Nirvana and Samsara 涅槃與輪迴 1

Just heard a very good but non-completed talk on Nirvana or Nibbana (涅盤) and Samsara ( "Round of Rebirths" or literally "Perpetual Wandering")(輪迥) on Friday night. It was given by Dr. Lau Kwai Biu at the HKSHP. 

Dr. Lau started  by analyzing the Buddhist concept of Samsara and its explanation of why ordinary sentient beings (有情眾生) have to undergo what the Buddhists think of as an endless cycle of birth, death and rebirth. According to the Buddha's teachings, the root cause of the repetition of the cycle of life,death and rebirth is our ignorance (無明). For ordinary folks like ourselves, owing of our ignorance, our lives are constantly being propelled by 12 nidanas( 十二因緣). Of these 12 nidanas, the first is the ultimate root of all our sufferings viz.
(1) our avidya or ignorance (無明) of Buddhist ideas about
(a)  the functioning of our consciousness or mental and emotional activities ie. the five skandhas or 5 aggregates (五蘊) viz. rupa (form or matter)(色) ie. the material or physical factors including our 5 senses and their corresponding capabilities; vedanā (sensation or feeling) (受) including sensation of pleasant, unpleasant and indifferent and having an emotional dimension sañña (perception conception, apperception, cognition, or discrimination) ( 想) which gives form to the inchoate and chaotic sensory data we receive from
the external world by mentally co-ordinating and organizing them into
definite and recognizable and identifiable and meaningful forms through
forming ideas and concepts about the relevant objects or experiences and
is purely conceptual and pre-moral;  and mental formation (行) or a
conditioned response to the object of experience, not just the
impression created by previous actions (the habitual energy stored up
from countless former lives), but also our responses here and now
motivated and directed in a particular way by our volition and thus
having moral implications and consciousness, sankhāra (mental formation, impulses, volition or compositional factors) viññana (consciousness or discernment)( 識) which is the capacity of our mind to  to co-ordinate the whole or part of the data perceived by us from one or more of our five senses as a totality and the object of whose activities is something internal i.e. ideas. Together they form and shape our impressions, our mental and emotional experiences (Note here that not only does our mind or our consciousness have the capacity to to detect and recognize physical object when they are present by comparing them to our former impressions of similar things in the past through our memory, they also have the capacity to "create" false cognitions of things or phenomena which are not there and compare them against each other.) In addition and more importantly, mind consciousness can also instruct, with or without thinking, the
first five consciousness to initiate all kinds of wholesome,
unwholesome, or neutral activities, and to keep the wheel of our life
turning around and around. How this mind consciousness functions thus have very clear and important moral and spiritual implications. But whatever our mind may do, to the Buddha, ultimately, the object ts of all such mental activities are based on and operate upon experiences or objects of our such experiences or phenomena which are in reality all "illusory" or "empty", both physically and temporally because they have no "real" or stable or "permanent" identity or existence"  (五蘊皆空) and are merely the result of the temporary coming together of certain causes and that as soon as one or more of which causes disappear, they too will disintegrate, vanish or disappear in those particular or specific forms they appear to us in our consciousness and how even our concept of our "self" who we suppose of the centre of those experiences have no real, stable or permanent existence. 
(b) the internal causes of our suffering or dukkha (苦) as the result of the functioning of our 5 aggregates vis a vis external objects or other persons.e.g how what we perceive may initiate or kindle our desires and how the non-satisfaction of our desires may lead us to suffer and also the forms that such desires or bodily and emotional states take eg. love (understood generally and inclusively)(愛) including passion, addiction, clinging, attachment to persons,  money, power, fame, games, even beliefs and how the absence or disappearance of the objects of our desire( 別 or 離) or failure in achieving our desires (求不得) may cause in us longings, hopes, fears, worries, anxieties, frustration, disappointment, despair, jealousy, envy and anger and may even lead to violence or madness and how the external natural conditions of all human existence may also function to cause us suffering through such natural events or phenomena or causes like birth, old age, sickness and decline of health and death (生老病死 ) and also how they tend to settle upon our consciousness (集) how they may be
eliminated (滅) and how they may be conclusively ended, terminated,
eradicated (絕) viz. through learning about the eight noble or right paths (八正道) viz. right  perspective or view or understanding, right intention, right speech, right conduct or deeds or action,  right livelihood, right effort for improvement, right mindfulness or awareness,  right meditation or reflection or focusing of attention (正見 ( ie. to believe in the samadhi of every thought and volition are forever changing, there is no "self" in anything, and there shall be absolute peace in nirvana)(, 正思, 正語, 正業, 正命, 正精進, 正念, 正定) . By understanding the Five Skandhas, we attain the wisdom of not-self.
