Conditionality (idappaccayatā) in the Pāli Discourses of the Buddha

In the Pāli discourses of the Buddha, ‘conditioned co-origination’ (paṭicca-samuppāda) is the key insight that underpins the Buddha’s own awakening and his teaching. This paper aims to shed light on three connected aspects of conditioned co-origination: the synchronic and non-linear nature of the conditional relations it establishes, the non-causal nature of this relation, and how the whole teaching can be seen as a deepening and expansion of the Buddha’s core insight about the impermanence and uncertainty (anicca) of all conditioned phenomena, which is also central in several forms of Buddhist meditation. These three points are connected. (1) By realizing how any given experience arises out of the systematic conditional relationship among several factors, (2) the practitioner’s attention is directed to contemplate the constitutively conditional nature of phenomenal experience as a whole (instead of focusing on specific causal relations), (3) by thus becoming able to directly see that ‘whatever has the nature of arising, all of that has the nature of ceasing’ (SN 56.11), which is the key insight that unlocks the path towards nibbāna.