The Theravāda Abhidhamma: Its Inquiry into the Nature of Conditioned Reality

Extraction note. The working copy raw/extracted/Karunadasa_Theravada-Abhidharma.md is a partial extraction (361 lines) covering the Introduction, Chapter 1 (The Real Existents), and Chapter 3 (The Two Truths) — the three sections Tenpa flagged as relevant. Page numbers below follow the page markers embedded in the extracted text. A short stretch of Ch 3 (the second of the two introductory stanzas on the double truth, c. p. 65) is missing from the extraction. First edition: Centre of Buddhist Studies, University of Hong Kong, 2010; reissued by Wisdom Publications 2015.

Thesis / main argument

Karunadasa’s book is an inquiry into the Theravāda Abhidhamma’s account of conditioned reality — the dhamma theory and its ancillary doctrines. The portions relevant to the MMK paper are the Introduction and Chapter 3. His governing claim across both is that the distinctive Abhidhamma constructions — the dhamma theory, the category of paññatti (the nominal/conceptual), and above all the two truths (sammuti-sacca / paramattha-sacca) — are Abhidhammic innovations whose antecedent trends are already present in the early suttas. The Abhidhamma does not import a foreign framework; it draws out what the canonical discourses leave implicit. Methodologically he insists the Theravāda Abhidhamma must be read alongside the parallel Abhidharma systems of the mainland (Sarvāstivāda, Sautrāntika) and in explicit dialogue with the Madhyamaka and Yogācāra, which the Pāli exegetes knew and sometimes answered.

A secondary, polemical thread runs through the book: the Theravāda dhamma theory is neither pluralism nor monism, neither substantialism nor nihilism — it transcends these binary pairs by combining analysis (bheda) with synthesis (saṅgaha) — and the much-cited charge that the Theravāda reified dhammas into quasi-substances (made “particularly” by writers “who seek to extol the merits of the Madhyamaka at the expense of the Abhidhamma,” Ch 1 p. 25) is mistaken.

Key claims

On the two truths (Chapter 3, the section of primary interest):

• The sammuti-sacca / paramattha-sacca distinction is “an Abhidhammic innovation” but “not completely dissociated from the early Buddhist teachings”; its antecedent trends are traced to the suttas (Ch 3 p. 64).
• The principal sutta antecedent is the Aṅguttara distinction between nītattha (meaning already drawn out, definitive) and neyyattha (meaning to be drawn out, requiring interpretation); to confuse the two is “to misrepresent the Tathāgata” (Ch 3 p. 64; also Introduction p. 10).
• The commentary to the Aṅguttara itself “seeks to establish a correspondence between the original sutta passage and the Theravāda version of the two truths” (Ch 3 p. 64) — i.e. the tradition’s own exegetes drew the two-truths framework out of the nītattha/neyyattha sutta.
• A second sutta link is the Saṅgīti Sutta’s four knowledges, of which sammuti-ñāṇa (knowledge of conventions) and paricchede-ñāṇa (knowledge of analysis) “anticipate not only the dhamma theory but also the theory of double truth” (Ch 3 p. 66).
• The Theravāda two truths are non-hierarchical. “There is no hierarchical difference between the two, despite the fact that one is called conventional and the other ultimate” (Introduction p. 9); neither sacca sublates the other; both are “equally true” and differ only as two ways of presenting what accords with actuality (Ch 3 pp. 67–71). Karunadasa marshals Jayatilleke (Early Buddhist Theory of Knowledge) and the commentarial “different dialects” simile to this effect.
• Etymological argument: the Pāli sammuti (from man, “to think”; with sam, “consent/convention/general agreement”) is not the Sanskrit saṃvṛti (from vṛ, “to cover”; “concealment”). Because saṃvṛti names “that which conceals… and makes [things] appear otherwise,” its very use “clearly indicates” that the conventional is “less truthful and therefore inferior” to paramārtha — a hierarchy the Pāli term does not carry (Ch 3 pp. 66, 70).
• Strictly, the two truths are not two kinds of truth but two modes of presenting one truth. Paramattha-sacca “really means the truth expressed by using the technical terms expressive of the ultimate factors of existence”; sammuti-sacca the truth expressed in conventional terms (Ch 3 pp. 69–70). This avoids conflict with the Suttanipāta’s “Truth is indeed one, there is no second” (glossed via the Bodhisattvabhūmi: “one in the sense of being non-contradictory,” Ch 3 p. 71).
• The Sutta Piṭaka (vohāra-desanā) and the Abhidhamma Piṭaka (paramattha-desanā) differ in method, not content — not a higher and a lower set of doctrines but two registers (Ch 3 pp. 71–72).
• Both truths must be “communicated through a common medium,” nāma-paññatti: “It is without going beyond (the parameters of) paññatti that the ultimately real is presented” (Ch 3 p. 72).

