Lectures to the Introduction to Abhidhamma, October through December 1975, taught by Ed Brown. The Buddhist canon of religious texts is divided into three parts. There's the Sutas, what we call Sutas, but what Italians call Sutas, and then there's the Daya, and then the Abhidhamma. The Sutas are called the Nikayas, and there's five Nikayas, I can't quite remember for sure.

[01:18]

But there's the Digha Nikaya, which I'll write down here. The Digha Nikaya, Lajjima, Samyukta, Samyukta, Samyukta. These Sutas have various themes in them. Mostly it's like stories or parables or teachings.

[02:21]

Someone asked a Buddhist question, and he gave a sermon and talked about suffering. So, the Kutaka Nikaya is a combination of several shorter words. One of the shorter words for the Kutaka Nikaya is the Dhammapada. So, there's a lot of different things in the Sutas. It includes the Jataka tales of Buddhist previous experiences. The Vinaya is the book of rules. You can have various rules. And generally each sect would have their own Vinaya, which may differ slightly from the other sects. That was probably the main way in which sects were designated, by which Vinaya they followed. Very slightly.

[03:24]

And this is two or three months. Usually they started out with two rules, and then some monk would do something, and somebody else would go to the Buddha and say, He's doing such and such, and then the Buddha would say, Okay, well, he's done enough of that. You know, like if they said, don't kill, then they'd have to start lifting things, because somebody would kill something. And then if they would say, don't kill, such and such, then the rules would get more and more specific. Or like robes, you can only have so many robes. So then somebody would end up with more robes, and they'd say, but somebody gave it to me. Then they'd make up a rule, well, even if somebody gives it to you, you still only have this many, and you have to give it to somebody else, or something like that. So there would be various kinds of cases which would come up, where somebody would say, well, this is different, though. I actually should have more robes, because people want to give me robes.

[04:25]

Then the Buddha would have to decide, no, you can still only have so many, and you have to give them away, or you should give away your old ones. And the third area of abuse, this is a quote from the Tripitaka, So the third area of the Tripitaka is beyond Dharma, or Bali. Dharma is Dharma, rather than Dharma. And this is... I'm going to talk some more about this, but this is a little different kind of teaching. It's in a way drier,

[05:32]

and it has a more analytical approach, a more kind of scientific approach, as it were. Where the example is, where in the scriptures it talks about a person, or an individual, the Abhidharma never mentions a person or an individual. A person or an individual is never mentioned. There's things like the states of consciousness, or there's five skandhas, or there's eighteen dhatus, or there's twelve ayatollahs, or there's various things said to be present, but there's never an individual mentioned to be present. So it's a rather different language than the common everyday language of the Suttas. And sometimes this language in the Abhidharma is referred to as paramartha.

[06:34]

This is an absolute truth, or ultimate reality, as opposed to conventional truth or conventional understanding. So it's used with various other words, like the word truth or discourse or something. So it's considered that the language of the Abhidharma is more accurate. If you want to talk about something accurately, you have to use the language of the Abhidharma. If you use the language of the scriptures, then you can speak with the people and individuals themselves. An I, me, mine, so forth. I have this feeling of clang. If you're using the language of the Abhidharma, you can't talk about something like that anymore. You have to try to decide accurately what it is. This is a whole language to know,

[07:51]

because it's used, I, me, mine. So, of course, one of the main teachings is no-self. The Abhidharma is a language that allows us to talk about things without talking about self, without mentioning self. Okay. Okay, why don't you... This is... Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay, I need to go now. And given the question about this now, so far I've used the scriptures as I should, what I'm emphasizing in this course is,

[08:54]

for us to start with, get acquainted with the language of the Abhidharma as a language. So, and to start with, it's maybe not so helpful to question whether that language, how accurate that language is as far as describing things. First of all, we have to learn the language. And then more and more we can determine how accurately, or how useful it is, and what use we can make of it. So if you resist learning the language because you have such doubt about it, it makes it more difficult. Okay. I'm going to write down the... What's left now of the... There's two main...

