Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 42-minute talk, Geshe Jampa Gyaltsen introduces dependent origination, the central principle of the Buddha’s teaching. He begins by clarifying terminology—the Pāli paticca-samuppada literally means “dependent co-arising”—and establishes its profound importance: the Buddha equated seeing dependent origination with enlightenment itself. Geshe explains the abstract structural principle underlying all phenomena: the formula “when this is, that is; with the arising of this, that arises,” meaning all compounded things arise only through their appropriate conditions, with no beginning and no first cause. He then turns to the practical application—the twelve-factor sequence of dependent origination that explains how ignorance and volitional actions in past lives condition rebirth and perpetuate the cycle of suffering. Working through ignorance, volitional formations, consciousness, mentality-materiality, the sense faculties, contact, feeling, craving, clinging, existence, and birth-and-death, he shows how each factor conditions the next and how understanding this causal chain is the path to liberation. The teaching is accessible to serious practitioners seeking to understand the philosophical foundations of Buddhist practice.
File metadata (for organising)
File: BT04A.mp3
UUID: 30959b31-0795-4895-97da-ccd3a108570d
Teacher: Geshe Jampa Gyaltsen
Collection: Dependent Origination
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~4,175
Lecture number four, Paticca Samuppada, Dependent Arising. Namo tassa Bhagavato Arahato Sammāsambuddhassa. The Pāli word paticasamuppada is a compound of two words. The first, paticca, means depending on, because of, conditioned by. The other word, samupada, means arising, but not a simple arising.
The prefix sam suggests the idea of complexity, of characterizing the process of arising. So for this reason, a really satisfactory translation of the term would perhaps be dependent co arising. But we follow the more usual translation and render it dependent arising. Other translators sometimes use dependent origination, condition co production, condition genesis, and so on. The doctrine of dependent arising is, so to speak, the dynamic counterpart of the doctrine of anatta, of selflessness.
And the great importance of this teaching can be seen from several suttas spoken by the Buddha. In one sutta, the Buddha says that one who sees dependent arising sees the dhamma, and one who sees the dhamma sees dependent arising. The Dharma is the truth discovered by the Buddha, the truth that subsists by itself, independent of all other influences. And in this statement, the Buddha makes an explicit equation between this profound truth he has realized and dependent arising. Again, it is said in some other suttas, in the description of his own quest for enlightenment.
The Buddha says that immediately before his enlightenment, when was sitting in meditation, he began inquiring into the chain of conditions, seeking the causal origination of suffering. And this inquiry led him to the discovery of dependent arising. So from one angle, we can equate the discovery of dependent arising with the attainment of enlightenment itself. Then the Buddha says, after his enlightenment, he sat for several weeks meditating on dependent arising, meditating on the sequence forwards and backwards. And when he emerged from his meditation, then he reflected that this dhamma that I have discovered is deep, difficult to see, difficult to understand.
It’s sublime, peaceful, beyond the range of reasoning, abstruse, to be realized inwardly by the wise, then the Buddha thinks that it will be very difficult to teach this doctrine because it will be hard for people to see and to understand the truth that is dependent arising. Another time, this is given in the Mahanidana Sutta of the Digha Nikāya, the fifteenth Sutta of the Digha Nikāya. The Buddha’s attendant, the Venerable Ānanda, comes to the Buddha and he says, Bhante, sir, even though this doctrine of dependent arising is said to be deep, to myself it seems very clear and very obvious. And its appearance also, it also appears very, very clear and obvious. When this was said, the Buddha replied, he said, Ānanda, do not speak in this way.
Ma hevam Ānanda, do not speak in this way. This dependent arising is deep in truth, and it’s deep in its appearance. It is through not understanding, through not penetrating this dhamma of dependent arising, that all living beings, this generation of living beings has become entangled like a matted ball of thread, become like grass and rushes, unable to pass beyond the woeful states of existence and saṃsāra, the cycle of existence. So dependent arising is not only the content of the Buddha’s enlightenment, not only the content of the dhamma, but it is also the truth that has to be realized to gain liberation. It is through not seeing and understanding dependent arising that we have wandered and roamed in the cycle of birth and death.
