22.4 Of Penetrating the Truth (KV22.4)

Controverted Point: That an embryo is capable of penetrating the truth.

Theravādin: You are implying that an embryo can be instructed in, hear, and become familiar with the Doctrine, can be catechized, can take on himself the precepts, be guarded as to the gates of sense, abstemious in diet, devoted to vigils early and late. Is not the opposite true?

Are there not two conditions for the genesis of right views—“another's voice and intelligent attention”?

And can there be penetration of the Truth by one who is asleep, or languid, or blurred in intelligence, or unreflective?

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.

This electronic version is published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 3.0 licence (CC BY-NC 3.0) as found here: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/

All copyright is owned by the Pali Text Society. See also the statement under http://www.palitext.com/ → Publications → Copyright Announcement. For non-commercial use only.