Introduction 

The Wings to Awakening constitute the Buddha's own list of his most important 
teachings. Toward the end of his life, he stated several times that as long as the 
teachings in this list were remembered and put into practice, his message would 
endure. Thus the Wings constitute, in the Buddha's eyes, the words and skills most 
worth mastering and passing along to others.  

The Buddha's Awakening  

When discussing the Buddha's teachings, the best place to start is with his Awakening. 
That way, one will know where the teachings are coming from and where they are 
aimed. To appreciate the Awakening, though, we have to know what led Prince 
Siddhattha Gotama -- the Buddha before his Awakening -- to seek it in the first place. 
According to his own account, the search began many lifetimes ago, but in this lifetime 
it was sparked by the realization of the inevitability of aging, illness, and death. In his 
words:  

I lived in refinement, utmost refinement, total refinement. My father even had lotus 
ponds made in our palace: one where red lotuses bloomed, one where white lotuses 
bloomed, one where blue lotuses bloomed, all for my sake. I used no sandalwood that 
was not from Varanasi. My turban was from Varanasi, as were my tunic, my lower 
garments, & my outer cloak. A white sunshade was held over me day & night to protect 
me from cold, heat, dust, dirt, & dew.  

I had three palaces: one for the cold season, one for the hot season, one for the rainy 
season. During the four months of the rainy season I was entertained in the 
rainy-season palace by minstrels without a single man among them, and I did not once 
come down from the palace. Whereas the servants, workers, & retainers in other 

 
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people's homes are fed meals of lentil soup & broken rice, in my father's home the 
servants, workers, & retainers were fed wheat, rice, & meat.  

Even though I was endowed with such fortune, such total refinement, the thought 
occurred to me: "When an untaught, run-of-the-mill person, himself subject to aging, not 
beyond aging, sees another who is aged, he is horrified, humiliated, & disgusted, 
oblivious to himself that he too is subject to aging, not beyond aging. If I -- who am 
subject to aging, not beyond aging -- were to be horrified, humiliated, & disgusted on 
seeing another person who is aged, that would not be fitting for me." As I noticed this, 
the [typical] young person's intoxication with youth entirely dropped away.  

Even though I was endowed with such fortune, such total refinement, the thought 
occurred to me: "When an untaught, run-of-the-mill person, himself subject to illness, not 
beyond illness, sees another who is ill, he is horrified, humiliated, & disgusted, oblivious 
to himself that he too is subject to illness, not beyond illness. And if I -- who am subject 
to illness, not beyond illness -- were to be horrified, humiliated, & disgusted on seeing 
another person who is ill, that would not be fitting for me." As I noticed this, the healthy 
person's intoxication with health entirely dropped away.  

Even though I was endowed with such fortune, such total refinement, the thought 
occurred to me: "When an untaught, run-of-the-mill person, himself subject to death, not 
beyond death, sees another who is dead, he is horrified, humiliated, & disgusted, 
oblivious to himself that he too is subject to death, not beyond death. And if I -- who am 
subject to death, not beyond death -- were to be horrified, humiliated, & disgusted on 
seeing another person who is dead, that would not be fitting for me." As I noticed this, 
the living person's intoxication with life entirely dropped away.  

-- A.III.38  

 
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Before my Awakening, when I was still an unawakened Bodhisatta (Buddha-to-be), being 

subject myself to birth, aging, illness, death, sorrow, & defilement, I sought (happiness 
in) what was subject to birth, aging, illness, death, sorrow, & defilement. The thought 
occurred to me: "Why am I, being subject myself to birth... defilement, seeking what is 
subject to birth... defilement? What if I... were to seek the unborn, unaging, unailing, 
undying, sorrowless, undefiled, unsurpassed security from bondage: Unbinding."  

So at a later time, when I was still young, black-haired, endowed with the blessings of 
youth in the first stage of life, I shaved off my hair & beard -- though my parents wished 
otherwise and were grieving with tears on their faces -- and I put on the ochre robe and 
went forth from the home life into homelessness.  

-- M.26  

These passages are universal in their import, but a fuller appreciation of why the young 
prince left home for the life of a homeless wanderer requires some understanding of the 
beliefs and social developments of his time.  

Prince Siddhattha lived in an aristocratic republic in northern India during the sixth 
century B.C.E., a time of great social upheaval. A new monetary economy was replacing 
the older agrarian economy. Absolute monarchies, in alliance with the newly forming 
merchant class, were swallowing up the older aristocracies. As often happens when an 
aristocratic elite is being disenfranchised, people on all levels of society were beginning 
to call into question the beliefs that had supported the older order, and were looking to 
science and other alternative modes of knowledge to provide them with a new view of 
life.  

The foremost science in North India at that time was astronomy. New, precise 
observations of planetary movements, combined with newly developed means of 
 
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calculation, had led astronomers to conclude that time was measured in aeons, 
incomprehensibly long cycles that repeat themselves endlessly. Taking up these 
conclusions, philosophers of the time tried to work out the implications of this vast 
temporal frame for the drama of human life and the quest for ultimate happiness. These 
philosophers fell into two broad camps: those who conducted their speculations within 
the traditions of the Vedas, early Indian religious and ritual texts that provided the 
orthodox beliefs of the old order; and other, unorthodox groups, called the Samanas 
(contemplatives), who questioned the authority of the Vedas. Modern etymology derives 
the word Samana from "striver," but the etymology of the time derived it from sama, 
which means to be "on pitch" or "in tune." The Samana philosophers were trying to find a 
way of life and thought that was in tune, not with social conventions, but with the laws 
of nature as these could be directly contemplated through scientific observation, 
personal experience, reason, meditation, or shamanic practices, such as the pursuit of 
altered states of consciousness through fasting or other austerities. Many of these 
forms of contemplation required that one abandon the constraints and responsibilities 
of the home life, and take up the life of a homeless wanderer. This was the rationale 
behind Prince Siddhattha's decision to leave the home life in order to see if there might 
be a true happiness beyond the sway of aging, illness, and death.  

