[Buddha-l] Dependent arising variants

[Dan Lusthaus]

Robert,

> 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.

Looking forward to your exposition of that (or Stephen's), since I'm unclear
exactly what section of Sn he is indicating. "Sn778-785 Very primitive
alternative version" does not correspond -- at least in the versions of Sn I
have on hand -- to anything related to p-s. Might the indication be to
Kalahavivaada sutta (vs. 862-877), which is a Q and A session in which
Buddha responds to specific questions with modified segments of p-s,
appropriate to the intent of the questions, which, like much of this part of
Sn, is concerned with the pernicious consequences of holding views, the
perils of disputation, etc. There are various "applied" versions of p-s in
Sn, so I'm not sure which one is at issue.

> My angle is that these 'frames' are much later stories invented to give
what
> is a dharmic teaching a context.

As I mentioned, these are the first thing that philologists shear off when
they want to stratify the literature. This is, therefore, a very complicated
issue, since, on the one hand, tinkering with the frame templates did occur
(even moreso in Mahayana literature, in which they become very stereotypical
boilerplate). But, on the other hand, to assume that always and everywhere
the frame can be safely ignored and discarded, is simply ridiculous, not
even primarily for historical reasons, but simply to make sense of what the
rest of the sutta is trying to present (whether one wishes to attribute the
motives and guiding hand to Ananda, redactors, or whomever). I sometimes
suspect that those eager to do such shearing -- aside from their supposed
philological motives (and philology on early Buddhist materials has been
strikingly unimpressive in its methods, perseverence, or results so far) -- 
is simply a way for some people to do "Abhidhamma-light", i.e., pare things
down to modular doctrinal clusters devoid of context, but not for the
purpose of practicing dhamma, but rather simply as a way to avoid delving
seriously in the complex actual abhidhammic/abhidharmic materials
themselves.

If one doesn't want to give the tradition credit for transmitting Ananda's
recital, at least one might give the redactors some credit for intelligently
putting their materials together.

>see 'The Theory of "Dependent Origination" in
> its Incipient Stage' by Nakamura, in 'Buddhist Studies in honour of
Walpola
> Rahula'),

Yes, I'm familiar with this, and the other pieces that have been mentioned
in this thread. To those I would add recommendations for

D.M. Williams, "Paticcasamuppada: A Developed Formula", Religious Studies
14, March 1978, 35-56 and

chapters 4-6 of Takeuchi Yoshinori's _The Heart of Buddhism_, tr. by James
Heisig, NY: Crossroad, 1983.

As you can see from the dates of these pieces, this is not a new issue.


> .  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.

Me, too, which is why I felt it necessary to devote a chapter to p-s in my
book, Buddhist Phenomenology.

>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.

Most shocking to me is the number of supposed leading scholars of Buddhism
today who proudly proclaim that p-s has them baffled (they usually blame
that on the model itself, contending it makes no sense). The arrogance of
that -- since it tacitly asserts that all the Buddhists who held up this
model as the key to Buddha's enlightenment and Buddhism itself, is
tantamount to declaring that Buddhists through the ages have been morons for
not sharing these modern confusions. Talk about viparyasa! To not understand
p-s, at least to the extent that it is a meaningful model for explaining how
things really are, is simply to not have the first clue about Buddhism.

Dan Lusthaus