I think the function of consciousness is unifying rather than dividing, hence it leans against name & form in what appears to be a continuum of experience. Death marks the a separation between the unifying effect of consciousness and name and form, hence triggers the disintegration of the body.
More generally, whatever is associated with a cohesive or unifying effect in the teaching is bad. From seeking solitude, to likening samsara to net, to the contemplation of death, to describing the aggregates as subject to clinging, (clinging, attachments, grasping, persistence …they are all bad!). As such, for the cessation of vinnana to be praiseworthy, it has to have a unifying rather than a divisive effect. Probably, seeking to end divisions as a solution to suffering is Brahmanism rather than Buddhism.
Yes, that’s true. This is only a working hypothesis, to which I’m not sure that there is a way to convincingly prove it one way or the other. However, what makes me believe ignorance was added later is precisely because it’s in early Buddhist sutras that we see other versions of dependent origination that don’t begin with ignorance. On the other hand, every Abhidharma and Mahayana text I have seen thus far always has ignorance at the start of a twelve-link chain. If I never looked at a Nikaya or Agama collection, I would have never known there was an alternative to it. Thus, I suspect that it was something that happened during the early Abhidharma period.
Do you have some quote(s) that demonstrate this? I would think that bare sense data would be in parallel being dependent on different organs, but could see sanna being serial. I am curious what the ahbidharma says the bottleneck is exactly.
Added later: I could see naming being serial. Language by its nature is serial. Recognition without naming might be serial. I recognize my house at a glance and son in front of it even if I have not verbalized anything. It feels like it happens at once, but maybe it is a fast sequence.
Right. The senses are always functioning, but there’s an unconscious process that happens before anything gets to the point of being the object of a conscious thought. That conscious attention moves from one thing to another from moment to moment.
Conscious thought and conceptual discrimination happen in the mental consciousness, which has more function than the five physical sense consciousnesses. It’s the place where higher functions of mind like knowing and wisdom take place. The five sense consciousnesses just notice and pass on sensory perceptions to the sixth consciousness, according to Sarvastivadins, at least. They don’t process the sensory information conceptually. E.g., the visual consciousness doesn’t recognize colors, but it provides the input that the mental consciousness uses to recognize things.
Dhammajoti summarizes some of these theoretical positions in his book Sarvastivada Abhidharma,which is available as a pdf.
I just recently saw a passage in the Chinese commentary to the Udana Varga when I looked up parallels for someone else. It interpreted a metaphor of traveling alone as referring to the mind giving attention to only one sense field at a time but moving from one place to another freely.
There apparently a controversy with Mahasamghikas over this point regarding the Buddha’s omniscience. They held that the Buddha could know all things in a single thought, but Sarvastivadins held that this was impossible. He could only know what he gave his attention. So, it wasn’t a universal doctrine. Does anyone know if there’s an equivalent position in Theravada Abhidhamma?
