious Experience: A short, chapter-length overview of much of the same. An additional point which I don’t think he goes into much in the book (at least not in the two chapters I highlighted) is how looks at consciousness as something elemental like time or space. I really think this jibes well with the Buddha’s teaching that viññāṇa is a dhātu like the mahābhūta, and, thus, like them, has infinite, external aspect which compliments its individual, internal apportionment to beings.

  • Alisa Mandrigin and Evan Thompson, “Own-Body Perception”: This is off on a different tangent. It is still related to the embodied mine, but the focus is on about autoscopic hallucinations–basically, different varieties of out of body experiences–as they relate to one’s perception of the body as subject and/or the body as object. For me, it relates directly to the practice of the eight liberations at the end of DN 15 in the context of its teachings on nāmarūpa and viññāṇa like we’ve been discussing for so long.

I still have a few articles on the relationship between language and cognition which I have yet to read. Generally speaking, it seems that, in the main, they’re mostly just expansions of the Clark 2006 article above (kind of like the Borghi article), and I can’t see how they’d really be adding much but fine tuning or specificity. Here’s one that I haven’t gotten much past the introductory paragraphs on yet:
Fusaroli et al. The Dialogically Extended Mind: Language as Skillful Intersubjective Engagement 2014

Sharing these articles with you is in no way selfless charity; there is definitely a selfish motivation behind all of this: I’m looking to “extend” my mind and its cognitive capacity by way of yours. This is unabashed solicitation of your brilliant insights on these issues, even if (and, indeed, perhaps especially if!) they oppose my own.

Peace.

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Thank you for the references! I will have to make my way through them gradually, though I am interested in being informed on some of these views!

I’m not entirely sure what you mean by this division. I’m assuming you mean that nāmarūpa either refers to ‘mind-and-body + consciousness’ (the mind here referring to our internal cognition and processing of external things, essentially) or to ‘external nāmarūpa vs. conscious body’ which would leave the ‘mind-and-body’ what is ‘opposed’ to nāmarūpa. In the latter model, nāmarūpa would then need to be some form of externalized/extended mind which is interacted with via the conscious body. If this is the case (roughly summarized), then I understand where you’re coming from. Let me know if I’ve completely mistaken what you’re thinking through here though.

Before reading through the articles you send and informing myself of the types of perspectives you’re thinking through, I would say what you hinted at: I don’t see a conflict in the suttas themselves in regards to this once the Vedic perspective is brought in.

The idea that nāmarūpa means ‘mind-and-body’ I find a later Buddhist interpretation/rationalization of a term they no longer had the context for, or, perhaps being more charitable, they had the context for but they were motivated to absorb a term into the evolving Abhidhammic-like models which made all the concepts and terminology align and form one Buddhist system. I think it’s best that this idea be dropped when approaching the suttas that refer to nāmarūpa. If it is arrived at separately, so be it; but it cannot be assumed from the beginning because of how far removed it is from many instances of it in the suttas and from the pre-Buddhist context/meaning of the word itself. In other words, it’s anachronistic.

One thing I’ve learned is that when we apply problems and inquiries from Western philosophy to the suttas as interpretative lenses, it tends to work well—until it doesn’t. I used to do very similar things with existentialism/phenomenology. There are plenty of similarities, but it tends to lead to blind spots. The Indian philosophical context was just coming from a very different place, a different set of questions, etc. that I find we have to understand the suttas on their own terms—almost as if they did not apply to the modern world—before we then learn how we apply what they say to our current situation. A good example of this is how some modern interpreters explain ‘sabbaṁ atthī’ in, say, SN 12.15 and related suttas in anachronistic terms. Sabba (or Skt. sarva) must first be understood in its context and then we can extrapolate modern meaning and value from the discussion. This same thing of course happens (and happened) with the Vedas: A later Upaniṣadic thinker may interpret a Vedic ritual from the Ṛgveda in a way that makes complete sense within their own system, but which is completely anachronistic in terms of the composer’s original intention/context.

Ever since our initial discussion of nāmarūpa with Ven. Sunyo and the others, I’ve spent the majority of my study time digging into the Vedic context of this issue further. Having done so, I have only been more convinced of my original position. By the time of the Visuddhimagga, we already have codified doctrinal significance to thinking about a “mind-body duality” with help of nāmarūpa: the first insight knowledge is “nāmarūpapariccheda-ñāṇa.” I think the purpose of using nāmarūpa was long lost, and all kinds of new philosophical questions came up far removed from the philosophical context of the Buddha in certain ways (and much closer than nowadays than others, of course).

