What is interdependent arising?

Answer 1

First Answer:

It means that all phenomena (outer and inner) arise through the coming together of particular causes and conditions. This means that phenomena do not arise without a cause and they are not created by a creator like God.

A More Detailed Answer:

Another term for "interdependent arising" include "dependent origination" which comes from the Pali word "paticcasamuppada". "Paticca" = "on account of" and "samuppada" = "arising" so what's being discussed is what causes "the arising" -- but of what? One popular way to answer the question of what it is that is being described as arising is "suffering" (dukkha).

In the classic description there are twelve causes, each one feeding into the next, that lead to dukkha.

(1) Ignorance (of dukkha, its cause, that it can be stopped, and how to stop it)

(2) Sankhara (self-perpetuating drives)

(3) Consciousness (awareness driven to know the self)

(4) Name-and-Form (the way we identify self and other)

(5) Six senses (the usual five plus mind, which are always seeking knowledge of the self)

(6) Contact (the six senses finding a bit of information it can use to know the self)

(7) Feeling (our first knowledge of that contact, whether it is pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral)

(8) Craving (the way we use that feeling to shore up our sense of self -- if it's someone saying something we already believe we like it and use it to confirm self, etc.)

(9) Clinging (from a word that actually refers to fuel -- the way that good feeling we just got fuels our sense of who we are)

(10) Becoming (the shaping of our total sense of self from many such incidents)

(11) Birth (the way that sense of self appears to others once we've formed it)

(12) Aging-and-Death (representing the way all of this comes to no good: dukkha!)

So another way of saying what it is that arises is "our sense of a lasting self". Dependent Arising describes in detail the mistake we unknowingly (in our ignorance) make that leads to those troubles we have that are curable (with a little bit of knowledge and a whole lot of practice).