中論 觀邪見品第二十七

The treatise’s final sentence is not a conclusion but an action: “I now bow my head in homage.”

Two Directions, Eight Propositions

The questioner says: “I have heard the Mahāyāna Dharma refute wrong views; now I wish to hear the śrāvaka Dharma refute wrong views.”

The answer sets out only two directions for examination: “In a past life, did I exist or not?” and “In a future life, will I be produced or not?” Qingmu completes them as “views of permanence and the rest depend on the past” and “views of limit and no limit depend on the future.”

Identity Means Permanence; Difference Means Annihilation

If the past self is the present self, then “a god is precisely a human” and “a caṇḍāla is precisely a brahmin.” Retreating to an unchanging self in a changing body, like washer and reaper, does not help: nondifference is permanence, while difference means “what is impermanent lacks the mark of self.”

What Use Is That Self?

The questioner assigns pleasure, pain, merit, and wrongdoing to the body. Qingmu asks in reply: “What use would the self be?”

The analogy of a householder fails: an owner “has form, touch, and strength, and can therefore repair a house,” whereas “the self you propose has neither form nor touch and thus no power to act”; even “saliva forces its way out beyond one’s control—know from this that there is no self.”

The positive account is this: “The five aggregates merely combine, and the provisional name ‘self’ has no determination”; “as beams and rafters combine to make a house, apart from them there is no other house”; and “because the conditioned continuity of the five aggregates does not lose merit and wrongdoing, liberation is possible.”

The settled statement is:

“The present self is not apart from appropriation, nor is it appropriation itself; it is neither without appropriation nor wholly absent: this is the settled meaning.”

Not identical, it is not permanent; not separate, it is not annihilated. The final “not wholly absent” is a guardrail, not a replacement annihilationist view.

The Same Illness in Another Direction

If the selves differ, karmic fruition is lost; if the self was absent and now exists, it is also uncaused. Thus, of the four past propositions, “whether combined or uncombined, none is tenable”; the four future propositions “are all the same as those concerning the past.”

If a god is a human, one falls into permanence, because “a permanent dharma is not produced.” If a god differs from a human, one falls into impermanence, yet “where there is continuity, one cannot speak of difference.” Half god and half human incurs “the fault of two marks in one body.” A beginningless cycle would require determinate coming and going, yet “nothing can be found from which it comes or to which it goes.”

No Boundary Can Be Drawn on a Lamp Flame

“The five aggregates continually follow one another, like the flame of a lamp”—“while the conditions are not exhausted, the lamp does not go out; when they are exhausted, it does.” No boundary can be drawn across continuity, for there is no thing there to sever. “Limit means the final body,” and what is under discussion is “the world of sentient beings.”

The Four Hundred Verses says that “true Dharma, one who teaches it, and one who hears it are rare.” Without true Dharma, “wandering through birth and death has no limit”; on attaining the path, “it cannot be called limitless.” Rare does not mean unobtainable.

The remaining propositions incur “two marks in one dharma” and “the fault of the two marks, permanence and impermanence.” The fourth fails “because there is nothing on which it can mutually depend.”

A View: Who Produces It, Where, and When?

“Because all dharmas are empty, views of the world as permanent and the rest— where, when, and by whom are such views produced?”

Earlier, the content of views was refuted; this question examines their arising. “In such empty nature there is neither person nor dharma”; “place means land, time means days, months, years, and who means a person”; yet “because self is refuted, no person produces this view.”

The criterion is: “If views existed, they would have determinate reality; if determinate, they could not be refuted.” What yields to refutation has no intrinsic essence; hence, “Views have no determinate essence—how could they arise?” At this point even refutation has nowhere to stand.

Therefore One Bows

“The Great Sage and Lord Gautama, moved by compassion, taught this Dharma; he cut off every view, and I now bow my head in homage.”

Views are “briefly five and extensively sixty-two,” and the Buddha “taught the Dharma in order to cut off these views.” The beginning is compassion, not victory; the wisdom that cuts off views is “immeasurable, boundless, and inconceivable” and cannot be claimed as one’s own.

Once every view is cut off, the treatise’s author does not remain standing. He bows.

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

I. Question: How Does the Śrāvaka Teaching Refute Wrong Views?

〔T30 0036c25〕The questioner says: I have heard how the Mahāyāna teaching refutes wrong views. Now I wish to hear how the śrāvaka teaching refutes them.

The respondent answers as follows.

II. Verse: Two Sets of Views, One Depending on the Past and One on the Future

In the past, did I exist or not? Views that the world is permanent and so forth all arise dependent on the past.

In the future, will I produce another self or not? Views that the world has a limit and so forth all arise dependent on the future.

