The Ten Fetters: #10, Ignorance, the Last Veil

It's Halloween week, and we are at the end of our series on the 10 deep patterns that keep us bound to the cycle of birth and death. You can think of these fetters as veils, since they keep the reality of subtle nature invisible to us. And with subtlety invisible, we are stuck with the material world and our emotional reactions to it.

When the Buddha remembered his past, it came with the understanding that ongoing existence is not a balance of joy and sorrow to be embraced, but a sustained painful experience. It's not possible to persist lifetime after lifetime without any suffering, except in the extremely rarified form of the Bodhisattva. Being reborn means being reborn into suffering through the power of grasping; reborn because of ignorance.

So tonight, the last veil: ignorance (avijjā). Then we can be ready for the eve of thin veils this weekend.

Online, October 28, 2025