Dependent origination
Everything arises in dependence on conditions, so nothing exists independently.
What it commits you to
Dependent origination is the analysis of existence as conditioned: nothing has an essence or arises on its own. Nagarjuna gave it its systematic form and used it to dissolve the categories of the schools he argued against. Applied technically it is a claim about systems: no component is self-sufficient, so no component's behaviour can be understood or governed in isolation.
Which realms lean on this
Philosophy carries the arguments the other four kinds are downstream of — what an agent is, what a person owes, what a rule is for.
philosophy · 8 realms — The Care Weft, The Contractual Court, The Existential Wilds, The Kantian Citadel, The Longview Foundry, The Middle Kingdom, The Pragmatic Wharf, The Sangha Terraces.
Canon that discusses this
primary · 150
Mulamadhyamakakarika
The foundational Madhyamaka text, arguing that no phenomenon has independent existence and that apparent essence arises from dependent origination. Read as epistemology rather than metaphysics it is a theory about why nothing is self-sufficient — including, later, why no component of a system can be trusted in isolation from what it depends on. The excerpt below paraphrases the chapter rather than quoting a translation.
primary · 300 BCE
Dhammapada
Verses assembled from the older Buddhist canon, of which the Khandha Goyana section on arising and passing away is the part that matters here. Its analysis of experience as conditioned and therefore impermanent is the substrate for dependent origination and for the no-self analysis, and it is the oldest systematic account of how a mind fails to stay put. The excerpt below paraphrases the Khandha Goyana rather than quoting a translation.