Tagged: Saṅkhāra
Pages with this tag
Norman - Aspects of Early Buddhism (1990)
1In early Buddhism, the denial of a permanent self (attā) raises the question of what transmigrates through saṃsāra, with the Buddha refuting the idea of a permanent consciousness (viññāṇa) and instead proposing the doctrine of dependent origination (paṭicca-samuppāda). This causal chain explains how suffering arises from conditions like ignorance (avijjā) and craving (taṇhā), and liberation (nibbāna) is achieved by breaking this chain. The Pāli canon presents multiple, sometimes conflicting, paths to this goal, including the Buddha's own attainment of bodhi through meditative states (jhānas) and the destruction of the āsavas ("afflictions"), and the more widely taught Eight-Fold Path which leads to the cessation of suffering (dukkha-nirodha). Ultimately, nibbāna is not a state of being for a soul but is described as the uncompounded (asaṅkhata) and indescribable reality that remains when the conditioned elements (khandhas) that constitute an individual cease, thus ending the cycle of rebirth.
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.