ON THE IMPERMANENCE OF THE SAṄKHĀRAS
Friends, I would like to propose a brief reflection on the meaning of the term saṅkhāra in the well-known verse traditionally attributed to the Buddha shortly before his parinibbāna:
Aniccā vata saṅkhārā,
uppādavayadhammino.
Uppajjitvā nirujjhanti,
tesaṃ vūpasamo sukho.
The verse is commonly translated along the lines of:
“Impermanent, indeed, are conditioned phenomena;
subject by nature to arising and passing away.
Having arisen, they cease;
their cessation is bliss.”
A translation of this kind, however, raises a significant philological and doctrinal difficulty. The term saṅkhāra is polysemous and cannot be assigned a single fixed meaning independently of its textual and doctrinal context.
In the present context, I would argue that saṅkhārā should be understood more specifically in the sense of conditioning factors, that is, as active processes or factors that condition experience and, in particular, the arising of suffering.* Saṅkhāra is morphologically an agentive formation and therefore denotes, in its active sense, something that “conditions,” “constructs,” or “determines.” It should consequently not be uncritically equated with saṅkhata, “the conditioned” or “the compounded,” which is a distinct term and a passive/resultative formation.
This distinction is doctrinally significant. In the Khajjaniya Sutta, the saṅkhārā are characterized according to their function as that which conditions the conditioned phenomena (saṅkhata-dhammā). The distinction between saṅkhāra and saṅkhata is therefore not merely grammatical but reflects a fundamental conceptual distinction between the conditioning activity and that which is conditioned.
This also helps to clarify the different ways in which the canonical texts relate the three characteristics to these categories. In the Dhammapada, impermanence (anicca) and suffering (dukkha) are explicitly associated with the saṅkhārā, whereas anattā is presented in relation to phenomena (dhammā) understood as conditioned. The terminology is therefore not necessarily interchangeable, and collapsing saṅkhāra into the notion of “compounded phenomena” risks obscuring an important doctrinal distinction.
There is a further difficulty with interpreting saṅkhārā simply as “produced” or “compounded phenomena.” In the present verse, the Buddha states that the vūpasama—the pacification or calming—of these saṅkhārā is sukho, a source of happiness or bliss. This is particularly significant when contrasted with the canonical statement:
Yad aniccaṃ taṃ dukkhaṃ; “Whatever is impermanent is suffering.”
If the saṅkhārā in the first part of the verse were simply “phenomena that have been produced,” it would become difficult to account for why their cessation or pacification should be described positively as sukho. The problem becomes even more apparent if one assumes that saṅkhārā and saṅkhata-dhammā are simply interchangeable expressions.
The semantic and doctrinal coherence of the passage is better preserved if saṅkhārā is understood here as conditioning factors—that is, as the conditioning activities or processes whose cessation constitutes their vūpasama, their pacification.
On this reading, the verse does not merely state that “compounded things are impermanent.” Rather, it points toward the cessation of the very conditioning processes that sustain conditioned experience and suffering. I would therefore suggest the following translation:
“Impermanent indeed are the conditioning factors,
by their nature subject to arising and passing away.
Having arisen, they cease.
Their pacification is happiness.”
This rendering preserves the active semantic force of saṅkhāra and, at the same time, maintains the conceptual distinction between saṅkhāra (“that which conditions”) and saṅkhata (“that which is conditioned”).
Notes
*The conditioning factor in question is the act of regarding (samanupassanā) the aggregates as permanent, as satisfactory, and in terms of “self,” “mine,” or “belonging to a self.” See the Parileyya Sutta.
**Yad aniccaṃ taṃ dukkhaṃ — “Whatever is impermanent is suffering.” This formulation may also be understood as implicitly challenging the conception, characteristic of the Upaniṣadic and broader Vedic traditions, of the ātman as permanent and consequently intrinsically blissful. Within the Buddhist framework, by contrast, whatever is conditioned and impermanent cannot constitute an enduring source of satisfaction.
*** Sukho here is understood in relation to the happiness or bliss associated with nibbāna, which is asaṅkhata, “the unconditioned,” precisely insofar as it is not subject to conditioning, arising, or cessation.
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