俱舍論 義疏通講 · 冊1Abhidharmakośabhāṣya · Exposition Throughout · Vol. 1

Before Reading This Fascicle

The Kośa is a treatise in which the stanzas came first and the prose afterwards. According to the Life of Master Vasubandhu translated by Paramārtha, Vasubandhu first expounded the sense of the Mahāvibhāṣā to an assembly, “each day’s lecture producing one stanza that gathered the sense of what had been said that day,” until more than six hundred stanzas had accumulated. The Vaibhāṣikas of Kashmir were delighted when they saw the stanzas, but complained that the verse was too terse to be fully understood, and requested a prose explanation; Vasubandhu then “established the Sarvāstivāda positions and, wherever there was a skewed point, broke it with Sautrāntika doctrine,” and named the work the Abhidharmakośa. Reading this treatise, therefore, one always has two layers of text before one’s eyes: the stanza is the framework—twenty characters in five-character lines, every character bearing sense, not one of them idle; the prose is the author’s own explanation, and also the place where he exercises his own judgment.

In India students called this treatise the Treatise of Intelligence. Puguang records the appellation: “therefore the students of India named it the Treatise of Intelligence”; and Yuanhui, explaining where the name came from, uses a strange comparison—“it is like a gate of poison, and is named the poison-gate of discernment”: poison enters through one small opening and yet travels through the whole body; the gate of discernment this treatise opens is narrow, but whoever enters it reaches through the whole of Abhidharma.

One more thing must be said in advance, or the reader will misjudge the author before he is a third of the way through: attend to the temperature of his wording. The it is transmitted of “thus the Vaibhāṣikas transmit,” and some say, some other masters say, there is an explanation—the Tang commentaries read every one of these as a mark of the distance between the author and the doctrine he is reporting (Fabao, at the very head of his commentary, judges: “when he says ‘it is transmitted,’ he shows his own disbelief”). At the end of this fascicle, those two words alone touched off a dispute that has not rested in a thousand years.

This fascicle (Unit 1) contains three prefatory stanzas and twenty-five principal stanzas, and advances in four sections: first homage and the establishing of the name (the three prefatory stanzas); then the comprehensive classification of all dharmas as with or without outflows, and the establishing of the three unconditioned (Principal Stanzas 1 to 5); then the opening out of the eleven items of the aggregate of form (Principal Stanzas 6 through the first half of 11); and last the establishment of feeling, perception, formations, and consciousness together with the sense fields and elements, with the discussion of inclusion, sequence, the dharma-aggregates, and the two elements of space and consciousness (the second half of Principal Stanza 11 through Stanza 25). What follows teaches them stanza by stanza.

1. Homage and the Establishing of the Name: How a Treatise Accounts for Itself (The Three Prefatory Stanzas)

〔Preface 1〕Why the praise begins from the extinction of darkness. The treatise’s first stanza is a praise: “To him in whom darkness of every kind is extinguished, who draws living beings out of the mire of birth and death: I bow in homage to such a teacher of things as they are, and I shall expound the Treatise on the Treasury of Abhidharma.” Ask first: there are a thousand ways to praise a Buddha—why does Vasubandhu praise from the extinction of darkness? The treatise states the reason itself: “this treatise is now to be composed; in order to make manifest that his own teacher is exalted in his very being and surpasses the whole assembly of noble ones, he first praises his virtues and then offers homage.” And darkness is not literary darkness; the treatise defines it: “because the forms of not-knowing can cover over the true meaning and obstruct genuine seeing, they are spoken of as darkness.” Darkness is not-knowing. What is most easily misread here is the phrase every kind: readers habitually take it as an adjective of praise, whereas the treatise uses it as a criterion—śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas also extinguish various forms of darkness, and yet “because defiled not-knowing is finally abandoned, it is therefore not in every kind.” Why? “Because with respect to the Buddha’s dharmas, to times and places extremely remote, and to the boundlessly differentiated classes of meaning, their undefiled not-knowing has not yet been cut off.” Defiled not-knowing (the afflictions) the two vehicles can finally abandon; undefiled not-knowing only a Buddha permanently exhausts. Within one stanza the first two lines are benefiting oneself and benefiting others, and the treatise keeps them apart: “the fullness of the World-Honored One’s virtue of benefiting himself has been praised; next the perfection of the Buddha’s virtue of benefiting others is to be praised.” As a matter of reading: a treatise whose whole work is discernment bows precisely to the perfection of clarity—this is not an opening courtesy, it is the announcement of a thesis.

There is another sentence that is often skipped. Explaining the phrase teacher of things as they are, the treatise says that the Buddha draws living beings out of the mire of birth and death by “being able, through skillful means, to proclaim the true teaching that accords with reality,” and “not by force of might or by the supernormal power of vows”—the manner of rescue is teaching, not display of power. This accords with the character of the whole treatise: it does not speak of response and communion, only of discernment. As to which virtues are praised within the one stanza, Puguang explains: “the extinguishing of darkness in every kind abandons undefiled not-knowing and obtains cessation independent of discernment; this displays the virtue of wisdom,” and again, “the extinguishing of every darkness abandons defiled not-knowing and obtains cessation through discernment; this displays the virtue of abandonment,” so that one line of stanza is read as carrying both the virtue of wisdom and the virtue of abandonment; and the two names cessation through discernment and cessation independent of discernment are here quietly planted, to make their formal entrance in Principal Stanzas 1 through 3.

〔Preface 2, first half〕The two words Abhidharma: the title explains itself. The stanza says: “pure discernment together with its accompaniments is called Abhidharma, and also the forms of discernment and the treatises by which this can be obtained.” First the question: what is Abhidharma? The treatise answers on two levels. Abhidharma in the ultimate sense is “discernment means the discerning of dharmas; pure means without outflows; the retinue of pure discernment is called its accompaniments,” which taken together is “thus, stated comprehensively, the five aggregates without outflows are called Abhidharma—this is Abhidharma in the ultimate sense.” Abhidharma in the conventional sense is the provisions by which that pure discernment can be drawn forth: the discernment born of cultivation, of reflection, of hearing, and innately acquired, all with outflows, together with their accompaniments, plus “treatises, meaning the scriptural teachings that transmit and give rise to discernment without outflows,” for “these forms of discernment and these treatises are the provisions for that, and therefore they too obtain the name Abhidharma.”

What is most easily misunderstood here is the phrase the five aggregates without outflows: the subject was plainly discernment—how does it suddenly become five aggregates? The key is that accompaniments brings the retinue in as well. Yuanhui states it most finely: “the retinue of pure discernment is called its accompaniments: the mind associated with discernment, the mental factors such as feeling and perception, the four marks and acquisition, and the nonmanifest form arising with the path,” so that “such pure discernment together with its accompaniments extends over all five aggregates and is named Abhidharma in the ultimate sense.” Puguang works instead from the word pure: “discernment means discerning the dharmas of the Four Noble Truths; pure means without outflows, being free of the two bonds, and hence it is named pure discernment.” Fabao takes a separate road, saying first that “discernment can discern, and hence is named the discernment of dharmas,” and then that “without outflows has the sense of being free of stain; the outflows are named stains, and the discernment of dharmas can be free of them, hence it is named pure discernment.” The two masters weight different things without conflicting. The treatise also gives dharma a definition in passing: “because it can maintain its intrinsic mark it is called a dharma”—what can hold and keep its own mark is a dharma; and it divides this in two: “if dharma in the ultimate sense, it is nirvāṇa alone; if dharma as a defining characteristic, it extends to the Four Noble Truths.” As to why it is called facing, the treatise says: “this can face toward, or can directly observe, and therefore it is called Abhidharma.” Facing toward nirvāṇa and directly observing the Four Truths—one word carries two directions. As a matter of practice, the division into ultimate and conventional levels is the invisible stratification behind this treatise’s appeals to authority: from here on, wherever the reader meets the word Abhidharma, the first question should be—does it mean that pure discernment without outflows, or the scriptural corpus that carries it?

〔Preface 2, second half〕What treasury means. The stanza says: “because it gathers in their ultimate meaning and depends upon them, the name Treasury of Abhidharma is established for it.” First the question: since Abhidharma has already been explained, why is the further word treasury needed? The treatise gives two senses. The first: “because the ultimate meaning within those treatises of Abhidharma is gathered into what this contains, it obtains the name treasury”—this treatise has gathered in the essential meaning of the root Abhidharma treatises, and treasury takes the sense of containing. The second: “or this depends on them, arises from them, and is what they store up, and so it too is named treasury”—this treatise arises in dependence on them and is stored up out of them, and treasury takes the sense of what is depended upon.

The easy mistake: to suppose the two senses conflict and one must be chosen. Not so. Puguang reads it as a two-layered structure of the name: “the treasury of the Abhidharma is named the Treasury of Abhidharma—this is the dependent-determinative analysis”; and again, “taking the Abhidharma as its treasury it is named the Treasury of Abhidharma—this is the possessive-compound analysis”—one and the same name, depending on which side you place the weight. As a matter of practice, the two senses together are exactly this treatise’s self-positioning: it does not set up doctrine out of nothing, but gathers a century of Sarvāstivāda doctrine into a framework; yet it is not mere transcription either, for the gathering is itself a sifting. When one later reaches “this explanation is not right” and “some other masters say,” one knows that this word treasury is not being polite.

〔Preface 3〕Why the Abhidharma is indispensable. The stanza says: “apart from the discernment of dharmas there is certainly no other excellent means for extinguishing the defilements; and because of the defilements the world drifts on the ocean of existence—therefore it is transmitted that the Buddha spoke the Abhidharma.” The question is the reason for composing the treatise, and the answer is very hard: “apart from the discernment of dharmas there is no excellent means able to extinguish the defilements”—leave aside the discernment that discerns dharmas and there is no second road to the extinction of defilement; and “apart from the teaching of the Abhidharma, disciples cannot discern the marks of dharmas in accordance with reality.” If the defilements are not extinguished, the world drifts on the ocean of the three existences. This one stanza fixes the standing of the whole treatise: it is not a catalogue of knowledge, it is a tool for extinguishing defilement.

Then the single most consequential word of the fascicle appears. The treatise says: “yet the Buddha, the World-Honored One, spoke the Abhidharma dispersed here and there, and the venerable Kātyāyanīputra and other great śrāvakas compiled and arranged it.” And it likens this to “just as the venerable Dharmatrāta collected the Udāna stanzas such as the Chapter on Impermanence; thus the Vaibhāṣikas transmit.” Shentai’s commentary puts the author’s stance plainly on this sentence: “‘thus the Vaibhāṣikas transmit’ names the one who holds the view,” and adds, “the author does not believe that everything said by the Abhidharma masters wholly captures the Buddha’s intent.” Shentai also separately supplies the reason for the appellation venerable—“bhadanta, which here means ‘venerable,’ is Dharmatrāta of the Sarvāstivāda school”—and “the Sarvāstivādins revered the man, and therefore called him ‘venerable’”; and he explains the sense of Udāna: “udāna here means ‘spoken without being asked,’” that is, teachings the Buddha uttered without waiting to be questioned. The easy mistake: to slide past it is transmitted as a narrative formula. It is not a formula; it is a gap between the author and the doctrine he reports—and Saṅghabhadra seized on precisely these two words to open his attack, a dispute recorded in the Further Resonances below. As a matter of practice, this passage gives the reader a standing question: whenever the author reports another school’s doctrine, look first at whether he states it flatly or says it is transmitted.

2. The First Cut across All Dharmas: With Outflows and Without (Principal Stanzas 1 to 3)

〔Principal 1–3〕The comprehensive criterion is not good and bad but increase by attachment. Three stanzas come together: “dharmas are with outflows or without outflows; the conditioned other than the path—the outflows increase by attachment therein, and so they are called with outflows. Without outflows means the truth of the path and the three unconditioned, namely space and the two cessations; among these space is non-obstruction. Cessation through discernment means separation from bonds, differing according to each thing bound; what definitively obstructs what would arise is obtained separately as cessation independent of discernment.” First the question: all dharmas are to be sorted into two heaps—where is the cut made? The treatise answers: “all dharmas, stated briefly, are of two kinds, with outflows and without outflows.” With outflows means “the conditioned dharmas other than the truth of the path,” and the reason is eight characters only—“because the outflows increase therein equally by attachment.”

The finest distinction falls on the truths of cessation and the path: “if the truths of cessation and the path are taken as object, the outflows may arise but do not increase by attachment, and so they are not with outflows.” A person can indeed be attached to nirvāṇa or feel aversion toward the noble path, and afflictions do arise taking them as object; but arising is not taking root, and there they cannot grow. The criterion, then, is not good and bad or pure and impure, but whether the afflictions can increase by attachment upon it. The treatise also honestly marks that this must wait to be fully expounded later: “the sense of not increasing by attachment will be set out in the chapter on the latent tendencies.” What does the word equally mean? Puguang explains: “among the dharmas associated with the two truths of suffering and origin, and among their objects, the outflows accord with one another and increase one another, and their strength is matched, and hence the word ‘equally’”—increase along both the associated and the objective routes, matched in strength, hence equally. Puguang further divides the side without outflows into two cases: “with the truths of cessation and the path, they are taken as object but there is no increase by attachment; with space and cessation independent of discernment, they are neither taken as object nor increased upon”—cessation and path can be taken as object without increase, while space and cessation independent of discernment are not even taken as object.

The side without outflows is the truth of the path plus the three unconditioned. Space “has only non-obstruction as its nature; because there is no obstruction, form moves within it”—it is not an empty place but the very fact of not obstructing. Cessation through discernment “has separation from bonds as its nature,” and the treatise is very plain about how it gets its name: “discernment means discerning, a particular kind of discernment, since it discerns each of the Four Noble Truths separately. The cessation obtained by the power of discernment is called cessation through discernment—as a cart drawn by an ox is called an ox-cart, the middle word being dropped in speaking this way.” Here the treatise deliberately raises a question at the very point of likeliest misunderstanding: do all dharmas with outflows share one cessation through discernment? The answer is “no,” and the reason is “it differs according to the thing bound: as many as are the things bound, so many are the things separated from bonds”—as many strands of binding, so many of release. Were it otherwise, then “at the time of realizing the cessation of the afflictions abandoned by seeing suffering, one ought to realize the cessation of all the afflictions to be abandoned,” and then “cultivating the remaining counteragents would serve no purpose.” There is no bargain by which one realization abandons all defilement, and this sentence is the foundation of the treatise’s whole account of the path.

Cessation independent of discernment repays even closer attention: “what permanently obstructs what would arise is obtained as cessation independent of discernment, that is, it can permanently obstruct the arising of a future dharma,” and its provenance is that “its obtaining is not due to discerning, but only to the absence of a condition”—not by the power of discernment, but because the conditions were incomplete. The treatise’s example belongs to everyone: “as when eye and mind are fixed upon a single form, the remaining forms, sounds, odors, tastes, tangibles and the rest fall away,” and the consciousnesses that could have arisen taking those objects thereupon “abide in the future world and definitively do not arise.” At this moment you are attending to this line of text, and the countless consciousnesses that could have arisen in the same instant are missed forever—that forever is cessation independent of discernment. At the end the treatise gathers it into a fourfold distinction with no gaps: those that obtain only cessation through discernment are “past, present, and arising dharmas with outflows”; those that obtain only cessation independent of discernment are “conditioned dharmas without outflows that will not arise”; those that obtain both cessations are “those dharmas with outflows that will not arise”; those that obtain neither are “past, present, and arising dharmas without outflows.” As a matter of practice, these four are the origin of the treatise’s coordinate system: for any dharma hereafter, ask first on which side of with-outflows and without it falls, then ask which of the two cessations is obtained with respect to it.

3. The Alternative Names of the Conditioned and of What Has Outflows (Principal Stanzas 4 and 5)

〔Principal 4〕What conditioned is, and its four alternative names. The stanza says: “again, all conditioned dharmas are the five aggregates beginning with form; they are also named world-path, basis of speech, possessed of separation, possessed of a ground, and so forth.” First the question: the previous stanza said “the conditioned other than the path”—so what exactly does conditioned refer to? The treatise answers: “the five aggregates beginning with form, that is, from the aggregate of form to the aggregate of consciousness. These five dharmas comprehensively include the conditioned, being made together by an assemblage of many conditions,” and it adds one flatly decisive sentence: “there is no dharma whatever produced by a single condition.” The easy mistake lies with future dharmas: the future has not yet been made—how can it count as conditioned? The treatise answers, “because they are of that kind; the future is no obstacle, as with milk, as with firewood”—they take the name by being of the same kind, as what has not yet become curds is already called milk and what has not yet been burned is already called firewood.

Each of the four alternative names has its ground, and each states one facet of the conditioned. It is named world-path because it has “the nature of what has been traversed, is being traversed, and will be traversed” (the road travelled by the three times), “or because it is devoured by impermanence.” It is named basis of speech because “speech means language, and what it rests upon is the name together with its meaning”; and this sense has textual authority, for the treatise says that otherwise “it would contradict the Treatise on Categories of Dharmas, which says the basis of speech is included in the eighteen elements.” It is named possessed of separation: “separation means permanent separation, that is, nirvāṇa; all the conditioned has that capacity for separation”—every conditioned dharma has that separable character, and this is the ground on which cultivation of the path is possible at all. It is named possessed of a ground “because it has a cause; ground has the sense of cause,” and at the end one sentence is still added: “thus the Vaibhāṣikas transmit.” As a matter of practice: alternative names are not rhetorical play; they rename one and the same heap of dharmas under different questions—and this is exactly how Abhidharma works.

〔Principal 5〕Seven alternative names for dharmas with outflows, each of them a diagnosis. The stanza says: “dharmas with outflows are named aggregates of appropriation, and are also spoken of as possessed of dispute, and as suffering, origin, world, basis of views, the three existences, and so forth.” First the question: having already classified them as with outflows, why give them a string of further names? Because each name states their disease from one angle. The name aggregate of appropriation has three explanations, which the treatise sets side by side without choosing: “affliction is named appropriation; because aggregates arise from appropriation they are named aggregates of appropriation, as with a fire of grass and chaff” (named from the cause); “or aggregates belong to appropriation and are named aggregates of appropriation, as with the ministers of an emperor” (named from what they belong to); “or aggregates produce appropriation and are named aggregates of appropriation, as with a tree of flowers and fruit” (named from what they produce). Puguang marks these three explanations along the three roads of cause, belonging, and result, and Fabao and Yuanhui run along the same track.

One misreading must be blocked here: the supposition that the aggregates of appropriation and the aggregates have the same extension. The treatise blocks it in advance—“some are only aggregates and not aggregates of appropriation, namely the formations without outflows”: conditioned dharmas without outflows are aggregates but not aggregates of appropriation. The remaining six names each have their ground: named possessed of dispute, because the afflictions “agitate the wholesome, injure self and others, and dispute increases by attachment therein”; named suffering, “because it runs counter to the mind of the noble ones”; named origin, “because it can bring on suffering”; named world, “because it can be destroyed and because it has a counteragent”; named basis of views, “because views dwell in it, increasing by attachment and lying latent”; named three existences, “because it is their cause, their support, and is included in them.” As a matter of practice, this string of names is a trailer for the later chapters on the truths, the latent tendencies, and the noble persons: one and the same heap of dharmas, viewed from another angle, becomes another course of study.

4. The Aggregate of Form (1): Which Eleven Things Form Is (Principal Stanza 6)

〔Principal 6, first half〕The inventory of the aggregate of form. The stanza says: “form is only the five faculties, the five objects, and nonmanifest form.” First the question: what exactly is packed into the aggregate of form? The treatise lists it cleanly: “the five faculties are the faculties of eye, ear, nose, tongue, and body”; “the five objects are the objects of those five faculties, namely form, sound, odor, taste, and the tangible”; plus “and nonmanifest form, meaning nonmanifest form.” Eleven items in all. The key is the word only in the stanza, which the treatise glosses as “upon this measure alone is the name aggregate of form established”—the aggregate of form is neither more nor less than these eleven, and nothing may be added at will.

The easy mistake: reading form as color. The form of the aggregate of form is the general name of a class of dharmas, and its criterion is stated separately below (Principal Stanza 10); color is only a part of one of them, the object of form. As a matter of practice, these eleven items are the fixed complement of form among the seventy-five dharmas, and the eleven forms of the later dharma-characteristics learning take their number from here. This stanza gives only the list; the marks of each item are expounded from the next stanza onward—which is also an Abhidharma habit: fix the total first, then verify item by item.

