Momentary Interpretation of PS

The Watercooler
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Because Erika wants to reserve her series of posts for those suttas that support a momentary PS and not all kinds of disgression or personal explantions, i thought it was best to start a new series of posts on this.

Yes, but not really in a direct way, i believe.

What rebirth really depends upon seems to be tanha, the passions that make the mind delight in a future, in something that still must happen and one sees as happiness. It is like the Buddha says: if you are in a passionate way directed upon a future, a future will be created.

The mind can delight in soon experiencing sensual pleasures. Or delights in the perspective of not feeling and perceiving anything anymore at death. Or it delights in the perspective of the joy in heavens. There is some element of delight in a future thing to happen. Via 3 tanha’s mind is directed upon realising that future. It is seen as an escape from suffering too.

It is this passion, i believe, that the Buddha saw as the driving forces of rebirth. avijja supports that this passion and orientation on a future arises and is even fed. But i do not think that avijja must be seens as something that literally causes rebirth. It causes rebirth in as far it supports and feeds craving. Craving represents the energyload that becomes a support for a next bhava. It is th combination of craving and avijja that leads to a wrong search and that is the cause for continuation of suffering in samara. At least so i see this.

Avjja is not only in Asmi mana (the conceit I am), but avijja is, for example, also in kama raga, the delight in and the search for sense pleasure, seeing this as escape form suffering. Not understanding that relying on these passions one will only reap more suffering.

Avijja in a momentary PS context means, i believe, that mind is still yet sensitive (vulnerable) for taking a wrong Path. Still being inclined to a wrong search for safety, protection, happiness. Still liable to seek this in something which is anicca.

I believe the Dhamma eye sees that all what arises will also cease. It sees this search is futile, ignoble. It sees that the escape from suffering cannot rely on something that is unreliabe, liable to cease. It is like seeking grip in something that desintegrates while one holds on to it.

The Dhamma-eye understands that real safety, happiness, protection can only be based upon what is not anicca, not constructed and thus not liable to cease, Nibbana, asankhata. It cannot be arrived at via clinging but only by uprooting all that leads to grasping and clinging.

Although it is all closely related, i believe, in essence avijja in the context of momentary PS refers to: Still being liable to become intoxicated and develop a wrong Path to happiness etc. Still being able to think, speak and act Not for ones own and others wellbeing. For example, people might take delight in the peace of jhana but also such is a sign one does not understand that also this is raga, passion, and not conducive to the end of suffering (rupa and arupa raga).

Old habits play a huge role in this, i believe. Because one can have an understanding of Dhamma but still become victum of old habits. That is why these teachings on the subconscious are so impotrant (anusaya), i feel. And to explain the presence of those latent ingrained patterns (anusaya) one again needs to accept that all this cannot be explained by assuming one life. One can see the body and how the mind habitually functions as old kamma. Not all kamma can be explained from this very life.

I think one can say that taking up the burden of the khandha’s is always something momentary? It is not really something that really happened in the past? It happens always here and now? When do we take up the burden of the khandha’s? Is that really at physical birth? Is that when a rebirth consciousness links to a fertilized egg?
Or is such always momentary?

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I believe, things can be understood in a more coarse manner and in a more subtle manner. For me this distinction works, at least. It is not really about right and wrong. But more about coarse versus subtle.

Examples:

Human being
-If one sees oneself at this very moment as a human being, as if this is some absolute reality, i believe that is already coarse. That is an entrapment in conceiving.
But is this how things really are? I feel that a more subtle understanding is that by grasping and clinging in the moment, one becomes this or that.
" I am a human"… is a sakkaya ditthi. Probably one identifies with the body that we have agreed upon that we call this a human body. How can one think one is a human without identification? So a more subtle understanding does not take ‘i am a human being’ as some absolute reality to start with.

Mind
-The same with mind. If one sees mind as humane, i believe that is coarse. There is not really such a thing as a human mind, i believe. Like there is also not such a thing as an American rainbow.

