5 : An Appropriate Frame

As part of his policy of not getting pinned down on issues of scale when presenting the process of rebirth, the Buddha was careful to avoid an issue that animated his contemporaries when they discussed rebirth: the metaphysics of what a person is, and what does or doesn’t get reborn after death.

In other words, he refused to explain whether any “what” underlay the experience of rebirth. He simply talked about how the experience happened and what could be done to end it.

In modern philosophy this approach is called phenomenology: talking about the phenomena of experience simply in terms of direct experience, without making reference to any underlying reality that may or may not stand behind that experience. The Buddha was a radical phenomenologist in that he dealt with experience on its own terms. He was a pragmatist in that he adopted this approach because he saw that it worked in bringing suffering to an end.

The Canon reports that the members of the other schools—and even some of his own monks—often expressed frustration over this aspect of the Buddha’s approach (MN 63; AN 10:93). In their eyes, the whole question of rebirth revolved around the “what” that did or didn’t get reborn. Either the life force was identical with the body, thus allowing no way for rebirth to occur after the body dies; or else there was a soul or life force separate from the body, which either died along with the body or else survived death. Yet when the Buddha’s contemporaries pressed him to take sides on this question and related questions, he consistently put them aside.

The tendency to read a “thing” or “no thing” behind the processes of dependent co-arising is still alive with us today. Many people have assumed that the Buddha taught that there is no self—which means that there would be no thing behind the process of dependent co-arising, and nothing to be reborn. Many others have assumed that he taught a True Self underlying our false sense of an individual self, and therefore underlying the process. Both assumptions, however, are misinformed. The Buddha actually refused to state whether a self of any kind does or doesn’t exist. The one recorded time he was asked point-blank whether the self exists, he declined to answer (SN 44:10).

This was because he saw that questions of this sort interfere with the path of practice leading to the end of suffering. As he said in MN 2, to focus on such questions as—“Am I? Am I not? What am I? What was I in the past? What will I be in the future?”— is a form of inappropriate attention: the kind of attention that ignores the four noble truths and actually leads to further suffering. So if a worldview demands an explanation of the “what” behind rebirth—as we find not only in the worldviews of ancient India but also in many modern worldviews as well—it’s simply a form of inappropriate attention that perpetuates suffering. If you want to put an end to suffering, you have to put the metaphysical demands of your worldview aside.

The Buddha found it more appropriate and fruitful to focus instead on the process of how birth is repeatedly generated by factors immediately present to awareness throughout life, and directly experienced by factors in the present moment. This is because these factors lie enough under your control to turn them toward the ending of repeated rebirth.

An understanding of the process as process—and in particular, as an example of the process of dependent co-arising—can actually contribute to the end of suffering. It gives guidance in how to apply the tasks appropriate for the four noble truths to the process of birth: i.e., comprehending suffering, abandoning its cause, realizing its cessation, and developing the path to its cessation. When these duties have been completely mastered, they can bring birth to an end by abandoning its causes, thus opening the way to the ultimate happiness that comes when the mind is no longer entangled in the process of birth.

The Buddha used several models for explaining the process of dependent co-arising, with each model listing a sequence of interdependent factors. In the most standard model, the factors are these:

This list has many complications, with certain factors appearing at several points in the sequence. For example, the factor of ignorance is identical with the sub-factor of inappropriate attention, under name-&-form. The list also contains many feedback loops, sequences where an effect returns to influence the next instance of its cause. As we will see, the existence of feedback loops in the process is what makes it self-sustaining and gives it the potential to continue indefinitely.

For the moment, however, we can focus on one of dependent co-arising’s most obvious features: its lack of outside context. It avoids any reference to the presence or absence of a self or a world around the processes it describes.

Instead, it forms the context for understanding “selves” and “worlds.” In other words, it shows how ideas of such metaphysical contexts are created and clung to, and what happens as a result. In particular, it shows in detail how the acts of creating and clinging to metaphysical assumptions about the existence or non-existence of the self or the world actually lead to birth and suffering. This means that dependent co-arising, instead of existing in a metaphysical context, provides the phenomenological context for showing why metaphysical contexts are best put aside.

The important factors leading from metaphysical assumptions to rebirth are “name,” “contact,” “clinging,” and “becoming.”

Under “name” is the sub-factor of attention, which MN 2—as we have seen—depicts as the act of choosing which questions to ask. When attention is inappropriately directed to questions of the metaphysics of identity—about what you are or whether you exist—it entangles you in a “thicket of views, a writhing of views” that keep you trapped in suffering and stress. As for views of what the world is and where it came from, the Buddha shows that these all derive from contact at the six senses (DN 1; SN 35:82). These views about self and world then become objects of clinging, which in turn gives rise to becoming: the act of taking on an identity within a particular world of experience defined around the craving underlying that clinging. Becoming, in turn, is the condition for repeated birth.

The antidote to this process is to direct attention appropriately to identifying the four noble truths as they’re experienced. This form of attention enables you to see the act of view-formation as a process, to see the drawbacks of the process, and so to abandon any clinging to the content of those views. This removes the conditions for further becoming and birth. Even though the four noble truths count as a type of view, their ability to see all views—even themselves—as part of this process, means that they contain the seeds for their own transcendence (AN 10:93).

So if you want to get the most use out of dependent co-arising, then rather than viewing dependent co-arising as occurring within the context of self and world, you’d do better to view ideas of self and world as occurring within the context of dependent co-arising.

The advantage of adopting this approach is that it focuses attention away from things for which you aren’t responsible—metaphysical entities that may or may not underlie experience—and points instead to events for which you are: acts of attention and the various forms of intention under “fabrications” and “name.” This is why, even though the Buddha didn’t take a stand on the issues of the metaphysics of rebirth, he devoted a lot of time to explaining the connection between rebirth and action. Action is what leads to rebirth, but action—skillful action—can also bring it to an end.

When you adopt this perspective, you focus directly on actions as they are experienced as factors: parts of a causal sequence. And this, in turn, makes it easier to apply the duties of the four noble truths with greater precision. In other words, it helps you notice which factors—such as ignorance—cause suffering and so should be abandoned by replacing them with right view; which ones—such as attention and intention, under “name”—can be converted to the path to the end of suffering and so should be developed before they, too, are abandoned; and which ones—such as clinging, becoming, and birth—constitute suffering and so should be comprehended to the point of disenchantment and dispassion, leading to the realization of the end of suffering: release.