Self-Awareness and Mental Perception

The purpose of this paper is to clarify Prajñākaragupta’s view of mental perception (mānasapratyak?a), with special emphasis on the relationship between mental perception and self-awareness. Dignāga, in his PS 1.6ab, says: “mental [perception] (mānasa) is [of two kinds:] a cognition of an [external] object and awareness of one’s own mental states such as passion.” According to his commentator Jinendrabuddhi, a cognition of an external object and awareness of an internal object such as passion are here equally called ‘mental perception’ in that neither depends on any of the five external sense organs. Dharmakīrti, on the other hand, considers mental perception to be a cognition which arises after sensory perception, and does not call self-awareness ‘mental perception’. According to Prajñākaragupta, mental perception is the cognition which determines an object as ‘this’ (idam iti jñānam). Unlike Dharmakīrti, he holds that the mental perception follows not only after the sensory perception of an external object, but also after the awareness of an internal object. The self-awareness which Dignāga calls ‘mental perception’ is for Prajñākaragupta the cognition which determines as ‘this’ an internal object, or an object which consists in a cognition; it is to be differentiated from the cognition which cognizes cognition itself, that is, self-awareness in its original sense.