[3] The Kośa includes an additional chapter in prose refuting the idea of the "person" (pudgala) favoured by some Buddhists of the Pudgalavada school.
[8] The second chapter examines three interconnected topics, starting with the twenty-two sense faculties (indriya), which govern specific aspects of sentient life.
[8] This chapter further explores the simultaneous arising of conditioned factors, focusing on the interaction between mind moments (citta) and their accompanying thought concomitants.
This leads into a broader discussion of causality, where Vasubandhu identifies the various types of causes (hetu), results (phala), and conditions (pratyaya).
Vasubandhu also explains the intermediate state (antarabhava) between death and rebirth and elaborates on dependent origination (pratītya-samutpāda), which accounts for cyclic existence without an enduring self (atman).
He also depicts the receptacle world (bhājana-loka), detailing its physical structure—Mount Sumeru, continents, and oceans—and its cosmogony, temporal cosmology of kalpas and dissolution.
Debates on this topic include the Pudgalavādin view that action is movement, the Sarvāstivāda claim that it is shape, and Vasubandhu's Sautrāntika position that it is intention (cetanā) directed toward the body.
These are subconscious dispositions that remain inactive until specific causes and conditions trigger them into active defilements, termed “envelopments” (paryavasthāna).
Six primary proclivities are identified: attachment (rāga), hostility (pratigha), ignorance (avidyā), conceit (māna), doubt (vicikitsā), and afflicted views (dṛṣṭi).
In contrast, Vasubandhu’s Sautrāntika perspective denies their ultimate existence, interpreting proclivities as forces (śākti) within the mind stream that lead to afflictions through transformation.
This discussion extends to the nature of past and future dharmas, with Sarvāstivāda asserting their existence and Sautrāntika rejecting unnecessary ontological entities.
Advanced forms include knowledge of exhaustion (kṣayajñāna) and non-arising (anutpādajñāna), unique to arhats, representing certainty in the completion of tasks related to the truths.
It describes the qualities of the four meditations (dhyāna) of the form realm, the four formless perception spheres (āyatana), and the attainment of cessation (nirodhasamāpatti).
Vasubandhu addresses objections from putative Hindu philosophers, tackling issues such as the no-self doctrine's compatibility with memory, agency (e.g., walking), and the differentiation of individual consciousness streams.
However, during a subsequent visit to Tibet, Sāṅkṛtyāyana discovered an ancient palm-leaf manuscript of 367 leaves that contained not only Vasubandhu's verses, but his lost commentary.
[10] In 1967 and then in a revised edition of 1975, Prof. P. Pradhan of Utkal University finally published the original Sanskrit text of the Abhidharmakośabhāṣya, Vasubandhu's great work summarizing earlier traditions of the Vibhāṣā school of Buddhist philosophy.