雜阿含經 心要連讀Saṃyukta Āgama · Continuous Heart-Essence

Among the thirty-two discourses of Fascicle 1, the shortest has only seven characters: “The discourse on defilement is taught in the same way.” The compilers did not even write the text out. They only tell you: take the sentence the World-Honored One spoke in the previous discourse, change it to “defilement,” and all the rest is the same. Those seven characters say everything about how to read this fascicle.

All the Rest Is the Same

Every discourse in this fascicle begins with form and then says, “and so with feeling, perception, formations, and consciousness.” The sentence is the same; only one word changes. In the first discourse the word is “impermanent”: “Contemplate form as impermanent. Whoever contemplates thus has right contemplation.” In the thirteenth it is “gratification”; in the fifteenth, “the fetters”; in the nineteenth, “bound by the bonds”; in the twenty-first, “wavering.” By the tenth discourse you can probably recite the ending of the next one. This is not the text being lazy. Every bound person is bound in a different place. One does not know that form is impermanent; another knows and still delights in it; another is caught in a single sentence, “I am superior, I am equal, I am inferior.” So the same road has to be spoken again from every doorway.

That One Word

But between neighbouring discourses, often only one word really does change. The ninth says: “Form is impermanent; what is impermanent is suffering; what is suffering is not self; what is not self is also not mine.” Four terms, two “therefores” and one “also.” Impermanence is not one thing, suffering another, and not self a third. It is that the glance which sees impermanence goes on to see suffering, and the glance which sees suffering goes on to see not self. By the twenty-third discourse the one word falls on “not self, not other than self, not within one another”: form is not the self, apart from form there is no other self, and self and form are not inside each other. From “impermanent” to “not within one another” the fascicle has travelled more than twenty discourses, but it is the same glance looking further and further down.

Saying It Oneself

In the last three discourses the one who teaches is not the Buddha but Śāriputra. In the thirtieth he teaches by asking first. “Is form permanent or impermanent?” The answer: “Impermanent.” Is it suffering? It is suffering. Something impermanent, suffering, subject to change—do you still see it as self? No. By this point Śroṇa, the householder’s son, has already said the answer himself; Śāriputra then states it as the teaching, which is why the text says of him that he “saw the Dharma and attained the Dharma, not depending on another.” In the thirty-first and thirty-second Śāriputra first states the teaching, then asks, then states it once more; the questions in between are these same few lines. The fascicle has repeated itself thirty-two times, and at the end it lets the listener open their own mouth.

Where It Stops

The fascicle ends on one sentence: “in all the world one takes hold of nothing; taking hold of nothing, one is attached to nothing; attached to nothing, one attains nirvāṇa by oneself.” To take hold is to reach out and grasp; not grasping, one is not attached; not attached, there is nothing more to seek. This is the same chain as the first discourse, “whoever contemplates rightly gives rise to weariness; weariness exhausts delight and craving; when delight and craving are exhausted, the mind is said to be liberated,” only now spoken from beginning to end. When you close this fascicle you need not remember what each of the thirty-two discourses said. Remember only that they change one word, and that the word points, every time, to the one thing you are holding in your hand right now.

The last discourse of Fascicle 2 takes place in the Hall of Deer Mother in the Eastern Park. A bhikṣu asks nine questions, and one of them is: “Are the aggregates the clinging, or are the five aggregates other than the clinging?” The “clinging” here is grasping: are the aggregates themselves the grasping, or is the grasping some other thing apart from the aggregates? The World-Honored One answers: “The five aggregates are not the clinging, nor are the five aggregates other than the clinging; where there is desire and craving toward them, those are the five aggregates of clinging.” Not one, not two; where there is desire and craving upon the aggregates, they are called aggregates of clinging. The whole fascicle, twenty-six discourses, is about the difference made by that one word.

Form Does Not Obey

The first discourse of the fascicle gives a reason that Fascicle 1 never gave: “If form were self, sickness and pain should not arise in form, nor should one wish form to be thus or not thus.” If this body were me, I should be able to tell it not to fall sick and it would not fall sick; but it falls sick, and I have no say. So form is not self. This is not a mode of contemplation; it is a fact anyone can check on their own body. From this fact the fascicle goes on, discourse by discourse, to ask: then what is form? What are feeling, perception, formations, and consciousness?

Water and Earth

The thirty-ninth discourse speaks of seeds. A seed with earth and no water does not grow; with water and no earth it does not grow either; with both earth and water, it grows. “The five kinds of seed are a figure for consciousness together with the aggregates of clinging; the earth element is a figure for the four stations of consciousness; the water element is a figure for delight and craving, grasping at the four kinds of clinging where consciousness dwells.” Consciousness is the seed, form, feeling, perception, and formations are the earth, and delight and craving are the water. Consciousness fastens on the four aggregates, is watered by delight and craving, and grows. The fortieth discourse gathers this into one line: “One who is obstructed and stagnant is not liberated; one who is not obstructed and stagnant is liberated.” To be obstructed and stagnant is to be glued by the water to the earth. To cut it off, one does not carry away the earth; one draws off the water: “when one is free from craving toward the realm of form, then, being free from craving, the bond born of the mind’s obstruction and stagnation in form is cut.”

Two Names

The fifty-fifth discourse says it outright: “I shall now speak of the aggregates and the aggregates of clinging.” All form, past, future, or present, internal or external, coarse or fine, fair or foul, far or near, “all of them together are called the aggregate of form.” That is the aggregate. And the aggregate of clinging? “If form is with outflows and is clung to,” and gives rise to greed, hatred, and delusion, that is an aggregate of clinging. The difference is four words: with outflows, clung to. The fifty-sixth discourse says it again, in terms of outflows: “If form is with outflows and is clung to, that form can give rise to craving and hatred,” and is a thing with outflows; “whatever forms are without outflows and not clung to” are things without outflows. Clinging, clung to, with outflows: three words for one fact. The aggregate has been seized.

Who Is Eating Whom

The forty-sixth discourse has a sentence that is hard to hear: “I am now being eaten by present form; in past lives I was eaten by that form, just as now in the present.” We think we are the ones enjoying this body; the discourse says the body is eating us. So it was in the past, and if one still delights in future form, one “will again be eaten by that form.” This is what the “clinging” in “aggregate of clinging” looks like from the inside: it is not that you are holding it; it is holding you.

One Sentence

So, back to the Hall of Deer Mother. Aggregate and aggregate of clinging are not two different things. The same form, feeling, perception, formations, and consciousness, with desire and craving, are aggregates of clinging; without them, they are only aggregates. The forty-first discourse lists what this fascicle wants known in five items: “I know form as it really is, and I know the arising of form, the gratification of form, the danger of form, and the escape from form as they really are.” Know what it is, where it comes from, why it is lovable, why it is a danger, how to get out. Not one of the five asks you to destroy form. What is to be left behind, from beginning to end, is only that desire and craving. When you finish this fascicle, you need not remember the definitions of the five aggregates; only that an aggregate and an aggregate of clinging differ by one word, and that the word is not on the side of the aggregate. It is on yours.

The seventy-third discourse of Fascicle 3 gives four names: the heavy burden, taking up the burden, laying down the burden, and the bearer of the burden. The heavy burden is the five aggregates of clinging. Taking it up is “craving for future existence, together with greed and delight, delighting here and there.” Laying it down is letting that craving go. And the bearer? The discourse answers: “The person: the person who has such a name, such a birth, such a clan, such food, such experience of pleasure and pain, such a length of life, such a span of abiding, such a limit to his life.” Someone with a name, a family, who eats this, suffers and enjoys that, lives so long: that one. The twenty-nine discourses of this fascicle are about how that burden gets onto the shoulder and how it comes off.

How It Gets On

The first discourse of the fascicle says it in one line: “the arising of craving and delight is the arising of form; the ceasing of craving and delight is the ceasing of form.” Form does not come from outside; it is fed into being by craving and delight. The sixty-fourth discourse gives the picture: consciousness “grasps at the four stations of consciousness,” stationed in form, feeling, perception, and formations, “grasping at, delighting, increasing, growing broad and great.” Like a vine growing up a wall. The sixty-fifth through sixty-eighth discourses count the road out link by link: contact, feeling, craving, clinging, existence, birth, aging and death. The burden is not dropped on you all at once; you join it on, one link at a time.

Why Anyone Carries It

The eighty-first discourse has an answer. The outsider teacher Pūraṇa said that beings are defiled for no reason and purified for no reason. The World-Honored One said there is a reason: “because form is not wholly suffering, but pleasant, accompanied by pleasure, nourished by pleasure, not apart from pleasure, beings are stained by form.” There is pleasure in form. If form were pure suffering, no one would pick it up. It is because there is pleasure in it that people take it on their shoulders; and it is because there is pain in it that “beings grow weary of form; weary, they do not delight; not delighting, they are liberated.” The same burden: its pleasure makes you lift it, its pain makes you set it down. Both have a cause and a condition.

How It Comes Off

The seventy-seventh discourse is only a few lines: “Cut off desire and craving for form; when desire and craving are cut off, form is cut off; when form is cut off, one abandons and fully knows; having abandoned and fully known, the root is cut off. Like a palm tree with its crown cut, it does not grow again in the future.” Notice that what is cut is desire and craving, not form. The burden need not be smashed; the hand only has to open. The sixty-fourth discourse says that once the hand opens, “consciousness no longer stations itself and no longer increases and grows broad and great,” and then a chain follows: not growing, it has nothing to do; having nothing to do, it abides; abiding, it is content; content, it is liberated. The eightieth discourse adds one more layer: even after contemplating emptiness, signlessness, and nothingness, one is “still not free of conceit,” because one has not yet seen where self and what belongs to self come from. Once it is seen that they arise “from what is seen, heard, smelled, tasted, touched, or cognized,” and that the causes and conditions of these are all impermanent, conceit falls away.

The Bearer

Back to the bearer. The discourse says the bearer is the person, the one with a name and a family. It does not say the bearer is a self outside the five aggregates, and it does not say there is no bearer. It says: the things the world calls a person, the name, the birth, the food, the pleasure and pain, the length of life, these are what carries the burden. The discourse before says of the arhat that “all reckonings are extinguished forever”: the things by which he could be counted are gone. When the burden is laid down the person does not vanish; there is simply no longer any “such a name, such a birth” to point at and say, that is him. The verse says: “Having laid down the heavy burden, one should not take it up again.” When you finish this fascicle, one thing is enough to remember: what you carry, you joined on yourself, link by link; and what you joined on was craving and delight, not form. What has to be let go of is also only the craving and delight.

In Discourse 110 of Fascicle 5, Satyaka the Nirgrantha brings five hundred Licchavis to debate with the World-Honored One. His thesis is a single sentence: “form is the person, the self, and good and evil arise from it.” The World-Honored One does not answer “not self.” He first asks a worldly question: a king in his own country, toward the guilty, can “kill, bind, banish, flog, cut off hands and feet,” and toward the deserving can give elephants, horses, and cities; can he do this? He can. “Is everyone who is a master able to do as he wills?” Yes. Then: “You say form is self, feeling, perception, formations, consciousness are self; can you do with them as you will, make them thus and not thus?” Satyaka does not answer. The World-Honored One asks again: “Speak! Speak! Why are you silent?” Three questions, three silences. The eight discourses of this fascicle circle this one question: the one who says the five aggregates are self, is he in charge of them?

What a Master Is

This discourse gives the plainest definition of a self: a self is what is in charge. A king is master of his land because he can have a man killed or spared. If form were the self, the self should be able to tell form not to sicken, not to age, not to change. Satyaka is silent because he knows it cannot be told. The World-Honored One later says it outright: “you argue your own thesis and cannot make it stand.” This is not metaphysics; it is something anyone can test on the spot: can you command your body? If you cannot, it is not your self.

Not in Charge, Therefore Suffering

In Discourse 107 the householder Nakula, a hundred and twenty years old, is gravely ill. Śāriputra explains to him the difference between a body afflicted and a mind afflicted: the ordinary person takes form as self and mine, and “when that form breaks up or changes, his mind and consciousness turn with it, and distress and suffering arise”; the noble disciple knows form as it really is, and “when that form changes or alters, his mind does not turn with it, and distress and suffering do not arise.” The body breaks up either way; whether the mind turns with it depends on whether it was taken as one’s own. Discourse 110 asks Satyaka the same: if one has not left craving for form, “when that form changes or alters, does sorrow, lamentation, distress, and suffering arise?” It does. And if one has left it? “Then does sorrow, lamentation, distress, and suffering not arise?” It does not. Suffering does not come from form breaking up; it comes from “my form has broken up.”

After Seeing Not Self, a Trace of Conceit

In Discourse 103 the bhikṣu Kṣemaka, sick in bed, says that he can contemplate the five aggregates of clinging as not self and not mine, yet “the conceit ‘I am,’ the desire ‘I am,’ the fetter ‘I am,’ I have not cut off, not fully known, not left, not spat out.” He gives the simile of the scent of flowers: the scent is not the root, not the stem or leaves, yet not apart from them; “it is the scent of the flower.” “So too with me: form is not the self, yet I am not apart from form.” One knows that form is not the self, and still that faint smell of “I” remains, like a washed garment that “still has a lingering smell.” How is it removed? Not by looking again for where the self is, but by turning back to contemplate arising and ceasing: “this form, the arising of this form, the ceasing of this form.” Contemplated to the end, the lingering smell disperses of itself. This is the finest sentence in the fascicle: seeing not self is one thing, exhausting the conceit is another; there is still a road between them.

