Three Schools on the Nature of Precept-Substance

I. The Question of Precept-Substance: From Its Absence in Early Buddhism to Its Birth in Sarvāstivāda

Anyone who has watched a Buddhist ordination — the questions, the formal motion, the bows — is left with a quiet puzzle. The candidate enters as one person and rises as another, now bound by precepts. But what has changed? On the testimony of the tradition itself, the newly ordained remain precept-holders even while asleep, even when their minds are wholly occupied with something else; only a grave breach, or a formal act of renunciation, strips the title away. It is as if ordination deposits something — something that endures across the gaps in attention, restrains the holder from wrongdoing over long stretches of time, and is lost only by breach or by giving-back. East Asian vinaya masters gave this enduring deposit a name: the precept-substance (jietǐ, 戒體). The question this paper anatomizes is the ontological one they pressed upon it: what, exactly, is this thing?¹

One fact must be stated at the outset, because it changes how the whole debate should be read: this question is not native to the Buddha's own teaching. In early Buddhism, śīla is built from three components — abstention (the resolve to refrain from killing, theft, and sexual misconduct, virati), restraint (the guarding of the senses and the composure of body and speech, saṃvara), and volition (the intentional act, cetanā). It is conduct and intention, not a residue laid down after a rite. The Saṃyuktāgama, glossing "right action" within the eightfold path, treats the abstaining itself as the precept:

何等為正業？……謂離殺、盜、婬，是名正業世、俗，有漏、有取，轉向善趣。 (Translator's rendering: "What is right action? … It is abstaining from killing, theft, and sexual misconduct — this is called right action, mundane, with outflows and graspable, turning one toward a good destiny.")²

Right action is the abstaining; no separate, deposited continuum is set up alongside it. The same collection, analyzing wrongdoing as a matter of moment-to-moment intention, says that across a day and a night a person has the mind to kill only briefly and lacks it for most of the time:

人於晝夜，少時有心殺生，乃至少時有心妄語，而多時不有心殺生，乃至妄語。 (Translator's rendering: "Through the day and the night, a person has, for only a short time, the mind to kill, even down to the mind to lie; and for the greater part has no mind to kill, even down to lying.")³

To sort good from bad by the momentary presence or absence of a mental intention is flatly incompatible with positing a continuously deposited substance: if the precept is read off the passing mind, then in the stretches without that mind — in sleep, in distraction — there is simply nothing on hand to "hold." Early śīla lands on conduct and intention, not on a permanent acquisition.

The point sharpens when we turn south. The Theravāda Abhidhamma does not merely lack a non-informative material residue; it positively rejects one, analyzing restraint instead as three momentary "abstinence" mental factors (the abstinences that constitute right speech, right action, and right livelihood, virati-cetasika) — each arising in conjunction with consciousness, each ceasing with it, none persisting as an independent deposited entity. This is, in effect, a fourth comparative position, distinct from the three Chinese answers to come: precept-substance as no substance at all.⁴ The "precept-substance question" — what enduring thing does ordination confer? — is therefore downstream of one specific move: the Sarvāstivāda decision to hypostatize the precept as a real existent. Early Buddhism never made the move; the Theravāda explicitly declined it. This paper records all of this descriptively, without grading any tradition "primitive" or "advanced"; each is a living lineage with its own internal logic, read here in parallel and without ranking.

A word of continuity with the previous paper. P15, reading the Yingluo and Brahmā's Net sūtras, took the line "the precepts of all bodhisattvas, ordinary or noble, have mind as their substance" as a positive frame for how the precepts are received. The present paper inherits that "mind-as-substance" thread but turns its function: in Zhiyi's hands, as we will see in §VI, "mind as substance / there is no separate non-acting" is reclassified as merely one pole of an old dispute, not a settled conclusion (cf. P15). The reader thus moves from P15's question — by what is the precept received? — into the present trilemma: what, ontologically, is the thing received?

II. The Material School: Avijñapti-rūpa as a Defended Substance

The first of the three answers makes the precept-substance material — a form-dharma (色法). This is the Sarvāstivāda position, which Daoxuan would later classify as the "Realist school" (實法宗). Its load-bearing category is non-informative form (avijñapti-rūpa, 無表色).

"Non-informative" is defined by contrast with the informative act (vijñapti, 表業): when one performs a karmically charged action — raising the blade in killing, uttering the words in abuse — there is an outward, communicative form that informs others of one's state. Alongside it, the Sarvāstivāda holds, a further increment of karma arises which, though also of the nature of form, cannot be displayed to others, and is therefore called non-informative. The Abhidharmakośa gives the definition:

無表雖以色業為性如有表業，而非表示令他了知，故名無表。 (Translator's rendering: "Although the non-informative is, like the informative act, of the nature of form-karma, it does not display itself so as to inform others; hence it is called non-informative.")⁵

Being "of the nature of form-karma," the non-informative belongs to the form-aggregate; being undisplayable, it differs from the informative act. The Kośa explicitly partitions the form-aggregate into the five faculties, the five objects, and the non-informative — so the non-informative counts as a species of form, specifically a "form falling under the mental-object base" (the form that is an object only of mind).⁶

Its bearing on the precepts turns on the equation restraint = a kind of non-informative form. The Kośa names three non-informatives, of which restraint comes first:

此中無表，略說有三：一者律儀、二不律儀、三者非二……律儀差別，略有三種：一別解脫律儀，謂欲纏戒；二靜慮生律儀，謂色纏戒；三道生律儀，謂無漏戒。 (Translator's rendering: "The non-informative is of three kinds: restraint, non-restraint, and neither. … Restraint is itself threefold: individual-liberation restraint, the precepts of the desire realm; meditation-born restraint, the precepts of the form realm; and path-born restraint, the uncontaminated precepts.")⁷

What full ordination confers is the first of these three restraints — individual-liberation restraint (prātimokṣa-saṃvara). Its mechanism of arising is precise: at the first instant of ordination, the candidate's bodily and verbal informative acts (the responses and gestures of the formal rite) serve as the condition that generates a portion of non-informative form; from the second moment onward this non-informative form continues in series, persisting even when the holder's mind turns elsewhere or lapses into the mindless state, and serving as the continuous support for the prevention of wrongdoing.

The whole ontological payoff of making the precept-substance material lies in this continuity. The Kośa defends the position with the image of an embankment — the precept as a dyke that, persisting over time, holds back the flood of transgression — and argues that to deny the non-informative form is to be left with nothing in series after ordination, hence no way to call a distracted person a monk at all:

又若撥無無表色者，則亦應無有別解脫律儀，非受戒後有戒相續，雖起異緣心而名苾芻等。又契經說：離殺等戒名為隄塘戒，能長時相續堰遏犯戒過故。非無有體可名隄塘。 (Translator's rendering: "If one denies non-informative form, then there is no individual-liberation restraint either: there would be no precept continuing in series after ordination, such that one is called a monk even when the mind has turned to other things. And scripture says that the precepts of abstention from killing and the rest are called embankment-precepts, because they continue in series over long time and dam back the fault of transgression. There is no embankment without something that has substance.")⁸

The reasoning is transparent: precisely because the non-informative is form, a real existent thing, it can flow on in series through agitated and mindless states; remove it, and the doctrine that "there is a precept continuing in series after ordination" collapses. The entire weight of the material answer rests on this need for a persisting substance.

