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THEMES OF SOTERIOLOGICAL REFLECTION
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"The body is invaded by diseases, the youth is devastated by old age; glories are ended by destruction, and existence ends in death."
vapurviddhi rujākrāntam jarākrāntam ca yauvanam/ aišvaryam ca vināśāntam maraņāntam ca jīvitam//
This verse of Subha candra offers a remarkable paralle to the following Pali gātha:
parijiņņamidam rūpam roganidam pabhanguram/
bhijjati pūtisandeho maranantam hi jīvitam//? "This body is entirely worn out, a nest of disease and perishable; this mass of impurities breaks up; indeed life ends in death."
Pujyapāda has to offer the following comment on the soteriological relevance of reflection on the fact of impermanence. “The bodies as well as the objects of pleasure of the senses are transient like bubbles. In the endless cycle of wordly existence, union and separation in the womb, etc. alternate in quick succession. However, the self under delusion considers the persons and objects associated with him as permanent. But there is nothing in the world which is permanent except the natural characteristics of knowledge and perception of the self. This is contemplation on the transitory nature of things. He who contemplates thus is free from intense attachment to persons and things, and hence he does not feel distress when he looses them or separates from them as in the case of garlands used and cast off.”
The impermanence of all the beings and things has been made the theme of a full-length doctrine of momentariness by Buddhist philosophers. The canonical texts in Pali and Sanskrit also frequently stress the fact of anit yatā of all things. Here we will refer only to a couple of verses expounding the theory of impermanence. The one verse is from the Dhammapada :
sabbe samkhārā aniccă ti yadā paññāya passati] atha nibbindati dukkhe esa maggo visuddhi yā/ 10
6. Jnanarnava, II, 10; cp. Uttaradhyayanasūtra, XVIII. 12-13. 7. Dhammapada, verse 148. 8. Reality, translation by S.A. Jain, p. 245; Sanskrit text in Sarvārthasiddhi on IX. 7, p. 355; cp.
Buddhacarita, VI, 48; IX. 33, "coming together of beings is transient as dream”. 9. See Tattvasangraha of Santarakṣita with the Pañjika of Kamalasila, chapter VIII (Sthirabhāva
parikşa): Ratnakırtinibandhavali, pp. 62-88; Jhanaśrīmitranibandhavali, pp. 1-159; Satkari Mookerjee, The Buddhist Philosophy of Universal Flux: Th. Stcherbatsky, Buddhist Logic, vol. I,
pp. 79-113; Edward Conze, Buddhist Thought in India, pp. 34 ff. 10. Pali Dhammapada, verse 277; Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Dharmapada, verse 373; Gandhari Dharma
pada, verse 106.
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