The one and the many: Yogaacaara Buddhism and Husserl
By M. J. Larrabee
Philosophy East and West
Volume 32 No. 1
January, 1981
p. 3-14
(C) by University of Hawaii Press
p. 3
INTRODUCTION
Among the teachings of the Buddhist school of
aacaara,(1) the doctrine of the aalayavij~naana (or
aalaya, for short) is especially unique and
perplexing. The Yogaacaara or Vij~naanavaada school
evolved between 350 and 500 A.D., stimulating other
followers in India and China into the ninth century.
The school posits a form of subjective idealism,
partially in reaction to the movement begun by
Naagaarjuna in the second century A.D., a philosophy
which had denied the reality of both the empirical
world and the self. Yogaacaara attempts to establish
the reality of the self as consciousness in order to
overcome the skepticism and nihilism engendered by
Naagaarjuna's teachings.(2)
The doctrine of the aalayavij~naana ("storehouse
consciousness") is central to Yogaacaara metaphysics,
but it appears impervious to a clearly defined
conceptual interpretation. At times the aalaya seems
to be only one of many elements of consciousness, all
possessing more or less equal stature. At other times,
however, the aalaya seems to take on a predominant and
fundamental role, separating itself from the elements
of any particular consciousness and laying claim to a
metaphysical status which amounts to the source of
particularity within the spatio-temporal world as
ordinarily experienced. Commentators, mirroring one or
another aspect of this fluctuation, have likened the
aalaya to both Freud's unconscious, (3) an
ego-centered and particularized phenomenon although
with a general shared structure, and Jung's collective
unconscious, (4) a basic, universally specified
phenomenon which underlies any particularized ego.
In this article, I wish to sketch an additional
comparison--in this instance, between the
aalayanij~naana of Buddhist idealism and the "flux"
of Husserlian idealism, a structure also termed
inner-time consciousness. In particular I will show
the extent to which one phase of Husserl's notion of
consciousness can illuminate some of the theoretical
problems which emerge from the doctrine of the
aalaya. As we shall see, the similarities between the
flux and the aalaya may stem, in part, from attempts
on the part of both philosophies to ground the
particularity of the ego-experienced spatio-temporal
realm in a primordial consciousness of some sort.
The article will take the following course: I
will first outline the important points of the
Yogaacaara system, with emphasis on the doctrine of
the aalaya and its mode of operation. Next, I will
discuss the Husserlian notion of the flux and compare
it with the aalaya in a preliminary way. The final
section will be an effort at extending the
metaphysical implications of the comparison to its
furthest point; hopefully, some additional insight
into the problems inherent in the doctrine of the
aalaya will result.
p. 4
I. THE DOCTRINE OF THE AALAYAVIJ~NAANA
The Yogaacaara school of Buddhism, with the aid of
Western philosophical terminology, can be described
as a metaphysical idealism. Its main advocates were
Asa^nga and Vasubandhu, who, in the late fourth
century, drew inspiration from earlier (and, for us,
anonymous) suutras, in particular the
Sa^mdhinirmocana Suutra and the La^nkaavataara
Suutra. The Yogaacaarins held that only consciousness
is real. Consequently, neither the external objective
world nor the "internal" egological world exists.
Both types of reality are the result of
transformations of consciousness. The various
arguments which the Yogaacaarins set forth to defend
their idealism will not be discussed here, since our
interest concerns only the description of how
consciousness operates.
This description begins with the positing of
eight types of consciousness.(5) This multiplicity on
the part of consciousness is intended to explain the
different functions by which consciousness apparently
"creates" the illusions of an existing
spatio-temporal world and the internal ego-worlds.
These eight types of consciousness are: the five
external senses (vision, hearing, and so on), which
count as the first through the fifth consciousnesses;
an internal sense-center (sixth); the "mind" or the
discriminating consciousness, termed manovij~naana
(seventh); and the aalaya (eighth), also called
storehouse or home consciousness, receptacle or
appropriating consciousness, or seed consciousness.
This eighth consciousness is, however, first in the
order of importance with respect to generating the
movement from the oneness of true being as
consciousness to the multiplicity of apparent beings
within the spatio-temporal world, including, of
course, the many empirical consciousnesses (human
persons). It is termed the first transformation of
consciousness as derivable from what might be
described as the "pure" or real state of
consciousness; consequently, it is the ground or
condition for the operation of the other
transformations of consciousness which take place in
the functioning of mind (the second transformation)
and the six senses (the third transformation).
