The History of Buddhist Thought c13.29

c13.29

The division into three existences, past, present, and future, is not peculiar to Pāli Buddhism. It is found in Nāgārjuna's *Friendly Epistle* and it belongs also to Sarvāstivāda, as seen in Vasubandhu's *Abhidharmakośa* (iii, 20), which makes a triple division in time, and in the purely Mahāyāna *Daśabhūmika-sūtra*,¹ though it is not quite the same division. The latter says: "what is said of the saṃskāras having ignorance as cause refers to the past; consciousness to feeling refers to the present; craving to becoming refers to the future, and so it goes on again." Its interpretation as individual development is still more clearly brought out in the *ṭīkā* on the *Bodhicaryāvatāra* (ix, 73), where it says, "through the union of mother and father at the seasonal concourse the seed of consciousness fettered by enjoyment and arising here or there produces in the mother's womb the germ of mind and body."