[Buddha-l] Dependent arising variants

[Mike Austin]

In message <1138763667.5000.29.camel at localhost.localdomain>, Richard P. 
Hayes <rhayes at unm.edu> writes
>On Tue, 2006-01-31 at 20:39 -0500, SJZiobro at cs.com wrote:
>
>> Is birth the cause of death, or is it simply a necessary condition 
>>without which speaking of death would be meaningless
>
>Vasubandhu and Dharmakirti both argue at considerable length that birth
>is a sufficient condition for death. No other cause of death is needed
>than birth itself. The argument is complex. You can read about it in the
>Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy sub voce "Potentials, Indian
>theories of."

I am having a bit of trouble following this. I do not have the reference 
to hand,  but I feel that it is rather like being offered a loan - where 
the small print says 'conditions apply'.  I think that our definition of 
'birth' may already imply that it is an event which necessarily leads to 
death. Of course, we never see any evidence to the contrary. What we see 
is birth that arises from a multitude of conditions,  and we do not know 
all of them. For example, I heard that scientists have not found reasons 
why the body degenerates.  Theoretically, we could live indefinitely, if 
we could avoid accidents.  So we should not assume that there is nothing 
else acting here - that birth alone is sufficient. What we mean by birth 
is a conditioned birth - as in the nidanas.  It is bound to culminate in 
death, but is not by itself sufficient. Were we to qualify the nature of 
this type of birth fully, it would be implicit that death follows, qed.

-- 
Metta
Mike Austin