What, then, is the aalayavij~naana, the eighth
type of consciousness? Asa^nga in his
Mahaayaanasa^mgraha summarizes its nature as follows:
"All actions (dharmas) which are blemished... lodge
in it in the quality of fruit and... it itself lodges
in these dharmas in the quality of cause
(hetubhavana)...."(6) The aalaya, then, has a twofold
character--it "receives" and "stores" the fruit of
actions and perceptions, the dharmas, in the form of
seeds, and it causes further actions and perceptions
on the basis of these seeds. In short, it is both
caused by and causes dharmas.(7)
We may note at this point that this dual
character of the aalaya answers one problem which
besets any idealism: if neither enduring
spatio-temporal objects nor enduring subject-egos
exist, how can the regularity, consistency, and
continuity of our experience be explained? The
Yogaacaarins claim that these characteristics of
experience flow from the causal force of the seeds on
the
p. 5
aalaya, seeds which regularly "perfume" the other
consciousnesses (as the original texts express it) in
a specific way which gives rise again and again to
the same manifestations (for example, the apparently
subsisting trees, birds, and so on).¡]8¡^Thus my
experience of myself as an enduring subject arises
regularly because the aalaya receives the fruit
(effects) of a mind (manovij~naana) which illusorily
posits my self as an enduring entity. This illusory
belief in turn is caused by the seeds of the aalaya
operating on the mind. The interplay of reciprocally
affecting aalaya and manas perpetuates the belief in
an enduring self. and the perpetuation of the belief
leads to the assumption of the "real" existence of a
self which is the object of that belief. In the same
way, the experience of enduring physical objects in
an enduring spatio-temporal world derives its
continuity and consistency from the mutual causation
between the aalaya and the other seven types of
consciousness.(9)
Thus far, the doctrine of the aalaya appears to
cohere well with the basic idealistic position of the
Yogaacaara school. However, certain difficulties
arise upon closer investigation. First, what is the
proper character of the aalaya? To be consistent with
their adherence to the no-soul doctrine of the
Buddha, the Yogaacaarins cannot view it as an
enduring soullike "container" which holds the
constantly passing seeds. On the other hand, they do
not want to claim that the aalaya is equivalent in
structure with these seeds. The latter interpretation
would result in a continuous defilement by the
non-aalaya consciousnesses causing the seeds, thus
rendering impossible the attainment of nirvaana, that
pure state of consciousness defined by the cessation
of such defilements.(10)
Asa^nga does not resolve this problem. He states
only: "These seeds are substantially neither
different from nor identical with the receptacle
consciousness (aalayavij~naana) ."(11) But this
statement merely reiterates the preceding position in
an ambiguous and paradoxical manner: the seeds cannot
be different from the aalaya because then the aalaya
would be an enduring substratum underlying the
momentary seeds, all of which are distinct from it.
On the other hand, the seeds cannot be equivalent to
the aalaya because then no consciousness free from
the defilements of these seeds would be possible. But
if the aalaya can be characterized in neither of
these ways, how then can it be characterized?
A second and related difficulty concerns the
predication of number to the aalaya -- is it one or
many? The texts themselves do not resolve this issue,
although certain indications are available. There are
two predominant interpretations on this point. First,
the aalaya is one, but "materializes" at many points
as individual consciousnesses which are empirically
but erroneously viewed as individual ego-centered
persons. Second, the aalaya is many, that is, each
individual person has an aalaya as one of the eight
consciousnesses which make up that individual. As we
can see, the latter interpretation emphasizes the
psychological descriptive aspect of the Yogaacaara
doctrine, while the former highlights the
metaphysical or ontological aspect.(12)
The psychological view was taken by Hsuan-Tsang,
a seventh-century
p. 6
Chinese follower and interpreter of the Yogaacaara
school. He notes in his commentary on Vasubandhu's
Thirty Verses, the Ch'eng wei-shih lun: "The word
`consciousness' generally expresses the idea that all
human beings each possess eight consciousnesses,"
including the aalaya consciousness.(13) This
interpretation militates against any monistic
tendencies of the doctrine of consciousness-only,
which at times seems to posit some single ultimate
reality. For Hsan-Tsang, such a single ultimate
could not even be "True Thusness" (tathaagatataa), as
many Buddhists describe the state of absolute reality
reached in nirvaa.na, since Hsan-Tsang claimed that
even tathaagatataa is "possessed" in an individual
way by each human being. Only by inferring that True
Thusness is one and the same in each individual (thus
dissolving any and all individuality) could one
arrive at a monism on Hsan-Tsang's interpretation of
the aalaya. It might be noted, however, that if one
takes into account the Buddhist penchant for
confounding the law of contradiction, a monistic
position might be feasible by claiming that Thusness
is neither one (because each human being can possess
it) nor many (because it is the one ultimate
reality). Hsan-Tsang might then be interpreted as
discussing merely one common aspect of the reality of
the aalaya and Thusness when he attributes both of
them to individual persons.
