We now enter into a section in which Shantideva refutes the views of the lower schools.  The first view he looks at is the Samkhya schools. The Samkhyas are very similar to how most Christians think about their soul. When you speak with a Christian and ask them about their soul, they will describe it as this permanent thing that goes with them from life to life, and the purpose of the Christian path is to save their soul. Once again, when we go through these debates we should not feel as if they are somehow divorced from our normal reality because none of us have ever heard of the Samkhyas before. We don’t know what their view is and we don’t seem to hold it, so it seems irrelevant to us. But if we can connect the views of the lower schools with views that we see in modern society, then we can appreciate the reputation that shantideva engages in. So when you see the sampek’s, as a shorthand it’s enough to think about a popular understanding of Christianity. And even that is not enough because we might not consider ourselves Christian and so we might think that this is refuting the views of others. In truth we need to find within our self where we still grasp onto notions of relating to our I or our self as something that is permanent and eternal.

(9.60) If, as the Samkhya school asserts, a permanent consciousness is the I,
Then the consciousness that enjoys sound is also permanent;
But how can it continue to enjoy sound
When the object, sound, is no longer present?

(9.61) If it can be a subjective consciousness even though its object does not exist,
Then it follows that even a piece of wood can be a subjective consciousness.
Nothing can be established as a consciousness
If there is no object of which to be conscious.

As we go through Shantideva’s actual refutations it is important to keep in mind what exactly Shantideva is rejecting and what he is not rejecting. Sometimes we can look at these debates and over apply the refutations to see a complete and total rejection of all the views of the lower schools. This is incorrect.  The way to think about the different schools is like a ladder of thought where we gradually abandoned different aspects of things that we mistakenly think are ourselves but in fact are not. But we do not reject everything that was in the lower view because there are elements of the lower schools that we retain within the Prasangika view. In this way, our study of the lower schools enables us to gradually build up the overall framework for understanding the Prasangika.

The Samkhya view is that our self is a permanent consciousness. They say not only is the I inside the permanent consciousness, the I is this permanent consciousness. They think this is our true self that goes with us from life to life. Again, it is very similar to the Christian view.

In Buddhism, when we call something permanent it means that it is unchanging. It never changes.  We need to make a distinction between permanent and eternal. Eternal means lasts forever, permanent means unchanging. It is perfectly possible for something to be eternal but not permanent. For example, the water on this earth is eternal , but it is constantly changing forms and so therefore it is not permanent. It is also possible for something to be permanent but not eternal. For example, the emptiness of my car is permanent in the sense that it never becomes any more or less empty, but it is not eternal because when the car no longer exists, the emptiness of the car no longer exists.

The Samkhyas believe in an I that is both permanent and eternal. The Prasangikas disagree with the permanent part but agree that our actual self is indeed eternal. According to the tantric teachings we understand that at our heart we have our continuously residing mind and continuously residing wind, which is our continuously residing body and mind. These never separate and are eternal. They last forever. But they are not permanent because they are undergoing constant change.

The Prasangikas also retain the idea of consciousness being part of our I.  The difference is the Samkhyas say that our consciousness is our I, whereas the Prasangikas say that consciousness is part of the basis of imputation of are I.  Specifically, we impute our I onto our continuously residing body and our continuously residing mind.  Our consciousness is part of our I but not our I itself.  

So what then do the Prasangikas actually refute of the Samkhya view? First, they refute that the I is permanent. If the consciousness is the I, and the I is permanent, then it follows that once the consciousness perceives something it must perceive that thing forever without change. If the consciousness goes from a state of observing a sound to then not observing the sound, then it implies that the consciousness itself has changed, and therefore is not permanent.

Implicit within the Samkhya view is that this is not a problem because the consciousness just continues to see things and know things as those things move around it. It is like a light that simply shines and illuminates whatever comes in front of it. Shantideva refutes this view by pointing out it is impossible to have a consciousness without an object of consciousness because otherwise what is the consciousness conscious of? Therefore, you cannot have a consciousness that does not change as it becomes aware of different objects.