Vaisheshika approaches causation as a real, objective structure woven into the very fabric of an atomistic universe. Reality is understood as composed of eternal, indivisible atoms of earth, water, fire, and air, whose combinations and separations give rise to the world of composite objects. Effects are treated as new products that arise when the appropriate causal conditions converge, especially when atoms enter into specific relations of conjunction and disjunction. The phenomenal world thus emerges as a law-governed reconfiguration of these enduring atomic entities and their qualities, while the atoms themselves remain permanent.

Within this vision, causation is analyzed through a nuanced typology of causes. The inherent cause (samavāyi-kāraṇa) is the material substratum in which the effect resides, as atoms are for a pot or threads for a cloth. The non-inherent cause (asamavāyi-kāraṇa) consists of the qualities and universals that inhere in that substratum and help determine the character of the effect, such as the color of the threads contributing to the color of the cloth. The efficient cause (nimitta-kāraṇa) is the operative factor—like the potter or the weaver—that initiates and coordinates the relevant transformations. These distinctions allow a careful mapping of how substances, their qualities, and the actions upon them cooperate in the production of effects.

Causation also serves to articulate both the arising and the cessation of phenomena. Composite objects are impermanent configurations; their creation is the coming together of atoms under suitable causes, and their destruction is the breakdown of those connections. The effect is absent before the operation of its causes, and its appearance marks a new state grounded in the prior arrangement of atoms and their properties. This same causal order accounts for dissolution, where the disintegration of composites reverses the earlier process of formation, without compromising the permanence of the underlying atoms.

At a deeper level, this causal framework underwrites a vision of reality as intelligible and orderly. Substances are bearers of causal powers, qualities and motions shape which effects will arise, and the relation of inherence explains the stable linkage between causes and their products. Causal connections are not treated as mere mental projections but as necessary relations: given the same causes and conditions, the same effects follow. In this way, Vaisheshika’s atomistic realism is not a bare aggregation of particles but a structured cosmos in which causation is the principle that bridges the unseen atomic realm and the manifest world of everyday experience.