俱舍論 義疏通講 · 冊2Abhidharmakośabhāṣya · Exposition Throughout · Vol. 2

The Chapter on the Elements has only just finished enumerating the eighteen elements one by one, and Fascicle Three opens with a very small question: “Here, what is the meaning of ‘faculty’?”—what, after all, does the word “faculty” mean?

The character of a treatise often shows itself in just such a place. Vasubandhu does not first say how many faculties there are; he first asks what a faculty is. And the answer runs to only six characters: “supreme, sovereign, manifestly evident—these are called a faculty.” Yuanhui’s Verse Commentary splits those six into three layers, saying that “because the entity of a faculty is excellent it is called supreme, and because the function of a faculty is excellent it is called sovereign”; only when entity and function are both excellent is it manifestly evident. Puguang’s Record splits them grammatically instead, saying that “‘supreme’ and ‘sovereign’ are the verbal base, and ‘manifestly evident’ is the affix”—the base is the root, the affix is the ending, and only joined together do they form the single sense of ‘dominance.’

The word ‘dominance’ is the key to this fascicle. It does not mean ‘important,’ nor even ‘having a function.’ The author of the treatise lays down his own definition: “Dominant function means being supreme and sovereign”—only what holds down and exercises mastery in the matter at hand counts as dominant. Every analysis that follows therefore asks not ‘what kind of thing is this?’ but ‘in this matter, who has the say?’

For this reason the fascicle proceeds by first establishing, then re-establishing, then establishing otherwise, and finally sifting the twenty-two faculties from beginning to end through six doctrinal gates and six miscellaneous analyses. Yuanhui’s Verse Commentary sums up the skeleton of the whole fascicle in five sections—explaining the meaning of faculty, establishing and rejecting faculties, explaining the entities of the faculties, analyzing the several gates, and miscellaneous analysis. The nineteen sections below follow that skeleton.

1. Five Faculties Govern Four Matters, Four Faculties Two, and the Five Feelings and Eight Faculties the Two Sides of Defilement and Purification〔Stanza 1〕

Ask first: on what grounds is the eye faculty called a “faculty”? The answer is not ‘because it can see,’ but four matters: “first, adorning the body; second, guiding and sustaining the body; third, producing consciousness and the rest; fourth, exclusive activity.” Without eyes and ears, “if one is blind or deaf, the body is unsightly,” and the bodily form is maimed; with eyes and ears one can “by seeing and hearing avoid dangers and calamities,” and the body can be sustained; eye and ear give rise to the two consciousnesses of eye and ear, and each separately sees form and hears sound—in all four matters they exercise mastery, and only this is called a faculty. Nose, tongue, and body are the same, save that guiding and sustaining is replaced by the use of food taken in portions.

The female, male, life, and mental faculties each govern two matters. The female and male faculties govern “difference among sentient beings” and “difference in characteristics,” which the author of the treatise explains himself: “Difference among sentient beings means that these two faculties divide sentient beings into female and male classes,” and “difference in characteristics means that through these two faculties, bodily shape, spoken sound, breasts, and the rest differ.” Puguang’s Record makes a cut for us here, saying that “the earlier, difference among sentient beings, is stated in terms of the general characteristic; the later, difference in characteristics, in terms of the particular”—the first speaks of classes, the second of appearances. The life faculty governs the “continuing and sustaining” of the commonality of sentient beings; the mental faculty governs “continuing later existence and sovereign following.” The five feelings beginning with pleasure govern the side of defilement, “because greed and the other latent tendencies increase by attachment to them”; the eight faculties beginning with confidence govern the side of purification, “because the various purifying dharmas arise and grow through them.”

What is most easily read past are the first two words. The stanza opens with “it is transmitted that the five are dominant with respect to four”—“it is transmitted” is not there to fill the line. The prose commentary likewise closes with “so the Vaibhāṣikas transmit it.” The ancient masters read in these two words a distance between the author of the treatise and the account he reports. Fabao’s Commentary judges of the whole, “to say ‘it is transmitted’ is to show that he does not himself credit it,” and beneath the closing sentence of this fascicle marks, “the fourth part concludes what has been said above, which is the Vaibhāṣikas’ position”; he further cites the Treatise Conforming to Correct Principle—“the opening words ‘it is transmitted’ show that he favors the later account”—and settles it thus: “this shows that Master Vasubandhu favors the later account.” What the author of the treatise inwardly assents to is the alternative account stated later, not the Vaibhāṣika line. This reading comes from the Tang commentaries and is not said by the treatise itself. The like will be met several times more below in this fascicle; the first lesson in reading the Kośa is to watch for such usage.

2. On What Grounds the Mental Faculty Can Join On to the Next Life—A Scriptural Proof and a Stanza〔Quoted stanza · Mind can lead the world〕

Ask first: the life faculty governs the continuity of one life-span; what, then, does the mental faculty’s “continuing later existence” govern? The author of the treatise does not argue the point himself but brings in scripture directly: when the intermediate existence becomes present and takes rebirth, “at that time the gandharva has present one of two minds, either accompanied by craving or accompanied by hostility, or the like.” The thought that joins on to the next life is nothing else but mind. As for “sovereign following,” he again brings in scripture, and this time a stanza: “Mind can lead the world; mind can gather in all things everywhere. Such is this single dharma, mind: all dharmas follow it under its sovereignty.”

One misreading must be cleared away here. This stanza is a scriptural verse quoted within the prose commentary as proof; it is not a root stanza of this treatise. The root stanzas of this treatise are those twenty-two five-syllable verses. Whenever the author of the treatise quotes a scriptural verse, he always sets a marker before it, such as “as the sūtra says” or “as a stanza says.” This is the mechanical mark by which root stanza and quoted stanza are told apart; no doctrinal guesswork is needed.

As for how to read it: a treatise whose unit of analysis is the dharma, asked how a sentient being joins from this life to the next, delivers as its answer “this single dharma, mind: all dharmas follow it under its sovereignty.” Among the four faculties the mental faculty is stated last, and yet it carries the most weight. When the Yogācāra tradition later establishes the manas and the ālaya, what it is handling is precisely the gap this sentence leaves: if it is mind that catches later existence, then who catches it between two lives, and within an absorption where mind is absent?

3. Re-establishing the Same Twenty-Two Faculties on a Different Set of Reasons〔Stanzas 2–4〕

Ask first: the four matters and the two matters have just been well set out—why is the account overturned at once? Because certain other masters say that avoiding dangers is the work of consciousness and not of the eye—“only after consciousness has discerned can one avoid danger”—and that seeing form too does not occur apart from consciousness, so that “exclusive activity” will not stand. With two of the four matters gone, the eye and the rest no longer amount to faculties.

So another set is put in their place. The first reason of the new set is “discerning one’s own object means the six bodies of consciousness”—the five faculties beginning with the eye are dominant with respect to the consciousness that discerns each its own object, and the mental faculty with respect to the consciousness that discerns every object; the six faculties are established on this ground. Someone objects at once: form, sound, odor, and flavor also help bring consciousness about—why do they not count as faculties? The author of the treatise answers with great directness: “an object exercises no dominance over consciousness,” and then supplies the criterion—one eye faculty serves as the common cause for the many consciousnesses that discern many forms, and consciousness is sharp or dull according to the eye; the form-object is the reverse on both points. This is the finest demonstration of ‘dominance’ in the whole treatise: the question is not who took part, but who has the say.

The second reason is “setting up two faculties out of the body.” The entities of the female and male faculties are not apart from the body faculty—“this name is merely set up upon one portion of the body”—and it is only because they are dominant with respect to femaleness and maleness that they are cut out of the body faculty. Yuanhui’s Verse Commentary supplies very concrete examples under the words “activity” and “inclinations,” saying of femaleness that “activity means sewing clothes and the like; inclinations means a liking for powder and rouge,” and of maleness that “activity means writing and the like; inclinations means a liking for bow and horse.” What the ancient master offers are the customs of the seventh and eighth centuries; what we read is the criterion behind them—that sex counts as a faculty because it falls across a whole divergence in forms of life, and not upon bodily shape alone.

The third reason takes in the life faculty, the five feelings, the five beginning with confidence, and the last three faculties all together: abiding by the life faculty, defilement by the five feelings, purification by the five beginning with confidence, and each successive path together with nirvāṇa by the three faculties without outflows.

4. Six Measures Gather It All In at Once—Why Ignorance and the Limbs Cannot Count as Faculties〔Stanza 5〕

Ask first: where does the rule ‘whatever is dominant is established as a faculty’ lead? The author of the treatise lays out the difficulty himself: ignorance is dominant with respect to the formations and so should be a faculty; the organ of speech with respect to speaking, hands and feet with respect to grasping and walking, the organs of excretion and of urination with respect to excreting and producing pleasure—all are dominant and so should be faculties. Admit them all, and the very concept of “faculty” rots away.

The author of the treatise answers with one stanza of six measures: “the support of mind means the six faculties beginning with the eye”—that is the first measure; the distinction of that support comes from the female and male faculties; the abiding of this life-span from the life faculty; its becoming defiled from the five feelings; the provision for its purification from the five beginning with confidence; and the accomplishment of that purification from the last three faculties. With the six slots filled, the author of the treatise closes in one sentence: “by this the matter of establishing faculties is fully accounted for.”

Clearing a misreading: these six measures are not six parallel standards but a single line. It asks first what mind stands upon, then what distinguishes that support, how long it can hold, which way it tips, what it turns itself around by, and how far that turn goes. Ignorance is dominant, yet occupies no slot on this line; hands and feet have power, and likewise occupy none. This is why, in answering the objection, the author of the treatise does not refute item by item but says simply that they “are not dominant.” Fabao’s Commentary adds a further cut here, saying that the six internal sense fields are the root of a sentient being and therefore the support of mind, whereas “the six external sense fields are not the root of a sentient being and therefore are not the support of mind.” Once inner and outer are so distinguished, the organ of speech and the limbs drop out of themselves.

Where it lands: this stanza is the definitional gate of the whole fascicle. Everything the later gates sift is only the twenty-two that have already taken their stand within these six slots.

5. And Yet a Third Account—Four Senses Apiece for Cyclic Existence and Return to Cessation〔Stanza 6〕

Ask first: how else might the same twenty-two faculties be arranged? Certain other masters say it can be done. The author of the treatise marks it plainly: “the word ‘or’ shows that this is the intent of other masters, who establish the twenty-two faculties in terms of cyclic existence and return to cessation.” Once the word ‘or’ appears, one knows that what follows is not his own school’s position.

This account uses only four terms: support, arising, abiding, and experience. On the side of cyclic existence: the support is the six faculties beginning with the eye, arising is by the female and male faculties, abiding by the life faculty, and experience by the five feelings—exactly fourteen. On the side of return to cessation the same four senses apply: the support is the five faculties beginning with confidence, and among the three faculties without outflows the first causes arising, the second abiding, and the third experience—exactly eight. Fourteen plus eight, and the author of the treatise closes with a sentence: “by this the number of the faculties is neither diminished nor increased.”

Clearing a misreading: this is not ‘another school’s mistaken view’ set out to be beaten. Not only does the author of the treatise not refute it; he even remarks that “it is on just such grounds that the sūtra lays out the sequence”—the order in which the sūtra arranges the twenty-two faculties fits this account exactly. The Kośa often records alternative accounts in this way: both parties stand side by side, and readers judge for themselves which account better explains the arrangement of the scripture.

Where it lands: the difference between the two arrangements is really a difference between two ways of looking at a sentient being. The first is a static anatomy—mind, support, abiding, defilement, purification; this one is a dynamic journey—arising, abiding, use, and turning about. The same parts; change the question and the diagram changes. Learn this move and it will serve throughout the six causes and four conditions, the chapter on action, and the chapter on latent tendencies.

6. Why Three Feelings Are Opened into Five, and Why the Three Faculties without Outflows Share Nine〔Stanzas 7 and 8〕

Ask first: are feelings not the three—painful, pleasant, and neither painful nor pleasant? How do they become five? The author of the treatise sets his blade at “body” and “mind.” “‘Body’ means bodily feeling, because it arises in dependence on the body, that is, feeling associated with the five consciousnesses.” Bodily displeasure is called the pain faculty—“‘displeasure’ means causing harm and distress”; bodily pleasure is called the pleasure faculty—“‘pleasure’ means embracing and benefiting.” Mental displeasure is set up as a faculty of its own, sorrow: “feeling associated with mental consciousness that causes harm and distress is mental displeasure and is called the sorrow faculty.” Mental pleasure ought to be called joy, but the third meditative absorption is the exception: there is no bodily feeling there, for “in the third absorption there is no bodily feeling, since the five consciousnesses do not arise, and so the mental pleasure is called pleasure,” and that mental pleasure is “settled and still, free of the craving for joy, and so is called only the pleasure faculty,” whereas the mental pleasure of the three lower levels is “coarse and agitated and still has the craving for joy, and so is called only the joy faculty.”

And equanimous feeling? Pain, pleasure, sorrow, and joy have all been divided between body and mind—why is equanimity not divided? The author of the treatise’s reason is starkly plain: “this feeling is without discrimination alike in body and mind.” He adds a piece of experiential evidence—“pain and pleasure in the mind arise mostly from discrimination; in the body it is not so, but follows the force of the object”—and this holds in the body of an arhat as well; equanimity “is without discrimination and arises spontaneously,” being the same in body and in mind, and so is combined into one faculty. Puguang’s Record states the cut still more bluntly, explaining that “this equanimous feeling is without discrimination alike in body and in mind, and therefore is not set up separately.”

This is the move in the fascicle most worth remembering: whether or not a thing is divided depends not on its name but on whether discrimination has entered in.

The second half of the stanza then establishes the three faculties without outflows. The entity is the same nine faculties—mind, pleasure, joy, equanimity, and the five beginning with confidence; what changes is the position. On the path of seeing, “a mode directed toward knowing what has never yet been known operates, and so he is called one who comes to know what is not yet known”; on the path of cultivation there is nothing never yet known, only that “one repeatedly knows those same objects, and so he is called one of what is known”; on the path beyond training, “because one knows that one has known, it is called knowing; one who possesses this knowing is called one of full knowledge.” Puguang’s Record fixes the measure of the path of seeing here, explaining that “‘knowing’ is cognition, that is, the fifteen moments on the path of seeing.”

Clearing a misreading: the three faculties without outflows are not three new things. One and the same set of nine faculties acquires three names because it stands at three different stations on the path—which is the best gloss there is on this fascicle’s sense that a faculty is a position from which mastery is exercised.

7. The Gate of With and Without Outflows—and a Dispute over the Five Faculties Beginning with Confidence〔Stanza 9〕

Ask first: which among the twenty-two faculties are without outflows? Answer: only the last three. The author of the treatise glosses the name in passing—“its entity is exclusively without outflows, meaning stainless; stain and outflow differ in name but are one in substance.” The seven faculties that are form (the five beginning with the eye plus female and male) together with life, sorrow, and pain are invariably with outflows; mind, pleasure, joy, equanimity, and the five beginning with confidence extend to both.

What is interesting is that the phrase ‘extend to both’ provokes a dispute. Certain other masters hold that the five faculties beginning with confidence too are only without outflows, and cite the World-Honored One’s words as proof: one wholly without these five “stands in the class of outer ordinary beings.” The author of the treatise’s rebuttal has two layers. The first: “this is not a reliable proof, for that statement was made with reference to the faculties without outflows”—that scriptural sentence was spoken only after the distinctions of noble station had been established in dependence on the five faculties beginning with confidence that are without outflows. The second layer is finer still: it divides “ordinary being” into two—“‘inner’ means those who have not cut off their wholesome roots; ‘outer’ means those whose wholesome roots are already cut off”—and the scripture speaks of “outer ordinary beings,” which does not cover every worldling. Two further scriptural proofs are added: before the Buddha turned the wheel of Dharma he had already said that sentient beings in the world have faculties superior, middling, and inferior; and if confidence and the rest were without outflows alone, there could be no such examination as “origin, disappearance, gratification, danger, and escape,” which is applied only to dharmas with outflows.

Where it lands: this passage demonstrates the Kośa’s most characteristic mode of work—not a contest over whose school is greater, but a word-by-word test of the scope within which a scriptural sentence applies. On reading the words “certain other masters say,” one should be ready to watch how the author of the treatise takes apart the scripture his opponent has cited.

8. Only the Life Faculty Is Definitely Maturation—and the Incidental Discussion on Prolonging and Relinquishing the Lifespan That Follows from It〔Stanza 10〕

Ask first: which among the twenty-two faculties must have been brought about by past karma? The answer names only one: “only the life faculty is definitely maturation.”

This answer trips over itself at once. An arhat can “prolong many life-formations” and so extend his life; of whose karma is the life faculty thus extended the maturation? The author of the treatise first cites the root treatise for the procedure—giving away robe and bowl, making a vow, entering the fourth limit-stage meditative absorption, and on rising thinking and saying aloud, “whatever karma of mine could bring about the maturation of wealth, may it all be turned to bring about the maturation-result of lifespan,” whereupon the karma that would bring wealth is turned into karma bringing lifespan; relinquishing the life-formations reverses this. He then records Ghoṣa’s explanation: the great elements of the form realm are drawn into the body, and where they accord with the lifespan it is retained, where they run counter it is relinquished. Finally the author of the treatise offers a solution of his own: the portion of duration belonging to the great elements of the faculties produced by past karma is exchanged, and a portion of duration produced by the power of concentration is drawn in instead—“therefore this life faculty is not maturation, while all the rest are maturation.”

The incidental discussion does not end there. Prolonging the lifespan is “for the benefit and ease of others, or so that the noble teaching may long endure in the world”; and those who can do this fall within a strict range—“arhats among the humans of the three continents in a female or male continuum, who are liberated not dependent on circumstance, and who have attained the limit-stage concentration.” Is there a difference between the vital principle and the lifespan? The author of the treatise records three accounts without adjudicating, one of which cites the root treatise directly: “What is the life faculty? Lifespan in the three realms.” Only with the closing sentence—“the incidental discussion is ended; the main discussion should now be taken up”—is the thread drawn back.

Clearing a misreading: this passage should not be read as a tale of marvels. What it really asks is whether a quantity fixed by karma can be rewritten by concentration. The answer the author of the treatise gives is ‘exchange the portion of duration,’ not ‘alter the karma’; the principle of karmic result yields nothing.

9. An Attitude toward Death within a Single Stanza〔Quoted stanza · The holy life has been excellently established〕

Ask first: in what frame of mind is the lifespan relinquished? After saying “or he is oppressed by the suffering of illness and the like in his own body,” the author of the treatise quotes only a single stanza: “The holy life has been excellently established; the noble path has been well cultivated; when the lifespan is exhausted he rejoices, as one who lays down a whole body of illnesses.”

This stanza too is a quoted stanza and not a root stanza, with “as a stanza says” before it as its marker. Of the four lines, the first two are the condition and the last two the result—the holy life established, the noble path cultivated, and only then rejoicing when the lifespan is exhausted. The order must not be reversed into ‘rejoicing because one is weary of the world.’

Where it lands: a treatise that spends itself throughout on counting the marks of dharmas suddenly offers a simile here—laying down a whole body of illness. The twenty-two faculties have reached exactly the section on the life faculty, and the author of the treatise uses an old stanza as a reminder: all these numbers are in the end to come down to how one person faces the exhaustion of his own lifespan. Nowhere else in the fascicle is there a second passage like it, and so it is worth pausing over.

10. The Sorrow Faculty Definitely Has Maturation—and Why It Is Stated Ahead of Its Turn〔Stanza 11〕

Ask first: the preceding gate said the sorrow faculty is not maturation; how does this gate say the sorrow faculty has maturation? The two do not conflict: the first asks whether sorrow is a result, the second asks whether sorrow will bring a result about. This is the pair of gates most easily confused in the whole fascicle; ‘is maturation’ and ‘has maturation’ must be kept apart.

The author of the treatise says sorrow “definitely has maturation,” and explains why the stanza sets down the word ‘definitely’—“the word ‘definitely’ is stated in the stanza on the senses of ‘only’ and ‘out of turn.’” ‘Only’ says that sorrow has nothing but the having-maturation kind, with no share that lacks maturation; ‘out of turn’ says that it is brought forward ahead of its place. Why ahead of its place? Because it possesses two features at once—“sorrow is not indeterminate, for it arises from forceful volition; and it is not without outflows, for it belongs only to the unconcentrated levels.” Being neither indeterminate nor without outflows, only the having-maturation road is left to it.

As for the rest: the first eight beginning with the eye do not have maturation because they are indeterminate; the last three do not because they are without outflows; the mental faculty, the remaining four feelings, and the five beginning with confidence—ten in all—have maturation if wholesome or unwholesome and with outflows, and do not if indeterminate or without outflows.

Where it lands: the two words ‘only’ and ‘out of turn’ are a technique for reading the stanzas. A stanza is twenty syllables in five-syllable lines, and every syllable has a duty; the single word ‘definitely’ marks both exclusivity and displacement in the order. Such density is why these root stanzas are called an astute composition. In reading stanzas hereafter, when a particle looks redundant, first ask what duty it is carrying.

11. The Gate of Wholesome, Unwholesome, and Indeterminate—Three Lines of Text Concealing a Question of Arrangement〔Stanza 12〕

Ask first: how are the qualities of the twenty-two faculties divided? The answer is very short: the eight beginning with confidence are invariably wholesome; the sorrow faculty extends to the wholesome and the unwholesome; the mental faculty and the remaining four feelings extend to all three qualities; the eight beginning with the eye are indeterminate only.

Short as it is, the author of the treatise pauses to explain a small matter of arrangement: “the eight faculties beginning with confidence are invariably wholesome; although they stand later in the enumeration, they are stated first because the discussion carries on from what precedes.” The eight beginning with confidence stand last in the sequence of the twenty-two faculties, yet the stanza puts them in its first line. The reason is that the discussion “carries on from what precedes”: the prose of the previous gate ended precisely on whether the five beginning with confidence have maturation, and Puguang’s Record explains this as “taking advantage of the momentum of the immediately preceding passage on the five beginning with confidence”—the thread runs on with that momentum, and so these eight are taken up first.

Clearing a misreading: the sorrow faculty “extends only to the wholesome and the unwholesome”—it does not extend to the indeterminate. This tallies exactly with the previous gate’s “not indeterminate, for it arises from forceful volition”; the two gates are locked together and are not each speaking on its own.

Where it lands: the order of a treatise’s stanzas sometimes obeys the natural sequence of the numbered dharmas and sometimes the continuity of the surrounding discussion. A reader who infers the sequence of the numbered dharmas from the order of the stanzas will be misled. This also explains why all three commentaries set out the outline before explaining the text—the outline exists precisely to forestall such a dislocation.

12. The Gate of the Three Realms—Why the Form Realm Has No Female or Male Faculty〔Stanza 13〕

Ask first: how are the twenty-two faculties distributed among the three realms? The answer works by subtraction. The desire realm excludes the last three without outflows, “because those three faculties are unbound to any realm,” leaving nineteen; the form realm further excludes female, male, sorrow, and pain, leaving fifteen; the formless realm further excludes the five faculties that are form together with joy and pleasure, leaving eight—mind, life, equanimity, and the five beginning with confidence.

Beyond the subtraction, the author of the treatise gives a reason in each case. The form realm excludes female and male because “the form realm is already free of the dharmas of sexual desire, and because female and male faculties make the bodily form unsightly.” Someone at once asks: then why does scripture call the Great Brahmā male? The author of the treatise brings in scripture: “there is no principle and no possibility that a female body should be Brahmā; there is such a principle and such a possibility that a male body should be Brahmā”; and his reconciliation is that this refers to another kind of male appearance, namely the features possessed by a male body in the desire realm, and not that the form realm actually has a male faculty. There is no pain faculty because “the body there is pure and subtle, and because there are no unwholesome dharmas there”—one clause says there is no support for pain, the other that there is no object of pain; there is no sorrow faculty because “calm abiding moistens the continuum, and because there is definitely nothing there that harms or injures”—again support and object on both sides.

Clearing a misreading: this gate is the liveliest place in the fascicle for textual collation. The first line of this stanza reads 「界」 tr. “realm” in the Taishō base text but 「繫」 tr. “bound” in the Ming edition; the fourth line reads 「并除色喜樂」 tr. “and excludes form, joy, and pleasure” in the base text, whereas the same line as cited by the ancient masters mostly reads 「并餘」 tr. “and the remaining.” The variant readings stand side by side, and the choice is not made in this place (see Further Resonances). The reader need only know that the letter of the stanza does differ among the transmitted editions, and that the doctrine of this gate—the faculties reduced realm by realm—is not overturned by that difference.

13. The Gate of Abandonment through Seeing and through Cultivation—Why the Last Three Faculties Are Not Even Subject to Abandonment〔Stanza 14〕

Ask first: when the afflictions are abandoned, are the twenty-two faculties abandoned along with them? There are three routes. Mind, joy, pleasure, and equanimity each extend to all three—abandoned through seeing, abandoned through cultivation, and not subject to abandonment. The sorrow faculty “extends only to what is abandoned through seeing and through cultivation, because it is not without outflows.” The seven faculties that are form, the life faculty, and the pain faculty are “abandoned through cultivation only, because they are not defiled, are not produced by the six, and are all with outflows”—three reasons closing in one upon another: not being defiled, they do not fall to abandonment through seeing; not being produced by the six kinds of affliction, they do not follow the afflictions of view; but being with outflows after all, they must still be dealt with in cultivation. The five faculties beginning with confidence are either abandoned through cultivation or not subject to abandonment, according as they are with or without outflows. The last three faculties are “not subject to abandonment only, because all are without outflows.”

Clearing a misreading: “not subject to abandonment” does not mean ‘cannot be abandoned’; it means ‘not among the things to be abandoned.’ The reason the author of the treatise gives is that a dharma without fault is not something to be abandoned. Read “not subject to abandonment” as a stubborn affliction and the whole gate turns upside down.

Where it lands: this gate is the joint by which the twenty-two faculties are attached to the theory of the path. When the chapter on the noble persons later expounds the fifteen minds of the path of seeing and the nine grades of the path of cultivation, the faculties it uses are exactly those sifted here; vagueness at this point makes that passage unreadable. Here the six doctrinal gates have all been sifted, and the author of the treatise closes with the sentence “the distinctions of meaning under the several gates have now been explained.”

14. At the Moment of Taking Birth, How Many Faculties Are First Received〔Stanza 15〕

Ask first: when a sentient being has just taken birth, how many faculties on its body are maturation? Answer: birth from the womb, from an egg, and from moisture in the desire realm “obtain only the two maturation faculties of body and life, because in these three modes of birth the faculties arise gradually”—eye, ear, nose, and tongue grow only later.

Someone presses at once: and the mental faculty and the equanimity faculty? Is mind not present at the moment of taking birth? The author of the treatise answers, “the mind at the moment of continuing into birth is necessarily defiled”—that thought is defiled, and a defiled mind is not maturation, so it is not counted among the maturation faculties. This answer is the easiest to overlook and yet is the pivot of the whole gate: what is asked concerns “maturation faculties,” not ‘whether they are there at all.’

Birth by transformation is different: at birth the faculties are complete. One without sexual form obtains six (eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and life), as with the humans at the beginning of an aeon; one with a single sexual form obtains seven, as with the gods; one with both obtains eight. Someone doubts that birth by transformation could come with both sexes at all, and the author of the treatise answers with a single sentence: “within the bad destinies birth by transformation with both sexes is admitted”—confining it precisely to the bad destinies. The form realm obtains six, as was said for one without sexual form born by transformation in the desire realm; the formless realm obtains the life faculty alone.

Where it lands: this gate presses the abstract twenty-two faculties down upon the most concrete of moments—the instant of taking birth. When the chapter on the world later expounds the intermediate existence entering the womb, and the chapter on action the projecting and completing karma, this same slot is what they use.

15. At the Moment of Dying, How Many Faculties Are Last Laid Down〔Stanza 16〕

Ask first: how do the faculties cease at death? In the formless realm three—life, mind, and equanimity cease last; in the form realm eight—those three plus the five beginning with the eye, because “all who are born by transformation are born and die with their faculties complete”; in the desire realm it depends on the manner of dying. For those who die all at once: one of both sexes ceases with ten faculties, one of a single sex with nine, one without sexual form with eight. For those who die gradually, only four are laid down last—body, life, mind, and equanimity, and “these four have definitely no principle of ceasing one before another”; they must cease together.

There is a further correction. All the above is stated for those who die with a defiled or an indeterminate mind; “if one dies with a wholesome mind in the three realms, the five faculties beginning with confidence are necessarily all present,” and so five must be added to every slot: the formless realm rises to eight, gradual death in the desire realm rises to nine, and the counts between follow by the same reasoning.

Puguang’s Record unpacks one word for us here, explaining that “‘cease’ means to relinquish: at the final moment of death the entity is present, and because it falls into the past and no longer appears it is called relinquishing”—what is called ceasing is not a vanishing into nothing but the present entity falling into the past and appearing no more.

Clearing a misreading: this gate and the preceding one look symmetrical, but their terms of reference differ—the gate of taking birth asks only about maturation faculties, while the gate of dying extends to all three ethical qualities. Hence mind and equanimity are not counted at birth but are counted at death. Read the two gates together without distinguishing the terms of reference and the numbers will never agree.

16. How Many Faculties Are Used in Realizing Each of the Four Fruits〔Stanza 17〕

Ask first: by how many faculties is each of the four fruits of the ascetic life attained? The author of the treatise first explains ‘edge’ and ‘middle’ in the stanza—“‘edges’ means the fruits of stream-entry and arhatship, because among the fruits of the ascetic life they stand first and last”—while ‘middle’ means once-return and non-return. Stream-entry is attained by nine faculties: mind, equanimity, the five beginning with confidence, coming to know what is not yet known, and what is known. The crux lies in the division of labor between the last two—the faculty of coming to know what is not yet known is on the uninterrupted path, the faculty of what is known on the path of liberation, and “these two aid one another in attaining the first fruit.” Arhatship likewise takes nine, with the faculty of what is known on the uninterrupted path and the faculty of full knowledge on the path of liberation, and any one of joy, pleasure, and equanimity. The two middle fruits are indefinite at seven, eight, or nine: seven by the mundane path, eight by the supramundane path, and nine for one who realizes them by leaping over.

At the end of this gate there is a pressing question put to the root treatise: the Treatise on the Development of Wisdom asks by how many faculties arhatship is attained and answers eleven—why is nine said here? The author of the treatise’s reconciliation is that “in actual fact the fourth fruit is attained by nine faculties only,” and that the root treatise says eleven “with reference to what may be present within a single body”—that is, one and the same person falls away and realizes again and again, using pleasure, joy, and equanimity over the course of it, so that eleven are counted in all; whereas “there is no principle by which three feelings arise at one time, and so it is said here that it is definitely attained by nine faculties.”

Where it lands: this is the one place in the fascicle where the author of the treatise squares accounts face to face with the root Abhidharma, and his solution is not to alter the root treatise’s number but to distinguish two terms of reference, ‘at one time’ and ‘within one body.’ When numbers clash in reading Abhidharma, check the terms of reference before arguing about right and wrong.

17. Possess One Faculty and Certain Others Must Follow〔Stanzas 18–20〕

Ask first: from possessing one faculty, which faculties can be inferred? The author of the treatise supplies a base plate: “whoever possesses any one among life, mind, and equanimity necessarily possesses these three faculties”—these three come and go together and none may be lacking. Fabao’s Commentary explains this as “these three are necessarily possessed in every place, time, station, and the like.” With the base plate laid, the rest is easy to reckon: possessing the pleasure faculty or the body faculty adds one, making four; possessing eye, ear, nose, tongue, or joy makes five; possessing pain makes seven (body, life, mind, and the four feelings apart from sorrow); possessing female, male, sorrow, or confidence and the rest makes eight in each case; possessing what is known or full knowledge makes eleven; possessing the faculty of coming to know what is not yet known makes thirteen—the extra body and pain being because that faculty is necessarily in the desire realm.

The author of the treatise at the same time clears out the conditions of ‘not possessing’: the four faculties of eye, ear, nose, and tongue are not possessed by one born in the formless realm; the body faculty is not possessed by one born in the formless realm; female and male are not possessed by one born in the two upper realms; the pleasure faculty is not possessed by an ordinary being born in the fourth absorption or above; the joy faculty is not possessed by an ordinary being born in the third or fourth absorption or above; the pain faculty is not possessed by one born in the two upper realms; the sorrow faculty is not possessed by anyone free of the craving of desire; the five beginning with confidence are not possessed by one whose wholesome roots are cut off; and each of the three faculties without outflows has its own station of non-possession.

Clearing a misreading: this gate is not a table to be memorized. What it asks is the relation of entailment among the faculties—which are the base plate and which the additions. Once it is seen that the base plate is life, mind, and equanimity, the whole table grows of itself.

18. How Few Can the Faculties Become〔Stanza 21〕

Ask first: what is the fewest number of faculties a sentient being can retain? Answer: eight. Two kinds of person come to exactly eight, and their contents are wholly different. One is the person “whose wholesome roots are already cut off and who is called without wholesome roots”; his eight are the five feelings plus body, life, and mind, and the author of the treatise glosses the word ‘feeling’ in passing—“‘feeling’ means what receives, because it takes in.” The other is the ordinary being who is “a fool born in the formless realm”; his eight are the five beginning with confidence plus life, mind, and equanimity, and the author of the treatise glosses the word ‘fool’—“‘fool’ designates an ordinary being, because he has not yet seen the truths.”

Someone asks: if the five beginning with confidence are invariably wholesome, are not the three faculties without outflows wholesome too—why are they not counted in? The author of the treatise answers with the utmost brevity: the statement here is made with reference to ‘eight faculties,’ and what is spoken of is a fool born in the formless realm—an ordinary being has no faculty without outflows.

