The Role of Vividness in Buddhist Philosophy of Meditation

This paper examines the role of vividness (sphuṭatva) in Jñānaśrīmitra’s and Ratnakīrti’s works on yogic perception. I argue that, for them, vividness does not, strictly speaking, play any epistemic role. Rather, its role is affective and motivational. An awareness-event’s degree of vividness is measured not in terms of how closely it corresponds to the way things are (after all, even hallucinations might be vivid), but in terms of how it motivates certain thoughts and actions. When an awareness-event gives rise to certain judgments, speech, and behavior automatically, it counts as vivid. The question of whether it counts as an instance of knowledge is another matter—one having to do with 1) the relation between the awareness-event in question and its object, and 2) the practical efficacy of the thoughts and actions it motivates. An awareness-event’s vividness and its knowledge-hood (prāmāṇya), then, are distinct issues that need to be treated separately.