Book

Dependent Origination for the Layman

Dependent origination, the twelve-link chain at the heart of the Buddha's teaching on suffering, is usually presented in commentarial language that puts it out of reach. Baal Kadmon's Dependent Origination for the Layman walks the chain link by link in plain terms: ignorance, the acts of will, consciousness, mentality and corporeality, the six-fold sense bases, contact, feeling, craving, attachment, becoming, rebirth, and aging and dying. Each link gets its own short chapter with the traditional term given alongside, so the reader learns the canonical vocabulary without being stranded in it. The book closes with a chapter on breaking the links, the practical point of the whole teaching, and frames the doctrine inside a brief orientation to Buddhism itself. The first of the author's Baal on Buddhism series, it is a study title rather than a ritual one. Readers who have bounced off longer treatises on pratityasamutpada will find the compact walkthrough they needed.

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