Buddhism before the Lotus Sutra was divided into three vehicles – the Śrāvaka vehicle, the Pratyekabuddha vehicle and the Bodhisattva vehicle. These are introduced in Chapter One of the Lotus Sutra when Mañjuśrī explains the teaching of a long-ago Buddha called Sun-Moon-Light.
In the Sutra of Innumerable Meanings this is called the “Twelve-linked Chain of Dependent Origination.”
The Wheel of Life is a circle with no beginning, but it is customary to begin its exposition at Blindness (unconscious state). Blindness is only a continuation of death. At death the body is abandoned, but Blindness remains as the crystallization of the effects of the actions performed during life. This Blindness is often termed Ignorance; but this Ignorance should not be thought of as the antonym of knowing; it must include in its meaning both knowing and not knowing—Blindness or blind mind, unconsciousness.
Blindness leads to blind activity. The ‘energy’ or the effect of this blind activity is the next Stage, Motive, or Will to Live. This Will to Live is not the kind of will which is used in the term ‘free will’; it is rather a blind motive toward life or the blind desire to live.
Blindness and Will to Live are called the Two Causes of the Past. They are causes when regarded subjectively from the present; but objectively regarded, the life in the past is a whole life just as much as is the life of the present.
In the life of the present the First Stage is Subconscious Mind. This is the first stage of an individual existence which corresponds, in actual life, to the first moment of the conception of a child. There is no consciousness yet; there is only the Subconscious Mind or the Blind Will toward life. When this Subconscious Mind advances one step and takes a form, it is the Second Stage of the present, Name-Form. The Name is the mind, because mind is something we know by name but cannot grasp. Name-Form is the stage of prenatal growth when the mind and body first come into combination.
In the Third Stage a more complex form is assumed and the six sense organs are recognized. They are the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body (organ of touch) and mind.
The Fourth Stage corresponds to the first one or two years after the birth of the child. The six sense organs reach the state of activity, but the sense of touch predominates. The living being begins to come into contact with the outside world.
Now that the living being is able to manifest its consciousness, it begins to take in the phenomena of the outside world consciously. This is the Fifth Stage called Perception, representing the growth scale of a child three to five years old. Here the individuality of the living being is definitely recognized; in other words, the status of the present life has been formed.
The above five Stages are called the Five Effects of the Past appearing in the Present. In these Stages the individual is formed, but the individual is not entirely responsible for its own formation because the causes of the past have effectuated the development of these Stages. From here on, the individual begins to create causes on his own responsibility, or in other words, enters the proper sphere of self-creation.
The first of the Three Causes in the Present is Desire. Through Perception the individual experiences sorrow, pleasure, suffering, enjoyment, or neutral feeling. When the experience is sorrow, suffering, or neutral feeling nothing much will happen. But when it is pleasure or enjoyment, the individual will endeavor to make it his own. This effort is Desire; it produces attachment. The first step of this attachment is the next Stage, Cleaving, the effort to retain the object of Desire. The last state of this attachment is Formation of Being. The term Existence is often used for this Stage, but as it is a link between the present and future, and the preliminary step for Birth, I believe that ‘Formation of Being’ is a more fitting term.
Desire, Cleaving and Formation of Being represent the three stages of the activities of an adult, and together constitute the Three Causes in the Present. While an individual is enjoying the effects of the past, he is forming the causes for the future. While the plum fruit is ripening on the tree, the core in the fruit is being formed. By the time the fruit is ripe and falls to the ground, the core too is ready to bring forth a new tree of its own to bear more fruits in the future.
As to the Future there are two Stages—Birth and Old age-Death, or in short, Birth and Death. When viewed from the Three Causes in the Present, Birth and Death may be termed the effects. But when viewed in the light of the continuous Wheel of Life, we may regard the future as the time when the Causes in the Present open out and close. Also, the Effects of the Future contain in themselves causes for the life still further in the future.
The present is one whole life, and so is the future. Past, Present and Future are each a whole life. In this Wheel of Life, the present is explained particularly minutely with eight stages, but in truth Blindness and Will to Live of the past and Birth and Death of the future have the same constituent stages as those of the present.
Because we human beings are accustomed to make the present the starting point of consideration, naturally the future is regarded as effects of the present. Therefore the life in the future is given descriptively as Birth and Death. And because the past is regarded as the cause of the present, it is given as causal principles, Blindness and Will to Live.
It is quite possible to reconstruct the Wheel of Life in the following manner in which Birth and Death are to be regarded as merely an abbreviated description of a whole life and Blindness and Will to Live are to be regarded as an ideological description of a round of life. Past, Present and Future are relative terms.
It is clear that the Causation Theory of Buddhism is not like the theory of causality of classical physical science which is a fixed theory. In Buddhism every Stage is a cause when viewed from its effect; when viewed from the antecedent cause, it is an effect. It may be also said that there is a cause in the effect, and an effect in the cause. There is nothing fixed in this theory.
The Blindness, which remains after the death of a living thing, is the crystallization of the actions (karma) which the living being performed during its life, or in other words, the ‘energy’ or influence of the actions that remain. One’s action (karma) is the dynamic manifestation of mental and physical energy. This latent energy may be called action-influence or potential energy. Action-influence remains after the action ceases, and this is what makes the Wheel of Life move. As long as there is energy, it has to work, and the Cycles of Causations and Becomings will inevitably—subconsciously or blindly—go on forever.
In other words, a living being determines its own nature and existence by its own actions. Therefore we may say the living being is self-created. The act of self-creation has continued in the past for thousands and millions of lives, and the living being has gone around the circle of Twelve Divisioned Cycle of Causations and Becomings over and over again.
