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The dependent arising of a cognitive unconscious in Buddhism and science

W. S. Waldron a
a
Dept of Religion, Middlebury College, Middlebury, VT, USA

Online Publication Date: 01 November 2002

To cite this Article Waldron, W. S.(2002)'The dependent arising of a cognitive unconscious in Buddhism and science',Contemporary
Buddhism,3:2,141 — 160
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 Contemporary Buddhism, Vol. 3, No. 2, 2002 13 Routledge
g ^ TaylorLFrancisCtoup

The dependent arising of a

cognitive unconscious in
Buddhism and science
W. S. Waldron
Middlebury College, Vermont, USA

There is a growing consensus in Western thought and science that we may

understand ourselves and our world more deeply if we think in terms of patterns
of relationships rather than of reified essences or independent entities—if we
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think, that is, in the traditional Buddhist terms of dependent arising. This essay
explores some of the common ground between these two perspectives by
focusing upon two core Buddhist concepts, the dependent arising of our 'world
of experience', and the notion of vijnāna, 'discerning cognitive awareness' or
simply 'consciousness', ultimately arriving at its most important development in
the Yogacara school of Indian Buddhism, the alaya-vijñana, a form of sublim-
inal cognitive awareness or 'unconscious structuring of the world'. We will
draw upon ideas from such modern fields as general systems theory, evolution-
ary biology and cognitive science in order to elucidate these ancient Buddhist
notions, resulting in provocatively different, yet to my mind more evocatively
contemporary, interpretations of key Buddhist concepts. Rather than pursue a
simple point-by-point comparison between these traditions, however, we shall
seek to invoke their commonalities by engaging in an inductive, almost
phenomenological inquiry into the arising of 'the world of experience' without
an experiencer.
To anticipate both the structure and argument of this essay, we will focus on
a number of areas where Indian Buddhist thought constructively converges with
current trends in scientific approaches to mind. They both focus upon patterns
of dependent relationships rather than on actions of independent entities; within
which cognitive awareness (vijnāna) is understood as a process that arises by
depending upon conditions, rather than a faculty that operates by acting upon
objects. Such cognitive awareness arises as an awareness of differences within
a correlative cognitive domain, rather than as a perception of objects within a
pre-existing external world. These cognitive domains, moreover, are thought to
have arisen through processes of circular causality (feedback systems), which
were in large part brought about by those very discernments of difference. And
such discernments are thought to arise, in part, through unconscious processes
pre-formed by linguistic classifications, rather than through conscious processes
performing rational procedures.
This 'linguistification' of human mental processes gives rise in turn to a
symbolic self, which is dependent upon the reflexive possibilities of language
usage rather than reflective of the existence of substantive souls. And finally,
ISSN 1463-9947 print; 1476-7953 online/02/020141-21 © 2002 Taylor & Francis Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/1463994032000068555
 142 W. S. Waldron

the notion of a 'cognitive unconscious' epitomizes all of the aforementioned

points: it develops through evolutionary processes of circular causality, which
give rise to forms of awareness without an experiencing subject, by means of
which our 'world of experience' is continuously yet unconsciously constructed,
classified, and mapped. This unconscious structuring of experience, both per-
spectives submit, imparts the cogency of human experience, with its deep sense
of subjective coherence, without relying upon essential or substantive causal
agents, either external or internal. In this way, at least some Buddhist thinkers
and some modern scientists have reached some accord in ways to think about
'Thoughts without a Thinker'.

The 'dependent arising of the world' as phenomenology of experi-

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ence
Indian Buddhists observed that we can best understand complex causality—how
things come to be—by understanding the systemic relations in which they are
involved and the patterns of dependence upon which they arise; that is, by
understanding their 'dependent arising'. As we shall see, this formula subse-
quently became the basis for a Buddhist model of circular causality wherein
certain specified patterns of conditions continuously feedback upon themselves,
reinforcing their own evolutionary processes.
The classical Indian Buddhist conception of causality1 is singularly expressed
in this simple formula of dependent arising:

When this is, that comes to be; with the arising of this, that arises. When
this is not, that does not come to be; with the cessation of this, that ceases.
(M II 32, etc.)

One of the most important implications of this model is that it dispenses with
the notion of fixed entities or unchanging essences altogether. Instead of asking
how independent entities act within or upon an objective world, the view of
dependent arising asks 'under what conditions does such and such a phenom-
enon arise?' or, more elaborately, 'what various complex conditions interact in
what recurrently patterned ways in order to routinely give rise to what kind of
phenomena?'.2
In other words, our attention shifts away from a concern with independent
agents acting on independent objects, the entrenched grammatical syntax of
conventional language,3 and towards an investigation of the complex, proces-
sual and interactive arising of things. But this requires focusing upon patterns
of arising rather than on agents of action—and patterns are relational, not
substantive, and arising is dynamic, not static.4 The Buddhist dismissal of
selves, essences or unchanging entities, therefore, derives not so much from
logical propositions or first principles, such as 'all is change', as much as it
follows from the nature of its questions: 'how do things come to be?'—a point
that is all the more obvious by a similar disavowal of essences,5 entities or
substantive selves6 in modem science.
 Cognitive Unconscious in Buddhism and Science 143

This is the conceptual framework, the causal syntax if you will, within which
most early Buddhist analyses of mind took place. It is an attempt to describe
and understand experience as it arises. It is, in a word, a phenomenology of
consciousness.

