Purejāta-Pacchājāta – Condition of Latency and Manifestation

The condition wherein things, material or immaterial, exist rather as a potential, without actually being manifest, is what is called a condition of latency. It is the condition of mental or material phenomena existing in germ form (the term Purejata literally means pre-nascence).While anything (any phenomena) that already is in existence exists in the condition…

The Chain-Reaction of Becoming (or the Law of Dependent Origination)

Paticca samuppāda (often called the Law of Dependent Origination is perhaps the most famous of Buddhist Laws. Discovered by the Buddha and prescribed by him as one of the most fundamental principles to comprehend, it is a chain of 12 links, which is spanning the whole of human life in a cause-effect manner. It thereby…

Looking for the Meaning

Very often we find different teachings on similar subjects or identical phenomena and we do not know, which one to believe. In the psychology of traditional Buddhism for example there is a teaching that the mind arises as a process of 17 mind moments, each possessing an arising, standing and perishing phase, happening so fast…

Acquiring Knowledge

Principally should the study of this system give a person the key to comprehend any teaching or statement or problem whatsoever, be it religious, mathematical, philosophical, biological or what ever else. Because, although there is a certain relativity to all truths spoken or written down, there is but one universal truth which may be approached…

Sampayutta Paccaya- Condition of Attraction

Whenever one phenomenon is, by virtue of its own qualities, pulling towards itself another phenomenon, it is called attraction. On all the conceivable scales of life, can there be found this condition of attraction. Matter from the tiniest of particles, to the matter of the whole universe is kept together through the condition of attraction.…

Keys to the Abhidhamma System

In the ancient world, the wise man was often called the knower of the gods. The gods signifying hidden entities which were believed to be the controlling agents of the world. Entities which were accessible only to those who were initiated into their mysteries. In modern times too, there are wise people investigating hidden entities, only now they are designated 'forces of nature'. The understanding of them, similar to the understanding of the gods of old, can give them certain powers over nature. The modern means of their studies being called the 'Sciences'. A word coming from the meaning 'to know'. The Buddhist Abhidhamma system being almost a blend of both, might be thought of both as an ancient system of 'scientific knowledge' or a 'divine science'; only its main aim is not so much to explore and explain the outer world, but primarily how the inner world of each individual is ruled and held together. This understanding too shall give the student certain powers, but rather over the forces of his own inner nature.

Summary of Patthāna Conditions

“To understand means, to understand all,...to understand only in part, means to not understand at all” 'The Paṭṭhāna', traditionally regarded as the quintessence of the Buddha's wisdom and as the surest proof of his omniscience, is a system which, in mathematical order, seeks to expand the comprehension of matter, mind and consciousness delineated in the…