What Is The Abhidhamma?

Hello,

And welcome to today's short talk.

In it,

We will be introducing the vital,

Interesting,

And profoundly deep text of the Abhidhamma,

And mention a small amount on its commentary,

The Abhidhammata Sangaha.

I'm Silas Day,

And thank you for joining me today.

The Abhidhamma is an incredibly complex topic and text,

So I hope I do a decent job at this.

Let's give it a shot.

Both of these texts are,

Of course,

Buddhist books for the study and practice of Buddhism.

They are incredibly scholarly,

And generally only looked at by those who are wanting to be or who are already neck deep in the study of the Buddha Dharma itself.

Read by themselves,

The Abhidhammata Sangaha and the Abhidhamma truly hovers at the edge of the arcane,

To even those who are quite familiar with Buddhism,

Meditation,

And manuals of this type.

In many ways,

It is one of the,

If not the most important compendium of Buddhist philosophy.

The main commentary,

The Abhidhammata Sangaha,

Itself is ascribed to one Akarya Anuruddha,

Who was a Buddhist practitioner,

Intellectual,

And teacher that so little is known about that his origin place and exact century are still a bit up in the air.

Yet,

This is a common thing with many great Buddhist writers.

Others include people like Nagarjuna,

Buddhaghosa,

And Shantideva,

All incredibly important in reinforcing certain aspects of the foundation of the Buddhist and meditative philosophy,

But all of whom we only know the smallest threads about.

At the heart of the Abhidhamma is the Abhidhamma Pitaka,

Which is one of the three texts,

Or baskets of wisdom,

Which was generated by the three great Buddhist councils after the death of the Buddha.

The three of them being the Vinaya Pitaka,

Which is a book on discipline for monastics,

The Sutta Pitaka,

Which is the collection of the Buddhist discourses over his life,

And which I'm sure you've heard sections of,

And the Abhidhamma Pitaka,

Which was considered the more esoteric and higher teaching of the Buddha,

Which is said to have been given and commented on later in his life,

Though this is not exactly true.

Yet,

As compared to the two other baskets of knowledge,

The Abhidhamma sticks out,

Where the first two lay the foundation for the personal discipline and path necessary for walking the path to awakening.

The Abhidhamma presents to us a highly abstract,

Intellectual,

And again at times almost arcane systemization of the doctrine,

Its micro-phenomena of meditation,

And level of technical detail which the other two don't really come close to.

Let me say again.

While the Sutta Pitaka may be stories to help people learn the message of the Buddha,

And the Vinaya Pitaka lay out a good ground of ethics to work from,

The Abhidhamma is a treatise in which the principles of the doctrine have been gone over with a fine-tooth comb again and again,

Gone at great length to define and organized for the use in practice with incredible rigorous consistency.

So much rigorous consistency that if you haven't been studying it for a lifetime,

You would never know that it does in fact have some inconsistencies in it,

Yet on this point I kind of digress and will leave it to proper Abhidhamma scholars to explain.

And yet,

And yet,

At first glance the Abhidhamma,

Seen with untrained eyes,

Appears to be a mere overdone scholastic exercise in defining and manipulating a tediously repetitive doctrine of interior examinations and qualities.

The Abhidhamma itself is made up of seven parts,

All of which have their own fancy Pali names that tell you what they are about,

But I won't confuse or trouble you with them here.

Regardless of how the Abhidhamma may be seen by untrained eyes,

It has within it the key to unlocking some of the most profound states of consciousness,

Levels of understanding,

And examination of the Buddha Dharma that there is.

Which is why in so many countries of Buddhist origin it is so revered,

And why it can be such a hard egg to crack by those with no background in the vocabulary and study of Buddhist teachings.

Through much study and reflection,

Which at time may take years due to its size and qualitative attention to detail,

One can come to know it and feel it in their bones what the Abhidhamma is communicating.

When the Abhidhamma is approached in this scholarly yet practice-oriented manner with vigor and a spirit willing to be humble about one's shortcomings,

One finds that the Abhidhamma is attempting nothing less than to articulate and teach a comprehensive vision of the totality of experienced reality,

And at all points and places,

Under all conditions and at all times.

An understanding which the Abhidhamma marks with extensive range,

Depth,

Systematic completeness,

And analytic precision.

