..續本文上一頁ple to serve as the scaffolding for the course of spiritual development issuing in final emancipation.[3] It figures in these Suttas as the architectonic underlying the gradual training, governing the process by which one phase of practice conditions the arising of the following phase all the way from the commencement of the path to the realization of the ultimate goal. To be sure, the application of dependent arising to the achievement of deliverance is already covered from one angle by the reverse or cessation side of the twelve-fold formula, according to which the cessation of ignorance sets off a series of cessations culminating in the cessation of suffering. Thence in itself such an application is not a unique feature of these Suttas. What gives these Suttas their distinctive quality and value is the positive form in which they cast the sequential pattern of the liberative venture. Whereas the series of cessations presents the achievement of liberation logically, in strict doctrinal terms as the consequence following upon the annulment of samsaric bondage, the present sequence views the same chain of events dynamically, from the inner perspective of living experience.

　　As living experience, the advance to emancipation cannot be tied down to a series of mere negations, for such a mode of treatment omits precisely what is most essential to the spiritual quest -- the immediacy of inner striving, growth, and transformation. Parallel to the demolition of old barriers there occurs, in the quest for deliverance, a widening of vistas characterized by an evolving sense of maturation, enrichment, and fulfillment; the departure from bondage, anxiety, and suffering at the same time means the move towards freedom and peace. This expansion and enrichment is made possible by the structure of the gradual training, which is not so much a succession of discrete steps one following the other as a locking together of overlapping components in a union at once augmentative, consummative, and projective. Each pair of stages intertwines in a mutually vitalizing bond wherein the lower, antecedent member nurtures its successor by serving as its generative base, and the higher, consequent member completes its predecessor by absorbing its energies and directing them on to the next phase in the series. Each link thus performs a double function: while rewarding the efforts expended in the accomplishment of the antecedent stage, it provides the incentive for the commencement of the consequent stage. In this way the graduated training unfolds organically in a fluid progression in which, as the Buddha says, "stage flows over into stage, stage fulfills stage, for crossing over from the hither shore to the beyond."[4]

　　All the factors comprised in this sequence come into being in strict subjection to the law of conditioned genesis. The accidental, the compulsory, and the mysterious are equally excluded by the lawful regularity governing the series. The stages of the path do not emerge fortuitously or through the operation of some inscrutable power, but originate conditionally, appearing spontaneously in the course of training when their requisite conditions are complete. Thus the course of spiritual development these Suttas reveal is a dependent arising -- a coming into being in dependence on conditions. But this dependent arising differs significantly from its mundane counterpart. The mundane version, with its twelve links, describes the movement of samsára, which revolves in a perpetually self-regenerating circle leading from beginning to end only to find the end lead back to the beginning. The mechanism of this process, by which defilements and renewed existence mutually kindle one another, is fueled by the hope that some-how some solution will yet emerge w…

《Transcendental Dependent Arising - A Translation and Exposition of the Upanisa Sutta》全文未完，請進入下頁繼續閱讀…