Abhidhamma
Ācariya Anuruddha's Abhidhammattha Saṅgaha — "the compendium of the things contained in the Abhidhamma" — is the classical synopsis of the entire Abhidhamma Piṭaka, condensing its seven vast books into nine short chapters that generations of students have recited and studied by heart. Ru-Yi's translation, made directly from the Pāli, works through it chapter by chapter — consciousness, mental factors, cognitive process, matter, conditionality, and the path of meditation itself — with the original alongside our English and a reading note for what repays a second look.
Translation Method
The Pāli source is the Pali Text Society's critical edition of the Abhidhammattha Saṅgaha, edited by Ven. Hammalawa Saddhātissa, cross-checked against the Chaṭṭha Saṅgāyana (Sixth Council) romanized text maintained by the Vipassana Research Institute (VRI, tipitaka.org) for internal consistency.
The English translation is Ru-Yi's own, made directly from the Pāli. No existing English translation — including Bhikkhu Bodhi's copyrighted A Comprehensive Manual of Abhidhamma, the standard modern edition of this text, with its own translation and an extensive explanatory Guide — is consulted, paraphrased, or used as a guide for wording or structure. Reading notes are grounded only in the text's own internal numbering and cross-references, and in classifications that are standard, uncontested Abhidhamma doctrine across the tradition — never in a modern scholar's specific interpretation.
Chapters
Abhidhammatthasaṅgaho niṭṭhito — the Compendium is finished. With chapter 9, Ru-Yi's translation of the entire Abhidhammattha Saṅgaha is now complete: consciousness and mental factors (chapters 1–2), how consciousness occurs (chapters 3–5), matter and categories (chapters 6–7), and conditionality and the path (chapters 8–9), rendered into English directly from the Pāli, in full. Chapter 9 itself closes with the meditation subjects the whole preceding theory exists to serve, and a verse wishing the reader the taste of practice.
Why start with consciousness (citta) rather than matter or conditionality? Because the Saṅgaha itself does — Anuruddha's own ordering follows the sequence of the four ultimate realities set out in his opening verse (consciousness, mental factors, matter, Nibbāna), and the chapters that build on cognitive process and conditionality all presuppose the 89/121-citta scheme that chapter 1 lays down first.