Intentionality: the karman involūtus hitch

2006-06-26T11:29:00.001+08:00

Nothing is more sensitive than the daughter of dharma [prakrti/dharmadravya]. As soon as she reflects, I have caught his attention, she no longer appears as separate from the impulse. (Isvarakrsna, ca. 3rd-5th cen)
*

1. In citing Stanely Tambiah (1984), if only for expediency, I would like to draw attention to an overlooked detail in generic Bauddha (hereafter B) doctrine that adduces 'all humans as imbued with intentionality' (181). Advancing from this statement, my present readers might care to note that this 'as it were' intentionality is in actual fact the B adaptation or redefinition – I don't know, it's certainly no homage, is it a forgery? – of an earlier pre-B Vedic conception of karman (Pāli kamma).

2. As an earliest attested paratactic species from the Rigvedic root k.r, 'to do, make, perform, accomplish, cause, effect, prepare, undertake' (see Appended note below), karman explicitly avows to a sacrificial-cum-ritualistic act that is strictly the prerogative of the priestly caste-Brahmin, and through which it aims to control and manipulate the universe from within the constrictions of its ritually consecrated ground.

3. 'Gradually, though, as the logical progression of Brahmanical culture' and thought (Jamison and Witzel 1992: 74), this sacrificial action came to lay stress on "ritual prescription," on the coded knowledge of the formulae for avoidance and removal of pollution and evil (pāpa). Only later came an isolate karman per se as the more comprehensive yet certainly quotidian "action" or "work" coinciding with a veiled but insurgent fascination for an arcane metempsychotic regeneration (Sk. punarjanman). But with Upanishadic ritual the actual 'performance' seems less important when viewed against the marked intellectual underpinning it retained with regard to mystical or esoteric identifications or 'homologies' (75). It is here that we witness karman passing through a radical reformational process of interiorisation while the ritual performance becomes entirely mental as evinced e.g. in Pranagnihotra Upanishad (Bodewtiz 1973). Further variations, cursively explained as enigmatic revelatory millenarian treatments, clearly emerge in Chandogya Upanishad (5.3.7; cf. also BAU 2.1.15, KausU 4.19), while later curtailings and variant traits are traceable through Jaina and early B distinctions where karman morphs to vernacular kamma and, in the case of B, furnishes itself as evidential specimen of its own complete or else sheer interiority. Of related interest, it is entirely feasible that this ontological marker may have hyperthetically overreached to our modern-day pop perception of karma as 'remote executor of moral retribution,' while effectively linked to a collaborative range of operant notions in proportion to assumptions of life beyond the grave. Is it here that the concept of karman finds its natural developmental terminus?

4. Now recontinuating focus on 'interiority,' we shall lend simultaneous partial attention to the interesting manner in which Richard Gombrich intends to homologize this innate inlying quality or feature with the far less noticed 'intentionality' (1996: 51-6) naturally vis-à-vis Pāli sanctioned thought, as the good professor goes on to cite what the canon's chief protagonist is made to relate whilst speaking in response to his ever-present Brahmin interlocutor: 'I posit that intention leads to kamma or involvement [...] that (finite karman) does not remain there' (51, 61). From Gombrich's reading of the Vedic karman, which becomes in Pāli kamma or 'intention,' it does this by way of Pāli cetanā, a 'mind-emphasis word,' like cetas/ceto, 'thought/mind' (60). And yet how disappointing that Gombrich withholds a precise Pāli term to match his 'intention' as crucially involves his psycho-intuitive account of the transformation of karman. What is more, to the mind of the present writer, at least, what Gombrich seems to be implying by 'intention' would much more plainly be rendered as mentation. In other words, if karma is reduced or homologized to pure interiority – 'pure' denoting riddance of all normative adjuncts – then homologization would best be served by defining kamma as 'the operant modus of a thought' (chitta-vritti), and with a half-life bound to a particle of light too slim to comport even sediment of flash (Gradinarov 2005), or as the Buddha says, that finite kamma does not remain there.