Who Is in Charge

Back to Satyaka. He loses, invites the Buddha to a meal, and after the meal the World-Honored One says: the Licchavis’ gift goes to one with greed, hatred, and delusion, while “Satyaka the Nirgrantha gains the fruit of a gift to one free of greed, hatred, and delusion.” The man who lost the debate turns out to be the one who gave to someone free of greed, hatred, and delusion. This discourse does not say “there is no one.” It says there is no one in the five aggregates who is in charge. In Discourse 104 Yamaka thinks an arhat whose outflows are exhausted is “nothing more at all” after death; Śāriputra corrects him: “The Tathāgata sees the Dharma as it really is, abiding as it is, with nothing obtained and nothing posited.” Not that he is gone, but that the master who could be said to exist or not exist was never to be found. In Discourse 109 Śāriputra takes the twenty views of self apart sentence by sentence and ends: “the noble disciple sees the four truths, attains the fruit of unbroken comprehension, and cuts off the wrong views,” and then “not clinging and not attached, he realizes nirvāṇa for himself.” Who is in charge? No one. To lay down the wish to be in charge is the liberation this fascicle teaches.

In Discourse 175 of Fascicle 7 the World-Honored One asks the bhikṣus: “Suppose a man’s head-cloth were on fire; how should he put it out?” They answer: “He should arouse heightened desire and, with earnest effort, put it out at once.” The World-Honored One says: “A burning head-cloth can still be forgotten for a moment; the blazing fire of impermanence must be utterly removed, cut off and extinguished. In order to cut off the fire of impermanence, diligently seek the teacher.” When the cloth on one’s head catches fire, no one says “in a moment.” The World-Honored One says that this can still be set aside for a while; the fire of impermanence cannot. From this discourse to Discourse 186, eleven discourses open with this question (Discourse 176 is the World-Honored One speaking directly, without it). What the fascicle says is this: there is one thing more urgent than a fire on one’s head.

Where the Fire Comes From

Discourse 139, at the head of the fascicle, first asks where the fire comes from: “Because what exists does what arise? Bound to what, attached to what, in what does one see a self, so that sorrow, lamentation, distress and suffering not yet arisen are made to arise?” The answer: “Because form exists, form arises; being bound and attached to form, one sees a self in form, and sorrow, lamentation, distress and suffering not yet arisen are made to arise.” There is form, and so one is bound and attached to form; being bound and attached, one sees a self in form; having seen a self, sorrow, lamentation, distress and suffering arise. In the thirty-odd discourses that follow, the question is the same and only its last clause changes: conceit, the three feelings, the eight worldly dharmas, superior, equal and inferior, the view of permanence, the view of annihilation, no cause, the seven bodies, Great Brahmā, the fourteen undeclared points, final nirvāṇa in this very life. Each view is asked where it arises, and the answer is always the same sentence. The doctrine of the seven bodies and the doctrine of annihilation say opposite things; Great Brahmā as creator and the doctrine of no cause say opposite things. The World-Honored One argues for neither side; he points out only that their root is one: a self has first been set up on the five aggregates. What the fire burns is these five aggregates that the self takes for itself.

Urgent, Because of What Is Burning

When a head-cloth burns, it burns the head; the fire of impermanence burns form, feeling, perception, formations and consciousness. It burns the very things a person takes to be his own. Discourse 172 says: “Whatever dharma is impermanent should be cut off. Having cut off that dharma, for one’s benefit and welfare, there is happiness through the long night.” To cut off the impermanent is not to destroy form; it is to cut off that one point of attachment on form. Discourse 173 says it directly: “past form is an impermanent dharma, past desire is an impermanent dharma; that dharma should be cut off.” What is cut off is past form, and also the desire for past form. Why is it urgent? Because Discourse 187 says: “because one is accomplished in one dharma, one is no longer able to know that form is impermanent,” and this one dharma is “greed.” With one greed present, impermanence cannot be seen; while impermanence is not seen, the fire keeps burning. The head of the fascicle says that seeing a self gives rise to distress and suffering; the end says: “because one is veiled by distress and suffering, one is unable to realize the complete cessation of form.” Suffering covers the eyes, and the eyes cannot see where suffering comes from. Someone has to cut this circle from outside.

What to Put It Out With

Discourse 174 has one sentence: “In order to cut off impermanent dharmas, one should seek the teacher.” Then Discourses 176 to 186, one discourse to each group: the four foundations of mindfulness, the four right exertions, the four bases of spiritual power, the five faculties, the five powers, the seven factors of awakening, the eightfold right path, the four paths, the three Dharma-phrases, calm and insight. The body of each is short, saying only what to cultivate in order to cut off impermanence; the abbreviation after the discourse multiplies it: “as with the ninety-six discourses on what should be cut off as impermanent, so for what should be known, spat out, exhausted, stopped, relinquished, ceased and made to vanish, ninety-six discourses each.” What the numbers mean is this: any one of the thirty-seven factors of the path can put out this fire, and any one of the senses, cutting off, knowing, spitting out, exhausting, stopping, relinquishing, ceasing, vanishing, will do. One does not choose the bucket when putting out a fire. At the end of Discourse 186 the word “impermanence” is exchanged for a hundred-odd names: “wavering, whirling, sickly, breaking, fleeting, rotting, tottering, not constant, unsafe, changing, distress and suffering, calamity, Māra’s deceit, Māra’s power, Māra’s instrument, like foam, like a bubble, like a plantain, like an illusion.” When the word “impermanence” has been heard so often that it no longer hurts, one can change the name and hear it again. Every one of the names is fire.

A Man Whose Head-Cloth Is on Fire

A man whose head is on fire does not first ask who set the fire, what the nature of fire is, or where the fire goes when it is out. Those are exactly the questions the thirty-odd views ask. He does one thing: he arouses “heightened desire and, with earnest effort,” puts it out at once. Fascicle 5 asked who is in charge; Fascicle 7 says: the thought of being in charge is born of attachment, and attachment burns on the five aggregates. Knowing that this is urgent, one goes to seek the teacher and cultivate the factors of the path; knowing that a single greed can veil everything, one does not make light of that one point of attachment. At the end of Discourse 139 it is said that one who contemplates the standpoints of view as not self “is certain to be directed toward saṃbodhi, goes back and forth among gods and humans for seven rebirths, and makes an end of suffering.” The fire will go out. But first one has to know that one’s own head is on fire.

In Discourse 264 of Fascicle 10 a bhikṣu wonders in meditation: is there any form that is permanent, constant, not subject to change, rightly abiding? He goes to ask the World-Honored One. The World-Honored One, holding a small lump of earth in his hand, asks: “Do you see the lump of earth in my hand?” The bhikṣu says he does. The World-Honored One says: “Bhikṣu, even this little bit of earth, a self cannot be found. If a self could be found, then it would be a permanent, constant, unchanging, rightly abiding dharma.” The bhikṣu asked about form; the World-Honored One answers about self: not even a self as big as this bit of earth can be found. If there were even that much self, that would be what permanence means. Then the World-Honored One tells how in the past he was Great Brahmā King, Śakra, lord of the gods, and a wheel-turning king, with eighty-four thousand elephants, horses, chariots and cities, and all of it “has worn away.” A small lump of earth and eighty-four thousand say the same sentence.

Not Knowing What

In the first three discourses of the fascicle Mahākauṣṭhila asks Śāriputra: what is ignorance? Śāriputra answers: “Ignorance is not knowing; not knowing is ignorance.” He asks again: “Not knowing what?” The answer: “That form is impermanent, one does not know as it really is,” and likewise feeling, perception, formations and consciousness; the second discourse answers not knowing arising, cessation and the path, the third not knowing arising, cessation, gratification, danger and escape. Ignorance is not a vague general darkness; it is not knowing the five aggregates of clinging as they really are. Who has ignorance? “One who is accomplished in this is said to have ignorance.” It is not that a person carries about a thing called ignorance; when not-knowing is accomplished, that is called having ignorance. The bhikṣu who asked in meditation whether there is permanent form was asking from exactly that place of not knowing.

Tied to the Post

What follows from not knowing, Discourse 266 says: “covered by ignorance, bound by the bond of craving, through the long night they turn in the round, not knowing the first beginning of suffering.” Grasses wither, the ocean dries, Sumeru collapses, the earth is destroyed; all of these come to an end; “the bond of craving not cut, they do not make an end of suffering.” The simile is a dog: “It is like a dog tied to a post; the tie not broken, through the long night it circles the post, turning round and round.” The dog circles the post not because the post pulls it but because the rope is not cut. Discourse 268 changes the simile: a river rushes down from a mountain ravine, people are swept away, “they grasp at the grass and trees, and the grass and trees break, and they are carried off again with the current”; one “says ‘form is self’, and that form breaks off.” They clutch the grass on the bank; the grass breaks, and they go with it. Discourse 269 turns it around: the trees in the Jeta Grove, when someone cuts the branches and carries them away, “you are not grieved. Why? Because those trees are not self and not mine.” Grass and trees are both the five aggregates; the one who grasps is carried off, and the one who does not grasp is not grieved.

Not Something Obtained by Asking

Discourse 263 says how to cut it. There is a kind of bhikṣu who “does not cultivate the means, does not accord with and accomplish them, yet he sets his mind on seeking: may my outflows be ended, may my mind be freed. Know that that bhikṣu will never attain the ending of outflows and liberation.” It is like a hen that does not brood and warm her eggs at the right times, yet wants her chicks to break the shell by themselves; they do not come out. The hen who tends them well, “though she does not wish her chicks to peck their way out of the eggs by themselves, yet her chicks are able of themselves to come safely out of the shell.” Wishing for the ending of outflows is useless; having cultivated, one’s outflows end even without wishing. The man holding the axe cannot see how much the handle wears away each day; he sees only that the marks of his fingers have appeared. Discourse 270 says what to cultivate: “The perception of impermanence, cultivated and much cultivated, can cut off all craving for sensual pleasure, craving for form, craving for the formless, restlessness, conceit, and ignorance.” The last of the things cut off is ignorance. The head of the fascicle says that ignorance is not knowing impermanence; the end says that the perception of impermanence cuts off ignorance. Between them lies the perception of not self: “The perception of impermanence can establish the perception of not self; the noble disciple dwelling in the perception of not self, his mind is free of conceit and goes on to nirvāṇa.”

The Small Lump of Earth in His Hand

Chanda asks Ānanda: if all is empty and still and unobtainable, “in that, how is there a self, such that one says: knowing thus, seeing thus, is called seeing the Dharma?” Who is it that knows, who is it that sees? Ānanda quotes what the World-Honored One taught Kātyāyana: “If one does not receive, does not take hold, does not dwell, does not reckon a self, then this suffering arises when it arises and ceases when it ceases.” Knowing and seeing do not require a self to be standing there first. This is what the bit of earth in the World-Honored One’s hand means: look for a self, and not even one this small can be found; and though none is found, form is impermanent all the same, suffering arises and ceases all the same, the Dharma can be seen all the same. In the last discourse, 272, the World-Honored One tells how the learned noble disciple reflects: “Is there in the world any one thing that could be taken hold of without fault?” He thinks it over, and there is not one. “Taking hold of nothing, he awakens to nirvāṇa of himself.” The six fascicles of the Connected Discourses on the Five Aggregates of Clinging begin with “contemplate form as impermanent” and end with that sentence. The bhikṣu who heard the teaching “always kept in mind the teaching of the simile of the lump of earth, dwelt alone in a quiet place, and reflected diligently,” and became an arhat. What he kept in mind was not the eighty-four thousand but the small lump of earth in the hand.

In Discourse 217 of Fascicle 8 the World-Honored One says: “What is called the ocean is what the fools of the world say, not what the noble ones say. The ocean is only a large or small body of water; the eye is a person’s great ocean, and forms are its surging waves.” When people say ocean, they mean water. When the World-Honored One says ocean, he means the eye. Forms are the waves that strike; the eye is where the waves strike in. “One who can bear the surging waves of forms crosses the great ocean of the eye.” Crossing the ocean is not crossing water; it is being able to bear the waves. The previous discourse says it more directly: the ocean as the noble ones speak of it is “when the eye has cognized forms, there is fond attachment, deep clinging, delight in the activities of body, speech and mind: this is called the ocean.” The eye has seen forms, there is fond attachment and deep clinging: this is the ocean. A person is not sunk in the sea; a person is sunk here.

One Set of Objects

The forty-two discourses of this fascicle contemplate only one set: “The eye is impermanent; forms, eye-consciousness, eye-contact, and the feeling arisen with eye-contact as condition, painful, pleasant, or neither painful nor pleasant, these too are impermanent.” Eye, forms, eye-consciousness, eye-contact, feeling; ear, nose, tongue, body and mind the same. The six fascicles of the Connected Discourses on the Five Aggregates of Clinging contemplated form, feeling, perception, formations and consciousness; this fascicle contemplates this set. Discourse 213 says how they join: “Conditioned by the eye and forms, eye-consciousness arises; the meeting of the three is contact; conditioned by contact, from contact arises feeling.” The eye and forms are two; the two give rise to consciousness; the three meeting is contact; contact gives rise to feeling. At feeling the road forks: “One who does not know as they really are the arising of this feeling, its cessation, its gratification, its danger and the escape from it, sows the bodily contact of desire, the bodily contact of hatred, the bodily contact of clinging to precepts, the bodily contact of the view of self.” Not knowing as it really is, one sows desire, hatred, clinging to precepts and the view of self right there in feeling. This is where the ocean raises its waves.

