中論 心要連讀

“Middle” is a name that points toward the true mark; “treatise” is an expedient that explains the path. Names and words are useful, but neither is a substantial thing to grasp. Seng Rui is concerned not only with worldly inversions concerning existence and nonexistence, but also with practitioners who retreat into a narrow wisdom of aversion. Unless illumination is vast, the Way and the conventional obstruct one another. Unless understanding is thorough, the two extremes cannot dissolve.

The received work also has a clearly articulated textual stratigraphy: Nāgārjuna composed the verses, Qingmu wrote the commentary, and Kumārajīva’s translation workshop edited and supplemented it. Only by preserving these three levels can one read the treatise in full without passing commentary off as the treatise author’s own speech. The Treatise on the Middle, the Hundred Treatise, the Great Treatise on the Perfection of Wisdom, and the Twelve Gate Treatise illuminate one another while applying their force in different ways. What they share is the opening of a gate beyond clinging, not the fabrication of another “middle” to hold on to.

The Treatise on the Middle opens with an act of homage:

“Neither arising nor ceasing; neither permanence nor annihilation; neither identity nor difference; neither coming nor going forth. Able to teach these causes and conditions, he skillfully ends all conceptual proliferation. I bow my head to the Buddha, foremost among all who teach.”

Qingmu gives one judgment: “By praising the Buddha with these two verses, the ultimate meaning has already been stated in brief.” Before the treatise begins, the ultimate meaning has been said in full. The twenty-seven chapters that follow merely let the reader reach it for themselves.

Two Illnesses, One Movement

On one side stand eight non-Buddhist schools: things arise from Maheśvara, from time, from atoms. Each places a source behind the myriad things. On the other stand people of the Semblance Dharma, whose “faculties have become dull” and who “cling deeply to dharmas” and “only to words.” Hearing of ultimate emptiness, they instead “grasp the mark of emptiness and become attached.”

Grasping dharmas and grasping emptiness—the hand makes the same movement. The eight negations treat that hand.

Between Grain and Sprout, Nothing Can Be Found

The eight negations sound abstruse, yet Qingmu exhausts them with one object, saying each time, “Because it is visibly evident in the world.”

“Apart from the grain at the beginning of the eon, present grain cannot be found,” so there is no arising. “If it ceased, grain should not exist now,” so there is no ceasing. “When a grain sprouts, the seed changes and breaks down,” so it is not permanent. “A sprout comes from the grain,” so it is not annihilated. “A grain does not make the sprout, nor does the sprout make the grain,” so they are not identical. “Why distinguish grain sprout, grain stalk, and grain leaf?” so they are not different. “The sprout in a grain has nowhere from which it comes,” so there is no coming. No one sees a sprout emerge “like a snake from its hole,” so there is no going forth.

This is not inferred. It is what cannot be found in the first place.

Arising Has Only Four Routes

“Dharmas do not arise from themselves, nor from another; neither from both nor without a cause—thus one knows non-arising.”

Self-arising gives “one dharma two bodies” and makes “arising have further arising, without end.” Arising from another fails because “an other exists because of a self”; with no self, other has nowhere to stand. Arising from both inherits the faults of both. Arising without a cause would make “giving and keeping precepts lead to hell.” The root lies in one sentence: “The intrinsic nature of dharmas is not present among the many conditions; a name is obtained only because the conditions come together.”

Before the Effect Arises, What Makes It a Condition?

Abhidharma establishes four conditions, the most exacting position in the chapter:

“The causal condition, immediately preceding condition, object condition, and dominant condition: these four conditions produce dharmas; there is no fifth condition.”

The respondent asks only this: “Before the effect has arisen, why is it not called a non-condition?” Qingmu exposes the point: “A condition is established through the effect, because the effect is later and the condition earlier.” You call it a condition because you have first seen the effect.

Each of the four conditions has one vulnerable point. The immediately preceding condition requires the ceasing of an earlier moment to condition a later one, yet “before the effect has arisen, there should be no ceasing.” The future has not arisen, so that ceasing has nowhere to be delivered: “How can a ceased dharma condition anything? Thus there is no immediately preceding condition.” The object condition requires an apprehended dharma, but when the marks of dharmas enter dharma-nature, “all are empty, signless, and objectless.” Thus, “How could there be an object condition regarding dharmas that have no object?” The dominant condition rests on “because this exists, that exists,” yet “dharmas have no intrinsic nature, and therefore no mark of existence.” If no mark of existence is present, the words “this exists” have nowhere to land.

Once the four conditions have been exhausted, the final verse gathers them:

“An effect arises neither from conditions nor from non-conditions; because no effect exists, neither conditions nor non-conditions exist.”

It is not that conditions fail to produce an effect. Once the effect cannot be found, the name “condition” has nowhere to hang.

And refuting conditions is not refuting cause and effect. Qingmu is explicit: what truly destroys cause and effect is the assertion of no cause.

Someone establishes a thesis from the most ordinary fact: activity can be seen in all three phases—what has gone, what has not gone, and what is presently going—so dharmas must exist.

Nāgārjuna does not deny the road. He takes the three phases apart, one cell at a time. Going has subsided in what has gone and has not yet begun in what has not gone. As for the middle cell, Qingmu says: “The time of going names what is half gone and half not yet gone; it is not apart from the already gone and not yet gone.” It is a name assembled from the cells before and after, not a third patch of ground.

The Vessel Is Made by the Fruit

If another going exists inside the time of going, that time becomes a preexisting container—“going would be contained within the time of going as fruit is contained in a vessel.” Yet the time of going receives its name only through going. Insist on this, and the count increases: “If going exists at the time of going, there are two kinds of going,” and the person multiplies with it: “One person has two goings and two goers.”

The First Step

“There is no setting forth in what has gone, none in what has not gone, and none at the time of going. Where could setting forth occur?”

Once the walk is finished it is too late; before it begins it is too early; and the time of going comes later than the first step. Qingmu dismantles the sequence to its end: “Because there is no setting forth, there is no going; because there is no going, there is no goer.”

The Motionless One

The goer does not stand, “because going has not ceased.” The non-goer does not stand either, because “standing exists through the cessation of going; without going, there is no standing.” Standing is a name obtained from the cessation of going. Qingmu extends the gateway to grain and sprout and to the twelve links of dependent origination: “Succession is called continuation; interruption is called cessation.”

Only Mutual Dependence Remains

They are not identical—then “agent and action would be one.” They are not different—then “they would not depend on one another, and when one dharma ceased the other should remain.” What remains is a single statement: “The goer exists because of going, and going because of the goer.”

Qingmu therefore concludes: “The three dharmas are false, empty, and without possession of their own; they exist only as provisional designations, like an illusion or transformation.” At the same time he bars the opposite extreme: “They cannot be called determinately existent or determinately nonexistent.” The feet still walk to the doorway. What cannot be found is the “determinately.”

The questioner establishes the position by citing scripture: “The eye and ear, together with nose, tongue, body, and mind, are the six faculties; these six operate in relation to the six objects, beginning with form.” Eye is inside, form outside, and “the eye sees form,” all the way through mind knowing dharmas. The respondent says only: “No. Why?”

The Measure Is a Lamp

The verse first asks whether the eye can see itself: “This eye cannot see its own body.” Qingmu measures it by a lamp—“A lamp illuminates both itself and other things.” When light shines, self and other stand together within it. If the eye truly bore the mark of seeing, it should do the same, “yet that is not so.”

Seeing other things but not itself gives the game away.

Changing the Analogy Cannot Change the Three Times

The questioner substitutes fire: “Fire burns other things but cannot burn itself.” The respondent does not debate fire. He says only, “Although you offer the analogy of fire, it cannot establish a dharma of seeing in the eye,” then points back to the preceding chapter: “What has gone, not gone, and the time of going have already answered this matter.”

Qingmu carries the measure across: “Just as no burning exists in what has burned, what has not yet burned, or the time of burning, no mark of seeing exists in what has been seen, what has not yet been seen, or the time of seeing.” For the fire analogy to stand, a burning capable of standing must first be found. It cannot be obtained in the three times.

Seeing Is a Name Obtained Only in the Encounter

“Before the eye faces form, it cannot see and is not called seeing. It is called seeing because it faces form.” The eyes remain when closed, but the name seeing cannot be placed upon them. Thus, “before seeing, there is no seeing”—no ready-made seeing waits there, prepared to go out and see.

The Position of Seer Cannot Be Reached by Either Route

“Seeing cannot possess seeing, nor does non-seeing see.” The side of seeing has already been examined; non-seeing fails “because it lacks the mark of seeing.” The consequence follows: “Once seeing is refuted, the seer is refuted with it.”

Qingmu adds two levels: “If a seer existed apart from seeing, a person without eyes should see through another faculty.” If instead seeing is used to see, the mark resides in seeing, while “the seer lacks the mark of seeing.” Either there is no support, or what supports it does not belong to the seer.

Once that position is empty, the other end is empty with it: “Since there is no seer, where can seeing and the visible exist?”

Release the First Link and the Whole Chain Releases

“Because seeing and the visible are absent, consciousness, contact, feeling, and craving are all absent.” Further: “Because craving and the rest are absent, the four kinds of clinging and the other links of dependent origination are absent.”

What is barred is the “fixed,” not the seeing occurring before your eyes.

The final verse extends the measure to the other five faculties: “Know that their meaning is wholly the same as explained above.” Qingmu’s reason is that they “belong to many conditions and therefore are not fixed.” He closes with, “Because the meaning is the same, they are not explained separately”—returning the measure to the reader’s hand.

