十二門論 心要連讀

Who

The table of gates and this preface at the head of the fascicle came from the same brush. At the end, its writer says, “and I inscribed the titles and meanings of the chapters at the beginning.” His name leaves only one character: “Rui, with my shallow and contrary understanding.” The preface at the head of the Treatise on the Middle along the same axis is signed “Preface by the Monk Seng Rui” and ends with the same sentence. The preface writer is not the treatise author; a reader must keep them separate.

Concern

“If one principle is not exhausted, the many divergent claims arise in confusion”; “if one source is not traced to its end, the many paths branch and spread.” A gap in the original road lets side roads grow. Thus, “That distinct destinations are not leveled and divergent tendencies are not extinguished is the great being’s concern.” The concern is that the road is uneven, and therefore “Nāgārjuna Bodhisattva opened a path by which those who go forth might pass.”

Name

The three terms are each explained: twelve is “the great number gathering the many branches”; treatise means “exhausting its source and taking its principle to the end”; and gate is “a name for opening passage without obstruction.” The small line beneath each gate’s title likewise ends, “therefore it is made a gate.” This agrees with the treatise author’s statement: “one should enter the meaning of emptiness through the Twelve Gates.”

Passage

“Corrected through the twelve, existence and nonexistence both pass freely.” Both sides pass together; one is not suppressed to establish the other. The next pair follows: “When matters are exhausted within existence and nonexistence, accomplishment is forgotten within transformation”; “when principle reaches the utmost empty position, self is lost at the two limits.”

Forgetting

“Losing self lies in dropping the fish trap; forgetting the trap consists in abandoning what was entrusted to it.” After refuting dharmas, one may grasp the words that refuted them; after forgetting words, one may retain a self that did the forgetting. Therefore “trap and self must both be forgotten.” What is permitted goes only as far as “then one may begin to draw near the real”—near, not attained.

Return

“At one with the hundred transformations, one rests in return.” One does not leave transformation in order to rest. At the end, “set the returning carriage in order at the place of awakening, and bring the mind’s orientation to completion in the ground of buddhahood.” It is a return, not an exit.

The preface writer asks himself, “Could this truly add anything?” He accepts only one sentence: “I merely hope that through this intention I may open a road of rapid progress.”

The treatise author means to teach emptiness, yet the word he chooses is not principle but gate: “One must enter the meaning of emptiness through twelve gates.”

For Whom the Gate Opens

It does not open for those of sharp faculties—they hear “the exceedingly profound treasury of Dharma belonging to all buddhas of the ten directions and three times.” This gate opens for “sentient beings in the final age who have little merit and dull faculties and, although they seek the scriptures, cannot penetrate them.” The author says, “Out of compassion for such people, I wish to enable them to awaken.” The motive is compassion, not the founding of a doctrine.

Someone objects that the gate is too small: the Buddha’s own words cannot exhaust the subject, much less an unfolding explanation. The reply: “Precisely for this reason, at the outset I said ‘briefly explain.’” A gate need not be as large as the house.

On the Lintel, One Word: Great

The greatness of the Great Vehicle has seven meanings: it is above the two vehicles, can reach buddhahood, is ridden by great persons, extinguishes great suffering and gives great benefit, is ridden by the great beings, reaches the utmost limit of all dharmas, and is itself called measureless and boundless by the Buddha. Not one meaning says that the vehicle possesses some quality called greatness in itself. Each is stated through a relation. The name works this way, and so does the teaching inside the gate. The author reveals the theme: “Its deep meaning, broadly distinguished, is what is called emptiness.”

Four Lines Carved upon the Gate

　　“Dharmas arising from a multitude of conditions are thereby without intrinsic nature;
　　if they lack intrinsic nature, how can one say that these dharmas exist?”

What must await a multitude of conditions in order to arise does not hold its establishment in its own hands. The last line does not ask whether a jar exists; it asks what one means by the word “exists.”

Two Rows Just Inside

One row is outside: clay, wheel, cord, and potter give rise to a jar; seed, earth, water, fire, wind, space, season, and human labor give rise to a sprout. The sprout that seems most to grow by itself receives the longest list of conditions. One row is inside: the twelve links, “each first having its cause and only afterward arising.” The author asks in a single sentence: since inner and outer dharmas alike arise from a multitude of conditions, “are they not thereby without intrinsic nature?”

