Visuddhimagga (the pah of purification)
by Ñāṇamoli Bhikkhu | 1956 | 388,207 words | ISBN-10: 9552400236 | ISBN-13: 9789552400236
This page describes Dependent Origination (vii): Feeling 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.
Dependent Origination (vii): Feeling
[Full title: B. Exposition of Dependent Origination (III): Detailed Exposition (vii): Feeling]
228. As to the clause “With contact as condition, feeling”:
Feelings, when named by way of door
“Eye-contact-born” and all the rest,
Are only six; but then they are
At nine and eighty sorts assessed.
229. In the analysis of this clause [in the Vibhaṅga] only six kinds of feeling according to door are given thus, “Eye-contact-born feeling, ear-, nose-, tongue-, body-, mind-contact-born feeling” (Vibh 136). [567] Still, when classed according to association with the eighty-nine kinds of consciousness, they are “at nine and eighty sorts assessed.”
230.
But from the nine and eighty feelings
Thirty-two, no more, appear
Associated with result,
And only those are mentioned here.Herein, contact in the five doors
Conditions five in eightfold way,
And single way the rest; it acts
In the mind door in the same way.
231. Herein, in the five doors contact beginning with eye-contact is a condition in eight ways, as conascence, mutuality, support, result, nutriment, association, presence, and non-disappearance conditions, for the five kinds of feeling that have respectively eye sensitivity, etc., as their physical basis. But that contact beginning with eye-contact is a condition in one way only, as decisive-support condition, for the rest of resultant feeling in the sense sphere occurring in each door as receiving, investigation and registration.
232. In the mind door in the same way: the contact called conascent mind-contact is also a condition in the same eight ways for sense-sphere resultant feeling occurring as registration in the mind door, and so also for the kinds of resultant feeling in the three planes occurring with rebirth-linking, life-continuum and death. But the mind-contact associated with mind-door adverting is a condition in one way only, as decisive-support condition, for the kinds of feeling that occur in the mind door as registration in the sense sphere.
This is the detailed explanation of the clause “With contact as condition, feeling.”