Regretting the madness of Yunjadalda
What is human? Who am I? When these questions arise we naturally focus on the mind rather than on the body. This is because the “I” that I wish to know is the mind which is conscious of the outer world as a whole, including my body, yet which does not exist as an object of cognition, while the body is an object presented to my consciousness just like other objects outside the body. Even when I recognize the mind as an object, the mind which is recognizing the object is of more interest than the objectified mind. If the world is a world perceived by me, who is the “I” that thus perceives the world? How can I know the “I”?
Contemporary philosophers of mind conclude that the mind that perceives the world yet is never objectified by anything does not exist.Footnote 1 They insist that it is in fact a sort of “ghost,” although it may seem to exist. The only things that they consider as real are the things which we can perceive and objectify as objects of the mind; and they believe that anything else must be a ghost even if it seems to be real. If they seriously believe this, they are all modern Yajñadattas.
A: What do you think about Yajñadatta of Śrāvastī who ran away mad because he thought he is a ghost when he could see his eyes and eyebrows only in his head in the mirror but not on his own head? Why would he run away mad?
B: His mind is mad; there is no other reason.
A: (Right.) He has the bright spiritual consciousness and the ground of his mind is bright and keen. How is it possible for him to have reason to be mad? If there is a reason, why would it be “madness”? Mad thoughts become reasons themselves and accumulate bewilderment throughout the passage of time. Even if the Buddha is to shine upon it, the process would not be reversed. Bewilderment is its own reason and has no other reasons; once we acknowledge this, there is no reason to be mad. . . . Yajñadatta of Śrāvastī must not have had certain reason in fearing his own head. Even if the madness disappears all of a sudden, it is not that the head is obtained from the outside, and if the madness remains, would that be loss of anything?Footnote 2
“Know yourself!” read the words written on the shrine of Delphi. All human beings want to know themselves and want to see themselves clearly in order to know themselves. Wanting to see the I that is seeing the I, in fact, drives us crazy. When one looks at oneself, one has to look at the one looking at the one, and the process is endless. The looking “I” is never to be perceived.
The head of Yajñadatta in the previous conversation is an allegory of “the mind as a looking I.” Yajñadatta who madly runs away thinking that he is a ghost without a head because he cannot see his head is not too different from the modern men who believe that their minds do not exist because they cannot see them. They share the belief that existence is demonstrated by the objectivity and that anything unseeable is non-existent. Yajñadatta becomes crazy because he thought that it was only him that lacked a head; but modern men believe that the mind does not exist in general and never seek for it or go crazy for the lack of it. Or, modern men are just not able to recognize their insanity since all are running around crazy. We live as ghosts that do not truly know ourselves.
What is the mind whose existence we do not recognize just like the head of Yajñadatta? What is the mind that cannot be objectified in the third person perspective? How can we acknowledge the existence of that mind?
The phenomenal world: a cognitive world constructed according to the language system
The mind is known through activity. When I find that the leaves outside the window flutter and that the birds sing from far away, this seeing and hearing occurs through the eyes and the ears. The leaves and the songs of the birds have affected the cerebral neural cells; but I do not perceive them in the eyes, in the ears, or in the brain, but see and hear them as they exist outside. How is this possible? Which is my mind or consciousness and which is the outer world? Which is the subjective and which is the objective? Where is the seeing and hearing mind located?Footnote 3
“Sensation” refers to accepting stimuli such as color or sound, and “perception” refers to noticing the sensations and recognizing them as such color or such sound. However, sensation and perception do not occur simultaneously but successively. It takes no more than a moment, but in this very moment a great change occurs. What happens?
The disparity of time between perception and sensation signifies that the object of sensation which has provided the stimuli no longer exists at the moment of perception. Perception then is a remembrance; and the perceived world is, strictly speaking, a non-existent world rather than an existing world. Nevertheless, we believe that we are perceiving the world as it is; this is because we consider the object of sensation and the object of perception as identical or continuous. However, its identity cannot be verified. When I see a star which is located 100 million light-years away, thus perceived star is not a present star but a star of 100 million years ago. There exists a time difference in every objectification, and the spatially perceived world is in fact a world of the past, a remembered world, a “fictitious world” which seems to be real yet in fact does not exist. At the moment when sensation turns into perception, we have moved into the fictitious world.
