Dependent Co-arising
Dependent co-arising
Dependent co-arising contains twelve steps, with craving as the eighth step.
The steps leading from craving to suffering are these:
8) The three types of craving condition…
9) the four types of clinging, which condition…
10) the three levels of becoming. Becoming provides the condition for the…
11) birth of an identity within becoming. This birth then leads inevitably to…
12) aging, illness, and death, along with sorrow, pain, despair, and suffering.
Tracing from craving back to its causes, the steps are these:
8) Craving is conditioned by…
7) feelings of pleasure, pain, or neither pleasure nor pain. These feelings depend on…
6) contact at…
5) the six senses (the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and mind). These senses are conditioned by…
4) the internal sense of the body and its mental events (such as attention, intention, feeling, and perception). These, in turn, are conditioned by…
3) consciousness at the six senses, which is conditioned by…
2) three types of fabrication: bodily (the in-and-out breath), verbal (the mind’s inner conversation of thinking and evaluating), and mental (feelings and perceptions). These fabrications, in turn, are conditioned by…
1) ignorance: not seeing things in terms of the four noble truths.
It may seem strange, in steps 2 and 3, to speak of fabrications happening prior to sensory consciousness, but we have to remember that the Buddha was describing experience as it appears from the perspective of someone who has gone beyond sensory consciousness and then returned to it while fully alert. So he was able to see how these fabrications influence your full consciousness of body and mind.
Even for someone who has not had that direct experience, it’s useful to reflect on how consciousness is affected by these activities even before it engages fully with the body, with mental activities, and with input from the senses. That way you can be alert to how you are priming your consciousness to lead either toward suffering or away from it.
One of the reasons the Buddha taught mindfulness of breathing is that it focuses attention right at step 2. By using a mental label, or perception, to direct your thoughts to the breath, at the same time evaluating the breath, adjusting it to give rise to a feeling of pleasure, mindfulness of breathing brings knowledge to all three types of fabrication. In that way, it turns them from causes of craving and suffering into factors of the path leading to the cessation of suffering.
