..续本文上一页ssion of cause and effect; it is the growth, the development, the evolution process where the successive stage is contained in germ-form, as it were, in the preceding one, requiring only the proper conditions to sprout forth. Thus in the six senses of mind and body are contained the possibilities of contact and sensation. Similarly in consciousness (vi.t.taa.na) are contained the other three mental groups of sensation, perception and mental formations (vedanaa, sa.t.taa, sa.nkhaara). Thus it is said that through consciousness are conditioned corporeality and mentality (vi.t.taa.na-paccayaa naama-ruupa) and that depen­dent on the six senses of body and mind arise contact and sensation (sa.laayatana-paccayaa phasso). Consciousness and its mental concomitants, hence also sense impression or contact and feeling or sensation, are all simultaneously arising and hence related in the sense of co-existence (saha­ jaata-paccaya), as a candle which is burning, burns together with its heat and light. But they are also mutually sup­porting one another (a.t.tama.t.ta-nissaya paccayaa), like “when three sticks are set upright leaning against one another at their upper ends, each of them depends on, and is depended on by, the other two … if one of them falls, all will fall at the same time.” (Ledi Sayaadaw).

　　Consciousness itself, however, is a product of kamma-­formations in the past (sa.nkhaara-paccayaa vi.t.taa.na.m). As the kamma process in the present (kamma-bhava) will produce birth and its consequences, so the kamma-formations of the past (sa.nkhaara) have produced this present conscious life. Like the kamma-process in the present finds its origin in craving and clinging, so the kamma of the past was formed in ignorance (avijjaa paccayaa sa.nkhaaraa). Craving and ignorance are synonymous. Craving is ignorance, for in ignorance we crave for things impermanent, sorrow-fraught and substanceless.

　　Further back than ignorance we cannot go, for if there would have been a time when there was no ignorance, there ought to have been knowledge supreme. But to say that knowledge supreme has produced ignorance is as non­sensical as to say that perfection could produce imperfec­tion, that goodness could produce evil. Ignorance thus stands as the sufficient reason for life, when life is seen as a process of grasping.

　　Is ignorance then the ultimate beginning of everything

　　 This question so frequently put is ignorance manifest.

　　To speak of a beginning where there is no entity is a sheer impossibility. A process can have no beginning, but is beginning constantly, can have no end, but is ceas­ing constantly. Not to understand this is ignorance; and dependent on ignorance arise the kamma-formations, which through processes of conscious grasping lead to rebirth, which is sorrow-fraught.

　　It is in ignorance that the “I”-concept is formed; it is in craving that the “I”-concept is maintained. Ignorance creates a delusion, and craving clings to it. And thus comes about this whole play of world-events which turns round the “self” like a wheel round its axle. But as, when the axle is broken the wheel will not turn any more, ­so, when the delusion of self is destroyed, when insight has destroyed ignorance, no further craving can arise, no further kamma can be formed, the wheel of sa.msaara will no more turn, the process of becoming and rebirth will have come to a stop.

　　Where ignorance thus gives rise to craving, the free­dom from craving can only be obtained through the over­coming of ignorance in the insight into the real nature of things. Ignorance also is a kind of understanding—it is mis-understanding; it is cognition with craving and thus it leads to formation i.e. kamma. But cognition without craving, that is right u…

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