Nirvikalpaka Pratyaksha (study)
by Sujit Roy | 2013 | 40,056 words
This essay studies Nirvikalpaka Pratyaksha or “Indeterminate perception” primarily based on Nyaya Philosophy and Bauddha philosophy. Pratyaksa is that cognition which is produced by the contact of a sense organ with an object. It is a direct cognition of reality which is not derived through the medium or instrumentality of any other cognition....
Chapter 5c - Nirvikalpaka Pratyakṣa in Bauddha philosophy
Dignāga was the first to use the term ‘nirvikalpaka’ in Indian epistemology (around 400 B.C). Both Dignāga and Dharmakīrti unambiguously highlight the indeterminate character of perception which is ‘free from conceptual construction’ (kalpanāpoḍha). Dignāga, Dharmakīrti and the other Buddhists logicians consider pratyakṣa as a kind of pure sensation–a piece of cognition by which the object is revealed only in its simple and pure nature, devoid of all attributes and associations. Like the sensation of a child or of a dumb, such a piece of cognition can never be verbally communicated (abhilāpa). The definition of pratyakṣa given by Dignāga and Dharmakīrti thus applies only to the nirvikalpaka form of pratyakṣa. The Buddhist logicians regard nirvikalpaka as the only mode of pratyakṣa and there is no savikalpaka pratyakṣa.