Dependent Origination

I've run my mind through the teachings on dependent origination. Sometimes I feel like the teachings are like water over a rock, little visible change happens. But even water over a rock creates some minute erosion, the rock gets smaller and smaller.

Listening to Rupert Gethin's talk in Tel Aviv on Dependent origination made me think a bit deeper. The twelve links are a deeper pattern to all this causality. I've always struggled with the connection between causality and the 12 nidanas in pratityasamutpada. Somehow I feel my mind is ripe for looking at these 12 nidanas.

Fundamental ignorance (Pali: avidya)
Formation (sankhara)
Consciousness (vinnana)
Name and form (namarupa)
Sense faculties (salayatana)
Contact (phassa)
Feeling or sensation (vedana)
Craving or thirst (tanha)
Clinging or grasping (upadana)
Becoming or worldly existence (bhava)
Birth or becoming (jati)
Old age and death (jaramarana)

I've always had a queasy fear that my conclusion to studying this would be chastity, a vow of abstinence from sex, a renunciation of sex.

I remember clearly a beautiful woman in a sangha meeting coming to a similar conclusion. The sangha filled with sexy young women who are looking for better concentration is not going to be as successful as a more elderly washed up sangha who is looking answers with time running out (urgency). Youth are intoxicated and can't see the preciousness of life.

I can't help but think that this is why Buddhism will not spread and take over the world. As you convert to it, you won't pump out a bunch of Buddhist children to grow the sangha. I can't help but think of the Jewish woman I knew who had 12 children. The Holocaust wiped out so many Jewish people, I'm sure they have not erased it's effects yet, since the Irish potato famine has not erased it's effects yet on the Irish yet. If you identify with a group that is shrinking, the urge to stop the shrinking might override the spiritual quest. Everything is impermanent, but our lifetime view might get us to think in terms of survival of the group to which we love.

Buddhism isn't about mere survival, though there were times in history when mere survival hasn't been the primary issue. The forces that push us away from thinking of mere survival are comfort in one direction. If we can get enough Hygge maybe we can take some time to think larger.

Capitalism wants us thinking about survival. One reason America has been the slowest to adopt universal health care, is that if you're threatened to die, if you have to pay off your college loans, you're a more compliant worker, willing to accept temporary positions, poor work conditions, the push to work overtime, putting work into the center of your life and abandoning family, fun and friends. Buddhism isn't against much except maybe cruelty for cruelty sake, but the neurotic quest for material comfort is not it's highest virtue. In fact you are encouraged to become more ascetic, renounce things. It's harder to hook people into the capitalist scramble if they're renouncing things. You have to hit them where it hurt, with their life, and having contingent on work health insurance is a major hook. Work is meaningful and social, we would do it without threats on our life, but not the kind of workers they want. A happy worker is 13% more productive without working more, but that's not the kind of thing companies want (except for the executives who squeeze more out of the workers).

I saw an interesting meme. It had the trolly problem, right. Someone is at the switch and you can send the trolly down one track instead of the other. On one there was nothing. On the other there was a cow. Put your pet dog Rover there, and they obviously don't send the trolly down that track. But if you eat meat, you are sending the trolly down the cow track. I think it's the consequential thinking that would lead someone to veganism. I didn't get there until I was 45, and I've been inconsistent, so I'm not trying to be judgemental, I want to be kind to myself, but I also want some observable progress.

Mutual Causality in Buddhism and General Systems Theory by Joanna Macy points out that causality means that even little choices by little people can effect changes. My favorite example is Greta Thunberg deciding to devote Fridays to protesting climate change in front of government. She turned vegan and made her family turn vegan. She refused to fly to North America and a sailboat was found. Her mother quit her opera career because of the flying. We all can't be lightning rods like Jeanne d'Arc. Try not eating meat at a BBQ and see how the questions fly. Someone will get upset. You don't even have to say anything. Just not for you. Or alcohol. And on and on.

Rupert Gethin talks about ignorance (the first link) as a willful refusal to see. You can think about the things Americans refuse to see: homelessness, poverty, consequences of murderous policies, climate change, animal cruelty, hypocrisy, death in general, 35 children dying every year for our love of guns. How many articles will I read about someone who died because they couldn't get their insulin. You could say ignorance is at the heart of the American system. That is why the status quo doesn't want to improve education. They want better workers, but they don't want to improve education. We don't want to hear about the founding fathers owning slaves, or the Ivy League being built off the back of slavery, we don't even want to hear about racism today because supposedly it's over. Yea, right. Forget the Native Americans. I thought it was funny if it wasn't so sad, Cheney's daughter accused the Native Americans of threatening her way of life. Now that is willful ignorance.

The feeling of the need to intensify practice is perhaps a mark of good dharma. I've always felt that lure, no matter how much I acted against that urge.

The next link, formation, is built up on the next ones: Consciousness (vinnana), Name and form (namarupa), Sense faculties (salayatana), Contact (phassa), Feeling or sensation. Those are all raw experience. Then there's what we do with that. That leads to craving and clinging. And the whole cycle begins again. And then you die.

When ever I've studied this, the "Mind the gap" slogan has come up between craving and clinging.

Gethin talks about formation in modern times in terms of genetics. Only Bolt has the right genes to be the fastest runner. I recently saw people trying to run at the pace of the latest unofficial breaking of the marathon record under 2 hours, by Eliud Kipchoge. I know I can't even hang with them for 50 meters, figured that out a while ago. I was so happy in the height of my fitness to break 6 minutes in the 1500 meter, metric mile. Watching the breaking of the 4 minute barrier gives me goosebumps.

Gethin talks about clinging to precepts and vows. He says this can easily slip into an unproductive anger. You see this in Buddhist countries making fun of a monk who wears a hat, or people who get upset that a bar has a Buddha statue.

I can't help but think of the fetter of relying on rights and rituals, which is also a fetter against superficiality. Great talk, made me get out my books.

I got out my two books on the subject to consider study: How Karma Works: The Twelve Links of Dependent Arising by Geshe Sonam Rinchen, and This Being, That Becomes: The Buddha's Teaching on Conditionality by Dhivan Thomas Jones. I'm sure it runs through every book on the Dharma that I have, but these books target it in the title.