Template:Dependent Origination Overview

Dependent Origination is a way of understanding existence as a whole made up of intimately connected parts. We may often think in terms of "cause and effect", and another insight is to see that things are so interconnected that a simple cause/effect relationship is a needlessly reductive perspective. Additionally, we can see that all things in our consciousness do not come about on their own but have a dependency on other things simply for them to exist in their current form. To take an extremely simple example, you may enjoy some coffee or tea, but how dependent is that enjoyment on the mug holding your drink? Another aspect of Dependent Origination is that just as everything relies on other things for their existence, so do those same things enable the existence of other things. Closely related to Dependent Origination are the Lenses of Impermanence and Emptiness, which all taken together can show us how everything we experience lacks a permanent or substantive quality when understood through these concepts.