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I have always understood D/O as essentially the specifics of a pessimistic cosmology.
Now I read in an article that this is supposed to be a “typical Western prejudice”.
My question is: Why ?
Is “conditioned” not tantamount to “dependently arisen”, and is Nibbana not the refuge from the conditioned? How then can D/O be seen as something good? And who currently holds such a view?
Many thanks
V. Thanissaro had an article called: Life Isn't Just Suffering He has a similar argument as the one I’m presenting here.
I think pessimism implies that “Nothing good will come out of this”, like Dīghanakha’s argument in MN74: "Nothing is acceptable to me.”
However, much as Buddhism finds conditional existence unsatisfactory, it’s not that there is no way out. Conditional existence can lead to a freedom from itself and so it’s not all gloom and doom. So it’s not a complete pessimistic view of DO, in that sense (such a view would be defeatist instead of soteriological IMO).
There is an end to suffering found in DO: Nibbāna is bliss. I think that alone makes it not pessimistic, as opposed to someone bitter and hopeless, like Schopenhauer.
Also, Mahāyāna has a completely different view on the matter, it should be said, so there’s that.
Isn’t this like saying that Hepatitis C is great because there is a pill to cure it?
And if the criticism of the judeo-christian West is generally that of an optimism bias, does not this view correspond to it?
I think a reasonable doctor could tell a patient, “I have great news. Your form of hepatitis is curable.” And in an imaginary universe where everyone had to have some form of hepatitis, you could not be blamed for saying that you had a great kind if it was curable.
An analogy I like to make is like being stuck on a forest of bamboo trees. Now, you may not want to spend the rest of your days on the bamboo island, but those things are sure useful to help you build a boat to carry you on water.
In a weird way, this strain of Hep C is the cure itself.
I think it’s fair to say Buddhism is critical of spending unnecessary amount of time in Samsara. But it’s a matter of how you approach the matter - as an object of clinging, DO is problematic. As a tool, DO is useful. So DO isn’t anything by itself - we’re the ones that make it problematic or useful.
No, but I could be of the oppinion that not being born is preferable to being born into a reality that forces a severe illness on everybody - even if there is a cure available for those that are able to see a doctor and follow thru with the cure.
Again, I would prefer not to be brought into existence if a life without suffering is only possible for those strong enough to win a contest first.
So in both of these cases, despite of possibly faring well myself, I could not be in agreement with the circumstances bringing me into existence, that is D/O.
That aside, I asked for views and you presented them to me. I also get their point. Thank you kindly.
I see it as something good in the sense that roads are built that can take us in many different directions depending on which way we want to go. That is, I have choices.
I think the role of D.O. was originally more like: ‘I reap what I sow’ or ‘What goes around comes around’. It’s pointing out that we can choose to react in a skillful way that leads to less suffering (or potentially none) or we can choose to react in an unskillful way making things worse.
I agree that it is often presented and understood as a pessimistic cosmology as you say but I really don’t see it that way, nor do I feel this was the Buddhas intent.
We should see it more as a model that describes how our experience unfolds based on our intentions. And having such a model helps us see that if we are victims we are victims of our own actions and we don’t have to be.
I think we should see the links in D.O. in a very general sense and not as some sort of Newtonian mechanism. For example: If I repeatedly react to my circumstances with anger, then anger will grow and proliferate. If I choose to not react with ange then anger subsides and diminishes. I think D.O. was originally taught for the development of sila and the path in general.
Yes, well suffering is wanting things to be otherwise right?
This is a great discussion; thank you 
I see it as sensical and available for observation by able-minded people. As such, it does not appeal to a sense of rightness/wrongness or good/not good. It does not require belief in something or someone outside me to deliver me (or others) from suffering. Nor does it require achieving a supernatural state of union with some omniscient entity as a means of liberation – in this life, anyway.
(I do subscribe to karma and cycles of rebirth for the record.)
