How does one gain reliable knowledge of dependent origination?

Q & A
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Hello. I believe the venerables here largely accept the three life interpretation of DO so I decided perhaps I should make a post here to ask some questions and get clarifications if possible.

Please let me know if this isn’t the appropriate tag I should be using; I’m quite unfamiliar with the platform.

My understanding of the three life interpretation is that, for example, avijja in one life leads to consciousness in the next life and all its causal results, for example tanha. Then tanha, the resultant of avijja from previous life, leads to rebirth.

My understanding above, I believe, is largely oversimplified and the venerables would likely have a much more comprehensive understanding of the various causal relations that I’ve overlooked. But regardless of the complexities, from my perspective, I believe it would be fair to summarize the three life interpretation as an elaborate hypothesis of how there is birth. And the task of the bhikkhus is to confirm the hypothesis, and sotpatti is when that hypothesis has been confirmed and seen to be indubitable.

However, how do we establish the fact that tanha causes rebirth? Can we ever step outside and observe tanha and see that this results in rebirth as we would in science, say for observing the fact that smoking leads to lung cancer. We need to be able to observe the two phenomena (smoking, and lung cancer) to establish a relation between them. In this case, we need to be able to observe tanha (in this life) and birth (next life).

So theoretically, to confirm that, you’d need a standpoint from which you can observe this life, and the next life, to reliably conclude “tanha leads to rebirth”. But do we have access to such a standpoint? How do we observe, in our present life, our next life? That’s impossible, so it’s not possible to conclude that tanha (in present life) leads to next life.

Suppose such a standpoint is in fact possible. How do we establish with certitude that every time, tanha does in fact lead to a new birth? How do we know for sure that there doesn’t exist any situation where tanha doesn’t lead to a new birth?

It’s only when we’ve established this with certitude can we say “tanha (one life) leads to birth (next life)”.

As a minor note, I was wondering what the venerables have to say about SN 12.70. The above investigations clearly requires one to be able to see previous lives (at the very least, our very own, if not that of others). And in SN 12.70, there are Arahants who supposedly see DO for themselves, even though they have no access to previous lives. That is, they’re somehow capable of seeing that tanha (one life) always leads to birth (next life), without somehow being capable of seeing their own or others’ lives. Is this sutta regarded as a later addition?

But the inquiry regarding the sutta is only a side note, I would greatly appreciate if I could get a perspective on the issue of reliable knowledge that three life interpretation poses (at least to me). I would’ve had another question to ask, but I feel I’ve already asked quite a lot and it would be unnecessary bombardment. But I’ll just put it here as an aside, in case someone wishes to answer it:

Suppose someone’s able to recollect their past lives, and they’re able to use the data of this to somehow conclude the certainty of DO. How do we know that that data (the memories) is itself reliable?

Every recollection is manifest as a mental image, but it’s distinct from other mental images in that this mental image is manifest as an image-from-the-past. However, how do we know that the content that this image is presenting did indeed happen in the past? How do I know that this “memory” I’m seeing of “my” past birth did in fact happen?

I feel the argument of the existence of rebirth from jhanas can be summarized as follows:

P1: Whatever one remembers, that happened.
P2: If one gets jhanas, then one can remember one’s past life.
P3: If one can remember one’s past life, one did in fact have a past life (by P1).
P4: There are individuals who can get jhanas.
Conclusion: There are individuals who can remember their past lives (P2, P4). And since they have memories, and memories are reliable (P1), there is in fact a past life, i.e., rebirth.

But the base assumption, that memories are always reliable, is completely unjustified.

I actually take up rebirth on faith, and have no problem in doing so. But the argument from memories is always thoroughly unconvincing to me.

I’ll leave it at this for now, hopefully that isn’t too much content to cover…

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As far as I understand it, vedana (feeling) → tanha (craving) → upādāna(grasping/taking as one’s own)

I remember reading that “desire for feeling is craving”, but take the phrasing with a grain of salt as cannot find the reference.

Example: take an example of a smoker who decided to quit - they might feel very strong urges of craving to smoke - so in that case it is very easily observable for them.

One point to take from this is that one will notice craving more easily when abstaining from the feeling that causes that craving. If the smoker in the example, regularly smoked, he might not come across the craving (aka desire for feeling) as he would always fulfill it before it would become too apparent.

Well, one thing is to notice craving in some obvious addiction, etc. it’s whole another thing, to notice even subtle form of cravings for various feelings. That’s why the monks live life in seclusion so these come into light. Furthermore, they practice mindfulness of body, feelings, heart and dhamma.

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Thank you for the response.

When I referred to observation, that referred to discerning phenomena present to the senses. And the question was asking whether it’s possible to discern tanha through the senses – which, from my perspective was not possible.

As I understand your response, it’s stating precisely that craving is a sense object, which I would disagree with. Here’s how I understand your response to mean that: desires are thoughts; there is no other possible means for them to be manifest. If craving were a subset of desire (your claim that craving is desire for feeling), then craving would be a thought (i.e., a sense object).

