A full discussion of this key word is given in A NOTE ON PATICCASAMUPPĀDA. It is there maintained that the word sankhāra, in all contexts, means 'something that something else depends on', that is to say a determination (determinant). It might be thought that this introduces an unnecessary complication into such passages as Vayadhammā sankhārā appamādena sampādetha ('To disappear is the nature of determinations; strive unremittingly') and Aniccā vata sankhārā uppādavayadhammino ('Impermanent indeed are determinations; to arise (appear) and disappear is their nature') (Dīgha ii,3 <D.ii,156&7>). Why, instead of telling us that things (dhammā) are impermanent and bound to disappear, should the Buddha take us out of our way to let us know that things that things depend on are impermanent and bound to disappear? The answer is that the Dhamma does not set out to explain, but to lead—it is opanayika. This means that the Dhamma is not seeking disinterested intellectual approval, but to provoke an effort of comprehension or insight leading to the abandonment of attavāda and eventually of asmimāna. Its method is therefore necessarily indirect: we can only stop regarding this as 'self' if we see that what this depends on is impermanent (see DHAMMA for more detail). Consider, for example, the Mahāsudassanasuttanta (Dīgha ii,4 <D.ii,169-99>), where the Buddha describes in detail the rich endowments and possessions of King Mahāsudassana, and then finishes: Pass'Ānanda sabbe te sankhārā atītā niruddhā viparinatā. Evam aniccā kho Ānanda sankhārā, evam addhuvā kho Ānanda sankhārā, yāvañ c'idam Ānanda alam eva sabbasankhāresu nibbinditum, alam virajjitum, alam vimuccitum. ('See, Ānanda, how all those determinations have passed, have ceased, have altered. So impermanent, Ānanda, are determinations, so unlasting, Ānanda, are determinations, that this, Ānanda, is enough for weariness of all determinations, enough for dispassion, enough for release.') This is not a simple statement that all those things, being impermanent by nature, are now no more; it is a lever to prize the notion of 'selfhood' out of its firm socket. Those things were sankhārā: they were things on which King Mahāsudassana depended for his very identity; they determined his person as 'King Mahāsudassana', and with their cessation the thought 'I am King Mahāsudassana' came to an end. More formally, those sankhārā were nāmarúpa, the condition for phassa (Dīgha ii,2 <D.ii,62>[9]), upon which sakkāyaditthi depends (cf. Dīgha i,1 <D.i,42-3> together with Citta Samy. 3 <S.iv,287>).

Consciousness (viññāna) can be thought of as the presence of a phenomenon, which consists of nāma and rūpa. Nāmarūpa and viññāna together constitute the phenomenon 'in person'—i.e. an experience (in German: Erlebnis). The phenomenon is the support (ārammana—see first reference in [c] below) of consciousness, and all consciousness is consciousness of something (viz, of a phenomenon). Just as there cannot be presence without something that is present, so there cannot be something without its being to that extent present—thus viññāna and nāmarūpa depend on each other (see A NOTE ON PATICCASAMUPPĀDA §17). 'To be' and 'to be present' are the same thing.[a] But note that 'being' as bhava, involves the existence of the (illusory) subject, and with cessation of the conceit (concept) '(I) am', asmimāna, there is cessation of being, bhavanirodha. With the arahat, there is just presence of the phenomenon ('This is present'), instead of the presence (or existence) of an apparent 'subject' to whom there is present an 'object' ('I am, and this is present to [or for] me', i.e. [what appears to be] the subject is present ['I am'], the object is present ['this is'], and the object concerns or 'belongs to' the subject [the object is 'for me' or 'mine']—see PHASSA & ATTĀ); and consciousness is then said to be anidassana, 'non-indicative' (i.e. not pointing to the presence of a 'subject'), or niruddha, 'ceased' (see A NOTE ON PATICCASAMUPPĀDA §22). Viññānanirodha refers indifferently to anidassana viññāna (saupādisesa nibbānadhātu, which refers to the living arahat: Itivuttaka II,ii,7 <Iti.38>[12]) and to cessation, at the arahat's death, of all consciousness whatsoever (anupādisesa nibbānadhātu).[b] Viññānanirodha, strictly speaking, is cessation of viññān'upādānakkhandha as bhavanirodha is cessation of pañc'upādānakkhandhā (i.e. sakkāyanirodha), but it is extended to cover the final cessation of viññānakkhandha (and therefore of pañcakkhandhā) at the breaking up of the arahat's body.

