百論 心要連讀

Sengzhao’s preface begins not with doctrine but with people and events: Deva composed, the adept Vasu commented, Kumārajīva translated, and Yao Song gathered an assembly to recollate. The Hundred Treatise now in hand is what remains after these four acts.

The condition for composing the treatise was that “erroneous arguments approached the semblance of truth and nearly confused the right path.” The hardest claims to handle are not obvious nonsense but words so nearly true that they can be mistaken for it. Deva “looked upward and lamented the decline of the sacred teaching; bending downward, he grieved over the many deluded people abandoning themselves to deception.” Compassion and vision were present together, and so this treatise came to be. Its function is “to protect the correct and guard against error”—one hand protects, one discloses.

Sengzhao defines the treatise’s character in four clauses: “It speaks without landing, refutes without clinging; freely without any ground, events do not lose their truth; quietly without lodging, principle naturally meets the profound.” Ordinary refutation destroys another’s ground and then occupies it; this treatise refutes and does not remain standing. Without ground, events do not lose their truth; without lodging, principle meets of itself. The mind, not principle, needs to grasp something for reassurance. Thus he dares say: “The path of returning to the root is manifest here.”

The text has two layers: “The treatise contains one hundred verses and therefore takes Hundred as its name,” yet “its ultimate destination is subtle and spare, and few find its gate.” Therefore, the adept Vasu “accorded from afar with its profound traces and composed an instructional commentary,” causing “meanings once sunk and hidden to appear in elegant writing.” Nor does the preface conceal the translation history: Kumārajīva “had translated it personally before, but the language of this land had not yet been integrated,” so “those seeking its meaning hesitated before erroneous phrases.” In the sixth year of Hongshi, Yao Song “gathered śramaṇas versed in principle and, with Kumārajīva, collated the correct text,” “refining and reviewing it while striving to preserve the treatise’s intent,” producing a text “plain without being crude, concise yet certain to arrive.”

Scale and loss are recorded together: “The treatise originally had twenty chapters, each with five verses,” while “the people responsible considered the latter ten of no benefit to this land, so they were omitted and not transmitted.” Nothing is concealed and nothing supplied. The preface entrusts only one sentence: “May discerning gentlemen examine and gather it in detail.”

The Hundred Treatise opens as a face-to-face exchange: on one side, “the outsider says”; on the other, “the insider says.” Where the interlinear note reads “sūtra” lies Deva’s bone; the extended prose that follows is the flesh supplied by the adept Vasu.

Only Two Criteria

Who is a World-Honored One? The answer: “The Buddha knows the true mark of all dharmas clearly and without obstruction and can also teach profound, pure Dharma”—one criterion is knowing, the other is teaching. The outsider raises practices such as scorching the body with five fires, starving oneself, plunging into a chasm, and observing the discipline of cattle. The treatise author does not refute them one by one but points to a prior level: “All these are wrong views. Because they obscure right view, they cannot teach profound, pure Dharma.” The fiercer the practice, the farther it strays when view is obscured.

Stopping Evil and Practicing Good

“The Dharma consists in stopping evil and practicing good”: “Bringing every evil to rest is called the mark of stopping; cultivating every good is called the mark of practice.” Stopping is not merely happening not to act—“Whether the resolve arises in the mind, is spoken aloud, or is undertaken as a precept—from this day until the end of life one does not perform it again. This is called stopping.” It is a decision made once and sustained over time. Thus, even when the mind of one who has undertaken precepts is unwholesome or indeterminate, “at that time, because evil has been stopped, there is still merit”; whereas “giving is the practice of good, not the stopping of evil.” “The mark of stopping is cessation; the mark of practice is activity. Their natures and marks are opposed,” so neither can swallow the other.

Dismantling the Thing Supposed to Stand on Its Own

The outsider says a scripture must begin auspiciously, “because when the beginning is auspicious, the middle and end are auspicious too.” The treatise author answers that cutting off wrong view is itself auspicious, and moreover that “no auspiciousness exists”: “The same thing is taken here as auspicious and there as inauspicious.” What is unfixed has no independent auspiciousness. He next refutes self, other, and both: “Arising dharmas have three possibilities: self, other, and both,” yet “sought among these three, it cannot be obtained; therefore no auspicious thing exists.” The salt simile fails because “the mark of salt abides in salt”; the lamp simile because “it is called illuminating because it destroys darkness; where there is no darkness to destroy, it does not illuminate”; the claim about spells working at a distance because “why does a lamp lit in India not destroy the darkness in China?”; and the elephant’s hand because neither identity nor difference can be established. Almost half the chapter is spent dismantling a single word.