Here’s why I disagree: to destroy craving, we would have to make sure certain thoughts never arise. But the ability to make certain thoughts incapable of arising would only be possible if we had absolute control over thoughts, which we don’t; though we do have limited control, for example, changing our attention which can (sometimes) change the thoughts that are present. Thus, the destruction of craving would be impossible. This is why I understand thoughts to be considered as the domain of Mara. The task, as I understand it, is to leave the domain. The things of the domain remain as is, whilst we’re no longer subject to the things in it.

My understanding of craving is that it’s the intention in regards to feeling. To use your example, the smoker who quit may feel a pull towards smoking (this is what I believe you take to be craving; I take this to be simply another unpleasant thought we’re subject to because we’re “in” Mara’s domain), however, fundamentally speaking, they don’t have a say in the pull being manifest. What they have a say in is whether they choose to be pulled in by the pull or not. The pull is unpleasant, and giving into the pull would mean the presence of the intention to resist unpleasant feeling, that intention is what I take to be craving. Hence, for me, craving is the cessation of all intentions of resistance towards what is arisen.

But this question of how tanha can be observed by the senses was a secondary question; the primary was how we are to establish the causal relation between two phenomena where each is in a different life with certainty.

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Hi, glad it was helpful.

I am not sure how to answer you main question.

Still regarding your reply:

I haven’t stated that desire is thought, rather that desire is one thing, thought is another and intention is yet another. However, you may call it ‘pull’ and the way you describe is afterwards is what I too described. And as you state, suttas too state to not adhere to craving.

MN20 does in fact describe mastery over thought.

This is called a mendicant who is a master of the ways of thought. They will think what they want to think, and they won’t think what they don’t want to think.

MN78 states what are unskillful thoughts, where they stem from and where they cease without anything left over.

And what are unskillful thoughts? Thoughts of sensuality, of malice, and of cruelty. These are called unskillful thoughts.

And where do these unskillful thoughts stem from? Where they stem from has been stated. You should say that they stem from perception. What perception? Perception takes many and diverse forms. Perceptions of sensuality, malice, and cruelty—unskillful thoughts stem from this.

And where do these unskillful thoughts cease without anything left over? Their cessation has also been stated. It’s when a mendicant, quite secluded from sensual pleasures, secluded from unskillful qualities, enters and remains in the first absorption, which has the rapture and bliss born of seclusion, while placing the mind and keeping it connected. This is where these unskillful thoughts cease without anything left over.

Finally, AN10.58 states about desire (chanda).

‘Reverends, all things(dhamma) are rooted in desire. They are produced by application of mind. Contact is their origin. Feeling is their meeting place. Immersion is their chief. Mindfulness is their ruler. Wisdom is their overseer. Freedom is their core. They culminate in freedom from death. And extinguishment is their final end.’

To clarify the difference of desire and thoughts consider that even 5 grasping aggregates are rooted in desire (chanda). MN109

“But sir, what is the root of these five grasping aggregates?”

“These five grasping aggregates are rooted in desire.”

“But sir, is that grasping the exact same thing as the five grasping aggregates? Or is grasping one thing and the five grasping aggregates another?”

“Neither. The desire and greed for the five grasping aggregates is the grasping there.”

“But sir, can there be different kinds of desire and greed for the five grasping aggregates?”

“There can,” said the Buddha. “It’s when someone thinks: ‘In the future, may I be of such form, such feeling, such perception, such choices, and such consciousness!’ That’s how there can be different kinds of desire and greed for the five grasping aggregates.”

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The word science has me a little confused here. You might be thinking about “the problem of induction” in philosophy? You won’t find anyone hitting a pool ball over and over again at the physics department to check if it works every time :sweat_smile:

Edit: Also, If the pool ball is a simile for rebirth, the pool ball hitting another pool ball would be rebirth, and knowledge of past lives would be looking back and seeing that in the past, the pool ball has always caused the other pool ball to move when it hit.

And the Buddha is saying something like, if you burn and crush the pool table and all the balls into dust and scatter them to the wind, you never have to worry about these darn pool balls hitting each other again.

I’m a little confused by this also. One of the rebirth producing cravings described in the four noble truths is kāmataṇha, basically wanting stuff in the five senses. Like, you can just know in the mind when you want something?

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The word science has me a little confused here. You might be thinking about “the problem of induction” in philosophy? You won’t find anyone hitting a pool ball over and over again at the physics department to check if it works every time :sweat_smile:

True, I agree that the example wasn’t that good in illustrating my point. What I was trying to illustrate was that establishing the fact that “A leads to B” requires one to observe both A and B. And I used a bit too trivial of an example, when perhaps it should’ve been like making observations such as smoking (A) leads to lung cancer (B). The point was, we need to be in a position where we can make observations of both A and B. I was just very lazy in thinking of any significant example, and thus just put the very first one that came to mind.