  Consciousness, it must be noted, is emphatically no more 'subjective' than are the other four upādānakkhandhā (i.e. than nāmarūpa). (This should be clear from what has gone before; but it is a commonly held view that consciousness is essentially subjective, and a slight discussion will be in place.) It is quite wrong to regard viññāna as the subject to whom the phenomenon (nāmarūpa), now regarded as object, is present (in which case we should have to say, with Sartre, that consciousness as subjectivity is presence to the object). Viññāna is negative as regards essence (or 'what-ness'): it is not part of the phenomenon, of what is present, but is simply the presence of the phenomenon.[c] Consequently, in visual experience (for example), phenomena are seen, eye-consciousness is not seen (being negative as regards essence), yet there is eye-consciousness (eye -consciousness is present reflexively).[d] In this way consciousness comes to be associated with the body (saviññānaka kāya), and is frequently identified as the subject, or at least as subjectivity (e.g. by Husserl [see CETANĀ [b]] and Sartre [op. cit., p. 27]). (To follow this discussion reference should be made to PHASSA, particularly [c], where it is shown that there is a natural tendency for subjectivity to be associated with the body. Three distinct pairs of complementaries are thus seen to be superimposed: eye & forms (or, generally: six-based body & externals); consciousness & phenomena; subject & objects. To identify consciousness and the subject is only too easy. With attainment of arahattā all trace of the subject-&-objects duality vanishes. Cf. also ATTĀ [c].)

---

Footnotes:

[a] A distinction must be made. 'To be' and 'being' are (in English) ambiguous. On the one hand they may refer to the existence of a phenomenon as opposed to what it is that exists (namely, the phenomenon). This is viññāna (though it does not follow that viññāna should be translated as 'being' or 'existence'). On the other hand they may refer to the existing thing, the phenomenon as existing; in other words, to the entity. But a further distinction must be made. The entity that the Buddha's Teaching is concerned with is not the thing but the person—but not the person as opposed to the thing, as subject in distinction from object. Personal existence is a synthetic relationship, dependent upon upādāna, and consisting of a subject and his objects. Being or existence in this pregnant sense is bhava, at least as it occurs in the paticcasamuppāda context, and the 'entity' in question is sakkāya (q.v.) or pañc'upādānakkhandhā. (It must be noted that the 'existence' of the living arahat is, properly speaking, not bhava but bhavanirodha, since the conceit '(I)  am' has ceased. Strictly, there is no arahat to be found. See [b].) Bhava is to be translated as 'being' (or 'existence'). [Back to text]  

[b] Strictly, we cannot speak of the 'living arahat' or of the 'arahat's death'—see A NOTE ON PATICCASAMUPPĀDA §§10 & 22. The terms saupādisesa and anupādisesa nibbānadhātu, which sometimes give trouble, may be rendered 'extinction-element with/without residue'. Saupādisesa and anupādisesa occur at Majjhima xi,5 <M.ii,257&259>, where they can hardly mean more than 'with/without something (stuff, material) left'. At Majjhima i,10 <M.i,62> the presence of upādisesa is what distinguishes the anāgāmí from the arahat, which is clearly not the same thing as what distinguishes the two extinction-elements. Upādisesa must therefore be unspecified residue. [Back to text]  

