Dependent Origination
Every phenomena, whether cognitive, emotional, perceptual or of active movement; are all the expression of a very large number of prior conditions and characteristics from which none of the phenomena can be isolated or separated out from currently or historically.
The web of interconnectedness can't be divided into isolated pieces apart from one another. Every thought, feeling, perception or action arises from its pre-existing matrix of prior conditions. This means that one's thoughts, feelings and actions are motions or expressions as fluctuations of a single whole and are not independently originated by a free and causative agent or self acting from "outside" the total matrix of phenomena.
That "self" is also only an assemblage of prior conditions such as conditioning, self-thoughts, DNA, memories and beliefs. The "me" is only a temporary assemblage of those prior conditions; and each one of those prior conditions is also only an assemblage of prior conditions ad infinitum.
Is there then no way to break out of this infinite loop of prior conditions and pre-existing determinants?
If the implications of this are fully understood, it becomes obvious that there is no independent self or entity that exists who could break out from that from which they are themselves constructed.
That was the Buddha's insight into the emptiness of individual self entities and independently existing things, known as "anatta".
But he saw even deeper into the nature of Reality; he realized the nature of Nirvana. Nirvana is the mystic realization of the unconditioned, uncaused, unestablished and unborn nature of impersonal "beingness". It is not a self or personal identity. It doesn't exist, but it also does not "not exist", nor both and nor neither. It's like a changeless empty, wisdom mirror in which the "conditioned dimension" appears like colorful reflections offering no benefit or harm.
Established firmly in the Unestablished, the Buddha turns the Wheel of Dharma like a beacon of Light that guides one to the Other Shore...
Jackson Peterson
23 hod