In the Buddha's Words - Bhikkhu Bodhi [242]
13. Nutriment (āhāra) is to be understood here in a broad sense as a prominent condition for the individual life-process. Physical food is an important condition for the physical body, contact for feeling, mental volition for consciousness, and consciousness for name-and-form, the psychophysical organism in its totality. Craving is called the origin of nutriment since the craving of the previous existence is the source of the present individuality with its dependence upon and continual consumption of the four nutriments in this existence. For an annotated compilation of canonical and commentarial texts on the nutriments, see Nyanaponika Thera, The Vision of Dhamma, pp. 211–28.
14. The next twelve sections present, in reverse order, a factor-by-factor examination of dependent origination. See too Texts IX, 4(4)(a)–(f).
15. The three kinds of existence (bhava): on the three realms of existence, see pp. 149–50. In the formula of dependent origination, “existence” signifies both the planes of rebirth and the types of kamma that produce rebirth into those planes. The former is known technically as upapattibhava, “rebirth-existence,” the latter as kammabhava, “karmically active existence.”
16. Clinging to rules and observances (sīlabbatupādāna) is the adherence to the view that purification can be achieved by adopting certain external rules or following certain observances, particularly of ascetic self-discipline; clinging to a doctrine of self (attavādupādāna) is holding one or another of the views of self that originate from identity view (see particularly the Brahmajāla Sutta, DN 1); clinging to views (diṭṭhupādāna) is the clinging to any other view (than one of the two enumerated separately). Clinging in any of its varieties is a strengthening of craving, its condition.
17. Craving for phenomena (dhammataṇhā) is the craving for all objects of consciousness except the objects of the five classes of sense consciousness. Examples would be the craving associated with fantasies and mental imagery, with abstract ideas and intellectual gratification, and so forth.
18. Contact (phassa) is the coming together (saṅgati) of internal sense base (sense faculty), external sense base (object), and consciousness.
19. The term nāmarūpa was of pre-Buddhistic origins. It was used in the Upaniṣads to represent the differentiated manifestation of brahman, the nondual absolute reality appearing in the guise of multiplicity. Brahman apprehended by the senses as diversified appearances is form (rūpa); brahman apprehended by thought through diversified names or concepts is name (nāma). The Buddha adopted this expression and gave it a meaning governed by his own system. Here name and form become, respectively, the cognitive and physical sides of individual existence.
In the Buddha’s system, rūpa is defined as the four great elements and the form derived from them. Form is both internal to the person (= the body with its senses) and external (= the physical world). The Nikāyas do not explain derived form (upādāya rūpa), but the Abhidhamma analyzes it into twenty-four kinds of secondary material phenomena, which include the sensitive matter of the five sense faculties and four of the five sense objects (the tactile object is identified with three of the great elements—earth, heat, and air—which each exhibit tangible properties).
Though I render nāma as name, this should