十二門論 觀一異門第六

The four lines on the gate read:

“Mark and what is marked cannot be obtained as identical or different; if neither identity nor difference exists, how could these two be established?”

The Opponent States the Whole Case

“Among things, sometimes the mark is precisely what is marked; sometimes the mark differs from what is marked; sometimes one part is the mark and the remainder what is marked.” Identity, difference, and part are set out together, each with concrete examples: consciousness and feeling; nirvāṇa and faith; right view and arising, abiding, and cessation.

The Side of Identity

The two positions are first named separately: “Because it is knowable through a mark, it is called what is marked; that which is used is called the mark.” One side is used and one is what the use reaches. How could they be one? “No thing can know itself, just as a finger cannot touch itself and an eye cannot see itself.”

Two cuts remain. Once one says “this is the mark and this what is marked,” two are already present within the sentence. And “the mark is the cause while what is marked is the effect”; to call them one makes cause and effect a single entity, yet “in fact they are not one.”

The Side of Difference

The author returns the opponent’s own words: “You say that the cessation of craving is the mark of nirvāṇa; you do not say that craving is the mark of nirvāṇa.” The posited mark was already within what is marked. Faith is the same: “If faith lacked faith, these three things would not exist.” Apart from faith, the three acts mark nothing. One further cut reaches every case: “the mark would itself require another mark, leading to infinite regress.”

One Lamp and One Part

The opponent calls upon a lamp: “A lamp can illuminate itself and also another.” The author disposes of it in two sentences: “it was already refuted under the three conditioned marks,” and “it contradicts your prior statement.” The person who claimed difference now claims that the mark can mark itself.

A partial mark seems a third road, but “this meaning falls either within identity or within difference.” Cutting smaller still leaves identity and difference.

The Bar

Once the three proposals are exhausted, the author drops the bar: “there is no third dharma that establishes mark and what is marked.” With nowhere for them to rest, “because these two are empty, all dharmas are empty.”

What is empty is not recognition but intrinsic nature. We still know fire from smoke and faith from three acts. Only the two ends, recognizing and recognized, no longer possess separate entities standing by themselves. Here the gate closes.

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

1. Opening Verse: Mark and What Is Marked Cannot Be Obtained as Identical or Different

〔T30 0164a09〕 Next, all dharmas are empty. Why?

Mark and what is marked cannot be obtained as identical or different; if neither identity nor difference exists, how could these two be established?

The mark and what is marked cannot be obtained when said to be one, and cannot be obtained when said to be two different things. Since neither identity nor difference can be obtained, the two cannot be established. Thus mark and what is marked are both empty. Since mark and what is marked are empty, all dharmas are empty.

2. Objection: They Are Either the Same, Different, or Partial

The questioner says: Mark and what is marked have always been established. Why say that they are not? You say they cannot be obtained as one or as different. I now say that among things, sometimes the mark is precisely what is marked, sometimes the mark differs from what is marked, and sometimes one part is taken as the mark while the remainder is what is marked.

For example, the mark of consciousness is consciousness. Apart from the consciousness being used, there is no other consciousness. The mark of feeling is likewise feeling; apart from the feeling being used, there is no other feeling. Cases like these are ones in which the mark is precisely what is marked.

As the Buddha taught, the cessation of craving is called nirvāṇa. Craving is a conditioned and contaminated dharma, while cessation is an unconditioned and uncontaminated dharma. Again, a person of faith has three marks: delight in approaching good people, delight in wishing to hear the Dharma, and delight in practicing giving. Because these three are bodily and verbal activities, they belong to the form aggregate; because faith is a mental factor, it belongs to the formations aggregate. These are cases in which the mark differs from what is marked.

Right view is the mark of the path, yet it is only one part within the entire path. Arising, abiding, and cessation are marks of conditioned dharmas, yet these three are also only one part within conditioned dharmas. In such cases, one part of what is marked is taken and called the mark.

