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The Buddhist Unconscious: The Alaya-vijñana in the context of Indian Buddhist Thought
Author Waldron, William S.
Date2003.21.31
Pages288
PublisherRoutledgeCurzon
Publisher Url http://www.routledge.com/
LocationLondon, England, UK [倫敦, 英格蘭, 英國]
SeriesRoutledgecurzon critical studies in Buddhism
Content type書籍=Book
Language英文=English
NoteHardcover. First published in 2003.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. alayavijñana. 2. Yogacara (Buddhism) 3. Madhyamika (Buddhism)
KeywordBuddhist Ethics; self; Nagarjuna philosophy=龍樹學=中觀學派; Yogacara=瑜伽行派; Aalaya-vijnana=Aalayavijnana=阿拉耶識; Madhyamika
AbstractAbstract:
This is the story of 5th century CE India, when the Yogacarin Buddhists tested the awareness of unawareness, and became aware of human unawareness to an extraordinary degree. They not only explicitly differentiated this dimension of mental processes from conscious cognitive processes, but also offered reasoned arguments on behalf of this dimension of mind. This is the concept of the 'Buddhist unconscious',which arose just as philosophical discourse in other circles was fiercely debating the limits of conscious awareness, and these ideas in turn had developed as a systematisation of teachings from the Buddha himself. For us in the twenty-first century,these teachings connect in fascinating ways to the Western conceptions of the 'cognitive unconscious' which have been elaborated in the work of Jung and Freud.
This important study reveals how the Buddhist unconscious illuminates and draws out aspects of current western thinking on the unconscious mind. One of the most intriguing connections is the idea that there is in fact no substantial 'self' underlying all mental activity; 'the thoughts themselves are the thinker'. William S. Waldron considers the implications of this radical notion,which, despite only recently gaining plausibility,was in fact first posited 2,500 years ago.


Table of contentsPreface xi
Acknowledgments xv

Thematic introduction: a Buddhist critique of the construction of self and world 1

PART I
The background and context of the alaya-vijñana 7

1 The early Buddhist background 9
The three marks of existence 9
The formula of dependent arising 11
Causation and continuity without a self 16
Viññafa in the formula of dependent arising 19
Viññafa as consciousness 21
Viññafa as cognitive awareness 28
The underlying tendencies (anusaya) 33
The underlying tendency “I am” and conceptual proliferation (papañca) 36
The debate over latent versus manifest 39
Reciprocal causality between the two aspects of viññafa 41

2 The Abhidharma context 46
The Abhidharma project and its problematic 46
Background of the Abhidharma 47
The aim and methods of Abhidharma: dharma as irreducible unit of experience 50
The basic problematic: two levels of discourse, two dimensions of mind 55
Analysis of mind and its mental factors 57
The initial formulation of the problematic in its synchronic dimension: the accumulation of karmic potential, the presence of the underlying tendencies, and their gradual purification in the Kathavatthu 59
The problematic in its diachronic dimension: immediate succession versus the continuity of karmic potential 62
The persistence of traditional continuities: karma and kleka in the Abhidharma-koka 67
Abhidharmic responses to the problematic 70
The Sarvastivadin theory of possession (prapti) 72
The Sautrantika theory of seeds (bnja) in the mental stream (santana) 73
Questions raised by consciousness, seeds, and the mental stream 76
The Theravadin theory of life-constituent mind (bhavamga-citta) 81
Conclusion 85

PART II
The alaya-vijñana in the Yogacara tradition 89

3 The alaya-vijñana in the early tradition 91
The origins of the alaya-vijñana 91
The new model of mind in the Saddhinirmocana Sjtra 94
The alaya-vijñana as mental stream 99
The Alaya Treatise of the Yogacarabhjmi 101
The Proof Portion 102
The Alaya Treatise, Pravgtti Portion: analyzing the alaya-vijñana in Abhidharmic terms 107
The alaya-vijñana’s subliminal objective supports and cognitive processes 109
The alaya-vijñana’s mutual and simultaneous relationship with manifest cognitive awareness (pravgtti-vijñana) 112
The alaya-vijñana’s simultaneous arising with (afflictive) mentation 117
The Alaya Treatise, Nivgtti Portion: equating the alaya-vijñana with samsaric continuity 123
Conclusion 127

4 The alaya-vijñana in the Mahayana-sadgraha
1. bringing it all back home 128

Appropriating the traditional Buddhist framework 129
Synonyms of the alaya-vijñana in the disciple’s vehicle 130
The two vijñanas and the two dependent arisings 131
Seeding the alaya-vijñana: the karmic process as simultaneous intrapsychic causality 135
Resolving the Abhidharmic Problematic 139
Karma, rebirth, and the alaya-vijñana 140
The continuity of the afflictions (kleka) 142
The path of purification: mundane and supramundane 150
Beyond Abhidharma: adventitious defilements, pure seeds, and luminous minds 153

5 The alaya-vijñana in the Mahayana-sadgraha
2. looking beyond 158
The predispositions of speech, self-view, and the life-constituents 159
Common experience, common embodiment: language, the alaya-vijñana, and “the arising of the world” 160

PART III
Appendices 171

Appendix I The series of dependent arising: affliction, action, and their results 173
Appendix II Index of related controversies 175
Appendix III Translation: the Pravgtti and Nivgtti Portions of the Vinikcayasadgrahafn of the Yogacarabhjmi 178

Notes 190
Bibliography of works cited 247
Index of texts quoted 255
Index 259
ISBN0415298091; 020345779X (E); 0203451171 (E)
Hits590
Created date2003.10.24
Modified date2014.05.22



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