Chapter 9: Examining Perception
Perception is non-conceptual and unmistaken cognition, of four kinds. The early Tibetan school had split perception from the valid cognition that is perception, adding to the latter the elimination of superimposition about a previously unrealised object, so that sense perception and the valid cognition that is sense perception came out as two things; Sakya Paṇḍita rejects the split. The chapter covers genuine perception, pseudo-perception in its four kinds, and the result of perception, with a subsidiary account of the result of inference.
Condensed from Khenpo Sodargye’s Chinese lecture transcripts on the Pramāṇayuktanidhi, and rendered into English. Root verses are given as the lectures give them; the prose beneath summarises the exposition. On the provenance and the limits of this rendering, see the series introduction.
Chapters: 1. Objects · 2. Cognition · 3. Universals and Particulars · 4. Proof and Exclusion · 5. Expressed and Expresser · 6. Connection · 7. Contradiction · 8. Definitions · 9. Perception · 10. Inference for Oneself · 11. Inference for Others
Ascertaining the Meaning of Each Illustration
Two parts: (1) perception; (2) inference.
I. Direct Perception
Three parts: (1) genuine perception; (2) pseudo-perception; (3) the result of perception.
a. Genuine Perception
Three parts: (1) the definition; (2) the classification of the definiendum; (3) the meaning of each illustration.
1. The Definition
Refuting Others’ Positions
[Objection:] They hold it to be the apprehension that eliminates superimposition — this is mistaken.
[Tibetan early-pramāṇa school] They split perception from the valid cognition that is perception: perception is “non-conceptual, non-mistaken cognition,” while the valid cognition that is perception is “that which, by eliminating superimposition, comprehends a previously unrealised object.” On their account sense perception and the valid cognition that is sense perception are two, and likewise for self-awareness.
Sakya Paṇḍita refutes on three counts. First, from scripture: neither Dignāga nor Dharmakīrti anywhere in the seven treatises teaches such a split; Sakya Paṇḍita, who knew the whole Indian and Tibetan literature, states this flatly in his Auto-commentary. Second, “previously unrealised” cannot apply to perception: perception is non-mistaken, so it engages only what stands immediately before the cognition, whereas ranging over past, present and future is the work of conception — a perception that cognized a previously-realised object would already be conceptual, and so not perception at all. The phrase therefore carries no force. Third, eliminating superimposition belongs only to conception; before a wholly non-conceptual cognition the object is simply present, and nothing can be superimposed or removed.
Setting Forth the Validity of One’s Own Position
Direct perception is non-mistaken and free from conception; Conception is the clinging that fuses term-universal and object-universal.
Sakya Paṇḍita’s own definition: perception has two marks, freedom from all conception and being utterly non-mistaken (in aspect and in time alike).
Which “conception”? The word has several senses — mind and mental factors in the Mahāyāna treatises and Five Treatises of Maitreya; detailed examination of an object in the Abhidharmakośa. Here it means none of these: were conception “mind and mental factors,” eye- and ear-consciousness would count as conceptual, which is absurd. The conception meant is precisely the clinging that fuses term-universal and object-universal into one.
Objection [some masters]: the definition then fails to cover the thought of one unfamiliar with names — a newborn, who has never fused term and object — so one must say the clinging that can be so fused (“can” = will be able to later). Reply: if “can” is added, the definition fails to cover adults in whom the fusion has already occurred. If the opponent then says a definition is posited on the class, not the individual instance (as “understanding speech and meaning” defines the human being, though mutes and infants cannot speak), the same reasoning removes the need for “can” at all: a single clinging suffices. Like two traders haggling — one asks seventy, the other offers fifty, and they settle at sixty — you drop your “can” and I drop my “already.”
Which “non-mistaken”? Freedom from the causes of error, inner and outer. Inner: bile disorder making a white conch look yellow, cataract showing hairs in space, seeing two moons. Outer: trees and houses seeming to run backwards from a moving vehicle. The error excluded here is temporary error, not the permanent error of ignorance that defiles every moment of an ordinary being’s mind — otherwise every sense cognition would be mistaken by definition.
Why both marks? To block two non-Buddhist positions: that there is a perception which is non-mistaken yet conceptual (which would collapse perception into inference), and that an object can be cognized without error through an “illuminating object” (which is in fact inference, not perception).
2. The Classification of the Definiendum
The non-mistaken [perception] is of four kinds; By way of object, support, And person, perception is divided. The Sautrāntikas accept four perceptions, The Vaibhāṣikas three classes, the Cittamātrins two.
Four perceptions: sense, mental, self-aware, yogic. Three angles of analysis:
- By object: sense and mental perception illuminate other phenomena (the apprehended object); self-awareness illuminates its own essence; yogic perception illuminates what is neither self nor other.
- By support: sense and mental perception depend on a faculty; self-awareness on its own support (Lowo Khenchen: on the dependent nature); yogic perception on meditative absorption.
- By person: ordinary beings have the first three; noble ones have yogic perception, divided into the learner’s path (arhat up through the ten grounds) and the non-learner’s path (buddhahood).
By school: the Sautrāntikas accept all four, since they accept both external objects and self-awareness. The Vaibhāṣikas reject self-awareness (holding cognition of any phenomenon completes in two moments) and accept three; the Abhidharmakośa is unclear on mental perception, but Gorampa and others hold that they accept it indirectly, since they accept the sense consciousnesses and the sixth consciousness, and a sense consciousness ceasing without interval produces the mental faculty. The Cittamātrins ultimately accept only self-aware and yogic perception, since with no truly existent external object the objects of form, sound and so on cannot be found and sense and mental perception are subsumed within self-awareness; provisionally they can accept all four (Dignāga’s Ālambanaparīkṣā explains the four, and Asaṅga accepts the form aggregate, hence the form faculties).
3. The Meaning of Each Illustration
Four parts: sense, mental, self-aware and yogic perception.
Sense Perception
The Definition
To posit the definition separately is mistaken; Therefore sense cognition is non-mistaken [— that is its definition].
[Tibetan early-pramāṇa school] Again they split sense perception (“non-conceptual, non-mistaken cognition depending on a faculty”) from the valid cognition that is sense perception (“eliminating superimposition by the sense consciousness with respect to a previously unknown sense object”). Refuted as above: the split is unattested in the Ācārya’s treatises, and perception cannot eliminate superimposition.
Own position: the non-conceptual, non-mistaken cognition arising in dependence on a faculty. Since there are five faculties there are five sense perceptions — e.g. the non-conceptual, non-mistaken cognition arising in dependence on the eye faculty is eye-faculty perception.
Establishing It — that it arises from a faculty
The sense faculty is the capacity that apprehends the object; It is established with certainty through co-presence and co-absence.
A faculty is a special capacity to apprehend an object, established by co-presence and co-absence: where the faculty is, the cognition apprehending the object is; where it is absent, so is the cognition — as smoke tracks fire. One may argue from the result as well: eye consciousness present, eye faculty present. Concretely: the red pillar is there, the attention to look is there, yet the moment the eye faculty is damaged no eye consciousness arises — proving that something uncommon capable of illuminating form exists in the continuum.
