Seeking a Path: Dependent Origination

P.A. Payutto (trans. from Thai by Bruce Evans), intro. edited by Wisdom Quarterly Himalayan path along Phoksundo Lake (lasochres.se)

The Buddhist Law of Conditionality
The teaching of causal interdependence is the most important of Buddhist principles.

It describes a law of nature that exists as the natural course of things. The Buddha was not an emissary of heavenly "commandments." He was a discoverer of this liberating-principle of the natural order, and he proclaimed its truth to the world.

The progression of causes and conditions is the reality that applies to all things: from the natural environment, which is an external and physical condition, to the events of human society, ethics, life events, and the happiness and suffering that manifest in our minds.

Causal relationships are part of one natural truth. Our happiness within this natural system depends on having some knowledge of how it works and practicing correctly within it. With knowledge we are able to address problems on personal, social, and environmental levels.

Given that all things are interconnected, all affecting one another, success in dealing with the world lies in creating harmony within it.

(Kevin-McGuiness/Flickr.com)

The sciences, which have evolved with human civilization and are influencing our lives so profoundly, are said to be based on reason and rationality. Their storehouse of knowledge has been amassed through interacting with these natural laws of conditionality. ...

But the human search for knowledge in modern scientific fields has three notable features...

• Underneath it all, we tend to interpret concepts like happiness, freedom, human rights, liberty, and peace in ways that preserve the interests of some and encroach on others. Even when controlling other people comes to be seen as a blameworthy act, this aggressive tendency is then turned in other directions, such as the natural environment. Now that we are beginning to realize that it is impossible to really control other people or other things, the only meaning left in life is to preserve self interests and protect territorial rights. Living as we do with this faulty knowledge and these mistaken beliefs, the natural environment is thrown out of skew, society is in turmoil, and human life, both physically and mentally, is disoriented. The world seems to be full of conflict and suffering.

All facets of the natural order -- the physical world and the human world, the world of conditions (dharma) and the world of actions (karma), the material world and the mental world -- are connected and interrelated; they cannot be separated. Disorder and aberration in one sector will affect other sectors. If we want to live in peace, we must learn how to live in harmony with all spheres of the natural environment, both the internal and the external, the individual and the social, the physical and the mental, the material and the immaterial.

...This is why, of all the systems of causal relationship based on the following law "Because there is this, that arises; when this ceases, that ceases," the teachings of Buddhism begin with, and stress throughout, the factors involved in the creation of suffering in individual awareness.

"Because there is ignorance, there are volitional formations..." is the first link of the Dependent Origination formula. Once this system is understood on the inner level, liberating us from suffering, we are then in a position to see the connections between inner factors and the causal relationships in the external environment. This is the approach adopted in this book. More

1. An Overview of Dependent Origination
Types of Dependent Origination found in the texts
1. The general principle
2. The principle in effect

2. Interpreting Dependent Origination
The essential meaning

3. Man and Nature

4. The Standard Format
The main factors
1. Ignorance and craving-clinging
2. Volitional impulses and becoming
3. Consciousness to feeling, and birth, aging and death

5. Other Interpretations
Preliminary definition
How the links connect
Examples
An example of Dependent Origination in everyday life

6. The Nature of Defilements

7. Dependent Origination in Society

8. The Middle Teaching

9. Breaking the Cycle

Appendix
A note on interpreting the principle of Dependent Origination
Birth and death in the present moment
Dependent Origination in the Abhidhamma
A problem with the word "nirodha"

Why do we exist? (Physics and Buddhism)

Matter and antimatter phenomenology (xenomorphic.co.uk)

A Step Closer to Explaining our Existence

John Roach (Cosmic Log, MSNBC)

Why are we here? It remains one of the most perplexing unexplained mysteries of the universe. But particle physicists are gaining more confidence in a result from an atom smashing experiment that could be a step toward providing an answer: We exist because the universe is full of matter and not the opposite, so-called antimatter. When the Big Bang occurred, equal parts of both should have been created and immediately annihilated each other, leaving nothing leftover to build the stars, planets, and us. More

