Ignorance
Avijjā
Not understanding suffering, its origin, its cessation, and the path leading to its cessation.
Ignorance is the first item in this formula, not a first cause of the universe.
Explore this link →Paṭiccasamuppāda · The twelve links
Dependent arising.
The conditions of suffering and release.
For curious newcomers and dharma students. Explore independently or use the guide during a talk. No prior Pāli knowledge is needed.
The twelve links in SN 12.2, with selected Chinese Āgama parallels. Explore the texts, their interpretations, and the practice of understanding conditions.
3D OPEN RING12 LINKS · 11 CONNECTIONS
Conditional arising
With this condition,
that arises.
that arises.
A map of suffering
and the possibility of release.
and the possibility of release.
Filled node: selected · Emphasized neighbors: preceding/following links · The ring remains open
Arrows show conditioning relationships stated in this discourse, not every condition involved. Neighbor highlighting is a reading aid. What do the arrows mean?
Early-discourse foundation · Educational visualization, not a mechanical simulation.
Arrows express conditions, not equal time intervals or sufficient causes.
Arrows express conditions, not equal time intervals or sufficient causes.
Read at your own pace
The twelve links, in plain language.
This readable companion follows SN 12.2. Definitions are paraphrases; qualifications help distinguish the text from later interpretation. Contact and feeling also draw on MN 148.
Volitional formations
Saṅkhārā
Intentional activities of body, speech, and mind, conditioned here by ignorance.
The word has different uses in Buddhist texts. Here it belongs to the dependent-arising formula.
Explore this link →Consciousness
Viññāṇa
Consciousness associated with seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, bodily sensing, and mental objects.
Other early sequences describe consciousness and name-and-form as mutually conditioning. This diagram follows SN 12.2.
Explore this link →Name-and-form
Nāma-rūpa
Mental factors and physical form: the embodied complex involved in experience.
Here “name-and-form” refers to mental factors and material form, rather than an object’s label and appearance.
Explore this link →Six sense bases
Saḷāyatana
The eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind as the six bases of experience.
This classification is a Buddhist account of experience, not a claim about the modern anatomical count of senses.
Explore this link →Contact
Phassa
The meeting of a sense faculty, its object, and the corresponding consciousness.
Contact includes hearing and thinking as well as physical touching.
Explore this link →Feeling
Vedanā
The pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral tone of an experience.
Feeling tone is one aspect of experience; anger is a more complex emotion. An awakened person can feel without craving.
Explore this link →Craving
Taṇhā
Thirst for experiences through the six senses; elsewhere also classified as craving for sensuality, existence, and nonexistence.
Wholesome aspiration and intention are distinguished from craving.
Explore this link →Clinging
Upādāna
Grasping at sensual pleasures, views, rules and observances, or doctrines of self.
The concern includes treating practices as sufficient for liberation; ethical practice itself remains valuable.
Explore this link →Becoming
Bhava
Existence or becoming in the sensual, form, and formless domains, conditioning birth.
Reducing this link to adopting a temporary identity would leave out the early texts’ rebirth framework.
Explore this link →Birth
Jāti
The coming into existence of beings, including the appearance of the aggregates and acquisition of sense bases.
“Birth of an ego-state” offers an interpretive application. SN 12.2 has a broader account of birth.
Explore this link →Aging-and-death
Jarāmaraṇa
Aging and dying, together with the sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, and despair described in the formula.
There is no additional “death causes ignorance” arrow in the standard formula. The ring is intentionally open.
Explore this link →Optional exploration · open one question at a time
Look a little deeper.
Start with the early-discourse foundations. Explore later philosophy and historical arguments when you want more context. Each note identifies its source and scope.
Understanding the teaching
How do the Pāli and Chinese texts compare?
Study deeper · Compare textual versions
Selected parallel witnesses
The main ring follows SN 12.2. Related discourses preserved in Chinese let us examine both shared teachings and differences in transmission. A parallel is a related witness, not an identical text.
