Essay name: Ahara as depicted in the Pancanikaya
Author:
Le Chanh
Affiliation: Savitribai Phule Pune University / Department of Sanskrit and Prakrit Languages
This critical study of Ahara (鈥渇ood鈥�) explores its significance in Buddhism, encompassing both physical and mental nourishment. The Panca Nikaya, part of the Sutta Pitaka, highlights how all human problems, including suffering and happiness, are connected to Ahara. Understanding this concept is crucial for comprehending and alleviating suffering, aiming for a balanced, enlightened life.
Chapter 6 - Cultivation of four kinds of Ahara
25 (of 38)
External source: Shodhganga (Repository of Indian theses)
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254
... These, monks, are the cankers to be got rid of by control, which
are got rid of by control.鈥�476
If the six senses are not controlled, the countless toxins that will
destroy both body and consciousness, individuals, families, and society,
will became tangled and troubled. Indeed, since when the six objects
cognizable by the six senses, the objects desirable, pleasant, delightful
and dear, since then the world or the earth on which devas, M膩ras,
Brahm膩s, hosts of recluses and Brahmins, and mankind, is for the most
past plunged herein, become tangled like a ball of thread, covered with
blight, become like a woven rope of grass, unable to cross over the
downfall, the way of woe, the ruin, and the round of rebirth. 477
Food of contact is the very contact element of Dependent Origination,
since when there is the arising of contact, there is the arising of ill and of
the world; hence the cultivation of contact is to tend to ending ill according
to the spirit of Dependent Origination as the Buddha taught:
"The arising of ill and of the world because of sight and visual
consciousness arises, contact is the clash of the three; feeling is
conditioned by the contact, craving by the feeling. This is the arising
of ill and world. Such is it also in the case of the other senses.
However, by the utter fading away and ceasing of the craving,
grasping ceases, by the ceasing of the grasping, becoming ceases ...
suffering, despair cease. Such is the ceasing of the entire mass of ill
and world.鈥�478
It can be said that the eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind are
regarded as the mouths of the mind or consiciousness. These six mouths
are constantly eating or in contact with sense objects to feed
476 A. III, 387; M. I, 9-10.
477 S. IV, 157.
478 S. II, 71, 73.
