Dependent origination-Pratītyasamutpāda
Dependent origination
The enlightenment (Bodhi) of the Buddha Gautama was simultaneously his liberation from suffering (dukkha) and his insight into the nature of the universe – particularly the nature of the lives of ‘sentient beings’ (principally humans and animals). What the Buddha awakened to (Bodhi means ‘to awaken’) was the truth of dependent origination.
This is the understanding that any phenomenon ‘exists’ only because of the ‘existence’ of other phenomena in an incredibly complex web of cause and effect covering time past, time present and time future. This concept of a web is symbolized by Indra's net, a multidimensional spider's web on which lies an infinite amount of dew drops or jewels, and in these are reflected the reflections of all the other drops of dew ad infinitum.
Stated in another way, everything depends on everything else. For example, a human being's existence in any given moment is dependent on the condition of everything else in the world (and indeed the universe) at that moment but, conversely, the condition of everything in the world in that moment depend in an equally significant way on the character and condition of that human being. Everything in the universe is interconnected through the web of cause and effect so that the whole and the parts are mutually interdependent. The character and condition of entities at any given time are intimately connected with the character and condition of all other entities that superficially may appear to be unconnected or unrelated.
Because all things are thus conditioned and transient (anicca), they have no real independent identity (anatta) so do not truly ‘exist’, though to ordinary minds this appears to be the case. All phenomena are therefore fundamentally insubstantial and ‘empty’ (sunya).
Wise human beings, who ‘see things as they are’ (yatha-bhuta-ñana-dassana), renounce attachment and clinging, transform the energy of desire into awareness and understanding, and eventually transcend the conditioned realm of form becoming Buddhas or Arhats.
General formulation
A general formulation of this concept goes:
- With this as condition,
- That arises.
- With this NOT as condition,
- That does NOT arise.
An example to illustrate:
You go on summer holiday to a hot climate, such as Arizona, Spain or Australia. It's a hot clear day and you're sunbathing by the hotel pool with the sun beating down on you. You begin to feel hot, sweaty, uncomfortable, and soon feel thirsty. You get a drink to quench your thirst, and think "It's too hot to sit by the pool today, I'm going back to my hotel room where it's cooler, to read for a while".
- With "hot summer sun" as condition,
- Sweat, thirst and discomfort arise.
- With "cool hotel room" (or "NOT hot summer sun") as condition,
- Sweat, thirst and discomfort do NOT arise.
This draws attention to the constant flux of "Coming to be, and Ceasing to be" that is happening all the time. All phenomena are subject to this unending interaction. And since all phenomena are dependent on other phenomena, they are all transient and impermanent.
Applications
The general formulation has two very well known applications.
Four Noble Truths
The first application is to suffering, and is known as the Four Noble Truths:
1. Dukkha: There is suffering. Suffering is an intrinsic part of life also experienced as dissatisfaction, discontent, unhappiness, impermanence.
2. Samudaya: There is a cause of suffering, which is attachment or desire (tanha).
3. Nirodha: There is a way out of suffering, which is to eliminate attachment and desire.
4. Magga: The path that leads out of suffering is called the Noble Eightfold Path.
Twelve Nidanas
The other application is to the rebirth process and is known as the Twelve Nidanas or the Twelve Links of Conditioned Existence. In this application of pratitya-samutpada, each link is conditioned by the preceding one, and itself conditions the succeeding one. These cover three lives:
Former Life
- ignorance
- activities which produce karma
Current Life
- consciousness
- name and form (personality or identity)
- the twelve domains (5 physical senses + the mind + forms, sounds, ..., thoughts)
- contact (between objects and the senses)
- sensation (registering the contact)
- desire (for continued contact)
- attachment
Future Life
- becoming (conception of a new life)
- birth
- old age and death.
