Dependent Origination. Origination means something arises, something is born, something is created. Buddhism says that nothing is created without a cause beforehand. In other words, you were born: Where did you come from? Your father's sperm, your mothers' egg. That was the physical part. Buddhism says that consciousness came in, got stuck in that little body. Causes created who you were. Everything is dependently arising due to something else. The food that you get for lunch, where did it come from? Trace it back, it's all dependent on something else. Everything is dependently arising.
So this is a deep principal within Buddhism to understand that you're coming from something else. And who you are right now isn't going to be here tomorrow. You think you're the same person you were yesterday, but you're not, you've changed in some way. Who you are now is dependent on that person's existence - if that person hadn't lived you would not be living now. But you're not the same person. That goes a bit deeper than this question. But dependent origination works on the fact that things come after another.
Now the part of dependent origination that we want to work with within the practice is the fact that we, as the physical body, have sense doors. We have eyes, ears, nose, mouth, touch and the mind, the thoughts. Now when these sense doors come in contact with something and if we're aware of the contact, then we've moved in to another type of development. We have the eye, it sees color and form.
Let's say I look outside and I see the Buddha statue near the rock. So my eye actually only sees color and form, then I perceive the statue - perception. I see it, I perceive it - that's a Buddha statue. Now, if that's all it is, fine, no big deal, then I'm probably onto something else; maybe I turn and I see one of you. But for this example, imagine I perceive the Buddha statue, I label it and then because it's a Thai Theravadin Buddha statue, I have a pleasant Vedana arise. Then because it is a familiar, loving sight for me, I have a pleasant feeling and I'm going to think, "I like it."
So the contact created the feeling; feeling was dependent on contact. So after I have the feeling towards something, I'm going to either like it or dislike it. I'm going to have a kind of craving, a pleasant or unpleasant thought in my mind. When I start craving things, then I might even create a story about it. For example, I might think, "Oh, I think I should move it, it's not in the right place, I should move it to the left". That's even more of a "becoming".
Part of the teaching on Dependent Origination lists a sequence of twelve steps which happen. For example, we have a contact. We perceive it. We have a Vedana arising, we have thoughts around it, we have craving, and then we have extra thoughts that actually want to do something with it. Now in that sequence, that's where we have to be careful.
If we see somebody, just another human being, and we don't like them, unpleasant feelings arise and we think, "Oh, I don't like them." And then we start to criticize them.
Now, when we first see the person, if we just note, "seeing, seeing", we have stopped the depending arising nature. We have stopped the craving and the becoming, we have stopped all the extra thoughts, we have stopped mental formations within the five aggregates - thinking, thinking, thinking, making a story about it. If we're able to just note "seeing, seeing" and then stop, that's fine, we cut the chain of dependent arising of Dukkha.
Now if we miss that cut and we're caught in the feeling: We see somebody we don't like and we have an unpleasant feeling, if we can note, "unpleasant Vedana, unpleasant feeling," if we can note that then we've also stopped the mental formation. We stop the wanting, liking, disliking, hating, getting into stories about how they should come to here etc. We've stopped all that.
So there are these two places in the practice where we can stop hindrances arising: at the contact and at the feeling. That's the most important aspect of Dependent Origination. It goes much more involved into explaining the twelve points but that's something for another day.