Among all the Buddha’s teachings, one stands out as the deepest and most difficult one. One teaching is the beating heart behind every doctrine, scripture, and practice. One insight is the source and destination of Buddhism. Dependent Origination. 

The Buddha himself said:

Whoever sees Dependent Origination sees the Dhamma; whoever sees the Dhamma sees Dependent Origination. 

Maha-hatthipadopama Sutta; MN 28

Dependent Origination maps the exact steps by which we arrive at suffering – and the steps we can take to become free of suffering forever. This teaching is the key to understanding not only our lives but the entire structure of reality.

(You can watch the video version of this essay on YouTube.)

Understanding Dependent Origination

At university, my professors only ever mentioned Dependent Origination in passing, without any discussion. Imagine not hearing about the Sun in a course on the Solar System. I found that strange back then… but these days, I see some wisdom in it. There is danger in encountering the teaching without due caution.

The Buddha’s closest disciple, Ānanda, once exclaimed: 

It’s amazing, master … how deep this Dependent Origination is, and how deep its appearance, and yet to me it seems as clear as clear can be!

Maha-nidana Sutta; DN 15

But the Buddha reproached him:

Don’t say that, Ānanda … Deep is this Dependent Origination, and deep its appearance. It’s because of not understanding and not penetrating this teaching that this generation … does not go beyond [the rounds of rebirth].

Maha-nidana Sutta; DN 15

We must heed this warning. I invite you to take everything you read in this essay as provisional. The tradition holds only awakened beings can explain Dependent Origination correctly. But while the teaching is difficult, each of us can gain insight from it, should we approach it with humility.

Structure of this Essay

This essay has 4 parts. In Part 1, we’ll explore the principle at the heart of Dependent Origination. In Part 2, we’ll look at the 12 links that map human existence; an ancient Buddhist sutta will be our guide here. Part 3 will explain the logic behind the links and in Part 4, we’ll reflect on how the teaching changes our view of reality and ourselves. And I have left something special for the conclusion as well.

So, let’s make our approach gently. Our journey will take us through virtually everything the Buddha ever taught. By the end, hopefully, we will be one step closer to the insight that liberated the Buddha and put the wheel of the Dhamma in motion. 

Part I. The Principle of Dependent Origination

When this exists, that comes to be; with the arising of this, that arises. 

When this does not exist, that does not come to be; with the cessation of this, that ceases.

Pañcaverabhayasutta; SN 12.41

All Buddhist teaching is a rephrasing or elaboration of these two lines. This is the formula that’s come to be known as Dependent Origination. And also Interdependent Arising. And Auspicious Coincidence. And Causal Interdependence… and about a dozen other names. In Pāli, it is called Paṭiccasamuppāda.

My point is, the words don’t matter. I invite you to not try to memorise any words or concepts throughout this essay. This will only get in the way of understanding the essence. 

Dependent Origination is the Buddha’s insight that the world of experience is not a collection of objects or ‘things’, but a living network of relationships. Imagine a cosmic feedback loop composed of infinitely many smaller feedback loops, all feeding into one another.

Remember, the Buddha discouraged philosophy for philosophy’s sake. He maintained his only occupation was to reveal the nature of suffering and the path to ending suffering. His teaching of Dependent Origination returns always to the human condition and how to free it from endless sorrow.

The 12 Links of Dependent Origination

When we apply Dependent Origination to our life, we get a formula. This formula maps how we live, suffer, and how we can be liberated. The most famous version of this formula contains 12 links. And here they are:

It’s easy to get intimidated at the sight of this. But again, you don’t need to memorize lists, terms, or formulas. It is only vital to understand the principle underneath. The 12 links describe the nature of human experience. They describe you: what you are, where you’ve come from, and where you’re going.

Let me present these links to you with a fascinating early text called Avijjapaccaya Sutta. There, a monk challenges the Buddha’s non-self teaching, to which the Buddha replies with the 12 links of Paṭiccasamuppāda. What follows is a conversation that touches on pretty much every aspect of Buddhist philosophy and shows the underlying unity of it all.

You are about to hear a new framework for understanding your existence.  Some of it might sound strange, even absurd at first. But I invite you to give it a chance. You may discover many new insights about the patterns of your life in this bizarre conversation.

Now let’s hear about Paṭiccasamuppāda in the Buddha’s original words.

Part II. The 12 Links Explained (Avijjapaccaya Sutta)

12. Old Age, Death, Suffering

Old age, death, and suffering. These comprise the final link of Dependent Origination. They are what the Buddha’s entire teaching is aimed at freeing us from. 

One day, a distraught monk approaches the Buddha and asks him: ‘Master, you teach the non-self, but you also teach liberation from suffering, old age, and death. Now whose suffering, old age, and death are you talking about? And who is it that must get liberated?’

The Buddha answers: ‘‘Whose suffering, aging, and death?’ is not a valid question, monk. Rather, when there is birth as a condition, suffering, aging, and death follow.’

Instead of answering the monk’s question, the Buddha addresses the thinking behind it. The ‘Who’ is replaced by ‘How’. The notion of a self is replaced by the notion of dynamic relationship. Keep this in mind as we continue.

11. Birth

Birth is the 11th link of Paṭiccasamuppāda. When there is birth, there must of necessity be old age, death, and suffering. Later traditions sometimes interpret these links metaphorically as the arising and passing away of mental states. The early suttas, however, take birth and death literally. They ground us in the physical reality of existence and its inevitable sorrow. 