〔Principal 6, second half〕The five faculties are not the eyeball and the ear-hole. The stanza says: “the subtle form on which those consciousnesses depend is named the five faculties beginning with the eye.” First the question: is the eye faculty the eye we can see? The treatise’s answer is no: the faculty is subtle form—“the five kinds of subtle form on which those consciousnesses depend should, in order, be known to be the five faculties beginning with the eye.” The treatise offers two readings. The first takes the objects as those: “those means the five objects beginning with form stated above, and consciousness means the consciousnesses of form, sound, odor, taste, and the tangible,” with a sūtra cited as proof—“as the World-Honored One said: bhikṣus, know that the eye is an inner sense field, having as its nature subtle form derived from the four great elements.” The second takes the faculties as those: “or those means the five faculties beginning with the eye stated above, and consciousness means the eye, ear, nose, tongue, and body consciousnesses,” taking thereby the sense of “that upon which the consciousnesses beginning with the eye depend”; and this way “accords with the Treatise on Categories of Dharmas,” which says, “what is the eye faculty? It has as its nature the subtle form on which eye consciousness depends.”

The easy mistake: supposing the faculty to be the visible organ. The visible part belongs to the object of form; the faculty is the pure and refined form derived from the four great elements, invisible yet really functioning. As a matter of practice, this step moves the question who is it that sees off the organ and onto the relation between subtle form and consciousness—and the great dispute over whether the eye sees or consciousness sees, in the second half of the Chapter on the Elements, grows out of precisely this.

〔Principal 7〕The five objects enumerated: every number has a reason. The stanza says: “form is of two kinds or of twenty; sound has only eight kinds; taste six and odor four; the tangible has eleven as its nature.” First the question: where do these numbers come from? The treatise supplies them item by item. The object of form divides into “first color, second shape”: the four root colors are “blue, yellow, red, white,” and all other colors are their differentiations; the shapes are eight, “beginning with long and ending with unshapely.” Opened out to twenty, they are blue, yellow, red, white, long, short, square, round, high, low, shapely, unshapely, plus “cloud, smoke, dust, mist, shadow, light, brightness, darkness.” The treatise also glosses in passing: “the vapor of water rising from the ground is called mist; the blaze of the sun is named light,” and “what arises when brightness is blocked while the other forms in it remain visible is named shadow; the opposite of this is darkness.”

Here one must learn a habit of the treatise: divergent accounts stand side by side and are not forcibly decided. “Some other masters say that the single color of open sky is a twenty-first”—the treatise records it without adjudicating; and the presence or absence of color and shape is divided into three classes, upon which again “some other masters say that only the forms of light and brightness have color without shape.” The eight kinds of sound are obtained by multiplying three binary divisions: appropriated or unappropriated great elements as cause, designated as sentient or not so designated, and last, “these again, by the distinction of agreeable and disagreeable, come to eight.” The six tastes are “sweet, sour, salty, pungent, bitter, bland”; the four odors are “good odor, bad odor, even and uneven odor,” and the treatise honestly records the discrepancy with the root treatise: “in the Root Treatise odor is said to be of three kinds: good odor, bad odor, and equal odor.” The eleven tangibles are the four great elements plus “smoothness, roughness, heaviness, lightness, and cold, hunger, thirst.” The easy mistake: taking these inventories for the physics of the ancients. They are classifications of what is cognized as object, and the criterion throughout is what this faculty gets hold of, not a table of material constituents. As a matter of practice, this inventory is the actual content of the first ten of the eighteen elements: every element questioned in the later distinctions through the several gates has its items opened out here.

〔Cited stanza · The Appearance of the Buddhas Is Happiness〕A stanza in praise of the Buddhas, proving a rule of naming. Explaining the last three of the tangibles, the treatise says: “the desire for warmth is named cold; the desire for food is named hunger; the desire for drink is named thirst.” It then points out why they are so named—“because in these three the name of the result is established upon the cause, this is so said”—and cites a stanza in proof: “the appearance of the Buddhas is happiness, the proclaiming of the true dharma is happiness, the concord of the Saṅgha is happiness, the vigorous striving of those who train together is happiness.” First the question: the subject is cold, heat, hunger and thirst—why suddenly cite a stanza in praise of the Buddhas? Because that stanza uses the very same manner of speech: the appearance of the Buddhas and the proclaiming of the dharma are themselves causes, happiness is their result, and the stanza calls the cause outright by the name of the result. In the same way, cold is the tangible that can produce the desire for warmth, and hunger the tangible that can produce the desire for food—the producing tangible is named by the desire it produces.

The easy mistake: reading “the desire for warmth is named cold” as “cold just is wanting to be warm.” It is not. Cold is that tangible; desire is the result it draws forth, and what the treatise is stating here is a rule of naming, not an account of substance. As a matter of practice, this rule will be used repeatedly later (as with the consciousness element being “the support of the arising of sentient beings”); wherever the reader meets a name that does not match its thing, the first question should be: is the name of the result being established upon the cause?

After this section there are three further fine distinctions that are often passed over, and the stanza is not fully read until they are read too. First, the tangibles of the form realm: there “there are no tangibles of hunger and thirst, but the remaining tangibles are there,” a garment “singly cannot be weighed, but in a heap can be weighed,” and “cold and warmth, though they have no injuring function there, do have a benefiting function. So it is transmitted”—those two words again. Second, consciousness may take one object or many: “sometimes eye consciousness arises taking a single thing as object,” and then it cognizes each separately; “sometimes eye consciousness arises taking many things as object,” and then it does not cognize each separately, as when “one gazes from afar at an army or a mountain forest.” Third, when objects reach the body and the tongue at once, which consciousness arises first? The treatise answers, “whichever object is stronger, that consciousness arises first,” and if the two are of equal strength, tongue consciousness arises first, “because food and drink sustain the body and cause it to continue.”

5. The Aggregate of Form (2): Nonmanifest Form and the Four Great Elements (Principal Stanzas 8 to 10)

〔Principal 8〕Nonmanifest form: a kind of form that cannot be seen. The stanza says: “in a distracted mind, in no mind, and so forth, flowing on, pure or impure, having the nature of derivation from the great elements—on this basis it is called nonmanifest.” First the question: is not form what is visible and resistant? How can there be a form that is nonmanifest? The treatise glosses the stanza word by word: “distracted mind means a mind other than this; no mind means entering the absorption without perception and the absorption of cessation,” and “the word and so forth shows the undistracted and minded states”—distracted mind, no mind, and undistracted minded states are all covered, precisely in order to show that this form is not cut off by the mind’s being distracted or not. “Continuity of similar moments is called flowing on”; “wholesome and unwholesome are called pure and impure.” As to why derived from the great elements must be added, the treatise says it is “in order to set apart the acquisitions, which are also a continuity of similar moments; therefore the words derived from the great elements are further added”—acquisitions too are a continuity of similar moments, so this phrase is needed to distinguish them. And what do the words on this basis mean in the stanza? “They show the reason for establishing the name, and so on this basis is said.”

Hence the name nonmanifest: “although nonmanifest form, like manifest action, has form and action as its nature, it cannot be manifested so as to make others know it, and so it is named nonmanifest”—it cannot let another know your mind through it, and so it is called nonmanifest. The easy mistake: reading it as an abstract moral concept. In this treatise it is a dharma of form, and the treatise states its scope plainly: “stated briefly, manifest action and the wholesome and unwholesome form produced in absorption are named nonmanifest”—the portion of continuing form left behind after receiving the precepts or performing an action, and the form produced in absorption. Here the treatise once again marks its stance: “the word stated shows that this is a statement of the master’s own school.” As a matter of practice, this item is a specifically Sarvāstivāda construction and the most attacked point in the treatise; Saṅghabhadra fires two objections at it here, recorded in the Further Resonances.

〔Principal 9〕The four great elements: seen as element, function, and nature. The stanza says: “the great elements are the four elements, namely earth, water, fire, and wind; they accomplish the functions of sustaining and the rest; their natures are hardness, moisture, warmth, and motion.” First the question: why are earth, water, fire, and wind called both elements and great elements? The treatise answers in two parts: they are named elements because they “can maintain their own intrinsic marks and the forms derived from them”; and named great elements because they are “what all other forms depend upon, their nature being broad and wide,” “or because in aggregations where earth and the rest predominate their configurations are great, or because they can give rise to various great functions.” Next comes the pairing of function and nature: “in order they accomplish the four functions of sustaining, gathering, ripening, and increasing; the earth element sustains, the water element gathers, the fire element ripens, the wind element increases,” and “increasing means growth, or else drawing out”; while their natures are “hardness, moisture, warmth, and motion.” To the motion of wind the treatise adds a simile: “by this it can draw the great elements and derived form on into continuity arising in another place, as when a lamp flame is blown, and so it is named motion.”

The easy mistake: reading the four great elements as four material substances. What the treatise speaks of is four natures and four functions: the natures are hardness, moisture, warmth, motion, the functions are sustaining, gathering, ripening, increasing, and the two may not be exchanged; earth is not soil, it is that portion whose nature is hardness and whose function is supporting. As a matter of practice, the treatise’s way of handling a conflict of authorities is visible here as well: the Treatise on Categories of Dharmas and a sūtra say “what is the wind element? It is the nature of motion, such as lightness,” while lightness is also said to be derived form, so the two statements collide; and the treatise’s disposition is that “the wind element should be said to have motion as its own nature, its function being cited to display its substance, and so lightness too is said”—motion is the substance, lightness only its function cited to display that substance. Choice made on evidence, with the difficulty not concealed: this is the treatise’s way.

〔Principal 10〕The earth, water, fire, and wind the world speaks of are not what the treatise speaks of. The stanza says: “earth is color and shape, the name established in accordance with worldly ideation; water and fire are likewise; wind is the wind element, and the same as well.” First the question: if earth has hardness as its nature, why do people point at a clod and say earth? The treatise’s distinction is brisk: “earth is color and shape, having the sense field of form as its substance, this name being provisionally established in accordance with worldly ideation”—what people mean by earth is in fact color and shape, the sense field of form, and not that element whose nature is hardness. The reason is “because when people of the world point out earth to one another, they point it out by color and shape; water and fire are likewise.”

Wind is the single exception: “wind is the wind element, because the world establishes the name of wind upon motion”—what people mean when they say wind happens to be the nature of motion itself. But the treatise immediately adds a second route: “or, like earth and the rest, its name is established in accordance with worldly ideation, and wind too has color and shape, hence the stanza says the same,” since the world also says “a black wind, a whirling wind,” which indicates wind by color and shape. The easy mistake: reading this stanza as the treatise correcting ordinary usage. It is not correction but stratification: conventional designation has its own use, and the treatise only marks the gap between it and the intrinsic mark of a dharma. As a matter of practice, this distinction is a miniature of the whole method of Abhidharma—first separate worldly ideation (provisional names) from the intrinsic marks of dharmas (real substances), and only then can discernment begin.

6. The Aggregate of Form (3): The Word-Sense of Form (A Cited Stanza · The First Half of Principal Stanza 11)

〔Cited stanza · Those Who Pursue the Objects of Desire〕Why form is called form: deterioration. The treatise raises the question: why does the aggregate of form, ending with nonmanifest form, take form as its collective name? The answer is “because of deterioration,” with a sūtra as ground: “as the World-Honored One said: bhikṣus, know that because it deteriorates it is named the aggregate of appropriation that is form.” Asked further who makes it deteriorate, the answer is “because a hand touches it, it thereupon deteriorates.” And “deterioration has the sense of being liable to be vexed and destroyed,” the proof being the stanza from the Chapter on Meaning: “those who pursue the objects of desire constantly bear expectations; if the objects of desire are not attained, they are vexed and destroyed as though struck by an arrow.” First the question: the subject is the sense of the dharma of form—why cite a stanza about frustrated desire? Because what the treatise means to prove is exactly that deterioration and being vexed and destroyed run together—“and how is form? It is vexed and destroyed by desire, since through the disturbance of desire deterioration arises.” Form is named form not merely because it breaks physically, but because it is what is vexed and destroyed by desire. This step lifts the dharma of form off the material plane and onto the plane of the truth of suffering.

After this section comes a splendid exchange, which shows exactly how this treatise answers an objection. Some say “it is named form because of resistant deformation,” and the objector at once brings three cases against it: the ultimate atom has no resistant deformation, the past and future have none, nonmanifest form has none—so none of them should be form. The treatise answers one by one: for the ultimate atom, “no ultimate atom abides singly by itself; when many atoms are aggregated the sense of resistant deformation is established”; for past and future, “these too have had and will have resistant deformation, and are of the same kind, like firewood already burned”; for nonmanifest form it records two explanations—one holds that “manifest form has resistant deformation, and nonmanifest form receives the name form along with it,” as a shadow moves when a tree moves, which the treatise refutes: “this explanation is not right, since it has no resistant deformation,” and moreover “when the manifest ceases the nonmanifest ought to cease, as when a tree perishes the shadow must perish with it”; the other holds that “the great elements it depends on have resistant deformation, and so nonmanifest action too obtains the name form.” At the end the treatise points out that the simile of shadow-on-tree and light-on-jewel “does not, for its part, accord with the doctrine of the Vaibhāṣikas,” and puts forward a separate explanation of its own: “what the five consciousnesses beginning with the eye depend on is not fixed,” some of it with resistant deformation (the faculties beginning with the eye) and some without (the mind that has ceased without interval), whereas what nonmanifest form depends on is not like this, and “therefore the earlier objection is indeed not on equal terms, and the principle that form is named from resistant deformation is established.” The easy mistake: supposing the treatise here to be defending the Vaibhāṣikas. On the contrary, it refuses to make do even with the Vaibhāṣika masters’ own old simile. As a matter of practice, once the word-sense of form is fixed, the eleven items of the aggregate of form have a common criterion—whatever is called form must survive the test of both senses, deterioration and resistant deformation. Saṅghabhadra has a counter-refutation on this passage, recorded in the Further Resonances.

〔Principal 11, first half〕The aggregate of form, turning around, is ten sense fields and ten elements. The stanza says: “among these, the faculties and objects are allowed to be the ten sense fields and elements.” First the question: are aggregate, sense field, and element three different inventories? Here the treatise gives the first joint: “within the nature of the aggregate of form stated above, the faculties and objects are allowed to be the ten sense fields and elements”—the same set of dharmas, “set up under the gate of sense fields as ten sense fields,” “under the gate of elements as ten elements.” Eye sense field and form sense field through body sense field and tangible sense field; eye element and form element through body element and tangible element: the content is unchanged to a word, only the gate is different.

The easy mistake: supposing the three classifications each to have their own content. They do not. They are three ways of cutting one heap of dharmas: of the eleven items of the aggregate of form, the ten of five faculties and five objects are ten sense fields under the gate of sense fields and ten elements under the gate of elements; the remaining nonmanifest form does not enter them and belongs to the sense field and element of dharmas (as the next stanza says). As a matter of practice, the knack of reading the three classifications lies just here: do not ask how their contents differ, ask why the same content is cut three times. The treatise does not leave this question hanging—in the second half of Principal Stanza 17 it gives a direct answer.

7. The Four Aggregates of Feeling, Perception, Formations, and Consciousness (Principal Stanzas 11b to 13)

〔Principal 11, second half–12〕The three aggregates of feeling, perception, and formations, and the content of the sense field and element of dharmas. The stanza says: “feeling is the receiving that follows contact; perception has the grasping of images as its substance; the four remaining are named the aggregate of formations; these three, feeling and the rest, together with nonmanifest form and the unconditioned, are named the sense field and element of dharmas.” First the question: how are feeling, perception, and formations defined? The treatise answers: feeling is “the aggregate of feeling is threefold, the receiving that follows contact, namely pleasant, painful, and neither painful nor pleasant,” and in detail “becomes six bodies of feeling, the feeling born of eye contact through the feeling born of mind contact”; perception is “the aggregate of perception has the grasping of images as its substance,” what is grasped being “the grasping of such marks as blue and yellow, long and short, male and female, hostile and friendly, painful and pleasant,” likewise becoming six bodies of perception; and the aggregate of formations is established by exclusion: “apart from the form, feeling, and perception preceding and the consciousness following, all remaining formations are named the aggregate of formations.”

Here there is an objection that must be answered, and it is the point of likeliest misunderstanding. The sūtra plainly says “the six bodies of volition are the aggregate of formations”—so how can all remaining formations be included too? The treatise answers: that was said “because it is most excellent”—“formation means constructing, and volition has the nature of action, its sense of constructing being strong, and so it is most excellent.” If only volition were taken, then “the remaining mental factors and the unassociated, not being included in the aggregates, would not belong to suffering and origin,” and would become dharmas that cannot be known or abandoned, contradicting the World-Honored One’s teaching, “if with respect to a single dharma one has not penetrated and not known it, I say one cannot make an end of suffering.” Therefore the treatise concludes: “it must definitely be granted that all conditioned formations other than the four aggregates are included in the aggregate of formations.” As a matter of practice, this is a basic skill in reading sūtra and treatise: when a sūtra says a certain dharma is a certain aggregate, that need not be an exhaustive definition; it may be citing the most excellent member as representative. At the end the treatise settles the content of the sense field and element of dharmas at one stroke: the three aggregates of feeling, perception, and formations “together with nonmanifest form and the three unconditioned, these seven dharmas,” are set up under the gate of sense fields as the sense field of dharmas and under the gate of elements as the element of dharmas.

〔Principal 13〕The aggregate of consciousness: one name, lodged in three places. The stanza says: “consciousness is the cognizing of each thing separately; this is precisely named the mind sense field; and it should be known as seven elements, the six consciousnesses becoming mind.” First the question: what is consciousness? The treatise answers, “cognizing each of its own objects separately and taking the mark of the object as a whole, it is named the aggregate of consciousness,” opened out as six bodies of consciousness. Then the treatise does something well worth learning: it aligns the three tables of five aggregates, twelve sense fields, and eighteen elements on the spot. The aggregate of consciousness is “set up under the gate of sense fields as the mind sense field,” “under the gate of elements as seven elements”; the aggregate of form, “apart from nonmanifest form, the remaining aggregate of form is named the ten sense fields and also the ten elements”; and the rest, “the aggregates of feeling, perception, and formations, nonmanifest form, and the unconditioned, are collectively named the sense field of dharmas and also the element of dharmas.” With this the three tables are jointed, and the reader has a table of correspondences that can be converted in any direction.

The easy mistake: supposing the seven mind elements of the eighteen to be seven consciousnesses. They are not. They are the six consciousness elements plus one mind element, and the mind element is not a seventh mind—the treatise at once raises an objection against itself: “is not the aggregate of consciousness only the six bodies of consciousness? What else is spoken of as the mind element besides them? There is no other dharma.” This one question forces out the next stanza. As a matter of practice: converting among the three classifications is this treatise’s most basic operation, and hereafter, whenever a new technical term appears, the treatise asks where it stands in these three tables; a reader who fixes the table of correspondences in mind here saves half the labor of everything that follows.

8. The Mind Element: How the Eighteen Elements Stand (Principal Stanza 14)

〔Principal 14, first half〕Mind is the thought of consciousness that has just ceased. The stanza says: “it is precisely the six bodies of consciousness that, ceasing without interval, become mind.” First the question: if “there is no other dharma,” where does the mind element come from? The treatise answers very briefly: “the six bodies of consciousness, having ceased without interval, can produce the succeeding consciousness, and so they are named the mind element”—not another thing, but the same consciousness renamed in the position of having just ceased. The treatise gives two similes: “as this one is a son and is named a father with respect to another; or as this one is a fruit and is named a seed with respect to another”—one and the same person is a father with respect to a son; one and the same thing is a fruit with respect to this and a seed with respect to that. The name is established by relation; it does not add to the substance.

The easy mistake: supposing the mind element to be an abiding mental substance. This treatise’s arrangement is precisely the opposite: mind is the consciousness of the preceding thought that has ceased, gone in an instant, relying on continuity and not on abiding. As a matter of practice, this step solves the problem on what does the sixth consciousness depend without having to posit any permanently existing mind. The later Yogācāra learning, positing manas as the mind faculty and the ālaya as the root support, answers the very same question in another way; one question, two generations of answers, which may be read against each other, though the characterization of their relation is not the business of this section.

〔Principal 14, second half〕Then why not seventeen elements, or twelve. The stanza says: “it is to establish the support of the sixth, and thus the eighteen elements should be known.” First the question: since the six consciousnesses and mind “include one another,” why not reduce them to seventeen, or simply to twelve? The treatise answers: “as the five consciousness elements each have their own separate support among the five elements beginning with the eye, the sixth, mind consciousness, has no separate support; and to establish this support the mind element is spoken of”—the first five consciousnesses each have a form faculty as support, and if the sixth had none the arrangement would be uneven, so the mind element is set up to fill its place. Thus “the supports, the supported, and the objects are six each, making eighteen elements”: six faculties, six consciousnesses, six objects, three sets of six, exactly even.