I should likely replace it with this.

I’m a little confused by this also. One of the rebirth producing cravings described in the four noble truths is kāmataṇha, basically wanting stuff in the five senses. Like, you can just know in the mind when you want something?

In retrospect, adding that seems to have been a mistake since that seems to be the main puzzling claim, which it wasn’t intended to be. I also now realize it wasn’t illustrating the issue I was trying to illustrate well enough, namely, that, if “A leads to B” requires being able to be in a position of observing A and B, then it must also be the case that in concluding “tanha leads to a next life” we must be able to observe both “tanha” (A) and “next life” (B) and establish the relation between the two. I was trying to demonstrate the fact that there is an issue in being able to observe both (A) and (B) at the same time, but the example I gave was entirely inadequate in doing that. For example, you in your present life, cannot observe for yourself, your next life; that’s impossible. So the observation that “tanha (in your present life) leads to your next life” cannot be made.

I had just used the example of tanha at that time since that’s what came first, and the reason why that made sense to me is because of how I understand tanha; I agree with you that you can discern tanha and that discernment is present as a thought, but in my belief, the tanha itself is not a thought or a particular sense object – this is what I was trying to say. But it’s not relevant anymore and I will likely edit that out for the sake of clarity.

On that note, I realize that a potential response to the objection that it isn’t possible to make the observation that “tanha (this life) leads to next life” is that you don’t need to make that observation with respect to this life and a next life and that, if you have access to past lives, then you can simply discern tanha (in past life X) lead to life X+1.

At which point, there’s the following questions (assuming we put questions of reliability of memories aside, and whether the order of their manifestation does indeed represent the order of our lives as lived, which are themselves great issues for me):

  1. How is it known that what lead to life X+1 is indeed tanha in life X? Why could there be no other possibility? Why could it not be explained via an arbitrary law in the universe that doesn’t grant us the possibility of freedom? Why specifically tanha?
  2. Suppose it has indeed been established that tanha in life X leads to life X+1, how can you guarantee that this principle holds for all lives? What if there exists a life Y (potentially in the future), where tanha (in life Y) doesn’t lead to life Y+1?

Thank you for the response – it was helpful in that it forced me to attempt to be less lazy and define precisely what issues I was having. Let me know if there’s any further ambiguity you would like clarified.

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Even day-to-day inference about causality is much harder than we think. If you have a headache and you take some panadol for it, you cannot observe the reality where you didn’t take a panadol.

Had the other reality obtained instead, perhaps your headache would have subsided in the same amount of time, or maybe even been shorter.

Unless you’re willing to rely on your past experience, like remembering times you didn’t take a panadol and your headache lasted much longer, and make an inference based on that, you cannot even in principle be sure that the panadol is not actually prolonging your headache, rather than alleviating it.

In other words, we cannot actually directly observe causal relationships, even trivial ones. This was called the Fundamental Problem of Causal Inference (by a guy called Holland in 1986.) Basically, we need more data about the world to infer about causal relationships.

The whole idea of e.g. a randomized experiment comes out of this problem. If we give a bunch of people a panadol, and a bunch of people a placebo, and we make who gets what random, and a whole bunch of more assumptions, then we can start to feel more confident that panadol actually works.

Not speaking from experience here, only from the viewpoint of the logic of causality.

The understanding that is embodied in DO, as far as I can tell, is not an inductive inference. Firstly, if it was, then it would be hard to see how anyone could become awakened without recollecting manifold past lives.

But more importantly, the truth claim of DO does not rely on observing some aspect of it always being true in a sequence or time series, and then making an inductive inference – we cannot directly observe a causal relationship even for trivial things like taking a panadol for a headache (like I mentioned above).

The concepts needed to understand the logic are necessary and sufficient causes (E.g. Pearl, 2019) [again just in my own opinion here, not making any claims].

  1. It would be because one had learned that taṇha is a sufficient cause for upādāna (and everything that results from upādāna following from that). In the same way that a specific type of lighter is a sufficient cause to light a fire with plenty fire starter. If you have that lighter, it’s sufficient to light the fire. You only need to know that if you have that lighter, then you can light the fire.

    • Maybe in the future the fuel will be gone and you can’t light the fire? No problem, that still doesn’t invalidate the knowledge that the lighter will light the fire if it has access to fuel.

  2. If someone says that smoking causes cancer, how do you know that in the future, maybe smoking won’t cause cancer? IMO, this is actually an ambiguity/unclarity coming from language. In the future, they might invent robotic lungs that can’t get cancer, then you can smoke all you want without getting cancer – but this isn’t what “smoking causes cancer” means. The statement “smoking causes cancer” refers to the coming together of those causes as we understand them today. It’s assumed that we mean tobacco and organic human bodies. If these words obtain a new meaning, the statement can stop being true.