Delighting in the Eye

The seven discourses at the head of the fascicle, one teaching each, speak of the same set of objects: contemplating the eye as impermanent is right view, “through right contemplation weariness arises; through weariness one leaves delight and leaves craving; having left delight and craving, I say the mind is rightly liberated.” The seventh discourse says why one must leave delight: “One who delights in the eye delights in suffering; one who delights in suffering, I say, is not liberated from suffering.” To delight in the eye is to delight in suffering. The “fond attachment, deep clinging” of Discourse 216 is this delight. In Discourse 197 the World-Honored One says to a thousand brahmins who had once served the fire: “All is burning. What is it that is all burning? The eye is burning,” burning with the fire of craving, the fire of hatred, the fire of delusion. They had worshipped fire all their lives; the World-Honored One says the fire is in the eye.

When the Eye Ceases, the Perception of Forms Departs

In Discourse 211 the World-Honored One tells of the time before he attained right awakening, when he sat alone in meditative reflection and observed where his mind mostly went: “My mind mostly chased after the five strands of sense pleasure of the past, little after those of the present, and toward the future world still less.” Seeing this, he “made utmost effort and diligently guarded himself.” Why could he guard it? “With the eye seeing forms as condition, an inner feeling arises.” Feeling comes from the eye and forms; not chasing the eye and forms, defiled feeling does not arise. Then the World-Honored One says only one sentence, “Be mindful of the six sense bases,” and goes into his dwelling to sit in meditation. The bhikṣus do not understand and go to ask Ānanda. Ānanda says this is “a teaching with a remainder, on the cessation of the six sense bases”: “when the eye as sense base ceases, the perception of forms departs.” It is not forms that cease; it is the eye. The eye ceasing is not the eye destroyed. In Discourse 215 Pūrṇa asks what the directly visible is, and the World-Honored One answers: having seen forms with the eye, one knows the forms, knows the craving for forms, “that within me there is craving for forms in eye-consciousness he knows as it really is”; and one step further, having seen forms with the eye, “within me there is no craving for forms in eye-consciousness,” and this one knows as it really is. The craving is in eye-consciousness, not in the forms. Seeing forms with no craving in eye-consciousness: the eye ceasing that this fascicle speaks of, this collection takes in that reading.

The Eye Is a Person’s Great Ocean

Rāhula asks three times for the teaching, and three times the World-Honored One does not give it, telling him first to teach others the five aggregates of clinging, then the six sense bases, then the nidānas. Having taught them, he reflects for himself and sees that “all these teachings tend toward nirvāṇa, flow into nirvāṇa, and come to rest in nirvāṇa”; only then does the World-Honored One give the higher teaching. What does it say? “All is impermanent. What things are impermanent? The eye is impermanent.” The same sentence spoken to the bhikṣus in Discourse 195. The same sentence, withheld before, waiting until he was able. The last discourse speaks of what has outflows and what has none: things with outflows are the eye and the rest, up to the mind, “the worldly, this is called a thing with outflows”; things without outflows are in one place only, “the supramundane mind.” Eye, ear, nose, tongue and body are all in the ocean; what is without outflows is not there, but in the supramundane mind. The eye is a person’s great ocean; a person crosses the ocean not by leaving the eye but by bearing the waves: forms strike, and no craving arises in eye-consciousness. The verse says: “hard to cross, yet one can cross; the arising left behind, forever without remainder.”

In Discourse 250 of Fascicle 9, Mahākauṣṭhila asks Śāriputra: “Does the eye bind forms, or do forms bind the eye?” Śāriputra answers: “The eye does not bind forms, nor do forms bind the eye, and so on to: the mind does not bind mental objects, nor do mental objects bind the mind. Venerable Mahākauṣṭhila, between them, if there is desire and craving, that is the bond.” Two oxen share one yoke; it is not the black ox that binds the white ox, nor the white ox that binds the black ox, “but between them, the yoke and the harness, that is what binds them.” The eye and forms are the two oxen; the yoke is desire and craving. The eye is there, forms are there, and the bond is not necessarily there; the bond lies on desire and craving.

The World Is on the Eye

This fascicle begins by asking about the world. Sanmiliti asks what the world is, and the World-Honored One answers: “The eye, forms, eye-consciousness, eye-contact, and feeling arisen with eye-contact as condition, felt within as painful, pleasant, or neither painful nor pleasant,” and so on to the mind, “this is called the world.” If there were no eye and so on up to feeling, “there would be no world, nor would any world be designated.” Discourse 233 says the world is the six internal sense bases: “What is the origin of the world? Craving for future existence, together with delight and craving, clinging here and there.” The world is the eye; the origin of the world is craving. The eye is not the problem; craving is. Māra comes and says what he rides: “Gautama, the eye’s sense base of contact is what I ride.” The World-Honored One says: “Where there is no eye’s sense base of contact, no ear’s, nose’s, tongue’s, body’s, or mind’s sense base of contact: there you cannot reach, and there I go.” What Māra rides is the six sense bases of contact; where the World-Honored One goes is where there are no six sense bases of contact. It is not another place; it is the place on the six sense bases of contact where there is no desire and craving.

The Eye and Forms Are Not the Problem

Having given the simile of the oxen, Śāriputra says why this point matters: “If the eye bound forms, or forms bound the eye, and so on to: if the mind bound mental objects, or mental objects bound the mind, the World-Honored One would not teach people to establish pure conduct and make an end of suffering.” If the eye itself bound forms, pure conduct would be of no use. Because the bond is desire and craving in between, pure conduct is of use. The proof is the World-Honored One: “When the World-Honored One’s eye sees forms, whether good or bad, desire and craving do not arise.” Śroṇa Koṭīkarṇa, having become an arhat, says: “Even if the eye constantly cognizes forms, it can never obstruct the liberation of mind and the liberation by wisdom”; “the six sense bases constantly confronting, they cannot move his mind.” Upasena is poisoned and his complexion and faculties do not change, because “the eye is not self, not mine; and so on to: the aggregate of consciousness is not self, not mine.” The eye still cognizes forms, the snake’s poison is still in the body, and the mind does not move. The form of every discourse in this fascicle is like this: the eye and forms as before; is desire and craving there or not.

Guarding the Door

At the end of the fascicle the brāhmaṇa Luxizhe asks what a door is, and Mahākātyāyana answers: “The eye is a door, because it sees forms.” Not guarding the door is “when the eye has seen forms, toward pleasing forms he gives rise to attachment, and toward displeasing forms he gives rise to anger”; guarding the door well is “when the eye has seen forms, toward pleasing forms he does not give rise to attachment, and toward displeasing forms he does not give rise to anger; he always collects his mind and dwells in mindfulness of the body.” Guarding the door is not shutting the door. The eye sees forms as before; toward the pleasing, no attachment arises; toward the displeasing, no anger arises. Śāriputra’s Pure Alms-Food Dwelling is this too: entering the town, going for alms, leaving the town, one asks oneself, “Just now, as my eye saw forms, did desire, affection, or fond attachment arise?” If it arose, put it out at once as when one’s head or clothes are on fire; if it did not arise, cultivate day and night by this root of goodness of joy and happiness. The one who guards the door stands at the door and watches what comes in; he does not block the door up.

Desire and Craving in Between

Ānanda asks Śāriputra whether, after the six sense bases of contact are exhausted, anything remains or nothing remains, and all four phrases are “empty talk”; the only thing that can be said is “free of all falsity, one attains final nirvāṇa: that is what the Buddha teaches.” Once the eye has ceased, one can no longer ask in terms of existence and non-existence. While the eye has not ceased, what can be done is to look at what lies between. The eye does not bind forms, forms do not bind the eye; desire and craving in between, that is the bond. The World-Honored One teaches people to establish pure conduct, and it is established on this one sentence.

In the last discourse of Fascicle 11, Uttara, a disciple of another sect, says his teacher teaches the cultivation of the faculties thus: “The eye does not see forms, the ear does not hear sounds: this is called the cultivation of the faculties.” The World-Honored One asks: “If it is as your Boluoshena says, is a blind man one who cultivates the faculties? Why? Because only a blind man’s eye does not see forms.” An eye that does not see forms is a blind man’s. The noble cultivation of the faculties begins with the eye seeing forms: in dependence on the eye and forms eye-consciousness arises, and the agreeable, the disagreeable, and the agreeable-and-disagreeable arise; “this is quiescence, this is sublime, namely equanimity toward both; having attained that equanimity, he is free of weariness and non-weariness.” The agreeable has arisen, the disagreeable has arisen, and “in an instant they are wholly extinguished, and he attains freedom from weariness and non-weariness, equanimity.”

The Eye Sees Forms as Before

In the ten discourses of this fascicle, every discourse starts from the eye seeing forms. Nanda’s closing the doors of the senses is “when the eye sees forms, he does not grasp at the signs of forms, does not grasp at the secondary features.” Restraint is “eye-consciousness cognizes forms and the mind is not stained with attachment.” The six faculties well tamed is “the learned noble disciple, when the eye sees forms, does not grasp at the signs of forms, does not grasp at the secondary features, lets the eye faculty go where it tends, and always dwells in restraint”: the eye faculty is let go where it tends, the eye looks at whatever it wants to look at, and not grasping at the signs is all. Restraint of the six sense bases of contact is, when the eye sees an agreeable form, “he does not delight, does not praise, does not take it as condition, is not attached, does not dwell on it,” and when it sees a disagreeable form, “he is not afraid, not hostile, not resentful, not angry.” The unsurpassed cultivation of the faculties is eye-consciousness arising in dependence on the eye and forms, cultivating weariness when the agreeable is seen and non-weariness when the disagreeable is seen, and at the end “equanimity that leaves both weariness and non-weariness behind, dwelling in right mindfulness and right knowledge.” Not one discourse says to shut the eyes.

The Knife Goes in Between

Nanda tells the five hundred bhikṣuṇīs the simile of the butcher: a skilled butcher “cuts along the gaps, injuring neither the inner flesh nor the outer hide,” and when the skinning is done he lays the hide back over it, but “the hide and flesh are already separated; it is not that they are not separated.” The meaning: “The flesh is the six internal sense bases, the outer hide is the six external sense bases, the butcher is the trainee who has seen the traces, the sinews and bones between hide and flesh are greed and delight together, and the sharp knife is sharp wisdom.” The internal bases are the flesh, the external bases are the hide, and the knife injures neither hide nor flesh. What is cut is the sinews and bones in between, greed and delight. Fascicle 9 said that between the eye and forms, desire and craving are the bond; this fascicle draws the picture: the hide is still there, the flesh is still there, the middle is cut, and from outside it still looks like an ox.

Fast

The six faculties and six similes of the noble cultivation of the faculties say one word. The eye is like “the instant of a strong man,” the ear like “a man of great strength snapping his fingers: the sound ceases as soon as it is made,” the body like “an iron ball heated red hot, and a few drops of water sprinkled on it, which vanish at once,” the mind like “a strong man cutting off the top of a palmyra tree.” The agreeable and the disagreeable do arise; it is not that the noble disciple does not give rise to them; having arisen they are wholly extinguished, and extinguished fast. The trainee who has seen the traces is one step slower: when the agreeable and disagreeable have arisen, “that noble disciple is ashamed and repelled.” Being ashamed and repelled is one in training; instant extinction is the noble cultivation of the faculties; an eye that does not see forms is a blind man. The three differ in what happens after seeing.

Guarding the Door, Not Shutting It

Fascicle 9 says, “The eye is a door, because it sees forms.” This fascicle says how to guard it: the door stays open, forms come in, toward the agreeable no desire arises, toward the disagreeable no aversion, and what has arisen is extinguished in an instant, and equanimity is attained. “Gathering in well these six faculties, / untouched by the six objects, / he crushes the hosts of Māra / and crosses to the far shore of birth and death.” The six objects touch as before; the mind is unmoved.

Moluojiajiu, gone forth in old age, asks the World-Honored One for a teaching in brief. The World-Honored One first asks him one thing: toward a form you have never seen, would craving arise? It would not. Then where does craving arise from? From forms that have been seen. Seeing is seeing; craving is something added on top of seeing. The World-Honored One says: “In the seen, only the seen as its measure; in the heard, only the heard; in the sensed, only the sensed; in the cognized, only the cognized.” The thirty-nine discourses of this fascicle can be read through with this one sentence.

No One Inside the Door

Fascicle 11 says the eye is a door: guard it without shutting it. This fascicle says there is no one inside the door looking out. “When the eye arises there is no place it comes from; when it ceases there is no place it goes to. Thus the eye arises without substance, and having arisen is wholly extinguished; there is the result of action, but no agent. When this aggregate has ceased, another aggregate continues, apart from conventional reckoning.” There is seeing; there is no one who sees. There is action; there is no one who acts. Eye, forms, consciousness, contact, feeling, perception, volition: “these things are called a person.” A person is the name of these few things. To say my eye sees forms, my ear hears sounds, to say what one is called and how long one lives, “this is a notion, this is a designation, this is a verbal expression.” The names are not false, but beneath the names there is no further thing.

