This is edited from letters I wrote 20 years ago on heart base.
A friend wrote to me that the reason they have little confidence in the Atthakattha (Commentaries) is because they say the heart is the base for consciousness. They wrote:
Buddhaghosa says in the Visuddimagga that the seat of the Mind is Heart. Now we know, this cannot be possible, through lots of knowledge we have gained on the functions of the heart and the brain and the associated central nervous system. If the heart is the seat of the consciousness, what happens during open heart surgeries where the heart is kept inactive for hours before activating by an electric shock at the end of the operation. On the other hand, what consciousness a person will have who receives a new heart from another dead person?
Robert: All of us are much conditioned by an age where scientific discoveries seem so testable and provable. It is natural that doubts arise on this matter. The Visuddhimagga (viii, 111) about hadaya-vatthu (heart basis): they describe the heart and then note that inside the heart ‘there is hollow the size of a punnaga seeds bed where half a pastata measure of blood is kept, with which as their support the mind element and mind-consciousness element occur.’ Note that it is not the heart itself that is the hadaya-vatthu nor is it the blood inside the heart but rather as the Paramatthamanjusa (see Visuddhimagga xiii, note 5 ) says ‘the heart basis occurs with this blood as its support’. The actual hadaya-vatthu is incredibly sublime – in scientific measure it wouldn’t even amount to a tiny fraction of a gram. It might be so refined as to be unmeasurable by scientific instruments.
This applies also to the other sense organs (pasada rupa). The Atthasalini remarks that the very purpose of using the term pasada is to dismiss the popular misconception of what we think an eye or an ear is. The actual sensitive matter in the eye and ear is very refined. If someone dies then the ear-sense and eye sense (sota-pasada and cakkhu-pasada ) are immediately no longer produced (they are produced by kamma only) yet one would not notice much outward change looking at the eye and ear (at least for the first few minutes before decomposition sets in). The same applies to the heart – the blood in the heart would have the same volume after death and yet the hadaya-vatthu is no longer present.
I think you accept that consciousness arises soon after conception. The fetus at that stage is so tiny as to be invisible to all but the most trained eye (if even that large). Yet consciousness is arising and passing away dependent on some matter (rupa) somewhere. There is certainly no brain yet but according to the commentaries the heart basis (hadaya-vattu ), that extremely subtle rupa, is already present – conditioned by kamma. This shows how extraordinarily tiny this type of rupa is. I think one can see how heart transplants etc. make no difference to the arising and passing of this subtle conditioned rupa.
What does the brain do then? It does something, it is like wiring center needed for functioning of the body mind. Sure if you pull out a few wires , just as with a computer, things aren’t going to work so well. No doubt someone ignorant of the processor in a computer could play around with the mass of wirings and see how the computer stopped working or had some malfunction- they might think that is ‘brain’ of the computer. Not knowing that the tiny chip is really where the processing is done.
Thus it is essential to realise that hadaya-vatthu (heartbase) is not the heart nor is it the blood in the heart that we can see. It is a special type of rupa that is conditioned only by kamma and it arises in association with some of the blood in the heart. In the space of a flash of lightning more than a billion moments of hadaya-vatthu have arisen and fallen away. If we think of heart in conventional terms (and mistake this for hadaya-vatthu) we will not understand the deep meaning in the Visuddhimagga.
Question: If the seat of the Vinnana (viññāṇa) is the hadaya-vatthu;
1. What would happen to the Vinnana during the time of an open heart surgery
where the heart is inactive for the function of pumping blood?
2. Does the Vinnana get changed from one heart tissue to another in case of the heart transplant?
3. Where does Vinnana reside during the period of tissue transition (several hours)?
4. In case of using an artificial heart, we can assume that engineers do not make any provision for the tiny heart hole’ as they are not aware of the requirement. But we know the person who carry the ‘heart pump’ live normally. In this case what happens to the Vinnana?
Robert: None of this can be surprising if we understand hadaya-vatthu. That special kammic matter will arise wherever there is the suitable conditions, including blood (or even a blood substitute). Although now, for us, it arises inside the body inside the heart, it can certainly arise in a pump, or anywhere suitable. Vinnana lasts even a shorter time than the heart base so there is no question of it going anywhere . Vinnana has no time to go anywhere— it can’t change from tissue to anywhere. It arises, performs its function (depending on the type of vinnana) and immediately falls away. But it conditions the next vinnana to arise. It is this continuity that deceives us into believing that things can last. Even if we think something lasts only for a split second we are still caught up in a subtle idea of permanence. It is all much more ephemeral than that and so only vipassana that insights (not us) can understand the difference between nama and rupa and so overcome doubt on these matters.
*Question:yes, the ‘pasada-rupa’ is not the organ itself. But I think it is the name given to the ability of the ‘rupa’ (organ) to receive an ‘arammana’ in a specific form and translate that into another form of ‘rupa’ to send the message to ‘Vinnana’(consciousness) which is constantly monitoring the ‘six sense doors’ for inputs.
Robert: The pasada rupa arises and performs its function which is to be the base and meeting point for cakkhu-vinnana to arise and contact the rupa which is visible object. The pasada is conditioned, the cakkhu vinnana is conditioned by different conditions, the rupa which is visible object (vanayatana or rupayatana) is conditioned by different conditions again. All of them ephemeral and yet they all arise and meet. That is all life is, through different doors. Because of ignorance we imagine that we can control this process. Seeing into this process is understanding paticcasamupada.
Question: when a person die, all pasada rupas ‘appear’ to die immediately. But they don’t. What dies is the Mind so that it can no longer monitor the sense doors and receive arammanas. This happens immediately after the death. That is the reason for me to use the words “permanent separation of the Mind from the Matter” to describe the death. However, the ability of some of those sense organs to function normally remain intact for sometime. That is how the surgeons use the Eye tissue of a dead person to transplant into another person, giving the vision to the second one. Removal of the eye tissue can take place even an hour after the death. I am aware of a situations where a medical team has recovered eyes of a dead man few hours after his death as the man died at home and relatives did not call the nearest Eye Bank for hours.
Robert: Immediately after cuti citta (death consciousness) arises, not even a split second delay, there are no more of any of the sense bases. They are all produced by kamma and already patisandhi citta has arisen in a new existence, maybe in another plane far from here. But the conventional eyes, ears and so forth are still visible because they are not conditioned solely by kamma. And they can act as a support for new pasada rupa, conditioned by kamma. That is why transplants can work.
