Citta, sati-sampajañña and dependent originationA source-bound, process-oriented account of consciousness, mindfulness and clear awareness, and the twelve links of dependent origination — without turning a self into a thing.

When we speak with Buddhist precision, we should not say "the citta identifies itself", "the citta seeks happiness" or "the citta grasps an object", as though citta were a hidden self. Such phrasings can serve as a teaching simplification, but in the end they are inexact. More precise is this: under certain conditions, moments of consciousness arise together with mental factors. Contact, feeling, perception, intention, attention, craving, clinging and becoming arise. These events constitute no owner and no inner agent. They are anicca, dukkha and anattā. The five khandhas describe the whole field of what can be experienced: rūpa, vedanā, saññā, saṅkhāra and viññāṇa. What is ordinarily experienced as "I" turns out, on close inspection, to be a stream of these conditioned aggregates. The Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta applies the not-self analysis explicitly to all five aggregates: form, feeling, perception, formations and consciousness.

The classical formula of dependent origination runs: l Avijjā — ignorance, not knowing l Saṅkhāra — formations, kammic constructions l Viññāṇa — consciousness l Nāma-rūpa — mentality and materiality l Saḷāyatana — the six sense bases l Phassa — contact l Vedanā — feeling l Taṇhā — craving l Upādāna — clinging, grasping l Bhava — becoming l Jāti — birth l Jarā-maraṇa — ageing and death, with sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair This series must not be understood merely as a linear chain in time. It describes a structure of conditionality. Some interpretations read it across several lives, others as a present process of experience. What is decisive for practice is this: suffering does not arise from an object itself, but from the conditioned events of ignorance, contact, feeling, craving and grasping.

In the discourses, the lever that matters most in practice becomes visible again and again at the sequence phassa — vedanā — taṇhā. Contact conditions feeling. Feeling conditions craving, so long as ignorance has not been seen through. Out of craving comes clinging, and out of that, becoming.

Contact here does not mean only the contact of the five bodily senses. The mind is included as well. The six sense bases comprise eye, ear, nose, tongue, body and mind. Accordingly there is eye-contact, ear-contact, nose-contact, tongue-contact, body-contact and mind-contact. The Fire Sermon analyses this process at all six sense fields: the sense base, the object, the corresponding consciousness, the contact and the feeling arising from it are burning, because they can be joined with greed, hatred and delusion. Precisely there the possibility of disenchantment, dispassion and liberation arises. In practice this means: an object appears. Contact is present. Feeling arises as pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. Without sati-sampajañña, taṇhā usually follows: wanting to have, wanting rid of, or dully passing over. With sati-sampajañña, vedanā is recognised before it automatically becomes taṇhā.

The intuitive insight that practice in deep concentration already takes hold at saṅkhāra is not wrong. It only needs to be stated precisely. In the chain of twelve, phassa stands only in sixth place. In the Abhidhamma, by contrast, no moment of consciousness arises without the seven universal cetasikas: phassa, vedanā, saññā, cetanā, ekaggatā, jīvitindriya and manasikāra. Contact is therefore already present as a mental factor at the level of every single citta. This produces no contradiction, but two different levels of analysis. The chain of twelve describes the conditioned dynamic through which dukkha arises. The Abhidhamma analyses the structure of the single moment of consciousness. At this finer level, contact, feeling, perception, intention and attention are given along with every citta. In deep concentration, in fine vipassanā or in the subtler jhānas it can therefore become visible that an orientation already arises before the gross reaction. An interest arises, an inclination, a movement towards the object, a barely visible intention. This level can be understood as the saṅkhāra level — not as the act of a self, but as the conditioned forming of experience.