“The sūtra teaches five aggregates. How is this to be understood?” The questioner comes holding the sūtra. The respondent does not debate the sūtra. He takes only the coarsest aggregate, form, turns it over and dismantles it before him, and at the end says simply: the other four aggregates are the same.

The Name “Cause” Is Given by the Fruit

“If one departs from the cause of form, form cannot be found; if one departs from form, the cause of form cannot be found.”

Qingmu uses cloth as an analogy: “Remove the threads and there is no cloth; remove the cloth and there are no threads.”

The first sentence is easy to understand; the second requires closer thought. The threads are still in one’s hand—how can they be said not to exist? Because “threads” here means the cause of cloth. If the cloth is not made, they are simply threads. The name cause is attached only in relation to a fruit.

Form Present Will Not Work; Form Absent Will Not Work Either

If form exists apart from its cause, it has no provenance—“The world contains no dharma that exists without a cause.” Conversely, if a cause exists apart from its fruit, whose cause is it? “It is in relation to a fruit that something is called a cause. If there is no fruit, how can it be called a cause?”

This presses the argument into the next verse: “If form already existed, it would have no need of a cause of form; if form did not exist, it likewise would have no need of a cause of form.” Put the fruit in, and the cause is superfluous; take the fruit out, and the cause hangs empty.

As for simply declaring it uncaused, Qingmu disposes of that in one sentence: even what has a cause cannot be found, much less what has none.

Likeness and Unlikeness Both Close In

To say that fruit resembles cause fails: “The cause is fine and the fruit coarse,” and “the threads are many while the cloth is one.” To say that they do not resemble each other also fails: “Hemp threads cannot make silk, and coarse threads cannot produce fine cloth.”

Erase the difference and cloth cannot be cloth; sever the relation and on what grounds was this cloth woven from this bundle of threads?

Only after Clinging Do We Begin to Argue

“‘Discrimination’ refers to ordinary people: through ignorance and the defilement of craving they covet and cling to form, then through wrong views produce discriminative proliferation, claiming that the fruit exists in the cause, that it does not exist in the cause, and so forth.”

See the sequence clearly: first we do not understand; then we stick to something; only at the end do we devise a theory of cause and fruit for the place where we are stuck. Thus, at the close of the refutation, the words turn toward the person.

Not Grasping the Mark of Emptiness

The last two verses do not discuss the five aggregates but question and answer themselves. Someone says a jar is impermanent. Asked why, he answers, “Because it arises from an impermanent cause.” Qingmu says this does not count as an answer, because “Within the cause and condition there is still doubt: it is not known whether it is permanent or impermanent.” The doubt has merely been moved back one step.

A challenge is the same: “You use impermanence to refute my permanence; I too can use permanence to refute your impermanence.” The positions have merely changed hands.

If so, does relying on emptiness not itself amount to a reliance? The respondent says: “If one relies on emptiness to refute permanence, there is no fault. Why? Because this person does not grasp the mark of emptiness.”

The difference is not what has been picked up, but whether the hand has closed around it. The final sentence carries this to its end: “Thus, if one wishes to conduct questions and answers, one should rely on the dharma of emptiness—how much more one who wishes to seek the mark of freedom from suffering and quiescent cessation?”

The questioner’s thesis sounds perfectly ordinary: “The six elements each have a fixed mark; because they have fixed marks, the six elements exist.” The respondent does not begin with earth, water, fire, or wind. He begins with space.

Both Ends Cannot Be There First

“Before the mark of space exists, no dharma of space exists; if space already existed beforehand, it would be without a mark.”

If the mark comes first, the dharma does not yet exist; if the dharma comes first, there is an interval in which no mark points to it.

And the mark itself depends on something—“A place without form is called the mark of space.” It can be spoken of only in relation to form.

A Mark Has Nowhere to Land

“Within the marked and unmarked, a mark has nowhere to abide; apart from the marked and unmarked, it likewise abides nowhere else.”

A markless dharma provides no object for a mark: “If there is no ox, these marks have nowhere to abide.” A dharma already bearing a mark has no room for another: “The mark of fire does not abide within the mark of water, because water already has its own mark.” There is no third place.

Thus, “The marked exists because of a mark, and a mark exists because of the marked; the two depend upon one another.” The roles can also reverse: “Fire has smoke as its mark, while smoke in turn has fire as its mark.”

Refuting Existence Does Not Require Positing a Nonexistence

“When a thing destroys itself or is destroyed by another, it is called nonexistent.” Thus, “Nonexistence does not exist on its own but comes from existence.” Since existence does not stand, nonexistence has nothing on which to depend; the knower of existence and nonexistence is refuted along with them.

The conclusion gathers this into a single verse and carries away the remaining five elements with it:

“Thus know that space is neither existent nor nonexistent, neither marking mark nor marked; the other five are like space.”

However its mark is sought, it cannot be found; “the other five elements are likewise.” Earth, water, fire, wind, and consciousness need not each traverse the path again.

Why begin with this one? Qingmu asks and answers: earth, water, fire, and wind are easy to refute because they conjoin through many conditions; consciousness is easy to refute because suffering and pleasure as its causes reveal it as impermanent and changing. Space has no such mark, and “ordinary people merely hope that it exists.” Moreover, “space can support the four great elements, and consciousness exists through the four elements as causes and conditions; therefore, refute the root first, and the others are refuted of themselves.”

The Error Lies in the Instant of Grasping the Mark

“Those of shallow wisdom see dharmas as marked by existence or nonexistence; they cannot see the secure dharma in which views are brought to an end.”

The error is not in seeing but in “grasping the mark and asserting existence” or “grasping the mark and asserting nonexistence.” The wise use the very same arising and ceasing: “Seeing dharmas arise, the wise at once end the view of nonexistence; seeing dharmas cease, they at once end the view of existence.”

Qingmu turns the principle upon itself: “Even the view of the uncontaminated path is to be ended, how much more other views.” Even the view used to refute views is not retained as a final attainment.

Security is not another object placed beyond existence and nonexistence. It is where both the view of existence and the view of nonexistence have ceased.

The questioner arrives with a sentence from the sūtra: the three poisons are the root of the world, and craving has an especially large number of names. With the terms distinguished so finely, he installs two positions—“Resting upon sentient beings, the being is called the defiled, and craving is called the defiling dharma.”

The response is short: “Although the sūtra teaches the names of the three poisons, their reality cannot be found.” The names are accepted; the reality must still be sought.

Sequence: One Side Need Not Be Defiled Again; on the Other, No One Can Be Defiled

“If, apart from the defiling dharma, a defiled person already existed, because this person was already in desire, defilement would have to arise again.”

Qingmu says: “If it is already determined that a defiled person exists, no further defilement is needed, because that person has already been defiled.” What is defilement to do to someone already defiled?

Reverse it and the same applies: “If there were no defiled person, how could there be defilement?” With no one to receive it, upon whom could defilement fall? The defiling dharma undergoes the same test—of defilement existing prior to and apart from a person, Qingmu says it is “like fire without fuel.”

Simultaneity: Neither Owes the Other Priority, So Neither Exists through the Other

Then let them arise at the same time. Yet “the defiled and the defiling dharma together have no dependence upon each other.” Established without a cause, they become permanent. Qingmu states the cost of permanence directly: “If permanent, many faults follow; there is no dharma of liberation.”

Identity and Difference: If One, It Cannot Conjoin with Itself; If Different, It Need Not Conjoin

“How could one dharma conjoin with itself? A fingertip cannot touch itself.” A fingertip cannot touch itself; one end cannot produce a conjunction.

What about difference? “If each is already fully established, no further conjunction is needed; even if they conjoin, they remain different.” Two things already complete in themselves remain two even when placed together. Qingmu adds: if person and dharma were one, “there would be utter confusion”; if different things can conjoin by virtue of difference, “even the most distant should conjoin.”

The Two Sides Rescue Each Other

When difference does not work, conjunction is brought in; when conjunction incurs faults, difference is brought back. Qingmu catches the movement in a sentence: “You yourself believe the matter settled, but what you say is unsettled.”

Since the mark of difference is unestablished, “within which mark of difference do you intend to assert a mark of conjunction?”

The Final Sentence Must Be Read as a Whole

“Thus, defilement and the defiled are established through neither conjunction nor nonconjunction,” and from defilement the examination extends to anger, delusion, every affliction, and every dharma.

Yet Qingmu closes with: “Neither before nor after, neither conjoined nor dispersed—they are established through causes and conditions.” The four negations dismantle fixed arrangements; the final words say that things still exist—in the mode of being established through causes and conditions.

Someone establishes all things through arising, abiding, and ceasing: the flower opens, remains in bloom, and withers. The three stages lie before us, so dharmas must exist.

The answer is only four words: “The three marks have no fixed determination.” It then asks in return—you say the three marks can mark the conditioned, but what are the marks themselves? If conditioned, they require another set of three marks, while arising, abiding, and ceasing contradict one another and cannot crowd into a single dharma. If unconditioned, they do not even possess marks of their own; something markless cannot mark anything else.

Add One Layer and Another Must Be Added

Add three more marks above the three, and the additions never end; add none, and the three marks themselves do not count as conditioned.

The questioner devises another plan: primary arising produces secondary arising, and secondary arising produces primary arising; with each pair supporting the other, the regress can close. The respondent asks only once: “Secondary arising does not yet exist—how can it produce primary arising?” Two things that have not yet stood cannot hold each other up.

A Lamp Cannot Illuminate the Darkness on Its Own Body

The questioner offers a lamp: it illuminates objects and also itself.