[09:57]

There's three main Chakritikas that are in existence today. There's the Pali Chakritika, and the Chinese Chakritika, and the Korean Chakritika. And the... The Korean Chakritika, the books on the Abhidharma, are translations from the Sanskrit, from the Srivastava school. And the Pali Canon is the only one that's preserved in its original language of Pali. So for a long time people thought, well that made it older and more useful than the Chinese. And I guess actually the Sanskrit tradition of the Abhidharma is probably about as old as the Pali. That's what I've heard lately. I have a question. Yeah. Does that mean that the Chinese one was written later, or was translated from the Pali? No, the Chinese one was translated from the Sanskrit. Oh. I don't understand why that makes the Pali better.

[11:00]

Well, people for a long time thought so. They thought the Pali one has never been translated. It's more accurate. And they also thought it's older. And it was the only one... I don't know if anybody translated the Chinese or anything for a long time, but generally the early interest in Buddhism was more in Pali. It was more people who had studied Pali than people who had studied Chinese. And they also thought that it was more... that because it had never been translated, it seemed to be the earliest existing tradition of oldest existing literature. But it looks like there was... Simultaneously developed actually various... Because it developed in various parts of India, different... little different decisions. The sentence became a little bit different in different parts of India. The Pali was basically in the south and so on. And the Sanskrit was more in the middle, in the northern part. And so...

[12:02]

But it looks... Whatever I've read recently in Sanskrit is probably by itself in Pali. The sutras in the Vinaya are the earliest, most original in the text. Earliest... The Avatara is a little late in development. But of course there's great controversy as to whether the Avatara is really Buddha's word or not. And because it looks like it was a little bit... I'm going to write down the names of the... The first book of the... Kutaka is... Kutaka. Kutaka.

[13:03]

So that's just... There's a specific Kutaka, Vinaya Kutaka and then other Yantra Kutaka. And these are... Kutaka. Kutaka.

[14:24]

Now, OK. For this class we wanted to be concerned with the first book of the Ramayana, the Tathagata Ramayana, which in the translation we're using is referred to as the Buddhist Manual of Psychological Ethics. Something like that. The Buddhist Manual of Psychological Ethics. In other places it's referred to as enumeration of things or enumeration of phenomena. And a lot of the basic vocabulary, while we're using this book, we can find out a lot of the basic vocabulary used in this book. And so it's very helpful in that sense. And now this one is going to be analytical. So it takes the state of consciousness and breaks it down into component parts. It takes what we usually consider to be

[15:31]

a whole entity and breaks it down into little pieces and little sub-parts. And then those parts are sub-parts as well. And in that way we look at itself and then we can get all the component parts and then we look at the component parts and there's no self there anymore. The other main book in this Abhidharmaka Prakriti is the last one, the Patanik, which is a book about relations. I haven't really studied any of these things in San Francisco County, so I can't say too much about them. But the Patanik, it relates all of these things in the San Francisco County by 24 modes of relationship. So in terms of... So another way to put it is, of course,

[16:31]

the fact that non-self or no-self is said to be, or emptiness is said to be simultaneously arising by conditions, because there's various conditions that it arises. And without all those various conditions it's not there. So you can't separate the thing that arises from all of its conditions, so you can't say there's some self there apart from the fact that there's all these conditions there. So another way to describe no-self, of course, is that there's only conditions. I think we have two English translations for the Dhammasanghara in time. One was enumeration of things, the other was Buddhist compendium of life. Yeah. This is called A Buddhist Manual of Psychological Ethics. Psychological Ethics. And... Could you say again

[17:33]

what the Andhara Pitaka is? Separate from the others? Oh, there's three pitakas, or I guess that's called baskets or something, of the Buddhist canon. So it's the Tripitaka, there's three baskets of the Tripitaka, and the three are Suta, Vinaya, and Abhidhamma. And the Pitaka's basket. Yeah. So there's the Suta Pitaka, Vinaya Pitaka, and then Abhidhamma Pitaka. So, several of these, the earliest one is the Dhammasanghara, and the Tantra, and the Vibhanga. These were apparently written out quite early, the time of at least the Second Council. There was three big councils, I guess, in Buddhist history. The third one was during the time of Ashoka, about 250 years after Buddha's death. And by the Third Council, all of these were accepted.

