Craving depends on both ignorance and feeling. Or the existence of craving depends on the concurrent existence of both ignorance and craving.
Dependency, not cause.
What do you think about the statement “the destruction of ignorance causes the destruction of craving”?
Edit: Maybe we should take this to a new thread? Seems to be veering off topic. I might make one about causality / dependence when I have some more time.
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Yes, another thread would be good.
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That would be interesting. I don’t know much about the current scientific discourse on causality, but I’ve recently been listening to the Brahmali/Sunyo lectures on DO and I’m interested in how they focus on how DO is supposed to be about sufficient conditions, not causality itself. But you are saying that this distinction is problematic?
In an Indian context I guess this makes sense since the Buddha never talked about causal powers per se (even if later thinkers like Dharmakirti did), he just said that things arise in dependence on other things. For me, this means that empirically you can observe that everytime x happens, there is y for example. Then you can abstract a law out of that observation. But this does not mean I am claiming y does something which produces or makes x happen.
But maybe we are using words to mean different things here.
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My point wasn’t about dependent origination in particular. Buddhists had a particular way of explaining causation, which I think was very naturalistic. I’d agree that they were knocking down simple ideas of cause and effect, first causes, definite (or imaginary?) beginning points, and the like. In these chains, which sometimes are traversed in both directions, the concept of cause and effect blurs as you realize that it’s relative to which point in a chain events one is taking as a standpoint.
I think it also relates to the assumption that rebirth is a basic fact of life. Things come about in a present as the culmination of a beginningless series of events that led to each other until: Here we are!
The problem here is not listening to the talk! 
Ven. Sunyo focused a lot on dependency, or necessary conditionality, because this is the meaning, or main meaning, of paṭicca. But clearly DO is about both necessary and sufficient conditionality. “When there is ignorance, there will be willed actions” is a statement of sufficient conditionality. “When ignorance ends, willed actions end”, is a statement about dependency. In other words, the standard “causal”, or better “conditional”, sequence is about sufficient conditionality, whereas the cessation sequence is about necessary conditionality. They both apply to DO.
I would say that the moment delusion/ignorance ceases we are no longer speaking of DO. DO only applies to non-arahants.
The problem here is that to say, for instance, that birth causes death goes against how we normally think of causality. Cancer might cause death or an accident, but not normally birth. Yet birth is clearly a sufficient condition for death. The word condition is generally better suited to DO than the word cause.
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Could you share the talks you are referencing?
I think this is an issue of terminology first and foremost. It might still be interesting to discuss this in a new thread though, if only for learning’s sake. I’m fascinated by causality, I think it’s neat and relevant!
Indeed, I was going by the slides only, inferring left and right what must have been meant 
From an everyday language perspective, this might be very well be true. On the other hand, I still think cause is better. Causal claims are bold and risky; they invite refutation, they’re transparent, it’s clear what is meant and how they may be refuted.
When someone says “smoking causes cancer” it’s clear that we should stop smoking. Smoking is going to give you cancer if you keep it up. To me, “birth causes death, old age, suffering, etc.” makes it clear that we should stop getting born. Being born is gonna give me suffering, whether I like it or not.
‘Condition’ feels vaguer to me, less dramatic. Subjectively speaking, conditions don’t seem that central or important, there are many conditions out there.
It reminds a little bit of words like determinant or antecedent, which are used in science when people are a bit anxious about using ‘cause’ because of a misconception that it’s impossible to say anything about causality outside a randomized experiment.
Anyway, these are just my own subjective perceptions that need not be applicable to anyone else 
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As did I on day 2 session 1: Waiting for the mp3 to download, I raced ahead through the slides and found…
I thought “Sweet! Why didn’t you lead with that? No need to hear any more!”.
The related audio corrected my view 
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I have to admit I sympathise with this. And you know, sometimes it’s nice to say something different simply because it gets attention. “Birth causes death” is just more attention-grabbing than “birth conditions death”. It makes you think. And that’s sort of the point.
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Isn’t stop getting born exactly the Buddha’s message?
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Doesn’t “hetu” mean cause? Also, not all the conditionality in DO is causal, for example vedana doesn’t cause tanha when ignorance has been removed.
It makes little sense to try and piece together how DO works without ignorance. As Ajahn Brahmali put it:
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So if DO ceases for the Arahant, then presumably that means the Arahant is no longer subject to aging and death. But what does that mean, practically speaking? Presumably aging and death are no longer a source of suffering for the Arahant? The physical process of aging and death remains ( first arrow), but the associated mental anguish (second arrow) has ceased?
Yes!
This comes down to how you use the word cause and causal.
Take smoking, which causes lung cancer through tar deposits it leaves in the lungs of smokers. It would be correct to say that “tar in the lungs causes cancer”, but it doesn’t happen to someone who doesn’t smoke (and doesn’t get tar in their lungs in other ways).