The fictitious world of perception is a world of our own making. The way in which we construct the world of perception through organizing sensory information in the perceptive system is based on our memory system, or our conceptualizing system. For instance, acknowledging something as “a dark green leaf” and recognizing a sound as “a clear birdsong” does not happen of its own accord. Myriads of similar sensory experiences and the remembrance of them is necessary, and the information accumulated has to be compared and classified to construct a language system through conceptualization in order to perceive objects as discriminate things. Only by following the language system can we recognize what we see as “green” instead of “red,” “dark” instead of “light,” and what we hear as “a birdsong” instead of a “human voice,” or as “a clear sound” instead of “a harsh sound.” If things are not defined linguistically, the consciousness would not be able to discriminate between them. Those with abundant vocabulary on colors possess a better sense of color, and those with detailed vocabulary on sound possess a detailed sense of sound. If there were no words or concepts to classify and define all the passing senses, it would be hard to recognize things discriminately. Perception is a discriminative cognition and it follows the language system. Thus, the world of perception is the thought world we draw according to our discriminative conceptualization system, the fictitious world of our own making.
At the moment when sensation turns to perception, we are drawn into the fictitious thought world which our language constructs according to the abstract thought system or the language system. The phenomenal world we perceive is not a world that exists as it is, but a world objectified according to our thought system, the world that is discriminated and organized according to our language system of conceptualization.
What happens to sensation, then, at the moment right before perception occurs? In what state are we right before the linguistic discriminative recognition occurs according to the thought system? What is there beyond the fictitious perceptual world which is objectified according to our language system?
Beyond the phenomenal world: the substance theory vs. the non-ego theory
1. The substance theory
Perception is to recognize the passing objects by identifying them as such and such. For instance, perception is recognizing something as “the green of a leaf,” and this recognition is only possible on the basis of a cognitive system and a language system containing information such as “leaves are green, small, and light.” Perception occurs according to the formula “x is F,” the “subject-predicate” structure. In other words, recognizing something that is given x (subject) as F1, F2, F3… (predicates) is perception. By x we indicate the designator, and by F1, F2, F3 the descriptive words which describe and define x. To say that the perceptual world is a fictitious world created by our conceptualizing system means that the predicates F1, F2, F3, which describe and define x, depend on our own classification system. As the Jastrow effect has revealed, whether we perceive x as a rabbit or a duck depends on which cognitive system, which language system, and which predicates we use to define x (see fig.1). Thus, questioning the moment right before perception, or questioning what is beyond the perceptual fictitious world, is questioning what x is before being defined as F1, F2, or F3. What is x before it is recognized through our conceptualizing system?
Figure 1. The duck-rabbit (Reference JastrowJastrow, 1901).
The “number” of Pythagoras or the “idea” of Plato is the form or eidos, and it belongs to the concept, language, general paradigm through which we define various things in the world. We perceive and evaluate the world through those general concepts and normative thought system, and each individual thing is defined and recognized through the system. Plato has distinguished the defining idea and the defined copy, the general thought system and the individual objects of perception into the world of idea and the phenomenal world, the intelligible world and the visible world; however, these two worlds are not that far apart from each other. The two are “our own concept system” and “the world perceived through that system”; these are the two sides of the fictitious perceptual world. What matters more is what lies beyond the two worlds, beyond the perceptual phenomenal world. In the Timaeus, Plato examines the “third kind”:
The new starting point in my account of the universe needs to be more complex than the earlier one. Then we distinguished two kinds, but now we must specify a third, one of a different sort. The earlier two sufficed for our previous account: one was proposed as a model, intelligible and always changeless, a second as an imitation of the model, something that possesses becoming and is visible. We did not distinguish a third kind at the time, because we thought that we could make do with the two of them. Now, however, it appears that our account compels us to attempt to illuminate in words a kind that is difficult and vague. What must we suppose it to do and to be? This above all: it is a receptacle of all becoming – its wetnurse, as it were. (Timaeus, 48e–49a)
For instance, if a leaf (x) was green (F1) and then changed to brown (F2), it means that x was at first defined by the form F1 and then redefined by F2 after being released from the form F1. As the defining F changes, the defined color of the leaf also changes. As such, there needs to be a third kind of x which differs from both the defining form and the defined color. What is x before it is defined by the form or the idea? What is x before it is perceived through the language system or the thought system? Augustine also questions this exact point.
