page_title: Abhidharma
hierarchical_section_title: Abhidharma
caption_attribution_description: English: The Buddha preaching the Abhidhamma to his former mother, now a Deva and others in Tavatimsa Heaven.မြန်မာဘာသာ: မြတ်စွာဘုရားသည် ဘုရားအဖြစ်သို့ ရောက်တော်မူပြီး နောက်ခုနစ်နှစ် မြောက်သော အခါ၌ သန္တုိုတ အမည်ရှိသော မယ်တော်မိနတ်သားအား ကျေးဇူးဆပ်သည့် အနေဖြင့် အဘိဓမ္မာတရားတော်ကို တာဝတိံသာနတ်ပြည်၌ ဟောကြားတော်မူ၏။ အဆိုပါ အဘိဓမ္မာတရားတော်ကို ဝါတွင်းသုံးလပတ်လုံး ကြားနာရသောအခါ မယ်တော်နတ်သားနှင့် တကွ နတ်ဗြဟ္မာအပေါင်းတို့သည် သောတပန်၊ သကဒါဂါမ်၊ အနာဂါမ်၊ ရဟန္တာ တည်းဟူသော အရိယာပုဂ္ဂိုလ်များအဖြစ်သို့ အသီးသီး ရောက်ရှိကြလေသည်။
context_page_description: Abhidharma or Abhidhamma are ancient Buddhist texts which contain detailed scholastic presentations of doctrinal material appearing in the Buddhist sutras. It also refers to the scholastic method itself as well as the field of knowledge that this method is said to study.
  Bhikkhu Bodhi calls it "an abstract and highly technical systemization of the [Buddhist] doctrine," which is "simultaneously a philosophy, a psychology and an ethics, all integrated into the framework of a program for liberation." According to Peter Harvey, the Abhidharma method seeks "to avoid the inexactitudes of colloquial conventional language, as is sometimes found in the Suttas, and state everything in psycho-philosophically exact language." In this sense, it is an attempt to best express the Buddhist view of "ultimate reality".
  There are different types of Abhidharma literature. The early canonical Abhidharma works are not philosophical treatises, but mainly summaries and expositions of early doctrinal lists with their accompanying explanations. These texts developed out of early Buddhist lists or matrices of key teachings.
context_section_description: Abhidharma (Sanskrit) or Abhidhamma (Pali) are ancient (3rd century BCE and later) Buddhist texts which contain detailed scholastic presentations of doctrinal material appearing in the Buddhist sutras. It also refers to the scholastic method itself as well as the field of knowledge that this method is said to study. 
  Bhikkhu Bodhi calls it "an abstract and highly technical systemization of the [Buddhist] doctrine," which is "simultaneously a philosophy, a psychology and an ethics, all integrated into the framework of a program for liberation." According to Peter Harvey, the Abhidharma method seeks "to avoid the inexactitudes of colloquial conventional language, as is sometimes found in the Suttas, and state everything in psycho-philosophically exact language." In this sense, it is an attempt to best express the Buddhist view of "ultimate reality" (paramartha-satya).  
  There are different types of Abhidharma literature. The early canonical Abhidharma works (like the Abhidhamma Pitaka) are not philosophical treatises, but mainly summaries and expositions of early doctrinal lists with their accompanying explanations. These texts developed out of early Buddhist lists or matrices (mātṛkās) of key teachings.  
  Later post-canonical Abhidharma works were written as either large treatises (śāstra), as commentaries (aṭṭhakathā) or as smaller introductory manuals. They are more developed philosophical works which include many innovations and doctrines not found in the canonical Abhidharma.
  Abhidharma remains an important field of scholarship among both Theravāda and Mahayana Buddhists.
caption: Buddha preaching Abhidhamma in Tavatimsa
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