[c] See Khandha Samy. vi,2 <S.iii,54>. Viññāna is positively differentiated only by what it arises in dependence upon. E.g., that dependent upon eye and visible forms is eye-consciousness, and so with the rest. Cf. Majjhima iv,8 <M.i,259>. That none of the five upādānakkhandhā is to be regarded as 'subjective' can be seen from the following passage: So yad eva tattha hoti rūpagatam vedanāgatam saññāgatam sankhāragatam viññānagatam te dhamme aniccato dukkhato rogato gandato sallato aghato ābādhato parato palokato suññato anattato samanupassati. ('Whatever herein there is of matter, of feeling, of perception, of determinations, of consciousness, these things he regards as impermanent, as suffering, as sickness, as a boil, as a dart, as a calamity, as an affliction, as alien, as wasting, as void, as not-self.') Majjhima vii,4 <M.i,435> (This formula, which is applied in turn to each of the ascending jhāna attainments, should be enough to dispel any idea that jhāna is a mystical experience, in the sense—see Preface (m)—of being intuition of, or union with, some Transcendental Being or Absolute Principle.) [Back to text]

[d] In reflexion, different degrees of consciousness, of presence, will be apparent. Distinction should be made between immediate presence and reflexive presence:
    Immediate presence: 'a pain is', or 'consciousness of a pain'.
    Reflexive presence: 'there is an existing pain', or 'there is consciousness of a pain'.
We can say 'there is consciousness', which means 'there is immediate presence' ('of a pain', of course, being understood or 'in brackets'), and this is reflexive evidence. But we cannot say 'consciousness is', or 'consciousness of consciousness' (i.e. immediate presence of immediate presence), since presence cannot be immediately present as a pain can. In French, the verbal distinction is more marked: être/y avoir ('ceci est'/'il y a ceci'). In Pali, the distinction is: ruppati/atthi rūpam; vediyati/atthi vedanā; sañjānāti/atthi saññā; abhisankharonti/atthi sankhārā; vijānāti/atthi viññānam. (The reflexive reduplication of experience is, of course, reduplication of all five khandhā, not of viññāna alone.) [Back to text]

Sakkāya is pañc'upādānakkhandhā (Majjhima v,4 <M.i,299>), and may conveniently be translated as 'somebody' or 'person' or, abstractly, 'personality'. See PARAMATTHA SACCA, also for what follows.

  An arahat (while alive—that is, if we can speak of a 'living arahat') continues to be individual in the sense that 'he' is a sequence of states (Theragāthā v. 716)[13] distinguishable from other arahanto (and a fortiori from individuals other than arahanto). Every set of pañcakkhandhā[a]—not pañc'upādānakkhandhā in the arahat's case—is unique, and individuality in this sense ceases only with the final cessation of the pañcakkhandhā at the breaking up of the arahat's body. But a living arahat is no longer somebody or a person, since the notion or conceit '(I) am' has already ceased. Individuality must therefore be carefully distinguished from personality,[b] which is: being a person, being somebody, being a subject (to whom objects are present), selfhood, the mirage 'I am', and so on. The puthujjana is not able to distinguish them—for him individuality is not conceivable apart from personality, which he takes as selfhood. The sotāpanna is able to distinguish them—he sees that personality or 'selfhood' is a deception dependent upon avijjā, a deception dependent upon not seeing the deception, which is not the case with individuality—, though he is not yet free from an aroma of subjectivity, asmimāna. The arahat not only distinguishes them but also has entirely got rid of all taint of subjectivity—'he' is individual but in no way personal. For lack of suitable expressions (which in any case would puzzle the puthujjana) 'he' is obliged to go on saying 'I' and 'me' and 'mine' (cf. Dīgha i,9 <D.i,202>; Devatā Samy. iii,5 <S.i,14>[14]). Individuality where the arahat is concerned still involves the perspective or orientation that things necessarily adopt when they exist, or are present, or are cognized; and for each individual the perspective is different. Loss of upādāna is not loss of point of view. See RŪPA and remarks on manasikāra in NĀMA.  

