It Depends: Dependent Arising

Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche speaks in English on dependent arising, working from a short text by Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo, and recommends Lama Tsongkhapa’s praise of the Buddha as the teacher of it. He tells how the verse Ye dharma hetu was first spoken to Shariputra, then explains its two halves: the Buddha taught the causes of suffering and how those causes end. A raspberry shows how mistaken seeing, craving and habit build up into birth and death.

He goes on to the inseparability of the relative and the truth, which he calls the magic in the mantra, then to the bodhisattva’s wider vision, the part wisdom plays, and aspiration. Near the end he gives the mantra as an oral transmission.