中論 觀縛解品第十六

The questioner wants someone who moves through saṃsāra: “Saṃsāra cannot be wholly without a basis; within it, surely sentient beings come and go, or conditioned activities come and go.”

The verse allows only two paths, and neither is passable: “If conditioned activities that come and go are permanent, they should not come and go; if impermanent, they likewise should not; the same is true of sentient beings.” If permanent, they are determinately fixed in intrinsic nature and have no continuity; if impermanent, they have no intrinsic nature that could be moved. Seek that person among aggregates, realms, and entrances, and “exhaustive search by the five modes finds nothing—who is the one that comes and goes?” Passing from this body to another, moreover, “the one who comes and goes becomes bodiless.”

The questioner tries again through nirvāṇa: what is extinguished must surely be conditioned activities or sentient beings. The answer is, “Neither is extinguished.” Extinction would require something extinguished. “Conditioned activities have no intrinsic nature,” and sentient beings are unobtainable when sought; nirvāṇa is not the destruction of an intrinsically real thing.

The questioner now presses: “If so, then there is neither bondage nor release, because the basis is unobtainable.”

The respondent directly agrees. Conditioned activities “arise and cease thought by thought, and therefore should not undergo bondage or release”—the prior thought has vanished, the later thought has not arrived, and between them no enduring thing remains to be tied or untied. A sentient being is unobtainable through the fivefold search, so whence could bondage and release arise? If the body itself is bondage, “one person would have two bodies”; if a bodiless one is bound, then “without the five aggregates there is emptiness—how could that be bound?” If what can be bound already has bondage, the three times of coming and going recur: “what is not bound is not bound, what has been bound is not bound, and during binding there is no binding.” Apart from the five aggregates there is neither a distinct sentient being nor distinct afflictions. Binder and bound require two things; when two cannot be indicated, the event cannot stand. Since bondage does not stand, neither does release: “One who is bound has no release, and one who is unbound likewise has no release.”

Neither bondage nor release means that no intrinsic bondage binds an intrinsic person. It does not mean that cultivation comes to nothing.

The closest line is this: someone forms the thought of leaving appropriation and attaining nirvāṇa, yet “that person is instead bound by this very appropriation.” Appropriation is grasping. One releases worldly grasping, then grasps this release itself with exceptional force. The posture of letting go can become a new fist.

Thus “there is no separate nirvāṇa apart from saṃsāra.” Qingmu cites the sūtra: “Nirvāṇa is precisely saṃsāra, and saṃsāra is precisely nirvāṇa.” With no two fixed things to point out, that pair of distinctions has nowhere to rest.

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

I. Question: Surely There Must Be Something That Comes and Goes in Saṃsāra

〔T30 0020c06〕The questioner says: Saṃsāra cannot be wholly without a basis. Within it, surely sentient beings come and go, or conditioned activities come and go. On what grounds, then, do you say that sentient beings and conditioned activities are all empty and that there is no coming and going?

The respondent answers as follows.

II. Verse and Commentary: Neither the Permanent nor the Impermanent Comes and Goes

If conditioned activities that come and go are permanent, they should not come and go; if they are impermanent, they likewise should not come and go. The same is true of sentient beings.

Qingmu explains: Are conditioned activities said to come and go in birth and death through the six destinies under the aspect of permanence, or under the aspect of impermanence? Neither is tenable. If they come and go under the aspect of permanence, there can be no continuity of birth and death, because they are determinate and because their intrinsic nature abides unmoving. If they come and go under the aspect of impermanence, there likewise can be no coming and going or continuity of birth and death, because they are indeterminate and lack intrinsic nature. If it is said that sentient beings come and go, the same faults follow.

Next—

III. Verse and Commentary: Seeking the One Who Comes and Goes among Aggregates, Realms, and Entrances

If it is said that sentient beings come and go, then among the five aggregates, the eighteen realms, and the entrances, exhaustive search by the five modes finds nothing at all. Who, then, is the one that comes and goes?

Qingmu explains: Saṃsāra and the aggregates, realms, and entrances have the same meaning here. If a sentient being comes and goes among these aggregates, realms, and entrances, that sentient being has already been sought by the five modes in the “Examination of Fire and Fuel” and found unobtainable. Who, then, comes and goes among aggregates, realms, and entrances?

