Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 46-minute talk, Ven Jampa Gendun maps each of the six realms on the Wheel of Life as psychological states we inhabit in ordinary life — the demigod’s jealous competition with those who enjoy fruits grown from its own roots, the hungry ghost’s insatiable consuming depicted with a needle-sized mouth and a stomach the size of a mountain, the hell being’s self-feeding hatred like a crocodile that grows stronger the more it devours its own tail. He then traces the twelve links of dependent origination, showing how ignorance — symbolized as a blind man leaning on a cane that cannot support itself in reality — drives the entire mechanism of compulsive rebirth. A reference to philosopher Nelson Goodman’s theory of world-making bridges Buddhist epistemology and Western thought. The session closes by urging practitioners to develop constructive anxiety about ignorance as the true root of suffering, and to extend compassion even to those who appear outwardly fortunate.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 04 OEE 1997 12 26.mp3
UUID: ec607ebb-d980-4381-8abb-c74eeea0a720
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Our Ego Empire (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1997-12-26
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 46.0 minutes
Words: ~6,784
Sustain it, and we find ourselves powerless to to maintain. And angrily, we strike out or whatever or whoever it is that is causing us, that’s disturbing our nice, neat, you know, insulated hideaway, and we move into another realm, a way of relating with the world. We turn the channel turn the channel knob to another station, another program. So that’s the next level, the level of the antigods. So, you know, at the level of the antigods, the predominant characteristic is that of jealousy and conflict.
So there’s a great deal of pleasure, but still there is a The mentality of the antigod is that of being preoccupied with comparison. You know, they’re they’re caught up in a constant struggle to gain security and and to achieve. You know, maybe we can begin to see this within ourselves, this demigod-like quality about ourselves, this characteristic. You know, others and we ourselves become standards of kind some kind of measurement, some kind of fixed point of reference against which we can determine whether we are getting what we want or not. Everything including ourselves become opponents in the game in some kind of game of winning.
You know, there’s the world this is the world of shoulds and ought’s. You know? There there is ourselves who needs fixing up, and I I need to improve myself, and should be doing I should be doing better than I am. I should be something more than I’ve achieved. You know?
And there there is a in this competition, everyone is a potential threat to oneself, you know, to to our well-being, to our security. You know, we we need to we need to be on guard even against ourselves. We really we really can’t trust others. We really can’t trust what’s happening to ourselves. You we have to we ignore the actual situation, and we refuse to learn from it.
We it’s universe you know, it’s the ideal the universe ought to be other than the way it is. You know, there there’s a there’s a basic there’s a basic dishonesty with demanding that the that the world be other than the way it is, that it that it that it operate according to our preconceptions, to our personal agenda, and that that and it becomes our our lifelong preoccupation to make it operate according to our agenda, a life of frustration. This in the the wheel of this depiction of the in the wheel of life, this is the demigod realm, and this is the god realm on top. And if you notice, there’s a tree which is growing up, and it has its roots in the realm of the antigods, and it grows up, and its branches, its leaves, and then finally its fruits are in the realm of the gods. And, you know, this this is this isn’t right, is it?
And it that’s not fair. And that the roots are in are in my realm. Why should they get to enjoy the fruits of something that is in my realm? Things ought to be other than this way. They ought to be you know, this is things should not be this way, and and the the demigods are forever jealous in perpetual conflict with with the gods trying to rectify the situation.
It’s not fair. Life just isn’t fair. So the the the major occupation of of the at of the level of of humans is the is desire. So within as human beings, we we have a sense of poverty about ourselves, a sense of of separateness, you know, that that pleasurable objects are out there in some way or another, and that we have a sense of self lack, a sense of loss about ourselves. We feel only pleasurable objects are able to bring us security, you know, that only pleasurable objects can bring us a sense of contentment and comfort in our lives.
And we, in ourselves, don’t don’t seem to have what it takes. There’s something missing about us, something some kind of deficiency or insufficiency about who we are. You know, we feel inadequate in ourselves, and and we don’t feel adequate enough to allow the good things of life to naturally come to ourselves. We we we we we that these things have to be appropriated, that we have to we have to go out there and acquire them and drag them back into our territory, that they won’t naturally come to us if we don’t, that we have to own them to ensure that we will get what we want in life. So everyone has in the human realm, everyone has their their own standards, their own styles about how they’re going to operate in this world.
