How to use this course

This course is about the Abhidhamma (the higher teaching), the part of the Buddha’s teaching that explains what a person really is: not a lasting someone, but moments of mind and matter arising and falling away, one after another. It has twelve lessons. Each lesson explains one part of the Abhidhamma in plain words, and most lessons also tell a true story from the ancient texts.

Pali words. The Buddha’s teaching was written down in a language called Pali. You will meet Pali words all through this course. Every time one appears, its English meaning sits right next to it in brackets, like this: citta (consciousness), rūpa (matter). You never have to remember a Pali word to understand the page. But if you do remember a few, you will be able to read the ancient texts one day.

Saying the words. A line over a letter makes it long: ā sounds like the “a” in “father”, ī like the “ee” in “see”, ū like the “oo” in “moon”. A dot under a letter (ṭ, ḍ, ṇ) means you curl your tongue back a little. ñ sounds like the “ny” in “canyon”. ṃ sounds like “ng”. So paññā is said “pan-nyaa” and saṅkhāra is said “sang-khaa-ra”.

Numbers. The Abhidhamma counts things: 89 kinds of citta (consciousness), 52 cetasika (mental factors), 28 kinds of rūpa (matter), 31 planes of existence. Nobody has to learn the numbers by heart. They are there to show that the Abhidhamma leaves nothing vague.

Quizzes. After every two lessons there is a short quiz.

Where it comes from. The course follows a small book, An Introduction to the Abhidhamma, printed for free distribution by the Dhamma Study Group in Bangkok in 1980. It has two essays: Abhidhamma Notes by Jill Jordan and Richard Giles, which Lessons 1 to 10 follow, and Abhidhamma and Practice by Nina van Gorkom, which Lessons 11 and 12 follow. At the back the book has an appendix listing all the paramattha dhamma (absolute realities), and the lists in Lessons 3, 4 and 5 come from it. The stories of how the Abhidhamma was taught and handed down come from the ancient commentaries and chronicles: the Atthasālinī (The Expositor), the Dhammapada commentary and the Mahāvaṃsa (the Great Chronicle of Ceylon). A sentence in quotation marks is a quotation from the book or from the ancient texts in translation.

Introduction: what is the Abhidhamma?

“Better than a thousand useless words, is one useful word hearing which, one attains peace.”
Dhammapada 100, as quoted at the front of the book this course follows.

The word. Abhidhamma is a word in Pali, the language in which the teachings of the Buddha were recorded and passed down to the present day. It is made of two parts. Abhi means “higher” or “greater”. Dhamma means “reality” or “truth”; the book says it “can be loosely translated as to mean ‘everything which is real’”. So Abhidhamma means “the higher truth” or “the higher teaching”.

The three baskets. The collected teachings of the Buddha in Pali are called the Tipiṭaka (the Three Baskets). The Abhidhamma is the third basket.

1. The Vinaya Piṭaka (the Basket of Discipline): the rules for the monks and nuns of the Saṅgha (the order).
2. The Sutta Piṭaka (the Basket of Discourses): the discourses, stories and verses given by the Buddha and his disciples.
3. The Abhidhamma Piṭaka (the Basket of the Higher Teaching): the book calls it “the philosophical and analytical summation of the teachings”. In plainer words, it takes everything apart and names every piece.

The seven books. The Abhidhamma is a collection of seven books.

The seventh, the Paṭṭhāna (the book of conditions), is the largest and the most important Abhidhamma work.

No persons, no places, no things. Here is the strangest and most important thing about the Abhidhamma. Its books “analyse in minute detail the mental states and material states that comprise what we call our life and what we call the world”. But in all that detail there is no mention of persons, places or objects. Why not? Because, the book says, “they do not exist in the ultimate sense”. A name like “Anna” or “Bangkok” or “table” is a label, useful for pointing things out and for talking. What really exists is only two sorts of thing: nāma (mind, that which experiences) and rūpa (matter, that which does not experience). What is called a person, a place or a thing is really “different types of mental and material phenomena occurring one after another with extreme rapidity and giving the appearance of a coherent and lasting whole”.

The chariot. The ancient teachers explained this with a chariot. The book quotes the Visuddhimagga (the Path of Purity), written by the great commentator Buddhaghosa:

“Just as the word ‘chariot’ is but a mode of expression for axle, wheels, chariot-body, pole and other constituent members, placed in a certain relation to each other, but when we come to examine the members one by one, we discover that in the absolute sense there is no chariot. And just as the word ‘house’ is but a mode of expression for wood and other constituents of a house, surrounding space in a certain relation, but in the absolute sense there is no house. And just as the word ‘fist’ is but a mode of expression for the fingers, the thumb, etc., in a certain relation, but when we come to examine the parts one by one we discover that in the absolute sense there is no fist; in exactly the same way the words ‘living being’ and ‘ego’ are but a mode of expression for the presence of the five attachment groups but when we come to examine the elements of being one by one, we discover that in the absolute sense there is no living being there to form a basis for such figments as ‘I am’ or ‘I’; in other words that in the absolute sense there is only mentality and materiality (nama and rupa).”

The chariot picture is older than Buddhaghosa. In the Saṃyutta Nikāya (the Grouped Discourses) a nun called Vajirā is asked by Māra, the tempter, who made “this sentient being”. She answers in verse:

“This is just a pile of conditions,
you won’t find a sentient being here.
When the parts are assembled
we use the word ‘chariot’.
So too, when the aggregates are present
‘sentient being’ is the convention we use.”

Moments. The preface to the book puts the same thing another way. “It is made clear that life exists as moments only. The past moments have gone, they cannot be made to come back. The future has not yet come, so it does not yet exist. The present moment is now and is all that really exists.” The Abhidhamma shows that the moment of seeing is different from the moment of hearing, that hearing is different from thinking about what is heard, that tasting is not the same moment as smelling, “that even the taste is not the same as the tasting”. Two moments following one another are never the same.

Good and bad. The Abhidhamma also sorts all moments of consciousness into four kinds: kusala (good) moments, akusala (bad) moments, moments that are the direct result of past causes, and neutral moments that produce no result. The book says that through this sorting “one establishes also a moral and harmonious way to live so as to benefit oneself and others in the course of life”. And in the end, “through Abhidhamma one comes to understand reality as it is so that ignorance of the true nature of reality can be eliminated forever and there is no more cause for going on.”

What the lessons cover. Lesson 1 tells how the Abhidhamma was taught and handed down. Lesson 2 explains the two kinds of reality, nāma (mind) and rūpa (matter), and the four paramattha dhamma (absolute realities). Lessons 3, 4 and 5 take the three conditioned realities one by one: citta (consciousness), cetasika (mental factors) and rūpa (matter). Lesson 6 is about kamma (deeds) and vipāka (result). Lesson 7 is about birth and death and the 31 planes of existence. Lesson 8 is about the four stages of enlightenment. Lesson 9 is about dependent origination, the Four Noble Truths and the three marks of all things. Lesson 10 asks what is happening right now. Lessons 11 and 12 follow the second essay in the book, on what the Abhidhamma has to do with practice.

Lesson 1: how the Abhidhamma came down to us

Taught in heaven. The book says that the teachings of the Abhidhamma “were first taught to the Buddha’s mother and residents of some of the heavenly realms during a period of three months in the seventh year after the Buddha’s enlightenment”. The ancient commentary on the first book of the Abhidhamma, the Atthasālinī (The Expositor), tells the story in full.

The Buddha’s mother, Queen Māyā, had died seven days after he was born. She was reborn as a deva (heavenly being) in the heaven called Tusita (the heaven of the contented). In the seventh year after his enlightenment the Buddha went up to Tāvatiṃsa (the heaven of the Thirty-three), the heaven ruled by Sakka (the king of the heavenly beings). He sat on Sakka’s stone seat, the Paṇḍukambala (the pale red stone), at the foot of the great Pāricchattaka (coral) tree. The devas (heavenly beings) of ten thousand world systems came to listen, and his mother came down from Tusita (the heaven of the contented) to sit at their head. There, for the three months of the rainy season, day and night without a break, the Buddha taught the Abhidhamma.

The created Buddha. A human body cannot go three months without food. So each day, the commentary says, the Buddha created an image of himself, a nimmita (created) Buddha, which went on teaching exactly as he would, while he himself went down to the lake Anotatta in the Himalayas to wash, and to the northern land of Uttarakuru for alms. He ate on the bank of the lake. And there, every day, his chief disciple Sāriputta came to wait on him, and the Buddha told him the method of what had been taught in heaven that day: “so much has been taught”.

Sāriputta’s five hundred pupils. Sāriputta went back and taught it to his five hundred pupils, “neither too briefly nor too elaborately”. The commentary has a story about those five hundred monks. Long before, in the time of the Buddha Kassapa, they had been bats, hanging in a cave where two learned monks used to recite the Abhidhamma. The bats could not understand a word, but they were drawn to the pleasant sound of the voices, and they died with that sound in mind. For that they were reborn as devas (heavenly beings), and in the time of our Buddha as human beings, who became monks under Sāriputta. The book says: “Sariputta in turn taught the Abhidhamma to the monks under his instruction, whose role it was to memorise and master it. In this way the seven books of the Abhidhamma have come down to us intact.”

The descent from heaven. When the three months were over, the Buddha came down to the human world at the city of Saṅkassa. The Dhammapada commentary tells that Sakka had three staircases made from the top of Mount Sineru, the mountain at the centre of the world, down to the city gate: one of gold for the devas (heavenly beings), one of silver for the Brahmās (the highest heavenly beings), and one of jewels in the middle for the Buddha. As he stood at the top, all the worlds were opened, so that the beings in hell could see up to the highest heaven, and the heavenly beings could see down to hell. The great crowd that saw this, the commentary says, all wished to become Buddhas themselves. The anniversary of that day, the full moon at the end of the rainy season, is still kept in Buddhist countries.

Why heaven? The commentary gives a reason. A deva (heavenly being) can sit for three months without needing to eat or sleep. The Abhidhamma is long, and it has to be taught without a break, because its sections depend on one another. Only in heaven was there an audience that could hear the whole of it at one sitting.

