Pointers from Nanavira Thera: Arahat and puthujjana

On p. 302 you say, 'The Arahat Grasps only towards the end of all Grasping'. With this I do not agree. There is no grasping (upādāna) whatsoever in the arahat. The puthujjana is describable in terms of pañc'upādānakkhandhā, but the arahat (while he still lives) only in terms of pañcakkhandhā. Upādāna has already ceased.

There are four kinds of upādāna—kāma, ditthi, sīlabbata, and attavāda—, and the arahat has none (see Majjhima 11: i,67). The expression in the Suttas for the attainment of arahatship is anupādāya āsavehi cittam vimucci.[1] The term sa-upādisesa-nibbānadhātu, which applies to the living arahat, you take (p. 299) as 'Nibbāna with the Grasping Groups remaining'. But this, in fact, has nothing to do with upādāna. Upādisesa means simply 'stuff remaining' or 'residue'. In Majjhima 10: i,62 the presence of upādisesa is what distinguishes the anāgāmī from the arahat, and this is clearly not the same precise thing as what distinguishes the living arahat (sa-upādisesa-nibbānadhātu) from the dead arahat (an-upādisesa-nibbānadhātu). Upādisesa is therefore unspecified residue, which with the living arahat is pañcakkhandhā. The arahat says pañcakkhandhā pariññātā titthanti chinnamūlakā (Theragātha 120),[2] and the mūla (or root) that is chinna (or cut) is upādāna. This means that there can still be rūpa, vedanā, saññā, sankhārā, and viññāna without upādāna.

This statement alone, if it is correct, is enough to invalidate the account on p. 149 (and elsewhere) of life as a process of grasping—i.e., a flux, a continuous becoming. For this reason I expect that you will be inclined to reject it as mistaken. Nevertheless, I must point out that the two doctrines upon which your account of grasping seems principally to rely—namely, the simile of the flame (p. 146) and the celebrated expression 'na ca so na ca añño' (p. 149), both of which you attribute to the Buddha—are neither of them to be found in the Suttas. They occur for the first time in the Milindapañha, and there is no evidence at all that they were ever taught by the Buddha.

You will see, of course, that if we reject your account of grasping as a process, we must return to the notion of entities, and with this to the notion of a thing's self-identity (i.e., for so long as an entity endures it continues to be 'the self-same thing'). And would this not be a return to attavāda? The answer is, No. With the question of a thing's self-identity (which presents no difficulty if carefully handled) the Buddha's Teaching of anattā has nothing whatsoever to do. Anattā is purely concerned with 'self' as subject ('I'). And this is a matter of considerably greater difficulty than is generally supposed.

In brief, then, your book is dealing with a false problem; and the solution proposed, however ingenious, is actually beside the point—it is not an answer (either right or wrong) to the problem of dukkha, which is strictly a subjective problem.

Perhaps this response to your request for criticism may seem unexpectedly blunt; but where the Dhamma is concerned 'polite' replies designed only to avoid causing possible displeasure by avoiding the issue serve no useful purpose at all and make confusion worse confounded. Since I think you are a person who understands this, I have made no attempt to conceal my thought.

Editorial notes:

[36.1] anupādāya...: 'freed in mind by not holding to the cankers' [Back to text]

[36.2] pañcakkhandhā...: 'The five aggregates, being completely known, stand with the root cut off.'

Thank you for your letter. I am glad to find that you have not misunderstood mine, and that you apparently see that the principal point of disagreement between us is a matter of some consequence.

You say: 'But if the idea of Grasping is not applicable to the living Arahat when, for example, he is taking food,—then I am confronted with a genuine difficulty. In other words, if one cannot say that when the Arahat is taking food, he is (not) taking hold in some fashion or other, then I am faced with the difficulty of finding or comprehending what basically is the difference between life-action and other action, as of physical inanimate things'.

