In the Mirror of Memory: Reflections on Mindfulness and Remembrance in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism

318 Pages·1992·10.627 MB·English

by  Janet Gyatso

SUNY Series in Buddhist Studies
Matthew Kapstein, editor
In the Mirror of Memory
Reflections on Mindfulness and Remembrance
in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism
EDITED BY
JANET GYATSO
Published by
State University of New York Press, Albany
© 1992 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced
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except in the case of brief quotations embodied in
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For information, address State University of New York
Press, State University Plaza, Albany, N.Y., 12246
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
In the mirror of memory reflections on mindfulness and remembrance
in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism / edited by Janet
Gyatso.
p. cm. — (SUNY series in Buddhist studies)
Includes index.
ISBN 0-7914-1077-3. — ISBN 0-7914-1078-1 (pbk.)
I. Buddhism—Psychology. 2. Memory—Religious aspects—Buddhism.
I. Gyatso, Janet. II. Series.
BQ4570.P76I5 1992
153.1 '2'0882943—dc20 91-25555
C1P
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction
JANET GYATSO 1
Memories of the Buddha
DONALDS. LOPEZ, JR. 21
Smrti in the Abhidharma Literature and the Development
of Buddhist Accounts of Memory of the Past
PADMANABH S. JAINI 47
The Omission of Memory in the Theravadin List of Dhammas:
On the Nature of Sanna
NYANAPONIKA THERA 61
Mindfulness and Memory: The Scope of Smrti from Early Buddhism
to the Sarvastivadin Abhidharma
COLLETT COX 67
Memory in Classical Indian Yogacara
PAUL J. GRIFFITHS 109
Buddhist Terms for Recollection and Other Types of Memory
ALEX WAYMAN 133
The Mdtikas: Memorization, Mindfulness, and the List
RUPERT GETH1N 149
Letter Magic: A Peircean Perspective on the Semiotics
of Rdo Grub-chen’s DharanT Memory
JANET GYATSO 173
Commemoration and Identification in Buddhanusmrti
PAUL HARRISON 215
vi Con ten is
The Amnesic Monarch and the Five Mnemic Men: “Memory" in Great
Perfection (Rdzogs-chen) Thought
MATTHEW KAPSTEIN 239
Remembering Resumed: Pursuing Buddhism and Phenomenology in Practice
EDWARD S. CASEY 269
Glossary 299
Contributors 305
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Amherst College for two faculty research grants that
aided in the completion of this volume.
Special thanks to contributors Ed Casey, Matthew Kapstein, Donald Lo­
pez, and Paul Griffiths, as well as to Jay Garfield, Steven Collins, manu­
script readers Roger Jackson and two anonymous others, and finally to Fur
Friend, all of whom offered valuable suggestions concerning the volume as a
whole at various stages in the project. John Pettit assisted in the editing of the
volume, and Nicole Freed, Jon Gold, and Evan Specter helped in typing it.
Bill Eastman, Diane Ganeles, and the SUNY Press staff expertly facilitated
a smooth publication process.

