Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c9.s3.10

c9.s3.10

Fourth in the complex is the aggregate of dispositions (*saṃkhāra*), a term which is explained as denoting that which compounds what is composed, whether matter or psychic, a definition peculiarly without value. The vagueness of the term is illustrated in the Abhidhamma,² where some fifty mental constituents are subsumed under it, and generally any other causally induced incorporeal phenomena exclusive of the other three psychic aggregates. The root conception is doubtless the impressions resulting in dispositions,³ predispositions or latent tendencies, which will bear fruition in action in due course, but in the Abhidhamma at any rate it covers will, attention, application, concentration, zest, faith, energy, mindfulness, insight, rectitude, modesty, discretion, disinterestedness, no covetousness, no malice, grasp and balance and various other groups. The explanation is simple enough; the category, having a vague sense, served effectively to cover all those mental activities for which the division had no obvious and convenient place; but it hardly needs remark that such a procedure is at once proof of the paralysing effect of tradition, and proof of lack of psychological interest. Dispositions, however, it must be remembered may be physical as well as mental, and the term Saṃkhāra in the sense of product of disposition is used, like Dhamma, to apply to the empirical world as consisting of compounded things. In psychic application the term aggregate is obviously wholly appropriate.