Cetanā, the elements and the siddhisHow will (cetanā) shapes matter — a deepening of the study on cittaja-rūpa: the two ways cetanā works, the air element as the material lever, cetanā in the act of siddhi and at the heart of the iddhipāda formula.

The study on cittaja-rūpa showed that the mind produces matter — from the raising of the hand to the mind-made body. What remained open was the more precise question: which factor in the mind carries this producing power, and through which element does it reach into matter? The Abhidhamma's answer is precise: it is cetanā (intention, will), and its material lever is the wind element (vāyodhātu). This study attests both members, clarifies the difference between the kammic and the matter-producing power of cetanā — which are not identical — and carries the line into the mechanics of the siddhis and into sitting practice.

of the Paṭṭhāna The locus classicus stands in the Paṭṭhāna, the Abhidhamma's doctrine of conditions, under the kamma condition (kamma-paccaya). The place of definition (Paccayaniddesa) distinguishes two cases: «Kammapaccayo ti — kusalākusalaṁ kammaṁ vipākānaṁ khandhānaṁ kaṭattā ca rūpānaṁ kammapaccayena paccayo. Cetanā sampayuttakānaṁ dhammānaṁ taṁsamuṭṭhānānañca rūpānaṁ kammapaccayena paccayo.» (Paṭṭhāna, Paccayaniddesa) «Kamma condition: wholesome and unwholesome kamma is a condition, by way of the kamma condition, for the resultant aggregates and for the matter arisen through deed. Cetanā is a condition, by way of the kamma condition, for the dhammas associated with it and for the matter arisen from these.» Explanation: here two different temporal structures stand side by side, which Ledi Sayadaw fixed terminologically in the Paṭṭhānuddesa-Dīpanī as nānākkhaṇika-kamma (kamma of different moments) and sahajāta-kamma (co-arisen kamma): Nānākkhaṇika: a past cetanā works across time and brings forth kammaja-rūpa later — the sense organs, the heart base, the sex-determining matter. That is kamma in the accustomed sense: the deed now, the material fruit later (up to and including the body of the next existence).

Sahajāta: the present cetanā conditions the matter that arises in the same moment with its citta — the cittaja-rūpa. The second sentence of the Paṭṭhāna quotation means exactly this: «taṁsamuṭṭhānānañca rūpānaṁ» — «and for the matter arisen from these (from this citta)». With that the first study's question is answered as to which mental factor carries the cittaja-rūpa: the citta is the origin (samuṭṭhāna), but within the citta the cetanā is the condition that acts, as kamma condition, upon the co-arising matter. Its function is determined in the commentary as āyūhana — «driving on, heaping up» (Asl 111): the same word for kammic accumulating and for the momentary driving forth of matter. Cetanā is the motor in both directions of time. The decisive refinement: the two powers of cetanā are not identical. Only wholesome or unwholesome cetanā can accumulate kammically. But cittaja-rūpa can be produced also by the functional (kiriya-) cetanā of the arahant — whose will moves the hand, produces speech, maintains the posture and accomplishes siddhis without creating an atom of new kamma (cf. Bodhi, CMA VI and VIII; Karunadasa, The Theravāda Abhidhamma, chapter on the conditions). The matter-producing power of cetanā is thus more fundamental than its kammic one: it belongs to its nature as the organising factor of every moment of consciousness, not first to its ethical quality. For the siddhi question this is central — for the arahant's abhiññā-citta is kiriya, and its powers work nonetheless.

