Causal Efficacy Without Causal Power

Causes work, but no power inside them is ever found that makes the effect. Is that orthodox Madhyamaka and Dzogchen?

A zoom-in of the exploration Cause and Effect.

In brief

My view. Things function. Conditions condition. A match lights, bread rises, karma ripens. All of this is validly functioning. What I never find is a causal power: a force sitting in the cause from its own side and handed across to the effect. Nothing passes from cause to effect, and no producer stands behind the meeting of conditions. Dependent arising, met without the habit of fixing, is what Dzogchen calls spontaneous presence.
Conditions are the appearing. The conditions are not parts lined up underneath that then produce the appearing. They are the appearing, cut into parts by a framework for explaining and for getting things done, and that framework works within agreements and a setting. So there is nothing left for a power to sit in, and nothing is lost.
Against orthodox MMK. At its core this is the Prāsaṅgika reading of MMK chapters 1, 20 and 24, as Candrakīrti and Tsongkhapa give it: reasoning refutes production established by its own nature, not production as the world speaks of it. The Rice Seedling Sūtra says the same with seed and sprout.
Where I part from some readings. I do not take up Tsongkhapa's "disintegratedness as a functioning thing" to link an action to its fruit, and I keep the mere I only as the conventional person, not as a bridge the imprints must rest on. On bridges I am also stricter than Mipham, who keeps reflexive awareness conventionally. Some of my earlier lines leaned towards a "regularity" account, which the Gelug idea of a designated capacity would correct. And I read spontaneous presence as dependent arising itself. This is not a departure from Dzogchen: I read its "not made by causes and conditions" as Nāgārjuna's "unborn by nature". The difference left is with one reading only, which makes spontaneous presence a ground with qualities of its own, before any dependence.
Substance or annihilation? Neither, as I see it. The substance risk lies in spontaneous presence heard as a source. The annihilation risk lies in "a cause is only a label", heard as "causes are not there". Both are risks in the wording, not in the view.
Why it matters. As long as a cause is pictured as a thing holding a power, the mind looks for a power, a carrier, a ground, and finally a reason why anything appears at all. When conditions are seen to work without anything producing, that whole search stops, and the working of conditions is left fully intact.

Why this is one of the critical insights

Strike a match and there is a flame. Leave the yeast out and the loaf is flat. Rice grows from rice seed, never from barley. Nothing seems more certain than that one thing brings about another.

The habit that comes with this certainty is quieter. We picture the match as holding a power to light, the seed as holding the sprout inside it, the angry word as holding the anger it causes. The cause becomes a little thing with a force in it, and the effect a second thing that receives what was handed over.

That picture is the same habit that builds a self. A self is the doer behind the doing, and a causal power is the doer behind the causing. When anatta is seen, the doer behind seeing falls away. When this insight is seen, the doer falls away from everything: the seed, the match, the action, the moment. This is why, in Decoding Anatta and MMK Chapter 3, I call it the same move, made in MMK chapters 2, 3, 10 and 1.

If it is not seen through, the habit simply moves house. It gives up the self and keeps a power in causes. It gives up the power and keeps a field or web of conditions underneath. It gives up the web and keeps one last demand: but why does anything appear at all? I call this "the last spell" (Beyond Cause and Effect).

My view

Causes work

Causes work. A power inside them that makes the effect is never found. Both stand (Cause and Effect).

None of this stops you lighting the stove. What goes is only the picture of a finished thing being pushed across an edge by another finished thing (Nāgārjuna's Middle Way, Chapter 1).

Then why is the world orderly? Barley seeds grow barley, and fire burns. The regularity is dependent arising itself. It needs no hidden power to make it hold (The World Itself).

And spontaneous does not mean uncaused. The car still has to go by for its sound to appear. Conditions still come together, and the world still follows them. What is gone is the maker, not the order (Decoding Anatta and MMK Chapter 3).

No power is found

We habitually treat function as a power inside the thing, the knife's power to cut, sitting in it from its own side. No causal power is stored in it, waiting to produce the next (Step 7, Function Without Substance).

Look for the power, and it is not found there. A key opens this lock and no other. In the wrong lock, it opens nothing. A power that shows itself only with its partner is not an inner property.

To say that a seed grows because it has the power to grow is to say that it grows because it grows. The "power" adds a name, not an explanation (Book 2, The Disease of Relentless Negation).

Three senses of "cause"

The clearest tool I have is to separate three senses of the word (Beyond Cause and Effect; Canon View, Part I point 17):

A producer: something existing by itself that makes an effect outside itself. This is refused (MMK 1.1).
A condition that lines up: factors that let a result appear when they meet. This is conventional truth, and it stands.
A designated link: "cause" is the name given to the condition attention picks out when it follows a process. This keeps the second sense from sliding back into the first.

A thing with its own nature could not act

This is the point that turns the objection round. Suppose this moment existed by itself, complete from its own side. Could it arise or cease? It could not. Such a moment could not change. It could not combine, because it depends on nothing else. And it could not act, because to act is to make a difference to what is not itself (Step 7).

So it is own-nature, not emptiness, that would break causation (MMK 24.16–20, 24.38). I am careful that this does not turn emptiness into a cause. Emptiness causes nothing and explains nothing. It is only what dependence comes to when it is examined.

