Abhidhamma Lessons: A Top-Down Approach Using Computer Science
Free Book: Abhidhamma Lessons PDF
Here is a book I wrote long ago that relates the Abhidhamma to Computer Science. As a programmer from the nineties, I “clicked” with the abhidhamma after reading just a small amount. When I learned that the mind does only one thing at a time, it instantly clicked with a graduate class I had taken on digital circuits. It gave me the faith in the Abhidhamma early on which is very rare among Western Monks and Western Theravada Buddhist lay people. Most of the Western scholars are outspoken against the Abhidhamma. I am no scholar by any right, but I hope this can create an interest and restore some faith.
I have found that Abhidhamma which is the third of the three baskets of Buddhism, is usually taught with a bottom up method and one cannot get the big picture until one learns almost all of the sections of Abhidhammattha Sangaha. I have taken some of the interesting points of the big picture that relate to computer science and made lessons out of them. I had originally posted these lessons one by one to a gplus group called Philosophy of Mind. It was well received by the moderator of the group, but a bag of mix and match from its members. The idea was to release it to non-buddhists to see if they could “get it” without any prior knowledge or conditioning. While they may have not agreed with what I said about the mind processing in serial order, they could certainly “get” what I was talking about. Be sure to read the book in order. The last chapter that is included with this release describes samadhi concentration according to Abhidhamma.
There are some mistakes in the text. If you are a Theravada Buddhist scholar, I am interested in hearing about them.
There are two chapters missing from this edition, which are still listed in the table of contents. Be patient!! It is work in progress.
This book was actually the main reason I started a website in the first place. I originally posted it on Google Drive in 2014, but as I updated my file, a new link address would be created (that is now fixed by google). My friend hooked me up with a free subhuti.tf domain. However, nothing is for free and advertisements started appearing around my website. Quickly I created my own new domain called https://Withmetta.net which still exists today. That evolved into https://americanmonk.org and now that blog has been changed to https://AmericanMonk.org which you are reading now. After all of that moving around and web posting, I forgot to post the original book which started it all in 2014! Enjoy!
Picture created from two cc0 pictures from pixabay.
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