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The Twelve Nidanas ("Preconditions")

The Buddha became enlightened when he was able to figure out the causal chain responsible for rebirth. The Buddhist term for this causal chain, pratityasamutpada ("Interdependent Origination"), points to the way that various elements are linked, with one step laying the groundwork for others in the chain. According to one account, the Buddha started at the end, contemplating suffering and death (which he wanted to find a way to avoid), and worked his way backward to see the basis for each of these things. .

There are twelve nidanas (literally "fetters," but more broadly preconditions) in this chain, and although the picture depicts them in linear fashion, Buddhist scholars take pains to point out multiple possible feedback loops (with one element leading to the next in linear fashion, but also reinforcing each other, and one common metaphor for this process is of water rushing from trickles to streams to rivers to oceans (getting more volume all the time). For example, breaking one's leg in an accident could affect one at multiple levels: the samskaras (number two, since one might avoid that place or situation in the future), name and form (number 4, since one's form had been altered), feeling (number 7, since one would be feeling pain), and craving (number 8, since one would seek to avoid it in the future).

From a religious perspective, the two most important steps are the first (ignorance), and the seventh (craving), since these are the two points at which human beings can consciously disrupt this causal chain, and thus bring it to an end. Each of the twelve nidanas is traditionally associated with an image, which means that this teaching would have been accessible to illiterate people.

1. Ignorance (avidya)—A blind old woman

Avidya is the lack of wisdom (vidya)--it is not just that people haven't learned some fact that they need to know, but rather that their habitual ways of perceiving the world are fundamentally mistaken, and thus they are "blinded" (by greed, desire, lust, etc.).

2. Karmic formations (samskaras)— Potter making pots

Pots are common images in Indian philosophy—they get made, get broken, and in between are useful objects. Karmic formations—the activity of body, speech and mind, usually performed with embedded ideas of having a "Self"— create create our dispositions and personalities (and like pots, are subject to change over time)

3. Consciousness (vijnana)-A monkey scampering across a rooftop

The monkey is one of the traditional images for human consciousness--just as monkeys run here and there (sometimes seemingly aimlessly), in the same way human consciousness wanders as the objects of perception (physical and mental) change.

Connecting a consciousness (of something) with ideas of a Self is the work of the samskaras

4. Name and Form (nama-rupa)--Two Men in a Boat

"Form" denotes the physical element of a person's experience (the body), and "Name" the non-physical elements (sensation, feeling, samskaras, and consciousness). Both are parts of one personality, just as both men are in one boat. For Buddhists, the error is supposing that Name and Form are elements of some unchanging, continuous identity, which they deny since these components are all impermanent and ever changing).

5. The Six Senses (shadayatana)--A house with six windows

The six senses are sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste, and the mind (which perceives and processes mental objects). As our source of sense data, they are clearly involved with our interactions with the world.

Contact (sparsha)--A couple making love.

The activity of the sense organs brings one into contact with the objects in the world (if there were no sense organs, or one of those sense organs was deficient, this would be impossible).

7. Feeling (vedana)-A man with an arrow in his eye

Contact gives rise to feelings of attachment and aversion, depending on the nature of the contact (this particular example gives me the creeps).

8. Craving (trshna)--A picnic (eating and drinking)

When one generates mental feelings based on the sensations of the sense organs, one will seek to obtain the pleasant ones, and avoid the unpleasant ones. This is reinforced into habitual patterns of attachment and aversion.

9. Grasping (upadana)--A monkey picking fruit

Once one has developed desires to obtain something (or to avoid something), one takes concrete steps to try to get (or avoid) it.

10. Becoming (bhava)--A pregnant woman

Once one purposefully strives to gain (or avoid) things, this pattern of intentional activity sets up the operation of karma, which lays down causes whose effects become manifest in the present and future lives.

11. Birth (jati)--A woman giving birth

One's karmic activities lead to rebirth in a state that reflects the quality of that karma.

12. Old Age and Death (jara-marana)--A corpse being carried away (and bodies on the ground).

Once born, death is inevitable. Old age can be avoided by dying young, but few people desire this. Old age, illness, and death are a

shorthand for the problems afflicting human existence to which the Buddha was seeking an answer.

Note: Background information for the explanations on this page was taken from Richard Robinson and Willard Johnson, The Buddhist Religion: A Historical Introduction, Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1997, pp. 25-27.

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