Sequence and the Threefold Pure and Impure

“A practitioner must first know evil and only then can stop it”; “first remove coarse stains, then remove subtle stains,” “as when washing clothes: first remove the grime, and only then can they be dyed.” In accord with beings’ intentions, the Buddha distinguishes giving, precepts, and wisdom among persons of lower, middling, and higher capacities, yet each has pure and impure forms. Giving “for the sake of recompense is impure, because it resembles market exchange.” In precepts, “keeping precepts in quest of pleasant reward is for the sake of sensual desire, like a disguised appearance,” whereas pure precepts give rise, step by step, from “a mind free of regret” all the way to nirvāṇa. Wisdom is impure “because it binds one to the world, like an enemy who comes as a friend.” What distinguishes lower, middling, and higher is not the three practices themselves, but the direction in which the mind is moving.

Relinquishing Both Demerit and Merit, Resting on the Signless

“Taking up merit and relinquishing evil is a dharma of continued course”; “relinquishing means that the mind does not cling. When the mind does not cling to merit, it no longer comes and goes among the five destinies. This is called a dharma of no continued course.” Merit should be relinquished because “when merit is exhausted, there is suffering,” and because it has two marks—“like rice mixed with poison: delicious while being eaten, painful when it comes time to digest it.” The claim that a horse sacrifice yields perpetual merit is also refuted: “The karmic causes and conditions of a horse sacrifice are measurable”; a finite cause cannot make an infinite fruit. If merit must be relinquished, why produce it at all? The answer: “Like soiled clothes that must first be washed clean before they can be dyed, the washing is not in vain.” On what does the relinquishment of merit depend? “The signless is supreme”—“because all dharmas lack intrinsic nature, there is nothing on which to depend.” The outsider asks for firmer ground; the treatise author gives groundlessness.

The outsider wants only one thing: behind all dharmas there must be a permanent, all-pervading lord that knows, called the self. Two schools establish it in different ways—Sāṃkhya says, “Awareness is the self,” while Vaiśeṣika says, “Cognition differs from self.” This chapter of the Hundred Treatise follows each path to its end.

If It Is That Awareness

If awareness is the self’s mark, then because awareness is impermanent, self is impermanent: “As heat is the mark of fire, since heat is impermanent, fire too is impermanent.” Awareness is indeed impermanent: “because its marks differ, because it belongs to causes and conditions, because formerly absent it now exists, and because, having existed, it returns to absence.” Say instead that self is “permanent because unarisen,” and awareness must differ from it; say awareness is all-pervading, yet it “operates in one place” alone; say the power of awareness remains where it has no function, and “there is only this statement”; say it functions when conditions meet, and it “falls under the mark of arising.” Permanence is worn away by its own explanations.

A Person Leading a Cow Is Not a Cow

If cognition is another thing, and self is called a knower because the two conjoin, this is like a person conjoined with a cow and called an owner of a cow. The answer is one sentence: “The mark of a cow abides in the cow, not in the cow’s owner.” Therefore, “cognition alone can cognize; self does not cognize,” just as “fire can burn, not the person who possesses fire.” Since “cognition itself can cognize,” what further use is self? The analogies of a horse’s body, black cloth, and a staff all fail at the same point: conjunction does not change identity.

When Cognition Ceases

The outsider turns to inference: because one sees a person depart and later arrive, one knows there was going; because one sees dharmas supported, one knows there is a self. The answer is, “What does not cognize is not self”—“in place” means outside the body, and “in time” means within the body: “in sleep, fainting, and the like, at that time there is no cognition.” On what basis does something defined by knowing still count as present through the interval when knowing is absent? Moreover, whether cognition is present or absent, “there is no one able to see self.” Thus: “One must not see a turtle and conceive hair, nor see a barren woman and conceive a child; likewise, one must not see cognition and conceive a self.”

