十二門論 觀三時門第十一

At the eleventh of the twelve gates, the author changes the form of the question. He does not ask what a dharma is, but only this: at what exact moment do cause and effect meet? “Cause and the dharma that has a cause cannot be found to arise before, after, or at the same time.”

The Verse Lists Only Three Words

“If a dharma is before, after, or simultaneous, and none can be established, how could this dharma be established as arising from a cause?”

Before, after, together—these exhaust the forms time can supply.

Passing through Each Position

At the moment when the cause stands alone beforehand, what it is said to produce has not yet appeared: “At the prior time of the cause there is no dharma that has a cause; for what is it a cause?”

Reverse the order and place the effect first: it is already established without awaiting a cause. “When there is no cause, the dharma that has a cause is already established; what use is the cause?”

Only simultaneity remains. A bull’s horns grow at the same time, yet “left and right are not causes of one another.” Being present together does not mean that one emerges from the other. Once all three positions have been traversed, the author judges: “Therefore cause and effect cannot be found in any of the three times.”

The Other Side Turns the Blade Around

It is a skillful move: if the three times overturn cause and effect, use the same examination against your refutation. If refutation comes first, what does it refute? If what is refuted comes first, what use is refutation? If they are simultaneous, they resemble a bull’s horns. “Thus refutation does not depend on what can be refuted, and what can be refuted does not depend on refutation.”

The author answers calmly: “If dharmas are empty, there is neither refutation nor what can be refuted. I now teach emptiness, so you establish what I teach.” The next sentence marks the boundary with perfect clarity: “I do not say that refutation and what can be refuted determinately exist; therefore this challenge should not be made.”

—He never established a separate, intrinsically existent thesis of his own. The knife was handed over by the other side; when its work is done, it is returned.

Three Things Seen before One’s Eyes

A potter making a jar, a teacher named through a disciple, and a lamp with illumination: manufacture, human relation, and natural event, each assigned to one temporal position.

All three answers land at the same place: was the referent of the relational name present then? “Before there is a jar, for what is the potter a cause?” “Before there is a disciple, who is the teacher?”

As for lamp and illumination, they are themselves a simultaneously arising pair and therefore the very point under question: “This is likewise a cause identical with what is doubted. Since lamp and illumination arise at the same time, how could they cause one another?”

At the End

“Because conditions are empty in this way, know that every conditioned dharma, every unconditioned dharma, and every sentient being is empty.”

The first gate spoke of “self”; this gate speaks of “sentient beings.” A sentient being is named through the line that links before and after, and every link in that line must pass the examination of the three times.

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

1. A Further Meaning: Every Dharma Is Empty

〔T30 0166c19〕 Next, every dharma is empty.

On what basis is this said? Cause and the dharma that exists through a cause cannot be found to arise at a prior time, at a later time, or at the same time. Therefore it is said:

2. The Verse of This Gate

  If a dharma is said to be before, after, or together with its cause, and none of these can be established,   how could this dharma be established as arising from a cause?

3. The First Time: The Cause Exists First, Then the Dharma That Has a Cause

The claim that a cause exists first and only afterward the dharma that has a cause cannot be sustained.

Why? If the cause exists first and something later arises from it, then while the cause is present beforehand, the dharma that has a cause does not yet exist. Since it does not yet exist, for what is this a cause?

4. The Second Time: The Dharma That Has a Cause Exists First, Then the Cause

If the dharma that has a cause exists before the cause, then while the cause is absent, that dharma is already established. Since it is already established, what use is the cause?

5. The Third Time: Cause and the Dharma That Has a Cause Are Simultaneous

If cause and the dharma that has a cause are simultaneous, there is still no cause.

It is like a bull’s two horns, which grow at the same time: the left and right horns are not causes of one another.

In the same way, the cause is not the cause of the effect and the effect is not the effect of the cause—precisely because they arise at the same time.

Therefore, neither cause nor effect can be found in any of the three times.

6. The Counterchallenge: Your Refutation Cannot Pass the Three Times Either

The questioner says: “Your refutation of cause and effect likewise cannot be established in any of the three times. If refutation exists first and what can be refuted afterward, then what can be refuted does not yet exist—what does this refutation refute? If what can be refuted exists first and refutation afterward, what can be refuted is already established—what use is refutation? If refutation and what can be refuted are simultaneous, there is likewise no causation, as with a bull’s two horns arising at the same time, left and right not causing one another. Thus refutation does not depend on what can be refuted, and what can be refuted does not depend on refutation.”

To unpack this sentence by sentence: the three-time examination you use to refute cause and effect likewise fails when applied to your own act of refutation.

