So to recap the whole wheel. It begins with ignorance. This is from past states of consciousness. There must have been an original state of ignorance, when you first became conscious as a human, or perhaps even before, for the first time and perceived with physical senses and didn’t understand that you are not seeing something separate outside of yourself.
It’s worth noting that the word ‘ignorant’ isn’t judgmental. You simply didn’t know something. Like if you go to a college to learn something, you’re ignorant when you enroll, and hopefully have understanding when you leave. Perhaps ‘not knowing’ is a better term. There is not knowing and not accepting, and they are two different things. Like the heliocentric galaxy. When you stand on planet earth, it looks like the sun is going around us and we are at the centre, which is actually incorrect. There is the way it seems to be and the way it is. But for much of human history we were ignorant, i.e. we didn’t know. Then someone found out the truth by using a telescope, but by then the idea of the earth being the centre of the universe was tied in to religious belief and so identity, and then people didn’t want to accept it and there was a whole load of suffering. This really is the definition of suffering. There is the way things are and the way you thought they were AND THE PAIN YOU WILL FEEL IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE TWO.
So there was the original ‘not knowing’ at first consciousness. Perhaps that was not a specific moment in time. I think a human child is born and the stages of development evolve slowly over a childhood. Interestingly, there is a concept of ‘object persistence’. A baby doesn’t understand that things they cannot directly perceive still exist. That’s why babies love the ‘peek-a-boo’ game. A parent hides their face behind their hands, and then suddenly removes their hands and cries, ‘Peek-a-boo!’ and the child is surprised and laughs, because as far as they were aware, the person had disappeared when they couldn’t be directly observed. When a child gets to a certain stage of development, they develop the understanding that things they cannot see still exist out of sight. This isn’t a vague theory, there are various experiments, mostly based around tracking eye movement in different situations, that proves this is a specific stage of development, from not knowing something to knowing it.
I think, as an aside, the subject of object persistence is interesting, as one theory is that, the babies are actually right, things we don’t perceive are not actually there, reality is a projection of human consciousness. Never forget, the world you are perceiving now is a recreation of your brain, 100% made up by the brain based on input from the senses, but there is no way of knowing what the senses are actually perceiving ‘out there’ beyond the skull, and different species have different senses and so their brains are recreating different realities for them.
There was the original state of not knowing the truth of reality, and this has been the case ever since. I recently realised that there are three ways to consider the dependent links, over the course of a lifetime, or as moment-to-moment consciousness, but it dawned on me that ‘death’ means ‘the end of consciousness… for now’. So if you are considering the cycle as lifetime to lifetime, then when life ends, consciousness in that body ends and according to Buddhist belief, goes on to the next world for a while, lives out a bit of karma, and then is reincarnated into a new human life.
But the last link, of death, means consciousness ending, before being reborn, either in another lifetime or in another moment, but you could also think of it as ‘another day’. So in this sense, the death of consciousness (in that moment) is sleep, and rebirth (of consciousness) is waking up again. You go to sleep not knowing, and you wake up not knowing.
So mental formations begin, stuff is created in the mind because it also was in the past. When you were conscious before, you wanted things, and this caused habits of thought that emerge now an mental pictures, inner-voice etc. and as soon as that is created there is a consciousness that is aware of them and of them being linked to a world that is ‘out there’.
You wake up hungry say, and imagine eggs and bacon and toast and tea, and have the mental pictures of them and are aware of the pictures, and that they relate to things that can exist in the world. You have senses and so if you go downstairs you can see and smell and taste the eggs and bacon and toast. So you get up and go downstairs and make the food and there is actual contact, you DO eat and smell and taste eggs and bacon and it is a good feeling, a pleasant physical and mental sensation of being full.
This lasts until lunchtime until you are full and would then LOVE a croissant from the cafe, but it’s SO expensive, but what the hell, so you go for it, then home for a nap. But you feel a little guilty for the calorie overload, imagine being fat and resolve to have salad tomorrow, this being your last thought (and intention) before ending consciousness for the day, when you will wake up with your new healthy resolve.
Alright, that is a little trite, to explain all human suffering, but it makes the cycle clear in the mind to answer the question, so how can we be happy and end suffering? Looking at the cycle, and considering the Noble Truths, the problem is the difference between the mental formations and the world objects. Wanting and having are not the same thing (sometimes wanting is BETTER than having, but let’s not go there).
When you wake up wanting eggs and bacon and toast, it is in your mind and not in the world as it is downstairs and not made yet and you are still in bed. So you go and get it and there is contact and you are satiated for a while, but there is an ‘unsatisifactoriness’ about it. The hunger, for the world object, can never be fully satiated. You can’t keep on eating forever and have unbroken happiness because of it, and when you stop the happiness it caused stops with it, and eventually the hunger will return. Now in the future you could get a cold or be in jail and the eggs and bacon and toast are either unobtainable or unenjoyable, so now there isn’t even the fleeting satiation.
