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What is a 'Cause'? And what is a 'Condition'?
anataman
Who needs a title?Where am I? Veteran
What is a Cause in buddhism?
I am not talking about the 'initial' cause, the 'divine spark', or the 'big bang', but what is a 'cause'?
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Comments
Well? What do you Guys (and Gals) define as a condition?
Circumstances that affect reults:
a seed is a cause.
soil, water, & light are conditions
a plant is the effect
or something like that
cause is what give rise to something
you cant' have a plant without a seed. Seed is the cause of a plant.
Don't you know this stuff?
The Six Worlds.
Action.
>
Yes, but that's why it's in BFB, and I like going over old territory... It's like taking a bath; first times great, the second is better especially when you have gotten dirt under the nails and something needs to be scrubbed a little harder...
Hetu is Pali for cause I believe, and paccayo is effects. Not sure what is the Pali word for condition is though.
They're the same in Buddhism, AFAIK, as in general modern science.
No I do not think that they are 'the same' despite what you may 'think' modern science may say (modern science is just a forum like this where people discuss things and provide evidence to back up their claims and counter claims); although I think it is fair to acknowledge that they are very much interdependent and related, but to go into detail would be pointless; here I was just asking what people understood by the meaning of causes and conditions as they perceive them and from a buddhist perspective.
Some may find this interesting in the above context btw:
http://www.hps.cam.ac.uk/people/broadbent/dif_cause_condition.pdf
@anataman That's nice.
A cause or a condition are imputed and interpreted at the same time.
I am thirsty = cause
water from sink, plastic bottle = condition
use water from sink to place water in plastic bottle and drink water = effect
there's a succession of moments chained in a sequence so it appears linear.
that's one way we can envision causality and conditions. We self-reflect and self-impute to make patterns and connections between references points that we set up.
another way to consider it is as a total nexus of infinite finite conditions and causes. this wouldn't look linear but circular.
i am thirsty = the cause and effect of all causes and conditions coming together in that instant then gone.
then the next action of getting water.
then the next action of drinking water.
all of it intimately connected yet never actually meeting because there isn't two moments, nor even one moment. each distinct moment is the totality and gone. always on the edge of everything as everything as an individual appearance, gone.
very much like only hearing the single note, yet there is the continuous flow hence music. each part intimately linked by a web of conditionality and cause yet not actually arising and not actually coming together to actually create something.
and that too is bringing a view into perception and then reading the perception.
"Firewood becomes ash, and it does not become firewood again. Yet, do not suppose that the ash is future and the firewood past. You should understand that firewood abides in the phenomenal expression of firewood, which fully includes past and future and is independent of past and future. Ash abides in the phenomenal expression of ash, which fully includes future and past. Just as firewood does not become firewood again after it is ash, you do not return to birth after death.
This being so, it is an established way in buddha-dharma to deny that birth turns into death. Accordingly, birth is understood as no-birth. It is an unshakable teaching in Buddha's discourse that death does not turn into birth. Accordingly, death is understood as no-death.
Birth is an expression complete this moment. Death is an expression complete this moment. They are like winter and spring. You do not call winter the beginning of spring, nor summer the end of spring.
Enlightenment is like the moon reflected on the water. The moon does not get wet, nor is the water broken. Although its light is wide and great, the moon is reflected even in a puddle an inch wide. The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in dewdrops on the grass, or even in one drop of water." - Dogen
What is?
Now that IS NICE
@anataman The basis of everything we have come to know, and everything we will come to know, starts with an understanding of cause and effect. It's what we know better than anything else, and more foundationally than anything else, even if we don't necessarily know every cause for every effect. Start with the modern understanding of causality as base, and use Buddhism to apply that causality to mental suffering for the purpose of unbinding.
@anataman: by "condition," do you mean, like @Chaz defined above, the facts that help the cause to flourish or do you mean "condition" as "interconnected" or "interrelated," as in the links of dependent co-arising being conditioned and conditioning with each other?
"Unknowable is the beginning of beings enwrapped in ignorance, whom desire leads to continued rebirth"
Is this thread "conditioned" with the thread on "Dependent Origination"?
Really? You know how reality works? I know I have lived with it, but do I really know or understand it? I need to go to your elementary school, because for the life of me, reality has always eluded me, and it always makes me sit up and say 'hello, whats going on here?'...
Cause and effect, yes of course I understand that x leads to y, and how x leads to y is dependent on what is in proximity and has influence over x and y, and the infinite number of things that have gone before to give x and y the chance to interact in such a way that x and y cause z .
But have you ever found yourself in a situation where xxx leads to WHY? (figuratively speaking of course, lol)
I love discussing what we all seem to take as simple and easily understood truths, because this is the environment we find ourselves in, and it has always supported us, so why doubt or question it?
But just take a sneaky peak at what that environment is creating for you, moment by moment, and then look at your hand, and I mean really look at it. Place it on the table or surface in front of you and let your mind relax. And I mean really relax, but with a light focussed attention. What happens - give it a few minutes without judgment? Where does your hand start and when does it stop? I generally take a prominent vein as the focus for that particular meditation. It is interesting to see how the hand starts to dissolve first looking almost alien, and sometimes almost scary, but you can quickly revert to your normal mode of consciousness to reveal your hand is still there; the contact it has with the table becomes just that, a perception of contact, rather than a merging with it.
