This essay explores the causes of the gender role conflicts between male and female characters who span three generations of the Brangwens in D. H. Lawrence’s The Rainbow. According to the Buddhist theory of dependent co-arising, each concerned character fails to develop his or her harmonious relationship with his or her parter because he or she is obsessed with ‘aggregates.’ In other words, each of them fails to realize that (s)he is stuck in intrinsic selfness. Tom, the first Brangwen who is born at the Marsh Farm and falls into androcentrism, confronts his wife Lydia’s artistic pride and religious superiority complex. He takes male-centrism for his own intrinsic selfness while Lydia is obsessed with the aggregate of Christianity and artistic ideology. The second generation, Will and Anna, are sharply contrasted in their world view. Tom is trapped in a Christian cosmology, whereas Anna aspires to free herself from all kinds of established order including religious rituals. The last couple, Strebensky and Ursula, reveal their philosophical obsession, which might be translated into the aggregate of knowledge (식온-識薀). Stebensky never abandons his mechanistic view of the world while Ursula pursues ‘a oneness with the infinite.’ Her concept of self does not avoid intrinsic self, either, because it reflects what Deep Ecology calls ‘Self-realization.’ Thus, all of the characters mistake their aggregates for their own intrinsic selfness, which results in the failure of their human relationships. In order to promote their better relationships, therefore, they needed to realize the value of interdependent selfness.