中論 觀行品第十三

The questioner cites scripture to establish a claim: since the Buddha speaks of what is “false and delusively grasped,” formations must truly possess a false mark standing opposed to nirvāṇa, the first true mark.

The answering verse replies with a single question: “What within it is there to grasp?”—within something false, what graspable thing remains? “The Buddha taught such a matter because he wished to reveal the meaning of emptiness.” The Buddha calls it false not to confer an identity upon formations, but to remove one.

Within This One Body, Where Is That “It”?

“Formations arise, cease, and do not abide; because they lack intrinsic nature, they are empty.”

Is the form of infancy through old age one or different? If determinately one, it is forever infancy: “It would also be like a lump of clay that always remained a lump of clay and never became a jar.” If determinately different, the segments have nothing to do with one another, even “the dharma of kinship would be lost: there would be neither father nor child.” Continuity does not work either: once ceased, it has no cause; if unceased, there is nothing to continue.

The respondent gives each aggregate its analogy. Form is like a plantain whose “solid heart cannot be found; there are only sheath and leaf,” and like a lamp flame in which “no determinate form can be distinguished and found.” Feeling is “like the continuity of a stream.” Perception is “like a shadow following a form”: when there is a form there is a shadow, and without the form there is no shadow. Consciousness is like an entertainer who holds a pearl in his mouth and shows it again after taking it out, leaving one uncertain whether it is the original pearl. Formations are “like a person who is ill: with suitable care the illness is cured, but without such care it gathers again.”

This is not nonexistence; it is “said to exist only by worldly convention.”

Conventional Truth Is the Ladder

Karmic formations are pure and impure; when fruition is received they decrease, and when performed again they increase. “Thus formations do not abide because they increase and decrease.” What increases and decreases cannot be determined.

Yet Qingmu does not discard the worldly level: “Through conventional truth one is able to see the truth of the ultimate meaning.” He counts the twelve links all the way to cessation, where “the body of the five aggregates is ultimately exhausted without remainder, and emptiness alone remains.”

Even Non-Nature Is Medicine

“Because dharmas undergo change, we know that all lack intrinsic nature; no dharma of non-nature exists either, because all dharmas are empty.”

Change is evidence of the absence of intrinsic nature. But non-nature cannot in turn be established as a thing: “Non-nature is spoken of only to refute intrinsic nature.”

What possesses intrinsic nature cannot change, for “intrinsic nature means determinate existence and cannot change.” Yet non-nature cannot serve as an essence that undergoes change either. That we see a youth become old is true. The error lies in assigning “change” to a determinate thing as its bearer: “If this very dharma itself changed, milk should itself already be curd”—yet milk is never simply curd.

Emptiness Is Not the One Thing Left Over

“If a nonempty dharma existed, an empty dharma should exist; but no nonempty dharma truly exists, so how could an empty dharma be found?”

Once the nonempty is refuted, mutual dependence is absent, and emptiness has nowhere to stand on its own side.

“The Great Sage taught the dharma of emptiness in order to abandon all views; if someone once more sees that emptiness exists, such a person cannot be transformed by any buddha.”

“It is like an illness that must be treated with medicine; if the medicine itself becomes an illness, the person cannot be treated.” “Emptiness is like water and can extinguish the fires of the many afflictions”—the water is sound; it simply cannot extinguish a fire born from itself.

And the person grasping emptiness is hardest to teach, for his first answer is: “I have long known this emptiness already.”

Nāgārjuna Bodhisattva, author; the Brahmin Qingmu, commentator; Tripiṭaka Master Kumārajīva of the Yao Qin, translator. Treatise on the Middle, Scroll Two, “Examination of Formations, Chapter Thirteen,” Taishō T30n1564. Paragraph-openers 〔T30 …〕 are page-column-line anchors in the Taishō canon.

I. Question: The Buddha’s Teaching Calls Them False and Delusively Grasped, So Formations Must Possess the Mark of Falsity

〔T30 0017a26〕The questioner says:

As the Buddhist scriptures teach, falsity is the mark of delusive grasping; because formations are delusively grasped, they are called false.

The scriptures say: falsity is precisely the mark of delusive grasping; the first truth, namely nirvāṇa, is not the mark of delusive grasping. Because the scripture says this, one should know that formations truly possess the false mark of delusive grasping.

II. Answer in Verse: Within False and Delusive Grasping, What Is Ultimately Grasped?

The respondent says:

Of what is called false and delusively grasped, what within it is there to grasp? The Buddha taught such a matter because he wished thereby to reveal the meaning of emptiness.