Causal efficacy as the appearing itself

My own understanding moved here. Earlier, designation was what made causal efficacy intelligible: there is no truly existing referent, yet designation is woven into experience. Later I saw it more directly, and in June 2025 I put it this way: "designation is already appearance and pure presence itself"; "dependent arising is the very nature of experiential reality by the virtue of being in relation, without effort and thoughts"; and "causal efficacies is already the expression". I would not even say "inbuilt", because that would imply a builder.

Put carefully: causal efficacy is not something added to the appearing, and it is not explained by something behind it. The working is the appearing itself, singled out in dependence. Function needs no "it" behind it (Step 7).

The last why, and spontaneous presence

The question "why does anything appear at all?" assumes a gap between the conditions and the appearing, a gap an explanation could fill. When there is no gap, the question is not left unanswered. It is retired, for lack of anywhere left to stand. That is what Dzogchen means by "no why and because". It is not a void and not a mystery (Cause and Effect). In ordinary life, "why did the loaf fail?" still has its answer: no yeast. Only the demand for a final reason stops applying.

Keep two questions apart. How does this appearance come about? Through conditions. What is the nature of what appears? Emptiness, which is not produced, so "why" does not apply to it. "Beyond cause and effect" answers the second question. It never cancels the first (The Limits of the Tools).

So when I say that dependent arising is spontaneous presence, this is what I mean. They are one appearing, described in two ways. Dependent arising is how it is described when we analyse. Spontaneous presence is the same appearing when the habit of fixing stops: complete, effortless, with nothing behind it. Neither description is higher (Decoding Anatta and MMK Chapter 3).

Conditions are the appearing

The usual picture of dependent arising keeps one last layer. The power has gone, the producer has gone, but the conditions are still pictured as little things lined up underneath, which come together and then give rise to the appearing. Spark, fuel and air first; the flame afterwards, built out of them.

I turn this round. Conditions are the appearing. The parts appear to exist only in relation to a framework that breaks appearances into conceptual parts for explanatory and functional purposes, and that framework works within a set of agreements within a prescribed environment.

Three points are packed into this.

There is one appearing, not parts plus a result. The flame is not assembled from spark, fuel and air the way a wall is built from bricks. What is there is the burning, vivid and whole. "Spark", "fuel" and "air" are that same appearing, divided up. This is what I call flatness in Beyond Cause and Effect: conditions are not a basement on which appearances are built, and appearances are not a coating laid over conditions.

The parts belong to a framework. The cut into parts is made by a way of looking that wants to explain or to get something done. Different purposes cut the same appearing differently:

A cook says the loaf rose because of the yeast, the warmth and the time.
A chemist names the sugars, the enzymes and the carbon dioxide.
A physicist names molecules, energy and pressure.
A baker in a cold kitchen names the draught by the window.

Each cut picks out different "conditions", and each works. None of them is the list of parts the loaf was truly made from, waiting to be read off. The parts appear as parts only in relation to the framework that cut them out. In Book 1 I said the same of the old candidates for a foundation: "conditions" do not take the producer's place, since they are as unfindable as what they condition.

The framework works within agreements and an environment. A framework is not a private fancy. It works within a set of shared agreements (what counts as a cause, what counts as an answer, what we measure and how) and within a prescribed setting: a kitchen, a laboratory, an engine, a hospital ward, a scale of size and speed. Inside them it is reliable: leave out the yeast and the loaf is flat, in every kitchen. Move it outside them and it can fail: the cook's "the yeast made it rise" explains nothing at the scale of the physicist, and Newton's account of a falling apple fails near the speed of light. So it is reliable enough to stake a life on, and the reliability belongs to the framework working in its setting, not to parts that exist from their own side.

What this does to causation. If the conditions are the appearing cut up for a purpose, then "the conditions produce the appearing" turns out to be the appearing, divided, said to produce itself. The picture of production has nothing left to stand on, and nothing is lost: the cook still bakes, the engineer still repairs the engine. This is the fullest sense of "causal efficacy without causal power". Efficacy is the appearing working, as a framework within its agreements singles it out. Power would be something in the parts, and the parts were never there apart from the cutting.

How it stands against the tradition.

Orthodox MMK. It agrees with the core verses. "The own-nature of things is not found in their conditions" (1.3). "The conditions are not made of themselves" (1.13, abridged). "And with no effect, where are conditions or non-conditions?" (1.14). "And without an effect, where is a coming-together of conditions?" (20.24). Candrakīrti's chariot is the model: the parts are named in dependence on the whole as much as the whole on the parts.
Tsongkhapa. Gelug teaching names three levels of dependence, on causes, on parts and on designation by conceptual thought, and calls the last the subtlest. I put that subtlest level first: causal and part–whole dependence are themselves cut by designation. A Gelug reader would agree, and would add two guards. First, the seed grew before anyone named it: conventionally yes, and "before anyone named it" is itself said within the framework, which includes the past. Second, a framework is not valid because people agree: Tsongkhapa's three checks ask that a convention be known to ordinary understanding, not contradicted by another valid convention, and not contradicted by analysis of the ultimate. By "agreements" I mean conventions that pass those checks, not a vote.
Dzogchen. It fits the non-foundational reading closely. Spontaneous presence is the appearing complete, not built up step by step (What the Logic Is Looking At); the parts are a later cut, not an earlier stock. A traditional reader would say the same of the ground's display: it is not assembled. I add only that no ground stands behind the display either.
Science. It is close to Bohr's point that a phenomenon includes the whole experimental arrangement, and to Barad's "agential cut", which settles what counts as object and what as apparatus (Science and the Dharma). I keep the guard I drew there: the cut is not made in some uncut stuff that was there first.

