Upadana? Let go of clinging

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Given that upādāna means literally ‘taking up’, probably intensified through the prefix upa-, I would clumsily render it ‘appropriation’ but would like to share the German word for appropriation, which is ‘Vereinnahmung’

ver-ein-nahmung
’ver’ - works similarly as ‘upa-’ as an intensifier, or directional proximity
’ein’ - equals the english ‘in’
‘nahmung’ - is the noun of the perfect participle of to take
–> The having-taken-in

A closer english synonym would be ‘allocation’ = ad-locare, but unfortunately it doesn’t sound well and occupies another meaning already…

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Can we analyse Upadana using dependent origination formula?
Thanha -Upadana-Bhava-Jati

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Well, I think you need to type the pali word into the ‘search’ box. Then it comes up with it’s own little page, which includes the English meanings. I hope that’s right and hope that helps!

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After reflecting for a while and playing with english alternatives I feel the most straight forward term for upādāna would be ‘to identify with’.

If I ‘take up’ something really close to heart - my dog, car, body - what I really do is starting to identify with it. Then exactly I get into the love-hate relationship that is so typical for idents: I lust for its satisfaction and feel the burdon of having to care for it.

In the DO it would work in that way:

  • After having developed bhava, the idea that ‘I’ exist
  • I can develop (and really need) the notion to exist ‘as’ something, to identify with it - bodily experiences, specific ideas, and especially an understanding of what my essence/soul is --> upādāna
  • After taking these things as myself, I can generate lust for these things and create experiences that confirm, proliferate and substantiate my identifications - taṇhā
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Hi @Gabriel,

I see things differently.

Bhava in dependent arising (and elsewhere) means a next life. It does not mean a sense of self. That is a modern interpretation but it doesn’t really fly if you look at the suttas as a whole. For example, the three types of bhava (kamabhava, rupabhava, arupabhava) clearly refer to the different realms.

See also AN3.76. Unfortunately Suttacentral now has Thanissaro’s translation, which I do not find very beautiful. I’ve written a bit about this before.

In a way upadana works exactly like the English: “take rebirth”, we say. Although in Pali you don’t “take bhava”, you do take up something (ie. “picking up”, “taking on”) because you crave that thing. That then leads to rebirth (bhava).

I think the prefix upa reflects direction. Ie. taking up. Then again, you can’t always give a prefix a meaning on its own. I think upadana and adana are effectively synonymous.

I’ve been fiddling around with “taking up” as translation and it doesn’t always produce nice sentences, but to me it’s more important to get the right meaning.

With kindness,
Sunyo

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Hi Sunyo,

My understanding is that both the three lifetime model of the twelve nidānas and the various one lifetime models (single mind-moment, series of mind-moments, etc.) are of roughly equal antiquity in the Theravada commentarial tradition. So I don’t think defenders of the three lifetime interpretation can correctly say the others are only modern innovations.

The fact that the three types of bhava are realms of existence doesn’t entail that they are not also evoked in the teachings in connection with the construction of the sense of self (ahaṃkāra and mamaṃkāra.) A natural understanding of their role in paticcasamuppada within the various one-lifetime frameworks is this: we can understand the samadhi attainments themselves as realms - even literally. When one transitions from the final rupa attainment to the first arupa attainment, for example, one then literally (though temporarily) enjoys the kind of existence that is enjoyed in a more enduring way by those beings who live an entire lifetime in the formless realms, because contact with external the sense bases has ceased. Realms and “worlds” are defined by the conditioned phenomena that constitute them. However, when one subsequently re-establishes contact between the internal and external sense bases, one “drops” so to speak, back down into a rupa realm.

The way this is connected with ahaṃkāra and mamaṃkāra would then be this: because of upadana, we experience the world not just as the rising and passing of conditioned phenomena, but incorporate those experiences into an ongoing sense of what is me and what is mine. We experience those phenomena as part of ourselves (in either a narrow or extended sense), or regard ourselves as part of those phenomena, or regard ourselves as something mysterious and separate that is somehow viewing those phenomena, or regard those phenomena as grounding our being in some obscure way. The complete cessation of upadana is the complete sensation of all this I-making and my-making.

