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Dependent Origination & Emptiness (1 of 4)

Introduction

So the first thing I want to say is that the dana^[1] for today will go to Ukrainian relief. When you give your dana to Sati Center, it doesn't come to me; it goes to Ukrainian relief organizations. The Buddha said he taught dukkha^[2] and the end of dukkha. Well, we could define dukkha today as living in Ukraine. I can't take away all their dukkha, and you can't take away all their dukkha, but we have the opportunity to help alleviate some of that dukkha. So all of your dana for today will go to Ukrainian relief.

The second thing is for people that are listening to this recording not live. I will be referring to book page numbers, which are page numbers in the PDF of my book, Dependent Origination and Emptiness. To get a copy of that PDF, go to the following website: sodapi.leighb.com. Click on download, and then click on the first of the PDFs (PDF number one), and those are the page numbers that I will be referring to.

A Curious Old Rune: The Origins of Dependent Origination

The first page number is page 13. After his awakening, the Buddha was concerned that people were addicted to their lifestyle, and he thought that people who are addicted to their lifestyle wouldn't be able to understand what he had to say. He said, "I considered this Dhamma^[3] I have attained is profound, hard to see, hard to understand, peaceful and sublime, unattainable by mere reasoning, subtle, to be experienced by the wise. But this generation delights in attachment, takes delight in attachment, rejoices in attachment."

Does that sound familiar?

"It is hard for such a generation to see this important thing, namely, this/that conditionality, dependent origination. And it's hard to see these important things, namely, the stilling of all fabrications, the relinquishing of all the accoutrements of one's lifestyle, the destruction of craving, dispassion, cessation, Nibbana^[4]."

This gives us a hint of what the Buddha thought was important. This was the really important stuff, and it was going to be difficult for people addicted to their lifestyle to see. In particular, "this/that conditionality," dependent origination—in Pali^[5], idappaccayatā paṭiccasamuppāda.

What exactly does that mean? That's what we're going to talk about today.

Mostly, dependent origination is talked about as the twelve links. If you turn to page 15 in the book, the links are right there. But that's kind of hard to understand. You've probably seen the list before, but what exactly does all of this mean? And why is birth right at the end? Usually, birth comes at the beginning; what's it doing right next to the last? That's weird. Caroline Rhys Davids^[6], who was one of the great translators of Pali into English at the beginning of the 20th century, referred to dependent origination as a "curious old rune." I think that's pretty good. It is kind of strange and difficult to understand.

Instead of jumping in at the twelve links, which I suspect are the very last recension of dependent origination, what if we start at the beginning? Of course, that only raises the question: where is the beginning?

There's a sutta in the Sutta Nipata^[7]. If you are not familiar with it, it's one of the oldest collections—at least, that's what the scholars are saying. This material seems to come from a time when basically the Buddha was a solitary wanderer. We know from the biography we have of the Buddha that after he had his first sixty disciples, he sent them all out and said, "Let no two go in the same direction, and teach the Dhamma for the benefit of many," and he went off by himself. The person depicted in the Sutta Nipata, in Book Four (the Atthakavagga), is a solitary wanderer for the most part.

The words used there seem to indicate that it's early, in the sense that you can tell the difference between 18th-century English and 20th-century English. The scholars who know the Pali can figure out that this is probably early material. It seems to contain quite useful teachings. I took a sutta study class with Gil Fronsdal^[8] back in 1996, and this is where we started. He has a wonderful book on the Atthakavagga called The Buddha Before Buddhism. Highly recommended.

There is a sutta in there that is not that well known, entitled the Sutta on Quarrels and Disputes (Sutta Nipata 4.11). It starts out with someone asking, "Why are there quarrels and disputes?" And the answer is: people find things endearing. Well, that makes sense. If it's not something you care about, you're not that likely to get involved in a quarrel or a dispute—except maybe on Facebook. But usually, an in-person quarrel or dispute is about something you really care about. You find whatever it is endearing.

Well, then the question arises: why do we find things endearing? Because they're desirable. That makes sense. Why do we find things desirable? It is said in this world, "It is pleasant, it is unpleasant." Where do the pleasant and unpleasant come from? Sense contact. And what does sense contact depend upon? Nama-rupa^[9].