The alternative interpretation of the number of
aalaya bypasses a possible collision with the
Yogaacaara monism by asserting that the aalaya is
one, but that it differentiates itself into various
ego-centers, which rise and fall like the waves of
the ocean, Also, like the waves of the ocean, the
individual ego-centers are neither wholly distinct
from nor wholly identical with the aalaya. In this
metaphysically accented view, the aalaya acquires a
more fundamental role than it has in the preceding
psychological interpretation. Here the aalaya
functions as the ground for the individual
ego-centers and, consequently, as a common ground for
the consistency of world-experience undergone by the
majority of individual human subjects, specifically
the continuous yet (for Buddhists) illusory belief
engendered by the manas-consciousness that a
substantial world with substantially enduring
ego-subjects exists.(14)
This interpretation of the aalaya would, to a
certain extent, accord with the Yogaacaara doctrine
of the triple nature of reality: reality is one
(monism), but appears as either perfected, dependent
or imagined (parini.spanna, paratantra, or
parikalpita).(l5) As perfected, reality is ultimate
reality or "Thusness" (tathataa). Thus the aalaya in
its perfected state is pure consciousness, totally
undifferentiated and undefiled.(16) It is this state
which a supposedly existent individual person would
reach upon attaining nirvaa.na; nirvaa.na is the
"return" to the one, the cessation of the wave on the
surface of the aalaya. The aalaya in its dependent
nature, however, is a continuously defiled (by mind
and sensations) and appearance-causing consciousness,
which "causes" the totally unreal imagined nature of
consciousness as an empirical subject living within
an object-laden world. Mind and sensasions, alone
with subjects and world,
p. 7
are reality in its imagined state----in fact, of
course, unreality mistakenly seen as reality.
One problem which the unitary view of the aalaya
must face is how an ultimately unitary aalaya is
differentiated into a plurality of different but
"con-current consciousnesses or ego-subjects.(17) If
consciousness is an ever-flowing single stream, as
the Yogaacaarins would maintain, can it serve to
ground the diversity of the dharmic series which
constitute the individual egos' consciousnesses? As
one aalaya, it should apparently give rise to
simultaneous ego-subjects which are the same and
which lack all distinctions. This is obviously not
the case, for the many ego-subjects are seemingly
unique in the (illusory) characters they have, the
(illusory) actions they perform, and so on. I myself,
as a series of momentary dharmas, am distinct and
different from you. Consequently, the unitariness of
the aalaya must be interpreted in a way which can
account for the divergencies in its "waves."
Let us look more closely at the momentariness of
the aalaya. As pure flowing consciousness, the aalaya
is surely beyond description. The moment we say that
it flows, we are leaning toward an entitative image
in which we see some thing which constantly changes.
Yet this is precisely not the nature of pure
consciousness. In apprehending pure consciousness as
one, we might imagine again something which is
immutable and possibly lacking in all determinations.
But, of course, the aalaya is not an entity in any
sense of substantiality, either as an underlying
substrate of changes or as an immutable substance
with a quasi-divine nature. Yet constant change and
immutable indetermination both seem to be
characteristics of the aalaya (although they are
seemingly incompatible without a grounding substance
theory). Can nonentitative consciousness be both
constantly changing in its determinations and
immutably indetermined? For that is precisely how we
want to interpret the aalaya in its pure reality. We
would like to say that the aalaya is both momentary
and unitary, since as unitary it can nonetheless
ground the multiplicity of ego-subjects in the sense
that. in its dependent nature, it contains all the
possible seeds which can give rise to such "defiled"
consciousnesses.
There is another related difficulty which follows
from the above argument, that is, the seemingly
temporal character of the aalaya especially as it
relates to the problem of the relation between the
aalaya and its seeds. This character appears most
strongly when the Yogaacaarins employ the image of a
stream or an ocean with waves to describe the nature
of the aalaya. For example, Vasubandhu notes in his
Thirty Verses (the Tri^m`sikaa): the aalaya "is
always flowing like a torrent..... "(18) The image
ably emphasizes both the persisting existence and the
nonsubstantial charateristics of the aalaya. Like a
stream or torrent it continuously flows on, or,
perhaps more accurately, there is a continuous
flowing (not: some thing is continuously flowing).
Also, like the stream, it undergoes continuous change
or transformation (recall Heraclitus' river). From
one perspective, such transformation can be seen as
the result of the constant change-
p. 8
over of the momentary seeds "carried" by the
aalaya-stream. But, as noted earlier, a clearcut
equivalence does not exist between the aalaya and its
seeds-- the aalaya is not momentary simply because
each of the seeds is, yet in each of "its" moments it
is causing and being caused anew. From another
perspective, the change of the aalaya could be
accounted for by its nature as a flow: a flowing is
never the same, quite apart from whatever it carries
along with it. But, as mentioned earlier, the aalaya
cannot be completely separated from its seeds; so too
neither can its changeability be completely separable
from the momentariness of its seeds.
Leaving aside the recurrent dialectical imagery
of this description of the aalaya, let us look more
closely at the difficulty which I termed the
"seemingly temporal" character of the aalaya. A
superficial understanding of the "flowing" image of
the aalaya might lead one who is familiar with
Western metaphysics to interpret this image as giving
the aalaya a similarity to, if not an identity with,
time. For the Westerner, change implies duration
which in turn implies a length of time which measures
this duration. But for the Yogaacaarin, time is as
unreal as the object which apparently subsists
through change within this time. Any empirical notion
of time, of clock-time, the time of the universe and
the movement of its bodies (charted in years, months,
days, and so forth), is rejected as a construct of
mind (manas). Consequently, the aalaya cannot be
termed temporal in the usual sense; nor can it be
termed eternal, if eternity means endless endurance
through time. If the aalaya is in any sense temporal,
the nature of this characteristic must be elucidated
by means of a more primordial sense of time and/or
temporality.