Clearing a misreading: both are eight, but one is a person of the desire realm whose wholesome roots are cut off, body and feeling intact and wholesome roots wholly gone; the other is an ordinary being of the formless realm, wholesome roots intact and body and feeling wholly absent. The number is the same and the situations are opposite. Remember only the three words “fewest is eight,” and this gate has been read for nothing.

Where it lands: this section is in fact the fascicle’s best demonstration that numbered dharmas are not a list but a set of coordinates. One and the same number, falling in a different realm and a different quality, points to two entirely different persons.

19. How Many the Faculties Can Become at Most, and Why a Noble One Instead Cannot Be Full〔Stanza 22〕

Ask first: who possesses the most faculties? Answer: nineteen. A person of both sexes has all the faculties beginning with the eye complete; excluding the three without outflows, exactly nineteen. The author of the treatise explains why what is without outflows is called pure—“without outflows is called pure because it is free of the two bonds”—and concludes that “a person of both sexes is necessarily an ordinary being of the desire realm, not yet free of the craving of desire, and so has nineteen.”

Is that the only kind? There is another: a noble one still in training who is not yet free of desire also has nineteen—what he excludes is two faculties without outflows and one sexual form. One abiding on the path of seeing excludes what is known and full knowledge; one abiding on the path of cultivation excludes coming to know what is not yet known and full knowledge. One of the two faculties female and male is excluded, “because no noble one is of both sexes.”

Clearing a misreading: the two nineteens come by exactly opposite roads. The person of both sexes reaches nineteen because he is still a worldling and still carries both sexes; the noble one has only nineteen because he is necessarily not of both sexes and because only one of the three faculties without outflows is possessed at a time. More faculties does not mean a higher station—this fascicle settles the point with a single number.

Where it lands: here the fascicle lays down its brush—“because the distinction between faculties and non-faculties arose in analyzing the elements, the twenty-two faculties have on that occasion been extensively analyzed to their conclusion.” From the opening question “what does faculty mean?” to the closing question of who can possess the most, it has walked through six doctrinal gates and six miscellaneous analyses. Twenty-two names measure one and the same thing: within this bundle of continuity that is a sentient being, where is mastery exercised?

What a Reader of This Fascicle May Carry Away

First, take ‘dominance’ as a measuring rod. It does not ask who was present, only who has the say. It will serve all the way through the enabling cause among the six causes and four conditions, and through the projecting and completing karma of the chapter on action.

Second, attend to the temperature of the author’s wording. “It is transmitted,” “some say,” “certain other masters say,” “so the Vaibhāṣikas transmit it”—these are not stock phrases; the Tang commentaries read them with one voice as Vasubandhu marking his distance from the account he reports (Fabao’s Commentary: “to say ‘it is transmitted’ is to show that he does not himself credit it”).

Third, keep the terms of reference of adjacent gates apart. Is maturation and has maturation; taking birth and dying; at one time and within one body—three pairs of gates in this fascicle yield opposite numbers because their terms of reference differ, and most stumbles in reading Abhidharma happen just here.

Further Resonances: A Mirror of the Three Commentaries

The above is the sense of this fascicle in itself. What follows illuminates it from the side with the ancient masters’ commentaries, the alternative translation, and the debate within the lineage—a mirror is not the treatise, only a change of reading upon the same passage. What is peculiar to this fascicle is that among the four commentaries, Shentai’s falls away precisely at Fascicle Three: the surviving table of contents of Shentai’s commentary lists fascicles one, two, four, five, six, seven, and seventeen, and fascicle three is not among them, so that for this fascicle there is no Shentai commentary to attach. The absence is marked here as it stands, and is not filled out from his other fascicles.

The three commentaries divide the outline differently. Puguang divides the Chapter on the Faculties into three major sections—the twenty-two faculties, the dharmas that co-arise, and the six causes and four conditions; Fabao sets his sections by stanza count, saying that “this chapter has seventy-four stanzas in all, divided into three sections,” of which the first twenty-two stanzas directly analyze the faculties. Yuanhui, under the chapter title, first sets up the sequence of entity and function, saying that “the Chapter on the Elements explains the entities of dharmas and the Chapter on the Faculties their functions; because function arises in dependence on entity, the faculties are explained next.” All three take the beginning of Fascicle Four as the start of the chapter’s second major division, so that this fascicle falls exactly within the first.

On whose the alternative account is, the three differ. Whose position is that passage at Stanzas 2–4? Puguang marks it “from here, second, the alternative masters are set forth; certain masters who hold that consciousness sees speak thus,” attaching it to the line that maintains consciousness as what sees; Fabao attaches it plainly to schools, saying that “the first stanza states the Vaibhāṣika masters’ establishment, the next three stanzas state the Dharmaguptaka establishment,” and cites Paramārtha’s account as Sautrāntika; Yuanhui merely says that alternative accounts are being set forth, without attaching them to anyone. All three are recorded together, without adjudication.

On the alternative school that holds the five faculties beginning with confidence to be without outflows only, Puguang and Fabao name the same party, Fabao marking it “this sets forth the Mahīśāsaka position,” while Puguang further gives their other name as the Vibhajyavādins. Fabao also adds a supplementary qualification to the treatise’s explanation under the gate of with and without outflows, saying that “examined closely, this explanation is not exhaustive: nonmanifest form that is without outflows is also included in the aggregate of form, since it is without outflows.” This is an ancient master’s opinion on the completeness of the treatise’s statement, not something the treatise itself says.

In the passage on prolonging and relinquishing the life-formations, the three differ most widely in fullness. Puguang and Fabao both expound it at length, Puguang marking Ghoṣa’s account “this is the first master’s incorrect position” and offering two solutions to bring it into accord with the school; Yuanhui omits the entire incidental discussion between the gate of maturation and the gate of having maturation. Such a difference in fullness is itself a fact worth reading.

Saṅghabhadra’s debate has the same boundaries as this fascicle. The first part of the Chapter on Differences in Fascicle Nine of the Treatise Conforming to Correct Principle opens, as the Kośa does, with the faculties already enumerated by reason of the elements, and its closing stanza likewise stops at “most is nineteen,” after which it enters the dharmas that co-arise—beginning and ending with this fascicle. Where Saṅghabhadra establishes positively, what he holds agrees with what the Kośa takes over, as with the basis for explaining the name faculty, “this sense of dominance is made evident by the sense of the verbal base,” which both Puguang and Fabao cite; and again with the sense of return to cessation, “the stilling of birth and death is the sense of return to cessation, that is, the final cessation of the six sense fields.” As for his counter-refutations, within the scope of this fascicle the Sūtra-master is expressly named in four places: on the objection to the extension of “likewise so,” “again, the Sūtra-master explains the words ‘likewise so’ as showing by extension that each can severally be a faculty, which too is unreasonable”; on the objection to the alternative sense of “and the rest,” “the Sūtra-master further explains ‘and the rest’ as showing that there is another sense; what other sense?”; on the objection that the life faculty is not maturation, “yet the Sūtra-master says that by the power of superior concentration one draws out a portion of duration of great elements of the faculties never had before, so that this life faculty is not maturation while the rest are maturation—this statement is unreasonable”; and on sorrow not being maturation he establishes positively, “on what ground is it definitely held that sorrow is not maturation? Because holding this to be maturation is unreasonable.” Again, as to why the form realm has no female or male, Saṅghabhadra does not take the account of the unsightly body, saying that “some say it is because the body is thereby unsightly; this is not so, for the hidden organ is concealed and not unsightly, and the earlier account is better,” while he explains Brahmā’s being male as “because, being free of desire, his majesty resembles the function of a male.” Both parties’ accounts have their reasons; here they stand side by side, with no verdict on who prevails.

Two places where the stanza text differs. First, the opening line of Stanza 1 in the Kośa reads “it is transmitted that the five are dominant with respect to four,” and the Treatise Conforming to Correct Principle cites the stanza with the same opening—“it is transmitted that the five are dominant with respect to four; four faculties with respect to two kinds; the five and the eight, in defilement and purification, are each severally dominant”—whereas the Treatise Revealing the Doctrine, composed by Saṅghabhadra himself, reads “the five faculties with respect to four matters; four faculties with respect to two kinds; the five and the eight, in defilement and purification, are each severally dominant”—the first line differing while the other three agree. Second, in the stanza of the gate of realm affiliation, the fourth line of the base text reads 「并除色喜樂」 tr. “and excludes form, joy, and pleasure,” whereas the Treatise Conforming to Correct Principle〔reading 「欲色無色界，如次除後三，兼女男憂苦，并餘色喜樂」 tr. “the desire, form, and formless realms, excluding in order the last three, together with female, male, sorrow, and pain, and the remaining form, joy, and pleasure”〕, the Treatise Revealing the Doctrine with the same wording, the text recorded by Yuanhui〔reading 「兼女男憂苦，並餘色喜樂」 tr. “together with female, male, sorrow, and pain, and the remaining form, joy, and pleasure”〕, and the lemma drawn by Puguang〔reading 「如是已說至并餘色喜樂」 tr. “thus has been said … down to ‘and the remaining form, joy, and pleasure’”〕—all four read “remaining” and not “excludes.” Both places are textual facts, recorded without pressing their significance; the choice belongs to the translator.

The mirror of Paramārtha’s older translation. Paramārtha’s version divides its fascicles at the same boundary as Xuanzang’s, but the format differs greatly—Xuanzang sets out the whole stanza first, while Paramārtha embeds the explanation line by line. Where the name faculty is explained, Paramārtha divides it into two layers, reading “the twenty-two faculties having been stated: what is the sense of faculty? Its sense is supreme and sovereign,” and bringing out the sense of illumination and adornment separately below. In the stanza quoted for the mental faculty, Paramārtha reads “thought draws the world along; thought turns it and makes it change; this single dharma, the mental faculty—all dharmas follow it,” the second line showing something other than Xuanzang’s gathering in everywhere. For the other masters’ alternative account, Paramārtha states its sectarian character more openly, reading “the word ‘again’ is to show the several schools’ distinct positions; another school says: the support of birth and death is the six faculties.” On combining the equanimity faculty, Paramārtha adds a layer of intrinsic nature, reading “as for equanimous feeling: if a person does not discriminate, it arises from its own nature, whether on the ground of body or of mind, and so the two are combined into one faculty.” For the names of the three faculties without outflows, Paramārtha reads “on the path of seeing it is called the faculty of desiring to know what is not yet known; on the path of cultivation, the faculty of knowing; on the path beyond training, the faculty of having known.” Explaining the name ‘without outflows,’ Paramārtha reads “without flow means stainless, because stain is another name for flow.” For the name of Ghoṣa, which Xuanzang renders by sense, Paramārtha keeps the transcription, reading “the Bhadanta Qusha says.” For the stanza on relinquishing the lifespan, Paramārtha reads “the holy life is brought to its end; the noble path has been well cultivated; through relinquishing life he rejoices, as a sick man who is cured.” No verdict is passed on the merits of the two translations; the choice belongs to the translator.

One cross-reading of translated terms. The first of the three faculties without outflows is in this treatise the faculty of coming to know what is not yet known, and in Paramārtha the faculty of desiring to know what is not yet known; and the first of the three faculties set out in the Yogācārabhūmi likewise reads the faculty of desiring to know what is not yet known. The same translation bureau under Xuanzang, and yet a difference in wording: this is recorded only, and no conclusion is drawn.

Each mirror set beside the others, each returned to its own place.

Opening this fascicle, Vasubandhu neither establishes his own position nor refutes another’s; he asks a single question:

“It should now be pondered whether, since all conditioned dharmas differ in their characteristics and therefore differ severally in their arising, there are any dharmas that must arise together—there are dharmas that definitely arise together.”

That conditioned dharmas differ in characteristic and differ in arising is common sense. Being severally different, they ought not to be bound together; so then, are there dharmas that cannot but arise together? The answer comes very fast: there are. And with the answer the skeleton of the whole treatise comes out with it—“all dharmas fall in brief into five classes: first form, second mind, third mental factors, fourth formations not associated with mind, fifth the unconditioned.”

The establishing of the five classes is the framework of what later ages call the seventy-five dharmas. The unconditioned does not arise, and so is not treated in this fascicle; of the remaining four, each is asked in turn, ‘how do you arise together?’ Puguang marks this passage as the chapter’s second major section, saying that it is “analyzing function in terms of co-arising”—the preceding Chapter on the Elements stated all dharmas in terms of entity, and here they are stated in terms of function. The same body of dharmas, looked at once again from another angle.

The nineteen doctrinal nodes below are the whole content of that second look.

1. Even the Smallest Particle of Matter Is Not a Single Thing

Ask first: how many things at least does the smallest piece of matter in the world require in order to stand?

The treatise answers: “when the aggregation of form reaches its finest, the name minute aggregate is established for it, to show that there is nothing finer than this. In the desire realm, having neither sound nor faculty, eight entities arise together and not one may be lacking.” The eight entities are the four great elements—earth, water, fire, and wind—together with four kinds of derived form: color, odor, flavor, and the tangible. If the aggregate contains the body faculty it is nine entities; if it contains one of the eye, ear, nose, or tongue it is ten (an aggregate containing the eye faculty must contain the body faculty as well, hence nine plus one). If sound is present, one more is added to each, making nine, ten, or eleven.

What is most easily misread are the two words “minute aggregate.” It is not “ultimate atom.” Puguang distinguishes this very sharply: “it should be known that ‘minute’ is of two kinds: first, the minute that is an aggregate of form, namely the least possible eight entities arising together, which cannot be reduced—this treatise speaks on that basis; second, the minute that is an ultimate atom, namely the least possible form, which cannot be divided further—the Treatise Conforming to Correct Principle speaks on that basis.” What this treatise speaks of is the smallest aggregate, not the smallest particle; and so Puguang also says, “a minute aggregate is provisional, and what is provisional must rest on what is real”—beneath this name there are eight real dharmas from the start. Yuanhui brings out the word “desire” as well: “‘desire’ means the desire realm; ‘minute’ has the sense of fine and does not mean the ultimate atom.”

A second point easily mistaken: if the four great elements are inseparable, why does touching gold give only hardness, and touching water only wetness? The treatise’s reply is not that ‘the other three are absent,’ but that “in that aggregate the one whose force predominates is clearly perceptible, while the entities of the others are not absent”—and it offers two everyday similes: a needle-point bound together with a bamboo tally, where only the needle is felt; salt mixed with flour, where only the saltiness is tasted. Whether a thing shows is a matter of force; whether it is there is a matter of entity, and the two must not be run together. Pressed a step further—‘how is it known that the other three are really there?’—the treatise answers, “because there are the operations of gathering, ripening, increasing, and sustaining”: water gathers, fire ripens, wind increases, earth upholds; all four operations are still at work, and so all four elements are present.

As to how this is to be read: this section sets the key of the whole fascicle. It first demonstrates upon matter that ‘no dharma arises alone,’ so that the later “necessarily together” of mind is not a new doctrine but the same line of reasoning carried up to mind. And the last question is especially worth savoring—is “entity” said with reference to substance or to sense field? The treatise answers that it is in one part with reference to substance and in one part to sense field, and then closes off the dispute itself: “what need is there for such distinguishing talk? Speech arises as one pleases; it is the sense that should be pondered.” The number attaching to a term may be argued over; the doctrine does not rest on the number.

2. Mind and Mental Factors: Lacking One, None Arises

Ask first: within a single thought, does mind arise first and then bring feeling, perception, and volition along with it, or do they light up together?

The treatise answers: “mind and mental factors necessarily arise together; should any one be lacking, the rest do not arise.” There is no before and after. The stanza’s second half, “formations, marks, and some with acquisition,” speaks of two further matters: when all conditioned formations arise they necessarily arise together with the four marks of arising, abiding, change, and cessation; and among the formations “only dharmas of a sentient being arise together with acquisition,” dharmas of what is insentient being otherwise—which is why only “some” can be said.

There is a mechanism here for reading stanzas. The five characters “formations, marks, and some with acquisition” look like three coordinate terms, but they are not. Yuanhui breaks it open: “the two words ‘necessarily together’ in the preceding line flow down to this, and it should read ‘formations and marks necessarily together.’” That is, the “necessarily together” of the previous line is to be read straight through—formations and the four marks are necessarily together, while formations and acquisition are only sometimes together. The word “some” is not vagueness but a discrimination: a stone too is a formation, and a stone has no acquisition.

Where does this land? In its cancelling of a very natural picture—that there is a subject called “mind” standing there first and then producing various mental activities. The treatise says there is no such thing: mind as sovereign and the mental factors are lamps in one cluster lit at the same moment, and pull out any one of them and the whole cluster goes dark. Everything later in the fascicle—the counting of mental factors, the analysis of their classes—is built on this sentence; if mental factors could exist apart from mind, or mind arise apart from mental factors, those numbers would mean nothing at all.

3. Why Mental Factors Fall into Five Classes—“Ground” Is a Word of Scope

Ask first: mental factors are dozens in number; why exactly five classes, and on what basis?

The treatise answers: “the dharmas that are mental factors fall provisionally into five classes. Which five? First, the factors of the great ground; second, the factors of the great wholesome ground; third, the factors of the great defiled ground; fourth, the factors of the great unwholesome ground; fifth, the factors of the small defiled ground.” And the pivot of the division lies in the single word “ground”: “ground means the place of activity; if this dharma is the place in which that dharma is active, this dharma is said to be the ground of that.”

What is most easily misunderstood are the two words “great ground.” It does not mean a vast expanse; it refers to mind as sovereign. Puguang separates three layers very finely—“great” alone refers to feeling and the other ten dharmas; “great ground” refers to mind as sovereign; “factors of the great ground” returns again to feeling and the other ten. So “factors of the great ground” means: those dharmas that appear upon ‘the ground in which the great dharmas are active.’ In the same way the great wholesome ground is the wholesome mind, the great defiled ground the defiled mind, the great unwholesome ground the unwholesome mind, and the small defiled ground a small portion of defiled minds.

A second point easily mistaken: the five classes are not a ranking of value nor a sorting into good and bad. They are divided by scope of appearance. Puguang has a very important sentence here: “following this treatise now, the factors of the great ground and the rest are established and rejected each by a single sense. This is the treatise’s own capacity, and is not a matter of anyone’s interpretation.” The masters of old divided the five classes by five senses, by eight, by nine (Shentai’s commentary records all these numbers of the old masters); this treatise uses one sense only—pervading or not pervading, exclusively or not exclusively—and with that the five classes are cleanly divided.

Where it lands: this is a methodology for a psychology of classification. It does not ask ‘is this mental factor good?’ but only ‘over how wide a scope does it appear?’ Once this layer is grasped, every “only” and every “pervading” in the five sections below stops being rhetoric and becomes a criterion.

4. The Ten Factors of the Great Ground—The Ten Faces Present in Every Thought

Ask first: which mental factors are indispensable to every mind, in every moment?

The treatise lists ten dharmas: “feeling is the three kinds of reception: painful, pleasant, and neither”; “perception is the taking up of the distinguishing characteristics of an object”; “volition is what causes mind to fabricate”; “contact arises from the coming together of faculty, object, and consciousness, and is able to make touch”; “desire is seeking after the work to be done”; “discernment is the ability to select among dharmas”; “mindfulness is holding the object clearly in mind without losing it”; “attention is what causes mind to be alert”; “resolve is the ability to endorse an object”; “concentration is mind’s being one-pointed upon a single object.”

There are four places in this section where a reader most easily goes astray. First, before listing the ten dharmas the treatise sets down two characters: “it is transmitted that the ten dharmas listed are present together and pervasively in every moment of mind.” The single word “transmitted” is read by the ancient masters with one voice as marking the author’s distance from the account he reports: Puguang judges outright in this very passage that “the Vaibhāṣikas transmit thus: the ten dharmas listed …” and that “the author of the treatise inclines to the Sautrāntikas and does not credit that all ten dharmas have separate entities, and therefore says ‘it is transmitted’”; Fabao likewise says, “it means that he is transmitting the Vaibhāṣika masters’ account, and therefore says ‘it is transmitted.’” This reading comes from the Tang commentaries and is not said by the treatise itself; in reading the Kośa one must stay alert to such wording. Second, “discernment” is not wisdom in the moral sense but merely selecting—which is why it can be present in one mind together with “doubt”: it is precisely because reckoning is made on both sides of a hesitation that the hesitation is what it is. Third, “concentration” is not the same as entering an absorption; Yuanhui explains it as “concentration, here rendered ‘even holding,’ evenly holds mind as it turns upon a single object, and holds the mental factors too, being named from what is strongest, namely mind”—it is present even in a scattered mind, only weakly. Fourth, the ten dharmas are not ten steps but ten aspects of one and the same moment; the treatise itself has forestalled this misreading: “the characteristics of mind and mental factors are subtle: it is hard enough to distinguish them one by one as they succeed one another, still more so those simultaneously present within one moment.”

Where it lands: these ten names give you a set of tools for taking your own mind apart. Take any present thought and you may ask: what does this thought receive—pain, pleasure, or neither (feeling)? What characteristic has it taken up (perception)? Where is mind being pushed (volition)? What has it met (contact)? What does it want (desire)? What is it distinguishing (discernment)? What is it holding in mind (mindfulness)? By what was it roused (attention)? What has it settled upon (resolve)? On which object does mind rest (concentration)?—ask the ten questions through and the thought lies open.

5. The Ten Factors of the Great Wholesome Ground—Ten Indicators of a Wholesome Mind

Ask first: on what grounds does a mind count as a wholesome mind?

The treatise answers: ten dharmas alone both ‘pervade wholesome minds and belong to wholesome minds alone’—confidence, heedfulness, pliancy, equanimity, conscience, shame, non-greed, non-hatred, non-harming, and diligence. One by one: “confidence is what makes mind clear and settled,” or else it is “the immediate acceptance and endorsement of the truths, the jewels, and karma and its results”; heedfulness is “the cultivating of wholesome dharmas and the keeping apart from unwholesome dharmas,” and what is called cultivating is “the unwavering focus upon what is wholesome”; pliancy is “mind’s workability”; equanimity is “mind’s evenness, its being without alertness”; non-greed and non-hatred are called the two roots; non-harming is “the absence of harm and distress”; diligence has for its nature “the making of mind vigorous.”

Confidence is most easily read as ‘believing in some object.’ The first sense the treatise gives is not an object but a state—making mind clear and settled. Yuanhui offers a very good simile for it: “confidence is clarifying; as a water-clearing gem can clear turbid water, so the gem of confidence in mind makes mind clear and settled.” Puguang cites the same simile more fully from the Entrance into Abhidharma: “as a water-clearing gem placed in a pool makes all the turbid and foul water at once clear, so the gem of confidence within the pool of mind at once expels all mind’s turbidity and foulness.”—Confidence is that gem, not one of the things floating in the pool.

A second point easily mistaken: “equanimity” is not indifference and not coldness but mind’s evenness; and that it should be present in one mind together with “attention” (which has alertness) the treatise itself finds hard, and so sets out a question and answer expressly: “how can it be said that within one mind there is alertness and the absence of alertness? For attention and equanimity arise in association.” The reply is “this one has alertness, upon that one there is none; the two being thus quite distinct, what conflict can there be?”—alertness belongs to attention, non-alertness to equanimity, each upon its own entity, not contending upon one and the same entity.

A third point easily mistaken: the missing third wholesome root, non-delusion, is absent not because non-delusion is not a wholesome root. The treatise says so plainly: “the wholesome root non-delusion has discernment for its nature, and so has already been stated above among the factors of the great ground and is not stated a second time as a factor of the great wholesome ground.” Its entity is discernment, and discernment is already among the factors of the great ground; it is not established twice.

Where it lands: these ten words may be taken as a checklist. Is mind clear (confidence)? Is it on guard (heedfulness)? Are body and mind workable (pliancy)? Does it lean (equanimity)? Does it know disgrace before itself (conscience)? Does it know fear of wrongdoing (shame)? Unsticking (non-greed), unvexed (non-hatred), not harming others (non-harming)? Is effort being put out (diligence)?—only with all ten present is it a wholesome mind; lacking one, that thought is not a complete wholesome one.

6. The Six Factors of the Great Defiled Ground—The Ground Tone Common to Every Defiled Mind

Ask first: greedy mind, hating mind, mind of wrong view—whatever is defiled, what is its common ground tone?

The treatise answers with only six: “delusion, heedlessness, indolence, lack of confidence, torpor, and restlessness are constant and belong to defiled minds alone.” Delusion is ignorance, absence of cognition, absence of manifestation; heedlessness is precisely what heedfulness counteracts; indolence is precisely what diligence counteracts; lack of confidence is precisely what confidence counteracts; torpor the treatise defines by citing the root treatise—“heaviness of body and of mind, unworkability of body and of mind”; restlessness “makes mind unable to be still.”

There is an apparent contradiction here that must be untied. The root Abhidharma says there are ten factors of the great defiled ground and does not include torpor; this treatise says six and adds torpor—it looks like both a subtraction and an addition. The author of the treatise answers without ceremony: “Beloved of the gods! You now know only the letter and do not grasp the intent.” (“Beloved of the gods” is a westerners’ jesting term for a fool; both Puguang and Shentai record the idiom.) Where is the intent? In this: that among those ten, lost mindfulness, distracted mind, incorrect knowing, improper attention, and wrong resolve are simply the defiled portion of the factors of the great ground—defiled mindfulness is called lost mindfulness, defiled concentration distracted mind, defiled discernment incorrect knowing, and defiled attention and resolve improper attention and wrong resolve. Having already been stated among the factors of the great ground, they are not to be established a second time. So four were not subtracted; five that were duplicates were put back in their places.

A second point easily mistaken: torpor being spoken of as “bodily.” The treatise sets the question, “this is a mental factor; how then is it called bodily?” and answers itself, “it is said as ‘bodily feeling’ is said, and so there is no fault”—feeling is properly a mental factor and is called bodily feeling when associated with the five consciousnesses; so it is with torpor. “Bodily” is said with reference to the consciousness it is associated with, and does not mean that it is form.

A third point easily mistaken lies in the closing passage. Some maintain that torpor ought to have been included and was not because it conforms to concentration; the author of the treatise presses: “who is of the mode of torpor and not of restlessness? Who is of the mode of restlessness and not of torpor?”—the two never operate singly. The other side falls back on ‘mode is said according to what predominates.’ The author of the treatise’s conclusion is of the first importance: “granted that ‘mode’ is said according to the predominance of operation, the establishing of a ground-factor must be made in dependence on a dharma that has its own entity, and so it is only as six that this ground-factor holds good.” To say ‘such a person is of the mode of torpor’ may be said according to what predominates, but establishing a ‘ground-factor’ must rest on a dharma with its own entity—description may be rough; institution may not.

Where it lands: in practice there are only six permanent residents to watch. Greed, hatred, and the rest are guests, coming and going; these six are the hosts, and the moment mind is defiled they are there.

7. The Two Factors of the Great Unwholesome Ground—A Sense of Disgrace Is the Last Door

Ask first: not every defiled mind is evil (an obscured-indeterminate mind associated with the view of self, for instance); what, then, raises “defiled” to “evil”?

The treatise answers with only two: “only two mental factors arise together with every unwholesome mind, namely non-conscience and shamelessness, and so these two alone are called factors of this ground.”

This section is extremely short and is for that reason most easily passed over lightly. The point is that “pervading” and “only” hold at the same time: non-conscience and shamelessness both pervade every unwholesome mind and belong to unwholesome minds alone. The six factors of the great defiled ground above pervade every defiled mind but are not only unwholesome (an obscured-indeterminate mind is defiled too); rage and the rest are only unwholesome but do not pervade. Among all the mental factors, only these two satisfy both conditions at once. That is why a class holding only two dharmas is nonetheless set up as a class of its own—not to make up numbers, but as what the criterion forces.

A second point easily mistaken: “non-conscience and shamelessness” is not ‘bad manners.’ The treatise will explain them fully below at Root Stanza 33, and here says only that “the characteristics of these two dharmas will be analyzed below.” And precisely because they are the necessary and sufficient mark of an unwholesome mind, they say something in return: conscience and shame within a wholesome mind are not an added refinement but the threshold on which a wholesome mind stands at all.

Where it lands: every evil deed, traced to its innermost point, must pass the gate of ‘not feeling disgrace, not feeling fear.’ Hold that gate and an evil mind cannot arise—which is why conscience and shame are called in scripture the two bright dharmas of the world, and that is not a figure of speech.

8. The Ten Factors of the Small Defiled Ground—Why They Are Called “Small”

Ask first: rage, concealment, avarice, envy, vexation, harmfulness, resentment, flattery, deception, and self-intoxication are plainly fierce enough—why are they called “small”?

The treatise gives three conditions in answer: “dharmas of this class are abandoned through cultivation alone, arise on the ground of mental consciousness, are associated with ignorance, and operate each separately, and are therefore called factors of the small defiled ground.” Yuanhui sets them out as three senses: “there are three senses: first, abandoned through cultivation alone; second, arising on the ground of mental consciousness and associated with ignorance; third, operating each separately.”

“Small” does not mean slight; it means small in scope. This is the section’s first correction. Set against the factors of the great defiled ground it becomes clear: those six pervade every defiled mind, while these ten are associated only with “a small portion of defiled minds.” The treatise says so in establishing the name: “any dharma here that belongs to the small defiled ground is called a factor of the small defiled ground, that is, a dharma arising together with a small portion of defiled minds.”

A second point easily mistaken is “operating each separately.” It means that only one arises at a time—when rage arises resentment does not arise with it, when avarice arises envy does not. This condition will be used directly later in counting mental factors: the class associated with rage and the rest is “twenty as in the independent class, plus one of rage and the rest” precisely because only one is added.

A third point easily mistaken: why are pride and doubt not counted among the factors of the small defiled ground? Puguang, following the treatise’s own criterion, states it cleanly: “following this treatise now, the ten factors of the small defiled ground are established and rejected by a single sense, namely being abandoned through cultivation alone.” Pride extends to abandonment through both seeing and cultivation, and doubt is abandoned through seeing alone; neither fits “abandoned through cultivation alone.” Regret, though abandoned through cultivation alone, extends to the wholesome quality and is not associated with ignorance alone. Lacking any one of the three senses puts a dharma out, and so there are only ten.

Where it lands: since they operate each separately, they can be counteracted one by one—these ten are not a tangle but ten knots that can be untied one at a time. The treatise also announces that “these dharmas will be analyzed at length below among the secondary afflictions,” giving only the coordinates here.

9. How Many Mental Factors Are Actually Present in a Single Thought

Ask first: after all this talk of classes, in one concrete thought of the desire realm, how many mental factors are present at once?

The treatise divides desire-realm mind into five classes and reports the count of each: a wholesome mind necessarily has twenty-two (the ten factors of the great ground, the ten of the great wholesome ground, applied thought, and sustained thought), and twenty-three when regret is present; the unwholesome class associated with independent ignorance and the class associated with view have twenty each (the ten of the great ground, the six of the great defiled ground, the two of the great unwholesome ground, applied thought, and sustained thought); the classes of the four afflictions greed, hatred, pride, and doubt, of the secondary afflictions such as rage, and of unwholesome regret have twenty-one each; the obscured-indeterminate class has eighteen; the unobscured-indeterminate class twelve; and sleep, extending to all three qualities, adds one to whichever class it is in.

The first correction is that ‘view does not add to the count.’ An unwholesome mind associated with view plainly has wrong view in addition—why is it still twenty? The treatise answers, “it does not become twenty-one because view is added, since view is spoken of as a difference of operation belonging to discernment among the ten factors of the great ground”—view is not an eleventh dharma but a difference of operation of discernment. The same point explains why the obscured-indeterminate class (associated with the view of self and the extreme view) likewise has only eighteen.

The second correction is in the word “regret.” Regret is neither ‘doing evil’ nor the mode of repenting itself. The treatise gives three layers of explanation: naming from the object (“it should be known that the name regret is here established from the dharma that takes an evil deed done as its object, that is, the nature that regrets in taking an evil deed as its object”—as the concentration that takes emptiness as its object is called the emptiness door of liberation, and the non-greed that takes the unclean as its object is called the unclean); naming from the support (as when it is said that all villages, towns, and lands are assembling, though what assemble are people); and provisionally setting the name of a cause upon the entity of a result (as when the six sense fields of contact are called karma done in the past). Yuanhui states the first sense most plainly: “the evil deed done is the object, not the repenting; repenting is now called ‘the evil deed done’ because it is named from its object.” And a thing not done may also be the object of regret—“as when in repenting one says, ‘I did not formerly do such work; this is my regret.’”

The third correction is in “independent ignorance.” It does not mean ‘an ignorance not shared with others’ but solitary ignorance—“in this class of mind there is only ignorance, without the remaining afflictions such as greed.”

Where it lands: this section turns mind from a mass of feeling into a table that can be counted. Its teaching value is not in memorizing the numbers but in establishing a habit—asking ‘how many mental factors are in this thought’ is a question with an answer. As for the masters abroad who grant that regret extends to the indeterminate and so make thirteen, the treatise records this faithfully without adjudicating, and that too is a lesson in how to read.

10. The Reduction of Mental Factors in the Upper Realms—A Map for Cultivating Absorption

Ask first: on entering an absorption, do mental factors become more or fewer?

The treatise answers with a reduction: “in the first meditative absorption, of the mental factors stated above, what is unwholesome alone, together with regret and sleep, is removed, and the rest are all present.” “What is unwholesome alone” means hatred, together with the seven small afflictions such as rage apart from flattery, deception, and self-intoxication, and non-conscience and shamelessness besides. The intermediate absorption further removes applied thought. From the second absorption upward as far as the formless realm, “sustained thought and the rest” is further removed—the word “and the rest” removing flattery and deception.