The dependent arising of cognitive awareness

This is well exemplified in the concept of vijnāna (P. viññana), 'cognitive
awareness' or 'consciousness', the central-most concept in Buddhist analysis of
mind. Although the Buddha7 declared that in general 'Apart from conditions,
there is no arising of cognitive awareness' (M I 258), each specific form of
cognitive awareness arises in conjunction with particular factors; for example,
'Visual cognitive awareness arises dependent on the eye and (visual) form' (S
II 73). That is, a moment of cognitive awareness {vijnāna) arises8 when an
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object appears in a sense field, impinging upon its respective sense organ. Sense
object and sense organ (or faculty) are thus correlatively defined, for a visual
object is, by definition, the kind of stimulus that can impinge upon an eye.
Although it is common to speak of cognitive awareness as if it actively
cognizes objects, in the syntax of dependent arising cognitive awareness does
not actually cognize anything—it simply is the awareness that arises when the
requisite conditions come together.9 Vasubandhu, author of the fifth-century
Abhidharma-kośa, makes precisely this point:
The sūtra teaches: 'By reason of the organ of sight and of visible matter
there arises the visual consciousness': there is not there either an organ
that sees, or visible matter that is seen; there is not there any action of
seeing, nor any agent that sees; this is only a play of cause and effect. In
the light of [common] practice, one speaks, metaphorically, of this
process: 'The eye sees, and the consciousness discerns.' But one should
not cling to these metaphors. (AKBh, Prüden 1988, 118)10
In other words, to interpret vijnāna as an act of cognition rather than an
occurrence of awareness is to ignore the syntax of dependent arising, which
takes no active subject. Once again, the traditional Buddhist denial of a
substantive, unchanging entity may be seen as less a metaphysical position than
a function of its mode of analysis.1 '
Cognition, in these terms, is thus neither purely subjective nor wholly
objective. Like a transaction that takes place between individuals, cognitive
awareness occurs at the interface, the concomitance of a sense organ and its
correlative stimulus. Cognitive awareness is thus neither an exact 'mirror of
nature' that reflects things 'as they are'—since what constitutes an 'object' is
necessarily defined by the capacities of a particular sense organ—nor is it a
unilateral projection of a priori categories—since the cognitive capacities of a
sense organ are similarly defined by the kinds of stimuli that may impinge upon
them. 12 This entails a number of far-reaching implications, for discerning
cognitive awareness is not only an event that occurs temporally, but one that
equally depends upon relational distinctions—and relational distinctions, it
should be clear, are hardly substances.
 144 W. S. Waldron

The dependent arising of awareness [vijnāna] of difference

Perception operates only on difference. All receipt of information is
necessarily the receipt of news of difference. (Bateson 1979, 31)

In his popular book Mind and Nature, Bateson (1979, 120-1) compares
cognitive processes with a simple electric switch:

the switch, considered as a part of an electric circuit, does not exist when
it is in the on position. From the point of view of the circuit, it is not
different from the conducting wire which leads to it and the wire which
leads away from it. It is merely 'more conductor'. Conversely, but
similarly, when the switch is off, it does not exist from the point of view
of the circuit. It is nothing, a gap between two conductors which
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themselves exist only as conductors when the switch is on. In other

words, the switch is not except at the moments of its change of setting,
and the concept 'switch' has thus a special relation to time. It is related
to the notion 'change' rather than to the notion 'object'.

The switch exists, as a switch, only at the moment of switching; otherwise it

remains indistinguishable from the rest of the circuit. Our sense organs function
similarly, Bateson avers: they only operate relative to, that is, are only triggered
by, changes in stimuli, by events. Bateson is not simply parroting the ancient
platitude that 'everything changes'. 13 Rather, he is suggesting the more funda-
mental notion that change is constitutive of perception itself. Hence, to even
speak of perception is necessarily to speak of events—and this is to speak in
terms of dependent arising.
Moreover, just as the switch does not exist, for the circuit, except while the
switch is switching, so too distinct stimuli do not exist, for a cognitive system,
except insofar as they also involve contextual differences. An absolutely
isolated or absolutely camouflaged object would be imperceptible. This is not
to say that 'differences are perceived' (which would abandon the syntax of
dependent arising), but rather that such differences are constitutive of perception
in the same way that change is. To even speak of perception, therefore, is
necessarily to speak of contextual differences. Awareness of differences, how-
ever, does not arise outside of a context, since differences only occur between
phenomena. Contextual differences, in other words, have no singular location.
As Bateson (1979, 109) observes: 'Difference, being of the nature of relation-
ship, is not located in time or in space'. Since differences arise contextually
rather than independently, and are episodic rather than enduring, they have no
substantive existence. Not being substances, they neither come nor go any-
where.
These ideas suggest an interesting approach to the elusive notion of dharma
in Abhidharma thought. Abhidharma represents a systematic attempt to analyze
the arising of experience in terms of discrete factors, in terms of momentary14
and distinctive events called dharmasP A dharma refers, in other words, to
each momentary and distinct aspect of experience insofar as it is understood as
 Cognitive Unconscious in Buddhism and Science 145

a conditioning factor, a stimulus, in the arising of cognitive awareness. It

follows, therefore, from the mode of analysis outlined earlier that these dharmas
neither arise from anywhere nor go anywhere. That is, dharmas have no actual
substance or any singular location; they are neither a 'something' nor a
'nothing', ontologically speaking.16
These are, of course, the same conclusions we drew from our analysis of
perception, except that now they are reflexively applied to the systemic
differentiations between the terms of analysis themselves. Abhidharma, in other
words, is a 'metapsychology', which self-consciously 'deals with the various
concepts and categories of consciousness as the primary objects of investiga-
tion' (Piatigorsky 1984, 8). Thus, while dharmas may ultimately refer to
experiential phenomena, what counts as a dharma in any system of description
must always be distinguished from other dharmas. Dharmas cannot therefore
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refer to independent, self-sufficient entities. Or rather, and more precisely, we

cannot speak about the 'true nature' of a dharma outside of a given system of
analysis.17
What can serve as a stimulus in the arising of cognitive awareness, moreover,
is not merely correlative to our sense organs or faculties, but more deeply
depends upon the implicit schemas that are enstroctured into the way those
organs and faculties operate. We cannot help but see something as red rather
than blue, hearing pitches as high or low, feeling distinct textures or tempera-
tures, or smelling odors odious or enticing. Since such distinctions are
constitutive of cognitive awareness, the classifications they depend upon are
also indispensable for the arising of any moment of discerning cognitive
awareness (vijnāna). As cognitive scientists Lakoff and Johnson point out:

Categorization is ... a consequence of how we are embodied ... We

categorize as we do because we have the brains and bodies we have and
because we interact in the world the way we do ... What that means is
that the categories we form are part of our experience] (1999, 18-19)18

Our cognitions and distinctions, and the implicit schemas that inform them, thus
constitute and construct our 'world' of experience.

Circular causality brings forth a world: biology

Our capacities for such awareness of distinctions did not arise uncaused, nor are
they without their own consequences. They developed in dependence upon
previous kinds of experience and, in turn, condition the kinds of experience, the
kinds of cognitive awareness, that may arise in the future. The momentary
arising of an awareness of differences is thus embedded in a larger feedback
cycle in which 'the effects of differences are to be regarded as transforms of the
difference which preceded them' (Bateson 1979, 121) These two inter-related
notions—circular causality, in the form of recursive feedback processes; and
epigénesis, the process wherein the results of previous events serve as the basis
for succeeding ones—provide another important arena where Buddhist philoso-
 146 W. S. Waldron

