Points of Controversy

14.7. Of Desire as inherent in Heavenly Things

Controverted Point: That lust for the things of the Rūpa heavens is inherent to and included therein.

Theravādin: You imply that the desire which seeks attainment in jhāna, the desire which seeks rebirth in the heavens, and the delighting, under present conditions, in celestial bliss, are all three concomitant, coexistent, associated and conjoined with their respective kinds of consciousness, are one in genesis and cessation, one in seat and object with those kinds. If you deny your proposition falls.

Is a desire for sound inherent and\included in the sphere of sound, or is a desire for the other Objects of sense inherent and included in their respective spheres? Why not affirm here instead of denying? If the desires are to be denied here, neither can you affirm them in the case of the heavens.

The same arguments apply to the desire for the things of the Arūpa heavens.

Andhakas and Sammitīyas: But if you admit that we may speak of sensuous lusts as inherent and included in the world of sense-experience, it is surely right to affirm analogous desires in the case of the Rūpa and Arūpa heavens.

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

This SuttaCentral edition was prepared by Bhikkhu Sujato, assisted by Jatin Patel and team from Hi-Tech Outsourcing, in 2013–2014. It contains several minor changes in terminology, the intent of which was to bring the translation in line with more commonly accepted renderings, while eliminating some ambiguities and archaisms. These were particularly apparent in the verses, so I have newly translated most of these. In addition, the corrections listed on pp. lv–lvi of the original edition incorporated in the text. Much of the text is highly compressed, and is often a paraphrase rather than a translation. All notes and excerpts from the commentaries have been omitted, with the exception of the identification of schools, which is marked with each argument. These do not entail that these schools existed at the time of the Kathāvatthu’s composition.

In May 2013, this volume was kindly released by the Pali Text Society under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 licence (CC BY-NC 3.0). The current SuttaCentral edition, including all revisions, corrections, additions, and modifications, is released under the same terms.

Prepared for SuttaCentral by Bhikkhu Sujato.