- Methodology
- Dr. Peter Della Santina
In this chapter I will discuss the methods through which the Abhidharma
investigates our personalities and our relations to the world around us. There are two
ways to depict a given person and his relation to the world around him: deductively and
inductively. The rational or deductive method begins with an abstract idea and applies
that idea to one's experience. The empirical or inductive method begins with the facts we
encounter in experience; through observing and analyzing, interpreting and understanding
these facts, we build up a picture of ourselves and the world around us.
In short, the rational method begins with the abstract and tries to
apply it to the concrete, whereas the inductive method begins with the concrete and builds
up a picture of reality gradually and progressively.
The inductive method, which is the one used in the Abhidharmic system,
is quite close to the method of science, except that in science the focus of the inductive
process is outward and in the Abhidharmic system the focus is inward, on the mind. This is
why the Abhidharmic method is sometimes called introspection or, to use a traditional
term, meditation.
When we say that the Abhidharmic method is empirical and inductive, we
mean that it has to do primarily with mental experience. Sometimes we say that meditation
is like internal or mental microscopy: it is a way of investigating very closely the facts
of experience. The Abhidharmic method of introspection yields results because it manages,
through meditation, to slow down mental processes to a point where we can see and
understand them. In this respect there is a remarkable parallel between the Abhidharmic
method and the scientific method. In science, when we want to find out how a certain
transformation actually takes place, we slow down the process or speed it up. In
Abhidharmic meditation, too, we can slow down mental processes so that we can see what is
actually happening, or we can speed things up. If we could see our human life, from birth
to death, within the space of five minutes, it would give us great insight into the nature
of life. However, because this is usually not possible, we slow things down.
This is the basis of Abhidharmic meditation. The lists of mental
factors and the like in the books of the Abhidharma may appear tedious and speculative at
first glance, but in fact they are just the written form of the data we find in this very
careful investigation of experience. Far from being speculative, the Abhidharma is the
result of careful and close introspective analysis of experience. That said, you may
question the use of studying the Abhidharma at all, thinking that it is surely more useful
to sit in meditation and reproduce the Abhidharmic experience of reality in one's own
meditation. This is true to the extent that, as in all aspects of Buddhist teaching,
direct as well as indirect acquaintance is required.
With the Abhidharmic view of the elements, the picture we get when we
analyze experience is certainly much more effective if it is a direct picture achieved
through our own meditation. But even if it is an indirect picture gained through study, it
is still of use to us, because when we sit down to meditate we will already have some
intellectual acquaintance with the general outline of the picture we are trying to bring
into focus. In this sense studying the Abhidharma can be useful in bringing about an
indirect understanding of ourselves and the world around us in Abhidharmic terms.
There are two ways Abhidharmic investigation works: (1) through
analysis, and (2) through synthesis, or relation. The basic structure of these two methods
is given in the first and last books of the Abhidharma Pitaka, the Dhammasangani
(Classification of Factors) and the Patthana (Book of Causal Relations), respectively.
These are the two most important books of the Abhidharma. It is through the analytical
method and the synthetic or relational method that the Abhidharma arrives at a basic
understanding of not-self and emptiness.
Let us look first at the analytical method and then at the relational
method; finally, we will combine the two, as, indeed, we must to reap the full benefit of
the Abhidharmic method of investigation. In The Questions of King Milinda (Milinda Panha),
it is said that the Buddha has accomplished a very difficult task: 'If a man,' Nagasena
says in reply to King Milinda, 'were to take a boat out to the sea, and if he were to take
a handful of sea water and were then able to tell you that in it this much water is from
the Ganges, this much from the Yamuna, and this much from the other great rivers of India,
this would certainly be a very difficult thing to accomplish. In the same way, the Buddha
has analyzed a single conscious moment of experience--for instance, the experience of
seeing a form--into its various component parts: matter, feeling, perception, volition,
and consciousness.'
Analysis is the dissection of an apparently unitary, homogeneous whole
into its component parts. This analysis can be applied not only to the self, as we find in
the analysis of personal experience, but also to external objects: just as we can break
down the personality into the five aggregates, so we can break down external phenomena
into their component parts. For example, we can break down a table into its legs, its top,
and so forth, and, even further, into the molecules and atoms of various elements that
compose the table.
The purpose of dissecting an apparent whole is to uproot attachment to
internal and external phenomena. Once we recognize that this apparently homogeneous self
is really just a collection of components, our attachment to the notion of the self is
weakened; similarly, once we realize that external phenomena are just collections of
individual smaller components, our attachment to external objects is weakened. What do we
have as a result of our analytical process? Internally, we are left with moments of
consciousness; externally, we are left with atoms. If we consider the two together, we are
left with elements, or factors of experience.
The mental and material elements of experience do not in themselves
bring us to the ultimate understanding of reality because we are left with moments of
consciousness and atoms of matter--elements of experience. These elements remain
irreducible no matter how long and how far we go in our process of dissection. Although we
come up with smaller and smaller parts, we are left with a picture of reality that is
broken up into little bits and pieces as a result of dissection. This in itself is not an
accurate and complete picture of reality.