And it is by penetrating to the truth of dependent arising that we are to gain freedom, liberation from the cycle of birth and death. So we can see that the essence of the Buddha’s teaching lies precisely in dependent arising, the key not only to an intellectual understanding of the dhamma, but to the attainment of liberation. Now the teaching of dependent arising has two aspects. One aspect is an abstract principle, what we can call a structural principle. The second aspect is the application of that principle to problem, which is the main concern of the Buddha’s teaching, the problem of suffering.
In its abstract form as the structural principle, dependent arising is the most fundamental law underlying every process and event that can occur. It is a law that is beginningless and endless, a law which has no external ground and requires no external support. This law which sustains every event that occurs, the structural principle that underlies all phenomena, this is the law of conditionality. It is the law that holds that whatever arises arises in dependence on conditions. Everything that comes into being comes into being being through the force of conditions.
Everything that exists exists in dependence on conditions. And without the support of the appropriate conditions, the given phenomena will not be able to arise and will not be able to remain in existence. The structural principle is expressed by an ancient Pāli formula, which is so basic and so important that we’ve set it out in the sheet in the Pāli itself. The formula runs, imasmin sati idaṃ hoti, imassuppādā idaṃ uppajjati, imasmin asati idaṃ na hoti, imassa nirodhā idaṃ nirujjhati. The meaning, when there is this, that comes to be.
With the arising of this, that arises. When there is not this, that does not come to be. With the cessation of this, that ceases. The first part of the formula, the positive part, explains the conditional arising of phenomena. It says that in order for any factor B to come into existence, its condition A must exist or be operative, that B arises through the contribution of its condition A.
To give an example, the apple tree exists in dependence on the apple seed. If there is an apple seed, the apple tree can come into existence. If an apple seed comes into being, the tree can come into being. But if there is no condition present, when the condition A for the occurrence of something B does not exist, then the phenomena B will not exist. That is, when B exists in dependence on A, then with the absence of A, B will not occur, and if A ceases, then B will cease.
Thus coming back to the apple tree, if there is no apple seed, then there can’t be any tree, and if the seed is destroyed, then there can be no growth of the apple tree. For the tree B depends on the seed A. The principle of dependent arising is the law of the conditioned arising of phenomena, and this law embraces all existing phenomena, everything from a particle of dust to a whole world system, from a fleeting thought to a whole empire or civilization, everything that is put together that’s compounded comes into existence only through its appropriate conditions. And if the conditions do not exist, then the phenomena will not exist. Now this law of conditionality, this is not the creation of the Buddha.
It is a law that’s always operative. In a sutta in the Saṃyutta Nikāya, the Buddha says that whether enlightened ones arise or do not arise, this law remains, this standing order, this structural principle of phenomena, that all compounded things come into being in dependence on their conditions. This principle of conditionality the Buddha calls actual reality, tathatā. He says it is invariable, unalterable. It’s the fundamental principle that underlies the occurrence of every event.
The principle of conditionality expressed is dependent arising. This differs significantly from the Western idea of cause and effect. Sometimes the two are equated or sometimes the term paticasamuppada is translated as causality. But that is somewhat misleading since there are certain important differences between dependent arising and the Western notion of causality. First of all we should mention that the Buddhist conception of dependent arising does not recognize a single cause.
Phenomena do not arise only from one cause, but from many conditions. The Western conception of causality works with the idea of a succession of events. One is a cause, the other is an effect. The effect in turn becomes a cause, giving rise to still another effect. And the whole series moves forward in one direction, one event after another.
The two cause and effect depicted as succeeding one another in a straight line. But the Buddhist model of conditionality works with the notion of complex interrelated network of conditions. Events linked together somewhat like the ripples of water on a pond or like the fibers of a spider’s web. They are links in a network rather than points along a straight line. And in the Buddhist idea of conditionality, no phenomena arises from a single cause.
For any phenomena to arise, it must arise from many conditions, from many causal factors working together in a functional integration. And then any phenomena which comes into being through these many conditions, it self conditions the arising of many other phenomena so that each causal factor has not only one effect but many effects. For example, the apple tree doesn’t arise only from the seed. The seed is the main condition but it also requires soil, water, sunshine, fertilizer, and so on. Then the apple tree in turn has many effects.