The First Council. Three months after the Buddha passed away, five hundred arahants (fully enlightened disciples) met at Rājagaha, led by the Elder Mahākassapa. They recited the whole teaching together so that it would be remembered exactly. The Elder Upāli recited the Vinaya (the discipline) and the Elder Ānanda the Suttas (the discourses). The Atthasālinī (The Expositor) says the Abhidhamma was recited at that same council. This is what the ancient texts mean by a saṅgīti (a council): a chanting together, not a debate.

Carried in memory. For a long time nothing was written down. The book says the entire Pali canon “had been committed to memory in verse form by groups of monks”. Each group was responsible for one part. There were bhāṇakas (reciters) of the Dīgha Nikāya (the Long Discourses), reciters of the Majjhima Nikāya (the Middle Length Discourses), and so on. A boy who became a novice would learn his part from his teacher word by word, and would teach it to his own pupils when he was old. This is how a text can travel for centuries without a single book.

The Second and Third Councils. A hundred years after the Buddha, seven hundred arahants (fully enlightened disciples) met at Vesālī to settle questions about the discipline, and recited the teaching again. Then, in the reign of the great King Asoka, who ruled nearly the whole of India, a thousand arahants (fully enlightened disciples) met at the capital, Pāṭaliputta, under the Elder Moggaliputta Tissa. At that council the Elder set out the fifth book of the Abhidhamma, the Kathāvatthu (Points of Controversy), answering wrong views that had crept in among the monks. The ancient texts say he followed an outline, a mātikā (a table of headings), that the Buddha himself had laid down for the purpose, foreseeing that it would be needed.

Mahinda goes to Sri Lanka. After the Third Council, King Asoka’s son, the Elder Mahinda, was sent to the island of Sri Lanka (Ceylon). The Mahāvaṃsa (the Great Chronicle of Ceylon) tells how he arrived. The king of the island, Devānampiyatissa, had gone hunting with forty thousand men on the Missaka mountain. A deva (heavenly being), wanting the king to meet the monks, took the form of a stag and let itself be seen browsing in a thicket. The king chased it up the mountain, and the stag led him straight to the Elder, who was waiting there with his companions. “Come hither, Tissa,” said the Elder. The king was alarmed that a stranger called him by name. The Elder said: “Samanas are we, O great king, disciples of the King of Truth. From compassion toward thee are we come hither from Jambudipa.”

Before he taught, Mahinda wanted to know whether the king was quick enough to follow. So he asked him about a mango tree standing nearby.

“What name does this tree bear, O king?”
“This tree is called a mango.”
“Is there yet another mango beside this?”
“There are many mango-trees.”
“And are there yet other trees besides this mango and the other mangoes?”
“There are many trees, sir; but those are trees that are not mangoes.”
“And are there, beside the other mangoes and those trees which are not mangoes, yet other trees?”
“There is this mango-tree, sir.”
“Thou hast a shrewd wit, O ruler of men!”

Then he asked the same kind of question about the king’s relatives, and the king answered just as well. “When he had known that he was a keen-witted man,” the chronicle says, “the wise thera preached to the monarch” a discourse of the Buddha, the Cūḷahatthipadopama Sutta (the Shorter Discourse on the Simile of the Elephant’s Footprint). The king and his people took the teaching to heart, and from that time Sri Lanka became the home of the Tipiṭaka (the Three Baskets). Mahinda brought the Abhidhamma with the rest, and the commentaries too, which were kept in the language of the island.

Written down. More than four hundred years after the Buddha, in the reign of King Vaṭṭagāmaṇī Abhaya, the island suffered war and famine, and the monks feared that the teaching might be lost if the reciters died. So they met and wrote the whole of it on palm leaves. The Mahāvaṃsa (the Great Chronicle of Ceylon) says: “The text of the three pitakas and the atthakatha thereon did the most wise bhikkhus hand down in former times orally, but since they saw that the people were falling away (from religion) the bhikkhus came together, and in order that the true doctrine might endure, they wrote them down in books.” The aṭṭhakathā (commentaries) are the ancient explanations of the texts. The book says that from the Third Council onwards the seven books “were considered completed and not subject to alteration in any way”, and that “unaltered copies of the entire Canon have existed in Sri Lanka until the present day”.

Why it matters. The seven books are not an invention of later scholars. The ancient texts say they are the Buddha’s own teaching, given in heaven, handed to Sāriputta, recited by the arahants (fully enlightened disciples) at the councils, carried in memory for four centuries, and written down in Sri Lanka. Every lesson in this course is a small piece of what was taught on the stone seat under the coral tree.

Lesson 2: the two kinds of reality

Nāma and rūpa. The book says: “There are two kinds of absolute realities (paramattha dhammas). They are mental phenomena (nama) and physical or material phenomena (rupa). Nama experiences something. Rupa does not experience anything.” That is the whole difference. Nāma (mind) knows; rūpa (matter) is known and knows nothing.

Seeing. Take seeing. Seeing is a kind of nāma (mind): it experiences something, namely its object, which is colour, or visible object, or what the book calls “visible data”. Visible object is a kind of rūpa (matter). It does not experience anything. That is what makes it rūpa (matter). The same goes for all five senses. Seeing, hearing, tasting, touching and smelling all experience an object. The objects, colour, sound, flavour, hardness and smell, are rūpa (matter), and experience nothing.

So seeing and what is seen are not the same thing. Hearing and sound are not the same thing. One knows; the other is known. A child looking at a flower may think that the flower and the seeing are one experience. The Abhidhamma takes them apart: there is colour, which is rūpa (matter), and there is seeing, which is nāma (mind), and they are two different realities.

Different moments. There is more. Each type of nāma (mind) and each type of rūpa (matter) is different from every other. Seeing is not hearing. The book says: “They do not occur together, they occur at different moments, although we are under the impression that they do occur together.” At the table there seems to be a whole scene at once: the sight of the food, the sound of talking, the taste, the smell, the hardness of the spoon. In reality these are five different experiences, each at its own moment, following one another so fast that they seem to be one. The same is true of the rest of the five senses.

The six doors. The ancient texts speak of six dvāra (doors) through which objects are experienced. Five are the senses; the sixth is the mind, through which thinking, remembering and dreaming take place.

In the first five rows the door and the object are rūpa (matter), and the consciousness is nāma (mind). Each of the five sense-door consciousnesses takes its own object and no other: seeing experiences only colour, hearing only sound, and so on. Seeing cannot hear, and hearing cannot see. The consciousness at the mind-door is different: it can experience nāma (mind) and rūpa (matter) of every kind, and concepts as well. Thinking about a sound is at the mind-door, and comes after the hearing, which was at the ear-door.

Bāhiya. There is a discourse in the Udāna (the Inspired Utterances) about a man called Bāhiya, who wore clothes of bark and was honoured as a holy man, until a deva (heavenly being) who had been his friend in a former life told him that he was not enlightened at all, and sent him to the Buddha. Bāhiya hurried to Sāvatthī and found the Buddha on his alms round, and begged him for a teaching there in the street. The Buddha told him:

“In that case, Bāhiya, you should train like this: ‘In the seen will be merely the seen; in the heard will be merely the heard; in the thought will be merely the thought; in the known will be merely the known.’ That’s how you should train.”

And he ended: “Just this is the end of suffering.” Bāhiya understood at once, and became an arahant (fully enlightened) standing there. “In the seen, merely the seen” is the whole of this lesson in six words: seeing and colour, and no one who sees.

Never alone. And one more thing: no type of nāma (mind) or rūpa (matter) can occur by itself. They “can only exist in conjunction with other types of nama and rupa”. Seeing needs an eye and a colour; a colour arises in a group with other kinds of matter; a moment of consciousness arises with mental factors. Nothing stands alone.

Three kinds of nāma. Nāma (mind) is divided into three kinds. Two of them are conditioned, that is, they arise because of causes. The third is unconditioned. So the four paramattha dhamma (absolute realities) are:

1. citta (consciousness)
2. cetasika (mental factors, or mental formations)
3. rūpa (matter)
4. nibbāna (the end of all troubles)

The first three are conditioned. Nibbāna (the end of all troubles) is the one unconditioned reality.

What nibbāna is not. The book is careful here, because people imagine all sorts of things. Nibbāna (the end of all troubles) “is not matter, it is not a place where one goes, it has no form or shape or solidity, it is not something that one unites with”. It is a mental phenomenon, but it is different from consciousness and mental factors. It is unconditioned: “there are no causes which make it arise. It does not begin and it does not end. It does not experience anything, but it can be the object of experience.” It is experienced by lokuttara citta (consciousness beyond the world), the consciousness that contains fully developed wisdom. And the book adds something that every student of the Abhidhamma should remember: it “cannot be understood intellectually. It can only be directly experienced when wisdom has been sufficiently developed.” Reading about it is not the same as knowing it.

Everything else is conditioned. All the other kinds of nāma (mind) and rūpa (matter) “arise because of past and present causes. They are all conditioned by one another.” Nothing in the three conditioned realities comes from nowhere, and nothing lasts. A moment of seeing arises because there is an eye, a colour, light, attention and the result of a past deed; it falls away at once; another moment follows.

Two truths. The ancient teachers spoke of two kinds of truth. Sammuti sacca (conventional truth) is the truth of everyday talk: there is a girl, she is sitting, she sees a flower. That is true in the way that “chariot” is true. Paramattha sacca (ultimate truth) is the truth of what is really there: moments of citta (consciousness) with their cetasika (mental factors), and rūpa (matter). The Abhidhamma speaks only the second kind. The Suttas (the discourses) often speak the first kind, because the Buddha spoke to people in the way they could understand. The two do not contradict each other. One is the name on the box; the other is what is inside.

A short test. Which of these is nāma (mind), and which is rūpa (matter)?

• the sound of a bell: rūpa (matter), because sound experiences nothing
• hearing the bell: nāma (mind), because hearing experiences the sound
• the hardness of the floor: rūpa (matter)
• feeling glad: nāma (mind)
• the colour of a mango: rūpa (matter)
• wanting the mango: nāma (mind)

The next three lessons take the three conditioned realities one at a time: citta (consciousness), cetasika (mental factors) and rūpa (matter).

Quiz 1 (lessons 1 and 2)

Click an answer. Each question tells you at once whether it is right. For the written ones, show the answer and mark yourself.

