THE BUDDHA'S AWAKENING 23in later centuries the way in which Buddhism interacted with the spirit cults it
encountered in every land to which it spread. As for the benign spirits, the
early texts treat their foibles with a gentle humor entirely devoid of awe. For
example, one of the more entertaining exchanges in the Pali Canon (D.21) is
between the Buddha and a gandharva who relates how on the night of the
Buddha's Awakening, when all the other deities were breathlessly awaiting the
outcome, he was able to sneak off and seduce the nymph of his dreams. In an-
other story (S.I.25), a female tree deva propositions a handsome young monk
whom she spies half-naked after he emerges from bathing in a river. Yet an-
other passage (D.11) depicts the Great Brahma as a pompous hypocrite intent
on hiding his ignorance from his adoring retinue. Thus the spirit world is
viewed as not being radically different from the human world, and even its re-
fined pleasures, like all other pleasures in the Wheel of Life, are doomed to
pass away when the power of the individual's karma is depleted.
The Wheel of Life is thus not simply a map of the cosmos, but also an
analysis of karma and an evaluation of its results. Human volition lies at the
center of the wheel and powers its every turn. One's individual mind is the
only author of rebirth in a lower or higher realm; no one else can bring about
the individual's ultimate salvation. The human person stands at the center of
creation with the assurance that whatever destiny is suffered or enjoyed is fully
merited. Even the highest rewards the wheel has to offer, though, are doomed
to pass away as the wheel turns, for all the realms of sarp.sara are impermanent
and subject to recurrent death. Ultimate happiness can be found only by tran-
scending karma and gaining release. NirvaiJ.a, the goal, is nowhere on the
wheel but instead utterly transcends it.
1.4.3 Dependent Co-Arising and the
Cessation of Suffering
(Strong EB, sec. 3.3.1)As we have noted, in the third watch of the night Gautama discovered the
causes and cure for bondage to sarp.sara. The variant accounts agree that the
basis of this discovery was the realization of pratttya-samutpiida (dependent co-
arising), which came to be regarded as the heart of the Buddha's Awakening.
A Pali Sutta (M.28) says, "Whoever sees dependent co-arising sees the
Dharma." "Dharma" here has three levels of meaning: doctrine, practice, and
nirvaiJ.a (attainment). On the first two levels, dependent co-arising and
Dharma came to be viewed as equivalent. On the level of doctrine, depen-
dent co-arising became the basis for the standard Buddhist view of condi-
tioned experience. Its categories formed the basic terms for analyzing
experience into its ultimate components; its pattern of causality acted as the
framework for understanding how the categories interacted to fuel the round
of rebirth. On the level of practice, dependent co-arising functioned as the
map for unraveling the causal process; through its complexity it also became
the riddle that the practitioner tried to comprehend through meditation.
Hence it became the primary guide for and topic ofBuddhist ~ontemplation.