Buddhist Exploration of Consciousness and Time. The Abhidhamma, the third great division of early Buddhist teaching, expounds a revolutionary system of philosophical psychology rooted in the twin Buddhist insights of selflessness and dependent origination. In keeping with the liberative thrust of early Buddhism this system organizes the entire spectrum of human consciousness. It maps out with remarkable rigor and precision, the inner landscape of the mind to be crossed through the practical work of Buddhist meditation.
ABHIDHARMAKOSABHASYAM by Vasubandhu / Louis De La Vallee Poussin Tr. / Leo M. Pruden, Tr.
Four-volume masterwork starts with abhidharma literature and covers a vast array of Buddhist topics, including Buddhist cosmology and ethical theory, a taxonomy of meditative states and so forth. The most important compendium of Indian Buddhist philosophy and psychology.
ABHIDHARMASAMUCCAYA by Asanga, trans. by Walpola Rahula & Sara-Boin Webb
There are two systems of Abhidharma according to the Tibetan tradition, the lower and the higher. The lower system is taught in the Abhidharmakosa, while the higher system is taught in this book--the two books form a complementary pair. Asanga is the founder of the Yogacara school of Mahayana Buddhism. His younger brother Vasubandhu wrote the Abhidharmakosa before Asanga converted him to Mahayana Buddhism. The Samuccaya follows the traditional prose question and answer style of the older Pali Abhidharma texts. Rahula's excellent translation was based on Sanskrit, Chinese, and Tibetan.
We will be exploring the Abhidharmasamuccaya, a text that belongs to the later development of Buddhism. Early Buddhism is known as Theravadin or Hinayana Buddhism. Later Buddhism is known as Mahayana Buddhism. It has two schools: Madhyamika, the school of the middle way, and Yogacara, the practitioners of yoga. Yoga, in this case, has very little to do with physical dexterity, with how you can twist your arms or fiddle your toes. It is very much related with learning how to meditate properly and relate to one's own mind, with trying to understand the sort of mental states we go through in meditation and so on. The Abhidharmasamuccaya presents that kind of overall structure, in the fullest sense.
ABHISAMAYALAMKARA WITH VRITTI BY ARYA VIMUKTISENA AND ALOKA BY HARIBHADRA Vol.1 by Arya Vimuktisena & Haribhadra, trans. Gareth Sparham
This book is, firstly, a commentary on the Perfection of Wisdom Sutra in 8,000 lines, and secondly, a commentary on Maitreya's Ornament for the Clear Realizations. It utilizes the latter to explain the former. The Ornament teaches the path to Buddhahood, bringing out and systematizing what is found buried in the voluminous Perfection of Wisdom Sutras. It became the most widely studied book in Tibet. There Haribhadra was regarded as the most authoritative Indian commentator on these topics, and virtually all of the many famous Tibetan teachers who wrote their own commentaries on them looked to him as their primary source. This is the first of four volumes, and contains Arya Vimuktisena's vritti as well.
COMPREHENSIVE MANUAL OF ABHIDHAMMA: A Abhidhammattha Sangaha by Bhikkhu Bodhi
No account of human consciousness would be complete without the insights contained in this Comprehensive Manual of Abhidharma, a classic text in humanity's shared library. But we have had to wait for this gift - a version truly accessible to the serious Western student.
DEVELOPMENT IN THE EARLY BUDDHIST CONCEPT OF KAMMA / KARMA by James McDermott
One of the cental concepts in Buddhism is the idea of kamma. Although the importance of karma in Buddhist thought is regularly recognized, the question remains whether the Buddhist understnading of the principal of karma has been inalterabley fixed, or whether it has undergone a rocess of development and modification during the course of Buddhist history. If, indeed, the Buddhist understand of karma has not been static, what kinds of development has it undergone? It is to these questions that this study addresses itself.
EARLY BUDDHIST METAPHYSICS: The Making of a Philosophical Tradition by Noa Ronkin
This book provides a philosophical account of the major doctrinal shift in the history of early Theravada tradition in India: the transition from the earliest stratum of Buddhist thought to the systematic and allegedly scholastic philosophy of the Pali Abhidhamma movement. Conceptual investigation into the development of Buddhist ideas is pursued, thus rendering the Buddha's philosophical position more explicit and showing how and why his successors changed it.
GATEWAY TO KNOWLEDGE: Volume 1 by Jamgon Mipham Rinpoche
A condensation of the Tripitaka and its accompanying commentaries--a distillation of Abhidharma, Prajnaparamita and Madhyamika from both the Mahayana and "Hinayana" perspectives by Jamgon Mipham Rinpoche containing explanations of the five aggregates, the elements, the sense-sources, interdependence, valid and non-valid cognition, the sense faculties, and time.
GATEWAY TO KNOWLEDGE: Volume 2 by Jamgon Mipham Rinpoche
A condensation of the Tripitaka and its accompanying commentaries--a distillation of Abhidharma, Prajnaparamita and Madhyamika from both the Mahayana and "Hinayana" perspectives by Jamgon Mipham Rinpoche. Volume 2 elucidates the Four Noble Truths.
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