俱舍論 破執我Abhidharmakośabhāṣya · Refutation of the Grasped Self

The eight chapters of the whole treatise expound “which dharmas there are,” expounding them down to the finest grain; this last chapter does one thing only — it points out, within that whole great mass of dharmas, that there is no self. There are no root stanzas; from beginning to end it is disputation, refuting the Vātsīputrīyas and going on to the Sāṃkhya and the Vaiśeṣika, and at the last three stanzas exhorting to study, with which the whole book ends.

In one sentence: This chapter is not proving that “a self does not exist”; it is taking away, one by one, every piece of ground on which a “self” could stand — direct perception has no place for it, inference finds no difference by which it can be attested, the scriptural teaching gives it no standing, and neither memory nor the fruit of action needs it as guarantor.

Three Points to Watch

1. Refuting the self begins by refuting cognition, not by refuting a definition. The chapter opens not by asking “what is the self” but only “on what ground do you know that there is one” — direct perception cannot reach it, and inference finds in it no difference to be attested of the sort “if it is there, so; if it is not there, otherwise.” What matters is that the treatise does not maintain that whatever is invisible is nonexistent: the five form-faculties are equally invisible, and yet the treatise grants that they exist, because when a condition is lacking the result does not arise and when it is not lacking it does, and this difference is an attestation. What the treatise blocks is not the invisible but the unattestable. This measure can be used all the way down.

2. A simile must be taken apart, and the first question is “in what respect is it alike?” The Vātsīputrīyas build their whole tenet upon “establishing fire in dependence on firewood,” and the author accordingly takes this one simile apart passage by passage — not denying that it is alike, but requiring first that it be settled which is the fire and which the firewood; and once the naming is fixed, six layers fall in order: since fire arises in dependence on firewood, fire differs from firewood; if the warm touch is the fire, they are simultaneous and of different entities; if “dependence” means co-arising, then difference of entity is admitted outright; where there is no firewood there is no fire, and yet you do not allow this… Each layer first accepts the explanation the opponent has just given, and then looks to see where that explanation carries itself. This is the densest stretch of argument from simile in the whole treatise.

3. Not declaring is the outcome of analysis, not an attitude. That the life-principle is or is not the same as the body is not declared; the four declarations about the world being permanent and the rest are not declared; whether the Tathāgata exists after death and the rest is not declared — and the reason is one and the same: the question presupposes a subject that cannot stand, and any answer whatever amounts to endorsing it. The Venerable Nāgasena’s answer to King Pilinda makes just this point with “there never was a mango tree in the palace, so how could the taste of its fruit be answered for.” And that he does not say “there is no life-principle at all” is a further nicety of measure: “there is no self” and “not even a conventional self” are two different sentences, and where the hearers differ, the teaching differs.

One Further Point (Appended): After No-Self, Who Remembers and Who Undergoes the Fruit of Action

Once the refutation is done, the treatise must answer the two most concrete questions. Who remembers? — it is not one mind remembering what a different mind saw; it is that within one and the same continuum a past mind that took that object as its object gives rise to the present consciousness that remembers; and as for “the owner of the recollection,” that is simply the cause that produces the recollection, and the cause is what is called the owner — why set up a self besides? Who undergoes the fruit of action? — the fruit is not produced from an action already perished, but from the transforming and differentiating of the continuum of action, as a fruit is produced from a seed: that it joins up is called continuum, that before and after differ is called transformation, that the last moment has a special force is called differentiation.

What is to be seen clearly is this: neither answer cancels the phenomenon; each only replaces the guarantor. Memory remains, the fruit of action remains; only what guarantees them is no longer a permanent self but a stretch of continuum possessed of causality. The positive doctrine of the whole chapter lies just here; all the rest is clearing away.

Bearing on the Treatise as a Whole

The sentence at the head of the chapter, “because they are deluded by the false grasping of a self,” reaches back to the adjudication of the with-outflows and the without-outflows that the whole treatise has carried on since “without outflows means the noble path” in the Chapter on the Elements — the root of the afflictions lying in the grasping of a self, all the marks of dharmas distinguished in the preceding eight chapters must in the end come down to this one sentence. The measure of real existence and conventional existence used in refuting the Vātsīputrīyas — that to have a separate thing is real, that to be merely an aggregation is conventional — is the measure the whole treatise uses in handling conventional and real dharmas; and the passage on the continuum, transformation, and differentiation of action and its fruit is the final gathering-up of the principle of action and fruit established in the Chapter on Action — that chapter says how many kinds of action there are, and this passage says how action can produce a fruit across a lifetime.

The last three stanzas are where the whole book comes to rest. “This is the one broad road to the palace of nirvāṇa, the nature of no-self on which a thousand noble ones travel” — no-self is not a conclusion but a road. And the author says of himself that what he has spoken is only “a corner,” whose use is “to open for the wise the poison-gate of discernment”: as poison entering the body spreads from one place through the whole of it, so does discernment, entering by one gate and pervading all dharmas. The last word of the whole treatise is “work,” yet it is no longer the work of transmigration but the surpassing work of comprehending all that is knowable. Thirty fascicles of book come here to their end.

I. The General Refutation — A Self Apart from the Aggregates Is Found by Neither Direct Perception nor Inference

Treatise (stating the tenet at the opening): If one goes beyond this body of teaching and relies on another, is there then no liberation? Answer: in principle there certainly is none. Why so? Because one is deluded by the false grasping of a self.

What is meant here by “the grasping of a self”? It is the “self” grasped by the various people outside this body of teaching — they do not conventionally establish a name with regard to the continuum of the five aggregates, but grasp that there is a real self existing apart from the five aggregates. By the force of such a grasping of a self the various afflictions arise; and the afflictions having arisen, one turns without ceasing within the three existences (the desire realm, the form realm, and the formless realm, the three domains of birth and death), and there is no room for liberation.

Question: What evidence is taken for saying that the grasping of a self is false? Answer: it should be known that the several names of a “self” merely hail that stretch of the continuum of the five aggregates, and do not point besides to an entity of a self. Upon that self apart from the aggregates which they reckon, there is no real direct perception (direct perception = the cognition that witnesses immediately and in person) and no real inference (inference = the cognition that infers the unseen from what has been seen) to be had.

How so? Suppose the entity of the self really were a further real thing; then it ought to be like any other existent dharma — if no obstructing condition blocked it, it ought to be obtainable by direct perception, as the six object-fields (the six objects, form, sound, scent, taste, touch, and dharmas) are obtained by the mind; or failing that, it ought to be obtainable by inference, as the five form-faculties (the five faculties possessed of form, eye, ear, nose, tongue, and body) are inferred.

Question: To say that the five form-faculties are obtained by inference — how is this to be understood? Answer: it is like what is seen in the world: although the several conditions are complete, merely because some one further condition is lacking the result does not appear; and when that condition is not lacking, the result appears — as a seed produces a sprout, water, soil, and sunlight all being present, and yet if the seed is spoiled it does not arise. In the same way it is also seen that although the object before one and attention and the rest of the conditions are all present, in the blind and the deaf and in those who are neither blind nor deaf consciousness in the one case does not arise and in the other does; and from this one dropping-out and coming-in it can certainly be determined that there is a further separate condition there, either lacking or not lacking. This separate condition is just the five faculties, the eye and the rest — and inference of this kind is called “the inference of the form-faculties.”

Conclusion: Upon a self apart from the aggregates neither of these two roads, direct perception and inference, exists; and from this point it can be known with certainty that there is no real entity of a self.

II. The Vātsīputrīyas State Their Tenet — Neither the Same as nor Different from the Aggregates · The Twofold Pressing on Real and Conventional Existence

Treatise (stating another’s tenet): Yet the Vātsīputrīyas (one of the eighteen schools of Buddhism) grasp that there is a “pudgala” (pudgala = the one who repeatedly takes up a destiny, the subject that time after time goes to take up a destiny of rebirth, commonly rendered in the older translations as “person”), and maintain that its entity is neither the same as the five aggregates nor different from them.

Treatise (the beginning of the proper refutation): This must now be well pondered and discriminated — this pudgala you posit, is it after all really existent or conventionally existent?

Question: The marks of real existence and of conventional existence, where do they differ? Answer (the Vātsīputrīyas answer): for there to be a further separate thing is the mark of real existence, as with form and with sound; for there to be merely an aggregation of several items is the mark of conventional existence, as with milk and with curds.

Question: Then, allowing it to be real, or allowing it to be conventional, what fault attends each? Answer: if its entity is really existent, it ought to differ from the aggregates, since it has a further separate entity-nature, as one aggregate is separate from another; moreover, having a real entity, it must certainly have a cause that produces it, and failing that it would be an unconditioned dharma, which is to walk the same road as the view of the non-Buddhists; moreover, it ought also to be of no use — one has merely grasped a real existent for nothing. If its entity is conventionally existent, then it is just what I (the author) say, and what is there left to argue about?

Treatise (the Vātsīputrīyas defend): The pudgala I posit is not divided into the two, real and conventional, as the venerable one challenges; I say only this — that a pudgala may be established in dependence on those aggregates which are inner, included in the present time, and appropriated.