Next—

IV. Verse and Commentary: From This Body to Another Body

If one goes from this body to another body, the one who comes and goes becomes bodiless in between. If that one has no body, there is no coming and going.

Qingmu explains: If a sentient being comes and goes, does it come and go with a body or without a body? Neither is tenable. Why? If it comes and goes with a body, passing from one body to another, then the one who comes and goes becomes bodiless. Moreover, if it already had a body beforehand, it should not pass again from body to body. If beforehand it had no body, then that person does not exist; if nonexistent, how could there be coming and going in birth and death?

V. Question, Answer, Verse, and Commentary: Does Nirvāṇa Extinguish Conditioned Activities or Sentient Beings?

〔T30 0021a02〕The questioner says: The sūtras say that nirvāṇa exists and can extinguish all suffering. What this extinction extinguishes, then, must be either conditioned activities or sentient beings.

The respondent says: Neither is extinguished. Why?

If conditioned activities were extinguished, this ultimately could not be established; if sentient beings were extinguished, this likewise could not be established.

Qingmu explains: Your claim that either conditioned activities or sentient beings are extinguished has already been answered. Conditioned activities have no intrinsic nature, while sentient beings are unobtainable when sought in every way through the coming and going of birth and death. Therefore, conditioned activities are not extinguished, nor are sentient beings extinguished.

VI. Question, Answer, Verse, and Commentary: Then There Is Neither Bondage nor Release

The questioner says: If so, then there is neither bondage nor release, because the basis is unobtainable.

The respondent says:

Conditioned activities bear the marks of arising and ceasing; they are neither bound nor released. Sentient beings, as explained before, are likewise neither bound nor released.

Qingmu explains: Your claim that conditioned activities and sentient beings undergo bondage and release is not so. Because conditioned activities arise and cease thought by thought, they should not undergo bondage and release. Sentient beings, as already explained, are unobtainable when sought by the five modes; how could they undergo bondage and release?

Next—

VII. Verse and Commentary: If the Body Is Called Bondage

If the body itself is called bondage, then one who already has a body is not bound again, while one without a body cannot be bound. Upon what, then, could bondage occur?

Qingmu explains: If the body of five aggregates is called bondage, then if a sentient being already had the five aggregates, it should not be bound again. Why? Because one person would have two bodies. Nor should one without a body be bound. Why? Without a body, there are no five aggregates; without the five aggregates, there is emptiness—how could that be bound? Beyond these two, no third thing that is bound exists.

Next—

VIII. Verse and Commentary: The Temporal Order of What Can Be Bound and Bondage

If what can be bound must already have bondage before bondage can bind it, then bondage would bind what is already bound. Yet before what can be bound, there is in fact no bondage. The remaining reasoning is as answered in the “Examination of Coming and Going.”

Qingmu explains: If what can be bound already has bondage, bondage should then bind what can be bound. Yet apart from what can be bound, no bondage exists beforehand; therefore one cannot say that sentient beings are bound. Some say that the sentient being is what can be bound and the five aggregates are bondage. Others say that the various afflictions within the five aggregates are bondage and that the remaining aggregates are what can be bound. This is not so. Why? If a sentient being existed before and apart from the five aggregates, the five aggregates should then bind the sentient being. Yet in fact no distinct sentient being exists apart from the five aggregates. If afflictions existed apart from the five aggregates, afflictions should then bind the five aggregates. Yet in fact no distinct afflictions exist apart from the five aggregates. Further, as said in the “Examination of Coming and Going”: what has gone does not go, what has not gone does not go, and during going there is no going. Likewise, what is not bound is not bound, what has been bound is not bound, and during binding there is no binding. Further, there is no release either. Why?

IX. Verse and Commentary: Neither the Bound nor the Unbound Is Released

One who is bound has no release, and one who is not bound likewise has no release. If release existed during binding, bondage and release would occur at the same time.

Qingmu explains: One who is bound has no release. Why? Because that one is already bound. One who is unbound likewise has no release. Why? Because there is no bondage. If one says that release occurs during binding, bondage and release occur at the same time. This is not so, all the more because bondage and release oppose one another.

X. Question, Answer, Verse, and Commentary: The One Who Thinks “I Shall Attain Nirvāṇa”

The questioner says: Some people cultivate the path, enter nirvāṇa here and now, and attain release. How can you say there is none?

