In a Double Way: Nāma-rūpa in Buddhaghosa’s Phenomenology

Abstract

In this paper, we want to bring together two issues for their mutual illumination: (i) the particular use of that hoary Indian dyad, "nāma-rūpa", literally, "name-and-form by Buddhaghosa, the influential 5 th c Theravāda writer, to organize the categories of the abhidhamma, the canonical classification of phenomenal factors (dhammas) and their formulaic ordering; 1 and (ii) an interpretation of phenomenology as a methodology. We argue that Buddhaghosa does not use abhidhamma as a reductive ontological division of the human being into mind and body, but as the contemplative structuring of that human's phenomenology. This phenomenological methodology expressed in his application of nāma-rūpa is expressed as a set of contemplative practices; we compare this approach to some of the processes explicated within the 20 th cWestern Phenomenological tradition's predominantly metaphysical teleology. We suggest that 2 Buddhaghosa's use of nāma-rūpa should be seen as the analytic by which he understands how experience is undergone, and not his account of how some reality is structured. We can learn from Buddhaghosa something about both how experience is to be analyzed, and how that analysis has a clarificatory purpose not tied to the espousal of any particular 'view' of reality. Phenomenology and metaphysicsThis paper is not about metaphysics, although it draws attention to how it depends on what one says metaphysics is not. Modern Western philosophy has tended to proceed through claims to break with the entire history of philosophy. As Kant pointed out, Hume said both that "metaphysics couldn't possibly exist" and that metaphysics and morals are the most important branches of learning. with their argument for an original understanding of metaphysics. 3 We do not intend to engage with that history and the validity of successive judgments (is metaphysics about "presence" and was Husserl committed to it, while Derrida broke free of it as he claims? and so on), let alone with the even more complex question of how to read "metaphysics" in the context of Indian thought. But we start with what we hope is a plausible if diffuse stipulation: metaphysics is about how things are and come to be what they are (on whatever construal of "things" and "is"); in short, it is concerned with questions of existence, while a metaphysical argument is one directed towards determining how those things are what they are. By "ontology," we mean the articulation of the structure of entities such as objects and relations. An ontology is, in this sense, 3 part of a metaphysical enterprise, whereas, there can be metaphysical questions that are not ontological. In that sense, a dominant strain of 20 th c Phenomenology does preserve a fundamental metaphysical reflex, for its purpose is in some way to determine the nature of the subject of experience of world. By way of contrast, on our reading of Buddhaghosa, he is not oriented to such determination at all, but rather seeks to train attention towards experience in such a way is to make the perfection of s...

Madness, virtue, and ecology: A classical Indian approach to psychiatric disturbance

“…My exploration of the Caraka Saṃhitā ’s approach to psychiatric disturbance is guided by the concept of ecological phenomenology that Maria Heim and I have developed and written on elsewhere (Heim, 2018; Heim and Ram-Prasad, 2018; Ram-Prasad, 2018). We use the metaphor of ecology to draw attention to how, in any complex and dynamic system (taking the environment as the literal realization of an ecology), the focus of our investigation determines what salience we pay attention to and, consequently, what elements of the system we define and study.…”