September 09, 2026

Nothing Arises Alone

When this is, that is; this arising, that arises; when this is not, that is not; this ceasing, that ceases.

Walpola Rahula was a Sri Lankan Buddhist monk and scholar who wrote this book in 1959 to give Western readers a clear, direct account of the Buddha's own words, stripped of later embellishment. Here he sets down the classic formula for paticca-samuppada, or dependent origination — the teaching that nothing in existence stands on its own but arises only because other things arise with it. The spare, almost mathematical language is deliberate: this exists because that exists, this ends because that ends, and no phenomenon can be pulled out of that chain and examined in isolation. The tradition practices this not as a theory but as a way of looking, tracing the rain, the soil, the sunlight, and the hands behind a single cup of tea until the cup stops looking separate from the world. To truly see one thing, in this view, is to see everything that had to happen for it to be there.

A principle of Eastern Wisdom: Interbeing →