These are editorial English summaries of selected passages. SĀ numbers follow the standard discourse numbering of the Chinese Saṃyukta Āgama, Taishō no. 99 (T 99), rather than the alternative numbers shown in the linked editions. The Chinese texts are punctuated by Zhuang Chunjiang (莊春江); his accompanying SN translations are from Pāli into Chinese.
SN 12.2 / SĀ 298 · Definitions
Study deeper · Pāli and Chinese texts · Definitions
Shared teaching
Both present the twelve-link framework. They share the six classes of consciousness and the six internal sense bases.
Different classifications
- Ignorance
- SN 12.2 defines ignorance through not knowing the Four Noble Truths. SĀ 298 gives a longer list, including action and results.
- Name
- SN 12.2: feeling, perception, intention, contact, attention. SĀ 298: the four non-material aggregates, including consciousness.
- Feeling
- SN 12.2: six classes according to the contact from which feeling arises. SĀ 298: pleasant, painful, and neither-painful-nor-pleasant.
- Craving
- SN 12.2: six classes according to their objects. SĀ 298: craving associated with sensuality, form, and formlessness. This differs from the sensuality/existence/nonexistence classification cited elsewhere on this page.
Why it matters
The framework is shared, but definitions require a named source. Our plain-language feeling gloss uses feeling tone; the Text layer also records SN 12.2’s six contact-based classes.
Compare SN 12.2 / SĀ 298 · Chinese and Pāli ↗Passage locator: SĀ 298, the explanations beginning 無明, 名, 受, and 愛; SN 12.2, the corresponding definitions. Select the text’s title carefully: the linked page also includes EĀ 49.5.
SN 12.20 / SĀ 296 · Principle and phenomena
Study deeper · Pāli and Chinese texts · Principle and phenomena
Shared teaching
The texts distinguish conditionality from dependently arisen phenomena and describe the regularity discovered and taught by a Buddha.
Different presentation
SN 12.20 explicitly describes each conditioned link as impermanent and subject to cessation. SĀ 296 arranges its explanations of the principle and conditioned phenomena differently. The two passages should be read in their own order.
Why it matters
The twelve links are an application of conditionality. Anālayo’s discussion of SN 12.20 helps explain why shorter formulations also express dependent arising.
Compare SN 12.20 / SĀ 296 · Chinese and Pāli ↗Passage locator: the opening distinction between 因緣法 and 緣生法 in SĀ 296; the opening definitions in SN 12.20. See also Anālayo, “Dependent Arising” (2020).
SN 12.67 / SĀ 288 · Mutual support
Study deeper · Pāli and Chinese texts · Mutual support
Shared teaching
Both accounts describe reciprocal support between consciousness and name-and-form. This relationship is explicit in the texts.
Different analogy
SN 12.67 uses two bundles of reeds leaning together. SĀ 288 describes three reeds standing through mutual support. The Chinese analogy does not, by itself, establish a third doctrinal factor.
Why it matters
Reciprocity has support in both witnesses. The relation between this account and the standard sequence remains a matter of interpretation. We preserve the analogy’s difference without ranking either version as automatically more authentic.
Compare SN 12.67 / SĀ 288 · Chinese and Pāli ↗Passage locator: SĀ 288, the analogy beginning 譬如：三蘆; SN 12.67, the passage beginning Seyyathāpi … dve naḷakalāpiyo.
SN 12.15 / SĀ 301 · The middle teaching
Study deeper · Pāli and Chinese texts · The middle teaching
Shared teaching
Both connect dependent arising with a teaching that avoids the extremes of existence and nonexistence.
Reading the witnesses
The parallel supports the central theme. Its wording and presentation should be consulted separately rather than combined into a single reconstructed quotation.
Why it matters
Our Middle Way note has a comparative foundation. Agreement between witnesses strengthens a reading without establishing the Buddha’s exact original words.
