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From the Buddha's Teaching to the Abhidhamma by Noa Ronkin

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rom its inception, Buddhism reminds us that we are constituted by how we respond to, interpret, perceive, and conceptualize our sentient experience, and it founds itself on the observation that there is something fundamentally wrong and unsatisfactory with lived experience in the round of rebirth (sa?s?ra). The Buddha’s teaching, the Dhamma, is presented in the Sutta-pi?aka of the Pali Canon as a framework of training in conduct, mental cultivation and understanding that forms a path leading to the cessation of this existential dis-ease called dukkha, customarily translated as “suffering”. Let us bear in mind, though, the point Richard Gombrich

has made in the introduction to this volume with regard to the inaccuracy in qualifying the Buddha’s teaching as sheer pragmatism. Paul Williams’s claim quoted by Gombrich is crucial: Buddhist tradition sees the Dhamma as beneficial in the context of the spiritual path because it is true. From the very beginning, then, the Pali texts contain a basic ambiguity about the nature of the Dhamma by assimilating pragmatism and metaphysics. On the one hand, the texts repeatedly state that the Buddha taught only what is conducive to

achieving the goal of the cessation of suffering, and the Dhamma is presented in a way that notably refrains from metaphysical underpinnings. In fact, there are strong suggestions that purely theoretical speculations, especially those regarding certain metaphysical concerns about the ultimate nature of the world and one’s destiny, are both pointless and potentially misleading in the quest for the cessation of suffering. [1]


These concerns are captured by the famous undetermined or… On the other hand, the Buddha’s teaching is said to be effective because the Dhamma is the truth about the underlying nature of reality, about the way things truly are. In this sense, one might say that at the heart of Buddhist thought lies a metaphysical Truth. In this chapter, we shall see that the early Buddhist evasiveness about metaphysics resulted in a host of related ambiguities regarding matters of ontology, psychology, and cosmology. These, in turn, gave rise to divergent interpretations of the foundational teachings by later thinkers who, as Gombrich notes above, could all claim to be faithful to what the Buddha taught.

2Attempting to define the early Buddhist metaphysical stance may clarify somewhat the ambiguity at stake. While it is true that the Buddha suspends all views regarding certain metaphysical questions, he is not an anti-metaphysician: nothing in the texts suggests that metaphysical questions are completely meaningless, or that the Buddha denies the soundness of metaphysics per se. Instead, Buddhism teaches that to understand suffering, its rise, its cessation, and the path leading to its cessation is to see reality as it truly is: not a container of persons and “things”, but rather an assemblage of interlocking physical and mental processes that spring

up and pass away subject to multifarious causes and conditions. Indeed, the main doctrinal teachings found in the Suttas, including the postulate of impermanence (anicca), the principle of dependent origination (pa?iccasamupp?da), and the teaching of not-self (anatt?), are all metaphysical views concerning how processes work rather than what exists. Thus while the Dhamma is silent on ontological matters, it is grounded in what may be identified as process metaphysics: a framework of thought that hinges on the ideas

that sentient experience is dependently originated and that whatever is dependently originated is conditioned (sa?khata), impermanent, subject to change, and lacking independent self-hood. Construing sentient experience as a dynamic flow of physical and mental occurrences and rejecting the notion of a metaphysical self as an enduring substratum underlying experience, the Buddha’s process metaphysics contrasts with substance metaphysics.

3Western metaphysics has been dominated by a substance-attribute ontology, which has a marked bias in favor of “objects”. While Plato’s view of reason and his doctrine of the realm of Forms illustrate the predominance of the notion of substance, it is in Aristotle’s writings that substance metaphysics reached its highest perfection and has thereafter dominated much of traditional philosophy from the ancient Stoics, through the scholastics of the Middle Ages, and up to the distinguished authors of modern

philosophy. The core idea underlying substance metaphysics is that the world contains unalterable entities that endure through time and in which properties inhere (leaving aside the question of whether those entities are material or immaterial and the exact nature of their inherent properties) (Taylor 1983: 81). This worldview is tied in with realism, according to which we are, by and large, capable of acquiring knowledge of the world and of comprehending it because our categories, beliefs, and statements fit with the features of a mind-independent reality.

4Notwithstanding the dominance of substance metaphysics and its decisive ramifications for much of the Western history of ideas, from as early as the period of the pre-Socratics, there has been present another stream of thought that goes against the current of much of Western metaphysics. This variant line of thought is designated by modern scholarship as “process metaphysics” or “process philosophy”. Process metaphysics has deliberately chosen to reverse the primacy of substance: it insists on seeing processes as basic

in the order of being, or at least in the order of understanding. Underlying process metaphysics is the supposition that encountered phenomena are best represented and understood in terms of occurrences— processes and events—rather than in terms of “objects” or “things”, and with reference to modes of change and to the category of becoming rather than to fixed stabilities and to the category of being (Rescher: 1996). The guiding idea is that processes are basic and things derivative, for it takes some mental process to construct “things” from the indistinct mass of sense experience and because change is the pervasive and predominant feature of the real. The result is that how eventualities transpire is seen as no less significant than what sorts of things there are. [2]


For a detailed explanation of the early Buddhist interest in…

5As Gombrich has explained, the Buddha conveys his focus on how processes work by using the analogy of fire as a model of reality. In particular, by comparing consciousness to fire, the Buddha shows that the processes that make up lived experience—and in this sense, the processes that make up one’s “world”—are always mediated by the cognitive apparatus embodied in the operation of the five aggregates (khandhas). The Buddha’s teachings thus set up the stage for developing a framework for studying sentient experience. Yet the doctrinal concepts and theoretical statements that the Buddha’s soteriological message contains regarding the rise and cessation of suffering and about the way things are do not amount to a systematic theory. The first conscious attempt to ground the Buddha’s scattered teachings in a comprehensive philosophical system was introduced with the advance of the subsequent Abhidharma (Skt)/ Abhidhamma (Pali) tradition, a doctrinal movement in Buddhist thought that arose during the first centuries after the Buddha’s death (fourth century BCE onwards) as part of the spread of the Sangha across the Indian subcontinent. Having its own distinctive theoretical and practical interests, the Abhidhamma resulted in an independent branch of inquiry and literary genre documented in the third basket of the Pali Canon, the Abhidhamma-pi?aka. [3]


The two canonical Abhidhamma/ Abhidharma collections that… A notable difference between this body of literature and the Sutta-pi?aka is that the Suttas analyze the nature of one’s experiential world in terms of the five aggregates, the twelve sense spheres, and the eighteen elements of perception (khandha, ?yatana, dh?tu), while the Abhidhamma treatises develop yet another mode of analysis that is understood as most comprehensive and exhaustive, namely, the analysis of experience in terms of dhammas. The overarching inquiry subsuming both the analysis of dhammas and their synthesis into a unified structure is referred to as the “dhamma theory”.

