Upasīva and Fire "Atthaṅgato"

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The (in)famous verses of SNP 5.7 has the Fire simile (with Bhante Sujato’s translation):

“As a flame tossed by a gust of wind,”
“Accī yathā vātavegena khittā,
replied the Buddha,
(upasīvāti bhagavā)
“comes to an end and cannot be reckoned;
Atthaṁ paleti na upeti saṅkhaṁ;
so too, a sage freed from the set of mental phenomena
Evaṁ munī nāmakāyā vimutto,
comes to an end and cannot be reckoned.”
Atthaṁ paleti na upeti saṅkhaṁ”.

This “comes to an end” has always rubbed me the wrong way, because of the Upasīva’s following question:

“One who has disappeared—do they not exist?
“Atthaṅgato so uda vā so natthi,
Or are they free from disease for eternity?
Udāhu ve sassatiyā arogo;

It feels like a weird question to me to wonder about someone who’s disappeared.

Attha in Pāli can mean both Artha (meaning or goal) and Asta in Sanskrit - and it’s very likely the later that we’re involved with.
Bhante @Sunyo explored these verses and notes:

Atthaṃ paleti, “disappears”, literally “comes to an end”. PED remarks under attha that this is a poetic synonym for atthaṃ gacchati, which is indeed used synonymously in the next two verses, in the form atthaṅgato. It is a synonym for cessation, as in “the cessation, subsiding, and disappearance (atthaṅgamo) of form” (SN 22.30). Cnd10 comments: “Atthaṁ paleti means disappears, comes to an end, ceases, subsides, abates.”

To understand the Vedic connonations, I’ve dug into RV.

In RV 3.53.4 we find this:

jāyed astam maghavan sed u yonis tad it tvā yuktā harayo vahantu | yadā kadā ca sunavāma somam agniṣ ṭvā dūto dhanvāty accha ||

“A man’s wife, Maghavan, is his dwelling; verily she is his plural ce of birth; thither let your horses, harnessed (to your car), convey you; we prepare the Soma at the fit season; may Agni come as our messenger before you.”

Here, asta means home, dwelling.

Then the Indra is told to go home (asta) in RV 3.53.6:

apāḥ somam astam indra pra yāhi kalyāṇīr jāyā suraṇaṃ gṛhe te | yatrā rathasya bṛhato nidhānaṃ vimocanaṃ vājino dakṣiṇāvat ||

“When you have drunk the Soma, then, Indra, go home; an auspicious life (abides) plural asantly in your dwelling; in either (case) there is the standing in your car or liberating the steeds for provender.”

And the funeral hymn of RV 10.14.8 has:

saṃ gacchasva pitṛbhiḥ saṃ yameneṣṭāpūrtena parame vyoman | hitvāyāvadyam punar astam ehi saṃ gacchasva tanvā suvarcāḥ ||

“Be united with the Pitṛs, with Yama, and with the fulfilment of your wishes in the highest heaven;discarding iniquity, return to your abode, and unite yourself to a luminous body.”

Having established the home meaning of the word, I went looking for Agni and home, and, sure enough, RV 5.6.1 talks about the home:

agniṃ tam manye yo vasur astaṃ yaṃ yanti dhenavaḥ | astam arvanta āśavo 'staṃ nityāso vājina iṣaṃ stotṛbhya ā bhara ||

“I glorify that Agni who is the giver of dwellings; to whom, as to their home, the kine, the light-faced steeds, the constant offers of oblations, repair; do you, (Agni), bring food to your adorers.”

So Agni, fire, is the home, or asta, in this passage.

I’ve checked Asta in M&W finally for this:

[ astam ] ind. at home , home Lit. RV. , especially used with verbs e.g. [ ástam-√ i ] ( ( [ ástam éti ] ; pr. p. [ astaṃ-yát ] Lit. AV. Lit. ŚBr. ; fut. p. [ astam-eṣyát ] Lit. AV. ; perf. p. [ ástamita ] see below s.v. ) ) ; [ ástaṃ-√ gam ] ( ( [ ástam gácchati ] Lit. AV. ; perf. p. [ astaṃ-gata ] Lit. MBh. , once in reversed order [ gata astaṃ ] Lit. R. i , 33 , 21 ) ) or [ astaṃ-√ yā ] ( ( pr. p. [ -yāt ] Lit. Mn. iv , 37 ) ) to go down , set Lit. RV. Lit. AV.

m. [ astam-√ i ] , [ astaṃ-√ gam ] ( also Caus. see [ astaṃ-gamita ] below) , or √ [ prāp ] ( ( Lit. Kathās. ) ) , to go to one’s eternal home , cease , vanish , perish , die Lit. ŚBr. xiv Lit. MBh.

