The Attainment Of Cessation

Its implications for the rest of Buddhist philosophy.

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In the Buddhist tradition of religion there is an altered state of being which is the soteriological goal of its practitioners. This state, whose attainment is achieved by certain strict meditational practices, is called nirodhasamapatti, or the “attainment of cessation”. Once this state is achieved, the practitioner is considered to have succeeded in disregarding all of the false representations of reality which are presented to us in samsara, our practical, everyday, world.

If an impulsive, and quite possibly false, connection can be made between this Buddhist¹ religion and Kant’s philosophy as embedded in his Critique Of Pure Reason, then it might be said that our “categories” of cognition determine the way in which we see the world. For Kant, these categories were necessitated by the very fact that we were human; and for him there was no way that we could hope to go beyond them. But for the Buddhist this is not the case. While we may have these categories of cognition as we live in samsara, that doesn’t mean that we can never escape them; through a series of meditational practices we can seek to escape these human categories (and any category at all), and finally, in the attainment of cessation, finally be able to see the Kantian noumena.

What is entailed in the attainment of cessation is the cessation of all physical, verbal, and mental activity. By physical what is meant is every function of the human body which would normally be considered as necessary for the prolongation of life; so the lungs cease to respire, and so on. However this does not mean that the practitioner is dead. What remains is the “vitality” and “heat”, which are, according to Buddhaghosa as described by Griffiths², analogous to the embers of a fire. The embers contain the “vitality” of the fire allowing it to be, if the embers are fanned, recreated; the “heat” is the heat of the embers, an indication that the fire-potential, or vitality, is still there.

After having considered this, it is necessary to say that my above analysis of the cessation of physical activity is not entirely accurate. There must remain enough autonomous activity in the body to maintain that body’s life; so, as Griffith’s says, “respiration has ceased completely, and it is likely (though not explicitly stated by these texts) that heartbeat, blood pressure, body temperature and metabolic levels in general have fallen to a very low level…The physical practitioner in the attainment of cessation, then, is like nothing more than that of a mammal in the deepest stages of hibernation; there also the physical functions slow to an almost imperceptible minimum, and it is possible for the untrained observer to judge the creature dead rather than in hibernation.”³

As Buddhaghosa further says⁴ the “vital functions” of the body, those functions which allow for the “vitality” to exist, must continue. But just what exactly are these “vital functions”? Griffiths indicates that they are the “heartbeat, blood pressure, body temperature and metabolic levels”, if only in a minimal way. However this cannot be the case, since, if we are to equate the vital functions with those things which allow an animal to survive in hibernation (and which are observable phenomenon) then respiration, a necessary life process, must also be a vital function. But it is acknowledged that this “in-breathing and out-breathing”⁵ is a physical function which does cease. Therefore “vital functions” cannot mean what Griffiths thinks it means, and we are left with the question of what are vital functions; another, more basic, question that might be asked by the medical practitioner, or anyone else who might wonder, is how can the person who has attained cessation continue to be even potentially alive when breathing, a physically life-supporting activity, has ceased?

But, although I have raised these questions, I cannot attempt to answer them here. What concerns this essay is something else entirely, and this has to do with the cessation of verbal and mental functions.⁶ Verbal function is, according to Buddhaghosa, “reasoning and deliberation”⁷ and, according to Griffiths, “the process of intellection and ratiocination – and therefore by extension also the activity of speech”.^8 | 9 Similarly, the mental functions are described as “conceptualization and sensation” and the non-existence of “consciousness”.

The question which from of this, which, as we shall see, is philosophically important for more than just reasons of definition, is whether or not these verbal and mental functions are to be taken as meaning the mind as a whole. Buddhaghosa rejects the notion that the mind can still be present for two reasons. The first is that, if the physical, verbal, and mental functions of both a dead person and one who has attained cessation are identical, then if the “attainer” of cessation has a mind¹⁰ then so must the dead person. The implication of this is that the dead person could talk or be able to commit murder. The second is that the retainment of mind in a state of cessation is opposed to the intentions of canonical text.

