The gist of Buddha’s teaching---7

The gist of Buddha’s teaching---7

Bhikkhu Dhammavaro
Buddharatana Monastery of Australia

3. The twelve Dependent Origination

The twelve Dependent Origination explains about the operation how a sentient being wanders in samsara. The proper understanding of this teaching would entail many years of investigation and contemplation.

There are two aspects of it;
First it explains the origin of the whole mess of ignorance, action, kamma, birth, aging and death, and rebirth.

The second explains the quenching of the desires, renunciation, inaction, and thus stopping and terminating the whole mess of sufferings.

In the Buddhist teaching of kamma and rebirth, it is explained from the basis of cause and effect, this is in line with the teaching of Dependent Origination; in actual fact all mental and physical phenomena work on the basis of cause and effect.

The Blessed One said: “Whoever sees Dependent Origination sees the Dhamma; whoever sees the Dhamma sees Dependent Origination.”( Maha-hatthipadopama Sutta) That is why this specific teaching is a very important one for any seeker, because it contains the crucial teaching about selflessness and liberation.

The twelve Dependent Originations

The Buddha said: “From ignorance as a requisite condition come mental formations.

From mental formations as a requisite condition comes consciousness.

From consciousness as a requisite condition comes name and form.

From name and form as a requisite condition come the six sense doors.

From the six sense doors as a requisite condition comes contact.

From contact as a requisite condition comes feeling.

From feeling as a requisite condition comes craving.

From craving as a requisite condition comes clinging.

From clinging as a requisite condition comes becoming.

From becoming as a requisite condition comes birth.

From birth as a requisite condition, then aging and death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, and despair all come.”

This progressive order of Dependent Origination explains the whole process of our sufferings in the three planes of repeated existence, but the Blessed One employed more than one way to explain the causal interdependence of suffering and rebirth;

1. In the Samyutta Agama 290 it listed three factors from the sixth to the seven.

2. In the DN 15 Mahanidana Sutta listed ten factors from the second to the twelve.

3. In the Samyutta Agama 296 it listed seventeen factors from the first to eleven plus sickness, death (marana), sorrow (soka), lamentation (parideva), pain (dukkha), and despair (upayasa).

4. In the Samyutta Nikaya II (p.112) it listed twenty four elaboration of the Dependent Origination.

From the above texts it clearly shows that ignorance is not the first cause, as elsewhere in the Tipitaka it has been stated that the beginning is not known.