What this chapter covers: This chapter describes the second stage of insight purification: understanding why mind and body arise. By seeing the conditions that give rise to mentality-materiality, the meditator overcomes doubt about the past, present, and future. There is no creator, no self that persists — only an unbroken chain of cause and result.
What This Purification Means
Knowledge that is established by overcoming doubt about the three periods of time — past, present, and future — through discerning the conditions of mentality-materiality: that is purification by overcoming doubt.
Seeking the Cause
The meditator who wants to accomplish this sets about looking for the cause and condition of mind and body. Just as a skilled doctor who encounters a disease looks for its origin, or a compassionate person who finds a helpless infant in the road wonders who its parents are.
Neither Created by a Creator Nor Arising Without Cause
The meditator begins by reasoning like this:
“First, mind and body are not causeless. If they had no cause, they would be the same everywhere, always, and for everyone. Second, they have no creator or overlord, because nothing exists apart from mentality-materiality that could serve as one. And if someone claims that mentality-materiality itself is the creator, then that creator-mentality-materiality would itself be causeless. So there must be a cause and condition. What are they?”
The Conditions for the Body
Having directed attention to the question, the meditator first discerns the conditions for the material body:
“When this body is born, it is not born in a lotus flower or a treasury of gems. It is born in the space between the stomach and the backbone — surrounded by bowels and entrails, in a place that is cramped, dark, and unpleasant.”
Its causes are four things: ignorance, craving, clinging, and action (kamma). These bring about its birth. Nutriment is its condition, since that is what sustains it. So five things together constitute the body’s cause and condition.
Of these five:
- Ignorance, craving, and clinging are like the mother — they provide decisive support
- Action is like the father — it generates the body
- Nutriment is like the wet-nurse — it keeps the body alive
The Conditions for the Mind
After discerning the body’s conditions, the meditator turns to the mental side: “Due to eye and visible object, eye-consciousness arises.” The same applies for ear and sound, nose and smell, tongue and taste, body and touch, mind-base and mental objects.
When the meditator sees that mentality-materiality always arises due to conditions — now, in the past, and in the future — all doubt is abandoned.
The Sixteen Doubts
What doubts are overcome? There are sixteen altogether:
Five about the past:
- Was I in the past?
- Was I not in the past?
- What was I in the past?
- How was I in the past?
- Having been what, what did I become?
Five about the future:
- Will I be in the future?
- Will I not be in the future?
- What will I be in the future?
- How will I be in the future?
- Having been what, what will I become?
Six about the present:
- Am I?
- Am I not?
- What am I?
- How am I?
- Where did this being come from?
- Where will it go?
Two Kinds of Conditions for Mind
Another meditator sees the conditions for mentality as twofold: common and specific.
Common conditions are the six sense doors (eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind) and the six kinds of sense objects (sights, sounds, smells, tastes, touches, mental objects). These are conditions for all types of mentality — wholesome, unwholesome, and neutral alike.
Specific conditions differ depending on the type of mentality:
- For wholesome states: wise attention, hearing good teaching, and associating with wise people
- For unwholesome states: unwise attention and the opposite influences
- For resultant states: past action and its conditions
- For functional states: the life-continuum and its conditions
Four Conditions for the Body
The conditions for materiality are fourfold: action, consciousness, temperature, and nutriment.
- Action is a condition for action-originated matter only when it is past
- Consciousness is a condition for consciousness-originated matter at the moment of arising
- Temperature and nutriment are conditions at the moment of their presence
Dependent Arising in Reverse
Another meditator discerns conditions by working backward through the chain of dependent arising (paticca-samuppada):
“This aging-and-death of formations comes to be when there is birth. Birth comes when there is becoming. Becoming comes when there is clinging. Clinging comes when there is craving. Craving comes when there is feeling. Feeling comes when there is contact. Contact comes when there are the six sense bases. The six sense bases come when there is mentality-materiality. Mentality-materiality comes when there is consciousness. Consciousness comes when there are formations. Formations come when there is ignorance.”
Seeing this, doubt is abandoned.
Dependent Arising in Direct Order
Another meditator discerns conditions by working forward through the chain:
“With ignorance as condition, formations arise. With formations as condition, consciousness arises. With consciousness as condition, mentality-materiality arises.” And so on through the entire chain to aging-and-death.
Seeing this, doubt is abandoned.
The Round of Action and Result
Another meditator discerns conditions by means of the round of action (kamma) and the round of result (vipaka):
In the past life’s active phase, five things operated: delusion (which is ignorance), accumulation (which is formations), attachment (which is craving), embracing (which is clinging), and intention (which is becoming). These five were the conditions for rebirth here.
In this life’s resultant phase, five things have arisen: rebirth-linking (which is consciousness), descent into the womb (which is mentality-materiality), sensitivity (which is the sense bases), what is contacted (which is contact), and what is felt (which is feeling). These five have their conditions in past action.
In this life’s active phase, with the maturing of the senses, the same five active factors operate again: delusion, accumulation, attachment, embracing, and intention. These are conditions for rebirth in the future.
In the future life’s resultant phase, the same five resultant factors will arise: rebirth-linking, descent, sensitivity, contact, and feeling. These will have their conditions in action done here.
And so the wheel turns.
The Twelve Kinds of Action
Action is classified in three different ways, each fourfold.
By When It Ripens
- Action ripening here and now: The intention of the first moment in a series of mental impulses. It gives its result in this very life. If it cannot, it lapses — it simply expires without producing any result.
- Action ripening at rebirth: The intention of the last moment in the series. It gives its result in the very next life. If it cannot, it lapses.