[ astaṃ-√ nī ] ( ( [ -nayati ] ) ) , to lead to setting , cause to set Lit. MBh. iii , i 7330

So, the perish idea seems to have come about after “sun set” and “fire home” kind of meanings, presumably, when the earliest attestations in RV all mention home explicitly.

Now, does this have any massive implications for how the verse should be read? I don’t know. Maybe. :slight_smile: That’s another discussion that I wouldn’t mind exploring here if someone was interested, about latent-hidden fire Agni and fire similes in these verses.

But at least, it might shed some light on people like me who didn’t find the question legible as “He who disappeared, does he no longer exist? Or is he eternally well?" (Precisely because the confusion of Upasīva implies an ambiguity that comes with the usage of the word) :slight_smile:

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yes, pretty common, see the PED for this.

Attha Attha2 (nt.) [Vedic asta, of uncertain etym.] home, primarily as place of rest & shelter, but in P. phraseology abstracted from the “going home”, i. e. setting of the sun, as disappearance, going out of existence, annihilation, extinction. Only in acc. and as ˚- in foll phrases: atthangacchati to disappear, to go out of existence, to vanish Dh 226 (= vināsaŋ natthibhāvaŋ gacchati DhA iii.324), 384 (= parikkhayaŋ gacchati); pp. atthangata gone home, gone to rest, gone, disappeared; of the sun (= set): J i.175 (atthangate suriye at sunset);

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It’s “disappeared” as in “the sun has disappeared below the horizon”, when it is of course perfectly reasonable to ask “but does the sun still exist?”.

But in the Suttas, the sense of attha as “home” has almost, if not entirely, receded. I do not know of any instance when it’s used explicitly to mean “home”; DPD cites this very passage.

Rather, it’s used routinely as a synonym for nirodha etc., as eg. sn26.9:1.13

yo viññāṇadhātuyā nirodho vūpasamo atthaṅgamo, dukkhasseso nirodho, rogānaṁ vūpasamo, jarāmaraṇassa atthaṅgamo”ti
The cessation, settling, and disappearance of the consciousness element is the cessation of suffering, the settling of diseases, and the disappearance of old age and death.

Obviously it doesn’t mean “old age and death go away for a while and then come back”. Nor does it mean that they enter a subtle latent state or whatever. It means they end completely and never return.

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Right — but still it just makes a little more clear to me that Upasīva (a brahmin, who was likely well versed in Rv, presumably) would be confused hearing such a loaded term, and asking like “Wait, what exactly do you mean with asta now?” to the Buddha. :slight_smile:

Thus it likewise makes the disappear translation more legible to me finally. :slight_smile:

By the way, a detail that I found interesting was how Agni is brought to life with wind — but here flame goes out with the wind. I’m back on my phone now, so I don’t have the RV ref, but that was an interesting find!

Thanks for that! I always forget to consult the PED for how immensely useful it is.

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Just to add here:

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For all this discussion of the attha, it’s actually the paleti that caught my eye in the Buddha’s reply: “As a flame tossed by wind runs off…” Now that’s an image!

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yes, this usage is mentioned in the same PED entry:

atthaŋ paleti = atthangacchati (fig.) Sn 1074 (= atthangameti nirujjhati Nd2 28).

also see

Palāyati Palāyati [cp. Vedic palāyati, palāy] to run (away)

(P.S. I hope people are not flipping out by PED’s usage of the ‘eng’ character for the niggahīta !!)

This translation, by Ven. Anandajoti, may feel more comfortable, as it captures the idea of the setting sun , and the day, as, ‘coming to rest’ rather than vanishing.

“The one who has come to rest, is he then nothing?” said venerable Upasīva,
“or is he actually eternally healthy?
Please explain this to me, O Sage,
for this Teaching has been understood by you.”

“There is no measure of the one who has come to rest, Upasīva,” said the Gracious One,
“there is nothing by which they can speak of him,
when everything has been completely removed,
all the pathways for speech are also completely removed.”

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Just doing some deep breathing over here.