Going back to the previous example then: if, in samadhi, and before final liberation, one transitions from experiences of form-sphere phenomena to formless phenomena, one will at some level cognize “I have become formless” or “I previously experienced form but am now experiencing formlessness”. But the fully released saint moves fluidly from experience to experience, realm to realm, without also lugging this heavy “I” around with her.

This even applies to more ordinary realms of experience outside meditative attainments, such as the changing experiences within one’s body. If you have an experience of your cold hand out in the snow, and then a few minutes later a warm hand in front of a fire, you will ordinarily cognize this experience in terms of both an enduring object - the hand - and an enduring self, both of which you weave across time, so to speak, from the conditioned ingredients of experience. You will think My hand was cold but now my same hand is warm. But in the fully released, self-free experience of the world, the previous hand phenomenon has simply ceased to be, and a new hand phenomenon, similar in some ways but different in others, has come to be in dependence on its conditions.

All of our suffering is connected in one way our another with this illusory self we are constantly manufacturing. We have ongoing fears, anxieties and griefs because we have a deep instinctive drive to preserve, protect, defend, enhance and extend this obscure, seeming entity. Once this drive and its illusory object has been eliminated through the gradual effacement of its constituent behaviors and level-by-level cessation of its conditioning factors, suffering ceases altogther and its cessation is known “by direct knowledge”, not by inferential knowledge about something that will or will not happen several decades in the future.

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By the way, non of this implies that the three-lifetime process isn’t also found in the suttas. But it does imply that jati, bhava and the other nidanas as they occur in that process are just a special case of more general and pervasive phenomena.

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Hi Dear DKervick!

The Theravada is already hundreds of years after the Buddha, and their commentaries even later. So from a perspective of early Buddhism they are very modern already. I have to admit that’s not what I meant originally, though. So if the Theravada commentaries clearly include the single-lifetime idea then I stand corrected. Anyway, whether it’s in the commentaries or not doesn’t matter much to my point.

So about the three versus one lifetime:

(For people who think: “Is this necessary to discuss this here? It’s been discussed elsewhere!” Yes it is, because the way you see dependent arising changes how you see upadana.)

[quote=“DKervick, post:27, topic:4158”]
The fact that the three types of bhava are realms of existence doesn’t entail that they are not also evoked in the teachings in connection with the construction of the sense of self (ahaṃkāra and mamaṃkāra.)[/quote]
Do you have a reference? Many topics are connected to each other, but that doesn’t make them interchangeable. The ahaṃkāra and mamaṃkāra for example, fall under the header of conceit, not under dependent arising.

As a little side note:

This principle of not mixing up different contexts is very important. For example, there are the suttas where upadana itself is used in a sense that has nothing to do with taking rebirth, but with taking things as “me, mine” instead. SN22.79 that I’ve mentioned before is a good example. In these suttas, however, there is no clear one on one link with dependent origination. So we should not say that upadana is used in the exact same way in those two places.

Consider the English verb “to take”. You can use it in so many ways. You can take a day off, take a walk, take a pill, take rebirth, take things the wrong way… Clearly the word “take” has very different meanings in all of these and the same happens with Pali words.

Also here a reference would help me give a more specific idea of what you mean.

I think it doesn’t. As I’ve said, you shouldn’t mix topics with each other too easily. If we look at the sutta usage of jati (birth) for example, I know of know clear passage (at least not in dependent arising context) where it means anything other than literal birth. In contrast, there are suttas such as SN12.2 which all too clearly speak about literal birth:

And what, bhikkhus, is birth? The birth of the various beings into the various orders of beings, their being born, descent into the womb, production, the manifestation of the aggregates, the obtaining of the sense bases. This is called birth.

The fact that birth here is so clearly just birth as we typically understand it implies that bhava also has to do with rebirth, and therefore upadana as well. Which brings me back to my original point that “taking (up)” leading to rebirth is also much more direct than “clinging” or “grasping” leading to rebirth.