It gives rise for one thing to many apples. Those many apples each contain many seeds and each of these seeds in turn can become the source for another apple tree which will give rise to still many more apples. Thus from many causes come many effects. Each effect in turn becomes a cause giving rise to many other effects. And this whole complex interlocking net of events has no first cause.
This is a significant difference from traditional Western ways of thinking. Usually we think that the chain of cause and effect needs a first cause, and theistic religions identify that first cause with God who creates the universe through his will and thereby sets the whole wheel revolving. But from the Buddhist standpoint, there’s no first cause to the process of conditionality, no original beginning. The succession of causes and conditions revolves without without any conceivable beginning, without any discoverable first point. The process has been going on through beginningless time without any bounds or limits to its sphere of operation.
Now the Buddha did not teach dependent arising merely as a theory, as speculative notion for the purpose of discussion and debate, but rather he presents the teaching because it is central to the aim of his dhamma, that is, deliverance from suffering. Suffering in its deepest aspect, as we saw, is the intrinsic unsatisfactoriness of the round of existence, of saṃsāra, the cycle of birth and death through which we have been wandering through beginningless time. The aim and goal of the teaching, that is, cessation of suffering, liberation from dukkha, and that comes by bringing an end to saṃsāra, to the wheel of becoming. Now the Buddha says that a first point to saṃsāra cannot be discovered. No matter how far back we might go in time, we always find the possibility of going back further.
Thus, a first point to the cycle of existence cannot be discovered. However, even though saṃsāra doesn’t have a beginning in time, it does have a distinct genetic structure, a causal structure. It is sustained and kept in motion by a precise set of conditions. These conditions the Buddha sets out in a sequence of 12 factors, and these make up the practical side of his teaching on dependent arising. The 12 factors are given on the sheet.
They are ignorance, volitional formations, consciousness, mentality, materiality, the six sense faculties, contact, feeling, craving,
Clinging, existence, birth, and aging and death. Aging and death, though two are grouped together as one. These 12 factors, these are the spokes of the wheel of existence. And these factors are all to be found within ourself, in our own minds, in our own experience. It is through these factors that we revolve over and over in saṃsāra.
We continue to roam in the round of becoming, meeting with the different forms of suffering, with sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, and despair. And because of our ignorance of these factors, because of our ignorance of dependent arising, we continue to be held in bondage. And by discovering this truth, the truth of dependent arising, it becomes possible to remove the fundamental links and thereby to reach true lasting freedom, to bring the whole process of repeated becoming, of birth and death, to a standstill. Now the 12 factors of dependent arising are set forth by the Buddha in a series of statements. These statements have as their basic formula in the order of arising with A as condition, B arises.
Then the Buddha fills us in with each of these factors that we have. With ignorance as condition, the volitional formations arise. Or dependent on ignorance, the volitional formations arise. Dependent on the volitional formations, consciousness arises. Dependent on consciousness, mentality materiality arises.
Dependent on material on mentality materiality, the six sense faculties arise. Dependent on the sense faculties, contact arises. in dependence on contact, feeling arises. In dependence on feeling, craving arises. in dependence on craving, clinging arises.
in dependence on clinging, existence arises. in dependence on existence, birth arises. in dependence on birth, there arises aging and death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, and despair. Such, the Buddha says, such is the arising of this whole mass of suffering. Now to clarify the working of the 12 factors, the factors are usually distributed over three successive lives that can be applied to any series of three lives in sequence.
Now if we take the main portion from consciousness number three through existence number 10. If we take this portion as applying to the present life, then the first two links, first two factors will pertain to the past life, to the immediately preceding existence. Then the middle factors from consciousness to existence belong to the present life, and the last two factors, birth and aging and death, those will represent the coming life, the future existence. When we say this, though, it has to be pointed out as a precaution that the division of the 12 factors into three lifetimes is made as an expository device for giving a clear explanation of the working of the factors. We shouldn’t grasp upon this and take it too literally as meaning that ignorance and the volitional formations occurred only in the past and do not occur now, or that birth and aging and death are events that will take place only in the future existence and won’t occur in the present existence.