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Depends on how you interpret “disappear”:

  1. "If people or things disappear, they go somewhere where they cannot be seen or found: "
  2. “To no longer exist”

So ‘disappears’ captures the double meaning. If that double meaning is there, that is. Maybe to Upasiva.

But the Buddha’s implication to me is clear from the final lines of the sutta: “When everything is terminated, all ways of describing are terminated as well.” And it’s the Buddha who brings this attham paleti up in the first place. So he means “to no longer exist”.

The suttas also are clear that a flame that goes out just ceases to exist.

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When reading this sentence - Accī yathā vātavegena khittā - do you visualize something similar to this:
fire-flames-sparks-billowing-animated-gif-image

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I don’t know much about the RV, but the way I understand it, in the RV, the spiritual path fully lived would mean that, at death, the soul would be going home to the Fathers to live a continued existence in the realm of Yama. There is no such idea of going home like that in the suttas. Perhaps that was one of the Buddha’s clever ways of redefining an existing concept like attha?

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“Accī yathā vātavegena khittā,
(upasīvāti bhagavā)
Atthaṁ paleti na upeti saṅkhaṁ;
Evaṁ munī nāmakāyā vimutto,
Atthaṁ paleti na upeti saṅkhaṁ”.

Just as a wind, because of having cast away the flames by its own power, subsides/sinks away and cannot be defined; so a sage who has cast away mind and body subsides/sinks away and cannot be defined.

In my opinion, perhaps the wind god didn’t kill Agni but only abandoned him! And when the very object that allows people to know ‘there is wind’ or ‘the wind is like this or like that’ is abandoned, then it - the wind god himself - suddenly becomes undefinable. Because the wind is only known and defined when there is an object impacted by it. And here, in my view, it is the wind itself, not the flames, that is the point of reference for the Muni.

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Hello everyone, it’s nice to see this verse and dialogue getting more attention here: I regard the teachings of the Pārāyana-vagga as amongst the most important in the Pali canon. But I must point out that the interpretations offered so far to me seem implausible - I mentioned this already in a very interesting post on the subject by Sunyo.

The main point to grasp is that the verse is a metaphor: it is not saying that the liberated person literally ‘disappears’; rather, the point is that the sage is like a flame that is extinguished. Fire imagery is very common throughout the early Buddhist teachings. Likening a liberated person to an extinguished flame does not mean that the person is actually ‘extinguished’: it is a metaphor.

This suggests that the verse is almost certainly referring to the transcendent state of the person liberated in life, a reading supported by two other points: first, the verse refers to a ‘sage’ (muni), a word which is never used in the Pali canon to refer to the liberated person who has died (as far as I am aware); second, the sage is said to be liberated from ‘the category name’, i.e. conceptuality. The term nāma does not refer to ‘mental phenomena’ in general: Cone’s Dictionary of Pali mentions Sue Hamilton’s definition of nāma as “the entire conceptual identity of the individual”. Both points indicate that the verse is talking about is the sage’s ineffable state in this life, as at other points in the Pali canon where fire imagery is used.

I could also add that the teachings in the Pārāyana-vagga before this refer to mindfulness type practices. E.g. in the final verse of the preceding teaching, to Dhotaka, the Buddha says: ‘Whatever you are aware of, above, below, across, in between, understanding this as attachment in/for the world, do not have craving for ongoing existence.’ The focus of the collection is very much on spiritual transformation in the here and now, not what happens in the hereafter.

A final point is that if the verse is read to mean that the sage is literally extinguished, then the teaching is tantamount to nihilism. I don’t see any way around this

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Hello there, good sir! Nice to see you around these parts. :slight_smile:

On a kind of related note, I’ve been trying to trace when Dharma has started to include Phenomenon in the Pāli suttas. So far in Vedas & Upanishads, I’ve not been able to find such such a usage — seems like it has the range of nomos, pragmata early on, spilling into logos, truth, but still not physis, phenomenon yet.

To me, it seems like another Buddhist subversion — truth being relocated to what is immediately observed and experienced.

I remember from your Upasīva article that you hadn’t really considered the last lines “sabbe dhamma” much differently than “when everything is removed” (apologies if my memory is failing me!); however, “when all the ideation is removed” seems like an interesting reading. I’ve not been able to find “sabbe dhamma” ever meaning “everything” in a Pre-Buddhist usage.

