An Introduction to the Law of Dependent Origination

Dependent origination (Paticca Samuppada) lies at the very heart of the Buddha’s teaching. It describes the dynamic process by which suffering arises, not through chance or fate, but through a chain of interdependent causes and conditions. In brief, “When this exists, that arises; when this ceases, that ceases.”

The traditional twelve links of dependent origination unfold as:

1. Ignorance (Avijjā): Not seeing things as they truly are.
2. Volitional formations (Saṅkhāra): Habitual tendencies and karmic formations shaped by ignorance.
3. Consciousness (Viññāṇa): The arising of awareness conditioned by karmic tendencies.
4. Name-and-form (Nāma-rūpa): Mental and physical phenomena constituting experience.
5. Six sense bases (Saḷāyatana): The faculties through which contact with the world occurs.
6. Contact (Phassa): The meeting of sense object, sense organ, and consciousness.
7. Feeling (Vedanā): The hedonic tone: pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral.
8. Craving (Taṇhā): The desire to grasp or resist experience.
9. Clinging (Upādāna): The intensification of craving into attachment.
10. Becoming (Bhava): The ongoing creation of patterns of existence.
11. Birth (Jāti): The arising of new experiences and identities.
12. Old age and death (Jarāmaraṇa): The inevitable suffering and dissolution inherent in all conditioned phenomena.

This cycle perpetuates samsara — the endless wandering through dissatisfaction. Yet it also points to the possibility of liberation: by seeing deeply into this process, the links can be broken. When ignorance dissolves through wisdom, the entire chain collapses. Craving no longer fuels becoming, and the cycle of suffering ceases.

“He who sees dependent origination sees the Dhamma; he who sees the Dhamma sees dependent origination.”
— The Buddha