Interdependent Origination in Chuang-tzu (Cook)

Specifically, well before the beginning of the Christian era, Chinese thinkers such as Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu articulated a view of existence as one of harmonious coexistence in interdependence of the many particulars which constitute the organic whole called existence. In Chuang-tzu's writing, particularly in the section named Seeing Things as Equal, we find a classical Chinese enunciation of a vision of a world in which things are naturally what they are by virtue of a pervasive, thoroughgoing interdependence. As in Whitehead's system, such a world of particular events is not to be seen as inhering in or growing out of anything beyond itself, nor may we look beyond it for any causal agency. It is itself self-sustaining and self-creating, and this is achieved through the interaction of a conditioning nature of all its parts. An example of this view is clearly expressed in the Kuo-hsiang [Guo Xiang] commentary on Chuang-tzu's writing:

"When a person is born, insignificant though he may be, he has all the requisites necessary for his life. However trivial his own life may be, he needs the whole universe as a condition for his existence. No thing in the universe, nothing that exists, can cease for a moment without some effect on him. If one factor is lacking, he might not exist any longer. If one principle is violated, he might not live."

From Causation in the Chinese Hua-Yen Tradition, by Francis Cook, Journal of Chinese Philosophy, vol. 6, 1979.