Avijja - Within The Twelve Nidanas

Within The Twelve Nidanas

Avidya is identified as the first of the twelve links of dependent origination (twelve nidanas)—a sequence of links that describe a karmic process that keeps being bound within samsara (cyclic existence).

Ajahn Sucitto explains:

The sequence of dependent origination begins with the condition of unknowing or ignorance (avijjā), which in Buddhist iconography is depicted as either a blind man or someone wearing a blindfold. This is the driver of the bus to dukkha . If you have to choose the one determining factor for suffering, it’s this ignorance. People tend to take “ignorance” as pejorative, but it more precisely refers to a lack of gnosis or insightful seeing. It is summarized as “not understanding the four noble truths”—or, perhaps more accurately, not understanding their implications. That is, as long as there is the condition of ignorance, the mind still expects to find an experience that is completely satisfying and feels disappointed when things “go wrong.” There is a parable of a man eating a bag of chili peppers one by one, weeping at their fiery taste as he does so. When asked why he continues to eat the peppers, he replies, “I’m looking for the sweet one.” This is ignorance.

Chogyam Trungpa states:

The twelve nidanas begins with what's called ignorance. It is ignorant in the sense that our own struggle has not been seen. We are unable to see our own struggle properly and completely, therefore there is this notion of blindness. The imagery for this is what's called the blind mother principle. A blind grandmother has no chance to see her grandchildren. She has her own concepts and ideas about how the world should function in her particular period of time in history and her particular social setup. All of that is on one level, that of blindness. And within the blindness, the grandmother struggles enormously, trying to communicate with her grandchildren constantly. The blind grandmother is also highly inquisitive and extremely interested in any kind of gossip that involves the grandchildren. Her way of maintaining power over her grandchildren is to maintain her intelligence of the gossip, which is what is called subconscious gossip: who got married, who had children, who got divorced, who got killed, who had cancer, who had an accident--that and this, this and that, this, this, that... That kind of gossip is endless...it goes on like a wheel which revolves again and again and again, maintaining constant eternity. Therefore, the second nidana process, which is called samskara...is traditionally analogized by a potter's wheel...This represents conceptual mind forming itself in a certain situation, and this is the point at which the creation of karma begins.