Feelings within the Twelve Links of Dependent Arising

Then we want to focus on these feelings in terms of the true origins of suffering. For that we need to understand the twelve links of dependent arising. I don’t want to go into tremendous detail about it; but, let me give a brief summary.

First Link: Unawareness

We start off with unawareness. Unawareness means that either we don’t know how we and others exist or we know it in an incorrect way. When we talk about unawareness, we have unawareness of behavioral cause and effect and about how persons exist. Unawareness of behavioral cause and effect is not included in the first link of dependent arising. Only unawareness of how we and everyone else exists is included.

In the non-Prasangika Indian Buddhist tenet systems, there is a difference in understanding of how we and others exist and how all phenomena exist. All phenomena include persons, but there is a less deep understanding in terms just of persons. Prasangika says the understanding is the same in terms of both persons and all phenomena. They don’t make the distinction. But, in any case what we are talking about here must be valid for both the Hinayana systems and the Mahayana systems. So it’s just unawareness of how persons exist – us and everybody else. With that unawareness, either we don’t know or we think that we exist in some impossible way.

Although not formally included in this first link, nevertheless we need to bring in here the disturbing emotions. These disturbing emotions include longing desire, with which we want to get something. We experience unawareness about ourselves and others as insecurity, so we want to get something to make that impossible “me” secure. This is impossible, of course, because we are trying to make secure something that doesn’t exist – an impossible “me.” It’s like trying to make chicken lips look pretty by putting lipstick on them. Well, there are no chicken lips, so we can’t make them look pretty. In that way, we can’t make that impossible “me” secure because there is no such thing. It is doomed to fail no matter what we try to do. We imagine that if we get enough food, enough sex, enough money, it will make me feel secure. But, we never have enough, so it doesn’t work.

Another strategy is the disturbing emotion of anger – that if we get something away from us, that will make us feel secure – or naivety, with which we just deny the existence of something threatening us and then we don’t have to deal with it, so we can feel secure.

If it is not possible to make an impossible “me” feel secure, then how can it feel insecure?

Our conventional “me” can feel insecure. And it’s not that we can ever make even our conventional; “me” feel secure, because there is no security in samsara. So, what we can aim for is just the absence of insecurity. It’s like that, either the absence or presence of insecurity, as opposed to insecure verses secure. It’s that type of mutually exclusive pair.

Second and Third Links: Karma and Consciousness

These disturbing emotions, based on unawareness, brings on the compulsiveness of our behavior. That’s karma, the second link, formally called the link of affecting impulses. On the basis of that compulsion, we act in certain ways and then there is karmic aftermath from that. There are karmic tendencies and habits, karmic potentials and so on. It’s a very complex system. All of that aftermath continues as imputations on the mental continuum and that is the third link, consciousness or loaded consciousness. Consciousness passes from one lifetime to another, so there are two phases of it – one in this lifetime and one in the next lifetime.

Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Links: Development of the Fetus

The second half of that third link and then the fourth, fifth and sixth links – namable faculties with or without form, cognitive stimulators and contacting awareness – basically describe the development of the fetus and the development of the full system of the aggregates from the joined sperm and egg. What is relevant here is that once all the apparatus of the aggregates has developed and is functioning, then what comes is the seventh link, which is feeling.

Seventh Link: Feelings

This is the feeling of a level of happiness or unhappiness and that ripens from these karmic potentials and so on. The negative karmic potential from our destructive behavior – whether acting, speaking, or thinking in a destructive way – was based on the disturbing emotions: greed, anger and naivety. Our neurotic compulsive constructive behavior – such as being a perfectionist and trying to control everything by being helpful – came from the naivety and ignorance that believed there is some independently existing “me” that can control everything. The negative karmic potential ripens into unhappiness; while our positive karmic potential ripens into our unsatisfying ordinary type of happiness.

Our feelings of happy and unhappy come about on the basis of a body that arose through the mechanism of the twelve links as well, as described in these earlier links. So, feelings have to be understood in terms of what ripens from karmic aftermath. That is what we are talking about when we talk about feelings in the context of the close placement of mindfulness on the feelings, and then these feelings are the focus of the next link.

Eighth Link: Thirsting (Craving)

Link number eight is called “thirsting,” although it is usually translated as “craving” because that is actually the way that the Tibetans have translated the word from the Sanskrit. Why the Tibetans translated it as “craving,” I have no idea, because the Sanskrit word, tṛṣṇā, is the same word as thirsty. It is a thirst, so there is a strong almost like a desperation there and you are thirsting. It is a disturbing emotion in the category of attachment and desire. When you are experiencing happiness, you have this desperate thirst for not being parted from it. For example, you are really thirsty and you have a sip of water and you don’t want to be parted from that. You want more. If it’s unhappiness, you have that desperate thirst to be parted from it. With a neutral feeling, it is the desperate thirst for it not to degenerate or weaken.

