Just so you don’t think I’ve stopped writing, I thought I’d drop a note here to direct you to my Skeptical Buddhist on Bluesky Social account, where I am, slowly but surely, documenting what I believe is a better understanding of Dependent Arising. It is slow going because I’m trying to do a good job of “showing my work” — that is, documenting with quotations from Pali suttas, and the research of others whose work has helped illuminate how the Buddha taught, and how embedded in the culture of his times his teachings were. All that while trying to keep it both readable to those who are not much into either the Pali or maybe even the suttas, as well as relevant to our lives.
For me, this more accurate view of Dependent Arising is really just the start of a fresh understanding of, not just what the Buddha taught, but of why he taught it the way he did, and of who he was as a historical figure. I find he was a very precise constructor of talks, extremely careful in the way he put words and concepts together, as well as full of subtlety and a bit of dry humor. Anyone looking for more information on Dependent Arising as discussed in my book, Dependent Arising In Context will find more detail and practical understanding in that thread.
I hope you’ll come visit the Bluesky account (you don’t even need to sign up for it, it’s wide open to public view), and say hello there or here.
P.S. The link to the Bluesky account lands on the first relevant item in a long Table of Contents. In case you (like me) are not Social Site Savvy, it will help to know to click the hyperlink that starts with a # (“hashtag”) to go from the introduction to the thread, to the thread itself.