Twelefold chain of interdependent arising

Bodhidharma

Anyone know where i can get some good info on this topic, had a very strange occurance last week and this seems to be at the centre of it.

Thanks

Asiaprod

Bodhidharma wrote:

Anyone know where i can get some good info on this topic, had a very strange occurance last week and this seems to be at the centre of it.

Thanks

I found this to be interesting, from Buddhadharma

Interdependent Origination
Defined by Francesca Fremantle
Interdependent origination (Skt., pratityasamutpada) is the law of causality, which Shakyamuni discovered at his awakening. It revealed to him the whole truth of existence, and in penetrating it he became the Awakened One. What he saw was a total vision of how and why all beings throughout space and time are entangled in samsara for countless lives, as well as his own past lives in his progress toward liberation. This was the extraordinary insight that distinguished his teaching from others, so it is said, “whoever sees interdependent origination sees the dharma, whoever sees the dharma sees the Buddha.” When Assaji, one of the Buddha’s first disciples, was asked by Shariputra about his master’s teaching, his reply was a summary of interdependent origination, which became famous as the fundamental doctrine of buddhadharma:
Whatever things are cause-produced, the Tathagata has told their cause;?and what their cessation is, thus the great ascetic teaches.
According to this law, nothing has independent, permanent, or absolute existence. Everything is part of a limitless web of interconnections and undergoes a continual process of transformation. Every appearance arises from complex causes and conditions, and in turn combines with others to produce countless effects. By interrupting the causal chain at certain key points, the course of existence can be altered and effects prevented by eliminating their causes.
This law embraces all the basic principles of Buddhism. (The late Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche said that the whole range of teachings, from the shravakayana to dzogchen, has only the meaning of interdependent origination.) It demonstrates the doctrines of karma and rebirth. The three marks of existence are inherent within it: there is no unchanging self in this process, and it is characterized by impermanence and suffering, since whatever comes into being must change and pass away. The four noble truths flow from it: the first truth is the recognition of inherent suffering; the second truth, the cause of suffering, is shown by the law; understanding the cause of suffering leads to its cessation, the third truth; therefore, there is a path to liberation, the fourth truth.
Its best known formulation is the twelve causal links, which has been called the karmic chain reaction. In the traditional image of the Wheel of Life, it depicts the life, death and rebirth of sentient beings, but it can also be understood as the life cycle of appearances, actions, thoughts or any phenomenon whatever. Essentially it analyzes the process of an illusion crystallizing out of emptiness and being taken for reality.

The twelve links are:
(1) ignorance or unawareness, which imagines self and the world to have intrinsic existence;
(2) conditioning, the karmic forces that ripen in the ground of ignorance from seeds sown in previous lives and form the conditioning factors of the next life;
(3) consciousness, arising from conditioning, which carries the sense of self and operates through the mind and senses;
(4) name and form, the totality of an individual’s mental and physical constituents;
(5) the six senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, and mental faculty; (6) contact, the meeting of the senses with their objects;
(7) feeling, the positive or negative sensations aroused by contact;
(8) thirst, the desire to possess or avoid these sensations;
(9) grasping, the physical, verbal or mental action that follows thirst; (10) existence or becoming, the coming into existence that results from grasping;
(11) birth, manifesting in one of the six realms;
(12) decay and death, the process of aging and passing away that inevitably follows birth.

The circle of the twelvefold chain is continuous, a self-contained system without beginning or end. At death we fall back into ignorance and start all over again. The whole cycle can be contemplated in reverse order, starting with death and tracing its causes back to ignorance. Although the links appear sequentially, they may also be seen as interconnected, simultaneous, and mutually dependent. The wheel is a schematic picture, designed to demonstrate the conditioned and relative nature of apparent existence, while exposing sentient beings’ intense attachment and habituation to the causes of suffering.
But on what does the law of causality rest? Nagarjuna declares that interdependent origination itself is emptiness, and this identity is the Middle Way, while the Heart Sutra proclaims “in emptiness... there is no ignorance or extinction of ignorance, up to no decay and death and no extinction of decay and death.” Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche says of the Wheel of Life, “this wheel is the portrait of samsara and therefore also of nirvana, which is the undoing of the samsaric coil,” bringing to mind his wonderfully vivid image of self-liberation, “the snake-knot of conceptual mind uncoils in space.”
For significant as life and death may seem, genuine as suffering is, and seriously as we must regard the law of karma, as long as we remain within samsara, nothing produced by interdependent origination has ultimate reality. It is an illusion appearing from ignorance, whose nature is the error of belief in self. Since it has never existed it cannot be destroyed. It is dispelled only by the wisdom of nonself. Transcending both existence and nonexistence, it is self-liberated into emptiness, the vast openness of space beyond conceptual thought.