Two ways to hear it wrongly.

"So the conditions are only concepts, and nothing really happens." No. The framework works, which is the whole point: the loaf is flat without yeast. What I deny is that the parts exist from their own side before the cutting, not that the cutting works.
"So the appearing is the true whole, and the parts are illusions laid on it." No. The appearing is not a lump underneath the parts, any more than the parts are bricks underneath the appearing. Whole and parts are named together (MMK 1.5), and neither is found standing by itself. "The appearing" is the plainest name for what is there, not a new ground.

Against orthodox MMK

MMK chapter 1: the four corners

Not from itself, not from another, not from both, and not without a cause: no thing anywhere, of any kind, is ever found to have arisen. (MMK 1.1)

I agree. I read 1.1 as a non-implicative negation: all four answers refused, no fifth installed. That is how Candrakīrti reads it in the Prasannapadā, against Bhāviveka, who wanted the negation backed by an independent proof. I read the verses on conditions as Nāgārjuna gives them:

1.4, "there is no producing activity that has conditions, and none that lacks them": this is the refusal of a power or activity (kriyā) in the cause, exactly what I mean by causal power.
1.5, "these are conditions, because in dependence on them that arises": the seed in a dry jar is just a seed. "Condition" is named because of the effect.
1.10, "the formula 'when this exists, that comes to be' does not hold" for things with their own nature. The formula still describes how things go together; it does not describe one self-standing thing powering another.

Buddhapālita, the first to read Nāgārjuna this way, argued that arising from itself would be pointless, since what already exists needs no arising, and endless, since it would arise again and again. My "a moment complete from its own side could not change" is the same argument turned on all four corners.

Candrakīrti: production even in the world's own terms

In Entering the Middle Way chapter 6, Candrakīrti refutes the four kinds of production one by one. Two points in his treatment bear on what I say.

Production from another is refused even conventionally. The Prāsaṅgika does not say that, conventionally, a seed which stands by itself produces a sprout which stands by itself. Ordinary people do not even think that way: someone who plants a seed says "I planted this tree", without any theory of two separate things. What the world uses is mere arising, not arising from another. This matches my "conditions without production" closely, as long as "production" means production from its own side.
The world's account stands without analysis. Candrakīrti keeps the world's ways of speaking as they are, without analysing them, and refuses them only when they claim to be found under analysis. My "conventionally valid, not found" is the same two-sided stance.

This is also the line between Prāsaṅgika and Svātantrika. Svātantrika readers (Bhāviveka, Śāntarakṣita) allow that conventionally things are established by their own characteristics. I side with Prāsaṅgika: no own-characteristic, not even conventionally.

MMK chapter 20: no handover, no gap

Chapter 20 examines the coming-together of causes and conditions. Most of my images come from it:

20.5–6: if the cause gives its power and ceases, it has two selves; if it ceases without giving, the effect has no cause. This is the refusal of the handover, the baton passed from seed to sprout.
20.19–20: "If effect and cause were one, producer and produced would be the same. If effect and cause were separate, a cause would be no different from a non-cause."
20.7–10: the effect neither at the same time as its gathering, nor before it, nor after a cause that has gone.

I agree, with one thing to watch. My "nothing passes from cause to effect" is 20.5–6 and 20.20 exactly. But some of my earlier lines said that condition and appearance arise "together, not one producing the other in a row", and that "dependence isn't a sequence… all at once". Read quickly, these sound as if cause and effect were simultaneous. MMK 20.7 refuses that too: a potter and a finished pot, both on the table, are not in the act of making.

What I mean is mutual designation: "cause" and "effect" are named together, as long and short are (MMK 1.5). That is not a claim about time. Conventionally the seed comes before the sprout, and Candrakīrti and Tsongkhapa both keep that order. So do I.

MMK chapter 24: because empty, it works

For whom emptiness fits, everything fits. (MMK 24.14)

Dependent arising is what we call emptiness. That is a designation in dependence, and that itself is the middle way. (MMK 24.18)

I agree. My strongest line, that a thing with its own nature could not change or act, is Nāgārjuna's reply in 24.16–20 and 24.38 ("fixed like an anvil"). And I do not let emptiness become a power that makes things work (Canon View, Part I point 8). "Fits" (yujyate) means "makes sense", not "produces".

Some of my videos and talk titles still say "because things are empty, they can work", or "why you must be empty to function". Nāgārjuna's own words are allowed, read as his reply to his critics. In my own voice I would now say: things work, and what works is found empty; a thing with its own nature could not work at all.

Tsongkhapa: functioning things, capacity, disintegratedness and the mere I

Tsongkhapa adds four things that a careful reader will want to compare with what I say.

(i) Production is refuted only with its qualifier. What reasoning negates is production established by its own nature, not mere production. I agree fully.

(ii) A functioning thing is "that which is able to perform a function" (dngos po, defined as don byed nus pa, Sanskrit arthakriyā-śakti or -sāmarthya). The definition comes from the epistemology tradition, and Gelug scholars use it throughout. "Able" (nus pa) is a word for capacity. So the Gelug reading keeps a designated capacity: conventionally, the seed is able to produce the sprout. What is refused is a capacity established from its own side.

