An important term in the teaching and practice of Siddhattha Gautama is the word saṅkhāra. Generally, it is translated as “formations,” “conditions,” or “constructions.” For this article, the metaphor of a “stitch” or “script” is used.

If there is a script, there must be a director. For the Buddha, that director is ignorance. Dependent upon ignorance, there can arise the possibility of stitches or scripts that give birth to action. If you don’t see the stitch or script coming, you get tied in or end up in some place, some scene, you feel lost in, wondering how you got stuck to some consciousness, intention, experience, conceptualizing, body (the five grasping aggregates).

In 22.100 SN it is likened to a dog being stuck to a pole without knowing a way out, continually circling around these five aggregates in suffering, and that pole or ignorance scripts the possibilities of the dog without the dog understanding them as such. If it intends to move away without understanding the fetter, and how that intention was a script rooted in ignorance, it finds itself confused or in despair when that intention doesn’t result in freedom. It may circle around:
consciousness of the experience,
consciousness of the conceptualizations
consciousness of the intentions
consciousness of the body
consciousness of the consciousness
It circles around these five as though this is a complete world, not understanding that they are sankhara’s or scripts or stitches and their dependently arisen nature.

Reckoning Sankhara’s by virtue of their stitchedness or scriptedness
Sankhara etymologically has the meaning of being ‘put together’.
It means that sankhara’s are not only best understood in relation to other things, but that sankhara’s only can be understood in relation to how they arise dependent upon other things are arising or ceasing.¹ If something like craving is taken, it often is understood as some a thirst or dart that is suffering. But this would be to understand craving as something unto itself, which foregoes the dimension of its stitched or scripted nature.

Rather, if it is understood it through stitchedness or scriptedness, it can be understood that the craving or thirst only arises dependent upon this dart arising together with consciousness. If the dart ‘is put together’ with consciousness, that being-put-togetherness is the sankhara of craving. Without the dart, there is no craving. Without the consciousness, there is no craving. Both these conditions need to co-arise for there to dependently arise the new condition, script or stitch of craving.

This script then scripts the consciousness.² And that means that the consciousness stitches into itself as long as there is ignorance about the cessation of this stitching process. If one is mindful of greed, hatred, delusion, one doesn’t get ‘stitched’ in with that greed hatred and delusion, which is basically consciousness that is burning or thirsting for release, i.e. craving.

This craving can give rise to clinging or grasping. The consciousness is stitched in and now it is pushing away (craving to destroy), or trying to gain control over (greed), or proliferate itself (craving for existence). Except, rather than allowing for itself to be extinguished through compassion, joy, equanimity, loving-kindness, the clinging adds to the burning. The moment something is grasped, at that very moment two things are put together: a stitch or script (sankhara) happens.

The force that seeks to preserve and multiply these stitches is personified in Buddhism as Māra. It exploits perceptions in craving consciousness and exerts persecutory authority over them. This resembles what Carveth calls the superego operating through persecutory guilt: one feels hounded by thoughts of existence, possessions, or destructiveness. This agency cannot be destroyed itself, but without craving or clinging, it has no ground dependent upon which there is becoming of anything stressful.

If one no longer wants to act out the play directed by ignorance, and its scripts of sufferings, what is required is the development of wisdom. Wisdom illuminates all things, including the question what is wisdom itself. In the language of Carveth, a key instrument for this wisdom is conscience. The conscience knows it is buried, half-buried, or surfaced and free. If one uses wisdom, a long with right effort and right mindfulness, a path can be developed leading to seclusion (concentration or undistrability).

Put differently, within this analogy, to be unleashed requires meditation. Mara is understood to have an army ready at its disposal to distract someone with. In the meditation, one can find out. Often, from the get go there are distracting thoughts that are skeptical doubt (can’t do this, this is not worth it), restlessness (what if…), dullness, craving for sensory stimulation, hatred.

If one can stay in such a secluded place for long enough, in the jhanas, it becomes possible to see a chain of dependently arisen conditions farther and farther. One becomes disenchanted with certain conflicts, understanding their suffering, their cause, and an alternative path towards letting go and freedom. Craving is quenched and the leash doesn’t become so tight. One experiences happiness, and may even start seeing that the ‘me’ stressing about freedom is a composite of intentions, body, consciousness, conceptualizing, experiences that depended on impermanent circumstances for their own impermanent arrival.

Truffaut, Ozu, Kiarostami and others all have reflections on some kind directedness of the director, and the inclining towards wanting to overcome themselves for the love of the movie to be free and real. They have a wholesome interest (chanda), conviction, wisdom, heart and attentiveness to establish what is without direction, signless, empty of self. (121 MN)

1. For a more in-depth discussion, check out https://leighb.com/sodapi/ ↩︎
2. 
   
   Post-script: Stardust and an origin tale.
   
   There is only one sutta on the origins of all things, the Agganna sutta (DN 27). Like all suttas in the Digha Nikaya (one of the collections in the Pali Canon), its function is mainly to strengthen the faculty of saddha (confidence or faith).
   
   Similarly, to cultivate confidence in the practice, I’ve enjoyed using the logic above to find a story for myself that resonates and movitates. I’ve always resonated with the movies from Terence Malick, who gives voice to such wonder.
   
   The logic above was as follows: sankhara’s need other sankhara’s for itself to arise. Without another sankhara, there can’t arise any other sankhara. Without a script, there is nothing that can script consciousness. For something to script consciousness, there needs to be a script.
   
   Following that, the list of mundane dependent origination can be reconstructed.
   
   Ignorance is sometimes liked to dust. The citta (in Pali: mind) is understood as light. Ignorance is said to depend on its arrival on what are known as three taints. One of these taints is ignorance itself. The implication of that is that dust, or ignorance, is a sankara’s that arises dependent upon dust or ignorance. Meaning, it is a sankhara that collects itself. Who knows where the dust came from? That is what would be beyond reach of this logic. Nonetheless, if for some reason dust appears in light, this dust starts collecting itself, and it starts conditioning this light. In Buddha dhamma, that firstly would be immaterial light or consciousness, then fine-material, and eventually gross-material conscioussness in the form of a material body.
   
   The consciousness and the mentality preceded the material body, and continues to condition or develop this mentality-materiality. Bhikku Nananande explains that the whole of mentality-materiality is a reflected dimension on consciousness. If all sankhara’s are destoyed, all ignorance removed, there would simply be non-reflective consciousness or non-reflective light. non-reflective light is a complicated way of saying that it would simply be light. It wouldn’t get caught by any of these aggregates, it wouldn’t pile around at it. There are many teachings that say that this would be the ultimate. However, this isn’t the case in Buddha dhamma. The Buddha taught that there is unconditioned, the deathless, and it wouldn’t be adequate to equate it with any of the aggregates.
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