The first remark that must be made is that anyone who is a puthujjana ought to find himself confronted with a difficulty when he considers the Buddha's Teaching. The reason for this is quite simply that when a puthujjana does come to understand the Buddha's Teaching he thereby ceases to be a puthujjana. The second remark (which, however, will only displace your difficulty from one point to another, and not remove it) is that all conscious action is intentional (i.e., purposive, teleological). This is as true for the arahat as it is for the puthujjana. The puthujjana has sankhār'upādānakkhandha and the arahat has sankhārakkhandha. Sankhāra, in the context of the pañcakkhandhā, has been defined by the Buddha (in Khandha Samy. 56: iii,60) as cetanā or intention.

Intentionality as a necessary characteristic of all consciousness is well recognized by the phenomenological (or existential) school of philosophy (have a look at the article 'Phenomenology' in the Encyclopaedia Britannica), and though the subject is not particularly easy it presents no inherent difficulties. But in order to understand the nature of intention it is absolutely necessary to return to the notion of 'entities', and to consider the structure of their temporary persistence, which is 'Invariance under Transformation'. This principle occurs in quantum mechanics and in relativity theory, and in the Suttas it makes its appearance as uppādo paññāyati; vayo paññāyati; thitassa aññathattam paññāyati, three characteristics that apply to all the pañcakkhandhā (see Khandha Samy. 37: iii,38). Intentionality is the essential difference between life-action and action of inanimate things.

But now this difficulty arises. What, precisely, is upādāna (grasping, or as I prefer, holding) if it is not synonymous with cetanā (intention)? This, and not any other, is the fundamental question raised by the Buddha's Teaching; and it is extremely difficult to see the answer (though it can be stated without difficulty). The answer is, essentially, that all notions of subjectivity, of the existence of a subject (to whom objects are present), all notions of 'I' and 'mine', are upādāna. Can there, then, be intentional conscious action—such as eating food—without the notion 'It is I who am acting, who am eating this food'? The answer is, Yes. The arahat intentionally eats food, but the eating is quite unaccompanied by any thought of a subject who is eating the food. For all non-arahats such thoughts (in varying degrees, of course) do arise. The arahat remains an individual (i.e. distinct from other individuals) but is no longer a person (i.e. a somebody, a self, a subject). This is not—as you might perhaps be tempted to think—a distinction without a difference. It is a genuine distinction, a very difficult distinction, but a distinction that must be made.[1]

On the question of anicca/dukkha/anattā it is necessary, I am afraid, to be dogmatic. The aniccatā or impermanence spoken of by the Buddha in the context of this triad is by no means simply the impermanence that everybody can see around him at any moment of his life; it is something very much more subtle. The puthujjana, it must be stated definitely, does not have aniccasaññā, does not have dukkhasaññā, does not have anattasaññā. These three things stand and fall together, and nobody who still has attavādupādāna (i.e. nobody short of the sotāpanna) perceives aniccatā in the essential sense of the term.

For this reason I consider that any 'appreciation of Buddhism by nuclear physicists' on the grounds of similarity of views about aniccatā to be a misconception. It is worth noting that Oppenheimer's dictum,[2] which threatens to become celebrated, is based on a misunderstanding. The impossibility of making a definite assertion about an electron has nothing to do with the impossibility of making a definite assertion about 'self'. The electron, in quantum theory, is defined in terms of probabilities, and a definite assertion about what is essentially indefinite (or rather, about an 'indefiniteness') cannot be made. But attā is not an indefiniteness; it is a deception, and a deception (a mirage, for example) can be as definite as you please—the only thing is, that it is not what one takes it for. To make any assertion, positive or negative, about attā is to accept the false coin at its face value. If you will re-read the Vacchagotta Sutta (Avyākata Samy. 8: iv,395-7), you will see that the Buddha refrains both from asserting and from denying the existence of attā for this very reason. (In this connection, your implication that the Buddha asserted that there is no self requires modification. What the Buddha said was 'sabbe dhammā anattā'—no thing is self—, which is not quite the same. 'Sabbe dhammā anattā' means 'if you look for a self you will not find one', which means 'self is a mirage, a deception'. It does not mean that the mirage, as such, does not exist.)

