NEW LIGHTON THE TWELVE NIDANAS.pdf

NEW LIGHTON THE TWELVE NID ¯ NAS

Dhivan Thomas Jones

Paticca samupp¯ da (dependent arising) is the central philosophical principle of

Buddhism, and is most commonly exempliﬁed in the suttas in terms of the twelve

nid¯nas. The ubiquitous interpretation of the twelve nid¯ nas of paticca samupp¯ da as

taking place over three lives, a religious doctrine explaining the rebirth process, is a

commentarial development, not found in the suttas. Recent Therav¯din exegetes

Bhikkhu Buddhad¯sa and ˜ ¯ _ nav¯ra Thera argue for an interpretation of the twelve

nid¯ nas of paticca samupp¯ da as taking place in the present moment, but Bhikkhu

Bodhi disputes the claim that their interpretation is the Buddha’s original meaning.

Recent work by Vedic scholar Joanna Jurewicz, however, suggests that originally the

twelve nid ¯ nas were a parody of Vedic cosmogony. This scholarship opens the way for

renewed exegesis of paticca samupp ¯ da liberated from Indian Buddhist metaphysics.

Introduction

The Buddha is recorded as telling Ananda that it was through not

understanding and not penetrating paticca samupp¯da (dependent arising) that

humanity ‘has become like a tangle of string covered in mould and matted like

grass’, and so does not go beyond the miseries of conditioned existence (D 15 PTS

ii 55, S 12:60 PTS ii 92). It is said that just before his enlightenment the bodhisatta

reﬂected on how dukkha (unhappiness) arose dependent on conditions—how

ageing and death ( jar¯mara _ na) arose on condition of birth ( j¯ti), birth on

existence (bhava), existence on clinging (up¯d¯na), clinging on craving (ta _ nh¯),

craving on feeling (vedan¯), feeling on contact ( phassa), contact on the six sense-

bases (sal¯yatana), the sense-bases on name and form (n¯mar¯pa), name and

form on consciousness (vi˜˜ ¯ na), consciousness on formations (sa˙kh ¯ r ¯ ), and

formations on ignorance (avijj¯). It was just through the ceasing of these twelve

nid ¯ nas that the Buddha, like Buddhas before him, attained the path to

awakening, that overgrown road to the ancient city of enlightenment (S 12:65 PTS

ii 104). To investigate these twelve linked conditions of sa _ ms¯ra is to understand

the ‘noble method’ of the Dharma (A 10:92 PTS v 182); and the cessation of just

these twelve nid¯nas is the end of dukkha.

From the paramount importance given to the teaching of the twelve

nid¯nas in the Pali canon, one might expect the formula to be clearly explained.

Contemporary Buddhism, Vol. 10, No. 2, November 2009

ISSN 1463-9947 print/1476-7953 online/09/020241-259

q 2009 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/14639940903239793

242 DHIVAN THOMAS JONES

But not so. Although each nid¯na or link is expounded to some extent, ‘the earliest

texts give very little explanation of how the formula is to be understood’ (Gethin

1998, 149). Later Buddhist tradition interpreted the twelve-fold formula as an

explanation of the rebirth process over three lives, but it there is no evidence that

this is what the Buddha originally meant.

In this article I will explore the interpretations of the twelve nid¯nas of

paticca samupp¯da offered by two recent Therav¯ din thinkers, Bhikkhu

Buddhad¯ sa and Bhikkhu ˜ ¯ nav¯ra, who in different ways criticise the three-life

interpretation and, reading the suttas afresh, offer accounts of how the links of

paticca samupp¯da can be understood as working in the present moment. I will

also indicate the criticism of this present moment interpretation by Bhikkhu Bodhi,

a defender of Buddhist tradition. I will then present a completely different

approach to the problem, starting from the idea that the arrangement of the

nid¯nas begins to make sense when one takes into account the brahminical

religious context in which the Buddha was teaching. In this context, the various

links in different ways turn upside down the assumptions about Self (att ¯ ), reality

(brahman) and the supposed purpose of brahminical rituals current in the

Buddha’s time. This suggests that the arrangement of the twelve nid¯nas was

originally intended as a parody of brahminical beliefs as well as a statement of

what the Buddha taught.

Conditionality and paticca samupp¯da

Before discussing the traditional three-life interpretation, I will clarify some

terms. Paticca sammup¯da can be translated as ‘dependent arising’, ‘dependent

origination’ or ‘conditioned co-production’, and the term is often used for the

principle of conditionality: ‘when this is, that becomes; with the arising of this, that

arises. When this does not exist, that does not exist; with the cessation of this, that

ceases’. This philosophical principle explains explaining without reference to a

creator God, while at the same time avoiding any recourse to chance and

meaninglessness; insight into this principle is the aim of Buddhist contempla-

tion—‘who sees paticca samupp¯da sees the Dharma’ (M 28 PTS I 191) and

leads to liberation.

