The Buddhist Concept of Genesis
In discussing genesis, origin of the world, the Buddha was not referring to an objective physical world. He was referring to a subjective experience, which we call the objective world.


The words of the Buddha are stated as follows:



The problem of existence is the insecurity of life created by a conflict between human reason and human emotion. It is human reason that recognizes the reality of external circumstances, while human emotions being unaware of reality are blindly concerned about human emotional needs. It is this conflict that Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis pointed to as neurosis. It is also what the modern existential philosophers have referred to as, fear and trembling, or anguish. They have, however, been unable to find an adequate solution to this problem, other than to take the leap of faith as Kierkegaard did or resort to Marxism as Sartre did. It was the Buddha who solved the problem in the East, not by changing the external circumstances, but by changing the mind of man. He solved it by understanding that the objective world and the subjective self, are only a creation of the process of perception and feeling, and therefore existence that the existentialists harped on was not even a rational concept but was only an emotional feeling based on imagination.


This means, what we observe as the world and self are not realities but appearances. Both our subjective and the objective experiences are really subjective, and therefore a delusion. Even the conflict between emotion and external circumstances is really a conflict between emotion and reason. Suffering is understood to be based on the delusion or dream of existence. It is only by awakening from this dream of existence that the problem is solved.


Concurrence of Antecedents (paṭicca samuppāda) is a description of a process that begins with an unconscious state (avijjā). The modern theory of evolution confirms this idea when it states that life began as an unconscious electrochemical process that began as the process of evolution that ended in producing a human brain that became conscious of a world and a self. In other words, matter was not conscious till the human being evolved. This awakening into a world with a self is an opening into an awareness of objective sensations (saññā) and subjective feelings (vedanā).


Concurrence of Antecedents (paṭicca samuppāda) therefore consists of two sequential processes: the cognitive and the affective. It starts with the Cognitive process that begins with construction (sankhāra) and ends with cognition (phassa). This is followed by the Affective process that begins with feeling (vedanā) and ends with ageing and death (jarā maraṇa).