I should perhaps say, in order to forestall possible misunderstandings, that I consider Dahlke's statement, 'Consciousness and its supporting points are not opposites, but transitions, one the form of development of the other, in which sankhāras represent that transition-moment in which thinking as vedanā and saññā, in the glow of friction, is on the point of breaking out into viññāna', to be wholly mistaken. This is not 'paticca-sam' at all. Perhaps you will have already gathered that I should disagree with this from my last letter.

Editorial notes:

[37.1] a difficult distinction: As his letters to the Ven. Ñānamoli Thera make clear, this distinction was the Ven. Ñānavīra Thera's last major insight prior to his attainment of sotāpatti. Although certainly this particular perception need not be pivotal for all who achieve the Path, that it was so for him is one reason for the strong emphasis the author lays on this point in the Notes as well as in various letters. [Back to text]

[37.2] Oppenheimer's dictum:

If we ask, for instance, whether the position of the electron remains the same, we must say 'no'; if we ask whether the electron's position changes with time, we must say 'no'; if we ask whether the electron is at rest, we must say 'no'; if we ask whether it is in motion, we must say 'no'. The Buddha has given such answers when interrogated as to the conditions of a man's self after death; but they are not familiar answers for the tradition of seventeenth and eighteenth-century science. (Science and the Common Understanding, pp. 42-3, quoted on pp. 49-50 of Mr. Wettimuny's book.) [Back to text]

That the puthujjana does not see aniccatā is evident from the fact that the formula, 'Whatever has the nature of arising, all that has the nature of ceasing', which is clearly enough the definition of aniccatā, is used only in connection with the sotāpanna's attainment: Tassa...vītamalam dhammacakkhum udapādi. Yam kiñci samudayadhammam, sabbam tam nirodhadhamman ti.[1] Aniccatā is seen with the sotāpanna's dhammacakkhu, or eye of the dhamma. I am glad, nevertheless, that you are managing to turn your mind towards aniccatā at times, though of course you will not really see it until you know yourself to be a sotāpanna.

To begin with, there is your 'overwhelming desire to know something of the Dhamma which gets precedence to Fundamental Structure'. Perhaps a simile will make the matter clear. No doubt you are acquainted with the game of chess, played on a board of 64 squares, with a number of pieces and pawns moving according to certain fixed rules. This I shall call 'dispassionate chess' in contrast to 'passionate chess', which I shall now describe.

Imagine that, in order to add an (unwanted) interest to the game of dispassionate chess, some foolish person were to conceive the pieces as being subject to various passions having the effect of modifying their moves. The bishops, for example, being enamoured of the queen, would be diverted from their normal strict diagonal course when passing close to her, and would perhaps take corresponding steps to avoid the presence of the king out of fear of his jealousy. The knights would make their ordinary moves except that, being vain fellows, they would tend to move into a crowd of admiring pawns. The castles, owing to a mutual dislike, would always stay as far distant from each other as possible. Passionate chess would thus differ from dispassionate chess in that the moves of the pieces, though still normally governed by the rules of dispassionate chess, would be seriously complicated under the influence of passion; but both passionate and dispassionate chess would be played on the same chessboard of 64 squares.

We can take passionate chess as representing the behaviour of the puthujjana, which is complicated by craving, and dispassionate chess as the behaviour of the arahat, which is entirely free from irregularities due to craving. The chessboard, on which both kinds of chess alike are played, is Fundamental Structure.

Now the Buddha is concerned with transforming the puthujjana into an arahat, that is to say, with removing the undesirable complications of passionate chess in order to restore the parity of dispassionate chess; and for this purpose an examination of the structure of the chessboard is clearly an irrelevant matter, since it is exactly the same in both kinds of chess. In this way it may perhaps be seen that an understanding of the Dhamma does not depend on an understanding of Fundamental Structure, and takes precedence. A study of Fundamental Structure may, however, be found necessary (at least in times when the Dhamma is no longer properly understood, which rather seems to be the situation today) in order to re-establish this important fact (for, of course, an understanding of what is not the Dhamma may lead to an understanding of what is the Dhamma).