Lesson 3: citta, the chief of the moment

The chief. Citta (consciousness) “is the chief mental phenomena of experience”. In seeing, for example, the function of the moment of seeing, which is a citta (consciousness), is to see the object. “Citta is the chief experiencer.” Everything else in the moment, the cetasika (mental factors), helps the citta (consciousness) in its own way; but the citta (consciousness) is the one that knows the object.

Eighty-nine. The book says: “Citta (consciousness) is of 89 different types.” They are sorted into four kinds, which the ancient texts call the four jāti (births, or classes) of citta (consciousness):

Twenty-one and twelve and thirty-six and twenty make eighty-nine. The first two kinds are causes: they are kamma (deeds) in the making, and will bring results in the future. The third kind is the result of causes in the past. The fourth kind is neither cause nor result.

Kusala citta: the good moments. Of the twenty-one kinds of kusala citta (good consciousness), eight belong to ordinary daily life. The book says they are divided “according to whether it is accompanied by pleasant or indifferent feeling, with wisdom or without wisdom and prompted or unprompted”. So a good moment may be glad or calm; it may understand or not understand; it may arise by itself or after some urging from oneself or another. Two times two times two makes eight. The other thirteen are nine kinds of consciousness of the meditative states, the jhāna (deep calm of mind), and four kinds that experience nibbāna (the end of all troubles).

What do good moments look like? The book gives examples: “moments of generosity toward other beings, moments of restraint from lying, killing or stealing, moments of respect for wise people, moments of insight into the true nature of things or moments of meditative absorption practising tranquility meditation”. A moment of giving a mango to a friend; a moment of holding back from a lie; a moment of bowing to a teacher: each is kusala citta (good consciousness).

Akusala citta: the bad moments. There are twelve kinds of akusala citta (bad consciousness). They are also divided by feeling, by whether they arise with wrong view, and by whether they are prompted or not. Eight of them are rooted in lobha (attachment). The book says these “are accompanied by pleasant or indifferent feeling”: wanting something can feel nice, or feel like nothing much. Two are rooted in dosa (anger), prompted or unprompted, and these “are accompanied by unpleasant feeling”: anger never feels pleasant. And two are rooted in moha (ignorance) alone, “accompanied by indifferent feeling, one with doubt and one with restlessness”.

The book’s examples: “when we get angry, when we are bored, when we are depressed, when we are absorbed in beautiful things, when we kill or steal or lie to people or when we are restless”. Notice that boredom is on the list, and so is being absorbed in beautiful things. Bad moments are not only the loud ones.

Vipāka citta: the results. The thirty-six kinds of vipāka citta (result consciousness) are “the result of previous skillful or unskillful deeds”. The book says: “When we see, hear, taste, smell or touch pleasant or unpleasant objects it is result.” Seeing a beautiful colour is the result of a good deed in the past. Hearing a harsh sound is the result of a bad deed in the past. The seeing and the hearing themselves are not good or bad; they are results. There are also nine kinds of result experienced in the meditative states, and four that arise at the moments of experiencing nibbāna (the end of all troubles).

Kiriya citta: neither cause nor result. The twenty kinds of kiriya citta (functional consciousness) “have no effect in terms of cause and result”. The book says they “occur in the sense-door and in thought processes of enlightened beings and again in 9 of the meditative states”. Two examples. When a sound strikes the ear, the first citta (consciousness) to turn towards it is a kiriya citta (functional consciousness): it only adverts, it does not like or dislike. And when an arahant (fully enlightened person) smiles or gives or teaches, those moments are kiriya (functional) and not kusala (good), because an arahant (fully enlightened person) has no more kamma (deeds) to make and no more results to come.

The same eighty-nine, sorted by sphere. The appendix to the book sorts the eighty-nine another way, by the bhūmi (sphere, or plane of consciousness) they belong to:

Fifty-four and fifteen and twelve and eight make eighty-nine again. The fifty-four of the sense sphere are the ones that make up ordinary life. The eighteen “rootless” ones are the moments with no lobha (attachment), dosa (anger), moha (ignorance) or their opposites in them: the ten moments of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching (five with pleasant or neutral objects, five with unpleasant), receiving and investigating moments, the two adverting moments, and the appendix names one more: “smile-producing consciousness (of an arahant)”. The twenty-four “beautiful” ones of the sense sphere are the eight good moments of daily life, their eight results, and the eight functional moments with which an arahant (fully enlightened person) does the same good things. The appendix adds that the eight moments beyond the world can also be counted as forty, by the jhāna (deep calm of mind) that goes with them, which gives the other number sometimes met: 121.

Five feelings. Every citta (consciousness) has a feeling with it. The appendix counts five: pleasant, unpleasant and indifferent mental feeling, and pleasant and unpleasant bodily feeling. The two bodily feelings arise only with body-consciousness, the moment that experiences hardness, heat or motion through the body. All the other senses, seeing and hearing among them, arise with indifferent feeling. A moment of seeing does not feel glad or sad; the gladness or sadness comes in the javana (running) moments that follow.

One process, all four kinds. The ancient texts describe what happens when a colour strikes the eye, moment by moment. They call it a vīthi (a process). Between processes the mind is not empty: there is a stream of bhavaṅga citta (life-continuum consciousness), the same kind of citta (consciousness) as the first moment of this life, which keeps the life going while nothing is being seen or heard or thought, as in dreamless sleep. These are vipāka (result).

When a colour strikes the eye-sense, the stream of bhavaṅga (life-continuum) is interrupted, and these moments follow one another:

1. āvajjana (adverting): a kiriya citta (functional consciousness) turns towards the object at the eye-door.
2. cakkhu-viññāṇa (seeing): a vipāka citta (result consciousness) sees the colour. This is the only moment that sees.
3. sampaṭicchana (receiving) and santīraṇa (investigating): two more vipāka (result) moments take the object on.
4. votthapana (determining): a kiriya citta (functional consciousness) settles how the object will be taken.
5. javana (running): seven moments in a row of kusala citta (good consciousness) or akusala citta (bad consciousness). This is where liking or disliking happens, and where kamma (deed) is made. In an arahant (fully enlightened person) these seven are kiriya (functional).
6. tadārammaṇa (registering): two vipāka (result) moments, and then the bhavaṅga (life-continuum) flows again.

So in one process at the eye-door there are kiriya (functional), vipāka (result), and kusala (good) or akusala (bad) moments: all four classes in the time it takes for one colour to be seen. Then a mind-door process follows, in which the colour is thought about and named. Only in that later process does anyone know “a mango”. The seeing itself knew only colour. The whole thing is over in far less than the blink of an eye, and it happens again and again, all day long, at every door.

One at a time. Only one citta (consciousness) arises at a time. It arises, it experiences one object, it falls away, and the next one arises. There is no second citta (consciousness) standing beside it to watch. This is why the Abhidhamma says there is no person behind the moments. There is only this moment, and then the next.

A day in cittas. A morning might go like this. Hearing the cock crow: vipāka (result). Not wanting to get up: akusala (bad), rooted in lobha (attachment) to the warm bed. Getting up anyway to help with the water jars: kusala (good). Seeing the sunrise: vipāka (result). Being absorbed in how beautiful it is: akusala (bad), rooted in lobha (attachment), as the book’s list says. Remembering that the sunrise will not last either: kusala (good), with paññā (wisdom). Tasting the rice: vipāka (result). Wanting a second bowl: akusala (bad). Giving the second bowl to a younger brother: kusala (good). Eighty-nine kinds, and most of a day is spent in a handful of them.

Lesson 4: cetasika, the mental factors

The helpers. The other kind of nāma (mind) is the cetasika (mental factors, or mental formations). The book says: “These mental factors arise accompanying each moment of experience (each citta). There is not one moment of experience occurring without at least some of them. Their function is to add to the experience each in their own way.” A citta (consciousness) never arises alone. It comes with a company of mental factors, and together they make up one moment of mind.

Each has its own mark. “Each cetasika or mental factor has its own special characteristic by which it is recognised and function which it performs.” The book’s example is māna (conceit): “the characteristic of conceit is haughtiness and self-praise is its function”. Conceit is the mental factor that holds the head high and says “I am better”, or even “I am worse”, or “I am just as good”. It compares. That is its mark, and whenever that mark appears, conceit is there, whatever name a person gives it.

Fifty-two. “There are 52 different types of cetasikas.” The book names some: “feeling, perception (or memory), contact, intention, attention, effort, interest, desire-to-do, restlessness, attachment, conceit, hate, envy, awareness, confidence, detachment, balance of mind, concentration, kindness, compassion.”

They come in groups. Mental factors “arise with each moment of consciousness in groupings of certain types”. Some can never arise together. The book says: “kindness and hate cannot occur together at the same moment, restlessness and balance of mind cannot occur together, compassion and conceit cannot occur together”. A moment is either kind or angry; it cannot be both. If anger is there, kindness is not, and when kindness arises, anger has gone. People say “I love him but I am angry with him”, and that is true of a person over an afternoon, but it is never true of one moment.

The seven that are always there. Seven mental factors “occur with every moment of consciousness”. The book calls them “the universal cetasikas”. Without them no citta (consciousness) could do its work at all.

Even in a moment of seeing there is contact with the colour, a feeling about it, a marking of it, an intention, a holding on it, a life, and an attention to it. They are all there, each doing its own small task, and the moment is gone before any of it can be noticed.

The other groups. The book lists the rest, and its appendix gives every name. Here they all are, with the English the appendix uses.

The 6 pakiṇṇaka (particulars), which “occur with particular states of consciousness” and not with all. They can be good or bad depending on the company they keep.

The 14 akusala cetasika (bad mental factors), which “make up all the akusala moments of consciousness”. The first four are in every bad moment.

The 19 sobhana cetasika (beautiful mental factors), “so called because they are common to all morally beautiful moments of consciousness”. The first seven have names of their own; the other twelve come in six pairs, one for the mental factors and one for the citta (consciousness).