We shall understand that the world we experience is not constructed upon and around the idea of a self,
but through "impersonal processes". By getting rid of the idea of the "self",
we can look at happiness and suffering, praise and blame, and all the
rest with equanimity. In this way, we will be no longer subject to
the imbalance of alternating hope and fear.
(2) samskara or the process of impulse accumulation of our will and desires (行), The impulse accumulations of samskara are characterized by the energetic direction of avidya manifesting itself through body, speech and mind as the structuring forces of our being and forms the basis of our personality or character and our personal karmic pattern.
(3) vijñana (Sanksrit) or viññana ( Pali ) the process of our cognition or the partially structured consciousness that flows from the accumulation of our will or desires into a more inflexible cognitive form (識). It may be pictured as having a two-fold function: the process of cognition of objects that arise and also the forces that motivate our material body towards further thoughts or action or more generally our mind,
(4) namarupa or the process of the shaping of objects of our will's cognition of our will , moving quickly from sensory objects to the objects of our imagination, "nama" referring to the three components of our mental functioning  viz. the sensation of tone awareness of our mental processes, the ideation or labelling function  and finally our dispositioning orientation or the mood energy we bring into a particular situations and "rupa" referring to the four dynamic structuring operations of
solidity, cohesion, heat and motility corresponding to respectively
earth, water, fire and air (名色) ,
(5) sadayatana (Sanskrit) or salayatana (Pali) : such processes in (4) are based upon our 6 internal or external ayatana or "sense base", "sense-media" or "sense sphere"  or 6 forms of awareness each of which is an internal component occurring inside our consciousness and each has its own corresponding sensation of matters in the external world  The six basic forms of our perception of our consciousness or six sense gates (六處 , 六入, 六根, 六趣 (趨)) of the external world  are the capability of our five sensory organs viz. our eyes, ears. nose, tongue, body (眼耳鼻舌身)  corresponding to sight, hearing, smelling, tasting, bodily or visceral feeling and a sixth non-sensory faculty or mental faculty consisting of perception, visualization, imagination, visualization, memory, formation of feelings, emotions and volition and other activities of our brain of as a result of the sensory data we receive from the external world . These forms of our consciousness or awareness are collectively grouped under the word sadayatana ( 意). These 6 external bases always work in conjunction with the the corresponding internal bases and are 6 possible types of object awareness. These bases are merely fleeting stabilization within our subjective consciousness or awareness which endure for just long enough for us to appropriate them to this or that object in the external world.  
(6) Sparsa (Sansksrit) or Phassa (Pali) or contact (觸). This refers to the relationship or rapport between the internal and external ayatana. It is "as if" each of our sensory modes will have experiences of varying intensity and frequency  and speed "as if" we were listening to the tone of sound heard by our "mental ear". , feeling  or emotions (受) , love or passion or desires to object of attachment (愛) the fixation of our desire to possess  or to hold upon certain objects of our attachment (取) expressed through our ability to understand the phenomena of ourselves and of this world by our mind or perception or volition or will (行)
(7) Vedana (Sanskrit and Pali) sensation (受). There are six type of sensation or feeling tone corresponding to the 6 ayatana such that each modality is experientially separable on the place where the relevant sensation originate (its internal base), the corresponding structure of its field (its external base) and the resulting "tone" color. 
(8) Trsna ( Sanskrit) or (Tanha)(Pali) or craving or desire (愛) understood more generally as the kind of feeling tone resulting from an unconditioned or habitually patterned experience of craving or attachment depending on which of the 6 ayatana mode is engaged, motivating us to act in certain ways eg. in the direction of sensual gratification (kama-trsna) often unconscious because of long habit of clinging or getting attached to those objects of desire. One may also be motivated to desire what one thinks of as "eternal" ( bhava-trsna) shaping and structuring our sensory impression or momentary awareness in the direction of eternal peace and contentment and one may be motivated by an automatic or compulsive thirst to destroy or annihilate (vibhava-trsna)
(9) upadana ( Sanskrit and Pali) or attachment or clinging (取 or 執) to the root cause of our suffering (dukka). If we attain the object of our attachment or cravings or desires, then usually new desires and new attachment  may arise e.g attachment to persons, to life, material comfort, routines, pleasant and unpleasant sensations or experience (if pathological), excitements, thrills, beliefs, thoughts, judgments etc. We may not have attachment to success, fame, power or wealth but we are are typically very strongly attached  to our feelings for our "self". We may get attached to a mental story or representation of reality or a mental vision of an object or event, preferring and craving for unrealized version of external reality. Once the fixation shapes behavior which leads to the satiation of the particular internal desire, then the craving or attachment of trsna is said to have been shifted to the attachment of upadana.
