3 Indra and his Weapon
In the well known Bauddha doctrine of sati-vipassanā the epistemes sati and vipassanā teach an ancient salvic path that " (i.) tears asunder the veil of ignorance, (ii.) brings knowledge, and (iii.) liberates people from the cycle of birth and death" (Vishuddimagga).
Question: Where is the god(head) or "transcendent authority" to be found in Bauddha interiority?
Answer: It is found in the concept of sati.
Bauddha doctrine imbues "all humans with intentionality" (Tambiah 1984: 181). "Intentionality" is the Bauddha redefinition of karman/kamma, i.e. from "sacrificial ritualistic action" in the earliest sense followed then by 'ritual prescriptions,' to general 'action' in the social sense of 'work,' and then to what Gombrich (51-6) explains as 'intentionality.' "I posit that 'intention' leads to kamma, 'involvement,' is Gautama's answer to Brahmin ritualism" (51)[1]. But we should not be diverted from our microcosmic concern here of "human interiority" and Bauddha sati, which modern English 'Buddhism' institutionalized as "mindfulness." However sati has no intention of itself, nor can one intend (to) sati, it would seem. Does sati really exist? Can we label it a fetish? Sati is portrayed as an element, as an impulse, as a function that "sees." It is said to be "mindful," as of objects. Yet is sati not the mind itself. 'Why?' Because it sees, "barely notices" (Tambiah 42) the mind itself. Therefore sati is not the "self," nor the person, the ego, nor the 'you,' nor the 'I.' 'Why?' Because Bauddha dogma rules these out vis-à-vis anatta. We will come to this later.
As elaborated out of the vipassanā doctrine, sati is said to be something "promoted by restricting attention" (Tambiah 42); and so sati is not "attention" either. So what does sati do? It mindfulnesses, one would awkwardly presume; that is to say, if sati can be said to do anything. But this cannot be said. Sati is situated, nonetheless, in the course of vipassanā, which is troublingly rendered as either 'insight,' 'meditation,' or worse, 'insight meditation. Sati as paired and combined with vipassanā is very much the basis of early Bauddha data acquisition and formulation. Or if not actual 'gathering,' then 'analysis' for sure. Sati-vipassanā (or satipatthāna) is described as "noticing…attending to the facts of perception as they arise," as physical senses "or in the mind" (42). Sati then is situated independent, autonomous, and transcendent of the body and the mind, not to mention the non-existent "you" in accord with Bauddha doctrine. Still, professor Tambiah faithfully rehearses Buddhagosh's Path of Purification (Vishuddimagga),
In due course, the normal illusions of continuity and rationality that sustain cognitive and perceptual processes give way to a correct apprehension of the random discrete units out of which reality is continually being structured. With emergence the true realization of these processes, mindfulness matures into insight (42, emphasis added).Until finally,
Contemplating mind and its object, previously separate, are now nondualistically conjoined, and in unbroken succession occurs a chain of insights of mind knowing itself, culmination in the state of nibbāna (43).This is quite a tidy strategy; indeed, nothing short of a veritable Bauddhic revolutionary manifesto of soteriological interiority; classically modern in its grand monolithic systematization and its universal embrace of all mankind, and the entire cosmos. Yet try to notice the glib discontinuity when at some non-point sati transfers its perceptive load-function and the ball gets passed to vipassanā ('insight'). It is a tricky manoeuvre, a sleight of foot that has much too long gone unnoticed, gone uninterrupted. But with a flash of hermeneutical suspicion-cum-insight this fundamental sati-vipassanā strategy, which has always seemed dour if not counterintuitive, is rendered now in some way sensible. How else to interpret the invincible duo but as metaphor for Indra and his lightening bolt? If sati is Indra the king of the gods, then vipassanā is Indra's holy weapon, his adamantine research tool.
Indra's favourite weapon is commonly understood to be the vajra, usually rendered as thunderbolt. But this heaven-hurled weapon is elsewhere said to be composed of metal or stone. In any case, Indra's jihādic arsenal certainly comprised a number of delivery systems, including slings. What is more, his sky-borne projectiles were not the only vajra, but included, as mentioned above, strokes of lightening, together with meteors, comets, and rocks. "Although Indra's weapon is usually explicitly designated by the term vajra," writes Gonda, "and vajra is generally described as metallic (ayasa), it is incidentally spoken of as a rock (parvata) or 'stone of, or: from, the heavens' (divo asmanam)" (1959: 63). In the very early Rg Veda verse the missile-welding Indra is described as such: "He hurlest forth from heaven iron missiles..., he hurleth his bolt, his dart of death." Concerning this verse, Griffith (1889) notes that Indra stands for a 'terrible God who sends affliction[2].'
As a corporal function, Indra analogues the heavens as the universal backdrop; a role metaphorically equivalent to sati; i.e., an independent, transcendent, autonomous, situatedness – an isolated witness appertaining to the data below, as it were[3]. And the diamond-like lance of his brandished vajra? It is a piercing, lance-like, surgical-strike weapon of data penetration vis-à-vis vipassanā – 'meditation!'
