Y Series: Twelve Links of Dependent Origination
Renewed Existence (bhava)
Death. Sort of. When all your aggregates and afflictions have culminated in whatever completed karma was your lot in life, you stop and the karmic seeds restore you to your next life. Formative action and renewed existence are the same karma at different times. Where renewed existence is karmic seeds able to project another birth. Here, we see the bardo (the place where consciousness joins an intermediate state of affliction and karma, just without a proper form. This stage supposedly lasts 7 weeks. Non virtuous actions lead to rebirth as a hell being, hungry ghost, and/or animal. Mundane virtue leads to humanity or deva-hood. Formless realm and samadhi are gained by some serious virtue and the wisdom realizing emptiness.
REFLECTION:
1. Imagine your death and the dying process.
2. Based on how you have lived and on your habitual tendencies, what types of craving and clinging are likely to arise in your mind at this time?
Fear of non-existence, maybe. Although, I really don’t like existing most of the time, so it may be more of a sense of relief that I don’t have to do this anymore. The scariest part seems to be lining up my worldly requirements so as to not cause too much discomfort for the people around me. You know, it seems rude to die in your apartment and make the neighbors find your corpse after a few weeks, all bloated and rancid. Someone is going to have to clean all that. And someone is going to have to sort through my will and mess with finances and all that. Seems like an imposition. The not existing thing seems fantastic and the idea of having to do this in yet another body for yet another life of suffering just seems pointless and exhausting. Maybe if I’m very very lucky and very disciplined, I can cut the root and just disappear into a new realm or not all at. What a relief.
3. What aspirations would you like to have while you are dying? Recall that these will influence which karmic seeds are nourished and become renewed existence.
Maybe a real relaxation of a need to exist. No clinging for a body, no real fear, just like falling into dark water. A chance to really relax and just let it all go. Sounds nice, actually.
4. How can you train in these thoughts and aspirations now so that your mind will be in a virtuous state then?
Stabilizing meditation or meditation on impermanence seems very useful here. Just letting go of a self-obsession and releasing this body-need of ‘am I pretty enough?’ ‘Am I thin enough?’ ‘Do people like me?’ ‘Am I good enough?’ ‘Does everyone listen to me?’ Blah blah blah. It’s just something to do to take care of the boredom until I can die anyway. Something to do to pass the time and run out the clock on this stupid, brainless, fruitless existence.
Birth (jati)
The first moment of new life. This is when the consciousness joins with the fertilized ovum, for mammals. This is a continuation of the mindstream from a being’s former body. Including all that karmic nonsense built up from the previous experience. Birth is the cause of aging and death. Here’s Buddha’s take:
“If, Ananada, there were no birth at all, anywhere, of anybody or anything: of devas in the deva-state, of gandhabbas…, of yakkhas…, of hungry ghosts…,of humans…, of quadrupeds…,of birds…, of reptiles to the reptile state, if there were absolutely no birth at all of all these beings, then with the absence of all birth, the cessation of birth, could aging and death appear? –‘No, venerable sir.’ Therefore, Ananda, just this is the root, the cause, the origin, the condition of aging and death – namely birth.”
Depressing, right? I like this religion very much.
Aging or Death (jaramarana)
Death is the cessation of a similar type of mental and physical aggregates; it is the mind’s separation from the body under the control of afflictions and karma. From the moment we come into the world, we are on the path to death. According to the Sutra on the Ten Grounds (Dasabhumika Sutra), “Death has two functions: 1) it causes a conditioned phenomenon to disintegrate, and 2) it brings about the cause of the continuation of ignorance.”
Between aging and death is lamentation, sorrow, not getting what we seek, being separated from what is dear, encountering and being forced to endure what we do not like, being disillusioned when events do not occur as wished, and being unable to control the experiences and events we encounter in life. Life is pretty horrible. This is actually one of my favorite parts of Buddhism. In Christian conditioning, it seems like you have to lie a lot. ‘God has a plan.’ ‘Suffering is the result of the devil and God lets it happen so man can purify his faith’, things like that. There also seems to be this expectation that you are supposed to be happy and optimistic and all sunshiney all the time because life is amazing and who wouldn’t want to be alive with all the beautiful things you can say and do, etc. ‘I’m high on life!’ and we are all supposed to be these optimistic goobers. I like that Buddhism says, ‘yep. It sucks. All of it. Total time-waster.’ Ironically, that seems to put me in a much better mood/frame of mind than trying to be ‘happy.’ An interesting little personal experience gem there.
The entire unsatisfactory experience of life is a continuous cycle of bullshit rooted in ignorance. Wisdom realizing emptiness is the only way to cut the cycle and quit it.
REFLECTION
1. What is the nature of meaning of each link?
2. What is the nature and meaning of each link’s function?
3. What is each’s cause? How is it related to the preceding link?
4. What is the result? How is it related to the subsequent link?
5. What is the antidote that will stop this link?
I’m not going to do this here, because it’s a lot of work and I don’t want to. A quick note: the application of the antidote for specific mental factors and afflictions is actually pretty helpful, but I have trouble remembering the anti-dotes, so I have to keep looking them up, which is an affliction in and of itself (I believe), so that’s a fun bit of irony for any committed reader who has made it this far.
I did this section on the website because I find the need to make lists and rules for everything in this particular tradition both tremendously helpful and utterly useless. So, as a way to force myself to care about some of these, I thought I would do the ‘play-along-at-home’ version in public. However, I am a strong believer in the Tendai and Zen schools of the wisdom-gate and the Chan understanding, which says that any reliance on these academic tools is not the heart of the way. That emptiness can’t be written or spoken of without ceasing to be emptiness and that wisdom is not the intellectual experience of these truths, but the realization of empirical understanding which is ineffable. But not great if you haven’t already become enlightened. Chicken and egg problem here, no?
Anyway, I’m going to leave karma alone for a little, since it is my least favorite topic of study in the series. Maybe we can skip a couple chapters (you can read on your own and I’ll skim them) and go into bodhiccita or abidharma a little later.
Until then, please find a lovely meditation in the Chan tradition called ‘Arhat 18 hands’ available here: