UNCONSCIOUS BELIEFS IN BUDDHIST
PHILOSOPHY: A COMPARATIVE
PERSPECTIVE

David Burton

The notion that our minds have unconscious depths has become commonplace
due to the popularity of psychoanalytic and related therapeutic techniques.
Our conscious minds—that is, those mental processes of which we are aware—are
just the tip of the iceberg, as the cliche´, says. Most mental activity occurs below
the surface, as it were, inaccessible to and often concealed from consciousness.
The two great early-twentieth-century theorists of the unconscious, Sigmund
Freud and Carl Jung, are largely responsible for its wide acceptance in our culture
today. According to Freud, the unconscious is primarily the repository of repressed
impulses, especially those of a sexual nature, that are considered to be socially
unacceptable. Michael Palmer (1997, 94 – 5) remarks that, in Freud’s view, ‘the
unconscious is, as it were, the underside of consciousness: it is that extensive and
dynamic field of mental life in which repose ideas and memories censored from
the conscious mind through the powerful mechanisms of repression.’ And Jung
(1953, 66) writes that the unconscious consists of ‘lost memories, painful ideas that
are repressed on purpose (i.e., forgotten on purpose), subliminal perceptions, by
which are meant sense-perceptions that were not strong enough to reach
consciousness, and finally, contents that are not yet ripe for consciousness.’
Moreover, for Jung, the mind contains a deeper, shared level—that is,
the collective unconscious—which consists of archetypes, such as the animus,
the anima, the hero, the divine mother, and so forth, psychic patterns or
predispositions supposedly common to all human beings. As Palmer (1997, 100)
writes, ‘the collective unconscious represents the impersonal and transpersonal
foundation of the psyche, undergirding both consciousness and the personal
unconscious.’ According to Jung, the symbolism and myths of religion, as well as
the artistic and literary imagination, draw on and give expression to these
archetypes that, Jung claims, occur trans-culturally as the common psychic
bedrock of the human mind.

There have, of course, been many criticisms of Freud and Jung’s theories.

Nevertheless, they are indisputably of huge impor‘tance as popularisers and

Contemporary Buddhism, Vol. 6, No. 2, November 2005

ISSN 1463-9947 print/1476-7953 online/05/020117-130

q

2005 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/14639940500435620

systematisers of the notion of the unconscious mind. However, as significant as
Freud and Jung’s contributions are, it seems clear that thinkers from various
cultures have long been aware that the mind has unplumbed depths. One need
look no further than Plato, with his theory that knowledge is recollection of what
one already knows (i.e., the eternal, immutable Forms), which needs to be
retrieved from the hidden recesses of memory, to find evidence of an inchoate
notion of the unconscious mind at the root of the Western philosophical tradition.
And when Achilles declares in Troilus and Cressida (III, iii, 308 – 9) that ‘my mind
is troubled, like a fountain stirr’d; And I myself cannot see the bottom of it’
(Blakemore Evans 1974, 474), we can be sure that the idea that one’s mind’s
contents can be concealed from oneself is not confined to ancient Greeks and
modern psychologists. Shakespeare was also aware that one’s own impulses,
desires, and beliefs are frequently unfathomed and perhaps sometimes
unfathomable. Lancelot Law Whyte (1960) argues that the explicit idea of the
unconscious arose in reaction to Cartesian dualism; the benighted Descartes, in
dividing the world into just two substances, res cogitans and res extensia, and
identifying consciousness as a characteristic essential to the former and absent
from the latter, envisaged the mind as a translucent entity with no hidden depths.
For Descartes, to have a mind is to be self-aware, always to know what one
is thinking and feeling. According to Whyte (1960, 27 – 8), it was in response to
Descartes’ choice of awareness ‘as the defining characteristic of an independent
mode of being called mind’ that the idea and eventually the term ‘unconscious
mind’ entered Western thought as a corrective to Cartesianism. Many thinkers
prior to Descartes had, Whyte (1960, 27) contends, ‘taken for granted factors lying
outside but influencing immediate awareness’; after Descartes’ influential and,
according to Whyte, erroneous theory, there was a need to make explicit and
defend the position that awareness is not the defining characteristic of mentality
and one’s mind contains dimensions that are not accessible to consciousness.