Treatise (challenging again): Speaking so vaguely, the sense is still not made clear. I still do not understand: what do you mean by “dependence”?

Suppose “taking up the aggregates” is the sense of this “dependence”: then, since it is by taking up the aggregates that the pudgala comes to be, the pudgala must become conventionally existent — just as milk and curds come to be by taking up form and the rest. Suppose “being caused by the aggregates” is the sense of this “dependence”: then, since it is in dependence on the aggregates as cause that the pudgala is established, the pudgala falls likewise into the fault just stated.

Treatise (the Vātsīputrīyas answer): I do not posit it in that way.

Question: Then in what way do you posit it?

III. The Simile of Fire Established in Dependence on Firewood — One Simile Taken Apart Layer by Layer

Treatise (the Vātsīputrīyas set up the simile): It is like the world’s establishing “fire” in dependence on firewood. If you ask how establishing fire can be said to be in dependence on firewood, the answer is this — apart from firewood no fire can be established, and yet firewood and fire are neither different nor the same. For if fire differed from firewood, firewood ought not to be hot; and if fire were the same as firewood, what is burned would be what burns. Just so, a pudgala is established not apart from the five aggregates. And thus the pudgala and the aggregates are neither different nor the same: if it differed from the aggregates, its entity ought to be permanent; if it were the same as the aggregates, its entity ought to become annihilated.

Treatise (the author challenges and refutes layer by layer · the first layer — first fix the naming): The venerable one should now settle his words upon this point: which is the fire? which is the firewood? so that I may understand what this “fire in dependence on firewood” of yours after all means.

Question: How should it be stated? Answer: if it must be stated, it should be said that “what is burned is the firewood and what burns is the fire.”

Then it must further be said what is burned and what burns, such that they deserve to be called firewood and fire. Let us follow for the moment what the world commonly understands: whatever is not ablaze and is burned is called “the firewood that is burned”; whatever has brightness, is exceedingly hot and ablaze, and can burn is called “the fire that burns.” This burner sets the continuum of the thing burned to burning, so that its later moments differ from its earlier.

(The second layer — by what the world commonly says, they turn out to be of different entities): These two, though alike having the eight entities (the four great elements, earth, water, fire, and wind, and the four object-dusts, form, scent, taste, and touch) for their entity, are yet such that it is in dependence on firewood that fire is able to arise — just as curds and vinegar arise in dependence on milk and wine; and so the world commonly says “in dependence on firewood there is fire.” If this be the principle, then fire is different from firewood, since the fire that arises later and the firewood that is there earlier are separate in time.

Then if the pudgala you reckon depends on the aggregates as fire depends on firewood, it must certainly be said that it arises in dependence on the aggregates, that its entity differs from the aggregates, and that it therefore becomes impermanent and does not abide — the very thing you yourself refuse to admit.

(The third layer — if the warm touch is now called fire, they become simultaneous): Suppose you change your wording and say: upon the blazing wood and the rest, that portion which is the warm touch is called fire, and the remaining portion is called firewood — then fire and firewood arise simultaneously, and moreover they must be of different entities, since the marks of the two differ.

That being so, you must now say what “dependence” means. These two arising simultaneously, how can it still be said that fire is established in dependence on firewood? For this fire does not take the firewood for its cause — each arises simultaneously from its own cause; nor is the name of this fire established in dependence on firewood — for the name “fire” is established with regard to the warm touch.

(The fourth layer — if “dependence” means co-arising or resting upon, one’s own tenet is wrecked): Suppose you say that this sentence “fire in dependence on firewood” is meant to display the sense of “co-arising” or of “resting upon”: then it must be allowed that the pudgala too co-arises with the aggregates or rests upon them. But in that case you have plainly admitted that its entity differs from the aggregates — and in principle it ought to be admitted. Moreover, if the aggregates were not, the entity of the pudgala too ought not to be, just as where there is no firewood there is no entity of fire; and this you do not admit. Therefore this explanation is unreasonable.

(The fifth layer — turning back the objection he set up for himself): Now here he set up an objection for himself: “if fire differed from firewood, firewood ought not to be hot.” Then his words must be settled: what do you mean by “hot”?

Suppose he explains that hot just is the warm touch — then firewood is not hot, since the entities and marks of the two differ. Suppose he explains further that hot means being conjoined with warmth — then what is of a different entity also gets to be called hot, for what is properly called fire refers only to the warm touch, and whatever else is conjoined with warmth may get the name “hot”; and in that case he has plainly admitted that firewood too is called hot. That being so, then though firewood and fire are different, the fault he alleged does not hold either — so to what end does he raise this objection here?

(The sixth layer — if when ablaze throughout both names apply, then the blocking of sameness and difference cannot be established): Suppose you say that when the wood and the rest are ablaze throughout, they are called both firewood and fire — then all the more must it be made clear what “dependence” means. And in that case the pudgala and the aggregates of form and the rest are definitely “the same,” and there is no principle by which this can be blocked.

Conclusion: Therefore what he said, that “as fire is established in dependence on firewood, so is a pudgala established in dependence on the aggregates,” cannot in principle be maintained, press it forward or press it back as one will.

IV. The Objection from the Five Knowables · The Objection from What the Designation Rests On

Treatise: Again, if he admits that of the pudgala and the aggregates it can be said neither that they are the same nor that they are different, then the three times (past, present, and future), the unconditioned, and the inexpressible which he admits — these five knowables (the knowables = what is knowable, the classification of all dharmas that can be known) must all likewise become inexpressible; for of the pudgala it can be said neither that it is the fifth of them nor that it is not.

Again, of the pudgala he designates it should further be stated with more precision: on what does it rest in being designated?

If it be said to rest on the aggregates — then the sense of “conventional” is already established, since the designating of the pudgala does not rest upon the pudgala itself. If it be said that this designating rests upon the pudgala itself — then why was it said above that “it is established in dependence on the aggregates”? In principle one should say only “in dependence on the pudgala.” And since you do not admit saying so, it can only rest on the aggregates.

If it be said: only when there are aggregates can this be known, and that is why I said above “this is established in dependence on the aggregates” — then forms too can be cognized only where there are conditions such as the eye faculty, and on this showing one should say “form depends on the eye and the rest.”

V. The Objection from Being Cognized by the Six Consciousnesses — Pressing “Sameness and Difference Cannot Be Expressed” to the End

Treatise (posing the question): Again, let it now be said: by which of the six consciousnesses is the pudgala cognized?

Answer (the Vātsīputrīyas): All six consciousnesses can cognize it. Why so? For instance, when at some time eye consciousness cognizes form, one thereby knows that there is a pudgala, and this is said to be “cognized by eye consciousness,” while it may not be said whether it is the same as or different from form; and so on down to when at some time mind consciousness cognizes dharmas, one thereby knows that there is a pudgala, and this is said to be “cognized by mind consciousness,” while it may not be said whether it is the same as or different from dharmas.

Refutation (the first objection — then it is like milk and curds, merely conventionally established): If so, the pudgala you reckon must be just like milk and curds, merely a conventional designation. For instance, when eye consciousness cognizes forms, if one can thereby know that there is milk and the rest, then milk and the rest are said to be cognized by eye consciousness, while it may not be said whether they are the same as or different from form; and so on down to when body consciousness feels touches, if one can thereby know that there is milk and the rest, then milk and the rest are said to be cognized by body consciousness, while it may not be said whether they are the same as or different from touch — otherwise milk and the rest would fall into the dilemma of being “made of the four great elements” or “not made of the four great elements.” By this parallel it must be established that a pudgala is conventionally designated in dependence on the aggregates taken all together, just as the world designates milk and the rest in dependence on form and the rest taken together, conventionally and not really.

Refutation (the second objection — the two gates of the four words “one thereby knows that there is”): Again, what does he mean by what he said, “if at some time eye consciousness cognizes form, one thereby knows that there is a pudgala”? Is he saying that “forms are the cause of cognizing the pudgala”? Or that “when form is cognized the pudgala too is cognized along with it”?

If it be said that forms are the cause of cognizing it, while it is also said that it does not differ from form — then, since forms have the eye faculty, light, attention, and the rest for their causes of being cognized, it should likewise be said that “form does not differ from the eye and the rest.”

If it be said that when form is cognized it too is cognized along with it, then it must further be asked: is it that form can cognize it, and that is the cognizing? Or is there besides, within this, a further cognizer?

If it be said that form can cognize, and that just is what cognizes it, then it must be admitted that its entity just is form, or else that this name is merely conventionally established with regard to form; failing that, there ought not to be such a distinction as “this class is form, this class is the pudgala.” And if these two distinctions are not there, how can “there is form, and there is a pudgala” still be established? For a sentient being is from the first established by distinction.

If it be said that there is besides, within this, a further cognizer, then, since there is a distinction at the time of cognizing, this must differ from form — as yellow differs from blue, and the later from the earlier. And pressing the objection along the same road as far as “dharmas” gives the same result.

Refutation (the third objection — the defense too wrecks the tenet): Should he defend by saying that just as “this” and form cannot determinately be said to be the same or different, so it is with the two cognizers as compared with one another — then the cognizer ought not to be included among the conditioned. And to admit this is to wreck one’s own tenet.

