What This Concept Is About
諸行相 (saṃskāra-lakṣaṇa, "the marks of conditioned phenomena"), taken apart literally, is not complicated: 諸行 (sarva-saṃskārāḥ, "all conditioned formations") refers to every conditioned fabrication — the myriad things that arise, cease, and transform; 相 (lakṣaṇa, "mark") refers to the qualities and characteristics that manifest on them. What this concept asks is something that looks simple but is in fact extremely profound: what exactly is the relationship between the characteristics of 無常 (anitya, "impermanence"), 苦 (duḥkha, "suffering"), and 無我 (anātman, "non-self") that appear on phenomena, and the phenomena themselves?
The 《解深密經》 (Saṃdhinirmocana-sūtra, "Sūtra of the Explanation of the Profound Secrets") answers this question with remarkable decisiveness:
不易施設与彼行等一相异相
*"It cannot be properly set forth that [the marks] are a mark identical to, or different from, those conditioned phenomena."*
— one can neither rightly say they are "entirely the same," nor rightly say they are "entirely different." This judgment of "neither one nor different" may look like a play on words, but what it presses upon is the very entrance to the entire path of liberation.
The sūtra first sets out the three most basic marks:
- 一切行上无常常 — every conditioned, arising-and-ceasing thing manifests the mark of "changing right now, bound to decay in the end"; - 一切有漏法上苦性 — everything tainted by greed, aversion, and delusion manifests the mark of "oppression and instability" (note: the mark of suffering attaches only to 有漏法 (sāsrava-dharma, "contaminated dharmas"), not to the pure 無漏法 (anāsrava-dharma, "uncontaminated dharmas")); - 一切法上补特伽罗无我性 — no phenomenon — including 補特伽羅 (pudgala, "persons"), thoughts, emotions, states — has an "independently existing, self-mastering, eternally unchanging" subject.
These three are not abstract propositions in Buddhist philosophy; they are the "original face of things" that ordinary people have been touching all along in daily experience, yet rarely recognize clearly.
The sūtra then says these features are:
微细、甚深，超过诸法一异性相，难可通达
*"Subtle, profound, surpassing the marks of identity and difference of all dharmas, difficult to penetrate and reach."*
— they are extremely subtle and extremely profound, exceeding the ordinary framework of "if it is A it is not B; if it is B it is not A," and are therefore hard to see through. So that people would not stumble on either of these two side-paths, the World-Honored One set up four sets of observation, refuting at once the two extremes of "entirely identical" (都無異) and "entirely different" (一向異).
First set: if entirely identical, then anyone who sees impermanence, suffering, and non-self should already be liberated — but plainly this is not the case; if entirely different, then one who sees the truth (見諦者) should not be able to remove the marks of conditioned phenomena, nor be released from 相縛 (nimitta-bandhana, "the bondage of marks") and 麁重縛 (dauṣṭhulya-bandhana, "the bondage of coarseness") — but plainly this is also not the case: those who see the truth do indeed sever them.
Second set: if entirely identical, then 勝義諦相 (paramārtha-satya-lakṣaṇa, "the mark of the ultimate truth," the most fundamental reality) would fall into defilement along with the marks of conditioned phenomena — but the mark of the ultimate truth is itself pure; if entirely different, then the common mark of conditioned phenomena could not be called the mark of the ultimate truth — but the sūtra explicitly says:
諸行共相方名胜义谛相
*"It is the common mark of all conditioned phenomena that is called the mark of the ultimate truth."*
So this alternative also does not hold.
Third set: if entirely identical, all marks would have no distinctions, and practitioners of contemplation would have no need to go further; if entirely different, then conditioned phenomena could only display the nature of non-self and the absence of self-nature, and could not at the same time bear both defiled and pure marks — but in fact, the deeper the contemplation, the clearer the distinctions among the marks become, and the contemplative continues to seek deeper.
Fourth set: the World-Honored One says of himself that with regard to this mark of the ultimate truth, which is 「微细、极微细，甚深、极甚深，难通达、极难通达，超过诸法一异性相」 (subtle, extremely subtle; profound, extremely profound; difficult to penetrate, extremely difficult to penetrate; surpassing the marks of identity and difference of all dharmas), he is 現正等覺 (abhisambuddha, "now fully awakened") — he is at this very moment perfectly cognizing it. Its nature is from the outset incapable of being conceptually established as "one" or "different."