Craving Is the Second

Luniu asks: what is dwelling with a second, what is dwelling alone? The World-Honored One answers: the eye sees a lovely form; one delights, praises, dwells attached; attached, the mind grows glad; glad, it deeply enjoys; deeply enjoying, it craves; craving, it is obstructed. This is called dwelling with a second. “Even if he is alone in a secluded place, it is still called dwelling with a second. Why? Because craving and delight are not cut off, not extinguished.” One man in the forest with craving beside him makes two. Conversely, seeing forms without delighting, praising, or dwelling attached, “even if he lives in a lofty tower of many storeys, he is still one who dwells alone.” Living alone is not in the mountains; it is in the cutting off of craving. The second has never been someone else; it is craving. Before Pūrṇa goes to Shuluna in the west, the World-Honored One asks him: if the people there abuse you, strike you, kill you, what then? In each answer he says the people there are good. Seeing a form is one case; being abused and struck is another; both are only the seen as its measure.

Only the Seen, Not No Seeing

“In the seen, only the seen as its measure” does not mean not seeing. The eye sees forms as before. Moluojiajiu explains it at length himself: “If the eye has seen a form and loses right mindfulness, then toward the form it sees it grasps the sign of fond longing.” Losing right mindfulness and grasping the sign is the step added on. “Seeing forms without grasping signs, the mind following right mindfulness, not stained by craving in an evil mind, not giving rise to attachment.” Having seen, one does not grasp the sign, and stops at the seeing. The Teaching of the Discourses puts it more plainly: a bhikṣu’s eye sees forms, and “he is aware of the form but is not aware of lust for the form; ‘before, my eye-consciousness had lust for forms; now my eye-consciousness has no lust for forms,’ he knows as it really is.” It is not that he is unaware of the form; he is aware of the form and unaware of lust. Lust before, none now: he knows it himself, without being told.

Dwelling with a Mind of Equanimity

The six constant abidings: “if a bhikṣu’s eye sees a form, neither suffering nor pleased, he dwells with a mind of equanimity, with right mindfulness and right knowledge.” Seeing a form, not following it into suffering, not following it into pleasure, the mind of equanimity dwells there, with right mindfulness and right knowledge. This is not the course of equanimity among the six courses: the course of equanimity meets an object of equanimity and moves along with it, still turning with the object. Dwelling with a mind of equanimity does not follow. The World-Honored One says one who accomplishes these six constant abidings is “rare in the world,” “the unsurpassed field of merit in the world,” “know that he is Śāriputra and his like.”

Only the seen as its measure: seeing goes as far as seeing. No one inside the door, craving does not come as the second, having seen one does not grasp the sign, one dwells with a mind of equanimity.

A great tree floats down the Ganges. The World-Honored One asks a bhikṣu: this tree, if it “does not get stuck on this shore, does not get stuck on the far shore, does not sink to the bottom, is not stranded on an islet, is not drawn into a whirlpool, is not taken by humans, is not taken by non-humans, and does not rot,” will it reach the sea? It will. “This shore is the six sense bases. The far shore is the six external sense bases.” The fourteen discourses of this fascicle can be read through with this one sentence.

Not Stuck Does Not Mean Destroying the Faculties

The jackal waits by the river for the tortoise to put out its head; “seeing it come, the tortoise at once withdraws its six.” The tortoise is not without head and feet; it does not put them out while the jackal is there. “Māra Pāpīyas ever watches for his chance at you”; the moment the eye attaches to a form, the head is out. Guarding the sense doors is not destroying the faculties; it is knowing that someone is waiting outside. King Udayana bears witness himself: entering the same palace “not guarding my body, not keeping restraint of the faculties,” greed burns his mind; entering it “guarding my body well, restraining my faculties well, unifying my attention,” the three poisons do not arise. The eye sees as before; the head does not go out.

Restraint Is in the Moment the Eye Sees a Form

“When the eye sees a form, toward an agreeable form he does not raise the thought of desire, toward a disagreeable form he does not raise the thought of hatred; one after another many thoughts do not arise and continue, and he sees the danger in the form; having seen the danger, he can let it go.” The definition of restraint is here, not in the rules of training. Non-restraint differs by a few words only: raising greed, raising hatred, “he does not see the danger; or, seeing the danger, he cannot remove it.” The seam too is in this moment: “contact is one extreme, the arising of contact is the second extreme, feeling is the middle, and craving is the seam.” The two extremes need not be removed; when craving is not raised upon the feeling in the middle, the seam is not sewn.

One Post

Six creatures tied together, each wanting to go its own way, “each uses its strength to pull toward the direction it likes, and cannot get free.” The six faculties too are six directions. The man ties them to a firm post: “the six creatures are a likeness for the six faculties; the firm post is a likeness for mindfulness of the body.” Not guarding the six faculties one by one, but tying all six in one place. The four gatekeepers of the border city are the four foundations of mindfulness; the tower “with walls firm, windows and doors shut tight,” fire rising on four sides, cannot be burnt. The one who does not dwell in mindfulness of the body is “a heap of dry grass with fire rising on four sides, burnt at once.”

The Direction Is Fixed

The Ganges has long flowed east; “if a crowd of people tried to dam it and make it slant, slope, and incline toward the west, could they?” They could not. The noble disciple’s mind “has long slanted, sloped, and inclined toward seclusion, toward being free from desire, toward nirvāṇa, quiet and letting go.” Guarded to this point, it is no longer a guarding done time after time; it is the direction of the whole river. The great tree leans on neither shore and reaches the sea by itself. The man with the basket of snakes binds his own raft and crosses; the man in the river of ashes goes upstream and climbs the mountain by himself; no one comes to rescue them. At the end the World-Honored One says: “Out of compassion the Teacher has done for his disciples what should be done; I have now done it, and you too must now do what should be done.”

Not stuck on this shore, not stuck on the far shore: the six faculties before the six objects, not destroying the faculties, not putting out the head; raising no craving upon feeling; the six faculties tied to one post; the direction fixed, into the sea. The five fascicles of the Connected Discourses on the Six Sense Bases end at this sentence.

Before he became a Buddha, the World-Honored One sat alone and asked upward from old age and death: “What exists so that birth exists? What is the condition for birth?” Link by link he asked up to consciousness, and “turned back at consciousness and could not go beyond it.” Then he said: “I have found the path of the ancient sages, the ancient sages’ trail, the ancient sages’ track; the ancient sages went by this track, and now I follow after them.” The twenty-one discourses of this fascicle are that old road, and how he came back and told people of it.

Suffering Is Fed

“If toward things bound by the bonds delight, longing, and binding of the mind arise, then craving arises; with craving as condition there is clinging, with clinging as condition existence, with existence as condition birth.” The tree grows great by being “banked with dung and earth and watered in season”; the lamp lasts long by “adding oil and wick again and again”; the mass of fire does not go out while one “adds dry grass and firewood.” Suffering is not first struck down; it is not fed: “longing does not arise and the mind is not bound, and so craving ceases.” The place of work is craving, and the first four discourses settle this point before anything else.

Consciousness Stands by Leaning on Name and Form

“It is like three reeds standing on open ground, leaning on one another and so held upright; take one away and the other two do not stand.” Consciousness with name and form as condition, name and form with consciousness as condition: traced to here, one turns back. The arising and ceasing of consciousness cannot be seen; it is “like a monkey roaming among the forest trees, moment by moment from place to place, catching hold of branches, letting go of one and grasping another,” and so the World-Honored One says one “would do better to bind self and what belongs to self to the body of the four great elements than to bind self and what belongs to self to consciousness.” The way to see consciousness is to look at contact and feeling: “It is like two sticks rubbed together, which in their meeting give rise to fire; if the two sticks are parted, the fire too goes out.”

Asking Level by Level

The inner way of contact is not a sentence but a way of asking: “What is the cause of this suffering, what its arising, what its origin, what its contact?” Suffering comes from upadhi, the acquisitions; upadhi from craving; craving from the notion of permanence and the notion of self laid on a fair form. Reflecting and examining asks from suffering up to ignorance, and at every level “he knows as it really is the way to the cessation of the suffering he rides upon, and practises the Dharma that leads there.” Asked to the end, knowledge arises, the body is still here, “like a strong man taking a newly fired clay pot and setting it, still hot, on the ground; in a moment it falls apart, and the heat is wholly gone.” This road is deep, “this profound matter, namely dependent arising; and doubly profound and hard to see,” and some who hear it panic; the World-Honored One says that he himself has “crossed over doubt”: the road can be walked through.

The Road Was Not Made by the Buddha

“The Dharma of dependent arising is not made by me, nor made by anyone else; whether Tathāgatas arise in the world or not, the realm of the Dharma abides forever.” “When this exists, that exists; when this arises, that arises” is the old road, and the Buddha is one who walked to the end of it. Knowing this, one “does not seek the former limit” and “does not seek the later limit.” The Discourse on Great Emptiness says that to whom old age and death belong cannot be asked; the brāhmaṇa and Kāśyapa come to ask who makes suffering, and the World-Honored One says it is undeclared: “Made by oneself and experienced by oneself falls into the view of permanence; made by another and experienced by another falls into the view of annihilation.” Kāśyapa asks: then is there no suffering? “It is not that there is no such suffering; there is this suffering.” Suffering exists; the maker of suffering does not. This is the middle way. Kāśyapa hears it and sees the Dharma, is killed by a cow on the road, and the World-Honored One says he “has already entered final nirvāṇa.”

When this exists, that exists: suffering is fed, and when it is not fed it ceases; consciousness stands by leaning on name and form, and is seen from feeling; one asks level by level up to ignorance; the road is always there, and the one who walked to the end came back to tell of it. The Connected Discourses on Dependent Arising begin with this fascicle.

Suśīma, who had gone forth to steal the Dharma, asks the bhikṣus: without attaining the dhyānas, how can you declare that your outflows are ended? A bhikṣu answers: “I am one liberated by wisdom.” He asks the World-Honored One, who answers: “They first know the abiding of the Dharma, then know nirvāṇa.” Then he questions him through the twelve links forward and in reverse, Suśīma answers “so it is” to each, and the World-Honored One says: “This is called first knowing the abiding of the Dharma, then knowing nirvāṇa.” The twenty-two discourses of this fascicle are how the abiding of the Dharma is known, and what kind of person one is once one has known it.

Arising from Conditions

Wanderers of another sect ask whether suffering and happiness are made by oneself or by another; Bhūmija answers that the World-Honored One calls this undeclared, and that “the World-Honored One says that suffering and happiness arise from conditions.” Śāriputra says why this is right: however one puts it, “those too arise conditioned by contact; to say that they do not arise from contact, there is no such possibility.” Mahākauṣṭhila asks about perfection of view layer by layer, and at the sixth question Śāriputra says: “You will never exhaust these discussions and reach their limit. If the noble disciple has cut off ignorance and knowledge has arisen, what need is there to seek further?” The World-Honored One asks about training and the reckoning of dharmas, Śāriputra is silent three times, the World-Honored One changes the word to “the real,” and he answers: “he grows weary, becomes dispassionate, and heads toward complete cessation; this is called training.” The root of old age, sickness, and death is traced upward through ten layers to shamelessness and lack of scruple; “because of shame and scruple there is heedfulness,” and traced forward again one is free of old age, sickness, and death.

First Knowing the Abiding of the Dharma

The knowledge of the abiding of the Dharma is not dhyāna. Suśīma asks “so that I may come to know the knowledge of the abiding of the Dharma, come to see the knowledge of the abiding of the Dharma,” and all the World-Honored One gives him is question after question: “Because there is birth there is old age and death; apart from birth there is no old age and death, is that so?” forward to ignorance, in reverse to the ceasing of ignorance. When the questions are done, Suśīma, “far from dust and free of stain, attained the pure Dharma-eye.” The Buddha roars the lion’s roar with this: “When this exists, that exists; when this arises, that arises; that is, conditioned by ignorance, formations…”; the learned noble disciple who has known this sentence no longer asks because of what this exists. Among the seventy-seven kinds of knowledge, the knowledge of the abiding of the Dharma stands last in each link: knowing that this link conditions that one, knowing it in each of the three times, “and the knowledge of the abiding of the Dharma—the knowledge, through abandoning, that it is impermanent, conditioned, arisen from what the mind takes as object, a thing that is exhausted, that changes, that is let go of in dispassion, that ceases.” The knowledge that knows dependent arising is itself within dependent arising.

Then Knowing Nirvāṇa

Shusheng says that with the cessation of existence there is quiescence, nirvāṇa, “and yet I am not an arhat whose outflows are ended.” Nārada says this is inconsistent. Shusheng gives a simile: a well by the roadside in the wilderness, a traveller pressed by heat and thirst, “with no rope and no bucket, he looks closely at the well water, knows and sees it as it is, yet does not touch it with the body.” To know nirvāṇa is to see the water; to end the outflows is to touch it. First knowing the abiding of the Dharma, then knowing nirvāṇa, is to have seen the water; the water is there, and to drink it is another step. Suśīma’s “outflows were ended and his mind set free” only after he heard the simile of the three hundred spears.