[18:35]

And the Katha Bhaktu, this one, is said to have been written by the person who was the head of the Third Council. And this is a point of controversy, but he settled all the points of controversy by writing out the Katha Bhaktu. The first three you mentioned were in existence at the time of the Second Council? Yeah, the Second Council, which is... Three of them. Yeah, which is... Oh, so if you remember these two, these then were... The Dhammasanghara and the Vibhanga at the time, apparently are the earliest. These are the Second Council. The Second Council was in the 4th century. And the Third Council was, I guess, by... It was in 1450 BC,

[19:37]

I guess it's in the 3rd century. It's 4th century BC? Yeah, 4th century BC. I think it's pretty something. But then the Council of Sukla? I don't know the exact... You said it was 250 years after Buddha was... That's what this one looks like. I'm not sure which date, but I think it's Buddha's death in the 3rd century. Well, I mean, I don't think that's the end. Well, let's see, 250 years... 300, yeah, I guess that... Buddha's life could simply be, I guess, in the 6th century BC? Yeah, usually. So if this is... If he's died maybe 480, 485, or 484, I don't know, they do have all kinds of different dates. So 250 years after that is the 3rd century. 3rd century, but then the Second Council is supposed to be in the 4th century BC, which is... Yeah. Which would be before the 3rd century.

[20:38]

The Second Council is before the Third Council. Oh. The Council of Soka is the First Council. The third one, I guess, is... I'm not sure about these councils. I've never... Do you know any other kinds of councils? Do you know? They had these three great councils to decide... You know, for a long time, all of these... Everything was just by memory. Right? People were reciting and then they learned. So everything is memorized and passed on in oral tradition. So in the First Council, they got together and they started writing it down. And somebody would recite and they'd say, yes, that's right, that's what we all heard and we agree on that's what the Buddha said. So then they wrote it down. But those people wrote it down and never heard it themselves, did they? Right. The First Council, maybe some of them heard it themselves. I'm not sure about that. I would think that maybe the First Council was held soon enough after Buddha's life that some of the people there

[21:42]

would have heard the Buddha talk. Ananda was supposed to have probably remembered this or just something similar. According to the legendary thing, Ananda is the one who always gets that title. It's a great term. I don't know. Well, there's still people like that. Somebody the other day was saying that Karmapa, one of the monks of Karmapa who's the official reciter was something you can ask him about because such and such doesn't recite for three hours. They get paid to have some text or chant or pray or something. So, there's kind of a controversy as to whether this is the real stuff or not, right? Especially in Sautranaka's school

[22:45]

that you should just go by the sutras not by the epitaph and this is not Buddha's words. So, there's various stories as to how this can essentially be the Buddha's words. Basically, the general understanding is that during the time that Buddha was after Buddha was enlightened and he sat for seven weeks after the first week he was enlightened and then he sat for seven more weeks or something like that. Somewhere in the middle of that time he spent a week in the 33rd Vishuddha Heaven and preached the Abhidharma to the devas in the 33rd Heaven and also to his mother who was there. And then he would come back and then he would and I know at some point he told all this to Sariputra also. And so, what he gave to Sariputra was the outline of the Abhidharma. And then his disciples and so forth filled in all of them. So, we can look at

[23:48]

the table of contents of the Abhidharma which is what Buddha said to have spoken and told somebody and then his disciples and so on filled it in. And even the Kadavadras who had been in the 3rd Council by the end of the 3rd Council just said a bunch of words to him and again said to him that Buddha is in some way supposed to have left that around for him to see or something so that he could then fill in all the spaces. Anyway, I'm not so we're not so concerned generally about this kind of thing about arguing which is crucible and which isn't so maybe we don't have that trouble but there's there's certainly as you'll see in some of the books high regard for the Abhidharma in various places. In Salananda said that one of the kings there had the whole

[24:49]

Abhidharma printed in on gold on gold leaf and the Dhammasangani was setting jewels he had such high regard for this and other kings in Salananda said they were studying the Abhidharma and of course in a lot of the traditions in Buddhism I think there's like in China you study the Abhidharma for seven years so there's been various traditions where one of the main things is to go and study the Abhidharma for a long time before studying other kings and I think for us it's particularly useful of course a lot of our traditions and Zen traditions emphasize expression of Buddha and if you want to know or in any of the sutras if you want to know

