The History of Buddhist Thought c13.22

c13.22

The series in the two previous examples are only a part of the Chain of Causation. Unless the Chain can be proved to be part of the earliest teaching the question whether it was compounded of earlier separate portions is not very important. It occurs in the *Dīgha* (ii, 30) with the omission of the first two links, and again with the omission of the six sense-organs as well (ii, 55). This seems to show that it did not originally form a fixed sequence. Its entire omission in the earliest accounts of the enlightenment suggests that it was not then even invented. Someone evidently put it together, and the main point of interest is its philosophic significance. It implies a theory of causality, but we find cause understood in different senses. Ignorance is the cause of consciousness. Consciousness is here understood as rebirth-consciousness, the state in which the individual exists at the moment of conception. It is clear that ignorance in the Buddhist sense, ignorance of the truth of pain, will lead to rebirth, for the ignorant individual cannot take the only course which, according to Buddhist doctrine, would prevent it.