Now I suggest that the apparent tension, if not
contradiction, between a plurality of momentary
determinations and an immutably indeterminate unity
can be better understood if we introduce a
perspective on time foreign to the letter of
Yogaacaara thought as such. This perspective, the
time of absolute consciousness, is found in
Husserlian phenomenology We will now sketch the
relevant features of this notion of time.
II. HUSSERL'S DOCTRINE OF TIME AS FLUX
The core of Husserl's theory of inner
time-consciousness is found in his 1905 lectures,
Towards the Phenomenology of lnternal
Time-Consciousness.(19) In these lectures Husserl
approaches the discussion of time from the point of
view of experience. Time is not merely a
scientifically objective topic, something apart from
the experiencing subject. Experienced time is the
time of living experience (Erlebniss-sensings,
thinkings, willings) of our subjective inwardness,
rather than the time of objects, of a physical
universe subject to putative natural laws.
Experienced time, however, cannot be equated with
what might be termed a factual psychological time,
for example, a person's subjective "measurement" of a
duration of time, the "feeling" that "this hour went
faster than the last hour." Husserl's more radical
position on time presents a point of view
p. 9
which can be applied to the Yogaacaara philosophy,
despite its rejection of time as an objective measure
of passing moments.
For Husserl, inner time is most fundamentally
consciousness self-constituting itself. At this
level, inner time is aware of itseIf in its own
conscious flow and, consequently, generates itself
and all experiences as temporal. Husserl names this
consciousness the "flux" to emphasize its
primordiality. This consciousness of inner time is
both multiphased and synthesized as a unity--many yet
one. The former characteristic refers to a
composition of many phases of the flow, for example,
consciousness of the present moment, of a past moment
as just past (called "retention"), of a future moment
(called "protention").(20) However, these different
phases do not comprise a series of really discrete
moments, for all phases are fundamentally
interconnected. Inner time-consciousness has a
synthetic unity which derives from the fact that each
phase occurs "all-at-once" within the consciousness
of the Now. This occurrence all-at-once is within a
living present which Husserl distinguishes from the
present of the Now-point.
The painfully brief discussion of the preceding
paragraph illustrates the difficulty in describing a
phenomenon which in some sense both is and is not
temporal. As Husserl notes, "names are lacking" for
the absolute characteristics of the flux of
inner-time consciousness,(21) even though we often
speak of it in terms which are normally used to
describe the constituted stream of experience rather
than the constituting flux. As we have seen, the
Yogaacaarin avoids this problem of description by the
use of metaphorical descriptions which lack specific
temporal terminology, but which imply some type of
nonserial temporality (for example, the aalaya is
like an ocean with its waves or a stream with its
rippling current).(22) Husserl naturally avoids such
images, but he nonetheless attempts to describe the
flux: it is, for example, not an object, a process,
or any kind of thing which alters or persists. The
flux is not in time, is not itself temporal in the
usual sense.(23) Since the flux is not in time, it is
said to be "all-at-once," a phrase which itself is
subject to the misinterpretation inherent in using
"time" talk. Also, Husserl equates the flux with
absolute consciousness.(24) Because of this
equivalence of the flux with absolute consciousness,
the flux cannot be considered a metaphysical
principle independent of consciousness --the flux is
consciousness taken in its absolute sense. Therefore,
in some difficult to understand yet important sense,
it parallels the Yogaacaarin view of pure
consciousness as the absolute or perfected reality.
The concept of "all-at-once" is based on the
notion of the "living present," a highly complex
concept in Husserl's later philosophy of time.(25)
For our purposes, the living present may be described
as the active focus of the self-differentiation of
absolute consciousness (also termed transcendental
subjectivity), encompassing both an undifferentiated
beginning and the differentiations of the streaming
flow of inner time (present consciousness, retention
and protention). Flux as all-at-once is the living
present, a unified synthesis of differentiated
"moments."
p. 10
This concept of the flux is crucial for our
interpretation of the aalaya as unitary yet
momentary, undifferentiated yet distinguished. I will
return to this interpretation in the next section,
but now I would like to draw several parallels
between the constituting character of the flux and
the "causal" character of the aalaya. First, in
Husserl's phenomenological discussion of the
constitution of the ego, we may differentiate two
meanings of "ego" and "constitution": (1) the
constitution of an empirical ego (psychological ego)
as a temporal and historical being, and (2) the
constitution of the transcendental ego as absolute
consciousness. The first type is dependent on the
second type, just as for the Yogaacaarin the
appearance of a mundane ego is dependent on the
aalaya consciousness. Furthermore, the constitution
of the transcendental ego is the self-constitution of
the flux.(26) And although the Yogaacaarins have no
parallel to the concept of self-constitution, their
Absolute would at least be independent in its being,
a concept analogous to Husserl's notion of
self-constitution.