This doesn’t mean “tar in the lungs” is not a cause; it’s precisely the way in which “tar in the lungs” only gets activated or deactivated through smoking that makes the sequence smoking -> tar -> cancer a causal sequence.
If removing ignorance didn’t cause any changes down the causal chain, DO would be non-causal. The seeming connections between the DO links would be spurious and thus DO would not be an actionable theory.
Edit: In more jargony parlance you would say that ignorance causes suffering and that the middle DO links are mediators (the middle DO links fully mediate between ignorance and suffering).
Smoking causes cancer, mediated by tar deposits in the lungs.
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So why isn’t hetu (“cause”) used in DO? Why is paccaya used instead?
The old age and death of the arahant are a residual result of past ignorance. The moment you are an arahant there is no more creation of these things. And so DO no longer applies.
Or you can view it from the point of the second noble truth. DO is an expansion of this truth, which involves craving. Without craving, no DO.
I agree that this is a reasonable criticism against certain interpretations of DO. There is no indication of such a “mess” in the suttas. However, if we take DO as applying only to non-arahants, this falls away. Every link is then both a necessary and a sufficient condition.
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I agree with most of your points (or maybe all?) but this point I find interesting to comment on. I get what you mean about ‘belief’ and the biased vibe he maybe be intending it with. But on the other hand, it is a belief, isn’t it?
I say this with reference to common misinterpretations of the Kalama Sutta, and that whole movement to present Buddhism as ;scientific’ and not having any ‘beliefs’ or ‘faith’ - a view which I think is entirely inaccurate. Even the Kalama Sutta itself seems to put logic and so on as inferior, and faith in wise people as the way to go!
So it seems to me that Early Buddhism actually teaches to have blind faith, in doctrines such as rebirth, kamma, the 4 Noble Truths, nibbāna, and so on. Now that’s not to say that those things are not true! Which is what modern atheists can often assume in any case of blind faith. And yet they themselves have blind faith in a great many things - basically even any scientific knowledge that they have not proven themselves or thoroughly investigated, which may be almost anything outside of their speciality! But anyway, just to say, the doctrine of rebirth is something to be taken on faith, is it not? (Unless you happen to have access to direct experience of it).
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It’s more about taking the reality of rebirth as the working assumption for one’s efforts towards a good life and eventual freedom from suffering .
At least to me, if I were to discard it, nothing would stop me from becoming a materialistic hedonist, an adept of the Charvaka ideology, like Ajita Kesambali. 
Under the working hypothesis in which suffering ceases with the end of this life and effectiveness of actions is none or just a function of how the society is to judge me, what would stop me from just looking for ways to cheat as many as possible to get me as much wealth as I need to simply enjoy as much as possible of the pleasure senses before my death?
If you stop to think, that’s exactly the paradigm under which most of the corrupt politicians, tyrants, super wealthy and powerful live by! And of course, somehow, the cognitive trap most of drug addicts, chronic gamblers, get caught into.
It is very illogical to be a virtuous hedonist. It can only be justified if that puts you in a position of prestige which gives you access to more pleasures of the senses. And possibly that was how Ajita Kesambali and other charvaka leaders achieved their goals.
They would teach some sort of relativistic moralistic hedonism, making his audience glad to learn they can just enjoy their lives to the fullest (“Yolo!!”) and in return they would be granted gifts of nice food, clothes, buildings, cosmetics and possibly the company of women or men. In ancient Greek this was the case of the Sophists.
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Well, let’s see.
With rebirth belief, we have 3 options:
- Continue a life of dukkha with no plan to stop that
- Continue a life of dukkha but plan to stop that in a future life (almost all lay people I guess, and Pure Land, Nichiren etc.)
- Try to end dukkha in this life (and maybe succeed).
Without rebirth belief, we have two options:
- Continue a life of dukkha
- Try to end dukkha in this life (and maybe succeed).
Not so different.
So to answer:
what would stop me from just looking for ways to cheat as many as possible to get me as much wealth as I need to simply enjoy as much as possible of the pleasure senses before my death?
That depends if you would prefer your one and only life to be characterised by dukkha for its entirety, or whether you’d like to be free from dukkha! Some would choose the latter.
For lay people or monastics uninterested in the rigours of mind training, sure this does make a big difference, since the standard ‘accumulation of merit’ model makes no sense without the rebirth belief. But personally I always saw that side of Buddhism as being more about morality in general, giving lay people a world view that induces morality and thus being less harmful, and thus leading to increased mundane happiness. Plus, their role in supporting the work of the people who are interested enough to do the actual work of mind training, i.e. the Sangha (in theory at least). For those actually trying to follow the path, the EBTs seem to be focused on enlightenment in this life.
Also, don’t forget that atheists aren’t automatically hedonists. There is that old argument isn’t there, that without religion, why would anyone behave? But in reality, atheist dominated countries, like Iceland, seem to do very well! And religious-focused countries often the polar opposite. So, righteous living doesn’t seem to depend on belief in something-after-life.
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