Dependent Arising - Illusion of being

It has been said by someone that the weakness of Buddhism is that it has no Ontology. But it can be asked, is it weakness or a strength?

My point simply hinges on the question of translating bhava by "becoming" as is usually done. It is generally argued against translating bhava by being that "being is static" but while admitting that "becoming" 1) no offers solution since in Concise Oxford Dictionary "to become" means "to begin to be", 2) it completely severs the hoti of (incipient) syllogisms eg "hoti Tathagato paramaram? ..." and other vaguer uses of hoti (bhavati) and indirectly atthi from connection with Paticca-samuppada, tending to make the P/S subordinate to syllogistic logic rather than the other way about; 3) it is incompatible with S ... Itv (and also with M131-134). "Becoming" (and still more "werden") suggest a flux where the future "becomes" by "flowing" through the present and then past, while what is meant or implied by constant and unavoidable use of the verb "to be" is left unaccounted for. 

Hence I argue, to translate (even to interpret to oneself) bhava by "becoming" is opiate that leaves the illusion of "being" untreated. I doubt if that is what the Buddha intended.

As I see it, the Buddha's treatment of Ontology is most clearly set out, according to right view, in M 38 which yatha-bhutam, sets out how the illusion of "being" (both in positive and negative forms - with the bhava-tanha and vibhavatanha of D9, 22 and anurodha and pathivirodha of M 11) can and should be treated and eliminated. 

M1 and M 49 are complementary: M1 describes the modes of asmi-mana (which is pre-logical) and M 49 present the same situation in "ontological" terms i.e in the functioning of logically formulated wrong view (while M1 describes the pre-reflexive asmimana - the manusaya, the fundamental wrong attitude). M 44 and M109 describe the logically formulated views which arise out of and are built upon the pre-logical tendency - the connection between these is shown briefly in M1 and forms the subject matter of M49.
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As I see it at present, the importance of the paticca-samuppada lies not so much in the twelve (or less or more) members as in the relationship imasmin sati ... (and its undoing imasmin asati) which is underlined in D15. This firstly implies complexity in experience (no complexity: no experience). The choice of the "12 members" is less philosophical than psychological, which is why it is variable. The undoing, as I see it, is the detail of "voidness" which is the ethical key to the Dhamma, since it is the "Abschattung" of voidness in samsara itself that renders it impossible in the Dhamma to ascribe absolitiveness to any particular value (such as divine grace, justice, etc) and so enter upon the "War of philosophical systems of the absolute". The formula imasmin sati ... (applied psychologically by a choice of interrelated instances) is used as an instrument in D 15 to describe and analyse the mental process of naming (function of namarupa) and language (nuratti, etc) and in M38 to describe and analyse the peculiar nature of consciousness (vinnana) in its constitutive relationship (through mediate states) to being. But both can only be studied in the Pali with careful discrimination of roots.
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The ironical and amusing story of Brahmanimanika Sutta conceals a profound meaning, which is ontological. That is, it presents the Buddha's treatment of verbes hoti, bhavati (to be) and the noun bhava (being), both from the root bhu. Some prelate, I forget who, said that Buddhism has no ontology, which in simpler language presumably meant that nibbana, the goal, was or that is had being, with the latent objection that if this was not proved, than nibbana was just an abyss of nothingness.

Now the Buddha has described the world (that is not just the external world but the consciousness that cognizes it, and not only other peoples consciousness objectified, but mine, too, and not only mine (of) past and future objectified, but mine committed to it now - no matter who "I" am). His description of the way it works is the first two truths, while the last two deals with escape from it. If we are interested in "being" we must look to the Dependent Origination (D/O), of which "being" (bhava) is the 10 th member.