With respect to the destinies of human beings and animals, dependent origination has a more specific meaning as it describes the process by which such sentient beings incarnate into any given realm and pursue their various worldly projects and activities with all the concomitant suffering involved. Among these sufferings are ageing and death. Ageing and death are experienced by us because birth and youth have been experienced. Without birth there is no death. One conditions the other in a mutually dependent relationship. Our becoming in the world, the process of what we call ‘life’, is conditioned by the attachment and clinging to certain ideas and projects such as having a family or making money. This attachment and clinging in turn cannot exist without craving as its condition. The Buddha understood that craving comes into being because there is sensation in the body which we experience as pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. When we crave certain things such as alcohol, sex or sweet foods it is the sensation induced by contact with the desired object that we crave rather than the object itself. Sensation is caused by contact with such objects of the senses. The contact or impression made upon the senses (manifesting as sensation) is itself dependent upon the six sense organs which themselves are dependent upon a psycho-physical entity such that a human being is. The whole process is summarised by the Buddha as follows:
| English Terms | Sanskrit Terms |
|---|---|
| With Ignorance as condition, Mental Formations arise | With Avidyā as condition, Saṃskāra arises |
| With Mental Formations as condition, Consciousness arises | With Saṃskāra as condition, Vijñāna arises |
| With Consciousness as condition, Name and Form arise | With Vijñāna as condition, Nāmarūpa arises |
| With Name & Form as condition, Sense Gates arise | With Nāmarūpa as condition, Ṣaḍāyatana arises |
| With Sense Gates as condition, Contact arises | With Ṣaḍāyatana as condition, Sparśa arises |
| With Contact as condition, Feeling arises | With Sparśa as condition, Vedanā arises |
| With Feeling as condition, Craving arises | With Vedanā as condition, Tṛṣṇā arises |
| With Craving as condition, Clinging arises | With Tṛṣṇā as condition, Upādāna arises |
| With Clinging as condition, Becoming arises | With Upādāna as condition, Bhava arises |
| With Becoming as a condition, Birth arises | With Bhava as condition, Jāti arises |
| With Birth as condition, Aging and Dying arise | With Jāti as condition, Jarāmaraṇa arises |
The thrust of the formula is such that when certain conditions are present, they give rise to subsequent conditions, which in turn give rise to other conditions and the cyclical nature of life in Samsara can be seen. This is graphically illustrated in the Bhavacakra (Wheel of life).
There appears to be widespread misunderstanding of the formula in relation to time scales. Many references made to Pratītyasamutpāda are expressed over lifetimes. While this is true in the wider sense, more practically, this is to be seen as a daily cycle occurring from moment-to-moment throughout each day.
It is necessary to refer to the above in order to fully understand and make use of the concept of pratitya-samutpada.
For example, in the case of avidyā, the first condition, it is necessary to refer to the Three Signs of Being for a fuller explanation and a better understanding of its fit and function within pratitya-samutpada. It is also necessary to understand the Three Fires and how they fit into the scheme. A quick glance at the Bhavacakra will show that the Three Fires sit at the very center of the schemata, and drive the whole edifice. To understand this, it is necessary to study different sorts of conditions, because only one of them is called "causal condition." For example, ignorance can determine activities as an "object condition" if one decides to reduce ignorance.
Because in this life one has been ignorant and acted in such a way as to produce karma, the cycle continues.
Nibbana (Skt Nirvana) is often conceived of as stopping this cycle. By removing the causes for craving, craving ceases. So, with the ceasing of birth, death ceases. With the ceasing of becoming, birth ceases, and so on, until with the ceasing of ignorance no karma is produced, and the whole process of death and rebirth ceases. In fact the opportunity for change comes between the stages of sensation and desire, since as we saw above it is craving that drives the whole process. If one can simply experience sensations without desiring, then craving will not arise, and one can begin to be free from the cycle of birth and death.
Interdependent origination in the Heart sutra
The Heart Sutra (Prajñāpāramitā Hridaya Sūtra) asserts that there is no karma, no law of cause and effect. The assertion was made by bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara in a teaching for the great arhat Shariputra, given before a multitude of beings, on the request of Buddha Shakyamuni. After the teaching, Buddha Shakyamuni greatly praised the wisdom of Avalokiteshvara's words and the beings present rejoiced.[1]
- This statement could be understood literally (as e.g. in Dzogchen), or
- it could be interpreted as seen from point of view of the philosophy of emptiness. For example, later teachers like Nagarjuna (see also below) and Tsongkhapa even explained that emptiness and dependent origination are like two sides of the same coin. The point is that all phenomena are dependent originations, which means that they do not exist in and out of themselves alone, are thus not self-defined, and empty (of self).
