Chapter 2. Nāma: A taxonomy of mental phenomena¶

The task of this chapter. The preceding chapter called the four columns for defining a dhamma a machine for definition. This chapter examines how it processes consciousness. The eighty-nine cittas are eighty-nine specifications of the same event obtained by crossing several axes. The fifty-two mental factors are likewise not fifty-two emotions, but fifty-two functions that can accompany the same event. This chapter first explains in modern language what questions the two classifications answer. It then sets out the numbers and explains where each comes from. Apart from the overview, the chapter is largely a reference catalog to consult as needed and need not be read from beginning to end.

Overview: what the classification is saying. There are three points.

First, the initial division of the eighty-nine cittas concerns kamma, not psychological types. Unwholesome, wholesome, resultant, and functional are four kammic statuses of the same psychological configuration. The unwholesome produces kamma through greed, hatred, and delusion, while the wholesome produces it through nongreed, nonhatred, and nondelusion. The resultant experiences the maturation of kamma already produced without producing new kamma. The functional operates as usual without producing kamma. The first level therefore answers just three questions: how kamma is produced, how its results are experienced, and why an arahant produces no kamma.

Second, the sphere axis comprises the sense sphere, the form sphere, the immaterial sphere, and the supramundane. The upper three levels are exceptionally regular. The fifteen form-sphere cittas follow a sequence of subtraction through the five jhāna levels. The twelve immaterial cittas are the same citta paired with four objects. The eight supramundane cittas are the four paths and four fruits. The regularity leaves little to say, since all the unevenness lies in the fifty-four sense-sphere cittas. Almost all of the chapter is consequently devoted to the sense sphere.

Third, the fifty-two mental factors answer a different set of questions. What do all cittas, wholesome or unwholesome, share? What else may accompany them? What is shared by the unwholesome, and where do they differ? What is shared by the wholesome, and where do they differ? And what do the cittas of noble persons and those in meditative attainment gain or lose?

With these three points established, readers need not rush to any of the tables that follow to understand what the classification seeks to accomplish. It locates an act of consciousness in a cell according to its kammic status, sphere, and configuration of accompanying functions, giving contemplation an identifiable point on which to settle.

Let us start with an overall diagram. The upper half shows cittas in three groups according to kammic status: those producing kamma, those experiencing its results, and those doing neither. The producers connect to those receiving results. The functional side is grounded, and kamma stops there. The lower half gives the six classes of mental factors, one per row, showing which classes of citta above they can accompany. The diagram gives no counts, only a sense of position. The numbers and their reasons follow in the sections below.

The figure places an arahant’s mundane javanas under functional consciousness; javana in fruition attainment remains supramundane fruition consciousness. The arrow from path to fruition shows their immediate succession at initial attainment; later fruition attainments are also possible.

Four cells, four kammic statuses. The four cells originate in the Dhammasaṅgaṇī. The first triad of its opening matrix is wholesome, unwholesome, and indeterminate. The first two specify moral character, while the third is neutral. The neutral category then divides in two. What comes from kamma maturing is vipāka, customarily called "result" in Chinese. What is neither kamma nor its result is functional. The four cells follow from these divisions. Maturation of past kamma describes the mundane side; the four supramundane fruition cittas are also resultants, arising as the fruits of the four path cittas.¹²

Why can kamma serve as the first level? The discourse defines kamma in one sentence, "It is volition that I call kamma; having willed, one acts through body, speech, and mind." The Chinese parallel reads, "How is kamma known? There are two kinds of kamma: volition, and action after volition."³ Volition is a mental factor present in all eighty-nine cittas without exception, yet only some of those cittas produce kamma. To mark the most important difference at its first level, a classification can distinguish between two kinds of work done by volition. In some cittas it drives a complete intention, while in others it merely carries out the work of the present cell.

The name of the fourth cell most needs explaining. Kiriya literally means "merely doing." Nārada's commentary states plainly that the good deeds of Buddhas and arahants are called functional because no kamma accumulates through them.⁴ A person who has cut off the roots still acts, teaches, goes for alms, enters meditative attainment, and answers questions. These acts are morally good, yet they no longer issue in kammic results. The system gives this kind of citta a cell of its own.