Is the capacity sentient or insentient? Capacity and its bearer are one entity, not two (as a seed and the seed’s capacity are one; if different, the seed would not be the capacity — many faults). On the Sautrāntika view, which the Auto-commentary follows here, the faculty is an insentient phenomenon. The Vaibhāṣika account of faculties with manifest shape (eye like a flax flower, nose like two copper needles, tongue like a half-moon) does not stand. On the Cittamātra view the faculty is a cognition: for the Following-Reasoning masters Dignāga and Dharmakīrti, an uncommon capacity to illuminate form upon the preceding moment of eye consciousness; for the Following-Scripture masters (Asaṅga, Vasubandhu, apparently Jñānaśrī), a particular latent trace of apprehending objects residing on the ālaya consciousness.
The faculty is not the physical organ: were the ear faculty the outer flap of skin, larger ears would hear louder sounds and smaller ears fainter ones — the fault the Abhidharmakośa raises. In every case the faculty is a capacity; which basis it is posited upon depends on the school’s view.
Establishing It — that it is free from conception and non-mistaken
Being vividly manifest, it is established as non-conceptual; Because it apprehends the particular, it is non-mistaken.
Non-conceptual, because vividly manifest: conception apprehends by mixing time, place and aspect into one and so cannot illuminate vividly and simultaneously. (Khenpo notes conception has its own kind of vividness — the Abhisamayālaṃkāra speaks of the vivid aspect of conception on the path of joining — but not this simultaneous, unmixed vividness.)
Non-mistaken, because it tracks the particular exactly: where the particular is one it illuminates one, where many, many; it never makes one into many. Conception does the opposite, clinging to phenomena distinct in earlier and later time as one — yesterday’s river and today’s river, yesterday’s person and today’s — so it always carries a component of error.
Determining the Term-Universal
Because the faculty is its uncommon cause, It is called sense cognition, like the sound of a drum.
Question: sense cognition arises from three conditions — object (objective condition), faculty (ruling condition), attention (immediately preceding condition). Why name it after the faculty alone? (“Attention” here is not necessarily the thought “I want to look,” but whatever part of the mind stirs outward toward the object.)
Reply: the faculty is its uncommon cause. “Object cognition” would over-pervade, since yogic perception has an object and self-awareness takes its own cognition as object; “mind” or “mental cognition” would over-pervade too, covering every conceptual cognition and all minds and mental factors. Analogy: beating a drum requires sticks, hands and cognition, but the sound is called the drum’s, since the drum is its uncommon cause; “the sound of the hand” or “of the stick” would not identify it.
Mental Perception
Identifying the Essence
That which is produced immediately from these two — object and sense cognition — is the mental [faculty]; The non-mistaken cognition arising in dependence on it Is the definition of mental perception.
Mental perception is the non-mistaken cognition produced without interval when the sense cognition ceases. The verse may look as though a third thing, a mental cognition, stands in between; it does not — the definition is simply the non-mistaken cognition arising in dependence on object and sense cognition. It divides by object: form-apprehending, sound-apprehending, smell-, taste-, touch-apprehending mental perceptions.
Difference from sense perception. Sense cognition arises when object, attention and faculty are complete. Mental perception shares the same objective condition (the same red pillar, one moment later), but its immediately preceding and ruling conditions are entirely the sense cognition. Following a chart attributed to Mipham Rinpoche: at moment one, object, attention and faculty are complete but neither perception has arisen; at moment two the first moment of sense cognition arises; at moment three mental perception arises, and thereafter both continue without interruption. At cessation they need not stop together: if the object ceases, both cease at once; if the object does not cease, the sense cognition ceases first and mental perception has one further moment.
Sense perception takes its own preceding moment as substantial cause and so runs on continuously; mental perception arises moment by moment from the sense cognition, never from its own preceding moment. Reasoning might suggest otherwise, but no scriptural treatise states it.
Mental perception is not, as some hold, a mental-consciousness perception wholly cut off from sense perception (on the model of the Abhidharmakośa’s mental consciousness taking dharmas as object). It arises behind every sense cognition; otherwise an object would be cognized by eye consciousness alone with the mental consciousness uninvolved, which is a fault.
Ascertaining Its Nature — the manner of arising
Though mental perception is of many kinds, It is like sense cognition and the single self-awareness.
Objection. If five mental perceptions follow the five sense cognitions, are they simultaneous? If so, one person has five mental consciousnesses, hence is five beings. If not simultaneous, then although the other four sense cognitions have ceased their mental consciousnesses are unproduced — the cause complete but the effect absent.
Reply: neither fault, just as with sense cognition and self-awareness. Five mental perceptions do arise at once facing five objects without making five minds. In the non-conceptual many aspects may be present at once; only in the case of conception can a single continuum not hold more than one at a time — that would contradict the scriptural statement that one being has one continuum.
Analogy (Jamyang Loter Wangpo, ascribed also to Mipham Rinpoche): a crystal ball in a house with five windows, silks of five colours outside. Looking outward, all five colours appear on the crystal; looking inward, it is a single translucent essence. Khenpo has tried it with a crystal glass and cloths of different colours on each side: the crystal blocks none of them. So one must not imagine eye consciousness dwelling in the eye, ear consciousness in the ear, each in its own quarter like separate districts of a city or nomad households in separate ravines. Cognition takes different names from different supports; inwardly its essence is one.
Further objection: if the eightfold, sevenfold and sixfold collections of consciousness are one entity (as Longchenpa too accepts), is this not the non-Buddhist position? No: outwardly, five cognitions arise in dependence on five objects; inwardly there is self-awareness; from the angle of cognizing the object there is mental perception. The epistemological method of distinguishing exclusion-isolates handles this.
One substance, distinct isolates. If the five sense consciousnesses and the mental consciousness are one substance, would eye consciousness hear sound? No — one in essence, each illuminating a different part; within one eye consciousness there are the parts illuminating white, red and blue without white becoming red. Analogy: the parts of a chariot are one substance with the chariot (there are no wheels apart from it), yet the wheel does not become the carriage-box. Likewise the non-conceptual perceptual cognition is one essence in one continuum, and divides by exclusion-isolate into five sense perceptions, five mental perceptions, and the self-awareness part. Simultaneous eye consciousnesses may be as numerous as atoms without multiplying the person’s continua — only conception is restricted to one at a time.
Both sense and mental perception are “object-cognizing,” since mental perception too requires faculty and object: a blind person has no form-apprehending sense perception, hence no form-apprehending mental perception either. Inwardly, sense cognition, mental perception and even conception are non-dual with the essence of self-awareness. If each had its own continuum, one being would have many continua, hence many lives, and killing one person would be killing many — absurd; the sūtras state that every being is a single continuum.
Ascertaining Its Nature — its validity as valid cognition
Because it is non-mistaken, it is valid cognition; Because it lacks a continuum, it does not [yield] ascertainment.