Two Paths That Try to Go Around the Gate

One says: things do not depend on intrinsic nature but on other-nature. Then “a cow would exist through a horse’s nature, and a horse through a cow’s nature.” The author blocks the way with four characters: “Yet in truth it is not so.”

The other says: not through other-nature, only because of another—as a mat exists because of rushes. If they are one body, the rushes cannot be other; if they are other, the mat cannot exist by virtue of them. Moreover, “the rushes too arise from a multitude of conditions and therefore lack intrinsic nature.” The thing pressed into service as a foundation itself lacks a foundation.

Where Can That “Already” Be Placed?

The author cites a verse from the Seventy Treatise:

　　“Dharmas of dependent arising are in truth non-arising; if one says they do arise,
　　do they exist in a single mind, or do they exist in many minds?”

Placed together in one mind, cause and effect arise simultaneously, although “in every case the cause comes first and the effect afterward.” Distributed among many minds, the earlier mind has ceased, and “a ceased dharma is utterly nonexistent; how could it serve as a cause?” What the question overturns is not continuity, but the premise that the links “already existed beforehand.”

Is There Still Ground Beyond the Gate?

First empty the conditions, then the effect: “Since conditions are empty, dharmas arising from conditions are empty as well.” The effect has nowhere left to retreat.

The self is spoken of in dependence on the aggregates, sense bases, and elements, “just as burning is spoken of because there is something combustible.” When the basis is empty, “without anything combustible, burning cannot be spoken of.” The scripture supplies the clue of dependence: “Because of self there is what belongs to self; without self, there is nothing belonging to self.”

At the end the measure turns toward nirvāṇa. The five aggregates were empty from the beginning—what is extinguished? The self too is empty—who attains? The name non-arising is established in relation to arising: “If arisen dharmas are not established, how can non-arising be established?” Every place to stand has been withdrawn, and the author writes only one sentence: “Therefore conditioned dharmas, unconditioned dharmas, and the self are all empty.”

Here the gate closes. One who has entered need not turn back and cling to the gate.

One verse asks only a single question: “Who, then, could be something that arises?” The questioner has already exhausted the answers—previously existent, previously nonexistent, or both existent and nonexistent.

You Say the Effect Already Exists

Then it “is already existent and accomplished—what use is further arising?” Moreover, if it always exists in the cause and remains after arising, “the process is endless.” You revise the claim and say what has arisen does not arise again. The author answers: “Within this there is no coherent principle of arising.”

You Say It Is Merely Unseen

The author asks for its mark: “By what mark do you know and say that a jar already exists in the clay?” There is no mark of jar, nor mark of cow or horse. You offer eight reasons something may be unknowable—medicine in the eye, a distant bird, damaged faculties, a mind attending to form, a wall’s obstruction, an ink dot on black, a bell or drum masking a faint brushing sound, and a mote. The author denies none of them. He only points to the remedy for each: what is unseen because too near “should be apprehended from slightly farther away”; what is obscured “should be apprehended when the stronger ceases”; what is too subtle should be apprehended when coarse. Every one of the eight has a way for its obstruction to end. The jar in the clay does not. If you next say, “Before arising it is subtle; after arising it becomes coarse,” you have admitted that “the coarse is absent in the cause.”

You Say Threads Are the Cause of Cloth

If cloth already exists in the threads, the threads are merely its place of residence: “It is like cloth in threads or fruit in a vessel—only a dwelling place, not a cause.” Once the cause side is empty, the effect side is empty with it. What lies hidden always gives some sign—“seeing smoke, one knows there is fire”—yet neither the effect’s entity nor its mark can be found.

You Say the Effect Was Previously Absent

Then “a second head and third hand should arise.” You say a jar has conditions while extra heads and hands do not. The author asks only this: the jar is absent from clay and equally absent from stone, so “why call a lump of clay the jar’s cause and not call a stone its cause?” If both are alike in being absent, “each thing should produce every thing,” and carts and horses should issue from a fingertip. You appeal to prior experience: oil has been seen to come from sesame. The author says this “falls into a reason identical with what is doubted”: you invoke arising as evidence when arising is precisely the disputed matter.

