Hi all,
A little addition to the essay, thanks to @Dogen pointing out SA233. I can still edit the opening post at the moment, but I decided to post this separately. I think it’s a nice example of how in text studies we can also create a certain hypothesis (e.g. my earlier essay) which is confirmed later.
A sūtra from the Chinese Saṁyukta Āgama brings all these matters together. The following is Charles Patton’s translation:
It was then that the Bhagavān told the monks, “Now, I will discuss the world, the world’s formation, the world’s cessation, and the path to the world’s cessation. Listen closely, and well consider it!
What is the world? It’s the six inner sense fields. What are the six? The inner sense field of the eye … ear … nose … tongue … body … the inner sense field of the mind.
What is the world’s formation? It’s craving, delight, and greed for a future existence. Those things are attached to its formation.
What is the world’s cessation? There’s craving, delight, and greed for a future existence. The attachment of those things to its formation is stopped without remainder. Having been abandoned, rejected, and ended, then one is free of desire, and it ceases, stops, and disappears.
What is the path to the world’s cessation? It’s the eightfold path, which is right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right method, right mindfulness, and right samādhi.”1
The sūtra defines ‘the world’ as “the six inner sense fields”, which refers to the being’s sense organs/faculties. This definition is similar to that of Ānanda at §2, and even more direct. The sūtra is also reminiscent of the Buddha’s reply to Rohitassa at §3, which I would now like to rephrase as: “I declare ‘the world’, its origin, its cessation, and the practice that makes its cease, just with respect to these six senses.” (The original instead has “this fathom-long body along with its mind and perception”.) This reply is, of course, a reference to the four truths of the Noble One:2 on suffering, its origin, its cessation, and the practice that makes it cease. The sūtra is very similar to a Pāli discourse on these four truths, in which suffering is also defined as the six inner sense fields, i.e. the six senses.3 The conscious experiences that result from these senses are implied in this definition too, because without consciousness there can be no suffering. It’s the sights and smells and such which are the suffering,4 not so much the senses themselves. But the definition of suffering as the six senses may also imply that the sense organs are also a source of suffering such as pain and sickness, just like the body as a whole.5
In our sūtra the origination of the world of the six senses comes about through craving, delight, and greed for a future existence. The Pāli discourse similarly talks of delight and enjoyment that accompany ‘the craving that leads to a next life’ (taṇhā ponobbhavikā). This statement, that the origin of the world of the world is the craving that leads to a next life, does not mean that the six senses originate the very moment we have this craving. Like I noted earlier when showing the difference between two interpretations of ‘the world’, the six senses originate at birth, not at momentary instances of consciousness. So the six senses originate through rebirth—and rebirth in turn is caused by craving. So he causal sequence is: ‘craving › rebirth › the senses’.
The sūtra’s statement on the world’s cessation I find particularly interesting. There is no close equivalent in Pāli, so we can’t give it too much weight, and Chinese can be a bit harder to parse as well. But it seems to be saying that craving is abandoned first, and only thereafter, at a later time, does the “world” cease. This happens when the enlightened being passes away. This is also implied in the Noble One’s third truth in the Pāli discourse. Cessation is a process that takes time. Suffering does not stop immediately when craving stops, but it does at the full extinguishment (parinibbāna) of an enlightened being. The Buddha indeed says elsewhere that the enlightened ones know that the senses will cease and that no new senses will arise in any place (of rebirth).6 So the cessation sequence is not ‘no craving › no world of the senses’ but ‘no craving › no rebirth after death › no world of the senses’.
When the six senses cease, so does the “world” of the being, as well as suffering. To combine a series of three discourses on these terms:
“Samiddhi, when the sense of sight does not exist, and when sights, sight-consciousness, and things cognized by sight-consciousness do not exist, then there is no being/suffering/world and no designation ‘being/suffering/world’. When the sense of hearing … the sense of smell … the sense of taste … the sense of touch … the mind does not exist, and when mental phenomena, mind-consciousness, and things cognized by mind-consciousness do not exist, then there is no being/suffering/world and no designation ‘being/suffering/world’.”7
The final paragraph of the Chinese sūtra says the noble eightfold path leads to the cessation of the world. In a footnote to the discourse with Rohitassa, Venerable Bodhi says about this path:
The six sense bases are themselves conditioned, having arisen from a chain of conditions rooted in one’s own ignorance and craving. Thus by removing ignorance and craving the re-arising i.e. rebirth of the six sense bases can be prevented, and therewith the manifestation of the world is terminated. This end of the world cannot be reached by travelling, but it can be arrived at by cultivating the Noble Eightfold Path. Perfect development of the path brings about the eradication of ignorance and craving, and with their removal the underlying ground is removed for the renewed emergence of the six senses, and therewith for the reappearance of a world.
So in brief, the origin of the world of the six senses is rebirth, which is the result of craving supported by ignorance. This world ends when the enlightened being passes away. At that time all perceptions of the external, conventional world cease too, so in a sense that world also comes to an end.
When the Kaccānagotta Sutta mentions the origination and cessation of the world, this is what it refers to as well.
- SĀ233, translation Dharmapearls.net, Charles Patton (tr.).
- For ariyasacca as ‘truth of the Noble One’ see note 12 in Seeds, Paintings and a Beam of Light: Similes for Consciousness in Dependent Arising.
- SN56.14
- The sense objects are often said to be suffering; see for example SN35.226. Also SN35.5, SN35.11, SN35.144, SN35.180–182, SN35.198–200, and SN35.216–218. For the six senses as suffering see for example SN35.2, SN35.81, SN35.141, and SN35.152.
- AN10.60 speaks of diseases of the eye, ear, nose, tongue, and body.
- SN48.53
- SN35.66–68. SN 35.65 repeats the same for Death (Māra, lit. Killer), which here is a personification of death.