Knife, Eye, and Mind

When a knife harms the body, distress arises; if self shares the distress, it should share the severing. If self is said to be untouchable and therefore unseverable, body and self cannot furnish the “two contacts and two thoughts” of the blind-and-lame analogy, and the person cannot move. If self sees by means of the eye, then “self differs from the eye,” so self has no eye—how could the eyeless see? Mind, meanwhile, knows by its own nature, as “fire’s nature is itself hot, and there is no fire that is not hot.” Recollection also needs no entity traveling through it: “Present mind cognizes past mind; because mind-dharmas are impermanent, there is no fault.”

A Garment Burned in One Part

The final dispute turns on “part”: cognition arising in one place is not enough to call self a knower. Just as a garment burned in one part is not wholly a burned garment, for “most of this garment is unburned and remains genuinely usable.” The entire chapter closes in five words: “Therefore, do not cling to language.”

This time the outsider does not establish self from sensation or knowledge, but from possession: “Existence, unity, a jar, and the rest belong to self.” The treatise author answers that self has already been found unobtainable, then immediately opens that sentence and asks: are existence, unity, and jar one, or different? This chapter follows only the path of unity.

When Names Can Be Substituted

If the three are one, they must be like three names of one lord of the devas, interchangeable in every locus: “Wherever existence is, unity and jar are.” A garment exists; the garment must therefore be a jar. If “existence” is permanent, the jar is permanent; if the jar is impermanent, “existence” and unity are impermanent too. This is called “as with one, all is established.” The same nondifference can be driven in reverse: existence is everywhere yet no jar is present there, so no jar should be present where the jar is; if “existence” is not a jar, “the jar too is not a jar.” This is called “as with one, nothing is established.” Add jar and existence-unity establishing one another first and last, and it becomes “as with one, everything is inverted.” When one premise yields three contrary paths, the premise itself cannot stand. The received text preserves a lacuna here: “Four folios of argument about names cannot be translated.”

Where Existence Is Present but No Jar, Two Have Already Appeared

The outsider revises the claim: where existence is present, a jar need not be present. The treatise author answers, “The jar and existence are two. Why two? Because there can be no jar.” Between one thing and itself, it cannot be present here and absent there. The criterion falls on trust: “If one says ‘existent,’ people trust that jars and other things are included. If one says ‘jar,’ they do not trust that garments and other things are included.” What gathers broadly is a universal character; what gathers narrowly is a particular character. The outsider invokes one person who is both father and son, only to hear: “Before a son is born, he is not called a father.” Both roles are established in dependence upon another.

One Scale Weighs Everything

Head and feet with body, color and the rest with jar, pine and cypress with forest, elephants, horses, chariots, and infantry with army: the outsider changes the scale four times, while the treatise author never changes the reason. “If the foot is not different from the body, why is the foot not the head?” “If one speaks of one forest, pines, cypresses, and the rest should also be one.” Once nondifference is claimed, properties must pass through in both directions. If they cannot, the nondifference must be withdrawn.

The Three Times Crushed into One

The outsider retreats to cause. The answer is: “Now that fruit is refuted, cause refutes itself, because in your doctrine cause and fruit are one.” One step further: “The lump of clay is present, the jar future, and earth past.” If cause and fruit are one, jar and earth already exist in the lump, so “the language of done, doing, and to be done is destroyed.” The final rescue invokes long and short as mutually dependent, but the character of long is sought in long, short, and their conjunction and found nowhere. The rescue becomes a witness: “If neither long nor short exists, how could they be mutually dependent?”

The difference established by the outsider makes jar, existence, and unity three separate things. Throughout the chapter, the treatise author asks only one question: if they are different, by what can they be joined again?

What Differs Does Not Draw the Other with It

“If existence and the rest differ, each is absent.” The jar differs from existence and unity, so “this jar neither exists nor is one.” The same follows for existence and unity: “Thus each is lost.” More important is the second level: “If the jar is destroyed, existence and unity should not be destroyed,” “because they differ,” “as when this person dies, that person should not die.” When the jar breaks, its existence does not remain where it was. This present fact is the verdict.

Using Difference to Prove Difference

The outsider establishes three kinds—conjoined difference, separate difference, and transformative difference—as a rescue. The treatise author first counts: “If so, there are many jars.” Then he identifies the illness: “I wish to refute your difference; how can you use difference to prove difference?” Hence, “You should state another reason.” When the outsider separates them still more cleanly, the answer is, “If so, there is no jar.” He retreats to many jars and hears: “Unity is the first among numbers.” If one is absent, many is absent too.