If the refuting argument exists first and the proposition to be refuted only afterward, then while the refutation stands first, the proposition to be refuted does not yet exist. Whom does this refutation refute?

If the proposition to be refuted exists first and the refuting argument only afterward, then the proposition has already been established. What use is the refutation?

If refutation and what can be refuted are simultaneous, there is likewise no causation, just as a bull’s horns arise together and left and right do not cause one another.

Thus refutation does not stand by depending on what can be refuted, nor what can be refuted by depending on refutation.

7. Answer: I Never Said That Refutation and What Can Be Refuted Determinately Exist

〔T30 0167a04〕 The answerer says: “The same fault occurs in the refutation and what can be refuted that you posit. If dharmas are empty, there is neither refutation nor what can be refuted. I now teach emptiness, so you establish what I teach. If I said that refutation and what can be refuted determinately exist, you should raise this challenge; because I do not say that they determinately exist, you should not raise it.”

To unpack this sentence by sentence: the refutation and what can be refuted that you posit contain the very fault you have just described.

If every dharma is empty, there is neither a refuting act nor something refuted. What I now teach is precisely emptiness; therefore, your challenge instead establishes what I teach.

Only if I said that refutation and what can be refuted determinately exist should you make this objection. I do not say they determinately exist, so you should not make it.

8. The Questioner Offers Three Things Seen before One’s Eyes

The questioner says: “One directly sees a prior cause, as when a potter makes a jar. There is also a later cause, as when a teacher exists because of a disciple: only after teaching the disciple does one later recognize that this is the disciple. There is also a simultaneous cause, as with a lamp and its illumination. Therefore the claim that prior, later, and simultaneous causes cannot be found is untenable.”

To unpack this sentence by sentence: one sees a prior cause with one’s own eyes, as when a potter produces a jar.

There is also a later cause, as a teacher exists because of a disciple. After the disciple has been taught, people only later recognize this one as the disciple.

There is also a simultaneous cause, as with a lamp and its illumination.

Your claim that a prior, later, or simultaneous cause cannot be found is untenable.

9. Answer: Not One of the Three Examples Can Stand

The answerer says: “The analogy of a potter making a jar is untenable. Why? Before a jar exists, for what is the potter a cause? As with the potter, no prior cause can be found. A later cause likewise cannot be found: before there is a disciple, who is the teacher? Therefore a later cause cannot be found. If a simultaneous cause is said to be like lamp and illumination, this too is a cause identical with what is doubted. Since lamp and illumination arise at the same time, how could they cause one another? Because conditions are empty in this way, know that every conditioned dharma, every unconditioned dharma, and every sentient being is empty.”

To unpack this sentence by sentence: the analogy of a potter making a jar cannot be established.

Why? Before there is a jar, for what is the potter a cause?

Since the case of the potter is so, every prior cause likewise cannot be found.

A later cause is equally unfindable. Before there is a disciple, who is this disciple’s teacher? Therefore a later cause cannot be found.

If a simultaneous cause is said to resemble lamp and illumination, that is the very cause identical with what is under doubt. Since lamp and illumination arise at the same time, how could they cause one another?

10. Concluding Sentence

Because conditions are empty in this way, know that every conditioned dharma, every unconditioned dharma, and every sentient being is empty.

Through the preceding ten gates, the author has repeatedly asked whether a given dharma possesses intrinsic nature. At Gate Eleven, the question suddenly turns: it no longer asks directly what cause and effect are in themselves, but instead asks—if you say an effect arises from a cause, at what time do cause and effect meet?

There are only three possibilities: cause first and effect afterward; effect first and cause afterward; or cause and effect at the same time. Once all three paths have been traversed, no fourth remains. This gate walks each path before the reader.

The author’s opening sentence states the point of entry with perfect economy: “Cause and the dharma that has a cause cannot be found to arise at a prior time, a later time, or the same time.”

The phrase “dharma that has a cause” must first be read precisely. It does not mean “effect” in a loose sense, but “that which exists through a cause and is called what it is only in dependence upon that cause.” From the outset, the author refuses to use the isolated word “effect,” because what this gate examines is the line connecting cause and effect. If the line cannot join, the names at both ends lose their footing.

1. The Opening Verse: Before, After, and Together Are Blocked at Once

The author gives the verse:

  “If a dharma is before, after, or together, and none can be established,   how could this dharma be established as arising from a cause?”

The first two lines enumerate every possibility: before, after, together. These three words are not arranged casually. They exhaust every temporal form that “meeting” could take. One thing is either before, after, or—if neither before nor after—simultaneous.

