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"Bur I have never got outside that circle. I have never broken out of the ring of what I have already done and cannot ever undo."
Joe Christmas (William Faulkner's Light in August, p. 296)
"Nascentes morimur finisque ab origine pendet."
Manilius, Astronomica IV, 16
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An old adage has it that one who rides a tiger cannot dismount. But if the fundamental insight of the Buddha's enlightenment experience is correct -- viz., that each samsaric 'tigrestrian' is astride a beast of his or her own fabrication -- the ineluctability of the human situation is only apparent. As is well known, the subsequent articulation of the elements of this insight into a tight philosophical formula is probably not due to the deliberate reflections of the Buddha alone, nor, indeed, to those of any one individual. Very likely in its first enunciation the tathaagata's vision assumed the form of a mere catena of interdependent occurrences,[1] to which a multiradial wheel (the so-called bhavackra or 'wheel of becoming') eventually became annexed as a more or less natural symbol. Moreover, the twelve-membered and ultimately paradigmatic representation of the formula was at first only one of several variant forms. [2]
But there is no need for still another diachronic survey of the increasingly refined theoretical apparatus and accompanying pictographs utilized in the many attempts to explicate pratiityasamutpaada. Nor need we review the changes in assessment of its function.[3] In fact, the history (and social geography) of the mutations in structure and interpretation of the doctrine
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of conditioned origination have been the subject of a number of scholarly works. Perhaps the best accounts of these matters are to be found in G.G. Pande's Studies in the Origins of Buddhism (University of Allahabad, 1957) and in D. Kalupahana's Causality: the Central Philosophy of Buddhism (University of Hawaii Press, 1975). Hence, while developmental considerations do play a role in this study, our primary aim is to begin by ascertaining those relations across a single determinate time slice that constitute a given pratiityasamutpaada configuration.[4] To put it more specifically, we shall assume an essentially 'structuralist' stance in conducting a synchronic analysis of the configuration selected below for scrutiny, thereby establishing a solid basis for carrying out such comparisons and chronicalings as may be called for afterwards. Here the broadest possible definition of 'structure' stands behind our use of the term 'structuralist';[5] i.e., a 'structure' is taken to be 'a set of any elements between which, or between certain sub-sets of which, relations are defined.'[6] Furthermore, in conformity with the general precepts of structuralist methodology, our approach entails a "rejection of any atomistic tendency. . . . [in that] the meaning of the individual elements which are structured arises out of and only out of the relations of the elements to one another and their mutual interdependence." [7] In other words, 'element' (or 'factor') in the present context means no more than 'an aggregate of relational situations'. The choice of this more or less formal method ('formal' in the sense that an initial abstraction is made from the eventual intentional and/or ontological loads to be borne by the relata and by the relations themselves) was prompted by its prima facie serviceability in the following areas of concern to us.
(I) Because of some long-standing misconceptions that surround it (them), the nature and deductive properties of the relationship(s) [8] linking the factors of any given instance of pratiityasamutpaada to one another need to be reassessed. The main body of our study is intended as a step in that direction.
(II) The erroneous tendency on the part of many glossators to assimilate certain Buddhist models of pratiityasamutpaada to the Saa^nkhya pari.naamavaada scheme will, it is hoped, be counteracted by increased clarity with regard to the structural nuances of both the key relationship alluded to immediately above, and the overarching gestalt in which this relationship figures. Especially in the
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Saa^nkhya case, critics have already supplied inter-systematic comparisons corrective of at least the most glaring errors of their predecessors. Our analysis of the deductive properties of the causal relationship will lend additional support to the contention that the Buddhist and Saa^nkhya models of causation are irreconcilably different in all respects.
(III) Re the oft-attempted task of differentiating the Naagaarjunistic from the earlier interpretations of pratiityasamutpaada, the application of a suitably adapted version of Roland Barthes' distinction between 'myth' and 'poetry',[9] opens up (in our opinion) the possibility of a deeper and more satisfactory hermeneutic confrontation with the texts in question.