The respondent says:

If one gives rise to this thought—“I do not appropriate any dharmas; I shall attain nirvāṇa”—that person is instead bound by this very appropriation.

Qingmu explains: If someone forms this thought—“I depart from appropriation and attain nirvāṇa”—that person is at once bound by appropriation.

Next—

XI. Verse and Commentary: No Separate Nirvāṇa Apart from Saṃsāra

There is no separate nirvāṇa apart from saṃsāra. Such is the meaning of the true character of dharmas—what distinction could remain?

Qingmu explains: In the ultimate meaning of the true character of dharmas, one does not say that a separate nirvāṇa exists apart from saṃsāra. As the sūtra says: nirvāṇa is precisely saṃsāra, and saṃsāra is precisely nirvāṇa. In the true character of dharmas, then, how could one say, “This is saṃsāra; that is nirvāṇa”?

The preceding chapters refuted coming and going, arising and ceasing, agent and action. A reader might still feel that these belong to the arena of debate. In this chapter the question suddenly comes close to the body: bondage and release—being tied and being untied. What practitioners seek throughout their lives is nothing other than this passage from bondage to release.

Yet this chapter says: bondage is unobtainable, and release is unobtainable too.

We must first see clearly the standpoint from which this sentence is spoken. Otherwise, it sounds as if cultivation itself were being canceled.

What the Questioner Wants Is Someone Who Comes and Goes in Saṃsāra

The opening question begins this way: “Saṃsāra cannot be wholly without a basis; within it, surely sentient beings come and go, or conditioned activities come and go.”

The questioner is not being unreasonable. He sees what appears to be an obvious fact: people have former and later lives, and karma continues from before to after. If all this is altogether empty, then who passes from this life to the next? So he presses: “On what grounds do you say that sentient beings and conditioned activities are all empty and that there is no coming and going?”

He wants one who comes and goes. This question hands us the thread running through the whole chapter: for coming and going to be established, there must first be something that passes from here to there. What the respondent does next is follow the questioner’s own words and see whether that thing can stand.

Neither the Permanent nor the Impermanent Comes and Goes

The verse answers first:

“If conditioned activities that come and go are permanent, they should not come and go; if impermanent, they likewise should not; the same is true of sentient beings.”

It offers only two paths, and neither is passable.

If conditioned activities are permanent, Qingmu speaks plainly: “because they are determinate and because their intrinsic nature abides.” What is already determinate and abides in intrinsic nature never changes. What does not change has no difference between before and after, and therefore “there can be no continuity of birth and death.” Saṃsāra is saṃsāra precisely because it is continuous. Something permanently abiding and unmoving has not even continuity—what could come and go?

If conditioned activities are impermanent, Qingmu says: “because they are indeterminate and lack intrinsic nature.” Since they lack intrinsic nature, no self-subsisting thing exists there that could be moved from here to there. Impermanence is not one thing changing rapidly; it means that the thing supposedly moving all the way through cannot be found. Thus “there likewise can be no coming and going or continuity of birth and death.”

What is permanent does not move; what is impermanent has no master. Coming and going would require something that both remains itself and yet can move. Those two requirements never meet.

The same holds for sentient beings: “If it is said that sentient beings come and go, the same faults follow.” Replace conditioned activities with sentient beings, and the fault remains unchanged.

Seeking the One Who Comes and Goes among Aggregates, Realms, and Entrances

The second verse narrows the field to the sentient being:

“If sentient beings come and go among aggregates, realms, and entrances, exhaustive search by the five modes finds nothing—who is the one that comes and goes?”

Qingmu first fixes the field: “Saṃsāra and the aggregates, realms, and entrances have the same meaning.” Saṃsāra is not another place outside aggregates, realms, and entrances. What people call a lifetime is just this collection of five aggregates, eighteen realms, and entrances. If we seek the sentient being that comes and goes, we can seek it only here.

He then refers back: “That sentient being was sought by the five modes in the ‘Examination of Fire and Fuel’ and found unobtainable.” The fivefold search was already conducted in that chapter: whether sentient being and aggregates are identical, different, contained in one another, or possessed by one another, every examination fails. Since no sentient being can be indicated among aggregates, realms, and entrances, Qingmu returns the questioner’s own question: “Who, then, comes and goes among aggregates, realms, and entrances?”

