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 Posted: Tue Mar 04, 2008 7:46 pm
Because I haven't found a thread in the guild about dependent arising, I figured I'd post one here, and see what I could come up with.
Dependent Arising (Paticcasamuppāda) :
Due to the condition of ignorance, action arises;
due to the condition of action, consciousness arises;
due to the condition of consciousness, name and form arise;
due to the condition of name and form, the six sense spheres arise;
due to the condition of the six sense spheres, contact arises;
due to the condition of contact, feeling arises;
due to the condition of feeling, attachment arises;
due to the condition of attachment, grasping arises;
due to the condition of grasping, the potentialized level of karma called "existence" arises;
due to the condition of "existence", birth arises;
due to the condition of birth, aging and death arise.
Now, it's clear that the Buddha was taking a reincarnational standpoint when he spoke of dependent arising, as it doesn't seem clear that because of ignorance, action arises.
What do all of you think about this concept?
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Posted: Fri Mar 07, 2008 10:26 pm
Keep in mind that "ignorance" is here meant as misunderstanding the true nature of reality, which can be defined as a neutral basis of awareness that requires no "action" (e.g. stirring of the mind in response to a perceived environment or Other) for its fulfillment. Thus, an actually-fulfilled mindstream that is stirred to falsely perceive an external "something" would thereby "lose" its sense of fulfillment and the "chain reaction" of being listed above would occur. Note that "action" may here mean karma, the predisposing tendencies of the mind due to cause-and-effect.
Just how the initial "fall" from primordial Nirvana is thought to have occurred is seemingly the million-dollar question. The Korean Son monk Kiwha, in his commentary of "The Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment," likened the enlightenment process to the refining of gold ore into pure gold, meaning that the fundamental Buddha-Nature hidden in a crude form eventually appears in its true element (while evidently not originating as a full-fledged Buddha; I've yet to hear of primordial Buddhas supposedly being lost to ignorance, though such an event wouldn't "hurt" the Buddha-Nature anyways).
However, samsaric ignorance is often described as being "beginningless" as the Buddhist conception of time. Quoting the chapter of "Samantabhadra Bodhisattva" of the the sutra:
"...The beginningless illusory ignorance of all sentient beings is all created from the perfectly enlightened mind of all Tathagatas...Illusion is born from enlightenment; in the cessation of illusion, enlightenment remains perfectly complete. This is because the enlightened mind is changeless."
Therefore, the ignorant state of the base awareness allows the operation of cause-and-effect/karma to allow the construction and reconstruction of the myriad delusion-based phenomena that appear to compose "our" inner and outer worlds.
Apparently there was no "fall" in primordial times because ignorance of true reality was forever the default state of sentient beings and (I conjecture) the base awareness/Buddha-Nature is by default connected to sentient beings* until a final "enlightenment" occurs, allowing the full potential of the Core to be realized as a distinct Buddha. Keep in mind that this is my understanding to date, though I haven't ever read scriptures or commentaries that directly describe Reality as such...
*That is, the base awareness was entwined in the perceptions of a illusionary phenomenal universe since beginningless time; whether anything ultimately corresponds to perceived beings is beside the point here... sweatdrop
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Posted: Sat Mar 15, 2008 11:33 am
Thanks for the insight, I appreciate it. =]
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