by Dalai Lama
Meanwhile, the karmic seed from harsh speech remains on her mindstream until in some future life its links 8–10 are activated and lead to an unfortunate birth. In that case, the set of twelve links associated with harsh speech occurs over three lifetimes, as in implicit presentation 2.
Many sets of twelve links can be in the works at one time, overlapping each other. While experiencing the resultant links of one set, the causal links of another set are being created. In Pat’s case she was experiencing the link of aging from a set of twelve links that began in a previous life. When she became angry and shouted at her children, the links of ignorance, formative action, and consciousness of a new set of links began. Her volunteer work at the hospital started yet another set of twelve links. During her life many sets of twelve links begin depending on actions done with virtuous or nonvirtuous motivations. Each set has the potential to lead to a new rebirth, unless the karmic seed and having-ceased are impeded from ripening or she eradicates the afflictive obscurations that cause rebirth in saṃsāra. Here we get an inkling of what “bound in saṃsāra by afflictions and karma” means.
Do we choose our next rebirth? For us ordinary beings, the choice exists as we do each action in our daily lives and create new karmic seeds. It is not the case that in the bardo we calmly look down on Earth or other habitats and pick our future parents in order to learn certain lessons or repay karmic debts. Rather, just prior to death karmic appearances manifest in our minds. Due to emotional reactivity to these appearances, craving and clinging arise and nourish a karmic seed, and the mind seeks new aggregates in which to take birth. The bardo is a confusing time; anger, attachment, jealousy, fear, and self-grasping ignorance arise just like during life.
No one creates lessons for us to learn in our lives. Whether we learn from our experiences is up to us. Do we insist on blaming others for our difficulties or do we examine our own distorted conceptions, afflictions, and behavior, and apply the Dharma counterforces to transform them?
Ārya bodhisattvas, as well as some śrāvaka āryas, can guide their own minds at the time of death and determine where they will be reborn. The rebirths of ordinary people, however, are projected by their afflictions and karma, just as during life they are under the influence of afflictions and karma. Under these circumstances, we are not free to experience the happiness and peace that we seek.
REFLECTION
1. Review the process of how the twelve links produce a new rebirth according to the explicit and the two implicit presentations.
2. Make an example, using a formative action created under the influence of ignorance in your present life, of how a set of twelve links could unfold in the future.
3. How does this reflection affect your attitude toward life?
Flexibility
In all of the above situations, different elements of many sets of twelve links may occur during the present life. While we are experiencing the results of one set of twelve links, many new sets of twelve links are initiated with the creation of links 1–3a. While sometimes the projected and actualized effects occur soon after the projecting causes, in other situations a long interval may ensue. Cyclic existence is terrifying, for as we live out each saṃsāric existence, we ignorantly create the causes for many more.
Vasubandhu says that once the links of craving, clinging, and renewed existence occur, the bardo follows. There is no reversal of the process; it is not possible to accumulate new projecting karma in the bardo, and the links of birth and aging or death from that set of the twelve links will definitely occur (ADK):
Once the intermediate state of a particular birth is actualized, it [the rebirth of that set of twelve links] will not waver.
Asaṅga has a different view (ADS):
There is the possibility of the set [of twelve links] to waver because in the intermediate state there is the possibility of accumulating karma.
Pāli Tradition: How We Cycle
The Pāli commentaries, including the Path of Purification, explain the twelve links in terms of four groups, each with five links to illustrate the relationships of the twelve links with the different lifetimes in which they occur.
To explain the column “links”: From our present life, life B, we look back and ask ourselves what factors were responsible for our present rebirth. Ignorance and formative actions occurred in a preceding life, life A. Through the maturation of formative actions conditioned by ignorance come the five resultant factors in this life (life B): consciousness, name and form, six sources, contact, and feeling.
THE PĀLI TRADITION’S PRESENTATION
LIFE
LINKS
20 MODES AND 4 GROUPS OF 5
A
Ignorance (1)
Formative actions (2)
Five past causes
1, 2, 8, 9, 10
B
Consciousness (3)
Name and form (4)
Six sources (5)
Contact (6)
Feeling (7)
Five present results
3, 4, 5, 6, 7
B
Craving (8)
Clinging (9)
Renewed existence (10)
Five present causes
8, 9, 10, 1, 2
C
Birth (11)
Aging or death (12)
Five future results
3, 4, 5, 6, 7
In this life, when feeling occurs craving arises. That leads to clinging, which generates karmically active renewed existence. These three occurring in this life are the force that generates another rebirth — life C — in which birth, aging, and death are experienced. This corresponds to the explicit presentation in the Rice Seedling Sūtra explained above.
However, in any given life all these factors intermesh. So to understand how the twelve factors function in this life, we look to the last column with its twenty modes, which fall into four groups of five each.
