I want to deepen our exploration of Dependent Origination by introducing Transcendental Dependent Origination.
Dependent Origination takes us through the determinative cycle of ignorance to "the origination of this entire mass of suffering” - through the 12 steps of samsaric existence. Most of the Buddha’s teachings take us through these 12 steps forward and backward. The cycle begins with ignorance which leads to volitional formations (karmic formations/habits) to consciousness to mentality-materiality (body and form) to the six sense spheres to contact with phenomenon to feeling tone (positive, negative, neutral) to craving, clinging, becoming, birth, aging and death. Ignorance conditions all experiences which lead by causes and conditions to the suffering of aging and death. In the words of the teaching, "with birth as condition, aging-and-death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, and despair arise. Such is the origination of this entire mass of suffering.” ~SN12, passim
The reverse cycle begins with the entire mass of suffering and through its elimination leads backwards to the elimination of ignorance.
Last week we looked at the middle sequence from the six sense spheres to contact, feeling tone, craving clinging, becoming to show that when we can bring awareness to any one element of the progression, we can change, even interrupt the forward momentum of the cycle through causes and conditions - because awareness is a condition that alters everything. In MBSR (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction), we learned that if we can bring awareness to the first arising of the positive or negative or neutral feeling tone, our awareness has the great power to head off the development of craving, clinging, becoming…the entire mass of suffering. With the cessation of ignorance, all the successive stages cease one by one down to the entire mass of suffering.
I want to quote Bhikku Bodhi who continually astonishes me with his power to express these concepts in a way that is both clear, vibrant and alive.
This is his introduction to the teaching of Dependent Arising (Transcendental Dependent Arising: A Translation and Exposition of the Upanisa Sutta by Bhikkhu Bodhi, © 1995 [https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/bodhi/wheel277.html]):
"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 diversified 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]
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"Its 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]
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"The twelvefold 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.
Bhikku Bodhi then articulates the other related principle contained in this teaching.
"Above and beyond its specific instances, dependent arising remains an expression of the invariable structural relatedness of phenomena ….(my italics)
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."
I have to highlight that last sentence as it illuminated for me as a shooting star the skies the essence of the teaching grounded in the bedrock of our existence.
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.”
Worth a pause and a breath….
And here is the turning point of this particular version of dependent arising - that of Transcendental Dependent Arising:
One particular exemplification of dependent arising...shows the basic principle to serve as the scaffolding for the course of spiritual development issuing in final emancipation.[3] It figures in these suttas as the architectonic underlying the gradual training, governing the process by which one phase of practice conditions the arising of the following phase all the way from the commencement of the path to the realization of the ultimate goal.
In Transcendental Dependent Arising, the sequence has been shifted into a positive iteration - what happens when suffering meets the way out of suffering, when some amount of awareness penetrates the depths of suffering to ask, inquire, insist, “Is there a way out of this suffering?” "There must be a way out of suffering!”
The first step of Transcendental Dependent Arising is when suffering meets faith. The conditions of faith (sometimes called ‘confidence’) are embedded in suffering, arise out of suffering, are conditioned by suffering. The arising of faith out of suffering takes the energy of suffering and uses it to fulfill its expression and to condition the next arising - that of joy.
It is said that the faith that arises out of suffering occurs when suffering encounters the dharma or the Buddha’s teachings. Like a match lighting the dry tinder in the forest, the dharma lights the energy of suffering into a blaze of awareness, curiosity, energy, investigation, into forward movement along the path that moves from conditioned arising to conditioned arising until full liberation has been attained.
We’ll end with this from Bhikku Bodhi:
As living experience, the advance to emancipation cannot be tied down to a series of mere negations, for such a mode of treatment omits precisely what is most essential to the spiritual quest — the immediacy of inner striving, growth, and transformation. Parallel to the demolition of old barriers there occurs, in the quest for deliverance, a widening of vistas characterized by an evolving sense of maturation, enrichment, and fulfillment; the departure from bondage, anxiety, and suffering at the same time means the move towards freedom and peace. This expansion and enrichment is made possible by the structure of the gradual training, which is not so much a succession of discrete steps one following the other as a locking together of overlapping components in a union at once augmentative, consummative, and projective. Each pair of stages intertwines in a mutually vitalizing bond wherein the lower, antecedent member nurtures its successor by serving as its generative base, and the higher, consequent member completes its predecessor by absorbing its energies and directing them on to the next phase in the series. Each link thus performs a double function: while rewarding the efforts expended in the accomplishment of the antecedent stage, it provides the incentive for the commencement of the consequent stage. In this way the graduated training unfolds organically in a fluid progression in which, as the Buddha says, "stage flows over into stage, stage fulfills stage, for crossing over from the hither shore to the beyond."[4]
Again, a long deep breath….
The notes that apply above are references to the teachings as follows:
1. MN 28.
2.Imasmim sati idam hoti, imass'uppada idam uppajjati. Imasmim asati idam na hoti, imassa nirodha idam nirujjati. MN 79, MN 115 etc.
3.SN 22.23; AN 10.3-5.
4.AN 10.2.