You know, we criticize others who who don’t meet our our particular standards, and we are impressed with those who have the same style of operating the world but do it much better than we do. We want to be just like them. We’re fascinated by what we lack. They are significant and and we are not, and we’re continually comparing, we’re continually selecting, and it brings a never ending procession of desire and ambition which very much characterizes the the desire realm quality or the human realm quality. You know, here the intellect is most active, and it there is there is a constant churning out of of ideas and plans and hallucinations and fantasies and all kinds of dreams.
You know, the mind is constantly searching for ways to improve the situation, you know, manipulating, magnetizing the situation. There’s a constant restlessness, a dis ease, a discontentment by by with what we’re experiencing at present, you know, whatever it may may be. And there’s a hunger for something more, you know, a great hope that things will will will get better and an underlying fear that maybe things will never change at all, that they won’t get better, in fact. So that’s the human realm. And then at the level of the animal realm, here the it’s characterized by ignoring, you know, the the the notion of stubbornly pushing forward toward predetermined goals.
And we it’s the idea of we look directly ahead, you know, straight ahead. You know, very we’re very sincere, very serious, very earnest about what it is that we’re going to get. We just move on to the next situation, adjusting everything and everyone to our preconceptions. And anything that doesn’t conform to our expectations, to our preconceptions is somehow adjusted, is somehow done away with if necessary. You know, it’s associated the animal realm is associated with stupidity and and insensitivity, you know, preferring blindly to play by the rules of the game.
It’s like, you know, the the the brutal bureaucrat, you know, that that the rules have to be followed regardless of what that may entail in terms of actual people’s actual being’s actual lived life, in a kind of reactive mentality as opposed to a creative mentality. You know, it doesn’t matter who or what is destroyed in the process as long as the the rules are correctly followed. You know, it’s the idea that people often talk about, you know, know, the letter above the spirit, the letter before the law. You know, that that is, by all by all means, has to be followed. You know, with this ignoring quality, there’s no concern with being truthful.
That that we find a way to justify ourselves in one way or another, some kind of rationale by which we can keep we can maintain our self respect. You know, we can always justify what we do. We can always rationalize it as being the right thing in one way or another. But it’s there’s real no there’s no real honesty about it. There’s no real truth from us even in front of oneself.
You know, we we we do not see others or we don’t see our environment. We only see our goals, and we invent all kinds of excuses to prove that we are doing the right thing in achieving what it is that we want no matter what we have to do to no matter what the cost may be. So the essence of animal style is to get what we want with extreme honesty and sincerity and seriousness. You know? It’s like it’s like a very sincere pig.
You know? It it it there’s no humor. There’s no there’s no openness. You know? Like, it’s like a tank that just oblivious to everything else, just rolling along from one thing to another and destroying what whatever gets in its way.
So then the the next level, the the level of I’m sorry. I’m sorry. hungry ghost. So hungry ghost is the preoccupation is consuming. Fundamentally, again, there’s a there’s a feeling of being poor.
There is a pervading sense of inadequacy about ourselves. We we are continually using the things and people about us in order to prop up our self image, but it’s but it’s never never quite enough to sustain ourselves. You know, hungry ghosts are usually depicted as having extremely small mouths like this like the size of the eye of a needle and huge stomachs, you know, like like that of a the size of a mountain. So the the you know, this is an expression of a mentality, this embodiment. They they are they they’re always they’re involved in a constant struggle to satisfy their hunger.
So this this hunger is extremely painful. You know, our hunger maybe it could be for love. It could be for friendship. It could be for wealth or status, for clothes, for for virtue, whatever. And and and even after after after a long search, when they when they do find what they’re looking for, it turns into molten lead and and burns them.
So our hunger is never appeased. You know, bay basically, there’s a mentality of poverty of our hungry ghosts. You know, the the people and the things about us are just so many consumer items. You know, we even even a beautiful sunset, you know, we we we we write a poem about it or we take a we take a we we we take a photo of it or or or we rehearse a dialogue in our mind about so that we can repeat to someone else later on how moving the experience of watching the sunset was, and we haven’t watched the sunset at all. You know?