The monk presses on: ‘Clearly, master, birth is the condition for death. But isn’t it a self that gets born? Or whose birth do you mean?’

‘‘Whose birth?’’, the Buddha replies, ‘is a misleading question. Rather, birth occurs when there is existence as a condition.’

10. Existence

Existence here refers to the 3 realms of Buddhist cosmology. The sense realm, the form realm, and the formless realm. These are the 3 planes on which karma generates sentient beings. Discussing these realms is a whole different rabbit hole, which we’ll leave for another time. The Buddha’s statement here is again quite matter-of-fact. For birth to occur, the fundamental parameters of existence must be in place. Existence is the 10th link of Dependent Origination.

‘But whose existence do you mean, master?’ the monk asks. ‘I exist while my imaginary brother does not. It is a self that exists or not, isn’t that so?’

The Buddha replies: ‘Your thinking is mistaken, monk. Rather, existence occurs when clinging is present as a condition.’

Here we enter the deep waters. It’s far from obvious why existence should have anything to do with clinging, let alone arise from it. Let’s pause on this strange statement.

9. Clinging

The Buddhist suttas list four kinds of clinging. There is clinging:

1. to sensuality,
2. to views,
3. to rules and practices, and
4. to a self-idea.

This is no random list. It brings out the four ways in which the human body-mind forms attachments.

The Pāli term for clinging, upādāna, literally means ‘fuel’. The suttas compare the unenlightened mind to fire in that it constantly needs fuel to keep going. The four kinds of clinging are the four ways in which deluded mind feeds. Let’s go through these one by one. As we do so, think about what type of clinging is most prevalent in your life.

Clinging to Sensuality

Most obviously, the mind feeds on the senses. Sensual stimulation alleviates, for a time, the mind’s craving for peace, and satisfaction. But this is an unreliable source of nutrition with diminishing returns. Our overstimulated culture, built on content addiction, fast food, and pornography shows this. Sensual clinging requires ever-increasing doses of pleasure to silence the void inside us we’re avoiding.

Clinging to Views

On a subtler level, deluded mind feeds on views about the nature of the world. Opinions (and their seeming confirmation) can be even more addictive than sensuality. There is no shortage of ascetics abstaining from bodily pleasure only to have replaced it with an addiction to doctrines and narratives. In fact, the Buddha recognizes his own teaching as a potential object of clinging. As long as we are practicing the Dhamma according to opinion rather than direct insight, we are not practicing the Dhamma.

Clinging to Rules & Practices

This brings us to the next kind of clinging, which is the mind feeding on rules and practices. Here attachment forms around maintaining a particular way of life. This can include our diet, our work routine, our family life, our spiritual practice… This is the mind seeking peace and satisfaction through activities. We seek the sense of being a good boy or a good girl, a productive citizen, living the proper life. Again, this is an attempt to cover up the constant background of stress and sorrow in our lives. And it works temporarily at best.

Clinging to a Self-Idea

The final kind of clinging is so subtle most people never realize it’s there. Attachment to a self-idea is the root and substance of all other kinds of attachment. The idea of being a separate self is the mind’s most treasured nutrient. It gives the mind a sense of shelter, belonging – reality even. It is the master narrative that makes sense of life. Ironically, it is also our key source of suffering.

On a basic level, clinging to a self-idea can be attachment to our social image, what Carl Jung termed ‘persona’. We may identify as a good mother, a faithful husband, a professor, an anarchist, and so on. Our times show we can cling to our gender too. Our bodies, feelings, perceptions, predispositions, and even the fact of our awareness can serve as targets for self-projection.

Clinging to a self-idea is the belief we are some independent entity, a ‘self’ separate from experience, or within experience, or even outside of experience. Mystical notions like the Cosmic Self are, for the Buddha, also forms of clinging. More food for deluded mind. 

For more on this, you can check out my comparative video on Jung’s Self archetype and the Buddha’s non-self teaching.

Clinging Conditions Existence

The four kinds of clinging are the mind’s efforts at alleviating stress, suffering, and dissatisfaction. These efforts deserve our compassion, but they must be recognized as futile. The end of sorrow is a noble goal, and the Buddha says it is within reach. But it cannot be attained through clinging. 

Now let’s return to the Buddha’s bizarre statement that ‘existence appears once clinging is present as a condition’.

If we think of a person addicted to sex, and another one addicted to religion, and another addicted to work, and another addicted to their looks – we picture four different kinds of life. Four different modes of existence. This is a simple example of how clinging shapes existence. 

Clinging is like gravity. It pulls us into habitual orbits, shaping our lives and destinies, making us circle endlessly around objects of craving—whether sensual pleasures, ideas, activities, or our self-image.

But the Buddha goes further. He says clinging puts us on trajectories that go beyond our present life, directing our experience in countless cycles of rebirth. Whether in the material world or subtler realms, clinging shapes our existence. We’re not meant to take the Buddha’s word for this – that would be clinging to views. But we may as well keep an open mind about it. 

So, think about what you most cling to in your life. Is it your work or your relationships? Is it achievement or status? What would happen if you let go of those, even for a moment? Clinging is the 9th link of Dependent Origination.

8. Craving

‘I see, master,’ the monk says, ‘but this only displaces my question. If a commoner clings to his possessions, it is he himself that clings, no? Or whose clinging do you mean?’