No new principle is added here. The questioner’s “surely a sentient being comes and goes” is simply brought back to the field he himself accepts, and he is asked to point. When he cannot point, the statement stops.

From Body to Body: Who Is There in That Moment?

The third verse changes the angle and directly takes up what “coming and going” would actually look like:

“If one goes from body to body, the one who comes and goes becomes bodiless; if that one has no body, there is no coming and going.”

Coming and going, plainly stated, means relinquishing this body and taking another. Ask, then: at the very moment of passage, does that one have a body or not?

Qingmu examines both paths: “Does it come and go with a body or without a body? Neither is tenable.”

If one says it has a body, the difficulty is this: “Passing from one body to another, the one who comes and goes becomes bodiless.” If it carries the former body along, then upon reaching the later body it has two bodies. If it does not carry that body, then during the moment between the two it is precisely bodiless. Qingmu adds another cut: “If it already had a body beforehand, it should not pass again from body to body.” If it already has a body, why must it take another?

If one says it is bodiless, the answer is swifter: “If beforehand it had no body, then it does not exist.” Without a body, that “one” has no basis for establishment. “If nonexistent, how could there be coming and going in birth and death?” If no person can be indicated, whose coming and going is it?

All three faces of the questioner’s traveler are now closed.

Nirvāṇa Extinguishes Neither Conditioned Activities nor Sentient Beings

The questioner changes his point of entry: “The sūtras say that nirvāṇa exists and extinguishes all suffering. What this extinction extinguishes must be either conditioned activities or sentient beings.”

The question is candid: since the Buddha says nirvāṇa can extinguish all suffering, surely there must be something extinguished. It must be either conditioned activities or sentient beings.

The answer is: “Neither is extinguished.”

The reason is not new. Qingmu directly says, “This has already been answered”: “Conditioned activities have no intrinsic nature, while sentient beings are unobtainable when sought in every way through the coming and going of birth and death. Therefore, conditioned activities are not extinguished, nor are sentient beings extinguished.”

We must see clearly what this “not extinguished” means. It does not mean that conditioned activities endure forever or that sentient beings never perish. It means that extinction requires something extinguished. Conditioned activities lack intrinsic nature: no intrinsically existent thing stands there waiting to be extinguished. Sentient beings are unobtainable when sought: no real person is erased by nirvāṇa. What nirvāṇa does has never been the destruction of an intrinsically real thing.

“If So, Then There Is Neither Bondage nor Release”

Here the questioner becomes urgent and voices the chapter’s most important challenge: “If so, then there is neither bondage nor release, because the basis is unobtainable.”

This sentence asks on the reader’s behalf. If both person and dharmas are unobtainable, who is tied and who is untied? Does cultivation not come to nothing?

The respondent does not evade the question:

“Conditioned activities bear the marks of arising and ceasing; they are neither bound nor released. Sentient beings, as explained before, are likewise neither bound nor released.”

He directly affirms: there is neither bondage nor release.

But the reason must be heard clearly. Why are conditioned activities neither bound nor released? “Because conditioned activities arise and cease thought by thought, they should not undergo bondage and release.” For something arising and ceasing thought by thought, the former thought has vanished and the later thought has not arrived; between them, no enduring thing remains that could be tied, and no enduring thing remains that could be untied. Why are sentient beings neither bound nor released? “Sentient beings, as already explained, are unobtainable when sought by the five modes; how could they undergo bondage and release?”

Thus neither bondage nor release means that there is no intrinsic bondage binding an intrinsic person. It does not mean that cultivation is useless, nor does it mean that there is no nirvāṇa.

If the Body Is Bondage, There Must Be Two Bodies

The next three verses examine, one by one, what bondage could be established upon.

First they test the most natural statement: the body of five aggregates is itself bondage.

“If the body is called bondage, one with a body is not bound; one without a body is not bound either—upon what could bondage occur?”

Qingmu makes the calculation: “If a sentient being already had the five aggregates, it should not be bound. Why? Because one person would have two bodies.” If the sentient being already has a body of five aggregates and the five aggregates are then said to bind it, the bound one has one body while the binding aggregates form another—“one person would have two bodies.” That is absurd.

What if one says the sentient being has no body? “Without a body, there are no five aggregates; without the five aggregates, there is emptiness—how could that be bound?” With not even the five aggregates present, what is there to bind?