(IV) A re-expression of the Buddhist doctrine of causation or conditioned origination in terms which are maximally intelligible to and useful for our own Zeitgeist is a desideratum, if this doctrine has a genuinely universal significance. Items I and II taken together constitute the focal point of the present analysis, while III and IV will be dealt with in detail in a subsequent investigation.
In what follows, it will be convenient to focus on the list of properties of and general formula for conditioned origination appearing in Sa.myutta Nikaaya II, 26 and II, 28 together with the corresponding commentary to be found in Sa.myutta Nikaaya Atthakathaa II, 41.[10] Formal tools will be utilized for the explication of the formula ("When this is present, that comes to be, from the arising of this, that arises. When this is absent, that does not come to be, on the cessation of this, that ceases.")[11] and for its four key characteristics ("objectivity, necessity, invariability and conditionality").[12] As was mentioned earlier, we shall here concentrate on the deductive characteristics of the causal relationship described therein and merely refer in passing to inductive approaches to the establishment of the occurrence of that relationship.[13] It is hoped that our explication will provide a contrastive foil against which a more precise critical examination of the positions
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of the later Buddhist schools will be feasible. Note that no attempt will be made to develop a full-fledged formal calculus for the Sa.myutta Nikaaya notion of causation, since such a project would have to be based in part on questionable extrapolations from the canonical texts, which texts tend to be parsimonious -- not to say niggardly -- as concerns the inclusion of details for which there is no clear soteriological justification.
The discussion which runs over the next
few pages presupposes an acquaintance with the logical punctuation, connectives and
principles that occur in any standard axiomatization of the two-valued prepositional
calculus: for example, 'left' and 'right parentheses' ('('and')'), 'material implication'
('
'), 'negation' ('~'),
'conjunction' ('¡E'), transposition, double negation,
etc. In addition, strict implication ('') is
used in the same way as it is by C.I. Lewis in his modal systems,[14]
and, since the implication involved in a causal statement is different from both material
and strict implication.[15] we introduce (in addition to '' and '
')
the symbol '
' to express
causal implication. A special modal operator '
' is also employed to designate causal necessity. '' is obviously the causal
analogue of the Lewis alethic modal operator necessity ('
'). [16] And
finally ' < ' symbolizes immediate temporal antecedence. We begin by defining the
relation '' over
appropriate non-empty domains of individual events or factors. The restriction to
non-empty domains (one which will later be challenged and finally sublated by the
Maadhyamikas in their interpretation of the chain of conditioned origination) adequately
reflects the demand for objectivity with which the list of constraints in SII., 26 begins;
i.e., as Kalupahana (op. cit., pages 91-92) unpacks 'objectivity' in the present context,
it amounts to an insistence that the causal relationship have some firm ontological
backing since, at least in the Sa.myutta Nikaaya, causation is not to be construed as a
more construct connecting two conceptual figments.
Next, keeping in mind the second and
third of the characteristic enumerated in SII, 26, viz., that causation be necessary and
inveriable, we equate ' ~ a~
b' (to be read ' ~ a causally implies ~ b' or ' ~ a is causally sufficient for ~ b') with
'
(~ a ~ b)' (to be read 'the material implication of the fact that ~ b
by the fact that ~ a is causally necessary').
Hence: D1. ~a~ b = df (~a~b).[17]
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Note the de dicto application of the model operator.[18] We thus express symbolically, and with reasonable fidelity
to S II, 26, the necessary and invariable connection that obtains between an event or
factor and its successor in the twelvelinked (or any other more general S-like) causal
nexus. For example, 'there being no ignorance is causally sufficient for concluding that
there are no dispositions'. But if on says that ~a is causally sufficient for ~b, this
amounts [19] to asserting that the absence of ~b (which, by
double negation, is equivalent to the presence of b) is causally sufficient for the
absence of ~a (equivalently, the presence of a). (Again using the example we have chosen,
'there being dispositions is causally sufficient for concluding that there has been
ignorance'.[20]) Formalizing the fact that transposition is
valid for '' yields:
( C1 ) (~a~b)(ba).
