SUBSEQUENT COGNIZERS
SUBSEQUENT COGNIZERS
The last three of the sevenfold division are cognizers, minds that actually get at the object. A subsequent cognizer, as the name implies, is a cognition of something that has been apprehended previously. It is subsequent to an initial and fresh valid cognition—either a perception or an inference. It is not the first moment of that mind. My eye consciousness sees a pen. The first moment is a valid perception, the second moment is a subsequent cognizer. Subsequent cognizers can be either perceptual or conceptual.
This distinction between first and subsequent is a point of debate among Buddhist scholars—some saying subsequent minds are valid, some saying they are not—but on a practical level, the difference is not so important.
INFERENTIAL COGNIZERS
Although an inferential cognizer is a conception rather than a perception, it incontrovertibly realizes its object of cognition and, as such, is as reliable a form of knowledge as a direct perceiver. However, while a direct perceiver contacts its object directly and nonmistakenly, an inferential cognizer makes contact via inference with things that are not available to perception. Many points, such as subtle impermanence or selflessness, are at present obscured from our immediate experience and can only be comprehended through a conceptual cognition.
As we progress on the spiritual path, our capacity for logic develops and our understanding of hidden phenomena becomes deeper. Things that once were hidden to us and only accepted through the power of belief become objects of knowledge. Perhaps you have already had times when some level of understanding about a subject has come about, not through logical deduction alone but because some deeper comprehension has been triggered through a far subtler mechanism. You could call this intuition, but it could also be karmic imprints ripening due to meeting the right conditions. Buddhists call this a realization. You might have a good intellectual understanding of impermanence as a result of years of study, but all this knowledge can and should be solidified until it becomes incontrovertible. The mind that brings this about is an inferential cognizer.
VALID DIRECT PERCEIVERS
Valid direct perceivers, the last of the sevenfold classification, are consciousness�Àes that apprehend the object directly and in a nonmistaken way. Nonmistaken means that no false element appears to the consciousness. The apprehension of the pen by the eye consciousness is without fault. What appears is the real pen. This obviously is a simpler concept of perception than the one we examined earlier, in which the aspect acts as a veil between mind and object.
The definition nonmistaken also eliminates mistaken minds that are not conceptual but also not direct perceivers. Sometimes certain sensory consciousnesses see or hear things completely incorrectly due to temporary distortions. While you are on a train that begins to pull away from the station, you may feel that the train is still while the people on the platform are moving. This is obviously mistaken. Although the perception of the moving people is a direct perceiver, it is not a valid direct perceiver because it is not nonmistaken.
In Buddhist epistemology there are four types of valid direct perceivers:
1. sense direct perceivers
2. mental direct perceivers
3. self-knowing direct perceivers
4. yogic direct perceivers
Sense direct perceivers operate with our five sense consciousnesses. Mental direct perceivers, on the other hand, are direct perceivers that are not part of the sensory consciousnesses. Self-knowing direct perceivers are also known as self-cognizers, the aspect of the mind that is self-aware and the source of memory. These minds are accepted as existent by all schools except Prasangika Madhyamaka, the highest subschool. It is worthwhile to look briefly at mental direct perceivers, which are said to be of two types: (1) those that occur at the end of a sensory direct perception and (2) clairvoyance.
Between the sense consciousness perceiving an object and the conceptual consciousness that superimposes conceptual thought upon the object, a brief moment of mental direct perception occurs. This consciousness is so brief that we ordinary people cannot recognize it. That moment is a mental direct perceiver at the end of a sensory perception.
The second type of mental direct perceiver is clairvoyance. There are different types of clairvoyance, such as the clairvoyance that directly sees other beings’ minds, or the clairvoyance that sees their past lives. This kind of direct perceiver is developed as a by-product of the profound meditation of calm abiding.
Whereas clairvoyance is almost a side-effect of meditation, the development of yogic direct perceivers is a major goal of meditative training. Although we have the capacity to effortlessly and directly perceive such things as forms and sounds with our eye or ear consciousnesses, we do not have that ability with regard to profound phenomena like subtle impermanence or selflessness.
