Identity and Experience_Hamilton_1996

132 Identity and Experience
consciousness as experienced. In fact the Sutta is ambiguous, and Reat's
conclusion is not the only one that can be drawn from it. The Sutta starts by
defining dukkha as the five upidinakkhandhi. It goes on to give the detailed
description of each of the catttSm fnahiibhiitd' as they relate to the human body
that has been referred to above in chapter I. Then comes the passage in the
Sutta which is relevant to us here. It begins by giving an analogy: just as
space that is enclosed by stakes, creepers, grass and clay is known as a
dwelling, so a space that is enclosed by bones, sinews, flesh and skin is
known as a body.64 The Sutta goes on to state that for there to be an
appearance of a corresponding kind of consciousness,65 there has to be one
of the internal senses 'intact' (or functional), its corresponding external
object within range, and appropriate attention or c~ncentration.~~ The
form of the Pali is the same for all the senses. The Sutta then states that
whatever is rips, vedanii, safifii, sapkh&a and uifiiiiy that comes to be in this
way is included in the khandha corresponding to each of those five
analy~es.~'
The precise meaning of this passage is not immediately clear. First, the
analogy of the dwelling place and the body does not seem to have any
connection either with what precedes it or with what follows and may be,
as Reat suggests, a corruption in the text.68 In any event, it may be ignored
in this discussion. According to Reat, the rest of the passage states that
"rripa, as a khandha ... come[s] into existence on the basis of the functioning
of consciousness".69 In my opinion, however, it does no more than state in
the first instance that consciousness is consciousness oJ; as already discussed
in chapter v: for consciousness to arise there has to be internal sense organ,
corresponding external object within range, and the appropriate attention
(samannihiro- literally the coming together of the two). And second, in
what follows the Sutta is stating that it is by means of this process of the
arising of 'consciousness of' that one analyses one's experience according
to khandhas: as human beings, our experience is conscious, and all our
analyses are therefore by means of the subjective cognitive process. Reat's
claim that the analysis into khandhas is actually an analysis of consciousness
as experienced suggests that all the khandhnr are (merely) different types of
consciousness. This suggestion is not supported elsewhere in the Sutta
R@ka, and in my opinion one should interpret this passage as stating that
the analysis into khandhm is an analysis of experience as we are conscious of
it. Such an interpretation does not have the implication that consciousness
is the stufof the khandzm, and it is in accord with the context of the Sutta as
a whole: the detailed description of the cattiZro rnahiibhzitz is classified as the
riipakkhandha by means of being conscious of it: without being conscious of
it there could be no analysis of it. Though Reat is correct in stating that
"consciousness does not arise without an object", there is no evidence that
he is also correct in stating that "an object does not arise without
consciousness".