III. Explanation: The Names of the Two Sets of Four Propositions

In the past, did I exist, not exist, both exist and not exist, or neither exist nor not exist? These four propositions are called the views of permanence and the rest arising dependent on the past.

In the future, will I be produced, not be produced, both be produced and not be produced, or neither be produced nor not be produced? These four propositions are called the views of limit and no limit arising dependent on the future.

Through what causes and conditions are wrong views of this kind called wrong? This will now be explained.

IV. Verse: A Self in the Past Cannot Be Found

That a self existed in the past cannot be found. The self in the past does not become the present self.

If one says that I am identical and only the bodily marks differ, then apart from the body, where does another self exist?

That no self exists apart from the body has already been established. If one says the body is the self, there is no self at all.

Yet the body is not the self either, because its marks arise and cease. How could what is appropriated be taken as the appropriator?

That a self exists apart from the body cannot be established. A self without any appropriation cannot in fact be found.

The present self is neither apart from appropriation nor identical with it; it is neither without appropriation nor entirely nonexistent. This is the settled meaning.

V. Explanation: Neither the Fault of Permanence nor That of Annihilation Provides a Way Through

〔T30 0037a19〕That I existed in the past cannot be established. Why? The former self does not directly become the present self; if they were identical, the fault of permanence would follow, together with immeasurable faults.

Why? A person may first become a deva through meritorious conditions and later become human. If the former self were the present self, the deva would be the human. Again, through evil karma someone may first become a caṇḍāla and later a brahmin. If the former self were the present self, the caṇḍāla would be the brahmin. It would be like the brahmin Devadatta of Śrāvastī going to Rājagṛha and still being named Devadatta; reaching Rājagṛha does not make him another person.

On that account, if one first becomes a deva and later human, the deva should be the human; the caṇḍāla should be the brahmin. But this is not so. A deva is not a human, and a caṇḍāla is not a brahmin. Identity entails such faults of permanence.

If one changes the claim and says the former self does not become the present self—like one person called a washer while washing clothes and a cutter while cutting grass: washer and cutter are not two, yet the washer is not simply the cutter—then likewise I am called a deva when appropriating a deva body and human when appropriating a human body; I do not change, only the body differs. This too cannot be established.

Why? If the two are identical, one should not say a deva becomes human. Moreover, is the present washer different or nondifferent from the cutter? If nondifferent, the washer should directly be the cutter; likewise the former deva would be the human and the caṇḍāla the brahmin, preserving the fault of permanence. If different, the washer does not become the cutter; likewise the deva does not become human, and the self is impermanent. What is impermanent has no mark of self. Thus the earlier and later cannot be said to be identical.

VI. Question: The Self Is One; Deva and Human Differ Only as What Is Appropriated

〔T30 0037b10〕The questioner says: The self is identical; distinctions into deva and human arise only because of what is appropriated. What is appropriated means the body of five aggregates. Through karmic conditions one is distinguished as deva, human, caṇḍāla, or brahmin, while the self itself is neither deva nor human, neither caṇḍāla nor brahmin. Thus the stated faults do not follow.

VII. Answer: If Everything Belongs to the Body, What Use Is the Self?

The respondent says: This cannot be established. Why? If it is the body rather than the self that becomes deva, human, caṇḍāla, or brahmin, a self exists separately from the body.

Now demerit and merit, birth and death, coming and going all belong to the body, not the self. Through demerit one falls into the three evil destinies, and through merit one is born in the three good destinies. If pain, pleasure, anger, joy, sorrow, fear, and the rest all belong to the body rather than the self, what use is the self? It would be like punishing a householder for an offense that does not concern a renunciant.

Moreover, continuity through the causes and conditions of the five aggregates already prevents demerit and merit from being lost and allows liberation to be spoken. If all this belongs to the body rather than the self, what use is the self?

VIII. Question: The Householder Repairs the House—I Am the Agent and the Body My Instrument

〔T30 0037b21〕The questioner says: Demerit and merit depend on me. I possess cognition while the body does not, so the knower should be the self. Karmic conditions are initiated, and demerit and merit are fabricated dharmas; therefore an agent must exist. The agent is the self, while the body is what I use and where I dwell.

For example, a householder repairs a house with grass, wood, clay, plaster, and the rest. Because he repairs it for his own body, the house becomes good or bad according to his work. I am the same: according to the good and evil done, I obtain a good or ugly body. I produce birth and death in the six destinies, so the body experiencing demerit and merit belongs entirely to me, just as a house belongs to its owner rather than another.

IX. Answer: The Analogy Fails—Theories of Self Refuted One by One

〔T30 0037b29〕The respondent says: The analogy fails. Why? A householder has form, touch, and strength and can therefore repair a house. Your proposed self has neither form nor touch and therefore no power to act. Without power to act itself, it cannot make another act.