To make this "neither one nor different" tangible as experience, the sūtra offers nine similes: the brilliant whiteness on a conch shell, the yellow color on gold, the beautiful melody in the sound of a 箜篌 (konghou, an ancient Chinese harp), the wonderful fragrance of black 沈香 (agarwood), the pungency of pepper, the insipidness of 訶梨 (harītaka, myrobalan), the softness of 蠧羅綿 (fine cotton wadding), the 醍醐 (tíhú, ghee) that rises on cooked butter — with "impermanence on all conditioned phenomena, suffering on all contaminated dharmas, and pudgala-non-self on all dharmas" as the ninth example. Each simile says the same thing — that quality is neither the thing itself (whiteness is not the conch, yellowness is not the gold), nor is it separable from the thing (apart from the conch you have no whiteness to see; apart from the gold you cannot find the yellowness). The sūtra also gives in passing the example of the "mark of non-calm and mark of defilement" on 貪、瞋、癡 (greed, aversion, delusion) — greed's agitation and murkiness is neither identical to greed itself, nor separable from it.
Putting all this together, 諸行相 is saying: on everything before you that changes, there is a layer of "impermanence, suffering, non-self" affixed; but that layer is not pasted on from outside — it grows out of the things themselves; you can neither peel it off to examine it alone, nor equate it with the thing itself.
It is directly connected with the two bondages of 相縛 and 麁重縛 — the former being the grasping that clings tightly to "things should be this way," the latter being the heavy force that greed, aversion, and delusion deposit deep in body and mind. That one who sees the truth can "remove the marks of conditioned phenomena and be released from the bondage of marks and the bondage of coarseness" — recognizing these three marks and not being dragged along by them are two faces of the same thing.
Walking Through It in Daily Life
This still sounds abstract. Let me pull it down into a few concrete scenarios and walk through them.
場景一：一段让你又爱又累的关系。 (Scene One: A relationship that both loves and exhausts you.)
Suppose you are in an intimate relationship, and the other person has parts that make you feel deeply at ease and parts that make you deeply weary. Sometimes a voice in your head says: "That's just who they are." A while later, an opposite voice emerges: "That's not who they are; they can change."
The first voice draws a line of "entirely identical" between the actions and the marks — you take the changing, impermanent parts of the other person as an unchangeable "essence," so their weariness gets read as "they are just selfish." The second voice goes to the other extreme — you try to peel the "selfishness" completely apart from the "love," insisting that "deep down they are good; it's just that right now they are this way." But in fact, the marks can neither be reduced to the actions themselves (they are not only weariness, nor only love), nor can they be completely extracted from the person and stored elsewhere as a "real them" (love and weariness grow on them; you cannot tear them apart).
The "impermanence on all conditioned phenomena" in the sūtra, here, means: you cannot fix them with any single present state — this is the first layer of the meaning that the marks are neither completely identical to, nor completely different from, the actions. If you forcefully equate the marks with the actions ("they are just selfish"), a sense of despair arises in your mind (this is precisely the flavor of the mark of suffering rising); if you forcefully separate the marks from the actions ("they haven't really changed; I just wasn't seeing it"), a sense of self-deception arises.
場景二：一份加班到深夜的工作。 (Scene Two: A job that keeps you working late into the night.)
Suppose you have recently taken on a big project and have been working until two or three in the morning for weeks on end. You observe an interesting psychological pendulum: Monday morning you are elated, thinking "this is my career, this is my destiny," as if you had drawn an equal sign between the work and your life; Wednesday late at night you are particularly dejected, thinking "none of this has any meaning; I'll quit tomorrow" — both sides are improper correspondences between the marks and the actions.
Monday morning's elation corresponds to the attachment of "entirely identical" — the fatigue and the meaning of the work are completely equated with me; Wednesday midnight's dejection corresponds to the attachment of "entirely different" — the meaning of the work and the fatigue of the work are completely separated, mutually irrelevant. What actually happens is closer to what the sūtra describes: the fatigue of the work, the meaning of the work, the responsibility of the work, the sense of achievement of the work — these marks grow on this job itself; they are not pasted on from outside; you neither need to separate them from the work and store away a "real job," nor equate the work with any single one of them.
場景三：刷手机。 (Scene Three: Scrolling on your phone.)
Have you noticed that while scrolling on your phone, there is a feeling of "I am relaxing," but at the same time, the fatigue of your body, the decline of your eyesight, and the sense of disappearing time are all piling up there? The two marks of "relaxing" and "being consumed" manifest simultaneously on the event of "scrolling on the phone." They are neither the same thing (you are not only relaxing, nor only being consumed), nor two independently existing things (you cannot peel off "relaxing" and keep it separately). What you can do is acknowledge that they grow here together, and then see clearly the texture of each — at that moment, the marks are "seen," not "grasped."