The Buddha refrains from pointing out the monk’s clinging to a self-idea. He replies: ‘‘Whose clinging?’ is not a valid question. Rather, when there is craving as a condition, clinging arises.’

Craving is the state of wanting your present experience to be different than what it is. It is having a preference for the contents of consciousness. The early suttas describe 6 classes of craving – one for each of the objects of our sense organs. 

Remember, Buddhism recognizes 6 sense organs: eyes, ears, tongue, skin, and nose, plus the mind, which is our sense organ for mental objects. The human body-mind has these 6 channels through which reality is interpreted and enters into consciousness. 

So, there is craving for images, craving for sounds, for tastes, tactile sensations, smells, and mental objects. This 6-fold division is, of course, only a teaching convention. Experience never arises so neatly classified. For one, mental objects such as memories and fantasies usually accompany all other sense experiences.

When the craving for some content of experience reaches a certain threshold, clinging arises. This is how addiction forms, in ways both subtle and tragic. Think about your own cravings here. How much of your thoughts, words, and actions revolve around pursuing pleasure or avoiding pain? How much of your life revolves around preference?

Craving is the 8th link of Dependent Origination.

7. Feeling

‘I see the truth in this,’ the monk says and bows. ‘But master, again I must ask, whose craving do you mean? A villager craves a woman, a nun craves the Dhamma. Are these not different selves craving different things?’

‘‘Whose craving?’ is not a valid question,’ the Buddha says. ‘Rather, when feeling is present as a condition, craving arises.’

‘Feeling’ is a technical term in Buddhism. It denotes the automatic interpretation of experience as pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. 

Note here, if I’m having blue cheese and it tastes like blue cheese, the experience will feel pleasant. If I’m having chocolate and it tastes like blue cheese, the experience will feel unpleasant. Feeling originates in the mind as a subjective interpretation of sensory data and is rooted in our desires, expectations, biology, and countless other factors. 

When the feeling is pleasant, we crave more of the experience. When it is unpleasant, we crave less of the experience. When it is neutral, we usually crave for the experience to change into something more exciting. So, feeling is the 7th link of Dependent Origination.

6. Contact

The monk, his patience tested, raises his voice: ‘But master, when I feel frustrated at not understanding your words, it is I who feel this, and not Sāriputta. Whose is that feeling you speak of?’

‘‘Whose is that feeling?’ is a mistaken question,’ the Buddha replies. ‘Rather, when there is contact as a condition, feeling arises.’

‘Contact’ is another technical term. It denotes the conscious coming together of sense organs and their sense objects. The moment you hear my voice, this is ear-contact. The moment you grasp the meaning of what I am saying, this is mind-contact. The time between these moments of awareness is so short, that the untrained mind confuses them as one and the same experience.

Now, if you fall asleep while listening to me, you will no longer consciously register my voice. While the sound of my voice will be reaching your eardrums, there will be no ear-contact. Contact requires consciousness. Would, however, your unconscious mind receive my voice? Can there be unconscious contact? This is an important question and I haven’t found an answer to it in the early suttas.

In any case, understanding contact is of extreme importance for liberation. 

Mindfulness of Contact

Remember, as sense data appears through contact, the body-mind applies a feeling tone to it. Usually, we can’t distinguish between the two. We say ‘I’m addicted to smoking’ or ‘I’m addicted to porn’ or ‘I’m anxiously attached to my partner’. But we’re not. It is the feeling we apply to contact with these objects that we crave, not the objects themselves. 

Cultivating mindfulness allows us to perceive the space between contact and feeling. This gradually erodes the hold external objects have on us. Or rather, we begin to see this hold is nothing other than our own self-projections. This insight begins to disrupt the cycles of Dependent Origination… but it is not enough to end them. 

Despite what some modern Buddhists teach, the Buddha never said mindfulness of contact leads to liberation. Only the complete cessation of the first link of the chain can end Dependent Origination and sorrow forever. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

One more thing before we move on. Contact is the point where information enters into consciousness. So, the remaining links we will cover are mostly unconscious. This shows just how much of what we do to produce suffering happens unbeknownst to the thinking mind. Liberation then, requires transformation on all layers of the body-mind. It’s not just about getting your thinking straight.

Contact is the 6th link of Paṭiccasamuppāda.

5. The 6 Sense Media

‘Yes, master Gautama,’ the monk says, ‘but there is my ear-contact and your eye-contact; there is his mind-contact and her skin-contact. It is the self that has contact!’

The Buddha replies: ‘To say ‘it is the self that has contact’ is misguided. Rather, when the 6 sense media are present as a condition, contact arises.’

The 6 sense media are, simply, our 6 sense organs. These are the gates through which reality becomes known by the body-mind. They are the 5th link of Dependent Origination.

4. The Body-Mind

‘But master,’ the monk exclaims, ‘my eye is different from your eye, and from the eye of Vacchagotta. I want to know what is the self that sense media belong to.’

‘‘What self do sense media belong to?’,’ the Buddha says, ‘is an invalid question. Rather, when there is the body-mind as a condition, there are the 6 sense media.’

Body-mind refers to the psycho-physical system we colloquially call ‘a person’. ‘Body’ refers to the physical elements that make up the organism. ‘Mind’ refers to the mental phenomena of feeling, perception, intention, contact, and attention. 

Note how consciousness is not included as a mental phenomenon. Rather, consciousness is the knowing of phenomena, mental and physical alike. We’ll get back to this in a minute.

