Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c10.s3.6

c10.s3.6

The relation of consciousness to name and form is expressly made out in the Dīgha Nikāya;² if consciousness did not enter the womb, there would be no living embryo; if it did not continue there, the embryo would die. The evidence is clear; the action is real; consciousness is even classed with the four elements and ether as an element (*dhātu*);¹ it passes from death to life whether we regard it as quasi-corporeal in itself—for it is visible—or as accompanied by a subtle body, a question which vexed the schools.² But it does in no sense create the matter of the body, and it is essentially dependent for its development, rebirth, death, &c., on matter, as it is only in the compound of name and form that it exists. Hence the doctrine that the two stand to each other in the position of two bundles of reeds;³ consciousness cannot exist save with name and form, and name and form cannot exist without consciousness, the third and fourth links in the chain thus being mutually dependent, a serious enough logical objection to such a chain. Name and form must here, it is clear, represent the individual in whom consciousness is involved with matter; the term is old, taken over from a more primitive thought when the name was treated as if it were a possession and part of the individual. The logical interpretation of the term must be that of later scholasticism;⁴ the form is matter, the name is the other four aggregates, feeling, perception or ideation, dispositions, and consciousness itself, but, doubtless to make the causal series more logical, an early text takes name as feeling, ideation, will, contact, and attention, and later authorities equate it with the three aggregates other than consciousness itself. The vital fact remains that it essentially represents the union of consciousness with matter to form the individual; whence, if one causes the other, it nonetheless is dependent upon it; but the causal relation is expressed as it is because matter cannot be said to evoke consciousness; there is matter without connexion with consciousness and when they coexist the initiative lies with consciousness. The chain, it must be added, must not be understood as asserting here an invariable relation, for at a high stage of development consciousness is reborn in the formless or immaterial sphere where matter is not.