The mutability [x] of mutable things itself embraces all the shapes [F] into which mutable things can change. And what is this mutability[x]? Surely not the mind? Nor the body either? Nor the form of the mind or body? (Confessions, xii, 6.6)
When we perceive that “x is F’, defining x as F, we do not equate x with F; we consider x as something beyond F. For example, when a leaf changes from green to brown, we think that the leaf itself is still a leaf which just changed colors. We consider that the thing x remains an identical entity even when the attribute F changes. In Western metaphysics, this self-identical thing is called a “substance.” A substance is defined as “the thing that does not change in itself and carries the attributes in the fundamentals of the changing attributes.”
Substantialists consider that our perceptual world is based on these individual substances x. Thus, they believe that the self-identity of the object is maintained, while sensation proceeds to perception. Yet x cannot be perceived as it is; therefore, Augustine wants to know what x is and whether it is a spiritual or a material thing. Much later, Descartes classifies the substance x according to its attributes. If an attribute F is material, the x with such attribute is a material extended substance (res extensa), and if an attribute is spiritual, the substance with such spiritual attribute is a spiritual thinking substance (res cogitans). He argues that in both extended and thinking substances, there exists an individual substance, the self-identical x, beneath the changes in attributes.Footnote 4
However, is it true that there exists an individualized self-identical substance x which carries the attributes? Is not substance x actually one of the signs of our concept system which organizes and classifies the attributes? In this sense, Kant explains that the “substance” is one of the “categories” of our thought system.Footnote 5 Hegel emphasizes that the “thing in itself” (Ding an sich) of Kant cannot be the individual x given to the sensations. If an individual x is given to sensations, we would call it “this.” And do we not call all the individualized things as “this” here and now? In the end, we see universality instead of individuality where we expected to encounter individualized substance. Hegel explains in the Phänomenologie des Geistes that thus our consciousness is frustrated by the certainty of sensation and goes over to perception. As long as we continue to maintain the substance theory, we are drawn back into the world of perception. If the sensory frustration were to be coped with by acknowledging the empty space of the individualized substance x, a mind outside the conceptual system, a mind beyond the phenomenal world, might be revealed.
2. The non-ego theory
Western metaphysics argues that the x which remains free from our conceptual definition refers to the substance of an object. Even when the attributes of the object change, it maintains that there exists an individualized substance x which does not change fundamentally. Buddhism does not believe in the individual substance x, which remains unchanging throughout the changes in time. The theory that there exists no self (atman) as a self-identical individual substance in the fundamentals is the “non-ego” theory.
a. Not-ego (非我)
The first step in discussing “non-ego” is to recognize that there is no self-identical substance in what we usually consider as the “I.” The body (色), the feeling (受), the perception (想), the intention (行), and the consciousness (識) are all given as the object of consciousness, and all change in the passage of time. None of these make up the “I” (x), and all are changing attributes F. From these, the not-ego theory emerges which argues that the five-assembles (五蘊) are not the self x.
However, the not-ego, which considers that the five-assembles are not the ego (x), differs from the non-ego, which considers that there is no ego (x). The not-ego presupposes the self x, but the non-ego denies the existence of the self x.
b. Non-ego (無我)
The second step in discussing non-ego is to recognize that there is no individualized self x. There are attributes or functions of the ego but the self-identical ego x does not exist. There we arrive at the concept of “non-ego” which signifies the non-existence of the ego.
