As mentioned previously, this essay is about Dependent Arising(缘起), the mental process through which our mind responds to things causing either duhkha or a sense of nirvana.
The teachings on Dependent Arising lie in the very heart of almost all Buddhist thoughts. From the perspective of Marxist philosophy, they answer the basic question of Buddhist philosophy which concerns the relation of thinking and being. All schools of Buddhist philosophy fall into the "idealism" category which suggests that the spiritual(consciousness, or thinking) is primary and the material(subject, or being) depends on the spiritual. Dependent Arising is all about how this dependence happens. Dependent Arising is like the thread underneath a string of beads bracelet linking causes and effects together.
The commonly seen 12-beads bracelet represents twelve links(十二轮回, nidānas) and Dependent Arising
Furthermore, Dependent Arising is closely related to the law of karma(业报). Dalai Lama(达赖喇嘛) once said that was he allowed to teach one lesson from Buddhism, he would choose to teach the law of karma——principles of action and result are essentially a matter of intention. In our culture, you are not supposed to be unfamiliar with the ethical notion, "deeds, be they good or bad, may rebound on the doer(善有善报，恶有恶报)" and this notion derives directly from the law of karma.
Reflecting on my own reading experience, understanding the teachings is not an easy task. However, the good news is we are Chinese speakers: most of us more or less know some Buddhist terms or sayings relating to teachings concerning Dependent Arising via our daily-speaking Chinese, such as "色即是空", "花非花, 雾非雾", "随缘", "因果循环", whereas these terms and sayings are interpreted in a folk fashion. After my introduction of the teachings, I am sure you are able to re-interpret these terms or sayings in Buddhist context.
I begin with the question of "the continuity and consistency of self", moving on to the underlying causal conncetedness and its further analysis, and conclude with a brief discussion about Dependent Arising. Note that those mentioned above are coherent with each other.
What is "Self"?
The doctrine of "No-Self" tells us that there is nothing we enable to call a "self" after examining the Five Aggregates: it is commonly believed that self is a CEO, whereas such a controller doesn't exist in any aggregate; we all think someone is the same person all the time——it is impossible for a lucid man to wake up one day, looking into the mirror, not recognizing himself, but Buddha hold that everything including our selves is impermanent and found nothing in Five Aggregates consistent through time. Were Buddha's teachings true, why am I the same person as, say, the person ten years ago? How Buddha accounts for this discrepancy?
Buddha's central points are:
(1) There is nothing but causal connectedness of those experiences which course through Five Aggregates(Buddhism often uses the word "Dharma(法)" referring to category of those experiences, and body, mind and the experience world are the places where Dharma happen). Peel away all the experiences, then nothing will be left in Five Aggregates. Put your hand in a fast-flowing river, try your best to grip the water, all the water will slip via the clefts of fingers, and nothing you can hold: the gripping hand is analogous to consciousness, and the ever-flowing water is to the experiences.
(2) It is the connectedness between mind, body, and Dharmas that remains unchanged. You might wonder, if everything is in constant flux, how could there be something remaining unchanged? Well, from a Buddhist perspective, mind, body, and Dharmas are transient: nothing in the quality scale of those three ever stays the same. However, the connectedness between those three doesn't change.
(3) This kind of connectedness could be subjectively perceived, which gives rise to a controllable, consistent sense of "self". Beware that it is "perceived" and what we normally perceive is mere delusions leading to eternal duhkha.
Thus far, the question of discrepancy raised at the beginning of this part can be answered: it is because of the unchanged connectedness that one intuitively feels he or she is the same person walking through the river of time, whereas his or her body, mind, and Dharmas fluctuate in every moment.
The Exterior Version of "No-Self"
This "No-self" pattern of logic can be applied to the analysis of external things as well. Here, I will give you an example by analyzing something in a Buddhist fashion. We often hear the old saying, "花非花". What does this saying really mean in Buddhist context?
There exists not a single stable quality which we can call a flower: Are the petals the flower? Is the root the flower? Is the stem the flower? No, they are not; Is the constellation of petals, the root and the stem the flower? No, the commonly used word "the flower" suggests consistency——if the flower withers, we won't call it "a flower"; if the flower is not mature, it is not a flower either, and nothing consistent found in the petals, the root, or the stem: they all grow, decay, and then extinguish.
"A flower" is mere connectedness: the external events(certain pattern of light) somehow connect with the mental events(the perception of "flower"). "A flower" is just a name, a tag we attach to the connectedness in language. Removing this tag "a flower", there is nothing left.
