Buddhadasa’s main teaching, as presented in Santikaro’s book, Under the Bodhi Tree, is that Dependent Origination is a teaching on how self arises, how self is generated over and over again, through the chain of reactions as described in Dependent Origination.

I have understood Dependent Origination in two ways. The first is that Dependent Origination is the way the Buddha figured out that consciousness is not an ‘eternal essence’, but is “dependent on causes and conditions”. This was in opposition to the Vedic concept of Atta as the eternal, unchanging ‘soul’ that transmigrates from life to life, and that this ‘soul’ is consciousness itself. In the Vedic view, the only aspect of being that is eternal is consciousness or awareness, sometimes called ‘mind.’ So the Vedic view was that consciousness or ‘mind’ was primordial, eternal and unchanging. Through the doctrine of Dependent Origination, Buddha surmised that consciousness or ‘mind’ is not primordial, eternal and unchanging, but arises depending on causes and conditions, like everything else.

The second way that I understood Dependent Origination is that it is a pre-scientific description of what in modern western psychology we call the “stimulus-response pathway.’ Our sense organs contact an object in the environment, which triggers a neurological response: feeling (vedana), grasping or craving and clinging, perception, consciousness. This pathway, if it involves craving and clinging, as Buddhadasa says, triggers an ego-centric response: ‘I want this’, this is mine.’ To clarify, as Buddhadasa says, contact is not mere sensory contact, but contact that makes an impression in consciousness.

The stimulus-response pathway, or Dependent Origination, can be used to describe the development of the human personality. From birth we engage in countless interactions (‘contacts’) with our caretakers and people in our immediate environment that we relate to and learn from, which forms the ‘self’ that we call the personality. This continues throughout life into adulthood, as we contact and relate to people, culture and the environment.

But I think what Buddhadasa is describing in thIs set of teachings on dukkha and Dependent Origination is not the ‘self’of the personality, but the reactive self, the self that arises as a reaction to sensory stimulus that is ‘pleasant, unpleasant or neutral’, which then provokes a reaction of attachment or aversion, desire or disgust, craving and clinging, and results in a momentary reactive ‘self’ of ‘I want this’ or ‘I hate this’ particular experience. If the reactivity persists, it can result in ‘this is me‘ which is a solidified sense of identity, or ‘this is mine’, or possessive greediness. Remember that Buddhadasa’s definition of dukkha is self-inflicted suffering, suffering that arises because of clinging to the delusion of a self.

So what Buddhadasa’s teachings on Dependent Origination point to is a way to end the suffering of reactivity and the generation of the false self of ego-identity and possessiveness, and that is certainly within the realm of suffering that can be alleviated and even prevented with meditation.

Dependent Origination has traditionally been used by Buddhists to describe the process of rebirth from one life to another, but Buddhadasa flatly rejects this doctrine. His argument is that Buddha changed the meaning of ‘karma and rebirth’ from a physical rebirth, with karmic consequences following and being manifested in the birth of the new individual; to spiritual rebirth, in which the reactive egoic self is reborn over and over again in response to craving and clinging, desire or aversion, many times a day. The ‘rebirthed’ egoic self carries the consequences of its prior karmic (intentional) activity and suffers the consequences. Thus, physical rebirth, which was a nearly universal belief in ancient Vedic and Sramanic culture, becomes a metaphor for psycho-spiritual rebirth of dukkha, the suffering egoic self.

There’s a way in which Buddhadasa’s description of Dependent Origination seems to be a bit truncated and too narrow to encompass all of human experience. We tend to think of the chain of dependent links as contacting a sense object, a ‘thing’ which provokes the chain of reactions. We can broaden this out by showing that we contact people in our sensory field, that we relate to and that shape our personalities, and that we contact our environment, physical and cultural, that shapes our worldview, and also provokes reactions and construction of the reactive egoic self. This would encompass all of our complex social and cultural experiences.

It is important to state that Buddhadasa rejects the notion that all sensory experiences necessarily give rise to the reactive egoic self. In fact, he says that ignorant or unwise contact with sensory experience gives rise to the suffering self. Contact that involves the wise investigation of experience, kind curiosity, even the emotional appreciation of experience, but that does not result in ‘craving and clinging’, ‘attachment or aversion’, does not result in the reactive egoic self. For example, caring attachment, such as the bonding of a parent with one’s infant is a ‘wise’ attachment that without such attachment would seriously harm the child. Without ignorant attachment or aversion, craving and clinging, the pathway to the construction of the reactive egoic self is cut off, and thus no self arises, because otherwise, there is no self.