The respondent does not debate self and other. It asks what “illuminating” means—“Only dispelling darkness is called illumination; where there is no darkness, there is no illumination.” There is no darkness in the lamp’s body or in the place filled by its light, so nothing there is dispelled. A lamp half-arisen and half-not-yet-arisen is still less capable of dispelling darkness. If it could dispel darkness without reaching it, a single lamp here should dispel all the darkness in the world.

The analogy can also be run backward: if a lamp truly illuminates itself and another because it opposes darkness, darkness, which likewise opposes the lamp, should “darken itself and darken another.” Darkness cannot conceal itself and another; the lamp’s self-illumination and illumination of another collapse with it—“Therefore, the lamp analogy fails.”

Arising is the same: what has arisen need not arise again; what has not arisen is no dharma; the time of arising was already answered through the gate of going and coming. As for abiding, aging and death constantly follow every dharma. As for ceasing, milk does not cease while it is milk, and a second head cannot be cut off. Once the three marks fall, the conditioned cannot stand; the unconditioned was only a name obtained by contrast with the three marks, and when the contrast is removed, it too is removed.

Retreat to Conditions or to the Future: Arising Is Still Unfindable

The questioner finally changes the account: do not grasp what has arisen, what has not arisen, or the time of arising; simply say that arising exists because many conditions conjoin. The respondent draws the sentence tighter:

“If a dharma arises from many conditions, its nature is quiescent cessation; therefore, arising and the time of arising are both quiescent cessation.”

What arises through many conditions lacks intrinsic nature. Quiescent cessation means “neither this nor that, without marks; the path of speech is cut off and all proliferations cease.” It is not that conditions fail to produce dharmas; at the very place where conditioned arising occurs, it is already quiescent cessation.

Retreat to the three times and the result is the same. If this not-yet-arisen future dharma already exists, “This dharma already existed—what further use is arising?” If arising itself has another arising that produces it, “If one claims a further arising, arising upon arising is endless.” If no additional arising is posited and arising produces itself, then “all dharmas should likewise be able to produce themselves, but in fact they do not.”

Seeing Is Simply Seeing

What, then, can still be said? Out of compassion for beings, the noble ones continue to speak with the words to which their listeners cling. The words are the same; the mind using them is different.

Like an illusion, a dream, or a gandharva city—the sentence Qingmu adds under the illusion analogy is where the chapter reaches the heart: “One should not form thoughts of sorrow or joy within it, but simply regard it as something seen by the eye.”

There is no need to deny what stands before the eye, and no need to rise and fall with it. The moment sorrow or joy stirs, one has admitted that the event carries real weight.

The final sentence gathers everything: “Ordinary people discriminate it as existent; the wise investigate it and cannot find it.” The object seen has not changed; the eye that sees has.

Someone acts, something is acted upon, and a tool is in hand—these three are the questioner’s firmest evidence in the world. Once all three gather, karmic fruition follows. The respondent says that the preceding chapters have already refuted everything, but “because your clinging is deep, you ask again; I will now answer again.” The principle has been explained, but the hand has not released it, so the answer is given once more.

Neither Determinate nor Indeterminate Can Act

“A determinately existent agent does not perform a determinate action; a determinately absent agent does not perform an indeterminate action.”

“Determinate” means that this end has already been established by itself before acting. If already established, acting is superfluous; if wholly absent, acting has nowhere to begin. Qingmu separates the matter again: if the action is determinate first, it should exist apart from the agent; if the agent is determinate first, the agent should exist apart from action—“But this is not so.” The name agent depends upon action, and the name action upon agent. They are originally a pair.

The More Real, the More Causeless

“If the agent determinately exists and the action also determinately exists, agent and action fall into causelessness.”

Once each side stands by itself, it need not await the other. If it does not await the other, “it does not exist through causes and conditions.” Trying to give action a secure owner instead sends causes and conditions away. Follow causelessness through, and what disappears is precisely what the questioner most wants to preserve: cause and fruit, demerit and merit, karmic fruition, and the path to nirvāṇa.

Leaving both ends empty fares no better. “Like a conjured person taking space as a house: there is only something said, without agent or action.” The sentence can be spoken, but the deed cannot be done.

Three Kinds of Agent, Three Kinds of Action

Determinate and indeterminate do not merely fail on their own sides; cross-pairing them also fails:

“An agent, whether determinate or indeterminate, cannot perform the two kinds of action; because existence and nonexistence contradict one another, one place cannot contain both.”

Determinate is existence and indeterminate nonexistence: “How can one person and one matter possess both existence and nonexistence?” Continue the division: “What exists cannot act upon what does not; what does not exist cannot act upon what exists.” If the action exists first, the agent has nothing to do; if no action exists first, there is nothing on which to act.

Thus, determinate, indeterminate, and both-determinate-and-indeterminate actions are refuted together; set the three kinds of agent against them and not one cell can be filled: “In this way, agent and action are sought everywhere but cannot be found.”

This Is How the Meaning of Action Is Established

“Because of action there is an agent; because of the agent there is action; this is how the meaning of action is established, and there is no further matter.”

The respondent first draws the boundary: “This action arises from many conditions and is provisionally said to exist; it has no fixed determination.” What is refuted is fixity, not existence. Qingmu says, “Action is initially unfixed and arises because of a person.” When a person moves, action arises; only the person who does it is then called the agent. “Through the conjunction of the two, action and agent are established.” What arises through conjunction lacks intrinsic nature. Conventionally, action and agent are still spoken of; “within the ultimate meaning, there is neither action nor agent.”

A person becomes that agent in the very act of doing, not by receiving the identity first and then acting.

The Same Measure Also Examines the One Who Experiences

“As action and agent are refuted, experience and experiencer are the same; all dharmas whatsoever should likewise be refuted in this way.”

“Experience means the body of the five aggregates, and experiencer the person”; yet “apart from the person there are no five aggregates, and apart from the five aggregates there is no person.” It is easy to nod when told that agent is a provisional name, but harder to release the self who experiences pleasure and pain. The final verse says the same measure reaches there too.

We casually say “my eye” and “I am suffering,” but beneath the words hides an owner. This chapter summons that owner for questioning.

The questioner names him the prior abider: “The faculties such as eye and ear and the dharmas such as pain and pleasure—who possesses such things? That one is called the prior abider.” And he must come first. Qingmu states the view: “By virtue of this prior abider, the faculties such as the eye are able to grow.”

First Ask How You Know Him

The respondent does not rush to say whether he exists. He asks only: “If a prior abider existed first, apart from the faculties such as the eye and the dharmas such as pain and pleasure, by what could it be known?”

Jars and robes are known through faculties such as the eye; inner dharmas are known through such faculties as pain and pleasure. No path leads to one stripped of every mark.

The questioner turns to breathing, thinking, hate, and love as evidence: “Inhalation and exhalation, looking and blinking, vitality, thinking, pain and pleasure, hate and love, initiating movement, and so forth are marks of a self.” Yet everything offered as evidence is an operation of body and mind themselves.

Pillar, Armor, Lamp, and Madness

If it is inside the body “like a pillar within a wall,” the body should not decay. If outside “like a person wearing armor,” the body should not be visible—yet “we plainly see the body destroyed.”

If it can contract when an arm is severed, then “when the head is cut off it likewise should contract inward and the person should not die; yet death plainly occurs.” If the self grows with the body as lamplight grows with a lamp, “the self would change with the body and should not be permanent.” Once impermanent, “it is of the same kind as eye, ear, pain, pleasure, and the rest,” so positing it has gained nothing.

A person afflicted by madness “does what should not be done.” If the self is master, “how could the person be said not to be in control?”

Every rescue has to borrow a new power from body and mind; the more it borrows, the less the one apart from body and mind can stand.

One Knower, or Six

Ask instead who knows objects, and there are only two paths. If one knower: perhaps “one could hear a sound with the eye”—but “this is not so.” If each faculty has its own knower: “while seeing one should also hear,” so there would be “one person but many selves”—yet “this is not so.”

There is no need to seek outside: “Eye-consciousness arises with the eye faculty as cause and visible form as condition”; the faculties are “discriminated through their different marks.” Order requires no overseer.

The Last Hiding Place

If he cannot be found apart from the faculties and pain and pleasure, retreat one step into the four great elements from which the faculties arise:

“The faculties such as eye and ear and the dharmas such as pain and pleasure, arise from the great elements—and in those elements too there is no self.”

The four great elements are the causes of eye, ear, and the rest. If the prior abider still has somewhere to stay, this is the last place. Qingmu ends it in one sentence: “There is no prior abider in those four great elements either.” Even when the search retreats into the coarsest earth, water, fire, and wind, that one is still absent.

The Question Dissolves by Itself

Nor can one keep only eye, ear, pain, and pleasure. Qingmu presses with two questions: “Who possesses this eye, ear, and the rest? Through what conditions do they exist?”

Sought through the three times, he is absent before, absent now, and absent afterward. Qingmu does not conclude with a thesis, but says: “Such questions and answers and conceptual proliferation then cease. Because conceptual proliferation ceases, dharmas are empty.”

The owner has not been defeated; the question had nowhere to land from the beginning.

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

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

The Words Are Spoken; the Things Are Not Taken Up

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

Fire Is Not Fuel, Nor Is It Apart from Fuel

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

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

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

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

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

Waiting upon One Another, Neither Can Stand Firm

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

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

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

Fire Does Not Come from Elsewhere

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

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

From Fire and Fuel to Jars and Robes

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

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

The final line falls heavily:

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

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

The questioner challenges the text with a sūtra: it says both that “beings come and go in saṃsāra and the prior limit cannot be found” and that “beings and saṃsāra exist here.” If it speaks of existence, why then say there is no findable prior limit?