    • Like, AFAIK, we can always light a fire given the causes for lighting a fire coming together. It’s kind of a tautology? There is an implied ceteris paribus of the laws of physics not changing I guess.
    • Could e.g. the universe, after enough eons, so many countless eons, evolve such that impermanence stops being true, for example? I have no idea, but it seems implausible.

I hope this makes sense! :nerd_face: :sweat_smile:

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Yes that makes sense.

I would like to go to your answer to the second question since that was particularly interesting.

If someone says that smoking causes cancer, how do you know that in the future, maybe smoking won’t cause cancer? IMO, this is actually an ambiguity/unclarity coming from language. In the future, they might invent robotic lungs that can’t get cancer, then you can smoke all you want without getting cancer – but this isn’t what “smoking causes cancer” means. The statement “smoking causes cancer” refers to the coming together of those causes as we understand them today. It’s assumed that we mean tobacco and organic human bodies. If these words obtain a new meaning, the statement can stop being true.

If I’m understanding you correctly, you are stating that the claim that “smoking causes cancer” can be reduced down to a claim of the form that “S1, …, Sn => cancer” where S1, …, Sn are phenomena, that, when present, necessitate the presence of cancer. Smoking can result in S1, …, Sn at which point it would necessarily imply the presence of cancer?

So can I take you to mean that claims of the form “A leads to B” are understood as “A implies B”, i.e., A is a sufficient cause for B? That is, when there is A, there is B.

If so, do you understand A implies B in the context of DO in the same manner as the implication “x > 0 implies x+1 > 0” (i.e., there is no temporal “difference” between the two; it’s not the case that x > 0 must occur at some time X, and only at Y or some time after it (where Y > X) is it the case that x+1 > 0)? That is to say, A and B aren’t temporally related in some manner?

Or is it the case that in DO, you understand A implies B more so as “(there exists time X at which there is A) implies (there exists time Y, Y > X, at which there is B)”? If this is the case, then isn’t the introduction of time necessarily making the claim inductive?

For example, if you take the claim that “tanha implies upadana”, and then introduce temporality here to have it mean “tanha at a time implies upadana at another time after that”, then to prove it, we would have to assume that there was some tanha at a time, and show that that implies the existence of a time after that time in which there is upadana, directly as a result of it. How do you even begin to show this? You could go, “there was tanha a few minutes ago, ah! Now I know there’s upadana present, it must be because of the tanha from before”; but how do you know the upadana present was the result of that particular tanha from the past?

If it’s the former, as opposed to the latter, i.e., there’s no temporal difference, wouldn’t it be the case that DO doesn’t even need lives? Because when it occurs isn’t of relevance.

Now to the first one. You state that we need to learn the sufficient causes. In DO, tanha is sufficient cause for upadana, which is a sufficient cause for bhava. Which is the “true”, sufficient cause for birth in the next life, right? So the initial issue here still remains:

  1. How is it known that what lead to life X+1 is indeed tanha bhava in life X? Why could there be no other possibility? Why could it not be explained via an arbitrary law in the universe that doesn’t grant us the possibility of freedom? Why specifically tanha bhava?

Simply replace tanha with bhava now.

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Delight in feelings is attachment. MN 38

Whatever desire & passion there is with regard to the five clinging-aggregates, that is the clinging there. MN 44

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:slight_smile: no! :nerd_face: causal inference cannot be reduced to predicate logic. It is impossible to think clearly about causality with predicate logic, I would say.

Saying “smoking causes cancer” has implications like this:

  1. take a life long smoker who just got diagnosed with lung cancer. If she had not smoked, she probably would not have lung cancer.
    • This means something like in an alternate reality where she acted differently, something else would have happened.
  2. if you smoke, you are increasing your chance of lung cancer

I would really recommend something like Pearl’s ‘The book of why’ to get an understanding for causal inference, or the logic / reasoning behind causal claims.

Edit: I’ll see if I can reply in a more detailed way to more points of your post tomorrow.

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Desire is an energetic urge; not thoughts. As an example, when the thrill of sexual desires causes physical sex organ to become erect & lubricated, this is not the functioning of thought.

Desire can create intentions & thoughts. Go to DN 22 and read the section on craving.

Poor simile. Obviously one ball is not the other ball therefore there is no “re” occurring

Where exactly did the Buddha say this? Thanks

Kamatanha reads to simply be sensual craving; like overeating on Xmas lunch. I never read the word ‘rebirth’ in any Noble Truth. I only read jati (birth) and ponobhavika (new becoming).

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I have one thing that might be worth noting.

A memory from a past life is as reliable as the things, places, and people from the past life.

Assuming you and I have past life’s, then our parents, siblings, and other familial relatives have past lives.

It may happen that individuals from a past life recollection appear in this current life. Or even places we grew up and lived in in a past life are accessible in this life.

It is possible to identify a completely different person from a different era in a past life recollection and further identify them in this life.