Nama-rupa is an interesting term. Literally, it means name and form. You could say mentality and materiality, or as it is often translated in dependent origination, mind and body. So what we've got here makes a lot more sense. You have a mind and body, and you get sense contacts. Right now you're getting both visual and auditory sense contacts, and these contacts generate what was later called vedana^[10]. Vedana is your initial categorization of a sensory input as either pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral.

We find the pleasant things desirable, and we find the absence of unpleasant things desirable. If something is desirable enough—especially if you actually get a hold of it—then it becomes endearing. If somebody wants your endearing thing and you don't want to give it up, it can lead to quarrels and disputes.

This makes so much more sense than the twelve links of dependent origination, which are really kind of obscure. You have a mind and body, you get sense contact, it produces pleasant or unpleasant feeling, you find the pleasant desirable, you start hanging onto it and getting endeared to it, somebody tries to take it away, and quarrels and disputes arise. I think this is the original dependent origination teaching. It certainly makes a lot more sense, and it fits with what the Buddha is teaching.

When someone asks for a summary of what the Buddha taught, you probably think of the Four Noble Truths. The first noble truth is: dukkha happens. They used to put that on bumper stickers—they used a four-letter Anglo-Saxon word rather than a Pali word, but it's the same thing. Second noble truth: dukkha arises dependent on craving. That's dependent origination. Quarrels and disputes are dukkha; they are dependently originated from what is endearing and desirable. Desirable and craving are used synonymously throughout the suttas. And of course, if you want to get out of dukkha, the third noble truth is: don't do the craving bit.

Necessary Conditions, Not Causes

This shows that the Buddha was actually talking about necessary conditions. One of the mistakes people make when trying to understand dependent origination is they look for causes. Dependent origination is not about causes; it's about necessary conditions.

A necessary condition for quarrels and disputes is that people are clinging to something they find endearing and they don't want to give it up. A necessary condition for finding something endearing, for wanting to cling to it, is that it's desirable. Desirability arises because of our pleasant and unpleasant experiences, which come every time we get a sense contact. And sense contacts are part of having a mind and body.

But these are necessary conditions, not causes. Having a mind and body doesn't cause quarrels and disputes. Having a mind and body doesn't even cause sense contacts. You still have a mind and body when you're under anesthesia having surgery, but there are no sense contacts. Obviously your mind is still working because your heart keeps beating and you keep breathing, but conscious sense contacts are just not happening.

The Buddha's genius was that he wasn't trying to explain how the world came to be or anything else about causes. He was simply looking for the problem—dukkha—and a necessary condition upon which dukkha depends. If he could turn off the necessary condition, he could turn off the dukkha. A necessary condition for a light to be on is that the light switch is turned on. The switch doesn't cause the light to shine—that's excited electrons in a filament—but it is a necessary condition. You don't have to understand why the light shines; if you want to turn it off, you just flip the switch. In particular, the Buddha found the necessary condition for dukkha: craving.

We can generalize quarrels and disputes to dukkha. Dukkha arises based on what we're clinging to. Clinging arises dependent on craving. Clinging is about possessing the object ("I've got it"), while craving is about getting the object ("I want to get it"). All of this arises dependent on vedana—the pleasant and unpleasant categorizations that happen when you have sense contact. Neuroscientists tell us that within a tenth of a second, you categorize any sense contact as pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. If you're not careful with the pleasant, you start craving it. If it's unpleasant, you crave its absence. These are setups for dukkha.

Sense contacts are just part of having a mind and body. This is what we find in the Discourse on Quarrels and Disputes. If we look at other suttas on dependent origination, we find sometimes there are two links, three links, five, six, eight, nine, eleven, or twelve links. The Buddha just used the links that he felt were useful at the time for whatever he was teaching. However, the twelve links became the de facto standard. That's what everybody thinks of when they think of dependent origination. But starting with the twelve links is like starting in graduate school; it's probably better if you start in first grade and get the necessary background.