Of course, aging and death have to occur in this existence too. As we will see as we go along, there is an interconnection or interlocking of these factors so all of them can actually be found in each single existence. But in order to give a clear, neat, and precise explanation of the causal operation of the cycle of becoming, the Buddha has spread them out, extended them out, and shown how they work over three successive lifetimes. Now we will take as our own starting point of explanation the present existence in which we are living now. This starts with the third factor, consciousness.
Our life is a continuum of experience, a stream of experience in which consciousness is the most fundamental factor. Life begins at conception with a moment of consciousness, a flashing moment of awareness. And consciousness continues all the ways through the course of our existence right up to the moment of death. Now the question comes up, what are the conditions that brought us into this present existence? From where does consciousness arise?
Where have we come from? How have we come into being? And how have we gotten to be the persons that we are? Have we come into being just by chance as a result of material processes, combinations of molecules? Have we come into birth through the will of some creator god?
Are we emanations from some divine source? Where have we come from? How have we come into being? This is made clear through the teaching of dependent arising. The Buddha explains that our present life is the result of our past life.
We have come into being in this present existence on account of our own ignorance and volitions in the past. Then in this present life, through our craving, our clinging, our attachment, through our actions or karma, we set rolling the forces that will bring about a new existence in the future, new birth followed by aging and death. Thus the process of becoming is something which repeats itself over and over. It is driven by our ignorance and our craving, shaped by our thoughts, our decisions, our desires and actions. The Buddha starts the sequence of factors with ignorance, avijja.
In our past life, our minds were obscured by a basic ignorance. No first point can be found of this ignorance. No matter how far back we go through our past lives, we always find that our minds have been obscured by ignorance. And what is this ignorance? The Buddha defines ignorance as not knowing and not seeing the four noble truths, the truths of suffering, its origin, its cessation, and the way to its cessation.
Ignorance does not mean mere lack of conceptual knowledge of the four noble truths. Perhaps in the past we were great Buddhist scholars. We had thorough knowledge of all the Buddhist scriptures. This doesn’t mean that we had true understanding of the four noble Truths, the liberating knowledge of the truths. Ignorance is a spiritual blindness concerning the Four Noble Truths.
It means not seeing, not fathoming, not understanding the four truths in their depth and in their range. It is usually represented in the pictures of dependent arising, represented by a blind old woman stumbling along with the aid of a stick. There is ignorance as a kind of blindness, a spiritual blindness, which has covered over our minds and caused us to see things in a distorted manner. It’s given rise to various conceptual and perceptual distortions which prevent us from understanding things as they really are. The ignorance is without any conceivable beginning.
Throughout beginningless time, our minds, covered over by ignorance, have led us to see things as being permanent, pleasurable, attractive, and and prevented us from seeing them in their real characteristics of impermanence, suffering, and selflessness. And out of this ignorance come all the other defilements, all the other unwholesome mental states greed, aversion, pride, wrong views, jealousy, selfishness, anger, and so on, all of these are grounded in ignorance. Ignorance is not the first cause of things. This has to be emphasized. Ignorance too too has conditions.
It arises through conditions. It arises as a factor in the minds of living beings. And as a mental factor, it depends on the minds and bodies of beings, and in turn it leads to the re arising of those beings. Thus, the process of becoming turns as a wheel around and around. But ignorance, though it arises through through conditions, ignorance is always itself the most fundamental condition, the most basic condition of all the others.
And therefore the Buddha takes it as the starting point of explanation. And though ignorance was active in the past and brought us into the present, we shouldn’t think that ignorance was left behind in the past. As long as we lack perfect insight into the four noble truths, into the dhamma, then ignorance remains in our mind. It continues to lurk in our mind, leading us into actions which bring about renewed birth in the future. Now because of this ignorance, we engage in action.
And this brings us to the first proposition which connects together the first two factors. In Pāli avijjā paccayā saṅkhārā, dependent upon ignorance, volitional formations arise. That is, dependent upon the mental spiritual blindness. We engage in actions, actions grounded on our illusions and our wrong views. We activate our will.
We form determinations of will. We engage in occasions of action. All of these volitional actions, these volitional formations, these are called Sankharas. The word Sankhara means forming, constructing, creating, putting together. And here it refers specifically to the mental formations, formations of will that arise in a mind that’s covered over by avija, by ignorance.