Thus, the mark is either precisely what is marked, differs from what is marked, or is one part of what is marked. Your claim that neither identity nor difference is established and therefore mark and what is marked are unestablished is incorrect.

3. Answer Refuting “The Mark Is Precisely What Is Marked”

The respondent says: Your claim that in some cases the mark is precisely what is marked, as with consciousness and the rest, is incorrect. Why? Because it is knowable through a mark, it is called what is marked; that which is used in order to know it is called the mark. No thing can know itself, just as a finger cannot touch itself and an eye cannot see itself. Therefore your claim that consciousness is both mark and what is marked is incorrect.

Furthermore, if the mark were precisely what is marked, one should not distinguish and say, “this is the mark, and this is what is marked.” Once one distinguishes and says, “this is the mark, and this is what is marked,” one should not say that the mark is precisely what is marked.

Furthermore, if the mark were precisely what is marked, cause and effect would become one. Why? The mark is the cause and what is marked is the effect, so the two would become one. Yet in fact they are not one. Therefore the claim that the mark is precisely what is marked is incorrect.

4. Answer Refuting “The Mark Differs from What Is Marked”

Your claim that the mark differs from what is marked is also incorrect. You say that the cessation of craving is the mark of nirvāṇa; you do not say that craving is the mark of nirvāṇa. If you said craving was the mark of nirvāṇa, then one could say that mark and what is marked differ. Since you say the cessation of craving is nirvāṇa’s mark, you cannot say that mark and what is marked differ.

Again, you say that a person of faith has three marks, but those three marks do not differ from faith. If faith on the side of faith did not exist, these three acts would not exist. Therefore one cannot say that mark and what is marked differ.

Again, if mark and what is marked differed, the mark itself would require another mark, and this would continue in turn to infinite regress. This is incorrect. Therefore mark and what is marked cannot be different.

5. The Question and Answer concerning the Lamp Simile

The questioner says: A lamp can illuminate itself and also illuminate other things. A mark is likewise able to be its own mark and the mark of another dharma.

The respondent says: Your lamp simile was already refuted under the three conditioned marks. Moreover, you contradict your earlier statement. Above, you said that mark and what is marked differ; now you say that a mark can mark itself and also another dharma. This is incorrect.

Again, you say that one part of what is marked serves as its mark. This is incorrect. Why? This meaning must fall either within identity or within difference; since identity and difference have already been refuted, one should know that the account of a partial mark is refuted as well.

6. Conclusion: Mark and What Is Marked Are Both Empty; All Dharmas Are Empty

Thus, through various conditioned relations one knows that mark and what is marked cannot be obtained as one or as different. No third dharma exists that can establish mark and what is marked. Therefore mark and what is marked are both empty. Since these two are empty, all dharmas are empty.

We recognize things through marks. Seeing smoke, we know there is fire; smoke is the mark. Seeing someone constantly visit a monastery, ask everyone about the Dharma, and give whenever meeting suffering, we say that person has faith; those three acts are marks. The word mark is used plainly in the treatise: through it a dharma is recognized. The side recognized is what the author calls “what is marked.”

This gate asks only about the seam between these two sides, mark and what is marked. Are they the same thing? If they are the same, recognizing and recognized are not distinct, so recognition has nothing upon which to operate. If they are two things, each independently established, why does the mark happen to indicate that particular dharma? When the author opens this seam and looks inside, he finds that neither identity nor difference can hold the two sides. The pair of names, mark and what is marked, therefore has no self-standing foundation.

1. Opening Verse: Neither Identity nor Difference Can Be Obtained

Like the other gates, this one begins by establishing its principle: “All dharmas are empty. Why?” Then comes the verse:

“Mark and what is marked cannot be obtained as identical or different; if neither identity nor difference exists, how could these two be established?”

The verse says only two things. First, neither identity nor difference can be obtained between mark and what is marked. Second, if neither identity nor difference exists, the two have no means of establishment.

