妙法蓮華經文句 序品 · 同聞眾（列名・結）

If others remember only one of your strengths, do they still remember the whole of you? We readily remember a person by one word: he is intelligent, she is brave; this person speaks well, that person is quiet. Labels are convenient, but dangerous. Repeated long enough, they begin to imply that the intelligent need not be compassionate or that the quiet cannot be strong. One virtue becomes a boundary that confines a person.

The Lotus Sutra lists twenty-one elders. The Wenju first reminds us that all of them possess a multitude of practices and are named only according to one virtue. Wisdom, supernormal power, ascetic practice, the divine eye, eloquence, and learning are not the whole of twenty-one people. They are twenty-one entrances.

Why open only one door first? Because beings differ in what they delight in and can approach. Some are willing to listen when they see wisdom; some are moved by austerity; some enter through stillness and others through teaching the Dharma. The virtue singled out first meets that person's inclination. The path actually to be walked does not stop at the inclination.

Ask four questions of a name, then. Through what causes and conditions did it arise? How does this virtue become a practice? From what original virtue does the aspect now visible descend? After hearing it, how do I return to my own mind?

Kauṇḍinya's “already knew” does not merely mean that he came first in a list. He is like the morning star in the long night, first breaking one portion of darkness. He is also like someone facing a mirror and asking where the image is born. The question finally reaches the present: is this one act of seeing, this one movement of liking or disliking, planting a seed of suffering?

Kāśyapa's “ascetic practice” is likewise more than a rag robe, one bowl, and an open-air dwelling. Even when clothing, food, and lodging are few, the thought “I can practice austerities” creates another bond. True shaking-off means noticing, between getting and not getting and between liking and disliking, what the mind has grasped once again.

A name is therefore a handle, not a box. We take hold of a handle in order to open the door. If we merely grip it and never enter, the entrance itself becomes an obstruction.

Reading the names of the twenty-one elders, we might ask ourselves in return: which virtue attracts me most readily? Have I taken it for the whole? Have I fixed myself or another person forever by one strength or one fault?

One virtue may open the way; it may not seal it shut. Enter through the one aspect known until the multitude of practices becomes visible. Enter through another person's name until one's own mind is illuminated. This is why the listing of names does not stop at a roster.

1. General Meaning of the Listing of Names

The fifth division is the listing of names. The scripture cites about twenty-one elders. In fact, all the Buddha's disciples possessed many kinds of practice. Here their complete capacities are left implicit, and each is named according to one particular virtue in order to guide people with different inclinations. The Ekottarika Āgama says that those who followed the monk Kauṇḍinya were all senior elders, eminent in virtue and held in honor; those who followed Śāriputra possessed profound and incisive wisdom; and those who followed Maudgalyāyana possessed great supernormal power. Each mastered one Dharma gate with which to guide beings who favored a particular approach.

To explain each name, one must therefore understand that person's conduct and virtue. Since names are established from virtues, interpretation by this method will be coherent wherever it is applied. In principle, each arhat below is explained through four meanings: causes and conditions, interpretation in terms of the teaching, Origin and Trace, and contemplating the mind [and so forth].

2. Ājñāta Kauṇḍinya: Name, Former Vows, and First Attainment of the Path

“Kauṇḍinya” is a surname, translated as Fire Vessel. He belonged to the brahman caste. His ancestors made a livelihood from serving fire, and so fire was used to name their lineage. Fire has two functions, illumination and burning: illumination prevents darkness from arising, while burning prevents things from arising. The surname is therefore explained through the meaning of nonarising.

“Ājñāta” is his given name, translated as Already Knew; it is also translated as Unknowing. “Unknowing” does not mean knowing nothing, but knowing the “not.” In terms of the two truths of ultimate and conventional, it means knowing the ultimate truth, and his name is established from the knowledge of nonarising. The Sutra of Immeasurable Life, the Sutra of Mañjuśrī's Questions, the Abhidharma, and the Vibhāṣā all call him one who understood the original limit or knew the original limit. In terms of the four truths, he knew the truth of cessation. Many sutras translate his name as Unknowing, and some as Attained the Path. The Ekottarika Āgama says that within the Buddhadharma the monk Kauṇḍinya was foremost in broad-mindedness and learning and in being first to receive the taste of Dharma. Hence Ājñāta became his name.

In terms of his former vow, during a famine in a past life the Buddha transformed himself into a great red-eyed fish, held his breath, ceased moving, and appeared to be dead. Five carpenters were the first to cut flesh from the fish with their axes. The Buddha then vowed, “In a future life, I shall deliver these five first.” The Buddha had first vowed that they would attain nonarising, so he is called Ājñāta. Again, in the time of Kāśyapa Buddha, nine people studied the path. Five of them had not yet attained the fruit and therefore vowed to awaken first within Śākyamuni Buddha's Dharma. Drawn by this former vow, they were the first to attain nonarising and hence the name Ājñāta.

In terms of conduct and virtue, when wisdom arises, delusion is extinguished: this is the practice of knowledge and severance. Through the long night, everyone sleeps and no one awakens first; before the sun has risen, the morning star appears. The monk Kauṇḍinya first attained the knowledge of nonarising, just as the morning star precedes every other light. No one's light of wisdom appeared before Kauṇḍinya's, and so he is called Ājñāta. Nor does anything dispel darkness earlier than the morning star. Kauṇḍinya likewise first extinguished the darkness of beings, and so he is called Ājñāta.

