Recently I attended a session on the theme of Dependent Origination. It was facilitated by Geshe Tenzin Lhabsun. I must say I got a deeper insight into the framework of this master teaching of the Buddha. For many years I struggled to understand the links and chain of causation and how they can be experienced in real life.
So I am going to try to explain the same using an everyday example.
Dependent origination is an experiential framework of what is happening in this moment. It attempts to show how we are creating our world in the moment and how we experience suffering.
The following is a version of dependent origination as explained by Ven. Punnaji. The traditional labels are mentioned in the bracket
- Unconsciousness (1) (Ignorance)
- Conditioned Mind (2) (Mental formations)
- Perception (3) & Cognition (4) (Consciousness and Name & Form)
- Senses (5) & Contact (6)
- Feeling (7)
- Emotional Reactions (8) (Craving)
- Personalization (9) (I will call it Identification) (Clinging)
- Existence (10) (Becoming)
- Birth (11) & Illness, Old Age, Suffering and Death (12)
Let us start first by understanding the 10th link – Existence.
I find myself already in Existence. I am sitting here in this Pune city in India working on my laptop. I am writing this blog right now. I am experiencing warmth in the air since it has not rained for a few days now. I am experiencing slight back pain. This is a pretty mundane situation. Its daily life as usual.
I remember my birthday is in November. I was born in 1974 so I will turn 52 this year. I am getting old, not having the energy of the younger years, suffering occasionally from acidity and hypertension. I am trying to reduce my daily screen time but it’s not so easy.
So in brief this is existence. There are many more things in my existence – spouse, kids, friends, business partners, projects, things to do. But for now, I am keeping it simple.
Existence means I believe I am here alive and breathing in the year 2026 on the planet Earth and all around me is the city, people, buildings, and the environment. I am in it.
Occasionally I read a book on Emptiness which says that life is a dream. I like the idea but then I need to pick up the groceries too, isn’t it and pay the electricity bill also. So emptiness is just another thought that comes and goes like all others.
Real Life Example
In existence, I live a mechanical life, although I am not aware that I live on auto-pilot most of the time. I believe I am aware and do things consciously. [Link1 – Unconsciousness]
I just dropped my daughter to her college and am returning home on my bike. I know the way home and take the usual turn [Link 2 – Conditioned Mind]
The best way to understand the conditioned mind is as a storehouse of all memories, learnings, patterns of behaviour that are etched in my being. It is my programming. I know where the college is, I know where my home is. I know how to drive the bike. I also know how to speak on the phone while riding and also avoid any accidents. The programming also includes traffic rules, when to break them and drive on the wrong side too. Everything that I have done before and have an experience of, it is my mental and bodily conditioning. I am able to live and do things mechanically because of all this programming. This conditioning is getting updated every moment based on new experiences and memories.
Now I am riding my bike but I am not carrying the thought that ‘I am riding’ or ‘It is my bike’. Right now the thought that is going on in my mind is ‘I need to make a phone call as soon as I reach home’
As soon as I take the usual turn, there is a big traffic jam ahead and I stop. [Link 3 and 4 – Perception and Cognition]
Even though my riding the bike is unconscious, there is consciousness to the changes in the environment. If traffic ahead has stopped it is an event where I need to pay more attention. I don’t want to hit anyone so I need to brake. There was a perception of the vehicle ahead coming to a stop and also the perception of all the vehicles ahead coming to a stop and there was the cognition of a ‘traffic jam’. Even a thought flashes through the mind – a jam so early in the morning!
Perception and cognition happen in the blink of an eye, probably millions of times faster than that. It is a familiar situation. I have been in traffic jams earlier so I know what this is. It’s an instantaneous recognition. There is perception of the form of things I am seeing and hearing – the vehicles stopped and honking and also the name of what it is – a traffic jam.
