By Victor M Fontane
Way before the great thinkers of the modern era, approximately two thousand years ago, started a discourse about the psychology of the mind like Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung and others. Shakyamuni Buddha delivered the third important body of knowledge and teachings called Abhidhamma Pitaka (basket) after Dharma and Tantra.
The Abhidhamma is essentially an attempt to systematize the Buddha’s teachings about the dynamics of moment-to-moment experience as it unfolds in the stream of consciousness.
In summary, the Abhidhamma describes how 28 physical phenomena co-arise with 52 mental factors, manifesting as 89 types of consciousness, which unfold in series of 17 mind moments, governed by 24 types of causal relation. One of its methods is to take a single thought-moment of experience, accessible by means of (rather advanced capabilities of) insight meditation, and then identify the characteristics of that moment of consciousness. Numerous things might be discerned about it.
Modern psychology will be enriched if Abhidhamma Pitaka is added as part of the of the investigation of the function of the mind specially in our present time of distress and chaos.
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