- Buddha-Nature
- Compassion
- Defining Bodhicitta
- Emptiness
- Equalizing & Exchanging Self and Others
- Equanimity
- History of Bodhicitta Teachings
- How to Develop Bodhicitta
- Interdependent Origination
- Lineage of the Profound View
- Lineage of the Vast Conduct
- Mahāyāna
- Mind Training
- Non-Self
- Seven-Point Instructions of Cause and Effect
- The Bodhisattva Ideal
- The Bodhisattva Path
- The Bodhisattva Vow
- The Bodhisattva's Goal
- The Four Immeasurables
- The Six Perfections
- The Three Higher Trainings
- The Two Accumulations
- The Two Truths
- Tonglen: The Practice of Sending and Receiving
- Types of Bodhicitta
Interdependent origination (pratītyasamutpāda), also referred to as "dependent origination" or "dependent arising," is one of Buddhism's most fundamental teachings, describing how all phenomena arise in dependence upon multiple causes and conditions rather than existing independently or absolutely. Traditionally formulated as a twelve-link chain beginning with ignorance and culminating in suffering, it explains how craving and attachment perpetuate the cycle of rebirth. The principle reveals that nothing possesses inherent, independent existence—everything is interconnected and contingent. Understanding interdependent origination is considered essential to grasping the nature of suffering and the path to liberation, as it demonstrates that suffering arises from identifiable causes and can therefore cease when those causes are eliminated.
The Buddha's teachings emphasize that the ultimate nature of reality is emptiness—that the self and all phenomena do not exist in the way that they appear to us. This focus on emptiness may lead some to believe that Buddhism presents a nihilistic position where nothing has any existential status whatsoever.
However, this would be an incorrect way of understanding what the Buddha taught. While the presentation of emptiness refutes both the self and phenomena as having any form of independent reality, being empty does not eliminate the possibility of things existing nominally, or on some basic conventional level.
Alongside the teaching of emptiness, the Buddha also teaches us interdependent origination, or dependent arising. Interdependent origination explains how things exist conventionally and how all phenomena arise from causes and conditions in relationship to other phenomena. They are not completely independent or disconnected from other things.
Interdependent origination is a translation of the Sanskrit pratītyasamutpāda. The Buddha taught that all phenomena arise (utpāda) in dependence (pratītya) on causes and conditions, forming complex relationships (sam) among those causes and factors. Interdependent origination describes precisely how all things come about, making the teaching on pratītyasamutpāda effectively the Buddhist theory of causality or evolution.
In the early Pāli canon's Dasabalasutta (from the Saṁyutta Nikāya, or Connected Discourses), the Buddha discusses the causality of all things while pointing to its deeper expression—the twelve links of interdependent origination—which describe how beings become trapped in samsaric existence.
Thus 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. That is, with ignorance as condition, volitional formations come to be; with volitional formations as condition, consciousness…. Such is the origin of this whole mass of suffering.[1]
Here, the Buddha describes how the process of birth, death, and rebirth is not haphazard. It is driven by causes and conditions, the first of which is our fundamental ignorance about reality. When these causes are in place, the whole chain of samsaric existence continues.
The Buddha expands on this theme of uncontrolled rebirth in cyclic existence in The Rice Seedling Sūtra (Śālistambasūtra), where he makes further reference to interdependent origination:
Venerable Śāriputra then said to the bodhisattva mahāsattva Maitreya, "Maitreya, here today, the Bhagavān, gazing at a rice seedling, spoke this aphorism to the bhikṣus: 'Bhikṣus, whoever sees dependent arising sees the Dharma. Whoever sees the Dharma sees the Buddha.' . . .
"What is the causal relation in outer dependent arising? It is as follows. From a seed comes a sprout, from a sprout a leaf, from a leaf a stem, from a stem a pedicel, from a pedicel a pistil, from a pistil a flower, and from a flower comes a fruit. If there is no seed, the sprout cannot arise and so on, until finally, without the flower, the fruit cannot arise. If there is a seed, the sprout will form and so on, until finally, if there is a flower, then the fruit will form. . . . [2]
Here, the Buddha takes the most profound statement—that whoever sees interdependent origination sees the Dharma—and brings that understanding of causation down to a simple example: a flower. He then traces the chain of causes and conditions that bring that flower into being. Later on in the sūtra, and summarizing the Buddha's teaching, the bodhisattva mahāsattva Maitreya then explains to the venerable Śāradvatīputra the connections between interdependent origination and the whole chain of samsaric existence:
. . . [T]he phrase dependent arising means that something arises because something else already exists; something is born because something else was already born. That is to say, ignorance causes formations. Formations cause consciousness. Consciousness causes name and form. Name and form cause the six sense sources. The six sense sources cause contact. Contact causes sensation. Sensation causes craving. Craving causes appropriation. Appropriation causes becoming. Becoming causes birth. And birth causes aging and death, sorrow, lamentation, suffering, despair, and anxiety. Thus does this entire great heap of suffering arise.[3]
Thus, the Buddha connects the external chain of causal events to the internal process that drives birth and death.
Different Levels of Interdependent Origination
Interdependent origination operates on multiple levels in Buddhist thought. These can be broadly broken down into three levels: (1) causal interdependence, (2) relational interdependence, and (3) designated interdependence.
