Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A cartoon of a schoolboy convinced he is permanently “a C student” opens Ven Jampa Gendun’s 47-minute walk through all twelve links of dependent origination. Starting with ignorance — the compulsion to freeze a changing, dependent self as something fixed and unitary — Gendun frames the entire path as learning to relax rather than struggle. He moves link by link: the potter shaping karma, the monkey in a fruit tree (conditioned consciousness), the boat with passengers (name and form), the house with six windows (sense faculties), then contact, feeling, desire, grasping, becoming, birth, and aging and death. A pot of stew persistently misidentified as potato stew illustrates ego’s rationalising grip on fixed identity. The talk closes by tracing a single example backwards through all twelve links to show how each condition depends on the one before.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 02 WoL 1988 09 25.mp3
UUID: 1b693883-f5d6-4e07-9390-8d42e7aa81f9
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Wheel of Life (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1988-09-25
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 47.0 minutes
Words: ~5,757
So this dependent origination is the evolution of the compulsive rebirth under the influence of karma and afflictive emotions. Under the afflictive emotions, the control of the afflictive emotions of desire, hatred, and ignorance. So in this representation, ignorance is illustrated. It is depicted by a blind man. So it’s it’s the absence of precision, of clarity.
You know, it’s a cloudiness. So it’s it’s experienced as confusion and bewilderment. So it’s like, you know, we’re we’re walking along, and suddenly, we find ourselves walking next to a precipice, a cliff. You know, nothing has changed. The ground is still as solid as it was before.
We’re able to walk just as well as before, but we panic. We don’t quite know how to conduct ourselves in this situation. You know, there’s a feeling of the situation is going to take you over. It’s going to overwhelm you. You know, the universe may swallow you up, for example.
Even though nothing has changed, there’s there’s a moment of bewilderment, of panic, and there’s a struggle to cope, just, you know, to secure your position, get yourself on firm ground again. You know, moment by moment, it becomes necessary to recreate the ground upon which you stand. You know, secure your ground. So in this sense, you’re trying to make the best of the present moment and cling to it. You want to ignore the possibility that it may be possible to relax.
You know, throughout all of Dharma, all the practices, there’s always this question of simply relaxing, of coming to an understanding the struggle is unnecessary. You know, that you have a basic ground of being beyond the ground of ego. That there’s not that this conflict, this struggle is completely unnecessary. And in all the various paths we talk about, for example, the three principal aspects of the path, you know, determination to be free or renunciation. Renunciation is simply most relaxing, letting go.
You don’t it’s not necessary to cling to these objects. It’s coming to that understanding. It’s not necessary to struggle any longer. You let go. You relax.
This is called renunciation. Developing an open heart, opening our heart to others, that we don’t have to struggle with others, that we’re not in conflict with others. In fact, we’re not even in isolation from others. We never have been, and we can relax. And then the ultimate question is that with the perpetual resecuring of the ground of ego is not necessary.
That even without the mode of being which we consider our only way of identifying ourselves, that beyond this, beyond the ego identity that we have, there is a basic ground of being. And in fact we can never go out of existence. We nothing to struggle against, that there’s nothing that we have to do to maintain our existence, our being. But we feel there is. So coming to the wisdom of understanding that there is a basic ground of being beyond the mode of being of our particular identity, of our particular ego image, we can relax.
The struggle is finished. You know, they call this nirvana, beyond sorrow. It’s continual relaxing, letting go, like a big sigh of relief. I don’t have to struggle anymore. So, you know, there’s this constant struggle, this constant churning out, resecuring, remanufacturing of who we must be, of who we think we are.
There’s a fear of not being, of going out of existence. You know, we begin by selectively imposing patterns. We cultivate some unawareness toward, various qualities that do not fit into this particular order that we’re trying to create. We’re trying to order reality. We’re trying to order ourselves into particular patterns.
So we have to ignore those aspects of our actual situation which don’t fit into our preconceived notion of how things should be. So there’s this ignoring quality. And we try to we want to slow down the situation. We want to try to freeze it so that we can gain control over it. We try to make the situation permanent.
Permanent people, permanent relationships, permanent objects, permanent self. It’s a conflict, struggle, because they’re not permanent. And we divorce ourselves in all the things from the context in which they’re occurring, in the actual situation, and we grasp at them as being isolated objects in order to be able to manipulate them, You know, as if these things were objectively existing without without dependence upon situations, upon causes, condition, our own mind. So this is the ongoing process of ego, the struggle of ego, the mechanism being coming out of the arising of ignorance. So this is the most basic quality of ignorance.
