Pratītyasamutpāda

right desires, or pure aspirations making for righteousness, charity, and purity of heart, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right effort, or constant intentness to avoid lapses into frailties of thought or conduct, right mindfulness, or continual dwelling of the memory on the teachings of the faith for the same purpose.

and right ecstasy or spiritual exercises tending to promote the peace and sanctity of the mind this noble path is one of the four noble truths which are the pillars of the buddha system to wit the fact that life is miserable the fact that its misery has a cause the fact that this cause can be killed and thereby the sorrow of life removed and the fact that the noble path is the only method that can attain this end for it destroys the selfish individualism inherent in the human mind the original sin and creates a universal knowledge and sympathy and a spiritual calm and purity which are salvation the buddhist doctrine as to the real nature of being and consciousness was expressed in a famous formula called in sanskrit pratitya samutpada and in pali patitya samuppada which means origination in a causal series The members of the series are as follows.

Ignorance Sanskrit Avidya Pali Avidya Confirmations Sanskrit Samskaras Pali Samkhara CONSCIOUSNESS, sanskrit, vijnana, pali, vijnana.

NAME AND FORM, sanskrit and pali, namarupa.

right desires, or pure aspirations making for righteousness, charity, and purity of heart, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right effort, or constant intentness to avoid lapses into frailties of thought or conduct, right mindfulness, or continual dwelling of the memory on the teachings of the faith for the same purpose.

and right ecstasy or spiritual exercises tending to promote the peace and sanctity of the mind this noble path is one of the four noble truths which are the pillars of the buddha system to wit the fact that life is miserable the fact that its misery has a cause the fact that this cause can be killed and thereby the sorrow of life removed and the fact that the noble path is the only method that can attain this end for it destroys the selfish individualism inherent in the human mind the original sin and creates a universal knowledge and sympathy and a spiritual calm and purity which are salvation the buddhist doctrine as to the real nature of being and consciousness was expressed in a famous formula called in sanskrit pratitya samutpada and in pali patitya samuppada which means origination in a causal series The members of the series are as follows.

Ignorance Sanskrit Avijja Pali Avijja Confirmations Sanskrit Samskaras Pali Samkhara CONSCIOUSNESS, sanskrit, vijnana, pali, vijnana.

NAME AND FORM, sanskrit and pali, namarupa.

The world is one family.

In Buddhism, Pratityasamutpada, and under the Maori system, Whanaungatanga.

Japanese, Wa.

Islam, Ummah.

Now, many people, especially in the West, for some reason in Western Buddhism, they've gotten the idea that people are seeking pleasure in order to help alleviate their Dukkha.

But that's not at all what the Buddha teaches, and he teaches this in many ways, and especially in Paticca Samuppada and in other places, and that you can actually understand this, that humans are actually built in for being pleasure seekers, and their Dukkha comes from not getting the pleasure that they seek.

The most fundamental one of all is our self-preservation instinct because we want to stay alive.

We want to stay alive.

Now, here's an important point, and you've heard me make this point up, uh, uh, before, is that internal, um, consciousness is actually the stories that we make up in perception.

Now, the word perception is, uh, sañña, but in the, um, uh, Paticca Samuppada, that word is broadened from sami- uh, from, um, uh, sañña or co- or perception into nama rupa, because nama rupa also includes, uh, feelings and other things like that at a kind of a dominant level.

So when we are in the use of perception, the right way of looking at it is anatta sañña.

Now, what anatta sañña means is that we do not add a self to perception.

Thank you, Pat.

So this is a teaching that a practitioner needs to first understand the universal truth of non-self and then dependent origination.

And if you understand those two teachings, then you can understand why the Buddha is talking in this way, because this particular student is asking the Buddha who consumes the nutriment of consciousness.

And the Buddha is saying, "Not a valid question." The reason why is because there is no who, there is no you, there is no being here.

It's actually the six sense bases or the mind.

That's what's doing all of this.

So the Buddha is walking through dependent origination here, helping this particular student to understand that there is no you there that is doing all of this.

It's a sequence of events that is happening within the mind itself.