Sam Forbes
Religion 354: Buddhism
Short Paper
Seeing Dependent Origination
“Whoever sees dependent origination sees the Doctrine…”
If the seed of a daffodil is planted in the ground, watered, fertilized, given enough sunlight and so on, it is sure to mature into a bright yellow flower come springtime. If the same seed is planted, but the conditions needed for it to sprout are not present (forgetting to water it, for example) it will never grow, no matter how much one wishes for it. This is a simple example of the Buddhist idea of dependent origination, more eloquently put as: “…conditioned by this, that comes to be; if this is not, that does not come to be.” All phenomena, both mental and physical, arise from causes and conditions. If even just one of these conditions is removed, the result cannot and will not arise.
It is said that “whoever sees dependent origination sees the doctrine…” Doctrine, in this context, refers to the essence of Buddha’s 84,000 teachings. Dependent origination is the essence of these teachings because it forms the basis of the most key concepts within Buddhism. These include suffering, impermanence, anatman, karman, and samsara. They are all built upon a deep understanding of dependent origination and how it operates in the mental and physical spheres. The teachings of Buddha are able to transform one’s mind and experience following the notion that everything arises and passes away due to causes and conditions.
In his first teaching, or the First Turning of the Wheel of Dharma, Buddha taught that the end of suffering is possible by following the path to nirvana. The historical Buddha himself said:
“… birth, old age, death, sorrow, lamentation, misery, grief, and despair, for the extinction of which in the present life I am prescribing… misery… the origin of misery, the cessation of misery… and the path leading to the cessation of misery have I elucidated. And why, Malunkyaputta, have I elucidated this? Because, Malunkyaputta, this does profit, has to do with the fundamentals of religion, and tends to aversion, absence of passion, cessation, quiescence, knowledge,
supreme wisdom, and Nirvana; therefore have I elucidated it.”1
In the above quote, Buddha is referring to the Four Noble Truths. Suffering has a cause (the Second Noble Truth) and precisely because of this, suffering can cease (the Third Noble Truth). If suffering had no cause, it would be eternal, not subject to change, and impossible to extinguish. In other words, there would be no hope in Buddha’s message concerning suffering. However, just as the daffodil will never bloom in the spring if the proper causes and conditions are not assembled, so suffering cannot arise if it’s causes are not present. Suffering arises due to negative past actions, which in turn are performed due to ignorance and craving, according to early Indian Buddhists.
The actions one performs in one’s life are known as “karma” in Sanskrit. Karma is not originally a Buddhist term, but rather comes from the Hindu traditions. It refers to the idea of cause and effect and thus is closely related to dependent origination. This relationship of cause and effect, according to Buddhism, does not apply to the short term, physical world alone but also to the mental world over lifetimes, even over eons of lifetimes. In Vedic Hinduism, karma was seen as the backbone of sacrificial rituals. The cause (sacrifice) would lead to the desired effect (cows, wealth and so forth) if the ritual was carried out properly. The sramana movement later rebelled against this worldly philosophy. Buddhism grew out of this movement, with questions raised about the nature and cessation of suffering. The end of suffering, expounded in the Third Noble Truth, refers to nirvana which in Sanskrit literally means “to blow out.” It is likened to a lamp which is extinguished when its fuel runs dry. Similarly, when it’s fuel of negative actions is consumed, one is no longer burned by the resultant suffering.
The Twelve Dependent-Related Links (pratityasamutpada) show how suffering arises in more detail. They explain precisely how ignorance and desire lead to suffering. In essence, these Twelve Links reveal how dependent origination functions on the subjective level, within one’s own mind and personal experience. In The Collection of Connected Discourses (Samyutta-Nikaya), Buddha replies to questions put forth by Kassapa, one of his disciples:
“Conditioned by ignorance are karmic constituents; conditioned by karmic constituents is consciousness; conditioned by consciousness is individuality (name and form); conditioned by individuality are the six senses; conditioned by the six senses is contact; conditioned by contact is feeling; conditioned by feeling is desire; conditioned by desire is clinging; conditioned by clinging is becoming; conditioned by becoming is rebirth; conditioned by rebirth are old age, death, sorrow, lamentation, suffering, depression, and dismay. In this way,
this whole great heap of suffering originates.”2
These twelve links reveal how ignorance and desire lead to rebirth and thus sufferings such as death and so forth. Basically, the Twelve Links map out a chain of mental phenomena, again based on causes and conditions. One link leads to the next in an endless cycle, forming the circle one sees bordering the Wheel of Life, an image that depicts samsara. Each link depends on the link previous to it as one circles about the Wheel; again, it operates on the basis of dependent origination. Samsara comes about as beings follow this painful cycle again and again.