With kindness,

Sunyo

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Hi Kay,

Ajahn Brahm is right that upadana has a double meaning of the verb “taking up” and the noun “fuel”. That upadana means fuel is agreed upon by everybody whereas the meaning of the verb is not. So I’ve decided to focus only on that here. However, it’s good that you mention this because it’s impossible to translate both meanings at once in English while some suttas really use these meanings at once as a kind of play on words almost.

I would give Ajahn Brahm credits, but the meaning “taking up” is already in the PTS dictionary which is now over a century old. :wink: The Buddha really deserves the credit though, since when I read the Pali it’s so obviously to me that “clinging” is not what is meant, and “taking” is.

To everybody: I’d still be very happy to be proven wrong. If only if it is just in a single passage. Show me! Where is “clinging” undeniable?

M to the E to the double T A,

Sunyo

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Hello Sunyo,

My interpretation of the teachings is strongly guided by the Sutta Nipata, especially the Atthakavagga and the Parayanavagga. We have strong ground for regarding these as the earliest Buddhist teachings, since the other suttas themselves sometimes refer to them, and we have good reason from these references to think that the Buddha himself was concerned that his followers know and recite them. I also tend to put a lot of emphasis on verses - including the verse components (but not so much the narrative components) of the Udana - since I believe the earliest teachings committed to memory were likely to be verses. It is striking how often the Udana verses present a simple and direct spiritual teaching that often seems to have little to do with the background narrative presentation of the alleged circumstances of the utterance, and are filled with more elaborate “doctrine”.

These texts have been my constant companion over the past few years, and tend to guide my interpretation of the other, more formalized, suttas which I tend to see as heavily colored by later commentarial impositions and schemes of systematization, and by the institutional structures and dogmas of the Buddhist “religion” as it began to take shape following the the Buddha’s lifetime - and also by the fact that they are often not built on fluid discourses and verses that have the feeling of authenticity that goes with the memorization of actual words, but are built out of pericopes and stock phrases that can only be the work of systematizers attempting to put the teachings into a form that can be recited and memorized, teachings that took place at some event in the past that they, or someone they were working with, could remember . The memories of these teachings will then be more heavily colored by the way these students and followers remembered them. And I suspect that in many cases these hearers did not have a very good grasp of the Buddha’s spiritual understanding. So one constantly as to try to read though the surface text.

When I read a text like the Parayanavagga, and ask what is meant in that text by “birth-and-aging”, by “being shrouded in birth-and-aging”, “the abandonment of birth-and-aging” or “the far shore of birth and death”, it is very hard for me to accept that the uses of these terms refer only to events that are many years in the past or future, as far as the Buddha’s interlocutors are concerned. The focus is entirely on what can be transcended and realized here and now, with direct intuitive knowledge attained from a pure life and deep meditative insight. They are not about achieving some mysterious clairvoyance or God’s eye view about what will or will not happen many years (or aeons) in the future. For example, in the questions of Mettagu, we have teachings such as:

as one who discerns.
From acquisition as cause
the many forms of stress
come into being in the world.
Whoever, unknowing,
makes acquisitions
—the dullard—
comes to stress
again & again.
Therefore, discerning,
you shouldn’t create acquisitions
as you stay focused on
the birth & origin of stress.

This is from the Thanissaro translation. Here it is clear that the “birth” in question is the birth of stress, dukkha. Then we have:

Whatever you’re alert to,
above, below,
across, in between:
Dispelling any delight,
any entrenchment
in those things,
consciousness should not take a stance
in becoming.
The monk who dwells thus
—mindful, heedful—
letting go of his sense of mine,
knowing right here would abandon
birth & aging,
lamentation & sorrow,
stress.

Birth & aging, lamentations, sorrow and stress are all in a group here. They are all apparently ongoing processes that can be abandoned “right here”. They are abandoned as soon as one’s consciousness ceases talking a stance in the ongoing processes of becoming.

Earlier, in the third book of the Sutta Nipata, in a talk with Sundarika, we have:

Those devoid of passion,
their faculties well-centered,
released like the moon
from the grasp of an eclipse:
To them, at the right time,
you should bestow an offering,
to them a brahman aiming at merit
should sacrifice.
Unattached, they wander in the world,
always mindful,
abandoning possessiveness:
To them, at the right time,
you should bestow an offering,
to them a brahman aiming at merit
should sacrifice.
Who, abandoning sensuality,
wanders victorious,
who knows the end
of birth & death,
totally unbound, cool
as a pool of water:
The Tathāgata deserves
the sacrificial cake.

