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Now let us consider the structure of the paticca-samuppāda for a moment. Firstly, it is not a logical proposition, nor is it a temporal cause-result chain. Such an approach makes an understanding of it impossible. It is not symbolic since, if we look, we can find each member in ourselves by introspection. The interpretations of European scholars have been, perhaps without exception, wild and bad guesses.
To the question: “What are these sets of terms intended to describe?” we may answer tentatively that they are intended to describe experience of any possible kind where ignorance (that is lack of personal realization of the Truths) is present.
But being (bhava)* is a member of the paticca-samuppāda as arising which contains ignorance. Being is only invertible by ignorance.
The destruction of ignorance destroys the illusion of being. When ignorance is no more, then consciousness no longer can attribute being (pahoti) at all. But that is not all; for when consciousness is predicated of one who has no more ignorance then it is no more indicatable
(as it was indicated in MN 22). **
*to translate (even to interpret to oneself) bhava by ‘becoming’ is an opiate that leaves the illusion of ‘being’ untreated.
**"When a monk's mind is thus freed, O monks, neither the gods with Indra, nor the gods with Brahma, nor the gods with the Lord of Creatures (Pajaapati), when searching will find on what the consciousness of one thus gone (tathagata) is based. Why is that? One who has thus gone is not to be found# here and now, so I say.
#The reason why the Tathāgata is not to be found (even here and now) is that he is rūpa-, vedanā-, saññā-, sankhāra-, and viññāna-sankhāya vimutto (ibid. 1 ), i.e. free from reckoning as matter, feeling, perception, determinations, or consciousness. This is precisely not the case with the puthujjana, who, in this sense, actually and in truth is to be found: With ignorance as condition ... being.
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