You Say It Is Both

“Because the natures of existence and nonexistence contradict one another,” they cannot share one place, just as light and dark, pain and pleasure, going and staying, bondage and release do not. Combining two positions already refuted does not produce a third.

Then What?

The author states his own position: “I say that action, agent, cause, and effect are all empty.” When you refute action and agent, you state his point for him.

The three cases are exhausted: “Reason reaches its limit here.” Since the effect ultimately does not arise and every conditioned dharma is both cause and effect, all conditioned dharmas are empty. Because the conditioned is empty, the unconditioned is empty as well. As for that self—there is no need to ask the question again.

The treatise author asks the opponent to point: where is the effect?

Places to Look

“Among the multitude of conditions, whether treated broadly or in summary, no effect exists; if no effect exists among conditions, how could it arise from conditions?”

Broadly means searching one condition at a time; in summary means searching the combined mass. The jar is not in the clay, wheel, cord, or potter, nor can a jar be extracted from their conjunction. There is no third place to search.

Names

The opponent asks, “What are called the multitude of conditions?” The author answers with finality: only these “four conditions produce all dharmas,” and “there is no fifth condition.” Once the number is exhausted, no extra one can later be added to save the claim. He explains each name: the causal condition refers to that from which something arises; the immediate antecedent condition to the preceding dharma’s ceasing and the next arising; the object-condition to the object recollected; and the predominant condition to the fact that because this exists, that can arise. Not one name stands on itself; each can be spoken only while pointing to another side.

Remove and See

If the effect exists within the cause, remove the conditions and it should remain. If it exists within the conditions, remove the cause and it should remain. If it exists in both places, it should be obtainable. Yet “sought through reason, it cannot be obtained; therefore it is absent in both places.”

Arising from Nothing Cannot Be Contained

“Why does it not arise from nonconditions? Because neither side contains an effect.” In the single respect of containing no effect, conditions and nonconditions are equal. Permit existence to arise from nonexistence and there is no reason to stop nonconditions.

A Name with Nowhere to Hang

“Because the effect does not arise, the conditions do not arise either. Why? Because conditions precede and the effect follows.” The prior is prior only relative to the later. Once the effect falls empty, the word condition has nowhere to hang. Thus, “because conditions and effect do not exist, all conditioned dharmas are empty.” From there unconditioned dharmas are empty too, and only one question remains: “how could a self exist?”

The question throughout is only this: you say it exists—point it out for me.

The treatise master establishes a verse, and all four lines turn upon it:

“Conditioned and unconditioned dharmas, these two kinds, are both without marks; because they are without marks, both kinds of dharma are empty.”

The prose adds only seven words: “Conditioned dharmas are not established by relying on marks.”

The Treatise Master Leaves Every Conventional Mark Untouched

A cow has horns, a hump, a dewlap, and tail hair; a jar has “a flat base, broad belly, narrow neck, and thick lip”; a cart has wheels, axle, shaft, and yoke; a person has head, eyes, abdomen, back, shoulders, arms, hands, and feet. All of these remain. The treatise master turns only the question: what, then, of arising, abiding, and cessation—“are they conditioned or unconditioned?”

Every Route Open to the Opponent

Call them conditioned. Then they themselves need the three marks, and those marks need another three: “proceeding recursively in this way produces an infinite regress.”

Call them unconditioned. Then “apart from arising, abiding, and cessation, who could know that this is arising?” What cannot be distinguished cannot serve as another thing’s credential.

Say that seven things arrive together. The primary arising produces six dharmas, the arising of arising produces the primary arising, and the primary arising in turn produces the arising of arising, closing the circle. But ask one question: “The primary arising has not in fact arisen; how can it bring the arising of arising into arising?” Both ends of the circle await the other.

Say it is like a lamp illuminating itself. Illumination earns its name by dispelling darkness; there is no darkness in the lamp or where its light reaches—“only dispelling darkness is called illumination, so what exactly does the lamp illuminate?” If it can dispel darkness across a distance, then “lighting a lamp here should dispel all darkness everywhere.” If the lamp illuminates itself, “darkness likewise should conceal both itself and others.”

Say arising brings itself into arising. What has not arisen “does not yet exist,” so it cannot set to work. What has arisen “is already arisen; why must it arise again?”—“Once it has arisen, there is no further arising; once an act has been done, there is no further doing.”

