There's this famous presentation called Dependical Arising in Twelve Limbs or Twelve Phases. And sometimes it's said, depending on ignorance, there comes to be or there arises karmic formations. Depending on karmic formation there arises consciousness. There arises name and form. Depending on name and form there arises sixth sense doors. Depending on sixth sense doors there arises contact. Contact, there arises feeling or sensation.

[01:04]

Depending on sensation, there arises craving. Depending on craving, there arises clinging. Depending on clinging, there arises becoming. Depending on becoming, there arises birth. Depending on birth, there arises old age, sickness, death, lamentation, and sorrow. The whole matter, ill, arises thus. Ill, But as I mentioned last week, the simple, the kind of basic form of what I just said could be put, or kind of a, yeah, symbolic form of it would be, depending on X, Y arises.

[02:39]

Y arises depending on X. But then, if you listen to that, then you also hear that this does not mean that when there's x, then there is y. Depending on x, y arises does not mean that when there's x, y arises. So in this case, x is a necessary condition for y, but not sufficient. Which is again to say that the proposed here is one of

[03:42]

interdependence, one of influence, actually mutual, but not strict determinism. And so the Buddha is saying, if you want to realize freedom from this pattern that's just been described, then you need to have faith in this pattern. You need to study this pattern. But faith in this pattern does not necessarily mean that you believe what you think it means when you believe it. Faith in the pattern would include that the pattern itself also is a dependent core arising and that your study of it is a dependent core arising. X is necessary for the rising of Y, but not sufficient.

[04:50]

Karmic influence, but not strict determinism, not strictly determined. And one of the texts that's on the reading list is called the in Pali, Maha Nidana Sutta and translated as Great Discourse. And in this discourse the The Buddha works from the cause at the beginning. He works from the point of view of what arose in dependence on something else.

[05:54]

How many of you have read this sutta? This Mahanidhana sutta? Anyways, I'm not. You can get it on the internet. How do you get it on the internet? How do you get it? Just Google it. Huh? Google the name? Yeah. So, at the beginning of the scripture it says, Thus I have heard at one time, On one occasion, the Blessed One was living among the Kurus. Now, the Kurus have a town named Kama Sadama, which looks like, you know, sex, good karma, good dharma, or good dharma sex. Kind of a surprising name. There, Venerable Ananda approaches

[07:08]

the Blessed One, and on arrival, having bowed down to the Blessed One, sat to one side. I can't help myself. I have to mention that you may have heard that the Buddha kind of discourage the practice of rituals and ceremonies. But here we observe an event at the beginning of the scripture, namely that the Buddha's attendant, that first of all the Buddha was sitting, ceremonially sat down, and then Nanda ceremonially approached the Buddha and bowed to the Buddha and sat to one side, which was the ritual thing to do. And as he was sitting there, he said to the Blessed One, It's amazing, Lord, it's astonishing how deep this rising is and how deep its appearance.

[08:27]

And yet, to me, it seems as clear as clear can be. Now, when he said that, you could think he meant, he's referring to the Buddha's teaching of dependent co-arising, that he's heard the Buddha teach. And now he's saying that this is an amazing teaching. Clear as clear can be to me. But when I read it just now, I thought when he said dependent core arising, he also could be referring to the dependent core arising of him studying with the Buddha, of being with the Buddha and

[09:33]

the dependent core rising of, for example, no craving and no clinging and no becoming and no birth and no death and no aging and lamentation. I just thought maybe he was referring to that when he said how, what did he say? How amazing and astounding and deep this dependent core rising, this dependent core rising of what we're doing here right now, which is you. The Buddha, obviously, the Buddha, although the Buddha is teaching that depending on craving, there's clinging. and so on, the Buddha is not craving.

[10:39]

The Buddha is not clinging. That's the Buddha that's dependently co-arising there in the seated posture. And Ananda, maybe, is joining this amazing dependent co-arising with his teacher. But he also could have been referring to this formula that the Buddha used to teach how to be with each other, how to be together with each other in this way. So the Buddha is with us, with compassion, but not craving and not clinging with us. And therefore the Buddha is at ease in teaching us how to be at ease. The Buddha is not clinging and thirsting and craving in the teaching to us of how to not crave and clink, crave and clink.

