Work Classification Layer
Compare Works
Pick two or more works to set their attribute fingerprints, dimension-by-dimension passages, and shared school embodiments side by side. Especially useful for author-stage comparisons (Wittgenstein early vs late) and for setting a single tradition's foundational texts against each other.
Visuddhimagga
Virtue, meditation, wisdom — the threefold path of purification leading to liberation, systematically expounded
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | Visuddhimagga |
|---|---|
| Time · Extent | Infinite |
| Time · Ontological Status | Relational |
| Time · Grain | Discrete |
| Time · Freedom | Deterministic |
| Time · Traversability | Cyclical |
| Time · Dimensionality | One |
| Time · Direction | Uni-directional |
| Space · Extent | Infinite |
| Space · Ontological Status | Relational |
| Space · Curvature | Undefined |
| Space · Dimensionality | Three |
| Space · Locality | Local |
| Matter · Extent | Finite |
| Matter · Ontological Status | Relational |
| Matter · Conservation | Non-conserved |
| Matter · Dimensionality | Three |
| Matter · Locality | Local |
| Observer · Time Instance | Multiple |
| Observer · Space Instance | Single |
| Observer · Knowledge Extent | Total |
| Observer · Knowledge Retainment | Total |
| Observer · Physicality | Embodied |
| Observer · Agency | Active |
| Observer · Number | Plural |
| Observer · Metaphysical Agency | None |
| Observer · Moral Authority | Scripture |
| Observer · Theological Method | — |
| Energy · Extent | Finite |
| Energy · Ontological Status | Emergent |
| Energy · Conservation | Non-conserved |
| Energy · Dispersibility | Irreversible |
| Information · Ontological Status | Relational |
| Information · Cosmic Conservation | Non-conserved |
| Information · Personal Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Granularity | Discrete |
Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence
What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.
Time
Visuddhimagga
Discrete moments of consciousness arising in succession. The meditative analysis tracks dharmas as they arise, persist, and pass — an empirical phenomenology of moment-to-moment experience.
Space
Visuddhimagga
Lived space of the meditator; not theorised philosophically.
Matter
Visuddhimagga
The body is one of the meditation objects — analysed into its 32 parts (XI.27ff), into the four elements, into the moments of arising. Relational, not substantival.
Observer
Visuddhimagga
The Theravāda observer is the embodied meditator, plural at the conventional level, active in practice. Knowledge culminates in the four stages of awakening. No personal metaphysical agency.
Energy
Visuddhimagga
Karmic and meditative energy is the central practical concept; not theorised as a separate category.
Information
Visuddhimagga
Karmic-saṃskāric patterns carry across lives. The dharmas are the relational informational units of experience.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
The relation between the Visuddhimagga's synthesis and the older suttas it commentates has been disputed: authentic systematisation or selective recasting? Modern Pāli scholarship generally treats Buddhaghosa as a faithful synthesiser of pre-existing Sinhalese commentarial traditions, but the modern insight-meditation movement's preferred map of the path has sometimes diverged from the Visuddhimagga's.