Then the 3 virati (abstinences): sammā vācā (right speech), sammā kammanta (right action) and sammā ājīva (right livelihood), which arise when a person holds back from a wrong word, a wrong deed or a wrong way of earning a living. The 2 appamaññā (illimitables), “so called because their objects are without limit”: karuṇā (compassion) and muditā (sympathetic joy). And “finally the last sobhana cetasika”: paññā (wisdom). With the nineteen, these make twenty-five beautiful factors in all, “arising in various combinations in the wholesome states of consciousness”.

Seven and six and fourteen and nineteen and three and two and one make fifty-two.

A moment of anger, taken apart. The groups can be seen in a single bad moment. When a boy’s brother breaks his toy cart and anger arises, that one moment of akusala citta (bad consciousness) has, with it, the seven universals, some of the particulars, and from the fourteen bad factors at least these: dosa (anger) itself; moha (ignorance), which is in every bad moment; ahirika (shamelessness) and anottappa (fearlessness of wrong), which are in every bad moment too, because at that moment there is no shame about being angry and no fear of where it leads; and uddhacca (restlessness), which is also in every bad moment. If the anger is at the brother for having a better cart, issā (envy) may be there. If it is anger at having to share, macchariya (stinginess) may be there. If afterwards there is fretting over having shouted, that is kukkucca (worry), in a later moment. Nineteen beautiful factors are absent, every one of them. That is what the Abhidhamma means by a group.

A gift, four ways. The same deed with different factors is a different moment. Lesson 3 said that a kusala citta (good consciousness) can be with pleasant or indifferent feeling, with paññā (wisdom) or without, prompted or unprompted. Take the giving of one mango.

• A girl gives it gladly and understands that giving is good: pleasant feeling, with wisdom, unprompted.
• She gives it gladly but without thinking about why: pleasant feeling, without wisdom.
• She gives it calmly, after her mother reminds her: indifferent feeling, prompted.
• She gives it calmly, of her own accord, understanding why: indifferent feeling, with wisdom, unprompted.

Each is dāna (giving), and each is good. But the moment with paññā (wisdom) is stronger, and its result is greater, because the beautiful factors in it are more. The Abhidhamma counts the factors so that this difference can be known.

Kindness is a mental factor. Here is something that surprises people. Mettā (loving-kindness) is not a feeling; it is the mental factor adosa (non-hate), one of the nineteen beautiful ones, when it takes living beings as its object. Compassion is a mental factor. Confidence is a mental factor. So is envy, and so is laziness. None of them belongs to a person. Each arises when its conditions are present, does its work for one moment with the citta (consciousness) it accompanies, and falls away. A kind person is a person in whom kindness arises often. That is all “kind person” means.

Why learn the names? Because the names make it possible to notice. When a child knows that there is a mental factor called issā (envy), whose mark is being unhappy at someone else’s good fortune, the next time a friend wins a game and something sour arises, it can be known for what it is: not “me being horrible”, only issā (envy), a conditioned cetasika (mental factor), already falling away. That is the beginning of sati (mindfulness), and the book says that the Abhidhamma “can lead us on to a better understanding of the practise of insight”.

Quiz 2 (lessons 3 and 4)

Click an answer. Each question tells you at once whether it is right. For the written ones, show the answer and mark yourself.

Lesson 5: rūpa, matter

Twenty-eight. The third of the conditioned realities is rūpa (matter). The book says: “There are 28 classes of rupa, 16 being classified as subtle and 12 as gross.” Gross means coarse, the kinds that strike the senses directly: the five sense organs and the seven objects that can be seen, heard, smelt, tasted or touched. Subtle means the finer kinds that do not strike the senses in that way.

The four great elements. At the base of all matter are the four mahābhūta (great elements). The book gives them with their real meanings:

1. paṭhavī dhātu (the element of earth), or solidity
2. āpo dhātu (the element of water), or cohesion
3. tejo dhātu (the element of fire), or temperature
4. vāyo dhātu (the element of wind), or motion

These are not the earth in the garden, the water in the well, the fire on the hearth and the wind in the trees. They are qualities. Earth is hardness and softness. Water is the holding together of the parts. Fire is heat and cold. Wind is motion and pressure. A stone has all four: it is hard, it holds together, it has a temperature, and it presses on the hand that holds it. So does a drop of water, and so does a flame, and so does the body. In the Abhidhamma a thing is never only “earth”; it is a group in which one element is strongest.

The elements in the body. In the Dhātuvibhaṅga Sutta (the Discourse on the Analysis of the Elements), the Buddha taught a young man called Pukkusāti, in a potter’s workshop, to see his own body as the four elements. What is hard in the body, he said, is the earth element: the hair of the head, the hair of the body, the nails, the teeth, the skin, the flesh, the sinews, the bones, and the rest. What is fluid and holds together is the water element: blood, sweat, tears, spittle, and the rest. What warms the body, and digests what is eaten, is the fire element. What moves in the body, the breath going in and out and the winds that move the limbs, is the wind element. And of each he taught: this is not mine, this is not what I am, this is not my self. The earth element inside the body and the earth element outside, in a rock or a wall, are the same element. There is nothing in the body that belongs to anyone.

The derived kinds. “The four great elements always arise with those rupas which are known as the derived rupas.” Derived means depending on the four, as a pot depends on clay. The book names them: “the physical sense-organs of eye-sense, ear-sense, taste-sense, etc., and the sense-objects of colour, sound, smell and flavour”. The eye-sense is not the eyeball; it is the fine matter inside the eye that can be struck by colour. The ear-sense is the fine matter that can be struck by sound. Then there are “the male or female characteristic, heart-base, nutritive essence (food), space, lightness, bodily intimation, speech intimation, etc.” Bodily intimation is the matter by which the body makes its meaning known, as when a hand beckons. Speech intimation is the matter by which speech makes its meaning known. Both arise from citta (consciousness). The heart-base is the matter on which most kinds of citta (consciousness) depend, as seeing depends on the eye-sense.

All matter. The book says: “All that matter consists of is these 28 different types of rupa in different combinations.” A mountain, a mango, a hand, a sound, a smell: twenty-eight kinds, in groups. There is nothing else to a material thing.

Rūpa does not know. This is the point that matters most for understanding. Rūpa (matter) does not experience anything. In the last lesson of the book: “Hardness is a type of rupa (matter). It cannot know anything about anything.” The hardness of a bench does not know that someone is sitting on it. The colour of a face does not know that it is seen. Sound does not know that it is heard. When a person says “the bench is hard”, there are really two realities: hardness, which is rūpa (matter), and the experience of hardness through the body-sense, which is nāma (mind). The Abhidhamma never lets the two be mixed.

The eightfold group. Rūpa (matter) never arises as a single kind. The appendix to the book says that matter “consists of 8 basic constituents which compose all matter”, known as the suddhaṭṭhaka kalāpa (the pure eightfold group): the four great elements and four that are derived from them.

Where there is hardness there is also colour, smell, taste and nutriment, whether anyone notices them or not. The appendix then lists “a further 20 types of matter, all of which are also derived rupas”: the five sense organs, eye, ear, nose, tongue and body; the male and female characteristic, which counts as two; the heart base; the material life-principle; space; bodily intimation; speech intimation; sound; lightness, plasticity and adaptability; and growth, continuity, decay and impermanence. “The fourteenth type, male and female characteristic, is of two types which makes a total of 28 rupas.” Groups of matter in the body arise from four sources: from kamma (deeds), from citta (consciousness), from temperature and from food. The eye-sense, the ear-sense and the heart-base are produced by kamma (deeds). The movement of the hand that beckons is produced by citta (consciousness). The warmth of the body is kept up by temperature and by food.

Rūpa falls away. Matter lasts longer than mind, but not long. The ancient texts say that one group of rūpa (matter) lasts as long as seventeen moments of citta (consciousness), and then it is gone, and another group has taken its place. The body that sat down is not the body that stands up; it has been replaced many times over. People speak of “my body” as if it were one thing that lasts. The Abhidhamma speaks of groups of twenty-eight kinds of matter, arising and falling away, conditioned by deeds, by mind, by heat and by food.

Body and mind together. Nāma (mind) and rūpa (matter) depend on one another in this life. Seeing cannot arise without the eye-sense; the eye-sense is matter produced by past kamma (deeds). A kind thought cannot show itself without the matter of the face and the hand. And in the planes where there is matter, citta (consciousness) arises on a base of matter. But the two are never the same thing, and neither is a person. What is called a person is nāma (mind) and rūpa (matter), and nothing besides.

The five khandhas. The ancient texts have one more way of sorting everything that has been met in Lessons 3, 4 and 5. The appendix to the book calls them the five khandha (aggregates, or groups), “the aggregates of our daily existence”. All conditioned nāma (mind) and rūpa (matter) fall into them:

1. rūpa-khandha (the group of matter): all the twenty-eight kinds of rūpa (matter), “hardness, temperature, pressure, colour, smell, taste”
2. vedanā-khandha (the group of feeling): the mental factor feeling, in its five kinds
3. saññā-khandha (the group of perception, or memory): the mental factor that “marks the object of experience so that it can be recognised now and in the future”
4. saṅkhāra-khandha (the group of mental formations): “the other fifty cetasikas”
5. viññāṇa-khandha (the group of consciousness): “all types of citta”

Two of the fifty-two mental factors, feeling and memory, have a group each to themselves; the other fifty are put together in one; all eighty-nine kinds of consciousness are one group; and all matter is one. The appendix says: “The khandhas are called the ‘groups of grasping’. This means that we cling to, or grasp at these aggregates as belonging to a self. As long as we take them for self we do not understand them as they really are, just paramattha dhammas, just conditioned realities.” When the nun Vajirā said, in the Introduction, that “when the aggregates are present ‘sentient being’ is the convention we use”, these five groups were what she meant.

Lesson 6: kamma and vipāka, deeds and their results

Seeing is a result. The book says: “Whenever we see, hear, taste, smell or touch an object, that experience, as was mentioned before, is resultant-consciousness (vipaka-citta). It is the result of a deed performed at some time in the past.” A pleasant sight is the result of a good deed; an unpleasant sound is the result of a bad one. Nobody chooses what will strike the eye and the ear in the next moment. “The area of cause and result (kamma and vipaka) is most important in Abhidhamma. To sort out experience into cause and result can cast our lives into a much clearer perspective.”

