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Consciousness and Rebirth
91
birth'. The manner in which the vijñāna produced in the womb is determined by the past vijñāna of the previous existence is according to some authorities of the nature of a reflected image, like the transmission of learning from the teacher to the disciple, like the lighting of a lamp from another lamp or like the impress of a stamp on wax. As all the skandhas are changing in life, so death also is but a similar change; there is no great break, but the same uniform sort of destruction and coming into being. New skandhas are produced as simultaneously as the two scale pans of a balance rise up and fall, in the same manner as a lamp is lighted or an image is reflected. At the death of the man the vijñāna resulting from his previous karmas and vijñānas enters into the womb of that mother (animal, man or the gods) in which the next skandhas are to be matured. This vijñāna thus forms the principle of the new life. It is in this vijñāna that name (nāma) and form (rūpa) become associated.
The vijñāna is indeed a direct product of the samskāras and the sort of birth in which vijñāna should bring down (nāmayati) the new existence (upapatti) is determined by the samskāras”, for in reality the happening of death (maraṇabhava) and the instillation of the vijñāna as the beginning of the new life (upapattibhava) cannot be simultaneous, but the latter succeeds just at the next moment, and it is to signify this close succession that they are said to be simultaneous. If the vijñāna had not entered the womb then no nāmarūpa could have appeared 3.
This chain of twelve causes extends over three lives. Thus avidyā and samskāra of the past life produce the vijñāna, nāma
The deities of the gardens, the woods, the trees and the plants, finding the master of the house, Citta, ill said "make your resolution, May I be a cakravartti king in a next existence,'" Samyutta, iv. 303.
? "sa cedānandavijñānam mâtuhkuksim nāvakrāmeta, na tat kalalam kalalatvaya sannivartteta," M. V. 552. Compare Caraka, Śarira, II. 5-8, where he speaks of a "upapāduka sattva" which connects the soul with body and by the absence of which the character is changed, the senses become affected and life ceases, when it is in a pure condition one can remember even the previous births; character, purity, antipathy, memory, fear, energy, all mental qualities are produced out of it. Just as a chariot is made by the combination of many elements, so is the foetus.
3 Madhyamaka vrtti (B.T. S. 202-203). Poussin quotes from Dīgha, 11. 63, "si le vijfāna ne descendait pas dans le sein maternel la namarupa s'y constituerait-il ?” Govindānanda on Sankara's commentary on the Brahma-sūtras (11. ii. 19) says that the first consciousness (vijñāna) of the foetus is produced by the samskāras of the previous birth, and from that the four elements (which he calls nāma) and from that the white and red, semen and ovum, and the first stage of the foetus (kalala-budbudāvastha) is produced.
