Dependent Origination

[Bodhisatta2012]

Dependent Upon Form

[Bodhisatta2012]

The Critical Path Vector

[Don Athukorala]

Derailed again
We began with asking the question “What is Dependent Origination and have now clearly demonstrated Buddha’s most profound teaching.
We began with Avijja in our brain - Avijja (ignorance - not seeing clearly, losing mindfulness)

and now we end up with soka-parideva-dukkha-domanassuppayasa (i.e., it ranges through sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair - so it ranges from being mildly upset to having an emotional breakdown)

This is DO

[Spiny le Norman]

We began with Avijja in our brain - Avijja (ignorance - not seeing clearly, losing mindfulness)

I think avijja goes a lot deeper than merely "losing mindfulness".  It's effectively a state of delusion, which is the "default" for samsara. 

Spiny

[Hanzze]

I don't think so. It's just that mindfulness is actually deeper as we are used to think it is. Avijja  is also not something firm, it just comes and goes on and on, conditioned. *smile*

Falling Out of a Tree

...It's the same with dependent co-arising. "Ignorance is the condition for fabrications. Fabrications are the condition for consciousness. Consciousness is the condition for name and form." We've studied this and memorized it, and it's true, the way the Buddha has divided things up like this for students to study. But when these things actually arise, they're too fast for you to count.

It's like falling from the top of a tree — thump! — to the ground. We don't know which branches we've passed. The moment the mind is struck by a good object, if it's something it likes, it goes straight to "good." It doesn't know the connecting steps in between. They follow in line with the texts, but they also go outside of the texts. They don't say, "Right here is ignorance. Right here is fabrication. Right here is consciousness. Right here is name and form." They don't have signs for you to read. It's like falling out of a tree. The Buddha talks about the mental moments in full detail, but I use the comparison with falling out of a tree. When you slip out of a tree — thump! — you don't measure how many feet and inches you've fallen. All you know is you've crashed to the ground and are already hurting.

[Amulet]

Upadana paccaya bhavo (bhava means becoming - this is the thrill of getting what you want)

Becoming is an invisible process pushed into motion by our craving desire to repeat the thrill
worldly sensory thrills are transitory and fade, like the satisfaction from a coffee, or sex or a cigarette

Only when we see (insight meditation) that the striving after impermanent satisfactory sensations only leads to the 'repeat' effect and once the satisfaction fades, after a while, the craving for re-fulfillment recurs

this is what we call 'watta chakra' the turning wheel
We perpetuate the process, and it is this inclination that is present within our hearts, which is the driving energy of upadhana (addiction for a repeat experience)

This Upadhana sensation is precisely what is the cause of Bhava (becoming)

Now as to 'Becoming'
we never get to BE, only ever 'in the process of becoming'
we are all 'inbetweenies' and between leaving one state and becoming another
its all just a roiling sea of becoming and shapes trying to take on some substance and 'BE' (exist in a fixed way)
But they fall apart in the same moment these shapes rise up and try to form themself, and they fall back into the great ocean of impermanence

the closes we can ever get to really Being something is 'becoming'
We are always changing and in flux as is everything, because nothing can be held in the same state for more than a split instant (not even that because the unit of an instant vectors off into infinity too and has inbetween sub units of measurement forever.. there is no such thing as a 'single instant' so nothing ever exists even for an instant.. only is in process of becoming)