Samsara, or cyclic existence, is one of the basic assumptions in the Indian religious world view. It originally comes from Hindu traditions and the notion of a transmigrating self which, ironically, Buddhism will try to refute. Nevertheless, the theory of rebirth remains:
“Then just as a grass leech, when it comes to the end of a blade of grass, gathers itself up together (to go over to something else), even so this Spirit, when it has rid itself of this body and cast off ignorance gathers itself up together (to go over
to another body).” – from the Upanishads3
Nirvana breaks this chain of death and rebirth, though the paths that lead to this liberation are radically different in the Upanishadic traditions and early Buddhism. Upanishadic Hinduism will postulate an eternal, unchanging, permanent self that possesses agency and self-control (atman), and claim that realizing that atman is not different from brahman leads to freedom from this painful cycle of rebirth and redeath. Buddhism challenges this idea directly, again based on the idea of causality by postulating the theory of no-self (anatman).
The teaching of anatman is one of the most profound aspects of Buddhist thought and involves lines of reasoning to negate the self expounded by Upanishadic Hinduism. This self has three aspects: 1) permanence; 2) agency; and 3) self-control. The Buddhist reasoning to assert that ultimately there is no self is summed up in the dialogue between Nagasena, a Buddhist monk, and King Milinda in the Questions of Milinda. In this exhaustive debate, Nagasena demonstrates that he lacks the self assumed to exist by the King. He does so by having the King search in every possible place for the monk’s atman and the King is unable to find it. It is important to note that this search is exhaustive; nothing is left out. He begins with the notion of self as an agent of action, then moves on to the body’s various parts and organs, and finally to the five aggregates (skandhas). He reveals to the King that none of the individual parts, the collection of these parts, nor something separate from these parts is the self or atman, concluding:
“Well, my friend, though I question you repeatedly, I do not find any ‘Nagasena.’ ‘Nagasena’ is but a sound. Who is this ‘Nagasena’? You are lying, my friend,
you are telling falsehoods. There is no Nagasena!”4
This exhaustive search and ultimate failure to find “Nagasena” is closely related to Buddhist causality or dependent origination. When Nagasena guides the King on his search, he leads him through all the causes and conditions that the monk’s own “existence” depends on. “Nagasena” is lost in a sea of causality, of interdependent factors that theoretically stretch out to infinity. “Nagasena” as mere name or mere sound conventionally depends on the assembly of his mental and physical aggregates, and yet ultimately is not any one nor the collection of these various parts or causes.
This can be demonstrated, again, using the more simple example of the daffodil. Is the soil the daffodil? Is the sunlight the daffodil? The water? The seed? The fertilizer? We can see that although a daffodil appears to our mind and is a valid imputation on this phenomena or appearance, ultimately the daffodil itself cannot be found. “Daffodil” is mere name. None of these individual factors is the flower we are searching for. Unconvinced, we may break these conditions down further to the cells, atoms and subatomic particles, but ultimately there is no self, no “daffodil-ness” there to be found! We may believe that the collection of the causes and conditions are the daffodil itself, but there is a contradiction in language here as we attempt to impute a singularity on a plurality. How can the parts (plural) be a flower (singular)?
Just as the causes come together to form what we call a “flower” or “Nagasena” or “self,” so they must part. This is the teaching of impermanence. Impermanence in and of itself does not cause suffering. Instead, it is our clinging to impermanent things, trying to grasp them and cause them to remain that causes suffering. For example, being separated from what one desires leads to frustration, sorrow, depression and other woes. This impermanent nature of phenomena is a product of dependent origination. Just as things arise from causes and conditions, their decay is also due to causality. To use the daffodil example again, when the temperature changes or the rain stops, the daffodil withers and dies. This is because the conditions conducive to its survival have ceased. Now, if we were to have a strong desire for the daffodil to stay alive, we would become despondent when seeing its demise. In this way, our desire for continued existence produces suffering. Dependent origination functions because phenomena are subject to change. These changes cause the arising and passing away of all that we experience.
Dependent origination, in the Buddhist context, can be thought of as a law that governs the creation and destruction of all phenomena in the universe. Like a scientific law or theory, this principle was discovered, tested and utilized by Buddhists to form the basis of many of their central tenets. Ideas such as karman, samsara, anatman, suffering, and impermanence are all based on this idea that everything arises from causes and conditions. Samsara and all its sufferings of death, lamentation, sorrow and so on arise from causes, just as a flower blooms in the springtime when the proper conditions are met. If these conditions are removed, the sufferings of samsara cannot arise, just as a flower will not grow if one forgets to water it. Similarly, the sutras demonstrate how there is no self to be found amongst the aggregates of a person, and how all phenomena that arise from causes must pass away when those causes change. Actions are the fuel that turns the wheel of samsara, that throws beings into samsaric rebirths over and over again. Without this fuel, samsara will cease. Nirvana is experienced.
1Warren 121
2Strong 110
3Edgerton 161
4Strong 103