Madhyamaka and Pratitya-samutpada
Though the formulations above appear might seem to imply that pratitya-samutpada is a straightforward causal model, in the hands of the Madhyamaka school, Pratitya-samutpada is used to demonstrate the very lack of inherent causality, in a manner that appears somewhat similar to the ideas of David Hume.
The conclusion of the Mādhyamikas is that causation, like being, must be regarded as a merely conventional truth (saṃvṛti), and that to take it as really (or essentially) existing would be both a logical error and a perceptual one, arising from ignorance and a lack of spiritual insight.
According to the analysis of Nāgārjuna, the most prominent Mādhyamika, true causality depends upon the intrinsic existence of the elements of the causal process (causes and effects), which would violate the principle of anatta, but pratītya-samutpāda does not imply that the apparent participants in arising are essentially real.
Because of the interdependence of causes and effects (i.e. causes depend on their effects in order to be causes, and effects likewise depend on their causes in order to be effects), it is quite meaningless to talk about them as existing separately. However, the strict identity of cause and effect is also refuted, since if the effect were the cause, the process of origination could not have occurred. Thus both monistic and a dualistic accounts of causation are rejected.
Therefore Nāgārjuna explains that the anatta (or emptiness) of causality is demonstrated by the interdependence of cause and effect, and likewise that the interdependence (pratītya-samutpāda) of causality itself is demonstrated by its anatta.
Christian Thomas Kohl: Buddhism and Quantum Physics: http://ctkohl.googlepages.com
In his Entry to the middle way, Candrakirti asserts, "If a cause produces its requisite effect, then, on that very account, it is a cause. If no effect is produced, then, in the absence of that, the cause does not exist."
Pratitya-samutpada in Dzogchen
In Dzogchen tradition the interdependent origination is considered illusory: '(One says), "all these (configurations of events and meanings) come about and disappear according to dependent origination." But, like a burnt seed, since a nonexistent (result) does not come about from a nonexistent (cause), cause and effect do not exist.
What appears as a world of apparently external phenomena, is the play of energy of sentient beings. There is nothing external or separate from the individual. Everything that manifests in the individual's field of experience is a continuum. This is the Great Perfection that is discovered in the Dzogchen practice.[2]
Being obsessed with entities, one's experiencing itself [sems, citta], which discriminates each cause and effect, appears as if it were cause and condition.' (from byang chub sems bsgom pa by Mañjusrîmitra. Primordial experience. An Introduction to rDzogs-chen Meditiation, pp. 60, 61)
The reversibility of dependent arising
Pratitya-samutpada is most commonly used to explain how suffering arises depending on certain conditions, the implication being that if one or more of the conditions are removed (if the "chain" is broken), suffering will cease.
There is also a text, the Upanisa Sutta in the Samyutta Nikaya, in which a discussion of the conditions not for suffering but for enlightenment are given. This is sometimes glossed as "transcendental" dependent arising. The chain in this case is:
- suffering (dukkha)
- faith (saddhā)
- joy (pāmojja, pāmujja)
- rapture (pīti)
- tranquillity (passaddhi)
- happiness (sukha)
- concentration (samādhi)
- knowledge and vision of things as they are (yathābhūta-ñāna-dassana)
- disenchantment with worldly life (nibbidā)
- dispassion (virāga)
- freedom, release, emancipation, deliverance (vimutti)
- knowledge of destruction of the cankers (āsava-khaye-ñāna)
Dependent origination and deep ecology
The awareness that all beings are connected through mutual interdependence is fundamental to ecology, especially deep ecology. The great challenge that now faces mankind to avert global catastrophe has arisen because of ignorance of the interconnectedness of all life – that harm caused abroad affects our own well-being at home. Deep ecology has been very influenced by Buddhist thought and the profound implications that the Buddha's teaching has for changing our relationship to the natural world.
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