Khandhas
-If one thinks that one moment in the past one has picked up the khandha’s, and has them from that moment on until now, i feel that is a coarse understanding. But when one sees this as something that always momentarily happens, i feel that is a more subtle understanding. Also in the past khandha’s were taking up momentarily.

These are some examples which want to illustrate that there is a coarse and more subtle way to understanding things! Please…this is not meant to offend anyone!

Birth
-Likewise one can think coarse and more subtle about birth, i believe.
In a coarse manner birth is described as: The birth of beings into the various orders of beings, their coming to birth, precipitation [in a womb], generation…(MN141)
And in a more subtle way, i believe, birth is described as: the manifestation of the aggregates, obtaining the bases for contact (MN141)

In this very life the bases of contact can cease, and that dimension must also be know says a sutta. In that sense, when the bases for contact arise again, i feel one can see this as birth.
Also the khandha’s can cease, no, they cease any moment.

The manifestation of the khandha’s is also called birth. And because khandha’s never exist in a durable manner from moment to moment, one can say that khandha’s always manifest momentary, for example vinnana.
If birth is defined as the manifestation of the khandha’s, is it wrong to see this in the momentary way?

Anyway, I tend to see the momentary interpretation of PS, and in general of Dhamma, as a more subtle understanding. This is not meant to offend anyone. It is my opinion about all this. And i have given reasons to support this.

i hope this finds a ground of goodwill

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[edit: made some changes, for clarity]

I see in the use of a verbal description like avijja-contact an example that avijja must not been seen as first nidana in PS. But both avijja and passion are for all nidana’s a supportive condition. No nidana is apart from this support.

PS is not like a causal chain as in 12 billiard balls hitting eachother. Passion and avijja are more like a poision that has spread throughout all 12 limbs of the PS body, as it were. Or like fuel that supports the turning of the Wheel.

PS does not describe that passion is only present after vedana! The meaning of tanha as 8th nidana is: Based upon what in this very life is sensed, desire arises in the form of like and dislike. And if we act upon this, the deep reservoir of passion that supports the whole of PS (passion collected in former lifes) is even more filled with energy and potential/power. If we do not feed the arising passion upon what is felt (no upadana) the reservoir drains. The 8 -9 nidana illustrate where we can make a difference. We can fill the reservoir of passion or drain it gradually.

Passion is everywhere present in all nidana’s because it is the support of the whole PS. Also avijja supports on passion. The passion that is called asava. (SN12.20, MN9, AN6.63)

“With the arising of the taints there is the arising of ignorance. With the cessation
of the taints there is the cessation of ignorance”. (MN9)

Kilesa, asava, anusaya, (abhi)sankhara are different ways to talk about passion in an active way and also as reservoir. It refers to that kind of volitional (constructive) activity that supports rebirth and attachment in this very life. It are those volitional activities that work like glue and constructs states in this life and after this life.

In PS all nidana’s are affected by passion and avijja because they are all supported by it. So also contact is always an avijja-and passionate contact. A contact with an element of desire. It is never a bare awareness of something. In the seen, heard, felt and known is always more then only the seen, heard, felt and known. There is always also an element of desire, conceit and conceiving.

For example: if pain arises there is not only a bare awareness of pain but also the desire that this pains stops to exist, and a notion of Me/I having pain. And probably a lot more mental proliferation upon the presence of pain, such as: ‘why must this happen to me, i cannot bear this pain, this is not honest’ etc.

If you see this in practice, in daily life there is almost all the time an avijja contact with what is sensed. A contact from the perspective that I as entity are in contact with what is sensed in a desireful and conceited way. Such arises habitually because the reservoir of passion is filled in former lifes. Anusaya’s is a detailed way to talk about the reservoir of passion that is filled in former lifes.

So, avijja and passion both support the whole of PS. All nidana’s are based upon, and supported by avijja and passion. Even the socalled first nidana, avijja, is supported by the passions of past lifes and vice versa.

