The ten-causal framework (十因) in the *Yogācārabhūmi Śāstra* (《瑜伽师地论》, T1579) is one of the most systematic causal maps in the Buddhist tradition. It organises every condition for a dharma's arising, continuation, and functioning into ten interlocking perspectives. The tenth — *avirodha-hetu*, "non-obstructing condition," translated as 不相违因 — is also the most quietly radical. It says, in effect: sometimes the *reason* something can come into being is not that something is pushing it from behind, but that what would have been blocking it from in front is simply *not there*. Mature Buddhist practice learns to recognize this moment, and the contemporary world is, perhaps more than any other, starving for it.
一、This Concept Is Saying
1. Its place in the Ten Causes
The Ten Causes are listed in *Yogācārabhūmi* as: 随说因 (condition of verbal designation), 观待因 (condition of object-dependence), 牵引因 (condition of pulling-forth, i.e., the latent seed), 生起因 (condition of actual arising, i.e., the active seed), 摄受因 (condition of appropriation), 引发因 (condition of sequential arousal), 定异因 (condition of fixed determination), 同事因 (condition of co-operation), 相违因 (condition of obstruction), and 不相违因 (non-obstructing condition).
The last two form a pair. *Saṃvighāta-hetu* / 相违因 addresses the case where an obstruction *is* present and therefore the dharma cannot arise. *Avirodha-hetu* / 不相违因 addresses the complementary case: the obstruction is absent or has departed, and therefore the dharma *can* arise. The classical formula is spare: "依无障碍因依处，施设不相违因" — "Based on the basis of *unobstructed* condition, the non-obstructing cause is established." And again: "此障碍因若阙、若离，名不相违因" — "When the obstructing condition is either absent (阙) or has departed (离), it is called the non-obstructing cause."
The Sūtra applies this across all three realms plus the unconditioned: "如欲系法，如是色、无色系及不系法亦尔" — "As with dharmas bound to the desire-realm, so with dharmas bound to the form-realm, the formless-realm, and the unconditioned." This is not a teaching about worldly matters only. It reaches all the way to the unconditioned dharmas (无为法), which is a strong doctrinal signal that the principle is being treated as a structural feature of how anything becomes possible at all.
2. The five verbs: 生, 得, 成, 办, 用
A crucial line in the text reads: "如生，如是得、成、办、用亦尔" — "As with arising, so with obtaining, establishing, accomplishing, and functioning." These are not five different non-obstructing causes. They are five applications of the same principle. The non-obstructing condition can be invoked any time a dharma is about to:
- 生 (arise) — come into being at all; - 得 (be obtained) — be acquired or come into one's possession; - 成 (be established) — take durable form; - 办 (be accomplished) — be brought to completion; - 用 (function) — actually operate and bear fruit.
This is a far more expansive scope than the English word "arise" suggests. The Chinese tradition is careful to extend the principle from the moment of first appearance all the way to the moment of effective use. Something can be *obtained* and yet not yet *established*; *established* and yet not yet *functioning*. Each transition is its own little threshold, and at each threshold the question of whether an obstruction is present recurs.
3. 若阙 versus 若离: two modes of freedom
The text's compression on this point is a teaching in itself: "若阙、若离." Two distinct ways of being unblocked.
- 若阙 (kuè) — the obstructing condition is *lacking, absent, missing*. It never showed up in the first place in any relevant way, or it never had the form needed to obstruct here. - 若离 (lí) — the obstructing condition was present, but has *departed, removed, gone away*. It was there; it interfered; it has since been cleared.
This distinction is not pedantic. *阙* and *离* are different karmic and practical situations. A person who was never exposed to environmental trauma has a 若阙 relationship to that trauma. A person who was exposed but has worked through it has 若离. Both can have the freedom to begin something new, but the texture of that freedom — what it implies for spiritual work, what residual habituation remains, what subtle traces still linger as "seeds" in the Yogācāra sense — is different. The text does not say these are equivalent; it says both are named by the same term because at the moment of the *new* dharma's arising, the obstruction is not in the way.