Already by his time, philosophers of the Vedic and Samana schools had developed 
widely differing interpretations of what the laws of nature were and how they affected 
the pursuit of true happiness. Their main points of disagreement were two:  

1) Survival beyond death.Most Vedic and Samana philosophers assumed that a 

person's identity extended beyond this lifetime, aeons before birth back into the past 
and after death on into the future, although there was some disagreement as to whether 
one's identity from life to life would change or remain the same. The Vedas had viewed 
rebirth in a positive light, but by the time of Prince Siddhattha the influence of the newly 
discovered astronomical cycles had led those who believed in rebirth to regard the 
cycles as pointless and restrictive, and release as the only possibility for true happiness. 
There was, however, a Samana school of hedonist materialists, called Lokayatans, who 

 
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denied the existence of any identity beyond death and insisted that happiness could be 
found only by indulging in sensual pleasures here and now.  

2) Causality. Most philosophers accepted the idea that human action played a causative 
role in providing for one's future happiness both in this life and beyond. Views about 
how this causal principle worked, though, differed from school to school. For some 
Vedists, the only effective action was ritual. The Jains, a Samana school, taught that all 
action fell under linear, deterministic causal laws and formed a bond to the recurring 
cycle. Present experience, they said, came from past actions; present actions would 
shape future experience. This linear causality was also materialistic: physical action 
created asavas (effluents, fermentations) -- sticky substances on the soul that kept it 
attached to the cycle. According to them, the only escape from the cycle lay in a life of 
non-violence and inaction, culminating in a slow suicide by starvation, which would burn 
the asavas away, thus releasing the soul. Some Upanishads -- post-Vedic speculative 
texts -- expressed causality as a morally neutral, purely physical process of evolution. 
Others stated that moral laws were intrinsic to the nature of causality, rather than being 
mere social conventions, and that the morality of an action determined how it affected 
one's future course in the round of rebirth. Whether these last texts were composed 
before or after the Buddha taught this view, though, no one knows. At any rate, all 
pre-Buddhist thinkers who accepted the principle of causality, however they expressed 
it, saw it as a purely linear process.  

On the other side of the issue, the Lokayatans insisted that no causal principle acted 
between events, and that all events were spontaneous and self-caused. This meant that 
actions had no consequences, and one could safely ignore moral rules in one's pursuit 
of sensual pleasure. One branch of another Samana school, the Ajivakas, insisted that 
causality was illusory. The only truly existent things, they said, were the unchanging 
substances that formed the building blocks of the universe. Because causality implied 
change, it was therefore unreal. As a result, human action had no effect on anything of 
any substance -- including happiness -- and so was of no account. Another branch of the 
same school, which specialized in astrology, insisted that causality was real but totally 
deterministic. Human life was entirely determined by impersonal, amoral fate, written in 

 
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the stars; human action played no role in providing for one's happiness or misery; 
morality was purely a social convention. Thus they insisted that release from the round 
of rebirth came only when the round worked itself out. Peace of mind could be found by 
accepting one's fate and patiently waiting for the cycle, like a ball of string unwinding, to 
come to its end.  

These divergent viewpoints formed the intellectual backdrop for Prince Siddhattha's 
quest for ultimate happiness. In fact, his Awakening may be seen as his own resolution 
of these two issues.  

The Pali Canon records several different versions of the Buddha's own descriptions of 
his Awakening. These descriptions are among the earliest extended autobiographical 
accounts in human history. The Buddha presents himself as an explorer and 
experimenter -- and an exceedingly brave one at that, putting his life on the line in the 
search for an undying happiness. After trying several false paths, including formless 
mental absorptions and physical austerities, he happened on the path that eventually 
worked: bringing the mind into the present by focusing it on the breath, and then making 
a calm, mindful analysis of the processes of the mind as they presented themselves 
directly to his immediate awareness. Seeing these processes as inconstant, stressful, 
and not-self, he abandoned his sense of identification with them. This caused them to 
disband, and what remained was Deathlessness (amata-dhamma), beyond the 
dimensions of time and space. This was the happiness for which he had been seeking.  

In one passage of the Pali Canon [§188], the Buddha noted that what he had come to 
realize in the course of his Awakening could be compared to the leaves of an entire 
forest; what he taught to others was like a mere handful of leaves. The latter part 
comprised the essential points for helping others to attain Awakening themselves. The 
part he had kept back would have been useless for that purpose. Thus, when we 
discuss the Buddha's Awakening, we must keep in mind that we know only a small sliver 
of the total event. However, the sliver we do know is designed to aid in our own 

 
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Awakening. That is the part we will focus on here, keeping the Buddha's purpose for 
teaching it constantly in mind.  

When the Buddha later analyzed the process of Awakening, he stated that it consisted 
of two kinds of knowledge:  

First there is the knowledge of the regularity of the Dhamma, after which there is the 
knowledge of Unbinding.  

