INTRODUCTION

TO THE

MAHA-NIDÂNA-SUTTANTA.

It

THE doctrine of Paticca-samuppâda-that all dhammâ (phenomena physical and mental) are patic casamuppannâ/ (happen by way of cause) finds in the following Suttanta the fullest exposition accorded to it throughout the Pitakas. is true that for some reason (cf. p. 26, n. 1) the Dighabhânakas (recorders of the Digha-Nikâya) excluded the first two of the Twelve Nidânas-avijjâ, sankhârâ—and that, in the

reiteratera-vibhanga of the Abhidhamma, the formula is

reiterated and analysed with greater variety of presentation. But in the present instance the doctrinal contents are more fully worked out. There is another feature in this Digha exposition which seems to us of no little significance.

But before discussing this feature, we would point to yet another factor in the statement of the chain of the Nidânas which does not find a place in the Nidâna-Suttanta. This is the schematized, or abstract formula of the whole sequence, showing the logic of it without the contents-That being thus, this comes to be, from the coming to be of that, this arises. That being absent this does not happen, from the cessation of that, this ceases.' (M. II, 32.) In the other Nikâyas the scheme usually precedes the full formula, and in one case where the principle of the latter is called 'the Dhamma,' supersedes the formula. It is on all fours with the modern formulation of the law of causation-That every event is the result or sequel of some previous event, or events, without which it could not have happened, and which, being present, it must take place.'

The significant feature is this:-although the formula, as expounded in this Suttanta, ends in the usual way- Such is the uprising of this whole body of Ill'-the burden of the Dialogue is in no way directly concerned with Ill, pain or sorrow. In certain other passages, on the other hand, where the Nidana-chain occurs, dukkha occupies the foreground. Thus in A. I, 177, the formula of the Paticca-samuppâda is rehearsed to explain the Aryan Truth of the uprising of Ill.

In M. I, 190 the context of the formula is an exhortation by Sâriputta on the primary importance of a right attitude towards, and understanding of, the nature and causes of Ill, so Surrend that the brethren may meet persecutions-ills not due to their own ill deeds with fortitude and serenity. In the NidânaSamyutta of the Samyutta-Nikâya, all the contexts of the formula known to the compilers are grouped together. Of the ninety-three brief Suttas of which this division consists, only one-sixth of those in which the formula occurs, have Dukkha (or its opposite) for their subject. A slightly larger proportion of the Suttas (16) are so many statements upholding the truth of the evolution of phenomena by way of natural causation. That any being exists absolutely and eternally is at the same time denied. And that any being ever perishes absolutely is equally denied, Of the remaining Suttas, four, in which Loka, the world of sense-perception, is substituted in the Paticca-samuppâda for Dukkha, belong virtually to the foregoing sixteen. Seven are concerned with rebirth, eight are ethical exhortations to destroy Craving, and thirty-six emphasize the importance of mastering the principle of the Paticca-samuppâda. (That holds the key to insight; to understand it is therefore, the test of true knowledge and sound doctrine. This too is the point in Samyutta V, 387-9, where the formula again occurs.) Once more, in the very strongly emphasized rehearsal of the formula in the 'Great Tanhâ-sankhaya-Sutta' of M. I, 256, (the doctrine there inculcated is not in any way hedonistic, sentimental or, directly, moral. It has nothing to say about Dukkha. It is a repudiation of the belief in any permanent, transmigrating intelligent principle (viññâna) in man, and the affirmation of the contrary view-that viññâna is a contingent phenomenon, a happening by way of cause and effect, something that becomes' and dies away.

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Dukkha, on the other hand, and the causes of it-'evam ... samudayo'- holds, in nearly every case, the last word in this notable formula. And according to the Buddhist records, as told in the preceding Suttanta, the fact and sequence those causes dawn ever on the mind of every Buddha in response to the anguished questionings of his mind brooding over the misery of the world, and of the infinite living and dying in it.

Hence in trying to account adequately for the profound significance and high importance attached by the founders of Buddhism to the doctrine of the Paticca-samuppâda, we need to keep in view this dual aspect of it-that it is a way of explaining phenomena, and that the most interesting phenomenon

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to be explained is that of Dukkha 1. The latter standpoint is that of man as recipient or percipient, the former, that of 'man as intellective or interpreting.

Now if to this twofold aspect we add that of man as reacting, by will and deed, to his impressions and his interpretations, and take the Buddha's doctrine of the Eightfold Path, as the corresponding formula, we have not only the whole of Early Buddhism in a nutshell, but also just those points concerning which we find the most emphatic affirmations of Dhamma as Dhamma ascribed to Gotama

'Both in the past and now do I set forth just this:—" dukkha and the cessation of dukkha 2."+

Let us put aside questions of the Beginning and the End. I will teach you the Dhamma:-That being thus, this comes to be. From the coming to be of that, this arises. That being absent, this does not happen. From the cessation of that, this ceases 3.

'There is a Middle Path ... discovered by the Tathagata (discovered by none but a Tathâgata, S. V, 14). .. this Aryan Eightfold Path.... This Path, my friend, is the religious life (brahmacariya) ".'

These three central tenets are put, by our earliest and best authorities, in these or other words, into the mouth of Gotama himself at the very outset of his career, in his first sermon, as the doctrine of the Four Aryan or Noble Truths. And the Paticca-samuppâda, with its positive formula of uprising (Samudaya), and its negative formula of passing away (Nirodha), (covers the ground staked out by the second and third of these Truths. It is frequently quoted in this connexion, and its importance in the Dhamma is thereby made the more evident.

