[Buddha-l] Re: Where does authority for "true" Buddhism come from?

[Erik Hoogcarspel]

Stephen Hodge schreef:

> Erik Hoogcarspel wrote:
>
>> Well I think the 12 nidaana's are just pseudo causal, because it's a 
>> one way street, a spiral at the best, which is nothing but a curved 
>> line. Ignorance causes consciousness etc. and not the other way around.
>
>
> Or possibly the 12 nidanas do not involve causality per se at all -- 
> look closely at the standard wording for each of the links: "x arises 
> in dependence upon Y".  Dependence is not quite the same thing as 
> causality.

Depends, in fact what we call THE cause is matter of convention, but 
this is not the essence of the concept of causation. In fact this 
involves necessary and sufficient conditions. You could define a cause 
as a suffencient and necessary condition, which is nothing but 'if X 
then Y'. Usually conditions which are necessary but not sufficient will 
be just called conditions, but also convention plays a role. In all 
cases you can prevent Y by preventing X. However if you say 'X arise 
when Y and Y arises when X', there's a whole different ballgame, because 
the one doesn't have to be there before the other. So you have to 
prevent both if you don't want one of them.  Causation is a process in 
time, dependence isn't. So I think if X and Y are depently arising, one 
dosen't cause the other, but both are structural elements in a field of 
experience. The tradional explanation of the nidanas has been as a 
diachronical causal proces extending over three lifes. There is an 
alternative synchronical interpretation which I prefer.

>
> Also there is a lot of confusion about the standard 12 nidanas, 
> because most people (past and present) are unaware that it is a rather 
> clumsy conflation of two separate processes intended to account for 
> suffering, one perceptual and the other what we might term existential.
>
> 1.    vijñāna -> nāma-rūpa -> ṣaḍ-āyatana -> sparśa -> vedanā [= duḥkha]
> 2.    tṛṣṇa -> upādāna -> bhava -> jāti -> jarā-maraṇa [= duḥkha]
>
> These earlier forms of the PS can be found in the Nikayas.  Sometime 
> after these two sets got conflated, avidyā and saṃskāra were stuck on 
> at the beginning for reasons that concern a different concept of the 
> path and its goal.  It would therefore seem unlikely that the Buddha 
> actually taught the 12-fold PS -- it is more probable that he 
> primarily taught List 2 and sometimes possibly List 1.
>
Makes sense to me. How about the claim of Gombridge that these forms came from outside Buddhism, say from the Upani.sads?

Erik


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