Why is consciousness one of the six elements

I think it is more specifically a categorisation of the person, see MN140:

‘This person has six elements.’ That’s what I said, but why did I say it? There are these six elements: the elements of earth, water, fire, air, space, and consciousness. ‘This person has six elements.’ That’s what I said, and this is why I said it."

https://suttacentral.net/mn140/en/sujato

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Something clicked a tiny bit, and maybe it’s worth revisiting the material.

We have a solid definition of kāya as consisting of cātumahābhūtika (or cātummahābhūtika) in AN 9.15, SN 12.61, SN 12.62, SN 35.103, SN 35.245, SN 41.5, SN 51.22, SN 55.21, MN 23, MN 74, MN 77, DN 1, DN 2, DN 10. So ākāsadhātu and viññāṇadhātu would be the qualities of humans that go beyond the mere kāya.

If the purpose of the khandha-teaching is to disown the aspects of experience and of the ayatanas to disown the location of experience, what would then be the purpose of dhātus?

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The 6-element model of the person is “form-heavy”, so it seems to focus attention on the body. Possibly there’s a connection with first frame of satipatthana?

I’m not sure I understand your comment about ayatanas disowning the location of the experience. For me mindfulness of the sense-bases leads to an increased awareness of where various sense-objects are arising.

I start to see a possible link, but I guess it’s not obvious. The idea is basically that the dhatus are the qualities that our sense faculties are able to perceive.

The qualities of earth, water, fire, air would be perceptible with the salayatana, space with the space-faculty, and consciousness with the cons-faculty.

The ‘space-faculty’ would come to the fore-ground once the salayatana are transcended, and the cons-faculty once the space-faculty is transcended.

The last bit could be shown with some suttas, but the remaining question would be why next to the proper sense-objects (form, sound, etc.) there would be an added value with pointing out ‘qualities’ of sense perception (= dhatus). A possibility would be to link our experience to the qualities of the outside world.

While our experience can be analyzed into cognitive aspects, nature cannot. There is a teaching-advantage in paralleling the anicca of natural phenomena to the anicca of the human experience, and the dhatus could be part of that teaching.

Ajita Kesakambali and his materialistic view have this connection of body-earth and nature-earth as a core belief, and the Buddha’s dhatu-teaching should be connected to that:

This person [purisa] consists of the four great elements [cātumahābhūta]. When one dies, earth returns to and merges with the earth-body [pathavī-kāya]; water returns to and merges with the water-body; fire returns to and merges with the fire-body; air returns to and merges with the airbody; the faculties [indriyāni] are transferred to space [ākāsa]. (SN 24.5)

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I think “dhatu” is used in a different sense with the 6-element model of a person - it’s describing what makes up a person, like the components.

I think it’s derived form that we experience via the sense bases.

I like to think of dhatus as the most basic or elemental sort of data of experience. It is not about elements but about information.

Maybe the established etymology does not support the link between the ancient term dhatu and the contemporary sense of the word data.

Thinking of this aspect of the teachings this way nevertheless helps me not falling the trap of trying to derive from EBTs ontological characterization of the fundamental nature of reality when these are, at least from the perspective of the path and its cultivation, concerned with a liberating sort of epistemology.

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I think that’s a useful way to look at it, it’s like a framework or model for categorising and examining aspects of our experience. In that sense the 6-element model of a person is equivalent to the five aggregates model.

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Perhaps these six elements, including consciousness are the basic element of existence. For example, beings are made up of these same elements. Perhaps this dichotomy is similar to the mind/body dichotomy. Are they separate, the same, or two sides of the same coin?

When I saw this post, I was studying DN 11, which has at least one interesting, relevant passage that perhaps raises more questions than answers.

Mendicant, this is not how the question should be asked: “Sir, where do these four primary elements cease without anything left over, namely, the elements of earth, water, fire, and air?”

This is how the question should be asked:

“Where do water and earth,
fire and air find no footing;
where do long and short,
fine and coarse, beautiful and ugly;
where do name and form
cease with nothing left over?”

And the answer to that is:

“Consciousness that’s invisible,
infinite, radiant all round.
Here’s where water and earth,
fire and air find no footing;

here’s where long and short,
fine and coarse, beautiful and ugly;
here’s where name and form
cease with nothing left over—
with the cessation of consciousness,
that’s where this ceases.”

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As @Erika_ODonnell argued earlier, I’d agree that there don’t seem to be hard boundaries or cut-and-dried relationships between the material and non-material in the EBTs (in comparison to more recent notions like idealism or physicalism or dualism).

I suppose there is also panpsychism, a kind of “middle way” :slight_smile: between idealism and physicalism, which hypothesizes that mentality, consciousness or sometimes just experience (depending on which of the many versions you pick) is an inherent property of the universe. That still has some adherents and has had a bit of a mini-revival of interest in modern times. There was actually a recent blog article in Scientific American (surprised to see something like that even in an associated blog), which looks at this, at some problems which arise with theories of this type, and at the authors’ proposed solution (and a link to their journal article) for one of them: the “combination problem”. Interesting, if somewhat wacky, stuff! :slight_smile:

You can get bottom-up versions of panpsychism where elementary particles like an electron would be conjectured to have some kind of, admittedly very rudimentary, “experience” (or even partaking of “mentality” to some limited extent). That leads to the “combination problem” of how to satisfactorily make the jump from rudimentary micro-units of consciousness to the large scale consciousness of animals or humans without needing some kind of magical leap.

