The study of the different kinds of naama and ruupa will help us to
understand more clearly the various conditions for the arising of
bodily phenomena and mental phenomena. Gradually we shall come to
understand that all our experiences in life, all the objects we
experience, our bodily movements and our speech are only conditioned
naama and ruupa. In the planes of existence where there are naama and
ruupa, naama conditions ruupa and ruupa conditions naama in different
ways. The ruupas that are sense objects and the ruupas that can
function as sense-doors are conditions for the different cittas
arising in processes which experience sense objects.
The study of ruupas can help us to have more clarity about the fact
that only one object at a time can be experienced through one of the
six doors. Visible object, for example, can be experienced through
the eye-door, it cannot be experienced through the body-door, thus,
through touch. Seeing-consciousness experiences what is visible and
body-consciousness experiences tangible object, such as hardness or
softness. Through each door the appropriate object can be experienced
and the different doorways should not be confused with one another.
When we believe that we can see and touch a flower, we think of a
concept. A concept or conventional truth can be an object of thought,
but it is not a paramattha dhamma, an ultimate reality with its own
inalterable characteristic.
When we are thinking about the world and all people in it, we only
know the world by way of conventional truth. It seems that there is
the world full of beings and things, but in reality there is citta
experiencing different dhammas arising and falling away very rapidly.
Only one object at a time can be cognized as it appears through one
doorway. Without the doorways of the senses and the mind the world
could not appear. So long as we take what appears as a �whole�, a
being or person, we do not know the world.
We read in the �Kindred Sayings� (IV, Sa.laayatana vagga, Kindred
Sayings on Sense, Second Fifty, Ch II, � 68, Samiddhi sutta) that
when the Buddha was staying near Raajagaha, in Bamboo Grove, Samiddhi
came to see him and adressed him:
� �The world! The world!� is the saying, lord. Pray, lord, to what
extent is there the world or the concept of �world�?�
�Where there is eye, Samiddhi, visible object, seeing-consciousness,
where there are dhammas cognizable by the eye, there is the world and
the concept of �world�.�
(The same is said with regard to the other doorways.)
In our life happy moments and sad moments alternate. We attach great
importance to our experiences in life, to our life in this world, but
actually life is extremely short, lasting only as long as one moment
of citta.
We read in the �Visuddhimagga� (VII, 39) :
"'Life, person, pleasure, pain - just these alone
Join in one conscious moment that flicks by.
Ceased aggregates of those dead or alive
Are all alike, gone never to return.
No [world is] born if [consciousness is] not
Produced; when that is present, then it lives;
When consciousness dissolves, the world is dead:
The highest sense this concept will allow' (Nd.1,42)."
------------
Nina.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]