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Dhammas

The Ultimate Reality

Photo from the Webb space-telescope
Photo from the Webb space-telescope

A cit­ta dham­ma aris­es and then instant­ly dis­ap­pears again. Anoth­er cit­ta aris­es and dis­ap­pears. The next aris­es and dis­ap­pears. Cit­ta does not arise alone. Cetasikas arise and dis­ap­pear along with cit­ta. When cit­tas arise, they are always accom­pa­nied by cetasikas. Indeed, con­scious­ness can­not exist alone in the absence of men­tal fac­tors and mate­r­i­al phe­nom­e­na. Cit­ta itself has only one qual­i­ty — the abil­i­ty to cog­nize an object. Cetasikas help the cit­ta with details in its act of cog­ni­tion, and rupas pro­vide the stage. 


List­ed below are the var­i­ous groups of dham­mas. The num­bers show how many indi­vid­ual dham­ma types there are in each sub­group, which togeth­er make up 89 (121) cit­tas, 52 cetasikas and 28 rupas (fig­ures in paren­the­ses apply to advanced med­i­ta­tion states). 

Citta dhammas

  • Sense sphere cittas 54
  • Fine-material sphere cittas 15
  • Immaterial sphere cittas 12
  • Supramundane cittas 8 (40)

Cetasika dhammas

  • Ethically variable cetasikas 13
  • Unwholesome cetasikas 14
  • Beautiful cetasikas 25

Rupa dhammas

  • Concrete rupas 18
  • Non-concrete rupas 10
Quantum art

The brief moment when men­tal fac­tors (cetasikas) and mate­r­i­al phe­nom­e­na (rupas) arise, exist and dis­ap­pear togeth­er with a dis­crete pack­age of con­scious­ness (cit­ta) is called a mind moment. Each such mind moment man­i­fests as one of the 89 (121) dif­fer­ent types of con­scious­ness. The ordi­nary mind expe­ri­ences the unfold­ing of the mind moments as one con­tin­u­ous stream of con­scious­ness, but a mind that has attained advanced stages of insight med­i­ta­tion (vipas­sana) expe­ri­ences con­scious­ness as a series of dis­crete enti­ties. The mind capa­ble of attain­ing even the high­est stages of vipas­sana med­i­ta­tion is able to iden­ti­fy the char­ac­ter­is­tics of indi­vid­ual moments of aware­ness, as well as their causal rela­tion­ships to oth­er dham­mas and mind moments. This, in brief, is how the knowl­edge found in the Abhid­ham­ma — most promi­nent­ly in its Patthana part — came about. 


The names of the var­i­ous groups and sub­groups above may sug­gest some of their char­ac­ter­is­tics. Fur­ther details can be found else­where on this site, which is ded­i­cat­ed to pre­sent­ing the details of the knowl­edge con­tained in the Patthana book in a non-aca­d­e­m­ic manner. 

April 2024.