tambahan
Abhidharma, its meaning and originsThis scholastic enterprise was called abhidharma (Pali:
abhidhamma), a multivalent term used to refer to the
new techniques of doctrinal interpretation, to the body
of texts that this interpretation yielded, and finally to
the crucial discriminating insight that was honed
through doctrinal interpretation and employed in religious
praxis. Traditional sources offer two explanations
for the term abhidharma: “with regard to (abhi)
the teaching (dharma)” or the “highest or further
(abhi) teaching (dharma).” The subject of abhidharma
analysis was, of course, the teaching (dharma) as embodied
in the dialogues of the Buddha and his disciples.
However, abhidharma did not merely restate or
recapitulate the teaching of the sutras, but reorganized
their content and explicated their implicit meaning
through commentary. In abhidharma, the specific content
of the various individual sutras was abstracted and
reconstituted in accordance with new analytical criteria,
thereby allowing one to discern their true message.
This true message, as set down in abhidharma texts,
consists of the discrimination of the various events and
components (dharma) that combine to form all of experience.
This discrimination in turn enables one to
distinguish those defiling factors that ensnare one in
the process of REBIRTH from those liberating factors
that lead to enlightenment. And finally, when the defiling
and liberating factors are clearly distinguished,
the proper PATH of practice becomes clear. Hence, abhidharma
was no mere scholastic commentary, but
rather soteriological exegesis that was essential for the
effective practice of the path.
Traditional sources do not offer a uniform account
of the origins of the abhidharma method or of the abhidharma
corpus of texts. Several traditional accounts
attribute the composition of abhidharma texts to a first
council supposedly held immediately after the death of
the Buddha, at which his teachings were arranged and
orally recited in three sections: the dialogues (sutra);
the disciplinary monastic codes (VINAYA); and the taxonomic
lists of factors (ma trka or abhidharma). Implicitly,
therefore, these traditional sources attribute
authorship of the abhidharma to the Buddha himself.
This question of the authorship and, by implication,
the authenticity and authority of the abhidharma
continued to be a controversial issue within subsequent,
independent abhidharma treatises. Although
many MAINSTREAM BUDDHIST SCHOOLS accepted the
Topic: Abhidhamma utk Pemula (Read 30391 times)