If some dharma in the world were without form or touch yet able to act, we could trust and know that an agent exists. But this is not so.

Furthermore, if the self were the agent, it should not produce suffering for itself. If it were the rememberer, desirable and pleasant matters should not be forgotten. If the self did not produce suffering yet suffering arose by force, everything else could arise by itself as well and need not be produced by a self.

If the seer were the self, since the eye sees form, the eye should be the self. If the eye sees but is not the self, that contradicts the earlier claim that the seer is the self. If the seer were the self, the self should not also hear sounds and other objects. Why? The eye is the seer and cannot hear sounds and other objects. Thus that the self is the seer cannot be established.

If one says that just as a cutter uses a sickle to cut grass, the self uses the hands and the rest to act, this too cannot be established. Why? Apart from the sickle, a cutter can be found; apart from body, mind, and faculties, no separate agent can be found.

If one says an agent exists although the eye, ear, and other faculties cannot obtain it, then the son of a barren woman could act as well; all the faculties should likewise be without a self.

If one says the right eye sees and the left recognizes, proving a separate seer, this too fails. Work mastered by the right hand cannot be done by the left, so no separate agent exists. If there were one, what the right hand mastered should be possible for the left; in fact it is not, so no further agent exists.

Moreover, proponents of a self say that when one sees another eat fruit, saliva flows in one’s own mouth, and this is a mark of self. This fails. It is the force of memory, not the force of self. Indeed it becomes a reason to refute self: in a crowd one is ashamed when saliva flows, yet it comes out forcibly beyond control. Thus one knows there is no self.

Furthermore, a grave inversion follows. One who was a father in the past becomes his son now. If father and son have one self and only their bodies differ, like moving between houses while the father remains the father, then if a self existed these two persons should be one, an enormous fault.

If one says the same fault applies to continuity of the five aggregates without a self, it does not. Why? Although the aggregates continue, sometimes they can be used and sometimes not. Grape juice may be drunk by one observing precepts; wine may not; when wine turns to vinegar, it may be drunk again. Continuity of the aggregates is the same: there are times of use and nonuse. If one self remained identical throughout, the preceding faults would follow; continuity of the aggregates avoids them.

Only because the five aggregates conjoin is a self provisionally named; nothing determinate exists. It is like a house from conjoined beams and rafters: apart from them, no separate house exists. Because the five aggregates conjoin, a self exists; apart from them, no separate self truly exists. Thus the self is only a provisional name and has no determinate entity.

Your earlier claim that an appropriator exists apart from what is appropriated and is distinguished as deva or human through what it appropriates cannot be established. One should know that only appropriation exists, not a separate appropriator.

If one says a self exists apart from appropriation, this too fails. If it existed apart, how could its marks be stated? If no marks can be stated, there is no self apart from appropriation.

If one says no self exists apart from the body and the body itself is the self, this too fails. Why? The body has marks of arising and ceasing, while the self is claimed not to.

Moreover, how could what is appropriated be directly called the appropriator? If an appropriator existed apart from appropriation, it should be found apart from the five aggregates. The eye and other faculties can be found; the appropriator in fact cannot.

Thus the self is neither apart from appropriation nor identical with it; it is neither without appropriation nor entirely nonexistent. This is the settled meaning. Therefore one should know that a self in the past cannot be established. Why?

X. Verse: Nonproduction Also Fails—Difference Entails Annihilation and Loss of Karmic Fruit

〔T30 0038a20〕That the past self does not become the present self cannot be established either; nor can the past self be different from the present self.

If they differed, a present self should exist apart from the past self. The self would remain in the past while the present self arose by itself.

This would be annihilation and karmic fruition would be lost. What one person did would be experienced by another; such faults would follow.

Prior nonexistence followed by present existence also entails faults: the self would be fabricated and would arise without a cause.

XI. Explanation: The Extreme of Annihilation and Causelessness

That the past self does not become the present self cannot be established. Why? The past and present selves cannot be intrinsically different.

If the present self differed from the past self, the present should exist apart from the former; the former self should remain in the past, while this body arose separately. This falls into annihilation and loses karmic fruits. That person committed the offense while this person receives the result; immeasurable faults follow.

Moreover, such a self would previously not exist but now exist. This too is faulty: the self becomes fabricated and arises without cause. Thus the past self’s nonproduction of the present cannot be established.

Furthermore:

XII. Verse and Explanation: All Four Propositions about the Past Fail

Views that in the past the self existed, did not exist, both, or neither cannot be established.

When wrong views concerning the past—existence, nonexistence, both, and neither—are sought in this way, all fail through the causes, conditions, and faults already explained.

XIII. Verse and Explanation: All Four Propositions about the Future Likewise Fail

Will I be produced or not in the future? Views of this kind are entirely the same as those concerning the past.