Second, for Husserl the flux is not simply a
nonpersonal stream of experience; it is personal, it
is always someone's ego.(27) This ego or
transcendental subjectivity (not to be confused with
the empirical ego) serves as repository of its past
in the sense that the ego both "has" its living
experiences and retains them in retentional
modifications within its "unconscious" (the
repository of experiences and their contents which
are no longer held in retentional modifications). The
ego also "has" the future as its protentional
horizon, as the horizon of its possibilities. The ego
in this sense is termed "monad, " exhibiting its own
concreteness by constituting itself as a being with
temporally constituted experiences which stretch in
two directions from the present.(28) And it lives
these experiences all at once as the living present.
At first sight, the transcendental ego seen from this
perspective may appear as a substantial entity quite
unlike the Yogaacaara aalaya. But, for Husserl, the
transcendental ego is not a substance in the usual
sense--its "concreteness" is defined within the
flash-point of the living present, and consequently
it does not require any characteristics proper to a
substantial entity. Again, the Yogaacaarins use
metaphor to eke out a description detailing how the
nonsubstantial aalaya is affected by and affects
nonrealities: it stores seeds, it is perfumed by
seeds, and so on. Yet for both Husserl and the
Yogaacaarins there remains the difficulty of relating
a basically nonsubstantial being with seemingly
"substantial" characteristics.
Third, and finally, in relation to the absolute
consciousness as monad, Husserl's description of the
workings of inner time-consciousness includes the
element of genesis. In the post-Ideas writings,
Husserl frequently states that sense (Sinn) has a
"genesis" or "history."(29) Sense is the correlate of
constituting consciousness; it is the
object-as-experienced. To say that sense has a
sense-genesis is to indicate a "pointing back" or
reference to something more original and consequently
something "prior" to the sense under investigation.
This prior element is the act(s) or noesis(es) which
originally constituted that sense.(30) In other
words, no object of consciousness occurs isolated
from
p. 11
previous experience. At another point Husserl
describes the genesis of a judgment as "its
intentional motivational foundations."(31) The notion
of genesis as foundation indicates that the presently
investigated sense points back to something original
which serves as a foundation for the current sense.
This foundation must be present in the structure of
the ego for the current sense to be constituted at
all; consequently, it is a necessary condition for
the current sense and its constituting act(s). This
characteristic of the genetic structure of the monad
recalls the necessary presence of particular seeds in
the aalaya in order that a particular mode of
consciousness and/or object may appear. The seeds
"perfume" the aalaya, and as a result of this
perfuming the aalya causes certain phenomena. The
aalaya, then, in its causal character, is comparable
to genesis as foundational for sense-constitution.
But genesis as foundation is not merely a
condition for the current sense; it is also
"motivational" (as mentioned in the earlier
quotation) in the sense that it provides an impulsion
or inducement toward the production of the new,
founded sense. The term "motivation" gives genesis a
further significance, since the term implies that the
foundation is not only a necessary precondition for,
but also an affective element in, the constitution of
the current sense.
This motivational aspect thus parallels the
Yogaacaara emphasis on the mutual causation between
the aalaya and its seeds. The seeds of past actions
"fall" into the aalaya, perfume it and consequently
"motivate" the aalaya to cause further actions
conditioned by the past actions. Both the theory of
the aalaya and of genesis can account for the
consistency within the empirical ego and its
experiences of the spatio-temporal world. While inner
time-consciousness gives the formal conditions for
the temporal existence of the ego, both empirical and
transcendental, the notion of genesis explains the
determinations of the material and concrete aspects
of living experience. Similarly, the concept of
aalaya as pure flow provides the formal grounds for
the (apparent) existence of an empirical ego and the
spatio-temporal world and also explains the origin of
the concrete, consistent experiences within this
world.
III. FINAL COMPARISON AND CONCLUSION
At this point we can state the explanatory value of
Husserl's doctrine of inner time for an
interpretation of the Yogaacaara aalayavij~naana.
Since for Husserl transcendental consciousness is not
"in" empirical time, it is not itself empirical, nor
are its concretions within the genetic structure
empirical. These structures explain not only the
source of empirical time but also the development of
a concrete empirical ego. In this way Husserl's
doctrine parallels that of the aalaya, which is the
cause of the consciousness of a "real" world and of
differentiated empirical ego-subjects experiencing
themselves as existent in that spatio-temporal realm.
Thus far, however, we have mentioned only the
surface parallels between flux and aalaya. The
Yogaacaara doctrine does not specifically introduce
the
p. 12
notion of a quasi-temporal characteristic for the
aalaya similar to the inner-time of Husserlian
transcendental consciousness.(32) It is at this
point, then, that the Husserlian analysis may be
helpful in understanding and expanding the aalaya
doctrine, specifically for the clarification and
resolution of the problem raised at the end of
section I. Clearly the aalaya is not "in" empirical
time--reality cannot have the nonreal characteristic
of empirical temporality. But, as noted earlier, the
descriptions of the aalaya possess a timelike
character. Could this character be understood as
something similar to the inner-time consciousness in
Husserl? By such a comparison, we may discover that
at least some, although not all, of the ambiguousness
of the aalaya's character will be dispersed.