Sakkāyaditthi (Majjhima v,4 <M.i,300>) is sometimes explained as the view or belief (often attributed to a purely verbal misunderstanding)[c] that in one or other of the khandhā there is a permanent entity, a 'self'. These rationalized accounts entirely miss the point, which is the distinction (Khandha Samy. v,6 <S.iii,47>) between pañc'upādānakkhandhā (which is sakkāya) and pañcakkhandhā (which is sakkāyanirodha). To have ditthi about sakkāya is not an optional matter (as if one could regard sakkāya from the outside and form ditthi about it or not, as one pleased): sakkāya contains sakkāyaditthi (in a latent form at least) as a necessary part of its structure.[d] If there is sakkāya there is sakkāyaditthi, and with the giving up of sakkāyaditthi there comes to be cessation of sakkāya. To give up sakkāyaditthi, sakkāya must be seen (i.e. as pañc'upādānakkhandhā), and this means that the puthujjana does not see pañc'upādānakkhandhā as such (i.e. he does not recognize them—see MAMA [a] and cf. Majjhima viii,5 <M.i,511>). A puthujjana (especially one who puts his trust in the Commentaries) sometimes comes to believe that he does see pañc'upādānakkhandhā as such, thereby blocking his own progress and meeting with frustration: he cannot see what further task is to be done, and yet remains a puthujjana.

---

Footnotes:

[a] Past, future, and present, 'five aggregates': matter (or substance), feeling, perception, determinations, and consciousness. [Back to text] 

[b] Taken in conjunction with what follows it, this evidently means 'A puthujjana must take good care to become a sotāpanna'. In other words, a purely intellectual distinction (i.e. without direct experience) is not possible. (This statement perhaps requires some modification to allow for the anulomikāya khantiyā samannāgato. One who is anulomikāya khantiyā samannāgato, though a puthujjana, is not at that time assutavā (through hearing the Dhamma he has some understanding, but he can still lose this and return to his former state). But to be anulomikāya khantiyā samannāgato it is by no manner of means enough to have studied the Suttas and to profess oneself a follower of the Buddha. See Anguttara VI,x,3-6 <A.iii,441-3> & CITTA. Anulomikāya khantiyā samannāgato may be translated 'endowed with acquiescence in conformity (scil. with the Dhamma)'; such an individual is not of contrary view to the Teaching, but does not actually see it for himself.). [Back to text]

[c] If avijjā were simply a matter of verbal misunderstanding, a maggot would be an arahat. [Back to text]  

[d] The reader is referred to the passage (d) in the Preface, quoted from Blackham. It is not possible to lay too much stress on this point. See also DHAMMA [c], NIBBĀNA [a], & A NOTE ON PATICCASAMUPPĀDA §§24 & 25. [Back to text]