Thus we have a means for expressing a review of the
Buddhist causal chain in reverse or contraposed order (pratiloman) well as in its regular
or 'natural' order (anuloman). Moreover, since '(ba)(~a~b)' is a substitution instance
of C1, we can obviously conclude that: (C2) (ba) ¡Ý (~a~b). All of this is so elementary as to be
trivial and accords with ordinary usage as well as what we take to be the sense of S II,
28 above.
It is, however, to be conceded that the Buddhist formula (both as it appears in the Pali and in the Buddhist Sanskrit versions quoted by Kalupahana on page 90 of his Causality), is not without a certain ambiguity, (a fact which has already been noted by C. Rhys Davids on page 154, n.2 of the Saakya or Buddhist Origins, London, 1934), owing to the use of the same pronoun (idam) to refer to both cause and effect. (See footnote 11.) It is clear from our point of view that a pronoun (or even a pair of distinct pronouns)[21] does (do) not function as perspicuously as would a pair of distinct variables (such as the 'a' and 'b' we have employed in D1 and C1) to distinguish cause and effect from one another. It is equally clear that these two relata must be distinguished from one another,[22] lest the Buddhist causal theory be allowed to collapse into one another brand of satkaaryavaada;[23] but no Buddhist school, with the possible exception of the Vaibhaasika continuators of the Sarvastivadin tradition, would assent to the explicit identification of a cause with its effect. This is to say no more than
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that almost all, if not all, Buddhist schools would reject
'aa'.Yet despite the
general consensus among critics and glossators (ancient and modern alike) that, within
Buddhism, cause and effect are to be construed as mutually distinct from one another, we
are either not told by textual interpreters exactly what kind of interrelatedness does
obtain between the two factors, or, worse still, where an explicit statement of the nature
of the causal linkage is made, that statement turns out to be inconsistent with
fundamental Buddhist tenets.[24]
Jayatilleke's otherwise excellent
analysis of causation, for instance, appears to be flawed by his failure to see the
distinctive character of the causal relationship which, in the long run, gives rise to an
inconsistency in his account. For, Jayatilleke blurs the necessity which we (and the
authors S and SA) view as characterizing the relationship which binds two events or
factors (see D1), into a necessity predicable of one of the relata (call it 'a'[25] ) which relatum is then erroneously regarded by
Jayatilleke as both necessary and sufficient for another event (call it 'b').[26] But, by symmetry, this is tantamount to concluding that
the factor expressed by 'a' and that expressed by 'b' are mutually necessary and
sufficient for one another, i.e., that '(ab)' and '(ba)', and therefore that the two relata are causally equivalent to
one another. Contrast this erroneous conclusion with C2 above. The satkaaryavaada trap
has, it would seem, caught a very illustrious victim.
Pande is another scholar who succumbs
to a confusion of a very similar sort[27] (which is in
Pande's case too, due at least in part to a failure to see causation as a relationship sui
generis). It would help if, in possession of clear notions of ''and ' ', respectively, metaphysicians could, as a
first approximation to a precise conception of the nature of the causal connective, see it
as stronger than material implication (with a causal implication implying a material
implication, but not conversely) and weaker than strict implication (a strict implication
implying a material implication, but not conversely.) In symbols:
(C3) (a
(C4) (a
To take another (and final) example, Kalupahana also falls short of disentangling the Gordian knot at the heart of the metaphysics of (this
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species of) causation. In fact, the same passage from Ms. Stebbing with which Jayatilleke rounds off his account is pivotal in Kalupahana's presentation as well. (See page 97 of Kalupahana's Causality.)
A few additional comments are in order.
In our presentation, as will be recalled, '' is a connective whose arguments are individual factors or
events. In order to be able to express explicitly each of the several mutually dependent
factors that together comprise a typical cause in early Buddhist theory, '' can be regarded instead as obtaining
between sets or classes of these individual factors (excluding null classes in conformity
with the requirement that causation be objective, but not excluding unit classes), so that
if A = a1, a2 ...... an and B = b1, b2...... bj then 'AB' asserts that those individual factors
which comprise A are conjointly causally sufficient for the event or events which make up
B.
