The cognizing subject in MN 43 and MN 18

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The other night I was reading MN 43, and came across some bits I have always loved:

“‘viññāṇaṃ viññāṇant’ti, āvuso vuccati. Kttāvatā nu kho, āvuso, viññāṇanti vuccatī”ti?

“They speak of ‘consciousness.’ How is consciousness defined?”

"‘vijānāti vijānāti’ti kho, āvuso, tasmā viññāṇanti vuccati.”

“It’s called consciousness because it cognizes.”

Then, a bit below, we get the same for saññā and vedanā: saññā is called that because it sañjānāti, vedanā is called that because it vedeti.

But, then, below that: You can’t disentangle vedanā, saññā, and viññāṇa because:

yaṃ hāvuso, vedeti taṃ sañjānāti, yaṃ sañjānāti taṃ vijānāti.

Which typically gets translated with something like what Ven @sujato does:

“For you perceive what you feel, and you cognize what you perceive.”

in the sense that vedeti and sañjānāti and vijānāti are verbs describing the action of a person. (Venerable’s translation being second person is just part of his interest in translating the suttas to be more colloquial, I’m thinking.)

But, just a few lines above, we had those verbs being used for the processes themselves. It’s perception that perceives. It’s feeling that feels. So could this also be:

For what feelings feel, perception perceives. What perception perceives, consciousness cognizes [or “knows” as I personally prefer in my own private writing].

Those seem to me to be much more consistent with the text. It also appeals to me because these are impersonal processes that occur because of causes and conditions, not things a single agent is doing. You take the person out of it, these processes would still occur.

I was reading this alongside MN 18. (This is what my autism thinks is fun to do to party on a Friday night, and I very much agree with it. I’m sure many of you can relate.) And the famous passage, probably the most quoted bit from it:

Cakkhuñcāvuso, paṭicca rūpe ca uppajjati cakkhuviññāṇaṁ, tiṇṇaṁ saṅgati phasso, phassapaccayā vedanā, yaṁ vedeti taṁ sañjānāti, yaṁ sañjānāti taṁ vitakketi, yaṁ vitakketi taṁ papañceti, yaṁ papañceti tatonidānaṁ purisaṁ papañcasaññāsaṅkhā samudācaranti atītānāgatapaccuppannesu cakkhuviññeyyesu rūpesu.

Eye consciousness arises dependent on the eye and sights. The meeting of the three is contact. Contact is a requirement for feeling. What you feel, you perceive. What you perceive, you think about. What you think about, you proliferate. What you proliferate is the source from which judgments driven by proliferating perceptions beset a person. This occurs with respect to sights known by the eye in the past, future, and present. (Sujato’s translation)

And commenters (including the Venerable in his notes) like to point out that grammatical shift. That after vedanā arises because of causes and conditions, it goes into the yaṃ…taṃ… correlative constructions (that’s the right word, isn’t it?), the first one being identical to MN 43: yaṃ vedeti taṃ sañjānāti

The reason I see commenters point to this grammatical shift is because there they see it becoming personalized. That is, it’s an active thing someone is doing: perceiving, then vitakka-ing and then pañcapa-ing. But, in light of MN 43, could it also be: “What feelings feel, that perception perceives. What perception perceives, the thinking machinery thinks about. What the thinking parts think about, the proliferating proliferates.” Right?

I mean, one of our big things is that things arise because of causes and conditions. That introducing a person to the mess, who starts appropriating these processes, is what leads to this whole mass of dukkha. Right?

I mean, the transition from just perceiving to proliferating and then getting walked all over by their papañcasaññāsaṅkhā (“walks all over” being a potential literal translation of samudācarati and a colorful one I love in this context) is happening because a person has been inserted into the process because of avijjā and has proceeded to make a mess of things.

I’m a bit shy to post this because I’m not sure how daft it is, but am doing so with Venerable @Pasanna ‘s encouragement. I’d love to hear from the many people who know a lot more about this than me what they think.

(Edit to add: Oh I also meant to compare this to the Chinese. I did read over MĀ 210 and 211 last night and made my notes, but haven’t consulted the actual Chinese to see what its grammar is. Although my classical Chinese is abysmal so my reading would be pretty questionable, so if someone knows more, I’d love to hear it.)

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Always delighted for an opportunity to unpack the Pali :slightly_smiling_face: !

In MN18, is it personalized because of the introduction of “a person” or “people in general” by virtue of purisaṁ? That appears to steer the translation (not just by Bhante Sujato) to express use of a personal pronoun with

yaṁ vedeti taṁ sañjānāti, yaṁ sañjānāti taṁ vitakketi, yaṁ vitakketi taṁ papañceti

That is, in a loosey-goosey kind of way a very unorthodox translation might read

There’s this person who’s beset with judgments driven by proliferating perceptions. This occurs with respect to sights known by the eye in the past, future, and present. What they feel, they perceive. What they perceive, they think about. What they think about, they proliferate. Eye consciousness arises dependent on the eye and sights. The meeting of the three is contact. Contact is a requirement for feeling.