The respondent first establishes the speaker: “There are three kinds of sage.” The Buddha is supreme among them and is therefore called the Great Sage; moreover, “nothing the Buddha says is other than a true statement.” Since it is a true statement, every word must be taken seriously to the end.

Beginningless Does Not Mean Immeasurably Ancient

“Saṃsāra has no beginning, and likewise has no end.” Qingmu explains only one sentence: “The first and last limits of saṃsāra cannot be found; therefore it is said to have no beginning.”

Not one word in the reason refers to length. The beginning is not too distant to find; the position called “beginning” cannot stand. The former leaves a mystery, while the latter dissolves the puzzle.

Without Two Ends, No Midpoint Can Be Measured

The questioner retreats one step: even without beginning and end, there should still be a middle. The verse answers: “If there is neither beginning nor end, how could there be a middle?”

Qingmu puts it plainly: “A beginning exists because of middle and end; an end exists because of beginning and middle.” Beginning, middle, and end are not three things that stand independently, but three names that delimit one another. When the two ends cannot be found, the middle has no boundary on which to stand—“In saṃsāra there is no beginning, middle, or end.”

Each of the Three Positions Tried in Turn

Birth first and aging-and-death later produces “birth without aging-and-death and aging-and-death without birth”; yet “by principle, birth should include aging-and-death, and aging-and-death should include birth.” Remove one side, and the other no longer becomes that side.

Aging-and-death first and birth afterward makes aging-and-death “without a cause,” because “birth comes later”; moreover, “without birth, how could there be aging-and-death?”

Both together at the same time: first, “death would already exist at the moment of birth,” although “by principle, there should be existence at birth and nonexistence at death.” Existence and nonexistence would occur simultaneously—“this is not so.” Second, “if they arise at the same time, they do not mutually serve as causes”—“just as a cow’s two horns emerge at once and are not causes of each other.” Simultaneous appearance is only simultaneous appearance.

When all three routes are exhausted, the verse rebukes: “Why continue conceptual proliferation and assert the existence of birth, aging, and death?” Qingmu concludes that they are “unborn and ultimately empty.” The rebuke is not directed at speaking of birth and death, but at “asserting determinate marks.”

Not Only Saṃsāra

“All causes and fruits, marks and what bears a mark,” “experience and experiencer and all dharmas whatsoever”—“not only in saṃsāra can the prior limit not be found.” Qingmu concludes that these “all lack a prior limit; it is not only saṃsāra that lacks one.” Saṃsāra was discussed first only “to disclose the teaching briefly.”

Saṃsāra is the example that cuts closest to the body. What is learned is a method, and its use lies elsewhere.

The Bhāviveka-line Prajñāpradīpa Commentary adds that having no limit or boundary is spoken within conventional truth; the Sthiramati-line Mahāyāna Madhyamaka Commentary extends the three routes to cause and fruit and to mark and what bears a mark; Jizang’s Commentary on the Treatise on the Middle further opens four intentions, refutes four views, and distinguishes two layers of causelessness—one by rigorous exclusion and one by provisional allowance. All belong to what is carried forward, recorded without adjudication.

When suffering comes, this question always rises in the mind. There are only four answers: I brought it on myself, someone else gave it to me, both sides had a hand in it, or there is simply no reason. The questioner at the chapter’s opening arranges precisely these four:

“Self-made and made by another, jointly made and made without a cause— 　when suffering is explained in these ways, none applies to the fruit.”

All four are swept away together. What is swept away is the answer, not suffering. Qingmu says plainly: “Beings incur suffering through many conditions; weary of suffering, they wish to seek its cessation.” Suffering exists, has a way it comes about, and can be brought to cessation. The error lies only in “not knowing that suffering actually exists through causes and conditions”—not knowing that suffering depends on conditions, one searches outside those conditions for someone who made it.

Self and Other

If self-making were established, suffering could generate itself through its own substance and would have no need for conditions. Qingmu exposes the point: “Self means arising from intrinsic nature.” Yet “the later five aggregates arise through the preceding five aggregates”—the present body depends on the past body. Since conditions are required, the word “self” falls away.

The questioner changes his claim: if these aggregates make those aggregates, is that not making by another?

To speak of another as maker, one must first prove that these aggregates and those have nothing to do with one another. Qingmu uses weaving as an analogy: “If thread and cloth were different, cloth should exist apart from thread.” Cloth and thread indeed are not identical, but remove the thread and the cloth comes apart. A difference that cannot be separated cannot support a maker standing outside.

Apart from Suffering, Where Is the Person?

The questioner retreats again to the person: the person makes and experiences his own suffering. The verse answers only with a question: “If a person makes suffering himself, apart from suffering, where is the person?” Qingmu presses to the end: “One should state who this person is, but he cannot be stated.”

Change the claim and say another made the suffering and gave it to me, and both ends vanish alike. At the receiving end, “apart from the five aggregates there is no such person to receive”; at the giving end, “if such a person exists, one should state his mark.”

Besides, “this” and “that” are only two positions. Qingmu says: “This and that exist in mutual dependence.” Viewed from that side, that person’s making suffering is precisely his making his own suffering. Self-making has already been refuted, so other-making falls with it. Blaming oneself and blaming someone else seem opposed, but underneath they carry the same assumption.

A Knife Does Not Cut Itself

“Just as a knife cannot cut itself”—cutter and cut cannot be one thing, and a dharma cannot use itself to produce itself. On the other side, making by another fails because “apart from suffering, that has no intrinsic nature.” Force “that” into existence, and “that itself is suffering”; the circle returns to its starting point.

Joint making first requires one thing on each side before they can be combined. With neither side present, the combination remains absent. Making without a cause has “many faults” and would cancel cessation as well.

The final verse extends the analysis: not only suffering, but “all external dharmas such as earth, water, mountains, and trees are likewise not established.”

Carry This Away

Applied to any dharma, the question “Who made it?” yields no answer. Another question does yield an answer: through what conditions does it exist? When the conditions disperse, it does not arise. The place to begin is with conditions, not with the unfindable maker of suffering.

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.”

Qingmu opens by stating where the chapter comes from: “The preceding ‘Chapter Refuting the Faculties’ explained that seeing, the seen, and the seer are all unestablished. Since these three matters possess no mutually differing dharmas, there is no conjunction.”

Since seeing, the visible, and the seer do not even possess difference, conjunction has nothing to conjoin.

Different Places: What Is Refuted Is Not Distance

“Seeing, the visible, and the seer each occupy a different place; since these three dharmas are thus different, there is never a time when they conjoin.”

Qingmu assigns the positions: “The eye is inside the body and form is outside it”; the self is “said by some to be inside the body and by others to pervade every place.” What is refuted is not near and far but three self-standing essences.

He therefore asks through two gates: “Does one see through conjunction or without conjunction? Neither is so.” Seeing through conjunction would mean that “wherever an object exists, a faculty and a self should be present”; seeing without conjunction fails because “the eye-faculty is here and does not see a distant jar.”

Add Mind, and the Same Difficulty Remains

The questioner changes the claim: “Because the four matters—self, mind, faculty, and object—conjoin, cognition arises.” The respondent tests it through time: “If it arises after seeing, cognition is useless”; “if it arises before seeing, there has been no conjunction”; and “if they arise simultaneously, there is no mutual dependence”—for “the jar exists first, seeing comes next, and cognition then arises.”

The landing point first says, “Since cognition does not exist, seeing, the visible, and the seer do not exist either”—all three are absent together. It immediately continues: “All dharmas in this way are like illusions and dreams and have no determinate marks; how could conjunction exist? Since there is no conjunction, they are empty.” What is absent is the determinate mark; what remains appears like illusion and dream. Nothing is solid enough to be taken up and conjoined.

The Same Measure Extends to the Afflictions

“Defilement, what is defiled, and the defiled one follow the same principle.” Qingmu completes the parallels one by one: “hearing, the audible, the hearer, and the other entrances,” and “anger, what is hated, the angry one, and the other afflictions.”

What is refuted is the threefold structure of subject, object, and possessor—the very seat on which affliction rests.

Conjunction Stands on Difference

“Only differing dharmas should conjoin, yet seeing and the rest are not different; since a mark of difference cannot be established, how could seeing and the rest conjoin?”

Once difference fails to stand, conjunction collapses by itself. Thus, although the chapter is named the refutation of conjunction, it spends its whole course refuting difference.

Difference is spoken relationally: “Apart from a differing dharma, it is not called difference.” Nor does what arises from conditions differ from its cause—“It is like a house that exists because of beams, rafters, and the rest; the house does not differ from the beams and rafters,” for when the beams and rafters are destroyed, the house is destroyed. The fist is the same: “Apart from the difference of the five fingers, a difference of the fist cannot be found.”

Someone appeals to discriminating a general mark, but the respondent turns the claim back: “If so, the mark of difference arises from many conditions.” Within what already differs, “since a differing dharma already exists, what use is a further mark of difference?” Within what does not differ, “if a mark of difference existed within it, it could not be called a dharma that does not differ.” The mark fits in neither place. Thus “since there is no mark of difference, there are no dharmas of this and that,” and “since differing dharmas do not exist, there is no conjunction.”

It Cannot Be Found in Any of the Three Places

“This dharma does not conjoin with itself, and a differing dharma does not conjoin either; the conjoiner, the time of conjunction, and the dharma that conjoins are all absent.”