One configuration, three statuses. The four cells mark kammic status, independently of psychological kind. This is directly visible in the data.

Consider the sense-sphere citta accompanied by joy, associated with knowledge, and unprompted. It is numbered thirteen in the wholesome cell, twenty-one in the resultant cell, and forty-four in the functional cell. The three lists of associated mental factors are identical word for word, with thirty-three entries and no difference at all. They share the same name, feeling, roots, and prompting status. The only difference is in the column for optional factors. Great wholesome consciousness has five options: right speech, right action, right livelihood, compassion, and appreciative joy. Great functional consciousness has two, compassion and appreciative joy. Great resultant consciousness has none.

The thirty-three identical entries show that these three cittas are psychologically indistinguishable. Since the difference falls entirely in the optional column, what differs there is precisely what this level of classification addresses.

Great resultant consciousness has no options because experiencing a result is not action and offers no choice. Great functional consciousness loses the three abstinences because abstention requires something to abstain from. An arahant encounters no impulse to lie that needs restraining, so restraint has no place. Compassion and appreciative joy remain because they are attitudes toward others, requiring no impulse of one's own to counteract first.

This comparison is the chapter's most significant piece of evidence. It shows why the term "nature" can mislead. Readers may hear unwholesome, wholesome, resultant, and functional as four psychological temperaments, whereas three of the cells have exactly the same psychological configuration. Kamma is what separates them.

Three questions in the sense sphere. Crossing the four statuses with the four spheres yields this table:

The lower three rows are too regular to require comment: five per cell in the form sphere, four in the immaterial sphere, and only two cells, wholesome and resultant, in the supramundane. All the unevenness is in the first row.

The four numbers in the first row thus answer the three questions at the first level. Twelve plus eight answers how kamma is produced. Twenty-three answers how results are experienced, while eleven covers neither producing nor experiencing. The next three sections take them in turn.

How kamma is produced: volition is universal, but kamma is not. Twenty sense-sphere cittas can produce kamma, comprising twelve unwholesome and eight great wholesome cittas. All twenty perform the function called javana in a cognitive process.

In Chapter 1's phone example, a complete five-door process takes seventeen mind-moments, of which only the seven javanas produce kamma. The preceding adverting, fivefold sense consciousness, receiving, investigating, and determining produce none. Volition is present in every cell, but kamma accumulates only in the javana stage. The weight of kamma is determined there too. The same deed can have greater or lesser weight depending on which mental factors arise in that stage. The weight also depends on whether the citta is unprompted or prompted, and whether it is accompanied by joy or equanimity. It does not depend on the deed itself.

Wholesome cittas in the upper three spheres also produce kamma. The five wholesome form-sphere cittas and four wholesome immaterial cittas produce meditative kamma, whose results are the corresponding places of rebirth. Chapter 5 of Essay 13 has already described this correspondence from the discourses.⁵ Mundane cittas producing kamma therefore total twenty-nine: twelve unwholesome, eight wholesome sense-sphere, five wholesome form-sphere, and four wholesome immaterial cittas.

The four supramundane path cittas also occupy the wholesome cell, but produce a different kind of kamma. See the third question below.

Chapter 4's account of cognitive processes covers how the cells before and after javana connect, how many javanas may arise in a process, and what is special about javana near death. Here we need only remember the first level's answer. Those twenty-nine cittas produce kamma, not all eighty-nine.

How results are experienced: a technical form of "in seeing, just seeing." There are twenty-three resultant sense-sphere cittas, fifteen of them rootless. Rootless means that a citta is associated with none of the roots: greed, hatred, delusion, nongreed, nonhatred, or nondelusion. Nārada cautions that rootless does not mean lacking conditions. It means only that the six roots are absent.⁴

The purest cell is the two sets of five sense-consciousnesses: eye-, ear-, nose-, tongue-, and body-consciousness, one set of wholesome results and one of unwholesome results, ten cittas in all. Each has only seven mental factors: contact, feeling, perception, volition, one-pointedness, the life faculty, and attention. There is nothing else, with no initial application, sustained application, decision, energy, or rapture.

