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Document Details : Title: 'This Being, that Becomes' Subtitle: Reconsidering the Role of the imasmiṃ sati Formula in Early Buddhism Author(s): JONES, Dhivan Thomas Journal: Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies Volume: 45 Date: 2022 Pages: 119-155 DOI: 10.2143/JIABS.45.0.3291578 Abstract : This article investigates the original meaning of dependent arising in the Buddha’s teaching, by focussing on the imasmiṃ sati formula. Modern scholars such as the Rhys Davidses, K.N. Jayatilleke and Paul Williams have interpreted it as a principle of causation, comparable to a scientific conception of causation. I argue instead that this formula implies that the Buddha held that causation is nothing more than the correlation of causes and effects, and that it commits the Buddha to a Humean regularity thesis about causation. I draw a distinction between the Buddhist and scientific concepts of causation, and then summarise an alternative approach made by more recent scholars such as Sue Hamilton, Noa Ronkin and Eviatar Shulman, who present dependent arising in terms of conditionality in the causal structure of subjective experience. I conclude by presenting the argument that the imasmiṃ sati formula does not express a principle of causation but is rather a formula for the method of discovering and presenting causation as conditionality in experience. |
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