Thank you for the wonderful discussion and for the series of posts on distorted/defiled saññā. I have gone through that series several times and am still making my way slowly through them; I did have a thought, however, of a possible connection between these concepts and paṭicca samuppāda, which I’d like to share here to see if it makes sense.
Let’s start with paṭicca samuppāda (PS), and let’s focus on just akusala-mula PS for this discussion: “avijja paccaya sankhara……bhava paccaya jati…..“
We see that 3 of the 4 mental khandā are in PS: sankhara, vinnana, vedana. Saññā is not.
Reading about distorted/defiled saññā, I had the idea that saññā is the mechanism or condition that moves PS from one step to the next. I sort of see it in the “vedana paccaya tanha” step.
In other words, distorted/defiled saññā is the “paccaya” in paṭicca samuppāda.
Best,
Lang