For the four propositions about production and nonproduction in the future, each fault from the past should be applied here.

Furthermore:

XIV. Verse and Explanation: If Deva Is Identical with Human, One Falls into Permanence

If the deva is identical with the human, one falls into the extreme of permanence; the deva would be unarisen, because permanent dharmas do not arise.

If deva is identical with human, that becomes permanence. If the deva is not born within the human destiny, on what basis is it called human? Permanent dharmas do not arise. Thus permanence cannot be established.

Furthermore:

XV. Verse and Explanation: If Deva Differs from Human, There Is Impermanence without Continuity

If the deva differs from the human, this becomes impermanence. Since deva and human differ, there is no continuity between them.

If deva and human differ, impermanence follows, together with annihilation and the other faults already explained. If they differ, continuity is absent; conversely, if continuity exists, one cannot call them different.

Furthermore:

XVI. Verse and Explanation: Half Deva and Half Human Gives One Body Two Marks

If one half is deva and one half human, one falls into both permanence and impermanence. This cannot be established.

If a being’s body were half deva and half human, it would contain permanence and impermanence: the deva half permanent and the human half impermanent. This cannot be established because one body would possess two marks.

Furthermore:

XVII. Verse and Explanation: Since the First Two Propositions Fail, the Fourth Fails Too

Only if permanence and impermanence could both be established should neither permanence nor impermanence be established.

Only if both permanence and impermanence were established could their joint negation be established, since the fourth proposition stands in opposition to them. In fact neither is established, so neither permanence nor impermanence is unestablished as well.

Furthermore, the assertion that birth and death are beginningless cannot be established. Why?

XVIII. Verse and Explanation: Without Determinate Coming and Going, Beginninglessness Cannot Stand

Only if a dharma determinately came from somewhere and determinately went somewhere could birth and death be called beginningless; in fact this is not so.

Only with determinate coming and going should birth and death be called beginningless. When this dharma is sought with wisdom, no source of coming or destination of going is found. Thus the assertion of beginningless birth and death cannot be established.

Furthermore:

XIX. Verse and Explanation: The Four Propositions Depend on One Another; Without a Support All Fail

If permanence does not exist, how could impermanence? How could both permanence and impermanence or neither permanence nor impermanence exist?

When wisdom finds no dharma that can be permanent, who could be impermanent? Impermanence exists dependent on permanence. Since neither exists, how could both? Since neither permanence nor impermanence exists, how could their joint negation exist? The fourth proposition depends upon the third.

Thus the four propositions of permanence and the rest arising dependent on the past cannot be found. The four propositions of limit and no limit arising dependent on the future likewise cannot be found and will now be explained. Why?

XX. Verse and Explanation: Neither Limit nor No Limit Can Explain a Future Life

If the world has a limit, how could there be a future life? If the world has no limit, how could there be a future life?

If the world had a limit, there should be no future life; yet a future life exists, so the claim fails. If the world had no limit, there likewise should be no future life; yet one exists, so that claim also fails.

Furthermore, neither extreme can be found. Why?

XXI. Verse and Explanation: Continuity of the Five Aggregates Is Like a Lamp Flame

The five aggregates continually follow one another, like the flame of a lamp. Therefore the world should be called neither limited nor limitless.

〔T30 0039a01〕From five aggregates further aggregates arise in sequence, like a lamp flame from conjoined conditions. If conditions are not exhausted, the lamp is not extinguished; when conditions are exhausted, it is. Thus the world cannot be called limited or limitless.

Furthermore:

XXII. Verse and Explanation: Two Accounts of Destruction and Nondestruction

If the former five aggregates are destroyed and later aggregates do not arise dependent on them, the world would have a limit.

If the former aggregates are not destroyed and later aggregates do not arise dependent on them, the world would be limitless.

If the former aggregates are destroyed and later ones do not arise dependent on them, the world is limited. If no further aggregates arise after their extinction, this is called the limit—the last body.

If the former aggregates are not destroyed and later ones arise without depending on them, the world would be limitless and permanent. This is not so, so the claim of limitlessness cannot be established.

There are two worlds: the world as land and the world of sentient beings. The latter is meant here.

Furthermore, as stated in the Four Hundred Verses:

XXIII. Cited Verse and Explanation: Because True Dharma, Speaker, and Hearer Are Rare, Saṃsāra Is Neither Limited nor Limitless

True Dharma, one who teaches, and one who hears are difficult to encounter. Thus birth and death are neither limited nor limitless.

Because true Dharma is not attained, coming and going in birth and death have no limit. Yet one sometimes hears true Dharma and attains the path, so it cannot be called limitless.

The claim of both limit and no limit will now be refuted.

