Pathfinder asked: “Why does the Buddha talk about the mother’s womb when the sutta is about conditions at that time/ Idappaccayatā Paṭicca Samuppāda?”
- Grasping a “human bhava” happens at the cuti-patisandhi moment, NOT when a gandhabba gets into a womb. A human gandhabba (mental body) is born well before it can get into a womb. So, in what you quoted above, the Buddha did not describe a cuti-patisandhi moment, but only the situation where a gandhabba gets into a womb. That translator does not understand this process, so it is misleading.
- To be born with a physical human body, that gandhabba must enter a womb, which normally can happens months or years after that. Then, a human baby is born, grows, and dies. If that person lived for 100 years, that is a much shorter time compared to the lifetime of the human gandhabba. So, the gandhabba comes out of the dead body and is pulled into another womb at a later time. There can be many births (jati) within a human bhava. See “Bhava and Jāti – States of Existence and Births Therein.”
- To properly translate that sutta, the trasnaltor must understand what I described above. This is why many English translations are misleading or confusing.
Pathfinder wrote: “Another interesting thing is that the Buddha skips saḷāyatana paccayā phasso in that analysis, and links nama rupa straight to phasso. He also stops at viññāṇa in his anaylsis, he does not go back further to talk about avijja and sankhara.”
- Yes. Here, “namarupa” represents “salayatana” too.
- It is a deeper point. But the point is that the “namarupa creation” that happens in the mind that gives rise to a gandhabba being born with six ayatana (salayatana).
- Paticca Samuppada analysis can be done at various levels. Properly tanslating the “Mahanidana Sutta” can take a book. It is the main sutta on Paticca Samuppada. Word-by-word translations are useless (and can be dangerously misleading) for such suttas, which require detailed expalnations.