Here some of my earlier lines went further than Tsongkhapa would allow. In Book 2 I once said functioning "is described completely by the regularities in which seed, soil, water and warmth are designated together", and in one video, "that is all a cause is". These lean towards a regularity account: no capacity at all, only patterns. A Gelug reader would say that this throws out the conventional capacity together with the inherent power. My better wording already keeps the capacity: a power that shows itself only with its partner is not an inner property; the key opens this lock. So: no power is found from its own side; the capacity, designated in dependence, works.

(iii) Disintegratedness is a functioning thing (zhig pa dngos po). This is one of Tsongkhapa's "eight difficult points" of Prāsaṅgika. An action ceases; how does it give its fruit years later, without a storehouse consciousness (ālaya) or seeds? Tsongkhapa's answer: the action's having-disintegrated is itself a conditioned, functioning thing, and it links action to fruit. Other schools hold that disintegratedness is a mere absence, which cannot produce anything.

My answer to karma across time is "neither carried nor cut" (MMK 18.10; Neither Carried Nor Cut): there is no carrier, and none is needed. When instants are lined up in time, the sequence is rightly described as neither the same nor different. I agree with Tsongkhapa in refusing the storehouse. I part from him by not naming any linking factor at all, even a designated one. Non-Gelug readers (Sakya critics such as Gorampa are usually named) also reject disintegratedness as a functioning thing.

(iv) The mere I. In the Gelug presentation the action's imprints are also said to rest on the mere I: the I that is merely designated in dependence on the aggregates, not found among them or apart from them, yet validly functioning as the one who acts and the one who meets the fruit. It is not a soul and not a storehouse. Together with disintegratedness, it is how Tsongkhapa keeps karma without any substantial carrier.

I do not doubt the mere I as convention. "I did it, and I will meet the result" is how the world speaks, and it gives a sound account of responsibility, ethics and karma. What I refuse is the mere I as a bridge: the thing that must be there for the imprints to rest on, so that an action can reach its fruit across time. I keep "neither carried nor cut" instead, for four reasons. It is not meant as a better theory. It is meant to trigger the insight that sees through the need for one.

1. A bridge does not explain. It only passes the problem on. "Neither carried nor cut" is close to Tsongkhapa's own refusal of the storehouse consciousness. Once we start adding a layer to explain karma, rebirth or continuity, there is no end to it. The added layer does not explain anything. It only passes the problem on and gives it a name. Ask of any carrier: does it last, or does it change moment by moment? If it lasts, it cannot take in changing imprints or give them out. If it changes, each of its own moments has to get to the next, and that needs another carrier. And so on.

Tsongkhapa refused the storehouse for Candrakīrti's reason: the act never ceased inherently, so its fruit can come without one. I only ask for the same strictness with what came after the storehouse. In the Gelug account, disintegratedness is itself momentary, a continuum that runs until the fruit. If each moment of that continuum follows the next with no further link, then the act's own sequence needs no link either, and nothing has been added. The same goes for the mere I. It is merely designated, as Tsongkhapa insists. But once it is asked to be the place where the imprints wait, it is doing a carrier's work, and its own moments meet the same question.

Where does the need for a bridge come from? From the habitual tendencies of the inherent framework: moments taken as things standing on their own, with a gap between them. Grant that, and nothing will join them: not a storehouse, not disintegratedness, not a designated carrier. Experiential reality is never like that. "Neither carried nor cut" does not offer another way across. It denies both: that the act travels to the fruit, and that the act ends in nothing before the fruit comes. It puts nothing in their place. With nothing standing on its own, there is no gap to cross. That the fruit follows the act was never a riddle. The world knows it already, as rice comes from rice seed (2.1). Only the demand for a bridge has to go.

Dōgen makes the same point from the other side, in Genjōkōan. Firewood burns and becomes ash, and the ash does not turn back into firewood. Yet, he says, do not think of the firewood as before and the ash as after. We usually picture one thing, "the firewood", travelling through time and turning into ash, and then we ask how it got across. Dōgen drops the traveller. We do not say that winter becomes spring. Winter is wholly winter, spring is wholly spring, and no one looks for some winter-stuff that crossed over into spring. In the same way, firewood stays in its own place (its dharma-position), fully firewood and lacking nothing, and ash stays in its own place, fully ash.

He also says that before and after are cut off. This is not the annihilationist's cut. That cut needs a thing that existed and was then destroyed into nothing. Dōgen's firewood was never such a thing. It was simply complete as firewood, so no void opens between firewood and ash, and nothing falls into one. The order still holds: before and after are there, and firewood burns to ash, never the other way round. Only the traveller and the void are gone. So the question "how does the firewood get to the ash?" loses its ground. It needs two things standing on their own with a gap between them, and once the traveller and the gap are gone, nothing is left to cross. A dharma-position is not a sealed block. Complete is not sealed off: the position is designated, and it holds its before and after without anything passing between them. Dōgen does not answer the question with a mechanism. He shows there was nothing for one to do. Nothing travels, so nothing is carried; nothing falls into a void, so nothing is cut; and the fruit still follows the act. (Neither Carried Nor Cut gives the longer account.)