It must be stressed, however, that "the non-informative is form" was not, even within the Sarvāstivāda, a self-evident axiom; it was a defended thesis. The Vaibhāṣika masters knew the claim was contested, and said so as they staked out their school (the line given as this paper's epigraph): they "set aside the crowd of disputes" and affirm "there is a real thing called non-informative form — this is the tenet of our own school." The word dispute, and the phrase the tenet of our school, already concede that this is one party's position, not a consensus. Saṃghabhadra's Nyāyānusāra was written largely to harden the claim against the Sautrāntika denial:

是故定應許實無表。 (Translator's rendering: "Therefore one must definitely admit a real non-informative.")⁹ 故有別法，若起餘心或無心時，恒現相續漸漸增長，說名無表，故無表色實有理成。 (Translator's rendering: "Hence there is a distinct factor which, when another mind arises or when there is no mind, continually manifests in series and gradually grows; this is called the non-informative; thus it is established in principle that non-informative form really exists.")

Saṃghabhadra fights so hard because the Sautrāntika lineage denied that the non-informative is real form, holding instead that what is called "non-informative" is only a modification of volition (cetanā) and its perfuming. That denial, while it looks like a mere quarrel about a form-category, is in fact the hinge to the third school: once the non-informative is refused the status of real form and reassigned to volition and its continuance, the precept-substance question pivots out of the dimension of form and into the dimension of mind and seed.¹⁰

III. The Neither-Form-nor-Mind School: The Satyasiddhi Non-Acting as a Third Category

The second answer makes the precept-substance neither form nor mind (非色非心), locating it in the non-acting (wúzuò, 無作). This is the position of the Satyasiddhi (Chéngshí) tradition — what Daoxuan classifies as the "Nominalist school" (假名宗) and, crucially, the home school of the Dharmaguptaka vinaya on which the East Asian ordination tradition rests (Daoxuan: "the Dharmagupta lineage we now inherit").

"Non-acting" is defined against "acting": the acting precept is the wholesome karma of the bodily and verbal motions performed at the moment of ordination, while the non-acting precept is the portion that persists after those motions have ceased and that can prevent later wrongdoing. The distinctive Satyasiddhi move is to refuse this non-acting both the status of form and the status of mind, placing it in a third class. The Satyasiddhi-śāstra's "Chapter on the Non-Acting" first settles that it is not mind:

問曰：已知有無作法非心，今為是色、為是心不相應行？答曰：是行陰所攝。所以者何？作起相名行，無作是作起相故。 (Translator's rendering: "Question: granting that the non-acting is not mind, is it then form, or a factor dissociated from thought? Answer: it falls under the aggregate of formations. Why? Because what has the character of an act-arising is a formation, and the non-acting has the character of an act-arising.")¹¹

The non-acting is thus assigned to the aggregate of formations — that is, to the factors dissociated from thought (cittaviprayukta-saṃskāra), the third class of conditioned dharmas, neither form nor mind-and-mental-factors. That it is not form is then argued from the premise that form is "of the character of obstruction-and-decay" and morally neutral:

色聲香味觸五法非罪福性故，不以色性為無作。又佛說：色是惱壞相。是無作中惱壞相不可得，故非色性。 (Translator's rendering: "Because the five — form, sound, smell, taste, and touch — are not of the nature of merit or demerit, one does not take the nature of form as the non-acting. Further, the Buddha said form is of the character of distress-and-decay; that character cannot be found in the non-acting; hence it is not of the nature of form.")¹²

Two pincers close the case: the non-acting is morally charged (it is precisely merit or demerit), whereas form is morally neutral; and the non-acting lacks the obstruction-and-decay that characterizes form. So the non-acting is neither form nor mind — a third-category real factor.

One distinction must be guarded with care: the Satyasiddhi non-acting is not volition (cetanā). A modern reader may be tempted to gloss "non-acting" as "the continuation of volition," but the Satyasiddhi-śāstra keeps three items separate — the acting (the karma of motion), the non-acting (a factor dissociated from thought), and mind, that is, volition. The correct statement is therefore that the Satyasiddhi precept-substance is neither-form-nor-mind (a factor dissociated from thought), and not that it is volition; the latter is the Yogācāra route, which stands directly opposed to the Satyasiddhi third category.¹³

This neither-form-nor-mind position was, in sixth-century China, an explicitly named and live debate, not a later reconstruction — a point we need not establish ourselves, since Zhiyi, in the substance-analysis section of his Commentary on the Meaning of the Bodhisattva Precepts, sets the Abhidharma "form-cluster" and the Satyasiddhi "neither-form-nor-mind" side by side with his own hand:

《成論》有〈無作品〉云：是非色非心聚。律師用義，亦依此說。若毘曇義，戒是色聚，無作是假色，亦言無教，非對眼色。 (Translator's rendering: "The Satyasiddhi has a 'Chapter on the Non-Acting' which says it is a neither-form-nor-mind cluster; the vinaya masters, in applying the doctrine, also follow this. On the Abhidharma reading, the precept is a form-cluster, the non-acting being a nominal form, also called non-informing, not the form opposite the eye.")¹⁴

Zhiyi states it outright — "the Satyasiddhi … says it is a neither-form-nor-mind cluster" (one pole) and "on the Abhidharma reading, the precept is a form-cluster" (the other pole). The contest between form and neither-form-nor-mind was thus already laid out, by name, among the sixth-century Chinese vinaya masters "in applying the doctrine." The present paper merely inherits Zhiyi's witness here; it does not construct the identification.

IV. The Seed School: Yogācāra Dismantles the Non-Informing Form and Posits the Volition-Seed

The third answer makes the precept-substance a seed (bīja, 種子). This is the Yogācāra position, and its entry is exactly the hinge identified at the end of §II: once the non-informative is refused the status of real form, the continuity of the precept must be re-grounded elsewhere.

The Cheng weishi lun first dismantles the reality of non-informative form, then re-grounds it on a volition-seed:

表既實無，無表寧實？然依思願善惡分限，假立無表，理亦無違。謂此或依發勝身、語善惡思種增長位立……世尊經中說有三業，撥身、語業豈不違經？不撥為無，但言非色。 (Translator's rendering: "If the informative act is not really existent, how can the non-informative be real? Yet to posit the non-informative nominally, in dependence on the good-or-bad delimitation of volition and intention, is not contrary to reason. That is, it is posited in dependence on the stage of growth of the good-or-bad volition-seed that issues in eminent bodily and verbal acts. … The World-Honored One taught three kinds of karma in the scriptures — does denying bodily and verbal karma not contradict scripture? We do not deny them as non-existent; we only say they are not form.")¹⁵

"If the informative act is not real form, how can the non-informative be real?" — the dependent collapses with the principal. Yet the treatise does not therefore erase the precept; it only declares it not form ("we do not deny them; we only say they are not form"). What it re-grounds the precept on is "the good-or-bad delimitation of volition and intention," nominally positing the "non-informative" at the stage of growth of the volition-seed. The term "non-informative" survives, but its referent has shifted from real form to the seed of volition. The treatise states the precept's nature directly: the precept "has the three kinds of karma as its nature" — not a separately posited non-informative form.¹⁶

The fullest statement of the seed mechanism is a passage in the Yogācārabhūmi's Section on Ascertainment, which supplies all four beats — volition → seed → continuity → protection:

若正攝受遠離戒時，名攝受律儀。從是已後，此遠離思五根攝受增上力故，恒與彼種子俱行，於時時間亦與現行俱行，即由五根所攝善思，如先所受律儀防護而轉。 (Translator's rendering: "When one rightly takes up the precept of abstention, it is called taking up restraint. Thereafter, by the augmenting force of the five faculties' embrace, this abstention-volition perpetually operates together with its seed, and from time to time also operates in present activity; and just by this wholesome volition embraced by the five faculties, it functions protectively in accordance with the restraint formerly received.")¹⁷

What is aroused at ordination is the abstention-volition (the intention to refrain, cetanā); after ordination, sustained by the augmenting force of the five spiritual faculties, it "perpetually operates together with its seed" — that is, perfumes a wholesome seed that persists in latency, surfacing into activity from time to time and "functioning protectively in accordance with the restraint formerly received." The volition of ordination perfumes a seed; the seed continues and protects. Mind, in the form of a seed, has replaced material non-informative form, and discharges the very same office of persisting-and-preventing.