[25:49]

what they're talking about actually you have to know the language the language of Buddhism which is basically spelled out in the Abhidharma particularly after you study the Zen then you you find books that you can't you wonder what they're talking about because they don't give you the Pali terms because there's so many different translations for various Pali words um I don't even know what this is but um give me the first one the one that's just the order no that's the order number one

[26:49]

those are the earliest ones the earliest and those were approved apparently by the second council approved one was the one um given to the first second council given and approved by the second council given and approved by the second council and two were approved by the third council and this number three here the Tathagantu or points of controversy was written by the head of the third council this time on points of controversy the term Abhidharma dharma uh first we have uh we're mostly a little bit familiar with the term dharma which is I take refuge in the dharma so taking refuge in Buddha Buddha dharma sangha as being the three jewels and of course in that sense dharma is the teaching

[27:50]

buddhist teaching so in the sense of Abhidharma Abhidharma is said to be the higher teaching or the absolute teaching or the supreme teaching or the further the further further dharma after the standard dharma because it's further dharma okay I want to talk a little bit more now about uh the difference between uh the sutras and how we used to talk about things in the Abhidharma uh okay so as I mentioned of course uh in the sutras and in everyday conventional language uh we have things like self I person individual total

[28:55]

and okay uh we have various in the sutras and in everyday language we talk about various things and then in Abhidharma we don't talk about any of these things uh uh the uh a self or person or individual is referred to as the five skandhas uh the five skandhas are uh

[30:08]

Rupa Rupa Rupa Vedana Tana Sankara and uh Vinana uh so this is of course what we talk about in the in the heart sutra uh this first Rupa in the in the heart sutra we talk about is uh called form uh or in some places it's referred to as does anybody know this word corporeality corporeality I've never gotten around to looking that up yet and imagine uh yeah this is uh body uh Vedana so in the in the sutras we chant in the morning five skandhas are form, feeling, perception, impulse, and consciousness so you know

[31:21]

the form, feeling form is that there is an emptiness emptiness is not different from form the same is true of feeling, perception, impulse, and consciousness so that's what these five are how do you spell it? this is the uh probably spelling mistake the uh the uh Sanskrit spellings are a little bit different this is uh maybe it's the and this is uh whoops this is uh uh uh

[32:24]

okay so and these skandhas are um compared to a cell which is quite solid these skandhas are um are rather um evanescent or fleeting so there's one expression that says uh rupa is like a massive foam because it's you know it has no substance and uh vedana feeling is like a bubble because it's zoomed in uh sana is perception is like a mirage because it's received and uh samkara samkara is like a plantain tree it has uh again a reference to the fact it has various layers but uh there's nothing abiding there and uh vinyana is like a magic show magic show? magic show it's very similar actually this is in the

[33:25]

uh sutras you know you don't have to wait until you get to the diamond sutra you know the diamond sutra is at first very similar to this but all of this is actually in the the earliest uh sutra talks about the five skandhas in this way these skandhas uh still are in the uh sutras but uh I'm using this I'm using this this is uh already in the sutras actually it talks about skandhas so this isn't uh but I'm I'm mentioning this anyway but uh you won't even know you won't even know think about it yourself the more usual in abhidharma actually uh president skandhas is a little different classification of music this is this is rupa uh jita where is this classification found?

[34:34]

this is the more usual classification for the uh abhidharma of what you know if we want to say what there is you know if we want to talk about some things president talks about some things uh such as self, I, person, individual, table, room, center we can talk about uh rupa sattashika jita and jivana so jivana is unconditioned element uh so it's not really included in the skandhas but uh the rest of the five skandhas sit in uh the five skandhas actually sit in rupa sattashika and jita so uh uh the correspondence so uh in abhidharma the uh the main group is uh routinely rupa or some kind of uh what's referred to as form or matter uh and uh

[35:39]

in other words uh sense objects rupa is uh sense object and uh sattashika is uh mental object or so uh you know of course buddhism talks about rather than five senses and sense objects buddhism refers to the mind as being six sense objects so uh uh the uh there's six senses there's the mind and then there's mind objects right similar to eye and eye objects uh eye organ and eye objects then there's uh mind organ and mind object so this is this could be said to be mind organ and then other senses this is mind object and uh

