Dependent Arising: This Comes From That – Part 1

From a talk given by Kenn Duncan, April 2026 

Words & Thoughts from Carol Cook, Barbara O’Brien, Leight Brasington

This weekend weeding wackin the backyard, I broke a window (one I’ve broken before doing the same thing).  I started thinking, damn it… if I had waited just a little longer to do the weeds, if there were no rocks in our backyard… if, if, if!   But I did do it at this time, because the weeds had grown tall, and there were rocks, and I hit one and it flew up and hit the window, and I hadn’t covered the window this time.  

There I was sitting in my anger towards myself, after my initial outburst (hard to believe I know, but it happens every now and then) I started thinking about this teaching, and a teaching from Carol Cook.  She has shared with me some of her teachings and pointed this series in particular.  Conditionality, the Principle of dependent arising.  I had to sit with all that and I recalled a part of this teaching:

The dukkha arises because you want the world to be different than it is. I don’t want there to be a broken window.

It’s said that not long before the buddha reached enlightenment, still sitting under the Bodhi tree, he spent several weeks meditating on dukkha, suffering.  How can we deal with suffering. In his wisdom he didn’t try to figure out WHY there is dukkha: he looked for what was the necessary conditions for the arising of dukkha. 

He realized craving to be a condition that had to be present for suffering, and if that is a necessary condition, and, as he had realized with the 4 noble truths, there is a cessation to suffering, then it would follow that there is likely a way to cut dukkha off at the pass.                  If it could be realized, and caught before heading downstream then without the conditions, suffering could be avoided. We could potentially have liberation from suffering.

Important to note we are differentiating a bit here between causes and conditions, not saying that craving causes dukkha, but it is a necessary condition for the arising of suffering. It’s craving that causes your mind to be out of touch with the way reality is.

Buddha realized we often bring suffering on ourselves or at very least amplify the suffering. Often, it’s not about what is actually happening to us, it’s about our reaction to whatever is happening.  It’s told he paid attention to his own experience and from that identified the process of how we create suffering.

He called this process patica sumupadda (in pali) or translated many ways as dependent origination, dependent arising, conditioned genesis, there’s others but these are the main ones you’ll come across. He realized he had gained insight to an essential truth here, but also realized how difficult it can be to understand this law of dependent arising. 

Ananda, Buddha's attendant, told the buddha that he thought that dependent arising seemed obvious and “clear as clear can be”.  The buddhas response: “Do not say that, Ananda! This dependent origination is profound... It is through not understanding, not penetrating this doctrine that this generation has become like a tangled ball of string, covered as with a blight, tangled like coarse grass, unable to pass beyond states of woe, the ill destiny, ruin, and the round of birth-and-death…. The woeful states of existence, and samsara, the cycle of suffering.”

It’s written that he goes on to talk about several conditions that make up the depth of this teaching and how difficult it can be.

He broke this down this into a discernible chain of mental and physical events linked to one another, known in many circles as the teachers list of 12 links, or the 12 full chain of dependent origination.  (I have copies of this list, in the form of a circle here.  I’m going to go into this list more fully in our next talk but wanted to reference it here.)

This teaching is also used to sort of explain how rebirth and how the karmic results of one life can lead to suffering in another.  But whether you believe in rebirth or not (a whole other topic) it can be also used to see how we create suffering from moment to moment in this lifetime.

So, this truth of dependent arising is not just a philosophical doctrine, it’s like a tangible reality that we can work with to unlink ourselves from day to day suffering and dissatisfaction.

There are two aspects of this teaching: 1st is more intellectual, the fundamental principle of conditionality, much of what I’ve been referring to so far.  And the 2nd is more practical, seeing how this principle or teaching can be applied to intervene on our own suffering. 

Tonight I’m looking more at conditionality and next week I’ll delve a little bit into how it can be applied.

One of the key elements to begin our journey and how we can gain some wisdom and then apply it to our own lives is our practice.  We can really only fully comprehend this through mindfulness practice.  The buddha discovered it by paying attention to every aspect of his experience as he sat under the bodhi tree, as he meditated.  

In his investigation buddha found that conditionality is the fundamental law underlying all phenomena. Whatever arises, arises dependent on conditions. Everything that exists, exists because of conditions.  Without the support of the right conditions, that phenomena, whatever it is that has arisen will cease to exist.

Buddha: 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 cessation of this, that ceases.

The example of the flame of a lamp: In order to have a flame, you need to have certain conditions, including a wick and some oil.  If either the wick or the oil run short our out, you have no flame. But when those conditions are present you have a flame.  And perhaps, particularly in his day, a new phenomenon is born: light or warmth.  

And now we see the flame coming into being due to the right conditions, and then the flame serving as the conditions for a new phenomenon that can be experienced by a sentient being, or it will condition the experience for a sentient being.
And so it goes… one thing leads to another.

This can lead us to another way of seeing that we are not separate selves.  Like the flame none of us would be existing without a myriad of supporting conditions. 

Here’s another big important side note, in this teaching there’s an important reveal, the buddha notes that this whole complex interlocking web of events, web of conditions has no first cause.  

Barbara O’Brien: In Buddhism, there is no teaching of a First Cause.  How all this arising and ceasing began, or even if it had a beginning, is not explained. The Buddha emphasized understanding the nature of things as-they-are over speculations of what might have happened in the past or what might happen in the future.  It might be said that the Buddhist version of Genesis is: Stuff happens, because other stuff happens.

Most spiritual traditions are kind of metaphysically based, with explanations of how the world is: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, on the 6th day … stuff like that.  And so, as this is kind of the norm that most people get exposed to especially here in the west, many come to a spiritual tradition expecting metaphysical answers.
But the Buddha wasn’t doing metaphysics; he was a phenomenologist. And basically, what he was saying was, pay attention to the phenomena you’re experiencing, and in particular how you’re reacting to the phenomena that you’re experiencing. It’s a different orientation.

It’s not that we are trying to figure out why things are the way they are, if we really want to work with suffering what we work with are our reactions to the way things are.  

Old age, sickness, death, these are big problems but much of what drives our suffering in life are more minor so to speak, (broken windows, spilt milk) and that’s also dukkha.  Everything that we may see as going wrong in life has similar conditions and if we can manage the day-to-day irritations to be less irritating, we’re left with more room, and more wisdom as the bigger ones come along, which they will.

So, when there’s dukkha arising, we name it, it’s likely arising dependent on craving.  Now can we name the craving?  Usually we can, we don’t want it to be like it is, then we can start the real work, the tricky work, sometimes the hard work: Can we drop the craving?  Sometimes we can, sometimes it’s more difficult and we may not, then comes compassion be gentle with ourselves thru this process.

Over this next week start paying more attention to stuff that happens, in our meditations and in our daily lives, and how this leads to other stuff.  Stuff happens because other stuff happens.

Next week I’ll focus on the second aspect of the teaching: the Twelve Links of Dependent Arising which gives us a way to liberate us from unconscious conditioning.