2. The bridge is not needed, and needing it brings back an old mistake. Candrakīrti and Tsongkhapa reject reflexive awareness (svasaṃvedana) even conventionally. The other side posited it to explain memory: "I remember seeing blue" seemed to need an earlier self-knowing of the seeing. Candrakīrti answers that memory arises in dependence on the earlier experience, and no extra knower is needed. Tsongkhapa sharpens this: reflexive awareness is not something the world knows. It is a theory built to fill an explanatory gap, and so it fails even as convention. When the mere I is asked to be the place where imprints are put so that karma can cross from act to fruit, it is doing the same job: a posit that fills the "how does it get across?" gap.

I grant the difference. The mere I passes the world's test, and reflexive awareness does not: ordinary people know nothing of a self-knowing, but they do say "I did it". So the mere I as the conventional person stays. Only the mere I as a required bridge goes. The criticism lands most squarely on disintegratedness as a functioning thing. No one in the world knows of it; it is a philosophical posit made to answer exactly the gap question, and it fails the world's test as reflexive awareness does.

Nāgārjuna himself gives me company here. In MMK 17 the "imperishable" (avipraṇāśa) is a bridge of this kind, like a promissory note that keeps the debt on record until it is paid. Candrakīrti reads it as an opponent's view, and Nāgārjuna then turns to emptiness (17.21 onwards). Scholars disagree on how far Nāgārjuna accepts the note. On this question I stand closest to Candrakīrti read without Tsongkhapa's additions: the same strictness about posits, applied to the replacements too. This argument works by Tsongkhapa's own standard. Mipham does not share its premise, since he accepts reflexive awareness conventionally (see 4.5).

3. Facing the feeling of a missing gap. "Neither carried nor cut" leaves the mind uneasy. Something seems to be missing between the act and its fruit. I do not answer that feeling. I ask that it be looked at seriously, again and again, until a critical insight arises: the gap is felt only because the inherent framework needs something to be there. Ultimate analysis shows, each time, that a bridge cannot be found. Moment-to-moment direct experience never meets one. And science, read without a substrate, does not need one either. It does not show that there is none: its conservation and continuity are regularities, not passengers. The feeling does not go away quickly. Its persistence does not prove anything; the analysis does the proving. What the persistence shows is how deep the habit of confused seeing runs, though no power to blind is ever found. And the honest form of the worry, "then who is responsible?", has its answer before any of this: the one who acts meets the fruit, conventionally, and nothing in this view takes that away.

Ignorance is not a power either. Here I must be careful with my own words. It is easy to speak of ignorance and habitual tendencies as if they had a causal power to blind: something that truly exists, separate from us, affecting us in a very subtle way. That is the same slip again. So what are they? Only a very deep habitual way of seeing things in a confused way, and we designate it "ignorance". The habit is not a hidden agent behind the confused seeing. It is the confused seeing itself, moment after moment, named as a habit; the same knot I describe in Holding an apple, where the tying is the habit and nothing stands behind it doing the tying. Search for ignorance as a thing, and it is not found, however efficiently it blinds.

Both halves hold, as they do for every cause. It blinds reliably, because the conditions keep being renewed: each moment of seeing things as existing in themselves repeats the pattern. And it can end, because nothing stands behind it. If ignorance had a power of its own, it could never end; it would be fixed, like the anvil. Nāgārjuna says it plainly: "ignorance ceases through cultivating this very knowledge" (MMK 26.11). Seeing that ignorance has no power of its own does not make it harmless. It keeps suffering going until it is seen through. It only shows that what has to go is a habit, not an enemy.

4. Cornered into "beyond cause and effect". The substrateless view of "neither carried nor cut" leaves nowhere to stand: no bridge, and no break either. It forces the dismantling into a corner. With nothing left to link, nothing is missing. That is where one can glimpse what Dzogchen means by "beyond cause and effect": display complete and present as it is, owing nothing to anything behind it, with no higher and no lower. The analysis does not produce this. It wears out the demand for a bridge, and what is recognised is seen when the demand stops. Mipham says the same of analysis in the Beacon of Certainty: it brings certainty, but it does not make the nature.

For readers to look into: whether "no carrier" needs a designated link, such as disintegratedness or the mere I, to stay clear of the charge of a gap, or whether "neither carried nor cut" already does the work.

The Rice Seedling Sūtra

The sūtra gives five features of dependent arising, seen in seed and sprout (translations differ in order and wording): not permanent (the sprout is not the seed); not cut off (the sprout does not arise from a seed that has already ceased, and does not come without it); no passing over (nothing goes from seed to sprout); a large fruit from a small cause; a result of the same kind (rice from rice seed).

This is my view in its oldest canonical form. "Nothing passes over" and "not cut off" together are "neither carried nor cut". "A result of the same kind" is the conventional regularity I affirm. Anyone who wants to check what I say against scripture can start here.

Against non-foundational Nyingma Dzogchen

"Beyond cause and effect"

Dzogchen texts speak of the view as "beyond cause and effect" (rgyu 'bras las 'das pa) and criticise the "causal vehicles". Longchenpa calls them causal because they hold that the path, by increasing good qualities, produces buddhahood. Dzogchen holds that the fruit is not produced, because it is already present.

I agree that freedom is recognised, not produced. If practice produced liberation, liberation would be compounded, and it would decay (Beyond Cause and Effect; Canon View, Part I points 16 and 22).