Most recently, I’ve been inspired by reviewing Chögyam Trungpa’s early writings. In particular, his notes on The Manure of Experience and the Field of Bodhi as well as his notes on Meditation (“The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa (Volume One)”).
Granted, his notes draw on some Mahāyāna metaphors and concepts-- only mentioning that to recognize that I’m not wholly in Theravāda when I read his stuff.
Still, he gives some of the most cogent and sensical explanations of cyclic existence that I’ve ever read – without really mentioning DO specifically.
This makes sense to me.
Could it also be that Thanissaro Bhikkhu’s typical audience in southern California wouldn’t relate so easily to such bare, empirically based theory (DO) without some use of poetic device? To soften the landing?
Without such gentle treatment, most people (in the US anyway) would hardly seek psychological and spiritual direction through Buddhist means.
(I downloaded that image a while ago using iStock and then I added the verbiage.)
I think about this a lot. In fact, too much! Well, not as much as I used to. Thankfully.
Is it possible to note a kind of satisfaction from seeing conditioned existence clearly. As such, there’s no out-of-proportion investment in the question of why there is suffering.
Moreover, I wonder at times how our sanitized 21st century lives protect us from the reality of it as a matter of course. (Speaking about those of us who aren’t in horrific areas of war and poverty.) I watch the birds at the feeder outside my office and wonder how even my simple caretaking of their nutriment resolves hardship that other birds are exposed to. And so it is…
One of my favorite book openings is still this, from The Road Less Travelled:
Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult-once we truly understand and accept it-then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.
And lo and behold I just saw this in the thread:
Nibbana depends on D/O. If things didn’t arise and cease - assuredly - cessation wouldn’t be assured. But it is, and it’s available to everyone. I was just reading an article on Hegel and Buddhism, and it opens with
“Few figures in the history of Western thought represent the
mindset of Orientalism better than the German Idealist philosopher
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Moreover, few prominent systems
of thought originating from the so-called Orient have been as
significantly marred by the reductionism of Orientalism, both in
its popular reputation as well as with the opinions of scholars, as
Buddhism. Uncoincidentally, these two subjects are related. Hegel,
as he and others did with many other rich systems of thought born in
Asian countries, imperialistically swept the systematic philosophy of
Shakyamuni Buddha and his many intellectual successors into his grand
vision of a hierarchically structured world-system of religions. In doing
so, Hegel ultimately served as one of the first prominent intellectual
figures of the West to cement the popular superficial understanding
of Buddhism as a form of crude nihilism. Through his reductive and
instrumentalizing attempt to reveal Buddhism as a religion that is
supposedly obsessed with indeterminate Nothingness, and therefore
as inferior in the ordering of history (an understanding of the religion
which he gained through superficial and secondhand European
accounts), Hegel’s obfuscating analysis exhibits some of the essential
attributes of Edward Said’s conception of Orientalism.”
I enjoy your contribution, Beth.
This is an important addition, because I feel that a metaphysical scenario in which the elimination of personal suffering does not result as first priority is at least thinkable.
Such may even be the case with many Buddhists, and I suspect that the whole Bhodisattva concept of Mahayana could have originated from such problems. But as for Thanissaro, I believe that he is very honest in his convictions, or at least he leaves this impression with this Non-Californian.
Very beautiful.
Wouldn’t encourage you to think more about it. I personally believe that there is no answer to this question. In fact, this is my single reason for endorsing the Buddhist path.
I believe this is something psychological. We have a built-in optimism bias. One German philosopher (Odo Marquardt) coined the term of homo compensator.
David Benatar is a South African professor of Philosphy who advocates Antinatalism in a very soft spoken and rational manner. He needs security guards 24/7.
Hi, friends 
I think this presentation of Schopenhauer is overly simplistic. It’s closer to a cultural caricature. Schopenhauer’s philosophy, like Buddhist philosophy, saw the pinnacle of human or existential potential as being an ascetic, contemplative life of denying the passions (i.e. craving) their force and living a saintly life. He thought it was possible for the will/desire to rebel against itself and remove the sense of ego individuation and so on. Below this, he had a philosophy of ethics based in universal compassion. And before that, he developed a relatively famous aesthetic philosophy about how contemplating beauty is a relief to calm the mind from hindrances, essentially, and see a greater universal beauty beyond one’s sense of self.
