Chapter 21. Investigation of Arising and Ceasing

Neither separately from arising nor together with it is there ceasing; neither separately from ceasing nor together with it is there arising.

How could there be ceasing at all without arising? There is no death without birth; there is no ceasing without arising.

How could ceasing be together with arising? For birth and death do not exist at the same time.

How could there be arising at all without ceasing? For impermanence is never absent in existents.

How could arising be together with ceasing? For birth and death do not exist at the same time.

The two whose establishment [does not exist] either together with each other or apart from each other — how then can the establishment of those two exist?

What is exhausted has no arising; what is not exhausted has no arising; what is exhausted has no ceasing; and what is not exhausted has no ceasing.

Arising and ceasing do not exist without an existent; an existent does not exist without arising and ceasing.

Arising and ceasing are not possible for what is empty; arising and ceasing are not possible for what is not empty.

Arising and ceasing are not possible as one; arising and ceasing are not possible as different.

“Arising is seen, and ceasing is seen” — that might be your [claim]; but arising and ceasing are seen [only] through delusion.

An existent is not born from an existent; an existent is not born from a non-existent; a non-existent is not born from a non-existent; a non-existent is not born from an existent.

An existent is not born from itself; nor is it born from another; neither from itself nor from another — then from where is it born?

For one who accepts an existent there arises the view of eternity or of annihilation; for that existent must be either eternal or non-eternal.

nāgārjuna wrote:

that existent must be either eternal or non-eternal

For one who accepts an existent there is neither annihilation nor eternity; for existence is the unbroken stream of arising and passing away of fruit and cause.

bhāvavādin wrote:

existence is the unbroken stream of arising and passing away of fruit and cause

If existence is the unbroken stream of arising and passing away of fruit and cause, then, since what has passed away does not arise again, the annihilation of the cause follows.

For what exists by own nature non-existence is not possible; and at the time of nirvāṇa there is annihilation, through the stilling of the stream of existence.

When the last has not ceased, the first existence is not possible; and when the last has not not-ceased, the first existence is not possible.

If the first is born at the moment when the last is ceasing, then one would be ceasing and the other coming to be.

And if what is ceasing and what is being born are not possible [at the same time], then in those skandhas in which one dies, in those very ones one is born.

Thus in all three times the unbroken stream of existence is not logical; how can that stream of existence exist, which does not exist in the three times?