The discourse instructs Bāhiya, "In the seen, only the seen; in the heard, only the heard; in the sensed, only the sensed; in the cognized, only the cognized."⁶ Abhidhamma gives the sentence a technical form. There really is a moment whose entire content is those seven factors, before thought, decision, or effort has been added. The practical task is not to pile an eighth and a ninth onto it immediately afterward.

The distribution of feeling at this level also deserves a look. Of the five kinds of sense consciousness, only body-consciousness carries pain or pleasure. Body-consciousness that is an unwholesome result carries painful feeling, while body-consciousness that is a wholesome result carries pleasant feeling. The other four invariably carry equanimous feeling. However good or bad the objects of eye, ear, nose, and tongue may be, feeling is still neutral at the moment of experiencing the result. Liking and disliking take shape only in later cells. The technical judgment is easily overlooked, yet directly supports the instruction above. At the instant of seeing, there really is as yet no liking or disliking.

The other rootless resultant cittas are receiving and investigating. Receiving has ten mental factors, three more than the two sets of five sense-consciousnesses. The additional factors are initial application, sustained application, and decision. Investigating accompanied by equanimity also has ten, while investigating accompanied by joy has eleven, adding rapture. The eight rooted great resultant cittas have the fullest configuration, up to thirty-three factors, but their optional columns are invariably empty. Experiencing a result offers no options.

Why an arahant produces no kamma. This is the cell at the first level most worth discussing, because it is the only place in the entire system where the mechanism of kamma is switched off.

The discourses offer two formulations. First, the Nidāna Sutta says that when greed is exhausted, kamma done through nongreed, nonhatred, and nondelusion is abandoned and uprooted, like a palm tree with its crown cut off, incapable of growing again.⁷ Second, the Ariyamagga Sutta lists four kinds of kamma: dark with dark result; bright with bright result; dark and bright with dark and bright result; and neither dark nor bright, with neither dark nor bright result, leading to the ending of kamma. The fourth is directly defined as the noble eightfold path.⁸ The two formulations make the same point. Action continues after the roots are cut, but no longer issues in kammic results.

Abhidhamma turns the point into a cell. An arahant's mundane javanas fall in neither the wholesome nor the unwholesome cell, since functional cittas arise instead. Javana in fruition attainment, however, is supramundane fruition consciousness.¹ The twenty functional cittas fall into two groups. The seventeen rooted functional cittas comprise eight great sense-sphere, five form-sphere, and four immaterial cittas. The other three functional cittas are rootless.

The correspondence is seventeen to seventeen. Of the twenty-one wholesome cittas, the four supramundane path cittas belong elsewhere. Path consciousness also has a result in the four fruition cittas in the resultant cell, with no counterparts in the functional cell. Only the remaining seventeen mundane wholesome cittas correspond one for one to the seventeen rooted functional cittas. Their associated mental factors are identical word for word, and they function as usual, lacking only the function of producing kamma. The difference lies solely in the optional column, and solely in the eight sense-sphere pairs. Wholesome consciousness has five options, while functional consciousness has two. The three missing ones are the abstinences already discussed. The five form-sphere pairs and four immaterial pairs are more regular still, since not even their optional columns differ.⁹

Another possible misunderstanding concerns the cittas of an arahant, which are not all functional. His seeing and hearing, his bhavaṅga and death consciousness, are still resultant cittas. Past kamma continues to mature as usual. Only the production end has been switched off, while the end that experiences results stops only with the final death consciousness.

The remaining three rootless functional cittas do neither. Five-door adverting, mind-door adverting, and smile-producing consciousness are why the twenty-one wholesome and twenty functional cittas cannot be matched as complete sets. The first two are shared by ordinary and noble persons. They never produce kamma and merely direct the continuum toward a door. Smile-producing consciousness belongs exclusively to arahants and Buddhas. Someone who produces no kamma still smiles, and the smile belongs to neither the wholesome nor the unwholesome side. A cell is therefore needed for it. Chapter 4 of Essay 3 in Part I discussed the origin of this citta, and Chapter 7 will return to it.⁹ Such cases reveal the classification's orientation particularly clearly. It would rather add a cell than leave a phenomenon without a place.

