Buddhism: Pratityasamutpāda in short

The enlightenment (Bodhi) of the Buddha Gautama was simultaneously his liberation from suffering and his insight into the nature of the universe – particularly the nature of the lives of ‘sentient beings’ (principally humans and animals). What the Buddha awakened to (Bodhi means ‘to awaken’) was the truth of dependent origination. This is the understanding that any phenomenon ‘exists’ only because of the ‘existence’ of other phenomena in an incredibly complex web of cause and effect covering time past, time present and time future. Because all things are thus conditioned and transient (anicca), they have no real independent identity (anatta) so do not truly ‘exist’, though to ordinary deluded minds this appears to be the case.