The treatise also raises a very fine objection: the last thought of an arhat beyond training has no succeeding consciousness—does it then fail to be a mind element? The answer: “not so; it already abides in the nature of mind, and the succeeding consciousness does not arise only because the remaining conditions are lacking”—the failure to arise is a lack of conditions, not a lack of the nature of mind. The easy mistake: supposing the eighteen elements to be eighteen different things. In fact the six consciousnesses and the mind element are one dharma in different positions; what the elements count are positions and functions, not the number of things. As a matter of practice, this gives the reader a measure: wherever a number in the treatise fails to match the number of things, ask first whether what is being counted is substance or position.

9. Inclusion: One Aggregate, One Sense Field, One Element Include All Dharmas (Principal Stanzas 15 and 16)

〔Principal 15〕Inclusion includes one’s own nature, not what merely resembles it. The stanza says: “all dharmas are comprehensively included by one aggregate, one sense field, one element; what is included is one’s own nature and not another’s, because a dharma is separate from another’s nature.” First the question: can all dharmas be packed into the fewest possible boxes? The treatise answers that they can: “by one aggregate of form, one mind sense field, one element of dharmas, it should be known that all dharmas are comprehensively included”—one aggregate of form, one mind sense field, one element of dharmas, three boxes and no more. But the real teaching point is in the last two lines: “in the various passages, speaking in the ultimate sense, only one’s own nature is included and not another’s,” the reason being “because a dharma is always separate from another’s nature.” The treatise takes the eye faculty as its example: the eye faculty “is included only in the aggregate of form, the eye sense field, the eye element, the truths of suffering and origin, and so on, because that is its nature; it is not included in the remaining aggregates, sense fields, and elements, because it is separate from their natures.”

The easy mistake: supposing inclusion to mean gathering related things together. In the ultimate sense it is not—inclusion includes only itself. Speaking conventionally there is another road: “it should be known that other dharmas may also include other dharmas, as with the four means of gathering, by which a following is gathered in.” The two accounts each have their own station and may not be mixed. Yuanhui states the practical use of this most clearly: “all dharmas do not exceed five positions: first form, second mind, third mental factors, fourth what is not associated with mind, fifth the unconditioned,” and hence “all dharmas of form are exhaustively included in the one aggregate of form; all dharmas of mind in the one mind sense field.” As a matter of practice, this is Abhidharma’s technique of retrieval: with any dharma in hand, ask first which box its own nature belongs to, then ask its relation to the other boxes—reverse the order and the discussion will fall into confusion.

〔Principal 16, first half〕There are two eyes; why is the element counted as one. The stanza says: “because kind, object, and consciousness are the same, though two, the substance of the element is one.” First the question: eye, ear, and nose each have two places—should the eighteen elements not be twenty-one? The treatise answers no, and sets out three samenesses: “same in kind, that is, the two places are alike the intrinsic nature of eye; same in object, that is, the two places alike take form as object; same in consciousness, that is, the two places alike serve as the support of eye consciousness.” Same nature, same object, same consciousness produced, therefore “by this the eye element, though two, is one; ear and nose should be established likewise.”

The easy mistake: supposing the elements to be counted by the number of organs. What the elements count is kind, not the number of items; one and the same lineage residing in two places is still one element. As a matter of practice, this is a rehearsal of the sense element = lineage—the first half of Principal Stanza 17 will formally supply that word-sense. Looking back from there, one sees that every number in this treatise has a statable reason behind it, and is not arrived at by counting heads.

〔Principal 16, second half〕Then why grow two. The stanza says: “yet in order to be comely, the eye and the rest each produce two.” If the substance is one, why be produced in two places? The treatise first records one explanation: “in order that the bodily form on which they depend be comely, the substance of the element, though one, arises in two places. If the eye and ear faculties arose in only one place each, and the nose had no two nostrils, the body would not be comely.” It then refutes it itself: “this explanation is not right. If they had been so from the beginning, who would call it ugly? Moreover cats and owls are produced with two places—what comeliness is there in them?”—if a person were born one-eyed by nature, who would call him ugly? And cats and owls have two eyes as well, without any comeliness in it.

The answer the treatise gives shifts the ground to function: “in order that the consciousness generated be clear and well-formed,” with direct observation as proof—“it is directly observed in the world that when one eye is closed and so forth, the cognizing of form is not distinct; therefore the three faculties each produce two places.” The easy mistake: supposing the treatise to be discussing beauty and ugliness. It has in fact rejected the account by beauty and ugliness and replaced it with the clarity and sharpness of cognizing. As a matter of practice, this is a method the treatise uses often: record the old explanation first, then test it against fact, and take what can be tested. The four words “this explanation is not right” occur twice in this fascicle—once at the explanation of nonmanifest form receiving the name form along with the manifest, once at the explanation by comeliness here—and both times what is refuted is an explanation of the author’s own school’s predecessors, not of outsiders.

10. The Word-Sense of the Three Words Aggregate, Sense Field, Element (First Half of Principal Stanza 17)

〔Principal 17, first half〕Collection, gate of arising, lineage—three word-senses, and a debate about the provisional. The stanza says: “collection, gate of arising, lineage are the senses of aggregate, sense field, and element.” First the question: what do these three literally mean? The treatise fixes each: aggregate is “the sense of a conjoined collection of conditioned dharmas is the sense of aggregate,” proved by the sūtra, “whatever form there is, past, future, or present, internal or external, coarse or subtle, inferior or superior, far or near—all this taken briefly as one collection is called the aggregate of form”; sense field is “the sense of a gate for the arising and growth of mind and mental factors is the sense of sense field,” glossed as “because it can give rise to and cause the growth of mind and mental factors, it is named a sense field”; and element is “the sense of the lineage of dharmas is the sense of element,” with the simile of a mountain that “has many lineages of copper, iron, gold, silver and the rest,” so that within one body “there are the lineages of the eighteen classes of dharmas, named the eighteen elements,” and “here lineage has the sense of source of arising.”

The ten pairs of terms in the sūtra the treatise then fixes one by one: “what has ceased as impermanent is named past; what has not yet arisen is named future; what has arisen and not fallen away is named present”; “one’s own body is named internal, the rest external”; coarse and subtle either “by the sense fields, what is resistant is named coarse, what is nonresistant subtle”; and again “what is defiled is named inferior, what is undefiled superior; past and future are named far, present near.” An objector says: if they are established relatively, coarse and subtle cannot be established. The treatise answers, “because the terms of relation differ”—“what is coarse relative to that is never subtle, what is subtle relative to that is never coarse, like father and son, or the truths of suffering and origin”; one and the same person is a son to his father and a father to his son, and there is no contradiction. Here the treatise again records a divergent account without adjudicating: “the venerable Dharmatrāta further says: what is grasped by the five faculties is named coarse form, the rest subtle form; what is disagreeable is named inferior form, the rest superior form; what is in a place that cannot be seen is named far form, what is in a place that can be seen near form.”

The real weight is in the last section, and the objector is the author himself. The author sets up a formal inference and objects: if the sense of collection is the sense of aggregate, the aggregate ought to be provisional, since it is “made together by the accumulation of many real things, like a collection, like a self”—Puguang explains, “here he sets up an inference to refute the Vaibhāṣika claim that the aggregate is real,” and Shentai’s commentary likewise assigns it as “first, the Sautrāntika objection is stated.” The Vaibhāṣikas at once come to the defense: “this objection is not right, since a single real ultimate atom is also named an aggregate”—one real ultimate atom also receives the name aggregate, so the aggregate need not await the accumulation of many real things, and the author’s reason fails here; Puguang explains, “the Vaibhāṣika masters defend it by saying that each single ultimate atom also obtains the mark of aggregate, since it can be accumulated,” and Shentai marks it as “the first master explains.” The author presses one step further: then one ought not to say that the sense of collection is the sense of aggregate, “since a single real thing has no sense of collection”; Puguang marks this sentence as “the author objects,” and Shentai as “next, the Sautrāntika refutation is stated.” The treatise also records two divergent explanations (“the sense of being able to bear a heavy burden is the sense of aggregate,” “the sense of being divisible into portions is the sense of aggregate”) and refutes the latter by the sūtra: “such an explanation transgresses the sūtra.” At the end the author delivers his own verdict: “because it says ‘all this taken briefly as one collection is called the aggregate,’ therefore, like a collection, the aggregate is definitively provisional.” The easy mistake: reading “the aggregate is definitively provisional” as the judgment of the Sarvāstivāda school itself. Quite the reverse—Puguang marks here that “in the Vaibhāṣika school the three gates of aggregate and the rest are all real dharmas; on the Sautrāntika position aggregate and sense field are provisional and only element is real,” so it is the author who sets up an inference against them and grants that the aggregate is provisional; while sense field and element have their own separate ground, “within the accumulation of many, each single ultimate atom has the function of a cause,” so that the sense fields possessing form are not provisional in the way the aggregate is. As a matter of practice, the words “the aggregate is definitively provisional” are the distant groundwork for the refutation of the grasped self in the treatise’s last chapter: if even the five aggregates are a provisional collection, grasping the aggregates as a self has nowhere left to stand.

11. Why Three Gates Are Taught (Second Half of Principal Stanza 17 to First Half of 19)

〔Principal 17, second half〕The three classifications are not three inventories but three teachings. The stanza says: “because folly, faculty, and preference are threefold, the three of aggregate, sense field, and element are taught.” First the question: why must one and the same set of dharmas be cut three times? The treatise answers: “because the beings to be trained are of three grades, the World-Honored One taught them the three gates of aggregate and the rest.” Each of the three grades is threefold: folly is of three kinds—“either folly about mental factors, grasping them collectively as a self, or folly about form alone, or folly about form and mind”; faculty is of three—“sharp, middling, dull”; preference is of three—“preference for brief, middling, and extended wording.” “In that order the World-Honored One taught them the three of aggregate, sense field, and element.”

The easy mistake: supposing the difference among the three classifications to be one of doctrinal depth, the aggregates shallow and the elements deep. It is not; it is fitness to the hearer. To those foolish about mental factors, grasping them collectively as a self, the five aggregates are taught (mental factors being opened out into the three aggregates of feeling, perception, and formations); to those foolish about form alone, the twelve sense fields (form being opened out into ten sense fields); to those foolish about both form and mind, the eighteen elements (both form and mind being opened out). To the sharp who prefer brevity, the aggregates are given; to the dull who prefer extension, the elements. As a matter of practice, this stanza is the key to the whole fascicle: behind a taxonomy stands a pedagogy, and the ground on which a classification stands lies not on the side of the objects but on the side of the hearers. Here again the treatise uses the words it is transmitted—“it is transmitted that beings’ folly is of three kinds”—that same gap once more.

〔Principal 18〕Why feeling and perception are pulled out of the aggregate of formations. The stanza says: “because they are the roots of dispute, the causes of birth and death, and because of the reason of sequence, among the mental factors feeling and perception are set up separately as aggregates.” First the question: the mental factors are so many—why are feeling and perception alone set up as aggregates? The treatise gives three reasons. First, the roots of dispute: “the roots of dispute are two, attachment to the objects of desire and attachment to views,” and “through the force of relishing feeling one is attached to the objects of desire; through the force of inverted perception one is attached to views”—feeling and perception are exactly the most excellent causes of the two roots of dispute. Second, the causes of birth and death: “the dharmas of birth and death have feeling and perception as their most excellent causes, since through indulging in feeling inverted perception arises, and by this one revolves in birth and death.” Third, the reason of sequence, of which the treatise says “the reason of sequence will be distinguished next”—that is, in the next stanza.

The easy mistake: supposing the arrangement of the five aggregates to be a list drawn up at random. It is not. Written into the list of the five aggregates is a diagnosis of the root of the illness: the most excellent cause of all dispute and all revolving in birth and death is nothing but one feeling and one perception. As a matter of practice, this also shows where the effort of the path is to be applied—counteracting attachment to desire and to views must begin from feeling and perception; and this is the seed of the later chapters on the latent tendencies and the noble persons. Reaching this point, the reader may turn back to the name possessed of dispute in Principal Stanza 5: what is said in the two places is one and the same thing.

〔Principal 19, first half〕Why the unconditioned enters the sense fields and elements but not the aggregates. The stanza says: “the aggregates do not include the unconditioned, because the sense does not correspond.” First the question: the three unconditioned are dharmas too—why is there no place for them among the aggregates? The treatise answers: “because they do not correspond to the sense of form and the rest: their substance is not form and so on down to not consciousness”—each of the five aggregates has its own nature, and the unconditioned matches none of them; “nor can they be spoken of as a sixth aggregate, because they do not correspond to the sense of aggregate,” since the sense of collection is the sense of aggregate, whereas unconditioned dharmas “do not, like form and the rest, have the class distinctions of past and so forth such that they could be taken briefly as one collection and named an unconditioned aggregate.” The treatise adds one further layer: “moreover, aggregate of appropriation is said in order to display the support of defilement, while the word aggregate displays the support of both defilement and purity; the unconditioned has neither of these two senses.” It also records a divergent account (“as a broken jar is not a jar, so an aggregate that has been quieted ought not to be an aggregate”) and comments, “on his account the same fault ought to follow for the sense fields and elements.”

The easy mistake: supposing the unconditioned to be excluded from the classification altogether. It is not—it stands within the sense field and element of dharmas, as the previous stanza said. The aggregates do not include it only because the word-sense of aggregate (collection) does not correspond to it. As a matter of practice, this shows that the three classifications are not three equivalent containers: sense fields and elements include all dharmas without remainder, while the aggregates include only the conditioned. Hereafter, whenever all dharmas is said with the word aggregate, the reader must remember to supply this limitation.

12. Sequence: Why Arranged This Way (Second Half of Principal Stanza 19 and Stanza 20)

〔Principal 19, second half〕Four readings of the order of the five aggregates. The stanza says: “following coarseness, defilement, the vessel and the rest, and the distinction of realms, the sequence is established.” First the question: is the order form, feeling, perception, formations, consciousness merely conventional? The treatise gives four reasons. First, following coarseness and subtlety: “form has resistance, and so among the aggregates it is coarse”; among the four formless aggregates feeling is coarsest, “hence people of the world say ‘my hand hurts’ and the like”; “relative to the latter two, perception is coarse, since perceptions of male and female are easily cognized”; “formations are coarser than consciousness, since actions such as greed and hatred are easily cognized”; “consciousness is subtlest, since it takes the mark of the object as a whole and is hard to distinguish.” Second, following defilement: male and female love one another in respect of form because “they indulge the relish of pleasant feeling”; indulgence in feeling arises through inverted perception; inverted perception arises through the afflictions (formations); the afflictions arise in dependence on consciousness—by the sequence of defilement the sequence of the aggregates is fixed. Third, following the vessel and the rest, the most memorable set of similes in the fascicle: “form is like a vessel, feeling like the food, perception like the seasoning that aids the flavor, formations like the cook, consciousness like the eater.” Fourth, following the distinction of realms: in the realm of desire the mark of form is manifest; in the form realm the mark of feeling is manifest; in the three formless the mark of perception is manifest; in the foremost existence the mark of formations is manifest.

The easy mistake: supposing the account of sequence to be a mnemonic conceit. The treatise says plainly that by this it is proved that “the five aggregates incur no fault of being too many or too few”—if the principle of the sequence stands, the number five can be neither increased nor decreased. As a matter of practice, the four reasons also prove once more the fitness of setting feeling and perception apart: they “are strongest in two realms, and so are set up separately as aggregates.” The reader may note that the treatise gives four explanations in a row without choosing one, which is exactly its standing practice with questions of the form why is it arranged thus: reasons are never too many, only never too few.

〔Principal 20〕The order of the six faculties likewise has its reasons. The stanza says: “the objects of the first five are only present; the objects of four are only derived; the rest by the distance, speed, and clarity of their functioning, or following the sequence of their places.” First the question: where does the order eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind come from? The treatise speaks on four levels. First, the first five faculties “grasp only present objects, and so are stated first,” while the objects of the mind faculty are not fixed—“the three times and the unconditioned, of which it may grasp only one, or two, three, four”—and so it is placed last. Second, the first four faculties have “objects only derived, and so are stated first,” while the objects of the body faculty are not fixed, “grasping the great elements, or derived form, or both,” and so it is placed at the end of the five. Third, among the first four the order follows the distance, speed, and clarity of functioning: eye and ear grasp distant objects and so come first, and of the two, “the eye’s functioning is more distant, and so it is stated first, since one sees mountains and rivers from afar without hearing their sound,” and “the eye’s functioning is also swift, since one first sees from afar a man striking a bell or drum and hears the sound afterward”; nose and tongue both fall short in distance, and “the nose is stated first because of speed and clarity,” as when facing fragrant food “the nose smells the fragrance first and the tongue tastes afterward.” Fourth, or by the upper and lower places within the body: “the support of the eye is placed highest, then ear, nose, tongue; the body is for the most part lower; the mind has no location.”

The easy mistake: supposing this to be a piece of anatomy. It is not. What the treatise arranges are the limits of functioning—whether the object is only present, whether only derived, and the distance, speed, and clarity of functioning; upper and lower placement in the body is only one route offered with the word or, and the mind faculty is expressly said to have “no location.” As a matter of practice, once the sequence of the six faculties is fixed, “from this the sequence of objects and consciousnesses may be known”—the ordering of the whole table of eighteen elements follows along. One reason holds up a whole table: this is the economy of Abhidharma.

13. The Distribution of Names: The Sense Field of Form and the Sense Field of Dharmas (Principal Stanza 21)

〔Principal 21〕All ten sense fields are form; why only one is named the sense field of form. The stanza says: “for distinction and excellence, and because it includes many dharmas and the dominant dharma, one sense field is named form and one is named dharmas.” First the question: since all ten sense fields are included in the aggregate of form, why does one alone take the name form? The treatise answers along two roads. First, for the sake of distinction: “in order that the various distinctions between the nature of an object and the nature of what possesses an object be known, ten sense fields are established within the aggregate of form according to their distinguishing marks, and not taken as one”—if the other nine sense fields each have their own particular name and this one has no name of its own left, the general name is made to serve as its particular name, and the treatise says this very finely: “though it bears the general designation, it is in fact a particular name.” Second, for excellence: the sense field of form is “resistant, so that when a hand or the like touches it, it thereupon deteriorates,” and “visible, so that one can point out the distinction of its being here or there,” and moreover “in the world it is only with respect to this sense field that people commonly speak of form, not with respect to the eye and the rest.”

The name of the sense field of dharmas follows the same two roads, with two further reasons added: “moreover, because it includes many dharmas such as feeling and perception, the general name should be established,” and “moreover, because the dominant dharma, namely nirvāṇa, is included in it, it alone is named dharmas.” The treatise also records another master’s explanation: the sense field of form is “given the name form alone because within it are twenty kinds of form, the coarsest and most evident, and because it is the object of the three eyes, the fleshly, the divine, and the noble eye of discernment”; the sense field of dharmas is “given the name dharmas alone because within it are the names of all dharmas and the knowledge of dharmas.” The easy mistake: supposing naming to be mere habit, with nothing to be said for it. The treatise’s position is exactly the reverse: where a general name falls must have a statable reason. As a matter of practice, this is precisely the character of Abhidharma—it demands the warrant even for the assignment of a name, let alone for a doctrine.

14. The Eighty Thousand Dharma-Aggregates: How Much Buddha-Dharma Is There (Principal Stanzas 22 to 24)

〔Principal 22〕The eighty thousand dharma-aggregates: is their substance speech or name? The stanza says: “the dharma-aggregates spoken by the Sage number eighty thousand; their substance is speech or name, included here in the aggregates of form or formations.” First the question: among the five aggregates, to which aggregate do the eighty thousand dharma-aggregates spoken by the Buddha belong? The treatise’s answer is a pair of conditionals: “those who say the Buddha’s teaching has speech as its substance say the dharma-aggregates are all included in the aggregate of form”; “those who say the Buddha’s teaching has name as its substance say the dharma-aggregates are all included in the aggregate of formations.”

The easy mistake: supposing the treatise here to decide whether the substance of the Buddha’s teaching is speech or name. It decides nothing—what it gives is a correspondence: if one holds the substance of teaching to be speech (speech being sound, and sound belonging to the aggregate of form), then the dharma-aggregates enter the aggregate of form; if one holds it to be name (name belonging to the formations not associated with mind), then they enter the aggregate of formations. Both accounts are recorded and each is internally coherent. As a matter of practice, this stanza demonstrates the actual use of the threefold classification: any term of the Buddha-dharma that is put forward may be asked which box of aggregate, sense field, and element does it fall in, and the answer varies with one’s determination of its own nature. This two-step operation—first fix the nature, then fix the placement—is used again and again throughout the treatise.