However, in the Pali suttas, the statement of the principle of paticca

samupp¯da is often followed by a statement of the twelve nid¯nas (for instance, in

the Ud¯na 1.1 – 3), as if they are the fundamental exempliﬁcation of the principle.

These twelve links are often simply listed, in order of arising and order of ceasing,

without explanation; in other places the Buddha discusses and analyses the links;

and in several suttas there are lists of nine, ten, or more, or less, links instead of

twelve. But the twelve links are the basic list. Here I will not be discussing the

general principle of conditionality, but speciﬁcally the selection and arrangement

of the twelve nid¯nas, and the meaning of that selection.

NEW LIGHT ON THE TWELVE NID ¯ NAS 243

The three-life interpretation

Early Buddhist thinkers, seeking to understand and systematise the

Buddha’s teaching as it had been passed down to them, came to see in the twelve

links an explanation of sa _ ms¯ra, of how the individual human being passes

through lifetimes according to karma. This process of reﬂection reached its

culmination with the ﬁfth-century C.E. commentator Buddhaghosa, who devotes

Chapter 17 of his Visuddhimagga to how the twelve links apply over three

lifetimes. The approach can be summarised as Table 1, which shows the

commentarial interpretation of each nid ¯ na alongside the sutta version.

The three-life interpretation of paticca samupp¯da is the mainstream

Buddhist exegesis, found in Vasubandhu’s Abhidharmakosabh¯ sya as well as in

Therav¯ din tradition. However, nowhere in the suttas is the Buddha recorded as

saying that the twelve nid ¯ nas should be understood over three lifetimes, or that

paticca samupp¯da is meant to explain an individual’s continual re-arising

according to karma and its result. The division of the twelve links into karma-

process and result-process is a later commentarial interpretation. The scholar Paul

Williams comments:

This twelvefold formula for dependent origination as it stands is strange. In one

way it makes sense spread over three lives, yet this explanation looks like an

attempt to make sense of what may well be a compilation from originally different

sources. Why, for example, explain the ﬁrst of the three lives only in terms of the

ﬁrst two links, and explain the tenth link, ‘becoming’, as essentially the same as

the second link, ‘formations’? Why introduce explanations in terms of karman

where none of the links obviously mentions karman? (Williams 2000, 71 – 72)

TABLE 1

Sutta version and commentarial interpretation of each nid ¯ na

Nid¯na

Sutta

Commentary

Avijj¯

Ignorance

Ignorance in the last life

Karma-process

Sa˙ kh¯r¯

Formations

Volitional formations in

the last life

Vi˜ ˜ ¯na

Consciousness

Re-linking ( patisandhi)

consciousness between lives

Result (vip¯ka)-

process

N¯ma-r¯ pa Name and form

Mind and body arising at

conception in this life

Sal¯yatan¯

The six sense realms The six sense organs in

the child

Phassa

Contact

Vedan¯

Feeling

Ta _ nh¯

‘Thirst’, craving

Craving

Karma-process

Up¯d¯na

‘Fuel’, grasping

Grasping

Bhava

Becoming

Becoming in sa _ ms¯ra

J¯ti

Birth

Birth in the next life

Result-process

Jar¯-mara _ nam Old age and death Old age and death in

the next life

244 DHIVAN THOMAS JONES

I will not here address how the twelve-fold paticca samupp¯da might be compiled

from different sources; 1 but if it is, there are few traces left in the canon of how

the compilation came about. It would appear that whatever the Buddha originally

meant by the twelve links must have been as difﬁcult to understand for the early

Buddhists as it is for us, which is why they developed the three-life interpretation

to make some sense of it. However, in doing so they had to make some changes to

what the Buddha is recorded as saying about what some of the links referred to.

First, the early Buddhists interpreted sa˙kh¯r¯ speciﬁcally as the past

volitional formations—that is, past karma—on the basis of which the present

individual arose. The suttas, however, describe sa˙kh¯r¯ very generally as bodily,

verbal and mental formations, with no reference to time or karma. Next, the

commentators interpreted vi ˜˜ ¯na speciﬁcally as the re-linking ( patisandhi)

consciousness that passes over from death to conception in the next life, the

‘seed’ consciousness that starts off the new existence. The suttas, however,

although they describe a ‘descent of consciousness’ into the womb, generally

explain the vi˜˜¯na of the twelve nid¯nas simply as consciousness associated with

each of the six senses. Similarly, the name-and-form of the three-life interpretation

