Chapter 5. The twenty-four conditions: A taxonomy of relations¶

The task of this chapter. The preceding three chapters inventoried consciousness, matter, and cognitive processes. This chapter inventories their connections. The twenty-four conditions are twenty-four distinguishable ways in which dhammas support one another, not twenty-four causal laws. Several often hold at once between the same pair of dhammas, which is why the Paṭṭhāna must enumerate them exhaustively, cell by cell. We first explain in modern language what question this taxonomy answers, then list the conditions, their fifty-two subdivisions, and the hundred and thirty assignments of dhammas. Finally, we confront the taxonomy's own difficulty. If a relation is also a dhamma, does it need further relations to connect it to its two terms? Apart from the overview and the last three sections, this chapter consists mainly of reference lists, to be consulted as needed rather than read in full.

An overview: what this taxonomy says. There are three points.

First, the twenty-four conditions classify ways of supporting. For a dhamma to arise, another dhamma may give it direction (root condition), an object (object condition), a seat (base condition), or the immediately preceding position (immediacy condition). It may simply remain present without obstructing it (nondisappearance condition). The inventory counts distinguishable kinds of support, which is not the same as enumerating causes.

Second, several conditions can hold simultaneously between the same pair of dhammas. The matter serving as the mind's base supports the consciousness that arises dependent on it. It is at once a support, prenascence, dissociation, presence, and nondisappearance condition for that consciousness. If this matter is also taken as an object, object condition is added. The twenty-four entries are predicates that can be stacked, not mutually exclusive drawers.

Third, making conditions into an enumerable inventory raises the question in the latter half of this chapter. Does each entry itself count as a dhamma?

The detailed table of fifty-two conditions can wait. These three points already show why this chapter matters. The system has broken dhammas down as far as possible and relies entirely on this chapter to reconnect them.

First, what it is not. The guide to this essay stated that conditions are not causal laws. This chapter makes good on that statement.

A causal law says that B occurs because A occurs. Only some of the twenty-four conditions fit this pattern. Presence and nondisappearance require only that the conditioning dhamma remain present, not yet ceased, when the conditioned dhamma arises. Absence and disappearance require the reverse. The conditioning dhamma must have ceased completely and departed to make room for the next. Presence and absence both count as support in the same inventory. Mutuality goes further, having no direction at all. Mental dhammas within one mental cluster are mutuality conditions for each other. A supports B while B supports A, with neither coming first.¹

The treatises themselves distinguish three actions of conditioning force, producing, assisting, and maintaining.² Only a few of the twenty-four conditions concern production; most concern the other two. Kamma condition produces; root condition makes firm; nutriment and faculty conditions maintain; presence and nondisappearance merely refrain from obstructing. When most entries concern maintenance and nonobstruction, the inventory classifies kinds of support rather than kinds of cause.

This inventory therefore cannot be read as a causal table. It is closer to a table of predicates. Given two dhammas, we ask of each entry which supporting relations hold from A to B. This is how the Paṭṭhāna's question section proceeds.

The three aspects of a condition. Every condition rests on the conditioning dhamma (paccaya-dhamma), the conditioned dhamma (paccayuppanna-dhamma), and conditioning force (paccaya-satti).

The conditioning dhamma gives support, the conditioned dhamma receives it, and conditioning force is the power of that support itself. Conditioned dhammas are mentality and matter that arise dependently. The conditioning domain is wider: besides conditioned mentality and matter, it includes Nibbāna and concepts. Concepts are not ultimate dhammas, while Nibbāna is unconditioned. Both can serve as supporting objects, but neither is produced by these conditions. The commentary compares conditioning force to a chili's heat. The heat is inherent in the chili and cannot be spoken of apart from it. In the same way, conditioning force is inherent in the conditioning dhamma and has no existence apart from it.²

The simile matters because it places the relation within one term, not because it is easy to understand. All the dilemmas in "The question moves to another level" near the end of this chapter begin here. For now, we record the point.

Another point helps in reading the tables. The conditioned-dhamma column usually lists mental and material clusters, rather than one citta or one kind of matter. A condition's actual terms are entire sets of mental dhammas or entire material clusters that arise and cease together. The consciousness and mental factors of Chapter 2, and the material clusters of Chapter 3, all appear here as clusters.

