Chapter 3. Sautrāntika: seeds, momentariness, and continuity¶

The previous chapter ended by calling for a simpler account than Sarvāstivāda's system of additional real dharmas. Sautrāntika offers precisely such an account. It develops from within Sarvāstivāda but rejects, almost one by one, the mechanisms that school values most, using "seeds" to explain karma and continuity instead. The present chapter examines how it simplifies the Sarvāstivāda system and where that simplification ultimately leads.

1. Relying on discourses rather than treatises: the origins of Sautrāntika¶

The name Sautrāntika means "taking the discourses as the standard." It recognizes the authority of the Buddha's discourses but not the rulings of treatises such as the Mahāvibhāṣā, hence "relying on discourses rather than treatises." Closely related is the Dārṣṭāntika tradition within Sarvāstivāda, which emphasizes teaching through similes. The Dārṣṭāntikas are regular opponents in the Mahāvibhāṣā, with ninety occurrences of the name. In the Abhidharmakośa, only two occurrences remain, while "Sautrāntika" appears twenty times and "Sautrāntika teachers" eleven times. The name changes between the two books.¹ Whether they are earlier and later stages of one tradition, or two groups combined by later readers, remains disputed in scholarship. The book treats their relation as an unresolved scholarly question and does not use it as a premise. What can be confirmed is only that Vasubandhu's positions at crucial points agree in direction with those attributed to the Dārṣṭāntikas in the Mahāvibhāṣā.²

The difficulties of the sources need to be explained first. Sautrāntika left no Tripiṭaka of its own. Our knowledge comes chiefly from two sources. Vasubandhu's Abhidharmakośa outwardly presents Sarvāstivāda orthodoxy, but his commentary repeatedly argues against it from Sautrāntika positions, as the previous chapter explained.³ Saṅghabhadra's Nyāyānusāra also attacks Sautrāntika point by point. Sautrāntika is therefore another tradition reconstructed through criticism and accounts by others. Modern researchers even question whether "Sautrāntika" was a clearly bounded school or a label under which later doctrinal classifications gathered different positions. The book accordingly cautions that what follows is an account of several claims within that tendency of thought, which need not be understood as a monolithic religious community.⁴⁵

2. Three simplifications: rejecting the reality of all three times, unmanifest matter, and possession¶

Sautrāntika makes three principal simplifications to the Sarvāstivāda system.

First, it rejects the reality of all three times. Sarvāstivāda holds that dharmas' intrinsic being exists permanently throughout the three times, but Sautrāntika disagrees. Only the present moment is real. The past has ceased and the future has not arisen, so both are merely names without any entity, the "presentism" mentioned in the previous chapter. The general premise of permanently existing intrinsic being is removed.

Sautrāntika rejects the reality of all three times through an argument that applies a "functional razor." Sarvāstivāda separates intrinsic being (svabhāva) from activity (kāritra), holding that the former exists throughout the three times while the latter occurs only in the present. Sautrāntika asks what the intrinsic being that "exists" in the past and future is doing. If it performs no activity, "existence" becomes an empty label that cannot be tested. Only what acts can count as truly "existing." Once the activity ends, nothing remains, which follows the principle of momentariness consistently. "Past" and "future" merely label a dharma as having acted or as going to act. They do not form independent domains of existence.² The same functional criterion governs the later rejection of unmanifest matter and possession. Any entity that cannot be defined in terms of "currently doing something identifiable" is rejected.

Second, it rejects unmanifest matter and possession. Sarvāstivāda uses unmanifest matter to preserve karma and possession to attach dharmas to a person. Sautrāntika judges them unnecessary entities. Continuity itself can explain how karma remains and how a dharma "belongs" to someone, without another thing being posited. It likewise treats most of Sarvāstivāda's formations dissociated from mind, including the life faculty and the four characteristics, as merely names rather than real dharmas.

Third, it carries momentariness through consistently. Each dharma now arises and ceases within a single moment, with no enduring "intrinsic being" behind it.

