Buddha taught (at AN 10.61) that the 1st factor of the path is association with Noble people (rather than association with sheep herders, therapy gurus, new agers, Xians, Brahmins, etc)
because of a lack of right faith, it appears the mind is yet to comprehend the reality of Dependent Origination, which is Buddha's in-depth-in-detail explanation of the origination of suffering (as distinct from the in-brief version called the 4 Noble Truths)
the following is correct understanding. but don't fight it like a reincarnation junkie or a nihilism (non-naming) aspirant! instead, looking into the mind, confirm it & join the Noble Awakened Ones (Ariya Sangha)
take care with that Hindu arrogance about nothing
note: suffering is not life itself but, instead, mental anguish & torment
“And what is the result of dukkha? There are some cases in which a person overcome with pain, his mind exhausted, grieves, mourns, laments, beats his breast & becomes bewildered. Or one overcome with pain, his mind exhausted, comes to search outside, ‘Who knows a way or two to stop this pain?’ I tell you, monks, that suffering results either in bewilderment or in search.” — AN 6:63
“Both formerly & now, it is only stress that I describe, and the cessation of stress.” — SN 22:86
These were the issues he taught for 45 years. In some cases, he would give a succinct explanation of stress and its cessation. In others, he would explain them in more detail. His most detailed explanation is called dependent co-arising—paticca samuppada. This detailed summary of the causal factors leading up to stress shows why the experience of suffering and stress can be so bewildering, for the interaction among these factors can be very complex.
The body of this book is devoted to explaining these factors and their interactions, to show how they can provide focus to a path of practice leading to the ending of stress. But first, here is a list of these actors — enough to give a general sense of the shape of dependent co-arising.
1) Ignorance: not seeing things in terms of the four noble truths of stress, its origination, its cessation, and the path to its cessation.
2) Fabrication: the process of ignorance shaping states of body and mind. These processes are of three sorts: a) bodily fabricator: the in-and-out breath, b) verbal fabricator: directed thought and evaluation, and c) mental fabricator: feeling (feeling tones of pleasure, pain, or neither pleasure nor pain) and perception (the mental labels applied to the objects of the senses for the purpose of memory and recognition).
3) Consciousness at the six sense media: the eye, ear, nose, tongue, body and intellect.
4) Name-and-form: mental and physical phenomena. Mental phenomena include: a) feeling, b) perception, c) intention, d) contact, and e) attention.
Physical phenomena include the four great elements—the properties constituting the kinetic sense of the body—and any physical phenomenon derived from them: f) earth (solidity), g) water (liquidity), h) wind (energy and motion), and i) fire (warmth).
5) The six internal sense media: the eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and intellect.
6) Contact at the six sense media. Contact happens when a sense organ meets with a sense object—for example, the eye meets with a form—conditioning an act of consciousness at that sense organ. The meeting of all three—the sense organ, the object, and the act of consciousness—counts as contact.
7) Feeling based on contact at the six sense media.
8) Craving for the objects of the six sense media. This craving can focus on any of the six sense media, and can take any of three forms: a) sensuality-craving (craving for sensual plans and resolves), b) becoming-craving (craving to assume an identity in a world of experience), and c) non-becoming-craving (craving for the end of an identity in a world of experience).
9) Clinging—passion and delight—focused on the five aggregates of form, feeling, perception, fabrication, and consciousness. This clinging can take any of four forms: a) sensuality-clinging, b) view-clinging, c) habit-and-practice-clinging, and d) doctrine-of-self-clinging.
10) Becoming on any of three levels: a) the level of sensuality, b) the level of form, and c) the level of formlessness.
11) Birth: the actual assumption of an identity on any of these three levels.
12) The aging-and-death of that identity, with its attendant sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, and despair.
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In each of these examples, assume (1) that you are operating in ignorance—i.e., you are not thinking in terms of the four noble truths, and instead are looking at your situation in light of your personal narratives about the family situation and your own place in it.
A. As you walk to the door of your parents’ house, thinking about the situation (2b—verbal fabricator), you pull up memories of things your uncle has done in the past (2c—mental fabricator). This provokes anger, causing your breathing to become labored and tight (2a—bodily fabricator). This makes you uncomfortable (2c—mental fabricator), and you are aware of how uncomfortable you feel (3—consciousness). Hormones are released into your bloodstream (4 f through 4i—Form). Without being fully aware that you are making a choice, you choose (4c—intention) to focus (4e— attention) on the perception (4b) of how trapped you feel in this situation. Your consciousness of this idea (5 and 6—mental contact) feels oppressive (7—feeling). You want to find a way out (8—craving). At this point, you can think of a number of roles you could play in the upcoming dinner (9d and 10—clinging and becoming): You might refuse to speak with your uncle, you might try to be as unobtrusive as possible to get through the dinner without incident, or you might be more aggressive and confront your uncle about his behavior. You mentally take on one of these roles (11—birth), but unless you keep your imaginary role actively in mind, it falls away as soon as you think of it (12—aging-&-death). So you keep thinking about it, evaluating how your parents will react to it, how you will feel about it, and so on (2b— verbal fabricator). Although the stress of step (12) in this case is not great, the fact that your role has to be kept in mind and repeatedly evaluated is stressful, and you can go through many sequences of stress in this way in the course of a few moments.
B. You have been walking to your parents’ house with the above thoughts in mind (2 through 4), already in a state of stress and unhappy anticipation. You knock on the door, and your uncle answers (5 and 6) with a drink in his hand. Regardless of what he says, you feel oppressed by his presence (7) and wish you were someplace else (8c). Your mother makes it obvious that she does not want a scene at the dinner, so you go through the evening playing the role of the dutiful child (9c, 10a, 11). Alternatively, you could decide that you must nevertheless confront your uncle (again, 9c, 10, and 11). Either way, you find the role hard to maintain and so you break out of the role at the end of the dinner (12). In this way, the entire evening counts as a sequence of stress.
