Dependent Origination: Ignorance




Seattle Insight Meditation Society show

Summary: Ignorance, or "ignoring" the facts, begins the conditioned chain of events known as Dependent Origination. Our refusal to acknowledge and look is the essential first cause of the sequencing of conditions that leads to struggle and separation. To reverse this process all we have to do is be amenable to seeing what is in front of our eyes. This, together with our willingness not to turn away from the implications of what we see, are the sole requirements necessary for the interruption of the links of causality. Awareness ends the belief that the world is static and fixed. We usually gloss over the continual unfolding and disarray we call, "our living experience," so we can use ignorance as a life preserver and steady our position by fixing it within the world.  How much of this unfixed universe we are willing to see will be determined by our sincerity, but the seeing, and therefore the ending of struggle, is always possible. This talk is also presented in video here: http://seattleinsight.org/Talks/BrowseTalks/DharmaTalk/tabid/90/TalkID/614/Default.aspx