十二門論 觀有相無相門第五

No Markless Elephant Can Be Found upon the Elephant’s Body

“An elephant has two tusks, a single hanging trunk, three swellings on its head, ears like winnowing baskets, a spine like a bent bow, a large hanging belly, hair at the tip of its tail, and four thick round feet. These are the elephant’s marks.” At the eighth item the elephant has been exhausted. The author adds: “Apart from these marks, there is no further elephant for a mark to mark.”

The horse is the same: upright ears, a hanging mane, four hooved feet, and hair along the whole tail. “Apart from these marks, there is no further horse for a mark to mark.”

Then Ask Where the Mark Is to Fall

“A mark does not mark what has marks; nor does it mark what lacks marks; apart from what has and lacks marks, what could a mark possibly mark?”

What already has a mark “has no further use for a mark”—the instrument has no work to do. Insist that the work is done and two marks compete for the same job: “first, the mark already present; second, the mark that comes and marks it as having a mark.” For what lacks marks, the author asks only, “What dharma is called markless such that what has a mark could mark it?” What you can point out already has a mark; what you cannot point out is not waiting there. Nor is there a place between: “apart from what has marks and what lacks marks, there is no third dharma for a mark to mark.”

Who Gives the Name?

“Through a mark one knows that this matter is called what is marked.” The identity of what is marked is supplied by the mark. Since the mark has nowhere to fall, what is marked cannot be established. Thus “mark and what is marked are both empty.” The myriad things are precisely this pair: “apart from mark and what is marked, no thing exists.”

Retreating toward “Nothing” Is the Same

Retreat to no thing also fails: “Because a thing ceases, it is called no thing. If no thing exists, what ceased such that it is called no thing?”

Conclusion

“Because thing and no thing are empty, all conditioned dharmas are empty; because conditioned dharmas are empty, unconditioned dharmas are empty too; because conditioned and unconditioned dharmas are empty, self is empty too.”

The elephant remains an elephant, with tusks, trunk, and ears all intact. Only beyond those eight things there is nothing further that receives them.

Composed by Nāgārjuna Bodhisattva and translated by the Tripiṭaka master Kumārajīva of Later Qin: Twelve Gate Treatise, fascicle one, “Examination of What Has Marks and What Lacks Marks, Gate Five,” Taishō T30n1568. A marker such as 〔T30 …〕 at the start of a paragraph is a Taishō page–column–line anchor.

1. Opening Verse

〔T30 0163c15〕 Next it should be said that all dharmas are empty. Why?

A mark does not mark what already has marks; nor does it mark what lacks marks; apart from what has marks and what lacks marks, what could a mark possibly mark?

2. A Mark Has Nothing to Mark in What Already Has Marks

A mark does not mark what already has marks. Why? If a dharma already possessed a mark, what further use would there be for a mark?

Furthermore, if a mark could mark what already has marks, there would be the fault of two layers of marks. The first would be the mark it already possessed; the second would be the later mark that came to mark it and make it something having a mark. Therefore, among things already having marks, a mark has nothing it can mark.

3. A Mark Likewise Has Nothing to Mark in What Lacks Marks

A mark likewise has nothing it can mark in what lacks marks. What dharma is called markless such that what has a mark could be used to mark it?

For example, an elephant has a pair of tusks, a hanging trunk, three swellings on its head, ears like winnowing baskets, a spine like a bent bow, a large hanging belly, hair at the tip of its tail, and four thick round feet. These are the marks of an elephant. Apart from these marks, no further elephant exists for a mark to mark.

Again, a horse has upright ears, a hanging mane, four hooved feet, and hair along the whole tail. Apart from these marks, no further horse exists for a mark to mark.

4. Outside the Two Positions There Is No Third

Thus, among what has marks, a mark has nothing to mark; among what lacks marks, a mark likewise has nothing to mark. Apart from what has marks and what lacks marks, no third kind of dharma exists for a mark to mark. Therefore, a mark has nothing to mark.