Having a body fails; being bodiless fails. Qingmu seals the road with the next line: “Beyond these two, no third thing that is bound exists.” Outside existence and nonexistence, there is no third thing that could serve as the bound.

Bondage and What Can Be Bound: Which Comes First?

The seventh verse examines temporal order:

“If what can be bound is already bound, bondage should bind what can be bound; yet before it there is in fact no bondage—the rest is as answered for coming and going.”

Suppose what can be bound must already be in bondage before bondage can bind it. Since it is already bound, why bind it again? But if it has no bondage beforehand, where does that “bondage” come from? Qingmu answers directly: “Apart from what can be bound, no bondage exists beforehand; therefore one cannot say that sentient beings are bound.”

He then names two common allocations: “Some say that the sentient being is what can be bound and the five aggregates are bondage. Others say that the various afflictions within the five aggregates are bondage and that the remaining aggregates are what can be bound.”

One account has the five aggregates bind the sentient being; another has afflictions bind the five aggregates. Each appears to distinguish binder from bound with perfect clarity. Qingmu answers both with the same point: two things cannot be separated. “If a sentient being existed before and apart from the five aggregates, the five aggregates should bind the sentient being. Yet no distinct sentient being exists apart from the five aggregates.” If no sentient being can be indicated apart from the five aggregates, then for the aggregates to bind the sentient being is the aggregates binding themselves. “If afflictions existed apart from the five aggregates, afflictions should bind the five aggregates. Yet no distinct afflictions exist apart from the five aggregates.” Afflictions too are not outside the aggregates, so for afflictions to bind the aggregates is again something binding itself.

Binder and bound are an event that requires two things. Once two things cannot be indicated, the event cannot be established.

Finally, Qingmu brings out a blade already used in an earlier chapter—the three times of coming and going: “As said in the ‘Examination of Coming and Going’: what has gone does not go, what has not gone does not go, and during going there is no going. Likewise, what is not bound is not bound, what has been bound is not bound, and during binding there is no binding.”

For one already bound, the event of binding has passed and no further binding is needed. For one not yet bound, binding has not occurred. As for “the time of being bound,” apart from already bound and not yet bound, no third interval can be indicated as a time of binding. The same cut made in the “Examination of Coming and Going” falls here unchanged.

Release Is the Same

“One who is bound has no release, and one who is unbound likewise has no release; if release exists during binding, bondage and release occur at the same time.”

Qingmu’s commentary is brief and sharp: “One who is bound has no release. Why? Because that one is already bound. One who is unbound likewise has no release. Why? Because there is no bondage.”

One already bound does not obtain release: that person is in bondage, so where can release enter? One never bound does not obtain release either: without bondage, release has no work to do. Suppose one compromises and says that release exists in the very act of binding. Then “bondage and release occur at the same time. This is not so, all the more because bondage and release oppose one another.” Bondage and release are contrary events; at the same time and place, something cannot be both tied and untied.

Since bondage has nowhere to be established, release has nowhere to be established. These are not two conclusions but two faces of one conclusion.

The Thought “I Shall Attain Nirvāṇa”

At last the questioner points to an evident fact: “Some people cultivate the path, enter nirvāṇa here and now, and attain release. How can you say there is none?”

People plainly cultivate and plainly attain release—how can you simply say there is none?

The responding verse is the chapter’s closest line:

“If I do not appropriate any dharmas, I shall attain nirvāṇa; one who is like this is instead bound by appropriation.”

Qingmu explains it in one sentence: “If someone forms this thought—‘I depart from appropriation and attain nirvāṇa’—that person is at once bound by appropriation.”

Notice that this does not tell anyone not to cultivate the path, nor does it say nirvāṇa is false. What it exposes is the shape of the thought: an “I” that departs from appropriation and will attain nirvāṇa. Within that thought stands an “I,” and there also stands a thing that I will acquire. “Not appropriating any dharmas” is meant as an open hand, but the thought “I shall attain nirvāṇa” is itself a reaching hand.

Appropriation means grasping. A person relinquishes worldly grasping, yet grasps with exceptional force at the project “I will attain release.” The subject-object configuration refuted above returns in its most refined form: an “I” that will be released and a nirvāṇa sought by me.

Thus, if the person invoked by the questioner—“someone cultivates the path, enters nirvāṇa here and now, and attains release”—carries this structure in mind, what that person obtains is not release. A rope remains in the hand; it merely seems to be an excellent rope.

