[Buddha-l] Dependent arising variants

[Robert Morrison]

> Dan et al.,
> 
> In a kind of exasperated "J'accuse!," Dan writes,
> 
> > 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.

Franz:
 
> I can only say, mea culpa. Well, okay, I'm not *proud* of it, but I've
> had a cordial distaste for p-s from the get-go. I'm just looking
> through my old notebooks from Buddhism courses (mostly with Frank
> Reynolds at University of Chicago), and I'm seeing the centrality of
> three cosmogonies in Buddhism: the sa?saric, the rupic, and the
> dhammic. The sa?saric cosmogony corresponds to p-s; the sa?saric world
> is created through p-s, and the way out of that world is through
> nibbana. In this sense, the Four Noble Actualities (as Dan nicely puts
> them) are just another partial version of p-s (albeit with different
> metaphors). Yet I cleave to them and shun the difficulties of p-s.

Sorry to use your post as an example of what I've been getting at.  To say
that p-s is just samsaric is to miss the boat regarding p-s. This is exactly
the view that comes from identifying p-s with the 12 nidaana list and others
of a similiar ilk.  But there are nirvanic fomulations, for example the 23
nidaana list from my prevous post to Lance.  There you'll find that the
samsaric can be the condition [here, dukkha] for the arising the of what we
can call the nirvanic, i.e. the p-s sequence that ends in 'knowledge of the
cessation' [of the aasavas], aka nirvana.  And is it not rather obvious that
the four Noble Truths, with the 8fold path (and all the other paths), are
simply particular expressions of the application of the principle - as
distinct from any formulation - of p-s.  From what you say, it appears that
Reynolds must identify p-s with samsara, which is simply a wrong-view
according to the various lists of p-s as found in the Pali suttas. 

Cheers,

Robert Morrison