Twenty kinds of deed. “The Buddha enumerated ten types of moral and skillful action and ten types of immoral or unskillful action through body, speech or mind. Moral action, whenever performed, will always bring a pleasant result at some time in the future. Immoral action will always bring an unpleasant result.” The ten akusala kamma (bad deeds) are:

The book is firm about this list: “These ten types of action whenever performed, no matter what the justification that we make for them, are always immoral actions and capable of producing an unpleasant result.” It gives examples of things people excuse: killing insects, cheating on taxes, abusive speech. And about killing it says: “the Buddha pointed out that destruction of other being’s lives is never to the welfare of oneself or the other being. The justification for killing is just thinking, but the actual moment of killing is always immoral and never to anybody’s benefit.”

Ten kinds of good deed. The ten puñña kiriya vatthu (bases of meritorious action) are:

The book remarks that some of these “are not very popular these days. Respect for teachers and parents, and for other’s opinions, is something we don’t practise very much. Sharing of merit is not practised at all in western countries today.” Sharing of merit means, after a good deed, wishing that beings in other planes may rejoice in it too. Rejoicing in others’ merit is the opposite of envy: being glad when someone else does good. “The last three types are concerned with the teaching of Buddha-dhamma. When we teach, listen and understand sincerely then this is a moral action.” So listening to this lesson with a sincere wish to understand is itself kusala kamma (a good deed).

What kamma really is. Kamma (deed) is not a law outside a person, and not a ledger kept somewhere. The book says: “Kamma (or karma) can also be understood more precisely as the cetasika or mental factor called intention (cetana). There is intention arising with every moment of consciousness as it is a universal mental factor.” Lesson 4 listed cetanā (intention) among the seven universals. Most of the time it is weak. “When intention is strong enough to motivate deeds through body or speech then the intensity of intention (cetana) is stronger. When intention motivates one of the ten types of moral or immoral actions through body, speech or mind then it is called kamma because it is strong enough to produce a result at some time in the future.” So kamma (deed) is cetanā (intention) grown strong enough to act.

Results in a life. The book lists the unpleasant things that come to everyone: “sickness, disease, accidents”; people who “abuse us” or “misrepresent us”; “our bodies wear out”. And the pleasant things: “we meet friendly people, we receive gifts, we have a strong body, we have good eyesight, we have a beautiful partner, we live in a pleasant house with beautiful children. All of these things happen to us because of deeds performed at some time in the past, we don’t know when.” People arrange their lives around the pleasant results they hope for: “we want a nice house, we want peace and quiet”, “we look forward to delicious, well-prepared food. But these things come to us only because of moral deeds we have performed in the past.”

Then the book draws the conclusion. “The only way to receive more of this is not to climb over the next man, not to cheat on tax, not to lie about our qualifications, not to abuse other people, but to be kind, respectful, generous, honest and upright in character. The Buddha taught quite clearly that it is deeds in the past that determine our life situation right now.”

Not knowing when. A good deed does not bring its result at once. The result may come in this life, in the next, or in a life far away. The deed is a seed; the result is the fruit; and between them there may be a long time, which is why people doubt that there is any connection at all. The Abhidhamma says the connection is certain even when the time is unknown. Every moment of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching is a fruit of some seed planted before.

Two moments to tell apart. Suppose a boy hears a rude word. The hearing is vipāka (result): the fruit of a past deed, and nothing can be done about it now. What comes next is not result. If anger arises, that is akusala citta (bad consciousness), a new seed. If patience arises, that is kusala citta (good consciousness), a new seed of a different kind. The moment of result is closed; the moment after it is open. The whole of a person’s future is decided in those open moments, and they come many times a minute.

Quiz 3 (lessons 5 and 6)

Click an answer. Each question tells you at once whether it is right. For the written ones, show the answer and mark yourself.

Lesson 7: the wheel of birth and death

A wheel, not a ladder. “Birth and death are dealt with in minute detail in the Abhidhamma.” The book says: “The Buddha taught that life or existence is a cyclic process with beings dying and passing on to other existences according to their moral and immoral deeds.” Some other teachings say that a being can never be born into a worse life than its present one, as if life were a ladder that only goes up. The Buddha did not teach that. “The Buddha maintains that life, far from being necessarily progressive, can for many beings be a destructive and downward process. He likens it a wheel turning around and around with no end to it. Beings are ever repeating mistakes or performing deeds due to their ignorance of the way things are which will bring them more and more unhappiness in the future.” The ancient texts call this wheel saṃsāra (the round of births).

Thirty-one planes. “The Buddha enumerated 31 planes of existence through which beings continually pass according to their deeds.” The book counts them: “There are 4 woeful or unhappy planes, the human plane, 6 planes of angels (or devas) and 20 planes of brahmas or gods.”

Four and one and six and twenty make thirty-one. Tāvatiṃsa (the heaven of the Thirty-three), where the Abhidhamma was taught, is the second of the six deva (heavenly) planes. Tusita (the heaven of the contented), where the Buddha’s mother was reborn, is the fourth.

All of them end. “Existence in all of these planes has one thing in common, it is temporary, it does not last. A being born into any plane of existence has to eventually pass out of it and be reborn elsewhere. So then heaven is not the end of it all, it is only one plane of existence from which a being must eventually fall again to a lower existence. Life in the heavenly planes is of course exceedingly pleasant and blissful and lasts for a long, long time compared to human existence.” But it ends. A deva (heavenly being) who has used up the good deed that put him there dies like anyone else, and goes where his other deeds take him.

The four unhappy planes. The book describes them plainly. There are “the hell realms in which there is constant suffering”; “the realm of titans where beings are constantly fighting one another”; “the realm of unhappy ghosts where beings wander about in empty landscapes without food or drink”, or wander after their human death “following family and friends or homes they once lived in, unable to communicate with the people they knew, and dependent upon those humans who remember them for food and drink”; and “the animal realm which is all the birds, animals, insects, fish, etc., that we see or don’t see about us”. That last one is the only unhappy plane that human beings can see. Every dog, every ant and every fish is a being that was once somewhere else and will be somewhere else again. “We all pass back and forth through these realms continuously from happy to unhappy and back again, round and round without end.”

No beginning. “The Buddha also explained that there has been no beginning to this wheel, to the round of births, and there will be no end as long as there is ignorance of the true nature of life.” The book quotes the Saṃyutta Nikāya (the Grouped Discourses):

“A world without end is this round of birth and death. No beginning can be seen of those beings hindered by ignorance, bound by craving running through the round of birth and death. Just as if a man should chop up all of the straws, boughs, twigs and leaves in India and piling them together should lay them in a heap, square by square, saying: ‘This is my mother, this is the mother of that mother of mine’,—still unsupplied would be the mother’s mothers of that man. Nay, to supply them all, the straw, boughs, twigs and leaves in this India would come to an end and be used up, ere this were done.”

Every mother had a mother. If a man tried to lay down one twig for each of them, all the twigs in India would be used up first. That is how long every being has been going round.

The last moment. The book then explains what happens at death. “In the last thought process before death a deed performed somewhere in the past surfaces (it can be from this life or any other life) and becomes the object of that thought process. If there is no deed strong enough at that moment, it will instead be a habitual thought pattern of some sort that becomes the object of that last thought process.” The mind reacts to that object, and the reaction is kusala (good) or akusala (bad). “We will be born in a happy realm if it is wholesome or an unhappy realm if it is unwholesome.” The book’s example: if someone had killed a living being during this life, and that deed comes up at the last moment, and the mind reacts to it with regret or aversion, “that is an unwholesome reaction”.

“The following moment is called death-consciousness (cuti-citta). That is the last moment of life. The next moment is called birth-consciousness (patisandhi citta) and that is the first moment of life for the new being.” There is no gap. The cuti-citta (death consciousness) falls away, and the paṭisandhi-citta (rebirth consciousness) arises at once, in whatever plane the last process pointed to. If the last process was unwholesome, “then the rebirth is in an unhappy plane, say as a dog. That patisandhi citta will be the moment of conception in the womb of the mother.”

Nobody is in charge. “We have no control over this process. We cannot determine where we will be born next. We cannot arrange things so that at our death the right things will occur to us and we will obtain a happy rebirth. Whatever persons surround us or help us they cannot determine our last thought process. It depends upon deeds in the past what happens to us at death.” And not only at death: “It is further deeds that determine our body, the family we are born into, whether we will be wealthy or not, whether we will die at an early age; everything that we experience is because of deeds in the past.”

That is why the book says: “You can see then how important an understanding of moral and immoral deeds is. Without this understanding beings wander through life sometimes doing the most atrocious things to each other. All of this happens through ignorance of the true nature of the law of cause and effect.” The only thing that can be done about the last moment of this life is to be done now, in this moment, by the kind of citta (consciousness) that arises.

Lesson 8: the four stages of enlightenment

A way out. The wheel has no beginning, but it has an end for the one who understands. “The process by which one comes to understand the truth is also explained in the Abhidhamma. There are four stages of enlightenment.” The book names them: “first the stream-winner, second the once-returner, third the never-returner and fourth the fully-enlightened one”. In Pali: sotāpanna (stream-enterer), sakadāgāmī (once-returner), anāgāmī (never-returner) and arahant (fully enlightened).

The ten fetters. What holds a being to the wheel is called a saṃyojana (fetter), a chain. There are ten of them, and the four stages are four cuttings of the chain.

The first stage. “At the first stage, a being has eliminated the first three fetters which bind one to the wheel of existence.” The book explains each. Wrong view is “an incorrect view of the way things are, i.e., that there is a self, that there really are permanent people and things rather than just momentary physical and mental phenomena”. Doubt is doubt “about the truth of the Dhamma”. And adherence to rule and ritual is the belief “that there is a method or a technique or something which one performs that will lead one to enlightenment”. The sotāpanna (stream-enterer) has seen for himself that there is only nāma (mind) and rūpa (matter), so the belief in a self cannot come back; and having seen it he cannot doubt it, and cannot believe that any ceremony could have done it for him.

“Streamwinner (sotapanna) means one has entered the stream to final enlightenment and that there are no more conditions to be born in a lower plane than that of a human being.” The stream-enterer still has attachment and anger. He can still be born again, but never again in the four unhappy planes, and the ancient texts say he will reach the end within seven lives at most. The stream cannot flow backwards.

