..续本文上一页on of the "entire mass of suffering."

　　Though the principle of dependent arising is applicable to any situation where an origination of phenomena takes place, the Pali Buddhist tradition has focused upon the doctrine almost exclusively in terms of its twelve-fold formulation. So much has this been the case that the two have tended to be blankly identified with each other, dependent arising being equated simply with the twelve-fold series and the twelve-fold series being regarded as an exhaustive treatment of dependent arising. This exclusiveness of emphasis doubtlessly poses a certain danger of rigidity; but even despite this danger it is not without its justification. For the aim of the Buddha”s teaching is not abstract and theoretical, but concrete and soteriological. Its goal is liberation from suffering, understood in its deepest sense as the un-satisfactoriness of sentient existence indefinitely repeated in the wheel of becoming, the cycle of births and deaths, called samsára. The twelve-term nexus contributes to this liberative thrust by bringing the principle of dependent arising to bear directly on the condition, which it is the doctrine”s over-riding concern to ameliorate. If suffering is produced by causes, these causes and the way they can be stopped must be uncovered and exposed. The twelve-fold application accomplishes precisely this. In its positive or direct aspect (anuloma) it makes known the causal chain behind suffering, demonstrating how the round of existence arises and turns through the impulsions of craving, clinging, and karma, working freely behind the shielding screen of ignorance. In its negative or reverse side (patiloma) it reveals the way to the cessation of suffering, showing that when ignorance is eliminated by the rise of true knowledge all the factors dependent on ignorance likewise draw to a close.

　　However, as a consequence of this constriction of attention, sight has tended to be lost of the broader range of exemplifications the principle of dependent arising might have, even within the limits of the soteriological direction of the teaching. Dependent arising cannot be reduced to any single one of its applications. Any application is only a pedagogical device framed from the standpoint of the teaching”s practical orientation. Above and beyond its specific instances, dependent arising remains an expression of the invariable structural relatedness of phenomena. It is a principle to which all phenomena conform by the very nature of their being, the principle that whatever comes into existence does so in dependence on conditions. From the perspective this teaching affords, things are seen to arise, not from some intrinsic nature of their own, from necessity, chance or accident, but from their causal correlations with other things to which they are connected as part of the fixed order obtaining between phenomena. Each transient entity, emerging into the present out of the stream of events bearing down from the past, absorbs into itself the causal influx of the past, to which it must be responsive. During its phase of presence it exercises its own distinctive function with the support of its conditions, expressing thereby its own immediacy of being. And then, with the completion of its actuality, it is swept away by the universal impermanence to become itself a condition determinant of the future.

　　When this law of inter-connected becoming, of conditionality and relatedness, is extracted from its usual exemplifications and explored for further doctrinal bearings, it can be found to have other ramifications equally relevant to the realization of the teaching”s fundamental aim. One particular exemplification of dependent arising,; found with minor variations in a number of Suttas, shows the basic princi…

《Transcendental Dependent Arising - A Translation and Exposition of the Upanisa Sutta》全文未完，请进入下页继续阅读…