It is also possible to remote view the location where one lived in a past life and then, if it suits your fancy, go there and identify in this life things which were only privy to you in the past life recollection.

And that applies to things as well. If, for example, you drove a Volkswagen beatle in a past life, you can remote view (or simply put “use the divine eye”) to locate it (wherever it may be). Therefore you could track down something in this lifetime which only exists prior to that in a memory. Thus there are many ways you can verify memories. Obviously if we can do this with memories from this lifetime, we should be able to do it with memories from a past life.

The immediate issue with that becomes the problem where some people are born previously in formless realms or heavenly realms. Not likely to physically travel to such realms in this given sensual realm.

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Lets use A ⇒ B and A → B where the former is the normal type of implication that we would learn about in an introductory college class (that’s where I learnt it anyway :slight_smile: ) and the latter denotes a causal relationship between A and B.

A → B carries causal information in a way A ⇒ B does not.

We can ask causal questions of A → B, like, what will happen to B if we do an intervention of A? A → B also allows us to ask counterfactual questions: what if B were different, how would A have to change for that to happen?

DN 15, is in my opinion, the Buddha putting DO causally in an interventionist way:

‘Craving is a condition for grasping’—that’s what I said. And this is a way to understand how this is so.

Suppose there were totally and utterly no craving for anyone anywhere.

That is, craving for sights, sounds, smells, tastes, touches, and ideas. When there’s no craving at all, with the cessation of craving, would grasping still be found?”

“No, sir.”

“That’s why this is the cause, source, origin, and reason of grasping, namely craving.

If we have craving → grasping, the Buddha is saying (IMO), imagine setting craving to zero, what would happen to grasping?

craving ⇒ grasping can emphatically not be queried in this way, it doesn’t tell us what happens to grasping if craving changes or is set to zero.

I hope this makes sense! :nerd_face:

Edit: Sorry for not responding to the points you made further down, but they do rely on the initial assumption which is what I am disagreeing with.

Edit2:

If you look at @TejvR’s posts, that is how someone writes when they are interested in having a meaningful exchange of ideas :slight_smile:

So I’m not going to respond to your questions unless you Put In The Work :saluting_face: :green_heart:

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Thank you for the clarification. I can treat “A leads to B” as you’ve decided to do so as A → B, as distinct from A ⇒ B.

Just as a side note - not relevant to the primary discussion regarding how we attain reliable knowledge of DO - I would interpret the condition in the sutta excerpt to mean a necessary condition, as opposed to a sufficient condition. That is, “craving is a condition for grasping” means to me “grasping implies craving” in the logical sense. In this sense, it is understandable how “what happens to grasping when craving is set to zero”; namely, grasping ceases, since by contrapositive, non-craving implies non-grasping (but all of this is admittedly fairly abstract, and I clearly do not see this for myself).

But that is a digression since it’s going into my (incomplete) understanding of DO, which isn’t the concern here.

So we’ve established that A → B is what we’re working with in DO. I will formulate my problem as specifically as I possibly can now:

In a 3-life DO model, there must exist phenomena M, N such that M (in life X) → N (in life X+1). To say one sees DO (i.e., a sekha), and knows for sure that it is the case would mean one sees the necessity of M (in life X) → N (in life X+1).

How do we establish with certitude – independent of scripture, tradition, teachers – the fact that M (in life X) → N (in life X+1)?

Edit: I forgot to ask the following question, but in one of your comments you stated the following:

The understanding that is embodied in DO, as far as I can tell, is not an inductive inference. Firstly, if it was, then it would be hard to see how anyone could become awakened without recollecting manifold past lives.

Isn’t it the claim of individuals who believe in 3 life DO that one necessarily needs to see one’s past lives? I’m not well read in Ajahn Brahm, et al.'s teachings, but I do recall vaguely hearing that that was a requirement for sotapatti and that a sotapanna doesn’t “believe” rebirth but “knows” it.

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My point then would just be that (I personally) think that using predicate logic as a lens for understanding DO isn’t that helpful. That is just based on my own experience of trying that approach. YMMV of course :slight_smile:

I don’t know exactly what the epistemological foundation is for the mind knowing causal relationships.

You could start with simpler questions even. Like, how do we establish with certitude that drinking causes the feeling of thirst to go away?

Like, we just know when we’re thirsty and then we know that if we don’t drink, we keep being thirsty, and then when we drink, the feeling of thirst goes away?

My own thought is “the mind can just do that” honestly :woman_shrugging:

A heuristic I like is “what is possible in practice, must also be possible in theory”.

But you might want to look at your own criteria of certitude and check whether any phenomena can fulfil them. Looking for the Ultimate Foundations of knowledge was a big thing in the Western history of ideas but they are mostly useless if you want to do stuff like invent penicillin. It just works, that’s what matters :slight_smile: [IMO]

I’m not sure exactly what goes into that insight and how knowledge of past lives figures into it, or to what degree that is necessary. I hope I find out one day though! :nerd_face:

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Hello @TejvR . This is a wonderful inquiry you have here. These conversations are important, as they get to some of the common motivations underlying different approaches to and interpretations of the Buddha’s teaching. Sādhu to your willingness to investigate and learn!