Chapter 8 of the Abhidhammattha Saṅgaha divides its account of conditions into the method of dependent origination and the method of conditional relations.³ The former is the twelve-factor account discussed in Chapter 4 of Essay 13; the latter is this chapter's subject. They arrange the same matter in two ways, by the sequence of continued wandering and by kinds of support.

The diagram places the conditioning dhamma on the left and the conditioned dhamma on the right, with conditioning force connecting them. The force occupies no separate slot. It is drawn on the conditioning dhamma's side because that is where the treatises place it.

On the left, conditioning dhammas can include conditioned mentality and matter, unconditioned Nibbāna, and concepts, which are not ultimate dhammas. On the right, conditioned dhammas are dependently arisen mentality and matter. Nibbāna and concepts can serve as supporting objects but are not produced by these conditions.

An overview of the twenty-four conditions. Chapter 8 of the Charts gives the definitions and assignments of dhammas for each condition. Here we list only its name, the support expressed by its conditioning force, and one example.¹

The table's "same as above" entries are not shortcuts. The twenty-four conditions include three synonymous pairs, immediacy and contiguity, absence and disappearance, and presence and nondisappearance.⁴ This requires no inference on this book's part, since the treatises and commentaries state it explicitly. A cell-by-cell comparison of the Charts' subdivisions makes the same conclusion firmer still. Among the fifty-two subdivisions, contiguity and immediacy match row for row, as do disappearance and absence. The seven subdivisions of nondisappearance also match the seven of presence row for row. Nine of the fifty-two are duplicate names; seventeen of the hundred and thirty assignments are repeated.¹

Merging the duplicate names reduces fifty-two to forty-three and twenty-four to twenty-one. This book considers it worth knowing before reading the table that a small part of the inventory's length comes from naming. The length does not come entirely from observation. Why retain the duplicate names? The treatises say each follows a discourse's wording. That is the conservatism of textual compilation, which differs from analytical necessity.

Arranging them by time. The conditioning dhamma may be required to precede, coincide with, or follow the conditioned dhamma; some conditions impose no temporal restriction. This division reveals more structure than an arrangement by name.

Prenascent: prenascence condition, the object branch of decisive support, and the route through the base. The conditioning dhamma arises first and remains in its phase of presence when the conditioned dhamma arises dependent on it. The five kinds of sensitive matter in relation to the two sets of five sense-consciousnesses are the standard example.

Co-arising: co-arising condition, mutuality, the co-arising branch of support, association, the co-arising branch of dissociation, the co-arising branches of presence and nondisappearance, and the co-arising forms of root, predominance, kamma, result, nutriment, faculty, jhāna, and path conditions. This column is the most crowded, because all support among dhammas within one mental cluster falls here.

Immediate: immediacy, contiguity, absence, disappearance, repetition, and the immediacy branch of decisive support. The conditioning dhamma must have ceased completely before the conditioned dhamma arises immediately after it, without a single intervening slot.

Postnascent: postnascence condition alone, together with its three forms of dissociation, presence, and nondisappearance.

Temporally unrestricted: the different-moment branch of kamma condition and natural decisive support. The former can span several lives; the latter can span an interval of any length. Object condition and object predominance also belong here. An object can be a past, present, or future dhamma, or something outside time such as a concept or Nibbāna. There is therefore no fixed order of earlier and later between it and the conditioned dhamma.

Postnascence deserves another comment because it appears to be backward causation. Later consciousness supports earlier matter, but this is not backward causation. It does not bring that matter into being. The supported matter has not ceased and is still in its phase of presence. Later consciousness merely nourishes it, enabling it to persist. This is the relation between the body's condition after eating and one's mood at the time of eating. The conditioning dhamma comes later, the conditioned dhamma earlier, but they overlap in time. Conditions without overlap all fall under immediacy and still run from earlier to later.

The twenty-four conditions can be laid out in these five divisions as follows.

