Yogācārabhūmi-śāstra: Volume 10 (Twelve Links of Dependent Origination)

(36) Original text: Question: How many links cease to reveal the exhaustion of conditions? Answer: These three are. Because the conditions of the remaining links persist.

Commentary: How many links cease to reveal the exhaustion of conditions? Answer: The cessation of the three links—existence (bhava), birth (jāti), and aging-and-death (jarāmaraṇa)—reveals the exhaustion of conditions. When the conditions for the three realms are exhausted, existence within the three realms will no longer arise, birth ceases, and consequently, aging-and-death cease. Apart from these three links, although the remaining links may cease, the conditions pertaining to the three realms are not yet fully severed; some conditions still persist. For example, through contemplation on the twelve links of dependent origination, ignorance (avidyā) may be extinguished, but conditions with the three realms remain. The mental faculty (manas) still retains formations (saṃskāra), albeit formations free from ignorance; the six consciousnesses (vijñāna) still exist, but they are consciousnesses free from ignorance, performing pure actions of body, speech, and mind, uncontaminated.

Name-and-form (nāmarūpa) still exists, but it is name-and-form without ignorance; the six sense bases (ṣaḍāyatana) still exist, but they are uncontaminated; contact (sparśa) still exists, but it is contact free from ignorance; feeling (vedanā) still exists, but it is feeling free from ignorance; craving (tṛṣṇā) may still exist, but it is craving free from ignorance, merely craving the Dharma and the path of Mahāyāna practice; grasping (upādāna) still exists, but it is grasping free from ignorance, merely grasping the Mahāyāna Dharma and wholesome dharmas; phenomena of the three realms still exist, but there is no attachment to them; aging-and-death still exist, but only residual suffering remains, with far less pain. Mahāyāna Bodhisattva Pratyekabuddhas will still have future births, and in the present life, they possess the twelve links of clarity, no longer the twelve links of ignorance.

Original text: Question: How many links cease to reveal the exhaustion of feelings? Answer: One. It is because, with the afflictions already severed, when the basis ceases, all these feelings permanently cease.

Commentary: Question: How many links, upon cessation, reveal the exhaustion of feelings? Answer: Only the cessation of the single link of feeling (vedanā) reveals the dharma of the exhaustion of feelings. Because the afflictions (kleśa) have been completely severed, and the basis upon which feeling depends has ceased, then all these feelings will permanently cease.