Husserl's explanation of inner-time consciousness
would be most relevant to the problem of whether the
aalaya is one or many. If we consider the flux as the
core of the self-constitution of Husserl's
transcendental consciousness, we find a single
undifferentiated beginning which grounds all
differentiations of sense constituted by it as
transcendental consciousness. How does Husserl allow
for this movement from an undifferentiated oneness
(the flow) to differentiated multiplicity? The answer
to this question clarifies the nature of the flux, to
the extent that clarification is possible for a being
with "no names." The flux, although resembling an
undifferentiated oneness, has a double reality.
Husserl attempts to capture the nature of the flux by
terming it the "living present." This living present
is characterized as both standing and streaming;
Husserl notes in an unpublished manuscript from 1932:
The primordial level of consciousness is a
stream, which stands and streams, which streams in a
constantly invariable form, so that, however... in
the streaming a doubled present constitutes itself:
the present of the respective worldly perceiving and
the present of this perceiving simultaneously with
the retentions and protentions of the perceptions
just-past and just-coming.(33)
Transcendental consciousness is basically a
double constitutive reality. Within its oneness as
living present, it differentiates itself in the
twofold character of standing and streaming. Such a
differentiation grounds all further differentiations,
both on the level of the primal temporality of
conscious experiences and on the empirical, and
founded level of "objective" temporality (the
empirical ego and its experiences). Thus, its oneness
is at once one and many. If such a characterization
is allowed, an ontological source of the constituted
world of experience emerges which overcomes the
difficulties posed by the problem of the one and the
many with respect to the aalaya. In applying this
characterization of the temporality of transcendental
consciousness to the aalaya, we could continue to
maintain the Buddhistic emphasis on a single
rationally inexplicable source of Being, while giving
some concrete analysis of the nature of this source
as a source of multiplicity.
The aalaya can thus be seen as the living present
which is not an empirical flow, but exists as the
source of all present empirical egos and their
supposedly contemporaneously present empirical
worlds. The streaming characteristic of
p. 13
the living present adequately reflects the nature of
the aalaya as flowing. The standing characteristic
emphasizes the atemporality (or, as Husserl puts it,
the quasi-transtemporality) and unity of the aalaya.
It also allows for the unitary nature of all
differentiations which flow causally from the aalaya,
for example, the fact that all empirical ego-subjects
seem to experience basically the same ("nonreal")
empirical world. By using the dialectical character
of the living present, we could thus explicate the
aalaya as one reality which by its nature is
fundamentally differentiated into a multiplicity of
temporal modes. From this primal differentiation, the
higher level differentiations into the multiplicity
of empirical ego-subjects would follow, all sharing
the same ontological source, yet not all sharing the
same empirical experiences or dharmic characters.
Each "wave" of the aalaya would echo only certain
aspects of the total range of higher level
differentiations (in Husserl, genetic contents) .
Thus, the aalaya in its dependent or apparent nature
is many; in its true reality, one.
To recapitulate: the living present is both
standing and streaming. As standing, it is the
One--the Now--through which flow all differentiated
living experiences and their contents (my experience
of the spatio-temporal world and of myself as
existing empirical subject, and so forth) . As
streaming, it is the Many, self-differentiating
itself into a multiphased stream of temporality which
occurs all-at-once, thus serving as source for the
multiple experiences within empirical time and space.
Although Husserl does not equate the constitution by
transcendental consciousness with a complete
constitution of all beings in their being (in a
metaphysically committed sense), the use of his
analysis to explicate the Yogaacaara aalaya would be
combined with a metaphysical claim--namely, that the
aalaya in its true or perfected state as Thusness is
the source of being (real and unreal) of all other
entities. This comparative effort, while not fully
integrating the Yogaacaara aalayavij~naana into the
phenomenological framework, nevertheless can
supplement the discussion of the aalaya and perhaps
obviate some of the difficulties inherent in its
interpretation.
NOTES
1. The discussion of the Yogaacaara school includes
Asa^nga and his follower Vasabandhu, supplemented
by elements from earlier anonymous idealist
Suutras.
2. See A. K. Warder, Indian Buddhism (Delhi: Motilal
Banarsidass, 1970).
3. Ramakant A. Sinari, The Structure of Indian
Thought (Springfield, Illinois: Charles Thomas,
1970), p.98.Sylvain L'evi notes in his Mateeriaux
pour l'e'tude du systeeme Vij~naptimaatra: the
term "aalaya" includes "... the entire domain
which we today designate as the subconscious and
the unconscious...." (Paris: Librairie Ancienne
Honore Champion, 1932), p. 10.
4. Ninian Smart, Doctrine and Argument in Indian
Philosophy (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1964),
p. 58.
