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4 Suffering in Dependent Origination Always Depends on Attachment

Suffering in the operation of Paticcasamuppada must always depend on attachment. Take a farmer who works out in the open, exposed to wind and sun, transplanting the young rice plants : he thinks "Oh! I'm so hot!" If no clinging arises in the sense of "I'm so hot!" there is merely suffering of a natural kind and not of the kind associated with Dependent Origination. Suffering according to the law of Paticcasamuppada must have clinging to the point of agitation about the "I" concept. So it happens that the farmer becomes irritated and dissatisfied with being born a farmer. He thinks it's his fate, his karma, that he must bathe in his own sweat. When one thinks this way, suffering according to the Law of Dependent Origination arises.

If one is hot and has a backache but nothing more, if one simply feels and knows that he is hot without any clinging to the "I" concept as above, then the suffering of Dependent Origination has not arisen. Please observe this carefully and make clear the distinction between these two kinds of suffering. If there is clinging, it is suffering according to Dependent Origination. Suppose you cut your hand with a sharp knife or razor blade and the blood gushes out. If you simply feel the pain but don't cling to anything, then your suffering is natural and not according to Dependent Origination.

Don't confuse the two. Suffering according to Dependent Origination must always follow upon ignorance, formations, consciousness, mentality/materiality, sense bases, contact, feeling, craving, attachment, becoming and birth. It must be complete this way in order to be called Dependently Originated suffering.

Now we can put the whole matter briefly. Someone who has studied the dhamma may understand that the internal sense base (e.g., the eye) comes into contact with the external sense base (e.g., the form) which has a value or meaning and which then becomes the base of ignorance. For example, take your eye. Look about you. You see a variety of things: trees, stones, or whatever. But there is not any suffering because nothing of what you see has any value or meaning for you. But if you see a tiger or a woman, or something that has meaning, it's not the same. One kind of sight has meaning and another kind has no meaning. If, for example, a dog sees a pretty woman, it means nothing to the dog. But if a young man sees a lovely woman, it has a lot of meaning. Seeing a pretty woman has meaning for a man. The dog's seeing is not a matter of Dependent Origination. The young man's vision is a matter of Dependent Origination.

We are speaking about people: people in the act of seeing. Whenever we look about we naturally see whatever is there and, if there is no meaning, it has nothing to do with Paticcasamuppada. We see, perhaps, trees, grass and stones, none of which, normally, have meaning. But maybe there's a diamond or a sacred stone or a tree that will have meaning; there will be mental events occurring and Dependent Origination will become operative. And so it is that we distinguish the internal sense bases (eye, ear, nose, tongue, body and mind) from the external sense bases (form, sound, smell, taste, tactile sensation, and mental objects), and these latter must be meaningful things. In this way they become the base for ignorance or stupidity or delusion. At this point of contact between the internal and external sense bases, sense consciousness arises. The consciousness arises instantaneously and gives rise to mental concocting a kind of power to cause further compounding or brewing up. That is, it brews up mentality/materiality, body and mind of the sort that is crazily stupid because it is prone to suffering.

When the body/mind change it means that the eye, ear, nose, tongue, body and mind also change. They become "crazy" sense spheres. The contact, feeling, craving and attachment that arise are also "crazy" to the point of suffering. It all culminates in birth (jati), the full blown birth of the "I" concept. Old age, sickness, death or any other kind of suffering will then all immediately arise and take on meaning because of clinging to the "I" and the "my" concept.

All of the above is concerned with Dependent Origination in daily life. I think it should be enough for you to see that Paticcasamuppada is something that arises in a flash, complete with all eleven conditions. In one day I don't know how many hundreds of times it can arise. No! It's not the case that one turn of the cycle of Dependent Origination must be spread over three life times, the past, the present and the future. It is not like that at all.

I have observed that there is general misunderstanding concerning this, so we must believe that Paticcasamuppada is being incorrectly taught nowadays—it is not being taught according to the original Pali Scriptures. I will show my reasons for this later. For now, let me summarize by saying that Paticcasamuppada, as I have explained it, is something which arises quick as lightning, ends in suffering and is a phenomenon of our daily lives.