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The Buddhist Unconscious

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This is the story of fifth century CE India, when the Yogacarin Buddhists tested the awareness of unawareness, and became aware of human unawareness to an extraordinary degree. They not only explicitly differentiated this dimension of mental processes from conscious cognitive processes, but also offered reasoned arguments on behalf of this dimension of mind. This is the concept of the 'Buddhist unconscious', which arose just as philosophical discourse in other circles was fiercely debating the limits of conscious awareness, and these ideas in turn had developed as a systematisation of teachings from the Buddha himself. For us in the twenty-first century, these teachings connect in fascinating ways to the Western conceptions of the 'cognitive unconscious' which have been elaborated in the work of Jung and Freud.
      This important study reveals how the Buddhist unconscious illuminates and draws out aspects of current western thinking on the unconscious mind. One of the most intriguing connections is the idea that there is in fact no substantial 'self' underlying all mental activity; 'the thoughts themselves are the thinker'. William S. Waldron considers the implications of this radical notion, which, despite only recently gaining plausibility, was in fact first posited 2,500 years ago. (Source: Routledge)

Citation	Waldron, William S. The Buddhist Unconscious: The Ālaya-Vijñāna in the Context of Indian Buddhist Thought. Routledge Critical Studies in Buddhism. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003. http://abhidharma.ru/A/Raznoe/0061.pdf.

Contents

• • Prefacexi
  • Acknowledgmentsxv
    
    

• • Thematic introduction: a Buddhist critique of
    the construction of self and world1
    
    

• PART I
  The background and context of the ālaya-vijñāna7
  
  
• 1 The early Buddhist background9
• The three marks of existence9
• The formula of dependent arising11
  • Causation and continuity without a self16
• Viññāṇa in the formula of dependent arising19
  • Viññāṇa as consciousness21
  • Viññāṇa as cognitive awareness28
• The underlying tendencies (anusaya)33
  • The underlying tendency "I am" and conceptual proliferation (papañca)36
  • The debate over latent versus manifest39
• Reciprocal causality between the two aspects of viññāṇa41
  
  

• 2 The Abhidharma context46
• The Abhidharma project and its problematic46
  • Background of the Abhidharma47
• The aim and methods of Abhidharma: dharma as irreducible unit of experience50
• The basic problematic: two levels of discourse, two dimensions of mind55
• Analysis of mind and its mental factors57
  • The initial formulation of the problematic in its synchronic dimension: the accumulation of karmic potential, the presence of the underlying tendencies,
    and their gradual purification in the Kathāvatthu59
  • The problematic in its diachronic dimension: immediate succession versus the continuity of karmic potential62
• The persistence of traditional continuities: karma and kleśa in the Abhidharma-kośa67
• Abhidharmic responses to the problematic70
  • The Sarvāstivādin theory of possession (prāpti)72
  • The Sautrāntika theory of seeds (bīja) in the mental stream (santāna)73
• Questions raised by consciousness, seeds, and the mental stream76
• The Theravadin theory of life-constituent mind (bhavaṅga-citta)81
• Conclusion85
  
  

• PART II
  The ālaya-vijñāna in the Yogācāra tradition89
  
  
• 3 The ālaya-vijñana in the early tradition91
• The origins of the ālaya-vijñāna91
• The new model of mind in the Saṃdhinirmocana Sūtra94
  • The ālaya-vijñāna as mental stream99
• The Ālaya Treatise of the Yogācārabhūmi101
  • The Proof Portion102
• The Alaya Treatise, Pravṛtti Portion: analyzing the ālaya-vijñāna in Abhidharmic
  terms107
  • The ālaya-vijñāna's subliminal objective supports and cognitive processes109
  • The ālaya-vijñāna's mutual and simultaneous relationship with manifest
    cognitive awareness (pravṛtti-vijñāna)112
  • The ālaya-vijñāna's simultaneous arising with (afflictive) mentation117
• The Ālaya Treatise, Nivṛtti Portion: equating the ālaya-vijñāna with saṃsāric
  continuity123
• Conclusion127
  
  

• 4 The ālaya-vijñāna in the Mahāyāna-saṃgraha
  
• 1. bringing it all back home128
• Appropriating the traditional Buddhist framework129
  • Synonyms of the ālaya-vijñāna in the disciple’s vehicle130
  • The two vijñanas and the two dependent arisings131
  • Seeding the ālaya-vijñāna: the karmic process as simultaneous intrapsychic causality135
• Resolving the Abhidharmic Problematic139
  • Karma, rebirth, and the ālaya-vijñāna140
  • The continuity of the afflictions (kleśa)142
  • The path of purification: mundane and supramundane150
• Beyond Abhidharma: adventitious defilements, pure seeds, and luminous minds153
  
  

• 5 The ālaya-vijñāna in the Mahāyāna-saṃgraha
  
• 2. looking beyond158
• The predispositions of speech, self-view, and the life-constituents159
• Common experience, common embodiment: language, the ālaya-vijñana, and "the arising
  of the world"160
  
  