Fifty-two kinds of condition and a hundred and thirty assignments. Twenty-four is the primary count. One name need not designate just one way of giving support. A conditioning dhamma may act as a base, object, nutriment, or life faculty. Its temporal relation to what it supports may be co-arising, prenascent, postnascent, or immediate. Dividing each condition by these two considerations gives fifty-two kinds. Assigning conditioning and conditioned dhammas to them yields a hundred and thirty entries. These two numbers frame this chapter's inventory.¹

Only ten conditions are subdivided; the other fourteen remain undivided.

The ten subdivided conditions yield thirty-eight kinds; adding the fourteen undivided conditions gives fifty-two. Presence and nondisappearance each account for seven, and their rows match. Fourteen of the fifty-two slots thus consist of the same assignments written twice.

The hundred and thirty assignments fall into ten groups, determined by where the conditioning and conditioned dhammas are situated. Their positions and the names of the conditions form two sets of coordinates.

Viewed in another direction, the same assignments yield four routes between mentality and matter.

Notice that concepts and Nibbāna appear only as conditioning dhammas, never as conditioned dhammas. Concepts are not ultimate dhammas, and Nibbāna is unconditioned. Nothing brings either into being, yet both can support the arising of other dhammas. Object condition has four kinds of conditioning dhamma, mentality, matter, concepts, and Nibbāna. A citta can take either a concept or Nibbāna as its object.¹ The system thus allows a nonultimate dhamma to support an ultimate one. Chapter 7 will address this point; here we simply record it.

Laid out by the ten groups and four routes, the hundred and thirty assignments form this diagram.

The footer's reference to "Chapter 8" uses an old number; read it as Chapter 7, "Restraint and Vacancies."

How many conditions are stacked on one pair of dhammas? Several often hold simultaneously between the same pair, as the overview's second point stated. We now examine this cell by cell, since it directly explains why the Paṭṭhāna must be exhaustive.

Consider the mind's base and the mental cluster that arises dependent on it. Of the fifty-two kinds, five apply, namely base-prenascence support, base prenascence, base-prenascence dissociation, base-prenascence presence, and base-prenascence nondisappearance. In terms of the twenty-four primary conditions, these are support, prenascence, dissociation, presence, and nondisappearance. The same matter supports the same consciousness in five ways at once. It provides its seat, exists before it, coexists with it despite being of a different kind, has not ceased when it arises, and has not departed by the time it arises.

If that matter is also taken as an object, a different set of six cells applies, comprising object condition, base-object-prenascence support, base-object prenascence, base-object-prenascence dissociation, base-object-prenascence presence, and base-object-prenascence nondisappearance. In terms of the twenty-four primary conditions, this is also six, one more than before because object condition is added.

Next consider the five kinds of sensitive matter and the two sets of five sense-consciousnesses. Five conditions apply, base-prenascence support, base prenascence, base-prenascence faculty, base-prenascence presence, and base-prenascence nondisappearance. These also count as five primary conditions. One differs from the preceding example, since faculty condition applies here but not there. The difference lies in the definition of sensitive matter. Eye-sensitivity governs seeing color; the mind's base does not govern it, but merely supplies a position. Chapter 3's account of why sensitive matter is not an organ concerned this same point. Here we see it from the side of conditions.

The question section of the Paṭṭhāna therefore cannot be dispensed with. Every cell must be asked about separately, because its answer cannot be inferred from the other cells.

Where these groups fall among the eighty-nine cittas. Four groups of cittas recur in this chapter. Seeing each marked on the full diagram of eighty-nine cittas is easier than memorizing the numbers.

First, the mental factor of volition in thirty-three cittas serves as the conditioning dhamma for different-moment kamma and natural-decisive-support kamma conditions. These are the twelve unwholesome, eight great wholesome, five form-sphere wholesome, four immaterial-sphere wholesome, and four path cittas. This is the group that produces kamma, with twenty-nine mundane cittas and four path cittas.