I think we can get enough context from ŚB 11.2.3, BU 1.2, and BU 1.4. Lauren Bausch (here) has argued rather thoroughly that the primary context for the Buddha’s relationship to Brahmanism is the Eastern Kāṇva Śākha centered around the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa and Bṛhadāraṇyaka which contain the teachings of Yājñavalkya. This relates to ideas presented by the same Alexander Wynne (who argued for the authenticity of Āḷāra Kālāma / Uddaka Rāmaputta here). The same ideas / themes of nāmarūpa are found in the Chāndogya Upaniṣad and other related Brāhmaṇa-Upaniṣad texts. Other reason why these specific instances are good case-studies in my opinion are their relationship to the suttas: I recently demonstrated the striking similarity between BU 1.2 and the Aggañña Sutta. BU 1.4 contains ideas that seem to be mocked/reframed (similar to DN 27) in DN 1; it is a primary cosmogony of the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad; and it contains a section on the self being the most dear (piya) which is a theme we find repeated in the suttas in various forms similar to the Upaniṣads. ŚB 11.2.3 is an example of earlier context for the same ideas echoed in BU in slightly new ways.

So in ŚB 11.2.3, reality (called bráhman) creates the three spheres of the manifest world (earth, air/space, sky) with three deities in each. Then it wants to re-affirm its identity with the manifest aspect of itself and continue creation, and so it enters (lit. ‘descends’) into itself via nāma and rūpa. These two are described as the means for cognizing reality (recognizing forms and knowing their names if they have one). The entire concept of nāmarūpa begins with the notion that it is sacred speech and the various manifestations of speech which have the ontic result of forms. The importance of speech comes from the recitation of the Veda, of course (which is often the outline for the creation of the world as we will see in BU 1.2). Creation of the world is via the production of names and forms which correspond to them, and the cognition of all of this via recognition of the names and forms. The idea of reality leaving and descending into manifest creation is a recurring theme throughout the Veda, and it seems that nāmarūpa is a primary way in which this is expressed as seen in ŚB, BU, CU, etc.

BU 1.2, as I discussed in my post, is the first cosmogony in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad. It is explaining the secret, deeper meaning of the Aśvamedha (horse sacrifice). This is a continuation from ideas in the ŚB which understand the behavior of reality and sacrifice as interconnected and in many ways identical. The BU shows how the Aśvamedha is a model of all of manifest reality which is an infinite cycle of killing and death, or death and resurrection; all is Agni and Soma—fire and oblation, or eater and eaten. This is of course relevant to Buddhism because it shares the same themes of saṁsāra, but justified in terms of advanced Veda and secret connections (upaniṣad). The creation of manifest reality via names and forms is the creation of all which will allow the sacrifice to play itself out. It is conceived in terms of procreation: nāmarūpa / the manifest reality is the off-spring of ātmán—which is mánas (mind; masculine)—and vāc (speech; feminine). Again, this is all deeply related to cognition: the mind is equated with the ātmán, which is also the highest cognitive power who knows all (later equated to vijñāṇa). With speech it produces names, and the forms of reality are recognized/made to fit with this. The passage goes on to describe how one who comes to understand the nature of manifest reality in these terms transcends it and becomes the eater of all. In other words, repeated death is no longer a matter of suffering and pain; they unite with manifest reality and the division between killer and killed is no longer present in them.

Here, nāmarūpa includes the individual and all external things—it is all manifest reality. The ātmán or essence of reality—which is likened to a subjective power (viññāṇa) is at the same time imminent and contained within it; it must manifest itself in this cyclic way in order to exist (the subject needs an object, but the object being itself means it must kill itself to live).

Then we turn to BU 1.4, which is a little bit more straightforward (especially having the above context). At BU 1.4.7, all of reality is said to be distinguished in terms of nāmarūpa. The ātmán is said to be within ‘this body’ with imagery of being within a container, and all of the activities are simply names (nāma) given to forms/manifestations of the ātmán; one who sees deeper into all these things will see it is all just the same ātmán , which allows one to know the entire world and transcend it. Nāmarūpa is more explicitly the (human) body within which the ātmán is contained, but this is mirrored in all the world.

So essentially, the background is: nāmarūpa is the manifest, created world including the human organism. The ātmán is the inner, hidden essence which is equivalent with all reality that is within all of this. It is reality which manifests itself via nāmarūpa. Knowing the deeper essence of the manifest means knowing the unmanifest, and thus union with it. By understanding the ātman in our own body (nāmarūpa) as the highest subjective power underlying all our activities and form, we can extend that knowledge to see that it is the same essence contained within all_ nāmarūpa and thereby understand bráhman (Ātman-Bráhman), or in other words, transcend the world of nāmarūpa. Unlike BU 1.2 which explains how one comes to understand the manifest aspect and live within it, BU 1.4 describes how one comes to penetrate through it and transcend it for liberation.

When we look beyond DN 15 or outside the instances of nāmarūpa in the context of paṭiccasamuppāda (which do not explain the context or purpose of the word but simply use it), we can see that this is precisely how nāmarūpa is used in the suttas. Contemplative brahmins ask the Buddha how they can transcend or escape nāmarūpa (which means repeated birth and death, similar to a sacrifice). Nāmarūpa is also used in place of all the manifest/created things of the world which people become attached to, see, or get possessive over.