The three rootless functional cittas have different configurations of mental factors, and the differences have reasons. Five-door adverting has ten factors, while mind-door adverting has eleven, the extra one being energy. Mind-door adverting also performs determining in a five-door process. Making a choice requires effort, whereas simple adverting does not. Smile-producing consciousness has twelve, adding rapture to the configuration of mind-door adverting.

The second level: counting the twelve unwholesome cittas. The first level explained how kamma is produced and how its results are experienced. The second adds details and possibilities by asking how many ways there are to do the same thing. We begin with the unwholesome.

The twelve unwholesome cittas divide by root into three groups: eight rooted in greed, two in hatred, and two in delusion.

The eight greed-rooted cittas come from multiplying three axes, each with two values. Feeling can be joy or equanimity. A citta can be associated with wrong view or dissociated from it, and it can be unprompted or prompted. Two times two times two makes eight. The last distinction needs some explanation. An unprompted citta arises spontaneously, without encouragement. A prompted citta arises only after persuasion or after one convinces oneself. An instance of greed that arises spontaneously and one acted on only after self-persuasion count here as two different cittas. The five prompted unwholesome cittas add sloth and torpor to the corresponding unprompted cittas, because that hesitation itself carries sluggishness.

The two hatred-rooted cittas differ only in whether they are unprompted or prompted. Both are accompanied by displeasure and associated with aversion. Why is there no feeling axis? Hatred necessarily accompanies displeasure. It cannot accompany joy or equanimity. Why is there no view axis? Wrong view belongs to the greed group and does not arise with hatred.

The two delusion-rooted cittas are both accompanied by equanimity. One is associated with doubt, the other with restlessness. Each has only fifteen mental factors, the fewest among the twelve unwholesome cittas. The citta associated with doubt lacks decision, because doubt is precisely the absence of decision. Both delusion-rooted cittas lack desire, because wanting nothing is precisely what they are like.

The optional factors at this level record finer possibilities. Conceit appears only in the four greed-rooted cittas dissociated from wrong view, and even there it need not arise. Wrong view and conceit do not arise together. Taking the five aggregates as self is view. Comparing oneself with others as higher or lower is conceit. The two exclude each other. Envy, avarice, and remorse appear only in the two hatred-rooted cittas, and no two of the three arise together. In a single moment one cannot envy another's gains, cling to one's own possessions, and regret what one has done.

One final point must be explicit. Delusion, shamelessness, fearlessness of wrongdoing, and restlessness occur in every one of the twelve unwholesome cittas without exception. Greed occurs in only eight, hatred in only two. The common denominator of the unwholesome is neither greed nor hatred, but delusion.

There is significance in making shamelessness and fearlessness of wrongdoing necessary constituents of every unwholesome citta. The discourse says that two pure dhammas protect the world, shame and fear of wrongdoing. Without them, the world would recognize no order of parents, brothers, sisters, wives and children, relatives, teachers and elders, senior and junior, and would fall into disorder like the animal realm.¹⁰ In this classification, an unwholesome citta is more than a bad psychological state. It is also the simultaneous failure of both defenses.

The symmetry of wholesome and resultant consciousness, and one asymmetry. There are eight wholesome sense-sphere cittas. They vary along three axes parallel to those of the eight greed-rooted cittas. Feeling can be joy or equanimity, association with knowledge can be present or absent, and the citta can be unprompted or prompted. Two times two times two makes eight. Association with knowledge means arising with the mental factor of wisdom. Dissociation means wisdom is absent.

The eight great resultant cittas correspond to these eight one for one, with the same names, configurations, and counts. Their lists of associated mental factors are identical word for word. The difference again lies only in the optional column, with five factors for great wholesome consciousness and none for great resultant consciousness. This is the table's most regular symmetry.

This symmetry records a match in specifications between two cells. It does not mean that a given grade of wholesome kamma produces a particular great resultant citta. Which citta kamma matures into is governed by the rules of rebirth-linking and cognitive processes. This chapter does not address those rules. Chapter 4 covers part of the question.