Whyte’s book is almost entirely focused on Western thought, with just brief

and rather superficial references to Eastern traditions (see, for example, Whyte
1960, 12). My intention in this paper is to help fill this lacuna by providing an
analysis of what I will call ‘unconscious beliefs’ in Buddhism. Of course, scholars
such as Lambert Schmithausen (1987), Padmasiri De Silva (2000) and William
S. Waldron (2003) have already given admirable and detailed textually based
studies of the rich vein of Buddhist speculations about what might be termed the
unconscious mind. In addition, Jungian psychology and its offshoots make much
of Buddhist visual representations and myths concerning Buddhas and
Bodhisattvas, ma

_

n

_

dalas, and so forth, as expressive of the archetypes of the

collective unconscious. However, unlike previous studies, this paper will explore
a typology of unconscious beliefs developed by the contemporary Western
epistemologists Nicholas Everitt and Alec Fisher (1995, 54 – 5). They identify three
distinct senses in which beliefs can be unconscious. Although they at no point
make any reference to Buddhist or any other Eastern thinkers, I will argue that

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D. BURTON

Everitt and Fisher’s taxonomy can be used to identify ways in which, for Buddhism,
one might have a belief and yet be unaware of it.

This paper is thus an exercise in what is sometimes called comparative

philosophy; it will take ideas developed by two Western thinkers and use them to
explicate and reflect on Buddhist ideas that were not originally formulated using
such a typology. Of course, critics of such comparative studies claim that they tend
to be superficial and pointless. It is uninteresting, they claim, to demonstrate that
the thought of a particular thinker or tradition in the East is in certain respects
similar to the reflections of a philosopher or philosophers in the West. So what,
they will ask? Indeed, it is possible for comparative philosophy to descend
into banality. However, I hope to show that, in this case, such comparison
can contribute significantly to our understanding and interpretation of the
unconscious in Buddhism, helping us to reflect on the issues it raises about
the mind and human nature.

Detractors may also argue that such comparison is actually intellectual

colonialism, where violence is unwittingly done to Buddhist ideas in order to make
them conform to Western categories. However, this objection smacks to me
of relativism run amuck. Different cultures are not hermetically sealed monads
without any prospect of interaction or dialogue. While acknowledging that there
is always a tendency to misconstrue the unfamiliar in terms of one’s own culturally
informed biases and interests, I am not so sceptical about the prospects for
genuine conversation between contemporary Western philosophy and Buddhism
or any other system of thought. After all, prejudices can be challenged and not just
confirmed in such an encounter. Nevertheless, there is undeniably a degree of
interpretation and appropriation in this study, given that Buddhists themselves,
as far as I am aware, have not traditionally used any term that could accurately be
translated as ‘unconscious belief’, let alone distinguishing three types! Perhaps
I am guilty of imposing a Western concept onto Buddhist thought, although
I would argue that it is a creative synthesis and development rather than an
imposition. Buddhism is not a museum piece, incapable of adaptation and
transformation when confronted by new ideas. Applying Everitt and Fisher’s
typology to Buddhism will, I think, illuminate Buddhist attitudes to the mind,
providing an opportunity for reflection on and assessment of them.

Beliefs as dispositions

Everitt and Fisher claim that one has some beliefs of which one is not

conscious, and never has been conscious. Is this not paradoxical, for surely one has
to have been conscious at some point of one’s belief in order for it to be one’s
belief? It might seem non-sensical to claim that one might have a belief without
ever having been aware of it. However, Everitt and Fisher think not. As an example,
they give the proposition that ‘there are more than ninety-nine ants in the world.’
This is a proposition that, presumably, I have not thought about in the past.
Yet, when it is brought to my attention, I assent to it. Furthermore, this proposition

UNCONSCIOUS BELIEFS IN BUDDHIST PHILOSOPHY

119

does not strike me as a revelation; it as though I believed it all along without ever
having thought about it. Bimal Matilal (1986, 102) gives the example of the belief
that ‘the floor will not melt under my feet’, a belief that ‘I may not have wondered
[sic] or apprehended consciously until today’ but which ‘my action of walking has
always assumed.’ We might choose, with Freud (1971, 102 – 4), to label these
beliefs as pre-conscious, for they are contents of our mind of which we have not
ever been aware. In other words, there are propositions that we are disposed to
accept, but we have never consciously considered—and Everitt and Fisher are
claiming that these dispositions are unconscious beliefs.

This theory has the consequence that each of us has a vast number of

beliefs. There appear to be an indefinitely large number of propositions to which
one would give one’s assent but about which one has never thought (see Moser
et al., 1998, 53 – 4). For instance, not only do I believe that ‘there are more than
ninety-nine ants in the world’, but I also believe ‘there are more than one hundred
ants in the world’, that ‘there are more than one hundred and one ants in the
world’, and so on. In addition, I believe that ‘there are more than ninety-nine
moths in the world’, and so forth. I have never thought about these propositions,
but I would accept them if they were brought to my attention.

