Well , if that is so , how to explain ending of consciousness following is the ending of the namarupa ?
Once you ends ignorant , intention ends(wisdom remain as you said) , consciousnesses should ends also , right ?
When the reason to crave ice-cream (ignorance) is gone, no intension for it remains. Therefore no consciousness will arise at the tongue base for ice-cream, and no rebirth in a sensual realm, to experience more ice-cream (which in turn requires a gross physical body).
Alternatively the arahanth will receive ice-cream. As there is no ignorance no perception of sensuality will arise. There will be no craving or attachment. No rebirth. There will only be the pleasant feeling of the ice-cream.
With metta
Sorry to say I found this explanation hard to accept , craving for ice cream is not ignorant !
Forgive me for my ignorant , I am saying the 12 interdependent origination start with ignorant and then follow by intention , but if you say the craving arises out of ignorant then I can see it , otherwise I admit I don’t know .
Isn’t there is a different between ignorance and craving both ?!
Ignorance is seeing:
permanence in the impermanent,
satisfactory in the unsatisfactory
Self in the not-self. AN4.49
When one sees tilakkhana one sees there is nothing worth clinging to in this world.
As long as we think things are permanent, satisfactory and self then things are potentially worthy of clinging to. The process of insight makes this clear.
As long as something looks delightful, we have the intension -based on craving- to experience it.
with metta
How do you relate ending of consciousness and thereby the endings of namarupa ? Because you are implying once you ends ignorant , intension also stops ! I suppose the arahant still have will, for example , there is one arahant decide to kill himself due to sickness . Therefore , I can’t see how it works out .
(What I asked is how the reverse sequence 12 nidana goes about ?!)
This is actually starting to make more sense to me now.
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I would say that ignorance is just greed, hatred, and delusion. So you can still have intention born from compassion and metta.
You only have six classes of consciousness , once you abandoned ignorant , immediately after that you cease to have intension and then ends your six group of consciousness ? Following that you ends your namarupa ?
We are talking about reverse order to end the future birth from the moment you abandoned ignorance , right ?
This isn’t the foundations of existence though, this is the foundation of suffering. So you still have consciousness, but it’s not an ignorant consciousness, not an ignorant nama-rupa, not an ignorant sense media, contact, feeling, and from there it all changes. If you wanted to see how it works once you reach arahantship, it would be a totally different set up because craving and clinging have been removed. So consciousness continues to arise but it doesn’t go anywhere from there except out of compassion and metta, because everything else has been uprooted.
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I don’t think this is how 12 nidana should explained as such , it doesn’t seems right to me .
Check out SN12.2 and SN35.93, it’s helped me in this discussion a lot. You see how consciousness is the result of contact, but in DO it’s right after fabrications, so those fabrications must be a previous contact than the contact further up. I’m still working through the details myself, but I do feel like I’m on the right track.
There is a different interpretation of the 12 nidana , and I feel that many of it doesn’t make sense .
I haven’t had a chance to look at all the texts you’ve cited @jimisommer, but it seems to me that the solution to the problem you proposed is that all of the nidanas are part of an ongoing recursive process. For example, if I hear an unpleasant sound and leave a room as a result, that means that there is an initial instance of ear consciousness that occurs when my auditory organs make contact with objects of some kind or other. That leads to a volitional formation to leave the room, which leads me to put my hand on the doorknob, which results in a new event of hand consciousness or whatever, which itself will be pleasant or unpleasant etc. etc. a given nidana is thus a condition for the arising of another nidana of the same kind.
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Yeah, I have a similar idea. I also wonder if consciousness at the beginning is really just the potential for it, and actual sense consciousness doesn’t arise until contact. The only other way I can think of is if this process is actually overlapping itself, running through at different sections simultaneously. So when you reach contact, the process starts anew as the previous run plays through to the end, and so on and so forth. By the way I brought you in just because you’re known to be fairly objective with these things lol.
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Correct. But note that the DO has an illustrative purpose. It doesn’t describe all of what happens- just critical connections on the path to suffering.
Furthemore, if we intend to see or feel something, that intention can also give rise to consciousness (as clearly shown in the DO). This then gives rise to the vinnana paccaya nama-rupa; whereas name-rupa giving rise to vinnana is what happens when it is occurring without an intention ie ‘bare awareness’, ‘choiceless awareness’.
with metta
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If something is impermanent it is dukkha -unsatisfactory. Therefore for complete cessation of dukkha all impermanent things must come to an end, right?
This means that nama-rupa must cease and so should consciousness, along with them.
The stream entrant sees the four noble truths- ie sees the third noble truth, and sees Nibbana (or gets a glimpse of it). Here the cessation of the DO results in stopping of all conditioned (read impermanent) phenomena. If they have ability to go into jhana they will be able to immerse (body witness -khaya sakki) in Nibbana for an extended duration. Here they would see that the path is indeed able to stop nama-rupa and vinnana. Consciousness should cease (for a little while). Like waking up from a sleep, there would be awareness that they had slept …and it would be restful…and blissful.
What happens here seems to be that when the tilakkhana is seen repeatedly and the mind goes past repulsion (nibbida) and dispassion (viraga) it enters into the phase of cessation (nirodha). Here phenomena, due to lack of craving (and ignorance) begins to stop arising. That is, normally phenomena arise and pass away. Here they don’t arise after they pass away, like before. What then remains is pure emptiness ie no conditioned or impermanent phenomena exists anymore (that is, it is not perceived). Consciousness now exists seeing emptiness (or Nibbana) as the meditator still has the intention (sankhara) to see thereby giving rise to vinnana (AN10.7). However when this intention is also released consciousness also ceases to exist (this experience: AN10.6). However the body still exists therefore consciousness is produced yet again and phenomena starts manifesting again. As long as life remains in the body nama-rupa keeps getting produced.
with metta
Could you define namarupa ?
Nibbana is a state ?
If nibbana is cessation of all phenomenon , then how could it be a state for you to witness ?
Does the craving stop first or ignorance ?
Without perceiving , how does one come to know about anything ? Including so called Nibbāna . Only when the mind come to a halt , there is no awareness at that instance therefore no sense of knowing . It’s after the functioning of the mind re emerge, then we are conscious again , is that right ?
P/s - anyway this doesn’t explain the reverse sequence of interdependent origination accordingly start from cessation of ignorant to death .