中論 觀燃可燃品第十

The questioner offers fire and fuel as proof: fire is the experiencer, and fuel is the experienced five aggregates. They are two distinct things that nevertheless come together—why could the person and the five aggregates not be the same?

The respondent does not accept the experiencer, but first turns back to inspect that fire.

The Words Are Spoken; the Things Are Not Taken Up

The questioner first blocks the way: if you can refute it, it must exist. The respondent draws only one distinction: “There should be no fault in speaking according to worldly convention.” To say something aloud does not mean taking it into the mind—“Although there is speech, there is likewise no acceptance.” If every utterance counted as assent, then your own word “refute” would first refute you.

Fire Is Not Fuel, Nor Is It Apart from Fuel

“If fire were fuel, act and agent would be one; 　if fire were different from fuel, there would be fire apart from fuel.”

If they were one, the potter would be the jar—“The potter is not the jar, and the jar is not the potter; how could they be one?”

If they were different, fire would burn forever without waiting for wood, and “apart from fuel, what could fire burn?”—it would become a fire that burns nothing at all. Qingmu’s evidence is right before the stove: “Human effort means tending and protecting the fire so that it burns. Such effort is plainly present; therefore one knows that fire is not different from fuel.”

Difference goes one layer deeper: two things truly established without depending on each other could not even come together—“If they are different, fire does not reach fuel; if it does not reach fuel, it does not burn.” The questioner compares them to a man and a woman approaching each other. The respondent points out that man and woman each remain a person apart from the other, whereas with fire and fuel, “apart from fire there is no fuel, and apart from fuel there is no fire.” The analogy collapses first.

The questioner tries another route: wood exists first and is called fuel only while it burns. The respondent dismantles the claim from within its own wording—“If one says that wood exists first and is called fuel when it burns, this is not so.” Once one has independently established wood apart from fire, one cannot then say that it becomes fuel only while burning: “If fuel exists separately apart from fire, how can one say it is called fuel only while burning?” The names have been applied backward at both ends, leaving both empty—“At that time there is only wood; what is it that burns the fuel?”

Waiting upon One Another, Neither Can Stand Firm

Retreat one step further and say that they exist in mutual dependence, and one must ask “which dharma is first determinately present?” Each establishes the other, so “neither of the two is determinate.” Pressed to the final line:

“If a dharma is established through dependence, how can it depend while unestablished? 　If after being established it has dependence, once established, what use has it for dependence?”

What does not yet exist cannot wait; what is already established need not wait again.

Fire Does Not Come from Elsewhere

“Fire does not come from elsewhere, nor is there fire where it burns; 　fuel is likewise so, and the rest is as explained for going and coming.”

Fire does not fly from somewhere else into the wood, nor can it be extracted by splitting the wood—“because when one splits wood and seeks fire, it cannot be found.” The same is true of fuel from the other side. Then ask through the three times as in the examination of going and coming: “What has burned does not burn, what has not burned does not burn, and while burning it does not burn.” In none of the three times is there a point of purchase.

From Fire and Fuel to Jars and Robes

Five statements exhaust the matter: “Fuel is not itself fire; apart from fuel there is no fire; 　fire does not possess fuel; there is no fuel within fire, and no fire within fuel.”

This fire was always meant to address the person—“Just as there is fire because of fuel, so there is an experiencer because of experience.” Extend the inquiry outward, and “all external dharmas such as jars and robes are just as explained above: unborn and ultimately empty.”

The final line falls heavily:

“If someone asserts a self and says that dharmas each have different marks, 　know that such a person cannot taste the Dharma of the Buddha.”

The Vātsīputrīyas hide the self in a fifth, inexpressible repository; the Sarvāstivādins establish a determinate mark for every dharma. All their terms come from the Buddha’s teaching, yet they land in “using the Buddha’s words to construct all kinds of conceptual proliferation.”

Nāgārjuna Bodhisattva, author; the brahmin Qingmu, commentator; Tripiṭaka Master Kumārajīva of the Later Qin, translator. Treatise on the Middle, fascicle two, “Examination of Fire and Fuel, Chapter Ten,” Taishō T30n1564. Paragraph-initial〔T30 …〕marks a Taishō page-column-line anchor.

1. Question: Since Fire and Fuel Exist, Experience and the Experiencer Should Also Exist

〔T30 0014b15〕The questioner says: There should be experience and an experiencer, just as there are fire and fuel. Fire is the experiencer, while fuel is experience—that which is called experience means the five aggregates.