In response to questions about transcendence of nāmarūpa, the Buddha says that the key is the cessation of consciousness (see, for instance, Snp 5.2). This is opposed to the teachings of the Upaniṣads, such as those of Yājñavalkya in the BU. The Brahmanical sages say that the end of nāmarūpa is in realizing the internal ātmán, the subject and essence of all reality equivalent with a ‘mass of consciousness.’ This is the same ātmán which they say is contained within our nāmarūpa—our body. We realize it by seeing it within our body (as I already said).

In DN 15, the Buddha says the same thing as elsewhere: viññāṇa is conditioned by nāmarūpa, it is not imminent in it; the cessation of nāmarūpa is in the cessation of consciousness, not union with it. In the beginning, he refers to that which is within the womb, which is birthed, and which grows up and matures as “nāmarūpa.” This sounds an awful lot like an individual organism. When he discusses phassa, he describes it in terms of nāmarūpa experiencing itself, or in experience being due to the factors of nāma and rūpa. This is the same as the Vedic notion where reality experiences itself by descending into nāmarūpa. Our body and the external things of the world are understood as all manifestations of reality which is merely experiencing itself. What the Buddha has done is taken this same idea, but he has stripped the idea of any underlying essence, ātmán, reality, or bráhman from it: there are simply these factors of experience which condition contact; when the factors cease, contact will come to an end.

Notice how it is this same sutta that the Buddha goes into all kinds of ideas of the ātman after describing paṭiccasamuppāda. He has, after all, just given a description of reality and of cognition that talks of conditionality and cessation rather than internal essences and eternal transcendence via consciousness. It is also this sutta where he describes his teaching on liberation: one understands conditionality and the impermanence in all states of existence (bhavas), and/or one realizes all higher states of consciousness up to cessation and relinquishes them all. The entire thing seems to basically be a refutation of Upaniṣadic doctrine.

So nāmarūpa is presented as the manifest world/experience of reality, which includes our own body that contains consciousness and contact with the world. Consciousness, however, is not an underlying essence, but rather a condition for our being sentient and the presence of nāmarūpa in experience (which conditions contact). It is essential that this, like BU 1.4, refer to the conscious body because it is precisely on the basis of seeing the ātmán within one’s nāmarūpa (i.e. body) that one extends it to all nāmarūpa of the manifest world. However, it is not limited to this. Another way of phrasing it would be contact between the sentient body and external nāmarūpa—and this is precisely what we see in SN 12.19 for instance! External nāmarūpa has been reduced as well: it is not a manifest form that corresponds to divine name / identity eminated out from primal speech (bráhman); rather, things are just material elements recognized via a series of mental properties.

I apologize if this has all been tediously repetitive of former ideas I discussed. You may have already been well aware of this. It also does not directly respond to your problem nor to the questions about extended mind; it approaches the entire question from scratch. Once I catch up on the articles you’ve sent, I should be able to contribute more directly. I thought this could prove helpful beforehand — but I could be wrong!

Mettā :pray:

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I wonder if we could get a list of abbreviations for those of us (like myself) who aren’t that familiar with Vedic texts? I’d like to follow some of these citations at some point. Posts like yours reminds me of the gaping holes in my background knowledge.

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@Vaddha I must say that you have convinced me–but, with a caveat. I not only see and follow your logic, I also feel it is the only way to reconcile these two portraits of nāmarūpa (one a definition, and the other a depiction in context): that is, it is the only way to make sense of the Buddhist tradition. However, you were forced to go outside the Buddhist texts to make your point, for the most part, and that is not insignificant. So, while I can stand by your interpretation, and, to my eyes, it appears to be fully consonant with the teachings of Buddhism, because we cannot find anything in the Buddhist texts themselves to explicitly support it, I cannot say with confidence that the early community shared your interpretation. And, as this whole thing pertains to nāmarūpa as described in DN 15, that’s what I am trying to ascertain.

As I understand you (and I hope, after all you’ve written, that I am not misunderstanding you), you wholly accept the external nāmarūpa paradigm as we find it in the suttas as a continuation of the Vedic conception, although with the requisite Buddhist adaptations (which I could never spell out as neatly as you have in your post, so I will refrain from any attempt to do so). At the same time, you seem to dismiss the five khandha, “mind-body” definition as belonging to a later (proto-)Abhdhammic tradition wherein the the original context for the Buddha’s adoption of the nāmarūpa concept was forgotten and/or otherwise misconstrued; and so this definition sort of misses the mark somewhat. (And, maybe we should remind ourselves that there are two [probably functionally synonymous] definitions in the early texts: the 4 mahābhūta and all derived forms as rūpa, and either the four formless khandhas, or phassa, vedanā, saññā, cetanā, and manasikāra as nāma.) However, you also seem to feel that there is a logical chain of events which may be reconstructed illustrating how the early community got from the one to the other. Essentially, your point, as I understand it, is that the human psycho-physical complex, being itself a form with an individual name, would also qualify as a particular nāmarūpa. This is quite explicitly supported by the Vedic tradition (replete, of course, with all the accoutrements of Vedic philosophy: ātman, brahman, and so on).