During insight meditation the body becomes transparent and particles become visible in the mind door (Buddhist-images.co.uk)

Why do "we" exist? (Buddhism answers)
Dharmachari Seven (Wisdom Quarterly)
Of course, ultimately speaking, we do not. That is what it means to say all conditioned things are impersonal (not self, anatta). What are "conditioned things"? They are the constituents of being, of clinging, of the delusion that things are self, permanent, or able to bring lasting satisfaction. It should be more obvious that there is a self. But what is the nature of that self?

Self, soul, ego, personality, "I" all refer to five functionally integrated components -- the physical and the psychological. The physical or material components of the self are the four characteristics of matter (called the Great Elements, mahabhuta). They further break down to what is called derived materiality* that make the sense organs, which are just configurations of the Four Great Elements. All of this is referred to as one group labelled "form."

The other Five Aggregates feel closer -- sensations, perceptions, mental formations (such as volition), and consciousness. They cling to the illusion of a "self" independent of them, in possession of them, controlling them. The self originates dependent on them. The illusion of our actual existence arises dependently originated on the aggregation of these five groups of factors. That is the self (soul, atta, atman, I, me, mine)! But what is the nature of the self? Looked at closely -- in a particle physics lab (in the case of form and kalapas) or in a meditation hall after emerging from the four absorptions (in the case of consciousness and cittas) -- it becomes perfectly clear that they are:

• radically impermanent (arising, turning, passing)
• unsatisfactory (disappointing, distressing, unpleasant)
• impersonal (not subject to control, following their own nature, not able to be clung to, dependent on karma, not self, not me, not mine, devoid of an owner and in that sense "empty").
  

It is completely incorrect to say we are "nothing." What we call a "self" is composed of many things. However, as with all "things," the composite is not what it seems.

Buddhist phenomenology, the "Five Aggregates of Clinging" (khandha)

Under the penetrating analysis of meditation (for purifying concentration and analytical insight, jhana and vipassana), even form is revealed. In Buddhist physics, form is seen as kalapas ("particles of perception") as explained in the Abhidharma. In Buddhist psychology, the aggregates of self-awareness are called cittas (mind moments, processes, consciousnesses, which make the most sense to me as being comparable to neuronal impulses, bearing in mind that there are neurons in the heart and throughout the gut as well as the spine, nerves innervating the body, and concentrating in the brainstem and cavity of the skull but in no way limited to the skull).

Why?
What is impelling the process, what causes the "self" to re-arise after passing away? Karma. This is not a guess. It is revealed by the insight-meditation practice of Dependent Origination, tracing back this life through the chain of causation, which the mind discovers is not in this life. It is not the same self -- which is passing away all the time -- but a self dependent past causes and present conditions.

Meditation (virtue, concentration, insight) is the key to realization.

Moral of the Story
All of this is directly, personally verifiable. We don't own a large hadron collider; yet, it is possible for the mind to be collected and intensified (through optimal-concentration, samma-samadhi) to discern kalapas. None of this is to be taken on faith. None of this is dogma. It is all experiential. And this is sure: If one does not make the effort to realize the Truth (not "learn" it or "believe" but realize it for oneself), whatever the Truth is, one will not become enlightened or liberated from ignorance and illusion. Without liberation, disappointment is certain (not eventually but in every moment).

Particle Physics

• That wily Higgs boson is running out of places to hide
• New subatomic particle: real or anomaly?
• Aging U.S. particle accelerator gets more time
• Seven smashing atom smashers
• Night vision contact lenses?
  

Buddhist Physics

• The Nature of Materiality (Ven. Pa Auk Sayadaw)
• Mindfulness and Four Elements Meditation
• *What is "derived materiality"?
• The "Ultimate Teaching" (Abhidharma) on materiality
• The "divine eye" knows and sees (direct knowing)