Most readers who brush past Buddhism's most famous lines never stop to unpack what they were actually pointing at. The 《金剛經》(Diamond Sutra) ends with: "一切有为法，如梦幻泡影，如露亦如电，应作如是观" (*such should be regarded: all conditioned dharmas, like a dream, an illusion, a bubble, a shadow, dew, lightning*). The 《心經》(Heart Sutra) condenses the same seeing into seven characters: "照见五蕴皆空" (*see the five aggregates as empty*). Behind both lines sits one quiet term that does most of the carrying work: 諸行 (*sarvasaṃskāra*).
To translate the word literally: *saṃ-* = together, *skāra* = that which is constructed. So 諸行 means *that which has been put together by causes and conditions working in concert*. It names the entire realm of phenomena that arise through 因緣和合 (dependent origination) and are therefore stamped with 生滅無常 (arising and ceasing). It includes breath, thought, mood, traffic, weather, the algorithm in your pocket, the stars in the sky, the people you love, the loan you carry, the ache in your back, the sentence you are reading right now. Anything that appears in time is named.
What 諸行 does *not* name is the unborn, the unconditioned: 涅槃 (*nirvāṇa*) and 真如 (*tathatā*, suchness). To see 諸行 clearly is to see what keeps the world spinning. To see through 諸行 is, in this tradition, the shape of freedom.
What this concept is really saying
Three layers, kept carefully apart
A reader will see the term 諸行 doing three different jobs in the classical literature, and the wise reader holds all three at once. Collapsing them into any one is where most modern misreadings begin.
(a) The broadest layer. 諸行 = 有為法 = 取蘊 — all conditioned dharmas, equivalent to the five aggregates (色受想行識 / *rūpa-vedanā-saṃjñā-saṃskāra-vijñāna*), or the twelve sense bases (十二處), or the eighteen elements (十八界), or any other complete enumeration of conditioned reality. The 《瑜伽師地論》(Yogācārabhūmi-śāstra) makes the equivalence explicit: 諸行即取蘊之義. This is the most general sense.
(b) The narrower, aggregate-specific layer. 諸行 as 行蘊 (*saṃskāra-skandha*), the fourth of the five aggregates: volition, intention, mental formation — the way the mind actively shapes experience rather than merely registering it. In this sense the famous metaphor begins: 《雜阿含經》: "觀色如聚沫，受如水上泡，想如春時燄，諸行如芭蕉，諸識法如幻" — each of the five aggregates given its own dissolving image.
(c) The ethical, karmic layer. 諸行 as 身口意行 — bodily, verbal and mental volitional action, i.e., karma. 《中論》(Mūlamadhyamakakārikā) puts it directly: "諸行者，身、口、意," classifying them as pure and impure.
These are not three rival definitions. They are three cuts at the same fabric. When 《瑜伽師地論》 says 諸行 has no real "self" in it, it is using layer (a) to make the point universal. When the verse gives 諸行 the banana-tree metaphor, it is using layer (b). When 《中論》 divides it into pure and impure, it is using layer (c). A good reading notices which cut is being made.
The four marks of 諸行
Every sutra in the tradition keeps coming back to the same set of characteristics. They reinforce each other; together they describe a single texture.
First, 因緣和合 — *entirely dependently originated*. Nothing here stands alone. Even the most intimate feeling, the most "I-feeling" feeling, has assembled itself out of causes. 《大寶積經》(Mahāratnakūṭa Sūtra) uses the alphabet as the teaching device: words appear because letters are conjoined, and letters have no independent word-being. The word appears precisely because it can also vanish. So with every conditioned thing.
Second, 生滅無常 — *arising and ceasing, impermanent*. 《雜阿含經》 opens: "佛見過去世，如是見未來，亦見現在世，一切行起滅" — *the Buddha saw, in past, future, and present, all 諸行 arising and dissolving.* The three times themselves are 諸行, and 諸行 is the three times.
