The History of Buddhist Thought c13.37

c13.37

For Mr. Matsumoto the Chain is part of the original teaching of Buddha. But the essential, he holds, does not rest upon the number of twelve links nor upon their order. In that case, how far does it remain a formula? It is said to be only an attempt to explain the thought contained in it—that everything arises in mutual dependence. Of course it is possible, he says, to apply this to everything and make it the starting point of a world-picture. But this is not the meaning that Gautama Buddha applied to it. "For him after long striving the doctrine of causal origination resulted as the final possibility of explaining human life as it presented itself to him. Concentration on this thought, the spiritual insight thereby brought about into the inner connection of the life-process, and the resulting knowledge of its unreality was for him at the same time emancipation, a state which must be looked upon as complete Nirvāṇa.” The interpretation of the formula as a theory of temporal causality, according to Mr. Matsumoto, was a change brought about by the Sarvāstivādins, a change, that is, from “ original Buddhism ” and the meaning that Gautama Buddha applied to it. Mr. Matsumoto is quite certain what Buddha’s original meaning was, and he finds it in the system of the *Prajñāpāramitā*, the Scripture of one of the schools of Mahāyāna. The significance of this must be considered later. He considers that the original meaning was perverted by the Sarvāstivāda Abhidhamma into a theory of the process of transmigration; but this is scarcely exact, for it occurs in the Canon itself in what is probably the oldest interpretation that we possess. This is the *Mahānidāna-sutta* (*Dīgha*, ii, 55), in which the first two links and the fifth do not appear. There it is said, “ if consciousness did not descend into the womb of the mother, would mind and body become constituted therein ? No, Lord. If the consciousness of one while yet young, whether of a boy or a girl, were to disappear, would the mind and body proceed to growth, increase, and development ? No, Lord.”