Those Who Have Known

An ascetic or a brāhmaṇa is not a name but one who “knows the dharma as it really is, and knows as they really are the arising of the dharma, the cessation of the dharma, and the path leading to the cessation of the dharma,” knowing from the six sense bases onward; if the earlier link is not known, for the later “there is no such possibility.” Reflecting and false imagining mean that “that fetter makes consciousness abide grasping at an object,” enters name and form, gives coming and going, gives birth and death; without reflecting and false imagining, consciousness has nowhere to abide. The learned bhikṣu, the bhikṣu who teaches the Dharma, and practice in accordance with the Dharma are three names with one definition: toward old age, sickness, and death, down to formations, “weariness, dispassion, and complete cessation.” The fascicle begins from training and ends at practice in accordance with the Dharma.

The knowledge of the abiding of the Dharma: suffering and happiness arise from conditions, feeling is conditioned by contact, and ignorance is the limit; to have known the twelve links forward and in reverse is first knowing the abiding of the Dharma; to know nirvāṇa is to see the water, and touching it comes after; those who have known grow weary, become dispassionate, and come to complete cessation toward the twelve links. Whether you understand or not is not the question: “for yourself, first know the abiding of the Dharma, then know nirvāṇa.”

Phalguna asks who feeds on this consciousness, and the World-Honored One answers: “I do not say there is one who feeds on consciousness. If I said there were one who feeds on consciousness, you should ask this; I say consciousness is a nutriment.” Six questions, six corrections: “for whom” is changed each time to “through what condition is there.” The forty-two discourses of this fascicle speak of nutriment in the first fourteen and of the truths in the last twenty-eight, and on neither side is anyone set up as the one.

Nutriment without One Who Feeds

The four nutriments are nourished by craving: “the arising of craving is the arising of nutriment.” Morsel food is to be contemplated as the couple crossing the wilderness ate their son’s flesh: “whenever one eats morsel food, one should contemplate it thus.” Contact is like a cow with its skin stripped off, mental intention like a fire without smoke, consciousness like three hundred spears. When there is delight and craving for the four nutriments, “the station of consciousness grows; because the station of consciousness grows, it enters name-and-form.” Without craving and delight the sunlight “would shine upon empty space, with nothing to grasp at,” and the painter cannot paint upon empty space. The station of consciousness is light with a wall to shine on; without craving and delight the wall is gone, and “consciousness has no place to abide.”

The Truths without One Who Knows

The three turnings and twelve aspects in the Deer Park: at each aspect, “a dharma never heard before, to be rightly reflected upon; at that time there arose vision, knowledge, understanding, and awakening.” Kauṇḍinya understands the Dharma, “and therefore he is called Ājñāta Kauṇḍinya”; the name comes only after the understanding. The four noble truths are to be known, understood, abandoned, realized, cultivated; one who has known, understood, abandoned, realized, and cultivated them is called an arhat, a superior person, a noble one; “ignorance is called the deep moat,” and to have cut off the conceit of self is to have raised the noble banner. The Tathāgata is the great king of physicians, and the four truths are the disease, its source, its cure, and its not recurring: “that good physician of the world does not know as it really is the cure for birth as the root.” An ascetic among ascetics is one who knows the four truths as they really are; from leaving home to becoming a Buddha, seven ranks of people know the same four truths.

Strive with Skilful Means

Knowing the four truths is like the sign of light before sunrise, like the stars appearing when sun and moon appear, like a stone pillar sixteen cubits long with eight cubits set in the ground: “when he comes to the places of debate, nothing can bend him.” A head-cloth on fire is no emergency: “Set aside the head-cloth, and give rise to heightened desire for the four noble truths.” Three hundred spears a day for a hundred years is no great suffering: “he would not take three hundred spears for his whole life to be great suffering.” What is taught is like the leaves in the hand; what is not taught is like the leaves of the great forest. Shooting a hair is hard, “but it is not so hard as giving rise to knowledge as it really is of the noble truth of suffering; that is very hard indeed.” The blind turtle and the floating log: “for the foolish ordinary person drifting through the five destinations to regain a human body for a while is harder still.”

Unbroken comprehension: nutriment has no one who feeds, consciousness has abiding and not abiding; the truths have no one who knows, vision, knowledge, understanding, and awakening arise or do not arise. The human body has been obtained, and the four truths can be known: “one who has not yet attained unbroken comprehension of the four noble truths should strive with skilful means, give rise to heightened desire, and train in unbroken comprehension.”

The householder Sudatta asks whether the four noble truths are comprehended gradually or all at once, and the World-Honored One answers: “These four noble truths are comprehended gradually, not all at once.” The forty-eight discourses of this fascicle speak of the truths in the first thirty-seven and of the elements in the last eleven; the truths begin from suffering, the elements from the mind.

Gradually

The bhikṣus in the dining hall discuss the world, the views, the affairs of kings, former lives, and the World-Honored One forbids each in turn; what may be discussed is four sentences: “This is the noble truth of suffering, this the noble truth of the arising of suffering, this the noble truth of the cessation of suffering, this the noble truth of the path leading to the cessation of suffering.” The deep precipice, the great hot hell, the great dark hell, the darkness between a thousand worlds, each has something worse than it, “namely, that ascetics and brāhmaṇas do not know as it really is the noble truth of suffering.” The thrown stick falls back, the wheel of five spokes spins fast; wisdom is only “one who knows the four noble truths as they really are.” To wish to know arising, cessation, and the way without first knowing suffering “is impossible”; “one must go by the first step, and then climb the second, third, and fourth steps in turn to reach the hall.”

The Soil on the Nail

Those who know the four truths are “like the earth and stones I hold in my hand,” those who do not like the earth and stones of the Snow Mountains. The human realm, the middle country, the noble eye of wisdom, knowing the Dharma and Discipline, keeping the precepts, the good destinations, layer after layer are like the soil on the nail. But the suffering cut off by one who has seen the truths is like the water of the great lake, and “what remains unended” is like a drop taken with a hair, a strand of fur, or a fingertip. Those who know are few; what they obtain is great. The World-Honored One says of himself, “when I had not yet heard the Dharma, I attained right reflection on this noble truth of suffering, and right view arose”; after it has arisen it must arise now and arise again, be practised, cultivated, touched, realized.

Together with the Elements

“Beings always go together with the elements, join with the elements”: with an unwholesome mind one goes with an unwholesome element, with a wholesome mind with a wholesome element. Thirteen venerable ones each lead a group of bhikṣus of their own kind, and Devadatta too leads a group of bhikṣus of his own kind; “conch and milk are one in colour: beings go together with the elements, join with what is like them, and grow alike.” The eighteen elements give rise to contact, contact to feeling, feeling to craving, forward and not in reverse: “it is not that conditioned by the various cravings arise the various feelings, not that conditioned by the various feelings arise the various contacts, not that conditioned by the various contacts arise the various elements.”

Skilled in the various elements: with whatever element one goes, that kind one becomes; beginning from a single wholesome thought, one goes with a wholesome element, and only one who goes with a wholesome element knows the four truths, and one who knows the four truths begins from suffering. So the urging in the section on the elements and the urging in the section on the truths are one sentence: “train well in the elements; be skilled in the various elements,” and “one who has not yet attained unbroken comprehension of the four noble truths should strive with skilful means, give rise to heightened desire, and train in unbroken comprehension.”

Udāyin cannot establish three feelings, King Bimbisāra cannot establish two, and the World-Honored One answers: “I sometimes teach one feeling, sometimes two, or three, four, five, six, eighteen, thirty-six, up to a hundred and eight feelings, or sometimes innumerable feelings.” Of the thirty-five discourses of this fascicle, the ten at the head and the one at the end speak of the elements, and the twenty-four between speak of feeling; the elements give rise to feeling, feeling is all suffering, one who knows feeling understands, and one who does not is struck by the second dart.

Feeling Arises from the Elements

“Conditioned by an element arises speech, never without an element; conditioned by an element arises a view, never without an element; conditioned by an element arises a perception, never without an element”; even “the view, toward the Fully and Perfectly Awakened One, that he is not fully and perfectly awakened” “too arises conditioned by an element.” The eye element, the form element, the meeting of the three give rise to contact, and “conditioned by joyful contact arises pleasant feeling”; “conditioned by the various elements arise the various contacts,” and so on to the quest conditioned by fever, and this cannot be said in reverse. To Rāhula’s one question the World-Honored One answers first with the six elements, “all of it one knows as it really is to be not self, not other than self, not within one another,” and then with the three feelings, “contact as their cause, contact as their origin, contact as their birth, contact as their turning”: the elements and feeling are two entrances to the one question.

Feeling Is All Suffering

“Because all formations are impermanent, because all formations are subject to change, I say that all feelings whatsoever are suffering”; and further, “because of the gradual stilling of formations I say it, because of the gradual quieting of formations I say it”: speech is stilled in the first dhyāna, on to “in the attainment of the cessation of perception and feeling, perception and feeling are stilled,” and above that there is still “the unsurpassed quieting”: “the mind takes no delight in desire and is liberated, takes no delight in hatred and delusion and is liberated.” So one contemplates feeling: “see pleasant feeling with the notion of suffering, see painful feeling with the notion of a sword’s thrust, see neither-painful-nor-pleasant feeling with the notion of impermanence.” One feeling is suffering, and a hundred and eight feelings are suffering too; there is happiness higher by layer upon layer, and yet “this is not what the World-Honored One counts as the happiness of feeling.”

The Second Dart

The ordinary person and the noble one alike give rise to pleasant and painful feeling; the difference is in “giving rise to two feelings, a bodily feeling and a mental feeling”: the ordinary person is “like a man struck in the body by two poisoned darts,” driven by the fetter of greed, the fetter of hatred, the fetter of delusion, “bound by birth, old age, sickness, death, sorrow, grief, vexation, and suffering”; in the noble disciple “only one feeling arises, namely the bodily feeling, and no mental feeling.” The abyss is not in the great ocean: “feelings arising from the body, pressed by many pains, to vexation or to death: this is called the deepest abyss of the great ocean”; the one who finds a place of rest is the one who, when feeling arises from the body, “does not give rise to the notion of sorrow and grief.”

The Wise

The seven Buddhas, before they became Buddhas, all examined one thing: “What is feeling? What is the origin of feeling? What is the cessation of feeling? What is the path leading to the origin of feeling? What is the path leading to the cessation of feeling? What is the gratification in feeling? What is the danger in feeling? What is the escape from feeling?” Because they knew as it really is, “he is liberated, has escaped, is free of the inversions, and has attained unsurpassed, right and perfect awakening”; one who does not know as it really is “is not an ascetic, not a brāhmaṇa.” Feeling does not stop at defilement: “conditioned by right view, beings give rise to feeling,” and “realizing what is unrealized” gives rise to feeling too. The merit of offerings is carnal happiness: “you should be diligent and train from time to time in the joy of seclusion, realizing it fully with the body”; to see Brahmā is the foremost seeing the world agrees on, but “as one has seen, one ends the outflows in due order: this is the foremost seeing.”

The wise can understand: the verses of the four discourses from the four hundred and seventieth to the four hundred and seventy-third open each with a different line but share one closing form, “a bhikṣu strives with skilful means, with right knowledge unshaken; all these feelings whatsoever, the wise can understand,” and the four hundred and seventy-third writes the wise with a different character. To understand is not to count how many feelings there are; it is to know that feeling arises from the elements, to know that feeling is all suffering, to know, when the first dart enters, not to let fly the second; and toward the three feelings, as toward nutriment, as toward name and form, as toward the ten courses of action, “to give rise to right weariness, take no delight, and turn away, and attain the ending of the outflows.”

Śāriputra has entered nirvāṇa, and Ānanda says: “my whole body feels as if it were coming apart, the four directions have changed their aspect, and the eloquence I held is blocked.” The World-Honored One asks: did Śāriputra “enter nirvāṇa taking with him the body of precepts he had received”? Did he take with him “the four foundations of mindfulness, the four right exertions, the four bases of supernormal power, the five faculties, the five powers, the seven factors of awakening, the eightfold path”? No. The dharmas of the path do not go away with the person. The thirty-five discourses of this fascicle all teach the four foundations of mindfulness, and the Path section begins here; the last two discourses take the passing of the great śrāvakas to say what one relies on: “be an island unto yourself, your own refuge; be the Dharma as island, the Dharma as refuge; be no other island, no other refuge,” and the content of that is still the four foundations of mindfulness.

The One-Vehicle Path

“There is a one-vehicle path that purifies beings, brings them beyond sorrow and lamentation, extinguishes affliction and suffering, and attains the Dharma as it really is—namely, the four foundations of mindfulness.” To depart from it is to “depart from the noble Dharma as it really is; one who departs from the noble Dharma as it really is departs from the noble path; one who departs from the noble path departs from the deathless Dharma.” The mass of the wholesome is this one thing alone: “the mass that is purely full and pure is the four foundations of mindfulness”; all dharmas too are this one thing: “all dharmas are the four foundations of mindfulness; this is called the right teaching.” The young are taught by it, those at the stage of training advance by it, and “an arhat whose outflows are ended, who has done what was to be done, laid down the heavy burdens, ended the bonds of existence, and is well liberated by right knowledge, at that time he too cultivates dwelling in contemplation of the body as body.” One dharma runs through the three stations, and so it is one vehicle.

One’s Own Domain

“Another place, another’s domain, means the domain of the five sense pleasures”; “one’s own place, the domain of one’s parents, means the four foundations of mindfulness.” The bird Luopo relies on its own domain and the hawk’s “breast struck the hard clod and its body was shattered, and it died on the spot”; the foolish monkey roams in another’s domain and is “stuck fast at five points, it lies curled on the ground.” One who moves in his own domain cannot be reached by the enemy: “though you have the fierce and foolish strength of a hundred thousand dragons and elephants, it is not worth a sixteenth part of my wisdom”; one who leaves it, “with inner faculties and outer objects bound at five points, goes wherever Māra wishes.” To keep to one’s domain is to guard oneself: “when one guards oneself one guards others; when others guard themselves they guard oneself.”