The Jar before Conjunction

The outsider establishes his own rule: “What is absent cannot conjoin.” The treatise author uses this rule to pursue the jar before conjunction. If the jar was then absent, “because an absent dharma cannot conjoin, it should not conjoin with existence.” If it already existed then, “What use is the later existence?”

Lamp and Mark

“If existence can disclose like a lamp, the jar should already exist.” “Objects exist first, and only then are illuminated by a lamp.” If the jar exists only upon conjunction, “existence is a productive cause, not a disclosing cause.” Further, “if an object cannot be established apart from mark and marked,” existence requires another mark, without end. If existence needs no mark, “jars and the rest should be the same.” At last the analogy is returned: “As a lamp illuminates itself and does not rely on another illumination, the jar too exists by itself and does not await an external existence.”

Parts and the Whole Possessing Parts

“If the whole possessing parts is complete within a part, why are the feet not in the head?” If it resides portion by portion, “the whole possessing parts is like a part.” The conclusion is: “Because the whole possessing parts is absent, the parts too are absent.” The rescue through atoms likewise fails: “If all gather into the jar, all atoms should wholly be the jar.” The power of threads and drops is defeated because it is “indeterminate”: “Each barren woman cannot bear a child, each blind person cannot see form, and each grain of sand cannot produce oil; many gathered together likewise cannot.” If each part already has power, the claim again falls into “the faults of identity and difference between parts and the whole possessing parts.”

The Liar

The outsider accuses: “You are one who destroys dharmas.” The treatise author returns it: “Parts such as head and feet conjoined are visibly the body, yet you say they are not the body”; “wheels, axle, and the rest conjoined are visibly a chariot, yet you say there is another chariot apart from them.” Saying what is seen is absent and what is unseen exists—“therefore, you are the liar.”

“Faculties” here means the five faculties of eye, ear, nose, tongue, and body. The outsider establishes his thesis from what seems most undeniable: “Dharmas belonging to self determinately exist, because they are present before us.” Since present awareness certainly exists now, the faculties, objects, and mind that produce it must all really exist. The whole chapter addresses only this backward inference.

Temporal Order

Which comes first, seeing or awareness? If seeing comes first, then “once color has been seen, what use is arising awareness?” If awareness comes first, then “without seeing color, the causes and conditions are absent, and arising too is absent.” Change the claim to simultaneity, and it still cannot escape the difficulty “because existent, because nonexistent.” Moreover, “if they arise simultaneously, awareness does not await seeing, and seeing does not await awareness.” Once mutual dependence is lost, the conjunction thesis destroys itself.

Distance

If the eye travels outward to apprehend color, “distant color should be seen later and near color sooner.” Yet “the near jar and distant moon are seen at the same time.” If the eye does not travel, “Why can it see what is near but not what is far?” Even granting travel leaves a dilemma. If it travels after seeing, “the affair is already finished—what use is going?” If it goes without seeing, “because the eye has no awareness, intending east, it goes west.” If the eye remains in the body, no eye is at the color; if it reaches the color, “the body has no eye.”

Intrinsic Character

If seeing is established as the eye’s substance, then just as “fire, whose character is heat, heats itself and can heat another,” the eye should see itself. “Yet it does not see; therefore, seeing is not the eye’s character.” The analogy of a fingertip unable to touch itself does not rescue it, because “touch is the finger’s activity, not the finger’s character.” If mind is said to travel, then “if mind is there, the body has no mind and is like a corpse.” If mind remains in the body and knows afar, color is there and conjunction is absent.

Where It Lands

At last the outsider has the force of mind make eye-light conjoin with color. The treatise author answers, “If seeing arises because of conjunction, there is no seer,” and points out: “Mind is not seeing; eye is not knowing; color is neither seeing nor knowing.” None of the three has the required character; even conjoined, there is no apprehender of color. The final sentence says, “Ear, nose, tongue, and body are refuted in the same way.” The chapter never denies what is seen before the eyes. It removes only the master installed behind conjunction, able to see by itself without awaiting the multitude of conditions.

The outsider holds to one thing alone: the jar is right there and can be apprehended, so both the apprehending faculty and the apprehended object exist. Sentence by sentence, this chapter takes apart the words “directly seen.”