There is only one asymmetry, among the rootless resultant cittas. Seven are unwholesome results and eight are wholesome results. The extra citta is investigating consciousness accompanied by joy. The traditional explanation is the grading of objects. Desirable objects divide further into desirable and very desirable, so wholesome results need two investigating cittas, one accompanied by equanimity and one by joy. Undesirable objects have only one grade, so unwholesome results need only one.⁹

This asymmetry records a judgment about experience. Exceptionally good experiences differ in quality from ordinarily good experiences, whereas exceptionally bad and ordinarily bad experiences have no such gradation. Whether that judgment holds is another question, but the system has indeed added a cell here for an observation of experience. This book takes the view that such places show how Abhidhamma works more clearly than its regular parts do. Not all its numbers are deduced. Some are read from observation and then added to the table.

Why the upper three levels can be covered briefly. We return to the sphere axis. Fifteen form-sphere, twelve immaterial, and eight supramundane cittas make thirty-five, nearly forty percent of eighty-nine. Yet there is little to say about them because they are entirely regular.

In the form sphere, the five wholesome cittas are those of the first through fifth jhānas. Theravāda makes sustained application without initial application a separate jhāna, yielding five rather than four. The successive differences form a series of subtractions. The first jhāna has thirty-three mental factors. The second has thirty-two, removing initial application. The third has thirty-one, removing sustained application. The fourth has thirty, removing rapture. The fifth still has thirty, replacing pleasure with equanimity without changing the count. The five resultant and five functional cittas follow the same pattern. In the table, abandoning jhāna factors is simply deletion, one item at a time.¹¹

One point deserves separate attention. The first wholesome jhāna citta's thirty-three factors are identical word for word to those of the great wholesome sense-sphere citta accompanied by joy, associated with knowledge, and unprompted. Entering the first jhāna adds no new mental factor. What it adds is the object and degree of stability. Concentration is another way in which existing constituents operate. The so-called jhāna factors are ultimately just five factors drawn from the seven universals and six occasionals and singled out for mention. They are initial application, sustained application, rapture, pleasure, and one-pointedness.

In the immaterial sphere, the four cittas take as their respective objects infinite space, infinite consciousness, nothingness, and neither-perception-nor-non-perception. Each has thirty mental factors. Their lists are identical word for word, both to each other and to the fifth jhāna's. The differences in depth among the four immaterial attainments lie entirely in the object column. Not a single element of the configuration changes. In Chapter 1's terms, what changes is the object being divided into dhammas, not the kinds of dhamma.

The eight supramundane cittas are the four paths and four fruits. The lists of mental factors for path and fruition are also identical word for word, with thirty-three entries each. Compared with great wholesome sense-sphere consciousness, they add right speech, right action, and right livelihood, and omit initial application, sustained application, and rapture. These three omissions depend on the supporting jhāna. The eighty-nine-citta count does not distinguish which jhāna supports the paths and fruits, so its basic table lists only what the jhānas share.¹ The optional column of supramundane consciousness is empty. The supplementary question below explains why.

This is where the total of 121 comes from. Divide each of the eight supramundane cittas into five according to the five jhānas, making forty. Eighty-nine minus eight plus forty is 121. Only the supramundane cell is expanded. The other eighty-one cittas stay as they are. Eighty-nine and 121 are therefore two ways of counting the same set of cittas, one coarser and one finer, each a complete count.¹¹

The sphere axis conveys another easily missed point. Of the twelve unwholesome cittas, the two hatred-rooted cittas can arise only in the sense sphere. The other ten can arise in all three spheres. Beings in the form and immaterial spheres have no hatred, but still have conceit and wrong view. This record is useful in assessing practice. It shows that concentration can suppress an entire class of afflictions while failing to suppress another.

For the form and immaterial spheres as states of existence, and the correspondence between jhānas and places of rebirth, see Chapter 5 of Essay 13. For the sequence of attaining the four fruits and the definition of an arahant, see Chapter 6 of Essay 13. This chapter concerns only the places of these thirty-five cittas in the table.