Propositions that we have never thought about but that we are disposed to

accept are very significant in Buddhism. An important notion in the Therava¯da
scriptures is the anusaya, defined by the Pali – English dictionary as ‘a bent, bias,
proclivity, the persistence of a dormant or latent disposition, predisposition,
tendency’ (Rhys Davids and Stede 1995, 44). Waldron (2003, 40 – 1) points out that
these anusayas are described at Majjhima Nika¯ya I 303 as being of three varieties:
the tendency to lust (ra¯ga¯nusaya), the tendency to aversion ( pa

_

tigha¯nusaya), and

the tendency to ignorance (avijja¯nusaya). In other words, there are both emotional
and cognitive hidden proclivities. The anusayas underlie our conscious minds,
and, when the conditions are right, they burst forward as active afflictions (kilesa);
that is, manifest experiences of craving, hatred and wrong views.

De Silva (1991, 43) writes that, according to Therava¯da Buddhism, there

are wrong beliefs that exist in the minds of Unawakened people, unbeknownst
to themselves: ‘Wrong beliefs exist at the level of dormant dispositions
(di

_

t

_

tha¯nusaya) and account for the unconscious roots of prejudices and strong

biases which colour our emotional life.’ Most important among these prejudices is
the ‘personality view’ (sakka¯yadi

_

t

_

thi); that is, the belief that one has a permanent,

unchanging self. The Majjhima Nika¯ya I 432 – 3, for instance, claims that: ‘The young
tender infant lying prone does not even have the notion “personality”, so how could
personality view arise in him? Yet the underlying tendency [anusaya ] to personality
etc. lies within him’ (trans. N

˜ a¯

_

namoli and Bodhi 1995, 537).

De Silva (2000 , 75) also highlights the frequent use of the term ‘a¯sava’ in the

Pa¯li scriptures; this term is often translated as ‘taint’ or ‘canker’ and is associated
with the metaphors of an intoxicating extract of a flower or tree and the discharge
of a sore or wound. As with the anusayas, they are thought to be cognitive as well
as emotional. The a¯savas explain our tendency to ignorance and also selfish desire.

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D. BURTON

The mind is said to be tainted or intoxicated by an a¯sava, which produces the
wrong view that there is a permanent self or soul. It is deeply engrained in the
human psyche even if it has not necessarily been articulated as an explicit view.

Metaphors abound in a variety of Buddhist traditions for the latent

disposition to ignorance. For instance, the Sautra¯ntika Buddhists refer to it as
a seed (bı¯ja) or scent (va¯sana¯) that lies dormant, persisting as a potentiality
underlying the flow of momentary conscious mental events, and which comes to
fruition as the wrong view that there is a permanent self. Adopting the Sautra¯ntika
imagery, and piling metaphor on metaphor, the Yoga¯ca¯ra Buddhists claim that the
seed or scent exists, along with many others, in the storehouse consciousness
(a¯layavijn˜a¯na) that, they claim, exists like a subterranean stream below the ever-
changing modes of manifest consciousness ( prav

_

rttivijn˜a¯na); it is the subliminal,

hidden aspect of the mind (see Schmithausen 1987; Waldron 2003).

Clearly, the disposition to accept the permanence of the self is thought to

explain the prevalence of religious and philosophical views that assert the
existence of such an entity. Waldron (2003, 40) notes that, according to Buddhism,
the anusaya manifests in adults as a developed capacity that traps and obsesses
them. For example, it occurs as the religious belief that one has an eternal soul.
The Abhidharmakos´a V, 19 (cited in Waldron 2003, 118) distinguishes an innate
view that there is a permanent self (sahaja¯ satka¯yad

_

r

_

s

_

ti), said to exist even in

non-human animals, from a deliberated (vikalpita) view that humans hold
when they make explicit, articulate and elaborate the innate view. In Tibetan
Buddhism, Tsong kha pa (see Napper 1987, 84 – 7) and his disciple mKhas grub rje
(see Cabezo´n 1992, 128 – 35) mirror the Abhidharmakos´a by distinguishing the
innate or inborn (lhan skyes) misconception, which exists in all sentient beings,
from philosophical (kun brtags) misconceptions, which are an expression and
elaboration of the innate misconception. These Buddhists clearly think there is
a deep-rooted and misguided proclivity to accept the permanence of the self.
They claim that it exists in us whether or not we are aware of it, and it is extremely
difficult to eradicate. Indeed, mKhas grub rje claims that refuting philosophical
misconceptions is preliminary and relatively superficial; this can be merely
a stepping-stone to the removal of the innate misconception. Fundamentally, it is
the innate misconception, although often not articulated and unconscious, that
influences behaviour; it fuels the selfish desire and attachment that causes
suffering and continued rebirth.