Refutation (the fourth objection — contradicting a sūtra): Again, if a pudgala really exists, and it may be said neither that it is form nor that it is not form, then why did the World-Honored One speak thus: form and so on down to consciousness are all without self?

Refutation (the fifth objection — pressing by way of the object condition): Again, since he admits that the pudgala is obtained by eye consciousness, then of the two, form and this, with which for its object does that eye consciousness arise?

If it arises with form for its object, then it ought not to be said that eye consciousness can cognize the pudgala, since the pudgala is not a condition of eye consciousness, just as the sense field of sound and the rest are not conditions of eye consciousness. That is to say: if there is a consciousness that arises with this object for its object, then it takes this object as its object condition; and the pudgala not being a condition of eye consciousness, how can it be said to be the object of eye consciousness? Therefore this is certainly not cognized by eye consciousness.

If it be said that when eye consciousness arises it has this for its object, or has form and this for its object together, then the word of the sūtra is contradicted — for the sūtra adjudges determinately that the arising of consciousness is from two conditions (a faculty and an object). Again the sūtra says, “bhikṣus, you should know that with the eye as cause and form as condition, eye consciousness is able to arise,” since every eye consciousness whatever has the eye and form for its conditions.

Again, on this showing, the pudgala would have to be impermanent, for the sūtra speaks thus: whatever causes and conditions are able to produce consciousness are of an impermanent nature.

Refutation (the sixth objection — to fall back on its not being an object is to wreck one’s own tenet): Should he thereupon say that the pudgala is not the object of consciousness — then it ought not to be cognized; and if it is not cognized, it ought not to be known; and if it is not known, how can “existence” still be established for it? And if “existence” cannot be established, one’s own tenet is wrecked.

Refutation (the seventh objection — cognized by six consciousnesses, it becomes six different things): Again, if it is admitted to be cognized by the six consciousnesses, then, being cognized by eye consciousness, it ought to differ from sound and the rest, just as form does; and being cognized by ear consciousness, it ought to differ from form and the rest, as sound does. For what the remaining consciousnesses cognize, the objection is to be pressed in the same way.

VI. The Objection from the Sūtra That the Courses of the Five Faculties Are Each Separate, and Its Reconciling

Treatise (the eighth objection — contradicting the sūtra that the five faculties are each separate): Again, to establish this as cognized by the six consciousnesses is to contradict the word of the sūtra. As the sūtra says: “brahmin-student, you should know that the courses and object-fields of the five faculties are each separate, and each makes use only of its own course and its own object-field; there is no faculty that can also make use of another faculty’s course and another’s object-field. The five faculties are the eye, ear, nose, tongue, and body; the mind makes use besides of the courses of the five faculties and their object-fields, since these depend upon the mind.” (Each of the five faculties has its own course and object-field, and they do not trespass upon one another; only the mental faculty can make use besides of the courses and object-fields of the five faculties, since the five faculties turn in dependence on mind.)

Failing that, you ought not to grasp that the pudgala is an object of the five faculties; and in that case it would not be cognized by the five consciousnesses, and you would then have the fault of contradicting your own tenet.

Treatise (the Vātsīputrīyas object in return): If so, the object of the mental faculty too ought to be separate. As the sūtra of the simile of the six creatures says: “thus the courses and object-fields of the six faculties each have their differences, and each separately delights in seeking its own course and its own object-field.”

Treatise (the reconciling): That sūtra does not speak with regard to the six faculties, the eye and the rest, in themselves — for the five faculties, the eye and the rest, and the consciousnesses they produce have no such force as “delighting in seeing” and the rest (insentient faculties and momentary consciousnesses do not delight in seeking). It speaks only with regard to the mind consciousness raised by the dominant force of the five faculties, the eye and the rest, and calls it the eye faculty and the rest; whereas the mind consciousness raised by the dominant force of the solitary mental faculty (the mental faculty that arises alone and not in dependence on the five faculties) cannot delight in seeking the object-fields ranged over by the five faculties, the eye and the rest. Therefore the sense of that sūtra does not contradict what was said above, and the fault alleged above does not hold.

VII. The Sūtra of the Dharma-Gate of All That Is Penetrated and Known — There Is No Pudgala Here

Treatise: Again, the World-Honored One said: “bhikṣus, you should know that I shall now expound for you in full the dharma-gate of all that is penetrated and known.” (The World-Honored One would expound in full once over all dharma-gates that can be penetrated and known.)

Question: What is its entity? Answer: it is the eyes, forms, eye consciousness, and eye contact, together with the feeling produced inwardly with eye contact for its condition — pleasant, or painful, or neither painful nor pleasant; and so expounded at length down to the feeling produced inwardly with mind contact for its condition — pleasant, or painful, or neither painful nor pleasant. This is called “all that is penetrated and known.”

By this passage of the sūtra it is determinately adjudged that all dharmas that can be penetrated and known are only so many; and within them there is no pudgala. Therefore the pudgala too ought not to be cognized — for the object of discernment and the object of consciousness must be the same.

Those who say that “the eye sees a pudgala” should know this: what the eye faculty sees is only that portion of form which it has; and to speak of seeing a self where there is no self is to fall into the deep pit of evil views.

VIII. The Sūtra on the Person — By Just This Much Is the Name “Person” Spoken

Treatise: And so within the Buddha’s sūtras this sense is itself adjudged, saying that it is only with regard to the aggregates that “pudgala” is spoken. As the Sūtra on the Person says:

“With the eye and form as conditions, eye consciousness arises; and with the contact of the three coming together, feeling, perception, and volition arise together.” — Here the latter four (contact, feeling, perception, and volition) are included in the formless aggregates, and the first two, the eye and form, are called the aggregate of form; and by just this much is the name “person” spoken.

And here, following the differences of sense, the several names and ideations are conventionally established: one is called a sentient being, one born unpleasing, a youth, a nourisher, a life-principle, one who is born, a pudgala, and one also designates oneself, saying “my eye sees form.” Again, in accordance with worldly usage it is said: this long-lived one has such a name, such a clan, such a lineage, such food, such experience of pleasure, such experience of pain, such length of life, such long abiding, such a term of life.

“Bhikṣus, you should know that this is only a name and an ideation, only a self-designation, existent merely as conventionally designated in accordance with worldly usage. All such things are impermanent and conditioned, arising from a host of conditions and made by volition.”

The World-Honored One constantly admonished us to rely on sūtras of definitive meaning; and this sūtra is precisely of definitive meaning, and no other construction should be put upon it.

IX. The Sūtra of the Twelve Sense Fields · The Sūtra Recited by That School · The Sūtra to Bimbisāra

Treatise: Again, the Bhagavat told a brahmin-student: “I say that all that exists is only the twelve sense fields.” (All that exists is only the twelve classes, the six inner and the six outer sense fields.) Then, if the one who repeatedly takes up a destiny is not included among the twelve sense fields, its having no entity is established; and if it is included among the sense fields, it ought not to be said to be inexpressible.

The sūtra recited by their own school likewise says: “whatever eyes there are, whatever forms there are,” and so on at length down to “bhikṣus, you should know that the Tathāgata designates everything just so far and establishes every dharma that has an entity of its own” — and within this there is no pudgala; how then can it be said to have a real entity?

The Sūtra to Bimbisāra likewise says: “whatever foolish and unlearned ordinary beings there are who follow after a conventional name and reckon it as a self, herein there is no selfhood and no what-belongs-to-self, but only the entity of all the dharmas of suffering, which is about to arise or has arisen,” and so on at length.

There was an arhat bhikṣuṇī named Śailā, who spoke a stanza to Māra:

〔Quoted stanza · not a root stanza〕 You have fallen upon the road of evil view, and within a heap of empty formations you falsely grasp that there is a sentient being; one who has discernment penetrates that there is none. Just as by taking the several parts a chariot is by conventional supposition established, so conventionally is a sentient being established, which should be known as established by taking the aggregates.

The World-Honored One in the Saṃyuktāgama spoke a stanza to the brahmin Batuoli:

〔Quoted stanza · not a root stanza〕 Batuoli, listen well: this is the dharma that can loose the several knots and bonds — namely that in dependence on mind one is defiled, and in dependence on mind one is likewise purified. I have in truth no selfhood; it is grasped as existent only by inversion; there is no sentient being and no self, but only these dharmas that have causes. Namely the aggregates, sense fields, and elements included in the twelve members of existence — pondering all this closely, within it there is no pudgala. And having contemplated that the inner is empty, so likewise is the contemplation of the emptiness of the outer; and even he who can cultivate the contemplation of emptiness is altogether not to be found.

X. The Five Faults of Grasping a Self · The Vātsīputrīyas Reject the Sūtras as No Valid Means

Treatise: The sūtra says that grasping a self has five faults — namely giving rise to the view of a self and the view of a sentient being and thereby falling into the courses of evil view, being one with the several non-Buddhists and thus walking off the road, not being able to awaken into the mind of emptiness, not being able to give rise to pure confidence and not being able to abide firmly, and not obtaining liberation, the noble dharma not being purified in him.

Treatise (the Vātsīputrīyas reject): These are all no valid means (a valid means = a standard by which right and wrong may be settled). Why so? Because in this school of mine they have never been recited.