I contend that his reasoning in both of these cases is erroneous. In the first case he supposes that a dead person, like an attainer of cessation, could talk or commit crimes, but this is obviously false as it is contradictory to the fact that all physical functions have ceased. Whatever the exact nature of physical functions might be, it is certainly obvious that they do not include the ability to talk (which entails the prohibited activity of “in-breathing and out-breathing”) or to murder (which entails at least the bodily functions prohibited by a state of minimal autonomic activity). Further, if the mind can’t exhibit itself on a physical level then there is at least no empirical method by which we can say that the mind isn’t there (as opposed to it just not manifesting itself).

Buddhaghosa’s second argument for refuting the existence of mind can, while not with as much certainty perhaps, also be criticized. The soteriological practices necessary for attaining cessation are enstatic in nature. In other words they entail a “drawing away” from the external world. While it may be true that this is a drawing away of the mind itself, this isn’t immediately obvious. It seems to me that what this is, is a drawing away of our awareness; and our perceptions and our cognizance of these perceptions, as well as any other forms of cognizance, are what make up this awareness. When we recede from
samsara what we do is negate this aware/thinking part of our minds, but this doesn’t mean that there isn’t a part of our minds which is non-aware/non-thinking; and the canonical texts don’t necessarily rule out this non-aware/non-thinking part.

Now, considering the nature of the attainment of cessation to have been addressed, it is necessary to consider a basic question concerning such a state: how is it possible to return from cessation to the external world once more? If such a state is the cessation of mind then what cause can there be for the re-emergence of this mind? In the final chapter of Griffiths’ book, he gives a list of six propositions, all of which are upheld as philosophically true by the majority of Buddhist thought. It is only as, and because, these propositions relate to the attainment of cessation that an internal conflict develops. Because of this conflict it is seemingly impossible for all six propositions to be true at the same time; and the reason why I say that they are upheld by the “majority” of Buddhists is because certain schools of thought have had to deny some of these propositions in order to allow for the implications of the attainment of cessation.

These six propositions are as follows:

(1)	For any X, if X exists X is a transitory event or can be analyzed into such.
(2)	There are no substances.
(3)	Personal proper names refer only to causally connected continuua of transitory events.
(4)	The transitory events of which such causally connected continuua are comprised are of two basic types: mental and physical.
(5)	Every event has, as a necessary condition for its occurrence, a cause which is (temporally) immediately antecedent and (phenomenologically) of the same kind.
(6)	In a continuum wherein there are no mental events at time T, there can be no mental events at time T-plus-one; and in a continuum wherein there are no physical events at time T, there can be no physical events at time T-plus-one.11

There is a proposition which is not explicitly stated here, but only implied by the content of this last chapter, however I think that it should be stated. In doing so, I draw upon the phrasing of the same proposition used by Griffiths in chapter one.

(7)	No mental events occur in the attainment of cessation.

The Theravada school of thought is of the opinion that “the necessary and sufficient cause for emergence from the state of cessation is the practitioner’s act of intention [to emerge] immediately preceding entry into that state”.¹² But to hold such a belief is to be in violation of (5) which states that there can be no effect for which there is a cause not immediately prior to it temporally. One way of avoiding this contradiction is to claim that the dharma which is responsible for the re-emergence of mind is in existence until just before re-emergence occurs. This will avoid the problem with (5) but it will create another conflict, this time with the theory of impermanence as seen in (1) which asserts that each dharma can exist for only a short period of time. While it could be argued that a “short time” for this type of mental dharma is the many days that cessation can take place¹³, the definition that is normally accepted for a “short time” is “in a snap of the fingers, the blink of an eye”, and the intent of this seems to go against that of the many days of cessation. Another approach is to say that there is a causal chain of events linking the intent to re-emerge and re-emergence, but since no mental events can occur this causal chain would have to be physical (violating (5) again, this time phenomenologically), and this is something which they are unwilling to accept.

There only seem to be two more possible routes open to the Theravada, one is to admit that there is some kind of mental causal chain going on, between the intent to re-emerge and its happening, but this they also will not accept. The other possibility lies in the fact that the attainer of cessation may be “called back” by the “practitioner’s death, the community needing the practitioner for a communal administrative act, a summons from the Buddha and others”¹⁴ (although this “others” isn’t made clear). Concerning the practitioner’s death, we are confronted, again, with the physical affecting the mental and the same conflicts occur. The most interesting cause for re-emergence here, is the case where the community can in some way affect the practitioner. Griffith assumes that the practitioner must be affected physically, and, being unable to think of any way that this may be so, leaves the question. I think that it deserves further attention.

