On Yogic Cognition of Past and Future Objects

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to clarify the development of the Buddhist account of yogic cognition of past and future objects from Vasubandhu to Jñānaśrīmitra. In the Abhidharmakośa­bhāṣya (99.1–10), Vasubandhu introduces three opinions of the Buddha’s cognition of future results, namely, 1. inference-based understanding, 2. cognition like fortune-telling, and 3. immediate cognition in accordance with the subject’s wishes. While the first and third opinions are individually interpreted by Śāntarakṣita and Kamalaśīla in TS 1852–1855, 3473–3474/TSP thereon, Prajñākaragupta unifies the two in order to show the progress of a yogin’s or the Buddha’s cognition from the inferential to the immediate cognition, in which the difference of past, present, and future is explained by “relying on other’s viewpoint” (anyāpekṣayā). On the problem of how to distinguish three times in a yogic perception that is related only to present objects, Jñānaśrīmitra, who knows well his predecessors’ arguments, finally replies by using the notion of conceptual determination (adhyavasāya), which functions in yogic perception for distinguishing past, present, and future times, though the cognition itself is ultimately undividable.