Treatise (the author presses): The “valid means” allowed in your tenet — is the school the measure, or is the Buddha’s word the measure? If the school is the measure, then the Buddha is not your master and you are not a son of Śākya; and if the Buddha’s word is the measure, these all are the Buddha’s word, so how can they be no valid means?

Treatise (the Vātsīputrīyas answer): These sayings are none of them truly the Buddha’s word. Why so? Because this school of mine does not recite them.

Treatise (the author refutes): This is exceedingly unreasonable.

Question: Wherein is it unreasonable? Answer: passages of scripture such as these are recited by all the schools, contradict neither the nature of dharmas nor the other sūtras, and yet you dare to slander them at will within, saying “because I do not recite them they are not truly the Buddha’s word” — this is merely to indulge violence and madness, and so it is utterly unreasonable.

Treatise: Again, is there then no such sūtra within that school of yours — namely the one that says “all dharmas are without selfhood”?

If his sense be that the pudgala and the dharmas on which it depends are neither the same nor different, and that therefore all dharmas are said to be not the self — that being so, it ought not to be cognized by mind consciousness, since the sūtra of “consciousness arising from two conditions” has already determinately adjudged the matter.

Again, how are the other sūtras to be reconciled? For instance the sūtra says: “where what is not the self is reckoned as the self, herein there are the inversions of perception, of mind, and of view” — the inversion that consists in reckoning a self is spoken of with regard to “what is not the self,” and there is no saying that it is spoken of with regard to “the self”; what need to trouble over reconciling it?

Question: What is meant by “what is not the self”? Answer: the aggregates, the sense fields, and the elements.

Treatise (the Vātsīputrīyas): This contradicts what was said above, that “the pudgala is neither the same as nor different from the aggregates of form and the rest.”

Treatise: Again, another sūtra says: “bhikṣus, you should know that whatever contemplations attendant upon the grasping of a self there are among all ascetics and brahmins, they all arise only with regard to the five aggregates of appropriation.” Therefore there is no such thing as a view of a self arising in dependence on “a self”; there is only false discrimination upon dharmas that are not the self, taking them for a self.

Again, another sūtra says: “whatever various former abodes have been recollected, are being recollected, or will be recollected, all arise only with regard to the five aggregates of appropriation”; therefore there is certainly no pudgala.

Treatise (the Vātsīputrīyas object): If so, why does this sūtra again say “I in a past life had such and such a form,” and so on?

Treatise (answer): This sūtra is meant to display that when former lives can be recollected there are various matters within a single continuum. If one held that a really existent pudgala could have form and the rest in a past life, how would this not count as falling into the fault of “giving rise to the view of self”? Failing that, you would have to slander the sūtra by saying there is no such sūtra. Therefore this sūtra speaks with regard to the conventional self spoken of in general, and its saying “had such and such a form,” and so on, is a manner of speaking as of a heap and a stream (a conventional continuum, aggregated like a heap and flowing like a stream).

XI. Omniscience — Not Knowing All at Once in a Single Thought, but the Continuum Having the Capacity

Treatise (the Vātsīputrīyas object): If so, the World-Honored One ought not to be omniscient — for no one mind or mental factor can know all dharmas, since they differ moment by moment and cease as soon as they arise. Only if a self is admitted can there be a thorough knowing of all; and in that case the pudgala would have to be permanent, since when the mind ceases it does not cease — and this would go beyond the tenet you yourself allow.

Treatise (answer): We do not say that the Buddha is called omniscient because he can know all dharmas thoroughly and at once in a single thought; it is said only with regard to “the continuum having the capacity” — that stretch of the continuum of the aggregates which gets the name of Buddha has accomplished a surpassing capacity of this kind: as soon as attention is directed, an unmistaken cognition arises with regard to the object one wishes to know, and it is therefore called omniscience, and not that in a single thought one can know all thoroughly and at once. And so here there is this stanza:

〔Quoted stanza · not a root stanza〕 Because within the continuum there is such a capacity, it is as fire can devour everything; so is omniscience also, and it is not by knowing all thoroughly at once in a single thought.

Treatise: Question: How is it known that “knowing all dharmas” is said with regard to the continuum, and that it is not a “self” that knows thoroughly? Answer: because the Buddha, the World-Honored One, is said to have three times.

Question: Where is this said? Answer: as a stanza says:

〔Quoted stanza · not a root stanza〕 Whether the Buddhas past, or the Buddhas future, or the Buddhas present, all extinguish the sorrows of beings.

Your tenet admits three times only for the aggregates and not for the one who repeatedly takes up a destiny, and so it must certainly be as stated (what has the three times is the continuum of the aggregates, and not a self).

XII. The Objection from the Sūtra of the Burden — The Burden · The Taking Up and Laying Down of the Burden · The Bearer of the Burden

Treatise (the Vātsīputrīyas object): If only the five aggregates of appropriation are called the pudgala, why did the World-Honored One speak thus: “I shall now expound for you the burdens, the taking up and laying down of the burden, and the bearer of the burden”?

Treatise (asking in return): Why should the Buddha not speak thus here?

Treatise (the Vātsīputrīyas press the objection): It ought not to be that the burden itself is called the bearer. Why so? Because such a thing has never been seen. And what is “inexpressible” ought not to be spoken of either (since he speaks both of the burden and of a bearer, the bearer is evidently not the burden itself). Why so? Because this too has never been seen. Again, the taker-up of the burden ought not to be included in the aggregates — for a burden taking up itself has never been seen.

Treatise (answer): Yet the sūtra says that “craving” is named the taker-up of the burden; and since craving is included in the aggregates, so likewise is the bearer of the burden (both being included in the aggregates) — one merely establishes a one who repeatedly takes up a destiny with regard to the aggregates.

It is only lest anyone take this pudgala for something inexpressible, permanent, and really existent that in the latter part of the sūtra the Buddha himself explains, “merely in accordance with worldly usage is this long-lived one said to have such a name,” and so on at length — just like the passage of the Sūtra on the Person cited above. This is so that it may be understood that this pudgala is expressible, impermanent, and not of a really existent nature.

Then how are the three to be understood? The five aggregates of appropriation, oppressing one another by their own mark, get the name “burden”; and since each preceding moment draws forth each succeeding one, they are called “the bearer.” Therefore there is no really existent pudgala.

XIII. The Objection from Apparitionally Born Sentient Beings — What Wrong View Slanders

Treatise (the Vātsīputrīyas object): The pudgala must certainly be really existent, because the sūtra says that whoever denies apparitionally born sentient beings is included under wrong view.

Treatise (answer): Who says that there are no apparitionally born sentient beings? It is just as the Buddha said: I say that they exist. Namely, when a continuum of aggregates can go on to a later existence and does not come by way of womb-birth, egg-birth, or moisture-birth, that is called an apparitionally born sentient being; to deny that it exists is therefore included under wrong view. And the aggregates of apparitional birth are in principle really existent.

Again, you admit that this wrong view slanders the pudgala — then you must say whether this wrong view is abandoned through seeing or abandoned through cultivation.

Whether it be said to be abandoned through seeing or abandoned through cultivation, neither is coherent. For the pudgala is not included among the four truths (it is not within the four truths, and the path of seeing takes the truths as its object in abandoning, so there is no way to abandon it), and wrong view ought not to be abandoned through cultivation either.

XIV. The Objection from Being Born into the World — What “Born” Means

Treatise (the Vātsīputrīyas object): If the sūtra says that “one pudgala is born into the world,” and yet it is not the aggregates — this too is unreasonable.

Treatise (answer): This is merely a conventional speaking of “one” within what is said in general, just as the world says “one sesame seed · one grain of rice · one heap · one word” (speaking of one by taking things together).

Failing that, the pudgala would have to be admitted to be included among the conditioned, since the sūtra says that it is “born into the world.”

Treatise (answer): The “born” spoken of here is not a new arising such as that of the aggregates.

Question: Then in what sense is “born into the world” said? Answer: it is said with regard to the sense of taking up other aggregates at this time — just as the world says “a sacrificer is born” or “a master of the exegetical treatises is born,” which is said with regard to taking up the treatises of clear knowing (the canon recited by the brahmins); and just as the world says “a bhikṣu is born” or “a non-Buddhist is born,” which is said with regard to taking up some observance; and just as the world says “an old man is born” or “a sick man is born,” which is said with regard to taking up some stage of life.

Treatise (refuting again): The Buddha has already blocked this road, and so this defense does not hold. As the Sūtra on Ultimate Emptiness says: “there is action and there is maturation, but an agent is not to be found” — for what can lay down these aggregates and continue on to other aggregates is nothing other than a conventional expression with regard to dharmas. Therefore the Buddha has already blocked it. The Sūtra to Phalguna likewise says: “I never say that there is one who appropriates.” Therefore there is certainly no pudgala that can take up and lay down the aggregates in the world.

Again, of the “a sacrificer is born” and the rest that you cite, what is the entity, that it should be brought forward as this simile? If you grasp it as a self, that is not commonly allowed by either side; if you say it is mind and mental factors, they cease thought by thought and arise anew, and taking up and laying down are not established; if you allow it to be the body, that too is like mind and the rest (arising and ceasing moment by moment).

