September 19, 2026

The Chain Of Becoming

When this exists, that comes to be; with the arising of this, that arises. When this does not exist, that does not come to be; with the cessation of this, that ceases.

This formula recurs throughout the Pali Canon, where the Buddha used it to explain paticcasamuppada, or dependent origination, the teaching that nothing arises except in relation to something else. Bhikkhu Bodhi, a Buddhist monk and one of the most trusted translators of the Pali suttas, rendered these words in his translation of the Samyutta Nikaya, the collection where the Buddha most often taught this doctrine to his monks. The passage says plainly that nothing comes into being on its own: a thing exists because some other thing exists, and it ceases because some other condition ceased. This is the root insight behind Interbeing — the paper depends on the cloud, the cloud on the sun, the sun on causes reaching back without any first beginning. The tradition practices this by sitting with one small thing, a breath, a bowl of rice, a cup of tea, and tracing outward the web of conditions that made it possible, until the line between self and world grows thin.

A principle of Eastern Wisdom: Interbeing →