[Buddha-l] Dependent arising variants

[Richard P. Hayes]

On Thu, 2006-02-02 at 02:37 +0000, Mike Austin wrote:

> >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.

Perhaps it will help to bear in mind that the argument as I reported it
applies on to what John Locke called simple ideas, and what Vasubandhu
called dharmas. (Vasubandhu defined a dharma in a way quite similar to
how Locke defined simple ideas.) His argument was that each dharma
perishes for no other reason than that it arose from conditions. When
the conditions cease or change configuration, the dharma disappears.

The reasoning that applies to dharmas would not necessarily apply to
complex objects, which actually have no independent reality but are
mental imputations superimposed upon real dharmas. What is really going
on, according to Vasubandhu, is that there are impersonal dharmas coming
into existence and immediately going out of existence. Upon that flow of
impersonal dharmas we superimpose complex conventional ideas, such as
human being, birth, death and rebirth. Ultimately speaking, none of
these things exist. There are no human beings, no births, no deaths and
no rebirth. All those notions are categories that belong to delusion.
When, however, an entire society is deluded in the same way, what is in
fact delusion comes to be thought of as truth. 

If an entire society shares a delusion in rebirth, then in that society
rebirth is seen as a truth. If a society does not have that delusion
(but perhaps has some other), then rebirth is not seen as a truth in
that society. So human societies disagree on what is true. Even so,
there may be certain delusions that just about every human society
shares. Among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And
personal identity, self, birth and death.

What Vasubandhu (and any other Buddhist who thinks more or less like
him) teaches is that there is a way to study, think and meditate one's
way out of the particular delusions of the society into which one was
born (such as rebirth), and even out of the universally shared delusions
of the human race as a whole (such as birth, death and personal
identity).

Does that clarify the issue or only make it more confusing? (I am much
better at confusing people than at edifying them.)

-- 
Richard
http://home.comcast.net/~dayamati/rebirth.html