This quality of grasping at that which is diverse as unitary. That which is changing as unchanging. That which is dependent as independent. You know, to give you, you know, a very kind of a simplistic example. I think I’ve shown this before, but I’ll show it again.
It’s a little cartoon out of the newspaper. And there’s two boys who are walking along and they’re talking about their test results. They just had an examination at their school. And so the one boy, he says to the other, that new teacher really did a number on me. In the second box he says, I thought I’d get a B on that test, and he gave me a C.
And in the third box he says, how did he know I was a C student? So, now what is he saying? He’s saying that I have a particular identity. You know, in spite of everything I might do, that my teacher saw through my pretense, that he somehow he saw my equality about myself, that I only have this one unitary fixed character that is a C grade person, a C grade quality about myself. And that in fact, this quality is unchanging.
No matter it’s not it’s also not dependent upon the various situations. You know, no matter even if I were to perform well on an examination or a test, well, that day everybody else was sick, you know. There’s going to be he’s going to find a way to rationalize. It’s something which does not fit in with his preconceived notion of this pattern which he’s holding on to, which he is fixating on. No matter what he does in life, no matter what the situation, no matter how well he may achieve, he’s always going to be fixated, fitting in all the various interpreting, rationalizing all his experiences from this fixed self image, this model that he has of himself, which is unitary.
It has one quality, it’s not diverse. You know, in fact, sometimes we act with great wisdom, sometimes we act with great stupidity. We have very diverse personalities. It’s unchanging. In fact, we’re constantly changing.
We’re constantly growing. We’re constantly developing and deteriorating, disintegrating various aspects of our personality, our abilities, of our potentials. And it’s independent, you know. No matter what other people do around me, no matter what the situation may be, the culture, my peer group, I’m a C student. But in fact we’re dependent.
It’s a relative dependent arising, depending upon what we call C is simply in a relationship to A students and F students. That there’s no fixed, independent, and existing C quality or C self image about ourselves. But he’s going to cling that to his entire life. He’s going to go on to get a C grade job, marry a C grade wife, have C grade children, teach them how to be C grade people. So this is the basic quality of ignorance working in our daily life.
This fixating, this trying to grasp on to a unitary, unchanging, independent self image ego, action of the ego. So there’s nothing within the entire stream of mental and physical phenomena which constitute our mind and body, which has the quality of being unitary, unchanging, and independent self, no matter how much one may examine. But we, to the depths of our being, cling, believe that this in fact exists, that such a type of self exists. You know, it’s grasping at such a type of self, at such a quality within our stream of mind and body, which makes the mind and body a constant source of suffering. So this is ignorance, the basic ignorance, the first of these twelve links of dependent origination.
So this is the first element in a series of related conditions, you know, of conditionality, of of an existence which is conditioned by ignorance, a basic misconception of the nature of the self. Everything that’s going to flow from this is based upon this initial misconception, this initial bewilderment, confusion. You know, the it’s going to this whole process, it’s a process interlinking, one link dependent upon the next, dependent upon the next. It becomes a chain reaction, and it cultivates, it culminates in a realm, in a particular version of reality, in a particular style of suffering. And, you know, as we sit here now, it’s occurring.
Maybe you can see it. Know, this is the you know, this basic ignorance is the first step on our journey towards perfect, complete, unsurpassed Buddhahood. You know, this If in fact the ego existed as it appears, we would have long ago achieved Buddhahood. But the basic grounding is not solid. There’s a basic misconception which ignorance.
And it’s due to this that we can actually that we haven’t achieved Buddhahood, but in fact the basic grounding is such of our basic being, the reality of this situation is that we can go beyond ego, that it’s not as we conceive of it to be. You know, basic quality of ignorance is like the first piece in a puzzle. And then the next piece is going to determine the shape. And then the first piece determines the shape of the next piece of the puzzle until we come up to a final we complete the final picture, and this is our life. You know, the first piece of this puzzle, its particular shape, is the piece called ignorance.
And the next piece has to interlock with that, And the next piece has to fit in with that. So we’re beginning to narrow down our possibility for choices. And then finally, due to the initial mistake of ignorance, until finally we come up with a complete interlocking picture which we take to be our reality, which we don’t see as a dependent arising. We see it as fixed objectively existing. So in this process, you know, everything fits together in these twelve links, in our development of our reality, of our style of suffering.
