..续本文上一页al sense-organs of eye,

　　ear, nose, tongue, body, and the mind;

　　6) the six sense-realms come into contact with

　　(sensorial and mental) phenomena;

　　7) contact gives rise to sensations or feelings (the

　　skandha called vedana);

　　8) feelings give rise to desire or thirst;

　　9) thirst gives rise to clinging;

　　10) clinging gives rise to the process of becoming;

　　11) the process of becoming leads to rebirth;

　　12) rebirth leads to suffering, old age and death.

　　Often this Chain of Dependent Origination is graphically represented as a circle and variously called the Wheel of Samsara, the Wheel of Becoming or the Wheel of Karma. Through the preaching of his insights, the Buddha taught people how to turn the wheel in the reverse order--through the complete cessation of ignorance, mental formations are eradicated; through the eradication of mental formations, consciousness is eradicated and so forth until one arrives at the cessation of conditioned rebirth and hence of suffering, old age, and death. This reverse turning is often called Turning the Wheel of Dharma and is called the path to nirvana, the state of being in which all deluded views as to anything in human personality being permanent or substantial are eradicated. It is important to bear in mind that each of the twelve factors in the Chain of Dependent Origination is conditioned as well as conditioning. As such, they are all interdependent and interconnected; in itself, no single factor is absolute or independent. Each factor is inherently empty. When the Wheel of Dharma is turned, all these factors find their resolution in nirvana or sunyata.

　　In sunyata, as noted earlier, forms are only flickerings--without any quality of solidity or time-endurance--manifesting themselves momentarily. Knowing this fundamental truth, we are spared the necessity of choosing one over the other, of attachment to one and aversion to another or both. Thus another occasion of clinging is dissolved. We are also spared the necessity to categorize the insight of the Buddha. Mahayana tradition insists that it is enough for a believer to firmly hold on to the thought of enlightenment and practice diligently. A firm belief that in sunyata all things find their resolution is therefore enough for a Mahayana believer. To know through the eye of wisdom that all the twelve links in the Chain of Dependent Origination are interconnections and inter-relations is to echo the words of Werner Heisenberg, one of the founders of quantum physics, "The world thus appears as a complicated issue of events, in which connections of different kinds alternate or overlap or combine and thereby determine the texture of the whole."[17]

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　　"No suffering, no origination, no stopping, no path, no cognition, also no attainment with nothing to attain."

　　This is the most shocking rejection yet of the Hinayana approach to Buddha”s teaching which had insisted that the totality of Buddha”s teaching was contained in the first teaching he gave to his five former colleagues soon after his enlightenment. This teaching is called the First Sermon or the Sermon of the Four Holy Truths. In this schema, the four Noble Truths are:

　　1) existence is dukkha (pain, suffering, discomfort,

　　dis-ease, sense of incompletion);

　　2) dukkha is caused by "thirst" (Sanskrit:

　　tanha)--desire to be, desire to have;

　　3) the thirst can be stopped (nirvana);

　　4) it can be stopped by walking the eightfold path

　　(namely--right understanding, right thoughts, right

　　speech, right action, right livelihood, right

　　effort, right mindfulness, right concentration).

　　The Mahayana disciples had no quarrel with the insight contained in any of these classifications but what precipitated a conflict for them was the Hinayana insistence on a monastic elitism which decla…

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