[Buddha-l] Dependent arising variants

[Stanley J. Ziobro II]

On Wed, 1 Feb 2006, Dan Lusthaus wrote:

> 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.

Dan,

I appreciate arguments from authority, even when they are seemingly weak
(and of course they are, because Americans have problems with authority,
except when it issuse from themselves).  I can grant from a
phenomonalogical perspective that birth appears to be a cause of death,
and this seems to be a point of view of the Buddha, at least as it has
been transmitted.  These caveats stated I don't think that this particular
analysis meets the point.  It does attest to the fact that contingient
existents change.  It does not really address the why or how of change.

> 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.

I see the point here, and in this instance it fits inasmuch as the seed is
the material couse of the tree.  But a seed is not a condition, whereas
birth is a process of bringing forth an existent possessed of life.  The
condition of life is not a cause; it is a resultant state.  To my limited
mind a cause is that which brings about a reduction of this state from
viability to death.  As I've written elsewhere, the "that" is either
intrinsic to the existent or extrinsic to it.

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

I'm having trouble with the analogy for reasons I've noted above.

Regards,

Stan Ziobro