Now back to @dharmamom's question - yes.
Actually, perhaps we should all go back to grade school, as young kids seem to experience things much closer to reality than adults do, lol. I agree that the basic understanding of cause and effect is something we are always presented with, from the time we are born (cry and get food/diaper change/etc) up until the present. But I don't think probably most of us have anything close to a true understanding of reality.
On a related note, I read this in Trungpa's "The Bodhisattva Path of Wisdom and Compassion" this morning, and it goes along with the same conversation my hubby and I had when discussing which shade of green to paint our son's bedroom walls:
"What do we mean by "red," what do we mean by "green" or "yellow"? How do we know that we share the same experience? Somebody has conveniently put these things together, and we have been programmed since our childhood so that we believe certain things. but how do we know that we are all not color-blind? Your red could quite possibly not be my red at all. I may see an entirely different red than your, although we appreciate redness mutually because we have been programmed that way from childhood. That makes things scary.
Our perception, our approach to reality, could be entirely different than someone else's. We say "I love you" but what do we really mean by that? What is behind the whole thing?"
The more you look at it the more hollow you realize your perceptions and "understandings" really are.
I find this discussion interesting. I'm not sure how I define cause and/or condition, I will think on it and see if I can come up with something adequate.
@anataman ...
@AldrisTorvalds...
enough of that Aldris, people will talk.
Op is the 'cause for this thread'
newbuddhist forum is the 'condition'
our thinking process make us writing an answer in response to Op and it is the 'effect'
if we do not have 'ego-self' we can let go of the Op
then it is 'Nirodha' from 'suffering'
see
still 'I have My Ego'
so 'I am suffering'
but
i can write this without 'Ego' too
then
i do not 'suffer'
because
i am not 'expecting' any praise or blame for 'what i have written'
Cause in anything is merely a convent fiction. There is no one cause to anything, we pick a cause based on what we can do, and according to our purpose.
So know your purpose, Anataman, know, your purpose.
Cause is that which is resposible for a subject or problem. Conditions are the related surrounding factors. A root cause is something that is isolated as being directly responsible.
Yeah right, and if something hits you on the head don't blame gravity, cuz like, there's absolutely noth'n y'all can do bout dat.
Vibrations of a certain frequencies is the cause, the organ of hearing ("ear") is the condition as is the contact with that vibration.
Sound(ear consciousness) is the effect as is feeling, perception, volitional formations (sankhara).
Right. Just accept something might hit us one day, and stop worrying.
Cool
This discussion reminded me of the 2-fold principle of dependent origination described in the suttas:
"When this is, that is.
From the arising of this comes the arising of that.
When this isn't, that isn't.
From the cessation of this comes the cessation of that."
Thich Nhat Hahn wrote "The Buddha expressed Interdependent Co-Arising very simply: 'This is, because that is. This is not, because that is not. This comes to be, because that comes to be. This ceases to be, because that ceases to be.' [...] They are the Buddhist genesis."
And before proceeding to explain what Interdependent Co-Arising is, he tells that "in the Sarvastivada School, four kinds of conditions (pratyaya) and six kinds of causes were taught. [...] All four kinds of conditions must be present for every thing that exists."
Not to make an essay of the thread, these conditions are: cause/seed/root condition, condition for development, condition of continuity, and object as condition.
The causes, which are encapsulated in the first condition, are creative force, concurrent condition, seed condition of the same kind, associated condition, universal condition, and ripening condition.
This is the introduction to the subject of Interdependent Co-Arising.
Since I move in the junior league for advanced ideas but I'm learning a lot from these two threads, please @anataman, could you please develop your idea for starting the thread? What went missing in the other one that brough you to open this one? Or what point were you originally trying to make? If you picture me now, I'm a totally serious student with the textbook on my lap. Really learning a lot...
I will @dharmamom. I am a student of interdependent co-arising. It is because of something I have experienced in meditation, and I alluded to it in the hand meditation above. When I meditate, I reach a state where things dissolve, and it becomes difficult to see where one thing starts and another ends. I am not talking about things disappearing, I am talking about (and this is hard to describe) how things appear to merge (they remain as objects of perception) with one another in the field of awareness. Now it is at this point that the term 'form is emptiness' comes to mind, so make of it what you will.
My problem (well I wouldn't really call it a problem, as it does not really matter if I get an answer or not) is that whilst things in everyday life appear to have a discrete 'boundary', and one discrete object can be seen to act on another in the regular causal way, in the meditative state I describe, everything is seen to be happening or acting all at once together, so that there is a blurring of the distinction between what a cause and a condition actually is. This leads me to conclude that actually there is no distinction and every cause is a condition for every other cause. But I am happy for someone to correct this if it is a misunderstanding of the experience of causation from the perspective I have described. It may mean you have to stare at your hand for a little while to see what I mean. lol
In actual fact what the buddha described fits more neatly with what I have experienced, than with the descriptions of interdependent co-arising as normally stated. So when this is, so is that, when this is not, this is not also.