Q&A: Views, Clinging, and Ignorance

William: I just want to say thank you for this. I've heard the twelve links described to me, and I couldn't follow all of them. It didn't really make sense. I wondered if I was stupid, and I've been wanting to rearrange it and reword it in my own way that made sense to me. But I didn't feel like I had permission to do so because I'm not a teacher. Now you're showing me it's okay to do that.

Leigh: Yeah, it's not so much rearranging them as basically throwing out the stuff that was added later to get to the heart of the matter.

Ali: Thank you for making it more accessible. I'm wondering if you can open up for me the topic of attachment to views. I like to think of myself as an open-minded person; if someone presents something, I have changed my ideas totally. But based on my own conditionality, I've come to have certain views. I'm not sure how much I'm attached to them.

Leigh: Before we started today, I was mentioning a weekend retreat I just did for the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies on Right View. It comes at the beginning of the Eightfold Path. What does Right View mean? If we look at some of the other suttas in Book Four of the Sutta Nipata, the basic idea is: don't get attached to your views. It's not that you shouldn't have views, it's that you should be willing to give them up anytime you get some better information.

How do you check that out? Let's say you have a view. One of the famous views in Buddhism is rebirth. "After I die, I'm going to be reborn." Can you give up that view for 24 hours? What does that mean? Just tell yourself, "After I die, I'm not going to be reborn. This whole rebirth thing was just a joke from India 2,500 years ago, and it's never been true." How does it make you feel? Do you want to cling back to your view? That will give you some hints on how tightly you're clinging to it. The most important thing to bring on the spiritual path is an open mind. You can't get to full awakening unless you're willing to let go of the mind states you have now that keep you from being fully awakened.

Ali: At the beginning, perhaps I need to cling to some Buddhist views because I don't have any others, and as I get deeper, I can let go of them one by one?

Leigh: I wouldn't use the word "cling". You get some provisional views. All views are provisional until you've eliminated dukkha, and then maybe you've got it right.

Ram: My question is about ignorance. In a broad sense, ignorance is defined as not knowing that I don't know. If I know that I don't know, I can figure that out. Is there such a thing called a conditionality that I'm not aware deliberately that I'm conditioned?

Leigh: Ignorance is a translation of avijja^[11]. We don't understand some of what's going on. There's a sutta where Ananda asks the Buddha what ignorance arises dependent upon, and the Buddha says, "You've gone too far, Ananda. Ignorance is there from the beginning." Everyone in this room is ignorant of what's going on at the equator of the nearest inhabited planet to the star Betelgeuse. You've been ignorant of that your whole life! [Laughter]

The Buddha is not saying we have to banish all ignorance; we have to banish ignorance particularly associated with anicca, dukkha, anatta^[12]. We are ignoring the fact that everything is changing. Things arise, change, and pass away. We're ignoring the fact that nothing is going to give us lasting satisfaction. And we're ignoring the fact that this solidly seeming self is actually just an illusion. Those are the things we really need to pay attention to. Insight practice is about investigating anicca, dukkha, anatta.

The Wheel of Life and the Twelve Links

Let's discuss the twelve links. If you look at a Tibetan thangka depicting the twelve links, it's called the Wheel of Life (Bhavacakra^[13]). The whole circle is held by Yama, the Lord of Death.

In the very center, there's a rooster, a snake, and a pig, each biting the tail of the other. The rooster represents greed, the snake is hatred, and the pig is delusion. In the ring around this are beings coming out of states of woe into heavenly states, and falling back into states of woe. This is samsara.

The big ring shows the six realms of existence. At the bottom, we have the hell realms, pictured in a way that Dante would be proud of—people being boiled alive or walking through a forest full of swords. There's the hungry ghost realm, creatures with very big bellies and tiny necks who can't get enough because they were greedy in their previous life. We have the warring gods, the Asuras. They're always fighting. Their headquarters appears to be a large five-sided building south of Washington, D.C. [Laughter] There's the animal realm, the human realm, and the heavenly realms.

