Interdependence

Understanding causality and the doctrine of emptiness in Buddhism

I cannot recall my name. Most people call me “Old Bard,” a title rather than a name for my aging body and endless tales. It’s strange that I remember stories, but hardly anything about my previous life — the life before Event X. I’m not sure if it was a natural or a human-made catastrophe, but the count of everything plummeted from billions to hundreds in a matter of hours.

I did some horrible things to survive. Identity and ideology are useless when you’re on the verge of extinction. You’ve to commit immoral acts. But that doesn’t matter when there’s no society to judge you in a wasteland. I’ve nightmares from this world and dreams of the previous one.

Everything was perhaps good in the pre-apocalyptic world. I have a vague memory of living in abundance in the technology industry. I think some people loved me too. But this might be a dream than a memory. In this desolate world, my life exists in moments with smog to breathe and scraps to eat. But I want to live for children - their twinkling eyes, cheerful laughter, and the future they behold for humanity and the world. Life seems empty without any identity or essence. But this emptiness kindles the stories within. And the stories inspire and motivate to create, rebuild, and rejuvenate a dead world. They become the cause for the effect that is the future. I’ve realized that nothing is permanent. I survive in moments to become the cause for happiness in the hearts of our future.

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We don’t need to live through the horrors of a dystopian world to realize the transient nature of everything around us.
Buddha, the enlightened one, told us that we could cease our sufferings by understanding impermanence and walking on a virtuous path without any cravings or attachments. He delivered sermons with analogies and similes that captivated and guided the royalty as well as the commoner. Later Buddhists carried forward his message by developing some of the most astounding philosophical theories that are still being actively discussed in academia.
Classical Buddhist philosophy covers many aspects of metaphysics, epistemology, and logic while always remaining true to the foundational teachings of Buddha. Exceptional thinkers like Nāgārjuna, Dharmakirti, and Dignāga advanced diverse philosophical views to emphasize on the three unique characteristics (tilakkhaṇa, त्रिलक्षण) of Buddhism - Suffering (dukkha दुःख;), Impermanence (anicca, अनित्य), and No-Self (Anattā, अनात्मन). Much like Conway’s game of life, the basic teachings of Buddha evolved into complex metaphysical theories by different schools of Buddhism across the Indian subcontinent.

The Wheel — Dependent Origination

Like the four chambers of our heart, Buddha gives life to his teachings with the Four Noble Truths:

• (Dukkha) There’s suffering in life

• (Samudaya) The suffering has a cause (Craving and Ignorance)

• (Nirodha) There’s an end to this suffering

• (Marga) Following the Eightfold path can liberate us from the suffering

They are the foundation on which everything else is built in Buddhism. Different metaphysical and soteriological concepts are categorized, connected, and then conveyed with metaphorical representations to deliver the message to the masses.

The Second Truth, Samudaya, correlates to Pratītyasamutpāda (प्रतीत्यसमुत्पाद) — the doctrine of dependent origination. It consists of twelve members that are co-dependent and depicted on the rim of a wheel representing this world. All these members are related to various material, mental, and physiological factors. Our suffering has its cause in the first member, ignorance or nescience (avidya), similar to Shankaracharaya’s idea in Advaita Vedānta. The remaining eleven members have been described in Saṃyutta Nikāya, an important Buddhist scripture:

• Saṅkhāra (संस्कार) - Motivations, volitional formations

• Vijñāna (विज्ञान) - Sense-consciousness

• Nāmarūpa (नामारूपा) - Name and Form

• Āyatana (आयतन) - The six sense bases (eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind)

• Sparśa (स्पर्श) - Contact

• Vedanā (वेदना) - Feelings

• Taṇhā (तृष्णा) - Cravings or desire

• Upādāna (उपादान) - Clinging or attachments

• Bhava (भव) - Existence, Becoming

• Jāti(जाति) - Birth, Rebirth

• Jarāmaraṇa(जरामरण) - Old age and death

The members are causally related — this being, that appears (अस्मिन् सति इदं भवति). Hence the name, dependent origination. Different schools of Buddhism have proposed diverse theories to causally relate the members to each other.
The Vaibhāṣikas split the twelve members into sets of two, five, three, and two. These sets represent three lives - Past, Present, and Future. ¹