First point easily mistaken: reduction does not mean mind grows weaker. What is dropped are mental factors that cannot exist on that level; mind’s functioning is not pared away. Puguang states the reasons very clearly: “moistened by concentration, there are no unwholesome dharmas such as the affliction of hatred, and so no unwholesome; there is no sorrow faculty, and so no regret; there is no food taken in portions, and so no sleep.” Yuanhui makes the two correspondences even plainer: “as for removing regret, regret is associated with the sorrow faculty, and the form realm is free of sorrow, and so there is no regret. As for removing sleep, the form realm has no food taken in portions, and so there is no sleep.”—Every item that falls away has its own reason, and none is laid down arbitrarily.

Second point easily mistaken: flattery and deception “reaching at most as high as the Brahmā heaven” is not a slur upon the Brahmā King. The treatise cites an extremely vivid passage of scripture: the monk Aśvajit asked the Great Brahmā King, ‘at what station do these four great elements cease without remainder?’, the Brahmā King did not know and before the whole assembly “answered evasively and confusedly: here in this Brahmā assembly I am the Great Brahmā, the sovereign, the maker, the transformer, the producer, the nourisher, the father of all,” and having said this drew the man outside the assembly, “drew him outside the assembly, spoke flatteringly, made a shamefaced apology, and told him to go back and ask the Buddha.” This passage is there to establish one thing—so long as a structure of ‘mutual dependence among the multitude,’ of ruler and subject, higher and lower, remains, there is still room for flattery and deception; above the second absorption there is no such structure, and so these two mental factors are absent.

Where it lands: this is a topographical map for cultivating absorption. It tells the practitioner that certain afflictions are not cut off by counteraction but have nowhere to rest once a given level is reached. Conversely, one still in the desire realm who wants the mental character of the first absorption should look at whether hatred, regret, and sleep are still present.

11. Non-Conscience and Shamelessness, Love and Respect—The Mind toward Persons and the Mind toward Dharmas

Ask first: where exactly do conscience and shame differ? And love and respect?

The treatise gives two explanations of non-conscience and shamelessness. The first divides them by object: “to have, toward qualities and toward those who possess them, no reverence and no esteem, nothing that gives one pause, and nothing to which one submits, is called non-conscience”—its object being qualities and those who have them; “a dharma reproved and rejected by the good is called wrongdoing, and to see nothing to fear in such wrongdoing is called shamelessness”—its object being wrongdoing and its result. The second is that of “certain other masters”: feeling no disgrace in regard to oneself is called non-conscience, and feeling none in regard to others is called shamelessness.

First point easily mistaken: “seeing no fear” is not about seeing or not seeing. The treatise sets out a very fine question and answer: if it is ‘seeing and yet not fearing,’ then what is shown must be wrong cognition; if it is ‘not seeing its fearsome result,’ then what is shown must be ignorance—fault on either side. The author of the treatise’s reply is: “this phrase does not show either seeing or not seeing … it shows that there is a dharma, a secondary affliction, which is the cause of those two, and this is called shamelessness.” The sentence is meant to point out that another dharma is present, the proximate cause of wrong cognition and of ignorance, and is not describing seeing or not seeing.

Second point easily mistaken: love is not the same as greed. The treatise says “love is loving delight, and its entity is confidence,” and at once divides it in two: “the defiled is greed, as in love for wife and children; the undefiled is confidence, as in love for teachers and elders.” It then makes four cases: confidence taking the truths of suffering and origin as its object is confidence and not love (accepting them as suffering, yet not delighting in them); every defiled love is love and not confidence; confidence taking the truths of cessation and the path as its object is both; whatever remains is the fourth case. One and the same word “love” must be read differently defiled and undefiled.

Third point easily mistaken: love and respect existing “in the desire and form realms only” does not mean that confidence and conscience are absent in the formless realm. The treatise sets and answers the objection itself: “love and respect are of two kinds, those taking dharmas and those taking a pudgala as object; those taking dharmas as object exist in all three realms. What is meant here are those taking a pudgala as object, and so they exist in the desire and form realms and not in the formless realm.”—Only love and respect toward persons are bounded by realm; those toward dharmas are not.

Where it lands: the treatise here splits “toward persons” and “toward dharmas” into two tracks, and with regard to persons makes four cases—love without respect toward wife and children, respect without love toward another’s teacher, both toward one’s own teacher and parents, and the fourth case for the remainder. These four cases are not a classifying game but a reminder: respect and love can each appear alone, and whether a relationship has respect in it and whether it has love in it are two separate questions.

12. Applied and Sustained Thought, Pride and Self-Intoxication—One “Not Admissible” and One ‘Toward Whom’

Ask first: applied thought is mind’s coarseness and sustained thought its fineness; coarse and fine are contrary, so how can they be in one and the same mind?

The treatise records two masters’ explanations. The first offers a simile: clarified butter floating on cold water with a blazing sun shining upon it, so that “by the working of water and sun the butter neither melts nor congeals”—so too with a single mind, which by applied thought is not too fine and by sustained thought not too coarse. The second says that applied and sustained thought are verbal formations, citing the sūtra, “there is speech only where there are applied and sustained thought,” the coarse being called applied thought and the fine sustained thought.

What matters most in this section is that the author of the treatise lets neither master pass. Against the first: water and sun are only the cause of congealing and melting, and “the entity of the sun is not congealing or melting”—so applied and sustained thought would be only the cause of coarseness and fineness and not their entity. Again, coarse and fine are established relatively, realms and levels being compared high against low, so that “even the summit of existence would have applied and sustained thought.” Against the second: if there really were two separate kinds of entity, coarse and fine, there would be no conflict in reason; “but there are no separate kinds of entity, and so a conflict does follow, for within a single kind of entity high and low cannot arise at the same time.” He closes in one sentence: “from this it should be known that the two dharmas applied and sustained thought definitely may not be held to be associated with one and the same mind.” When someone cites the sūtra’s “the first meditative absorption is complete with five limbs” in reply, the treatise answers, “‘complete with five limbs’ is said with reference to a level, not a single moment.”

The point easily mistaken lies here: do not read applied and sustained thought as ‘thinking’ and “concentrating.” What the treatise fixes is the two natures of coarse and fine, not two functions; and it is precisely because they are only coarse and fine that the author of the treatise can overthrow the position by ‘established relatively.’

Pride and self-intoxication are another pair. “Pride is the nature of mind exalting itself against another, weighing the difference in the qualities and classes of self and other”; “self-intoxication is the nature of mind grown haughty and unrestrained, preceded by attachment to what belongs to oneself.” The difference lies in a single word: pride is toward another, self-intoxication toward oneself. Pride requires an object of comparison; self-intoxication does not—attachment to one’s own lineage or bodily strength is enough. The treatise also records another master’s simile: “just as the difference of elated exaltation produced by liquor is called drunkenness, so the difference of elated exaltation produced by greed is called self-intoxication.”

Where it lands: read together, these two pairs teach one and the same thing—in reading a treatise, attend to the words “some explain thus,” “certain other masters say,” “some say.” In this section four masters’ accounts stand together and the author of the treatise chooses among them plainly; without discriminating these markers, one takes some one master’s words for the treatise’s settled doctrine.

13. Mind, Thought, and Consciousness Are One in Entity; Association Has Five Senses

Ask first: are mind, thought, and consciousness three things, or three names for one thing?

The treatise answers with the utmost brevity: “because it gathers and gives rise it is called mind; because it deliberates it is called thought; because it discerns it is called consciousness.” It records a second account as well: “because of the various differences of pure and impure elements it is called mind; because this very thing serves as the support of another it is called thought; because it is what does the depending it is called consciousness.” The conclusion is that “although the senses conveyed by the three names mind, thought, and consciousness differ, the entity is one.”

The same reasoning is then carried once more: mind and mental factors likewise have four names—having a support (relying on a supporting faculty), having an object (taking up an object), having a mode of apprehension (raising up a mode of apprehension upon the distinctions among the classes of the object), and associated (evenly conjoined). And “associated” has five senses: “mind and mental factors are even in five senses and are therefore said to be associated—support, object, mode of apprehension, time, and entity are all even.”

First point easily mistaken: “one in entity” does not mean there is no division of labor. Each of the three names conveys its own sense; it is only that three entities are not set up. Shentai uses a tree simile for “gathering and giving rise”: “because it gathers and gives rise it is called mind, as a tree has a heart that can gather and give rise to branches, flowers, and fruit”—the heart of a tree is not another thing, and yet branches, flowers, and fruit come from it.

Second point easily mistaken: “mode of apprehension” is not “object.” This is the step most easily missed in this section. Puguang separates them with a mirror simile: “as a bright mirror facing many forms has them all appear on its face, what so appears is not what is illumined, and yet from the appearing of the image the mirror is said to illumine”—the image appearing on the mirror’s face is not the thing the mirror illumines; “what so appears is called the mode of apprehension.” Yuanhui puts it still more plainly: “as when mind and mental factors take a blue object, they all carry the image of blue upon them, and this characteristic upon consciousness is called the mode of apprehension.” The mode of apprehension is on the side of what apprehends; the object is on the other side.

Third point easily mistaken: “evenness of entity” is not equality of number. The treatise adds a sentence itself: “evenness of entity means that within one association, just as the entity of mind is one, so each of the mental factors is likewise one.” The sense is that each is only one—within a single association there will not be two feelings or two perceptions.

Where it lands: evenness in five senses is the Sarvāstivāda definitional formula for “association.” Whenever one meets ‘such a dharma is associated with such a dharma,’ one may go back and test it by these five: same support, same object, same mode of apprehension, same time, one of each.

14. The Class That Is Neither Form nor Mind

Ask first: acquisition, non-acquisition, commonality, and the rest are neither form nor mind—what are they to be counted as?

The treatise answers: “dharmas such as these are not associated with mind and are not of the nature of form and the rest, yet are included in the aggregate of formations, and are therefore called formations not associated with mind.” The stanza first lists them in general: “the formations not associated with mind are acquisition, non-acquisition, commonality, the result of non-perception, the two absorptions, the life faculty, the marks, the name-bodies and the rest.” Yuanhui lists all fourteen names: acquisition, non-acquisition, commonality, the result of non-perception, the absorption without perception, the absorption of cessation, the life faculty, arising, abiding, change, cessation, name-body, phrase-body, syllable-body.

First point easily mistaken: “not associated” does not mean ‘nothing to do with mind.’ It means not associated with mind—that is, not possessing the five kinds of evenness of the previous section. They are still established upon the stations of form and mind and are still among conditioned dharmas; they simply do not fall in the list of mental factors.

Second point easily mistaken: do not read them as unconditioned. The treatise has already said here that they are “included in the aggregate of formations,” hence conditioned; the unconditioned is the fifth class, and the fascicle said at its opening that “the unconditioned has no arising and is not discussed here.”

Third point easily mistaken: this fascicle only enumerates in general and does not explain them all. Having listed the fourteen, the treatise at once narrows: “among them the characteristics of acquisition and non-acquisition will be analyzed for the present”—of the fourteen only the first two are treated, the rest being left to the next fascicle. The word “for the present” must be seen.

Where it lands: this class of dharmas is the most questioned member of the Sarvāstivāda system—it establishes ‘having or not having,’ ‘being of the same class or not,’ and ‘being alive or not,’ these relations and states, as independent dharmas. And precisely because it is the most questioned, the fascicle will next spend an extremely long stretch defending only the first of them, “acquisition.” Understand acquisition and you understand the legislative motive of this whole class.

15. What “Acquisition” Is—Having Is Set Up as a Dharma

Ask first: when one says ‘I have the precepts,’ ‘I have discernment,’ what is that “have”?

The treatise answers: “acquisition is of two kinds: first, what has never been acquired, or has been acquired and lost, being now obtained; second, what has been acquired and not lost, which is possession.” Coming into it now is called obtaining, keeping without losing is called possession, and the two together are called acquisition; non-acquisition is the contrary. As to where it is found: “in one’s own continuum and in the two cessations.”

First point easily mistaken: acquisition is not the dharma acquired. Acquisition is another dharma, and it is what makes some dharma “belong to” some continuum. That is why the treatise asks “in which dharmas are acquisition and non-acquisition found,” and not ‘which dharma is acquisition.’

Second point easily mistaken: the scope is extremely strict. Only within one’s own continuum—“not in another’s continuum, since no one can possess a dharma belonging to another’s body”; not upon what is insentient—“not upon what is not a continuum, since no one can possess a dharma of what is insentient.” Among unconditioned dharmas too, only cessation through discernment and cessation independent of discernment have acquisition, and space does not: “there is definitely no one who possesses space, and so no acquisition is spoken of with regard to space; and since there is no acquisition, neither is there non-acquisition.” The reason is that this school “holds acquisition and non-acquisition to be established as the reverse of one another”—where there is no acquisition, non-acquisition cannot even be spoken of.

Third point easily mistaken: every sentient being possesses cessation independent of discernment. The treatise cites the Abhidharma treatise: apart from the noble one still fully bound in the first moment of the path of seeing and every fully bound ordinary being, “the rest of sentient beings possess cessation through discernment”; whereas of cessation independent of discernment “there is no sentient being that does not possess it”—since in every moment some dharma, for want of a condition, will never arise.

Where it lands: this section does something very large—it turns “having” from a descriptive term into a real dharma. Afflictions cut off, precepts acquired, cessation realized: in the Sarvāstivāda these are no longer merely ways of speaking, but each has an “acquisition” bearing it. Grasp this motive and the long dispute of the next section carries its weight.

16. The Dispute over a Separate Thing—Two Schools in One Passage and the Author’s Double Endorsement

Ask first: on what ground is it said that there is a separate thing called “acquisition”?

The Sarvāstivādins first adduce the word of the noble ones: “because the sūtra so says. As the sūtra says: a noble one, with regard to those ten dharmas of one beyond training, by their arising, by their acquisition, by their possession, has cut off the five limbs.” The Sautrāntikas at once press back: then how is ‘there is a wheel-turning monarch who possesses the seven treasures’ to be taken? The wheel treasure and the jewel treasure are insentient, and the elephant, the horse, and the queen belong to another’s continuum—are these possessed too? The Sarvāstivādins fall back on “sovereignty”: “here sovereignty is spoken of as possession, that is, the wheel-turning monarch has sovereign power over those seven treasures and sets them in motion as he pleases.” The Sautrāntikas press one more step: since “sovereignty” suffices there, why must a separate thing be posited elsewhere?

The Sautrāntikas then shift to a refutation by means of knowledge: “the acquisition you posit has no entity that can be known, as color and sound and the rest have, or greed and hatred and the rest; and no operation that can be known, as the eye and ear and the rest have; therefore it is not admissible that there be a separate thing called acquisition.”—It cannot be seen, and it cannot be inferred. Next they refute the claim that ‘acquisition is the cause of arising’: if acquisition were the cause of arising, the unconditioned, which does not arise, should have no acquisition; when the level changes or defilement is left behind, the dharma has no acquisition, and how then is it to arise in future; if a co-arising acquisition is the cause of arising, what work is left for arising and the arising of arising among the four characteristics; an insentient dharma, having no acquisition, should then never arise; and for one fully bound there should be no difference in the appearing of afflictions of the lower, middling, and higher grades, since acquisition has no differences. The Sarvāstivādins fall back upon acquisition as “the cause by which differences are established”—without acquisition there would be no distinguishing an ordinary being from a noble one. The Sautrāntikas answer that the difference is in the supporting body and not in acquisition—“causing the supporting body to be transformed and made other than it was,” “just as a seed burnt by fire is transformed and made other than before and has no power to produce,” and therefore “both of these are merely provisional and not real.”

At this point the word “seed” is forced out: “what dharma here is called a seed? It is the capability—serially transmitted or immediately proximate—that name and form have with respect to producing their own result; and this is constituted by continuum, transformation, and distinctiveness.” The treatise even glosses the three senses word by word—transformation is “the nature of being other before and after within a continuum,” continuum is “the formations of the three times in their causal and resultant nature,” and distinctiveness is “the capability of producing a result without interval.”

The most important step is at the close. The Vaibhāṣikas hold firmly that both are “separate things, real and not provisional,” and the author of the treatise sets down a double endorsement: “thus both roads are well stated. Why? Because it does not conflict with reason; because it is what my own school holds.”—‘Does not conflict with reason’ speaks of the Sautrāntikas; ‘what my own school holds’ speaks of the Sarvāstivādins.

A point easily mistaken: this passage is often read as ‘the author of the treatise has refuted the Sarvāstivādins.’ The text does not say so. What it gives is two reasons standing side by side, with the place of both schools set within one sentence. Just how far and to which side it leans is where the four later commentaries each expend their strength; it is not adjudicated here.

Where it lands: this is the passage in the whole fascicle most worth reading slowly. It exhibits a formal mode of debate—establish, object, retreat, object again, retreat again, endorse both. And “seed” appears here for the first time with a formal definition; how far it later traveled is another case; of this fascicle one need only remember that it was forced out in the search for an account of “having” that need not posit a real dharma.

17. The Five Gates of Difference in Acquisition—A General Formula of Analysis

Ask first: what quality is acquisition itself, to what time does it belong, to what realm is it bound?

The treatise answers with five gates. The gate of the three times: “dharmas of the three times each have three kinds of acquisition, that is, a past dharma has a past acquisition, a future acquisition, and a present acquisition,” and future and present likewise. The gate of the three qualities: “dharmas that are wholesome and the rest have acquisitions that are wholesome and the rest only.” The gate of realm affiliation: “a dharma bound to a realm has its acquisition in its own realm only,” while “an unbound dharma has acquisitions extending to four kinds”—the acquisitions of the three realms plus an acquisition without outflows. The gate of the three kinds of training: a dharma of training has an acquisition of training only, a dharma beyond training an acquisition beyond training only, and the acquisition of what is neither extends to three. The gate of the three modes of abandonment: dharmas abandoned through seeing and through cultivation have respectively such acquisitions, and the acquisition of a dharma not subject to abandonment extends to two.

First point easily mistaken: ‘acquisition takes its quality from what is acquired’ is not the only rule. Within the gate of realm affiliation the treatise already divides three ways: “the acquisition of cessation independent of discernment extends to all three realms; the acquisition of cessation through discernment belongs to the form and formless realms and is also without outflows; the acquisition of the truth of the path is without outflows alone.” Why the inconsistency? Because cessation through discernment has no operation of its own, and its acquisition is judged by the path that realizes it; cessation independent of discernment likewise has no operation, and its acquisition is judged by the supporting body; only the acquisition of a conditioned dharma is judged by the dharma acquired. Puguang sets these three side by side precisely to keep a reader from pushing one rule all the way through.

Second point easily mistaken: the stanza and the prose are not of equal extent. The stanza says only “neither of training nor beyond training, three; not subject to abandonment, two kinds,” while the prose sets out both the three kinds of training and the three modes of abandonment in full. This is not the prose saying more; it is the stanza being narrow in its letter—in reading a stanza one must know what it has left out.

Where it lands: the three times, the three qualities, realm affiliation, the three kinds of training, the three modes of abandonment—these five gates are the general formula of analysis used throughout the Kośa. Here they are demonstrated in full for the first time, and thereafter every dharma one meets may be put to the same five questions.

18. Why the Acquisition of the Indeterminate Can Only Arise Together with It

Ask first: since it is said that dharmas of the three times each have acquisitions of the three times, is this so of every dharma?

The treatise at once discriminates: “the acquisition of what is unobscured-indeterminate arises only together with it, neither earlier nor later, because its force is feeble.” If the dharma is past the acquisition is past, if present the acquisition is present. But there are exceptions: “save for the two superknowledges of the eye and ear and what is capable of transformation”—the discernment of the divine eye and divine ear and the mind capable of transformation, being “of strong force and accomplished through the distinctions of preparatory practice,” though unobscured-indeterminate have acquisitions preceding, following, and arising together with them. The field of craft and the mode of deportment, if practiced to an extreme degree, may perhaps be so too. The acquisition of obscured-indeterminate manifest form likewise arises only together with it, since “although there may be a higher grade, it still cannot give rise to nonmanifest form, and so its force is feeble.” Wholesome and unwholesome form bound to the desire realm have “no acquisition preceding,” only a co-arising and a following acquisition.

First point easily mistaken: “save for the two superknowledges and transformation” does not mean that the two superknowledges are not indeterminate. They remain unobscured-indeterminate; it is only that their force is strong, and so they are an exception with regard to the three times of acquisition.

Second point easily mistaken: “force” is a lever of explanation and not a mystifying word. The treatise uses it to divide two kinds of indeterminate: what arises spontaneously (the maturation-born and the like) is feeble in force, and what is cultivated by preparatory practice (the two superknowledges and transformation, and craft and deportment practiced to an extreme) is strong. The difference of strong and weak falls upon ‘whether it was got by effort.’

Where it lands: this section demonstrates one of the treatise’s techniques—first establish a general rule, then discriminate the exceptions one by one, giving a reason for each exception. This way of writing, ‘general rule plus discrimination,’ will recur again and again in the chapters on karma and on the latent tendencies.

19. Non-Acquisition, Ordinary-Being Status, and That “Infinite Regress”

Ask first: is an ordinary being an ordinary being because of something added or something lacking?

The treatise’s answer is: something lacking. “Because it is granted that the non-acquisition of the noble path is what is called ordinary-being status.” Ordinary-being status is not a positive quality; it is the non-acquisition of the noble path—the “not having” of not having obtained the noble dharmas, set up as a dharma. The treatise cites the root treatise in evidence: “what is ordinary-being status? It is not obtaining the noble dharmas,” and adds that “‘not obtaining’ is precisely another name for non-acquisition.”

The differences of non-acquisition itself are also stated by gates: in the three qualities, “every non-acquisition is included within the unobscured-indeterminate quality alone”; in the three times, “past and future each have three kinds, that is, a present dharma definitely has no present non-acquisition”—because a dharma that is present must be one acquired and must have an acquisition; in realm affiliation, dharmas of the three realms and unbound dharmas “each have three non-acquisitions,” determined by the supporting body.

First point easily mistaken: “not obtaining all” and the word “wholly.” Someone asks: the non-obtaining of which noble dharmas counts? The treatise answers, “the non-obtaining of all, since no distinction is stated,” and explains that “these words ‘not obtaining’ express separation from obtaining”—were it otherwise, the Buddhas too, who do not possess the noble dharmas of the śrāvaka and pratyekabuddha lineages, would have to be called ordinary beings. Someone else says the root treatise ought to add the word “wholly”; the treatise answers that it need not: “the sense of ‘wholly’ is already contained in this one phrase, just as when it is said that this class feeds on water and feeds on wind.”—To say that a class of beings feeds on water and wind is understood as feeding on them alone, though “wholly” is not said.

Second point easily mistaken: what the author of the treatise endorses here is the Sautrāntikas. A second master says that ordinary-being status is the non-obtaining of receptivity to the cognition of dharma concerning suffering and of the dharmas arising with it; the author of the treatise remarks, “if so, the restatement is made to no purpose,” and immediately says, “what the Sautrāntika masters say is better,” recording their sense: “the difference of station within a continuum in which noble dharmas have never yet arisen is what is called ordinary-being status.”—This is a choice stated outright in the text, not a later inference.

Third point easily mistaken: the “infinite regress” is not really infinite. If acquisition has a further acquisition and non-acquisition a further non-acquisition, is that not endless? The treatise answers that it is not, “since it is granted that acquisitions may reciprocally cause one another to be possessed”—when a dharma arises, three dharmas arise together: “first, the root dharma; second, the acquisition of the dharma; third, the acquisition of the acquisition”; the acquisition of the dharma causes the root dharma and the acquisition of the acquisition to be possessed, and the acquisition of the acquisition causes the acquisition of the dharma to be possessed, and so the chain closes upon itself. Puguang separates the two names: “because it is the acquisition of the dharma it is called the acquisition of the dharma, which is the major acquisition; the acquisition of the major acquisition is called the acquisition of the acquisition, which is the minor acquisition.” At the second moment six dharmas, at the third eighteen, and “in this way the acquisitions increase further and further one after another.” The treatise closes with a sentence: acquisitions, “because they are without resistance, can contain one another. Were it not so, space would not contain the acquisitions of a single sentient being, still less those of a second and the rest.” Shentai here offers a very beautiful simile—like a fine autumn mist filling all ten directions.

Where it lands: this section sets the difference between ordinary being and noble one upon a “not having”; and the Sautrāntikas restate the same matter as a difference of station within a continuum, which the author of the treatise endorses. One and the same question, two ways of setting it up: one must legislate a dharma, the other need only state a station. This contrast is the longest thread the fascicle leaves for its later readers.

Further Resonances: A Mirror of the Four Commentaries and of Both Parties

The above is the sense of this fascicle in itself. What follows illuminates it from the side with the ancient masters’ commentaries and with a treatise of the same lineage—a mirror is not the treatise, only a change of reading upon the same fascicle.

The division of labor among the four commentaries. Puguang’s Record of the Kośa explains lemma by lemma, most fully, and never fails to record an alternative account; Fabao’s Commentary on the Kośa is fond of fourfold discriminations and does not shrink from criticizing his predecessors; Yuanhui’s Verse Commentary on the Kośa has the clearest outline and the similes handiest for a beginner; Shentai’s Commentary on the Kośa numbers each passage, has the finest outline, and from time to time takes Mahāyāna terminology for comparison. All four mark this fascicle as the chapter’s second major section, and only Fabao and Shentai state outright its extent of twenty-seven stanzas.

The place where the four commentaries differ most fiercely is an old case. The treatise says that a minute aggregate of the desire realm ‘has eight entities without sound,’ while the Treatise on the Development of Wisdom says that sound is constantly possessed in the desire and form realms—how are the two texts to be reconciled? In earlier times Master Nian took a compromise solution; Shentai’s commentary denounces it as a gross error; Puguang records the quarrel and judges for himself that “examined now, the two worthies are each partly right and partly wrong.” Fabao in turn refutes them both, saying that “Master Tai and Master Guang wrongly construe Master Nian’s intent,” and asserting that “since Master Nian’s sense accords with the treatise’s text, Masters Tai and Guang refute him erroneously.” Among the four, the divergence is deepest here. The three judgments are recorded together, without a verdict of right and wrong.

On whether a minute aggregate is provisional or real, the four are likewise not agreed. Puguang preserves the distinction of the two “minutes” and judges that this treatise speaks on the basis of the minute that is an aggregate of form; Fabao judges outright that “of the two explanations the later is the better”; Yuanhui does not touch on provisional or real and explains only that “‘minute’ has the sense of fine”; Shentai cites the discussion of entity and function in the Treatise Conforming to Correct Principle and makes no judgment. So too with the passage on increase of entity and increase of operation: Puguang records that the Correct Principle takes increase of entity while this treatise takes increase of operation; Fabao rejects both—“yet examined closely, increase of entity and increase of operation have not exhausted the reasoning”—and adds, “hence it is known that the nature of dharmas is indeterminate as conditions vary.”

The assigning of the passage on pliancy also has divergent readings. At “it should be known that the bodily pliancy spoken of here is the body’s workability,” Puguang judges outright that “many masters explain this text as the Sarvāstivādins’ answer; this explanation is erroneous”; Fabao sets down his own note on the Sautrāntika objection—“examined now, this objection is not quite to the point”; Shentai construes the whole passage as nine rounds of question and answer between the Sarvāstivādins and the Sautrāntikas; Yuanhui passes over the passage.

The number of counteracting pairs is another set of divergences. Shentai’s commentary records the old masters’ account that ‘eight of the counterparts have entity and two do not,’ rejects it as untrue, and maintains that “all ten counterparts have entity,” citing the old translation of the Kośa in evidence. Puguang and Fabao each draw up a large table of ten direct counterparts and eleven indirect ones; the dharma-headings of the two tables agree entirely, save that Fabao writes “the counterpart of restlessness is equanimity as a formation” while Puguang writes “the counterpart of restlessness is equanimity.”

Saṅghabhadra’s refutations are concentrated in four places. First, the refutation of the Elder of the Sautrāntika forerunners on ‘the great ground being three only’—the Elder maintained that the sūtra speaks only of feeling, perception, and volition arising together, so that the factors of the great ground are three only; Saṅghabhadra denounces this as “the Elder’s statement that the great ground is three only is exceedingly deluded and mistaken,” and cites scripture to prove that desire and the rest really have separate entities. Second, the defense of the contrariety of attention and equanimity—Saṅghabhadra explains that “equanimity, like holding a balance, is even in advancing and halting,” and then says that “the objection of the Sūtra-master, that having alertness and being without alertness make attention and equanimity mutually contrary, is thus well disposed of.” Third, the charge that Vasubandhu pressed a crosswise objection at non-conscience and shamelessness—“the Sūtra-master here mistakes their meaning and presses a crosswise objection.” Fourth, and with the greatest force, at acquisition and the seed: he answers that “the Sūtra-master here asks thus: on what ground is it known that there is a separate thing called acquisition,” and judges that “the Sūtra-master, though he says much here according to his own position, accomplishes nothing, for the seed he posits does not hold good in reason,” listing the seed’s alternative names one by one—accompanying element, perfuming, capability, non-loss, increase; and on ordinary-being status he says, “if ordinary-being status had no separate entity, this sūtra would be contradicted.” One meaning and two schools, recorded together with no verdict as to which prevails.

In Paramārtha’s older translation there are five differences in this fascicle worth viewing together. First, in the establishing of the five classes the two translations agree in number and order, and differ only in the names of the third and fourth (mental factors and mental dharmas; formations not associated with mind and the unassociated). Second, among the ten factors of the great ground the number of dharmas is the same while three names and the order of listing differ. Third, the two names non-conscience and shamelessness are interchanged in the two translations. Fourth, among the ten factors of the small defiled ground the number is the same, while no text states the matching of the individual names, which are listed without adjudication. Fifth, the times of non-acquisition—Xuanzang’s version reads “a present dharma definitely has no present non-acquisition,” while the older translation states the contrary; Puguang, Yuanhui, and Shentai all three mark the older translation outright as an error of translation, and Fabao offers no remark. The three judgments are recorded together; the weighing of the two translations does not belong in this place.

The comparison of the seventy-five dharmas with the hundred dharmas the ancient masters made for themselves. Fabao under the ten factors of the great ground draws the comparison outright—“the position of the Sarvāstivādins is that ten dharmas are omnipresent, while in the Mahāyāna only five are omnipresent”; and under the factors of the small defiled ground he records the difference of provisional and real—“moreover, rage and the rest are in the Mahāyāna said to be portions of hatred and the like, and so are provisional dharmas; in this school they are all of a really existent nature.” Shentai under the five senses of association cites the Yogācārabhūmi for comparison, saying that “therefore the Yogācārabhūmi says: the support is the same, the object is the same, the mode of apprehension is not the same,” and at the end matches them with the two aspects, image and perceiving—“the mode of apprehension is like the image aspect in the Mahāyāna, and evenness of entity like the perceiving aspect in the Mahāyāna.” The five classes established in this fascicle and the five positions of the later hundred dharmas agree in number and differ in order: mind opens from one into eight; forty-six mental factors against fifty-one; eleven dharmas of form in both; fourteen unassociated against twenty-four; three unconditioned against six. Their agreements and differences are listed, with no verdict as to merit.

That mind, thought, and consciousness are one in entity, and the later establishing of eight consciousnesses, are two ages of one question. This fascicle’s statement that the three names are one entity is made with reference to differences of name and sense; the Yogācāra tradition later established the distinction of eight consciousnesses at the same place, and it did so upon another set of questions. The two are recorded together as coordinates, and the character of their relation is not settled in this section.

All the mirrors above are supplied by the four commentaries and by the treatises of the same lineage, and are not the original words of this fascicle’s stanzas and prose. Recorded together without adjudication, each returned to its own place.

Among the five aggregates, form, feeling, perception, and consciousness are all easy to place. Only within the aggregate of formations does a set of things remain that are neither form nor associated with mind: the likeness by which a person is “still the same person”; the blank stretch in which a meditator’s ‘mind has stopped and yet the person is still there’; the stiff prostration of a corpse after ‘lifespan, warmth, and consciousness have left the body’; the flowing by which a thing “is not before and is now, and having been is not again”; and the reason why a sentence ‘can be understood.’

The Sarvāstivādins established each of these as a real thing, counted them as fourteen, and named them formations not associated with mind. The preceding fascicle already analyzed acquisition and non-acquisition; this fascicle runs from the third, “commonality,” to the fourteenth, “syllable-body,” finishing twelve of them at a stretch.

This fascicle is therefore the one in the whole treatise that most resembles a courtroom. The pattern of each item is nearly the same: first the Sarvāstivādins establish the thesis, adduce scriptural proof, and open a fourfold analysis; then the author of the treatise puts on Sautrāntika eyes and presses all the way through, asking ‘must this matter really have a separate real thing established for it?’; and finally the author of the treatise himself sets down the sentence “this is not well stated, because it contradicts my own school”—having spoken the Sautrāntikas’ words, he declares that he is not a Sautrāntika. What is to be learned in reading this fascicle is not which side to stand on, but how to see clearly what work a term is actually made to carry when it is set up.

1. Commonality—On What Ground Can One Say ‘This Too Is a Sentient Being, That Too Is a Sentient Being’

The stanza is only five characters: “commonality is that by which sentient beings are alike.” The question, however, is very large. Sentient beings without number differ severally in shape, in activity, and in inclination; why is it that at a glance one can call them all alike “sentient beings”? The Sarvāstivāda answer is that another real thing is at work—“there is a separate real thing named commonality, that is, sentient beings being of an equal kind one with another.”