XXIV. Verse and Explanation: Half Limited and Half Limitless Gives One Dharma Two Marks

If half the world were limited and half limitless, it would be both. This cannot be established.

If the world were half limited and half limitless, one dharma would possess two marks. This cannot be established. Why?

XXV. Verse and Explanation: Neither Appropriator nor Appropriation Can Be Partly Destroyed and Partly Undestroyed

How could the appropriator of the five aggregates be partly destroyed and partly undestroyed? This cannot be established. The appropriated aggregates are the same: how could they be partly destroyed and partly undestroyed?

How could the appropriator be partly destroyed and partly undestroyed? One matter cannot be both permanent and impermanent. The appropriated is the same. The fault of coexisting permanence and impermanence follows, so the world cannot be both limited and limitless.

The view of neither limit nor no limit will now be refuted.

XXVI. Verse and Explanation: Once the Third Proposition Is Refuted, the Fourth Has No Relational Support

Only if both limit and no limit could be established should neither limit nor no limit be established.

No limit exists in opposition to limit, as short exists in opposition to long. Both exists in opposition to existence and nonexistence; neither exists in opposition to both.

If both limit and no limit were established, neither could be established through mutual dependence. Yet the third proposition has already been refuted. Whence the fourth, when nothing remains on which it depends?

Sought in this way, all four views concerning limits that arise dependent on the future are unfindable.

Furthermore:

XXVII. Verse and Explanation: Since All Dharmas Are Empty, Where, When, and by Whom Do These Views Arise?

Because all dharmas are empty, where, when, and by whom do views that the world is permanent and the rest arise?

The preceding refuted views through the śrāvaka teaching; the Mahāyāna teaching now speaks.

Dharmas have from the beginning been ultimately empty in nature. Among such empty dharmas there is neither person nor dharma, so neither wrong nor right views should arise.

“Where” means land, “when” days, months, and years, and “who” a person; these three constitute views. If determinate views of permanence and impermanence existed, a person producing them should exist; after the self is refuted, no person produces them.

If a place should exist, even presently visible form can be refuted, how much more time and direction. If views truly existed, they should possess determinate entities; if determinate, they could not be refuted. They have already been refuted through many causes and conditions, so one should know they lack determinate essence. How could they arise?

As the verse says: where, when, and by whom do these views arise?

XXVIII. Final Verse and Explanation: Homage to the Buddha

The Great Sage and Lord Gautama taught this Dharma from compassion and cut off every view. I now bow my head in homage.

All views are briefly five and extensively sixty-two. The Buddha taught the Dharma to cut them off. The Great Sage and Lord Gautama possesses immeasurable, boundless, inconceivable wisdom; therefore I bow my head in homage.

Across its twenty-seven chapters, the Treatise on the Middle refutes coming and going, arising and cessation, agent and action, cause and effect. Then Chapter Twenty-Six suddenly counts the twelve links with disarming plainness. A reader might think the work has ended, only to turn to this final chapter and discover that the treatise’s author still has one thing left to do.

When this chapter is complete, the final sentence of the entire treatise is not a conclusion but an action: “I now bow my head in homage.”

A treatise renowned for refutation comes to rest in a bow. What this chapter has to say is hidden in that very contrast.

This Question Retraces the Mahāyāna Path through the Śrāvaka Teaching

The opening line says: “I have heard the Mahāyāna Dharma refute wrong views; now I wish to hear the śrāvaka Dharma refute wrong views.”

The impulse behind this question is the same as in the preceding chapter. There the question was how the śrāvaka teaching enters the path of the ultimate meaning; here it is how that teaching refutes wrong views. The questioner is not asking for a second system. He wants to know whether the Dharma already in his hands can carry him all the way through.

The answer is perfectly steady. It does not begin in abstraction, but first lays out what must be refuted, and does so in exact order:

“In a past life, did I exist or not? Views of the world as permanent and the rest all depend on the past.”

“In a future life, will I be produced or not? Views of limit and the rest all depend on the future.”

Every entanglement concerning the “self” moves in only two directions: backward and forward. Looking backward, one asks whether one existed before, and views of permanence and impermanence arise. Looking forward, one asks whether one will be produced again, and views of limit and no limit arise. Qingmu completes each set as four propositions, then says: “These are called views of permanence and the rest that depend on the past,” and “These are called views of limit and no limit that depend on the future.”

Eight propositions, two directions. The author gathers every human anxiety about oneself into just two directions in time. He then asks: “For what reason are these called wrong views?”

The Self in the Past: Identity Entails Permanence; Difference Entails Annihilation

The long verse closes the issue at its outset: “A self in a past life cannot be found,” and “The self in the past did not produce the self of this life.”