6This chapter aims to provide a concise exposition of the transition from the Suttanta thought-world to the canonical and post-canonical Abhidhamma, with focus on the role of the dhamma theory in this transition. In particular, I will address two primary questions: first, How does the Buddha’s experientially oriented and pragmatic teaching become a systematic philosophy? And second, What kind of a philosophical system is it that founds itself upon the concept of dhamma? I shall attempt to show that the doctrinal transition from the Buddha’s thought to the Abhidhamma results from a shift in early Buddhist tradition’s construal of sentient experience that is best understood in terms of a change in epistemological orientation and metaphysical outlook.


Historical background

7The early history of Buddhism in India and of the school now referred to as Therav?da is remarkably little known and the attempt to construct a consistent chronology of that history still engrosses the minds of contemporary scholars. A generally accepted tradition, however, has it that some time around the beginning of the third century BCE, the primitive Sangha divided into two parties or fraternities: the Sthaviras and the Mah?s??ghikas, each of which thenceforth had its own ordination traditions. Throughout the subsequent two centuries or so, doctrinal disputes arose between these two parties, resulting in the formation of various schools of thought and teacher lineages (Vin 51–4; Mhv V 12–13. See Cousins 1991: 27–8; Frauwallner 1956: 5ff & 130ff; Lamotte 1988: 271ff).

8The Sinhalese Therav?da tradition traces its lineage through the Vibhajjav?dins, who belonged to the Sthaviras. The evidence arising from a range of texts and inscriptions combines to present a picture of several related Vibhajjav?da branches (Cousins 2001: 140-6). Roughly in the first century CE, together with the demise of the other Vibhajjav?din schools in most parts of India, the Sinhalese Vibhajjav?din tradition was able to spread out in Southern India and parts of South-East Asia. It is the worldview of this particular Vibhajjav?din school that is preserved in the Abhidhamma-pi?aka of the Pali Canon.


Abhidhamma literary style and genre

9Scholarly opinion has generally been divided between two alternative interpretations of the term abhidhamma, both of which hinge upon the denotation of the prefix abhi. First, taking abhi in the sense of “with regard to”, abhidhamma is understood as a discipline whose subject matter is the Dhamma, the Buddha’s teaching. Second, using abhi in the sense of preponderance and distinction, abhidhamma has also been deemed a distinct, higher teaching: the essence of the Buddha’s teaching or that which goes beyond what is given in the Buddha’s discourses, in a sense somewhat reminiscent of the term “metaphysics” (e.g., Dhs-a 2–3; Horner 1941; von Hinüber 1994). Buddhist tradition itself differentiates between the Sutta and Abhidhamma methods of instructing the teaching by contrasting the Suttanta “way of putting things” in partial, conventional terms that require further clarification, vs. the Abhidhamma exposition and catechism that expound the teaching fully, in non-figurative, “ultimate” terms (A IV, 449– 56; Vibh 100–1; Dhs-a 154).

10Abhidhamma literature consists of the canonical collection that includes seven books, post-canonical commentaries on these books, and a variety of manuals that introduce and expound the canonical materials. The canonical treatises manifest two features that accord with two literary characteristics of the genre. First, they attempt to analyze meticulously the significant points of the Dhamma. This is shown by the arrangement of major parts of the material around detailed lists or, more literally, matrices (m?tik?) of doctrinal topics. [4]


In fact, such textual structuring dates to the beginning of… Second, the texts evince the process of institutionalization undergone by Buddhist thought and its growing bent for discursive hermeneutics through catechetical exposition. This is evidenced by the catechetical style of the texts (e.g., Kath?vatthu, Pa?isa?bhid?magga, and the Vibha?ga, among others) and the argumentative ways in which they address various points of dispute that arise out of the abovementioned analytical project. The Abhidhamma treatises thus became a medium by which the Therav?dins developed their position concerning the Dhamma through stimulating monastic debates with both their Buddhist rivals and Brahmanical opponents.

11It is most likely that within the earliest Sangha, there arose two approaches to discussing the Dhamma: the first intended to summarize and analyze the significant points of the teaching, the second to elaborate on and interpret the doctrines taught by means of monastic disputations (see Cousins 1983: 10; Gethin 1992b: 165).


The changing meaning of dhammas

12In the Nik?yas, both the singular and plural forms dhamma/dhammas interchangeably refer to the fundamental principles the Buddha taught, similarly to “teaching” and “teachings” in English (S II 16 & 18; M I 133). Within the specific context of meditative contemplation, however, the plural dhammas signify both elements of the normative system prescribed by the Buddha’s teachings and the objects that arise in a practitioner’s consciousness while absorbed in meditative attainment (M I 55 & D II 290; Collins 1982: 115).

In particular, the plural form dhammas came to denote mental objects of the sixth sense faculty, namely, manas (broadly translated as “mind”), alongside the objects of the five ordinary physical senses (e.g., M III 62; S I 113–16, II 140ff, IV 114 & 163ff; A I 11). As such, dhammas are not merely mental objects such as ideas, concepts, or memories, but rather a pluralistic representation of encountered phenomena: all knowable sensory phenomena of whatever nature as we experience them through the six senses—and this is no other than the sa?s?ric world in its entirety (Carter 1978: 2 & 62; Hamilton 1996: 28–9).