A Part Does Not Constitute the Possessor of Parts

A jar is composed of form, odor, and the rest, but the eye obtains form alone. Thus, “if a jar were directly visible, odor and the rest should also be directly visible. Yet they are not visible.” The outsider retreats to the claim that seeing one part counts as seeing the jar. The answer is: “at present, a part does not constitute the possessor of parts.” Form itself fares no better: “because form has shape,” this part obstructs the other part. When the outsider turns to a partless atom, his own tradition is returned to him: “Your scripture says that atoms are not directly visible.”

Whether a Jar Exists and Whether It Is Seen Are Two Different Matters

People commonly believe that a jar is directly seen. The answer is: “Although the jar is not manifest, it is not the case that no jar exists.” The claim is revised to say that one does not see it because the eye has not yet met it. The author then tests this through time: if no new mark arises at the moment of seeing, “therefore the mark of being directly seen does not arise.”

Contact and Noncontact

The account of five bodies fails at “how can what contacts conjoin with what does not contact?” Moving the site of conjunction to the jar leaves both identity and difference between jar and contact exhausted. Scripture is invoked to say that form is produced by the four great elements, yet “the four great elements are not seen by the eye”: if the producers are not visible, how could what they produce be directly visible? The claim that the bodily faculty apprehends the four great elements fails because “at present, all four great elements within fire have the mark of heat.”

When There Is No Abiding Time, There Is No Place to Apprehend an Object

The outsider wants the present to provide a place in which objects are apprehended. The answer is that oldness does not begin only after a long time: “It is like a person wearing clogs: from the beginning they already carry a subtle oldness.” It is too subtle to be noticed, and only later does its mark become manifest. Hence, “because dharmas do not abide, there is no abiding time; if there is no abiding time, there is no place in which an object is apprehended.” New and old are merely words: “in the ultimate meaning there is no new, no middle, and no old.” Asked what benefit follows, the author answers with one line: “One attains lasting release.” Seed, sprout, stalk, node, flower, and fruit “do not conjoin with one another, and because dharmas do not abide,” they become distant; “because they become distant, they cannot be apprehended.”

The outsider’s position has only one sentence: “What exists is not lost, and what is absent does not arise.” Change is merely the same existent taking another shape; therefore the jar already exists in the clay.

Loss and Difference Cannot Both Be Avoided

The treatise author answers: “If, because the effect arises, what exists is not lost, then because the cause is lost, what exists is lost.” If the lump of clay is not lost, the jar is precisely the lump; yet “now in fact one sees differences of shape, time, capacity, cognition, name, and the rest.” The bent-and-straightened finger fails because “bending and straightening are the finger’s activities, while the finger is the agent”; youth, maturity, and old age fail because “youth does not make maturity, and maturity does not make old age.”

If Things Abide Permanently, Demerit and Merit Both Disappear

The outsider simply asks, “What fault is there if nothing is lost?” The answer is, “If there is no impermanence, there is no demerit, merit, or the rest”—“a person of demerit would always remain a person of demerit and should not become meritorious,” so “giving and stealing, observing precepts and violating precepts” all lose their footing. Preserve an indestructible existent, and practice cannot be preserved.

Every Retreat Leaves Something Formerly Absent and Later Present

If cause and effect are one, “the three times are thus disordered.” If names change with time, “this name was formerly absent and later present.” If clay is indeterminate, “if clay is indeterminate, the effect too is indeterminate.” Establish a subtle form to explain imperceptibility, and “the coarse character was originally absent and later arose.” Use “one who makes a jar selects clay, not rushes” as evidence from what is to be, and “now that the jar is broken, the effect should be what is to be absent.” Arrange arising, abiding, and destruction in sequence, and precisely “these two were formerly absent and later present.”

Where It Comes to Rest

“Because it continues, it is not annihilated; because it is destroyed, it is not permanent”—“from grain to sprout and the rest, continuity means it is not annihilated; because grain and the other causes are destroyed, it is not permanent.” What is refuted is not cause and effect, but cause and effect installed upon something unchanging.

The outsider hands over a choice: either the effect existed beforehand in the cause or it did not—“Since arising exists, one of the two must be established.” The treatise author does not choose. He asks about something prior: “If arising exists, did it exist beforehand in the cause, or was it absent beforehand? Sought through such reflection, it cannot be obtained—how much less an arising that does not exist.”