Francesca Fremantle is the author of Luminous Emptiness: Understanding the Tibetan Book of the Dead (Shambhala Publications).

maitri

Oh, that was really interesting reading! Thank you, Asia!

Asiaprod

maitri wrote:

Oh, that was really interesting reading! Thank you, Asia!

Glad you enjoyed it. There are more bits that are found in diffeerent writings that actually build on this concept. This all dates back to the time the Buddha first started to expound on his teaching. If memory serves me he expounded the teaching over a course of 6 lectures and after each one, a follower went away to start their own school. It is for this reason that in IMHO there is no single school that can claim to be THE only true school. One has to study the teachings of many schools to fit all the pieces together.

For example, the following teachings, from different schools, are all interconected to our understanding of Interdependent Origination:
The 10 Worlds
The three existences
The 3,000 life conditions and believe it or not the I ching:)

MeditationMom

by Bodhidarma had a very strange occurrence last week and this seems to be at the centre of it.

Bodhidarma - is there any way you could attempt to describe this occurrence and how you relate it to the twelve links? These things are close to impossible to describe in words as they start to move beyond the logical mind and you would have to be able to trust us a lot to do so, but this forum should be a safe place. Scripture/Sutras like the one Asiaprod chose are a wonderful place to find confirmation and to find resonance with your experience. Maybe you can say something about it also, in your words, so it can resonate for someone else.

Mostly what happens is that "afterwards" the mind "tries to make sense" out of these experiences and also to "draw conclusions." In general my advise is to think of them as the orgasms of meditation - no need to make sense of them or to draw conclusions - just keep meditating and have more of them
- but depending on what occurred with you last week there may be other considerations. Also, I am no-one to talk as I ALWAYS had to find in sutras or scriptures, or from my teachers, confirmation or explanations before I could move on. And I made so, so many wrong conclusions...now, though, I am happy to offer you my mind-dismantling services should you want them.

Even if you don't, I still want to give you encouragement to give words to your experience and feel safe here in doing so.

Asiaprod

MeditationMom wrote:

Also, I am no-one to talk as I ALWAYS had to find in sutras or scriptures, or from my teachers, confirmation or explanations before I could move on. And I made so, so many wrong conclusions...now, though, I am happy to offer you my mind-dismantling services should you want them.

This also resonates with me. One of the issues I also had to deal with was this seeking of confirmation. Over time, I came to realize that if I do this, then in reality I am not really learning. Learning means to be able to make/believe in our own judgment. I believe we really begin to grow when we no longer look for confirmation, but have the courage to believe we are right. Any confirmation required will come from dialogue. At the heart of the Buddha's teaching lies the command to seek for the answers ourselves and not to blindly believe what others have told us.

Bodhidharma

Hey everyone. Thanks for the replys so far.

Meditation Mom you asked for the story behind the question so here it goes.

Last week i went to college and it was raining heavily so i was soaked by the time i got in. When i got to the class, it wasn't on. I had an hour to kill so i decided to go to the canteen in the place where the next class was on. When i got there, i remembered there was no canteen in the place, so i had to sit in an empty class for 40 mins. After the class ended, i thought i got snubbed by someone i liked and as i walked back to college it rained on me again. As i was driving home i felt very angry and fed up. I thought what was the point of all this crap (not in a suicidal way or anything). Suffice to say when i got home i was not in a good mood.

I didn't do much, but i decided to watch a dvd, a comedy. I enjoyed it and found myself laughing. Near the end of the film someone mentions inevitability. After the movie was over i thought about inevitability. I began with one action leading to another reaction and so on. Then i thought about how life is the result of birth, and how birth must be the inevitable result of death.

Then i decided to go outside to the garden for quiet, to think. While there i looked at the stars. Usually i dont like to do this because it makes me feel insignificant. While there, i thought about my day. Maybe me sitting here looking at the stars is the inevitable result of my crappy day. Maybe i needed to experience the bad day to appreciate some insight i was feeling inside. I looked at one star in particular and i just felt connected. I felt like i was looking directly into the eye of the universe. I realised that the universe could not exist without me, i am important, just as important as even the sun. I looked into the centre of the universe at felt like i belonged. As i was looking a smile grew on my face. I felt so happy, like i'd been shown a secret by the cosmos. As if it said, "dont worry, everything happens for a reason, you'll be fine."

