I often hear Buddhists talking about “the unconditioned.”
I’m extremely suspicious of this expression. In fact think it’s positively unhelpful, in that brings about a sense that Enlightenment is something that happens far, far away. “The unconditioned” becomes a sort of mystical realm — some kind of mysterious entity or metaphysical reality. Sometimes people call it “the Absolute.”
Why I’m Skeptical of the Unconditioned
I started thinking about this when I made the discovery that a well-known Buddhist teaching on suffering: that there is ordinary pain, the suffering of reversal (e.g. loss) and the suffering inherent in “conditioned existence” said no such thing.
Actually, the teaching says that there are (in this order) inevitable physical suffering (the first arrow), suffering we create through reacting to the first kind of suffering (the second arrow), and suffering that hits us if we try to immerse ourselves in pleasure as an escape from these other forms of suffering (I call this “the third arrow”). The second kind of suffering is called “fabricated” suffering, because, unlike the inevitable physical suffering of aging and illness, it’s something we create for ourselves.
The word I’ve translated as “fabricated” is sankhāra, which if usually translated in this context as “conditioned.” And this kind of suffering in also moved from second place (where the Buddha put it) to third place, representing some supposed kind of “unsatisfactoriness of the conditioned.” A very simple and practical teaching (we make suffering for ourselves) is turned into a very different kind of statement.
A Calamitous Error
My own teacher, Sangharakshita, makes what I regard as a calamitous error when he says “there is conditioned reality and Unconditioned reality — or more simply, there is the conditioned and the Unconditioned.”
But there cannot be two realities. Only one of these things can be real, although one single reality can be looked at in different ways, and perhaps that’s what he meant.
The habit Sangharakshita had — shared by many others — of capitalizing “Unconditioned” reinforces this idea of the term referring to something very special and abstract. If you say “in reality” you’re simply describing what happens. If you say “in Reality” there’s a very different implication. We start wondering where and what this “Reality” is.
See other articles in the “Debugging the Source Code of the Dharma” series:
- Three forms of suffering, reinterpreted
- The four foundations of mindfulness as a dynamic process
- The five spiritual faculties: freedom in every moment
- The strange myopia of Buddhist teachings on suffering
What Is this Term?
Let’s look at this expression, “unconditioned” or “the unconditioned,” or even (heaven help us) “the Unconditioned.”
One of the key places it’s found are in translations of a famous Udāna verse:
There is, bhikkhus, a not-born, a not-brought-to-being, a not-made, a not-conditioned. If, bhikkhus, there were no not-born, not-brought-to-being, not-made, not-conditioned, no escape would be discerned from what is born, brought-to-being, made, conditioned. But since there is a not-born, a not-brought-to-being, a not-made, a not-conditioned, therefore an escape is discerned from what is born, brought-to-being, made, conditioned.
There are several other places in the scriptures where this saying is found.
This passage is invariably interpreted in a metaphysical way — as if the Buddha is talking about different worlds. “The unconditioned” sounds even more mysterious now, because it’s accompanied by other terms: “not-born, not-brought-to-being, not-made.” How mystical! Surely the Buddha is talking about some otherworldly realm, other than the one we find ourselves in — the world where we are born, brought into being, etc.
What Does It Really Mean?
Remember, first, that there’s no direct or indirect article in Pāli. The text just says “there is not-born, not-brought-to-being, not-made, not-conditioned.” That already sounds quite different.
These four terms (not-born, not-brought-to-being, not-made, not-conditioned) are synonyms, so asaṅkhata, “not-conditioned” or “unconditioned”) means the same as “not-made.” Saṅkhata can mean “made” or “produced” and so asaṅkhata here can simply mean that something hasn’t yet come into being or no longer exists.
In the Saṁyutta Nikāya, the Buddha actually explains what he means in using the term “uncreated” (asaṅkhata).
“And what, bhikkhus is not-created? The destruction of lust, the destruction of hatred, the destruction of delusion: this is called not-created.”
So now we have states of mind that are “not-born, not-brought-to-being, not-made, not-created.”