Citta is not a lasting thing. It is a moment of consciousness that arises and passes away. Cetasikas are the mental factors that arise together with citta and determine its concrete quality. Vedanā and saññā form khandhas of their own. The remaining mental factors, apart from vedanā and saññā, are assigned to the saṅkhāra-khandha. The viññāṇa-khandha corresponds to the side of consciousness. This makes it clear why the statement "the citta identifies itself" is only provisionally serviceable. Strictly speaking, moments of consciousness arise with particular mental factors. When avijjā, taṇhā, māna or diṭṭhi are involved, the impression of I, mine and self arises. The Buddha, however, analyses this impression as dependently arisen and not as ultimate reality.

Sati is holding present and not losing the object of practice. Sampajañña is clear comprehension: what is happening? In what context is it happening? Is it wholesome or unwholesome? Does it lead to letting go or to grasping? With sati-sampajañña the dynamic becomes visible:

l Contact arises. l Feeling arises. l An inclination arises. l Craving or rejection arises. l Grasping arises. l A becoming in the direction of a self-project arises. Practice shifts as it deepens. First gross behaviour is recognised. Then feelings. Then thoughts. Then intentions. Then the movement of the mind itself. Finer still, it becomes visible how the very tendency arises to form itself towards an object.

Avijjā is not merely missing knowledge in the intellectual sense. It is the failure to see through the four noble truths, the three characteristics and conditionality. As long as avijjā is at work, the conditioned appears as potentially satisfying, as controllable, or as the ground of a self. That is why the process of experience keeps seeking satisfaction in conditioned phenomena. Strictly speaking, no self is seeking. Processes arise in which an object is marked as desirable, threatening or identity-giving. Out of this come taṇhā, upādāna and bhava. The real deception lies in taking the conditioned as a refuge. Vipassanā sees through this deception by direct insight into arising and passing away, unsatisfactoriness and not-self.

Care is called for with the phrase "the citta takes nibbāna as its object" as well. In the Abhidhamma, nibbāna is indeed described as the object of the supramundane path and fruition consciousness. But that does not mean a self possesses or grasps nibbāna. What is meant is: when the conditions of the path are ripe, a supramundane moment of consciousness arises whose object is nibbāna. This moment is precisely not grasping, but the breakthrough to the ending of grasping. Nibbāna is not a subtler saṃsāric object, but the unconditioned, realised through the extinguishing of greed, hatred and delusion.

The whole practice of sīla, samādhi, paññā, sati-sampajañña and vipassanā is a process of recognising conditionality ever more finely. First the obvious is recognised: action, speech, reaction, feeling. Later the arising of intention, inclination, attention and grasping becomes visible. Finally it is seen through that the movement towards the object is itself conditioned. What at first appears as "my mind", "my wish" or "my suffering" shows itself to be an impersonal process of khandhas, cittas and cetasikas. As long as avijjā is present, saṅkhāras form and the chain of dependent origination continues. With wisdom this movement loses its force. Taṇhā, upādāna and bhava lose their ground. Where grasping ends, dukkha ends.

Sources and notes l Saṃyutta Nikāya 12.1 and 12.2: the classical formula of dependent origination. l Majjhima Nikāya 38, Mahātaṇhāsaṅkhaya Sutta: consciousness arises dependent on conditions; contact, feeling, craving and clinging are explained in context. l Saṃyutta Nikāya 35.28, Ādittapariyāya Sutta: analysis of the six sense fields, contact, feeling and letting go. l Saṃyutta Nikāya 35.93: with contact one feels, intends and perceives; relevant for contact, vedanā, cetanā and saññā. l Saṃyutta Nikāya 22.59, Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta: not-self of the five aggregates. l Abhidhammattha Saṅgaha, especially the account of the seven universal cetasikas. l Bhikkhu Bodhi, A Comprehensive Manual of Abhidhamma: English translation and explanation of the Abhidhammattha Saṅgaha. l P. A. Payutto, Dependent Origination: an account of various ways of interpreting dependent origination. l Ñāṇavīra Thera, A Note on Paṭiccasamuppāda: a modern, structural reading of dependent origination. Useful, but not uncontested.