The dirt on a fingernail. In the Saṃyutta Nikāya (the Grouped Discourses) the Buddha once picked up a little dirt on his fingernail and asked the monks: “Which is more: the little bit of dirt on my fingernail, or this great earth?” They answered: “Sir, the great earth is far more. The little bit of dirt on your fingernail is tiny.” In the same way, he said, for the noble disciple who has seen the truth, the sotāpanna (stream-enterer), the suffering that is finished and done with is like the great earth, and the suffering that remains, in seven lives at the most, is like the dirt on the fingernail: “what’s left is tiny.” That is what the first stage means. The chain is not yet all cut, but the wheel has been given its end.

The second stage. “A once-returner (sakadagami) lessens his attachment and aversion. He is called once-returner because he can return only once more to the human plane.” The next two fetters are not yet cut, only worn thin.

The third stage. “A never-returner (anagami) eliminates two further fetters, these being sense-desire and aversion. He has no more desire for sense-objects and no more dislike for unpleasant things. The never-returner does not return to the human plane again. If he dies as an anagami he is born into a god realm where he attains final enlightenment.” Those realms are the five highest of the Brahmā (highest heavenly) planes of fine matter, which the ancient texts call the Suddhāvāsa (the Pure Abodes), because only never-returners are born there.

The fourth stage. “The last stage is the fully enlightened one (the arahant). He has eliminated the last five fetters which bind him to the wheel of existence. They are attachment to existence in the form-god realms, attachment to existence in the formless-god realms, conceit, restlessness and ignorance. Because of the first of these two fetters beings are born into the god realms. When they are eliminated there is no more desire for any existence at all.” Three and two and five make ten. “There are then, ten fetters which bind us to the wheel of existence.”

Moments, not people. Each stage is reached at one moment of lokuttara citta (consciousness beyond the world), the magga citta (path consciousness), which experiences nibbāna (the end of all troubles) and cuts the fetters for good. It is followed at once by phala citta (fruition consciousness), which also experiences nibbāna (the end of all troubles). Lesson 3 counted these among the eighty-nine: four kinds of kusala citta (good consciousness) that experience nibbāna (the end of all troubles), and four kinds of vipāka citta (result consciousness) that do the same. The four path moments are the four stages. After the fourth there is no more kusala (good) and no more akusala (bad), because there is no more kamma (deed) to make. Everything the arahant (fully enlightened one) does from then on is kiriya (functional), as Lesson 3 said.

What happens when an arahant dies? The book asks this question and answers it. “He has eliminated all unwholesome tendencies from his character including the desire to go on being born. Having become enlightened during this life, he will die at the time when his lifespan has expired. Since there is no more desire to go on, when the last moment of life for the arahant finishes it is not followed by another rebirth consciousness. When we die, it is immediately followed by another moment (of the next life); when an arahant dies, that is all. No more experience. No more rebirth. This is called by the Buddha the only true peace.”

Not a ladder either. Nobody climbs the four stages by wanting to. The fetters are cut by paññā (wisdom) that has seen nāma (mind) and rūpa (matter) as they are, moment after moment, for a long time. The book has already said that nibbāna (the end of all troubles) “cannot be understood intellectually”. Reading a list of ten fetters cuts none of them. But knowing what they are shows what wisdom will one day have to see through, and the first of them, the view that there is a self, is the one that every lesson in this course has been about.

Quiz 4 (lessons 7 and 8)

Click an answer. Each question tells you at once whether it is right. For the written ones, show the answer and mark yourself.

Lesson 9: the chain, the four truths and the three marks

The book says: “There are three more aspects which should be discussed—the Law of Dependent Origination, the three basic characteristics of existence and the Four Noble Truths.” This lesson takes them in turn.

Dependent origination. Paṭicca samuppāda (dependent origination) “is the Buddha’s explanation of how states of existence come to be and how they condition each other”. The book sets it out as a chain of twelve links. Here it is, with the Pali names added:

1. Dependent on avijjā (ignorance) arise saṅkhāra (karmic activities, deeds)
2. Dependent on saṅkhāra (deeds) arises viññāṇa (consciousness)
3. Dependent on viññāṇa (consciousness) arise nāma-rūpa (mind and matter)
4. Dependent on nāma-rūpa (mind and matter) arise saḷāyatana (the six-fold bases, the five senses and thinking)
5. Dependent on saḷāyatana (the six bases) arises phassa (contact)
6. Dependent on phassa (contact) arises vedanā (feeling)
7. Dependent on vedanā (feeling) arises taṇhā (craving)
8. Dependent on taṇhā (craving) arises upādāna (grasping)
9. Dependent on upādāna (grasping) arises bhava (becoming)
10. Dependent on bhava (becoming) arises jāti (birth)
11. Dependent on jāti (birth) arise jarā-maraṇa (decay and death), sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair

“Thus arises the whole mass of suffering.” The links are not a story that happens once. They are turning all the time. Because of ignorance, deeds are done; because of deeds, a new life begins with its consciousness; with consciousness come mind and matter; with them the eye, ear, nose, tongue, body and mind; with the senses, contact; with contact, feeling; with feeling, wanting; with wanting, grasping; with grasping, the making of a new existence; with that, birth; and with birth, old age and death. And then round again.

Seen the other way, the chain is a way out: when ignorance ends, the deeds that make rebirth are not done, and the rest of the chain does not arise. “We can see then that at the root of it all is ignorance. That is defined as ignorance of the Four Noble Truths.”

The Four Noble Truths. These are the heart of everything the Buddha taught. He taught them first, in the deer park at Isipatana near Bārāṇasī (Benares), to the five ascetics who had once been his companions. In Pali the four are dukkha (suffering), samudaya (its origin), nirodha (its ending) and magga (the path). The ancient texts state them like this:

1. Life is unsatisfactory or suffering: dukkha (suffering).
2. Suffering arises because of craving: taṇhā (craving).
3. There is an ending of suffering, which is nibbāna (the end of all troubles), the stopping of craving.
4. The way leading to the ending of suffering is the ariya aṭṭhaṅgika magga (the Noble Eightfold Path).

The first sermon. The discourse in which the Buddha taught these truths is called the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta (the Discourse on Setting the Wheel of the Teaching in Motion). Two months after his enlightenment he walked to Isipatana, where the five ascetics were staying. They had left him in disgust when he gave up starving himself, and they agreed among themselves not to rise for him. But as he came near they could not keep to it: one took his bowl, one made a seat, one brought water for his feet. He began by telling them that there are two extremes that should not be followed: indulgence in sensual pleasures, and indulgence in tormenting oneself. Between them lies the middle way, the Eightfold Path. Then he taught the Four Noble Truths, and said that until he had known each of them fully he had not claimed to be a Buddha. As he spoke, the eldest of the five, Koṇḍañña, saw the truth for himself, and the ancient texts give his understanding in one line: “Everything that is liable to arise is liable to cease.” The Buddha said: “Koṇḍañña has really understood! Koṇḍañña has really understood!” Koṇḍañña had become a sotāpanna (stream-enterer), the first of the Buddha’s disciples to do so, and the wheel of the teaching had begun to turn.

“When one does not understand these truths directly one is subject to continual rebirth in the wheel of existence.” The eight factors of the path are: right understanding, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration.

The path is made of moments. Here the book says something that only the Abhidhamma makes clear. The Eightfold Path “is often taught as a ‘path’ which one follows by developing each of the factors piece by piece until there are all perfected. In the Abhidhamma it is made clear that the Eightfold Path is in fact only momentary phenomena like everything else. The Eightfold Path is not a ‘whole path’ which one follows, but at the moment that a wholesome moment of wisdom (the wisdom that understands the true nature of things) arises then it is accompanied by the Eightfold Path factors as mental factors (cetasikas).” The eight factors are eight cetasika (mental factors), of the kinds Lesson 4 listed. Right understanding is paññā (wisdom). Right thought is vitakka (applied thought). Right effort is viriya (effort). Right mindfulness is sati (mindfulness). Right concentration is ekaggatā (concentration). Right speech, right action and right livelihood are the three virati (abstinences).

“Five of these factors accompany every moment of true wisdom. The whole eight occur together only at the moments of enlightenment.” The five are understanding, thought, effort, mindfulness and concentration, which arise together whenever there is a moment of satipaṭṭhāna (mindfulness of realities), a moment that knows a nāma (mind) or a rūpa (matter) as it is. The three abstinences arise one at a time, when there is something to abstain from. Only at the moment of magga citta (path consciousness), when nibbāna (the end of all troubles) is experienced, do all eight arise at once. So nobody walks the path. The path arises, for one moment, and falls away, and arises again when the conditions are there.

The three marks. “Finally, the Buddha also explained that there are three things characterising all elements of existence.” Every conditioned reality, every citta (consciousness), every cetasika (mental factor) and every rūpa (matter), has these three marks:

• dukkha (unsatisfactory): “there is no lasting satisfaction in them”
• anicca (impermanent): “they do not last even for a moment”
• anattā (non-self): “there is not a lasting person, self or something in anything, they are all empty of self”

The three marks are not three separate lessons. What does not last cannot give lasting satisfaction, and what does not last and cannot satisfy cannot be anyone’s self. A moment of seeing arises and is gone; it was not pleasant for long, if at all; and there was no one in it who saw. The ancient texts call these the tilakkhaṇa (the three characteristics). Everything in the first eight lessons was a way of showing them: the chariot, the moments, the eighty-nine, the fifty-two, the twenty-eight, the seed and the fruit, the wheel, the fetters. They all point at the same three facts.

One root. Ignorance begins the chain; wisdom ends it. The Suttas (the discourses) and the Abhidhamma (the higher teaching) agree that the one thing a being needs is understanding of what is really there. The last lesson asks where that understanding has to begin.

Lesson 10: what is happening right now?

The point of the lists. The book ends by asking the question that any reader will have been asking. “You may wonder what is the point of all these classifications. Are they of any use to one in coming to understanding the truth of the way things are?” Its answer: “When the Abhidhamma enumerates lists of types of consciousness and lists of types of matter this is so that one can understand that this is all that there really is right now.” Not in a book. Not in heaven. Right now, in this moment, there is nothing but some of the eighty-nine, some of the fifty-two and some of the twenty-eight.