In the Kevaddhasutta (Dīgha i,11 <D.i,223>), it is said that the question 'Where do the four mahābhūtā finally cease?' is wrongly asked, and that the question should be 'Where do [the four mahābhūtā] get no footing? Where do nāma and rūpa finally cease?' Matter or substance (rūpa) is essentially inertia or resistance (see Dīgha ii,2 <D.ii,62>[9]), or as the four mahābhūtā it can be regarded as four kinds of behaviour (i.e. the four primary patterns of inertia—see NĀMA). Behaviour (or inertia) is independent of the particular sense-experience that happens to be exhibiting it: a message in the Morse code (which would be a certain complex mode of behaviour) could be received in any sense-experience (though seeing and hearing are the most usual). In any one kind of sense-experience there is revealed a vast set of various behaviours, of various patterns of inertia; and in any other contemporary sense-experience there is revealed a set that, to a great extent, corresponds to this first set.[a] (One particular group of behaviours common to all my sense-experiences is of especial significance—it is 'this body', ayam kāyo rūpī catummahābhūtiko ('this body composed of matter, of the four great entities') [Majjhima viii,5 <M.i,500>].) Thus, when I see a bird opening its beak at intervals I can often at the same time hear a corresponding sound, and I say that it is the (visible) bird that is (audibly) singing. The fact that there seems to be one single (though elaborate) set of behaviours common to all my sense-experiences at any one time, and not an entirely different set for each sense, gives rise to the notion of one single material world revealed indifferently by any one of my senses. Furthermore, the material world of one individual largely corresponds to that of another (particularly if allowance is made for difference in point of view), and we arrive at the wider notion of one general material world common to all individuals.[b] The fact that a given mode of behaviour can be common to sense-experiences of two or more different kinds shows that it is independent of any one particular kind of consciousness (unlike a given perception—blue, for example, which is deppendent upon eye-consciousness and not upon ear-consciousness or the others); and being independent of any one particular kind of consciousness it is independent of all consciousness except for its presence or existence. One mode of behaviour can be distinguished from another, and in order that this can be done they must exist—they must be present either in reality or in imagination, they must be cognized. But since it makes no difference in what form they are present—whether as sights or sounds (and even with one as visible and one as audible, and one real and one imaginary)—, the difference between them is not a matter of consciousness.[c] Behaviour, then, in itself does not involve consciousness (as perception does), and the rūpakkhandha is not phassapaccayā (as the saññākkhandha is)—see Majjhima xi,9 <M.iii,17>. In itself, purely as inertia or behaviour, matter cannot be said to exist. (Cf. Heidegger, op. cit., p. 212.) And if it cannot be said to exist it cannot be said to cease. Thus the question 'Where do the four mahābhūtā finally cease?' is improper. (The question will have been asked with the notion in mind of an existing general material world common to all. Such a general world could only exist—and cease—if there were a general consciousness common to all. But this is a contradiction, since consciousness and individuality [see SAKKĀYA] are one.) But behaviour can get a footing in existence by being present in some form. As rūpa in nāmarūpa, the four mahābhūtā get a borrowed existence as the behaviour of appearance (just as feeling, perception, and intentions, get a borrowed substance as the appearance of behaviour). And nāmarūpa is the condition for viññāna as viññāna is for nāmarūpa. When viññāna (q.v.) is anidassana it is said to have ceased (since avijjā has ceased). Thus, with cessation of viññāna there is cessation of nāmarūpa, and the four mahābhūtā no longer get a footing in existence. (The passage at Salāyatana Samyutta xix,8 <S.iv,192>, ...bhikkhu catunnam mahābhūtānam samudayañ ca atthagamañ ca yathābhūtam pajānāti, ('...a monk understands as they really are the arising and ceasing of the four great entities') is to be understood in this sense.)

   From the foregoing discussion it can be seen that in order to distinguish rūpa from nāma it is only necessary to separate what is (or could be) common to two or more kinds of consciousness from what is not. But care is needed. It might seem that shape is rūpa and not nāma since it is present in both eye-consciousness and body-consciousness (e.g. touching with the fingers). This, however, is a mistake. Vision is a double faculty: it cognizes both colour and shape (see FUNDAMENTAL STRUCTURE §§I/4 & II/8). The eye touches what it sees (it is only necessary to run the eye first across and then down some vertical lines or bars to discover this), and the result is coloured shapes. The eye is capable of intentional movement more delicate even than the fingers, and the corresponding perception of shapes is even more subtle.[d] Similar considerations apply, though in a much lesser degree, to hearing (and even to taste and to smell) where perception of shape, when present (however vaguely), corresponds to movement, real or imaginary (which will include the directional effect of two ears), of the head or of the entire body.[e] But provided different kinds of consciousness are adequately distinguished, this method gives a definite criterion for telling what is matter from what is not. It is consequently not necessary to look for strict analysis of the four mahābhūtā: provided only that our idea of them conforms to this criterion, and that they cover all the primary modes of matter, this is all that is needed. Thus it is not necessary to look beyond the passage at Majjhima xiv,10 <M.iii,240> for a definition of them. (It is easy, but fatal, to assume that the Buddha's Teaching is concerned with analysis for its own sake, and then to complain that the analysis is not pushed far enough.) A human body in action, clearly enough, will present a behaviour that is a highly complex combination of these primary modes: it is behaviour of behaviour, but it still does not get beyond behaviour. (It is important to note that the laws of science—of biochemistry and physics in particular—do not cover behaviour (i.e. matter) associated with conscious [intentional] action.)[f]

---

Footnotes:

[a] Mind-experience is not considered in this Note to avoid complication. It is not, however, essentially different. See MANO [c]. [Back to text]  

