Dependent origination (Skt: pratityasamutpada, Pali: paticca-samuppada) is also known as conditioned co-arising and several other terms. Buddhism teaches that everything that exists is conditioned—dependent on something else. This applies to thoughts as well as objects, to the individual as well as the entire universe. Nothing exists independently. Everything is conditioned.

This concept is illustrated in the Buddhist teachings of the chain of dependent origination, which describes the factors that perpetuate the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. The twelve links in the chain are sequential, each factor causing the following one: Because of this, that arises. When this ceases, that also ceases.

The links form a never-ending cycle that binds us to suffering, and the goal of Buddhist practice is to escape from this vicious cycle. Though there is more than one version of the sequence of links, they commonly run this way:

- Ignorance - Mental formations - Consciousness - Name and form - The senses: sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste, and mind - Contact - Feeling - Craving - Clinging - Becoming - Birth - Aging and death