If you ask me what the main idea of Buddhism is, it’s that (almost) all states arise due to conditions. There are conditions for discomfort, fear, depression and pain - and there are conditions for well-being, joy and happiness. The Buddha’s teaching has conditionality written all over it, especially in the path leading to the cessation of dukkha. And the best portions of the dhamma are practical!
But then we have this strange paṭiccasamuppāda, mostly in its 12-step formula. It is what the Buddha supposedly realized with his enlightenment. But let me dare to ask: so what?
Does this formula have any practical application? If not then it’s a kind of philosophical information I don’t need to worry about. I don’t think I’m smarter than Ananda who got reprimanded for saying that he understood it. There is no meditation connected to the formula, it is not properly explained, we don’t know if it’s meant on the level of the universe or the experience of men. In short: it doesn’t look like the kind of teaching I subscribed to following the dhamma.
Either really central aspects about it totally went lost (but why would they when so many other details have remained?), or it’s a botched up formula that somehow got canonized (like Nakamura for example argued), or I’m missing something.
Again, conditionality is all over the place in the dhamma, and it’s fantastic. I just wonder about the practical value of the paṭiccasamuppāda specifically (except for the occasional philosophical head ache it gives me). Am I alone with this?