First of all, I don’t want to say that it is the practitioner’s physical “continuum” which needs be affected. Griffith, I assume, says this because the practitioner has no mind and, hence, no mental continuum to affect. However, it must be realized that a mental continuum is needed to support the existence of the mental, even if the mental is not present (in the same sense that a set can contain no members, or space can contain no objects), for otherwise it would be impossible to imagine that the mind could return at all, regardless of what could be the cause of that return. So, in saying this, I wish to examine the possibility that the community can affect the practitioner’s (mindless) mental continuum. When I consider that one person’s physical continuum is, seemingly, capable of affecting another person’s physical continuum (or how else can the collision of objects be explained?), I can see no difficulty in accepting the view that the same can be said of mental continuum.

So, in some way, it might be possible for the community, or the Buddha, to “call back” the practitioner from the attainment of cessation, in the same fashion that, analogously, one person can pull another person out of a hole in the ground. However, even if this is accepted, it doesn’t explain how the intentions of the practitioner can be known by the community, such that they would know when, or even if, to issue the “call” to re-emerge; and it would seem to contradict the spirit of the attainment of cessation as an individual practice.¹⁵

These problems are present also in the Vaibhasika, Sautrantika, and Yogacara traditions, so I won’t bother recapitulating all that I have said in regard to them. However, each of these traditions do contain approaches to these problems which have not been considered, and are different from the Theravada tradition. Each tradition actually states, to at least some degree, that one of the propositions is false.¹⁶

The Vaibhasika reject the temporal aspect of (5), claiming that the cause of re-emergence from the attainment of cessation is the intent to re-emerge immediately prior to entering the state. Their ability to do this is based on an argument of theirs that, while dharmas are impermanent, they must yet continue to exist in some sense, for, if this were not the case, we would not be able to cognize or speak about past events. For the purposes of this essay it is unfortunate that Griffiths didn’t have the time to go into this, but this theory allows the intention of re-emergence to be the required immediately antecedent and similar condition while still being temporally distant.

The Sautrantika tradition deny the Vaibhasika theory, and instead propose that the phenomenological aspect of (5) is in error. They claim that it is the physical body which is the cause of the re-emergence of the mind. They argue their claim by pointing out the generally accepted fact of the “acquisition” of a new body for those who have spent some time in the “formless realms where no bodies exist”.^17 | 18 Since the only thing that existed in this formless state was the mind, then it must be the case that the mental can be the immediately antecedent (and “similar”) cause of the physical; and if this is the case, entailing the breakdown of (5), then the reverse must not also be ruled out. The problem that arises from this is that the Sautrantika are not ready to wholly concede the (phenomenologically) similar aspect of (5), and propose something called a “seed” which is planted by the mental into the physical body so that in some way, while the mental no longer exists, it is this mental seed which causes the re-emergence of the mental. This leads to a position which is less consistent, and less defensible, than if they were to wholly abandon the “mental seed” and say that it was the entirely physical which was the cause of the mental.¹⁹

The final tradition to consider is that of the Yogacara, who propose a solution of a type which hasn’t yet been considered. They believe that it is (7) and, similarly, (6), which are in error²⁰; it isn’t the case that all mental events cease to occur during the attainment of cessation, but, rather, only those which are aware/non-thinking. It may be argued that to say this is to go against the intentions of the canonical texts, but there is a counter-argument to this (which I have given earlier).²¹ Those mental events which don’t cease to exist comprise the store-consciousness.

The idea of the store-consciousness is an extension of the philosophical “seed” of the Sautrantika. While the “mental seed” of the Sautrantika was used as an explanation for the re-emergence of mind, the “seed” idea was also used by them, outside of this context, as an explanation for the “continuance” of a person comprised of momentary events. The seed will be “planted”, and then later “ripen”, encapsulating those “lost” momentary events which are needed for such continuance of the person. The problem with the Sautrantika view is that it doesn’t propose a locus for the seeds, or a place for them to be planted in and ripen. The Yogacara say that this place is the store-consciousness.

