Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c10.s1: 1. Causation

Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c10.s1

Language: English

1. Causation

c10.s1.1

IN striking conflict with the modern suggestion that the real emphasis of the Buddha’s teaching lay in the doctrine of causality as pervading all the things of experience, and that his normalism was a new and Copernican revolution of thought, is the meagre and inadequate examination accorded to causation in the Canon. The idea is repeatedly expressed, regularly in the form: ‘That being, this becomes; from the appearance of that, this appears; that is to say, by reason of ignorance &c. (*imasmim sati idam hoti*; *imass’ uppādā idam uppajjati*; *yadidam avijjāpaccayā*).¹ The duplicate character of the formula is explained variously by later scholasticism; it serves at any rate to make clear that the intervention of a substrate in the form of a self is negated. But in any event the extraordinarily imperfect character of the definition is obvious; the first member expresses the idea of an essential condition; the next a coefficient; and the last, the cause of a generation. If, as we are assured, the Buddhist chain of causation was inculcated at least as much for the sake of the idea as for the sake of the conclusion, the explanation of misery, it is incredible that no further analysis should have been attempted. In truth the case is clear; the origin of evil evoked the chain, and interest in causation was wholly subordinate, and this explains the variations and omissions found in the chain. The lover of causation would have insisted on each link; for the practical Buddhist all that was necessary was to show that evil was caused, and the minor details could be left vague.

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¹ *Udāna*, i. 1; MN. i. 1. 2; SN. ii. 28, 65; MN. i. 262; ii. 32; iii. 63; MKV. p. 9.

c10.s1.3

The vagueness of the conception is reflected in the language which uses without attempt at differentiation a whole series of terms¹ (*hetu*, *paccaya*, *nidāna*, *samudaya*, *jātika*, *pabhava*, *kāraṇa*, *nimitta*, *liṅga*). The point is essential, for it explains how in the chain of causation the idea of cause is applied in varying aspects without consciousness of inappropriateness.

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¹ DN. ii. 57; SN. ii. 37, 81; MN. i. 261; *upanisā*, SN. ii. 30; cf. TCD., p. 51, n. 1; it may be for *Upaniṣad*; cf. AKV. (MS. Burn. f. 133ᵇ) in MKV., p. 76, n. 7.