If a dharma bearing the mark of delusive grasping is itself false, what is there within these formations to be grasped? Since the Buddha spoke in this way, one should know that what he taught was precisely the meaning of emptiness.

III. Question: How Do We Know That All Formations Are Empty?

The questioner says: How do we know that all formations are empty?

The respondent says: All formations are empty because they bear the mark of falsity. Formations arise, cease, and do not abide; because they lack intrinsic nature, they are empty. “Formations” also names the five aggregates, because the five aggregates arise from formative activity; thus the five aggregates themselves are called formations. These five aggregates are all false and have no determinate mark.

IV. Form: From Infancy to Old Age, Both Identity and Difference Entail Faults

Why? For example, the form of infancy is not the form of crawling; the form of crawling is not the form of walking; the form of walking is not the form of childhood; the form of childhood is not the form of adulthood; and the form of adulthood is not the form of old age. Because form in this way never abides from thought-moment to thought-moment, a determinate essence cannot be distinguished and found.

Is the infant’s form itself the form of crawling and so on through old age, or is it different from them? Both alternatives entail faults. Why?

If the infant’s form were itself the form of crawling and so on through old age, then there would be only one form and every stage would be infancy; there could be no crawling and no old age. It would also be like a lump of clay that forever remained just that lump and could never become a jar. Why? Because form would be permanent and determinate.

If the infant’s form differed from the crawling child’s form, the infant could not become the crawling child, nor could the crawling child have been the infant. Why? Because the two forms would be different. In the same way, the forms of childhood, youth, adulthood, and old age should not exist in continuity. The dharma of kinship would then be lost: there would be neither father nor child. If so, only the infant should have a father; the crawling child and all later stages through old age should have no share in him. Thus both alternatives entail faults.

V. Continuity: Does It Continue Only after Ceasing, or While It Has Not Ceased?

The questioner says: Although form is not determinate, after the infant’s form ceases, another form arises in continuity, and so on until the form of old age arises. This avoids the faults just described.

The respondent says: When you say that the infant’s form gives rise to another in continuity, does it arise in continuity after having ceased, or while it has not ceased? If the infant’s form has ceased, how could continuity exist? There would be no cause. It is like fire: although there may be firewood capable of burning, once the fire is extinguished there is no continuity. If the infant’s form has not ceased and yet continues, then the infant’s form is unceasing and permanently abides in its original mark; here too there is no continuity.

VI. Similar Arising: The Plantain and the Lamp Flame

The questioner says: I do not speak of continuity in terms of either cessation or noncessation. I say only that, without abiding, a similar form arises; therefore I call it continuity.

The respondent says: If so, a determinate form would arise anew, and there should be tens of millions of distinct forms. But this is not so, and thus there is still no continuity. Wherever form is sought, no determinate mark can be found; it is said to exist only by worldly convention. It is like a plantain tree: when one seeks its solid heart, none can be found; there are only layers of sheath and leaf. In the same way, when the wise seek the mark of form, they see it cease thought-moment by thought-moment. No real form can be found beyond this, and it does not abide in any shape or mark of form. Similar instances arise in sequence and are difficult to distinguish, just like a lamp flame: no determinate form can be distinguished and found, nor can one find a determinate form from which a further form arises. Thus form is empty because it has no essence; it is said to exist only by worldly convention.

VII. Feeling, Perception, and Consciousness Are the Same

Feeling is likewise so. The wise examine it in many ways. Because successive instances are similar, their arising and ceasing are difficult to distinguish and know, like the continuity of a stream. It is only because there is felt awareness that three kinds of feeling are said to be present in the body. One should therefore know that feeling is explained in the same way as form.

Perception arises dependent on names and marks; apart from names and marks, it does not arise. Therefore the Buddha said: because it discriminates and knows the marks of names, it is called perception. Perception does not determinately preexist; it arises from many conditions and has no determinate essence. Because it has no determinate essence, it is like a shadow following a form. Because a form is present, a shadow is present; without the form, there is no shadow. A shadow has no determinate essence. If it determinately existed, there should be a shadow apart from the form—but in fact there is not. Thus a shadow arises from many conditions and cannot be found because it lacks intrinsic nature. Perception is the same: it is said to exist only on the basis of external names and marks and through worldly convention.

