In the suttas there is talk of sense restraint at the mind base, in relation to mind objects. We also hear talk of unpleasant mental contacts which the Arahants still experience. How are these explained in the commentaries and Abhidhamma?
1 Like
Do you have a reference?
1 Like
Yeah sure
As the wind cannot stir
a solid mass of rock,
so too sights, tastes, sounds,
smells, and touches—the lot—and ideas, whether liked or disliked,
don’t disturb the poised one.
Their mind is steady and unfettered
as they observe disappearance.Selo yathā ekagghano,
vātena na samīrati;
Evaṁ rūpā rasā saddā,
gandhā phassā ca kevalā.Iṭṭhā dhammā aniṭṭhā ca,
nappavedhenti tādino;
Ṭhitaṁ cittaṁ visaññuttaṁ,
vayañcassānupassatī”ti.
Thag 13.1: Soṇakoḷivisattheragāthā—Mahāsaṅgīti Tipiṭaka Buddhavasse 2500 (suttacentral.net)
“Mendicants, I will teach you who is restrained and who is unrestrained. Listen …
And how is someone unrestrained?
There are sights known by the eye that are likable, desirable, agreeable, pleasant, sensual, and arousing. If a mendicant approves, welcomes, and keeps clinging to them, they should understand: ‘My skillful qualities are declining. For this is what the Buddha calls decline.’
There are sounds … smells … tastes … touches … ideas known by the mind that are likable, desirable, agreeable, pleasant, sensual, and arousing. If a mendicant approves, welcomes, and keeps clinging to them, they should understand: ‘My skillful qualities are declining. For this is what the Buddha calls decline.’
This is how someone is unrestrained.
And how is someone restrained?
There are sights known by the eye that are likable, desirable, agreeable, pleasant, sensual, and arousing. If a mendicant doesn’t approve, welcome, and keep clinging to them, they should understand: ‘My skillful qualities are not declining. For this is what the Buddha calls non-decline.’
There are sounds … smells … tastes … touches … ideas known by the mind that are likable, desirable, agreeable, pleasant, sensual, and arousing. If a mendicant doesn’t approve, welcome, and keep clinging to them, they should understand: ‘My skillful qualities are not declining. For this is what the Buddha calls non-decline.’
This is how someone is restrained.”
There are sense-door processes and mind-door processes. And these are happening repeatedly in a day.
It is no different for an arahat.
However, the normal person is is overwhelmed by the different objects and so the javana moments in the both processes are usually akusala, and occasionally kusala.
After a sense door process there is the mind-door process which experiences the just fallen away sense door objects…Then there is bhavanga cittas and more mind-door processes which may have concepts as object.
The arahat has the same objects but the javana moments are kiriya citta.
These are experienced through the sense bases as vipaka citta and are either desirable (ittha) or undesirable (aniṭṭhā).
1 Like
So what is meant here according to the Abhidhamma is mental “images”, for want of a better word, of past or current sense objects?
Taking the eye-consciousness (cakkhu-viññána) as an example:
Nina van Gorkom Nina Van Gorkom - Abhidhamma in daily life - 13
When visible object contacts the eye-sense the eye-door-adverting-consciousness (cakkhu-dvaravajjana-citta) adverts to visible object through the eye-door. When the cakkhu-dvaravajjana-citta has fallen away it is succeeded by seeing-consciousness (cakkhu-vinnana). The function of seeing (in Pali : dassana-kicca) is performed by seeing-consciousness (cakkhu-vinnana). Seeing is vipaka: it is the result of kusala kamma or akusala kamma. We are born in order to receive the results of our deeds and therefore the current of bhavanga-cittas is interrupted and vipakacittas arise after the panca-dvaravajjana-citta.
The citta which performs the function of seeing (dassana-kicca) only sees visible object. This citta does not like or dislike, it is an ahetuka vipakacitta. Neither does it think about the object
Your question about mental image: The cakkhu-vinnana has as object a rupa.
However, it is true that later mind-door processes are taking the nimitta of the visible object which is like an exact copy.
So there are 10 vipaka cittas that arise at the sensitive matter, pasada, of the eye, ear, nose, tongue, and body. 5 are unwholesome-resultants and 5 are wholesome-resultants.
It is all happening now and at every moment. It is taken for granted yet it is so amazing. There are various conditions needed for the visible object to arise. Many conditions needed for the pasada rupa inside the eye to arise. And other conditions needed for the vipaka citta . Yet they all meet at the eyebase just for an instant before falling away.
1 Like
Sorry but that looks like a word salad that does not explain what people experience on a daily basis. At one point you are trying to talk in Mind moments that are infinitely small and not able to be experienced by the the normal man. This is the great failure of abhidhamma explanation as it does not match experience in which each object is actually large and holds for a period of time that is known to anyone who meditates. You can watch objects forming at each sense door and your minds reaction to it. Sense restraint is done by experiencing an object and wisdom stops you from getting akusala reflections about it.
I think the Abhidhamma is precise. We might believe we are watching this or that but when analysed there are only brief moments, no one watching at all - just as the Abhidhamma and Commentaries say.
Take the example of knowing “that is a rose”. In fact that quick recognition is composed of many, many moments.
