The Foundations of Buddhism

No Self 153

(birth, old age, and death) is a shorthand way of referring to the

coming into being and subsequent decay of links 3, 4, 5, 6, and

7 (consciousness, mind and body, six senses, sense-contact, and

feeling) in a future life. In this way, each of the four sections of

column 3 can be seen as comprising five factors, making a total

of twenty, instead of twelve, links.

The formula of dependent arising states that 'conditioned

by' a certain phenomenon a certain other phenomenon comes

into being. The Theravadin tradition analyses in some detail the

ways in which a phenomenon can be a condition for another

phenomenon by applying a scheme of twenty-four possible types

of condition to each of the twelve links and detailing which are

relevant in each case.^35 Another important point made in the

exegetical literature is that, although the formula states just one

condition for each subsequent link, this should not be taken

as suggesting that a single cause is a sufficient condition for the

arising of each further link. Each condition is stated as a repres-

entative and significant cause; the Theravada tradition records

here as a fundamental axiom the principle that a single cause

does not give rise to either a single result or several results; nor

do several causes give rise to just one result; but rather several

causes give rise to several results.^36

The details of all this need not concern us here, and if it

sounds complicated, it is and deliberately so. Yet what is con-

veyed is how we as individual beings-our lives and experience

-consist of a complex web of conditions built around the inter-
action of passive fruits and active causes. I said above that the

formula of dependent arising is intended to reveal the actual

pattern and structure of causality. Buddhist thought does not
understand causality in terms similar to, say, Newtonian mech-
anics, where billiard balls rebound off each other in an entirely
predictable manner once the relevant information is gathered.

First, the Buddhist attempt to understand the ways of causal

conditioning is concerned primarily with the workings of the
mind: the way in which things we think, say, and do have an effect

on both our selves and others. Second, Buddhist thought sees

causal conditioning as involving the interaction of certain fixed