Now I see another bike rider block my path from the opposite direction. [Link 5 and 6 – Sense and Sense Contact]
One of the confusions I had earlier was that how come perception and cognition happens even before sense contact. I was particularly confused by the use of the term consciousness. The point is that sense and contact has been there right from the beginning of our story. It is a part of existence. I did see the vehicles in front of me and that is the contact of the sense object vehicles with my sense consciousness which is eyes in this case. Remember that while the dependent origination is explained as a logical sequence, it is a simultaneous happening.
For the purpose of my explanation, I am going to focus on the sense contact of the biker who blocked my path. I observed myself angrily saying to him – Hey, how are you driving. Do you have any sense? And I blew my bike’s horn multiple times. I also noticed thoughts in my mind – this city is going crazy… When will people learn…
This is where we need to slow down a bit to see what happened.
The moment this biker blocked my way, a feeling of dislike arose in me instantly (too fast for me to notice it). There was already an unpleasant feeling from the sense contact of the traffic jam. Now this event caused another unpleasant feeling [Link 7 – Feeling] which instantly gave rise to irritation [Link 8 – Emotional Reaction].
Note that every sense contact necessarily creates a feeling – sometimes pleasant, sometimes unpleasant and sometimes neutral. We are immersed in sense contact at all the times in all the senses and hence feelings are getting created constantly. These feelings are triggering emotional reactions in us in matter of micro-seconds. Which emotions are getting triggered depends on the accumulated mental conditioning which is present in the moment. An irritable person is prone to getting irritated by anything.
People around me were also shouting at this bike rider who was blocking several people’s vehicles. It is difficult not to react in such a situation.
Notice that because this person was right in front, it leads me to identification [Link 9 – Personalization, which I feel like calling it Identification]
The other creates the I. Because I see everything else outside and also experience emotional reaction which I assume to be occurring inside me, I unconsciously deduce that I – the Self – Me – exists. Who else then is having these experiences?
Because this person is in front, he is blocking MY way. The MY comes into being. The SELF gets created in this moment. Till now, there was no self (we are limiting ourselves to this story of driving a bike). It was all an unconscious happening of aggregates changing their form (me as aggregates of body mind with vehicle as aggregate of metal, plastic, fuel). But as soon as this movement is blocked, the SELF emerged.
Thoughts started to flood [All various forms of reactions ultimately] – I will get delayed now. I needed to make that phone call. What a stupid decision to take this road. I should have taken the other road…
Now suddenly I find myself in Existence [Link 10] – caught in this stupid traffic jam with this idiot blocking my way. I am getting so irritated and angry and don’t know how to get out of this situation. I am blowing the horn as if the sound will make the biker vanish. This is the birth of suffering [Link 11]
This reaction and experience becomes a part of my conditioning and will stay till I become old, ill and die [Link 12]. If I am caught in similar traffic jam I will experience the same irritation or even more.
So that’s how dependent origination unfolds.
Just imagine the precision with which the Buddha untangles our present experience. We are constantly taking in sense impressions through our 5 senses. We have been conditioned since our birth by our various experiences and our emotional reactions explode in so many ways in any given situation. To be able to show how each link depends on the one before it and how it creates our suffering is probably the single most significant discovery in understanding the human mind. It is amazing to experience this level of clarity of seeing.
Not only does the Buddha explain this dependent origination but he also shows us the path to soften its unrelenting shackles. It is by developing mindfulness. If you can develop mindfulness of body, feelings, thoughts and mind states, you will be in a position to notice your emotional reactions as they are happening and allow them to flow their course.
Emotions are known as energy in motion. Once it is in motion, it will take your body and speech along with it. It will make you do things and say things which you might regret later. However becoming aware of emotional reactions is the place one can break the cycle.
With more awareness, one can notice the reactions as soon as they are triggered and watching them helps to reduce their unconscious power over us. This brings about a calm of mind because there is no identification, just witnessing the flow of aggregates and energy.
Sense and sense impressions will continue. Feelings will continue. But as reactions reduce, it will melt our past conditioning gradually. As conditioning dissolves, we are more free to act, rather than react. This is the way out of suffering.
If I was able to do it, I might have just smiled at the person who was blocking my way and quietly allowed him to go past me and clear the traffic just a bit. No suffering to carry home.
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