A First Look at Abhidhamma (1):
Importance of Abhidhamma the Buddhist Psychology


What is Buddhism?

Brothers and sisters, what is Buddhism?  This three-word question is surprisingly a very difficult question.  I was running a Buddhism booth in a multi religion exhibition in US.  Most young people are not interested in religions nowadays, so our religion section has only few visitors.  Then one American who apparently did not know about Buddhism asked me this question.  I tell you, I was dumbstruck by it.

I was a Mahayana then, hence all my years of Buddhism knowledge and experiences flooded through my mind.  I could not even find a single word that can approximate this wealth of information.  Should I tell him about the Buddha?  Or should I tell him about the rich Buddhist philosophy?  Or should I tell him about the myriad of Buddhist practices from meditation to mantra chanting?  Or should I tell him about the various cultures of Buddhism ranging from the Thailand’s, the Chinese, the Tibetan, and to the Japanese?  There is no starting point, hence I did not know where to start.  The religion is too rich and colorful to be defined simply.

It took me a few months of contemplation before I found an answer, and I am embarrassed by my answer.  Buddhism is a religion that teaches one how to cope with suffering, and for those who want to, how to end suffering.  It is as simple as that.  This answer includes the objective for the layman, as well as the objective for the Sangha.  The rest of Buddhism, which includes the practices, the philosophies, the culture and even the various sects, are just different forms for the same function.  I was so distracted by forms, that I even forgot the function.



Ending Suffering

Buddhism is all about ending suffering, or at least to learn to cope with suffering.  There are so many kinds of suffering, so many definitions of suffering, and so many manifestation of suffering, that is why Buddhism grew into such richness and colors to attempt to answer to each and every suffering.  When Buddhism goes into a new culture, Buddhism changes according to the culture to answer suffering in that culture.  When Buddhism goes into a new era, Buddhism changes with the era to answer suffering of that era.  Suffering is conditional, thus Buddhism answers to each condition.  Such is the great love and compassion of Buddhism, to benefit every sentient being under all conditions.

However as we practice Buddhism, very often we became attached to the practice and forgot its goal.  Each form of practices and philosophy ends suffering in its own way.  We enjoy the calmness brought by the practice.  Sometimes we dwell in the calmness too much, get too comfortable, and forget the greater objective of ending suffering.  We should not forget this greater objective.  Just as the Heart Sutra mantra says:

“Gate gate, paragate, parasamgate, Bodhi svaha.”

We should always remind ourselves of the greater objective of ending suffering.  Why?  Because conditional calmness is impermanent.  Soon the Law of Cause and Effect will catch up with us, and end our calmness.  It is only by ending suffering, to reach the unconditional calmness of Nibbana, that we are truly free.

How can we end suffering unconditionally?  The answer is not easy, but nonetheless it is the correct question to ask.  What is suffering?  The answer is also not easy, but that is also the correct question to ask.  Now we are talking.  How does suffering come about?  Where does suffering occur, is it internal or external?  What is the thing that ‘feel’ suffering?  Each of these questions qualifies to be a Koan by itself.  They are that deep and profound.  We are now asking the right questions.



Abhidhamma: The Buddhist Psychology

At some point in the contemplation, we would realize that psychology plays an important part in our suffering.  Different people can experience the same thing or event, but feel different degrees of suffering.  Other than their physical build and background, their psychology certainly plays a big part.  How people feel things, or perceive things, or judge things, or think about things, all these make a big difference.  Hence to end suffering unconditionally, each of us at some point, will have to confront our own psychology.  We have to understand our true nature.

Abhidhamma is the one of the three sections of the Pali cannon, the other two are Vinaya Pitaka, the rules of discipline, and Suttana Pitaka, the collection of discourses.  Abhidhamma translates literally to mean “higher truth” or the “higher reality”.  However what it really deals with, is the human mind and phenomena.  Hence it can be more appropriately referred to as the Buddhist psychology.  This is a collection of seven books compiled separately from as early as 477 BC to 250 BC and 25 BC.  Hence it is understood that the psychology approaches in the Abhidhamma are very different from that of the contemporary scientific approaches.  There were no brain scans, and there were no concepts like the left brain and the right brain.  Nonetheless, Abhidhamma directly addresses the part of our psychology that explains our suffering.  It suggests ‘new’ paradigms to understand our own psychology better.  By understanding our own psychology better, we know how sufferings come about, and how to end them.  This is the value of learning about the Abhidhamma.

There is a practice which I personally find useful, to go hand in hand with exploring our own psychology.  This is the practice of breathing (or mindfulness) meditation.  As we slow down our body and thinking, by focusing on our breaths, we immediately come into contact with our psychology.  Hence we don’t really need a text book to teach us about psychology.  Simply relax and watch our own psychology for ourselves!  In fact, I enjoy this so much, that I do not need to bring a book to read during my travels anymore.  The best book, which is the book of my psychology, is already in my head.

Hence Abhidhamma is not really the book of psychology, but rather the guide book to teach us how to read our own book of psychology.  As we learn about Abhidhamma, and do the mindfulness meditation, we finally take small steps towards understanding our own true nature.  This is a nature we often take for granted, and hence neglected.  As we direct our effort towards understanding our own selves, we are like going back to our true home.  A home that has always been with us, through eons of rebirths since beginning-less time.  A home that records all that we have been through - the sadness and  the happiness, the good and bad deeds that we did, the un-quantifiable cycles of attachments we bore, and the countless mental formations.  This is a home to which we feed all kinds of trash to it every day, but yet we never thought of stopping to do some housekeeping or spring-cleaning.  And we were still wondering where all the sufferings came from.  Isn’t it time to visit this home of yours, and find your roots of suffering?  Doesn’t it worth a bit of your time each day, to try heal your much abused home?  By doing the mindfulness meditation, aided with some knowledge of Abhidhamma, we can more easily identify our home and come in touch with our psychology.  Without the mindfulness meditation, all knowledge of Abhidhamma stays as knowledge, they will never be translated to realizations and experience.  Without the Abhidhamma, we may dwell in our own calmness of mindfulness meditation without recognizing our own psychology.  Hence both need to go hand in hand.



What’s Next

In the following chapters, I shall present the following concepts one by one:

These topics may sound technical, but I will not be presenting them in a technical way.  It will be as ‘layman’ as this chapter.  As such, this series is so simplified that it does not even qualify to be call an introduction.  That is why this series is called ‘A First Look’ instead.  After this series, the interested reader can then proceed to read a proper introduction series written by more enlightened authors. 

I hope readers will correct me as I go along, starting from this chapter.  I hope this series, be it correctly written or wrongly written, inspires new wisdom in you, bringing you calmness and happiness, and giving you new means of overcoming attachment, anger and ignorance.  It is a joy even to mention about the treasures in this third collection of the Pali cannon.


With Metta,
Lee Hon Sing.

-- Last modified: Dec 12, 2003.  All ignorance is mine.


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