Because they have abandoned sensality and become totally cooled, they “know the end of birth and death” - other texts say they have “mastered birth & death.” They have transcended the whole world of generation and corruption, arising and passing away, and abide in misery-free peace above and beyond the world of becoming, identification with which they no longer experience, and from which they have become detached. There is also an intriguing verse in the first vagga, about the muni or sage:

Danger is born from intimacy,
a home gives birth to dust.
Free from a home,
free from intimacy:
Such is the vision of the sage.
Who, destroying what’s born,
wouldn’t plant (again)
or nourish what’s taking birth:
They call him the wandering, solitary sage.
He, the great seer
has seen
the state of peace.
Considering the ground,
crushing the seed,
he wouldn’t nourish the sap
—truly a sage—
seer of the ending of birth,
abandoning conjecture,
he cannot be classified.
Knowing all dwellings,
not longing for any one anywhere
—truly a sage—
with no coveting, without greed,
he does not build,
for he has gone beyond.
Conquering all
knowing all,
wise.
With regard to all things:
unsmeared.
Abandoning all,
in the ending of craving,
released:
The enlightened call him a sage.
With discernment his strength,
well-endowed in habit & practice,
centered,
delighting in jhāna,
mindful,
released from attachments,
free from rigidity, free
from effluent:
The enlightened call him a sage.
The solitary wandering sage,
uncomplacent, unshaken by praise or blame—
unstartled, like a lion at sounds,
uncaught, like the wind in a net,
unsmeared, like a lotus in water,
leader of others, by others unled:
The enlightened call him a sage.
Who becomes
like the pillar at a bathing ford,
when others speak in extremes;
he, without passion,
his senses well-centered:
The enlightened call him a sage.
Truly poised, straight as a shuttle,
he loathes evil actions.
Pondering what is consonant & discordant:
The enlightened call him a sage.
Restrained in mind, he does no evil.
Young & middle-aged,
the sage self-controlled,
never angered, he angers none:
The enlightened call him a sage.

Here I think it is clear that we have profound spiritual poetry, and that terms like “plant”, “nourish”, “birth”, “sap” are intended be interpreted figuratively.

I would also note that the more psychologically immediate interpretation of paticcasamuppada is clearly employed sometimes by Ajahn Chah in his teachings, and in connection with the not-self teachings. Here is a passage from The Middle Way Within:

We don’t understand the Dhamma and so we don’t understand these sankhara ‘; we take them to be ourselves, as belonging to us or belonging to others. This gives rise to clinging. When clinging arises, becoming’ follows. Once becoming arises, then there is birth. Once there is birth, then old age, sickness, death … the whole mass of suffering arises.
This is the paticcasamuppada. We say ignorance gives rise to volitional activities, they give rise to consciousness and so on. All these things are simply events in the mind. When we come into contact with something we don’t like, if we don’t have mindfulness, ignorance is there. Suffering arises straight away. But the mind passes through these changes so rapidly that we can’t keep up with them. It’s the same as when you fall from a tree. Before you know it ‘Thud!’ - you’ve hit the ground. Actually you’ve passed many branches and twigs on the way, but you couldn’t count them, you couldn’t remember them as you passed them. You just fall, and then `Thud!'
The paticcasamuppada is the same as this. If we divide it up as it is in the scriptures, we say ignorance gives rise to volitional activities, volitional activities give rise to consciousness, consciousness gives rise to mind and matter give rise to the six sense bases, the sense bases give rise to sense contact, contact gives rise to feeling, feeling gives rise to wanting, wanting gives rise to clinging, clinging gives rise to becoming, becoming gives rise to birth, birth gives rise to old age, sickness, death, and all forms of sorrow. But in truth, when you come into contact with something you don’t like, there’s immediate suffering! That feeling of suffering is actually the result of the whole chain of the paticcasamuppada. This is why the Buddha exhorted his disciples to investigate and know fully their own minds.

and later in the same dhamma talk:

Therefore the Buddha didn’t discriminate between laymen and monks, he taught all people to practise in order to know the truth of the sankhara . When we know this truth, we let them go. If we know the truth there will be no more becoming or birth. How is there no more birth? There is no way for birth to take place because we fully know the truth of sankhara. If we fully know the truth, then there is peace. Having or not having, it’s all the same. Gain and loss are one. The Buddha taught us to know this. This is peace; peace from happiness, unhappiness, gladness and sorrow.
We must see that there is no reason to be born. Born in what way? Born into gladness: when we get something we like we are glad over it. If there is no clinging to that gladness there is no birth. If there is clinging, this is called ‘birth’. So if we get something, we aren’t born into gladness. If we lose something, we aren’t born into sorrow. This is the birthless and the deathless. Birth and death are both founded in clinging to and cherishing the sankhara.
So the Buddha said: ‘There is no more becoming for me, finished is the holy life, this is my last birth.’ There! He knew the birthless and the deathless. This is what the Buddha constantly exhorted his disciples to know. This is the right practice. If you don’t reach it, if you don’t reach the Middle Way, then you won’t transcend suffering.

So, that’s my reading. Frankly, I don’t like to dispute about these issues too much, because they are distracting. When I sit to meditate, I attempt to achieve a state in which all memories and remorse or nostalgia about the past is gone; where no thoughts of, or anxieties about the future are present; and nothing in the present is held or grasped at. Similarly, when I give to monks, I focus on the good it does for me to relinquish acquisitions, right at the moment of giving, and why it is a good thing to nourish and support the holy life for the sake of the world. I personally think that’s the only kind of merit the Buddha wanted people to cultivate. I think confining myself to this kind of practice is the only place I can locate “the end of suffering”. Any other thoughts I might or might not have about what happens when my body ceases its organic functioning are just as worldly and distracting as thoughts about whether I will get a promotion at work.

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Did you ever considered that you might juxtapose wrong pieces of the puzzle?

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All I needed to point out was that there are at least some instances of the use of “birth” where it refers to something other than what happens at the beginning of a lifetime.

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If I may be so bold: deriving an understanding of dhamma primarily from poetry will invariably lead to misunderstandings. That’s not what poetry is for. This is particularly the case when that poetry is read in inaccurate translations.

Let me just take one example from your post, a quote from Snp 5.5:

But this is far from clear. Allow me to ambiguate it up for you. The Pali is:

Dukkhassa jātip­pabha­vā­nu­passī

  • The case in which dukkha is expressed is either genitive (“of suffering”) or dative (“for suffering”).
  • The construal of the compound jātip­pabha­vā­nu­passī is not determined by the grammar. The latter part is straightforward, it means something like “observing the origin”. But how that relates to jāti is unclear. Evidently Thanissaro reads it as dukkhassa jātiñca pabha­vañca a­nu­passī.
  • Another reading would be dukkhassa ca jātiyā ca pabha­vā­nu­passī “observing (that attachments are) the origin of suffering and rebirth”.

A related idiom occurs at SN 12.51, where, in the context of dependent origination, we find the following:

yaṃ kho idaṃ anekavidhaṃ nānappakārakaṃ dukkhaṃ loke uppajjati jarāmaraṇaṃ, idaṃ kho dukkhaṃ jātinidānaṃ jātisamudayaṃ jātijātikaṃ jātippabhavaṃ. Jātiyā sati jarāmaraṇaṃ hoti, jātiyā asati jarāmaraṇaṃ na hotī
The suffering that arises in the world starting with old age and death takes many and diverse forms. The source, origin, birthplace, and root of this suffering is rebirth. When rebirth exists, old age and death come to be. When rebirth doesn’t exist, old age and death don’t come to be.

Now, note that here we find jāti both in the usual sense of “rebirth” as well as a term meaning “originate”. The term for “originate” is however a little different, jātika. The difference may or may not be significant; this specific term is unusual, and this may be the only occurrence in this sense (it is not mentioned in the PTS dictionary in this sense.). But the point here is that in a prose text such as this, there is no problem disambiguating these two senses. Note, too, that the term jātippabhava here clearly means “origin of birth”, not “origin and birth (of suffering)”, thus supporting my second reading above.