The three rejections immediately raise problems. If intrinsic being no longer exists permanently and unmanifest matter and possession have also been removed, how can today's karma bear fruit years later? If the preceding mind-moment has entirely ceased, how can the next continue it? The seed theory in Section 3 must address the problems left by those rejections.

3. Seeds: one dharma accounts for karma and continuity¶

Sautrāntika fills the gap in its explanation by introducing "seeds" (bīja). When a karmic act, a wholesome or unwholesome action of body, speech, or mind, is performed, the immediate mind-moment ceases at once. It nevertheless leaves a potential by "perfuming" (vāsanā) the mental continuum, as though planting a seed. The seed reproduces itself through the continuum without being lost or destroyed. When the right conditions are met, it "matures" and produces the corresponding result, karmic maturation.

The return arrow does not mean that a karmic result necessarily produces a new karmic act. The text describes a seed yielding its corresponding result when suitable conditions are present.

The central move is to "replace many with one." Sarvāstivāda uses three real dharmas, unmanifest matter, possession, and the reality of all three times, for the separate tasks of preserving karma, attaching it to a person, and maintaining continuity across time. Seeds alone can perform those tasks. A seed is not a separately posited entity outside mind, but a functional state of the mental continuum itself. The book considers the account a simplification of Sarvāstivāda's practice of "assigning a real dharma to every function," close to the economy of Ockham's razor.

The seed theory leaves the location and bearer of seeds unclear. Sautrāntika answers "the mental continuum" (santāna), yet the continuum itself consists of minds that arise and cease momentarily. Each moment ends completely before the next arises, leaving the mechanism that passes a seed between them unexplained. Sarvāstivāda used possession to attach a dharma to a person. Sautrāntika removes possession without explaining "whose continuum this is." Continuity exists, but what establishes its unity remains unexplained.

More precisely, three limiting cases expose a direct failure in the explanation. They are attainment without perception (asaṃjñi-samāpatti, an unconscious meditative state that can last for several eons), the attainment of cessation (nirodha-samāpatti, an extremely deep meditative state in which feeling and perception stop completely), and the interval between death and rebirth. In all three, the ordinary stream of consciousness is interrupted. The preceding mind has ceased, while the next has yet to arise, and the interval may be very long. What carries seeds through that "gap in consciousness"? Once the mental continuum itself is interrupted, the claim that "seeds remain in the continuum" has nowhere to attach them. Sautrāntika does not give a complete treatment of the three cases.

Yogācāra's answer fills precisely those three gaps. Storehouse consciousness is posited as an underlying consciousness that continues latently when ordinary consciousness is interrupted. It specifically carries seeds and is not broken by the depth of meditation or by death. The move is not a gentle extension of Sautrāntika. It puts a new entity with a dedicated function back where Sautrāntika's razor has just removed "unnecessary entities." Sautrāntika says that the mental continuum itself is enough. Yogācāra says it is not and must therefore establish something more stable than "continuity." Moving from seeds to storehouse consciousness fills the gap Sautrāntika left. It does not merely clarify an answer already given.⁶

4. Knowing only representations: an epistemological turn¶

Rejecting the reality of all three times also raises an epistemological problem. One reason Sarvāstivāda established the doctrine was that "consciousness must have a real object" and people can know past and future things, as the previous chapter explained. Sautrāntika denies the reality of past and future and holds that everything ceases in a moment. By the time consciousness arises to know something, the thing has already ceased. How can we know it?

Sautrāntika's answer marks a significant turn. We do not directly apprehend external things. We apprehend the "aspect" (ākāra), a form they leave in consciousness. The external object itself can only be inferred from that form as having "been there." Knowledge becomes knowledge of aspects, while external things withdraw behind a veil.

An aspect (ākāra) is not another independent mental factor. In cognition, consciousness itself takes on a particular "appearance." When it knows red, consciousness itself displays the form of red. That form resembles the external object but is not identical with it. It is the object's "imprint" on consciousness. The main Sautrāntika position is that "consciousness bears an aspect." While knowing, consciousness already has the object's form and need not additionally contact the external thing itself. The position anticipates the Yogācāra view of "consciousness-only with aspects." Later Yogācāra thinkers continue to dispute whether aspects are part of consciousness, a development discussed in Essay 6.