Again, just as the treatises of clear knowing and the rest differ from the body, so the aggregates ought to differ from the pudgala; and the two bodies, the old and the sick, are each distinct from the body that was before, while the sense of “transformation” has already been dismissed above in the refutation of the Sāṃkhya. Therefore the similes he cites none of them hold.

Again, since he admits that it is the aggregates that are born and not the one who repeatedly takes up a destiny, he certainly admits that it differs from the aggregates and moreover is permanent.

XV. The Parallel of Derived Form Being the Great Elements — A Fault of That School’s Own

Treatise (the Vātsīputrīyas object): Again, this (the pudgala) is only one while the entity of the aggregates is five, so why should it not be said to differ from the aggregates? Just as the great elements are four while the form derived from them is only one — is it then said that derived form does not differ from the great elements?

Treatise (answer): That is a fault of that school’s own.

Question: Which school is meant? Answer: those who maintain that “derived form just is the great elements.”

Suppose we follow their view; then the challenge must be put thus: just as the several derived forms just are the four great elements, so too a pudgala ought to be established as just the five aggregates (having allowed the “just is,” one can no longer say that sameness and difference are inexpressible).

XVI. Setting Aside the Declaration “The Life-Principle Is the Body” — Nāgasena and King Pilinda

Treatise (the Vātsīputrīyas object): If the pudgala just is the aggregates, why did the World-Honored One not declare that “the life-principle just is the body”?

Treatise (answer): Because he observed the āśaya of the one who could ask (āśaya = the underlying inclination, the questioner’s real bent of mind).

That questioner grasped that there is “a person acting within” whose entity is real and not an empty name, called it the life-principle, and asked the Buddha in dependence on it whether it is the same as or different from the body. No such thing exists at all, and so neither sameness nor difference is established — that being so, how could sameness or difference be declared of it with regard to the body? Just as the hardness or softness of a tortoise’s hair cannot be declared.

Treatise: The masters of old had already untied this knot. Long ago there was a Venerable named Nāgasena, possessed of the three knowledges, the six supernormal knowledges, and the eight liberations. At that time there was a King Pilinda who came to the Venerable and spoke thus: my purpose in coming today is to ask about a doubt; yet ascetics are by nature fond of many words, and if the venerable one can answer straight, then I will ask. The Venerable accepted his request.

The king then asked: the life-principle and the body, are they the same or different? The Venerable answered: this should not be declared.

The king said: was there not an agreement beforehand? Why now speak of something else and not answer what I asked?

The Venerable challenged him in return, saying: I should like to ask about a doubt; yet kings are by nature fond of many words, and if the great king can answer straight, then I will ask. The king thereupon consented.

The Venerable asked: as to the mango trees in the great king’s palace, is the taste of the fruit they bear sour or sweet? The king said: there is no such tree in the palace at all.

The Venerable reproached him again: was there not an agreement beforehand? Why now speak of something else and not answer what I asked? The king said: since there is no such tree within the palace, how can it be answered whether the taste of its fruit is sweet or sour?

The Venerable instructed him, saying: the life-principle likewise does not exist; how then can it be said to be the same as or different from the body?

XVII. Why the Buddha Does Not Simply Say That There Is No Life-Principle at All — For Fear He Fall into Wrong View

Treatise (the Vātsīputrīyas ask again): Why does the Buddha not say that there is no life-principle at all?

Treatise (answer): Here too because he observes the āśaya of the questioner. That questioner may be calling the continuum of the aggregates a life-principle and asking in dependence on that; and were the World-Honored One to answer “there is no life-principle at all,” he would fall into wrong view, and so the Buddha does not speak so. For he is not yet able to penetrate the principle of dependent origination, is no vessel fit to receive the true dharma, and so the Buddha does not expound “conventional existence” for him.

In principle it must certainly be so, since the World-Honored One himself has said it. As the World-Honored One told Ānanda: there was a wandering non-Buddhist of the Vatsa clan who came to me and asked thus: am I existent or nonexistent in the world? I made no declaration for him. Why so? Were I to declare him “existent,” that would contradict the true principle of dharma, since all dharmas are without self; were I to declare him “nonexistent,” that would increase his bewilderment, for he would suppose that “I formerly was and now am not.” Compared with the folly of grasping existence, this folly is graver — for to grasp a self as existent is to fall into the extreme of permanence, while to grasp at no-self is to fall into the extreme of annihilation; and the relative weight of the two is expounded at length in the sūtra.

In accordance with this sense, therefore, there is a stanza that says:

〔Quoted stanza · not a root stanza〕 Behold those wounded by view and those who have destroyed the several wholesome actions; and so the Buddha speaks the true dharma as a tigress carries her own cub (grip too tight and it is wounded, hold too loose and it falls). To grasp a true self as existent is to be wounded by the teeth of view; to deny the conventional self as nonexistent is to destroy the cub that is wholesome action.

He spoke a further stanza, saying:

〔Stanza composed by the author · not a root stanza〕 Because a really existent life-principle does not exist, the Buddha does not speak of sameness or difference; and fearing that the conventionally established self be denied, he does not say “there is none at all” either. That is to say: within the continuum of the aggregates there are action and fruit and a life-principle (a life-principle that is a conventional name); and to say that there is no life-principle would be to deny this along with it. That he does not say “within the aggregates there is a conventionally named life-principle” is because he observes that the questioner has not the strength to understand true emptiness. Observing thus the differences of Vatsa’s inclination, therefore, when he asked whether there is a self or is not, the Buddha answered neither that there is nor that there is not.

XVIII. On What Ground the World Being Permanent and the Rest Are Not Declared — All Four Declarations Are Unreasonable

Treatise (posing the question): On what ground are “the world is permanent” and the rest not declared (the four propositions among the fourteen undeclared matters: permanent, impermanent, both permanent and impermanent, neither permanent nor impermanent)?

Treatise (answer): Here too because he observes the āśaya of the questioner.

If the questioner grasps “the self” as the world — the entity of the self does not exist at all, and so all four declarations are unreasonable.

If he takes “birth and death” together to be called the world — the Buddha’s four declarations are likewise all unreasonable. That is to say: to declare it “permanent” is to have no attaining of nirvāṇa at all; to declare it “impermanent” is to have annihilation come of itself, so that without effort all attain nirvāṇa; to declare it “both permanent and impermanent” is to have one portion of sentient beings never attain nirvāṇa and another portion realize quiescence of itself; to declare it “neither permanent nor impermanent” yields “not attaining nirvāṇa, and not not attaining it” — a determinate contradiction, and so an idle proliferation. Yet in dependence on the noble path one can attain parinirvāṇa, and so those four determinate declarations are all unreasonable.

Just as when the Nirgrantha asked about the death and rebirth of a sparrow, the Buddha knew his mind and made no determinate declaration.

Treatise: As for the four propositions of “having a limit” and the rest likewise not being declared, it is because they carry the same faults as the four propositions of permanence and the rest.

Question: How is it known that the sense of these four propositions is the same as that of permanence and the rest? Answer: because there was a non-Buddhist named Uttika who first asked the four propositions of the world having a limit and the rest, and afterwards contrived a device and changed the manner of asking, putting it to the World-Honored One thus: are all worlds able to attain deliverance by the noble path, or only one portion? The Venerable Ānanda thereupon told him: you have already asked the World-Honored One about this matter; why now change the name and ask again? Hence it is known that the sense of the latter four propositions is the same as that of the former.

Treatise: And on what ground does the World-Honored One not declare the four propositions of “the Tathāgata exists after death” and the rest? Here too because he observes the āśaya of the questioner — for the questioner asks by falsely reckoning that self already liberated and calling it the Tathāgata.

Treatise (now challenging those who grasp a self): Now those who reckon a self should be challenged: why does the Buddha declare that “there is a present pudgala,” and yet not declare that “the Tathāgata too exists after death”?

He says: for fear of the fault of falling into permanence.

If so, why does the Buddha declare “Maitreya, you will attain Buddhahood in a future life,” and declare of a disciple that when his body has broken up and his life ended, so-and-so has now been born in such a place? Is there not here too the fault of falling into permanence?

If it be said that the Buddha formerly saw a pudgala and, once it had entered nirvāṇa, no longer saw it, and that not knowing it he therefore did not declare it existent — that is tantamount to slandering the great teacher as not possessed of omniscience. Failing that, one ought to admit that “the non-declaration is because the entity of the self does not exist at all.”

If it be said that the World-Honored One saw and did not say, then there are the two faults of “apart from the aggregates” and “permanent.” And if it be said that both his seeing and his not seeing are inexpressible, then it must be said along with this that “whether the Buddha is omniscient or not omniscient is likewise inexpressible.”

XIX. The Objection from “Because It Is True, Because It Abides” · Grasping a Self Falls into the Extreme of Permanence

Treatise (the Vātsīputrīyas object): A pudgala is said to be really existent because the sūtra says “because it is true, because it abides,” and says moreover that whoever determinately grasps at no-self falls into the place of evil views.

Treatise (answer): This constitutes no proof, because that same sūtra also says that “whoever determinately grasps at a self falls into the place of evil views.”