Second, thirty-six resultant cittas are the conditioned dhammas of those two kamma conditions. Fifteen rootless resultant, eight great resultant, five form-sphere resultant, and four immaterial-sphere resultant cittas make thirty-two mundane resultants. Adding the four supramundane fruition cittas gives thirty-six. These two sets total the categories that can participate in the respective relations; they do not mean that each kamma-producing citta produces all thirty-six resultants. The first fruition citta directly after the path falls under immediate kamma condition; the remaining fruition cittas can be related to the path by different-moment kamma condition, as explained in Chapter 4.²

Third, seventy-five cittas can produce co-arising consciousness-produced matter. This excludes the two sets of five sense-consciousnesses and the four immaterial-sphere resultant cittas. Chapter 3 gave the same number when asking which cittas can produce matter. Here we ask which serve as co-arising, support, dissociation, presence, and nondisappearance conditions for consciousness-produced material clusters. The two inquiries reach the same seventy-five by different routes.

Fourth, forty-three mental clusters are conditioned dhammas when the mind's base also serves as an object. These are the fifty-four sense-sphere cittas less the two sets of five sense-consciousnesses and five-door adverting. The former have their own bases, while the latter's object lies on the five-door side. Neither takes the mind's base as an object.

A comparison with Sarvāstivāda. Sarvāstivāda treats conditions through six causes and four conditions. The causes are efficient, coexistent, homogeneous, associated, pervasive, and maturation causes; the conditions are cause, contiguity, object, and predominance conditions.⁵ Only the four conditions have names that match Theravāda's twenty-four, and it is only their names that match.

Sarvāstivāda's cause condition includes the five causes other than efficient cause. Its predominance condition has the broad sense of nonobstruction. Theravāda distinguishes co-arising predominance from object predominance. In the former, one of desire, consciousness, energy, or wisdom leads a javana mental cluster; in the latter, a valued object supports the mental dhammas that take it as their object.² The same name has different scopes and modes of support in the two accounts. The four co-arising leaders alone cannot represent the whole Theravāda definition.

The difference lies in the questions asked. The six causes and four conditions look back from a result and ask which kinds of cause help this dharma arise. The twenty-four conditions ask about the connection between two dhammas. Given A and B, in how many distinguishable ways does A support B? The former classifies causes, the latter relations. One concerns how a result is generated, the other how many ways dhammas can be connected.

Consider several conditions that Theravāda lists separately, and compare how they define the scope of support.

Repetition resembles Sarvāstivāda's homogeneous cause but differs from it. Homogeneous cause explains wholesome producing wholesome and unwholesome producing unwholesome, even across lives, as a genealogy running through continuity. Repetition concerns only adjacent javanas within one cognitive process. The first through penultimate javanas condition the second through final javanas by repetition, and fruition consciousness has no repetition condition.¹ Both describe like producing like, but one spans countless lives and the other stays within seven mind-moments. Theravāda confines the condition so tightly in order to keep it within what contemplation can identify.

Sarvāstivāda also recognizes simultaneous support, including coexistent cause. Its six causes and four conditions therefore cannot all be described as earlier causes producing later effects.⁵ Theravāda separately lists postnascence to explain how later mental dhammas assist earlier matter that still exists. Such assistance does not make the past happen again.² The comparison concerns how support is defined. The presence or absence of this one name does not establish that no corresponding relation exists anywhere in Sarvāstivāda's system.

Decisive support, absence, disappearance, and different-moment kamma condition together address a further difficulty. How can a dhamma that has ceased support a present dhamma? Sarvāstivāda answers through real existence across the three times. The substance of a past dharma exists perpetually; it has not been annulled and can still act. Theravāda instead accepts that past dhammas have ceased completely without remainder. It must therefore posit special conditions that make cessation itself a form of support. Absence and disappearance mean ceasing and making room; different-moment kamma and natural decisive support concern support across lives and intervals of time.

The refusal to let a dhamma's substance persist thus accounts for part of the inventory's length. It requires finer distinctions among relations. The section on unmanifest matter in Chapter 3 showed the same choice. Sarvāstivāda prefers another entity to bear persistence; Theravāda prefers conditions to bear it. This is one instance of the restraint Chapter 7 will discuss. Both sides pay a price, Sarvāstivāda in ontology, Theravāda in the inventory's length and the difficulty in this chapter's closing discussion, "The question moves to another level".

Essay 15 will directly examine the reasons for Sarvāstivāda's positings, including the arguments of the four exponents of real existence across the three times. Here we offer only a comparison.