Sautrāntika's position must be presented precisely. Its representationalism accepts external objects but denies that we perceive them directly. Their existence must be established by inference (anumāna). The external objects themselves are not objects of direct perception (pratyakṣa). The basis of the inference is that our representations have a specific structure and order rather than occurring arbitrarily. Seeing a red apple and feeling a round object with weight agree with each other. The order must have an external cause, and "an external object caused the representation" is the most reasonable explanation of that order.⁵ The position is a realism tending toward "consciousness-only with aspects." It accepts aspects (ākāra) as the direct objects of cognition while preserving external objects through inference.

The position has both internal stability and internal vulnerability. It accepts external objects, unlike Yogācāra's denial of them, and the mediation of representations, unlike Sarvāstivāda's direct realism. It is therefore a compromise. Its vulnerability follows once it says that "external objects can be known only by inference." If representations themselves can explain every phenomenon of cognition, what need remains for the inferred external objects? Remove them, and the result is consciousness-only. Sautrāntika used Ockham's razor against Sarvāstivāda, and Yogācāra now uses the same razor against Sautrāntika.

A comparison with Western philosophy can help understanding without implying historical influence. Sautrāntika's position is close to Locke's representative realism. We directly know only ideas, while external things remain behind a veil of perception. Moving from that position to Berkeley's idealism, which denies external things, corresponds to the step taken by Yogācāra. The book regards Sautrāntika representationalism as the point of transition from Sarvāstivāda realism to Yogācāra consciousness-only, discussed further in Essay 6.

5. Simplification remains within dharma realism¶

The account can now be assessed as a whole. Sautrāntika's main contribution is to reduce the number of entities substantially. It removes permanently existing intrinsic being throughout the three times, rejects unmanifest matter, possession, and many formations dissociated from mind, and explains continuity through "seeds." The same phenomena are explained with far fewer entities. As a simplification of a realist system, it is thorough.

Following the argument of Chapter 2.5, however, the book needs to add that simplification does not amount to leaving dharma realism. Sautrāntika reduces entities without escaping the problem of "ontologization" itself. It still accepts momentary dharmas as real and possessing own-nature, replacing permanent existence with existence that ceases in an instant. It also adds "seeds," "continuity," and "aspects" to replace the rejected mechanisms. The impulse described in Chapter 1.5, to keep finding a bearer for continuity, has not disappeared. Instead of many real dharmas, the bearers are now finer explanatory mechanisms such as seeds and the mental continuum. Yogācāra later develops the seed theory into the theory of storehouse consciousness.

A distinction must be kept clear so that simplification is not mistaken for a mere change of names. Possession is a real dharma in Sarvāstivāda, while a seed is a nominal designation in Sautrāntika. They therefore leave different kinds of unfinished business. A real dharma adds an entity that produces further problems, as possession-of-possession directly shows in Chapter 3.2. A nominal designation leaves an incomplete description that can be developed without creating further things. Both accounts remain unfinished, but one keeps accumulating unresolved items while the other adds no more. On that basis, Part II, Essay 17, Chapter 3 judges that the simplification is real. What remains unresolved is still unresolved, but it no longer produces new unresolved problems of its own.⁷

Sautrāntika therefore stands at a point of connection. Looking backward, it corrects Sarvāstivāda realism from within. Looking forward, its representationalism leads toward Yogācāra idealism. A different route leaves the entire project of "dharmas have own-nature" and rejects even momentary real existence. That route is the "emptiness" of Nāgārjuna's Madhyamaka. The connecting position of Sautrāntika can be summarized in a diagram.

The lines compare philosophical positions and do not establish direct transmission from teacher to pupil. Madhyamaka is presented as another way of challenging dharma realism, including the reality of momentary dharmas.

The next chapter first rounds off the treatment of the early-school tradition by examining how Theravāda develops Abhidharma into its own system. Madhyamaka and Yogācāra are left to the later treatment of Mahāyāna.

References¶