Pratītyasamutpāda (Dependent Origination)

Pratītyasamutpāda (Sanskrit; Pāli paṭicca-samuppāda), usually translated dependent origination, dependent arising or conditioned co-production, is the principle that all phenomena arise in dependence on causes and conditions, and cease when those conditions cease. The Gautama Buddha is said to have realised it on the night of his awakening, and he called it the heart of his teaching: “Whoever sees dependent origination sees the Dhamma; whoever sees the Dhamma sees dependent origination” (Majjhima Nikāya 28). It is Buddhism’s alternative both to the idea of an eternal, unchanging self or substance and to the idea that things happen by chance or without cause.

The general formula

The principle is stated in the early texts in a four-line formula:

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. (imasmiṃ sati idaṃ hoti… imasmiṃ asati idaṃ na hoti…)

The twelve links

Applied to the problem of suffering and rebirth, dependent origination takes the form of a chain of twelve links (nidānas):

1. Ignorance (avidyā) — not seeing the Four Noble Truths;
2. Formations (saṃskāra) — volitional impulses, karma;
3. Consciousness (vijñāna);
4. Name-and-form (nāmarūpa) — mind and body;
5. Six sense bases (ṣaḍāyatana);
6. Contact (sparśa);
7. Feeling (vedanā);
8. Craving (tṛṣṇā);
9. Clinging (upādāna);
10. Becoming (bhava);
11. Birth (jāti);
12. Ageing and death (jarā-maraṇa), with sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair.

“Thus is the origin of this whole mass of suffering.” Reversed, the chain shows the way out: “With the remainderless fading away and cessation of ignorance, formations cease…” and so on, until suffering ceases. The traditional commentaries distribute the links across three lives — past (1–2), present (3–10) and future (11–12) — explaining rebirth without a self. The Tibetan Wheel of Life (bhavacakra) depicts the twelve links around its rim. The crucial points of intervention are ignorance, removed by wisdom, and craving, removed by the path.

Later interpretations

The Abhidharma analysed dependent origination into precise relations between momentary dharmas — twenty-four types in the Theravāda Paṭṭhāna. Nāgārjuna argued that dependent origination means that nothing has intrinsic existence: “Whatever is dependently arisen, that is explained to be emptiness” (Mūlamadhyamakakārikā 24.18) — see Śūnyatā (Emptiness). In Chinese Huayan Buddhism, dependent origination became the mutual interpenetration of all things, imaged in Indra’s net: an infinite net with a jewel at every knot, each reflecting all the others.

Modern readers have compared dependent origination with process philosophy (Whitehead), systems thinking, ecological interdependence, and the relational interpretations of quantum mechanics. The Vietnamese teacher Thich Nhat Hanh coined the word “interbeing” for it: “If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper.”

In conversation

Its whole content fits in one line: when this exists, that comes to be; when this ceases, that ceases. And Thich Nhat Hanh’s cloud in the sheet of paper is the friendliest way to explain it.