-- S.XII.70  

The regularity of the Dhamma, here, denotes the causal principle that underlies all 
"fabricated" (sankhata) experience, i.e., experience made up of causal conditions and 
influences. Knowing this principle means mastering it: One can not only trace the 
course of causal processes but also escape from them by skillfully letting them 
disband. The knowledge of Unbinding is the realization of total freedom that comes 
when one has disbanded the causal processes of the realm of fabrication, leaving the 
freedom from causal influences that is termed the "Unfabricated." The Buddha's choice 
of the word Unbinding (nibbana) -- which literally means the extinguishing of a fire -- 
derives from the way the physics of fire was viewed at his time. As fire burned, it was 
seen as clinging to its fuel in a state of entrapment and agitation. When it went out, it let 
go of its fuel, growing calm and free. Thus when the Indians of his time saw a fire going 
out, they did not feel that they were watching extinction. Rather, they were seeing a 
metaphorical lesson in how freedom could be attained by letting go.  

The first knowledge, that of the regularity of the Dhamma, is the describable part of the 
process of Awakening; the second knowledge, that of Unbinding, though indescribable, 
is what guarantees the worth of the first: When one has been totally freed from all 
suffering and stress, one knows that one has properly mastered the realm of fabrication 
and can vouch for the usefulness of the insights that led to that freedom. Truth, here, is 

 
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simply the way things work; true knowledge is gauged by how skillfully one can 
manipulate them.  

There are many places in the Pali Canon where the Buddha describes his own act of 
Awakening to the first knowledge as consisting of three insights:  

· recollection of past lives,  

· insight into the death and rebirth of beings throughout the cosmos, and  

· insight into the ending of the mental effluents or fermentations (asava) within the mind 
[§1]. (As we will see below, the Buddha's Awakening gave a new meaning to this term 
borrowed from the Jains.)  

The first two insights were not the exclusive property of the Buddhist tradition. 
Shamanic traditions throughout the world have reported seers who have had similar 
insights. The third insight, however, went beyond shamanism into a phenomenology of 
the mind, i.e., a systematic account of phenomena as they are directly experienced. This 
insight was exclusively Buddhist, although it was based on the previous two. Because it 
was multi-faceted, the Canon describes it from a variety of standpoints, stressing 
different aspects as they apply to specific contexts. In the course of this book, we too 
will explore specific facets of this insight from different angles. Here we will simply 
provide a general outline to show how the principle of skillful kamma underlay the main 
features of this insight.  

The Bodhisatta's realization in his second insight that kamma determines how beings 
fare in the round of rebirth caused him to focus on the question of kamma in his third 
insight. And, because the second insight pointed to right and wrong views as the factors 
determining the quality of kamma, he looked into the possibility that kamma was 
primarily a mental process, rather than a physical one, as the Vedists and Jains taught. 
 
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As a result, he focused on the mental kamma that was taking place at that very moment 
in his mind, to understand the process more clearly. In particular, he wanted to see if 
there might be a type of right view that, instead of continuing the round of rebirth, would 
bring release from it. To do this, he realized that he would have to make his powers of 
discernment more skillful; this meant that the process of developing skillfulness would 
have to be the kamma that he would observe.  

Now, in the process of developing a skill, two major assumptions are made: that there is 
a causal relationship between acts and their results, and that good results are better 
than bad. If these assumptions were not valid, there would be no point in developing a 
skill. The Bodhisatta noticed that this point of view provided two variables -- causes and 
results, and favorable and unfavorable -- that divided experience into four categories, 
which he later formulated as the four noble truths (ariya-sacca): stress, its origination, 
its cessation, and the path to its cessation [§189]. Each category, he further realized, 
entailed a duty. Stress had to be comprehended, its cause abandoned, its disbanding 
realized, and the path to its cessation developed [§195].  

In trying to comprehend stress and its relationship to kamma, the Bodhisatta discovered 
that, contrary to the teachings of the Jains, kamma was not something extrinsic to the 
cycle of rebirth that bound one to the cycle. Rather, (1) the common cycle of kamma, 
result, and reaction was the cycle of rebirth in and of itself, and (2) the binding agent in 
the cycle was not kamma itself, but rather an optional part of the reaction to the results 
of kamma. The Bodhisatta analyzed the cycle of kamma, result, and reaction into the 
following terms: kamma is intention; its result, feeling; the reaction to that feeling, 
perception and attention -- i.e., attention to perceptions about the feeling -- which 
together form the views that color further intentions. If perception and attention are 
clouded by ignorance, craving, and clinging, they lead to stress and further ignorance, 
and form the basis for intentions that keep the cycle in motion. In his later teachings, 
the Buddha identified these clouding factors -- forms of clinging, together with their 
resultant states of becoming and ignorance [§227] -- as the asavas or effluents that act 
as binding agents to the cycle. In this way, he took a Jain term and gave it a new 
meaning, mental rather than physical. At the same time, his full scale analysis of the 

 
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interaction between kamma and the effluents formed one of the central points of his 
teaching, termed dependent co-arising (paticca-samuppada) [§§211, 218, 231].  

The fact that it is possible to develop a skill suggested to the Bodhisatta, while he was 
developing his third insight, that the craving and clinging that cloud one's perceptions 
and attention did not necessarily follow on the feeling that resulted from kamma. 
Otherwise, there would be no way to develop skillful intentions. Thus craving and 
clinging could be abandoned. This would require steady and refined acts of attention 
and intention, which came down to well-developed concentration and discernment, the 
central qualities in the path to the cessation of stress. Concentration gave discernment 
the focus and solidity it needed to see clearly, while discernment followed the two-fold 
pattern that attention must play in the development of any skill: sensitivity to the context 
of the act, formed by pre-existing factors coming from the past, together with sensitivity 
to the act itself, formed by present intentions. In other words, discernment had to see 
the results of an action as stemming from a combination of past and present causes.  