13The canonical Abhidhamma treatises, especially the Dhammasa?ga?i and the Vibha?ga, draw subtle distinctions within the scope of the mental and marginalize the differences between a variety of mental capacities. They especially emphasize manoviññ??a (literally “mind-consciousness”), the sixth cognitive modality based on the faculty of manas, or rather mental cognitive awareness, which is deemed the central cognitive operation in the process of sensory perception. [5]


The compound manoviññ??a specifies viññ??a while functioning as… Manoviññ??a is the distinctive consciousness that is the cognitive basis of sense perception issuing from the contact between the sixth, mental sense faculty (referred to as “mind element, ” manodh?tu) and its respective dhamma objects (Dhs 132, 178, 229; Vibh 10, 14–15, 54, 60–62, 71). It is not an act of cognition in the sense of an agent that acts upon its objects by cognizing them, but rather a discerning awareness of distinctions between the stimuli impinging upon the fields of the sense faculties that issues when the requisite conditions come together. Dhammas as the objects of

mental cognitive awareness may now be rendered as apperceptions: rapid consciousness-types (citta) that arise and cease in sequential streams, each having its own object, and that interact with the five sensory modalities of cognitive awareness as they arise in dependence on their corresponding material phenomena. The canonical Abhidhamma portrays these dhammic apperceptions as diverse capacities of psychophysical occurrences by means of which the mind unites and assimilates a particular perception, especially one newly presented, to a larger set or mass of ideas already possessed, thus comprehending and conceptualizing it (Gethin 1992A: 149-50, 1998: 209-10 & 2004; Ronkin 2005: 35-42; Waldron 2003: 28-33 & 50-2).


The dhamma categorization: a theory of mind

14Within the Abhidhamma canonical framework, dhammas are reckoned psycho-physical occurrences as presented in consciousness. The Abhidhamma turns this notion of the plurality of dhammas into the basis of an intricate theory of consciousness. The dhammas fall into various categories, the number of which is more or less finite: Pali Abhidhamma counts eighty-two categories. The term dhamma signifies each category that represents a possible type of occurrence as well as any particular categorial token. Thus, according to

the Therav?din typology, there are eighty-two possible types of occurrence in the encountered world, not eighty-two occurrences. Eighty-one categories are conditioned, meaning that the many and various dhamma instances they embrace constitute conditioned cyclic experience in the round of rebirth from the lowest realms of hell to the highest heavens of the gods. The eighty-second dhamma category is unconditioned and has one single member, namely, nirvana.

15The eighty-one conditioned dhammas fall into three broad categories: the bare phenomenon of consciousness (citta), which encompasses a single dhamma type and of which the essential characteristic is the cognizing of an object; associated mentality (cetasika), which encompasses fifty-two dhammas; and materiality or physical phenomena (r?pa), which include twenty-eight dhammas that make up all physical occurrences (Abhidh-av 1). The Abhidhamma analyzes in great detail each of these categories to the extent that the notion of the plurality of dhammas becomes the basis of an intricate theory of consciousness, or rather, as I will argue, a metaphysics of mind. Germane to this chapter is the analysis of citta, on which much of Abhidhamma doctrinal thought is built.

16The paradigm for the operation of citta is citta as experienced in the process of sensory perception. Citta can never be experienced as bare consciousness in its own origination moment, for consciousness is always intentional, directed to some particular object that is cognized by means of certain mental factors. Citta, therefore, always occurs associated with its appropriate cetasikas or mental factors that perform diverse functions and that emerge and cease together with it, having the same object (either sensuous or mental) and grounded in the same sense faculty. Any given consciousness moment—also signified by the very term citta—is thus a

unique assemblage of citta and its associated mental factors such as feeling, conceptualization, volition, or attention, to name several of those required in any thought process. The classic Abhidhamma scheme—as gleaned from the first book of the Abhidhammapi?aka, the Dhammasa?ga?i, and as organized by the commentarial tradition—describes eighty-nine basic types of consciousness moments, i.e., assemblages of citta and cetasika (Dhs Book I; Vism XIV 81–110; Abhidh-av 1–15; Abhidh-s 1–5). It begins with the sense-sphere

(k?m?vacara), which includes unskillful consciousnesses at the bottom, followed by consciousnesses that concern the mechanics of bare awareness of the objects of the five senses, and then by skillful consciousnesses; next come the various form-sphere (r?p?vacara) and formless-sphere (ar?p?vacara) consciousnesses that constitute meditation attainments (jh?nas); finally, there are world-transcending (lokuttara) consciousnesses that constitute the mind at the moment of awakening itself: these have nirvana as their object. In addition, within these four broad categories, various other classifications operate. For instance, some dhammas are wholesome or skillful, others unwholesome; some are resultant, others are not; some are motivated, others are without motivation.

17The basic structure of this hierarchy of consciousness parallels quite explicitly the basic structure of the cosmos: beings exist in the sense world (k?ma-dh?tu), the form world (r?pa-dh?tu), or the formless world (ar?pa-dh?tu), in which they are continually reborn in accordance with their actions and experience the appropriate types of consciousness. As Rupert Gethin opines, the shift from the psychological hierarchy of consciousness to the cosmological hierarchy of beings is essentially a shift in time scales, both

of which are subject to the principle of dependent origination (1997: 194-5). From one perspective, the mind might range throughout the possible levels of consciousness in moments, while from another perspective, beings progress from life to life over years. Gethin further suggests that in assimilating psychology and cosmology, the Abhidhamma conforms to a basic ambiguity, which lies at the heart of Indian Buddhism, about the objective outer world and the subjective inner world. This ambiguity can be interpreted as a loosely

idealist tendency to locate reality in the mind and its processes rather than in something “out there” that exists ontologically other than the mind (id: 211). Sidestepping the question of the ontological status of the external world and the world of matter, experience in sa?s?ra is constructed mentally insofar as it is the result of past karma. In technical Abhidhamma terms based on its

analysis of consciousness, “our basic experience of the physical world is encompassed by a limited number of classes of sense-sphere consciousness that are the results of twelve unskillful and eight skillful classes of sense-sphere consciousnesses: what we thought in the past has created the world we live in and experience in the present; what we think in the present will create the world we shall live in in the future” (id: 211-12). Ultimately, the particular world each of us experiences is something that we individually and collectively have created by our thoughts.

18Rather than a closed inventory of all existing dhammas “out there” in their totality, the canonical dhamma typology yields a manual, as it were, of whatever occurrences may possibly present themselves in consciousness. Each such occurrence represents an interlocking complex of phenomena made up of the appropriate type of citta, a number of necessary cetasikas and various kinds of material phenomena. The goal here is to map out the constituents and workings of the mind in an attempt to account for the basic

types of dhamma that make up ordinary consciousness as opposed to the awakened mind of Buddhas and arahants. Such a theory of mind—and of the enlightened mind in particular— required the Abhidhamma theoreticians to set out criteria for identifying, distinguishing, and determining what any given dhamma that may possibly occur in one’s consciousness is. It is this metaphysical undertaking that distinguishes the dhamma theory from the Buddha’s thought as presented in the Suttas.

