Twelve nidanas the twelve links of co-dependent origination.

How did I get here? Our life experiences arent determined by fate or some divine influence, but by causes and conditions that we can see. Gaining insight into these causes and conditions allow us to influence and change our experience our life. What this really means is that there is nothing external to our lives, to our experience. As karma or actions, unfold we can look at what is happening and see patterns based on compulsive behavior. The first compulsion is ignorance. Ignorance is not the cosmic cause in the sense that we suddenly lapse into ignorance and it all goes to hell. But rather we start with ignorance as a skillful means of relating this topic. In reality, all these 12 factors are co-dependent, forming a non stop round of existence hence the wheel of life and the word samsara: cyclic existence. 1. Ignorance (avidaya or ma rigpa) Fundamental ignorance of the truths and the delusion of mistakenly perceiving the skandhas as a self. a. An old blind person groping for his way with a cane b. Skandas i. Form ii. Feeling iii. Perceptions iv. Impulses v. Consciousness Formation (saskra) As long as there is ignorance there is the formation of karma: positive, negative and neutral actions of body speech and mind based on the belief in self. This forms the rebirths in the various realms. a. A potter shaping a vase on a wheel The pots the potter makes symbolise the actions of body, speech and mind with which he moulds his karma in the wheel of life. Karmic imprints or traces from actions in previous lives affect our present and future lives in the form of certain propensities, just as the potters wheel keeps turning after a single push. b. Karma - literally means 'action' but it also refers to the process of cause and effect whereby positive actions result in happiness and negative, harmful actions lead to suffering. The real message of the teachings on karma is personal responsibility and personal opportunity. Life is a car that we can steer not a train on a set path. Consciousness (vijna) Formations cause the consciousness. The consciousness propels one towards the next existence and that a particular state. If there is something that is reborn it is consciousness. Formations constantly feed and inform this consciousness. a. A monkey swinging from a tree The monkey represents our consciousness, the way we tend to spring from one thought to another in an uncontrolled manner. b. Habitual patterns are part of consciousness c. The consciousness is the active part of the mind d. Eight consciousnesses i. 5 sense consciousnesses ii. Mental or Mind Consciousness iii. Emotional Consciousness iv. Foundational consciousness/storehouse/all-ground

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Name-and-form (nma-rpa) The five skandhas. By the power of consciousness one is linked to a birth, and there the body develops: the form (rupa) and the four name (nama) skandhas of sensation, perception, formation and consciousness. This is combined to indicate the close relationship of the mind and body. a. A person (or people) on a boat. The five skandhas that make up our sense of self need a physical body: form (the boat) and a psyche: name (the mental skandhas: feeling, perception, mental formations, consciousness). The six ayatanas (ayatana) The six inner ayatanas of the sense structures then arise. a. A house with five windows and a door. This symbolises the six senses by which the outer world is perceived. In the wheel of life they are represented by an empty house because this is a time when the organs of the embryo are developing but not yet functioning. b. six ayatanas - the six sense faculties (or six inner sources): i. eyes ii. ears iii. nose iv. tongue v. body vi. mind Contact (spara) The coming together of objects, sense structure and consciousness is contact. This explains the interaction between external sense objects and internal sense perceptions. a. A couple embracing b. the six sense objects (or six outer sources): i. sights ii. sounds iii. smells iv. tastes v. textures vi. mental objects c. These 12 combined with the aforementioned 6 consciousnesses make the 18 dhatus 18 elements.

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Sensation (vedan) From contact of external object and sense structure (nose, ear, etc) and evaluation by the sense consciousness arises sensation: pleasurable, painful and neutral. a. A person with an arrow in their eye b. Because of habitual patterns, we have impulses or mental formations that immediately make us perceive something as pleasurable, painful and neutral, based on the three poisons passion, aggression and ignorance. Craving (t) the desire not to be separated from things we like and escape things we hate. This is an automatic habitual response. a. A woman offering a drink to a man Grasping (updna) Craving develops into grasping - actively striving never to be separated from things we like and escape things we hate. a. A man plucking fruit from a tree

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10. Becoming (bhava) Through this grasping one acts with body, speech and mind, and creates the karmic habituations that determine ones next existence. In other words; if you want to know what your past life was like, look at your current situation. If you want to know what your next life will be like, look at your current actions. a. A beautiful bride (sometimes depicted as a couple making love or a pregnant woman) i. The image conveys a sense of marriage or matching or bonding your consciousness with your actions we become what we do, think and say. 11. Rebirth (jti) Through the power of this becoming, one is reborn in a particular birthplace whenever the necessary conditions are assembled. This is the appearance of habituations (where-as becoming was the creation of that habit). This is the forming of the life, based on habituations. a. A woman giving birth 12. Old age and death (jar-maraa) Following rebirth there is a continual process of aging as the aggregates change, develop and decay and eventually there is death when the aggregates finally cease. a. Bearers with a corpse