This Buddhist logic still gives us insight in modern world. Harari, in his book A brief history of humankind, discusses the fundamental quality of what we call a corporation; nothing can be found attributing to "a corporation": its logo, CEO, share holders, recruits, capital, products, customers, edifices, etc., or a constellation of all those, and finally he reaches the conclusion that a corporation is an imaged community formed mentally by groups of people. What's more ironic is that the word "corporation" is derived from "corpus" in Latin which means "body", however, a modern corporation lacks such real entities badly. The imaged community, in the scope of Buddhism, is the unchanged, underlying connectedness going through all the elements.
What is Apple Inc?
Further Analysis of the Connectedness
You may notice that I use the word "connectedness", not "connection", because in Buddhist scope the connections between body, mind and Dharmas are determined. In other words, every event, be it physical or mental, has its unseen causes and unforeseen results, and the causality(or the chain of causality) is somehow fixed. The fixed causality is the principle of causality(因缘观, idam-pratyayatā).
Today this principle is conceived of as the linear perspective of causal relationship which dramatically denies the influence of random factors. I once mentioned in my opening essay of Buddhism writings that all religions, as William James, the great psychologist put it, believe in unseen orders. In Christianity, that order is God himself, while in atheist Buddhism, that is the law of karma stemming from the principle of causality which extends beyond life and death.
This linear view violates scientific view on the casual relationship, but it is not a matter of who is right or who is wrong. Whatever view we hold, it always gives us the psychological sense of control of which in absence happiness, well-being, or inner peace is out of our reach.
Fan Zhen(范缜), a noted Confucian scholar in North and South Dynasties, attacked Buddhist thoughts by negating the linear perspective of causal relationship proposed in Buddhism.
Dependent Arising
As discussed above, the principle of causality is a linear view of causes and effects accounting for the connectedness, and the causal relationship is somehow fixed, determined. How does the causality operate? Buddhist understanding lies in the twelve links(十二轮回,nidānas) of the chain of Dependent Arising (缘起, pratītya-samutpāda/paticca-samuppāda).
The causal chain of Dependent Arising is clearly and artistically demonstrated in the old-fashioned Tibetan "Wheel of Existence(生命之轮)".
Wheel of Existence
The Wheel is in the hands and jaw of Yama(阎摩), the god of death from Hinduism myths. The outer circle shows the twelve links, starting from a blind man holding his cane depicted on the outer circle under the right eye of Yama, moving in a clockwise manner with the former link giving rise to the latter, and we have:
a blind man(痴, ignorance), a potter fashioning a pot(行蕴, formations), a monkey picking a fruit (识蕴, consciousness), a boat on a journey(身心, mind and body), a house with six windows (六感, the six sense-spheres), a couple making love(六感的触食或称六触, sense contact), a man struck in the eye by an arrow (受蕴, feeling), a man drinking(渴求, thirst), a man taking hold of a fruit(执念, grasping), a pregnant woman (有生, becoming/bhava), a woman in labour(出生, birth), old age and death(生老病死) leading to duhkha conditioned by birth which are not shown on the picture.
In addition, death does not end the circle: death ends the physical events not the mental ones; death only re-configures one's pattern of the causal connectedness and therefore one becomes another kind of being. That is pratisandhi(结生) in Buddhist context. In other words, Buddhist thoughts understand change not in terms of unchanged essence or qualities, while appearances change. Change is the change of causal connectedness, and none of the qualities remain the same.
Dependent Arising is a mental process in its nature, for the chain of twelve links starts from "ignorance", but it attempts to reveal the actual casual pattern of conditioning of the whole universe and extends beyond life and death. Had I the chance, I would discuss further on the relation between Dependent Arising and Buddhist cosmology, however, that is not our major concern in this essay.
In the end, I am to conclude with Dependent Arising and the Four Noble Truths. In the Four Noble Truths, Buddha taught that (1) life is duhkha; (2) the cause of duhkha; (3) the cessation of duhkha (nirvana); (4) the eight-fold paths leading to the cessation of duhkha. Dependent Arising explains both how duhkha rises and how duhkha cesses. It is a matter of the first link on the causal chain: If the chain is started by greed (贪, rāga/lobha), aversion (嗔,dvesa/dosa), ignorance or delusion (痴,moha,avidyā/avijjā), then life is nothing but eternal duhkha that one cannot escape; If the chain is started by non-attachment(无贪, alobha), loving kindness (慈悲，Pali: adosa mettā) and wisdom(般若, prajñā/paññā), then a sense of nirvana is attained.
Following essays will draw evidences from modern psychology validating Buddha's teachings on "No-self" and examine the meaning brought by Buddhism to our modern world.
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