The 72 ultimate dharmas

In certain Buddhist analytical systems, reality is broken down into ultimate phenomena (*paramattha dhammas*) — the most basic constituents of experience. While the Theravāda Abhidhamma traditionally identifies a smaller number of ultimate dhammas (namely, citta, cetasikas, rūpa, and nibbāna), some later or more detailed systems present further subdivisions, such as the listing of 72 ultimate dharmas found in some commentarial traditions.

These lists serve as a framework for precise contemplation, categorizing the mind and body into distinct mental factors, physical phenomena, and unconditioned realities. The purpose of such detailed classification is not intellectual mastery, but to support insight into the impersonal, conditioned nature of all experience.

By deconstructing experience into these building blocks, the practitioner undermines the illusion of a unified self. Rather than seeing the flow of experience as belonging to “me,” one comes to observe an impersonal succession of conditioned events arising and ceasing according to cause and effect.

In practice, the 72 dharmas — like all analytical tools in the Abhidhamma — function as skillful means (*upāya*). They guide the meditator beyond conceptual proliferation toward the direct perception of impermanence, non-self, and emptiness. Ultimately, their value lies not in their precision as categories, but in their capacity to dissolve clinging and reveal the simplicity of suchness.

“To analyze the parts is to see the whole is empty of self.”
— Abhidhamma summary teaching