This week Nancy offered the first look into the teaching that the Buddha himself called equal in importance to the Four Noble Truths – the teaching of Dependent Arising (paticca samupadda). This is the Buddhist rich and subtle understanding of causality, which focuses on how particular conditions give rise to our experience.
This systematic view is rich in practice possibilities – transforming neurotic patterns into healthy ones, extricating oneself from stuckness or downward spirals. In the traditional sequence, the first of 12 links in the chain of Dependent Arising is Ignorance, and with Nancy we explored the ignorance of prana – energy in our own bodies – and ignorance of the Four Noble Truths, and the ways in which actively ignoring those truths increases our suffering.
Burlington Buddhist Sangha 