Your question about the propriety of sending good wishes ('Is not wishing desire, and so to be shunned?') can be answered, though not in one word. There is desire and desire, and there is also desire to end desire. There is desire that involves self-assertion (love, hate) and desire that does not (the arahat's desire to eat when hungry, for example), and the former can be either self-perpetuating (unrestrained passion) or self-destructive (restrained passion). Self-destructive desire is bad in so far as it is passionate, and therefore good in so far as, translated into action, it brings itself to an end. (By 'translated into action' I mean that the desire for restraint does not remain abstractly in evidence only when one is not giving way to passion, but is concretely operative when there is actually occasion for it, when one is actually in a rage. To begin with, of course, it is not easy to bring them together, but with practice desire for restraint arises at the same time as the passion, and the combination is self-destructive. The Suttas say clearly that craving is to be eliminated by means of craving [A. IV,159: ii,145-46]; and you yourself are already quite well aware that nothing can be done in this world, either good or bad, without passion—and the achievement of dispassion is no exception. But passion must be intelligently directed.) Since an arahat is capable of desiring the welfare of others, good wishes are evidently not essentially connected with self-assertion, and so are quite comme il faut.

Your reference to the autonomous mood in the Irish grammar can perhaps be turned to account, particularly since you yourself go on to suggest that a linguistic approach to the deeper questions of life might be rewarding. There is, in fact, a Sutta in which all the five aggregates (the factors present in all experience) are defined in this very way.

Matter is what matters;[a] feeling is what feels; perception is what perceives; determinations (or intentions) are what determine (or intend); consciousness is what cognizes. (Khandha Samy. 79: iii,86-7)

The ordinary person (the puthujjana or 'commoner') thinks, 'I feel; I perceive; I determine; I cognize', and he takes this 'I' to refer to some kind of timeless and changeless ego or 'self'. But the arahat has completely got rid of the ego-illusion (the conceit or concept 'I am'), and, when he reflects, thinks quite simply, 'Feeling feels; perception perceives; determinations determine; consciousness cognizes'. Perhaps this may help you to see how it is that when desire (craving) ceases altogether 'the various things just stand there in the world'. Obviously they cannot 'just stand there in the world' unless they are felt, perceived, determined and cognized (Berkeley's esse est percipi[2] is, in principle, quite correct); but for the living arahat the question 'Who feels, perceives, determines, cognizes, the various things?' no longer arises—the various things are felt by feeling, perceived by perception, determined by determinations, and cognized by consciousness; in other words, they are 'there in the world' autonomously (actually they always were, but the puthujjana does not see this since he takes himself for granted). With the breaking up of the arahat's body (his death) all this ceases. (For other people, of course, these things continue unless and until they in their turn, having become arahats, arrive at the end of their final existence.)

A further point. When an arahat is talking to people he will normally follow linguistic usage and speak of 'I' and 'me' and 'mine' and so on; but he no longer (mis)understands these words as does the puthujjana (see Additional Texts 14).

It would be unfair on my part to allow myself to suggest, even by implication, that the Buddha's Teaching is easier to understand than it is; and still more unfair to lead you to suppose that I consider myself capable of benefitting you in any decisive manner. All I can do is to plant a few signposts in your way, in the hope, perhaps, of giving a certain orientation to your thinking that might stand you in good stead later on.

Thank you kindly for your offer of theatre tickets, but our rules rule out visits to theatres, however much we might like to attend a performance.

P.S. Do you know that in Prof. Jayatilleke's book, The Buddhist Theory of Knowledge (which you have kindly sent me) the words 'sotāpanna' (stream-enterer) and 'arahat' are not to be found in the index? Nor have I met with them in the text. This is simply Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark.

Query: If all things are adjudged as characterized by dukkha, who does the judging? And with reference to what criterion or norm? A subject (immortal soul) with reference to an objective sukha, no? Q.E.D.