Through which of the four great elements does cetanā reach into the body? The answer of the Dhammasaṅgaṇī and the Visuddhimagga: through the wind element, vāyodhātu — the element of movement, of pressure, of tension. The Dhammasaṅgaṇī defines the matter of bodily expression (kāya-viññatti) as the tautening, communicating and making known of the body in one who, with wholesome, unwholesome or indeterminate citta, goes forward, goes back, looks or bends and stretches the limbs (Dhs §636, in substance). The Visuddhimagga makes the mechanics precise: according to Vism XIV.61, kāya-viññatti is no material thing of its own but a particular modification (ākāravikāra) of mind-born wind-element matter — that alteration in the co-arisen vāyo-dhātu which supports, tautens and moves the body and thereby «makes known» (viññāpana) the intention. The chain runs in full:

Cetanā (in the citta) → cittaja matter groups with a dominant vāyo-dhātu → ākāravikāra of this wind element (= viññatti) → movement of the kamma-born body. Explanation: philosophically this is remarkably sober. The Abhidhamma posits no occult channel between mind and matter, but locates the interface in the most inconspicuous of the four functions of the elements: vāyo, the principle of movement and pressure. Every intention that reaches the body reaches it as an alteration of tension and movement. This coincides exactly with meditative observation: what becomes perceptible of the «will» in the body is always pull, pressure, vibration, tautening — the wind element. The remaining elements (solidity, cohesion, temperature) are carried along, but the point of engagement is vāyo. The Satipaṭṭhāna commentary on walking meditation (Papañcasūdanī on MN 10) says it in the formula already quoted: the thought «I am walking» produces the wind element, the wind element produces the movement of expression. What cetanā concretely produces — the kalāpa analysis: mind-born matter arises, according to the Abhidhammattha-Saṅgaha (VI), in groups (kalāpa) whose basic stock is always the eight inseparable kinds of matter (avinibbhoga: the four elements plus colour, odour, taste, nutritive essence — the «pure group of eight», suddhaṭṭhaka). Depending on the citta, there are added: the two viññatti, the triad lightness–malleability–workability (lahutā, mudutā, kammaññatā) and sound (articulate speech). A strong, concentrated, wholesome citta thus produces not «more mind in the body», but material groups of another quality: lighter, more malleable, more workable. The bodily phenomena of deep concentration (section 11 of the first study) are the experiential side of exactly these kalāpa qualities.

citta In the Iddhividha-Niddesa (Vism XII) the role of cetanā can now be named in every step of the act of power: Parikamma (preparation): «let there be a hundred», «let the body be light» — that is cetanā in its ordinary shape, accompanied by vitakka (the directing of the mind onto the goal). It formulates the vector, but has as yet no extraordinary power. Adhiṭṭhāna (resolve): here cetanā joins with the cetasika adhimokkha — «decidedness», the mind's becoming firm upon its object, the opposite of wavering (CMA II.3). Adhiṭṭhāna is not a factor of its own among the 52 cetasikas, but the function in which cetanā, adhi‐

mokkha and (in the case of powers) paññā work together: a willing that no longer wishes but fixes. Abhiññā-citta: the one extraordinarily powerful consciousness of the fourth jhāna (in the Abhidhamma count: the fifth), accompanied by equanimity and one-pointedness, which accomplishes the deed. Its cetanā is the same function as in raising the hand — āyūhana — but carried by a mind that has become mudu and kammaniya through the attainment (DN 2). The cittaja-rūpa driven forth by it (through the kamma condition) accordingly has an extraordinary reach: it is not confined to one's own body. KNOWLEDGE / SYNTHESIS SEPARATED Attested are: the kamma condition of co-arisen cetanā for the cittaja-rūpa (Paṭṭhāna, Paccayaniddesa; Ledi Sayadaw, Paṭṭhānuddesa-Dīpanī); viññatti as the ākāravikāra of the mind-born wind element (Dhs §636; Vism XIV.61); the sequence parikamma–adhiṭṭhāna–abhiññā (Vism XII); adhimokkha as a cetasika (Abhidh-s II). — Synthesis is the formula «adhiṭṭhāna = cetanā + adhimokkha (+ paññā) in one function»: it is an obvious Abhidhamma reading of the concept of resolve, but is not stated literally in this way in the sources. Likewise synthesis is the pointed formulation that the matter-producing power of cetanā is «more fundamental» than the kammic one; attested is only that kiriya cittas produce cittaja-rūpa without forming kamma (CMA VI).