Introduction
Buddhist discussions of memory range from epistemological analyses of
the nature of recognition or the mind’s ability to store data, to spectacular
claims concerning memory of innumerable past lives, memorization of vast
volumes, and the reduction of those volumes into highly condensed mne­
monic devices. In addition, meditative concentration, which requires that an
object be held in mind, has been associated with types of memory by several
Buddhist theorists. The special strings of syllables in the Buddhist dharanls,
which are used as reminders of philosophical principles, also are associated
with kinds of memory. The practices of devotion to, and visualization of, the
Buddha involve a variety of memory akin to commemoration. Even the
awareness that is enlightenment itself is considered by some traditions to con­
sist in a “mnemic engagement” with reality, or ultimate truth.1
Yet, despite this impressive array of phenomena and practices that in­
volve distinctively Buddhist species of memory, many labeled by Sanskrit
terms derived from the same verbal root smr or other roots displaying a sim­
ilar semantic scope, very little has been written by Buddhologists on memory,
with the exception of several articles on the recollection of past lives.2 This
silence may be attributed to a certain tendency to consider as memory only
that which consists expressly in the recollection of previous experience. And
because discussion of this sort of memory, at least in theoretical discourse,
apparently occurs in but few passages in Buddhist literature, Buddhologists
seem to have concluded that Buddhism does not have much to say about
memory at all.
But if memory is reduced to recollection, a wide range of mnemic phe­
nomena that have a central role both in Buddhist practice and thought will be
overlooked. Some of these phenomena involve forms of memory that work in
concert with recollection; others can be shown to entail types of memory that
are not primarily recollective. As several of the studies in the present volume
demonstrate, important but hitherto unstudied passages in Buddhist doctrinal
literature address explicitly the question of how recollection of past experi­
ence is related to some of the other faculties and practices that are also de­
noted by smrti or other terms. To fail to examine those mnemic phenomena in
the Buddhist tradition that lie at the limits, or on the margins, of what is nor­
mally thought to be memory is to miss an opportunity to expand and to
deepen our understanding of memory as a whole.
In fact, to restrict memory to recollection would be to reflect a bias that
may be associated more with Western strains of thought than with Buddhist
I
2 Janet Gy at so
ones themselves. And yet, in several Western academic disciplines and areas
of research, including philosophy, psychoanalytic theory, cognitive psychol­
ogy, and anthropology, increasing attention is being paid to types of memory
that do not consist mainly in the recollection of past events, particularly that
aspect of recollection associated with the mental representation of an object
or episode in the rememberer’s personal past. An outstanding example of a
type of memory that is not at all recollective is “primary memory,“ recog­
nized first by William James and Edmund Husserl and since observed in lab­
oratory settings; such memory consists in the initial retention of experience
that takes place in a brief stretch of time as the experience retreats from mo­
mentary awareness. Also receiving notice is the spectrum of types of memory
that are habitual in nature, studied by Henri Bergson and others. Closely re­
lated to habit memory is what Edward Casey has called “body memory.”
The “abstract, timeless knowledge of the world that [a person] shares with
others,” termed “semantic memory” by Endel Tulving is another form of
nonrecollective memory. Well known, of course, are Freud’s and his succes­
sors’ investigations of the vicissitudes of repressed memory traces in psycho-
pathological symptoms; here again, the mnemic mode is not primarily
recollective. Deserving of mention as well are recent anthropological analy­
ses of the embodiment of social memory in cultural processes, material me­
dia, and places, in which the emphasis is put upon the performative function
of memory in the present, rather than on the mental storage or representation
of past events.3
The present volume is in some respects continuous with the growing fas­
cination with the range and manifold nature of memory, of both the recol­
lective and nonrecollective sorts, although the Buddhist traditions treated
here are often concerned with mnemic modes distinct from those that have
received the most attention in the West. But even such Buddhist traditions
that speak of the commemoration of buddhahood, or that would characterize
enlightenment as a memory of ultimate truth, have long had counterparts in
Western discussions of memory, from St. Augustine’s reflections on human
memory of God to Heidegger’s discussion of memory as “the gathering of
the constant intention of everything that the heart holds in present being.”4
On another note, a certain mistrust of memory can also be observed to be
shared by Western theorists—from Descartes to Nietzsche to Freud—and by
Buddhist ones, particularly the Buddhist logicians discussed in Alex Way-
man’s article in this volume, who consider some types of memory to be un­
reliable and deceptive.5 In the Buddhist case, the devaluation of certain kinds
of memory, particularly mundane recollection and the recognition of objects
of the past, is to be attributed ultimately to the conviction that these are ob­
stacles to progress on the Buddhist path. Yet once again, when recollection's
privileged position as the researcher’s paradigm of memory is revoked, it be­
comes possible to identify other varieties of memory, varieties suggested in