Single-Minded

“Take the sign of your own mind and do not let it scatter outward”; one who cultivates the foundations of mindfulness and whose “mind does not leave desire, is not liberated, has not ended the outflows—I say that he is not a great man.” The bhikṣuṇīs “cultivate the four foundations of mindfulness with the mind bound in place, and know for themselves the rising and falling, before and after,” and the World-Honored One confirms it: “the mind seeks outward, and then one restrains it and makes it seek its own mind; a scattered mind and an unliberated mind are both known as they really are.” The man holding the bowl of oil is “single-minded, mindful of the bowl of oil, and walks slowly past the beauty of the world and the great crowd, not daring to glance aside”; when Āmrapālī comes, the admonition is given first: “diligently gather the mind and abide, with right mindfulness and right knowledge.” The cultivation of the foundations of mindfulness lies in the mind, and the essential of the mind is first to take its own sign and to be single-minded.

The Initial Undertaking Purified, Then the Cultivation

Uttiya asks three times, and the answer is “you should first purify your initial undertaking, and then cultivate pure conduct”; the initial undertaking is to “first purify your precepts, straighten your view, and be complete in the three kinds of action, and then cultivate the four foundations of mindfulness.” For what are the noble precepts taught? “For the sake of cultivating the four foundations of mindfulness.” The whole course begins from hearing the Dharma: pure faith, going forth, “trains in the noble precepts, guards the sense-doors, protects the mind with right mindfulness,” sitting alone and cutting off the five hindrances, and then “dwelling in contemplation of the body as body internally, ardent and resourceful, with right knowledge and right mindfulness, taming greed and sorrow for the world.” One whose initial undertaking is purified, dwelling in the foundations of mindfulness, “passes beyond the Māras,” “passes beyond birth and death”; cultivating and much cultivating, one “attains non-regression,” attains purity, crosses to the far shore, attains arhatship, up to “attains unsurpassed, right and perfect awakening.”

An island unto oneself, one’s own refuge: of the great tree, “its great branches break first; like a great mountain of jewels, its great crags crumble first,” and “the Tathāgata too will before long pass away”; “there are two kinds of wealth: material wealth and the wealth of the Dharma,” and the wealth of the Dharma was sought from Śāriputra and Maudgalyāyana, and the two are gone. What one relies on is not in a person but in oneself and in the Dharma; and one who is an island unto oneself, with the Dharma as island, is “a bhikṣu who dwells in contemplation of the body as body, ardent and resourceful, with right knowledge and right mindfulness, taming greed and sorrow for the world.” The one-vehicle path, one’s own domain, taking the sign of one’s own mind, first purifying the initial undertaking: the four meanings come back to one sentence. One who cultivates the four foundations of mindfulness is an island unto oneself, one’s own refuge.

Prince Fearless asks: some say “without cause, without condition, beings are defiled; without cause, without condition, beings are purified”; what does the World-Honored One say? The answer: “with cause, with condition, beings are defiled; with cause, with condition, beings are purified.” The cause of defilement is the five hindrances; the cause of purification is the seven factors of awakening. The seventy discourses of this fascicle teach the faculties, the powers, and the factors of awakening, their numbers running from three to ten; the last discourse closes them with “let this be named the Discourse on the Factors of Awakening,” and what it says is this: purification has a cause, and the cause can be cultivated.

I. Wisdom Holds the Five Faculties

“There are five faculties. Which five? Namely, the faculty of faith, the faculty of energy, the faculty of mindfulness, the faculty of concentration, and the faculty of wisdom”; “the faculty of faith, know, is the four unbreakable purities; the faculty of energy, know, is the four right exertions; the faculty of mindfulness, know, is the four foundations of mindfulness; the faculty of concentration, know, is the four dhyānas; the faculty of wisdom, know, is the four noble truths.” Among the five faculties, “it is like the many timbers of a storeyed hall: the ridgepole is their head, and all rely on the ridgepole, because it holds them together. So too the five faculties: wisdom is their head, because it holds them together.” Wisdom is not outside faith: “if a noble disciple has accomplished the faculty of wisdom, he can cultivate the faculty of faith, relying on seclusion, relying on dispassion, relying on cessation, and tending toward relinquishment; this is called the accomplishment of the faculty of faith, and the accomplishment of the faculty of faith is the faculty of wisdom.” The keenness or dullness of the faculties is the step among the stations of the noble ones, and “if one has none of these five faculties at all, I say that he is counted among the ordinary persons of other paths.”

II. The Powers of One in Training and the Powers of the Tathāgata

The five powers are the five faculties: from “that power of faith, know, is the four unbreakable purities” onward, the five dharmas matched are the same as for the faculties. The stage of training has its own five powers, “the power of faith is a power of one in training, the power of energy is a power of one in training, the power of shame is a power of one in training, the power of fear of blame is a power of one in training, and the power of wisdom is a power of one in training,” guarding the training by shame and fear of blame; “if a bhikṣu does not wish evil unwholesome dharmas to arise, there is only faith in wholesome dharmas; if faith declines and perishes, and lack of faith abides for good, unwholesome dharmas arise.” The Tathāgata and the arhat have the same liberation; what distinguishes them is before and after, and the powers: “the Tathāgata, the Worthy One, the Perfectly Awakened One, having not heard the Dharma before, is able to awaken to it himself,” “the five powers of one in training and the ten powers of the Tathāgata,” “these ten powers only the Tathāgata accomplishes; this is called the various differences between the Tathāgata and the śrāvakas.” The ten powers are all knowing as it really is, and so are powers of knowledge; and “of the power of knowledge of the possible and the impossible I say that it is certain, not uncertain, up to the knowledge of the ending of the outflows, I say that it is certain, not uncertain; what is certain is the right path, what is uncertain is the wrong path.”

III. The Eight Powers of One Whose Outflows Are Ended

The world has eight powers, “the power of a sovereign king, the power of a minister who decides cases, the power of a woman who bears a grudge, the power of an infant who cries, the power of a fool who reviles, the power of the wise who examine closely, the power of one gone forth who endures, and the power of the learned who reckon,” each displaying what it has. Śāriputra asks how many powers a bhikṣu whose outflows are ended has, and the answer is also eight: “the mind of a bhikṣu whose outflows are ended tends toward seclusion, flows into seclusion, and inclines toward seclusion; tends toward deliverance, flows into deliverance, and inclines toward deliverance; tends toward nirvāṇa, flows into nirvāṇa, and inclines toward nirvāṇa. If he sees the five sense pleasures, it is as if he saw a pit of fire.” The powers of the world lie in the person; the powers of one whose outflows are ended lie in the direction of one mind. So too the power of reckoning and the power of cultivation: first one reflects on the result of bad conduct and cuts it off, “when the noble disciple has accomplished the power of reckoning, he then attains the power of cultivation,” and “what is the power of cultivation? Namely, cultivating the four foundations of mindfulness.”

IV. Black Darkness and Great Light

The five hindrances are the things that lead to decline, the seven factors of awakening the things that do not lead to decline; the five hindrances “can make black darkness, can make one without eyes, can make one without knowledge, can weaken wisdom, are not light, not perfect awakening, and do not turn one toward nirvāṇa,” the seven factors of awakening “can make great light, can be eyes, and increase wisdom; they are light, they are right awakening, and they turn one toward nirvāṇa.” The pivot of their arising and ceasing is reflection: “if a bhikṣu reflects rightly, the hindrance of sensual desire not yet arisen does not arise, and the hindrance of sensual desire already arisen is made to cease.” The hindrances are like five great trees, “the seed is tiny, yet the tree grows huge”; the factors of awakening arise from mindfulness, “having cultivated the awakening factor of mindfulness, the awakening factor of mindfulness is fulfilled; when the awakening factor of mindfulness is fulfilled, then he selects, discriminates, and reflects, and at that time the awakening factor of investigation of dharmas is cultivated,” giving rise to one another in sequence up to equanimity. For one who cultivates these seven dharmas, “pure faith is liberation of mind; knowledge is liberation by wisdom,” and “one who leaves sensual desire is liberated in mind, and one who leaves ignorance is liberated by wisdom.”

With cause and condition beings are purified: among the faculties wisdom is the head, among the powers wisdom is knowledge, among the factors of awakening the increase of wisdom is the light; the factors of the path are many in number, and what is cultivated is one. The prince, having heard it, says, “coming up the mountain today, my four limbs were utterly weary; having heard Gautama teach the Discourse on the Factors of Awakening, I have wholly forgotten my weariness.” Purification has a cause, and the cause lies in the factors of awakening; the factors of awakening can be cultivated, and cultivation begins from one moment of mindfulness.

Followers of other paths ask the bhikṣus: we too teach cutting off the five hindrances, dwelling in the four foundations of mindfulness, and cultivating the seven factors of awakening, “what difference is there between us and that ascetic Gautama? Both are able to teach the Dharma.” The Buddha teaches them to ask back: “the five hindrances should be ten in kind. The seven factors of awakening should be fourteen in kind.” The difference is not in the names but in the divisions beneath the names; the criterion of the divisions is a single sentence: a hindrance “is not knowledge, not right awakening, it does not turn toward nirvāṇa,” a factor of awakening “is knowledge, it is right awakening, it is able to turn toward nirvāṇa.” The thirty-six discourses of this fascicle teach the divisions, the time, the nutriment, the sequence, and the fruits of the seven factors of awakening, and what they teach is this: a factor of awakening is a factor of awakening because it is knowledge and because it goes toward nirvāṇa.

I. Ten Hindrances and Fourteen Factors

“There is inner sensual desire, there is outer sensual desire. That inner sensual desire is a hindrance; it is not knowledge, not right awakening, it does not turn toward nirvāṇa”; “there is mindfulness of the mind dwelling on inner dharmas, there is mindfulness of the mind dwelling on outer dharmas. That mindfulness dwelling on inner dharmas is the awakening factor of mindfulness; it is knowledge, it is right awakening, it is able to turn toward nirvāṇa.” Hindrance and factor are each opened into two: selecting wholesome dharmas and selecting unwholesome dharmas are alike the awakening factor of investigation of dharmas, doubt about wholesome dharmas and doubt about unwholesome dharmas are alike the hindrance of doubt; what is selected and what is doubted are not divided into good and bad, what divides good from bad is the selecting and the doubting themselves. Hindrance and factor alike stand by relying on nutriment, “just as the body stands by relying on nutriment, not without nutriment”; the nutriment of a hindrance is “reflecting wrongly on it,” the nutriment of a factor is reflecting on its object. “The awakening factor of mindfulness assists them all.”

II. The Small Fire and the Blazing Fire

When the mind is feeble, “one should not cultivate the awakening factor of tranquillity, the awakening factor of concentration, the awakening factor of equanimity,” “as when, with a small fire, one wishes to make it burn and adds charred coals”; when the mind is restless, “one should not cultivate the awakening factor of investigation of dharmas, the awakening factor of energy, the awakening factor of joy,” “as when, with a blazing fire, one wishes to put it out and supplies it with dry kindling.” The reverse is the time. The seven factors of awakening are not seven dharmas cultivated all at once; one observes the sinking or restlessness of the mind and selects what should be cultivated; charred coals and dry kindling are neither good nor bad, succeeding at the right time and failing at the wrong one. One beyond training has mastery here: “these seven factors of awakening are attained with certainty, attained without striving; as I wish, I enter the attainment of the factors of awakening.”

III. Wholly Pure and Still, the Pure Conduct Spotless

Ānanda takes the good friend as half the pure conduct; the Buddha says “do not say this”: good friends, good companions, good followers are “wholly pure and still, the pure conduct spotless,” “because I am a good friend, there are beings who from me take up the awakening factor of mindfulness, relying on seclusion, relying on dispassion, relying on cessation, and tending toward relinquishment.” A factor of awakening “not yet arisen arises by the Buddha’s taming and instruction, not by any other”; a young bhikṣu attending on the elders “from time to time hears the profound and subtle Dharma; having heard the profound Dharma, two right things are accomplished, rightness of body and rightness of mind. At that time he cultivates the awakening factor of mindfulness.” The factors of awakening do not arise of themselves; they arise from the good friend and the profound Dharma; the Buddha, ill, has Ānanda speak the seven factors of awakening, and approves one factor alone: “only energy, cultivated and much cultivated, attains unsurpassed, right and perfect awakening.”

IV. Together with the Awakening Factor of Mindfulness, Tending Toward Relinquishment

“The seven factors of awakening arise in sequence and are cultivated to fulfilment”: dwelling in mindfulness contemplating the body as body and gathering the mind without forgetting is the awakening factor of mindfulness; when mindfulness is fulfilled, investigation of dharmas; when investigation of dharmas is fulfilled, energy; and so on to equanimity. Their fruit: “in this life one attains the ending of outflows and nirvāṇa without remainder, or one attains the fruit of non-returning.” Their cultivation is together with every field of practice: the contemplation of impurity, mindfulness of death, loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity, the sphere of space, mindfulness of breathing, the perception of impermanence, each one “together with the awakening factor of mindfulness, relying on seclusion, relying on dispassion, relying on cessation, and tending toward relinquishment.” The seven factors of awakening are not another field of practice beside the fields of practice; they are the common track of all cultivation; whatever dharma one cultivates, all tend toward relinquishment.