To arrive at the ultimate picture of reality, we need to couple the
analytical approach with the synthetic or relational approach. That is why a great
Buddhist scholar and saint, Nagarjuna, once expressed his reverence for the Buddha as 'the
teacher of interdependent origination.' The truth of interdependent origination pacifies
and calms the agitation of thought-construction. This is an indication of the importance
of relation, interdependence, or conditionality in understanding the real nature of
things. It is also why scholars have focused on the Book of Causal Relations, which
supplies the other half of the Abhidharmic method of investigation.
Just as, through analysis, we arrive at the insubstantiality of
personality and phenomena (because we see that they are made up of component parts), so,
through the process of relational investigation, we arrive at the emptiness of personality
and phenomena (because we see that the component parts which constitute them are all
conditioned by and relative to each other). We arrive at this insubstantiality and
emptiness by focusing on the teaching of interdependent origination. We can see how,
within a given thing--be it the personality or an external object--the component parts
depend on one another for their existence. For instance, within a single phenomenon, such
as an apparently unitary table, there are several component parts (the legs, the top, and
so forth) that depend on each other for their existence as part of a table.
Similarly, the table depends on its antecedent causes (the wood, the
iron, and action of the craftsman who put it together) and also on proximate conditions
(like the floor on which it stands). We can also explore the idea of interdependence in
relation to three dimensions: time, space, and karma. For instance, the table is dependent
in terms of time in the sense that, prior to the table existing, a series of events
occurred--the cutting of lumber, the construction of the table, and so forth. This
sequence of events led to the arising of the table. Similarly, the table is dependent in
terms of space in the sense that it stands on the floor, and so forth. The third dimension
of conditionality operates beyond time and space.
This dimension is explained by karma, because karma has its effects
depending on time and space, yet it is not directly apparent in time and space. Because of
karma, an action done at a very distant point in time and space can have its effects here
and now. Conditionality is therefore not only temporal and spatial, but also has a karmic
dimension.
Let us take two examples to establish more firmly what we mean by the
analytical approach and the relational approach. Take a chariot, which is a phenomenon, an
identifiable entity. We apply the analytical approach to the chariot by breaking it down
into its component parts: the wheels, axle, body, shaft, and so forth. Application of the
synthetic method looks at the same chariot in terms of the lumber that goes to it, the
action of the builders who put it together, and so forth. Alternatively, we can take the
classical examples of the flame in an oil lamp, which exists dependent on the oil and the
wick, and the sprout, which depends on a seed, soil, sunlight, and so forth. The
analytical and the relational methods together yield the ultimate picture of things as
they really are. They yield this ultimate picture through careful investigation. We use
the analytical method to break things up into the component parts of an apparent whole;
then we use the relational method to show that these component parts do not exist
independently and separately but depend on other factors for their existence. There are
many places in the Buddha's teaching where methods of investigation are used singly and
then in combination. For example, we apply mindfulness first to internal phenomena, then
to external phenomena, and finally both to internal and external phenomena. By using
analysis and relation together, we overcome many problems. Not only do we overcome the
idea of self, substance, and personality, we also overcome the problems that result if we
believe in the independent existence of separate factors and ideas like existence and
nonexistence, identity and difference.
The analytical and the synthetic approaches are actually reflected in
the chemistry of the brain. Neurologists have discovered that the brain is divided into
two hemispheres, one whose function is analytical and one whose function is synthetic. If
these two functions are not in harmony, not in balance, personality disturbances result.
Someone who is too analytical tends to overlook the more intuitive, dynamic, fluid aspects
of life, while someone who is too relational tends to lack precision, clarity, and focus.
Thus even in our personal lives we need to combine analytical and relational thinking.
The psychological and neurological dimensions of these two approaches
are also clear in the development of western philosophy and science. Philosophies in which
the analytical approach is predominant have left us with realistic, pluralistic, and
atomistic systems like the philosophy of Bertrand Russell. By the same token, in the
latest developments of science, such as quantum theory, we find a more relational view of
reality gaining ground. When we look at the history of philosophy and science in the West,
we can see that each of these two approaches to investigation has been dominant at one
time or another.
Perhaps we are reaching a point where we can combine the two even in
western science and philosophy. Perhaps we can arrive at a view of reality not too
different from the one that the Abhidharma arrives at through the experience of
introspective meditation--a view of reality that is both analytical (in that it rejects
the idea of a homogeneous whole) and relational (in that it rejects the idea of
independent, separately existing bits and pieces of reality). We would then have a very
fluid and open view of reality in which experience saturated by suffering could be
dynamically transformed into experience free from all suffering.
-oOo-
[Taken from Peter Della Santina., The Tree of Enlightenment. (Taiwan:
The Corporate Body of the Buddha Educational Foundation, 1997), pp. 284-290].
-oOo-
Sincere thanks to Ti.nh Tue^. for typing
this article.