Time and Space:
The Abhidhamma Perspective
Professor K. N. Jayatilleke Memorial Lecture 2003
by
Y. Karunadasa, former director,
Postgraduate Institute of Pali and Buddhist Studies
TIME AND SPACE AS PANNATTIS
The inclusion of time and space in the category of pannattis in other words means that they are not dhammas. The dhammas, as we have already noted, are the entities that have ontological ultimacy. Hence they are often described as paramattha, that is, that which exists in a real and ultimate sense. The description of dhammas as paramattha means not only their objective existence (paramatthato vijjamanata) but also their cognizability in an ultimate sense (paramatthato upalabbhamanata).71 Thus from an ontological point of view, if the dhammas represent the final limits into which the analysis of empirical existence can be pushed, from an epistemological point of view they represent the objects of higher knowledge. The pannattis, on the other hand, signify those entities that have no objective counterparts and therefore which owe their being to mind’s synthetic function (kappaana). Therefore the two terms, paramattha and pannatti, could be understood as indicating two levels of reality as well: The first refers to those entities that truly exist independently of the cognitive act and the second, to those entities that owe their being to the act of cognition itself. These two categories are said to be mutually exclusive and together they provide a rational explanation for the totality of our internal and external experience. Hence it is categorically stated that apart from pannatti and paramattha a third category does not obtain (tatiya koti na vijjati).72 In consonance with this situation pannatti is also defined as "that which is other than the dhammas" (tato avasesa), or as "that which remains after the mental and material dhammas" (namarupa-vinimmutta).73.
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