[11:53]

Does that make sense to you? It would be with the Buddha with her students. And the students might feel this, this dharma of being together in this way and just be really moved by it and say, this is astounding to me. And we can also talk about some of your favorite old stories. But anyway, after he says it's clear as clear can be, the Buddha says, don't say that, Ananda. Don't say that. Deep is its arising and deep is its appearance. It's because of not understanding and not penetrating this dharma of dependent core arising that generations, that this generation is like a tangled skein, a knotted ball of

[12:59]

like matted rushes and wreaths, and does not go beyond transmigration, beyond the plains of deprivation, woe, and bad destinations. Now, so when I read that, I think, you know, be quiet, Ananda. Don't talk about how great it is to be with me, because there's a lot of people who do not understand this and their suffering. So don't say how clear it is and how wonderful it is. Especially don't say how clear it is. Of course it's clear to the Buddha. Anyway, he told Ananda not to talk like that. And then he says, and says, if one would ask

[14:03]

Is there a demonstrable requisite condition for aging and death? One should answer, there is. If one asked requisite condition, do aging and death come? One should say aging and death come from birth as their requisite condition. depending on birth, aging and death, etc. If one asked, is there a demonstrable requisite condition for birth, one should say, there is. If one asks, From what requisite condition does birth come? One should say, birth comes from becoming as its requisite condition.

[15:07]

If one is asked, is there a demonstrable requisite condition for becoming? One should answer, Yes, there is. If one is understanding this teaching for free of this cycle which we're talking about, then one would teach this cycle like this. If one is asked, from what does becoming come, one should say becoming comes from clinging as its requisite condition. If one is asked, is there a demonstrable requisite condition for clinging, one should answer, there is.

[16:19]

If one is asked, from what requisite condition does clinging come, one should say, clinging comes from craving as its requisite condition. If one is asked, is there a demonstrable requisite condition for craving, one should say, there is. If one is asked, What is the requisite condition? What requisite condition? From what requisite condition does craving come? One should say craving comes from feeling its requisite condition. I'll stop here. May I stop here for a moment? Feeling is a requisite condition for craving. If there were no feeling, would there be craving?

[17:28]

John? When you experience that presence, is that a feeling? If you were there, you would have a feeling of that presence if you were alive. Hold your question there, John, just for a moment. So I just asked, if there were no feeling, would there be craving? What? What? Do you have some other versions of craving without feeling? What? Let me know if you can think of one. Yeah, this is saying, it didn't say it, but I'm just asking you.

[18:36]

Now we said the requisite condition for craving is feeling. So then I'm asking you, if there were no feeling, would there be craving? John says, if you were in the presence of the Buddha teaching this teaching, would there be feeling? If you're alive, you would have a feeling. If you were in the presence of the Buddha, you would have a feeling. If you didn't have a feeling, however, you would be dead. You wouldn't be a living being. You wouldn't be a sentient being at that time. If there's feeling, then is there craving? Right. It's not sufficient. So that's the answer to John's question. You could be in the presence of the Buddha and have this perhaps really deep and moving feeling and not crave for anything, even not crave to be like the Buddha or to be able to teach like that or to, you know.

[19:50]

You could have the feeling in the presence of the Buddha like the Buddha has the feeling in the presence of the Buddha with no craving. But if there is no feeling, there is no craving. So the cessation of craving is key to this whole process because craving leads to clinging. Leads to clinging in the sense that clinging depends on craving, but clinging Do you have to have craving? Yeah. If you have craving, do you have to have clinging? No. But with the cessation of clinging, do you have the cessation of craving? Not necessarily. If you're alive and you're in the presence of the Buddha, then that's a sufficient condition to have a feeling.

