OLD - Twelve Links of Causation

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SF-05089A
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Continuation of previous lecture on 12 links of causation - Aug 23 - both sides - 3 3/4 - on cassette - Dan Gourley #5

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69-08-23 - beginning and middle

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Let's continue to study about twelve links of causation. Causation of one understanding, maybe the more classical understanding is explanation of twelve links of causation is causation of life. And the other is causation of suffering of our life. Why do we suffer? Very different. I said classical one, according classical one, classical explanation, but actually in Agama or more old scriptures,

[01:27]

twelve links is not twelve as I said before, and it does not refer to the actual life of ourselves. Like before we come to this world, and after we come to this world, and after our past, three worlds, past, present and future. And three worlds, twelve causation of life and death. This is so called older type of explanation of it, but in old scriptures this kind of understanding is not there.

[02:48]

But after Buddhists divided in many schools, this kind of so called classical explanation of causation of life and death in past, present, future, twelve links of causation appear. This is not so old one. The old one is rather explanation of why we suffer. And we count the reason why we suffer.

[03:55]

We find twelve elements in our suffering. So this is very different explanation, and this is more nearer to teaching of Buddha himself. The other day Peter asked, raised this question, and did you, do you have life of Buddha, written by some, I forgot his name, do you have it? Someone else asked that same question, so she must have read that book.

[05:05]

I don't know what kind of explanation he gives to it, for the twelve causation of life and death. Do you know? Have you read it? Oh, I see. Maybe, maybe interesting to compare. To compare Dr. Wyss or his disciple Mizuno's explanation of it. It is rather difficult for me to translate it, but I will try as much as possible.

[06:14]

And here he says, he referred to the Sutra of Satay. There was a Buddha's disciple named Satay, he understood his teaching of twelve links of causation. Like, how we suffer, who has a kind of soul, you know, in there in the past and present and future. And he was scolded by him, by Buddha. And at that time he said, He denied the something like self.

[07:58]

And he explained, the purpose of this teaching is to explain that we have no self, but people who are caught by the idea of self, how they suffer, this is the purpose of the teaching. And Buddha said, you should not, you should not misunderstand my teaching, he said. Satay's understanding was, that his teaching was about Atman.

[09:12]

Something like Atman will, during past and present and future, how we suffer, what kind of process they take was the teaching of the twelve links. He understood in that way, and Buddha, and was scolded by Buddha. Anyway, here Dr. Mizuno is trying to explain what is the twelve links. Ignorance.

[10:18]

Ignorance. Ignorance. And ignorance means, means that lack of understanding of our life. Because of lack of understanding of our life, they will have, they will have some misconduct. And because of that they will have suffering. And that we have suffering in this world is because of ignorance.

[11:37]

And the second one is action, you know, in Sanskrit action, samskara. And ignorance in Sanskrit, avidaya, A-V-I-D-Y-A. And the second one is action, or gyo. Because of ignorance, we have misconduct. And here, gyo is same as karma. Lack of light, view of world and life, we have various misunderstanding and misconduct.

[12:56]

And once we make some misconduct, or misunderstanding even, that will result in something bad. That is why we suffer. And this means also, not only misconduct or action, but also accumulation of action which will result next link. Which is ski, vijjana. So this means misconduct, misreading, misconduct and accumulation of misconduct.

[14:11]

And the third is vijjana, consciousness or conception as a consciousness. And he refers to some more our experience in our everyday life. And whether it is good or bad experience, physical or spiritual experience,

[15:25]

or intellectual experience, or emotional experience. Whenever we experience something, and that experience will create some force. And that force will result in some form, good or bad result. And it may be, this kind of conduct will be accelerated in good way and in bad way too. And we will have some kind of custom, or what was the word, how do you say, a kind of accelerated action.

[16:49]

If you get up early, next morning, this morning if you get up early, next morning it may be easier for you to get up early. Yeah, habit, that kind of habit. If you do something bad, you know, it will create some nature within yourself. And in this way the action will create something, some result. And if you take the idea of reincarnation in consideration in this way,

[18:05]

we will reincarnate in various forms of life. The next one is consciousness, or vijana, consciousness or vijana. And this is the subject, you know, of the cognition. And this subjective something, you know, which is called vijana, or consciousness, a kind of consciousness,

[19:18]

it includes past experience. So if it is dissolved, this kind of consciousness we have is the fruit of our past experience of various actions and experiences. This is consciousness. And this consciousness is actually, is not actually in like the state of white paper. And this is the, this consciousness has some color, resulted by past experience.

[20:24]

Only when this consciousness is like a white paper, we can see things as it is. But we cannot, our consciousness is not pure white paper. Because it is tainted various color, we will have various suffering. And this is, this color comes from ignorance and accent from ignorance. This is the consciousness. And third one is namalupa, name and form.

[21:41]

Name and form means, name means our spiritual being, and form means our body, physical body. So this means actually our five senses and five sense objects. And next one is six, next one is sadhayatana, sadhayatana, the six sense organs, six sense organs.

[23:09]

This is quite simple, you know, sense organs like eyes and nose and mouth. And next one is sparsa, sparsa, contact or touch. It means that, you know, our sense organs and our subjectivity, our consciousness and objective world become one and start some action, that is touch. So actually this is, this is touch.

[24:24]

And this is actually sometimes intense, you know. Intense caution, consciousness will appear when subjective and objective sense organs and sense objects come together and some feeling, that feeling will be many different feelings. And this also includes the intensity or less intensive touch.

[25:56]

And the seventh one is dadana, sense action, ah no, excuse me, sensation. Sensation means, you know, when we just accept sense objects by sense organs, we have some touch, or we have, there we have some intense sensation, but that sensation at the same time maybe discrimination of good or bad.

[27:03]

Good sound, bad sound, good form or bad form, or good color or bad color. When we start to discriminate the sense objects in sense of good or bad, that is next one, sensation or dadana. The next one is trana, or thirst, or desire, strong desire. Like when you work in the sun, you know, you will be thirsty, thirsty desire, you know, is next trana.

[28:15]

And as soon as we have some good feeling or bad feeling, you will have strong discrimination and you will have thirsty desire for good things. That is next one. And this is different from love in its true sense. It is strong attachment to something. So this is, you know, we are very strict with our, you know, love between man and woman, whether it is thirsty desire,

[29:25]

or, you know, a true love. When it is thirsty,

[29:42]

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