Olalde also goes much this same route. However (and, please forgive me, I do not mean this as condescendingly as it’s probably going to sound), she, rather wisely in my opinion, only hints at it, and stops short of actually postulating anything regarding the Buddhist context. First, obviously, Vedic philosophy and not Buddhism is her field of expertise. But, beyond this, she may in fact realize that, as logical as this theory sounds (as I say, you’ve convinced me!), this really all quite speculative, and not easily supported with Buddhist texts. If we could find more sutta support, I would be fully on-board without any reserve.

On another (yet related) note, I completely appreciate what you said about non-Buddhist paradigms being useful until suddenly they aren’t. I strive to be as cognizant as I can of exactly when the party has come to an end. My motivation for exploring the extended mind stuff is not to try to force Buddhism to some other paradigm, but to give myself (and you, since I’m sharing those articles with you) a different way of approaching mind. Because, probably like most, was very much stuck in the idea of mind being bound by the bones and skin of the skull. Buddha doesn’t seem to have adhered to those same limitations. Viññāṇa as the sixth dhātu, the viññāṇañcāyatana, the idea of loka being synonymous (contiguous?) with the apparatus by which we perceive the loka, and so on are all concepts which I now feel I glossed over in the past without thinking much about them.

In fact, in light of extended mind theory, I wonder how necessary it is locate all the mental content described by the formless khandhas (excluding viññāṇa) in the individual. Strictly relying on DN 15, nothing cognitive is noted in the individual other than viññāṇa: perceptual “discrimination” (to use Jayarava’s terminology). Actually, that’s not true: there’s also vedanā. But, within the context of DN 15, that could easily be construed as “experience.” My reasoning behind following this path of inquiry is that modern philosophy of mind scholars question the emergence of the “inner dialogue,” the “analog ‘I’,” to use one scholar’s description. And, modern scholars identify it as the source of all our troubles and woes–just as the Buddha did. The five khandhas are indeed dukkha. And it would seem that the mind can persist without them. Scholars speak about how much of our mental functioning is actually quite independent of this inner self. And the Buddha does say they cease, no? The very few characterizations we have in the texts hint that the nibbānic state of being may be something akin to this “mindless” state of being.

That last statement was purposely triggering. I don’t mean what some might think I mean by “mindlessness.” However, I will say that the perennial argument about mindfulness vs. mindlessness in the Buddhist tradition is, in my opinion, a result of the misapprehension of this teaching–probably stemming from the same cloudiness regarding the original role and function of nāmarūpa (in its interaction with viññāṇa) in the early Buddhist tradition you have identified.

“Gambhīro cāyaṁ, ānanda, paṭiccasamuppādo gambhīrāvabhāso ca.”

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Yes, I think this is fair, though I think it depends on what we mean by ‘early community.’ If by this you mean the Buddha and his direct disciples/students who were around in his lifetime and/or who received a sermon similar to what we have in DN 15 and its parallels, then I think it is fair to say that this is exactly how they understood it (otherwise the Buddha would not have used the language in the first place). The nidāna for DN 15 is in Kuru country after all—prime brahmin land. The purpose for this may be to place the sutta in the context of Brahmanism. Moreover, we know that many of the Buddha’s disciples were brahmins or had exposure to Upaniṣadic ideas (as is apparent in MN 38, MN 22, Snp 5, etc.). However, if by the early community you mean the slightly later community of monastics involved with Buddhism and beginning to lose touch with the Brahmanical dialectics, then I’d agree. This is evident, as you point out, by the (proto)-Abhidhammic interpretations of nāmarūpa throughout early Buddhist schools.

I understand, and I do think that this is somewhat of a mystery: why are there so many Vedic concepts in the Buddhist texts left unexplained? However, I tend to disagree that there is not sutta evidence—I just think it is less explicit as, say, an explanation. What we see is consistent references and inferences to contemplative Brahmanical ideas and the Buddha/his disciples having contact with them (as well as contact with non-Buddhist ascetics and brahmins). As I pointed out in my post, DN 15 itself is full of other references besides nāmarūpa: it is followed by a discussion of the ātmán addressing several more philosophical conceptions, it contains the attha vimokkhā which I have discussed as being pre-Buddhist and likely Brahmanical, and I will post another coincidental connection I personally see below here at the end of this post.

Although it is less certain, if we connect DN 15 to Snp 4.11 and Snp 5.15 (with the same mention of perceiving the disappearance of form, etc.), then these suttas also mention nāmarūpa and the formless attainments in a Brahmanical context.

