Dependent Co-arising

The chains of pratitya-samutpada dependent co-arising:

1.   Ignorance 
2.   Mental formations 
3.   Consciousness 
4.   Name and form 
5.   The senses: sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste, and mind 
6.   Contact 
7.   Feeling 
8.   Craving 
9.   Clinging 
10.   Becoming 
11.   Birth
12.   Aging and death.

Whoever sees Dependent Origination sees the Dhamma;
whoever sees the Dhamma sees Dependent Origination.


When this exists, that comes to be;
with the arising of this, that arises.
When this does not exist, that does not come to be;
with the cessation of this, that ceases.

 

Avijjā Paccayā Sutta:

It starts with ignorance and ends with aging, suffering, and death.

Aging, suffering, and death is preceded by birth preceded by existence preceded by clinging.

Clinging:

The Buddhist suttas list four kinds of clinging. There is clinging to sensuality, to views (doctrine), to practices (rituals), and to a self-idea. 

The Pāli term for clinging, upādāna, literally means ‘fuel’. The four kinds of clinging are the four ways in which deluded mind feeds. 

Most obviously, the mind feeds on the senses. Sensual stimulation alleviates, for a time, the mind’s craving for peace, and satisfaction. But this is an unreliable source of nutrition with diminishing returns. Our overstimulated culture, built on content addiction, fast food, and pornography shows this. Sensual clinging requires ever-increasing doses of pleasure to silence the void inside us we’re avoiding.

 
On a subtler level, a deluded mind feeds on views about the nature of the world. Opinions (and their seeming confirmation) can be even more addictive than sensuality. There is no shortage of ascetics abstaining from bodily pleasure only to have replaced it with an addiction to doctrines and narratives. In fact, the Buddha recognizes his own teaching as a potential object of clinging. As long as we are practicing the Dhamma according to opinion rather than direct insight, we are not practicing the Dhamma.

 
Another clinging is the mind feeding on rules and practices. Here attachment forms
around maintaining a particular way of life. This can include our diet, our work routine,
our family life, our spiritual practice... This is the mind seeking peace and satisfaction through activities. We seek the sense of being a good boy or a good girl, a productive citizen, living the proper life. Again, this is an attempt to cover up the constant background of stress and sorrow in our lives. And it works temporarily at best. 

The final kind of clinging is so subtle most people never realize it’s there. Attachment to a self-idea is the root and substance of all other kinds of attachment. The idea of being a separate self is the mind’s most treasured nutrient. It gives the mind a sense of shelter, belonging – reality even. It is the master narrative that makes sense of life. Ironically, it is also our key source of suffering. This is what Carl Jung termed ‘persona’. We may identify as a good mother, a faithful husband, a professor, an anarchist, and so on. Our times show we can cling to our gender too. Our bodies, feelings, perceptions, predispositions, and even the fact of our awareness can serve as targets for self-projection. Clinging to a self-idea is the belief we are some independent entity, a ‘self’ separate from experience, or within experience, or even outside of experience. Mystical notions like the Cosmic Self are, for the Buddha, also forms of clinging. More food for deluded mind.

 
The four kinds of clinging are the mind’s efforts at alleviating stress, suffering, and dissatisfaction. These efforts deserve our compassion, but they must be recognized as futile.

 
If we think of a person addicted to sex, and another one addicted to religion, and another addicted to work, and another addicted to their looks – we picture four different kinds of life.

 
Clinging is like gravity. It pulls us into habitual orbits, shaping our lives and destinies, making us circle endlessly around objects of craving—whether sensual pleasures, ideas, activities, or our self-image.  So, think about what you most cling to in your life. Is it your work or your relationships? Is it achievement or status? What would happen if you let go of those, even for a moment? Clinging is the 9th link of Dependent Origination.

 
‘I see, master,’ the monk says, ‘but this only displaces my question. If a commoner clings to his possessions, it is he himself that clings, no? Or whose clinging do you mean?’ The Buddha refrains from pointing out the monk’s clinging to a self-idea. He replies: ‘‘Whose clinging?’ is not a valid question. Rather, when there is craving as a condition, clinging arises.’ Buddha uses similar question in each links of the dependent co-arising so as to come to the teaching of the non-self.