The we we want to eat the sunset. We want to hold on to it. We can’t just be with the sunset and let it move on. We have to somehow restrict the flow of things. We feel so impoverished about ourselves.
You know, when we eat, we go beyond what is what is comfortable. You know, there’s like you know, out of a fear that this may be our last meal, you know, and that this there may not be any more than than what we’re getting now. We we have a a constant there’s a constant hunger for entertainment of of all types of various sorts. You know, the new it can be anything. I mean, it’s there in one form another.
You know, maybe even New Age spiritualism or or sports or the arts or education. They all become but all of what we hunger for, though we may, you know, we may get we may achieve it. We may come to meet with it, but eventually it becomes boring, you know, after a while. And our but our our hunger is not somehow is not satisfied. There’s not been a peace, so we have to move on.
You know, We scrape up all the last morsels, sucking out all the goodness of everything that we come across. All few meaningful encounters that we do have, we squeeze every last juices out of that we can get, and our lives are littered with the empty shells of people and the wrappers of all the goodness that we’ve made use of over the course of our lives and that we’ve consumed along our way in one way or another, simply a user of things and people, a consumer. There’s always some kind of need to keep moving on. Whatever it is, it may be just up ahead, just around the next corner, that which I’ve always been looking for, I’ve always been seeking, searching for my entire life. You know, the next book, the next person, the next town, the next teaching at Buddha House, the next teacher at Buddha House, and maybe just the one that’s going to do it for This never-ending perpetual dissatisfaction, until beginnings become an end in themselves, we just continually begin something.
We don’t get and we don’t even wait to see whether it eventuates. The beginning the beginnings become an end in themselves. You know, a driven search for satisfaction, it’s painful to be suspended in unfulfilled desires, the level of the hungry ghost. And then finally, at the bottom of it all, in various forms, are the hell realms. The hell beings are pervaded by aggression, hatred, hostility.
You know, it’s it’s based upon the perpetual condition of hatred. You know, we we built you know, we built up a complete environment of a of of hatred, aggression, and we no longer in such a state, we’re no longer even sure what it is that we hate any longer, you know, where our hate is to be directed. There’s just this recycling of hatred, you know, like like a crocodile that eats its own tail, you know, and as it eats its own tail, it’s nourished by it, and so it has more to eat. Its tail keeps growing and it and eats its tail and it’s nourished by it. By that nourishment, its tail grows and it has more to eat and it’s a negative feedback system which feeds upon itself, reinforcing itself.
There’s no end to it. The more that we hate, the more that we see is deserving of our hate. The more that we destroy, the more we see it needs to be destroyed, you know, until the entire environment is seen as aggressive, as hostile. The more that we destroy, the more that needs to be destroyed, including ourselves. We can’t get away from even ourselves and the hate that we have even for ourselves.
We are consumed by our own hatred. Everything is like fire. You know, ourselves, we ourselves are fire. The level of the hell beings is characterized by continuous mental and physical pain. So, you know, no matter no matter who we are, each of us has adopted in one way or another to some degree or another, in some form or another, and expressed in some manner or other our unique style in our individual struggle to solve the fundamental problem of our self identity, of ego.
Each of us involved in a continual recreation of our particular version of reality, and we cling to this, you know, our particular projected world as if our life depended upon it, and in a way it does. You know, life as we know it, our dysfunctional approach to life as we know it, We are very much afraid of an open, fluid way of relating to the world and being in the world. We cling to our chronic fixations that we deem reality to be, our particular version of the world. You know, there’s a in talking about world making, you know, how the if if this world is, as I mentioned before, one of the basic notions or assertions of Buddhism is that knowing isn’t organizing into the known, that the world in which we find ourselves is very much a product of how we have come to know it, How is it that we how have we come to create this particular version that we call the human realm? Harvard philosopher Nelson Goodman has developed a view of world making, world making characteristics of the world of words and symbols.
He argues that all of the various worlds of scientists, artists, ordinary men and women are but versions that can be judged right or wrong in terms of various internal characteristics or by comparison of other versions, but they cannot be judged true by testing against any foundation real world, because there is no such real world beyond our versions. He summarizes his view thus: Talk of an unstructured content or an unconceptualized given or a substratum without properties is self defeating, for the talk imposes structures, conceptualizes, describes properties. Goodman continues, the many stuff, matter, energy, waves, phenomena that worlds are are made of are made along with the world, but made from what? Not from nothing after all, but from other worlds. World making as we know it is always always starts from worlds already on hand.
