There is a spontaneous and universal law of causation which conditions the appearance of all events, mental and physical. This law (dharma or dhamma) works automatically without the help of any conscious guide. In accordance with it, whenever a particular event (the cause) appears, it is followed by another particular event (the effect).

‘On getting the cause, the effect arises.’ The existence of everything is conditional, dependent on a cause. Nothing happens fortuitously or by chance. This is called the theory of dependent origination (Pratityasamutpada in Sanskrit and Paticcasamuppada in Pali).

This view, as Buddha himself makes clear, avoids two extreme views: on the one hand eternalism or the theory that some reality eternally exists independently of any condition and, on the other hand, nihilism or the theory that something existing can be annihilated or can cease to be.

Buddha claims, therefore, to hold the middle view, namely, that everything that we perceive possesses an existence but is dependent on something else, and that thing in turn does not perish without leaving some effect.

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Buddha attaches so much importance to the understanding of this theory that he calls this the Dhamma.

‘Let us put aside questions of the Beginning and the End.’ he says, ‘I will teach you the Dhamma: that being thus, this comes to be from the coming to be of that, this airses. That being absent, this does not happen.

From the cessation of that, this ceases.’ ‘He who sees the paticcasamuppada sees the Dhamma, and he who sees the phamma, sees the paticcasamuppada.’

It is again compared to staircase, by mounting which one can look round on the world and see it with the eye of a Buddha. ‘It is the failure to grasp this standpoint which, Buddha asserts, is the cause of all our troubles.

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Later Buddhism, as Rhys David’s notes, does not pay nuich heed to this theory. But Buddha himself says that this theory is very profound.

We have seen already how this theory is applied to the solution of the question regarding the origin of misery, as well as to that regarding the removal of misery. We shall see just now how profound in its many-sided implications this theory is in some other respects as well.