Reply To: Compilation of my thoughts

#50297
dosakkhayo
Participant

Phassa can be divided into neutral phassa and contaminated samphassa. Neutral phassa can only be experienced through indriya. With Abhidhamma, we can deal with this in finer level. Because Abhidhamma is a tool that explains all the details about everything. Let me give an example.

“When the eyes capture an image of a tree, that image is processed by the brain and then passed along to the cakkhu pasāda rūpa, which is in the mental body or manōmaya kāya. In the case of a human or an animal, manōmaya kāya is the same as gandhabba.”

The above sentence is quoted from #7 of Contact Between Āyatana Leads to Vipāka Viññāna. Let me connect the above process with a neutral phassa and explain it in more detail.

The definition of phassa is a contact between external rupa and internal rupa. Therefore, it is not actually the tree that comes into contact with the eye, but rather the information about the tree’s shape that enters the physical eye through light. This information is then converted by the brain into data that the pasada rupa can read. This data flows to the pasada rupa via kirana wave, and it is precisely this very subtle bundle of information, as an energy wave, that contacts the internal rupa as an external rupa. In other words, when considering the collision process between the external rupa and the internal rupa, we can see that the external rupa that collides with the pasada rupa is also just suddhatthaka. This implies that the phassa occurring through neutral indriya is an Abhidhammic process.

From these observations, we can understand that external rupa and external ayatana are fundamentally different. This is because external rupa belongs to rupa in the paramattha dhamma, while external ayatana belongs to nama. Therefore, the two cannot be interchanged.

I understand up to this point. If there are any mistakes in what I have written so far, I would appreciate it if you could point them out.

I cautiously speculate that phassa arising from indriya might not be discussed at all in Paticca Samuppada. This is because what was previously known as neutral PS, Abyakata PS, was actually explaining the minor kamma generation process known as purana kamma.

In fact, neutral phassa can only be explained in abhidhamma, not in PS. This is because all terms in PS are related to the contamination or purification of the mind. Since phassa of indriya is unrelated to both of them, it has little relevance to PS.

However, this does not mean that there are things in the world that PS does not explain. It simply means that neutral phassa through indriya is in a different subject from dukkha samudaya or dukkha nirodha. It’s more like just calculating, rather than contemplating.

The statement “sun is not a planet” is astronomically true. And “the sun is anicca” is a Dhammically true statement. Both are true and they’re talking about the sun, but astronomy is not Buddha Dhamma. The same logic applies here. (Of course, Abhidhamma IS Buddha Dhamma.) That’s the reason even if one is good at Abhidhamma, they may not have gotten any magga phala.