Also, note the Buddha doesn’t say ‘a body and a mind’ or ‘a body with a mind’, or ‘a mind with a body’. He says ‘body-mind’, meaning one whole. For the purposes of analysis, we say this whole has a physical dimension and a mental dimension. But the body-mind is one continuous, dynamic process. Modern medicine is still catching up with this insight. Thank God for Gabor Maté.

The body-mind is the 4th link of Dependent Origination.

3 Consciousness

‘But master,’ the monk says, ‘this body-mind we call Siddhartha and that body-mind we call Ānanda. Is the body-mind the self or does it belong to the self? Or is the self something completely different from the body-mind?’

‘Your questions are off the mark, monk’ the Buddha replies. ‘Rather, when there is consciousness as a condition, the body-mind arises.’

We arrive at another crucial link here. 

The traditional explanation is that, without consciousness, the body-mind could not maintain its development and vital functions. This is what the Buddha says in Mahanidana Sutta. But let me give you an additional interpretation. 

The mainstream view today is that consciousness is somehow produced by the brain. Since we can see the physical correlates of states of consciousness, we assume consciousness is nothing but an activity of the brain. The Buddha, avoiding assumptions, sticks with the facts of experience. And those are that the body-mind only ever appears as content of consciousness.

Think about it. 

Experience as a Video Game

Think of playing a first-person video game. Let’s take Skyrim for example, one of my favourites. We play Skyrim on a screen. We don’t imagine our screen exists within our game character. We don’t imagine when our character, the dovahkiin, dies our screen will disappear. We know our character, the game world, and all game activity exist as content of the screen.

But once we close the game we fail to apply this same principle to our own experience. We assume our consciousness is somehow contained within our mind or body. We assume the breakup of the body-mind is the end of consciousness. And we keep failing to notice the obvious. That is, the body-mind only ever appears as content of consciousness.

Now, our intuition about the brain-consciousness relationship is not entirely wrong. Consciousness does seem to require some psychophysical system as support. The Buddha recognizes this too. He says:

Insofar as consciousness is conditioned by body-mind, body-mind is conditioned by consciousness…

DN.2.32

From all 12 links of Dependent Origination, only here does the Buddha explicitly speak of a two-way relationship. We can see here the germ of the non-dual insight that consciousness and its contents is a false division of one and the same reality. But the Yogācāra Buddhists will get here centuries after the death of the Buddha. You can learn more about them in my video on the Buddhist unconscious.

Consciousness as a Sunbeam

The Buddha himself left us with a mysterious simile. He compares consciousness to a sunbeam and the body-mind to that on which the sunbeam lands. We read:

“Just as if there were a roofed house or a roofed hall having windows on the north, the south, or the east. When the sun rises, and a ray has entered by way of the window, where does it land?”

“On the western wall, lord.”

“And if there is no western wall, where does it land?”

“On the ground, lord.”

“And if there is no ground, where does it land?”

“On the water, lord.”

“And if there is no water, where does it land?”

“It does not land, lord.”

“In the same way, where there is no craving for nutriment … consciousness does not land there or increase [and] there is no alighting of body-mind.

Atthiraga Sutta; SN 12.64

This simile suggests that liberation from the endless cycles of rebirth does not consist of the end of consciousness. Rather, it is the setting free of consciousness from the confines of the body-mind. 

What does this mean? I wish I could tell you…

Consciousness Feeding on Reality

And notice another detail. The Buddha says the liberation of consciousness comes when ‘there is no craving for nutriment’. This is worth taking a closer look at.

Our 6 sense organs are our 6 channels of feeding on reality. We feed on sights, sounds, smells, tastes, textures, and mental phenomena. The words we listen to, the work we do, the love we make, the books we read, the content we consume… These are all different ways of feeding on life. 

And as they say, you are what you eat.

Feeding on junk experience, we create a sick, undisciplined, deluded body-mind. A decrepit shelter for consciousness. What’s more, this defiled body-mind is caught in a vicious cycle of seeking more of the quick-dopamine junk that poisons it.

On the other hand, feeding on wholesome experience creates a healthy, disciplined, awake body-mind. A beautiful abode for consciousness. And that body-mind will seek and create more wholesome experience in a positive feedback loop.

But while the Buddha recommends feeding on wholesome experience, even this must be transcended for liberation to occur. Liberation comes when the body-mind finally loses all appetite for experience, wholesome and unwholesome alike. When all preference ends.

When all of life is seen through as non-self, ephemeral, and unsatisfactory, no more feeding occurs. When there is no more feeding, there is no more karma. With the cessation of karma, no future rebirth occurs, no new body-mind is generated after death, and consciousness is set free as a sunbeam in empty space.

Consciousness is the 3rd link of Dependent Origination.

2. Karma Formations

‘But whose consciousness do you mean,’ the monk asks, determined to push his master as far as he can. ‘I have my consciousness and my mother has her consciousness. In fact, it seems to me we are nothing other than consciousness. The true self must be the pure being of awareness!’

‘You lose yourself in speculation,’ the Buddha replies. ‘When there are karma formations as a condition, consciousness arises.’

Here we arrive at an opaque term: karma formations. Your reading this essay now is a karma formation. Reading this essay, rather than doing something else, is the form your will has taken at this point in space-time. And thanks for that, by the way!

‘Karma formations’ means the will’s intentional production of karma.

There are 3 channels through which we create karma: body, speech, and mind. Through our actions, words, and thoughts we produce karma that is bright, dark, or neither bright nor dark. This karma determines our future experiences in this life and subsequent ones. 

