Dependent origination (paṭicca-samuppāda) expresses the conditional structure of saṃsāra: 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. It avoids two extremes—the idea that things exist through an eternal essence and the idea that events occur without causes.
The standard twelve links are ignorance, volitional formations, consciousness, name-and-form, six sense bases, contact, feeling, craving, clinging, becoming, birth, and aging-and-death with sorrow and despair. Forward order explains the arising of the whole mass of suffering; reverse order explains cessation. Different Buddhist traditions analyze the links across multiple lives, within present experience, or through both lenses. A complete introduction should not pretend that one interpretive lens exhausts the teaching.
The middle links can be observed directly. A sense faculty and object condition consciousness; the meeting is contact; contact conditions pleasant, painful, or neutral feeling. When ignorance is present, feeling conditions craving, craving intensifies into clinging, and clinging supports becoming—a momentum of identity and action. Practice is possible because conditionality is not destiny: mindful knowledge at feeling and craving changes what follows.
In SN 12.15, the Buddha teaches Kaccānagotta that right view avoids "everything exists" and "nothing exists." One sees arising and cessation dependently without constructing a metaphysical absolute. In SN 12.23, conditionality also describes the upward path: suffering can condition confidence, then joy, rapture, tranquility, happiness, concentration, knowledge and vision, disenchantment, dispassion, freedom, and knowledge of ending.
Dependent origination is profound and should be studied patiently. Its purpose is not to create a clever diagram. It locates causes that can cease. When ignorance and craving cease, the chain of suffering is no longer fed.
Kaccāna asks about right view. The Buddha answers through dependent origination, avoiding both the claim that everything absolutely exists and the claim that nothing exists.
The discourse runs the familiar chain to suffering, then continues in a new direction: suffering conditions confidence, and successive wholesome conditions fill one another like rainwater flowing from mountain pools into rivers and the ocean.