I mention this not only to supplement the presentation of Schopenhauer, but because I think it is also a portal to approaching the Buddhist view related to the original question.
Buddhism focuses heavily on contemplating the drawbacks and dangers of the world. But it also
makes clear that there is a gratification, or satisfaction, to be had in things—and it is precisely such pleasure in things which permits more desire towards them. In general, Buddhism gives ample attention to the beauty and joy of morality and wholesome mind states like love and compassion.
For example, the path of practice and teachings themselves are specifically discussed in light of their conditionality; that is to say, their imperfection and ultimate unreliability. And yet they are also celebrated and praised with joy. I would say that Schopenhauer displayed an awareness of the good which approaches that of Buddhism: there is an uplifting beauty in the world that is not necessarily itself emancipating, but which nonetheless tends away from lower, selfish craving.
In terms of dependent arising, a basic example of this would be the Upanisa Sutta (SN 12.23). This presents how there can be the conditional, dependent arising of faith and joy that can lead a practitioner eventually to liberation. I believe that discourse offers a quite self-contained response to the original question.
Wishing you happiness and peace.
As I mentioned before, I think it is highly interesting that the simile of the poisoned arrow in MN63 seems to suggest that the specifics of the applied cosmology/metaphysics are to a certain extent irrelevant, because even a certain answer would not change the fact that the human condition equals Dukkha. Schopenhauers Kantian approach in determining the thing-in-itself as the “will” would certainly fall under this poisoned arrow category, as would, ironically, D/O itself. On these grounds I view the Buddhist path as possibly compatible with any number of pessimistic cosmologies, as well as with a skeptic approach. The Dhamma could be seen as essentially a “weather report” of the human condition.
To a certain extent, yes. Schopenhauer definitely goes out of bounds from the perspective of early Buddhist epistemology in order to formulate his metaphysical ideas.
So while I agree with the former, the latter I take as a misrepresentation of the material. I don’t think you’ve given the Buddha or the community of compilers enough credit in consistency and self-awareness. The very text itself contrasts dependent arising to the pernicious claims.
Dependent arising offers a conditionality-, not a causality-, based framework to apply to the problem of suffering.
The fetter of views is itself an obstacle to the Buddhist path, as is also outlined at MN 63. In terms of ‘poison arrow’ views, it is not just a problem of, say, unknowability. It is that the act of holding to the views is itself antithetical to liberation; and worse, the conclusions the views lead to would render the path ineffective. Dependent arising is not another apple bobbing in a water tub to be blindly seized, shown to the crowd, and consumed . It is a paradigm shift. It’s cultivating the apple trees.
This is bearing in mind also that early Buddhism does not consider continuity of spacetime experience to be a metaphysical claim, but a phenomenological one. The higher being or non- of such spacetime experience is what is sent home, gently.
Granted, but if you reduce it to such the question remains whether that framework is binding to the original teaching - which I hypothesize to have been the middle way vs. asceticism under a pessimistic shramanic cosmology - or if it could be subject to later criticism.
Also, I fail to see how rebirth and kamma can follow from a phenomenological approach. They are not readily apparent phenomena. They could, however, very well have been left standing in a skeptical approach.
It absolutely is. To reiterate what I said before, we cannot invoke half of MN 63 (undeclared metaphysical views) because we find it agreeable, then dismiss the other half of the argument (declared views) in the very same text.
This is regardless of whether someone considers MN 63 representative of the “original teaching,” because if they do not consider it that way, it cannot be called upon as testimony for a thesis about the epistemology of the original teaching. Though we should bear in mind that the contrast between invalid philosophical views (‘undeclared points’) and dependent arising or conditionality is a thread found in every collection of early Buddhist discourses across recitation lineages. It is the main thesis of DN 1, for example.