〔Principal 23〕The number eighty thousand: three ways of counting. The stanza says: “some say the measure of the dharma-aggregates is as that treatise states; or following the wording of aggregates and the rest; speaking in accordance with reality, it is the counteracting of the modes of conduct.” First the question: how large is one dharma-aggregate? The treatise sets three accounts side by side. The first fixes the measure by the text: “the measure of each of the eighty thousand dharma-aggregates equals the Dharmaskandha, that is, each has six thousand stanzas.” The second fixes the measure by gates of teaching: “dharma-aggregates number eighty thousand according to the several distinctions of the wording of aggregates and the rest,” and the treatise lists the items—“aggregates, sense fields, elements, dependent origination, the truths, the nutriments, the meditative absorptions, the immeasurables, the formless, the liberations, the bases of mastery, the totalities, the limbs of awakening, the supernormal powers, the state of non-contention, the knowledge of aspiration, the unobstructed knowledges, and the rest, each gate of teaching being named one dharma-aggregate.” The third fixes the measure by counteraction: “the beings to be trained have eighty thousand distinct modes of conduct such as greed and hatred, and in order to counteract those eighty thousand modes of conduct the World-Honored One expounded eighty thousand dharma-aggregates.”

The easy mistake: reading eighty thousand as a measurement of documents. The third account gives a measurement in the sense of the path—the number of teachings equals the number of illnesses, and how much the Buddha taught depends on how many modes of conduct beings have. Nor are the three accounts a level list without adjudication: the third is prefixed by the four words “speaking in accordance with reality,” which is precisely the author marking it himself as the account that accords with reality; and the ancient masters have their further judgments on this, recorded in the Further Resonances. At the end the treatise brings the matter back to the point at issue: “the eighty thousand dharma-aggregates so stated are all included in two of these five aggregates”—whichever way of counting is adopted, the result of the placement does not change. As a matter of practice, the setting of three accounts side by side is itself a demonstration of the form: there may be three ways of computing a measure, while the result of placement is only one.

〔Principal 24〕The aggregates, sense fields, and elements of other sūtras, each placed. The stanza says: “thus the remaining aggregates and the rest are each, as corresponds, included in what has been stated; one should examine closely their intrinsic marks.” First the question: the sūtras speak of other sets of five aggregates and other sense fields and elements—do these constitute another system? The treatise answers, “as corresponds, they are included in what has been stated,” and demonstrates a round of placements on the spot: the five aggregates of morality, concentration, discernment, liberation, and the knowledge and vision of liberation—“among them the aggregate of morality is included in this aggregate of form, and the remaining four in this aggregate of formations”; of the ten totalities, the first eight “have non-greed as their nature and are included in this sense field of dharmas,” and “if taken with their companions they have the nature of five aggregates and are included in this mind sense field and sense field of dharmas,” while “the inclusion of the eight bases of mastery should be known to be likewise”; “the totalities of space and consciousness and the four formless spheres beginning with the infinity of space have the nature of four aggregates and are included in this mind sense field and sense field of dharmas”; “the five bases of liberation have discernment as their nature and are included in this sense field of dharmas,” and with their companions “are included in these sense fields of sound, mind, and dharmas”; the place of the heaven of non-percipient beings is “included in these ten sense fields, since there is no odor or taste there”; and the sphere of neither perception nor non-perception is “included in these sense fields of mind and dharmas, having the nature of four aggregates.”

The easy mistake: supposing that, the terms of sūtra and treatise being so many, two parallel systems must result. The treatise’s answer is that there is one: whatever term there may be, it can be examined by its own intrinsic mark and placed within the eighteen elements. And so the last line of the stanza is not a conclusion but an assignment for the reader—“one should examine closely the intrinsic mark of each.” As a matter of practice, this is precisely the treatise demonstrating its own use: not to memorize inventories, but to take the inventory and test any newly encountered term with it. Master this step and the eight remaining chapters will not drown the reader in terminology.

15. A Question at the End of the Fascicle: The Space Element and the Consciousness Element (Principal Stanza 25)

〔Principal 25〕The space element is not space, and the consciousness element is not all consciousness. The stanza says: “the space element means apertures; it is transmitted that these are brightness and darkness. The consciousness element is consciousness with outflows, the support of the arising of sentient beings.” First the question: the Sūtra of Many Elements speaks of six elements; the four of earth, water, fire, and wind have been stated—what are space and consciousness? The treatise first blocks the readiest misreading: the space element is not the space among the three unconditioned. It is “the inner and outer apertures such as doors, windows, mouth, and nose are named the space element”—the openings of doors, windows, mouth, and nose. How, then, are apertures cognized? “It is transmitted: apertures are precisely brightness and darkness; apart from brightness and darkness apertures cannot be apprehended, and so it is said that the space element has brightness and darkness as its substance,” and “it should be known that this substance is not apart from day and night.” It is also named form neighboring agha, and for this name the treatise records two accounts: one says “it is transmitted that agha means accumulated form; because it is maximally obstructive it is named agha,” and so “this form of the space element neighbors it, and is therefore named form neighboring agha”; the other says “some say agha is the form of the space element itself, here named agha because it is non-obstructive,” and so “the remaining obstructive form neighbors this agha-form, and it is therefore named form neighboring agha.” One name, two explanations pointing in opposite directions—one taking agha as obstruction, the other as non-obstruction—and the treatise records them without deciding.

The consciousness element is restricted to what has outflows: “all consciousness with outflows is named the consciousness element.” Why is consciousness without outflows not taken? The treatise answers: “because it is granted that the six elements are the support of the arising of sentient beings, and these elements constantly maintain that arising from the mind of rebirth-linking to the mind at death; dharmas without outflows are not so.” The six elements are the pillars of one lifespan, maintained from the thought that links to a new existence to the thought at death; what dharmas without outflows do is precisely to destroy the three existences, and so they are not entered in this list. At the end the six elements are placed one by one and the fascicle is closed: “the first four are included in this tangible element, the fifth in this form element, the sixth in these seven mind elements.” The easy mistake: sliding past the words it is transmitted. In this fascicle it is transmitted occurs seven times—six in the prose and one in a stanza (namely this stanza’s “it is transmitted that these are brightness and darkness”)—and two of them fall within this one passage; this is also where the ancient masters dispute most sharply, whether the space element is really or provisionally existent, four masters with four accounts, recorded in the Further Resonances. As a matter of practice, having read one fascicle through, the reader should have seen this much: from its first sentence this treatise is not only classifying, it is simultaneously judging; and where it judges, its wording always leaves room. From the next unit onward both these things accelerate at once—twenty-two gates distinguishing the eighteen elements one by one, while the words it is transmitted still surface from time to time.

Further Resonances: A Mirror of Four Commentaries

The above is the sense of this fascicle’s own text. What follows is a separate section gathering three things: the ancient masters’ judgments and the divergences among the three commentaries, Saṅghabhadra’s counter-refutations, and the differences of Paramārtha’s old translation. A mirror is not the treatise; it is only another way of reading the same passage—recorded together without adjudication, each returned to its own place.

1. Points Where the Three Commentaries Diverge

The word every in the stanza of homage. There is a transmitted saying of the masters of the West of the mother-and-child treatises that “whoever would compose a treatise places the word every at the head,” which Puguang records as reasonable; Fabao rejects it as not so, holding that “this very word every already sets the treatise apart from the outsiders”—the word has its own function of setting apart and is not a formula for composing treatises; Yuanhui does not enter the dispute and explains directly from the text of the treatise.

How darkness is assigned. Puguang preserves three explanations side by side; Fabao, in the form “someone says . . . refutation,” cites and refutes them one by one (what he cites agrees on the surface with the three that Puguang preserves; this is a mechanical observation of surface wording, with no judgment as to whom he means); Yuanhui takes the general sense in a single phrase.

The possessive analysis of the name treasury. All three judge it possessive, while Fabao separately rejects as mistaken the explanation of “someone” who takes the simile of a knife-sheath directly as a many-possessions reading, citing the Correct Principle—“treasury means what is firm and solid, like the heartwood of a tree”—to fix the two Western senses.

Whether the space element is real or provisional. Yuanhui judges outright: “according to the Sautrāntika position the space element is provisional; for the Sarvāstivāda masters the space element is real,” and therefore “the author inclines to the Sautrāntikas, and so says ‘it is transmitted.’” Puguang marks that “he does not believe the space element really exists, and therefore says ‘it is transmitted,’” while preserving a further explanation—that the claim of the space element’s real existence “is not what the author grants,” the reason being that “day and night are not real, and the space element is likewise, and so it ought not to be really existent.” Fabao likewise marks that the author does not believe in its real existence, yet cites at length the passages of the Correct Principle that establish it to the contrary. Shentai’s commentary, on the two words it is transmitted, explains that “‘thus the Vaibhāṣikas transmit’ names the one who holds the view,” and says that “the author does not believe that everything said by the Abhidharma masters wholly captures the Buddha’s intent.” Four masters, four routes, recorded together without adjudication.

The measure of a dharma-aggregate. The treatise prefixes the third account with the four words “speaking in accordance with reality,” already marking it as the account that accords with reality; Puguang judges on that basis, “the third, the correct meaning, fixes the measure by function: the removal of one defilement is named one dharma-aggregate”; Fabao cites the third explanation of the Correct Principle and records that “‘eighty thousand’ cites the round number; it is in fact eighty-four thousand dharma-aggregates.” The two masters’ judgments run in the same direction as the treatise’s own marking.

The emendation of the wording at increase by attachment. Puguang records a piece of the history of the doctrine: when the master Fasheng composed the Treatise on the Heart of Abhidharma he explained with outflows by arising; a later generation’s Dharmatrāta found the sense of arising faulty (with the truths of cessation and the path the outflows arise yet are not with outflows) and so changed it to increase by attachment, and “therefore the present author too follows that explanation.” Fabao adds a comment here: “this corrects his wording, not his meaning.” This comment is an ancient master’s judgment and therefore does not enter the main text.

What is refuted at ultimate inclusion. Puguang points out that what Principal Stanza 15 refutes is a separate school that holds another’s nature to be associated, and cites the Mahāvibhāṣā—“when the intrinsic nature of dharmas includes its own nature, it is not like taking food with the hand”—as proof. This identification of the target is supplied by Puguang; the text of the treatise itself does not mark it.

2. What Shentai’s Commentary Separately Supplies

Shentai’s commentary separately supplies three things on the corresponding passages of this fascicle: the reason for the appellation venerable (“bhadanta, which here means ‘venerable,’ is Dharmatrāta of the Sarvāstivāda school”; “the Sarvāstivādins revered the man, and therefore called him ‘venerable’”); the gloss of Udāna (“udāna here means ‘spoken without being asked’”); and it is transmitted as naming the one who holds the view. On the Udāna entry, Shentai further says, “the old rendering Youtuona Sūtra is a corruption of the sound”—and Paramārtha’s old translation does read Youtuona; what Shentai’s “old rendering” refers to is not adjudicated.

3. Saṅghabhadra’s Counter-Refutations

In the Treatise Conforming to Correct Principle Saṅghabhadra calls Vasubandhu “the Sūtra-master”; four passages bearing on the corresponding portion of this fascicle can be attested, and all are recorded below, both parties set side by side, with no judgment of who prevails.

First, whether the Abhidharma is the Buddha’s word. Saṅghabhadra attacks the word transmitted in the third prefatory stanza: “the Sūtra-master says ‘transmitted,’ and thereby shows that he does not believe the Abhidharma to be spoken by the Buddha.” His own positive claim is that “the Abhidharma is sanctioned by the Buddha and is also called the Buddha’s word,” and he sets up an objection: “if what the Buddha sanctions were not called the Buddha’s word, one would have to discard immeasurable sūtras.”

Second, that the marks of nonmanifest form are not fully stated. Saṅghabhadra writes: “I say that in this stanza the Sūtra-master cannot fully state the marks of nonmanifest form, since he calls what flows on nonmanifest.”

Third, challenging what the word and so forth includes. Saṅghabhadra writes: “the words ‘distracted mind and so forth’ already include every other minded state; what then does the second ‘and so forth’ include? The Sūtra-master should consider this.”

Fourth, the objection about the simile of shadow-on-tree and light-on-jewel. Saṅghabhadra says: “this objection does not touch the doctrine of the Vaibhāṣikas, since they grant that the dependent and what it depends on cease together.”

Where Saṅghabhadra’s counter-refutations are dense is not in this fascicle (this fascicle consists largely of passages of establishment); they will be recorded separately when the later chapters come.

4. Differences in Paramārtha’s Old Translation

In the stanza of homage Paramārtha has “by knowledge of every kind he extinguishes all darkness and draws living beings out of the mire of birth and death” and “I bow at the feet of the great teacher whose teaching accords with reality; I shall expound the Treasury of Abhidharma”—the first line speaking in the one case from the side of what is abandoned and in the other from the side of the knowledge that abandons, so that the construction differs; and the last line reads Abhidharma-kośa with kośa transcribed, not Treasury of Abhidharma with it translated. In explaining the name Abhidharma, Paramārtha’s text has “pure knowledge together with its assisting companions is called Abhidharma” (discernment against knowledge, accompaniments against assisting companions); in explaining the name dharma he has “because it can maintain the mark of its own entity, it is called dharma,” using the transcription outright in explaining the name. The stanza on the aggregate of form reads “the skandha of form is the five faculties, the five dusts, and the uninstructive.” At the end of the fascicle the space element is “apertures are named the space element,” and where Xuanzang has form neighboring agha Paramārtha has form neighboring obstruction (transcription against meaning-translation); and where Xuanzang has it is transmitted Paramārtha has they say and they hold.

Of the correspondences of translated terms, the commonest may be cited: aggregate and skandha, sense field and entrance, with outflows and with currents, nonmanifest and uninstructive, five objects and five dusts, aggregate of appropriation and appropriation-skandha, Chapter on the Latent Tendencies and Chapter on the Defilements, Udāna and Youtuona. The two versions also differ in expansion and compression: Xuanzang gives the complete stanza first and comments afterward, while Paramārtha embeds his explanation line by line, so that a single stanza is often broken up and cited in several places. The adoption or rejection of a variant belongs to the translator, and this section only records without adjudicating.

5. Coordinates Available for Cross-Reading

What this fascicle establishes is the first half of the underlying map of the seventy-five dharma learning. The three unconditioned (space, cessation through discernment, cessation independent of discernment) and the six unconditioned into which the later dharma-characteristics learning opens them may be read against each other in their expansion and compression; the eleven kinds of form (five faculties, five objects, nonmanifest form) and the eleven forms of the hundred dharmas share the same number while differing in how they are opened out; the arrangement of mind and consciousness as six consciousnesses plus the mind that has ceased without interval, and the arrangement of eight consciousnesses in which Yogācāra posits manas and the ālaya, are two generations of answers to one question; and the doctrine of dharma in the sentence “because it can maintain its intrinsic mark it is called a dharma” was carried on by the later dharma-characteristics learning. This section only lists the coordinates available for cross-reading; the characterization of the relations is not its business.

This Fascicle Does One Thing Only

The first half of the Chapter on the Elements set up the eighteen elements—eighteen names, eighteen places. The whole of the second half does one thing only: it takes one question after another and puts them to those eighteen elements from beginning to end. How many are visible, how many invisible? How many resistant, how many nonresistant? How many wholesome, how many unwholesome, how many indeterminate? And so on to the end of the chapter. Puguang marks here that “from here begins the third major division, distinction through the several gates: there are in all twenty-two gates distinguishing the eighteen elements,” and Yuanhui likewise writes, “from here comes the third division, distinction through the several gates: in all twenty-two gates distinguishing the eighteen elements”—the name later readers habitually use, the twenty-two gates, comes from these.

The text leaves its own markers. Whenever a gate has been asked through, it sets down a sentence, “such and such has now been stated,” and then raises the next question: “visible and invisible have now been stated,” “wholesome and the rest have now been stated,” “realm affiliation has now been stated,” “applied and sustained thought and the rest have now been stated,” “accumulable and the rest have now been stated,” “acquisition and possession and the rest have now been stated” . . . These short sentences are not ornament; they are the nails of the outline. A reader who simply follows the nails will find the skeleton of the fascicle plain.

Why are the questions put to the elements and not to the aggregates or sense fields? Puguang answers by citing the Correct Principle: “because the elements display faculty, object, and consciousness together, the classes of meaning under the several gates are easily understood, and so for now the distinctions are made with respect to the eighteen elements; and by this the classes of meaning of aggregate and sense field are already accomplished.” The eighteen elements are a coordinate system in which faculty, object, and consciousness are all three present; once matters are made clear within that system, the classes of meaning of aggregate and sense field follow along.

The gates asked, in the order of the text, are: visible and invisible; resistant and nonresistant; wholesome, unwholesome, and indeterminate; affiliation with the three realms; with and without outflows; applied and sustained thought; having and lacking discrimination; having and lacking an object of consciousness; appropriated and unappropriated; the great elements and derived form; accumulable and not accumulable; what cuts and what is cut, what burns and what is burned, what weighs and what is weighed; the five classes; acquisition and possession; inner and outer; participating and corresponding nonparticipant; abandoned through seeing, through cultivation, and not subject to abandonment; and what is seeing and what is not. From there the text turns to the incidental discussions—two eyes seeing together; objects reached and not reached, and whether ultimate atoms touch; objects of equal measure and the arrangement of the faculties’ ultimate atoms; the time of consciousness’s support; the name support falling on the faculty; consciousness named after the faculty; the levels of the four things. The incidental discussions complete, the fascicle closes with the three gates of what is cognized, permanent and impermanent, and faculty and non-faculty.

What follows takes the gates one at a time. The power of Abhidharma lies not in any one gate being especially brilliant, but in the same set of dharmas being placed on every dimension without vagueness—so one must read gate by gate to see this treatise’s constitution.

Visible and Invisible: Only One Element Can Be Pointed Out as Here

Ask first: among the eighteen elements, which is called visible? There is only one—the form element, that is, the object of form facing the eye. The treatise gives one sentence of reason only: “among the eighteen elements the form element is visible, since the distinction of being here or there can be pointed out in it.” What can be pointed at and said to be here or there, whose difference of place can be marked out, is color and shape alone. For the other seventeen elements no account need be given one by one; the treatise says, “extending the principle from this, the rest are invisible”—extend this one rule and it is done.

What is most easily misunderstood here is reading visible as able to be seen. If it meant that, sound can be heard by the ear and odor and taste by nose and tongue, so would they not all become visible? More awkward still is the eye faculty: the eye is what sees, and yet it is judged invisible—is that not upside down? The point is that seeing here is not taken as able to see but as able to be pointed out—what can be pointed out in its difference of place is what is called visible. The eye faculty cannot itself be pointed out as here or there, and so is invisible; so too sound, odor, taste, and the tangible.

As a matter of reading: this is the first lesson of the fascicle and the most important—a word’s definition here is to be taken from the gloss the treatise itself gives, not from ordinary usage. So it is with each of the remaining twenty-one gates.

Resistant and Nonresistant: Three Kinds of Obstruction, and a Table of Four Cases

The second question: how many are resistant? The treatise answers, “only the ten elements included in the aggregate of form are resistant”—five faculties and five objects, ten elements. What is resistant? “Resistance has the sense of obstruction.” But obstruction is of three kinds, and the treatise at once separates them: “and it is further of three kinds, since obstruction, object field, and object of consciousness differ.”

Resistance as obstruction is the plainest kind: “being obstructed where another thing occupies a place, so that it cannot arise there, as hand obstructs hand, or stone obstructs stone, or hand and stone obstruct one another.” Two things possessing resistance cannot occupy one place. Resistance of the object field refers to dharmas possessing an object field being bounded by their own object field—and here the treatise cites the Treatise of Designations with a whole string of examples about eyes: the eyes of fish are obstructed in water and not on land, the eyes of humans on land and not in water; the eyes of piśācas, of crocodiles, of fishermen and frogs are obstructed both in water and on land, and some are neither; and again some are obstructed at night and not by day, such as the eyes of bats and horned owls, some by day and not at night, such as the eyes of humans, and some both by day and at night, such as the eyes of dogs, jackals, horses, leopards, dholes, wolves, cats, and wildcats. Resistance of the object of consciousness refers to mind and mental factors being bounded by their own object of consciousness.

What is the difference between object field and object of consciousness? The treatise lays down two extremely clear definitions: “if this dharma has a capacity with respect to that dharma, that is said to be this dharma’s object field,” and “if mind and mental factors arise grasping that, then that, with respect to mind and the rest, is named their object of consciousness.” Object field is stated in terms of the range of capacity; object of consciousness in terms of what is grasped in arising—so the five faculties have an object field but no object of consciousness, while mind and mental factors have both.

Then why is proceeding upon one’s own object field on the contrary called being obstructed? The treatise answers: “because, once past that field, it cannot proceed anywhere else”—step outside that range and it cannot move, which is precisely a limitation. The treatise then gives a second reading: “or else obstruction has the sense of meeting and joining,” obstruction being coming together, the eye and the rest proceeding by meeting and joining with their own object field and object of consciousness. One word, two glosses, and the treatise chooses neither but preserves both.