Through meditation and logical reasoning we start to understand subjects on an increasingly deeper level, moving from doubt to assertion to absolute conviction. However, at the beginning all of this occurs only within the conceptual process. In relation to impermanence, for instance, we get a stronger and stronger feeling for the momentary changes that occur in all things. The Gelug school says that a yogic direct perceiver realizing impermanence or selflessness directly—a perception—can only be achieved through the valid�À inferential cognizer—a conceptual mind. But through repeated meditation, that conceptual mental image becomes more and more part of our mind until it transcends conceptuality and becomes a direct perception. This is a yogic direct perception—we have realized the object directly, not through our senses, but through our mental consciousness.
Unlike clairvoyance, which is an achievement not exclusive to Buddhist practitioners, yogic direct perceivers occur only in the continuum of superior beings.30 Although it shares some features with our sensory direct perceivers, such as freedom from conceptuality and being nonmistaken, yogic direct perceivers only occur through training. For this training, we need a clear understanding of the complete process of mental cultivation. The goal of having a yogic direct perceiver that realizes impermanence or selflessness seems impossible without understanding the definite attainable steps that get us there.
We start with conceptual minds, beginning at the wrong consciousness that sees everything as permanent. Through reading and listening, our doubts become awarenesses. For example, we may, after listening to or reading some Buddhist teachings, start to doubt that compounded phenomena are permanent. This doubt settles into a conviction and becomes a correctly assuming consciousness. With deeper reflection over time, it eventually becomes an inferential cognizer.
How do we turn these conceptual minds into a yogic direct perceiver? We need to develop calm abiding and then special insight, first separately and then together. The union of the two is not a yogic direct perceiver itself, but the tool that will help us develop it. Once we have done so, we can increase our realizations not only of impermanence, but also of emptiness and bodhichitta.
Remember that I said that there is no intermediary between a direct perceiver and its object, as opposed to a conceptual mind that is separated from its object by an image. Using the union of calm abiding and special insight—a mind that is simultaneously deep in meditation and possesses a strong understanding of the object—we can move beyond a consciousness reliant on mental images. When we separate our mind from these images, we are left with a direct perception of the very subtle object. Having gone through this process and attained this realization, it will never degenerate; it will remain stable from lifetime to lifetime. This shows the extraordinary power of the mind of yogic direct perception, and should inspire us to persevere to develop it.
Differences in Process Between Wisdom and Method
Examining this sevenfold division helps us see the process we need to undergo in order to attain enlightenment—from wrong consciousness all the way to a direct perception of the way things really are. There is a difference, however, between the wisdom approach and the method approach.
As you know, when we work from the wisdom point of view we address facts, such as emptiness or impermanence. But when we develop the method side of our minds, such as great compassion and bodhichitta, what we engage with is harder to pin down. Many texts explain that our conceptual understanding of emptiness or impermanence can become direct perceptions while we are still unenlightened beings. On the other hand, we cannot have a direct perception of bodhichitta until we attain enlightenment.
The reason for this is the object. Every mind must have an object. The object of a mind developing a realization of emptine�ƀss is emptiness itself. The object of the mind developing a realization of bodhichitta is the suffering of all sentient beings and enlightenment. We can manage to directly see the emptiness of, say, our own body—it is difficult but not impossible. But until we have an omniscient mind, it is surely impossible to directly know the entire suffering of every single sentient being.
Within the Mahayana tradition, this is considered the point of difference between individual-liberation practitioners and practitioners of the bodhisattva vehicle. When you realize emptiness directly, you can go on to attain liberation from suffering, but if your goal is complete enlightenment or buddhahood, the focus of your meditation is the suffering of all sentient beings. Liberation can be achieved within lifetimes, it is said, but enlightenment takes three countless great eons.
According to our tradition, both perspectives, wisdom and method, need to be developed in tandem. In the first stages, both are conceptual minds, but we develop them in different ways. Then, it is comparatively easily to transform our wisdom into a direct perceiver, but the same is not true of method. Certainly, the objects of bodhichitta and great compassion can be realized before enlightenment, and we can have very powerful experiences in relation to them, but they cannot be realized directly. In the context of the sevenfold division, they do not become direct perceivers but only correctly assuming consciousnesses.
In the texts on lamrim, or the graduated path to enlightenment, the topics of calm abiding and special insight are taught after bodhichitta. In Tibetan Buddhism, and particularly in the Gelug presentation, we do not develop these later subjects in great detail in the early stages, focusing instead on laying the groundwork of study. However, my feeling is that without calm abiding and special insight we cannot experience direct realizations of anything. The earlier topics within the lamrim will remain intellectual exercises and not penetrate our consciousness in any deep way until we have engaged with them in stable and deep meditation.