kasiṇa mechanics The most remarkable thing about the Visuddhimagga's description of the siddhis is that the resolves are addressed element by element — and that the precondition is mastery of the element kasiṇas (earth, water, fire, wind as training images, together with the colours and space/light). Examples from Vism XII: whoever wants to walk on water emerges from the fourth jhāna (practised on the earth kasiṇa) and determines: «pathavī hotu» — «let there be earth» — and the water carries like firm ground (Vism XII.104 ff.). Whoever wants to walk through a wall determines, on the space kasiṇa: «let there be space» (ākāso hotu). Whoever wants to fly works with lightness — and rūpa-lahutā is, as shown, a quality of matter that the mind can help to produce. Explanation: the logic is consistent. The kasiṇa is the school of the perception of the elements. Whoever has cultivated the earth kasiṇa for years has made «earthness» — solidity, bearing, resistance — fully available to the mind as a mastered inner object. The resolve pathavī hotu is then no magical command to the outer world, but the application of a perfectly mastered capacity of perception and production: the abhiññā-citta brings forth — through the kamma

condition of its cetanā — matter with a dominant function of solidity. The tradition understands this realistically, not idealistically: real, load-bearing matter arises (cittaja-rūpa), not mere imagination; but it arises lawfully, conditioned by concentration, kasiṇa mastery and resolve, and passes away again when the determined time runs out. Exactly here the circle closes back to the first study: the same bridge as in raising the hand, only that the cetanā now stems from a mind that has worked through the elements completely as objects. The Paṭisambhidāmagga (ii.205 ff.), the source of the Visuddhimagga's list of ten, further orders the powers according to their basis and names among them, revealingly, the «power out of concentration» (samādhivipphārā iddhi) and the «power of the noble ones» (ariyā iddhi) — the latter being the capacity to perceive the non-repulsive in the repulsive and vice versa: a pure power of perception and will without any outward marvel. Even the canonical systematics thus understands «iddhi» more broadly than the working of miracles — as a scale of the efficacy of concentrated cetanā, whose noblest form is sovereignty over one's own perception.

In the full canonical formula the four bases of power are not merely «chanda, viriya, citta, vīmaṃsā», but in each case: «Chandasamādhi-padhānasaṅkhāra-samannāgataṁ iddhipādaṁ bhāveti» (SN 51.13 and elsewhere) «He develops the base of power that is furnished with concentration through will and with formations of striving.» SN 51.13 explains both members: when the monk gains concentration by relying on the will (chanda), that is called chanda-samādhi; and the padhāna-saṅkhārā are the four right exertions — the willing, the effort and the applying of energy so that the unwholesome does not arise or is overcome and the wholesome arises or grows. Explanation: with this, cetanā stands in the wording of the formula itself: saṅkhāra is here — as in the khandha context — volitional formation, and padhāna-saṅkhāra is cetanā formed into exertion. The architecture of every iddhipāda is thus threefold: a dominant factor (chanda, viriya, citta or vīmaṃsā) + the concentration gained through it + the volitional formations of striving. Concentration alone does not work; it needs the volitional vector. In The Buddhist Path to Awakening (chapter on the iddhipādas) Rupert Gethin has shown that exactly this coupling of samādhi and padhāna-saṅkhāra is the core of the concept of iddhipāda: «power» arises where concentration and forming will come to coincide. That is the ca‐

nonical sutta counterpart to what the Paṭṭhāna describes technically as the sahajāta-kamma condition of cetanā. That the iddhipādas are in this no special tool of the miracle-workers but carry the whole path is stated expressly by SN 51: developed and made much of, they lead to the exhaustion of suffering — the siddhis are a by-product of the same structure.

