28.9.22

Twelve Links of Dependent Origination

When a mind (vijñāna) conditioned (saṃskāra) by ignorance (avidyā) conceives (nāmarūpa) an impression (sparśa) through the six senses (ṣaḍāyatana) that feels (vedanā) pleasant/unpleasant, then it craves (tṛṣṇā) for its continuation/discontinuation, attempts to keep (upādāna) and identify (bhava) with it, but with its birth (jāti) comes its decay and demise (jarāmaraṇa).

When one is ignorant about how suffering arises and ceases, then one concocts/fabricates physical, verbal, and mental activities to perform, and that results in a mindset/attitude (consciousness) that regulates one's bodily and mental functions, thus colouring one's senses, so when there is an impression (contact) and a related quality (feeling), then necessarily one enjoys and delights in it (craving), therefore wants to hang on to it (clinging), and that turns into an identity (becoming), so it defines one's whole being (birth), but eventually, like everything else, it'll fall apart and thus cause pain.

The twelve links are present at each instance of suffering ignorantly. It's not that when there is one link present, like feeling, then the others are missing. When one feels something pleasant (note that already that single feeling exists in a compounded way within a network of conditions), then there had to be a contact with something through the six sense gates, and that thing is recognised as a particular form with a particular name, and one has an opinion (mindset) of that thing that is primarily driven by an intention, and that motivation can exist because of not knowing any better. Because of the presence of the preconditions it is inevitable that the feeling of something pleasant is met with liking it, the need to hold it, and thus defining one's whole experience of the world, what in turn gives rise to a fixed set of particular behaviour and mentality that will necessarily deteriorate and decease.
Let's take an apple juice as an example for a pleasant object. To recognise it as such one needs to come in contact with it (seeing/tasting/imagining), and that contact to be meaningful one needs a couple of preconditions, like knowing what an apple juice is and an opinion of it whether one likes it or not. Since one recognises the apple juice as something desirable, it is a pleasant object. With the recognition of the tasty juice comes the thirst for it, the thirst develops into the need to have it, that grows into the thought of being the one who delightedly experiences drinking it. With those present arises the view and entity of the subject partaking of an object, the subject being the actor and enjoyer, while the object what is seen/tasted/imagined. Then with the changing of the object, for instance finishing a glass of apple juice, the subject loses its reason to exist and experiences some dissatisfaction because of that. All this can go down in a few seconds from seeing the apple juice to having drunk it. And then it happens again and again with the various experiences happening, the previous conditioning the next.

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