This is a fascinating topic and I invite you to my video on karma and rebirth to learn more. 

But why would karma formations condition consciousness?

The Karmic Algorithm

The law of karma works like a social media algorithm. The more of a certain content type you consume, the more of that content type you get recommended. This is why people end up with such different feeds. And such different lives.

What you do, say, and think determines what you experience in the future. 

Acting violently will land you in a violent life. Speaking kindly will fill your life with kindness. The Buddha teaches all we ever experience is the fruit of past karma. Your reading this essay now is literally what your past karma looks like. (Or some of it, at least.) It is not just your search engine algorithm that brought you here. A much greater algorithm, the law of karma, is responding to the thoughts, words, and actions you have willfully produced in the past. And here you are. 

So take a moment to reflect: what kind of future are you shaping right now with the choices you’re making? What you think, say, and do today shapes what you experience tomorrow. Karma formations is the 2nd link of Dependent Origination.

1. Ignorance

‘But master,’ the monk hesitates, ‘karma formations too must have an owner, isn’t that so? I have my thoughts, you have your words, and the elephant has her actions. Surely, there must be a self who produces and owns their karma! How can I experience my past karma unless it is… well, my past karma?’

The Buddha remains silent for a moment. With great compassion, he looks deeply into the monk’s eyes. His voice then comes heavy but kind.

‘My karma and his karma’’ are misguided ideas, my friend. Rather, when there is ignorance as a condition, karma formations arise.’

In Buddhism, ignorance is another technical term. It is not ignorance of the Pythagorean theorem or Bulgarian grammar. By ignorance, the Buddha means the core existential delusion chaining beings to endless sorrow. That is, ignorance of the Four Noble Truths. 

I have covered the Four Noble Truths in a past video, which I invite you to watch. But here is a short summary.

The Four Noble Truths

The First Noble Truth is that there is no final satisfaction to be discovered in the world. To exist is to be dissatisfied. All paths, the straight and the winding, the long and the short, the wide and the narrow, the easy and the rough, all of them lead to sorrow, disappointment, and pain.

The Second Noble Truth is that dissatisfaction arises due to craving. The very chasing of satisfaction in a world of dissatisfaction is the feedback loop that keeps the world running. And keeps beings in perpetual suffering.

The Third Noble Truth is that while there is no final satisfaction to be discovered in the world – final satisfaction is, in fact, possible. There is a way to become free of sorrow.

The Fourth and final Noble Truth is the pathless path leading to nirvāṇa. The Eightfold Noble Path of Buddhist practice, contemplation, and mind cultivation. You can learn about this in detail in my video on the Path.

Again, ignorance in Buddhism means not knowing the Four Noble Truths. And no, what you’ve just heard from me does not constitute knowing the Truths. Intellectual discussion has little to do with true insight. Only upon final awakening do the last remnants of ignorance burn away and true wisdom emerges. But hey, one has to start somewhere.

The Ending of Karma Formations

Now, when there is insight into the Truths, no karma formations arise. But what could this mean? Do we simply stop acting, speaking, and thinking? Must we live a passive, disinterested life?

The Buddha doesn’t strike us as passive or disinterested. The man devoted his life to teaching and caring for others. He gave his last lecture literally while he was dying. Isn’t this karma formation? Didn’t he intentionally act, speak, and think to achieve his intentions? Does this mean the Buddha acted out of ignorance?

Well, perhaps the end of intentional action doesn’t mean inaction. Nor should it mean un-intentional action. I think what the Buddha means is simply action, with intention out of the picture.

When an apple tree is giving apple fruit, it is acting, but not intentionally. There is no disassociation between tree, fruit, and environment. There is only one single flow of causal events. 

The environment nurtures the tree, the tree nurtures the fruit, the fruit nurtures the environment. And there is no environment, no tree, and no fruit really. These are only man-made words for different phases of one and the same causal continuum. 

Dependent Origination.

No Buddha, no Dhamma, no Sangha

In the same way, the Buddha’s enlightened actions, words, and thoughts are simply the flow of Dhamma into the world. This flow of pure insight is possible because there is no disassociation between subject, object, and action. 

There is no Buddha, no Dhamma, and no Sangha. Only the influx of insight. What we call ‘the Buddha’ is but the constellation of causes and conditions that allow for this insight to arise and be verbalized.

We see this same principle in Meister Eckhart’s teachings on spiritual poverty. Through being thoroughly empty of oneself, one realizes one’s identity with the unconditioned. You can have a look at my video on the Christian mystic to learn more.

When there is ignorance, reality experiences itself in a fragmented way. It sees itself as a subject encountering objects, as an isolated, vulnerable agent with goals and preferences. This fuels the whole process of Dependent Origination and the production of sorrow.

Ignorance is the 1st link of Dependent Origination. When there is ignorance as a condition, Dependent Origination occurs.

The monk remains silent after the Buddha tells him this. He doesn’t ask ‘Whose ignorance do you mean?’ or ‘Who is it that is ignorant?’.

The monk simply bows in gratitude for the teaching. This ending of the monk’s questions is, I feel, the most profound part of the sutta. But we’ll return here in a bit.

First, let’s take a step back. Let’s take a panoramic view of the 12 links and see how the parts work together.

Part III. Understanding The 12 Links

If we view Paṭiccasamuppāda as a linear process, the 12 links make little sense. I mean, how can the body-mind appear earlier in the chain than the actual birth of said body-mind? Also, while the relationship between contact and feeling is obvious, that between clinging and existence is tenuous at best. What’s all that about?