Everything is appropriate. It’s all meshing together. You know, dependent upon that, this arises. This is one of the most famous sayings of the Buddha. It doesn’t sound like much perhaps.
Dependent upon that, this arises. If this doesn’t arise, that that won’t arise. It sounds very simple. This was what the Dalai Lama called the slogan of the Buddha. The All things are dependent arising, dependent arising.
Perhaps the most important concept in all of Buddhist teachings, arising. So, you know, what we’re discussing is actually is the whole process of karmic development, you know, without any particular reference to which developments are good, which developments are bad. Which ones are good ones, which ones are bad ones. So we’re discussing the karmic situation as it actually is. You know, the evolution of our present situation.
So everything happens everything happens in the present moment. You know, The potential for the future is in the present moment. You you can’t have a predetermined future. It hasn’t come into existence yet. It’s, you know, it’s still open ended.
The future is still open ended. Its potential, but its potential lies within the very present moment. On the other hand, the present, you know, the it’s the past which presents us with the present moment, the present situation. You know, the determination or predestination, it goes up that far. It comes up to the present moment.
It doesn’t go beyond that. You know, they talk about quality of free will and determinism. It’s like a baby in a crib and there’s various toys in the crib. Now the baby has no choice. He didn’t choose to be in that crib.
He didn’t choose what toys are in that crib. So this is the present situation. This is what the given is karmic situation. But he can choose which of those toys and how he’s going to relate with them, which ones he’s going to play with, how he’s going to play with them. This is the way the present moment becomes the is a potential the future is a potential within the present moment even though, you know, the present moment is determined by what has come through the past.
Therefore, you know, if we consider this, then it makes sense to make some effort in a spiritual practice, in a spiritual path. It makes some sense to, for example, to meditate, to work at the various practices. You know, become important in the sense that they are helpful for us to begin to understand the present situation. You know, they are a way of learning about the present situation and learning how to relate with it. You know, we can’t this is our situation.
This is our karmic situation, our present disposition. It’s it’s perfect. I mean, it couldn’t have been anywhere else. We have to accept that. But if we can understand our present situation and how it evolved, because the potential of the future lies within this present moment as it exists right now, we learn how to we learn about how it evolves, if we learn its situation, we learn how to relate with it, we can determine what kind of future is going to evolve in this present moment.
There’s no one organizing the situation for us. You know, the various situations that we experience, you know, arise in particular unique ways in dependence upon appropriate conditions. There’s kind of this word appropriate. Everything is appropriate. You know, fire burns.
It’s quite appropriate to its nature. So everything that, you know, that our suffering, our problems, our difficulties, our happinesses, our joys are quite appropriate to the causes which have gone before. So, you know, these in dependence upon appropriate conditions. So those conditions are contained within the present moment. So in this sense we don’t have to remain victims of our past.
We don’t have to carry the history of our past life around on our backs. The past is contained within the present moment. And therefore all situations become workable. We simply have to understand our present situation and how it evolved and commit ourselves to a proper way of relating with it. Commit ourselves to a proper way of relating with it.
So in dependence upon this basic bewilderment of ignorance, we engage in various actions, you know, of either enhancing or defending the misconceived self or the ego. So we have this basic bewilderment, this basic quality of ignorance. And dependent upon this, we misconceive the nature of the self. in dependence upon this misconceived nature of the self, we engage in various actions in order either to enhance this self or to defend it. So in this in dependence upon this, there arises we commit actions.
Actions are karma. karma simply means work actions. in dependence upon this arise karmic formations. This is the second link of the twelve links of dependent origination. The second link.
So this is illustrated by a potter, you know, forming, shaping pots. We’re shaping our karma, our latencies. You know, the idea of karma has two aspects to it. It’s the actual actions that we commit, you know, the actions of body, speech, mind, for example. And it’s also, when we talk about karma, we can also mean, be referring to the latencies, the seeds, the potential that are imprinted, impressed on the mind, which predisposes the mind to certain compulsive patterns, certain tendencies.
These are karma, both the actions themselves and the latencies, the impressions which are left by these actions on the mind stream. So in this way, you know, the mind is conditioned by actions. So these various latencies are placed or impressed, imprinted, you know, like a print, pressing your hand in wet clay. There’s an impression left. The mind is conditioned by our various actions of body, speech and mind, for example.
And we engage in these due to the basic quality of ignorance, the misconception of the nature of the self. So all these where you have our mind is imprinted with various particular reactive patterns. When these patterns, when they come in contact with an object, a particular reaction will take place. So this mind which has been imprinted, has been conditioned, which has these latencies impressed upon it, is the third link of the twelve links of dependent origination. It’s consciousness.
But more specifically, not just consciousness in general, but conditioned consciousness, you know, consciousness which is predisposed to a particular reactive pattern, compulsive patterns. So this is illustrated by a monkey climbing a fruit tree. So, you know, this tree is it’s a little fruit. I’m sorry you can’t see it. You know, this is the fruit of past actions, but fruit hasn’t been picked yet.
It hasn’t been experienced yet. It hasn’t found expression yet. It hasn’t completely ripened. It hasn’t been made use of. It’s sort of just hanging on the tree.
So this is the fruit hanging on the tree are the karmic latencies imprinted on consciousness. So these are going to these impressions, these tendencies are going to begin to express themselves, these tendencies. You know, are going to manifest as particular programmed materiality and mentality. So this materiality and mentality is a further furtherance of the struggle of ego to ground itself, to solidify its position. You know, to secure itself, to extend its domain.
So, you know, ego can never be made permanently secure. You know, it’s it’s like you know, it’s like the the appearance of a, you know, of a continuously solid flaming circle. If you take a stick and you have flame on the end of it at nighttime, for example, and you whirl it around in a continuous pattern with enough speed, there appears a solid, continuous circle of flame. Now, that’s a mere appearance, isn’t it? It’s not due to the speed and the patterning.
What is merely an instant, a moment of flame appears to be a solid continuous circle. You know, the moment we relax, the illusion disappears. That appearance no longer is there any longer. But as long as there’s the speed, there’s the perpetual grasping at reoccurring patterns, the extension in space and time, then there’s the appearance of a solid concrete circle, a flame, a solid concrete I, self, ego due to the speed and the perpetual patterning. So this is experienced in this, you know, what is this constant struggle to make what is merely in a what is, to make solid that which is merely an appearance.
The constant struggle to make solid that which is merely appearance, is experienced as pain. Constantly struggling to solidify through ground ego. And it’s an impossible task. And it gets very tiring. You know, and there’s always this undercurrent of anxiety, of fear, of not being.
And as long as we identify exclusively with one mode of being, with one particular identity, self image, then there’s always the basic anxiety of not being. It’s like for example if you had a pot of stew and then had celery in it and carrots, potatoes, peas, all these various elements in it. And it’s like really bubbling up. It’s really, you know, churning. And you you lift the pot off this this lift the top of this pot of stew.
And you look in. And at that moment, that particular moment, there was a potato had risen to the top. And so you fixate. You say, oh, potato stew. You put the lid back on.
You know, you say, oh, yeah. We have some good potato stew. When you you you go back and look at it, maybe, you know, in reality, there’s a carrot on top. But you say, oh, that’s a strange looking potato. I’ve never seen an orange potato before.
And look, there’s a little green potato. You know? You’re completely fixated in your mind, holding on to grasping at a particular identity of a potato stew. You know, we we grasp onto a particular type of materiality and mentality, you know. So there’s there’s a continue you know, if you were to always be grasping at this as a potato stew, you would always be constantly happening to rationalize strange looking potatoes.
And through this entire process, there would be this underlying disbelief in yourself that maybe this anxiety, maybe this really isn’t a potato stew. But you want it to be a potato stew because you if it’s not a potato stew, then it’s not a stew at all. It doesn’t exist. This is our basic underlying anxiety, our basic struggle. So this conditioned consciousness gives rise to, you know, a particular programmed materiality and mentality.
You know, basically what we call the five aggregates, the five aggregates. This is so this is the fourth link of the twelve links of dependent origination. It’s usually referred to as name and form. And it’s illustrated by a boat with four people in it, with four passengers. So the boat is the aggregate of form, Essentially, the body.
In this context, the body. And the passengers are the aggregates of feeling, discrimination, compositional factors, and consciousness. These constitute what is called name. Compositional factors are like a collection of different factors, but mainly we are talking about thought. Thought.
You know, aggregates are not, you know, solid things like maybe like bricks, but they’re like collections of a lot of details. Collections of of, for example psychological inclinations of different types. So, you know, the body itself is a collection, isn’t it? It’s a collection of, you know, various parts, the arms and legs and the various organs, and it’s a collection of atoms. And none of this none of these parts of this entire collection are the parts individually as a whole.