[21:05]

Yeah, if you're alive and you're in the presence of Fred, you also have a feeling. So that sounds like a different kind of relationship than the relationship we're talking about. That's a sufficient condition to have a relationship as opposed to a simply necessary condition to have a relationship. Is that right? I didn't quite follow how it's sufficient. You said, because if you have feeling, you don't necessarily. But if you have life, if you're alive, then you necessarily have feeling. If you have contact. Is it possible to be in the presence of the Buddha and not have the threat and not have the feeling? Yes. Oh, okay.

[22:08]

That's slightly different. It would be an unusual condition because before feeling came contact and before contact was And usually, name and form, nama rupa, name and form means psychophysical situation. Usually, the psychophysical situation... Are you going away, Dan? Bye-bye. You're excused. Usually, the psychophysical situation... involves five aggregates, five skandhas. And one of the skandhas is feeling. But here too, the analysis, the traditional analysis of the psychophysical setup is that anything that's happening in the psychophysical setup can be accounted for by these five aggregates. But it doesn't mean that there's always something to go in each of these aggregates.

[23:16]

Whatever you would tell an analyst of this school, you would never be able to come up with anything that they couldn't put into these five aggregates. However, you might not be able to have something in one of the five aggregates. It's possible. That's a relief. It is. It's part of the relief process, yeah, that you wouldn't always have something of this sort. So you could actually be conscious and there are some aspects of name and form. So let me go a little further back in this because that brings up the name and form again, okay? So... Yeah, so from the condition does craving come?

[24:22]

It comes from feeling. But again, comes from feeling doesn't mean feeling will bring it. It comes from feeling. It depends on feeling. It needs feeling, but feeling is not sufficient to bring it about. Therefore, a Buddha can feel what it's like to be with you and you can feel what it's like to be with Buddha, and we can be together, with together, with the Buddha, with no craving. It could happen that the whole assembly, that would be astounding and amazing, but we probably shouldn't say so. Because, why because? Because there's so many people who don't get it. So let's not get too excited here and be too, yeah, let's not get too enthusiastic about how great it is to be here with feeling and no craving and no clinging.

[25:25]

But that could happen. But that actually could happen, and according to this tradition, it did happen, that the people were with the Buddha, and there was no craving and no clinging, and they were free of birth and death together at that time. But be careful, because a lot of people don't understand this, and they're suffering. So let's get on with the teaching instead of talking about how great it is. Got to be careful. Even though the Buddhist got a lot of feeling and no craving or clinging, he can be a little... I'll give you a few warnings now and then. Craving comes or depends on feeling as a requisite condition. Is there a demonstrable requisite condition for feeling? One should answer, there is.

[26:27]

If one is asked, from what requisite condition does feeling come? One should say, feeling comes from contact as its requisite condition. If one is asked, is there a demonstrable requisite condition for feeling? One should say, whoops. If one is asked, is there a demonstrable requisite condition for contact? One should answer, there is. If one is asked from what requisite condition does contact come? Contact comes from name and form as a requisite condition. Thank you, Lois. It's not in the scripture. So this scripture actually is only going to be in the 12. It's going to skip. It's going to skip one of them. Namely, it's going to skip the sense doors.

[27:29]

Do you look, are you feeling as shocked as you look? The Buddha sometimes taught the twelve links in terms of two links. Ignorance, suffering. I don't know if there's any cases where he had 13 or 14. To say the least, you could have more than 12. You could have innumerable phases. We could even have like a little game of seeing like somebody can have a 175 link one, you know. And actually, if you read further in this, you will are links that are not mentioned classically. And so this scripture is really mentioning nine. The first two are not mentioned and the sense doors are not mentioned. We can discuss that more if you want to about why you don't need to mention the sense doors.

[28:37]

Actually, we can discuss anything. You can just sit there with the Buddha, you know, and cool it. Just deal with no craving and you'd sort of understand. But in this case, there's some talk here. I have name and form now as a requisite condition for contact. If one is asked, is there a demonstrable requisite condition for name and form, one should answer, there is. If one is, what requisite condition does name and form come? One should say, name and form comes from consciousness as its requisite condition. Okay? Now, if one is asked, is there a demonstrable requisite condition for consciousness?