Given that mere grammar alone cannot determine the reading of this line, what can we tell from the context? The question is the origin of suffering, which we know from countless prose suttas involves rebirth. The brief explanation of this is the four noble truths, and the detailed explanation is dependent origination. The verses constantly allude to these teachings, but in the allusive and flexible style of verse. Reading the verse in translation, many of these allusions are lost.

The verse recurs in the Dvayatanupassana Sutta at Snp 3.12, where it is even more obviously embedded in the context of dependent origination.

The sutta says that suffering comes to someone who “being ignorant” (avidvā) “creates attachments” (upadhiṁ karoti). Ignorance is of course the root term of dependent origination, while “creates attachments” is a quasi-synonym of saṅkhārā and upādāna. As usual in verse, the text does not allow for a very precise meaning, but the general sense is clearly the same as dependent origination.

The text then goes on to say that a fool comes “again and again” to suffering:

Punappunaṃ dukkhamupeti mando

The term punappuna, recalling punabbhava from the definition of the second noble truth, i.e. “rebirth” is a stock idiom referring to the sequence of rebirths, as in the famous verse:

dukkhā jāti punappunaṃ
Painful is birth again and again.

The term is used repeatedly in a famous series of verses at SN 7.12 and elsewhere, which include an almost identical line:

Punappunaṃ gabbhamupeti mando
Again and again the fool comes to a womb
Punappunaṃ jāyati mīyati ca,
Again and again they get reborn and die
Punappunaṃ sivathikaṃ haranti;
Again and again they get carried off to the charnel ground

Now, returning to the Mettagupuccha, the next verse clearly uses jāti in the normal sense of “rebirth”, once again placing it in a context that clearly echoes dependent origination:

Jātiṃ jaraṃ soka­parid­davañca
Rebirth, old age, sorrow, and lamentation

Further down the text discusses how to get out of the problem of rebirth:

Etesu nandiñca nivesanañca,
Regarding these, having dispelled delight and abidings
Panujja viññāṇaṃ bhave na tiṭṭhe
one’s consciousness would not be stationed.

The idiom is a little complex, please forgive my over-literal translation. But once again, we see the use of terms that are immediately familiar from the central contexts of the four noble truths and dependent origination.

  • Nandi occurs in the second noble truth as a synonym for craving.
  • viññāṇaṃ bhave na tiṭṭhe is obviously an allusion to the idea of viññāṇaṭṭhiti, the so-called “stations of consciousness”, i.e. the various realms in which consciousness can be reborn, remaining in a state of existence (bhava). Thanissaro’s “consciousness should not take a stance in becoming” is wrong.

Finally the verses finish by saying that one who lets go of attachments to bhavābhava (= the various realms of rebirth), who is free of “craving” (second noble truth), will cross over rebirth and old age (first noble truth).

You mention that they abandon such things “right here”. But this is another idiom that is readily misunderstood in a vaguely interpreted and loose translation. In fact, such idioms as idheva and diṭṭhevadhamme mean “in the present lifetime”. The point is that the rewards of the practice are not something that you have to wait until after death to experience.

Thus taken as a whole, and read as they should be, in the context of the Buddha’s teachings, these verses unambiguously place rebirth at the center of the existential problem, and position the Dhamma as a path out of that. Remember, these verses were given to a brahmin student, so there is every reason to believe that both he and the Buddha had a shared acceptance of the reality of rebirth.

I would like to ask you to stop and think about this. I, too, once thought much as you do. I didn’t believe in rebirth, and I thought that those who taught such things were just parroting the party line, but that the real teachings of the Buddha were much more subtle. But I managed to not let that stop me, or to close my mind off. I looked deeper and deeper, and I found things that opened me up to new ways of seeing: I changed my mind. Why not at least play around with the idea that, just maybe, there is something worth looking at when it comes to rebirth?

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If we’re attached to this individual body-mind and its products as I, me, mine, my self, we will be perplexed about what will happen to I, me, mine, my self it at death. Understanding the process of dependent origination, we are no longer perplexed. It applies to the macro scale, life-to-life, and to the micro scale, moment-to-moment. These are one and the same process of natural change that is unsatisfactory and thus unfit to be perceived as I, me, mine, or my self.

