..续本文上一页stroy ”the cause of dukkha” (2) or craving which has impelled us to seek more and more lives, more and more pleasures. ”The cessation of dukkha” (3) which perhaps could have been seen by us in past lives, was not realised, so we come to the present existence inevitably burdened with dukkha. And in the past we can hardly assume that we set our feet upon the ”practice-path leading to the cessation of dukkha” (4) and we did not even discover Stream-entry. We are now paying for our own negligence in the past.

　　And this unknowing is not some kind of first cause in the past, for it dwells in our hearts now. But due to this unknowing, as we shall see, we have set in motion this wheel bringing round old age and death and all other sorts of dukkha. Those past "selves" in previous lives who are in the stream of my inpidual continuity did not check their craving and so could not cut at the root of unknowing. On the contrary they made kamma, some of the fruits of which in this present life I, as their causal resultant, am receiving.

　　The picture helps us to understand this: a blind old woman (avijja is of feminine gender) with a stick picks her way through a petrified forest strewn with bones. It is said that the original picture here should be an old blind she-camel led by a driver, the beast being one accustomed to long and weary journeys across inhospitable country, while its driver could be craving. Whichever simile is used, the beginninglessness and the darkness of unknowing are well suggested. We are the blind ones who have staggered from the past into the present— to what sort of future

　　Depending on the existence of unknowing in the heart there was volitional action, kamma or abhisankhara, made in those past lives.

　　..............................

　　2nd Link: VOLITIONAL FORMATIONS (sankhara)

　　Represented by a potter. Just as a potter forms clay into something new, an action begins a sequence that leads to new consequences. Once put into motion, the potter”s wheel continues to spin without much effort. Likewise, an action creates a predisposition in the mind.

　　Intentional actions have the latent power within them to bear fruit in the future - either in a later part of the life in which they were performed, in the following life, or in some more distant life, but their potency is not lost with even the passing of aeons; and whenever the necessary conditions obtain that past kamma may bear fruit. Now, in past lives we have made kamma, and due to our ignorance of the Four Noble Truths we have been "world-upholders" and so making good and evil kamma we have ensured the continued experience of this world.

　　Beings like this, obstructed by unknowing in their hearts have been compared to a potter making pots: he makes successful and beautiful pottery (skillful kamma) and he is sometimes careless and his pots crack and break up from various flaws (unskillful kamma). And he gets his clay fairly well smeared over himself just as purity of heart is obscured by the mud of kamma. The simile of the potter is particularly apt because the word ”Sankhara” means "forming," "shaping," and "compounding," and therefore it has often been rendered in English as "Formations."

　　Depending on the existence of these volitions produced in past lives, there arises the Consciousness called "relinking" which becomes the basis of this present life.

　　..............................

　　3rd Link: CONSCIOUSNESS (vinnana)

　　The rebirth consciousness or "consciousness that links on", is represented by a monkey going from window to window. This represents a single consciousness perceiving through the various sense organs. The monkey represents the very primitive spark of sense-consciousness which is the first moment in the mental life of the new being.

　　This relinking consciousn…

《Dependent Arising》全文未完，请进入下页继续阅读…