The last two lines ask one question: if none of these three positions can be established, on what basis could the statement “this dharma arises from a cause” stand?

The force of the verse must be seen. It does not first concede an existent cause and existent effect and then arrange a time for them. It says: your phrase “arises from a cause” can be spoken only by relying on one of these three temporal positions. When all three collapse, the phrase has nowhere to land.

2. The First Time: The Cause Is Prior—At That Time the Effect Does Not Exist, So Whose Cause Is It?

The author begins with the path most congenial to common sense, the one people naturally state first: cause first, effect afterward. His judgment has only a few words: “A prior cause followed by a dharma that has a cause is untenable.”

The reason is one question: “If a cause exists first and something afterward arises from it, then at the prior time of the cause there is no dharma that has a cause. For what is it a cause?”

The question looks light but bears enormous weight. “Cause” is not a quality that belongs to a thing in isolation. It is a name that stands only in relation to something else. A father is father in relation to a child; before there is a child, that person is not a father. In the same way, something is called a “cause” because a “dharma that has a cause” stands in relation to it.

Now you say that the cause is prior and the effect later. During the interval in which the cause stands alone, the effect does not yet exist. At that moment you possess only a thing with nothing yet opposite it. On what basis do you already call it a cause?

People commonly answer: “It will produce an effect later, so it is already a cause now.” The author does not accept this sentence. The future effect does not yet exist; the statement “will produce later” itself becomes valid only when the effect has arisen. To reach backward from something not yet there and name the present thing by it is not genuinely to have secured the name.

3. The Second Time: The Effect Is Prior—It Is Already Established, So What Use Is the Cause?

When the first path fails, one naturally tries the second: then let the effect precede and the cause follow. The author again asks only one question: “If the dharma that has a cause exists first and the cause afterward, then while there is no cause the dharma that has a cause is already established. What use is the cause?”

This question is shorter still and harder to evade. While the cause is absent, the “dharma that has a cause” has already established itself. Since it stands without relying on the cause, the later cause is superfluous—a cause that is not needed is no longer a cause.

The illness in this path lies even deeper. If the effect is established without a cause, it is no longer a “dharma that has a cause.” Once the name is lost, this route no longer even possesses the thing it proposed to discuss. The author need not add a second sentence.

4. The Third Time: Simultaneous—the Analogy of the Bull’s Horns

With the two sequential paths collapsed, only simultaneity remains. The author answers decisively: “If cause and the dharma that has a cause are simultaneous, there is likewise no cause, as when a bull’s horns arise at the same time and left and right do not cause one another.”

The gate’s one analogy appears here, and it belongs to the treatise itself: a bull’s two horns.

No one denies that the horns grow at the same time. When the left horn is present, the right horn is present. They face and correspond to one another and appear intimately paired. Yet the left horn does not produce the right, nor the right the left. Simultaneity gives copresence; it does not give an origin from one another.

The mind often holds a vague assumption: when two things always appear together, one of them must cause the other. The horns separate precisely these two ideas. Appearing at the same time is one matter; one thing emerging from the other is another. No matter how close the first relation, it does not yield the second.

The author therefore concludes: “Thus the cause is not the cause of the effect, and the effect is not the effect of the cause, because they arise at the same time.” Of two simultaneous things, this one does not become the cause of that one, nor that one the effect of this one.

Having traversed all three paths, he gives the general judgment: “Therefore cause and effect cannot be found in any of the three times.”

5. The Counterattack: Your Refutation Cannot Pass These Three Times Either

At this point the questioner makes an intelligent move. He stops defending cause and effect and turns the author’s blade back upon its wielder: “Your refutation of cause and effect likewise cannot be established in any of the three times.”

He then applies the same three-time analysis to “refutation” and “what can be refuted” without changing a word: “If refutation exists first and what can be refuted afterward, then what can be refuted does not yet exist—what does this refutation refute? If what can be refuted exists first and refutation afterward, what can be refuted is already established—what use is refutation? If refutation and what can be refuted are simultaneous, there is likewise no cause, as when a bull’s horns arise together and left and right do not cause one another.”

—If refutation is first, the object to be refuted does not yet exist; whom does your refutation refute? If what is refuted is first, it has already established itself; what use is refutation? If both are simultaneous, they resemble the bull’s horns, left and right not causing one another. The questioner concludes neatly: “Thus refutation does not depend on what can be refuted, and what can be refuted does not depend on refutation.”