The factor of sankharas, this is equivalent to karma. The word karma means volitional actions, acts of will which might be expressed outwardly through the body as when we perform bodily actions, which might be expressed verbally as speech, that is verbal karma, or actions which might remain in the mind when we make decisions, form plans, arouse desires, think different thoughts, and so on. All of these activities of volition, whether they’re expressed outwardly through body or speech, or whether they remain inwardly in the mind, these are the volitional formations, the Sankaras. Now when the mind of a person is encompassed by ignorance and when he performs some volitional action, then that action gives rise to formations and it gets deposited in the mind as a kind of seed with a potency, a power of germinating in the future and of producing results. They might germinate in the future in this present life, or they might germinate in the next life, or they might germinate in some future existence after that, even after many aeons.
For whenever there’s a volitional action that arises in a mind encompassed by ignorance, then that action leaves an imprint on the mind, a formation with the capacity to mature, to fructify in the future. Now in the present context of dependent arising, the most important aspect of the volitional formations is their power to cross over the gap created by death and to generate a new existence in the future. That is, the volitional formations underlain by ignorance have a power to bring about rebirth. These volitional formations that produce rebirth, these can be of two kinds. They can be wholesome volitions or unwholesome volitions, kusala or akusala.
The wholesome volitions are morally pure or good volitions. The unwholesome volitions are the morally blameworthy, bad or harmful volitions. Each kind of volition brings about a different type of rebirth. The wholesome volitions bring a good rebirth. The unwholesome ones bring a bad rebirth.
But both types of volitions, the wholesome and the unwholesome ones, are both conditioned by ignorance. They both arise out of ignorance and both sustain the wheel of becoming. They both keep the wheel of existence in motion. Now we come to the next link in the series, sankhara paccaya vinnanam, that is with the volitional formations as condition, consciousness arises. Now when the volitional formations are accumulated in the mind and ignorance is still present, then when death occurs, a new moment of consciousness will be generated right after death, the first moment of consciousness of the new life.
From the Buddhist perspective, consciousness is not regarded as a single persisting entity, a self or a soul which continues unchanged. Consciousness is seen rather as a series of acts of consciousness, each one arising and breaking up like the waves of the ocean. When death comes, the last act of consciousness of that life arises and passes away. But through the force of ignorance and the force of the volitional formations, the final process of consciousness generates out of itself a new act of consciousness which springs up in the mother’s womb, links up with the fertilized ovum, and starts the new existence. This act of consciousness, the first act of consciousness of the present life, the act of consciousness
Which occurs at the moment of conception. This first act of consciousness is conditioned by the past volitional formations. It is given its form or its shape by those volitional formations. This first moment of consciousness occurring at the moment of conception, this is called the Patisandhi citta, which means the relinking consciousness. It is called the relinking consciousness because it links together the old existence with the new one, the past life with the present life, the new being, new person with his entire past.
That is, this rebirth consciousness functions as the vehicle for the transmission of all the past experience, all the past karma. And the reason why this rebirth consciousness arises is because of the wholesome and the unwholesome volitions that were performed and stored up in the past life. If the karma or volition that determines rebirth is a wholesome one, then they will follow a favorable state of rebirth with a superior type of relinking consciousness. If the rebirth determining volition is an unwholesome one, then they will take place a lower type of rebirth with an inferior type of relinking consciousness. But whether it be a high or low rebirth, that rebirth will be determined or conditioned by the volitional formations that are underlain by ignorance, by the spiritual blindness.
Key terms in this teaching
- dependent origination pratityasamutpada (Skt); ten drel (Tib)
- Also called dependent arising. The way that the self and phenomena exist conventionally as relative and interdependent. LYWA
- four noble truths denpa zhi (Tib)
- The subject of the Buddha's first turning of the wheel of Dharma. The truths of suffering, the origin of suffering, the cessation of suffering, and the path to the cessation of suffering as seen by an arya. LYWA
- samsara khor wa (Tib)
- Cyclic existence; the six realms of conditioned existence, three lower - hell, hungry ghost, and animal - and three upper - human, demigod, and god. LYWA
Definitions adapted from the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive glossary, as taught in the Gelug tradition.