Just as the limbs grow age, so does the body as a whole change and grow with age. The particles and parts connect with each other, such as the limbs and trunks of our bodies, to make a whole mass ( gong-bu). If we may borrow the Sautrantika-Svatantrika distinction, some are composite forms ( ( bsags-pa’i gzugs) – forms of physical phenomena that are composites of their constituent particles and/or constituent parts. A collection synthesis refers to a whole, a whole as an imputation on the parts. In reference to conventional objects, there is, first of all, a collection synthesis ( tshogs-spyi). These would be categories, like the category animal, a mental label imputed on many species. Other syntheses are nonfunctional phenomena – static phenomena that do not change from moment to moment and that are no affected by causes and conditions. There are also groups, like a football team, which do need to be put together from its members.

No one has assemble and then impute a whole body on four limbs in order for there to be a whole body. For instance, a body is a synthesis of its parts, it is an imputation on its parts. Some syntheses are functional phenomena – nonstatic phenomena that change from moment to moment and are affected by causes and conditions. But labeled doesn’t necessarily mean verbally, nor does it mean that someone has to actively impute it. We have all these individual beings, these creatures, these things that walk around, or whatever, and we put them all together and we impute on it a category, animals. That’s what I mean by a mental synthesis. So what we’re talking about here is a phenomenon shared in common by the individuals on which it is imputed. But in Tibetan or in Sanskrit there’s one word that refers to all of this. We’ll see what the different kinds are, what we’re referring to. Sometimes the word category, sometimes the word generality. Anyway, let’s not go into this whole very interesting topic of how we learn these groups.īut a synthesis also doesn’t always work.

If you think of a small baby, a small baby puts almost everything into the group of edible (you can put it in your mouth), doesn’t it? But later it has to learn that there are certain things that don’t really belong in that group. It’s very interesting how we learn these groups. Giving that group a name is something else. And we’re not talking necessarily about naming them we’re talking about putting them together in a group. Let me just give a very simple example, like animals: we don’t have to go through every single instance of every creature that somehow we want to put them together into one group and then, having gathered them all together, then we say, “OK, I’m going to call all of these animal.” It’s not that we actively have to do it. But the mental creation does not need to be an active process. According to the Gelug tradition, some naturally occur, like the synthesis of parts into a whole, and some are mental creations, like the synthesis of many different looking creatures into the conceptual category 'animal.' The non-Gelug traditions say that all syntheses are mentally created. In other words, they are a synthesis of various things into some larger entity.

I think that if we want to describe a little bit better what is really involved here with these generalities, then we would say that they are mental syntheses.

Particulars vs generalities