 These events are referred to as dharmas (Pali, dhammas), differently from the singular dharma/dhamma that signifies the Buddha’s teaching(s). The Āgamas/Nikāyas use the form dharmas to convey a pluralistic representation of encountered phenomena, i.e., all sensory phenomena of whatever nature as we experience them through the six sense faculties (the five ordinary physical senses plus mind [manas]). The canonical Abhidharma treatises, however, draw subtle distinctions within the scope of the mental and marginalize the differences between multiple varieties of mental capacities. Within this context, dharmas are seen as the objects of a specific mental capacity called mental cognitive awareness (Skt., manovijñāṇa, Pali, manoviññāṇa) that is considered the central cognitive operation in the process of sensory perception. Mental cognitive awareness is a particular type of consciousness that discerns between the stimuli impinging upon the sense faculties and that emerges when the requisite conditions come together. Dharmas are not merely mental objects like ideas, concepts, or memories. Rather, as the objects of mental cognitive awareness, dharmas may be rendered apperceptions: rapid consciousness-types (citta) that arise and cease in sequential streams, each having its own object, and that interact with the five externally directed sensory modalities (visual, auditory, etc.) of cognitive awareness. The canonical Abhidharma texts portray dharmas, then, as psycho-physical events with diverse capacities by means of which the mind unites and assimilates a particular perception, especially one newly presented, to a larger set or mass of ideas already possessed, thus comprehending and conceptualizing  it.[6]