19The dhamma theory was supplemented by related doctrines that shaped the development of the Abhidhamma systematic thought. In what follows, I provide a concise overview of four major Abhidhamma doctrines: 1) the theory of momentariness; 2) the theory of the consciousness process; 3) the doctrine of own-nature; 4) the theory of causation.


The Abhidhamma theory of momentariness

20The theory of momentariness (kha?a-v?da) probably originated in conjunction with the teaching of impermanence and the three characteristics of conditioned phenomena (sa?kh?r?/ sa?khatadhamm?), i.e., impermanence, suffering, and not-self (anicca, dukkha, anatt?). The principle of impermanence is part of the basic position of the Buddha’s teaching that all empirical phenomena—physical and mental alike —are constantly subject to conditioned construction and are interconnected, being dependently originated (e.g., A I 286; S III 24–5, 96– 9; M I 230, 336, 500; D II 157; Dhp 277). The Suttanta elaboration on these ideas results in the notion that conditioned phenomena are of the nature of origination, cessation, and “change of what endures” (A I 152).

21The Abhidhamma-pi?aka takes the analysis of the term “moment” (kha?a) to the next level: here “moment” denotes a very brief stretch of time, the dimension of which is determined by its context, and is said to be divided into origination and cessation submoments (in a manner quite different from the atomistic Sarv?stiv?din view, according to which this term denotes the smallest, indivisible unit of time) (Kim: 1999: 60-1). The Pali commentaries later present a full-fledged scheme wherein each moment is subdivided into three

different instants of origination (upp?dakkha?a), endurance (?hitikkha?a) and cessation (bha?gakkha?a) (Spk II 266; Mp II 252). These are three phases of a single momentary phenomenon defined as one single dhamma or consciousness-moment. A dhamma occurs in the first sub-moment, endures in the second, and ceases in the third. The commentarial tradition thus analyzes phenomena temporally by dissecting them into a succession of discrete, momentary events that fall away as soon as they have originated in consciousness. As one event is exhausted, it conditions a new event of its kind that proceeds immediately afterwards.

22The theory of momentariness spawned a host of problems for the Buddhist schools, particularly with regard to the status of the endurance moment. One might argue that the conceptual shift from “impermanence” to “endurance” is a result of scholastic literalism and testifies to the Abhidhamma tendency towards reification and hypostatization of the dhammas, following which ontology began to creep into Buddhist thought (Gombrich 1996: 36-7, 96-7, 106-7). Nevertheless, the object of the doctrine of momentariness is not so

much existence in time, nor the passage of time per se, but rather, in epistemological terms and a somewhat Bergsonian sense, the construction of temporal experience. Instead of a transcendental matrix of order imposed on natural events from without, time is seen as an inherent feature of the operation of dhammas. The doctrine of momentariness analyzes dhammas as they transpire through time: as psychophysical events that arise and cease in consciousness and, by the dynamics of their rise and fall, construct time. The sequence of the three times is therefore secondary, generated in and by the process of conditioned and conditioning dhammas.

23As is the case with the shift between the psychological hierarchy of consciousness and the cosmological hierarchy of beings that organize the dhamma typology, the conceptual shift from the principle of impermanence to the theory of momentariness is a shift in time scales. While the Suttas interpret the three times as referring to past, present and future lives, the Abhidhamma sees them as phases that any conditioned dhamma undergoes each and every moment. Impermanence marks dhammas over a period of time, but is also encapsulated in every single consciousness-moment (Vibh-a 7–8; Sv 991; Vism XIV 191; Collins 1992: 227).


The theory of the consciousness-process

24The temporal analysis of phenomena derived from the commentarial tradition’s theory of momentariness reveals an uninterrupted, flowing continuum of causally connected psychophysical events. These momentary events succeed each other so rapidly that we conceive of the phenomena they constitute as temporally extended. At stake here are these events as they appear in consciousness, and hence it is no coincidence that the commentarial tradition assimilated this analysis of phenomena-in-time-as-constituted-by-consciousness to a highly complex description of the consciousness process (citta-v?thi).

25The theory of the consciousness process is set out in the Abhidhamma commentaries and manuals—mainly in the works of Buddhaghosa, Buddhadatta (5th century), and Anuruddha (10th or 11th century)—although it is based on the description already found in the first and seventh books of the Abhidhammapi?aka, the Dhammasa?ga?i and the Pa??h?na respectively (Cousins 1981; Vism XIV 111–24, XVII 126–45; Dhs-a 82–106 & 267–87; Vibh-a 155–60; Abhidh-s 17–21). This scheme is not separate from the dhamma analysis as outlined above.

Rather, it analyzes mental cognitive awareness as resulting from particular functions in the consciousness process period. These functions are performed by certain consciousness types, cittas (that is, dhammas, of the total number of which 45 are relevant when restricting the account to the ordinary person). The point is that according to this analysis, the specific functions in the consciousness flow occur at particular instants of that continuum—hence the close connection between the theory of the consciousness process and the theory of momentariness. The result is a fairly static account of mental and material phenomena as they arise in consciousness in particular moments. The elaborate theory of the consciousness process accounts for their occurrence over a series of such moments.