5. Mark and What Is Marked Are Both Empty

Since a mark has nothing to mark, the dharma called what is marked—the side indicated by the mark—cannot be established either. Why? It is precisely through a mark that one knows this matter is called what is marked.

Through this conditioned relation, both mark and what is marked are empty. Since mark and what is marked are empty, the myriad things are empty. Why? Apart from mark and what is marked, no thing can be spoken of.

6. Thing and No Thing

Since no thing exists, nonthing does not exist either. It is because a thing ceases that one speaks of no thing. If there is fundamentally no thing, what has ceased such that it is called no thing?

7. Conditioned, Unconditioned, and Self Are All Empty

Since thing and no thing are both empty, all conditioned dharmas are empty. Since conditioned dharmas are empty, unconditioned dharmas are empty too. Since conditioned and unconditioned dharmas are empty, the self is empty too.

We recognize things through marks. Seeing a pair of long tusks and a hanging trunk, we say it is an elephant; seeing upright ears and a hanging mane, we say it is a horse. A mark is the most ready instrument in our hands, so ready that ordinarily we never consider how it works.

This gate picks up that instrument and asks it one question: before you mark the thing you mean to indicate, does that thing already have a mark, or does it still lack one?

The author opens, “Next, all dharmas are empty.” The word “next” shows that this continues the preceding gates. Each gate has its own entrance, and this gate enters through the instrument itself. He asks “why?” and then gives a verse:

“A mark does not mark what has marks; nor does it mark what lacks marks; apart from what has and lacks marks, what could a mark possibly mark?”

The word mark appears six times in four lines, making the verse sound like a tongue twister, but its structure is very simple. The first two lines close one end each; the third says that no place exists beyond those two; the fourth leaves the instrument suspended by a question. The verse is not three arguments. It exhausts every place where one thing could stand. The extended prose below simply unfolds each of its four lines.

1. If It Already Has a Mark, What Does Your Mark Come to Do?

First end: “A mark does not mark a thing that has a mark.” Among things already possessing a mark, a mark does not mark.

Why? The author’s reason is only one short sentence: “If a dharma already has a mark, what further use is a mark?”

The force falls upon the word further. It does not say that marks are false. It says that here a mark has no work to do. If before you arrive a thing already possesses its own mark, then it is already recognizable. Your mark approaches something already recognized. The tool is not broken; it has no task.

Fearing that someone might think there is no harm in doing the work twice, the author takes another step: “If a mark could mark a thing that has a mark, there would be the fault of two marks.” Suppose you insist that this act of marking is effective and genuinely accomplishes its work. The thing then has two marks: “first, the mark already present; second, the mark that comes and marks it as having a mark.” The first is the mark the thing originally possessed; the second is the later mark that comes and makes it something marked.

See where the fault lies. It does not lie in the number two—an elephant already has tusks, trunk, and ears, and marks were never limited to one. The fault is that these two marks are two agents doing the same job. If the first mark already makes the thing marked, the later one is superfluous. If only the later one makes the thing marked, the first never truly did its work. The inference has no end: if the second mark alone counts, then the second itself already has a mark and requires a third to mark it. The author does not elaborate; he simply concludes, “Therefore, among things having marks, a mark has nothing it can mark.”

2. If It Lacks Marks, What Do You Give the Mark to Mark?

Once one end is blocked, the mind naturally retreats to the other: say that the thing originally lacks marks and receives them only when a mark arrives. The author answers just as directly: “Among things lacking marks, a mark likewise has nothing it can mark.”

What follows is the gate’s most important question: “What dharma is called markless such that what has a mark could mark it?”

What dharma is called markless, allowing you to mark it with what has a mark? The question seeks not a reason but an object. You say a markless thing waits to be marked; point it out. Once you can point it out, the point indicated is already a mark. If you cannot point it out, nothing waits there. This question does not ask for a reason. It asks for the thing itself.

