What is "Citta" in English?
Buddha’s teachings are all about Psyche, and David J. Kalupahana’s “ThePrinciples of Buddhist Psychology” is a proof of that. Part Two (Revisionsand Resurrections) pp. 103-147 even discusses works by the later schools of Buddhist thought revisiting this subject over and over again. Is it possibleand thinkable that the Great Teacher of all times would not allude to this keyconcept responsible for a total and complete understanding of everything in themultiverse?I believe I have found the answer in the mention of
in Anu-ruddha’s seminal treatise that has been translated into English as “A Compre-hensive Manual of Abhidhamma”, with Bhikkhu Bodhi as general editor. Theauthors of this translation used the term “ mind-moment ” for this quantumentity. It is also mentioned that according to later commentators, in the blinkof an eye, billions of these quanta appear and then disappear, following oneanother in a discrete chain of
happenings. Their lifetimes last one khanna (ksana in sanskrit), the shortest time length imaginable.I am not happy with the vague term “ mind-moment ” that does not con- jure up the extremely eeting nature of a khanna, and would like to propose anew word for “ cittakkhana ”, namely a “ ksana psyche ”. The basic “ psychic “ (the word used in the translation is “ cognitive ”) process contains seventeenpsyches, within which seven of them constitute the “ Javana ” process where“ karma
” is created, (the sowing of seeds that bear fruits in future lives). Theseeds can be wholesome or unwholesome, so the fruits would come in the formof suering or good fortune, following the ineluctable law of cause and eect inunlimited time, through innumerable lives. That is the rationale for continuingmetamorphoses (and not reincarnation), meaning reappearance into one of sixrealms of existence,
four of which being spirit or immaterial energy, with onlytwo (humans and animals) taking on physical form. So, no eternal life, and noend of existence at death either. Life goes on in quantum time and quantumspurts of energy. Sentient beings keep on appearing and disappearing in var-ious forms endlessly unless awakening
comes about, resulting in the denitivecessation to the ever-rolling cycle of suering, as has happened in the case of Shakyamuni Buddha. Specically, in case a human being has the good fortuneof being born human again, the last karma cittakkhana just before death willdecide his or her entire fate in that next life, the “blueprint” each human is Academia Letters preprint.©2022 by the author – Open Access – Distributed under CC BY 4.0
born with that Carl Jung has talked about.To point out the fact that this ksana can be legitimately considered as ameasurement of scientic signicance, I would like to note that the theoreticalphysicist Max Planck has found out a similar shortest time length imaginable inthe physical world. It is ten to the minus forty three of a second, and is calleda “
Planck time ”. A ‘zeptosecond’ is the trillionth of a billionth of a second,or 10−21 of a second. The Higgs boson “lives” for just 15.6 thousand-billion-billions (1.56x10-22) of a second. Both are way too long compared to the timelength of a skana, and this last one, amazingly, might even be sixteen timesshorter than a Planck time, since spirit moves much faster than crude matter.In this way, metaphysics might very probably be united with future physicsto arrive at an authentic and valid ”
Theory of Everything ”. For how can onehope to arrive at a true and accurate big picture of everything when the searchis focused solely on matter without any slight attention paid to psyche andconsciousness, the spiritual content that is the all-encompassing control factor? Academia Letters preprint.©2022 by the author – Open Access – Distributed under CC BY 4.0
REFERENCES
Bodhi, Bhikkhu. (Gen Ed). (2000).
Abhidhammattha Sangaha (A Compre-hensive Manual of Abhidhamma ). (1st Ed.). Onalaska, WA: BPS PariyattiEditions.Buswell, Jr., Robert E. (Ed in Chief). (2004).
Encyclopedia of Buddhism . NewYork, NY: Macmillan Reference USA.Cleary, Thomas. (Trans.). (1993).
The Flower Ornament Scripture . Boulder,CO: Shambhala Publications, Inc.Hakeda, Yoshito S. (Trans.). (1967).
The Awakening of Faith . New York, NY:Columbia University Press.Kaluaphana, David J. (1987).
The Principles of Buddhist Psychology . Albany,NY: State University of New York Press.Narada Thera. (Trans.). (1978). Dhammapada, Pali text & Translation. KualaLumpur, Malaysia: Buddhist Missionary Society.Ringu Tulku Rinpoche. (2014). Bodhichitta, Awakening Compassion and Wis-dom . (2nd Ed.). Oxford, UK: Bodhicharya Publications.Thurman, Robert A. F. (Trans.). (1976).
The Holy Teaching of Vimalakirti .University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press.****************** NOTE
For a further understanding and deepened discussion of the subject onhand, I highly recommend a thorough reading of Robert Espiau’s “The TrueOrigins of Psychology and the Inuence of Euro-American Ethnocentrism”(2013) which has been posted on academia.edu and can be downloaded bymembers. Academia Letters preprint.©2022 by the author – Open Access – Distributed under CC BY 4.0
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