The direct perception of emptiness starts at the path of seeing, the third of the five paths of a bodhisattva. This is a very subtle mind, and there is a risk, especially in the advanced stages of meditation, that we will be led into a blissful equanimity from which we will not want to emerge. It is said in some Mahayana sutras that when many individual-liberation practitioners get to a certain point, the wisdom realizing emptiness becomes a meditative absorption that can keep them in blissful stasis for many eons. Our goal is full enlightenment for the benefit of all beings, and if we keep this in mind then we will not get waylaid along the path.
It is difficult to develop this mind while we are still trying to deal with the gross mental afflictions that plague our daily lives. The layers of the mind must be systematically unpeeled to expose evermore subtle layers of affliction. Happiness—of ourselves and others—depends on reaching these deeper levels of mind and developing both wisdom and method in our practice. And in order to bring this about, we must cultivate a deep understanding of the mind and how it functions.
The understanding of the mind that is the subject of the Abhidharma and Pramana texts has been developed over centuries by masters who have been not only great logicians but also great meditators. Their theories have been formulated not in isolation but in the laboratories of their own minds; they actually experienced the mental states they write a�ˀbout.
I feel that so much of this understanding is not only relevant, but vital to our lives today. Our world is in crisis now, a crisis caused largely by an ignorance of the real path to happiness. Look about and see if this isn’t so, in your own life, in the lives of the people you know, and in the way the cultures of the world are developing. More and more, the spiritual is being set aside for material pleasure; deep, lasting contentment for the quick buzz. This is due to an ignorance of the role the mind plays in creating happiness and suffering.
In our greed for possessions, we are eating the world we live in. Gandhi said that the world has enough for human need but not for human greed, and it is greed that we see manifesting so strongly in our lives today. Possibly there is no more greed today than in previous times, but with the increase in population and advances in technology, we now have the ability to destroy the delicate infrastructure of this planet. Wisdom has always been needed, but never more so than at this moment.
We have all the tools necessary for a great transformation, of ourselves and of the world we live in. All we need is an enquiring and persevering mind. Mind is complex, but not unknowable. The subjects covered in this book deal with understanding the mind and using that understanding to transform it. As with any tool, whether you use it is entirely up to you.
APPENDIX
The Fifty-one Mental Factors31
ALWAYS-PRESENT MENTAL FACTORS
(1) contact
(2) discernment
(3) feeling
(4) intention
(5) attention
OBJECT-ASCERTAINING MENTAL FACTORS
(6) aspiration (7) appreciation
(8) recollection
(9) concentration
(10) intelligence
VARIABLE MENTAL FACTORS
(11) sleep
(12) regret
(13) general examination
(14) precise analysis
WHOLESOME MENTAL FACTORS
(15) faith
(16) self-respect
(18) detachment
(19) nonhatred
(20) nonignorance
(21) enthusiasm
(22) suppleness
(23) conscientiousness
(24) equanimity
(25) nonviolence
MAIN MENTAL AFFLICTIONS
(26) anger
(27) attachment
(28) self-importance
(29) ignorance
(30) afflicted views [the view of the transitory composite; extreme views; views of superiority; views that regard unsatisfactory moral and spiritual disciplines as supreme; mistaken views]
(31) afflicted indecision
DERIVATIVE MENTAL AFFLICTIONS
afflictions derived from anger:
(32) wrath
(33) vengeance (34) spite (35) envy (36) cruelty
afflictions derived from attachment:
(37) avarice
(38) self-satisfaction (39) excitement
afflictions derived from ignorance:
(40) concealment
(41) dullness (42) faithlessness (43) laziness (44) forgetfulness (45) inattentiveness
afflictions derived from both attachment and ignorance:
(46) pretension
(47) dishonesty
afflictions derived from all three:
(48) shamelessness (49) inconsideration for others (50) unconscientiousness (51) distraction
NOTES
1 For more on this sutra, see volume 1 of this series. The Theravada tradition is the Buddhism preserved in Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Burma, whereas the Mahayana tradition encompasses the Buddhism of Tibet, China, Korea, and Japan.
2 The four seals are: all compositional phenomena are impermanent; all contaminated phenomena are by nature suffering; all phenomena are empty of self-existence; and nirvana is true peace.
