In Depth: Abhidharma

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy uses this report to examine Abhidharma. The first centuries after Śākyamuni Buddha's death saw the rise of multiple schools of thought and teacher lineages within the Buddhist community as it spread throughout the Indian subcontinent. These new forms of scholarly monastic communities had distinct theoretical and.

The early history of Buddhism in India is remarkably little known and the attempt to construct a consistent chronology of that history still engrosses the minds of contemporary scholars. A generally accepted tradition has it that some time around the beginning of the third century BCE, the primitive Buddhist community divided into two parties or fraternities: the Sthaviras and the Mahāsāṅghikas, each of which thenceforth had its own ordination.

Throughout the subsequent two centuries or so, doctrinal disputes arose between these two parties, resulting in the formation of various schools of thought and teacher lineages ( Vin 51–54; Mhv V 12–13. See Cousins 1991, 27–28; Frauwallner 1956, 5ff & 130ff; Lamotte 1988, 271ff; Wynne 2019, 269–283).

The Buddha’s discourses collected in the Āgamas/Nikāyas analyze sentient experience from different standpoints: in terms of name-and-form , the five aggregates , the twelve sense fields , or the eighteen sense elements . All these modes of analysis provide descriptions of sentient experience as a succession of physical and mental processes that arise and cease subject to various causes and conditions.

The report closes by linking the event to broader consequences.