The Four Conditions
Having examined dependent origination's own inner structure, the treatise turns to what actually makes any conditioning relationship a conditioning relationship at all: the four classical conditions, headed by the causal condition's own remarkable twenty named varieties of efficient causation, drawn from examples as ordinary as a lamp illuminating a room and as exalted as the noble path bringing about nirvāṇa.
1. Four Conditions Named
云何緣？幾是緣？為何義故觀緣耶？謂因故、等無間故、所緣故、增上故，是緣義。一切是緣。為捨執著我為因法故，觀察緣。
What is a condition? How much of everything is a condition? For what purpose is this examined? The causal condition, the immediately-antecedent condition, the objective condition, and the dominant condition — these four together are what "condition" means. Everything whatsoever is a condition, in one or another of these four senses. This is examined in order to abandon clinging to a self conceived as the very cause of the dharmas.
2. The Causal Condition, and Its Twenty Varieties
何等因緣？謂阿賴耶識及善習氣。又自性故、差別故、助伴故、等行故、增益故、障礙故、攝受故，是因緣義。自性者，謂能作因。自性差別者，謂能作因差別，略有二十種。
What is the causal condition? The ālayavijñāna, together with wholesome habitual traces. It is further characterized through seven senses: intrinsic nature, its own distinct varieties, accompaniment, mutual conformity, augmentation, obstruction, and acquisition. Its intrinsic nature is the efficient cause; its own distinct varieties are the efficient cause's own twenty named kinds.
一生能作，謂識和合望識。二住能作，謂食望已生及求生有情。三持能作，謂大地望有情。四照能作，謂燈等望諸色。五變壞能作，謂火望薪。六分離能作，謂鎌等望所斷。七轉變能作，謂工巧智等望金銀等物。八信解能作，謂煙望火。九顯了能作，謂宗因喻望所成義。十等至能作，謂聖道望涅槃。
First, generative efficacy: consciousness and its conditions coming together, with respect to the arising of that very consciousness. Second, sustaining efficacy: nutriment, with respect to already-born and rebirth-seeking beings. Third, supporting efficacy: the great earth, with respect to sentient beings it upholds. Fourth, illuminating efficacy: a lamp, with respect to visible forms it reveals. Fifth, transforming efficacy: fire, with respect to firewood it consumes. Sixth, separating efficacy: a sickle, with respect to what it cuts. Seventh, transmuting efficacy: a craftsman's skill, with respect to gold or silver it reshapes. Eighth, evidential efficacy: smoke, with respect to fire it allows one to infer. Ninth, disclosing efficacy: a thesis, its reason, and its example, with respect to the conclusion they establish. Tenth, culminating efficacy: the noble path, with respect to nirvāṇa it brings about.
十一隨說能作，謂名想見。十二觀待能作，謂觀待此故於彼求欲生，如待飢渴追求飲食。十三牽引能作，謂懸遠緣，如無明望老死。十四生起能作，謂隣近緣，如無明望行。十五攝受能作，謂所餘緣，如田水糞等望穀生等。十六引發能作，謂隨順緣，如正事王令王悅豫。十七定別能作，謂差別緣，如五趣緣望五趣果。十八同事能作，謂和合緣，如根不壞，境界現前，作意正起望所生識。十九相違能作，謂障礙緣，如雹望穀。二十不相違能作，謂無障礙緣，如穀無障。
Eleventh, expressive efficacy: name, conceptual image, and view. Twelfth, prompting efficacy: relying on one thing, a wish for another arises — as thirst and hunger prompt the pursuit of food and drink. Thirteenth, distal-attracting efficacy: a remote condition, as ignorance, with respect to aging-and-death. Fourteenth, proximate-generating efficacy: a near condition, as ignorance, with respect to formations. Fifteenth, sustaining-support efficacy: every remaining supporting condition, as field, water, and manure, with respect to a crop's growth. Sixteenth, facilitating efficacy: an accommodating condition, as a minister's faithful service, with respect to a king's own contentment. Seventeenth, differentiating efficacy: a distinguishing condition, as the conditions proper to each of the five destinies, with respect to that destiny's own particular result. Eighteenth, cooperative efficacy: a combined condition, as an unimpaired faculty, a present object, and correct attention, with respect to the consciousness they jointly generate. Nineteenth, obstructive efficacy: a hindering condition, as hail, with respect to a crop it damages. Twentieth, unobstructive efficacy: an unhindering condition, as a crop's own freedom from such damage — the reverse of the nineteenth.
助伴者，謂諸法共有而生必無缺減，如四大種及所造色隨其所應。等行者，謂諸法共有等行所緣必無缺減，如心心所。增益者，謂前際修善不善無記法故，能令後際善等諸法展轉增勝後後生起。障礙者，謂隨所數習諸煩惱故，隨所有惑皆得相續增長堅固，乃令相續遠避涅槃。攝受者，謂不善及善有漏法，能攝受自體故。
Accompaniment is the way certain dharmas necessarily arise together, without deficiency, as the four great elements and the derived form they support, applied as is fitting. Mutual conformity is the way certain dharmas necessarily share a common object and a common mode of activity, as mind and its mental factors. Augmentation is the way habituating oneself in wholesome, unwholesome, or morally neutral dharmas earlier causes similar dharmas to grow progressively stronger later. Obstruction is the way habitually cultivating affliction causes whatever afflictions are present to grow ever more entrenched, keeping a being's continuum ever further from nirvāṇa. Acquisition is the way unwholesome and contaminated-wholesome dharmas are capable of drawing a further embodied existence to themselves.
