Expert: Joe McSorley - 5/26/2005

Question
Im a student from the philippines.
I see truth and I want to know more and clearly.

In depent co-origination, how can volitional formations (2nd link) lead to consiousness (3rd link)? Does it mean volitional formations produced consiousness? Does it always mean karma from past life?

I know this is too much theory but i just want to understand. thanks very much

Answer
 This is very much a chicken and egg situation.  How can you have volitional forms without consciousness and how can there be consciousness without volitional forms?  Don't they immediately create and define one another?  In trying to understand Buddhism as something of form or logic we make it something it is not.  In the Indian tradition there are huge discourses on these matters but what do they do to solve the individual's suffering?  If you one to take this a step farther think of this; if avidya/ignorance is the cause of suffering then who is it that is ignorant to begin with?  It is stated that from avidya comes craving/desire/ attachment and so on and this somehow creates the self and aggregates but doesn't there need to be a self that becomes ignorant in the first place? What is this self?  Also if volitional formations are contingent upon past life karma then there was a self that was reincarnating, thus, already volition and consciousness.   I don't know how there can be ignorance and suffering (dukkha) without there being a primary source or function behind it; i.e.- a self.  So I think the linear idea of ignorance creating the conditions that create the conditions that form a self already has an underlying sense of self for this linear process to even happen.  I think it is the arising of self as that which has the ability to separate itself, to be self aware, the separating ego that is the source of all of this.  That the arising of self, self-reflection, self-awareness, from nature is immediately the cause and effect of all of the other conditions and without this happening the conditions do not follow.   For this to have been passed down from past lives immediately implies that somewhere self-awareness appeared and then set the rest of the linear process into play.  To stop this process in the here and now is the goal of Zen, to break down the dualistic distinctions created by the separated self which at once, as it comes into self-awareness, creates the self and the universe by separation and dualism thus being an act and fact of its creation. This separation of self and universe is ignorance and the beginning of suffering due to the illusion of self and other; thus, the chicken and egg, at once creating each other.  It is here Chuang tzu's phrase has great meaning, ‘Heaven, earth and I arise simultaneously'.
  I hope this has helped you.  Take care,
                Joe