The exhaustiveness of the Paṭṭhāna. The twenty-four conditions come from the Paṭṭhāna, the last of the seven treatises, traditionally called the Great Treatise (Mahāpakaraṇa).⁶ No other work in the entire Tipiṭaka matches its scale, and that scale is itself its argument.

The work first lists the twenty-four conditions in its brief statement of conditions, then defines each in its exposition of conditions. The main text takes each group of dhammas in the matrix, pairs it with each of the twenty-four conditions, and asks about every combination.

The matrix has twenty-two triads and a hundred dyads. Wholesome, unwholesome, and ethically indeterminate form one triad; root and nonroot form one dyad. The main text combines them into six routes, triad, dyad, dyad-triad, triad-dyad, triad-triad, and dyad-dyad conditional relations. It follows each route in four ways, positive, negative, positive-negative, and negative-positive. The positive asks by which condition something occurs, the negative without which condition it occurs. The other two combine these methods. Six times four gives twenty-four, hence the description of twenty-four treatises.⁶

This accounts for the work's scale. The Paṭṭhāna occupies five volumes in the Burmese Tipiṭaka and six in the Siamese edition.⁶ A widespread claim needs correcting here. The often-cited "over six thousand pages in the Siamese edition" refers to the entire Abhidhamma Piṭaka in that edition, 6,297 pages, rather than to the Paṭṭhāna alone.⁴ The number is still startling, but its source needs to be stated correctly.

This book sees three levels to what such a work is saying.

The first is its method. Exhaustive enumeration is a refusal to proceed by examples, not an exercise in diligence. The work refuses to settle for a few typical cases of how conditions operate and instead fills every cell. Once this decision is made, neither cells that cannot be filled nor cells where several conditions overlap can be hidden. The five conditions counted for each pair of dhammas in the preceding section could be counted precisely because of this exhaustive enumeration.

The second is its picture of the world. Filling every cell produces a net with no empty cells. Several conditions hold each dhamma; none stands alone or is produced by a single cause. The net itself, rather than an argument, yields the conclusion of not-self. It has no position with only outgoing ties and none coming in.

The third is its cost, the problem of this chapter's closing discussion, "The question moves to another level". Weaving this net requires treating its threads as things that can be listed, counted, and entered cell by cell. Once conditions become entries in an inventory, their own status needs explaining.

The third label in the left column is 各别广释 ("detailed exposition of individual cases"). The Paṭṭhāna note does not adopt that label or the associated name Paṭiniddesa; it lists Paccayuddeso, Paccayaniddeso and Pucchāvāro at the opening, and distinguishes the last of these from Pañhāvāra in the sevenfold division. The phrase "eight volumes" in the right-hand box also conflicts with the Nyanatiloka note. The quoted "6297 pp. Roy. 8 vo" means 6,297 pages in royal octavo format for the entire Siamese Abhidhamma Piṭaka; "8 vo" is a format, not a volume count. The five and six volumes mentioned separately in the diagram refer to the Burmese and Siamese versions of the Paṭṭhāna.

The question moves to another level. Chapters 3 and 4 asked which entries in an inventory were found in contemplation and which were added to make the notation consistent with itself. Here the question concerns the standing of the whole inventory. Does a condition itself count as a dhamma?

First, let us set out the dilemma.

If a condition is a dhamma, it should appear among the eighty-two ultimate dhammas, comprising one consciousness, fifty-two mental factors, twenty-eight kinds of matter, and one Nibbāna. No place is assigned to conditions.³ More troublingly, if a condition has the status of a dhamma, its connection with either of its terms becomes a connection between two dhammas. In this system, conditions must account for connections between dhammas. What, then, connects the condition to the conditioning dhamma, and what connects it to the conditioned dhamma? If the answer is another condition, the question recurs unchanged and without end.

If a condition is not a dhamma, the difficulty runs the other way. The whole system depends on conditions, including the order of cognitive processes, the separation of kamma and its result, and the mutual dependence of mentality and matter. When something sustains the whole but has no place in the inventory, that inventory cannot claim to have listed everything that exists.