(1) The group of the five past causes. In the previous life, life A, ignorance and formative actions were not the only causes for the present life; craving, clinging, and karmically active renewed existence were also present. These five are considered the five past causes that brought about the present life.
(2) The group of the five present results. The five past causes brought about the five present effects, links 3–7.
(3) The group of the five present causes. In this life, life B, there are five causes that will bring forth yet another rebirth — links 8, 9, 10, as well as 1 and 2. These same five factors that were five past causes of the present life become five present causes that will lead to a future rebirth, life C.
(4) The group of the five future results. Birth, aging, and death arise in the future life due to the five present causes. Links 3–7 are an expanded way of speaking of birth and aging or death.
In the above explanation, there are three connecting points: (1) Past causes connect with present results. This occurs between formative actions and consciousness. (2) Present results connect with present causes. This happens between feeling and craving. (3) Present causes connect with future results. This transition occurs between renewed existence and birth.
Of the twelve links, two are said to be roots of saṃsāra: Ignorance is the root extending from the previous life to the present one; craving is the root extending from the present life to the future life. As the basic unknowing that obscures the mind, ignorance is more fundamental than craving, but craving thrives on ignorance. Since identifying ignorance is more difficult than recognizing craving, we begin by subduing craving through restraining our senses and cultivating concentration. Then wisdom can arise and uproot ignorance.
As with many categories, the above distinctions serve explanatory purposes and are not fixed. Ignorance exists in all three lives, as does craving.
An Example from a Pāli Sūtra
In the Greater Discourse on the Destruction of Craving (MN 38), the Buddha gives an example of the twelve factors playing out in the life of an uninformed
ordinary human being who is unaware that he is in saṃsāra and ignorant of the four truths. The Buddha then discusses the way to cut the cycle.
Conception in the womb requires three conditions, and if any one of them is missing, it does not occur. These are the sexual union of the mother and father, the woman being in the fertile time of her cycle, and the presence of a gandharva (P. gandhabba), a being who is ready to take rebirth and has a karmic affinity with these parents.61 This karmic affinity is due to the first two links, (1) ignorance and (2) formative actions. The gandharva entering the newly fertilized ovum is called the “descent of consciousness.” This consciousness (3) brings with it ignorance, afflictions, and the entire store of karmic seeds from previous lives.
At the time of conception, name and form (4) arise. Only the tactile and mental sources are present at that time, but gradually as the zygote becomes an embryo and then a fetus, all six sources come into being (5). After the baby is born, the six sources become active, contacting (6) and engaging with sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and tactile objects. Babies have rudimentary conceptual thought, which develops as the child learns language and is socialized and educated. As the child plays with toys and participates in games, his six cognitive faculties lead to contact with more agreeable, disagreeable, and neutral objects. This produces pleasant, painful, or neutral feelings (7), and the child craves (8) and clings (9) to have what brings him happiness and to be free of what brings suffering.
As the child becomes an adult and his toys are exchanged for more sophisticated means of entertainment, the six sources continue to contact the six objects, leading to many occasions of pleasant, painful, and neutral feelings. As a senior citizen, the objects of entertainment change again, but the process of the six sources leading to contact that produces feelings continues.
In all these occasions, pleasant and painful feelings lead to craving and clinging to have or to be separated from objects of the six senses. Attachment, anger, and other emotions arise one after the other in response to whatever he contacts. When he feels neither pleasure nor pain, he is bored and craves some excitement as an escape. Thus it is said “he delights in that feeling, welcomes it, and remains holding to it.” Lacking mindfulness and introspective awareness regarding his own experience, he does not see any alternative and remains ignorant of the potential of his mind.
What does it mean to delight in a painful feeling? This indicates a person clings to the feeling with the thought “I” and “mine.” His sense of I gets a boost through feeling uncomfortable. He may put himself in stressful or even dangerous situations to reinforce his sense that I exist. He may even create an identity out of his pain: “I am the person who was unfairly criticized.”
Triggered by craving and clinging (8 and 9), he speaks, acts, or ruminates about the situation. This karmically active side of renewed existence (10) ripens in a new birth (11). Aging or death (12) begins immediately and “sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, and despair come to be. Such is the origin of this whole mass of duḥkha.” The process from contact onward to aging or death occurs repeatedly as a result of the six sources contacting objects of the six senses.
Seeing that this is our situation, a wise sense of danger arises, and we come to appreciate our precious human life and the opportunity it provides to counteract our situation in saṃsāra. We are grateful that the Buddha appeared in the world and taught the Dharma, which is “good in the beginning, good in the middle, and good in the end.” Seeing the disadvantages of saṃsāra, we take refuge in the Three Jewels and choose to go forth into a life of Dharma. Abandoning the ten nonvirtues and practicing the ten virtues, we cultivate mindfulness and introspective awareness with respect to sense objects. Now, whenever our cognitive faculties contact their objects, we pause. While the arising of feeling is a natural result of previous conditions, we now see that a weakness in the process exists between feeling and craving. We have a choice regarding our response to pleasurable, painful, and neutral feelings. Instead of immediately letting the mind jump into craving, we remain mindful and equanimous.
