r0b’s Reviews > The Original Buddhist Psychology: What the Abhidharma Tells Us About How We Think, Feel, and Experience Life > Status Update

‘If you work in the field of psychology for even a decade [i have], you start to see how concepts that seemed to be fundamental truths of human nature are as up and down as hemline fashions. It is somewhere between discouraging and terrifying to realize that clinical practice is based on such philosophies...
The Abhidharma is the closest possibility for working below that problem.’

‘The scope of interdependent origination involved in one moment of consciousness is so radically complex, all I can say is ekacittakkhanika-paticca-samuppāda. This is the Pali word for it, meaning “interdependent origination in one citta.” If there was such a thing as conceptual onomatopoeia, that word would be it.’

...By looking at events so microscopically, the early Buddhists noticed a juncture connecting matter and human communication.’

‘Bodily and vocal intimation refer to the smallest units of human intention in movement...[and] are personal-scale, human force affecting organic matter. They name the moment when will and matter interpenetrate...The Abhidharma supplies a missing link here, in the impact of consciousness on the material world....

‘The Abhidhamma lists illuminate a key point that is obscured at times in the DSM: the purpose of any useful diagnosis is to aid in the cessation of suffering.’

That’s an understatement.

But even if you abandon all for the ancient path of meditation, you can never forget the meaning of sadness.
Dogen

...We are entire interacting filters in a universe of possibilities, and we have certain mechanisms for interacting that determine what we find. Our particular equipment for processing reality could work in any other number of other ways.’

‘The elements and structure of human mental life are the foundation of a system, and the understanding of this system enlightens and relieves our condition. Human consciousness here is far broader than the Western idea of cognition. We are not minds and bodies; we are not bodies run by minds. All cognition is the interrelation of our personal system and the myriad other systems that surround us...