[29:39]

One, there is. If one is asked from what requisite condition does consciousness comes, one should say consciousness comes from name and form as requisite condition. That's the first time in this scripture that that happened, what just happened. So we're working back, got name and form. What does name and form depend on? Consciousness. What does consciousness depend on? Name and form. and now. So in other words, and that's a basic Buddha Dharma, is that when you have consciousness, you don't just have consciousness. Usually you have some kind of psychophysical situation. You don't have consciousness floating. It depends on a psychophysical situation. It comes with usually feelings, perceptions,

[30:46]

Emotions. Usually. And it usually comes with the body. But not necessarily the full complement. This nama doesn't necessarily have the full complement. Matter of fact, it never has all the possible emotions and feelings that you could have. Like you do not usually feel it in a moment of consciousness. You do not usually feel pain and pleasure simultaneously. That's called neither pain or pleasure. Regular pain doesn't have pleasure. Regular pleasure doesn't have pain. When you have pain and pleasure together, that's called neutral. That's called you can't tell which. And some people would say, you're good to me. I'll take that over pain anytime. So anyway, usually consciousness doesn't come up by itself.

[31:55]

It comes up depending on a body and other mental factors. Mental factors also do not come up by themselves. They come up depending on a consciousness. Now this reciprocality or this mutuality that we just discovered for these two forms, it applies other places in this pattern too, not just here. There's mutuality all over the place. Mutuality but also mutuality without dependency without determinism. Thus, ānanda, from name and form as a requisite condition comes consciousness.

[33:06]

From consciousness as a requisite condition comes name and form. From name and form as a requisite condition comes contact. You've heard that before, right? Right? Contact. No, no. Name and form, contact. So from name and form comes contact. Now, ready? Contact as a requisite condition comes feeling. From feeling as a requisite condition comes craving. From craving as a requisite condition comes clinging. From clinging as a requisite condition comes becoming. From becoming as a requisite condition comes birth. From becoming as a requisite condition comes aging, death, and sorrow.

[34:07]

Lamentation, pain, distress, despair come into play. Such is the origination of the entire mass of stress and ill. And so now the next phase is going through, again, backwards from aging to birth to becoming with discussion and so on backward, with discussion for each. But I think I open now for discussion. Laurie? I can't tell if this is where you want to go in this direction, but... What is name and form of something different from birth?

[35:26]

when you have name and form in some sense, you already have had some kind of birth. A birth of what? Well, a birth of name and form. Right? So birth applies to each one of these arisings. Does that make sense? Maybe that should make sense before I go to this wonderful question. She's saying, come to the birth part of this process. Well, it's like that. Because name and form is born. I don't know if that's why you thought that. But when name and form arises, it's born. When consciousness arises, it's born. When you're born, consciousness arises. But does that not... Consciousness and name and form... not necessarily have to do with an individual who was born?

[37:06]

Well, actually, it does have to do with an individual that's born, but it doesn't have to do with an individual that exists independent of the causal process. It doesn't have to do with a person, an independently existing person. It doesn't have to do with that kind of person. But it does have to do with an individual body, an individual consciousness. But it's a consciousness that's living in this Dependicore Rising Sphere. This other one that's going down in the birth category is more specific. The one that's born later is not more specific. It's born of a new, a fresh new clinging, a fresh new becoming. So we see here that actually it's possible that feeling could be born and worked with in such a way

[38:13]

that craving would not arise. Earth that follows from craving would not come. So you'd have a living person who has feelings, arising, but no craving arising, and therefore no birth of the type of birth that's born of craving and the type of birth that is the requisite condition for, you know, personally, personal suffering and lamentation. Now, it says later in this text, which I'm not going to get into tonight, but craving is not only the requisite clinging becoming birth and misery for the person who is getting into clinging now and craving based on feeling. For that person, that feeling person now, that sentient being who is now directing the craving based on having feelings, they get into a body and a mind

