The Twelve Links (Nidãnas) is one of the most important teachings in Buddhism; it teaches the origin of suffering (dukkha) to be ignorance (avidya). In Buddhism, Dependent Origination is the teaching of how things come to be, are, and cease to be. The Twelve Links show how Dependent Origination ‘works,’ that no beings or phenomena exists independently of other beings or phenomena.
Each link is the cause of the next link (effect). Though the links are numbered and are in order, the numbering could begin anywhere, because each links connects to all the other links.
1. Ignorance (Avidya)
Ignorance in Buddhism generally means lack of understanding, usually referring to the Four Noble Truths. It is also ignorance of Anatman (no-Self), the Skandhas, and Karma.
2. Volitional Formation (Samskara)
The volitional action, impulse, motivation that comes from ignorance and creates thoughts, words, and actions that sew the seeds of Karma.
3. Consciousness (Vijñãna)
In Buddhist teaching there are many kinds of vijnana. Very generally, vijnana is what happens when one of the six faculties (eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind) reacts to or becomes aware of one of the six external phenomena (visible form, sound, smell, taste, touch, and ideas and thoughts). The third link includes all kinds of vijnana.
4. Name and form (Nama-rupa)
The joining of the five skandhas into an individual existence. With name and form also come sensory perception. As a collective idea, the Nāmarūpa motif models the reciprocal relationship of bodily and mental functioning. Nāma is the naming activity of the discursive mind. Rūpa develops an internal representation of external objects, without which mind and body cannot exist.
5. Faculties and Objects/Six Sense Bases (Ṣaḍāyatana)
The Vijnana, or consciousness, link described above involves the the six faculties or sense organs (eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind) and six corresponding external phenomena, or objects (visible form, sound, smell, taste, touch, and ideas and thoughts). The faculties and their corresponding objects are the shadayatana.
6. Contact (Sparśa)
Sparsha is contact with environment, or the contact with the faculties and object discussed of Sadayatana.
7. Sensation (Vedanã)
Vedana is the recognition and experience of sensations. These experiences are pleasurable or painful, which leads to desire and aversion.
There are these six forms of cravings: cravings with respect to forms, sounds, smells, tastes, touch (massage, sex, pain), and ideas. If we are not mindful, we are perpetually being jerked around by desire for what we want and aversion of what we don’t want. In this state we heedlessly create karma, which keeps us entangled in the cycle of rebirth.
Upadana is a grasping and clinging mind. We cling to sensual pleasures, mistaken views, external forms, material pleasure/comfort, routines, persons, and appearances. Most of all, we cling to ego and a sense of an individual self, a sense reinforced moment-to-moment by our cravings and aversions. Upadana also represents clinging to a womb and the beginning of rebirth.
Bhava is new becoming, set in motion by the other links. It refers to the new formation of karmic tendencies. This creation of new habits and karmic tendencies, called bhava, will come to fruition through future experiences. Bhava, therefore, differs from Saṃskāra in temporal nature. “Saṃskāra refers to tendencies from past situational patterning (lives) which act on the present situation.
Jāti refers to the birth or emergence of a newborn being, appearing, according to the specific history of patterning, in one of six ‘lifestyles’ (realms; deva, asura, human, animal, hungry ghost, hell). These lifestyles indicate the general character of experience.
The chain comes to old age and death, or the dissolution of what came to be. The karma of one life sets in motion another life, rooted in ignorance (avidya). The process of disintegration, destructuring, and entropic scattering yields a nexus of vibratory murkiness which is the condition of avidyā, the first link. Thus the entire structure of patterning feeds back on itself, and is often pictured as a circle of twelve sections, called the Wheel of Life.