Or there are more top-down versions. The cosmos seems to be a unitary process in its own right, a view which, for example, quantum entanglement seems to support. For top-down versions like cosmopsychism, there’s some kind of “cosmic experience” (not necessarily mentality or consciousness, though with some theories there is), which sidesteps the “combination problem” but introduces problems of its own, e.g. why can’t I just step into other people’s experiences if everything I see if part of some vast universal experience/consciousness that I’m part of also.

The Scientific American referenced journal article advocates cosmopsychism but proposes to side-step this problem by appealing to cases of multiple-personality disorder where distinct personalities seem to inhabit the same brain (uses the case of a person with some “blind” personalities where MRI scans showed the brain pathways for sight were not used in the blind personalities) and then makes the jump that dissociation could explains this problematic aspect of cosmopsychism.

Or take this article which attempts to use cosmospsychism to explain the incredible fine-tuning of physical constants to make the universe suitable for life. The usual explanations for this are either multiple universes (we just happen to be in one that allows this) or a designer (whether Deity or some grand simulation runner :slight_smile: ). This theory argues that the consciousness/mentality associated with the cosmos (though presumably limited) chose the values of these constants at an early stage to somehow lead to better outcomes for itself (maybe maximize the later occurrences of conscious beings). All quite whacky but sounds a little like Buddhist conceptions of Brahma in a way: vast but limited also, e.g. what happens when a cosmos ends?

Theories of this type might perhaps align better with EBT thought, but I’m not sure how workable is this general halfway-house notion of having experience/mentality/conscious as a fundamental aspect of physical reality (a kind of extra element in a sense). Does it lead to more problems/questions than it solves? Some people are evidently still busy trying to figure out if they can make the idea work though! :slight_smile:

Not sure if this is what is meant in the suttas, but I have interpreted the 6 elements to be all the basic elements of the universe. In other words, is there anything we can think of in the universe that isn’t made up of these 6 elements? I’m not aware of anything.

What I find especially interesting about this outline of the basic elements of the universe is that it seems to suggest that the Universe has consciousness in addition to matter, energy, space and so forth. Thus, this is why consciousness may have been grouped together as the 6 fundamental elements of the universe.

Perhaps the most interesting of all is that cessation of consciousness, is possible somehow, as discussed in DN 11 and elsewhere. I’m not sure what this means because i don’t have any experience with cessation. However, it seems an integral part to the culmination of the eightfold path ending in nibbana.

Grateful for this community. Best Wishes for you.

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I’d be interested also. I’m not sure quite what to make of the verse you quoted. Maybe the early part refers to arupa/formless realms and the later cessation of consciousness bit to nibbana? I suppose the Pali itself might make that clearer.

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I would be hesitant with a conclusion like that, because quite often doctrines of Buddhism have been understood as statements about the world - but then looking closer they turned out to be statements about human experience after all.

And what would be the purpose for a ‘physical’ statement within the buddhist framework at all?..

We find this six-fold structure in AN 3.61, SN 18.9, SN 25.9, SN 26.9, SN 27.9, MN 112, MN 115, MN 140, MN 143, DN 33.

A hint for the six dhatus as ‘human’ (vs. cosmic) can be found in AN 3.61:

In dependence on the six dhatus the descent of an embryo occurs.

That vinnana is the odd one out in the list of six can be seen in MN 140:

When you really see with proper understanding, you reject the space element, detaching the mind from the space element. There remains only vinnana, pure and bright. And what does that vinnana know? sukha, dukkha, asukha-adukkha…

And for many different types of dhatus see MN 140 (there are even more types in the suttas…):

  • Six dhātu: sukkha (pleasure), dukkha (pain), somanassa (joy), domanassa (grief), upekkhā (equanimity), avijjā (ignorance)
  • Six dhātu: kāma (sensual desire), nekkhamma (renunciation), byāpāda (ill will), abyāpāda (non-ill will), vihiṃsā (cruelty), avihiṃsā (non-cruelty) (also AN 6.111, and in variation AN 5.200, DN 33, DN 34)
  • Three dhātu: kāma (‘sense-sphere’), rūpa (‘fine-material’), and arūpa (‘immaterial’) (also in DN 33, DN 34)
  • Two dhātu: saṅkhatā (‘conditioned’) and asaṅkhatā (‘unconditioned’)
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But how many humans have experienced their spleen or their kidneys? I don’t think even 10,000 hours of body scan meditations would reveal to the mind the existence of the large intestine.