phy has much in common with scientific models of causality, particularly those
of cognitive science and evolutionary biology.
Stimuli are always impinging upon the sense organs, giving rise to forms of
cognitive awareness, however subtle; and these processes continuously but
subtly modulate the structures of these organs, which in turn influences their
receptivity to subsequent stimuli.19 These two processes—that living itself
entails continuous moments of cognitive awareness and that cognitive aware-
ness entails continuous modification of living structure—illustrate the reciprocal
causal relation between the structure of sense organs and the arising of
cognitive awareness. These reciprocal processes, however, not only occur at the
micro level of cognition, but also at the macro level of evolution. Both
evolutionary biology and the view of dependent arising also articulate models
of circular causality in order to describe how things come into being over
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the long term through the recursive, accumulative processes of feedback

causality.20
This implies, in the biological view, that the very minds and bodies we
embody today reflect the gradually accumulated results of reproductively
successful interactions between our forebears and their natural and social
environments. As with our analysis of cognitive awareness, evolutionary theory
here shifts our attention from the arising of entities to the recurrent patterns of
interaction. 'What evolves', biological philosophers Maturana and Várela
observe, 'is always a unit of interactions' (1980, 12), neither the organism by
itself, and certainly not the environment alone, but rather the organism-in-
environment. In other words, it is patterns of interaction that evolve,21 repre-
senting for each species an 'evolution of [its] cognitive domains'.22 And,
similarly and reciprocally, the evolution of its cognitive domain is the evolution
of the 'world'—for that kind of organism—a process Maturana and Várela call
a 'structural coupling with the world'.
What constitutes the 'world' or 'environment' for any given organism,
therefore, depends upon these evolved cognitive structures. We cannot speak of
an independent, objective world that organisms have access to, because 'the
domain of classes of interactions into which an organism can enter constitute its
entire cognitive reality' (Maturana and Várela 1980, lOf; emphasis added). To
even speak of a 'world', therefore, is necessarily to speak of a cognizing, that
is, an interacting, organism. In this sense, and consonant with the view of
dependent arising, 'world and perceiver specify each other' (Várela et al. 1991,
172)—both synchronically, from moment to moment, as well as diachronically,
over the life and lifetimes of individuals and species.

Circular causality brings forth a world: Buddhism

We may now more fully appreciate some of the implications of the formula of
dependent arising, whose cyclic nature warranted the appellation
samsara, literally 'the going around'. The series of dependent arising depicts
recursively cyclic patterns of interaction between the constructed complexes
 Cognitive Unconscious in Buddhism and Science 147

(samskāra), cognitive awareness (vijnāna), and the constructive afflicted actions

these both enable and elicit. For as long as the cognitive processes give rise to
sensation (sparśa) and feeling (vedana), then craving (tŗsna) and grasping
(upadāna) will tend to arise, which in turn tend to elicit the intentional
afflicted activities, the karma, that ultimately shape and sustain the structures
(samskāra) that perpetuate further existence—all of which constitutes the
'arising of the world' (S II 73). 23 And for as long as these structures
persist, they provide the conditions that both enable and conduce to
further cognitive and afflictive processes, and so on. This model of circular
causality—enabling structures that give rise to cognitive awareness, which in
turn elicit the afflictions that instigate actions which reinforce those very
structures, and so on—is, we submit, the core of the non-Mahāyāna Buddhist
world view.24
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Evolutionary biology and Buddhist thought thus both analyze the causal
relations underlying momentary cognitive processes and long-term evolutionary
processes in a similar fashion:25 the 'arising of the world' for an individual, its
ontogeny, as well as, for a species, its phytogeny,26 can be equally well
understood as the evolution of specific cognitive domains out of the dynamic
vortex of cyclic causality.
Since the recurrent interactions between cognitive awareness and its enabling
structures, which entail continuous modification of these structures, are causally
effective at either a developmental or evolutionary scale, it follows that the
particular implicit and innate classificatory systems that condition cognitive
awareness themselves become important factors in the further development of
living structures (samskāra); that is, they impart causal influences upon human
evolution in their own right. Living forms have, in effect, 'enstructured' their
cognitive maps, their capacities for cognitive discernment, through the extended
epigenetic processes of circular causality. This is true at the individual level, in
our neural pathways, for example, as well as at the species level, as in
evolutionary theory.
But classifications, we remember, refer to patterns of relationships not
properties of substances, to maps not territory. That is to say, the distinctions
that constitute our cognitive schemas—which have no spatial location and come
from nowhere and go nowhere—are indispensable conditions for the dependent
arising of our minds and bodies. In Buddhist terms, the dharmas that give rise
to discerning cognitive awareness are constitutive conditions for 'the arising of
the world' not just epistemologically, which is obvious, but ontologically as
well. In other words, there would be no distinctively human embodiment
without the classifications and categorizations constitutive of the arising of
cognitive awareness itself.
And what is our most important source of human categorization and
classification, whose distinctions have no spatial location either inside or
outside of our brains,27 and is, furthermore, one of the most salient features of
our physical and mental structures? Language. It appears that we embody not
only the results of what we have thought, felt and done, but, in addition, of what
we have heard and said. We are, in short, the word become flesh.
 148 W. S. Waldron

Cognitive awareness arising from consensual communication

Our linguistic capabilities did not, of course, spring fully formed from the head
of Zeus. They too resulted from the accumulative, constructive and circular
processes of evolution whereby cognitive processes condition living structures,
which in turn condition further cognitive processes, and so on.28 As linguistic,
symbolic communication 'dependently arose' in early hominids it became a
powerful evolutionary force in its own right, radically and irrevocably changing
the structures and processes of the human brain.29 This momentous change
centered on an increasingly enlarging prefrontal cortex, where such symbolizing
processes apparently occur.30 As language use and 'prefrontalization' mutually
reinforced each other, the symbolic-linguistic mode of cognition that depends
upon them came to dominate other, originally non-linguistic, processes. In other
words, human cognitive processes, even simple sensory ones, unavoidably arise
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in dependence upon our 'linguistified' brain. Language, then, along with the
systemic distinctions that constitute it, is not something added on to human
cognitive processes. Systemic symbolic thinking is constitutive of normal
human cognitive processes.31
This prefrontalization of human cognition, however, is fraught with unin-
tended consequences, consequences that follow from the very nature of
linguistic symbolification: language gives rise to its own feedback cycles. Not
only can we not 'help but see the world in symbolic categorical terms',
according to neurophysiologist Deacon (1997, 416), 'dividing it up according to
opposed features, and organizing our lives according to themes and narratives.'
But, he ominously notes, '[Symbolically mediated models of things ... exhibit
complicated nonlinearity and recursive structure as well as nearly infinite
flexibility and capacity for novelty due to their combinatorial nature' (Deacon
1997, 434). This linguistification of human cognitive processes, in other words,
represents a physiologically enstructured, predominating cognitive strategy
characterized by compulsive yet creative recursivity, based upon words that are
defined disjunctively and systemically, not independently or substantively, and
whose meanings are merely conventionally determined. No wonder Deacon
ambivalently observes (1997, 436): 'we are not just a species that uses symbols.
The symbolic universe has ensnared us in an inescapable web'. 32
Buddhist analysis of mind also connects reflexivity, and the linguistic
categorizations it depends upon, with cognitive processes (yijñana) that have
been built up through the accumulating, epigenetic cycles of dependent arising.
In this view, cognitive reflexivity and recursivity also depend upon the recipro-
cal relationships between sensory cognitive awareness, non-sensory (symbolic)
objects such as thoughts or ideas,, and the ensnaring web of conceptual
proliferation (S. prapañca, P. papañca) entailed by language use:
Dependent on the eye and forms, eye-consciousness arises. The meeting
of the three is contact. With contact as condition there is feeling. What
one feels, that one apperceives. What one apperceives, that one thinks
about. What one thinks about, that one mentally proliferates. With what
one has mentally proliferated as the source, apperceptions and notions
 Cognitive Unconscious in Buddhism and Science 149

