Is Dependent Origination = Solipsism?

[RedLine]

Dependent Origination is the most important -and advance- teaching of the Buddha. Buddhists teach that there is a dependent origiantion between craving and dukkah, and more widely between craving and the whole material world and emotions. It is clearly experienced during cessation, where, when the meditator comes back from that state, he experience how the whole experience field is created by his craving.

 

So, as long as I understand, it means that we are creating relative world trough our attachments to it. Buddhists don´t use solipsistic terminology because they are only interested in pointing out the relationship between dependent origination and suffer, but it is something that is derived from the idea of dependent origination that they expose. Am I wrong?

 

p.s: Leigh Brasington has recently written a free book about Dependent Origination, if you want to know about Depend Origination check it out: http://sodapi.leighb.com/

[Tim R]

It's not Solipsism.

Pratītyasamutpāda doesn't "result in" / imply / explain / justify Solipsism or really any kind of -"ism".

Rather, it simply states how everything relies on / implies / creates everything else.

"Solipsism" is is pure projection, belief and a concept, nowhere to be found in reality.

The only relation one could draw between Solipsism and the Chain of Dependent Origination, is that it is a part of the Chain (although really, there are no "parts", since the chain describes implication and dependent / mutual arising) and thus a part of the creation of suffering. 

[Nahm]

7 hours ago, RedLine said:

Dependent Origination is the most important -and advance- teaching of the Buddha. Buddhists teach that there is a dependent origiantion between craving and dukkah, and more widely between craving and the whole material world and emotions. It is clearly experienced during cessation, where, when the meditator comes back from that state, he experience how the whole experience field is created by his craving.

So, as long as I understand, it means that we are creating relative world trough our attachments to it. Buddhists don´t use solipsistic terminology because they are only interested in pointing out the relationship between dependent origination and suffer, but it is something that is derived from the idea of dependent origination that they expose. Am I wrong?

Dependent origination is of no importance, and certainly isn’t advanced, and isn’t a / the teaching, that’s a fundamental misnomer. The teaching points. Mistaking this, dependent origination is believed to have importance and be advanced, but this is projection from the assumption, misunderstanding. That leads to the belief there is experience, a meditator & a meditator’s states, objectification, and solidifies thought attachment in regard to a material or relative reality. Cessation is actually to the contrary, as that is really the perpetuation of suffering. A mental ‘emperor’s new clothes’ situation, which is fundamentally aversion from the message of the very teaching.  

A reframing might be clarifying. Consider, dependent origination = cessation. Different terms, same pointing.  In comparison, solipsism is an ideology of the ‘separate self’. You might say solipsism is the opposite of cessation. As in, the practice is discarded as the spiritual ego or ‘knower’ arose. Cessation, dependent origination, as a pointing to, is the absence of these ideas, identity, etc, and is not anything derived from any ideas. 

[RedLine]

3 hours ago, Tim R said:

 

Rather, it simply states how everything relies on / implies / creates everything else.

 

It is cause-effect. It is how mind undestand reality and how science work, this cause that. It was formalized for the Greeks. So you are telling me the most advance teaching of the Buddha is the same as regular people proccess reality?. 

No, it does not make sense. Dependent Origination means that phenomena is created by desire. You can see how craving origins suffer if you are awake and you can see how world is created if you exit cessation.

 

Edited December 31, 2021 by RedLine

[The0Self]

It describes the emptiness, acausality, and timelessness of existence, causality, and time. So it’s a pointing.

[Tim R]

36 minutes ago, RedLine said:

It is cause-effect.

Not quite.

Cause and effect imply separation. Dependent origination is about the recognition that everything hangs on everything else, simultaneously.

That's why it is a circle, and not a linear sequence of events (even so, there would be no separation). 

Take one link away, and the entire chain is broken. In that sense, there aren't even any "links". 

Every link is dependent on the "previous" link, ad infinitum. There is no cause.

"This arises, that becomes." (Idappaccayatā) Because "this" and "that" are identical, they depend on each other like the two ends of a stick;

When I hold a stick by one end and lift it up from the ground, do you see how ludicrous it would be to think that the end I'm holding is the "cause" of the other end going up? It's one stick! moving as a unity. There is no such thing as "cause" and "effect". 

