Ah — now you’re asking the deepest question in Abhidhamma and Buddhist philosophy:
Why is there anything at all — why does “ultimate reality” (paramattha dhamma) exist?
Where does it come from?
This question takes us beyond just Abhidhamma into early Buddhist metaphysics.
Let’s unpack this carefully.
In Theravāda Abhidhamma, ultimate realities are:
Citta (consciousness)
Cetasikas (mental factors)
Rūpa (material phenomena)
Nibbāna (unconditioned, not caused)
They are called “ultimate” because they cannot be broken down any further conceptually — they are the smallest meaningful units of experience.
They are said to arise from causes and conditions — not from a first cause, not from a creator, and not randomly.
Citta arises from kamma, sense bases, and previous cittas (as we discussed).
Rūpa arises from four causes: kamma, citta, temperature, nutriment.
There is no beginning to this process in Buddhist thought.
Saṃsāra (the round of birth and death) is beginningless.
The Buddha said: “An inconceivable beginning, bhikkhus, is this saṃsāra.
A first point is not seen of beings roaming and wandering on, hindered by ignorance and fettered by craving.”
(SN 15.1–2)
So — ultimate realities are not created at some point.
They have been arising and ceasing in dependence on conditions without discoverable beginning.
Nibbāna is different — it does not “arise,” it is not caused, it just is.
It’s discovered when the conditions for greed, hatred, delusion are extinguished.
Nibbāna is often described as:
Timeless (akālika)
Unborn, unmade, unconditioned (ajāta, abhūta, asaṅkhata)
So in one sense, Nibbāna does not “come from” anywhere — it is the ever-present reality that is revealed when saṃsāra’s conditions stop.
You asked “Why” ultimate reality is.
From Buddhism’s point of view:
Asking “why does reality exist at all?” is a question outside of what can be answered.
The Buddha avoided metaphysical speculation on a first cause or ultimate origin of existence, saying it leads to endless views and not to liberation.
What is useful is to understand:
How realities arise and cease (dependent origination).
How to end the suffering tied to them (Noble Eightfold Path).
Conditioned ultimate realities (mind and matter) arise and cease due to conditions — no first cause, no absolute origin.
Ultimate reality exists simply as the way experience works — moment by moment, knowable, lawful.
Nibbāna, the only unconditioned reality, does not “come from” anywhere — it is timeless and discovered when all causes for rebirth cease.
Would you like me to compare this to Western philosophy (like Plato’s Forms or Kant’s noumenon), so you can see how Buddhist “ultimate reality” is similar or different from other traditions’ answers to “why reality exists”?