The making is a remaking. So, you know, the the the point you know, we are we we all share a common karma. That is to say, we we have we are conditioned to organize and interpret our world in very similar fashions and that’s and we have come that is why we have come to share what we call the human realm. We are born into a world of meaning. The world that we live in is appropriate to our past ways of thinking, how we have expressed ourselves and how our various experiences in the past, the conditioning factors within our mind.
It’s very appropriate to who we have been, this type of embodiment that we have, this type of world that we live in and the various experiences that we undergo. That we you know, this is what we term conventional reality. It is a convention. Convention has the notion of agreement, of consensus, of there is some common shared notion about about our experiences and about our reality. But this is only a particular version.
There are other possibilities. These represent other possibilities. And as long as these possibilities have as their fundamental cause ignorance, no matter what these possibilities may be, no matter what their forms or how they may be expressed, they will always be dissatisfactory in some way, in some shape or form or other. That within this context, there is no peace. There is no real happiness.
There is only some different measures of dissatisfactoriness about it all. Now we you know, we how did it evolve? You know, we’re talking about the driving force, that which is the fundamental cause, is ignorance. So this is depicted by outer rim, the outer circle, which depicts the twelve links of dependent origination. This is the means by which we’re continually recreating our worlds, the means by which we continually take in rebirth, the process by which we are continually reconfirming our particular realities, the process of compulsive rebirth under the control of karma and afflictive emotions.
The process of a dysfunctional approach to life. Dysfunctional in that it’s governed. It’s driven by ignorance. It is under the control of afflictive emotions and karma. So it begins with at the very top, and again, I’m sorry you can’t see it, but it begins with ignorance. Twelve links of dependent origination.
And ignorance is depicted as blind man supported by a cane, carrying a cane. So, again, we talked about ignorance previously. At one level, the blindness symbolizes the absence of some kind of absence of precision or lack of clarity with regard to our actions and the consequences of our actions in terms of the results. That is to the actions as causes and their results, some type of experience. But at a deeper level, level, ignorance is this basic distortion of mind, this misconceiving of ourselves and phenomena as ultimately or inherently existent.
And it is what prevents us from gaining a realization of their true nature. Ignorance serves as the basis for all afflictive emotions, and therefore it is the driving force behind the entire primary source of suffering, the twelve links of dependent origination. So that is what is symbolized by the blindness. And the man is carrying a cane And the cane is has the notion symbolizes that ignorance can’t be supported cannot be supported within reality. And this is true of all the afflictive emotions.
And when I when I mentioned previously that the objects of the afflictive emotions by afflictive emotions, I mean such types of mental patterning as attachment and hatred, etcetera, that they’re not supported in reality. That is to say that the object as it is appearing does not exist. When you’re terribly when you’re when you’re experiencing desire as attachment, that object as it appearing to your mind at that particular moment does not exist. There is a basic distortion as to the the the agreeable, the attractive attributes of that object. The same holds true of hatred.
When you’re angry at someone, as they’re appearing to you at that moment, they do not exist. There’s nothing that person, as they’re appearing to you at that moment, does not exist. You are seen in in an imbalanced way. All their negative qualities are being exaggerated and all their positive qualities are being filtered out. You’re seeing a fantasy, a hallucination of your own making.
So, you know, this is the notion of being not being supported in reality, of having to rely upon a cane. The notion one of the basic notions of Buddhism is that the more that you analyze, that if something is true, the more that you analyze it, the more obvious it will become to you. On the other hand, if something is false, upon analysis, the more obscure and finally the object will disappear altogether. You know, the closer that we come to reality, the more obvious it becomes, the truth of it becomes. And moreover, you know, truth is therapeutic.
And the the Dharma is Buddha’s truth, his his therapy, the way that we can cure ourselves by coming by analyzing and coming to know the way things are, opposing our ignorance ignorance and developing wisdom. So in talking about these twelve links of dependent origination, know, it’s not so much that that we’re trying to understand the nature of ignorance, but just trying to to to appreciate the role ignorance plays in the mechanism of the twelve links of dependent origination. And this you know, we have to develop, you know, in terms of the three principal aspects of the path, to develop a a will to awaken. And what it is that we awaken to or from? The sleep of ignorance.
