Patthanuddesa Dipani - The Buddhist Philosophy of Relations

Patthanuddesa Dipani

by
Ledi Sayadaw Mahathera

Translated by
Sayadaw U Nyana

Buddhist Publication Society
Kandy • Sri Lanka
The Wheel Publication No. 331/133

First BPS edition: 1986

SL ISSN 0049-7541

Digital Transcription Source: Buddhist Publication Society.

For free distribution. This work may be republished, reformatted, reprinted and redistributed in any medium. However, any such republication and redistribution is to be made available to the public on a free and unrestricted basis and translations and other derivative works are to be clearly marked as such and the Buddhist Publication Society is to be acknowledged as the original publisher.


Foreword

The author of the present treatise, the Venerable Ledi Sayadaw, was one of the most eminent Burmese Buddhist scholar-monks of recent times. Born in the Shwebo District of Burma in 1846, by the time he passed away in 1923 he had written over seventy manuals on different aspects of Theravada Buddhism and established centres throughout Burma for the study of Abhidhamma and the practise of insight meditation. His profound erudition, original thinking and lucid writings have won him the esteem of the entire Buddhist world.

The Patthanuddesa Dipani is Ledi Sayadaw’s treatment of one of the most difficult and complex subjects of Theravada Buddhist thought—the philosophy of conditional relations. The Patthana, the seventh and last book of the Abhidhamma Pitaka, works out the system of relations in six large volumes. In the present slim volume the Venerable Ledi Sayadaw has extracted the essential principles underlying this vast system and explained them concisely but comprehensively, with lucid illustrations for the Patthana’s twenty-four conditional relations.

An English translation of the Patthanuddesa Dipani by the Sayadaw U Nyana, a direct disciple of the author, was published in Rangoon in 1935. This translation, with a few minor changes, appeared serialised in the Burmese Buddhist journal The Light of the Dhamma, and later was included in a collection of Ledi Sayadaw’s works, The Manuals of Buddhism (Rangoon: Union Buddha Sasana Council, 1965). A Thai reprint of the latter work (Bangkok: Mahamakut, 1978) was used as the basis for the present edition, which reproduces the original with a few minor alterations of style and choice of renderings.

In including the Patthanuddesa Dipani in The Wheel series, the publishers recognise that the treatise will not be easy reading even for those seriously involved in Abhidhamma study. However, since copies of the earlier editions are now almost impossible to obtain, it was felt that the value and importance of this work for understanding the Buddhist philosophy of conditionality justify its being re-issued. As the treatise presupposes prior familiarity with the Abhidhamma gained elsewhere, footnotes have been kept minimal; if footnotes had been added to elucidate every difficult point, the annotations would have become unmanageable. The original translator had chosen to retain much of the Pali terminology in the exposition, and this edition follows suit. Since the author’s own explanations make the meanings of the Pali terms very clear, the reader who is keen on study should not find this a serious obstacle, and moreover will be able to deal with them more precisely in the original than in make-shift English renderings.

Readers who wish to extend their knowledge of the Abhidhamma in connection with the present work would do best to turn to the classical summary of Abhidhamma thought, the Abhidhammatthasangaha. This has been published by the BPS in an English translation by the Venerable Narada Thera as A Manual of Abhidhamma. The first two volumes of the Patthana itself have been published by the Pali Text Society under the title Conditional Relations, translated by the Patthana Sayadaw, U Narada.

Nyanaponika Thera
Translator’s Preface to the First Edition

Buddhism views the world, with the exception of Nibbana and paññatti, [1] as impermanent, liable to suffering, and without soul-essence. So Buddhist philosophy, to elaborate the impermanency as applied to the Law of Perpetual Change, has from the outset dissolved all things, all phenomena both mental and physical, into a continuous succession of happenings of states of mind and matter, under the Fivefold Law of Cosmic Order (niyama). The happenings are determined and determining, both as to their constituent states and as to other happenings, in a variety of ways, which Buddhist philosophy expresses by the term paccaya or “relations.” One complex happening of mental and material states, with its three phases of time—genesis or birth, cessation or death and a static interval between—is followed by another happening, wherein there is always a causal series of relations. Nothing is casual and fortuitous. When one happening by its arising, persisting, cessation, priority, and posteriority, is determined by and determining another happening by means of producing (janaka), supporting (upatthambhaka), and maintaining (anupalana), the former is called the relating thing (paccaya-dhamma), the latter the related thing (paccayuppanna-dhamma), and the determination or the influence or the specific function is called the correlativity (paccayata). As the various kinds of influence are apparently known, the relations are classified into the following twenty-four kinds:

hetu—condition or root
arammana—object
adhipati—dominance
anantara—contiguity
samanantara—immediate contiguity
sahajata—coexistence
aññamañña—reciprocity
nissaya—dependence
upanissaya—suffering condition
purejata—pre-existence
pacchajata—post-existence
asevana—habitual recurrence
kamma—kamma or action
vipaka—effect
ahara—food
indriya—control
jhana—absorption
magga—path
sampayutta—association
vippayutta—dissociation
atthi—presence
natthi—absence
vigata—abeyance
avigata—continuance.

These twenty-four relations are extensively and fully expounded in the seventh and last of the analytical works in the Abhidhamma Pitaka of the Buddhist Canon, called the Patthana (“The Eminence”) or the Mahapakararana (“The Great Treatise”).

The well-known Ledi Sayadaw Mahathera, D. Litt., Aggamahapandita, has written in Pali a concise exposition of these relations known as Patthanuddesa Dipani, in order to help those who wish to study the Buddhist philosophy of relations expounded in the Patthana. In introducing these relations to the student of philosophical research before he takes the opportunity of making himself acquainted with the methodological elaboration of correlations in the Patthana, the Mahathera deals with the subject under three heads:

The Paccayattha-dipani or the analytical Exposition of Relations with their denotations and connotations.
The Paccaya-sabhaga or the Synthesis of Relations.
The Paccaya-ghatananaya or the Synchrony of Relations.

The following translation has been undertaken with the hope of rendering the Ledi Sayadaw’s work intelligible to the English student. If the present translation makes any contribution to the advancement of learning and knowledge in the matter of apprehending the general scheme of causal laws in terms of ’relations’ in the field of Buddhist philosophy, the translator will deem himself well rewarded for his labour. It may, however, be necessary to mention here that the original form, sense, and meaning of the Venerable Author are, as far as possible, cautiously preserved; hence the literal character of the translation—if it appears so—in some places. Nevertheless, the translator ventures to hope that any discrepancy that may have crept in, will be accordingly overlooked.

In conclusion, it is with great pleasure that I express my indebtedness to U Aung Hla, M.A. (Cantab.), Barrister-at-Law, who has very kindly, amidst his own many duties, taken the trouble of revising the manuscript and has also helped me in getting it through the press and in the correction of the proofs. My thanks are also due to Saya U Ba, M.A., A.T.M., for his valuable assistance, and to the printers for their courtesy and cooperation.

Last, but not least, I must gratefully acknowledge the timely help from U Ba Than and Daw Tin Tin, of Rangoon, who have voluntarily and so generously undertaken to meet the cost of publication of one thousand copies of the book, which but for their kind suggestion, would not have materialised in this form.

Sayadaw U Nyana

Masoyein Monastery,
Mandalay West, Burma
February, 1935