Causal Interdependence (རྒྱུ་འབྲས་ཀྱི་རྟེན་འབྲེལ།)
At a simple level, causal interdependence refers to the principle that all impermanent phenomena arise only in dependence upon causes and conditions. If the causes and conditions for something do not come together, that particular resultant phenomenon will not come into being. If the complete causes and conditions for something come together, it will arise. A table exists in dependence upon wood, a carpenter, tools, and some other factors. If any of these conditions is absent, the table cannot come into existence. This is the basic level of causal interdependent origination.
Taking this basic level of causal interdependence to a deeper context, as described above in The Rice Seedling Sūtra, Buddhism presents the twelve-linked chain of cause and effect that perpetuates the cycle of rebirth and suffering, beginning with ignorance and ending with aging and death, and again with rebirth.
Relational Interdependence (ལྟོས་པའི་རྟེན་འབྲེལ།)
Relational interdependence explains how things cannot have any level of independence where there is not some form of reliance on other phenomena through the relationship of parts and whole, or through being interrelated terms.
One of the classic examples of this level of dependence is the fact that a phenomenon exists in relation to its parts. It cannot have any form of existence separate and unconnected to its parts. A computer, for example, must necessarily depend on its parts—the circuit board, the screen, the keyboard, etc. And indeed the parts depend on the whole to give definition to a collection of things which, taken together, can be thought of as a cohesive whole.
This level of interdependence also covers terms that can only have meaning in relation to each other. For instance, tall and short are mutually defining terms. We cannot find anything that is only tall or only short. Indeed, the very terms tall and short are defined in relation to the other, and we can only speak of something being tall or short by comparing two things. They have no meaning in isolation from each other or independent of other phenomena.
Dependently Designated Interdependence (བཏགས་པའི་རྟེན་འབྲེལ།)
Dependently designated interdependence is the subtlest level of dependent origination and refers to the deepest existential status of self and phenomena. Using analysis to search within the basis of designation of phenomena, we cannot find them to exist in the way that they appear to us. Although they appear to exist from the side of their parts and basis of designation, when we look for them to exist in that way, nothing can be found. Since there is no findable essence for the referent term, it must mean that things exist merely as conceptual designations. Things exist only as labels imputed by mind onto a valid basis of designation. For instance, the "I" exists merely as a designation upon the psychophysical aggregates of body and mind. This dependently designated interdependence connects to the deepest meaning of emptiness in the Prāsaṅgika Madhyamaka view. In that system, the deeper we understand the empty nature of things, the better we grasp how things can function conventionally and causally, despite lacking even an atom of intrinsic existence.
Emptiness and Interdependent Origination
The relationship between emptiness and interdependent origination represents the key to understanding the deepest level of Buddhist philosophy. Nāgārjuna famously identifies the relationship between these two concepts when he states the following in his Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way (Mūlamadhyamakakārikā):
Whatever is dependently arisen This has been explained as empty. In dependence upon something else it is imputed [as existent]. This is the Middle Way indeed. (24.18)[4]
This relationship reveals that emptiness is not a metaphysical void refuting any kind of existence at all. Rather, the very reason that things lack any form of inherent existence means that things must arise dependently upon other causes or factors. They cannot exist in a vacuum totally unconnected to other phenomena.
Nāgārjuna, and the later Madhyamaka tradition, emphasized that interdependent origination and emptiness are two sides of the same coin: to see something as interdependent is to see it as empty of any self-instituting nature, and to see it as empty is to see it as dependently originated. This mutual entailment prevents emptiness from collapsing into nihilism, as interdependent origination affirms the conventional reality of phenomena, even while denying their ultimate, independent existence.
Every system of Buddhist tenets seeks to reconcile the doctrine of the self's nonexistence with the need to affirm some nominal existence as the basis for our shared, conventional reality. In the view of the highest philosophical school of Tibetan Buddhism, the Prāsaṅgika Madhyamaka school, things lack even an atom of intrinsic existence from their own side and therefore must be merely imputed by mind. But on the dependently related conventional level, all ordinary phenomena such as the objects of our perception and the whole world of karmic cause and effect have some basic nominal and dependent existence, which allows all of them to function.
Notes
- ↑ Bhikkhu Bodhi, trans., Dasabalasutta, in Saṁyuttanikāya (Nidānavaggasaṁyutta, Nidānasaṁyutta, Dasabalavagga) SN 12.21, https://suttacentral.net/sn12.21/en/bodhi?lang=en&reference=none&highlight=false.
- ↑ Ngawang Kunga, Raktrul, Rebecca Hufen, Jason Sanche, Arne Schelling, and Sonam Spitz (Dharmasāgara Translation Group), trans., The Rice Seedling (Śālistamba), (84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha, 2020), https://read.84000.co/translation/toh210.html.
- ↑ Kunga et al., Śālistamba, https://84000.co/translation/toh210#UT22084-062-010-16
- ↑ Helena Blankleder and Wulstan Fletcher (Padmakara Translation Group), trans., The Root Stanzas of the Middle Way: The Mulamadhyamakakarika, by Nāgārjuna (Boulder, CO: Shambhala Publications, 2016), 88.
