The Abhidhamma

The Abhidhamma is one of the three great divisions of the Buddhist canon, alongside the Sutta and Vinaya. It offers a profound and detailed analysis of the workings of the mind and reality, breaking down experience into its most fundamental components.

Unlike the discursive style of the Suttas, which often use metaphor, story, and dialogue, the Abhidhamma is highly systematic. It presents a kind of psychological map, cataloguing mental factors (cetasikas), types of consciousness (cittas), material phenomena (rūpa), and the intricate web of causal conditions (paccaya) that underlie all experience.

At its heart, the Abhidhamma teaches that what we conventionally call a “person” is a stream of momentary mental and physical events arising and passing in rapid succession. There is no enduring self behind these processes — only conditioned phenomena interdependently arising.

For the serious practitioner, studying the Abhidhamma provides not merely intellectual knowledge but a framework for deep contemplation. By seeing how mind and world operate with such precision, one gradually loosens identification and attachment, opening the door to insight into impermanence, non-self, and suffering.

Though challenging and highly technical, the Abhidhamma complements meditative practice, offering a lens through which the meditator can observe their own moment-to-moment experience with increasing clarity.

“He who sees dependent origination sees the Dhamma; he who sees the Dhamma sees dependent origination.”
— Buddha