Consciousness arises dependent on forms, sounds, odors, tastes, and tangibles, together with the eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and so forth. Because the eye and the other faculties each differ, consciousness is also differentiated. Is this consciousness located in form, in the eye, or between them? There is no determination. Once it has arisen, it cognizes an object, this person, and that person. Is the consciousness that knows this person itself the consciousness that knows that person, or is it different? The two are difficult to distinguish. Just as eye-consciousness is difficult to distinguish, ear-consciousness is likewise so. Because distinction is difficult, some say they are one and some say they are different; no determinate distinction exists. Consciousness arises only from many conditions, and because it is differentiated according to the eye and the other faculties, it is empty and lacks intrinsic nature. It is like an entertainer who holds a pearl in his mouth, takes it out, and shows it again: people wonder whether it is the original pearl or another one. Consciousness is the same. After one consciousness arises, another arises: is this the original consciousness or a different one? Thus one should know that because consciousness does not abide, it lacks intrinsic nature and is false like an illusion.

VIII. Formations: Body, Speech, and Mind, Pure and Impure, Increase and Decrease

Formations are likewise so. What are called formations are activities of body, speech, and mind. There are two kinds: pure and impure. What is impure? Harming sentient beings, craving attachment, and the like are called impure. Not harming sentient beings, speaking truthfully, not craving attachment, and the like are called pure. These activities sometimes increase and sometimes decrease. Those who cultivate pure conduct receive karmic fruition among humans or in the heavens of the desire realm, form realm, or formless realm; when its fruition has been received, the activity decreases, and because it is performed again, it is called increasing. Those who perform impure conduct are the same: they receive karmic fruition in hell, among animals, hungry ghosts, or asuras; afterward it decreases, and because it is performed again, it is called increasing. Thus formations do not abide because they increase and decrease.

It is like a person who is ill: with suitable care, the illness is cured; without such care, it gathers again. Formations are the same. Because they increase and decrease, they are not determinate and are said to exist only by worldly convention. Yet precisely by relying on conventional truth, one is able to see the truth of the ultimate meaning.

IX. The Arising and Correct Cessation of the Twelve Links

That is: ignorance conditions formations; from formations comes the attachment of consciousness; because consciousness attaches, name-and-form exists; from name-and-form come the six entrances; from the six entrances, contact; from contact, feeling; from feeling, craving; from craving, grasping; from grasping, existence; from existence, birth; and from birth come aging, death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, the suffering of separation from those one loves, the suffering of meeting those one hates, and so forth. All such forms of suffering have formations as their root.

The Buddha taught this on the basis of conventional truth. For one who realizes the truth of the ultimate meaning and gives rise to true wisdom, ignorance ceases. Because ignorance ceases, formations no longer accumulate. Because formations no longer accumulate, the identity-view, doubt, attachment to precepts, and other factors abandoned by seeing the truth are cut off; craving, anger, attachment to the form realm, attachment to the formless realm, agitation, and ignorance abandoned by cultivation are also cut off. Because they are thus cut off, each portion ceases in turn: ignorance, formations, consciousness, name-and-form, the six entrances, contact, feeling, craving, grasping, existence, birth, aging and death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, separation from those one loves, meeting those one hates, and so forth all cease. Because of this cessation, the body of the five aggregates is ultimately exhausted without remainder, and emptiness alone remains.

Therefore, because the Buddha wished to reveal the meaning of emptiness, he said that formations are false.

Furthermore, because dharmas have no essence, they are false; because false, they are empty. As the verse says:

X. Verse: Because Dharmas Undergo Change, We Know That All Lack Intrinsic Nature

〔T30 0018a27〕Because dharmas undergo change, we know that all lack intrinsic nature; yet no dharma of non-nature exists either, because all dharmas are empty.

Dharmas have no intrinsic nature. Why? Although dharmas arise, they do not abide in their own nature; therefore they are said to lack intrinsic nature. For example, if the infant determinately abided in an intrinsic nature, it could never become a crawling child and so on through old age. Yet the infant continues in sequence, and differing marks appear as crawling and then the later stages through old age. Thus it is said: by seeing the changing marks of dharmas, we know that they lack intrinsic nature.

XI. Can a Dharma of Non-Nature Exist?

The questioner says: If dharmas undergo change and lack intrinsic nature, then a dharma of non-nature exists. What fault is there in that?

The respondent says: If there is no intrinsic nature, how could there be a dharma? How could there be a mark? Why? Because there is no root. Non-nature is spoken of only to refute intrinsic nature. If this dharma of non-nature existed, one could not call all dharmas empty. If all dharmas are empty, how could there be a dharma of non-nature?