First clear away a misunderstanding. Commonality is not the fact of “resemblance” itself, but the cause that makes resemblance possible. Yuanhui’s Verse Commentary explains it thus: “‘portion’ has the sense of cause; it is by this portion that the bodily shapes of sentient beings and the rest are made alike.” Puguang’s Record preserves two explanations, one appositional-determinative (the portion itself being the sameness), one dependent-determinative (the portion of what is the same, hence commonality), and records of the name that “this is named from both result and cause.” Commonality is therefore named from both ends, result and cause: the result is the resemblance, the cause is the commonality.

The Sarvāstivādins then open it into three: the “undifferentiated commonality” shared by all sentient beings; the “differentiated commonality” set severally by realm, level, destiny, mode of birth, lineage, female and male, in training and beyond training; and the “dharma-commonality” established according to the aggregates, sense fields, and elements. Their reason is extremely brief—without this thing, “the equal and undifferentiated cognition and expression, ‘a sentient being, a sentient being,’ ought not to be established”: you could not even call two people by one and the same name.

Brought down to practice, this item is the most useful lesson in the fascicle: wherever a term can stably designate a group of things, some kind of ‘commonness’ has been presupposed behind it. The Sarvāstivādins make that presupposition into a solid dharma; the Sautrāntikas mean to take it apart. Who prevails may be left for later; first see how real the question itself is.

2. The Objections to Commonality—The Fourfold Analysis, Ordinary-Being Status, the Mango Tree, and the Vaiśeṣikas

The author of the treatise next raises five questions on behalf of the Sautrāntikas, each sharper than the last.

He first sets out a fourfold analysis that looks like an aside and is in fact a signpost: when one dies and is born again, is commonality relinquished or not? Dying in one place and being born again in that same place—neither relinquished nor acquired; entering the certainty of the noble path—relinquishing the commonality of an ordinary being and acquiring that of a noble one; dying in this destiny and being born in another—both relinquished and acquired; and apart from these, the fourth case. Note the second case—when a worldling turns noble, what changes is his commonality. This clause will come back and bite the Sarvāstivādins.

The bite is the first question: “if there were a separate real thing named the commonality of an ordinary being, what need would there be to establish ordinary-being status separately?” Having already established “the commonality of an ordinary being,” you establish “ordinary-being status” besides—two real things in one place; and moreover “it is not as though there were a humanness apart from the commonality of a human being.” The second question: commonality is not form and cannot be seen by the eye; it has no separate operation and cannot be made out by cognition and discernment; people who do not know it exists call sentient beings sentient beings all the same—so “even granting that it has an entity, what use is it?” The third question is the wittiest: “on what ground is commonality of the insentient not allowed?” Grain, wheat, and beans, gold and iron, the mango and the jackfruit tree—do not these too resemble their own kinds? The fourth question: the several commonalities also differ from one another; why is no further commonality established upon commonalities? The fifth is the weightiest: does not this establishment of yours exactly amount to the Vaiśeṣikas’ “category of universal sameness” and “category of sameness-and-difference”?

The Vaibhāṣikas answer only the last: “what they hold is not of the same kind of sense as this, for they speak of one thing operating upon many things”—for the outsiders a permanent thing pervades many things, whereas ours belongs to each sentient being severally and is momentary and impermanent. Beyond that they fall back on scripture: the World-Honored One said “if he comes back here, he acquires the commonality of a human being.” The Sautrāntikas throw it straight back: the sūtra says “he acquires the commonality of a human being,” but it does not say that “there is a separate real thing named commonality”; it is that “when formations of this class arise, the commonality of a human being and the like are provisionally established upon them.” The author of the treatise strikes the last blow: “this is not well stated, because it contradicts my own school.”

Clearing a misreading: do not read this passage as “the author of the treatise refutes the Sarvāstivādins.” The author first lets the Sautrāntika objections be fully set out, and then with his own hand judges them ill stated. The first thing to learn in reading the Kośa is exactly this temperature—he lets both parties finish speaking and states his own position only once, at the end.

3. The Result of Non-Perception—A Dyke Blocking a River

The stanza reads: “non-perception, within the non-percipient, is the ceasing of mind and mental factors; its maturation dwells in Bṛhatphala.” The first “non-perception” is the result, the second is the heaven; two layers are hidden in five characters.

What is it? The dharma in the Heaven of Non-Percipient Beings by which “there is a dharma able to make mind and mental factors cease.” It is really existent, and its function is to block—“it is a real thing, able to block future mind and mental factors and make them not arise for a time, as a dyke blocks a river.” This simile must be looked at carefully: a dyke does not kill the water; it holds it back so that it does not flow across. Hence “not arise for a time.”

Where does it come from? It is the maturation brought about by the absorption without perception. Where does it dwell? In a high and superior place within the Bṛhatphala Heaven. Yuanhui’s Verse Commentary explains this by analogy with the first absorption: “as within the first absorption there is a high terrace where the Great Brahmā King dwells, called the intermediate absorption”—it is not a separate heaven but a separate quarter within one heaven.

Clearing a misreading: what is most easily got wrong is supposing that the beings there have no perception from beginning to end. The treatise says it plainly: “in the phases of being born and of dying they have perception for a long while,” and it is only because perception does not arise in the long interval between that they are called non-percipient. And the end comes precisely when perception returns—“those sentient beings pass away from that place because perception arises”—to which the author adds a simile, “like one waking from a long sleep, they give rise to perception again.”

Where it lands: this item is the treatise’s coolest description of ‘passing off a state of absorption as nirvāṇa.’ Five hundred aeons of blankness are exchanged for “an arrow shot into the sky falls when its force is spent”; after passing away one is necessarily born in the desire realm, and must be caught by karma to be experienced in a later life laid down beforehand. To cultivate absorption without discriminating what one seeks—this is the first warning the Kośa gives.

4. The Absorption without Perception—Why a Noble One Regards It “as the Sight of a Deep Pit”

Four lines of stanza state five gates of the absorption at once: “the absorption without perception is likewise so; in the later absorption, seeking liberation; wholesome, to be experienced in the next life only; not attained by a noble one, one time-period obtained.”

How is the name established? The treatise gives two readings: “the absorption of one without perception is called the absorption without perception; or the absorption that is itself non-perception is called the absorption without perception”—the first being ‘the absorption of one who cultivates non-perception,’ the second ‘the absorption that is non-perception.’ Its level is the fourth meditative absorption. Its attention—directed to seeking liberation, and of the kind in which “those people hold non-perception to be true liberation.” Its quality is wholesome only, and so it can bring about the five-aggregate maturation of the Heaven of Non-Percipient Beings; as to experience, it is to be experienced in the next life only, its result being necessarily undergone in the second birth.

The weightiest point is the first half of the fourth line: “not attained by a noble one.” The treatise states the reason with great force: “because the noble ones regard the absorption without perception as they would the sight of a deep pit and take no pleasure in entering it.” Why a deep pit? Because the price of admission is “holding non-perception to be true liberation, giving rise to the notion of renunciation, and so cultivating this absorption”; a noble one does not hold what is with outflows to be true liberation, cannot afford that ticket, and would not buy it.

“One time-period obtained” means that at its first attainment only the present time-period is obtained. The treatise gives a ready comparison: “as with first receiving the individual liberation precepts”—at the moment of receiving them, too, only the present is obtained. And because it is without mind, there is no future cultivation.

Clearing a misreading: do not misread “not attained by a noble one” as a deficiency in a noble one’s capacity. It is unwillingness, not inability—a judgment of intention, not of station.

Where it lands: the absorption without perception and the absorption of cessation that follows are almost identical in appearance, both shutting mind off; the divide is a single moment of attention. The same technique with a different aspiration makes the one an outsiders’ heaven and the other liberation in both parts. This is the sharpest contrast in the fascicle.

5. The Absorption of Cessation—A Noble One’s Mindlessness, and the Buddha’s “Not Before”

Six lines of stanza: “the absorption of cessation is likewise so; for peaceful abiding, at the summit of existence; wholesome, the two experiences indeterminate; attained by a noble one through preparatory practice; attained on becoming a buddha, not before, because of the thirty-four moments.”

The words “likewise so,” as the treatise itself points out, take by analogy the “ceasing of mind and mental factors” of the absorption without perception, and that item alone is the same. Every other gate is the reverse: as to attention, the former is “preceded by an attention with the notion of renunciation,” this one “preceded by an attention with the notion of stilling”; as to level, the former the fourth meditative absorption, this one the summit of existence; as to experience, the former in the next life only, this one in the next life, in a later life, indeterminately, and even not at all; as to person, the former ordinary beings only, this one noble ones only. Why can an ordinary being not arouse it? The treatise lists three causes—“because they fear annihilation; because it can be aroused only by the force of the noble path; because it is entered through the resolve upon nirvāṇa in the present dharma.”

The last two lines are the Buddha’s special case. The Buddha does not attain it through preparatory practice but at the moment of becoming a buddha, when the knowledge of exhaustion arises, because “the Buddha has no quality attained through preparatory practice.” Yet the Buddha had never before aroused the absorption of cessation—how then, at the knowledge of exhaustion, was he already liberated in both parts? The treatise answers: with regard to arousing the absorption of cessation he “had attained sovereignty, and so is one liberated in both parts just as one who has already aroused it”—sovereignty is itself attainment, and it need not be actually aroused.

“Because of the thirty-four moments” blocks the masters of the West. They say the bodhisattva while in training first aroused the absorption of cessation and afterwards attained awakening; to allow this would accord with Upagupta’s Treatise That Is the Feet of Reason’s Eye. The masters of Kaśmīra establish their thesis on the thirty-four moments: sixteen moments in the path of seeing, eighteen in leaving behind the craving of the summit of existence, continuous within one sitting, and in the midst of them “there is no occasion for a mind of an unlike kind to arise”—the mind of the absorption of cessation is with outflows and cannot be inserted into that string of moments without outflows. The masters abroad would still contest that ‘what if it were aroused?’; the author of the treatise concludes by bringing out the bodhisattva’s resolve of mind: “until I attain the permanent exhaustion of the outflows, I shall not unloose this cross-legged posture.”

Where it lands: this passage incidentally explains what “one sitting” means. It is not a posture but a stretch of continuity into which nothing else may be inserted.

6. The Likeness and Difference of the Two Absorptions—Why the Absorption of Cessation Must First Arise among Humans

Two lines of stanza: “the two absorptions depend on desire and form; the absorption of cessation first arises among humans.”

Where are they alike? Both absorptions arise in dependence upon a body of the two realms, desire and form. The treatise cites a sentence of the root treatise in evidence—“there may be an existence that is form, and this existence is not of five formations”—referring to a sentient being of the form realm dwelling in a mind of an unlike kind, or entering the two absorptions, or having been born in the Heaven of Non-Percipient Beings and entering non-perception, where only the two aggregates form and formation remain and there are not five. Where do they differ? The absorption without perception can first arise in both realms; the first arising of the absorption of cessation must be among humans; only afterwards, through falling away, is one born in the form realm and cultivates it again in dependence upon a body of form.

Does the absorption of cessation fall away? The treatise answers that it does, and cites the Udāyin Sūtra in evidence: there are monks who in the present dharma cannot cultivate to fulfillment, and after the breaking up of the body are born with a heavenly body formed by mind, where they can again enter and emerge from the absorption of the cessation of feeling and perception again and again. The heavenly body formed by mind the Buddha declares to be of the form realm, while the absorption of cessation is only at the summit of existence—if there were no falling away, how could one take birth in the form realm? Some other schools say the fourth meditative absorption also has the absorption of cessation; the treatise turns this back with the sūtra’s “nine successive absorptions”; and as for the leaping absorption, that is a matter of after sovereignty is attained and does not disturb the beginner’s succession.

The treatise then arranges the differences of the two absorptions in six gates: difference of level, difference of preparation, difference of continuum, difference of maturation, difference in the manner of experience, and difference of first arising. It adds a further question: since both absorptions are the ceasing of mind and mental factors, why is the one called non-perception and the other the cessation of feeling and perception? The answer is fine—“because in the preparatory practice of the two absorptions it is only these that are turned away from in disgust,” just as the cognition of another’s mind also knows feeling and the rest and yet is named from where the preparatory practice weighs.

Clearing a misreading: “the absorption of cessation first arises among humans” does not mean that it cannot be entered in the heavens; it means that the first time must be among humans. As for why the absorption of cessation cannot be aroused at all in the formless realm, that is another question under the line “the two absorptions depend on desire and form,” and Yuanhui’s Verse Commentary sets out a separate question and answer for it—Question: “that the absorption without perception does not depend on the formless is beyond doubt in reason; why does the absorption of cessation not depend on the formless?” Answer: “the life faculty turns in dependence on two dharmas, form and mind. If one arouses the absorption of cessation in the desire or form realm, then although there is no mind at that time, the life faculty turns in dependence on form. Born in the formless there is no bodily form; and if one then aroused the absorption of cessation there would be neither form nor mind—on what would life turn? That would be annihilation and not the entering of an absorption; hence in the formless realm the absorption of cessation is not aroused.” When entering the absorption of cessation in the desire and form realms, mind is absent and yet the life faculty can still turn in dependence on form; in the formless realm there is no bodily form, and to cease mind besides would leave it without support. The two lines belong to different questions and may not be substituted for one another.

7. Whether There Is Mind at All in the Absorption of Cessation—Vasumitra, Ghoṣa, and the Two Dharmas as Seeds of One Another

This is the deepest place in the fascicle, and the treatise opens it with the question, “now that within the two absorptions mind has been cut off for a long time, how does mind arise again afterwards?”

The Vaibhāṣikas answer bluntly: the past exists, and so an earlier mind can serve as the immediately antecedent condition of a later mind. Certain other masters take another route: when one is born in the formless realm, form is cut off for a long time and afterwards arises again, which shows that the re-arising of form rests upon mind; then the re-arising of the mind that emerges from the absorption should likewise rest upon the “body endowed with faculties” and not upon a previous mind—hence the preceptors of former times “all said that the two dharmas are seeds of one another,” the two dharmas being mind and the body endowed with faculties.

The Venerable Vasumitra takes a third route: “I say that in the absorption of cessation there is still a subtle mind, and therefore this fault does not arise.” The Venerable Ghoṣa at once refutes him: if there were consciousness, then faculty, object, and consciousness having come together there would necessarily be contact, and “with the contact of the three come together arise feeling, perception, and volition”—then feeling and perception would not have ceased, and what would make it an absorption of the cessation of feeling and perception? Vasumitra’s side takes as an example that an arhat has feelings and yet gives rise to no craving—so contact too need not produce feeling; Ghoṣa answers that the example does not hold, because the scripture qualifies itself, saying “feelings produced by a contact of ignorance are the condition for the arising of craving,” whereas nowhere has it qualified “contact producing feeling.”

From this, “the Vaibhāṣikas say that within the absorption of cessation all minds cease.” Being without mind, how is it still called an absorption? The treatise gives two solutions: “because it makes the great elements operate evenly it is called an absorption,” or because the force of the mind of concentration before entering reaches evenly to this point. As to whether the two absorptions are really or provisionally existent, the Sarvāstivādins say really (they can block mind), and some say provisionally (merely a station provisionally established upon mind’s not operating); and the author of the treatise closes as usual with a sentence: “this is not well stated, because it contradicts my own school.”

Where it lands: this passage is the page most worth being thoroughly familiar with before reading Yogācāra. The difficulty of ‘how continuity is maintained in a mindless station’ already has three answers on the table here—the past has entity, the two dharmas are seeds of one another, and there is still a subtle mind. The later Yogācāra answer is that the eighth consciousness runs on constantly; the question is one and the same question.

8. The Life Faculty—One Clause Saying ‘Lifespan Is Life,’ One Clause Saying “Sustains Warmth and Consciousness”

Two lines of stanza: “the entity of the life faculty is lifespan, able to sustain warmth and consciousness.” Puguang’s Record explains that “the upper line reconciles the name, the lower line proves it by its operation”—the upper line only identifies “life faculty” and “lifespan” as one thing; the lower line states its operation.

The evidence for reconciling the name is the Abhidharma: “what is the life faculty? Lifespan in the three realms.” But what then is “lifespan”? The treatise answers: “there is another dharma able to sustain warmth and consciousness, and this is called lifespan.” The life faculty is therefore not a lump of vital force; its definition is functional—the cause that ties warmth and consciousness together and makes them continue to abide.

Clearing a misreading: do not think of the life faculty as a soul. It can neither stand alone apart from warmth and consciousness, nor do any third thing besides them; it is only the holding that ‘keeps those two from dispersing.’

Where it lands: this is the most economical account Buddhism gives of ‘being alive.’ To be alive is for bodily warmth and consciousness to remain upon one continuum; once these two leave the body, what remains is only the stiff prostrate body of the stanza.

9. The Stanza on Lifespan, Warmth, and Consciousness—A Sentence the World-Honored One Himself Spoke, and the Fascicle’s Only Description of a Corpse

The treatise here quotes a stanza, prefaced by the marker “therefore the World-Honored One said”—this is not the author of the treatise’s own composition but a scriptural citation, and all four lines are the Buddha’s words: “Lifespan, warmth, and consciousness—when these three dharmas leave the body, the body they leave lies stiff and prone, like a piece of wood without thought or feeling.”

Puguang’s Record has a gloss of a single word here that shows how finely the ancients read: “dying face upward is called lying stiff, dying face downward is called lying prone”; and he adds, “there is also dying on the side, and yet it says stiff and prone, speaking perhaps from the majority”—some do die on the side, and the sūtra names only the common cases.

Why quote this stanza? Because the preceding definition is abstract (“able to sustain warmth and consciousness”), and here a verification anyone has seen is given: when the three go together, the body is like wood. Having quoted it, the treatise at once concludes—“therefore there is another dharma serving as the cause that sustains warmth and consciousness in continuing to abide, and it is called lifespan.”

Clearing a misreading: the stanza says “three dharmas leave the body”; do not read the three dharmas as three little persons departing. The treatise’s position is that lifespan is what sustains and warmth and consciousness are what is sustained; the three passing away together is the sustainer and the sustained passing away together.

Where it lands: this is one of the few passages in the fascicle that can be used directly in the mindfulness of the body. A body is a body by these three things alone; withdraw the three and it is wood.

10. The Incidental Discussion on the Life Faculty—Whether the Entity of Lifespan Is Real or Provisional, Pressed by the Author through Eighteen Turns

The prose beneath the stanza suddenly becomes a tug of war, and a very long one.

The Sarvāstivādins establish: lifespan sustains warmth and consciousness. The Sautrāntikas ask: then what sustains lifespan? The Sarvāstivādins answer: warmth and consciousness in turn sustain lifespan. The Sautrāntikas at once seize the circle: if the three sustain one another, which ceases first? If none ceases first, the three ought to be everlasting and never pass away. The Sarvāstivādins fall back a step: then lifespan is sustained by karma. The Sautrāntikas press again: since karma can sustain, why not have karma sustain warmth and consciousness directly—what need is there for lifespan? The Sarvāstivādins show their hand: it cannot be, for otherwise “one must not let it follow that all consciousness from beginning to end is constantly maturation”—if karma alone sustained consciousness, consciousness would be maturation forever, which is not the fact. The Sautrāntikas push on: then let karma sustain warmth and warmth sustain consciousness. The Sarvāstivādins answer: in the formless realm there is no warmth—what would consciousness rest on? And so back and forth, until the author of the treatise remarks, “how can you shift your account again and again to suit yourself?”

The Sautrāntikas at last show their own proposal: “now I too do not say that there is no entity of lifespan at all; I say only that the entity of lifespan is not a separate real thing”; the entity of lifespan is “the portion of duration of the commonality drawn forth by the karma of the three realms”—karma draws forth the commonality, and however long the commonality abides, that “portion” is the lifespan. Two similes are given: “like the portion drawn forth by a seed of grain and the rest, lasting until the time of ripening; or like the portion drawn forth by the shooting of an arrow, lasting until the time of coming to rest.” The simile of the arrow incidentally draws in the outsiders’ position of a “swift motion,” which the author of the treatise refutes on three grounds: its entity being one, there ought to be no differences of speed, slowness, and time of arrival; having no resistance, it ought never to fall; and if the obstruction be wind, it ought either to fall as soon as released or never to fall.

Having refuted the outsiders, the author of the treatise closes for the Sarvāstivādins: “there is a separate real thing able to sustain warmth and consciousness, named the entity of lifespan—this account is the better.”

Where it lands: what is most worth learning from this passage is the rhythm of the pressing. Each turn does only one thing: substitute the opponent’s answer and see what extra follows from it. After eighteen turns, the cost to both parties lies open on the table—one who establishes a real thing must carry a circle, and one who establishes a portion of duration must carry the lack of an entity.

11. The Fourfold Analysis of Death and “Untimely Death”—Two Passages Appended to the Life Faculty

The treatise asks next: does one die because lifespan is exhausted, or is there some other cause? The Treatise of Designations opens four cases: the karma of lifespan exhausted, the karma of merit exhausted, both exhausted together, and “not being able to avoid a violent condition coming from without.” The fourth case is violent death. The author of the treatise adds a further item: it should also be said “through relinquishing the life-formations.”

He then cites the Treatise on the Development of Wisdom asking whether lifespan “turns along with the continuum” or “abides as soon as it arises”: of desire-realm beings who do not enter the two absorptions, it turns along with the continuum; of those who enter the two absorptions and of all beings of the form and formless realms, it abides as soon as it arises. The masters of Kaśmīra judge this thus: “the first shows that there is obstruction and the second that there is none; and by this it is settled that there is untimely death”—and this judgment is the Sarvāstivādins’ chief warrant for establishing “untimely death.”

He then cites a sūtra opening “four acquirings of a body of one’s own”: injurable only by oneself, as with the gods of playful forgetfulness and the gods of mental wrath, who pass away by arousing excessive delight or anger; injurable only by another, as with those within the womb or the egg; injurable by both, as with most of the desire realm; injurable by neither, a long list—the intermediate existence, the form and formless realms, naraka, Uttarakuru, one properly abiding on the path of seeing, one in the absorption of loving-kindness, one in the absorption of cessation, one in the absorption without perception, royal seers, the Buddha’s envoys, the five whom the Buddha prophesied, the bodhisattva in his final body and his mother, a wheel-turning monarch and his mother.

Yet in the sūtra the Buddha names for Śāriputra only the one station of neither perception nor non-perception. The treatise explains this as “naming the last to display the first,” and gives an instance of “naming the first to display the last” (the Brahmakāyika Heaven is the first heaven of pleasant birth) and of “naming the last to display the first” (the Ābhāsvara Heaven is the second heaven of pleasant birth). An outsider argues that those two instances have the word “like” and are similes, while this sūtra has no “like” and cannot be reasoned from them; the author of the treatise counters with the sūtra on the stations of consciousness—“sentient beings with form, differing in body and differing in perception, like a portion of humans and the gods, this is the first station of consciousness”—where the “like” is likewise not a simile. The argument done, the author of the treatise calls a halt himself: “the incidental discussion stops here.”

Clearing a misreading: this passage is often read as anecdote. In fact it completes the foregoing clause, “by this it is settled that there is untimely death”—if everyone died only when lifespan was exhausted, the Buddha would not have had to open four ways of acquiring a body of one’s own.

12. The Four Conditioned Marks—Arising, Abiding, Change, Cessation, and the Three Enemies Lying in Wait in the Dense Forest

Two lines of stanza: “the marks are of conditioned dharmas: the nature of arising, abiding, change, and cessation.” The treatise explains the four words with great regularity: “with regard to dharmas, what can make them arise is called arising, what can make them settle is called abiding, what can make them decay is called change, what can make them break up is called cessation,” and adds at the end, “nature has the sense of entity”—and it is precisely this word “entity” that the Sarvāstivādins want.

It runs at once into a scriptural proof: the sūtra speaks of only three conditioned marks. The treatise answers: the sūtra’s “change of what abides” is precisely another name for “change” here, as arising is called origination and cessation is called exhaustion. Then why does the sūtra not establish abiding? Two reasons: the three marks are what make the formations flow through the three times, and they are stated “in order to make sentient beings give rise to a mind of weariness and dread,” whereas abiding settles and does not produce weariness; and unconditioned dharmas too have abiding in their own characteristic, so that stating abiding would confuse the two.

Here the treatise gives the best simile in the fascicle: a man in a dense forest with three enemies wishing to injure him—“one drags him out of the dense forest, one weakens his strength, and one destroys his life faculty.” Arising drags you from the future into the present, change wears down your strength, cessation cuts off your life; so are the three marks with regard to the formations.

There is also a third account: the sūtra combines abiding and change under one name. Why combine them? Because “abiding is what sentient beings cling to and love,” and in order to make them weary of it and cast it away it is stated together with change—“just as Black-Ear is shown together with Auspicious.”

Clearing a misreading: the four marks are not the names of four stages but four operations. Upon a dharma of one and the same moment all four marks are present together, differing only in the time of their operation; and it is exactly this point that the Sautrāntikas will attack below.

Where it lands: this passage turns impermanence into a structure rather than an exclamation. What you cling to is precisely “abiding,” and the sūtra will not even give you that name by itself.

13. The Four Secondary Marks—The Simile of the Hen, and the Closing Off of “Infinite Regress”

The objection comes very fast: since the marks of arising and the rest are themselves conditioned, they should have marks of arising and the rest of their own; and so on without end. The stanza answers in two lines: “these have the arising of arising and the rest; upon eight and upon one they have function.”

“The arising of arising and the rest” are the four secondary marks—the treatise glosses them itself, “that is, the four secondary marks: the arising of arising, the abiding of abiding, the change of change, and the cessation of cessation.” How is the objection of infinite regress solved? “Because the four primary and the four secondary differ in their function upon eight and upon one.” Of function the treatise gives two glosses: “a dharma’s operation, or what is called human effort.”

The reckoning is this: when one dharma arises, nine dharmas in all, its own entity included, arise together—the entity one, the primary marks four, the secondary marks four. The “arising” among the primary marks excludes itself and gives rise to the other eight; the “arising of arising” among the secondary marks gives rise only to the one dharma, the primary “arising.” The treatise uses the hen as a simile: “as with a hen, some bear many chicks and some bear only one.” The arising of arising produces only one at a time, and so the series stops at the secondary marks and need not be added to further.

Clearing a misreading: do not imagine the secondary marks as a fifth and sixth tier of marks. The secondary and the primary marks are a set that accomplish one another: the eight dharmas of the primary marks already contain the secondary, and the secondary in turn accomplish only the primary. The nine dharmas close upon themselves, and the objection of infinite regress is cut off here.

Where it lands: this is the most typical move in Sarvāstivāda dharma-analysis—closing off a regress by a difference of function rather than by an addition of tiers. When Yogācāra later speaks of seeds and manifest activity perfuming one another, it uses the same kind of closure.

14. The Sautrāntika Objection—“On What Ground Is Empty Space Cut Up in This Fashion?”

Here the Sautrāntikas come out in the open, and their first sentence is very heavy: “on what ground is empty space cut up in this fashion?”—where there is nothing at all, you have carved out four names. The reason is “because there is no determinate means of knowledge”: these marks, unlike color and the rest, have no determinate direct perception, inference, or authoritative testimony to prove them.

The Sarvāstivādins bring in scripture: “the origination of the conditioned may be known; its exhaustion and its change of what abides may also be known.” The author of the treatise answers without ceremony: “Beloved of the gods! You cling to the letter and lose the sense; the Bhagavat said that it is the sense that is to be relied upon.” What is the real sense of that sūtra? The foolish cling to self and what belongs to self upon the continuum of the formations, and the World-Honored One, to cut off that clinging, displayed that ‘the continuum of the formations is conditioned and arisen from conditions’; it is not to say that a single moment possesses the three marks—for the origination and the rest of a single moment cannot be known, and what cannot be known should not be established as a mark.

And why does the sūtra repeat the two words “conditioned”? To make one know that this mark declares the conditioned, and not that the mark declares ‘the existence of a conditioned dharma’ (“as a gathering of white egrets declares that water is not absent”), nor that it declares the wholesomeness or unwholesomeness of a conditioned dharma (“as the marks of a maiden declare the wholesome or the unwholesome”). Both similes are very lively: seeing egrets one knows there is water—that declares existence; seeing the marks of a maiden one knows she will bear good or bad children—that declares good and bad; the four marks are neither.

The Sautrāntikas then give their own four marks: “the first arising of the continuum of the formations is called arising; at the station of final exhaustion it is called cessation; the continuum turning on in the middle is called abiding; and the difference between earlier and later is called change of what abides,” citing as evidence the World-Honored One’s words to Nanda on the arising, abiding, change, and cessation of feeling.

Where it lands: the same set of terms the Sarvāstivādins place upon the moment and the Sautrāntikas place upon the continuum. This sentence is the master key to the second half of the fascicle—the three stanzas quoted below are all there to make it firm.

15. The First Quoted Stanza—“The First of a Continuum Is Called Arising”

The treatise quotes the first stanza, prefaced with “therefore a stanza says”: “The first of a continuum is called arising; cessation is the station of final exhaustion; the turning on in the middle is called abiding; change of what abides is the difference of earlier and later.”

See clearly who is speaking. This is not a stanza of the author’s own composition but one he quotes as a lemma; he quotes it to prove that ‘setting the four marks upon the continuum’ is not his own new invention but has authority behind it. The four lines answer one by one to the prose of the preceding passage: first arising, final exhaustion, turning on in the middle, the difference of earlier and later.

Clearing a misreading: do not pass over the two words “continuum.” The Sarvāstivādins say that a single moment possesses the four marks; the Sautrāntikas say that upon a single moment there are no four marks to point to at all, and only when a stretch of continuum is laid open do arising, abiding, change, and cessation have places to stand. The whole force of the set of quoted stanzas is spent upon this “continuum.”

Where it lands: this is also how people actually experience it—no one ever sees impermanence within a single moment; it is seen only by setting two stretches, earlier and later, side by side.

16. The Second Quoted Stanza—“Not Being Before and Being Now Is Arising”

The second stanza is prefaced with “and there is a further stanza”: “Not being before and being now is arising; the continuum turning on is abiding; a difference of earlier and later is change of what abides; the cutting off of the continuum is called cessation.”

It is the same in sense as the former with a different set of words: arising is stated as “not being before and being now,” cessation as “the cutting off of the continuum.” Why quote a second stanza? Because “the first” and “final exhaustion” of the former stanza still carry a flavor of points in time and are easily read back into the moment; this stanza changes to “not being before and being now” and “the cutting off of the continuum,” and so states the four marks thoroughly as divisions upon a continuum.

Clearing a misreading: the four words “not being before and being now” occur three times in this fascicle, twice in Sautrāntika mouths and once in a Sarvāstivāda mouth, and the use differs. The Sautrāntikas use it to say that arising is merely a description; the Sarvāstivādins use it to say why a mark of arising must be established. One and the same phrase, each school taking what it needs—this is the place in the fascicle that most requires watchfulness.

Where it lands: to say in ordinary speech that ‘this has happened’ is to say exactly “not being before and being now.” The Sautrāntika point is that besides this there is no separate thing called “happening.”

17. The Third Quoted Stanza—“Since Dharmas Are Momentary, There Is No Abiding but Only Cessation”

The third stanza is prefaced with “and there is yet another stanza”: “Since dharmas are momentary, there is no abiding but only cessation; they cease of themselves, and so to hold that there is abiding does not hold in reason.”

This stanza has a different task from the two before it. The two former stanzas establish, stating how the four marks are set upon the continuum; this one refutes, pointing directly at the impossibility of an “abiding” upon the moment—dharmas being momentary, they cease as soon as they arise, and there is no stretch between that could be called abiding; and cessation is spontaneous, waiting on no outer condition, so that to establish a mark of abiding upon the moment does not hold in reason.

Having quoted it, the author of the treatise concludes: abiding is therefore spoken of only upon the continuum, and in this way the words of the Abhidharma can be made good—“what is called abiding? It is every formation that has arisen and not yet ceased.” As for the Treatise on the Development of Wisdom speaking of arising, death, and aging within a single mind, the author places that too: “that treatise’s text is stated with reference to the mind in the continuum of the commonality of sentient beings, and not with reference to a single moment.”

Clearing a misreading: three stanzas quoted in a row are not one thing said three times. Two establish and the third refutes; the third seals off the Sarvāstivāda road of ‘the moment possessing the four marks.’

Where it lands: when several stanzas are quoted in a row in a treatise, first ask ‘what is each of them doing’—this is often quicker than glossing them line by line.

18. The Four Marks upon the Moment, and the Diamond That Was Thrown

The Sautrāntikas do not stop at the continuum. The treatise goes on: even with respect to each single moment, once “holding that there are real things” is set aside, the four marks are equally established—not being before and being now is arising, being and then not being again is cessation, the later succeeding the earlier is abiding, and the difference of earlier and later is change of what abides.

The objector says: when earlier and later are alike, where is the difference? The treatise uses the diamond as a simile: “as with a diamond and the like, there is a difference between being thrown and not thrown, and between being thrown with strong force and with weak force, and a difference of speed and slowness in falling”—one and the same diamond, thrown or not, thrown hard or gently, falls at different rates, which shows that a difference in the transformation of the great elements exists; it is only because formations continue on alike, with little difference between earlier and later, that they look unchanged.

A further objection: the last moment of sound or light, and the last six sense fields at nirvāṇa, have no later thought—do they not then lack change of what abides, so that the mark does not extend to all the conditioned? The treatise answers: here abiding is not being established as a conditioned mark at all; what is meant is “the change of what abides”; where there is abiding there is necessarily change, and so there is no fault of not extending to all.

