[Buddha-l] Does 'momentariness' remove emotion from citta?

[Dan Lusthaus]

Mahabodhi,

>I think you are missing my point.  Isn't it the case that in the Pali 
>Suttas there is just citta, there is no 'cetasika, the momentary content of 
>the apperceptive vector.'

In fact, the term cetasika occurs dozens of times in the Tipitaka, and fully 
consistent with how it gets further refined in the Abhidhamma. You are 
imagining an "original" meaning of citta that is simply modern imagining. 
The passage you quoted in your previous message is a perfect example of how 
this works, even without the word cetasika appearing:

You wrote:
"Satipatthana Sutta 'the monk sees a mind with hate as with hate..'"

Mind *with* hate, as "with* hate.
Mind is accompanied by the cetasika "hate." Mind itself is not hate.


>> Think of it this way. Citta is like a mirror -- the surface is simply 
>> what
>> it is, and reflects whatever colors, shapes, etc. appear before it.

>This isn't the view in the Suttas.  How is a 'mind with lust' a mirror? 
>Isn't this a later view?

The suttas do use the mind as mirror metaphor. Mind is "with lust", mind 
itself is not lust. It is colored, flavored, surrounded by lust, momentarily 
enveloped in an atmosphere of lust -- but precisely because it itself is not 
lust, or hate, etc., one can calm down instantaneously, snap out of it.

>> Citta apperceives emotions, thoughts, ideas, mental activities of all 
>> sorts. In
>> itself, it is dispassionate --- hence those who translate it without 
>> "heart"
>> are more faithful to the traditional understanding.

>I disagree with this interpretation of citta because it leads to inaction, 
>and the Buddha criticized views that led to inaction.

Here perhaps you are showing the implicit assumption that elicited the 
question in the first place. You seem to think that only emotion 
"motivates," hence mental conditions that are not emotions will not 
motivate, and hence lead to inaction. That is NOT the Buddhist view. Ditthi, 
papanca, avijja, etc. are prime motivators...

>And that would be a valid reason to criticize the Abhidhamma - if the 
>theory of momentariness led to inaction.

And perhaps another assumption you hold -- Abhidhamma = egghead useless 
intellectualism. Might I recommend Bhikkhu Dhammajoti's _Sarvastivada 
Abhidharma_ (Hong Kong: University of Hong Kong, 2009) as a corrective to 
that misimpression? Or perhaps Andrew Olendzki's Unlimiting Mind: The 
Radically Experiential Psychology of Buddhism, which I ran into onto amazon 
the other day
http://tinyurl.com/49ehpdm
Browsed it a bit online (amazon let's you "look inside").

Abhidhamma gets very bad press, and most academic Buddhologists, not to 
mention practitioners, try to avoid it like poison. So making up negative 
impressions of what it is, or doesn't do, without really exploring it 
carefully hardly seems like a shining example of ehipassika.

Seems like something necessary, so that one notices little but important 
things, like the difference between "hate" and being "with hate."

Dan