Interconnectedness A practical introduction on the Buddha’s teachings on compassion and interdependent origination by Tsadong Rinpoche Ngawang Tenzin. The Buddha’s teaching on interdependent origination is profound, yet applicable to our daily lives. It intersects with the development of compassion, so key to our spiritual practice.

Learning to develop and apply a compassionate heart and mind to all our activities and interactions creates the basis of an altruistic attitude, by combining this compassion with the wisdom that comes as a result of understanding Interdependent Origination, revealing a clear pathway to liberation from existential suffering. “Interdependent Origination is the Buddhist teaching on how things come to be, are, and cease to be. Everything is interconnected, everything affects everything else. Everything that is, is because other things are.” The Buddha used the principle of Interdependent Origination to understand human suffering and taught how to bring that suffering to an end. In our daily lives, through understanding the interconnection of all things and by learning that causes and conditions keep us linked in a perpetual cyclic chain of suffering, we are able to begin to utilise this knowledge to break the links of this circuit. This allows us to achieve the wisdom that perceives the ultimate nature of things - namely emptiness - overcoming our innate ignorance that prevents us from seeing reality.