The masters of the Abhidharma treatises say: to grasp the self as existent and to grasp the self as nonexistent are both included under extreme view, falling in order into the extreme of permanence and the extreme of annihilation. What those masters say is deeply reasonable — for to grasp a self as existent is to fall into the extreme of permanence, and to grasp at no-self is to fall into the extreme of annihilation, as the Sūtra to Vatsa above said plainly.

XX. Who Transmigrates through Birth and Death — Like a Fire over a Plain

Treatise (the Vātsīputrīyas object): If there is definitely no pudgala, then who is said to transmigrate through birth and death? For birth and death do not transmigrate of themselves. Yet the Bhagavat says in a sūtra: sentient beings, covered by ignorance and bound by craving, race on through birth and death; and so there must certainly be a pudgala.

Treatise (asking in return): Then how does this one transmigrate through birth and death?

Treatise (the Vātsīputrīyas): By laying down the former aggregates and taking up the later.

Treatise (answer): Such a doctrinal position has already been challenged and dismissed above. Just as a fire over a plain, though it ceases moment by moment, is said by reason of its continuum to have “transmigration,” so likewise is a heap of aggregates conventionally called a sentient being, which transmigrates through birth and death with craving and appropriation for its conditions.

Treatise (the Vātsīputrīyas object): If there are only aggregates, why did the World-Honored One speak thus: “I who am now was in the past a guide of the world named Sublime Eye”?

Treatise (answer): What fault is there in speaking so? (If it were really as you say, with a real self) the aggregates are each and all different.

Question: What thing was it, then? Answer (the Vātsīputrīyas): just the pudgala — the I of former days is the I of today.

Treatise (refuting): Then its entity would have to be permanent. Therefore the saying “I who am now was in the past a teacher” displays that the past and the present are one and the same continuum, just as it is said “this fire once burned that thing.”

XXI. If There Definitely Is a True Self, the Fault of Craving for Self and Grasping of Self

Treatise: If it be said that there definitely is a real self, then it ought to be clearly contemplated by the Buddha alone; and having contemplated it clearly, a firm grasping of self ought to arise, and from that grasping of self a grasping of what belongs to self, and from these there ought further to arise a craving for self and a craving for what belongs to self. Hence the Bhagavat speaks thus: if one grasps a self one grasps what belongs to self, and because one grasps what belongs to self there arise within the aggregates the craving for self and for what belongs to self and the view of a real person; and one bound by craving for self thereby slanders the Buddha and is far from liberation.

If it be said that with regard to “the self” no craving for self arises — this saying is without sense. Why so? Where what is not the self is perversely reckoned as the self, there craving for self can still arise; but upon a real self (if one really saw the self and did not crave it, this on the contrary is unintelligible). What is said in this way affords no principle to serve as proof. Therefore those people have within the Buddha’s true and noble teaching no cause or condition for raising the boil of view.

Treatise (summing up the three classes): Thus one class grasps an “inexpressible pudgala”; another class denies altogether that any dharma has an entity; and the non-Buddhists grasp a further real selfhood — all these views are unreasonable, and none escapes the fault of “having no liberation.”

XXII. Recollection and Recognition — How Recollection Is Established without a Self

Treatise (an outside objection): If there is no entity of a self of any kind whatever, on what ground can a mind that ceases moment by moment recollectively know a long-past and similar object once experienced?

Treatise (answer): Such recollective knowing arises from a difference of mind within the continuum, “of the class of the object and the perception of it.”

Question: From what kind of difference of mind does the first recollection arise with nothing intervening? Answer: it arises from a difference of mind which has attention that takes that object as its object, together with similarity, relatedness, perception, and the rest, and whose merit is not marred by such conditions as a difference of support, sorrow, or distraction.

Though there be such conditions as attention, if there be no difference of mind of that class, there is no capacity for cultivating this recollection into arising; and though there be a difference of mind of that class for its cause, if there be not such conditions, there is likewise no principle by which it can be cultivated — only when both are complete is the cultivating of it possible. The arising of recollections is by these alone, since apart from these no further capacity is seen.

Treatise (an outside objection): How can this be so — that what one mind saw, a later and different mind can recollect? There is surely no principle by which “an object once seen by God-given’s mind can afterwards be recollected by Sacrifice-given’s mind.”

Treatise (answer): This objection is unreasonable, because those are unrelated. That is to say: those two minds are not related to one another, unlike a single continuum in which there is causality. We do not say that “one mind saw and a different mind recollects,” because the continuum is one and the same. It is from the past mind that took that object as its object that the present consciousness which recollects is drawn forth — as was said above, recollection arises by the force of the continuum’s transforming and differentiating; what fault is there in this?

By the force of this recollection there afterwards arises recognition (recognition = the fixing of what has been recollected).

Treatise (an outside objection): Since there is no entity of a self, who then is it that recollects?

Treatise (answer): What is meant by “recollects”? Answer: by recollection one is able to take an object.

Question: Is this taking of an object not different from recollection? Answer: though not different from recollection, it is only because there is an “agent”; and this agent is just the cause of recollection spoken of above, namely a difference of mind of that class.

Yet what the world speaks of as “Caitra recollects” is the establishing of the name Caitra with regard to a continuum of aggregates; and it is because recollection arises after a previous mind of seeing that he is said, on that principle, to recollect.

Treatise (an outside objection): If there is no entity of a self, whose recollection is this recollection? In what sense is the sixth case-ending said (the sixth case-ending = the genitive, the manner of speaking of “so-and-so’s”)?

Treatise (answer): This sixth case-ending is said with regard to the sense of belonging to an owner.

Question: What thing belongs to what owner? Answer: this is like oxen and the rest belonging to Caitra.

Question: How does he count as the owner of the oxen? Answer: just in that he attains mastery in such matters as riding them, milking them, and employing them.

Treatise (challenging in return): Then where is it that you propose to employ this recollection, that you take such pains to seek an “owner of recollection”?

Answer: recollection is employed upon the object recollected.

Question: To what end is recollection employed? Answer: just to make recollection arise.

Treatise: How strange, that words so unreasonable should be uttered with such assurance — is “this” to be employed in order that “this” may arise (recollection has not yet arisen, so with what will you employ it)?

Again, how do I employ recollection? Is it to make recollection arise, or to make recollection move? Recollection has no mark of “movement,” and so it can only be to make recollection arise. In that case the “cause” is called the owner and the “result” is called the belonging — by the dominant force of the cause the result is made to arise, and so the cause is called the owner; and the result, in arising, is possessed by the cause, and so is called the belonging. Since the cause producing recollection suffices to be the owner of recollection, what need to trouble to set up a self besides as the owner of recollection?

Just as with a continuum of a class of heaps of formations, the world commonly designates “Caitra” and “ox” and establishes Caitra as the owner of the ox — the continuum of the ox arising in another place, and he being the cause that makes it alter, he is therefore called the owner; and within this there is no real Caitra and no real ox, but only a conventional designation, so that even the phrase “owner of the ox” is inseparable from a cause.

As it is with recollection, so it is with recognition. And having distinguished recollection and knowing in this way, such questions as “who is the cognizer, and whose is the consciousness” should be explained in the same manner. As for the causes and conditions of consciousness that differ from what was said above, they are the faculty and the object and the rest, to be known each as is fitting.

XXIII. Refuting the Sāṃkhya Masters — An Activity Must Await One Who Is Active

Treatise (the Sāṃkhya state their tenet): Some speak thus: there definitely is a self, because an activity must certainly have “one who performs the activity.” That is to say: the several activities all await one who is active, as God-given’s walking must await the person God-given. Walking is the activity, and God-given is the one who is active. So likewise all the activities of consciousness and the rest must await a “cognizer” on which they depend.

Treatise (now challenging him): Now he should be challenged: what is this “God-given” of yours?

If it be said to be a real self, this has been refuted above. If it be said to be a conventionally established person — then its entity is not one thing but only this name conventionally established upon a continuum of formations; and in that case, just as God-given can walk, so consciousness can cognize (both alike being conventionally established upon a continuum).

Question: On what principle is it said that God-given can walk? Answer: it is that upon formations arising and ceasing moment by moment, and not apart from the continuum, the name “God-given” is established; and the foolish grasp it therein as one whole, treating it as the cause of their own continuum’s arising in another place. Arising in another place is called “walking,” and that cause is called “the walker” — and on this principle it is said that God-given can walk.

Just as flame and sound continue and arise in another place, and the world accordingly says that “a flame can travel” and “a sound can travel,” so likewise the body of God-given can be a cause of consciousness, and so the world also says that “God-given can cognize.” And the noble ones too speak so, in conformity with the principle of worldly speech.

Treatise (what does consciousness do to its object): The sūtra says that the several consciousnesses can cognize their objects — then what does consciousness after all do to its object? Answer: it does nothing at all, but merely arises by way of the object. Just as a result requites its cause and, though doing nothing, arises resembling the cause and is therefore called “requiting the cause,” so likewise consciousness, though doing nothing in arising, resembles the object and is therefore called “cognizing the object.”

Question: What is meant by “resembling the object”? Answer: it is bearing the aspect of that object. And so, although the several consciousnesses also arise in dependence on a faculty, they are not called “cognizing the faculty” but only “cognizing the object” (since what they bear is the aspect of the object and not the aspect of the faculty).

