[Buddha-l] Dependent arising variants

[Stephen Hodge]

Dan Lusthaus wrote:

> Birth was the cause. [snip] The fact of death, however, once something
> or someone is born, cannot be otherwise.

Dan,

I think you are confusing necessary /sufficient causes with necessary / 
sufficient conditions -- they are different though they may on occasion 
overlap, but not in this instance.  All your comments and examples so far in 
your various messages on this topic reflect this confusion.  Obviously, 
birth is a necessary and sufficient condition for death but not the cause. 
A cause is an entity or event that imparts a generative force.  If birth is 
causal in any sense, it is a cause of life rather than death -- as somebody 
else suggested.

Also, if you were to insist that birth is the cause of death, you are making 
an arbitrary choice.  Why not embark on a process of infinite regression ? 
As Erik implies, the mere fact of our universe itself coming into being is 
the ultimate cause of death -- and even then one might argue for further 
regression of one accepts recent aspects of string theory.

So again, I would maintain that dependent arising is not a causal process 
but a conditional process.  The Buddha is never reported in the Nikayas as 
saying nidana X *causes* nidana Y.  It would have been easy enough to do 
this and then the standard account of the nidanas would probably have linked 
the items with a causative verb like "uppaadeti" -- but this never happens. 
Besides, in Buddhist terms, birth is a prajnapti so cannot be causal !

Best wishes,
Stephen Hodge