Third, 空寂如幻 — *empty, like an illusion*. 《增壹阿含經》 states it as flatly as the tradition ever does: "一切諸行皆空、皆寂，起者、滅者皆是幻化，無有真實." 《大寶積經》 adds: "知諸行如幻，諸根無所著" — *know 諸行 as illusion, and the senses no longer fixate.*
Fourth, 無自性 — *without self-nature*. 《中論》: "諸行生滅不住，無自性故空." 諸行 has no fixed core, no essence separable from its conditions. This is also why 《中論》 can issue its grand totalisation: "眾因緣生法，我說即是無，亦為是假名，亦是中道義" — *whatever arises from conditions, I say is empty; it is also a provisional name; it is also the middle way.*
The five images must stay distinct
The 《雜阿含》 verse is the most economical teaching the early tradition left us on this topic, and the metaphors are not interchangeable. To compress them into one vague "everything is illusory" is to break the contemplative work the verse was designed for. Each aggregate gets the image that fits its specific texture:
- 色如聚沫 — *form (rūpa) like foam.* Massy to the eye, but only surface tension and an instant away from nothing. - 受如水 上泡 — *feeling (vedanā) like a bubble on water.* Arising and bursting in the same breath. - 想如春時燄 — *perception (saṃjñā) like a spring mirage.* Water shimmering where there is no water. - 諸行如芭蕉 — *saṃskāra like a banana tree.* Layer after layer of fibrous sheath, but no heartwood. Peel it, and there is no core inside. - 諸識法如幻 — *consciousness (vijñāna) like an illusion.* Presenting things that are not what they appear.
The tradition repeats this set, image for image, with the discipline of a teaching that depends on the images staying distinct. To call a perception a banana tree, or a feeling a mirage, would be to lose what each image is doing. (You can also find closely parallel lists in the 《增壹阿含》、《瑜伽師地論》's fifteen-image expansion, and elsewhere.)
Where 諸行 sits in the path of liberation
The conceptual position matters as much as the marks. 諸行 is the object of 觀 — specifically, of 毘缽舍那 (*vipaśyanā*, clear seeing). 毘缽舍那 paired with 奢摩他 (*śamatha*, calming) is the two-pedalled movement of insight meditation. 諸行 is what the second pedal sees clearly: dependently originated, arising-and-ceasing, empty, without self.
The path forward from this seeing is not more philosophy. It is the ceasing of 諸行 as compulsive re-arising. That ceasing is what the tradition calls 涅槃. 《增壹阿含》: "一切行無常，起者必有滅，無生則無死，此滅最為樂" — *all 諸行 are impermanent; what arises must cease; what does not arise does not die; the cessation of this is the highest joy.* 《雜阿含》: "一切行寂滅，勤修正方便... 一切行滅盡，知一切有餘，不復轉還有."
Crucially, the cessation is not annihilation. To be reborn-and-dying is exhausting; to stop 諸行 is rest. The verse that confuses many ("no birth, no death; this cessation is the highest joy") is not nihilism. It is the recognition that the *grasp* that keeps 諸行 spinning is itself suffering, and that releasing the grasp is the relief. At the conventional level, 諸行 is real; at the ultimate level, it is empty. The 《成唯識論》 crystallises this with: "非不見真如，而能了諸行，皆如幻事等，雖有而非真" — *one cannot comprehend 諸行 without first having seen 真如 (suchness); even then, 諸行 is like an illusion: real, but not truly self-existent.* This is the 二諦 (two truths) grammar that prevents collapsing the seeing into denying phenomena.
The 《佛說解節經》 adds the strict logical point: 真如 and 諸行 are neither identical nor different. To say they are one (一) collapses them; to say they are different (異) makes liberation impossible. The tradition names the move 過一異相 — transcending both identity *and* difference in a single stroke. This protects both: the reality of conditioned things, and the reality of what is unconditioned.
The 《大乘莊嚴經論》 goes further with a sustained investigation of 刹那刹那滅 — *moment-to-moment dissolution* — using fifteen lines of reasoning (起、從因、相違、不住、無體、定相、隨轉、滅盡、變異、因、果、執持、增上、隨淨、隨生) to show that all inner and outer 諸行 vanish in every instant. The text even explains why ordinary people do not perceive this: "諸行是顛倒物" — 諸行 is *upside-down-stuff*, its constant change disguised by similarities from one instant to the next, like a lantern flame mistaken for a single thing because its next flicker looks like its last.