That Temporal Position Cannot Be Found

Seek arising once the jar is complete, and “the jar already exists”; moreover, beginning, middle, and end “exist in mutual dependence,” so with the whole jar present, “what further use is arising?” Seek it when the lump of clay has not yet become a jar, and it is “not yet present”—“if there is no jar, how could there be the jar’s arising?” Change the answer to the time of arising, and the reply is: “The time of arising means half arisen and half not yet arisen, and it incurs both faults.” Replace arising with completion, and the answer is: “Completion means already arisen”; “therefore one should not take completion as arising, for arising would come afterward.”

Names Leaning upon Names

Beginning, middle, and end—“apart from one another, how could they exist?” If they arise simultaneously, “one should not say this is beginning, this is middle, and this is end.” Arising, abiding, and destruction are the same: “without abiding there is no arising.” And if the three marks themselves are conditioned, each must again contain three marks, “and then there is no end.” The father-and-son analogy also fails, because “this father has yet another father.” Arising and what can arise are two names for one event: “If the jar has arising, the jar has already arisen and is not called what can arise.” Let what can arise establish arising, and “arising becomes what can arise and is not called what produces arising.” If two real dharmas together produce, “why is there no third dharma, as when father and mother produce a child?”

Letting Both Sides Go Together

If the effect exists as the cause is destroyed, it “does not differ from destruction, and therefore arising too is cessation.” If it exists after destruction, “because there is no cause, the effect should not arise.” The nonexistent-effect side must answer: “Why is a jar found only in clay and cloth only in thread?” The existent-effect side makes “this cause itself this effect”; it also puts curd and ghee beforehand in milk, producing many effects in one cause and many causes in one effect. Therefore, “whether the effect exists or does not exist in the cause, in either case there is no arising.” The final four alternatives exhaust the question: the examples of mother and child, blood constituent, maturity and old age, and mirror image all fail to establish thing producing thing; hare’s horn, barren woman, and turtle hair close the remaining three alternatives. “Therefore, there is no dharma of arising.”

The outsider retreats to his last line of defense. Everything you have refuted is caused, but “space, time, direction, fine particles, and nirvāṇa are uncaused dharmas.” This chapter examines these five in sequence and to the end.

No Cause and Revealing Cause

The treatise author does not initially touch the five dharmas, but asks on what basis they are established: “Do you say it is permanent because it has a cause, or because it has no cause?” If caused, it falls into impermanence; if uncaused, “one may equally call it impermanent.” The outsider distinguishes productive cause from revealing cause. The treatise author answers, “This cause is not right.” A container cannot substitute for what it contains: “Self was refuted before, and the remaining permanent dharmas will be refuted afterward.” Nor can one infer “because constructed dharmas are impermanent, unconstructed dharmas are permanent,” for the two sides do not differ at every point: “Unconstructed and constructed dharmas are alike in lacking contact; therefore, the unconstructed should be impermanent.”

Space, Time, and Direction

If all of space is in a jar, space does not pervade; “if this counts as pervading, the jar too should pervade.” If only part is there, then “the whole possessing parts is what is called space.” Said to be the receptive place of all things, space has nowhere of its own to abide—“because a solid contains no space.” To take formlessness as its character receives the answer: “Formlessness means the negation of form, not a further dharma.” If time is permanent and one, “past time never becomes future time,” so the future has nowhere to come from. If each temporal character is already present, “then everything is present”; yet “the past is not past,” and therefore “the dharma of time has no substance, only speech.” Direction follows the sun’s course and the observer’s position; the four continents take turns being east, and thus “direction exists in speech, but in reality there is no direction.”

The Smallest and the Final

If fine particles conjoin with their whole bodies, “the effect made of two fine particles should likewise be round.” Since the visible effect is not round, they conjoin “by one part; therefore the fine particle has parts, and because it has parts, it is impermanent.” If nirvāṇa is precisely the absence of afflictions, it is a dharma attained through cultivation and is “impermanent because constructed.” If it is what enables liberation, “then it is not liberation.” Establish something apart from bondage, what is bound, and the means, and “it has no use.” At the end the treatise author no longer argues only over dharma-character, but asks the mind: “How can one crave a place of fear?”

