< Ahan Sutra >: Twelve Causes to Disassemble the Underlying Code of Suffering
How precise is the cycle of twelve causes?
You went from the moment the alarm went off this morning to now
It's gone in one piece for an unknown number of rounds.
Every time you're anxious about a piece of news
Every time you get irritated by a thought
Every time you know you shouldn't swipe your phone, your finger slides over it
It's all the same program running behind
Buddha did not have a computer
No flowchart software
But he looked at it through pure insight.
Take every step of this process
Every jump
Each cycle condition
All reverse engineered
And he discovered something even more crucial
There's a loophole in this cycle.
You just need to insert a breakpoint at the correct location
The whole program will stop
Hello
Hello.
I am Wang Lijie
Last time we took apart the Four Noble Truths
The Buddha's diagnosis for all mankind
The symptom is suffering
The cause is thirst
Noji
The prescription is the Noble Eightfold Path
What we're going to do today is open the attachment to that diagnosis
pathology report
The Four Noble Truths tell you
Are you sick?
The reason is this
Twelve causes tell you
What exactly is going on inside you at any given moment?
Twelve Causes
Sanskrit is called Twelve Origins
Twelve links
end to end
Form a closed loop
It's not a linear causal chain.
It's a self-reinforcing feedback loop.
I'm going to go through the names of the 12 links as fast as I can.
Let you have a panorama in your heart
And then we came back.
Take it apart slowly
ignorance, line, knowledge, name, six entry, touch
Receive, love, take, have, live, old age and death
Twelve links
The last old man to die
Receive the first ignorance
Form a closed loop
OK
Now I'm going to break those 12 links down into three.
You will have a better understanding of what each paragraph corresponds to in your life
first paragraph
Ignorance, action, awareness
These three links are the underlying drivers of the entire cycle
You don't even realize they're running
It's not that you are stupid
It's not that you haven't read
The original meaning of the word is not ignorance
But can't see clearly
You don't know. You don't know.
You treat the impermanent as if it were eternal
Treat something without a fixed essence as having a fixed essence
Use the mechanism that creates pain as a tool for the pursuit of pleasure
This lack of vision is not a personal intellectual disability
It is factory set.
Evolution has written it into your operating system.
Because a creature who always feels that there is not enough
Has a survival advantage over a contented creature
Natural selection doesn't care if you're happy.
It only cares if you survive or not
So I can't see clearly.
It's the default mode it comes pre-installed for you.
Driven by ignorance
It's not your walk
It means artificial
Based on all the psychological impulses and behavioral responses that arise from not seeing clearly
You think you're making choices freely.
But most of the time
You're just executing an unspecified script
These artifacts form imprints deep in your consciousness
In the language we use in the Consciousness Only series
The seed was planted into Alaya consciousness
Then comes the knowledge
In the context of the Twelve Causes
This knowledge is not a categorical framework of the eight kinds of knowledge in consciousness-only
It is closer to the original projection of consciousness - with the base color of ignorance
With all the marks left by the pretense
A cognitive system comes online
These three links together
What's that?
It's before you open your eyes
The system has completed the initialization
You think you wake up every morning a blank slate
Actually, no.
The moment you wake up
Wuming is already running in the background.
Your emotional response patterns from yesterday
Already saved as seed
Your mind carries these preconceptions.
Start a new day
You have not chosen this starting point
But you start from this point.
second paragraph
Name, Six in, Touch, Receive
These four links
It's your perception system that comes online
And start the process of receiving data
Fame is your physical and mental structure
Name is mental activity
Color is a form of matter.
Combined, it is your entire hardware and operating system.
So, hexagon is six sensors.
Eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, mind
All your information receiving ports are open.
The touch is when the sensor meets the data.
Your eyes catch a message that pops up on your phone screen.
Your ears hear the boss calling your name
Then there is suffering
Touch makes sense.
Attention
This feeling is very primitive
There are only three.
Comfortable, uncomfortable, or insensitive
It's much faster than your mind.
The moment you saw that message
Your body reacts before your brain does
Stomach tightens slightly
Or the chest sinks
Or the corners of the mouth rise slightly
This reaction is automatic
Extremely fast.
