Yogācārabhūmi-śāstra Explanation of the Twelve Links of Dependent Origination (15)

Original text: 问。识亦以名色为缘。何故此中。但说行为缘耶。答。行为识杂染缘。能引能生后有果故。非如名色。但为所依所缘。生起缘故。

Explanation: Question: The six consciousnesses also arise with name-and-form as their condition; why is it stated here only that the six consciousnesses arise with bodily, verbal, and mental actions as their condition? Answer: Bodily, verbal, and mental actions are the defiling condition of the six consciousnesses, because they can initiate and generate the retributive results of future existence. This is unlike name-and-form, which serves only as the basis and the object condition, the condition for arising.

When volitional formations condition consciousness, if the bodily, verbal, and mental actions are defiled, the six consciousnesses are defiled, and there will be defiled seeds as well as defiled karmic retribution in future lives. But bodily, verbal, and mental actions are the bodily, verbal, and mental actions of the six consciousnesses; without the six consciousnesses there would be no bodily, verbal, or mental actions. Therefore, bodily, verbal, and mental actions do not initiate and generate the six consciousnesses themselves, but rather initiate and generate the karmic seeds created by the six consciousnesses—that is, they initiate and generate the defiling condition of the six consciousnesses. Why are bodily, verbal, and mental actions defiled? Because the mental activities of the manas are defiled, the bodily, verbal, and mental actions initiated by the manas are defiled, the six consciousnesses are defiled, and the seeds and their retributive results are likewise defiled. After the defiled retributive result of name-and-form is born, the six consciousnesses will arise depending on the defiled name-and-form; name-and-form is the intensified condition (adhipati-pratyaya) for the arising of the six consciousnesses, not the initiating condition.

Original text: 问。名色亦由。大种所造。及由触生。何故但说。识为缘耶。答。识能为彼。新生因故。彼既生已。或正生时。大种及触。唯能与彼。为建立因。

Explanation: Question: Name-and-form is also created by the seeds of the great elements and is also born through the condition of contact—there is mental contact at the time of entering the womb, and contact of the six sense bases at the time of leaving the womb. Why is it stated here only that name-and-form arises with the six consciousnesses as its condition? Answer: The six consciousnesses can serve as the causal condition for the new arising of name-and-form. After name-and-form has been born, or while it is being born, the seeds of the six great elements—earth, water, fire, wind, space, and consciousness—together with contact, can only serve as the establishing condition, the sustaining condition, and the condition of transformation by which name-and-form becomes the five aggregates. The two kinds of conditions function respectively before and after the birth of name-and-form, and their functions differ. From the perspective of the importance of the initiating condition, it is said that consciousness conditions name-and-form; therefore it is not said that the great elements and contact are the conditions for the arising of name-and-form.