In the momentary interpretation of PS there is always this realisation that volitional activities in past lifes and deeds based upon them, are conditioning, and more or less ruling/choosing, the thoughts, speech and actions we now have. Here you see that a momentary PS interpretation is not apart from a more then 1 life model and vice versa. One does not have to choose for one, i feel.

The whole idea of fetters and fettering is that the past still rules, controls our current thinking, speaking and actions. The whole idea of liberation from fetters is that the same info from the past that now rules , does not rule anymore. Freed from such conditionings, that what is unconditioned is arrived at.
Fettered one does not see at that moment what is really conducive to ones own and others welbeing.

So, i do not feel that this momentary and 3L (or more) model of PS really compete with eachother. They support eachother. The one cannot without the other.

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The great picture seems to be that DO describes the second noble truth of the origin of suffering and the cessation of avijja etc. describes how this origin ceases. (AN3.61)

My best gues is: Real understanding of DO is having that knowledge, having that insight, that confirmation that what we expereince as the world, the All, all that is being experienced, at that very moment is conditionally arising. It is a construction. The coming together of many conditions. Any feeling, sense, notion, perception, understanding that we live in a given, objective, stable and substantial world is gone for one who knows PS.

All we experience is merely a constructed reality and not a given one. And as such insubstantial, arising here and now, empty, dream-like. We never experience a world as it really is. That is also why a Buddha is not involved in standpoints about the world, i believe.

If we experience grass as green there is no objectivity in all this. And if an animal experiences grass as grey, the same. If an insect experiences grass as huge and mountain like that is his world and if we experience grass as small that is our world.
There is nothing real about all this, or, it is real in as far these are merely two different perspectives. They do not have to compete. Our perspective is not more true then this of an insect.

I believe this is the first Truth Buddha teaches: "It is hard for such a generation to see this truth, namely, specific conditionality, dependent origination. (MN26)

We keep having that notion that the world we experience is somehow given and not a perceptive. We have the impression that there is a world and we merely sense that. This is our delusion. Whatever we hear, see, feel etc is always every moment a conditionally arising world. Seeing, for example, is not looking through a window at what is present.

But it is really difficult to abandon this impression that what we experience is given (nicca) and to really see and understand that any moment we live in a conditionally arising world.

This is why, i believe, DO is really hard to see. The idea of nicca is strong.

The second truth Buddha taught was: "…this truth, namely, the stilling of all formations, the relinquishing of all acquisitions, the destruction of craving, dispassion, cessation, Nibbāna. (Mn26)

I believe these two Truths relate. Without knowing the stilling of all formations (the cessation of what we experience as the world in this very life) one also cannot have a real experiential understanding of the conditionally arising of the world we experience, the All . The one understanding supports on the other.
One must know cessation to find the confirmation that the totallity of the world we experience is conditionally arising at that very moment.

I believe cessation, stilling, is known as peaceful, cooled, unburdened. That is probably why someone who knows the cessation of the world in this very life, can also say…‘what arises is merely suffering and what ceases is merely suffering’. Meaning, the Nibbana element of an empty coolness and peace does not cease. But suffering does.

I believe such a one knows home, knows safety, knows protection, has found the deathless, the not desintegrating, the amazing (SN43)

I think Zen refers to this as true self, but that does not mean atta, but it is the ultimate confirmation that what we always consider to be atta is not atta.

In the end, i believe our usual perception of nicca and atta points to the strong impression we all have that we live in a given objective world.
And we also think that the way we know the world is objective, while this is never any moment true. Every being has this strange tendency to believe that his/her world is reality as it really is. While every being lives in a construction of reality.
It is a perspective on reality.

Seeing rupa, vedana, sanna, sankhara, vinnnana as nicca and atta in practice means that we are momentarily blinded for how relative all is we experience, how insubstantial, empty, not reality, mere a constructed world, a projection as it were.

We always tend to… “but it is like this…only this is true”…because we are not able to see that our knowledge merely represent a certain perspective. It is never objective. And will never become objective too.