Hi Everyone
I have recently been interested in a philosophical discussion about Necessity and Contingency.
That which is said to be necessity is what always applies regardless of the conditions, and that which is said to be contingency is because it depends on a condition, which if the same condition is not met, then a contingent truth will not be a truth, and a contingent existence requires a contingent cause in order to exist.
I see a striking similarity of this contingency concept with a term in Pali, namely Sankhara / Sankhata. (I could be wrong). where it is said that all Sankhara are Dukkha and Anicca. While on the other hand I see Nibbana, which is also synonymous with Asankhata, is an entity that can be said to be necessity.
Could the most accurate translation of Sankhara be Contingency? or maybe fellow Buddhists in this forum have other views? let’s discuss.
Nibbāna is also contingent. It is contingent on the full practice of the noble eightfold path. Nibbāna is equivalent to the attainment of arahantship, which is how it is defined in the suttas.
I would like to respond, you said that Nibbāna is contingent because it takes effort to attain it, but correct me if I am wrong, whether or not there is someone trying to attain it, isn’t nibbana always there Bhante?
This is what I understand from the quote from Udāna 8.3:
If there were nothing free of rebirth, free of what has been produced, made, and conditioned, then you would find no escape here from rebirth, from what has been produced, made, and conditioned.
because whether or not there is someone trying, it is still there.
Nibbāna is not a “thing” that is always present. It’s the ending of something, the extinguishment of defilements, followed by the ending of all suffering. If you have a pain in the knee and the pain comes to an end, you would not say that the ending of the pain is always there. You would just say the pain is gone. In the same way, nibbāna just means the ending of all problems.
The verse from the Udāna that you quote just means that there is such a thing as the ending of suffering, which is free from all the things mentioned.
No, there are still truths, that is, truths about contingent phenomena. These are the Buddhist version of the laws of nature, primarily dependent origination.