The store-consciousness isn’t aware/non-thinking, or “intentional” as the text puts it, for the very reason that it is only the ripened seeds which have these attributes; while the seeds are “dormant” they are only potentially intentional. “However,” as Griffiths says, “the store-consciousness is not strictly identical with [experience since] those things in which [the store consciousness] consists (seeds and tendencies) do not produce experience while they remain in the store-consciousness. Experience, understood in the sense of conscious intentional mental events, happens only outside the store-consciousness, when the seeds and tendencies therein ‘mature’ to bring it about.”²² Nonetheless the store-consciousness is described as “something which cognizes, something which has an intentional object”²³ but this is only in so far as it is “about” the seeds; it may technically be thought of as “ordering” what is in it, but as understood in the important aware/non-thinking sense, it isn’t “something which cognizes, something which has an intentional object” (as we normally understand these words).

Seemingly the only real objection to the idea of store-consciousness is that it approaches too closely the fact that it is something which has permanence, and this is proposition (2) and is something which no Buddhist wishes to entertain. The Yogacara claims simply that the store-consciousness is just as impermanent as anything else, but this may not be satisfactory. Griffiths says that there is a great deal of debate on this subject, and that he can only note that such a claim to impermanence “sounds suspiciously like a case of special pleading”.²⁴

I offer, as a final comment on the re-emergence from the attainment of cessation, a theory which is a variation of the Yogacara position.²⁵ This theory postulates the existence of, not a store-consciousness, but a sub-conscious, an idea which seems to be lacking in Indian thought (although the store-consciousness is at least close to this). As with the store-consciousness, the sub-conscious is wholly non-aware/non-thinking. But the difference is that there are no seeds of experience. The sub-conscious exists as a part of the mind which is identical to the aware/non-thinking mind but for the “awareness” distinction necessary for cessation. Thus the sub-conscious does not contain seeds of experience, which mature into dharmas of awareness, but rather it contains dharmas of non-awareness. Or, perhaps, if this description can better serve, there are two “minds”, one aware and the other non-aware, both of which are part of the same mind (just as the physical and the mental are part of the same world).

The sub-conscious event is, then, the temporally immediate and phenomenologically similar cause of any future sub-conscious event; and it is also the temporally immediate and phenomenologically similar cause of any future (aware) mental event which is not caused by another (aware) mental event – as in the case of cessation. Because the non-aware mind and the aware mind are both within the realm of the mind, just as are the “verbal” and the “mental”, it is not in error to say that they are phenomenologically similar and, therefore, one can be the cause of the other.²⁶

The problem of the continuity of the person, not necessarily connected with my sub-conscious theory of mind, may be addressed in a fashion which, as I have never before come across it, may be based on erroneous assumptions on my part; nevertheless I shall present my solution. As I understand it, the combinations of dharmas which form our perception of a chair are, at time T-plus-one, dharmas different from similar dharmas at time T. It is only the similarity of these dharmas which leads us to perceive the chair at time T-plus-one as being the same as the chair at time T, when, in point of fact, the chairs (dharmas) are not the same. Further, it is the dharmas of the chair at time T which are the temporally immediate and phenomenologically similar causes of the dharmas of the chair at time T-plus-one. If this is the case, that physical reality is only continuous because of our illusory perception of such continuity, then the problem of continuity in persons is solved. This “person”, or mental, continuity has the same status as physical continuity. In other words, persons are only continuous by virtue of the illusion of their continuity; in “reality” there is no continuity.²⁷ In fact, if physical objects do only have the illusion of continuity, then it seems a grave mistake in Buddhist philosophy to not follow this to its inescapable application to the mental world as well (except, perhaps, in the case of the Yogacara). At the very least, as Griffiths points out, it is interesting why no Buddhist postulated this.

