I think I understand the beginning part of this sutta
bookworm
U.S.A. Veteran
Thus have I heard. On one occasion the Exalted One was living among the Kurus, where there was a town of the Kurus named Kammasadhamma. Then the Venerable Ananda approached the Exalted One, paid homage to him and sat down to one side. Seated, he said to the Exalted One:
"It is wonderful and marvellous venerable sir, how this dependent arising is so deep and appears so deep, yet to myself it seems as clear as clear can be."
Do not say so, Ananda! Do not say so, Ananda! This dependent arising, Ananda, is deep and it appears deep. Because of not understanding and not penetrating this Dhamma, Ananda, this generation has become like a tangled skein, like a knotted ball of thread, like matted rushes and reeds, and does not pass beyond samsara with its plane of misery, unfortunate destinations, and lower realms.
Maha-nidana sutta
https://suttacentral.net/en/dn15
Comments
I don't really understand the rest of that sutta, but I think I know why Venerable Ananda said, and this dependent arising appears so deep and yet to myself it seems as clear as clear can be. And why the Buddha said not to say that, by explaining why.
Exactly so.
Clear as day. Then we deepen. Clouds. Then we deepen. The dharma is very clear but it has unfoldings ...
"The problem with this generation..." or, "Kids these days..." This passage was written by a sour, old man with a critical eye for other's faults. Hardly the enlightened attitude of the Buddha.
First, the Arahants never much liked Ananda and did their best to portray him as lacking in understanding of the Dharma, no matter how much Buddha liked him. Second, the Arahants had a vested interest in making sure the Dharma appeared deep and mysterious and incapable of unenlightened mortal beings to understand.
In other words, people being people.
The Dhamma is very deep, it is vast like the ocean, I would say it's incredible simplicity is what makes it so profound, It will make a person feel completely dumbfounded by its profundity, to the point of making you burst out in laughter.
Pre-read comments: I've always taken the "don't say you've understood it through to the bottom" as a caution that it's true in deeper ways than we're used to looking.
Consider first that sutras are meant to be read and investigated, some might even say "are to be experienced," in a peaceful, preferably natural place. Elucidation at very tranquil and stable leveltude of stillness.
Really there are so many wonderful entrance points into understanding Dependent Arising. One very efficacious one is simply meditating on the words "Dependent Arising"
Okay, after reading through the link you posted I find that there is a difference in terming with DN 15 on accesstoinsight.org (it's possible to reference many sutras with just the collection abbreviation and number)
The translator's notes alone are probably worth the hyperlink:
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/dn/dn.15.0.than.html
I am not an expert of DN 15. It's really deep.
Basically I would conceptually approach it like:
There are natural processes which permeate everything and by coming to understand where they arise and sustain and decay and diminish then we can understand what effects we'd like to bring about.
But there is one thing that is an amazing thing that I would recommend to continually keep in mind. A great master, I think Saraha or Gampopa (forgive me, I'll try and find an appropriate reference) once said "appearances are not the problem, it is our attachment to appearances."
So then if there is no grasping, fixating, "clinging" (like cling-wrap), if there is no grasping then suffering cannot arise. This is a subtle point that appears to be clearly reflected in the Great Causes Discourse you are referencing.
Just as a final note on this message: in the accesstoinsight version of the sutra there are different terms used. Things that are rendered as "mental-materiality" are rendered as "name-and-form" in the accesstoinsight one.
Personally, I'd rather have more terms than fewer because Dharma is fresh in our language and will be fleshed out into native tongues always (as it should, as the Buddha instructed), but if you are looking for a concise explanation or a way to meditate on what is pointed to here I think it would benefit to stick to one teacher's way of wording it because then you can get the most out of a deliberate word choice, if that makes any sense.
I read a story a while back ago, I forget what it was called, but I think it goes like this. There was a man who lost a jewel, and he went looking everywhere for it, anyway long story short, or short story made shorter, somebody eventually points out that the jewel is right on his person. I think that story was talking about Buddha Nature, but that is not what i'm talking about, i'm talking about
This is suffering
This is its origin
This is its cessation
This is the way leading to its cessation.
How do you know that? What's your source?
The principle of dependent arising is conditionality. It's not hard to understand intellectually, but experiencing it directly is much more challenging.
Yes... there's a world of difference between 'understanding' and 'implementing'...