This is a challenge of great weight in the treatise. It no longer disputes a particular dharma; it disputes the author’s right to speak. If you can overturn cause and effect with the three times, I can overturn your inquiry with the very same three times. If the tool itself cannot stand, everything you dismantled with it must collapse as well.

Every treatise that speaks of emptiness must answer when it reaches this point.

6. Answer: Precisely Because Refutation and What Is Refuted Are Empty, What I Say Stands

The author’s answer has two parts. The first is one sentence: “The same fault occurs in the refutation and what can be refuted that you posit.”

This is not a retort. It first makes the fact clear: the challenge through the three times is fatal to an “intrinsically existent refutation.” Since you imagine refutation for me as an existent thing, the fault belongs to the refutation you posit, not to mine.

The second part is the direct answer and the most important words in the gate: “If dharmas are empty, there is neither refutation nor what can be refuted. I now teach emptiness, so you establish what I teach.”

—If every dharma is empty, then neither refutation nor what can be refuted exists intrinsically. What I now teach is precisely emptiness. Your challenge does not injure my account; it states for me the very point I intend to make.

The questioner thinks he is dismantling a house, yet in fact he is fixing the last rafter into place for the author. What he proves is that “refutation too lacks intrinsic nature”—exactly what the author has been saying throughout.

The author then marks the boundary with perfect clarity: “If I said that refutation and what can be refuted determinately exist, you should raise this challenge; because I do not say they determinately exist, you should not raise it.”

This sentence is the treatise’s own confession of method: the author has never erected a separate, intrinsically existent thesis of his own outside the opponent’s position. His refutation follows the intrinsic nature posited by the other side and presses it to the point where it reveals its own impossibility. Once refutation has completed its work, it need not remain. If one continued to clutch an intrinsically existent knife, that knife would eventually cut its holder.

This also explains why in the preceding movement the author returns the fault with a single sentence: there never was such a knife in his hand.

7. The Questioner Appeals Again to What Is Seen: Potter, Teacher and Disciple, Lamp and Illumination

Unable to prevail in doctrinal argument, the questioner appeals to direct sight. The move is natural and powerful: regardless of your analysis, when I open my eyes I see three kinds of cause.

“One sees a prior cause, as when a potter makes a jar.” The potter is there first and the jar is completed later: a prior cause.

“There is also a later cause, as a teacher exists because of a disciple; after teaching the disciple, one later recognizes this as the disciple.” A teacher exists because there is a disciple, and only after the disciple has been taught do people later recognize this relation: a later cause.

“There is also a simultaneous cause, as with lamp and illumination.” When the lamp is present, illumination is present at the same time: a simultaneous cause.

Three examples, each neatly assigned to one time. The closing challenge presses the point: “The claim that a prior, later, or simultaneous cause cannot be found is untenable.”

Notice where the three examples are drawn from. A potter making a jar is manufacture; teacher and disciple are a human relation; lamp and illumination are a natural event. The questioner takes one example from each corner of the visible world. His meaning is: what you deny is what everyone sees every day.

8. Answering the Potter: Before the Jar Exists, For What Is He a Cause?

The author answers each in turn. The first sentence is a general judgment: “The analogy of a potter making a jar is untenable.”

The reason is the same question, with not one word changed: “Before there is a jar, for what is the potter a cause?”

One must see what the author answers here and what he does not. He does not say that a potter cannot make a jar, nor that clay cannot take shape upon a wheel. From the first gate onward, the treatise has never canceled the practical use of a jar. He asks about the name: at the moment when no jar yet exists, when you call the potter “the cause of this jar,” in relation to what is that name established?

What direct sight actually provides is only that a person is present earlier and a jar present later. The sentence “he is its cause” is added by the mind. Yet the correlate required by that sentence is absent at the time when the supposed cause stands first.

The author therefore extends this case universally: “As with the potter, no prior cause can be found.” The potter is only one specimen; every claim of a prior cause is the same.

9. Answering Teacher and Disciple: The Name Is Applied Later, but the Cause Must Be Prior

The author answers the second example more quickly: “A later cause likewise cannot be found. Before there is a disciple, who is the teacher? Therefore a later cause cannot be found.”

The questioner intended the example to reveal a cause established afterward. Instead, it states the author’s point more clearly. The name teacher must wait upon a disciple to be established. Before the disciple exists, no teacher is waiting there. If there is no teacher, what was the so-called “cause” during the earlier interval?

The questioner’s own words are “one later recognizes this as the disciple.” The recognition is later, but the cause you seek must be earlier. Direct sight supplies a later recognition; you use it as though it constituted an earlier cause. The gap between them is precisely the difficulty of the three times.