tinged by mental proliferation [papañca-sañña-sankha] beset a man with

respect to past, future, and present forms cognizable through the eye ...
mind-objects cognizable through the mind. (M I 11 If) (Nāņamoli 1995,
203) 33

The most deeply entrenched locus of these recursive possibilities, which also
doubles back to instigate its own linguistically generated recursivity, is no doubt
our sense of self as an enduring, experiencing agent. As one Pāli text declares,
'the notion "I am" is a proliferation; "I am this" is a proliferation; "I shall be"
is a proliferation' (S IV 202f). The very thought Ί am' is, according to the
Sutta-nipāta, the root (múla) of proliferation itself.34 In short, as long as the
thought Ί am' persists, so long will endless cycles of apperceptions, conceptual
proliferation and further apperceptions, and so on, keep spinning.
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This sense of self, however, derives its compelling cogency, its enduring and
endearing allure,35 from the same social and linguistic matrix that other words
and symbols do: symbolic representation.36 Like language, this symbolic self is
a product of massive interdependency; like other relational phenomenon, it has
no substantive existence in time or space. 'It is a final irony', Deacon concludes:

that it is the virtual, not actual, reference that symbols provide, which
gives rise to this experience of self. The most undeniably real experience
is a virtual reality ... its virtual nature notwithstanding, it is the symbolic
realm of consciousness that we most identify with and from which our
sense of agency and self-control originate. (1997, 452; original emphasis)

The cognitive unconscious as embodied structuring of experience

Language and the symbolic self that language enables are also both complex
products of interdependent processes that have, like habits, become enstructured
into our underlying physiological and psychological structures. As Deacon
observes (1997, 456), 'It is the goal of most cognitive processes to make
information processing unconscious and automatic—as quick, easy, and
efficient as possible'. We may distinguish, therefore, between the immediate but
intermittent processes of discerning cognitive awareness accompanied by atten-
tion, and the underlying but continuous processes operating automatically. This
distinction was intimated in two distinct formulas for the arising of cognitive
awareness in early Indian Buddhism:

Depending on eye and forms visual cognitive awareness arises. (S II 73)

Depending on sankhāra (samskāra) cognitive awareness arises. (S II 2)

It was not until the Yogacara school (circa second to seventh century CE),
however, that forms of supraliminal cognitive awareness (pravŗtti-vijnāna),
which arise in conjunction with present stimuli accompanied by attention, were
explicitly distinguished from forms of subliminal cognitive awareness, which
arise in conjunction with enduring structures (samskāra)—these latter being
 150 W. S. Waldron

subsumed under the term alaya-vijñana (roughly 'store-house' consciousness).37

This Buddhist 'cognitive unconscious,' however, is no more an experiencer,
agent or enduring subject than was cognitive awareness in the earlier model. It
preserves all the qualities and qualifications mentioned earlier: 'it is related to
the notion "change" rather than to the notion "object" ... admitting] only news
of difference' (Bateson 1979, 121), it evolves through the accumulating,
epigenetic processes of cyclic causality, and it gives rise to cognitive domains
which constitute a specific cognitive reality, a dependently arisen 'world of
experience'. According to the Samdhinirmocana Sūtra, this form of subliminal
cognitive awareness is such that:

the mind with all the seeds (i.e., the alaya-vijñana) matures, congeals,
grows, develops, and increases38 based upon the two-fold substratum39
(or: appropriation, upadāna); that is, (1) the substratum of the material
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sense-faculties along with their supports (sadhisthana-rupendriya-

upādāna), (2) and the substratum which consists of the predispositions
toward conceptual proliferation in terms of conventional usage of images,
names, and conceptualizations.40
That is, subliminal cognitive awareness (alaya-vijñana) continuously arises in
conjunction with (1) the living sense-faculties, and (2) the predispositions
instilled by past linguistic experience, conceptualization, naming, and so on,
defining as its specific cognitive domain an 'external world' which, however,
remains outside of immediate awareness.41 We live, that is, in a 'world' whose
predominant structuring influences—linguistic and physiological structures built
up over time through extended organism-environment interaction—we cannot
fully discern. And this is, if I am not mistaken, nearly exactly the current notion
of the 'cognitive unconscious' (Lakoff and Johnson 1999, 9-15).
This model provides a way of articulating the continuous, simultaneous and
mutually reinforcing relationship that occurs between subliminal and supralim-
inal cognitive processes in all ordinary human activities. On the one hand, all
supraliminal cognitive processes are said to arise simultaneously with and based
upon subliminal cognitive awareness (alaya-vijñana),42 which is itself continu-
ously and simultaneously informed by the classifications constituting the
predispositions (vāsanā) toward conceptual proliferation, etc. On the other
hand, the arising of supraliminal cognitive awareness also continuously entails
modulations or transformations of the forms of unconscious cognitive aware-
ness themselves, implanting 'seeds' (bīja) or impressions (vāsanā) as the texts
say.43 These reciprocally reinforcing and gradually accumulating processes take
place not only simultaneously, ceaselessly and mostly automatically, but also,
in large part, unconsciously.
Since linguistic categories and classifications underlie all forms of cognitive
awareness, subliminal as well as supraliminal, then they too are susceptible to
the same conceptual prolixity, the same ensnaring recursivity that all language
entails, which is now understood to occur at unconscious levels as well.
Concurrently, our sense of self—enabled by and arising out of the reflexivity of
linguistic representation—is also seen to have become so deeply enstructured
 Cognitive Unconscious in Buddhism and Science 151

that it too occurs unconsciously and automatically in nearly every moment of

mind.44
And since such systemic classifications underlie all our cognitive processes,
and have therefore informed and instigated nearly all the intentional activities
that have, in the long term, been instrumental in shaping human evolution, it
therefore follows that our linguistically based symbolic self, unconsciously
embedded and virtually real, has also played an instrumental role in the coming
to be of our entire world of experience. The symbolic self, in other words,
although generated out of the vortex of the linguistic recursivity underlying all
cognitive processes, from the unconscious on up, has effected compelling causal
efficacy in its own right.45 And this is true both within a single lifetime, that is,
ontogenetically, as well as in the traditional Buddhist conception of multiple
lifetimes, that is, (after a fashion) phylogenetically.
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The cognitive unconscious as generative matrix of our 'common

world'
We live our lives in this shared virtual world... The doorway into this
virtual world was opened to us alone by the evolution of language.
(Deacon 1997, 22)

