The World

The study of the different kinds of nāma and rūpa and the various conditions for their arising will help us to understand that they are anattā. 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 n āma and rūpa. In the planes of existence where there are nāma and rū pa, nāma conditions rūpa and rūpa conditions nāma in different ways. The rūpas that are sense objects and the rūpas that can function as sense-doors are conditions for the different cittas arising in processes which experience sense objects. The study of rūpas 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, Saḷāyatana vagga, Kindred Sayings on Sense, Second Fifty, Ch I, § 68, Samiddhi sutta) that when the Buddha was staying near Rājagaha, 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” (VI, 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).”