Who Attains It?

“There is no attainer of nirvāṇa.” As when a lamp goes out, its direction cannot be stated: “All speech has ceased; there is nothing that can be discussed.” Self is permanent and all-pervading, and therefore “should not attain nirvāṇa”; the five aggregates arise and cease, and they too do not attain it. Yet cultivation and realization are not rejected: “If one says that nirvāṇa is attained, this is said within worldly convention.”

In this chapter, the outsider defends no particular dharma. He defends the act of “refutation” itself. If you admit that the refuting act exists, not every dharma has been completely refuted; if you say it does not exist, then you have refuted nothing.

The Knife Belongs to No One

The answer has only four words: “Refutation is like what can be refuted.” If it exists, “it has already fallen among what can be refuted and is empty, with nothing there”; if it does not, “what are you refuting?” The illness lies in this: “Because you cling to refutation, you use the dharmas of existence and nonexistence to refute that refutation.” Unity and difference are the same: “That unity and difference cannot be found was already refuted; because it was already refuted, there is nothing grasped.” The tools of the first nine chapters are dismantled along with everything they dismantled.

The outsider therefore condemns his opponent as a destroyer. The answer is: “The speaker of emptiness grasps nothing; because there is nothing grasped, he is not a destroyer. You grasp your own dharma and use it to refute another’s grasping.” The outsider next says that refuting another establishes oneself. The answer distinguishes them: “Establishing means praising merits; refuting means exposing faults,” and “establishing is called having fear.” The one hurrying to establish his own dharma through another’s defeat lacks confidence in that dharma. Even if the rule were accepted, it would run all the way through: “Because my own dharma is established, nothing is established; because nothing is established, I establish nothing.”

Saying “Absent” Does Not Produce an Absent Thing

“Nongrasping is not called grasping, as with ‘absent’”—“It truly is absent; saying ‘absent’ does not therefore make an absence exist.” The outsider’s illness is always the same: taking negation as a possession. When he points to the one who annihilates dharmas, the answer is: “I myself have no dharma, so there is nothing to refute.” When he establishes the mutual dependence of long and short, high and low, emptiness and reality, the answer asks: “If there is nothing nonempty, there is no emptiness; how could they be mutually dependent?” When he invokes a room without a horse to claim that absence is always real, the answer is: “If there is no existence, there is also no nonexistence.” Absence is established in dependence on presence; when presence cannot be found, absence too has nowhere to stand.

There Never Was Water on the Sand

“Dharmas are empty in their intrinsic nature”; if already empty, why refute them? The answer is: “Although intrinsically empty, beings are bound because they grasp marks.” The analogy is “a fool sees a heat shimmer, falsely imagines water, and exhausts himself pursuing it”; a wise person “tells him this is not water”—“to stop that conception, not to destroy water.” What is refuted was always the inversion of grasping marks, never a dharma. As for the allegedly ineffable neither-existence-nor-nonexistence, the opponent’s own scriptures contain it: sound is “called neither large nor small,” a lump of clay is “neither a jar nor not a jar,” and light is “neither bright nor dark.” Therefore “there is a fourth proposition.”

Even at the End, Nothing Is Handed Over

If all is empty, why still speak of good and evil? “When buddhas teach the Dharma, they always rely on conventional truth and the truth of the ultimate meaning; both are true.” The Buddha knows that “if earth, timber, and the rest are removed, no city can be found,” yet still tells Ānanda to enter the city for alms. Is conventional truth really truth? “It is true for people of the world and not true for sages,” as one rose apple is “large beside a jujube and small beside a melon.” Yet “to call it small beside a jujube and large beside a melon would be false speech”: within its own scope, one may not speak carelessly.

What benefit is gained? “Relinquishing self in this way is called attaining liberation.” Refuting the self leaves no self; refuting all dharmas leaves nothing belonging to self. Its lived mark is plain: “Hearing existence, one does not rejoice; hearing nonexistence, one does not grieve.” Asked why the text says only “called attaining,” the answer is “because it is ultimately pure.” “Because the self is refuted, there is no person; because nirvāṇa is refuted, there is no liberation.” It closes: “Because of conventional truth, it is spoken of as liberation.” Liberation is not false; it simply never becomes an object held in someone’s hand.