Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c10.s3.1

c10.s3.1

Ignorance in the chain has, it is certain, a purely limited sense, and no cosmic significance, similar to that of ignorance in the Vedānta, through which the absolute passes into the empirical. It is repeatedly defined, and is always the individual's ignorance of the four noble truths, or an equivalent: the origin and disappearance of the aggregates making up individuality, or the delusion which recognizes a self. Ignorance is traced in the Canon³ to diverse causes, the five hindrances (nīvaraṇas), hankering after the world, the desire to injure, torpor, flurry and worry, and wavering; these are nourished by sins of body, speech and thought; failure to subdue the senses, to note precisely disagreeable impressions, imperfect attention, failure to listen to the law and, to frequent the saints. More briefly, it is desire or thirst which produces ignorance, and thirst in turn arises because the feelings which evoke it are permeated by ignorance.⁴ Thus we have as long as the one lasts the other; there can be no question of finding a beginning for ignorance, just as in the Sāṃkhya the failure to discriminate between soul and nature leaves an impression on the internal organs which produces in the next birth the same fatal ignorance. Yet, though the cycle is normally unending, ignorance has a right to the title of 'root' given in the Milindapañha, for it is the link which can be destroyed by the gaining of intuition.