The respondent says: This is not so. Why? Because neither fire nor fuel can be established. Fire and fuel might be said to be established as one dharma or as two dharmas, but neither route succeeds.

2. Question: By Refuting Them through Identity and Difference, You Have Already Admitted That They Exist

The questioner says: Set aside for now the claims of identity and difference. If fire and fuel do not exist at all, on what basis do you now refute them through the marks of identity and difference? The horn of a hare and the hair of a tortoise do not exist in the first place, so there is nothing there to refute. Only after people in the world plainly see that a thing exists can they reflect upon it. For example, gold must first exist before one can fire and hammer it. If fire and fuel did not exist at all, one should not reflect upon them through identity and difference. Since you allow talk of identity and difference, one should know that fire and fuel exist. Once you allow that they exist, they are thereby already existent.

3. Answer: Speaking in Accordance with Convention Does Not Mean Accepting Something in the Mind

The respondent says: There should be no fault in speaking in accordance with worldly convention. Whether fire and fuel are said to be identical or different, neither statement is called acceptance. Apart from conventional speech, there would be no ground for discussion. If one did not even speak of fire and fuel, how could anything be refuted? If nothing were said, the meaning could not be made clear. Suppose a dialectician wished to refute existence and nonexistence: that person would necessarily have to speak of existence and nonexistence, but would not thereby accept them merely by naming them. Thus there is no fault in speaking in accordance with the speech of the world.

If merely uttering something counted as accepting it, then by uttering the word “refute,” you would at once refute yourself. The same applies to speaking of fire and fuel. Although there is speech, there is likewise no acceptance. Thus when fire and fuel are examined through identity and difference, neither route succeeds. Why?

4. Verse and Commentary: If Identical, Act and Agent Become One; If Different, Fire Exists Apart from Fuel

The verse says: If fire were fuel, act and agent would become one; if fire were different from fuel, then there should be a fire apart from fuel.

Qingmu explains: Fire is flame, and fuel is wood. The agent is a person; the act is the deed produced. If fire and fuel were one, act and agent should also be one. If act and agent were one, the potter would be one with the jar. The agent is the potter, and the act is the jar; the potter is not the jar, and the jar is not the potter. How could they be said to be one? Thus act and agent are not one, and therefore fire and fuel are likewise not one.

If one says that since identity is impossible, they must be different, that too is wrong. Why? If fire and fuel were different, there should be a fire apart from fuel; one should be able to point distinctly and say, “This is fuel, and that is fire,” and wherever there was no fuel a fire should still be present. But that is not in fact so. Therefore difference is also impossible. Further:

5. Verse and Commentary: Perpetual Burning, Human Effort in Vain, and a Fire without an Act

The verse says: Fire should then burn forever, without being born through fuel; there would be no labor of kindling and tending it, and it would also be called a fire without an act.

Qingmu explains: If fire and fuel were different, fire would burn forever without waiting for fuel. If it burned forever, it would abide in its own substance and would not wait for causes and conditions; human effort would then be in vain. Human effort means tending and protecting a fire so that it burns. Such effort is plainly present, and therefore one knows that fire is not different from fuel.

Further, if fire were different from fuel, fire would have no act. Apart from fuel, what could fire burn? If that were so, fire would perform no act. There is no such thing as a fire without an act.

6. Question and Answer: Why Say That Fire Does Not Arise from Causes and Conditions and Human Effort Is in Vain?

The questioner says: Why do you say that fire does not arise from causes and conditions and that human effort is in vain?

The respondent answers in verse: If fire does not wait for fuel, then it does not arise from conditions; if fire burns forever, human effort should be in vain.

Qingmu explains: If fire and fuel were different, fire would exist without waiting for fuel. If fire existed without waiting for fuel, there would be no dharmas mutually serving as causes, so it would not arise from causes and conditions. Further, if fire were different from fuel, it should burn forever. If it burned forever, fire should be seen apart from fuel and there would be no need for human effort. Why?

7. Verse and Commentary: If It Is Called Fuel Only While Burning, at That Time There Is Only Wood

The verse says: If you claim that it is called fuel only while it is burning, then at that time there is only wood—what is it that burns the fuel?

Qingmu explains: If one says that wood exists first and is called fuel only when it burns, this is not so. If fuel exists separately apart from fire, how can one also say that it is called fuel only when it burns? Further:

8. Verse and Commentary: No Reaching, No Burning, No Extinction, and Permanent Abiding

The verse says: If they are different, fire does not reach fuel; if it does not reach fuel, it cannot burn it; if it does not burn it, it is not extinguished; if it is not extinguished, it abides forever.