26The normal flow of consciousness involves the mind picking up and putting down successive objects by means of successive sets of associated mental factors. Restricting the complex account of the consciousness process to ordinary beings, two types of process are described: five sense-door processes (pañcadv?ra) and mind-door processes (manodv?ra). These may occur in succession, or mind-door processes may occur independently. Five-door processes account for sensory perception as information is directly received from the

senses. Mind-door processes internalize the information received through the senses, but occur without direct perception of one’s sensory environment. If there is no mind activity, as is the case in deep, dreamless sleep, the mind is in a state of rest or in its inactive mode (bhava?ga). Throughout one’s life, the same type of mentality will perform this function of the inactive mind. It can be understood as the natural mode to which the mind reverts and as what defines precisely who one is. The mind switches from its inactive mode to a simple mind-door process when a concept or memory occurs and no attention is directed to the senses. The simplest mind-door process is a succession of the following functions:


Adverting to the object of thought: the duration of this function is one moment;

Impulsion: occurs for up to seven moments and performs the function of the mind’s responding actively to the object with wholesome or unwholesome karma;

Retaining: holding on to the object of the consciousness process for one or two moments. 28The mind switches from its inactive mode to the sense-door process when an object occurs at one of the five sense doors. This process of sensory perception involves a greater number of functions:


Disturbed inactive mind: a function that arises due to the stimulus of a sense object. It lasts for two moments during which sensory contact takes place, i.e., a physical impact of the sense object on the physical matter of the appropriate sense field; Adverting: lasts one moment, during which the mind turns towards the object at the appropriate sense door;


Perceiving: lasts one moment and is the sheer perception of the sense object, with minimal interpretation; Receiving: lasts one moment and performs the intermediary role of enabling transit to and from the sense consciousness; Investigating: lasts one moment and performs the role of establishing the nature of the sense object and of determining the mind’s response to that object that has just been identified;


Impulsion: same as in the mind-door process;

Retaining: same as in the mind-door process. For instance, visual perception involves not only seeing itself, but also a succession of moments of fixing of the visual object in the mind, recognition of its general features, and identification of its nature. In both mind- and door-processes, when the retaining function ceases, the mind reenters its inactive mode (Cousins 1981; Gethin 1994: 17-22). 30Most of the functions that make up the mind- and door-processes are performed by types of resultant consciousness types, i.e., the result of past actively wholesome or unwholesome consciousness. As Gethin notes (1998: 216), this means that the experience of the

sense data presented to the mind is determined by one’s previous actions—it is the result of one’s previous karma and is beyond of one’s immediate control. Whenever one remembers or conceptualizes, sees, hears, smells, tastes, or touch something that is desirable or pleasing, one experiences a result of previous wholesome consciousness. And vice versa with objects that are undesirable or unpleasing and previous unwholesome consciousness. Only in the final stage of the consciousness process, when the mind has chosen to respond actively to its object in some way, actively present unwholesome or wholesome consciousness operates and constitutes karma that will bear future results. The Abhidhamma thus “provides an exact small-scale analysis of the process of dependent arising” (ibid).

31The point I wish to stress here is that the highly technical theory of the consciousness process embodies the Abhidhamma pragmatic concern with psychology and soteriology. The reason is that the systematic account of the consciousness process is not meant to specify what exists per se, but what goes on in one’s consciousness at each and every moment. The higher one progresses along the Buddhist path, the more complex the states of consciousness become, involving more mental factors. Still more significant are the

qualitative differences that characterize one’s mind: for instance, consciousness types that arise while experiencing higher meditation attainments become increasingly refined and may never involve unskillful tendencies or defilements that might potentially occur in ordinary (even wholesome) consciousness. Gethin expresses the concern of the Abhidhamma as follows: “If consciousness is understood to consist of a temporal series of consciousness moments each having an individual object, then when an ordinary being is experiencing wholesome consciousness, what at that moment distinguishes him or her from an arahant?” (1994: 30). The attempt to account for this question underlies the Abhidhamma’s signature doctrine of own-nature.


The doctrine of own-nature

32Throughout the Abhidhamma’s formative period, Buddhist thought underwent a gradual process of institutionalization, schematization and conceptual assimilation, which was accompanied by an increasing interest in establishing the nature of dhammas. Crucial to this development is the concept of own-nature (sabh?va), which plays a major role in the systematization of Abhidhamma thought, is closely related to the consolidation of the dhamma theory, and is regarded as that which gave an impetus to the Abhidhamma’s growing concern with ontology.

33The term sabh?va does not appear in the Suttas and is rare in the Pali Canon in general. It does feature in five canonical or para-canonical texts that are considered later additions to the Canon, although they contain parts that predate the latest works of the Abhidhamma-pi?aka and that are certainly older than the main Pali commentaries. The first text is the Pa?isambhid?magga, which endorses a broad notion of sabh?va as the nature of dhammas, but it is by no means clear that this nature necessarily defines what a dhamma is, or that a dhamma exists by virtue of this nature which it possesses (Pa?is II 177–83). The Buddhava?sa and the

Milindapañha present a somewhat narrower and more technical notion of own-nature by juxtaposing sabh?va with “quality” (rasa) and “characteristic mark” (lakkha?a), thus anticipating the three basic categories of dhamma exegesis in the commentarial tradition (BV II 167; Mil 149, 185, 241). The hermeneutical manuals Pe?akopadesa and Nettippakara?a elaborate on the idea of own-nature as

intrinsic to sets of dhammas, or as the particular nature that defines what a given set of dhammas is: what it means to be this stream of dhammas rather than that (Pe? 104; Nett 78-9). Since sentient experience is seen as an ongoing flow of interlocking streams of consciousness, an attempt is made to analyze this process by defining the particular nature of each such stream. No certain conclusion, however, can be derived from the paracanonical texts about the ontological status of either dhammas or their own-natures.

34This situation changes significantly in the post-canonical, commentarial and subcommentarial literature, in which sabh?va becomes a standard concept extensively used in dhamma exegesis. A recurring idea in the commentaries is thatdhammas are defined by virtue of their sabh?va: “dhammas are so called because they bear their particular natures” (e.g., Dhs-a 39-40; Pa?is-a I 18; Vism-mh? I 347). The commentaries also regularly equate dhammas with their particular natures, using the terms dhamma and sabh?va interchangeably. For

example, the Visuddhimagga proclaims that dhammas mean but particular natures (Vism VIII 246) and the sub-commentary to the Dhammasa?ga?i indicates that there is no other thing called dhamma apart from the particular nature borne by it (Dhs-m? 28). A similar idea is expressed by statements like: “The term sabh?va denotes the mere fact of being a dhamma”, or “There is no such thing called ‘activity’ apart from a dhamma’s particular nature” (Dhs-m? 94; Abhidh-av-p? I 296).