Fourteen functions. Consciousness performs fourteen functions in cognitive processes: rebirth-linking, bhavaṅga, adverting, seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, receiving, investigating, determining, javana, registration, and death. The same citta can perform different functions on different occasions, and the same function can be performed by different cittas. For example, the eight great resultant cittas perform rebirth-linking, bhavaṅga, death, and registration.

This chapter only lists the names. The fourteen functions can be properly explained only in Chapter 4. Rebirth-linking and death are two occurrences of the same kind of citta at the two ends of a life. Bhavaṅga is the underlying stream of continuity when no external object is taken. Javana is the only stage that produces kamma. Discussing functions apart from cognitive processes yields only a list of nouns.¹

Mental factors: definition before catalog. Defining the fifty-two mental factors begins with a criterion, not an enumeration. What counts as association with consciousness? The verse in the compendium's second chapter gives four conditions. A factor must arise with the citta, cease with it, have the same object, and have the same base. Only what meets all four simultaneously counts as a mental factor.¹²

What this restriction excludes matters more than what it includes. It rules out any psychological entity existing separately from consciousness and any mental container extending across moments. Mental factors are simply aspects of the same event. The mind does not contain a collection of ready-made things. Chapter 1 said that consciousness is the activity of cognizing, while mental factors are the various functions arising and ceasing with it and taking the same object. The definition here supplies the criteria for that statement.¹³

The discourse passage closest to this list is the Vibhaṅga Sutta's definition of mentality: "Feeling, perception, volition, contact, and attention: this is called mentality."¹⁴ All five later became universal mental factors, with Abhidhamma adding only one-pointedness and the life faculty. The Chinese parallel, Saṃyukta Āgama 298, takes another route, defining mentality as the four immaterial aggregates: feeling, perception, formations, and consciousness. The difference between the transmissions marks Abhidhamma's choice precisely. It takes up the Pali line of listing mental factors individually, not the line of dividing by aggregates.

The answers to the four questions below together form a table with eighty-nine rows of cittas and fifty-two columns of mental factors. Each cell asks whether this factor occurs in this citta. The whole table appears here first, and the four questions then guide a reading of it section by section. There is no need to identify every cell in the diagram. Look only for three things: stretches that are solid throughout, stretches that are entirely blank, and the positions of the gaps. The horizontal bars at the right give the number of factors in each citta, from seven to thirty-three. The vertical bars at the bottom give the number of cittas in which each factor appears, from one to eighty-nine.

The diagram makes it easier to see that the fifty-two columns have only nineteen distinct distributions. The nineteen beautiful universals have identical columns, as do the seven universals and the four unwholesome universals. Envy, avarice, and remorse also have identical columns, as do right speech, right action, and right livelihood. Sloth matches torpor, and compassion matches appreciative joy. This book takes the view that this is the preference for format described in Chapter 1, made visible in the data. Format determines how long the list is. Content determines how many distributions there are.

First question: what do all cittas share? They share seven factors, called the universal mental factors: contact, feeling, perception, volition, one-pointedness, the life faculty, and attention. Each appears in every one of the eighty-nine cittas, without exception.

These seven constitute the minimal structure of cognizing. The encounter between object and consciousness is contact. Experiencing the object is feeling. Taking its mark is perception. The impetus is volition. The one-to-one relation of mind and object is one-pointedness. The power sustaining the life of the mental dhammas in this moment is the life faculty. Directing consciousness toward the object is attention. Without any one of these, the moment would not be a cognition. The two sets of five sense-consciousnesses have only these seven factors. In them the minimal structure appears on its own.

One discourse comes very close to this list. The Chinese Discourse on the Root of All Dhammas gives nine statements: "Desire is the root of all dhammas; contact is their conjunction; feeling is their coming; thinking is their being; mindfulness is their overlord; concentration is their leader; wisdom is their highest; liberation is their truth; Nibbāna is their end."¹⁵ At least six of these belong to the fifty-two mental factors: desire, contact, feeling, mindfulness, one-pointedness (concentration), and wisdom. The discourse supplies an outline; Abhidhamma supplies a complete table. The difference lies in completeness, not in kind.

