The Historical Context
The Historical Context
Key points from each talk will be captured beneath the video. These are also available for review and reflection in each unit's downloadable workbook.
A middle way
One way of looking at the Buddha's middle way—and this is true even of dependent arising—is that it's basically a middle way between Brahminism and Jainism. Brahminism is focused on the household world, and Jainism is focused particularly on asceticism.
A teaching on conditionality
If you wanted to summarize dependent arising in the simplest way, you would say this is a teaching that patterns the way that things depend on other things. And because of that relationship of dependency we have a possibility to change. We can support conditions or we can stop supporting conditions.
Dependent arising is starkly different than many of the teachings we have and strikes us as highly modern. It speaks of a dynamic process reality that is always coming together in pieces depending on other pieces. And this teaching is the foundation of liberation. It's also an explanation of how suffering arises and can be reversed.
The Creation
John Peacock's translation of The Nāsadīya Sūkta, a pre-Buddhist Vedic text, hints at the climate that Buddhist teachings appeared amidst. There are people who think that in this text we have an early, inchoate predecessor of Buddhist dependent arising.
"There was neither existence nor nonexistence then; neither the world nor the sky that lies beyond it. What lay enveloped and where, and who gave it protection? Was water there, deep and unfathomable? There was no destiny, nor immortality, nor of night or day was there any sign. The One breathed endless and by self impulse. Other than that was nothing whatsoever. Darkness was concealed in darkness there, and all this was indiscriminate chaos. That One which had been covered by the void, through the might of tapas (heat, inner energy) was manifested. In the beginning there was desire, which was the primal germ of the mind. The sages searching in their own hearts with wisdom found in the nonexistence, the kin of existence. The dividing line extended transversely. What was below it, and what was above? There was the seed bearer. There were mighty forces. There was impulse from below, forward movement beyond. Who really knows? Who can here declare it? Whence was it born and whence came this creation? The devas (divine beings) are later than this world's production. Then who knows from where it came into being? That from which this creation came into being. Perhaps it formed itself. Perhaps it did not. He who surveys in the highest region, only he truly knows it. Or maybe even he doesn't."
At the end of this, we're basically left with a burning question. What is happening here? It has something to do with creation. It has something to do with desire, it has something to do with vitality. And there are beings who can begin to understand this by searching their own hearts. That sets the scene for dependent arising from a Buddhist point of view.