T1606 identifies this whole apparatus as an expansion of the classical six causes: the efficient cause's own twenty varieties are simply that single cause worked out in exhaustive, concrete detail, while accompaniment, mutual conformity, augmentation, obstruction, and acquisition correspond respectively to the co-existent cause, the associated cause, the homogeneous cause, the universal cause, and the ripening cause — the same six-cause system used on this site's Abhidharmakośa pages, here folded entirely under this treatise's own broader category of "causal condition." Worth pausing on: the twenty varieties deliberately span registers from the utterly mundane (a lamp revealing color, a sickle cutting rope) to the most exalted (the noble path bringing about nirvāṇa itself) — the same everyday causal vocabulary, on this treatise's own account, genuinely applies at every level, from field and manure feeding a crop to the path feeding liberation.
3. The Immediately-Antecedent Condition
何等等無間緣？謂中無間隔，等無間故。同分異分心心所生，等無間故。是等無間緣義。
What is the immediately-antecedent condition? A mind having no intervening interruption, immediately followed by another; a mind and its mental factors, whether of the same or a different kind, arising immediately after, with no interruption between — this is what the immediately-antecedent condition means.
T1606 clarifies a subtlety in "no intervening interruption": it does not require literal, unbroken instant-to-instant continuity, only the absence of any other, different mind intervening in between — which is why even the profound gap of the two mindless attainments does not break this condition; the mind that eventually re-emerges from such an attainment still counts as immediately conditioned by the mind that entered it, since nothing else occurred in between. T1606 also notes that a wholesome mind can be immediately followed by an unwholesome or neutral one and vice versa, and a desire-realm mind can likewise be immediately followed by a form-realm, formless-realm, or uncontaminated mind — the condition tracks strict succession, not any requirement of matching moral quality or realm.
4. The Objective Condition
何等所緣緣？謂有分齊境所緣故、無分齊境所緣故、無異行相境所緣故、有異行相境所緣故、有事境所緣故、無事境所緣故、事所緣故、分別所緣故、有顛倒所緣故、無顛倒所緣故、有礙所緣故、無礙所緣故，是所緣緣義。
What is the objective condition? Twelve senses make up what it means: an object taken with a bounded scope, and one taken without bounded scope; an object taken without a differentiated mode of apprehension, and one taken with a differentiated mode; an object grounded in a real referent, and one not so grounded; an object serving as an actual referent, and an object serving as a mere discriminated construct; an object taken with distortion, and one taken without distortion; and an object still obstructed, and one no longer obstructed.
T1606 glosses the six pairs concretely. A bounded object is what each of the five physical sense-consciousnesses takes, restricted to its own specific domain; an unbounded object is what mental consciousness takes, since it can range over every dharma whatsoever. An undifferentiated mode belongs to a mind — such as an infant's, not yet capable of attaching a name to what it perceives — that cannot yet distinguish an object under any determinate concept; a differentiated mode is the reverse. A real-referent object is any object apart from the view of self and conceit and their associated states, since the latter two take as their object something that does not actually exist where they place it — a "self" superimposed onto the aggregates. Distortion and its absence track whether an object is grasped as permanent and the like (distorted) or as impermanent and the like (undistorted); and obstruction and its absence track whether the cognitive obstruction has, or has not, already been severed in the one taking the object.
5. The Dominant Condition
何等增上緣？謂任持增上故、引發增上故、俱有增上故、境界增上故、產生增上故、住持增上故、受用果增上故、世間清淨離欲增上故、出世清淨離欲增上故，是增上緣義。
What is the dominant condition? Nine senses make up what it means: dominance through sustaining; dominance through facilitating; dominance through co-existing; dominance as an object; dominance through generating; dominance through maintaining; dominance through the enjoyment of a result; dominance through mundane purification and freedom from desire; and dominance through supramundane purification and freedom from desire.
The dominant condition is, by design, the broadest and most inclusive of the four — essentially, any condition whatsoever, examined from the angle of the specific dominant influence it exerts, rather than the narrower and more specific senses already carved out by the other three conditions. Together, the four conditions close out the treatise's account of what "condition" itself actually means: a causal condition that supplies a dharma's own seed, an immediately-antecedent condition that clears a place for mind to arise in unbroken succession, an objective condition that gives a cognition something to take hold of, and a dominant condition that names every further contributing influence, in whatever form it takes.
Part 22 Complete
The four classical conditions are now fully examined, closing the treatise's account of causation itself. Part 23 turns to a shorter run of categories closing out the hundred-gate analysis: shared versus unshared sense-experience, what is physically appropriated by a living body, the sense faculties, and the three kinds of suffering.
Continue to Part 23 — Shared Experience, Appropriation, Faculties, Suffering →