The members of the Past-Present set are the fruition of causes established in the previous lives, while the Present-Present set represents our actions in the current life. They become the cause for events in our future lives that connects back to the root cause of ignorance and motivation. Hence, the Wheel keeps on revolving until we attain liberation by getting rid of nescience through the Four Noble Truths. ²

Nāgārjuna, however, has a different idea. He categorizes the twelve members into sets of defilement (klesha), karma, and suffering (dukkha).

The three defilements — nescience, craving, and attachments — give rise to the two karmas — motivations and existence — and that these two give rise to the seven sufferings — sense-consciousness, name-and-form, six sense bases, contact, feelings, rebirth, and old age and death. Thus the “Wheel of Becoming” revolves again and again. ³

The Seeker, however, has a way out. The last two Noble Truths tell us that we can attain liberation and stop the Wheel by walking on the Eightfold Path.

According to Peter Harvey, the doctrine of dependent origination unites the Four Noble Truths and makes possible a methodological science of moral and spiritual life. By becoming aware of how one is conditioned, one can come to alter the flow of conditions by governing, suspending, or, for skillful ones, intensifying them so as to reduce the dukkha, and ultimately stop it entirely by transcending the conditions: reconditioning, then de-conditioning.⁴

Instead of converging to an Absolute, Buddhists prefer to explain everything with causal relationships. And two incredible scholars from the Nalanda University, Dharmakirti, and Nāgārjuna take Buddhist metaphysics to greater heights with their notable philosophical works, Hetubindu and Mūlamadhyamakakārikā.

Causes and Conditions

In Hetubindu, Dharmakirti explains impermanence with the metaphysics of causality. He makes a logical argument to prove that things only exist momentarily, the causal efficacy (अर्थ क्रिया कारित्व) being a necessity for their momentary existence.⁵

We can understand his philosophical position by taking an example of causality in a gradual process:

• Suppose an object A has the causal efficacy to produce an effect B.

• For the sake of argument, let’s assume that at moment M1, A does not produce B. But at a moment M2, A produces B.

• This means that A holds two different properties of non-production and production.

• This is absurd. We have a contradiction when incompatible properties are predicated on the same thing. Hence, to arrive at a state of non-contradiction, we have to understand that A at M1 is different from A at M2. This implies that even in a gradual process, things only exist momentarily.

The same argument is also given for an instantaneous process. One might object that different properties or states do not imply momentary existence. But Buddhist scholars justify their position by raising the question of different identities. Can we assume the same identity for an object with contradictory inherent properties? Objects with different intrinsic properties cannot be identical. And if they are not identical at different moments, it implies that their existence was, in fact, momentary.

While Dharmakirti justified the fundamental teachings of Buddha with causal efficacy (hetu), Nāgārjuna relied on causal conditions (pratyaya, प्रत्यय) to defend his philosophical views.

A causal condition is an event, state, or process whose occurrence is necessary to explain another event, state, or process. ⁶

For example, the <causal condition, C> for <charging my phone, “event, e”> is that the cable should be <connected to the power outlet, “Conditional event, c”>.

C: c —> e

Nāgārjuna identified four distinct causal conditions to explain any phenomenon:

• Efficient condition - I need to connect the cable to my phone for charging.

• Supporting condition - For my phone to charge, there should be a continuous power supply from the outlet, and the cable should be in working condition.

• Immediate conditions - The pins from the cable pass current to the battery in my phone. The battery charges by a potential difference between the two electrodes.

• Dominant condition - I need to charge the phone to talk to my friend.