3 Gyatso, Tenzin, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, MindScience: An East-West Dialogue, ed. by Goleman and Thurman (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 1991), p. 16.
4 Yeshe, Lama Thubten, Becoming Your Own Therapist (Boston: Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive, 2003), p. 89.
5 Subtle matter is physical but is not visible or measurable by instruments, and its existence is thus not corroborated by modern science. In this example, the eye sense organ is a subtle material organ that resides within the eye and mediates between the eye and the visual consciousness. Subtle matter also plays a role as a vehicle for the subtle consciousness, much as the gross physical body, including the nervous system, is a vehicle for the gross consciousnesses. It is the so-called subtle body that the mind rides upon during the intermediate state between rebirths.
6 Buddhism describes three realms where beings live—the desire, form, and formless realms. The latter two realms are attained through deep meditative practice and do not depend on gross physical bodies. The desire realm encompasses six kinds of rebirth: hell beings, hungry ghosts, animals, human beings, jealous gods, and gods. The goal of Buddhism is to escape the cycle where one takes birth after birth in the three realms through the force of contaminated karma.
7 Rabten, Geshe, The Mind and Its Functions (Le Mont-Pèlerin, Switzerland: Editions Rabten Choeling, 1978), p. 20.
8 Dzogchen literature uses the term rigpa somewhat differently. The Tibetan word for mind mentioned previously, lo, refers more to mental states rather than basic knowing. Sem, which corresponds to the Sanskrit citta, is another common Tibetan word for mind.
9 Gyatso, MindScience, p. 21.
10 Dhammapada,
I:1-2. Quoted in Rabten, The Mind and Its Functions, p. 11.
11 Gyatso, MindScience, p. 16.
12 Yeshe, Becoming Your Own Therapist, p. 31.
13 Isolate (ldog pa) is a philosophical term for a mental abstraction of an object. Technically, it means the opposite of everything the object is not; e.g., the isolate of apple is not-not-apple. One and the same object may produce different isolates depending on which aspect is being considered. Chapter 6 explores this aspect of conception in more detail.
14 For an explanation, see Rabten, The Mind and Its Functions, pp. 142-51.
15 The twelve links are: ignorance, karma, consciousness, name and form, sense bases, contact, feeling, clinging, craving, existence, birth, and aging and death. For an explanation see Tsering, Geshe Tashi, The Four Noble Truths (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2005), p. 93.
16 For a more traditional account, see Rabten, The Mind and Its Functions, pp. 137-62.
17 The terms mental affliction, afflictive emotion, negative mental state, and negative emotion are different translations of the same term (Skt. klesha; Tib. nyönmong), one that is hard to render fully in English. It encompasses all the unwholesome mental factors discussed in the preceding chapter and has both cognitive and affective dimensions. Their effect is a disturbance in the body and mind that obscures perception.
18 Shantideva, A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, V:13, trans. Batchelor (Dharamsala, India: LTWA, 1981), p. 41.
19 Shantideva, A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, VI:20, p. 63.
20 Shantideva, A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, VI:10, p. 61.
21 Shantideva, A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, VI:41, p. 67.
22 Rabten, The Mind and Its Functions, p. 135.
23 Cited in Dreyfus, Georges B.J., Recognizing Reality: Dharmakirti’s Philosphy and Its Tibetan Interpretation (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1997), p. 244.
24 Of the four types of perception cited in these three schools—sense perception, mental perception, self-cognition, and yogic perception—the highest subschool, Prasangika Madhyamaka, denies the existence of self-cognition, saying that it is not needed for memory to function.
25 Cited in Dreyfus, Recognizing Reality, p. 288.
26 Cited in Dreyfus, Recognizing Reality, p. 304.
27 Cited in Dreyfus, Recognizing Reality, p. 303.
28 Ibid.
29 Yeshe, Becoming Your Own Therapist, p. 60.
30 A superior, or arya, being is one who has achieved the third of five Buddhist path levels, that of seeing. The five paths are: the path of accumu�ۀlation, the path of preparation, the path of seeing, the path of meditation, and the path of no more learning. What is “seen” in the path of seeing is precisely this direct yogic perception of selflessness or emptiness. See Tsering, The Four Noble Truths, p. 139.
31 The renderings in this list are largely drawn from Geshe Rabten’s The Mind and Its Functions, which is translated by Stephen Batchelor. See chapters 7-9 of that volume for short descriptions of each of these mental factors.