5. Yet we mustn't get waylaid here and fail to that which 'tropically operates beneath the attention' (Lock 1998) of our cosmo/substantial field of endeavour as amidst the shadows and the shade of human interiority (Sritantra 2006): for any serious and critical study of the stratified disquietude of Homo interiority, with special line-in care and attention to the venerable complexities of context B, does indeed inadvertently or else unintentionally transect that quintessential B-point sati, which the global Buddhism slots as "mindfulness."

6. To inquire as to 'whether or not perception is intentional' is inferrent indeed to the follow-on query 'is sati itself intentional.' What is more, to inquire as to 'whether or not sati is intentional' is inferrent to the hyperthetic loci classici of our current paratactic setting forth and which is no inopportunity to anyone who gets that 'sati's possessing intention or not is neither here nor there'; and yet retaining the trifling fact that it doesn't and further disregarding all readied proofs, as elegant corollaries simply won't follow, pretty much the only valid question that remains is whether or not sati has real time function and/or pre-eminence.

7. Ritually obliged to commandeer and skipper this lost and flagging academic fetish, I have initiated exigent re-manoeuvring, and plotted an entirely new compass course with clear-cut bearing on the karman involūtus hitch in-herself: for in the strained laterality of its sheer irrepressible reverting and revealing polysemic referents, languid and ploy to their tactical dissection of this irreducibly scored recital where sati is marked as an 'impulse, property or function' that sees, and we draw here attention the metaphoric nature of sees – well, sati sees nothing but betrayal by the mindful. But they are not her objects, nor the eyes of her entitlement.

We have gained some keys to the old Flemish locks of circuitous passage to open seas...

Appended note on karman

2006-06-26T10:29:00.000+08:00

Karman, or karma is first attested in English in 1827 in reference B to the sum of a person's actions in one life, which determine his form in the next. From Sanskrit karman- "action, fate," it is related to krnoti, Avestan kerenaoiti "makes," O.Pers. kunautiy "he makes;" and from PIE base *kwer- "to make, form." Note that the root of karma, k.r, relates to the second element in the word sanskrit, itself first attested in 1617, from the more accurately spelled samsk.rtam, "put together, well-formed, perfected," from sam "together" + k.rta- "to make, do, perform." The first element "sam" is cognate with English 'same,' the second is from PIE *k(w)er- "to make, form" as related to karma.

Abbreviations: BAU, Brhadranyaka Upanishad, KausU, Kaushitaki Upanishad.

References

2006-06-26T09:29:00.001+08:00

Bodewtiz, H. R. Jaiminiya Brahmana I, 1-65: With a Study - Agnihotra and Pranagnihotra. Trans. from the Sanskrit and commentary. Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1973.

Dreyfus, Georges B. J. Is Perception Intentional? (a preliminary exploration of intentionality in Indian philosophy). Williams College, Winter 2006.

Gombrich, Richard F. How Buddhism Began: The Conditioned Genesis of the Early Teachings. London: Athlone, 1996.

Gradinarov, Plamen. Empty Of What? (the gakja poll). E-Sangha, online post #501, Nov 2 2005 http://tinyurl.com/grdwp.

Harris, Troy. Grafting Plato’s Shadow Play: a spray can version of metaleptic mimesis. Ashé Journal, Vol 5, Issue 1, 3-33, Winter/Spring 2006 http://ashejournal.com/index.php?id=42.

Isvarakrsna. Samkhya-karika, ca. 3rd - 5th century http://radicalacademy.com/adiphileasternessay17.htm.

Jamison, S. and M. Witzel. Vedic Hinduism, 1992 http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/vedica.pdf.

Lock, Charles. A Returning of Shadows. International Comparative Literature Association, 15.29 (Spring-Summer 1998): 15-26 http://tinyurl.com/brv3z.

Tambiah, Stanley Jeyaraja. The Buddhist Saints of the Forest and the Cult of Amulets (a study in charisma, hagiography, sectarianism and millennial Buddhism). Cambridge University Press, 1984.