Dear Lennart,
Op 16-jun-2009, om 15:33 heeft Lennart Lopin het volgende geschreven:

> Okay, hope to understand you correctly: You say that "vitakka" is a
> fundamental reality besides the 5 groups of grasping????? To me,
> vitakka is
> just like any other mental stuff, an object - or better even a
> series of
> objects - of the mind. My core Abhidhammapitaka is actually pretty
> short:
>
> rupa, vedana, sanna, sankhara, vinyana

------
N: That is all right, these include all realities, all physical
phenomena and mental phenomena. Vitakka and vicaara are included in
the 'formations' khandha, sa"nkhaarakkhandha.
You see the khandhas as a concept, I see them as realities. We read
in the Suttas (See K.S. III)) that the khandhas are present, past,
future, etc. This cannot be said of concepts, only realities are
aniccaa.
Vitakka is naama, it cannot be ruupa that does not know anything.

The Buddha explained about realities, not concepts, that they should
not be taken for self: See the twenty kinds of sakkaaya di.t.thi,
personality belief, for example explained in § 1 of K.S. III: Ruupa
as self, the self as having ruupa, ruupa as being in the self and the
self as being in ruupa and so for the other khandhas. He would not
say this about concepts. Only realities are impermanent, dukkha and
anattaa.

You quote S IV, 227. Here the Buddha spoke about the subjects of
right thinking of a great man, (wanting little, etc.), true. But when
reading carefully he speaks about kusala citta that thinks. There is
no person who thinks, it is citta that thinks. He speaks about the
papa~ncas, as you say. These are akusala dhammas (ta.nhaa, maana and
di.t.thi) that slow down the development of insight.
Seeing is vi~n~naa.nakkhandha, it is real. It has its own unalterable
characteristic that can be known without naming it. Seeing is always
seeing, even when we name it differently. This cannot be said of a
concept. For the development of vipassanaa we learn to understand the
characteristics of realities that appear, we do not attend to names.
I am afraid to make the discussion too long, too much for the
readers. To round off our discussion, we can conclude that we just
think differently and that is because of the variety (vicitta) of
citta that thinks.
Ending with a short quote from Acharn Sujin:
<When we are thinking, citta is the reality which thinks, and each
person thinks in a different way. Different people who are interested
in the Dhamma and study it, consider it and ponder over it in
different ways. They also have different points of view as far as the
practice is concerned. The world evolves in accordance with the
variegated nature of the cittas of different people. The world is
constituted by different people living in different countries and
participating in different groups and these different individuals
condition the events in the world. This occurs because of the variety
of thinking of each individual. >
--------

Nina.



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