Study Aid : Papañca as a Cause of Conflict

Three passages—§§62–64—map the causal processes that give rise to papañca and lead from papañca to conflict. Because the Buddhist analysis of causality is generally non-linear, with plenty of room for feedback loops, the maps vary in some of their details.

In §62, the map reads like this:

In §63, the map is less linear and can be diagramed like this:

In §64, the map is this:

In this last case, however, the bare outline misses some of the important implications of the way this process is phrased. In the full passage, the analysis starts out in an impersonal tone:

“Dependent on eye & forms, eye-consciousness arises [similarly with the rest of the six sense]. The meeting of the three is contact. With contact as a requisite condition, there is feeling.

Starting with feeling, the notion of an “agent”—in this case, the feeler—acting on “objects,” is introduced:

“What one feels, one perceives [labels in the mind]. What one perceives, one thinks about. What one thinks about, one ‘papañcizes.’”

Through the process of papañca, the agent then becomes a victim of his/her own patterns of thinking:

“Based on what a person papañcizes, the perceptions & categories of papañca assail him/her with regard to past, present, & future forms cognizable via the eye [as with the remaining senses].”