Qingmu explains: If fire were different from fuel, fire should not be able to reach fuel. Why? Because they would not be established in mutual dependence. If fire were established without mutual dependence, it would abide in its own substance. What use would it have for fuel? Therefore, it could not reach it. If it could not reach it, it could not burn the fuel. Why? Because nothing can burn what it does not reach. If it did not burn, there would be no extinction, and it should abide forever in its own mark. This is not so.

9. Question and Answer: The Analogy of a Man and a Woman Coming Together

The questioner says in verse: Although fire and fuel are different, fire can reach fuel, just as this person goes to that person and that person comes to this one.

He explains: Fire and fuel are different, yet fire can reach fuel, just as a man goes to a woman and a woman comes to a man.

The respondent answers him in verse: If fire and fuel could each be established separately apart from the other, only then could fire reach that fuel.

Qingmu explains: If fuel existed apart from fire, if fire existed apart from fuel, and each could be established on its own, then fire should be able to reach fuel. But that is not in fact so. Why? Because apart from fire there is no fuel, and apart from fuel there is no fire. Yet a woman still exists apart from a man, and a man still exists apart from a woman, so your analogy is wrong. Because the analogy does not hold, fire cannot reach fuel.

10. Question and Answer: Then Let Us Say That the Two Exist in Mutual Dependence

The questioner says: Fire and fuel exist in mutual dependence—fire exists because of fuel, and fuel exists because of fire; the two dharmas are established by waiting upon one another.

The respondent says in verse: If fire exists because of fuel, and fuel exists because of fire, which dharma is first determinately present, thereby allowing fire and fuel to exist?

Qingmu explains: If fire is established because of fuel, fuel should likewise be established because of fire. Here, if fuel is first determinately present, fire can be established because of fuel; if fire is first determinately present, fuel can be established because of fire. Now, if one says that fire is established because of fuel, fuel exists first and fire later; one should no longer say that fuel must wait upon fire in order to exist. Why? Because fuel comes first and fire afterward. Yet if fire does not burn the fuel, the fuel does not become fuel; nor is fuel found anywhere else, since it is not apart from fire. If fuel is not established, fire is likewise not established. Conversely, if fire existed first and fuel afterward, fire would incur the same fault. Therefore, neither fire nor fuel is established. Further:

11. Verse and Commentary: Established and Then Established Again, While Fuel Instead Contains No Fire

The verse says: If fire exists because of fuel, then after fire is established it must be established again; consequently, there would instead be no fire within the fuel.

Qingmu explains: If one wishes to establish fire because of fuel, fire would be established after already having been established. Why? Because fire originally abides by itself within fire. There is no such thing as fire that does not abide in its own substance yet gains establishment from fuel. Thus if one says there is a fire established from fuel, it is now established all over again after having been established, and this fault follows. There is also the further fault that fuel contains no fire. Why? Because fuel abides in its own substance apart from fire. Thus there is no such thing as fire and fuel existing in mutual dependence. Further:

12. Verse and Commentary: Neither the Dependent Nor What It Depends On Is Determinate

The verse says: If a dharma is established because of what it depends on, and this dharma in turn establishes that on which it depends, there is then no real ground of dependence that serves as cause, nor any real dharma being established.

Qingmu explains: If a dharma is established because of what it depends on, this dharma in turn establishes the original ground of dependence. Once matters are settled in this way, neither of those two determinate things remains. Just as fire is established because of fuel and fuel in turn because of fire, neither side is determinate. Because they are not determinate, they cannot be found. Why?

13. Verse and Commentary: How Can the Unestablished Depend? Why Must the Established Depend?

The verse says: If a dharma must depend on something to be established, how can it depend while still unestablished? If it depends only after it has been established, once established, what use has it for dependence?

Qingmu explains: If a dharma is established because of what it depends on, that dharma was not yet established beforehand. What is unestablished is nonexistent; how can what is nonexistent depend on something? If that dharma was already established beforehand, once established, what need has it to be established through dependence? Along neither route can there be mutual dependence. Thus there is no such thing as your previously asserted fire and fuel being established through mutual dependence. Therefore:

14. Verse and Commentary: Cause and Noncause Gathered Together

The verse says: There is no fire because of fuel, and none without fuel; there is no fuel because of fire, and none without fire.