Creating or Destroying Mental States
It’s actually, I think, a very practical statement that the Buddha is making. He’s simply saying that things (specifically the experience of suffering, which is what he was most interested in, and the mental states that are the causes of suffering) are sometimes created, and sometimes they are not. They can be “de-created.”
What he’s saying is that because suffering can be not created or destroyed that the experience of suffering can be escaped. If we can create suffering, then we can also not create suffering.
If we had previously created certain mental states of suffering, like craving or hatred, and, through practice, we let them die away. They’d no longer be “born, brought-to-being, made, created,” but would now be “not-born, not-brought-to-being, not-made, not-created.” And that would be the state of nibbāna, which is literally the “burning out” of suffering. When suffering’s fuel burns out, suffering burns out, or is “not-created” (asaṅkhata).
“The Unconditioned” is not a thing.
“The Unconditioned” (asaṅkhata) is not a thing. It’s not some kind of “absolute.” It’s not a “reality.” It’s not even “the unconditioned,” because both the “the” and the “unconditioned” parts aren’t right. What it refers to is the “non-creating of things that would otherwise be created.” Practically, it’s the non-production of suffering, through the non-production of that which causes suffering.
I think that’s all the Buddha is saying.
The Traditional Interpretation Is a Distraction
All this metaphysical stuff about “the Unconditioned” is a million miles away from how the Buddha actually taught, and presumably also from how he thought.
My own preoccupation is that I want to know the mind of the Buddha. I want to see things they way he saw them. And having a goal which is not the Buddha’s goal just isn’t helpful in that regard. In fact it’s a massive distraction.
Making the Buddha’s teaching metaphysical leads us into realms of nebulous speculation. It takes us away from the here and now. It takes us away from our direct experience. It diverts us from actually practice.
We don’t need to try to conceive of, let alone strive to attain, some mystical state called “the unconditioned.” We just need to keep working on letting greed, hatred, and delusion die away, so that they are no longer things that are born, brought-to-being, or made within us. Instead they are not-born, not-brought-to-being, not made.
To be very simple and concrete, we stop creating greed, hatred, and delusion, and destroy them instead.
Wildmind is a Community-Supported Meditation Initiative. Click here to find out about the many benefits of being a sponsor.
5 Comments. Leave new
What you saying there reminds me the first verses of Dhammapada ie the creation of suffering is conditioned to act of speaking or acting with impure mind and therefore suffering is produced in same way wheel will turn if ox pulls forward cart. If one is refraining from acting or speaking with impure mind thence ox isn’t moving cart (or plough) and suffering being absent therefore by analogy
Thank you! I have been bothered by “The Unconditioned” for a while now. This is the most cogent explanation I’ve seen that’s grounded in reality.
Thank you Bodhipaksa. The confusion around ‘ The Unconditioned,’ came up in Mitra study last week, and I found I couldn’t explain it, to myself or the group, satisfactorily, I felt really uncomfortable all week and couldn’t help thinking we all had the wrong end of the stick. Your clear and rational explanation has made all the difference.
Hi, Vilokini. Thank you for your kind comment. I realized, glancing at the article for for the first time since I wrote it, that I hadn’t really explained the link with the three forms of suffering, so I added a little about that. If you haven’t already read it, I think you’d find that article interesting as well. It’s another teaching that’s been altered in order to give the appearance that it’s “cosmic” when in fact it was originally ruthlessly practical and psychological.
Im going to attempt to describe how I see this, perhaps for my own edification and since you’ve provided the space. Thank you.
This is the basis of why we meditate. To practice Being without making meaning. This is the training the warrior goes through, to feel and live a life of Being. To bring a non-conditioned and non-meaning-making mind, the connected eternal Self, into a local place of time, space, meaning, reality.
Perhaps its just my meaning making reading, but there is a tension in this description, as I see apples and eternity being compared.
Narrowing down to this thought you’ve provided; ‘”Saṅkhata can mean “made” or “produced” and so asaṅkhata here can simply mean that something hasn’t yet come into being or no longer exists.”