5. See Vasubandhu, Tri^m`sika, v. 2, trans.
Wing-Tsit Chan as "The Thirty Verses on the
Mind-Only Doctrine" in A Source Book in Indian
Philosophy, ed. S. Radhakrishnan and C. A. Moore
(Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University
Press, 1957), p. 334; the same translation also
appears in A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy,
ed. W. Chan (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton
University
p. 14
Press, 1963), p. 380 (hereafter cited as SBIP and
SBCP). Also, see The La^nkaavataara Suutra, Ch.
6, v. 82, trans. D. T. Suzuki (London: Routledge
& Kegan Paul Ltd., 1932), p. 190. On manas, see
Asa^nga, Mahaayaanasa^mgraha, Ch. I, v. 59, no. 3
and 4, trans. Etienne Lamothe, as La somme du
grand vehicule (Louvain: Bureaux de Museon,
1934), p. 81; Vasubandhu, Tri^m`sika, v. 5, SBIP,
p. 334 (SBCP, p. 383) . On the third
transformation, see Vasubandhu, Tri^m`sika, v. 5,
SBIP, p. 334 (SBCP, p. 383).
6. Ch. 1, v. 3, p. 13. Confer. Sa^mdhinirmocana
Suutra, Ch. 5, v. 7, trans. Etienne Lamote as
L'explication des mysteres (Paris: Adrien
Maisonneuve, 1935) , p. 186; Vasubandhu,
Tri^m`sika, vv. 2 and 5, SBIP, p. 334 (SBCP, p.
380).
7. Ch. 1, vv. 14-15, pp. 32-33. While in many
contexts the Indian term dharma means duty, the
Buddhist idealists often use the term to refer to
conscious activities, that is, both the process
and the products of those activities.
8. See La^nkaavataara, Ch. 6, v. 82, p. 193, and v.
83, p. 195. Also, Asa^nga, Ch. 1, vv. 58-59, pp.
80-81. D. T. Suzuki, in his Studies in the
La^nkaavataara Suutra (London: Routledge & Kegan
Paul Ltd., 1930), characterizes the "perfuming"
of the aalaya as follows: "... it is a kind of
energy that is left behind when an act is
accomplished and has the power to rekindle the
old and seek out new impressions.... Through this
`perfuming',...we have a world of opposites and
contraries with all its practical consequences."
P. 99. Confer. L'evi, p. 10.
9. The aalaya doctrine is also intended to address
the problem of retribution and transmigration.
The aalaya thus provides the ground for
adjudicating moral consistency between the
different "lives" of each individual spirit, as
well as for empirical consistency between the
different moments of experiencing. See Asa^nga,
Ch. 1, v. 59, no. 2, p. 81.
10. In most Buddhist literature, nirvaa.na is the
term which refers to the goal of human existence,
the attainment of unity with the one true
reality. What is actually attained in this state
is open to interpretation; for example, it could
be a complete cessation of activity or the
achievement of the purest activity.
11. Ch. 1, v. 16, p. 34.
12. See Ashok Kumar Chatterjee, The Yogaacaara
Idealism (Varanasi: Bhargava Bhashan, 1962), pp.
132-133: "... the aalaya as a constructive
hypothesis must be accepted either as one or as
many; in neither case is it free [from]
difficulties. This indicates only that it is not
ultimate." Chatterjee notes that the aalaya must
be grounded in the Absolute because the aalava
can never reach a pure state: "It already
contains the seed of self-disruption in the form
of this implicit duality... between itself and
its contents," p. 117. Chatterjee himself leans
toward a Hegelian interpretation of Yogaacaara,
such that the bare identity of the aalaya and the
Absolute (true reality) is impossible.
13. Trans., Wing--Tsit Chan as "Treatise on the
Establishment of the Doctrine of Consciousness-
Only" in SBCP, p. 392.
14. See Smart, p. 58: The aalaya "...is not part of
what constitutes the individual, cannot be
considered as the name for an entity peculiar to
any individual." Compare Surendranath Dasgupta,
Indian Idealism (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1962) , pp. 115-119, who interprets
Vasubandhu to mean that the aalaya is only a
hypothetical state which grounds all individual
experiencing subjects; as such, the aalaya is
unitary.
Chatterjee, however, proposes that the
interpretation of the aalaya as unitary can be
maintained only when unity is interpreted as "the
harmony obtaining between the moments belonging
to different series, as between moments of a
single series..., the unity of the temporal
succession," p. 132.
15. See Sa^mdhinirmocana, Ch. 6, vv. 3-6, pp.
188-189; Asa^nga, Ch. 2, v. 1, p. 87; Vasubandhu,
Tri^m`sika, vv. 20-21, SBIP, p. 336 ( SBCP, p.
393); Hsan-Tsang, SBCP, p. 393. Compare A. K.
Warder, Ch. 11, especially pp, 1130, 438-439.
16. See Chatterjee, p. 124: "When the aalaya starts
functioning, there is no Absolute, since the
aalaya itself is the Absolute defiled."
Consequently, perfected reality as the Absolute
is, in a sense, the aalaya purified. The
diffference between this interpretation and mine
is perhaps simply a matter of nomenclature.
