http://kusala.online-dhamma.net/%E6%96% ... dhamma.pdf
But the Dhammasangini asks ‘What is the aggregate of cognition on that occasion?’ This is as
nonsensical as asking ‘Which dog is the canine species?’ The Dhammasangini is so crude
a semantic steamroller that it is unable to distinguish between a class and a member of
the class. A class is too obviously a concept, and it just wouldn’t do to soil the
abhidhamma with mere concepts.
In the later abhidhamma, the treatment of time is dominated by a radical new theory,
totally unlike anything in the suttas or even the canonical abhidhamma, the theory of
moments (khanavada). [..]
Now it is quite possible to take this theory, compare it with the suttas, and refute it
point by point. But here I would simply like to point out what an implausible and useless
idea it is.
[..]
So too
the self (atta) is just a big pile of ‘self-existents’ (sabhava).
This kind of analysis is reminiscent of Jain animism, which sees all existence as
composed of atoms (paramanu), which they call ‘persons’ (pudgala). These are elemental
souls (jiva, lives), possessed of color, odor, and taste. The souls of earth, etc., are tiny,
undeveloped, and can only be perceived when vast amounts of them accumulate in one
place. The souls of humans are merely an advanced version. The simple animistic
theories of the early Jaina Sutras, whose concepts probably pre-date the Buddha, became
developed by their commentaries in abstruse and baffling detail.
The reifying tendency takes full flight in later abhidhamma literature.
This task is the burden of the Patthana, a book
whose labyrinthine mazes are ideally suited to masking the fact that it is a spurious
solution to a pseudo-problem. The Patthana, the most revered – and therefore least read
– of all abhidhamma books, is said to present 24 modes of conditional relationships. It
does nothing of the sort. Most of the much-vaunted ‘modes of conditional relations’ are
merely lists of dhammas that act as condition for other dhammas. The text says little
about causality as such; in fact this work excels all other products of the human mind in
its combination of verbosity of form with vacuity of content. Remarkably, it is less
intellectually stimulating and less readable than a telephone book. The Patthana attempts
to glue the mind and the body back together again with its ‘dissociation condition’, a
term which perfectly encapsulates the strange world of mind-body dualism: things are
connected by being disconnected. I can certainly confirm that if I think about this stuff
too much, I end up in a very dissociated condition!
....
I suggest that the abhidhamma is most profitably considered, not as a psychology or
as a philosophy, but as a mystical cult.