Failing that, when consciousness arises in continuum upon an object, a former consciousness being the cause that draws forth a later, to say that “consciousness cognizes” is likewise faultless — for the world speaks of an “agent” with regard to a “cause.” Just as the world says that a bell or a drum can sound, or says that a lamp can travel, so it is with saying that consciousness can cognize.

Question: On what principle is it said that a lamp travels? Answer: within a continuum of flame the name “lamp” is conventionally established, and when the lamp arises in continuum in another place it is said that “the lamp travels,” and there is no separate traveler besides. So likewise, upon a continuum of mind the name “consciousness” is conventionally established, and when it arises upon another object it is said to “cognize.” Or it is as form has its arising and its abiding, and within this there is no separate producer and no separate abider; and the principle of saying that “consciousness cognizes” ought likewise to be so.

Treatise (why the mind is not always like the former): If it be said that the arising of a later consciousness is from consciousness and not from a self — then it is asked: on what ground is it from consciousness? Answer: because it is not always like the former, nor does it arise in a determinate order as sprout, stalk, and leaf succeed one another with differences; because conditioned dharmas all have the mark of “change of what abides.”

That is to say: the own-nature of conditioned dharmas is from the first just so — a subtle continuum in which the later must differ from the earlier. Were it not so, then even if someone entered absorption and his body-and-mind continuum arose earlier and later alike, since a later thought would have no difference at all from the first thought, there ought to be no such thing as a last thought’s emerging of itself from absorption.

The several continua of mind have also a determinate order: if this mind is such that in its order that mind should arise, then after this mind that mind must certainly arise; and there must also be minds concordant in a portion of their mode of apprehension and the rest for them to produce one another, because their classes differ. For instance, after a woman’s mind there arises with nothing intervening a mind of adorning and defiling her body, or a mind that takes her husband or her son for its object, and the rest; and afterwards, from the transforming and differentiating of the continuum of these minds, the woman’s mind arises again. Thus the woman’s mind has the capacity to produce the minds of adorning and defiling and the rest that arise later, and apart from these it has no such capacity, because their classes differ.

After a woman’s mind many kinds of mind may arise with nothing intervening; yet among the many, that which was formerly produced again and again, is clear, and has arisen near at hand arises first and not the rest — because the force of practice in a mind of that kind is strongest; excepting only where at the point of its arising the conditions outside the body have differences.

Question: If the force of practice is strongest, why does it not always produce its own result? Answer: because this mind has the mark of “change of what abides”; and this mark of change is most concordant with the arising in continuum of other results of practice (and so the arising of results has its earlier and later, and is not uniformly constant).

Treatise (referring it back to the Buddha’s cognition): The general outline of the causes and conditions by which the classes of mind arise one after another I have now briefly stated; the full penetration of it rests with the World-Honored One alone, since his cognition attains mastery among all dharmas. In accordance with this sense, therefore, there is a stanza that says:

〔Quoted stanza · not a root stanza〕 Upon a single peacock’s tail-wheel, the marks of all the kinds of cause therein are not the object-field of any other cognition; only the omniscient one knows them.

XXIV. Refuting the Vaiśeṣika Masters — All Minds Arise from the Self

Treatise: If even the causes of the differences of form are hard to penetrate, how much more the differences of the causes and conditions of mind and mental factors, which are formless dharmas — are these easy to penetrate?

Treatise (the Vaiśeṣika state their tenet): A certain class of non-Buddhists grasps thus: all minds, when they arise, arise from the self.

Treatise (properly refuting · borrowing the two preceding objections): Those two objections above are most to the point against him — if the arising of all minds is from the self, then on what ground is a later consciousness not always like the former, and not arising in a determinate order like sprout, stalk, and leaf (the self being permanent and one, its result ought to have no differences)?

Treatise (the Vaiśeṣika defend · it awaits conjunction with mind): If it be said that it is by awaiting a difference in “the conjunction of self and mind” that different consciousnesses arise — this principle is certainly not so. For that “the self is conjoined with anything else” is not commonly allowed by both sides; and moreover the conjunction of two things has bounds. That is to say: they explain the mark of “conjunction” themselves by saying that not having arrived beforehand and arriving afterwards is called conjunction. Then the conjunction of self and mind should likewise have bounds; and the mind shifting, the self too should shift, or should perish together with the mind.

If it be said to be a partial conjunction — this principle too is certainly not so, since within one entity of a self there are no separate parts.

Even granting it a conjunction, since the entity of the self is permanent and the mind has no differences, how should this “conjunction” have differences?

If it be said to await a further cognition (a different apprehension) — the objection is the same: on what ground does that cognition have differences?

If it be said that the self and mind are conjoined by awaiting a difference of formations — then merely by mind’s awaiting a difference of formations different consciousnesses could arise, and what need then of the self? The self being of no use whatever in the arising of consciousness, and yet all consciousnesses being said to arise from the self — this is as when the business of the medicine is already done and the disease can be removed, and yet the physician is deceived with the stubborn claim that it was the merit of reciting the spell “svāhā.”

Treatise (the Vaiśeṣika defend · the self is the support): If it be said that these two, mind and formations, come to be by way of the self — this is mere empty talk, and there is no principle to serve as proof.

If it be said that these two, mind and formations, have the self for their support — then it must be asked: in the sense of what supporting what?

If it be said that it is not that mind and formations are like a picture or a fruit and the self is the upholder like a wall or a vessel (a picture depending on a wall, a fruit on a vessel) — then there is the fault of “obstructing one another,” and there is at times the fault of “abiding separately.” Therefore the self is not their support in the way of a wall or a vessel.

Question: How then? Answer (the Vaiśeṣika): it is only like the earth, which can be the support of the four things, scent and the rest.

Treatise (following his simile, which turns out to establish no-self): What he says in this way establishes no-self precisely, and so I here am deeply gladdened and consoled — for just as the earth of the world is inseparable from scent and the rest, so should the self be, inseparable from mind and formations.

Who can cognize an earth apart from scent and the rest? It is only upon the differences of an aggregation of scent and the rest that worldly usage current establishes the name “earth.” And the self should likewise be — only upon the differences of mind and the other aggregates is the name “self” conventionally established.

Question: If apart from scent and the rest there is no separate earth, how then is it said that “the earth has scent and the rest”? Answer: that is to display that within the entity of earth there are the differences of scent and the rest, and so scent and the rest are said with regard to earth, that it may be understood to be this and not another — just as the world says “the body of a wooden image,” and the like (the wood just is the image, and yet the image’s body may still be spoken of).

Treatise (a further objection): Again, if there is a self and it awaits a difference of formations (before consciousness arises), why does omniscience not arise all at once?

Treatise (the Vaiśeṣika answer): If at that time the function of this formation is strongest, this can block the rest and keep them from producing their results.

Treatise (objection): Then why does the result not arise constantly from the strongest?

Treatise (the Vaiśeṣika answer): This is like the principle of the force of practice spoken of above — since it is allowed that “formations” are not permanent but alter by degrees.

Treatise (concluding the refutation): If so, reckoning a self turns out to be labor spent for nothing — for it is the force of the formations that makes the differences of mind arise.

Treatise (the Vaiśeṣika defend · the quality-category): Since that formation and this practice do not differ in entity-nature, it must certainly be believed that the entity of the self really exists — because there are the quality-categories of “recollection” and the rest (the quality-category among the Vaiśeṣika’s six categories, meaning attributes), and a quality must certainly rest upon a substance-category (a substance), and that recollection and the rest should rest upon anything else is in principle not established.

Treatise (refuting): This proof is unreasonable, because it is not commonly allowed by both sides. That is to say: your saying that recollection and the rest are included in the quality-category and that their entities are all not substances — this sense is not commonly allowed, for we allow that whatever has a separate entity is called a “substance,” since the sūtra speaks of “six real things” and calls them the fruits of the ascetic life.

Then his saying that recollection and the rest rest upon a real self is likewise not established in principle — for the sense of “resting upon” has been blocked above. Hence what he sets up is nothing but empty words.

XXV. The Object of the Grasping of Self · Agent and Experiencer · The Support of Pleasure and Pain

Treatise (the Vaiśeṣika object): If the self really does not exist, then for whom is action done? Answer: it is for the sake of my experiencing the fruit of pleasure and pain in the time to come.

Treatise (asking in return): What is the entity of that self? Answer: it is the object of the grasping of self.

Question: What is meant by the object of the grasping of self? Answer: it is the continuum of the aggregates.

Question: How is this known to be so? Answer: because it is what craving takes as its object, and because it arises together with the cognitions of “white” and the rest. That is to say: the world has such sayings as — I am white, I am black, I am old, I am young, I am thin, I am stout. It is plainly seen that in the world the cognitions taking white and the rest as their objects arise together with the grasping that reckons a self; and the self reckoned has no such differences, whence it is known that the grasping of self merely takes the aggregates as its object.

And because the body has the kindness of protecting the self, the self is also conventionally spoken of with regard to the body, as when it is said “my ministers are just my own body.” Upon a thing that has done a kindness a self is indeed conventionally spoken of; but what the several graspings of self take is not of this kind (what the grasping of self takes is universally reckoned, not a conventional expression of this sort).

