Bodhicharyavatara Chapter 9, Stanzas 134-137

Staying with the Samkhya philosophical stance, that both cause and result co-exist as fixed entities within everything, the example given here is that sand cannot produce oil, because unless oil is already present in the sand, there is no process within the sand particles that will cause oil to appear if it is not already there. Shantideva once again refutes that view giving an example: if someone is eating delicious food, is the result––excrement––already in the food as a fixed, permanent thing? The food undergoes a series of processes as it is digested, which means that while excrement is not truly existing in the original mouthful taken, it is the act of eating that will always produce excrement. Thus it is dependent on other interrelated things and is not truly evidentially there in the food as it is eaten.

Rinpoche reminds us of the chicken and egg scenario, which comes first? This question cannot be definitively answered, because we can never see the fully grown chicken at the same time we first observe the egg which produces it, but we do know that the causes and conditions resulting in a chicken are within the egg, and that the hen is the cause of an egg.

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