Valid: the form-apprehending mental perception illuminates the particulars of the object exactly as the sense cognition saw them, without error, and so is genuine perception.
No ascertainment: sense cognition, having a continuum and arising from its own causes without other cooperating conditions, produces ascertainment by its own power (“just now I saw a red pillar”). Mental perception cannot even produce its own essence by its own power — it must depend on the sense cognition at every moment — much less ascertainment. Mipham Rinpoche’s qualification: the inability is by its own power; by another’s power ascertainment does occur.
Analogy (Mipham Rinpoche): a woodcutter cuts wood with an axe. The axe does the cutting, yet people say “the woodcutter cut the wood,” never “the axe cut the wood,” because one is agent and one instrument. So too the mental consciousness does the real illuminating, yet people say “my eye saw it,” because mental perception operates by another’s power — the power of the faculty. Ordinary usage is therefore reasonable.
Mental perception lacks a continuum because its cause has none: each moment is produced from a sense cognition of a different kind.
Since the faculty arises from the physical faculty, Sense cognition possesses a continuum.
Eye consciousness at each moment arises in dependence on the faculty within its own continuum, so sense perception has a continuum of its own.
The mental faculty does not arise from a mental faculty.
Doubt: if sense cognition produces sense cognition and that becomes the mental faculty, does mental perception not then have its own continuum? No — the mental consciousness meant here is at every moment produced in dependence on the sense cognition.
Therefore that [mental perception] has no continuum.
Hence: mental perception has no continuum and yields no ascertainment; sense perception has both.
Both [the view of] alternation and [the view of] the end-of-the-continuum Are alike invalidated [by reasoning].
Two rejected accounts of how mental perception arises. (Jamyang Loter Wangpo’s exposition takes these two lines as the opponent’s question or position.)
[Jñānaśrī] Alternation: sense cognition at moment one, mental consciousness at moment two, sense cognition at moment three, and so on in alternating succession. (Some deny the attribution, since the Tibetan works of Jñānaśrī contain no such statement; others uphold it on the authority of the lineage gurus. The point is not important here.)
[Jinendrabuddhi] End-of-the-continuum: sense cognitions arise continuously, and only at the very end is a single mental perception produced.
Refutation of alternation: if the two simply alternated, there would be no reason at all why one yields ascertainment and the other does not — yet sense cognition does and mental perception cannot. Refutation of end-of-the-continuum: if the tenth and last moment of sense cognition can produce mental perception, so can the first, second and third, since the cause — a preceding sense cognition — is complete from the first moment onward. A complete cause without its effect is untenable.
Therefore the faculty is the uncommon cause of sense cognition And serves as the [indirect] condition for the mental [perception]. Being self-aware, it is not another continuum.
Own position: the faculty is the uncommon cause of sense cognition (the drum-sound simile again) and only the indirect condition of mental perception — faculty at moment one, sense cognition at moment two, mental perception at moment three. Hence the mental consciousness cannot arise at the very first moment; one must pass through the sense cognition first, or mental perception would have no cause. From the second moment onward the two proceed in parallel.
[Jinendrabuddhi] held mental perception is established by scripture only (“Bhikṣus, form is illuminated by the mental consciousness and the eye consciousness”), reasoning being unable to establish it. Mipham Rinpoche refutes this in the Great Commentary on the Pramāṇavārttika: it is established by reasoning too, and confirmed in experience. Example: a man enters a flower garden — eyes see flowers, ears hear bees, tongue tastes candy, nose smells fragrance, body feels the breeze. All are cognized by the mental consciousness at one time; without its operation the sense cognitions could not cognize their objects at all. And if there were only sense cognitions, each wholly unrelated to the others (the eye unable to hear, the ear unable to see) — like a stūpa inlaid with separate agates and corals — a single being could not cognize all its objects.
Hence the three perceptions proceed in step.
From the second moment onward, sense perception, mental perception and self-aware perception proceed simultaneously (yogic perception apart): at the first moment the sense cognition arises together with its inward-looking self-awareness; at the next, mental perception joins, and thereafter the three run abreast.
Mipham Rinpoche allows that self-aware perception need not be posited separately at all, since every cognition has an inward-looking part. Khedrup Jé too endorses this: if one wishes to accept the three proceeding in step, Sakya Paṇḍita’s account is the reasonable one. Sakya Paṇḍita states that this pith-instruction came to him from the Kashmiri Paṇḍita Śākyaśrī (Śaṅkaranātha).
Dispelling Objections
It apprehends a different object and depends on the faculty; Therefore here the two faults do not apply.
[Nāvamapa non-Buddhists — literally the “ear-unpierced”; the label, glossed in Jamyang Loter Wangpo’s exposition, is uncertain] A dilemma: does the mental consciousness apprehend the apprehended object of the sense cognition? If it does, the sense cognition has already enjoyed that object, so the mental consciousness becomes mere subsequent cognition. If it does not, then a blind person could see form, since apprehending without passing through the eye faculty would be established — and no blind person lacks a mental consciousness.
Reply: neither fault. (1) Different object: the sense cognition apprehends the first-moment object, the mental consciousness the second-moment object — distinct entities. (2) Not independent of the faculty: mental perception arises only once the sense cognition (itself faculty-dependent) has ceased, so it never bypasses the faculty and the blind-man consequence does not follow.
Self-Aware Perception
The Definition
The cognition that knows its own essence — The wise accept this as direct perception.
Self-awareness is the non-mistaken cognition that cognizes its own essence by itself. The Madhyamakālaṃkāra defines it as the self-knowing, self-illuminating cognition that excludes insentient phenomena and excludes non-clarity — a definition on which Śāntarakṣita and a great many Tibetan masters agree.
Dispelling Objections
Objection: if self-awareness depends on no other object, cause or condition, it must be self-arisen, so “self-awareness” and “self-arising” mean the same.
Self-production is the arising of what did not exist before; Self-awareness merely excludes insentient phenomena.
Self-arising is the fresh arising of what did not exist before. Self-awareness makes no division of cognizer and cognized — like a crystal ball, which has no distinction of illuminator and illuminated yet is by essence translucent and bright, unlike eye-perception, where the form is understood and the eye consciousness understands. Self-awareness only excludes the insentient.
Therefore self-awareness and self-production Have no occasion of being the same.
Self-arising would be a thing arising spontaneously of itself; self-awareness is posited entirely upon cognition, as inward-looking cognition, not as the outward cognition of an object. The two never coincide.
Yogic Perception
Identifying Its Nature — the definition
To posit the definition separately is false.
[Tibetan early-pramāṇa school] As before, they split yogic perception from the valid cognition that is yogic perception, defining the latter by “comprehending a previously unknown meaning by eliminating superimposition.” Refuted on the same two grounds: perception cannot eliminate superimposition, and the Ācārya’s treatises never propose such a division.
Born of meditation and non-mistaken — that is genuine perception; Whatever is deluded — that is pseudo-perception.
Yogic perception is a perception born of uncommon meditative absorption and practice which cognizes its object without error. Sense and mental perception do not arise from practice; yogic perception arises entirely from the power of practice.
