Three Mental Faculties:
Intellect, Intelligence and Intuition
By Dr Elizabeth Ashby
In
Western Buddhist literature we often find intellect and intuition
contrasted with one another, usually to the disadvantage of intellect.
This is a very short-sighted view, for both are necessary for the
understanding and practice of Dhamma.
The
intellect is the reasoning faculty in man. It sees things in their
right proportions. It investigates, analyses and discriminates. It
accumulates knowledge, and is inclined to forget that “knowledge” isn’t
“wisdom.” Too much stress on intellect produces mental dryness, harsh
judgments, and a lack of mettā and compassion. Another danger is that
investigation may become mere idle speculation. “Speculative views”
about the subjects that the Buddha refused to define will lead us into
the wilds of sceptical doubt, with all the mental suffering that
involves. Another danger is opinionatedness—the canker of clinging to
views as in the case of certain Brahmins of old who declared: “This
alone is the truth; all else is falsehood!”
Therefore one of the early Zen Patriarchs went so far as to say:
Do not seek after the true;Only cease to cherish opinions.
The cherishing of opinions leads to disputes and to vexation, for we wound one another “with the weapon of the tongue.”
Intuition
is the faculty that perceives truth without having it demonstrated or
explained. It feels the truth before the intellect can grasp it and turn
it into concepts. Hence intuition is closely allied to the emotions,
and this constitutes a danger because the emotions go hand-in-hand with
the imagination, and an imagined “truth” may be mistaken for “real
truth.” This happens because intuition functions on both the mundane and
the transcendental plane (lokuttara). Our intuitions—our instinctive
feelings for and against people or ideas, and our useful “hunches”—do
not mean that we already possess Bodhi, the transcendental intuition
that “knows according to reality.” This mundane intuition can be
extremely deceptive, and may lead to all kinds of trouble. It has to be
examined in the light of a third mental faculty: intelligence.
Intelligence is the ability to make skilful (kusala) use of the
intellect. Lacking this, both intellect and intuition go astray.
All
Buddhist schools recognise the part intuition must play in the
attainment of gnosis—that sure certain knowing that “done is what had to
be done.” The winning of Enlightenment by intellectual means, “the way
of the head,” is very, very rare, though some of the Great Disciples are
known to have done so.
The
Zen School in particular stresses the importance of intuition. A great
feature of Zen is to accept life as it comes, and to make the
appropriate response. Note, the appropriate or right response. This does
not mean acting on the first impulse that comes into one’s head. Most
human impulses arise from greed, hate or delusion, and it is only the
trained disciple who can act both spontaneously and rightly every time.
Impulsive action frequently ends in disaster, as in the case of Don
Quixote.
A
Western writer has said that Don Quixote was “Zen incarnate.” This is a
sad travesty of the facts as recorded in that glorious fiction.
Cervantes has drawn the picture of a very courageous and idealistic
gentleman (hidalgo, a man of good family), whose intellect had been
vitiated by a prolonged course of sensational fiction. He believed the
romances of chivalry to be true histories, and thought it was his
destiny to sally forth as a knight-errant, in order to right wrongs and
relieve the oppressed. No one doubts his high motives, but as he was
completely lacking in judgement he committed innumerable follies,
whereby he not only suffered himself, but also brought trouble on other
people. He believed that in the practice of his calling a knight-errant
was above good and evil. Hence he bilked an inn-keeper and, in order to
obtain the supposed “helmet of Mambrino,” committed a bare-faced highway
robbery.
On
another occasion he imagined that a flock of sheep was a hostile army,
and dashing into the middle of it, he killed seven of the creatures
before the shepherd could beat him off. He was then severely cudgelled,
and Sancho Panza, the loyal peasant who served him as squire, was also
badly mauled. This unbalanced behaviour was typical of the poor deluded
man; when he scented adventure he never waited to ascertain the facts
but at once issued an arrogant challenge to the supposed aggressor, with
the result that he was at once attacked and beaten up.
The
pitiful thing was that the knight really had a very good intellect.
Judged by the standards of his time, he was a man of considerable
culture; he could read and speak Italian, and also knew some Arabic. He
could converse sensibly and even eloquently upon most subjects; it was
only when chivalry was mentioned that he “slid off into madness.” His
monomania was such that he never attributed his misfortune to his own
stupidity, but believed they were the work of a malign enchanter who had
a grudge against all knights errant. If anybody questioned the validity
of his opinions he fell into a fury, drew his sword, and at once became
the centre of an unseemly brawl. This may be “living by Zen” (which is
open to doubt); it is certainly shockingly bad Buddhism.
If,
as postulated, Don Quixote was “Zen incarnate,” why does not the story
end with some kind of apotheosis equivalent to satori? Instead the
knight—we call him so though even his knighthood was spurious, having
been conferred upon him for a joke by a village inn-keeper—is overthrown
by a bogus knight-errant, a young man from his own village, a graduate
of Salamanca, newly down from the University, who with the connivance of
Don Quixote’s good friends, the priest and the barber, had gone out to
bring the wanderer home The knight creeps back to die of a broken heart,
first making a pathetic recantation of his follies.
It
is begging the question to say that Cervantes did not know his
business. His object was to ridicule the books of chivalry, because they
were silly in content and usually bad as literature. He did this
supremely well, and incidentally produced one of the most tragic stories
ever penned—the ruin of a noble mind.
This
long digression is not an attack upon Zen. Zen is so great and so
venerable that its position is unassailable. But Don Quixote is a
warning against the assumption that spontaneous action is necessarily
right action. It is frequently just the reverse.
What
practical conclusions can be drawn? First we should remember that the
Noble Eightfold Path is a discipline. The second “step” is a combination
of right intention and right thought. To achieve this, mental culture
is needed. This is the function of the intellect guided by intelligence.
“Mental clarity” is one of the dhamma listed as occurring in good
(kusala) consciousness. It is essential for the practice of the Four
Right Efforts, i.e., to recognise unskilled mental states, and not only
to “send them to their ceasing,” but also to discourage them from
arising in the future; then to encourage the arising of healthy mental
states, and to strengthen them when they have arisen.
It
is a commonplace that intellect can be strengthened by use. Some of its
dangers have already been pointed out; another danger is that it enjoys
diversity. It is always playing with ideas and forming concepts. It
therefore encourages dualism and is obsessed with “the ten thousand
things,” so that it never sees them in their “such-ness.” It is the
function of intuitive wisdom to actually experience “suchness.”
According to the Ven. Nyanaponika Thera, the intuition can also be
cultivated.” A careful and frequent study of this will benefit us
all.
Source: BPS, Kandy, Sri Lanka. Bodhi Leaves No. 44 (excerpt).
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