XII. What Has Intrinsic Nature Cannot Change; What Lacks It Cannot Be Made the Thing That Changes

The questioner says:

If dharmas have no intrinsic nature, why do you still say that from infancy through old age there are many different marks?

If dharmas had no intrinsic nature, they could not have different marks. Yet you say that different marks exist, so the intrinsic natures of dharmas must exist. If there were no intrinsic natures of dharmas, how could there be different marks?

The respondent says:

If dharmas possessed intrinsic nature, how could they change? If dharmas lacked intrinsic nature, again how could change belong to them?

If dharmas determinately possessed intrinsic nature, how could change be possible? Intrinsic nature means determinate existence and cannot change. Genuine gold, for example, cannot be changed; likewise, the nature of darkness does not become light, and the nature of light does not become darkness.

Furthermore:

This very dharma does not change, nor does another dharma change; just as adulthood does not become old age, and old age does not become adulthood.

If a dharma changes, it should have a mark of change. Does this very dharma change, or does another dharma change? Neither is so. If this very dharma changed, old age should become old age—but old age does not in fact become old age. If another dharma changed, then because adulthood differs from old age, adulthood should become old age—but adulthood does not in fact become old age. Both alternatives entail faults.

XIII. Verse: Milk Should Itself Already Be Curd

The questioner says: What fault is there if this very dharma changes? We now see with our own eyes that a young person grows old with the passing days, months, and years.

The respondent says:

If this very dharma itself changed, milk should itself already be curd. Apart from milk, what other dharma could become curd?

If this very dharma itself changed, milk should itself already be curd, and no other causes or conditions would be needed. But this is not so. Why? Because milk and curd have many different marks. Milk is not itself curd, so a dharma does not change simply as itself. Yet if one says that another dharma changes, this too is not so: apart from milk, what other thing could serve as curd? Thinking in this way, one knows that neither this very dharma nor another dharma changes; therefore one should not cling one-sidedly.

XIV. Verse: If a Nonempty Dharma Existed, an Empty Dharma Should Exist

The questioner says: You have refuted identity and refuted difference, yet emptiness remains. Emptiness is itself a dharma.

The respondent says:

If a nonempty dharma existed, an empty dharma should exist; but no nonempty dharma truly exists, so how could an empty dharma be found?

If a nonempty dharma existed, then because the two depend upon one another, an empty dharma should exist. But nonempty dharmas have already been refuted above through many causes and conditions. Since a nonempty dharma does not exist, there is no mutual dependence; without mutual dependence, how could there be an empty dharma?

XV. Verse: The Great Sage Taught Emptiness in Order to Abandon All Views

The questioner says: You say that because no nonempty dharma exists, no empty dharma exists either. If so, you are saying only that emptiness has no counterpart and therefore should not be grasped. Where there is an opposite, there should be mutual dependence; where there is no opposite, there is no mutual dependence. Since mutual dependence is absent, there is no mark; since there is no mark, there is no grasping. This itself is to teach emptiness.

The respondent says:

The Great Sage taught the dharma of emptiness so that people might abandon all views; if someone once more sees that emptiness exists, such a person cannot be transformed by any buddha.

The Great Sage taught emptiness in order to refute the sixty-two views and the many afflictions of ignorance, craving, and the rest. If someone again gives rise to a view regarding emptiness, that person cannot be transformed. It is like an illness that must be treated with medicine; if the medicine itself becomes an illness, the person cannot be treated. Or it is like a fire arising from firewood, which can be extinguished with water; if fire arose from water, with what could it be extinguished? Emptiness is like water and can extinguish the fires of the many afflictions. But some people have weighty karmic offenses, deeply grasping minds, and dull wisdom, and so give rise to views about emptiness, saying either that emptiness exists or that emptiness does not exist. Because they fall again into existence and nonexistence, afflictions arise once more. If emptiness is used to transform such a person, he will say, “I have long known this emptiness already; apart from this emptiness there is no path to nirvāṇa.” As the scripture says, to claim that one can attain liberation apart from the three gateways of emptiness, signlessness, and wishlessness is nothing but words.

Across the Treatise on the Middle, chapters refute going and coming, the six faculties, fuel and fire, and the prior abider. By this point, most readers have learned one thing: whatever is established as “just what it is in itself” cannot stand.

The subject here is “Examination of Formations.” What are formations? Qingmu speaks clearly: “Formations name the five aggregates, because they arise from formative activity.” He also says: “What are called formations are activities of body, speech, and mind.” On one side stands this current of body and mind—form, feeling, perception, formations, and consciousness—flowing thought-moment by thought-moment. On the other are the bodily, verbal, and mental actions people perform every day. Both meanings inhabit the word “formations.” This chapter examines this thing most intimately bound to us and most readily taken as real.