Qingmu explains: Fire is not now established through dependence on fuel, nor is fire established without depending on fuel. Fuel is likewise not established either through fire or without fire. The faults in both routes have already been explained. Further:

15. Verse and Commentary: It Does Not Come from Elsewhere; the Three Times Are as Explained in the Chapter on Going and Coming

The verse says: Fire does not come from elsewhere, nor is there fire in the place where it burns; fuel is likewise so, and the rest is as explained in the chapter on going and coming.

Qingmu explains: Fire does not come from another place and enter the fuel, nor is there fire within the fuel, because when one splits the wood and searches for fire, it cannot be found. Fuel is likewise so: it does not come from elsewhere and enter the fire, nor is there fuel within the fire. As for what has already burned not burning, what has not yet burned not burning, and what is burning not burning even while it burns, this is as explained in the chapter on going and coming. Therefore:

16. Verse and Commentary: The Five Statements Gather Everything Together

The verse says: Fuel is not itself fire; apart from fuel there is no fire. Fire does not possess fuel; there is no fuel within fire, and there is no fire within fuel.

Qingmu explains: Fuel is not itself fire. Why? Because the fault that act and agent would be one has already been explained. Apart from fuel, there is no fire, because faults such as perpetual burning would follow. Fire does not possess fuel, there is no fuel within fire, and there is no fire within fuel—because the fault of difference would follow, none of these three statements is established.

17. Question and Answer: Why Speak of Fire and Fuel?

The questioner says: Why speak of fire and fuel?

The respondent says: Just as there is fire because of fuel, so there is an experiencer because of experience. Experience means the five aggregates; the experiencer means the person. Because fire and fuel are not established, experience and the experiencer are likewise not established. Why?

18. Verse and Commentary: From Experience and Experiencer to Jars, Robes, and All Dharmas

The verse says: Through the dharmas of fire and fuel, the dharmas of experience and experiencer are explained, as are jars and robes and all such dharmas.

Qingmu explains: Just as fuel is not fire, so experience is not the experiencer, because the fault that act and agent would be one would follow. Nor is there an experiencer apart from experience, because difference cannot be found. Because the fault of difference follows, those three statements are not established. As with experience and the experiencer, all external dharmas such as jars and robes are just as explained above: they do not arise and are ultimately empty. Therefore:

19. Verse and Commentary: Those Who Assert a Self and Fixed Different Marks for Dharmas Cannot Taste the Dharma of the Buddha

The verse says: If someone asserts a self and says that dharmas each possess different fixed marks, one should know that such a person cannot taste the Dharma of the Buddha.

Qingmu explains: Dharmas have never arisen from the very beginning and bear the mark of ultimate quiescence, so this verse is spoken at the chapter’s end. If someone asserts the mark of a self, as the Vātsīputrīyas do, saying that form cannot be said to be the self, nor can the self be said to exist apart from form, but that the self resides in a fifth, inexpressible repository; or if, like the Sarvāstivādins, someone says that dharmas each possess their own marks, being wholesome, unwholesome, or indeterminate, tainted or untainted, conditioned or unconditioned, and so forth—such people do not attain the quiescent mark of dharmas, but instead use the Buddha’s words to construct all kinds of conceptual proliferation.

By the time the Treatise on the Middle reaches this chapter, the questioner has been driven into a corner: the preceding chapters searched through agent and experiencer and found neither. So he changes tactics. Instead of speaking directly about a self, he turns to something everyone has seen with their own eyes.

He says: “There should be experience and an experiencer, just as there are fire and fuel. Fire is the experiencer, and fuel is experience, namely the five aggregates.”

Fire burns wood. Fire is the burning side; wood is the side being burned. The two are plainly distinct and plainly come together. If fire and wood can be so, why could the experiencer and the five aggregates not be the same?

The full weight of the question rests on the word “just as.” He is not discussing fire; he is using fire as proof. Proof by analogy has one vulnerable point: if the analogy cannot stand by itself, the conclusion it supports falls with it. So the respondent turns around to inspect the fire—“because neither fire nor fuel is established.”

All sixteen verses in the chapter inspect this one fire.

1. First Objection: If You Open Your Mouth to Refute It, Have You Not Already Admitted That It Exists?

Before the fire can be examined, the questioner blocks the way with a deft objection.

