wai lin aung: 2020

The doctrine of paṭiccasamuppāda or Dependent Origination is one of the most important teachings of Buddhism and serves as a source of inspiration for reflections on all kinds of issues including social, political, and spiritual. In this paper, the doctrine of Dependent Origination is examined as a resource for conceiving of a relationship between human beings and nature as one characterized by responsibility. This is done by reflecting upon the abstract form of the teaching as a law of universal causality that contains an environmental import. The environmental significance of this teaching appears when we realize that human thoughts and actions can lead certain things to arise in nature that may be either positive or negative. Based on these reflections, a paradigm of human-nature relationship of responsibility is proposed. In addition, the Buddhist virtues of moderation and contentment are presented as essential ways to nourish such a relationship. Dependent on ignorance, volitional formations arise. အဝိဇၨာပစၥယာ သခၤါရာ Dependent on volitional formations, consciousness arises. သခၤါရပစၥယာ ဝိညာဏံ Dependent on consciousness, mentality and materiality arise. ဝိညာဏပစၥယာ နာမ႐ႈပံ Dependent on mentality and materiality, the six senses faculty arises. နာမ႐ႈပပစၥယာ သဠာယတနံ Dependent on the six senses faculty, contact arises. သဠာယတနပစၥယာ ဖေႆာ Dependent on contact, feelings arise. ဖႆပစၥယာ ေဝဒနာ Dependent on feelings, craving and aversion arise. ေဝဒနာပစၥယာ တဏွာ Dependent on craving and aversion, clinging arises. တဏွာပစၥယာ ဥပါဒါနံ Dependent on clinging, existence arises. ဥပါဒါနပစၥယာ ဘေဝါ Dependent on existence, birth arises. ဘဝပစၥယာ ဇာတိ Dependent on the basis of birth, aging and death arise together with sorrow, lamentation, physical and mental sufferings and tribulations. ဇာတိပစၥယာ ဇရာမရဏ ေသာက၊ ပရိေဒဝ၊ ဒုကၡ၊ ေဒါမနႆုပါယာသာ သမ႓ဝႏၲိ Thus arises this entire mess of sufferings.