Second question: what else may accompany a citta? Six factors may do so, called the occasionals: initial application, sustained application, decision, energy, rapture, and desire. They are not universal. Each appears in a different number of cittas: initial application in forty-seven, sustained application in fifty, decision in seventy-eight, energy in seventy-three, rapture in twenty-seven, and desire in sixty-nine.

The first seven and these six make thirteen, traditionally called the ethically variable factors. Nārada explains that añña means "other," and samāna means "common." Together they indicate that these thirteen are common to both the wholesome and the unwholesome. They carry no moral coloring of their own but take their color from the other factors arising with them.⁴ The name answers the first and second questions exactly. The factors shared by all cittas and those that may additionally accompany them are precisely the morally neutral ones.

Every absence has a reason. Reading the omissions one by one explains the table through what is absent. The two sets of five sense-consciousnesses lack initial application, sustained application, decision, and energy. A moment purely experiencing a result neither thinks, decides, nor exerts itself. Initial application is absent from the second jhāna upward, sustained application from the third upward, as the jhāna factors are abandoned one by one. Doubt lacks decision because doubt is the absence of decision. The two delusion-rooted cittas and all eighteen rootless cittas lack desire. The fifteen rootless resultant cittas and five-door adverting lack energy because neither experiencing results nor adverting requires effort. Rapture appears only in cittas accompanied by joy, yet the fourth-jhāna citta accompanied by joy lacks rapture. That cell shows pleasant feeling remaining after the rapture factor has been abandoned.

Another blank needs explaining. The eighty-nine-citta count does not subdivide supramundane consciousness by jhāna, so initial application, sustained application, and rapture are left blank for all eight supramundane cittas. This is how the figures forty-seven, fifty, and twenty-seven above are obtained. Under the 121-citta count, which expands the four paths and four fruits according to their jhānas, those factors would be filled in there.

Drawing the six distributions side by side makes the gaps discussed in the preceding two paragraphs visible.

Third question: what does the unwholesome share, and where does it differ? It shares four factors, called the unwholesome universals: delusion, shamelessness, fearlessness of wrongdoing, and restlessness. Every one of the twelve unwholesome cittas has all four, without exception.

There are ten variable factors: greed, in eight cittas; wrong view, in four; conceit, in four and not necessarily present; hatred, in two; envy, in two; avarice, in two; remorse, in two; doubt, in one; sloth, in five; and torpor, in five. Adding these ten to the four universals gives the fourteen unwholesome mental factors.

The numbers themselves show the relative weight of the factors. Four are universal, so every unwholesome occurrence is at once an occurrence of delusion, shamelessness, fearlessness of wrongdoing, and restlessness. Greed occupies only eight cittas, hatred only two, and doubt only one. Greed and hatred, most often treated as representative afflictions, are merely variable entries in this table.

Fourth question: what does the wholesome share, and where does it differ? It shares nineteen factors, called the beautiful universals. Seven are faith, mindfulness, shame, fear of wrongdoing, nongreed, nonhatred, and neutrality of mind. The other twelve form six pairs, the tranquility, lightness, malleability, adaptability, proficiency, and rectitude of body and mind. These nineteen appear in each of the fifty-nine beautiful cittas.

The six pairs need a brief explanation. They say the same thing six times, each time divided into the two columns of mental factors and consciousness. They describe the absence of disturbance, heaviness, rigidity, resistance, unfamiliarity, and crookedness. Chapter 1 discussed Abhidhamma's preference for format. This is its purest instance. A quality that could be stated in one sentence is divided into twelve entries simply because the format calls for separate listing. In actual practice these twelve are never identified separately, yet each occupies a cell.

There are six variable factors: right speech, right action, and right livelihood, together called the three abstinences; compassion and appreciative joy, together called the two immeasurables; and wisdom. Adding these six to the nineteen universals gives the twenty-five beautiful mental factors.

The fifty-nine beautiful cittas are obtained by subtraction. Eighty-nine minus twelve unwholesome and eighteen rootless cittas leaves fifty-nine. Wisdom appears in forty-seven cittas. The twelve beautiful cittas lacking it are precisely the four wholesome, four resultant, and four functional sense-sphere cittas dissociated from knowledge.