Not yogic perception: the yogin contemplating the unclean who finally sees cities and mountains of skeletons. As the Madhyamakāvatāra teaching has it, this is a mistaken subject: the appearance does not accord with the object, since there are no real skeletons outside. It counteracts desire but belongs to pseudo-yogic-perception.
Identifying Its Nature — classification
The three kinds of noble ones have three perceptions; Divided into learner and non-learner, they make five; These, [divided into] with-appearance and without-appearance, Each into two kinds, make ten in all.
Yogic perception is posited only at the level of a noble one — from the first bodhisattva ground in the Mahāyāna, from the path of seeing in the Hīnayāna. (Vinītadeva would posit it from the supreme worldly dharma of the path of joining.) Ordinary beings have none, since it is the perception of a noble one’s undefiled wisdom.
By person: the yogic perceptions of śrāvaka, pratyekabuddha and bodhisattva (the Buddha’s being included in the last). By learner and non-learner: five, since the pratyekabuddha is reckoned to have only the non-learner fruition (Rongzom Paṇḍita dissenting). By equipoise and post-equipoise: ten. The appearance-less yogic perception of equipoise rests in emptiness and selflessness with no appearance or clinging; the with-appearance yogic perception of post-equipoise illuminates the thousandfold world-systems through clairvoyance.
How does yogic perception take emptiness as object? Sense perception needs a particular to illuminate, but the emptiness of selflessness has no essence at all. Answer: as one directly sees the absence of a vase in a place where there is no vase — the convention “there is no vase” is established, and one may say one directly sees the absence. If self and mine existed among the five aggregates they could be illuminated there; illuminating aggregates devoid of self and mine posits, conventionally, the true state of the self’s non-existence.
Its ruling condition is meditative absorption; its immediately preceding condition, at the path of seeing, is the preceding contaminated phenomenon. As the Abhidharmakośa allows, an ordinary being’s final moment of contaminated mind can produce a noble one’s first uncontaminated moment: a cause of homogeneous outflow (a substantial cause) need not match its effect in colour or form — else a brownish seed could not produce a green sprout.
Identifying Its Nature — content
The topic here is chiefly the Buddha’s wisdom knowing the variety and wisdom knowing the nature, expounded in the Pramāṇasiddhi chapter of the Pramāṇavārttika. That chapter is an exposition of the first two lines of Dignāga’s homage verse in the Pramāṇasamuccaya (so Mipham Rinpoche and Khedrup Jé agree), and is the root of which the other three chapters are branches. Its order: establish valid cognition, ascertain past and future lives, then establish Śākyamuni Buddha as the sole valid being — the ground of that being his unerring cognition of the four truths, which no ṛṣi or brahmin shares.
The cause of wisdom
By cultivating well both method and wisdom, Which serve as mutual causes, there will be accomplished The primordial wisdoms of suchness and of variety.
Method (the first five perfections) and wisdom act as mutual causes: the accumulation of wisdom is the substantial cause of the wisdom knowing the nature with merit as concurrent condition, and the accumulation of merit is the substantial cause of the wisdom knowing the variety with wisdom as contributing condition. From the Cittamātra downward, the Buddha’s wisdom is held to be produced from causes and conditions — which both establishes it before worldly people and refutes non-Buddhist accounts.
The time of its culmination
In three lifetimes, in a hundred aeons, And in three great aeons, these reach completion.
The śrāvaka of sharp faculties attains the arhat fruition in three lifetimes; for dull faculties it is indefinite (some śrāvakas of the Buddha’s time will attain the fruition only under Maitreya). The pratyekabuddha of sharp faculties — the rhinoceros-like kind, though Rongzom Paṇḍita rates the congregating kind sharper, since their practice is unaffected amid crowds — in a hundred great aeons. The bodhisattva in three incalculable aeons for the sharpest, seven for middling, thirty-three for dull. All eventually attain buddhahood; as the Lamp Illuminating the Definitive Meaning explains, śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas too enter the Mahāyāna.
The distinctive features in relation to method and result
The two liberations, weak in method, Possessing traces, are not the Teacher; Cultivating method and illuminating all phenomena, Having severed the traces — that is the Omniscient One.
The two liberations (śrāvaka, pratyekabuddha) are weak in giving, discipline, compassion and bodhicitta, and retain the four causes of non-knowing — in effect cognitive obscurations, though the Hīnayāna does not so name them. Hence they are not the Teacher. The Pramāṇavārttika gives the reason: “The cause that produces it being method, / not manifest, expounding it is difficult” — one who does not know the method himself can hardly expound it to others. The Auto-commentary adds that they are shallow in wisdom too, having realised only the selflessness of persons (though their own school holds that selflessness to be the only one, and complete). The Buddha, having perfected both wisdoms and severed both obscurations, is the sole Omniscient One.
The Principle of Its Being Valid Cognition — establishing it as perception
Subsequent cognition and ascertaining cognition, Being conceptual, are not perception; All yogic perceptions, Being perception, are established as valid cognition.
Subsequent cognition (recognising what has already been cognized) and ascertaining cognition both have a conceptual component, so yogic perception is neither. The early-pramāṇa claim that subsequent cognition and perception share a substance, and the non-Buddhist claim that conception and perception do, were both refuted earlier. Yogic perception is valid cognition for the simple reason that it is perception: however the object exists, the noble one’s cognition illuminates it just so.
The Principle of Its Being Valid Cognition — adoption and rejection
The valid cognition of ordinary beings Engages in adoption and rejection through ascertainment; The noble ones, free from conception, Engage through meditative absorption — so say the treatises.
Ordinary beings perceive, generate ascertainment, and only then adopt and reject. Perception alone will not do: an infant sees fire perfectly well, but lacking ascertainment does not withdraw its hand from the flame. Adults both perceive the particular and ascertain — there is water here, I cannot cross; there is fire, I must not touch it. Noble ones (eighth-ground bodhisattvas and above) act entirely through the power of meditative absorption, in giving as in discipline; the Buddha taught a hundred thousand absorptions in sūtras such as the Samādhirāja.
The Valid Cognition That Establishes It — establishing the essence
Establishing past and future
The one of inconceivable wisdom — His wisdom cannot be measured.
The problem: if the Buddha illuminates particulars, how does he illuminate past phenomena (already ceased) and future phenomena (not yet arisen), whose particulars do not now exist?
Khedrup Jé’s answer: he illuminates them by the power of his perfected accumulation of wisdom — as, by the perfection of his accumulation of merit, impure food such as horse-fodder became fine delicacies in his presence. The Pramāṇavārttika and Pramāṇayuktanidhi establish the fact by inference, while granting that the manner of the Buddha’s cognition cannot be measured by ordinary conception. Analogies: a kindergarten child cannot gauge his doctor father’s thoughts and deeds; ordinary beings observing the appearing aspect of omniscience are like blind men feeling an elephant; one asleep does not know the mind of one awake.
But “the Buddha is inconceivable” must not be offered to non-Buddhists as an answer, or every question collapses into the same word and nothing is established. One must analyse minutely — both to generate unfeigned conviction in oneself and to give the opponent a sufficient reason.