Because it is one, it does not conjoin with itself: “Just as one finger does not conjoin with itself.” Because it is different, it does not need conjunction: “Once difference is already established, no conjunction is needed.”

What matters is that all three places fall together—“the conjoiner, the time of conjunction, and the dharma that conjoins cannot be found.” Refute conjunction while secretly retaining a conjoiner or a time of conjunction, and sooner or later the original thing will grow back in that position.

The questioner begins: “Dharmas each possess intrinsic nature because each has a distinctive efficacy. A jar possesses the intrinsic nature of a jar, and cloth the intrinsic nature of cloth. This intrinsic nature appears when many conditions conjoin.”

One sentence conceals two claims: intrinsic nature already exists, and intrinsic nature emerges only when many conditions gather.

What Emerges from Conditions Is Fabricated by Them

“That intrinsic nature exists among many conditions cannot be established; if intrinsic nature emerges from many conditions, it is called a fabricated dharma.” Qingmu shuts the gate: “If it emerged from many conditions, it would be a fabricated dharma and would possess no determinate intrinsic nature.”

The questioner hoped that “emerges” would preserve the prior existence of intrinsic nature. Once the word is spoken, intrinsic nature has entered the hands of conditions.

Intrinsic Nature Means Precisely What Does Not Depend on Another

“The name ‘intrinsic nature’ means what is unfabricated and does not depend upon another dharma for establishment.” Two positions are not contending here; one position contends with itself.

Qingmu’s two analogies each govern one end: “Gold mixed with copper is not genuine gold” governs independence from conditions; “unlike long and short or this and that, which exist through mutual dependence because they lack determinate intrinsic nature” governs independence from another. Names such as long and short require the opposite term precisely because they lack determinate intrinsic nature of their own.

Retreat to Other-Nature, and One Turns in Place

“If a dharma lacks intrinsic nature, how could other-nature exist?” Qingmu says, “Other-nature for its own part is itself intrinsic nature,” and closes decisively: “Other-nature is itself intrinsic nature.”

Ask the same question next door, and that house is rented too. “Apart from intrinsic nature and other-nature, how could another dharma exist?” A third thing has nowhere to stand.

Refute Existence, and the Nonexistence Left Behind

“If existence cannot be established, how could nonexistence be established? Only because an existent dharma exists is its destruction called nonexistence.”

Nonexistence is not an independent thing but a name left after existence is destroyed. Once existence is unestablished, that name has nothing on which to depend.

A Downward-Sliding Slope

“When intrinsic nature is refuted, the person sees other-nature; when other-nature is refuted, the person sees existence; when existence is refuted, the person sees nonexistence; when nonexistence is refuted, the person is bewildered.”

In the argument, the four gates are four propositions; in a person, they are four changes of grip. Thus the quality Qingmu singles out is not cleverness but “slight attachment”—such a person “knows that extinguishing all views is peaceful and secure, so no longer gives rise to these four kinds of conceptual proliferation.”

This Is Not a New Teaching

“The Buddha can extinguish existence and nonexistence, just as when he transformed Kātyāyana; as stated in the scripture, he is free from both existence and nonexistence.” Qingmu identifies the source: “In the Śāṇḍa Kātyāyana Sūtra, the Buddha taught him the meaning of right view, free from existence and nonexistence.”

If the Buddha saw even a trace of determinate existence remaining among dharmas, he would not refute existence. Yet once existence is refuted, people take it as nonexistence; therefore he “teaches that neither exists.”

What Is Before Our Eyes Speaks for Itself

“If a dharma truly possessed intrinsic nature, it should not later change,” yet “because we now directly see that dharmas possess marks of change, we should know that they have no determinate marks.”

This sentence does not come from reasoning but from the eyes. Jars break; people age.

The Landing Point Is Demerit and Merit

“Determinate existence means attachment to permanence; determinate nonexistence means attachment to annihilation. Therefore the wise should not cling to existence or nonexistence.” Permanence is when “the dharma arrives in the present and passes into the past without abandoning its original mark”; annihilation “means the absence of a cause for continuity.”

Qingmu’s final sentence returns the matter to human life: “If one holds views of annihilation or permanence, demerit, merit, and other such matters are absent and worldly affairs are destroyed. Therefore these views should be abandoned.” Permanence leaves a person unable to change; annihilation leaves a person without responsibility. Views of existence and nonexistence are abandoned so that demerit, merit, and practice can still stand.

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.

The questioner has not come to sabotage the argument but to protect cause and fruit: “Karma determinately exists and can make every sentient being undergo its fruition.” He begins with goodness: “A person can subdue the mind and benefit sentient beings”—first extinguish one’s own evil, then speak of benefiting others. He next establishes karma’s substance: “The volition spoken of by the Buddha is precisely mental karma,” while “volition is the basis of what is done.” Then he divides it into seven dharmas: “What is done while acting is called performed karma; what constantly follows and arises after the act is called nonperformed karma.” Through the donor’s two merits when a gift is used, and the two wrongs—“one arising from shooting, the second from killing”—he proves that karma carries weight.

The respondent poses only a dilemma: “If karma remains until fruition is undergone, this karma becomes permanent; if it ceases, there is no karma—how could it produce fruition?” If it remains, it is permanent; if it ceases, it is absent.

The questioner offers two rescues. First, the grain seed: “A continuum such as sprout and the rest all arises from a seed”; “karma comes first and fruit afterward, neither annihilated nor permanent.” It is refuted by the same skeleton: “Does the continuum occur after cessation, or without cessation?” If after cessation, it is causeless; if without cessation, “one grain seed would produce every grain in the world.” Moreover, a grain seed can be seen, “how much less mind and karma, intangible, formless, and invisible.” Second, “the dharma of nonloss is like a bond, and karma like property taken on debt”: the karma is spent, but the bond remains. Yet if the bond remains until it yields fruit “because it does not cease thought by thought,” permanence has merely been stored under another name; thus “this doctrine does not escape the faults of annihilation and permanence on either side.”

The questioner is forced to say what he truly fears: “If so, then there is no karma and no fruition.”

Here is the right meaning: “Though empty, it is not annihilated; though existent, it is not permanent; karma and fruition are not lost—this is what the Buddha taught.” Why is it not annihilated? “Karma is ultimately empty, bears the character of quiescent extinction, and is separate from intrinsic nature. What dharma is there to annihilate, what dharma to lose?” Annihilation means annihilating something existent; that existence was never established. Why is it not permanent? Coming and going in saṃsāra arises from inversion and, “because unreal, is not permanent.”

Pressing to the end: “Karmas originally do not arise because they have no determinate intrinsic nature.” The reason they do not cease is that “because they do not arise, they do not cease—not because they are permanent.” Conversely, if karma had intrinsic nature, it would be permanent and could not be performed. Then “another person commits the wrong and this person undergoes its fruition”; pure conduct loses its basis; “in winter one should not plan for spring”; “committing wrong and cultivating merit would have no difference”; and “after undergoing fruition, one should undergo it once more.” Trace it to the root: “These afflictions are unreal—how could karma be real?”

What is refuted has never been karma but karma’s intrinsic nature. The same holds for the body: “Afflictions and karmas are empty—how much more the bodies?” The same holds for the agent: karma does not arise with intrinsic nature, “therefore there is no one who can originate karma,” while conventionally “the person provisionally named among the five aggregates is the agent.”

At last the questioner says: “We now plainly see sentient beings perform karma and undergo fruition.” The answer is a conjured person who conjures another: “The first conjured person is called the agent; what the conjured person does is called karma.” The conjured person “has no real affair and can merely be seen,” and “although this karma is unreal, it can be seen.” Visibility does not equal intrinsic nature; lacking intrinsic nature does not prevent visibility. Even the agent is conjured.

“All are like illusion and dream, like a mirage and also an echo.” The echo truly sounds, but no intrinsic body of sound resides in the mountain.

This chapter opens not with a refutation but with a request for directions: “How does one enter?” The answer is one sentence: “By extinguishing attachment to self and what belongs to self, one obtains the emptiness of all dharmas. The wisdom of no-self is called entry.” Entry is not a place; entry is that wisdom.

Both Gates Are Closed, and What Belongs to Self Has Nowhere to Hang

“If the self is the five aggregates, the self undergoes arising and ceasing; if the self differs from the five aggregates, it does not have the aggregates’ character.”

If self is the aggregates, it arises and ceases with them—“because once arisen they deteriorate.” If it differs from them, no one can indicate what it is, since “apart from the five aggregates there is no further dharma.” The same holds across the four kinds of warrant: “Who first saw the spiritual self joined with the five aggregates and then, seeing the aggregates, knew the spiritual self existed?” Sacred testimony is trustworthy because “what sages teach, they first saw with their own eyes and then taught,” yet concerning the spiritual self “there is no one who first saw the spiritual self and later spoke of it.” Thus “when the spiritual self is sought among the four warrants and every warrant, it is unobtainable.”

“If no self exists, how could there be what belongs to self? Because self and what belongs to self are extinguished, this is called obtaining the wisdom of no-self.”

Once self is withdrawn, what belongs to self has nowhere to hang. Cultivation is not esoteric: “By cultivating the factors of the noble eightfold path and extinguishing the causes and conditions of self and what belongs to self, one obtains determinate wisdom of neither self nor what belongs to self.” What is extinguished is not self but the conditions establishing self. When self and what belongs to self are extinguished, the wisdom-eye is no longer obstructed: “Ordinary people cannot see reality because self and what belongs to self obstruct the wisdom-eye.” When appropriations cease, later bodies no longer connect; this is nirvāṇa without remainder. Karma and affliction have another origin: “Afflictions and karmas all arise from conceptual recollection and discrimination.” Thus “Karma and affliction are unreal; upon entering emptiness, conceptual proliferation ceases.” This is nirvāṇa with remainder.

