[Dstyeglm]

Being in agreement with Element's above post, Lazy, I feel, "between the lines" that you harbor the idea of a consiousness that is before an existing process and that, in the end, leads to the unavoidable consequence, of a fabricated idea of an Atman. I'm I right here?

LOL. Talk about a loaded question!

Actually, without a fabricated Atman, what we have is simply the arising and recombining of aggregates. That's closer to what I had in mind. Are you perhaps harboring an idea of Atman as equivalent to the physical body and its lifespan?

My question was whether the sequencing of the links implicitly points to D.O. as kind of self-perpetuating loop, or complex of loops -- with each instance conditioning others, as well as being conditioned by others, on and on unless the chains are broken (via the eightfold path). "Self-perpetuating" is an apt word here because the illusion of self is one of the byproducts of the process.

I was just reading, btw, an interesting essay which argues that any view of dependent origination as a linear, temporal model runs into logical problems -- and that includes Buddhaghosa's "three life" paradigm, a one-lifetime version and even "moment-to-moment rebirth". All of them trip up in the face of dependent cessation (paticcanirodha).

I remember Stuka has raised this issue before in relation to Buddhaghosa.