A pivotal transitional witness sits between the second and third schools: Sthiramati's Abhidharmasamuccaya-bhāṣya reclassifies the Sarvāstivāda's "non-informative form" as form-induced-by-reception (受所引色) — a subtype of the form falling under the mental-object base, induced by the act of receiving the precepts.¹⁸ This re-classification keeps the name "non-informative form" while moving it out of the dimension of real form and into the category of what reception induces. The term thus becomes a re-locatable label rather than a fixed designation of Sarvāstivāda real form — a crucial way-station between the houses. (This same treatise was used in P12 and P14 as the doctrinal anchor for the three clusters and the nine kinds; the passage drawn upon here — non-informative-form-as-form-induced-by-reception — is a different passage put to a different use, flagged to keep the cross-references honest.)

A discipline of attribution must close this section. The Yogācāra treatises do not themselves say "the precept-substance is a good seed in the store-consciousness." The Cheng weishi lun says the precept's nature is the three kinds of karma and that the non-informative is nominally posited on the volition-seed; the Yogācārabhūmi says the abstention-volition perfumes a seed and operates protectively with it; Sthiramati says the non-informative form should be reclassified as form-induced-by-reception. What the treatises establish is that the nature of the precept is the three karmas / the abstention-volition, and that after ordination it perpetually operates together with its seed — not the explicit formula "precept-substance = a good seed in the store-consciousness." The figure who fixes the seed-model in the store-consciousness and turns it into the equation "the good seed in the store-consciousness is the precept-substance" is Daoxuan, by way of his Perfect-Teaching synthesis. The present paper therefore marks that formula as the Perfect-Teaching school's appropriation of the Yogācāra seed-model, not as native Yogācāra doctrine. The deeper machinery of the seed lineage — the precise locus in the store-consciousness and the afflicted mind (manas), the transformation of the basis (āśraya-parāvṛtti), the six characteristics of seeds, and the dynamics of perfuming — is the home subject of P18 and is not unfolded here.¹⁹

V. Daoxuan's Three-School Judgment and the Perfect-Teaching Seed-Substance

We turn now to the first of the two Chinese masters who organize this inheritance: Daoxuan (道宣, 596–667) of the Nanshan vinaya school.

A persistent claim in the planning literature has labeled Daoxuan a material-substance theorist. This is the headline mis-assignment, and it should be corrected — not as an interpretive thesis of this paper, but as a settled point of doctrinal history, stated plainly. Three independent lines of his own writing place his position at the Perfect-Teaching seed-substance (圓教種子戒體, the seed perfumed into the store-consciousness), not at material form.

First, Daoxuan's own definition of the precept-substance, in his Abridged and Supplemented Commentary on Practice from the Dharmaguptaka Vinaya, locates it in mind, not form:

二明戒體者……以此要期之心，與彼妙法相應，於彼法上，有緣起之義；領納在心，名為戒體。 (Translator's rendering: "Second, on the precept-substance: … by this resolute mind corresponding with that excellent dharma, there is, with respect to that dharma, the sense of a conditioned arising; what is received and retained in the mind is called the precept-substance.")²⁰

"What is received and retained in the mind is called the precept-substance" — the substance is in the mind, not in form. That is the first line of evidence.

Second, in his substance-analysis section, Daoxuan explicitly rejects taking form as the substance of karma:

三出體狀。二論不同；今依本宗，約《成論》以釋……如人無心殺生，不得殺罪，故知以心為體……若指色為業體，是義不然；十四種色，悉是無記，非罪福性。 (Translator's rendering: "Third, setting out the substance. The two treatises differ; here, following our own school, I explain by way of the Satyasiddhi. … As when a person kills without the intention, no offence of killing is incurred — hence we know that mind is the substance. … To point to form as the substance of karma is wrong: the fourteen kinds of form are all morally indeterminate, not of the nature of merit or demerit.")²¹

"To point to form as the substance of karma is wrong" — an explicit repudiation of the material answer. That is the second line. And the reader can see here exactly what Daoxuan is doing at the operational level: following the Satyasiddhi / Nominalist school, taking mind as the substance, and positing the non-acting precept as neither form nor mind:

言無作戒者，以非色非心為體。非色者，非塵大所成，以五義來證……言非心者，體非緣慮，故名非心，亦有五證……故以第三聚非色非心為體。 (Translator's rendering: "As for the non-acting precept, it takes the neither-form-nor-mind as its substance. Not form, because it is not composed of the elements, proved by five arguments … not mind, because its substance is not cognition, proved by five arguments … therefore it takes the third-category neither-form-nor-mind as its substance.")²²

He works at this layer with the Nominalist school because the Dharmaguptaka vinaya is formally a Nominalist-school text (Daoxuan: "here, following our own school, I explain by way of the Satyasiddhi"). But this is not his final word.

Third, and most decisively, Daoxuan frames his own three-school judgment (三宗判), which assigns form explicitly to the Sarvāstivāda and seed to his own Perfect-Teaching school. The crispest statement of this judgment is preserved in Yuanzhao's Zichiji, transmitting Daoxuan's Karman-Commentary (Yeshu) — and the byline matters, as we note below:²³

且依《業疏》三宗，以示一家處判……一者實法宗。即薩婆多部。彼宗明體則同歸色聚……二者假名宗。即今所承曇無德部。此宗論體則強號二非……三者圓教宗。即用涅槃開會之意，決了權乘同歸實道。故考受體，乃是識藏熏種……然今《四分》，正當假宗。深有兼淺之能，故旁收有部；教蘊分通之義，故終會圓乘。 (Translator's rendering: "Following the three schools of the Karman-Commentary, to show our school's adjudication: first, the Realist school — that is, the Sarvāstivāda; that school, clarifying the substance, refers it to the form-cluster. … Second, the Nominalist school — that is, the Dharmagupta lineage we now inherit; this school, in treating the substance, emphatically calls it the 'two negations' [neither form nor mind]. … Third, the Perfect-Teaching school — using the Nirvāṇa's sense of opening-and-uniting, it resolves the provisional vehicles into one with the real path; thus, examining the substance-received, it is the seed perfumed into the store-consciousness. … Now the Dharmaguptaka properly belongs to the Nominalist school; yet, having the capacity of the deep encompassing the shallow, it incidentally takes in the Sarvāstivāda; and by the sense of its teaching partially opening onto [the Mahāyāna], it ultimately resolves into the Perfect vehicle.")

