1 reply to this topic

[RobertK]

http://www.buddhismw...4308-Abhidhamma

25 Mar 13, 05:52 #3

Aloka

 

Hi ML,

There appear to be mixed views about the Abhidhamma. I seem to remember reading somewhere that the famous Thai teacher Ajahn Buddhadasa said it should be thrown in to the sea!


Regarding Ajah Chah's comments from ''A still Forest Pool " ....

 

The Chicken or the Egg?

During his first visit to England, Achan Chah spoke to many Buddhist groups. One evening after a talk he received a question from a dignified English lady who had spent many years studying the complex cybernetics of the mind according to the eighty-nine classes of consciousness in the Buddhist abhidharma psychology texts. Would he please explain certain of the more difficult aspects of this system of psychology to her so she could continue her study?

Dharma teaches us to let go. But at first, we naturally cling to the principles of Dharma. The wise person takes these principles and uses them as tools to discover the essence of our life.

Sensing how caught up she was in intellectual concepts rather than benefiting from practice in her own heart, Achaan Chah answered her quite directly,

''You, madam, are like one who keeps hens in her yard," he told her, "and goes around picking up the chicken droppings instead of the eggs."

 

http://www.what-budd....orest_Pool.htm

{C}
and from Ajahn Sumedho's "Gratitude for Luang Po Chah":

 

"What impressed me about Luang Por Chah was his emphasis on teaching the Four Noble Truths. I hadn’t come across this before with other teachers, or perhaps I just hadn’t picked it up – there was always a problem around language because I didn’t speak Thai.

Many of the meditation techniques I learned were based on Abhidhamma teaching, which I found very boring. The last thing I wanted to learn was all that incredibly complex Abhidhamma.

I remember going to an Abhidhamma teacher in Bangkok who gave lectures on it in English; I was never so bored in my life. I thought, “That is not what I want from this religion”.

 

http://www.forestsan....edho&Itemid=25

Aloka

 

[RobertK]

• http://community.dha...-the-Abhidhamma
•  
• 15th-April-2012, 08:11 AM #2
  Ajahn Brahmali

  •  

  

  Sangha Moderator Senior Member  

   

  Dear Abhishek,
  
  If you are interested, it can be useful to study a little bit of Abhidhamma - at the very least you will know first-hand what you are talking about when you are discussing it with others.
  
  I fully agree with with Ajahn Brahm that the Abhidhamma is not the word of the Buddha. The language is very different, both in style and vocabulary. It is very obvious that the suttas and the Abhidhamma were not spoken by the same person. Then there is the enormous discrepancies between the Abhidhammas of the different schools. Whereas the suttas are very similar across the different textual traditions, the Abhidhammas have little in common. This points to a post-sectarian date for their composition (or at least finalization).
  
  There are a number of areas, in my view, where there are discrepancies between the suttas and the Abhidhamma (one of these being the Abhidhamma idea of lokuttarajjhāna). But rather than me giving you a list, it is sufficient to know that the Abhidhamma is not the word of the Buddha. This means that the suttas are primary and that the Abhidhamma at most fills in the picture by giving supplementary information. For too many people the Abhidhamma is primary and they read the suttas through the lens of ideas developed in the Abhidhamma. This often leads one to read ideas into the suttas that were developed a long time after the Buddha. Some of these ideas may be wrong, or at the very least they may distort one's understanding of the sutta material.
  
  With metta.

  Brahmali