However, how can we demonstrate that the ego x does not exist? Proving that something exists is possible; but proving that something does not exist is rather impossible. Thus, the non-ego theory which argues that the individual substance x does not exist cannot be demonstrated.
c. Self-emptiness (我空)
Nevertheless, if there remains nothing except for the emptiness itself when we remove the attributes F from the individual things, then we can conclude that the individual substance x does not exist. So, the third step in discussing non-ego is to demonstrate that when we eliminate the attributes F, there remains only emptiness. If the ego exists, there must be the ego itself (x) in place of the total elimination of one's attributes; but there remains only emptiness. Thus, x is not an individual substance but emptiness. Here we arrive at the concept of “self-emptiness” which means that the ego is emptiness.
However, how can we acknowledge that the space in which I believe I exist is in fact an empty space, emptiness itself? We can only talk about non-ego after we acknowledge the emptiness. And if the place is really empty, there would not be the “I” that acknowledges emptiness. Yet if the I that acknowledges the emptiness of the place exists, then it is not really emptiness. How can I acknowledge the emptiness in a definite sense and talk about the non-ego?
d. Only-mind (唯心)
The last dilemma is to be resolved through the fact that the emptiness I wish to know is not different from the “I” but is the “I” myself, through the fact that “I” exists as the mind which is aware of its emptiness. I am aware of the emptiness which occurs when all attributes of mind are eliminated, and the mind which is aware of the emptiness is the “I.” The empty space that remains after eliminating all attributes is the space of my mind; the empty space is my mind. I find my identity as emptiness in the empty space. The empty mind feeling myself empty is the “I.”
There is no individualized x beyond the phenomenal world (non-ego); the space is rather empty (self-emptiness) and there exists only the mind that is aware of the emptiness (Only-Mind/ Consciousness-Only). The empty mind that is aware of the emptiness is the “I.” The question about what there is beyond the phenomenal world can be answered with “the mind.” Arguments such as “there is no substance” or “the subject is dead” arise from the mind which looks at the emptiness. It is not that I simply do not exist; I exist as the mind. Being aware of the “I” through emptiness and being aware of the emptiness through the “I” are the same. The awareness of the emptiness is the self-awareness of the mind.
If I do exist as an empty mind, why is it a non-ego? The emptiness which is revealed when all the attributes of the “I” are eliminated is not discriminated from the emptiness that occurs when the attributes of other individual objects are eliminated. So, the emptiness inside the “I” is not different from the emptiness that the others find in themselves. The mind of emptiness is the same, universal mind, the One-mind (一心). There is nothing that discriminates and differentiate you and I in the One-mind; there is nothing to call “you” or “I.” Going beyond the discrimination of I and the other is called non-ego.
The fact that the emptiness in the “I” is not different from the emptiness in any other person or thing signifies that the emptiness is one emptiness, one empty space, one base. And it means that my mind, your mind, and his mind, as the awareness of emptiness, are all one mind. I embrace the emptiness of the whole through the emptiness in me and the awareness of the empty mind leads to becoming one mind with all other beings. At the moment when I recognize myself as emptiness, I am able to acknowledge that all other people and other things are not the individual substance x but empty bases and empty minds just like I am.
Looking beyond the phenomenon: the sensory world resonates with the One-mind
Being aware of emptiness is to become an empty base, an empty mind. Only when I become an empty base or an empty mind which embraces the whole phenomenal world can I acknowledge that I am the mind beyond the phenomenal world and that the phenomenal world is a fictitious world drawn on my mind. The perceptual world constructed by our conceptual system is a picture drawn on the base of the mind and it is a hologram universe floating in the empty space. At the moment we become the empty base of the whole world, we know that our phenomenal world is a fictitious perceptual world constructed by our language system, and that our mind is the mind beyond that phenomenal world.
At the moment when I feel myself as emptiness, the moment when I realize the non-ego, I transcend the world of perception. While going from sensation to perception is a movement from existing in the moment to being involved in the passage of time, realizing that I am emptiness and that I am the empty mind beyond my attributes is a movement back into the moment escaping from the passage of time. In this way, I escape the language system and the perceptual world which is constructed according to the passage of time. This is going back to the world of sensation, to the moment before perception.
