This article is a continuation of the previous one on nāma-rūpa in this series.

“There’s a tangle within, a tangle without, The world is entangled with a tangle. Of that, O Gotama, I ask you: Who can disentangle this tangle?” — Jaṭā Sutta (SN 7.6)

According to the Buddha, suffering is not out there in the ‘objective’ world theorized by conventional worldly philosophers. The origin of suffering is found in our subjective conceptual world of name-and-form. As it is said: acchecchi taṇhaṃ idha nāmarūpe: the aim of a meditator is to “cut off the craving in this name-and-form.” (Samiddhi Sutta, S I 12)

Let’s use a simile from the Suttas to clarify: the Buddha is called the ‘incomparable surgeon’, sallakatto anuttaro (Sela Sutta, Sn 56). Also he is sometimes called taṇhāsallassa hantāraṃ, ‘one who removes the dart of craving’ (Pavāraṇā Sutta, S I 192). So the Buddha is the incomparable surgeon who pulls out the poison-tipped arrow of craving.

Therefore nāma-rūpa is like the wound in which the poisonous arrow of craving is embedded. When one is wounded by a poison-tipped arrow, first of all the wound has to be cleaned up. Then the bandage has to be applied, not on the archer or on his arrow, but on the wound itself. Similarly, comprehension of name-and-form is the preliminary step in the treatment of the wound caused by the poison-tipped arrow of craving. Trying to ‘fix saṃsāra’, or improve the external condition of the world, will be of absolutely no help in overcoming suffering.

Thus a meditator, however proficient he may be in conventional worldly usage of words, has to pay special attention to the basic pre-conceptual components of nāma, as defined by Venerable Sāriputta: feeling, perception, intention, contact and attention. This requires a process of deconditioning, awakening from the hypnotic trance induced by family, schooling, media and society. It involves unlearning habitual verbal associations down to childlike simplicity. But of course, the meditative equanimity thus developed is not based on ignorance but on knowledge.

The significance of rūpa in nāma-rūpa is similar. Here too we have something deep, but many take nāma-rūpa to mean ‘mind and matter’, ‘mind and body’ or even ‘mentality-materiality’. Like uninstructed materialists, they assume that mind and matter are disjunct. But in Dhamma there is no such rigid Aristotelian duality. Nāma and rūpa are intimately interrelated, and taken together the pair forms an important link in the chain of paṭicca samuppāda, Dependent Origination.

Rūpa exists in relation to nāma. That is, form is known with the help of name. As we saw in the previous article, the infant gets first-hand knowledge of the rubber ball through contact, feeling, perception, intention and attention, even before he knows its name. Similarly, the definition of rūpa is given by Venerable Sāriputta as: