Nothing Exists Independently
Dependent Origination (Pratītyasamutpāda) is Buddhism’s core insight into how reality works: nothing exists independently or on its own.
Everything arises in dependence on causes and conditions, and ceases when those conditions change.
The classic example of an oil lamp demonstrates this beautifully. An oil lamp has three essential components: flame, wick, and oil. The flame depends on the wick and the oil to exist. There cannot be a flame without a wick, just as there cannot be a flame without oil. Oil and wick are two factors the flame requires for its existence.
But it goes deeper—the wick depends on fibres woven together, which depend on plants that grew, which depended on soil, water, and sunlight.
The oil depends on seeds that were pressed, which grew from plants, which depended on their own conditions. Every single element, when you examine it, dissolves into a web of dependencies. Nothing stands alone.
This isn’t just true for oil lamps but for all phenomena—your body, thoughts, emotions, relationships, and sense of self. Everything is a temporary coming-together of conditions.
When you truly grasp this, the whole idea of permanent, independent things begins to dissolve. What seems solid and separate reveals itself as fluid, interconnected, and empty of any fixed essence
The Twelve Links of Dependent Origination
The Buddha outlined twelve specific links that show how ignorance leads to suffering and rebirth, creating a cycle that perpetuates itself.
These twelve links form a chain: (1) ignorance leads to (2) karmic formations, which lead to (3) consciousness, then (4) name and form, (5) six sense bases, (6) contact, (7) feeling, (8) craving, (9) clinging, (10) becoming, (11) birth, and finally (12) old age and death.
Each link conditions the next, creating the entire cycle of existence.
Ignorance doesn’t mean stupidity—it means not seeing reality clearly, particularly not understanding impermanence, suffering, and non-self. This fundamental misunderstanding sets everything else in motion. From ignorance arise karmic actions (formations), which create the conditions for consciousness to take form in a new life.
That consciousness develops a body and mind (name and form), which develops sense organs, which make contact with the world, which produces feelings, which trigger craving, which hardens into clinging, which creates the conditions for a new existence (becoming), which results in birth, which inevitably leads to ageing and death.
And the cycle begins again. Breaking any link in this chain—particularly ignorance or craving—stops the whole process. For a detailed explanation of each link and how they interconnect, check out the interactive wheel at https://universalbuddhism.com/wheel-of-existence-2/
