chain of delusion

In order to make sense of this world around us our mind assembles a structure of concepts; we label and explain everything, making distinctions, seeing separations, experiencing a world separate from ourselves, an endless chain of delusions. We forget that each concept, each thought arises as a result of a set of conditions. And our experience of those conditions may differ from the experience others have based on the filter we use for interpreting those conditions, i.e the emotional, physical and psychological history and habitual patterns we bring to the situation. That is the heart of dependent arising: our experience of reality is dependent on causes and conditions just as everything around us. All of this is happening in a state of ongoing movement, change, decay, impermanence and death.. Ultimately, dependent arising describes the progression that enlivens the endless cycle of re-birth whether of each moment or our lives altogether.