Next come the causes and conditions for his being “first.” The crown prince renounced his country and royal station and entered the mountains to cultivate the path. The king, longing for his son, sent five men to follow and serve him. They were Kauṇḍinya; Aśvajit, also called Aśvaka, Assaji, or Horse-Star; Bhadrika, also called Mahānāma; Daśabala Kāśyapa; and Prince Koli. Two were relatives on his mother's side and three on his father's side. Two regarded sensual pleasure as purity, while three regarded ascetic practice as purity. When the prince practiced austerities, the two left him and the other three remained in attendance. Later, when the prince abandoned austerities and again accepted food, ghee, and warm water, the three also departed.

After attaining the path, the prince first taught the four truths to these five. When he initially taught two of them, Kauṇḍinya attained the pure Dharma eye while the other four did not. Three went out to seek alms, and what they obtained was shared among all six. He next taught the three, who then attained the pure Dharma eye, while the other two went for alms, again sharing what they obtained among the six. At the third teaching, Kauṇḍinya and the other four, together with eighty thousand devas, became far removed from dust and defilement; the five attained nonarising. The Buddha asked three times, “Do you know the Dharma?” Three times they answered, “We already know.” The earth deities proclaimed it, the gods in the sky passed the proclamation one to another, and the sound reached as far as the Brahmā world.

All the gods called him “Already Knew.” Kauṇḍinya was first to behold the signs of the Buddha's attainment of the path, first to hear the Dharma drum, first to receive the fragrance of the path, first to taste the amṛta, first to enter the Dharma stream, and first to ascend to the ultimate truth. Among those in Jambudvīpa who attained the path, he preceded every person, every deva, and every arhat. The Sutra of Twelve Years' Travels therefore says that in the first year after his awakening the Buddha delivered the five, in the second year the three Kāśyapas, and in the fifth year Śāriputra and Maudgalyāyana. From this one can know that Ājñāta truly came first. The foregoing is the interpretation through causes and conditions.

3. Ājñāta Kauṇḍinya: Nonarising as Clarified in the Tripiṭaka Teaching

In the interpretation of the Tripiṭaka teaching, a blind person represents the knowledge of nonarising, and a mirror represents the object of nonarising—that is, the aggregates, sense fields, and elements. The six parts, beginning with the head, represent present causes, while the image in the mirror represents future fruit. If one opens one's eyes and takes up the mirror, the face and mirror stand opposite each other and an image arises. Because of delusion, cause and fruit cannot be cut off. If one closes one's eyes as though blind, nothing at all is seen. Not seeing the six parts, beginning with the head, represents the nonarising of the cause; not seeing the image in the mirror represents the nonarising of the fruit.

The Āgamas therefore say: if one regards form as truly existent and pure, this “purity” arises and is not nonarising. If one regards feeling, perception, formations, and consciousness as truly existent, and consciousness as pure, purity arises and is not nonarising. If one regards feeling as pleasure, pleasure arises and is not nonarising; this extends to regarding form as pleasure, in which case pleasure likewise arises and is not nonarising. If one clings to perception and formations and takes formations as self, self arises and is not nonarising; this extends to taking form as self, in which case self likewise arises and is not nonarising. If one reckons consciousness to be permanent, permanence arises and is not nonarising; this extends to reckoning form as permanent, in which case permanence likewise arises and is not nonarising.

This is like taking up a mirror and seeing one's own face: when the facial image arises, it is not nonarising. If the five aggregates are regarded as truly existent, all five become arising and are not nonarising. If one can know that form is not pure, extending to knowing that consciousness is not permanent; and if one can know that everything from form through consciousness is impermanent, suffering, empty, and impure—is impermanent, suffering, not-self, and impure—this is nonarising rather than arising. It is like a blind person holding a mirror, unable to see an image arise: this is nonarising rather than arising.

Having known nonarising, how could one still reckon within form that “I am form,” “I am different from form,” “I dwell within form,” or “form dwells within me”? Feeling, perception, formations, and consciousness are contemplated in the same way. Through such contemplation, both present cause and future fruit do not arise, just as a blind person facing a mirror sees neither face nor reflected image. This is called the contemplative knowledge that sees the five aggregates as nonarising.

Next contemplate the sense fields and elements. What people ordinarily call an ocean may be deep and broad, yet it has this shore and the farther shore and remains only a small, bounded body of water. Only when the eye has seen a visible object, delights in it, becomes defiled and attached, craves and enjoys it, and initiates bodily, verbal, and mental action does it become a true great ocean capable of drowning the devas, humans, and asuras of all worlds.

One should therefore know: the eye is the ocean and visible form its waves; attachment to visible objects is the swirling rapid current; the arising of unskillful reflection within it is evil fish and poisonous dragons; jealousy and harm are male rākṣasas; defiling desire is a female ghost; and the further production of bodily, verbal, and mental karma is like drinking salt water and thereby drowning oneself. This is ignorance concerning eye and form, from which ignorance and craving arise.