Yet the sentence with which the chapter finally lands does not refute formations. It refutes emptiness.

I. The Questioner’s Step: Since the Buddha Calls Them False, There Must Be Something False

The questioner opens by bringing forward the Buddhist scriptures:

“As the Buddhist scriptures teach, falsity is the mark of delusive grasping; because formations are delusively grasped, they are called false.”

Qingmu states the intended meaning plainly: “The first truth, namely nirvāṇa, is not the mark of delusive grasping.” Nirvāṇa is the first truth and is not delusively grasped; the formations opposed to it are therefore false and delusively grasped. Since the Buddha himself says so, it is a matter certified by the Buddha that “formations possess the false mark of delusive grasping.”

Look closely at this move. The questioner has not misquoted the Buddha. He has merely assigned a real position to each term in a scriptural contrast—the true and the false, nirvāṇa and formations. If something true stands over there, something false must stand here; and if the false really is false, “falsity” itself becomes something real.

This is among the hardest forms of grasping to detect: it is not grasping existence, but grasping the thing judged false as something that nonetheless stands there solidly and securely.

II. The Respondent Asks Only One Thing: What Exactly Has Been Grasped There?

The answering verse does not debate the scripture. It merely asks:

“Of what is false and delusively grasped, what within it is there to grasp? The Buddha taught such a matter because he wished to reveal the meaning of emptiness.”

Qingmu follows the question with extreme brevity: “If a dharma bearing the mark of delusive grasping is itself false, what is there within these formations to be grasped?”

Delusive grasping must grasp something. You say that formations are what is delusively grasped, so bring out that “object grasped.” Yet once you have acknowledged that formations are false, what real object remains to be grasped within something false?

Thus “false” is not a new identity fastened onto formations; it removes the identities already fastened to them. The Buddha speaks of false and delusive grasping not to establish a false dharma in opposition to a true one, but to let us see that no graspable thing was ever here. Qingmu delivers the conclusion: “Since the Buddha spoke in this way, one should know that he taught the meaning of emptiness.”

With this one question, the questioner’s framework of opposites collapses. The long passage that follows explains the same matter one aggregate at a time.

III. The Five Aggregates: From Infancy to Old Age, Where Is That “It”?

The questioner presses: how do we know that all formations are empty? The respondent’s general answer is two clauses: “Formations arise, cease, and do not abide; because they lack intrinsic nature, they are empty.”

He then begins with form. This is the chapter’s easiest passage to follow—and the one that cuts closest to the heart.

The form of infancy is not the form of crawling, the form of crawling is not the form of walking, and the sequence continues through adulthood and old age. Qingmu says: “Because form does not abide from thought-moment to thought-moment, a determinate nature cannot be distinguished and found.”

Then comes the dilemma: are the infant’s form and the old person’s form one, or two?

If they are one, it must remain infancy forever. Qingmu adds an analogy: “It would also be like a lump of clay that always remained a lump of clay and never became a jar.” If clay really were determinate clay, it could not become a jar; if form really were determinate form, the infant could not grow old. Whatever is determinately itself cannot move.

If they are two, the infant cannot become the crawling child and the crawling child cannot have been the infant; segment by segment, none has anything to do with another. Qingmu suddenly offers a thoroughly human line: “The dharma of kinship would be lost: there would be neither father nor child.” If the earlier and later were truly two things, only the infant-segment would have acquired a father; none of the later persons could count as his child. Parent and child, teacher and student, you and yesterday’s you—these relations all hold through “neither one nor different.” Once they fall into determinate identity or determinate difference, human relations are the first things to scatter.

The questioner retreats one step: there is no need to say one and no need to say different; surely “continuity” will do—the infant’s form ceases and the next form then arises. The respondent presses again: does it continue once ceased, or before ceasing? “If the infant’s form has ceased, how could continuity exist? There would be no cause.” Once it is wholly extinguished, what can serve as cause? Qingmu uses fire as his analogy: “Although firewood capable of burning may remain, once the fire is extinguished there is no continuity.” The wood remains, but once the fire has gone out there is no next portion of fire. Conversely, if it continues without ceasing, the infant’s form permanently abides in its original mark, and there is no continuation to speak of.

The questioner retreats again: I do not speak of cessation or noncessation, only of “similar arising without abiding.” The respondent says that if what “arises similarly” remains a determinate form, there will merely be tens of millions of determinate forms arrayed one after another; that is still not continuity.

