Identity and Experience_Hamilton_1996

The Ripakkhandha
appropriate interpretation of it: nima is not the equivalent of arqa, and
therefore mental, dhammi. Rather, it is the equivalent of conceptual or
abstract dhammi, which precisely fits with the conceptual or abstract (and
objective) dhammi referred to in the last paragraph. Riipadhammi refers to
sensory phenomena. The nature and status of all dhammii later became the
subject of extensive philosophical speculation within the Buddhist tradition
as a whole, much of which is recorded in Vasubandhu's Abhidhamzakoia and
its bhiga. But there is no such speculation in the Sutta Pitaka: there, even the
term nimarzipa dhammi is not used, let alone defined.
We find manas in one other context which appears to confirm its unique
role as what one might call a quasi sense and that it functions as collator
of a wide range of incoming data. This is in a reference to the level of
awareness achieved in the fourthjhina. "What can be understood through
mano~in"n"inal~~ when it is 'purified', that is when it is isolated from the five
[other] senses?"155 The reply is that one can know that space is unending
(ananto ikso), that consciousness is unending (anantam viiiiiigam) and one
can know the sphere of no-thing (ikn"can"n"123)atana). These three represent
consecutive jhina levels of meditation, none of which is knowable through
the senses.
Here the role of manodhitu appears to be similar to that meant by sensus
communi.r as described above, in that it collates the incoming data as the
first stage of the cognitive process, but those data are what one might call
supra-sensory rather than simply abstract or non-sensory. In another
description of the jhinas, what one knows at the fourth level is described
differently:
. . . through completely transcending all apperceptions based on appearance,
through the cessation of apperceptions which are sensory in origin, through
not paying attention to apperceptions of rn~1tiforrnity.l~~
Though in this passage the involvement of manodhitu is not explicitly
stated, what one knows is clearly not from sensory data. Perhaps in line
with this, the Vibhariga suggests that manas might function at even higher
non-sensory levels when it states that both manm and dhammi are sometimes
lokya (worldly) and sometimes lokuttara (supramundane). 15'
I stated above that where dhammi refers to all phenomena whatsoever
the term clearly referred to more than Geiger's 'empirical world'. We have
now arrived at an understanding of dhammi when it is the object of
manodhitu which includes sensory, non-sensory and supra-sensory phenomena.
Whether or not this meaning of dhammi also represents more than
Geiger's 'empirical world', on the grounds that it includes phenomena
which are not actually empirical, is open to debate. The non-sensory and
supra-sensory phenomena may not be empirical in the Western
materialistic meaning of the word, but it may be a valid word to use in
Buddhism. Even at supra-sensory jhiina levels phenomena are part of
3 I