The paticcasamuppāda formulation (as I see it) does not admit of alternative interpretations—there is one and one only

 

In any case, the paticcasamuppāda formulation (as I see it) does not admit of alternative interpretations—there is one and one only. I do not see that anyone offering a number of different interpretations as equally valid can possibly be right in any of them. (It is quite possible that someone actually reaching sotãpatti, and therefore seeing paticcasamuppāda for himself, might still hesitate before deciding on the meaning of the expanded—twelve term—formulation, since what he sees for himself is imasmin sati idam hoti,* etc., and not its expansion in terms—avijjā, sankhārā, and so on—whose meaning he may not know. But one thing is certain: whatever interpretation he gives will be in conformity with his private knowledge, imasmin sati…, and since he has already grasped the essence of the matter he will not look around for alternative interpretations.) But the Ven. Thera may have had something else in mind when he spoke.

Nanavira Thera
**
As I see it at present, the importance of the paṭicca-samuppāda lies not so much in the twelve (or less or more) members as in the relationship imasmiṃ sati … (and its undoing imasmiṃ asati) which is underlined in DN 15. 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” (shading off. —Ed.) of voidness in saṃsāra itself that renders it impossible in the Dhamma to ascribe absolutiveness to any particular value (such as divine grace, justice, etc.) and so enter upon the “War of philosophical systems of the absolute.” The formula imasmiṃ sati, …’ (applied psychologically by a choice of interrelated-instances) is used as an instrument in DN 15 to describe and analyse the mental process of naming (function of nāma-rūpa) and language (nirutti, etc.), and in MN 38 to describe and analyse the peculiar nature of consciousness (viññāṇa) in its constitutive relationship (through mediate states) to being. But both can only be studied in the Pali with careful discrimination of roots…

Nanamoli Thera*

* On his understanding of the paṭicca-samuppāda:

According to Ven Nanamoli, regarding dependent arising, «To the question: “What are these sets of terms intended to describe?”

we may answer tentatively that they are intended to describe experience of any possible kind where ignorance (that is lack of personal realization of the Truths) is present. »

“The Buddha’s purpose is to describe enough of the world to be able to show how suffering can be ended, not to produce full and detailed elaborations, which would be endless and arrive nowhere.”

For him, one can equalise suffering and conceit “I am”, nibbana is the cessation of asmimāna (AN 9:1O one who perceives non-self eradicates the conceit ‘I am,’ [which is] nibbāna here and now.”) Since Suttas define also nibbana as the cessation of bhava (… I know this, I see this: ‘Nibbāna is the cessation of bhava.’” (bhavanirodho nibbānaṃ) SN 12: 68) Ven Nanamoli emphasis the necessity to translate bhava as being:

I argue, to translate (even to interpret to oneself) bhava by ‘becoming’ is an opiate that leaves the illusion of ‘being’ untreated.

According to Ven Nanamoli dependent arising «is not a logical proposition, nor is it a temporal cause-result chain. Such an approach makes an understanding of it impossible.»

As I understand him, he sees dependent arising as a kind of mirror where one can see one’s own ignorance, namely that what was previously taken for granted: one’s own being ( “I am” ) as impermanent, suffering, and dependently arisen upon ignorance. When paticcasamuppada is seen as a process, immediate dependence of one’s own being on ignorance disappears from the vision, so he says: “Such an approach makes an understanding of it impossible”.

As to details he suggests that the Buddha, by the way, has solved seemingly unsolvable philosophical problem:

«But this particular description (dependent arising) 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 makes 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 that in a rather peculiar way. (…)

The right way of treating this fact is to take the D/O, not as an individual description, but as an integrated set of descriptions. Each member provides in fact a set of terms to describe the rest of the world. Together they cover the whole subjective/objective, positive/negative world.»

According to Ven Nanamoli the relationship between these descriptive items is that of sine qua non.

So for example “with feeling as a condition craving” is not description of temporal process where something is first felt, and than it leads to craving -at least as far as dependent arising goes- but that of dependence, structurally craving can arise only when feeling is present, without feeling there is no possibility of craving to arise. Such vision, unlike cause and effect interpretation makes possible to see now and here one’s own death as impermanent and dependently arisen: as unborn, I cannot die, and to see the body as “this is not mine, this I am not, this is not my self” should undermine one’s own certainty of being born.

In other words, Ven Nanamoli regards the death as merely certain event in the field of consciousness, which can be observed objectively, but not experienced subjectively. More or less in the same way as I cannot imagine my own death, however well I exercise my imagination, observing funeral, “my own” dead body and so on, I will always survive as the observer. So he says using so called indirect communication:

In a syllogism (1. All men are mortal. 2. Socrates is a man. 3.Therefore Socrates is mortal), the generalization (all men are mortal) must have been arrived at by induction. No inductive process is ever absolutely certain. There is always the leap, the assumption, of generalizing and therefore one of the premises of a syllogism must have an element of uncertainty. So it cannot prove anything with certainty.

A syllogism is therefore a signpost pointing where to look for direct experience, but can inherently never give information that is 100% certain. But a syllogism (on metaphysical subjects) can also point to what can, inherently, never be experienced; then it is an anomaly.

In other place he says: All the questions asked about death are wrongly put.

All informations provided here can be found in the Thinker’s Notebook, perhaps except an idea of sine qua non relationship between the items of dependent arising, which as far as I remember can be found somewhere in his translation of the Neti."