Inadequate reasons for omniscience: that the Buddha knew the 84,000 worms on the body; that he prophesied Nāgārjuna and Asaṅga; that he has clairvoyance. The Pramāṇavārttika dismisses the last outright — worldly ṛṣis have clairvoyance, and so do eagles, which see far-off things crystal-clear; if clairvoyance is what you admire, rely on an eagle rather than the Buddha.
Two reasonings do work. The first:
If the characteristics of [his] words are ascertained, One can also infer the prior [cause].
Ascertain the distinctive features of the Buddha’s teaching and one infers that its source possessed inconceivable wisdom. Analogy: never having met an author, one reads his books and knows his learning must be excellent from the range of what he cites. Reading the Tripiṭaka, one sees that such profound meaning could be comprehended only by omniscient wisdom. (Lu Xun, after reading the Yogācārabhūmi and the Sūtra of the Wise and the Foolish, remarked that what men of letters research painstakingly all their lives Śākyamuni Buddha had long ago explained perfectly clearly.) The works of learned ones have been overturned one after another in history; the four truths have not. “Inferring the prior life” means: the source of such words must earlier have had a yogic perception attaining the wisdom of selflessness.
The second, that we too shall attain yogic perception in future:
Through perfected cultivation, that becomes clear; By excluding the other extreme, it is ascertained and proven.
The earlier Buddha attained the fruition through long study and practice on the power of his own mind; so may we. “Excluding the other extreme” means the support is stable: the luminosity of mind’s nature is not something that decays, so what is cultivated upon it is not lost, and no cause for the non-establishment of future buddhahood can be found by epistemological reasoning.
Establishing support and supported — refuting others
Here some say: in dependence on the support, The first and final [moments] of cognition — Using fire and lamp as examples — Can be established by direct perception.
[Some masters] Past and future lives are established by self-aware perception. For the past: the present cognition, known by self-awareness, directly excludes the general cognition denying a preceding cognition and indirectly excludes the particular denials — just as “smoke is produced from fire” directly excludes smoke’s production from non-fire and indirectly from other particular things. For the future: the present moment of self-awareness excludes the principle that cognition produces no later cognition — as a lamp now emitting light excludes the claim that lamps do not shine.
Refutation:
The endless [continuum] is not proven by self-awareness; The lamp and fire examples are untenable.
Self-awareness reaches the immediately preceding and following moments, not a beginningless prior limit or an endless later one. Worse, both similes hand the Cārvākas their own position. The fire-and-smoke simile has a thing of one kind (fire) producing a thing of another (smoke) — exactly the Cārvāka claim that luminous, clear-and-aware cognition is produced from the non-luminous body of four elements. The lamp simile is worse still: once the oil is spent the light stops, which is precisely the Cārvāka view that after death, like dust scattered by the wind, nothing whatever remains. The Cārvākas already grant this life’s moments of mind; the opponent’s argument therefore proves nothing they do not accept. What is needed is an inference complete in the three modes.
Establishing support and supported — one’s own position: the beginningless prior limit
Because mind does not depend on another cause, Through [its own] cause the beginningless prior limit is established.
The inference: the first moment of mind in this life (subject) depends on a past-life cognition as its substantial cause (thesis), because apart from its own preceding cause of a similar kind it depends on no other phenomenon (reason), like our present mind (simile). The substantial cause of mind is mind. Body and parental seed are concurrent conditions only, and no opponent can produce a reason why the substantial cause of cognition should not be cognition. “Not depending on another cause” does not mean depending on no condition whatever, only that it depends on no cognition-substitute.
[Cārvāka, two factions] One holds the first moment of mind in the womb arises from the body, and the rest from that first mind; the other holds each day’s moments of cognition arise in dependence on the body.
A distinction to keep: this concerns the essence of cognition, not its distinctions. Whether a person is bright or dull turns on external causes and conditions — the parents’ qualities function as concurrent conditions, as brave parents tend to have brave children, and seeds sown in different fields yield fruit of different flavour. But the essence of mind is produced from mind, past-life mind producing this life’s, without interruption.
Supporting material: the Ratnakūṭa on the consciousness departing while the body remains (matched by modern near-death accounts); the Daśabhūmika-sūtra on recollection of past lives, of which researchers worldwide have documented many instances. Sakya Paṇḍita’s two lines are brief; the Pramāṇasiddhi chapter argues the case in detail. Before those with faith the point is easy — the Buddha said it; before others, reasoning is needed, and even then hard. Illustration: an Indian master debated a non-Buddhist for years without persuading him, then died holding a pearl in his mouth and was reborn a child still holding the pearl — only that convinced him.
Establishing the endless future — establishing by reason
The assembly of causes complete, without obstruction, Through [its own] cause the endless future limit is established.
An ordinary being’s later moment of mind definitely exists, because the causes and conditions — karma, delusion, affliction — are complete, and the obstruction, the wisdom of selflessness, is absent. Analogy: with moisture, fertiliser and the rest complete, the seed cannot but produce its fruit. If past life and this life exist, the future life follows. An inference complete in the three modes; two lines, but not overturnable.
Establishing the endless future — ascertaining the meaning: refuting others
[Objection:] They say karma, body, and mind are the causes of saṃsāra; To sever the [latter] two, they undergo austerities.
[Nirgranthas and other non-Buddhists] Virtuous and non-virtuous karma together with body and mind are the cause of saṃsāra. They accept past and future lives and a future liberation, and so seek to exhaust body, karma and mind by austerities — bathing in water, burning in fire, cutting off limbs — thereby attaining the fruition of Maheśvara and the like.
Because it is powerless, useless, and unnecessary, Exhausting karma and destroying the body is not the true path.
Three faults. Powerless: while self-grasping stands, karma and affliction continue, as the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā says; austerities cannot exhaust the body — like cutting the branches, leaves, flowers and fruit of a tree whose root is intact, which grow back in spring. Useless: even granting the body destroyed, rebirth continues, since afflicted ignorance remains. Unnecessary: what is needed is severing self-grasping, and once that is severed such austerities serve no purpose. The point extends to modern practice that consists of outward display with nothing cultivated in the mind.
Setting forth one’s own position — identifying the cause of taking rebirth
From the producing cause, ignorance, Arise too the afflictions, karma, and saṃsāra; From this sphere another sphere is born, And its good or bad [condition] is wrought by karma.
The root of the three realms is ignorance, i.e. self-grasping, the view of the transitory collection (the Madhyamakāvatāra’s opening verse). From ignorance comes desire toward the pleasing and hatred toward the displeasing; from these, virtuous and non-virtuous karma; from karma, the six realms — the remaining links of dependent arising following in train. Not body and karma, as the non-Buddhists hold.
