Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening

by Joseph Goldstein

when craving becomes a strong and powerful force in the mind, it can lead us to many unwholesome actions, creating more unskillful karma, which results in suffering. Craving plays a pivotal role in the teaching of dependent origination. Based on contact and feeling, whether pleasant or unpleasant, craving arises. Because of craving, clinging; because of clinging, becoming. And so the whole cycle—old results (feelings) causing new actions, which, in turn, bring new results—goes on. An idiomatic way of expressing these links might bring home just how common and familiar they are to us: “I want, I need, I must have.” How many times have we gone from a simple wanting, a desire, to that convincing mind state of “needing”? Right there we have gone from craving to clinging. And as the felt need gets stronger, it turns into “must have.” This is already on the cusp of action, of becoming.