I narrow the phrase. I read "beyond cause and effect" as "beyond intrinsic cause and intrinsic effect, never beyond dependent arising". That is a Madhyamaka reading of a Dzogchen phrase. In its own setting the phrase is mainly about the path and the fruit, and about the nature of mind, not about all causation. Keeping the two questions apart is what lets the two readings meet: how does an appearance come about? through conditions; what is its nature? emptiness, not produced. The tradition's phrase applies to the second question.

Longchenpa himself does not reject cause and effect. In his advice verses (as translated in a 2021 Awakening to Reality post) he insists that the dependent arising of cause and fruit is what the true path asserts, and he uses pressing sesame and churning butter as images: the result does not come without the work. Lobel's study of Longchenpa's philosophy of action (Allowing Spontaneity, Harvard dissertation) has a section on whether Longchenpa rejects cause and effect. Both are good to check.

Spontaneous presence (lhun grub)

Here my reading looks furthest from Dzogchen's wording, but I do not think it departs from Dzogchen at the core. The Canon View names the joining as my synthesis (Part II point 5).

How I see it: spontaneous presence is dependent arising, met without the fixing. Not uncaused, and not a source behind things. Complete because nothing is hidden behind it, not because nothing conditions it.
Many traditional readings: lhun grub is one of the ground's aspects, paired with primordial purity (ka dag) and compassion or responsiveness (thugs rje). Its presence is often described as not made by causes and conditions. Wisdom is "primordial" because it arises spontaneously from the basis and does not depend on causes (as a scholarly summary puts it; the exact Longchenpa passage was not seen).
Where a difference is left. For Longchenpa spontaneous presence also includes qualities said to be present in the ground, and display is spoken of as the ground's own dynamism. Read with Mipham, that ground is empty, and I follow that reading. Only a reading that makes the ground's qualities present before and apart from any dependence parts from mine.

So the two statements meet. Dzogchen says the presence is not made by causes and conditions. Nāgārjuna says dependent arising is unborn by nature: it appears through conditions, yet nothing is produced. Read this way, "not made by causes" does not mean "appearing without conditions"; it means not produced, with no maker and no birth from its own side. That is what I mean by spontaneous presence. A presence that appeared with no condition at all would be the own-nature MMK 15.1–2 refutes, but I do not think Dzogchen, read with Mipham, claims that. Some readers hold otherwise and should weigh both sides (Three Descriptions, One Taste, "How the masters define it").

Longchenpa on the ground

Longchenpa is careful with the word "ground" (gzhi): it appears to be a ground only from a relative point of view, and in its nature it is empty of being a ground (Tshig don mdzod, as I cite it in Beyond Cause and Effect; also van Schaik's "a presence that is spontaneous in that it is not created or based on anything"). I build on this "groundless ground". I think it is fair to Longchenpa, but I take one strand of his thought as the key to the rest. Other readers, for example those who stress the ground's qualities, or who hold Dzogchen as a vehicle beyond Madhyamaka, would put it differently.

Energy and display (rtsal, rol pa)

Traditional texts speak of appearances as the ground's dynamic energy (rtsal) and its display or play (rol pa). I keep the words but take away the owner. Display here means only this: dependent arising, vivid and unobstructed, with nothing behind it (Book 2, Ye Shes; Canon View, Part II point 6).

This is the non-foundational reading. Where the texts say "the ground's own energy", I hear "energy" and "display" as descriptions of how appearing is, not as something the ground does. I think it is defensible, and it is what keeps display from becoming production by a hidden ground. It is not the only reading in the tradition.

Mipham

Mipham is the Nyingma author closest to me.

Two truths as one. Emptiness is not a separate reality behind appearances, and dependent arising does not make things vanish; it is what lets them arise (as Duckworth summarises him). This is my "one appearing, two descriptions".
Negation. In the Beacon of Certainty (Pettit's translation and study), the first topic is negation. Mipham uses the Prāsaṅgika non-implicative negation to clear every extreme, but holds that the final view is the union (zung 'jug) of appearance and emptiness, beyond both affirming and negating. My talk MMK Non-Implicative Negation ironically shows: Dependent Arising = Spontaneous Presence is close to this: the negation installs nothing, and what is left is appearing itself, not a new thing.
Primordial purity and spontaneous presence. Duckworth reads Mipham's buddha-nature as the unity of primordial purity and spontaneous presence, the same unity as appearance and emptiness. I have not found Mipham himself equating spontaneous presence with dependent arising in so many words, so my identity is best called close to Mipham, and my own synthesis.

On the bridge, Mipham and I part. Mipham defends reflexive awareness (rang rig) conventionally, against Tsongkhapa: for him, Candrakīrti refuted only a self-awareness established ultimately. As far as I know, he also allows the storehouse consciousness (ālaya) at the level of convention, in the older Nyingma way: conventional accounts are fine in their place, and none survives analysis of the ultimate. So Mipham does not refuse bridges. He keeps them as convention and lets them all dissolve in the final view. I am stricter. With Tsongkhapa, I let no theory-posit in, even conventionally. Against Tsongkhapa, I apply that to his own replacements. With Mipham, I end in freedom from elaboration, with no higher and lower.

On reflexive awareness the gap with Mipham is partly a matter of words. His rang rig is not a second act of knowing turned back on the first. It is the clarity of knowing itself, not lit by anything else. That is very near what I mean by "clarity is never missing", and by reading "self-luminous" as "not lit by another" (The Lamp That Does Not Light Itself). So I am not rejecting Mipham's clarity. I refuse only the word in its Yogācāra sense, and the bridge.

