  A few clarifications about the origins and scope of the Abhidharma scholastic are necessary before we explore its analysis of mind. First, as the name suggest, the Abhidharma (‘about’ (abhi) + ‘the doctrine’ (dharma), usually translated as ‘higher doctrine’) is concerned with the notion of dharma, its central and most difficult concept. Depending on the context, a dharma may be taken to designate either the body of teachings attributed to the Buddha or a basic element or unit of existence and/or experience, better captured by the notion of phenomenon. In the Abhidharmic analysis of mind and mental constituents, a dharma most closely refers to a temporal instance in the stream of cognitive events, which is momentary and discrete, that arises together with a moment of cognitive awareness (a vijñāna). In this extended sense, a dharma designates both an indivisible unit of experience and an object of conceptual analysis, which means that factors contributing to the arising of cognitive awareness can in turn become objects of reflective inquiry. 