The Analysis Of Buddha's Theory Of Conditional Existence Of Things

Buddha, namely Sakyamuni, is the founder of Buddhism. He has many teachings, but there is a clue in all his teachings. That is the theory of dependent origination of things. Buddha held that the life was the most important, but the ontological questions made no difference to the real life of beings, and no matter how hard we worked to look for the answers to these questions, we would gain nothing. Thus he payed all his attention to what the human nature is and how to make human beings free. All his teachings focused on the subject. So the law of conditional existence was applied mainly to observing the phenomenon of life.Then, Buddha developed a theory of the chain of twelve links. In a certain sense, it is the Buddha's theory of conditional existence of things.The theory of conditional existence of things will be analyzed specifically and completely from four perspectives in this paper. Firstly, there were many philosophy schools in the times which Buddha lived in. Making full use of the intellectual resources, Buddha established his original theory of dependent origination. Secondly, there are three parts elaborating Buddha's theory:one analyzes the theory of the chain of twelve links; another argues that the theory reveals the impermanence and non-existence of the soul, that is to say, it reveals the emptiness of things; another shows that the Buddha's aim in advocating it is to make all living beings freedom. Thirdly, the relationship between the theory of dependent origination and the Buddha's doctrines is discussed, and we can conclude that the theory is the core of Buddha's thoughts. Fourthly, the paper discusses the evolution of the theory in the two periods of many-schools Buddhism and Mahayana Buddhism. The former deviated from the Buddha's standpoint while the latter tried to go back to the Buddha's theory. The paper aims to clean up and completely understand Buddha's theory of independent origination by vertical and horizontal analysis.