But why does this disposition exist? The common Buddhist answer is that all

of the dispositions, both emotional and cognitive, are karmic formations
(sankhara¯, samska¯ra¯) that exist as innate personality traits and are psychological
tendencies that occur as consequences of actions in previous lives. There is no soul
that is reborn, but the process of physical and mental events that is the present life
contains relatively stable affective and cognitive proclivities that are passed on
from past lives. However, this is obviously question begging, as an explanation
needs to be given for the existence of the latent dispositions in previous
existences. Indeed, the Buddhists’ position appears to entail an infinite regress,

UNCONSCIOUS BELIEFS IN BUDDHIST PHILOSOPHY

121

for they contend that there is no traceable beginning to the latent disposition that
causes wrong views. It is a result of beginningless ignorance.

Evidently, this Buddhist explanation, or non-explanation, relies on the

questionable notion of rebirth. Nevertheless, the theory that there are such
unconscious proclivities that influence our thoughts and actions might be true,
even if we doubt the Buddhist account of their origins. Faced with the lack of
epistemic warrant for a belief in rebirth, and a considerable body of evidence from
biology, psychology and the social sciences, we might seek to explain the mind’s
unconscious cognitive impulses to be the result of genetic or early environmental
factors, or, most probably, a combination of both. Perhaps the tendency to believe
in a permanent self and so forth is a result of a physiologically based urge for self-
preservation. We do not wish to die and we desire to carry on living, so we tend
to believe in our own immortality as a kind of wish-fulfilment. In addition,
the inclination to accept such beliefs is doubtlessly a result, in part at least, of the
child’s exposure to them via the religious views of his or her family and the wider
society.

However, are these beliefs really, as the Buddhists claim, a purely imaginative

projection that results from human insecurity and unrealisable desires for eternal
life? There seems to be little doubt that such religious convictions are rooted to
some extent, perhaps to a great degree, in a longing for immortality. Surely
some wishes can come true, however, and explaining the origin of the belief as
a psychological need for permanence does not prove that an eternal soul does not
exist. Have not the Buddhists here committed a form of the genetic fallacy?
That is, are they not making the mistake of dismissing the truth of this belief
because it originates in a human need? It might be that we tend to wish for
permanence and that our wishes are in accordance with reality. In other words, we
might doubt the Buddhist contention that the belief that there is a permanent self is
definitely a wrong view.

Of course, this distinctive Buddhist claim arose originally in opposition to

the belief in Hinduism and Jainism that there is an eternal a¯tman or jı¯va that
underlies the changing personality. The Buddhists are famous for analysing the
personality into its constituent elements, pointing out that there is no element
that can be observed that is permanent; the body and mental states are in a state
of flux. In a famous analogy from the Milindapan˜ha 25 – 8 (Horner 1990, 34 – 8), the
self is likened to a chariot that is made up of destructible parts. There is no
separate, independent and permanent chariot-entity; ‘chariot’ is simply a name
attributed to the parts when they are appropriately organised. In a similar fashion,
the self is simply a label attributed to a conglomeration of physical and mental
processes, because there is no independent, permanent self-entity that can be
perceived in addition to these processes.

It might seem that the Buddhists are arguing that something must be

observable in order to exist; this is of course an assumption that proponents of an
eternal soul need not share. It is not apparent why one should accept the Buddhist
claim. Indeed, it can be objected that there is no observable evidence that could

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D. BURTON

conceivably prove that unobservable entities such as an eternal soul do not exist.
Surely the Buddhist insistence that there is no permanent self is unproved and
possibly unprovable. Therefore, it seems that the Buddhist commitment to the
non-existence of an eternal self is an article of faith like their opponents’ belief
to the contrary.

However, the Buddhists can reply that it is not that the inability to observe

the eternal self establishes its non-existence; after all, many Buddhists themselves
accept the existence of unobservable entities—namely, the microscopic, atomic
dharmas—which they infer must exist as the building blocks for everyday
perceivable things. Rather, the objection to the existence of an eternal self is that
it is an unnecessary postulate; everything about the physical and mental processes
that constitute our personalities can be explained satisfactorily without resorting
to a mysterious soul, which acts as a ghost in the machine somehow lying behind
these processes. Understood in this way, the Buddhist rejection of the eternal self
employs what is known in Western philosophy as Ockham’s razor or the principle
of parsimony; explanations should be as simple and economical as possible, and
no more assumptions should be accepted in an explanation than those that are
absolutely necessary.