The three kinds of resistance being set up, which does the stanza speak of? The treatise closes the matter itself: “it should be known that here the statement is made solely with respect to resistance as obstruction,” and so the stanza says only that the ten possessing form are resistant. This sentence is the pivot of the whole gate—without it the reader would inevitably suppose that twelve of the eighteen elements are resistant (the number for resistance of the object field), which contradicts the stanza.

At the end the treatise also sets out two tables: resistance of the object field and resistance as obstruction are worked into a fourfold distinction—the seven mind elements and the associated dharmas of one portion of the element of dharmas are the first case, the five objects beginning with form the second, the five faculties beginning with the eye the third, the non-associated dharmas of one portion of the element of dharmas the fourth; while resistance of the object field and resistance of the object of consciousness are given a following-consequent answer: whatever has resistance of the object of consciousness certainly has resistance of the object field, while the five faculties have resistance of the object field and not of the object of consciousness.

At the close of the gate, the treatise cites a stanza of the venerable Kumāralāta by way of conclusion:

Where mind would arise, but another thing obstructs it so that it cannot arise— 　know that this is what is resistant; the nonresistant is the contrary of this.

Mind was about to arise here and is blocked by another thing so that it cannot arise—this is the resistant. On this stanza the treatise sets down four characters only: “this is accepted.” This is the first appearance in the fascicle of another’s words that the author accepts as his own, and from here on the author’s posture of choosing and rejecting is already visible in outline.

Wholesome, Unwholesome, Indeterminate: Eight Elements Cannot Be Determined, Ten Extend to All Three

The third question: how many are wholesome, how many unwholesome, how many indeterminate? The treatise answers in two parts. Of the ten resistant, apart from form and sound the remaining eight elements are only indeterminate—“the five faculties of form and the objects of odor, taste, and the tangible cannot be determined as wholesome or unwholesome in nature, and so they are named indeterminate.” The remaining ten elements extend to all three, wholesome and the rest: the seven mind elements are named wholesome when associated with non-greed and the rest, unwholesome when associated with greed and the rest, and the remainder indeterminate; the element of dharmas is judged according to its association and co-origination; and “the form element and the sound element, when they are co-originated by the force of a wholesome or unwholesome mind and are included in bodily or vocal manifest action, are wholesome or unwholesome, and the remainder is indeterminate.”

Hidden here is one aside that is often read past. Someone offers another explanation: “some say: because they cannot determine a result of maturation, they are named indeterminate.” The treatise answers him at once: “if that were so, dharmas without outflows would all have to be indeterminate”—dharmas without outflows also bring on no maturation; are they then to become indeterminate too? One sentence exposes the definition as too wide. The strictness of its glossing may be seen here.

The ancient masters open out wholesome and unwholesome more finely at this point. Puguang opens wholesome into seven—innate, from hearing, from reflection, from cultivation, of one in training, of one beyond training, and ultimate; unwholesome is one alone; indeterminate opens into seven—one obscured and six unobscured (maturation, deportment, craft, supernormal result, intrinsic nature, ultimate); while the element of dharmas has four wholesome (intrinsic nature, association, co-origination, ultimate) and three unwholesome. Puguang also resolves a doubt for the reader: why is the ultimately unwholesome not spoken of here? His answer is that “the ultimately unwholesome extends in substance to all three ethical qualities. . . . If the ultimate is spoken of, there is then no distinction.” Fabao divides the passage the same way with fuller subdivision.

How form and sound can extend to good and bad is the most practical point of this gate. Yuanhui states it most bluntly: “because form and sound are not wholesome or unwholesome by their own nature, they are judged wholesome or unwholesome with reference to the mind that sets them in motion.” Color and sound have of themselves no good or bad; the good or bad is in the mind that sets them going—the same sentence, the same gesture, is wholesome when a wholesome mind issues it and unwholesome when an unwholesome mind does. This is the starting point for everything later said about bodily and vocal action.

Affiliation with the Three Realms: Why the Realm of Form Lacks Four Elements—A Long Debate about Nose and Tongue

The fourth question turns to the three realms. The stanza answers briskly: the realm of desire has all eighteen, the realm of form only fourteen, the formless realm only the last three. The treatise first glosses the name of the gate: “affiliation means belonging, that is, the sense of being bound”—affiliation is not a label of classification, it is being bound.

Which four elements does the realm of form lack? The two objects of odor and taste and the two consciousnesses of nose and tongue. The reason has two layers: “odor and taste are excluded because they have the nature of morsel food, and one must be free of the desire for morsel food to be born there”—odor and taste are of the substance of morsel food, and only one free of the desire for morsel food is born upward; “the nose and tongue consciousnesses are excluded because they have no object”—the object being absent, the consciousness does not arise.

From here the question rolls on. If odor and taste are excluded because they are of the nature of morsel food, the tangible is of that nature too—should it not also be excluded? The treatise answers: the tangibles that exist in that realm are not of the nature of morsel food. Then may not the non-morsel-food portion of odor and taste be left behind as well? The treatise answers: “odor and taste have no other use apart from eating,” whereas “the tangible has other uses, maintaining the faculties, serving as clothing, and the like”—the tangible must still maintain the faculties and carry clothing, and its use is not lost when eating is left behind. And some other masters offer a further explanation: when one dwells here and, in dependence on that realm’s meditative absorption and attainment, sees form and hears sound, “the excellent tangible that arises together with pliancy benefits the body,” and so form, sound, and the tangible follow along when one is born there, while odor and taste do not.

The real difficulty comes next: odor and taste being absent, why do the two faculties of nose and tongue remain? In the dozen or more rounds that follow, Puguang marks with great clarity who asks and who answers at every turn—the one raising the objections is the author, and the one defending the faculties is an earlier master of the Sarvāstivādins (Puguang: “the author objects to the earlier master,” “the earlier master explains,” “the author objects again,” “the earlier master defends again”). The author objects first: nose and tongue have no use there and should be excluded along with odor and taste. The earlier master explains: “the two faculties do have a use there, namely giving rise to speech and adorning the bodily form.” The author objects again: “if it is for adorning the body and giving rise to speech, the bases alone suffice; what need is there for the faculties?”—to look well and to speak, the shapes of nose and tongue (the bases) are enough; why the faculties? The earlier master defends again: that realm having no male faculty, the base of the male faculty is absent along with it; the bases remaining is precisely what shows the faculties have their use. The author objects once more: the base of the male faculty may be absent there because it is useless, but the bases of nose and tongue are useful there and should exist apart from the faculties—so the faculties are still not needed. The earlier master explains again, producing an instance: “there are also cases where the faculty arises although it has no use, as with one who is destined to die while in the womb”—one fated to die in the womb still has his faculties arise, which shows that having a faculty does not wait upon having a use; and moreover “arising without use is still not arising without a cause.” The author challenges further: granted it arises without use, there must still be a cause. The earlier master answers that the cause is craving: “from craving for the faculties, which sets an excellent action in motion.” The author objects again on principle: craving for the objects having been left behind, craving for the faculties should be left behind with it, and then that realm should have no nose or tongue at all; otherwise the male faculty too should arise. And if it be said that the male faculty does not arise because it is unseemly—the author retorts, “the private organ is concealed; where is the unseemliness?”—and further, “the arising of the faculties is not on account of their being useful: if the force of a cause is present, they arise even without use.” At last the earlier master brings out a sūtra (Puguang marks it, “the earlier master produces a contradiction with scripture”): the beings of that realm are “without deficiency of limb, with no diminution of the faculties”—does your denial of nose and tongue not contradict the sūtra? The author resolves it: the sūtra’s intent is that whatever faculties may properly be had at that level are said to be undiminished.

After a dozen rounds the author himself brings down the hammer, and the criterion is a single sentence: “because craving for the six faculties arises in dependence on the inner body and does not appear in dependence on objects”—craving for the six faculties arises in dependence on the inner body and not on objects; while craving for the male faculty arises in dependence on sexual touch, and sexual touch being absent there, the male faculty is not present. Whether a faculty is there is decided not by whether it has a use but by where the craving arises from.

The formless realm is simple: “one must be free of desire for form to be born there, and so in the formless realm the ten elements of form are absent”; and the ten elements of form being absent, “the supports and objects being absent, the five consciousnesses are absent too”—support and object both lacking, the five consciousnesses do not arise, and only the three elements of mind, dharmas, and mind consciousness remain.

The ancient masters supply two things here. Puguang cites the Miscellaneous Heart Treatise for the reason there is no morsel food in the realm of form, “there is no nature of morsel food there, because the body is subtle,” and records a divergent school’s account: “according to the Treatise on the Wheel of Tenets, for the Mahāsāṃghikas and others the realms of form and formlessness possess all six bodies of consciousness”—one meaning and two schools, recorded together without adjudication. Fabao glosses the name of the gate once more: “dharmas affiliated with the realm of desire are bound by the greed and the rest of the realm of desire, and so are named affiliated with the realm of desire.”

This gate is the best introduction to the Kośa’s style of objection and answer: a question and an answer are not for liveliness but to press a criterion to its limit. A reader who remembers only the conclusion, the realm of form has fourteen, has let the best thing in the fascicle slip away.

With and Without Outflows: Three Elements Extend to Both, Fifteen Are Only with Outflows

The fifth question is very short and yet not to be skipped. The stanza answers: “the three elements of mind, dharmas, and mind consciousness extend to both; the rest are only with outflows.” The treatise glosses: “of mind and mind consciousness, what is included in the truth of the path is named without outflows, and the rest with outflows”; within the element of dharmas, “what is the truth of the path and what is unconditioned is named without outflows, and the rest with outflows”; “the remaining fifteen elements are named only with outflows.”

First clear away one misunderstanding: without outflows is not a separate batch of dharmas, but that portion of the same dharmas which is included in the truth of the path and the unconditioned. The mind element and the mind consciousness element are not split into two mind elements; it is one and the same mind element extending to both, according to what includes it. The element of dharmas is plainer still—one portion of the element of dharmas is the unconditioned, which is not included in the truth of the path and yet is without outflows, so that the element of dharmas has two routes to being without outflows: the truth of the path and the unconditioned.

Then clear away a second misunderstanding: that the fifteen elements of five faculties, five objects, and five consciousnesses are only with outflows does not mean the eyes are of no further use in practice. What is said is that in the very nature of those fifteen elements there is no portion belonging to the truth of the path or to the unconditioned. A noble one still sees form with fleshly eyes, and that seeing is still with outflows; what makes him noble is the discernment without outflows associated with his mind consciousness.

One sentence for practice: among the eighteen elements, only three are gates that can carry emergence. Short as it is, this gate sets the register for the whole treatise’s account of practice and realization—practice is not exchanging one set of senses for another, but exchanging one kind of association along the single route of mind consciousness.

Applied and Sustained Thought: Why a Fourth Class Is Forced Out beyond the Three

The sixth question: how many have applied and sustained thought, how many have sustained thought only without applied thought, how many have neither? The stanza answers, “the five consciousnesses have only applied and sustained thought; the last three extend to the three; the rest have neither.” The treatise glosses: “the five consciousnesses beginning with the eye have applied and sustained thought, because they are always associated with applied and sustained thought,” the reason being “their mode is coarse and turns toward the outer gate, and this sense being fixed, the word only is said.” The last three elements (mind, dharmas, mind consciousness) all extend to the three classes; the remaining ten elements of form “have neither applied nor sustained thought, because they are never associated with applied and sustained thought.”

The three classes are divided by level: the realm of desire and the first meditative absorption have applied and sustained thought; the intermediate meditative absorption has sustained thought only without applied thought; from the second absorption upward to the summit of existence there is neither. Applied thought is coarse and sustained thought subtle, and the coarse falls away first while the subtle falls away later; this is the order of depth among the levels of absorption.

The finest stroke of this gate is how applied and sustained thought are themselves classified. Applied thought is not associated with a second applied thought—“because there is no second applied thought, and because it is associated only with sustained thought”—and so applied thought as a dharma is itself without applied thought and with sustained thought only. And sustained thought? Sustained thought must be considered by level. The sustained thought of the intermediate meditative absorption the treatise has already judged along with the non-associated dharmas—“the non-associated dharmas included in the element of dharmas, and the sustained thought of the intermediate meditative absorption, are likewise”; that level has no applied thought at all, and sustained thought is not associated with a second sustained thought, so it is without applied and without sustained thought. Fabao marks this most plainly, saying that the non-associated dharmas “and the sustained thought of the intermediate meditative absorption are both without applied and without sustained thought,” and giving the reason: “because the intermediate sustained thought has no second sustained thought, and because the dharmas of that stage have no applied thought.” The sustained thought of the realm of desire and the first meditative absorption alone is received by none of the three classes—“what should the sustained thought of the realm of desire and the first absorption be called, since the three classes do not receive it?”—and by the same line of reasoning, being unassociated with a second sustained thought and associated only with applied thought, it forces out a fourth class beyond the three: “this should be named without sustained thought and with applied thought only, since there is no second sustained thought and it is associated only with applied thought.” The treatise thereupon sets up “four classes of dharma in the stage that has applied and sustained thought”: first, with applied and sustained thought (the associated dharmas other than applied and sustained thought); second, without applied thought and with sustained thought only (applied thought itself); third, without applied and without sustained thought (all non-associated dharmas); fourth, without sustained thought and with applied thought only (sustained thought itself).

A taxonomy grants itself no discount either—this is the most admirable thing in Abhidharma. Most people would set up three classes and stop, since a fourth class is doctrinally unnecessary; the treatise would rather open one class more than let its own rule make an exception of itself. Reaching this point, the reader may turn back and inspect any classification of his own: can it accommodate itself?

The Three Kinds of Discrimination: Why the Five Consciousnesses Are Called Without Discrimination

The seventh question is asked on the reader’s behalf, and asked fiercely: if the five consciousnesses “have applied and sustained thought,” and applied and sustained thought are discrimination, how can the five consciousnesses still be said to be without discrimination?

Before answering, the treatise opens out the terms, and it opens them with a mark of reported doubt at the very start: “it is transmitted: discrimination is briefly of three kinds—first intrinsic discrimination, second conceptual discrimination, third recollective discrimination.” Intrinsic discrimination has applied thought as its very substance, the mind’s immediate taking hold of its object; conceptual discrimination is “the diffuse discernment associated with mind consciousness”; recollective discrimination is “the forms of mindfulness associated with mind consciousness, whether in absorption or diffuse”—the one is inferring and judging, the other is recalling, and both belong only to mind consciousness.

So the answer emerges: the five consciousnesses have intrinsic discrimination and lack the other two, and are therefore said to be without discrimination. The treatise gives an excellent simile: “the five bodies of consciousness, though they have the intrinsic kind and lack the other two, are said to be without discrimination, as a horse with one leg is named legless.” A one-legged horse is still called legless—not that it has no legs at all, but that what it has does not amount to having legs.

A large misunderstanding must be cleared away here: to say the five consciousnesses are without discrimination is not to say they are a blur. Eye consciousness takes hold of blue and yellow perfectly plainly, and that taking hold is intrinsic discrimination. What it lacks is turning back to infer and judge and recalling what went before. You see a patch of color: that is the five consciousnesses. To recognize this is the cup I bought yesterday is already the recollective and conceptual discrimination of mind consciousness.

For practice: the everyday remark I saw at a glance that he meant no good is, on this treatise’s register, at least three layers folded together—the five consciousnesses take the color, mind consciousness infers and judges, and recollection matches it against what has gone before. Taking these three layers apart is the basic skill for all later contemplative practice.

Having and Lacking an Object of Consciousness: Only What Can Grasp an Object Has One

The eighth question: how many have an object of consciousness and how many have none? The treatise answers: “the six consciousnesses, the mind element, and the mental factors included in the element of dharmas are named having an object of consciousness, because they can grasp an object”; “the remaining ten elements of form and the non-associated dharmas included in the element of dharmas are named having no object of consciousness, which is established by extending the principle.” The seven mind elements plus one portion of the element of dharmas (the mental factors) have an object of consciousness; the ten elements of form plus the other portion of the element of dharmas (the unassociated formations and the rest) have none.

There is one criterion only: whether it can grasp an object. What can grasp has an object of consciousness; what cannot, has none. Form grasps nothing at all, form is only grasped, and so form has no object of consciousness; the eye faculty has an object field (a range within which its capacity reaches), yet it does not grasp, and so the eye faculty has no object of consciousness either—a point already established under the gate of the resistant, of which this is the positive application.

The misunderstanding to be cleared away: having no object of consciousness is not the same as not being taken as an object. Form is the object of eye consciousness, yet it itself takes nothing as object; being taken as object and being able to take as object are two different things. Here the treatise passes over the matter with the four words “established by extending the principle,” precisely because the table of four cases in the previous gate has already drawn the boundary.

For practice: read this gate together with the last and one obtains a rule for reading the mind—whenever mind is discussed, first ask what it grasps; whenever form is discussed, first ask by what it is grasped. Ask in the wrong direction and the whole passage goes astray.

Appropriated and Unappropriated: What Feeling Pain Means

The ninth question is the second half of the same stanza: how many are appropriated and how many unappropriated? The treatise answers: the seven mind elements and the whole element of dharmas, together with the sound element—nine elements in all—are unappropriated; the remaining nine elements (the five faculties and form, odor, taste, the tangible) “each extend to both gates.”

The key to the division is time and position. “The five faculties beginning with the eye are named appropriated when they abide in the present, and unappropriated when past or future”; form, odor, taste, and the tangible must both abide in the present and be inseparable from the five faculties to be appropriated. The treatise gives a string of thoroughly everyday examples: within the body, “apart from what is joined to the faculties, the hair, body-hair, nails, teeth, excrement and urine, mucus, saliva, blood and the rest,” and the form, odor, taste, and tangible in the earth and water outside the body, “though present, are unappropriated”—hair and nails grow on the body, and yet feel neither pain nor itch.

Then what is appropriation? The treatise’s definition stands here: “what mind and mental factors together hold and take as their base is named appropriated, because benefit and injury are passed back and forth between them”—only what is held by mind and mental factors and made their base, and what benefits and injures mind reciprocally, is appropriated. The treatise at once confirms this with ordinary language: “this is also what the world calls having felt contact, since when touched by an assemblage of conditions there is a feeling of pleasure and the rest.” To be able to feel pleasure and pain is the practical test of the appropriated.

The ancient masters resolve one important difficulty here. If the five faculties must be joined with consciousness to be called appropriated, what of the times when consciousness does not depend on them? Puguang answers: “the five faculties in the present, even when consciousness does not depend on them, are still named appropriated, since they are of the class of the appropriated. . . . Past and future five faculties have no capacity to generate consciousness, and are named unappropriated”—present faculties, even with no consciousness depending on them at this instant, still belong to the class of the appropriated; past and future faculties, which cannot generate consciousness at all, are the truly unappropriated. Fabao cites the Correct Principle to open appropriation into two senses: first, being grasped as one’s own by craving and the view of self; second, being a cause able to produce pleasure and pain.

For practice: this gate states the matter of my body with great precision—what makes the body mine is not that it grows on me, but that it and mind benefit and injure one another. A clipped nail, once off the body, is unappropriated: a thing anyone can verify.

The Great Elements and Derived Form: Why Juetian’s Doctrine Does Not Stand

The tenth question: how many have the nature of great elements and how many the nature of derived form? The stanza answers, “within the tangible element there are two; the remaining nine of form are derived.” The treatise glosses: “the tangible element extends to both, namely the great elements and the derived”—“there are four great elements, namely hardness and the rest; there are seven derived, namely smoothness and the rest, named derived because they arise in dependence on the great elements”; the remaining nine elements of form (the five faculties and the four objects of form, sound, odor, taste) are only derived; and the nonmanifest form of one portion of the element of dharmas is likewise only derived.

The weight of this gate falls on a refutation. The venerable Juetian sets up another position: “all ten sense fields of form have only the nature of great elements”—the five faculties and five objects are all great elements. The treatise’s refutation has four layers. First, “because the sūtras say only that the four marks of hardness and the rest are the great elements.” Second, the four great elements are included only in the tangible, “hardness, moisture and the rest are not what the eye and the rest can grasp, and form, sound and the rest are not what the body faculty can feel”—the eye cannot see hardness, moisture, warmth, and motion, and the body faculty cannot feel form and sound; neither road is passable. Third, the sūtra is cited positively: the sūtra says of each place that “the eye is an inner sense field, subtle form derived from the four great elements,” and so on to the two sense fields of odor and taste; and only of the tangible does it say, “the tangible is an outer sense field, being the four great elements and what is derived from the four great elements”—the sūtra itself separates the tangible from the remaining sense fields of form. Fourth, a difficulty is resolved: the sūtra also says that within the fleshy lump of the eye there is hardness and a class of hardness—is the eye then a great element? The treatise answers, “that sūtra says that hardness and the rest are within the fleshy lump not separate from the eye faculty, and there is no fault of contradiction”—the hardness in the fleshy lump is the tangible present together with the eye faculty, and is not the eye faculty itself.