It is like suddenly waking up after having wandered in a dream world for a long time. In the same way that we come to realize that the dream world is an imaginative work of the mind when we wake up, we also come to realize that the phenomenal world we perceive is a product of our imagination when we wake up from the everyday world. Everything works like an individual substance in the dream, but all the discrimination in the dream becomes vain after we wake up. If we go beyond the discrimination and return to the base, the empty mind, all is one. At the moment right before perception occurs, we exist as the undiscriminating one in sensation.
According to the perceptual discriminating consciousness, the leaf and the eyes that sees the leaf, the song of a bird and the ears that hear the song, are divided into object and subject, outside and inside; however, the fact that we perceive the color as a certain color out there where the leaf is instead of in our eyes or brain, and that we perceive the sound as coming from the bird instead of perceiving being in our ears or brain demonstrates that our mind is already out there. At the moment right before perception occurs, the eyes and the color, the ears and the sound, exist in the same place, undiscriminating in the world of sensation. Although all are divided into subject and object and into inside and outside in perception, all exist as the undiscriminating one in sensation. We do not associate the originally discriminated objective and subjective through perception; we divide the originally undivided one into subject and object, inside and outside, through perception. The discrimination between subject and object, inside and outside occurs only after the process of conceptual perception, the objectification of consciousness.
While perception is to divide inside and outside, to discriminate subject and object by objectifying all things according to the conceptual thought system, sensation is the mind in which the divisions are not yet made and all things resonate as one in the deep structure. It is the state of mind in which the division at the surface is not yet made and thus the subject and object, the sensory faculty (根) and the object (境), resonate as one. Thus, at the moment when we see, the seeing mind and the seen colors are not divided; at the moment when we hear, the hearing mind and the heard sound are not divided. Our mind resonates as one following the waves of the colors we see, the sounds we hear, and the pains we feel. The world of sensation before perception is the world of one mind which resonates in waves, the world of One-mind.
How far does this mind resonate before perception occurs? Even if the birds are singing, I would not recognize it if I am focused on something else at the moment. However, I am already listening to the birds singing at the moment. The recognition of the ceasing of certain noise means that I was actually listening to the noise even before I knew that I was listening to it. Even when the superficial consciousness does not recognize discriminatively, the inner mind is aware of it. Thus, the resonance of the mind moves further than the perceptual consciousness. While I do not recognize it, I listen to the sounds of the ocean waves and winds thousands of miles away, and I also resonate with the waves of the whole earth, or the whole universe, including the moon and the stars. Before I consciously perceive, I am already resonating with the waves of the whole world. I exist with the whole world as One-mind.
Our mind does resonate with the universe. However, the resonance only operates within a moment and is not recognized in the perceptual world which is conceptually discriminated according to the passage of time. When it is objectified, the momentary resonance disappears, and the whole turns into the fictitious world which is conceptually discriminated according to our own frame of thought. Sensation in the ordinary meaning has already become the sensation perceived by discriminative consciousness; it is the conceptualized sensation. However, the sensation beyond conceptual self-identity, the sensation we cannot perceive as an objectified entity, belongs to the deep-mind, the mind more profound than perceptual consciousness. The deep-mind deeper than consciousness is the world where sensory faculty and object, subject and object, “I” and the whole universe, dance as one and resonate as one.
The self-awareness of the mind
One-mind is a mind which resonates with the whole world beyond the discrimination between subject and object or self and other. Since it is beyond discrimination of all kinds, One-mind is the infinity which has no limits and is the absolute which does not have the other outside oneself. One-mind is the mind of the absolute and the infinite.
However, is it possible for us to know the mind of the infinite and the absolute? How are we to recognize its existence when it has no limits and no other? Moreover, how can I acknowledge the existence of it when the One-mind is “I” myself and cannot be objectified? Regarding this, Kant states that the transcendental self which is not given as an object of intuition cannot be known,Footnote 6 and Wittgenstein argues that the philosophical self which is the eye seeing the world cannot be seen and thus cannot be known, and that we should not talk about what we do not know.Footnote 7 According to this, knowing x means that we know x as something that is not “not-x,” and thus also means that we need the knowledge about the not-x which is the other of x; and if the x is the absolute which has no other, we cannot know the x as x. They believe that the fish which is always in the water and knows not the outside of water cannot know the water. Thus, they pay attention only to the perceptible discriminations of the phenomenal world and not to the undiscriminated mind which is the base of the phenomenal world.
