The History of Buddhist Thought c13.31

c13.31

It is clear that this interpretation was a widely spread one, for it continued in Theravāda and Sarvāstivāda teaching, and is found even in Tantric Buddhism.² As Keith says, it does not impose itself as necessarily representing the intention of its creators, but he declares that no other traditional interpretation has any chance of being original.¹ However, Buddhaghosa refers to another when he compares the scheme to a wheel, but not a revolving wheel as in the usual interpretation of the Chain. The nave is ignorance and the rim old age and death. The other ten links form ten spokes. Thus each of the ten arises directly from ignorance and ends in old age and death. There is, in fact, a sutta which explains pain in this way.² Pain is said in turn to be due to upadhi (the khandhas), to ignorance, etc. Sixteen items are spoken of, each directly the cause of pain. Among them eight of the links of the Formula occur, but the six sense-organs, becoming, birth, old age and death are omitted. It remains an isolated interpretation, and suggests that pain was once explained from different and independent causes without any order, and that the causal Formula might have been an attempt to co-ordinate them into a series and make one item dependent on another. Such an attempt from the heterogeneous nature of the items could never be made perfectly consistent, and the idea that behind the logical weakness of the current interpretation must lie a perfectly cogent one may be an illusion, and is certainly a mere surmise.