This is my own general opinion, too, based on broadly reading texts from various Buddhist traditions (which become accessible when one learns classical Chinese rather than an Indic language). I think Buddhists were explaining experience rather than existence and didn’t really think in terms of existents in the abstract way we are familiar with today. Then, there was an encounter with Western ideas (i.e., Greek and Near East civilizations) early on by Buddhists who settled in the Gandhara region. The Greeks were more advanced than the locals, so there would’ve been a natural inclination to adopt their ideas and methods. Which included writing, rhetoric, and principles of philosophical argument.
Sarvastivadins were among those early Buddhists, and they began writing reasoned arguments and making ontological claims (like the past and future exist to explain karmic fruition, etc.) in their Abhidharma tradition. These developments then filtered into the sutras, which I think continued to be composed and developed for many centuries to keep up with new ideas and literary developments after writing was adopted.
These changes apparently provoked a reaction among traditional Buddhists, and many dissenting groups arose who criticized them. Some rejected the entire Abhidharma project (e.g., Mahasamghikas, Prajnaparamita writers, Sautrantikas, etc). Some attempted to correct it (e.g., the works of Vasubandhu and Asanga). And some tried to keep their Abhidharma as traditional as possible (e.g., Dharmaguptakas and Theravadins).
The “big picture” of Buddhist history in India looks to me like a conflict over this change in perspective by Sarvastivadins and the success they enjoyed as they developed it. Eventually, the traditionalists (Theravada) and rejectionists (Mahayana) were the survivors after Buddhism disappeared in India, but they had both been shaped and influenced by Sarvastivadin ideas, making discerning what original Buddhism looked like difficult. New and old ideas had mixed together to an extent that it’s difficult to sort out now.
I am not sure that this is right, are you referring to MN38 ? If so my sense is that Sati’s position is more like this present discernment is the only or essential substance that transmigrates; i.e something like vinanna as a unique perspectival identifier, so when you die all your shit gets faded back to one point and then rolled out agin from there. Its actually a very attractive position philosophically if your looking for a way to think about rebirth for example;
However the early Buddhists seem to reject a priviliging of a “point like” perspectival “unique identifier” as a means to underwrite continuity of existence, and have vinanna rising and falling just the same way as the rest of the phenomena.
However its not clear, to me at least, that vinanna in a more general sense isn’t pivitol in ensuring continuity, just not this present vinanna - so there is still a “discerning” that “uncovers” our new situation in the next life, and that discernment has the shape and dispositional features it has because of ones past, its just not a substantial unit that remains the same across moments or lives, rather it is conditioned, like everything else.
So with the caveat that it not be confused with some stable, enduring thing, i think vinanna as feature of experience that is tied up with continuity is fine too.
Anyway, am on my phone but lovimg this thread, especially some of what you have been saying @Ceisiwr , and am hoping to get toy laptop later to engage more fully with some of the thoughts here.
I think that the bolded text above seems to imply a doctrinal split from the Parayanavagga. See bolded text below.
Do you think that viññāṇa here means recognition of sensory objects?
I wonder sometimes if viññāṇa was originally more inline with self-consciousness rather than awareness or discernment since a sense of self is key to being a run of the mill person.
To be fair, the sarva-asti doctrine is not really the result of speculative metaphysics. It is a logical consequence of taking the dependent origination formula literally as requiring the presence of the condition for the effect to manifest. And this is the natural reading of the formula, IMO.
Those who asserted sarva-asti “universal existence” didn’t really make any ontological claim over and above other Buddhists (it is akin to the Everett interpretation of the Schrodinger Equation). If a past mental event is able to achieve the idaṁ hoti part now, then the logical consequence is that the imasmin sati part must also be true now.
If the past condition was truly absent in the present, then imasmin asati, idam na hoti; imassa nirodhā idaṃ nirujjhati. A past condition cannot be the condition for an effect in the present unless it still exists.
It is really only logical assert that for conditionality to occur over time, the conditions themselves must universally exist. It’s not that sarvāstivāda invented eternal dharmas out of the blue in defiance of Buddhism and common sense. Rather it is that all other Buddhists tweaked their presentation of dependent arising to avoid allowing this possibility (if you know about Everett and “many worlds” you will recognise this description).
However, for there to be temporality, conditions can only be active at certain times. This limited scope for activity was the sarvāstivāda fudge to avoid an “everything all at once” scenario
This makes as much sense as any other religious metaphysics I’ve come across and is better than most because it doesn’t speculate beyond accepting dependent arising as a literal truth. It doesn’t invent any weird entities like the bhavaṅgacitta or alāyavijñāṇa that look suspiciously like ātmavāda, so by Occam’s razor it starts to look like the best traditional explanation.
not a sarvāstivādin either but it certainly seems possible to argue that it is the Therevada tradition that has come to privilege the present over the past and the future and thus gone beyond the EBT material in a way that the sarvāstivādin does not.
Oh, I wasn’t disparaging Sarvastivadins, per se. Different points of view are refreshing. But we have this difficulty today in sorting out early and late meanings of words like rupa in the (so-called) EBTs because at some point there appears to have been redefinitions that took place across the board. I see them in all the different canons that still exist while translating Agamas and comparing parallels.
The Sarvastivadins seem like the likely source of it to me because they had become authoritative and were actively engaged in creating a systematic paradigm from the EBTs. There’s a textual record of it at different stages in Chinese. And perhaps the overall conflict was a case of importing foreign innovations, like Greek philosophy as an example, and then rejecting them after a long period of fascination. The endpoint was a hybrid of the foreign ideas and original ones: Ideas like the Alayavijnana was the end result. It reminds me a little of how China ended up with Neo-Confucianism, which kind of mimics late Buddhist metaphysics in order to supplant the foreign religion. The result was a Confucian-Buddhist hybrid of sorts.
Can you please clarify this obsevation, regarding AN 6.41? If you read only the Pali translation, perhaps you have a point??. Why would Buddha take pains to clarify the properties of a wood pile? Have you looked at its Chinese translation? SA 494. Interpreting that it seems Buddha is expounding the inconceivability of the mind of a meditator, and encouraging Bhikkhus to meditate. Powers of meditation are inconceivable the teacher tells the students. Between the lines I read, that divine power is not the ability to turn the tree into gold, but the divine power is in the ability to abolish all suffering. To me it looks like the Pali translators left out part of the original sutta. It is not the first time that I detect an omission of this nature by the Pali tradition.
What is abhidhamma got to do with the inconceivability of the mind? According to abhidhamma rupa of Nama-rupa of paticca samuppada is considered materiality. Rupa of Nama-rupa of Paticca samuppada, according to SA/SN is a cognitive feature.
