Abhidharmakośabhāṣyam, Volume IV

Volume IV concludes the philosophical architecture developed throughout the four-volume work. The earlier volumes analyse dharmas, faculties, cosmology, karma, latent defilements and the Buddhist path; the final volume addresses the knowledge produced through that path, the meditative attainments supporting liberation and the rejection of a permanent personal subject. The chapter on knowledge is particularly important for understanding Sarvāstivāda and Vaibhāṣika epistemology. It explains how different forms of cognition are classified according to their objects, purity, sphere and spiritual function. The treatment of absorption provides a detailed map of meditative consciousness and its relationship to ethical development, insight and supernormal attainment. The concluding refutation of the pudgala clarifies the Buddhist doctrine of non-self by showing how experience, action and rebirth can be explained without reference to a permanent soul. Chapter Seven: The Knowledges - The relationship between patience, knowledge and seeing - The ten forms of knowledge - Pure and impure knowledge - Conventional and supramundane knowledge - Knowledge of dharmas and inferential knowledge - Knowledge of suffering, origin, cessation and the path - Knowledge of destruction and non-arising - Knowledge of another person’s mind - The sixteen aspects of the Four Noble Truths - Cultivation of knowledge along the paths of seeing and meditation - The eighteen qualities unique to a Buddha - The ten powers of a Buddha - The four fearlessnesses - The three foundations of mindfulness - Supernormal knowledge and supernatural abilities Chapter Eight: The Absorptions - The four dhyānas - The four formless attainments - Pure and defiled absorptions - Happiness, joy and equanimity - The preparatory and intermediate absorptions - The three samādhis - The four immeasurables - The eight liberations - The eight spheres of mastery - The ten all-encompassing āyatanas - The absorption of cessation - The arising, objects and cultivation of meditative attainments Chapter Nine: Refutation of the Pudgala - Refutation of the theory of a person or pudgala - Criticism of the Vātsīputrīya position - The relationship between the person and the five skandhas - Memory, recognition and personal continuity - Refutation of a permanent transmigrating subject - Refutation of soul theories associated with grammarians - Refutation of Vaiśeṣika theories of self - Action, agent, pleasure, pain and karmic retribution - The continuity of causal processes without a substantial self