Well, to make sense of the links, we must understand 3 key aspects of Dependent Origination. I’ll get a bit technical for a minute, but bear with me, this will make things clearer.

2 Types of Causality in Dependent Origination

First, Dependent Origination describes two types of causality: linear and synchronic. Linear causality is like a domino effect—one event leads directly to the next. Synchronic causality happens simultaneously, like how having a front always implies a back, or having an up implies having a down. In the chain of Dependent Origination, these two types of causality are interwoven into a complex web of cause and effect.

You can see this in the original formula of the Buddha. There, he first describes the linear principle, and then the synchronic:

When this exists, that comes to be [LINEAR]; with the arising of this, that arises… [SYNCHRONIC]

Pañcaverabhayasutta; SN 12.41

This is why not all links follow the same logic. For example, feeling leading to craving is a linear relationship. Body-mind conditioning the 6 sense media is a synchronic relationship. It is important to understand Paṭiccasamuppāda transcends our everyday understanding of time. We’ll return to this in a minute.

The Links are INTER-Dependenent

A second key point is that each link interacts with all other links, not just with the preceding and the following one. The traditional order of the links describes the most significant relationships, but there are countless feedback loops running in the background.

For example, feeling doesn’t directly lead to craving. If it were so, enlightened beings, who do experience feeling, would also experience craving. But this would mean they are not enlightened beings. Rather, feeling in combination with ignorance leads to craving. Feeling without ignorance is simply feeling arising and feeling passing away.

Also, ignorance is the cause of karma formations, but karma formations also reinforce ignorance. When we act, speak, and think in delusion, we create more delusion for ourselves and for others.

As Thich Nhat Hanh writes:

Each link in the chain… is both a cause and an effect of all the other links in the chain. The 12 Links inter-are…

Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching

Dependent Origination Works Across Space-Time

This leads us to a third key aspect of Paṭiccasamuppāda. That is, the principle works on multiple scales of space-time. For example, while contact may lead to feeling straight away, birth leads to old age and death in a matter of decades. Feeling may lead to craving immediately, or a decade of feeling may be necessary for craving to arise. 

Cause and effect can happen simultaneously or they can be separated by lifetimes. A core implication of this is that nobody gets away with anything. Whatever the time horizon, causality keeps the records.

Some Buddhists claim the 12 links describe the moment-to-moment arising of conscious experience. Others believe the links describe human experience in a lifetime. Still others split the links between 3 lives – past, present, and future.

All 3 interpretations have their virtues, but I believe none of them does full justice to the teaching. We’ve seen how some links act momentarily and others across a lifetime. Let me briefly present the 3-lives interpretation.

The 3-Lifetimes Interpretation of Dependent Origination

According to this view, the first 2 links – ignorance and karma formations – belong to our past life. Back then, we produced bright and dark karma in our ignorance. This has conditioned the arising of consciousness in our present body-mind. The last two links – birth and old age and death – belong to our future life. Then we will be born once again, suffer once again, and once again die. The rest of the links in the middle present the dynamics of our present life. 

This model is meant to broaden the context in which we understand ourselves and the world. It reveals the causes and consequences of our existence which go beyond the life we live right now. It shouldn’t, however, blind us to the presence of all 12 links in every moment of awareness. 

The Buddha’s Original Representation of Dependent Origination

The dynamic nature of Dependent Origination means every static representation of it will be inaccurate. Numbered lists just won’t do. The Tibetan wheel of life is also potentially misleading. One may surmise from it that the final link (old age and death) is the cause of the first link (ignorance). This is something the suttas never say.

The best simile for Paṭiccasamuppāda comes from the Buddha himself.

Here are his original words:

[Dependent Origination] is like when the heavens rain heavily on a mountain top, and the water flows downhill to fill the hollows, crevices, and creeks. As they become full, they fill up the pools. The pools fill up the lakes, the lakes fill up the streams, and the streams fill up the rivers. And as the rivers become full, they fill up the ocean.

Upanisa Sutta; SN 12:23

On another occasion, the Buddha completes the description:

Monks, the great ocean rising causes the large rivers to rise. The large rivers rising cause the little rivers to rise. The little rivers rising cause the large lakes to rise. The large lakes rising cause the little lakes to rise.

Upayanti Sutta; SN 12:69

The Buddha compares conditioned existence to the Earth’s water cycle. The 12 links are local phenomena like pools, rivers, and streams. But these local phenomena are part of a much larger, dynamic cycle. Any change in one place or at one moment affects all other places and moments. Micro feedback loops run within macro feedback loops, spanning all of space-time. The world, the Buddha tells us, is a fractal of relationships.

Many Perspectives on the Same Principle

Dependent Origination is not complicated, but it is endlessly complex. That’s why there are so many different explanations of it throughout Buddhist literature. 

There is the 2-link version, which contains only cause and effect.

There is a 3-link version, with past, present, and future. 

The 4-link version has ignorance, karma formations, birth, and old age and death.

The point is: we can divide existence into however many slices we want. A good division is one that serves our purposes. But in reality, all divisions are just conventions. There are no links of Dependent Origination, really. The links are just pixels we use in an attempt to build up a picture of what is. And what is is a dynamic process of conditional causation. 

Let’s shift our attention to this universal principle.

Part IV. Understanding The Principle

When this exists, that comes to be; with the arising of this, that arises. 