Pre-Buddhist texts seem obsessed with establishing and upholding Dhamma. The raft tells us to abandon it, Upasīva tell us its destruction — this seems like both a semantic shift and subversion of Vedic values.

But I think such a reading could work towards your proposed freedom from “namakaya”? What do you think? :slight_smile:

I had tried to explore it a bit here (without tracing the word Dhamma, but still amounting to that). :slight_smile:

All the best.

:lotus:

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Hi all, :slight_smile:

Someone asked me in private to reply to this. I would be repeating myself a bit, but OK. :slight_smile: Perhaps in doing so I can explain my point of view better, since it seems it’s not completely understood. And then people may perhaps be able to give a more pointed reply and show me where I’m mistaken.

To Alex Wynne:

Whether the going out of a fire is a metaphor is not the question. The question is: what does the metaphor imply?

And to me the mere fact that it is a metaphor does not suggest

Why can’t it be a metaphor yet still refer to the situation after death?

? The most famous use of the fire imagery in the canon is MN72, where the unmistakable question is what happens to the liberated mendicant / Tathāgata (i.e. sage) after death, whether they get reborn or not. It’s the exact same metaphor as the Upasiva Sutta, as I see it. MN72 is important context for interpreting this sutta, especially given its cryptic and poetic nature.

What is essential to understanding my interpretation is that it’s Upasiva who thinks an essential sage comes to an end, not the Buddha. The Buddha says you cannot identify such a thing as a sage (i.e. self), just as there is no thing-in-itself that is THE fire. In other words, it’s just name-and-form (and consciousness) that ceases, not a self. This also explains—in a standard way that is found throughout the canon—why the Buddha’s teaching does not amount to annihilationism.

It’s just like the Buddha uses the term Tathagata to conventionally refer to enlightened people while alive. But in MN72, as elsewhere, he refuses to flat out affirm that a Tathagata “still exists” or “no longer exists” after death. It’s the same situation with the term muni, is what I’m suggesting.

Also, it’s clear that Upasiva himself at least takes the Buddha to be talking about death when he asks about the sage: “does he no longer exist, or is he eternally well?” In my interpretation, the Buddha actually addresses this question. If the Buddha was only talking about liberatoin while alive, he would effectively just be leaving Upasiva’s confusion unaddressed.

The only other use of nāmakāya is of course in DN15, where it just refers to nāma in the compound nāmarūpa. There may be no universal agreement on what nāma means in that context, but the consensus interpretation is certainly not that it refers to conceptuality.

It’s interesting that Upasiva is an Upanisadic Brahmin, and such Brahmins believed that one’s name survives one’s death and travels with one. This is one of the more famous teachins about nāma in the Upanisads. However, the Buddha talks about getting liberated from “nāma”…

Gonda explains the wider cultural context in “Notes on Names …”:

Among students of comparative religion and cultural anthropology it is a matter of common knowledge that the name was widely regarded as an essential part of its bearer, as in a way identical with him; that it is “equivalent to his true existence” [quoting Eliade] or “is to be regarded as an essential part of his personality” [quoting Masani]. […] This belief obtained also in ancient India. Over and over again authors give evidence of their conviction that the connections between a name and its bearer, whether this is a person or a thing, is so intimate that there is for all practical purposes question of identity. […] Names are as essential a part of man’s personality as his physical strength, his organs, his life-breath.‍

The Buddha, of course, denied such “identity” and “essential parts”. His teachings on non-self again.

For the meaning of the term nāma, I found Olalde’s " Zum Begriff Nāmarūpa" more on point than Hamilton’s works. Anyway, even Hamilton agrees that “some of the contexts in which the term [nāmarūpa] is found in the Sutta Pitaka do suggest that it means ‘mind and body’.” (Identity and Experience, p124)

That’s true. And this is not just the case in the Parayana Vagga: it is the case in the entire canon. The transformation people must undergo to get enlightened is a more pragmatic focus; it’s something they can directly practice. What happens after death is just a natural consequence of that transformation. However, it’s not like the “hereafter” is completely unaddressed. The suttas talk about this also, and I think there is no reason why the Parayana wouldn’t do so too.

