Abhidhamma Papers

A day may pass and looking back over it we may remember that we were upset by a friend's thoughtless comment just before lunch, had a riotous laughing session just after, and the rest of the time seemed to be an indifferent blur.

In abhidhamma terms, what has actually happened is that many thousands of states of consciousness have arisen and fallen away in one continuous stream. Abhidhamma is about recognizing these states in the present moment so that we may penetrate more deeply into that present.

We can classify each moment of consciousness into active or passive and then further subdivide active and passive into skilful and unskilful.

                              CONSCIOUSNESS
                             /              \
                        ACTIVE           PASSIVE
                        /    \           /      \
                   SKILFUL  UNSKILFUL  SKILFUL  UNSKILFUL

Passively viewing the wares on display in a bookshop, we suddenly reach out for a book which has aroused our interest. Or, standing in front of the fire, passively aware of the pleasant bodily feeling, we suddenly leap back as our trousers begin to burn.

The latter example is perhaps a skilful action, but in abhidhamma it is not necessarily a skilful state of consciousness. The terms 'skilful' and 'unskilful' are purely relative. To develop the conditions for the arising of insight or the first meditation, skilful states are essential. Basically, they are states of consciousness which bring about the lessening of disturbances in the mind, making the mind clearer and lighter. Unskilful states, on the other hand, tend to disturb the mind, exciting it, depressing it or dulling it, and quite often they are accompanied by unpleasant mental feeling. Certainly if active unpleasant feeling is experienced then there is an unskilful state of consciousness present, whereas pleasant or neutral feeling can indicate either skilful or unskilful consciousness is present.

However, in the skilful state certain mental factors are prevalent which make the experience quite different;there is a lightness and clarity of mind which does not occur in unskilful states.

Objects are perpetually being presented to us and we act, or rather react, to them. The way we react is conditioned by the numerous previous times we have reacted to the same stimuli. Our habits are self-perpetuating and are manifest as the mental factors which accompany each state of consciousness.

If we watch carefully then we can see these habits, and analyse them into their active and passive sides. So the next time someone insults us, and we know we are going to react violently, then we have a chance to do something different - a slim chance, but a chance nonetheless. At the moment before we react we have an element of choice and we can break the cycle there. The passive stimulation need not lead to its usual conclusion.

This is of course assuming that our actions are unskilful and we really want to break the cycle. Unfortunately for the most part our actions are unskilful, as we are constantly seeking stimulation, embracing some things, rejecting others. Our lives can be dominated by unskilful states ofconsciousness. This is most obvious to us after some distressing emotional experience; we feel depressed perhaps for several hours, several days, or longer. This is a gross manifestation of what in actual fact is happening most of the time. The feeling may be less intense, but our normal consciousness flows on from one unskilful state to the next.

To break these unskilful cycles is not an easy matter, and as we observe them the slim chance we have of breaking them may seem to become even slimmer. This is not a cause for despair but must necessarily be the case until our observation becomes clear enough to occasionally stop the process.

So far we have analysed the consciousness process into two parts, active and passive, with a point of decision somewhere in the middle. But if we observe very carefully the passive side of the process then we will see that the matter is not so simple as an object suddenly presenting itself to one of our senses and our reacting to it. Our initial reaction is very important; the actual way we perceive an object will be influential in our later determining what action to take towards it. As soon as we see something we attach to it a vast complex of associations. Can we see 'w' without mentally saying 'double you'? Basically we perceive only colours, sounds, tastes, smells and touch, but to make this mass of stimuli intelligible we have developed concepts through which the mind knows the world. Concepts are necessary to function in the world, but we should know that they are constructs, and as such not 'real'. They are a complex of associations and feelings learnt over the years. The way we have constructed these concepts is the way we react to the world. Our choices have already been made in the way in which we built up our concepts. It's too late to refuse when we see a 'delicious desirable gateau'; the yearning for that object is already present in our initial perception of it.

The memory of these concepts is stored in the mental factor 'recognition' which arises in every state of consciousness. But the crucial mental factor from a practical standpoint is 'attention'.

