縁起説に於ける相依性の問題

Abstract

Between 1920 and 1930 the study of paticca-samuppada of early Buddhism was carried on in Japan with successful results by two leading scholars, Dr, Hakujyu Ui and Dr. Tetsuro Watsuji. They gave an entirely new interpretation to it, which has since been acknowledged as being standard. The gist of their interpretation is as follows : Paticca-samuppada theory is by no means intended to find out the physical cause of our human misery, and to explain away objectively how it happened that we are all destined to suffer such fullness of misery, as the Abhidhamma-school had asserted. On the contrary the relation between angas in paticca-samuppada must be considered as quite logical: the pur pose of this theory is to ascertain how and under what condition it is possible that we suffer such fullness of misery. It successively traces the conditioned to its condition till it reaches the final one (i.e. avijja), the destruction of which leads us to conditioning in the reverse order leading to the first term (jara-marana)-to emancipation from our present misery. The present author is convinced that the series of these conditions (12 angas) must be understood as that of existential categories, and that the relation between these categories (angas) can be satisfactorily explained by means of the idea of " existential temporality". Thus the relation between angas in paticca-samuppada is neiher that of cause and effect in the objective, and at the same time mythological, time scheme of the Abhidhamma-school, nor is it the logical, and therefore timeless, one of the conditioned and condition which is the order in mere subjectivity, as the epistemological tendency of recent Japanese interpreters suggests. Paticca-samuppada is the logic of conversion, or of the awakening to Absolute Truth. Therefore it contains the temporality of " geschehen " of the religious existence. From the existentialist point of view, such an interdependent relation between vinnana and nama-rupa as expressed by paticca-samuppada with nine or ten angas furnishes a key to the explanation of the whole paticca-samup- pada theory. This interdependence between vinnana and nama-rupa is the basic nexus from which all subject-object relationships in ordinary experiences come out, and its dynamic structure reveals also the inner working of our heart, through which our conversion from ignorance (avijja) to enlightenment (vijja) becomes possible.