Mundane Sense Sphere Cittas

The mun­dane sense-sphere cit­tas are divid­ed into three sub­groups accord­ing to whether they have unwhole­some roots, have no roots, or have beau­ti­ful roots. In the Abhid­ham­ma con­text, ​‘roots’ is a term for cer­tain spe­cif­ic cetasikas. There are a total of six roots — three unwhole­some and three so-called bright ones, which can be either unwhole­some or indeterminate.

The unwhole­some roots are greed, hatred and delu­sion. Greed and hatred can­not coex­ist with­in the same cit­ta. Delu­sion, on the oth­er hand, is present in all unwhole­some cittas.

Root­less resul­tant and func­tion­al cit­tas are results of past kam­ma, which means they are results of roots in the past. But when they arise, no roots accom­pa­ny them.

Roots are men­tal fac­tors that help estab­lish sta­bil­i­ty in a cit­ta, so root­less cit­tas are weak­er than those that have roots.

Beau­ti­ful means accom­pa­nied by the three bright roots – that is, non-greed (or gen­eros­i­ty), non-hate (or lov­ing-kind­ness), and non-delu­sion (or wis­dom). The beau­ti­ful cit­tas include all kam­mi­cal­ly whole­some cit­tas and those of the resul­tant and func­tion­al ones that are accom­pa­nied by beau­ti­ful cetasikas. Resul­tant and func­tion­al cit­tas are nei­ther whole­some nor unwhole­some, but kam­mi­cal­ly indeterminate.