On svabhāva / sabhāva (Introduction and Chapter 1):

• Each dhamma is defined as “own-nature” (sabhāva), but this is interpreted “in such a way that it means the very absence of sabhāva in any sense that implies a substantial mode of being” (Introduction p. 9; Ch 1 pp. 39–40).
• A dhamma is “not ‘that which bears its own-nature’ but ‘what is being borne by its own conditions’” (paccayehi dhārīyanti ti dhammā); “own-nature” (sabhāva) does not mean “own-sway” (vasavattitā) (Introduction p. 9; Ch 1 p. 39).
• A sub-commentary states outright that “the meaning of sabhāva is… the same as the meaning of ‘emptiness’” (sabhāvattho nāma suññattho) (Ch 1 p. 40).
• The Theravāda’s use of sabhāva as a synonym for dhamma is “very likely” influenced by the Sarvāstivāda, where svabhāva was used for dharma long before; but the Theravāda rejects tritemporality (sarvāstitva) and so does not let sabhāva become a substance persisting across the three times (Ch 1 pp. 33–36, “The Definition of Dhamma as Own-Nature”).

On emptiness (Introduction and Chapter 1):

• Suññatā in Pāli means “empty of self or of anything pertaining to a self” (attena vā attaniyena vā suññaṃ); “empty” and “non-self” are “mutually convertible expressions,” so sabbe dhammā anattā may be restated as sabbe dhammā suññā (Introduction p. 8; Ch 1 p. 40).

On the Sarvāstivāda and the wider Abhidharma scene (Introduction):

• The Sarvāstivāda over-emphasised analysis, producing the theory of tritemporality (trai-kālya / sabbatthivāda = “all exists”), which the Pāli suttas class as the extreme of realism (“all exists,” sabbam atthi), opposite the nihilist extreme (“nothing exists,” sabbam natthi) (Introduction p. 8; Ch 1 detailed critique pp. 28–35).
• The Pāli exegetes were demonstrably aware of the Mahāyāna: a Visuddhimagga sub-commentary appears to reference MMK’s dedicatory verse (“without arising, without cessation,” anirodham anutpādam) (Introduction p. 6); and Vasubandhu’s Karmasiddhiprakaraṇa shows the Theravāda bhavaṅga consciousness predates and partly inspired the ālaya-vijñāna, not the reverse (Introduction p. 7).

Methodology

Comparative Abhidharma philology with a confessional Theravāda standpoint. Karunadasa reads the Pāli canonical Abhidhamma through its commentaries and sub-commentaries (Mahāvihāra exegesis), checking against the Sarvāstivāda seven treatises, the Abhidharmakośabhāṣya and its Vyākhyā, and Sautrāntika positions, with Bhikkhu Bodhi, Nyanaponika, Ñāṇamoli, Lamotte, La Vallée Poussin, Gethin and Jayatilleke as modern interlocutors. The reasoning is etymological and doctrinal rather than historical-developmental; he is explicitly cautious about reading “historical stages” into doctrinal variety (Introduction pp. 11–12). His interpretive interest is to defend the Theravāda against both the pluralism/substantialism charge and the imputation that its two truths are hierarchical in the Mahāyāna manner.

Notable quotes

“In Pāli neither is ipso facto preferred to the other; one errs only in interpreting one as if it were the other.” — F. Edgerton on nītattha / neyyattha, quoted approvingly by Karunadasa (Introduction p. 10; Ch 3 p. 64).

Connections

• kalupahana-mmk-1986 / Kalupahana — strongest connection. Same Sri-Lankan-Theravāda sammuti/saṃvṛti etymology, same non-hierarchical two-truths reading, same “two truths are a pedagogical/presentational device, not a ranking of realities.” Karunadasa supplies the Abhidhamma-side version of Kalupahana’s MMK-side argument. Mutually corroborating; together they constitute a coherent Sri-Lankan-academic-Theravāda reading of the two truths.
• Della Santina (della-santina-madhyamaka-western-1986) — converges on “the Two Truths is nothing more than a pedagogical device” and on the anti-etymological-”absolute/relative” reading, but from the Indo-Tibetan side and against Murti.
• Provisional and Definitive — directly answers the page’s open question on Pāli↔Mahāyāna continuity; supplies the Edgerton observation that in BHS literature nītārtha is preferred to neyārtha whereas in Pāli neither is preferred — a precise, citable difference between the two traditions’ deployment of the same device.
• Siderits (siderits-buddhism-philosophy-2007 –3.6) — Karunadasa’s vohāra / “the five aggregates walk” material (Ch 3 p. 68) and the Nāgasena “no fit question” / “conditioned by contact, feeling arises” passage (Introduction p. 12) are the Pāli-canonical roots of exactly the Milinda–Nāgasena two-truths pedagogy Siderits uses to introduce the method ().
• Svabhāva — Theravāda sabhāva-as-emptiness qualifies the Burton/Siderits Abhidharma-substantialism premise.
• Emptiness — the early Pāli suññatā loci (empty of self) sit alongside the chowdhury-nagarjuna-hermeneutics-2018 catalogue already on that page.