Proponents of a self will object that a stable locus of identity is required for

the ever-changing mental and physical processes that one experiences.
Experiences require an experiencer who persists throughout the processes and
whose processes they are. Given the Buddhist belief in a beginningless and, short
of Awakening (bodhi), endless series of rebirths, this persisting self must be
permanent.

Furthermore, it is arguable that the Buddhists should accept that, in so far as

the mental and physical process that is the present person can be traced back
endlessly into past lives, and will continue forever in the future if Awakening is not
attained, it is permanent even if is not unchanging. The stream of causally
connected events flows on and alters over time, but it is nevertheless always the
same stream, in so far as the Buddhists think that its present form is continuous
with its previous and future manifestations. In addition, is it not the case that
dispositions such as the tendency to accept a permanent self and to crave are
everlasting, in that they have no beginning and, if Awakening is not achieved, no
end? Does not this entail that the stream has certain features that not only persist
but also have been present forever and can remain in perpetuity? Of course, the
Buddhists will claim that here we are beguiled by language; we should not reify
a process, for it is nothing other than the numerous transitory events that make
it up. And what we call dispositions to ignorance and craving are not permanent
entities that remain embedded in the mind until Awakening; in reality, they
are simply a series of unconscious, impermanent events. Rather than a single
disposition persisting at t

1

, t

2

, and so forth, there is a disposition event at t

1

,

followed by a new if very similar disposition event at t

2

, and so forth.

This process ontology has radical implications, for it entails that the world

of things is not really as it appears to be. For the Buddhists, everyday objects, such

UNCONSCIOUS BELIEFS IN BUDDHIST PHILOSOPHY

123

as mountains, trees, houses, selves, and so on, are only conventional; that is, they
only exist relative to our perceptual apparatus and the interpreting mind with its
concepts and labels that it uses to shape its world of experience. They are
convenient designations or a pragmatic shorthand for what are actually complex
webs of events. Furthermore, the Buddhists claim that we are largely unaware
of the mind-dependent nature of the things we perceive. We are often tricked by
language into thinking that the named objects exist when, in reality, they are no
more than names attributed to their parts. We are easily misled by appearances
because we are naive realists by nature. We accept the world as mind-
independent even if, for the most part, we hold this view without our being aware
that we do so, let alone being aware that it is mistaken! In other words, we have
not only the disposition to believe in a permanent self; we also possess the largely
unconscious and, according to the Buddhists, erroneous tendency to regard the
merely conventional world of named entities as real.

Beliefs as post-conscious

Everitt and Fisher identify a second type of unconscious beliefs; namely, any

belief of which one is not presently thinking but of which one has thought at least
once in the past. These beliefs might also be called post-conscious, as their defining
feature is that they have been, but are no longer, present to consciousness.

Everitt and Fisher notice that there are many such beliefs. Take, for instance,

my beliefs that ‘Paris is the capital city of France’ and that ‘2 þ 2 ¼ 4’. These are
beliefs I hold and that I have held consciously, for example, when I learned these
propositions in school. However, I rarely think about these beliefs. I certainly am
not continuously rehearsing them in my mind. Most of the time, they are
unconscious beliefs; that is, beliefs about which I am not thinking. I can and do,
when required, bring these beliefs to consciousness, and this is the proof that I do
indeed have them. At any particular time most of one’s previously consciously
held beliefs will be below the threshold of consciousness, so to speak, in this way.
One is explicitly thinking about only a minute amount of what one has consciously
believed at some point. Indeed, there are occasions, such as deep sleep, when
everything one has consciously believed is unconscious. Note, however, that it is
not that such unconscious beliefs have been forgotten. They are still available
to consciousness when required and retrievable, sometimes with and sometimes
without effort. It is just that they are not presently objects of consciousness.