Looking beyond the causal theory delineated in S II 26 and 28 and SA II, 41, we must contend with the fact that some philosophers flatly deny the alleged 'necessity' of causation (Autrecourt and Hume come directly to mind among Western thinkers as do the Sautraantikas among the Buddhist theorists) so that causal connection for them reduces to a mere invariable succession of contiguous factors. To explicate such a causal concept, the introduction of an extralogical primitive ' H ' (to be read 'is immediately antecedent to') suggests itself. We shall not here attempt to work out the details of a systematization of causation centering on ' < ', since to do so would require an excursion into the philosophy of time, in order to consider such questions as: "Must a cause strictly precede its effect or can the former be contemporaneous with the latter?"[29] "Can an effect precede its cause?"[30] Suffice it to say that it would call for more than just minor modifications of D1 and C1-C4 above in order to capture the full import of the Sautraantika notion of causation.
As for an explication of the Maadhyamika stance with respect to the causal relationship, the construction of a system based on a primitive designating counterfactual implication was considered and quickly dismissed (along with one or two similar alternative systematizations) as symptomatic of what Naagaarjuna might term (were he given to Sartrean transports) the samsarin's 'condemnation to mythologize'. We shall have more to say in a forthcoming study about the Maadhyamika drive to 'escape the stranglehold of myth'.[31]
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And finally, turning to the various attempts (by Jacobi, Pischel and Schayer, inter alia)[32] to establish an isomorphism between the Saa^nkhya and Buddhist causal schemes, the undeniable but superficial resemblances between the two can be adequately accounted for in terms of their probable common provenance from a pre-aryan proto-philosophical Weltanschauung. Beyond that, if the disparity between the logical structure of the relationship connecting the nodal points of the Buddhist system(s) and that linking the tattvas of the Saa^nkhya scheme is not enough to discourage parallel-seekers,[33] the differences in ontological status of the relata themselves certainly ought to suffice.[34]
Our sketch concludes with some suggestions for homeomorphs to be obtained by transposing any of the historically extant versions of pratiityasamutpaada into idioms more appropriate to the twentieth century. The Whiteheadean account of the relatedness of actual entities,[35] the Peircean depiction of a cyclic system[36] and the formulation by A.M. Turning of an abstract definition of a kind of computer (the so-called 'Turing machine')[37] seem to us the most likely vehicles for effecting a transposition of this sort.
Whatever its semiological clothing (and in so speaking we reveal our strong Maadhyamika affinities) comprehension of the significance of pratiityasamutpaada is, for all Buddhist schools, essential to the elimination of du.hkha. In terms of our initial figure of speech, the 'tiger' of worldly suffering is, by means of meditation on this pivotal Buddhist formula, denuded of its 'fearful symmetry'. Paper tiger that it is, it burns for a brief sa.msaaric moment, rendered incandescent by the mystic's penetrating gaze; and in the wake of the conflagration, not even the ashes of `suunyataa remain.
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UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO AT ALBUQUERQUE
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1. That is, a nexus of functionally related or mutually conditioned arisings or originations (pratiityasamutpaada) together with the (causal) relationships obtaining among the relata. However, the term 'catena' or 'chain' was apparently not employed in this connection until E. Burnouf's characterization of the scheme as an enchainement (in his Introduction a l'histoire du Buddhisme indien, 1894).
2. Though, to be sure, the motif of a wheel with precisely twelve radii is a very ancient one in Indian thought, appearing as it does in e.g., Atharva Veda X, 8,4 and .Rg Veda I, 164, 115. Dodecapartite model or not, there does seem to have been a general assent to the apportionment of the several elements or members of the structure into three subgroups, relating respectively to the present existence and to those immediately preceding and following it.