Unless we have to develop some kind of determination to overcome ignorance. And this is what this is meant to facilitate, to help us to do. When we appreciate very deeply the part that ignorance is playing in in our present dysfunctional approach to life, in in this in the ego empire, then we will develop some kind of determination to work with the means to come develop develop the wisdom to overcome the ignorance within our mind, the will to awaken. So simply beginning to appreciate the part that ignorance plays in our suffering, as more fundamental than where we usually attribute our problems coming from. That he’s not my problem or she’s not my problem.
That the fact that that I don’t have this car or this house or not enough money. The fundamental problem is our own ignorance and beginning to appreciate that. So this becomes a priority in your life to overcome this and develop the wisdom that by means of which it can be overcome. So we want to develop some kind of constructive anxiety. You know, as long as we have ignorance in our mind, we’re going to suffer no matter how much we may struggle, no matter what we may do.
All, you know, all the blood, sweat, and tears that we may expend over the course of our life will be to no avail. As long as there is ignorance in our mind, we will suffer in some form or another in one of these realms or another. And it will be dissatisfactory in some form or another. There’s no other you know, this is by its very nature, you know, it’s not our fault. We’re not being punished.
It’s simply a result of specific, you know, discernible variable variables bringing specific outcomes. You know, we we we are we are in a process which is governed by ignorance. And as long as we are that our approach to life will be dysfunctional, and this is experienced in terms of feeling as suffering. That’s the nature of the situation in which we find ourselves. So developing some kind of determination to awaken from this situation, to get us to to exit the system, to get ourselves out of it, you know, to to remove ignorance from our minds.
And, you know, the and moreover and something more, you know, to to begin to appreciate, you know, what holds true for each of ourselves holds equally true for all others. No matter how rich or famous, no matter how beautiful someone else may be, as long as they have ignorance in their mind, they have not gone beyond suffering. That they have not as long as they exist within conditioned existence conditioned by the afflictive emotions and karma, they are in some way or another experiencing suffering, and therefore to begin to help us to awaken our hearts. You know, why isn’t that we can’t develop love and compassion for for the rich, for the famous, you know, we don’t understand the deeper nature of our human dilemma, of our problems that we all share. You know, we can perhaps most of us can readily understand and develop compassion for those who are undergoing, you know, deep suffering, a great loss in one way or another.
But it’s difficult for us to to develop compassion for those who appear to have it all, who appear very happy and experiencing all the good things of life. But that’s just not because simply we don’t understand the deeper nature of our the human dilemma. So this is to help us to develop not only the will to awaken, but to help us develop an awakened heart, and ultimately thereby to develop an awakened mind and develop to the state of being a Buddha. So ignorance is the prime mover of this entire process. You know, for ignorance is basically a wrong consciousness that conceives the opposite of the way things are in terms of their ultimate nature.
It conceives of a solid, concrete, isolated I entity at the center of our being, of who we are as a as a fixed self identity. So, you know, it’s like I have to There’s some some some self identity about ourselves, something about intrinsic nature of who we are. And I maybe I think it’s worthwhile just you know, even if we have to rush. Yeah. I I’ve I’ve shown many I’ve probably shown this cartoon many times, but, you know, this kind of a these two boys are walking home from school, and the one boy is just took a had taken a test, and he’s he’s he’s been given his test results, and he’s carrying his test results with him.
And then his one boy says to to the other, that new teacher really did a number on me. And the second boy he says, I thought I’d get a b on that test and he gave me a c. And the third box he says, how did he know I was a c student? So, you know you know, this you know, it’s kind of a a tragic comedy in a way. You know, the boy, you know, tried to be someone other than who he who he really is, you know, that that but the new teacher saw through his this his attempt at deception.
He couldn’t fool the teacher for very long. You know, there was there was like something there’s something inside the boy which which which gave him away. It was it was like something that you know, his his c ness is the nature of being a c kind of grade person kind of oozed out of his skin. And he he couldn’t hide it. He he couldn’t he couldn’t pull the the wool over the teacher’s eyes.