So in conclusion, I'm here because you and everyone else is. When you're not here, neither will I be...
Metta
I think it depends on how you define the terms. If you define them in a particular way, "cause" and "condition" could mean the same thing.
~ SN 12.2 Paticca-samuppada-vibhanga Sutta: Analysis of Dependent Co-arising
That is not really different from saying "The cause of fabrications is ignorance....The cause of feeling is contact, the cause of craving is feeling, the cause clinging/sustenance is craving...the cause of aging and death is birth.
Just 2 different statements saying the same thing. In the first statement, ignorance is the condition. In the 2nd statement, ignorance is the cause. But both statements are saying the same thing really.
AKA, a condition of ignorance causes suffering.
Indeed, but it is nice to experience that for yourself.
Now what does @atiyana have to say?
Why the sudden, deep interest in atiyana, suddenly?
Care to share the basis of your curiosity?
Thich Nhat Hanh seems to distinguish between "condition" and "cause." When he proceeds to explain the interdependent co-arising itself, he talks of links or causes for each of the twelve... well, causes. He doesn't use the word "condition" as in Thanissaro Bhikku's translation.
Where are those Pali teachers when you need one?
She has been irritating me...
http://www.sevenreflections.com/name/Atiyana/
http://www.sevenreflections.com/name-numerology/jason/
@anataman...I thought we had covered this before elsewhere....
If you are irritated, that irritation is YOUR problem....
Yes I know - I'm dealing with it
... :coffee: ...
That's better...
http://www.sevenreflections.com/name-numerology/jason/
If there is a moon in a pool of water the conditions are the moon the water the eye and the consciousness.
I think a cause is the same thing as condition.
What are the terms (in Pali, Sanskrit, or both, or whatever else) that we have translated causes and conditions from? What do they mean in their native languages?
To me, if we change them to verbs, they are definitely different.
to cause something is not the same as to condition something.
Condition, to me, implies something that has happened more over time.
The state or condition of my mind is the result (in part) of causes, it seems. Kinda. Cause gives rise to condition.
But that might not be an accurate translation from other languages which is why I'm curious what they happen to be, if anyone knows off hand.
Yes what are the translations,
You may have a point there @karasti.
Mork calling Orson, come in Orson...
nano nano
actually, it's 'Nanu Nanu'..... 'nano' is italian for dwarf.
(giggling as I write.....)
I know - but nano nano also means really really small
Thich Nhat Hanh uses alternately "hetu" and "pratyaya" for condition and cause in the introduction (sometimes he interchanges both words) and "nidanas" for the twelve links in the explanation. Though it sounds confusing the way I explain it, his explanation of the subject is very clear. Caroline Brazier and Alexandra David Neel use "pratyaya" when they refer to the twelve links.
Looks like the theoretical experts have fled the site today...
Yes, but my biggest problem with all the 'buddhist stuff', is that it really don't correlate with what I actually experience...
And that's really annoying and above all worrying.
How can someone live their life as a monk/nun and yet be expected after 10 years of isolation or more to fit into a society that gave birth to them...
Perhaps I don't see things properly, but I don't expect them to either...
Monks/nuns aren't expected to return to layperson life, if they've dedicated their lives to being monks/nuns. It's just like priests and preachers have decided to always be priests and preachers, and aren't well-equipped to change vocations.
I find plenty of things that correlate, and much of the time I don't realize it has a name, or a set of words ascribed to it, until I read about someone else's attempt to explain it, and then I have an inkling that they are experiencing about the same thing, as best as can be explained anyhow.
What, exactly, doesn't line up for you? Is it that you are reading about things, but not experiencing them? Are you maybe limiting what you are experiencing because you have not yet read about things? Sometimes it's easy to get caught up in what others explain as their experience, or stuck in definitions. All the translations of the teachings are most likely somewhat poor attempts at explaining what Buddha (supposedly) said based on their experience. When most likely, even those words fail to accurately portray what was truly experienced.
I try to not focus on the details, or definitions, and think more in terms of a bigger picture as far as what to do, ideas on how to practice, on things that can actually make a difference in my life right now. I notice those differences pretty frequently, and readily. In just a few years, my Buddhist practice has had a huge impact on my everyday life.
I've read through the thread, but I'm unclear on what you mean when you say annoyed and worried at the lack of correlation. I enjoy your posts, but the past few days you seem a bit...perturbed. You sound kind of how I felt last week, but I'm guessing you don't have PMS? LOL If that's the case, it's normal. Doubt is normal. Fear is normal. Being concerned about what is, or is not, going on, is still normal. Keep practicing anyhow. The clouds always clear.
I spent nearly 20 years as a medical professional, and have finally given it all up because that is what works best for my family - This has been really hard, and I am not sure anyone here will understand or care...
That is why I think spending 6 years of your life in a buddhist retreat, and then returning to a discussion forum might not be conducive to settling back into the life you gave up....
Can;'t put things gentler than that....
Time for teas or coffee
... :coffee: ...
it is
if one has the Right View
so aim should be to get the Right View
then
one would drop so many questions