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CHAPTER XIX
PURIFICATION BY OVERCOMING DOUBT
(Kaṅkhāvitaraṇa-visuddhi-niddesa)
1. [598] Knowledge established by overcoming doubt about the three divisions
of time by means of discerning the conditions of that same mentality-materiality
is called “purification by overcoming doubt.”
[WAYS OF DISCERNING CAUSE AND CONDITION]
2.
The bhikkhu who wants to accomplish this sets about seeking the cause
and condition for that mentality-materiality; just as when a skilled physician
encounters a disease he seeks its origin, or just as when a compassionate man
sees a tender little child lying on its back in the road he wonders who its parents
are.
[NEITHER CREATED BY A CREATOR NOR CAUSELESS]
3.
To begin with, he considers thus: “Firstly this mentality-materiality is not
causeless, because if that were so, it would follow that [having no causes to
differentiate it,] it would be identical everywhere always and for all. It has no
Overlord, etc., because of the non-existence of any Overlord, etc. (XVI.85), over
and above mentality-materiality. And because, if people then argue that mentality-
materiality itself is its Overlord, etc., then it follows that their mentality-materiality,
which they call the Overlord, etc., would itself be causeless. Consequently there
must be a cause and a condition for it. What are they?”
4.
Having thus directed his attention to mentality-materiality’s cause and
condition, he first discerns the cause and condition for the material body in this
way: “When this body is born it is not born inside a blue, red or white lotus or
water-lily, etc., or inside a store of jewels or pearls, etc.; on the contrary, like a
worm in rotting flesh, in a rotting corpse, in rotting dough, in a drain, in a
cesspool, etc., it is born in between the receptacle for undigested food and the
receptacle for digested food, behind the belly lining, in front of the backbone,
surrounded by the bowel and the entrails, in a place that is stinking, disgusting,
repulsive, and extremely cramped, being itself stinking, disgusting, and
repulsive. When it is born thus, its causes (root-causes) are the four things,
namely, ignorance, craving, clinging, and kamma, [599] since it is they that
bring about its birth; and nutriment is its condition, since it is that that
consolidates it. So five things constitute its cause and condition. And of these,
the three beginning with ignorance are the decisive-support for this body, as the