| PAGE ONE Fall, 2001 Issue: Spirit & Crisis EDITOR'S NOTE BUDDHASCOPE DHARMATALK FOUNDOBJECTS GUESTCOLUMN QUOTES POETRY READING ROOM REVIEWS CONTACT US SITE INDEX SUBSCRIBE |
The Wheel of Samsara, with its various cyclical realms in the inner circle. In the outer circle are listed the interdependent stages of becoming ("Dependent Origination"). Through ending our delusion, hatred and greed, and through letting go of clinging and craving, we are able to break the chain and escape our ancient bondage to this illusory wheel of becoming, in Buddhist teachings.
THE FOLLOWING EXCERPTS COME FROM "The Great Discourse on Causation: The Mahanidana Sutta and its Commentaries," translated from the Pali by Bhikku Bodhi, released for free, non-profit distribution through the Buddhist Publication Society, Sri Lanka.
By BHIKKHU BODHI
THE REASON DEPENDENT ARISING is assigned so much weight lies in two essential contributions it makes to the [Buddha's] teachings. First, it provides the teachings with its primary ontological principle, its key to understanding the nature of being.
Second, it provides the framework that guides its programme for deliverance, a causal account of the origination and cessation of suffering. These two contributions, though separable in thought, come together in the thesis that makes the Buddha's teaching a 'doctrine of awakening": that suffering ultimately arises due to ignorance about the nature of being and cease through wisdom, direct understanding of the nature of being ... (pps 1-2)
THE BUDDHA IS NOT INTERESTED in abstract formulas devoid of content; for him content is all-important. His teaching is concerned with a problem — the problem of suffering (dukkha) — and with the task of bringing suffering to an end...
The suffering with which the Buddha's teaching is concerned has a far deeper meaning than personal unhappiness, discontent, or psychological stress. It includes these, but it goes beyond. The problem in its fullest measure is existential suffering, the suffering of bondage to the round of repeated birth and death. The round, the Buddha teaches, has been turning without beginning, and as long as it turns it inevitably brings "aging and death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair." To gain deliverance from suffering, therefore, requires more than relief from its transient individual manifestations. It requires nothing short of liberation from the round... (pps-2-3)