The Foundations of Buddhism

212 The Abhidharma

combination of just eighty-one classes of dharma. Indeed, accord-

ing to an old image, the mind is far more complex, subtle, and

varied than any painting? Moreover the arising of dharmas is

seamless and the difficulty of distinguishing different kinds of

dharma in actual experience is compared to tasting the waters

of the sea and knowing that certain water comes from one river

and certain water from another river.^8

The term citta or consciousness is used in two senses: (I) as a

name for one of the eighty-one classes of dharma, namely the

bare phenomenon of consciousness; ( 2) as a term for a given com-

bination of consciousness and its associated mental factors. Con-

sciousness in this second sense might be compared to a hand:

the hand excluding the fingers is like the bare dharma of con~

sciousness (the' first sense), while the fingers are like the various

associated mental factors; a given arising of consciousness is

thus analogous to consciousness experiencing or picking up an:d

handling a particular object by means of the associated mental

factors. The flow of consciousness involves the mind picking up

and putting down successive objects by means of successive sets

of associated mental factors. In fact an old image from the siltras

compares the mind to a monkey swinging quickly through the

trees in the forest: as soon as it lets go of one branch it grasps

another.^9

Although there is a total of fifty-two types of associated

mental factor, only certain combinations of these are possible;

for example it is impossible for the mental factors of greed and

aversion to arise together in the same moment of consciousness

for the simple reason that it is not possible to want something

and not want it in the same moment-this does not, of course,

mean that we cannot want something one moment and not want

it the next. As I have already mentioned, for the Theravadins

the simplest kind of consciousness that can occur involves seven

associated mental factors. More complex consciousnesses involve

up to a maximum of thirty-six types of associated mental factor.

The Theravadin Abhidharma tabulates a system of eighty-nine

basic classes of consciousness based on possible combinations
of consciousness and associated mental factors. Normal human