26 CHAPTER ONE
as his primary examples ofbirth, aging, and death, and with gaining in-
sight through them into how these processes functioned in the cosmos as
a whole.
- Birth depends on becoming. If there were no coming-to-be (through karma)
of the conditions of the sensual realm, the realm of form, or the formless
realm, there would be no locus for rebirth. Again, these realms refer not
only to levels ofbeing, but also to levels of mental states. Some mental
states are concerned with sensual images, others with forms (such as the
form of the body experienced in dhyana), and still others with formless
abstractions, such as space or nothingness.
- Becoming depends on sustenance. The image here is of a fire remaining in
existence by appropriating sustenance from its fuel. The process of
becoming takes its sustenance from the five skandhas, whereas the act of
taking sustenance is to cling to these skandhas in any of four ways:
through sensual intentions, through views, through precepts and practices,
or through doctrines of the self. Without these forms of clinging, the sen-
sual, form, and formless realms would not come into being.
- Sustenance depends on craving. If one did not thirst for sensuality, for com-
ing-to-be, or for no change in what has come to be, then the process
would not appropriate fuel.
- Craving depends on feeling. If pleasant and painful feelings were not experi-
enced, one would not thirst for continuing experience of the pleasant or
for cessation of the unpleasant.
- Feeling depends on contact. Without contact there is no pleasure or pain to
be felt.
- Contact depends on the six sense fields. If either the senses or their objects
were absent, there would be nothing to make contact.
- The six sense fields depend on name-andjorm. "Name" here is defined as
feeling, perception, attention, contact, and intention. Because the sense
fields are equivalent to name-and-form, some lists of the preconditions
omit the sense fields and interpret contact as occurring primarily between
name and form.
- Name-andjorm depends on consciousness if the six sense fields. Without this
kind of consciousness, the physical birth of the individual, which is com-
posed of the skandhas, would abort, whereas on the level of momentary
mental birth there would be nothing to activate an experience of the
skandhas.
- Consciousness if the six sense fields depends on the forces that bring about the for-
mation of the body, speech, and mind. Here, on the level of physical birth, the
phrase "formation of the body; speech, and mind" refers to volitional
forces from the previous birth that give rise to the conditions taken on by
sensory consciousness in the new life. On the level of momentary mental
birth, the breath is the force that forms the body; directed thought and
evaluation are the forces that form speech; and feeling and perception are
