BUDDHACARITA 14.77: Links 3, 4, 5, 6 - With the Grain

[No Sanskrit text]

Tibetan:

| de ltar rnam par śes pa las | | miṅ gzugs ’byuṅ ba mkhyen gyur pa |

| de nas dbaṅ po ’byuṅ ’gyur źiṅ | | dbaṅ po las byuṅ reg pa’o |  

de ltar: thus

rnam par shes pa: consciousness

las: from

ming gzugs: name and form

byung: arise

mkhyen: know

de nas: from that

dbang po: sense faculty (根; indriya)

byung: arise

dbang po: sense faculty

las: from

byung: arise

reg: contact (觸; sparśa)

EHJ's translation from the Tibetan:

77. Thus he understood that from consciousness arises name-and-form, from the latter originate the senses and from the senses arises contact.

Revised:

77. Thus he understood that from divided consciousness arises psycho-physicality, from which originate senses, and from senses arises contact.

Chinese:

名色生諸根 諸根生於觸

name and thing produce the roots (ayatanas). The roots engender contact; (SB)

...name-and-form produces the faculties. The faculties produce contact, (CW)

COMMENT:

In today's verse the circle (going both with and against the grain) formed by divided consciousness (link 3) and psycho-physicality (4) is followed, going with the grain, by six senses (5) and contact (6).

This is as per chapter 26 of Nāgārjuna's MMK:

The doings that lead to yet further becoming, a person enclosed in ignorance, in the three ways, does do – and by these actions, to a new sphere in the cycle of going, does go. Divided knowing, into the new sphere of going, does set, having doings as its causal grounds. And so with the setting in of this divided consciousness, psycho-physicality is instilled. 

There again: With the instilling of psycho-physicality, there is the coming about of six senses. Six senses having arrived, there occurs contact. Depending on eye, on form, and on the bringing of the two together – depending in other words on psycho-physicality – divided consciousness occurs. 

When the threesome of form, consciousness and eye are combined, that is contact; and from that contact there occurs feeling. With feeling as its causal grounds, there is thirsting – because the object of feeling is thirsted after. While thirsting is going on, taking hold takes hold in the four ways. While taking hold is taking hold, the becoming arises of the taker – because becoming, if it were free of taking hold, would be liberated and would not become becoming. Five aggregates, again, are becoming itself. Out of the becoming arises birth. The suffering and suchlike of ageing and death – sorrows, accompanied by bewailing and complaining; downheartedness, troubles – all this arises out of birth. In this way there is the coming into being of this whole aggregate of suffering.  

The doings which are the root of saṁsāra thus does the ignorant one do. The ignorant one therefore is the doer; the wise one is not, because of reality being realized. In the clearing away of ignorance, there is the non-coming-into-being of doings. The clearing away of ignorance, however, is because of the bringing-into-being of just this act of knowing. By the stopping of this one and that one, this one and that one no longer advance. This whole aggregate of suffering is brought in this way to a complete full stop .