At this point the respondent stops pressing questions and gathers the passage with three analogies. “It is like a plantain tree: when one seeks its solid heart, none can be found; there are only sheath and leaf.” Peel away one layer and there is another; peel to the end and no heart appears. Or it is like a lamp flame—“no determinate form can be distinguished and found within a lamp flame.” It looks like a single unmoving flame, yet no instant holds the same one.

What, then, is the “body of this person” spoken of in daily life? Qingmu gives the line that runs through the whole chapter: “It is said to exist only by worldly convention.” This is not nonexistence. It is existence only at the level of speech.

For feeling, perception, and consciousness, the respondent gives one passage and one analogy each. Feeling is “like the continuity of a stream”: it looks like one river, though not a drop abides. It is only because there is felt awareness that painful, pleasant, and neither-painful-nor-pleasant feeling are said to be present in the body. As for perception, “perception arises dependent on names and marks; apart from names and marks, it does not arise.” Qingmu compares it to a shadow: “Because a form is present, a shadow is present; without the form, there is no shadow. A shadow has no determinate nature.” Seek a shadow apart from its form and it cannot be found; perception apart from external names and marks is established no more successfully.

Consciousness is hardest to dismantle, so Qingmu questions it most closely. Is this consciousness located in form, in the eye, or between them? Nothing is determined. Is the consciousness recognizing this person one with or different from that recognizing another person? This too cannot be distinguished. He therefore uses a street performer as his analogy: “It is like an entertainer who holds a pearl in his mouth, takes it out, and shows it again: people wonder whether it is the original pearl or another one.” A conjurer puts a pearl in his mouth and then spits one out to show you; you wonder, is it the same pearl as before? In the same way, thought arises after thought and one wonders: is it the same “I” thinking as a moment ago? The conclusion is: “Because consciousness does not abide, it lacks intrinsic nature and is false like an illusion.”

IV. Karmic Formations Are the Same: What Increases and Decreases Cannot Be Determined

After the “formations” of the five aggregates, Qingmu turns to the “formations” of action: “What are called formations are activities of body, speech, and mind.” They divide into pure and impure. Harming sentient beings and craving attachment are impure; not harming sentient beings, speaking truthfully, and not craving attachment are pure.

What matters is his next observation. For those cultivating pure conduct, birth among humans and devas brings karmic fruition; once that fruition is received, the activity “decreases,” and when performed again, it “increases.” For those performing impure conduct and falling into the three evil destinies, the same applies: after fruition, it decreases; performed again, it increases. Therefore, “formations do not abide because they increase and decrease.”

He adds an analogy: “It is like a person who is ill: with suitable care the illness is cured, but without such care it gathers again.” With care it heals; without care it builds up again. Karmic formation is not a fixed stockpile but a process waxing and waning according to conditions. What can increase and decrease is not determinately existent.

Then comes the pivot of the passage: “Through conventional truth one is able to see the truth of the ultimate meaning.”

This sentence deserves a pause. After so much refutation, one can easily imagine that the worldly level must be thrown away. It must not. Qingmu immediately counts the twelve links one by one—ignorance conditions formations and so on through birth, aging, death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, and distress. All these are taught at the level of conventional truth. It is precisely through this sequence of cause and effect spoken by conventional truth that one reaches the cessation of ignorance and the nonaccumulation of formations; only then are identity-view, doubt, and attachment to precepts, abandoned by seeing, and craving, anger, and the rest, abandoned by cultivation, cut off. Conventional truth is the ladder; the truth of the ultimate meaning is where it climbs. Without the ladder, there is no ascent.

What follows complete cessation? Qingmu says: “The body of the five aggregates is ultimately exhausted without remainder, and emptiness alone remains.” Then he immediately returns to the opening question: “Therefore, because the Buddha wished to reveal the meaning of emptiness, he said that formations are false.”

The circle is complete. When the Buddha says “false,” his intent is precisely emptiness.

V. Non-Nature Too May Not Be Established as a Thing

With the prose explanation complete, Nāgārjuna gives the verse:

“Because dharmas undergo change, we know that all lack intrinsic nature; no dharma of non-nature exists either, because all dharmas are empty.”

The first half gathers the entire preceding argument. Precisely because the infant can become old, one sees that it never abided in intrinsic nature—Qingmu says, “Although dharmas arise, they do not abide in their own nature; therefore they are said to lack intrinsic nature.” Change itself is evidence of the absence of intrinsic nature.

