Omniscience and the Buddha's Mind

The Mahāyāna path is aimed at a buddha’s complete awakening. But what is the awakened mind of a buddha like? Is a buddha conscious—and, if so, of what is a buddha conscious? A buddha appears to act, but does any thought precede that action? Some Buddhist philosophers argue that a buddha’s awakening consists in a complete cessation of thought, a state of unconscious automaticity that Mark Siderits has aptly characterized as “robo-Buddha.” At the other end of the spectrum, some say that a buddha’s awakening consists in total omniscience, the simultaneous awareness of every knowable object in the universe, past, present, and future, together with the capacity to respond appropriately to every situation. And there are many other positions in between. This panel will explore some of the different positions on this spectrum in an effort to better understand how a buddha’s mind works. Speakers will draw on accounts developed by traditional Buddhists engaging in Yogācāra, Madhyamaka, and tantric philosophical debates, as well as on some recent developments in the philosophy of skill, meditation, and perceptual learning. 

The first paper presents a two-layer theory of a buddha’s mind based on classical Yogācāra sources in Sanskrit and Chinese. The author argues that contemporary discussions of buddhahood conflate two issues: whether a buddha has conscious experience, on one hand, and whether a buddha deliberates about how to act on the other. The author argues that, for classical Yogācāra authors, the foundational layer of the dharma-body (dharmakāya) is anchored in the “mirror cognition” (ādarśajñāna), which reflects appearances of all phenomena in their specific characteristics. The second layer of a buddha’s mind, the enjoyment-body (sambhogakāya) and transformation-body (nirmāṇakāya), meanwhile, are the repository of practiced skillfulness. The dharma-body is inert: it is permanent, the classical Yogācāra sources say, the unchanging nature of emptiness that cannot interact causally with phenomena. The second layer is the layer of interaction with sentient beings. Through practice, it becomes effortless (anābhoga), and thus without deliberation despite its engagement with beings as objects.

The second paper extends some of these ideas about the object-directed nature of a buddha’s mind into the tantric realm. The author considers *Śāntarakṣita’s surprising claim in the ca. 9th century Tattvasiddhi that a buddha’s omniscience (sarvajña) is a form of awareness that ineluctably involves mental constructions (that is, it is savikalpaka). It is not a “non-conceptual gnosis” (nirvikalapkajñāna), as is often asserted. *Śāntarakṣita argues for this on grounds he claims are Dharmakīrtian (though they appear to be squarely opposed to what Dharmakīrti says): the gnosis that arises from repeated tantric practice has a vividness (spaṣṭatā) that is devoid of conceptual content, like language, generic characteristics, and so on (nāmajātyādi); however, because that practice involves distinctions between object, subject, and awareness (grāhyagrāhakasaṃvittibheda) at every stage, these basic distinctions remain even in the vividness of omniscience. Indeed, these distinctions make a buddha’s purposeful activity in the world possible, *Śāntarakṣita argues. A buddha acts without deliberation or discursive reflection; still, a buddha’s skillful immersion in activity is grounded on a continued apprehension of objects of action.

The third paper will continue this exploration of Buddhist tantric understandings of a buddha’s mind, but in a very different context, by considering Raviśrījñāna’s and Vibhūticandra’s 12th–13th century commentaries on the various attributes of Mañjuśrī lauded in the Mañjuśrīnāmasaṃgīti (NS). Basing themselves on the tradition of the Kālacakra, these authors find every word of the NS to be an expression of a buddha’s fundamental nature as “connate bliss” (sahajasukha), an indivisible gnosis (abhedyajñāna) devoid of conceptual constructions. A buddha appears in the world like players on a stage or figures in a dream. Though these interpreters consider buddhahood from different perspectives, their principal focus is on the nature of buddhahood experienced in itself, and on how the distinctive Kālacakra practice of the six-fold yoga (ṣaḍaṅgayoga) reveals this innate nature of reality to the practitioner.

Our last paper will address the problem of a buddha’s omniscience from a contemporary philosophical perspective, considering the question from the standpoint of those who would take the Buddhist path seriously in the context of contemporary Western culture. Omniscience is clearly of importance to the Buddhist tradition’s understanding of buddhahood, despite its being understood in many different ways. So, taking a contemporary perspective, the author will ask: “What would any omniscience to which we could rationally aspire be like?” The author will argue that we can indeed develop a recognizably Buddhist account of omniscience that is both consistent with what we know about human beings and soteriologically non-trivial.

Finally, our respondent will present questions for further discussion, based in part on her own extensive research into the philosophical problems posed by omniscience and a buddha’s mind. 

Given that we have four papers and a respondent, we would request a two-hour session to have room for conversation among the panelists and with the audience after the response. We are proposing this session to be co-sponsored between the Yogācāra Studies Unit and the Buddhist Philosophy Unit.