All conditioned things are impermanent — when one sees this with wisdom, one turns away from suffering.
Conditionality
If we want to understand life, according to Buddhism, we need to understand how things happen. Then we can see how the world and our personal experience come to be as they are. Seeing life in this way will show us a different way to be in the world.
The Buddhist account of how things happen is called the teaching of conditionality. Traditional expressions of this teaching are abstract because the Buddha was describing a universal law that is true for all people at all times, but he wasn’t interested in philosophy for its own sake. His account of the world as we experience it was intended to help us recognise the fundamental challenges of our lives.
The teaching of impermanence says that everything is constantly changing, but that doesn’t mean change occurs haphazardly. There’s a relation between our actions and their consequences – this is the principle of karma; and (more philosophically) a relation between causes and effects. As the Buddha put it, there’s a regularity to the way things happen, and this is the principle or ‘law’ of conditionality (or, alternatively, ‘causality’). The classic expression of this principle goes like this:
‘This being, that comes to be;
from the arising of this, that arises;
this being absent, that does not come to be;
from the cessation of this, that ceases.’
Understanding Conditionality
To make this clearer, let’s consider a couple of examples. Water is constantly flowing through a river: it’s all flux and change and in that way a river is a good example of impermanence. But where did the water in the river come from? This is how the Buddha explained it:
"When it rains heavily on a mountain top, the water flows downhill to fill the hollows, crevices, and creeks. As they become full, they fill up the pools. The pools fill up the lakes, the lakes fill up the streams, and the streams fill up the rivers. And as the rivers become full, they fill up the ocean." The Buddha, Samyutta Nikaya
The river doesn’t have a single cause. The water comes from many sources and it’s more accurate to say that it arises in dependence on an array of conditions, all interacting with one another. For this reason, the principle of conditionality is often termed ‘dependent arising’, or ‘conditioned co-production’.
This is a subtle way of understanding the world, and it has been compared with an array of western approaches, including scientific method and systems thinking. But in Buddhism, it isn’t intended as a description of the material world. Firstly, it helps us understand that the world of experience is impermanent and contingent.
Buddhist teachings are intended to help us see how the mind works, how it produces suffering and how that suffering can cease. They do so by applying conditionality to the mind and noticing that, just like a river, a state such as suffering or happiness arises from many conditions. We need to know what we are doing right now to produce mental suffering, so we can stop doing it; and what mental conditions will create deep and lasting happiness. This is subtle because we can’t control our states of mind. They arise from a variety of conditions, so we have to cultivate beneficial ones.
"Just as sharp pain arises although one does not desire it, so anger forcibly arises although one does not desire it. A person does not intentionally become angry, thinking, 'I shall get angry,' nor does anger originate, thinking, 'I shall arise.'" Shantideva, Bodhicaryavatara
Buddhist teachings suggest that conditionality can work in two ways. There are the conditions that keep us going round in circles, following the same patterns and habits. This is ‘cyclic conditionality’ and a well-known, but complex, Buddhist teaching lists twelve links (or ‘nidanas’) in the process. Theravada Buddhism often urges practitioners to stop creating the conditions that lead to suffering in this way, and follow a path of ‘cessation’.
Other teachings describe a progressive process in which one stage naturally arises out of the preceding stage, if the conditions are right:
"Monks, for one who is virtuous, in full possession of virtue, there is no need for the purposeful thought: may freedom from remorse arise in me. This, monks, is in accordance with nature: that for one who is virtuous, in full possession of virtue, freedom from remorse arises." The Buddha, Anguttara Nikaya
Seen like this, Buddhism is a path of spiritual development. By practising the Threefold Way of Ethics Meditation and Wisdom, and the more detailed process described in the Eightfold Path, we move gradually towards the goal of Nirvana:
"If the mind is not soiled, gladness is born. When one is gladdened, rapture is born. When the mind is uplifted by rapture, the body becomes tranquil. One tranquil in body experiences happiness. The mind of one who is happy becomes concentrated. When the mind is concentrated and phenomena become manifest, one is reckoned as 'one who dwells diligently." The Buddha, Samyutta Nikaya
Mahayana Buddhism described this progressive process in describing the path of the Bodhisattva, who is motivated by compassion and works for the Enlightenment of all beings.
However we approach it, the purpose of conditionality in Buddhist teachings is to guide us towards liberation.
Irrigators guide the water. Fletchers shape the arrow shaft. Carpenters shape the wood. The wise fashion themselves.
