The History of Buddhist Thought c20.32

c20.32

Abhidhamma is thus only indirectly psychological, but it involves much psychological analysis. Every study of the mind has to begin by dealing with the popular terms which already exist, and these furnish the categories according to which the science is likely to develop. The terms at hand were those of common experience, and they never acquired the scientific precision of Western psychology. Cognition, will or conation, and feeling have been in modern times made entirely distinct elements or aspects of mental states, but they never appear alone. The Buddhists never tried to treat them alone. Their classifications are classes of states in which one or other of these aspects are prominent. Will (*cetanā*) is an actual state, and hence a state of consciousness in which conation is predominant. Feeling (*vedanā*) is distinguished as pleasant, painful and non-pleasant, and non-painful. But it expresses not merely the three emotional aspects; it also implies three conscious states of feeling, so that it could also be distinguished according to the six senses. It is in consciousness that any actual state of feeling exists, and thus feeling was also classified according to the particular sense through which it was manifested.