- Action ripening in some later life: The intention of the five moments in between. It gives its result whenever it finds the opportunity, no matter how many lifetimes pass. This kind never lapses.
- Lapsed action: Action of the first two kinds that failed to find an opportunity to ripen.
By Priority
- Weighty action: Whether wholesome or unwholesome, the heaviest action ripens first. This includes both the gravest misdeeds and the most powerful meditative attainments.
- Habitual action: Whatever has been done repeatedly — good or bad — takes priority when weighty action is absent.
- Death-threshold action: Whatever is vividly remembered at the moment of death determines the next rebirth when the first two are absent.
- Stored-up action: Action that has been performed many times in previous lives. This produces rebirth only when all three above are absent.
By Function
- Productive action: Both wholesome and unwholesome. It directly produces the mental and material aggregates at rebirth and during life.
- Consolidating action: Cannot produce results on its own. But when another action has already produced rebirth, it extends and sustains the resulting pleasure or pain.
- Frustrating action: Obstructs the pleasure or pain produced by another action. It cuts off and weakens results without producing any of its own.
- Supplanting action: Cuts off weaker action, takes over its opportunity, and produces its own result instead.
Background Note: The full detail of how these twelve kinds of action interact — which ripens first, which displaces which — is said to be clear in its true nature only to the Buddha’s own knowledge of action and its results. A meditator practicing insight can know this succession only in part.
The Verse on Action and Result
When the meditator has seen how mentality-materiality arises due to conditions through the round of action and result — past, present, and future — doubt is abandoned:
Action-result proceeds from action, Result has action for its source, Future becoming springs from action, And this is how the world goes round.
No Doer Apart from the Doing
In all kinds of existence — in every realm, every destiny, every state — there appears only mentality-materiality occurring through the linking of cause with fruit.
The meditator sees no doer over and above the doing. No experiencer over and above the experiencing. But he sees clearly with right understanding that the wise use “doer” when there is doing and “experiencer” when there is experiencing simply as a manner of speaking.
Hence the Ancients said:
There is no doer of a deed Or one who reaps the deed’s result; Phenomena alone flow on — No other view than this is right.
And so, while action and result Thus causally maintain their round, As seed and tree succeed in turn, No first beginning can be shown.
Nor in the future round of births Can they be shown not to occur: Sectarians, not knowing this, Have failed to gain self-mastery.
They assume a being, see it as Eternal or annihilated. Adopt the sixty-two wrong views, Each contradicting one another.
The stream of craving bears them on Caught in the meshes of their views: And as the stream thus bears them on They are not freed from suffering.
A monk, disciple of the Buddha, With direct knowledge of this fact Can penetrate this deep and subtle Void conditionality.
And further:
There is no action in result, Nor does result exist in action; Though they are void of one another, There is no fruit without the action.
As fire does not exist inside The sun, a gem, cow-dung, nor yet Outside them, but is brought to be By means of its component parts,
So neither can result be found Within the action, nor without; Nor does the action still persist In the result it has produced.
The action of its fruit is void; No fruit exists yet in the action; And still the fruit is born from it, Wholly depending on the action.
For here there is no creator god, No author of the round of births, Phenomena alone flow on — Cause and component their condition.
Full Understanding of the Known
When the meditator has discerned the conditions of mentality-materiality and abandoned doubt about the three periods of time, then all past, future, and present states are understood in terms of death and rebirth-linking.
He understands: “Aggregates produced in the past with action as condition ceased right there in the past. But other aggregates arose in this life with past action as their condition. Nothing has come over from the past life to this one. And aggregates produced in this life will cease here. Other aggregates will arise in a future life. Nothing will go over from this life to the next.”
To make this clear, the text offers several analogies:
- A teacher’s recitation does not pass from the teacher’s mouth into the student’s mouth — yet the student does learn to recite
- Medicine drunk by a proxy does not enter the sick person’s stomach — yet the sick person is cured
- The arrangement of ornaments on a face does not pass into the mirror — yet the reflection appears
- A flame does not move from one wick to another — yet the new flame is produced
In the same way, nothing passes over from one life to the next. Yet aggregates, sense bases, and elements do not fail to arise, with prior aggregates as their condition.
Just as eye-consciousness comes next Following on mind-element, Which, though it does not come from that, Yet fails not next to be produced,
So too, in rebirth-linking, conscious Continuity takes place: The prior consciousness breaks up, The subsequent is born from that. They have no interval between, Nor gap that separates the two; While nothing whatever passes over, Still rebirth-linking comes about.
The Result of This Practice
When all states are understood in terms of death and rebirth-linking, the meditator’s knowledge of conditionality becomes sound in all its aspects. The sixteen kinds of doubt are thoroughly abandoned. The eight kinds of doubt about the teacher, the teaching, and the community are abandoned too. And the sixty-two kinds of wrong views are suppressed.
This knowledge — established by overcoming doubt about the three periods of time through discerning the conditions of mentality-materiality — is what should be understood as purification by overcoming doubt. Other terms for it are “knowledge of the causal relationship of states,” “correct knowledge,” and “right vision.”
When a meditator has attained this knowledge, he has found comfort in the Buddha’s teaching. He has found a foothold. He is certain of his destiny. He is called a “lesser stream-enterer.”
So would a monk overcome His doubts, then ever mindfully Let him discern conditions both Of mind and matter thoroughly.
This is the nineteenth chapter, “The Description of Purification by Overcoming Doubt,” in the section on the Development of Understanding in the Path of Purification, composed for the purpose of gladdening good people.