The awarness of the mental in Buddhist philosophical analysis

Distinctive approaches to the awareness of mental states and factors were developed by the individual traditions of classical South Asian philosophy. The logico-epistemological tradition of Buddhism (Sanskrit pramanavada), which flourished in South Asia between the 5th and 13th centuries CE, contributed the notion that mental events are innately aware of themselves and require no further acts to become conscious; this notion is expressed with the technical term "self-awareness" (svasamvedana). Self-awareness also encompasses the awareness of mental factors like pleasure and pain, and is a prerequisite for the recollection of previous experience. Most distinctive for the specific intellectual background of Buddhist epistemology is the further association of self-awareness with the idealist doctrine that the mind cognises only itself, and with an intense scrutiny of the nature and structure of consciousness. Self-awareness was not only one of the most heatedly debated notions in confrontations between Buddhist epistemologists and their mostly Brahmanical opponents, but also became a focal point in the continuous interaction of idealist and realist tendencies within the epistemological tradition of Buddhism itself. The proposed project will undertake a comprehensive and systematic inquiry into the theory of self-awareness as it has been developed in the main epistemological treatises of the two founding fathers of Buddhist pramanavada, Dignaga (ca. 480-540 CE) and Dharmakirti (ca. 600-660 CE). The project will initially focus on the critical constitution of the relevant sections in Dignaga`s Pramanasamuccaya and his auto-commentary on it, the Pramanasamuccayavrtti, as well as in Dharmakirti`s Pramanavarttika and Pramanaviniscaya. The theorems and arguments that are involved in the philosophical contexts that thematise self-awareness in these works will be examined on the basis of this philological groundwork. Within this process, it will be attempted to detect shifts in emphasis, distinct or even conflicting priorities, as well as theoretical tensions within the thought of Dignaga and Dharmakirti, and to discern differences between their views, perspectives and priorities especially in connection with the interaction of realist and idealist tendencies.

This project conducted a comprehensive and systematic enquiry into the theory of svasamvedana or "self- awareness". This theory of an immediate and necessary access to our own mental states was developed in the epistemological tradition of Buddhism in South Asia. The project focussed on relevant sections in the main treatises of the two founding fathers of this tradition, Dignaga (ca. 480-540 CE) and Dharmakirti (ca. 600-660). These sections were critically edited on the basis of new and hitherto unused Sanskrit manuscript material. For Dharmakirti`s Pramanavarttika, this required developing specific methodologies that take into consideration the complex transmission situation of this particular work. State-of-the-art and open-source technologies were used and customized for tagging, encoding and scripting critical editions with multiple critical apparati. Transdisciplinary contacts with contemporary philosophers in Euroamerican traditions were pursued. Buddhist epistemology alternates between realist and idealist conceptions of object-awareness. This alternation has recently attracted considerable attention in scholarship. Through its philologically grounded, historically situated and comprehensive approach to its sources, the project discovered that the subjectivity of experience plays a significant role in the interaction between realism and idealism in Buddhist epistemology as it is first sketched in the works of Dignaga. This had so far been overlooked; the most recent studies by Dan Arnold (Univ. of Chicago), however, point in the same direction. This new discovery provides important clues and new impulses for understanding the more extensive and developed account of self-awareness in the works of Dharmakirti. Here, too, progress can only be achieved through a comprehensive approach to all relevant sections, which is a considerable challenge given the characteristic complexity of Dharmakirti`s argumentation. In addition to studying key issues in Buddhist epistemology from a philological, historical and philosophical perspective, the project also studied Rahul Sankrityayan`s (1883-1963) hitherto neglected reports (composed in Hindi) on his three journeys to Tibet in 1934, 1936 and 1938. The focus was initially on evaluating these reports for information about Sanskrit manuscripts that Sankrityayan found in Tibetan monasteries. But the travelogues turned out to be valuable for further historical and biographical studies on the life, works and intellectual environment of this Buddhist scholar, political activist and literary writer. Efforts were therefore undertaken to stimulate multidisciplinary research on Rahul Sankrityayan.