Tagged: Nikāyas
Pages with this tag
Polak - Can Cessation Be a Cognitive State (2023)
1In the early Buddhist Nikāyas, the concept of *nirodha* (cessation) describes a special meditative state, achievable in life, that should be understood not as insentience but as a unique form of cognition. This state involves the cessation of the psychophysical constituents (*khandha-s* and *salāyatana-s*), which the article interprets, using modern philosophy of mind, as the cessation of ordinary, constructed phenomenal consciousness (*viññāna*). While this reportable, self-referential experience is suspended, a deeper, functional mind (*citta*) continues to operate in a non-introspectable, globally unavailable way. The soteriological purpose of this is to bypass the distorting nature of phenomenal consciousness—which is a constructed representation rather than a direct perception of the present—thereby allowing for a tacit, ineffable insight into reality as it is. This cognitive state is thus apophatic, transcending the familiar categories of self, time, and space that structure phenomenal experience, and results in a profound but non-reportable transformation.
Polak - The Pleasure of Not Experiencing Anything (2023)
2Grzegorz Polak's article reconstructs the philosophical basis for the early Buddhist claim that the pleasure (*sukha*) of nibbāna lies in the absence of experience (*vedayita*). The author argues that *vedayita* and the five aggregates (*khandhas*) do not represent all cognition but a specific type of introspectable, reportable "access consciousness" that is inherently fabricated (*saṅkhāra*) and tied to a mistaken sense of self. Drawing on modern cognitive science, the paper posits that this form of consciousness is not continuous and its very generation is correlated with a subtle tension and fundamental discomfort (*dukkha*). Consequently, states of deep absorption or "flow" are pleasurable due to a lower frequency of this self-conscious awareness. The ultimate psychological transformation, therefore, involves ceasing to identify with one's consciousness, which allows for its absence to be realized not as annihilation, but as a profound, non-introspectable comfort (*sukha*) while the organism remains intelligently and receptively engaged with the world.
Polak - Who Identifies with the Aggregates (2023)
3This paper analyzes the Buddhist concept of identifying with the five aggregates (*khandhas*) as "I am this," challenging the traditional view that the aggregates are the objective constituents of a person by proposing they are instead passive, phenomenal representations of subjective experience. Drawing on Nikāya similes that imply a distinction between the individual and the aggregates, the author argues that key cognitive faculties like the mind (*citta*) operate separately from the *khandhas*, which are better understood as the end-results of cognitive processes rather than active agents themselves. Consequently, the fundamental error of identifying with the aggregates is interpreted as a mistaken projection of agency and identity onto one's own phenomenal self-representation, a process which, by attaching to something inherently distorted and unsatisfactory (*dukkha*), becomes a primary source of suffering.