Causation in East Asian and Southeast Asian Philosophy

In South Asia, where the belief in reincarnation constituted an important philosophical base for both Hinduism and Buddhism, the concept of causation played a vital role in shaping one's outlook on life and history. According to Buddhism, all forms of existence are related one way or another in an infinite and endless causal web. Thus the creation theory, which is crucial to some religions, finds no place in Buddhism. Drawing on the incarnation belief, Buddhism also connects the life of this world to the next, in which the rise or fall of one's status leading to either salvation or condemnation is dependent on the karma one accumulates in this life. Ironically, however, this causal connection between this world and the next is not necessarily conducive to the development of historical consciousness because it dwells on the mutability, fluidity, and temporality of life, which breeds an extreme relativism that negates the meaning of life itself. Indeed, while Buddhism urges one to improve one's karma in life, it also stresses, extending the broad-based belief in eschatology in South Asia, that life is merely a fleeting bubble and that the world is extinguishable ablaze. Moreover, because everything is causally related in an infinite and endless web, nothing is constant or specifically consequential to anything else. Explanation for change also becomes unnecessary.

In its later development, however, Buddhism began to value life and history, which in turn translated its idea of causation into an important contribution to the development of historical thinking. In Theravada Buddhism, hagiological need led to the developmentof a scholastic trend. The same need also gave rise to a new concept of time, in which the birth of Buddha became a watershed in the otherwise completely cyclical flow of time. More important, the appearance of Buddha was not considered an accidental event, but a result of the work of an inexorable, omnipresent rule or norm. All this renders the Buddhist theory of causation germane to the study of history. Buddhists continue to situate the change of history in an infinite causal relation, or an "iron chain of causality," which leads them to a multilateral and simultaneous consideration of historical causation. In the meantime, they also seek to identify the specific causes for each event. They argue that even if the result is the same, the causal relation between the result and its causes remains unique. Historical change thus is regarded as an outcome of the concatenation of a number of divergent factors coming together in a unique circumstance and relationship.