 

11 minutes ago, The0Self said:

It describes the emptiness, acausality, and timelessness of existence, causality, and time. So it’s a pointing.

Exactly. 

[RedLine]

10 minutes ago, Tim R said:

Not quite.

Cause and effect imply separation. Dependent origination is about the recognition that everything hangs on everything else, simultaneously.

That's why it is a circle, and not a linear sequence of events (even so, there would be no separation). 

Take one link away, and the entire chain is broken. In that sense, there aren't even any "links". 

Every link is dependent on the "previous" link, ad infinitum. There is no cause.

"This arises, that becomes." (Idappaccayatā) Because "this" and "that" are identical, they depend on each other like the two ends of a stick;

When I hold a stick by one end and lift it up from the ground, do you see how ludicrous it would be to think that the end I'm holding is the "cause" of the other end going up? It's one stick! moving as a unity. There is no such thing as "cause" and "effect". 

 

 

 

Tell me what you are saying has to do with the understanding of dukkah.

 

 

 

 

[Tim R]

2 minutes ago, RedLine said:

Tell me what you are saying has to do with the understanding of dukkah.

The root of Dukkha is a house of cards.

[Leo Gura]

Dependent Origination is just Groundlessness and holism. It means that you cannot ground any one thing within reality into any other, since all things co-arise and get created as an interconnected whole.

In other words, your farts are inextricably connected to every other phenomenon in the Universe. Everything is created together so to speak and no thing is the source of all other things. This is Groundlessness. This means that all attempts to ground reality into something like quarks or strings or mathematics is doomed to fail.

This is not related to solipsism. Although all things are interrelated

[Nahm]

2 hours ago, RedLine said:

Dependent Origination means that phenomena is created by desire. You can see how craving origins suffer if you are awake and you can see how world is created if you exit cessation.

Desire & phenomena are phenomena in the sense they are thoughts. 

[The0Self]

34 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Dependent Origination is just Groundlessness and holism. It means that you cannot ground any one thing within reality into any other, since all things co-arise and get created as an interconnected whole.

In other words, your farts are inextricably connected to every other phenomenon in the Universe. Everything is created together so to speak and no thing is the source of all other things. This is Groundlessness. This means that all attempts to ground reality into something like quarks or strings or mathematics is doomed to fail.

This is not related to solipsism. Although all things are interrelated

^^^? Anything beyond that explanation would basically be fluff ? 

Edited December 31, 2021 by The0Self

[Tim R]

38 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

your farts are inextricably connected to every other phenomenon in the Universe.

Preach!?

There's a beautiful, beautiful symbol in Buddhism to describe this kind of interconnectedness, "Indra's Net"

Everything exists by virtue of the existence of everything "else". 

[The0Self]

Really, dependent origination can basically be distilled to:

Anything = Everything

[Tim R]

12 minutes ago, The0Self said:

Really, dependent origination can basically be distilled to:

Anything = Everything

Basically, yes. But I think there is a good reason why the Buddha devised D.O. the way he did. Just saying "anything = everything" might be true, but not necessarily a very good pointer, don't you think?

[BipolarGrowth]

It is not solipsism, and dependent origination is not only limited to the relationship between craving and things that arise from it. It’s about everything. Every “cause” is “causing” every other “cause” in an infinite chain, all arising and passing away right here and right now. 

[BipolarGrowth]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

Dependent Origination is just Groundlessness and holism. It means that you cannot ground any one thing within reality into any other, since all things co-arise and get created as an interconnected whole.

In other words, your farts are inextricably connected to every other phenomenon in the Universe. Everything is created together so to speak and no thing is the source of all other things. This is Groundlessness. This means that all attempts to ground reality into something like quarks or strings or mathematics is doomed to fail.

This is not related to solipsism. Although all things are interrelated

Good explanation ?

[The0Self]

6 hours ago, Tim R said:

Basically, yes. But I think there is a good reason why the Buddha devised D.O. the way he did. Just saying "anything = everything" might be true, but not necessarily a very good pointer, don't you think?

Perhaps.

Anything=Everything is very simple and direct though, however... i.e. yeah... virtually inaccessible by seekers. Still about as direct as can be. Not that any direct pointer can actually help someone understand what is -- there is no real context in which knowing the absolute dualistically can be possible, at least not separate from illusion.

D.O. is also direct in its own right. I like it.