[Buddha-l] Dependent arising variants

[Robert Morrison]

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.
<<

Dan:

>
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, 
<

Sorry Dan, but I was refering to a version mentioned by Stephan found in the
'Chapter of the Eights' from the Sutta Nipata. It is certainly not a variant
of the standard 12 nidaanas.  Lance asks the same question about my 'without
doubt', so I'll try and answer that in my reply to him - but that will be
tomorrow night (GMT) at the earliest.


>>
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)
[snip]

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.
<

My angle is that these 'frames' are much later stories invented to give what
is a dharmic teaching a context.  K. R. Norman gave a series of lectures at
SOAS in the 1980's (if I remember correctly), one of which went into this
aspect of how the contexts were made up to support an oral transmission. I
don't know if these were ever published.  There is also Schopen's work on
the Mulasarvastivadin Vinaya (sorry, can't remember the article title),
which has passages showing how monks should contextualize texts they are
writing up, I think in this case it was Jatakas.  Then there is also the two
final vaggas of the Sutta Nipata, which are reckoned by both scholars and
the Theravada tradition as the oldest texts, which is where, in my and many
others' opinions (for example, see 'The Theory of "Dependent Origination" in
its Incipient Stage' by Nakamura, in 'Buddhist Studies in honour of Walpola
Rahula'), we find the earlist attempt to formulate something that later came
to be call 'conditioned-arising'.  In these two vaggas, there is a complete
lack of 'Thus have I heard, when the Buddha ...' etc.  One finds no
'developed' doctrines here, but the clear antecedents of them.  So contexts
are interesting as added devices - they make for a more engaging read - but
that's all. 

>
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'm sure this was not the early intention, but humans being what they are,
that seems to be quicky forgotten.  There are so many examples of
mind-numimg literalism, especially within the Theravada tradition.  If you
can direct me to a good account and dharmic interpretation of
conditioned-arising, I'll be very pleased.  So far I've been very
disppointed.  My present view is that this is a very important doctrine -
even the root doctrine - that has not in my experience received an
intelligent and thoughtful treatment.  (I'm by nature lazy - I like to rely
on others doing the work!).  

>>
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.
<

Apologies for shocking you Dan, but on such a list one simply does not have
the time to be thorough enough (and I have a deep loathing of passing
thoughts through to these 10 digits, which then have to find and land
squarely on little plastic squares with letters on them).  If I did I would
write an article on this (which I've been meaning to do for years)!

Bed-time.

Cheers,

Robert