ABHIDHAMMA STUDIES BUDDHIST EXPLORATIONS OF CONSCIOUSNESS AND TIME
NYANAPONIKA THERA
according to the deeply penetrative analysis of the Abhidhamma the apparently simple act of seeing a rose, for example, is in reality a very complex process composed of different phases, each consisting of numerous smaller combinations of conscious processes (cittavīthi), which again are made up of several single moments of consciousness (cittakkhaṇa) following each other in a definite sequence of diverse functions. Among these phases there is one that connects the present perception of a rose with a previous one, and there is another that attaches to the present perception the name “rose,” remembered from previous experience. Not only in relation to similar experiences in a relatively distant past, but also between those infinitesimally brief single phases and successive processes, the connecting function of rudimentary “memory” must be assumed to operate, because each phase and each lesser successive state has to “remember” the previous one—a process called by the later Ābhidhammikas “grasping the past” (atīta-gahaṇa). Finally, the individual contributions of all those different perceptual processes have to be remembered and coordinated in order to form the final and complete perception of a rose.
It is all happening so quickly, just different jati alternating by conditions.
The hand is quicker than the eye. The eye is fooled by 24 frames per second. The reaction time of a human on Average to a sound is approximately 140-160 milliseconds (0.14-0.16 seconds), generally making it faster than responses to visual stimuli. While auditory responses often fall between 140-200ms, they are roughly 40-50ms faster than visual reactions. Look at your own experience and you can examine any sense door and you you will see that the Abhidhamma explanations are just fantasy and are unpercieivable by a normal person making them just a blindly repeated dogma. All the functions of the vitthi are perceivable but the times taken are not probable or provable and everything else is just wishful thinking. The Dhamma is based on large units of time. Our behaviour and reactions to stimulus is not based on photons or sound waves. When you have an intention to do something it is a very big event. Just watch your own thoughts and formation of understanding of words. Listen to the sylables of each word in your head as you recite and see the comprehension of them. Experience your body and see how big a field is perceived in each instant of knowing. It doesn’t take much observation to find something is very wrong with the theories you are professing because of your hope that someone has not made an unknowable explanation.
Do you think the moment of seeing is very brief, or it lasts for a second or something?
While seeing some people think that they can hear at the same time - but clearly seeing and hearing and thinking are happening in a series, with many other moments in-between. Thus even now we can understand to some degree how rapidly the consecutive moments are passing.
Of course it takes many, many moments of taking an object as bare experience before it become clear - this is a car, that is a house . But if we never see these processes then we are living only in a world of concepts. The Abhidhamma can help us devle below the surface of this ‘world’ and see what is really present.
Yes when you meditate your mind can get to a point where it focuses to a point that when you see you don’t hear etc. You are mindful of one thing at a time in rapid succession khannika samadhi. You can become one pointed on an object to exclusion of all else. But still it is not in the time scale of abhidhammic claims. That is my pont the claims do not match experience. Hence sense restraint is not as complex as abhidhamma wants you to think. Our delusions are not microscopic. Our sense of self is a big mental event and so is mindfulness and all the other cetasikas. So the vitthi explanation fails the test of experience. Something ain’t quite right and it is pretty obvious if you look. I use abhidhamma on big blocks and big objects and it has it’s use to be able to identify those things. What is kusala and akusala is identifiable with that assistance.
Here is a quote from the VISM.
XX 103. The characteristic of not-self becomes evident to him through seeing rise according to condition owing to his discovery that states have no curiosity and that their existence depends upon conditions. The characteristic of impermanence becomes evident to him through seeing rise and fall according to instant owing to his discovery of non-existence after having been and owing to his discovery that they are secluded from past and future. The characteristic of pain becomes evident to him [through that] too owing to his discovery of oppression by rise and fall. And the characteristic of individual essence becomes evident to him [through that] too owing to his discovery of delimitation [of states] by rise and fall.
And in the characteristic of individual essence the temporariness of the characteristic of what is formed becomes evident to him [through that] too owing to his discovery of the non-existence of fall at the instant of rise and the non- existence of rise at the instant of fall.
- When the several truths, aspects of the dependent origination, methods, and characteristics have become evident to him thus, then formations appear to him as perpetually renewed: “So these states, it seems, being previously unarisen, critic, and being arisen, they cease.” [633] And they are not only perpetually renewed, but they are also short-lived like dew-drops at sunrise (A IV 137), like a bubble on water (S III 14 I), like a line drawn on water (A IV 137), like a mustard seed on an awl’s point (Nidd I 42), like a lightning flash (Nidd I 43). And they appear without core, like a conjuring trick (S III 141), like a mirage (Dhp 46), like a dream (Sn 807), like the circle of a whirling firebrand, like a goblin city (source untraced), like froth (Dhp 46), like a plantain trunk (S III 142), and so on.
For the whirling firebrand a modern simile would be that of a strobe light. If set to a very fast rate then it appears as if the light is lasting, the separate flashes appear as continuous motion. In the same way, rapidly arising and vanishing mental and bodily events appear as one long event.
At the brief moments of seeing before thinking arises is there any sense of self - there isn’t actually as wrong view only arises during the vitthi processes. These different jati can be understood and so the idea of one continuous sense of self and having/not having mindfulness as a long mental event can be seen to be a delusion.
VISM XXI 3.. Now, the characteristics fail to become apparent when something is not given attention and so something conceals them. What is that? Firstly, the characteristic of impermanence does not become apparent because when rise and fall are not given attention, it is concealed by continuity.