Almost out of your control
So far.
Everything is still within normal limits.
sensory reception data
Produce primal feelings
And that's what any conscious system would do.
Reference before we "have two of you in mind
One is saying
A point of view that was listening to that video
The above part can be understood as a small local AI model of our physical body
In automated operation
It's like Tesla's driverless FSD.
Or the NPCs in the game.
The crux of the matter lies in the next jump
third paragraph
Love, take, have, life, old age and death
This is the most crucial passage in the entire twelve causes
The Engine Room of Human Suffering
Before entering the analysis
I want to give you a firsthand sense of what the Buddha himself said about this passage.
In the Pali Classics
There is a burning scripture called the Fire Sermon
The Buddha said to a thousand practitioners
Your eyes are burning
What you see is burning
The consciousness generated by the eyes is burning
Eye contact is burning
All feelings generated by contact
Whether it is comfortable
uncomfortable
Still not bitter
All are burning
Burned by what
Fire of greed
Fire of hatred
The fire of ignorance burns
Ears are burning
The nose is burning
Tongue is burning
Body is burning
Consciousness is burning
Your entire sensory system
It's burning with these three fires all the time.
What is Buddha doing?
He wasn't explaining the chain of touch, reception and love.
He tore it open
Your senses are not calmly receiving information.
They're burning.
Every touch
Behind every feeling
There is a fire of greed, anger and delusion burning
It is said that a thousand listeners became enlightened on the spot
Whether this account is exaggerated or not
The message was clear.
When you really see your sensory system burning
The one who sees itself
It has the power to put out fires
OK
Now back to the structure of the twelve causes
And it creates a primal feeling.
Then love comes
Love is not the love of love here
Its original meaning is thirst
The one I talked about in the last issue
Thirst like a fire in the throat
Comfortable feeling rises
You automatically want more.
Uncomfortable feelings arise
You automatically want to drive away
This automatically
Is the key
You haven't thought about it at all
The reaction has already happened
Once the thirst starts
Upgrade to take
attachment
Not just I want
But I have to get
Deeper than love
Because it's starting to hang on
You don't just want to feel comfortable.
You start to build a narrative around it.
I deserve this.
Lose this and I'm done
Why do others have it and I don't?
Take solidification as have
inertia of existence
Your behavior patterns are locked
Your identity is reinforced
You become the anxious one.
The one who always feels mistreated
The person who can't live without his phone
Karma is formed here
Then life and old age and death
Carry on with these solidified patterns
And then existence dies.
Decline itself creates new ignorance
Because of the fear and confusion you experience from decline
It becomes the fuel for the next cycle
Closed loop complete
OK
The structure is demolished
Now I'm going to tell you
The most important thing in the entire Twelve Causes
Where is the exit?
The exit is between acceptance and love
This is also the interface between consciousness and primordial spirit
Or rather
The interface between Tesla's steering wheel and the driver in autonomous driving
Do you want Yuanshen to take over the self-driving driverless car?
Just at this moment
Moments you see a colleague get promoted
This is touch.
A complex feeling surged in his chest
This is subject to
So far.
You have no choice.
Sensory exposure to data
The body produces primal feelings
This is automatic.
But then something happened
Decided everything
You are pushed by this feeling
Or did you see this feeling?
If you are being pushed
The uncomfortable feeling is automatically triggered: why is he promoted?
Not my reaction to the promotion
This is love.
And then you regurgitate.
compare
make up stories
This is taking
Emotions solidified that I was mistreated by the world
This is there
The whole process may only take three seconds
But the core structure of the twelve causes
Ran it all over again.
What if you saw it?
You notice that
A feeling rose in my chest
Not very comfortable
You didn't reach out and grab it.
Didn't turn around to run away from it
There you were.
Watch it.
It only takes a few seconds.
The automatic jump between receiving and loving
Broken
The chain broke a link here
Take the back
Yes.
raw
Old age and death have all lost their raw materials
This cycle can't go on
Congratulations!
That moment
On a dangerous road
You successfully took over your driverless car
Avoided danger
That moment.