What truly demands attention is the latter half: “No dharma of non-nature exists either.”

The questioner seizes on this immediately: since dharmas lack intrinsic nature, does that not mean there is a “dharma of non-nature”? What fault would that entail?

Qingmu’s answer has one sentence of greatest weight: “Non-nature is spoken of only to refute intrinsic nature.”

Non-nature is not a newly discovered thing; it is a remedial medicine. When someone grasps intrinsic nature, non-nature is taught. Once intrinsic nature is refuted, non-nature too has nothing to oppose. If non-nature is gathered back into a real dharma, one can no longer say that all dharmas are empty—“If this dharma of non-nature existed, one could not call all dharmas empty. If all dharmas are empty, how could there be a dharma of non-nature?”

Still unsatisfied, the questioner answers with a verse:

“If dharmas have no intrinsic nature, how can one speak of infancy and so on through old age as undergoing many changes?”

If you say that they lack intrinsic nature, how can you still speak of all the differences from infancy to old age? The answering verse cuts in both directions:

“If dharmas possessed intrinsic nature, how could they change? If dharmas lacked intrinsic nature, again how could change belong to them?”

The first cut meets the questioner: what has intrinsic nature cannot change. Qingmu says: “Intrinsic nature means determinate existence and cannot change.” Then he offers analogies: “Genuine gold cannot be changed; likewise, the nature of darkness does not become light, and the nature of light does not become darkness.” The second cut returns toward his own side: non-nature too cannot be used as a thing that undergoes change. “Change” stands on neither side. This is precisely to say that change is the appearance of dependent arising, not a property owned by either side.

Then the pressure goes one layer deeper:

“This very dharma does not change, nor does another dharma change; just as adulthood does not become old age, and old age does not become adulthood.”

If this very dharma changes, then old age must become old age—where could an identical thing change to? If another dharma changes, adulthood and old age are wholly separate things, so adulthood cannot become old age.

The questioner produces the counterexample anyone might offer: “We now see with our own eyes that a young person grows old with the passing days, months, and years.” I personally see the young become old; does that not count as change?

The answering verse replies with something from the kitchen:

“If this very dharma itself changed, milk should itself already be curd; apart from milk, what other dharma could become curd?”

If the same dharma could change by itself, milk should instantly be curd, without awaiting causes and conditions. Yet “milk and curd have many different marks”; milk is indeed not curd. But if curd is a wholly different thing, where apart from milk will you find it?

That we see a youth become old is true; the error is assigning “change” to some determinate thing as its bearer. Qingmu closes with care: “Therefore one should not cling one-sidedly.” Refusing either extreme is not vagueness; it is refusing to force an occurrence of dependent arising into the drawer of either “identical” or “wholly different.”

VI. The Last Move: Emptiness Is No Place to Settle

At this point, the questioner makes the chapter’s final and most subtle retreat: “You have refuted identity and refuted difference, yet emptiness remains. Emptiness is itself a dharma.”

You have refuted both identity and difference, but surely one thing remains: “emptiness.” That must be the dharma of emptiness.

The answering verse says:

“If a nonempty dharma existed, an empty dharma should exist; but no nonempty dharma truly exists, so how could an empty dharma be found?”

Qingmu’s explanation is spare: “Since a nonempty dharma does not exist, there is no mutual dependence; without mutual dependence, how could there be an empty dharma?” Emptiness is spoken in contrast with the nonempty. Once the nonempty is thoroughly refuted, emptiness has nowhere to stand. Emptiness was never the one thing left behind; it is a formulation established through mutual dependence.

The questioner makes a final turn that sounds almost as though he now understands: if there is no mutual dependence, there is no mark; if there is no mark, there is no grasping—is that not precisely the teaching of emptiness?

Yet the respondent’s final verse does not nod along:

“The Great Sage taught the dharma of emptiness in order to abandon all views; if someone once more sees that emptiness exists, such a person cannot be transformed by any buddha.”

Qingmu explains the function of the Buddha’s teaching of emptiness: “The Great Sage taught emptiness in order to refute the sixty-two views and the many afflictions of ignorance, craving, and the rest.” Emptiness is used to abandon views. But once you take “I have abandoned views” as something attained, emptiness turns from medicine into illness.

He gives two analogies in succession. First, medicine: “It is like an illness that must be treated with medicine; if the medicine itself becomes an illness, the person cannot be treated.” Illness can be treated with medicine; when the medicine itself becomes the illness, there is no second medicine. Second, fire: “It is like a fire arising from firewood, which can be extinguished with water; if fire arose from water, with what could it be extinguished?” Qingmu states the point: “Emptiness is like water and can extinguish the fires of the many afflictions.” The water is good water; it simply cannot extinguish the fire that arises from itself.