4. Six kinds of contradiction, narrowed to one
The treatise elsewhere lists six kinds of 相违 (contradiction or mutual opposition): 语言相违 (verbal contradiction), 道理相违 (doctrinal contradiction), 生起相违 (arising-contradiction), 同处相违 (contradiction by sharing the same locus), 怨敌相违 (enemy-contradiction), 障治相违 (contradiction between an obstruction and its remedy). But in the context of the tenth cause, the text explicitly narrows: "于此义中，正意唯取生起相违" — "In this meaning, the proper referent is only arising-contradiction."
This is an important disambiguation. The five *other* types of contradiction do exist in the analysis. But for the purpose of *defining* the non-obstructing condition, only one is in view: the situation where the conditions that would *generate* the dharma are missing, while the conditions that would *obstruct its generation* are gathered together. The non-obstructing condition is, by definition, the negation of *this specific* obstacle, not a blanket absence of all opposition.
5. How it is classified: convenient cause, predominant condition
The ten causes are themselves grouped into two: 能生因 (causes that directly produce) — namely the pulling-forth seed (牵引因) and the active seed (生起因) — and 方便因 (convenient/auxiliary causes) — everything else. 不相违因 falls under 方便因. And when this two-fold scheme is mapped onto the four conditions (四缘), 能生因 maps to 因缘 (causal condition), while 方便因 maps to 增上缘 (predominant condition). Therefore 不相违因 is, in the four-conditions framework, a predominant condition (增上缘).
This classification is the conceptual clincher. 不相违因 is *not* framed as the seed that brings the dharma into existence. It is framed as the *background condition* that, by virtue of not obstructing, allows the seed to actually do its work. The seed (生起因) is on the causal-condition side; the unobstructedness is on the predominant-condition side. The dharma needs both. The non-obstructing condition is the silent partner that makes the seed heard.
6. The on-the-nose examples: the mind at work
The treatise offers a particularly vivid illustration through the arising of minds (心法). When a sense-contact (触) is of a kind that facilitates pleasurable feeling (乐受), then minds concomitant with painful feeling (苦受) or neutral feeling (不苦不乐受) cannot arise — they are excluded by the very nature of what is present. Likewise, when a mind is conjoined with the entanglement of greed (贪缠), a mind conjoined with the entanglement of hatred (瞋缠) cannot arise: the two are mutually exclusive.
These are stated as examples of *相违令心不得生* — "contradiction causing the mind not to arise." But the text is using them to anchor the more general principle. Turn the situation around: when the pleasurable contact is *not* present, the painful/neutral minds are *not* obstructed and can arise. When greed is *not* linked to this mind, hatred is not obstructed. The non-obstructing condition is precisely this — the texture of the present moment that, by not matching the form of the obstruction, leaves the door open.
二、Walking It Through Daily Life
Most dharmas in the texts are not abstract metaphysics. They are pointed at things you can recognize in your own afternoon. Let me walk through 不相违因 with several concrete scenes, mapping each element of the definition rigorously.
Scene 1: Trying to start a meditation practice
You have decided to meditate. In the Yogācāra sense, this is a dharma with 生, 得, 成, 办, 用 to track.
生 (arising). The practice actually begins when you sit down. What is the *arc* of the non-obstructing condition here? The obstructing condition — in this 若阙 / 若离 frame — might be: a phone that keeps vibrating, a child who needs something every eight minutes, a body that is in pain, a mind that is already hijacked by the day's anxieties. If none of these are present (阙), or if they have been deliberately settled (离) — phone face-down, child asleep, pain acknowledged, breath chosen — the practice can arise. Note: the practice's arising is not *caused* by the phone being silent. The phone being silent is a *predominant condition*, a 增上缘. It is the unobstructed foreground that lets the seed of mindfulness (which is the real 能生因) actually get going.
得 (obtaining). Access to a teacher, a tradition, a method. Here the obstruction might be "I don't know anyone who knows this" or "I can't find a beginner-friendly practice." What does 不相违因 look like here? When the relevant obstruction is absent or has been cleared — a friend has recommended a teacher, a library has a book, a beginner session is open — the dharma can be obtained. The teacher was not produced by the absence of obstruction; the teacher was already there. The unobstructed path to the teacher is what is named.