In Twelve-Link Dependent Origination (十二因緣), 諸行 occupies the second link, immediately after 無明 (*avidyā*). 《中論》: "以無明滅故，諸行等亦滅" — *with ignorance's cessation, 諸行 and the rest cease as well.* This places 諸行 in the engine-room of samsara: ignorance sets 諸行 in motion; the cessation of ignorance ends the motion.
Life walkthrough: actually trying to see 諸行
Let's take an ordinary afternoon, the kind you wouldn't have written in a diary. You are at a screen. A notification arrives. There is a small spike of apprehension. A friend sends something warm; the spike dissolves. The next moment, you reach for a drink; the *desire* arises. You finish the drink; the desire dissolves. A thought about a future event surfaces — *will this work out?* — and dissolves. A memory from years ago surfaces — and dissolves. Sound passes: footsteps, a closing door. Each of these things — body, feeling, perception, intention, awareness — arose, briefly abided, dissolved.
Now run the five classical images through that minute, deliberately.
Run it through 色 (form) as foam (聚沫). Pick any bodily sensation — your jaw, your shoulders, the air on your skin. Where was the jaw ten minutes ago? Where will it be in ten minutes more? Even right now, that "jaw" is foam: a coherence that the next moment will not recover identically. This isn't contempt for the body. It is precision about its actual texture — and most modern people, having no contemplative training for this, are surprised by how quickly any chosen "solid thing" becomes ungraspable when looked at directly.
Run it through 受 (feeling) as a water-bubble (水 上泡). The apprehension at the notification had a definite texture: a tightness across the chest, a specific resonance. Where is it now? It has already become the next feeling, or it is dissolving. Holding on to a feeling for "too long" is fighting the actual life of feeling, which is to arise, swell, burst. Western pop-Buddhism usually names this without practicing it; here is the practice: let one feeling arise, and let one feeling end.
Run it through 想 (perception) as a mirage (春時燄). You see the colleague as "supportive." You see the notification as "threatening." You see the day as "bad." These are perception's overlays. Like a mirage shimmering on a road at noon, perception lays down "name and form" over what is actually happening. To watch 想 as mirage is not cynicism. It is to see that "name-and-form" is a structure; the labels help, but they are not the things themselves.
Run it through 行 (saṃskāra) as a banana tree (芭蕉) — this is the image most directly pointed at when 諸行 means 行蘊. Try now to find the *actual* "you" that is making the next decision. There is a body posture. There is a feeling tone about the posture. There is the perception "I am sitting." There is an intention to continue. There is awareness of all this. As you peel each layer, looking for a centre — body, then feeling, then perception, then intention, then awareness — you get only layer after fibrous layer, no heartwood. That is not because something is wrong. That is because this was always the structure of volitional experience. Each layer is itself 諸行. None of them have a self. The banana tree is a teaching about the architecture of moment-by-moment experience, not about anybody being insufficient.
Run it through 識 (consciousness) as illusion (幻). The continuity "me-yesterday = me-today" is itself an illusion, in the technical sense: an effect that takes its character from its conditions but does not have a separate, fixed essence behind it. The《大乘莊嚴經論》explains this carefully — continuity is composed of distinct, sequentially-caused moments that the mind then binds into "one." You continue; the binding is itself an active mental construction.
The three-time 諸行
The 《雜阿含》 contains a mature contemplative formula worth carrying around the day:
"於過去諸行不顧念，未來諸行不生欣樂，於現在諸行不生染著."
*With respect to past 諸行, no regret. With respect to future 諸行, no eager anticipation. With respect to present 諸行, no fixation.*
Notice this is not the modern slogan "live in the present." It equalises all three times as 諸行. It does not elevate "now" as a special category. The trap with the past is rumination. The trap with the future is anxiety. The trap with the present is grasping. The antidote in each case is the same: see what is there as 諸行, and the grasping reaction relaxes.