Where Mipham and I may also part: Mipham keeps a strong place for buddha-nature and for wisdom (ye shes) as distinct from ordinary mind (sems). I keep the distinction only as "ordinary mind with fixing" and "the same appearing without it", with no second mind (Canon View, Part I points 12, 14 and 22). Readers who want to check this should read Duckworth's Mipam on Buddha-Nature and Pettit.

Scholars' readings: is this Hume?

Garfield ("Dependent Arising and the Emptiness of Emptiness: Why Did Nāgārjuna Start with Causation?", Philosophy East and West 44.2, 1994) argues that Nāgārjuna rejects causes as things holding powers and keeps conditions as explanatory regularities. He compares this with Hume. He also separates hetu (cause, with power) from pratyaya (condition), saying Nāgārjuna rejects the first and keeps the second. His reading is influential and contested.

How I stand:

I agree that no power is found, and that "power" adds a name, not an explanation.
It is not Hume. Hume drops the power but keeps the events as "loose and separate", each standing by itself. Madhyamaka drops both the power and the self-standing events: if cause and effect were separate, a cause would be no different from a non-cause (MMK 20.20). For Hume, regularity is all that is left between two separate things. For me, there were never two separate things to need a link.
The hetu/pratyaya split is weak as a reading of the text. MMK 1.2 lists the causal condition (hetu-pratyaya) as one of the four conditions, and 1.3 refuses own-nature to all of them. I do not need the split: I refuse a power from its own side in every condition.
The Gelug correction applies here too. As with Tsongkhapa's functioning things above, a pure regularity account risks throwing out designated capacity. My best wording keeps it.

For readers to look into: Garfield's article and his translation of the MMK (1995); Westerhoff, Nāgārjuna's Madhyamaka (2009), on causation; the debate over Candrakīrti's account of convention (Salvini; "Dimensions of Candrakīrti's Conventional Reality").

Where a reader could hear substance or annihilation

Heard as	Where the risk comes from	What I mean
Substance: a source behind appearances	"Spontaneous presence", "beyond cause and effect", "self-appearing", "clear by itself"	Not a source, not uncaused; complete because nothing is hidden behind it. "Self" in self-appearing only means not borrowed from another (Beyond Cause and Effect)
Substance: a web or field of conditions underneath	"Web", "network", "relations"	The conditions are not a web or machine behind what appears; dependence too is designated (Canon View, Part I point 10)
Substance: emptiness as what makes things work	"Because empty, things work"; "you must be empty to function"	Emptiness causes nothing; a thing with its own nature could not work. Nāgārjuna's 24.14 is his reply to his critics (Canon View, Part I point 8)
Annihilation: conditions are only concepts	"The parts exist only in relation to a framework"	The framework works within its agreements and setting; only parts existing from their own side before the cutting are denied
Annihilation: causes are only words	"That is all a cause is"; "a label for a link"	The label is the whole status of the cause and the cause works: rice from rice seed, a flat loaf without yeast
Annihilation: karma has nothing to link it	"No carrier"; "nothing passes over"	Neither carried nor cut: no carrier and no gap. Karma ripens (MMK 17.20; Neither Carried Nor Cut)
Annihilation: practice and ethics no longer apply	"Beyond cause and effect"	Baizhang's fox: not obscuring cause and effect is freedom; not falling into it is the error

How it is seen through

The step is from cause and effect as two things joined by a power to conditions met, with nothing producing. It is not reached by a better theory of causation. It is reached by looking for the power and not finding it, and then seeing that nothing was lost.

The match. Strike it and look for the moment the flame passes from not being to being. Every moment is full of change; at no moment is a finished flame handed across. Head, striking strip, friction, air: the flame appears as they meet. Take any one away and there is no flame. The power to light is not found in the match apart from them.

The seed in a dry jar. Keep a seed in a jar for a year, and it is just a seed. It is called a cause only because a sprout came up, in soil, water and warmth (MMK 1.5). Nothing was waiting in it.

The key and the lock. A key opens this lock and no other; in the wrong lock it opens nothing. The capacity is reliable enough to depend on, and it shows itself only with its partner. It is not stored in the key.

Angry words. "Your words made me angry." The anger arose with the words, the hearing, an old hurt and a tired evening. No power to anger sits inside the words. Yet the words can be apologised for. This is where the insight matters most: suffering is kept going by conditions that can change, not by a power that must be fought.

What changes when it is seen.

The search for a power, a carrier and a ground stops, because each was looked for and not found.
The last "why" stops applying, because there is no gap between conditions and appearing for it to fill. In ordinary life, "why did the loaf fail?" still has an answer: no yeast.
Conditions matter more, not less. Care heals, an unkind word hurts, actions bear fruit. Emptiness gives no exemption from karma.
Appearing is met as it is: vivid, working, complete, and not found standing by itself. This is what I call spontaneous presence. Mind and matter lose their weight and become light, magical and plastic (Step 2).

Try it. Turn on a tap. Notice the water come. Look for the moment the tap "makes" the water flow. Then look for the water's flowing apart from the tap, the pipe, the pressure and the turn of your hand. Neither is found. And the water still flows.