The skeleton of the three-school judgment stands clear: the Realist school is the Sarvāstivāda, whose substance "refers to the form-cluster" — form is assigned to the Sarvāstivāda, not to Daoxuan; the Nominalist school is the home school of the Dharmaguptaka vinaya, whose substance is "the two negations" (neither form nor mind); and the Perfect-Teaching school's substance-received is "the seed perfumed into the store-consciousness" — Daoxuan's own settled answer. That material form belongs to the Realist school and not to Daoxuan is made still plainer in a companion passage transmitted by Yuanzhao:

初明有宗，當分小教。彼謂小機力劣，不約心論；善惡二業，皆由色造；能造是色，所發亦色；故作無作，竝色為體……正明業體是色法也。 (Translator's rendering: "First, the Existence school, falling under the lesser teaching. It holds that those of lesser faculties, being weak, do not argue in terms of mind; good and bad karma are both made by form; the maker is form and what is issued is also form; so both the acting and the non-acting take form as their substance … this precisely shows that the substance of karma is a form-dharma.")

"The substance of karma is a form-dharma" is adjudicated to the Existence school, not to Daoxuan. Daoxuan's own Perfect-Teaching precept-substance is, instead, the good seed in the store-consciousness:

故《業疏》云：智知境緣，本是心作……故作法受還熏妄心，於本藏識，成善種子，此戒體也。 (Translator's rendering: "Thus the Karman-Commentary says: knowing that objects and conditions are originally made by mind … so the formal act of reception in turn perfumes the deluded mind, and in the root store-consciousness forms a good seed — this is the precept-substance.")

"The formal act of reception in turn perfumes the deluded mind, and in the root store-consciousness forms a good seed — this is the precept-substance." Daoxuan's ultimate precept-substance is precisely the good seed in the store-consciousness: the Perfect-Teaching seed-substance.

Two layers of nuance must be added here, neither of which should be flattened. The first is philological. The text transmitting the crispest three-school and seed formulae — bearing the Taishō number T1805《四分律行事鈔資持記》T40, No. 1805View on CBETA online reader ↗ — is titled the Zichiji (Notes Upholding the [Practice-Commentary]) and was composed by Yuanzhao (元照, 1048–1116) of the Song, not by Daoxuan; earlier project and prior-paper references mis-stated both title and author. Daoxuan's autograph voice is his Practice-Commentary (T1804《四分律刪繁補闕行事鈔》T40, No. 1804View on CBETA online reader ↗). The three-school judgment and the "seed-in-the-store-consciousness" formula belong to the layer of Daoxuan's Karman-Commentary (the Yeshu / Jiemoshu), which survives for us as transmitted by Yuanzhao's Zichiji; they must therefore be cited within the frame "Yuanzhao's Zichiji, transmitting Daoxuan's Yeshu," never as Daoxuan's direct autograph. (Daoxuan's actual Han-zhu jieben shu is a Manji canon text, not a Taishō-numbered one.) Indeed, in the whole of Daoxuan's Practice-Commentary the word "seed" occurs only in the agricultural sense of the precept against destroying seeds and plants; the precept-substance sense of "seed" lives in the Karman-Commentary layer and surfaces for us through Yuanzhao's transmission — which is why that witness is indispensable.²⁴

The second is that Daoxuan's position has two tiers that must not be collapsed into one. At the operational level of the Practice-Commentary he does adopt the Satyasiddhi / Nominalist reading (mind-as-substance, the non-acting as neither-form-nor-mind) to expound the Dharmaguptaka vinaya, because that vinaya is formally a Nominalist-school text; but his ultimate reading, by way of "the [vinaya's doctrine] partially opening onto the Mahāyāna" (分通大乘), resolves into the Perfect-Teaching seed. The settled label is Perfect-Teaching seed-substance, but the exposition should display both tiers, the Nominalist rising into the Perfect. (A genealogical note, with Newhall: Daoxuan's seed-theory draws on the pre-Xuanzang Yogācāra of Paramārtha's translations, not on Xuanzang's new renderings — a distinction that guards against the hasty equation "seed-substance = Xuanzang's Yogācāra.")²⁵

VI. Zhiyi's Provisional-Real Relativization, the Three-Way Dialogue, and the Trilemma

The second Chinese master to organize this inheritance is Zhiyi (智顗, 538–597) of Tiantai. The planning literature has labeled him a "mind-substance" theorist; this too should be corrected. Zhiyi is not cleanly a school-bearer for any one answer but a second indigenous doxographer who lays the debate out and then relativizes it with a provisional-and-real meta-resolution.

In the substance-analysis section of his Commentary on the Meaning of the Bodhisattva Precepts, Zhiyi does not set up a fourth house to bear the precept-substance. He first arrays the Abhidharma form-cluster and the Satyasiddhi neither-form-nor-mind as the two poles of an old dispute (the juxtaposition quoted in §III), and then gathers them with a provisional-and-real judgment:

然此二釋，舊所諍論……若言無者，於理為當。若言有者，於教為當。理則為實，教則為權。在實雖無，教門則有。 (Translator's rendering: "These two interpretations are the subject of an old dispute. … To say there is none accords with principle; to say there is one accords with the teaching. Principle is the real; teaching is the provisional. At the level of the real there is none, yet at the gate of teaching there is.")²⁶

Zhiyi's meaning: at the level of ultimate principle (the real), there is no graspable substance to be seized; at the level of pedagogical convention (the provisional), one may unproblematically say there is. "At the level of the real there is none, yet at the gate of teaching there is" — with the two-tier provisional-and-real distinction, he relativizes both the material and the neither-form-nor-mind positions at once, without committing to either pole. Tellingly, at the level of the provisional/teaching he goes so far as to call the Mahāyāna precepts a form-cluster (a material statement, the opposite of "mind-substance"), and to refuse to let the Mahāyāna borrow the Satyasiddhi neither-form-nor-mind (if it did, he says, it would merely repeat the Satyasiddhi and remain at the lesser-vehicle level). Zhiyi thus clings to neither form, nor neither-form-nor-mind, nor mind; he uses the provisional-and-real judgment to let each reading rest at its proper level. (His "mind-ground" language elsewhere belongs to the title-glossing register of his Profound Meaning — the thematic key of the perfect-and-sudden precepts — and not to the substance-analysis register; the two should not be conflated into a thesis that "mind is the precept-substance.")²⁷

So the two Chinese masters each devise a mode of organization: Daoxuan subsumes the three under his three-school judgment and settles his own school on the Perfect-Teaching seed; Zhiyi relativizes the three with his provisional-and-real judgment and holds that there is none at the level of principle, one at the level of teaching. Neither stops at a flat list of three; each, with a master's eye, re-settles this inheritance from Indian Abhidharma.

This is the place to set the trilemma into dialogue with three modern interlocutors.