do But the canon knows the other side as well — and for practice it is as important as the efficacy. AN 10.2 (Cetanākaraṇīya-Sutta): «Sīlavato, bhikkhave, sīlasampannassa na cetanāya karaṇīyaṁ: ‹avippaṭisāro me uppajjatū›ti. Dhammatā esā, bhikkhave, yaṁ sīlavato sīlasampannassa avippaṭisāro uppajjati.» «For the virtuous one, monks, who has fulfilled virtue, no act of will is needed: ‹Let freedom from remorse arise in me.› It is lawfulness, monks, that in the virtuous one freedom from remorse arises.» The sutta carries the whole chain on in this way — from freedom from remorse through gladness, rapture, stillness, happiness, concentration, the vision of reality, up to liberation: at every stage it holds that na cetanāya karaṇīyaṁ — no willing is needed; dhammatā esā — it happens lawfully when the condition of the previous stage is fulfilled. Explanation: here lies the exact division of labour on the path. Cetanā forms the conditions — the virtue, the sitting down, the resolve, the orientation. The ripening of the conditions into the next stage is dhammatā and withdraws itself from the will; willing at this place even disturbs (it is then taṇhā in the garment of practice). SN 51.15 (Uṇṇābha-Sutta) carries the same point: to the brahmin's objection that one surely cannot abolish will by means of will, Ānanda answers with the example of the park — the will to go to the park settles of itself once one has arrived. Chanda and cetanā are means of the way that exhaust themselves at the goal. And SN 51.20 adds the fine tuning: the chanda must be neither too slack nor too taut, neither cramped inwardly nor scattered outwardly — the classical logic of the simile of the lute string, applied to the iddhipādas. The efficacy of cetanā and the letting go of cetanā are thus no contradiction, but two phases of the same law: willing builds conditions; letting-happen harvests them.

matter The first study showed the breath as cittaja-rūpa and kāya-saṅkhāra. MN 118 makes of this an explicit instruction for practice — the fourth step: «‹Passambhayaṁ kāyasaṅkhāraṁ assasissāmī›ti sikkhati; ‹passambhayaṁ kāyasaṅkhāraṁ passasissāmī›ti sikkhati.» (MN 118) «‹Calming the bodily formation I shall breathe in›, thus he trains; ‹calming the bodily formation I shall breathe out›, thus he trains.» Explanation and practice: the canon here commands no breathing technique, but an exercise of cetanā at the mind-matter bridge: the gentle, sustained intention of calming (passambhayaṁ — a participle: a continued, accompanying letting-become-still) acts back upon the mind-born matter of the breath. In practice: one does not refine the breath by control (that would be coarse cetanā and produces a coarse, disturbed breath), but keeps the fine direction of will, «calming», in the background — and observes how the matter follows the formation. Whoever practises this sees the sahajāta effect of cetanā in real time: the quality of the intention and the quality of the breath change in the same movement, because the one is the matter of the other. If it fails — the breath becomes halting, controlled — the cetanā was too coarse: an immediate feedback that no other object of meditation gives so directly.

cetanā The first study introduced the noticing of the intention before the movement (citta → vāyo → movement). The deepening: not only that an intention goes before, but how it is constituted — and how its constitution stamps the wind-element quality of the movement. An impatient intention produces jerky, hard vāyo (one feels it as a thrusting in foot and leg); a concentrated intention produces continuous, soft vāyo. The practice: in each phase of walking, briefly «look at» the intention itself once (urging? neutral? still?) and then register the quality of the movement. In time the Visuddhimagga's pair of terms — mudu and kammaniya, malleable and workable — becomes a direct bodily experience: one recognises from one's own wal‐

king in what state the citta is. That is the same diagnostic which in the large decides the capacity for siddhi, on the scale of the training path.

Vism XI (catudhātuvavatthāna) teaches one to go through the body systematically as solidity, cohesion, temperature and movement. In the light of this study the exercise gains a second level: it is the training in perception for exactly those addressees to which the resolve later directs itself. The Burmese Pa-Auk tradition (Pa-Auk Sayadaw, Knowing and Seeing) builds its kalāpa analysis on this: out of a steady perception of the elements, the material groups and their four origins — including the cittaja groups — become distinguishable; according to this tradition the practitioner then sees directly how, at every impulse of will, new mind-born groups shoot up. Whether one follows this very fine-grained tradition of description or not (it is commentarial and teaching tradition, not sutta): even the simple survey of the elements makes it experienceable that «body» is a magnitude in process made of four functions — and that one of them, vāyo, visibly hangs upon the will. As an entry, this is practically enough: three times a day one minute, one posture, four questions — where is there solidity just now, where binding, where warmth, where movement/pressure? The fourth question is the trace of cetanā.