You ask 'Who does the judging?' This question takes for granted that judging is done 'by somebody'. But this is by no means a foregone conclusion: we are quite able to give an account of judgement (or knowing without finding ourselves obliged to set it up as 'a relation between subject and object'. According to Bradley (and Heidegger, who however is not conveniently quotable, would not entirely dissent), judgement is

the more or less conscious enlargement of an object, not in fact but as truth. The object is thus not altered in existence but qualified in idea.... For the object, merely as perceived, is not, as such, qualified as true. (PL, p. 626)

For Bradley, all inference is an ideal self-development of a real object, and judgement is an implicit inference. (See also SAÑÑĀ, last paragraph.) In my own understanding of the matter, I see knowledge as essentially an act of reflexion, in which the 'thing' to be known presents itself (is presented) explicitly as standing out against a background (or in a context) that was already there implicitly. In reflexion, a (limited) totality is given, consisting of a centre and a periphery—a particular cow appears surrounded by a number of cattle, and there is the judgement, 'The cow is in the herd'. Certainly, there is an intention to judge, and this consists in the deliberate withdrawal of attention from the immediate level of experience to the reflexive (cf. DHAMMA [b]); but the question is not whether judgement is an intentional action (which it is), but whether there can be intention (even reflexive intention) without a subject ('I', 'myself') who intends. This, however, is not so much a matter of argument as something that has to be seen for oneself (cf. CETANĀ [f]).

Of course, since knowledge is very commonly (Heidegger adds 'and superficially') defined in terms of 'a relation between subject and object', the question of the subject cannot simply be brushed aside—no smoke without fire—and we have to see (at least briefly) why it is so defined. Both Heidegger and Sartre follow Kant in saying that, properly speaking, there is no knowledge other than intuitive; and I agree. But what is intuition? From a puthujjana's point of view, it can be described as immediate contact between subject and object, between 'self' and the 'world' (for how this comes about, I must refer you to PHASSA). This, however, is not yet knowledge, for which a reflexive reduplication is needed; but when there is this reflexive reduplication we then have intuitive knowledge, which is (still for the puthujjana) immediate contact between knowing subject and known object. With the arahat, however, all question of subjectivity has subsided, and we are left simply with (the presence of) the known thing. (It is present, but no longer present 'to somebody'.) So much for judgement in general.

But now you say, 'If all things are characterized by dukkha....' This needs careful qualification. In the first place, the universal dukkha you refer to here is obviously not the dukkha of rheumatism or a toothache, which is by no means universal. It is, rather, the sankhāra-dukkha (the unpleasure or suffering connected with determinations) of this Sutta passage:

There are, monk, three feelings stated by me: sukha feeling, dukkha feeling, neither-dukkha-nor-sukha feeling. These three feelings have been stated by me. But this, monk, has been stated by me: whatever is felt, that counts as dukkha. But that, monk, was said by me with reference just to the impermanence of determinations.... (Vedanā Samy. 11: iv,216)

But what is this dukkha that is bound up with impermanence? It is the implicit taking as pleasantly-permanent (perhaps 'eternal' would be better) of what actually is impermanent. And things are implicitly taken as pleasantly-permanent (or eternal) when they are taken (in one way or another) as 'I' or 'mine' (since, as you rightly imply, ideas of subjectivity are associated with ideas of immortality). And the puthujjana takes all things in this way. So, for the puthujjana, all things are (sankhāra-)dukkha. How then—and this seems to be the crux of your argument—how then does the puthujjana see or know (or adjudge) that 'all things are dukkha' unless there is some background (or criterion or norm) of non-dukkha (i.e. of sukha) against which all things stand out as dukkha? The answer is quite simple: he does not see or know (or adjudge) that 'all things are dukkha'. The puthujjana has no criterion or norm for making any such judgement, and so he does not make it.

The puthujjana's experience is (sankhāra-)dukkha from top to bottom, and the consequence is that he has no way of knowing dukkha for himself; for however much he 'steps back' from himself in a reflexive effort he still takes dukkha with him. (I have discussed this question in terms of avijjā ('nescience') in A NOTE ON PATICCASAMUPPĀDA §§23 & 25, where I show that avijjā, which is dukkhe aññānam ('non-knowledge of dukkha'), has a hierarchical structure and breeds only itself.) The whole point is that the puthujjana's non-knowledge of dukkha is the dukkha that he has non-knowledge of;[a] and this dukkha that is at the same time non-knowledge of dukkha is the puthujjana's (mistaken) acceptance of what seems to be a 'self' or 'subject' or 'ego' at its face value (as nicca/sukha/attā, 'permanent/pleasant/self').