Because craving arises, it is called formation; because formation arises, it is called karma. Karma binds consciousness and casts it into the intermediate existence: this is the arising of consciousness. Once in the womb, before the five swellings have formed, this is the arising of name-and-form. When the five swellings are formed, this is the arising of the six sense fields. When the six sense fields cannot yet distinguish suffering and pleasure, this is the arising of contact. When they can distinguish suffering and pleasure, this is the arising of feeling. When defiling attachment to sense objects arises, this is the arising of craving. When one races in the four directions seeking them, this is the arising of grasping. The production of bodily, verbal, and mental action is the arising of existence. The five aggregates that will be received in the future are the arising of birth. The changing of the future five aggregates is the arising of old age. The disintegration of the future five aggregates is the arising of death. Inner heat in the mind is the arising of grief. Crying aloud is the arising of lamentation. The wasting and trembling of body and mind are the arising of suffering and distress.

In the instant when the eye sees form, the great mass of suffering constituted by the twelve links across the three times arises from this. It is not nonarising. The same applies to ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind, and to everything from the eye element through the Dharma element. This is the arising of the sense fields and elements, not nonarising.

How, then, is there nonarising? When contemplating eye and form, do not plant the seed of suffering, do not grow the sprout of suffering, do not let foul liquid seep out, and do not gather maggots and flies. If the seed does not arise, the sprout does not arise; if the sprout does not arise, foul liquid does not arise; if foul liquid does not arise, maggots and flies do not arise. Hence it is called nonarising.

What is the seed of suffering? When the eye sees form, thoughts of greed and anger are the seed of suffering; recollection of the five desires produces the sprout of suffering; the six faculties grasping the six sense objects are foul liquid flowing out; and wholesome and unwholesome actions contending in the presence of the six sense objects are maggots and flies gathering. If one knows eye and form to be impermanent, suffering, empty, and not-self, greed and anger do not arise, recollection of sensual pleasure does not arise, grasping at objects does not arise, and wholesome and unwholesome activities do not arise. This is nonarising. The same applies to ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind, and to everything from the eye element to the Dharma element. Ājñāta was the first to attain this Tripiṭaka knowledge of nonarising, and so he is named Ājñāta Kauṇḍinya.

4. Ājñāta Kauṇḍinya: Nonarising as Clarified in the Shared Teaching

The Shared Teaching's contemplation of nonarising is like a conjured person holding a conjured mirror and facing that conjured mirror with a conjured head and its other five parts, then seeing a conjured image. The conjured image is not born from the mirror, from the face, from the combination of mirror and face, or apart from the mirror and face. Since it is not born from any of these four alternatives, it is not inside, outside, or between them. It does not exist eternally of itself, nor is there any place into which it ceases. When it departs, it goes nowhere in the east, west, south, or north.

Its nature has always been unborn; it is not called nonarising because something already born has been extinguished. Its nature has always been unceasing; it is not called nonceasing because some preexisting cessation has been extinguished. Because it neither arises nor ceases, it is called nonarising. Feeling, perception, formations, and consciousness are the same.

Again, contemplate conjured form as an image in a conjured mirror, feeling as a bubble, perception as a mirage, formations as a plantain trunk, and consciousness as a conjuring. The conjuring is not born from the conjured object, from the conjurer, from the combination of object and conjurer, or apart from the two. Seeking the birth of the conjuring through the four alternatives, one finds that birth has no place from which it comes; seeking the cessation of the conjuring in the four directions, one finds that cessation has no place to which it goes. Its nature has always been unborn; it is not unborn because birth has been extinguished. Its nature has always been unceasing; it is not unceasing because cessation has been extinguished. Because it neither arises nor ceases, it is called nonarising.

Next contemplate faculty and object as a village occupied by bandits: none of its parts has ever been real, and it arises only from deluded conception. A hollow settlement is provisionally formed by the mechanism of karmic force. The nature of ignorance has always been nonexistent; it exists through the conjunction of deluded conception and causes and conditions. This existence has always itself been nonexistent, but causes and conditions produce the manifold afflictions, karma, and suffering, like a circle of fire formed by whirling a torch. Contemplating that they have always been nonexistent can be understood by the method above. This is the general meaning of the Shared Teaching [and so forth].

[At this point the first part of fascicle one ends in the received edition. The second part of fascicle one follows, still headed “Spoken by the Great Master Tiantai Zhizhe.”]

5. Ājñāta Kauṇḍinya: Nonarising as Clarified in the Distinct and Perfect Teachings

In the Distinct Teaching's contemplation of the knowledge of nonarising, the mirror represents the Dharma realm and the eye represents contemplative knowledge. Blue, yellow, red, and white images, and small, large, short, and long ones, represent the ten Dharma realms. Blue represents the causes and fruits of hell beings; yellow, the causes and fruits of hungry ghosts; red, the causes and fruits of animals; and white, the causes and fruits of humans and devas. Small images represent the causes and fruits of the two vehicles, large images the causes and fruits of bodhisattvas of the Shared Teaching, short images the causes and fruits of bodhisattvas of the Distinct Teaching, and long images the causes and fruits of buddhas. All can be distinguished within the mirror without the least confusion.

To set oneself right, one prevents nine kinds of cause and fruit from arising and causes one kind to arise. To set others right, one likewise prevents nine kinds of cause and fruit in them from arising and causes one kind to arise. Relying on the Dharma realm, one practices bodhi. First one successively uses the contemplative knowledge that analyzes dharmas and that directly realizes dharmas to sever the arising of the four abiding afflictions and prevent them from arising. Next one uses Dharma teachings as numerous as the sands of the Ganges to sever adventitious afflictions and prevent lack of knowledge from arising. Finally one uses the wisdom of the true mark to sever ignorance and prevent the root from arising.

