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What is Patthana?

Artistic rendering of subatomic event
Artistic rendering of subatomic event

A lit­tle more than 100 years ago, the sci­ence of physics dis­cov­ered that all mate­r­i­al objects did not actu­al­ly exist by them­selves, but con­sist­ed of atoms. Over the fol­low­ing decades, physi­cists grad­u­al­ly learned that atoms did not exist by them­selves either, but con­sist­ed of rapid­ly fluc­tu­at­ing sub­atom­ic enti­ties that emerged from the unknown, only to almost instant­ly dis­ap­pear again. These dis­cov­er­ies were made by col­lid­ing atoms and sub­atom­ic enti­ties with each oth­er and ana­lyz­ing the traces left behind. The lab­o­ra­to­ry exper­i­ments went hand in hand with exten­sive math­e­mat­i­cal cal­cu­la­tions that formed the basis of quan­tum field the­o­ry, accord­ing to which there is no such thing as sta­ble ele­men­tary par­ti­cles – rather, it is a ques­tion of small vibrat­ing pack­ets of not under­stood basic ener­gy forms. 


More than 2000 years ear­li­er, Bud­dhist monks and schol­ars dis­cov­ered and ana­lyzed sim­i­lar phe­nom­e­na and came to very sim­i­lar con­clu­sions. How­ev­er, while the physi­cists deal only with the mate­r­i­al parts of the uni­verse and neglect the exis­tence of mind and con­scious­ness, these phe­nom­e­na were the pri­ma­ry focus of the Bud­dhist monks and schol­ars. Their dis­cov­er­ies and con­clu­sions were for­mu­lat­ed in the Abhid­ham­ma – a promi­nent part of the canon­i­cal Bud­dhist lit­er­a­ture – of which the Patthana is the sev­enth and final book. 

The pri­ma­ry play­ers in Patthana 

All things are ulti­mate­ly noth­ing but man­i­fes­ta­tions of cit­ta, cetasi­ka, rupa and nib­bana. Cit­ta, cetasi­ka and rupa dham­mas are con­di­tioned by oth­er things. Nib­bana on the oth­er hand is not con­di­tioned by anything. 

Dhamma types

  • Citta dhammas (awareness, state of mind, attention)
  • Cetasika dhammas (mental factors, mind conditioners)
  • Rupa dhammas (substance, unconscious nature)
  • Nibbana dhamma (absolute peace, total annihilation of craving, aversion and delusion)

Cit­ta is con­scious­ness. It is the nature which is capa­ble of know­ing, sens­ing or being aware of objects: the see­ing mind, the hear­ing mind, the smelling mind, the tast­ing mind, the tac­tile-feel­ing mind, the think­ing mind are exam­ples of cit­ta. Cetasi­ka always aris­es with cit­ta and dis­ap­pears with cit­ta. Exam­ples of cetasikas are irri­ta­tion, anger, hatred, rage, jeal­ousy, crav­ing, igno­rance, depres­sion, fear­less­ness, shame­less­ness, love, attach­ment, cling­ing, con­ceit and many more. Rupa is mate­r­i­al, all mat­ter — solids, liq­uids, gas­es, mol­e­cules, atoms, quarks, lep­tons, etc. is made up of rupa dham­mas. Nib­bana is the ulti­mate reality. 


Accord­ing to Patthana, there are (usu­al­ly) 89 dif­fer­ent cit­ta dham­mas, 52 cetasi­ka dham­mas, 28 rupa dham­mas and 1 nib­bana dham­ma. In cer­tain advanced med­i­ta­tive states, 32 more cit­ta dham­mas may appear. 


On this site, all of these dham­mas and their inter­ac­tions will be described in more detail 

April 2024.