“Just as the sign that goes before the sunrise is the first light of the sign of dawn, so too, bhikṣus, the sign that goes before the complete ending of suffering, the final ending of suffering, is right view.” The forty-five discourses of this fascicle teach the eightfold noble path, and from beginning to end they turn on one thing: right view comes first. Before the sun has risen, the sign of dawn is seen first; before suffering is ended, right view arises first. Again and again the disciples ask, “is there a path, is there a track, by cultivating which and cultivating much one cuts off these three feelings?”—what is asked after runs from desire, the deathless, and samādhi to the three fears, the three feelings, and old age, sickness, and death—and the Buddha answers with only one sentence: “namely, the eightfold noble path: right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration.”

I. Knowledge Is the Sign Before Right View

Right view is the sign that goes before the path, and knowledge in turn is the sign that goes before right view: “if knowledge arises as the sign that goes before, wholesome dharmas arise. At that time shame and scruple arise with it; when shame and scruple have arisen, they are able to give rise to right view; when right view has arisen, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration arise in sequence.” What is knowledge? “One who knows as it really is, that is right view”; what is ignorance? “Ignorance is not knowing: not knowing wholesome and unwholesome dharmas as they really are.” Right view is not a view that has been chosen; it is knowing as it really is. Wrong view is not a mistaken view; it arises from not knowing. From this the order of the path is settled: knowing comes first, body, speech, and livelihood are made right by knowing, and effort, mindfulness, and concentration are accomplished by that rightness.

II. View Is the Seed of Action

“It is like a bitter fruit planted in the ground and watered in season: it takes in the flavour of earth, the flavour of water, the flavour of fire, and the flavour of wind, and all of it is bitter. Why? Because what was planted was bitter”; sugar cane, rice, and wheat have the same earth, water, fire, and wind, and yet “all their flavour is sweet. Why? Because the seed was sweet.” A person of wrong view’s “bodily action is as his view is, his verbal action is as his view is; whatever he thinks, desires, wishes, and does all follows along with it, and everything he obtains is an unloved fruit”; a person of right view is the reverse. The sign that goes before speaks of its order, the seed speaks of its nature: when the view is right, body, speech, thought, and wish all follow it and are right, and the fruit follows them too; that is why the eight factors have right view at their head.

III. Two Kinds of Right View

“There is right view that is worldly and conventional, with outflows and with clinging, turning toward good destinations; and there is right view that is noble and beyond the world, without outflows and without clinging, completely ending suffering, turning toward the end of suffering.” Worldly right view is “there is giving, there is teaching, there is offering,” up to knowing that there are arhats; right view beyond the world is “the noble disciple’s reflecting on suffering as suffering, reflecting on its arising, its cessation, and the path as the path, reflection without outflows conjoined with it, selecting among dharmas, discriminating and searching, awareness and keen wisdom, opening awakening and contemplating.” Each of the eight factors is of two kinds, and the explanation beyond the world differs factor by factor: right view, right intention, right mindfulness, and right concentration the explanation beyond the world in each case contains the one sentence “reflecting on suffering as suffering, reflecting on its arising, its cessation, and the path as the path, reflection without outflows conjoined with it”; right speech, right action, and right livelihood further speak of being without outflows and unattached toward wrong livelihood, the four faults of speech, and the three evil actions of body, holding firm and not transgressing; right effort speaks of being conjoined with recollection without outflows. Under one name there are two paths: one goes to good destinations, one ends suffering. What makes the eight factors the noble path is not their names but their being conjoined with reflection on the four truths and without outflows.

IV. The Path Arises From Within and Without, and Ends at the Fruits of an Ascetic

The path does not arise of itself. Within, it arises from right reflection; without, it arises from the good friend: “among inner dharmas I see no one dharma that makes evil, unwholesome dharmas not yet arisen not arise and makes evil, unwholesome dharmas already arisen cease, like right reflection”; and the furthest point of the good friend is the Buddha: “the wholly pure and complete fulfilment of the pure conduct is the good friend. Why? Because I am a good friend, there are beings whom I cause to cultivate right view.” The path is named by where it leads: the eight wrong factors are not the far shore, go with the stream, and lead to hell, the animal realm, and the hungry ghosts; the eight right factors are the far shore, go against the stream, and lead to humans, gods, and nirvāṇa, and are “the vehicle of the right Dharma and discipline, the vehicle of the gods, the vehicle of Brahmā, the great vehicle, which is able to subdue the army of afflictions.” Its end is the matter of the ascetic: “what is the dharma of an ascetic? The eightfold noble path—right view up to right concentration. What is an ascetic? One who is accomplished in this dharma is called an ascetic”; the goal of an ascetic is “greed forever ended, hatred and delusion forever ended, all afflictions forever ended,” and the fruits of an ascetic are the four fruits. From the first light of right view to the accomplishment of the four fruits, the order of one fascicle is the order of one path.

“There is one dharma which, cultivated much, up to, can cause two dharmas to be fulfilled. What is the one dharma? Namely, mindfulness of breathing.” The thirty-two discourses of this fascicle teach mindfulness of breathing and the three trainings, and what they teach is only one thing: training has a gate, has a sequence, and has a season. The breath is the gate; the foundations of mindfulness, the factors of awakening, and knowledge and liberation are the sequence; in season is the season.

I. The Gate

The venerable Ānanda asks: “Is there one dharma which, cultivated and cultivated much, causes four dharmas to be fulfilled; the four dharmas fulfilled, seven dharmas fulfilled; the seven dharmas fulfilled, two dharmas fulfilled?” The World-Honored One answers with mindfulness of breathing, and himself pairs the sixteen steps with the four foundations of mindfulness, the four foundations of mindfulness with the seven factors of awakening, and the seven factors of awakening with knowledge and liberation, concluding: “This is called dharma akin to dharma, dharma nourishing dharma. Thus these thirteen dharmas, with one dharma as the higher and one dharma as the gate, advance in sequence and are cultivated to fulfilment.” The foundations of mindfulness, the factors of awakening, and the noble path taught in the four previous fascicles of the Connected Discourses on the Path each seem to be one dharma; this fascicle teaches one gate by which to enter, and the dharmas are of themselves akin to and nourish one another. The gate is not the smallest dharma; it is the first.

II. Binding Mindfulness

The sixteen steps have one phrase: “mindful of the breath within, one binds mindfulness and trains well; mindful of the breath without, one binds mindfulness and trains well.” The breath long, the breath short, the whole body, the stilling of bodily activity; joy, pleasure, mental activity, the stilling of mental activity; the mind, the gladdening of the mind, the concentrating of the mind, the liberating of the mind; impermanence, cutting off, dispassion, cessation—the objects contemplated run from the body to dharmas, and what is done is only binding mindfulness and training well. The Tathāgata, sitting in meditation for two months, dwells in this mindfulness too; the gods who see him take his life to be ended, but “this is a dwelling of cultivation, it is the stillness of an arhat, that is all.” When the contemplation of the impure makes the bhikṣus so weary of the body that they die, the World-Honored One teaches, “dwell in the subtle dwelling, open to awakening in accordance with it, and swiftly bring to rest the evil, unwholesome dharmas already arisen and not yet arisen, as a great rain from the sky can bring to rest the dust already risen and not yet risen.” Mindfulness bound to the breath: the coarse becomes subtle, the moving comes to rest; one in training dwells in it to cut off the five hindrances, the Tathāgata dwells in it with the five hindrances already cut off.

III. Training Well

The second half of the fascicle teaches the three trainings. The sequence of the three trainings begins with the precepts: “he values the precepts, and the precepts are higher; does not value concentration, and concentration is not higher; does not value wisdom, and wisdom is not higher; and as for the several minor precepts, when he breaks one he at once repents,” and the World-Honored One does not say that this person is incapable—one in whom the precepts are higher cuts off the three bonds, one in whom concentration is higher cuts off the five lower bonds, one in whom wisdom is higher is liberated in mind from the three outflows. The phrase “one not yet fully awakened at that stage” is repeated again and again; the difference between fruits is only a difference in full awakening. There are those with precepts and no concentration or wisdom; one with wisdom necessarily has precepts and concentration; therefore one “lives by the life of unsurpassed wisdom.” More than two hundred and fifty precepts are recited every half month, and the three trainings “can gather all the precepts”: this is not replacing the many with the few; it is gathering what follows by what it follows from. In the first half of the fascicle each in-breath and out-breath says “one trains well,” and in the second half each passage says “takes them up and trains”: it is the same word, training.

IV. In Season

The farmer “ploughs and harrows in season, irrigates in season, sows in season,” and does not think of fruit today, “and yet once the seed has entered the ground, it grows of itself in season, and the fruit ripens”; the brooding hen “in season tends them, cherishing them in cold and warmth,” and does not think of pecking and scratching with beak and claw, “and her chicks are born safe of themselves.” So too a bhikṣu in the three trainings: he does not think of attaining today, he does not wait to attain by supernormal power, but “in its own season he attains of himself the non-arising of outflows and a mind well liberated.” The donkey follows the herd of cattle and takes himself for an ox, “yet in truth is far indeed from a bhikṣu”; Baqizi is not able for the two hundred and fifty precepts, and the World-Honored One asks, “are you able to train in the three trainings in season?”—diligent in season, before long his outflows end. The fascicle begins with the fruits of an ascetic and ends with one man attaining arhatship. The gate has been shown, mindfulness has been bound, training has been done well; what remains is only the season.

“The great ocean where all blessings gather, pure itself, it purifies others, vast and flowing level, truly the chief of the hundred streams.” The thirty-one discourses of this fascicle teach the four unbreakable purities—unbreakable purity in the Buddha, unbreakable purity in the Dharma and the Saṅgha, accomplishment in the noble precepts—and what they teach is only one thing: when faith and the precepts are clear, one is like the ocean; the hundred streams return of themselves, and being pure oneself, one purifies others.

I. Unbreakable

“Though the four great elements—earth, water, fire, and wind—may change, increase, or diminish, these four unbreakable purities have never once increased, diminished, or changed.” The body may change; the faith does not change, and what is believed in does not change either. When faith is bound to one person, then at the time when that person “breaks the precepts, violates the discipline, and is cast out by the assembly,” the faith breaks with him; for one who believes in the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Saṅgha, what is believed in is not in a person, not in a body, and not in the Tathāgata’s arising in the world—“whether a Tathāgata arises in the world or does not arise, the nature of the Dharma ever abides.” The reason faith is unbreakable lies partly in the depth of the faith and partly in the abiding of what is believed in. Nanda bathes himself in “the pure faith and gladness I have gained in the World-Honored One”; the brāhmaṇa bathes his body in sesame meal and “runs towards the east”—the one on the level, straight road, the other on the false path.

II. Accomplished

The accomplishment of the precepts is not a rule that comes from outside. Kāśyapagotra confesses his fault, and the World-Honored One grants him “the precepts of restraint give rise to precepts”—for one who knows his own fault, the precepts arise from his own heart. For one accomplished in the noble precepts, “the five fears and enmities are stilled”: the enmity of killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, false speech, and drinking liquor is stilled in himself. The elder, riding an elephant with the palace women, “always guards three things,” “not for a single moment without right reflection,” and the World-Honored One says, “you guard the mind well.” The precepts are the guarding of the mind; they do not stop at restraining the body.

III. The Heavenly Way

One who is accomplished recollects the Tathāgata and “a mind of rejoicing arises; having rejoiced, the mind is gladdened; the mind gladdened, the body is tranquil; the body tranquil, he experiences happiness; experiencing happiness, he is concentrated in samādhi”; concentrated, he asks himself what the heavenly way of the gods is, and answers himself, “I have heard that freedom from anger is the highest heavenly way of the gods,” and from this day on, “whether in fear or at ease in the world, I shall not give rise to anger.” The heavenly way is not a way to be born in heaven; it is to be free of anger as the gods are. If the same chain does not arise, that is heedlessness: only one who is “accomplished in unbreakable purity in the Buddha, his mind does not give rise to the thought of contentment,” is called heedful. Accomplishment is the beginning, not the end.

IV. The Mirror of the Dharma

The disciples ask one by one where others were reborn when they died, and the World-Honored One says, “it is mere toil,” and gives them the discourse on the mirror of the Dharma: “the noble disciple’s unbreakable purity in the Buddha, unbreakable purity in the Dharma and the Saṅgha, and accomplishment in the noble precepts—this is called the discourse on the mirror of the Dharma.” A mirror is for looking at oneself. Looking at one’s own faith and one’s own precepts, one knows one’s own destination, “not believing because of another, not desiring because of another, not hearing it from another.” The six fascicles of the Connected Discourses on the Path teach the foundations of mindfulness, the faculties and powers, the factors of awakening, the noble path, mindfulness of breathing, and the three trainings, all of them what is practised; this fascicle teaches the faith and the precepts on which what is practised rests, and comes back to looking at oneself—one who is pure is where the hundred streams return, “giving, precepts, and the cultivation of merit are where the stream of a hundred blessings returns.”

