Paṭiccasamupāda - Dependent Arising

In Wednesday’s class in Topics in Mainstream Buddhism we will be discussing one of the more abstruse and certainly one of the most important ideas in the Buddha’s teaching, the notion of Dependent Arising, sometimes translated “Dependent Causality”. The following notes provide a list of the elements that comprise the chain of Dependent Arising; in looking them over, consider the modern logician’s understanding of “necessary cause” vs. “sufficient cause”. The latter is what we think of when we think of cause in the world of Newtonian physics: we hit a ball with a bat and, dependent on the mass of the bat and the ball, the speed and direction of the swing, and the angle of contact, the ball speeds off on a minutely determined trajectory. In the lists comprising Dependent Arising, the notion of causality is closer to the logician’s necessary cause; these conditions are necessary to their successor conditions, in that, without the former, the latter cannot arise. But the former conditions are not sufficient. There has to be a particular cause, typically the appearance, within one’s field of perception, of something that evokes desire, before the subsequent condition will actually arise in whatever form it takes. That is what, in ordinary terms, “causes” the subsequent condition to arise. But if the precedent condition were not present, whatever we think of as a cause in these circumstances would be unable to produce its particular result.

Trust me, it’s more interesting than it may sound.

This is the standard list of elements in the chain of conditions comprising Paṭiccasamupāda, leading from Ignorance to Dukkha:

• Ignorance (avijja )
• Kamma formations (sankhara )
• Consciousness (viññana )
• Mentality-materiality (namarupa )
• Sixfold sense base (salayatana )
• Contact (phassa )
• Feeling (vedana )
• Craving (tanha )
• Clinging (upadana )
• Existence (bhava )
• Birth (jati )
• Suffering (dukkha )

The Transcendental Order

In a single sutta, the Buddha outlines a second chain of conditions which Bhikkhu Bodhi, in a long and fascinating essay, calls “the Transcendental Order”, as distinct from the traditional chain, above, which he calls “the Mundane Order”. The Transcendent Order begins with Faith and ends in the destruction of the taints, or the cankers - the taint of sensuality, the taint of becoming, the taint of ignorance, and, in some sources but not all, the taint of views or opinions. (From an abundance of other sources, we know that destruction of the taints is the necessary condition for, and leads directly to, Enlightenment, awakening, nibbana.) Unlike Ignorance, which, in the Mundane Order, is a given, the Faith which begins the Transcendental Order has its own dependent condition: “‘Faith, bhikkhus, also has a supporting condition, I say, it does not lack a supporting condition. And what is the supporting condition for faith? “Suffering” should be the reply.’” (Upanisa Sutta)

• Faith (saddha )
• Joy (pamojja )
• Rapture (piti )
• Tranquillity (passaddhi )
• Happiness (sukha )
• Concentration (samadhi )
• Knowledge and vision of things as they are (yathabhutañanadassana )
• Disenchantment (nibbida )
• Dispassion (viraga )
• Emancipation (vimutti )
• Knowledge of destruction of the cankers (asavakkhaye ñana )

We don’t know precisely what it means to be Enlightened. The Buddha himself frequently referred to the state he attained through that experience as a “awakening”. When we wake from sleep, we understand that what we experienced in our dreams, although it felt powerfully real, was in fact delusory—a distortion of the reality we know when we wake. Just so, the Buddha understood that what unenlightened people experience through their lives, although it feels powerfully real, is a delusion, a distortion of what the Buddha experienced as “the knowledge and vision of things as they are”.

The decision that the Buddha made to reveal that knowledge and vision to the world was a difficult and courageous one. Imagine that you were able to enter another person’s dream and attempt to show the dreamer the reality of the world as you knew it. Would you be able to convince the dreamer that the figures and events in her dream were illusory and that she would be better off shedding those illusions and facing the reality that you experienced in the waking world? The task would be difficult, at best.

Yet that is the task that the Buddha took upon himself; to show those of us who are not yet Enlightened that the world we experience is not the real world but a construct of our minds with which we delude ourselves, that there is a more profound reality that we would experience if awakened to it, and that our lives would be immeasurably better if we were to just accept the promise of such an awakening.

One of the most significant changes that was accelerating in Northern India through the course of the Buddha’s life is the development of trade and the rise of an increasingly powerful merchant class. That development increased the net wealth of the region, and the increasing wealth meant more taxes for the reigning kings, which enabled them to consolidate power, raise armies, and, eventually, subordinate the representative republics that had been, up until then, the dominant form of government in the region. With disciplined armies under effective central control, the kings were also able to bring a measure of law and order to the roads and trade routes of the region, which had always been dangerous routes to follow - if the tigers didn’t get you, the highwaymen would. And safer trade routes, in turn, led to further increases in trade, more rich merchants, and even more taxes for the king.

The Anattalakkhana Sutta, the Discourse on the Not-Self Characteristic, is, by traditional accounts, the second discourse delivered by the Buddha, shortly after his first discourse that we discussed last week. His audience was the same five bhikkhus who had heard that discourse in which the Buddha set the Wheel of the Dharma in motion. At the conclusion of that first discourse, the Venerable Aññakaṇdañña had attained Enlightenment, had become an arahant. This second discourse awakened the other four; the final line of the sutta summarizes the historical moment: “And there were then six arahants in the world.”

In our second class in the Teachings of the Buddha, we’ll start with the sketch of the Buddha’s early life, leading up to his Enlightenment, which we didn’t have time to cover in the first class. The sutta we’ll then read and discuss is the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta - the Discourse Turning the Wheel of the Law. That is the first teaching that the newly enlightened Buddha delivered, and it represents the core of his teaching; all that he taught through the next 45 years expand on the central ideas presented here.

An aspiring young British philologist, a number of years ago, published a paper in an academic journal purporting to prove that Gotama Siddhata of the Sakyan clan, the person who Awakened to become the Buddha, could not, based on a number of esoteric points, have delivered the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta. The paper caused a minor stir in buddhological circles, and a prominent Thai monk was asked what he thought of the notion that the person he knew as the Buddha could not have delivered the teaching that serves as the foundation for all Buddhist thought and practice. He chuckled and responded, “Well, whoever delivered that teaching, that was the Buddha.”

In the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, the Buddha enumerates the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path leading to an end to suffering. I’ve also posted a precís of Bhikkhu Bodhi’s book on the Eightfold Path, for those of you who can make the time to read it.

A very detailed outline of my teaching notes for class 2 is on the web. On Wednesday, we’ll finish up the stuff we didn’t get to in the first class and begin on the second class. By the end of class 3, we should be back on track. One thing to note about the posted outlines: they are actual outlines, and the little black arrow to the left of a topic line is clickable; if it’s pointing right, it can be expanded by clicking on it, and you will see everything under that line. If it’s pointing down and you click on it, you will see just the topic line.

Have fun.