The author does not remain in abstraction. He immediately brings in an elephant:

“An elephant has a pair of tusks, a hanging trunk, three swellings on its head, ears like winnowing baskets, a spine like a bent bow, a large hanging belly, hair at the tip of its tail, and four thick round feet. These are the elephant’s marks.”

Eight things are counted one by one: two tusks, one hanging trunk, three swellings upon the head, ears large as winnowing baskets, a back curved like a bow, a great hanging belly, hair at the tip of the tail, and four thick round feet. This is an ancient person’s complete list for recognizing an elephant—not a definition, but a method of recognition.

After counting, the author gives the next sentence: “Apart from these marks, there is no further elephant for a mark to mark.”

Remove these eight things. What remains for you to mark? No bare and markless elephant stands there waiting to be dressed in tusks and trunk. There is not first an elephant to which elephant-marks are later added. Once the elephant’s marks are exhausted, the elephant is exhausted.

The same question is then asked again with a horse: “A horse has upright ears, a hanging mane, four hooved feet, and hair along the entire tail.” Its ears are upright, its mane hangs, its four feet are hooves—unlike the elephant’s “four thick round feet”—and its tail is covered in hair. “Apart from these marks, there is no further horse for a mark to mark.”

Why give two examples? With only one, someone may suspect a peculiarity of the case. Elephant and horse, one massive and one familiar, have completely different forms, yet are counted in exactly the same way: the conditions of recognition are listed, and apart from those conditions, the thing does not exist. Two examples using the same method show that this is not a property of elephants but a property of marks.

3. Beyond the Two Positions There Is No Third

After traversing both ends, the author gathers them: “Thus among what has marks, a mark has nothing to mark; among what lacks marks, a mark likewise has nothing to mark.”

At this point a reader may still hope for an intermediate state—half marked and half unmarked, or perhaps “about to have marks but not yet.” The author closes that road as well: “Apart from what has marks and what lacks marks, there is no third dharma for a mark to mark.”

Having marks and lacking marks form an exhaustive division. A thing either already has marks or does not yet have them; there is no third status that can serve as what is marked. Since neither position receives a mark, and no place exists outside them, only one conclusion remains: “Therefore, a mark has nothing to mark.”

A mark has no place to mark. This does not mean that we cannot recognize elephants and horses—the author himself has just recognized an elephant through eight things. It means that marking cannot find an independently standing position from which to operate. There is not first a thing called mark that then acts upon another thing called object.

4. The Recognized Side Falls Empty Too

Having refuted this far, the author turns his hand and examines the other side: “Because a mark has nothing to mark, the dharma called what is marked is unestablished too.”

“What is marked” is the side indicated by the mark. Since the mark has nowhere to mark, the identity of “what is marked” cannot stand. The reason is one sentence: “Through a mark one knows that this matter is called what is marked.”

This sentence is the hinge of the gate. What is marked is not a preexisting thing to which a label is later attached. Its identity as “that which is marked” comes from the mark itself. Since the side of the mark cannot be established, the side of what is marked has no source for its identity. The two sides are not one real and one nominal; each gives the other its name.

Thus, “through this conditioned relation, mark and what is marked are both empty.”

The author next carries this step to the myriad things: “Because mark and what is marked are empty, the myriad things are empty too.” How does he move from marks to the myriad things? He answers: “Apart from mark and what is marked, no thing exists.”

Every “thing” of which we speak is nothing but something recognized through certain marks—the pair of mark and what is marked. Apart from this pair, no other collection called the myriad things exists. When mark and what is marked are empty, the myriad things are naturally empty as well.

5. Even “Nothing” Depends upon “Something” in Order to Stand

Once things are empty, the mind has one last place to go: say there is no thing, a nonthing. The author anticipates this step too: “Because no thing exists, nonthing does not exist either.”

His reason is extremely concise: “Because a thing ceases, it is called no thing. If no thing exists, what ceased such that it is called no thing?”

