The teaching of pratitya samutpada is often said to be the Buddha’s core insight.
That used to baffle me, as I thought his teachings on metta, meditation and ethics were far more revolutionary and life changing for our modern society, than just a statement about the importance of conditionality that seems to be very obvious compared to his other teachings.
Ananda famously had the same reaction to me, to which the Buddha replied “Do not say that. Ananda, do not say that. This dependent arising is deep and profound. It is from not understanding and penetrating this Dharma that people have become like a tangle of string covered in mould and matted like grass, unable to escape from samsara with its miseries, disasters and bad destinies.”
The reporting of this conversation also baffled me, as the Buddha’s words usually resonate with something inside me, but in this case, it was Ananda’s.
That is why I wanted to explore this insight deeper and try and find out why the Buddha considered this so important.
My talk tonight is going to meander through various topics connected with pratitya samutpada
In particular there are four areas I would like to discuss
Firstly our view of conditionality and causality today compared with Ancient India
Secondly Why the Buddha’s insight is still relevant today
Thirdly I discuss the concepts of rebirth, and no soul versus reincarnation and soul. I discuss whether this conflict is merely linguistic, just a different way of looking at things, or whether it is a real difference that makes a practical difference in our lives.
Fourthly I then go onto discuss the evidence for an afterlife, and the possible dangers of such a belief.
So, to start off, I will discuss our view of conditionality and causality today compared with Ancient India
Two and a half thousand years have passed since that conversation between the Buddha and Ananda. Our mind set is very different to Ancient India. Isaac Newton gave us his laws of motion where, we can see how the movement of all objects at our macro level is conditioned by the forces of gravity, momentum and forces applied by one object to another. This insight revolutionised our understanding of the way everything moves.
In the Eighteenth century, the great philosopher David Hume explored the idea of causality, stating that our use of induction is justified by our idea of constant conjunction of causes and effects. So the idea of causality is central in developments in science and engineering.
Not only that, it is the basis of pseudo sciences like psychiatry, psychotherapy, and new age teachings about our mind. You can go into any bookshop and find a row of self help books that talk about solutions to feeling depressed or powerless, for example. They talk of doing X that has the effect Y on our consciousness.
So it seems that the idea of conditionality and causality is much more widespread, and part of our mindset than it was in Ancient India. The whole of science is based on it.
Secondly: Has the Buddha seen something that is relevant to us today and that can help us escape from our tangle of string covered in mould and matted like grass? Are we still missing something?
Well yes he has.
Even though our society knows about conditionality, it conveniently forgets about it, for the most part, in the area of how our mind works. Yes, to some extent we are aware of little tricks or practices that can change our mind. That much is filtering through to those of us interested in personal growth.
However it is not given the centrality that it deserves. Our entire experience is a function of two things, what is going on outside, and what is going
Most people, for the most part, just focus on what is going on outside of themselves, and change things there to be happy.
Succesful people, whether in sport, business, or any other field tend to be aware of the importance of attitude and mindset. This has been increasingly talked about in the last few decades.
So we are learning not only how to change our mindset, but also the mind of people we interact with.
So the primacy of mind, and how things affect it, is supremely important, and it is good that we can be reminded of that through the Buddha’s words.
Any religion, philosophy or system of psychology suffers from one issue which is how far to go with analysis and system building.
Obviously there has to be a certain minimum amount.
Our minds are hungry for analysis, and we need to find some order to the chaos of our experience. We need a clear practical path, and we also may have questions. So there are always demands on the priest class to come up with answers to the questions.
Often they would just make something up eg “God told me”, or “my Guru told me”, or they could just create some elaborate philosophical system or commentary on a sacred text.
The Buddha did come up with a few systems which were mostly practical and useful, like the four noble truths, or the noble eightfold path.
But often he would just not even discuss certain topics, like the origin of existence. Presumably either because there is no answer, or he did not know the answer, and did not want to make something up. And he could see it was not really helpful to discuss these things. Just another head trip.
That required great honesty and strength of character to continually push back his disciples thirst for answers, and it is something I greatly admire him for.
I do think it is possible to get too stuck in our minds about the concept of pratitya samutpada . It does not have to be at all complicated.
It is much more important to practice the dharma, observe the law of karma, and follow the spiral path, than it is to get caught up in all the detail.
This brings me to my third topic which is a discussion of the concepts of rebirth, and no soul versus reincarnation and soul
Suppose we undergo electro convulsive therapy and are unable to remember anything? To what extent are we the same person as before? We look the same, but apart from that we are almost different people.
Nevertheless, presumably our habits would continue, and if we liked chocolate before the accident, we would probably like it after.
Also, if I knew that that was going to happen to me in a year’s time, and then after then I would either spend many years in agony, or many years in bliss, I would have a strong preference for the latter. Much more so than if it was someone else we were talking about.
The reason for that is that I know that even though there is a discontinuity in my memory, there is some underlying continuity going on. I won’t use the word soul, as it is non Buddhistic, but there is something that continues through the accident. I will call it lifeforce for nw.
That future self is partly me, and partly a different person. Depends which way you look at it. But obviously something continues.
Just for example suppose in our next life we will be reborn female, called Hong and we live in China.
To what extent is Hong the same person as me?
