What is “Citta” in English?
Vumanhphat Vumanhphat (aka Kim Vu)
the Tibetan version of this wonderful sutra intended specically for our era.The following segment is taken from the rst paragraph: “Having integrated his realization with skill in liberative technique, he was expert in knowing
the thoughts and actions of living beings.” The phrase “
the thoughts and actions
” in the above has its equivalent in Kumarajiva’s Chinese translationas “
Xin
”.Another example can be found in the extremely important concept of “
bod-hicitta
” or “
bodhichitta
”, the wish to attain enlightenment with the sole pur-pose of helping all sentient beings reach the same state of supreme bliss andliberation as Buddha. Ringu Tulku Rinpoche’s rendition of this term is “
com-passion and wisdom
”.The third proof is shown in Thomas Cleary’s “The Flower Ornament Sutra”,translated from Shikshananda’s Chinese version of the ‘Avatamsaka Sutra” intoEnglish. In the very rst paragraph of Book Seventeen, Indra questions: “…whatis he extent of the merit attained when the enlightening being rst
determinesto become enlightened
.” That last phrase in the Chinese translation alsomentions the awakening of “
bodhicitta
”.The above examples should show that translating “
citta
” as “
conscious-ness
” or “
mind
” is quite inadequate, if not even inaccurate.Based on my modest understanding of key Buddhist concepts, I believe themost appropriate word to translate “
citta
” into English is “
psyche
”.What I am proposing is quite unusual considering the present perception of the term. Aristotle himself, in “De Anima”, has found it extremely dicult topinpoint what it is. InWestern thought, “psyche” is usually associated with “soul”, considered byThomas Aquinas as potentially eternal in human beings, an entity that lastsforever.Buddha teaches a completely dierent concept. Acariya Anuruddha, thegreat master of Theravada Buddhism, author of Abhidhammattha Sangaha, hasinterpreted it as a spurt of energy the life of which lasts only one khanna (ksanain Sanskrit), the shortest length of time imaginable. But before disappearing,that “psyche” bequeathes all its “karma” to the following one which in turnspasses on its heritage to the next one, on and on to almost innity unlessenlightenment comes about owing to awakening.
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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
cittakkhana
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
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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?
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.
