Perception, Categorization and Proliferation
Excerpt from the weekly Dhamma meeting,
Tuesday, October 5, 2026
The Madhupiṇḍika Sutta (MN 18) describes a process through which sensory experience can turn into conceptual proliferation:
“Friend, from the interaction between the eye and forms arises visual consciousness. The meeting of the three is contact. Contact conditions feeling. What is felt is recognized (sañjānāti); what is recognized is thought about (vitakketi); what is thought about proliferates (papañceti). And that which is the cause of proliferation becomes the basis for categorization and proliferation [arising from] recognition (papañcasaññāsaṅkhā), which assail a person in relation to visible forms, cognizable by the eye, with regard to the past, the future, and the present. The same occurs with the ear and sounds, the nose and odors, the tongue and tastes, the body and tangible objects, and with the mind and mental phenomena.”
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The expression papañcasaññāsaṅkhā is perhaps one of the most difficult in the entire Canon to translate. A little help comes from the Kalahavivāda Sutta (Sn 4.11), where the relationship between the various components of the compound is made explicit:
“saññānidānā hi papañcasaṅkhā” : “Indeed, recognition is the condition for categorization and proliferation.”
Bhante Madawela Punnaji interpreted saññā as “recognition,” and saṅkhā as “categorization.” Saññā indicates the recognition of what is experienced, whereas saṅkhā can be understood as the process of categorization, discrimination, or judgment through which what has been recognized is assigned to a particular category: beautiful or ugly, good or bad, convenient or inconvenient, high or low, gross or subtle.
Categorization thus makes the content of experience identifiable and conceptually determined. On this basis, papañca can develop: conceptual proliferation fueled by desire, views, and egoic conceit. Recognition and categorization, therefore, do not necessarily constitute the problem in themselves. The proliferation of afflictions arises when the mind further constructs around what it has recognized and categorized.
From this, the various forms of papañca traditionally identified as taṇhā-papañca, diṭṭhi-papañca, and māna-papañca can emerge: the proliferation of desire, of views and concepts, and of comparison based on “I” and “mine.” According to the Mahāniddesa, these three forms of proliferation originate from recognition (saññāsamudaya), arise from recognition (saññājātika), and spring forth from recognition (saññāpabhava).
It is significant that the text refers to objects belonging to the past, the future, and the present (atītānāgata-paccuppannesu). Once experience has been recognized and categorized, proliferation does not necessarily remain confined to the immediately present datum: the mind can compare it with the past, anticipate a future, and interpret the present through categories that have already been formed.
From this perspective, papañcasaññāsaṅkhā can be understood as the process through which recognition and categorization become the ground upon which conceptual proliferation develops. The problem, therefore, is not simply perceiving or categorizing, but the way in which, starting from these cognitive functions, the mind constructs further meanings through taṇhā, diṭṭhi, and māna, eventually proliferating around experience instead of simply knowing it.
This theme will be explored further in the next meeting, also in light of the verses of the Bāhiya Sutta and the Kevaddha Sutta of the Dīgha Nikāya.
All rights reserved ©️ Davide Puglisi, Dhammādana Group Italy
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