(10) Bhava (Sanskrit and Pali) or becoming (有). Once a person has progressed to the state of overt clinging, then that may develop and deepen into a habit for such clinging and that habit may itself become the cause for future clinging behavior which will affect his future karmic tendencies and will eventually lead to newer forms of clinging and attachment. it differs from samskara in that whereas samskara refers to the effect of the past upon the present, bhava refers to the effect of the present upon the future.
(11) Jati (Sanskrit and Pali) or birth or rebirth (生). This is the result of the bhava coming to fruition in the history or future history of a person's karma (業) through the initiation of new patternings. Psycho-biologically, it refers to the birth or emergence of a new born being, appearing, according to the specific history of patterning in one of 6 "lifestyles" (六度) symbolized by the terms deva-loka or gods (天), humans (人), asuras or titans (阿修羅)( although they do 10 goods, they cannot rise to be devas because they are proud, angry, jealous and suspicious of the Buddhas,)tiryanc orr  animals (畜生) (reserved for those who commit one of the 10 evils out of ignorance and later regret them or crimes like giving unclean good to others, lusts, stealing, not repaying debts, killing or destroying or abusing sentient beings (施不淨物、邪淫、犯戒偷竊、負債不還、殺生、或毀罵惱害有情) , hungry ghosts (餓鬼) wither we go if we commit sins like being miserly, envious, obsiqueous,denizens of hells (地獄) and each hungry ghost has a life of 27 millions years. According to traditional Buddhists beliefs, there are 18 hells: 8 cold, 8 hot, 1 peripheral at the edge of the 18 hot hells comprised of 128 such mini-hells and 1 lonely (distributed in the human world eg. valleys, mountain tops, deserted countryside), each subdivided into more mini-hells, In the restless  hell (無間地獄)，there is no respite or restbreaks from the heat at all and will have to go through 84,0000 cycle of life and death each night. The stay in each hell is incredibly long, according to the 起世經》記載，if we fill 20 ladles with seasame seed and throw one out each 100 years, then the length of time will be many times the time it takes for all the seasame seed to be thrown away at the aforesaid rate and even after having suffered in hells, the relevant souls will still have to go to the other hells like hungry ghost, animals etc and even if one were to return to the human world, one would suffer a life which is short, poor, unhealthy and short. If we commit 5 capital sins (五無間罪 aka五逆罪) like killing our father, killing our mother, killing an arahant, injuiring a Buddha and causing dissension amongst the sangha (弒父、弒母、殺阿羅漢、出佛身血，以及破僧團和合的重罪)  we shall go to restless hell and for  other less serious offences like the 10 evils (十惡) (killing, stealing, lust, lies, misleading words, angry words, double-tongues, greed, anger and perverted thoughts)

(12) Jara-marana (Sanskrit and Pali) old age and death (老死). To Buddha, decay affects all structures which are but fleeing stabilizations fed by the energy flow of habitual patterning and when the process reaches its end, we come to the final termination of that karmic stage, resulting in total breakdown, scattering and dissolution of the relevant stage in the karmic history of the relevant individual and throwing back the individual into the murkiness of avidya (無明 or 癡). Thus the entire structure of patterning feeds back upon itself and is often pictured as the circle of 12 sections called the Wheel of Life (bhavacakra). According to tradition, the 12 nidanas describe a process that unfolds over at least three consecutive lifetimes but contemporary teachers teach that it can be seen to as a daily cycle occurring from moment to moment each day, relying upon certain passages in the Abhidharmakosa (阿毗達磨俱舍論 ) of Vasubandhu (世親（Sanskrit ) 天親，世親,，婆藪槃豆、伐蘇畔度藪槃豆、伐蘇畔度) .According to the Buddha, each state or stage is both a result and a cause or condition for the next stage. Thus ignorance conditions creations, activities, activities conditions consciousness, consciousness conditions body and mind and body and mind condition the 12 domains. Thus during rebirth, the four psychic aggregates condition the sixth domain as simultaneity, reciprocity, support, association, result, existence and non-disparition.

One can see here how logical the thinking of the Buddha is. He starts from the phenomenal world and then goes on step by step from the external world to the 5 skanda of form, perception, thought, desire formation and thoughts or mental images of the objects desired and the mental and emotional factors related to each stage of the process of the formation of thoughts and feelings in our mind and our heart and then our will which lead to action which will detain in the repetition of the cycle of life and death. He goes from outside to inside and from one life to the next. It all starts with our ignorance of how our mind and emotions function, land how this ignorance leads us to will form desires for things and how this then lead us to think about how to get what we want and how we form concepts and plans about it, how this takes form, and how it is based upon our six senses. how our thoughts triggers our emotions and desires , how such desires build up in us, how this grows into feelings of attachments to the objects of our desire, how such desires become mental habits and lead to our being caught in the cycle of birth and death.