Visuddhimagga (the pah of purification)

by Ñāṇamoli Bhikkhu | 1956 | 388,207 words | ISBN-10: 9552400236 | ISBN-13: 9789552400236

This page describes Dependent Origination (vi): Contact of the section Dependent Origination (paññā-bhūmi-niddesa) of Part 3 Understanding (Paññā) of the English translation of the Visuddhimagga (‘the path of purification’) which represents a detailled Buddhist meditation manual, covering all the essential teachings of Buddha as taught in the Pali Tipitaka. It was compiled Buddhaghosa around the 5th Century.

[Full title: B. Exposition of Dependent Origination (III): Detailed Exposition (vi): Contact]

220. As to the clause “With the sixfold base as condition, contact”:

Contact is briefly of six kinds
With eye-contact and others too;
According to each consciousness
It is in detail thirty-two.

221. Briefly, with the clause “With the sixfold base as condition, contact,” there are only the six kinds beginning with eye-contact, that is to say, eye-contact, ear-contact, nose-contact, tongue-contact, body-contact, and mind-contact. But in detail the five profitable resultant and the five unprofitable resultant beginning with eye-contact make ten; the rest, which are associated with the twenty-two kinds of mundane resultant consciousness, make twenty-two. So all these come to thirty-two ((34)–(65)), like the consciousness with formations as condition given above.

222. But as to the sixfold base that is a condition for this thirty-twofold contact. Herein:

Some wise men take the sixfold base
To be the five internal bases
With the sixth; but others count
These plus the six external bases.

223. Herein, firstly, there are those who take this to be an exposition of the occurrence of what is clung to, [that is, kammically-acquired aggregates,] and they maintain that the conditioning [bases] and the conditionally-arisen [contact] are only what is included in one’s own continuity. They take any one part to represent any remaining one of its kind, since the condition for contact in the immaterial states is the sixth base [only], according to the text “With the sixth base as condition, contact” (Vibh 179), and elsewhere it is the sixfold base inclusively. So they have it that “sixfold base” means the internal [five] beginning with the eye plus the sixth (mind) base. For that sixth base and that sixfold base are styled “sixfold base.” But there are those who maintain that it is only the conditionally-arisen [contact] that is contained in a single continuity, while the conditioning [bases] are contained in separate [that is, past] continuities as well. They maintain that all and any such bases are a condition for contact, and they include also the [six] external ones. So they have it that “sixfold base” means the same internal [five] plus the sixth plus the external ones beginning with visible data. For that sixth base and that [partial] sixfold base and the sixfold base along with these [external ones] each representing the rest [566] are styled sixfold base too.

224. Here it may be asked: “One kind of contact does not derive from all the bases, nor all the kinds of contact from one base. And yet ‘With the sixfold base as condition, contact’ is said in the singular. Why is that?”

225. Here is the answer: It is true that neither is one derived from all nor all from one. However, one is derived from many. For eye-contact is derived from the eye base, from the visible-data base, from the mind base reckoned as eyeconsciousness, and from the mental-datum base consisting of the remaining associated states. And each case should be construed as appropriate in this way. Therefore:

Though stated in the singular,
He shows therewith in all such cases
That this contact, though only one,
Is yet derived from several bases.

Though stated in the singular: the meaning is, by this statement in the singular that “With the sixfold base as condition, contact,” it is pointed out by the Blessed One (Tādin) that contact, which is of one kind, comes into being from many bases.

[How the Sixfold Base is a Condition for Contact]

226. But as regards these bases:

Five in six ways; and after that
One in nine ways; the external six
As contact’s conditionality
According to each case we fix.

227. Here is the explanation: firstly, the five consisting of the eye base, etc., are conditions in six ways, as support, prenascence, faculty, dissociation, presence, and non-disappearance conditions, for contact classed in five ways as eyecontact, and so on. After that, the single resultant mind base is a condition in nine ways, as conascence, mutuality, support, result, nutriment, faculty, association, presence, and non-disappearance conditions, for the variouslyclassed resultant mind contact. But in the case of the external bases, the visibledata base is a condition in four ways, as object, prenascence, presence, and nondisappearance conditions, for eye-contact. Likewise the sound base, etc., respectively for ear-contact, and so on. But these and mental data as object are conditions likewise, and as object condition too, for mind-contact, so “the external six as contact’s conditionality according to each case we fix.”

This is the detailed explanation of the clause “With the sixfold base as condition, contact.”

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