[36:40]

this is uh rupa it's both the sense organ and sense object rupa yeah i think both sense organ and sense object are referred to as uh five sense organ and five sense object okay so in chaitashika uh there's uh uh feeling perception anything mental that happens apart from uh rupa i asked uh uh jayavastuna here well how how did he make this kind of decision because um how do you know anything about rupa except by chaitashika and uh he said how do you know

[37:40]

anything about chaitashika except by rupa so actually these terms are always a little bit tricky like that because um you know uh sense organ when sense uh when sense organ comes in contact with sense object uh you know like eye when eye organ comes in contact with eye object then the eye consciousness then you have uh this thing called thing is eye organ coming in contact with eye object eye consciousness uh so eye consciousness though doesn't arise unless there's an eye object unless there's an object there for the eye there's no such thing as eye consciousness so there's no mind there's not considered to be any mind unless there's an object there so there's this uh uh

[38:41]

mind organ or any other sense organ uh you know does exist independent of the fact that there's an eye object or mind object uh you don't get so these kshetastikas are said to be cognizant or associated with mind and mind is always associated with these kshetastikas or kshetastikas kshetastikas uh excuse me excuse me kshetastikas kshetastikas so uh mind is always associated with uh these kshetastikas or mind objects you know A shikta never arises independent of the, and they never arise independent of this. So you don't get first mind and then have the others. You only get mind because these are here. And you never get eye object unless there's an eye,

[39:42]

you don't get eye consciousness unless there's an eye object. So, do you understand what I'm talking about here? There's nothing there, it's just independent of the rest. It's actually kind of, it's pretty important. But, you know, we can ask ourselves, well, you know, I mean, we can say, well, how do we know, as I was saying, how do we know anything about Rupa, except by mind? How do we know anything about anything except by our experience, our mind? That's always how we know about Rupa. So how can we say what is Rupa and what is mind? This is mind down here, so how do we know, how do we say what's Rupa and what's mind? That kind of question, we can have that kind of question. All of these things are a little bit hard to actually pin down. So even though we try, interestingly enough, even though we try to use these so-called paramartha terms,

[40:47]

or use terms that refer to actually existing entities, rather than refer loosely to some complex of entities, or some combination of entities like we usually do, these terms are referred to a combination of entities. Like a table refers to the sense that you have some sight, and you know if you walk over your head and you tap it, there's going to be some feeling, and there's going to be a sound, and you know that if you turn away and then you turn back, you're pretty sure it's still going to be there, all those things. And so out of all those factors, you can have all those experiences, you say, oh, there's the table, that's the table. So in terms of the Abhidharma, what there is, is there is an eye object, there is eye consciousness, there is sound consciousness,

[41:49]

there is a particular touch consciousness, and so on. It's actually what happens. And the thing table never happens. There's no such thing. The table is just referring to the complex of all those experiences that you have, and that you think you could have, in relation to what we call a table now. But the table itself doesn't, you know, is, you know, in essence, referring to a whole collection of experiences. Could you describe more what mind objects are? Okay, well, the mind objects are, as I pointed out to you, the mind objects are Vedana, Tantra, and Tantra, or Tantra, feelings, perceptions, and impulses.

[42:51]

And that's actually one of the main things we'll be studying. So, let's see, what should we use to look at that? You all have this book here, right? So some of the main things those are, if you look on, starting on, I think it's 17.2. Most of these things on page 2, 3, 4, 5, are all Chaitasaka. Contact, feelings, perception, thinking, thought, conception, descriptive thought, joy, ease, etc. And, but, this is in 17.3. Actually, it's page 2.3, but it's kind of a small section. These are all dependent on the Tantra, but anyway, this feeling, feeling is,

[43:54]

would you like to answer as well as mind objects, feelings, and impulses? Well, just what, What are mind objects? How are feelings, perceptions, and impulses mind objects? What do you mean by mind objects? It means that they're not experienced. It means that they, that's a, it's hard actually to say, but mind objects means that they're perceived by the mind, as if by one of the other senses. But again, that side of the list, because, you know, one of these, the sun scars or impulses are, a lot of different things are included here, such as, concentration, interest, ease, interest, attention, and then things like greed, hate, delusion, non-greed, non-hate, non-delusion, anger, and so on.