There is a tenuous nature here between what exists and what doesn’t. As if all that ‘Exists’ can be brought into or out of being in that way. It’s a similar paradox between what is being said of what is reality and what is Reality. We are talking about two entirely different measuring sticks. One of those two cannot be measured, in the same way that what is Eternal has nothing to do with a clock, what is omnipresent cannot have anything to do with a measuring tape. Quantum Things vs material things. As if all that ‘Exists’ can be brought into or out of being. Though all that ‘exists’ to our mind and experience, can.
What IS; what IS Reality, is always the only Real, the only present, the only happening. It isn’t created or made. It just is. That version of Reality encompasses everything which we in material existence of time and space would call real vs not-real. This is the place I would put Bliss, Love, Being, Flow. This is what really Exists.
Calling this Metaphysical is the creation of this exact conundrum.
An Unconditioned mind Experiences in Eternity, is as boundless as Love, as Experiential as Now. As is stated, these are not “things”. To call them things is to define and thus limit what they are.
Calling them things and giving them meaning, real vs not real, is the exact process of “creating”; while lessening our grip on ‘understanding’ them is “destroying” them.
When we talk about what is real as what exists, as something understood, those are things created. This version of understanding is giving a symbol, a local box, whether an image, or words, or felt meaning, to a portion of what Exists. It becomes real in this way, to our understanding. But what Exists is beyond our understanding. They are ‘created’ by our very process of defining into being what they are.
Being humans and trying to grok and make meaning of everything, which is our birthright and prerogative, we cannot help doing these things.
This pendulum of mindfulness swings entirely on the Awareness, or lack thereof, that the creation of what is ‘real’ is our own responsibility.
Before a Mind is Unconditioned, is is first aware of it’s conditioning. It is then trained through Awareness to act and live without that conditioning being the paramount force of creation. This is why we train. To experience Un-condition. So that when meaning is applied and gives existence, this is done with intentional awareness.
Creating all that exists in your reality is your responsibility.
This is the perilous error…
“Saṅkhata can mean “made” or “produced” and so Asaṅkhata here can simply mean that something hasn’t yet come into being or no longer exists.”…this is the perilous error because judgment is being proscribed to something that cannot be judged. Reasoning is being added to something that cannot be given bounds. Words are being used to put a box on what is boundless.
Rather, Asaṅkhata IS (not made, or made), whether you give it being or not. Saṅkhata is the process of you making that something, or un-making. Be mindful on what you create.
Asaṅkhata isn’t something that doesn’t Exist; it is in its true form encompassing of all of both existence and non-existence (as those are just mental boxes for understanding).
It only “hasn’t yet come into being or no longer exists” in so much that we aren’t giving it meaning.
The only way that it doesn’t exist is in the Rational non-explanation of it’s existence.
Likewise, the only way that it does exist…is in the same Rational explanation.
That very rational mindset is the place and moment where Asaṅkhata no longer IS in OUR understanding. We are using a measuring tape here to grok what cannot be comprehended, with words, thought, reasoning, meaning.
In the sense being used in the article’ “existence” is a reference to how the rational process of life is put through the filter of our mind, translated to what we know, grown with meaning, and thus it ‘exists’. ie Energy isn’t a particle or a wave. When we observe it, it is a particle, when we leave it alone it is a wave. But the whole time, it is the same energy. It just is, quantum and omnipresent. Our observation is what brings it into our existence, our observation is what gives it meaning. Our measuring tape defines its locality as particle or unobserved wave. We bring it into existence through observation, through giving it a space, a meaning. This is the privilege of being human, and the responsibility.
The unconditioned mind knows that what Exists is without the meaning; the meaning we are giving it in our mind. It just Exists, and it’s properties and possibilities are endless. It is our meaning-making that is bringing all of this into local existence, and out of existence, Saṅkhata. An unconditioned mind does not apply meaning or judgment. Living with intention is to realize that giving meaning is our prerogative, so we give meaning intentionally to existence, so that we can experience the world. We remove suffering by remove the meaning from a “thing” that is causing suffering; which we may realize, we gave to it in the first place. Doing that is to Live; Living Intentionally is to be mindful about the meaning, about what we bring into our existence. Meditative living is the training to do so, to Live as the Unconditioned Mind.
And in writing all of this, I have blissfully been caught in my own trap.