3. Very cogent discussions of this are to be found on pages 60 and 78-81 of E. J. Thomas' The History of Buddhist Thought (New York, 1933); pages 106ff, of A.B. Keith's Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon, (Oxford, 1923), and page 73 of F. Streng's "Reflections on the Attention Given to Mental Construction in the Indian Buddhist Analysis of Causality," Philosophy East and West, January, 1975, pp. 71-80.
4. Rather than attempting ab initio to focus on relations that hold through several different times.
5. With so broad a definition, we hope to avoid the temptation to make exclusivistic claims on behalf of any of the several (and chameloeonic) forms which comprise this loose-jointed but extremely influential intellectual movement. Nevertheless it should be noted that our remarks on Nagarjuna (page below) do hinge on conceptual distinctions adapted from the peculiar form of structuralism evolved by Roland Barthes.
6. Page 24 of M. Lane's Introduction to Structuralism. New York, 1970.
7. Lane, Introduction to Structuralism, p. 35. See also J. Lyons, Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics, Cambridge, 1968, page 50. This 'attitude totalisante' (so it is termed by J. Pouillon in his "Presentation: un essai de definition," Les Tempes Modernes, November, 1966, pages 769-90) is, it goes without saying, also to be found in Nagarjuna's writings, where, however, it is enlisted in the service of ends quite different from those of Pouillon.
8. As has been frequently pointed out in the literature (for example by Pande on page 436 of his Studies in the Origins of Buddhism or by E. Conze on pages 148-156 of his Buddhist Thought in India, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1967), the relationship between the various elements of (even a single paradigmatic version of) the causal chain is by no means uniform. Since, however, our primary aim is to ascertain the formal deductive properties of the relationship, we here disregard the nuances of meaning that give rise to the several subclassifications of causes and conditions enumerated by the different Buddhist schools.
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9. R. Barthes, Mythologies (tans. by A. Lavers), New York, 1976, pages 133-136.
10. Hereafter abbreviated as S and SA respectively.
11. ("Imasmi.m sati ida.m hoti, imassa uppaadaa ida.m uppajjati. Imasmi.m asati ida.m na hoti, immassa nirodhaa ida.m nirujjhati.") S II, 28. Translation by D. Kalupahana, Causality: the Central Philosophy of Buddhism, page 90. (S II, 28 is also quoted by other scholars, of course; fox example by A.B. Keith on page 96 of his Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon. Oxford, 1925. Keith cites only the first or positive half of the statement, though this is perhaps not significant.) Where the two overlap (in S II, 26) Kalupahana's translation of this S material follows that of his teacher, K.N. Jayatilleke. See pages 447-448 of Jayatilleke's Early Buddhist Theory of Knowledge, London, 1963. However, in a more extensive discussion of the early Buddhist theory of causation in chapter V of his Causality, Kalupahana goes on to interpose a Buddhist Sanskrit and two different Chinese versions of the lines occurring in S II, 28. We shall again have occasion to consider the Sanskrit version: ("Imasya sato, idam bhavati, imasya asato idam na bhavati. Imasyotpaadaad idam utpadyate, imasya nirodhaad ida.m nirudhyati.") as our analysis develops.
12. (tathataa avitathataa anannathataa idappaccayataa aya.m vucatti ...... pa.ticcasamuppaado.") S II, 26, Jayatilleke, op. cit., page 447. See also Kalupahana, op. cit., page 91. On pages 447-448, Jayatilleke appends the following (translation of the) gloss (SA II, 41) to his translation of S II, 26:
'Objectivity', etc. are synonyms of what is characteristic of causation. As those conditions alone, neither more nor less, bring about this or that event, there is said to be 'objectivity'; since there is no failure even for a moment to produce the events which arise when the conditions come together, there is said to be 'necessity'; since no event different from (the effect) arises with (the help of) other events or conditions, there is said to be 'invariability'; from the condition or group of conditions which give rise to such states as decay and death, etc., as stated there is said to be 'conditionality'.
