Everything Arises and Disappears According to Conditions

Today's teaching is on dependent arising. Dependent arising means that nothing comes into being alone; many causes, conditions, and relationships meet and give rise to each thing.

No event simply appears by chance or by itself. A person's single word, one feeling in the mind, and one event unfolding before us all include the working of countless causes and conditions. So when we see a phenomenon, rather than grasping it as a fixed substance, we need to look wisely at what conditions have given rise to it.

The principle of dependent arising is very deep, and it cannot be fully measured by thought alone. We cannot say it is merely false, nor only true. We cannot say it always remains the same, nor that it is completely cut off and gone.

This is because everything clearly arises, yet within it there is no fixed self-nature that can be held. And although something seems to disappear, when conditions continue, the flow goes on again in another form.

If someone insults me in a dream, anger and pain clearly arise in that moment. But when I wake up, I know that the whole scene was the working of a dream. In the same way, in our lives we should not only grasp outer events and suffer over them; we should also look at how our own mind receives and responds to those events.

Of course, this does not mean that everything is my fault. It means that when something happens, instead of holding it as a fixed substance and hating it or clinging to it, we should be able to see it as a flow that arises and disappears according to conditions.

When we see dependent arising rightly, we do not cling to "it exists," and we do not fall into "it does not exist." To know what arises as arising, to know what disappears as disappearing, and to brighten the mind in the midst of that is practice.

Today, may we not judge things too quickly, but wisely observe the flow that arises through conditions, and live with awareness rather than attachment.