The the the teacher saw who he really is. That, you know, he he is a c grade person. No doubt about it. And it’s it’s obvious. And and and he’s and he’s going to go on to get a a c grade job and work marry a c-grade wife and have c grade children and teach them how to be c grade people.
And his life becomes a self defeating, self fulfilling kind of a c grade prophecy. Know? That’s this is the the you know, this is why we can’t change because we’ve fixated upon some kind of self identity. We’ve you know, our our our only limitations are those we acknowledge, and we have acknowledged in a very self depreciating way a particular limitation about ourselves. I really can’t change after all, you know, about who I am.
It’s pretty much fixed. You know, at some level, that’s what we’re holding on to. That’s the notion that we have about ourselves. Nothing in the whole stream of mental and physical phenomena and events that that constitute our experience of body and mind, that is to say, nothing within the of in fact of who we are has the quality of being a solid concrete I or self or fixed identity. It is it is solely due to the influence of ignorance and in its persistent grasping at the existence of such a self identity that makes our body and minds a constant stream of suffering.
You know, that the the it is simply that which bring which constructs the ego empire. It is simply that which makes ignorant ex driven existence, you know, suffering, pathological. So this is the first link in these twelve links of dependent origination. You know, it’s like the first piece in a puzzle. You know, the the shape of the first piece in the puzzle kind of determines what the what shape the next piece can be.
And that next piece shapes what the next piece can be. And next and next, until finally defining the the entire picture itself, the completed picture. It’s it’s somehow the seeds of it is sewn in that very first piece and the nature of its shape, what can fit in later. It all fits together. You know, everything fits everything that happens to us is appropriate to what has gone before.
You know, if you throw a brick up in the air and we don’t move we shouldn’t be surprised when it comes down on our head. You know, there’s no one out there to get us. There’s no one out there organizing the situation for us. That brick is following a natural law. You know, it’s the law of gravity.
Depend upon this, that happens. If this doesn’t happen, then that won’t happen. So it’s it’s like discernible variables obeying natural laws, bringing about predictable outcomes. You know, this is simply the outflow of the law of cause and effect. Given ignorance, this evolves.
It it it is a natural outflow. There’s no one out to get us. There’s no one overseeing the situation, it against us. There’s no one out to hurt us or harm us. in dependence upon ignorance, we go on to — which is, you know, the second of the twelve links of dependent origination — we go on to formative actions. You know, having misconceived the nature of the self, having we having absolutized the demarcation between self and other, then we go on to, we go on to there is impetus to begin to, how how are we going to relate with that world of other, that world out there? We begin we it is necessary to begin to form some sort of relationship with it involving some some way of interacting with it. This is the second link of dependent origination called formative actions.
So, you know, we there’s a there’s a sense of of bewilderment associated with ignorance. And we are impulsively engaged in actions of either extending or defending or simply maintaining our now misconceived I or self. So it is called formative actions because forms or shapes pleasurable and unpleasurable experiences or effects which are result of these actions. Know, that we are you know, all the shapings, all the formings make us who we are, this process which is under undergoing constant transformation. You know, it’s it’s it is symbolized by a potter forming pots and a wheel.
So, you know, the the the pots forming the pots symbolizes the creation of actions, karma. And and the the potter’s wheel, even even when, you know, it doesn’t require constant turning. You know, you know, if you use a pedal, for example, you can stop for a while and and the the inertia of the wheel will keep it turning for some time. Likewise, having created an action, we don’t have to continue to create keep maintaining that action. It will maintain in in in itself in terms of latencies, predispositions within our own mind.
So out of actions, out of form of actions, the actions are infused in the consciousness. This is the third of these are the twelve links of dependent origination called consciousness. But here, it’s not just consciousness. You know, consciousness is just simply not some kind of blank slate. There’s no such thing as simply raw consciousness, you know, uninfluenced by our past experiences, unconditioned by our past actions.
Our consciousnesses have residues of our past ways of thinking, our past experiences, the karmic predispositions within our mind. So when we talk about this third link, consciousness, we’re talking about conditioned consciousness, consciousness conditioned by our past actions. In in dependence upon these conditioning factors, specific patterns of mentality arise and materiality, minds and bodies. So together these these constitute what are called the five aggregates. The aggregate of forms, the aggregate of feelings, the aggregate of perceptions, the aggregate of, compositional factors, and the aggregate of consciousnesses.
