Nama/Rupa

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N¤ma¾ ca R¬pa¾ ca

Name and Form, Mind and Matter, Name and Shape, Mind and Body


Pali	MO	Hare	Horner	Punnaji	Bodhi	Nanamoli	Rhys Davids	(Mrs)Rhys Davids	Thanissaro	Walshe	Woodward
N¤ma¾ ca R¬pa¾	Name and Appearance; Phenomenon; Mind and Matter	Name and Form	name-and-form; psycho-physicality	Entity/Identity	mentality-materiality		Mind and Body; Name and Form	Mind and Body; Name and Form	name-and-form	Mind-and-Body	Name and visible body complex

Nama/Rupa (mind/matter; name and form): There is Name and there is Thingness.

Strictly speaking, that is the lesson. However this is often explained as: If there were no inter-operability (co-operation) of Nama and Rupa there would not be manifested that which is known to be an individual.

The worker in respiration examines the respiration while devoting himself to the development of insight through the means of corporeality.

The basis, namely, the coarse body, is where the mind and mental characteristics occur.

Thereupon, he, the worker in respiration, cognizes the mind (nama) in the pentad of mental concomitants beginning with sense-impression. The first beginning with sense-impression are sense-impression, feeling, perception, volition, and consciousness. They are taken here as representative of mind.

The worker in respiration examines the mind and the body, sees the Dependent Origination of ignorance and so forth, and concluding that this mind and this body are bare conditions, and things produced from conditions, and that besides these there is neither a living being nor a person, becomes to that extent a person who transcends doubt. Besides these phenomena there is neither a living being nor a person refers to vision that is purified [añño satto va puggalo natthiti visuddhiditthi].

Mind-and-body is a bare impersonal process. It is not unrelated to a cause and also not related to a discordant cause (which is fictive) like god, but is connected with (the really perceivable fact of) a cause like ignorance [tayidam dhammamattam na ahetukam napi issariyadi visamahetukam atha kho avijjadihi eva sahetukam].

Where there is lust, delight, thirst for Material Food, consciousness gets itself attached; when consciousness gets itself attached, the rebound is Nama/Rupa. Where there is nama rupa there is confounding (sankaraming -- interesting that here the order is not the usual avijja>sankaram>vinnana>nama/rupa; but apparently ~vinnana7gt;nama/rupa>sankaram; but this is not a rigid formula as I see it, it circles around within itself as well as describes a straight line to dukkha), where there is confounding, there is renewed birth and the inevitable aging and death, grief and lamentation, pain and misery and despair.

The place of Nama/Rupa in the Paticca-Samuppada:
Downbound Consciousness Rebounds Bound up in Phenomena
Downbound Phenomena Rebounds Bound up in The Six-Fold Sense Realm (SALAYATANA: The Eye and Sights, Ear and Sounds, Nose and Scents, Tongue and Tastes, Body and Touches, Mind and Ideas)

And the same thing stated according to the "Backwards-up" method:
Could the Sixfold Realm of the senses Exist without an inter-operability, a working-together, a co-operation of the Mental and the Material?
No, the Sixfold Realm of the senses could not exist without an interoperability of the mental and material.
Therefore the Sixfold Realm of the Senses arises dependant on Phenomena (Nama/Rupa, Mind/Matter).
Could there be any interoperation of the mental and the material without consciousness (awareness of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, and ideas)?
No, there could not be any interacting of the mental and the material of any sort whatsoever within any of the six realms of sense if there were no consciousness.
Therefore Phenomena arise dependant on Consciousness.

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