The History of Buddhist Thought c13.28

c13.28

The last paragraph shows that Buddhaghosa divides the career of the individual who is transmigrating into three parts. Consciousness is birth-consciousness, the first two links belong to a past existence, and at the third he is reborn, but the actual point of passing to another existence is not birth but conception. Thereupon he develops into the khandhas, the material khandha of body (rūpa) with the four immaterial khandhas included in nāma, the immaterial part. These develop sense-organs, which with contact (i.e. stimulus of any one of the sense-organs) result in any of the six senses. From these develops the craving for satisfaction, the craving leads to grasping at anything that will satisfy them, and the grasping leads to bhava, coming to be, i.e. a new conception followed by birth, old age and death, and another future existence. So the sequence goes on. It is not referred to as a wheel in the older texts, but it is not easy to see how with this interpretation it could be considered in any other way. Each link mentioned does not express the whole of what exists at any given stage, but only that which is causal at that stage. With *nāma-rūpa* there is a complete being. It develops the six sense-organs, i.e. a complete being with sense-organs. But these organs are the cause, i.e. render possible the contacts, the exercise of each sense, which in their turn give rise to sensations, and so on.