13. The most sophisticated treatment of issues centering on the inductive confirmation of causality occurs in the later Buddhist treatises, among which J~naana`sriimitra's "Kaaryakaara.nabhaavasiddhi" (J~naana`srimiitraniibandhavalii, ed. A. Thakur, Patna, 1959, pages 317-322) has probably had the greatest influence.
14. See Symbolic Logic by C. I. Lewis and C.S. Langford, New York, 1932.
15. That the causal relation is a relation sui generis is a circumstance which has been overlooked by many, if not most, traditional metaphysicians, both Western and Eastern.
16. In an article entitled "The Logic of Causal Propositions" (reprinted from Mind, 1951, pages 363-382 in The Nature of Causation, M. Brand editor, Urbana Illionis, 1976, pages 257-276), Arthur Burks "seeks to develop a language for expressing causal propositions ... which is more precise, explicit, and formal
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than the language of everyday discourse." (Burks,
page 257.) Among the concepts Burks introduces are '' and ''. We apply a suitably modified portion of this logic of causal
propositions to the passages in S II 26 and 28 in order to deal with certain ambiguities
therein and to provide indications as to how a more perspicuous treatment of the theory of
causation both in S and in alter Buddhist texts might be achieved.
17.
Strictly speaking, as Brand notes on page 35 of his editor's introduction, since the
definiens of D1 involves '',
it must take sentences as arguments, whereas '' obtains between events. We can get around this by following
Brand's suggestion and supposing a function g(a) = a1 , that takes event-describing
sentences into their gerundives, whence a and b in the definiendum of D1 will be replaced
by a1 and b1 . But as long as '' is understood as always requiring prime terms as arguments,
there is not need to uniformly append primes to '' 's variables hereafter, There are other problems with Burk's
logic, but a solution to these is not directly germane to dealing with the cluster of
issues confronting us.
18. I.e.,
'' is affixed to the
definiens of D1 as a whole, and thus qualifies '' rather than qualifying either of the terms which '' binds. In this regard,
Kalupahana remarks (on page 94 of his Causality): "'Invariability' in the early
Buddhist texts does not refer to the nature of causes and effects. On the contrary, it
refers to the nature of the relation existing between causes and effects." It might
perhaps be argued that the introduction of quantifiers is in order at this juncture, so
that the combined necessity and invariability of causation might be expressible with
greater exactitude as, for instance by '(x) (AxBx)'. But apart from the number of (largely unsolved) problems engendered by
attempts to mix modalities and quantifiers, such a move in the direction of
pseudo-precision would seem to distort the sense of S II, 26 far more severely than the
simple incorporation of both notions (viz., 'necessity' and 'invariability' into the
single operator ''.
19. By transposition.
20. Prima facie this may sound a little odd, but upon reflection it is clear that if dispositions are present, we can infer, on causal grounds (and on the strength of the Buddha's insight), that ignorance has occurred.
21. On page 90, op. cit., Kalupahana does allude to other Buddhist source materials which use two different pronouns to refer, respectively, to cause and effect. But pronouns are indexical terms and hence, given the problematicity of the contextual factors which would normally serve to disambiguate them, an interpreter is not (even in cases where different pronouns are employed) on ground as secure as that provided by the use of variables, whose referents can be held fixed throughout the entire course of a given discussion.
22. Kalupahana (ibid. ) cites Mrs. Rhys David (and the contemporary Western philosopher Mario Bunge) approvingly on this matter.
23. The theory that cause and effect are identical in essence. Among Indian philoso-
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phers, the Saa^nkhyas are the most ardent Satkaaryavaadins.
24. The account of pratiityasamutpaada given by Richard Robinson, on pages 22 and 23 of his (The Buddhist Religion, Belmont, California, 1970), is the only one with which we are acquainted that avoids both nebulousness and inconsistency; Robinson's analysis is quite correct as far as it goes.
25. Of course, if an event 'a' is causally sufficient for another event 'b', the latter can correctly be described as necessary for the former, but no license is thereby granted for concluding that the former is necessary as well as sufficient for the latter.
