What is dependent origination (paṭicca-samuppāda)?

Dependent origination is the fundamental law of causality in Buddhism. It explains why any phenomenon exists and arises only owing to the presence of certain conditions - and with the cessation of those conditions, the processes and phenomena dependent on them cease to exist as well. First of all the Buddha applies this principle to the arising and cessation of suffering. The general formula runs: “When this is, that comes to be; with the arising of this, that arises. When this is not, that does not come to be; with the cessation of this, that ceases” (SN 12.37). It is not a linear chain but, rather, a dynamic web of mutual conditionality, explaining how the experience of individual existence unfolds within samsara.

It is one of the key teachings describing why suffering arises and how it can be brought to an end. MN 28 says: “One who sees dependent origination sees the Dhamma. One who sees the Dhamma sees dependent origination”.

The Buddha set out the scheme of dependent origination as a chain of 12 links (SN 12.2):

1. Ignorance (Avijjā) - not knowing the nature of reality, and specifically the Four Noble Truths.
2. Formative factors (Saṅkhārā) - kammically conditioned impulses in the form of intentions, emotions, thoughts - everything that shapes the space of the mind and is born of ignorance.
3. Consciousness (Viññāṇa) - awareness of the “objects” arising in the space of the mind.
4. Name-and-form, or Mind and Body (Nāma-rūpa) - the mental and physical constituents of a being, arising in the presence of consciousness. “Name” (the mental) - feeling tone, perception, attention; “form” (the material) - the four great elements and what derives from them.
5. The six sense bases (Saḷāyatana) - the sources of sense perception: eye, ear, nose, tongue, body and mind.
6. Contact (Phassa) - the coming together of a sense organ, its object and consciousness.
7. Feeling (Vedanā) - the tone of experience: pleasant, unpleasant or neutral.
8. Craving (Taṇhā) - passionate desire (attraction) or aversion (rejection) arising towards the feeling.
9. Clinging (Upādāna) - intensified craving grown into attachment to sensual pleasures, the “appropriation” of objects, views and notions of a “self”.
10. Becoming (Bhava) - the process of forming new kamma and a predisposition to a certain kind of existence.
11. Birth (Jāti) - appearance in a new form of existence (not necessarily physical birth, but also the arising of a new identity, a state of mind).
12. Ageing and death (Jarā-maraṇa) - the inevitable decay, suffering and dissolution that follow birth (and with them sorrow, lamentation, pain, dejection and despair).

The main point: suffering exists because of the chain of conditioned links. If the chain is broken - especially at the stage of craving and clinging - the cycle stops, and dukkha (suffering) disappears.

In the canon Sariputta takes the chain apart link by link (MN 9): feeling tone arises with contact, craving - with feeling tone (vedanā); and as the path to the cessation of craving he names the Noble Eightfold Path. It is at the junction of feeling tone and craving that habit operates: the pleasant pulls us to hold on, the painful - to push away. The feeling tone itself - pleasant, unpleasant, neutral - does not go anywhere even for the trained disciple: he still experiences all three kinds of vedanā, but without clinging and without the “second arrow” (SN 36.6).

The standard formula as a sequence does not exhaust all the relations of conditionality. DN 15, for example, points to mutual conditioning: consciousness rests on name-and-form, and name-and-form - on consciousness. The formula of cessation runs in the same order: with the complete fading of ignorance the volitional actions cease, and so on to the end of the whole mass of suffering. Brief expositions begin the cessation with the fading of craving (SN 12.43).

Main interpretations

The classical commentarial explanation spreads the chain over three lives: past, present and future. Taken this way, it shows how ignorance, kamma and craving sustain samsara - precisely as the round of births and deaths - without an unchanging soul passing from body to body.

There is also an interpretation through present experience. Its emphasis is on how conditionality shows itself now: feeling supports craving, craving - clinging and suffering. Some teachers read the whole chain psychologically, including the “birth” of the sense of “I” at every moment - a new identity of sorts, with characteristic manifestations conditioned by this whole chain. On Thanissaro Bhikkhu’s interpretation, small psychological becomings and the large becoming that leads to a new birth are one and the same mechanism at different scales.

The Mahayana tradition, especially Madhyamaka, ties dependent origination to the understanding of emptiness (śūnyatā): since all things depend on conditions, on other phenomena and on designation, they have no independent, self-existent nature. “Empty” does not mean “non-existent” altogether; it means “existing dependently”.

Dependent origination makes it possible to avoid two extreme views - “I have an unchanging essence” and “everything is random, my actions change nothing”. Everything is conditioned, but conditions can change. Virtue, attention, wisdom and goodwill become new conditions that weaken suffering. Dependent origination is also the middle between eternalism (“everything always exists”) and annihilationism (“nothing exists and everything vanishes without trace”), which the Buddha frequently criticises in the canon.

In place of these polar views the Buddha describes new birth through an agrarian metaphor of creating the conditions for a seed to sprout (AN 3.76):

• kamma is the field: intentional actions that create the range of possibilities for experience and birth;
• consciousness is the seed: if passion, delight and craving are present, consciousness gets established and grows;
• craving is the moisture, without which consciousness cannot take hold and grow.

Under these conditions “a new becoming in the future” is produced. Upādāna, grasping, is built here into the mechanics of the interplay of kamma, consciousness and craving. Clinging directs our intentions (cetanā) and deeds (kamma), which in turn condition the “establishing and growth” of consciousness. So “rebirth” can be described as a process of forming a new mode of existence that has gathered momentum - the direction in which the next literal new birth ripens.

Such an account of rebirth implies no personal transmigrating soul. And that is why the Buddha objects to the monk Sāti, who decided that “the same consciousness” wanders on: consciousness arises in dependence on conditions and is distinguished by them (MN 38).

Where to read: MN 9, MN 38, DN 15.