When this does not exist, that does not come to be; with the cessation of this, that ceases.

Pañcaverabhaya Sutta; SN 12.41

This is the Dhamma. Every Buddhist doctrine, sutta, and commentary is a specific application of this universal insight. Let’s look at a few examples.

Dependent Origination & Non-Self

We’ve talked a lot about the Buddha’s non-self teaching on this channel. We’ve studied its nuances and we’ve seen it doesn’t say the self does not exist. 

Rather, the self, as a concept, is an inaccurate, conventional way of referring to the human condition. It doesn’t do justice to the many relationships that animate our experience and the constant change these relationships undergo.

But saying there is no self is just as inaccurate. This ignores the continuity of our past, present, and future. It doesn’t do justice to the integrated structure of human personality and our responsibility for our lives.

So, rather than teaching there is a self or no self, the Buddha teaches the Middle Way, Dependent Origination. 

The mainstream self-view is useful for making sense of our daily existence. It focuses on the continuity of individual people’s behavior. Its usefulness for survival has made it the norm. You would prefer dinner with a friend over dinner with a serial killer, I presume.

The opposite no-self-view is useful in overcoming craving and attachment, and hence becoming free of psychological suffering. This makes it a powerful spiritual tool and that’s why many novice practitioners cling to it.

Paṭiccasamuppāda shows how the flow of causes and conditions we call ‘a person’ transcends both self and no-self descriptions. The teaching embraces both these limited perspectives, allowing us to use whichever is most useful for our purposes.

The 12 links map the dance of the aggregates of human experience. They show us their mutual synchronization, which creates the illusion of a self, and also their conditioned nature, which creates the illusion of no-self. In reality, a person is neither a self nor no self. A person is a temporary phase of Dependent Origination.

This brings us to free will and karma. 

Dependent Origination & Karma

Did you choose to read this essay as a free agent? Or is your reading it the product of past experiences, thoughts, words, and actions? 

Are you fully responsible for the kind of life you have? Or is your life the product of circumstance, chance, and external conditions? 

Do you produce karma or does karma produce you?

One view suggests you transcend reality and act independently of your experiences and environment. The other view suggests you have no say in the course of your life, but simply experience a predetermined chain of events. Neither perspective does justice to the full complexity of reality. 

The Buddha again reconciles these extremes by taking the Middle Way, Dependent Origination.

The body-mind, karma formations, and the world of experience are caught in endless feedback loops. Our actions shape the world, the world shapes us, and we shape our actions; but our actions also shape us, and we also shape the world, and the world also shapes our actions, and so on…

Here is how Thich Nhat Hanh captures this cyclical nature of existence:

The egg is in the chicken, and the chicken is in the egg. Chicken and egg arise in mutual dependence. Neither is independent.

Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching

The Buddha’s teaching on Dependent Origination later evolved into the Mahāyāna doctrine of emptiness. My most popular video explores this at length and you can check it out to learn more. 

Dependent Origination & Emptiness

In short, Mahāyāna emptiness concludes that since all things are conditioned, no thing has independent existence. There are no ‘things’ really; empty is the world.

Nāgārjuna, the father of this doctrine, warns us not to take it as meaning nothing exists, which would be absurd. He just means to show that to say anything does exist is just as absurd. 

But how can we reconcile this pair of negations? How can things both not exist and also not not exist?

The resolution lies in the Middle Way, Dependent Origination. 

The Buddha says:

[F]or one who sees the origin of the world as it really is with correct wisdom, there is no notion of nonexistence in regard to the world. 

And for one who sees the cessation of the world as it really is with correct wisdom, there is no notion of existence in regard to the world.

Kaccayanagotta Sutta; SN 12.15

In other words, experience arises, generated by causes and conditions. This, in our limited vocabulary, we call existence. When the causes and conditions change or disappear, the experience changes or disappears. This, in our limited vocabulary, we call non-existence. 

The ecosystem of Dependent Origination goes through many cycles of arising and passing away, some short, some long. We mostly remain blind to these cycles and fixate on certain points along the slope, expecting them to remain as they are. But they never do. This clinging to what is of the nature to change is how we guarantee our continued suffering.

Dependent Origination & The 3 Marks of Existence

And this takes us to the famous 3 Marks of Existence: impermanence, non-self, and suffering.

By trying to hold on to the impermanent as if it is permanent, we produce suffering. By trying to satisfy our non-self as if it is a self, we produce suffering. By expecting to escape suffering in this world of suffering, we produce suffering. This is all a different formulation of Dependent Origination.

I can keep tracing Buddhist teachings back to Paṭiccasamuppāda, but this essay is long enough as it is. I invite you to reflect on other Buddhist doctrines you know and see how they all spring from the Buddha’s one core insight.

Let me close with one final point.

Dependent Origination & Ignorance

Remember the monk questioning the Buddha in the sutta we looked at? Why did he remain silent after the Buddha arrived at ignorance as the first link? Why didn’t the monk ask ‘Whose ignorance do you mean?’?

I believe the monk understood that the very question ‘Whose ignorance?’ is the ignorance the Buddha was describing.

The very conviction that experience is happening to somebody, and that somebody is you, and you have likes and dislikes, and you need to pursue what you like and avoid what you dislike… this whole stance is the very fuel behind Dependent Origination. This is the rain filling up the ponds, gulleys, and creeks.

