upādā rūpa
Derived materiality
[ oo-PAH-da ROO-pa ]
Seeing it in life
Upādā-rūpa includes the five sense faculties, the five sense objects (visible form, sound, smell, taste; touch = three of the great elements), sex, heart-base, life-faculty, nutritive essence, space element, two intimations, three mutabilities, and four characteristics.
In short
24 kinds of matter dependent on the great elements.
The analysis
Twenty-four kinds of matter are counted as upādā-rūpa — dependent on and derived from the four great elements without being reducible to them. The list includes the five sense faculties, four sense objects, femininity and masculinity, the heart-base, the physical life-faculty, nutritive essence, the space element, two forms of intimation (the material basis of gesture and speech), three mutabilities, and four characteristics of matter.
Where it sits
Upādā-rūpa depends on mahābhūta the way a shadow depends on an object — present only because the four great elements are present, but constituting a distinct further layer of material phenomena.
The clarity in the eye that makes seeing possible, distinct from the eyeball as ordinary anatomy, is pasāda-rūpa — one specific item within the broader upādā-rūpa list, illustrating how granular this classification gets.
Commonly mistaken for
A single undifferentiated category. Twenty-four distinct kinds are enumerated, covering sense faculties, sense objects, gender, vitality, communication, and more.
Independent of the great elements. Every derived rūpa depends on mahābhūta for its existence.
Abhidhammattha Saṅgaha VI.
Related terms