Before approaching the main points, I would say that your remark on craving is a good one that is often left unaddressed in Buddhist discussions. In one way of speaking, craving is not a phenomenon in the sense of an object of consciousness; it is on the side of the mind, on the level of intentionality towards or in relation to phenomena. In other words, craving is not what we observe, but how we observe.

I think this is a good starting point because, as you mention, someone may discern craving, but not through ‘staring’ or ‘observing’ in the naive sense. Already here, then, you seem to imply that you accept that there are inferential forms of knowledge which are reliable, but not based on observation of bare phenomena.

And yet, you propose that to know the relationship between A and B, one must observe those as independent phenomena and then establish their relationship. If we take your description of craving at face value then, it would be impossible to do so. In this line of thinking, craving is not comparable to lung cancer, smoking, or a billiard ball in that it is not an object of awareness. It could not be known through independent, external observation. And so it would seem impossible to know the relationship between X craving and Y experiences with the criteria you established.

But, given that you accept the possibility of inferential discernment, we can ask: how would one know that they have craving present? If they can’t observe it, how can they be certain that they are deducing the accurate cause from the phenomena or symptoms they experience? Say they have particular feelings, thoughts, etc. arising. How would they know that it is in fact ‘craving’ underlying them, and not, say, an external deity who places those symptoms in front of their mind’s eye, so to speak, at will?

That could be a good starting place. :slight_smile:

I will add to this that, setting aside interpretations of dependent arising, the discourses are abundantly clear that for someone to be an arahant, they must know for themselves that they will not be reborn. That is said to be the arahant’s knowledge nearly every single time the discourses mention it. It is called the Buddha’s knowledge of the future at DN 29.

In the gradual training passages and elsewhere, it is said that arahants know they will not have another life because they understand the four noble truths and defilements (‘āsavas’), even if they cannot recall their past lives or see other beings fare according to their deeds (not all arahants are said to have that ability; c.f. SN 12.70). It is also found all throughout the discourses that discuss an arahant’s knowledge outside of the framework of the gradual training (e.g. all throughout the SN).

This means that despite your interpretation of dependent origination, the discourses are more than clear that they consider it possible for an arahant to know that they will not have another life. Otherwise, the Buddha and his awakened disciples were wrong and didn’t reach what they claimed. So the question might as well be how it is possible for the Buddha to know he will not have another life.

Dependent origination is merely a more detailed explanation of the four noble truths which the arahants understand, especially the second and third (c.f. AN 3.61). How could it not be, given that is the framework for the Buddha’s teaching (MN 28)? But that can be discussed later.

See also MN 12 for another example the Buddha gives of his inferential knowledge about the future. It has similes! The simile he gives for how a reliable inference is formed is of someone taking a road towards a destination.

Similarly, imagine that a heavy object is flying towards someone. They can infer that if they do not move out of the object’s pathway, and if the object is not obstructed in its movement, then it will hit them in the future. It doesn’t requite they have a PhD. :smile:

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I agree, I accept possibility of inferential discernment. But I’m not quite clear what this line of questioning is attempting to demonstrate? The intention of leaning in towards phenomena, intention of leaning away from phenomena, or the intention of distracting oneself from phenomena; this I call craving.

It may be that one is having sensual thoughts, but that isn’t necessarily indicative of craving. My present intention in regards to that sense-experience as a whole is where I discern craving. And intention is discernable even though it’s not an object of the senses.

I agree with this.

I’m unsure what you’re referencing here when you say “your interpretation”; perhaps I didn’t communicate properly, but I do not yet subscribe to the three life interpretation, and I haven’t mentioned my interpretation yet; I’m simply investigating the three life interpretation to see whether it even can be confirmed for oneself, independent of others, and whether it can indeed lead to the complete cessation of the possibility of suffering here-and-now.

An inference isn’t being made in this case; we don’t spend a few seconds or even a nanosecond when an object is flying towards us trying to logically infer whether or not it will hit us. The thing is manifest as a thing-that-will-hit-me, and not wanting to be hit, we instantly move. It’s not like in the experience, there is first a naked “thing”, and then by some logical inference, we conclude that that thing is a “thing-that-will-hit-me”, and then we move. No; that thing already comes clothed with significance.

However, I have no issue granting you that an inference is being made here. The discussion above regarding whether an inference is made in that situation or not is not what I’m fundamentally concerned with presently. I’ll try to rephrase my abstract question from before to perhaps make it more concrete:

In 3-life DO, sankhara in one life leads to vinnana in the next life. Bhikkhus who claim to see DO for themselves claim to see the fact above. I will put aside concerns of indubitability: how do such bhikkhus conclude that sankhara in some life will lead to vinnana in the next life? How do they arrive at this? What reasoning do they use? We can put concerns aside about inductive, or deductive reasoning; feel free to use any.

