In the time of the Buddha, every man and woman who came across the great Master and subsequently achieved the ultimate and unconditional happiness and mental freedom of Nibbana was ready to explore and reflect, prepared to listen and compare with what is known and held as true. What greater joy can there be than the feeling of reassurance as a teacher corrects the errors in our thoughts? Therefore, dear reader, I hope these articles can accomplish one thing: enlighten you. That means showing you and explaining crucial aspects of our lives that we have been, at least so far, blind to. Lifting that veil of ignorance will be a tremendous relief for those courageous enough to take that simple step of open investigation and internal reflection. We are more than happy to answer any questions via mail. Still, we kindly suggest the reader visit our YouTube channel to listen to some of the sermons conducted by the monastery, which will most certainly go a long way in clarifying these issues.

In one of the recent articles, I explained how to understand the relationship between the three characteristics of nature, namely anicca, dukkha, and anatta. Anicca is a characteristic of nature, the nature of Cause and Effect. One aspect we have already covered that is included in Anicca is the following: Beauty is not an objective property of external objects. In other words, we can say that external objects do not possess any intrinsic beauty, pleasure, or value to be gained by associating them. A simple example is the following: The title of a big house will be more valuable than a bar of chocolate to an adult, but the bar of chocolate might be more valuable than the title deed to a small child. Value is a perceived notion rather than an intrinsic one. However, an ignorant mind does not usually perceive nature this way: we perceive things as beautiful and valuable, some more than others. Although we perceive something that is not out there (much like perceiving a mirage), this perception itself does happen and is called Dukkha. Suppose we act according to this misperception and try to acquire and maintain things to obtain happiness by associating things in this world. In that case, we will ultimately only subject ourselves to great suffering (and no gain whatsoever), which makes the whole endeavour futile and meaningless (anatta).

In this article, let us investigate a little deeper into the nature of anicca – the nature of Cause and Effect.  

First, I want to explain the concept of Cause and Effect as per Buddha's Dhamma and contrast it with the idea of Cause and Effect in Science. 

Let us look at the following picture. You can see that there are three projectors, each project light of a different colour. In the upper part of the picture, we can see different colours depending on which lights mix with each other. For example, right in the middle, we can see a small slice of white which originates dependent on all three projected lights mixing together. In other words:
White = green + blue + red

We can also see a yellow part just over to the left of the white. Yellow depends on the green and red projector lights mixing together, but not the blue. Therefore, Yellow = green + red.

Each of the colours and shapes in the upper part is what we call an ‘effect’. Why are they there? How did they come into being? Well, because they have originated dependent on the coming-together of some or all the three light projections emitted by the three projectors. Therefore, we can also refer to the three light projections, green, red and blue, as the ‘causes’. Particularly noteworthy is the fact that the effect is sustained continuously by the causes. The effect is not an entity independent of the causes, but neither is it the causes themselves. It is a ‘dynamic’ effect of the causes and is, therefore, entirely dependent on them. The causes do not produce a self-standing effect but rather manifest an effect which survives for as long as the causes prevail.

Here is another example to check whether you have understood what I have explained so far: Magenta is an effect. It originates dependent on the coming together of the causes blue and red. Now, let me ask you this simple question. If I were to shut down the blue projector, what would happen? Would we still be able to see magenta where we used to see it? No, right? It is because one of the two causes has been removed. Now, we would only see red where we used to see magenta before, but not magenta.

What would happen if we replaced the blue projector with another green projector? Well, what used to be magenta will no longer manifest. Instead, green + red will give us yellow, just like on the other side. Crucial to our understanding is to comprehend that it is not the magenta that has turned yellow. Instead, when there were causes for magenta to manifest, it did. When there are causes for yellow to manifest, it does. The two effects are unrelated, and it would be erroneous to state that one has ‘become’ the other.

These two simple questions teach us one crucial point: An effect originates dependent on causes but has no separate existence from the causes. It is not independent of the causes. It is not a fully formed, finished, fixed and self-standing entity which can be separated from the causes. Causes need to be continuously supplied to manifest the Effect.
Here is another simple way to understand this point: When you go to the cinema, you see a movie projected onto the screen. To see the film, is it enough to turn on the projector at the beginning of the movie, “create” the movie and then conveniently turn off the projector to save electricity? Does the theatre not have to continuously supply electricity and the proper modulation (which colours to show for the following pictures, etc.) to keep the movie ‘showing’?

Let us now consider the principle of cause and effect in Science. Let me offer an analogy. Take a man and a woman. When these two “come together”, a child is born. Can a child be born without a mother? Or father? Or both? It can’t. Therefore, the effect of “child” cannot be reproduced without causes. But, with this logic, once it is born out of the causes, born to a mother and from a father coming together, it is independent. Here, what I mean by independence is the following: If the mother dies, the child does not die. If the mother changes, the child does not necessarily change. Any effect on the causes, therefore, does not affect the effect (child) since it is now self-standing and complete on its own. There are some among us whose father or mother died. But their death did not result in our death. In other words, changes in the causes do not affect the effect after its “birth”. This is the idea of cause and effect in science, which we can summarise as follows:

An effect originates dependent on causes but has a separate existence from the causes. It is independent of the causes and is a fully formed, finished, fixed and self-standing entity which can be separated from the causes. After its “birth”, we say: “The effect now exists.”

Having made this crucial juxtaposition, I want to give you a powerful example to help you understand the differences. This will also help to identify the mistake in our perception, which, if we can correct, will give us a great foundation to attain Nibbanic bliss.

The example I will choose is the phenomenon of a ‘voice’. You and I have a voice that we speak with. That is the phenomenon I am talking about. The voice is what we use to speak, sing and express ourselves. We could also take other examples and phenomena, but this will be an easy example to understand. 

First, I want to ask you this question: Where is your voice when you are not speaking, when your mouth is closed? It might sound like a silly question, but I want you to give it some serious thought. Where is your voice when you are not using it? Is it in your body, hidden inside the throat or the neck? 

Let's proceed after you have thought about it for a few minutes. The question is silly, don’t you think? We have all learnt at school the basic mechanism for producing vocal sounds, and so we know that you cannot ‘find’ a voice inside your body. It is very silent inside your body; in fact, the body makes no sound at all! This statement might unsettle some of our readers, but please continue reading, and your questions will be answered. You might be struggling to accept this because we have always considered sound an external phenomenon to which our ears are sensitive. But is that so? 

Any medical doctor would clarify that the voice we hear when another person is speaking is essentially a pattern of vibrations travelling through the air. Here is how it is described in Wikipedia: ‘ The lungs, the "pump", must produce adequate airflow and air pressure to vibrate vocal folds. The vocal folds (vocal cords) then vibrate to use airflow from the lungs to create audible pulses that form the laryngeal sound source. The articulators (the parts of the vocal tract above the larynx consisting of the tongue, palate, cheek, lips, etc.) articulate and filter the sound emanating from the larynx and, to some degree, can interact with the laryngeal airflow to strengthen or weaken it as a sound source.
The vocal folds, combined with the articulators, can produce highly intricate arrays of sound.’
If that sounded too complicated, here is the essence compressed. It means that when adequate airflow and air pressure from the lung come in contact with the vocal cords, it starts vibrating, and a vibrational pattern (vibrating air) emerges through the mouth into the outside environment.

Therefore, the voice is not hidden anywhere inside the body when we are not speaking. 

Now, imagine one day I go to bed healthy, and the next morning I wake up with a sore throat, which makes it very difficult to speak. The whole night, I was asleep and not a single word was uttered. But suddenly, my voice sounds very fragile and thin, very incomplete. When I speak to someone who does not know about the condition, they would ask me: ‘Hey Daniel, what’s happened to your voice? It sounds a little bit off. Are you ill?’ 
So therefore, I would visit my doctor. When the doctor arrives for the consultation, he (or she) would ask me about my problem, and I would reply: ‘Doctor, I think I have a sore throat which I would like to have treated.’ Then, the doctor would reply: ‘Oh, yes, Daniel, your voice sounds very different than usual.’ 
As a matter of fact, the exact thing happened to me recently! Someone even asked me, ‘Where did you leave your voice? Did it go back to Germany?’

Please reread these three statements. These will be crucial in understanding the difference between the cause and effect principle of Science and the principle of anicca, which we can understand through this example.  

Somebody asked me the first question: ‘What happened to your voice?’
Now, let us think this through very carefully. When we ask this question, what do we usually feel? We feel that ‘something has happened to a voice’. We think that there is an entity called my ‘voice’, which exists in time to which a change took place; a ‘happening’ took place. A cause or a perturbation affected the entity called ‘voice’.

But, hold on a moment. For a change to happen to the voice overnight, the voice should have been somewhere to be affected; it should have existed somewhere. Somewhere relatively stationary so that some external causes could affect them. Like your car on a car lift at a garage while the mechanics work on it. While the mechanics work on it, it remains stationary. However, throughout the night, as I made no effort to produce it, there was no voice to which anything or anyone could have made an effect. Where was my voice during the night when my mouth was closed? Was it somewhere else when I wasn’t speaking? After all, you can’t affect something if it is not there, right? Then, why do we feel that an alteration of an existing entity took place when we had agreed that there is no voice hiding somewhere when we are not using it?

For today, we shall stop at this juncture and pick up our contemplation next week from here. I want to leave the reader with these questions, which can be answered very elegantly through the concept of anicca. Then, it becomes clear that our intuitive perception of the world, the perception of fixed entities which change over time, is fundamentally flawed. Not only that, this perception is the foundation of all mental suffering in our lives. Understanding and realising this concept of anicca will, therefore, enable us to free ourselves from all mental suffering.