How is it that our experience collectively gives rise to our shared world of
experience? We live in this 'shared virtual world', as Deacon puts it, in large
part because 'the evolution of symbolic communication ... created a mode of
extrabiological inheritance ... [that] is intrinsically social' (1997, 409f), one that
evolved 'neither inside nor outside brains, but at the interface where cultural
evolutionary processes affect biological evolutionary processes' (Deacon 1997,
409f). That is, we have similar kinds of cognitive processes because their
supporting structures developed historically through continuous interaction with
other human beings, giving rise to our common bodily forms, with our
species-specific propensities toward cultural and social conditioning, and the
predominating influences of linguistic classification, conceptualization, nomi-
nalization, and so on, through which we collectively yet unconsciously bring
forth a shared world of experience.
With allowances for the issue of rebirth, this is largely compatible with
mainstream views of causality in the Yogacara tradition. As the commentary to
Mahayana-samgraha (MSg 1.60), explains:

[The statement:] 'The common [characteristic of the alaya-vijñana] is the

seed of the receptacle-world' means that it is the cause (kāraņa-hetu) of
perceptions (vijñapti) which appear as the receptacle world. It is common
because these perceptions appear similarly to all who experience them
through the force of maturation (vipāka) that is in accordance with their
own similar karma. (U 397c 12f; u 267a8-268al)

Our 'world' 46 appears to us in similar ways because we have similar karma to

experience it similarly. It is language that provides the means through which the
 152 W. S. Waldron

'common aspects' of the alaya-vijñana give rise to a 'common' receptacle

world. As a medium for sharing, conceiving and expressing experience, lan-
guage provides the stimulus for similar kinds of cognitive processes to arise,
processes that tend to provoke similar responses,47 which, in turn, typically give
rise to similar results. That is, actions that are informed and instigated by similar
conditions and similar intentions give rise, over the long term, to a similar
'world'.
And it is because our cognitive structures depend upon linguistic predis-
positions that cognitive awareness is always subject to language's endless
recursivity (prapañca). The 'predispositions or impressions of speech'
(abhilāpa-vāsanā)—which are said to have the 'special power' (sākti-visesa) of
conventional expressions (vyavahara) to give rise to cognitive awareness
(vijnāna) in regard to expressions of selves (ātmari), dharmas, and actions, and
so on 4 8 (ad MSg 1.58)—are never fully 'used up' (anupabhukta), MSg 1.61.2
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explains, because 'the seeds of the impressions of language give rise to

conceptual proliferation since beginningless time'. In other words, linguistic
recursivity is the generative matrix from which endlessly springs forth the
contents of our shared symbolic world, one that virtually supersedes the
physical world we apparently inhabit.
The reciprocal feedback processes within which language is entwined thus
operate on a variety of levels, not only synchronically—between the alaya-
vijñana and supraliminal forms of cognitive awareness—but also diachroni-
cally, between our previous linguistic experience and our present proclivities
conditioned by the 'impressions' of language. These operate both within a
single lifetime and, in traditional Buddhist terms, over multiple lifetimes. But
there is also a third, unconscious yet thoroughly intersubjective, feedback
system, which, like the other two, continuously proliferates and perpetuates
samsaric existence, but which, unlike them, bridges the individual and collec-
tive experience of the 'world', connecting our similar karmie activities with the
similar 'worlds' these activities bring about.49
Our shared world, then, dependent upon our shared species-specific cognitive
structures, is ultimately inseparable from our shared cognitive awareness,
dependent upon our shared linguistic, symbolic structures. As Deacon declares:
a person's symbolic experience of consciousness ... is not within the
head ... This [symbolic] self is indeed not bounded within a mind or
body ... [it] is intersubjective in the most thoroughgoing sense of the
term. (1997, 452f)
It is our common but unconscious habits of body, speech, and mind to which
we are habituated that give rise, in the long term and in the aggregate, to the
habitats we collectively inhabit. And, this, we suggest, is as true for some
twentieth-century biologists and neuroscientists, as it was for fifth-century
Yogacarin Buddhists.
Such perspectives serve to both clarify the nature of our alienation and
bondage—our enchantment (there is no better word) with reified abstractions,
such as genes, neurons, species, or selves—as well as to suggest paths beyond
 Cognitive Unconscious in Buddhism and Science 153