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By this I just meant “someone” — a general ‘you.’
As in: “Regardless of how someone interprets dependent origination, …” :slight_smile:

Do you accept that the texts say as much, but would like to clarify how such a thing could be possible in reality? Or do you also take it that such a thing is possible in reality? In the latter case, how is it possible for them to know?

The purpose is just to investigate precisely this. If you believe there is such a thing as accurate inferential discernment that does not involve the immediate data of sense experience, what are the grounds for that being reliable? So far you have only said that you discern it, but not how or why one should trust that judgement as accurate.

As you say, it is not thoughts themselves which are craving, otherwise the Buddha would not be able to think. So, imagine a scenario where craving is present in the mind. How do you know that there is specifically craving present or not, if you cannot observe it directly? How would you arrive at that conclusion with certainty?

And moreover, say that you practice the Dhamma and your craving in regards to those thoughts ceases. How would you know that it is Dhamma practice which led to that, rather than, for example, a deity who removed the craving from your mind?

What I am calling ‘inference’ is precisely when someone’s mind draws these connections. But setting aside the specific terminology, why is it manifest as “thing-that-will-hit-me”? Why does the mind register it as such? Because that is not the sensory data. The sensory data itself does not communicate that the object is going to hit someone. That is, as you say, a significance assigned by the mind out of the sensory phenomena.

This is, in part, what I meant by not needing a PhD to draw basic inferences. By ‘inference,’ I don’t mean pondering over the various orders of logical consequences. I am referring to any function of mind which takes the data or content of sense experience and constructs meaning out of how that data interacts and behaves, i.e. the principles that govern it. Those principles are not the content and so cannot be observed as mere data; they are how the content operates. Yet the behavior and laws of the content are inseparable from it, and vice versa.

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Is the point you’re trying to make that there are things we know that don’t require observation via the senses? And that the claim that “sankhara in a life leads to vinnana in the next life” is one that doesn’t require observation via the senses? Because it’s unclear to me how the question here relates to the main question of the post.

I agree that sankhara and vinnana wouldn’t be observed via the senses. That was never the problem. The problem is, how do you know that sankhara in one life leads to vinnana. It’s the “leading to” part that is fundamentally in question. I’m unsure if I’m not communicating the issue I’m facing here or whether I’m not understanding what you’re trying to arrive at here.

Things are manifest as attractive, unattractive, dangerous, safe, and so on. This is perception. Asking “why is it manifest as a ‘thing-that-will-hit-me’” is asking “why is perception perceiving what it’s perceiving?” – and I fail to see the relevance of this question here as well.

Please note the following quote:

This is all I wish to know.

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Hi,

happy holidays!

As someone who accepts the three-life interpretation—though I prefer to call it the ‘multiple-life’ or ‘rebirth’ interpretation, to avoid some common misunderstandings—this is how I see things.

When teaching Dependent Origination, the Buddha phrased very deep principles in intrinsically limited words (usually in twelve factors, from ignorance down to suffering). But what he himself had seen, and what all noble ones have seen, is not really those twelve specific factors but the deeper principles behind them. The twelve factors are just one way of trying to put those principles into words.

These principles include certainty of rebirth, yes; and how rebirth is caused by craving, yes. But it’s not like stream winners first remembered where they lived in a past life, then remembered they had craving in that past life, and then saw how their consciousness travelled from that life to this life by having that craving. Instead, these knowledges of the principles of Dependent Origination come as one big insight, like a package deal of sorts. :slight_smile:

You’re right, one can’t see one’s next life. Even stream winners can’t be sure that they will have a next life, because they may become fully enlightened beforehand, who knows! So to get this insight, one doesn’t connect craving in the here and now to future birth. It’s the other way around: one connects craving of the past to being born in this life here and now.

Then you could still argue similarly, saying: if you only remember one single past life, you can only make a connection with the life following it. You can’t really generalize beyond that.

That’s also true. But that’s not how the insight happens either! :slight_smile: You don’t recollect one single life and connect it to one single life following that. It’s more like you recollect all your past lives at once and connect them to all following lives at once, leading all the way up to this one. And at the same moment you also see that the principles connecting those lives together are still present in your own mind, that craving glues the mind to existence, that existence won’t cease as long as there still is craving. So at that same moment you connect the same principle to the future as well.

That may sound incomprehensible on a theoretical level, so it probably doesn’t answer your questions satisfyingly. :slight_smile: But to me, it seems you’re basically asking: how can I be sure that craving leads to rebirth? Well, to know for sure, you have to have the insight yourself! :smiley: There’s no other way. It doesn’t even really help to have it explained by others. The Buddha already did so hundreds of times, and people still don’t understand. :wink: (That craving leads to rebirth is already stated in the second noble truth, by the way, not just in Dependent Origination.)

