How broadly should saññā be interpreted in Snp 4.2?

Discussion
21

I think these things may be true in the original idea of the four jhanas.

As @jesophzizys points out, there is a problem with relating sanna to vitakka when the four jhanas are placed in the context of the eight or nine samadhis. Sanna can’t completely cease in the second jhana if it exists in the formless attainments after the fourth jhana. I had a problem in my own translations for a couple years: I was translating vitakka (from Chinese) as perception and also sanna as perception (following the convention among Pali translators). I thought about it and thought about it. Researched vitakka and vicara in Abhidharma texts. And so on. In the end, I changed my translation of sanna to “conception/concept.” I broadened its meaning to something that encompasses the cognitive “sense” better in English and left vitakka as perception.

I think the meaning of sanna was being stretched to something mystic or subtle by Buddhists. I mean, what is being described in these formless attainments? Infinite awareness? Infinite space? Nothingness? They sound like mystic experiences to me. But those experiences were then conceptualized as formless heavens the same way the jhanas were mapped onto the Brahma heavens. These two things, meditative experiences and the heavens, are intertwined in Buddhist thought. I think ancient Buddhists must have naturally assumed some heavenly place was being directly accessed in meditation, similar to the way Greeks thought Muses put ideas into their minds to explain the creative process. The four jhanas were the road to the Brahma Heaven because often visiting those places in meditation led to being reborn there.

But was that in early Buddhism? I don’t know. Maybe not. So, we have this problem of dealing with different (and ill-defined) historical strata in the Buddhist corpus that don’t always match up seamlessly. Translators end up agonizing over these issues because we naturally want to translate words uniformly and consistently for an audience in the here-and-now. But the texts themselves don’t always cooperate with us because they were written over the course of centuries. And a translator also wants to respect the original author (or, at least, I do). So, there’s compromises that have to happen. Translators are rarely “happy” with their work. If they are, I have to wonder what they are really doing.

The other problematic angle to me is in our English-speaking heads: We think it terms of five senses, not six. Which is why my analogy above uses a concrete an example of seeing an external event like an animal skittering by on a path. We have to stretch our way of thinking to consider cognitive processes as being sensory.

22

I think it is safe to say that the Atthakavagga was inline with the original idea of the four jhanas and not the formless attainments.

The Atthakavagga, unlike the Parayanavagga, does not mention the formless attainments except to say that the Buddha did not enter the dispute about them being highest attainments in the last verses of Snp 4.11 which was probably a later addition to rebut the Parayanavagga. The Parayanavagga, on the other hand, clearly pushes the cessation of consciousness, surely a formless attainment, as the ultimate attainment.

So I would say the Atthakavagga was inline with the Eightfold Path with its Right Concentration being the four jhanas. The Parayanavagga does not appear to be inline with the Eightfold Path. It would have the cessation of consciousness presumably as Right Concentration.

Given the importance of the four jhanas and the Eightfold Path in the EBTs, I am more inclined to believe the Atthakavagga(at least the actual octads Snp 4.2, 4.3, 4.4, 4.5) was earlier than the Parayanavagga and any other texts that appear to imply Right Concentration being a formless attainment.

So I think the two statements I asked about were true for the earliest Buddhist texts though things got confusing once formless attainments were pushed.

Just my humble opinion.

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23

Isn’t sanna specifically … if this is the case, then Buddhism dispenses with the noumenal, which seems correct to me.

Powers
(indriyāṇi)		 Domains
(viṣaya)		 Internal Sense Fields
(ajjhattikāni āyatanāni)		 External Sense Fields
(bāhirāni āyatanāni) 		Perception (Appearance)
(saññākāyā)
cakkhuṁ
(eye)		 rūpā
(visual)		 cakkhāyatanaṁ
(seeing)		 rūpāyatanaṁ
(sights)		 rūpasaññā
(the visual)
sotaṁ
(ear)		 saddā
(aural)		 sotāyatanaṁ
(hearing)		 saddāyatanaṁ
(sounds)		 saddasaññā
(the aural)
ghānaṁ
(nose)		 gandhā
(odour)		 ghānāyatanaṁ
(smelling)		 gandhāyatanaṁ
(odours)		 gandhasaññā
(the olfactory)
jivhā
(tongue)		 rasā
(flavour)		 jivhāyatanaṁ
(tasting)		 rasāyatanaṁ
(flavours)		 rasasaññā
(the gustatory)
kāyo
(body)		 phoṭṭhabbā
(tactility)		 kāyāyatanaṁ
(haptics)		 phoṭṭhabbāyatanaṁ
(touches) 		phoṭṭhabbasaññā
(the haptic)
mano
(mind)		 dhammā
(mental phenomena)		 manāyatanaṁ
(mental)		 dhammāyatanaṁ
(phenomena)		 dhammasaññā
(the phenomenal)
24

