Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c10.s2: 2. The Development of the Chain of Causation

Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c10.s2

Language: English

2. The Development of the Chain of Causation

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The insistence on the doctrine of the causation of misery was doubtless in Buddhism inspired by opposition to the pessimism of the Ājīvakas under Makkhali Gosāla, who insisted that purity and depravity arose without cause or condition, that the fate of men depended neither on their own nor others’ action or effort; that no human power was efficient, and that all things with life were without inherent force. Ajita also held that there was no fruit of good or evil deeds nor result of the deeds of others or previous lives. Such doctrines² were, it is plain, destructive of any orderly conception of existence, and the Buddha’s message of deliverance is based on the conviction that misery exists because it is produced and will continue to exist until its process of production can be stopped.

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² Below, ch. vii. § 1.

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The essence of the doctrine of the causation of misery is expressed in the second noble truth; the cause of the origin of misery is thirst—that is, desire—leading to rebirth, accompanied by pleasure in the object and attachment, taking pleasure here and there, the thirst of lust, the thirst of becoming, the thirst of non-becoming. This brings misery, for it produces, whether directly aimed at rebirth or not, the fact of such rebirth, and, as the first truth assures us, birth, age, death, all the incidents of life, are misery.

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This in effect is the kernel of the doctrine, and we may doubt the emphatic assurance of the texts that the Buddha’s attainment of enlightenment was closely involved with the gaining of knowledge of this further elaboration in the chain of causation in its stereotyped set of twelve links.³ The doubt is strengthened when we find the germs of the twelve contained in a text of the Suttanipāta¹ in which other ancient doctrines are preserved. There we find a set of eleven couples which illustrate the principle of causation: ‘That being, this becomes.’ In each case misery is the second element; the first are, in order, action which, based on ignorance, leads man to constant rebirth; ignorance; dispositions (*saṃkhāra*), allied to perception (*saññā*); consciousness; contact; feeling; thirst, which leads to grasping (*upādāna*); grasping which leads to becoming (*bhava*), rebirth, death, and misery; efforts; aliments (*āhāra*); and movements. There is here no attempt to erect an elaborate series, but the chain is already largely present in germ. Another text² of the same collection traces discord back to desire (*chanda*), based on feeling, based on contact, based on name and form, the empiric individual.

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³ MV. i. 1; SN. ii. 10.

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¹ 724 ff.; SBE. x. 129. The work exists in Sanskrit, JRAS. 1916, pp. 709 ff.

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² 862 ff.; SBE. x. 159.

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These suggest a simple enough idea; misery as rebirth might have been explained by the individual consciousness under the influence of ignorance and impressions or dispositions, the result of past deeds, entering into contact with the world, receiving thence feelings of pleasure or pain, conceiving thirst or desire leading to action or grasping producing a new becoming. But the classical formula is less simple; it runs in twelve members:³ ‘By reason of ignorance dispositions; by reason of dispositions consciousness (*viññāṇa*); by reason of consciousness name and form; by reason of name and form contact; by reason of contact feeling; by reason of feeling thirst; by reason of thirst grasping; by reason of grasping becoming; by reason of becoming birth; by reason of birth old age, death, grief, mourning, pain, sorrow, and despair.’ The reverse order also applies; the destruction of ignorance serves to set about a chain of destruction as effective as the creation. This is the formula of dependent (literally going-towards) production (*paṭicca-samuppāda*), a term which moves scholasticism¹ to ask whether the effect goes towards the cause, or the cause to the effect. Frequently as the formula occurs, there are variants from the normal twelve; sometimes the first two elements disappear; in one case the third, fourth, second, and the last two appear in that order, and there are minor variants. The psychological reasons which prompted its development as it stands are uncertain, but there must be taken into account the chain of derivation which is given from the absolute in the Katha Upaniṣad, and of which a later development presents itself in the Sāṃkhya system, or the possibility of Yoga influence.²

Linked texts (6)

Dīghanikāya — Pāli
Majjhimanikāya — Pāli
Aṅguttaranikāya — Pāli
Suttanipāta — Pāli
Kaṭhopaniṣad — Sanskrit
Nidānasaṃyutta — Pāli