II

The Twofold Method of Abhidhamma Philosophy

Having used the term “Abhidhamma philosophy” in the title of this chapter, we must first state in what sense these two words are to be taken here.

It is well known that the Abhidhamma Piṭaka forms the third main division of the Pāli Canon and consists of seven books. But when speaking in these pages of the Abhidhamma in general we have in mind particularly the first and last of these seven books, namely, the Dhammasaṅgaṇī and the Paṭṭhāna, which are aptly characterized by the Venerable Nyanatiloka as “the quintessence of the entire Abhidhamma.”¹⁴

Now, in what sense can the Abhidhamma be called a philosophy? Let us make a rough division of philosophy into phenomenology and ontology, and briefly characterize them as follows: Phenomenology deals, as the name implies, with “phenomena,” that is, with the world of internal and external experience. Ontology, or metaphysics, inquires into the existence and nature of an essence, or ultimate principle, underlying the phenomenal world. In other words, phenomenology investigates the questions: What happens in the world of our experience? How does it happen? Of course, when inquiring into the “what” and “how,” philosophy is not satisfied with the surface view of reality as it presents itself to the naive and uncritical mind. Ontology, on the other hand, insists, at least in most of its systems, that the question “how” cannot be answered without reference to an eternal essence behind reality, whether conceived as immanent or transcendent. Particularly in the latter case the question “how” is frequently changed into a “why,” containing the tacit assumption that the answer has to be sought somewhere or somehow outside of the given reality.

The Abhidhamma doubtlessly belongs to the first of these two divisions of philosophy, that is, to phenomenology. Even that fundamental Abhidhamma term dhamma, which includes corporeal as well as mental “things,” may well be rendered by “phenomena”15—if only we keep in mind that in Abhidhammic usage “phenomenon” must not be thought to imply a correlative “noumenon” as, for instance, in Kant’s philosophy.

In describing the Abhidhamma as phenomenology we must make two reservations, which however will not greatly alter the substance of our statement. First, Nibbāna, mostly under the name asaṅkhatā dhātu (“the unconditioned element”), also appears in the “Enumeration of Phenomena” (Dhammasaṅgaṇī) in several of the classificatory groups treated in that work. Being “supramundane” (lokuttara), Nibbāna is certainly, in the sense of the term lokuttara, a metaphysical or transcendent entity. The latter term “transcendent” may well be rendered by another Abhidhammic classification of Nibbāna, apariyāpanna, that is, “not included” in the three realms of conditioned existence conceived by Buddhism.¹⁶ Though Nibbāna, as the asaṅkhatā dhātu, does in fact appear quite often in the Dhammasaṅgaṇī, it should be noted that: (1) in all cases it is merely mentioned without any further explanation beyond the classificatory heading under which it appears, and so it differs in that respect from the other “things,” to all of which a definition is added; (2) the classifications of Nibbāna are all negative in character.¹⁷ On the other hand it is noteworthy that Nibbāna is definitely termed a dhamma, even in classifications where it cannot be viewed as an object of thought (that is, a dhamma in the sense of a mental object, correlated to mano, mind). So we have to admit that this sole nonphenomenal entity belongs likewise to the system of the Abhidhamma, but—and this reinforces our point—it is never enlarged upon because Nibbāna is an object of realization and not of philosophical research.

Our second reservation with regard to an exclusively phenomenological view of the Abhidhamma is this: The penetrative phenomenological investigation undertaken in the Abhidhamma makes a definite and valuable contribution to ontological problems, that is, to the search for an abiding essence in reality. The Abhidhamma philosophy shows clearly and irrefutably where such an alleged essence can never be found, namely, anywhere in the world of the five aggregates (khandha). The most sublime states of meditative consciousness—so frequently identified with the manifestation of, or the mystical union with, a deity of a personal or impersonal nature—are included in those five phenomenal objects of clinging (upādānakkhandha) and excluded from the sphere of the unconditioned element. At the same time, the thorough analysis of all phenomena undertaken in the Abhidhamma leaves no doubt as to what Nibbāna definitely is not. It is true that these ontological results of the Abhidhamma are “merely negative,” but they certainly represent more substantial and consequential contributions to the ontological problem than the “positive” assertions of many metaphysical systems, indulging in unprovable or fallacious conceptual speculations.

Having dealt with these two reservations, we may return to our initial simplified statement and formulate it now in this way: The Abhidhamma is not a speculative but a descriptive philosophy.

For the purpose of describing phenomena, the Abhidhamma uses two complementary methods: that of analysis, and that of investigating the relations (or the conditionality) of things. Both these typical features of the Abhidhamma, that is, the limitation to a purely descriptive procedure and the twofold method, will become evident if we glance at the fundamental schemata of the two principal books of the Abhidhamma mentioned above.

1. In its chapter on consciousness, the analytical Dhammasaṅgaṇī, or “Enumeration of Phenomena,” has the following descriptive pattern: “At a time when (such or such a type of) consciousness has arisen, at that time there exist the following phenomena…”18

2. The Paṭṭhāna, or “Book of Origination,” the principal work dealing with the Buddhist philosophy of relations, uses the following basic formula: “Dependent on a (wholesome) phenomenon there may arise a (wholesome) phenomenon, conditioned by way of (root-cause).”

It is evident from the very wording that in both cases the statements made are purely descriptive. In the first case a description is given of what is really happening when we say “consciousness has arisen,” that is to say, what are the constituents of that event which is seemingly of a unitary, noncomposite nature. In the second case, the description answers the question how, that is, under what conditions the event is happening.

The mere juxtaposition of these two basic schemata of the Abhidhamma already allows us to formulate an important axiom of Buddhist philosophy: A complete description of a thing requires, besides its analysis, also a statement of its relations to other things.

Though the Abhidhamma, being nonmetaphysical, does not deal with any Beyond as to things in general (meta ta physika), it nevertheless does go beyond single things, that is, beyond things artificially isolated for the purpose of analytical description. The connection or relation between things, that is, their conditionality (idappaccayatā), is dealt with particularly in the Paṭṭhāna, which supplies a vast net of conditional relations obtaining between the conditioning phenomena and the things they condition. But the mere fact of relational existence is already implicit in the thorough analysis undertaken in the Dhammasaṅgaṇī, where it is shown that even the smallest psychic unit, that is, a single moment of consciousness, is constituted by a multiplicity of active mental factors bound together in a relationship of interdependence. This fact is frequently emphasized in the Atthasālinī. For example, when commenting on the formula for the first type of wholesome consciousness in the Dhammasaṅgaṇī (see below, p. 31), the Atthasālinī (pp. 58–59) enumerates the different meanings that the word samaya (“time” or “occasion”) may have in this context. One of these meanings is samūha, aggregation (or constellation) of things, and if samaya is understood thus, the formula would read: “In whichever aggregation of things a wholesome state of consciousness… has arisen, in that aggregation exist: sense-contact, etc.” Here the commentator remarks: “Thereby (that is, by the above explanation of samaya) the view is rejected that any one thing may arise singly” (Asl 59). In other words: thorough analysis implies an acknowledgment of relationship. Two more axioms in the same text (Asl 59–61) stress the need to investigate the relations of things: “Nothing arises from a single cause” (ekakāraṇavādo paṭisedhito hoti); and “Nothing exists (or moves) by its own power” (dhammānaṁ savasavattitābhimāno paṭisedhitohoti).19

We can add as third the already quoted sentence in an abbreviated form: “Nothing arises singly” (ekass’ eva dhammassa uppatti paṭisedhito hoti).

These terse sentences represent three fundamental principles of Buddhist philosophy, which well deserve to be taken out of the mass of expository detail where they easily escape the attention they merit. Next to the fact of impermanence (aniccatā), these three axioms, implying as they do the principle of conditionality (idappaccayatā), are the main supports for the fundamental Buddhist doctrine of non-self or unsubstantiality (anattā).

The analysis as undertaken in the Dhammasaṅgaṇī shows that the smallest accessible psychic unit, a moment of consciousness, is as little indivisible (atomos), uniform, and undifferentiated as the material atom of modern physics. Like the physical atom, a moment of consciousness is a correlational system of its factors, functions, energies, or aspects, or whatever other name we choose to give to the “components” of that hypothetical psychic unit. In the Abhidhamma these “components” are called simply dhammā, that is, “things” or “states.”

It should be noted, however, that the Paṭṭhāna, the principal work of Buddhist “conditionalism,” is not so much concerned with the relations within a single psychic unit (cittakkhaṇa)—which we shall call “internal relations”—as with the connections between several such units. But these “external relations” are to a great extent dependent on the “internal relations” of the given single unit or of previous ones, that is, on the modes of combination and the relative strength of the different mental factors within a single moment of consciousness. This shows that the analytical method is as important for the relational one as the latter is for the former.

The presence or absence, strength or weakness, of a certain mental factor (dhamma or cetasika) may decide the occurrence or nonoccurrence of a given external relation. For example, in any wholesome state of consciousness the mental factor of energy (viriya) functions as right effort (sammā-vāyāma), the sixth factor of the Noble Eightfold Path. Even though this state of consciousness may be one dissociated from knowledge, the presence of energy, one of the path factors, may establish a relationship with a future state of consciousness where the path factor “right view” (sammā-diṭṭhi) is also present. In other words, the tendency toward liberation inherent in the path factors is, in our example, at first mainly expressed by the factor “energy,” that is, the active wish and endeavor directed to liberation. This energy naturally strives to acquire all the other requisites for reaching the goal, particularly the path factor of right view. If there is the definite awareness that a certain quality of mind or character is a member of a group of factors sharing a common purpose, then the respective state of consciousness will naturally tend to complete that group either by acquiring the missing members or by strengthening those that are undeveloped. Thereby a bridge is built to another type of consciousness. Thus, from this example, we can see how the composition of a state of consciousness—its internal relations—influences its external relations.

As already mentioned, the Paṭṭhāna investigates only the external relations, but in another work of the Abhidhamma, the Vibhaṅga, the internal relations too are treated. In the Paccayākāravibhaṅga, the “Treatise on the Modes of Conditionality,” the schema of the Dhammasaṅgaṇī is combined with the formula of dependent origination (paṭicca-samuppāda); for example: “(At a time when the first unwholesome state of consciousness has arisen), there arises dependent on ignorance the (respective) kamma formation (avijjāpaccayā saṅkhāro, in singular!).” In that text, there are some deviations from the normal formula of dependent origination, varying in accordance with the type of consciousness in question. This remarkable application of the paṭicca-samuppāda is called in the commentary ekacittakkhaṇika-paṭicca-samuppāda, that is, “dependent origination within a single moment of consciousness.” The commentary indicates which of the twenty-four modes of conditionality (paccaya) are applicable to which links of that “momentary” paṭicca-samuppāda. In this way, by showing that even an infinitesimally brief moment of consciousness is actually an intricate net of relations, the erroneous belief in a static world is attacked and destroyed at its root. In that important but much too little known chapter of the Vibhaṅga, both methods of the Abhidhamma, the analytical and the relational, are exemplified and harmonized simultaneously.20

The Buddha, who is so rightly called “skillful in his method of instruction” (nayakusalo), has on other occasions, too, used the same ingenious approach of first applying separately two different methods and afterwards combining them. Here are only a few examples:

According to the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta (DN No. 22; MN No. 10), the contemplation of different objects should proceed in two phases:

Phase I:

1.  ajjhatta, the contemplation of phenomena (corporeal and mental) as appearing in oneself

2.  bahiddhā, phenomena appearing in others

3.  ajjhatta-bahiddhā, the combination of both

Here the synthetical or relational method is applied by breaking down wrong differentiations between ego and non-ego and by showing that the life process is an impersonal continuum. Only a thorough practice of the first two stages will lead to the result.

Phase II:

1.  samudayadhamma, phenomena viewed as arising

2.  vayadhamma, phenomena viewed as passing away

3.  samudaya-vayadhamma, the combination of both

Here the analytical method is applied in order to break up wrong identifications.

In the course of the practice of satipaṭṭhāna, both partial aspects, the synthetical and the analytical (Phases I and II), gradually merge into one perfect and undivided “vision of things as they really are.”

The following instruction for the graduated practice of insight (vipassanā), frequently given in the commentaries and the Visuddhimagga, follows a similar method:

1.  analysis of the corporeal (rūpa)

2.  analysis of the mental (nāma)

3.  contemplation of both (nāma-rūpa)

4.  both viewed as conditioned (sappaccaya)

5.  application of the three characteristics to mind-and-body and their conditions21

Only the application of both methods—the analytical and the synthetical—can produce a full and correct understanding of the egolessness (anattā) and insubstantiality (suññatā) of all phenomena. A one-sided application of analysis may easily result in the view of a rigid world of material and psychic atoms. When science has come close to the Buddhist anattā-doctrine, it has done so (at least up to the beginning of this century) mostly through a radical application of the analytical method, so its kinship to the Buddhist concept is only a partial one and has to be accepted with reservations. However, this analytical approach of science has been supplemented by the dynamic worldview that dominates the latest trends in modern physics, psychology, and philosophy.

To be fair, we have to admit that even distinguished Buddhist writers of the past, and of our time as well, have not always avoided the pitfalls of a one-sided analytical approach. This may easily happen because analysis takes a very prominent place in Buddhist philosophy and meditation. Furthermore, in striving for insight, that is, for a “vision of things as they really are,” analysis comes first. The first task is to remove by analysis the basis for all the numerous false notions of substantial unities, such as the unquestioned belief of the average person in an identical ego, or theological faith in an individual soul, or the various concepts of materialist or idealist systems. Finally, analysis tends to be overemphasized in expositions of the Abhidhamma because the analytical Dhammasaṅgaṇī makes relatively easier reading than the Paṭṭhāna, giving more concrete facts than the latter book. The Paṭṭhāna furnishes only an abstract scheme of all possible relations scantily illustrated. It deals with the formal aspect of the life process. The “bodies” within which these abstract principles operate are supplied in the analytical books of the Abhidhamma. In other words, analysis describes, by critically chosen terms, the “things” that actually enter into those relations dealt with by the synthetical method. All these points are strong temptations to stress unduly the analytical aspect of the Abhidhamma philosophy.

So it is all the more imperative to supplement the analytical aspect by constant awareness of the fact that the “things” presented by analysis are never isolated, self-contained units but are conditioned and conditioning events, as is emphasized by the commentarial axioms cited above. They occur only in temporary aggregations or combinations that are constantly in a process of formation and dissolution. But the word “dissolution” does not imply the complete disappearance of all the components of the respective aggregation. Some of them always “survive”—or, more correctly, recur—in the combination of the next moment, while others, conditioned by their previous occurrence, may reappear much later. Thus the flux of the life stream is preserved uninterrupted.

Bare analysis starts, or pretends to start, its investigations by selecting single objects existing in the sector of time called “the present.” The present is certainly the only reality concretely existing, but it is a very elusive reality that is constantly on the move from an unreal future to an unreal past. Indeed, strictly speaking, the object of analysis, at the time it is taken up for examination, already belongs to the past, not to the present. This is stated by the commentators of old: “Just as it is impossible to touch with one’s fingertip that very same fingertip, so too the arising, continuing, and ceasing of a thought cannot be known by the same thought.”22 Apart from the so-called “momentary present” (khaṇa-paccuppanna), which consists of a single virtually imperceptible moment of consciousness, the statement that, strictly speaking, a thought has not a present but a past object holds good even if we have in mind the much wider “serial present” (santati-paccuppanna), that is, the perceptible sequence of several moments of consciousness, which alone is actually experienced as present. To a philosophical mind, the duration of the object of bare analysis in an artificially delimited, elusive, and not even genuine present lends to it a strangely illusory character, which contrasts quaintly with the frequent assertion of “pure analysts” that they alone deal with “real facts.” Indeed, these “hard facts” are constantly slipping through their fingers! A frequent and vivid experience and contemplation of that illusory nature of the present, not in the well-known general sense but as established by Abhidhammic analysis, will greatly help in the final understanding of suññatā, that is, voidness or insubstantiality.

We have noted how bare analysis starts with single objects occurring in the present. But even the most complacent analysts cannot afford to stop at that point. They must take into account the fact that other “single” objects existing in the “same” space-time act upon their original object, and are in turn acted upon by it. They also have to note that the object chosen undergoes, even before their eyes, a series of consecutive changes. In view of these considerations, analysis must renounce its self-sufficiency and admit within its range of scrutiny at least those two facts of relational existence and constant change. When that is done we must now speak of “qualified analysis,” as distinct from the previous “bare analysis.” In its widened scope, “qualified analysis” spreads, as it were, its objects and the results of its investigations over a plane or surface with only the two dimensions of breadth and length. The “breadth” consists in the first-mentioned relational fact: the coexistence of other phenomena insofar as they are in interconnection with the original object of analysis. The “length” signifies the second relational fact: the sequence of observed, consecutive changes stretching forward in time. Thus qualified analysis takes into consideration only those of the twenty-four modes of conditionality treated in the Paṭṭhāna that refer to coexistence (e.g., sahajāta-paccaya, “conascence”) or to linear sequence (e.g., anantara-paccaya, “contiguity”).

