..續本文上一頁ion that experience is just a double stream of material and mental events without a subsisting self. The synthetic procedure makes it clear that all these events are conditioned phenomena, which arise when their conditions are present and cease when their conditions disappear.

　　This last realization becomes the portal to the next major stage in the development of understanding, the contemplation of rise and fall. As the yogin attends to the states that appear, he sees how each undergoes the same process of coming into being, altering, and passing away: "Such is the arising of material form, feeling, perception, formations, and consciousness. Such is the passing away of material form, feeling, perception, formations, and consciousness." The contemplation of rise and fall brings into focus three marks common to all conditioned phenomena -- their impermanence, un-satisfactoriness, and selflessness. Impermanence is generally the first characteristic to be discerned, as it becomes clear through the immediate attention given to rise and fall. The perception of impermanence leads directly to insight into the other marks, which follow naturally from the first. The notion of "happiness," or "pleasure," at the level of philosophical understanding rather than mere feeling, hinges upon an implicit notion of permanence. If something is to be truly a source of happiness it must be permanent. What is impermanent is incapable of yielding lasting happiness and security, and therefore turns out, under examination, to be really unsatisfactory, a potential source of suffering. The notion of selfhood in turn rests upon the two pillars of permanence and pleasure. What is impermanent and unsatisfactory cannot be identified as a self, for it lacks any solid unchanging core upon which the notion of selfhood can be grounded. Thus the impermanent, unsatisfactory phenomena comprised in the five aggregates turn out to have a third characteristic, the aspect of selflessness. The realization of these three characteristics -- impermanence, un-satisfactoriness, and selflessness -- through unmediated insight is the knowledge and vision of things as they really are.

　　Disenchantment (Nibbida)

　　"The knowledge and vision of things as they really are is the supporting condition for disenchantment": As the yogin contemplates the rise and fall of the five aggregates, his attention becomes riveted to the final phase of the process, their dissolution and passing away. This insight into the instability of the aggregates at the same time reveals their basic unreliability. Far from being the ground of satisfaction we unreflectively take them to be, conditioned things are seen to be fraught with peril when adhered to with craving and wrong views. The growing realization of this fundamental insecurity brings a marked transformation in the mind”s orientation towards conditioned existence. Whereas previously the mind was drawn to the world by the lure of promised gratification, now, with the exposure of the underlying danger, it draws away in the direction of a disengagement. This inward turning away from the procession of formations is called nibbida. Though some times translated "disgust" or "aversion," the term suggests, not emotional repugnance, but a conscious act of detachment resulting from a profound noetic discovery. Nibbida signifies in short, the serene, dignified withdrawal from phenomena, which supervenes when the illusion of their permanence, pleasure, and selfhood has been shattered by the light of correct knowledge and vision of things as they are. The commentaries explain nibbida as powerful insight (balava vipassana), an explanation consonant with the word”s literal meaning of "finding out." It indicates the sequel to the discoveries unveiled by that contempl…

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