Drum Roll, Please
The next link in the chain of Dependent Co-Arising is bhava, usually translated as “becoming.” When we cling to the idea that something….or someone….can make us happy (or unhappy), or that our views/opinions/beliefs are RIGHT (and therefore need to be defended), or we when hold onto some idea about who we are and the way things SHOULD be — then we have started to become that belief.
Here’s what Christina Feldman says, “Clinging is followed by becoming — the entire process of fixing or positioning the sense of self in a particular state of experience. Any time we think in self-referential terms…’I am angry,’ ‘I am loving,’ ‘I am greedy,’ etc….an entire complex of behavior is generated to serve craving and clinging. I see something over there that I’ve projected as the thing ‘that is going to make me really happy if I get it,’ and then I organize my behavior, my actions and my attention in order to find union with that. This is the process of becoming — becoming someone or something other that what is.”
Bhava is also translated as “being,” or “arising,” but I’ve gotten used to “becoming” as the standard translation, so for the DPP homework, I’m sticking with that.
(image: this is one of those old cards I’ve had in my collection for years. I don’t know who to credit.)