IV. Kaivalya Pāda · The mind and the seer (4.18–4.24)
4.21 · Minds Watching Minds
If the mind were seen by another act of mind, there would be an endless regress of cognitions of cognitions, and memory would be confused.
Word by word
- citta-antara-dṛśye
- if seen by another act of mind
- buddhi-buddheḥ
- of cognitions of cognitions
- atiprasaṅgaḥ
- endless regress
- smṛti-saṃkaraḥ
- confusion of memory
- ca
- and
Where it fits
Vyāsa states the view: a mind-moment that has ceased is known by the next one. Then each knower needs another without end, and memories become confused. Vyāsa says the vaināśikas, a Brahmanical name for Buddhists, throw everything into confusion, and ends: Sāṃkhya and Yoga hold that the self is the mind's experiencer. 4.22 asks how.
Reading
Could each moment of mind be known by the next one? Then that one would need another to know it, and so on without end, and memories would pile on memories until none could be told apart. Vyāsa presses this against those he calls Destructionists (vaināśika), usually taken to be Buddhists: they deny a lasting self, yet vow to practise so that their constituents never arise again. Who, then, is freed? This completes the second step. The regress stops only with a knower of a different kind: the seer, who needs nothing else to see it.
Vyāsa
“If one mind were grasped by another, what would grasp that intellect which grasps the intellect? It would be grasped by another, and that by yet another, without end. And memory would be confused.”
Vyāsa's Yoga-bhāṣya, the oldest commentary. New translation from the Sanskrit, with reference to Woods (1914), p. 331.
Practice
For one minute, notice a thought. Then notice yourself noticing it. Then notice that. Feel how quickly this becomes tiring and empty. Stop, and rest in plain knowing, which needs nobody to watch it.
A question to sit with
Who is watching the watcher?