“The gatekeeper, though he does not know how many people there are, knows that the people pass only through this door and nowhere else.” The fourteen discourses of this fascicle are spoken by the disciples: Śāriputra answers a wanderer’s several dozen questions, and after each answer comes “There is. It is the eightfold noble path”; Śāriputra does not know the minds of the Buddhas, yet he knows “the limits of the Dharma” of the Buddhas. What a disciple knows is not everything; it is the door.

I. One Door

Yanfuche asks about nirvāṇa, about the higher relief, about the higher coolness, and Śāriputra’s answer is each time “the permanent ending of desire, the permanent ending of hatred, the permanent ending of delusion”; asked about the arhat, he answers ‘cut off without remainder’; asked about the ending of outflows, he answers that the three outflows are ‘ended without remainder’; asked about coolness, he answers the ending of the five lower bonds; asked about outflows, the floods, clinging, bonds, and fetters, he answers each time with a numbered list of what is to be cut off; and at the end of each question—“is there a path, is there a way, cultivated and much cultivated,” by which this is attained?—the answer is a single sentence. The several dozen names are what the man asks; the one path is where the Dharma returns. The questioner is a wanderer of another sect, and many of the names he asks about come from other ways; the one who answers does not dispute the names, he only shows the door.

II. Declaring for Oneself

A bhikṣu tests his mind with a pure sign: if desire arises he “does not dare to declare for himself,” and if the mind is secluded he “is able to declare for himself.” Devadatta teaches that one who cultivates the mind in the dharma of the mind can declare for himself that he is free from desire; Śāriputra asks why he does not teach “knowing for oneself that there is no further existence”—the difference between the two declarations lies in what is declared. Relief and coolness each have the distinction between “cut off” and “already cut off, already known.” Among the discourses spoken by the disciples much is said of knowing for oneself: the fruit is not declared by another but known by oneself; known and then spoken—this is what is spoken by the disciples.

III. What One Relies On

For one who breaks the precepts, “that on which he relies declines,” and everything from gladness to nirvāṇa is lost, “as when the root of a tree is damaged, the branches, leaves, flowers, and fruit do not come to be”; one who attains the immeasurable samādhi and yet thinks longingly of the existing body is like “glue stuck to the hand,” and never gets free—the samādhi is not what he relies on; “the mind gives rise to faith and delight and does not think of the existing body” is what he relies on. Whether a charge of an offence is rightly made does not lie in the offence charged but in “truly, not falsely; timely, not untimely; for benefit, not for harm; gently, not harshly; with a mind of loving-kindness, not with anger.” Maudgalyāyana, dwelling in the noble silence, finds initial and sustained thought arising again; dwelling in the noble dwelling, finds the mind taking up signs; and three times the World-Honored One comes and teaches, “do not be heedless.” Even the disciple’s concentration relies on the teacher.

IV. The Two Venerables

At the end of each question in discourse 490, “then the two venerables, having finished their discussion, each rose from his seat and left”: the questioner is a wanderer, the one who answers a venerable, and both are called venerables. The end of discourse 503 has the same sentence, and there the two are Śāriputra and Maudgalyāyana, one taking himself for a small stone and the other for a great mountain, and the other likewise, “taking on the same colour.” The fascicle of the discourses spoken by the disciples begins with two venerables in discussion and ends with two venerables in discussion. What is spoken is not the disciple’s own view but the meaning within the noble Dharma and discipline, and the single door; so the questioner may be a wanderer and the one who answers a disciple, and what is spoken does not differ from what the Buddha speaks.

“I too see this being, and the reason I do not speak of it is for fear that people would not believe.” The thirty-three discourses of this fascicle are the second fascicle of what is spoken by the disciples: Mahāmaudgalyāyana sees a being on the road and smiles, does not speak of it on the road, and speaks of it only when he has returned before the World-Honored One; the World-Honored One says, I too see this, and then tells the past deed, and then says, “truly and without difference; you should bear it in mind.” What the disciple sees, the World-Honored One seals; what the disciple speaks can be borne in mind because of this.

I. What Is Seen

Śakra speaks a verse praising the fruit of giving; Mahāmaudgalyāyana asks what he has seen; Śakra answers with the reverence of the five foremost and the palace without equal in the small chiliocosm, “seeing this fruit, I spoke this verse.” Mahāmaudgalyāyana goes to the heaven of the Thirty-three to ask the meaning of liberation by the ending of craving; Śakra “sometimes remembers former matters, and sometimes does not,” and only asks him to go in and look at the new palace; Mahāmaudgalyāyana answers three times, “It is because you earlier cultivated good dharmas, by the causes and conditions of merit, that this wonderful fruit has come to be,” and then “with one toe he flicked the palace,” to make weariness arise. What the god sees is the fruit; what the disciple sees is heedlessness; what is flicked is the palace, and what is brought about is weariness.

II. What Is Sealed

In twenty-seven discourses, each time Mahāmaudgalyāyana sees a being—a body like a tower, shaped like dried meat, hairs like great needles, headless with two eyes, a tongue nailed and a tongue adzed, iron wheels under the flanks—each is “moving through the air, weeping and wailing.” Each sight waits to be told before the World-Honored One, and in 508 to 510 the World-Honored One says, “Among my śrāvakas, one abiding in true vision, true knowledge, true meaning, and true Dharma, with decisive penetration,” words that set the meaning of all twenty-seven sights, and tells the deed: butchering cattle, butchering sheep, hunting, fortune-telling, adultery, splashing a bhikṣu with impure water, putting excrement under rice, stealing seven fruits, stealing the sugar on the axe-blade, a monastery steward’s rebukes and abuse, stirring up the Saṅgha. The body seen answers the deed done, “because of this offence he has already suffered immeasurable pain in hell, and with the remaining retribution from hell he now receives this body and continues to suffer this pain.” The disciple sees the body, the World-Honored One tells the deed; one seeing and one telling, and then, “as Mahāmaudgalyāyana saw, truly and without difference; you should bear it in mind.”

III. What Is Declared

The World-Honored One teaches the Dharma for his mother in the heaven of the Thirty-three, and the gods “come as they wish and go as they wish.” Mahāmaudgalyāyana asks whether these gods once heard the Dharma and attained unbreakable purity and so came to be born there; the World-Honored One says so it is, Śakra repeats it, a bhikṣu repeats it, and then the gods “before the World-Honored One each declared for themselves the attainment of the dharma of stream-entry”; forty gods before Mahāmaudgalyāyana likewise “each declared for themselves the attainment of the fruit of stream-entry.” Declared before the Buddha, declared before a disciple, what is declared is the same fruit; within what is spoken by the disciples there is what the gods speak of themselves.

IV. One Path

Aniruddha thinks, “There is a one-vehicle path that purifies beings, frees them from sorrow, grief, affliction, and pain, and attains the Dharma of suchness, namely the four foundations of mindfulness”; one secluded from the four foundations of mindfulness is secluded from the noble Dharma, from the noble path, from the deathless Dharma, and one who has faith and delight in them is the reverse. Mahāmaudgalyāyana knows his thought and goes to ask: asked once about delighting in the four foundations of mindfulness, Aniruddha answers, “the mind takes the body as its object and abides in right mindfulness, tamed, stilled, quiescent, one-pointed and advancing”; asked once about cultivating and much cultivating, Aniruddha answers that toward the inner and outer body, feelings, mind, and dharmas one “forms the perception of weariness, the perception of non-weariness, and the perception of equanimity toward both weariness and non-weariness, abiding in right mindfulness and right knowledge.” The fascicle speaks from the rewards of the gods down to the remaining retribution of beings, and from remaining retribution to the one-vehicle path. Cause and fruit are truly and without difference, and what frees one from birth, old age, sickness, death, sorrow, grief, affliction, and pain is one path alone; a disciple sees it, a disciple speaks it, the World-Honored One seals it.

“The real meaning abides in the mind, quiescent and undisturbed.” The twenty-two discourses of this fascicle are spoken by the disciples: Aniruddha teaches the four foundations of mindfulness, Kātyāyana explains the World-Honored One’s verses and phrases, Ānanda answers on the fruit of the signless samādhi of the mind; the World-Honored One himself speaks only one passage, and his phrase and Ānanda’s answer are “the same phrase, the same flavor, the same meaning.” The real meaning of what is spoken by the disciples does not lie in the disciples; it lies in what abides in the mind.

I. One Dharma, Nine Doors

Śāriputra asks about divine power, Maudgalyāyana asks about divine power, Ānanda asks about supernormal power, and Aniruddha’s answer is each time “by cultivating and much cultivating the four foundations of mindfulness”; the bhikṣus ask how he endures in sickness, and he answers, “dwelling in the four foundations of mindfulness”; asked about the stage of training, he answers, “he should dwell in the four foundations of mindfulness”; asked whether the arhat too cultivates them, he answers, “he too cultivates the four foundations of mindfulness”; wanderers ask why he went forth, and he answers, “for the sake of cultivation.” Nine doors of questioning, one dharma of answer. Divine power is its fruit, endurance its use, those in training and beyond training its persons, going forth its reason; and the tree falls only in the direction it leans, “inclines, slopes, and flows toward nirvāṇa.”

II. Binding and Freedom

Dispute comes from being “bound and attached by desire” and “bound and attached by desire for views”; old and young are not a matter of years but of being, with regard to the five strands of sense pleasure, “free from greed, free from desire, free from craving, free from longing, free from turbidity”; the four castes are not a matter of birth but of “the reality is action; it is what depends on action”; the flow lies in greed arising in faculty and consciousness, the blocking in the exhaustion of “the fetter that binds and attaches”; the ultimate end lies in the exhaustion of delight and of the fetter. What Kātyāyana teaches in ten discourses can be gathered in one word: freedom. Freedom is not freedom from objects but freedom from binding; objects remain always in the world, binding can be exhausted. The sick elder, depending on the four unbreakable purities, increases the six recollections and is “able to declare for yourself that you have attained non-returning”—when what one depends on is established, what is increased can be declared.

III. Seeing Above Concentration

Ascetics and brāhmaṇas take the attainment of the all-entering sphere of earth as the unsurpassed; Kātyāyana does not reject their concentration but shows “seeing its origin, seeing its danger, seeing its cessation, seeing the path to its cessation”; having seen, then “the real meaning abides in the mind.” The signless samādhi of the mind “neither surges nor sinks, liberated and then abiding, abiding and then liberated,” and the World-Honored One says its fruit is “the fruit of knowledge, the merit of knowledge.” Concentration does not take concentration as its fruit but knowledge; the six recollections leave the mind of defiled attachment—what is left is the mind, what is headed toward is nirvāṇa. The real meaning does not abide in concentration; it abides in the seeing above concentration; when the seeing abides in the mind, it is quiescent and undisturbed.

IV. The Same Phrase

The bhikṣuṇīs ask the Buddha, and the Buddha answers with two names in five characters; they ask Ānanda, and Ānanda answers with the same two names in five characters. “The teacher and the disciple have the same phrase, the same flavor, the same meaning—this is called the first meaning of the phrase.” Kātyāyana, explaining a verse, says, “I understand that the World-Honored One spoke this verse with this meaning”; to the king he does not answer himself but says, “Now I shall question you; answer me as I ask”; the certain bhikṣu will not “ask truly and answer otherwise,” and follows six years before he asks. The worth of what is spoken by the disciples lies not in being able to speak but in what is spoken not differing from the teacher; the truth of a disciple lies not in being able to answer but in not seeking an answer by a question that is not true. The real meaning abides in the mind, and so the phrase is the same and not borrowed.

“I have come because I know the Dharma; sir, you should know this.” The seventeen discourses of this fascicle are the last fascicle of what is spoken by the disciples: the first seven are spoken by Ānanda, and the last ten center on the householder, who speaks his own seeing. The World-Honored One does not speak one word himself, and yet not one word spoken by the disciples is other than what the World-Honored One has spoken. The substance of what is spoken by the disciples lies in knowing the Dharma.

I. Relying and Cutting Off

Relying on desire one cuts off craving; relying on food one cuts off food; relying on conceit one cuts off conceit; relying on craving one cuts off craving. The instrument that cuts off is the very dharma that is cut off: when desire relies on seclusion and on cessation and tends toward relinquishment, craving is exhausted and desire ceases—“this is the limit; it is not without limit.” Only sexual desire has nothing to rely on; it is only cut. The four kinds of purity all go “what is not yet full he makes full; what is already full he takes up accordingly,” and so are called pure cutting off.

II. Having Something as Root

The views “all have the view of the body as their root”; the merits “all have heedfulness as their root”; faculty and object do not bind each other, “desire and craving are the bond.” Where the root lies and where the bond lies is pointed out in one sentence; the elders are silent, and the junior and the householder say it.

III. One Meaning, Various Flavors

The four samādhis of the mind are four with regard to their objects and one with regard to freedom from greed, hatred, and delusion: “there are dharmas of various meanings, various phrases, and various flavors, and there are dharmas of one meaning and various flavors.” The householder first asks, “did the World-Honored One speak this verse?” and then explains; the explanation comes from himself, and the meaning returns to the teacher.

IV. What Need to Believe

The Nirgrantha says faith comes before knowledge; the householder answers with his own dwelling in the second dhyāna: “having such knowledge, what need is there to believe in the World-Honored One?” The five doors of the purity of seeing all return to “having faith in the true Dharma,” and what faith accomplishes is knowledge. The part spoken by the disciples begins with “there is a path, there is a way” and ends with “I have come because I know the Dharma”: what is spoken is the same as the World-Honored One’s, and comes from one’s own knowing.