[Buddha-l] Dependent arising variants

[Dan Lusthaus]

Robert,

> But there are others, including the one you missed in Stephen's list,
which
> is without doubt the earliest attempt to formulate conditioned-arising.

Without doubt? How did you arrive at that vinicchaya? This sutta (Mahanidana
sutta) begins with Ananda coming to the Buddha, having *already* obviously
been exposed to the teaching of paticca-samupada, and being quite please
with himself at believing he understands its depth and complexity. So the
the point of the sutta is precisely to complicate the issue, so that Ananda
doesn't go away with a cheap and simplified understanding. This version
initially gives the short list in pratiloma order (from death down), ending
with consciousness and nama-rupa mutually conditioning each other, i.e., a
ten-link version. Buddha then proceeds to draw out implications of those
ten. The sutta also announces at the beginning that one of the underlying
issues to be addressed is the problem with the current generation which,
failing to understand p-s (fully), has entangled itself in "a tangled ball
of string, covered as with a blight, tangled like coarse grass, unable to
pass beyond states of woe,...ruin and the round of birth-and-death." (Walshe
translation). So that will be the subject matter to which this particular
episode of p-s exposition will apply itself, as your quote illustrates.

> 'And so, Ananda, feeling-sensation [vedanaa] conditions 'thirst'
[ta.nhaa],
> 'thirst' conditions 'searching' [pariyesanaa], 'searching' conditions
> 'acquisition' [laabhaa], 'acquisition' conditions 'decision-making'
> [vinicchaya], 'decision-making' conditions 'lustful desire'
[chanda-raaga],
> 'lustful desire' conditions 'attachment' [ajjaahosaana], 'attachment'
> conditions 'possessiveness' [pariggaha], 'possessiveness' conditions
> 'avarice' [macchariya], 'avarice' conditions 'guarding of possessions'
> [rakkha], and because of 'guarding of possessions' there arises the taking
> up of stick and sword, quarrels, disputes, arguments, strife, abuse, lying
> and other evil unskilled states.' [D ii. 57ff]

These are not additional links (those were enumerated in the ten at the
beginning); these are derivative consequences of those. This is an
illustration of how to *apply* p-s, not an exercise in proliferating links.

> In the Majjhima Nikaaya, in the Discourse on the Honeyball (Madhupi.n.dika
> Sutta), we have:

Again, what is the context as established in the sutta itself (the first
thing philologists shear off in their search for strata, but the most
important factor for understanding the meaning of a sutta)? Buddha, at
Kapilavastu, his old home town, goes into the woods after his morning
alms-meal, and is approached by a fellow clansman (Dandapani the Sakyan) who
has come into the wood to "walk, wander and exercise," and Dandapani asks
him what he proclaims. Apparenlty not in the mood to enter a long, and
possibly contentious disputation with Dandapani, since he himself plans to
meditate for the day, he quickly responds that he proclaims what no one in
the world would dispute, and which removes perception (meaning here
conditioning by senses becoming vedana [= pleasure/pain conditioning],
instilling detachment from sensory conditioning, perplexity, worry or
craving for any being.

That evening, having finished his meditation, he rejoins the bhikkhus and
recounts the exchange, to which a bhikkhu asks him to explain further what
those two "proclamations" mean.

Buddha initially gives a short explanation about perceptions and papanca,
and retires. The bhikkhus want more, so they go to Maha Kaccana for further
elucidation. He obliges them with additional similes and expository models,
which includes the account you quoted:

>
> 'Dependent on the eye and visual forms, eye-consciousness arises. The
> meeting of the three is contact [phassa]. With contact as condition, there
> is feeling-sensation. What one feels, that one apperceives [sañjaanti].
What
> one apperceives [saññaa], that one thinks about [vitakketi]. What one
thinks
> about [vitakka], that one mentally proliferates [papañceti]. With mental
> proliferation [papañca] as the source, apperceptions and notions tinged by
> mental proliferation [papañca-saññaa-sa"nkhaa] beset one with respect to
> past, future, and the present forms cognizable through the eye [same with
> other senses]'.

Subsequently, when apprised of Maha Kaccana's exposition, Buddha approves of
it, saying it conforms to what he might say. So Ananda replies:

"Venerable sir, just as if a man exhausted by hunger and weakness came upon
a honeyball, in the course of eating it he would find a sweet delectable
flavour; so too, venerable sir, any able-minded bhikkhu, in the course of
scrutinizing with wisdom the meaning of this discourse on the Dhamma would
find satisfaction and confidence of mind. Venerable sir, what is the name of
this discourse on the Dhamma?" (Nanamoli and Bodhi tr.)

Buddha, perhaps tongue in cheek (looking for traces of honeyballs), tells
him to call it the Honeyball Discourse.

The framing material is important. The end frame especially is key, since
this deals with a recurrent theme in the Nikayas, namely which teachings,
expositions, elucidations, explanatory expansions, etc., conform to
Buddhavacana, and which violate it. If I were a philologist, I would say
that the frame suggests this is a later addition to the corpus, explicitly
NOT put into the mouth of the Buddha, but given sanction by the redactors.
That is an important theme, but whether this particular sutta is looked at
as an historically later accretion, or some sort of transcript of an event
actually remembered by Ananda, it is clearly a presentation of Maha
Kaccana's commentary on the questions raised, applying the model of p-s with
relevant derivatives.

Applied p-s, which can introduce derivative expansions, is the whole point
of p-s in the first place. It was never intended as a reductionistic
appropriation of the universe to precisely and only 12 factors.

> I must confess that I am always rather shocked at the seemingly total
> ignorance within both the Buddhist tradition and the academic world of the
> extent of the various formulations of conditioned-arising, and the
> implications of this.  There, I said it!

And I am equally shocked at how noncontextual disputers of Buddhavacana get,
and their inability to distinguish a nidana from its analytic derivatives.

cheers,
Dan Lusthaus