If there are still forces that lead to becoming in the next moment, there will be becoming in the next moment. Whether that is the next moment as you’re reading these words or that next moment as the body breathes its last, it doesn’t matter. If those underlying tendencies, taints, and defilements in the mind are still in force, you can bet their attendant results will follow.

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Thank you venerable for saying what I was hoping to say, but much better than I could have done. The essence for me is that if we want to get the meaning of a word in a certain context it is much better to look at where it is actually defined (such as the sutta I gave) instead of harder to interpret things such as verses.

Your last paragraph reminded me again of one of the reasons why I opened this topic. The more I read in Pali the more obvious it is to me how central the idea of rebirth is in the suttas. And the translation clinging does not really carry this idea for me. Clinging is something you do in “the moment” while taking is more focused towards actually moving on to something. (a next life specifically)

Metta

It’s probably too much to ask, but I will anyway ;): what happened that you changed your mind?

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Thank you for your helpful comments, Bhante! I just want to clarify a few things about my previous remarks.

I did not argue that rebirth of the standard kind is not mentioned frequently in the suttas. It is obviously a large part of the worldview of the suttas, and appears to be presupposed by both the Buddha and most of his interlocutors, and to be an important subject of discussion, concern and reflection among them. I also did not argue that there are not passages in which references to various of the twelve nidānas most probably refer to stages in the round of rebirth extending across lifetimes. My claim was only that the paticcasamuppada teachings cannot be understood exclusively in those terms. I also noted that there are some important and rightly venerated spiritual teachers, like Ajahn Chah, who evidently have not understood it exclusively in those terms.

There are passages in the suttas whose interpretation, it seems to me, becomes very strained when the twelve nidānas are read exclusively as stages in a long process extended across several lifetimes, rather than as – at least sometimes - mental phenomena occurring rapidly and codependently in a more confined space of time. For example, several of the suttas in the Nidānasaṃyutta assert the dependence of consciousness on volitional formations, for example this one. Venerable Bodhi argues, following the traditional commentarial orthodoxy, that this refers to the fact that the volitional factors, as kamma in one life, are the pre-condition for the re-establishment of consciousness in future lives. This seems like a very limited, and limiting, reading to me. Surely part of the point is that the ongoing activity of planning and volitional activity serves as an ongoing condition for the continuing re-establishment and workings of viññana moment-by moment.

Similarly, other suttas dealing with namarupa describe the “descent of name-and-form” resulting from the contemplation of gratification from things that can fetter. The orthodox commenters tend to treat “namarupa” as referring in some way to the whole sentient organism, and thus meaning something like mind-and-body, and they then regard namarupa, considered as a nidāna in paticcasammupada, as some process by which mind and body come together in a sentient organism at conception. It seems to me that it makes much more sense to interpret namarupa in many contexts as something like “concept and form.” So, for example, when we view the world, we don’t just experience it as a bunch of forms: colored patches, sounds, etc. Rather we conceptualize the forms we encounter as car, spouse, dinner-bell, etc. They are things to which “names” have been applied. And only because they are conceptualized as objects of various kinds do they become subjects of craving or aversion. It seems fairly clear that when the Buddha talks about the decent of name-and-form as being analogous to the sinking of a tree’s roots in the ground, and develops the analogy further in terms of the nourishment of samsaric existence conditioned by the craving you experience for the things in life that can fetter you, he is not talking about something that happened when you were an embryo. If you see a form whose signs and features you don’t ignore and that you conceptualize as an attractive member of the opposite sex, and you begin to fantasize sexually, then you are tightening or deepening your fetters to the world, like the roots of a tree, and nourishing samsaric existence right then and there.

The Buddha also treats the paticcasamuppada elaborately in one context as a tool for “inward exploration” – for tracing one’s current suffering to its root and origin. The upshot is that once you understand the pleasures of the world as impermanent, dukkha, not self, a disease and fearful, you abandon craving. And as soon as you abandon craving, your suffering comes to an end. I think this goes along with the idea that the whole of the dhamma is present in this fathom-long body. You don’t have to search for it in space by wondering about what is beyond the oceans, and you don’t have to search for it in time by plotting out schemes of lives past and present.