First, on the material axis, the work of K. L. Dhammajoti. His Sarvāstivāda Abhidharma offers the most rigorous modern reconstruction of why the Sarvāstivāda classed precept-restraint as a species of matter — the non-informative as the invisible link that sustains the continuity of karmic effect. The present paper accepts that reconstruction and pushes it one step: Dhammajoti reads the non-informative as an Indian-Abhidharma problem of dharma-classification (under which list does restraint fall?); this paper shows that the same material is re-ontologized the moment it crosses into Chinese vinaya exegesis. Daoxuan does not ask "which dharma-list does restraint belong to," but "what perdures in the ordinand, and in what mode does it exist?" — and the classification problem becomes the trilemma of precept-substance.²⁸

Second, on the Chinese-jietǐ axis, the work of Thomas Newhall — the one English study of jietǐ as such, and (by virtue of its open access) the one English source this paper engages closely. Two of his findings are taken up here: that the precept-substance is the central organizing concept of Daoxuan's vinaya commentaries, not a marginal technicality; and the genealogical correction that Daoxuan's seed-theory draws on pre-Xuanzang (Paramārtha-lineage) Yogācāra rather than Xuanzang's new translations — a correction that guards against equating "seed-substance" with Xuanzang's system. The present paper accepts both and advances beyond them: Newhall's frame is Daoxuan-centric and genealogical; this paper reads the three positions synchronically as a structured trilemma and adds the second indigenous meta-move, Zhiyi's provisional-and-real relativization, which a vinaya-school focus does not bring into view.²⁹

Third, on the disputed-dharma axis, the work of Collett Cox. Her Disputed Dharmas shows that the very existence-status of the non-informative was already an intra-Indian dispute — the Sarvāstivāda affirming, its critics denying — so that the Chinese three-way split is the downstream of a live Indian ontological argument, not a Chinese invention; and it lets the Satyasiddhi "neither-form-nor-mind" deflation be historicized as an Indian-rooted move. The present paper accepts this and advances it: Cox stops at the Indian Abhidharma horizon (the Sarvāstivāda and its critics); this paper shows that the same dispute, once it must answer "what does the ordinand carry away?," is re-organized around a third, Chinese-Yogācāra option (the store-consciousness seed) and then meta-resolved by Zhiyi.³⁰

A note on the thinness of attention this subject has received. There is, to date, no sustained English monograph treating the three-school jietǐ dispute as a structure; the Anglophone literature reaches it only along three non-converging lines — the dharma-theory of the non-informative, the genealogy of Daoxuan, and the institutional history of the ordination platform. Newhall (2014) is the single English study of jietǐ itself, yet it is Daoxuan-centric and silent on Zhiyi's provisional-and-real move. This paper's three-house, synchronic comparison is offered as a corrective, on the same approach taken in P12–P15. (For a Japanese-language groundwork directly on the topic, Satō Tatsugen's Studies on the Vinaya in Chinese Buddhism, chapter 8, "Daoxuan and the Precept-Substance," is the closest precedent; engaged here through paraphrase.)³¹

To sum up. The material answer (a substantialist material continuum), the neither-form-nor-mind answer (a deflationary third-category factor), and the seed answer (a dispositional mental disposition) are three ontological responses to one and the same Sarvāstivāda-generated question: what does ordination confer such that it can persist and prevent wrongdoing? The three are not a diachronic genealogy to be set in sequence but a synchronic, side-by-side ontological trilemma: one question, three mutually incompatible answers. What China adds is a third option (the store-consciousness seed) and Zhiyi's provisional-and-real relativization. The precept-substance question thus runs from its absence in early Buddhism, to its birth in the Sarvāstivāda, to its three Chinese answers, and finally to its relativization by the eyes of two masters — a small but consequential episode in the ontology of the East Asian vinaya.

The canonical compendium of this trilemma is Daoxuan's Practice-Commentary, whose full architecture, authority, and unfolding of the received-and-followed precepts are reserved for the next paper (P17); the deeper machinery of the seed lineage — the afflicted mind, the transformation of the basis, the six characteristics of seeds, and perfuming — is reserved for P18. The present paper binds the three houses together as a single trilemma, to open the Precept-Substance Studies.

---

---

References

Primary Buddhist Sources

• Za ahan jing (雜阿含經, Saṃyuktāgama); trans. Guṇabhadra of the Liu-Song; Taishō vol. 2, No. 99.
• Abhidharmakośa (阿毘達磨俱舍論); composed by Vasubandhu, trans. Xuanzang of the Tang; Taishō vol. 29, No. 1558.
• Nyāyānusāra (阿毘達磨順正理論); composed by Saṃghabhadra, trans. Xuanzang of the Tang; Taishō vol. 29, No. 1562.
• Satyasiddhi-śāstra (成實論); composed by Harivarman, trans. Kumārajīva of the Later Qin; Taishō vol. 32, No. 1646.
• Cheng weishi lun (成唯識論); composed by Dharmapāla et al., trans. Xuanzang of the Tang; Taishō vol. 31, No. 1585.
• Yogācārabhūmi (瑜伽師地論); spoken by Maitreya, trans. Xuanzang of the Tang; Taishō vol. 30, No. 1579.
• Abhidharmasamuccaya-bhāṣya (大乘阿毘達磨雜集論); compiled by Sthiramati, trans. Xuanzang of the Tang; Taishō vol. 31, No. 1606.
• Sifenlü shanfan buque xingshi chao (四分律刪繁補闕行事鈔, Practice-Commentary); by Daoxuan of the Tang; Taishō vol. 40, No. 1804.
• Sifenlü shanbu suiji jiemo shu (四分律刪補隨機羯磨疏, Karman-Commentary / Yeshu); by Daoxuan of the Tang. (Proximate source of the three-school judgment and the seed-substance; surviving as transmitted by Yuanzhao's Zichiji.)
• Sifenlü xingshi chao zizhiji (四分律行事鈔資持記, Zichiji); by Yuanzhao (Lingzhi, 1048–1116) of the Song; Taishō vol. 40, No. 1805. (The extant witness to the three-school judgment and seed-substance formulae, transmitting Daoxuan's Karman-Commentary; not Daoxuan's autograph, and not the Han-zhu jieben shu.)
• Pusajie yishu (菩薩戒義疏, Commentary on the Meaning of the Bodhisattva Precepts); spoken by Zhiyi, recorded by Guanding, of the Sui; Taishō vol. 40, No. 1811.
• Vinaya / Visuddhimagga (Theravāda baseline on virati-cetasika) — engaged through paraphrase only, never quoted.

Modern Scholarship

• Cox, Collett. Disputed Dharmas: Early Buddhist Theories on Existence. Tokyo: International Institute for Buddhist Studies, 1995. (In copyright; engaged through paraphrase.)
• Dhammajoti, K. L. Sarvāstivāda Abhidharma. Hong Kong: Buddha-Dharma Centre, 5th ed. 2015. (In copyright; engaged through paraphrase.)
• Newhall, Thomas. "A Study of the Concept of Jieti 戒體 in Daoxuan's Vinaya Commentaries." Journal of Chinese Buddhist Studies 27 (2014): 181–208 (and IBK 65.2, 2017). (Open access; the single English study of jietǐ; engaged through close paraphrase.)
• Satō Tatsugen (佐藤達玄). Chūgoku bukkyō ni okeru kairitsu no kenkyū (Studies on the Vinaya in Chinese Buddhism). Tokyo: Mokujisha, 1986, ch. 8. (Japanese; engaged through paraphrase.)
• Ōno Hōdō (大野法道). Studies on the Mahāyāna Precept Scriptures. 1954. (Japanese; engaged through paraphrase.)

