Richard Zen:
One question. When you put consciousness leading to volitional formations, what you mean is that you can't have volitional formations without consciousness?
Yes. That is only common sense, when you stop to think of it, yes? Do you see that?
Richard Zen:
This is to mean that craving and clinging affect volitional formations but you're trying to point out what leans on what?
Okay. Let's go through this progression the way I came to see it. I goofed up last night (tired and sleepy) in going through this in my mind. I switched around
vedana and
sankhara in the example below to correct my mistake.
Ian And:
What I was mainly referring to with regard to the reference to dependent co-arising was following the middle eight factors in one's experience of the twelve factored
paticca samuppada in regard to any experience you may have. That means:
consciousness makes >
contact with one of the >
six sense bases > and recognizes
name and form > conditioning
feeling > from which
volitional formations arise > giving rise to
craving > and
clinging. Seeing the last four factors in this series provides one with the opportunity to develop dispassion toward them.
Let's look at a practical example from reality, okay. You are walking along and suddenly you come upon an orange tree.
Consciousness (in the form of grabbing an object, which is
vinnana, and recognizing the object, which is
sanna) makes
contact with the orange through the
sense base of vision (eye-
consciousness). It recognizes
namarupa (
name and form of the object) which conditions
vedana (
feeling) about the object which conditions
sankhara (
volitional formations) with regard to the object, giving rise to
tanha (
craving) and
upadana (
clinging). Is this making any more sense?
Now, notice how
sankhara (a volitional idea – "I must have this orange right away") is conditioned by
vedana (a pleasant affectation, lets say, with regard to the orange in the present example). Having noticed this sequence up to this point in the process, the owner of the mind now has a decision to take: either grab the orange and eat it, or not grab to eat it. In Pavlovian conditioned response scenarios, the conditioned mind will do whatever it has been conditioned in the past to do, which if the owner is an untrained child, let's say, he might grab the orange and eat it to satisfy a sudden urge or
craving. See?
Let's further say that the social situation in which this particular mind finds itself in is one where grabbing the orange would be seen as self-serving and a social
faux pas. He then circumvents his own conditioning by becoming
dispassionate about the orange, and does not grab it, understanding the social consequences of not doing so.
Don't over-read things into this. It is just a simple example from a practical, hypothetical life situation that serves to illustrate the points I'm endeavoring to get across.
Richard Zen:
BTW that's cool you could let go of vedana in that way . . .
but I can understand how you may not want to get into that state because from what I read in Boisvert's book is that it's death like and not awakening.
But I didn't
do anything (let go of anything). The mind went
there all on its own. I may have put forth a resolution (to enter the
cessation of perception and feeling), but that is all. All I did was set up the condition for it to occur. Having been there once, I've never had the desire to return, for the very reason that Boisvert states, "it is not awakening."
In other words, when a person experiences awakening, they still have the remainder of their life to live out (unless they are considering committing suicide – heaven forbid)! So
sanna-vedayita nirodha is a useless achievement as it has no practical use in living one's life (other than as a state, for example, that one might enter as an anesthesia during a medical procedure or operation).
Yet, even so, it is still comforting to realize that the mind can be shut down, that it is possible to shut down perception and feeling so that no
sankhara can be executed (or rather, be suppressed via
dispassion toward formations). But, please, don't conflate (or mistake) from this statement that shutting down perception and feeling is equal to dispassion toward formations. That's not the point I intend to make. Dispassion is something to be DEVELOPED and CULTIVATED
consciously,
not unconsciously. It's just plain common sense.