UNCONSCIOUS BELIEFS IN BUDDHIST.pdf

UNCONSCIOUS BELIEFS IN BUDDHIST

PHILOSOPHY: A COMPARATIVE

PERSPECTIVE

David Burton

The notion that our minds have unconscious depths has become commonplace

due to the popularity of psychoanalytic and related therapeutic techniques.

Our conscious minds—that is, those mental processes of which we are aware—are

just the tip of the iceberg, as the clich´ , says. Most mental activity occurs below

the surface, as it were, inaccessible to and often concealed from consciousness.

The two great early-twentieth-century theorists of the unconscious, Sigmund

Freud and Carl Jung, are largely responsible for its wide acceptance in our culture

today. According to Freud, the unconscious is primarily the repository of repressed

impulses, especially those of a sexual nature, that are considered to be socially

unacceptable. Michael Palmer (1997, 94 – 5) remarks that, in Freud’s view, ‘the

unconscious is, as it were, the underside of consciousness: it is that extensive and

dynamic ﬁeld of mental life in which repose ideas and memories censored from

the conscious mind through the powerful mechanisms of repression.’ And Jung

(1953, 66) writes that the unconscious consists of ‘lost memories, painful ideas that

are repressed on purpose (i.e., forgotten on purpose), subliminal perceptions, by

which are meant sense-perceptions that were not strong enough to reach

consciousness, and ﬁnally, contents that are not yet ripe for consciousness.’

Moreover, for Jung, the mind contains a deeper, shared level—that is,

the collective unconscious—which consists of archetypes, such as the animus,

the anima, the hero, the divine mother, and so forth, psychic patterns or

predispositions supposedly common to all human beings. As Palmer (1997, 100)

writes, ‘the collective unconscious represents the impersonal and transpersonal

foundation of the psyche, undergirding both consciousness and the personal

unconscious.’ According to Jung, the symbolism and myths of religion, as well as

the artistic and literary imagination, draw on and give expression to these

archetypes that, Jung claims, occur trans-culturally as the common psychic

bedrock of the human mind.

There have, of course, been many criticisms of Freud and Jung’s theories.

Nevertheless, they are indisputably of huge impor‘tance as popularisers and

Contemporary Buddhism, Vol. 6, No. 2, November 2005

ISSN 1463-9947 print/1476-7953 online/05/020117-130

q 2005 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/14639940500435620

118 D. BURTON

systematisers of the notion of the unconscious mind. However, as signiﬁcant as

Freud and Jung’s contributions are, it seems clear that thinkers from various

cultures have long been aware that the mind has unplumbed depths. One need

look no further than Plato, with his theory that knowledge is recollection of what

one already knows (i.e., the eternal, immutable Forms), which needs to be

retrieved from the hidden recesses of memory, to ﬁnd evidence of an inchoate

notion of the unconscious mind at the root of the Western philosophical tradition.

And when Achilles declares in Troilus and Cressida (III, iii, 308 – 9) that ‘my mind

is troubled, like a fountain stirr’d; And I myself cannot see the bottom of it’

(Blakemore Evans 1974, 474), we can be sure that the idea that one’s mind’s

contents can be concealed from oneself is not conﬁned to ancient Greeks and

modern psychologists. Shakespeare was also aware that one’s own impulses,

desires, and beliefs are frequently unfathomed and perhaps sometimes

unfathomable. Lancelot Law Whyte (1960) argues that the explicit idea of the

unconscious arose in reaction to Cartesian dualism; the benighted Descartes, in

dividing the world into just two substances, res cogitans and res extensia, and

identifying consciousness as a characteristic essential to the former and absent

from the latter, envisaged the mind as a translucent entity with no hidden depths.

For Descartes, to have a mind is to be self-aware, always to know what one

is thinking and feeling. According to Whyte (1960, 27 – 8), it was in response to

Descartes’ choice of awareness ‘as the deﬁning characteristic of an independent

mode of being called mind’ that the idea and eventually the term ‘unconscious

mind’ entered Western thought as a corrective to Cartesianism. Many thinkers

prior to Descartes had, Whyte (1960, 27) contends, ‘taken for granted factors lying

outside but inﬂuencing immediate awareness’; after Descartes’ inﬂuential and,

according to Whyte, erroneous theory, there was a need to make explicit and

defend the position that awareness is not the deﬁning characteristic of mentality

and one’s mind contains dimensions that are not accessible to consciousness.

