Chapter 0: Guide to This Part¶

This part is about a system of lists. The lists are long, containing close to two hundred entries, and they are tied together by a great many cross-correspondences. This chapter first explains why this part must exist, then why it need not be read cell by cell, and finally offers three ways through it. Once these three matters have been settled, readers should know which portions they need to read and which they may safely skip.

Why this part must exist.

First, Part I gave Theravāda Abhidhamma only a single chapter. That chapter explained its place in the landscape of the early schools; its position was made clear, but its contents were not unfolded. A system that analyzes mind and matter down to what it regards as their irreducible terms, then works through the relations among every one of those terms, needs a part of its own if its implicit philosophy is to be examined in depth.

Second, half of the opponents and coordinates needed by the parts that follow are here. Madhyamaka's target of intrinsic nature, Yogācāra's seeds and continuity, and the missing terminus supplied by tathāgatagarbha theory all confront a background in which the relations among mind, matter, and dhammas have already been laid out in tables. The other half is in the next part: Sarvāstivāda. There we find another system built around existence in the three times, the enduring existence of the dharma's substance, six causes and four conditions, unmanifest matter, and acquisition. Madhyamaka and Yogācāra must confront that system as well. Only the two parts together supply the whole base map. This part draws one half of it; readers should not expect it to account for every opponent by itself.

Third, this is not a dead field of learning. The four establishments of mindfulness, insight meditation, the seven purifications, and the sixteen insight knowledges are still practiced today through these classifications. The material discussed here is used every day in Theravāda meditation traditions. To treat it merely as ancient cataloguing is to miss half of what it is.

Why this part need not be read cell by cell.

Chapters 2 through 5 are, in large part, four reference lists: mental phenomena, material phenomena, cognitive processes, and conditions. The eighty-nine cittas, fifty-two cetasikas, twenty-eight kinds of rūpa, and twenty-four conditions are already dense. Add the correspondences between cittas and cetasikas, the composition of material groups, the fifteen modes of cognitive process, and the 130 pairings of conditioning and conditioned phenomena, and reading everything in one sitting becomes a heavy burden.

Many people begin studying Abhidhamma and put it down halfway through. Usually the problem is not that they cannot remember the material, but that they do not know what the remembering is for. The lists are spread before them before they have a thread with which to connect them, so they can only memorize one cell after another; by the third table, they have lost their bearings. This is an avoidable loss. Those who withdraw are often precisely the readers willing to work hard; they have simply spent their effort on the details first.

This part therefore reverses the order. Each of Chapters 2 through 5 begins by explaining in modern language what its list is actually saying, and only then presents the entries. The overview is written to stand on its own: after reading it, even a reader who skips every later table should know what the chapter is about, why it divides the material as it does, and what role it plays in the system as a whole. The tables are prepared for those who need to use them. They are not an entrance examination.

Modern language is only an entrance.

The cost of explaining the overview in modern language must be stated in advance. A cetasika is not an emotion, a mind-moment is not the smallest unit of time, a material group is not a molecule, and a condition is not a law of causation. Whenever this part uses a modern term to render an ancient concept, the term serves only as a guide: once it has brought us to the door, it must step aside. The introduction to Part II already issued a warning that matters especially here: let the text finish speaking in its own terms before asking which modern framework happens to pass nearby. The actual definition is found in the four columns of the fourfold defining method, not in the analogy. Wherever this book uses an analogy to open a subject, the text immediately adds what the subject is not.

Three ways to read.

First, the rapid path: Chapter 0, Chapter 1, the opening overview of each of Chapters 2 through 5, and then Chapters 6 and 7. This path never requires opening a table, yet it still forms a complete reading.

Second, the reference path: the list sections of Chapters 2 through 5, used together with the Tabular Exposition. Consult the cell you need when you need it. These four chapters are written as permanent tools and need not be read through.

Third, the complete path: read everything in order. Readers willing to take this route should pay particular attention to the latter half of Chapter 5 and to Chapter 7. The real argument of this part lies there.

Data and basis. The sequence of chapters follows the nine chapters of the Abhidhammattha Saṅgaha. The data are based on the Chinese Tabular Exposition of the Abhidhammattha Saṅgaha (《摄阿毗达摩义论表解》), compiled by Bhikkhu Mingfa, revised by Luo Qinglong, and published by Dhammarain. All numbers in this part follow that edition; divergences from other editions are explained in notes. The Chinese names and explanations of the entries also follow it and are not newly translated in the Chinese text. The judgments, however, are this book's own and do not come from any commentary. Whenever a claim is conjectural, the text marks it as this book's view.

Connection with Part I. Part I, Part 3, Chapter 4 offered a preliminary judgment: the phenomenological portion of Theravāda Abhidhamma is excellent; the problem lies in ontologization and the fixing of fluid processes into static entries. This part does not merely repeat that judgment. It tests it cell by cell before deciding whether to retain or revise it. Chapter 1 supplies the criterion for that test.

To Chapter 1. We begin by clarifying what questions this analytical system is trying to answer.