MOD.

1: MAINSTREAM BUDDHIST PHILOSOPHY

• Early Buddhism - Core Teachings

• Abhidharma (“Higher Dharma”)

• Pudgalavāda (“Person-View”)

• Homework + preview of next

week

 FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS

1) symptom: suffering/dis-ease

2) diagnosis: cause is craving (or ignorance)

3) prognosis: cessation of dis-ease is possible

4) prescription: eightfold path (right view, intention,

speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness,
samādhi)
• or ethical conduct, samādhi, and wisdom

a program for action: thoroughly understand suffering,

relinquish the cause, realize cessation, by cultivating
the path

 TRUTH OF SUFFERING
The Noble Truth of Suffering (dukkha),
monks, is this:
birth is suffering,
aging is suffering,
sickness is suffering,
death is suffering,
association with the unpleasant is suffering,
dissociation from the pleasant is suffering,
not to receive what one desires is suffering
— in brief, the ve aggregates subject to
grasping are suffering.
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 THE FIVE AGGREGATES

1) physical form = four elements (earth, water, re, air)

2) feeling tone = pleasant, unpleasant, indifferent

3) perception = recognition, labeling

4) karmic formations = volitional activities + dispositions

5) consciousness = six kinds distinguished in terms of

their object (visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory,
tactile, mental)

Alternative analyses: 12 sense spheres, 18 elements, 12

links of dependent origination

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NOT-SELF CHARACTERISTIC SUTTA

• Can I control the aggregates?

• Is it pro table to identify with these

constantly changing states?

• Is this grasping not stressful?

“Three Characteristics” of conditioned

existence:
• impermanent
• suffering/dissatisfactory
• not -self/no self
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DEPENDENT ORIGINATION OF SUFFERING

1. Ignorance* past life, cause
2. Karmic Formations ➡
3. Consciousness present life, effect
4. Name and Form ➡

5. Six Sense Organs

6. Contact
7. Feeling
8. Craving* present life, cause
9. Grasping ➡
10. Becoming
11. Birth future life, effect
12. Old Age & Death ➡

 ABHIDHARMA (“HIGHER DHARMA”)

• beginning approx. 3rd c. B.C.E.

• third of “Three Baskets” of the canon

• refers to texts and method of analysis

(universal, technical vs. contextual, natural)

• basic grammar and vocabulary of Buddhist

philosophy

• two primary concerns:

• identifying, de ning, and categorizing
salient elements of experience relevant
to de lement and puri cation (the path)
• explaining how these phenomena
(dharmas) relate to each other
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 DHA(R)MAS IN THE SATIPAṬṬHĀNA SUTTA

A monk dwells watching dhammas as dhammas in terms of:

1. the ve hindrances (sensual desire, ill-will, sloth and torpor,

restlessness and worry, doubt)

2. the ve aggregates of grasping

3. the six senses and their respective objective elds

4. the seven wings of awakening (mindfulness, dhamma-

investigation, vigor, joy, tranquillity, concentration, equanimity)

5. the four noble truths

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DHARMA THEORY
• early Buddhism: dharmas as
elements of experience salient to
the path (as in Satipaṭṭhāna sutta)

• evaluative and descriptive

• Abhidharma basic categories:

conditioned (mind, mental factors,
material form) and unconditioned
(nirvana)

• evolution “from category to

ontology” [ontos = being]

 THE NATURE (SVABHĀVA) OF DHARMAS

1. suttas: evanescent, ephemeral phenomena, lacking
solidity or substance— but which have their own
distinctive natures (svabhāva)

2. Theravāda Abhidhamma: phenomena that bear

their own distinctive nature (svabhāva) in virtue of
their relationship with other phenomena

3. Sarvāstivāda Abhidharma: phenomena that bear

their own distinctive nature (svabhāva)
independently of other phenomena

4. Mature Theravāda and Sarvāstivāda: dharmas are

ultimately as opposed to conventionally real; they
are the fundamental building blocks of existence,
nal real things
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PUDGALAVĀDA
(PERSON-VIEW)
 BEARER OF THE
BURDEN
A burden indeed
are the ve aggregates,
and the carrier of the burden
is the person.
Taking up the burden in the world is
stressful.

Casting off the burden is bliss.

Having cast off the heavy burden and not
taking on another, pulling up craving,
along with its root, one is free from
hunger, totally unbound.

Bhāra sutta (“Discourse on the Burden”)-

SN 22.22
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QUESTIONS MOTIVATING PERSON-VIEW
• what/who is subject of the four noble truths?
• what/who experiences suffering?
• what/who is subject to karma and
rebirth?
• what/who practices the path?
• what/who are the objects of moral
action and sentiment?
• what/who is liberated? (lays down the
burden of the aggregates?)
• to what/whom do memories belong?

 WHAT IS THE PERSON?

• subject of the Four Noble Truths

• individual persisting over time

• neither the same as, nor different

from the aggregates

• relates to aggregates, like re to fuel

• inde nable/inexpressible

• ultimately existent in the sense that it

cannot be reduced to aggregates/
dharmas — a necessary concept
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AGAINST PUDGALAVĀDA (VASUBANDHU)

• real person = self (persons are merely conceptual
designations)

• things can be substantially/ultimately real or conceptual

designations/conventionally real (no 3rd option)
• only know a person based on the aggregates

• if X is real, it must be the same or different from Y (no

3rd option)

• aggregates are suf cient to explain who is subject to

the four noble truths

• all are activities within the “stream” of aggregates; it

is only from a conventional perspective that we
speak of persons

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