Dependent Emergence

Introduction

The Buddha was not concerned about what things are, and he was especially not interested in questions about the ultimate nature of things. He accepted the common sense view of the world that we share with most other more-or-less sane people, and he recognized the usefulness of conventional language to talk about things. What he was concerned with, however, was how things come to be. That leads to a very different way of understanding the world than the way that’s common in our culture.

Noa Ronkin, of Stanford, points out that “Western metaphysics has been dominated by a substance-attribute ontology, which has a marked bias in favor of ‘objects’.” And she points out that Buddhist metaphysics, by contrast, is what she calls “process metaphysics”. “Process metaphysics has deliberately chosen to reverse the primacy of substance: it insists on seeing processes as basic in the order of being—or at least in the order of understanding.” [Ronkin, Noa. "Theravada Metaphysics and Ontology." Buddhist Philosophy, ed. Edelglass, William and Garfield, Jay. Oxford University Press, 2009: p. 14.]

The central idea in Buddhist “process metaphysics” is, in Pali, paticcasamupāda, usually translated as “dependent arising”, or “conditioned arising”, or, sometimes, “conditioned causation”. Rather than the term “arising”, which seems a little mystical to me, I prefer the term “emergence”. It’s no less accurate than “arising”, and it has the benefit of being a term that has a meaning in modern science which is very similar to the meaning it has in Buddhist metaphysics; it’s used to describe complex systems and processes, like the synchronous flashing of tropical fireflies, the food-gathering behavior of ants, termite mounds, the rise of cities, and the activity of the human mind in perceiving and remembering—complex activities that are dependent on preceding conditions, but that can’t be causally related to those conditions in a deterministic way. So throughout this discussion, I will be using the term “dependent emergence” to translate paticcasamupāda.

So we’re going to look into the notion of Dependent Emergence. In the simplest possible terms, that means that all phenomena—all processes and events, including those perceptual and experiential events that we reify as “objects”—emerge as they are from the entire complex of phenomena that preceded them. In some cases, one or a few phenomena so dominate that emergence that we identify those as “causes” of the emergent phenomena. In many cases, however (and in even more cases when we begin to look deeply and in detail), it would have been impossible, prior to the fact, to predict the exact nature of the event that would emerge from a particular set of preceding conditions. While the phenomenon depends on the preceding conditions, it cannot be said to have been “caused” by them in the simple sense that a well-placed cue stroke causes a particular set of collisions among the perfectly round balls on a perfectly smooth and level billiards table.

Dependent emergence is absolutely central to the Buddhist understanding of the world. Nagarjuna, arguably the greatest Buddhist thinker after the Buddha himself, grounded the Mulamadhyamakakarika—The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way, his monumental study of emptiness, on the concept of dependent emergence. Nagarjuna argued that, since all phenomena emerge dependent on preceding conditions, all phenomena (including emptiness itself) must be empty of inherent existence.

The concept of paticcasamupāda is difficult to absorb. The story is told, in the Maha-Nidana Sutta, that the Buddha was once staying, with his attendant Ananda, in a town named Kammasadhamma.

There are many expositions of the doctrine of dependent emergence throughout the Pali Canon, ranging from the very general and concise to the much more detailed and elaborate.

The general formula runs like this:

A slightly more elaborate version is presented in the Dhammacakkappavatha Sutta, the Buddha’s very first discourse. dukkhā is ubiquitous, the Buddha said; the condition for the emergence of dukkhā is craving; with the cessation of craving, dukkhā ends.

But the most elaborate exposition of dependent emergence, which I’ll discuss today, presents a 12-step sequence of conditions, each emerging from those preceding it. The sequence begins with ignorance and ends in dukkhā; it’s presented at several different places in the Canon; this exposition, from the Paticca-samuppada-vibhanga Sutta, Samyutta Nikaya 12.2, is typical:

That’s pretty telegraphic, and it’s not surprising that it has occasioned a very wide-ranging and diverse commentary through the ages. What I’m going to present now borrows heavily from classic commentary on the teachings and from modern philosophers of Buddhism, but it’s mainly my own attempt to understand how the concept of dependent emergence and how this particular chain of emerging conditions is relevant to my life, here and now, and to my practice as a Buddhist.

