It might not be the best idea to jump into one of the most complex teachings at the beginning, but the teaching of dependent origination is perhaps at the core of understanding how our reality is created: if we can get this, it’s downhill from then on!
This teaching is an explanation of how everything exists, how it is all connected, why it is all imbued with suffering and the solution. There are twelve sequential links that explain how it all comes about, and there are two ways to look at it. You can say that the sequence describes each human life, one cycle is one lifetime – or you can interpret it as an explanation of how moment-to-moment consciousness, and so reality (remember, it’s ALL INSIDE) is created and sustained (and how to crack it). I’m going to present the latter understanding, as I don’t understand what a practice would be with the former.
Ignorance
The first link is symbolized by a blind person and is translated as ‘ignorance’, which means to not know something. It is the first link, and so there is the implication that, if you DID know this, then the whole cycle would not start in the first place (or cease if it has already started) and so what do we not know? To explain it, the Buddha gave the example of someone in the dark looking at the flame from an oil lamp, but they can only see the flame. They cannot see the lamp and the wick and the fuel that it depends on, and so they think it is an independent phenomenon. The suggestion is that we are what we perceive (there is only imagination); we are not separate.
Often commentaries suggest that the ignorance relates to the four noble truths, and it is based on the idea that there is something ‘out there’, to obtain, to not have but want.
Mental formations
The second link is known as mental formations. It is the contents of the mind such as thoughts, habits, mental pictures. It is all of the mental tendencies, to think in a certain way, to perceive and filter the world in a certain way, based on the past thoughts. Sit in a room alone and look at the blank slate of your imagination. It won’t be blank for long. Things arise, mental pictures, inner-voices, ideas. It’s past conditioning arising and creating the future. All karma is created at this stage and all that is created in the world in other words. The image is a potter shaping a pot, which is very interesting because I think this is a biblical image also. Why would this image be chosen? Because a potter has a piece of clay that he can shape into anything, and he can make a pot, which can hold anything. So the mind and imagination can create anything it wants, any mental picture, thought, idea, in the same way that a pot can hold a whole host of different ingredients to make soup. The soup could taste good or bad, meaning there is wholesome (leading to awakening/truth) and unwholesome mental formations (leading to wanting (something that doesn’t exist but you think it does (ignorance)).
The image of a river is also used to describe this link, because it flows a certain way depending on how the water has gone in the past. All the time our minds are creating various stuff, mental pictures and thoughts and inner-talk — and we can reign it at any time and choose what we want, but usually we don’t and the STREAM of consciousness pulls up all it’s stuff based on what happened and what you thought in the past, even when you’re reacting to something, without conscious intervention and choosing to make it otherwise, you react the same way you usually do, automatically, with the same thoughts, the same way of seeing the world — and it’s all based on the first link of ignorance. In the past you thought that there was something ‘out there’ beyond the senses (that isn’t you (it’s all you (imagination))) and so you created a lot of mental formation in response, liking and not liking, wanting and not wanting, and now have a whole inner-ecosystem based on these previous reactions.
Consciousness
So, there is a river of mental contents flowing based on past ignorance, and what happens now is that consciousness arises, there is an awareness that cognizes this stream, which is a link between the past (ignorance, causing the stream) and the present (where the stream is now observed, and cognized). The traditional image is of a monkey swinging tree to tree, as this is how the mind goes from one thing to another, although personally I think that image applies to the second link more. There is also the analogy of a flame for this link, which illuminates and allows one to be aware of something. It also has the image of a mirror, as it ‘holds’ whatever is shone into it (mental formations).
Consciousness isn’t just arising from mental formations, but form, feeling, perception and impulse (mental formations). So at this stage, contact with the outside world isn’t mentioned, but consciousness is aware of everything that is being experienced. Due to past experience, the cycle has been run through many times and so once created, previous feelings and mental formations are cognized by consciousness, as is sense impression.
Name and form
Here, ‘name’ represents the inner mental processes, and at this stage they are linked to ‘form’, objects in the world. The mental process is now embodied in a mind that exists in an external world and there are inner and outer objects. There is an interdependence of mental and physical objects. There is a body with a world on the inside and a world on the outside.
One understands what exists and has an attitude about it.
Name is feeling, perception, impulse (mental formations), and consciousness, and form is the world. You’re not a mind floating adrift in a mental universe, but an embodied consciousness existing in the world. The traditional image is a person in a boat on a stream, the embodied stream of consciousness on a journey through a physical world beyond it’s senses (apparently).