If you actually do this as a practice during a single afternoon — at the moment of a notification, at the moment of a regret, at the moment of a small pleasure — you will find that the practice is doable, and that the relief it offers is real and quite different from any verbal reassurance.
The most common mapping mistakes I see in modern readings
These are the traps in the contemporary reception of this teaching. I'll name them here so you can watch for them as you walk:
- Translating 諸行 simply as "impermanence." True but thin. The mark is thicker: dependently originated, empty, without self, like a banana tree (no core), real only at the conventional level (二諦), and in the second-order aggregate sense, layered with no center. - Collapsing all five aggregate-images into one vague "everything is illusory." The tradition keeps them distinct so you can call *each* aggregate by *its own* dissolving image. The contemplative precision lives in the five-ness. - Reading 諸行 as "things are fake, so anything goes." This is the nihilism that the entire tradition, from 《中論》 onward, rules out. 諸行 is *real at the conventional level*. The through-seeing is not a refraining-from. - Treating 諸行 as a philosophical claim. The 《成唯識論》 phrase "非不見真如，而能了諸行" warns: this is a *seeing*, not a proposition. You can say "impermanence" a thousand times and not have done 諸行 觀 once. - Treating 諸行 as an indictment of the world ("it's all empty, so what's the point").《大寶積經》 insists that the bodhisattva's six perfections (六度波羅蜜 — generosity, ethics, patience, effort, meditation, wisdom-means) are themselves called 諸行. The path is built of 諸行. Engagement is not the enemy.
Why contemporary people specifically need this
Our culture is structurally addicted to permanence. Brands spend fortunes promising that *this* is the phone, the partner, the diet, the identity that will hold. Modern anxiety and modern burnout are, in this reading, the predictable costs of trying to make 諸行 into its opposite.
Several specific conditions become legible through 諸行 觀 in a way other frameworks don't quite match:
Burnout. What happens when a person has been pouring energy into a system whose output they assumed to be reliable. 諸行 觀 reveals: this is precisely the assumption that fails earliest. The work was always 諸行; the assumption of stable return is what burns. (Without dismissing more materialist readings of burnout — overwork, poor conditions — the practice adds a tool for the *interior* relationship to work.)
Identity-conflict. Career change, religious leaving, sexuality renegotiation, empty-nest, retirement — these are moments when life has reorganised itself around an assumed continuous "self" that turns out to be a banana tree. 諸行 觀 does not patronise the pain. It says: that self was always already 諸行. The shock is not that *you* changed. The shock is that there was never a stable "you" to betray.
Grief and loss. A parent dies. A child grows up. A marriage ends. A body capability fades. 諸行 觀 does not say grief is illusory. It says love and loss cannot ultimately be separated; they are made of the same impermanent fabric; love that does not acknowledge impermanence is love that has built on the banana tree's "core." Love that does is love with open eyes.
Spiritual bypassing. "Nothing matters, so I don't have to engage." This is the loophole the sutras repeatedly close. 諸行 is real. Engagement is right. The seeing-through is a seeing-through, not a refraining-from. As 《增壹阿含》 and 《大乘莊嚴經論》 both insist, the path is *made of* 諸行; the bodhisattva's whole life is structured as 行.
The acceleration of information. Today's environment makes impermanence viscerally present even to those uninterested in it. A version of an app rarely lives for two years; a job title rarely three; a friendship's intensity for an indeterminate moment or a decade; the housing stock of many cities, a decade. Whatever is marketed — gadget, platform, lifestyle, partner — is marketed *precisely because the prior version is already fading*. 諸行 觀 is the very shaped lens through which this friction can be seen without despair and without denial. When you learn to look at an inbox moment, a feed moment, an argument moment, with the banana-tree metaphor in hand, you stop demanding that the moment contain more stability than it can hold.
A short, careful note on convergences with contemporary science
Buddhism does not need neuroscience to be valid; but the curious reader will notice friendly convergences. Modern studies of emotion point to the rapid turnover of internal states. Studies of autobiographical memory point out that we *reconstruct* the past each time we recall it, not retrieve it. Studies of consciousness describe processes assembled in each moment by prior conditions rather than a stable entity. The 《大乘莊嚴經論》's fifteen-reason study of 刹那刹那滅 has an eerie parallel to the way some process-philosophies describe reality.