• PART III
  Appendices171
  
  
• Appendix I The series of dependent arising: affliction, action, and their
  results173
• Appendix II Index of related controversies175
• Appendix III Translation: the Pravṛtti and Nivṛtti Portions of the
  Viniścayasaṃgrahaṇī of the Yogācārabhūmi178
  
  
  • Notes190
  • Bibliography of works cited247
  • Index of texts quoted255
  • Index259

avidyā - Literally "unknowing," it refers to a lack of knowledge or misunderstanding of the nature of reality. As such, it is considered to be the root cause of suffering and the basis for the arising of all other negative mental factors. Skt. अविद्या Tib. མ་རིག་པ་ Ch. 無明

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kun gzhi - Although it is commonly used as an abbreviation of ālayavijñāna (kun gzhi'i rnam shes), in later Tibetan traditions, particularly that of the Kagyu and the Nyingma, it came to denote an ultimate or pure basis of mind, as opposed to the ordinary, deluded consciousness represented by the ālayavijñāna. Alternatively, in the Jonang tradition, this pure version is referred to as ālaya-wisdom (kun gzhi'i ye shes). Skt. आलय Tib. ཀུན་གཞི་

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abhidharma - Abhidharma generally refers to the corpus of Buddhist texts which deals with the typological, phenomenological, metaphysical, and epistemological presentation of Buddhist concepts and teachings. The abhidharma teachings present a meta-knowledge of Buddhist sūtras through analytical and systemic schemas and are said to focus on developing wisdom among the three principles of training. The Abhidharma is presented alongside Sūtra and Vinaya as one of the three baskets of the teachings of the Buddha. Skt. अभिधर्म Tib. ཆོས་མངོན་པ། Ch. 阿毗达磨

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kleśa - Often referred to as poisons, these are a class of disturbing or disruptive emotional states that when aroused negatively affect or taint the mind. Skt. क्लेश Tib. ཉོན་མོངས་ Ch. 煩惱

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kleśa - Often referred to as poisons, these are a class of disturbing or disruptive emotional states that when aroused negatively affect or taint the mind. Skt. क्लेश Tib. ཉོན་མོངས་ Ch. 煩惱

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bīja - A seed, commonly used figuratively in the sense of something which has the potential to develop or grow, and likewise as the basic cause for this development or growth. Skt. बीज Tib. ས་བོན་ Ch. 無漏種

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Yogācāra - Along with Madhyamaka, it was one of the two major philosophical schools of Mahāyāna Buddhism. Founded by Asaṅga and Vasubandhu around the fourth century CE, many of its central tenets have roots in the Saṃdhinirmocanasūtra and the so-called third turning of the dharma wheel (see tridharmacakrapravartana). Skt. योगाचार Tib. རྣལ་འབྱོར་སྤྱོད་པ་ Ch. 瑜伽行派

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sūtra - Sūtras mainly refer to the discourses delivered by the Buddha and his disciples, and the Sūtra corpus is one of the three main sets of teachings which form the Buddhist canon. Skt. सूत्र Tib. མདོ། Ch. 佛经

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Mahāyāna - Mahāyāna, or the Great Vehicle, refers to the system of Buddhist thought and practice which developed around the beginning of Common Era, focusing on the pursuit of the state of full enlightenment of the Buddha through the realization of the wisdom of emptiness and the cultivation of compassion. Skt. महायान Tib. ཐེག་པ་ཆེན་པོ། Ch. 大乘

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śrāvaka - The disciples of the Buddha who aspire to attain individual liberation or nirvāṇa. The final goal of the Hearers is to become an arhat, a state in which one has totally eliminated the inner problems of attachment, hatred and ignorance, the main causes for rebirth in this cycle of existence. There are four stages of a śrāvaka path including eight phases. Skt. श्रावक Tib. ཉན་ཐོས། Ch. 聲聞

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kleśa - Often referred to as poisons, these are a class of disturbing or disruptive emotional states that when aroused negatively affect or taint the mind. Skt. क्लेश Tib. ཉོན་མོངས་ Ch. 煩惱

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kleśa - Often referred to as poisons, these are a class of disturbing or disruptive emotional states that when aroused negatively affect or taint the mind. Skt. क्लेश Tib. ཉོན་མོངས་ Ch. 煩惱

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āvaraṇa - Literally, that which obscures or conceals. Often listed as a set of two obscurations (sgrib gnyis): the afflictive emotional obscurations (Skt. kleśāvaraṇa, Tib. nyon mongs pa'i sgrib pa) and the cognitive obscurations (Skt. jñeyāvaraṇa, Tib. shes bya'i sgrib pa). By removing the first, one becomes free of suffering, and by removing the second, one becomes omniscient. Skt. आवरण Tib. སྒྲིབ་པ་

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prabhāsvaratā - In a general sense, that which clears away darkness, though it often appears in Buddhist literature in reference to the mind or its nature. It is a particularly salient feature of Tantric literature, especially in regard to the advanced meditation techniques of the completion-stage yogas. Skt. प्रभास्वर Tib. འོད་གསལ་ Ch. 光明

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