As the more blatant forms of craving, clinging, and ignorance were eradicated with the 
continued refinement of concentration and discernment, there came a point where the 
only acts of attention and intention left to analyze were the acts of concentration and 
discernment in and of themselves. The feedback loop that this process entailed -- with 
concentration and discernment shaping one another in the immediate present -- brought 
the investigation into such close quarters that the terms of analysis were reduced to the 
most basic words for pointing to present experiences: "this" and "that." The double 
focus of discernment, in terms of past and present influences, was reduced to the most 
basic conditions that make up the experience of "the present" (and, by extension, 
"space") on the one hand, and "time" on the other: Attention to present participation in 
the causal process was reduced to the basic condition for the experience of the present, 
i.e., mutual presence ("When this is, that is; when this isn't, that isn't"), while attention to 
influences from the past was reduced to the basic condition for the experience of time, 
i.e., the dependence of one event on another ("From the arising of this comes the arising 
of that; from the cessation of this comes the cessation of that"). These expressions 
later formed the basic formula of the Buddha's teachings on causality, which he termed 

 
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this/that conditionality (idappaccayata) [§211] to emphasize that the formula described 

patterns of events viewed in a mode of perception empty of any assumptions outside of 
what could be immediately perceived.  

After reaching this point, there was nothing further that concentration and discernment 
-- themselves being conditioned by time and the present -- could do. When all residual 
attachments even to these subtle realizations were let go, there thus followed a state 
called non-fashioning, in which the mind made absolutely no present input into 
experience. With no present input to maintain experience of time and the present, the 
cycle of fabricated experience disbanded. This formed an opening to the Unfabricated, 
the undying happiness that the Bodhisatta, now the Buddha, had sought. This was the 
knowledge of Unbinding, or total release.  

The Buddha's Teachings 

The texts say that the Buddha spent a total of 49 days after his Awakening, sensitive to 
the bliss of release, reviewing the implications of the insights that had brought about his 
Awakening. At the end of this period, he thought of teaching other living beings. At first 
the subtlety and complexity of his Awakening made him wonder if anyone would be able 
to understand and benefit from his teachings. However, after he ascertained through his 
new powers of mind that there were those who would understand, he made the decision 
to teach, determining that he would not enter total Unbinding until he had established 
his teachings -- his doctrine and discipline (Dhamma-Vinaya) -- on a solid basis for the 
long-term benefit of human and divine beings.  

The two primary knowledges that constituted the Awakening -- knowledge of the 
regularity of the Dhamma and knowledge of Unbinding -- played a major role in shaping 
what the Buddha taught and how he taught it. Of the two, the knowledge of Unbinding 
was the more important. It not only guaranteed the truth of the other knowledge, but 
also constituted the Buddha's whole purpose in teaching: he wanted others to attain 
this happiness as well. However, because the first knowledge was what led to the 

 
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second, it provided the guidelines that the Buddha used in determining what would be 
useful to communicate to others so that they too would arrive at the knowledge of 
Unbinding of their own accord. These guidelines were nothing other than the three 
insights of which this knowledge was composed: recollection of past lives, insight into 
the death and rebirth of beings, and insight into the ending of the mental effluents. As 
became clear during the Buddha's teaching career, not all those who would reach the 
knowledge of Unbinding would need to gain direct insight into previous lifetimes or into 
the death and rebirth of other beings, but they would have to gain direct insight into the 
ending of the mental effluents. The mastery of causality that formed the heart of this 
insight thus formed the heart of his teaching, with the first two insights providing the 
background against which the teachings were to be put into practice.  

As we noted above, the three insights taken together provided answers to the questions 
that had provoked Prince Siddhattha's quest for Awakening in the first place. His 
remembrance of previous lives showed on the one hand that death is not annihilation, 
but on the other hand that there is no core identity that remains unchanged or makes 
steady, upward progress through the process of rebirth. One life follows another as one 
dream may follow another, with similar wide swings in one's sense of who or where one 
is. Thus there is no inherent security in the process.  

The second insight -- into the death and rebirth of beings throughout the cosmos -- 
provided part of the answer to the questions surrounding the issue of causality in the 
pursuit of happiness. The primary causal factor is the mind, and in particular the moral 
quality of the intentions comprising its thoughts, words, and deeds, and the rightness of 
the views underlying them. Thus moral principles are inherent in the functioning of the 
cosmos, rather than being mere social conventions. For this reason, any quest for 
happiness must focus on mastering the quality of the mind's views and intentions.  

The third insight -- into the ending of the mental effluents -- showed that escape from 
the cycle of rebirth could be found, not through ritual action or total inaction, but 
through the skillful development of a type of right view that abandoned the effluents 

 
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that kept the cycle of kamma, stress, and ignorance in motion. As we have seen, this 
type of right view went through three stages of refinement as the third insight 
progressed: the four noble truths, dependent co-arising, and this/that conditionality. We 
will discuss the first two stages in detail elsewhere in this book [III/H/i and III/H/iii]. 
Here we will focus on this/that conditionality, the most radical aspect of the Buddha's 
third insight. In terms of its content, it explained how past and present intentions 
underlay all experience of time and the present. The truth of this content was shown by 
its role in disbanding all experience of time and the present simply by bringing present 
intentions to a standstill. Small wonder, then, that this principle provided the most 
fundamental influence in shaping the Buddha's teaching.  