He says: “Because the horn of a hare and the hair of a tortoise do not exist, they cannot be refuted.” A hare has no horn and a tortoise no hair—precisely because they do not exist at all, there is nothing to refute. Since you use the marks of identity and difference to refute fire and fuel, fire and fuel must exist; otherwise, what are you refuting? He adds an even more concrete example: gold must first exist before one can fire and hammer it. Thus he says that “only after people in the world plainly see that a thing exists can it be reflected upon,” and concludes with a tightly drawn line: “If you allow its existence, it is thereby already existent.”

What makes this challenge difficult is not fire, but speech itself: whatever one speaks of has already been admitted.

The respondent answers by drawing just one distinction, but it governs the manner of speech throughout the Treatise on the Middle: “There should be no fault in speaking according to worldly convention.” He gives an example that works on the spot: “A dialectician who wishes to refute existence and nonexistence must speak of existence and nonexistence, but does not accept them merely by naming them.” Anyone who wishes to refute existence and nonexistence has no choice but to say the words “existence” and “nonexistence.” Yet saying them aloud does not mean receiving them into the mind as substances. Speaking and accepting are two different things.

The respondent then returns the challenge unchanged: “Your word ‘refute’ would refute you.” If you insist that every utterance is an admission, then the word “refute” that you utter is also an utterance and, by your own rule, refutes you first.

Thus, “although there is speech, there is likewise no acceptance.” The words are spoken; the things are not taken up. These eight Chinese characters stop a familiar misunderstanding—the idea that someone who speaks of emptiness should remain silent or else contradict himself. One must be able to point something out in order to refute it. Pointing lets it show itself; it does not invite it in.

Once this objection has been stopped, fire and fuel formally undergo examination.

2. Identity: If Fire and Fuel Are One, the Potter Is the Jar

The first verse opens two routes:

“If fire were fuel, act and agent would be one; 　if fire were different from fuel, there would be fire apart from fuel.”

Qingmu first fixes the names: “Fire is flame, and fuel is wood.” Then he exchanges them for another familiar pair of names: “The agent is a person, and the act is the deed.” Fire is what burns and wood what is burned, just as a person is what acts and a deed what is done.

To say that fire and fuel are one is therefore to say that act and agent are one. Qingmu immediately illuminates this through a scene of craft: potter and jar. “The potter is not the jar, and the jar is not the potter; how could they be one?”

No debate is needed to understand the sentence. The jar is made by the potter, but the potter is not the jar—the potter remains when the jar breaks. If maker and made were truly one, the person making the jar would have to shatter with it.

So the route of identity first collapses. Fire is not wood.

3. Difference: A Fire Apart from Wood Would Burn Forever Yet Burn Nothing

Once identity fails, one naturally slides to the other side: then they must be different.

The respondent follows the word “different” and watches where it leads. If fire and wood were really two things each able to stand on its own, then “one should be able to distinguish this as fuel and that as fire, and wherever there was no fuel there should be a fire.” You should be able to point to a place with no wood at all and say: there is fire. Qingmu closes the case with four Chinese characters: “But it is not in fact so.”

Then three consequences follow in succession:

“It should then burn forever, without arising through fuel; 　there would be no labor of kindling fire, and it would also be called a fire without an act.”

The first is perpetual burning. If fire does not rely on wood, it has neither rising nor falling and burns forever.

The second is that human effort becomes vain. Qingmu introduces an utterly domestic detail: “Human effort means tending and protecting the fire so that it burns.” This effort is nothing lofty; it means crouching before the stove, adding wood, raking ash, blocking wind, and keeping watch over the flame. Qingmu uses this concrete fact as evidence: “Such effort is plainly present; therefore one knows that fire is not different from fuel.” If fire truly had nothing to do with wood, for whom did your hand add that piece of fuel? This is the chapter’s homeliest and most forceful move: it does not argue from an abstraction, but from a pair of hands.

The third consequence is the most glaring: a fire without an act. “Apart from fuel, what could fire burn?” What does a fire burn once wood is gone? Can something that burns nothing still be called fire? Qingmu’s verdict is final: “There is no such thing as a fire without an act.”

The route of difference also fails. What it gives you is not an independent fire, but a fire that neither goes out nor burns anything—the name remains, while fire has vanished.

The respondent then restates these two layers in another verse: “If fire does not wait for fuel, it does not arise from conditions; if fire burns forever, human effort should be in vain.” Not waiting, it does not arise from conditions; not arising from conditions, no amount of tending can reach it.

4. It Is Called Fuel Only While Burning—Then What Was the Piece in Your Hand at That Time?

The questioner has one route of retreat left: I do not say that wood exists apart from fire; I say it is called fuel only while it is burning.