If I am correct then I would say that the Buddha did not teach that formless attainments were necessary for liberation from suffering. Is that what you mean by dispensing with the noumenal? There may be other consequences I am not thinking of that you’re referring to.

25

OK, I am going to set aside your first sentence.

Response to second: Well, maybe not, there can be phenomenally formless and noumenally formless.

This is within Kantian language, and this is one of the disputes that Nietzsche had with him … trying to slip God in the back door. (i.e., the noumenal is not perceptible, which is why we end up with this cliched protestant interpretation of Kant “by faith alone.”) I reserve opinion, but Spinoza definitely advanced immaterial mind (i.e., the formless or immaterial God - thought and extension - “in” our minds). Active spirit, or if you want to say force, meaning, roughly, the power to affect and be affected.

So, an aside: speaking of taking in sensory data (which means what? bits of information? hmm), and making sense of it, for me, this framework is too Kantian, because it assumes that human sense is passively receptive. It seems to me, especially with this talk of kamma, cetana, etc. going on, that Buddha was aware of a much more active, relational condition “of” “in” “to” ? perception.

So, if we cede that formlessness is a real experienced condition, meaning it can be perceived, because we have introspection - mind is active and sensing - well, what would it be …to perceive formlessly in a way that could be useful (delicately predicated) for dhamma?

Now, we have a strong visual bias in Western society.

And, also speaking of Christianity, “logos” means word, but it also means Christ. God made flesh in the Word is one way to look at our baby Jesus, (which I am now making certain connections to Scholasticism), but anyway, we are so extraordinarily tied to belief in language = the ontic in terms of human being (our covenant with God? OK, anyway).

We have to push back on that and take that we have precognitive abilities (of our own??). We’re not just a bunch of passive humours, so to speak, until some kind of mechanical entrapment brings us into coherent, articulate being, and then we have to set about cleaning out the mess.

We are active beings in a good, healthy, free way. This is one of the things that separated Kant from all the rest; he believed humans are good. Certain conditions apply, obviously, finding them is what matters. (Then you have Kierkegaard with the Call, and we move into the domain of Calvinist rapture. So let’s stop.)

What I like about Buddhist understanding of sense is body consciousness. We superficial people emphasize “touch” or “taste” or “odour,” which is the surface. But we actually have haptic sensibility (which I think still means touch, but is interpreted differently). We even have expressions for it, we think with our gut, for instance, feel it in our bones.

The formless world is a notable attainment, right? I don’t think it’s easy to attain, right? But the point is, if you got it, and it was within, right view, proper understanding, it could be something on the path. It doesn’t have to be necessary, but if you were a practitioner of visualization meditation, you would have to go through haptic sense. And this includes of the mind.

I think it’s clear. The outcome isn’t noumenal, right?

26

I think you are correct that the outcome is not noumenal. That said, I was in college forty years ago and only took a handful of philosophy courses, but I will try to justify my answer. If I am way off the mark, forgive me. My background may not be up to the task.

The Atthakavagga and those suttas that appear to be perfectly inline with it do not encourage speculative philosophy. This is very contrary to the rest of the canon that seems enamored of it. Some of this theorizing may have been helpful in teaching and winning over converts, but views of this type were seen as a trap for attachment to the world. See Snp 4.3.
In the Atthakavagga the Buddha really is only teaching suffering and the end of suffering. It is very practical and down to earth.

When you look at the unanswered questions, you realize that the Buddha wasn’t giving any support to those pushing after lives. In the parable of the poison arrow, he is discouraging our asking questions that assume speculative philosophy has the answers and encourages us to start meditating.

