Abhidhamma Papers

Essay: Abhidhamma and four kinds of realities

The word 'abhidhamma' may be translated as 'further teaching'. The texts embodying the abhidhamma form one of the three collections into which the earliest body of Buddhist scriptures is divided. The other two collections are the collection of discourses, containing the talks and sermons given by the Buddha; and the collection of the discipline, comprising the rules which govern the way of life of Buddhist monks and nuns.

The abhidhamma is a 'further teaching' in several senses. Its teachings go further than the discourses in being more analytical, and are best understood once some feeling for the suttas has been established. Moreover, the abhidhamma deals with truths which, although they do not contradict our everyday experience, cannot be fully expressed in terms of everyday language. Accordingly, certain new concepts and habits of thought and observation are needed, to attain a degree of precision and clarity that goes beyond anything required for the ordinary purposes of our habitual speaking and thinking.

The purpose of abhidhamma is to enable us to reach a deeper understanding and a clearer awareness of ourselves and the world. Rightly approached, in other words, it is conducive to mindfulness and wisdom, which are in turn the means by which we and others may reach the end of suffering.

For this purpose abhidhamma offers an analytical method through which all our experience may be examined and understood. It follows that the study of abhidhamma cannot be fruitful unless it is combined with observation of our own immediate experience, whatever that may be. Just as abhidhamma will enable us to understand experience, so experience will help us to understand abhidhamma, and the two kinds of learning should develop together.

The subject matter of abhidhamma consists of four kinds of realities. These are:

Consciousness
Mental factors
Matter
Nibbana

Each of these terms requires some comment, and the first three need some re-definition, for the English words must take on slightly new senses if they are to be useful in the context of abhidhamma.

Consciousness is that in all our experience which watches, which knows. It might also be called 'mind', if mind is taken to mean not a permanent entity, or a faculty of the individual, but the quality of living awareness in whose field all that we know takes place.
Consciousness is impermanent: no form of consciousness lasts very long (even casual observation shows, for example, that our 'states of mind' change frequently, that we cannot concentrate on one thing indefinitely, that wakefulness tends to alternate with sleep, and so on) and closer analysis reveals that consciousness arises and ceases and arises again a very large number of times each second.
At each such arising, the consciousness which comes into being has certain qualities, and is directed to some object. Accordingly many different kinds of consciousness may be distinguished. The description of the kinds of consciousness occupies an important place in the abhidhamma.
Mental factors apply a consciousness to its object. They are not the same as consciousness, but every consciousness is accompanied by some of them and they arise and cease with it. For this reason mental factors are also sometimes called 'concomitants of consciousness' .
The mental factors are the basis of our commonsense understanding that different kinds of consciousness 'feel' different. When we recognize in ourselves pleasant or unpleasant states of mind, dull or alert ones, generous or malicious ones, we are noticing some of the mental factors that are present.
The abhidhamma lists and describes the range of mental factors we may experience and explains which kinds of consciousness they accompany.
Matter is that which has form, that which, through the senses, becomes an object of consciousness. Without consciousness matter cannot be experienced; without matter consciousness cannot be experienced. When they exist, they exist together.
The abhidhamma gives an analysis of the nature of matter and its relationship to our senses, of how it comes into being and how it ceases.
Nibbana is the end of suffering. Beyond all worlds, beyond existence and non-existence, it cannot be described. The Buddha, however, has called it the supreme happiness and it is the goal towards which all Buddhist teaching and practice strives. It is the only one of the four basic realities which is not subject to impermanence.

The abhidhamma teaches that these four fundamental realities, consciousness, mental factors, matter and nibbana, comprise all that can be, all that we can conceive or possibly could conceive. This may seem an extravagant claim, and indeed it should be tested and tested again more closely as the study of abhidhamma progresses.

The full meaning of these technical terms can only become fully clear as more of the abhidhamma's theory is examined and given meaning by relating it to life.

Grevel

Discussion: Abhidhamma and four kinds of realities

This essay attempted to examine some of the most basic concepts of abhidhamma, seeking to define them without using Pali terms, with the exceptions of the words nibbana and abhidhamma. Areas of difficulty soon emerged. Rupa, for instance, posed particular problems. The disadvantage of translating it as 'matter' is that this term has, in the tradition of Western thought, certain connotations of naive materialism, in which everything apart from matter is seen as some kind of by-product. This is not true of rupa.

'Form' seemed in some ways closer to rupa as it implies some kind of relationship with a perceiver. In other respects, though, this is unsatisfactory as a translation as, firstly, it tends to be associated in popular usage with 'shape', and, secondly, it is usually a visual term, not applicable to objects of the other senses of hearing, smell, taste and touch.

There was also discussion about whether 'further teaching' is a suitable translation for abhidhamma (paragraph one, line one). Abhi, in Pali, means 'higher' or 'further' and abhidhamma is sometimes called 'deep dhamma', as it penetrates right into the nature of things. There are various translations for dhamma, including 'truth' and 'teaching'. The latter is not really meant in this context so much as the former. In fact, it is arguable if dhamma ever means 'teaching' in the sense of imparting knowledge; it is rather a living expression of truth in words or experience. The earliest occurrence of the term abhidhamma is in the suttas, when a distinction is drawn between abhivinaya,'further training', and abhidhamma,'further teaching'. It is usually supposed, however, that the term here has not yet acquired its technical sense.

There was considerable discussion about matter or rupa, perhaps indicating that it was a topic of abhidhamma about which most people felt hazy. The point was taken that 'without consciousness, matter cannot be experienced', but what does this mean in practice? For many kinds of beings, the converse is also true, that 'without matter, consciousness cannot be experienced'. Abhidhamma also states that there is a world in which consciousness exists without any matter at all (the arupa loka), so the relationship between consciousness and matter is not a simple one.

The texts also state that there are three defining characteristics of matter:

that which changes,
that which suffers disintegration,
that which suffers impact.

The first of these raises the question of the way in which the changeability of matter is different from that of consciousness. Perhaps the difference is that matter has a longer life-span than consciousness, and so it undergoes a more obviously definable process of change during that life-span.

With regard to the third characteristic, it is said that one state of consciousness cannot make impact with another, while one unit of matter can make impact with another. No doubt this is because mind is not spatial in nature whereas matter is. In fact space is a label for the arrangement of units of matter.

In the essay, it is stated that nibbana is not suffering and neither is it subject to impermanence. The question arises from this, does the third mark of existence, no-self, apply to nibbana? There has been much controversy about this in Buddhist tradition. In one view nibbana is not the same as the five aggregates, it is not part of the aggregates, they are not part of it and it is not in the relationship of owner to the aggregates; it is therefore considered not self. In another view, nibbana transcends the categories of self and no self.