The Buddhist teaching on dependent arising (or dependent origination) concerns specific conditions whose presence is indispensable for something to come into existence. In the early stages of Buddhist history, the overarching concern of this doctrine was to identify the specific causes responsible for the human predicament, with a view to bringing about their cessation so as to become liberated. In later times, Buddhist exegesis developed various perspectives on causality, where in Huayan philosophy in particular the notion of interconnectedness or interdependence arose, according to which all phenomena relate to each other in one way or another. Despite its traction in the contemporary setting, this notion needs to be recognized as a later development that is by no means identical with the basic Buddhist teaching on dependent arising.

佛教关于依存产生（或依存起源）的教义涉及特定条件，这些条件的存在对于某种事物的存在是必不可少的。在佛教历史的早期，这一学说的首要关注是确定造成人类困境的具体原因，以期使他们停止生活，从而得到解放。后来，佛教释经学发展了因果关系的各种观点，尤其是在华严哲学中，出现了相互联系或相互依存的概念，据此，所有现象都以一种或另一种方式相互联系。尽管它在当代环境中颇受关注，但这一观念需要被认为是后来的发展，它与佛教关于依附产生的基本教义绝不相同。