Try it again. Take one cup of tea. Name its conditions as a cook would (leaves, hot water, three minutes), then as a chemist would, then as a farmer would. Notice that each list works, that each was cut for a purpose, and that the tea did not wait to be assembled from any of them.

Why it never arises in seeing. In the seen, just the seen, the question "how does the act reach its fruit?" does not come up. That is not because experience answers it. The question needs a split that is not there in direct experience.

It needs two things standing on their own: a finished "before" and an "after" to be reached, with a gap between them. In seeing, neither is found. Each instant is complete. The seeing is wholly seeing, the sound wholly sound. Nothing is missing that has to come from elsewhere.

It needs someone outside, looking. To see a gap between two moments, there must be a place outside both to see it from. That place is the observer. When anatta is seen, there is no seer behind the seeing, and in the same move no causer behind the causing. With no one standing outside, there is no "between".

It needs time as something on its own, a line the moments sit on. Past and future are never met as places. Remembering is not the past brought across the years. It is this appearing, now, as its conditions come together.

So the gap is never found in looking. It comes in when thought lines the instants up in a time sequence and then asks how one gets to the next. That is the inherent framework at work. Without that framework, it is one complete stroke. When the habit stops, things work exactly as before, and the act still meets its fruit. Only the question has nothing to stand on.

Two guards. This is not a oneness taking the place of the two moments. Seeing is seeing and hearing is hearing: six streams, with no pure consciousness behind them linking them. The appearing is neither found as two nor made into one. Nor is it a state to keep up. Maintenance is the split. Clarity is never absent; it is only not abstracted out and reified, and nothing has to be maintained. And conventionally, once the instants are lined up, I still say "I acted, and I meet the fruit": neither the same nor different, neither carried nor cut.

Try it with the gap. Recall something you did years ago whose result you live with now. Notice the pull to ask how it got here, and the feeling of a missing gap between then and now. Look at that feeling itself. Is the gap found anywhere, or only felt once then and now are taken as two things standing on their own? Stay with it until the asking loosens. The act still bore its fruit.

Where I part from some traditions

I keep these on purpose. They are not errors, but places where readers should know I take a position, and should read the sources for themselves.

I read spontaneous presence as dependent arising itself. Dzogchen defines it as the ground's presence, not made by causes and conditions; I read that as Nāgārjuna's "unborn by nature", so I do not see a departure at the core. The difference left is with a reading that makes it an unconditioned ground with qualities of its own, which would be the own-nature MMK 15.1–2 refutes. Read: Longchenpa's Treasury of the Supreme Vehicle (Theg mchog mdzod) and Treasury of Words and Meanings (Tshig don mdzod); van Schaik, Approaching the Great Perfection; Higgins, The Philosophical Foundations of Classical rDzogs chen; Duckworth, Mipam on Buddha-Nature.
I narrow "beyond cause and effect" to "beyond intrinsic cause and effect". In its own setting the phrase is mainly about path and fruit. Read: Lobel, Allowing Spontaneity; Butters, Illuminating the Goal.
I read the ground's energy and display with nothing behind them. Traditional texts speak of the ground's own dynamism. Read: Longchenpa as above; Mipham's Beacon of Certainty (Pettit).
I need no bridge for karma. Tsongkhapa posits disintegratedness as a functioning thing, and has the imprints rest on the mere I; Mipham keeps conventional bridges (reflexive awareness, and probably the storehouse). I keep the mere I only as the conventional person. Read: Tsongkhapa, Ocean of Reasoning (Garfield and Samten), and his Illumination of the Thought on MA 6; the eight difficult points; Gorampa's critique; Williams, The Reflexive Nature of Awareness: A Tibetan Madhyamaka Defence; Mascarello, "Tsong-kha-pa and Mi-pham: A Multidimensional Controversy".
Some of my earlier lines leaned towards regularity. My best wording keeps a designated capacity. Read: Garfield (1994) and his critics; Hopkins, Meditation on Emptiness, on functioning things.
I read Dzogchen and Madhyamaka as one view. I treat them as two descriptions of one appearing. Some lineages hold Dzogchen as its own vehicle, beyond Madhyamaka (Canon View, Part II point 11).

Words to know

Causal efficacy (arthakriyā): the ability to perform a function. As I use it, validly functioning and never found from its own side.

Causal power: a force taken to sit in the cause from its own side and to be handed to the effect. Never found.

Condition (pratyaya): a factor in dependence on which something arises; named a condition because of the effect (MMK 1.5).

Production from its own side: a cause that exists by itself making an effect that exists by itself. What MMK 1.1 refuses.

Framework: a way of cutting appearing into parts for explaining or doing something, which works within shared agreements and a setting (a kitchen, a laboratory, a scale). Its parts appear as parts only in relation to it.

Non-implicative negation (prasajya-pratiṣedha, med dgag): a denial that puts nothing in place of what it denies.

Disintegratedness (zhig pa): in Tsongkhapa, the having-ceased of an action, held to be a functioning thing that links action to fruit.

Mere I: in Tsongkhapa, the I merely designated in dependence on the aggregates; not found, yet validly functioning as the one who acts and meets the fruit.

Spontaneous presence (lhun grub): as I use it, appearing complete, owing nothing to a hidden source, never uncaused. In many traditional readings, the ground's presence, not made by causes and conditions. I read that as "unborn by nature".

Display (rtsal, rol pa): as I use it, dependent arising vivid and unobstructed, with nothing behind it.