[Buddha-l] Batchelor

[Zelders.YH]

I have been puzzled too by Batchelor's use of the notion of 
'contingency', and I consider it a very unfortunate choice of words 
to characterize the nature of the pratityasamutpada.
On the other hand, the rhetorical question : "why is there anything 
at all rather than nothing' plays a key role in Batchelor's thinking. 
That question reveals the basic contingency of the whole of life, and 
in that light there is nothing that is not contingent, not even the 
necessary causal relations of the links of the p. .
Do I think that that is what Batchelor meant ? Not really.