[Ternneowns]

In each of these examples, assume (1) that you are operating in ignorance—i.e.,
you are not thinking in terms of the four noble truths, and instead are looking at
your situation in light of your personal narratives about the family situation and
your own place in it.

A. As you walk to the door of your parents’ house, thinking about the
situation (2b—verbal fabrication), you pull up memories of things your uncle
has done in the past (2c—mental fabrication). This provokes anger, causing
your breathing to become labored and tight (2a—bodily fabrication). This
makes you uncomfortable (2c—mental fabrication), and you are aware of
how uncomfortable you feel (3—consciousness). Hormones are released
into your bloodstream (4 f through 4i—Form). Without being fully aware that
you are making a choice, you choose (4c—intention) to focus (4e—
attention) on the perception (4b) of how trapped you feel in this situation.
Your consciousness of this idea (5 and 6—mental contact) feels oppressive
(7—feeling). You want to find a way out (8—craving). At this point, you can
think of a number of roles you could play in the upcoming dinner (9d and
10—clinging and becoming): You might refuse to speak with your uncle,
you might try to be as unobtrusive as possible to get through the dinner
without incident, or you might be more aggressive and confront your uncle
about his behavior. You mentally take on one of these roles (11—birth), but
unless you keep your imaginary role actively in mind, it falls away as soon as
you think of it (12—aging-&-death). So you keep thinking about it, evaluating
how your parents will react to it, how you will feel about it, and so on (2b—
verbal fabrication). Although the stress of step (12) in this case is not great,
the fact that your role has to be kept in mind and repeatedly evaluated is
stressful, and you can go through many sequences of stress in this way in the
course of a few moments.

B. You have been walking to your parents’ house with the above
thoughts in mind (2 through 4), already in a state of stress and unhappy
anticipation. You knock on the door, and your uncle answers (5 and 6) with
a drink in his hand. Regardless of what he says, you feel oppressed by his
presence (7) and wish you were someplace else (8c). Your mother makes it
obvious that she does not want a scene at the dinner, so you go through the
evening playing the role of the dutiful child (9c, 10a, 11). Alternatively, you
could decide that you must nevertheless confront your uncle (again, 9c, 10,
and 11). Either way, you find the role hard to maintain and so you break out
of the role at the end of the dinner (12). In this way, the entire evening counts
as a sequence of stress.

C. Instead of dropping the role you have taken on, you assume it for the
rest of your life—for instance, as the passive, dutiful son or daughter; as the
reformer who tries to cure your uncle of alcoholism; or as the avenger,
seeking retributive justice for the many hardships you and your mother have
had to endure. To maintain this role, you have to cling to views (9b) about
how you should behave (9c) and the sort of person you are or should be
(9d). You keep producing (10) and assuming (11) this identity until it
becomes impossible to do so any further (12). In this way, a full sequence of
dependent co-arising could cover an entire lifetime. If you continue craving
to maintain this identity (8b) even as you die, it will lead you to cling (9) to
opportunities for rebirth (10 and 11) as they appear at the moment of death,
and the full sequence of dependent co-arising could then cover more than
one lifetime, leading to further suffering and stress on into the indefinite
future.