The Abhidhamma,

In many ways,

Both in my own studies and those who have looked at it along with me or taught me about it,

Is no less than the full long-body comprehension of the wisdom in the Buddha Dharma.

Which is a lot.

What the Abhidhamma articulates and tries its hardest to teach,

Which is difficult to do without a teacher,

Is at the same time a philosophy,

A science of mind,

A psychology,

An ethic,

And an examination of the vast universe here and now wrapped within the frame and goal of total liberation.

At times,

The Abhidhamma is described as a philosophy because it proposes an ontology of the nature of reality.

This philosophy is called the Dharma or Dhamma theory,

I mean,

Surprise,

Surprise,

Depending on if you prefer your Sanskrit or Pali.

What the Abhidhamma proposes through the Dharma theory is that ultimate reality consists of a multiplicity of elementary constituents,

Which are referred to as Dharmas.

These Dharmas aren't things in and of themselves,

But are the fundamental components of actuality.

Within these Dharmas there are only two categories,

The unconditioned Dharmas,

Which the Abhidhamma states is only nirvana,

And conditioned Dharmas,

Which is basically the rest of the process of experience itself.

Not our experience of itself,

But the process of experience itself.

According to the Abhidhamma and Dharma theory here,

The familiar world of substantial objects and enduring universality from one moment to the next is a conceptual construction of the mind built from the raw data of those Dharmas.

That which we understand to be our everyday frame of reference is just the objective Dharmic generation of a universe using our minds as a node to project a subjective experience based on the foundational stratum of conditioned Dharmas.

According to the Abhidhamma,

It is those foundational Dharmas which possess ultimate reality as it actually is,

Beyond any subjective reference.

That subjective reference generated by those Dharmas are the things,

In a roundabout way,

We are trying to see directly with wisdom,

Insight,

And understanding,

So that we can transcend the conditioned Dharmas into that unconditioned Dharma of nirvana.

Though,

This is just my thought,

And if any Abhidhamma scholars out there disagree,

I would be happy to update my understanding of this here.

However,

The goal of the Abhidhamma is not to present this philosophy.

The presentation of it is almost a byproduct of its main goal,

Which is the systemization of the Buddhist doctrine.

It exhaustively classifies Dharmas based on various aspects,

Relatedness,

And place within the structure of its ontological ultimacy.

The Abhidhamma's attempt to comprehend and systemize the nature of reality,

However,

Differs from that of a Western attempt by its point of view.

It does not take the stance of a neutral observer like we try to do in science.

This is because it is attempting to comprehend and systematize conscious reality and the nature of experience,

Not the material world of matter and energy.

It acts as an elaborate analysis of the mind as it presents itself in introspective meditation,

Classifying consciousness into various types and forms depending on the factors and functions correlating them based on their objects,

Experience,

And physiological basis.

As you can tell,

They spared no effort in any sense.

Where detail could be found,

They added it.

They were as thorough as they could possibly be.

It astounds me when I pick it up.

Sometimes I can only read a page at a time without being either entirely blown away or having to read it again and again to try and get at what they're trying to teach within the Abhidhamma.

It's a complex book.

That's really what I'm trying to get across here.

And yet,

All of this is only scratching the surface.

I could go on for another 20 hours on the Abhidhamma,

But at some point,

You begin to sound rather odd to those listening,

And unless trained for years,

Eventually you put your foot in your mouth and teach something incredibly wrong.

So I think I'll stop here for now.

If you're interested in studying the Abhidhamma,

I highly recommend the online courses,

Which are free and given by Bhikkhu Bodhi,

Which I believe can be found on his website and across YouTube.

As well,

I recommend Bhikkhu Bodhi's copy of A Comprehensive Manual of Abhidhamma,

Which goes into great detail on all seven of its parts.

If you're a veteran or new student of the Dharma,

I highly recommend it.

I have gone through it several times and still find vast amounts which I seem to either at first skim over or miss entirely.

So again,

I'm Silas Day,

And if you enjoyed this content,

Please leave a review or check out my courses and content here on Insight Timer and on my website.

If you have any questions,

Ask them in your review and I will try my best to answer them.

Thank you and have a wonderful day.