The study has determined adhiṭṭhāna as the working together of cetanā and adhimokkha. From this follows a precise rule of practice for the practice of resolve of the first study (the sitting, time and direction resolve): the effective resolve has the grammar of fixing, not of wishing. «May I sit calmly» is a wish — cetanā with an admixture of taṇhā, weak and restless. «This hour I sit; the posture stays» is adhiṭṭhāna — cetanā with adhimokkha, formed once, then let go. The letting go belongs to it constitutively: a resolve that has to be repeated was none. Here the same structure shows itself in the small as in the abhiññā act of the Visuddhimagga: a single, clear, concentrated moment of will — after which the condition carries of itself (dhammatā). For whoever wants to examine their resolves: the test is not strength of will, but whether calm sets in after the forming. If tension remains, it was a wish.

From section 7 follows perhaps the most important practical diagnostic tool of this study. When practice stalls, examine: is willing happening at the wrong place? The chain of AN 10.2 gives the map — only the respectively previous condition can be willed, never the result: concentration cannot be willed; what can be willed is the sitting down, the virtue, the resolve, the turning towards the object. Rapture and stillness cannot be willed; what can be willed is the patient staying with the condition (the object). Insight cannot be willed; what can be willed is the honest, repeated looking. Most crises of practice are, in this optic, errors in the placing of cetanā: the will reaches for the fruit instead of for the condition — and thereby disturbs exactly the dhammatā that would bring the fruit forth. The correction is always the same movement: one step back, will the condition, let the result be.

First: cetanā is the factor that forms matter — through the wind element, in every moment, lawfully; nothing about it is exotic, and everything about it is observable. Second: step 4 of ānāpānasati is the canonical practice at this bridge — hold the calming intention, see the matter of the breath follow. Third: in walking meditation, read the quality of the intention, not only its occurrence. Fourth: form resolves with adhimokkha — once, clearly, then let go; the test is calm. Fifth: place the willing at the conditions, never at the results (AN 10.2) — the results are dhammatā. And sixth: the siddhis remain what the first study said — the extreme case of the everyday and a side road; the real power of the noble ones is sovereignty over one's own perception (ariyā iddhi), and the only willing that may exhaust itself entirely at the end is the one that carried as far as there. Note on the translations All the German renderings in the original are the author's own working translations from the Pāli. On the state of German translation: MN (Zumwinkel; Neumann), SN (Geiger/Nyanaponika/Hecker) and AN (Nyanatiloka/Nyanaponika) are available complete in German, and likewise

the Visuddhimagga (Nyanatiloka, Der Weg zur Reinheit). For the Paṭṭhāna, the Dhammasaṅgaṇī and the Paṭisambhidāmagga no complete German translation is known to me (in English: Conditional Relations, Nārada, PTS; A Buddhist Manual of Psychological Ethics, C.A.F. Rhys Davids, PTS; The Path of Discrimination, Ñāṇamoli, PTS). Ledi Sayadaw's Paṭṭhānuddesa-Dīpanī is available in English (The Manuals of Buddhism); I suspect that no complete German edition of it exists. Before publication, quotations should be checked against the editions named. Sources Canonical (Sutta Piṭaka) - DN 2, Sāmaññaphala-Sutta (PTS DN I.77) — the mudu/kammaniya mind; the mind-made body - MN 118, Ānāpānasati-Sutta — step 4: passambhayaṁ kāyasaṅkhāraṁ - MN 44, Cūḷavedalla-Sutta — the breath as kāya-saṅkhāra - SN 51.13 — chandasamādhi and padhānasaṅkhāra defined; SN 51.15, Uṇṇābha — will for the abolition of will; SN 51.20 — the fine tuning of chanda - AN