ABHIDHAMMA STUDIES
BUDDHIST EXPLORATIONS OF CONSCIOUSNESS AND TIME
NYANAPONIKA THERA
Taking up this suggestion we can assume that ancient Buddhist psychology ascribed the main share in the process of recollection to perception (saññā), regarding it merely as a department of the latter. It should be recalled that saññā belongs to the pentad of sense-contact and to the factors common to all consciousness (sabbacittasādhāraṇa), so that the requirement of universal occurrence as a neutral and general factor is fulfilled. We are supported in our theory by the definition of saññā found in the Atthasālinī (p. 110). There two sets of explanations are supplied, given in the customary categories used for definitions (lakkhaṇa, rasa, etc.). According to the first explanation, the characteristic (lakkhaṇa) of perception, applicable to all cases, is “perceiving” (sañjānana, lit. “cognizing well”); the essential property or function (rasa) is “re-cognizing” (paccabhiññāṇa), said to be applicable only to certain cases, namely, when perception proceeds with the help of a distinctive mark of the object, either fixed to it intentionally (e.g., as by woodcutters to trees) or being a characteristic of the object itself (e.g., a mole in the face of a man). The second explanation is said to apply to all cases of perception. The characteristic is again “perceiving.” The essential property given here is: “making marks as a condition for a repeated perception” (i.e., for recognizing or remembering; punasañjānana paccayanimittakaraṇa). So we may sum up: perception (saññā) is the taking up,75 the making, and the remembering of the object’s distinctive marks. In this connection it is noteworthy that “mark” or “signal” is also one of the different meanings of the word saññā itself.
Not only the “taking up” but also the “making” and the “remembering” of marks may be relevant to all cases of perception if it is understood as follows: What really happens in a simple act of perception is that some features of the object (sometimes only a single striking one) are selected. The mental note made by that perception is closely associated with those selected features; that is, we attach, as it were, a tag to the object, or make a mark on it as woodcutters do on trees. So far every perception is “a making of marks” (nimittakaraṇa).
In order to understand how “remembering” or “recognizing,” too, is implied in every act of perception, we should mention that according to the deeply penetrative analysis of the Abhidhamma the apparently simple act of seeing a rose, for example, is in reality a very complex process composed of different phases, each consisting of numerous smaller combinations of conscious processes (cittavīthi), which again are made up of several single moments of consciousness (cittakkhaṇa) following each other in a definite sequence of diverse functions.76 Among these phases there is one that connects the present perception of a rose with a previous one, and there is another that attaches to the present perception the name “rose,” remembered from previous experience. Not only in relation to similar experiences in a relatively distant past, but also between those infinitesimally brief single phases and successive processes, the connecting function of rudimentary “memory” must be assumed to operate, because each phase and each lesser successive state has to “remember” the previous one—a process called by the later Ābhidhammikas “grasping the past” (atīta-gahaṇa). Finally, the individual contributions of all those different perceptual processes have to be remembered and coordinated in order to form the final and complete perception of a rose.
Not only in such microscopic analysis of sense perception but also in every consecutive thought process, for example in reasoning, the phase of “grasping the past” can be observed, as for instance when the parts of an argument are connected, that is, when conclusions are built on premises. If that “grasp” of the past is too weak to be effective, one says that one has “lost the thread.” The way in which one remembers the earlier phases of one’s thought process is likewise through selected marks (nimittakaraṇa) because it is neither possible nor necessary to consider all the minor aspects of a thought. But if the “selection” is too incomplete and overlooks essential features or consequences of the past thought, then a faulty argument built on wrong premises follows. In these two ways we can understand how “remembering,” that is, connecting with the past, is a function of perception in general. We can now formulate the following definition: saññā is cognition as well as recognition, both being by way of selected marks.
We can summarize our findings as follows: 1. Memory, as we usually understand it, is not mentioned as a separate component of a moment of consciousness because it is not a single mental factor but a complex process.
2. The mental factor that is most important for the arising of memory is perception (saññā = sañjānana), being that kind of elementary cognition (jānana) that proceeds by way of taking up, making, and remembering (i.e., identifying) marks. 3. Apart from what, in common usage, is called “remembering,” the reminiscent function of perception in general operates also: (a) in the imperceptibly brief phases of a complete perceptual process, the sequence of which is based on the connecting function of “grasping the past phases”; (b) in any consecutive train of thoughts where this “grasping of the past” is so habitual, and refers to an event so close to the present, that in normal parlance it is not called “memory,” though it is not essentially different from it.Another reason for the omission of memory from either the components or the classes of consciousness is this: remembrance means merely the fact that a state of consciousness has objects of the past (atītārammaṇa). But as mentioned already (pp. 34–35), in the Dhammasaṅgaṇī the objective side of the perceptual process is used for the classification of consciousness only in a single instance and refers only to the division into visual objects, etc. The time relation of objects, in particular, does not enter into the classification or analysis of consciousness at all, being irrelevant for that purpose. Still less could the time relation—for example, that of memory—be counted as a separate component of consciousness. In the Dhammasaṅgaṇī the time relation of objects is treated separately in the “triad of things with past objects, etc.” (atītārammaṇa-ṭīkā). But the fact that a moment of consciousness has objects of the past does not warrant the inclusion of a separate factor called memory.