None of them are you. But there’s a tendency to take security in the body, you know, we make it like a fort. You know, we can withdraw into what is conceived of as we withdraw from a threatening situation into this into our fortified nest of the body, the skin encapsulated ego. It’s like, you know, the central headquarters from which we’re sending out to make forays out into the world, kind of feeling the texture of situations, things, people. You know, beginning to expand our territory, test the water, you know, trying to solidify our experiences, to feel out objects.
You know, we experience them this is pleasurable, this is unpleasurable. So, you know, making judgments, discrimination is good, bad whether this object is enhancing or threatening. So you know this process, so we’re feeling the situation, we make forays out of the fort. Feeling the situation, giving rise to good feelings, bad feelings, pleasurable feelings, unpleasurable feelings, giving rise to discriminations, good discriminations, threatening objects, enhancing objects. You know, this evolution of the five aggregates.
Giving rise to various thought processes about our discriminations, you know, the complex reactive thoughts, patterns. You know, this this is compositional factor, the aggregate of compositional factors. And then all the mental processes which take place, you know, which is like the network of consciousness, you know, the background or the context, the background of patterns of psychological works which supply the impetus for all these various aggregates to operate. You know, it’s like a complex of types and styles and functions, you know both unconscious and active. So it’s all these four aggregates are operating within the context of the environment of the aggregate of consciousness, this fifth aggregate.
You know but so you know, what we’re doing is the ego is based upon this basic misconception of ignorance, we’re going to begin to extend our domain. We’re trying to solidify, fix, dominate. You know, we’re trying to the ultimate goal of ego would be to identify with the entire universe and become omnipotent, to gain control. You know, it’s as if, you know, we, you know, someday even in our spiritual practices, for example, we have this dream, this fantasy that someday we’re going to achieve enlightenment, that we’re going to you know all our disciples are going to be dancing and celebrating around us at our final liberation and our final Buddhahood. And in this joyous celebration which is taking place our ego comes up and taps us on the shoulder and puts his arm around you and says, you know, we really did a great job, didn’t we?
That’s our that’s our greatest hope. That’s the greatest hope of ego. But the problem is ego won’t be around when we do achieve Buddhahood someday. But in this process of identifying with the universe and moving out and extending this territory, there has to be evolution of some medium of relating, you know, is necessary. So this is the fifth link of the twelve links of dependent origination.
This is the six sources or the six faculties. So this is usually depicted by a house with one door and five windows representing the six senses, the six sense faculties. Eye, eye sense faculty, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mental sense faculty. So these are the mediums out of which the ego is beginning to extend its territory into its environment. It’s beginning to test the waters to feel the ground.
So in dependence upon these sixth sense faculties, ego makes contact with the six sense objects. Six sense objects, sights, sounds, smells, tastes, objects of touch, and mental phenomena. Phenomena which appear just only to the mind itself. And it begins to experience the world. So it’s extending out its domain.
So this is the sixth of the twelve links of dependent origination, which is contact. So through the sixth sense faculties, these sixth sensory objects are made contact with. And the contact is illustrated by a man and a woman embracing. A little bit of pornography there. Embracing.
And dependence upon, you know, the experiencing or, you know, we develop having sensations arise. You know, it depends upon these sensations, experiences, we develop feelings, either pleasurable, unpleasurable, or neutral. Neutral feelings are those which the mind is confused about, it can’t categorize, can’t quite fit into a nice neat box. So it’s momentarily confused about how to label this feeling, and therefore it takes on a neutral quality. So this is the seventh of the twelve links of dependent origination, which is feeling.
Feeling is illustrated with a yeah, with a man with an arrow in his eye, just to give you a very gross feeling. There’s a man with an arrow in his eye. So in dependence upon feeling. So this is a natural sequence, a chain reaction which is taking place. One link dependent upon the one previous.
It’s uncontrolled compulsive sequence of events. in dependence upon feeling there arises desire. Desire either to prolong contact and repeat contact, or to break off contact and not repeat contact in the future. So the two qualities of desire, you know, to either maintain contact or avoid contact with an object due to the various feelings which arise from this contact. So this is the eighth link of the twelve links of dependent origination, which is desire.
And this is illustrated by a woman offering a man some alcohol. So in dependence upon desire, specific karmic tendencies are energized, are activated. You know, we have these back at link number two various karmic formations will be implanted, imprinted on the mind. It’s like maybe like a DNA molecule or something like that. It has all this information, condition, pattern, structure, reaction is being impressed upon the mind, is conditioning the mind.
When it comes into the context in association with the condition of desire, then this tendency is energized. It’s activated. This is the ninth of the twelve links of dependent origination, grasping. So, in dependence upon feelings, pleasurable, unpleasurable, desire arose. in dependence upon desire, there is the activation of these reactive patterns, the conditioned formations within the mind.