When the four abiding afflictions are absent, fragmentary birth and death do not arise. When lack of knowledge is absent, expedient birth and death do not arise. When ignorance is absent, birth and death in the land of true reward do not arise. Arising does not arise, and nonarising does not arise; hence it is called nonarising. This is called the Distinct Teaching's knowledge of nonarising.

In the Perfect Teaching's contemplation of the knowledge of nonarising, one contemplates the whole mirror in its round completeness. One does not contemplate its back and does not contemplate its images. It is neither the darkness of the back nor the brightness of the front. One grasps neither its various forms nor its various reflected images, but contemplates only round completeness. Round completeness has no boundary, beginning, or end, no brightness or darkness, and no distinction of sameness and difference. It represents perfect contemplation.

Perfect contemplation does not grasp the marks of the ten Dharma realms or establish distinctions of good and evil, deviant and correct, small and great. All are quiescent and extinguished, and its objects are only the true mark of all dharmas and the Buddhadharma of Dharma-nature. Whether form or fragrance, there is no dharma that is not the true mark. Affliction, karma, and birth are contemplated as themselves nonarising, while nonarising does not separately arise. Hence it is called nonarising.

The suffering of the aggregates, sense fields, and elements is precisely Dharma body. It is not that some separate thing appears and is then called Dharma body; obstruction itself is Dharma body. Greed, anger, and delusion are precisely prajñā. It is not that some separate illuminator is called prajñā, for there is nothing to illuminate and self-nature is lucid. Every binding force of karmic activity is called liberation. Liberation is not obtained only after bonds have been severed, for there has never been a substantial entity that can be bound or anything that can bind it.

Liberation is the nonarising of karma; prajñā is the nonarising of affliction; Dharma body is the nonarising of suffering. These three kinds of nonarising are one kind of nonarising, and one kind of nonarising is three kinds. Since it is neither three nor one, it is called nonarising. How much more must the afflictions, karma, and suffering of transformational birth and death be nonarising? This is the Perfect Teaching's contemplative knowledge of nonarising [and so forth].

6. Ājñāta Kauṇḍinya: Origin and Trace and Contemplating the Mind

In terms of Origin and Trace, Kauṇḍinya was originally himself nonarising; he did not only now begin to be nonarising. To guide the milk flavor into the curd flavor, he extended a trace manifesting the first teaching's nonarising; to guide the curd flavor into raw ghee, he extended a trace manifesting the Shared Teaching's nonarising; to guide raw ghee into refined ghee, he extended a trace manifesting the Distinct Teaching's nonarising; and to guide refined ghee into clarified essence, he extended a trace manifesting the Perfect Teaching's nonarising.

His original ground abides in the gate of the letter A: all dharmas have from the very beginning been nonarising. If one hears the gate of the letter A, one can understand that all meanings are neither arising nor nonarising. Extending a trace to guide and transform, he can distinguish arising from nonarising for beings. If beings can enter the complete nonarising, they become the same as Ājñāta: neither Origin nor Trace, neither arising nor nonarising. The causes and conditions of the one great matter are thereby fulfilled.

The later text therefore says that if the Buddha were to tell in full the various transformations manifested by Pūrṇa, beings would hear them and give rise to doubt. This is precisely the meaning explained above. The Āgama also says that Ānanda followed behind the Buddha holding a parasol and lamp, while the Brahmā king followed behind Kauṇḍinya holding a parasol and lamp. These are all manifested functions of the Trace, intended to reveal the Origin.

In terms of contemplating the mind, one need only understand the mind's nonarising through the three contemplations of emptiness, provisionality, and the middle; there is no need to explain it again.

7. Mahākāśyapa: Name, Family, and the Many Kinds of “Greatness”

“Mahākāśyapa” is translated as Great Tortoise Clan. While one of his ancestors was cultivating the path, a numinous tortoise came carrying a hermit's diagram on its back as a confirming sign. The lineage was therefore named Tortoise Clan after this virtue. Paramārtha Tripiṭaka translated Kāśyapa as Wave of Light: the ancient hermit's bodily radiance surged forth in blazing waves, obscuring every other light so that none appeared. Hence Wave of Light. It is also translated as Drinking Light, because Kāśyapa's bodily radiance could likewise eclipse other things.

His given name was Pippala, also rendered Pippalāyana or Tiviri. Pippala is a kind of tree. His parents prayed to the tree deity and obtained this son, so they named him after the tree. He was also born in the settlement of Vṛji, and people called him by the settlement's name. His family was immensely wealthy. The Ekottarika Āgama says that in Rājagṛha there was a great wealthy elder named Kapila, whose wife was Dhānā, son Pippala, and daughter-in-law Bhadrā. His family's wealth surpassed King Bimbisāra's a thousandfold, and none of the sixteen great states could compare with it.

The Record of the Transmission of the Dharma Treasury says that after Vipaśyin Buddha entered cessation, the gold color of a buddha image within a stupa was damaged. A poor woman obtained a gold bead by begging and asked a goldsmith to hammer it into gold leaf. Delighted, the goldsmith restored the image. Together the two vowed to become husband and wife in a future life. For the next ninety-one kalpas, their bodies were always gold-colored in the heavens and among humans, and their minds always experienced pleasure. At last, Kāśyapa was born into the brahman household of Nyagrodha in Magadha. His family feared that wealth exceeding the king's would bring punishment. Although they deliberately reduced their holdings by one plow, they still possessed nine hundred and ninety-nine pairs of oxen and golden plows.