The extended prose lays these statements flat: “The mark and what is marked cannot be obtained as one and cannot be obtained as different. If neither identity nor difference can be obtained, these two are unestablished. Thus mark and what is marked are both empty.” It then moves one step farther: “Because mark and what is marked are empty, all dharmas are empty.”

This inference matters. Mark and what is marked are not two obscure things. They are the positions occupied whenever any dharma is known: every dharma spoken lies on the side of what is marked, and whatever is used to speak it lies on the side of mark. If this pair lacks intrinsic nature, all dharmas established through the pair lack intrinsic nature too. The gate seems to refute only two terms, but it comes to rest upon all dharmas.

2. The Opponent’s Three Proposals: An Honest Inventory

The questioner is not vague. He exhausts the possibilities in one breath: “Among things, sometimes the mark is precisely what is marked; sometimes the mark differs from what is marked; sometimes one part is the mark and the remainder what is marked.” The mark is what is marked; the mark differs from what is marked; the mark is one part of what is marked—identity, difference, and part exhaust the proposals. Each comes with examples rather than empty assertion.

For the first proposal he gives consciousness and feeling: “The mark of consciousness is consciousness; apart from the consciousness used, there is no further consciousness.” What marks consciousness? Cognition. Yet outside cognition there is no separate consciousness standing there; mark and dharma are one. Feeling is the same: receiving is feeling, and apart from feeling that receives, there is no other feeling.

For the second proposal he gives nirvāṇa and faith. The cessation of craving is called nirvāṇa, yet craving is conditioned and contaminated while cessation is unconditioned and uncontaminated. Mark and what is marked belong to two categories; how could they not differ? Faith is even clearer. The three marks of faith are delight in approaching good people, delight in hearing the Dharma, and delight in practicing giving. “Because these three are bodily and verbal activities, they belong to the form aggregate; because faith is a mental factor, it belongs to the formations aggregate.” The marks lie in the form aggregate, what is marked in the formations aggregate. Two aggregates are plainly distinct; if this is not difference, what is?

For the third proposal he gives right view and the three conditioned marks: “Right view is the mark of the path, but within the path it is one part.” Right view is indeed a mark of the path, yet it is only one of eight factors. Arising, abiding, and cessation are marks of conditioned dharmas, and these three are likewise only a small part within the vast field of conditioned dharmas.

After listing the three proposals, the opponent concludes that the claim “mark and what is marked are unestablished because identity and difference are unestablished” is incorrect.

This inventory deserves respect. It is not sophistry; it honestly states the three ways recognition appears in ordinary life. Sometimes we speak as though mark and marked were one, sometimes as though they were two, and sometimes as though one were a part. The author does not say that these expressions cannot be used conventionally. He asks whether any one can stand as the real relation between mark and what is marked.

3. A Finger Cannot Touch Itself; an Eye Cannot See Itself

He first refutes the proposal of identity. The author begins by explaining the origin of the two names: “Because it is knowable through a mark, it is called what is marked; that which is used is called the mark.” Through one side a dharma is known; the side known is called what is marked, and what is used is called the mark. Once the names are established, agent and object are separated: one side is used, the other is reached by that use.

Then come the gate’s only two similes, both extremely short: “No thing can know itself, just as a finger cannot touch itself and an eye cannot see itself.”

A finger touches everything yet cannot touch itself; an eye sees everything yet cannot see itself. This is not that the finger lacks sensitivity or the eye lacks brightness. The acts of touching and seeing themselves require two sides. When agent and object are the same entity, the act cannot be accomplished. If consciousness were both mark and what is marked, it would have to recognize itself, exactly like a finger touching itself or an eye seeing itself.

4. Once Distinguished, They Cannot Be Called One

The second cut is lighter but harder to avoid: “If the mark were precisely what is marked, one should not distinguish and say, ‘this is the mark and this is what is marked.’” Conversely, “if one distinguishes this as the mark and this as what is marked, one should not say the mark is precisely what is marked.”

