[Buddha-l] Dependent arising variants

[Dan Lusthaus]

Stan asks:
> Is birth the cause of death, or is it simply a necessary condition without
which speaking of death would be meaningless, but which is changed by either
an extrinsic cause (murder, falling off a cliff) or a cause intrinsic to the
ogranism (cancer, cardiovascular disease)?

Dan answers:
It's the necessary and sufficient condition. If there is no birth, there is
no death. Period. That's what the Buddha said, and no one has any
information to the contrary. Murder, accidents, disease, etc., are
contributing factors -- those are contingencies, not necessities. We might
not die from the same contingencies, but we will both die since we both were
born.

In the standard example of the distinction between hetu (cause) and pratyaya
(contributory conditions) in the early literature, the seed is the hetu of
the tree, while sun, soil, water, etc., are pratyaya. You can pile up all
the pratyaya you want, but without the hetu there is no tree. Hydroponics
suggest that one can fudge with the pratyaya, and they will likely affect
how the tree grows, but the *type* of tree (oak, maple, banyan, etc.) is
solely determined by the seed.

By analogy, birth is the primary hetu of death, though mitigating factors
can bring on its outset sooner rather than later.

Dan Lusthaus