Some practitioners who have attained serenity may use their concentration to temporarily suppress craving for sense objects. However, samādhi is not the final solution to saṃsāra, and subtle attachment to the blissful or equanimous feelings experienced in deep concentration may still exist. Seeing this, they cultivate insight. As the power of their unified serenity and insight increases, they employ wisdom to penetrate nirvāṇa and gradually eradicate defilements.
Other practitioners have a stronger aptitude for wisdom and rely on the power of reflection and examination to understand the unsatisfactory nature of sensual pleasures. Through this, they draw their minds back from entanglement with sense objects and with understanding they temporarily stop their minds from reacting to feelings with craving. On their own, reflection and examination do not go deep enough to uproot saṃsāra, but they calm the mind, allowing for the cultivation of serenity. These practitioners, like the previous ones, then unify serenity with insight and use wisdom to realize nirvāṇa and overcome all defilements.
Who Revolves in Cyclic Existence?
When outlining the twelve links in the Rice Seedling Sūtra, the Buddha said from ignorance arises formative action and from birth arises aging or death. He expressed the interconnection of the twelve links in this way to emphasize that there is no inherently existent person who experiences the twelve links. The links occur naturally as part of a causal process. The Rice Seedling Sūtra says:
Nothing whatsoever goes from this world to the beyond. Nevertheless, from causes and conditions the effect of karma is manifested. It is just as in a clean mirror one sees the image of a face, but the image does not transfer into the mirror. Because the causes and conditions are complete, a face appears. Accordingly, there is not anyone who transfers from this lifetime at death; no one is born in another lifetime as well. Because the causes and conditions are complete, the effect of karma is actualized.
To this Nāgārjuna adds in the Versed Commentary on the Rice Seedling Sūtra (Śālistamba Sūtra Kārikā):
Just as the distant moon appears in a small vessel of water,
but is not transferred there, karma and its function exist.
Likewise, at death nothing transfers from this life, but a being is born.
If the causes and conditions are not complete, a fire does not burn;
once they are complete the fire burns.
So, from complete causes and conditions the aggregates [of a new] life arise.
Just like the moon reflected in water, there is nothing that transfers from here at death,
but a being is reborn.62
These moving passages point out that the person who transmigrates from one life to another is nothing more than a merely designated I. The rebirth process happens without a permanent, substantial self that is reborn. In fact, it would be impossible for rebirth to occur if there were an inherently existent self, because such a self would exist independent of all other factors and thus could not be influenced by causes and conditions and could not change. Since rebirth entails change, a permanent independent person could not be reborn. It is possible for rebirth to occur only if the I exists nominally, as a convention.
One moment of an oil lamp’s flame doesn’t transfer into the next moment, but a mere continuum goes on without interruption. Likewise, due to the coming together of causes and conditions, the mental continuum takes birth without a findable self that is reborn. When masters teach their disciples prayers by asking them to repeat the lines after them, the prayers are not transferred to the disciples, but they know the prayers just as the masters do. Just as a seal makes a clear impression on wax without anything transferring from the seal to the wax, so too does consciousness continue without a self that transfers from one life to the next.
Although we speak of a person revolving in cyclic existence — someone who creates karma, experiences its effects, and is the appropriator of the aggregates
— this is a nominally existent self, not an inherently existent self. When the Buddha said that what arises through causes and conditions has no birth, he was referring to this uninterrupted process of causes and conditions that lacks any fixed beginning. No inherently existent aggregates or person goes from one life to the next. There are simply resultant factors that arise from causal factors. Both causes and results exist by mere designation; likewise the moment that a cause ceases and its result arises is merely designated by conception. As one impermanent, merely designated link ceases, another transient, merely designated link arises. In dependence upon this process, we say a person cycles in saṃsāra, but there is no soul or truly existent person who cycles in saṃsāra. There is simply the continuum of a merely designated person. Likewise the person who creates karma and attains nirvāṇa is like an illusion in that it cannot be pinpointed.
Not only can no inherently existent person who is reborn, practices the path, and attains liberation be found, but the aggregates and the twelve links themselves also lack inherent existence. Nāgārjuna tells us in his Commentary on the Awakening Mind (59, 60, 63):
Starting with ignorance and ending with aging [or death],
all processes that arise from
the twelve links of dependent origination —
we accept them to be like a dream and an illusion.
This wheel with twelve links
rolls along the road of cyclic existence;
outside this there cannot be sentient beings
experiencing the fruits of their deed . . .
In brief from empty phenomena
empty phenomena arise.