The 12 Links of Dependent Origination

[Douglas]

In the The 12 Links of Dependent Origination; Why is consciousness number 3? I was under the impression that being conscious human beings our problems started with that.

thanks!
Gassho, Doug
sat/lah

[Bion]

Oh, that's a fantastic question! I'd love to take a jab at it, though, huge disclaimer here: TAKE IT WITH LOTS OF SALT.. you know, I am far from being qualified to dish out any teachings.

It does sound counterintuitive for consciousness to not be the root link in the chain, right? Here's an interesting fact: in a couple of instances, in his own account of his Enlightenment, the Buddha traces the chain only as far back as consciousness.
By the way, consciousness in the Buddha's system is not awareness of the mind alone. In the Nidanasamyutta, the Buddha himself addressed this, explaining consciousness as being of various classes: of the eye, ear, nose, tongue, body and mind. Since everything is a product of conditions, consciousness is also conditioned, so the whole chain is really a circle, more than a finite line - at least as far as I understand it.
To not reach too deep, and stretch beyond my simple understanding, what the Buddha teaches is that it is ignorance, the not realizing the true nature of reality that leads to karma, or volitional formations (act, words and thoughts), which in turn lead to the rest of the chain and not consciousness. For example, when an eye enters in contact with an object that leads to eye consciousness arising. But, that eye consciousness alone, that sight, does not name and judge the object seen, nor does it attach meaning to it. However, with ignorance at the root, the simple consciousness, the seeing, leads to a process of name and form, then a process of contact, then one of feeling, then one of craving, leading to one of attachment to that feeling etc...
In other words, if there was no ignorance at the root, one would not dissect the "wholeness", would not create concepts and illusions to then get attached to, which would not then lead to ideas of birth or death of these things, and thus there would be no suffering at the idea of things coming and going, or being impermanent.

Oh boy, this is quite an exercise for me and my ignorance shines through! Hope I made a bit of sense.
My most sincere apologies to you, everyone else and Jundo Roshi if my words mislead in any way.

Also, apologies for the long reply

Gassho
sat lah

[Douglas]

Oh, that's a fantastic question! I'd love to take a jab at it, though, huge disclaimer here: TAKE IT WITH LOTS OF SALT.. you know, I am far from being qualified to dish out any teachings.

It does sound counterintuitive for consciousness to not be the root link in the chain, right? Here's an interesting fact: in a couple of instances, in his own account of his Enlightenment, the Buddha traces the chain only as far back as consciousness.
By the way, consciousness in the Buddha's system is not awareness of the mind alone. In the Nidanasamyutta, the Buddha himself addressed this, explaining consciousness as being of various classes: of the eye, ear, nose, tongue, body and mind. Since everything is a product of conditions, consciousness is also conditioned, so the whole chain is really a circle, more than a finite line - at least as far as I understand it.
To not reach too deep, and stretch beyond my simple understanding, what the Buddha teaches is that it is ignorance, the not realizing the true nature of reality that leads to karma, or volitional formations (act, words and thoughts), which in turn lead to the rest of the chain and not consciousness. For example, when an eye enters in contact with an object that leads to eye consciousness arising. But, that eye consciousness alone, that sight, does not name and judge the object seen, nor does it attach meaning to it. However, with ignorance at the root, the simple consciousness, the seeing, leads to a process of name and form, then a process of contact, then one of feeling, then one of craving, leading to one of attachment to that feeling etc...
In other words, if there was no ignorance at the root, one would not dissect the "wholeness", would not create concepts and illusions to then get attached to, which would not then lead to ideas of birth or death of these things, and thus there would be no suffering at the idea of things coming and going, or being impermanent.

Oh boy, this is quite an exercise for me and my ignorance shines through! Hope I made a bit of sense.
My most sincere apologies to you, everyone else and Jundo Roshi if my words mislead in any way.

Also, apologies for the long reply

Gassho
sat lah

interesting. So I guess the crux of my problem is a misunderstanding of the meaning of consciousness in the context of Buddhist understanding vs my own.

thanks!

Gassho,
Doug
sat/lah

[Jundo]

Hi Douglas,

The "12 Links" have been the target of various interpretations through the millenia, some of which did not include even a full 12 links (some had 6, 8 or 10). It may also be a later addition to Buddhism, not fully developed during the Buddha's lifetime. Some interpretations tie it most literally to rebirth, e.g., that the first 4 links are about prior lives, the middle 4 about this life, and the Final 4 about about basketball (a little USA joke there ) and future lives. Frankly, tying in so closely to literal rebirth never made much sense to me at all.

Rather, I offered an essay and talk years ago where I compare the 12 links to the stages of infant development (ala Piaget and others) as the baby's sense of being an individual "self" appears, and it all makes good sense.

In a nutshell, there is first something unbroken and whole (chaos ... but in the Greek meaning of kháos, the mythological state preceding the creation of the universe which is empty of separate phenomena), then raw sensory sensation and contact with things in the world (pleasing and painful), the resulting appearance of the myself/not-myself divide, then judgements of "mine" and seeking what is pleasing, ending with a feeling and fear that "my life" will end in death. A lot of Buddhism, including Zazen, seeks to reverse the process and return us to the wholeness of the original "Buddha Womb" which is whole, unbroken, without "me/not-me," coming or going, birth and death. Part of the confusion is that several of the 12 links are not sequential, but happen as parallel steps in the process.

Here is what I said about the appearance of consciousness ...

1) The first of the “Twelve Causes” is a state we can barely understand with the ordinary mind, for it is the state of reality before the mind comes into play, before the mind divides, and categorizes and judges. Before the mind identifies separate objects, assigning names, distinguishing by characteristics and imposing judgments, there is no figure or ground, no subject or object, no defined relationships of any kind, the whole merging into the whole — this nondual source can also be seen as our “Original Face” when properly perceived. But it is often termed ignorance or chaos (sk: avida) when encountered instead as divided and broken — much as the newborn infant is born into the world confused and ignorant of what is transpiring to her. That basic divide is the trigger to all that follows until wholeness can be restored.

2) Following birth, this process of division by mind into “self” and “not self” begins with the next of the Twelve Causes, which is action (karma). We might say that it is human action of the most ordinary kind, like the moving hands and feet of a newborn baby. It is much as the blind flailing about of the tiny baby in its crib who, still lacking clear sense of separate self, un-directedly kicks and thrashes amid the chaos of the new environment in which it finds itself. Thus, in the midst of the ignorance and chaos of the newborn's world, this movement or “action” naturally arises.

3) The next of the Twelve Causes is consciousness (vijnana), or simple self-awareness. It is a basic sense of “self” that arises out of the bodily “action” which precedes it, much as the newborn infant develops when it forms a simple sense of separation from its environment as its arms and legs flail about amid the chaos, thereby coming to define space and dimension and separate objects in its surrounding environment. As the sense of self arises, the sense of ‘not self,’ of the external world, mentally arises as its reflection in the following steps.

Bion is right that, for the early Buddhists (and modern neuro-scientists actually confirm part of this), consciousness is not all in the brain between the ears, but also in parts of the greater body ... in the fingers and skin for touch, the gut, etc.

Here is the rest, including the talk where I actually act out being the baby!

https://forum.treeleaf.org/forum/treeleaf/the-beginner-s-place/buddha-basics/2933-buddha-basics-part-xiv-%E2%80%93-the-twelve-fold-chain

Gassho, Jundo
stlah

[Jundo]

Since everything is a product of conditions, consciousness is also conditioned, so the whole chain is really a circle, more than a finite line - at least as far as I understand it.
To not reach too deep, and stretch beyond my simple understanding, what the Buddha teaches is that it is ignorance, the not realizing the true nature of reality that leads to karma, or volitional formations (act, words and thoughts), which in turn lead to the rest of the chain and not consciousness. ...
In other words, if there was no ignorance at the root, one would not dissect the "wholeness", would not create concepts and illusions to then get attached to, which would not then lead to ideas of birth or death of these things, and thus there would be no suffering at the idea of things coming and going, or being impermanent.

That is right, but maybe better to say that it is neither a circle nor really a chain or straight line. First, as I noted, several aspects seem to happen in parallel (Stages 4-5-6 on Sense Organs/Contact/Sensation should logically happen before, or better said ... as part of ... the appearance of consciousness and the identification of "things" with name/form. It is possible that there was an idealist tendency in early Buddhism that consciousness appeared first AND THEN the senses and sensation ... and that name/form existed BEFORE sensation of outside objects, like some Platonic forms in the sky or in the mind which exist before the things on earth ... but in modern terms, we know that the order should be more like sense organs/contact/sensation/name-form/self-other, with consciousness appearing somewhere in that process.)

Also, "chaos/kháos" is a double edged sword. It is originally a good thing because whole and undivided, deathless and without conflict. It is the sentient mind that turns the chaos into a mess as the friction and conflict of a separate self appears, so our practice is to return to the kháos (the wholeness.)

