The memoria of Venerable Chin Kung continues in many places and the chanting activities will continue for 49 days. In all his teaching, Venerable Chin Kung stresses that the biggest crisis of our era is not that of the economy, environment, or food, but the crisis of lost faith. Buddhism is not a religion, but education about life science. He said people become unethical, and commit crimes or misconduct because they are not aware of the law of cause and effect. We need to help people expand their consciousness about the importance of the karmic force that shapes our being.
One of the most fundamental concepts in Buddhism teaching is the twelve Links of Dependent Origination (or Dependent Arising, or Dependent Co-arising). The truth of the universe as Buddha taught us is that all things arise through causes and conditions, and that suffering arose from a twelve-step cycle he would later call the Twelve Links of Dependent Origination. Kudo to the great works from many sources putting out intuitive illustrations to make these complex subjects easier to understand. Below are some wonderful materials I found on the web and I will put their website links here whereever it is available.
Each link is the cause of the next link (effect). Though the links are numbered and are in order, the numbering could begin anywhere, because each link connects to all the other links.
Great articles by Sunnataram Forest Monastery about each of the 12 Links.
More details explanations for each of the 12 Links of Dependent Origination can be found here, and here, and here.
Thich Nhat Hanh, the great Zen master explains that it is easy to assume that Dependent Co-Arising is teaching on cause-and-effect: “that can be misleading, because we usually think of cause and effect as separate entities, with cause always preceding effect, and one cause leading to one effect. According to the teaching of Interdependent Co-Arising, cause and effect co-arise (samutpada) and everything is a result of multiple causes and conditions…” Below are some other ways to see the relations between the twelves links.
