DiscussWorldIssues - Socio-Economic Religion and Political Uncensored Debate - View Single Post - Emptiness - break off thread from the beginners section.

**grubnismarl** · 11-25-2011, 06:42 AM

Hi Yuan, thanks for the reply but I don't know what tha Law of Nidanas is. I don't even know what a nidana is!!! Could you please elaborate?

Hi srivijaya,

In English, Nidānas can be simply defined as “causation.” But, there are two components to the “causation”, a “possibility” of a phenomenon and the prerequisites (elements and conditions) that are necessary for a phenomenon to occur. If both the possibility and the prerequisites for a phenomenon come together, then this phenomenon will occur.

I like to use fire as an example to illustrate Nidānas. I think that we agree that the phenomenon of "fire" is possible in our world. At the simplest level, the prerequisites for fire is sufficient amount fuel, air and heat all in the same proximity. If any of the prerequisites are missing, we would not get fire. You can call these prerequisites "dependencies". So "Dependent origination" is the event that all the dependencies are fulfilled, at which time, the phenomenon comes to be.

Another thing about fire that I want to point out. If we look at fire, it changes all the time right? I mean, it flickers, "dances", and maybe changes in color. Why? Because its dependencies are changing all the time, a change in the fuel (maybe a patch of wood is more moist than another.), a breeze, what ever, can all change its dependencies. And when the dependencies change, it changes. Usually, we consider this "fire" as a single, real fire, because it provides us warmth and light, more or less consistently while it is there. Or we can consider this "fire" to not be a single fire, but births and deaths of many many fires, each with a lifetime of milliseconds, because each fire looks different than the one that came before and after it. It is with the second view, that we said that the characteristic of "fire" is sunyata.

With fire, you also get smoke, heat and light, right? So fire is also considered to be a Nidanas (dependency) for smoke, heat and light. So this is why there is a concept of chain of causation, as refers to in Wiki for the definition of Nidanas .

12 Nidanas that most Buddhists should be familiar with is simply an explanation of how human (at least for the emotion/mind aspect) works.

Does this sounds like a science lesson?

11-25-2011, 06:42 AM	#32
grubnismarl Join Date Oct 2005 Posts 507 Senior Member	Hi Yuan, thanks for the reply but I don't know what tha Law of Nidanas is. I don't even know what a nidana is!!! Could you please elaborate? Hi srivijaya, In English, Nidānas can be simply defined as “causation.” But, there are two components to the “causation”, a “possibility” of a phenomenon and the prerequisites (elements and conditions) that are necessary for a phenomenon to occur. If both the possibility and the prerequisites for a phenomenon come together, then this phenomenon will occur. I like to use fire as an example to illustrate Nidānas. I think that we agree that the phenomenon of "fire" is possible in our world. At the simplest level, the prerequisites for fire is sufficient amount fuel, air and heat all in the same proximity. If any of the prerequisites are missing, we would not get fire. You can call these prerequisites "dependencies". So "Dependent origination" is the event that all the dependencies are fulfilled, at which time, the phenomenon comes to be. Another thing about fire that I want to point out. If we look at fire, it changes all the time right? I mean, it flickers, "dances", and maybe changes in color. Why? Because its dependencies are changing all the time, a change in the fuel (maybe a patch of wood is more moist than another.), a breeze, what ever, can all change its dependencies. And when the dependencies change, it changes. Usually, we consider this "fire" as a single, real fire, because it provides us warmth and light, more or less consistently while it is there. Or we can consider this "fire" to not be a single fire, but births and deaths of many many fires, each with a lifetime of milliseconds, because each fire looks different than the one that came before and after it. It is with the second view, that we said that the characteristic of "fire" is sunyata. With fire, you also get smoke, heat and light, right? So fire is also considered to be a Nidanas (dependency) for smoke, heat and light. So this is why there is a concept of chain of causation, as refers to in Wiki for the definition of Nidanas . 12 Nidanas that most Buddhists should be familiar with is simply an explanation of how human (at least for the emotion/mind aspect) works. Does this sounds like a science lesson?
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