The six sense bases
Now a ‘base’ arises, an ability to receive sense input. So in the previous link we become embodied, and now the bases to receive sense impressions and perceive the form outside of the body arises. The image is a house with windows, symbolizing the senses, the outside world can be perceived through the windows. There are six windows and six senses as Buddhism considers the mind itself to be a sense.
The senses receive experience and filter it, and focus, based on previous habit, and this influences the (feeling) reaction, although this can be delinked, feeling (vedana) can be uncoupled from the world, but we’ll come onto this.
Contact
Now there is an intersection of three things, contact joins the form to the sense base and consciousness is aware of it. The traditional image is a hand touching something, so it is literal. The Buddha said, with contact, the world arises, and cessation of contact is cessation of the world. Contact, to my understanding, is the linking of perception, feeling and consciousness, in other words, these three things are together. The world is perceived and created an emotional reaction, you like or dislike what you perceive, and this is all based on the original ignorance, thinking that what is outside is not also imagination.
Feeling
The next link is feeling, which means that the response to the contact, the perceived object is either pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. The image is of a person being hit with an arrow. There is another analogy where a person is hit by two arrows, which is perhaps a better way to think of it. The first one is the contact with the object, and the second is the judgement of whether it is good or not.
So there are inner objects as mental formations, which would include things we visualise, and physical forms in the world. We can choose the former and not the latter. With the inner world, there is a kind of inner-contact, and there could perhaps be an inner response or a pleasant thought or mental picture or whatever — but there is full control and volition over the inner processes, and so the pain isn’t created there and if it is it can be controlled there.
Craving
Craving is a response to things being pleasant or unpleasant, we either want them to continue or to cease. If it is unpleasant we want them to stop and for existence to cease also, and if they are pleasant, then we want that contact to continue, and by default, we want to continue to exist and be conscious, so that we can experience more. This desire to keep on experiencing something then drives the wheel onwards and forward. The traditional image is a thirsty person reaching for water.
Clinging/grasping
Clinging is an intensified form of craving and links the desire to an identity. A sense of ownership emerges. The clinging can be an idea or concept, and it can be something that endows a specific sense of self. Types of clinging can be sensual pleasures, views, rules, rituals and the very idea of an unchanging self. The traditional image is a person holding a burning coal, because there is actually nothing to cling to, and so only pain can result.
Becoming
Now the grasping progresses to identities, states, habits that lead to becoming. The image is a seed sprouting into a plant. The previous clinging created a desire to exist in a particular fixed form, as a fixed being who has managed to grasp a particular form, say a successful business person in an opulent home (for example), this requires existence to continue and be a certain way, with a certain identity, situation, things being perceived.
Becoming = I am existing in a certain state. Consciousness exists with an identity, emotion, desire and expectation which will then go forth and shine into the world (beliefs manifest and are perceived, positive or negative).
Birth
The desire to exist in a certain way leads to new thoughts, ideas and identities so that grasping can be fulfilled. The image is of a woman giving birth. We could also say that it is the birth of states (of being). The image is literal. This is the way I think of it. We perceive the outer world, and it shows the birth of the previous cycles, in other words, the dead world of past we perceive outside our skulls in the physical world, has been born from this inner-cycle, and so the cycle is not complete (for better or worse). It makes me think of the well known biblical verse, ‘walking through the shadow of the valley of death’, not a place in the afterlife, but the dead results we perceive with our senses, the projected results of our previous mental cycles (we created our own realities).
Birth – I am now the experiencer/identity
I AM
Aging and death
As soon as something is born, it must die. This is also true of ideas, identities and thoughts. There isn’t a permanent thing you can perceive or think or be within the cycle. Everything will peter out. Sometimes the image here is a tottering old person, but there is also the image of a tree with a ripe fruit falling from it, as the season is over, and next year the cycle will begin again and a new fruit begin sprouting. Of course, when this cycle ends, one is still ignorant in the same way as when the cycle began, and so it turns once more and off we go.
I think it can also mean the impermanence of the physical world. We created it with out previous thoughts, and even when we create something we wanted and are happy with, it’s nature is to change, and so lead to more desire and so mental formations and so the cycle keeps spinning. We’re constantly creating and manifesting a world that we want to keep but it cannot stay the same. We suffer… but we don’t have to.