Whyte’s book is almost entirely focused on Western thought, with just brief

and rather superﬁcial references to Eastern traditions (see, for example, Whyte

1960, 12). My intention in this paper is to help ﬁll this lacuna by providing an

analysis of what I will call ‘unconscious beliefs’ in Buddhism. Of course, scholars

such as Lambert Schmithausen (1987), Padmasiri De Silva (2000) and William

S. Waldron (2003) have already given admirable and detailed textually based

studies of the rich vein of Buddhist speculations about what might be termed the

unconscious mind. In addition, Jungian psychology and its offshoots make much

of Buddhist visual representations and myths concerning Buddhas and

Bodhisattvas, ma _ n dalas, and so forth, as expressive of the archetypes of the

collective unconscious. However, unlike previous studies, this paper will explore

a typology of unconscious beliefs developed by the contemporary Western

epistemologists Nicholas Everitt and Alec Fisher (1995, 54 – 5). They identify three

distinct senses in which beliefs can be unconscious. Although they at no point

make any reference to Buddhist or any other Eastern thinkers, I will argue that

UNCONSCIOUS BELIEFS IN BUDDHIST PHILOSOPHY 119

Everitt and Fisher’s taxonomy can be used to identify ways in which, for Buddhism,

one might have a belief and yet be unaware of it.

This paper is thus an exercise in what is sometimes called comparative

philosophy; it will take ideas developed by two Western thinkers and use them to

explicate and reﬂect on Buddhist ideas that were not originally formulated using

such a typology. Of course, critics of such comparative studies claim that they tend

to be superﬁcial and pointless. It is uninteresting, they claim, to demonstrate that

the thought of a particular thinker or tradition in the East is in certain respects

similar to the reﬂections of a philosopher or philosophers in the West. So what,

they will ask? Indeed, it is possible for comparative philosophy to descend

into banality. However, I hope to show that, in this case, such comparison

can contribute signiﬁcantly to our understanding and interpretation of the

unconscious in Buddhism, helping us to reﬂect on the issues it raises about

the mind and human nature.

Detractors may also argue that such comparison is actually intellectual

colonialism, where violence is unwittingly done to Buddhist ideas in order to make

them conform to Western categories. However, this objection smacks to me

of relativism run amuck. Different cultures are not hermetically sealed monads

without any prospect of interaction or dialogue. While acknowledging that there

is always a tendency to misconstrue the unfamiliar in terms of one’s own culturally

informed biases and interests, I am not so sceptical about the prospects for

genuine conversation between contemporary Western philosophy and Buddhism

or any other system of thought. After all, prejudices can be challenged and not just

conﬁrmed in such an encounter. Nevertheless, there is undeniably a degree of

interpretation and appropriation in this study, given that Buddhists themselves,

as far as I am aware, have not traditionally used any term that could accurately be

translated as ‘unconscious belief’, let alone distinguishing three types! Perhaps

I am guilty of imposing a Western concept onto Buddhist thought, although

I would argue that it is a creative synthesis and development rather than an

imposition. Buddhism is not a museum piece, incapable of adaptation and

transformation when confronted by new ideas. Applying Everitt and Fisher’s

typology to Buddhism will, I think, illuminate Buddhist attitudes to the mind,

providing an opportunity for reﬂection on and assessment of them.

Beliefs as dispositions

Everitt and Fisher claim that one has some beliefs of which one is not

conscious, and never has been conscious. Is this not paradoxical, for surely one has

to have been conscious at some point of one’s belief in order for it to be one’s

belief? It might seem non-sensical to claim that one might have a belief without

ever having been aware of it. However, Everitt and Fisher think not. As an example,

they give the proposition that ‘there are more than ninety-nine ants in the world.’

This is a proposition that, presumably, I have not thought about in the past.

Yet, when it is brought to my attention, I assent to it. Furthermore, this proposition

120 D. BURTON

does not strike me as a revelation; it as though I believed it all along without ever

having thought about it. Bimal Matilal (1986, 102) gives the example of the belief

that ‘the ﬂoor will not melt under my feet’, a belief that ‘I may not have wondered

[sic] or apprehended consciously until today’ but which ‘my action of walking has

always assumed.’ We might choose, with Freud (1971, 102 – 4), to label these

beliefs as pre-conscious, for they are contents of our mind of which we have not

ever been aware. In other words, there are propositions that we are disposed to

accept, but we have never consciously considered—and Everitt and Fisher are

claiming that these dispositions are unconscious beliefs.

This theory has the consequence that each of us has a vast number of

beliefs. There appear to be an indeﬁnitely large number of propositions to which

one would give one’s assent but about which one has never thought (see Moser

et al., 1998, 53 – 4). For instance, not only do I believe that ‘there are more than

ninety-nine ants in the world’, but I also believe ‘there are more than one hundred

ants in the world’, that ‘there are more than one hundred and one ants in the

world’, and so on. In addition, I believe that ‘there are more than ninety-nine

moths in the world’, and so forth. I have never thought about these propositions,

but I would accept them if they were brought to my attention.

Propositions that we have never thought about but that we are disposed to

accept are very signiﬁcant in Buddhism. An important notion in the Therav ¯ da

scriptures is the anusaya, deﬁned by the Pali – English dictionary as ‘a bent, bias,

proclivity, the persistence of a dormant or latent disposition, predisposition,

tendency’ (Rhys Davids and Stede 1995, 44). Waldron (2003, 40 – 1) points out that

these anusayas are described at Majjhima Nik¯ya I 303 as being of three varieties:

the tendency to lust (r¯g¯nusaya), the tendency to aversion ( patigh¯ nusaya), and

the tendency to ignorance (avijj¯nusaya). In other words, there are both emotional

and cognitive hidden proclivities. The anusayas underlie our conscious minds,

and, when the conditions are right, they burst forward as active afﬂictions (kilesa);

that is, manifest experiences of craving, hatred and wrong views.

