In this selection from the Digha Nikāya, or the Long Discourses of the Buddha, we read passages from the Mahānidāna Sutta, one of the most profound discourses in the Pāli canon on the factors of dependent origination. Here we read the Buddha’s teachings on the twelve links of dependent origination and their relationship to the origin of suffering and no-self.

In this lesson, Jay Garfield illuminates the teachings of Abhidharma with particular emphasis on the Pali Abhidhamma. Jay guides us through essential ideas and texts that demonstrate the particular ways in which Buddhist philosophy and psychology were systematized after the death of the Buddha, and before the rise of the Mahayana.