such notions. For once we start thinking of organisms as complex dynamic

organizations interacting in patterned relationships with their environments, our
older, ultimately alienating, models of human beings as autonomous agents
unilaterally acting on, or passively being acted upon, an independent, external
and pre-existing world becomes limited at best and misleading at worst. The
constructive power of these models comes not only from the idea that we can
understand living processes better by understanding the patterns of interaction
through which they arise, that is, their 'dependent arising', but also from the
notion that we are collectively responsible for the world we continuously
construct together. For if we are not really trapped inside our heads, but are
causally as well as cognitively intersubjective through and through, then it
matters indeed which particular concepts, categories and classifications we
produce, proclaim and protect.
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Notes
The author gratefully acknowledges permission to reproduce parts of 'Buddhist Steps to
an Ecology of Mind: Thinking about "Thoughts without a Thinker" ' (Eastern Buddhist,
2002, XXXIV, 1-51), from which this article is largely drawn.
1 This is, unavoidably, a generalization. There were numerous sects that often differed
in their interpretations of dependent arising.
2 There are many passage in the Pāli texts such as the following: 'Who, now, Lord,
is it who craves?'. 'Not a fit question', said the Exalted One. "I am not saying
[someone] craves. If I were saying so, the question would be a fit one. But I am not
saying so. And I not saying so, if you were to ask thus: 'Conditioned now by what,
lord, is craving?' this were a fit question. And the fit answer there would be:
'Conditioned by feeling is craving.' " (S II 13).
3 'All our forms of speech are taken from ordinary, physical language and cannot be
used in epistemology or phenomenology without casting a distorting light on their
objects' (Wittgenstein Philosophical Remarks, §57; cited in Stern 1995, 12).
4 Since by definition essences do not change, they can have no obvious causal effect
in the world of change; an unmoving billiard ball does cause another ball to move,
only a moving one does. Essences are therefore metaphysical notions unrelated to the
endeavor to understand causality in the phenomenal world. In slightly different
terms, Wittgenstein (Philosophical Investigations, §271) suggests that 'a wheel that
can be turned though nothing else moves with it, is not part of the mechanism'.
5 Gombrich (1996, If) cites Karl Popper's remarks on the non-essentialism and
nominalism of modern science: 'Popper, 1952, vol. II, p. 14): "the scientific view of
the definition Ά puppy is a young dog' would be that it is an answer to the question
'What shall we call a young dog?' rather than an answer to the question 'What is a
puppy?' (Questions like 'What is life?' or 'What is gravity?' do not play any role in
science.) The scientific use of definitions ... may be called its nominalist interpret-
ation, as opposed to its Aristotelian or essentialist interpretation. In modern science,
only nominalist definitions occur, that is to say, shorthand symbols or labels are
introduced in order to cut a long story short." Popper 1974:20: "... essentialism is
mistaken in suggesting that definitions can add to our knowledge of facts ..." '.
6 Many, if not most, scientific works on brain and consciousness reject the notion of
a 'unified, freely acting agent'. For example, brain scientist Richard Restak (1994,
111-21) argues: 'Brain research on consciousness carried out over the past two
decades casts important doubts on our traditional ideas about the unity and indissol-
ubility of our mental lives', particularly 'the concept of ourself as a unified, freely
acting agent directing our behavior'. Lakoff and Johnson (1999, 268) state: 'The very
 154 W. S. Waldron

way that we normally conceptualize our inner lives is inconsistent with what we
know scientifically about the nature of mind. In our system for conceptualizing our
inner lives, there is always a Subject that is the locus of reason and that metaphor-
ically has an existence independent of the body. As we have seen, this contradicts
the fundamental findings of cognitive science'.
7 There are serious historical questions concerning whether or to what extent the
discourses preserved in the Pāli Canon represent the actual words of the Buddha. As
these questions do not directly affect the import of this paper, we follow their
traditional attribution to the Buddha.
8 M I 190: 'When internally the eye is intact and external forms come into its range
and there is the corresponding engagement, then there is the manifestation of the
corresponding class of consciousness' (Ñānamoli 1995, 284).
9 As Rahula (1959, 23) points out, 'Consciousness does not recognize an object. It is
only a sort of awareness — awareness of the presence of an object'. Milinda's
Questions: 'Because there are vision here and material shape, sire, visual conscious-
ness arises. Co-nascent with that are sensory impingement, feeling, perception,
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volition, one-pointedness, the life-principle, attention-thus these things are produced

from a condition and no experiencer is got at here' (Miln., 78).
10 Buddhaghosa similarly states in the Visuddhimagga (XIX, 20): 'He sees no doer over
and above the doing, no experiencer of the result over and above the occurrence of
the result. But he sees clearly with right understanding that the wise say "doer" when
there is doing and "experiencer" when there is experiencing simply as a mode of
common usage'.
11 Wittgenstein's attempt to forge a subjectless language entailed similar consequences:
'It is because a language designed for the sole function of expressing everything that
a subject might experience has no need for a term designating that subject that one
cannot refer to the subject of experience from within the phenomenological lan-
guage... From within, one cannot individuate a subject at all. The metaphysical
subject is not an object of experience, but a way of indicating the overall structure
of experience ... The grammar of the phenomenological language ensures that all
statements about experience are expressed in the same—ownerless—way' (Stern
1995, 84).
12 'Color concepts are "interactional"; they arise from the interactions of our bodies, our
brains, the reflective properties of objects, and electromagnetic radiation. Colors are
not objective; there is in the grass or the sky no greenness or blueness independent
of retinas, color cones, neural circuitry, and brains. Nor are colors purely subjective;
they are neither a figment of our imaginations nor spontaneous creations of our
brains ... Rather, color is a function of the world and our biology interacting' (Lakoff
and Johnson 1999, 24-5).
13 In his Philosophical Remarks §54, Wittgenstein (1975) makes the following remark:
'What belongs to the essence of the world cannot be expressed by language. For this
reason, it cannot say that all is in flux. Language can only say those things we can
also imagine otherwise'. We take Stern's (1995, 162) comments on this passage as
admonitory qualification for many of the points that follow in this essay: 'Like the
solipsistic sayings, "the world is my world" and "only the present experience has
reality", Wittgenstein regards "all is in flux" as a philosophical pseudo-proposition,
an attempt to say the unsayable ... But saying that we can't imagine it being
otherwise is to rule out the possibility that the proposition is false, and in so doing
we also eliminate the connection between language and world that gives the
proposition its sense'.
14 The Abhidharma-kośa defines as momentary that which perishes immediately after
its coming into being (AKBh IV ad 2b-3b; Shastri, 568; Poussin, 4). There was of
course considerable disagreement as to what exactly constitutes a moment, whether
it was divisible and so on. See, for example, Kathāvatthu XXII.8, the Abhidham-
mattha-sangaha (Compendium of Philosophy), 25; Nyanatiloka (1977 (1980), 34);
AKBh ad II 46a-b (Shastri, 259; Poussin, 228).
 Cognitive Unconscious in Buddhism and Science 155

15 From the root verb 'dhr' to hold, bear, carry, maintain, preserve, keep, possess, use,
place, fix, etc.'. Derived meanings of dharma are 'that which is established or firm,
steadfast, law, statute, prescribed conduct, duty, right, justice, virtue, morality,
religion, etc.'(SED, 510, 519). In the Abhidharma context, it is traditionally defined
as that which 'holds' (dhārana) its own mark (AKBh ad I.2b; Shastri, 12; Poussin,
4: svalaksanādhāranād dharma).
16 This is arguably implicit in the perspective of dependent arising from the beginning:
'He who with right understanding sees the arising of the world as it really is, cannot
attribute non-existence to the world; he who with right insight sees the passing away
of the world as it really is, cannot attribute existence to the world' (S II 17).
17 Since dharmas are themselves dependency arisen events, they are expressed in terms
of patterns of relationship (with the concomitance of X and Υ, Ζ arises). But because
the multiple conditions for the arising of a phenomenon were themselves dharmas (X
and Y), the formula of dependent arising was fairly early on implicitly, or perhaps
incipiently, a system wherein the sense of each item was mutually and disjunctively
defined. That is, Buddhists fairly quickly came to recognize that they were working
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with systems of relationships rather than with terms individually defined.

