[Buddha-l] Dependent arising variants

[Dan Lusthaus]

Stephen,

> I think you are confusing necessary /sufficient causes with necessary /
> sufficient conditions --

I think not, though, as Richard noted, some confusion may arise from the use
of anachronistic terminology (though the necessary / contingent / accidental
distinction re: causes goes back to Aristotle and pervaded Medieval and
early modern philosophy, so it is not a "recent" term).

Some years ago Lance Cousins and I discussed on this list whether the
twenty-four pratyaya system of the Theravada made sense (Lance's position)
or was littered with unnecessary redundancy (my position) that could be well
served by being subjected to or translated into the parsimonious four causes
of Aristotle (efficient, material, formal and final). Buddhists, of course,
did something very much like that -- Sarvastivada whittled the list down to
five, six, or seven conditions (depending which text one reads), Yogacara
settled on four (the ones Mike Austin mentioned via Garfield -- who
apparently misunderstands completely what the four pratyayas entail).

You are correct that the standard formulas for pratitya-samutpada employ the
conditional (if Q, then R; in the absence of Q, no R) rather than a "hard"
causal formula. In the pratiloma version of the nidanas, Buddha begins by
asking "Why is there death?" He decides, There is death because there is
birth. Whether you choose to take this as a conditional or a harder causal
statement is up to you.

> 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.

The next question Buddha asked himself was: "Why is there birth?" There is
birth, because of bhava, so this is not an infinite regress but an
uncovering of a causal order. Why bhava? Because of upadana... and so on,
until, why samskaras? Because of ignorance. In the absence of ignorance,
this whole mass of suffering, up to birth and death, ceases.


> Besides, in Buddhist terms, birth is a prajnapti so cannot be causal !

Prajnapti is itself a complicated category, and for some Buddhists not
entirely devoid of causal characteristics. Fiction does elicit effects in an
audience (like the frightened reaction to the snake that is actual a rope),
though the cause and effects understood properly would not be assigned to
the fictitious entity itself ("Sherlock Holmes" doesn't solve crimes, nor
does "he" delight his readers -- the causes and conditions that have led to
the writing, distribution, and consuming of the Conan Doyle character need
to be analyzed into their dravya). On the other hand, for Sarvastivada,
birth is viprayukta samskara, and thus a dravya, not prajnapti (the
Darstantikas and Yogacaras consider viprayukta samskaras to be prajnapti,
not dravya).

Dan Lusthaus