That practice is simple in that you don’t have to read an entire bookshelf of books to understand it. I think you pretty much cover it in maybe ten suttas. Some of those being Snp 4.2, 4.3, Ud 1.10, AN 3.65 and the basic mediation process described in MN 119. I think the problem is that the meaning of words were sometimes lost and reinvented to suit other agendas. The confusion over meanings is sometime maddening.

I think that a big part of mindfulness and watching the sense doors is possible because of that haptic sense you mention. That is how we detect suffering. Our thoughts and anxieties manifest themselves in our bodies.

In a nutshell, I don’t see anything in the Atthakavagga or the other suttas I mentioned that relies on the noumenal. I hope I understood your question well enough and that this answered it.

27

Yes. I haven’t read it. I’m still busy working on the SN.

So there’s this thing … what is the mental content of contemplation? The intentionality.

And what is the all? It’s just the eye and sights, the ear and sounds, the nose and smells, the tongue and tastes, the body and touches, and the mind and thoughts. This is called the all.

If this is what you’re working through, you’re going to reach a point where substantive form is gone. It can be perceptively known all non-self and impermanent.

What I do believe is observed there is the arising and cessation of suffering. Realistically, if you were bleeding to death, you wouldn’t just sit there, “OK I’ve attained equanimity and bliss, this is the arising and cessation of suffering,” because that’s stupid. You might do that, you might have no choice. But likely, if you could you would ask someone “please call an ambulance, my daughter’s expecting a Christmas gift from me,” or whatever.

I think something similar was said by @stephen already.

Point being, there’s still more in dhamma to discover.

Rene Descartes sat around and wrote his Meditations on First Philosophy, obviously influenced by Orientalism, probably the Jesuits, and therefore through Chinese stuff … he came up with something completely different cogito ergo sum. But his work is very much a process of sorting through his mind. Questioning whether there’s a demon that puts thoughts into it, and such. It’s good if we know our own cultural conditioning, because we keep churning up this stuff, but we can use it, rather, to pivot.

I like the formless world - the phenomenal one that can be attained through contemplation. It’s but one step to the Heart Sutra. And knowing things from the Pali canon sure helps to make sense of it.

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28

Could you elaborate on what you mean by this?

Mettā

29

Gosh. Don’t you think you’re asking me to have attained the formless world?
Do you know the Heart Sutra. It’s really short.

This is something that really hitched me up. I was looking at a particular film by Mira Nair, and there’s one part in which I thought, wow! this is the formless world. Representation is a really difficult issue. And to bring a Buddhist lens to it is to break new ground.

Let me just go away and think about this. Thanks.

30

Yeah, I’ve read it a couple times and heard some explanations. As far as I know, it’s a basic summary of the Prajñāpāramitā; it goes through basic Dhamma categories (starting with the five aggregates, rūpa onward) and explains how all of them are empty and not ultimately existent or truly real categories as emptiness literature goes. I just wasn’t sure how it related to the formless attainments, thought you maybe had something in mind I hadn’t thought of.

Mettā

31

Well here’s a question. What do you think you’re doing with the formless attainments, crunching something out there?

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32

I see what you’re pointing to, yeah. I think this is true of the jhānas as well, and it relates to our recent discussion on bhava in the other thread (still ongoing) and how it relates to upādāna and things. That is, the connection between the cognitive and the ontological in Buddhism (and in agreement with Vedic thinking in many respects).

I assume by close to the Heart Sutra you mean that the next point would be simply cessation?

Mettā

33

No, I think DO/DA whatever you want to call it. Emptiness is DO. And I am so reluctant to go back to the chain of causation for that.

34

How were you relating this to the formless attainments though is what I was curious about. I don’t see the connection in this context as of now. Maybe something in relation to Snp 4.11?

35

Well that’s a very lovely sutta. It’s so musical I can practically hear it. I think we just don’t touch base @Vaddha and I will vex you further. So let’s end here. Thanks.

36

One of the many topics of research I’ve love to see done is the historicity of the formless realm heavens. They seem possibly a later development to me. Partly because they are dealt with separately from the jhanas in early Abhidharma, partly because the Pure Abodes appear to have been the pinnacle of rebirth in early Buddhism, where non-returners were born. They even include a heaven in some accounts called the Asāṃjñika Heaven. It makes me wonder if the formless realm didn’t exist or wasn’t initially described in early times.

