How It All Depends

Abstract Few would deny that something ontologically depends on something else. Given that something depends on something, what depends on what? Huayan Buddhism (Huayan zong 華嚴宗), a prominent Chinese Buddhist school, is known for its extensive thesis of interdependence, according to which everything depends on everything else. This intriguing thesis is entangled with seemingly paradoxical claims that everything is not only identified with everything else but also contained within it. Moreover, the radical thesis of interdependence entails that dependence is pervasive and symmetric. This chapter first develops a contemporary interpretation of Huayan interdependence by employing the definitional account of essence and the essence-based account of dependence. Through these contemporary resources, it elucidates and unifies the theses of interdependence, mutual identity, and mutual containment within Huayan Buddhism. The chapter then proposes a unique framework of ontological dependence that suggests varying degrees of ontological dependence, aimed at accommodating and explaining away intuitions against pervasive and symmetric dependence. By contemporizing Huayan Buddhism, it explores its potential and facilitates engagement between contemporary metaphysics and Huayan Buddhism.