That’s the ninth of the twelve links of dependent origination grasping. So this is illustrated by a man picking fruit, and the fruit was the karmic formations on the consciousness. Now he’s actually, you know, he’s going to he’s taking them down from the tree. He’s actually grabbing hold of them. He’s grasping for them.
You know, he’s he’s selecting a particular pattern, a particular program. You know, it’s like on this floppy disk, there’s all these different possible programs. So the reactive pattern is fully activated. You know, the program is inserted, you know, into the computer, for example. So this is the tenth link of the twelve links of dependent origination becoming.
It’s illustrated by a pregnant woman. So in dependence upon desire, that acted as a condition to activate a particular program. That is, there was a selection of a particular program. When the program that created grasping, actually taking the program down from the consciousness from the shelf in the program, putting it into the computer, fully activated, was becoming. It’s just about to run the program.
It’s just about when it meets the correct condition, it’s going to play out this pattern. So in dependence upon becoming, in dependence upon the this tendency. You know, we’re talking about tendencies, directions of the movement of the mind, you know, ways habitual ways of reacting to various objects, situations. You know, in dependence upon these tendencies, there’s a there becomes an appropriate coming to be. You know, we’re becoming.
In accordance with that tendency, so we picked we picked a tendency, we activated a tendency, and this tendency was becoming. And in accordance with that tendency, we’re going to take on a specific mode of being. This is what we call birth. And this is illustrated by a woman giving birth to a baby. That is the eleventh link of the twelve links of dependent origination birth.
So, you know, we’ve come into a particular mode of being, a particular having come into a particular mode of being, they will naturally ensue the diminishing of the capacity of that situation to support such a mode of being until a point is reached that the situation can no longer sustain it. And then there occurs the twelfth link of the twelve links of dependent origination, aging and death. And this is illustrated by a bent old man and a corpse being carried. So in this entire process of these twelve links, there are three afflictive emotions and two karmas operating. Two you know, when I said karma here, in the sense of a tendency of a movement, of a habitual mode of relating, of a movement toward a specific patterning.
In this process three afflictive emotions and two tendencies, karmic tendencies were brought into play. So the first, that is ignorance. The eighth, that is desire. And the ninth, grasping are the afflictive emotions. The afflictive emotions of ignorance, desire, and grasping.
And then the two karmic tendencies were the were the second link, karmic formations where we actually created the karmas, you know, imprinting them on the mind, the consciousness. And the tenth that is becoming where we had the the the karmic formation that we created in the second link is being completely activated in the tenth link. It’s becoming. It’s moving toward its expression. So, you know, if we take a take a simple example, maybe hopefully we’ll take a simple example.
You know, for example, we come in contact with a with a long white thing which is made of paper and stuff full of chopped dried leaves. Yeah? So we come in contact with a long white thing, about that long, made of white paper stuffed with dried, chopped leaves. So this is contact. This is the sixth link of these twelve links of dependent originations.
So but coming in contact was dependent upon having sense faculties. In this sense, in this particular instance, perhaps the eye sense faculty. in dependence upon the eye sense faculty, we came in contact with this long white thing. So in dependence upon contact, contact is dependent upon sense faculty which is the fifth link. So in turn, you know, the sense faculties, the eye sense faculty for example, is dependent upon name and form, the mind and body.
That is the fourth link. in dependence upon the mind and body, the body, the sense faculties arose. in dependence upon the sense faculties, specifically the eye sense faculty, contact with this long white thing arose. So there’s a sense of one link depending upon the previous link. And specifically in this case a human body, a particular mentality and materiality.
So this human body in turn arose in dependence upon a particular conditioned mind, a mind which is conditioned to grasp, to move toward, a tendency to move toward, and in this grasping and this fulfilling of this tendency takes a particular energy pattern known as the human body. This is predisposed to this, to associating itself with a particular energy pattern, a material pattern, the form of human body. So the human body was dependent upon a conditioned consciousness, which is the third of the twelve links. This, you know, we grasp at a human form. So this, in turn, this conditioned consciousness is dependent upon the karmic formations, the actual creation of engaging in actions which were implanted on the consciousness.
And this karmic formation is the second link of dependent origination. And the engaging of actions was dependent upon the basic misconception of ignorance and the bewilderment, misconceiving of the nature of the self, which is the first link of dependent origination. So we, you know, we worked our way back. We just