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Endnotes

1. This is, of course, not to say that this isn’t a religion that is upheld by most, if not all, Indian thought. Rather that (Indian) Buddhism is the focus of this paper and these issues shall be discussed in this context.
2. Paul J. Griffiths, On Being Mindless, pp. 9-10.
3. Ibid., p. 10.
4. Ibid., pp. 39-40.
5. Ibid., p. 6.
6. It is necessary to note here that I am going beyond the religious aspects of Buddhist thought and turning my attention to that school’s philosophy. While the idea of the attainment of cessation, and the meditational practices required to produce it, are founded in Buddhist religion, the details which will now be discussed are philosophical in nature. It should also be recognized that the philosophy is based on the religion, or in other words the philosophy is an attempt to explain the implications of the canonical texts which describe our metaphysical status.
7. Ibid., p. 6.
8. Ibid., p. 8.
9. It is interesting to note how neither of these four “verbal” functions is seemingly necessary for such emotionally inspired acts of speech as, for example, “I’ll kill you!”, or “Damn you!” which are very un-thought out, unconsidered, statements. Perhaps the implication is that speech is, by definition, a deliberative activity so that such examples as those above don’t qualify under the heading of “speech”. But if we are to understand speech in this way then what general process governs such “expletives”?
10. This must be a mind which is possessed only of qualities other than those which are seen in the verbal and mental functions.
11. This proposition seems, to me, to be too strict. If we accept this proposition, then how, once there are no mental events at time T, at some point during the attainment of cessation, can there then be any mental events at time T-plus-1, at some point after the practitioner has re-emerged? This seems to deny the fact that there can be re-emergence at all, because after this re-emergence there have to be mental events. Perhaps it should be reformulated to say that there can be no mental events at time T-plus-one only so long as time T-plus-one is during cessation.
12. Ibid., p. 35.
13. The amount of time that cessation can be “maintained” is, according to accounts, anywhere up to a week.
14. Ibid., p. 39.
15. Although, once subject/object distinctions have broken down (and, ultimately, they aren’t “really” there in the first place), it isn’t inconceivable to propose that the community is aware of the practitioner’s intent to re-emerge, by the very virtue of being part of the same continuum. In this view it makes little sense to talk of an intention on the part of the practitioner only. (Then again, and in a very vague fashion as I’m not sure how to explain what I mean any further, perhaps the practitioner’s re-emergence is just part of the “flux” of things such that the cause is contained in the true nature of the world with which the practitioner has become one. In other words, maybe it is a mistake to think of cause and effect when we are dealing with someone who is beyond such concepts.)
16. These other three traditions all offer defensible positions on the question of re-emergence from the attainment of cessation, at the expense of some part of generally held Buddhist doctrine. But, unlike these three traditions, the Theravada school admits to no solution, holding all of the propositions to be true, hence failing to reconcile the discrepancies that this entails, and remains internally inconsistent.
17. Ibid., p. 65.
18. I believe that this reference applies to those who have been reincarnated, however it may also apply to those who have decided to “return” from Nirvana (I know that there are entities which exist “between” samsara and Nirvana, choosing not to “go on”, but I’m unclear as to whether or not “return” from Nirvana is possible in any sense).
19. In this sense, their position, while more defensible than that of the Theravada, is still similar in its inconsistencies.
20. And, as according to the rest of their idealist philosophy, although I won’t go into it here, (4), in so far as it is not purely phenomenologically based.
21. It is curious to me why Griffiths, who says, “and it is hard to disagree” with Buddhaghosa’s rejection of mind, should fail to see the connection between the Yogacara position and that of Buddhaghosa’s opponent (because, since there is an entire school founded against Buddhaghosa on this point, it is obviously not that hard to disagree). The only reason that I can see why this might be so is that Buddhaghosa and/or Griffiths had a different understanding of mind then the one which I use here. However, as I see it, the argument of Buddhaghosa’s opponent must rest on the (part of the) mind as that which is “non-aware/non-thinking” to have meaning, and, if Buddhaghosa and/or Griffiths did have a different understanding of mind, then any criticisms against Buddhaghosa’s opponent would be inapplicable as the object of dispute is different.
22. Ibid., p. 95.
23. Ibid., p. 96.
24. Ibid., p. 95.
25. I also apologize if it is incomprehensible or absurd, as I don’t know if I’m familiar enough with the subject to either propose it or propose it in a meaningful way. For all intents and purposes what has gone before should be considered the body of the essay proper, and this last part just an interesting idea.
26. However, the aware mind can never be the cause of the non-aware mental event, at least in the sense that it is aware of being so, since the very nature of the non-aware mind is that the aware mind is not aware of it. This does not mean, though, that the non-aware mind cannot be the cause of the aware mental event because the non-aware mind may itself be aware while it is still not present as an object of the aware mind. This is in parallel to the store-consciousness being non-aware but still being the cause of (aware) mental events.
27. Persons, like material objects, may be defined by the likes of Nozick’s “closest continuer” and Parfit’s idea of “connectedness”.