The author of the treatise then presses several objections in a row against the Sarvāstivāda position that ‘the four marks are present together and operate at different times’: supposing the arising of a future thing has an operation, how is it still future; when the operation of arising has passed away in the present, how is it still present; the three operations of abiding, change, and cessation being all in the present, is the moment to be called abiding, change, or cessation; if abiding’s force is strong and so it operates first, how does it afterwards grow weak enough to be broken by change and cessation along with the primary dharma; and if it be said that abiding, having operated, should not operate again, as with arising—here the author draws a very fine distinction: the operation of arising is to draw the dharma into the present, and once drawn in it need not be drawn again; the operation of abiding is to settle the dharma so that it neither decays nor ceases, and having made it abide it may well make it abide forever, so that the operation of abiding should arise constantly and arising cannot be taken as its model. He asks at the end: once the operation of abiding stops, change and cessation and the primary dharma no longer abide—where then do the two marks change and cessation operate, and what work is left for them?

Where it lands: this passage is the treatise’s model exercise in ‘inspecting a model.’ One need not ask whether it is right; ask first: run it once as it says, and see whether it contradicts itself.

19. The Fourth Quoted Stanza—“If It Is That Very Earlier One”

Pressing on to the mark of “change,” the author of the treatise says: that a dharma having arisen and not yet broken up is called abiding, and having abided and at the time of breaking up is called cessation, may still pass; only “change,” pressed forward or backward within one dharma, cannot stand. Why? “Change means the transformation of the nature and characteristic between earlier and later, and it is not that upon this very dharma one may say it is changed from this.” And so a stanza is quoted: “If it is said to be that very earlier one, change is not established; if it is said to differ from the earlier, it is not one and the same dharma. Therefore, upon one dharma, to establish change cannot in the end be established.”

This stanza too is prefaced with “therefore a stanza says” and is a lemma and not a composition; it is quoted to compress a whole stretch of the foregoing pressing into four lines. The sense is extremely simple: say that it is the earlier one, and “change” cannot be spoken of at all; say that it is not the earlier one, and a different dharma has been substituted, so that it is not ‘the change of one dharma.’ Neither road goes through.

The author of the treatise then adds a refutation of the mark of cessation: another school says that only when the causes and conditions of cessation are met can the mark of cessation cause a dharma to cease; the treatise uses the simile of taking medicine—“when a purgative is taken a god must come to make it work”—the medicine works of itself, so why call in a god? Since the causes and conditions of cessation can themselves make it cease, why posit a mark of cessation besides? And they too allow that mind and mental factors cease of themselves in a moment, so that cessation and abiding would have no earlier and later, and one dharma at one time both abiding and ceasing does not accord with correct reasoning.

Where it lands: “change” is the hardest of the four marks to place. To say today that ‘this thing has changed’ is always to set two points in time against one another; once only one point in time remains, the word “change” has nothing to rest on. That is exactly what the stanza says.

20. Arising Cannot Give Rise Alone—“Not Apart from the Meeting of Causes and Conditions”

After all the disputing over whether there is a mark of arising, an important qualification is added here. The objector asks: if arising can give rise to what it produces while still in the future, why do not all future dharmas arise at once? The stanza answers in two lines: “arising can give rise to what it produces, yet not apart from the meeting of causes and conditions.”

The treatise’s explanation is very short: it is not that, apart from the meeting of the other causes and conditions, the force of the mark of arising alone can give rise, and so future dharmas do not arise all at once. The Sautrāntikas at once ask back: then we see only that causes and conditions have the capacity to give rise—what need is there for a mark of arising besides? The Sarvāstivādins answer: “the nature of dharmas is subtle and exceedingly hard to know, and so, though a thing presently has its entity, it may be unknowable”; and without a mark of arising, the expression in the sixth case, “the arising of form,” “the arising of feeling,” could not be established.

The Sautrāntikas push the counter-example to its end: if a real thing must be established to make good an expression in the sixth case, then to make good the cognitions of “emptiness” and “non-self” must one establish a nature of emptiness and a nature of non-self apart from dharmas? To make good the cognitions of one and two, large and small, junction and separation, this and that, must one, like the outsiders, establish separate natures of number, magnitude, junction, separation, and the rest? And what of the sixth-case expression “the intrinsic nature of form”—is there another intrinsic nature apart from form? Therefore arising and the rest are merely provisionally established, and to say “the arising of form” is only to distinguish it from the others—“as the world says the fragrance of sandalwood, the substance of a stone.”

The Sarvāstivādins at the end no longer answer point by point but simply state their stance: how could one abandon one’s own school merely because those who object are many—“one does not refrain from sowing wheat for fear that deer may come, nor refrain from eating a sweet ball for fear that many flies may settle on it.”

Where it lands: this proverbial ending is the most human touch in the fascicle. It grants that the objections are objections, and yet holds that to establish a thesis carries its own responsibility. The author of the treatise records the attitudes of both parties as well, and not the reasoning alone.

21. Name-Body, Phrase-Body, Syllable-Body—Why a Sentence Can Be Understood

Two lines of stanza: “what are called the name-bodies and the rest are the collective expression of ideation, statement, and letter-sound.” Name is explained by ideation, phrase by statement, syllable by letter-sound, and body by collective expression.

The treatise explains name as “name means ideation,” as in the ideations of form, sound, odor, and flavor; phrase as “a phrase is a statement, able to express a sense to completion,” as in the statement ‘all formations are impermanent,’ or as able to make clear the correspondence and difference of action, quality, and time; syllable as “a syllable is a letter-sound,” as a, ā, i, ī. An objector says that letters are just the names of written signs; the treatise answers: it is not that letters were made to display written signs, but that written signs were made to display letters—for it was in order that a person might understand without having heard them spoken that written signs were made. “Body” is “collective expression,” which the treatise glosses as “what is called collective expression is the sense of gathering together”; two or more names joined make a name-body, and the rest by analogy.

The greatest objection comes afterwards: these three are of the nature of speech, speech is sound, and sound belongs to form—how then can they be said instead to be formations not associated with mind? The treatise answers: the three are not of the intrinsic nature of speech. Speech is only vocal sound, and vocal sound of itself does not make the sense known; the order is “speech gives rise to name, name displays the sense, and only so can it be made known.” And what kind of vocal sound makes the sense knowable? Only one that speakers have “jointly settled among the several senses as the fixed measure of what expresses.”

Clearing a misreading: do not take the name-, phrase-, and syllable-bodies for a grammar. The Sarvāstivādins establish them in order to place a very practical observation—one and the same string of sounds is heard as sense by one who understands and as mere noise by one who does not. That difference must have somewhere to be put.

Where it lands: this is the starting point of Buddhist theory of language. When Yogācāra later speaks of the perfuming of verbal designations as seeds, the question is still this one: how is sense carried?

22. The Fifth Quoted Stanza—The Nine Senses of the Sound Go

The treatise gives an example to prove “jointly settled as the fixed measure of what expresses,” and quotes a stanza, prefaced with “therefore there is a stanza that says”: “Direction, beast, earth, light, speech, diamond, eye, heaven, and water—upon these nine senses the wise established the single sound go.”

This stanza is quoted from an outside text and is not the author of the treatise’s own statement. A single sound go the ancients jointly settled upon to designate nine wholly unrelated things—direction, beast, earth, light, speech, diamond, eye, heaven, and water. Why quote it? Because it proves the word “convention” most thoroughly: were there a natural link between sound and sense, how could one sound carry nine senses?

The treatise at once turns this back upon those who hold that name displays the sense: since it is a jointly settled measure, then “the work of displaying by vocal sound alone is already accomplished; what need is there to reckon crosswise and posit besides a really existent name?” It then seals off each road in turn: is name produced by speech—since all sounds are of the nature of sound, every sound ought to produce a name; is name displayed by speech—the same fault. If it be said that the sound that produces or displays has a distinguishing feature, that feature already suffices to display the sense—what need is there of a separate name? Again, the sounds of the several moments cannot be gathered together, nor does any dharma arise little by little in parts—how then is a name given rise to by speech? And if one shifts to holding that speech produces the syllable, the syllable the name, and the name displays the sense, the same objections hold, because the syllables of the several moments likewise cannot be gathered.

He then refutes another road: if the name, like arising and the rest, arises together with the sense, then a present name could not designate a past or a future sense; and moreover “parents and others give names to their children as they please”—a name is added later at will, how can it arise together with the sense? Besides, unconditioned dharmas ought then to have no name, which you do not grant. As for the World-Honored One’s saying that a stanza depends on name, the treatise answers: sound is itself name, and a stanza is the differing arrangement of names; to hold it a real thing does not accord with correct reasoning—“as with many trees forming a row, or minds in succession”—a row is nothing apart from the trees.

The Sarvāstivādins at the end still hold their own school: the name-bodies and the rest are separate real things, real and not provisional, on the ground that “not every dharma is such as reflective thought can know.”

23. The Realm Affiliation, Five Classes, and Three Qualities of the Name-Bodies and the Rest

Two lines of stanza: “they belong to desire and form, are included in the class of sentient beings, are of homogeneous outflow and of indeterminate quality.” Four gates are answered at once.

Realm affiliation: the two realms desire and form only. The treatise records an alternative account, “some say that they also belong to the formless realm, and yet it cannot be stated”—preserved without adjudication. Sentient or insentient: included in the class of sentient beings, on the ground that “they are possessed by a speaker and are not the sense displayed”—what possesses the name-bodies is the speaker, not the sense expressed (the sense extending to the insentient). Five classes: homogeneous outflow only, neither maturation nor nourished. Three qualities: unobscured-indeterminate only.

Clearing a misreading: to say that the name-bodies and the rest are indeterminate is not to say that language has no good or evil. Good and evil lie in the mind that utters, not in the name-, phrase-, and syllable-bodies themselves; these only carry.

Where it lands: this item has a very practical side for practice—one and the same sentence is well or ill spoken according to the mind and not the letters; and the letters themselves being indeterminate, anyone may take them up. That the scriptures could be compiled, could be recited, and could also be misused has its warrant just here.

24. The General Analysis under the Several Gates—One Stanza Settles Twelve Items

The last stanza, in four lines: “commonality is likewise so, and also the formless and maturation; acquisition and the marks extend to three classes; non-acquisition and the two absorptions are of homogeneous outflow only.” The realm affiliation, five classes, and three qualities stated separately for each item above are here filled in all at once.

“Likewise so” says that commonality, like the name-bodies and the rest, extends to desire and form, to the class of sentient beings, to homogeneous outflow, and to the unobscured-indeterminate. “And the formless” adds one item: commonality is not confined to desire and form but extends to all three realms. “And maturation” adds another: commonality is not confined to homogeneous outflow but extends to maturation as well. So commonality extends to three realms and to two classes. “Acquisition” and the four marks extend to three classes—momentary, homogeneous outflow, and maturation. “Non-acquisition” and the two absorptions are of homogeneous outflow only, the single word “only” being there to make clear that they are not maturation.

At the end the treatise puts two questions to itself and thereby makes its own conventions plain: why is it not said that acquisition and the rest are of the class of sentient beings only? Because it was already said above, “what a sentient being possesses,” and the rest. Why is it not said that the marks extend to both the class of sentient beings and what is not? Because it was already said above, “all that is conditioned is together”—that is, together with the four marks. What remains unstated may be known by inference as fits each case.

Clearing a misreading: do not read this stanza as an appendix. It is the fascicle’s balance sheet—the twelve formations not associated with mind, each located upon the three coordinates of realm, class, and quality. That the Sarvāstivādins establish a dharma as “real” is not merely to say that it exists, but that it can occupy a determinate cell in this table.

Where it lands: reading this fascicle through and then looking again at the phrase “formations not associated with mind,” one finds that it is not a box of odds and ends. Whatever cannot be assigned to form and cannot be assigned to mind, and yet really does work within experience—all those ‘reasons why’—are gathered here. Commonality manages resemblance, the two absorptions manage the blank, the life faculty manages continuity, the four marks manage flowing, the name-, phrase-, and syllable-bodies manage meaning. Within one fascicle, five matters that everyone meets have been given five seats.

Further Resonances: A Mirror of Four Commentaries

The above is the sense of this fascicle in itself. What follows illuminates it from the side with the ancient masters’ judgments, Paramārtha’s alternative translation, and Saṅghabhadra’s counter-refutations—a mirror is not the treatise, but a change of reading upon the same fascicle.

One: on the name and sense of commonality, the four masters each make a different explanation. Puguang’s Record preserves the two readings, appositional-determinative and dependent-determinative, and uses the appositional reading to “distinguish it from the Sautrāntikas” and to “distinguish it from the Vaiśeṣikas”; Yuanhui’s Verse Commentary takes only the dependent reading; Fabao’s Commentary, after citing the Treatise Conforming to Correct Principle, judges outright that “since the treatise explains it thus, other explanations are a needless trouble,” and sets up his own instead: “the dharmas that are the same are not one, and so are called the same in a multitude; and being their cause, it is called a portion”; Shentai’s Commentary does not discuss the mode of explanation but turns instead to reconciling the differing names in four texts: “the root treatise of the six feet calls this the commonality of sentient beings”; “this commonality of sentient beings the Miscellaneous Heart Treatise calls the class-kind of beings, speaking only of the commonality of persons and not of dharmas. The Mahāvibhāṣā calls it the place of receiving a body, speaking only of the commonality of dharmas and not of persons. This treatise calls it commonality, extending to both persons and dharmas.” Shentai further refutes the old masters’ account that “apart from the commonality of persons there is a separate commonality of dharmas.” All four are recorded together, without adjudication.

Two: Saṅghabhadra’s counter-refutations are densest in this fascicle. The Treatise Conforming to Correct Principle calls Vasubandhu “the Sūtra-master” and refutes his words passage by passage. In the section on commonality, Saṅghabhadra answers the objection about “commonality of the insentient” with a counter-charge: “you too allow that there are the destinies of humans and gods and births from the womb and the egg; why do you not also allow that mangoes and the rest are destinies and mung beans and the rest are births?”, and establishes commonality as really existent on three grounds. In the section on the life faculty he takes up the lemma “now I too do not say that there is no entity of lifespan at all; I say only that the entity of lifespan is not a separate real thing” and judges that “therefore the Sūtra-master, upon this sense, piles up many words that declare nothing at all,” concluding, “therefore the entity of lifespan is really a separate thing, able to sustain warmth and consciousness, and is called the life faculty.” In the section on the four marks he takes up the whole of “on what ground is empty space cut up in this fashion” and refutes it, ending, “then it is you who, by holding to the provisional, are on the contrary boring and churning empty space.” Both schools are recorded together, with no verdict as to which prevails.

Three: the names of the four marks in Paramārtha’s older translation differ from those of this fascicle. Xuanzang has arising, abiding, change, and cessation; Paramārtha has “arising, aging, abiding, and impermanence,” and his prose follows accordingly: “aging is what can alter this dharma; impermanence is what can make this dharma cease.” The stanza on change Paramārtha renders “if it is as before there is no aging; if it differs it is not the former dharma; therefore upon one dharma the mark of aging cannot be established.” The stanza on the name-bodies Paramārtha renders “name-collections, phrase-collections, and letter-collections, the collective gathering of designation, speech, and syllable,” and his example of a phrase is not ‘all formations are impermanent’ but ‘a good friend met at one time.’ The stanza on the sound go Paramārtha renders “speech, direction, earth, light, ox,” putting “ox” in place of “beast” among the nine senses, and marking its source, “as the Nirukta treatise says in a verse”—whereas Xuanzang’s version has only “therefore there is a stanza that says.” What is taken and what is left between the two translations is for the translator to determine; here they are merely recorded together.

Four: the sources of the three quoted stanzas survive only because Shentai’s Commentary transmits Paramārtha’s own commentary. Shentai says, “Master Paramārtha’s own commentary says: of the three stanzas below, the first stanza occurs in the upadeśa on the sūtras composed by Mahākātyāyana”; “the second stanza occurs in the upadeśa on the sūtras composed by Buddhatrāta. The third stanza occurs in a treatise composed by the Dharma Master Kumāralāta.” On the stanza “if it is said to be that very earlier one” he likewise cites, “Master Paramārtha’s own commentary says: this verse too is a line of the stanzas of the Correct Principle treatise in the upadeśa on Mahākātyāyana’s sūtra.” Paramārtha’s own commentary is now lost, and this is the only surviving record of it. Whether the attributions are exact the ancients did not settle; they are recorded together without adjudication.

Five: what the two characters of “the arising of arising” refer to above and below is given in three forms by three masters. Puguang’s Record preserves two readings: “the upper character of arising is the minor arising and the lower is the major, because it gives rise to arising,” and, alternatively, “the upper character of arising is the major arising and the lower the minor, being the arising of arising and so called the arising of arising”; Yuanhui’s Verse Commentary takes only the former, “the upper character of arising is the minor arising and the lower the major, because from the minor arising the major arising is produced, and so it is called the arising of arising”; Shentai’s Commentary makes a form of its own, explaining the upper character as “operation.” The three forms are recorded together.

Six: the story of Black-Ear and Auspicious and the older translation. Puguang’s Record tells the story in full: “Black-Ear and Auspicious were two sisters who always went about together. The elder was named Auspicious, and wherever she went she brought benefit. The younger was Black-Ear, so named because her ears were black, and wherever she went she brought loss,” and he denounces the older rendering: “the old version says Goddess of Merit and Maiden of Darkness—the translators were mistaken.” Shentai’s Commentary likewise holds the old names to be wrong; Yuanhui tells the story in full without judging; Fabao says only “it may be known from the text.” Judging and not judging, each is returned to its own place.

Seven: to whose account the maturation of non-perception belongs, only Shentai’s Commentary has made the determination. Shentai says, “if we follow the assessors of the Mahāvibhāṣā, among the eleven accounts they assess and take the second. Now the Kośa: Question, of what is it the maturation? Answer, of the absorption without perception. This agrees with the second master’s account in the Mahāvibhāṣā, which the assessors preserve,” while what the Treatise Conforming to Correct Principle takes “agrees with the first master’s account in the Mahāvibhāṣā and is not what the assessors of the Mahāvibhāṣā preserve.” This is the finest piece of ancient collation in this fascicle, recorded for reference.

Eight: the twenty-two variant readings in Fascicle Five of the Taishō, recorded together and unaltered. Three of them touch on doctrine—「種姓」 tr. “lineage” reads 「種性」 tr. “nature of the kind” in the Song, Yuan, and Ming witnesses; 「此於諸法能起名生」 tr. “with regard to dharmas, what can make them arise is called arising” reads 「中於」 tr. “within, with regard to” in the Palace witness; 「或謂士用」 tr. “or what is called the effort of a person” reads 「士時」 tr. “the time of a person” in the Song and Yuan witnesses and 「生時」 tr. “the time of arising” in the Ming. The rest are variant graphs, transcriptions, and omissions or additions. The base still follows the Taishō reading, the variants being recorded alongside for reference; what is to be adopted is not for this layer to settle.

Which joint of the chapter this fascicle stands on

The Chapter on the Faculties makes a wide turn at this point. The three preceding fascicles spoke of which dharmas there are — the twenty-two faculties, co-arising mind and mental factors, formations not associated with mind. From this fascicle on, what is spoken of is what these dharmas arise by.

The turn was not added by later hands. Three commentators mark the head of the fascicle with the same outline sentence: Puguang’s Record of the Abhidharmakośa has, “From here begins the third major division of this chapter, explaining causes and conditions”; Fabao’s Commentary on the Abhidharmakośa has, “From here begins the third major division of this chapter, explaining cause and also condition”; Yuanhui’s Verse Commentary has, “From here, the third major division, explaining causes and conditions” — three slightly different wordings cutting at exactly the same boundary. Shentai’s Commentary sets up a fivefold outline instead (concluding what precedes; restating the earlier text; inquiring into causes and conditions; the twenty-five lines of stanzas; the four conditions), a different method of outlining that still falls at the same place. That four commentators bring the knife down on the same word tells the reader something in itself: this is the beginning of the third major section of the Chapter on the Faculties, and the front gate of the whole treatise’s account of cause and result.

The treatise’s first sentence is itself a transition: “Thus the formations not associated with mind have been explained. It was said above that when the arising-mark produces what is to arise, it does not do so apart from the conjunction of the other causes and conditions. Which dharmas here are called causes and conditions?” The arising-mark was treated in the previous fascicle, but a loose end was left there: the arising-mark can produce a dharma, yet cannot accomplish this on its own — the conjunction of the other causes and conditions is needed too. That loose end is what this fascicle gathers up.

It gathers it up with two tables: the side of causes opened out into six, the side of results into five. When the six causes and five results are done, the fascicle breaks off; the four conditions are not stated until the next one. This break is worth noticing: Root Stanza 62 in fact straddles cause and condition, and in dividing the fascicles Xuanzang gave up the stanza’s boundary and followed the doctrine’s. At the end of this fascicle Yuanhui writes, “All the distinctions above belong in sum to the first part; the explanation of causes is complete” — the commentator’s closing words and the translator’s cut fall at precisely the same place. Causes are stated to the end first, and conditions begin a separate fascicle: this is how the Tang read this book, not an accident of binding.

I. Why exactly six causes (Root Stanza 50)

Stanza: “Enabling and coexistent, homogeneous and associated, all-pervading together with maturation — causes are allowed to be only six kinds.”

First a question most easily skipped over: why are the causes exactly six?

The treatise’s answer is extremely short: “There are six kinds of cause: first the enabling cause, second the coexistent cause, third the homogeneous cause, fourth the associated cause, fifth the all-pervading cause, sixth the maturation cause. The Abhidharma masters allow that causes are only these six kinds.” Note that the subject of the closing sentence is not “the Buddha” but “the Abhidharma masters.” Yuanhui is explicit when he explains the stanza’s syntax: the first three lines merely list the names, and “the fourth line concludes by referring them back to our own school.” That conclusion marks where the authority of the six causes comes from: it is an institution of the Abhidharma masters.

The misreading lies here: readers easily take the six causes for something scripture states. Yuanhui at once records the counter-question of another school — the Sautrāntikas and their like do not accept the six causes, on the ground that “scripture does not state them,” while the four conditions they do accept, because “scripture does state them.” So the five words the treatise uses here, “the Abhidharma masters allow,” are not politeness but measure: the four conditions the author states outright (in the next fascicle “it is said that there are four kinds of condition” is established by citing scripture), while for the six causes he marks their provenance.

Where this lands: these five words set the posture for reading the whole fascicle. In listing the six causes the treatise uses “the Abhidharma masters allow” and not “the Buddha said” — and the Sautrāntika line takes exactly this as its challenge: scripture has explicit text for the four conditions and none for the six causes, so how can the two be set side by side? But this is the starting point of the fascicle’s dispute, not its conclusion: in the Treatise Conforming to Correct Principle Saṅghabhadra adduces scripture item by item to establish the six causes, and finally rules outright, “These six causes the Buddha stated everywhere; those who detest and turn from them are deluded and do not see them.” Whether there is scriptural warrant, the treatise itself does not adjudicate; the positions of both parties are recorded together under Further Resonances. Later on, when the Sautrāntika counter-questions come section by section, look back at these five words and it will be clear what is actually being contested.

Puguang does a further layer of work on the names: each of the six he splits into two readings, the appositional-determinative and the dependent-determinative (the enabling is itself the cause / the cause that enables, and so on for the rest), and finally rules in one sentence, “None of these six causes admits of a possessive-compound analysis” — because the entity of each of the six is itself the cause, and not something that borrows causal standing from another thing. The sentence looks fussy but is in fact a safeguard: the six causes name six ways in which a dharma itself serves as a cause; they are not six things called “cause” standing outside dharmas.

II. The enabling cause: counting even “not getting in the way” as a cause (first line of Root Stanza 51)

The stanza is only five characters: “Apart from itself, all others enable.”

First ask: on what ground does every dharma count as a cause of some given dharma? The answer: “Every conditioned dharma, excluding only its own entity, takes all dharmas as enabling causes, because when it arises they abide without obstructing it.” The criterion is abiding without obstructing: at the moment a given dharma arises, all other dharmas are there without blocking it, and that is enough. Yuanhui brings out the point of “apart from itself”: when a dharma arises its own entity must be excluded, since an entity cannot be its own cause.

The first misreading the author raises himself: is it not said that “outflows not yet known are about to arise, and because they have been known the outflows do not arise”? Cognition plainly obstructs the outflows, and sunlight plainly obstructs the seeing of stars. The answer is finely made: to say “abide without obstructing” is to say “when this arises, those all abide without obstructing it” — at the moment the outflows arise, cognition is not present; at the moment the stars are seen, sunlight is not shining. The enabling cause is stated with respect to the actual moment of arising, not with respect to a general capacity.

The second misreading goes deeper. Someone says: only what could obstruct and does not obstruct counts as a cause, just as the people of a realm say, “Because of our sovereign we obtain ease”; but nirvāṇa and dharmas that will never arise have not even the capacity to obstruct the arising of a conditioned dharma, so on what ground are they causes? The author answers hard: they are causes still, and one may say this of a king without power just as well. Shentai puts the point of this most plainly, explaining the enabling cause thus: “Because it does not obstruct the arising of the result, it has the sense of enabling the result, and so is named the enabling cause; this name is taken from function.” The name is established from function, not from force.

The third is a difficulty both the Sarvāstivādins and the Sautrāntikas must face: if all dharmas fail to obstruct, why do not all dharmas arise at once? When one person kills, why does not everyone incur the offense of killing alike? The author answers: they are allowed as enabling causes merely by not obstructing, and this does not say that they “have an intimate productive force with respect to arising.” The intimate cause is not present and the mind that equally instigates is not present, and so there is no arising all at once and no shared offense.

Where this lands: the enabling cause is the widest of the six — Yuanhui’s comparison is the easiest to remember: because enabling is explained by non-obstruction, the enabling cause ranges widely over all dharmas (conditioned and unconditioned alike may be causes), while the dominant result it obtains is narrow, restricted to the conditioned. A wide cause with a narrow result — this asymmetry foreshadows the great dispute over “the unconditioned has neither cause nor result” in the eleventh section below: the unconditioned may serve as a cause but cannot take a result.

III. The coexistent cause: cause and result simultaneous, and each the other (last three lines of Root Stanza 51)

Stanza: “Coexistents are one another’s results, as with the great elements, the marks and what they mark, and mind with respect to what follows mind.”

First ask: what is meant by “coexistent”? Yuanhui settles it in a sentence: coexistents are those that exist at the same time; and the three words “one another’s results” are precisely his explanation of the coexistent cause. The treatise’s definition is, “Dharmas that are reciprocally results of human effort are reciprocally coexistent causes” — the criterion is not simultaneity but being one another’s results. Three examples: the four great elements among themselves; the four marks and the dharma they mark; mind and the dharmas that follow mind.

The misreading lies in an exception easily slipped past. The treatise adds at once: “A dharma and its secondary marks are not one another’s results; nevertheless the dharma is a coexistent cause of its secondary marks, and not the secondary marks of the dharma.” Between the primary dharma and the four lesser marks the relation is one-way — the primary dharma is a cause of the secondary marks, and the secondary marks are not a cause of it. So being one another’s results is the general mark of the coexistent cause, not a mark satisfied by everything that coexists. At this point the treatise writes four characters, “here it should be argued out”; Yuanhui reads them as ‘urging that the explanation be carried through’ — that is, the author is noting here that explaining the coexistent cause by reciprocal resulthood is not yet exhaustive, and is asking that someone analyze it further. The reader should see this seam first: reciprocal resulthood is the general mark of the coexistent cause, yet not everything the coexistent cause covers is reciprocally resultant — definition and extension part company here by a hair.

The weight of the treatise falls in the latter half: the causation the world acknowledges has the seed first and the sprout after, and “no such simultaneous cause and result has ever been seen.” Then comes one answer and one counter-question: “Is it not evident that a lamp flame and its light, a sprout and its shadow, are simultaneous and are nevertheless cause and result?” Puguang assigns this to the Sarvāstivādins as their answer, and takes what follows from “this should be argued out in detail” as the Sautrāntikas’ counter-question. The counter-question runs: as for flame and light, does the flame produce the light, or do the human labor of the preceding moment, the lamp vessel, the oil, and the wick together make flame and light arise at the same time? The shadow is plainer still: a shadow exists only because something else blocks the light, so how can the sprout be called its cause?

What steps forward next is not the author but the Sarvāstivāda defense. Of the sentence “That does not stand to reason, because they follow one another in existing and not existing,” Puguang assigns the stretch from “that does not stand to reason” down to “by this reasoning cause and result are established” to “the Sarvāstivādins defending the position,” and explains “following one another in existing and not existing” as “the existence or non-existence of the result’s entity follows the existence or non-existence of the cause” — it is the result’s existing or not that follows the cause’s existing or not, and not a shadow following the thing that blocks the light. The defense comes to rest on a criterion of the science of reasoning: “If, when this exists or does not exist, that correspondingly exists or does not exist, then this is definitely the cause and that definitely the result.” Among coexistent dharmas, when one exists all exist and when one does not exist none does — which fits the criterion exactly. The Sautrāntikas press again at once, “How can they then be called one another’s cause and result?”, and the Sarvāstivādins answer, “By what was just said; there is no contradiction here either,” since the criterion was two-directional from the start. As for the simile of three staves leaning on one another and standing, it is the Sautrāntikas who raise it as a counter-question after restating the Sarvāstivāda defense: do those three staves stand by leaning on one another at the same time, or do the causes and conditions of a preceding moment make them arise at the same time and so stand? And besides, cords and hooks and the ground are there as well. The closing words, “here too there are the homogeneous cause and the rest, and therefore the sense of the coexistent cause is established,” are again the Sarvāstivādins speaking; Puguang marks them as the Sarvāstivādins’ words of defense.

Where this lands: simultaneous cause and result is the Sarvāstivādins’ most distinctive move and the one most attacked. Understand this dispute and one has a starting point for reading later forms of simultaneous cause and result, such as the mutual perfuming of seeds and manifest activity.

IV. The constitution of the dharmas that follow mind: mental factors, the two disciplines, the marks (first three lines of Root Stanza 52)

Stanza: “Mental factors, the two disciplines, and the marks of these and of mind — these are the dharmas that follow mind.”

First ask: what sort of dharma qualifies as following mind? The treatise lists three classes: all dharmas associated with mind (the mental factors); the two disciplines, the discipline of absorption and the discipline without outflows; and the marks of arising and the rest belonging to these dharmas together with mind itself.

There are two misreadings. First, the two disciplines are form (nonmanifest form), and how can form follow mind? Yuanhui’s explanation is the most economical: these two disciplines “exist when one enters absorption and are absent when one leaves it,” and so are named as following mind — their presence or absence hangs entirely on whether mind is concentrated or scattered. Second, the stanza says “the marks” and does not say the secondary marks such as “arising of arising.” Puguang gives the warning: since it says arising and the rest and does not say arising of arising and the rest, “this shows that the secondary marks do not follow mind.” This is a matter of one word’s measure, yet it decides the arithmetic of the fifty-eight dharmas and the fifty-four in the next section.

Where this lands: the dharmas that follow mind are not a miscellaneous list but the hardest of the coexistent cause’s three classes to establish. That the four great elements support one another, and that the four marks and what they mark support one another, are easy enough to state; to say that mind and form (the disciplines), and mind and formations not associated with mind (the marks), are one another’s results is the real test. The treatise sets out their constitution clearly here first so that the next stanza can adjudicate them in five words.

V. By time, by result, by ethical quality and the rest: ten reasons adjudicate what follows mind (last line of Root Stanza 52)

The stanza is only five characters: “By time, result, ethical quality, and the rest.”

First ask: on what ground is a dharma judged to follow mind? The answer has three gates. As to time, the dharma has one arising, one abiding, and one cessation with mind, and falls into one and the same time-period with it; Yuanhui counts these four out — time has four items: first arising, second abiding, third cessation, fourth falling into one time-period. As to result, the dharma has one result, one maturation, and one homogeneous outflow with mind. As to ethical quality and the rest, the dharma is wholesome, unwholesome, or indeterminate together with mind. The three gates together make ten, and hence the ten reasons.

The misreading falls on a single word. The treatise says, “It should be known that the first ‘one’ here and the latter ‘one’ show simultaneity and show commonality respectively, and their sense is not the same” — the earlier “one” (one arising, one abiding, one cessation) says “at the same time,” while the later “one” (one result, one maturation, one homogeneous outflow) says “in common.” The same word “one” does not point to the same thing in the two places. Yuanhui’s gloss is the best to memorize: in the earlier gate of time, “one” shows being together at one time; in the later gate of result, “one” shows sharing one result. Puguang lays down a summary sentence over each gate: for the gate of time, “this shows that only what has one time with mind is called following it”; for the gate of result, “this shows that only what has one result and the rest with mind is called following it.”

The second misreading is why, given “one result,” homogeneous outflow and maturation must still be stated separately. Puguang resolves it by citing the Treatise Conforming to Correct Principle, and divides the result of human effort into four kinds — co-arisen, immediately subsequent, separated by an interval, and not arising — to show that “one result” here takes only the two results of human effort and of release from bondage, and not the co-arisen reciprocal kind (an entity does not make one result with itself); which is why homogeneous outflow and maturation have to be marked out in addition. This passage is one of the finest stitches in the fascicle; not following it does not damage the whole, but it demonstrates how Abhidharma works: if one word may be ambiguous, add another word to plug the gap.

Where this lands: the arithmetic follows. Mind as sovereign is a reciprocal coexistent cause with at least fifty-eight dharmas (the ten factors of the great ground, their forty primary marks, and mind’s own eight primary and secondary marks); conversely, of those fifty-eight, once mind’s four secondary marks are removed, the remaining fifty-four are causes of mind — Puguang’s reason is that a secondary mark is “weak in its power to produce a dharma and not the equal of what is marked,” and so is not a cause with respect to mind as sovereign (whereas the reason the forty secondary marks upon the factors of the great ground are not counted among the fifty-eight is a different one, “because they are far removed, their power does not reach them,” and the two reasons are not interchangeable). The author also refutes the view of “only fourteen dharmas” — Shentai marks it as the interpretation of a second master — relying on a recited passage of the Treatise on Categories of Dharmas; some transmitted versions do not recite the five characters “and the dharmas associated with them,” whereupon the Vaibhāṣikas of Kaśmīra say that the passage must be recited thus, or that one should infer from the sense that something has been abbreviated. Five characters of one old recension move a whole system of dharma-numbers: this is something a reader of Abhidharma must get used to.