A third way that I have understood Dependent Origination is that it is a pre-scientific model of evolution, the evolution of ‘form and consciousness’. My reading of the Vedic concept of rebirth is that it is a model that describes the evolution of individuals from lower to higher life forms. Samkya philosphy, with which the Buddha would have been familiar, also had a pre-scientific theory of evolution. In terms of karma, when one lives a good life, one is ‘reborn’ into a hgher life form. When one causes harm, one is reborn into a lower life form. The Vedic model of evolution is deeply flawed for two reasons: 1) it didn’t have a notion of the evolution of species, and 2) it lacked a theory of the gene and genetic inheritence. The modern science of evolution tells us that individuals mutate, but only populations and species evolve. They evolve when a mutation in the individual is encoded in the genes and transmitted to its offspring that thrive because of the mutation, and then that mutation spreads in subsequent progeny to the population to produce a new species. The Vedic model believes that individuals evolve from lower to higher forms, and that one can ‘devolve’ to lower life forms, essentially other species, which we know from science is not possible. Following Samkya philosophy, the Buddhists introduced the notion of samskara or ‘forming’ and ‘constructing’ actions that shape the individual. The idea is that the karmic (intentional) actions of the individual are karmic ‘seeds’ (bija), which could be something like ‘genes’, that influence the ‘forming and constructing’ actions (samskara) of the fetus in the womb, and that those tendencies are then ‘reborn’ with the new individual. However, while this might explain how individuals obtain characteristic traits, this does not explain how species evolve.

Buddhadasa rejects the notion of physical rebirth and says that the Buddha used the nearly universal belief in karma and rebirth as a model to explain a spiritual rebirth, the rebirth of the reactive egoic self or the spiritual birth of the fully liberated being, who no longer generates a reactive egoic self. I propose that there is a third way of utilizing the model of ‘karma and rebirth’ that incorporates both the psycho-spiritual rebirth of the liberated individual and the evolution of the species.

I propose that what the Buddha showed us was a path to a new kind of human being who lives a different kind of individual and collective life, one that does not require an egoic self (or an eternal soul) in order to thrive. I propose that the current stage of human evolution is stuck at a stage of producing ‘separate’ and egoic individuals that, as a matter of survival, are self-centered, greedy, aggressive and aversive to others, and at best tribal, that is, oriented towards others like themselves. I propose that Buddha’s way of meditation and development of a non-egoic individual who is intuitively connected to all others regardless of tribe, generous and cooperative, is the next stage of human evolution. What is required is a new kind of human being that creates societies that are communal, cooperative, sensitive to ecological limits and the needs of all other species. But that evolution has to begin with individuals who develop a mutation that is then passed on to others, genetically, who will then transmit that mutation to the population, creating this new species. (The science-fiction television series, Sense8, explores this notion of a subspecies of ‘senesates’ who are psychically inter-connected.) Like most other instances of evolution, those individuals and populations already exist, and their unique capacities already exist, but they are not the dominant species. Metaphorically speaking, they are the tiny mammals in a world of human dinosaurs, who I dare say are about to become extinct.

Besides gene inheritence, there are two other forms of evolution that could play a role in creating this new species: epigenetics and cultural evolution. Epigenetic change occurs when conditions in the environment switch the expression of genes off or on, causing the suppression or expression of certain traits. This ‘switching on and off’ of genes usually happens in the womb, during the development of the fetus, or sometimes later in the physical development of the individual into maturity. Those epigenetic ‘switches’ can persist as ‘genetic markers’ that can be transmitted to future offspring, consistently turning off or on those genetic traits. If those genetic traits prove to be adaptive and persistent, they can be passed on to a large enough population to create a new species. The process of epigenetic change has already been tested and substantiated by scientific research.

Secondly, there is cultural evolution, which is a more recent theory with less scientific proof. The idea is that particular cultures produce particular types of individuals and social relations, and that pervasive and persistent changes in a culture will produce a different type of individual and social relations. Types of individuals and social relations are ‘passed on’ not through genetics, but through learning and socialization. In sociology, this is called the social reproduction of the social system. Whereas in genetic evolution, those changes are called genetic traits, in cultural evolution, they are called behaviours. If those new behavioural traits persist, that is, if they are selectively adaptive to the cultural environment, they will be passed on through the process of socialization to future generations who will exhibit those traits. There are new theories of cultural evolution wihch propose that cultures can also ‘switch on or off’ the expression of genetic traits, similar to epigenetic switching. But for cultural evolution to be effective, it is not necessary that the change extends down to the epigenetic change of the genes. It is only necessary that conditions in the cultural environment are pervasive and persistent enough to consistently reproduce similar individuals and social relations.

Through epigenetics and cultural evolution, it is possible that individual traits can be passed on to the population as a whole, and possibly initiate the next stage of evolution. This is a way that Dependent Origination, in the more traditional sense of karma and rebirth, can be broadened to encompass the spiritual evolution of an individual, the cultural evolution of a population, and perhaps even, the genetic evolution of a species.