Conditioned Emergence

It all begins with Ignorance

Ignorance afflicts us in various guises:

• We may be ignorant of the true state of affairs; that is, within the Buddha’s universe of discourse, we may not know the four ennobling truths, that dukkha is pervasive, that its cause is craving, that the cessation of craving brings about the cessation of dukkha, and that the way to the cessation of craving is a way of living with eight factors: right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right diligence, right mindfulness, and right focus. And if we don’t know that, we also are likely not to know that all things are impermanent, arising contingent on the presence of necessary conditions and lasting only a moment; and we also will not know that our sense of a permanent Self is delusional.

  In Buddhist traditions, this aspect of ignorance is usually spoken of as wrong view.

• We may be able to see the true state of affairs but still ignore them, either because we are distracted by sensual pleasures, anger or other emotions, or because we don’t want to confront anything that seems to challenge the view of the world that seems to provide stability and comfort, or because we are afraid, or because we surrender to delusional or wishful thinking.
• We may not know what’s going on at all; that is, we may be subject to confusion or pervasive uncertainty. All may seem to be chaotic and meaningless.

Whatever form it takes, ignorance obscures our vision, plunges us into darkness; we just don’t know.

With Ignorance as condition, the Phenomenal World emerges.

Confronted with what seems chaotic and indistinct, we create distinctions. Here and there. This and that. Dark and Light. Now and then. Far and near. Large and small. Not to speak of right and wrong, just and unjust, victim and oppressor, etc. The set of boundaries we draw with those distinctions, the phenomenal world we create, is illusory and arbitrary, but we imagine it to be real and natural. Making such distinctions is one response, and it feels like the most natural response, to uncertainty.

The Pali term here is sankāra, and the Pali-English Dictionary says that it is “one of the most difficult terms in Buddhist metaphysics, in which the blending of the subjective/objective view of the world and of happening, peculiar to the East, is so complete, that it is almost impossible for Occidental terminology to get at the root of its meaning in a translation”. Among the terms that have been used to translate sankāra are “mental formations”, “volitional formations”, “fabrications”, “constructions.” The term occurs in two other very important contexts in the teachings. Sankāra is one of the Five Khandas, along with Perception, Feeling, Material Form, and Consciousness—in his first teaching on the Four Noble Truths, the Buddha referred to these as the Five Aggregates of Clinging. In a famous passage from the Dhammapada, defining the three essential attributes of the Buddha’s Dhamma, the first two points concern sankāra:

• “Sabbe sankāra aniccà“—all the phenomenal world is impermanent.
• “Sabbe sankāra dukkhā“—all the phenomenal world is dukkhā.

Especially in that last context, “the phenomenal world” seems to me to be more helpful to understanding than some of the other terms that have been used to translate sankāra.

With the Phenomenal World as condition, Consciousness (Cognition) emerges.

Once we start making distinctions, it feels like an inescapable realization to make the essential distinction between self and other, Martin Buber’s “I and Thou”. Consciousness, the sense of being conscious, depends on the existence of something to be conscious of, and that is provided by the phenomenal distinctions that arise out of chaos, out of ignorance regarding how things unfold in the world, out of wilfully ignoring the uncertainty that characterizes existence.