None of this *proves* 諸行, and none of it should. Contemplative claims are first-person reports; scientific claims are third-person statistics about populations. They meet, at best, as *analogies* and gentle pointers. The convergences are useful because they show that an observation made twenty-five centuries ago still has something to say about a Sunday afternoon. That alone is striking enough.
Common misreadings and clarifications
1. "Impermanent" ≠ "meaningless." Reading 諸行 as "everything fades, so nothing matters" is the loophole the sutras explicitly close. "无生则无死，此灭最为乐" is positive language: *the highest joy*. The cessation of cyclical re-arising is rest, not a void.
2. 諸行 is not 身口意行 alone, and not 行蘊 alone. It works at three scales: universal (有為法 / 取蘊), aggregate-specific (行蘊 / volitional formation), and karmic (身口意行). Conflating the three is the most common amateur error. Many popular "Buddhism = thoughts-are-impermanent" readings do exactly this flattening. The classical tradition is more careful.
3. 諸行 is not "things are fake, so anything goes." This is the nihilism 《大寶積經》, 《中論》, and 《成唯識論》 all explicitly rule out. 諸行 is real at the conventional level; empty at the ultimate level. 二諦 is the grammar that prevents collapsing. The 《成唯識論》 phrase "雖有而非真" is the entire tradition's compressed answer to nihilism.
4. "Live in the now" is a half-truth that misreads 諸行. That modern slogan manufactures a special category called "now" that is qualitatively different from past and future. 《增壹阿含》 insists: all three times are 諸行, of equal texture. The contemplative move is to *see* each time as 諸行, not to fetishise one of them.
5. 諸行 is not philosophy. It is 觀 — contemplative seeing. The 《成唯識論》 phrase "非不見真如而能了諸行" puts the matter sharply. To grasp "impermanence" as a proposition is not to do 諸行 觀. To let a feeling be a water-bubble until it dissolves *is* to do 諸行 觀. The difference is the difference between a description of a meal and the eating.
6. 諸行 is not opposed to 涅槃 in a way that makes them rivals. They are two registers of the same continuum. 諸行 is what 涅槃 ceases. 真如 is what 諸行 reveals when seen clearly. As the 《佛說解節經》 insists, they are neither one nor different — the 過一異相 move. To read them as "the world versus the spirit" (matter versus God, profane versus sacred) is to import categories that Buddhist philosophy does not have.
7. 諸行 is not a teaching against action, relationship, or engagement. Quite the opposite. The 《大寶積經》 六度波羅蜜 are themselves named 諸行. The bodhisattva path is built of 諸行; the bodhisattva path *is* 諸行. It is precisely *because* 諸行 is the medium that 諸行 is the path.
There is a reason the tradition places this concept so early and so persistently. Every other doctrinal term becomes precise once 諸行 is seen clearly. Karma becomes legible: how could action bear fruit if not through the conditional fabric of 諸行? Emptiness becomes plausible: how could anything be empty unless 諸行 has been turned over first? Compassion becomes possible: if 諸行 is the only thing there is, then the ubiquity of suffering is the ubiquity of 諸行, and the response is wide. Even 涅槃 becomes speakable: one cannot name rest to someone who has not yet noticed that what they took to be solid was, all along, foam, bubble, mirage, banana tree, illusion.
The work is not a chore. The first time you feel a feeling as a bubble that bursts on its own and notice you did not need to do anything — not suppress it, not extend it, not analyse it — you have done 諸行 觀 once. The second time is closer than the first. By the hundredth time, the texture of seeing itself begins to change. This is, the tradition holds, the beginning of something not easily named except as 諸行 beginning to rest, and what is left when 諸行 rests being called many things — 真如, 涅槃, *suchness*, *the unconditioned* — without anyone's needing to argue about which name is best. The seeing does the work. The names are the scaffolding around the seeing, and the scaffolding, like everything else, is 諸行.