Liberation from rebirth (mokṣa) pertains to realization, or direct perception of the Self, ātman
Atman is often translated as real self (真我）. However with its multi-layers of meaning connoted in the concept of atman, such as spirit and breath, is it Udayana's narrative of Atman as self?
It is discrimination. Discrimination from what? From the body, etc. which are other than the self” (ibid.) T
Can we claim that Udayana was the earliest philosopher who thought about body-mind divide, the Cartesian dichotomy?
If perceptions and recollections did not belong to the same knower, then the teacher’s cognition could be remembered by a student.
This sentence might open to the discussion, why discourses and dialogues are thought to be more important than the written texts in early East Asian thinking. e.g. Confucius dialogues and discussions with his disciples.<br /> Shinto doesn't have a sacred text or a canon that could be referred to, but puts more weight on rituals and prayers through spoken words.
Self-awareness simply does not require language; while ordinary cognitions are subjected to language and assessment
This is so interesting! There is a way of thinking in Shinto that once the text is written, it does not have same meaning as in a spoken words. I understand that there is a differentiation between written and spoken words in Buddhist ideas as well.
This can be said of the common cognitions of blue, yellow etc. also. If self-awareness could be discredited on the ground that it is the product of some beginningless urge, how can any other cognition be credited as valid so that one could depend upon the cognitions of blue, yellow etc.?”
The other day, I was having an interesting discussion with Buddhist philosopher working on sanskrit. We were discussing perhaps it is the grammatical structure that lead us to think in a certain way. That the languagenand its grammatical structure may already guiding our way of thinking. Sor the argument was on White Cow, is the whiteness posessing the cow, or the cow posessing the whiteness. The scholars were arguing that it could be translated in both ways, that gives us a kind of vague different understanding of what is being described.
But how might the self be perceived?
This is such an important question!
possibility of knowing the self
yeah... perhaps it is only by chance, or it is only a possibility whether we can know the self.
self’s subtlety
Precisely, self is subtle. Can we know who we are without the existence of others?
the self’s (ātman) existence is postulated with the use of inferential proofs, i.e. through the process of inference (anumāna).15 The self cannot be perceived directly.
Here also resonates weill with Shinto. The self cannot be perceived directly but can be percieved through the existence of others and other objects, through experiences.
the recollection of one’s past experiences produces the experiences which are indicated by emotions.
This linkage with the concept of self, lineage of time, and emotion is very interesting, This also kinds of resonates with the Shinto idea. Shinto does not explicitly mention about past experiences, but emotion plays a very important role as to reflectivey understand self that is separated from others. However, there is a shared emotion as well...that leads to self, in a sense of shared experience and community.
First, the self is different from the mind and the senses, which enables it to realize its own activity. However, the instance of mind is here not an active or cognitive faculty but solely a passive internal organ, which neither thinks nor acts. It serves as an instrument for the self to experience (pleasure, pain, desire, aversion, merit, demerit, etc.) and cognise. Cognition is here a property of the self, since the self is a locus of awareness, and not a cluster of physical elements or non-sentient intermediaries. The self owns its qualities: cognitions, dispositions, memories, feelings, and actions. The self is therefore not pure consciousness, as Materialists or Idealists would claim, but is a highly individuated self with a personality.
yeah... so it's multi-layered sense of self.
In other words, the self must be embodied in order to experience awareness and cognitions (NS 3.1.18–26).
This sentence kind of resonates with what Shinto has in its understanding of self. The spirit (tama) needs to be embodied into some object, but it can still experience awareness and cognition without its own body as well. I understand that there is a muti-level, or multi-layered understanding of self in that sense.
Before the connection with the mind (manas), an individual self is not conscious. In other words, the self must be embodied in order to experience awareness and cognitions (NS 3.1.18–26).
As far as I understand, based on my conversation with the Univ. Tokyo Prof. Emeritus, Sueki the concept of mind (manas) was kind of invented in the thought of vijñapti-mātratā school (唯識). The concept of ālaya-vijñāna（阿頼耶識) did not satisfy the requirement to explain the concept of self, and thus the idea of Manas was applied to build on ālaya-vijñāna to explaing the concept of self.
Udayana’s use of “indeterminate perception” enabled his texts to conceptualize an idea of self that persists both prior and after the state of existing as a human being
I am still not fully convinced. We might be reading Udayana's text in the hope of finding the idea of self. This leads to a question on how can we read and analyse a text without any upfront hypothesis (bias)? How can we truly understand the written text of the 10th century through translation and claim that there is a similar conceptual notion of self that is based on the understanding of the self of the 21st century?
Udayana is an example of how cosmopolitan, comparativist philosophers of religion may critically engage with others without defending any religious sect per se
Can you please elaborate and explain more on your thinking behind this?
concept of the self
To broaden the scope of the question, it might be useful if one could also ask on the relevance of the question itself. Are we to inquire on a concept of "self" in the Western perspective. What is "self"? or is there any "concept of self" in the 10th century India? From Buddhism perspective, the concept of self reclines more to that one realises "self" through interactions with others; "self that arises through relationality with others and incidents". However, in Shinto perspective, there is not a clear concept of self, but there is more emphasis on collective actions and collectivity, perhaps "collective self" instead of "individual self". The idea of individual, individualism, and self, might be a simple Western perspective that originates in the modern times, that we might be reflexively trying to find a concept of self from Western perspective.