Saying “Self” and Saying “No-Self” Are Both Medicines

“Buddhas sometimes teach self, and sometimes teach no-self; in the true character of dharmas, there is neither self nor nonself.”

Self is taught to establish cause and fruit for those who “do not know to fear wrongdoing.” No-self is taught to dismantle the self that fears its own disappearance for those who “weary of saṃsāra’s suffering yet fear nirvāṇa as eternal extinction.” The medicine changes with the person; the pathology does not. No-self too is spoken in response to self: “Self is determinately unobtainable—how could there be a determinate no-self?” To cling to it is precisely this: “If no-self determinately existed, that would be annihilation and would give rise to craving attachment.”

Mind “arises through conditions by grasping marks,” and therefore “all activities of mind are false; because false, they should cease.” Those attached to dharmas permit only nirvāṇa to be quiescent, and therefore “because those attached to dharmas do not understand, nirvāṇa is used as an analogy.” The four alternatives are the same: elsewhere they are left behind “to refute four kinds of craving attachment”; here they are taught because “within the four alternatives there is no conceptual proliferation, and upon hearing the Buddha’s teaching one attains the path.” The same four alternatives, when grasped, are attachment; when ungrasped, they are a gate.

The Recognizable Character, the One Flavor of Ambrosia

“Known for oneself and not followed from another, quiescent and without conceptual proliferation, without difference or discrimination: this is called true character.”

Even when non-Buddhists display supernormal power or transform their bodies, one still “trusts one’s own mind and does not follow them.” This is not stubbornness; it is seeing for oneself. Quiescence is not blankness of mind: “Because no dharma can be taken or rejected here, it is called the character of quiescence.” Conceptual proliferation has two kinds: “one is the discourse of craving, the other the discourse of views; neither exists here.” When both cease, “there is no conceptual recollection or discrimination and no character of difference; this is called true character.”

Annihilation and permanence are seen by the eye that grasps marks: “You now greedily cling to grasping marks and see the faults of annihilation and permanence in true character.” A dependently arisen dharma is neither identical with nor different from its cause: “If fruit differed from cause, that would be annihilation; if it did not differ, that would be permanence.” It is neither. To penetrate this meaning is “at once to extinguish afflictions and conceptual proliferation and attain the constant bliss of nirvāṇa”; this is called “teaching through the flavor of ambrosia.” One flavor yields three fruits: extinguishing afflictions is called the Śrāvaka teaching; “giving rise to great compassion and the unsurpassed mind is called the Mahāyāna”; when the Buddha’s Dharma has vanished, wisdom born in seclusion is that of a pratyekabuddha. The distinction lies not in several dharmas but in compassionate vow and time.

The questioner’s thesis is sturdy: “Time should exist, because it is established through dependence.” The three times depend upon one another, so all three exist; he also places “such dharmas as upper, middle, and lower and one and different” on the same ground.

Nāgārjuna does not deny dependence. He simply follows dependence to its end.

Present within One Another, or Not

If future and present truly exist because of the past, they must be within the past. Qingmu’s rule is: “Whenever a dharma is established in dependence upon a place, that dharma should exist in that place.” His example is: “Because light is established through a lamp, wherever the lamp exists, light should exist.”

But if all three times are within the past, “all three times would be called past time.” Once future and present are gone, the past loses its counterparts: “If future and present time are absent, past time should likewise be absent.”

Suppose one says they are not within the past. Then they are “like such objects as a jar and a robe, each established separately and not dependent upon the other.” Things that stand independently do not need dependence; the original reason withdraws itself.

And what if they do not depend? Qingmu asks only one question of location: “Where does present time exist?”

Once both gates have been traversed, he gathers them into one sentence: “Because time exists only through such mutual dependence, time in truth is absent.”

Not Only Time

“Upper, middle, lower, one, and different—dharmas such as these are all absent.” Apart from upper there is no middle or lower. One and different likewise arise “because of one there is different; because of different there is one.” Qingmu closes both ends: “If one truly existed, it should not exist because of different.”

What needs the other in order to exist does not exist from itself. Everything that can be named only through comparison is gathered into this sentence.

Years and Months Are Not Evidence

The questioner cites “distinctions such as years, months, days, and moments.” Nāgārjuna turns back to time itself: “Time at rest cannot be found, and time gone cannot be found.”

If it does not remain, it cannot be grasped; if it remains, it is no longer time. “If there is no mark of time, there is no time.”

Where the Chapter Lands

“Time exists because of things; apart from things, where is time? Things themselves have no possession—how much less could time exist!”

Qingmu says only two sentences: “Time is named because things arise; apart from things there is no time.”

Time is a name established on the arising and ceasing of things. Remove the things and no empty container called time is left; even the place where the name could be established is gone. Thus he closes very lightly: “In the preceding chapters, things have already been refuted through many kinds of causes and conditions. Since things are absent, where could time exist?”

The preceding refutations of things are enough. This chapter need only close the clasp.

The questioner says: “Because a fruit is visibly seen to arise when many causes and conditions conjoin, one should know that this fruit exists from the conjunction of many conditions.” That fruit visibly arises is true; the extra step is the word “exists.” The twenty-four verses pursue only this step.

A Fruit Present and a Fruit Absent—Neither End Holds

“It already exists within the conjunction; why would conjunction need to produce it?” Qingmu fixes the criterion in one sentence: “If the fruit already had a determinate body, it should not arise from conjunction.”

To say the fruit is absent also fails: “If a thing lacks intrinsic nature, that thing ultimately does not arise.” Those who say the fruit is present cannot produce it—“it should be obtainable within conjunction, yet in fact it cannot be found.” Those who say it is absent cannot distinguish cause from noncause: “Milk is a cause and condition for curds. If curds are absent within milk, they are likewise absent within water.” Milk can become curds and water cannot; that difference cannot be erased.

The Cause’s Cessation and the Fruit’s Time

If the cause ceases after serving as cause, one cause has two bodies: “one is called the cause that gives; the second, the cause that ceases.” If it ceases without serving as cause, “this fruit is causeless,” yet “among all fruits visibly seen, none arises without a cause.” If they arise simultaneously, “producer and what is to be produced would both exist at the same time”—but “a father and son cannot be born at the same time.” If the fruit precedes the conditions, “it is apart from causes and conditions and is called a causeless fruit.”

If the cause transforms into the fruit, Qingmu cuts it off in one sentence: “If it remains identical, it is not called transformation; if it has transformed, it cannot be called identical.” A lump of clay becoming a jar is not transformation—“the lump of clay first ceases and then a jar arises, which is not called transformation”; moreover, “jars, basins, urns, and the rest all come from clay.” If transformation is to be spoken, “what is called transformation is like milk transforming into curds.” Milk and curds appear twice: first to distinguish cause from noncause, later to set the criterion for transformation. The two uses must not be confused.

Ceased, Pervasively Possessing, Three Times, Conjoined or Not

“How can a cause that has ceased produce a fruit?” What has ceased has nothing with which to produce. “If the cause pervasively possesses the fruit, what further fruit would it produce?” What already exists need not be produced. Whether the cause sees or does not see the fruit, neither produces it. Across the nine cells of the three times, the answer is always: “ultimately does not conjoin.” Conjoined or not is the same: without conjunction there is no fruit; with conjunction, “the fruit already exists within the cause—how could it arise again?” It is “like a person who has not conceived: how could that person bear a child?”

The Fruit Itself, and the Final Question

“If the fruit is not empty, it does not arise; if the fruit is not empty, it does not cease.” “Because the fruit is empty, it does not arise; because the fruit is empty, it does not cease.” Determinate existence needs no arising; determinate absence means “emptiness is having nothing whatsoever—how could arising or ceasing occur?” Neither end establishes arising or ceasing.

One and different gather the argument: if one, “producer and what is produced become one”; if different, “the cause becomes the same as a noncause”—returning exactly to the opening question about milk and water. The last move concerns conjunction itself: “Conjunction itself does not arise; how could it produce the fruit?” Qingmu says: “This dharma of the conjunction of many conditions cannot produce its own body.”

“If there is no fruit, where could a dharma of conjunction exist?”

Sprouts still emerge, milk still becomes curds, and clay still becomes a jar. The chapter blocks only the extra statement.

The questioner points to what lies before the eyes: “All worldly things presently display the mark of ruin; therefore, destruction exists.” The treatise does not dispute what is seen. It asks only: on what does the destruction you speak of stand?

With All Four Gates Traversed, Formation and Destruction Do Not Stand by Themselves

“Apart from formation or together with formation, no destruction exists there; apart from destruction or together with destruction, no formation exists there.”

Apart from formation there is no destruction, because “formation means the conjunction of many conditions; destruction means their dispersal.” What has never conjoined has nothing to disperse: “Without a jar, one cannot say that a jar is destroyed.” Together with formation there is likewise no destruction, because conjunction requires things first separately established; erase their difference and destruction loses its cause. Apart from destruction there is no formation, because “if formation existed apart from destruction, formation would be permanent.” Together with destruction there is no formation, because “a person cannot have hair and have no hair at the same time.”