This step sounds very much as if dependent arising has already been understood. Yet a single verse exposes it:

“If you claim that it is called fuel only while it burns, 　at that time there is only wood; what is it that burns the fuel?”

By saying “it is called fuel only while burning,” you admit that the name “fuel” arises from a relation. Yet you previously used fuel as a prior object for fire. Before burning, the piece in your hand—by your own rule—was not yet called fuel: “At that time there is only wood.” It is only a stick of wood. Since fuel has not yet been established, what is fire burning?

Qingmu places the two ends side by side, and the contradiction shows itself: “If fuel exists separately apart from fire, how can one say it is called fuel only while burning?”

One name cannot serve both uses. Either it exists only within the relation, in which case it cannot be treated as a substance prior to the relation; or it is a substance, in which case one should not say that it is “called fuel only while burning.”

5. No Reaching Means No Burning: Two Independent Things Cannot Even Touch

The route of difference contains a deeper and especially elegant layer:

“If they are different, fire does not reach fuel; if it does not reach fuel, it does not burn; 　if it does not burn, it is not extinguished; if it is not extinguished, it abides forever.”

Ordinarily one assumes that two independent things can at least come into contact—fire comes over and burns the wood. But the respondent observes that things truly established without depending on one another cannot even accomplish the act of meeting. The reason is that they “are not established in mutual dependence.” Since each is already established in itself, “what use would fire have for fuel?” It has no reason to move toward the wood.

And without reaching it, fire cannot burn it—“because nothing can burn what it does not reach.” If it does not burn, there is no extinction; without extinction, it “abides forever in its own mark.” A fire that never goes out is no fire.

Each of these four links generates the next, until the route of difference is driven to the same place as the view of permanence.

The questioner objects with a very natural counterexample:

“Although fire and fuel are different, fire can reach fuel, 　just as this person goes to that person and that person comes to this person.”

Qingmu puts it more directly: “Just as a man goes to a woman and a woman goes to a man.” Are a man and a woman not two people? Can they not still come together?

The respondent accepts the analogy and distinguishes the decisive condition in one move:

“If fire and fuel could both be established separately apart from each other, 　only then could fire reach that fuel.”

To use man and woman as an analogy, the two sides must first meet one condition: each must remain established apart from the other. Man and woman do—“a woman exists apart from a man, and a man apart from a woman.” A woman need not rely on a particular man in order to be a woman; each is a complete person.

Fire and fuel are not like this: “Apart from fire there is no fuel, and apart from fuel there is no fire.” Apart from fire, the piece of wood is only wood and is not called fuel; apart from wood, the heat has nothing on which to depend and is not called fire. The two names arise together.

So Qingmu judges: “Therefore your analogy is wrong.” If the analogy fails, the conclusion fails with it.

The questioner thinks he has found an example of the same kind, but in fact he has found a counterexample: man and woman can approach each other precisely because each is established without depending on the other—fire and fuel are exactly otherwise. The more the analogy is pressed, the more clearly their difference appears.

6. Mutual Dependence: Then Let Us Say the Two Wait upon Each Other

With both identity and difference shattered, the questioner advances what most resembles the correct answer: “Fire and fuel exist in mutual dependence”—fire exists because of wood, wood is fuel because of fire, and each establishes the other.

This is nearly dependent arising. Why does the respondent still inspect it? Because one must see what “mutual dependence” is being made to do. If it merely means that neither side has substance of its own, there is no problem. But the questioner uses mutual dependence to prove two real things. That requires a question:

“If fire exists because of fuel, and fuel exists because of fire, 　which dharma is first determinately present, thereby allowing fire and fuel to exist?”

Which one first stands firm?

If fuel is determinate first, then “fuel comes first and fire afterward”—the wood was already there on its own, so one need not say that it waits for fire. Yet how can wood that has never been burned be called fuel? “If fire does not burn the fuel, then the fuel is not established.” Conversely, if fire is determinate first, exactly the same fault returns unchanged.

The next verse reveals the self-contradiction on fire’s side:

“If fire exists because of fuel, then fire is established after being established; 　consequently, there is no fire within fuel.”

If fire is said to be real, then fire has already “abided by itself within fire”—it is established in its own position. Yet you also say that it must depend on wood to be established. It is therefore established a second time after already being established, accomplishing the same thing twice. The other side is equally awkward: “Fuel abides in its own substance apart from fire”—wood is independently established, so there is no fire within it. You try to bind two entities together through mutual dependence, but both remain where they were; neither actually depends on the other.

