Now this law of conditionality is not the creation of the Buddha. It is a law that is always operative. The Buddha says whether enlightened ones arise or do not arise, this law remains.

The Buddhist model of conditionality works with the notion of a complex, interrelated network of conditions, of events linked together like the fibres of a spider's web. They are nodes in a network rather than points in a straight line. In the Buddhist idea of conditionality, no phenomenon arises from a single cause; for any phenomenon to arise there must be many conditions, many central factors must work together in a functional integration. Further, any phenomenon that comes to being through these many conditions, itself serves as a condition for the arising of many other phenomena. Thus each causal factor has not only one effect, but many effects.

For example, the apple tree does not arise only from the seed. The seed is the main condition. But it also requires soil, water, sunshine, fertilizer, etc. The apple tree in turn has many effects. It gives rise to many apples, and those many apples each contain many seeds, and each of these seeds in turn can become the source for another apple tree which will give rise to more apples.