How does the name no thing arise? Only when a thing ceases does one speak of no thing. If fundamentally no thing exists, what ceased to give it that name? “Nothing” is a name that must be fed by “something.” When the side of something is empty, the side of nothing loses its support.

This move has the same intent as the preceding refutation of marks. There the identity of what is marked came from the mark; here the name no thing comes from thing. Whatever stands only through its opposite cannot in turn become its own ground.

6. Threefold Exhaustion

The final three sentences gather the argument upward:

“Because thing and no thing are empty, all conditioned dharmas are empty; because conditioned dharmas are empty, unconditioned dharmas are empty too; because conditioned and unconditioned dharmas are empty, self is empty too.”

Because thing and no thing are empty, all conditioned dharmas are empty, for conditioned dharmas are nothing but these matters of thing and no thing. Because conditioned dharmas are empty, unconditioned dharmas are empty too, for the name unconditioned is established against the conditioned, and the preceding gate already used the same reasoning for nirvāṇa. Once conditioned and unconditioned are empty, self is empty too, for self is spoken on the basis of these dharmas; when the dharmas afford no support, self has nowhere to rest.

The gate closes here. It began with the most ordinary instrument: where does a mark fall? The answer is that it cannot fall upon what has marks, cannot fall upon what lacks marks, and has no place outside the two. Follow this question to its end and it arrives at the final words: “because conditioned and unconditioned are empty, self is empty too.”

What Can a Reader Carry Away from This Gate?

First, remember the eight things. The author recognizes an elephant through tusks, trunk, head, ears, spine, belly, tail, and feet, omitting none. He first makes the method of recognition clear, then asks: apart from these, whom do you intend to mark?

Second, keep watch over the word “further.” “What further use is a mark?” This refutation does not say that the mark is wrong, but that at this position it has no work to do. Having no work and doing the work wrongly are two different things.

Third, do not search for a third position. Between two difficulties the hand most readily reaches toward the middle. The author expressly says, “there is no third dharma for a mark to mark.” Having and lacking marks exhaust what can be said.

Fourth, notice that “no thing” is a name as well. To think one can retreat from existence to nonexistence is to treat “nothing” as solid ground. “Because a thing ceases, it is called no thing”—even its name is borrowed.

Carried Forward: Illumination from Treatises along the Same Axis

The preceding is the meaning of this gate itself. What follows is a cross-light from the axis of the Three Treatises. The illumination is not this treatise; it simply records without deciding how the same doctrinal meaning is stated elsewhere.

When the Treatise on the Middle, “Examination of the Six Elements,” discusses space, it follows almost the same road. It first establishes the side lacking marks:

“This dharma without marks does not exist anywhere; within a dharma without marks, a mark has nothing to mark.”

It then says that neither side receives a mark and no further place exists outside them:

“Within what has marks and lacks marks, a mark has nowhere to abide; apart from what has marks and lacks marks, it abides nowhere else.”

The example in that treatise’s extended prose is likewise an animal, though there it is a cow: “Having a hump and horns, hair at the end of its tail, and hanging dewlap beneath its neck—these are called a cow’s marks. Apart from these marks, no cow exists.” It first counts hump, horns, tail hair, and hanging flesh beneath the neck, then says that no cow exists apart from them. The method is exactly the same as this gate’s counting eight marks of an elephant and four of a horse. The difference lies in what is addressed. That chapter examines space among the six elements and thus begins by asking about “the time before the mark of space existed.” This gate examines marks themselves and therefore directly establishes its objection through what has and lacks marks. The road is the same; the faculties addressed differ.

As for the specialized commentary on this gate, Jizang’s Commentary on the Twelve Gate Treatise is indeed extant. Its text was not independently rechecked in this round, so its existence alone is recorded without excerpt.

Read together along one axis, each remains in its own place. The meaning of this gate is still governed by this gate’s own extended prose.