This cut uses the opponent’s own statement. Once he says, “the mark is precisely what is marked,” the sentence already contains two terms and two positions. If they truly were one thing, the sentence could not arise. The sentence asserting one has itself already stated two. The author needs no additional reason; he simply returns the opponent’s words.

5. The Mark Is Cause; What Is Marked Is Effect

The third cut turns to cause and effect: “If the mark were precisely what is marked, cause and effect would be one. Why? The mark is cause and what is marked is effect, so the two would be one.”

Why is the mark cause and what is marked effect? Because it is through the mark that the dharma becomes known. The mark is relied upon first; the dharma then occupies the position of the knowable. There is an order and a dependence between them. If mark and what is marked are one, this order collapses and cause becomes effect. The author judges in only three words: “yet in fact they are not one.”

These words should be read with the preceding gates. The author already said under causes and conditions that in ordinary things cause precedes and effect follows. A cause is a cause precisely by not being its effect. Once mark is identified with what is marked, the pair of cause and effect disappears as well. The first proposal has now been exhausted.

6. Your Own Words Say “Cessation of Craving,” Not “Craving”

He turns to the second proposal, that mark differs from what is marked. Again, the author does not establish another principle but returns to the opponent’s example.

In the nirvāṇa example, the author points to the opponent’s own words: “You say that the cessation of craving is the mark of nirvāṇa; you do not say that craving is the mark of nirvāṇa.” Your mark is the cessation of craving, not craving. The distinction is subtle but governs the whole argument. If you said craving was nirvāṇa’s mark, the mark would lie in the conditioned and contaminated while what is marked lay in the unconditioned and uncontaminated; the two would indeed be apart. “If you said craving is nirvāṇa’s mark, one could say that mark and what is marked differ.” But you said cessation of craving. The cessation of craving is precisely nirvāṇa itself and not outside it. Therefore, “if you say that the cessation of craving is nirvāṇa’s mark, you cannot say mark and what is marked differ.”

The opponent tried to prove difference through craving and cessation belonging to two categories. The author looks and finds that the mark actually posited already lies on the side of what is marked. The author has changed no word for him; the opponent said it himself.

7. If Faith Lacked Faith, These Three Things Would Not Exist

The faith example is refuted in the same way, through the opponent’s own words. The three marks and faith “do not differ,” for one reason only: “If faith lacked faith, these three things would not exist.”

Approaching good people, hearing the Dharma, and giving occur through body and speech and may appear separate from faith in mind. But remove faith and these three cease to be marks of faith. A person may approach good people, hear the Dharma, or give for other reasons; then those acts mark nothing called faith. They can serve as faith’s marks precisely because they do not separate from faith. Belonging to the form and formations aggregates concerns their classification, not that this pair can be divided into two independently standing things.

8. The Mark Would Require Another Mark, Leading to Infinite Regress

The third cut reaches every case: “Furthermore, if mark and what is marked differed, the mark itself would require another mark, leading to infinite regress.”

If the mark truly were another thing external to what it marks, then it too would be a dharma. As a dharma, it needs a mark to be recognized; that mark is another dharma and needs a further mark. The road has no end. The author judges only, “This is incorrect. Therefore mark and what is marked cannot differ.”

The author already used infinite regress when discussing the three conditioned marks. Whenever the marking side is established as an independent thing, this road of regress opens by itself. The second proposal is now exhausted.

9. The Lamp Simile: Can It Illuminate Itself?

At this point the opponent changes route and brings forward a powerful simile: “A lamp can illuminate itself and also illuminate another; likewise a mark can mark itself and also another.”

A lamp truly appears to work this way. Lit in a dark room, it illuminates everything in the room and illuminates itself. If a lamp can illuminate itself, why can a mark not mark itself?

