I think this is the crux of the issue. Calling what we experience via a concentrated mindful mind dhammas is using a conceptual structure after the fact of the experience. When we are talking about dhammas, are we talking about actual, existing momentary and discrete units of experience? I do not think so.pt1 wrote:I agree, but I have a feeling here (apologies if I misunderstood) that you are equating dhammas to concepts.
It is a problem with language that no matter how hard we try not to, we tend to end up making whatever it is we are talking about solid and individual. I think the Pali Abhidhamma seems to have tried to resist this, even into the later commentaries, and it probably did better than some other Abhidharma systems, but there is an obvious reification going on in some of the more modern abhidhamma discussions that really does not seem warranted from the earlier Abhidhamma, particularly the Abhidhamma Pitaka, nor from the suttas.
If dhammas are “ultimate things,” what kind of "ultimate things" are they? Piatigorsky, in his essay on the Theravadin Abhidhamma Pitaka texts (THE BUDDHIST PHILOSOPHY OF THOUGHT 1984, 181) points out dhammas are not substances; they are not individual 'things' in and of themselves. He states:
“We simply cannot say that 'a dharma is... (a predicate follows)', because a dharma, in fact, 'is' no thing, yet [it is] a term denoting (not being) a certain relation or type of relation to thought, consciousness or mind. That is, dharma is not a concept in the accepted terminological sense of the latter, but a purely relational notion.”
Dhammas in the Theravada Abhidhamma Pitaka are "ultimate things" only as a way of talking about aspects of the relational flow of experience, but not in terms of describing discrete realities. In other words, dhammas are not actual momentary and individual units of experience.Nyanaponika in ABHIDHAMMA STUDIES @ page 41 BPS; page 42 Wisdom wrote: By arranging the mental factors in relational groups a subordinate synthetical element has been introduced into the mainly analytical Dhammasangani. By so doing, the danger inherent in purely analytical methods is avoided. This danger consists in erroneously taking for genuine separate entities the “parts” resulting from analysis, instead of restricting their use to sound practical method with the purpose of classifying and dissolving composite events wrongly conceived as unities. Up to the present time it has been a regular occurrence in the history of physics, metaphysics, and psychology that when the “whole” has been successfully dissolved by analysis, the resultant “parts” themselves come in turn to be regarded as little “wholes.”