“What, friends, is the earth element? The earth element may be either internal or external. What is the internal earth element? Whatever internally, belonging to oneself, is solid, solidified, and clung-to; that is, head-hairs, body-hairs, nails, teeth, skin, flesh, sinews, bones, bone-marrow, kidneys, heart, liver, diaphragm, spleen, lungs, intestines, mesentery, contents of the stomach, feces, or whatever else internally, belonging to oneself, is solid, solidified, and clung-to: this is called the internal earth element. Now both the internal earth element and the external earth element are simply earth element. And that should be seen as it actually is with proper wisdom thus: ‘This is not mine, this I am not, this is not my self.’ When one sees it thus as it actually is with proper wisdom, one becomes disenchanted with the earth element and makes the mind dispassionate toward the earth element. - MN28

The internal elements in the suttas don’t seem to be so much about experiences as anatomy. And it seems that the ‘physical’ statement about the elements being the same whether internal or external is for the purpose of developing non-attachment to the physical body.

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Thanks for your thoughtful reply, Gabriel. The issue of whether the description of the six elements pertains to the universe as a whole or just the human experience kind of reminds me of the philosophical question, “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”

In other words, it seems difficult, if not impossible, to make a statement about the universe and what elements it’s made of that is independent of human involvement. That said, the EBTs speak of an infinite sphere of consciousness, regarding the immaterial jhanas, for example, which possibly suggests an impersonal, universal aspect of consciousness. However, I agree that beings are still apart of this description.

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I’m honestly surprised that the ayatanas of space and consciousness can be interpreted as ‘impersonal’ or maybe ‘objective’ in a sense. After all they are in the same context as the jhanas which I think we agree are a personal experience of the meditator. Why would the ‘arupas’ be different?

Also they have their own plane of rebirth, which is again personal and merely a consequence of their meditation achievement. So to me it was always clear that ‘infinite’ refers to ‘in one’s mind’ and not the space of the milky way out there.

I think this would be a difficult case to make. The Buddha was not interested to give a description of the universe or quantum mechanics. In another thread we tried to scramble together other statements of the suttas about space, galaxies, etc. and I don’t think anything convincing came out of this.

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Ontological reality is an uncertainty, according to the Kaccayanagotta sutta (SN12.15). In which case the process of perception always includes consciousness. Even assuming the world and the body of a person exists, they would be perceived in the same way, through this process of perception, which is at the heart of phenomenal existence. Thinking in an ultimate sense, the external/internal division is an illusion. The self-extant sense we have of objects, is an illusion. There are only causal chains of experience (such as how aggregates arise).

With metta

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There is a western philosophical tradition called pragmatism, where loosely speaking, truth is defined as that which produces the desired result.

Perhaps one could argue that even thinking in terms of causal chains of experience is true, first and foremost, because it is useful in bringing about the ending of suffering.

It makes sense to me that the point of the various frameworks for experience (6 senses, five khandas, elements, more?) is to partition them in a way to be useful for the ending of suffering.

So why describe consciousness as a (mere) element at the level of solids, liquids, etc? Perhaps to point out that it is just as impermanent, suffering and selfless as everything else?

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I’m fully with you on this. But if it was just about anicca-dukkha-anatta then the vinnana in the khandhas would have sufficed. Why to include vinnana in the dhatus, no?

What complicates the dhatus is their inconsistency in the suttas. E.g. AN 4.177 tells us that disowning 4 dhatus results in awakening - no mention of space and consciousness.

In MN 10, MN 119, DN 22 we have the 31 parts of the body followed by 4-dhatu-contemplation which results in samadhi, not awakening - again no mention of space and consciousness.

Btw, the pre-Buddhist tradition speaks rarely but consistently of five mahabhutas: earth, water, fire, air, space.

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If it’s a useful way to teach Dhamma, why not include vinnana in the dhatus?

Maybe the dhatu framework worked better for some people than the khandas, and vice versa?

According to a footnote in the writings of Piya Tan, the parallel to AN 4.177 (SA 465) does contain 6 elements:

SA 465 differs from A 4.177 in as much as it begins with an inquiry by Rāhula on how to go beyond notions of self and conceit in regard to this body with consciousness and all external signs (A 4.177 does not report any inquiry by Rāhula). Another difference is that SA 465 takes up 6 elements, whereas A 4.177 treats only 4 elements.

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I can’t rule this out, but we have a few suttas where disciples mention to have learned all three: khandhas-dhatus-ayatanas, suggesting that we have three complementing (not alternative) teaching-aspects: SN 5.9, SN 8.12, SN 35.31 (AN 3.61 omits khandhas)

That’s why I assume that the three represent different aspects of anatta- or disowning-practice.

That’s interesting. And it would be even more so if there was a pattern. In the following suttas the body (kaya) is defined as consisting of the cātumahābhūtika ‘four-great-beings’. Is that at least consistent with the agamas? (AN 9.15, SN 12.61, SN 12.62, SN 35.103, SN 35.245, SN 41.5, SN 51.22, SN 55.21, MN 23, MN 74, MN 77, DN 1, DN 2, DN 10)

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