The Buddhist law of dependent origination teaches that everything in the universe is interrelated and that all human beings live in an organically structured world, all of whose parts are interdependent. To attempt to divorce oneself from the whole and seek no more than one’s own personal bliss is to ignore the principle of universal causation and the moral code it implies. This is why the Buddha rejected both meditation and asceticism as paths to enlightenment: both mistake a false cause for a true one.Basic Buddhist Concepts