The Buddha expressed this/that conditionality in a simple-looking formula:  

(1) When this is, that is. 

(2) From the arising of this comes the arising of that. 

(3) When this isn't, that isn't. 

(4) From the stopping of this comes the stopping of that.  

-- A.X.92  

There are many possible ways of interpreting this formula, but only one does justice 
both to the way the formula is worded and to the complex, fluid manner in which 
specific examples of causal relationships are described in the Canon. That way is to 
view the formula as the interplay of two causal principles, one linear and the other 
synchronic, that combine to form a non-linear pattern. The linear principle -- taking (2) 
and (4) as a pair -- connects events, rather than objects, over time; the synchronic 

 
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principle -- (1) and (3) -- connects objects and events in the present moment. The two 
principles intersect, so that any given event is influenced by two sets of conditions: 
input acting from the past and input acting from the present. Although each principle 
seems simple, the fact that they interact makes their consequences very complex [§10]. 
To begin with, every act has repercussions in the present moment together with 
reverberations extending into the future. Depending on the intensity of the act, these 
reverberations can last for a very short or a very long time. Thus every event takes place 
in a context determined by the combined effects of past events coming from a wide 
range in time, together with the effects of present acts. These effects can intensify one 
another, can coexist with little interaction, or can cancel one another out. Thus, even 
though it is possible to predict that a certain type of act will tend to give a certain type of 
result -- for example, acting on anger will lead to pain -- there is no way to predict when 
or where that result will make itself felt [§11].  

The complexity of the system is further enhanced by the fact that both causal principles 
meet at the mind. Through its views and intentions, the mind takes a causal role in 
keeping both principles in action. Through its sensory powers, it is affected by the 
results of the causes it has set in motion. This creates the possibility for the causal 
principles to feed back into themselves, as the mind reacts to the results of its own 
actions. These reactions can take the form of positive feedback loops, intensifying the 
original input and its results, much like the howl in a speaker placed next to the 
microphone feeding into it. They can also create negative feedback loops, counteracting 
the original input, much like the action of a thermostat that turns off a heater when the 
temperature in a room is too high, and turns it on again when it gets too low. Because 
the results of actions can be immediate, and the mind can then react to them 
immediately, these feedback loops can at times quickly spin out of control; at other 
times, they may act as skillful checks on one's behavior. For example, a man may act 
out of anger, which gives him an immediate sense of dis-ease to which he may react 
with further anger, thus creating a snowballing effect. On the other hand, he may come 
to understand that the anger is causing his dis-ease, and so immediately does what he 
can to stop it. However, there can also be times when the results of his past actions 
may obscure the dis-ease he is causing himself in the present, so that he does not 
immediately react to it one way or another.  
 
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In this way, the combination of two causal principles -- influences from the past 
interacting with those in the immediate present -- accounts for the complexity of causal 
relationships as they function on the level of immediate experience. However, the 
combination of the two principles also opens the possibility for finding a systematic 
way to break the causal web. If causes and effects were entirely linear, the cosmos 
would be totally deterministic, and nothing could be done to escape from the 
machinations of the causal process. If they were entirely synchronic, there would be no 
relationship from one moment to the next, and all events would be arbitrary. The web 
could break down totally or reform spontaneously for no reason at all. However, with the 
two modes working together, one can learn from causal patterns observed from the 
past and apply one's insights to disentangling the same causal patterns acting in the 
present. If one's insights are true, one can then gain freedom from those patterns.  

For this reason, the principle of this/that conditionality provides an ideal foundation, 
both theoretical and practical, for a doctrine of release. And, as a teacher, the Buddha 
took full advantage of its implications, using it in such a way that it accounts not only 
for the presentation and content of his teachings, but also for their organization, their 
function, and their utility. It even accounts for the need for the teachings and for the fact 
that the Buddha was able to teach them in the first place. We will take up these points in 
reverse order.  

The fact of the teaching: As noted above, this/that conditionality is a combination of 
two causal modes: linear activity, connecting events over time; and synchronic 
causality, connecting objects in the present. The fact that the causal principle was not 
totally linear accounts for the fact that the Buddha was able to break the causal circle 
as soon as he had totally comprehended it, and did not have to wait for all of his 
previous kamma to work itself out first. The fact that the principle was not totally 
synchronic, however, accounts for the fact that he survived his Awakening and lived to 
tell about it. Although he created no new kamma after his Awakening, he continued to 
live and teach under the influence of the kamma he had created before his Awakening, 

 
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finally passing away only when those kammic influences totally worked themselves out. 
Thus the combination of the two patterns allowed for an experience of the Unfabricated 
that could be survived, opening the opportunity for the Buddha to teach others about it 
before his total Unbinding.  

The need for the teachings: This/that conditionality, even though it can be expressed in 
a simple formula, is very complex in its working-out. As a result, the conditions of time 
and the present are bewildering to most people. This is particularly true in the process 
leading up to suffering and stress. As §189 states, beings react to suffering in two 
ways: bewilderment and a search for a way out. If the conditions for suffering were not 
so complex, it would be the result of a simple, regular process that would not be so 
confusing. People would be able to understand it without any need for outside 
teachings. The fact of its actual complexity, however, explains why people find it 
bewildering and, as a result of their bewilderment, have devised a wide variety of 
unskillful means to escape from it: recourse to such external means as magic, ritual, 
revenge, and force; and to such internal means as denial, repression, self-hatred, and 
prayer. Thus the complexity of this/that conditionality accounts for the lack of skill that 
people bring to their lives -- creating more suffering and stress in their attempts to 
escape suffering and stress -- and shows that this lack of skill is a result of ignorance. 
This explains the need for a teaching that points out the true nature of the causal 
system operating in the world, so that proper understanding of the system can lead 
people to deal with it skillfully and actually gain the release they seek.  