成 (establishing), 办 (accomplishing), 用 (functioning). Establishing the practice as a daily habit, completing a retreat, and — the moment that matters most — having the practice actually *function* when you are furious at your partner or terrified on the way to a medical appointment. Each of these is a separate threshold. A meditation can be *obtained* (you learned it in a workshop) and yet not yet *established* (you don't actually do it on ordinary evenings). It can be *established* (you sit daily) and yet not yet *functioning* (when the chips are down, you don't remember a single instruction). At each threshold, the same logic applies: the obstruction that would prevent *this specific transition* must be absent or removed.
The 若阙 / 若离 distinction here. Some people grow up in households where stillness is normal — the 若阙 case. Other people grow up in households where stillness is unknown, even threatening, and they have to slowly, painfully build it through years of practice — the 若离 case. Both can meditate. The non-obstructing condition is *present* in both. The path to its presence is different.
Scene 2: A creative project at work
You have a deadline Friday. You want to write a proposal. This is a dharma with 生得成办用.
- 生 — the first sentence appears. The obstruction might be: the open-plan office's constant chatter, your own hunger, an unfinished fight with a colleague. When these are absent or have been removed — you've come in early, you've eaten, you've decided to put the fight aside for two hours — the dharma can arise. - 得 — you get the data you need. The obstruction is "the analyst is on vacation." When the analyst is back (若离), or when you find another source (若阙 a different obstruction), the dharma can be obtained. - 成 — the proposal takes coherent shape. The obstruction is "I keep getting pulled into reactive email." When email is closed, the dharma can be established. - 办 — the proposal is finished, sent, accepted. - 用 — the proposal actually serves the purpose it was meant to serve: the partnership opens, the client comes in, the team gets staffed.
The non-obstructing condition is not the same thing at each stage. It is "in the moment, the obstruction specific to *this* dharma at *this* threshold is not there."
Scene 3: The mind examples — the simplest and most radical
The text's examples of mutually exclusive minds are perhaps the easiest to recognize in your own interior:
- Pleasurable contact excluding painful minds. When you are genuinely enjoying a walk in the woods, the brooding mind about the email you didn't send simply *cannot* occupy the foreground. The two are not both present at once. This is what the text means by 相违令心不得生. The non-obstructing condition for the enjoyment-mind is not "you must defeat the brooding" — it is the non-arising of brooding. You did not destroy the brooding; you did not even win against it. The conditions for its arising were simply not gathered. (In 若阙 / 若离 language: sometimes the brooding's conditions were never met in the first place; sometimes they were present in the office and have now been left behind.)
- Greed-mind excluding hatred-mind. When you are genuinely sunk in a desire — scrolling through a marketplace for a thing you want to buy — the resentment-mind about your partner is, in that moment, not arising. This is not because you have transcended resentment. It is because the mind, in Yogācāra terms, can only be properly shaped by one such "entanglement" at a time. The non-obstructing condition for the desire-mind is the non-arising of the resentment-mind. The reverse is also true: when genuine resentment is alive, the desire-mind has nothing to grip onto.
This is, by the way, where the contemporary phrase "you can't be in two places at once" turns out to point at something deeper than people usually mean by it. The mind has a structural oneness at any given moment; the foreground is single; what is in the foreground, by being in the foreground, *is* the non-obstructing condition for itself and the obstructing condition for its alternatives. The non-obstructing condition is not nothing — it is the lived texture of what is here, which is leaving room for one thing and not another.
The classic mis-mapping to watch out for here
Contemporary readers often hear "non-obstructing condition" and think *it means the absence of all difficulty*. This is the mis-mapping. The text is precise: the obstruction in view is the 生起相违 — the kind that prevents this specific dharma from arising. Not all difficulties are obstructions. A difficult situation can be exactly the predominant condition that lets a virtuous dharma arise. The ascent of a mountain is not an obstruction to the mountain-top view; it is its condition. The entire concept of 不相违因 presupposes that we are talking about a *specific* dharma and a *specific* obstruction, not a generic battle between "things being easy" and "things being hard."
三、Why Contemporary People Need This Concept
1. The default modern mode is "add the right thing"
Modern life trains us to think that the reason a desired outcome is not here is that we have not yet *added* the right input. Not enough discipline: add a productivity app. Not enough calm: add a meditation subscription. Not enough connection: add a dating app. Not enough sleep: add a sleep supplement. The model is: cause = positive input → result.