… where we’ve shifted around the order of the sentences, more or less.

In this case (not that it really exists), it would be odd not to ascribe a known subject – a universalized “person” – to the inflected verbs vedeti, sañjānāti, vitakketi, and papañceti.

Whereas in the MN43 text,

a work-around translation could be

Consciousness cognizes; therefore it’s called consciousness.

Technically both forms of vijānāti are verbs but it’s my understanding the third-person singular inflection can be read as a noun when it makes sense. (Consciousness as viññāṇanti = viññāṇaṃ + iti.)

In this interesting MN43-MN18 comparison, then,

I’m thinking no. Reason being in MN 18 there is a specific subject being called out – the universalized person – who must be associated with the third person singular inflections.

?:folded_hands:

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Excellent. Thank you. This morning I was thinking applying it to MN 18 was kinda shaky, and more or less for the reasons you state.

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Well, this is precisely how things are, according to the Lord Buddha. All experience is in fact impersonal. But it is not all the truth, since truly impersonal is only experience of arahat, while in the case of puthujjana, we can say that subjectivity - the presence of person who assumes mastery over experience is kind of parasite on it. Totally unnecessary and painful. Dukkha, so this subject, person has to be removed from experience. Or if you wish “he should commit a mental suicide😌”

You, as the person, imagine that the Guru is interested in you as a person. Not at all. To him you are a nuisance and a hindrance to be done away with. He actually aims at your elimination as a factor in consciousness.

Nisargadatta Maharaj

Regarding your mussing, I don’t feel skilled enough to comment on them, right view doesn’t depend on understending of such distinctions. But perhaps it could be interesting for you to know differences between consciousness and perception, in strict phenomenological descriptions, according to certain monk:

Saññā and viññāna (perception and consciousness) may be differentiated as follows. Saññā (defined in Anguttara VI,vi,9 <A.iii,413>) is the quality or percept itself (e.g. blue), whereas viññāna (q.v) is the presence or consciousness of the quality or percept—or, more strictly, of the thing exhibiting the quality or percept (i.e. of nāmarūpa). (A quality, it may be noted, is unchanged whether it is present or absent—blue is blue whether seen or imagined --, and the word saññā is used both of five-base experience and of mental experience.)

It would be as wrong to say ‘a feeling is perceived’ as it would ‘a percept is felt’ (which mix up saññā and vedanā); but it is quite in order to say ‘a feeling, a percept, (that is, a felt thing, a perceived thing) is cognized’, which simply means that a feeling or a percept is present (as, indeed, they both are in all experience—see Majjhima v,3 <M.i,293>[15]). Strictly speaking, then, what is cognized is nāmarūpa, whereas what is perceived (or felt) is saññā (or vedanā), i.e. only nāma. This distinction can be shown grammatically. Vijānāti, to cognize, is active voice in sense (taking an objective accusative): consciousness cognizes a phenomenon (nāmarūpa); consciousness is always consciousness of something. Sañjānāti, to perceive, (or vediyati, to feel) is middle voice in sense (taking a cognate accusative): perception perceives [a percept] (or feeling feels [a feeling]). Thus we should say ‘a blue thing (= a blueness), a painful thing (= a pain), is cognized’, but ‘blue is perceived’ and ‘pain is felt’. (In the Suttas generally, due allowance is to be made for the elasticity in the common usage of words. But in certain passages, and also in one’s finer thinking, stricter definition may be required.)

At Dīgha i,9 <D.i,185>, Potthapāda asks the Buddha whether perception arises before knowledge, or knowledge before perception, or both together. The Buddha gives the following answer: Saññā kho Potthapāda pathamam uppajjati, pacchā ñānam; saññ’uppādā ca pana ñān’uppādo hoti. So evam pajānāti, Idapaccayā kira me ñānam udapādí ti. (‘Perception, Potthapāda, arises first, knowledge afterwards; but with arising of perception there is arising of knowledge. One understands thus: ‘With this as condition, indeed, knowledge arose in me.’’) Saññā thus precedes ñāna, not only temporally but also structurally (or logically). Perception, that is to say, is structurally simpler than knowledge; and though perception comes first in time, it does not cease (see CITTA) in order that knowledge can arise. [a] However many stories there are to a house, the ground floor is built first; but it is not then removed to make way for the rest. (The case of vitakkavicārā and vācā—A NOTE ON PATICCASAMUPPĀDA §5—is parallel.)

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