Cittasanto wrote:So there are no other conditions?
the quoted text in the OP clearly claims there are, and others have made this sort of claim, so nothing but hollow claim?
so lets change the questions (which will be added to the OP in a moment)
how is this outside world more materialistic or worse for practice or what ever else, and how does that change things in regard to the teachings & practice?
how are we any different (in relation to the Buddhas teachings of what the problem is & its cause) to people back when the teachings took place? and why does this matter?
how & why is it more complicated/difficult to see today than then? how do we proliferate, ignore the obvious, fool ourselves any more than then?
all that springs to mind is there are those who will see with ease, those who will see with some difficulty, those who will see but ignore, and those who will not see at all (if I remember the four types of ability correctly) that Sahampati used to persuade the Buddha to teach. their really doesn't seam to be any difference on the level the Buddha was pointing at no profound level, just the open palm of a teacher.
Well, it's a matter of layer. Of cause on every layer there are the same conditions but they are of different sensibility.
Let me explain the thing with a pig. A big pig is a very greedily being and even domesticated in that way it is useful. While a wild pig is still a very flexible being, the long time domesticate pig is incredible inflexible as there is no real need to be flexible. It get's it's food and when something is itchy in the back there are different ways to get the problem fixed, even other take care of it, that the pig does not need to take care of it's back.
In this way the domesticated pig has gown terrible inflexible. The conditions are all the same. It eats and it empties it's bowels. When there is food, there is food, when there is bung, there is dung. The conditions are the same.
Even the experience and it's happening eye, ear, nose...intellect is the same. So one day the pig might see another pig while losing a dropping. It even wight have the feeling that such a drop is not really beneficial and would be better missed. So if the pig is real good, it will come to the conclusion that some problems are because some pigs lose droppings. But as unfexible the pig has grow, it will not easy see the whole circle and would not understand its ways. It's not easy possible for the domesticate pig to get that flexible, or even the idea that it needs to grow flexible to observe it like it really is.
It might be that many pigs are running around having realized the dirt and try to find a solution. Mostly claiming other pig "Take care of your droppings" but at the same time they do it as well, in the back the "owner" carrying about it's droppings. Then there are also many pigs, who focus on transcendent the droppings to a scale, where they can find some satisfaction and overcome it's problems, but there are really less who really try to get deeper and uproot the cause under the subtitles level. Why is that so, because the pig has grow very unfexible and would need to put much effort into it, to get flexible as it would be needed to understand cause and effect on it's lowest level.
Conditions are always the same, the exist is always the same, but the flexibility of the pig changes with it's general tendency. That a unfexible pig would reach awakening will be very, very rare.
In that way also the similes of the Buddha, taken from the root necessaries of live, understandable for everybody are not easy understood today. We might know some things from books and from TV, but how many are there who know what it means to work for his food directly or what is a heartwood and what is bark used for.
One essay that is maybe useful in this case is: "
The Customs of the Noble Ones
But no worry, the conditions to understand the conditions are under a constant chance, sometimes up and sometimes down and at least a individual problem. But that is also why it is hard, the more lazy one is the more harder to gain flexibility. So we need the second teacher next to Buddha to wake us up all the time. It's the very friend Dukkha we love to banish not understanding that the teach leading to awakening is a pair. Suffering it self and the way out. We would just come to the extent suffering is understood by our self.
That is why so many heavenly beings are not able to understand the Dhamma.
There are condition when Dhamma will bloom, I remember seen it even told by the Buddha. Conditions are always the same, but they change. How paradox.
Sometimes the conditions are so incredible "good" that we even hardly come to see the dropping face to face. And without meeting the
divine messages, there is simply no chance to gain something that is called right view, the very first step. How many today are used to face death, non cosmetician sickness and aging like it is. That is fare away from our building for livestock and there will be less who will see it as beneficial to go out for it. We can do the things theoretical as well... That is way it is a practice tradition, out in the field and the deepest secret wholes in our mind. Easy to get the conditions on a level understood, but there are more and more, the same, but to understand it more profound even they are the same.