Maximum Capacity of Bhavanga

Abhidhamma
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Extracted from Ven. Maggavihari’s Sinhala lessons on Theravada.

  • When a person is born, he gets a certain Bhavanga (root mind) with a certain maximum capacity.
  • The bhavanga can be developed up to this max level but not beyond that.
  • When a person develops his mind by practicing Dhamma, the bhavanga of him gets developed.
  • A Dvihetuka bhavanga can not be developed into a Tihetuka bhavanga. (how ever much he tried)
  • The bhavanga of the King Vessantara (The Omniscient One’s previous human birth) can not be developed up to the Omniscience. But the bhavanga of King Siddhartha can be developed up to the Omniscience.
  • If one is heedless, he misses the opportunity to develop his bhavanga up to the maximum level possible.
  • The Omniscient One smiled (a rare occurrence) having seen the beggar Mahadhana Setthiputta, who was once the wealthiest man in the City born with a bhavanga that can be developed up to Arahant level.

Opinions?

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it is not possible to summarize his talks like this. You should give a link to the relevant lectures in English. It sounds funny the way you are putting it. So try not to mislabel things. Bhavanga consciousness is fixed for the whole lifetime and repeats that way it will not change until the next patisandhi. You must be misquoting him or something is lost in translation.

You also are ambiguous with “maximum capacity”. . It would be best to find an English lecture or translate the whole lecture in full… or at least with more details.

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I’d like to read more about this topic.

So, is the reason why we don’t really see anyone displaying powers like flying is because nowadays someone with that much potential is really rare?

How do we know how much potential we have? I really hope I have enough potential to get super powers and vipassana knowledges.

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I think if you develop the ability to understand, even a little, the difference between nama and rupa that would be even better than superpowers…

We don’t know our accumulations but some of them must have been very meritorious otherwise we wouldn’t have confidence in the sublime Dhamma which is so hard to penetrate.
Even if our merit from the past (pubbekata punnata) is miniscule it doesn’t matter - that should only make us set on accumulating more now and in the future.
These days people are either neyya - who if they learn and understand the teachings in detail can attain- or padaparama who even if they do learn and understand can’t penetrate in this life but are accumulating the conditions for attainment in a future life.

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