Most translators use the term “consciousness” to translate the Pali term viññāṇa, but that is inexact, and it misses some connotations that are important for the coherent processing of the place of the term in the series. The Pali Text Society’s Pali-English Dictionary calls viññāṇa “a special term in Buddhist metaphysics”, and its first translation of the term explains it as “a mental quality as a constituent of individuality”, which would certainly seem to be equivalent to our term “consciousness”. But the Dictionary also warns that “It is difficult to give any one word for[viññāṇa], because there is much difference between the old Buddhist and our modern points of view, and there is a varying use of the term in the Canon itself”, and it explains that the form of the word is participial, suggesting that “minding” might be a better translation than “mind”. I think that a good compromise term (always recognizing the impossibility of an accurate one word for one word translation), might be “cognition”. The term itself, as well as its place in the Dependent Emergence series, certainly implies an active, volitional process at work here, transforming the bare phenomena implied by sankārā into the much more subtle and conceptually driven processes of the next term in the series, nāmarūpa.

With Cognition as condition, Mind/Body arises

Once we start thinking about things, once we are conscious of ourselves in a world of others, we have the condition for the emergence of a particular process of cognition which we experience as a dualistic understanding of those “selves”. Conditioned by consciousness we experience a body, which, we know from experience, changes through time, as well something else which seems to be stable and constant through time. This something else—the experiencer, the locus of the identity; this Richard Blumberg, for example—is typically conceptualized as “mind”. Philosophers have identified the complex of difficulties involved in dealing with the duality of self as “the mind/body problem”, and that’s the translation I’ve chosen for nāmarūpa.

(Most translators use the literal meaning “name-and-form” to translate nāmarūpa; I don’t believe that’s any more accurate than “Mind/Body”, it is awkward in English, and it tends to obscure the role of this khandha in the process of dependent emergence.)

The process we’re dealing with at this point in the progression has wide implications: objective and subjective, real and ideal, object and attribute. When nāmarūpa emerges from cognition, an entire external world emerges, and establishes the necessary condition for the cognizing self to connect to it.

With Mind/Body as condition, the Six Sense Bases emerge

The mode of that connection is determined by the qualities of mind and body, and by the attributes of objects in the world, in other words, by nāmarūpa. The body has six organs for sensing, and for each of those organs, there is a corresponding sense attribute of objects in the external world, and also a corresponding sense consciousness in the mind. So, we have the eye as an organ of sight, visible attributes in external objects, and what the Buddha saw as a particular mode of “sight-consciousness” or “eye-consciousness”, linking the two. Similarly with the nose, odors, and scent-consciousness, the ear, sounds, and sound-consciousness, the tongue, flavors, and taste-consciousness, the tactile sensors in the body, surfaces or touchable attributes of external objects, and touch-consciousness; and the mind, abstract attributes of external world objects, and mind-consciousness. (That last one is peculiar to Buddhism, but in the context of the Buddha’s understanding of how things emerge in the world, it makes sense.)

With the Six Sense Bases as condition, Contact emerges

We see the world, we smell it, we taste it, we touch and hear and conceptualize it. And we go further: we don’t just see it, we look at it; we sniff it, savor it, feel the textures, listen to it, think about it. Through the six senses, understood as the Buddha understood them, as compound and contingent processes, conditioned by body, mind, and conventional objects, we engage with the world. We experience it. And our sensual and sensational experience of the world establishes the conditions for feelings to emerge.

With Contact as condition, Feeling emerges

The Buddha distinguished three primary sorts of feelings that emerge from our experience with the world, from the contact we have with it through the six sense bases.

Feeling may be:

• sukkā (pleasant). There are sights, sounds, tastes, ideas that I like; a particular shade of red appeals to me; I’m fond of chocolate; I feel an affective response to what my mind perceives as the independence of cats.
• dukkhā (painful). This is not the dukkhā that pervades this contingent universe—the grand metaphysical angst that constitutes the essential quality of all experience, but rather something simpler. Think of the difference between school spirit and world spirit, between something that’s true and the Truth. “I don’t think that mustard color is right for the trim on the house” “The smell of brussels sprouts leaves me a little queasy.” “The intolerant attitude of many churchmen gets on my nerves.” “I sensed some disapproval of what I just said.” Those are dukkhā vedaāa”, painful or unpleasant feelings, arising from contact conditioned by the sight, smell, and mind sense bases.
• asukkā (without affective tone, neutral). Most experience just passes us by; we either don’t notice it at all, or it holds no affective qualities for us.