Qingmu takes the plainest route. He avoids abstraction and asks about ordinary life: someone cultivates merit, is born a god, and later becomes human. If the past self were precisely the present self, then “a god is precisely a human.” Again, someone becomes a caṇḍāla through wrongdoing and later a brahmin; if the self were identical, “a caṇḍāla is precisely a brahmin.”

He deliberately gives a counterexample: “Suppose a brahmin named Devadatta in Śrāvastī is still called Devadatta upon reaching Rājagṛha; arriving there does not make him different.” Change the place and the person remains the same—exactly the picture held by one who posits a permanent self. But a change of condition is not a change of place. God and human are not one thing standing in two locations; therefore “a god is not precisely a human, nor a caṇḍāla precisely a brahmin.” To say they are one incurs the fault of permanence.

Someone retreats one step: perhaps the self is not identical with the body; the self remains unchanged while the body changes. The same person is “called a washer while washing clothes and a reaper while reaping.” Washer and reaper are not two persons, yet “the washer is not precisely the reaper.” Qingmu follows the analogy to its point of pressure: “Is the present washer different from the reaper or not?”

If not different, they remain identical and the former fault of permanence stands untouched. If different, “the washer does not produce the reaper”; likewise, a god does not produce a human, and the self becomes impermanent. Qingmu then adds the fatal sentence: “What is impermanent lacks the mark of self.”

There are only two paths by which to rescue a permanent self: one leads to permanence, the other to annihilation. Neither goes through.

What Use, Exactly, Is That Self?

The questioner now revises the claim. The self is identical, while the difference between god and human lies in appropriation: the body of five aggregates undergoes karma and therefore takes various forms, but the self itself is “neither god nor human, neither caṇḍāla nor brahmin.”

This rescue sounds clean, but Qingmu’s reply is severe. If it is the body that becomes god or human, then merit, wrongdoing, birth, death, coming, and going are all affairs of the body. “If pleasure and pain, anger and joy, anxiety and fear all belong to the body rather than the self, what use would the self be?”

Pause over this sentence. He does not say that your self does not exist. He asks: What use is that self? You have protected it too thoroughly—so thoroughly that it has nothing to do with pleasure or pain, merit or wrongdoing, birth or death. Why rescue something that touches nothing at all?

Karmic fruition never needed that self: “Because the conditioned continuity of the five aggregates does not lose merit and wrongdoing, liberation is possible.” Continuity is sufficient to bear karmic fruition and sufficient to make liberation intelligible.

The questioner then offers the strongest analogy: an owner repairing a house. Using grass, timber, mud, and plaster, the owner determines whether the house is good or poor; by doing good and evil, the self likewise receives good or ugly bodies, and it is the self that acts throughout birth and death in the six destinies.

Qingmu dismantles the analogy with care: “A householder has form, touch, and strength, and can therefore repair a house.” The owner can work on a house because the owner has form, touch, and strength. “The self you propose has neither form nor touch and therefore no power to act.” The very self you require has nothing at all—how could it act?

There follows a long series of tests, each pressed against ordinary experience. If the self were the agent, “it should not inflict painful deeds upon itself”—no one chooses suffering for oneself. If the self were the seer, and the eye sees forms, the eye should be the self; yet “if the eye were the seer, it could not apprehend sounds and other objects.” If the self used the faculties as a reaper uses a sickle, nevertheless “apart from the sickle a reaper can be found, whereas apart from body, mind, and faculties no separate agent can be found.” Beyond a sickle one finds the person who reaps; beyond body, mind, and faculties one finds no user. If an agent could exist without being apprehended by the faculties, “then the child of a barren woman could act.” If the right eye sees and the left eye recognizes, supposedly proving a separate seer, then “what the right hand has learned the left should also be able to do, yet in fact it cannot.”

The most arresting test concerns saliva. Someone sees another person eating fruit, salivates, and calls this the self. Qingmu says it occurs “through the power of memory, not the power of self”; indeed, the episode turns against the self: “A person among others is ashamed when saliva appears, yet it forces its way out beyond control—know from this that there is no self.” If you cannot even command your own saliva, how could there be a self that commands everything?

After refutation, Qingmu gives the positive account: “The five aggregates merely combine, and the provisional name ‘self’ has no determination.” It is like this: “As beams and rafters combine to make a house, apart from them there is no other house.” A house is genuinely useful, yet no separate thing called house can be found apart from beams and rafters. Thus “the self exists only as a provisional name and has no determinate reality,” and “there is appropriation alone, with no separate appropriator.”

The long verse settles the matter here:

“The present self is not apart from appropriation, nor is it appropriation itself; it is neither without appropriation nor wholly absent: this is the settled meaning.”