By division: this life’s six sense spheres arise from the past life’s — the past-life faculties as substantial cause, the past-life cognition as concurrent condition (a citation in the Pramāṇasiddhi chapter, also cited in On Past and Present Lives). Where the past-life cognition did not cling to form, rebirth follows in the formless realm. The quality of faculty and cognition is the work of karma as ruling condition. Candrakīrti’s Exposition of the Catuḥśataka gives the simile of the dove for why the markings of the past life’s body-faculty appear on this life’s — the uncommon dependent arising of a substantial cause surfacing on the body, which modern science can only register as a mystery.
Analysing its antidote — partial suppression
Loving-kindness and the rest do not contradict the self; Therefore they cannot sever the root of saṃsāra.
Loving-kindness counteracts hatred, the contemplation of the unclean counteracts desire, immeasurable joy counteracts jealousy — but none of these contradicts self-grasping, so they only suppress the afflictions temporarily. The Pramāṇavārttika: “Loving-kindness and the rest, being undeluded, do not contradict [the self]; / they are not the ultimate antidote.”
Analysing its antidote — complete eradication
Because selflessness contradicts the self, When selflessness is directly seen, that [self-grasping] is removed.
The wisdom of selflessness directly contradicts grasping at self and mine; when it is directly seen — whether through Madhyamaka or through the unsurpassed secret mantra — self-grasping is severed at once, and the afflictions with it.
Though the seed has no beginning, Once burnt by fire it has an end; Likewise, though saṃsāra is beginningless, Seeing selflessness brings about its end.
Barley or wheat seed has no beginning, since each is preceded by its own kind without limit; burnt by fire it has an end. So the minds of beings in saṃsāra are beginningless, yet on penetrating selflessness the seed of self-grasping is eradicated and the former mind ceases. Saṃsāra in general is beginningless and endless; a particular being’s saṃsāra is beginningless but ends — as Śākyamuni Buddha, having displayed countless rebirths, at the time of Prince Siddhārtha never took rebirth again.
Establishing the endlessness of luminosity free from self-grasping
Doubt: if the conceptual mind terminates, is the continuum of mind itself interrupted at nirvāṇa?
The causes for the arising of luminous mind being complete, And there being no obstruction, it definitely arises.
No. The essence of mind, emptiness-luminosity neither separate nor joined, never ceases from ordinary being to buddhahood — the luminous tathāgatagarbha, treated at length in the Uttaratantra and more explicitly in the tantras. The luminous mind meant here is the clear-and-aware cognition free from apprehender and apprehended, established by four reasons in certain Cittamātra treatises. Two reasons for its endlessness: its causes are complete, and there is no obstruction, since the wisdoms of the two selflessnesses do not contradict a cognition free of apprehender and apprehended. The conceptual mind is exhausted (desire and the rest being afflictive obscurations, and grasping at the three spheres a cognitive obscuration), but the luminous aspect does not break off; at buddhahood the two wisdoms manifest as this clear-and-aware mind, which conception cannot measure.
The Valid Cognition That Establishes It — establishing the pervasion
Cultivating fear and the like gives rise to vivid experience.
The support of mind is stable, and so the qualities accumulated on it increase without limit — from the path of accumulation to the path of joining, from the first ground to the tenth. The Pramāṇavārttika argues the point negatively: if the continuum did not change, study would make one more foolish, or progress would stop at some fixed point; experience shows otherwise. Examples: one who constantly cultivates fear comes to see fearful appearances; one who arouses strong desire may see the object of desire appear. These are not ultimate similes, only demonstrations that mind changes in accordance with cultivation.
The Valid Cognition That Establishes It — establishing the definition
Because it is free from the duality of apprehender and apprehended, it is unmistaken.
Yogic perception has no apprehender-apprehended duality; with the original luminosity of mind’s nature present, it is without error and without conception, measures its object without error, and so is valid cognition. Were there conception, the conceptual mind and mental factors being the nature of the three realms, it could not accord with the actual state.
Dispelling Objections Concerning the Establishment of the Meaning — perfection of severance
[Objection:] Some say: because [the obscurations] cannot [be removed], the means is not known, And [the removal] is unstable, there is no liberation through severance.
[Non-Buddhists] Three reasons why the Buddha cannot have severed all obscurations: (1) they cannot be severed, being the very nature of mind — conception is non-dual with the obscurations, so severing them would leave the being mindless; (2) even if severable, ordinary beings, being afflicted and foolish, do not know the means; (3) even if severed, they recover, as arhats’ afflictive traces revive — so the removal is unstable.
Because they are not [mind’s own] nature, there is a method; And because the cause can be removed, liberation is reasonable.
Answered point for point — you say cannot, not known, unstable; we say can, known, stable. (1) The obscurations are adventitious, not the nature of mind: the nature of mind is luminosity (so the Pramāṇavārttika), and the obscurations are like clouds and mist in the sky, never of one taste with it, and therefore severable. (2) The means is known through the teachings of the Buddha and the lineage gurus: first penetrate the view of emptiness, then sever them by the power of practice and view. (3) The severing goes to the seed, and a destroyed seed never recovers; mercury once treated never becomes poison again. No arhat, irreversible bodhisattva or buddha has ever reverted to the ordinary-being ground — the root of saṃsāra having been burnt by the fire of the wisdom of selflessness, it cannot flower again without violating cause and effect. (The Hīnayāna allows some arhats a temporary regression; the Mahāyāna does not.)
Dispelling Objections — perfection of wisdom: the path of cultivation
[Objection:] By the examples of jumping, water, and molten gold, [Your claim] to establish limitless cultivation is inadmissible.
[Non-Buddhists] Nothing in the world reaches a limitless state, so the ordinary mind cannot become boundless wisdom. Three similes: the high jump — athletes improve with training up to a limit, and none ever trains until he leaps to the edge of the sky; boiling water — however hot, water never becomes the nature of fire; molten gold — once out of the fire it congeals again, so wisdom would revert to an ordinary being’s mind once the antidote is left.
Because they depend on effort, are unstable, And re-arise, those examples do not hold.
Each simile fails on its own terms. Jumping: the support is the body, and the reason for improvement is that heavy elements such as phlegm are progressively removed; once removed, no further training helps, since the ceiling is set by the obstruction. A limited thing is no simile for a limitless one. Mind, by contrast, increases in compassion, luminosity and wisdom all the way to perfect wisdom. Water: its support is unstable, being composed of water-atoms. Mind’s support is stable, so loving-kindness and compassion can become the nature of the wisdom of selflessness. The Pramāṇavārttika argues that every being has a good mind — even fierce beasts feel love for their young — and specifies loving-kindness and compassion (rather than desire and hatred, which are equally universal) because these do not contradict the wisdom of selflessness: as that wisdom increases they flourish with it, while desire and hatred, contradicting it as water contradicts fire, weaken and are finally severed. Molten gold: here one has entered the nature of phenomena by severing the root, so there is no regression; the cases are unlike.
Dispelling Objections — perfection of wisdom: the resultant omniscience
[Objection:] Though by cultivating emptiness and compassion It is possible to become of that nature, Yet since objects of knowledge are limitless, Establishing omniscience is truly difficult.
The opponent concedes the path but not the result: if phenomena had a limit, comprehending them all would be possible, but the things of the world are limitless.
