Ignorance is a cognitive defilement, craving an emotional defilement. Their pairing here shows that they work together, rather than being in a strict linear relationship as in the standard set of twelve links. Dependent origination is textually stated as a line, and pictorially as a circle. However in many ways, the best image is a spiral: twisting around like a coiling snake or like DNA, never exactly repeating yet never really new.

The phrase “shrouded by ignorance” describes beings roaming through transmigration (SN 15.1, AN 3.76, Iti 14). Nīvaraṇa ultimately stems from Vṛtra, the serpent who, by coiling around the mountain, both “shrouded” it in darkness, and “hindered” or blocked it. | The reading here is sampayutta (“coupled”) rather than saṁyojana (“fettered”) found elsewhere.

In the standard sequence, this corresponds to the emergence of consciousness with name and form in a new life. | For the unique phrase “this body and external name and form” (ayañceva kāyo bahiddhā ca nāmarūpaṁ), compare the stock phrase “this conscious body and all external stimuli” (saviññāṇake kāye bahiddhā ca sabbanimittesu, eg. SN 18.21:1.3). “Name and form” are that which is known, the labels and concepts as well as physical sense stimuli, all of which is felt as “external” to the knowing consciousness, the “lord of the city” seated in the central square (SN 35.245:9.7). For the body in the process of rebirth, compare Rig Veda 10.56. | The idiom etesaṁ vā aññatarena (“one or other”) takes the instrumental, so it applies to the six senses, not pleasure and pain.

Paṇḍita is normally used for a learned scholar, rather than a contemplative “sage”. Pali has many more terms for “a wise person” than does English, and it is not easy to distinguish the senses. “Astute” is meant to convey the sense of one who is observant and of sound judgment.

These factors are all resultant, not kammically active.

While the opposition between the fool (or “child”, bāla) and the astute (or “learned”, paṇḍita) is consistent in Buddhism, not so in the pre-Buddhist literature. There the pair rarely appear, and when they do it is to subvert expectations. Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 3.5.1 says a brahmin should stop being a paṇḍita and become a bāla, and when they are no longer either of those, they become a sage (muni); and when they stop being a sage, they become a brahmin.

The “fool” in Buddhism is not one who lacks intelligence, but one who, lacking moral sense, lives heedlessly.

This corresponds with the generation of “continued existence” and future rebirth in the standard sequence. Thus the process evolves over at least three lives: the past life, where you made kamma driven by ignorance and craving; this life, where you experience the results and can choose to act differently; and the next life where you will experience the results of choices in this life. It can be more than three, as kamma takes effect over many lifetimes. The different factors are all observable in every life, but it is only when the process is seen evolving over time that their full nature is understood.