No Self ISI
of action as the means to bring about the particular pleasant
experiences we repeatedly crave;^33 and so we carry out these par-
ticular courses of action; as we repeatedly carry them out they
( ro) become our particular ways of being ( bhava ). And so a future
( 11) birth (jiiti) conditioned by these very courses of action must
occur, and whatever is born will once more (12) age and even-
tually die (jarii-maralJa ). So the process goes on without any known
beginning or end.
Buddhaghosa gives us the following vivid image of dependent
arising. A blind man (ignorance) stumbles (formations) and falls
(consciousness); as a result of the fall a swelling develops (mind
and body) and on that swelling there forms an abscess which weeps
(six senses); this abscess gets continually knocked and bruised
(contact) causing terrible pain (feeling) which the man longs
to remove (craving); in consequence he seizes on (grasping)
and applies (becoming) to the swelling various remedies that he
thinks will relieve the pain; but instead of relieving the pain their
effect is simply to change the condition of the swelling for the
worse (birth) and finally the whole swelling bursts (old age and
death).^34
Theravada commentaries preserve some further points of
analysis of the formula that can be best set out in the form of a
table (see Table 3). In the first place there are three main tran-
sition points (column 2) that divide the twelve links of the for-
mula into four sections (column 3). Thus our previous ignorance
and formations represent the 'past cause' of the 'present fruit'
which consists of the consciousness, mind and body, six senses,
sense-contact, and feeling which we presently experience; the. way
we react to this fruit in the present, by way of craving, grasp-
ing and becoming, constitutes the 'present cause' that will bear
fruit in the form of the conditions of our future birth, ageing, and
death. Viewing the formula in this way also reveals a certain
symmetry: if links I and 2 (ignorance and formations) were active
in the past, then inevitably links 8, 9, and IO (craving, grasping,
and becoming) were also active in the past; similarly if links 8,
9, and IO are active in the present, so must links I and 2 (ignor-
ance and formations); and the future existence of links I I and I2