Sitting. The book takes the plainest thing it can find. “We sit and we talk and we think and we move about but we do not realise that our sitting and talking and thinking, etc., are in fact conditioned by many different things. When we sit down how do we know that we are sitting? You may say, ‘Well it’s obvious, isn’t it?’ But ‘sitting’ is known because of different experiences through the body-sense and the eye perhaps, and we remember that these experiences when occurring all together are conventionally known as sitting.”

Take it apart, as the Abhidhamma does.

“It is, in fact, a type of (body-sense) consciousness which experiences hardness through the body, seeing which sees and memory which remembers what we are doing. Body-sense, seeing and memory are all types of nama which are conditioned. They are each different and each have different functions. Hardness is a type of rupa (matter). It cannot know anything about anything. Hardness is not a seat. ‘Seat’ or ‘chair’ are conventional labels we give to other sets of experience through different senses. None of these experiences is a person sitting. Each is different. Each experience occurs at a different moment. So in reality no ‘person’ exists who is ‘sitting’ on a ‘chair’. There are just different realities occurring one after another through different senses.”

So, in the moment that is called “sitting”, there is:

• hardness, which is rūpa (matter) and knows nothing;
• the body-sense citta (consciousness) that experiences the hardness, which is nāma (mind);
• seeing, which sees colour, another nāma (mind) at another moment;
• saññā (memory), the cetasika (mental factor) that remembers “this is sitting”, at yet another moment.

Four different realities, at different moments. The word “sitting” is the box they are put in. The word “I” is the box the box is put in. Neither box is in the room.

Pain. “This may still not seem clear, but perhaps if we apply this knowledge to all of our life, we can see that pain, for example, is just unpleasant result (of deeds in the past), that the aversion to pain is just nama, that the unpleasant feeling when there is pain is also just nama.” Three realities again: the painful bodily experience, which is vipāka (result); the dosa (anger) that wants it to stop, which is a new akusala (bad) moment; and the unpleasant vedanā (feeling) that goes with each. When a child falls and scrapes a knee, the sting is result, and cannot be helped; the “I hate this” that follows is not result, and can be known as only dosa (anger), arising and falling away.

Insults. “When people insult us, it is just sound appearing through the ear.” Hearing the sound is vipāka (result). The sound is rūpa (matter); it knows nothing and means nothing by itself. The meaning is put together afterwards by thinking, and the hurt is dosa (anger) arising in a later moment. “It is only when we see and hear ‘things’ which we don’t like that we have all our problems, worries, strife and woe.”

No person in them. The book’s last teaching sentence is this: “To understand Abhidhamma is to understand that there is just seeing, hearing, thinking, touching, tasting, etc., but no person in them. This knowledge as it develops, ultimately brings us release from this unsatisfactory wheel of existence.”

Every lesson has been about this one sentence. Lesson 2 said that seeing is nāma (mind) and colour is rūpa (matter). Lesson 3 said that seeing is a vipāka citta (result consciousness), one of eighty-nine. Lesson 4 said that it arises with seven cetasika (mental factors). Lesson 5 said that the eye-sense and the colour are among the twenty-eight kinds of rūpa (matter). Lesson 6 said that the seeing is the fruit of a deed. Lesson 7 said that this body and this life are the fruit of deeds too. Lesson 8 said that the view of a self in all this is the first fetter to be cut. Lesson 9 said that seeing is anicca (impermanent), dukkha (unsatisfactory) and anattā (non-self). And this lesson says: look now.

What the Abhidhamma is for. The preface to the book says it: “A study of the Abhidhamma can be of immense value to us in coming to terms with the nature of life and understanding it in the way of momentary events.” And: “As we understand more and more the Buddha’s teaching, we will be more kind, more considerate and more harmless (in the true sense of causing no harm) to all our fellow beings.” Someone who knows that the other person is also only nāma (mind) and rūpa (matter), arising from conditions, suffering results, has less reason to be angry and more reason to be kind.

The last word. The book closes with a verse from the Visuddhimagga (the Path of Purity) by Buddhaghosa, which it calls “the greatest written summary of the Theravadin teachings in existence today”:

As long as a man is vague about the world,
About its origin, about its ceasing,
About the means that lead to its cessation,
So long he cannot recognise the truths.

The world is this moment of nāma (mind) and rūpa (matter). Its origin is craving and ignorance. Its ceasing is nibbāna (the end of all troubles). The means is the path, arising moment by moment. Someone who is clear about those four is no longer vague about the world, and the Abhidhamma was taught so that beings could stop being vague.

Quiz 5 (lessons 9 and 10)

Click an answer. Each question tells you at once whether it is right. For the written ones, show the answer and mark yourself.

Lesson 11: no one is master

The second essay in the book is by Nina van Gorkom, and it is called Abhidhamma and Practice. The first essay explained what the Abhidhamma says. The second asks what difference it makes. Lessons 11 and 12 follow it.

Three things. The essay opens with a question: “What is the cause of all misery and sorrow in the world?” And it answers with a discourse from the Saṃyutta Nikāya (the Grouped Discourses, called the Kindred Sayings in the translation it uses), in which King Pasenadi of Kosala asked the Buddha:

“How many kinds of things, lord, that happen in the world, make for trouble, for suffering, for distress?”

The Buddha answered:

“Three things, sire, happen of that nature. What are the three? Greed, hate, and delusion:—these three make for trouble, for suffering, for distress.”

Greed is lobha (attachment); hate is dosa (anger); delusion is moha (ignorance). They are the three roots that Lesson 3 met, and the three strongest of the fourteen bad mental factors in Lesson 4. “In the Buddha’s time defilements were the cause of all sorrow and suffering and this is also true for today. It is true for all times. Only those who are perfected have no more sorrow and suffering.” The perfected are the arahants (fully enlightened ones) of Lesson 8.

The solution. “The Buddha taught the solution to all problems: the eradication of all unwholesomeness through the development of right understanding; right understanding of all phenomena of our life.” The essay then asks the question a thoughtful reader would ask. Is it not selfish to be busy with one’s own defilements? And is it even possible? The answer is this: “We cannot eradicate the defilements of others, ‘we’ cannot even eradicate our own defilements. But when right understanding has been developed, it is right understanding which can gradually eradicate defilements. But this may take many lives.” Nobody does it; paññā (wisdom) does it, when it has been developed. And as for selfishness: “We usually seek only ourselves and we serve our own interests. How could we then really serve other people? Detachment from ‘self’ is only possible through right understanding of the phenomena of our life. Through right understanding there will be less unwholesomeness in life and more wholesomeness, such as loving-kindness and compassion.”

Where is the mind? The essay takes the things people are most attached to and looks for them. The body: “We all see a change in the body after some time, when we become older, but in reality our body changes each moment of our life. What we take for ‘our body’ are only different physical phenomena which arise and then fall away immediately.” The mind: “We are attached to the idea of ‘my mind’, but where is it? Is it thinking? But thinking is never the same, we think now of this, now of that. There is thinking now, but it is always changing. Is feeling something which lasts? Feeling is sometimes pleasant, sometimes unpleasant, and sometimes there is indifferent feeling. Each moment feeling is different. There is no mind, there are only ever-changing mental phenomena which do not belong to a self.”

Love is real. It would be easy to misunderstand this as saying that nothing matters. The essay says the opposite. “Love is real, but it falls away immediately, and it does not belong to a self who could be master of it. We can have the intention to be kind, but we cannot force ourselves to kindness. When things are not the way we want them to be we may become angry, in spite of ourselves, as we say. This shows us that phenomena are anatta, not self. Anger is real, but it falls away immediately. Love, hate, wisdom, generosity, all these things are real, but there is no self which could be master of them, they are anatta.” Everybody knows the experience of meaning to be kind and finding anger there instead. That experience is the proof. If there were a master, the master would choose kindness every time.

Character. “Does not everybody have his own personality? There is nothing lasting in a man, not even what we call his character.” What there is, the essay says, is a chain. “There is only one moment of consciousness (citta) at a time, and it falls away immediately after it has arisen, but it is succeeded by a next moment. Thus our whole life is like a chain of moments of consciousness. Each moment of consciousness which falls away conditions the next moment of consciousness and thus it is possible that our good and bad moments today condition our inclinations in the future. Generosity today or anger today conditions generosity or anger in the future. A moment of right understanding now conditions right understanding in the future, and thus it is possible to develop wisdom.” This is why what a child does today matters, although there is no child who lasts: every moment hands something on to the next. “Although each moment falls away we can still speak of an ‘accumulation’ of experiences in each moment of consciousness, and we can call this character.”

Not estranged. Does seeing people as nāma (mind) and rūpa (matter) make a person cold towards them? “We do not become estranged from life and from our fellow-men when we see both ourselves and others as nama and rupa which are impermanent and not self. We would rather that there is no impermanence, no death, but that is not possible. It is better to know the truth about life than to mislead ourselves with regard to the truth. When there is less clinging to the concept of self we will be able to act with more unselfishness and thus we can be of more help to others.”

Seeing sees only the visible. The essay then returns to the plainest reality of all. “We think that we see a person but seeing sees only what appears through the eyes: the visible. A person could not contact the eye-sense. When we pay attention to the shape and form of something there is no seeing, but thinking.” And: “Seeing is not thinking. Seeing sees and it does not think. When we close our eyes we may think of many things but we cannot see. When we open our eyes something appears which did not appear when our eyes were closed. There is seeing, and seeing sees visible object. Seeing does not see a man or a tree.” The same is true of touch: “The hardness which is experienced is not a body, it is only hardness, a rupa which is experienced through the body-sense and it falls away again, although we do not realize it.”

Realities and concepts. Here the essay gives the course a word it has needed since the Introduction. Things like “person, animal, tree or house are not paramattha dhammas, they are concepts.” A paññatti (concept) is an idea put together by thinking out of many experiences remembered: “We form up concepts because of a combination of many different experiences which we remember.” Colour is a reality; “tree” is a concept. Hardness is a reality; “chair” is a concept. The realities “can be directly experienced by everybody, without there being the need to think about them. We do not have to think of sound or hardness in order to experience them.” Concepts cannot be experienced through any of the five senses; they are only thought. This does not mean that thinking is wrong: “We should not try to avoid thinking of people or things, thinking is a reality, it arises. However, we should know that the concepts which are objects of our thinking are not realities.”