Compare SN 12.15 / SĀ 301 · Chinese and Pāli ↗Passage locator: the discussion of 有 and 無 followed by the middle teaching in SĀ 301; the corresponding existence/nonexistence passage in SN 12.15.
These selected comparisons are a starting point, not a complete critical edition. Wording, translation, and historical interpretation are separate questions.
What do the arrows mean?
Study deeper · What the arrows mean
Scholarly explanation of early discourses
Read each arrow as “with this as a condition.” The diagram selects relationships for study; several conditions may be involved, and the spacing carries no temporal measure.
Bodhi explains that the discourses include mutual support and other forms of conditionality. His introduction discusses variants that connect the factors differently. The relationships are more complex than a row of independent objects knocking one another over.
The open ring preserves the sequence in SN 12.2. Neighboring highlights guide your reading while leaving other conditioning relationships outside this view.
Kalupahana’s philosophical account distinguishes conditionality from fatalism: the conditions matter. It should be read as an attributed interpretation, not as a resolution of every debate about causation or free will.
Bodhi, Connected Discourses (2000), vol. I, pp. 522–524; Kalupahana, Causality (1975), pp. 89–95. Compare SN 12.67 · ATI ↗ · SuttaCentral ↗.
Why is this called a middle teaching?
Study deeper · A middle teaching
Early discourse · SN 12.15
SN 12.15 presents dependent arising between the extremes “everything exists” and “everything does not exist.” It directs attention to arising and cessation rather than attachment to a position about an enduring self.
Here, “middle” names an understanding of experience through its conditions, rather than a compromise between two opinions.
Cessation concerns the ending of the conditions sustaining suffering, rather than the destruction of a permanent self.
Read SN 12.15 · ATI ↗ · SuttaCentral ↗ · Bodhi, Connected Discourses, vol. I, pp. 544–545; introduction, pp. 522–524. This is an introductory paraphrase, not an exhaustive interpretation.
Does experience require a permanent self?
Study deeper · Self and conditions
Early discourse · SN 12.12
In SN 12.12, questions such as “Who feels?” are redirected toward the conditions for feeling. The inquiry proceeds through conditions, without positing an unchanging owner behind the process.
A change in the question
From “Who is the permanent experiencer?” to “With what condition does feeling arise?”
The discourse identifies contact as the condition for feeling. Pain remains real, and conduct and care matter. The inquiry examines experience without assuming an enduring substance that owns it.
Read SN 12.12 · ATI ↗ · SuttaCentral ↗ · Bodhi, Connected Discourses, vol. I, pp. 541–542, and introduction, p. 524. The question shift above is an explanatory paraphrase.
How do the Four Noble Truths fit?
Study deeper · Four Noble Truths
Early-discourse framework · scholarly explanation
Bodhi connects the arising and cessation sequences with the second and third noble truths. The wider framework explains the purpose of studying these conditions.
- 1 · Suffering
- What is to be understood.
- 2 · Its origin
- The sustaining conditions investigated in the arising sequence.
- 3 · Its cessation
- The ending of suffering through the ending of its sustaining conditions.
- 4 · The path
- The practice cultivated toward cessation: the Noble Eightfold Path.
The Upanisā sequence describes conditions supporting liberation. It complements the Eightfold Path while retaining its own name and distinct list of factors.
Bodhi, Connected Discourses, vol. I, pp. 522–524; SN 12.43. For the Eightfold Path, SN 12.65 · ATI ↗ · SuttaCentral ↗; for the companion sequence, SN 12.23.
Philosophy & historical questions
How does this relate to emptiness?
Study deeper · Emptiness
Madhyamaka · Nāgārjuna through Garfield
In Mūlamadhyamakakārikā 24.18–19, Nāgārjuna connects dependent arising, emptiness, and dependent designation. In Garfield’s interpretation, things exist conventionally and function through dependence, without an independent, intrinsic nature.
