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Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c10.s7: 7. Causation in Nature

Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c10.s7

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7. Causation in Nature

c10.s7.1

The chain of causation is essentially an explanation of misery; it tells us nothing regarding physical causes, and, as we have seen, the Abhidhamma expressly denies as heretical the idea of action as determining events in the physical world. How far was the conception attained that there was causation active in the world of nature? The idea of absolute regularity of causation was excluded for the world of human action by the necessity of recognizing free will and the possibility of release, and in these circumstances it would have been impossible to develop the idea of a natural causality prevailing in the physical sphere. We obtain, therefore, nothing more than the vague general assertion³ that things as compound come into being under the effect of causes, but we have to put beside this the doctrine that we do not know anything definite as to their operation; we must not inquire whether the world is self-made, made by another, both, or neither, that is, fortuitous, since all these issues belong to the realm of the indeterminates.⁴ Indeed, if we were so unkind as to press this doctrine strictly, it would be fatal even to the idea of any material causation at all, as the Madhyamaka readily shows.

c10.s7.2

³ SN. ii. 25; AN. i. 286 : so of all Dhammas, *Dhammapada*, 279.

c10.s7.3

⁴ Above, ch. ii. § 2.

c10.s7.4

The vagueness of the canonical view is confirmed by the *Milindapañha*,¹ where we find the threefold divisions of beings born of action as conscious; of fire and other things growing out of seed, as cause-born, the result, that is, of a previously existing material cause; and the earth, hills, water, wind, as season-born, depending for existence on reasons connected with the weather, while space and Nirvāṇa exist independently of all three forms of cause. In the face of this to assign to Buddhism faith in the uniformity of the causal process or of nature is absurd.

c10.s7.5

¹ p. 271.

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