35In the commentaries, then, the term sabh?va acquires a narrower sense than in the earlier, para-canonical texts: rather than a vague nature of clusters of dhamma, it signifies an atemporal category determining what any single dhamma is. Note that it determines what a dhamma is: what it means to be this particular dhamma rather than any other, and not necessarily that a dhamma exists. The concern here is not so much with the ontological status of dhammas—whether their primary existential status as ultimately real

constituents or their temporal existence—but primarily with what makes a dhamma unique. This is manifested in the commentarial assimilation of the concept of own-nature with that of particular characteristic (salakkha?a/ Sanskrit svalak?a?a). “Dhammas”, the commentarial literature states, “are so called because they bear their particular characteristics” (Vibh-a 45; Vibh-m? 35; Pa?is-a I 79; Vism XV 3), and a particular characteristic “is the own-nature that is not held in common by other dhammas” (Vism-mh? II 137).

36The Sanskrit term lak?a?a generally means a mark, or a specific characteristic that distinguishes an indicated object from others. The Logicians use this term in the sense of “definition” of a concept or logical category (Matilal 1985). This notion may well have influenced the Pali commentaries in their use of the term salakkha?a and its identification with sabh?va in the sense of a dhamma’s

particular definition (e.g., Vism VI 19, 35). That a dhamma has an own-nature, then, means that it possesses an essential characteristic that defines it as a certain psychophysical occurrence unique and distinct from any other instance of its type. Inasmuch as sabh?va is identified with salakkha?a, it primarily functions as an epistemological and linguistic determinant of a dhamma qua a particular nameable by a unique verbal description, rather than an ontological determinant of a dhamma as a primary existent. [6]


This is a point on which the Therav?da and the…

37Nevertheless, from the foregoing epistemology the Pali commentaries also draw metaphysical conclusions, specifically with regard to the reality of dhammas. The final units of the Abhidhamma analysis of sentient experience, the dhammas, are reckoned as the ultimate constituents of experience. “There is nothing else, whether a being, or an entity, or a man or a person”, a famous commentary proclaims (Dhs-a 155. See also Dhs-m? 25; Vism-mh? I 347 on Vism VIII 246). While this statement is meant to refute the rival Puggalav?da position of the reality of the person by insisting that there is no being or person apart from dhammas, there emerges the idea that the phenomenal world is, at bottom, a world of dhammas qua individuals: [7]


In using the term “individuals, ” I refer to P. F. Strawson’s… that within the confines of sentient experience there is no other actuality apart from dhammas. And the evidence for the status of each dhamma constituent is its sabh?va. In the context of the theory of momentariness, sabh?va is understood as what underlies a dhamma’s endurance moment and as a point of reference to the two other sub-moments. Before a dhamma arises it does not yet have a sabh?va, and when it ceases its sabh?va dissolves with it. In the endurance moment, though, while possessing its sabh?va, a dhamma arises as a present, ultimate reality, and its sabh?va attests to its actual existence as such (Dhs-a 45; Vism VIII 234, XV 15). One commentarial passage even goes so far as naming this instant “the acquisition of a self” (Vism-mh? I 343).

38In sum, the post-canonical Abhidhamma steps further away from both the Suttas and the canonical Abhidhamma, espousing a naturalistic explanation of dhammas as the fundamental constituents of the phenomenal world. Some may observe ontology creeping into this system, but in the Buddhist context, if the concept of sabh?va has ontological bearing, then this is markedly different from the idea of ontology as the branch of philosophy that is concerned with being and what there is. Here ontology is largely blended with psychology and influenced by the Abhidhamma inquiry into the enlightened mind vs. the ordinary mind. Rather than a comprehensive ontological model, the Abhidhamma lays out the foundations of a metaphysics of mind. The Abhidhamma theory of causation helps better understand this claim.


The theory of causation

39The early Buddhist interest in causation is shaped by a concern for the human condition in sa?s?ra, the round of rebirth, and hence is closely related to the dynamics of the law of karma, which is what fuels this repetitive experience. Broadly speaking, sentient experience is seen as a “mass of karma”, of which any segment arises depending on the origination of certain sequences of coordinated factors. As explained in the introductory chapter of this volume, the relationship between the patterns of these sequences is called dependent origination (pa?iccasamupp?da) and is articulated by the stock twelvefold chain of links leading from ignorance to ageing and death, which symbolize whatever kinds of suffering there are. In the sense that all phenomena arise and cease dependently on

causes and conditions, dependent origination can be understood as the early Buddhist general principle of causation, not in the sense of a law of universal causation, but inasmuch as it is an explanation of the nature and origin of suffering. In light of the Buddha’s ethicization of karma and its recasting from “action” to “intention” (A III 415; Gombrich 1996: 50-6), the early Buddhist notion of causal conditioning is primarily concerned with the workings of physical and mental processes, explaining how they occur in a nonrandom order, without at the same time presupposing an underlying substance that unifies the moments of those occurrences and from which they derive their actuality.

40As the image of the chain suggest, the formula of dependent origination represents a linear succession of processes, whereby each link is a necessary condition for the arising of whichever link is said to follow it. The focus is on knowing which dhamma or dhammas are most essentially related to ageing and death and how these processes occur. An explanation of all the possible relations that may hold among the sum total of conditions and between those conditions and their related processes constitutes a metaphysical account of the world, and this was dispensed with. It was the task of the Abhidhamma to offer such an account in terms of “what things are”. This account is given in the seventh book of the Abhidhamma-pi?aka, the Pa??h?na (literally “conditions”).

41The Pa??h?na meticulously synthesizes dhammas into their multiple conditioning relations. Here the account of the conditioned nature of all phenomena is not arranged according to the twelvefold formula of dependent origination,but according to twenty-four conditional relations (paccaya). The result is a highly complex account of all possible ways in which a phenomenon may function in conditioning the rise of another phenomenon. The twenty-four conditional relations are: 1) root cause; 2) object; 3) predominance; 4)

proximity; 5) contiguity; 6) simultaneity; 7) reciprocity; 8) support; 9) decisive support; 10) pre-existence 11) post-existence; 12) habitual cultivation; 13) karma; 14) fruition; 15) nutriment 16) controlling faculty; 17) jh?na (a relation specific to meditation attainments); 18) path (a relation specific to the stages on the path and their associated dhammas; 19) association; 20) dissociation; 21) presence; 22) absence; 23) disappearance; 24) non-disappearance.

