The Four Aspects of Willing: An Essay Based on Paul Dahlke's Buddhism & Science

by Anthony J. Damiani

Paper V09N

3-LETTER CODE: BUD

TOPIC: Buddhism

SUBJECT: Willing

SUBSUBJECTS: Vasanas, Samskaras, Karma, Skandhas

ORIGINAL LOCATION & FILE NAME (of PDF used for typing): PSY willing partial paper 3p AD HAND P.PDF

CONTENTS:

Previous investigations into the 4-fold aspects of emotion/feeling and knowing; both viewed through multiple causal/aspectual lenses

Challenge of understanding willing: investigation leads toward the "I" processes; involves comprehension of actuality itself

Static nature of language; difficulty capturing processive motion

Unique nature of will investigation: no separation between concept and object; self as both concept and experience; focus on living processes

Samskaras/vasanas as key to understanding will; defined as the compounded, conditioned

All living beings exist by reason of forces (karma); these are unique to each being and determine individuality

Karma is dependent on its material, the skandhas

Living processes have no substance, only material; no force, only energies; are always a unity of opposites

Every living being is the embodiment of their karma; this is expressed as anatta; beings are processes of combustion without a constant self

Expanding this understanding to the entire world

BOOK QUOTED FROM:

• Paul Dahlke, Buddhism and Science

AD HANDWRITING: Typewriter typed, a few AD and student edits

COMPLETENESS: Fragmentary Paper, mostly an abridgment of a few pages from a book with some original additions by AD

PUBLISHABILITY: No, already mostly published and too fragmentary

RETYPED by JRS 2020, FORMATTED by JF 2023, REFORMATTED AND UPDATED/CORRECTED by IT 2025

NOTES:

• RETYPED AD PAPER (V09N).

• This paper seems to be from some time around the middle of 1978 when the fourfold aspects of emotion (feeling) and knowing were being discussed. It is heavily based on, and quotes without attribution, Buddhism & Science by Paul Dahlke. Although it is primarily an abridgment of a few pages from a book (pp. 31-44), the first two and a half paragraphs and a few scattered sentences are by AD, and thus it is categorized as a V09N Paper and not Book Notes.

• See WG Classes 1978 0412a, 0418, 0426 and WG Paper 1978 0412b for more on the 4-fold aspects of emotion and WG Classes 1978 0510, 0524b for more on the 4-fold aspects of knowing mentioned at the beginning of this paper. See also WG Class 1977 1012, where portions of Paul Dahlke's Buddhism & Science are read and discussed and the concepts presented in this paper are more thoroughly gone into.

• All AD handwritten revisions/additions are indicated in brackets.

• All errors (wrong words, etc.) in this retyped version have been corrected to conform to the Dahlke book by IT. All spelling and punctuation corrected.

THE FOUR ASPECTS OF WILLING: AN ESSAY BASED ON PAUL DAHLKE'S BUDDHISM & SCIENCE

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Previously we investigated the 4-fold aspects of emotion or feeling. We saw that it can be viewed from the point of view of the instrumental or efficient cause, or aspect, the essential, qualitative meaning of emotion, the material aspect of what emotion is, and finally, the final aspect or final cause.

Similarly, with knowing the 4-fold aspects were superficially touched upon. This provided a more comprehensive and integral, synthetic view of what "to know" means.

Now we will investigate into the nature of willing in a similar fashion. A tremendous difficulty is involved here. This is because our search for the true meaning of willing leads to an investigation into, or towards the I [AD adds: processes] itself. That is, in understanding a process which is irreversible, and is our very own, our very self. In [AD adds: the] comprehension of willing or doing, we are involved in the very process of actuality itself. One of our primary difficulties is the nature of language, which, being static, doesn't necessarily reveal the processive motion, a species of becoming, arising. [AD adds: And] in these matters, our lives [AD adds: which] have the duration of a [AD adds: moment of] thought itself…

In all discussions, there's always an attempt made that eternally fails. That is, the concepts and objects do not coincide. There is an unending procession of concepts that play around, about, under, and over an object. It is endless. However, in our investigation into the nature of will, we come across the object, and one object only in all the world, that is so constituted that, in regards to it, no separation of concept and object is found. That is I, myself. Every attempt to form a concept is just a form of myself. Here the concept of myself is experience, actuality itself.

This is where we get bogged down. For in this actuality of I or myself, we are concerned with processes that maintain themselves, living processes. Like in the often used simile of fire, the process of combustion as flame. Or, the process of alimentation as living beings.

Now, in all that is, in regard to myself, all processes whatsoever, all of these are samskaras, or vasanas. This is the key word in order for us to get some insight into the nature of will.

The word samskaras, or vasanas, signifies the compounded, the conditioned, and also the compounding, the conditioning. All living beings exist by reason of forces. A force is not perceptible to sense. Every living being is here in virtue of this individual force, which is peculiar to him alone. We may refer to it as energy. This is what we will be concerned with in the discussion of will. The existence of actual energies, which are peculiar to each and every living being, and are usually called Kamma, or Karma. This is that by which a living being manifests activity after its own fashion, in its own unique way, and how it reacts upon the external world. It is that which makes a living being to be an individuality, a personality.

I am a thing unique, a personality in virtue of this "in-force," which we have called Karma. This in-force has being, or is solely dependent on its material. For example, heat, light, electricity, etc., are words of no meaning in the absence of a material in which to manifest themselves. So Karma, or in-force, is a word of no meaning in the absence of its material. The material of Karma is called, by the Buddhists, the skandhas. These are five: corporeality, sensation, perception, discrimination, and consciousness. They are often referred to as the five heaps, the aggregation, coagulation, formation. These skandhas are not parts or pieces of the I-process, but rather phases, forms of development. It is something like the shape, color, and odor of a plant. An actual process, a proceeding of the nature of combustion or alimentation, can never have any parts. In the living person they are forms of development, since all have come forth from one common root. This must be remembered if one claims to think in terms of actuality.

Actuality, living processes, have no substance, no matter, but only material, matter worked up by energies. It has no force, only energies, forces apparelled, substantialized. Actuality always and everywhere is only the unity of opposites, a process.

The way in which I conceive or represent myself corporeally, receive sensation, perceive, exercise discrimination and become conscious of things is one which is very peculiar to me. In every motion, corporeal as well as mental, physical as well as psychical, I am this very form of Karma itself. This fact, that every living being is wholly and entirely the embodiment of his Karma, is expressed in Buddhism by the word "Not-Self" - anatta. All beings are anatta. These are out and out processes of combustion, of alimentation. As such, these processes cannot hide any self within themselves, cannot conceal any constant. Consequently, there could be no I, or a real, genuine, authentic self.

If you were to expand and amplify what we just said, and apply it to the entire world, then we would readily understand [incomplete]

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