The Final Plain Robe

Once marks of the conditioned are exhausted, one tries to retreat to the unconditioned, and then to marklessness. The master pursues with one question: “By relying on what mark is this known to be markless?” If known by a mark, it is not markless. If known by marklessness, “what is absent cannot be known.”

The opponent points to one plain robe among a pile of patterned robes: call for it and someone can retrieve it. The master replies that the surrounding pile must first be definite. “When arising, abiding, and cessation are sought through many causes and conditions, they are all empty; no mark of the conditioned can be found”—so “which fixed and determinate mark of the conditioned have you obtained, such that by it you know a markless place to be unconditioned?”

Close

“Therefore all conditioned dharmas are empty. Because conditioned dharmas are empty, unconditioned dharmas are also empty. Because conditioned and unconditioned dharmas are empty, the self is also empty.”

Fasten the gate’s single word all the way through, and the gate opens.

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.

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.

The seventh gate examines only one sentence. The opponent says that impermanence is already within a dharma: “When existence arises, impermanence is already present but not yet active”; only at cessation does it act.

The author does not ask whether impermanence is present. He asks one thing: can it produce destruction now?

The question seems light, but it falls exactly where the opponent labors hardest. Through the words “not yet active,” he tries to retain within the dharma something unable to do anything.

It cannot. For “when things arise they do not have the mark of destruction, and while they abide they do not have the mark of destruction either.” The word mark is spoken precisely in terms of what can perform its work. “Because it can cognize, it is called consciousness; if it cannot cognize, it lacks the mark of consciousness.” Capacity to receive is the mark of feeling; capacity to remember is the mark of mindfulness; capacity to sustain is the mark of abiding; capacity to change is the mark of aging. Impermanence is the same: “Destruction is the mark of impermanence; apart from destruction there is no mark of impermanence.”

If it cannot perform, co-arising is an empty attachment. The author asks to the end: “What use is there in co-arising?”

Both panels of the gate close at the outset: “Existence and nonexistence cannot be obtained at one time; nor can they be obtained at different times.” If together, the dharma should perish when arising and arise when perishing. If existence is separated from nonexistence, one member is removed from the opponent’s own seven co-arisen dharmas: “therefore, apart from nonexistence, existence does not arise.”

One immediately evident fact blocks the other side for the author: “yet abiding does in fact exist.” A dharma does remain for an interval, so existence is not eternally nonexistent from the moment it arises.

Only one sentence remains: “Impermanence should exist only when existence is destroyed.” The name follows destruction; it is not stored within the thing. Until destruction arrives, the name points to nothing.

The conclusion therefore reaches far: existence and nonexistence are empty, conditioned dharmas are empty, unconditioned dharmas are empty, and “sentient beings are empty too.”

At the seventh of the Twelve Gates, what is dismantled is no longer a thing but the claim that its time “has not yet come.”

This gate examines the word nature. Anything claiming that name must first pass two gates.

First Gate: Do You Change?

If it changes, it is disqualified. “If dharmas possessed intrinsic nature, they should not alter”—yet wherever one looks, every dharma changes. The verse states it directly:

“Seeing that dharmas bear the mark of alteration, one knows that dharmas possess no intrinsic nature; even a dharma of no intrinsic nature does not exist, because all dharmas are empty.”

The latter two lines turn back for one more cut: do not reclaim “absence of intrinsic nature” as a new nameplate.

Second Gate: Do You Wait for Others?

Whatever waits for conditions in order to exist is made, not nature. The treatise author gives a definition: “What is not made and does not depend upon another is called nature.” Dependently arisen dharmas fail both gates and therefore are empty.

Someone Shouts: You Have Dismantled the Four Truths

Suffering, origin, cessation, path, the fruits of recluseship, and Buddha, Dharma, and Saṅgha are said to fall together with emptiness. The author first distinguishes the two truths: “Through the conventional truth one can state the truth of the ultimate meaning.” He then identifies the illness: “You now hear a teaching of conventional truth and take it to be the truth of the ultimate meaning.” Emptiness is not outside conditioned dharmas: “These conditioned dharmas have no intrinsic nature; therefore I call them empty.”