10. Answering Lamp and Illumination: What Is Still under Question Cannot Serve as Proof

The third example matters most, because it looks impregnable. Lamp and illumination truly are simultaneous, and illumination truly comes from the lamp.

The author answers: “If a simultaneous cause is said to resemble lamp and illumination, this is itself a cause identical with what is doubted. Since lamp and illumination arise at the same time, how could they cause one another?”

The phrase “a cause identical with what is doubted” is the key. The evidence you offer is the very thing presently under question. The section on the bull’s horns has already asked: by what right can one of two simultaneous things be called the cause of the other? Now you answer with lamp and illumination, but lamp and illumination are themselves a pair that “arise at the same time.” To answer the question with an example still subject to the question is simply to restate the question.

The author adds only a final question: “Since lamp and illumination arise at the same time, how could they cause one another?” It is exactly the question raised by the horns, with lamp and illumination substituted.

11. Conclusion: From the Emptiness of Conditions to the Emptiness of Conditioned, Unconditioned, and Sentient Beings

Once all three analogies have been refuted, the author gathers the whole gate:

“Because conditions are empty in this way, know that every conditioned dharma, every unconditioned dharma, and every sentient being is empty.”

The sequence of this sentence is exactly the same as in the first gate: first conditions are empty, then everything that issues from conditions is empty. Conditions are the root; when the root is empty, everything spoken of in dependence upon it is empty as well.

Its three items must be read one by one. Conditioned dharmas are empty: these are dharmas born through conditions. Unconditioned dharmas are empty: “unconditioned” is a name established over against “conditioned”; a name depends upon what it opposes, and when that correlate is empty, the name has nothing to rely upon. The final item is sentient beings.

Here the author says “sentient beings,” not “self.” The first gate says, “Therefore conditioned, unconditioned, and self are all empty,” addressing the self that is grasped. This gate speaks of sentient beings and carries the statement across all living beings. What this gate dismantles is the line joining cause and effect; and a sentient being is called a sentient being precisely by depending on that line—former life as cause of later life, these aggregates as cause of those aggregates, connected onward. Each link of the line must occupy one of the three times. Since none of the three can be found, the line is not an intrinsically existent chain.

What Readers Can Carry Away from This Gate

First, simultaneous does not mean mutually productive. A bull’s horns are present at the same time, yet left and right do not cause one another. Whenever two things occur together and one immediately concludes that one produces the other, the author regards that step as a leap, not a traversed argument.

Second, “cause” is a name that can stand only in relation to something else. Before the potter makes the jar, he is not the cause of that jar; before there is a disciple, there is no such teacher. A name needs a correlate. The challenge of the three times asks precisely whether that correlate is present.

Third, there is no intrinsically existent knife in the author’s hand. “Because I do not say that refutation and what can be refuted determinately exist, you should not raise this challenge.” He does not establish a thesis of his own and contend with another. He only presses the intrinsic nature posited by the other side to its conclusion. If the knife existed intrinsically, it should already have cut him.

Fourth, do not answer with the very thing still under question. Lamp and illumination cannot establish simultaneous causation precisely because they too “arise at the same time.” An example must already stand; it cannot share the illness of what it is meant to prove.

Carried Forward: Cross-Illumination from Treatises on the Same Axis

The foregoing is the meaning of this gate itself. What follows places beside it two passages from treatises on the same axis. The illumination is not this treatise; it is the same principle spoken elsewhere, recorded without adjudication.

The Treatise on the Middle has an “Examination of Time,” which asks about time itself. That chapter first refutes the three times as established through mutual dependence and concludes by returning them to things:

  “Time exists because of things; apart from things, how could time exist?   Things themselves cannot be found—how much less could time!”

That chapter speaks of time by examining time: time depends on things, and when things cannot be found, time has no support. This gate does not ask about time itself. It borrows the three positions before, after, and together to examine how cause and effect meet. One borrows temporal positions; the other examines the essence of time. They enter the same meaning by different questions.

The Treatise on the Middle, “Examination of Going and Coming,” also begins with a threefold inquiry:

  “In what has already gone there is no going; in what has not yet gone there is no going;   apart from what has gone and has not yet gone, in the time of going there is no going either.”

That analysis divides the act of “going” among what has gone, what has not yet gone, and the time of going, and finds it nowhere. Its division resembles this gate’s: one matter is sought across three times. The difference is that the other chapter seeks an action, whereas this gate seeks the connection between two endpoints.

Treatises on the same axis illuminate one another while each remains in its own place. The meaning of this gate is still governed by this gate’s extended prose.