⚛️ Abidharma Atoms §

= particular occurrences of qualities (NOT TINY SOLID PARTICLES)

Types §

• 🔥 Fire
  • -> occurrence of heat
• 🌍 Earth
• 💧 Water
• 💨 Air

📖 Example: §

• Earth atom: an occurrence of solidity in a vewry small solid thing ¹

Discussion §

Although not very intuitive in respect to todays’ understanding of modern phsysics, the intuition that there are no substances but only “qualities” can still make sense, since it isn’t the primary concern of Buddhism to find out ‘why’ something is hot. Just knowing ‘atomic’ qualities of the world is enough to make sense of it. Finding out why these atomic qualities exist, is then the job of science.

Footnotes §

1. Siderits M. Buddhism as Philosophy. Second edition. Hackett Publishing Company, Inc; 2021. ↩