Śāstra & Commentary Index

Short title	Full title	Author / Translator	Taishō No.	Use in this paper
Saṃyuktāgama	Za ahan jing	trans. Guṇabhadra, Liu-Song	T2, No. 99《雜阿含經》Saṃyukta-āgamaT2, No. 99Guṇabhadra (Liu Song, ca. 435 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗	Baseline contrast: right action is abstention; momentary intention
Kośa	Abhidharmakośa	Vasubandhu, trans. Xuanzang, Tang	T29, No. 1558《阿毘達磨俱舍論》Abhidharmakośa-bhāṣyaT29, No. 1558View on CBETA online reader ↗	Material-substance source: definition of the non-informative, three restraints, embankment simile, Vaibhāṣika self-statement
Nyāyānusāra	Apidamo shun zhengli lun	Saṃghabhadra, trans. Xuanzang, Tang	T29, No. 1562《阿毘達磨順正理論》T29, No. 1562View on CBETA online reader ↗	Material-substance defense: informative→non-informative, "must admit a real non-informative," rebuts the Sautrāntika
Satyasiddhi	Chengshi lun	Harivarman, trans. Kumārajīva, Later Qin	T32, No. 1646《成實論》T32, No. 1646View on CBETA online reader ↗	Neither-form-nor-mind source: the non-acting as a third category; non-acting ≠ volition
Cheng weishi lun	Cheng weishi lun	Dharmapāla et al., trans. Xuanzang, Tang	T31, No. 1585《成唯識論》Vijñaptimātratā-siddhi-śāstraT31, No. 1585Xuanzang composite (Tang, 659 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗	Seed source: dismantles the non-informative, posits the volition-seed; precept's nature = three karmas
Yogācārabhūmi	Yuqie shidi lun	Maitreya, trans. Xuanzang, Tang	T30, No. 1579《瑜伽師地論》Yogācārabhūmi-śāstraT30, No. 1579Xuanzang (Tang, 646–648 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗	Seed mechanism (fasc. 53): abstention-volition perpetually operates with its seed, functions protectively
Samuccaya-bhāṣya	Dasheng apidamo zaji lun	Sthiramati, trans. Xuanzang, Tang	T31, No. 1606《大乘阿毘達磨雜集論》Abhidharmasamuccaya-vyākhyāT31, No. 1606View on CBETA online reader ↗	Transitional hinge: non-informative reclassified as form-induced-by-reception (prior use: P12 / P14)
Practice-Commentary	Sifenlü … xingshi chao	Daoxuan, Tang	T40, No. 1804《四分律刪繁補闕行事鈔》T40, No. 1804View on CBETA online reader ↗	Daoxuan's autograph anchor: substance received-and-retained in mind, rejection of form, operational Nominalist layer
Zichiji	Sifenlü xingshi chao zizhiji	Yuanzhao, Song	T40, No. 1805《四分律行事鈔資持記》T40, No. 1805View on CBETA online reader ↗	Three-school judgment + seed-substance formulae (transmitting Daoxuan's Karman-Commentary)
Yishu	Pusajie yishu	Zhiyi (rec. Guanding), Sui	T40, No. 1811《菩薩戒義疏》T40, No. 1811View on CBETA online reader ↗	Zhiyi as second doxographer: self-listing of form-cluster vs. neither-form-nor-mind; provisional-and-real judgment

---

Series Cross-References

Within Volume IV SĪLA, preceding

• SILA-P15 Receiving as Gate — its "the precepts of all bodhisattvas, ordinary or noble, have mind as their substance" was used as a positive receiving-frame; the present paper re-functions that line as one pole of Zhiyi's "there is no separate non-acting" debate (cf. P15, with the changed function flagged).
• SILA-P12 The Three-Body Architecture of Bodhisattva Sīla / SILA-P14 The Bodhisattvabhūmi Chapter on Śīla — Sthiramati's Abhidharmasamuccaya-bhāṣya (T1606《大乘阿毘達磨雜集論》Abhidharmasamuccaya-vyākhyāT31, No. 1606View on CBETA online reader ↗) was the doctrinal-endorsement anchor there; the present paper uses only its "non-informative → form-induced-by-reception" passage (a different passage and function — prior use noted).
• SILA-P13 Nāgārjuna on Śīla-Pāramitā — its "no Pāli precedent for the East Asian crystallization" finding carries forward and is sharpened here (the Theravāda takes the explicit negative).

Within Volume IV SĪLA, forthcoming

• SILA-P17 Daoxuan's Practice-Commentary as the Source-Compendium — the canonical compendium of this trilemma; the full received-and-followed procedure and authority live there, while the present paper takes only the ontology of the substance-received. (The P17 entry carries forward the T1805《四分律行事鈔資持記》T40, No. 1805View on CBETA online reader ↗ byline erratum lock.)
• SILA-P18 Precept-Substance and the Afflicted Mind — the store-consciousness / manas / transformation-of-the-basis / six-characteristics-of-seeds / perfuming deep-dive; the present paper states only the basic volition → seed → continuity → protection claim.

Cross-paper recurring anchors

• "No Pāli precedent for the East Asian crystallization" (P13 / P14 / P15 / P16).
• CBETA-byline verification and plan-correction discipline (P14 on member-7 / T1606《大乘阿毘達磨雜集論》Abhidharmasamuccaya-vyākhyāT31, No. 1606View on CBETA online reader ↗; P15 on T1811《菩薩戒義疏》T40, No. 1811View on CBETA online reader ↗ ≠ T1812《天台菩薩戒疏》T40, No. 1812View on CBETA online reader ↗; P16 on Daoxuan ≠ material-substance / Zhiyi ≠ mind-substance / T1805《四分律行事鈔資持記》T40, No. 1805View on CBETA online reader ↗ = Yuanzhao).

Cross-volume polyphonic anchors

• NIAN P30 (the afflicted mind / transformation of the basis) — the deeper seed-mechanics deferred here to P18 connect to the manas lineage of the NIAN gate.
• The Eight-Part Suite, S3 (the hundred dharmas / Yogācāra dharma-taxonomy) — the dharma-classificatory ground of the form / factor-dissociated-from-thought / seed debate.

---

CBETA collation: The primary Chinese textual anchors of the present paper — the Abhidharmakośa (T1558《阿毘達磨俱舍論》Abhidharmakośa-bhāṣyaT29, No. 1558View on CBETA online reader ↗, the definition of the non-informative at p. 0003a23–25, its place in the form-aggregate at p. 0002b07, the three restraints at p. 0072b09–16, the embankment-precept and continuity argument at p. 0069a24–28, the Vaibhāṣika self-statement at p. 0070a21–22); the Nyāyānusāra (T1562《阿毘達磨順正理論》T29, No. 1562View on CBETA online reader ↗, "must admit a real non-informative" at p. 0543a25–26, the persisting distinct factor at p. 0542b04–06, the ordination mechanism at p. 0549b08–14); the Satyasiddhi-śāstra (T1646《成實論》T32, No. 1646View on CBETA online reader ↗, the non-acting as not-mind / aggregate-of-formations at p. 0290b09–12, as not-form at p. 0290b15–17, the three-item distinction at p. 0304a15–20); the Cheng weishi lun (T1585《成唯識論》Vijñaptimātratā-siddhi-śāstraT31, No. 1585Xuanzang composite (Tang, 659 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗, the dismantling of the non-informative and the volition-seed at p. 0004c20–28, the precept's nature as the three karmas at p. 0051b18–20); the Yogācārabhūmi (T1579《瑜伽師地論》Yogācārabhūmi-śāstraT30, No. 1579Xuanzang (Tang, 646–648 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗, the abstention-volition operating with its seed at p. 0590b04–08, trans. Xuanzang); the Abhidharmasamuccaya-bhāṣya (T1606《大乘阿毘達磨雜集論》Abhidharmasamuccaya-vyākhyāT31, No. 1606View on CBETA online reader ↗, the non-informative reclassified as form-induced-by-reception at p. 0696b27–c02, Sthiramati); Daoxuan's Practice-Commentary (T1804《四分律刪繁補闕行事鈔》T40, No. 1804View on CBETA online reader ↗, the precept-substance received-and-retained in mind at p. 0004c01–06, the rejection of form and the operational Nominalist layer at p. 0052b02–17); Yuanzhao's Zichiji (T1805《四分律行事鈔資持記》T40, No. 1805View on CBETA online reader ↗, the three-school judgment at p. 0157b24–c07, the material answer assigned to the Existence school at p. 0269c12–18, and the seed-substance formula at p. 0270b02–05 — all transmitting Daoxuan's Karman-Commentary); Zhiyi's Commentary on the Meaning of the Bodhisattva Precepts (T1811《菩薩戒義疏》T40, No. 1811View on CBETA online reader ↗, the form-cluster / neither-form-nor-mind juxtaposition at p. 0566a19–22 and the provisional-and-real judgment at p. 0566b21–26, spoken by Zhiyi and recorded by Guanding of the Sui); and the Saṃyuktāgama (T0099《雜阿含經》Saṃyukta-āgamaT2, No. 99Guṇabhadra (Liu Song, ca. 435 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗, right action as abstention at p. 0203a12 and momentary intention at p. 0231c14, trans. Guṇabhadra) — have all been collated against the CBETA Electronic Tripiṭaka (2024 collation). On the byline: T1805《四分律行事鈔資持記》T40, No. 1805View on CBETA online reader ↗ is Yuanzhao's Zichiji (Song), not Daoxuan's Han-zhu jieben shu (a Manji-canon text); the true Zhiyi commentary is T1811《菩薩戒義疏》T40, No. 1811View on CBETA online reader ↗, not T1812《天台菩薩戒疏》T40, No. 1812View on CBETA online reader ↗ (Mingkuang's Tang abridgement). The Theravāda baseline (the virati-cetasika analysis; the Visuddhimagga's treatment of virtue) is engaged only through scholarly paraphrase and is never quoted. Modern scholarship — Dhammajoti (Sarvāstivāda Abhidharma, 2015), Newhall (JCBS 27, 2014), Cox (Disputed Dharmas, 1995), and Satō Tatsugen (Studies on the Vinaya in Chinese Buddhism, ch. 8) — is engaged through paraphrase and page-reference citation; no verbatim quotation.

