The History of Buddhist Thought c13.38

c13.38

This is how the “ inner connection of the life-process ” presented itself to the earliest interpreters of the formula. Rhys Davids found in the sutta much more, for he held that it expressed the process of origination and cessation as a natural and universal law. “ Events came impelled by preceding conditions, causes that man could by intelligence and good will study and govern, suspend, or intensify.” Yet it is this very sutta which after closing the series with “ mind and body have consciousness as a cause ”, adds, “ consciousness has mind and body as a cause.” We scarcely find here “ the significance of the law of universal causation, breaking in on a great mind with a flash of intuition ”, nor was any application made of it as a universal law.