不相违因 offers a different model. Sometimes the reason the desired outcome is not here is that there is something *in the way* — and the mature spiritual response is to address the obstruction, not to add yet another positive input. The mind already has the seed of mindfulness (the 能生因). What it needs is the non-obstructing foreground — the absence of the specific thing that would prevent mindfulness from arising right now. Recommending another app to someone who is already overstimulated is, in this frame, adding a tenth obstruction to a field that already has nine. The right move is often to remove one.
This is structurally different from "be passive" or "do nothing." Removing an obstruction is itself an action. Sometimes it is the most skillful action available: closing the tab, ending the conversation, leaving the room, putting the phone in another room, declining the meeting. The non-obstructing condition is established *by* the act of removing the obstruction. The 若离 case is precisely the case of *someone doing something* to clear the way.
2. The 若阙 / 若离 distinction is therapeutically useful
In contemporary psychotherapy and trauma-informed practice, the distinction between *阙* (never having the obstruction as a shaping force) and *离* (having had it, and having it no longer) is increasingly recognized. People who did not grow up with chronic threat have a different relationship to safety than people who did but have worked through it. Both can feel safe; the phenomenology is not the same. The Yogācāra terminology — never having the obstruction be conditioned, versus having conditioned it and then un-conditioned it — names this difference neatly. Spiritual practice is *not* the same for the two cases. The 若阙 person may have less to clear but also less ability to recognize what they are clearing. The 若离 person may have more to clear but also a more refined sensitivity to it.
3. The widening to the unconditioned (不系法) is the profound move
The fact that the text extends the principle to *不系法* — the unconditioned dharmas, including the cessation of defilements and the Buddha's own unconditioned qualities — is not a peripheral note. It is the doctrinal heart. If the non-obstructing condition applies to the arising of even the unconditioned, then even *liberation* in some sense is not produced by a positive push. It is allowed by the absence of the obstructions that would prevent it. This is a deeply counter-intuitive insight in a culture that wants liberation to be the result of *more* effort, *more* discipline, *more* spiritual achievement. The text suggests, with characteristic restraint, that the final movement is also a matter of *not obstructing*. The practitioner does not, ultimately, *make* awakening happen. The practitioner stops being the obstruction to awakening. Awakening itself is the seed (能生因); the unobstructed foreground is the predominant condition.
This is one of the most important places in Buddhist philosophy where the *negative* (removal, absence, non-obstruction) is treated as having causal efficacy. It is not nihilism — there is a real effect, the arising of a real dharma. But the effect is named from the side of what was *cleared*, not from the side of what was *added*.
4. The contemporary analogy — and its limit
The way an algorithm works might be a partial analogy: a recommendation system does not *cause* you to watch a video; it surfaces the video into a foreground that is not obstructed by friction. The video's "arising" in your attention is the combination of your pre-existing interests (the 能生因, the seed) with the absence of friction (the unobstructed predominant condition). When the algorithm is upgraded or replaced, the foreground changes; the seeds remain latent. This is a useful analogy for *the structure* of the principle.
But the analogy is partial and breaks at the moral-spiritual level. An algorithm chooses what to surface based on engagement metrics; a practitioner's awareness chooses what to surface based on ethical evaluation and the cultivation of what is wholesome. The concept of 不相违因 in the *Yogācāra* sense is ethically charged in a way that the algorithm is not. The text would not accept that "any unobstructed dharma arising is fine" — the explicit reference to greed-minds and hatred-minds and the *desirable* (sensual pleasure) vs. the *undesirable* (pain, hatred) shows that the principle is being framed within a moral-practical horizon. The unconditioned dharmas being included is a strong signal: the principle is in service of awakening, not in service of any arbitrary unobstructed arising.
四、Common Misreadings and Clarifications
Misreading 1: "Non-obstructing condition" means "no cause at all"
This is the most common and most damaging misreading. People read "absence of obstruction" and think the text is saying that some dharmas just arise spontaneously, without cause. The text is *not* saying this. It is saying that the *obstructing* condition is absent or removed, and the *producing* condition (能生因, the seed) does the actual generative work. 不相违因 is a 增上缘 — a predominant condition — not a replacement for the 因缘. The dharma still has its seed. What 不相违因 does is get out of the seed's way.
If you find yourself thinking "things just happen," you have collapsed the seed into the unobstructedness. The Yogācāra would insist: the seed is intact and operative; the foreground is simply clear.