No Separate Nirvāṇa Apart from Saṃsāra

The final verse gathers the whole chapter:

“There is no separate nirvāṇa apart from saṃsāra; such is the meaning of true character—what distinction could remain?”

Qingmu’s commentary is utterly steady: “In the ultimate meaning of the true character of dharmas, one does not say that a separate nirvāṇa exists apart from saṃsāra.”

The chapter has examined coming and going and examined bondage and release. Throughout, it examines the same illness: dividing one event in two and then installing a transitional subject between the halves. Saṃsāra is one side, nirvāṇa another, and a person is required to walk from one to the other. That is coming and going once again; it is passage from body to body. Since coming and going cannot stand, neither can this manner of crossing.

Qingmu cites the sūtra as witness: “Nirvāṇa is precisely saṃsāra, and saṃsāra is precisely nirvāṇa.”

He then closes with a question: “In the true character of dharmas, how could one say, ‘This is saṃsāra; that is nirvāṇa’?”

To point within true character and say, “This is saṃsāra; that is nirvāṇa,” one must first have two fixed things to point at. The ten verses above remove those fixed things one by one: the traveler is removed, what is extinguished is removed, binder and bound are removed, and the “I” seeking nirvāṇa is removed. Here even this final pair of distinctions has nowhere to rest.

What a Reader Can Carry Away from This Chapter

First, there is no need to find a traveler for saṃsāra. “Exhaustive search by the five modes finds nothing—who is the one that comes and goes?” Not finding one is precisely the chapter’s point.

Second, understand what neither bondage nor release means. It does not mean that cultivation comes to nothing. It means that no intrinsic bondage binds an intrinsic person. It does not cancel the path; it cancels the two entities supposedly standing at its ends.

Third, watch the thought that looks most like cultivation. “I shall attain nirvāṇa”—while this thought remains, one is “instead bound by appropriation.” The posture of letting go very easily becomes a new fist.

Carried Forward: Jizang’s Mirror

What precedes is the meaning of the chapter itself. What follows is illuminated from the perspective of the Sui-Tang Three Treatise lineage—a mirror is not the treatise, but another way of reading the same group of verses.

Explaining why the Commentary on the Treatise on the Middle refutes bondage and release, Jizang says that seeing bondage and release as existent is itself called bondage; only when examination finds no source for either is there release. He further says that followers of the inner and outer teachings, Great and Lesser Vehicles, remove bondage and are no longer bound by bondage, yet have not removed release and remain bound by release. It is like escaping iron fetters while still wearing golden ones. The treatise-master refutes bondage and release so that both sets of fetters can be shed. Jizang also says these practitioners regard bondage and release as two things and concentrate on severing bondage and cultivating release; this passage instead lets one realize that bondage itself is release and know bondage and release as nondual. That is why it refutes both.

Regarding the claim that the five aggregates bind the sentient being, Jizang offers another analysis. Only the conjunction of the five aggregates is called a sentient being; before the sentient being is formed, no other five aggregates can already stand there. Moreover, “sentient being” is the collective name for the five aggregates. Once one has taken up the sentient being, no separate five aggregates remain to bind it. He further uses the image of a knotted rope: it is this same rope that is knotted and this same rope that is untied; there is no other thing. Therefore one cannot say that a separate name-and-form binds the sentient being, nor that a separate sentient being receives the bondage of name-and-form.

On the verse about not appropriating any dharmas, Jizang distinguishes two senses of “no appropriation”: first, the five aggregates are called appropriation; second, the mind of grasping is called appropriation. At entry into nirvāṇa without remainder, both kinds of appropriation are absent; hence one speaks of not appropriating any dharmas. Yet the one who entertains this thought does not appropriate appropriation but does appropriate nonappropriation, so nonappropriation becomes appropriation again. Jizang then concludes: this person claims that the mind appropriates nothing but ultimately still has something attained. Wherever something is attained, appropriation ultimately remains, so that person is still bound by appropriation. Thus one leaves the ordinary to attain sagehood, only for the sage to become ordinary again.

This mirror connects the chapter to the interpretive structure of refuting error and revealing rightness in the Three Treatise lineage. Its articulation is Jizang’s addition, not the words of Nāgārjuna’s verses or Qingmu’s extended commentary. The readings are recorded side by side without adjudication, each returned to its own place.