[39:28]

that's born in such a way as to lead to aging, sickness, and misery. But they could also be a person who's alive, but who's dealing with that they're not giving rise to that kind of birth. They would just be giving birth to feeling, feeling, feeling, or maybe not even feeling, maybe just name and form. Hey, I don't even feel being with the Buddha. I'm with the Buddha, I don't even feel anything. The rest of us are feeling that way, but you can be that way. You can be here and you don't have to crave having feelings. But anyway, if you've got feelings, you can be with them in a way called studying the causation. So to be with feelings and study causation taking into account all the teachings about how to study equalization, you're having feelings, but it's possible not to have craving.

[40:29]

And then you're not creating this body which is going to, well, it's the trouble. Now, if you have past, if you have a history of working with feeling in such a way, created a bunch of bodies, all those are going to have trouble. But right now you can start working with feelings that come with a body and make this new body with this way of working with it, which doesn't go the route of old age unless you want to do somebody a big favor because you're a great bodhisattva. So that was a nice question. Thank you for bringing that up because it's a different birth from the birth It's the birth of this. Be troublesome. Because this birth depends on craving and clinging. But the body that you have when you just come into feeling, even if you have some history of bodies like that, if you come into work in this meditative way, you start to discover a new name and form.

[41:46]

one that's capable of feeling without getting into craving, feeling which goes back to name and form, back to name and form and consciousness. So you turn yourself back to this causal process as your home base and you stay away from the process of going into the creation of a body that's going to have trouble. It's going to have trouble because when it ages and there's clinging, it's . In the other case, it's not really aging. You just get new bodies that seem to be older by somebody's standard. You get new bodies which aren't as cute as some earlier ones. You know, people aren't going, But you're in such a way that there's no clinging, and therefore there's no lamentation, grief, and sorrow about the new body that you got, which is maybe somebody would say is older than the one you used to have.

[42:56]

But the ones you used to have, you're in trouble for those. However, the trouble you're in, I say you could be in trouble, I should say. Because you're not strictly determined to have trouble from those past times when you had bodies and you were clinging to them. It wouldn't necessarily happen. But if you deal with this present body, which has present feelings and present name and form and present consciousness, this is called a way of being with it that's freedom from birth and death and misery. This is the What you might call, quietly, amazing and astounding possibility. So most of us usually do

[43:59]

And those are to be worked with in a very kind way. And if you're really kind with your feelings, it's possible to not slip into craving around them. Because you don't, you know, if you're really kind with your feelings and also maybe get some help with how to be sure that you're paying attention to them, And, you know, so getting some help to make sure you're not paying attention to them in a limited kind of like substantialistic way, but in a causal, a causal way is part of the kindness. The kindness leads to a causal way of understanding your feelings. Then there's a possibility of not clinging to them, not craving and clinging around them. The point of this study of causation is so we won't attach to our feelings, attach to our sentientness, our sentientness, attach to our name and form.

[45:15]

Yes. Can I talk about that next week? Did he ask? What's becoming? I'd like to focus on this pivotal place here, the name and form area, dash, because feeling is actually included in name and form. So name and form and feeling are kind of like essential, the essential realm of work. And it's kind of the focus of this particular teaching in this text. The name, form, consciousness, and name, form includes feeling. But the feeling is kind of saying, when you have name and form, you have consciousness. When you have consciousness, you have name and form. They're requisite conditions for each other. And the feeling part is the first place where you start to slip into selfishness, craving, and claiming.

[46:24]

Before you slip, give lots of kind attention to this basic situation and that door into the habitual pattern of craving and clinging. Maybe like, just let it be a door that you don't use right now. And feeling is the easiest for most people. It's the easiest of the mental factors to identify. it's in some sense, and it's a skanda among the five aggregates. Consciousness is aggregate all by itself, but in terms of mental factors, the only mental factor that gets to be, well, maybe that's not true, but It's such an important mental factor that it gets to be an aggregate all by itself. It's the second aggregate. The physical body and the sense data is the first aggregate.

