[expabsPapsgag]

Continuing, Bodhi says:

The primary problem of dukkha with which the Buddha is concerned, in its most comprehensive and fundamental dimensions, is the problem of our bondage to sa.msaara -- the round of repeated birth, aging, and death.

Bodhi is trying to force a nexus here between reincarnation-belief and PS through an artificial connection of "the round of birth-and-death".

Occasionally, he mentions "aging"/decay as part of it, but his main concern is forcing PS to be a reincarnation strategy. Not surprisingly, he uses a good bit of equivocation to do so. For example, he consistently lumps the last two nidanas together as if they were one -- but not the whole two nidanas; it is actually an equivocation of one nidana and a small portion of another. He takes the nidana of "birth" (equivocated as the physical birth of a child) and lumps it in with "death" from the nidana of "the mass of suffering" as if they were a single nidana of their own, and for all intents and purposes completely ignores the fact that "death" is just one small part of "sorrow, lamentation, grief, pain, displeasure, despair; in short, the whole mass of suffering".

This equivocation is part of his strategy to support his claim that the Buddha's own, liberative teachings are concerned first and foremost with reincarnation, and that "liberation from suffering" is "liberation from reincarnation".

And, as I will show presently, these terms are intended quite literally as signifying biological birth, aging, and death, not our anxiety over being born, growing old, and dying.

...which brings up the point, "what, then, is really is so bad about birth, aging and death?"

The short answer is: exactly that fear and anxiety over them that Bodhi attempts to downplay here. There may be painful sensations associated with each one, but in the case of our own birth, we do not remember it, and it has not necessarily been shown to be an intrinsically unpleasant experience at all. Old age? There are certainly unpleasant physical sensations associated with it, physical ailments and such, but these are also mere physical ailments, just like any other unpleasant physical sensations. What is so difficult about aging is the fear of it. Which also brings us to death, which we have not yet experienced ourselves, and which generates the most fear and anxiety (and fear of aging is really just a part of fear of death as well). But again, what is so awful about our own death is exactly the fear of it, the fear of the unknown.

I do not remember my physical birth. I have not yet died. And growing older is really not so bad.

O, Death, where is thy sting? Only in fear: fear of its certainty, its finality, the uncertainty of its time and circumstances, and not knowing if there is something after it or not.



In so far as the Dhamma addresses the problem of our present suffering, it does so by situating that suffering in its larger context, our condition of sa.msaaric bondage. The present cannot be considered only in its vertical depths. It must also be viewed as the intersection of the past and future, shaped by our past experience and harbouring our future destiny in its womb.



Bodhi has the Dhamma entirely backwards here: He sees dukkha as being a by-product of reincarnation. But, again, the Buddha explains dukkha in terms of not getting what one wants, and getting what one does not want, which is something that occurs in the here-and-now. And again, the Buddha specifically explains that for one who sees PS, there is no running to the past or future. He also sees PS as an explanation of how this reincarnation happens, and he says so, and hangs his entire argument on the assumption that it is an explanation of the "mechanics" of the "samsaric bondage" of reincarnation:

If the Dhamma is to enable us to extricate ourselves from the dukkha of repeated birth and death, it must make known the chain of causes that holds us in bondage to this round of repeated birth and death, and it must also indicate what must be done to bring this cycle to a halt.

And this statement is true: if the Buddha's teachings are there to extricate us from the karma/reincarnation process he claims, then yes, the Buddha would very definitely have to explain how karma/reincarnation happens, and how his program of action would stop that karma/reincarnation process, if one were to even want that process to stop -- which is a whole different can of worms. Unfortunately for Bodhi's assumption, the Buddha points out that trying to explain such a process is useless, and very clearly points out that PS is a here-and-now teaching rather than a karma/reincarnation strategy. Again, the Buddha states unequivocably that one who understand PS has no need to "run to the past or future". Were PS a reincarnation strategy, the Buddha would have stated as such very clearly and at great length, just like any other teaching of his own.

Throughout the Suttas we can find only one basic statement of the causal structure of sa.msaara, one overarching formulation with many minor variations, and that is the twelvefold formula of dependent arising.

Too bad for Bodhi here, since the Buddha was very clear that PS is not an explanation of "samsara", or of a karma/reincarnation strategy, especially in MN 38. Also too bad for Bodhi, the Buddha humiliates Sati the Fisherman's Son for claiming that He taught that consciousness transmigrates from one life to another, since this is exactly what Bodhi also claims in his own explanations of PS -- a "stream of consciousness" that transmigrates form one life to another.


If one's aim in following the Dhamma is to gain release from existential anxiety, then the three-life interpretation of PS may seem unsatisfactory and one may turn to Ven. ~Naa.naviira's version as more adequate.

Another very important concession. The Buddha himself says over adn over that the aim of following the Dhamma is to gain release from dukkha in the here-and-now.

But the task which the Buddha sets before his disciples is of a different nature: namely, to gain liberation from the recurrent cycle of birth, old age, and death, that is, from bondage to sa.msaara.

And again, Bodhi simply has the Dhamma completely backwards here.

Once one accepts this task as one's own, one will then see that PS must be looked upon as a disclosure of the conditional structure of sa.msaara, showing us how our ignorance, craving, and volitional activity keep us chained to the round of existence and drive us from one life to the next.



And if one rightly sees that this is in fact not the case, then on can also clearly see that this idea of looking at PS as an elaborate karma/reincarnation strategy is simply a matter of superstitious wishful thinking.

More to come....