7.3. Self-cognition (svasaṃvedana)

According to Yogācāra School, feelings like pleasure, pain, joy and sorrow is known as self-consciousness. Diṅnāga examines it into the three moments of sensation, mental sensation and self-cognition.^[1] In the process of perception the first moment is a simple reflex of a particular and indefinite object. The second moment is about mental feeling which is forced by the simple reflex with the effect that there is something in our process of perception. The third moment is a desire to accept or reject the object. This moment arises when pure sensation and mental sensation stops functioning. Selfcognition is a kind of feeling when one has the feeling of desire or aversion for the thing. The knowledge gain by this kind of perception is immediate and direct because the mind has not yet started to play its role in its occurrence. It is a kind of perception which is non-constructive.^[2] Dharmakīrti provides a logical explanation of the definition of self-cognition given by Diṅnāga. For him, the feeling of desire or aversion has not any relation with external object. Thus it cannot be explained in the terms of subject-object relation.^[3] So it cannot be described in words. Self-cognition is a type of direct knowledge. It shows new objects which are not showed by any other sources. It is not constructive knowledge but a clear experience which is assured by our daily experiences. It takes our knowledge further to the points which are not reached by pure sensation and mental sensation.

Realists disagree with the Yogācāra’s explanation of self-cognition. They hold that when a person apprehends the object in pure sensation and mental sensation only after the feeling of desire or aversion for the object can be experienced and it is because of the object itself. Thus, the locus of the feeling of desire or aversion must be the object. The Buddhist refuses the objection and provides two arguments in order to support his view. Firstly, in the process of sense-perception when a person perceives a patch of red colour, one at first has an indeterminate knowledge which arises from the external thing. Next, when the object is fully cognized one has image of the particular thing i.e. one feel the image of the patch of red colour and not of the feeling of pleasure. If the pleasure were similar with the thing, the image of the thing would have followed. But this thing never happens. Hence, the feelings of desire, pleasure and pain are not external but internal. Secondly, different people have different emotions with respect to the same object. For instance: we can take the example of a rose. It stimulates different emotions in the mind of a poet, an artist, and a lover and a gardener.

According to Yogācāra School,

“Every consciousness and every mental phenomenon are selfconscious.”^[4]

In other words one may say that consciousness, which appears in pure sensation as well as all the mental phenomena i.e. feelings, passions, volitions are selfconscious. Consciousness is same as a lamp. Lamp being self-luminous does not need any other lamp to reveal itself. Similarly, consciousness does not need any another factor for its own revelation. It is self-luminous.

The theory of Self-cognition of Buddhists is opposite to the theories of Mīmāṃsa and Nyāya Vāiśeṣika schools, who believe that self-consciousness is a kind of mental thing which occurs when the thing comes in contact with the self. For Buddhist, there is no mental thing exist which is not conscious of its own self. Further one cannot cognize a patch of blue colour until one knows, or in other words one is self-conscious about the fact that what he perceives a patch of blue colour.

The objector asks:

“If every consciousness and mental phenomenon are self-conscious, what would be the fate of those instinctive thoughts and actions which are automatic and do not seem to possess consciousness?”^[5]

In answer to the question Dharmottara says that there are actions which are quasi-automatical, because the incoming stimulus is succeeded by a fruitful action. But this only appears that way, because the intermediate complicated process, being habitual and instantaneous, eludes discursive introspection. But one should not reach to the result that it is unconscious or not self-conscious. For him, when a newborn baby stops crying by putting his lips on his mother’s breast. His action is self conscious in that sense. In this way self-consciousness is a synonym of life.

He further adds that when one perceives a patch of blue colour, he at the same time is conscious of another thing which is pleasant.^[6]

“This feeling is a feeling of the condition of one’s ego. Indeed in this form in which the ego is felt is a direct self-perception consisting in being self-conscious”.^[7]

Hence, while experiencing perception we at the same time experience something more i.e. something which accompanies every mental phenomena, which is different from the perceived thing, without which there is no single mental phenomena and this something is our own ego. Thus, it is an awareness of knowledge which is unquestionable a mental state, a feeling of the Ego, which is direct and free from construction.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

S. Mookerjee, op.cit., p.319.

[2]:

Nirvikalpakaṃ pratyakṣam. Nyāyabinduṭīkā p.14.

[3]:

Mānasaṃ cārtharāgādi-svasaṃvittir akalpikā. Pramāṇasamuccaya, as quoted in Pramāṇa-vārtika p.303.

[4]:

Sarva-citta-caittānām ātma-saṃvedanam. See C. L. Tripathi, op.cit., p.130.

[5]:

Ibid, p.131.

[6]:

S.R. Bhatt & A. Mehrotra, op.cit., p.47.

[7]:

Pramāṇavārttika, II. 274. C.S. Vyas, op.cit., p. 108.