What does a person grasping emptiness look like? Qingmu describes the person concretely: weighed down by karmic offenses, deeply attached, and dull in wisdom, he gives rise to a view about emptiness, saying either that emptiness exists or that it does not. Once he falls into existence and nonexistence, afflictions arise again. The most difficult part follows: “He will say, ‘I have long known this emptiness already; apart from this emptiness there is no path to nirvāṇa.’” You try to teach him, and his first answer is, “I already knew that.” Emptiness has become one of his possessions, and so becomes a wall through which no one can pass him anything.

The last line is coldest of all: “To claim that one can attain liberation apart from the gateways of emptiness, signlessness, and wishlessness is nothing but words.” One may speak lucidly and at length about the three gateways to liberation—emptiness, signlessness, and wishlessness—but talk of liberation apart from entering them remains only talk.

VII. What Readers Can Carry Away from This Chapter

First, return to this very body and look. Infancy, crawling, childhood, adulthood, old age—this sequence is each person’s own life. If “I” were determinate, this moment could not age; because it ages, it was never fixed for a single moment. This is not merely a proposition to memorize but a mirror available at any time.

Second, recognize the measure of “said to exist only by worldly convention.” Qingmu never says that body and mind do not exist; he says they are established only at the level of speech. Thus one still cares for the body and still cultivates pure conduct—“It is like a person who is ill: with suitable care the illness is cured” says exactly this. What is refuted is determination, not daily functioning.

Third, notice whether you have collected emptiness as a possession. Whenever the first thought to arise on hearing the Dharma is “I already know this,” Qingmu has written us into the text. Emptiness is water and medicine. Water should not give birth to fire; medicine should not become illness.

Carried Forward: Jizang’s Mirror

The meaning above belongs to the chapter itself. What follows is a side illumination from the Sui–Tang Sanlun lineage—a mirror is not the treatise, but another way of reading the same verses.

Jizang’s Commentary on the Treatise on the Middle first distinguishes the word “formations.” Asked whether calling the five aggregates formations means causal or resultant formations, he says it carries both meanings: the five aggregates are produced from karmic formations and so are called formations; these same five aggregates themselves arise, cease, and act and so are called formations. This classification orders the two identities of “formations” more systematically than Qingmu does.

For “no dharma of non-nature exists either,” he labels the move the provisional use of intrinsic nature to refute non-nature. Only if intrinsic nature originally existed could non-nature be spoken of in opposition; when intrinsic nature itself does not exist, whence non-nature? He adds that the verse contains multiple implications.

At the final verse, he lays out the stages of the Buddha’s teaching of emptiness more finely. Simple emptiness is taught to free beings from the view of existence; doubled emptiness is taught to refute the view of emptiness; the eighteen emptinesses refute the view of existence; and solitary emptiness refutes mutual dependence and thus also refutes a view of emptiness. To say that such a person cannot be transformed by the buddhas means that one attached to simple emptiness cannot again be transformed by simple emptiness, one attached to doubled emptiness cannot be transformed by doubled emptiness, and the same applies to attachment to the eighteen emptinesses or solitary emptiness. Every level of emptiness can be grasped as a new foothold, at which point the same medicine can no longer be used.

This mirror joins the chapter to the Sanlun lineage’s exegetical architecture of abandoning views and disclosing the right. Its layered classification is Jizang’s addition, not the wording of Nāgārjuna’s verses or Qingmu’s prose. The readings are recorded side by side without adjudication, each returned to its own place.

Two other exegetical traditions also transmit this chapter. At the verse “Because dharmas undergo change,” the Bhāviveka-lineage Prajñā Lamp Commentary says that seeing dharmas change and fail to abide permanently reveals their absence of essence, attesting the same point as this chapter. At the final verse it compares grasping emptiness to taking a purgative that instead becomes a grave illness; those grasping emptiness cannot be cured, and emptiness was expressly taught to abandon wrong views, so abandoning emptiness entails no fault. At “no dharma of non-nature exists either,” the Sthiramati-lineage Mahāyāna Commentary on the Middle Contemplation says that although all dharmas are taught as empty, there is no separate dharma of non-nature to obtain. The three transmissions differ in wording but agree that remedial language must not be reified. The Chinese translation of the Sthiramati lineage ends with this chapter; no corresponding alternative reading remains after it.