And how, then, does knowledge of dukkha come about? How it is with a Buddha I can't say (though it seems from the Suttas to be a matter of prodigiously intelligent trial-by-error over a long period); but in others it comes about by their hearing (as puthujjanas) the Buddha's Teaching, which goes against their whole way of thinking. They accept out of trust (saddhā) this teaching of anicca/dukkha/anattā; and it is this that, being accepted, becomes the criterion or norm with reference to which they eventually come to see for themselves that all things are dukkha—for the puthujjana. But in seeing this they cease to be puthujjanas and, to the extent that they cease to be puthujjanas,[b] to that extent (sankhāra-)dukkha ceases, and to that extent also they have in all their experience a 'built-in' criterion or norm by reference to which they make further progress. (The sekha—no longer a puthujjana but not yet an arahat—has a kind of 'double vision', one part unregenerate, the other regenerate.) As soon as one becomes a sotāpanna one is possessed of aparapaccayā ñānam, or 'knowledge that does not depend upon anyone else': this knowledge is also said to be 'not shared by puthujjanas', and the man who has it has (except for accelerating his progress) no further need to hear the Teaching—in a sense he is (in part) that Teaching.

So far, then, from its being a Subject (immortal soul) that judges 'all things are dukkha' with reference to an objective sukha, it is only with subsidence of (ideas of) subjectivity that there appears an (objective) sukha with reference to which the judgement 'all things are dukkha (for the commoner)' becomes possible at all.

1. It is going too far to say that, to me, the sekha is essentially arahat, and that, rigorously, I exclude him from paticcasamuppāda anuloma. Where paticcasamuppāda is concerned, we are dealing with the difference between the puthujjana and the arahat, and the question of the sekha simply does not arise. He is in between. The sekha, like the two-faced Roman god Janus (whose month this is), is looking both ways, to the past and to the future. The past is anuloma, and the future is patiloma, and if it is too late to include the sekha in anuloma it is too early to include him in patiloma. Or if you wish he is something of both.

2. There is no 'but' and 'when' about the arahat's being paticcasamuppāda patiloma—he is paticcasamuppāda patiloma entirely, and in no way anuloma. Anuloma is avijjāpaccayā, and patiloma is avijjānirodha, and there is not the smallest trace of avijjā where the arahat is concerned. It is not possible to put 'him' back to anuloma, since, with cessation of avijjā, there is cessation of 'him' (attavāda, asmimāna)—ditth'eva dhamme saccato thetato Tathāgato anupalabbhamāne (S. iv,384).[1] There is certainly no 'outside the paticcasamuppāda context' as far as persons are concerned, since patiloma is cessation of the person. Thus it is only if we think of the arahat therī Sonā as a person, as somebody (sakkāya), that she seems to be putting herself back to anuloma when she says: pañcakkhandhā pariññātā titthanti chinnamūlakā (Therīgāthā 106).[2]

You suggest that when I describe the arahat I do so in terms other than negative to pañc'upādānakkhandhā; but when I describe him 'as such' I do not say he is saupādāna, any more than Sonā Therī when she describes herself 'as such'. But the fact is that no one, not even the Buddha, can describe an arahat in such a way as to be intelligible to a puthujjana; and the reason is, as you point out, that the whole of the puthujjana's experience is saupādāna, including his experience of the anupādāna arahat (whether he sees him, thinks about him, visualizes or imagines him, or hears him described). Your account of the difficulties that you encounter when you consider the arahat and his robe, as far as it goes, is quite correct. (I say 'as far as it goes' since to you the arahat's robe is to be worn 'by him', whereas to him it is to-be-worn, not 'by me' but 'on this body'.)

For a puthujjana even the terms khīnāsava, akataññū, and so on, to the extent that they are intelligible to him, are all saupādāna. In other words, it is impossible for a puthujjana to 'see' (= understand) an arahat—as soon as he does 'see' him he ceases to be a puthujjana. But this does not in the least mean that a puthujjana should not try to understand an arahat—he might succeed and then he would cease to be a puthujjana.