[44:57]

Those are all impulses here. Or, and the main sun scar is, called chaitanya, or will. So, these are, so, so basically, these are experienced by the mind, and these are experienced by the other five senses. Now, there's a little bit of a question in, you know, if you have, anger, say, of course you have some, I asked someone, I asked a bunch of other students, if you have anger, well, you must have some bodily feeling, too, which would be, a touch object. But you don't call anger, and one thing that happens in, my experience with that thing is,

[45:58]

that a lot of times, what started out as a sun scar, or impulse, turns out to be something very physical. You know, a particular muscle, or area of muscles that's tight, is going, is, is clenching. So that seems to me like that would be, a rupa. Now, if you experience your muscle clenching, then you have a rupa. If you experience, as anger, some feeling of anger, then it's, kind of just a feeling you get, all around, all around your scar. Are you talking about the fact that you're noticing it? That you've noticed it? That it's noticed at all? Uh-huh. Yeah. It's, it's partly, you know, of course, a lot of things depend on how we experience it. Or so,

[47:03]

in that sense, you know, these, the various, anyway, these, some scars actually have a lot to do with that, of how, for example, attention. If you pay attention to something, you have quite a different experience of it, a perception of it, than if you don't pay attention to it. You know? And your experience will be different depending on what you pay attention to. And the same is true, like whether you're interested in it, or not interested, whether you're concentrated or not concentrated, whether you're distracted, you know? So all of these, so there's various factors here, which will affect what you perceive, and what your perception is, and what your feeling is, and so forth. So one of the things that the Abhidharma is concerned with is how do you develop these factors to, in order to liberate your self? So this is the main area of, since I've started, the main area that it's worked on,

[48:05]

in terms of practice, you know, on concentration, or attention, or interest, and for meditation, there's five things that are in terms of factors, factors of absorption, and so that the interest is the thinking, which is kind of not to be taught, but anyway, probably to be taught, and which are sustained examination, and one point in this is that, so as those are developed, the meditative experience develops. What's that nirvana? What's that nirvana? That's not one of the other things. So the nirvana is unconditioned.

[49:09]

Now all these things here are conditioned, are conditioned, and nirvana is said to be unconditioned, not conditioned. Oh, I see. So it's listed there as a dharma. These four terms are dharma? Okay, now I'll go on down. What's... They're categories of dharma. These are categories of dharma. So what I'll do is... Each category has several dharmas. Uh-huh. Are those the four categories of dharma? Yes, those are the four... I mean, there are various ways to categorize. Five standards is one way. And then these four terms should be categorized as the five standards? If you had four terms over there, I wonder if they'd show up in any way. The four or five standards.

[50:12]

Okay. So if you were to say, in this Pali-Arya dharma, there's something like 82 so-called dharmas, which are something like 82... These dharmas are said to be, you know, what... At least more real than the same table or something, right? So you're trying to talk now about, you know, more actively. Instead of same table, we're trying to say, we want to say there's an I-rupa, you know, and there's a touch-rupa, and there's a sound-rupa, when, you know, in a particular moment.

[51:17]

And those collectively we call table. So... You said you can divide table into 82 dharmas? Oh, no, not... Not necessarily. Yeah, more real. This is... No, rather, you know, so this is not... This is a special language. Now you're going to have to learn the language, and then you can figure out, you know, what... Somewhat arbitrary, because each school of Abhidharma has a slightly different list. So some have more... The fact that they're 82 is not such a magical number, because that's what they come up with. Every school might have 75 or 100 or whatever. It depends on how deep the detail is. Okay, we already have...

[52:18]

So, anyway, in the Pali, the rupa is the sense organ of... The sense organ... Each sense organ is a dharma. And... And in Pali, there are several other things related to it, which I'm not so familiar with. One way to describe rupa is to say that it's not mind or mental object. You know, there's a chapter by the faculty here. This is the whole Kama-sangam. You have here the first 97 pages. There's a... There's a slight chance...

[53:24]

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