The answer comes from two sides — that the Buddha knows all necessary points, and that he knows all knowable phenomena. First:
Not deceiving regarding the essential point — That is omniscience, like “the crowd has gathered.”
One is called omniscient for being unerring in what must be known — for satisfying the most important aspiration. Analogy: a specialist in physics is called a learned one though he may know little chemistry or geography. What beings most need is to leave the suffering of the three realms; for a man in prison, analysing the prison’s architecture is beside the point — he wants out. On the Pramāṇavārttika’s view the sole reason the Buddha is omniscient is that he taught the four truths without error: know suffering, know its origin in karma and affliction, sever them by the truth of the path, and the truth of cessation appears. Sūtra simile: a man shot in the heart with an arrow does not need to know the arrow’s quality, length, or where it was shot from; he needs it pulled out.
“The crowd has gathered” does not require every person in the world; a physician saying “all the medicines are prepared, take them” does not mean every medicine on earth.
One who comprehends all the necessary points Is called by the wise “the all-knowing one.”
Sakya Paṇḍita’s Entrance Gate for the Wise likewise distinguishes two kinds of wise person: one who knows all phenomena, and one unobstructed in all the knowledge he himself needs.
“All have gathered to listen” — Though the ox is absent, there is no fault.
We say all the listeners have come though no elephants, yaks, dogs or monkeys are present, and no one holds that class cannot begin because the yak is missing. “Everyone has arrived” at a meeting never means the Americans and Africans too. Conventionally “omniscient” means expert and unobstructed in the chief knowledge within a certain scope.
Second, lest this seem an evasion — the Buddha does in fact know all phenomena:
Or else, by means of inference, He is established as the all-knowing one.
No one can establish this by perception: an arhat cannot measure the Buddha’s wisdom, nor can Mañjuśrī or Avalokiteśvara. But by inference: the Buddha cognizes without error the subtlest and most profound principles — emptiness, the five paths and ten grounds, karmic cause and effect — so the coarser matters follow a fortiori. His teaching accords throughout with the facts, with no contradiction front or back, and such speech indicates direct seeing, as a man describing his native place in exact detail must have been there. Or: if we can see the motes of dust in sunlight, a concentrated mind can certainly illuminate the vase and pillar before it.
So omniscience is of two kinds — knowing all necessary matters and knowing all knowable phenomena. Worldly scholars have only the first; the Buddha has both.
Why, then, are some things absent from the sūtras? Not for lack of knowledge, but lack of significance. The 84,000 worms on the body he did state, in the medical and secret-mantra tantras, along with the structure of the body and much else — effortless for the wisdom knowing the variety, and in any case a semblance reason for omniscience. As for aeroplanes and trains: how to slaughter a pig, how many ants are in an ant-hole, how tofu and cabbage taste stir-fried together — all of no real significance. Beings are tormented by the three sufferings; the Buddha taught the dependent-arising Dharma-gate because that is what matters.
Interstitial verse
Though what is told would span an aeon, It appears all at once within the mirror; Likewise, though objects of knowledge are endless, The Buddha’s wisdom knows them fully in an instant.
The prognostic mirror (known in Tibet and in India): a practitioner recites mantras and matters of past, present and future — the four continents, Mount Meru, scenes that words could not exhaust in an aeon — appear all at once by the power of dependent arising, visible only to particular eyes. So before the wisdoms knowing the nature and the variety, all things subtle and coarse of the three times appear at once without obstructing one another, not by long deliberation but in a single instant. Hence Dharmakīrti: the Tathāgata’s omniscience is inconceivable.
b. Pseudo-Perception
1. The Definition
Every mistaken cognition Is asserted to be pseudo-perception.
Every deluded cognition not according with the actual principle, conceptual or non-conceptual, is pseudo-perception.
Doubt: granting a mistaken non-conceptual cognition may be called pseudo-perception, since perception is non-conceptual — how can a mistaken conceptual cognition be? Reply: Dharmakīrti’s Pramāṇavārttika likewise gives four kinds of pseudo-perception, of which only the first (a damaged faculty) is non-conceptual and the other three conceptual. The ground is that a conceptual cognition too has an appearance, but does not directly illuminate the particular of the object.
2. The Classification
It is [both] conceptual and non-conceptual; The non-conceptual is of [the] sense and mental [kinds]; The conceptual is of three — and is stated as six — Divided thus to dispel wrong notions.
Non-conceptual pseudo-perception, two kinds: (1) mistaken sense cognition — seeing two moons, or hairs in space with a damaged eye; (2) mistaken mental consciousness — dreaming, where the five sense cognitions are absent for want of their supporting faculties, yet the mental consciousness manifests mountains, rivers and the great earth from its own deluded traces.
Conceptual pseudo-perception, three kinds:
- With a name-support — clinging to things of different places, times and forms as one phenomenon, e.g. trees of every kind taken as the single substantial universal “tree” (the general phenomenon of chapter three).
- Superimposing onto another object — a mottled rope taken for a snake, the impure body taken for pure.
- With a hidden object-component — the inferential cognition, the cognition produced by inference, the recollecting cognition, and the cognition aspiring to the present; we do not cognize the object as it is but conjecture it.
Why does Dignāga give six in the Pramāṇasamuccaya where Dharmakīrti gives three? The six are: mistaken cognition, conventional cognition, inferential cognition, cognition produced by inference, recollecting cognition, cognition aspiring to the present. The mistaken cognition is the superimposing-onto-another-object conception; the conventional cognition is the name-support conception; the remaining four are subdivisions of the hidden-object-component conception. Among these, the inferential cognition is the clinging to the reason (“there is fire, because there is smoke” — the clinging to smoke); the cognition produced by inference is the mental consciousness that infers the fire; the recollecting cognition recalls the past; the cognition aspiring to the present looks to the future (“I shall attain buddhahood”). The last two count as pseudo-perception because their apprehended objects are not present as they are — a past matter cannot be embodied in a present cognition, nor a future one.
The purpose of the sixfold division: the first two dispel the Vaidikas’ notion that sense cognition is conceptual; the middle two are posited from the angle of relying on a reason, establishing the corroborating instance of what is not sense cognition (inferred phenomena are not objects of the faculty and must carry error); the last two from the angle of not relying on reasoning at all, since recollection and aspiration involve no reasoning. The intentions of Dignāga and Dharmakīrti are not merely non-contradictory but each has its own point. Three conceptual plus two non-conceptual make five, all pseudo-perception, because none directly cognizes the apprehended object as it is — though from the angle of the appearing object they are not all mistaken.
c. The Result of Perception
1. The Actual Exposition
Stating Others’ Differing Views
[Some] posit perceiving and ascertaining as valid cognition and result; [Some] accept contact and cognizing the object as valid cognition and result; [Some] speak of [grasping] the distinction and its distinguishing property; Some assert the faculty and sense cognition as valid cognition and result.
[Mīmāṃsaka] (line 1) The non-conceptual cognition that makes the object appear is valid cognition; the subsequent conceptual cognition ascertaining its distinctions (this pillar is red, is impermanent) is the result. Fault: the valid cognition is non-conceptual and the result conceptual — arising from a different kind.