He then returns the entire chain unchanged. If the five aggregates had fixed nature, they would neither arise nor cease; without arising and ceasing there would be no impermanence, and without impermanence no suffering. “If dharmas had fixed nature, there would be no noble truth of the cessation of suffering. Why? Because nature does not alter.” Suffering could not cease, and the path could not be cultivated. It was never emptiness that dismantled the four truths.

The same inference reaches the world: under fixed nature there would be neither demerit nor merit, and “the world would always have a single mark.”

The Final Place to Stand

Change the claim to other-nature? “Other-nature is precisely the other’s own self-nature.” Its position has moved, but it remains the same nature. When self and other both fail, no dharma can be found apart from them. Nor may one turn around and establish nonexistence: “If existence is not established, nonexistence is not established either.”

“Since conditioned and unconditioned dharmas are empty, how much more so the self?”

The ninth of the Twelve Gates has the fewest words. The treatise author opens with “next” and closes with “how much more so the self?” Between them he does only one thing.

The First Eight Gates Have Already Driven the Claim into a Corner

The person being questioned still has one move: if the effect is not within the conditions, say that it comes from elsewhere. Ordinary thought already works this way—if it is not in this box, it must be in another. The latter half of the author’s answer is set precisely against this move: “nor does it come from elsewhere.”

The Verse Closes Both Boxes Together

“Among the multitude of conditions, the effect is ultimately unobtainable; nor does it come from elsewhere—how, then, could an effect exist?”

“Ultimately” does not mean that it cannot be found for the moment. The final line is a question, not a declaration: when you say that an effect exists, to what does that word point?

The Author Does Not Explain the First Box Again

“Whether within each condition individually or within the conjunction of the conditions, no effect exists”—both the individual and the combined must be stated for no crack to remain. Why no effect exists is given in only three words: “as explained before.” The short gate is not thin; it stands upon the foundations of the gates before it.

The Second Box Incurs a Debt

If the effect truly came from elsewhere, the account would have two charges: “it would not arise from causes and conditions”—the conditions did not produce it and thus are not its causes and conditions; and “the conjunction of the conditions would have no efficacy”—if a finished thing is carried in, whether the conditions assemble is irrelevant. In trying to preserve the effect, one forfeits causality and conjunction.

The Word Empty Falls upon “Precisely”

“If the effect is absent among the multitude of conditions and does not come from elsewhere, that precisely is emptiness.” The author does not infer emptiness from this; this itself is emptiness. What is empty is the effect whose location could supposedly be indicated, not karmic result and not a sprout arising from a seed.

The Final Three Steps

“Because the effect is empty, all conditioned dharmas are empty; because conditioned dharmas are empty, unconditioned dharmas are empty too; since conditioned and unconditioned dharmas are empty, how much more so the self?”

Its entrance differs from the first gate, but its conclusion is word for word the same. The gate closes, yet the final line remains a question—leaving the reader to look for where that self depends.

When people suffer, their first thought is usually to find someone. Did I bring it on myself? Did someone else impose it? Did heaven give it? Or did it simply happen? This gate receives all four thoughts together.

Four Cells

“Produced by oneself, produced by another, produced by both, or produced without a cause—when sought in these ways, suffering is not found.”

Self, other, both, or neither—once the question “Who produced it?” is asked, the answer can fall only into these four places. When all four are empty, the question itself has nowhere to land.

Two Ready Examples

Self-production requires suffering to create its own entity, yet “consciousness cannot cognize itself, and a finger cannot touch itself.” When subject and object are squeezed into one end, activity cannot begin. As for production by another, the master initially returns only one sentence: “How can another produce suffering?”

The Many Conditions Are Not an Agent

Someone finds a good refuge for production by another: are not the many conditions precisely other? The master answers adroitly. Since suffering arises from the many conditions, suffering is the shape those conditions take. Where is a separate other? “Clay cannot be called other”; “gold cannot be called other.” A jar does not treat clay as an outsider, nor a bracelet gold.

Moreover, the conditions cannot themselves govern:

“A result arises from many conditions, yet these conditions cannot govern themselves; since the conditions cannot govern themselves, how could they produce a result?”

A group that cannot govern itself cannot assemble a sovereign. Conditioned arising speaks of conditions, not commands.

The Buddha’s Four Silences

The naked ascetic Kāśyapa asks the same four cells in order. At the first question, “the Buddha remained silent and did not answer”; for the remaining three, “again the Buddha did not answer.”