There is also the fact that the DN as a whole is constantly referring to Brahmanical ideas, to dialogues with brahmins, to conversion narratives, etc. DN 27 even contains what is closer to a Brahmanical cosmogony adopted to fit a Buddhist narrative. So besides individual suttas and the details within DN 15 itself, the collection as a whole is pointing to a more Brahmanical-than-usual context. Likewise, we can look at where nāmarūpa appears elsewhere in the suttas and with whom. No surprise, nearly every instance of nāmarūpa that is not a formulaic insertion of the paṭiccasamuppāda link are in verses and with brahmins or Brahmanical deities. In fact, I do not think I have come across a single instance where this is not the case in the suttas. Well, there are some cases where nāmarūpa is related to the viññāṇakkhandha in the MN and also in the four āhārā.

Definitely! And I hope I haven’t come across as dismissing that. I think this is a valuable line of inquiry and something to consider the applicability to Buddhism either way. I am interested in these ideas as well and I think that they help us (or me, at least) think outside of the box and re-consider our relationship to our experience and its relationship to our practice.

I will say, there are some suttas that discuss this matter (apart from DN 15 and related ones such as those in the Snp which discuss the cessation of viññāṇa). SN 22.53, SN 22.54, SN 22.86, SN 22.89 come to mind. These (and other tangential suttas) may relate to your research :smiley:

Below I’ve written the brief connection I saw between DN 15 and the BU.

návataraṃ kalyāṇátaraṃ rūpaṃ kurute | pítryaṃ vā gāndharváṃ
vā daívaṃ vā prājāpatyáṃ vā brāhmáṃ vānyéṣāṃ vā bhūtā́nām |
As a weaver, after she has removed the colored yarn, weaves a different design that is newer and more attractive, so the self, after it has knocked down this body and rendered it unconscious, makes for himself a different figure that is newer and more attractive—the figure of a forefather, or of a Gandharva, or of a god, or of Prajapati, or of brahman, or else the figure of some other being
BU 4.4.4

devānaṁ vā devattāya, gandhabbānaṁ vā gandhabbattāya, yakkhānaṁ vā yakkhattāya, bhūtānaṁ vā bhūtattāya, manussānaṁ vā manussattāya, catuppadānaṁ vā catuppadattāya, pakkhīnaṁ vā pakkhittāya, sarīsapānaṁ vā sarīsapattāya, tesaṁ tesañca hi, ānanda, sattānaṁ tadattāya jāti nābhavissa
That is, there were no rebirth of sentient beings into their various realms—of gods, fairies, spirits, creatures, humans, quadrupeds, birds, or reptiles, each into their own realm.
DN 15

This is another random connection beteween the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad and DN 15 that occurred to me while going through some of it. This section of the BU talks about: rebirth, ethical karma, desire and clinging driving rebirth, escape from rebirth via the relinquishment of desire, the shedding of a snake skin for liberation [Snp 1.1], discovering an ancient path [SN 12.65], becoming a true brahmin, being shrouded by the darkness of ignorance and led into saṁsāra, etc. etc. The image of a weaver=rebirth also relates to the somewhat common simile of craving being a seamstress that leads to rebirth in the suttas. It is, quite honestly, strikingly similar to Buddhist textual motifs. Anyway, here we see a correspondence in referring to rebirth. The similarities in the beings listed as examples of rebirth are: gandhabba/gandharvá, deva/daíva, bhūtā/bhūtā́, manussā/pitṛ(?). The mentioning of brahma/Prajāpati as a rebirth (rather than transcendence) is also quite similar to Buddhist references (such as MN 1 in dialogue with brahmins). It is also worth noting that the gandhabba being mentioned in DN 15 is somewhat out-of-place, and its presence there is one of the main indicators that there is slight Vedic influence.

Mettā!

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By “early community,” I would say I mean the authors of the sutta piṭaka as a whole. Evaluations like “proto-Abhidharma,” while perhaps sometimes valid, can often distract from the compatibility (if not always identity) of many of concepts–whether earlier or later–found in this body of texts, which I think is what you have been working so hard to get me to see. I know I have a tendency to fall victim to this sort of thinking.

Yes, but, in going back over what you’ve been saying, I think maybe we’ve been arguing slightly different points here: points so close, however, that it seems we’re not, and that’s a big part of why this has drug out so long. (For which, let me say, I am nonetheless very grateful, inasmuch as your posts have introduced me [and, it seems, others as well] to a wealth of Vedic knowledge I lacked before.) I am very much to blame in this, because I don’t know that I’ve been articulating my position well: which is understandable, as I have been developing it along the way.