All four clauses must be seen. Not identical, it does not fall into permanence; not separate, it does not fall into annihilation. There is neither an absence of appropriation nor simply nothing at all. That final “not wholly absent” is the reader’s guardrail: refuting self does not replace it with a vacant annihilationist view.

Two Directions in Time, the Same Illness

The author now changes tempo and presses swiftly forward.

If the past and present selves differ, “there is annihilation and karmic fruition is lost”; moreover, “one acts and another receives.” If the self was formerly absent and now exists, “the self is a constructed dharma and is also without cause.” Thus all four past propositions are refuted together:

“Concerning the past, views that the self existed or did not exist— whether combined or uncombined, none of these is tenable.”

For the future set, the author does not even assign new faults: “Views of this kind are all the same as those concerning the past.” Qingmu says it more directly: the faults of those four propositions “should be stated here just as with the past.” The same illness, turned toward another direction in time, remains the same illness.

So the inquiry returns to god and human. “If a god is precisely a human, one falls into the extreme of permanence,” because “a permanent dharma is not produced.” What is permanent cannot be born again; if a god is not born among humans, there is no reason to call that god human. Conversely, “if a god differs from a human, this is impermanence,” and worse, “there is then no continuity.” Qingmu adds the decisive line: “Where there is continuity, one cannot speak of difference.”

Someone tries a compromise: half god and half human. Qingmu blocks it in one sentence: “It incurs the fault of two marks in one body.” Nor can the fourth proposition, “neither permanent nor impermanent,” be preserved. It arises only in dependence on the preceding three; when they fail, it has no footing.

The claim that birth and death are beginningless fails in the same way.

“If a dharma had determinate coming and determinate going, birth and death would be beginningless; yet in reality this is not so.”

Hidden beneath “beginningless” is a thing with determinate coming and going; yet “when this dharma is investigated with wisdom, nothing can be found from which it comes or to which it goes.” Remove the foundation, and the structure collapses.

The four propositions were never four separate things. They are a chain of claims leaning upon one another.

Limit and No Limit: No Boundary Can Be Found on the Five Aggregates

The future set of views changes its vocabulary and asks whether the world has a limit.

The author first blocks both extremes with a fact already at hand:

“If the world has a limit, how could there be a future life? If the world has no limit, how could there be a future life?”

—yet “in reality there is a future life.” A limited world leaves nowhere for future life; a limitless world equally fails to explain it.

The author then gives the chapter’s most beautiful positive image:

“The five aggregates continually follow one another, like the flame of a lamp; therefore the world should be called neither limited nor limitless.”

Qingmu explains with utmost simplicity: “A lamp flame exists through the conjunction of conditions. While the conditions are not exhausted, the lamp does not go out; when they are exhausted, it does.”

The lamp-flame analogy must be seen precisely. A flame is not a thing that burns; it is conditions continuing. While the conditions continue, so does the flame; when they end, it ends. You cannot draw a boundary across a sequence of continuity, because there was never a thing there that could be cut.

The author then presses each claim once more. If former aggregates cease and later aggregates do not arise conditioned by them, there is a limit. If former aggregates do not cease and later aggregates arise without depending on them, there is no limit. Qingmu gives “limit” a concrete definition: “Limit means the final body.” A limit would be the very last body. Yet former aggregates cease and condition the arising of later ones, so neither extreme can take hold. He also clarifies the scope: “There are two kinds of world: the world as land and the world of sentient beings. This is the world of sentient beings.” The boundary examined here concerns the continuity of beings, not the dimensions of the cosmos.

Qingmu then cites a verse from the Four Hundred Verses: “True Dharma, one who teaches it, and one who hears it are rare.” His explanation works in both directions. “Because the conditions for attaining true Dharma are absent, wandering through birth and death has no limit”—without encountering true Dharma, the cycle does not end. Yet “because one sometimes hears true Dharma and attains the path, it cannot be called limitless”—people do hear and awaken, so limitlessness cannot be asserted. Rare does not mean unobtainable; this sentence is left for the practitioner.

The remaining two propositions fare as before. Half limited and half limitless incurs “two marks in one dharma.” Neither appropriator nor appropriation can be partly destroyed and partly undestroyed, because that carries “the fault of the two marks, permanence and impermanence.” The fourth proposition, neither limit nor no limit, again has nothing to support it: “No limit is posited in opposition to limit, as short in opposition to long.” Whatever stands through mutual dependence loses its footing when what it depends on is refuted; “because there is nothing on which it can mutually depend,” it cannot be established.

The Final Turn: Who Produces These Views, Where, and When?

After the śrāvaka teaching has refuted each gate, the author suddenly looks up and asks a question wholly unlike the preceding ones:

“Because all dharmas are empty, views of the world as permanent and the rest— where, when, and by whom are such views produced?”

Qingmu makes the change of level explicit: “The preceding used the śrāvaka Dharma to refute views; now the Mahāyāna Dharma speaks.”

The preceding refutations addressed the content of views: permanence fails, impermanence fails, limit fails, no limit fails. This question addresses the arising of a view: “Dharmas have from the beginning been ultimately empty; in such empty nature there is neither person nor dharma.” If so, where, when, and by whom could these views arise?

Qingmu makes each of the three terms concrete: “Place means land; time means days, months, and years; who means a person. These constitute the substance of views.” Place, time, and person are the three pillars on which views depend. But the person has already been refuted—“because self is refuted, no person produces this view.” Even visible form taken as a place can be refuted, much more time and direction.

Most important is the criterion he gives: “If views existed, they would have determinate reality; if determinate, they could not be refuted.”

Something possessing intrinsic nature could not be moved by refutation. Yet every one of these views has already yielded under examination through many causes and conditions—and that very susceptibility shows that it never possessed intrinsic essence. Therefore: “Views have no determinate essence—how could they arise?”

This turn does not add one more refutation; it gathers refutation itself back in. The preceding twenty-six chapters refuted the dharmas being grasped. This question reveals that the person who grasps, the place of grasping, and the time of grasping likewise lack intrinsic nature. Once the inquiry reaches here, refutation itself has nowhere to stand.

Therefore the End Is an Act of Homage

And so the final four lines of the entire treatise are:

“The Great Sage and Lord Gautama, moved by compassion, taught this Dharma; he cut off every view, and I now bow my head in homage.”

Qingmu states their number plainly: views are “briefly five and extensively sixty-two,” and the Buddha “taught the Dharma in order to cut off these views.”

The causal order matters. It is not that the Buddha first possessed an ingenious view to transmit. Sentient beings were first entangled in sixty-two views and could not escape; moved by “compassion,” the Buddha taught. The beginning of teaching is compassion, not victory. Without this sentence beneath the dense inquiry of twenty-seven chapters, it could look like mere virtuosity in debate. With it, one sees that the entire treatise has been dismantling a net, not weaving another one.

The author’s own position is settled in the same sentence. He does not say, “Now I understand,” or “Now I have realized.” He says, “I now bow my head in homage.” Qingmu gives the reason: the Great Sage and Lord Gautama “possesses immeasurable, boundless, inconceivable wisdom.”

When every view has been cut off, the wisdom that cuts them off is not one’s own—this is the final action the author leaves to the reader. When refutation reaches what cannot be further refuted, one does not remain standing. One bows.

What Readers Can Carry Away from This Chapter

First, watch the direction in which thought moves. Think backward about what one was and forward about what one will be: each direction generates an entire set of views. The failure of all eight does not forbid thought about past and future. It shows that no fixed self waits there to be found.

Second, do not protect the self too thoroughly. “What use would the self be?” is a sharp question: a self unrelated to pleasure and pain, merit and wrongdoing, is useless even if rescued. Karmic fruition does not depend upon it, nor does liberation—“because the conditioned continuity of the five aggregates does not lose merit and wrongdoing, liberation is possible.”

Third, remember the lamp flame. No boundary can be drawn upon continuity. There is no need to fear annihilation, and no need to search for a first point of birth and death.

Fourth, when refutation reaches its end, remember to bow. “He cut off every view” is followed by “I now bow my head in homage”—not by anything else.

Carried Forward: Jizang’s Mirror

The foregoing is the meaning of this chapter itself. What follows looks alongside it through the Sui–Tang Sanlun tradition. The mirror is not the treatise; it is only another way of reading the same verses.

In his Commentary on the Treatise on the Middle, Jizang preserves one degree of room within conventional truth. He says that claiming there is wholly no self in conventional truth is itself a wrong view. A provisionally named self is not absent, yet there is neither a real entity nor a real efficacy belonging to it. This carries the verse’s final phrase, “neither without appropriation nor wholly absent,” one step further in the direction of conventional truth.

He reads neither limit nor no limit through continuity. Because earlier and later aggregates condition one another, they are not annihilated, and hence there is no limit; because they arise and cease moment by moment, they are not permanent, and hence there is no limitlessness. He identifies this passage as the correct śrāvaka view.

For the final question, he establishes three roots: the person producing views, the place where views arise, and the time at which they arise. The chapter shows all three to be ultimately empty; without a root of views, views do not arise. Jizang thus judges that, after refuting ordinary people’s views, the chapter washes away the views of the two vehicles and of bodhisattvas with the water of Mahāyāna ultimate emptiness, rendering wrong and right equal and great and small nondual.

This interpretive structure is Jizang’s addition, not the wording of Nāgārjuna’s verses or Qingmu’s extended commentary. The readings are recorded side by side without adjudication, each returned to its own place.