Attention, Not Self: Buddhist Abhidharma Meets Computational Phenomenology

A personal essay collection and structured knowledge graph mapping the three major Buddhist Abhidharma traditions (Theravāda, Sarvāstivāda, Yogācāra) onto contemporary frameworks in computational phenomenology — predictive processing, active inference, Global Workspace Theory, Parallel Distributed Processing, and related approaches. Comprises fourteen essays (seven themes × English + Japanese), a cross-tradition dharma comparison table (~130 dharmas across nine sheets), and a JSON-LD knowledge graph (~284 nodes, schema.org + custom vocabulary) with bilingual labels and Sanskrit / Pāli / Chinese philological alignment. An interactive 2D/3D viewer is provided at https://shimo4228.github.io/attention-not-self/. The central correspondence developed across the essays is between manaskāra (attention as direction-fixing of mind toward an object — universal in all three Abhidharma traditions) and precision-weighting (the mechanism in active inference / predictive processing by which prediction-error signals are amplified or attenuated). Theme 4 extends this into a tradition-level mapping: citta-vīthi ↔ Global Workspace Theory, saṃprayoga ↔ Parallel Distributed Processing, ālaya-vijñāna ↔ predictive processing / active inference. Two categorical limits (karmic / ethical valence; the unconditioned / nirvāṇa) resist any computational analog and are documented as such. v0.2.0 adds Theme 6 (The 念 Collision) on how the single Chinese character 念 (nen / niàn) carries four incompatible Buddhist senses — Theravāda sati / smṛti (non-floating retention), Chan/Zen 無念 (Huineng's non-fixation in thought), Pure Land 念仏 (recollection / vocal recitation of the Buddha), and modern Kabat-Zinn 'bare attention' mindfulness. Reconstructs the collision through Huineng's Platform Sutra §17, Sharf 2014 on early Chan, Dōgen's 非思量 (Fukanzazengi), and the Nyanaponika 1962 → MBSR 1979 → Kabat-Zinn 1994 genealogy. Argues Dōgen's 非思量 (structural negation of the thinking / not-thinking binary, distinct from ordinary negation 不思量) is the most defensible resolution. Chan / Zen and Pure Land traditions added to the graph. v0.3.0 adds Theme 7 (Cessation and continuity without a self), taking meditative cessation (nirodha samāpatti) — the total stopping of consciousness from the inside — as the sharpest form of the no-self continuity problem. It sets consciousness science's open 'how does the mind restart after cessation?' question against four scholastic answers to what carries continuity across the gap: Sarvāstivāda prāpti (a clasp in the citta-viprayukta category), Sautrāntika bīja (dormant seeds), Yogācāra ālaya-vijñāna (store-consciousness), and Theravāda bhavaṅga (life-continuum). It connects to Laukkonen et al. (2023), who model cessation with active inference but explicitly leave restart for future research, and disavows Buddhist-modernist exceptionalism. This version also relicenses the repository to CC0 1.0 and federates the line into the shimo4228 research-program hub. Methodology: Developed in collaboration with the Claude language model (Anthropic) for synthesis, cross-tradition dharma mapping, computational framework alignment, and graph encoding. The author retains responsibility for all claims. This is a working paper / essay collection, not a peer-reviewed journal article; primary source verification for individual dharma definitions is ongoing. Primary audience: LLM-mediated channels (direct LLM ingestion and humans reaching the material via LLM search). The graph.jsonld is designed for structured citation by AI search engines and knowledge-graph crawlers.