I didn’t tell you that I reached out to Olalde. I explained to her what we’ve been wrestling with, and she sent an excerpt of her book which she felt would be relevant. It was in German, so I had to run it through Google Translate, which did a surprisingly good job. I don’t think I can upload here, but I’ll post a paragraph or two which demonstrate her stance on nāmarūpa outside the paṭiccasamuppāda formula, where she identifies nāmarūpa as unquestionably pointing to the individual. I’ll mention here that she seems to be limiting her inquiry to the 12-link chain; the 9-/10-link chain leaves more room for differing interpretations, in my estimation. In any case, having cited several scholars who noted the few scattered passages in the Pāli which seem to support an “Upaniṣadic” reading, Olalde says,

"These statements testify to the unsatisfactory fact that that it is actually unclear, how nāmarūpa in other contexts is to be understood. As can be seen, these remarks offering the notion of nāmarūpa as a generic term for everything that has a name and a shape, present the possibility of understanding nāmarūpa as both things in general and the subgroup “person” without getting into contradictions. This means that this interpretation can only be ruled out definitively with difficulty. For this reason, in what follows I will not focus on the distinction between nāmarūpa as a thing and nāmarūpa as a person, but on one that seems to me much more relevant, namely that between a subjective and an objective nāmarūpa, in other words, between the own nāmarūpa – “my name and my form” – and the nāmarūpa “outside” (bahiddhā)." (emphasis mine)

My point is that she has comes to same conclusion as you have, generally, which you rightly saw in her article way back at the beginning of this thread. And I wish to state that this unity between interpretations as either “thing” or “person” (or, at least, no clear boundary separating the interpretations) which I interpret as your main point was never a point of contention for me. But, please note the final portion which I highlighted: she slightly nuances the “thing-person” dichotomy and then, in the rest of the chapter, proceeds to examine all nāmarūpa occurrences outside of paṭiccasamuppāda contexts. What she finds is that not only is it almost never clear which interpretation reads better in any one instance, the two interpretations will lead to wildly different readings of the passage in question. This was my point about the DN 15 passage: not that, in the greater scheme of things, the two views don’t mesh, but that, of any particular passage (in this case, DN 15), they don’t really allow for a combined reading. In fact, it’s even difficult to get a definitive reading for any passage. Mine is perhaps more of a philological or a textual-criticism issue than a philosophical one, though there’s so much overlap here that these are hard to distinguish.

I don’t know if that clears things up at all. And maybe I’m wrong, but that’s where I see some slight miscommunication.

Peace.

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I am not sure where my head is at with regards to the various threads I have been reading here of late, but I wanted to hop on here and just voice a general unease about the term per se.

I used to be of a school of thought that took paticcasamuppada to be an early phenomena and pañcaupādānakkhandhā to be a late corruption of it.

I am now coming round to the view that paticcasamuppada itself, at least in it’s ten and twelve link versions is a later elaboration and exemplar of the more general principle of conditionality.

I was of the view that namarupa was probably an earlier near synonym for upādānakkhandhā.

Now I suspect that it too is a somewhat later term.

Once again there is a pattern discernible in the way the term is distributed through the canon.

VN: 3
DN: 15
MN: 16
SN: 94
AN: 6
KN: 112
AB: 76
VM: 90

The occurrences in the Vinaya are all in the opening of the Mahākhandhaka.
The occurrences in DN are all in DN14 and DN15.
The occurrences in MN are all in MN9 MN11 MN38 MN109 MN115.
The occurrences in AN are all at AN3.62 AN9.14 AN10.92.

The word then occurs 94 times in SN, 86 of those occurrences being in SN12.
97 of the 112 occurrences in KN are from the late books.
55 of the 76 occurrences in the abbhidhamma are in the Vibhanga.

So the basic pattern is that it’s rarely attested outside SN12, Vibhanga and Netti etc.

Basically it seems very tightly associated with the paticcasamuppada formula, where it seems to mean something like the object of consciousness. (“phenomena” might be a good translation)

I would be inclined to “read it down” as a technical term, and argue that the links in the formula are really just given as examples, using more or less accepted folk psychology at the time, and that it would be a mistake to try and make much deep metaphysics, or even much deep psychology, out of them.

It’s just a word. It means whatever people using it mean by it.

I would not be at all surprised if the first people to use it where monastics living some time after the death of the Buddha, developing a scholastic psychology, that bears on the actual practice of the path the same way a race callers commentary bears on the race.

Metta.

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Ah, I see where the miscommunication was, yes. Thank you, and I’m glad you reached out to Olalde for clarification. You’re right that we agree there . I suppose the main point that I see somewhat missing in Olalde’s response (assuming I only saw a portion of it anyway, and so this is just from what has been said here), is that in the Brāhmanas and Upanisads, nāmarūpa is specifically used in this dual conception of the ātman of the creator joining with his own creation in the same “format” as creation—nāmarūpa in order to experience itself. That is, in order to experience the bliss of unity with oneself, it enters nāmarūpa and experiences nāmarūpa via this ‘shell.’

In Buddhism, the essence within the shell is actually conditioned consciousness of course, and the world is not a monistic manifestation of a Creator or sacred speech (bráhman) but it too is conditional (and its origin is largely put aside).

I also may not have said this, but this is why I think the salāyatana are missing from DN 15 and it goes straight into phassa: the exact same formula is true of the Vedic nāmarūpa insofar as it refers to reality experiencing itself. The Vedic process is:
Bráhman-Ātmán descends into Nāmarūpa to experience Contact between each side of itself and in order to feel Emotion, bliss, and know itself (vedanā / vid-).