Some of our competence knowledge is like this. Admittedly, some ‘knowing

how’ does not seem to be reliant on ‘knowing that’ at all. An animal’s instinctual
competence knowledge is a case in point; a bird’s ability to fly is not dependent
on any knowledge of facts about the flying process. Similarly, we learn our native
language without propositional knowledge of many, or even any, of the
grammatical rules. And we learn to use many implements, such as doors and stairs,
without ever having formulated any propositions about how to open and
close doors, ascend and descend stairs, and so forth. However, other cases

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D. BURTON

of competence knowledge seem to be different; they depend on some, and
sometimes a large amount of, initial propositional knowledge, on which one
becomes decreasingly reliant as one’s ability increases. For instance, in learning to
play the piano I might need, in the beginning, to think very actively about the
techniques that will enable me to be successful in perfecting the skill. However,
as I become more adept, the need to hold this information in my consciousness
diminishes. With sufficient practice, I rarely if ever need to bring it to mind. I master
the skill, and it becomes second nature or habitual.

People hardly notice many of their beliefs. For instance, I may glance out of

the window and perceive a tree with green leaves, swaying in the wind and with
a blackbird perched on one of its branches. Suppose that I form the belief that
there is a tree with green leaves, swaying with the wind and with a blackbird
perched on one of its branches. Very soon, my mind moves on to other matters.
It would be unusual for me to stop and think about the belief I have formed; that
is, to hold it in my mind and give it some consideration.

How might this species of unconscious beliefs be applied to Buddhism?

The Buddhists recognise that many people—in particular, but not exclusively,
those who have accepted the tenets of Buddhism—do accept that there is no
permanent self. However, in most cases such people are unconscious of this belief
in the sense that they rarely think about it. In other words, their belief is something
they have thought about from time to time perhaps, but they do not bring it to
mind often or often enough. They believe that they and other things are
impermanent, but, according to Buddhism, they do not take enough notice of this
belief. They are insufficiently attentive to what they believe. This is important
because, according to Buddhist psychology, being inattentive to transitoriness
leads to inappropriate and ultimately painful emotional responses of selfishness
and attachment. Failing to attend to their impermanence, we tend to cling to
things, forgetful of the futility of and eventual disappointment inherent in such an
attitude.

Thus, Buddhism promotes the value of attentiveness to impermanence.

The Therava¯da tradition calls it ‘mindfulness’ (sati) and thorough or wise attention
(yoniso manasika¯ra). Commenting on the idea of yoniso manasika¯ra as it occurs at
Majjhima Nika¯ya 1, 7, Bhikkhu Bodhi (N

˜ a¯

_

namoli and Bodhi 1995, 1169) writes that:

‘Wise attention (yoniso manasika¯ra) is glossed as attention that is the right means
(upa¯ya), on the right track ( patha). It is explained as mental advertence,
consideration, or preoccupation that accords with the truth, namely, attention to
the impermanent as impermanent, etc.’ The Satipa

_

t

_

ta¯nasutta, ‘The Discourse on

the Foundations of Mindfulness’, teaches the Buddhist monk to develop this
mindfulness in all of his activities and with respect to all of his feelings, thoughts
and bodily functions. The monk is encouraged to be attentive to the transitory
nature of his body and mind as transitory physical and psychological processes.
The Abhidhammattasangaha lists sati as one of the universal beautiful mental
factors (sobhanacetasika), present in all wholesome of skilful (kusala) states of
consciousness, and characterised by ‘not wobbling, i.e. not floating away from its

UNCONSCIOUS BELIEFS IN BUDDHIST PHILOSOPHY

125

object’ (see Bodhi 1993, 86). In the Tibetan tradition, Tsong kha pa’s Lam Rim Chen
Mo identifies mindfulness (dran pa) of death as a key spiritual practice. He extols
the virtue of persistent reflection on the certainty of death, the contemplation that
our lifespan is always brief and constantly diminishing, and that life is precarious,
so that the time and cause of our impending death is uncertain (see Cutler and
Newland 2000, 143 – 60).

Clearly, the fundamental point here is that a life lived with awareness of its

brevity and fragility is preferable to one that overlooks this truth. It is worth noting,
however, that the practical ramifications of such attentiveness to impermanence
are debatable. For instance, persistent awareness of transitoriness could lead one
to devalue the things of this world, consistent with a path of renunciation and
asceticism. The Buddhist tradition, dominated as it has been by monasticism,
often appears to favour this attitude. Alternatively, a life lived with mindfulness
of the ephemeral nature of things is compatible with a more world-affirming view,
where one seeks to appreciate and enjoy, without grasping and attachment, the
fleeting beauty of things of this world, a beauty that is perhaps enhanced by its
fragile transiency. Perhaps we find evidence of this attitude in the Buddhist
tradition in, for example, the Zen visual arts and poetry, which often appear to
celebrate the aesthetic pleasure derived from the natural world.

Beliefs as repressed

Everitt and Fisher (1995, 54 – 5) identify a third form of unconscious belief.

