..续本文上一页from the whole field of formations and escaping from it."[24]

　　The desire for deliverance leads to a quickening of insight. The capacity for comprehension picks up new speed, depth, and precision. Like a sword the mind of insight-wisdom cuts through the net of illusions fabricated on account of ignorance; like a light it illuminates phenomena exactly as they are. As the power of insight mounts, driven by the longing for liberation, a point is eventually reached where a fundamental turn-about takes place in the seat of consciousness, effecting a radical restructuring of the mental life. The beam-like radiance of insight expands into the full luminosity of enlightenment, and the mind descends upon the supra-mundane path leading directly and irreversibly to final deliverance.

　　This transformation, signified by viraga or dispassion, is the first strictly supra-mundane (lokuttara) stage in the progression of transcendental dependent arising. The earlier links in the sequence leading up to dispassion are all technically classified as mundane (lokiya). Though loosely called "transcendental" in the sense that they are directed to the unconditioned, they are still mundane in terms of their scope since they operate entirely within range of the conditioned world. Their objects of concern are still the five aggregates, or things derivative upon them. But with the attainment of dispassion consciousness passes clear beyond the mundane level, and for a fleeting moment realizes as its object the unconditioned state, nibbána.

　　The shift in standpoint comes about as the immediate consequence of the preceding stages of development. Through insight into the three marks the basic distortions covering over the true nature of phenomena were exposed; with the uncovering of their true nature there set in a disengagement from phenomena. This disengagement led to an attitude of relinquishment and a fading out of desire. Now, having released its grip on the conditioned, the mind turns to the unconditioned, the deathless element (amata dhatu), focusing upon it as the only state fully adequate to itself:

　　Whatever is there of material form, feeling, perception, mental formations, and consciousness -- he beholds these phenomena as impermanent, suffering, as a disease, a boil, a dart, a misfortune, an affliction, as alien, as decomposing, as empty, as selfless. He turns his mind away from these phenomena; and when he has turned his mind away from them, he focuses his mind on the deathless element, thinking: "This is the peaceful, this is the sublime, that is, the stilling of all formations, the relinquishing of the foundations, the destruction of craving, dispassion, cessation, nibbána."[25]

　　Though the realization of the unconditioned requires a turning away from the conditioned, it must be emphasized that this realization is achieved precisely through the understanding of the conditioned. Nibbána cannot be reached by backing off from a direct confrontation with samsára to lose oneself in a blissful oblivion to the world. The path to liberation is a path of understanding, of comprehension and transcendence, not of escapism or emotional self-indulgence. Nibbána can only be attained by turning one”s gaze towards samsára, and scrutinizing it in all its starkness. This principle -- that the understanding of the conditioned is the way to the unconditioned -- holds true not only in the general sense that an understanding of suffering is the spur to the quest for enlightenment, but in a deeper, more philosophical sense as well.

　　The path to nibbána lies through the understanding of samsára for the reason that the experiential realization of the unconditioned emerges from a prior penetration of the fundamental nature of the conditioned, without which it is impossible. …

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