Compare Sinari, p. 98, and La^nkaavataara, Ch. 2,
v. 18, p. 55. Suzuki in his introduction to the
La^nkaavataara states: "The [Tathaagata-] Garbha
is from the psychological point of view the
AAlayavij~naana..., " pp. xxxix-xl. Suzuki,
however, claims a distinction between the
Lan^nkaavataara and the Yogaacaarins on this
point: "But the aalayavij~naana of the Yogaacaara
is not the
p. 15
same as that of La^nkaavataara.... The former
conceives the aalaya to be purity itself with
nothing defiled in it, whereas the La^nkaavataara
... make[s] it the cause of purity and
defilement," ibid. Suzuki fails to note that, for
the Yogaacaara, the aalaya in its dependent
nature is defiled by its seeds, thus continuing
to produce further mistaken dharmas. In contrast
to the foregoing, Dasgupta sees a complete
distinction between the aalaya and pure
consciousness: "As ground of this aalayavij~naana
we have pure consciousness called
vij~naptimaatra, which is beyond all experiences,
transcendent and pure consciousness...; even this
aalayavij~naana is an imposition on it..." pp.
119- 120.
17. Chatterjee discusses this problem but finds no
satisfactory solution, p. 131.
18. V, 4, SBIP, p. 334 (SBCP, p. 380). Compare
Sa^mdhinirmocana, Ch. 5, v. 4, p. 185, and v. 6,
p. 186; La^nkaavataara, Ch. 6, v. 81, p. 190.
19. Husserliana, vol. 10: Zur Phanomenolagie des
inneren Zeitbewusstseins, ed. R. Boehm (The
Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966),¡±34, p. 73;trans.
J. Churchill as The Phenomenology of Internal
Time-Consciousness (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana
University Press, 1964), p. 98. Compare Husserl,
Erfahrung und Urteil, 3d ed., rev. and ed. by L.
Landgrebe (Hamburg: Claassen, 1964),¡± 38, p.191,
trans. J. S. Churchill and K. Ameriks as
Experience and Judgment (Evanston, Illinois:
Northwestern University Press, 1977), p. 165.
20. Husserliana, vol. 3: Ideen zu einer reinen
Phanomenologie und phanomenologischen
Philosophie, Book I, ed. W. Biemel (The Hague: M.
Nijhoff, 1950), p. 199.
21. Zeitbewusstseins,¡± 36, p.75 (trans., p. 100);
compare Husserl MSC 13 II (1934), p. 9, Edmund
Husserl Archives, Cologne, West Germany.
22. See note 18.
23. Zeitbewusstseins, Beilage 6, p. 113 (trans., pp.
152-153).
24. Ibid., pp. 75, 112(trans., pp. 100 and 150-151).
25. Husserl MS C 3 III (1931), pp. 23-24, Edmund
Husserl Archives, Cologne, West Germany. See
Klaus Held, Legendige Gegenwavt (The Hague: M.
Nijhoff, 1966).
26. Husserliana, vol. 6: Die Krisis der Europ„ische
Wissenschaften und die transzendentale
Phanomenologie, ed. W. Biemel (The Hague: M.
Nijhoff, 1954), p. 175; trans. David Carr as The
Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental
Phenomenology (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern
University Press, 1970), p. 172.
27. Husserliana, vol. 9: Ph„nomenologische
Psychologie, ed. W. Biemel (The Hague: M.
Nijhoff, 1962), p. 475. "All my pasts lie in me,
in the streaming present...."
28. Husserliana, vol. 1. Cartesianische Meditationen
und Pariser Vortr„ge, ed. S. Strasser (The Hague:
M. Nijhoff, 1950),¡± 33, p.102; trans. D. Cairns
as Cartesian Meditations (The Hague: M. Nijhoff,
1964), pp. 66-67.
29. Husserliana, vol. 17: Formale and transzendentale
Logik, ed. P. Janssen (The Hague: M. Nijhoff,
1974;1st ed., Halle: M. Niemeyer,1929),¡± 85, pp.
215-216; trans. D. Cairns as Formal and
Transcendental Logic (The Hague: M. Nijhoff,
1969), p. 207.
30. Ibid.
31. Ibid., p. 226 (trans., p. 218).
32. Kenneth K. Inada discusses the feasibility of
applying the notion of temporality (not of time)
to the Buddhist doctrine in his article, "Time
and Temporality--A Buddhist Approach," Philosophy
East and West 24, no. 2 (April, 1974): 171-179.
While not specifically directed toward Yogaacaara
Buddhism, the discussion offers an account of
temporality different from Husserl's.
33. Husserl MS C 7 I (1932), p. 4, Edmund Husserl
Archives, Cologne, West Germany. See Held,
Foreword, pp. x and 30: "`Now' as the one
remaining form of presence and `Now' as a
changing time-point among others..." are Held's
characterization of the present as both standing
and streaming. See Husserl, Erfbhrung, Beilage I,
pp. 467-468 (trans., p. 386); Husserl MS C 3 III
(1931), pp. 29-31, and MS B 1II 9 (1931), pp.
36-37, Edmund Husserl Archives, Cologne, West
Germany.