Question: If it is allowed that a grasping of self arises taking the body as its object, why is there no grasping of self that takes another’s body as its object? Answer: because another’s body is unrelated to that grasping of self. That is to say: if a body or a mind is related to the grasping of self, then when this grasping arises it takes that for its object and not another, because it has been so habituated from beginningless time.

Question: What is meant by “related”? Answer: it is causality.

Treatise (the Vaiśeṣika object): If there is no entity of a self, whose grasping of self is this grasping of self?

Treatise (answer): This has been explained above; why come again? I have already said above in what sense the sixth case-ending is said, down to distinguishing “the cause as that to which the result belongs.”

Question: If so, what is the cause of the grasping of self? Answer: it is the perfuming of the grasping of self from beginningless time, together with a defiled mind that takes its own continuum as its object.

Treatise (the Vaiśeṣika object): If there is no entity of a self, who has pleasure and pain?

Treatise (answer): If in dependence on this pleasure and pain arise, then this is said to “have pleasure and pain” — as it is said that a grove has fruit, or that a tree has flowers.

Question: On what do pleasure and pain depend? Answer: on the six inner sense fields, spoken of as their support according to the place in which they arise.

Treatise (the Vaiśeṣika object): If the self really does not exist, who is it that can do action? Who is it that can experience the fruit?

Treatise (asking in return): What is meant by “doing” and “experiencing”? Answer: doing is that which can do, and experiencing is the experiencer.

Treatise: This is merely to change the name and has not yet displayed the sense. Those who distinguish the marks of dharmas explain these marks thus: to be able to act with mastery is called the agent; to be able to experience the fruit of action gets the name of experiencer. It is plainly seen in the world that where one can attain mastery in some undertaking he is called the one who does it — as when God-given is seen to attain mastery in bathing, eating, and walking, he is called the bather, and so on.

Then within this, what is this “God-given” of yours? If it be said to be a real self, this simile is not commonly allowed; and if it be said to be the aggregates, then they are no agent possessed of mastery.

Action is of three kinds — bodily action, verbal action, and mental action. And to take bodily action: its raising must depend on the body and the mind, while the body and the mind each turn in dependence on their own causes and conditions, and those causes and conditions in turn depend successively on their own causes and conditions; and within this there is no raiser possessed of mastery, since all the conditioned belongs to causes and conditions. And that self which you grasp neither awaits causes and conditions nor does anything, and so it has no mastery. Hence what he said, that “to be able to act with mastery is the mark of an agent,” is sought for and not to be found.

Yet among the causes and conditions in the arising of dharmas, whatever has a surpassing function is conventionally named the agent — and this is not that self you grasp, since not the least function is discernible in it, and so it certainly ought not to be named the agent.

Question: What is the surpassing cause able to produce bodily action? Answer: from recollection there arises a wish, from the wish arise applied and sustained thought, from applied and sustained thought arises effort, from effort arises wind (the wind that moves within the body), and the wind then raises bodily action. What use is that self you grasp within all this? Therefore with regard to bodily action the self is no agent. As for the raising of verbal action and mental action, the same reasoning is to be applied.

Treatise: And how could I experience the fruit of action? If it be said that with regard to the fruit I can cognize it — this is certainly not so, since the self is of no use whatever in cognizing, as was already dismissed above where the causes of the arising of consciousness were distinguished.

Treatise (the Vaiśeṣika object): If there really is no self, why do sin and merit not arise and grow in dependence on insentient places?

Treatise (answer): Because those are not what craving and the rest rest upon; only the six inner sense fields are their support. The self is not their support, as was said above.

XXVI. The Continuum, Transformation, and Differentiation of Action and Its Fruit — Action and Fruit Established without a Self

Treatise (the Vaiśeṣika object): If there really is no self, action having already perished, how can it still produce a future fruit?

Treatise (asking in return): Even granting a real self, action having already perished, how then can it produce a future fruit?

Treatise (the Vaiśeṣika answer): Dharma and non-dharma (the force of wholesome and unwholesome action) arise in dependence on the self.

Treatise (refuting): In the sense of what depending on what? This has been refuted above, and so dharma and non-dharma ought not to depend on the self.

Treatise: Yet within the noble teaching it is not spoken of thus — as if a future fruit arose from an action already perished.

Question: From what then does it arise? Answer: it arises from the continuum, transformation, and differentiation of action, just as a fruit is produced from a seed.

Just as the world says “a fruit is produced from a seed,” and yet the fruit does not arise from a perished seed, nor does it arise immediately upon the seed.

Question: From what then does it arise? Answer: the fruit is able to arise from the seed’s continuum, transformation, and differentiation. That is to say, the seed produces in succession sprout, stalk, leaf, and the rest, and the flower is the last, and it then draws forth the fruit.

Question: If so, why is it said that “the fruit is produced from the seed”? Answer: it is so said because the seed successively draws forth the capacity for producing the fruit within the flower. If the capacity for producing fruit within this flower were not drawn forth beforehand by the seed, then the mark of the fruit produced ought to differ from the seed (and it would not be a fruit of that seed at all).

So likewise, though it is said that “the fruit is produced from action,” it is not produced from that perished action, nor is the fruit produced immediately upon the action, but only from the continuum, transformation, and differentiation of action.

Question: What is meant by continuum, transformation, and differentiation? Answer: that action comes first and form and mind arise thereafter with no interval between is called the “continuum”; that in this very continuum each succeeding moment arises differently from each preceding one is called “transformation”; that in this very transformation there is at the last time a surpassing capacity that can produce its fruit with nothing intervening, surpassing the other transformations, is therefore called “differentiation.”

For instance, when an appropriating consciousness is at the very point of death, though it bears the perfuming drawn forth by many actions that can call forth a later existence, yet among them what is heavy, what has arisen near at hand, and what is drawn forth by repeated practice is the clearest, and the rest are not. As a stanza says:

〔Quoted stanza · not a root stanza〕 Among actions, the gravest, the nearest arisen, the repeatedly practiced, and what was done before — the earlier matures earlier and the later later, and thus one turns about in birth and death.

Treatise (maturation does not produce maturation): Within this sense there is a further difference. The capacity by which a maturation cause draws forth and gives a maturation fruit perishes as soon as the maturation fruit is had; while the capacity by which a homogeneous cause draws forth and gives a homogeneous result, if defiled, perishes as soon as its antidote arises, and if undefiled, perishes forever only at parinirvāṇa, since the continuum of form and mind then perishes forever.

Question: On what ground can a maturation fruit not call forth a maturation again, while from a fruit of a seed a further fruit does arise? Answer: this simile is not on all fours to begin with — not all dharmas are alike. And from a fruit of a seed likewise no further fruit arises.

Question: If so, from what does the later fruit arise? Answer: from a later difference of ripening and change. That is to say: at a later time the very fruit of the former seed, meeting such conditions of ripening and change as water and soil, is able to draw forth a difference of ripening and change. Only at the stage of producing a sprout does it get the name of “seed”; when it has not yet ripened and changed it is spoken of by the name it will have, or else, because it resembles a seed, the world says that it is a seed.

Here it is likewise: it is the former maturation itself which, meeting such conditions as the hearing of the true dharma or of false dharma that raise good or evil, is able to draw forth wholesome minds with outflows and unwholesome minds possessed of maturation; from this is drawn forth a continuum that transforms, drawing forth successively a difference of transformation, and from this difference the later maturation arises and not from anything else. Therefore the simile and the dharma agree.

Failing that, it may also be known by the parallel of other dharmas: as when a citron flower has been smeared with lac juice, with the continuum’s transforming and differentiating for its cause, its pulp is red when the fruit arises later; and from this red no further color is produced. Thus it should be known: from the maturation of action no further maturation can be drawn forth.

Treatise (referring it back to the Buddha’s cognition): What precedes has merely displayed the coarse marks of actions and their fruits in a general way, following the object-field that my own discernment reaches; but the capacities of the differences of the several classes therein, the transforming of the continuum perfumed by the several actions, and the arising of this or that fruit at this or that stage — only the Buddha can realize and know these, and they are not the object-field of any other. In accordance with this sense, therefore, there is a stanza that says:

〔Quoted stanza · not a root stanza〕 This action, this perfuming, the giving of fruit at this time — the determinate principle of all these kinds, apart from the Buddha none can know.

XXVII. Exhorting to Study and Handing the Work On — The End of the Whole Treatise

〔Stanza composed by the author · seven characters to the line · not a root stanza〕 This pure road of causes has been well spoken, namely the Buddha’s ultimate word and the true nature of dharmas; the dark and blind graspings of the outsiders should be cast off, and those hemmed in by evil views should go and seek the eye of discernment.

This is the one broad road that leads to the palace of nirvāṇa, the nature of “no-self” on which a thousand noble ones travel; and where the light of the Buddhas’ sunlike word shines, though eyes of distinction be opened they still cannot see (those unwilling to rely on this true dharma cannot see even with eyes open).

Within this corner it has been briefly expounded, in order to open for the wise the “poison-gate of discernment” (the poison-gate of discernment = as poison entering the body pervades it, so discernment enters by this one gate and pervades all dharmas); may each, as his own strength is able, comprehend all that is knowable and accomplish the surpassing work.