Argument

Abhidharma

Overview

The Abhidharma (lit. "about the dharma") refers to a class of Buddhist texts, the first of which date from the 3rd century BCE. Abhidharma texts contain detailed scholastic presentations of Buddhist doctrine, including doctrines that appear in canonical Buddhist scriptures and commentaries. "Abhidharma" also refers to the scholastic method itself, and the knowledge (prajña) that this method is said to study and cultivate.

Bhikkhu Bodhi calls Abhidharma "an abstract and highly technical systemization of the [Buddhist] doctrine," which is "simultaneously a philosophy, a psychology and an ethics, all integrated into the framework of a program for liberation." According to Peter Harvey, the Abhidharma method seeks "to avoid the inexactitudes of colloquial conventional language, as is sometimes found in the Suttas, and state everything in psycho-philosophically exact language." In this sense, it is an attempt to best express the Buddhist view of "ultimate reality" (paramārtha-satya).

There are different types of Abhidharma literature. The early canonical Abhidharma works, such as the Pali Abhidhamma Piṭaka, are not philosophical treatises but mainly summaries and expositions of early Buddhist doctrinal lists with their accompanying explanations. These texts developed out of early Buddhist lists or matrices (mātṛkās) of key teachings.

Later post-canonical Abhidharma works were written as either large treatises (śāstra), as commentaries (aṭṭhakathā), or as smaller introductory manuals. There were numerous schools of Abhidharma in India, such as the Theravada, and the Vaibhāṣika. They are more developed philosophical works which include many innovations and doctrines not found in the canonical Abhidharma. Abhidharma remains an important field of scholarship among the Theravāda, Mahāyāna, and Vajrayāna schools of Buddhism.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

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The beauty of a systematical arrangement of different observations, connected by a few common principles, was first seen in the rude essays of those ancient times towards a system of natural philosophy. Something of the same kind was afterwards attempted in morals. The maxims of common life were arranged in some methodical order, and connected together by a few common principles, in the same manner as they had…
Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
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But by sacred things one must not understand simply those personal beings which are called gods or spirits; a rock, a tree, a spring, a pebble, a piece of wood, a house, in a word, anything can be sacred. A rite can have this character; in fact, the rite does not exist which does not have it to a certain degree.
Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life
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The doctrines concerning those two subjects were considered as making two distinct sciences. What are called metaphysics, or pneumatics, were set in opposition to physics, and were cultivated not only as the more sublime, but, for the purposes of a particular profession, as the more useful science of the two. The proper subject of experiment and observation, a subject in which a careful attention is capable of…
Adam Smith, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
States what Abhidharma is.
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Abhidharma

Overview

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Philosophers who discussed Abhidharma

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Place in the tradition