But the important stuff for our discussion is on the outside rim, which depicts the twelve links:

1. Ignorance: Depicted as an old blind person trying to make their way through a forest.
2. Sankharas: A really important word in Pali. It literally means "making together." Thanissaro Bhikkhu translates it as "fabrications," and Santikaro translates it as "concoctions." It is depicted as a potter at a wheel making pots. Some pots are nice, some are broken or misshapen. It depends on ignorance because we're ignoring the empty nature of reality and "thingifying" the world.
3. Consciousness: Depicted as a monkey swinging through the trees, grabbing first one branch and then another, jumping from object to object.
4. Nama-rupa (Mind & Body): Depicted as two people in a boat. Usually, one is standing up rowing the boat, and the other is lying prone, just along for the ride. I'll leave it as an exercise for you to figure out which one is mind and which one is body. Clearly, the one pulling the boat along is determining where the boat goes.
5. Six Senses: Depicted as a house with five windows (the external senses) and a door (the mind).
6. Contact: Depicted as a couple embracing. Contact arises through our senses.
7. Vedana (Feeling): Depicted as a man having arrows shot into his eyes, or sometimes shown as Saint Sebastian being shot with arrows.
8. Craving: Shown as a very fat person sitting at a table laden with food.
9. Clinging: Someone picking fruit and putting it in baskets that are so full the fruit rolls out onto the ground.
10. Becoming: A pregnant woman.
11. Birth: A mother with an infant.
12. Death: A corpse.

This pictorial depiction was highly useful for people in a culture where not everyone was literate to help them remember the cycle. But it can be difficult to work with the twelve links textually. The links state that old age, sickness, and death arise dependent on birth. Which makes sense—if you don't get born, you don't die. But it's not a practical solution to getting out of dukkha, because I can tell every one of you already got born. It's a necessary condition, but it's not a manipulative necessary condition. So the Buddha didn't stop there.

Interpretations: Three Lifetimes vs. Moment-to-Moment

The orthodox interpretation of the twelve links is that they represent three lifetimes. The first two links, ignorance and sankharas, are your previous life. They translate sankhara as "karmic formation" (although there's no basis in the suttas for doing that). In your previous life, you were ignorant and acted in ways that produced karmic formations. You died, and your leftover karma determined what kind of consciousness and mind and body you have in this life. You go through the senses, contact, vedana, craving, and clinging in this life. But you're clinging to being alive, so in your next life, you will become, you'll be born, and you'll die again.

This is what you'll find in the Visuddhimagga^[14]. The Visuddhimagga is a really powerful book; if you ever have insomnia, just crack it open anywhere and start reading, it'll put you right out. [Laughter] On a scale of one to a hundred, I give the odds of the three-lifetime model being what the Buddha actually had in mind exactly a zero. There are no suttas that support the three-lifetime model. There is the Mahanidana Sutta (Digha Nikaya 15) that supports a two-lifetime model, but I suspect it's a later composition.

I don't think that's what the Buddha was talking about, especially in light of the Sutta on Quarrels and Disputes. The Buddha was pointing to an in-the-moment happening. There's a really great book by Ajahn Buddhadasa^[15] called Under the Bodhi Tree (translated by Santikaro) which I highly recommend if you want to study the moment-to-moment interpretation.

Briefly, it says: you have a mind and body, you get sense contacts, they produce vedana. The craving and clinging that sets in cause you to think you have become somebody. You give birth to a sense of self. And since your sense of self is an illusion, eventually it gets bothered or destroyed (death). It's not physical birth being talked about; it's the birth of a sense of identity.

Let me give you a story to illustrate it. Let's say you've never had a mango. You go to the grocery store, you see a sign that says "Mangoes," and you think, "I've heard about mangoes, I'm going to get one." You take it home, you peel it, you make a big mess. Finally, you have a piece of mango in your sticky, drippy fingers. You have a conscious mind and body, you have senses, and you get sense contact: the mango hits the tongue. Pleasant vedana. "Oh, this is good, I'm going to have some more. I'm going to get a mango next time I go to the store."

You begin to crave and cling to mangoes. You remember your friends—Bob, Carol, Ted, and Alice—have never had a mango. You bring them a mango, and they love it. Next time you visit, you bring another one. You have become the "Mango Bringer." You've given birth to a self, the possessor and provider of mangoes. Eventually, your friends say, "What's with all the mangoes?" Uh oh. Death of the Mango Bringer. You took the pleasant vedana of the taste of a mango and constructed an entire identity around it.

We do this all the time. You hear Apple has a new iPhone out with a wonderful new feature. The sound of that news produces pleasant vedana. You start craving it. You go to the store, stand in line for four hours, and get one. You cling to it. You have become "the one with the new iPhone." You've given birth to yourself as the possessor of this object. Craving and clinging require somebody to be there to do the craving and clinging. If you're not careful, you give birth to a self. This moment-to-moment interpretation is really the most useful way to look at the twelve links.

Q&A: Wholesome Desires, Identity, and Letting Go

Chris: If I have a desire in my metta practice for all beings to be happy, does that mean it's based on an unpleasant vedana I have in the back of my mind that all beings aren't happy?

Leigh: It's probably based on multiple ideas. One idea is that if beings are happy, this is a good thing, which produces pleasant vedana. And some beings aren't happy, which is unpleasant. Taking the two together, you develop a wholesome desire. When I was at Buddhadasa's monastery in 1988, they talked about "wise wishes" and "foolish desires." It's a wise wish to wish all beings be happy. It puts you in a positive mind state, which affects your mental development. You go out into the world, encounter a being who's not happy, and do what you can to make them happy.

But if you are craving that all beings be happy, and you wake up in the morning to bad news, you're going to experience dukkha. If your broad desire that all beings be happy doesn't result in clinging or pushing, it keeps you in a wholesome place.

Chris: Regarding the simile of the raft... the Buddha says you build a raft to cross a dangerous river to reach the safe far shore. You use your hands and feet to propel yourself across, and when you reach the far shore, you leave the raft behind. It's the same with the teachings. We have a wholesome desire to reach liberation, so we use the teachings to get to the far shore, but we don't want to cling to them. That would be like refusing to get off the raft. But if you let go of the teachings too soon, you fall in the river and drown.

Leigh: Yes. To add to your earlier point about identity, if somebody were to look at you and say, "You are the most uncompassionate person I've ever met in my entire life," how would it make you feel? If you got defensive, there is clinging there. You can cling to things and not have any dukkha until it's snatched away from you or threatened. We swap personas all the time. Right now, I'm pretending to be a Dharma teacher. Before, I was a computer programmer. When I'm out hiking, I'm a hiker. But if I go to my favorite hiking trail and it's closed, I get upset because I was clinging to being a hiker.

Diane: What does a student do when they discover that a favorite teacher believes in the three-lives explanation of dependent origination, but having read Buddhadasa and listened to you, the moment-to-moment interpretation makes a heck of a lot more sense? What is this poor student to do?

Leigh: Unless you're absolutely certain your teacher is fully awakened—and the only way you're going to know that for certain is if you're fully awakened—you have to realize they don't know everything. Take everything any teacher says, including this one, and decide for yourself: is this helpful? Is this useful? Does this accord with the Dhamma as I understand it?

There are teachers I greatly admire and have learned a lot from that I don't fully agree with. Most everybody has something useful to present. Take what you find useful and use that. It may not be appropriate to argue with the teacher about it, but recognize there are probably going to be flaws in what any teacher teaches (present company not excepted!). It's okay to let go of your teacher's views. Don't cling to any view, no matter where it comes from.

The very first real meditation retreat I had was a ten-day retreat with Ayya Khema^[16]. I went because I was curious about meditation, but I was really skeptical of religion. My father was a literalist Presbyterian preacher. I went on this retreat, and Ayya Khema said, "You don't have to believe anything the Buddha said. Ehipassiko^[17]—come and see for yourself." Take everything any teacher says and check it out for yourself.

Jeff: Going back really quickly to sankharas. There's a lot packed into that word. Every time I hear that and I hear rebirth, I remember Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche being asked, "What gets reincarnated?" In his inimitable style, he said, "Your neuroses."

Leigh: Yeah, that's brilliant. I've heard it phrased as "your bad habits," which is the same as your neuroses. It's a brilliant teaching.

We've been at this for a while. We're going to take a short bio break, come back, do another meditation, and then I'll talk about some more links of dependent origination that you probably never realized were links of dependent origination.