De Silva (1991, 43) writes that, according to Therav¯ da Buddhism, there

are wrong beliefs that exist in the minds of Unawakened people, unbeknownst

to themselves: ‘Wrong beliefs exist at the level of dormant dispositions

(ditth¯nusaya) and account for the unconscious roots of prejudices and strong

biases which colour our emotional life.’ Most important among these prejudices is

the ‘personality view’ (sakk¯yaditthi); that is, the belief that one has a permanent,

unchanging self. The Majjhima Nik¯ya I 432 – 3, for instance, claims that: ‘The young

tender infant lying prone does not even have the notion “personality”, so how could

personality view arise in him? Yet the underlying tendency [anusaya ] to personality

etc. lies within him’ (trans. ˜ ¯ _ namoli and Bodhi 1995, 537).

De Silva (2000 , 75) also highlights the frequent use of the term ‘¯ sava’ in the

P¯ li scriptures; this term is often translated as ‘taint’ or ‘canker’ and is associated

with the metaphors of an intoxicating extract of a ﬂower or tree and the discharge

of a sore or wound. As with the anusayas, they are thought to be cognitive as well

as emotional. The ¯ savas explain our tendency to ignorance and also selﬁsh desire.

UNCONSCIOUS BELIEFS IN BUDDHIST PHILOSOPHY 121

The mind is said to be tainted or intoxicated by an ¯ sava, which produces the

wrong view that there is a permanent self or soul. It is deeply engrained in the

human psyche even if it has not necessarily been articulated as an explicit view.

Metaphors abound in a variety of Buddhist traditions for the latent

disposition to ignorance. For instance, the Sautr¯ ntika Buddhists refer to it as

a seed (b¯ja) or scent (v¯san¯) that lies dormant, persisting as a potentiality

underlying the ﬂow of momentary conscious mental events, and which comes to

fruition as the wrong view that there is a permanent self. Adopting the Sautr¯ ntika

imagery, and piling metaphor on metaphor, the Yog ¯ c ¯ ra Buddhists claim that the

seed or scent exists, along with many others, in the storehouse consciousness

(¯ layavij˜ ¯na) that, they claim, exists like a subterranean stream below the ever-

changing modes of manifest consciousness ( pravrttivij˜ ¯na); it is the subliminal,

hidden aspect of the mind (see Schmithausen 1987; Waldron 2003).

Clearly, the disposition to accept the permanence of the self is thought to

explain the prevalence of religious and philosophical views that assert the

existence of such an entity. Waldron (2003, 40) notes that, according to Buddhism,

the anusaya manifests in adults as a developed capacity that traps and obsesses

them. For example, it occurs as the religious belief that one has an eternal soul.

The Abhidharmako´a V, 19 (cited in Waldron 2003, 118) distinguishes an innate

view that there is a permanent self (sahaj ¯ satk ¯ yadr sti), said to exist even in

non-human animals, from a deliberated (vikalpita) view that humans hold

when they make explicit, articulate and elaborate the innate view. In Tibetan

Buddhism, Tsong kha pa (see Napper 1987, 84 – 7) and his disciple mKhas grub rje

(see Cabez´ n 1992, 128 – 35) mirror the Abhidharmako´a by distinguishing the

innate or inborn (lhan skyes) misconception, which exists in all sentient beings,

from philosophical (kun brtags) misconceptions, which are an expression and

elaboration of the innate misconception. These Buddhists clearly think there is

a deep-rooted and misguided proclivity to accept the permanence of the self.

They claim that it exists in us whether or not we are aware of it, and it is extremely

difﬁcult to eradicate. Indeed, mKhas grub rje claims that refuting philosophical

misconceptions is preliminary and relatively superﬁcial; this can be merely

a stepping-stone to the removal of the innate misconception. Fundamentally, it is

the innate misconception, although often not articulated and unconscious, that

inﬂuences behaviour; it fuels the selﬁsh desire and attachment that causes

suffering and continued rebirth.

But why does this disposition exist? The common Buddhist answer is that all

of the dispositions, both emotional and cognitive, are karmic formations

(sankhar¯ , samsk¯ r¯) that exist as innate personality traits and are psychological

tendencies that occur as consequences of actions in previous lives. There is no soul

that is reborn, but the process of physical and mental events that is the present life

contains relatively stable affective and cognitive proclivities that are passed on

from past lives. However, this is obviously question begging, as an explanation

needs to be given for the existence of the latent dispositions in previous

existences. Indeed, the Buddhists’ position appears to entail an inﬁnite regress,

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika: