Chapter 0. Guide to this essay¶

This essay examines a set of long lists with nearly two hundred entries and many correspondences between them. The chapter first explains why the essay is necessary and then why it need not be read cell by cell. It ends by offering three ways to read it. Readers should then know which parts they need to read and which they can safely skip.

Why this essay is necessary.

First, Part I devoted only one chapter to Theravāda Abhidhamma. That chapter explained its place among the Buddhist schools, but left its content to be examined. The system analyzes mind and matter down to what admits of no further division and works through the relations between every cell. It needs an essay of its own if we are to examine its implicit philosophy in depth.

Second, half the opponents and points of reference for the essays that follow are here. Madhyamaka seeks to refute own-nature, while Yogācāra seeks to establish seeds and continuity. Tathāgatagarbha thought seeks to supply what is missing on another side. All face a system that has already tabulated mind, matter, and the relations among dhammas. The other half lies in the next essay, on Sarvāstivāda. The real existence of dharmas in all three times, the enduring existence of their substance, the six causes and four conditions, unmanifest matter, and acquisition form another scheme with which Madhyamaka and Yogācāra must also contend. Together the two essays provide a full map of the background. This essay draws half of it, so readers need not expect it to cover every opponent.

Third, this is a living discipline. Practitioners still use these classifications in the four establishments of mindfulness, insight meditation, the seven purifications, and the sixteen insight knowledges. The material covered here is used every day in Theravāda meditation traditions. To treat it merely as ancient cataloging is to miss half of it.

Why this essay need not be read cell by cell.

Chapters 2 through 5 are largely four sets of reference lists: mentality, materiality, cognitive processes, and conditions. Eighty-nine cittas, fifty-two mental factors, twenty-eight kinds of matter, and twenty-four conditions already make for a dense catalog. Add the correspondences between cittas and mental factors, the composition of material clusters, the fifteen patterns of cognitive process, and the 130 pairings of conditioning and conditioned dhammas, and reading it all at one sitting becomes a heavy burden.

Many people who study Abhidhamma today stop halfway through. They usually stop because they do not know what remembering the material is for, rather than because they cannot remember it. When the lists are laid out at the start, readers have no thread to connect them. They can only memorize cell after cell, losing their bearings by the third table. The loss is avoidable, since those who give up are often precisely the readers willing to work hard. Their effort has simply gone into the details too soon.

This essay therefore reverses the order. Each of Chapters 2 through 5 first explains in modern language what its list is saying and then sets out the entries. The overview is written to stand on its own. Even without looking at any of the tables that follow, readers should understand what the chapter is about and why it divides things as it does. They should also understand the part it plays in the system as a whole. The tables are there for those who need them, and need not be an admission ticket.

Modern language only shows the way in.

The cost of explaining the overview in modern language should be stated at the outset. Mental factors are not emotions, and a mind-moment is not the smallest unit of time. A material cluster is not a molecule, and a condition is not a causal law. Whenever this essay uses a modern term to render an ancient concept, the term serves only as a guide. Once it has brought the reader to the door, it should step aside. The introduction to Part II gave a warning that this essay especially needs to observe. Let the text finish speaking before considering which modern framework happens to pass by. The actual definitions lie in the four columns used to define a dhamma, which Chapter 1 will introduce, not in the analogies. Wherever this book uses an analogy to open a subject, the text follows it with a statement of what the subject is not.

Three ways to read.

First, the quick route: Chapters 0 and 1, the opening overview in each of Chapters 2 through 5, then Chapters 6 and 7. This route requires no tables and still gives a complete reading.

Second, the reference route: use the lists in Chapters 2 through 5 alongside the Charts, looking up each cell as needed. These four chapters are designed as a lasting reference tool for that purpose and need not be read from beginning to end.

Third, the full route: read in order. Readers choosing this route should pay particular attention to the latter half of Chapter 5 and to Chapter 7, where the essay's central arguments lie.

Data and sources. The chapter sequence in this essay follows the nine chapters of the Compendium of Abhidhamma. Its data come from Charts for the Compendium of Abhidhamma, compiled by Bhikkhu Mingfa, revised by Luo Qinglong, and published by Fayu Practice Center. All counts in this essay follow that edition, and differences from other editions are explained in notes. The Chinese names and explanations of the entries follow that text, without retranslation. The judgments belong to this book, not to any commentator. Conjectures are marked in the text with "this book takes the view that."

The connection with Part I. Chapter 4 of Essay 3 in Part I offered a preliminary judgment. The phenomenological part of Theravāda Abhidhamma is outstanding, but its problems lie in ontologization and fixing things in place. This essay tests that judgment cell by cell, rather than repeating it, before deciding whether to retain or revise it. Chapter 1 sets out the criteria for the test.

On to Chapter 1. First, we need to establish just what questions this analysis seeks to answer.