But the reason for that importance only becomes clear, when we look away from the dukkha to which the formula is

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It is regrettable that later Buddhist teaching, yielding to this fact of 'interest,' obscured the great causal principle taught by Gotama, through the simile of a wheel, so as to include the vatta, or round of Samsâra. A ladder or stairway (nisseni), like that used to illustrate the way to see Brahmâ (Dialogues,' I, 308, Tevijja-Sutta), would have been more appropriate.

2 M. I, 140.

Ib. II, 32. Cf. ib. I, 190, where Sâriputta says The Exalted One has said, that he who sees the Paficca-samuppâda, sees the Dhamma, and he who sees the Dhamma' sees the Paficca-samuppâda.' 4 Vin. I, 10. 5 S. V, 15.

e. g. S. II, 14-16, 28, 29, 57-9, 108, 109, 129-31, A. I, 177.

so often applied, away too from the antecedents of dukkha, and consider all that is implied in the Paticca-samuppâda by way of method and Weltanschauung

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If we persist in viewing either Dukkha or its causes as the 'secret' of the doctrine, we might omit the formula altogether, since the nature and cause and effect of each nidâna is fully taught in each Nikâya. Nor is the order of sequence the main tenet. Frequent liberties are taken in the Canon with both order and number of nidânas1. Nor finally could the arrangement of antecedents and consequences in an iterated rigmarole (convenient for oral transmission) appeal with the runic force of a Shibboleth to a movement of thought like that of Buddhism, any more than would the similarly arranged fragment of formula contained in the Sânkhya Kârikâ have appealed, as such, to the followers of that school. No reformers who so carefully purged their literature of all the 'eulalic' reiterations of Om! Hari! and the rest, that so throng the pages of the Upanishads, would care a brass farthing for any accumulative jingle accounting for things after the fashion of the widely spread pre-historic folk-rune, The cat began to kill Like the rat, the rat began to gnaw the rope,' &c. ... and so the old woman got home that night.' Evam etassa, &c.

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It was not the fact of Dukkha, nor the fairly obvious conditions of birth and so on, leading up to it, that come as a revelation to each Buddha, beneath his Bo-tree. (It was the process of samudaya and nirodha as a natural and universal law. Coming to pass! Coming to pass! At that thought there arose in me a Vision into things not called before to mind, and knowledge arose, insight, wisdom, light arose 2.' fiat of

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Not uncaused and casually, nor by them, light arose 2'

Soma, Varuna, Brahma 3 did events happen, painful or otherwise not as Job and the Psalmist taught-God distributeth sorrows in his anger.' For God is a righteous judge, and God is angry every day.' (Events came impelled by preceding Su conditions, causes that man could by intelligence and good will, study and govern, suspend or intensify 5.

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e. g. this Suttanta omits the first two. In 'Dialogues,' I, p. 53 (Brahmajâla S.), the first five are omitted, so also in S. II, 92. S. II, IOI, instead of the usual order of the twelve nidânas, gives 3, 4, 2, II, 12 only, and in this order. In M. I, 191, a different group of antecedents are said to have dukkha as their consequence-desire, attachment, indulgence, lusting after.

2 See above, p. 26.

4

Job xxi. 17, Ps. vii. 2.

See Dialogues,' I, p. 310.

5 Cf. herewith Prof. Oltramare's 'La Formule bouddhique des douze

Thus Buddhaghosa, in explaining the name Paticca-samuppâda1, points out that it excludes all theories of absolutism, nihilism, chance, irregular causation, and indeterminism 3. And of such theories, it is concerning the implied rejection of the first two that he is most explicit. Namely, that there is no persistent ego reaping results in one life sown as causes in a previous life, and that it is not a different, an alien ego either, which reaps. The latter person (attabhava) is the resultant, the creature, the evolute' of the former. Thus faithfully was the tradition of the Pitakas preserved, wherein the view of viññâna as a persistent ego was categorically contradicted in the words anekapariyâyena paticcasamuppanna (causally evolved in various ways). M. I, 256.

Let it be remembered that the 'immanent' absolutism opposed by Buddhism was chiefly the Brahmanic theosophy. According to this, the âtman of the individual was not so much (an efflux of the World-Âtman, as was the latter immanent in, and identified with, each man-soul. 'In the beginning this world was only Soul, in the shape of a man

world-guardian, world-lord, this that is My Soul 5.' 'My Soul' was therefore, in that theosophy, the personal First

causes' (Genève, 1909), which we have had the good fortune to read

before going to press. 'Le Bouddha a voulu apprendre... que la misère ne vient point à l'homme de quelque agent externe échappant a sa prise, et qu'elle n'est pas non plus inhérente à une substance immuable, ce qui la rendrait elle-même incurable. . . . Le Pratityasamutpâda est une tentative d'expliquer la qualité de la vie, sans qu'interviennent ni la notion d'âme, ni la notion de Dieu,' &c. And yet to these luminous remarks he prefixes the statement, that the Buddha certainly did not wish to affirm any formula of universal causality, since that theory n'intéresse que l'homme. To us it seems that precisely for this reason it would be the object of the quest of him men called the Naruttama, the Aggapuggala-the supreme Man-who combined 'philosophical curiosity' or rather, insight, with the practical bent of a saviour of men.

1 Visuddhi-Magga, ch. xvii.

2 Visama-hetu-vâdo. Warren translates this 'heresy of existences due to an over-ruling power.' Buddhism did virtually reject an Issara, but scarcely in such terms as those above.

4

Vasavattivado. Warren has 'self-determining existences.'

Cf. H. Oldenberg, 'Buddha' (London, 1882). Where there is no being, but only becoming, it is not substance, but only a law, which can be recognized as the first and the last.' The significance of the Paticca-samuppâda as the discerning of such a law has found adequate emphasis in this scholar's work.

Brhad. Up. I, 4. 1; Kaush. Up. III, 8.

ལས་ཚ

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