Dependence makes change and practice intelligible. If suffering possessed a fixed, independent nature, its cessation would be impossible. Emptiness names this absence of intrinsic nature, not a hidden substance or permanent foundation beneath appearances.
Chapter 26 returns explicitly to the twelve links and liberation. This is a later Madhyamaka philosophical treatment, not a substitute for the wording of SN 12.2.
Jay L. Garfield, The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way (1995), Chapter 24, especially verses 18–19 and their commentary; Chapter 26. Garfield’s preface identifies his Indo-Tibetan Prāsaṅgika interpretive standpoint. Other readings exist.
Find this book in the reading list ↓Was the formula a response to Vedic ideas?
Study deeper · Historical questions
Historical reconstruction · scholarly argument
Joanna Jurewicz proposes that the twelve-link formula reworks Vedic accounts of creation while rejecting their assumption of an underlying self. Her paper compares the sequence and its terminology with earlier Vedic material.
She offers a tentative reconstruction with a limited scope: some canonical formulations fall outside her treatment. Read it as a historical argument, distinct from an established definition or the Buddha’s own recorded explanation.
Richard Gombrich endorses her proposal in his second-edition introduction. This is an endorsement of her argument, rather than independent confirmation. His Chapter II also discusses conditioned consciousness and the teachings’ Brahmanical context.
Read with two questions
What evidence supports the historical connection? What remains an inference about the teaching’s original setting?
Jurewicz, “Playing with Fire,” Journal of the Pali Text Society 26 (2000), pp. 77–103. Gombrich, How Buddhism Began, 2nd edition, introduction and Chapter II.
Find these readings below ↓A reading path, not a consensus claim
Books & scholarship.
Start with an accessible account, return to the discourses, then compare interpretations. These selections include academic scholarship and traditional scholar-monks; their approaches are not interchangeable.
01 · Get oriented
Gethin or Harvey for a book-length introduction; Anālayo for a short conceptual entry.
02 · Read the sources
Begin with SN 12.2. Then compare SN 12.67 and SN 12.23 using the links below or Bodhi’s translations.
03 · Deepen the inquiry
Read Bodhi on liberation, then choose philosophy or historical debate. Keep each author’s interpretive standpoint in view.
10 readings · 7 books, 1 booklet, 2 articles
Academic introduction
The Foundations of Buddhism
Rupert Gethin
Oxford University Press, 1998.
Oxford University Press, 1998.
Begin with Chapter 6, especially pp. 149–159. A clear comparison of the twelve links, classical three-life and momentary readings, and the Wheel of Life.
Best first book for seeing how the interpretations fit together.
ISBN 9780192892232
Academic introduction
An Introduction to Buddhism: Teachings, History and Practices
Peter Harvey
Cambridge University Press, 2nd edition, 2013.
Cambridge University Press, 2nd edition, 2013.
Read “Conditioned Arising,” pp. 65–72. Explains specific conditions, rebirth, present experience, and why the ring should not add a death-to-ignorance arrow.
Best companion for terminology and interpretive cautions.
ISBN 9780521676748 (paperback)
Translated primary texts
In the Buddha’s Words: An Anthology of Discourses from the Pāli Canon
Bhikkhu Bodhi, editor and translator
Wisdom Publications, 2005.
Wisdom Publications, 2005.
A thematic route into the discourses with introductions. Read the material on wisdom and dependent origination alongside the broader account of the path.
An accessible next step from an overview to source texts.
Anthology; scholarly introductions from a Theravāda perspective.
Translated primary texts
The Connected Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Saṃyutta Nikāya
Bhikkhu Bodhi, translator
Wisdom Publications, 2000.
Wisdom Publications, 2000.
Study the Nidāna-saṃyutta (SN 12), with its introduction and notes. Compare different formulations rather than relying on one isolated passage.
For sustained source study; more demanding than an introductory book.