18 Varela et al. make a similar point: 'The visual system is never simply presented with
pregiven objects. On the contrary, the determination of what and where an object is,
as well as its surface boundaries, texture, and relative orientation (and hence the
overall context of color as a perceived attribute), is a complex process that the visual
system must continually achieve ... In the words of P. Gouras and E. Zrenner, "It is
impossible to separate the object sensed from its color because it is the color
contrast itself that forms the object" ' (1991, 167; emphasis added).
19 As Capra (1998, 220) points out, 'as it keeps interacting with its environment, a
living organism will undergo a sequence of structural changes ... an organism's
structure at any point in its development is a record of its previous structural changes
and ... each structural change influences the organism's future behavior'.
20 Reciprocal or causal causality is commonly used in investigating emergent proper-
ties, how things come to be, particularly in evolutionary biology. It is, rather, linear
logic that is the problem: 'How is the world of logic, which eschews "circular
argument", related to a world in which circular trains of causation are the rule rather
than the exception? ... we shall see that logic is precisely unable to deal with
recursive circuits without generating paradox and that quantities are precisely not the
stuff of complex communicating systems. In other words, logic and quantity turn out
to be inappropriate devices for describing organisms and their interactions and
internal organizations' (Bateson 1979, 21).
21 'Evolutionary stable strategies within and between populations, whether or not they
culminate in symbiogenesis, require that the "unit of selection" now ceases to be an
individual genotype or even phenotype, and becomes instead a relationship between
genotypes and/or phenotypes' (Rose 1997, 229-30; original emphasis).
22 'What evolves is always a unit of interactions defined by the way in which it
maintains its identity. The evolution of the living systems is the evolution of the
niches of the units of interactions defined by their self-referring circular organization,
hence, the evolution of the cognitive domains' (Maturana and Varela 1980, 12). In
Buddhists terms, we might say that is the cumulative, multidimensional, and repeated
relationship between samskāra and vijñāna that evolves.
23 'Dependent on the eye-faculty and visual form, visual cognition arises; the concomi-
tance of the three is sense-impression. Depending on sense-impression is feeling,
depending on feeling is craving, depending on craving is grasping, depending on
grasping is becoming, depending on becoming is birth, depending on birth old age,
death, grief, lamentation, suffering, distress and despair come about. This is the
arising of the world' (S II 73).
24 Vasubandhu describes this classic account of cyclic causality in terms of one's 'mind
stream': 'the mind stream (santāna) increases gradually by the mental afflictions
 156 W. S. Waldron

(Jdeśa) and by actions (karma), and goes again to the next world. In this way the
circle of existence is without beginning (anādibhavacakraka)' (AKBh III 19a-d;
Poussin, 57-9; Shastri, 433-4).
25 Ί shall assume that evolutionary change and somatic change (including learning and
thought) are fundamentally similar' (Bateson 1979, 164). See Waldron (2000).
26 Varela et al. (1991, 121) interpret these two aspects of dependent arising as roughly
corresponding to phylogeny and ontogeny: 'we could say that such traces (kanna) are
one's experiential ontogeny ... Here ontogeny is understood not as a series of
transitions from one state to another but as a process of becoming that is conditioned
by past structures, while maintaining structural integrity from moment to moment.
On an even larger scale, karma also expresses phylogeny, for it conditions experience
through the accumulated and collective history of our species'. One of the main
differences with evolutionary theory, however, is that Indian Buddhists see the
'evolution' of mind is terms of the continuity of individual mind-strearns from one
lifetime to the next, with karma as the basic causal mechanism whereby changes are
transmitted from one life to the next. In Darwinian thinking, this role is played by
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natural selection. In this sense, Buddhist ideas are akin to a form of Lamarkianism.
27 See Deacon (1997, 4090 P- 151 this article.
28 As Capra (1998, 220) points out, 'as it keeps interacting with its environment, a
living organism will undergo a sequence of structural changes ...an organism's
structure at any point in its development is a record of its previous structural changes
and... each structural change influences the organism's future behavior'.
29 'It is simply not possible', Deacon concludes (1997, 409f), 'to understand human
anatomy, human neurobiology, or human psychology without recognizing that they
have all been shaped by something that could best be described as an idea: the idea
of symbolic reference'.
30 '[S]ymbol use itself must have been the prime mover for the prefrontalization of the
brain in hominid evolution'(Deacon, 1997, 336).
31 'As our central nervous system — and most particularly its crowning curse and
glory, the neocortex — grew up in great part in interaction with culture, it is
incapable of directing our behaviour or organizing our experience without the
guidance provided by systems of significant symbols ... To supply the additional
information necessary to be able to act, we were forced, in turn, to rely more and
more heavily on cultural sources — the accumulated fund of significant symbols.
Such symbols are thus not mere expressions, instrumentalities, or correlates of our
biological, psychological, and social existence; they are prerequisites of it. Without
men, no culture, certainly; but equally, and more significantly, without culture, no
men' (Geertz 1973, 49).
32 A web, we might add, without a weaver. Anthropologist Rappaport (1999, 5): 'It
would not, indeed, be an exaggeration to claim that humanity is [its] creation'.
33 Translation altered for terminological consistency.
34 'With what manner of insight, and not grasping anything in this world, does a monk
realize Nibbāna? Let him completely cut off the root of concepts tinged with the
prolific tendency (papañca), namely, the thought "I am".' (SN 915-16) (Ñānananda,
1971, 34f). The translation is altered slightly (katham disvā nibbāti bhikkhu
anupādiyāno lokasmim kiñci. Mūlam papañcasankhāyāti Bhagavā mantā asmīti
sabbam uparundhe). Ñānananda takes 'mantā' as 'thinker' rather than 'thought'.
35 The Buddha describes the following, unacceptable, conception of a self: 'That which
is this self for me that speaks, that experiences and knows, that experiences, now
here, now there, the fruition of deeds lovely or depraved, it is this self for me that
is permanent, stable, eternal, not subject to change, that will stand firm for ever and
ever' (M I 8).
36 'Self-representation ...', Deacon suggests (1997, 451), 'could not be attained without
a means for symbolic representation'. "The label ·Τ thus superimposed on the
complex contingent process, serves as a convenient fiction of thought or a short-hand
 Cognitive Unconscious in Buddhism and Science 157

device ... it is the outcome of papañca ...". Bhikkhu Ñānananda (1971, 11)
concludes, 'the ego notion is an extension in thought not faithful to facts'.
37 The distinctions between these two fonns of cognitive awareness are most succinctly
stated in the Proof Portion of the Yogācārabhwni: 'l.a) The ālaya-vijñāna has past
samskārās as its cause (hetu), while the arising forms of cognitive awareness, visual,
etc., have present conditions as their cause. As it is taught in detail: "the arising of
the cognitions comes about due to the sense-faculties, the sense-domains and
attention" '.
This same distinction is also articulated by Maturana and Varela's theory, as
articulated by Capra (1998, 268): 'cognition involves two kinds of activities that are
inextricably linked: the maintenance and continuation of autopoiesis and the bringing
forth of a world'.
38 Tib: sa bon thams cad pa'i sems mam par smin cing 'jug la rgyas shing 'phel ba
dang yangs par 'gyur ro. Sanskrit reconstruction by Schmithausen (1987, 356, n.
508): *sarvabījakam cittam vipacyate sammūrcchati vŗddhim virūdhim vipulatām
āpadyate. This closely parallels passages found in Pāli texts (S III 53, D III 228):
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viññānam ... viddhim virūlhim vepullam āpajjeyya.