And with that i went to bed, i was still thinking about inevitability. And here is the where i knew my experience meant something. I was about to start reading and for whatever reason i looked over my bed at a board i have. On it was a sheet i wrote on some Buddhist things, the eightfold path and so on. Anyway my eye caught sight of the word "Death" with an arrow pointing back to "Birth". It was the twelvefold chain of interdependent arising. It was then that the message hit home. I actually laughed. It all made so much sense.

I had put up that sheet of notes over 18 months ago and never once looked at it. Why at that exact time, at the exact point where i needed it most, did i look at it and find an answer? I can only think that when i wrote the notes it was inevitable that the moment of realisation would occur. It felt like an epiphany, like an acknowldement of all the questions i asked myself being answered by circumstance.

That is why i asked the question. Too many thigs happened that day for it to be a coincidence. So there you have it. What do you think? Has anything like this ever happened to anyone?

Sorry for the lenght of the story but its as short as i could make it.

Asiaprod

Bodhidharma wrote:

I had put up that sheet of notes over 18 months ago and never once looked at it. Why at that exact time, at the exact point where i needed it most, did i look at it and find an answer? I can only think that when i wrote the notes it was inevitable that the moment of realisation would occur. It felt like an epiphany, like an acknowldement of all the questions i asked myself being answered by circumstance.

Very interesting experience. That is known as a Moment of Realization. Why did it happen. You made the cause for it to happen 18 months ago when you hung that note on the wall because, though you did not fully understand why at the time, the note held some deep significance for you. The minute you made that cause the result was also present in your life at the same moment. You just could not see it. It took time for you to get into the right frame of mind to open your eyes to the reality around you. Your day seemed to have conspired to help you get to that point. You are indeed lucky to have made the connection that you did. Many spend their lives without ever experiencing a moment like this. That was what I was referring to earlier when I said that one does not need to seek for confirmation. Confirmation will come of it own when the time is right. I think we all experience these types of thing, but most of the time our mind is so preoccupied with the day-to-day stresses of life that we miss the moment. This is why meditation is so important for us. The lesson I have found the hardest to follow is to open my eyes to the world around me. There is a great teaching by Nichiren Daishonin, the founder of my school of buddhism, called The Opening of the Eyes. If you get a chance look it up.
I will leave space now for MeditationMom who I am sure will have much deeper insight on this than I have.
Congratulation on finding that moment.

MeditationMom

Bodhidarma- thank you so much for giving words to your experiences of that day - how blessed you are to have had such a day! Asiaprod's explanations of causes and results, and calling it a moment of realization, are right on the button and even though we do not realize how these things happen you can count on them and trust them, completely.

Enlightenment itself is absolutely inevitable. If you don't manage during your lifetime, you will get enlightenend in death, and then return for another lifetime to try again.

Your day is hinting at several things. Not only is death inevitable after birth, and birth inevitable after death, these two - death and birth - can move so closely together that they become the very same thing. If I understand your post correctly this is actually what made you laugh when you side-glanced at your death-birth-note on your board, while pinning something else on it.

Your have found connection with the universe that evening by your willingness to feel small and insignificant. The whole day had prepared you. Nobody paid attention to you. By the time the comedy dvd made you laugh, you had relaxed your grumpiness about being ignored all day and being alone all day, even maybe rejected. Against your usual need for SELF-protection, though, you went outside to look at the sky. You felt so insignificant and small in fact, that you were able to identify with one tiny, little speck of light in the infinite night sky that evening. In other words, YOU, were almost gone. What do you think would have remained if even that had been gone? "If even that had been gone" that would have been "death and birth in the same moment". You would have become one with existence.

Know, that you are already one with existence! Therefore don't be surprised when this existence arranges itself - empty classroom, empty cafeteria, funny dvd, no rain that night, the note on your board, etc. - to take you towards re-union with itself. Keep up your ways of open mind, humor, getting annoyed with worldly pursuits while pursuing them - like finishing college , looking at the stars, pinning notes on your board, willingness to be nothing, receptivity, studying the teachings you are drawn to, etc. - you are doing very, very well!

by Bodhidarma- I felt like i was looking directly into the eye of the universe. I realised that the universe could not exist without me, i am important, just as important as even the sun. I looked into the centre of the universe at felt like i belonged. As i was looking a smile grew on my face. I felt so happy, like i'd been shown a secret by the cosmos. As if it said, "dont worry, everything happens for a reason, you'll be fine."

Trust this, and one day there will be no more "you" and "the universe" but only Oneness. Already there was communion, a form of union. Thank you for trusting us with especially this paragraph. It makes me very happy for you.