From Chain to Web: Rethinking Dependent Origination in Buddhism

Dependent Origination (Paṭicca-samuppāda) is one of the most profound and far-reaching teachings of the Buddha. Yet its interpretation diverges significantly between Theravāda and Mahāyāna traditions.

By Kenneth Leong

Dependent Origination (Paṭicca-samuppāda) is one of the most profound and far-reaching teachings of the Buddha. Yet its interpretation diverges significantly between Theravāda and Mahāyāna traditions. Both acknowledge it as central to understanding suffering and liberation, but they frame it in strikingly different ways — Theravāda emphasizing a simplified, individual cycle, and Mahāyāna envisioning an expansive web of interconnection that resonates with collective responsibility, ecological awareness, and modern systems thought.

1. The Theravāda Cycle: A Linear Model

In the Theravāda tradition, Dependent Origination is most often explained through the Twelve Links (nidānas). This model begins with ignorance and proceeds step by step through craving, clinging, and birth, culminating in old age and death. It describes how suffering arises in a sequence that binds an individual being to samsara across multiple lifetimes.

While profound, this presentation is relatively linear and simplified. It neglects many cross-linkages between conditions, and it tends to be read in a metaphysical sense — as the “journey” of a being carried forward by karma. This interpretation preserves the self–other division, since the model is explained in terms of an individual agent trapped in rebirth.

2. The Mahāyāna Expansion: A Universal Web

By contrast, Mahāyāna thinkers — especially in Huayan Buddhism — radicalized Dependent Origination into a vision of universal interdependence. The metaphor of Indra’s Net from the Avataṃsaka Sūtra vividly illustrates this worldview:

In each jewel of Indra’s Net are reflected all the other jewels, and in each reflection are reflected all the others again.

Here, reality is not a chain but a dynamic web in which each phenomenon both contains and conditions all others. This vision is collective, not individual. A single being’s liberation cannot be detached from the liberation of others, for all beings are entangled in the same cosmic net.

3. Thich Nhat Hanh’s Concept of Interbeing

The Vietnamese Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh coined the term Interbeing to translate this Mahāyāna insight into simple, contemporary language. To “inter-be” means that nothing exists independently: everything is woven into everything else. He often illustrated this by asking us to look deeply into a sheet of paper:

“If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there is no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow; without trees, we cannot make paper.”

Thus, the paper contains the cloud, the rain, the logger, the sunshine, the earth — indeed, the whole universe.

Another example: When I was a child growing up in Hong Kong, my grandmother taught me to say a prayer before each meal to express my gratitude towards the universe. A bowl of rice is not “just rice.” It contains the sunshine, the rain, the soil, the farmer’s labor, the truck that carried it, the oil that fueled the truck, and the whole web of global trade and climate patterns that made it possible. If drought strikes in one region or if supply chains collapse, that bowl of rice disappears. This illustrates universal interdependence in daily life.

4. The Huayan Teaching of “All in One and One in All”

Huayan Buddhism further deepens this vision with the teaching of “All in One and One in All” (yi ji yi qie, yi qie ji yi 一即一切，一切即一).

All in One: Each phenomenon contains the whole. As discussed earlier, a piece of paper depends on sunshine, rain, clouds, soil, and human labor. But each of these factors also depends on countless other factors: the rain depends on clouds, the clouds on bodies of water, the water on sunlight and wind, and so forth. This factor analysis can be reiterated endlessly, revealing an infinite web of conditions embedded within a single object.

One in All: The unity of life manifests through its diversity. The myriad forms of life on earth, despite their differences, all trace back to LUCA (Last Universal Common Ancestor) in evolutionary history. Alternatively, this truth is illustrated by the image of the same moon reflected in countless bodies of water — whether lake, pond, or ocean. Each reflection is unique, but they all reveal the same moon.

Together, these teachings reveal a cosmos where part and whole interpenetrate without obstruction. Each thing is both itself and more than itself: a microcosm containing the macrocosm.

5. The Range of Suffering

Theravāda emphasizes existential suffering — birth, aging, illness, death — without explicitly addressing systemic suffering such as pandemics, environmental collapse, or social injustice. Mahāyāna’s broadened framework, however, is capable of embracing all forms of suffering, since every phenomenon is implicated in the suffering of the whole.

As Fazang wrote in his Essay on the Golden Lion:

“The lion is made entirely of gold. Its eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and all its parts are gold. The gold is the lion, and the lion is the gold.”

Just as each part of the lion is inseparable from the whole, the suffering of any being reverberates throughout the cosmos.

6. Illusion of Isolated Liberation

Theravāda’s emphasis on individual liberation risks giving the impression that one can attain nirvāṇa regardless of the plight of others. This creates an illusion of insulated salvation. Mahāyāna explicitly critiques this notion. The Vimalakīrti Sūtra teaches:

“Because living beings are sick, I am also sick.”

The message is clear: the fate of the individual is inseparable from the fate of the world.

7. Dissolution of Self–Other Duality

Theravāda, while rejecting a permanent soul, retains the framework of self and other: an individual being seeks release apart from others. Mahāyāna dissolves this duality entirely. The Diamond Sūtra declares:

“If a bodhisattva still clings to the notion of a self, a person, a being, or a life-span, he is not a true bodhisattva.”

For Mahāyāna, self and other are not-two. To liberate oneself is to liberate all.

8. Relation to Science and Systems Thought

The Theravāda model, with its karmic linearity, does not easily harmonize with modern science. By contrast, the Mahāyāna vision resonates strongly with ecology, systems theory, and quantum physics, all of which affirm that nothing exists in isolation. Nāgārjuna summarized it simply:

When this exists, that arises; when this ceases, that ceases. Nothing exists by itself, everything arises in dependence.” (Mūlamadhyamakakārikā)

9. Toward Socially Engaged Buddhism

The Mahāyāna vision of universal interdependence calls for a socially engaged Buddhism. Focusing solely on individual cultivation risks narrowing the Dharma to a private project. Yet the Noble Eightfold Path itself contains profoundly social dimensions:

Right Speech encourages honesty, compassion, and harmony in communication.

Right Action extends ethical responsibility to our treatment of others.

Right Livelihood demands that our work not exploit or harm other beings.

These aspects of the Path remind us that Buddhism is not only about inner transformation but also about transforming relationships, communities, and systems. They support a holistic view of suffering — one that goes beyond the individualist frame of the Twelve Links to embrace the collective and structural conditions of dukkha.

Conclusion: From the Individual to the Cosmos

The Theravāda presentation of Dependent Origination remains indispensable as a foundational teaching for individual liberation. Yet the Mahāyāna reinterpretation — especially in Huayan Buddhism’s teaching of All in One and One in All and Thich Nhat Hanh’s Interbeing — offers a vision that is broader, more collective, and more consistent with ecological wisdom and modern science.

In this Mahāyāna vision, the duality between self and other dissolves, and the very idea of isolated liberation is revealed as an illusion. The fate of the individual is always tied to the fate of the whole. Just as every jewel in Indra’s Net reflects all others, every sheet of paper contains the sun and the rain, and every body of water reflects the same moon, so too does the liberation of one being depend on, and contribute to, the liberation of all.

To realize this truth today is to recognize that Buddhism cannot be separated from the world’s social, political, and ecological crises. The Dharma must be lived not only in meditation halls but also in workplaces, marketplaces, and public squares. The Bodhisattva path, in our time, is nothing less than the path of socially engaged Buddhism.

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