A supplementary question: noble and meditative consciousness. The three abstinences behave differently in two places. That difference marks the boundary between noble and ordinary persons in this table.

In the eight great wholesome cittas, right speech, right action, and right livelihood occupy the optional column. They arise separately, and only when there is something to abstain from. Refraining from a lie is one occasion, and refraining from taking what is not one's own is another. The two are not simultaneous. In the four paths and four fruits, all three occupy the associated column, necessarily present and arising together. Sixteen cittas contain the abstinences, eight great wholesome and eight supramundane. In an ordinary person, right speech, action, and livelihood are occasional restraints. In a noble person, they are a standing structure. This is the mark the path factors leave on the mental-factor table.¹⁶

The two immeasurables occupy the opposite position. Compassion and appreciative joy occur in twenty-eight cittas: eight great wholesome, eight great functional, and four wholesome, four resultant, and four functional form-sphere cittas corresponding to the first four jhānas. The fifth jhāna and four immaterial cittas lack them, as do the supramundane cittas. The reason has two parts. Compassion and appreciative joy take beings as objects, whereas the fifth jhāna and immaterial attainments do not. Path and fruition consciousness take Nibbāna, also not beings. The other two of the four immeasurables are accounted for elsewhere. Loving-kindness is nonhatred, and equanimity is neutrality of mind. Both already belong to the nineteen beautiful universals, so no separate entries are needed.

Wisdom has a different distribution. It occurs in twelve sense-sphere cittas associated with knowledge, comprising four great wholesome, four great resultant, and four great functional cittas. It also occurs in all fifteen form-sphere, all twelve immaterial, and all eight supramundane cittas. Twelve plus fifteen plus twelve plus eight makes forty-seven. Exalted and supramundane cittas are invariably associated with wisdom. This is the table's statement on the relation of concentration and wisdom. A mind in meditative attainment necessarily has wisdom. Whether that wisdom is used for insight is another question, which the table does not distinguish.

Drawing the baseline of the beautiful universals together with these three variable lines makes both boundaries in the supplementary question visible. The abstinences separate noble from ordinary, while wisdom separates exalted from sense-sphere consciousness.

Supramundane cittas have one further peculiarity. Their optional columns are invariably empty. An ordinary person's mind has many options because each wholesome deed admits of several configurations. Path and fruition consciousness have none because each is an event with a fixed structure, in which every factor that should be present is present. The disappearance of options is itself a description.

How to use the list. The guide to this essay explained how to read these chapters. One practical point can be added here. This list is for consultation during contemplation. Is the present cell wholesome or unwholesome, rooted or rootless, accompanied by joy, equanimity, or displeasure, unprompted or prompted? Being able to locate the present experience in a cell is far more useful than being able to recite the whole table.

Modern language only offers a way in. Rendering rapture as happiness, restlessness as anxiety, and neutrality of mind as an ordinary, untroubled mind may help readers understand at first. But taking those renderings literally turns mental factors into emotions. The two are not on the same scale. An emotion is an experience with duration and fluctuations, something that can be narrated. A mental factor is one aspect of one moment. In this analysis, twenty minutes of anger consists of thousands upon thousands of successive cognitive processes in which the mental factor of hatred repeatedly arises. "Anger" describes the entire expanse. "Hatred" describes one aspect of one moment within it. Confuse them, and the entire analysis ceases to work.

The four statuses must likewise not be read as value judgments. "Resultant" does not mean "good," and "functional" does not mean "superior." The four cells mark kammic status, not the rank of a mind. As we have seen, an arahant's functional citta and an ordinary person's wholesome citta have exactly the same configuration of mental factors.

On to Chapter 3. The list of consciousness is in place. Next comes its counterpart. The twenty-eight kinds of matter are not generated by crossing axes as the eighty-nine cittas are. They have a different organizing principle and answer different questions. The classification of consciousness asks about kamma and result. That of matter asks how material phenomena form units available to contemplation. The next chapter begins with the four great elements and derived matter.

References¶