If we put this in terms of Buddhist conditionality to disagree with the Vedic essentialism, we get: nāmarūpapaccayā viññānam; viññānapaccayā nāmarūpam; nāmarūpapaccayā phasso; phassapaccayā vedanā. This (1) rejects the primacy of either Creation or Ātman with mutual-conditionality, (2) then echoes the Vedic model, keeping the same valuable emphasis on experience and contact causing pleasure. As many scholars have noted from various methodological angles, tanhā onward seems to be a kind of mirror sequence to the avijjā-on one, and indeed the suttas treat these terms as interrelated siblings. I, like Jurewicz, do not think this need be a sign of “later composition” or smashing two lists together; I think it is perfectly coherent and logical, and it aligns with the suttas that treat avijjā and tanhā as two forces on equal-footing for driving samsāra.

Still, none of this has addressed the issue: where in the suttas is there evidence that this was the particular way nāmarūpa was understood and interpreted? I cannot say there is anywhere (as I mentioned). I can definitely point to suttas where interpreting it as ‘the individual’ makes little sense though, or make logical inquiries based on what passages say. If, when looking, all one sees is nāmarūpa, I’d assume this means all of the manifest world (Snp 4.13), same as the ‘realm of nāmarūpa (Snp 4.15). When the suttas say that by understanding contact one understands all feeling, and then say that by understanding consciousness they understand all nāmarūpa, I assume this means all phenomena that one cognizes; I do not, after all, only cognize myself (SN 12.63). This is still an inference of course. Note that this too comes up in the context of SN 12, similar to SN 12.19 where nāmarūpa is explicitly internal. We see further justification at SN 1.23 where the factors of nāmarūpa in DN 15 re-appear in reference to the ‘external tangle.’

SN 1.23 is actually an instance pointing to my same conclusion. We see the problem of nāmarūpa split into “the tangle within” and “the tangle without” all with the same solution: the cessation of viññāna. The same is true of SN 12.19 where the body endowed with consciousness appears in the same context as ‘external nāmarūpa’ one makes contact with. Of all the theoretical interpretations then, this inclusive dual one seems most supported by the discourses and most inclusive of the general usage throughout the discourses.

As to if the early community thought the same thing, the same above suttas could be cited as evidence to ‘yes,’ but I imagine there was a diversity of thought and that some may not have put much thought into these particular categories, taking the easier route of absorbing them into other pre-existing frameworks (like the five aggregates).

In quick response to @josephzizys, I think you’re overlooking the clear Brahmanical and Vedic context/origin of this word which stays true of the suttas. The Buddha uses it in dialogue with contemplative brahmins all throughout the Sutta Nipāta, and it mostly occurs in verses with brahmins or Vedic deities outside of that + in the context of dependent origination, which as many have shown has strong Vedic parallels (even if one disagrees that the model as a whole maps 1:1). These were mostly ignored, forgotten, or absorbed into more uniquely Buddhist models by later philosophers, along with the rising aggression towards Brahmanism that we don’t see in earlier suttas with the Buddha.

I hope this was helpful in contributing to your exploration! Let me know if I’ve misinterpreted or overlooked something!
Mettā

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I haven’t read the whole discussion that followed since my leaving. I will do so later. For now, regarding the name of a person and name of an object being intrinsic to those, I would recommend Jan Gonda’s Notes on Names and the Name of God in Ancient India, which Olalde quoted from. It does not specifically discuss nāmarūpa in Buddhism, but it does a good job of summarizing how (one aspect of) the concept of “name” was understood:

Among students of comparative religion and cultural anthropology it is a matter of common knowledge that the name was widely regarded as an essential part of its bearer, as in a way identical with him; that it is “equivalent to his true existence” [quoting Eliade] or “is to be regarded as an essential part of his personality” [quoting Masani]. […] This belief obtained also in ancient India. […] Names are as essential a part of man’s personality as his physical strength, his organs, his life-breath.

Similar ideas are found in Falk’s Dharma-rūpa and nāma-rūpa, which also discusses how nāmarūpa relates to the consciousness Self (vijñanamaya atta) in Brahmanism. Some Brahmins believed you could free consciousness from the other aspects of one’s being, first one’s body (rūpa) and then one’s “name”, into some state of divine, universal consciousness.

But the Buddha effectively denied this by saying that consciousness is dependent on “name and form”, that it can’t exist in isolation.

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… and the point is … they’re both (or all) subject to the three marks … I assume you are talking about ahamkara

Tangentially, I was actually thinking of writing some comment/post on this in other cultures with beliefs in rebirth. Sometimes ‘names’ are literally a separate factor in rebirth apart from the soul or spirit that relate to what incarnation someone is and their personal identity. The Kwakiutl, for instance, have complex naming systems related in part to their rebirth eschatology. What’s interesting is how nāmarūpa as a concept is still relevant and applicable to other non-Indic cultures in discussing and analyzing their rebirth models — it is not necessarily a useless Brahmanical vestige.