Blame. The essay ends its first half with a sentence that every reader can test on himself. “When there is no right understanding of nama and rupa we will only have a superficial knowledge of both ourselves and others. We will have a wrong understanding of cause and effect in life. Don’t we blame others for our own unhappiness? The real cause of unhappiness is within ourselves.” When a boy is unhappy because his sister took the last mango, the mango and the sister are not the cause. The cause is lobha (attachment) and dosa (anger), which arose in him, and which will arise again at the next mango unless paññā (wisdom) comes to know them. “Right understanding of the different namas and rupas which appear is the only way to have less defilements and thus to have less sorrow in life.”

Lesson 12: study with mindfulness

What the practice is. The second half of Nina van Gorkom’s essay is about vipassanā (insight), and it says what insight is in one sentence: “The development of insight is a kind of study of nama and rupa through the direct experience of them.” Not study in a book, though the book comes first, but study at the moment a reality appears. “Namas and rupas which appear one at a time should be ‘studied’ with mindfulness, but each moment of study is extremely short, since mindfulness does not last, it falls away. However, gradually a clearer understanding of realities can be accumulated.” The objects of this study are “nama and rupa”, “not people, animals or things”. “Wherever we are there are in reality only nama and rupa, such as seeing, hearing, the visible object, sound or hardness.”

What mindfulness is. Sati (mindfulness) is one of the nineteen beautiful mental factors in Lesson 4. The essay says: “Mindfulness (sati) is nama which arises with a wholesome moment of consciousness. We cannot induce mindfulness whenever we want it, but it can arise when there are the appropriate conditions. All namas and rupas in our life arise only when there are the appropriate conditions, not because of our will.” So there is no method of making sati (mindfulness) happen. There is only the question of its conditions.

Its condition. “The condition for right mindfulness is intellectual understanding of what nama and rupa are: realities which appear through the six doorways.” That is what this whole course has been for. “When we read in the Buddhist scriptures time and again about the realities which appear through the six doors or we listen to talks about nama and rupa, and we understand what we read or what we hear, then the intellectual understanding can condition the arising of mindfulness. Even one moment of mindfulness is valuable because it can condition another moment later on and thus right understanding can grow.” The essay calls this “the highest form of wholesomeness”, because “it is the only way to eradicate attachment, aversion and ignorance”. Lesson 6 listed bhāvanā (mental development) among the ten bases of merit; this is the highest kind of it.

What it is not. Many people think that mindfulness means doing everything slowly and carefully, with attention to what the hands and feet are doing. The essay says plainly that this is not it. “When one believes that one does all one’s actions in a day with thoughtfulness but there is no awareness of nama and rupa, it is not the development of insight. When one, for example, follows what one’s hands and feet are doing in a day one does not learn anything about nama and rupa, about what is real, about impermanence.” Hands and feet are concepts. What is real when the hand moves is hardness, motion, the body-consciousness that experiences them, and the citta (consciousness) that moves them. Sati (mindfulness) is aware of one of those, for one moment, and is gone.

Doing everything as usual. “In the development of insight we do everything as usual, but in our daily life there can be mindfulness of a nama or a rupa, a moment of ‘study with mindfulness’, study through the practice.” The essay gives an example from its author’s own life:

“When my husband takes my hand, there is, as we say, a ‘human contact’. What are the realities? There is attachment and this is real, we do not have to try to suppress it. There can, in a very natural way, be study with mindfulness of a nama or a rupa. What appears through the body-sense? Not a person, not my husband. Heat or cold, hardness or softness can appear through the body-sense. We do not have to think about it, it can be directly experienced. Through mindfulness we can prove that no person is experienced through the body-sense, that a person does not exist. There is no person, only different namas and rupas appearing one at a time, and they do not stay.”

Notice what the essay does not say. It does not say that the attachment is wrong and must be stopped, or that the hand must be let go of. “There is attachment and this is real, we do not have to try to suppress it.” The practice is not to change what arises, but to know it. And she adds the reason it matters: “Clinging to people brings sorrow; eventually I will have to take leave from my husband, nothing is permanent.”

Kamma, again. With more understanding, the essay says, “we will have a different view of the events of our life. We like to make plans but often things do not happen the way we would like them to. Our good and bad deeds (kamma) are the causes in our life which bring their results in the form of pleasant and unpleasant experiences. When we understand that our life is nama and rupa which arise because of their own conditions, not because of our will, we will be less attached to pleasant results and less inclined to blame others for unpleasant things we experience. There are only nama and rupa and we are not master of them.”

For others too. The essay’s last sentences answer the question it began with, whether this is selfish. “Through the development of insight we will become more patient, we will have more loving-kindness and compassion. Thus, the development of insight is to the benefit of other people as well.” Someone who knows that the person who was rude is only nāma (mind) and rūpa (matter), arising from conditions, with dosa (anger) that he is not master of either, has less reason to be angry and more reason for karuṇā (compassion).

The goal. The appendix to the book, after listing all the conditioned realities, ends with the one that is not conditioned. “There is one type of unconditioned reality and that is called nibbana (in Sanskrit, nirvana). Nibbana is described as the ‘deathless’, the ‘cool’, the ‘incomparable’, the ‘peaceful’. It is the end of craving, the goal of the Buddha’s teachings.” Lesson 2 said that nibbāna (the end of all troubles) cannot be understood by reading about it. But the road to it can be: it begins with hearing what nāma (mind) and rūpa (matter) are, goes on with understanding what has been heard, and continues, one short moment at a time, with sati (mindfulness) of the reality that is appearing right now.

Quiz 6 (lessons 11 and 12)

Click an answer. Each question tells you at once whether it is right. For the written ones, show the answer and mark yourself.

The Abhidhamma on one page

Everything in the twelve lessons, in the order it was met.

Going on from here. The preface to the book says: “We should apply ourselves to the study of all parts of the Buddha’s teaching contained in the Pali Canon-to the Vinaya (the books of discipline for the Sangha), to the Suttas (the books of discourses) and to the Abhidhamma. Our own clarification of the teachings through reading, wise consideration and contemplation will be of much benefit to us and to all others who come into contact with us.” The book’s own reading list begins with Abhidhamma in Daily Life by Nina van Gorkom, which takes each of these lists further and can be read free of charge on abhidhamma.org. After that comes the Abhidhammattha Saṅgaha (the Compendium of Abhidhamma), the short manual by the Elder Anuruddha that every student of the Abhidhamma in Burma, Sri Lanka and Thailand has learnt for a thousand years, and which gives all the lists in this course in full.

Word list

Every Pali word in this course, with the English used for it. The words are in the order of the English alphabet, ignoring the marks on the letters.

Where it comes from

This course follows An Introduction to the Abhidhamma, printed for free distribution by the Dhamma Study Group, Bangkok, at New Year 1980, and dedicated to Sister Sudhammā (Pauline Ofner, 1927 to 1979). The book has two essays and an appendix. The first essay, Abhidhamma Notes by Jill Jordan and Richard Giles, was written as an introduction to the Abhidhamma for a comparative religion class in Adelaide, South Australia; Lessons 1 to 10 keep to its order, its explanations and, as far as a course for young readers allows, its words. The second essay, Abhidhamma and Practice by Nina van Gorkom, was written for a Dhamma publication in Holland; Lessons 11 and 12 follow it. The appendix, The Paramattha Dhammas, lists all 89 (or 121) kinds of consciousness, the 52 mental factors and the 28 kinds of matter, and the tables in Lessons 3, 4 and 5 are taken from it. Where this course quotes a sentence in quotation marks, the words are those of the book or of the translation it uses.

The book itself draws on these ancient texts, and the course has gone to them for the stories:

• The Atthasālinī (The Expositor), Buddhaghosa’s commentary on the Dhammasaṅgaṇī, the first book of the Abhidhamma, for the teaching of the Abhidhamma in Tāvatiṃsa (the heaven of the Thirty-three), the created Buddha, Sāriputta and his five hundred pupils, and the recital of the Abhidhamma at the First Council.
• The Dhammapada commentary, for the descent from heaven at Saṅkassa.
• The Mahāvaṃsa (the Great Chronicle of Ceylon), chapters 14 and 33, in the translation of Wilhelm Geiger, for the Elder Mahinda’s meeting with King Devānampiyatissa and for the writing down of the Tipiṭaka (the Three Baskets) in Sri Lanka. The Samantapāsādikā, the commentary on the Vinaya (discipline), for the three councils.
• The Visuddhimagga (the Path of Purity) by Buddhaghosa, for the chariot and for the closing verse, both quoted in the book.
• The Saṃyutta Nikāya (the Grouped Discourses): the discourse on the heap of sticks (ii, 178) and King Pasenadi’s question about the three things that make for trouble (the Kindred Sayings, I, III, iii, 3), both quoted in the book; the verses of the nun Vajirā (the Vajirā Sutta), the discourse on the dirt on the fingernail and the first sermon, the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, in the translation of Bhikkhu Sujato.
• The Udāna (the Inspired Utterances), for the Buddha’s words to Bāhiya, in the translation of Bhikkhu Sujato.
• The Majjhima Nikāya (the Middle Length Discourses), the Dhātuvibhaṅga Sutta, for the elements in the body.
• The Dhammapada, verse 100, quoted at the front of the book.
• The Abhidhammattha Saṅgaha (the Compendium of Abhidhamma) by the Elder Anuruddha, for the Pali names of the ten bad deeds, the ten bases of merit, the planes, the fetters and the moments of a sense-door process, where the book gives only the English or does not go into them.

Where the ancient texts and modern scholars differ, this course follows the ancient texts. In particular, it follows the Atthasālinī (The Expositor) in holding that the Abhidhamma is the Buddha’s own teaching, recited at the First Council, and that the Kathāvatthu (Points of Controversy) was set out by the Elder Moggaliputta Tissa at the Third Council on an outline the Buddha had laid down.

The whole of the Abhidhamma, with many more books about it, can be read free of charge on abhidhamma.org.