[b] Natural science, in taking this concept as its starting-point and polishing it a little to remove irregularities, has no place for the individual and his sense-experience (let alone mind-experience or imagination); for the material world of science is by definition utterly without point of view (in relativity theory every point is a point of view, which comes to the same thing), it is uniformly and quite indifferently communal—it is essentially public>. Consciousness, intention, perception, and feeling, not being public, are not a part of the universe of science. Science is inherently incapable of understanding the nature of material change due to conscious action—which is, concisely, reflexive exercise of preference for one available mode of behaviour (or set of them) at the expense of the others. (Quantum physics, in hoping to reinstate the 'observer'—even if only as a point of view—, is merely locking the stable door after the horse has been stolen.) [Back to text]  

[c] A visual and an auditive experience differ in consciousness (whether or not they differ in matter); but between two different visual (or auditive) experiences the difference is in matter (or substance, or inertia) and not in consciousness. [At this point the question might be asked, 'What is the material difference between the simple experiences of, for example, a blue thing and a red thing (ignoring spatial extension)?' The immediate answer is that they are simply different things, i.e. different inertias. But if it is insisted that one inertia can only differ from another in behaviour (i.e. in pattern of inertia)—in other words, that no inertia is absolutely simple—, we shall perhaps find the answer in the idea of a difference in frequency. But this would involve us in discussion of an order of structure underlying the four mahābhūtā. See FUNDAMENTAL STRUCTURE [j].] Thus it will be observed that all difference in appearance (nāma) is difference in either consciousness (viññāna) or matter (rūpa). Why is this? Neither consciousness nor matter, by itself, can appear (or be manifest); for consciousness by itself lacks substance or specification—it is pure presence or existence without any thing that is present (or exists)—, and matter by itself lacks presence or existence—it is pure substance or specification, of which one cannot say 'it is' (i.e. 'it is present [or absent]'). Appearance or manifestation must necessarily partake of both consciousness and matter, but as an overlapping () and not simply an addition (for the simple superposition of two things each itself incapable of appearing would not produce appearance). Appearance is existence as substance, or substance as existence, and there must be also simple existence (or consciousness) and simple substance (or matter) to support this imbrication. Appearance, in a manner of speaking, is sandwiched between consciousness and matter: there must be rūpa, and nāma, and viññāna (). (There is more to be said about this, but not briefly.) It is because of this structure that all differences in appearance can be resolved into differences either of consciousness or of matter (or both). [Back to text]  

[d] Strictly, the shapes are there before the eyeball is moved, just as the hand perceives the shape of an object merely by resting on it; movement of the eyeball, as of the fingers, only confirms the perception and makes it explicit. This does not matter: we are concerned only to point out the similarity of the eye and the hand as both yielding perceptions of shape, not to give an account of such perceptions. [Back to text]  

[e] This discussion, it will be seen, makes space a secondary and not a primary quality (see NĀMA [d]): space is essentially tactile (in a wide sense), and is related to the body (as organ of touch) as colours and sounds (and so on) are related to the eye and the ear—indeed, we should do better to think of 'spaces' rather than of any absolute 'space'. Space, in fact, has no right to its privileged position opposite time as one of the joint basic determinants of matter: we are no more entitled to speak of 'space-(&-)time' than we are of 'smell-(&-)time'. Time itself is not absolute (see PATICCASAMUPPĀDA [c] & FUNDAMENTAL STRUCTURE §II/5), and material things, as they exist, are not 'in' time (like floatage on a river), but rather have time as their characteristic; space, however, besides not being absolute, is not, strictly, even a characteristic of matter. On the other hand, our first four sense-organs are each a part of the body, which is the fifth, and space does hold a privileged position relative to colour, sound, smell, and taste. Thus we sometimes find in the Suttas (e.g. Majjhima vii,2 <M.i,423>) an ākāsadhātu alongside the four mahābhūtā; and for practical purposes—which is ultimately all we are concerned with—space can be regarded as a quasi-material element. But the Milindapañha has no business whatever to put ākāsa together with nibbāna as asankhata. [Back to text]  

[f] Pace Russell: 'Physical things are those series of appearances whose matter obeys the laws of physics'. Op. cit., VIIIth Essay, §xi. [Back to text]