Also, it is hard to understand the famous sheaves simile if the only kinds of dependency on conditions the Buddha was talking about were trans-temporal chains extending across large stretches of time.

One further problem I have with reading paticcasamuppada exclusively in the multiple lifetime way is that it turns some of the Buddha’s apparent explanations of suffering into, one might say, insipid non-explanations. For example, if the Buddha says that after studying the causes of suffering he realized “with discernment” that aging and death are dependent upon birth, what are we to make of that? The Buddha is hardly the first human being to recognize that you can’t grow old and die if you aren’t born in the first place! The teachings of the greatest spiritual master in the history of humanity are in this case reduced to pocket book Buddhist “wisdom” about relative commonplaces in life. Also, simply asserting that volitional activities carried out now bear fruit as the re-establishment of consciousness and dukkha in some future life isn’t much of an explanation of anything unless it is accompanied by some insight into the fundamental processes by which these outcomes occur. If one is examining one’s painful grief, or despondency, or anger, the more intricate psychological readings actually give you something to work with to help understand what is nourishing and constructing these forms of dukkha. On the other hand, saying “Well you did some bad stuff in previous lives, and by some mysterious means you cannot grasp, this has resulted in the painful anger you now feel”, isn’t very helpful.

We have reason to think the Buddha’s teaching on paticcasamuppada was frequently misunderstood. For example, when Ananda came to him and said “Hey, I totally get the paticcasamuppada”, the Buddha said, “Don’t say that. The paticcasamuppada is incredibly subtle. Hardly anybody in the world gets it.”

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No problems, I understand where you’re coming from, and really, I don’t want to contest your beliefs. I think these things are complex, and they evolve in unpredictable ways as we grow in life. You know better than I do what matters for your life, so go you!

My only issue, really, stems from my—doubtless excessive!—immersion in the Suttas, and frustration when I see obvious mistranslations used to justify points of Dhamma. I apologize if I seem dogmatic on this, but I have just seen it happen so often.

The word is avakkanti, which unambiguously means “rebirth”. “Descent” is just one of the many inaccurate translations foisted upon us by over-literal translators. From DN 15:

Viññāṇañca hi, ānanda, mātukucchismiṃ okkamitvā vokkamissatha, api nu kho nāmarūpaṃ itthattāya abhi­nib­bat­tis­sathā
If consciousness, having “descended” (i.e. “been conceived” or “reborn”) into the mother’s womb, were to be miscarried, would name and form be born into this world?

But in general, you’re over-interpreting the application of dependent origination across multiple lifetimes. Of course it affects how things happen within one life as well. In fact, there are plenty of other teachings where this kind of thing is addressed explicitly. But that’s not the point of the teaching of dependent origination. The point is to explain how rebirth happens without a soul. Take that away, and you have a massive gaping wound in the middle of Buddhist doctrine.

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C[quote=“sujato, post:39, topic:4158”]
But in general, you’re over-interpreting the application of dependent origination across multiple lifetimes. Of course it affects how things happen within one life as well. In fact, there are plenty of other teachings where this kind of thing is addressed explicitly. But that’s not the point of the teaching of dependent origination. The point is to explain how rebirth happens without a soul. Take that away, and you have a massive gaping wound in the middle of Buddhist doctrine.
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Well, I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree on that one, Bhante. It seems to me that dependent origination is employed almost constantly in the sutras - sometimes with many links and sometimes with only a few - and the main focus is on the source of “this whole mass of suffering”. Just explaining rebirth doesn’t explain suffering. After all, we could probably conceive of a much happier universe than ours in which there was still rebirth.

Also, I have been reading these suttas for years and have never come across anything I would regard as an actual explanation of rebirth. It is claimed that the seeds of unwholesome kamma bear fruit in future lives. But that’s not an explanation. It’s just an assertion. It’s kind of analogous to claiming that pumpkin seeds planted in New England result in pumpkins sprouting in Vietnam. Even if true for some reason, the claim is not an explanation.

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