An important point to note is that Nāgārjuna is not implying that these conditions create a phenomenon. The conditions are neither the essence nor the potentiality for the existence of a thing. Everything is merely interdependent. Ignorance is the causal condition for suffering, and not that ignorance creates suffering.

The subtle distinction between a cause and a condition is central to the philosophy of Nāgārjuna. He remains true to the fundamental doctrine of dependent origination but with causal conditions as the driving factor and not direct causation. Consequently, we cannot have anything that originates on its own or through something else. Nāgārjuna says:

Neither from itself not from another

Nor from both, 

Nor from a non-case,

Does anything whatever, anywhere arise

In this opening verse of Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, Nāgārjuna refutes the Satkāryavāda theory of Sāṅkhya, which says that an effect preexists in its cause, causation being merely a change or transformation from one state to another while the original thing remains constant and unchanging.⁷

He also negates the causation doctrine of Nyāya-Vaisesika, according to which an effect is a new creation and hence numerically different from its cause.

Both the positions are fallacious, says Nāgārjuna. Things can only dependently co-arise through conditions and nothing else. In a surprising attack on common sense, he further declares that dependent origination is nothing but emptiness. The idea is so radical that it seems absurd and makes you close the browser tab right away in a fit of rage. But hold on. Emptiness is not empty of meaning.

Emptiness (Śūnyavāda (शून्यवाद))

The 18th verse in chapter 24 of Mūlamadhyamakakārikā says:

Whatever is dependently co-arisen

That is explained to be emptiness.

That, being a dependent designation

Is itself the middle way

Emptiness does not mean non-existence. It means that things lack intrinsic nature; there’s no essence or potentiality. Everything is in flux, and the causal conditions lead to an incessant succession of events. The doctrine of emptiness, which forms the basis of the Madhyamaka school, holds true to the fundamental concept of No-Self in Buddhism. Our environment and circumstances condition us. There’s no true identity or intrinsic nature. We mistakenly identify ourselves with a name or a job title. But these are merely linguistic and societal constructions.

The character in our dystopian story loses the perceived identity and becomes something else. The Self is just an illusion. But we exist. Not as somebody with intrinsic nature but as a person who is a conditioned stream of mental and physical processes.

The realist says that everything exists while nothing exists for the nihilist. For Nāgārjuna, interdependence defines conventional existence while understanding that there’s nothing like a true self or essence. Hence, we take a middle path between the realist and the nihilist.

Jay L. Garfield explains the concept of Emptiness in his paper on Dependent arising:

Emptiness and the phenomenal world are not two distinct things. They are rather two characterizations of the same thing. To say of something that is dependently co-arisen is to say that it is empty. To say something that is empty is another way of saying that it arises dependently.

Hence, dependent origination and emptiness are two sides of the same coin.

One realizes a conventional truth(samvritti-sat, समवृत्ति सत् ) after understanding that existence is dependent on origination. But you know the ultimate truth(paramārtha-sat, परमार्थ सत् ) with the realization that dependent origination is nothing but emptiness.

As Nāgārjuna concludes:

If dependent arising is denied,

Emptiness itself is rejected.

This would contradict

All of the worldly conventions

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It’s amazing how different philosophies co-existed and thrived in ancient and classical India. While the Upanishads emphasized the Self, the Buddhists believed in No-Self. Sāṅkhya focused on creation, while Buddhism emphasized causation and conditions. All of this is neither confusing nor chaotic. It’s the ultimate triumph of human inquisitiveness to explore and understand the world and beyond.

1. Buddhist Dependent Origination - Alex Wayman

2. ibid

3. ibid

4. The conditioned co-arising of mental and bodily processes within life and between lives - Peter Harvey

5. The Buddhist doctrine of momentariness and its presuppositions - Rita Gupta

6. Dependent arising and the emptiness of emptiness: Why did Nāgārjuna start with causation? - Jay L. Garfield

7. Causality in the Nyāya-Vaisesika school - Bimal Matilal