Chapter 08 The Law of Dependant Origination

The Essence of Happiness and True Freedom

2.2-The.Essence.of.Happiness.and.True.Freedom Chapter8 Law Dependant Origination

It’s well aware that the framed structures of the four quotients of human beings are innate, and the differences are vast. Some people think God arranges them. However, if God really exists, he would be fair, just, or merciful, he would not perform anything that is not fair, just, or merciful. Therefore, it is certainly not of God.

Gold Steiner, a prominent New York Orthodox Jewish leader, asked Einstein, "Do you believe in God?"

Einstein gave the most renowned response:"I believe in Spinoza’s God, who is revealed in the harmony and order of life itself; and not in a God who is implicating the fate and behaviour of mankind." Spinoza was a seventeenth-century Jewish philosopher who believed that as a whole, there was only one entity in the universe; God and the universe were one and the same.

Einstein said famously, "God doesn't play dice."**

These two statements are actually the same. It is said that the world is unified in harmony and follows the law of cause and effect. God gives us the freedom of mind.

In the book "The World As I See it” Einstein used several articles to elaborate his perspective of the relationship between religion and science.

Einstein said that there are things that are beyond conceptualization, and we can only approach them in their most splendid beauty, their most primitive forms. This knowledge and emotion constitute compassionate, religious feelings.

He also emphasized that only through this perspective he could be a person with deep religious feelings. He could not imagine a creator who rewards and punishes his own creations.

Einstein told people that, for him, it was satisfying to be able to perceive the eternal mysteries of life and consciousness and to understand the miraculous structure of the real world, and to grasp even a tiny fraction of the rationality displayed by nature.

That is to say, Einstein admitted that the existing rationality of human beings could not fully penetrate the mysteries of the universe and life. By stating "some of the most primitive forms" he may as well have been referring to a human’s spiritual quotient.

We know that all the theoretical systems of modern science are based on axioms. The so-called axioms refer to basic propositions that are self-evidently true, those of which have been tested repeatedly by human beings for a long period of time, they do not need to be further proven. Axioms are the basis of all theorems.

The law of causality is an axiom, is the theoretical basis of all science and philosophy. Without the law of causality, all scientific theorems and philosophical theories cannot be established.

The law of causality indicates that any phenomenon or event must have its own cause that is “there is a proper sequence of beginning and end results”. So, any kind of result and phenomenon arise are from the combination of causes and conditions.

The law of causality also known as the Law of Dependant Origination which contain the following three characteristics:

• The effect is initiated by the cause: the effect cannot be produced without the cause, and the effect must have its own cause. It has an order, the cause must come first, the result can only come after, and the time sequence of the two cannot be reversed.

• Rationalism: The relationship of causes and that which caused by the objective phenomena. It comes with objectivity, it is not affected by human consciousness, and it has it’s own rule of principles. These principles, for instance, contain the following, when there is life, death is inevitable; where there is a gathering, there will be a dispersal; where there is a conjunction, there will be a separation; where there is success, there will also be destruction. This is the law of inevitability.

• Existence is based on emptiness: Anything that exists, its production is based on the foundation of non-existence, and it all comes into existence after non-existence. The multiple factors of the objectivity in relationships determine the complexity of causal relationships.

The existence of all things must have the above three characteristics.

Let's take a tree as an example. A tree is an effect. When a seed of a tree has the right temperature, humidity and enough nutrients, it will begin to germinate. When it receives enough sunlight, it will grow vigorously and finally bloom and bear fruit. It is called “The effect initiated by the cause"; the gene of the tree determines the difference of the species, and there is a common rule of principle in it. A seed of an apple cannot grow into a pear tree, which is “Rationalism”; This tree, before planting, does not exist, and after planting a seed, it grows into a tree later. Thus, Existence is based on emptiness.

If we apply these three characteristics to test the existence of all things, we will find that everything in the universe has these three basic characteristics, and it is inseparable from the law of arising and ceasing, the existence and the destruction.

Everything follows the law of cause and effect, which is about the former causes and latter consequences. The framed structures of human beings are the result, so what is the antecedent? We must approach this issue in terms of the law of causality.

Some materialists compare human beings to computers; they conclude that the relationships between the human mind and body are the same as the relationship between computer hardware and software. We must know that the software of a computer is downloaded onto the hardware; so the functions are fixed. Even if an upgrade is required, the old software will be deleted and the new software will be copied. In this way, the roles and functions of the new software are still predetermined in the process.

However, our four quotients are distinctively different from our parents’, as they are not physically copied into the body from our parents’ quotients.

In Chapter 5, we have demonstrated that the potential of the four quotients does not come from heredity. Human genetic genes refer to the genetic information in DNA, while the four quotients of human beings reside within the human mind. The energy form of the mind is not at the molecular and atomic level, it exists at the level in the biological energy field. So human minds are not replicable like computer software, they are not copied from parents' genetics.

Some materialists believe that if the hardware of a computer were to be destroyed, so would the software. Therefore, it’s safe to conclude that if the human body were to be destroyed, the human mind would also perish.

In fact, the computer hardware is the carrier of the software. Without hardware, the software alone cannot exist. It must exist in the computer's memory hard drive or an external hard drive.

Therefore, if the hardware is damaged, the software in the hardware will also be damaged. However, the genes of the human body are copied from the parents, the mind is not copied from the parents, so the human body can be separated from the mind. The human body is not the carrier of the mind; the human body is merely a tool of the mind.

In short, the relationship between human body and mind are different from the relationships between computer hardware and software.

Since human minds are not copied from the parents, from where do the framed structures of the four human quotients originate? According to the perspective of the Law of Dependant Origination, the framed structures of the four quotients do indeed have their source of origin.

These issues are more complex, and we will explain them more in the coming chapters.