ISBN 9780861713318
Traditional scholarly commentary · booklet
Transcendental Dependent Arising: A Translation and Exposition of the Upanisa Sutta
Bhikkhu Bodhi
Buddhist Publication Society, Wheel 277/278; online edition © 1995.
Buddhist Publication Society, Wheel 277/278; online edition © 1995.
A focused explanation of SN 12.23 and the conditions supporting liberation. Clearly represents a Theravāda exegetical approach.
Read after the basic twelve-link sequence to study the liberating path.
Free authorized online text; a booklet, not a broad academic survey.
Scholarly article
Dependent Arising
Bhikkhu Anālayo
Insight Journal / Barre Center for Buddhist Studies, 2020.
Insight Journal / Barre Center for Buddhist Studies, 2020.
Distinguishes specific conditionality from particular lists of links. Particularly useful for understanding why shorter early formulations remain valid.
A concise conceptual starting point; historical proposals within it should be read as scholarly arguments.
Free article; not a book.
Philosophy · advanced
Causality: The Central Philosophy of Buddhism
David J. Kalupahana
University Press of Hawaii, 1975.
University Press of Hawaii, 1975.
Begin with Chapters V–VI; pp. 89–95 discuss conditionality and fatalism. Compares Pāli and Chinese sources.
An influential philosophical interpretation to compare with other accounts, not a consensus statement.
Historical interpretation
How Buddhism Began: The Conditioned Genesis of the Early Teachings
Richard F. Gombrich
Routledge, 2nd edition, 2006; first edition 1996.
Routledge, 2nd edition, 2006; first edition 1996.
Read Chapter II, especially pp. 45–48, and the second-edition introduction. Examines conditioned consciousness and Brahmanical context.
Distinguish textual observations from proposals about the historical development of the teachings.
Madhyamaka · translation & commentary
The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way: Nāgārjuna’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā
Jay L. Garfield
Oxford University Press, 1995.
Oxford University Press, 1995.
Begin with Chapter 24, especially verses 18–19, then Chapter 26 on the twelve links; read the accompanying commentary.
Garfield states an Indo-Tibetan Prāsaṅgika standpoint. This is a later philosophical treatment.
Historical argument · article
Playing with Fire: The pratītyasamutpāda from the Perspective of Vedic Thought
Joanna Jurewicz
Journal of the Pali Text Society 26 (2000), pp. 77–103.
Journal of the Pali Text Society 26 (2000), pp. 77–103.
A proposed reading of the twelve-link formula as a response to Vedic cosmogony. The supplied copy is a later reprint with different pagination.
A tentative historical reconstruction; does not cover every canonical formulation.
Read the discourses directly
Each discourse is linked in two places: Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu at Access to Insight, and SuttaCentral (multiple translations and parallels). SN = Saṃyutta Nikāya; MN = Majjhima Nikāya; DN = Dīgha Nikāya.
- SN 12.2 — Analysis of Dependent Co-arising: the main formula and definitions. ATI ↗ · SuttaCentral ↗
- SN 12.67 — Sheaves of Reeds: reciprocal conditioning. ATI ↗ · SuttaCentral ↗
- SN 12.23 — Prerequisites: a sequence supporting liberation. ATI ↗ · SuttaCentral ↗
- SN 12.65 — The City: inquiry into conditionality and the Noble Eightfold Path. ATI ↗ · SuttaCentral ↗
- MN 148 — The Six Sextets: sense experience, contact, feeling, and responses. ATI ↗ · SuttaCentral ↗
- DN 15 — The Great Causes Discourse: an extended inquiry, including reciprocal conditioning of consciousness and name-and-form. ATI ↗ · SuttaCentral ↗
- MN 38 — The Greater Craving-Destruction Discourse: consciousness arises through conditions; the discourse challenges the claim that the same consciousness continues through rebirth. ATI ↗ · SuttaCentral ↗