And here we arrive at the core point of Dependent Origination. As Professor Peter Harvey writes,

[Dependent Origination] is a process which can operate only in ignorance of itself.

Peter Harvey, The Conditioned Co-arising of Mental and Bodily Processes within Life and Between Lives

Ignorance is not a first cause; it is just as conditioned as any other phenomenon in existence. Ignorance is, however, the cornerstone of the conditioned world. Take away ignorance, and the whole structure collapses in on itself. 

In other words, you and I, and Barney the dog are different local cycles of Dependent Origination. Our body-minds and consciousness get regenerated in countless cycles according to karma. And all of this occurs because we are ignorant of its occurrence. Dependent Origination is like a nightmare in that it can only occur while we are asleep.

Dependent Origination & Liberation

The Buddha’s remembering of his past lives, his discovery of the Four Noble Truths, of the laws of karma, impermanence, and the illusory self all occurred simultaneously on the night of his awakening. That is, the night when he realized nirvāṇa. I believe all these discoveries and the realization of nirvāṇa are different names for the Buddha’s complete and final realization of Dependent Origination.

The local cycle of Dependent Origination that was Siddhartha Gautama finally saw through itself. It was this vision that ended bondage to conditioned existence. What looked from the outside as a person becoming enlightened, was, in fact, reality waking up to its own nature.

And yet, this breaking up of Siddhartha Gautama’s Dependent Origination did not lead to his disappearance from the face of the Earth. On the contrary, the Buddha had his most productive years after awakening.  

This is a reminder that the goal of liberation is not non-existence. It is something much subtler and greater. 

Beyond Being & Non-Being

In his first Dharma talk, the Buddha cautioned his disciples not to be attached to either… being or nonbeing, because [they] are just constructs of the mind… If you say that the purpose of the practice is to destroy being in order to arrive at nonbeing, this is entirely incorrect. 

With nonattachment, we see both being and nonbeing as creations of our mind, and we ride the wave of birth and death. 

We don’t mind birth. We don’t mind death. If we have to be born again to continue the work of helping, that is okay…

We know that there is birth, old age, and death, but we also know that these are only waves on which bodhisattvas ride. Birth is okay and death is okay, if we know that they are only concepts in our mind. Reality transcends both birth and death.

Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching

So, what are the actual effects of liberation? The Buddha is reported to have suffered from backaches on several occasions. Does this mean he did not, after all, achieve freedom from suffering?

The answer may lie in a simile he gives us:

[I]n the case of a well-taught noble disciple, O monks, when he is touched by a painful feeling, he will not worry nor grieve and lament… It is one kind of feeling he experiences, a bodily one, but not a mental feeling. 

It is as if a man were pierced by a dart, but was not hit by a second dart following the first one. So this person experiences feelings caused by a single dart only.

Sallatha Sutta; SN 36.6

A Fire Blown Out

In other words, at liberation, one does not become supernaturally invincible. It is psychological suffering that ends and with it, the whole chain of Dependent Origination begins to break. There is no longer a sufferer with a story about their suffering and with intentions to become free of their suffering. There is only suffering arising and suffering passing away. 

The suttas compare the enlightened being to a fire blown out with the embers still burning. These embers are the residue of past karma. Once the winds of time extinguish the embers too, no new fire arises. The flames of Dependent Origination are blown out. And yes, the Sanskrit word for ‘blown out’ is nirvāṇa.

Once ignorance, the cornerstone of the conditioned world, is no longer present, the whole structure collapses. What remains then is the unconditioned. But we’ll talk more about nirvāṇa in the future.

Transcendental Dependent Origination

Much of the Buddhist tradition focuses on waking us up to our bondage to cosmic laws we do not understand. This can result in a bleak, even hopeless picture of life.

But consider this: How did the Buddha – in this world of bondage, ignorance, and sorrow – how did he manage to realize nirvāṇa? Looking at the 12 links, it seems all odds are against us. How is a sentient being supposed to find liberation? 

And if all things are conditioned, where do wisdom, compassion, and liberation come from? What conditions them?

Before you go, allow me to share with you a little-known Pāli sutta on Dependent Origination. This nearly forgotten text answers these questions and reminds us the spiritual path is not one of negation but of courage and discovery.

This text, the Upanisa Sutta, expands on the 12 links we’ve covered with 11 more links. These additional links make up what is called Transcendental Dependent Origination. Don’t worry, I won’t go into any detail on these. But it’s worth your time to have a look at them.

Here is what we’ve covered:

Upanisa Sutta continues the chain like this:

This is the unraveling of the nightmare. The process of waking up to nirvāṇa. Transcendental Dependent Origination.

The Original Non-Dual Insight

Upanisa Sutta was mostly overlooked by early Buddhism. It took centuries for the tradition to arrive at the understanding that saṃsāra and nirvāṇa, bondage and liberation, ignorance and insight, are one and the same reality seen from different angles. This non-dual insight is usually attributed to Nāgārjuna and Mahāyāna Buddhism. We can see, however, it existed from the very start, waiting for us to catch up with it.

The venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi writes:

As the frame behind the four noble truths, the key to the perspective of the middle way, and the conduit to the realization of selflessness, [Dependent Origination] is the unifying theme … of a single coherent vision. 

Bhikkhu Bodhi, Transcendental Dependent Arising

This vision is the Dhamma, awakening, and liberation. I hope this essay gives you a new appreciation of the unity of the Buddha’s teachings. And for Paṭiccasamuppāda as the DNA of the Dhamma.

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