The utility of the teachings: The fact that this/that conditionality allows for causal input 
from the present moment means that the causal process is not totally deterministic. 
Although linear causality places restrictions on what can be done and known in any 
particular moment, synchronic causality allows some room for free will. Human effort 
can thus make a difference in the immediate present. At the same time, the fact that the 
principle of this/that conditionality is expressed in impersonal terms means that the 
Buddha's insights did not depend on any power peculiar to him personally. As he noted 
in recounting his experience, the realizations he attained were such that anyone who 
developed the mind to the same pitch of heedfulness, ardency, and resolution and then 

 
 17 
 

directed it to the proper task would be able to attain them as well [§1]. For these 
reasons, the act of teaching would not be futile, because the mental qualities needed for 
the task of Awakening were available to other people, who would have the freedom to 
develop them if they wanted to.  

The function of the teachings: As chaos theory has shown in graphic terms, any causal 
system that contains three or more feedback loops can develop into incredible 
complexity, with small but well-placed changes in input tipping the balance from 
complex order to seeming chaos, or from chaos to order in the twinkling of an eye. A 
similar observation applies to this/that conditionality. Given the inherent complexity and 
instability of such a system, a simple description of it would be futile: the complexity 
would boggle the mind, and the instability would insure that any such description would 
not be helpful for long. At the same time, the instability of the system makes it 
imperative for anyone immersed in such a system to find a way out, for instability 
threatens any true chance for lasting peace or happiness. The complexity of the system 
requires that one find a reliable analysis of the sensitive points in the system and how 
they can be skillfully manipulated in a way that brings the system down from within. All 
of these considerations play a role in determining the function for which the Buddha 
designed his teachings. They are meant to act as a guide to skillful ways of 
understanding the principles underlying the causal system, and to skillful ways of 
manipulating the causal factors so as to gain freedom from them. The concept of 
skillful and unskillful thoughts, words, and deeds thus plays a central role in the 
teaching.  

In fact, the teachings themselves are meant to function as skillful thoughts toward the 
goal of Awakening. The Buddha was very clear on the point that he did not mean for his 
teachings to become a metaphysical system, or for them to be adhered to simply for the 
sake of their truth value. He discussed metaphysical topics only when they could play a 
role in skillful behavior. Many metaphysical questions -- such as whether or not there is 
a soul or self, whether or not the world is eternal, whether or not it is infinite, etc. -- he 
refused to answer, on the grounds that they were either counterproductive or irrelevant 

 
 18 
 

to the task at hand: that of gaining escape from the stress and suffering inherent in time 
and the present.  

Although the Buddha insisted that all of his teachings were true -- none of his skillful 
means were useful fictions -- they were to be put aside when one had fully benefited 
from putting them into practice. In his teachings, true but conditioned knowledge is put 
into service to an unconditioned goal: a release so total that no conditioned truth can 
encompass it. Because a meditator has to use causal factors in order to disband the 
causal system, he/she has to make use of factors that eventually have to be 
transcended. This pattern of developing qualities in the practice that one must 
eventually let go as one attains the Unfabricated is common throughout the Buddha's 
teachings. Eventually even skillfulness itself has to be transcended.  

The organization of the teachings: The fact that the causal system contains many 
feedback loops means that a particular causal connection -- either one that continues 
the system or one designed to disband it -- can follow one of several paths. Thus there 
is a need for a variety of explanations for people who find themselves involved in these 
different paths. This need explains the topical organization of the Buddha's teachings in 
his discourses. In talking to different people, or to the same people at different times, he 
gave different accounts of the causal links leading up to stress and suffering, and to the 
knowledge that can bring that stress and suffering to an end. Those who have tried to 
form a single, consistent account of Buddhist causal analyses have found themselves 
stymied by this fact, and have often discounted the wide variety of analyses by insisting 
that only one of them is the "true" Buddhist analysis; or that only the general principle of 
mutual causality is important, the individual links of the analyses being immaterial; or 
that the Buddha did not really understand causality at all. None of these positions do 
justice to the Buddha's skill as a teacher of this person and that, each caught at 
different junctures in the feedback loops of this/that conditionality.  

As we will see when we consider the Wings to Awakening in detail, the Buddha listed 
different ways of envisioning the causal factors at work in developing the knowledge 

 
 19 
 

needed to gain release from the realm of fabrication. Although the lists follow different 
lines of this/that conditionality, he insisted that they were equivalent. Thus any fair 
account of his teachings must make room for the variety of paths he outlined, and for 
the fact that each is helpfully specific and precise.  

The content of the teachings: Perhaps one of the most radical aspects of the Buddha's 
teachings is the assertion that the factors at work in the cosmos at large are the same 
as those at work in the way each individual mind processes experience. These 
processes, rather than the sensory data that they process, are primary in one's 
experience of the cosmos. If one can disband the act of processing, one is freed from 
the cosmic causal net.  