It is arguable, they say, that there are beliefs that one has never consciously held
and that one would fail to recognise as one’s beliefs, even if it were suggested that
one does hold the beliefs in question. People would hold such beliefs without
being able to admit to themselves that this is the case. They would deny that they
hold these beliefs, and yet hold them they do. Everitt and Fisher give the example
of beliefs that have strong and unpleasant emotional significance, such as the
belief that ‘my father hates me’. Some people who hold this belief might not be
able to ‘face up’ to it. Their belief might remain hidden from their consciousness.
They would not believe that they have this belief! Such a belief is repressed and
involves self-deception.

This notion of the repressed belief is, I think, useful as an explanatory

device for Buddhism. It can be claimed that people repress their awareness
of impermanence because it is an emotionally uncomfortable belief. They choose
to evade the transitoriness that is evident in all experienced things. Some people
go so far as to deny to themselves that they believe that things are impermanent,
adhering to consoling religious doctrines of an eternal soul and so forth.
And, granted the Buddhist claim that there is a latent proclivity to accept that
there is a permanent self, it is all too easy to take refuge in such beliefs.

There is a strong similarity here with Martin Heidegger’s (1962, 279 – 311)

claim in Being and Time that, for the most part, people live in an inauthentic
relationship with the prospect of their own inevitable death. Dasein, in its

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everyday fallen state, flees in the face of death. Awareness of our own finitude,
Heidegger claims, causes us anxiety, and thus we seek a state of tranquillisation
in which reality is avoided rather than faced. Forgetful of our mortality, we are
alienated from the prospect of death. Heidegger also recognises that our
inauthenticity supports and is supported by that of other people; it is as though
there is a group conspiracy, which Heidegger calls ‘the they’ (das man), to evade
the disturbing, personal reality that each of us must die. We try to cocoon
ourselves from reality by avoiding discussion of death, or talking about it in
a banal, impersonal way, without really taking it seriously as something that will
happen to us, or we collectively resort to a comforting belief in an afterlife and
eternal soul.

So too, for Buddhism, human beings attempt to distract themselves from

the disturbing reality of their own finitude and that of the things to which and
people to whom they are attached. Presumably, this tendency to evade the
painful truth explains why it is so difficult for us to remain mindful of transitoriness.
Our desires and emotions have a strong influence on the beliefs that we allow
ourselves consciously to entertain. As we have already seen, Buddhists are well
aware that the dispositions that inform our personalities are as much emotional,
and volitional, as cognitive. Hence, there are latent tendencies not only for wrong
views, but also for selfish desire, conceit, anger, and so forth. In particular, we have
a tendency to crave our own continued existence and sensual experiences of
various kinds. Indeed, it seems difficult to dispute the Buddhist claim that we have
this psychological proclivity, supported as it is by so much evidence. Generally, we
do desire pleasant sensual experiences and we often fear death. Now, if one
experiences craving for one’s own continued existence and craving for sensed
objects, then one’s awareness of the evanescent nature of oneself and the objects
of one’s craving is liable to be unpalatable and will thus tend to be repressed.
Desires and fears can cloud the mind, allowing it to overlook distressing truths and
to fabricate pleasing fictions.

A curious implication is that one can have contradictory unconscious beliefs

at the same time, in the sense that one might have a disposition to believe that
things are permanent, while also repressing one’s contradictory belief that things
are impermanent. Indeed, there is surely a strong relationship between the
disposition and the repression; because we are inclined to believe in permanence,
we find our awareness of impermanence unpleasant and seek to forget it.

Obviously, the theory of repressed beliefs has been developed and

popularised by Freud. It has not been without its critics, however. For instance,
Jean-Paul Sartre (1956, 86 – 96) argues that, contrary to Freud’s theory, one’s mind
does not have hidden recesses containing repressed beliefs and emotions of
which one is unaware. This is because, according to Sartre, the act of repression
entails that consciousness, as the repressor, is aware of what it is repressing.
The Freudian appeal to unconscious motivations is thus a species of what Sartre
calls ‘bad faith’ (mauvaise foi); an attempt to explain our behaviour by reference to
deterministic causes over which we do not have control and which influence

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us without our consent. For Sartre, the self-deception here is that we pretend to
ourselves that we are unaware of our beliefs, emotions and desires as a way
to renege on our responsibility for them, for how can we be responsible for that of
which we are unaware? This is, Sartre claims, an illegitimate attempt to attribute
the opacity and causally determined nature of being-in-itself (eˆtre-en-soi) to the
transparent, free and responsible existence of being-for-itself (eˆtre-pour-soi).
If Sartre is right, Descartes was not so misguided after all, despite White’s
protestations to the contrary!