Another scripture says that even the coarsest cotton cloth in his family was worth a hundred thousand taels of gold. If it was fixed to the earth with nails seven feet deep, it did not tear but remained as before. His family had sixty golden granaries of millet, each holding three hundred and forty hu. Another scripture says that in a past life he offered barley rice to a pratyekabuddha. As a donor, he therefore went to and from the Trāyastriṃśa Heaven, experiencing pleasure a thousand times in each direction. Kāśyapa possessed thirty of the bodily marks.

Considering only his golden color: the gold of Jambūnada may be hidden beneath turbid water, yet its light still reaches the surface; when placed in darkness, it dispels the dark. Kāśyapa's bodily radiance surpassed this gold and illuminated one yojana. He lacked two marks, presumably the white tuft and uṣṇīṣa. When the devas invited him to compile the teachings, they praised him: advanced in years, he had eliminated desire, anger, and conceit; his form was like a pillar of purple gold, incomparably dignified from head to foot, and his eyes were clear as lotuses.

He abandoned such immense family wealth. He had married a golden-colored woman, yet the two slept by turns, felt no desire for one another, and finally separated when he left home. When leaving home, he wore a priceless jeweled robe. Later he cut it into a saṃghāṭī, folded it into four layers, and offered it to the Buddha as a seat. No one in the world could equal these three great renunciations, and so he is called “great in renunciation.”

He encountered the Buddha at the Vṛji settlement and offered him the jeweled robe. The Buddha gave him his great robe made of discarded rags. This was the great robe of the great sage, and yet it was not coarse or heavy. Kāśyapa said that when he received the Buddha's robe, he regarded it as his teacher and as a buddha stupa. He never once placed it beneath his head, much less covered himself with it while sleeping. This great robe greatly advanced his practice, and so he is called “great in receiving.”

Many disciples of the Buddha were named Kāśyapa, including Daśabala Kāśyapa and the three Kāśyapas; all were eminent persons. He was the eldest among those of the same name, and so he is specially called Mahākāśyapa. At the settlement of Vṛji he first heard the Buddha teach the higher discipline, higher concentration, and higher wisdom, and immediately attained the uncontaminated. He accepted the practice of seeking alms and cultivated the twelve ascetic practices, never abandoning them even in old age.

Later the Buddha told him, “You are old. You may stop seeking alms and return to the Saṅgha to receive food. You may also put aside the coarse and heavy robe of discarded rags and wear instead a light, subdued-color robe donated by householders.” Kāśyapa replied, “Even had the Buddha not appeared in the world, I would have become a pratyekabuddha and practiced the ascetic practices throughout my life. Now I dare not abandon my old training and learn some other method. I also wish to furnish proof for the future. People of later times will say: ‘The senior elder Kāśyapa was praised by the Buddha; I too should learn this difficult ascetic practice.’” The Buddha praised him, saying, “Excellent.” This is “great in practice.”

The Ekottarika Āgama says that within the Buddhadharma Mahākāśyapa was foremost in cultivating the twelve ascetic practices and carrying out difficult austerities. Having practiced them for a long time, his hair and beard had grown long and his robes were tattered. When he came before the Buddha, the monks slighted him because of his appearance. The Buddha told him to sit beside him on half his seat, but Kāśyapa declined.

The Buddha then said, “I possess the four dhyānas; from beginning to end, my concentration calms the mind without decline. Kāśyapa is the same. I possess great loving-kindness, with which my benevolent mind embraces and protects all; you are the same, your nature equally loving and compassionate. I possess great compassion with which I rescue beings; you are the same. I possess four kinds of supernormal samādhi: the formless, the immeasurable mind, the accumulation of purity, and nonretrogression; you are the same. I possess the six superknowledges; you are the same. I possess four concentrations—the concentration of dhyāna, of knowledge, of wisdom, and of discipline; you are the same.”

The Ekottarika Āgama also says that a brahman asked the Buddha, “Which brahman came to my home yesterday?” The Buddha pointed to Kāśyapa. The man said, “This is an ascetic, not a brahman.” The Buddha replied, “I know the Dharma discipline of ascetics and the Dharma discipline of brahmans in their entirety; Kāśyapa also knows them all. Kāśyapa's virtues do not differ from mine, so why could he not sit with me?” When the monks heard the Buddha praise him in this way, their hair stood on end.

The Buddha then cited a former cause and condition. Long ago there was a noble king named Māndhātṛ, whose ability and virtue were incomparable. Indra revered his virtue and sent a thousand horse-drawn carriages to the palace to receive him. Indra came out personally to wait for him, shared a seat with the king, entertained him, and then sent him back to his palace. In the past, Kāśyapa had once invited the Buddha to share a seat subject to birth and death; now that the Buddha had attained the path, he repaid that former merit by offering him a seat of the true Dharma. When Kāśyapa sat facing the Buddha, devas and humans all took him to be the Buddha's teacher.