[47:32]

The second aggregate is feeling. So mindfulness of feelings is very helpful if you're trying to be present with your psychophysical consciousness and try to live in a psychophysical place with feelings in such a way that you don't slip into craving. Will you talk about karmic formation and ignorance? Will I? Okay. Charlie and then Linda. Or maybe Linda and then Charlie. When you were saying... You said feeling sensation. Yeah, feeling sensation.

[48:34]

Sometimes they'll use the word sensation for feeling. Yeah, but feeling in this case usually would mean positive, negative, and neutral sensation. Another word that's sometimes used here is experience. Experience. Yeah. Experience, feeling. Kind of like synonyms. And again, you would think, well, wouldn't experience a bigger category than sensation? And I think it could be, because you could have consciousness experience, too. There's some reasons why they do that, which I don't want to get into right now. Charlie? It's interesting and beautiful that the relationships between these 12 legs are those of necessary conditions, not sufficient conditions.

[49:35]

It feels like that's sort of causation between these 12 legs, because causation would seem to be a sufficient condition for something. Well, see, your background understanding of causation is determinism. And again, the advantage of the deterministic understanding of this type of causation is the nice thing about it is that the causal situation doesn't need anybody to run it. Buddhism doesn't want to have a god or a person running this causal process. So the nice thing about this take you bring about causation being kind of that has that advantage, but the Buddha's not saying that he has a different kind of causation. His causation is not deterministic because if it was, You would never be able to get out of this process. And there would be no point of religious practice.

[50:38]

So aside from including these problems, is there any? Including what? Including everyday. Is there anything that is a sufficient condition for anything else? Is there any foundation of that sort? I think that's a good place to end on, don't you? So we have several requests for next week. Becoming, are there any sufficient conditions? And what about those first two elements in the traditional presentation of the 12? And also, I will try to bring a 15-length thing for you next week, see if I can find one. Okay? So thank you for your sincere presence. When I was driving over here, I thought, we make a big effort in this class to get together. One more thing is that the people who, I don't know what, the people who kind of like run this place, they invited, they offered me or invited me to do a weekend workshop here.

[51:51]

So if you would like me to do a weekend workshop here sometime, they'd like me to also. Maybe you could suggest some, if you have any suggestions of topics you'd like to have here, let me know. Maybe a Friday, Saturday, Sunday, or a Saturday, Sunday. That could continue this class. And they offered this, their other room, I'm going to be showing the other room, but we can use the other room. And I also found out that this place is in the lineage of a man named Rudrananda, Swami Rudrananda, who was also called Rudi. His name was Rudolf. I think his name was something Rudolf, maybe Rudi Rudolf. But his last name was Rudolf. And he had a huge antique business in New York.

[52:54]

And our first statue at Tassajara, our first altar was from Rudi. And the Green Gulch Manjushri is from Rudi. And the Tara in the city center is from Rudi's brother, Arthur Rudolf. So we have this, and also I have some statues in my little house, which are from Rudy also. So we have an idolatrous connection with Rudy and this place. That's why they have all these nice art here. The Rudy, you know, the Rudy Warehouse. They have all these Buddhist statues. So it's kind of a nice connection. Rudy died in an airplane accident when he wasn't very old. And so the person who's in charge of this place is one of his students.

[54:03]

And I think he wanted me to come because I think he felt he knows there's a warm connection between Rudy and Suzuki Roshi. Because Suzuki Roshi, I think, went to his place in Brooklyn and picked that Buddha out. And if you have some ideas and you'd like to have it happen, let me know. I think I'll probably do it because it seems like Might be nice to do it, just to try it anyway. Well, we could stay overnight here. You know, we could camp out in there. That's a big room there. Have camp out, you know, and get a little tense. Or it could be, you know, just an hour a day. Any suggestions I'm open to. Thank you very much. And thanks for bringing these books.

[55:03]

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