How would it be if you can experience the things you imagined directly? I mean, if you woke up, wanted eggs and bacon and toast and imagined it and rather than be in your head, those mental pictures could be in the world in a way that you can physically perceive them. Then it would be the end of desire, you could just think of what you want and have it. Over time, I think it would be a Midas touch, boredom and existential angst would set in, because you are still satiating a repeating desire and so the states, the emotions, are not constant satiation but cycling between wanting and having, albeit faster.
The thing is that, only imagination exists. You have the imaginary bacon and eggs and toast in your mind, and it is perceived by inner senses, created wholly in the brain. Then you go downstairs and make it and perceive it with the outer senses, the eyes, tongue, ears hear the toast crunching, fingers feel the dry texture, and all these senses send electrical signals to the brain, which then recreates a world with the illusion that it is from ‘out there’, outside of your skull and beyond the senses, when really you have no idea what is out there or not. It’s all imagination. But we want to feel happy and pleasant states. Desires keep coming up, wanting the senses to report that they are experiencing certain things, we don’t want to ‘think’ about eggs and bacon and toast, we want to ‘have it’ to ‘experience’ the physical taste, touch, sounds, smells and taste — the pleasant state arises with this contact but the contact can only be fleeting.
It’s possible to have a happy state without the contact. You could be sitting at home in the evening, not hungry, and recall a fantastic restaurant meal you had last week and the memory, the mental picture, causes a happy state to arise… but it also conditions desire as there is the ignorance that the meal was ‘out there’ beyond the senses, and in the future you could reserve the table again, the nice one near the window, and have the same meal. You remind yourself to call the restaurant next week when your salary gets paid in. Now there is habit and tendency and grasping.
So the mental picture of the meal can be a happy memory at one point, and a desire at another point, and always ultimately unsatisfactory as, try as you might, you can’t eat forever and hunger always returns. Yes, this is a trite example, but take something a bit meatier like romantic love or being alive in itself, and weigh up all the happiness and sadness in the course of the average human life and if the Buddha and other masters say that there is some ultimate state beyond this, beyond suffering, then I’m all for it.
But it can’t be that we don’t have states, states of happiness and joy and sadness. The Buddha still got hungry and wanted food, felt sadness and compassion for other peoples’ suffering. The problem is that the states are linked to the idea of there being something ‘out there’ beyond our imagination which we are not a part of; this is the ignorance. The states are independent. In the same way we can imagine anything we want at any time, we can also choose to feel anything we want at any time. It’s not obvious and it takes some practice and observation because no one ever spells this out for us and it is not the way we are used to using the mind.
We live in states that are reactive to whatever is out there in the world and whatever comes up in the mind, whatever mental pictures or inner voice, the world triggers us. The Buddha said that the world is full of sparks, meaning the senses ignite all our passions, things we see, watch on social media etc. but the inner-world also, as we remember all of the triggers, the things we perceived in the past, and enjoyed or hated, are internalised and recreated in the mind and cause us to want to experience them on the outside of our skulls, or avoid them because they are unpleasant.
So just take all this in and think about what the end of suffering could be. Clearly the states we feel, our emotion, and it needs to be delinked from the things we perceive, whatever may or may not be ‘out there’ beyond the skull. We need to deeply comprehend the truth, beyond ignorance, IT’S ALL ON THE INSIDE. WE CAN BE HAPPY WITH THE WANTING.
The world needs to be disavowed, otherwise we are allowing desire to arise and choose our state over something that either doesn’t exist, or IS US. WE *ARE* THE THINGS WE DESIRE. An imagined bacon and toast and eggs is the same as a toast and eggs and bacon that might or might not exist outside your senses which are telling you is there, it is all imaginary. Therefore, you need to choose states directly, regardless of senses, and then try to comprehend reality the way that it really is, not the way it appeared to be. ONLY THE MIND EXISTS.
It isn’t enough to just say this, there is only mind, or intellectually comprehend this. It needs to unfold as a realisation, that this idea of a separateness, that there’s an individual you separate from the perceived, is a bit like the these illusions where you are looking at a picture of an old hag with a hooded cloak and cruel mouth. While you stare at the picture, it also turns out to be a beautiful young woman, and the cruel mouth is actually a necklace. But you can’t see both pictures at the same time. You are looking at one and ‘trying’ to see the other, and then, all of a sudden and all by itself, your brain can comprehend the other picture and you are surprised, but then you cannot ‘see’ the original picture, until it snaps back into comprehension when it is ready. You cannot make this happen directly. You can create the conditions for the change of perspective. Obviously, if you go out in the back garden and play football then it won’t happen. You have to create the correct conditions, namely hold the picture and look at it with a sense of patience, faith and expectation. You have faith because someone told you the picture had two ways to be perceived, although at this point you can only see one, why would your friend lie about it and say there are two ways to see it? You also have expectation, because everyone told you if you look at it long enough, then your mind will work out the other way to see it and show you what else is there. And this is exactly the same mechanism for awakening, Nirvanah, to extinguish the idea of separateness, because if YOU ARE WHAT YOU SEE, THEN THERE CAN BE NO WANTING.