Misreading 2: "Non-obstructing condition" means "external obstacles only"
The text's examples are explicitly *mental* — greedy minds and hateful minds, pleasure-contact and pain-contact. The obstruction that 不相违因 addresses is not only the external blocked door. The most important obstructions are internal: the obsessive loop, the prejudice, the conditioned reflex, the exhaustion. The 若阙 / 若离 distinction is, in many practical cases, about the mind's habitual foreground, not about the room's physical layout.
Misreading 3: All six types of contradiction are what is meant here
The text lists six types of 相违 but explicitly narrows to 生起相违 (arising-contradiction) for the purpose of the tenth cause. If you apply 不相违因 to *all* six — treating it as "absence of any kind of contradiction" — you have read the definition too widely. Specifically: the absence of *verbal* contradiction (everyone agreeing with your words) is not what 不相违因 is about. The absence of *doctrinal* contradiction (your view being internally consistent) is not what 不相违因 is about. What is meant is precisely the absence of the *arising* contradiction — the conditions that would prevent this dharma from coming into being.
In practical terms: people often say "I was obstructed from doing the right thing because of contradiction." If the contradiction is *verbal* (someone disagreed with my words), that is not the obstruction that 不相违因 names. If the contradiction is *arising* (the conditions for my action were not gathered, or the actual obstacles were actively present), then *this* is the obstruction that the non-obstructing condition addresses.
Misreading 4: The若阙 and 若离 are the same
The text pairs them with 若 ("either / if"), treating them as alternative ways the obstruction can be absent. But they are not the same case. *阙* is the case where the obstruction was never substantively present. *离* is the case where the obstruction was present and has been removed. The spiritual textures — and the residual karmic traces — differ. Conflating them flattens the text. The 若离 case is in fact the very heart of what the Buddhist path is doing: taking the obstructions that habitually arise and *actively removing* them through practice. The 若阙 case is what we more passively enjoy. Both are honored in the term 不相违因, but the work of cultivation is, in the main, the work of *离*.
Misreading 5: "Non-obstructing" means "non-existent"
In English, "non-obstructing" can sound like "irrelevant" or "insubstantial." The Chinese term 不相违 (literally "not mutually opposed") is more precise. The non-obstructing condition is the condition of *not being in opposition to* the dharma's arising. It is itself a real condition — it is the establishing (施设) of a categorical description on the basis (依处) of actual featural unopposedness. The text is positive about this: it is a "施设" (a designation of something real), not a "non-thing." The unobstructed foreground is a real state of affairs. It is not nihilistic nothing.
Misreading 6: The non-obstructing condition is something I can directly "do"
This is subtle. The non-obstructing condition is not a *direct action*; it is the *state of affairs* of obstruction not being present. What we *do* is remove the obstruction. What results is the non-obstructing condition. The relationship is analogous to the relationship between "shutting the door" and "the room being quiet." Shutting the door is an action; the room being quiet is the resulting state. The text emphasizes the state, because the state is what is being designated as the condition for the dharma's arising.
In practice, this means: if you find yourself unable to meditate, unable to act, unable to wake up to what is here, the question is often not "what positive input do I need to add?" but "what is the specific obstruction that is preventing this?" Once the obstruction is identified, the removal can be addressed. The state of unobstructedness takes care of itself once the obstruction is out of the way.
Coda
The ten-causal system of the *Yogācāra* is, in the end, a teaching about how to examine any situation that is on the verge of becoming. The first cause is about language. The next few are about how seeds work. The middle ones are about how the world conditions the world. The ninth and tenth are about the threshold: what is gathering on the threshold, and what is not. The ninth cause — 相违因 — names the obstructions that are right there, in front of the door. The tenth cause — 不相违因 — names the situation in which the obstruction is not there, and the dharma can step through.
To learn to recognize 不相违因 is to learn a different kind of spiritual action: the action of *not obstructing*, the action of stepping aside, the action of clearing the foreground. In a culture that has trained us to constantly *add* — more input, more stimulation, more productivity, more achievement, more spiritual practice — the Yogācāra's tenth cause is a quiet but insistent reminder. Sometimes the most powerful thing to do is to step out of the way of the dharma that is already trying to arise. The seed is already there. The unobstructed foreground is what it is waiting for.