The verse in full
Kumārajīva's Chinese (402 CE): 一切有為法 (yīqiè yǒuwéi fǎ) — "All conditioned phenomena" 如夢幻泡影 (rú mèng huàn pào yǐng) — "are like dream, illusion, bubble, shadow" 如露亦如電 (rú lù yì rú diàn) — "are like dew and also like lightning" 應作如是觀 (yīng zuò rú shì guān) — "one should contemplate thus" The Sanskrit original: tārakā timiraṃ dīpo māyāvaśyāya budbudaḥ / supinaṃ vidyud abhraṃ ca evaṃ draṣṭavyaṃ saṃskṛtam — which gives a slightly different six (a star, cataract/defect of sight, lamp, illusion, dew, bubble, dream, lightning, cloud). Kumārajīva's Chinese consolidates and restructures. The version chanted today is overwhelmingly Kumārajīva's.
Why six similes instead of one
A popular reading treats the verse as saying "all conditioned things are illusory in various poetic ways." This is not wrong but loses most of the verse's content. Each simile points at a specific structural feature of conditioned phenomena. Six similes, six features. The meditator is being given six different angles from which to contemplate the same underlying fact (conditioned = without self-existence), each angle illuminating a different face. The verse closes with "one should contemplate thus" (應作如是觀). This is instructional. The contemplation is not a single move ("things are illusory") but a sequence of six distinct moves. A serious contemplation of this verse is long — each simile gets sustained attention until its specific aspect is seen, not merely understood.
Simile 1: Dream (夢)
A dream, while occurring, feels real. The dreamer acts, suffers, fears, enjoys — without awareness that the experience is fabricated by mind. Upon waking, the entire dream-world dissolves; what felt like substantial objects and relationships were mind-generated the whole time. The dream points at: the mind-fabricated character of apparently external phenomena. What you take to be a solid external world is, on Mādhyamaka analysis, not that — it is a mind-dependent appearance that your mind is actively generating at every moment. The mind-dependence doesn't mean the phenomena are hallucinations; it means they cannot be extracted from the mind-structure that is presenting them. Contemplation: sit with a specific phenomenon arising in experience — a sound, a sensation, an emotion. Notice that you cannot cleanly separate "the phenomenon" from "the mind receiving/constructing it." They are continuous. Waking from dream is a specific kind of noticing that extends into waking experience when trained.
Simile 2: Illusion (幻)
An illusion — specifically, the classical illusionist's trick — presents the appearance of something (a horse, a city) without that something actually being there. The illusionist's audience sees horses and cities until the illusion is dispelled and only the bare stage remains. The illusion points at: the appearance-without-substance character of conditioned phenomena. Every object you encounter presents an appearance, but the appearance is not identical to the object having the self-substance it appears to have. The coffee cup has the appearance of being a solid, independent object; on inspection (physical, temporal, causal) the solid independent-object-ness is not there. Contemplation: take any ordinary object and inspect its substantial appearance. Look for where the "solid independent object" actually resides. Ask: if the cup has a solid object-nature, where is it located? In the atoms (which are mostly empty space)? In the function (which is conditioned)? In the pattern (which is mind-imposed)? The substantial appearance persists; the substantial existence does not.
Simile 3: Bubble (泡) / Simile 4: Shadow (影)
**Bubble**: briefly present, shimmering with apparent form, pops into non-existence on touch. Points at: the transitory, surface-only character of conditioned phenomena. A bubble looks beautiful and substantial but has no interior — it is surface tension over empty space. Touch it and it is gone. Contemplation: notice the transitoriness of any specific phenomenon. A thought arises, has its moment, passes. Now the thought is gone; you cannot retrieve it. What you can retrieve is your memory of it, but the memory is another phenomenon, also bubble-like. **Shadow**: an appearance that requires a light source, an object, and a surface. Has no existence of its own — it is purely relational. When any of the three conditions change, the shadow changes or disappears. Points at: the purely relational, condition-dependent character of phenomena. Nothing has its existence in itself; every phenomenon is a shadow cast by the specific conditions producing it. Change the conditions, the phenomenon changes or ends. Contemplation: for any specific phenomenon, identify the conditions producing it. Notice the phenomenon does not exist separately from those conditions.
Simile 5: Dew (露) / Simile 6: Lightning (電)
**Dew**: briefly appears at dawn, evaporates as the sun rises. Present for a finite, definite duration. Points at: the short-lived character of conditioned phenomena at the everyday timescale. Not infinitesimally brief (that's lightning) but visibly transitory — the relationship you are in, the job you hold, the identity you carry will all evaporate as the sun of time rises. **Lightning**: instantaneous. Present-absent almost in the same moment. Points at: the moment-by-moment dissolution that the fine-grained analysis of phenomena reveals. At the finest time scale, each phenomenon is born and dies; what appears as persistence is successive arisings that are too rapid for ordinary perception to distinguish. Contemplation: practice both timescales. Sit with a dew-level phenomenon (a friendship, a project, a phase of life) and recognize its finite duration. Separately, sit with lightning-level phenomenon (the flash of thought just now, the micro-movement of sensation) and recognize the instantaneous arising-and-passing.
The instruction "contemplate thus"
The verse closes with "one should contemplate thus" (應作如是觀, yīng zuò rú shì guān). This is explicit instruction, not summary. The contemplation is ongoing. Not a single insight experience and done — the six similes are six repeatable contemplations, applied across the arising phenomena of daily life, across years. A practical protocol: dedicate one week to each simile. During that week, when a conditioned phenomenon arises that catches your attention, apply the week's simile. Six weeks cycles through all six. Then repeat. Over a year, this practice produces a cumulative shift in how conditioned phenomena are seen. Not as a single transformation; as a gradual erosion of the habit of attributing self-existence to everything that arises. At the end of a year, conditioned phenomena feel different in a way that is hard to articulate to someone who hasn't done the contemplation, and very recognizable to anyone who has.