The respondent therefore turns mutual dependence over and examines it:

“If a dharma is established because of what it depends on, this dharma in turn establishes that on which it depends; 　there is then no cause that serves as the ground of dependence, nor any dharma being established.”

Fire depends on wood, and wood in turn depends on fire. Once the circle begins to turn, there is nothing first established: “Neither is determinate. Because they are not determinate, they cannot be found.” Both wait for the other to stand firm first, so neither stands firm. One thing must be seen clearly here: the problem is not mutual dependence; the problem is using mutual dependence to prove substance. Mutual dependence says precisely that neither side has feet of its own. Yet you would use it to prove two pairs of feet.

The final stroke is the cleanest:

“If a dharma is established through dependence, how can it depend while unestablished? 　If after being established it has dependence, once established, what use has it for dependence?”

While unestablished, it is not yet a thing—“the unestablished is nonexistent; how could the nonexistent depend on anything?” A nonexistent thing cannot wait for someone. Once established, it is already a thing—“once established, what use has it for dependence?” Someone standing firmly need not be held up. The two ends close from front and back, leaving no moment between them in which a real thing could be “established through mutual dependence.”

A final verse seals both routes together: “There is no fire because of fuel, and none without fuel; there is no fuel because of fire, and none without fire.”

7. The Three Times of Going and Coming, Used Here Once More

At this point, the respondent adds another approach:

“Fire does not come from elsewhere, nor is there fire in the place where it burns; 　fuel is likewise so, and the rest is as explained for going and coming.”

Fire does not fly from somewhere else and burrow into the wood; nor is fire hidden in advance inside the wood. Qingmu offers a hands-on method: “Because when one splits the wood and seeks fire, it cannot be found.” Split the wood and look. What is split is wood; split it again and it is still wood. Fire is not inside.

He then carries the examination through the three times in a single line: “What has burned does not burn, what has not burned does not burn, and while burning it does not burn.” What has already burned burns no more; what has not burned has yet to burn; and in the very moment of burning no independent “present burning” can be separated out. The chapter on going and coming has already performed this examination once. Here it is not repeated, but only named: this meaning is as explained there.

This stroke deserves notice. The chapters of the Treatise on the Middle are not unrelated short essays. Once a mode of examination has been used here, it remains effective elsewhere. Going, coming, and burning change the subject, not the question: after removing the relation, can you still point to the thing?

8. Five Statements Gather Everything Together

After identity and difference, mutual dependence, and coming and going have all been examined, Nāgārjuna concludes in five statements:

“Fuel is not itself fire; apart from fuel there is no fire. 　Fire does not possess fuel; there is no fuel within fire, and there is no fire within fuel.”

Not itself, not apart, not possessing, not within it, and it not within me. Qingmu identifies the fault supporting each statement: the first rests on “the fault that act and agent would be one”; the second on “faults such as perpetual burning”; the last three all on the fault of difference, so “none of the three is established.”

All five routes have been exhausted. If one still wishes to install an independent fire between flame and wood, there is nowhere left to put it.

9. For Whom Was This Fire Explained?

At this point the questioner himself comes to his senses and asks the chapter’s most important question: “Why speak of fire and fuel?”

You have spent all this time examining fire. Why examine it at all?

Only then does the respondent return the matter: “Just as there is fire because of fuel, so there is an experiencer because of experience. Experience means the five aggregates, and experiencer means the person.”

At the beginning, the questioner used fire and wood to prove experience and experiencer, and the respondent simply followed his analogy to the end. Since fire and wood are established neither through identity nor through difference, the experience and experiencer supported by that analogy are likewise unestablished.

Nor does the matter stop there:

“Through the dharmas of fire and fuel, the dharmas of experience and experiencer are explained, 　as are jars and robes and all such dharmas.”

The same examination applies not only to the person and the five aggregates, but also to jars, robes, and “all such dharmas.” Qingmu says it plainly: “All external dharmas such as jars and robes are just as explained above: unborn and ultimately empty.”

This move raises the weight of the whole chapter. Fire and fuel are not an isolated example but a sample. Wherever something can be divided into an “agent” and an “object”—what burns and what is burned, what experiences and what is experienced, what acts and what is acted upon, what contains and what is contained—the same questions can be asked: Are the two identical or different? Which one first stands firm? Apart from the other, does either remain?