場景四：自我认同。 (Scene Four: Self-identity.)
Perhaps the hardest gate is this one: the present you — a certain professional identity, a role in a certain relationship, a set of life habits, a certain emotional pattern — you sometimes decide "this is me" (the attachment of "entirely identical"); at other times the thought arises "that's not me; the real me is elsewhere" (the attachment of "entirely different"). The former brings rigidity and fear; the latter brings drifting and emptiness.
The "pudgala-non-self" in the sūtra, in this scenario, is no longer an abstract proposition — it points to the fact that there is no independently existing, eternally unchanging "I" behind these changes pulling the strings; but neither are these changes without continuity, without anything at all.
In these scenarios, what needs special attention is: the place where people most commonly mis-map is understanding "non-self" as "equals nothing at all." This is hearing "the marks of conditioned phenomena are not identical to conditioned phenomena" as "the marks deny the existence of conditioned phenomena," and then fleeing into nihilism; or hearing "the marks of conditioned phenomena are not different from conditioned phenomena" as "the marks are just another name for conditioned phenomena," and then fleeing into fatalism. Both are what the sūtra explicitly refutes as 「愚癡、顽钝、不明、不善、不如理行」 (foolish, dull, unclear, unwholesome, irrational conduct).
Why Contemporary People Need It
This concept has particularly practical relevance for contemporary people, I think, in three places.
First, it addresses the thinking habit that modern people are best at and most exhausted by — "either-or." Contemporary society is full of such dichotomies: are you progressive or conservative, successful or failed, is this relationship worth it or not, is this person trustworthy or not. Our language, algorithms, and community structures are constantly rewarding this kind of either-or judgment. And the concept of 諸行相 steps directly on the ground beneath "either-or" — it does not ask you to choose between two extremes, but tells you both extremes are wrong, and that the distance between them is not something your thinking can quantify. It asks you to develop a capacity for awareness that can hold "both is and is not, and yet not fully is and not fully is not" — this is a rather scarce cognitive training in contemporary times.
Second, it corresponds to modern people's excessive attachment to "identity." Social media, career advancement, persona management — these mechanisms all encourage us to compress "I" into a fixed image that can be displayed, recognized, and consumed. This is precisely the reverse operation of equating the actions with the marks: you work hard to make your "mark" (the image seen by others) equal to your "actions" (the actual you). The result is that any change that does not fit this image triggers panic — "I've changed; am I no longer 'me'?" What the dharma of 諸行相 gives is not a placebo; it gives a capacity to see through this attachment: change loses nothing, because there was never a fixed mark that "ought to be thus."
Third, it relates to contemporary people's way of seeking "meaning." Modern people often treat meaning as something that can exist independently of experience — finding meaning is like finding an independent, self-existing label that can be pasted onto life. But 諸行相 says: meaning, value, and belonging — these "marks" grow on your life experience; they are neither pasted on from outside, nor can they be peeled away from life itself. Asking "does this matter have meaning independent of me?" — the question itself presupposes that "meaning" can exist detached from "the matter" — and the four sets of observation in the sūtra are precisely meant to dismantle this presupposition.
It should be noted: here I use contemporary experience as a comparison so that people can enter this concept — this is not saying that modern science "has proven" Buddhism. We cannot yet fully describe the nature of 諸行相 with neuroscience or computer algorithms — even what vocabulary to use for it, the sūtra itself says is "difficult to penetrate." Contemporary neuroscience's research on the brain mechanisms of the "sense of self," complexity science's discussions of emergence — these have some surface-structure resonance with "neither one nor different," but they are two different systems of discourse and cannot be simply equated. This quality of "hard to put into words, yet directly recognizable through practice" is precisely the core of this concept — it is for practitioners, not for philosophers.
Common Misreadings and Clarifications
誤讀一：把諸行相當成「無常、苦、無我」的另一個名字。 (Misreading One: Taking 諸行相 as another name for "impermanence, suffering, non-self.")
This is the typical error of drawing an equal sign between the actions and the marks. The result: impermanence becomes "everything is empty," suffering becomes "everything is painful," non-self becomes "nothing has meaning." The end of this road is not liberation; it is a melancholy wrapped in philosophical clothing.