At the end the treatise also carefully separates two matters: whatever is a cause by way of the coexistent cause certainly coexists, but what coexists is not necessarily a cause by way of the coexistent cause. Eight sets of examples (a secondary mark with respect to its primary dharma, an acquisition and what is acquired, and so on) coexist without being coexistent causes — the reason being that they do not take one result, one maturation, and one homogeneous outflow together.

VI. The homogeneous cause: resemblance is not enough — same category, same level, and earlier (Root Stanza 53 and the first half of 54)

Stanza: “The homogeneous cause is what resembles, of its own category and level and arisen before; the path is reciprocally so across the nine levels; only equal or superior dharmas are its results; what arises from preparation is likewise, as with what is formed through hearing and reflection and the rest.”

First ask: that similar dharmas are one another’s causes — is this not quite natural? The treatise’s first sentence says just that: wholesome five aggregates with wholesome five aggregates, defiled with defiled, indeterminate with indeterminate, are reciprocally homogeneous causes.

After this sentence the treatise first branches off into a passage of divergent views that is most often skipped. For the two ethical qualities, wholesome and defiled, the ancients had no dispute about their causes; what started a dispute was the indeterminate — and the four characters of the treatise, “pure indeterminate aggregates,” designate one class and not two, as Fabao glosses word by word: “By ‘indeterminate’ is meant only unobscured-indeterminate dharmas.” He then rules: “About the causes of the wholesome and the defiled there is no further dispute. On the indeterminate five aggregates the divergent views differ.” Do the aggregate of form and the remaining four aggregates serve as one another’s causes or not? The treatise lists three masters. One says, “Of the pure indeterminate aggregates, the five are results of form, and the four are not causes of form” — all five aggregates are results of form, that is, form can be a cause of the five aggregates, while the four aggregates do not produce form. One says, “The five are results of the four, and form is not a cause of the four” — the direction is exactly reversed: the four aggregates can be a cause of the five aggregates, while form does not produce the four. One says, “Form and the four aggregates, considered reciprocally, are in neither direction causes” — neither side is a cause. Clearing the misreading: the first two are not two ways of saying the same thing but two schools running in opposite directions; in reading, simply seize on which side is the result — “the five are results of form” makes form the cause, “the five are results of the four” makes the four aggregates the cause. Puguang’s Record preserves the reasons of both: the former holds that “because the four aggregates are superior they are not causes of form, and because the aggregate of form is inferior it is a cause of the four”; the latter holds that “the force of the four aggregates is strong, and therefore they can be a cause of form; the force of the aggregate of form is weak, and therefore it is not a cause of the four” — one and the same set of dharmas, with opposite judgments of superiority and inferiority yielding opposite conclusions. The treatise lists without adjudicating, and the ancient masters’ choices are recorded under Further Resonances.

Only after the divergent views does the treatise add three gates.

The first is “its own category and its own level.” Category means the five categories (from what is abandoned by seeing suffering through what is abandoned by cultivation); level means the nine levels (the desire realm as one, the four absorptions, the four formless attainments). What is abandoned by seeing suffering is a cause only for what is abandoned by seeing suffering; the desire realm is a cause only for the desire realm, and so on up to the summit of existence being a cause only for the summit of existence. Across different levels there is no sense of cause at all. The second gate is “arisen before” — only a dharma already arisen earlier is a homogeneous cause of a later one. The third is “only equal or superior dharmas are results”: a dharma arising from preparation is a cause only of what equals or surpasses it, and not a cause of what is inferior.

The misreading is thickest at the second gate. The treatise cites the Treatise on the Development of Wisdom as warrant, but runs into a sentence of that treatise’s own self-questioning and self-answering, “there is no time at which it is not a cause” — if there really were no time at which it is not a cause, would not future dharmas also have homogeneous causes? The author’s resolution is that the sentence was said covertly with respect to the three causes of coexistence, association, and maturation. Someone else explains it as “an answer made covertly on the basis of the final position,” and the author judges this “not a good explanation,” on the ground that a future dharma is not a homogeneous cause before the moment of its imminent arising. He further adduces the question and answer on the immediately antecedent condition as corroboration: there the author answered, “when this dharma has not yet reached the state of having arisen,” which shows that the two exchanges were never on the same track. In this section the author uses the heaviest sentence in the fascicle: “What merit is gained by composing the text thus? It only shows that the author of that treatise was not skilled in composition.” What is criticized is the deftness or clumsiness of that treatise’s wording, not its doctrine; within one sentence, its sense is honored and its wording is not spared.

The second misreading concerns whether “there is no homogeneous cause in the future” makes the homogeneous cause something that was not and comes to be. The author answers crisply: it is established with respect to position, not with respect to entity. And why does the maturation cause exist already in the future? Because a maturation cause and its result do not resemble each other, so that even without a before and after they would not be one another’s cause and result; a homogeneous cause and its result do resemble each other, and without a before and after they would be each other’s cause and each other’s result, which contradicts reason. The homogeneous cause is established by position and the maturation cause by characteristic — this sentence is the pivot of the whole section.

The third misreading is the apparent contradiction between “only one’s own level” and the nine levels being one another’s causes. The treatise distinguishes clearly: “only one’s own level” is said with respect to what has outflows; the path without outflows, by contrast, is reciprocally a cause across the nine levels, because the path without outflows “abides in every level like a guest and is not included within any realm,” and is not appropriated as its own by the craving belonging to a level. Yuanhui’s simile is easy to remember: the without-outflows arises in the several levels as a guest lodging for a time.

Where this lands is the last passage, on the wholesome that arises from preparation. What is formed through hearing can be a cause of hearing and of reflection but not of cultivation (the desire realm has nothing formed through cultivation); what is formed through reflection is not a cause of what is formed through hearing, since hearing is inferior to reflection; what is formed through cultivation is a cause only of cultivation. It is the same among the nine grades: the lowest of the low can be a cause of all nine grades, while the highest of the high is a cause only of the highest of the high. The author closes here with a worldly simile — no one toils in vain and gains nothing at all. The sequence of training has a structural warrant in the doctrine of causes: a lower grade can draw up a higher one, and a higher grade does not turn back to be a cause of a lower.

VII. The associated cause: five senses equal, the same entity as the coexistent cause but a different sense (second half of Root Stanza 54)

Stanza: “The associated cause is settled: mind and mental factors share one support.”

First ask: since the associated cause is in entity just the coexistent cause, why set up a separate name at all? The treatise forces the conditions out by a chain of counter-questions: only mind and mental factors are associated causes; those whose object and mode of apprehension differ do not count; those whose object and mode of apprehension are the same but whose times differ do not count either; and those in different bodies whose object, mode of apprehension, and time are all the same (as when a crowd looks together at the new moon) still do not count. So the stanza adds the two words “same support,” barring all of these in a single phrase. Yuanhui counts the five conditions out in full: the same support, the same object, the same mode of apprehension, the same time, the same activity — only when the five senses are complete is it called association.

The misreading is on the word “same” in “same support.” The treatise explains it very concretely: visual consciousness takes the eye faculty of this one moment as its support, and the feeling and the rest associated with it take that same eye faculty as their support. Not “each has a support,” but “the support is one and the same” — the same faculty in the same moment.

Where, then, does the difference between the two causes lie? The treatise gives a beautifully matched pair of similes: the coexistent cause is established by the sense of being one another’s results, like merchants relying on one another while traveling a dangerous road together; the associated cause is established by the sense of being associated together in five equalities, like that same company of merchants sharing and performing together the business of food and drink and the rest, where if one man is missing none of them is in association. Fabao states the division of labor between the two similes more finely — traveling together is relying on one another and so getting across the dangerous road; sharing the same activity is that if they halt they must halt together, if they travel they must travel together, if they eat they must eat together. One simile is used on two faces: walking the same road is being one another’s results, eating the same meal is the five equalities.

Where this lands: the associated cause is the structural law of mental life. Mind and mental factors do not first exist separately and then come together; only when the five senses are equal is there what may be called one moment of thought — a rule inherited afterwards by the whole doctrine of mental factors, so that in reading any book on the association of mental factors these five senses remain serviceable.

VIII. The all-pervading cause: the passage among defiled dharmas (first half of Root Stanza 55)

Stanza: “The all-pervading are those pervasive dharmas arisen before, causes of defiled dharmas of the same level.”

First ask: the homogeneous cause already governs the production of similar dharmas by one another, so why establish an all-pervading cause as well? The treatise answers directly: because the homogeneous cause is a cause only within its own category, whereas the all-pervading cause is “a general cause for defiled dharmas” — not only a cause of defiled dharmas of its own category but also of the defiled dharmas of every other category; by its force the afflictions of the other categories and their retinues grow along with it. Puguang states the two reasons separately: one turns on general versus restricted (a general cause and a non-general cause), the other on one’s own category versus another’s.

What is the constitution of the all-pervading cause? The treatise says, “The all-pervading dharmas will be analyzed at length in the chapter on latent tendencies, where the sense of pervasion is treated” — it is not unfolded in this fascicle. Yuanhui counts them out here on the reader’s behalf: the all-pervading are the eleven all-pervading latent tendencies together with the dharmas associated and coexistent with them; the eleven are, under the truth of suffering, the five views, doubt, and ignorance, seven in all, and under the truth of origination, wrong view, adherence to views, doubt, and ignorance, four in all. Puguang’s gloss runs on the same track and adds “the dharmas associated with and coexistent with the latent tendencies.”

The misreading is on the two words “arisen before and pervasive.” “Before” is a restriction — only all-pervading dharmas already arisen are taken, and the future is excluded; “pervasive” does not say that it pervades all dharmas, but that it pervades the defiled dharmas of the five categories. So the all-pervading cause extends through past and present but not the future, in agreement with the homogeneous cause.

The treatise also sets a question: do the defiled dharmas abandoned through cultivation within the continuum of a noble one also take what is abandoned through seeing as their cause? The Vaibhāṣikas of Kaśmīra answer, “All defiled dharmas take what is abandoned through seeing as their cause,” and cite three passages of the Treatise on Categories of Dharmas in evidence. But the Treatise of Designations says that “the first defiled volition already arisen when a noble one falls back from freedom from desire” takes only the unwholesome as its cause — how are the two to be reconciled? The author’s resolution is that this was said covertly with respect to a cause not yet abandoned: what is abandoned through seeing is also a cause of that volition, but the noble one has already abandoned the defilements of seeing, and so it is passed over unmentioned.

Where this lands: the all-pervading cause is the groundwork of the doctrine of afflictions. It explains something of the first importance in practice — why cutting off the defilements of seeing is a wholesale turning point: the eleven all-pervading latent tendencies abandoned through seeing are the general cause of every defiled dharma, and once the general cause is cut, the defiled dharmas of the other categories lose that overall route of nourishment. Only because this cause is established here does the chapter on latent tendencies have anything to say.

IX. The maturation cause: the unwholesome and the wholesome with outflows, transforming and ripening (second half of Root Stanza 55)

Stanza: “The maturation cause is the unwholesome, and the wholesome that has outflows alone.”

First ask: why does the indeterminate not call forth maturation, and why does the without-outflows not either? The treatise answers with two similes of seeds: the indeterminate, “because its force is weak, is like a rotted seed”; the without-outflows “lacks the moistening of craving, like a sound seed with no water to soak it,” and moreover the without-outflows belongs to no bound level, so how could it call forth a result belonging to a bound level? Conversely, the unwholesome and the wholesome with outflows have both senses complete — they belong to a bound level and have the moistening of craving — and so can call it forth, like a sound seed that has also received water.

The misreading is in how the two words “maturation cause” are read. The treatise first sorts out the name: is it “the cause of maturation” or “maturation which is itself the cause”? Both readings hold — if only the former, the holy teaching should not say “the maturation-born eye”; if only the latter, it should not say “the maturation of an action.” This keeps the reader from nailing one name to one grammar.

The real divergence is over the sense. Puguang records the Vaibhāṣikas’ explanation: “The cause is wholesome or unwholesome and the result is indeterminate; ripening as a different kind is the sense of maturation” — a single word, “different,” distinguishing it from the other causes. The author is not satisfied. He first sets two conditions on ripening: the entity must arise only through the transformation and differentiation of a continuum, and its duration must have a limit in accordance with the relative strength of the cause’s force. The results of the two causes, coexistent and associated, lack the first (they give the result as soon as they take it); the results of the three causes, enabling, homogeneous, and all-pervading, lack the second (to the very end of birth-and-death the result arises again and again with no limit of time). So he revises the judgment: “ripening through transformation is the sense of maturation,” and one should not distinguish it by the single word “different.” Fabao expressly records this revision as the author’s own explanation, distinguishing it from the Vaibhāṣikas’ older one; Shentai at the same place reckons the several masters together and says, “The Treatise Conforming to Correct Principle and this treatise together have five explanations” — one and the same term, with five readings standing side by side in the commentarial field of the Tang.

The treatise then spreads out the operative face of the maturation cause: how many aggregates in the three realms jointly call forth one result (in the desire realm one, two, or four aggregates; in the form realm one, two, four, or five; in the formless realm one or four); how many sense fields of maturation one action calls forth (from one to eleven); how an action of one lifetime can call forth maturation in three lifetimes while no action of three lifetimes calls forth maturation in one; how an action of one moment can call forth maturation in many moments while no action of many moments calls forth maturation in one — the reason in every case being the same sentence: one does not toil in vain and get a result smaller than the cause. The last three clauses are the most crucial: a maturation result is not simultaneous with the action, is not immediately subsequent to it, and can be brought about only when a continuum has transformed.

Where this lands: these three clauses are the temporal law of the whole doctrine of action and result. Between an action and its result there must be a stretch of continuum, and what carries that stretch the treatise does not answer here — the Sarvāstivādins posit acquisition, the Sautrāntikas posit seeds; further on, this vacancy is just the place the eighth consciousness comes to fill. To read this passage without remembering the vacancy is to have read it for nothing.

X. In which time-periods the six causes reside (first half of Root Stanza 56)

Stanza: “The all-pervading and the homogeneous, two time-periods; three causes, three time-periods.”

First ask: why should a cause be restricted as to time-period? The answer: the all-pervading and the homogeneous reside only in past and present and are absent in the future — for the reason stated above, that they are established with respect to position. The three causes, associated, coexistent, and maturation, are present throughout all three time-periods.

The misreading is over the item the stanza does not state. The stanza names only five causes; where has the enabling cause gone? The treatise says, “Since the stanza does not state where the enabling cause resides, one should infer from the sense that it extends through the three time-periods and to what is outside time.” Yuanhui breaks open the two words “outside time” — what is outside time is the unconditioned. The enabling cause extends not only through the three time-periods but also to the unconditioned, which answers exactly to what was said in the second section, that it is the widest of the six.

Where this lands: fixing the three time-periods looks fussy, but it is in fact the premise of the section on taking and giving a result (the fourteenth). Which time-period a cause resides in decides at which position it can take a result and at which it can give one. This stanza is a nail joining what precedes to what follows, not an appendix.

XI. Results are only the conditioned and release from bondage; the unconditioned itself has neither cause nor result (second half of Root Stanza 56)

Stanza: “Results are the conditioned and release from bondage; the unconditioned has neither cause nor result.”

First ask: how many kinds of result are there? The treatise answers by citing the root treatise: “What are result-dharmas? They are all the conditioned, together with cessation through discernment.” Yuanhui separates the two: first the conditioned, that is, the four results of human effort, dominance, homogeneous outflow, and maturation, which are drawn forth by the six causes; second release from bondage, whose entity is cessation through discernment and which is realized by the path — the path is a cause of realization and not a cause of production, and so this cause of realization is not among the six causes.

The misreading comes at once: since cessation through discernment is a result, should it not have a cause? And since it is also an enabling cause, should it not have a result? The treatise answers very hard: only conditioned dharmas have causes and results, and the unconditioned has neither — “because it has none of the six causes and none of the five results.” What then is the relation between the path and cessation through discernment? The treatise divides it very finely: with respect to the acquisition the path’s function is to produce; with respect to the cessation its function is to realize. So although the path is not a producing cause of the cessation, one may still say that cessation through discernment is a result of the path. As for why the unconditioned may serve as an enabling cause and yet have no result — because, standing apart from the dharmas of the world, it has no operation of taking and giving a result.

From here the fascicle enters the longest dispute in the whole treatise. The Sautrāntikas open: the unconditioned is not a cause, because “there is no scripture saying that a cause is unconditioned, and there is scripture saying that causes are only conditioned.” The Sarvāstivādins counter, the Sautrāntikas answer again, and after several exchanges the Sautrāntikas push the question to the bottom: no unconditioned dharma is really existent; a separate real thing of the sort that form and feeling are, is exactly what it is not. Space is merely the absence of anything tangible; cessation through discernment is merely the non-recurrence of what is left over, by the force of selection; cessation independent of discernment is merely the non-recurrence of what is left over, through the lack of a condition. The Sarvāstivādins for their part maintain that the unconditioned has a separate real entity, realized inwardly and severally by the noble ones.

In this contest the author records the Sautrāntikas’ reconciliation of scripture (the sūtra on the five faculties and the simile of the lamp flame), records the Sarvāstivādins’ five senses of “entity” (entity as intrinsic nature, as object, as bondage, as cause, and as what is included), and finally closes with the single sentence, “The Vaibhāṣikas do not allow this explanation,” passing no overall judgment of his own.

Worth reading sentence by sentence are the two safeguards the author sets up on the Sautrāntikas’ behalf. The first is linguistic: the Sautrāntikas do not say that the entity of the unconditioned is wholly nothing, but say, “as when it is said that this sound has a prior non-existence and a subsequent non-existence” — before it is uttered the sound has a prior non-existence, and once it has passed, a subsequent non-existence; that non-existence may not be called really existent, and yet the word “has” in the phrase “has a prior non-existence” still holds good. To say that there is an unconditioned is to use ‘there is’ in just this sense. The second is nominal: if it is non-existent, how can it deserve the name of the noble truth of cessation, and how can it be established as the third? The answer lies in the two words “noble truth” — a noble truth takes the sense of being without inversion, and the noble one sees suffering as suffering and sees the non-existence of suffering as non-existence, without inversion on either side. As for why it is placed third, the answer is plainer still: “it is seen and stated by the noble ones immediately after the second, and so becomes the third” — a matter of sequence.

Taking the two safeguards together, what the Sautrāntikas defend is not that there is no nirvāṇa, but that nirvāṇa is not a thing. Miss this measure and the whole dispute will be misread as a quarrel over existence and non-existence.

Where this lands: this is the weightiest passage in the fascicle, and there are two ways to read it. First, see that the point at issue is not the wording but the entity — both sides grant that scripture calls nirvāṇa foremost and calls it the truth of cessation, and what they contest is whether this foremost is one really existent thing or is utterly non-existent. Second, notice the author’s method: he sets out the Sarvāstivāda position in good order and then lets the Sautrāntikas question it sentence by sentence, up to the point where the Vaibhāṣikas do not allow it. A book that takes its stand on the Sarvāstivāda and, where the position is awkward, breaks it with the Sautrāntika, shows its character here more completely than anywhere else.

XII. Which result each of the six causes obtains (Root Stanza 57)

Stanza: “The last cause has the maturation result, the first cause the dominant result; the homogeneous and all-pervading, the homogeneous result; the coexistent and associated, the result of human effort.”

First ask: why does this stanza put maturation and dominance at the head and the tail? The treatise says so quite plainly: “the last cause” is the maturation cause, because it stands last among the six; “the first cause” is the enabling cause, because it stands first. And among the five results, the maturation result stands first and the dominant result last. The stanza uses order to remember order — a mnemonic device this treatise often employs, not a doctrinal depth.

The misreading is over the name of the dominant result. “If it merely abides without obstructing, what dominance is there?” The treatise answers: it obtains the name of dominance precisely by not obstructing. But the author at once adds a further layer: the enabling cause also has superior power — as the ten sense fields and elements have with respect to the five bodies of consciousness, as the actions of sentient beings have with respect to the receptacle world, as the ear faculty and the rest have with respect to the arising of visual consciousness (having heard of a thing one wishes to see it, and so visual consciousness arises). This addition matters: dominance does not mean doing nothing; it is only that its lower limit is set as low as not getting in the way.

Where does the name of the result of human effort come from? The treatise says, “there is no separate human effort apart from the entity of the person” — it is not that some thing called human effort exists apart from the entity of the agent; it is simply the operation belonging to dharmas, like the doings of a person, and hence is called human effort. Two worldly examples of names established from similes are adduced (the crow’s-foot herb, the drunken-elephant general). Puguang here cites the Entrance into Abhidharma and glosses the names of the five results one by one, each name taking its sense differently: maturation takes “the result does not resemble the cause”; homogeneous outflow takes “the result resembles the cause and arises from it”; release from bondage takes “it is obtained by the path and is not produced by the path”; human effort takes “by the force of this, that obtains arising”; dominance takes “by the dominance of what is earlier, the later dharma obtains arising.”

The treatise leaves an unsettled question at the end: is the result of human effort found only with the two causes, coexistent and associated? One master says the other causes have it too, excepting only maturation; another master says the maturation cause also has a result of human effort separated by a long interval, like the harvest a farmer gathers. The two views stand together and the treatise does not adjudicate.

Where this lands: this stanza is the wiring diagram between the six causes and the five results. The least laborious way to memorize it is to remember that the two ends are order and the middle is resemblance and operation — the homogeneous and all-pervading take resemblance and so obtain the homogeneous result; the coexistent and associated take operation and so obtain the result of human effort.

XIII. The look of each of the five results (Root Stanzas 58 and 59)

Stanza: “The maturation result is an indeterminate dharma, belonging to sentient beings and produced by the determinate; the homogeneous result resembles its own cause; release from bondage is exhaustion through discernment. If a dharma arises through the force of another, that result is called the result of human effort; apart from conditioned dharmas already arisen before, conditioned dharmas are dominant results.”

First ask: why must a maturation result be indeterminate? The treatise’s order is to establish the ethical quality first and then narrow the range. As to quality, it is only unobscured-indeterminate; as to range, it is restricted to sentient beings and is only “produced by the determinate” — every unwholesome dharma and every wholesome dharma with outflows can determine a maturation, and is therefore called determinate; the result arises only after that determinate action, neither simultaneously nor immediately subsequently, and so is named produced by the determinate. Since it is produced by the determinate, one may know that it does not extend to the homogeneous or to the nourished, for those two are produced by all three ethical qualities.

The misreading is over mountains, rivers, and the great earth. What is not counted among sentient beings also arises from action, so why is it not called maturation? The treatise answers: because it is held in common — others enjoy it just the same, whereas a maturation result admits in no way of being enjoyed in common with others. Then the dominant result also arises from action; why may it be enjoyed in common? Because it arises from action held in common. “Common” and “not common” are the dividing line between the maturation result and the dominant result, not “inner” and “outer.”

The misreading about the homogeneous result is finer still. The all-pervading cause also obtains a homogeneous result, so why is it not allowed to be called a homogeneous cause? The treatise answers: the result of the all-pervading resembles its cause only through sharing a level and sharing defilement, and not through resembling it in kind; only what resembles in kind is called a homogeneous cause. Hence four alternatives are set up: a non-all-pervading dharma acting as a homogeneous cause; an all-pervading dharma of another category acting as an all-pervading cause; an all-pervading dharma of its own category being both; and, apart from the preceding three, the remainder. The four alternatives are Abhidharma’s standard method of taking things apart, used to keep two categories from being blurred together.

The gloss on the name of the result of release from bondage is extremely short and extremely important: “because it is cessation it is called exhaustion; because it is selection it is called discernment” — cessation through discernment is called a result of release from bondage because it is obtained by discernment and because discernment brings the defilements to exhaustion. The result of human effort is established on “arising through the force of another,” with the examples of a preparatory mind of a lower level producing the absorption of a higher level, and a pure mind of meditative absorption producing a transformation mind; cessation through discernment, however, must be spoken of as obtained by the power of the path and not as produced by the power of the path — a difference of one word, following directly upon the eleventh section’s division between the path’s producing with respect to acquisition and its realizing with respect to cessation.

The definition of the dominant result uses exclusion: “Among conditioned dharmas, apart from those already arisen before, the rest are dominant results of conditioned dharmas” — because a result is either simultaneous with its cause or later than it, and never earlier. For the boundary between human effort and dominance the treatise gives a memorable example: a thing made by a craftsman is, for the craftsman, both a result of human effort and a dominant result, while for anyone other than the craftsman it is only a dominant result. Puguang compresses this boundary into a sentence: human effort is said with respect to having the power to act, dominance on the ground of not obstructing.

Where this lands: of the five results, four are conditioned and only release from bondage is unconditioned; four stand in a temporal relation to their causes, and only release from bondage is realized rather than produced. Remember this one exception and the whole dispute of the eleventh section falls into its proper place.

XIV. Taking a result and giving a result: at which position a cause operates (Root Stanza 60)

Stanza: “Five take their result only in the present, and two give it likewise; two causes give in past and present, and one gives only in the past.”

First ask: what is taking a result, and what is giving a result? The treatise gives the definitions only at the end of this section: “Because it can serve as the seed of a result, it is called taking the result; because it is presently giving that result power, it is called giving the result.” Puguang explains more plainly — seed carries the sense of being able to produce, and since the cause has the capacity to produce a result it is called taking the result; it presently gives that result power, and so it is called giving the result. Fabao’s two sentences are the easiest to remember: at the taking, the sense of cause is established and it is named a seed; at the giving, it is presently drawing the result into arising and is named giving. Taking a result is claiming it and giving a result is handing it over, and the two do not fall at the same position.

First misreading: why must the five causes take their result in the present? Because in the past they have already taken it, and in the future they have no operation. As for why the enabling cause is not included in this list, the treatise says it with reserve: the enabling cause does not necessarily have a result, and so the stanza does not state it.

Second misreading: the two causes, homogeneous and all-pervading, give their result in both past and present — giving in the past is easy to understand, but how does one give in the present? The treatise answers: because some homogeneous results arise immediately (the cause is in the present and the result arises right after it). And once the result has arisen the cause becomes past, which is called having already given the result, and it should not give again.

Third misreading: why does the maturation cause give its result only in the past? Because a maturation result is neither simultaneous with its cause nor immediately subsequent to it. This sentence meshes exactly with the three clauses at the end of the ninth section.

Here the treatise also arranges several sets of four alternatives, all framed in terms of acquisition: a wholesome homogeneous cause that takes and does not give is the last acquisition relinquished when wholesome roots are cut off; one that gives and does not take is the first acquisition obtained at the restoration of wholesome roots; one that both takes and gives covers all the other positions in which wholesome roots are not cut off; and neither of the two is the remainder apart from the preceding three. For the unwholesome and the obscured-indeterminate, four alternatives are made on the same pattern; for the unobscured-indeterminate there is a following-consequent clause — whenever it gives a result it must also take one, while the last aggregates of an arhat take without giving anything.

At the end the treatise records other masters who set up four further results beyond the five: the establishment result (the water disc as a result of the wind disc, grasses and the rest as results of the great earth), the preparatory result (knowledge of non-arising and the rest, obtained remotely by way of the contemplation of impurity), the conjunction result (visual consciousness and the rest as results of the eye faculty and the rest), and the cultivation result (transformation minds and the rest as results of the meditative absorptions), gathering them up as “all included among results of human effort and dominant results.” Puguang records this as the view of the masters of the West, the four results together with the preceding five making nine.

Where this lands: this section puts all the causal relations set out above back onto the axis of time. If the six causes and five results are memorized only as a static table, the most important dimension is lost — a cause is not operating forever; it takes its result at one specific position and gives it at another.

XV. From how many causes each of the four classes arises: the fascicle gathered into one negation (Root Stanza 61 and the first half of 62)

Stanza: “The defiled, the maturation-born, the rest, and the first noble — in that order, excluding maturation, excluding the all-pervading, excluding those two, and excluding also the homogeneous, the remainder produces them. This is said of mind and mental factors; for the rest, exclude the associated cause as well.”

First ask: what is this stanza counting? The answer: it divides all conditioned dharmas into four classes — defiled dharmas, maturation-born dharmas, the remaining dharmas, and the first dharmas without outflows — and counts for each how many causes produce it. Defiled dharmas exclude the maturation cause and are produced by the remaining five (the defiled is not a result of the maturation cause); maturation-born dharmas exclude the all-pervading cause and are produced by the remaining five (what the all-pervading produces is defiled only); the remaining dharmas exclude both maturation and all-pervading and are produced by the remaining four; the first dharmas without outflows exclude the homogeneous cause as well and are produced by the remaining three (before the first without-outflows there is no dharma of the same kind).

The misreading is at the fifth line. What has been counted so far is said of mind and mental factors; form and the formations not associated with mind cannot be associated, and so the associated cause must be excluded as well — whereupon the four classes become, in order, produced by four, four, three, and two causes. Yuanhui praises the stanza here: “This stanza is exceedingly deft; it should be well pondered” — the single word “excluding” used four times and the two words “the remainder produces” used four times press eight sets of numbers into thirty characters.

The real gathering-up is in the last sentence: “A dharma produced by a single cause definitely does not exist.”

The sentence is short enough to slip past, yet it is the hammer-fall of the whole fascicle. Fabao points out here what it excludes — to allow that one cause can produce a dharma would be to agree with the non-Buddhists. A whole fascicle on the six causes and five results was written, in the end, not to prove that dharmas have causes but to prove that no dharma has a single cause. The arising of any dharma requires at least two causes and at most five; nothing whatever is brought about by one reason alone.

Where this lands: set this sentence back beside the transitional sentence at the head of the fascicle — “not apart from the conjunction of the other causes and conditions” — and head and tail are seen to join. This fascicle begins from the point that the arising-mark cannot produce on its own and ends at “a dharma produced by a single cause definitely does not exist”; all the distinctions of the six causes and five results in between are only the taking apart of this one thing, taken apart finely enough that one can no longer quietly install a single cause in one’s own mind.

What one can carry away from this fascicle

First, remember the five words “the Abhidharma masters allow.” In listing the six causes the treatise sets down “allow” and not “the Buddha said,” and the Sautrāntika line takes exactly this to challenge them as lacking scriptural text; Saṅghabhadra, adducing scripture at many places to establish them, declares outright, “These six causes the Buddha stated everywhere.” Whether the six causes have scriptural warrant this treatise does not adjudicate, and the positions of both parties are recorded under Further Resonances — knowing this is what makes it intelligible that the Sautrāntikas and the Sarvāstivādins can quarrel for a whole fascicle inside one and the same book.

Second, read the fixing of the causes’ time-periods together with the taking and giving of a result. A cause is not something perpetually in operation; it has a position of taking and a position of giving. Once the doctrine of cause and result is set upon the axis of time, a fatalistic reading cannot stand.

Third, hold on to the last sentence. A dharma produced by a single cause definitely does not exist — this is the one categorical statement the fascicle leaves its reader, and the reason it divides the six causes so finely.

Further Resonances: A Mirror of Four Commentaries

The above is the sense of this fascicle’s own text. What follows records separately the judgments of the four Tang commentaries, the choices of the earlier translation, and Saṅghabhadra’s counter-refutation — a mirror is not the treatise, only a few other ways of reading the same fascicle. They are recorded together without adjudication, each returned to its own place.

Divergence in the outline. Puguang and Fabao both mark “the third major division of this chapter,” the one writing “explaining causes and conditions” and the other “explaining cause and also condition”; Yuanhui writes “From here, the third major division, explaining causes and conditions,” and further divides the fascicle into three sections (properly explaining the constitution of causes; explaining how causes obtain results; explaining how dharmas arise from causes), concluding at the end, “All the distinctions above belong in sum to the first part; the explanation of causes is complete.” Shentai does not use the language of major divisions and sets up a fivefold outline instead. The four differ in their outline wording and cut at one and the same boundary.

The dharma-count for mind as sovereign as a cause. Puguang has, “Mind as sovereign, with respect to ninety-eight dharmas at the fewest, is still a coexistent cause with fifty-eight dharmas”; Fabao sets up two further numbers, a greatest and a least (in the mind of the first absorption, a cause with one hundred fifty-eight among two hundred seventy-nine dharmas), and rebukes the earlier view outright: “Those who say that mind as sovereign, with respect to ninety-eight dharmas at the fewest, is still a coexistent cause with fifty-eight dharmas, are in error.” Shentai here runs on the same track as Puguang. The wording rebukes while the numbers pointed to are the same; who is being rebuked is not adjudicated.

Choice among the four views on the indeterminate five aggregates. The treatise lists three divergent views without adjudicating, and the two commentators choose oppositely: Puguang judges, “All the treatises have four views, and none of them has an adjudicating master,” and then, “The present interpretation: for the time being take the later master as correct” — taking the fourth view (form and the four aggregates are not one another’s causes), and citing the Mahāvibhāṣā on the number of conditions for the great elements and for the mental sense field in evidence. Fabao asks, “The four views differ, and since there is no adjudicating text, which is the correct view?” and answers himself, “One should say the earlier view is the better” — taking the first view (they are reciprocally causes), on the ground that since form and the four aggregates are reciprocally causes in the two qualities, wholesome and defiled, the indeterminate should not stand alone in differing. The one takes the first and the other the last; both are recorded without adjudication.

The sense of maturation. Puguang records the Vaibhāṣikas’ explanation, “ripening as a different kind”; Fabao records the author’s own explanation, “ripening through transformation,” and also records the counter-defense of the Treatise Conforming to Correct Principle; Shentai combines that treatise’s three explanations with this treatise’s two into five. The three gather different numbers, and this fascicle does not adjudicate which is sufficient.