is deﬁned as that which develops in the womb on condition of the re-linking

consciousness, whereas in the suttas the n ¯ ma of n ¯ ma-r ¯ pa is generally deﬁned

as ‘feeling, perception, intention, contact and attention’, clearly the complex

mental concomitants of the adult mind. While the commentators give the six

sense bases the speciﬁc meaning of the senses of the newly-arisen being, in the

suttas they are not so speciﬁed. By interpreting the feeling or vedan¯ of paticca

samupp¯da as a karma-result, the commentators appear to have limited their

conception of feeling merely to the feeling that arises due to past karma, whereas

the suttas describe all feeling, whether as a result of karma or not, as dependently

arisen. Finally, we should note that while the commentators take birth and old age

and death to refer speciﬁcally to the next life, the suttas appear simply to deﬁne

these nid ¯ nas quite generally as being born, ageing and dying.

In short, it would appear that the commentators, by assigning speciﬁc, literal

meanings to each of the twelve nid¯nas, created out of paticca samupp¯da a

religious and metaphysical doctrine describing the rebirth process according to

karma. In the suttas, however, the nid¯nas are deﬁned in more general and

suggestive ways, and the twelve-fold formula does not mention karma. This is not

to say that the Buddha did not teach karma and rebirth, which he clearly did; only

that paticca samupp¯da is not presented in the canon as explaining it. Indeed, the

Buddha does not appear to have explained the mechanism of the rebirth process

or the exact workings of karma. Perhaps this is why the later Buddhists utilised

paticca samupp ¯ da to render into deﬁnite religious doctrine what the Buddha

had left unexplained.

NEW LIGHT ON THE TWELVE NID ¯ NAS 245

Pa ticca samupp¯da in the present moment

The commentators, then, took the twelve links of paticca samupp¯da to be

referring to a linear causal process occurring through time, on the scale of

lifetimes. This enabled the early Buddhists to conceptualise the rebirth process

that the Buddha taught and which they believed in, and eventually this

sophisticated interpretation of the suttas must have settled into a generally

accepted part of Buddhist doctrine. The traditional images for the twelve links

stretched around the outside of the ‘wheel of life’ suggest that by the time this

symbol was devised the doctrine had become embedded into the religious

imagination, along with the Buddhist cosmology of which paticca samupp ¯ da is

the guiding principle.

Evidence within the Pali canon shows the gradual development of the

exegetical principles behind the three-life interpretation (Patis PTS 50 – 53; Warder

1997, 50 – 53); however, in the Therav¯ din Abhidhamma texts there is also

evidence of a different kind of interpretation. In the Vibha˙ga there is an analysis

of paticca samupp¯da in which the twelve links are presented as occurring

together in the present moment (PTS 144; Thitthila 1969, 189). This example of

paticca samupp¯da in the present moment was not supposed to be an account of

what the Buddha had taught in the suttas, since the Abhidhammikas clearly

distinguished between this approach and the method by which they interpreted

the discourses. But it illustrates another early interpretation. More recently, two

Therav¯ din thinkers, Buddhad¯ sa and ˜ ¯ _ nav¯ra, have each speciﬁcally criticised

the commentarial interpretation of paticca samupp ¯ da and proposed their own

interpretations that they claim are nearer to the Buddha’s original meaning.

Buddhad ¯ sa: paticca samupp ¯ da in daily life

Buddhad¯ sa Bhikkhu (1906 – 93) was a highly respected Thai meditation

master, as well as an outspoken critic of some of the popular beliefs of Thai

Buddhists. In a lecture on paticca samupp¯da given in 1971 at his monastery, Suan

Mokh (‘Garden of Enlightenment’), he criticised the three-life interpretation and

set out an interpretation of the twelve nid ¯ nas as occurring in the present

moment (Buddhad¯ sa 1986; condensed in Buddhad¯ sa 1989; discussed in Seeger

2005). This was not supposed to be a version of the Abhidhamma interpretation,

which Buddhad¯ sa regarded as ‘superﬂuous, inﬂated Abhidhammic knowledge’,

a merely intellectual analysis (Buddhad¯ sa 1986, 55), and ‘totally useless’

(Buddhad¯ sa 1989, 122).

He described the three-life interpretation as a ‘cancer, an incurable tumour

of Buddhist scholarship’ (Seeger 2005, 111). He pointed out that in the suttas the

Dharma is described as ‘self-evident’ (sanditthika), ‘timeless’ (ak¯lika) and ‘to be

experienced individually by the wise’ ( paccata _ m veditabbo vi ˜˜ ¯hi), and that

paticca samupp¯da was said by the Buddha to be identical to the Dharma (M 38

PTS i 265). By spreading the links of paticca samupp ¯ da over three lifetimes, such

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