Abhidhamma's solution appeared in the section on the three aspects of a condition. Conditioning force is inherent in the conditioning dhamma, a power it possesses just as a chili's heat is inherent in the chili.² Placing the relation within one term leaves no third thing between the two dhammas and stops the regress. The inventory needs no addition, since conditioning force is only a power of a dhamma, not another dhamma.

The move is neat, and the cost is clear. The relation loses its independence. This book holds that a relation without independence cannot bear the metaphysical explanation of dependent origination, for three reasons.

First, dependent origination says that because this exists, that exists. What matters lies between the terms, in how A's existence conditions B's. If this is explained as A's own power, the supported term has no place in the description. A has a power, but how it reaches B remains unexplained. The regress stops at precisely the point where the problem began.

Second, conditioning force varies with the other term. The same mind's base gives seventy-five mental clusters five conditions, support, prenascence, dissociation, presence, and nondisappearance. For forty-three mental clusters it gives a different set, adding object condition. This matter cannot provide faculty condition for the two sets of five sense-consciousnesses, whereas the five kinds of sensitive matter can. If conditioning force were purely the conditioning dhamma's own power, it should not vary with what it supports. That variation shows that the relation has two terms. Placing it entirely within one does not give a coherent account.

Third, conditioning force fails the criterion established in Chapter 3 and retained in Chapter 4. It cannot be taken separately as an object of insight meditation; no instance of conditioning force can be taken as an object on its own. Yet the second of the sixteen insight knowledges is knowledge discerning conditions, which contemplates conditions.¹ The actual object of contemplation has no recognized place in the inventory of ultimate dhammas. This is a more severe form of the difficulty found in the preceding two chapters.

Chapter 3 encountered a regress of the same form. If the four material characteristics are posited as real dhammas, arising, presence, and dissolution must themselves arise, persist, and dissolve, without end. The treatise excludes material characteristics from the seventeen mind-moments, evading the difficulty without solving it. Karunadasa makes the point clear in his discussion of dhamma theory. If impermanence is posited as a separate dhamma, another impermanence must make it impermanent, and so on endlessly.⁷ The material characteristics are denied a lifespan; conditioning force is denied a status. Both evasions follow the same method, denying an independent place to whatever would produce a regress.

Evasion works, especially in practice, and in a positive sense still displays the virtue of restraint in metaphysical claims. But what is evaded does not disappear. It will eventually be written elsewhere. Chapter 7 will discuss it alongside Chapter 3's material characteristics and Chapter 4's fifteen forms.

A limited external parallel. Bradley's Appearance and Reality offers an argument of the same structure. If a relation is real, further relations must connect it to its two terms, and so on without end. If it is not real, nothing connects them.⁸ Its form is almost identical to the argument in the preceding section.

The guide to Part II cautioned that texts come first, with external theories serving only as limited parallels and analogies. That order must not be reversed. We follow it here, using Bradley as a comparison rather than an argument, within three boundaries.

First, we take the form alone. Bradley concludes that relations and qualities belong to appearance, while reality lies only in absolute experience. This book does not adopt that conclusion, which is also unrelated to Abhidhamma.

Second, the questions have different origins. Bradley's inquiry comes from his defense of monism, Abhidhamma's from not-self and momentary arising and ceasing. Different starting points may lead to a similar fork. It would be inaccurate to call them the same problem.

Third, their solutions and consequences differ. Bradley draws the relation and both terms into the Absolute; Abhidhamma draws the relation into the conditioning term. The former abolishes plurality, while the latter preserves it by sacrificing the relation's independence. This book makes only the point that an inventory that divides what exists as finely as possible meets the same fork when dealing with relations, whichever end it starts from.

Passing the discussion to Chapter 6. Immediacy and contiguity appear to be a rule of order, but sustain two places where no gap is permitted. Between cittas, the next arises immediately after the preceding one ceases completely, without an intervening mind-moment. Between lives, death consciousness ceases and rebirth-linking consciousness immediately arises, again without an intervening slot. Chapter 4 ended by marking the latter point and recording that immediacy presupposes a shared clock. The next chapter addresses continuity directly, covering thirty-one planes in four spheres, objects near death, types of rebirth-linking and lifespans, and the way bhavaṅga fills the intervals in a life. The question of relations remains open here. We turn to its consequences for time and rebirth.

References¶