A possible analogy would be the situation where we are in a strange room in the dark. The room is new to us and there is just enough moonlight to see vague shapes. A burglar will interpret the shapes One way; we, as privileged guests, will interpret them in a different way. The fundamental set of attitudes is dissimilar and this underlies the different perceptions. On a more momentary scale, we have a paraUel in the functioning of attention as the moulder of perception. Attention directs the mind towards the object. If it does so skilfully then a skilful state of consciousness will follow. If it does so unskilfully an unskilful state will follow. The skilfulness in this case is marked by a degree of non-involvement. The burglar in our example was very involved; his attention wanted to see jewellery and silver, and he did not want to see people, especially police. His perception of objects in the room would have been correspondingly distorted. A less involved observer would see the objects more clearly for what they were. To develop an uninvolved attention is to refrain from immediately grasping objects as desirable or undesirable. The practice of 'bare attention' is often referred to in Buddhist teachings and here we can see a little of the abhidhamma rationale behind it.

Sometimes in a crowd we may think we recognize an old acquaintance but as the figure comes closer we realise we were mistaken. If we had not wanted to meet this person then we would have tightened up and then breathed a sigh of relief in a split second. The attention was unskilful.

Perhaps in a similar fashion we mistake the 'reality' of the world about us, reacting unnecessarily to 'realities' which are not much more than figments of our imagination.

Abhidhamma can give some pointers, provide a skeleton which we must flesh out. with our own experiences. We should pay close attention to the objects of our senses and our reactions to them for this constitutes our view of the world, and it is the attachment to this view which prevents our changing. The attachment arises out of ignorance or murkiness, and it is our attention that is murky. It is so murky that it causes us to do things again and again which bring ourselves and others suffering. Abhidhamma may help clear that murkiness.

Rod

Discussion: The value of studying abhidhamma

There was also much discussion about the role of the mental factor 'recognition' (sanna) in our perception of objects. Paragraph twelve outlines according to abhidhamma the process of perception through the senses, which involves only colours, sounds, tastes, smells and touch. Thus in the case of a visual impression, we do not perceive 'cup' but only a particular colour and form. The 'cup' is not a visual impression but a concept (pannatti) experienced by way of the mind rather than the eyes. Sanna is said to be of crucial importance in this progression from visual impression to experience of a concept. Sanna is said to 'label' visual impressions so that they can be recognised later on. In other words, when we 'see' a cup, memory is also involved; our mind searches through past visual impressions which have been labelled by sanna. Presumably it is in childhood that we learn to establish links between particular visual impressions and concepts, and so create our world. But if each time we perceive a cup an association is made between sense-impressions and concepts, is there then some kind of store of memories and concepts on which the mind draws? Could sanna be the 'store' as well as the agent which identifies and recognizes? Perhaps part of the difficulty in this arises from the way we usually think of the mind - as something 'private', 'inside' us, with a kind of door, the senses, opening to the outside world. But perhaps we can also think of there being a door which opens inwards as well, to a mental world in which there are many kinds of memory and concept. If it is seen in this light then it is not necessary to regard memories and concepts as being 'stored' when we are not using them - just as we do not think of visual impressions as waiting to be used while our eyes are closed.

From this it is possible to see the general importance of sanna in Abhidhamma. Abhidhamma is concerned with things as they really are. The obvious implication is that usually we do not see things as they really are. So it is necessary to examine the role of sanna in the creation of our 'unreal' perceptions. We have all been educated to create the world using a generally agreed jigsaw of concepts. This is obviously necessary for any kind of participation in life, but it also seems that we forget that it is a jigsaw we have created, and this distorts our perceptions and the actions based on them.

The relation between attention and skilful or unskilful consciousness (paragraph fifteen) was also discussed. The term used in the texts for skilful attention is yoniso manasikara, which may also be translated as 'appropriate attention'. This involves a subtle change of emphasis, as the importance then lies not only in the manner of attention, but also in its object. If attention is paid to unskilful matters, then unskilful consciousness is more likely to arise; if to skilful objects, then skilful consciousness will be more likely. This key word, attention, then underlines an important aspect of the use of the terms kusala and akusala in abhidhamma, as it indicates that they are neutral in nature, without the moralistic overtones sometimes given them by Westerners.