[Vaidika] (line 2) The faculty’s contact with the external object is valid cognition; the cognition produced after they meet is the result. Fault (from the Auto-commentary): if faculty and object contact directly, then since form possesses the eight subtle particles, colour, smell, taste and touch would all be experienced through the eye faculty.
[Vaiśeṣika] (line 3) Grasping the distinction (the pillar) is valid cognition; cognizing the distinguishing property (its red or white) is the result. Fault: their own doctrine is that one cognizes the entity through its quality, which fails if distinction and distinguishing property are wholly separate; and one who knew the property would not know the distinction, and vice versa.
[Certain Buddhist śrāvaka schools] (line 4) The faculty is valid cognition, the sense cognition produced from it the result. Fault: valid cognition cannot be posited on an insentient phenomenon — “being insentient, it cannot be that which sees.” A stone is no valid cognition.
The common error: all four posit valid cognition and result as producer and produced, which yields the fault that when the valid cognition is present the result is absent, and when the result is present the valid cognition is absent.
Positing the Reasonable Position of One’s Own School
What is proven and what proves, [in their] cause-and-result [relation] — These two are asserted as valid cognition and its result.
Own school: prover and proven, not producer and produced. Three terms to keep straight: the object of comprehension is the basis on which the function is exerted (seeing form with the eye, form is the object of comprehension); the valid cognition is the agent exerting the function, i.e. the eye consciousness — not the faculty, which would be no different from the Hīnayāna schools; the result is the angle of the object’s having been illuminated. In essence, illuminating form and the eye consciousness are not different, since without the object being illuminated no eye consciousness arises; but as valid cognition and result they are distinguished by angle. (In Jamyang Loter Wangpo’s exposition, “object” means a reason or ground, and “the object upon which the true function is posited” is the agent exerting the function.)
Correlating It with the Four Schools
As for self-awareness being valid cognition and result, Most schools that posit cognition agree; The object-cognizing schools, according to their own views, Posit the principle of valid cognition and result separately.
On the self-awareness side there is no divergence: cognition itself is the object of comprehension, the experience produced in dependence on its essence is valid cognition, and true self-awareness is conventionally the result. “Most” excludes the Vaibhāṣikas, who do not accept self-awareness at all.
On the object-cognizing side the schools differ:
- [Vaibhāṣika] The real external object appearing when colour meets the faculty is the object of comprehension; the faculty that sees it is valid cognition; the mind that cognizes it is the result — object of comprehension and result being different substances at the same time. Fault (refuted in chapter one): cause and effect simultaneous; and if valid cognition and object of comprehension are simultaneous, valid cognition need not arise in dependence on the object at all.
- [Sautrāntika] The first-moment external object is the object of comprehension; the second-moment cognition arising bearing the object’s aspect is valid cognition; the cognizing or discriminating of the object is the result. Acceptable under slight examination. Dharmakīrti posits valid cognition and result through three modes, which Mipham Rinpoche’s Great Commentary sets out as: without examination, according with worldly people; with slight examination, according with the Sautrāntikas; with extremely subtle examination, according with the Cittamātra. Sakya Paṇḍita notes pointedly in the Auto-commentary that the early epistemologists follow the Vaibhāṣikas, whereas he follows Dharmakīrti.
- [True Aspectarian Cittamātra] The self-aware part that makes the apprehended object appear is the object of comprehension; the apprehending part is valid cognition; true self-awareness is the result — object of comprehension and result being simultaneous and of one essence, as experiencer and experienced in our feelings of pleasure and pain are one entity. The Madhyamakālaṃkāra supports this: on both Cittamātra and Sautrāntika views what is seen is an aspect of mind, the apprehended being mind turned into the object’s aspect.
- [False Aspectarian Cittamātra] The superimposed part that makes the object appear is the object of comprehension — outer mountains and rivers being neither one’s own mind nor truly existent, appearing like hairs in the sky; the cognition apprehending it is valid cognition; and the imputed self-awareness obtained through it is conventionally the result, with object of comprehension and result neither truly one entity nor different. Fault: for establishing conventions, only the True Aspectarians’ true inner self-awareness will serve; the False Aspectarians posit imputed self-awareness because for them the external object is vague and insubstantial. Khenpo follows the True Aspectarian account here, as does the Commentary on the Madhyamakālaṃkāra.
2. The Subsidiary Exposition [on the Result of Inference]
Properly a topic for the chapters on inference for oneself and for others, treated here instead.
The Object-Cognizing School’s View
The wise assert that The particular of fire is the object of comprehension; The exclusion-cognition produced by smoke is the valid cognition; And cognizing that [fire] is the result.
Taking the effect-reason “there is fire behind the mountain, because there is smoke”: the particular of fire, not yet seen but to be known, is the object of comprehension; the conception clinging to the smoke one has seen is the valid cognition; the resulting knowledge that fire burns behind the mountain is the result. The sequence is: cling to the reason, then know, finally arrive at the subject-property. Indian and Tibetan masters posit it in this way.
The Self-Awareness School’s View
Within the essence-store where the trace of appearing fire is roused, There arises the trace of appearing smoke; Therefore, being non-deceptive to persons, The wise call it inference.
[Cittamātra opponent] On the mind-only view, inferring fire from smoke is impossible. A trilemma: (1) If the fire behind the mountain exists while unseen, then something exists that does not appear to cognition, and “all phenomena are mind only” fails. (2) If it does not exist, there is nothing to infer. (3) If fire is known only after smoke appears, then cause follows effect, since fire produces smoke.
Reply: the fault is absent, provided one speaks in terms of traces. In connection with cognition, whichever trace ripens first appears first; when a general ascertainment is made, from the essence-store in which the trace of vividly appearing fire is roused, the trace of vividly appearing smoke arises. Their cause-and-effect relation being established, seeing smoke revives the trace “there is fire on the mountain,” and the inference does not deceive. Analogy: in a dream there is no external fire at all, yet seeing smoke rise on the mountain one infers fire, runs toward it wanting fire, and finds fire — the fire found being the particular fire within the dream. So no separately existing particular fire is required alongside the appearance, and the cause-after-effect fault does not arise.
The opponent’s difficulty is not peculiar to the Cittamātra: on the Sautrāntika view too, when smoke appears the fire that produced it has already ceased, so inferring the continuum of the cause from the effect likewise rests on the trace of the producer-produced relation in one’s own continuum. Mipham Rinpoche explains the point thus in the Great Commentary on the Pramāṇavārttika.
Closing. Two points are the crux of this chapter, and of pramāṇa as a whole: that past and future lives exist conventionally, against the atheist claim that nothing remains after death; and that Śākyamuni Buddha is a valid being whose words carry no deception. Both are to be verified by theoretical examination, practice, and life experience, so that faith rests on fact and reason rather than on report — and, resting there, is stable.
Here ends the Ninth Chapter, Examining Perception, of the Pramāṇayuktanidhi.
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