Open Access 25-11-2020 | ORIGINAL PAPER
Dependent Arising and Interdependence
Gepubliceerd in: Mindfulness | Uitgave 5/2021
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The Buddhist teaching on dependent arising (or dependent origination) concerns specific conditions whose presence is indispensable for something to come into existence. In the early stages of Buddhist history, the overarching concern of this doctrine was to identify the specific causes responsible for the human predicament, with a view to bringing about their cessation so as to become liberated. In later times, Buddhist exegesis developed various perspectives on causality, where in Huayan philosophy in particular the notion of interconnectedness or interdependence arose, according to which all phenomena relate to each other in one way or another. Despite its traction in the contemporary setting, this notion needs to be recognized as a later development that is by no means identical with the basic Buddhist teaching on dependent arising.