Dialogues of the Buddha, Part II — trans. T. W. and C. A. F. Rhys Davids (1910)

Dukkha, on the other hand, and the causes of it — ' evam . . . samudayo'— holds, in nearly every case, the last word in this notable formula. And according to the Buddhist records, as told in the preceding Suttanta, the fact and sequence of those causes dawn ever on the mind of every Buddha in response to the anguished questionings of his mind brooding over the misery of the world, and of the infinite living and dying in it.

Hence in trying to account adequately for the profound significance and high importance attached by the founders of Buddhism to the doctrine of the Pa/icca-samuppada, we need to keep in view this dual aspect of it — that it is a way of explaining phenomena, and that the most interesting phenomenon to be explained is that of Dukkha l. The latter standpoint is that of man as recipient or percipient, the former, that of man as intellective or interpreting.

Now if to this twofold aspect we add that of man as reacting, by will and deed, to his impressions and his interpretations, and take the Buddha's doctrine of the Eightfold Path, as the corresponding formula, we have not only the whole of Early Buddhism in a nutshell, but also just those points concerning which we find the most emphatic affirmations of Dhamma as Dhamma ascribed to Gotama —

' Both in the past and now do I set forth just this : — " dukkha and the cessation of dukkha 2."

1 Let us put aside questions of the Beginning and the End. I will teach you the Dhamma: — That being thus, this comes to be. From the coming to be of that, this arises. That being absent, this does not happen. From the cessation of that, this ceases 3.

' There is a Middle Path . . . discovered by the Tathagata (discovered by none but a Tathagata, S. V, 14) . . . this Aryan Eightfold Path . . . 4.' This Path, my friend, is the religious life (brahmacariya) 5.'

These three central tenets are put, by our earliest and best authorities, in these or other words, into the mouth of Gotama himself at the very outset of his career, in his first sermon, as the doctrine of the Four Aryan or Noble Truths. And the Pa/icca-samuppada, with its positive formula of uprising (Sa mud ay a), and its negative formula of passing away (Nirodha), covers the ground staked out by the second and third of these Truths. It is frequently quoted in this connexion c, and its importance in the Dhamma is thereby made the more evident.

But the reason for that importance only becomes clear, when we look away from the dukkha to which the formula is

1 It is regrettable that later Buddhist teaching, yielding to this fact of 'interest,' obscured the great causal principle taught by Gotama, through the simile of a wheel, so as to include the va//a, or round of Samsara. A ladder or stairway (nissewi), like that used to illustrate the way to see Brahma (' Dialogues/ I, 308, Tevijja-Sutta), would have been more appropriate.

2 M.I, 140.

s lb. II, 32. Cf. ib. I, 190, where Sariputta says — 'The Exalted One has said, that he who sees the Pa/icca-samuppada, sees the Dhamma, and he who sees the Dhamma sees the Pa/icca-samuopada.'

4 Vin. I, 10. 5 S. V, 15.

e e.g. S. II, 14-16, 28, 29, 57-9, 108, 109, 129-31, A. I, 177.

so often applied, away too from the antecedents of dukkha, and consider all that is implied in the Pa/icca-samuppada by way of method and Weltanschauung.