11.3 Of Insight and Ordinary Consciousness (KV11.3)

Controverted Point: That insight (ñāṇa) is not conjoined with consciousness.

Theravādin: But are you prepared to identify insight with all that is admittedly detached from consciousness: with matter, Nibbāna, or the organs and objects of sense? Scarcely!… .

Or are you prepared to declare “insight” as having nothing in common with understanding? For you will admit that understanding, as controlling power or force, as supremely right view, as intuitive search for truth, is not detached from, but is bound up with, consciousness?

Insight, again, as we agree, includes, involves the activity of the aggregate of the coefficients of consciousness, as also does understanding. Both of these are conjoined with consciousness. How then can insight be detached from it? Hence, if you maintain that insight and understanding, both involving conscious coefficients, are respectively detached from and conjoined with consciousness, you are committed to this: that the aggregate of coefficients is in part conjoined with, in part detached from, consciousness—which you of course deny … .

Pubbaseliya: You contend then that an Arahant who is enjoying cognitions by way of sight, etc., may be said to “have insight”?

Theravādin: Yes.

Pubbaseliya: But is his insight conjoined with that consciousness (sight, etc.)?

Theravādin: Nay, that cannot truly be said … .

Pubbaseliya: Then my proposition holds.

Theravādin: But such an argument holds equally for “understanding”, if you substitute that for “insight”. And you have admitted the connection between understanding and consciousness.

The Points of Controversy, an English translation of the Pali Abhidhamma Kathāvatthu. Translated by Shwe Zan Aung and C.A.F. Rhys Davids. First published by Pali Text Society, 1915.

This SuttaCentral edition was prepared by Manfred Wierich and Ven. Vimala and proofread by Josephine Tobin. Some changes were introduced:

Abbreviations, i.e., those of cited works and the participants in the controversies, were expanded.

Cross-references were linked.

Some typographic changes were introduced, among others, i.e.: the phonetic symbol “ŋ” was changed to the Pāli diacritical letter “ṃ”, “ô” to “o”, single quotes to double quotes, and “:—” to “:”.

Letter-spacing with fixed spaces was replaced with bold font.

The corrigenda were merged into the text. Some could not be resolved, though.

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