Given that every sensory contact with the world has one of those affective colorations, it follows that the feelings generated by those contacts can serve as conditions for a more passionate experience.

With Feeling as condition, Craving emerges

The Pali term is taṇhā, and the literal meaning is “thirst”. When you’re thinking Craving, think the old Vaughn Monroe song “Water”. When simple affective feeling sets the condition for craving to arise, you’re in a whole new league. When what you want turns into something that you must have, then your life is marked by Craving. “She painted the trim that goddamn mustard color, and every time I come home, I want to puke.” “He said my plan was ‘strategically unsound’; that jackass wouldn’t know a strategy from a lemonade stand.” “We’ve had such a marvelous time on the island; why do we have to leave?” “One more drink won’t hurt anything.”

Craving marks a turning point; from here on out, the chain of conditions accelerates. The conditions start looking more like Causes, and it’s increasingly difficult to see a way out; the progression from Craving to dukkhā seems unstoppable. The Craving here is the same Craving that the Buddha identified as the primary condition for dukkhā in the Second Noble Truth.

There are several different generalizations throughout the teachings of the objects of Craving. All start with Craving for āma, for sensual pleasure, and that always includes greed as well as lust and gluttony. Craving to become something other than what we are, including craving for a fortunate rebirth, is usually in the list, as is craving for an end to being what we don’t want to be.

A classic list, found at many places in the teachings, talks about the four pairs of things that motivate people—pleasure and pain, gain and loss, praise and blame, fame and disrepute—all of these are potential objects of craving; we crave the first in each pair, and we crave to be rid of the latter. The obsessive nature of craving establishes the condition for the next step in the progression.

With Craving as condition, Clinging emerges

The texts talk about various types of Clinging: Clinging to desires, to views, to rites and rituals, and to a permanent Self.

While clinging is clearly visible in compulsive behavior or addiction, it’s a little harder to see in ourselves and in those we are close to. But when we consider such common conditions as jealousy, arrogance, resentment, we see that each of those is a variety of Clinging. We cling to our exclusive relationship with our sexual partner, or to the position of power we’ve attained in our job, or to our expertise, or to our dignity. It’s not just that we cling to negative things—to delusional ideas, or to hurtful or self-destructive behaviors. We cling to religious views, or political positions, or daily routines. My mother-in-law went to mass each morning of her life, during all the time I knew her; she clung to that ritual. I have a friend who clings to polite behavior to the extent that she won’t speak out against injustice or oppression, because that might offend the people she is speaking to.

When we examine deeply our behavior, or the views we hold, or our hopes and fears, we are likely to find that we are at a point where we can’t imagine a situation—something happening, or someone presenting an argument—that would cause us to alter those behaviors or views, or to give up those hopes and fears. At that point, we are face-to-face with clinging. And we can begin to see how our clinging shapes us and provides the necessary condition for the next phase of dependent emergence.

With Clinging as condition, Being emerges

So, clinging to our views, our desires, our rituals, our habits, we become these Selves—faithful Catholic or confirmed atheist, Socialist or Tea-bagger, Addict or Teetotaller, Bengals fan or Steelers fan, Desperate Housewives fan or desperate housewife. This attachment to the world, this complex bundle of clung-to stuff, this baggage defines us, limits us, reduces us, and establishes the conditions for the final stage.

Before we go on to that, though, I want to say a few words about this word bhava that I have translated as “Being”. That’s not inaccurate, but it misses the dynamic connotations of the Pali. Bhava is not just “being” in the sense of something that sits there, or something that can be analyzed into its component parts, or something that is complete and fixed. It means something that has come to be but is still and forever in process; to translate it more accurately, we would need an English word that was half way in meaning between “becoming” and “being”.

