by Tang Huyen
Things and objects arise when thought jumps in, cuts the wholesome sensation up, and processes the bits according to concepts and categories, structures and frameworks. A thing or an object is therefore a product of thought, a thought-up object.
Since Leibniz, time and space are in the class of relations, not of realities, and Kant calls them thought-up representations. Kant, Reply to Eberhard, VIII, 222–23 refers to space and time as "the thought-up representations [die gedachten Vorstellungen]."
In sensation, there is no space and time, because in sensation, no relation has been made up (or made out) by the understanding yet.
Krishnamurti says that one cannot grasp the present because by the time one grasps it, it is already past. Likewise one cannot grasp things and objects in the present, because it takes the categories of the understanding to cut up the wholesome sensation into bits and process the bits into things and objects, and that process takes time, by which time the present has already slipped away.
In Buddhism, just as in European philosophy and theology, the ultimate category (or super-category) is the something (kiñcano, τι in Greek), and without desire to fuel the mind, there is no impetus to arrive at somethings. The wholesome sensation is left alone, uncut and unprocessed, that is, untouched by mind (in western terms, untouched by the categories of the understanding). The Buddha says that sensation (actually, feeling, the second aggregate) is "born in cessation" (nirvṛti-ja).
The layman Citra says: Lust makes for limit (rāgo pamāṇa-karaṇo), hostility makes for limit, delusion makes for limit; but the strifeless (arana) is the best unlimited (appamāna). Lust makes for sign (nimitta-karaṇo), hostility makes for sign, delusion makes for sign; but the strifeless is signless. Lust is something (kiñcano), hostility is something, delusion is something; but the strifeless is no-thing (a-kiñcano, not something). Furthermore the strifeless is empty of lust (suññā rāgena), of hostility, of delusion, of anything stable, unchanging, of self and of "what belongs to self" [= of I and mine]. SA, 569, 149c–150a; SN, VI, 295–297 (41, 7); MN, I, 297–298 (43) also has roughly the same content.
So in the absence of desire and its products like mentation and the self, there is no "thing," no "object," no tending to, no intentioning. Things and objects arise when thought jumps in, cuts the wholesome sensation up, and processes the bits according to concepts and categories, structures and frameworks. A thing or an object is therefore a product of thought, a thought-up object (ein gedachter Gegenstand).
The Buddha says: "If one tends to anything (Skt. anusete) then one follows on it (anunīyate), and if one follows on it one is bound by grasping (upādāya saṃyuktaḥ)," and the opposite: "If one does not tend to anything then one does not follow on it, and if one does not follow on it one is freed by not grasping (anupādāya visaṃyuktaḥ)." Poussin, "Documents," 571, SA, 15, 3a. "If one tends to anything one follows on it, and if one follows on it one goes to reckonings" (saṃkhyaṃ gacchati) and the opposite: "If one does not tend to anything one does not follow on it, and if one does not follow on it one does not go to reckonings." Poussin, ibid., 572, SA, 16, 3b. The Pali, SN, III, 35 (22, 35) says: "If one tends to anything one is measured after it, and if one is measured after it one is reckoned by it" (yaṃ kho bhikkhu anuseti, taṃ anumīyati, yaṃ anumīyati, tena saṃkhaṃ gacchati).
Without thought, there is no thing, no object, and no present. One can still perfectly remain aware of what happens, but one refrains from freezing that flow of what happens by means of concepts and categories, structures and frameworks — one abstains from making relations. And in such a state, there can be no present. The question whether relations are objective, exist out there, or not (but are instead purely thought-up), does not arise.
So the intuition of the whole in awakening is objectless — not that it is a blank, even less a homogeneous blank, for it is as differentiated as that in delusion, but it is objectless in that it does not cut up the whole sense-field into bits and pieces (the objects of daily life) according to concepts and categories, structures and frameworks.
In modern critical philosophy, there is the widespread idea that even physical objects of our daily life, like tables and chairs, are logical constructs, which don't exist as such in sensation but are constructed from bits and pieces of the sense-field. All the more so for non-physical entities or non-entities that we construct on a much more abstract level, by much more complicated constructions, like "I," "self," "soul," "God," etc.
The Buddha twenty-four centuries ago in India had understood such ideas and even pushed them to their logical end. To him, our basic problem is that we follow speech to chase realities, and the most basic errors that we commit in that direction and inflict as problems on ourselves are "I," "mine," "self," "soul," "God," etc. — not to mention concrete physical objects, like tables and chairs, which we logically construct from bits and pieces of the sense-field. We build our lives on such words and concepts, stabilise and congeal the flowing reality around them, and thereby offer resistance to the flowing reality. Suffering comes from such resistance, and the ending of suffering comes from no longer putting up such resistance.
Colophon
Posted to talk.religion.buddhism on May 31, 2004. Author: Tang Huyen (Laughing Buddha, Inc.). Message-ID: <[email protected]>.
Tang Huyen was a scholar of Buddhist studies with deep command of Pāli, Sanskrit, Chinese, and Tibetan sources. Posting to talk.religion.buddhism and related groups from 2003 to 2008, he was among the most rigorous analytical voices in the English-language Buddhist Usenet world. This post develops the philosophical consequences of the Buddhist analysis of "things" as thought-constructs — drawing on Leibniz and Kant's treatment of space and time as relations, Krishnamurti's observation about the present's perpetual slippage, and the layman Citra's Pāli teaching on the strifeless (arana) and no-thing (a-kiñcano) from the Saṃyutta Nikāya.
Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.
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