A visual roadmap of conditionality
The Twelve Links of Dependent Origination at a Glance
What are the 12 links of Dependent Origination and how do they fit together?
Direct Answer: The twelve links map the circular causal chain through which fundamental ignorance conditions volitional impulses, leading across consciousness, contact, and craving into recurring suffering and rebirth.
Fuller teaching
Paṭiccasamuppāda is not a linear timeline from past to future, but a structural analysis of how suffering reproduces itself at every moment. When ignorance (avijjā) clouds seeing, volitions (saṅkhāra) drive consciousness and sensory contact (phassa) into feeling (vedanā).
Crucially, feeling does not have to ignite craving (taṇhā). Mindfulness intervenes at this exact pivot: when feeling is known simply as feeling without ownership, the chain unwinds in reverse (Paṭiloma), revealing liberation.
Canonical source
Paṭiccasamuppāda Sutta · SN 12.1 — The fundamental exposition of the twelve links in forward and reverse order.
Stepping off the wheel at Feeling
- Notice sensory contact: an email, sound, or comment.
- Identify the feeling tone: pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral.
- Pause before the habitual reflex of grabbing or rejecting fires.
- Know: "Feeling is present, but craving is optional."