In his first discourse on the Four Noble Truths, the Buddha presented a program to end suffering, stated in the form of four truths—the truth that suffering is ubiquitous, the truth that the origin of suffering is Craving, the truth that suffering ceases when Craving is abandoned, and the truth that the way to the cessation of suffering is the Noble Eightfold Path. Each of the four truths, the Buddha said, demanded a response. The response demanded by the fourth truth, regarding the eightfold Path that leads to the cessation of suffering, was bhavana—the participial form of bhava. The Path is not something to be followed but to be created in our lives; if we are to realize the promise explicit in the Four Noble Truths, the Buddha said, each of has to be the Path, bring the Path into being. It’s not that we achieve or acquire or practice Right Intention, or Right Speech, or Right Mindfulness; we must embody those, become a person whose view of the Four Noble Truths is clear, whose Intention is right, whose speech and actions and livelihood and awareness and effort and concentration are right. When we become one who so embodies the Path, the Buddha promises, we are then free of Clinging and so free of Birth and the suffering into which we are plunged by Birth.

Until then, however, we become what we Cling to, we are part and parcel of our attachments, and that “being” establishes the necessary condition for the final stage in the chain of dependent emerging.

With Being as condition, Birth emerges

Thinking of the world as a collection of stuff, and thinking of Being as being something, our English word “birth” indicates the definitive process that generates a new bundle of stuff. Thinking of the world as process, though, we see (albeit with some difficulty, because we cling to our cultural habits of seeing) that the emergence of Being, the emergence of a Being attached to the world in particular ways, is, in fact, what gives birth to the Self that is subject to “aging and death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair”.

What is born, in fact, is just dukkha. dukkhā does not emerge; it is part and parcel of Birth, identical with the Self that is generated, or born, from the condition of Being that emerges from the condition of Clinging that emerges from the condition of Craving, and so on back—that generated Self is impermanent and empty of ultimate existence. It is dukkhā.

It doesn’t end with dukkhā

This is the chain of dependent emergence that is most commonly elaborated in the Pali Canon, but it is far from the only such chain. Some are similar to this chain, but missing a few links. In other teachings, the Buddha uses the same understanding of conditioned emergence to explain other processes. And in one teaching from the Samyutta Nikaya, the Upanisa Sutta, the Buddha gives the same 12-link chain that we just went through, but then establishes a second chain, beginning with dukkhā.

With dukkhā as a condition, he teaches, Faith emerges, the faith that there is a way to end the dukkhā we are immersed in, the dukkhā that has emerged, via a chain of intermediate conditions, each dependent on the one before, all the way back to a very basic ignorance.

And then he goes on to develop another chain of twelve links:

• With dukkhā as condition, Faith (saddha) emerges
• With Faith as condition, Joy (pamojja) emerges
• With Joy as condition, Rapture (piti ) emerges
• With Rapture as condition, Tranquillity (passaddhi) emerges
• With Tranquility as condition, Happiness (sukha) emerges
• With Happiness as condition, Concentration (samadhi) emerges
• With Concentration as condition, Knowledge and vision of things as they are (yathabhutañanadassana) emerges
• With Knowledge and vision of things as they are as condition, Disenchantment (nibbida) emerges
• With Disenchantment as condition, Dispassion (viraga) emerges
• With Dispassion as condition, Emancipation (vimutti) emerges
• With Emancipation as condition, Knowledge of destruction of the taints (asavakkhaye ñana) emerges

There are three taints: the taint of sensual desire, the taint of being, and the taint of ignorance. When they are understood and abandoned, the result is enlightenment.

Exposition of this second sequence of emergent conditions is for another time. For now, rest assured that it does not end with dukkhā; in fact, with Faith in the Buddha’s teaching, dukkhā is simply the first step and the necessary condition for enlightenment.