Identity and Experience_Hamilton_1996

The Saiiiiiikhandha
Ranananda has suggested the translation 'conceptual proliferati~n'.~~ Both
Johansson and Ranananda discuss papaiica in considerably more detail than
is necessary to understand it in the context we are discussing in this
chapter. Neither of them, however, appears to have understood the
profound implication of papaiiceti as making manifold. Johansson, for
example, sums up his chapter as follows: "Papan"ca is, then, a word for a
vaguely defined prolific tendency, in the fields of imagination, thought and
action. It is the tendency to produce associations, wishful dreams and
analytic
But this surely misses the much more profound point
that in seeing things as manifold one is attributing independent existence to
them, and to oneself as perceiver. Nagarjuna's Madhyamakaka-h- are above
all concerned to refute independent existence and to teach dependent
origination, and in singling out the term papaiica he is giving us an
indication of the underlying meaning of it. This meaning is also indicated
in the Suttu Nipita where it states: "The wise man should put a stop to the
thought 'I am', which is the root of all naming in terms of manifoldne~s",~~
Of this passage, Johansson states: "It @apaiica] is an ego-related activity,
which gives satisfaction to human vanity and pride . . . To get rid ofpapaiica
is therefore one of the problems of the Buddhist disciple".30 In Buddhism,
ego-related activity is more than just satisfying to human vanity and pride:
it is h fundamental ignorance which has to be eradicated. And the use of
asmi in the above sentence is surely both literal and figurative; that is, it
means both the erroneous sense of 'I am' on the part of the individual
bhikkhu, and the erroneous attribution of independent existence to that
which he sees as manifold. Furthermore, as the fundamental ignorance
which has to be eradicated, it is the problem for the Buddhist disciple, as
Nag-juna states, not merely one of them.
To return to our discussion of saEiii, from the Majhima .iVihya passage we
are discussing here, we see that saEEi has a discriminatory or identificatory
function which is in effect one of 'naming'. This in turn leads on to the
various thought processes (VitaWca) of sa;?zsiiric existence, and a separated or
manifold way of interpreting our experiences. This sequence is confirmed
in the Sutta NiZta, where we read:
One who is conscious of neither a conception nor a false conception, and
who is neither unconscious nor conscious of a conception that has
disappeared: for one who has attained such a state, form disappears, for
naming in terms of manifoldness arises subsequent to conception^.^'
As Johansson points out, the first part of this probably refers to the
higherjhina levels in which there are no conceptions of form.32 The second
part clearly confirms that papafica follows safin"Z.
From this perhaps the most satisfactory translation of saEiii would be
'apperception', which implies both that its function is discriminatory, and
also that it incorporates a function of assimilation or comprehension of