What this means in the case of the individual mind -- engaged in and suffering from the 
processes of time and the present -- is that the way out is to be found by focusing 
directly on the processing of present experience, for that is where the crucial issues play 
themselves out most clearly. Here and now is where everything important is happening, 
not there and then. At the same time, the skills that are needed to deal with these issues 
are skills of the mind: proper ways of analyzing what one experiences and proper 
qualities of mind to bring to the analysis to make it as clear and effective as possible. 
This boils down to the proper frame of reference, the proper quality of awareness, and 
the proper mode of analysis. These are precisely the topics covered in the Wings to 
Awakening, although as one's skill develops, they coalesce: The quality of awareness 
itself becomes the frame of reference and the object to which the analysis is applied.  

The presentation of the teaching: Because the Buddha's listeners were already caught in 
the midst of the web of this/that conditionality, he had to present his message in a way 
that spoke to their condition. This meant that he had to be sensitive both to the linear 
effects of past kamma that might either prevent or support the listener's ability to 
benefit from the teaching, and to the listener's current attitudes and concerns. A person 
whose adverse past kamma prevented Awakening in this lifetime might benefit from a 
more elementary teaching that would put him/her in a better position to gain Awakening 

 
 20 
 

in a future lifetime. Another person's past kamma might open the possibility for 
Awakening in this lifetime, but his/her present attitude might have to be changed before 
he/she was willing to accept the teaching.  

A second complication entailed by the principle of this/that conditionality is that it has 

to be known and mastered at the level of direct experience in and of itself. This mastery 
is thus a task that each person must do for him or herself. No one can master direct 
experience for anyone else. The Buddha therefore had to find a way to induce his 
listeners to accept his diagnosis of their sufferings and his prescription for their cure. 
He also had to convince them to believe in their own ability to follow the instructions 
and obtain the desired results. To use a traditional Buddhist analogy, the Buddha was 
like a doctor who had to convince his patients to administer a cure to themselves, much 
as a doctor has to convince his patients to follow his directions in taking medicine, 
getting exercise, changing their diet and lifestyle, and so forth. The Buddha had an 
additional difficulty, however, in that his definition of health -- Unbinding -- was 
something that none of his listeners had yet experienced for themselves. Hence the 
most important point of his teaching was something that his listeners would have to 
take on faith. Only when they had seen the results of putting the teachings into practice 
for themselves would faith no longer be necessary.  

Thus, for every listener, faith in the Buddha's Awakening was a prerequisite for 
advanced growth in the teaching. Without faith in the fact of the Buddha's knowledge of 
Unbinding, one could not fully accept his prescription. Without faith in the regularity of 
the Dhamma -- including conviction in the principle of kamma and the impersonality of 
the causal law, making the path open in principle to everyone -- one could not fully have 
faith in one's own ability to follow the path. Of course, this faith would then be 
confirmed, step by step, as one followed the teaching and began gaining results, but full 
confirmation would come only with an experience of Awakening. Prior to that point, 
one's trust, bolstered only by partial results, would have to be a matter of faith [M.27]. 
Acquiring this faith is called "going for refuge" in the Buddha. The "refuge" here derives 
from the fact that one has placed trust in the truth of the Buddha's Awakening and 
expects that by following his teachings -- in particular, the principle of skillful kamma -- 

 
 21 
 

one protects oneself from creating further suffering for oneself or others, eventually 
reaching true, unconditioned happiness. This act of going for refuge is what qualifies 
one as a Buddhist -- as opposed to someone simply interested in the Buddha's 
teachings -- and puts one in a position to benefit fully from what the Buddha taught.  

The Buddha employed various means of instilling faith in his listeners, but the primary 
means fall into three classes: his character, his psychic powers, and his powers of 
reason. When he gave his first sermon -- to the Five Brethren, his former compatriots -- 
he had to preface his remarks by reminding them of his honest and responsible 
character before they would willingly listen to him. When he taught the Kassapa 
brothers, he first had to subdue their pride with a dazzling array of psychic feats. In 
most cases, however, he needed only to reason with his listeners and interlocutors, 
although here again he had to be sensitive to the level of their minds so that he could 
lead them step by step, taking them from what they saw as immediately apparent and 
directing them to ever higher and more subtle points. The typical pattern was for the 
Buddha to begin with the immediate joys of generosity and virtue; then go on to the 
longer-term sensual rewards of these qualities, in line with the principle of kamma; then 
the ultimate drawbacks of those sensual rewards; and finally the benefits of 
renunciation. If his listeners could follow his reasoning this far, they would be ready for 
the more advanced teachings.  

We often view reason as something distinct from faith, but for the Buddha it was simply 
one way of instilling faith or conviction in his listeners. At several points in the Pali 
Canon [e.g., D.1] he points out the fallacies that can result when one draws reasoned 
conclusions from a limited range of experience, from false analogies, or from 
inappropriate modes of analysis. Because his teachings could not be proven prior to an 
experience of Awakening, he recognized that the proper use of reason was not in trying 
to prove his teachings, but simply in showing that they made sense. People can make 
sense of things when they see them as similar to something they already know and 
understand. Thus the main function of reason in presenting the teachings is in finding 
proper analogies for understanding them: hence the many metaphors and similes used 
throughout the texts. Faith based on reason and understanding, the Buddha taught, was 

 
 22 
 

more solid than unreasoned faith, but neither could substitute for the direct knowledge 
of the regularity of the Dhamma and of Unbinding, for only the experience of Unbinding 
was a guarantee of true knowledge. Nevertheless, faith was a prerequisite for attaining 
that direct knowledge. Only when the initial presentation of the teaching had aroused 
faith in the listener, would he/she be in a position to benefit from a less-adorned 
presentation of the content and put it into practice.  