On another occasion, Kāśyapa and Ānanda taught the Dharma to the nuns. One nun was displeased and mocked them, saying that it was like a needle-peddler selling needles before a needle-maker. Kāśyapa said to Ānanda, “This nun regards you as the needle-maker and me as the needle-peddler.” He then asked the nun, “Have you heard that in the Discourse on the Simile of the Moon the Buddha said that only Mahākāśyapa grows daily and always remains like a new student? Have you heard that the Buddha shared half his seat with me before the assembly? Have you heard that before the assembly the Buddha praised me as possessing vast virtues like his own? How can you call such a person a needle-peddler?” All this indicates his confirmation by the Buddha, and so he is called “great in being confirmed by the Buddha.”

In terms of rank, he was great within the assembly, great among the twelve hundred and fifty, great among the five hundred, and great among the four principal disciples. He served as master of the Five Mountains Monastery and as senior elder administering Saṅgha affairs throughout Jambudvīpa. Hence he is called “great in rank.”

After the Buddha was cremated, four pattra trees grew on the ash field. They indicated that Kāśyapa would compile the Dharma of the past three incalculable eons into the Tripiṭaka and the four Āgamas. Sengzhao's preface says that the highest purport transcends every name, and sages are therefore silent; yet the subtle purport cannot be transmitted without language, and so Śākyamuni established the teaching. He regulated body and speech, guarding them through the prohibitions of discipline; he clarified good and evil, guiding them through the discourses; and he expounded the subtle, analyzing it through Dharma characteristics. These are the three collections of discipline, concentration, and wisdom.

The Ekottarika Āgama clarifies the causes and fruits of humans and devas; the Dīrgha Āgama refutes deviant views; the Madhyama Āgama clarifies profound meanings; and the Saṃyukta Āgama clarifies dhyāna and concentration. All are due to Mahākāśyapa's achievement. Distinguished according to the parts they recited at the compilation, Ānanda recited the sūtras, Upāli recited the Vinaya, and Kāśyapa recited the Abhidharma. Hence he is called “great in compilation.”

After the Tathāgata entered cessation, he entrusted the Dharma to Kāśyapa. Kāśyapa could be a refuge for all beings, just like the Tathāgata. The reason is that if people cultivate the ascetic practices, the Buddhadharma can remain in the world; without such people, the Buddhadharma cannot remain. Kāśyapa can shoulder the Buddhadharma and cause it to abide for a long time, until the future buddha appears. Only after entrusting him with the Dharma and the Buddha's robe will he enter cessation. Hence he is called “great in preserving the Dharma.”

When Kāśyapa was about to disappear, he secretly ascended to heaven to venerate the Buddha's hair and taught the Dharma to the devas: the practice of good leads to rebirth in heaven, the doing of evil to descent into the abyss; the five desires are impermanent, like dew on a flower that dries in the sun. Having spoken, he took his leave and departed. The devas wept and lamented: he had always pitied and protected those suffering in alleys, those weakened by calamity, and the poor and exposed. Now that he had relinquished his body and entered cessation, who would protect them hereafter? [And so forth.]

8. Mahākāśyapa: The Twelve Ascetic Practices and Shaking Off under the Four Teachings

In interpreting shaking off in terms of the teaching, first the twelve ascetic practices are listed as ways of shaking off twelve kinds of fault. In seeking fine clothing, one suffers while obtaining it, fears after obtaining it, and grieves when it is lost. A robe made of discarded rags does not bring the five fears of flood, fire, thieves, bandits, and royal confiscation. Accumulating many garments also increases the labor of sewing, mending, washing, and carrying, so one retains only the three robes. Receiving food within the Saṅgha entails management and assistance with Saṅgha affairs, so one seeks alms. Eating leftover or minor meals involves disruptive coming and going that consumes time, so one eats at a single sitting.

Eating too much is difficult to digest and produces drowsiness and laxity. Eating too little leaves one hungry and weak, without strength, so one eats a measured amount. Many utensils create the obstruction of washing and carrying, so one eats from a single bowl. Running about to obtain drinks is also laborious, so one does not drink beverages. Houses readily produce attachment, so one dwells beneath trees; dwelling beneath trees can itself produce attachment, so one dwells among graves; grief and sorrow among graves can obstruct practice, so one dwells in the open; lying down diminishes one's work and increases laziness, so one sits constantly and does not lie down. Of the twelve practices, two concern clothing, six concern food, and four concern dwelling.

For the moment, take only seeking alms as an explanation of shaking off. When food is easily obtained, joy arises; when it is difficult to obtain, anger arises. Fine food produces craving, while poor food produces grief. Grief and joy arise in dependence on form: this is the form aggregate. Experiencing grief and joy is the feeling aggregate; grasping their characteristics is the perception aggregate; the activity of grief and joy is the formations aggregate; and discriminating grief and joy is the consciousness aggregate.

Grief and joy involve the mind sense field and Dharma sense field and extend throughout the three realms. Elements, sense fields, and aggregates are the truth of suffering. If one grasps the thought “I am the one able to seek alms,” one produces a view of self or of no-self. If alms-seeking itself is taken as the path and as reality, one clings to it as fixed and unchanging. Praise brings joy and blame anger. Thinking, “How could I be rebuked?” is doubt; inability to understand is delusion. Greed, anger, delusion, conceit, doubt, and the five views together form the ten compulsions. Extended across the three realms and four truths, they become the eighty-eight compulsions called the truth of origination.