The author’s answer has two parts, both extremely short. First: “Your lamp simile was already refuted under the three conditioned marks.” The treatise has already addressed this simile when discussing arising, abiding, and cessation. There it considered light and darkness: “the lamp itself contains no darkness, and the place occupied by its light contains no darkness either.” Darkness must be broken for the name illumination to arise. With no darkness to break, self-illumination points nowhere. The conclusion there is that “the lamp neither breaks its own darkness nor another’s; therefore it neither illuminates itself nor another.” The simile need not be refuted again in this gate; it has already fallen in the preceding one.

The second part is more direct: “Moreover, you contradict your prior statement. Above you said mark and what is marked differ, but now you say the mark can mark itself and another.” You just maintained their difference, yet now say that the mark can be its own mark. If the mark marks itself, it is also its own what-is-marked. Where, then, is the difference? The two claims strike each other.

10. A Partial Mark Still Falls within Identity or Difference

The final return is to the third proposal, the part. The author handles it in only two sentences: “This meaning falls either within identity or within difference. Since identity and difference have already been refuted, one should know that a partial mark is refuted too.”

You take one part of what is marked as its mark. Is that part identical to or different from the whole? If identical, every cut used to refute identity applies unchanged; if different, every cut against difference applies unchanged. A partial relation sounds like a third kind, but only cuts once more between identity and difference; the two resulting pieces still stand as identical or different. Right view and the path, or arising, abiding, and cessation and conditioned dharmas, are all the same.

11. There Is No Third Dharma

Once the three proposals are exhausted, the author closes the gate: “Through these various conditioned relations, mark and what is marked cannot be obtained as one and cannot be obtained as different. There is no third dharma that establishes them. Therefore mark and what is marked are both empty.”

The words “there is no third dharma” are the bar across this gate. After identity and difference are refuted, the mind often retains one hope: perhaps a relation exists that is neither identical nor different. The author expressly says there is no third dharma. Between mark and what is marked no relation beyond identity or difference can be established. Since neither can be obtained, this pair has nowhere to rest.

The final sentence thus answers the opening: “because these two are empty, all dharmas are empty.”

What Can a Reader Carry Away from This Gate?

First, recognition is always two-sided. A finger cannot touch itself and an eye cannot see itself; this does not describe defective faculties, but that agent and object cannot be the same entity. Every account claiming that something recognizes or proves itself stands beneath this cut.

Second, attend to the author’s method of refutation. He establishes almost no new principle. In three of four movements he returns the opponent’s own sentence: you said cessation of craving; you distinguished the two; you said they differ. The conditions of a statement follow as soon as the statement is uttered.

Third, know that “part” is not a retreat. Driven into the dilemma of identity and difference, one readily says that things are neither completely the same nor completely different. This gate closes that road beforehand: part merely divides identity and difference into smaller pieces; it does not produce a third thing.

Fourth, remember that what is empty is not recognition but intrinsic nature. The author never says one cannot know fire through smoke or faith through three acts. He asks whether, when you speak of mark and what is marked, each side possesses an entity standing by itself. If so, identity and difference cannot be avoided. If not, knowing a dharma through a mark continues unchanged, only without a foundation.

Carried Forward: Illumination along the Same Axis

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

The simile of a lamp illuminating itself also appears in the Treatise on the Middle, “Examination of the Three Marks,” where it is used to prove that the dharma of arising can produce itself:

“As a lamp can illuminate itself and also illuminate another, so the dharma of arising produces itself and produces another.”

That treatise first refutes it through light and darkness:

“Within the lamp itself there is no darkness; where it abides there is no darkness either; breaking darkness is called illumination—without darkness there is no illumination.”

It then turns the objection around:

“If a lamp can illuminate itself and also illuminate another, darkness should likewise darken itself and also darken another.”

If a lamp, because it opposes darkness, can illuminate itself and another, then darkness, because it opposes light, should cover itself and another. Yet darkness does not cover itself, and that passage concludes, “therefore the lamp simile is incorrect.”

That chapter obstructs the self-production of the dharma of arising; this gate obstructs the self-marking of a mark. The same lamp illuminates different questions in the two places, while the reason it fails is shared. The meaning of this gate remains governed by its own extended prose.