42A detailed discussion of all the conditional relations is beyond the scope of this chapter, but two points relevant for our purposes are worth mentioning here in brief. The first is that the simultaneity condition is a focal axis of the Pa??h?na system. No less than seven other conditions further down the list are, in fact, variations on the categorical relation of simultaneity (these

are #7, 8, 14, 19, 20, 21, and 24). All the seven are types of dependence-in-coexistence, which strongly implies interdependence: in other words, they all instantiate the abstract category of interrelatedness. In the formula of dependent origination, however, the ideas of reciprocal conditioning and interconnectedness are merely latent. This difference between the Sutta and the Abhidhamma notions of causal conditioning is reflected by the shift from the image of a linear chain of the twelve causal links to that of a web or network of causal conditions.

43The second important point concerns the first conditional relation, namely, root cause condition (hetu-paccaya). Outside the Pa??h?na, only two para-canonical texts— the two methodological manuals, Nettippakara?a and Pe?akopadesa of the Khuddaka-nik?ya— uphold the semantic distinction between hetu and paccaya in the sense of “cause” and “condition” respectively. Both texts equate hetu with sabh?va and state that a cause is the very sabh?va of a particular dhamma instant arising in a certain situation, while a condition is

some other dhamma or a group of dhammas that establish this situation once the sabh?va has been obtained (Nett 78-9; Pe? 104). Among a group of necessary conditions for the occurrence of a dhamma, then, there is one that is the root cause of that dhamma’s individuality. The remaining conditions are all necessary, but become relevant only once the primary cause has fulfilled its function. Cause condition is a dhamma’s activity within its own stream in precipitating the next moment of this consciousness stream, and it is this function that defines the dhamma as that particular event.

44We may think of cause condition qua a dhamma’s own-nature as its “horizontal” causality that defines what it means to be a particular dhamma of that kind and what makes it so—though it does not necessarily imply that it is. The remaining twenty-three conditional relations further elaborate on this account by revealing the quality and intensity of operation unique to each dhamma, viz., its capability of “vertical” conditioning by which it facilitates the occurrence of other dhammas outside its consciousness stream. [8]


This interpretation is informed by discussions of the… These conditions locate a dhamma within the web of interrelations by which it is connected with the incessant rise and fall of all other dhammas. It is here that the image of the network model of causal conditioning takes over the earlier image of the causal chain. The relative positioning of each dhamma within this network of vertical causal conditioning is, first and foremost, a means for its individuation. Only in an indirect, subsidiary sense is this network an analysis of causal production.

45What arises here is a metaphysical theory of mental events in terms of sameness of causal conditions. Analogous to the space-time coordinate system that enables one to identify and describe material objects, the network of conditional relations may be seen as a coordinate system that locates within it any given dhamma, implying that to be a dhamma is to be an event that has a place in that web of relations—an idea reminiscent of Donald Davidson’s principle of sameness of causes and effects as a condition of identity of events (2001: 119–20 and 154–61). Two dhamma instances of the same type would fit into the web of causal conditions in exactly the same way, but would then be distinguished as individual instances on the grounds of their unique degrees of causal efficacy.

46This idea, in fact, is well aligned with the early Buddhist soteriological quest for the cessation of suffering. The Pa??h?na shows that dependent origination and the twenty-four conditions are two different methods of analyzing sentient experience. It turns out that dependent origination applies not only to one’s past, present and future lives, but also to each and every single moment of consciousness. [9]


Note that the twelvefold formula of dependent origination has… As the theory of the consciousness process implies, every dhamma, every moment of thought arises in consciousness in accordance with the twelve links of dependent origination, meaning that in every single moment the twelve links arise simultaneously and are all interrelated (Vism IV 78, VIII 39, XIV 190–191, XVII 101ff, XX 22–6 & 97–104; Vibh-a 192; Gethin 1998: 154–5). As Gethin observes, “The list of twenty-four paccayas can be considered by way of two basic concepts. The first concerns those paccayas that illustrate the various relationships that exist simultaneously between dhammas that arise together in a given assemblage or complex at a given moment in time. The second concerns those paccayas that focus on the

relationships that exist between dhammas over a period of time, that is to say, the way in which a dhamma that arises at one moment can be related to a dhamma that arises at another time” (1992: 301). Just as ordinary experience is the result of the interrelated network of conditions encapsulated in every single consciousness moment, so the path factors leading to the cessation of this process are contained in every single consciousness moment that contributes to awakening. Any one of the path factors embraces all the factors, and hence, by the relations of simultaneity and reciprocity, to cultivate any one of the dhammas that contribute to awakening is to develop them all (id: 244–7). The awakening moment is that at which all the path factors arise simultaneously as a unified whole. At this moment the chain of dependent co-origination is demolished in its entirety.


Summary: from process to event metaphysics

47We have already seen that the Buddha analyzes sentient experience from various standpoints (in terms of name-and-form, the five aggregates, the twelve sense spheres, or the eighteen sense elements) as mental and physical processes: as occurrences rather than substances. The same anti-substantialist attitude is shared by the Abhidhamma: it sets out a description of mental processes and their interaction with the physical and the transcendent. Encapsulated in the dhamma theory, the Abhidhamma system is meant to individuate one’s conscious experience according to one’s position on the noble eightfold path, thus distinguishing the ordinary mind

from the awakened mind. Dhammas, then, are not substances: they always prove to be types of consciousness in its broadest sense of a series of particular mental occurrences. The striking difference between the Suttanta and the Abhidhamma worldviews is that the Suttas depict the occurrences that make up sentient experience as ongoing processes or sequences, while the Abhidhamma portrays them as discrete, specific, evanescent events. These are seen as short-lived minds (cittas) related to specific sense objects, accompanied by a number of structures composed of basic mental elements (dhammas), and constantly change in their quality, object, content, and function (Cousins: 1983: 7).

48As occurrences, events and processes alike have a direct relation to time, but any attempt to distinguish between them cannot simply draw on temporal duration. It is not the amount of time they occupy (in fact, there can be long events and short-lived processes), but rather the way in which they occupy time, or their “temporal shape”—e.g., whether they persist through, or occur during, or obtain throughout time—that marks the distinction between events and processes (Steward 1997: 72). The most pertinent questions to be asked about mental and physical processes are of the how type: how such happenings are distributed in time, how they

unfold, how they come about and how they can be ended. By contrast, once events have been analyzed into their sub-phases, they are ordinarily found to be instantaneous. For this reason it does not make sense to ask how they transpire through time. Unlike universals and along with material objects and people, events are regarded as concrete particulars, i.e. occurrences of which the nature and individuality can be determined. Hence a rather more suitable set of questions about events is of the “what” group: what

makes up an event, what its starting and culmination points are, and above all, what it means to be this particular event rather than another. The notion of events as particulars would, in turn, urge one to establish the principles of their categorization into types and the criteria for individuating the innumerable tokens of each type by virtue of their causal origins (Bach 1986: 8–10; Davidson 2001: 181ff; Steward 1997: 98).