You still seem to take dependent arising as another view in the set of metaphysical views, given your reply. As another apple bobbing in a tub of water, to call on the previous post. But we should be clear that this is the opposite of what Buddhist texts say dependent arising is. Consider the difference between: “If there is no water, there will be no rain” and “Rain is caused by divine energies propelling water into a particular condition.”
As you say in the OP:
Unless you engage with what the texts are trying to express—the otherness of descriptive, conditional relationships from metaphysical views trying to speculate about those relationships—then you will only be holding to a preconceived notion of the doctrine and reading it into the texts to conform them to that. Just an invitation.
Neither are bacteria, viruses, or the billions of other microorganisms. Or DNA. Or the workings of quantum physics. This doesn’t mean these things cannot be observed. It just means that skill and knowledge in their observation must be coupled with carefully crafted instruments and technology. Buddhism isn’t claiming to be easy; it claims to provide the groundwork in how to develop the instruments and knowledge in order to enhance perception and clear reasoning, for lack of a better word.
The continuity of sense information through spacetime is often taken as a given if it is the physical senses in question, due to particular historical biases built into the fabric of, say, current Western education. Plenty of tools and bodies of knowledge have been developed and accepted for enhancing these senses. Think of telescopes.
Would you lump remembering what you did 1 minute ago into the dangerous views of MN 63? Or discussing radio waves, which are otherwise invisible?
All the best.
Yes. Because without presupposing the validity and/or divinity of EBT, it absolutely is. And one with many problems, I might add.
Yes, and if this apparent contradiction of declaring one metaphysical truth as valid while demonizing metaphysics in general cannot be explained, it is of course nothing more than a weak religious dogmatism.
But I believe that there is such an explanation. The Buddha could just have adviced realism against pondering metaphysical views to which there is no answer. Unfortunately, the nature of his “phenomenological” approach was later scholastically defined and interpreted as D/O, a quasi-metaphysical concept itself.
There is empirical evidence for the existence of bacteria, viruses, microorganisms and DNA. A metaphysical theory on the other hand is never empirically falsifiable. The phenomena you take to be evidence for D/O can be convincigly explained by any metaphysical theory, with no way to either prove or disprove any of them empirically.
This is from Hegel:
A: Dialectic as a negative movement, just as it immediately is, at first appears
to consciousness as something which has it at its mercy, and which does not
have its source in consciousness itself. As Scepticism, on the other hand, it
is a moment of self-consciousness, to which it does not happen that its truth
and reality vanish without its knowing how, but which, in the certainty of its
freedom, makes this ‘other’ which claims to be real, vanish. What Scepticism
causes to vanish is not only objective reality as such, but its own relationship
to it, in which the ‘other’ is held to be objective and is established as such,
and hence, too, its perceiving, along with firmly securing what it is in danger
of losing, viz. sophistry, and the truth it has itself determined and established.
Through this self-conscious negation it procures for its own self the certainty
of its freedom, generates the experience of that freedom, and thereby raises
it to truth.17
Neither of these postulates are Buddhist, and
A: is considered by suttas such as SN 35.92 and explicitly rejected - there are also many suttas in which Buddha enters into the domain of ‘negative other’ the English word “otherwise” is all over the suttas
And look at SN 12.65
B: is directly opposed by the entire edifice of the system - which rejects “doubt” kamma is cetana which is intent - constructed action … there isn’t anything to show that morality as such operates in a mechanical fashion to save people from “unjust” things happening to them.
The Indian school of skepticism is Cārvāka or Lokāyata
No, this is not “typical Western prejudice”, but just misunderstanding of the D/O teaching by some people in the world (West or East …).
The D/O is also presented in the notion of the middle way. See SN12.15 = SA 301:
Pages 192-5 from The Fundamental Teachings of Early Buddhism Choong Mun-keat 2000.pdf (274.5 KB)