However, eastern philosophers emphasize that the mind is already aware of the mind itself. Is it possible that the fish does not know the water or that we do not realize our mind as a whole? If a fish is only able to know the water once it is outside the water, how can it know the outside of the water when it did not know it inside? To know the lack of water when it is put outside the water, it ought to already know what the water is when it is inside the water. Thus, the fish already knows the water when it is inside the water. We are already aware of the whole mind, the infinite and absolute mind which embraces the whole universe.
While all that is perceived by the mind is the fictitious perceptual world constructed through the language system and takes the “shape” (相) drawn by the mind, the mind itself is the base of the whole perceptual world and thus it is the “self” (性) which is the base of all shapes. Buddhism refers to this self-awareness as “sung-ja-sin-hae” (性自神解) meaning that the “self” is divinely aware of itself, and also calls this “gong-juk-young-ji” (空寂靈知) meaning the holy knowing of the emptiness.Footnote 8 “Gong-juk” means the emptiness and tranquillity beyond the discriminative perception and “young-ji” means the holy self-awareness of that mind. This self-awareness of the mind is called the “original enlightenment” (本覺). In Confucianism, the mind divinely recognizing the mind itself before all discrimination is called “heo-ryong-bul-mae” (虛靈不昧) or “unawakened Perception” (未發知覺). Eastern philosophy emphasizes that there exists self-awareness of the mind which resonates with all the living beings and the whole universe; and the practice aims at realizing and expanding this self-awareness of the mind. That we exist as One-mind and that we can realize the One-mind ourselves can be ultimately demonstrated only through becoming One-mind beyond all conceptual arguments.
Conclusion: escape Yajñadatta's madness
Yajñadatta de Śrāvastī does not have the reason to become mad because he “has the bright spiritual consciousness and the ground of his mind is bright and keen.” Yajñadatta already has the “bright spiritual consciousness” and the “original enlightenment.” Since he is aware of what is mind, he is prone to question its existence when he cannot see it. If he has never realized its existence, he would not be curious nor wish to see it. The problem is that even though the mind is the subject of consciousness, it wants to see itself as an object:
The nature (性) is originally enlightened; trying to enlighten it again makes it vain.Footnote 9
When the mind objectifies the mind itself, those that were not phantasm turn into phantasm.Footnote 10
The enlightenment of nature (性) means the original awareness of the self, the “original enlightenment.” In other words, the mind is originally enlightened because of the original enlightenment. Therefore, trying to enlighten the mind, objectifying the mind is a vain pursuit. When the mind tries to objectify the mind, the objectified mind is no longer the original infinite mind but instead the objectified relative mind. By being objectified, the mind becomes a form (相), the phantasm which belongs to the fictitious perceptual world. When that happens, it is no longer the original infinite mind, and those deceived by the phantasm may say that there is no infinite mind. But the mind that says that is the infinite mind which is believed not to exist. Talking about its non-existence demonstrates the existence of the mind; and not realizing the irony of this self-negation indeed is madness.
The modern thought which only acknowledges what they see as real entity and regards the mind as nonentity resembles this madness of Yajñadatta. Without realizing one's own mind as One-mind which sees the world, one is prone to focus only on the distinction and discrimination of the superficial consciousness. The result, then, is living without realizing our One-mind which resonates with the whole. The “Uri” (we) human community, the “Uri” (fence) of the whole universe, and the sensibility to resonate with the whole life is forgotten, leaving only islands of individuals, the island of the imagination. That the madness of modern man resembles Yajñadatta is especially distressing for this reason.
To escape this madness, we have to overcome the objectifying obsession to look at everything as objects, or the blind faith of scientism which tries to conceptualize and discriminate everything. It has to be accepted that the subject rather than the thing objectified, and the activity of seeing rather than the thing seen, is of primary value in life. In addition, it has to be accepted that resonating communication is more beautiful than discrimination, and that tao (道) which tries to empty itself is more valuable than learning (學) which tries to accumulate. Only through this emptying of the mind would the true self-awareness of the mind be possible.