The need for various ways of presenting his points on a wide range of levels meant that 
the body of the Buddha's teachings grew ever more varied and immense with time. As 
his career drew to a close, he found it necessary to highlight the essential core of the 
teaching, the unadorned content, so that the more timeless aspects of his message 
would remain clear in his followers' minds. Societies and cultures inevitably change, so 
that what counts as effective persuasion in one time and place may be ineffective in 
another. The basic structure of this/that conditionality does not change, however; the 
qualities of the mind needed for mastering causality and realizing the Unfabricated will 
always remain the same. The Buddha thus presented the Wings to Awakening as the 
unadorned content: the timeless, essential core.  

Even here, however, the principle of this/that conditionality affected his presentation. He 
needed to find principles that would be relatively immune to changes in society and 
culture. He needed a mode of presentation that was simple enough to memorize, but 
not so simplistic as to distort or limit the teaching. He also needed words that would 
point, not to abstractions, but to the immediate realities of awareness in the listener's 
own mind. And, finally, he needed a useful framework for the teaching as a whole, so 
that those who wanted to track down specific points would not lose sight of how those 
points fit into the larger picture of the practice.  

His solution was to give lists of personal qualities, as we noted above, rather than any of 
the more abstruse, philosophical doctrines that are often cited as distinctively Buddhist. 
These personal qualities are immediately present, to at least some extent, in every 
human mind. Thus they retain a constant meaning no matter what changes occur in 

 
 23 
 

one's mental landscape or cultural horizons. The Buddha presents them in seven 
alternative, interconnected lists (see Table I). Each list -- when all of its implications are 
worked out -- is equivalent to all of the others in its effects, but each takes a distinctive 
approach to the practice. Thus the lists provide enough variety to meet the needs of 
people caught in different parts of the causal network. As one searches the texts for 
explanations of the meaning of specific terms and factors in the lists, one finds that the 
lists connect -- directly or indirectly -- with everything there. At the same time, the 
categories of the lists, because they point to qualities in the mind, encourage the 
listener to regard the teachings not as a system in and of themselves, but as tools for 
looking directly into his/her own mind, where the sources and solutions to the problem 
of suffering lie.  

As a result, although the lists are short and simple, they are an effective introduction to 
the teaching and a guide to its practice. From his experience with this/that 
conditionality on the path, the Buddha had seen that if one develops the mental qualities 
listed in any one of these seven sets, focuses them on the present, keeping in mind the 
four frames of reference and analyzing what appears to one's immediate awareness in 
terms of the categories of the four noble truths, one will inevitably come to the same 
realizations that he did: the regularity of the Dhamma and the reality of Unbinding. This 
was the happiness he himself sought and found, and that he wanted others to attain.  

In addition to the seven lists, the Buddha left behind a monastic order designed not only 
so that the teachings would be memorized from generation to generation, but also so 
that future generations would have living examples of the teaching to learn from, and a 
conducive social environment in which to put them into practice. This environment was 
intended as a gift not only for those who would ordain, but also for those lay people who 
associated with the order, taking the opportunity to develop their own generosity, 
morality, and mindfulness in the process. Associating with others who are following a 
sensitive disciplinary code forces one to become more sensitive and disciplined 
oneself. Although our concern in this book is with the Dhamma, or the teaching of the 
Wings to Awakening, we should not forget that the Buddha named his teaching 
Dhamma-Vinaya. The Vinaya was the set of rules and regulations he established for the 

 
 24 
 

smooth running of the order. Dhamma is the primary member of the compound, but the 
Vinaya forms the context that helps keep it alive. They meet in a common focus on the 
factor of intention. The Vinaya uses its rules not only to foster communal order, but also 
to sensitize individual practitioners to the element of intention in all their actions. The 
Dhamma then makes use of this sensitivity as a means of fostering the insights that 
lead to Awakening.  

After he had placed the Dhamma-Vinaya on a sure footing, the Buddha passed away 
into total Unbinding. This event has provoked a great deal of controversy within and 
without the Buddhist tradition, some people saying that if the Buddha was truly 
compassionate, he should have taken repeated rebirth so that the rest of humanity 
could continue to benefit from the excellent qualities that he had built into his mind. His 
total Unbinding, however, can be seen as one of his greatest kindnesses to his 
followers. By example he showed that, although the path to true happiness entails 
generosity and kindness to others, the goal of the path needs no justification in terms of 
anything else. The limitless freedom of Unbinding is a worthy end for its own sake. 
Society's usual demand that people must justify their actions by appeal to the continued 
smooth functioning of society or the happiness of others, has no sway over the innate 
worth of this level. The Buddha made use of the kammic residue remaining after his 
Awakening to make a free gift of the Dhamma-Vinaya to all who care about genuine 
happiness and health, but when those residues were exhausted, he took the noble way 
of true health as an example and challenge to us all.  

● Thus the Dhamma-Vinaya can be seen as the Buddha's generous gift to posterity. 
The rules of the Vinaya offer an environment for practice, while the Wings to 
Awakening are an invitation and guide to that practice, leading to true happiness. 
Anyone, anywhere, who is seriously interested in true happiness is welcome to 
focus on the qualities listed here, to see if this/that conditionality is indeed the 
causal principle governing the dimensions of time and the present, and to test if 
it can be mastered in a way that leads to the promised result: freedom 
transcending those dimensions, totally beyond measure and unbound.