..续本文上一页d vision of things as they really are, the knowledge and vision of things as they really are is the supporting condition for disenchantment, disenchantment is the supporting condition for dispassion, dispassion is the supporting condition for emancipation, and emancipation is the supporting condition for the knowledge of the destruction (of the cankers)."

　　Transcendental Dependent Arising

　　An Exposition of the Upanisa Sutta

　　Dependent arising (paticcasamuppada) is the central principle of the Buddha”s teaching, constituting both the objective content of its liberating insight and the germinative source for its vast network of doctrines and disciplines. As the frame behind the four noble truths, the key to the perspective of the middle way, and the conduit to the realization of selflessness, it is the unifying theme running through the teaching”s multifarious expressions, binding them together as persified formulations of a single coherent vision. The earliest Suttas equate dependent arising with the unique discovery of the Buddha”s enlightenment, so profound and difficult to grasp that he at first hesitated to announce it to the world. A simple exposition of the principle sparks off the liberating wisdom in the minds of his foremost disciples, while skill in explaining its workings is made a qualification of an adroit expounder of the Dhamma. So crucial is this principle to the body of the Buddha”s doctrine that an insight into dependent arising is held to be sufficient to yield an understanding of the entire teaching. In the words of the Buddha: "He who sees dependent arising sees the Dhamma; he who sees the Dhamma sees dependent arising." [1]

　　The Pali texts present dependent arising in a double form. It appears both as an abstract statement of universal law and as the particular application of that law to the specific problem which is the doctrine”s focal concern, namely, the problem of suffering. In its abstract form the principle of dependent arising is equivalent to the law of the conditioned genesis of phenomena. It expresses the invariable concomitance between the arising and ceasing of any given phenomenon and the functional efficacy of its originative conditions. It”s phrasing, as terse as any formulation of modern logic, recurs in the ancient texts thus: "This being, that exists; through the arising of this that arises. This not being, that does not exist; through the ceasing of this that ceases."[2]

　　When applied to the problem of suffering, the abstract principle becomes encapsulated in a twelve-term formula disclosing the causal nexus responsible for the origination of suffering. It begins with ignorance, the primary root of the series though not a first cause, conditioning the arising of ethically determinate volitions, which in turn condition the arising of consciousness, and so on through the salient occasions of sentient becoming down to their conclusion in old age and death:

　　With ignorance as condition, the kamma formations; with kamma formations as condition consciousness; with consciousness as condition, mentality-materiality; with mentality-materiality as condition the six-fold sense base; with the six-fold sense base as condition, contact; with contact as condition, feeling; with feeling as condition, craving; with craving as condition, clinging; with clinging as condition, existence; with existence as condition, birth; with birth as condition, aging-and-death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, and despair arise. Such is the origination of this entire mass of suffering.

　　-- SN. XII, passim.

　　The corollary of this formula, which constantly accompanies it, describes the conditioned cessation of suffering. It shows how, when ignorance ceases, all the following conditions successively cease, down to the cessati…

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