If while seeking alms one can recognize the four inversions: apparent continuity conceals reality, so what is impermanent is mistakenly taken as permanent; temporary agreeableness conceals reality, so what is suffering is mistakenly taken as pleasure; movement and construction conceal reality, so what is not-self is mistakenly taken as self; thin skin conceals reality, so what is impure is mistakenly taken as pure. Recognizing these four coverings, one is free of the four inversions of permanence, pleasure, self, and purity. Diligently preventing two kinds of evil, producing two kinds of good, and cultivating the four concentrations, faculties, powers, factors of awakening, and path constitute the truth of the path.

When one does not reckon a self in seeking alms, delusion ceases. Because delusion ceases, craving ceases; because craving ceases, anger ceases; with anger gone one no longer elevates oneself, so conceit ceases; when conceit ceases, one no longer doubts when rebuked. Because there is no self, the view of self ceases; because the view of self ceases, the view of extremes ceases; because alms-seeking itself is not grasped as the path, the view that clings to precepts and prohibitions ceases; because it is not reckoned as reality, the view that clings to views ceases; because no deviant grasping occurs, deviant views cease. When the ten compulsions cease, the eighty-eight compulsions cease; when the eighty-eight cease, the bonds that function as causes cease; when causal bonds cease, resultant bonds cease; when resultant bonds cease, the twenty-five modes of existence cease. This is the truth of cessation.

If one cannot see the four noble truths in the single act of seeking alms, one will long revolve in the sea of the suffering of birth and death. If one can see the four truths, one can sever birth and death. Once birth and death are exhausted, no further modes of existence are received. This is the contemplative wisdom of shaking off within alms-seeking; the practices concerning clothing and dwelling are the same. The foregoing is the Tripiṭaka Teaching's ascetic practice.

The Shared Teaching's shaking off takes realization of quiescence through conditions of ultimate truth as its dwelling, the wisdom of emptiness as its food, and all practices performed with an empty mind as its clothing. The nature of emptiness is constant; there is not an instant that is not empty. The wisdom of emptiness shakes off all things as conjurations, so that deluded thoughts and evils become quiescent and do not arise, and mental and associated mental dharmas no longer operate, for nothing whatsoever can be obtained. Among all kinds of correspondence, correspondence with emptiness is foremost; among all ascetic practices, the practice of emptiness is foremost; among all kinds of shaking off, shaking off through the wisdom of emptiness is foremost. This concludes the summary.

The Distinct Teaching's shaking off takes Dharma body as dwelling, prajñā-wisdom as food, and all practices as adornment and covering. Practice shakes off the evil of dark karma, prajñā shakes off the evil of affliction, and Dharma body shakes off the evil suffering of birth and death. First one shakes off the affliction, karma, and suffering of fragmentary birth and death; next one shakes off the affliction, karma, and suffering of transformational birth and death. This is the ascetic practice of correct contemplation of the middle, surpassing the austerities practiced by the two vehicles [and so forth].

In the Perfect Teaching's shaking off, dwelling is itself clothing and itself food: one Dharma is distinguished as three. One kind of shaking off is all kinds of shaking off, and all kinds of shaking off are one. It is neither one nor all. Every kind of shaking off is none other than the true mark, the practice of all buddhas and the practice of the Tathāgata, surpassing the purity practiced by bodhisattvas [and so forth].

9. Mahākāśyapa: Origin and Trace and Contemplating the Mind

In terms of Origin and Trace, Kāśyapa originally sat with the Tathāgata in the principle of ultimate emptiness, attained the same vast Dharma body, the same unobstructed wisdom, and the same immeasurable virtues. Inwardly he relinquished attachment to Dharma; outwardly he did not receive defilement. His inward and outward shaking off was originally already pure. To guide beings through the milk flavor, he extended a trace manifesting circumstantial shaking off; next, to guide them through the curd flavor, he manifested shaking off within emptiness; next, to guide them through raw ghee, he manifested shaking off within the distinct; next, to guide them through refined ghee, he manifested shaking off within the perfect.

In terms of contemplating the mind, immediate emptiness can shake off grasping at characteristics, immediate provisionality can shake off the dust-like delusions, and the immediate middle can shake off ignorance. Within a single mind, one shakes off the afflictions of the five abodes [and so forth].

10. The Three Kāśyapas: Uruvilvā, Nadī, and Gayā

All three had the surname Kāśyapa, whose meaning is as explained above. “Uruvilvā,” also rendered Uruvilva or Uruvī, is translated as Papaya Grove. “Nadī” is translated as River or Great River. “Gayā,” also rendered Gayi or Elephant, is translated as City Household. They lived seven yojanas south of Rājagṛha. In the time of Vipaśyin Buddha, the three brothers jointly erected the pillar of a tree shrine, and through this cause and condition became brothers.

The eldest was King Bimbisāra's teacher and had five hundred disciples. His two younger brothers each had two hundred and fifty disciples and both practiced their elder brother's method. The Buddha manifested ten transformations: a poisonous dragon could not injure him; dragon fire could not burn him; the Ganges could not drown him; he traveled east, south, and west to gather fruit, north to obtain fine rice, and to Trāyastriṃśa Heaven for amṛta; knowing that Uruvilvā resented him, he disappeared, and knowing that Uruvilvā thought of him, he appeared; a fire that had gone out could not be lit, and an axe raised aloft could not descend. The various auspicious responses are explained at greater length elsewhere.