The treatise also disposes in passing of the objection from the Sūtra on Entry into the Womb speaking only of six elements as constituting a person: that is “in order to display the root items that can constitute a person,” and not a claim that a person consists of these six alone—the same sūtra goes on to speak of the six sense fields of contact.

Clearing away a misunderstanding: the derived in derived form does not mean manufactured, but existing in dependence on the great elements. The seven derived tangibles—their names already listed in the first half of this chapter, “smoothness, roughness, heaviness, lightness, and cold, hunger, thirst”—are established in dependence on the four great elements; and the subtle form of eye, ear, nose, tongue, and body is likewise established in dependence on them. The four great elements are what is depended upon, not craftsmen.

For practice: this gate demonstrates how the author refutes a position—not from a preference in doctrine but from the distribution of the scriptural text. Where a sūtra says a thing and where it pointedly does not say it is itself evidence.

Accumulable and Not Accumulable: Ten Are Aggregated of Ultimate Atoms

The eleventh question is extremely brief, and yet it is the seed of the passage on ultimate atoms below. The treatise answers: “the ten elements possessing form, the five faculties and five objects, are accumulable, because they are aggregations of ultimate atoms”; “extending the principle, the remaining eight are not accumulable, because they are not ultimate atoms.”

There is one criterion only: whether it is aggregated of ultimate atoms. The ten elements of form are aggregated of ultimate atoms and so are accumulable; the seven mind elements and the element of dharmas (nonmanifest form aside) are not constituted of ultimate atoms and so are not accumulable. Mind is not stacked up grain by grain.

The misunderstanding to be cleared away is reading accumulable as many. Mental factors too may be many, but many is not accumulation—accumulation specifically means an aggregation of ultimate atoms, and it is a criterion about bulk and substance, not about number.

For practice: once this rule is set, the two later debates—do ultimate atoms touch and can a single ultimate atom generate consciousness—have ground to stand on; and at the same time one road is closed in advance—for whatever is not accumulable, questions of its touching and of its spatial parts do not arise at all.

Cutting and Being Cut, What Burns and What Is Weighed: A Limit Discovered by an Axe

The twelfth question suddenly becomes very concrete: among the eighteen elements, how many can cut and how many are cut? How many can burn and how many are burned? How many can weigh and how many are weighed?

The treatise answers that it lies only in the four outer elements (form, odor, taste, the tangible): “form, odor, taste, and the tangible constitute the axe, the firewood, and the like, and this is named what cuts and what is cut.” What is cutting? The treatise gives an extremely precise definition: “an aggregation of form such as firewood arises in unbroken continuity, and the axe and the like separate it so that each arises in its own continuity—this dharma is named cutting”—cutting is not breaking a thing in two, it is making an aggregation of form that had been arising in unbroken continuity separate and each continue on its own.

Why do the faculties of form such as the body not count as what is cut? Two reasons: “it is impossible to sever one entirely into two”—a faculty cannot be cut in two, and “once a limb is separated from the body the faculty is no longer within it”; and further, the faculty is “pure and refined, like the light of a jewel,” and an axe-blade cannot cut light. By the same reasoning the faculty is not what cuts either. The sound element is “entirely none of them, because it is not continuous”—sound is not continuous, and so neither cuts nor is cut.

What is burned and what does the weighing are the same—also only the four outer elements. But at the end the treatise honestly leaves a matter undecided: “as for what can burn and what is weighed, there are differing disputes.” One account says that what can burn and what is weighed are also, as before, only the four outer elements; another says that “only the fire element may be named what can burn, and what is weighed is only heaviness”—only the fire element burns, and only the heavy tangible is weighed. The treatise does not adjudicate, and both accounts are recorded.

Clearing away a misunderstanding: this gate seems to speak of physics, but in fact it speaks of limits. What it asks is: when the everyday transitive verbs—cut, burn, weigh—are brought down onto the eighteen elements, who is the subject and who the object? The answer is: they fall only on the four outer elements, never on a faculty and never on mind.

For practice: hereafter, whenever the question who is doing this arises, this gate has already given the pattern—first ask on which elements the action can fall. This is the very measure used in the great dispute below over whether the eye sees or consciousness sees.

The Five Classes: Maturation-Born · Nourished · Homogeneous · Possessed of a Real Entity · Momentary

The thirteenth question asks five classes at one breath: how many are maturation-born, how many nourished, how many of homogeneous nature, how many possessed of a real entity, how many momentary?

Maturation-born—the treatise gives four glosses, each deeper than the last. First: “what is produced by a maturation cause is named maturation-born, as a cart drawn by an ox is named an ox-cart, the middle word being dropped in speaking this way”—an ox-cart is not a cart made of ox but a cart drawn by an ox, with a word left out in the middle. Second: “or the action performed, on reaching the time of yielding its result, alters and is able to ripen, and so is named maturation.” Third: the result is of a different class from its cause and is what is ripened. Fourth: the name of the result is provisionally established upon the cause, as a sūtra says that the six sense fields of contact now present are the actions performed of old. Four glosses stand together, and the treatise chooses none.

Nourished—“what is augmented by excellent conditions such as food and drink, assistance, sleep, and concentration is named nourished.” Some hold that celibate conduct can also nourish, and the treatise gives an extremely economical comment: “some say celibate conduct can also nourish; this is merely non-injury, and is not a separate augmenting.” There follows the most moving simile of the gate: “the continuum of what is nourished constantly protects the continuum of maturation, as an outer wall guards an inner city”—maturation is the inner city and nourishing the outer wall; food, sleep, and absorption do not produce a new body of retribution, they only hold the wall for it.

Sound is the finest case in this gate. The treatise judges that “sound is of homogeneous nature and nourished, and is not maturation-born,” because it “proceeds according to wish”—one makes a sound when one wishes to, and a maturation does not follow a present wish. The objector at once cites the Treatise of Designations: through well cultivating the avoidance of harsh speech one “obtains the mark of the great man’s voice of Brahmā”—is the voice of Brahmā then not a result brought on by action? The masters explain it as best they may: some say sound belongs to a third remove (action produces great elements, and the great elements, being struck, produce sound); some say a fifth remove (action produces maturation-born great elements, these produce nourished great elements, these produce homogeneous great elements, and these then produce sound). The treatise exposes the poverty of this with a single counter-instance: “if so, bodily feeling also arises from great elements produced by action, and would also have to be no maturation; and if feeling were treated like sound, correct principle would be contradicted.”—by your reckoning, bodily feeling too would have to be no maturation.

The eight nonresistant (the seven mind elements and the element of dharmas) extend to homogeneity and to maturation-born: “what is produced by the homogeneous cause and the all-pervading cause is of homogeneous nature,” and what is drawn forth by the maturation cause is named maturation-born; “the nonresistant dharmas, having no accumulation, are not nourished”—not being aggregations of ultimate atoms, there can be no question of nourishing. The remaining four elements of form, odor, taste, and the tangible extend to all three classes. Possessed of a real entity is only the element of dharmas: “real means the unconditioned, on account of its firmness and solidity.” Momentary is only the last three: “namely the class of the first receptivity to the cognition of dharma concerning suffering, which is without outflows; because it is not of homogeneous nature it is named momentary”—the first thought of the path of seeing has nothing homogeneous before it, and arises alone for a single moment.

The ancient masters here bring out the mutual exclusiveness of the five classes. Yuanhui says: “the five classes make their sense plain, their substances each differing, and they do not include one another,” and opens four kinds of nourishing (food and drink, assistance, sleep, concentration), and brings out one important distinction—“what nourishes extends to all three ethical qualities, while what is nourished is only indeterminate.” Puguang, under each class, draws the distinction of in general there are two (nourishing has two, by increase of substance and by superiority of function; homogeneity has two; momentariness has two; the real has two), cutting each term once more. Fabao cites the Correct Principle to answer for the sound element: “on what ground is the sound element not maturation-born? Because it is repeatedly interrupted and then arises again”—what breaks off and resumes is not the mark of a maturation.

For practice: the five classes are not five labels to be stuck on at will but a lineage of classes that do not include one another. The five faculties beginning with the eye are exhausted by the two classes of maturation and nourishing, and no homogeneity is set up for them; sound is only homogeneous and nourished, and maturation is not allowed it. Whenever the reader meets a dharma, he may try asking himself: from which class of cause does it come?

Acquisition and Possession: When the Eye and Eye Consciousness Each Come to Hand

The fourteenth question makes a turn: it no longer asks about the nature of dharmas but about when these elements come to hand in the practitioner. The stanza answers in ten characters: “of the eye element and the eye consciousness element there is acquisition of one alone, of both, of neither, and the rest.”

Acquisition of one alone has two routes. Acquiring the eye element without eye consciousness: “when one born in the realm of desire gradually acquires the eye faculty, and when one dies in the formless realm and is born in the second, third, or fourth meditative absorption levels”—one born in the realm of desire acquires his faculties gradually, so the eye faculty comes first and eye consciousness has not yet arisen; and one who dies in the formless realm and is born in the second, third, or fourth absorption levels finds no eye consciousness of that level, so he acquires the eye element while eye consciousness is not yet acquired. Acquiring eye consciousness without the eye element: one born in the second, third, or fourth absorptions when eye consciousness arises (which must be borrowed from the first absorption), and one who dies there and is born in a lower level. Acquisition of both: dying in the formless realm and being born in the realm of desire or the Brahmā world, both elements come to hand at once. Acquisition of neither: “as for neither, it is neither of them, that is, apart from the preceding cases.”

The word and the rest at the end of the stanza the treatise says is to gather in further unstated senses—and so another table of four cases is spread out: possessing the eye element but not eye consciousness, one born in the second, third, or fourth absorptions when eye consciousness is not arising; possessing eye consciousness but not the eye element, “one born in the realm of desire who has not yet acquired the eye faculty, or who acquired it and has lost it again”—a person whose eyes are ruined still possesses eye consciousness; possessing both, one born in the realm of desire who has acquired the eye and not lost it, one born in the Brahmā world, and one born in the second, third, or fourth absorptions while actually seeing form; possessing neither, apart from the preceding cases.

Clearing away a misunderstanding: acquisition and possession are not the same thing. Acquisition is the instant of coming to hand; possession is continuing to belong to one’s continuum. Hence there are all the differences of acquiring and losing again, of losing without being severed; and it is precisely these interlockings that the table of four cases sets out.

For practice: this gate takes the terms established in the preceding thirteen gates and puts them back, once, onto a particular person, a particular place of birth, a particular moment. To read Abhidharma only down to the nature of dharmas and not down to acquiring and discarding is to have only half of it.

Inner and Outer: Why Inner and Outer Are Still Spoken of Where There Is No Self

The fifteenth question: how many are inner and how many outer? The treatise answers: “the six faculties and six consciousnesses, twelve, are named inner; outer means the remaining six objects beginning with form.”

But the treatise at once asks itself the most dangerous question: relative to whom are inner and outer said? “What the self depends on is named inner, and what is other than this is outer. Since there is no substance of a self, whence are inner and outer?”—the names inner and outer are established with reference to a self; the self having no substance, do they not fall to the ground?

The treatise’s way of answering is very fine: “because it is what the grasping of a self rests upon, mind is provisionally spoken of as the self.” What the grasping of a self rests upon is mind, and so with reference to mind a self is provisionally spoken of. And two sūtra verses are cited in proof:

Through well taming the self, the wise attain birth in heaven.

One should well tame the mind; mind tamed can draw forth ease.

One and the same matter, and the sūtra speaks in one place of taming the self and in another of taming the mind—from which it is evident that what the sūtras call a self is a provisional name for mind. And so the names inner and outer have a place to stand: “the faculties beginning with the eye are what this depends on and are near to it, and so are named inner; form and the rest are its objects and are remote, and so are named outer.” Inner is what is depended on and near; outer is what is taken as object and remote.

There is a further objection: the six consciousnesses extend to the three times, and when they have not yet reached the position of mind they are not what mind depends on—should they not then be judged outer? The treatise answers: “when they reach the position of mind they do not lose the nature of the six consciousness elements, and before they reach that position they have never departed from the mark of mind”—the six consciousnesses that have not fallen into the position of mind have not departed from the mark of mind; and were this not granted, the mind element would exist only in the past and the six consciousnesses only in the present and future, which “contradicts our own school’s tenet that the eighteen elements all extend to the three times.”

For practice: this passage is one of the few places in the fascicle that touches no-self head on, and its manner is worth remembering—it does not first deny the self and then take back a little self for use; it says plainly that the self has no substance, and that inner and outer are only names of position provisionally established with reference to the mind on which the grasping of a self rests. The names go on being used, and while they are used one knows them to be provisional.

Participating and Corresponding Nonparticipant: Performing or Not Performing One’s Own Work, and One Sentence on the Element of Dharmas Being Always Participating

The sixteenth question: the name of the gate is unfamiliar and its sense is essential—how many are participating and how many corresponding nonparticipants?

First the general rule is set: “what performs its own work is named participating; what does not perform its own work is named a corresponding nonparticipant.” The eye that with respect to visible form has seen, is seeing, or will see is a participating eye; the eye that does not perform this work is a corresponding nonparticipant eye. And so on to the mind element, each with respect to its own object, of which its own function should be stated. Participating does not mean a portion that is alike; it means being at one’s proper work; and a corresponding nonparticipant is what is not at its proper work while being of the same class as what is—the treatise glosses the name itself at the end: “because this nonparticipant shares a class in common with what participates, it is named a corresponding nonparticipant.” The treatise also gives three readings of the word share: “faculty, object, and consciousness, all three, interact with one another, and this is named a share,” or a share is the function already performed, or a share is the contact produced.

How many kinds of corresponding nonparticipant eye are there? Here there is a divergence between two groups, which the treatise records without adjudicating: the Vaibhāṣikas of Kaśmīra say four kinds—that which does not see form and has already ceased, is ceasing, or will cease, and that which will not arise; “the masters of the West say there are five kinds: dividing what will not arise further into two, one having an accompanying consciousness and one having none.”

The deepest sentence of this gate is at its beginning: “the participating element of dharmas: the single element of dharmas alone is throughout participating”—the element of dharmas is always at its proper work. The reason is: “there is no portion whatever of the element of dharmas upon which boundless mind consciousnesses have not arisen, are not arising, and will not arise, because the noble ones certainly give rise to the mind that contemplates all dharmas as being without self.” A noble one must give rise to the contemplation of no-self that takes everything as its object, and this mind, “apart from its own substance and the dharmas coexisting with it, takes all dharmas as its objects,” while the portion excluded becomes the object of a second moment of mind; “these two successive moments of mind take all objects without exception, and therefore the element of dharmas is always named participating.” Among all dharmas there is not one that is forever unobserved by mind.

The treatise also distinguishes finely one asymmetry: the participation of the eye and of form cannot be reckoned in the same way. “The eye is not held in common, and participation and corresponding nonparticipation are established with respect to a single continuum; form is held in common, and they are established with respect to many continua”—one form can be seen by many people (as when people gaze together at the moon, at dancing, at wrestling), whereas one eye cannot be used by two people. Odor, taste, and the tangible, though also not held in common, are nevertheless said by the treatise to “admit of being held in common,” since with respect to this person and that, odor and the rest have the sense of being able to give rise to nose consciousness and the rest, and so they too are stated as with form.

The ancient masters supply what is most useful here. Fabao cites the Correct Principle on why the element of dharmas is always participating: “for instance the element of dharmas is the fixed object of that mind consciousness, since it is not held in common,” and judges the five objects to be held in common and not fixed objects. Yuanhui brings out two senses of fixed and explains the four kinds of corresponding nonparticipant eye. Puguang distinguishes a pair of registers easily confused—faculty and consciousness are called participating with reference to their capacity to grasp an object, while an outer object is called participating with reference to its being taken as an object—the two facing in opposite directions and not to be run together.

For practice: this gate sets up in use and not in use as a pair of categories running through the whole treatise. And the sentence that the element of dharmas is always participating is the quietest and deepest place in the fascicle—what it says is that no dharma escapes being observed.

Abandoned through Seeing, through Cultivation, Not Subject to Abandonment: What Is Definitively Not Abandoned through Seeing

The seventeenth question: how many are abandoned through seeing, how many through cultivation, how many not subject to abandonment? The stanza answers, “fifteen are abandoned only through cultivation; the last three extend to the three.” The treatise glosses: the ten elements of form and the five consciousness elements are abandoned only through cultivation; the three elements of mind, dharmas, and mind consciousness each extend to the three kinds—“the eighty-eight latent tendencies together with the dharmas coexisting with them and the acquisitions that accompany them are all abandoned through seeing,” “the remaining dharmas with outflows are all abandoned through cultivation, and all dharmas without outflows are not subject to abandonment.”

There follows an important distinction. An objector says that ordinary-being status and the bodily and vocal actions that bring on evil destinies “are utterly contrary to the noble path”—are they not then also abandoned through seeing? The treatise answers no, and produces a comprehensive judgment: dharmas that are undefiled, what is not born of the sixth, and form are definitively not abandoned through seeing. The three are three marks standing side by side, not a single mark form not born of the sixth: Fabao writes, “dharmas not abandoned through seeing have briefly three marks,” and Yuanhui, “stated briefly, what is not abandoned through seeing has in all three kinds”—the two judge alike.

The three terms are each made concrete. Why is ordinary-being status not abandoned through seeing? “That ordinary-being status is undefiled and included in the indeterminate, since one who has left desire behind and one who has severed the wholesome roots still possess it”—both the desire-free and those who have severed the wholesome roots still carry it, which shows it is not a defiled dharma; and moreover “if this ordinary-being status were abandoned through seeing, one in the position of the receptivity to the cognition of dharma concerning suffering would still be an ordinary being”—if ordinary-being status were abandoned through seeing, then at the first thought of the path of seeing it would not yet be abandoned, and would the practitioner not still be an ordinary being? What is born of the sixth? “The sixth means the mind sense field; what is born otherwise than from this is named not born of the sixth,” that is, what is born from the five faculties beginning with the eye, which the treatise names outright as “the five consciousnesses and the like.” And form means all bodily and vocal action and the like. Why are these three definitively not abandoned through seeing? “Because they are not directly set in motion by delusion about the principle of the truths”—what is not directly set in motion by delusion about the principle of the truths is not abandoned by the path of seeing.

The ancient masters take the terms apart more finely here. Yuanhui enumerates the eighty-eight latent tendencies (ten for the truth of suffering, seven each for origin and cessation, eight for the path; in the two higher realms twenty-eight each, hatred being excluded), and brings out a dependent-determinative analysis to set the name abandoned through seeing right: “seeing means seeing the truths; seeing is what abandons, defilement is what is abandoned; what is abandoned by seeing is named abandoned through seeing”—seeing is what abandons, defilement is what is abandoned, and within three words subject and object are plain. Puguang here “briefly opens three headings to display what is not abandoned through seeing,” and explains why the treatise cites only a part. Fabao separately distinguishes abandonment by intrinsic nature from abandonment by object.

For practice: this gate lays down a hard boundary for cultivation—delusion at the level of principle is cut once and for all by the path of seeing, while habitual tendencies at the level of the concrete must be counteracted by the long nourishing of the path of cultivation. To mistake the second for the first is the commonest miscalculation among practitioners.

Seeing and Not Seeing: Does the Eye See or Does Consciousness See—A Thousand-Year Dispute

The eighteenth question reaches the center of gravity of the fascicle: how many are seeing and how many not?

The treatise first establishes the definition of seeing. “The eye is wholly seeing; eight kinds within one portion of the element of dharmas are seeing; the rest are all not seeing.” Which eight? “The five defiled views beginning with the view of self, worldly right view, the right view of one in training, the right view of one beyond training”—five defiled views plus three right views. And the treatise divides their clarity and dimness by a simile: “just as by night and by day, with clouds and without, the multitude of forms and images are seen with differing clarity and dimness”—worldly views defiled and undefiled, and the views of those in training and beyond training, observe the marks of dharmas with differing clarity and dimness, as one looks at the same forms under day and night, cloud and clear.

Then why is worldly right view only in mind consciousness? Because “the discernment arising together with the five consciousnesses cannot make a decisive judgment”—decisive judgment is the very substance of seeing. The definition the treatise gives runs to eight characters only: “what deliberates first and then judges decisively is named seeing.” Only what deliberates first and then decides is called seeing; “the discernment arising with the five consciousnesses has no such capacity, being without discrimination, and so it is not seeing.”