"Being" we said, is a member of D/O, in other words, to be is to be dependent, or contingent upon something else. Whatever is, has being only in virtue of something else that lends it its being. Kim pabhava.
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Now, let us consider the structure of D/O for a moment. Firstly, it is not a logical proposition, nor is it a temporal cause - result chain. Such an approach makes an understanding of it impossible. If we stop to consider each of its components, they will be found to vary so enormously in scope from the particular to the whole. The interpretation of European scholars have been, perhaps without exeption, wild and bad guesses.

The Buddha's purpose is to describe enough of the world to be able to shaw how suffering can be ended, not to produce full and detailed elaborations, which would be endless and arrive nowhere. But this particular description is aimed at including everything. And here a difficulty arises. A description must be made in terms of something other than what it describes, or it is not a description. It has to reproduce in other material certain structures that are in what it describes. This fact made it impossible for a description to be a description and complete at the same time. How is the D/O complete, then? Or is it not a description after all?

It is in fact both, but it attains in a rather peculiar way. The best way to approach it from a European background is from Descartes' "Cogito ergo sum" (I think therefore I am). That is not a logical proposition; it is a description of interconditionality between consciousness and being. Ignoring Descartes' theories of substance and taking only that bare formulation, we can compare it with the fact that "consciousness" (vinianna) and being (bhava) are two of the most obvious members of D/O formulation, which also is not a logical proposition. But now, let us return for a moment to the "enormous" scope from the particular to the general which we noted earlier in the D/O.

 The right way of of treating this fact is to take D/O not as an individual description, but as an integrated set of descriptions. Each member provides in fact a set terms to describe the rest of the world. Together they cover the whole subjective-objective positive-negative world. To the question: what are these set terms intended to describe? we may answer that they are intended to describe experience of any possible kind where ignorance (that is lack of personal realization of the Truths) is present. 

But when taken together becoming and being, impermanence and (illusory) permanence comes within its net. This seeming paradox represents what we actually live, but what we never face up to as a whole.

Any concept of Pure Being is always open to the objection that, if absoluteness is claimed for it, then it cannot be known; for if it is known, it is accessible to consciousness and consequently no longer pure; consequently Pure Being and non-being cannot be distinguished. If absoluteness is claimed for any concept of Pure Consciousness (the Yogacara opposition to the Vedanta) similar objection arises; for if consciousness is pure, it must not be, or it will be adulterated by being. Consequently pure consciousness has to have no being, which is tantamount to saying that it is not.

By making both consciousness and being, in whatever form, subject to the D/O, the Buddha both closes the entry into this logical maze and offers us a picture which if we only bother to observe, rather than malobserve, we shall find corresponds with our experience as we actually live it. Only we keep forgetting what we learn. And forgetting is ignorance. And ignorance, the most reprehensible of all heads the D/O. It is one of the "taints" (asava) - and so is being.

So it is not that "Buddhism has no ontology" but that the Buddha has seen through what a modern writer has called the "ontological mirage" and set being into its true position.

Nibbana is the cessation of ontology "bhava nirodho nibbanam". It is not, however, the abyss of non being since that requires consciousness to cognize it as such. It is "absolute cessation" which includes the non-ascription of either being or non-being: naphahosim.

Now while the D/O has the appearance of, and is, a complete description of the world (as we have defined it) nevertheless, when nibbana is treated of positively in any of its therms instead of, as its cessation, a paradox will appear. Atthi ... abhutam ... or sabbato pabham describes as cognized, to be (by consciousness) is anidassanam, the act of cognizing without "showing" making seen any positive determined (sankhata) object. That this opposing of being and consciousness seems possible and not nonsense (the paradox) also indicates the "incompleteness" of the "complete" description.

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To be is to be contingent: nothing of which it can be said that "it is" can be alone and independent. But being is a member of paticca-samuppada as arising which contains ignorance. Being is only invertible by ignorance.

Destruction of ignorance destroys the illusion of being. When ignorance is no more, than consciousness no longer can attribute being (pahoti) at all. But that is not all for when consciousness is predicated of one who has no ignorance than it is no more indicatable (as it was indicated in M Sutta 22)

Nanamoli Thera