Clarification: the marks manifest on the actions, but the marks are not equal to the actions. Impermanence does not mean "nothing exists"; it means "what exists is all changing." Suffering does not mean "experience is bad"; it means "experience defiled by greed, aversion, and delusion is unstable" (note: the mark of suffering does not attach to the pure uncontaminated dharmas). Non-self does not mean "there is no person"; it means "there is no independently existing, self-mastering, eternally unchanging subject." None of the three denies anything; each points to a certain quality of experience itself — a quality that can neither be reduced to "nothing at all," nor exaggerated into "everything is so terrible."
誤讀二：把諸行相當成一種獨立的、超越的形而上屬性。 (Misreading Two: Taking 諸行相 as an independent, transcendent metaphysical attribute.)
This is the typical error of completely separating the actions from the marks — commonly seen in discussions that over-philosophize Buddhism. The result: believing that above impermanent things there is another thing called "impermanence-nature," above suffering experience another thing called "suffering-nature," above persons another thing called "non-self-nature," and that these "natures" exist independently and can be grasped by some special wisdom. This is in fact reifying the marks — it is the attachment of "entirely different" that the sūtra explicitly refutes.
Clarification: the eight similes in the sūtra (the whiteness on the conch, the yellowness on the gold, the pungency of the pepper) all say the same thing — the whiteness is the whiteness on the conch; apart from that conch you have no layer of whiteness to take out and look at separately. Suffering is the oppression in this specific experience; it is not a separate "suffering-nature" floating above all experiences. This does have some resonance with the modern scientific understanding that "properties cannot exist independently of concrete things," but science cannot directly "prove" this Buddhist dharma — they are two different systems of discourse and cannot be simply connected.
誤讀三：把諸行相當成「諸行無常、諸法無我」的簡稱，從而把它讀成一種世界觀宣言。 (Misreading Three: Taking 諸行相 as an abbreviation of "all conditioned phenomena are impermanent, all dharmas are non-self," and thereby reading it as a worldview declaration.)
This misreading is the most dangerous, because it mistakes an insight for practice — one that can change how you see things — for a statement about the nature of the universe. Once read as a worldview declaration, 諸行相 degenerates into a metaphysical game, with no connection to how you deal with colleagues every day, how you reply to messages, how you face the end of a relationship.
Clarification: 諸行相 is an entrance to practice, not cosmology. Its actual function is to let you recognize, on every concrete experience: this thing is changing (impermanence), this thing is oppressed because it has been defiled by greed, aversion, and delusion (suffering), this thing has no fixed self that you suppose "ought to be thus" or "should be thus" (pudgala-non-self) — and moreover, these three are themselves grown out of this thing, not judgments added from outside. The process of seeing through these three marks is called "removing the marks of conditioned phenomena," and it is accompanied by "release from the bondage of marks and the bondage of coarseness" — the former being the attachment that clings tightly to "things should be this way," the latter being the heavy force that greed, aversion, and delusion deposit deep in body and mind.
誤讀四：以爲「非一非異」是一種折中中道——所以現實裏應該一半認同、一半不認同。 (Misreading Four: Thinking "neither one nor different" is a compromising middle way — so in reality one should half agree, half disagree.)
This misreading turns "neither one nor different" into a compromise. The result is self-splitting on every concrete experience: "I must both believe they are this kind of person and not believe they are this kind of person," "I must both see the meaning of the work and not see the meaning of the work." This is a new attachment, more insidious than the previous three.
Clarification: "neither one nor different" is not a compromise; it is another path that "surpasses the marks of identity and difference of all dharmas." It means: the marks are not at either endpoint of "equal to the actions" or "completely detached from the actions," but neither are they the midpoint between the two ends. Its actual manifestation is: when you recognize impermanence, suffering, and non-self on a concrete experience, you neither freeze that experience into "it is just this way," nor discard it entirely saying "it is not this way" — you directly see its original face, which can neither be locked by the thinking of identity nor shaken off by the thinking of difference. This is a capacity for awareness born from long-term practice, not a slogan to be decided in an instant.
Finally, I want to emphasize one more thing: at the end of the sūtra, the World-Honored One is said to be 「現正等覺」 — he is at this very moment perfectly cognizing this dharma. This is not speaking of a completed past tense, but saying that the nature of this matter cannot from the outset be locked by concepts; it is a "present-continuous" insight that can be lived out. The person who reads this concept is ultimately not meant to understand it as a theory, but to let it slowly take root in the mind — until one day you suddenly discover that, facing some concrete matter, you no longer need to decide "I must either accept it or not accept it," but can directly recognize that it is changing, that it has its oppression, that within it there is no eternal unchanging core — at that moment, you have touched what the concept of 諸行相 truly points to.