3. (i) Āneñja (na iñjatī ti āneñjam), which literally means 'not shaking', seems to have two quite distinct connotations in the Suttas. In the first place it refers either (as in A. IV,190: ii,184) to the four arūpa attainments or more strictly (as in M. 106) to the fourth jhāna and ākāsānañcāyatana and viññānañcāyatana—note that the second and third āneñjasappāya refer to both these last two; and these are attainable by the puthujjana, the sekha, and the arahat alike, provided, of course, that they make the effort. See, for example, A. IV,172 (which should be a continuation of 171: ii,159), where certain devā, having been nevasaññānāsaññāyatanūpagā are liable to return to this world (which cannot happen to an ariyasāvaka in the same position). And see A. III,114: i,267 for the same of the first three of the arūpa devā. In the second place it refers to arahattā. Anejo anupādāno sato bhikkhu paribbaje (Sn. 751). In both cases there is 'not shaking', but in two different senses. There is nothing mysterious about this; it is merely a question of Sutta usage.

(ii) As regards the passage you quoted from Majjhima 106: ii,264, I understand it in this way. When a puthujjana attains nevasaññānāsaññāyatana that is clearly enough saupādāna, that is, sakkāya. When a sekha attains this, he sees that it is saupādāna, that it is sakkāya. Now the condition for upādāna is avijjā, that is to say, not seeing—not seeing upādāna as upādāna. But the sekha, unlike the puthujjana, does see this, so his upādāna is seen and is also, therefore, an-upādāna. (As I have said before, all one can say of the sekha is mā upādiyi.) Similar remarks apply to the frequent passages in the Suttas where the sekha sees or considers or is urged to consider the pañc'upādānakkhandhā as anicca and so on. The puthujjana cannot see pañc'upādānakkhandhā as anicca or anything else, since he does not see them at all.

4. About salāyatana and phassa. Within limits I follow your argument (except that I have no experience of the dibbacakkhu and cannot therefore usefully comment upon it), but I note that you seem to regard the cakkhundriya as 'subject'. The question remains, 'What do you mean by "subject"?'

In visual experience (considered alone) the eye does not appear (na pātubhavati) at all, either as cakkhundriya or as mamsacakkhu, since vision itself is not visible, and the eye does not see itself. Since visual experience alone neither reveals cakkhundriya nor mamsacakkhu there is (or should be) no justification for calling either of them subject. When other faculties (or a looking glass) are used the mamsacakkhu appears (pātubhavati), but it appears as a phenomenon (to avoid using the word 'object' for the moment) amongst other phenomena, and, as such, has no claim to be called subject. In neither case is there any subject to be found. This being so, when these two experiences, visual and the other, occur together (as is usual), although there is the constriction you speak of (I would rather call it a superposition) there is no reason whatsoever for any 'discrepancy between subject and object'; for we have not found any subject. And in the arahat (do I disconcert you?) no discrepancy is, in fact, experienced, and no dukkha. It is only in the puthujjana, for whom an apparent self is manifest, and who necessarily divides things into subject and object, that the discrepancy you speak of can arise. But it seems to me that perhaps you do not find the approach by way of the salāyatana as congenial to you as the approach by way of pañcakkhandhā, and I shall not pursue the question any further.

5. In my early days in Ceylon I myself was something of a 'tidy-chart' maker, and I hoped and believed that it was possible to include all that the Suttas said in a single system—preferably portrayed diagrammatically on one very large sheet of paper. In those innocent days—which however did not last very long—I believed that the Commentaries knew what they were talking about. And I had the idea that everything that happened to me was vipāka and everything that I did about it (my reaction, that is, to the vipāka) was fresh kamma, which in turn produced fresh vipāka, and so on ad inf. And this is as tidy as anyone could wish.

