210 The Abhidharma
we think of atoms as bits of matter there is a tendency for the
layman to conceive of them as inert enduring things, despite what
modern nuclear physics tells us to the contrary. Similarly, as we
saw in the context of insight meditation, dharmas are not endur-
ing substances, they are evanescent events, here one moment andgone the next-like dewdrops at sunrise or a bubble on water,
like a mirage or a conjuring trick.
Just as there is a more or less finite number of elements, so
there is a more or less finite number of classes of dharmas.
But we should also note that the term dharma is used both of a
particular instance of a class of dharma and of the whole class.
Thus according to the Sarvastivadins the number of dharmas is
seventy-five, meaning not that there are only seventy-five eventsin the world-given the duration of a dharma the world would
be over in a very short time-but that there are only seventy-
five possible types of event. The Y ogacarins count some one
hundred classes, while later Theravadin sources give eighty-two
classes of dharma.^6 Let us take a closer look at the Theravadin
analysis, the basic principles of which are shared with the other
Abhidharma systems.
Eighty-one types of dharma are 'conditioned' (saY(lkhata). That
is to say, the conditioned world of saq1sara from the lowest hell
realms to the highest heavens of the Brahma world is con-
structed from the combination of these dharmas. The eighty-
second dharma is the unconditioned ( asayt1khata ), namely nirvfu).a.
Conditioned dharmas fall into three main groups: consciousness(citta), associated mentality (cetasika), and physical phenomena
(rilpa). The first, consciousness, constitutes a single class of
dharma; the second, associated mentality, comprises fifty-two
classes of dharma; the third, physical phenomena, comprises
twenty-eight classes of dharma. Each of these eighty-one classes
of dharma is precisely defined by, among other things, a distinc-tive characteristic (lakkhaJJa). For example, greed (lobha) is one
particular class of dharma. The nature of greed may vary from
a mild wanting as one gazes through a shop window to an un-
stoppable craving. Yet all dharmas that are instances of 'greed'
share the distinctive characteristic of 'grasping at some object';