(The same can be said of Western conceptions of reincarnation: What do people mean when they say “John was reborn”? Not all notions of the soul, identity, or personhood are uniform, and many people have non-atomic notions of a soul, allowing the soul of one individual to go several places or several souls to inhabit one individual).

Also, I wanted to cite Jurewicz’ ‘Playing With Fire.’ In a footnote, she discusses nāmarūpa as cognized by viññāna compelled by sankhārā and avijjā being parallel to the Vedic structure / cosmogony as well. That is to say, she also acknowledges what Olalde calls the objective/external nāmarūpa which is outside of oneself as faithfully represented by the model of paticcasamuppāda. This is not to say we must agree with her that it is relevant in the context of DA (I think she mentions it as tangential either way with a clear correspondence), but it is there nonetheless. Being a footnote, I imagine it is easily overlooked (unfortunately):

49 This may also be expressed in the terminology of the pratityasamutpdda: the poets meet an unknown object (symbolized in the Rigveda mainly by a rock or the night), which corresponds to the image expressed in the pratitya- samutpdda as avidya; then they assume the subjective form (vijidna), which is probably preceded by the will to get the object (samskāra; the presence of this will is guaranteed by the sexual metaphor used to describe the poets’ activity). The next stage is the recognition of the object and its creation (nāmarūpa). This correspondence with the pratityasamutpdda is especially clear at BU 1.4.4. The idea that man repeats the Absolute’s creative activity is also present in the interpretation of the ritual in SB which is the step-by-step repetition of the cosmogony of Prajapati.

Mettā

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There are several German speakers here who you might reach out to for a more accurate translation than Google Translate. For instance @sabbamitta and @georg may or may not have the inclination or time, but it doesn’t hurt to put it out there. :slight_smile:

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I don’t know what sort of text this is, but I am rather good at translating from English to German, not so much the other way around. And for any longer text outside of my translation project I don’t really see the capacity to do it. Sorry if I can’t be of much help here.

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Thank you for your kind offer. (And @Adutiya for your kind suggestion.) Thankfully, the text wasn’t really so hard to translate: her language was pretty straightforward. But I do know the horror that machine translation can be. This time, though, it worked out surprisingly well.

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What do you think of the term “Embodied cognition” for Namarupa.

Hi friends, :slight_smile:

I plan to leave this forum for a while soon, but before I do, I wanted to briefly pop in here, since this discussion was sort of still up in the air.

By now I’ve read Olalde’s Zurn Begriff ‘namarupa:’ Das lndividuum im Pali-Kanon (Towards the concept of nāmarūpa: the individual in the Pali Canon) and for those who can read German I can’t recommend it enough. I think it’s the definitive work on nāmarūpa in the Pali Canon. Olalde is clearly a linguist, having the unfortunately all-too-rare ability to recognize which passages are cryptic and which are not. And she also does not infer things which aren’t clearly stated in the texts.

As to our discussion (also here) on whether nāmarūpa refers to the being, to certain external objects, or even to processes of cognition, the book clearly supports the first interpretation (with one exceptoin for SN12.61). For this it brings up many arguments which I won’t repeat here. (Sorry :face_in_clouds:)

But to serve as a sort of summary, page 103 states:

“Interessanterweise beziehen sich die Autoren, die die Interdependenz von nāmarūpa und viññāṇa im Sinne einer Abhängigkeit von Wahrnehmung (viññāṇa) und deren Objekten (nāmarūpa) interpretieren, nur nebenbei auf diese Stelle und stützen ihre Argumentation hauptsächlich auf den Teil des Mahānidānasutta, in dem diese Beziehung eigentlich nicht erklärt wird, sondern die zwischen nāmarūpa und der Berührung (phassa).”

“Interestingly, authors who interpret the interdependency between nāmarūpa and viññāṇa in the sense of a dependency of cognition (viññāṇa) and its objects (nāmarūpa), refer only in passing to this passage [on the actual dependency between the two, e.g., the passage on nāmarūpa and consciousness in the womb] and base their argumentation mainly on that part of the Mahānidāna Sutta which actually does not explain this relationship, but instead that between nāmarūpa and contact (phassa).” (translation and emphasis mine)

This reflects how I generally feel about this topic. Interpreters who see in nāmarūpa something other than aspects of the individual often keep resorting to passages which are tangential, or otherwise cryptic and open to interpretation. Also they tend to interpret words which have rather clear meanings (e.g. ‘conception’) very liberally, sidestepping relevant passages like those on the conception of a fetus (AN3.61) and the passage of the mother’s womb in the Mahānidāna (DN15).

I’m rather boldly guessing now, but perhaps some don’t like that these are the things the Buddha talked about because it doesn’t seem very relevant to their practice. But it becomes clearer why the Buddha did so, and why he specifically used the term nāmarūpa, when considering the brahmanic ideas surrounding it. Olalde explains some of these ideas. I’m still in the process of writing an essay on this topic in which I hope to add some more. I’ll share it on this forum when it’s done, so keep an :eye: out if you’re interested. :wink:

Bye for now!

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