paṭiccasamuppāda
Dependent origination
[ pa-TIC-cha-sa-mup-PA-da ]
Seeing it in life
Avijjā → saṅkhāra → viññāṇa → nāmarūpa → saḷāyatana → phassa → vedanā → taṇhā → upādāna → bhava → jāti → jarāmaraṇa. The structural law of saṃsāra.
In short
The twelve-link chain of conditioned arising.
The analysis
Twelve links, each conditioning the next, describing how suffering is manufactured moment to moment — without needing a self to run the process. Avijjā conditions saṅkhāra, which conditions viññāṇa, nāmarūpa, saḷāyatana, phassa, vedanā, taṇhā, upādāna, bhava, jāti, jarāmaraṇa. Traditionally read across three lifetimes, but the middle links — phassa through upādāna — describe a mechanism that runs many times within a single day. This is the section most workable by ordinary attention, since it doesn't require memory of a past life to observe.
Where it sits
This formulation is the doctrinal spine beneath vedanā, phassa, taṇhā, and upādāna — all links within it. Nothing here is a first cause; each link conditions and is conditioned, which is the entire point. The chain is interruptible at any link, but the one most available to a waking mind is the hinge between feeling and craving.
A late-night spiral rarely starts with the invoice. It starts with a body that's tired, meets a thought (contact), registers as unpleasant (feeling), and from there the mind reaches for a story — craving for it to be otherwise, then clinging to a narrative about money or worth. The chain feels instant. It isn't. It has parts, and parts can be seen.
Commonly mistaken for
Fate or fixed causality. 'Dependent' does not mean 'determined.' Every link is a condition, not a compulsion — exactly why the chain can be interrupted.
A single lifetime's psychology only. The traditional reading spans birth, death, and rebirth; the psychological reading applies the middle links to moment-to-moment experience without replacing the traditional one.
Mahānidāna Sutta (DN 15); Visuddhimagga XVII.
Related terms