26. Jayatilleke says essentially this on page 449 of his Early Buddhist Theory of Knowledge (and we here replace the 'A' and 'B' employed by Jayatilleke by our 'a' and 'b', respectively, for the sake of notational uniformity throughout this discussion). In his words: "(1) 'Whenever a is present, b is present' and .... (2) 'whenever a is absent, b is absent'. This means that b does not occur unless a is present and occurs only when a is present." Jayatilleke then goes on, on the basis of some remarks made by S. Stebbing on page 264 of A Modern Introduction to Logic, London, 1962 to describe the foregoing as "a scientific view of causation as opposed to the practical common sense view." But all of this comes to saying that the two terms at issue are connected by a bilateral causal implication of some sort; hence the conclusion that the two are causally equivalent to one another can scarcely be avoided.
27. Pande tells us (on page 418 of his Studies in the Origins of Buddhism): "The formula of Paticcasamuppaada...asserts, in effect, that if x assumes any of the two values 'Î, ~Î' y also assumes the same and that 'Î, ~Î' must be interpreted as 'existent, non-existent'." He goes on to say on page 436: "One can still say that in every case the antecedent in the sequence of Paticcasamuppaada is a condition necessary and sufficient to the subsequent."
28. It is perhaps going too far say that pinpointing causal implication in the logical space between the extremes of strict and material implication, mirrors perfectly the positioning of the Buddhist conception of causation (midway between the extremes of strict determinism and indeterminism), which positioning is ascribed to the fourth of causation's characteristics (Kaluaphana, op. cit., page 94) -- viz., the 'conditionality' of causation. Yet there is an undeniable parallelism between the two cases and it remains to be determined how far beneath the surface that parallelism extends.
29. For the Sarvaastivaadins there can indeed be temporal overlap between causes and their effects (see, e.g., Vasubandhu's Abhidharmako`sa II, page 275, trans. and annotated by L. de la Vallee-Poussin, 6 vols., Louvair, 1923-31), a fact which might better be reflected by the adoption of '£' (with 'a£b' symbolizing that the putative cause 'a' is not later than its effect 'b') instead of '<'.
30. In no Buddhist school, to our knowledge, can an effect precede its cause. But, among contemporary Western philosophers, the existence of genuine cases of
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'backward' causation has been entertained as a possibility by J.L. Mackie in "The Direction of Causation," Philosophical Review, LXXV, 4 (October, 1966), pages 441-446, and defended outright by G.H. von Wright (Explanation and Understanding, Ithaca, New York, 1971, pages 76-81).
31. The characterization is due to Roland Barthes (Mythologies, page 135) as is a description of myth as aimed at 'ultrasignificantion' in contradistinction to poetry which "attempts to regain an infra-significantion, a pre-semiological state of language; in short, [poetry] tries to transform the sign back into its meaning." (Ibid., page 133).
32. See E.J. Thomas, The History of Buddhist Thought, pages 77-81.
33. See Pande, op. cit., page 408 as well as our immediately preceding account of causal sufficiency in early Buddhism.
34. See Thomas, ibid. See also B.B. Singh's "Commentary on Gerald Larson's 'The notion of satkaarya in Saa^nkhya'," Philosophy East and West, January, 1975, pages 59-63. Interestingly enough, quite independently of Larson's suggestion that a structuralist orientation might prove fruitful for reevaluatting the Saa^nkhya satkaarya theory (Larson's article on satkaarya appears in the same issue of Philosophy East and West as does Singh's commentary), we had already adopted structuralist methods for the present exploration of pratiityasamutpaada.
35. Masao Abe ("Mahayana Buddhism and Whitehead," Philosophy East and West, October, 1975, pages 415-428) has already explored this possibility in depth.
36. C.S. Peirce, Collected Papers, vol. IV, Harvard University Press, second printing, 1960, page 504ff.
37. See S.C. Kleene, Introduction to Metamathematics, Princeton, New Jersey, 1952, pages 356-386.