FWIW, the commentaries (PJ and Nidd) think about these matters of the Upasiva Sutta as follows (Bhikkhu Bodhi’s translation):

Then the Blessed One, without adopting either annihilation or eternal existence [i.e. Upasiva’s “does he no longer exist, or is he eternally well?”], spoke the verse “As a flame,” showing the final nibbāna through non-clinging of a noble disciple who has arisen there [meaning “reborn in the base of nothingness”]. Cannot be designated: It cannot be described thus: “It has gone in such and such a direction.”

According to Nidd the latter refers to the question asked in MN72 when the Buddha explains the “after death” situation: in which direction does a fire go after it goes out? So the commentaries recognize the same essential connection with MN72. And they say:

There is no measure of one who has gone out [means]: For one who has gone out, who has attained final nibbāna by way of the nibbāna element without residue remaining, there is no measure by way of form, no measure by way of feeling, no measure by way of perception, no measure by way of volitional activities, no measure by way of consciousness.

That is, if there are no aggregates, there is nothing we can say.

The commentarial understanding is not completely identical to mine, but it is very close.

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Hello bhante again! :slight_smile: Thanks for chiming in.

I’m beginning to think Yamaka Sutta again offers a clean parallel to Upasīvasutta, with Muni “disappearing”, and Tathagata “Not being found alive”.

Even MN 72 which you’ve quoted seems to point something along these lines:

For a realized one has seen:‘Such is form, such is the origin of form, such is the disappearance of form…

That’s why a Realized One is freed with the ending, fading away, cessation, giving up, and letting go of all conceiving, all churning, and all I-making, mine-making, or underlying tendency to conceit, I say.”

So, isn’t it possible that namakaya may be an interesting way to say asmimana? → “I am this name, I am the muni” etc.?

Since, in Yamaka and MN72, the reason the question “Is tathagata x after death?” is irrelevant, is precisely because Tathagata has already disappeared for Yamaka, there’s no identifying with the khandas — rather than khandas ceasing after death, per se.

So I don’t disagree with you on this:

Bur rather, just relocating the fire analogy to the sage realising that there’s no sage, like there’s no tathagata at all (and like in the Tathagata example, sage/tathagata both being a paradoxical sounding shorthand for someone who stopped identifying with the khandas). :slight_smile:

Since the question Upasīva asks is thus:

This seems identical to the common refrain in Thag/Thig, like Thig 1.15:

I was restrained
“Kāyena saṁvutā āsiṁ,
in body, speech, and mind.
vācāya uda cetasā;
Having plucked out craving, root and all,
Samūlaṁ taṇhamabbuyha,
I’m cooled and quenched.
sītibhūtāmhi nibbutā”ti.

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:slight_smile: I was going to mention that sutta as well (SN22.85). It’s on the exact same principles, indeed. It just doesn’t use the fire simile.

Yes, the “cooled” refers to enlightenment (“right there”, in the realm of nothingness, where he “stays for many years [i.e. doesn’t die] without faring on”).

However, Upasiva’s actual question is: “would the consciousness of someone like him [who is cooled] pass away?” This refers to their death. And it’s only then that the Buddha introduces the fire simile.

(Here I’m with Wynne (and Sujato among others) that Upasiva is not asking two separate questions. Bodhi instead includes a bracket “[or]”, which I think is based on the commentaries. Either way, the commentary also takes “would the consciousness of someone like him pass away” to refer to death, to nibbāna without remnant. Also, the word for “pass away” is caveyya, which commonly means to die. The variant reading bhavetha is not convincing and probably a commentarial intrusion, as I think Norman pointed out.)

In a way the concept of “a Tathagata” has disappeared already before death, I agree. The whole point is that there never was an inherent Tathagata in the first place. But this doesn’t change matters, because the initial (misguided) questions of Yamaka still revolve around death. Same for Vaccha’s questions in MN72. And the same for Upasiva.

Maybe at some point Upasiva got right view and wouldn’t ask questions about death in this way again. But at the time he did ask these questions, they were still about whether a sage (muni) ceases or continues after death. And part of my point is that the Buddha’s reply does not completely avoid this matter, as in the alternative interpretation. It’s just like he doesn’t avoid it in MN72 when speaking to Vaccha and just like Sariputta doesn’t avoid it when talking to Yamaka. The answer in each case is: Before death there was no inherent Tathāgata/muni, so no inherent Tathāgata/muni can cease at death either.

Nāma is not an easy to grasp concept no matter how we put it. However, I see no evidence for this idea. If we were to read the Upasiva Sutta in such a way, it would have to hing on how we interpret “liberated from” nāmakāya, not on the word nāmakāya itself.