I started out studying Mahayana Buddhism, but quickly realized that without knowing the Agamas and Nikayas, the context of those sutras is lost. That was 20 years ago. There’s definitely a development process that led from one thing to another over a thousand years or so.

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37

I think this is an important point, and i think it relates to this whole conversation and the bhava one too, there is a tendency, especially in Theravada circles, to make ever finer and more technical distinctions in the definitions of terms and argue about what these terms refer to as if they picked out differentiable “things out there”. (Or worse, “cognitive” structures)

In fact I think these terms are themselves niether noumenous nor phenomenal, niether ontological nor cognitive, because there is no “atta” or substance that bear them we cannot talk of “distinctness” with regards to them, because of emptiness, we can only talk of perception in relation to sensation, cognition, apparition, etc etc, the term depends on these other terms to make any sense at all, it is incoherent without those others, and cannot be fully seperated or destinguished from them.

So there is for me some quite mysterious and deep attitude towards phenomenal reality in the EBT’s, very much tied up with the undeclared points and exemplified by DO not as a particular sequence of particular terms but as a neccesary picture of any terms whatever, that the insistence of the Theravada specificity obscures and ocludes, creating a machine where there was a magical cloud.

Basically, worrying about some fundemental difference between “perception” and “consciousness” is to be worrying about the wrong thing.

“Object”, “sensation”, “perception”, “cognition”, “consciousness”, “subject”, etc etc, pluck out any one of these and your immediately confronted with the need for all the rest, and endlessly more, to explain what any one of them mean.

DO is meant to be an example of that phenomena, not a description of an ontology, or of a “cognitive” thing, whatever that means.

Metta

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38

I’m not sure if you’re quoting me with the references to cognition. I have used this word around here recently though, and I don’t know of others who have here. I’m not sure where the strong sense of disagreement would be coming from other than misunderstanding though, so I’m not sure it is the same reference.

Either way, I agree. I think the whole separation between cognitive and ontological, or in more simple terms, “internal psychology” vs. “the real out-there” as this pair is sometimes perceived as, is completely absent in Early Buddhism. I think we can learn a lot from a phenomenological attitude too when we see that the perception of a thought, a table, or of birth in a new life are all simply phenomena — and they’re conditioned. The existential manifestation of these is the concern of paticcasamuppāda, and I agree with the rough idea expressed in these recent comments that the formless realms/attainments are an interesting case study of all of this. The barrier between objective and subjective is blurred into a conditional reality whereby all factors find themselves on equal footing, in a sense.

That said, some were not interested in sharing their ideas or conversing about this, seemingly. So I’m not sure of what they were thinking specifically, not yet having psychic powers and all :laughing:

Mettā

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39

Definitely not you @Vaddha !! You are one of my favourites :slight_smile:

It is some others, in some other threads, including the bhava one, but also more commonly elsewhere, like in the zen reddits, who more or less reduce Buddhism to a cognative “trick” that sortt of slyly implies that if you just realise that you arent real then you are free, and there is often a furthur implication, less often made explicit, that for such a person behaviours that would be obstructions for others are no obstruction.

There is usually a strong sense of narcissism and arrogance to the style of communication of defenders of this position.

Anyway, I only read the first paragraph of your response and had to immediately and unequivocally state that you where definitely not my target! So now i will read the rest and see if i can bring myself to engage further on this topic.

Metta.

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40

Yes, I think this is intersting too - in as much as i have a background in philosophy at all it is definitely in the so called “analytic” tradition, so the idea of constructive conversation being a place where ideas are refined and made progressivly clearer and pinned down and agreed upon is very strong, I think this style of discourse suits me in particular because i have a capacity for resolutely failing to see the “obvious” and really need things spelled out until i can form a clear, almost mechanical picture in my mind.

I guess some posters here (who i would also count as amongst my favourites btw) seem to have a background more in what is called the “continental” style, where, it seems to me, specificity and concreteness is often less important than evocation and gesture, and so frequently it can be difficult to reconcile the two styles, although i think they are both valuable.

As for formless attainments, i am also of the view that there is at least a question to be asked, and i am not sure what more can definitively said, beyond the twntative conclusion that they may at least not be essential, given the number of descriptions of the path that dispense with them.

Metta.

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