It would be even less than the “me” after the electro convulsive therapy?
Not only would there be no shared memory, there would be no commonality in our bodies, and no-one would make any connection between us.
But even so, if there is some sort of continuity of my experience, I would still prefer Hong to have a blissful life compared to a life of agony. And I would prefer that more for Hong, than for her sister for example.
But what is this thing that is supposed to continue?
And isn’t that what is also called a soul?
I understand that this is blasphemy to call it that as there is no soul in Buddhism, so we can call it something else.
But I think that there is confusion around the anatta doctrine and the concept of rebirth.
Well you can say that because we call it rebirth and not reincarnation, we get round that problem.
But I do not think that is so easy.
I see two ways of looking at this:
Either
1) There is a basic flow of experience and consciousness. Call it what you will. I call it life force. But because of this flow of consciousness, I care more about what happens to a future self after a total memory loss, or even in a future life
Or
2) There is no lifeforce, soul or anything else. We are just a heap of skandhas or a bundle of perceptions as David Hume puts it.
I think there is no real contradiction between these, because it is just looking at the same thing from a different perspective.
In the same way that we can perceive others as a fellow human being, a collection of organs, cells, atoms, or a tiny speck in our galaxy. Or we see them as a boss, a sexual object, an Indian, or whatever.
These are all true.
So in that case, is there really a difference between reincarnation and rebirth?
Or again, are they just different ways of looking at the same event.
My feeling is that they are just different ways of looking at the same event. In the same way that soul and no soul are just two different ways of looking at the same thing.
I know people will say that is not the Buddhist answer, but I think which words we use is not the critical thing in Buddhism. I think our lifestyle, and consciousness is the important thing. If the words we use can assist this, then great. But it can become a bit tedious and meaningless having long debates about which abstract is true.
The reason I am not a fan of some styles of philosophy is that people use words in different ways, and they try and force everything into one rational system that normally conflicts with someone else’s rational system.
At its best, philosophy frees us from that sort of meaningless discussion that can go on indefinitely and cause wars, when there is not much disagreement in substance. The Buddha was actually good at freeing us from this sort of thing, but unfortunately some of his followers are not so good.
Friedrich Nietzsche was also good at freeing us from overblown philosophical systems. His book “Twilight of the Idols” was subtitled “How to philosophise with a hammer”
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Fourthly and finally, we need to consider the evidence for this rebirth. How we know that there is some continuity of something between me and this Chinese baby, Hong appearing soon after my death.
I do not take on beliefs like that without evidence, and I think there is no real evidence for anything like that.
It is not and cannot be provable in principle.
Of course there is a lot of anecdotal evidence.
The same sort of evidence you hear spoken about in churches up and down the country as evidence that Jesus lives, and is the cause of things like recovery from sickness, promotion, or lottery win.
You can’t really prove this is true one way or another. The best you can say is that there is no real evidence for it, apart from anecdotal, subjective evidence.
I know Tibetans try and prove this sort of thing by giving the baby objects owned by the deceased, and seeing which ones they pick up.
Of course, if you give 100 babies different objects, many of them will pick up the right ones.
Or if you just put the right one at the front, they are more likely to pick it up.
So it does not really surprise me that at least one baby picks up the right object.
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The reason the idea of rebirth bothers me so much is that so many millions or billions of people believe in either rebirth or an afterlife. And they are being controlled and manipulated by others with potentially disastrous consequences.
Many people give 10% of their income to their church, because they think this increases their chance of going to Heaven instead of Hell.
Exactly the same sort of thing goes on in Buddhist countries.
The 9/11 suicide bombers murdered thousands of people because they want to hang out with the virgins in Heaven. There are many other people in the Middle East motivated by similar ideas.
There are many people trapped in stupid cults and religions, that intellectually they can see is rubbish, but they are too scared to move out because of a fear of a bad rebirth.
So it is much more than a philosophical issue, it is a point that must be fought with every opportunity.
There is also the belief that we are at the end times. As foretold in the Apocrypha, there will be a time of great war and destruction just before Jesus comes, and the faithful will arise with him to Heaven. There are people high up in the Republican party who believe this sort of thing, and they welcome a massive nuclear war for this reason.
It is so easy to bring up a baby into this sort of belief, which is based on strong emotion, particularly fear, and this tends to beat logic every time.
That is why we have to use every ounce of logic to fight this sort of superstition.
It is why I admire what Richard Dawkins has done with his books.
It is one thing for us to sit here in our ivory tower debating whether A or B is true. That does not really affect anything, but the belief in rebirth has lead to wars and mass destruction, as it justifies actions by something outside logic that cannot be proved or disproved.
If there is a way of proving rebirth, then of course I would be happy to accept it. But there is no way, apart from saying “My guru says so”, or “the Buddha says so”, and according to the Kalama sutta, that is not a valid reason.
The more we learn about the brain, the more we see the correlation between our experience and physical events in the brain, so it seems highly implausible to me that anything experiential could continue after destruction of the brain.
So to sum up. I think there are aspects of pratitya samutpada that are extremely important. That is the various practical things that we can apply it to, to cause change, such as the twelve nidanas, the spiral path, law of karma etc.
It can also lead to a lot of confusing and meaningless talk, and it is important not to engage with this, and just stick to what is useful, practical and provable.