However, perhaps the Buddhist concept of the unconscious is not open to

Sartre’s charge of bad faith. While Buddhism often accepts that we have
dispositions to wrong views, to craving, hatred, and so forth, it claims that we are
able to become aware of and overcome these dispositions. After all, this is the
ultimate aim of Buddhist ethical and meditative practices. Although these
dispositions are part of the facticity with which we are confronted, we are not
inexorably determined by them—they can be weakened, and the final goal is to
eradicate them once and for all. In addition, while Buddhism acknowledges that
we tend to be unmindful of impermanence and seems to maintain that we repress
our awareness of it, this does not entail that, for Buddhism, we are unaware that
we have repressed this information. As Matilal (1986, 148 – 53) has shown, some
Buddhist philosophers, notably Digna¯ga and Dharmakı¯rti, uphold the reflexive
nature of awareness (svasa

_

mvedana); to be aware of an object or proposition is

always and necessarily to be aware that one is aware. Their claim that
consciousness is self-luminous is strikingly similar to the position of Descartes and
Sartre and would seem to entail that, if consciousness represses its awareness of
impermanence, it must be aware that it does so. Furthermore, Buddism often
claims that we have the capacity to transcend this unmindfulness and repression;
we can conduct our lives with attentiveness to the transitory nature of others and
ourselves.

It is here, I think, that a real problem with the Buddhist analysis emerges.

For Buddhism can be accused of optimism unwarranted by the evidence.
Can dispositions to ignorance and selfish desire really be overcome? Can the
human mind really achieve the consistent mindfulness of impermanence that
Buddhism advocates? Do not human beings need to take refuge in inauthentic
attitudes to death in order to make life bearable? Is not the Buddhist sanguinity
rooted in an unrealistic view that our basic selfishness and inability to come to
terms with impermanence can be transcended? Perhaps the dream of authenticity
and faultlessness represented by Awakening is unrealisable because it contradicts
human nature. Admittedly, Buddhism often acknowledges the difficulty of the
task, claiming that Awakening is a rare occurrence only achieved with great effort.
However, the suspicion remains that it might more accurately be described as
impossible. Buddhists might accuse those who advocate belief in a God and/or
eternal soul as guilty of wish-fulfilment, but it seems reasonable to wonder
whether the Buddhist ideal of Awakening is itself nothing more than a fantasy
originating in a quixotic urge for an impossible perfection. But perhaps this

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is rather hard on the Buddhists; after all, it is conceivable that the perfection they
seek is indeed possible. Perhaps human nature is more pliable than my scepticism
suggests. Furthermore, it might be that, even if Awakening cannot be attained,
it serves an important pragmatic function as an ideal, establishing standards of
wisdom and compassion that, even if unrealisable, can at least be approximated
by fallible human beings whose imaginations and actions are stimulated by it.

Are there really unconscious beliefs?

I have argued that Everitt and Fisher’s taxonomy can be fruitfully applied to

Buddhism. Many Buddhists would accept that there are dispositions to ignorance
that one has without being conscious of them, that one can be unmindful and
hence unconscious of impermanence, and, furthermore, that one can repress
one’s awareness of transitoriness.

Of course, it is debatable whether are Fisher and Everitt are right to claim

that beliefs can be unconscious. Everitt and Fisher have arguably over-extended
the use of the term ‘belief’. Contrary to their analysis, it might be that propositions
that we would be inclined to accept if they were brought to attention, statements
that we have thought about but to which we are not presently attending,
and information which we have actively repressed, are only believed when we
do bring them to mind. Prior to this awareness, there is no belief. We should
distinguish a mere disposition to believe that p from an actual belief that p. In this
case, a proposition of which we have never been conscious but which we would
be inclined to accept if it were brought to our attention is not a belief. It only
becomes a belief if and when we think of it. Nor is a repressed belief really a belief
at all; rather, it is a proposition that one refuses to believe. A belief that one has
thought about but of which one is not presently conscious is not actually a belief
either; it is simply information, once believed, that becomes one’s belief again
whenever one attends to it. According to this view, to hold a belief requires
current awareness of the belief one holds. Everitt and Fisher’s taxonomy, as
applied to Buddhism, seems successful in showing three distinct notions of the
unconscious; that is, unconscious dispositions, propositions of which one is
unmindful and propositions that one has repressed. However, it is a moot point
whether these are forms of unconscious belief.

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