39 Comprised of the prefix 'upa', 'towards, near, together with', plus the noun 'ādāna',
'receiving, taking to oneself (SED), upādāna, like sankhārā, may refer to both an
active process and a passive product, both a conditioning and a conditioned state. It
is not only 'grasping, attachment, finding one's support by, nourished by, taking up',
but also 'fuel, supply', 'the material out of which anything is made', or even
'substratum by means of which an active process is kept alive or going' (Apte, 471;
PED: 149). See also Schmithausen (1987, 72).
40 Schmithausen reconstructs the last phrase as *nimitta-nāma-vikalpa-vyavahāra-pra-
panca-vāsanā-upādāna. The import of this dauntingly long (and proliferating!) string
of concepts is well summarized in Schmithausen's definition of the first item, nimitta,
as 'in this context, objective phenomena as they are experienced or imagined,
admitting of being associated with names, and being conditioned by subjective
conceptual activity (vikalpa), which has become habitual so that it permeates all
(ordinary) perceptions and cognitions' (1987, 357, n. 511; emphasis added).
41 Ibid. Pravŗtti-Portion (D.3b7-4a3; H. T. 580a2-12): '"l.b)A.2. The "outward
perception of the external world, whose aspects are undiscerned' (bahirdhā-
aparicchinnākāra-bhājana-vijñapti) means the continuous, uninterrupted perception
of the continuity of the world based upon that very ālaya-vijñāna which has inner
appropriation as an object. l.b)A.3. Thus, one should know that the way the
ālaya-vijñāna [functions] in regard to the object of inner appropriation and the object
of the external [world] is similar to a burning flame which arises inwardly while it
emits light outwardly on the basis of the wick and oil, respectively".'
42 Samdhinirmocana Sūtra. Chapter V. 4. 'Viśālamati, the six groups of cognitive
awareness, that is, visual cognition, aural-, olfactory-, gustatory-, tactile-, and mental
cognitive awareness, arise supported by and depending on (samniśritya pratisthāya)
the appropriating cognitive awareness (ādāna-vijñāna) [i.e. the ālaya-vijñāna]'.
43 Pravŗtti-Portion of Yogācārabhūmi (D.5a3-7; H. 580b17-29): ' In this way one
should understand establishing the arising [of the ālaya-vijñāna] is by means of the
ālaya-vijñāna and the [supraliminal forms of] arising cognitive awareness being
reciprocal conditions of each other: by means of [the ālaya-vijñāna] being the seed
and creating the support [of the forms of arising cognitive awareness
(pravrtti-vijñāna)] [A.2.], and by [the pravrtti-vijñānas] nurturing the seeds

44 Pravŗtti-Portion, 4.b)A.l.(a). (D.5a7f; P.6a5f; T.30.580b29f, 1019c6f). This uncon-

scious self-conception accompanies all states of mind: '4.b)B.4. "The mind which
was explained above always arises and functions simultaneously with the ālaya-
vijñāna. One should know that until it is completely destroyed it is always associated
with the four afflictions (kleśa, following Ch.) which by nature arise innately
 158 W. S. Waldron

(sahaja) and simultaneously: a view of self-existence (satkaya-drsti), the conceit Ί

am' (asmimāna), self-love (ātmasneha), and ignorance (avidyā)" '.
45 'These abstract representations have physical efficacy. They can and do change the
world. They are as real and concrete as the force of gravity or the impact of a
projectile' (Deacon 1997, 453).
46 Johansson (1979, 28f) has collected numerous passages that equate 'the world' (loka)
with the 'world of experience': 'the world has arisen through the six (senses, or
sense-modalities), it gives rise to knowledge (i.e. is known) through the six; building
on the six, the world is destroyed in six' (SN 169); 'In this very fathom-long body,
with its perception and inner sense, I proclaim the world to be, likewise the origin
of the world and the destruction of the world, likewise the method leading to the
destruction of the world' (A II 48); "These five love-objects (kāmagunā) are called
the world in the code of the noble one. What five? Forms, cognized by the eye,
longed for, alluring, pleasurable, lovely, bound up with passion and desire, sounds
... , smells . . . , tastes ... , contacts' (A IV 430); "The world is brought up by the
mind, swept away by the mind' (S I 39); 'there is no release from suffering without
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reaching the end of the world' (Α II 49).

47 That the arising of consciousness and the train of responses that follow occur in
discernable patterns is the gist of the series of dependent arising in general, as well
as of many of the specific factors in particular.
48 ad MSg 1.58. U 397a24-b4; u 266b4-267al; Bh. 336c5f; bh. 168b7f.
49 It is the 'unbounded' nature of symbolic media, in Deacon's (1997, 427) terms, that
'gives us the ability to share a virtual common mind'.

References
Abbreviations and primary sources

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Gradual Sayings. London: Pāli Text Society. Cited by page number
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merical Discourses of the Buddha: An Anthology of Suttas from the
Ańguttara Nikaya. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.
Abhidhammattha-
sangaha See Compendium.
AKBh Abhidharmakośabhāsya. Shastri, S.D. (ed). 1981. Varanasi: Bauddha
Bharati Series; de La Vallée Poussin (trans). 1971. L' Abhidhar-
makośa de Vasubandhu. Bruxelles: Institut Belge des Hautes Études
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Apte Apte, V.S. 1986. The Practical Sanskrit-English Dictionary. Reprint:
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ASBh Abhidharmasammucaya-bhāsyam. Tatia, N. (ed). 1976. Patna: K.P.
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Bh Mahāyāna-samgraha-bhāsya, Chinese translation of Hsüan Tsang,
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Correspondence address: W. S. Waldron, Dept of Religion, Middlebury College,

Middlebury, VT 05753, USA. E-mail: wwaldron@middlebury.edu