La natura dell’esperienza. Considerazioni sulla nozione di svasaṃvedana (rang rig) nel buddismo indo-tibetano, con uno sguardo al dibattito filosofico contemporaneo

Self-awareness―that is, mind’s knowing of itself―is a highly technical concept in Buddhist philosophy and, since it targets fundamental issues related to the nature of consciousness, becomes a major subject of debate among the scholars of the Indo-Tibetan tradition. Within the field of Buddhist Studies, this is a topic that still requires much further investigation; only recently have a few scholars called attention to it, pointing out a correlation between Indo-Tibetan accounts of self-cognition and the ongoing debates on subjective experience in contemporary philosophy of mind. In this paper I analyze the main structural tension that generates debates related to svasaṃvedana/rang rig in the Indo-Tibetan philosophy: the subtle conflict between the non-dualistic or reflexive nature of self-awareness, on the one hand, and the dualistic framework whereby its inner articulation is interpreted, on the other. This issue is addressed starting from its genesis, examining the tensions already present in Dignāga’s formulation of the concept of svasaṃvedana, which forms its entry point into the Indian epistemological discourse. This inherited philosophical tension and how it was carried forward is then examined in terms of the wider Indo-Tibetan discourse on the topic. The paper concludes with a few remarks on contemporary philosophy of mind, where this structural conflict, still present, has been inducing further attempts at the reconciliation of this issue.