Both bare and qualified analysis are closely bound to a spatial view of the world and, as we have seen, to a limited two-dimensional space. Those who rely on these two kinds of analysis fear nothing so much as the disturbing intrusion of the time factor into their well-ordered but static, sham world of supposedly “unambiguous and palpable facts.” Having had to admit the time factor, at least partially, by way of the two relational facts mentioned above, qualified analysis endeavors to render the time effect as harmless as possible by trying to reduce it to spatial terms of juxtaposition and contiguity. The coexistent things are, as we have seen, arranged into the dimension of breadth, which we might accept provisionally. The fact of change is disposed of by imagining the single phases of the change to be arranged in the dimension of length as if the time during which these changes occurred were an extent in space along which the object moved. Obviously, the strange assumption is made that while the object “changes its place” along that stretch of time it also changes in some mysterious way its nature, that is, it undergoes the observed alterations of, say, aging.

In that way, sequence in time appears to bare and qualified analysis like a cinema in which a great number of single static pictures are substituted quickly enough to produce in the spectator the effect of moving figures. This illustration, after Bergson, is very frequently used in literature with or without the implication that, properly speaking, motion or change is illusory, or real to a lesser degree, while only the single static pictures, that is, self-identical physical and/or psychic (time) atoms, have genuine reality. But according to the Buddha the very reverse is true: change or flux is real, and the single static pictures (that is, individuals, atoms, etc.) are illusory.

If we take up another aspect of that same simile, we shall get a more correct view of the facts concerned: to take a film of moving objects with the help of a mechanism called a camera, and thereby to dissect the continuous motion of the objects, might be compared to the perceptual activity of the mind that, by necessity, must fictitiously arrest the flux of phenomena in order to discriminate. But, as in the case of the camera, that function of dissecting is only an artificial device based on the peculiarity of our perceptual instruments; it is not found in the actual phenomena any more than in the moving objects converted into static pictures by the camera. These static pictures obtained by filming correspond to the static images or percepts, concepts or notions, resulting from the act of perceiving.

But let us now leave this simile. We said before that the spatial world of qualified analysis is limited to the two dimensions of breadth and length. Bare or qualified analysis dare not admit those conditioning and conditioned phenomena that are bound up with the third dimension, that of depth, because the latter is too closely connected with the disturbing time factor. By “depth” we understand that subterranean flow of energies (a wide and intricate net of streams, rivers, and rivulets) originating in kamma or past actions and coming to the surface unexpectedly at a time determined by their inherent life rhythm (time required for growth, maturing, etc.) and by the influence of favorable or obstructive circumstances. The analytical method, we said, will admit only such relational energies as are transmitted by immediate impact (the dimension of breadth) or by the linear “wire” of immediate sequence (the dimension of length). But relational energies may also arise from unknown depths opening under the very feet of the individual or the object; or they may be transmitted, not by that linear “wire” of immediate sequence in space-time, but by way of “wireless” communication, traveling across vast distances in space and time. It is the time factor that gives depth and a wide and growing horizon to our worldview. By the time factor the “present moment” is freed from the banality and insignificance adhering to it in the equalizing and leveling world of space and one-sided analysis. The time factor, as emphasized by the philosophy of relations, invests the “present moment” with that dignity, significance, and decisive importance attributed to it by the Buddha and other great spiritual teachers. Only by the synthetical method, by the philosophy of relations, can due regard be given to the time factor, because in any comprehensive survey of relations or conditions, the past and future too have to be considered, while one-sided analysis may well neglect them.

Precisely because the following pages are mainly concerned with the analytical part of the Abhidhamma, we felt the need to underline the importance of the other aspect. But we wish to stress the harmonization of both methods, not only on philosophical grounds but also on account of its practical importance for spiritual development. Many will have observed in themselves or in others how greatly it often affects the entire life of the individual if the activity of mind is dominated by a dissecting (analytical) or connecting (synthetical) function, rather than the two being well balanced. The consequences can extend beyond the intellectual to the ethical, emotional, social, and imaginative side of the character. This can even be observed when one’s own mental activity is temporarily engaged in one or the other direction. But it can be clearly seen in extreme analytical or synthetical types of mind; here the particular virtues and defects of both will be very marked. We need not enlarge on this. Enough has been said to point out how important it is for the formation of character, and for spiritual progress, to cultivate both the analytical and the synthetical faculties of one’s mind. To do so is one aspect of following the Buddha’s Middle Way, which alone leads to enlightenment.