Where the other masters’ four results are subsumed. Puguang gives two views, a general explanation (all four are included among results of human effort and dominant results) and a separate interpretation (the first and third are dominant only; the second and fourth extend to both results); Shentai takes the separate interpretation outright. The two assign them differently; both are recorded.

To what the prior acquisition at the restoration of wholesome roots belongs. Shentai cites the Treatise Conforming to Correct Principle rebuking the author’s words, “one should say the prior acquisition of what is restored at that time,” and further records Sthiramati’s defense — Sthiramati was Vasubandhu’s disciple, and his defense holds that what the author said extended from the outset to all past acquisitions without beginning, and did not take only the last acquisition relinquished. Puguang at the same place makes only a brief remark and does not cite Sthiramati. This is the fascicle’s one corroboration of lineage that appears in the commentaries and not in the treatise text.

Divergence in the earlier translation. In the places of this fascicle answering to it, Paramārtha’s old translation, the Expository Treatise on the Treasury, forms a lineage of renderings of its own: the enabling cause is “facilitating cause,” the maturation cause “retribution cause,” the maturation result “retribution result,” the result of release from bondage “release-and-cessation result,” the result of human effort “efficacy result,” the dharmas that follow mind “dharmas following mind,” the two disciplines “two protections,” and the establishment result and the conjunction result “support result” and “collection result.” Two points deserve most notice doctrinally. First, the gloss on the result of release from bondage runs on a different track — Xuanzang has, “because it is cessation it is called exhaustion; because it is selection it is called discernment,” while Paramārtha has, “exhaustion means the cessation that is permanent separation; knowledge means the three faculties within the three paths.” Second, the dominant result is established from the opposite direction — Xuanzang establishes it on “apart from those already arisen before,” Paramārtha on “what did not exist before,” the thing designated being one and the formulation different. At “the unconditioned has neither cause nor result” Yuanhui comments outright on the old translation: “The old translation’s rendering that the unconditioned is not cause or result is a faulty translation here,” and distinguishes for himself between “is not” and “has no”; Puguang, Fabao, and Shentai pass no comment on the two translations at this place. Which of the two translations is superior is not adjudicated.

Further: Paramārtha’s version divides the Chapter on the Faculties into only four fascicles where Xuanzang divides it into five, so the fascicle boundaries of the two versions do not correspond — the head of Paramārtha’s “Analysis of the Faculties, part four” falls in the middle of this fascicle (exactly at the dispute over the real existence of the unconditioned), while the head of this fascicle (the general listing of the six causes) lies within Paramārtha’s “part three.” A reader collating the two versions must compare them by the structure of the scene and may not match them by fascicle number.

Saṅghabhadra’s counter-refutation. The Treatise Conforming to Correct Principle responds to this fascicle section by section; five points are the chief. First, the objection that the six causes have no scriptural warrant. Saṅghabhadra first restates the objection — “These six causes were not stated by the Buddha; how does the root treatise establish these names on its own authority?” — and at once turns it with “there is certainly no doctrine that the great Teacher did not state,” then reconciles it with five proofs: that the text has been lost, that it was stated under another heading, that it was handed down by gods and sages, that other schools do not recite it, and that it is stated scattered through the several sūtras; and he concludes, “These six causes the Buddha stated everywhere; those who detest and turn from them are deluded and do not see them.” So “the six causes have no scriptural text” is a claim he refutes, not one he concedes; the establishing and the refuting of the absence of scriptural text is precisely one of the dividing lines between this fascicle’s author and Saṅghabhadra. Second, on the definition of the coexistent cause, Saṅghabhadra says plainly, “the causal character stated here is too meager,” and again, “one should not say that only being one another’s results makes a coexistent cause,” establishing instead that “conditioned dharmas having one result may be coexistent causes.” Third, on the answer that the homogeneous cause does not exist in the future, Saṅghabhadra defends the covert statement of the Treatise on the Development of Wisdom and rebukes: “Yet the Sūtra-master says: that is not a good explanation.” Fourth, on the sense of maturation, Saṅghabhadra says, “the Vaibhāṣikas do not state decisively that everything obtained by the six causes is called ripening,” refuting the author on the ground that “merely different” does not cover the sense exhaustively. Fifth, on the general dispute over the real existence of the unconditioned, Saṅghabhadra announces for himself, “I now refute the Sūtra-master’s slander of causes,” and concludes, “Thus the Sūtra-master’s slander of causes has been refuted, and it is established that nirvāṇa is real in its entity.” The words of both parties are preserved in the Han transmission; which prevails is not adjudicated.

The joint with the Yogācāra line. Fabao already drew this line out at the end of the section on the six causes: he sets this treatise’s six causes beside the Mahāyāna ten causes and twenty causes, and appends a question of his own — from what scriptural text does the sense of the Mahāyāna ten causes, six causes, and four conditions come? The ancient masters did not answer this question, and this fascicle does not answer it on their behalf; yet three joints may be noted in advance. First, the opening out of the enabling cause into ten causes and twenty causes. Second, the names of the five results, taken over entire by the Yogācāra lineage without the change of a single word. Third, the requirement of a continuum between the maturation cause and its result, while this treatise posits no separate entity to carry that stretch — the Sarvāstivādins posit acquisition, the Sautrāntikas posit seeds, and thereafter comes the establishing of the maturation consciousness. One and the same question, two generations of answers; that reading Yogācāra requires reading back into the Abhidharmakośa is nowhere more direct than in this fascicle.

Before reading this fascicle

This fascicle opens with only eight characters — “The causes have been stated at length. And what of conditions?” The previous fascicle finished the six causes and five results, and the author at once presses a further question: since causes have been stated to the end, what then are conditions? A first-time reader will feel the question superfluous: are cause and condition not the same thing? It is precisely this question that opens the finest piece of workmanship in the whole of Abhidharma.

Shentai’s Commentary, at the very head of the fascicle, counts its stanzas for us: “Below there are twelve and a half lines of stanzas analyzing the four conditions, and within them three parts.” A five-character stanza-line of twenty characters makes one line, so twelve and a half lines are two hundred fifty characters — and the eight root-stanza blocks of this fascicle come to exactly that. The “half line,” then, is not an odd remainder but the half-stanza carried over from the previous fascicle: the latter half of that fascicle’s closing stanza falls exactly on the joint where causes end and conditions begin, and in dividing the fascicles Xuanzang gave up the stanza boundary and followed the doctrinal one, so that this half-stanza became the opening of the present fascicle. To read this fascicle is to pick up from that joint.

Shentai’s Commentary further divides the twelve and a half lines into five parts: a line and a half establishing the entities of the four conditions, one line setting out the times at which the four conditions operate, one line setting out how many conditions each class of dharma arises from, one line setting out how the great elements and derived form are causes for one another, and finally “from here the fifth part has eight lines of stanzas setting out at length the sense of mind, taking up the immediately antecedent condition once more” — eight lines of stanzas given entirely to mind. The proportion is itself a hint: of the four conditions, the one the author cares most about is the immediately antecedent condition; and once that condition is treated in depth, the whole register of which minds can follow a given moment of mind must be spread out, whence the three sections on the twelve minds, the twenty minds, and how many minds are acquired. The four conditions are the net-cord; mind is the field.

One more thing should be said in advance: the middle of this fascicle contains a rare passage refuting the non-Buddhists. Abhidharma habitually takes stock of its own enumeration of dharmas and seldom engages an outside party; but when the discussion reaches how many conditions each dharma arises from, the author suddenly turns and devotes a whole passage to refuting the doctrine that all the world arises from the single cause Īśvara, quoting a stanza of the non-Buddhists’ own. This passage is a rare piece of doctrinal defense in the whole treatise, and it is taught through section by section below.

I. The Four Conditions: Why Four, and What Each Governs

〔1.1〕The four conditions are not the author’s invention. The treatise’s first words ask, “Where is this stated?”, and answer, “In a sūtra” — the four conditions are stated in scripture, and the treatise only puts them in order. This step is not to be skipped: it is the rule of Abhidharma that whenever an enumeration of dharmas is established its provenance must be stated first, and that where the provenance is scripture the name may not be altered. Scripture has “the nature of the four conditions,” and the treatise at once explains that word “nature”: “nature here means the class of a condition” — “nature” is here no kind of essence but merely “this class.” The easy error lies exactly here: readers often read “the nature of causal condition” as “the intrinsic being of a causal condition,” whereupon the four conditions turn into four things; in fact it means “the class of causal condition.” In the Treatise Conforming to Correct Principle Saṅghabhadra says it more plainly still: “the nature of a condition here is just the four conditions; as ‘four dwellings’ is the same as ‘the nature of a dwelling,’ the word ‘nature’ is used in order to display the class” — like saying “four dwellings” and “dwellings as a class,” with no extra thing added. In terms of reading: the four conditions are four classifications, not four real objects. Keep this in mind and such statements below as “all dharmas are object conditions” and “all dharmas are dominant conditions” will not alarm.

〔1.2〕The causal condition: the six causes minus one. “Within the six causes, excluding the enabling cause, the remaining five causes are the nature of the causal condition” — coexistent, homogeneous, associated, all-pervading, and maturation, five causes together, make up the causal condition, while the enabling cause alone is taken out and matched instead to the dominant condition. First ask: why should it be the enabling cause that is dropped? Because the enabling cause is defined by not obstructing, and its range is wide enough to gather in every dharma; a cause so wide as to leave nothing out has no discriminating force if left in the square marked “producing intimately.” So the treatise moves it over to serve as the dominant condition, leaving the causal condition to the five causes that intimately produce. The easy error is to take the six causes and the four conditions as two unrelated lists and to memorize both by rote. In fact they are two ways of cutting one and the same set of operations. Fabao’s Commentary states the relation with the least effort: “cause is the name for what is intimate, condition the name for what is remote,” and again, “among the six causes five are intimate and so share the name of the intimate; among the four conditions three are remote and so share the name of the remote” — five intimate and one remote among the six causes, three remote and one intimate among the four conditions, the intimate and the remote crossing over, and hence two sets of names. In practice, whenever a later question asks how many causes and how many conditions a given dharma arises from, set the words intimate and remote in mind first and the numbers will not go astray.

〔1.3〕The immediately antecedent condition: why only mind can serve as it. The definition is: all already arisen mind and mental factors, “excluding the last mind and mental factors of an arhat about to enter nirvāṇa.” The name comes from “this condition produces dharmas that are equal and without interval, and the name immediately antecedent is established on this sense” — what it produces is “equal” before and after, with no interval between, and hence the name. First ask: why can form not serve? The treatise answers with great skill: form arises unequally. In one and the same moment nonmanifest form of the desire realm may be present together with nonmanifest form of the form realm, and nonmanifest form of the desire realm together with nonmanifest form without outflows — “since forms become present mixed together, while what the immediately antecedent condition produces is without mixture.” Forms can stand side by side; mind cannot: one moment has one feeling and one perception, and one feeling does not produce two feelings. This is the real sense of the word “equal.”

The treatise also records the additions of two ancient masters. Vasumitra says that within one and the same body a portion of nourished form continues unbroken while a second portion of nourished form arises, and the two “do not injure or contradict each other” — where things can coexist there is no question of handing over a place. The Venerable Dharmatrāta says instead that form is indeterminate in quantity before and after, and gives two symmetrical similes: burning a great heap of rice straw yields only a small heap of ash, which is many producing few; a single fine seed grows into a banyan tree, whose “root, trunk, branches, and leaves increase and flourish by degrees, the tall trunk letting fall its boughs and casting shade far and wide,” which is few producing many. The easy error is to read these two similes as the author discussing plants and fire. They are proving one thing — that the quantity of form has no guarantee of equality, and that form therefore cannot be established as an immediately antecedent condition.

The author then sets himself a difficulty: do not mental factors too vary in number? A wholesome mind and an unwholesome mind have different numbers of mental factors. The answer distinguishes finely: that variation obtains only between different kinds, and “within one’s own kind there is no absence of the sense of equality” — one feeling never produces many feelings. Pressing further: is it then only a preceding dharma of one’s own kind that serves as condition for the later? The treatise answers, “It is not so,” and gives the correct account: “the dharmas of the preceding class of mind as a whole are the immediately antecedent condition of the following class, and not only what is of their own kind” — a whole class of mind hands over its place to the next class of mind; it is not feeling handing over to feeling and perception to perception. In practice: the immediately antecedent condition speaks of the handing over of a place, not of succession within a kind; and reading it as “continuity within a kind” is precisely the position the author refutes in the next passage.

〔1.4〕Where those who admit only one’s own kind go wrong. There is a class of people who hold that only what is of one’s own kind can be an immediately antecedent condition, that “mind produces only mind and feeling produces only feeling.” The price they pay is this: when a defiled mind arises immediately after an undefiled mind, the affliction within that defiled mind has to take “the affliction that ceased earlier” as its immediately antecedent condition — a stretch of the undefiled lies in between, and they must still force the connection back to the same kind. They also adduce the absorption of cessation as an example, saying that the mind emerging from it takes as its condition the mind that preceded entry. The author refutes them in one sentence: “their statement is not good, for the first mind without outflows would then have to arise lacking this condition.” First ask: why is this refutation fatal? Because before the first arisen mind without outflows there simply is no mind without outflows of the same kind to connect with; and if only one’s own kind can serve as condition, that moment arises while lacking one of the four conditions — whereas that mind and mental factors are definitely produced by four conditions is a tenet they themselves grant. The easy error is to suppose that the author here denies the account of the mind emerging from the absorption of cessation connecting to the mind before entry. He does not. That model the author himself uses (see the fourfold analysis below); he only refuses to let it be generalized into “only one’s own kind.” In practice: this is a mode of refutation common throughout the treatise — he does not refute your example, he refutes your taking the example for a general rule.

〔1.5〕Why there is no immediately antecedent condition in the future, and how the Buddha nonetheless knows the future. Someone asks: why is an immediately antecedent condition not allowed in the future time-period? The treatise answers, “because future dharmas abide mixed together and have no before and after” — future dharmas have not yet formed a queue, and where there is no before and after there is no question of which succeeds which. This answer at once raises a larger question: since the future has no before and after, how does the Buddha know that “this dharma will be immediately followed by that dharma which is to arise”? Here the treatise records three views and then adopts one. The first is “because he knows the present by comparison with past and present dharmas,” the Buddha comparing the causal sequences of past and present and so seeing the future manifestly, with the added remark that “this is included in the knowledge of aspiration and is not inferential knowledge”; the author objects that if so, “since the World-Honored One has not seen the prior limit, he ought to be unable to know dharmas of the later limit.” The second is that within the continuum of a sentient being there is a “prior sign of the cause” of the future result, belonging to the differentiations of the aggregate of formations not associated with mind, and that the Buddha knows simply by observing this sign, “without needing to range through the meditative absorptions and the supernormal knowledges at the moment”; the author objects that this makes it “knowing by reading signs in the future, and not direct realization.” The third is the Sautrāntika view: “the World-Honored One, on directing his intention, knows all dharmas everywhere, neither by inference nor by reading signs,” and the author judges, “this statement is good,” closing with the World-Honored One’s own words — the domain of the Buddhas is inconceivable.

First ask: why does this passage stand in the chapter on the four conditions? Because it is in fact defending the line that the future has no before and after. If it were granted that the Buddha relies on inference or on reading signs, the future would have to be queued up in advance, the immediately antecedent condition would reach into the future, and the definition just given would collapse. The easy error is to read the three views as a dispute in Buddhist epistemology. They are advanced in order to preserve a boundary line in the enumeration of dharmas. In practice: a reader of Abhidharma must get used to this manner of writing — an apparently theological incidental discussion is often there to keep some definition from leaking.

〔1.6〕The arhat’s last moment of mind: it is “mind-faculty,” yet not a “condition.” The treatise asks: why are the last mind and mental factors of an arhat not an immediately antecedent condition? The answer: “because no further mind and the rest continue on from them” — there is no mind after them to connect. The objector at once asks in return: every mind that has ceased without interval is named “mind-faculty” (as the support of the subsequent consciousness), and since no consciousness arises after the last mind, ought it not to lose even the name of mind-faculty? The treatise’s division is beautifully made: “mind-faculty is displayed by way of support and not by way of operation,” whereas the immediately antecedent condition is “displayed by way of operation.” Mind-faculty is named with respect to being available as a support, and the last mind still qualifies as available for support; it is only that the remaining assisting conditions are lacking, and so no subsequent consciousness arises. The immediately antecedent condition, by contrast, is named with respect to actually having performed the handing over of a place, and of any dharma taken as a result by this condition, “there are definitely no dharmas and no sentient beings that can obstruct it so as to keep it from arising” — once a result is taken it must arise, with no exception. Hence “the last mind, though it obtains the name of mind-faculty, may not be called an immediately antecedent condition.”

First ask: what is the use of this distinction over a single word? It separates qualification from efficacy. The easy error is to take “mind-faculty” and “immediately antecedent condition” as two names for one and the same thing — the treatise does often say that a mind ceased without interval is named mind-faculty, and one slips past it easily. In practice: whenever two names later appear to designate one thing, first ask whether the one is established with respect to support or with respect to operation, and the knot will usually come undone.

〔1.7〕Two fourfold analyses: prying apart “immediately antecedent” and “without interval.” The treatise sets two questions, each answered in four alternatives. First question: is whatever is an immediately antecedent result of mind also something that arises directly after mind? The first alternative is the former without the latter: the mind and mental factors on emerging from a mindless absorption, and the moments of the two absorptions from the second moment onward — these are immediately antecedent results of mind, yet do not arise directly after mind. The second alternative is the latter without the former: the four marks of arising, abiding, change, and cessation belonging to the first arisen moment of the two absorptions, and the four marks of arising, abiding, change, and cessation belonging to mind and mental factors in a state possessed of mind — these arise directly after mind, yet are not results of mind. The third alternative is both, the fourth neither. The second question substitutes “directly after a mindless absorption,” and its answer merely transposes the four alternatives — “the third and fourth alternatives above become the first and second here.”

First ask: what is all this circling for? To force out a conclusion: “immediately antecedent” is the name of a result, and “without interval” is the name of a position, and the two may come apart. Hence the treatise adds a question at the end: when the mind emerging from the two absorptions looks back to the mind before entry, so long a stretch lies between — how can it still count as without interval? The answer: “because no mind or mental factor intervenes” — if what intervenes is not mind, it does not count as an interval. The easy error is to read “without interval” as immediate succession in time. It is immediate succession in the sequence of minds, and the time may stretch very long. In practice: this settles the point on which later readers most often stick — that when one emerges from the absorption without perception after five hundred aeons, the immediately antecedent condition of that moment of mind is still the mind before entry.

〔1.8〕The object condition: it remains an object even when it is not being taken as one. The definition is: “the nature of the object condition is all dharmas with respect to mind and mental factors, each as applicable” — visual consciousness and its associated dharmas take all visible form as object condition, and so on up to mental consciousness and its associated dharmas taking all dharmas as object condition. The real teaching lies in the sentence that follows: “if a dharma is an object for that dharma, there is no time at which this is not an object for that” — even at a time and place where it is not being taken as an object, it still counts as included among objects, because “being taken as object and not being taken as object, its character is one”; and a simile is set: “as firewood and the like, even when not being burned, are still called what is burned, since their character is not different.”

First ask: what sort of reasoning is this? Firewood is called what is burned even when unburnt, because being burnable belongs to its character and not to the presence of fire. In the same way, being available as an object is the character of the dharma itself and is not lost merely because at this moment nobody is taking it as object. The easy error is to suppose that an object condition is established only when a mind comes to take it — which would make the condition something manufactured by mind. The treatise also notes in passing that an object is “determinate in all three respects, place, entity, and moment,” and asks whether the support, the faculty, is likewise, answering that it is, save that only in the present time-period does it “intimately adhere to its own support” while past and future are separated from it; and it preserves another view that “in the past too it intimately adheres to its support.” Yuanhui’s Verse Commentary fits this section with an excellent simile: “mind and mental factors are feeble in nature and arise only by grasping an object, like a feeble man who cannot rise without a staff” — mind is the feeble man, the object is the staff, and without the staff he cannot stand. In practice: the object condition is not an appendage of mind but the support by which mind is able to arise; and this sentence will be weighed again and again in Yogācāra later on.

〔1.9〕The dominant condition: the widest square of the four. “The nature of the dominant condition is just the enabling cause,” and its entity is the widest, since every dharma is a dominant condition. The objector at once seizes the handle: since the object condition too is every dharma, on what ground is the dominant condition said to be uniquely wide? The treatise answers along two routes. One is to give a counter-example: those dharmas that arise together with this moment of mind “have never been its object” — companions in the same moment cannot become one’s own object, yet they are still dominant conditions, which shows that the range of the dominant condition really is greater. The other is to shift the angle: “or, because what it does is broad, it is named the dominant condition” — every dharma, each excluding its own intrinsic nature, can be a dominant condition for every conditioned dharma, and this is said with respect to the breadth of what it does.

First ask: which route is the correct account? The treatise preserves both without adjudicating, and this is precisely its rule. The easy error is to read “dominant” as reinforcing. Its real sense is not obstructing — it does nothing at all, only keeps out of the way; and just because the qualification of keeping out of the way is the easiest to satisfy, its range is the widest. At the end the treatise sets a closing question: is there any dharma that serves as none of the four conditions whatever for some dharma? There is — “an intrinsic nature with respect to itself,” which serves as not one condition for itself; and there is also the case of another nature, namely the conditioned with respect to the unconditioned, and the unconditioned with respect to the unconditioned. In practice: this question seals off the chapter on the four conditions. It tells the reader that wide as the four conditions are, they still have a boundary; the unconditioned does not arise, and so receives no condition at all.

II. On Which Moment the Operation Falls: The Moment of Ceasing and the Moment of Arising

〔2.1〕They are causes alike, yet they act at different times. The stanza says, “Two causes at the moment of ceasing, three causes at the moment of arising; the other two conditions, contrariwise, exercise their operation.” Among the five causes, the coexistent and associated causes operate “at the moment of ceasing,” and “the words ‘the moment of ceasing’ display the dharma as present, since its ceasing is before us, and hence the moment of ceasing”; the three causes homogeneous, all-pervading, and maturation operate “at the moment of arising,” that is, a future dharma “at the stage of imminent arising, because its arising is before us.” First ask: ought not a cause to operate when it produces its result — how can a cause act at the moment of ceasing? The key is that what these two causes produce is a simultaneous result: coexistent and associated causes are in the very same moment as their result, and result and cause are present together and tend toward ceasing together, so it is said that they “exercise their operation at the stage of the dharma’s ceasing” — not that the cause first ceases and then produces the result, but that their operation is displayed only in this present moment. Conversely, what the three causes homogeneous, all-pervading, and maturation produce is a later result, the result still standing in the future at the stage of being about to arise, so that the cause’s drawing force falls upon that “about to arise.”

〔2.2〕Why the two conditions are the reverse. The treatise says, “the operation of the two conditions is contrary to this.” The immediately antecedent condition operates “at the stage of a dharma’s arising,” “because at the time it arises the preceding mind and mental factors have given it their place” — its work is to yield a place, and the moment the place is yielded is precisely the moment the new dharma arises. The object condition operates “at the stage of the ceasing of what takes it,” “because mind and mental factors must be present in order to grasp an object” — grasping an object requires a present mind, and a present mind is just then tending toward ceasing, so its operation falls at the stage of ceasing. As for the dominant condition, “at every stage it abides without obstructing,” barring nothing at either the stage of arising or the stage of ceasing.

The easy error is to memorize this stanza as a formula of four points in time. It has in fact only one principle — the position of the operation is fixed by the position of the result: where the result is simultaneous with the cause, the operation is in the present; where the result lies in the future about to arise, the operation is at the stage of arising; where the condition’s work is to yield a place, it falls at the stage of arising; where the condition’s work is to be grasped, it falls at the stage of ceasing. In practice, this section is the pivot of everything the treatise says about taking and giving a result; whenever the chapters on action and on the noble persons later raise questions about whether taking and giving a result are simultaneous, one must come back here.

III. From How Many Conditions Each Dharma Arises: The Shortest Checklist

〔3.1〕A list of three lines. The stanza says, “Mind and mental factors from four, the two absorptions from three only, the rest arise from two conditions.” Mind and mental factors have all four conditions; the absorption of cessation and the absorption without perception have only three, “excluding the object condition, since they do not take an object” — a mindless absorption does not take an object, and so naturally has no object condition; the remaining forms and formations not associated with mind have only two, the causal condition and the dominant condition. First ask: since the two absorptions are mindless, why do they still have an immediately antecedent condition? Because the two absorptions are drawn forth by the moment of mind before entry, and so that mind of entry together with its associated dharmas is their immediately antecedent condition. But the treatise at once adds a sentence of the first importance: “these two absorptions are drawn forth by mind and the rest; because they obstruct the arising of mind and the rest, they are for mind and the rest merely immediately antecedent, and not an immediately antecedent condition” — the two absorptions are “immediately antecedent dharmas” of mind, but not the “immediately antecedent condition” of mind.

The easy error is to take these two names for one. The two absorptions are drawn forth by mind, and so they follow directly after mind (they are immediately antecedent dharmas); but their function is to block mind from arising, and something that blocks the road cannot conversely serve as the condition that yields a place. In the Treatise Conforming to Correct Principle Saṅghabhadra presses precisely this point — “on what ground are the two absorptions immediately antecedent to mind and yet not said to be the immediately antecedent condition of mind?” — and answers that “they are injuriously contrary to the arising of mind and the rest.” Here the treatise gives only the conclusion, and Saṅghabhadra supplies the reason. In practice: this is the key to how the minds of entering and emerging from absorption are joined, and the whole chapter on absorption later rests upon it.

〔3.2〕What the study of the four conditions is good for. This table looks fussy, but it is in fact taking the four conditions established above and checking them class by class: mind has four, the two absorptions three, the rest two. Whenever an enumeration of dharmas is set up, one must be able to turn back and verify it item by item against all dharmas with no exception left over — this is Abhidharma’s mechanism of self-verification. In practice: on meeting any dharma hereafter, the reader can first ask, “is it mind, is it a mindless absorption, is it form or a formation not associated with mind?”, and once the answer is out, the number of conditions is fixed.

IV. Refuting the Single Cause: Three Lines of Reasoning

〔4.1〕Why the author suddenly turns. The last line of the stanza, “not from a god, because of sequence and the rest,” is extremely terse and contains two things. Yuanhui’s Verse Commentary takes it apart clearly: “this has two senses: first the denial, second the establishing of the reason” — “not from a god” is what is refuted (Īśvara and the rest), and “because of sequence and the rest” is the reasoning that refutes. Three parties in all are refuted: those who hold Maheśvara to be the maker, those who hold a self to be the maker, and those who hold the primal nature to be the cause. The author first sets a general question: on what ground is it said that things are not produced by a single cause? The answer is briskly made — “if you allow that anything whatever is brought about by a cause, have you not thereby abandoned the doctrine that all the world arises from the single cause Īśvara and the like?”: if you grant that the establishing of any one thing requires other causes to help, your own doctrine of a single cause collapses.

〔4.2〕The first reason: sequence. “That is, if the worlds arose from the single cause Īśvara and the like, then everything ought to arise all at once and not in sequence; yet we plainly see dharmas arising in sequence, and so we know they definitely do not arise from a single cause.” First ask: where is the force of this refutation? In this, that a single, unchanging cause cannot yield results that come earlier and later. The opponent’s defense is to add a “wish”: Īśvara wishes this dharma to arise now and that one later. The author presses on through four steps: if it depends on a wish, then it is no longer a single cause; if the wishes are said to differ, then, since those differing wishes issue alike from an undifferentiated Īśvara, they too ought to arise all at once; if the differing wishes are said to depend on some further cause, then it is not “taking Īśvara alone as the cause”; and if the cause depended upon depends in turn on yet another cause, then “the causes depended upon would have no limit” — and to grant that they have no limit is to grant beginninglessness, which “does not transgress the correct principle of causes and conditions in the Buddha’s school,” so that the circle comes back round to Buddhism’s own doctrine of causes and conditions.

The easy error is to suppose that the author is proving that the world has no creator. What he refutes is the single cause — “therefore there is no dharma produced by a single cause alone.” In practice: the form of this reasoning is well worth remembering — anyone who maintains a single permanent cause must face the question of how an unchanging cause produces changing results.

〔4.3〕The second reason: it serves no purpose. “And when that Īśvara exerts great effort to produce the worlds, what benefit does he gain?” If it be said that it is for the sake of arousing delight, then, since delight cannot be aroused apart from other means, he must rely on something else for the arousing of delight — “so that Īśvara, since he must depend on another in the arousing of delight, ought not to be sovereign.” The author then writes the weightiest sentence in the passage: “Or if Īśvara produces the hells and other measureless instruments of suffering to oppress and harm sentient beings, and arouses his own delight at the sight of it — enough! What use is such an Īśvara?” First ask: is this sentence emotion or argument? It is argument. It forces out the internal consequence of the opponent’s position: if instruments of suffering are made merely for the maker’s own amusement, then the god he sets up contradicts the very name of Sovereign. In practice: the method of this refutation is not to add an external value judgment but to push the opponent’s own premises to the end and let them state the conclusion themselves.

〔4.4〕The third reason: it contradicts the world. “And if one accepts that all the world arises from the single cause Īśvara, this is to deny the other causes and conditions and the human labor and the rest that we plainly see in the world.” First ask: is this an appeal to common sense? What it appeals to is what is plainly seen — farming requires that someone plow, making a cart requires that someone make it, and these are causes and conditions verifiable before one’s eyes. If the opponent says that Īśvara must await human labor to assist and elicit his act, the author answers, “this is merely words of partisan reverence for Īśvara, since apart from the other causes and conditions no distinct function of his is seen” — that is deference, not reasoning. If the opponent falls back on holding that only the very first arising has Īśvara as its cause and that only afterwards are other causes awaited, the author answers: then what first arose awaited no other cause, and “it ought to have been accomplished beginninglessly, just like Īśvara.” As for the two schools of the self and of the primal nature, “each as applicable is to be thoroughly examined and dismissed just as Īśvara was.” At the end the author sighs: “Strange, that the world does not cultivate excellent discernment, but is like foolish birds and beasts — truly this is to be pitied” — each acts for himself and undergoes his own maturation result and result of human effort, and yet people would put the account in another’s name. In practice: refuting the single cause is not for the sake of winning an argument but in order to hand the responsibility for cause and result back to those who act; and the author immediately says, “enough of refuting error; the correct doctrine should now be set out,” and turns back to the enumeration of dharmas.

V. A Stanza of the Non-Buddhists: Why the Author Says “This Is Truly Well Said”

〔5.1〕The stanza and where it comes from. After “enough! what use is such an Īśvara?” the author says, “in the words of their own stanza, this is truly well said,” and then quotes four lines: “Because he is sharp as a precipice and can burn, fearsome and constantly oppressing and harming, delighting to feed on blood, flesh, and marrow, he is therefore named Rudra.” First ask: whose stanza is this? It is not a stanza of this treatise — Shentai’s Commentary assigns it to “the brahmins who serve that god,” recited by the servants of Īśvara themselves. So although this stanza stands in the fascicle it does not enter the count of the root stanzas, which is why Shentai counts the fascicle’s root stanzas as twelve and a half lines.

〔5.2〕What the stanza says. The ancient masters bring each of the stanza’s four matters down to concrete detail: his fire-arrows are sharp as a precipice and burn up three lands, whence “sharp as a precipice and can burn”; he strings serpents through human skulls and ties them at his head, and slays elephants and takes their hides, wearing them inside out still bloody, whence “fearsome and constantly oppressing and harming”; and the last line states outright what he feeds on. As for the name, Shentai’s Commentary records Xuanzang’s oral gloss most directly — “as for Rudra, the Dharma Master Xuanzang says: this means Violent and Cruel”; Yuanhui’s Verse Commentary has “as for Rudra, this means Violent and Cruel; Īśvara has a thousand names, and this is one title”; while Puguang’s Record has “this means Fierce and Cruel, an alternative name of Maheśvara. Maheśvara has a thousand names in all, of which only sixty are current in the world today, and Rudra is one of them.” The graph and the number transmitted by the three differ slightly, while the gloss “violent and cruel” is the same.

〔5.3〕Clearing a misreading: how the four words “this is truly well said” are to be read. This is the sentence in the fascicle most easily misread. On its face it looks as though the author were praising the non-Buddhists’ stanza; but he has just said, “enough! what use is such an Īśvara?”, so how does he turn at once to praise? The ancient masters divide into two routes here, and this section states first the clue given by the treatise’s own text: what the author praises is not that god but the exact correspondence between the figure this stanza describes and the position they themselves maintain, that he takes delight in others’ suffering — since you say he makes the hells for his own delight, then the descriptions in your own stanza, “constantly oppressing and harming” and “feeding on blood, flesh, and marrow,” have caught this god exactly. So “well said” is said with respect to the accuracy of the description, and not with respect to the worthiness of what is described. Whether the sentence is finally irony or straightforward assent the four commentaries read differently, and this is recorded under Further Resonances. In practice: when the tone of the treatise turns abruptly, look back at the position taken in the preceding sentence, and one will usually not misjudge.