Pressed to the end, agent and object are not two antecedent things that later come together. First there is the event, and only within the event do the two names divide.

10. The Sound at the Chapter’s End

The final verse suddenly grows severe:

“If someone asserts a self and says that dharmas each have different marks, 　know that such a person cannot taste the Dharma of the Buddha.”

Qingmu first gives the reason: “Dharmas have never arisen from the beginning and bear the mark of ultimate quiescence; therefore this verse is spoken at the chapter’s end.”

He then gives two examples from his own time. One is the Vātsīputrīyas: form cannot be said to be the self, and the self cannot be said to exist apart from form; “the self resides in a fifth, inexpressible repository.” This school carefully avoids both identity and difference, yet opens a separate inexpressible repository in which to place the self. Avoiding identity and difference is not the same as releasing the self; it merely hides the self more deeply.

The other is the Sarvāstivādins: “Dharmas each have their own marks: wholesome, unwholesome, or indeterminate,” tainted or untainted, conditioned or unconditioned—each bearing a determinate mark. This school does not establish a self, but establishes fixed marks for dharmas one square at a time.

The two schools suffer the same illness, though it settles in different places: one locates substance in the person, the other in dharmas. Qingmu’s verdict is therefore the same for both: such people “do not attain the quiescent mark of dharmas, but use the Buddha’s words to construct all kinds of conceptual proliferation.”

The words “the Buddha’s words” weigh most heavily. They are not using non-Buddhist language, but precisely the names spoken by the Buddha. The more finely they divide them into separate squares, the farther they move from the mark of quiescence.

The phrase “cannot taste the Dharma of the Buddha” is also perfectly chosen. It does not say that they fail to understand the reasoning. It says that they cannot taste it—like memorizing every dish on a menu without eating a single bite.

11. What Can a Reader Carry Away from This Chapter?

First, an analogy must itself be examined before it can serve as proof. The things about which the mind is least guarded are often precisely those that “everyone has seen.” The questioner uses this lack of guard to smuggle in experience and experiencer.

Second, speaking and accepting are two different things. “Although there is speech, there is likewise no acceptance”—one speaks in order to point something out, not in order to take it up. If this distinction does not stand, one either dares not speak or establishes another entity with every word.

Third, the stroke concerning human effort. “Tending and protecting a fire so that it burns—such effort is plainly present.” Every piece of wood added while crouching before the stove is immediate evidence that fire is not apart from fuel. The principle need not be sought far away.

Fourth, mutual dependence does not prove two entities. It says exactly the opposite: neither side has feet of its own and so they lean on one another. The instant one uses it to prove that they have their own feet, the unestablished cannot depend and the established need not depend; at neither end is there a place to begin.

Fifth, this fire is addressed to me. The examination of fire and fuel is not for the sake of fire and fuel, but to see clearly the “one who experiences” and “what is experienced” between the person and the aggregates. Extend it outward, and jars, robes, and all dharmas are no different.

Carried Forward: Jizang’s Mirror

The foregoing is the meaning of the chapter itself. What follows uses the eye of the Sui-Tang Three Treatise lineage as a sidewise illumination—a mirror is not the treatise, but another way of reading the same verses.

In his Commentary on the Treatise on the Middle, Jizang divides the chapter’s refutation of the analogy into six approaches: identity and difference, mutual dependence, cause and noncause, inside and outside, the three times, and the fivefold search. He treats the final verse as a rebuke after both thesis and analogy have been exhausted: the first two approaches investigate nonexistence through correct contemplation, while the last rebukes the deluded mind that supposes existence.

On the questioner’s linguistic objection, Jizang answers: although there is speech in accord with convention, there is no acceptance in accord with convention—the language is the same as that of the world, but what is accepted in the mind is different.

As for the fivefold search, Jizang directly maps it onto the self and the five aggregates: form is the self, the self is apart from form, form is in the self, the self is in form, and the self possesses form. Five statements for each of five aggregates make twenty-five selves. He also resolves a small question for the reader: Why say only that the self possesses form, rather than that form possesses the self? Because the self is the governing subject and controls form, so form belongs to the self. One cannot reverse this by saying that form governs the self and the self belongs to form; therefore no such statement appears.

This mirror connects the chapter to the Three Treatise lineage’s interpretive structure of refuting error and disclosing correctness. Its sixfold classification is Jizang’s addition, not the original speech of Nāgārjuna’s verses and Qingmu’s prose commentary. The readings are recorded side by side without adjudication, each returned to its own place.