49I argue, then, that the history of the Therav?din Abhidhamma reflects a shift in metaphysical foundation and epistemological approach. The transition from the earliest strata of Buddhist teaching to the Abhidhamma consists in replacing a process-based approach to the analysis of sentient experience with an event-based approach. This shift challenged criteria for distinguishing every possible event that may present itself in consciousness and for specifying what makes it the very particular it is. Aiming at this objective, the Abhidhamm developed its dhamma analysis as a categorial theory of individuation of the mental and supplemented this

theory with systematized notions of own-nature, momentariness, and causation. In this sense, the dhamma theory and its accompanying doctrines offer an event-based metaphysics of mind that sets out to answer two primary questions: 1) the intension of the dhammasindividuality, namely, what it means to be this very particular and no other, what the nature of any particular dhamma is; 2) the principle or cause of individuation: what, in the internal constitution of a dhamma, makes it the very particular it is (Gracia 1988: 8ff).

50The canonical Abhidhamma is concerned primarily with the former question. The dhamma analysis as a categorial theory of individuation of the mental is an endeavor that is, at bottom, epistemological. Yet the dhamma theory also intends to ascertain that every psychophysical event is knowable and nameable, and that the words and concepts employed in the systematic discourse that is thus developed uniquely define their corresponding referents. In this respect, the dhamma analysis paves the way for conceptual

realism: a worldview that is based on the notion of truth as consisting in a correspondence between our concepts and statements, on the one hand, and the features of an independent, determinate reality, on the other hand. Conceptual realism does not necessarily have implications for the ontological status of this reality as externally existing. But to espouse such a position is to make a significant move away from the earliest Buddhist teaching, which, as Gombrich has mentioned, presents the Buddha’s view of language as conventional (Gombrich 2009: Ch. 10, esp. pp. 144–55; Ronkin 2005: 244–50).

51The post-canonical Abhidhamma emphasizes the question of the principle of the dhammasindividuality. Seeking the foundations of individuality in the dhammas qua individuals themselves while further systematizing the notions of own-nature and momentariness, the post-canonical Abhidhamma not only attempts to account for the nature of one’s mind, but also to establish the indubitable correlates of thought and speech in reality. A dhamma upholds its individuality and is uniquely defined by its particular nature, which determines its internal structure and mode of operation and which discriminates it from all other eventualities. It is true that in

pursuing this project, the post-canonical Abhidhamma is gradually drawn into espousing a naturalistic explanation of dhammas as the fundamental constituents of the phenomenal world. But inasmuch as this system accommodates ontology, this is primarily a “meta-psychological” ontology rather than a reductionist ontology (Piatigorski 1984: 182). For what is at stake here is the conditions of our thinking about the phenomenal world in terms of dhammas qua psycho-physical events rather than the substrata of psycho-physical events as such. The dhammas are first and foremost the ultimate units of categorization, analysis, and distinction of the consciousness process and, in this sense, of one’s “world”.


Notes

[1] These concerns are captured by the famous undetermined or unanswerable questions: see, for instance, M I 426ff; A V 193ff; D I 187ff; S IV 395. [2]

For a detailed explanation of the early Buddhist interest in the question of how experience and the self are, rather than in what they are, see Hamilton 2000, particularly chapter 5. [3]

The two canonical Abhidhamma/ Abhidharma collections that survive are those of the Therav?dins and the Sarv?stiv?dins (the latter only in Chinese translation.) This chapter refers only to the Therav?din Abhidhamma, hence the Pali spelling. [4]

In fact, such textual structuring dates to the beginning of Buddhist literature: it is an oral textual tradition and was built up around mnemonic lists. The Nik?yas thus contain numerous m?tikas such as the four noble truths, the five aggregates, the six sense faculties, the noble eightfold path, the twelvefold chain of dependent origination, and so forth. [5]

The compound manoviññ??a specifies viññ??a while functioning as the sixth modality of cognitive awareness, since it is a mental awareness that arises in conjunction with its appropriate mental objects. Viññ??a as cognitive awareness occurs in six modes: visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, tactile and mental cognitive awareness, based on the concomitance of their respective sense faculties (the five physical sense organs plus manas) and their appropriate sense objects. A specific form of cognitive awareness arises when an appropriate sensory object enters the field of its respective sense faculty (indriya), impinging on this unimpaired sense faculty, and there is sufficient attention on the part of the mind (e.g., D III 243; M I 111–12 & 190; S II 72–5, IV 32–4 & 66–9). [6]

This is a point on which the Therav?da and the Sarv?stiv?da-Vaibh??ika, the Northern Abhidharma school, differ. In the Sarv?stiv?din framework, svabh?va is an ontological determinant of primary, real existence (dravya). Svalak?a?a, on the other hand, is an epistemological, linguistic determinant of a dharma as that which is discernable, definable, and knowable. The Therav?dins do not seem to hold such a distinction: salakkha?a and sabh?va are used interchangeably as epistemological and linguistic determinants of dhammas: as what renders any given dhamma distinguishable and definable. [7]

In using the term “individuals, ” I refer to P. F. Strawson’s rendering in his book Individuals (1971), where he uses the term in the sense of distinguishable particulars that can be referred to. [8]

This interpretation is informed by discussions of the Sarv?stiv?da theory of causation (Williams 1981). There is reasonable ground for believing that in distinguishing between hetu and paccaya, the Therav?dins were influenced by contemporary Sarv?stiv?din sources (Kalupahana 1975). [9]

Note that the twelvefold formula of dependent origination has traditionally been interpreted as depicting the process that makes up a person as it stretches over three cycles of lives: past ignorance and formations are the sufficient condition of one’s present life (represented by consciousness up to feeling), while this present fruit conditions the set of necessary conditions (craving up to becoming) that will bear fruit in a future cycle of birth, ageing and death.



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