We I’m sorry. I can’t go into those. Having having created these are called in terms of the twelve links of dependent origination, they’re called name and form. So in terms of what is being pictured here, there is a in the so the ignorance was a blind man supported by a cane. Formative actions was a potter shaping pots at a wheel.
And then consciousness is a monkey climbing in a tree. So the tree is full of fruits. So that is to say the fruits are the karmic dispositions, the karmic seeds implanted within our own minds. And then out of that, the five aggregates. The aggregates are referred to here in terms of the fourth link of the twelve links of dependent origination as name and form.
Form is the first aggregate of forms, specifically the body, and name refers to the other four mental aggregates. It’s pictured here as a boat with four people in it. The boat is the aggregate of the body, and the four people are the four mental aggregates. So this is the beginning of the evolution of corporeal being, the way in which our actions are going to find some kind of expression materially. But before we can begin to the the it’s like the ego is beginning to extend its territory.
It’s making you know, it’s beginning to, like, make forays out into the world, beginning to begin to relate with the world out there, which is seen as absolute other. In in order to be able to do that, we have to develop a medium by which to relate with the world. And this is this is the next of the twelve links, the the fifth of the twelve links, which is called the the sixth sense The sixth sense spheres, which is is pictured by a house with five windows and a door. So the five windows, this is the way that the evolving ego is able to step out into the world and relate with it through the medium of the six sense spheres. There are five physical senses, spheres, or faculties eye, ear, nose, tongue, body and finally the sixth, which is the mental sense faculty.
So these are the mediums by which we relate with out into the world. In terms of the five material or physical sense spheres or faculties, it’s not, for example, in the eye sense faculty, it’s not the flesh organ, but there is a subtle matter within the eye which is said to be the sense faculty. And this is the medium by which the the we can begin to relate out into the world and begin to know the world out there. in dependence upon I’m going to have to go fairly fast, I’m afraid. in dependence upon the sixth sense spheres, there then there arises contact.
So this this is the way that we actually you know, the coming together of consciousness, object, and the medium. This aggregation represents contact. Here it’s pictured. There is a man and a woman embracing that’s contact. So it’s the coming together, the aggregating of a consciousness, an object, and and the medium of it let us say the sixth one of the sixth sense faculties.
The coming of these together is contact. And contact is experienced either in terms of attractive, unattractive, or neutral, neither attractive nor unattractive. Out of contact arises feeling, the seventh of the twelve links of dependent origination. Feelings are either pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral, depending upon how the object is discerned. Know, if it if it’s an if it has been if the contact was attractive, then it will you will there will rise a feeling of pleasure.
If it was unattractive, a feeling of displeasure. If it was neutral, a a neutral feeling will arise. And this this is pictured by a man with an arrow shot in his eye. This is this is an experience of an unpleasant feeling. I’m guessing.
The eye the the notion behind this is that the that the eye is such that even a minor irritant can produce a very unpleasant, a strong feeling. So we have feelings. in dependence upon feelings, their the eighth link of dependent origination arises craving. A craving is a desire to prolong the present contact with a particular object or to repeat that contact again in the future, or that’s in the case of a pleasurable feeling, or in the case of an unpleasurable feeling, the desire to break off contact with the present object and the desire not to repeat that contact again in the future in in with regard to an unpleasant feeling. So it’s it’s been this is the way that we become addicted, that we become it’s it’s symbolized here by a a a man drinking alcohol.
He’s becoming intoxicated. Through feelings, we become intoxicated and develop craving. We we it’s like it’s an addictive substance. It depends upon craving, which is the eighth link, arises the ninth link, which is grasping. Grasping is an intensified craving.
So the mind is mentally grabbing at its object. You know, what what is happening? Now we’re talking about someone who’s dying. Yeah. A a a potency, a karma is being activated in his mind.
He’s going to there’s there’s going to be a desire. Yeah. A desire for a a a desire to maintain existence, to take rebirth, but a particular type of rebirth. So depending upon the type the quality of the karma which is being activated. You know, there’s like it’s like taking a program, let’s say a disk, and placing it in your computer.
The placing in the computer is like like we a sense that I want to run a program. We that thought to run a program is like the desire. Then you actually say, well, which which one of these will satisfy that desire? And you actually grab hold of the