But a difficulty arises at once: the eye faculty cannot make a decisive judgment either—why then is it called seeing? The treatise answers: “because it can clearly and sharply illuminate and observe forms, it too is named seeing”—seeing has two routes: one is the seeing of inferring and judging, the other the seeing of illuminating and observing. Puguang marks these two routes with great clarity: “first, illuminating and observing is named seeing, namely the eye faculty. . . . It does not stretch out light to the object, unlike a lamp or the sun; nor does it receive an image, unlike water or a mirror. . . . Second, inferring and judging is named seeing”—the eye’s seeing is neither a shining out nor a receiving in, and both of these ready-made similes are unusable.

The definitions being set, the great dispute breaks out: is it the eye that sees, or consciousness that sees?

To which party each of the exchanges below belongs is assigned according to the division of the text in Puguang and Fabao. The eye-sees party sets up first: the eye is the seeing. The consciousness-sees party at once objects: “if the eye sees, then when another consciousness is operating it too ought to be named seeing”—when another consciousness is operating the eye is still there, so why is it not called seeing then? The eye-sees party answers: “not every eye is able to see actually.” The consciousness-sees party presses again: “which is able to see actually?” The eye-sees party explains: “the participating eye in the state of being joined with consciousness is able to see, and no other”—only that portion of eye which is arising together with eye consciousness sees. The consciousness-sees party presses the advantage: if it must be joined with consciousness to see, “then it must be the dependent consciousness that sees form, and not the eye.” The eye-sees party denies it altogether: “not so, eye consciousness is definitively not what sees.” The consciousness-sees party presses: “why?”—and in the answer appear the two most famous words in the treatise: “it is transmitted that it cannot observe screened-off form, since it is directly observed that forms screened off by a wall and the like cannot be observed.” In transcribing this Sarvāstivāda reason the author prefixes it with it is transmitted.

Below, a dozen or more rounds follow, every sentence drawing blood. The eye-sees party seizes the moment and presses back at the consciousness-sees party: “if consciousness sees, then since consciousness is nonresistant a wall cannot obstruct it, and it ought to see screened-off form”—consciousness has no resistance, a wall cannot block it, so it ought to be able to see the form behind the wall 〔Puguang marks here, “again he presses back at the consciousness-sees party,” and Fabao marks, “he objects back to the consciousness-sees party”—this sentence is the eye-sees party interrogating its opponent, not the consciousness-sees party stating its own position〕. The consciousness-sees party answers: “with respect to a screened-off form eye consciousness does not arise; and since consciousness does not arise, how should it see?”—upon screened-off form eye consciousness simply does not arise, and consciousness not arising, whence any seeing? The eye-sees party then presses in summary: “why does eye consciousness not arise with respect to it?” and first states that its own school can account for it: “we who hold that the eye sees can say the eye is resistant, and with respect to that screened-off form it has no capacity for seeing; and since consciousness proceeds upon the same object as its support, it may be said that eye consciousness does not arise there”—the eye has resistance, and consciousness follows its support in taking the same object, and so eye consciousness does not arise there; and then it throws back a question: “you who hold that consciousness sees—for what reason does it not arise?” The consciousness-sees party objects again: “is the eye then like the body faculty, grasping only when it meets its object, that you should say it does not see the screened-off because it is resistant?”—the eye is not like the body faculty, which must make contact to grasp; on what ground do you make resistance the issue? And it cites a fact in evidence: “moreover, why can forms screened off by crystal, beryl, mica, water and the like be seen?”—through crystal, beryl, mica, and water one plainly sees; and it concludes: “therefore it is not because the eye is resistant that it has no capacity for seeing screened-off form.” It is now the eye-sees party’s turn to ask in return: “if so, what of the eye consciousness that you maintain?”—then how do you account for that eye consciousness of yours? Only now does the consciousness-sees party draw the boundary at light: “where the brightness is not cut off, eye consciousness arises with respect to the screened-off form; where the brightness is cut off, eye consciousness does not arise. And since consciousness does not arise, it cannot see.”

The consciousness-sees party then brings out the scriptural text: “as for the sūtra’s saying that the eye can see form, the eye is what seeing depends on, and so it is said to see.” The sūtras also say that the mind can cognize dharmas; yet the mind is past, and what cognizes is in fact mind consciousness—the mind is only what consciousness depends on, and so it is said to cognize. The same figure of speech is applied to the eye: the eye is what seeing depends on, and so the eye is said to see. And the consciousness-sees party cites ordinary usage as an example: “or it is stating the action of the dependent in terms of what it depends on, as the world says of a bench that the bench is talking”; and it cites the sūtra, “Brahmin, know that the eye is the gate, and it is solely for seeing form”—the eye is the gate, and is the gate the seeing? (The several instances and sūtra passages that follow are all assigned by Puguang and Fabao to the consciousness-sees party reconciling the scriptures.)

Next comes a pair of mutual objections. The eye-sees party objects: “if consciousness can see, who does the cognizing? And how do the two functions of seeing and cognizing differ?”—if you say consciousness sees, who is left to cognize, and what difference is there between the two functions? The consciousness-sees party explains: to see form is to cognize form, just as a certain portion of discernment is named able to see and also able to discern, so a certain portion of consciousness is likewise. From here a separate section begins: “some others object: if the eye can see, the eye is the seer—then what is the act of seeing?”—who these some others are Puguang leaves open with two explanations (either a separate master of another position, or another master of the consciousness-sees party), while Fabao, citing Master Tai, fixes them outright as an objection of the Vātsīputrīyas. The eye-sees party answers: “this makes no objection: just as all grant that consciousness can cognize while there is no cognizer”—all grant that consciousness can cognize without there being a cognizer, and it is the same with seeing. Then follows, “some others further say: it is eye consciousness that sees; and because the eye is what the seeing depends on, the eye too is named able to see, as a bell is what the ringing depends on, and so the bell is said to be able to ring”—this section Puguang judges to be another master of the consciousness-sees party reconciling the earlier sūtra, while Fabao, citing Master Tai, fixes it as the Dharmatrāta school. The eye-sees party objects again: if so, then since the eye faculty is what consciousness depends on, ought it not to be called able to cognize? That party answers, “there is no such fault,” and cites the Mahāvibhāṣā in its own support: “what is obtained by the eye and received by eye consciousness is called what is seen,” and so one says only that the eye can see and not that the eye can cognize; “only when consciousness is present does one say it cognizes form, as one says that the sun makes the day.” Fabao marks this plainly: “this is the Dharmatrāta school citing the Sarvāstivādins’ Mahāvibhāṣā to resolve the objection”—the one citing the Mahāvibhāṣā is one party in the dispute fetching proof for its own position, not the author adjudicating between the two.

At this point the Sautrāntika masters step in, and with a sentence that sweeps both parties away: “why do you gather together and clutch at empty space, when it is eye, form, and the rest as conditions that give rise to eye consciousness?”—you have gathered together to clutch at empty space. Eye, form and the rest as conditions give rise to eye consciousness; where within this is there any seer or seen? “There are only dharmas as cause and result, and in fact no agent function; it is merely to accord with worldly feeling that expressions are provisionally set up—the eye is named able to see, consciousness is named able to cognize—and the wise should not fasten upon them.” And they cite the World-Honored One’s words as ground: “the words of a region are not to be held to rigidly; the name-ideations of convention are not to be insisted upon.” The author then adds a note: “yet the Vaibhāṣika school of Kaśmīra says the eye can see, the ear can hear, the nose can smell, the tongue can taste, the body can feel, the mind can cognize.”

The ancient masters have left a complete score for this passage. Of the four masters’ positions Puguang records the fullest: “the venerable Vasumitra holds that the eye sees; the venerable Dharmatrāta that eye consciousness sees; the venerable Ghoṣa that the discernment associated with eye consciousness sees; the masters of similes that the assemblage of mind and mental factors simultaneous with eye consciousness sees”; Fabao adds a fifth, “it is also said that for the Vātsīputrīyas the assemblage of mind and mental factors sees,” and states plainly that “the venerable Vasumitra’s ‘the eye sees’ is the correct sense of the Sarvāstivādins.” There being four positions, why does the text refute only the one that consciousness sees? Puguang preserves four explanations side by side (where the interest lies, refuting the discernment position along with it, the assemblage position partly agreeing with the Sautrāntikas, and refuting the strongest, consciousness, so that all three fall), citing a stanza of the Miscellaneous Heart Treatise as ground: “the participating eye sees form, not that eye consciousness, nor discernment, nor an assemblage, because screened-off form is not seen”; Fabao settles it outright by the single explanation of that Heart Treatise—“refuting one, the rest are refuted by parity.” As to which party each of the exchanges in the treatise belongs to, Puguang assigns them sentence by sentence, Fabao divides the text the same way, and he points out that “the treatise’s ‘it is transmitted that it cannot observe screened-off form’—this is the setting out of the reason”—that is not the author’s own verdict; it is the eye-sees party setting out its reason.

This gate does not adjudicate. What both parties say and on what grounds they say it has been set out above; who prevails the treatise does not judge, and it is not judged here either. The reader need only see clearly where the dispute lies: what is contested is not whether the eyes have a use, but under whose name the act of seeing should be filed—and the Sautrāntika answer is that it can be filed under nobody’s, because there is no agent of the function at all.

Two Eyes Seeing Together: Consciousness Abides in No Location

The dispute over seeing being finished, the treatise lets the incidental discussions unfold. The first question is delightful: when form is seen, does one eye see or do two? The treatise says, “there is no fixed rule,” and then gives the great masters’ opinion: “the great masters of Abhidharma all say: sometimes two eyes see together, because when both eyes are open form is seen distinctly and when one is open it is not distinct.” And there is an experiment anyone may perform: “moreover, when one eye is open and one presses the other with the hand, one then sees two moons and the like before one, whereas closing one eye and pressing one has no such effect”—press one eye with a finger while the other is open, and two moons appear before you; close it and press, and nothing of the kind happens.

There follows at once an important resolution of difficulty: the support being in two places, does consciousness not become two halves? The treatise answers: “consciousness does not become two portions because its support is divided, since it abides in no location and is unlike resistant form.”—Consciousness occupies no place, and is not, like form possessing resistance, something that can be cut in two. The support may be twofold, and consciousness is still one.

Clearing away a misunderstanding: this passage is not physiology. What it establishes is a fundamental difference in the mode of existence of consciousness and of form—form has spatial parts and so can be divided; consciousness has none and so cannot. The criterion set up in the earlier gate of the accumulable flowers and bears fruit here.

For practice: hereafter, whenever a question of the type can one mind take two places as object at once arises, this sentence is the root of the answer: first ask whether it has spatial parts.

Objects Reached and Not Reached, and Whether Ultimate Atoms Touch

The second incidental discussion: when a faculty grasps its object, does it grasp having reached it, or without reaching it? The stanza answers, “the objects of the faculties of eye, ear, and mind are not reached; the three are the contrary”—eye, ear, and mind grasp objects not reached; nose, tongue, and body grasp objects reached.

The treatise’s reasons all lie in experience: “the faculties of eye, ear, and mind grasp objects not reached”—the eye can see distant forms, while “salve and the like within the eye cannot be observed”—ointment smeared on the eye is on the contrary not seen; the ear can hear distant sounds, while “what is pressed close against the ear faculty cannot be heard.” If eye and ear grasped only objects reached, “then one who cultivates absorption would have no need to cultivate the production of the divine eye and divine ear”—the divine eye and divine ear that are cultivated are precisely for seeing and hearing at a distance. The objector asks: if it can see form not reached, why does it not see all distant and screened-off forms? The treatise answers with the lodestone: “why does a lodestone that draws iron not reached not draw all iron not reached?”—a lodestone draws iron it does not touch, and yet does not draw all the iron it does not touch. As for the mind, “the mind has no substance of form, and so of it there is no reaching,” and the question does not arise. Another holds that the ear grasps both reached and not reached, since one can hear the sound within one’s own ear. Nose, tongue, and body grasp only objects reached, and the treatise gives a clean verification: “because when the breath is held one cannot smell an odor”—hold your breath and you cannot smell. What is reached? “What is meant by reached? Arising without interval.”

That one word reached carries the treatise into the passage in the fascicle that most resembles natural philosophy: do ultimate atoms touch one another or not?

The Vaibhāṣikas of Kaśmīra say they do not touch, on the ground of a dilemma: “if ultimate atoms touched throughout their whole substance, there would be the fault of the substances of real things being commingled; if they touched in one portion, there would be the fault of having parts, and yet ultimate atoms have no finer parts”—touching throughout, two atoms merge into one; touching in part, the atom has parts, and by definition it has none. Then, if they do not touch, why does striking them produce sound? The treatise answers: “if so, why does striking produce sound? Only because ultimate atoms arise without interval”—they merely come close enough to be without interval, and do not truly touch; if they truly touched, “if touching were granted, in striking stones or clapping hands the substances would be commingled,” and striking stones or clapping hands the two would blend into one mass. It is asked again: if they do not touch, why does an aggregation of form not scatter when struck? The answer: “because the wind element holds it, it does not scatter”—some wind elements can destroy and scatter, as at the destruction of an aeon, and some can form and hold together, as at the formation of an aeon.

Several accounts are put forward. “The venerable Vasumitra says: if ultimate atoms touched one another, they would have to abide into the following moment”; while the venerable Dharmatrāta offers another: “yet the venerable one says that no ultimate atoms in fact touch one another, and that the name touch is merely provisionally established upon their being without interval.” On this the treatise sets down a rare comment: “this venerable one’s intent should be found agreeable.” And it supplies a reason on his behalf: were it not so, “if it were otherwise, there would have to be gaps between the ultimate atoms; and the space between being empty, what obstructs their movement, that they should be granted to be resistant?”—if the space between were truly empty, what is it that blocks them, and yet they are called resistant? At the end the treatise adds a summarizing judgment: “moreover, if ultimate atoms are granted to have spatial parts, then whether they touch or not there is the fault of having parts; if they have no spatial parts, then even granting that they touch there is no such fault.”

Shentai’s commentary supplies this sentence with a piece of its history: “this reports the venerable Dharmatrāta, whose name here means ‘Dharma-rescued.’ Out of respect for his virtue his name is not spoken. He says that no ultimate atoms in fact touch one another, and that only because there is no empty gap between them is the name touch provisionally established”—the text says only the venerable one and does not give the name, out of respect for his virtue.

For practice: the value of this passage is not in its conclusion but in its method. Once the everyday word touch is pushed down to the level of the ultimate atom, it dissolves of itself—not because the ultimate atom hides some mystery, but because the word had meaning only at the scale of coarse form. This is the same line of view as the Sautrāntikas’ “there are only dharmas as cause and result, and in fact no agent function” in the dispute over seeing, applied in two different places.

Objects of Equal Measure and the Arrangement of the Faculties’ Ultimate Atoms

The third incidental discussion: when the faculties grasp their objects, do they grasp only what is equal to themselves in measure, or is the size unfixed? The stanza answers, “it should be known that the three beginning with the nose grasp only objects of equal measure.” The treatise glosses: nose, tongue, and body grasp only what is equal in measure, “as is the measure of the faculty’s atoms, so is the measure of the object’s atoms, and matching one another they conjoin and produce nose consciousness and the rest”—faculty-atoms and object-atoms must match for consciousness to be produced conjointly. Eye and ear are not fixed: “the eye with respect to form sometimes grasps something small, as in seeing the tip of a hair; sometimes something large, as in briefly opening the eyes and seeing a great mountain; sometimes something equal, as in seeing a grape”—seeing a hair-tip is grasping something small, opening the eyes on a great mountain is grasping something large, and looking at a single grape is grasping something equal; and the ear hears the sound of a mosquito or of thunder, small or large as is fitting. Of the mind, “the mind has no resistant substance, and no distinction of shape or measure can be told of it.”

The treatise then describes the arrangement of the ultimate atoms of the five faculties, all in figurative language: the ultimate atoms of the eye faculty “abide spread out over the pupil, like a coriander blossom, clear and covering over so that they do not scatter”—with another account that they abide heaped up like a ball; those of the ear faculty “abide coiled round within the ear cavity, like a rolled sheet of birch bark”; those of the nose faculty “abide within the bridge of the nose, back upward and face downward, like a pair of fingernails”; those of the tongue faculty are “spread over the tongue, in the shape of a half-moon”; those of the body faculty “abide throughout the parts of the body, as the body’s shape and measure.” Of the ultimate atoms of the female and male faculties the treatise likewise gives each its shape.

The two sentences that follow carry the most weight. First: “the ultimate atoms of the body faculty are never all participating—even in the hottest naraka, with fierce flames wrapping the body, there are still measureless ultimate atoms of the body faculty that are corresponding nonparticipants”—even in a hell where fierce flames wrap the body, measureless ultimate atoms of the body faculty are still not at work. Second: “it is transmitted: if the body faculty were to generate consciousness throughout, the body would break apart,” because “the five consciousnesses definitively require an accumulation of many atoms before the nature of support and object is constituted”—no single ultimate atom can serve as support and object; consciousness must arise in dependence on an aggregation of many atoms. And from this the treatise draws a further sentence: “it is by this very principle that ultimate atoms are said to have an invisible substance, because they cannot be seen.”

Clearing away a misunderstanding: this passage is not anatomy. Blossom, birch bark, fingernails, half-moon are all taken for the posture of their arrangement, and do not say that the faculties are shaped so. A reader who takes it for a description of organs has read the passage for nothing.

For practice: read together with the preceding gate, one obtains a single holding sentence—faculty and object must match for consciousness to arise; and that word match will serve later in speaking of conditions, of obstruction, and of dominance.

The Time of Consciousness’s Support: The Supports of the Five Consciousnesses Are Simultaneous, the Support of Mind Consciousness Only Past

The fourth incidental discussion: the five consciousnesses take only the present as object while mind consciousness takes all three times—are their supports likewise? The stanza answers, “the support of the last is only past; the supports of the five consciousnesses are either simultaneous.”

The treatise glosses: “mind consciousness depends only on the mind that has ceased without interval”—what mind consciousness depends on is the thought that has just ceased—and so it is only past. The five consciousnesses “have supports either simultaneous,” and the treatise points out expressly the work done by the word either in the stanza: “the word either indicates that they also depend on the past”—the five consciousnesses depend both on the faculty arising with them (the eye being the support arising together with eye consciousness, and so on to the body with body consciousness, both in the present world) and on that mind which has ceased without interval. Therefore “the supports of these five bodies of consciousness are two each”: the five faculties are their several separate supports, and “the mind faculty is the support common to the five.”

The treatise then sets out a table of four cases distinguishing support from immediately antecedent condition: “the first case, the eye faculty arising together with it”—a support but not an immediately antecedent condition; “the second case, the element of dharmas of mental factors that has ceased without interval”—an immediately antecedent condition but not a support; “the third case, the past mind faculty”—both; and the fourth apart from the foregoing. For mind consciousness “a following-antecedent answer should be made”: whatever is a support of mind consciousness is definitively its immediately antecedent condition, while what is its immediately antecedent condition need not be its support (as with the element of dharmas of mental factors that has ceased without interval).

Clearing away a misunderstanding: support and immediately antecedent condition are not the same thing. The former is what consciousness leans on to arise; the latter is the preceding thought that yields its place to the succeeding one. The eye faculty arising together leans without yielding place; the mental factors that have ceased without interval yield place without being leaned on—and the table of four cases sets out precisely this crossing.

For practice: that the support of mind consciousness is always in the past looks technical and is in fact essential—the thought of mind at this instant leans upon a thought that has already ceased. The continuity of mind does not rest on an abiding support; it rests on the preceding thought handing over the baton.

The Name Support Falls Only on the Faculty: Consciousness Turns with the Faculty, Not with the Object

The fifth incidental discussion asks sharply: consciousness arises depending at once on the two conditions of faculty and object—why is the name support given to the faculty and not to the object?

The stanza answers, “consciousness differs as the faculty alters, and therefore the eye and the rest are named its support.” The treatise glosses: “because the faculties beginning with the eye undergo alteration, the consciousnesses alter accordingly, being clear or dim as the faculty is augmented or damaged”—when the faculty is clear and sharp the consciousness is clear, and when the faculty is damaged the consciousness is dim—whereas “alteration in form and the rest does not make the consciousness differ, since consciousness follows the faculty and not the object.” And the conclusion in one sentence: “the name support falls only on the eye and the rest, and not on the others.”

This reason is verifiable. Looking at the same flower, one with good sight sees clearly and one with a clouded eye sees blurred; change the flower and the clarity or dimness of the consciousness does not change with it. The clarity or turbidity of consciousness is bound to the faculty and not to the object—which is the concrete evidence that the name support falls only on the faculty.

Clearing away a misunderstanding: to say consciousness does not alter with the object is not to say the object has no effect on consciousness at all. When the object changes, the mark of what is taken as object changes (whether one sees a flower or a stone), but the clarity or dimness of consciousness does not change with the object. The mark of what is taken as object and the clarity or dimness of consciousness are two different matters.

