PHIL 307 Handout 9.1: Sarvastivada

I. Sarvastivada Teachings:

A. Sarvastivada provides an analysis of the Abhidharma literature of early Buddhism.

B. There are no Sarvastivadins today; the importance of the school is that Madhyamaka and Yogacara developed their views by attempting to refute Sarvastivada.

C. Basic Claim: The ultimate constituents that make up interdependent arising are real; otherwise nothing could possibly exist.

D. Ultimate constituents of reality = Dharmas.

1. Dharmas are held to be “self-existing.” The existence of dharmas is not dependent on anything else.

2. Dharmas have their own nature – each has a unique and defining characteristic.

E. Analysis is analogous to contemporary scientific theory: ordinary perception versus scientific analysis.

II. Foundations of Abhidharma: Probably Sarvastivadin theory is based on Abhidharma, which contains classification of objects (dharmas) based on meditative experience.

A. Theravada Abhidharma

1. Mindfulness reveals that a “person” is not some permanent substance but rather an aggregate consisting of five streams (i.e., the Five Aggregates): Bodily processes, processes of feeling, processes of perception, processes of action, processes of consciousness.

2. These Five Streams are further analyzed into their constituent parts, revealing:

a. Physical constituents: vision and hearing;

b. Constituents of mental activity: sensation, desire, understanding, memory;

c. Constituents of virtue: faith, courage, equanimity, nongreed, nonhatred, compassion, and mindfulness;

d. Constituents of vice: dullness, pride, hatred, jealousy, anger, etc.

e. constituents of consciousness: pure, impure, and indeterminate.

3. Original Theravadin Abhidharma analysis was intended for meditative classification, not for philosophical reflection. They do not posit dharmas as the ultimately real constituents of existence.

B. Sarvastivada Abhidharma

1. Basic Objective: To show that the Dharmas are the ultimately real and self-existing. All other reality is constructed from them.

2. Establishing Reality: The reality of a person comes from the reality of the person’s constitutive processes. But persons are real only if the constituents are real. And if persons aren’t real, the Buddha isn’t either! Therefore, the dharmas must be self-existing.

3. Identity: The ultimate constituents determine identity. Without identity there could be no Buddha, no-one on the eightfold path, etc.

4. Continuity: The dharmas must have sufficient duration to support successive moments of existence. Otherwise, the person who experience dukkha is not the same person who later practices the path. Then there would be no point in practice.

5. Knowablity: Sarvastivadins held that unless the dharmas are fundamentally real, knowledge is impossible. They believed that the momentary duration of the existence of dharmas makes them knowable as unique objects.

6. Types of Ultimate Constituents: In addition to the traditional abhidharma lists, Sarvastivadins added other dharmas to explain knowability, continuity, and identity.

III. Arguments Against Substance: Buddhists generally argue against existence as a substance common to Hindu thought (especially Nyaya and Vaisheshika). Basic Argument: Either the substance view of existence is true or interdependent arising is true. The substance view is untenable. Therefore, interdependent arising is true.

A. The Concept of Substance

1. Permanence – essences are unchanging.

2. Universality – essence is the same everywhere at all times.

3. Identity – substances are identical to themselves despite change.

4. Unity – the components or characteristics of a thing are unified by inherence in a substance.

B. Arguments Against Permanence

1. The Upanishad’s assume that if something is ultimately real it must be changeless. But whatever is unchanging cannot produce effects, since effects involve change. Causes can be known only by effects. If reality is changeless, it is therefore unknowable (reductio).

2. Knowledge argument: Coming to know something involves a change in the knower. If the self cannot change, it cannot know.

3. Causality argument: Change is fact of our experience. But how can something unchanging bring about change. Causation is either temporally extended or instantaneous. It can’t be instantaneous; there could be further change.

4. If the real causes instantaneously, either it continues to exist as a cause or it doesn’t. If it does continue to exist as a cause, it would give rise to the very same effects (unless it changed, which it can’t). If ceases to exist as cause, it has changed.

5. Temporally extended causality: If R produces x, y, and z, then either [1] y and z could have been produced while x was produced or [2] R could not produce y and z while x was produced. [1] is absurd, because this amounts to instantaneous causation. [2] is absurd because if at any time R cannot produce y or z, there is no time when R can produce them – unless there are other causal conditions, which would amount to a change in R.

C. Arguments Against Identity: Substance view of identity entails that a thing remains identical to itself through time unless it is destroyed or altered by outside forces. The Sarvastivada argument is that unless the nature of an object were change and cessation, no outside force could alter it or bring about its demise.

D. Arguments Against Unity: The substance assumption is that while an object is composed of parts, we can know it as a whole. Sarvistivada argues that perception only gives us parts. There is no direct perceptual evidence of unity. Instead, unity is a construction of mind onto our experience that has pragmatic value. (Compare to Hume) Reality is no more than successive momentary elements – like the pictures that flow together to form a film.

E. Arguments Against Universality: Universal essences are what unite particulars into a single category. Sarvastivadins argue:

1. Perception gives us only particular things.

2. By what mechanism do universals reside in particular things?

3. Why are universals unaffected by what happens to particulars?

4. How can universals be known? One answer appears to be a kind of “double perception.” One perceives not only the particular object, but also the universal, which is then applied to the object. But how can we perceive timeless, spaceless universals? The Sarvastivadins contend that universals are practical mental construction (abstractions) that we create for various useful purposes.