Talk:Twelve Nidānas

Three lives and five skandhas

This section has a formating issue. Only part (1st 3 rows) of Schumann table is shown.

Within different schools of Buddhism

the first difficulty is i focus on Theravada's teachings. I think this teaching remains the same in every "school" but..?
as it is, this page i created seems incorrect to me. i put a "whole description" part in order to detail which condition apply to which step. i still want to writte it, but would like an echo, as this further development could be quite long. It could take place in another page. pyl 13:31, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I think with regard to the issue of other schools, the best course if we're unsure (and I certainly don't know enough about non-Theravada views of patticca samupadda to comment) is to simply clearly identify the origin of the material- that it stems from a Theravada reading of the concept, rooted in Buddhaghosa- and then hope that someone better versed in the Mahayana or the defunct Hinayana schools can come in and either say that they agree with the Theravada reading, or where it differs. There are already some comments on a varient interpretation of dependent origination in the Madhyamaka school over at Pratitya-samutpada, for instance.

I reorganized things a little bit; I put the 12 bases in the order that they are in the Visuddhimagga (at least Nanamoli's translation), and made the translations the category headings, with the Pali where it's available in parens afterwords. The rest of the Pali terms can be filled in later.

I'm having a little difficulty interpreting the passage about the complication that the Five Aggregates present; is the difficulty due to the fact that the faculties of perception and descriminiation are typically given as part of the five skandha (which would make the 'name and form' step in reality a set of 2-4 steps)? It would be also helpful if the explanation of the 24 types of conditioning could be expanded a bit; the first sentence is a little unclear to me, and I'm not sure how they fit into the picture.

Conceptually, I'm more concerned about clearly distinguishing how this article is different from the dependent origination page. I think to make this more complimentary to that page, the best thing would be to expand the individual descriptions of the Twelve Nidanas (most likely using the VM as a reference). --Clay Collier 09:23, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Namarupa vs. Skandhas

I reverted the Pali term associated with 'body and mind' back to 'namarupa' from 'skandhas'. Couple reasons; first of all, because it is the term that is used in the modern translation of the Visuddhimagga. Secondly, namarupa (lit. name and form, body and mind) is a much closer translation of body and mind than skandha (heap, aggregate, factor) is. I know that the namarupa article is blank right now, but it is a significant enough term in both Hinduism and Buddhism that it's reasonable to think that it should be filled at some point. --Clay Collier 22:12, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Well, i will try to begin this article and hope someone to make it better pyl 5 July 2005 15:55 (UTC)

No rebirth?

In my quest for figuring out the possibility that early Buddhism did not include rebirth (see Talk:Rebirth (Buddhism)#Rejection of rebirth?), I've stumbled upon pratityasamutpada and the twelve nidanas. The perspectives given by Bucknell and Jurewicz are fascinating, providing an explanation of how the twelvefold chain developed from several older lists, integrating and somewhat chaning a couple of terms in an awkward way. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 07:45, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

Development

Ancestor of standard version
		salayana (sixfold sense-base) + nama-rupa (name-and-form) ↓	= phassa (contact) ↓
avijja → (ignorance)	sankhara → (volitional action)	vijanana (consciousness)
			vedana (feeling) ↓
			etc.

@JimRenge and Ms Sarah Welch: in addition to our recent conversation about rebirth in Buddhism, this is a must-read: Bucknell, Roderick S. (1999), "Conditioned Arising Evolves: Variation and Change in Textual Accounts of the Paticca-samupadda Doctrine", Journal of the Internatopnal Association of Buddhist Studies, Volume 22, Number 2. Bucknell gives a convincing argument of how the present "standard list" was synthesised from other lists, explaining various discrepancies in the "standard list." Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 13:56, 26 August 2018 (UTC)

Also see K.R. Norman's A Philological Approach to Buddhism (1997), at least the first chapter. Highlights some of the reasons for discrepancies and other issues in interpreting Buddhist texts. Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 16:42, 26 August 2018 (UTC)

@Joshua Jonathan and JimRenge: We should clarify that the traditional interpretation is the commonest and reflects the majority in the Buddhism traditions. See Richard Gombrich's chapter 9, in What the Buddha Thought. The chapter starts on page 129. The discussion on pages 133-143 leading to "three corrections" and "anachronistic interpretations" is worth some reflection, then a short summary somewhere. Second source: Peter Harvey, An Introduction to Buddhism: Teachings, History and Practices, page 65 onwards. There are many more RS. Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 14:06, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

Note, though, that Harvey himself is influenced by Theravada-orthodoxy. Harvey, Peter (2015), "The Conditioned Co-arising of Mental and Bodily Processes within Life and Between Lives", in Emmanuel, Steven M. (ed.), A Companion to Buddhist Philosophy, John Wiley & Sons, ISBN 978-1-119-14466-3, doesn't even mention the alternate interpretation. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 15:36, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

JJ: Professor Peter Harvey books published by Cambridge Univ Press and other publishers are RS, though yes his background is in Theravada Buddhism. He does not need to mention the minority alternate views in his papers or a particular book, but we sure can per our community-consensus content guidelines. There are numerous additional sources we can cite for this 'commonest, majority" clarification. Let us work on this later, after you have improved these articles further. Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 01:33, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

Okay. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 04:10, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

Relation with the five skandhas & the meaning of "bhava"

Mathieu Bosivert, A Study of the Five Aggregates in Theravada Buddhism: Their Order and Their Relation to the Doctrine of the Paticcasamuppada, relates the twelve nidanas to the five skandhas. Of course, I'd say; the correlation is quite obvious. I'll add this later.

Bhava has mulitiple meanings; not just "becoming" as in future life or existence, but also existence, state of being, identification with experiences and desires. With other words: craving and clinging setermine your state of mind and your self-identity. See the additions I've made.

And what if dukkha is not literal to be equated with birth, aging and death, but they are enumerations of what becomes dukkha when one is in a 'state of mind of dukkha'? To compare: when you're down, everything turns grey. When you're dukkha, everything is dukkha, out of order, not the way it should be. When you cling and crave, your mind-set is narrowed, and life becomes dukkha. Buddhadasa and Payuto have a strong argument, I think. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 07:19, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

Schmitthausen

Eviatar Shulman (2008), Early Meanings of Dependent-Origination, refers to Schmitthausen (2000), Zur Zwolfgliedrigen Formel des Entstehens in Abhangigkeit, in Horin: Vergleichende Studien zur Japanischen Kultur, 7, in note 14 and 19. Note 14 says "following Frauwallner"; I guess (hope) that this is the same as Frauwallner (1973), History of Indian Philosophy vol 1, as referenced by Dhivan Thomas Jones (2009), New Light on the Twelve Nidanas. See also Gombrich's comments, 'who argues in chapter 9 of his'What the Buddha Thought that the 12-step chain is the result of pasting together two chains, and that the first four links are a parody of Vedic Cosmogony'. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 15:01, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

Frauwallner (1973), p.156-169. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 04:14, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

JJ: Gombrich is stating something else. Let us rely on the Gombrich RS directly, avoid the dhammawheel.com forum/blog. Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 14:09, 30 August 2018 (UTC)