In a sense, it is a reversal, as we "undo" the creation of the separate self, returning to the wholeness. However, really it is neither a circle or a line because the kháos is "Thusness" which neither goes anywhere, nor comes anywhere, nor ever left. It is something like saying that the separate wave which rose up on the surface of the sea does not "return" to the sea because it was always the sea all along, and never left it.

What is more, our Zen practice lets us have our "non-cake and eat it too" by letting us know the "self-less" wholeness of kháos EVEN AS SIMULTANEOUSLY we can remain in this life of self and chaos. So, we return to what cannot be returned to, even as we stay right in this messy life.

Something like that.

By the way, the early Buddhists thought that, for example, "eye consciouness" was actually in the eyeball, "smell consciousness" was actually in the nose, thinking in the heart (with not much happening between the ears), but no need to believe that with our modern understanding of modern neuro-science.

Gassho, Jundo
stlah

[Jundo]

PS - If one is a modern panpsychist or the like, it is certainly arguable that "consciousness" in some manner happens "before" or as a foundation to Sense Organs/Contact/Sensation/Name-Form/Self-Other. So, it can be read that way too. However, I leave that to the philosophers and brain scientists to hammer out.

[Bion]

First, as I noted, several aspects seem to happen in parallel (Stages 4-5-6 on Sense Organs/Contact/Sensation should logically happen before, or better said ... as part of ... the appearance of consciousness and the identification of "things" with name/form. It is possible that there was an idealist tendency in early Buddhism that consciousness appeared first AND THEN the senses and sensation ... and that name/form existed BEFORE sensation of outside objects, like some Platonic forms in the sky or in the mind which exist before the things on earth ... but in modern terms, we know that the order should be more like sense organs/contact/sensation/name-form/self-other, with consciousness appearing somewhere in that process.)

Thanks for that. I was hoping you'd pick it apart a bit!
Also... as a matter of fact, in the Samyutta Nikaya, the Buddha himself, instructing the bhikkhus says that "with consciousness as condition, name-and-form comes to be", so that is more the logical sequence. But, in addition, in the Digha Nikaya, in the Great Discourse on Origination, the Buddha executes a brilliant plot twist, I think. He says: "Consciousness conditions mind-and-body (name and form) What conditions consciousness? Mind-and-body conditions consciousness. Thus, Ananda , mind-and-body conditions consciousness and consciousness conditions mind-and-body." I think it's kind of neat

Gassho
sat lah

[Jundo]

Thanks for that. I was hoping you'd pick it apart a bit!
Also... as a matter of fact, in the Samyutta Nikaya, the Buddha himself, instructing the bhikkhus says that "with consciousness as condition, name-and-form comes to be", so that is more the logical sequence. But, in addition, in the Digha Nikaya, in the Great Discourse on Origination, the Buddha executes a brilliant plot twist, I think. He says: "Consciousness conditions mind-and-body (name and form) What conditions consciousness? Mind-and-body conditions consciousness. Thus, Ananda , mind-and-body conditions consciousness and consciousness conditions mind-and-body." I think it's kind of neat

Gassho
sat lah

For History Wonks, there is some good writing on early interpretations of Dependent Origination and how it changed over time. I like this, short and sweet and highlights some of the early changing interpretations

The Theory of 'Dependent Origination in its Incipient Stage
HAJIME NAKAMURA
PDF DOWNLOAD LINK

Wiki Roshi is actually pretty good in highlighting the very many different takes and interpretations of this ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prat%C4%ABtyasamutp%C4%81da

Gassho, J
stlah

[Bion]

The Theory of 'Dependent Origination in its Incipient Stage
HAJIME NAKAMURA
PDF DOWNLOAD LINK

Coming back to this, to say thank you! The Nakamura paper was very informative. Again, we see the Buddha being way simpler in his approach and thinking, working with less complicated intelectual systems than what his overthinking later disciples came up with, and focusing primarily on practical aspects. It is not a matter of creating a system, codifying it and writing it down, but a matter of experiencing the reality of dependent arising on one's own, through practice.

Gassho
sat lah

[michaelw]

In a sense, it is a reversal, as we "undo" the creation of the separate self, returning to the wholeness. However, really it is neither a circle or a line because the kháos is "Thusness" which neither goes anywhere, nor comes anywhere, nor ever left. It is something like saying that the separate wave which rose up on the surface of the sea does not "return" to the sea because it was always the sea all along, and never left it.

Hope this is not a non sequitar but there is a lovely quote that I remember, but not who said it along the lines that 'a wave does not know it is a wave only the ocean knows that.'

Gassho
MichaelW

satlah