For practice: this is of great use in cultivation—whether the object one faces is good or bad is one matter; whether the faculty that takes it is clear or dim is another. Objects cannot all be chosen; the faculty can be nourished.

Consciousness Named after the Faculty: The Excellence of the Support and Not Being Held in Common

The sixth incidental discussion asks next: it is form and the rest that are the objects cognized—why is consciousness called eye consciousness and so on to mind consciousness, and not form consciousness and so on to dharma consciousness?

The stanza answers, “by those and by the cause of not being held in common, consciousness is named after the faculty”—two reasons. The first is what the preceding gate established: “those means the eye and the rest named support above; the faculty is what is depended on, and so consciousness is named after the faculty.” The second is not being held in common: “the eye is the support only of one’s own eye consciousness, whereas form may be grasped by another’s eye consciousness and by the mind consciousness of oneself and of others”—the eye is the support only of one’s own line of eye consciousness, while form may be grasped by another’s eye consciousness and by one’s own and another’s mind consciousness; and so on to body and the tangible. The faculty is exclusive, the object is shared; and a name must follow the exclusive if it is to distinguish.

The treatise also gives two examples from ordinary usage: “by the excellence of the support and by the cause of not being held in common consciousness receives its name; it follows the faculty and not the object, as with the names ‘sound of a drum’ and ‘barley sprout’ and the like”—the sound of a drum is named after the drum and not after the character of the sound; a barley sprout is named after the barley and not after the character of the sprout.

Clearing away a misunderstanding: this is no accident of naming habit. If the name followed the object, then when you and I looked together at one flower the consciousnesses that arose would share the name flower consciousness, and the two could not be told apart; naming after the faculty, my eye consciousness and yours each have their own support, and the boundary is plain.

For practice: this gate and the last form a pair—the last says that the quality of consciousness is bound to the faculty, this one that the identity of consciousness is bound to the faculty. The two together are the reason the eighteen elements are arranged with the faculties at their head.

The Levels of the Four Things: Body, Eye, Form, Consciousness—Which Is Higher and Which Lower

The seventh incidental discussion: a person dwelling in one level sees form of some level with an eye of some level, and consciousness of some level arises—are the levels of these four things the same or different?

The treatise first lists every possible combination exhaustively (born in the realm of desire, seeing form of one’s own level with an eye of one’s own level, all four are of one’s own level; seeing form of the realm of desire with the eye of the first absorption, body and form belong to the realm of desire while eye and consciousness belong to the first absorption . . . and so on to those born in the second, third, and fourth absorptions seeing form of their own or another level with an eye of their own or another level), and then says, “now the decisive marks of this are stated briefly,” gathering it into two stanzas.

The decisive marks are: “body, eye, and form all extend over five levels, namely the realm of desire and the four meditative absorptions; eye consciousness exists only in the realm of desire and the first absorption.” Next are three inequalities—“here the eye faculty, with respect to the level in which the body is born, is either equal or higher and never lower,” the eye is never lower than the body; form and consciousness with respect to the eye are “either equal or lower and never higher,” the reason being “a lower-level eye cannot see higher-level form, and a higher-level consciousness does not depend on a lower-level eye”; while form with respect to consciousness extends to equal, higher, and lower. The ear element expounded at length is as with the eye. “The three of nose, tongue, and body are all of their own level; among them the distinction is that body and the tangible must be of the same level”—nose, tongue, and body are only of their own level, and body and its tangible must be of the same level; consciousness with respect to the tangible and the body is of its own level or a lower one. As for the mind, “it should be known that the four things of the mind element are not fixed,” sometimes all four of the same level, sometimes higher and lower.

Here the treatise also says one honest thing about its own composition: these differences will be distinguished at length in the chapter on absorption and are not distinguished here, because “repeating before and after costs much effort and yields little benefit.” And then comes the sentence that closes all the incidental discussions: “the incidental discussion being complete, the principal discussion should now be taken up.”

Clearing away a misunderstanding: this passage is not a tedious game of permutations. What it establishes is one principle—a dharma of a higher level may take an object of a lower level, and a dharma of a lower level may not take an object of a higher. One who cultivates absorption may see form of the realm of desire with the eye of the first absorption; he may not see form of the first absorption with the eye of the realm of desire.

For practice: this gate pushes the eighteen elements from which there are to on which storey. One and the same eye consciousness has its standing decided jointly by three things—the level in which the body is born, the level to which the eye belongs, and the level to which the form belongs—and the stages of practice are not a vague higher and lower but are reckoned out square by square in just this way.

The Incidental Discussion Complete: The Three Gates at the End of the Chapter—What Is Cognized, the Permanent, the Faculties

The incidental discussions closed, the treatise concludes with one stanza asking three things: among the eighteen elements, which is cognized by how many consciousnesses? How many are permanent and how many impermanent? How many are faculties and how many not?

The gate of what is cognized: “among the eighteen elements the five beginning with form are, in order, each cognized by one of the five consciousnesses beginning with the eye, and are also all cognized collectively by mind consciousness; thus these five elements are each cognized by two of the six consciousnesses.” Form is cognized by eye consciousness and also by mind consciousness, and so is cognized by two consciousnesses; and so on to the tangible. “Knowing this, it may be inferred that the remaining thirteen elements are all cognized only by mind consciousness, because they are not the objects of the five bodies of consciousness”—apart from the five objects, the remaining thirteen elements can be taken as object only by mind consciousness. The eye faculty cannot see itself, yet mind consciousness reaches it.

The gate of the permanent is extremely short and extremely weighty: “among the eighteen elements there is no element that is wholly permanent; only the unconditioned within one portion of the element of dharmas is permanent,” the rest being impermanent by extension of the principle. No element is permanent as a whole—even the element of dharmas has only that portion of it which is unconditioned. This sentence puts the whole coordinate system of the eighteen elements back under impermanence.

The gate of the faculties opens the door to the next chapter: of the twenty-two faculties spoken of in the sūtras, among the eighteen elements they are “included in the inner twelve elements and one portion of the element of dharmas.” One portion of dharmas means the life faculty and ten others together with one portion of the last three faculties; the inner twelve means the five faculties beginning with the eye included as their own names indicate, “the mind faculty included in the seven mind elements throughout,” one portion of the last three faculties included in mind and mind consciousness, and “the female and male faculties being one portion of the body element.” “Extending the principle, it may be known that the remaining five elements beginning with form and one portion of the element of dharmas are in substance not faculties.” The treatise also records a difference of practice: “the great masters of Abhidharma all pass over the sūtras’ sequence of the six sense fields and speak of the mind faculty only after the life faculty, because it has an object of consciousness”—the masters’ sequence of the twenty-two faculties differs from the sūtras’, moving the mind faculty to a position after the life faculty.

The ancient masters set down words to close the fascicle. Puguang cites the Miscellaneous Heart Treatise in proof: “the form element is cognized by two consciousnesses, and so on to the tangible likewise; the remaining thirteen elements are throughout taken as object by mind consciousness alone.” Fabao marks the closing of the count of gates: “the following single stanza has three gates . . . added to the preceding, twenty-two gates”; Yuanhui marks these three outright as the twentieth, twenty-first, and twenty-second.

For practice: the fascicle ends with three gates, which look casual and are in fact joints. The gate of what is cognized joins the eighteen elements back to cognition; the gate of the permanent joins them back to impermanence; the gate of the faculties joins them to the twenty-two faculties of the next chapter. With this the Chapter on the Elements has both its doors open and is transparent within and without.

Further Resonances: A Mirror of the Three Commentaries and Shentai’s

The above is the sense of this fascicle itself. What follows sets three mirrors alongside it—the ancient masters’ judgments, the debate within the lineage, and the differences of the alternative translation. A mirror is not the treatise; it is a few other ways of looking at the same fascicle of text. Recorded together without adjudication.

The Three Commentaries’ Judgments and Divergences

Even the major outline and the counting of the gates are not agreed among the three. Puguang marks, “from here begins the third major division, distinction through the several gates: there are in all twenty-two gates distinguishing the eighteen elements”; Fabao marks, “from here begins the second major division, in nineteen lines of stanza, distinguishing the eighteen elements by gates of meaning,” and at the end of the chapter says, “the following single stanza has three gates . . . added to the preceding, twenty-two gates”; Yuanhui marks, “from here comes the third division, distinction through the several gates: in all twenty-two gates distinguishing the eighteen elements,” and at the end of the chapter marks them outright as the twentieth through twenty-second. One and the same fascicle of text, and the numbering and the counting each form a house of their own.

On which side the author inclines, the three commentaries take wholly different attitudes. Puguang judges outright: “although the two parties, the eye-sees and the consciousness-sees, dispute above, looking at the momentum of the text, the author inclines toward the view that consciousness sees,” and he explains the Sautrāntika sense on their behalf: “dharmas have only capacities and in fact no agent function; the World-Honored One, to accord with worldly feeling, merely speaks provisionally of seeing.” Fabao passes no judgment and only divides the text: “here the author is stating the Sarvāstivāda position.” Yuanhui closes by citing the Sautrāntika account and likewise issues no judgment. Moreover Puguang, under the gate of the visible, has a separate judgment that “the author inclines toward the Sautrāntikas”—two gates, two judgments, both preserved for reference.

From which party the two passages some others object and some others further say come is likewise unsettled. Fabao, citing Master Tai, writes, “Master Tai says it is the Vātsīputrīya objection” and “the Dharmatrāta school reconciles the earlier sūtra saying that the eye can see form”; Puguang leaves two explanations open; Yuanhui does not enter the question.

Why the text refutes only the position that consciousness sees is also treated differently by the three. Puguang preserves four explanations side by side and cites a stanza of the Miscellaneous Heart Treatise as ground; Fabao settles it by that Heart Treatise’s single explanation, “refuting one, the rest are refuted by parity”; Yuanhui marks the passage directly and raises no such question.

Four divergences: here they are only recorded, and which is right is not adjudicated.

Debate within the Lineage: Saṅghabhadra’s Sentence-by-Sentence Counter-Refutation

Saṅghabhadra’s Treatise Conforming to Correct Principle addresses this fascicle very densely, and where he says “the Sūtra-master” he mostly has this fascicle of the Kośa in view; the principal passages are recorded.

First, how the two words it is transmitted are to be read. Saṅghabhadra writes: “there are further masters who, by a separate line of reasoning, establish that eye consciousness is definitively not what sees, namely because it cannot observe screened-off form. But the Sūtra-master’s mind cannot accept that reason, and so in the stanza he marks it with the words ‘it is transmitted’”—the author does not inwardly accept that reason, and therefore marks it is transmitted in the stanza. On the same passage Puguang has a different judgment, given in the section above. The two readings are set side by side here and are not harmonized.

Second, the refutation of the challenge about grasping only when the object is met. The author had asked, “is the eye then like the body faculty, grasping only when it meets its object,” and Saṅghabhadra answers: “here the Sūtra-master presses further, saying: is the eye then like the body faculty, grasping only when it meets its object, that one should say it does not see the screened-off because it is resistant? This objection is not right, because he has not understood the sense of resistant as stated”; and he further reproves him: “here one should challenge him: if a faculty can grasp objects it does not meet, then it ought to grasp everything it does not meet.”

Third, the refutation of what seeing depends on and of the bench simile. Saṅghabhadra: “again the Sūtra-master says: as for the sūtra’s saying that the eye can see form, it is because the eye is what seeing depends on that it is said to see. On what ground does the Sūtra-master raise this holding? . . . This does not amount to proof, since mind and mind consciousness are of one class”; and he further questions the ground of his statement: “on what cause does the Sūtra-master raise this fixed holding? Other words and other explanations cannot be without a cause.”

Fourth, ultimate atoms and the venerable one’s doctrine of touch. The author praised Dharmatrāta’s account as “to be found agreeable,” and Saṅghabhadra does not let even this word of praise pass: “here the Sūtra-master, displaying that man’s excellence, says thus: this venerable one’s intent should be found agreeable. . . . Now I say that the venerable one’s intent in this is neither simply agreeable nor to be disliked; one should only investigate how, being without interval, they still do not touch.” And he refutes the objection about spatial parts: “having parts and having spatial parts differ in name and agree in sense; to say ‘without parts’ has already excluded spatial parts.”

Fifth, the refutation of the reason in the gate of applied and sustained thought. The author established that the five consciousnesses are always associated with applied and sustained thought on the ground that “their mode is coarse and turns toward the outer gate,” and Saṅghabhadra does not allow it: “this reason is not sound, since it is directly observed that mind consciousness, when it turns toward the inner gate, is also always associated with them. The explanation should be: the five consciousnesses exist only in the stages that applied and sustained thought accompany.”

Sixth, the refutation of there is no second applied thought as a proof. Saṅghabhadra: “supposing there were a second, would association be granted? There is a second feeling, and yet they are not associated. The words ‘there is no second’ do not constitute a decisive proof.”

Seventh, the refutation of the answer about nose and tongue in the gate of realm affiliation. Saṅghabhadra: “for giving rise to speech and adorning the body the bases alone suffice; the faculty is not visible—what does it adorn?”

Eighth, one passage cited without refutation. Saṅghabhadra cites the author’s explanation that “mind is provisionally spoken of as the self” and expands it with other sūtras, setting down no refutation; recorded here for reference.

Further, the Treatise Revealing the Doctrine only preserves that stanza in ornamented form in the corresponding passage of this fascicle, with no independent counter-refutation. The texts of both parties are set side by side as above, and neither is judged the winner.

The Difference of the Two Translations: Xuanzang and Paramārtha

Paramārtha’s old translation stands gate for gate against Xuanzang’s new one, with many differences in the names of the gates and in the rendering of terms, and with some items identical in both (as with the eighty-eight latent tendencies, homogeneity, and the Sautrāntikas). The weight-bearing items are recorded.

In the opening question Xuanzang has “how many are visible and how many invisible,” Paramārtha “how many are manifest and how many non-manifest”—visible against manifest. Of the three kinds of resistance Xuanzang has “obstruction, object field, object of consciousness,” Paramārtha “first resistance as obstruction, second resistance of the dust, third resistance of the object condition”; and of the treatise cited, Xuanzang has the Treatise of Designations while Paramārtha has the Treatise of Provisional Names, one treatise under two names. The gloss of the gate of realm affiliation differs entirely in the two: Xuanzang glosses “affiliation means belonging, that is, the sense of being bound,” while Paramārtha glosses “correspondence has the sense of possessing and the sense of not being separate”—the same gate, glossed in wholly different ways. For applied and sustained thought Paramārtha has awareness and observation, his stanza reading “having awareness and also observation, these are definitely the five consciousness elements.” For the names of the five classes Paramārtha has retribution-produced, growth-produced, possessed of a real thing. In the gate of participation Paramārtha has equal share and unequal share, glossed as “from the object’s own capacity the name equal share is established”—Xuanzang glosses by performing or not performing one’s own work, Paramārtha by the object’s own capacity.

Most notable is the placing of the mark of reported doubt within the stanza. Xuanzang puts the two words it is transmitted into the stanza; Paramārtha’s version of this stanza reads “since the form is not visible when screened off, such is their holding,” putting their holding into the stanza—each version has its own way of marking, and in both the mark stands inside the stanza. At the Sautrāntika conclusion there is a further difference: Paramārtha’s text reads, “the Sautrāntikas say: why gather together to break up space? . . . Such is the Vaibhāṣika masters of Jibin’s doctrinal judgment,” the last phrase explicitly marking a judgment of the school’s position, for which Xuanzang’s text has nothing corresponding.

The remaining weight-bearing correspondences of translated terms: resistant / obstructive, resistance of the object field / resistance of the dust, resistance of the object of consciousness / resistance of the object condition, unwholesome / evil, having an object of consciousness / having an object condition, appropriation / grasping, inner and outer / what the self depends on and what is outside it, abandoned through seeing, through cultivation, and not subject to abandonment / extinguished by seeing the truths, by the path of cultivation, and not extinguished, the accompanying acquisition / attainment, the discernment arising together / the knowledge arising together, Kaśmīra / Jibin, conceptual and recollective discrimination / displaying and remembering discrimination, what is cognized / what is known, permanent / permanently abiding, Kumāralāta and Jiumoluoluoduo. The two versions also differ in structure: Xuanzang’s passage forms a fascicle by itself and has a sentence closing the fascicle, while Paramārtha’s has no fascicle boundary and passes from the end of the Chapter on the Elements straight into the Chapter on the Faculties.

The adoption or rejection of a variant belongs to the translator, and here it is only recorded, not adjudicated.

Variant Readings: The Twenty-Nine Collation Notes within the Fascicle

The collation notes attached to this fascicle number twenty-nine in all, and not one suffices to alter the base text; the variants are recorded together for reference. Several touch on doctrine and may be noted. In the stanza 「後三三餘無」 tr. “the last three extend to the three; the rest have neither”, the second 「三」 tr. “three” reads 「二」 tr. “two” in the Song, Yuan, Ming, and Palace witnesses. In 「傳說不能觀，彼障諸色故」 tr. “it is transmitted that it cannot observe, because of those screened-off forms”, the graph 「彼」 tr. “those” reads 「被」 tr. “is screened” in the four witnesses; and in the prose 「於彼障色無見功能」 tr. “with respect to that screened-off form it has no capacity for seeing”, the same 「彼」 tr. “those” likewise reads 「被」 tr. “is screened” in three—and Saṅghabhadra’s own citation carries the second reading, so the difference between the two may be seen right there. In the Sautrāntika phrase 「共聚楂掣虛空」 tr. “a crowd gathered to clutch at empty space”, 「楂」 tr. “clutch” reads 「摣」 tr. “zhā, a variant graph” in the Ming witness and 「植」 tr. “zhí, as the Palace witness writes” there. In 「唯法因果實無作用」 tr. “there are only dharmas as cause and result, and in fact no agent function”, 「因」 tr. “cause” reads 「內」 tr. “inner” in the Yuan and Ming witnesses. In the gate of the two eyes, in 「或時二眼俱見」 tr. “sometimes two eyes see together”, 「二」 tr. “two” reads 「一」 tr. “one” in the Song, Yuan, and Ming witnesses. Of the eye faculty’s ultimate atoms, in 「如香荾花清澈映覆」 tr. “like a coriander blossom, clear and covering over”, 「澈」 tr. “clear” reads 「徹」 tr. “chè, a variant graph” in the four witnesses and 「映」 tr. “covering” reads 「膜」 tr. “membrane”—and the reading membrane bears on the explanation by the membrane of the eye—kept for reference. The rest—in 「已說界繫」 tr. “realm affiliation has now been stated” the 「說」 tr. “stated” reading 「設」 tr. “shè, as the Palace witness writes”; in 「義准成故」 tr. “established by extension of principle” the 「准」 tr. “by extension” reading 「唯」 tr. “only”; in 「如見蒲桃」 tr. “as in seeing a grape” the 「桃」 tr. “táo, the plain graph” reading 「萄」 tr. “táo, the fuller graph” in the Ming witness; in 「如名鼓聲及麥牙等」 tr. “as with the names ‘sound of a drum’ and ‘barley sprout’ and the like” the 「牙」 tr. “yá, the plain graph” reading 「芽」 tr. “yá with the grass radical” in the four witnesses—mostly belong to interchangeable graphic forms and bear on no doctrine.

Coordinates of Continuation

Several matters established in this fascicle were carried on by later treatises, and their agreements and differences are recorded together without adjudication.

First, the three kinds of discrimination. The threefold setting up of “first intrinsic discrimination, second conceptual discrimination, third recollective discrimination” was carried on by the later treatises of the Yogācāra lineage, and this is its original Abhidharma coordinate.

Second, the definition of seeing. “What deliberates first and then judges decisively is named seeing”—seeing having deliberation and decisive judgment as its substance, this definition became in later treatises the starting point for the distinction of the perceiving aspect and the mental factor of discernment.

Third, participation. The participation as a class of elements established in this gate (performing or not performing one’s own work), and the later sense of commonality of sentient beings entering the formations not associated with mind, agree and differ in how they are opened out, and await collation when the five positions are fully enumerated in the Chapter on the Faculties.

Fourth, that passage of the Sautrāntika masters. “There are only dharmas as cause and result, and in fact no agent function”—seer and cognizer alike are provisional names established; and since seeing is only a provisional statement upon a continuity of cause and result, what then of the object seen? That is precisely the question the later lineage of treatises went on to press, and the two may be read against each other.

Last, back to those two words. The author wrote it is transmitted into the stanza when he set down a Sarvāstivāda reason; Saṅghabhadra read out of it “the Sūtra-master’s mind cannot accept that reason”; Puguang read out of it “the author inclines toward the view that consciousness sees”; Fabao only divided the text; Yuanhui closed by citing the Sautrāntikas. Four readings stand together, and here it is not adjudicated. The reader need only remember one thing: in the world of Abhidharma, where an adverb of reported doubt is placed is enough to draw forth a whole treatise in opposition.