Cittavíthi, 'mental process, cognitive series'. Visuddhimagga, Ch. XIV etc. It is, perhaps, not superfluous to remark that this doctrine, of which so much use is made in the Visuddhimagga (and see also the Abhidhammatthasangaha), is a pure scholastic invention and has nothing at all to do with the Buddha's Teaching (or, indeed, with anything else). It is, moreover, a vicious doctrine, totally at variance with paticcasamuppáda, setting forth the arising of experience as a succession of items each coming to an end before the next appears (imassa nirodhá idam uppajjati -- cf. A NOTE ON PATICCASAMUPPÁDA §7). The decay first seems to set in with the Vibhanga and Patthána of the Abhidhamma Pitaka. (See SAÑÑÁ, and refer to The Path of Purification [Visuddhimagga translation by the Ven. Ñánamoli Bhikkhu], Semage, Colombo 1956, Ch. IV, note 13.
Connected with this doctrine is the erroneous notion of anuloma-gotrabhú-magga-phala, supposed to be the successive moments in the attainment of sotápatti. It is sometimes thought that the word akálika as applied to the Dhamma means that attainment of magga is followed 'without interval of time' by attainment of phala; but this is quite mistaken.[a] Akálika dhamma has an entirely different meaning (for which see PATICCASAMUPPÁDA). Then, in the Okkantika Samyutta <S.iii, 225> it is stated only that the dhammánusárí and the saddhánusárí (who have reached the magga leading to sotápatti) are bound to attain sotápattiphala before their death; and other Suttas -- e.g. Majjhima vii,5&10 <M.i,439&479> -- show clearly that one is dhammánusárí or saddhanusárí for more than 'one moment'. For gotrabhú see Majjhima xiv,12 <M.iii,256>, where it says that he may be dussíla pápadhamma. In Sutta usage it probably means no more than 'a member of the bhikkhusangha'. For anuloma see SAKKÁYA [b].
See NÁMA [c] and the Glossary for meanings of citta.
For cittasankhára as opposed to
manosankhára see A NOTE ON PATICCASAMUPPÁDA
§§5 & 16.
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Footnotes:
[a] The notion of two successive 'moments', A and B, as
akálika or non-temporal is a confusion. Either
A and B are simultaneous (as e.g.
viññána and
námarúpa), in which case they are indeed
akálika; or B follows A and they are
successive (as e.g. the in-&-out-breaths), in which
case they are kálika. Even if there is no interval
of time between the ending of A and the beginning of B, it
remains true that B comes after A, and time is
still involved. The source of the confusion is in the
contradictory idea of a moment as the smallest possible interval
of time -- i.e. as absolute shortness of time --, and
therefore as no time. Two successive moments are,
thus, also no time: 0 + 0 = 0. This is
nothing but a mystification: it is like the notion of 'absolute
smallness of size' in quantum theory (Dirac,
op. cit., pp. 3-4), introduced to compensate for
other philosophically unjustifiable assumptions made elsewhere.
(Quantum theory, of course, being an elaborate and ingenious rule
of thumb, does not require philosophical justification; but
ipso facto it provides no foundation for philosophy.) To
the idea of a 'moment' as the shortest empirically
observable interval of time there is no objection; but this
merely marks the threshold below which changes are too small and
rapid to be clearly apprehended as discontinuous and are grasped
irrationally and ambiguously as a flux. What it does
not mark is the boundary between kálika and
akálika. See PATICCASAMUPPÁDA [c].
A different approach to this whole question is outlined in FUNDAMENTAL STRUCTURE.
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