Author: 釋慧鏡 Shi Huijing Project: Pointing at the Moon · Six Practice Gates License: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Repository: github.com/pointing-at-the-moon/six-practice-gates

Pointing at the Moon · The Six Practice Gates · Volume IV SĪLA · Paper 16 · Part V opener · May 2026

Footnotes

1. This opening question also meets the live curiosity of a Western reader first encountering East Asian vinaya — "when someone is ordained, what do they actually get?" — which points directly at the ontology of the precept-substance. ↩

2. Saṃyuktāgama (Za ahan jing), trans. Guṇabhadra of the Liu-Song, fascicle 28: "right action … is abstaining from killing, theft, and sexual misconduct." Taishō vol. 2, No. 99, p. 0203a12. Right action is the abstaining itself, with no separately deposited continuum. ↩

3. Saṃyuktāgama, fascicle 32: through day and night a person has the mind to kill only briefly and lacks it for most of the time. Taishō vol. 2, No. 99, p. 0231c14. Analysis by momentary intention is incompatible with positing a continuously deposited substance. ↩

4. Early Buddhist sīla as virati (abstention), saṃvara (restraint), and cetanā (volition) is standard doctrine. The Theravāda Abhidhamma analyzes restraint as three momentary abstinence mental factors (virati-cetasika) — mind-conjoined, momentary, not a persisting substance — positively declining a non-informative material residue. The relevant Pāli sources (e.g., the Aṅguttara treatment of the precepts and the Visuddhimagga's section on virtue) are engaged here only through paraphrase, never quoted, for reasons of copyright and corpus-licensing; the quotable baseline is the Chinese Saṃyuktāgama (T99). This "no-substance" answer is in effect a fourth comparative position alongside the three Chinese answers. ↩

5. Abhidharmakośa, composed by Vasubandhu, trans. Xuanzang of the Tang, Chapter on the Elements: "although the non-informative is of the nature of form-karma … it does not inform others; hence it is called non-informative." Taishō vol. 29, No. 1558, p. 0003a23–25. ↩

6. The non-informative enters the form-aggregate: "form is only the five faculties, the five objects, and the non-informative." Abhidharmakośa, Taishō vol. 29, No. 1558, p. 0002b07. It is a "form falling under the mental-object base," an object of mind alone. ↩

7. Abhidharmakośa, Chapter on Karma: the three non-informatives (restraint, non-restraint, neither) and the three restraints (individual-liberation, meditation-born, path-born). Taishō vol. 29, No. 1558, p. 0072b09–16. Full ordination confers the first, individual-liberation restraint (prātimokṣa-saṃvara). ↩

8. Abhidharmakośa: to deny the non-informative form is to lose individual-liberation restraint and any precept-continuity after ordination; the embankment-precept simile. Taishō vol. 29, No. 1558, p. 0069a24–28. The mechanism of arising at the first instant of ordination (informative act → non-informative, then continuity from the second moment) is detailed in Saṃghabhadra's Nyāyānusāra, Taishō vol. 29, No. 1562, p. 0549b08–14. ↩

9. Saṃghabhadra, Nyāyānusāra, trans. Xuanzang of the Tang: "therefore one must definitely admit a real non-informative," Taishō vol. 29, No. 1562, p. 0543a25–26; and "there is a distinct factor which … continually manifests in series … thus non-informative form really exists," p. 0542b04–06. ↩

10. The Sautrāntika lineage denies the non-informative is real form, reassigning it to volition (cetanā) and its perfuming — the first sounding of the seed-school's "dismantling the non-informative and positing the volition-seed" (§IV). ↩

11. Satyasiddhi-śāstra, composed by Harivarman, trans. Kumārajīva of the Later Qin, "Chapter on the Non-Acting": the non-acting is not mind but falls under the aggregate of formations (factors dissociated from thought). Taishō vol. 32, No. 1646, p. 0290b09–12. ↩

12. Satyasiddhi-śāstra: the non-acting is not form, since form is morally neutral and of the character of distress-and-decay, which is absent from the non-acting. Taishō vol. 32, No. 1646, p. 0290b15–17. The two pincers (moral charge; absence of obstruction-and-decay) yield "neither form nor mind." ↩

13. The Satyasiddhi-śāstra keeps three items separate — the acting, the non-acting (a factor dissociated from thought), and mind, that is, volition. See Taishō vol. 32, No. 1646, p. 0304a15–20. Hence: the Satyasiddhi precept-substance is neither-form-nor-mind, not volition. To read it as "the continuation of volition" is the Yogācāra route, which stands opposed to the Satyasiddhi third category. ↩

14. Zhiyi, Commentary on the Meaning of the Bodhisattva Precepts (Pusajie yishu), recorded by Guanding, of the Sui: the Satyasiddhi "Chapter on the Non-Acting" gives a neither-form-nor-mind cluster; on the Abhidharma reading the precept is a form-cluster. Taishō vol. 40, No. 1811, p. 0566a19–22. A sixth-century Chinese witness that "form vs. neither-form-nor-mind" was already a named, live debate. ↩

15. Cheng weishi lun, composed by Dharmapāla et al., trans. Xuanzang of the Tang: the non-informative is nominally posited on the volition-seed; the three karmas are not denied, only declared "not form." Taishō vol. 31, No. 1585, p. 0004c20–28. ↩

16. Cheng weishi lun: the precept "has the three kinds of karma at the time of receiving the bodhisattva precepts as its nature." Taishō vol. 31, No. 1585, p. 0051b18–20. The precept's nature is the three karmas, not a separately posited non-informative form. ↩

