The Dhamma 61only rejects a material (Samkhya) or idealistic (Vedantic) first
cause; he rejects even taking nibbanaas a first principle. As its
translator Thanissaro Bhikku notes,In the pattern of Samkhya thought, Unbinding (nibbana) would thus be
the ultimate ‘root’ or ground of being immanent in all things and out of
which they all emanate. However, instead of following this
pattern of thinking, the Buddha attacks it at its very root: the notion of
a principle in the abstract, the ‘in’ (immanence) and ‘out’ (emanation)
superimposed on experience (see http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/maj/).What is substituted for the notion of a ground of being or first
cause as a method of analysis is a series of causal chains, of ‘depen-
dent co-origination’—the famouspaticca samuppada (in Sanskrit
pratitya samutpada), in which one thing arises out of something
else, in a regular but non-deterministic process.
At one level the paticca samuppadais a simple statement of
causal relationships. It is in the form, ‘If this arises, that also arises;
if this ceases, that ceases’. This implies a regularity of relationship
that is more equivalent to the empirical regularities scientists search
for than the postulated ‘first cause’ of the materialists. However,
the fully developed form of this chain of causality, which is taken
as sancrosanct by most of later Buddhism, is indeed metaphysical
and idealistic. It begins with ignorance (avijja) which gives rise to
the aggregates (sankhara) which in turn give rise to consciousness
(vinnana), to name and form (or ‘mind and body’; nama-rupa), to
the six senses (salayakam), to contact (phassa) to sensation
(vedana), to thirst or craving (tanha), to grasping (upadana), to
becoming (bhava) to birth (jati)to old age and death (jaramarana).
If ‘ignorance’ is the beginning point, then it is implied that the
whole process leading up to the world of sorrow and death is based
on an illusion.
Yet some of the most important statements of the causal chain
underlying sorrow take different forms. The is not only true of the
Dhammcakkappavattana Suttacited earlier, but also in the long
sutta on causation in the Digha Nikaya, the Mahanidana Suttanta.
The beginning of the chain is actually a circle, with cognition
(vinnana) going to name-and-form (nama-rupa) and back again;
from there it goes on to contact, to sensation (vedana), to craving
(tanha), to grasping (upadana), to becoming, to birth, to old
age and death. In other words, the chain begins from the actual‘Great king, to me there is no one dearer than self. How about
you?’ ‘To me, too, Mallika, there is no one dearer than self ’. Then the
whole conversation is reported to the Buddha and he comments,
‘Having traversed all directions in thought, he nowhere found one
dearer than self. In this way, for others too the separate self is dear.
Therefore one who loves self should not harm others’. (Samyutta
NikayaIII, 1, 8; see Gombrich 1997: 62–63 for the best recent
translation). Several verses from the Dhammapadamake the same
point: ‘All men tremble at punishment; all men love life. Likening
others to oneself, one should neither slay nor cause to slay’ (#130).
This is strikingly different from the Upanisadic teaching. In the
Brahmanical version, the ‘self’ as a concrete person or individual is
ignored, and even denigrated; there is a leap immediately to the
abstract, universal atman. It is for this reason that ‘love’ is said to
exist; as love for the universal, not as love for a concrete other. This
very abstractness makes it possible to go on viewing the concrete
individual in differentiated form as man, woman, Brahman or
Shudra, and to treat him or her differentially according to the rules
of varnashrama dharma. There is no ethical implication regarding
treatment of the ‘other’ in the Brahmanic teaching or concept of the
self. In contrast, for Buddhism of course there is no universal,
essential, abstract atman; though the individual is an aggregate of
the five khandas, it is this very individual which is the subject and
object of ethical action. It is this individual who begins by acting in
self-love, but out of this concrete beginning comes the concern for
others and the ethical imperative.
This focus on the psychological and the concrete also differentiates
the Buddha’s teachings from what we know of the various forms of
materialist philosophy. While these philosophies postulated a
material ‘first cause’, they also had the effect of taking the actions
of the concrete individual as determined and derivative. Perhaps
this is why the Samannaphala Suttaaccounts of their teachings
show them as fatalistic.^3
The Buddha rejects any ‘first cause’, whether idealistic or mate-
rialistic. This is elaborated in the Mulapariyaya Sutta, which is a
sutta directed to questioners from the Samkhya school and which
is a rejection of any first cause or ‘root principle’. The Buddha not
60 Buddhism in India
(^3) I am indebted to Valerie Roebuck for her help in clarifying this.