Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c16.s1.2

c16.s1.2

The analysis of consciousness in the *Dhammasaṅgaṇi*¹ is essentially motivated by ethical considerations. Consciousness is analysed into eight types of good consciousness, and twelve types of bad consciousness, which are applicable to human beings *in primis* but also to infra-human beings, the gods, and other celestials, but not to beings in the more ethereal Brahma- or Rūpa-lokas, worlds of attenuated matter, or the sphere in which matter no longer has any existence (*arūpaloka*). Thirdly, there is ethically indeterminate consciousness. In each case the consciousness is judged ethically not as causing a result, but as the effect (*vipāka*) of earlier action, and a curious result is thus developed, which is not known to the *Sutta Piṭaka*. The term good is restricted to felicific or causing welfare; the welfare caused is reckoned, wherever and whenever experienced, as neutral, and is not treated as itself felicific, but is classed as neutral or indeterminate (*avyākata*,) being neither good or bad.¹