Exhaustion and nonexhaustion fare the same. What is exhausted does not remain, like flowing water, and is “like a mirage with no determinate nature obtainable”; no moment of formation can be cut from it. If nonexhaustion is fixed as permanent continuity, one likewise asks: “How can one discriminate and say, ‘Now is the time of formation’?”

Dharmas and formation-destruction still less can be separated from one another. Apart from formation and destruction, a dharma can only “be absent or permanent”; apart from a dharma, “if separated from the dharma, who forms and who is destroyed?” If intrinsic nature is empty, there is no one to form or be destroyed; if “nonempty means determinately existent,” there is likewise no formation or destruction. To say they are one fails; to say they are different fails as well.

As for taking “seen with the eye” as evidence, Qingmu does not deny what is seen. He points out where the seeing comes from: “Ordinary people obtained these eyes through inverted causes and conditions in prior lives; through the causes and conditions of recollection, conception, and discrimination in this life, they say that the eye sees arising and ceasing.”

Arising Cannot Make the Connection Either

“From a dharma no dharma arises, nor does a nondharma arise; from a nondharma neither a dharma nor a nondharma arises.”

What has nothing whatsoever cannot produce another nothing whatsoever, “as a hare’s horn does not produce a turtle’s hair.” The three kinds—arising from self, other, or both—likewise do not arise. Before arising there is no self; without self, there is no other.

Continuity Cannot Rescue the Extremes of Annihilation and Permanence

The questioner builds a bridge with “because cause and fruit are continuous, there is neither annihilation nor permanence.” The reply says: “Because what ceases does not arise again, the cause is annihilated.” If every joint is broken, adding more joints does not make an unbroken line.

The graver consequence comes next. If the continuity of the three modes of existence is taken as real, “nirvāṇa, by extinguishing continuity, falls into annihilation.” If the first existence ceases, later existence is causeless; if it does not cease, there are “two existences at the same time.” At the time of ceasing and at the time of arising, there are still two existences. If both truly occur at the same time, “one dies in these very aggregates and is born in these very aggregates.”

Sought carefully through the three times, it cannot be obtained anywhere: “One should know that the continuity of existence exists through ignorance and inversion; in reality, it is absent.”

Where It Lands

The treatise does not say that flowers do not fade or people do not die; Qingmu himself says, “Yet remaining does in fact occur.” What is removed is only formation and destruction treated as capable of standing by themselves. Views of the extremes of existence and nonexistence all grow from this point: determine that it forms, and one falls into permanence; determine that it is utterly destroyed, and one falls into annihilation. Once the root is gone, neither extreme has a place to arise.

When the jar exists, no mark of destruction is present; when the jar is absent, no mark of destruction is present either.

The questioner says only something familiar: the Tathāgata is “honored throughout all worlds,” the Dharma King and the omniscient person; therefore, “he should exist.” There is no fault in the praise. The fault lies in “should exist.” The respondent tests it on the spot: “If he exists, he should be apprehensible; if he does not exist, what is there to apprehend?”

None of the Five Routes Works

“Not the aggregates, not apart from the aggregates; neither resides within the other. 　The Tathāgata does not possess the aggregates—where is there a Tathāgata?”

If he is the aggregates, he arises and ceases with them, and “experiencer and experienced dharma become one.” If apart from them, he becomes permanent, and “the faculties such as the eye cannot see or know him.” “Like fruit in a vessel or fish in water,” “like a person on a bed or milk in a vessel,” “like a person having a son”—whether one says inside or possessed, A and B become two and return to the fault of permanence. “Sought in these five ways, he cannot be found.”

Retreat to Combination, Then to Other-Nature

To say “the Tathāgata exists when the five aggregates combine” already admits dependence on conditions, and therefore “there is no intrinsic nature.” Retreat again and say he exists through other-nature, and two sentences cut the route off: “Other-nature itself has no intrinsic nature”; “without an opposed ground of mutual dependence, other-nature cannot be found.” Once self is absent, the name “other” has nowhere to land.

Qingmu’s analogy is plain: “Just as a fist exists through five fingers, this fist has no substance of its own.” Clenched, it functions; opened, it has no body. “The self has many names: being, person, deva, Tathāgata, and so forth.” To place a Tathāgata-substance outside the five aggregates uses the same gesture by which an ordinary person installs a self.

Emptiness Is Not Established as Something

When both ends are empty, one still tries to mold an empty Tathāgata out of emptiness, asking: “Then does emptiness definitely exist?” The answer: “Empty cannot be spoken; nonempty cannot be spoken; both and neither cannot be spoken; they are spoken only as provisional names.” The reason is one sentence: “They are provisionally named only to dismantle contradiction.” Emptiness is medicine that unties a knot, not a conclusion.

“Within the mark of quiescence there is no tetralemma of permanent and impermanent,” and the same holds for bounded and unbounded. The true character is “ultimately pure and cannot be appropriated”; “even emptiness is not accepted, how much less the four views.” “The four views all arise through appropriation” and “honor one’s own view while disparaging another’s.” What is at stake is whose view stands higher.

Neither Side Stands

“Those whose wrong views are deeply rooted say that there is no Tathāgata; yet within the Tathāgata’s mark of quiescence, to discriminate and say that he exists is likewise wrong.”

To say there is no Tathāgata is the coarse wrong view that “destroys worldly well-being”; it “loses even worldly well-being, how much more nirvāṇa.” Yet saying there is a Tathāgata is also wrong when it adds discrimination to the mark of quiescence. One “craves and clings to a self and discriminates existence and nonexistence,” and therefore “does not attain nirvāṇa because of discriminating existence and nonexistence.” Even the question of existence after cessation is disallowed: “The Tathāgata has always been ultimately empty—how much more after cessation!” The question has already assumed a real one before cessation.

“The Tathāgata has passed beyond conceptual proliferation, yet people generate it”; “conceptual proliferation destroys the eye of wisdom, and such people do not see the Buddha.” Conceptual proliferation means “recollection, apprehending marks, and discriminating this and that.” Not seeing does not mean that the Buddha is absent; the eye has covered itself, and therefore “cannot see the Tathāgata’s Dharma-body.” Qingmu concludes precisely: “Contemplated from beginning through middle to end, the Tathāgata’s determinate nature cannot be found.” What cannot be found is determinate nature alone.

Where It Lands

“Whatever nature the Tathāgata has is the nature of the world; the Tathāgata has no intrinsic nature, and the world likewise has no intrinsic nature.”

Pressed to the end, the answer is only nine Chinese characters: “The Tathāgata has no nature, just as the world has no nature.”

What they share is not purity and defilement, but the mode of existence: both depend on conditions and lack a substance of their own. No wall of intrinsic nature separates the Tathāgata outside the world.

The farther the refutation proceeds, the emptier the hand becomes. The final sentence is the road back: the Buddha is not elsewhere.

The questioner cites a sūtra: greed, anger, and delusion arise from recollection, conception, and discrimination, while “the inversions of pure and impure all arise from many conditions.” Since their mode of arising can be explained, they must exist.

The respondent accepts the sequence and takes it only one step farther: “The three poisons have no intrinsic nature; therefore, the afflictions are unreal.” What arises through conditions is not there by itself.

Upon Whom Are They Hung?

“Who possesses these afflictions cannot be established.” Qingmu explains that “affliction means that which afflicts another,” yet the being afflicted “cannot be found when sought anywhere.” Retreat and say they belong to mind, and “this too is wrong.” Afflictions cannot be found through the fivefold search within a defiled mind, nor a defiled mind within afflictions—neither side can be found.

What of inversion itself? Qingmu defines it: “Inversion means false and delusive.” The false has no intrinsic nature; a cause without intrinsic nature cannot produce a real fruit.

The Object Is Like a Mirage and a Dream

The questioner changes ground and says the six entrances are the root of the three poisons. The answer in verse: “All are empty, like a mirage, a dream, or a city of gandharvas,” “like an illusory person and an image in a mirror”—seen yet impossible to seize. Pure and impure are appropriated upon objects and receive their names only by leaning on each other; thus, “because neither pure nor impure exists, neither greed nor anger arises.”

Refuting Permanence Does Not Leave Impermanence

“To cling to permanence in what is impermanent is called inversion,” yet “within emptiness there is no permanence; where is there an inversion of permanence?” More important is the next verse: “Within emptiness there is no impermanence; where is there one who is not inverted?” Refuting permanence is not a move into impermanence as a refuge. Even nonarising is not allowed to become an established true character—“Even uncontaminated dharmas cannot be named a mark of nonarising.”

After the search through the three times, the final sentence is not a conclusion but an admonition: “Now remove the mind of arrogance, observe well for yourself: who is the inverted one?”

The First Link Does Not Connect

“When inversion ceases in this way, ignorance likewise ceases.” Since inversion, sought, does not arise, ignorance has nothing on which to depend; “because ignorance ceases, the three kinds of karmic formation through aging-and-death all cease.”

As for severing: what truly exists cannot be severed, and what is false cannot be severed either. The final line remains a question: “Who can sever a dharma without intrinsic nature?”

Cessation is not removing something by hand; it is nonarising.

The questioner is not an outsider. What he holds is the Buddhadharma itself: “Eliminate the four inversions, penetrate the four truths, attain the four fruits of a renunciant.” He fears emptiness will dismantle this path, and therefore says, “One who teaches emptiness in this way destroys the Three Jewels.” He also says, “Emptiness destroys cause and result and also demerit and merit.”

The treatise master does not defend emptiness. He first identifies the misrecognition:

“You do not in fact know emptiness or the reasons for emptiness, nor do you know the meaning of emptiness; therefore you distress yourself.”