Asking a noble one to explain this in more detail is like asking a mathematician to explain why 1+1 is always 2. Why not 3 or some other number; or why a number at all? Well, that’s just the way it is! What more is there to say other than 1+1=2? Similarly, to the noble one it’s simply the case that craving leads to rebirth. That’s the core of what they have seen regarding the origination of suffering. What more is there to say? We could flesh out the details, adding some steps between craving and rebirth (like upādāna and bhava) or explain the principle differently (ignorance leading to consciousness, for example). But that’s adding details and isn’t getting us any closer to the fundamental insight itself.

I’m not a mathematician, so in the case of 1+1 there may be more to it, but you get the idea: there will be some point when explanations simply can’t go any further. And even “craving leads to rebirth” is already an explanation of a deeper principle, a principle that unlike 1+1=2 we can’t share on a piece of paper. So it is already saying too much, in a way.

As to the first side question: The psychic power of past-life recollection is always phrased as remembering “many kinds of past lives, with features and details”, recalling as far back as the practitioner wants, whenever they want it. But this is not the only way to realize rebirth. One can remember past lives without details: you may just know that you have been conscious in the past, for example, while not knowing where specifically you lived in the past. Compare SN22.79.

Stream winners know that samsara has no discoverable beginning (SN48.50), but this doesn’t mean they remember past lives with all their features and details. So they don’t need the full-blown psychic power to see rebirth and the principles behind it. It’s a bit like people who had an out-of-body experience during surgery still don’t have the psychic power of astral travel explained in the suttas. They can’t leave their body at will, for example. So while their experience was (potentially) similar, it doesn’t count as a psychic power.

The other side-question: Genuine insights only come when the mind is free from the hindrances. Most people never abandon the hindrances (even though they may believe they have) so they don’t know what it’s like to have a mind that is completely unobscured. It’s like you were asleep your whole life, like you finally put on glasses after being almost blind, like having a military-grade searchlight at night after having only a candle.

When your mind is sharp like that, the question is not: how can I trust these insights? The question becomes: how can I trust whatever my ordinary, defiled mind brings up? :slight_smile: Then you’ll also start to understand how certain memories and insights can be genuinely true: namely, if they come from an undefiled mind. Compare AN5.193.

Most past-life memories we generally hear about (like those of children or coming from hypnosis) aren’t based on samādhi, so they may indeed not be as trustworthy. So the “base assumption” is not that memories are “always reliable”, as you say. It’s only specific memories in a specific context that can be relied upon. When the hindrances are abandoned, then memories are reliable.

Understanding Dependent Origination can also only happen when the hindrances are abandoned. And if the stream winner would start to question their realization of rebirth (which they won’t), they might as well question everything else they’ll ever know and experience! To them, it’s the most real thing they ever experienced—alongside other insights that are of a similar nature, including into nibbāna.

On a different note, it seems the basic principles behind your objections apply to all other interpretations of Dependent Origination just the same. The fundamental logic isn’t just limited to the three-lifetime interpretation. Just replace “life” with “moment”, and ask the same: if craving leads to suffering in this moment, how can we be sure that it also leads to suffering in the next moment? Maybe the next moment will be a special one, a moment when we have craving but don’t suffer?… How can we be sure that it won’t be?…

If these questions strike you as somewhat silly compared to your questions about seeing rebirth, that might say more about what kind of knowledge you deem reliable than about the specific interpretation of Dependent Origination. Maybe you think you can reliably see within this single life but not beyond. Yet that wouldn’t mean that there aren’t others who have seen far beyond this life with just as much (or more) clarity as within this life. To such people it wouldn’t make sense that one would regard the delineation between lives as a specific barrier to knowledge. To them, individual lives are all part of a larger continuum, anyway.

I say this not to start a philosophical debate about how we can know what we know! It’s for people to potentially ask themselves exactly why they are challenging certain interpretations of DO but not others. Because, for the rebirth interpretation, more often than not the challenge basically comes down to: “I can’t see how this is knowable or pragmatic; ergo, it is not what the Buddha was on about.” That’s not a good argument, of course. And I know you aren’t making it! But since it’s such a common objection and closely related to your questions, I wanted to point it out here. If not you, somebody else joining this discussion later would’ve made such an argument at some point. :wink:

To base one’s acceptance of interpretations of DO before stream entry is maybe not a wise approach. It’s better to consider honestly what the Buddha actually did say in the suttas, and then be humble enough to realize that one doesn’t yet know how such insight may come about. Before real insight develops, it’s a part of having faith. Just like you take rebirth on faith, you can also take on faith that insight into its connection with craving is possible—instead of working it out theoretically.

Those are my 2 cents, anyway. I hope anything is helpful to you, even if it doesn’t answer your question as directly as you may have wished: for which I do apologize. :smile:

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