17. Yogācārabhūmi, spoken by Maitreya, trans. Xuanzang of the Tang, fascicle 53, Section on Ascertainment: the abstention-volition "perpetually operates together with its seed" and "functions protectively in accordance with the restraint formerly received." Taishō vol. 30, No. 1579, p. 0590b04–08. The four beats: volition → seed → continuity → protection. ↩

18. Sthiramati, Abhidharmasamuccaya-bhāṣya (Dasheng apidamo zaji lun), trans. Xuanzang of the Tang: the non-informative form is reclassified as form-induced-by-reception, a subtype of the form falling under the mental-object base. Taishō vol. 31, No. 1606, p. 0696b27–c02. (This treatise was the doctrinal anchor for the three clusters in P12 and the nine kinds in P14; the passage and function used here differ — flagged to keep the cross-references honest.) ↩

19. The formula "the precept-substance is a good seed in the store-consciousness" is the Perfect-Teaching school's synthesis and appropriation of the Yogācāra seed-model, not the verbatim doctrine of the three Yogācāra treatises (T1585《成唯識論》Vijñaptimātratā-siddhi-śāstraT31, No. 1585Xuanzang composite (Tang, 659 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗ / T1579《瑜伽師地論》Yogācārabhūmi-śāstraT30, No. 1579Xuanzang (Tang, 646–648 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗ / T1606《大乘阿毘達磨雜集論》Abhidharmasamuccaya-vyākhyāT31, No. 1606View on CBETA online reader ↗), which state only that the precept's nature is the three karmas / the abstention-volition and that after ordination it perpetually operates together with its seed. The afflicted mind (manas), the transformation of the basis, the six characteristics of seeds, the fourfold dynamics of perfuming, and the newly-perfumed-vs.-innate question are reserved for P18 (with cross-reference to the manas lineage of the NIAN volume). ↩

20. Daoxuan, Sifenlü shanfan buque xingshi chao (Abridged and Supplemented Commentary on Practice from the Dharmaguptaka Vinaya), of the Tang: "what is received and retained in the mind is called the precept-substance." Taishō vol. 40, No. 1804, p. 0004c01–06. Daoxuan's own autograph definition: the substance is in mind, not form. ↩

21. Daoxuan, Practice-Commentary: "to point to form as the substance of karma is wrong; the fourteen kinds of form are all morally indeterminate." Taishō vol. 40, No. 1804, p. 0052b02–08. An explicit rejection of the material answer. ↩

22. Daoxuan, Practice-Commentary: the non-acting precept takes the third-category neither-form-nor-mind as its substance, proved by five arguments each that it is not form and not mind. Taishō vol. 40, No. 1804, p. 0052b10–17. This is Daoxuan's operational (Nominalist-school) layer, adopted because the Dharmaguptaka vinaya is formally a Nominalist text. ↩

23. The three-school judgment and the seed formula are transmitted in Yuanzhao's Zichiji: the Realist school (Sarvāstivāda, form-cluster), the Nominalist school (Dharmagupta, the "two negations"), the Perfect-Teaching school (the seed perfumed into the store-consciousness); the Dharmaguptaka, formally Nominalist, incidentally takes in the Sarvāstivāda and ultimately resolves into the Perfect vehicle by "partially opening onto the Mahāyāna." Taishō vol. 40, No. 1805, p. 0157b24–c07. Material form assigned to the Existence school: p. 0269c12–18. The seed formula ("forms a good seed in the root store-consciousness — this is the precept-substance"): p. 0270b02–05. All cited within the frame "Yuanzhao's Zichiji transmitting Daoxuan's Karman-Commentary." ↩

24. Philological note on T1805《四分律行事鈔資持記》T40, No. 1805View on CBETA online reader ↗: it is titled Sifenlü xingshi chao zizhiji (Notes Upholding the Practice-Commentary) and was composed by Yuanzhao (元照, 1048–1116) of the Song, not by Daoxuan, and is not Daoxuan's Han-zhu jieben shu (a Manji-canon text, not a Taishō number); earlier project and prior-paper references mis-stated the title and author, an erratum corrected here and carried forward to the P17 entry. Daoxuan's autograph is the Practice-Commentary (T1804《四分律刪繁補闕行事鈔》T40, No. 1804View on CBETA online reader ↗); the three-school judgment and seed formula belong to the layer of his Karman-Commentary (Yeshu / Jiemoshu), surviving as transmitted by Yuanzhao. In the whole Practice-Commentary the word "seed" appears only in the agricultural sense of the precept against destroying seeds and plants. ↩

25. Daoxuan's two tiers: operationally Nominalist (because the Dharmaguptaka vinaya is formally a Nominalist text), ultimately Perfect-Teaching seed (by "partially opening onto the Mahāyāna"). The settled label is Perfect-Teaching seed-substance, but both tiers should be displayed. His seed-theory draws on pre-Xuanzang (Paramārtha-lineage) Yogācāra, not Xuanzang's new translations — guarding against the equation "seed-substance = Xuanzang's Yogācāra." ↩

26. Zhiyi, Commentary on the Meaning of the Bodhisattva Precepts: "to say there is none accords with principle; to say there is one accords with the teaching … at the level of the real there is none, yet at the gate of teaching there is." Taishō vol. 40, No. 1811, p. 0566b21–26. The provisional-and-real relativization of both poles. ↩

27. At the provisional/teaching level Zhiyi calls the Mahāyāna precepts a form-cluster and refuses to let the Mahāyāna borrow the Satyasiddhi neither-form-nor-mind (else it would repeat the Satyasiddhi and remain at the lesser-vehicle level), so he is not cleanly a "mind-substance" theorist. His "mind-ground" language belongs to the title-glossing register of his Profound Meaning, not to the substance-analysis register, and should not be conflated with a thesis that mind is the precept-substance. ↩

28. K. L. Dhammajoti, Sarvāstivāda Abhidharma (Hong Kong: Buddha-Dharma Centre, 5th ed. 2015), the chapter on the non-informative within the treatment of karma. Engaged here through paraphrase; the original is in copyright. ↩

29. Thomas Newhall, "A Study of the Concept of Jieti 戒體 ('Essence of the Precepts') in Daoxuan's (596–667) Vinaya Commentaries," Journal of Chinese Buddhist Studies 27 (2014): 181–208 (with a genealogical note in IBK 65.2, 2017). The single English study of jietǐ as such, and an open-access source; engaged here through close paraphrase of its two load-bearing findings (the centrality of jietǐ in Daoxuan; the pre-Xuanzang / Paramārtha genealogy of the seed-theory). ↩

30. Collett Cox, Disputed Dharmas: Early Buddhist Theories on Existence (Tokyo: International Institute for Buddhist Studies, 1995; Studia Philologica Buddhica XI), translating and analyzing Saṃghabhadra on the factors dissociated from thought and the disputed status of the non-informative. Engaged here through paraphrase; the original is in copyright. ↩

31. Satō Tatsugen (佐藤達玄), Studies on the Vinaya in Chinese Buddhism (Chūgoku bukkyō ni okeru kairitsu no kenkyū; Tokyo: Mokujisha, 1986), chapter 8, "Daoxuan and the Precept-Substance," is the closest precedent directly on the topic; Ōno Hōdō's Studies on the Mahāyāna Precept Scriptures (1954) is a deeper groundwork. Both engaged through paraphrase. The thin-attention disclosure parallels P12–P15. Negative-select (treating adjacent but distinct problems): Heirman and McRae on ordination procedure and the platform; Keown and Heim (engaged in P13/P14); Lamotte and Williams (P13); Groner, Funayama, and Muller (P15). ↩