Whats so special about tanha?

[Mark_Foote]

@sujato

In its straightforward usage, bhava means “existence” or “life” in the sense of “in my past life I was Cleopatra”. But it has a more philosophical sense: we exist now, and will continue to exist in the future. So there is a continuity of “existence” which manifests as particular “lives”.

“Craving for existence” is not “craving to become”, it means “craving to continue, to survive, to be”, especially, the craving to be reborn in future lives.

The craving for sensory pleasure, the craving “to be”, the craving “not to be”.

I have not seen “past habitations” or “future arisings”, but I can say that the cravings make sense in the here and now to me, in the way I described.

I’ve often thought that they are prejudices, toward the present (sensory desire), toward the future (becoming, “to be”), or toward the past (not becoming, not “to be”).