When chanted

Chanted at a funeral, the last of the seven books of the Abhidhamma, after which the book marks the whole Suat Jaeng service complete.

A note on this chant. The book prints this chant in Pali only, with no Thai translation. The English here is a working translation prepared for this edition — it is not the book's own, and has not yet been checked by a teacher.

Historical background

ปัฏฐาน is the great book of conditional relations, the largest of the seven and by tradition the most demanding. It is represented here by nothing at all except its list of conditions, recited straight through without comment.

Below this chant the book prints จบสวดแจงเท่านี้, centred — here ends the Suat Jaeng. That line closes the whole service rather than this chant, so it is recorded on the page and not as a second closing here.

Meaning and purpose

Twenty-four conditions are named one after another with nothing between them: root, object, predominance, proximity, contiguity, conascence, mutuality, support, decisive support, prenascence, postnascence, repetition, kamma, result, nutriment, faculty, jhāna, path, association, dissociation, presence, absence, disappearance, non-disappearance.

No explanation is offered and none is expected. Each names a way in which one thing can condition another, and the book itself works out the combinations at a length nobody recites and few read.

It is a fitting close. Having named the wholesome and the unwholesome, the aggregates, the elements, the kinds of person, the disputes and the paired questions, the service ends by naming every way in which one thing can bring about another — and then simply stops, which at a funeral is the most exact thing it could do.

The chant

As the book prints it: page 41 →