falling off the wheel

I've spent the past week playing with investigation of the elements of interdependent origination (dependent co-arising, dependent origination)- following them forward and backward, through arising and cessation, but keeping in mind that the processes are not linear, that elements arise together. I am being especially intrigued with ignorance as a condition for formations and with formations as a condition for consciousness.

I understand formations and consciousness to be always occurring, always flowing - that is, as long as we are alive, apparently alive. And that both of these, formations and consciousness (ordinary consciousness), are results (and cause) of interaction of this body/mind and its surroundings. Because everything we know or experience is a result of these interactions, it is all subjective, none of it is objectively true, but rather a kind of ignorance through limitations of perception (or misperception).

These mind/body interactions are necessary for us to live in the world. And they generally operate predictably within the world; but the world itself, the world we know, is built on these interactions and therefore not objectively true or real. We live and function in an illusion. If we recognize the illusory nature of things we are not trapped by experience.

...knowing and seeing in this way,
would you run back to the past thus:
'Were we in the past?
Were we not in the past?
What were we in the past?
How were we in the past?
Having been what, what did we become in the past?'

...knowing and seeing in this way,
would you run forward to the future thus;
'Shall we be in the future?
Shall we not be in the future?
What shall we be in the future?
How shall we be in the future?
Having been what, what shall we be in the future?

...knowing and seeing in this way,
would you now be inwardly perplexed about this present thus:
'Am I?
Am I not?
What am I?
How am I?
Where has this being come from?
Where will it go?

M 38:23

We are also not indifferent. The world we live in does include sorrow and joy. However, we can be free of the limitations in our perceptions and the resulting grasping of objects and views and choose to participate in more wholesome unfolding within this constructed world.



To see the source of this investigation and the other elements of the wheel read the Mahatanhasankhaya Sutta - The Greater Discourse on the Destruction of Craving M 38 or see related Practice Board entries at
http://citta101.com/practice/viewtopic.php?f=83&t=205&p=446#p446