Craving:

Craving is the state of wanting your present experience to be different than what it is. It is having a preference for the contents of consciousness.

Craving is preceded by feeling ( pleasant, unpleasant and neutral) preceded by contact preceded by seix sense bases preceded by body-mind preceded by consciousness.

Consciousness:

The Buddha himself left us with a mysterious simile. He compares consciousness to a sunbeam and the body-mind to that on which the sunbeam lands.  

"Just as if there were a roofed house or a roofed hall having windows on the north, the south, or the east. When the sun rises, and a ray has entered by way of the window, where does it land?" "On the western wall, lord." "And if there is no western wall, where does it land?" "On the ground, lord." "And if there is no ground, where does it land?" "On the water, lord." "And if there is no water, where does it land?" "It does not land, lord." "In the same way, where there is no craving for nutriment … consciousness does not land there or increase [and] there is no alighting of body-mind. This simile suggests that liberation from the endless cycles of rebirth does not consist of the end of consciousness. Rather, it is the setting free of consciousness from the confines of the body-mind. What does this mean? I wish I could tell you… And notice another detail. The Buddha says the liberation of consciousness comes when ‘there is no craving for nutriment’, the food, contact, mental violations, and consciousness itself.  

We feed on sights, sounds, smells, tastes, textures, and mental phenomena. The words we listen to, the work we do, the love we make, the books we read, the content we consume… These are all different ways of feeding on life. And as they say, you are what you eat.

Feeding on junk experience, we create a sick, undisciplined, deluded body-mind. A decrepit shelter for consciousness. What’s more, this defiled body-mind is caught in a vicious cycle of seeking more of the quick-dopamine junk that poisons it. On the other hand, feeding on wholesome experience creates a healthy, disciplined, awake body-mind. A beautiful abode for consciousness. And that body-mind will seek and create more wholesome experience in a positive feedback loop. But while the Buddha recommends feeding on wholesome experience, even this must be transcended for liberation to occur. Liberation comes when the body-mind finally loses all appetite for experience, wholesome and unwholesome alike. When all preference ends. When all of life is seen through as non-self, ephemeral, and unsatisfactory, no more feeding occurs. When there is no more feeding, there is no more karma. With the cessation of karma, no future rebirth occurs, and no new body-mind is generated. Consciousness is set free.

Consciousness is preceded by mental formation preceded by ignorance.

Mental formations (Karma formation):

There are 3 channels through which we create karma: body, speech, and mind. Through our actions, words, and thoughts we produce karma that is bright, dark, or neither bright nor dark. This karma determines our future experiences in this life and subsequent ones.

The law of karma works like a social media algorithm.  What you do, say, and think determines what you experience in the future. Acting violently will land you in a violent life. Speaking kindly will fill your life with kindness. The Buddha teaches all we ever experience is the fruit of past karma. Your watching this video now is literally what your past karma looks like.  It is not just the YouTube algorithm that brought you here. A much greater algorithm, the law of karma, is responding to the thoughts, words, and actions you have willfully produced in the past. And here you are. So take a moment to reflect: what kind of future are you shaping right now with the choices you’re making? What you think, say, and do today shapes what you experience tomorrow.

Ignorance:

By ignorance, the Buddha means the core existential delusion chaining beings to endless sorrow. That is, ignorance of the Four Noble Truths. 

The First Noble Truth is that there is no final satisfaction to be discovered in the world. To exist is to be dissatisfied. All paths, the straight and the winding, the long and the short, the wide and the narrow, the easy and the rough, all of them lead to sorrow, disappointment, and pain.

The Second Noble Truth is that dissatisfaction arises due to craving. The very chasing of satisfaction in a world of dissatisfaction is the feedback loop that keeps the world running. And keeps beings in perpetual suffering. 

The Third Noble Truth is that while there is no final satisfaction to be discovered in the world – final satisfaction is, in fact, possible. There is a way to become free of sorrow. The Fourth and final Noble Truth is the pathless path leading to nirvāṇa. 

But what could this mean? Do we simply stop acting, speaking, and thinking? No there will be unintentional action. Inaction in action.

 

Excerpts from:

https://youtu.be/ryZp2UOobP8?si=-w5d169qFBXNozJO (Seeker to seeker)