Only by treating emptiness as sheer nonexistence can one derive that long chain of faults.

The Two Truths Are an Entrance, Not Two Stories of a Building

“The Buddhas rely on two truths when teaching the Dharma to beings: first, the conventional truth; second, the ultimate truth.”

Qingmu distinguishes them clearly. False dharmas born from the world’s inversion are “real to the world”; noble ones see the nature of inversion and know all dharmas to be empty and unarisen—“for noble ones, this is the ultimate truth and is called reality.” One set of dharmas, two truths.

Nor can convention be abolished: “Without relying on the conventional truth, the ultimate cannot be attained,” because “the ultimate is entirely disclosed through words, and words are conventional.” Abolish convention and the ultimate no longer has a door through which it can be spoken.

The master also makes no secret of emptiness’s danger: “Unable to contemplate emptiness correctly, the dull-witted harm themselves”—like one unskilled in catching a venomous snake. It is not emptiness that causes the harm.

Emptiness Itself Is Empty, and Therefore All Dharmas Can Be Established

“I teach the emptiness of nature, and emptiness itself is empty; there is no such fault.” Emptiness is not something one can embrace, so faults caused by grasping emptiness have nowhere to lodge.

Now comes the chapter’s pivot:

“Because emptiness has meaning, all dharmas can be established; without the meaning of emptiness, nothing could be established.”

Things can arise and change precisely because they lack intrinsic nature. If they possessed determinate natures, not one dharma could be established.

And then the most widely recited verse in the entire treatise:

“Dharmas born from many conditions, I say, are precisely absence; they are also provisional names, and this is the meaning of the Middle Way.”

One dharma, three descriptions: because it belongs to many conditions it has no intrinsic nature, and because it has no intrinsic nature it is empty; “it is only to guide beings that one speaks by means of provisional names”; and “because this dharma has no nature, one cannot say it exists; because even emptiness is absent, one cannot say it does not exist.” Falling into neither extreme is the Middle Way.

Returning the Fault to Its Owner

“This fault now returns to you.” The master returns the objector’s chain to him in the same form:

“If everything were nonempty, there would be neither arising nor cessation; consequently, the four noble truths would not exist.”

If suffering possessed determinate nature, it would not be impermanent, yet “scripture says that impermanence is the meaning of suffering.” Determinate nature means that suffering does not arise from origin, should not cease, and leaves no path to cultivate—“if a dharma were real, it would be permanent; what is permanent cannot be increased.” One who did not see suffering before could not see it now; if the four activities fail, the four fruits do not exist; without the eight noble persons there is no Jewel of the Saṅgha; and eventually, “without the Jewels of Dharma and Saṅgha, how could there be the Jewel of the Buddha?”

The same applies to Buddha and awakening. With determinate natures neither can cause the other, “just as iron lacks the nature of gold and never becomes gold despite every kind of refinement.” The same applies to demerit and merit: if a result arises from demerit and merit, “how could it be called nonempty?”

The Ground of Practice Lies in This Very Word Emptiness

“If emptiness did not exist, what had never been attained should not be attained; there would be no severing of afflictions and no exhaustion of suffering.”

The manifest arising, cessation, and transformation of all things already prove the absence of determinate nature. The chapter concludes by citing scripture:

“Therefore a scripture says: one who sees dharmas of causes and conditions is able to see the Buddha and sees suffering, origin, cessation, and the path.”

The path the objector fears losing can be traversed only within emptiness.

Qingmu completely states the outcome for one who refutes emptiness: “To refute emptiness is to refute dharmas of causes and conditions; to refute dharmas of causes and conditions is to refute the Three Jewels; and to refute the Three Jewels is to refute oneself.”

The challenger asks at the root:

“If all dharmas are empty, neither arisen nor ceased, what is cut off and what extinguished that it may be called nirvāṇa?”

The nirvāṇa in his mind is something produced—real afflictions can be cut off and real aggregates extinguished.

Nāgārjuna returns the sentence: “If dharmas were not empty, there would be neither arising nor ceasing.” What possesses intrinsic nature does not depend on conditions and cannot change; afflictions could not be cut, the aggregates could not be extinguished. Qingmu gathers it: “Thus neither the gate of existence nor the gate of nonexistence leads to nirvāṇa.”

One Verse First Establishes Its Mark

“Nothing is attained and nowhere is reached; it is neither annihilation nor permanence, neither arising nor ceasing. What is spoken of in this way is called nirvāṇa.”

Qingmu says, “Nowhere is reached means that no place exists at which to arrive.” He calls it not annihilated because “the five aggregates have from the beginning been ultimately empty”—not because cutting is thorough, but because no thing was ever there to cut.

The Four Gates Are Exhausted in Turn

Whatever exists bears aging and death and, arising from conditions, is conditioned; therefore nirvāṇa is not existent. Nonexistence in turn can be spoken only by leaning on existence—“what existed before but does not exist now is called nonexistent”—yet nirvāṇa is “not an existent dharma turning into nonexistence.” Existence and nonexistence contradict one another, “as light and darkness do not coexist,” and cannot combine. Once neither existence nor nonexistence stands, their joint negation has no basis for discrimination.

The Direct Answer Is Simply Nonappropriation

“Because one appropriates causes and conditions, one revolves in birth and death; not appropriating causes and conditions is called nirvāṇa.”

The five aggregates are not destroyed; “because the five aggregates lacking intrinsic nature no longer continue, this is called nirvāṇa.” Even the one who attains cannot be found—Qingmu asks: “Apart from the Tathāgata, who would attain nirvāṇa?”

The Summit

“Nirvāṇa and the world have not the slightest difference; the world and nirvāṇa likewise have not the slightest difference.”

Because the five aggregates continue, come, and go, they are provisionally called the world; yet their nature is ultimately empty, unappropriated, and quiescent. “Because all dharmas neither arise nor cease,” the two ends do not differ. At the limit, there is “not a hair’s breadth of difference.” The object viewed never changed; what changed is whether it was seen.

Gathering In

“Dharmas are all unfindable and all conceptual proliferation ceases; there is neither person nor place, and the Buddha has spoken nothing.”

What is blocked is a determinate mark of nirvāṇa. The exhaustion of proliferation is not blankness—Qingmu immediately says one “comprehends the true marks of dharmas and attains the path of peace,” then gathers it as “the true marks of dharmas, also called suchness, Dharma-nature, the reality-limit, and nirvāṇa.”

Not one part of the questioner’s practice of cutting afflictions and extinguishing the aggregates is canceled. What is canceled is only the thought that “a real thing is there to be cut and a real place there to be reached.”

After twenty-five chapters of refutation, this chapter suddenly begins counting the twelve links in perfect earnest, without a single counter-question. Negations do occur in the verses—“if the one who clings does not cling,” “what the wise do not produce,” “this then does not arise”—but all belong to the affirmative account of cessation in reverse order. They do not refute one alternative after another.

The questioner has changed. He has not come to win a dispute. He says: “You have explained the path of ultimate meaning through the Mahāyāna. I now wish to hear how the śrāvaka teaching enters the path of ultimate meaning.” Does the road I walk reach the place you describe?

The answer therefore uses the twelve links he knows.

A Chain That Begins with Not Knowing

The starting point is delusion, not evil. “Sentient beings, covered by delusion, set the three formations in motion for what comes afterward.” First the eyes are covered; only then does action begin. Qingmu is more direct: “Because ordinary beings are blinded by ignorance.”

Once formations arise, beings “fall among the six destinies in accordance with their actions.” Consciousness receives a body, and “because consciousness clings, name-and-form grows.” Name-and-form gives rise to the six sense bases; “faculty, object, and consciousness come together, and the six kinds of contact arise.” Contact gives rise to three kinds of feeling, and “thirsting craving arises.” Then “because of craving there are four kinds of clinging; because of clinging there is existence,” followed by “from existence comes birth; from birth come aging and death,” and then “grief, sorrow, and all kinds of suffering and distress.”

One sentence gathers it all: “Through these causes and conditions alone, the great aggregate of suffering gathers.”

That “alone” matters. Only this, nothing else—no sufferer stands behind the suffering.

The Gate Opens Halfway Through

While the forward sequence is still moving smoothly, the verse inserts a line: “If the one who clings does not cling, there is liberation and no existence.”

It does not appear at the end but immediately beneath clinging. The verse joins liberation to non-clinging and thereby points to an entrance of its own.

The long explanation gives the governing movement of cessation in reverse order: “Because they see in accordance with reality, ignorance ceases.” Cessation runs throughout from ignorance. An entrance can be named without imposing a fixed schedule upon it.

The Difference Is Not in the Chain

“This is called birth and death, the root of the formations— produced by those in ignorance, not produced by the wise.”

There is no second chain. The wise do not possess another set of twelve links. The difference is only that “because they see in accordance with reality, ignorance ceases.”

This is also why the chapter need not refute. Every link exists only in dependence on conditions. Count them honestly, and their conditioned dependence shows itself.

Cessation Means Not Connecting Again

“Because this ceases, that then does not arise; it is only the gathering of the aggregate of suffering, and thus it rightly ceases.”

This is not a severing. The next link has no condition upon which to depend. Qingmu defines it: “Right cessation is complete cessation.”

Complete: once the cause has ceased, the effect cannot emerge elsewhere. This is the joint where the śrāvaka teaching meets the path of ultimate meaning.

Qingmu also identifies the source: “As explained extensively in the Abhidharma and the sūtras.” This is not a new doctrine. It is what the Buddha already taught, spoken once more in sequence.

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.