Ninth Link: An Obtainer (Grasping)

The disturbing emotion of thirsting after some feeling leads to an obtainer disturbing emotion or attitude. Again, this is often translated as “grasping,” but it is not the same word as “grasping” in “grasping for truly established existence.” So, it’s confusing to translate it like that. It means to obtain, it’s the word that means to obtain for us a next rebirth. There are various components to it and we don’t need to go into all of the components.

One is the longing desire for that object that we are experiencing happiness with. If you have that object, you don’t want to let go. “I have happiness eating this food and I don’t want it to end.” Or it could be in terms of thinking in terms of an impossible “me” or “mine.” “Me, me, me – I want to be happy. These are my feelings, my happiness and so on.” There’s this disturbing attitude and the technical terms for it is a deluded outlook toward a transitory network. A “network” means a network of the aggregates, and “transitory” means that it is changing all the time. The deluded attitude toward it is that it is “me” or it’s “mine.”

The Prasangika explanation is that this deluded attitude is directed at the conventional “me.” I like to describe it as being like throwing out a net of “me” or “me, the possessor” onto the aggregates, like identifying “me” with the body. So, it’s like throwing out this net onto everything as “me.” “I possess this body. I am experiencing this feeling and I don’t want it.” We throw that net out all the time onto everything. “This is my space, don’t invade it” – even a dog has that.

Tenth Link: Further Existence

The combination of that thirsting and an obtainer attitude activates the karmic potential and the karmic tendencies. That’s the tenth link, further existence. It’s giving the name of the result to the cause. It’s the activated tendencies and potentials, and that again is a type of karma, a type of compulsion. It’s that compulsion to continue that then brings about rebirth – uncontrollably recurring because it is now under the influence of these disturbing emotions and that compulsiveness of karma. We just grab out. Sometimes I like to describe it as a drowning rat that would just grasp onto anything in order to survive. So, we just grab compulsively another basis for continuing, which of course is going to be one that has all the sufferings in accord with what we have discussed with the first close placement of mindfulness, on the body.

Eleventh and Twelfth Links: Conception, Aging and Death

Then, we get conception, which is the eleventh link and aging and death, which is the twelfth link.

This is what we are trying to understand when we focus on the feelings: that these feelings of happiness and unhappiness – which are “tainted,” because they have come from unawareness or ignorance – are not only the problem, but also the cause of suffering and the cause of uncontrollably recurring rebirth. This is because we thirst not to be parted or to be parted from them or for them not to degenerate, and then we become attached to the objects of them and we identify with them and think in terms of “me” and how can we possess them. We think “I’m happy; I’m unhappy and I don’t want to be unhappy” – this “me-me-me” type of thing. All of that is based on unawareness of how we exist. Who is it that wants to be happy and not to be unhappy? All of that activates this so-called throwing karma that perpetuates uncontrollably recurring rebirth.

This is the basic foundation within which we understand and practice the close placement of mindfulness on the feelings. That really is a very important practice. A beginning level of it I call the “nothing special” meditation. There is a whole course on that on my website. Whether we are feeling unhappy or we are feeling happy, so what? Nothing special; what do we expect? That’s the nature of this uncontrollably recurring existence. It’s going to go up and down. Sometimes we feel happy and sometimes we feel unhappy. No big deal. Of course, it’s going to change from moment to moment and of course the intensity will change. It goes up and down. There’s nothing special about it, so don’t freak out like “Oh, I’m happy, aren’t we happy? Aren’t we having a good time?” That destroys the happiness. Or, “I’m so depressed, I’m so unhappy.” Then we just identify with it. That’s the problem. An attitude of “nothing special,” however, is not the same as an attitude of “whatever.” “Whatever” means we don’t care, so we don’t make any effort to overcome suffering and attain a true stopping of it. We do care, but we don’t make a big deal of what we’re feeling now and let it hinder our practice toward gaining liberation and enlightenment.

[See: Mind Training in Daily Life: Nothing Special]

So, what we want to do is adopt this attitude, on this very beginning level, of “nothing special,” so that we’re not caught up with our feelings. This is what we want to do. We want to not thirst for these feelings and not have one of the obtainer attitudes in terms of these feelings, because if we have that based on unawareness – that it’s this impossible “me” that wants not to be parted from this happiness that is going to change anyway, “me, me, me” – it’s going to perpetuate this whole cycle of uncontrollably recurring rebirth and more suffering. We want to stop perpetuating it. That’s the whole point, to achieve a true stopping of that uncontrollably recurring rebirth with a body that has all of these problems and with feelings that are just going to elicit more disturbing emotions and attitudes.

We want to stop that so that, instead, we have an unlimited type of body as an arhat or a Buddha. Instead of these so-called tainted feelings, tainted by this unawareness that leads to disturbing emotions and compulsive behavior, which then leads to these types of feelings, instead we just have what’s called “pure feelings.” As an arhat we have sometimes a blissful feeling or sometimes a neutral feeling depending on what type of meditation we’re doing. Arhats can meditate on these various deep trances and so on and can have a neutral feeling. Otherwise they feel happy. Or, we can become a Buddha, in which case we can have the blissful untainted happiness of a Buddha. We don’t want to have our ordinary, very unsatisfying up and down type of feelings of ordinary life.