The Missing Link in Pratītyasamutpāda: The Primordial Identity Lock and Its Fatal Implications

This paper examines the Buddhist doctrine of dependent origination (pratītyasamutpāda), a 12-link chain explaining the cycle of suffering and rebirth. While the chain captures conditioned phenomena, it lacks a foundational element: the primordial identity lock, formalized as ∀x (∃Oᵢ Oᵢ(x) → x = x). We argue that identity is not merely presupposed but is the unconditioned ground enabling the entire chain. Without it, no link could maintain referential stability or operational coherence. This analysis reveals that pratītyasamutpāda, in claiming universal explanatory power while denying its own metalogical presuppositions, is logically incoherent and practically misleading. The identity lock is not merely a missing link but the exposed flaw that demonstrates the doctrine's fundamental inconsistency. Any spiritual path based on this incoherent foundation cannot function as a reliable guide to liberation. Historical-philosophical analysis of early Buddhist debates reveals that internal doctrinal disputes themselves required a stable logical frame to be meaningful, thereby confirming our metalogical critique. Formal Verication: The metalogical theorems of this critique have been formally veried using the Coq proof assistant. This machine-checkable proof demonstrates irrefutably that the Pratītyasamutpāda chain, in its radical formulation, is logically incoherent—it necessarily presupposes the identity lock it explicitly denies. The doctrine is therefore not merely incomplete but fundamentally flawed. Coq code can be downloaded from the external Zenodo link below.