VI. The Great Elements and Derived Form: Five Causes, Yet Not the Coexistent Cause

〔6.1〕Four directions of relation. The stanza says, “The great elements are two causes for the great elements, five kinds for derived form; derived form is three kinds for derived form, and for the great elements one cause only.” Great elements with respect to great elements are only coexistent causes and homogeneous causes. Great elements with respect to derived form are five causes: producing, supporting, establishing, upholding, and nourishing. Derived forms with respect to one another may be coexistent, homogeneous, and maturation causes. Derived form with respect to the great elements is a maturation cause only. First ask: why should the numbers in the four directions all differ? Because the senses of causality that can be established in each direction differ, and the treatise gives a reason for each: among derived forms with respect to one another, the coexistent cause is confined to “bodily and verbal action that follows mind, and not the other derived forms”; the homogeneous cause is “all that arises earlier with respect to what is homogeneous and later”; and the maturation cause is that bodily and verbal action can call forth “the maturation result of the eye faculty and the rest.” And that derived form has only the maturation cause with respect to the great elements is likewise because bodily and verbal action can call forth a result that is a great element.

〔6.2〕The real sense of the five causes, and the one restriction that matters most. Each of the five causes has its analogy: because derived form arises from the great elements it is named the producing cause; because once arisen it proceeds in dependence upon the great elements, “as one depends on a teacher and the like,” it is named the supporting cause; because they can uphold it, “as a wall upholds a painting,” it is named the establishing cause; because they keep it unbroken it is named the upholding cause; because they make it increase it is named the nourishing cause. Taken together, “thus is displayed the causal nature of the great elements with respect to derived form as arousing, altering, holding, maintaining, and increasing.” Yuanhui’s Verse Commentary matches the five names to the five senses one by one: “arousing is the producing cause; altering is the supporting cause; holding is the establishing cause; sustaining is the upholding cause; increasing is the nourishing cause.”

But the most important thing in the whole section is this one restriction: “these five causes are only differentiations of the enabling cause.” First ask: why does this sentence matter? Because the reader’s most natural misunderstanding is to read “the great elements produce derived form” as making the great elements the intimate cause of derived form (a coexistent or homogeneous cause). The treatise states plainly here that these five causes are only five divisions of labor beneath the enabling cause, belonging to the square marked “not obstructing,” and are not among the six causes that intimately produce. There is a further layer of easy error: the five causes are named producing and nourishing, which sound as intimate as can be, and yet they remain remote conditions. In practice: this restriction keeps the framework of the earlier sections, cause intimate and condition remote, from being thrown into disorder — names may be chosen for their warmth, but the squares may not be misfiled.

VII. The Twelve Minds: Counting All Minds Out First

〔7.1〕How the twelve are counted. The treatise says, “it has been stated in general above that mind and mental factors earlier are the immediately antecedent condition of what is later, but it has not been determinately stated how many minds may arise directly after which mind,” and so first sets up an inventory of mind. The desire realm has four minds: wholesome, unwholesome, obscured-indeterminate, and unobscured-indeterminate. The form realm and the formless realm have three each, “that is, excluding the unwholesome” — the two higher realms have no unwholesome mind. These ten are all minds with outflows; minds without outflows are only two, that of one in training and that of one beyond training. Together they make twelve.

〔7.2〕Clearing misreadings, and where it lands. First ask: why do the two higher realms have no unwholesome mind? Because the entity of an unwholesome mind is a mind associated with the afflictions that can call forth maturation in the evil destinies, and the two higher realms have already left behind the defilements of the desire realm, so that such a mind does not arise there — this is an established doctrine carried over from the preceding chapter and simply taken up here. The easy error is to confuse the unobscured-indeterminate with the obscured-indeterminate. Both are indeterminate (they do not call forth maturation); the difference lies in “obscured” — the obscured is covered by afflictions and obstructs the noble path, while the unobscured does not obstruct. In practice: the twelve minds are the coordinate axis of every number in the second half of this fascicle, and all the “produces nine” and “arises from eight” below are counted over these twelve squares. Shentai’s Commentary also makes a lateral check for the reader: “among the twelve minds, six minds do not undergo birth at death” — which of the twelve squares can become present at death and which can become present at rebirth-linking is the real mechanism behind the table of mutual arising.

VIII. The Twelve Minds Arising from One Another: One Table, Two Mechanisms

〔8.1〕How the table is read. Four lines of stanza list in full how the twelve minds arise from one another: the wholesome mind of the desire realm produces nine and arises from eight; the defiled mind of the desire realm arises from ten and produces four; the unobscured mind of the desire realm arises from five and produces seven; the wholesome mind of the form realm produces eleven and arises from nine; the obscured mind of the form realm arises from eight and produces six; the unobscured mind of the form realm arises from three and produces six; the wholesome mind of the formless realm produces nine and arises from six; the obscured mind of the formless realm produces seven and also arises from seven; the unobscured mind of the formless realm follows the pattern of the form realm; the mind of one in training arises from four and produces five; the mind of one beyond training arises from five and produces four. First ask: how are these numbers arrived at? By two mechanisms.

〔8.2〕Mechanism one: entering and emerging from absorption. The wholesome mind of the desire realm can produce two minds of the form realm, and the treatise notes that one of these is “at the time of entering absorption”; and it also comes from the wholesome mind of the form realm, which is “at the time of emerging from absorption.” This brings entry into and emergence from absorption into the table of mutual arising. One passage here is especially worth turning over: the defiled mind of the form realm can also produce the wholesome mind of the desire realm — the treatise says, “when one is distressed by a defiled absorption, from that defiled mind there arises a wholesome mind of the lower realm, in order to rely on that lower wholesome mind to guard against falling back from it.” One who cultivates absorption is troubled by a defiled absorption and retreats to a lower level to arouse a wholesome mind for his own protection: this is an actual circumstance of practice, and the treatise reckons it into the enumeration of dharmas.

〔8.3〕Mechanism two: rebirth-linking. The treatise says again and again, “at the stage of rebirth-linking.” The moment of mind at rebirth-linking is necessarily defiled, and so any mind in any of the three realms, at death, can be directly followed by a defiled mind of the desire realm — this is the source of “the defiled arises from ten” (the twelve minds excluding those of one in training and one beyond training). Conversely, a defiled mind of the desire realm can produce only the four minds of its own realm, “there being no principle by which it produces the rest,” since a defiled mind cannot leap directly to a level of absorption or to another realm.

〔8.4〕Clearing misreadings, and where it lands. The first easy error is to suppose that “cannot produce” means forbidden. It does not; it means there is no such road — thus the wholesome mind of the desire realm can produce a defiled mind of the formless realm (at rebirth-linking) yet cannot produce a wholesome mind of the formless realm, and the reason the treatise gives is “because they are extremely far apart,” listing four kinds of distance: distance of support, distance of mode of apprehension, distance of object, and distance of antidote. The second easy error is to treat this table as a memory exercise. It is in fact a traffic map of mind: which moment may be followed by which decides the possible routes of practice and the possible routes of falling back. In practice: when the chapter on the noble persons later treats entering contemplation, emerging from it, and falling back, it must return to this map to find its roads.

IX. The Twenty Minds: Cutting the Wholesome and the Indeterminate Finer

〔9.1〕Why cut further. “The wholesome mind of each of the three realms divides into two kinds, namely acquired through preparation and acquired by birth” — some wholesome minds are won by applied effort and some are had from birth, and the two differ in force and cannot occupy one square. The unobscured-indeterminate of the desire realm divides into four: maturation-born, mode of deportment, field of craft, and supernormal-result mind. The form realm drops the field of craft, “since in the higher realms there is no making of the various crafts”; the formless realm has fewer still. Thus “the wholesome divides into six and the unobscured into eight,” and with the two minds of one in training and one beyond training added, they make twenty.

〔9.2〕What the four kinds of unobscured-indeterminate are. The maturation-born is the mind that arises in requital of former action; the mode of deportment is the mind arising while walking, standing, sitting, and lying; the field of craft is the mind arising while making things by skill; the supernormal-result mind is the mind of transformation and supernormal power drawn forth by absorption. The treatise states their objects: “the three unobscured minds of the mode of deportment and the rest have visible form, odor, taste, and the tangible as their objects; the field of craft and the rest also take sound as object; and these three minds are mental consciousness alone,” while “the preparatory stages of the mode of deportment and of the field of craft extend also to the four consciousnesses and the five consciousnesses.” It also records another master’s divergent view: that there is a mental consciousness drawn forth by the mode of deportment and by the field of craft which “can take all twelve sense fields as its object.”

〔9.3〕Why mutual arising suddenly becomes complicated. The table of mutual arising for the twenty minds is far more intricate than that for the twelve, because the wholesome acquired through preparation and the wholesome acquired by birth have parted company, and the supernormal-result mind moves in and out only with minds of absorption. Nothing illustrates the matter better than this exchange: a wholesome mind acquired through preparation can be directly followed by the three indeterminate minds, maturation-born, field of craft, and mode of deportment, whereas those three cannot be directly followed by a wholesome mind acquired through preparation. The reason is “because their force is weak and they are not drawn forth by applied effort”; while conversely a wholesome mind acquired through preparation can produce them because “the mind of emerging proceeds without applied effort.” And immediately there follows another misreading to clear: if that is so, a defiled mind accords still less with a wholesome mind acquired through preparation, so how can a defiled mind be directly followed by a wholesome mind acquired through preparation? The treatise answers: “even so, when one is wearied by the present activity of the afflictions, and wishes to know them, it is possible for preparation to arise.” In practice: these few sentences are among the rare passages in the fascicle bearing directly on practice — a mind of applied effort can be caught by a mind that proceeds without applied effort, while a mind without applied effort cannot catch a mind of applied effort; and the very moment the afflictions are active is a moment when contemplation may be aroused. Shentai’s Commentary makes here a check symmetrical with the earlier one: “among the twenty minds, eight minds do not undergo birth at death.”

〔9.4〕The three kinds of attention and the going in and out of the noble path. At the end of the twenty minds the treatise inserts three kinds of attention: attention to an individual characteristic (contemplating form as having the character of resistant deformation, and so on to contemplating consciousness as having the character of discerning), attention to a common characteristic (attention associated with the sixteen modes of apprehension), and attention through resolve (the contemplation of impurity, the four immeasurables, the liberations possessed of form, the bases of mastery, the totalities, and the rest). All three kinds of attention can be directly followed by the manifesting of the noble path, and the noble path can be directly followed by all three — so that this accords with the sūtra’s statement that “one cultivates the awakening-factor of mindfulness and the rest in company with the contemplation of impurity.” Two further masters hold otherwise: one says that only attention to a common characteristic can enter the noble path while the noble path can issue in all three; the other says that both entering and issuing belong to attention to a common characteristic alone. The author sets a difficulty for the third master: if one enters the certainty of the noble path in dependence on the second, third, or fourth absorption, of which level is the attention to a common characteristic that the noble path can be directly followed by? That of the desire realm is too far; attention to a common characteristic of one’s own level not previously obtained just is the noble path; and the factors conducive to penetration cannot possibly be aroused again after the fruit has been obtained. And if it be said that there is another attention to a common characteristic, already cultivated together with the factors conducive to penetration and bound up with them, which can be drawn forth, then “the Vaibhāṣikas do not allow this sense, since it contradicts correct principle.” At the end the treatise also lists the levels of the mind of emerging from contemplation after the fruit of an arhat is obtained: for one who obtains the fruit in dependence on access concentration, the mind of emerging is either of that same level or of the desire realm; for one who obtains it in dependence on the sphere of nothingness, either of that same level or of the summit of existence; for one who obtains it in dependence on the other levels, of his own level alone. And it lists the number of kinds of attention in the three realms: three in the desire realm (formed through hearing, formed through reflection, and acquired by birth); three in the form realm (hearing, cultivation, and acquired by birth, with nothing formed through reflection, “since as soon as the mind sets itself to consider, it enters absorption”); and two in the formless realm (cultivation and acquired by birth). Of these eight, “five kinds of attention can be directly followed by the manifesting of the noble path, excluding what is acquired by birth,” while the noble path can also be directly followed by the attention of the desire realm acquired by birth, “because it is bright and keen.”

First ask: why is this long passage placed among the twenty minds? Because attention is one of the stages of mind, and the going in and out of the noble path just is the arising of mind from mind — this passage is in fact the redemption of the table of mutual arising in the practice of the path. In practice: if the reader collates it with the table of mutual arising in the preceding section, he will see that the real theme of the second half of this fascicle is the road by which a moment of mind comes and the road by which it goes.

X. Minds Acquired When One Is Present: What Is “Acquired” in a Single Moment

〔10.1〕What “acquisition” means. The stanza says, “When a defiled mind of the three realms is present, six, six, and two are acquired; three with the wholesome of the form realm, four with that of one in training; for the rest only their own may be acquired.” The treatise glosses the sense of acquiring a mind in a single sentence: “because what was not accomplished before is now accomplished” — what was not accomplished before and is accomplished now is what acquisition means. First ask: when one mind becomes present, how does one incidentally acquire other minds? Because accomplishment and becoming present are two different things: a person may accomplish a given mind and not be arousing it at this moment. When certain joints are crossed (rebirth-linking, entering absorption, becoming free from defilement, falling back, restoring wholesome roots), the accomplished status of a whole batch of minds changes at once.

〔10.2〕Counting position by position. When a defiled mind of the desire realm is present, six are acquired: by restoring wholesome roots through doubt, or by falling back from a higher realm, the wholesome mind of the desire realm is acquired; by falling back through the arising of an affliction and by falling back from a realm, the unwholesome and the obscured minds of the desire realm and one obscured mind of the form realm are acquired; and by falling back through the arising of an affliction, one obscured mind of the formless realm and the mind of one in training are acquired. When a defiled mind of the form realm is present, six are likewise acquired: by falling back from a realm, one unobscured mind of the desire realm and three minds of the form realm are acquired, the defiled mind of the form realm itself being also acquired by falling back; and by falling back through the arising of an affliction, one obscured mind of the formless realm and the mind of one in training are acquired. When a defiled mind of the formless realm is present, only two are acquired: by falling back through the arising of an affliction, that defiled mind and the mind of one in training. When a wholesome mind of the form realm is present, three are acquired: that wholesome mind and the unobscured-indeterminate minds of the desire and form realms, “by way of advancing upward.” When the mind of one in training is present, four are acquired: the mind of one in training, the unobscured-indeterminate minds of the desire and form realms, and the wholesome mind of the formless realm, by first entering the certainty of the noble path and by becoming free, through the noble path, from the defilements of the desire and form realms. When the remaining minds are present, “only their own may be acquired.”

〔10.3〕Clearing misreadings, and where it lands. The easy error is to read “falling back” as an accident of failure. In this table, falling back and advancing upward are two symmetrical mechanisms — advancing upward makes one acquire the minds of a higher level, and falling back makes one acquire again the minds of a lower level; and how many minds are acquired records just how far a person has moved on the ladder of the three realms. In practice: this section carries the two tables of mutual arising forward from “what can be connected to what” to “how the accomplished status changes once the connection is made,” and is the last layer of the fascicle. If the reader asks why Abhidharma reckons so finely, the answer is here: progress and regress in practice can be entered in the ledger square by square.

XI. Another School’s Stanza, and the Author’s Correction

〔11.1〕The quoted stanza. The treatise says, “Others state this in general,” and quotes a stanza: “The wise say that when a defiled mind becomes present nine are acquired, with a wholesome mind six are acquired, and with the indeterminate only the indeterminate.” First ask: why do this stanza’s numbers differ from those in the earlier part of the treatise? Earlier, defiled minds of the three realms acquire six, six, and two respectively, fourteen in all, whereas this stanza says only nine. The difference is in the method of counting: the treatise counts realm by realm and allows the same item to be counted more than once, while the stanza removes the duplicates and counts each only once. Likewise for the wholesome mind, where the treatise’s separate reckoning gives seven (three with the wholesome of the form realm, four with that of one in training) while the stanza combines them into six.

〔11.2〕The author’s correction. The author goes on to say, “with a wholesome mind one should say that seven are acquired,” and lists the seven joints one by one: on restoring wholesome roots through right view, the wholesome mind of the desire realm is acquired; at the culminating stage of becoming free from the defilements of the desire realm, the unobscured-indeterminate minds of the desire and form realms are acquired all at once; on obtaining the concentrations of the form and formless realms, the wholesome minds of those two are acquired; and on first entering the certainty of the noble path and on realizing arhatship, the minds of one in training and of one beyond training are acquired. First ask: why does the author add this one mind? Because the stanza omits the position of restoring wholesome roots through right view — a person whose wholesome roots have been cut off and who arouses them anew is the very type of “what was not accomplished before and is accomplished now,” and should not go uncounted.

〔11.3〕Clearing misreadings, and where it lands. The easy error is to suppose that the author is charging the other school with error. His wording is “one should say that seven are acquired”: he supplements rather than overturns, and one and the same set of facts yielding different numbers under different methods of counting is no contradiction at all. From which school the stanza comes, and how Saṅghabhadra defends it, are recorded under Further Resonances. In practice: the treatise often quotes another school’s stanza and then corrects it, and this is its rule of gathering in and only then discriminating — when a reader meets in the treatise a stanza whose numbers suddenly do not agree with what precedes, the first step is not to judge right and wrong but to ask whether the two sides are counting in the same way.

XII. The Five Gates That Gather the Sense: One Stanza Closes the Fascicle

〔12.1〕The stanza and the five gates. “In order to gather in the preceding sense, a stanza is stated again”: “At taking birth, at entering absorption, at becoming free from defilement, at falling back, and at the position of restoring wholesome roots, a mind is acquired, because it was not accomplished before.” The five gates are taking birth (rebirth-linking), entering absorption, becoming free from defilement, falling back, and restoring wholesome roots — every acquiring of a mind falls within these five positions, and the reason it is called acquiring is simply that “it was not accomplished before.”

〔12.2〕What this stanza does. First ask: the reckoning has already been made position by position, so why one more stanza? Because the earlier reckoning went mind by mind (how many minds are acquired when a given mind becomes present), while this stanza gathers gate by gate (the acquiring of a mind falls within five gates). One and the same set of facts rearranged once on a different axis is what allows a reader to remember it and put it to use. The easy error is to take it for repetition and skip it. It is the fascicle’s only comprehensive table.

〔12.3〕How it lands on the whole fascicle. Looking back: this fascicle begins from “the causes have been stated at length; and what of conditions?”, first establishes the entities of the four conditions, next fixes their operation, then audits how many conditions each class of dharma arises from, midway refutes the grasping of a single cause in defense of the correct principle of causes and conditions, and at the end uses eight lines of stanza to make the immediately antecedent condition concrete as a traffic map of mind, gathering it under five gates. Among the four conditions, the other three govern what a thing arises on the basis of, and only the immediately antecedent condition governs what a thing arises after — and what practice contests is precisely where the next moment of mind will connect. That this fascicle gives eight lines of stanza to mind has its reason here.

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 four matters: the judgments of the ancient masters and the divergences among the four commentaries, Saṅghabhadra’s counter-refutation, the divergences of Paramārtha’s older translation, and coordinates for collateral reading. A mirror is not the treatise, only another way of reading the same text; the items are recorded together without adjudication, each returned to its own place.

1. Where the Four Commentaries Diverge

The four similes for the four conditions. All three commentaries cite the Mahāvibhāṣā in matching similes to the four conditions. Fabao’s Commentary cites it as, “the causal condition is like the way of a seed; the immediately antecedent condition is like the way of opening and standing aside; the object condition is like the way of taking up a staff; the dominant condition is like the way of not obstructing”; Puguang’s Record cites the same with slight differences of wording, as “cause is like the way of a seed; immediately antecedent is like the way of opening and standing aside; object is like the way of taking up a staff; dominance is like the way of not obstructing.” Fabao’s Commentary adds after the citation a discrimination of his own: “inferring from this, the four senses do not gather in dharmas exhaustively, since there is such a thing as having the power to act and not merely not obstructing” — deft as the four similes are, they still cannot gather in the characters of all dharmas. These four similes are transmitted by the ancient masters and are not in the treatise’s text.

To which side the word “equal” belongs. Yuanhui’s Verse Commentary gives three explanations: that mind and mental factors before and after are each one in entity and so are called equal; or that the preceding mind and mental factors serve equally as condition for what follows; or that the following mind and mental factors equally make use of the preceding as condition, so that “this word ‘equal’ extends to both the condition and the result.” Puguang’s Record gives six explanations and adds a route in which “equal extends to both places, before and after,” concluding that the names of the four conditions “admit of no possessive-compound analysis,” only the appositional-determinative and the dependent-determinative being applicable. Saṅghabhadra in the Treatise Conforming to Correct Principle gives several further explanations, and Shentai’s Commentary reckons them as five in all, judging that “among these five explanations the first three and the fifth are Sarvāstivāda” — assigning the five explanations to two schools. The four commentaries differ in the number of explanations while what is contested is one: whether “equal” speaks of the condition or of the result. All are recorded together without adjudication.

The boundary between cause and condition. Fabao’s Commentary takes intimacy and remoteness as its cord: “cause is the name for what is intimate, condition the name for what is remote.” Puguang’s Record takes instead two gates, that of entity and that of similarity of function, first citing the Mahāvibhāṣā’s two views (that cause and condition gather each other in; that condition gathers in cause while cause does not gather in condition) and ruling that “this treatise agrees with the latter view of the Mahāvibhāṣā,” and then reconciling them by the two gates of entity and function. The two commentaries take different routes while the text they explain is one. As for whether the five causes beginning with producing are gathered under the causal condition or under the dominant condition, Puguang’s Record preserves both interpretations while taking the former as correct — this is Puguang’s own judgment, and the treatise’s text itself does not judge.

Whether “this is truly well said” is irony or straightforward assent. This is where the four commentaries diverge most plainly in this fascicle. Puguang’s Record reads it as irony, ruling outright that “the author is making sport of that non-Buddhist,” and holding that the non-Buddhists’ intent in reciting the stanza was to display Īśvara’s “teaching sentient beings by manifold manifestations,” the author borrowing their words to prick them in return. Shentai’s Commentary reads it instead as straightforward assent: “now the author says that he produces the sufferings of the hells and the rest and arouses his own delight; hence one knows that their stanza too concerns the reward-body god, and so it becomes well said” — the stanza as recited concerns the manifestation-body god, while what the author adduces is a matter of the reward-body god, and since the two figures agree, it is called well said. Yuanhui’s Verse Commentary explains only the concrete detail and the sense of the name, without judging it either mockery or assent. Both readings are recorded without adjudication.

The doctrine of Īśvara’s three bodies. Shentai’s Commentary records that “the brahmins who serve that god say Īśvara has three bodies”: first a dharma body pervading the whole realm of dharmas; second a reward body dwelling in the palace of Īśvara as the great Brahmā king or as Maheśvara; third a manifestation body in the world guarding the lands. Puguang’s Record likewise gives three bodies, with the second as an enjoyment body, and records its appearance as “the Maheśvara spoken of in the Buddha’s teaching, with three eyes and eight arms.” Yuanhui’s Verse Commentary gives dharma body, reward body, and manifestation body. What the three transmit is broadly the same with small differences of assignment.

The gloss on Rudra and the number of his names. Shentai’s Commentary records Xuanzang’s oral gloss, “as for Rudra, the Dharma Master Xuanzang says: this means Violent and Cruel”; Yuanhui’s Verse Commentary has “Īśvara has a thousand names, and this is one title”; Puguang’s Record has “this means Fierce and Cruel,” recording that “Maheśvara has a thousand names in all, of which only sixty are current in the world today.” The differences of graph and of number are recorded together without adjudication. Shentai’s Commentary at the same place also records Paramārtha’s account: “Master Paramārtha says: there were three asuras who carried three lands flying through the sky and passed above the heaven of Maheśvara” — so that for the concrete detail of this passage Shentai preserves both Xuanzang’s and Paramārtha’s transmissions.

One character in the summary of the great elements’ five causes. The treatise’s text has “arousing, altering, holding, maintaining, and increasing,” whereas the text restated in Yuanhui’s Verse Commentary has “arousing, altering, holding, sustaining, and increasing,” and he matches the names accordingly with “sustaining is the upholding cause.” The difference of one character is bound to the recension transmitted, and is here recorded without adjudication.

From which school the stanza quoted at the end comes. Yuanhui’s Verse Commentary judges that “this is the author quoting a stanza of the masters of the Miscellaneous Heart, setting out how many minds are acquired”; Puguang’s Record runs on the same track with “this is the author reporting the Miscellaneous Heart masters’ statement that with a defiled mind nine are acquired,” and goes on to fault it: “the Miscellaneous Heart masters do not state the first item, the restoring of wholesome roots through right view, but say only that six are acquired, which is too few and is a fault.” Shentai’s Commentary gives a separate account: “the ‘others’ are those who hold there are eleven; the master of the Heart states this stanza in general, and the author of the Miscellaneous Heart fits this stanza to the twelve minds” — taking the “others” to be the master who holds mind to be elevenfold (the minds of one in training and one beyond training combined into a single mind without outflows), and the author of the Miscellaneous Heart to be the one who matched the stanza to the twelve minds. The three accounts are recorded together without adjudication.

Puguang’s own marking of a doubt. On the accomplishment of the three minds of the mode of deportment and the rest, Puguang’s Record reconciles the difference between this treatise and the Treatise on the Body of Consciousness and provides several interpretations, and then says of himself, “I still hope that the discerning will examine this clumsy opinion of mine” — that an ancient master should plainly mark a doubt where he is uneasy is itself part of the tradition’s manner, and it is recorded as found.

2. Saṅghabhadra’s Counter-Refutation and Supplementary Explanations

In the Treatise Conforming to Correct Principle Saṅghabhadra calls Vasubandhu “the Sūtra-master.” In the passages corresponding to this fascicle he expressly names the Sūtra-master only twice, the remainder being positive statements of his own position; all are recorded below.

First, the gloss on the word “nature” of a condition. Saṅghabhadra supplements: “the nature of a condition here is just the four conditions; as ‘four dwellings’ is the same as ‘the nature of a dwelling,’ the word ‘nature’ is used in order to display the class” — answering to the treatise’s “nature here means the class of a condition.” This is supplementary explanation and not refutation.

Second, an added list of causal characters. Before the four conditions Saṅghabhadra first lists causal characters in six opposed pairs (producing cause and revealing cause, determinate cause and indeterminate cause, common cause and uncommon cause, near cause and remote cause, previously arisen cause and co-arisen cause, cause within one’s own or another’s continuum and cause not counted among sentient beings), and composes a stanza of his own to gather them: “Nothing however small is established but by a cause; that all is by causes the Buddha has said. The causes of dharmas are many and subtle and hard to know; the world in its confusion then says there is no cause at all.” This is Saṅghabhadra’s addition and is not in the treatise.

Third, the refutation of the Elder’s old accompanying element, and with it the Sūtra-master’s seeds. Saṅghabhadra records the Elder’s statement: “yet the Elder says that the nature of the causal condition is the old accompanying element, that is, the capacity of the continua of sentient beings to be causes for one another in turn,” and at once refutes it: “this too is refuted as the doctrine of seeds held by the Sūtra-master was refuted above, since this old accompanying element is only a different name for those seeds” — Saṅghabhadra thus judges the Elder’s old accompanying element and the Sūtra-master’s seeds to be one doctrine and refutes them together. This item is the densest place of intra-lineage debate in this fascicle; the refutation proper is in a later chapter, and its location is recorded here.

Fourth, the challenge concerning before and after in the future. Saṅghabhadra says, “if you hold that the future has a determinate before and after, as with the highest worldly dharma with respect to the receptivity concerning suffering and the rest, on what condition do they say the before and after are determinate?” — reaching the same conclusion as the treatise’s “because future dharmas abide mixed together and have no before and after,” while arguing along a different route.

Fifth, why the two absorptions are not a condition. Saṅghabhadra sets the question, “on what ground are the two absorptions immediately antecedent to mind and yet not said to be the immediately antecedent condition of mind?”, and answers that they are drawn forth by the force of mind and are injuriously contrary to the arising of mind and the rest; the treatise here stops at the conclusion, and Saṅghabhadra widens the reason for it.

Sixth, the divisions of the passage refuting Īśvara. The three lines of reasoning are the same in the two works, but at the culminating point of the refutation this treatise has “enough! what use is such an Īśvara?” and then quotes the non-Buddhists’ stanza, whereas Saṅghabhadra does not quote that stanza and writes directly, “enough! what use is it to serve such a violent and cruel Īśvara?” — and the two words “violent and cruel” are exactly Xuanzang’s gloss on “Rudra” recorded by Shentai’s Commentary. The difference in how the two divide and join is recorded without adjudication.

Seventh, the number of minds acquired. Saṅghabhadra defends that stanza: “as the Sūtra-master objects, one should say that seven are acquired; yet since one in training and one beyond training are alike without outflows, they are stated together as a single mind, and to say six is no fault” — one in training and one beyond training being alike without outflows, they are combined into one mind, and so saying six is not an error. Fabao’s Commentary cites the passage without adding a ruling. This is one meaning and two schools recorded together, with neither judged to prevail.

Appended: the eightfold distinction of cause and condition in the Treatise Revealing the Doctrine. The Treatise Revealing the Doctrine first establishes that “the six causes and four conditions do not differ in entity though they differ in sense,” and then sets out eight distinctions: “cause means what produces, condition what nourishes, like the difference between the mother who bears and the mother who rears”; cause is one and conditions are many, as with a seed and manure and soil; “again, cause is uncommon and what is common is condition, as with the eye and with visible form”; what does its own work is called cause and what does another’s work is called condition; what can draw forth is called cause and what can uphold is called condition, as with the flower and the calyx; “again, what is near is called cause and what is far is called condition, as with the jewel and the sun”; what can produce is called cause and what can accomplish is called condition, as curds bring forth ghee; and what properly has the sense is called cause while what assists in displaying it is called condition, as with a verbal root and its accompanying condition. These eight are the ordering made by Saṅghabhadra’s line and are not the text of this treatise, and so they stand in this section; Fabao’s Commentary also cites the whole of the Treatise Revealing the Doctrine’s text here, with the same characters and slight differences of punctuation.

3. Divergences of Paramārtha’s Older Translation

Paramārtha’s Expository Treatise on the Treasury forms a lineage of renderings of its own in the passages corresponding to this fascicle. For the names of the four conditions, his version has the class of causal condition, the class of sequential condition, the class of the condition-that-is-an-object, and the class of dominant condition — what is now the immediately antecedent condition he renders as the sequential condition, while explaining the name “sequential” by “equal and without interval,” so that Xuanzang’s rendering is his gloss. Among the six causes, the enabling cause he renders as the facilitating cause and the maturation cause as the retribution cause; nonmanifest form he renders as uninstructive form, without outflows as without flows, and applied and sustained thought as examining and pondering. Among the twenty minds, the supernormal-result mind he renders as the transformation mind (though the same passage below also uses supernormal-result mind, the two names being used interchangeably), and the maturation-born as the retribution-produced mind. Among the terms of the path of cultivation, attention he renders as consideration, attention to a common characteristic as general-character consideration, attention through resolve as consideration through wish and delight, the certainty of the noble path as the class fixed in rightness, access concentration as not-yet-reached concentration, and the restoring of wholesome roots as the joining of wholesome roots.

The dividing and joining also differ. For the two words “nature” and “class,” Xuanzang has “nature here means the class of a condition” while Paramārtha has “class here is the intrinsic nature of a condition,” with the positions exactly reversed. In the similes showing that form cannot be established as immediately antecedent, Paramārtha’s version has an extra item, “the kernel within a palmyra nut,” before the banyan tree. In the stanza quoted in the refutation of the single cause, Xuanzang keeps the transcription and has “he is therefore named Rudra,” while Paramārtha gives both a rendering of the sense and a transcription, “he is called Litya who makes them cry out”; and Xuanzang’s word “stanza” Paramārtha transcribes as śloka. For the summary of the great elements’ five causes, Xuanzang has “arousing, altering, holding, maintaining, and increasing,” Paramārtha “producing, transforming, holding, maintaining, and increasing.” For the five gates that gather the sense at the end, Xuanzang has taking birth, entering absorption, becoming free from defilement, falling back, and restoring wholesome roots, while Paramārtha has taking birth, entering contemplation, becoming free from desire, falling back from absorption, and joining wholesome roots.

The fascicle boundaries also differ: Xuanzang divides the Chapter on the Faculties into five parts, Paramārtha into only four; this whole fascicle falls in the latter portion of Paramārtha’s “Analysis of the Faculties, part four,” and Paramārtha closes his fifth fascicle with “the analysis of the sense of the four conditions is complete” — a closing boundary at the same place as the end of Xuanzang’s Fascicle Seven, and his version names this section simply “Analysis of the Sense of the Four Conditions,” exactly answering to the title of this unit. The choices of an alternative translation are the translator’s own affair, and this section only records them together without adjudication.

4. Coordinates for Collateral Reading

What this fascicle establishes is the full register of mind succeeding mind, and also the first table of definitions for the names of the four conditions. Those names were taken over by the later study of dharma-characteristics, while the entities matched to them differ — this treatise takes five of the six causes as the entity of the causal condition, whereas later ages attach it to seeds and manifest activity: one name and two systems, and they may be read against each other. The rule that the immediately antecedent condition is “mind and mental factors alone” and that “form and the rest may none of them be established as an immediately antecedent condition” raises a joint that must be passed through once several consciousnesses running in parallel have been established. Since Saṅghabhadra in this fascicle judges the Elder’s old accompanying element and the Sūtra-master’s seeds to be one doctrine and refutes them together, the explicit text of the debate over the doctrine of seeds held by the author of this treatise is in that very passage, and it is a place where the Sautrāntika line of seeds can be anchored. The sentence that the five causes of the great elements with respect to derived form “are only differentiations of the enabling cause” may likewise be read against the later dividing and joining of form. As for the map of stages by which the twelve minds are opened out into twenty — each of the three realms divided into wholesome, unwholesome, obscured-indeterminate, and unobscured-indeterminate, and the unobscured opened further into maturation-born, mode of deportment, field of craft, and supernormal-result — it is the base map for the study of the stages of mind. This section only lists coordinates for collateral reading; determining the nature of the relations does not belong here.