The suttas repeatedly say that nāmarūpa ceases with the cessation of consciousness. Also in the Parayana Vagga, Snp5.2:

As to where the immaterial aspects and body [nāma-rūpa]
fully come to cease:
when consciousness ceases,
then those come to cease.

Note that Upasiva brings up the fading away of consciousness in the quote you gave. This is directly connected to the mention of rūpa and nāma in the same sutta, because they always go together with consciousness.

Wynne might maintain that the Parayana is not concerned with matters after death at all, but to me it’s clear that the enlightened being is still conscious. Consciousness only ceases when they pass away. Hence nāma(rūpa) only ceases at that time, too. And the above quote, from the Parayana, refers to this. It’s also what the Upasiva Sutta is about.

For consciousness ceasing at death, see for example the Yamaka Sutta, since we already mentioned it:

“Then, Venerable Yamaka, how would you now answer if asked: ‘What happens to an enlightened, undefiled mendicant after their body falls apart, after death?’”

“Venerable, if I were asked that, I would answer: ‘Form, feeling, perception, will, and consciousness are impermanent. What is impermanent is suffering. What is suffering has ceased, has disappeared.’”

What Upasiva is told is the same, in my interpretation. And it is effectively this: consciousness passes away, nāma and rūpa cease. But no sage as such is annihilated (or continues forever).

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But in Buddhist usage it is literally everything, since sabbe dhamma is anatta, and in the Buddha’s view everything that can be thought of is not the Self, then sabbe dhamma encompasses all things.

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:slight_smile: I think you’re missing the distinction I was aiming for here, friend.

Let’s put it this way: All khandas are selfless too. All six sense fields are selfless too.

But khandas are not six sense fields. In a way, yes, they both are ways to express totality… But still, they’re distinct concepts.

So, to what totality is sabbe dhamma pointing at, here? In very few places in the Nikayas, dhamma actually means phenomenon; in vedic usage, it often means norms, customs, natural law and in upanishads, truths.

So, When all concepts / norms / truths are removed is a different way to express totality than when all items are removed.

I agree with Bhante @Sunyo above that Upasīva was agitated about the sage-after-death, but precisely because how a sage stops identifying with the khandas is why that question is useless, .

And again, Yamakasutta gives us another clean parallel: Tathagata can’t be talked about even when alive. MN 72 likewise:

A realized one is freed from reckoning in terms of consciousness. They’re deep, immeasurable, and hard to fathom,

Thus, even while alive, we can say a sage has uprooted all dhamma and thus is beyond reckoning, a point made in Yamakasutta and MN72 and elsewhere repeatedly; dhamma here wouldn’t necessarily mean all things (since khandas aren’t removed, but just the identification with them) but, all manner of conceptualisation by which one might define the Sage. :slight_smile:

Thus, Upasīvasutta would be the same move in many other parallel suttas: Querent asks the Buddha about what happens to the sage after death, the Buddha finding that question irrelevant because the sage has been freed from reckoning while alive, raft of dhamma abandoned.

Hence the last two lines, following the prose examples, would refer to a living sage.

A few other examples

Sabbābhibhū sabbavidūhamasmi,
sabbesu dhammesu anūpalitto;
sabbañjaho taṇhākkhaye vimutto,
sayaṁ abhiññāya kamuddiseyyaṁ.
“I have overcome all, I know all;
unstained among all dhammas;
having abandoned all, liberated through craving’s destruction,
having directly known for myself, whom should I name as teacher?”

MN 26, Describing the living Buddha being unstained among sabbesu dhammesu.

Bhikkhus, when the gods with Indra, with Brahmā and with Pajāpati seek a bhikkhu who is thus liberated in mind, they do not find anything of which they could say: ‘The consciousness of one thus gone is supported by this.’ Why is that? One thus gone, I say, is untraceable here and now.

MN22

All manner of speech being altogether removed is commonly used for arhats and the Tathagata while alive. :slight_smile:

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Then not all things are anatta, then there is something not empty of atta, then shunyata is not the all-encompassing seal of all things. It is strange to reduce dhammas to mere philosophical concepts. You are wrong that in the suttas, dhammas do not denote phenomena. In the suttas, dhammas very often simply denote all things; in this sense, the meaning is even broader than the usual “mental phenomenon.”