It is not that he cannot choose among four answers. The questioner has already placed a permanent and pure spirit in his mind: it creates fine and ugly, suffering and pleasure, then itself goes on to receive a body. The four questions ask about the same being in four postures. To answer within any cell would be to nod assent.

The Spirit Taken Apart

Someone argues that this is a father teaching children to recognize pleasure. The master keeps asking: if he would teach pleasure, why not give pleasure rather than suffering? If worshiping one being could end suffering, why does each person plainly receive that person’s own results? If he needs something, he is constrained by the need. If he needs nothing, is creating all things not a child’s game? Who created him? Where did he stand while creating? Why must he practice austerities to seek another’s favor?

Then look at the world he created. Once created and fixed, “a horse should always be a horse and a person always a person,” yet the world changes with karma. If he created everything, there could be no demerit and merit, yet the world plainly has both. If all are his children, everyone should love him, yet there is hatred and love. If observing precepts and cultivating the holy life were useless, conventional dharmas would collapse entirely. The master returns only three words: “Yet this is not so.”

Even the creator in their own scripture must practice austerities again and again before producing creatures, birds, humans, and gods. This is a sequence of karma; they do not arise from austerities.

The Sentence That Remains

After dismantling all four cells, the master does not add another agent. He leaves only “arises from many causes and conditions.” This sentence is emptiness: “What arises from many causes and conditions has no intrinsic nature. Absence of intrinsic nature is emptiness.”

Suffering has no agent, yet it has conditions. Ask “Who gave it?” and nothing is found. Ask “Upon what does it continue?” and the path opens.

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.

Only One Word Remains to Be Asked

The preceding gates have successively refuted causes and conditions, existence and nonexistence, marks, nature, the agent, and the three times. At the end, one matter has not yet been asked: surely those things that were refuted nevertheless once arose? The treatise author takes up this very word.

Arising Can Be Spoken of in Only Three Places

Already arisen, not yet arisen, or presently arising. The verse establishes three positions and leaves none behind:

“An arisen effect does not arise; what has not arisen does not arise either; apart from the arisen and not arisen, the time of arising too does not arise.”

The terms are first fixed: “Arising means that an effect has emerged; not arisen means not yet begun, not yet emerged, and not yet existent; the time of arising means just beginning to emerge but not yet complete.”

Already Arisen: What Has Been Done Is Not Done Again

If what has arisen must arise again, there will be a second, third, and fourth arising without end. Moreover, “what has been done should not be done again, what has been burned should not be burned again, and what has been realized should not be realized again.” If the arising that produces could itself produce while not yet arisen, the one word arising would contain two meanings, “and thus what you first stated as fixed is now unfixed.”

Not Arisen: The Horns of Rabbits and Horses Should Arise Too

If the not-arisen could arise merely by being not-arisen, far too much would arise: the enlightenment not yet arisen in ordinary people, the afflictions that no longer arise in an arhat of the irreversible dharma, and “the horns of rabbits, horses, and the rest” should all emerge. Moreover, arising apart from arising would mean “doing apart from doing, going apart from going, and eating apart from eating.” What first collapses is the convention governing ordinary speech.

Someone retreats: arising occurs only when all conditions are complete. The author does not deny conditions; he asks what status the effect has within the cause—previously existent, previously nonexistent, or both existent and nonexistent. “Sought through these three alternatives, arising cannot be obtained.”

The Time of Arising: That Road Exists Only through Someone Traversing It

The time of arising consists only of a portion already arisen and a portion not yet arisen, neither of which arises. Apart from arising, there is no time of arising. To say that arising arises during the time of arising counts two arisings, yet “there are not two dharmas.” The plainest question is: “Where does arising travel?”

One Sentence Closes the Gate

When none of the three positions can be established, “non-arising; abiding and cessation are the same.” When the three marks are unestablished, conditioned dharmas are unestablished; when conditioned dharmas are unestablished, unconditioned dharmas are unestablished; finally, sentient beings too are unestablished. The author writes the treatise’s last sentence: “All dharmas are non-arising because they are ultimately empty and quiescent.”

This is the last of the Twelve Gates. The gate closes—not to shut out what is outside, but so that the person who has entered need not turn back to seek an entrance.