You are a true gamer
Rather than NPCs
This intervention point discovered by the Buddha
The core operation of mindfulness-based stress reduction therapy today
Point to the exact same location
You're not changing your feelings.
You're changing your relationship to your feelings.
And there's a saying that goes around.
There is a space between stimulus and response
In that space
There is the power to choose our responses.
This quote is often attributed to Victor Frankl
The exact origin is still in doubt
But the space it describes
And the gap between receiving and loving that Buddha discovered through Vipassana under the Bodhi tree
Is the same location
Frankl's personal experience in Nazi concentration camps
It is the strongest evidence that this space really exists
You might ask
This gap is too narrow
Less than a second
How could I possibly squeeze in?
This is why there is mindfulness and concentration in the Noble Eightfold Path
The function of mindfulness
Just widen that gap
Never less than a second
Become two seconds
Three seconds
Ten seconds
The function of positive definition
Is to keep your attention firmly anchored in that gap
Not to be swept away by the waves of feeling
As you continue to train awareness
The space you have between receiving and loving
It's going to get bigger.
Big to the end
You can stand in that space.
Watch the whole cycle run in front of you
Without getting caught up in it
This is the prescription for the Four Noble Truths I talked about in the last issue
Noble Eightfold Path
The exact connection point with the twelve causes and conditions I talked about today
The Four Noble Truths say that suffering can end
Twelve causes tell you where it ends
The Noble Eightfold Path tells you how to end
Three sets of frameworks
A system
Finally, I'd like to use two other original dialogues from the Ahan Sutra
Let's wrap up today's content
The first paragraph is the Arrow Parable Sutra
A cultivator named the boy
Went and asked the Buddha a series of metaphysical questions
Is the universe eternal or not?
Are the soul and the body the same thing or different things?
Buddha does not answer
So he says.
You're like a poisoned arrow.
Before the arrow is drawn
You have to find out who fired the arrow first
What material is the bow made of?
What shape is the arrow?
You haven't figured it out yet
Is already dead
This conversation
It is the attitude of the Buddha towards the learner of the twelve karma
You don't have to ask the ultimate question of where ignorance comes from.
The Twelve Causes are not for your philosophical speculation
It's a blueprint.
What you need
Is to find that breakpoint
The gap between acceptance and love
Then do it.
Arrow on you
Draw the arrow first
One more paragraph
It's the Snake Parable
Buddha drew an analogy
Someone wants to catch a snake
If he scratches the snake's tail
The snake will turn back and bite him
If he first holds the snake in place with a forked stick
Hold it firmly by the neck again
Won't be bitten
Buddha said
That's what I teach.
If you grab the wrong spot
It will harm you in turn
This sentence
For all those who study the twelve causes
Is an extremely important warning
You can memorize the twelve links by heart
You can use it to analyze other people's emotional responses
Well analyzed
But if you just think of it as a mind game
As an after-dinner conversation
You're scratching the snake's tail.
Really grasp the twelve causes correctly
Is to use it in your own life
The next time you feel the moment you are raised
Can you walk without being automatically pushed?
That's catching the snakehead.
So, 2,500 years ago, the Buddha made this 12-step flow chart.
Its core message
It's not that life is an endless cycle, you accept your fate
Quite the contrary.
It's telling you.
Although the loop is the default state
But the default state can be overridden
The exit is not outside the loop
You don't need to step out of your life to stop the pain
The exit is inside the loop
Just between receiving and loving
In that gap of less than a second
The starting point for all your spiritual practices in life
Maybe that's the moment.
The feeling rises
You are not being pushed
You saw it.
And once you see it once
You can't pretend you didn't see it anymore
In the next issue, we will leave Ahan Sutra
Enter one of the most famous Buddhist scriptures
Diamond Sutra
There should be nothing to live in but a heart
This is probably the most well-known Buddhist scripture in all of China
What are you talking about?
It is related to the Four Noble Truths and the Twelve Causes established by us in these two periods
What is the relationship?
For the twelve causes discussed today
How do you feel?
Especially the gap between love and love
You are in your daily life
Have you ever captured that moment?
The feeling rises
But you're not immediately pushed around.
Even if only once
Welcome to let me know in the comment area.
I am Wang Lijie
See you next time.