..續本文上一頁, and rivers to the great ocean at the mountain”s base. Thus the series of conditions presented in the Sutta can be mapped out in the abstract as follows:

　　Mundane Order

　　Ignorance (avijja)

　　Kamma formations (sankhara)

　　Consciousness (viññana)

　　Mentality-materiality (namarupa)

　　Six-fold sense base (salayatana)

　　Contact (phassa)

　　Feeling (vedana)

　　Craving (tanha)

　　Clinging (upadana)

　　Existence (bhava)

　　Birth (jati)

　　Suffering (dukkha)

　　Transcendental Order

　　Faith (saddha)

　　Joy (pamojja)

　　Rapture (piti)

　　Tranquility (passaddhi)

　　Happiness (sukha)

　　Concentration (samádhi)

　　Knowledge and vision of things as they are (yathabhutañanadassana)

　　Disenchantment (nibbida)

　　Dispassion (viraga)

　　Emancipation (vimutti)

　　Knowledge of destruction of the cankers (asavakkhaye ñana)

　　For ease of explanation we will examine the links of transcendental dependent arising in direct order. However, before doing so, it is instructive to note that there is special significance in the initial presentation of the series in reverse. Such a presentation serves to throw an important spotlight on the nature of the causal relation obtaining between the path to liberation and its goal. It shows that the type of causal development displayed by this progression is quite different from the pattern of blind efficient causality which involves the incidental emergence of an effect out of its causal matrix, as for example when a series of geological changes triggers off an earthquake or a number of atoms combine to form some new molecule. The relationship between the path and the goal belongs to a more complex order of causality, one which can perhaps be pictured as a set of prior causes giving rise to an effect but can never be adequately and correctly comprehended in terms of this model. What we have here is not an instance of simple, one-directional causality proceeding forward unmodified in a straight line; we have, rather, a species of teleological causality involving purpose, intelligence, and planned striving simultaneously projected towards and refracted from the aimed at effect in a process of reciprocal determination. In the workings of this relationship not only does the path facilitate the achievement of the goal, but the goal as well, already present from the outset as the envisaged aim of striving, itself bends back to participate in the shaping of the path. Starting from man”s awareness of the painful inadequacies of his existence, and his intuitive groping towards a condition where these are allayed, the formula proceeds to trace back, in terms derivative from and constantly checked against the goal, the series of alterations he must induce in his cognitive and emotive makeup to bring the goal into his reach.

　　We see this pattern illustrated in the traditional account of prince Siddhartha”s great renunciation. [7] When the future Buddha leaves his palace, he goes forth in the confidence that beyond the perishable, defective, and substance-less things of the world there is accessible to man an un-perishable and self-sufficient state which makes possible deliverance from suffering. What he needs to discover, as the objective of his "holy quest," is the path bridging the two domains. This he does by pursuing backwards from the goal of striving the obstructions to its attainment and the steps to be taken to remove those obstructions. One line of exploration begins with aging and death as the fundamental manifestation of the suffering, which weighs upon the world, and follows its chain of conditions back to ignorance as the underlying root. [8] Another, complementary line starts with the defilements as the principal obstruction to emancipation. It then finds the defilements to be sustained by ignorance, ignorance by the distracted mind, and the distr…

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