..续本文上一页 cornerstone of the Buddha”s teaching, the program of liberation announced by the Four Noble Truths. The ontological survey of dhammas stems from the Buddha”s injunction that the noble truth of suffering, identified with the world of conditioned phenomena as a whole, must be fully understood (pariññeyya). The prominence of mental defilements and requisites of enlightenment in its schemes of categories, indicative of its psychological and ethical concerns, connects the Abhidhamma to the second and fourth noble truths, the origin of suffering and the way leading to its end. And the entire taxonomy of dhammas elaborated by the system reaches its consummation in the "unconditioned element" (asankhata dhatu), which is Nibbana, the third noble truth, that of the cessation of suffering.
The Twofold Method
The great Buddhist commentator, Acariya Buddhaghosa, explains the word "Abhidhamma" as meaning "that which exceeds and is distinguished from the Dhamma" (dhammatireka-dhammavisesa), the prefix abhi having the sense of preponderance and distinction, and dhamma here signifying the teaching of the Sutta Pitaka.[1] When the Abhidhamma is said to surpass the teaching of the Suttas, this is not intended to suggest that the Suttanta teaching is defective in any degree or that the Abhidhamma proclaims some new revelation of esoteric doctrine unknown to the Suttas. Both the Suttas and the Abhidhamma are grounded upon the Buddha”s unique doctrine of the Four Noble Truths, and all the principles essential to the attainment of enlightenment are already expounded in the Sutta Pitaka. The difference between the two in no way concerns fundamentals but is, rather, partly a matter of scope and partly a matter of method.
As to scope, the Abhidhamma offers a thoroughness and completeness of treatment that cannot be found in the Sutta Pitaka. Acariya Buddhaghosa explains that in the Suttas such doctrinal categories as the five aggregates, the twelve sense bases, the eighteen elements, and so forth, are classified only partly, while in the Abhidhamma Pitaka they are classified fully according to different schemes of classification, some common to the Suttas, others unique to the Abhidhamma.[2] Thus the Abhidhamma has a scope and an intricacy of detail that set it apart from the Sutta Pitaka.
The other major area of difference concerns method. The discourses contained in the Sutta Pitaka were expounded by the Buddha under perse circumstances to listeners with very different capacities for comprehension. They are primarily pedagogical in intent, set forth in the way that will be most effective in guiding the listener in the practice of the teaching and in arriving at a penetration of its truth. To achieve this end the Buddha freely employs the didactic means required to make the doctrine intelligible to his listeners. He uses simile and metaphor; he exhorts, advises, and inspires; he sizes up the inclinations and aptitudes of his audience and adjusts the presentation of the teaching so that it will awaken a positive response. For this reason the Suttanta method of teaching is described as pariyaya-dhammadesana, the figurative or embellished discourse on the Dhamma.
In contrast to the Suttas, the Abhidhamma Pitaka is intended to pulge as starkly and directly as possible the totalistic system that underlies the Suttanta expositions and upon which the inpidual discourses draw. The Abhidhamma takes no account of the personal inclinations and cognitive capacities of the listeners; it makes no concessions to particular pragmatic requirements. It reveals the architectonics of actuality in an abstract, formalistic manner utterly devoid of literary embellishments and pedagogical expedients. Thus the Abhidhamma method is described as the nippariyay…
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