Then I came across the Sutta that I transcribe below. This, as you will see, was enough to shatter my illusions, and it came as a bit of a shock (though also as a bit of a relief). In due course after asking people about it and getting no satisfactory explanation, I decided that my 'tidy idea' could be true only in a general sense, and that, in any case, it could not possibly be of any vital importance in the essential part of the Dhamma. Since then I have stopped thinking about it. Here is the Sutta (Vedanā Samy. 21: iv,229-31):[3]

Once the Auspicious One was staying near Rājagaha, at the Squirrel's feeding-ground in the Bamboo Grove.
Now at that time the Wanderer Sīvaka of the top knot approached the Auspicious One. Having approached, he exchanged courtesies and, having done so, sat down at one side. Sitting at one side the Wanderer Sīvaka of the top knot said this to the Auspicious One:
—There are some recluses and divines, Master Gotama, of such a belief, of such a view: 'Whatever this individual experiences, be it pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral, all that is due to former actions.' Herein what does Master Gotama say?
—Some feelings, Sīvaka, arise here (1) with bile as their source. That can be known by oneself, Sīvaka, how some feelings arise here with bile as their source; and that is reckoned by the world as truth, Sīvaka, how some feelings arise here with bile as their source. Therein, Sīvaka, the recluses and divines who are of such a belief, of such a view: 'Whatever this individual experiences, be it pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral, all that is due to former actions', they both go beyond what is known by themselves and go beyond what is reckoned as truth in the world. Therefore I say that these recluses and divines are in the wrong.
Some feelings, Sīvaka, arise here (2) with phlegm as their source....
Some feelings, Sīvaka, arise here (3) with wind as their source....
Some feelings, Sīvaka, arise here (4) due to confluence of humours....
Some feelings, Sīvaka, arise here (5) born from seasonal change....
Some feelings, Sīvaka, arise here (6) born from improper care....
Some feelings, Sīvaka, arise here (7) due to exertion....
Some feelings, Sīvaka, arise here (8) born from the ripening of action.... Therefore I say that these recluses and divines are in the wrong.

6. Let us return to §2. Your letter encourages me to think that, in a way, you understand your own failure to understand the arahat. And it is because I thought this also before that I felt it was worthwhile to speak of the 'sterility of making tidy charts'. The making of tidy charts (even if they are accurate, which is rarely the case—a chart of the Dhamma tends to distort it just as a map-maker distorts the curved surface that he represents on a flat sheet), the making of tidy charts, I say, is sterile because it is essentially takka, and the Dhamma is atakkāvacara. To make tidy charts, though not in itself reprehensible, does not lead to understanding. But it is useless to say such a thing to a convinced tidy-chart-maker—such as a commentator, who is satisfied that the Dhamma is understood when it is charted.

In your case, however, though you do tend to make tidy charts (it is an attitude of mind), there is also another aspect. You seem to be well aware that there is a discrepancy in your present position in that you are disconcerted when the arahat is described 'as such', and you are perhaps prepared to allow my statement that this is due to failure to see that things can be significant without being 'mine', that they can be teleological without being appropriated. And I think, also, that you are aware that this, in fact, is the central problem and that all else (including the tidy charts) is secondary and unimportant. This attitude is not sterile; and from the first it has been my principal concern, directly or indirectly, to encourage it and make it stand out decisively. As you have noted I have consistently underlined this matter (in whatever terms it has been stated) and rejected any possibility of arriving at a compromise solution. It is because you have been prepared to listen to this one thing that I have continued the correspondence. The other things we have discussed, except in so far as they have a bearing in this, are of little importance. But it is one thing for me to insist on this matter and quite another for you to see it. Even bhikkhus who heard the Dhamma from the Buddha's own mouth had sometimes to go away and work it out for themselves. Tassa me Bhagavā...so kho ahan...patiladdho (Bojjhanga Samy. 30: v,89-90).[4]

Afternote: You say that, as far as you see it, the arahat's experience functions automatically. By this I presume that you mean it functions without any self or agent or master to direct it. But I do not say otherwise. All that I would add is that this automatically functioning experience has a complex teleological structure.

The puthujjana's experience, however, is still more complex, since there is also avijjā, and there is thus appropriation as well as teleology. But this, too, functions automatically, without any self or agent to direct it. On account of the appropriation, however, it appears to be directed by a self, agent, or master. Avijjā functions automatically, but conceals this fact from itself. Avijjā is an automatically functioning blindness to its automatic functioning. Removal of the blindness removes the appropriation but not the teleology.