Yes. Being conscious, aware, Mindful and ever-present in the 'knowing' that all you experience is a product of your Mind's attachment to perception. That it both is and isn't.
You can also focus on the nuts and bolts of dependent origination, observing how contact occurs, how feelings arise and how we then react to them.
there's that word 'hope' again....
I think mindfulness is the key to noticing conditionality in our experience.
According to the sutras, when Buddha died the first thing the Arahants did was send out invitations to a meeting of all the leaders (except for the women Arahants, who were snubbed) and did not invite Ananda because he "wasn't an Arahant, only a stream-winner". This in spite of the sutras also mentioning that Buddha actually had Ananda do some lecturing in his place once in a while with no disagreement on what he taught. At the last minute, most likely due to unrest among the regular monks because Ananda was so popular, it was announced that he had an overnight breakthrough and had miraculously achieved full Arahant status.
And at the meeting, they immediately put Ananda on trial for the pickiest, stupidest charges anyone could think of then and now. We're talking "I saw him defile the Buddha's spare robe by accidentally stepping on it while mending it for Buddha" type of important charge. And this, remember, after their founder had just died. The most damning and damaging charge, of course, was that Ananda had talked Buddha into admitting women into the order as equal to the men. Pretending Buddha was reluctant and it was Ananda's fault for using his influence allowed the other Arahants to reverse this without openly disagreeing with Buddha's policy.
If this doesn't sound like the compassionate, ego-less nonattachment we have come to expect from enlightened Buddhist Masters, it's because the reality of the Sangha then and now never meets the ideal. If you look at them as just people, no better or worse than us, then the story is there for everyone to see.
You're being selective in your account.
From here:
I haven't come across that. Which sutta describes this?
@SpinyNorman, see the link I provided.
I fear, on reading the account in AccesstoInsight, that @Cinorjer has his facts a little...."muddled"....
https://sites.google.com/site/santipada/thefirstcouncil(mahisasakaversion)
And @federica we do have different interpretations of "why" the Arahants acted as they did against Ananda out there. But the facts of what they did are laid out in the sutras. It isn't a new debate. Even the definition of "arahant" varies across teachings because of their behavior. Some don't consider an Arahant to be fully enlightened, but another stage so to speak because they displayed such petty behavior.
But all we have are a few pages in the sutras to go on. What their actions mean depends on the eyes that are reading. I've seen enough factional infighting in church boards and corporate meeting rooms and military commands to recognize immediately what is going on. I don't expect the people back then to be any different from us today. But, of course, I might be wrong. Take this as just one opinion out there.
Exactly. It's just one opinion based on a single teaching.
When you look at the different interpretations, it brings in other perspectives, and might complicate matters, because you have to use your own perception and evaluation of all the different commentaries laid before you.
I evaluate matters according to which teachings first arose.
Rather like Chinese whispers, it's more favourable, in my personal view, to return to as close to the source of the original comment....
The 12 links are actually depicted in this wheel called a Bhavachakra (Tibetan "wheel of life"... maybe "wheel of existence" makes more sense)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhavacakra
That is called papanca right?
what is....?
All we experience is our minds attachment to perception, experience is a proliferation is it not?
This is why it is taught that compassion and wisdom must unite. One wing is not enough to fly.
Hmmm. I have heard it being rendered by teachers as "conceptual mind" but I always considered prapanca more as diffusion to the same degree that your reflection in a pair of mirrors aimed at each other can infini-grow (and "blur") either way.
After all, experience is not the culprit, but the quality of the experience, which we can affect in different ways; to plant virtuous and selfless seeds with our deeds of body speech and mind, and to see with wisdom situations which would otherwise be uncomfortable or undesirable as great helps we can bring to the path.
Anyway, if everyone was already enlightened BUT myself and you then we could fairly say experience is prapanca and we gotta get ourselves together (xD) but if there are still unenlightened beings then the work of the Buddhas and experience are like the two different sides of a beautiful cloth. Inseparable.
So it still seems (to me) that compassion marks the vital difference between "get me out of here!" and "ah, let me relax and help."
I thought about about this, but I've come to the conclusion that the dharma doesn't have unfoldings, it is all there in its entirety, it is not like a scroll that that you have to roll out more and more to see the whole picture.
^^^ it is not the dharma that unfolds. It is us
Yes that is right, and I really like that