Although Uruvilvā saw the many supernormal transformations, his deviant attachment remained unchanged. He still said that Gautama possessed supernormal powers but the path Gautama practiced was not as real as his own. The Buddha then told him plainly, “You are not an arhat and have not attained the path.” He suddenly awakened, and teacher and disciples all submitted. Seeing the signs, the two younger brothers followed their elder brother in taking refuge in the Buddha, making one thousand monks in all.

In terms of the teaching, the Ekottarika Āgama says that Uruvilvā was foremost in protecting the fourfold assembly and providing its members with the four requisites of food, clothing, bedding, and medicine so that they lacked nothing. The monk Nadī was foremost in inner quiescence, subduing every bond, and vigor. The monk Gayā was foremost in contemplating and understanding all dharmas, being wholly unattached, and skillfully teaching and transforming. These are meanings within the curd teaching. Upon turning to raw ghee, they should feel shame at the lesser Dharma and aspire to the great Dharma. Upon turning to refined ghee, they should accept the work entrusted to them and receive the teaching-command. Upon turning to clarified essence, it is as in this sutra: they receive predictions and will attain buddhahood in the future. The other cases can be known by analogy.

In terms of Origin and Trace, they originally abode in the three virtues: the grove is prajñā, the city is Dharma body, and the water is liberation. This is the secret treasury of their original ground. In the Trace, they rely on grove, city, and water to deliver beings.

In terms of contemplating the mind, correct contemplation of mind-nature is the unmoving middle, like a city wall defending against enemies. Moving while unmoving is like water washing away the inversions of the two extremes. Simultaneously illuminating withering and flourishing is like a luxuriant grove. The three dharmas support one another like brothers joined on a single branch.

11. Śāriputra: Name and the Former Life of Uncle and Nephew

The full Sanskrit form of “Śāriputra” should be Śāriputra, translated as Son of the Body. Śāri is also translated as Pearl. His mother was exceptionally intelligent among women, and the sign of her intelligence appeared in the pupils of her eyes. Because he was born to this pearl-eyed woman, he is called Son of the Pearl. Śāri is also translated as Body. His mother possessed a beautiful form, and because he was born to this beautiful-bodied woman, he is called Son of the Body. People of the time used the son to make the mother known, and thus established this title.

His father named him Upatiṣya, also rendered Upatiśa, translated as Discourse on Meaning. His father obtained a wife through discourse on meaning, and the son was likewise named from his father's virtue in discourse on meaning. This makes the father's virtue known. The Treatise on the Great Perfection of Wisdom says, “My name is Tiṣya. My son's style-name was established in relation to mine, as Upatiṣya.” Upa is translated as following, while Tiṣya is the name of a constellation. One may also say that “Śā” indicates his father and “ri” his mother, displaying the virtues of both parents at once; hence Śāriputra, with putra meaning son. His surname was Kolita and he belonged to the brahman caste. The Ekottarika Āgama says that within the Buddhadharma Śāriputra was foremost in inexhaustible wisdom and the ability to resolve every doubt.

The Sutra of Birth Stories once said that in a past life an uncle and nephew were both weavers. Knowing where the king's treasury lay, they dug an underground passage into it, stole from it, and obtained many precious objects. The keeper of the treasury reported this to the king. The king ordered him not to make the matter public, reasoning that the thieves would return and need only be watched and captured in secret.

When uncle and nephew returned, the uncle fell headfirst into a trap and was captured. Fearing that people would recognize the kinship from his face, the nephew cut off the uncle's head. The king had the body placed at a crossroads in order to draw out the dead man's relatives. Later, when merchants gathered and the crowd became dense, the nephew concealed the body beneath two cartloads of firewood and carried it away. The king again sent men to watch for whoever would retrieve the corpse. Taking advantage of children singing, dancing, and playing, the nephew threw in fire and burned the body.

The king then sent men to guard the ashes. The nephew supplied wine, got the guards thoroughly drunk, and carried the bones away in wine jars. Troubled by this cunning man, the king sent his daughter to keep strict guard. He stationed her by the water and first instructed her to seize anyone who came and call out.

The nephew first sent pieces of floating wood downstream. The guards mistook them for people, then found on inspection that they were only wood. After this happened for many days, the guards ceased to be vigilant. The nephew then came to meet the princess. She seized his clothing, but he immediately thrust a dead man's hand into her grasp and escaped. The princess cried out loudly; when the others came to look, they saw only a dead hand in her grasp.

The princess thereby became pregnant and gave birth to a handsome boy. The king ordered a nurse to carry the child outside and arrest anyone at whose sight the boy cried out. After days of hunger and thirst, the boy was brought near a baker's oven. The baker gave him a cake, and the child cried. The king again ordered the nurse to take the boy out. The nephew had already persuaded the watchers to buy strong wine, and when all were drunk, he took the child and fled to another country.

People in that country admired his intelligence and wished to marry a minister's daughter to him, but he did not accept. Instead he gave his own style-name to his son and returned to seek the hand of the princess of his own country. The king consented but suspected that he was the former thief. When he came for the marriage, he brought five hundred riders whose saddles and clothing were all identical. Seeing this, the king of his country asked whether he was the former thief, praised his ingenuity, and finally gave him his daughter in marriage. That nephew was Śāriputra, and the uncle was Devadatta [and so forth].

12. Śāriputra: Virtue in the Womb, Childhood Wisdom, and Attainment of the Path

Next come the causes and conditions of his conception. His father, Upatiṣya, mastered the scriptures, bound an iron plate around his belly, wore a crown of fire, and alone beat the drum of debate in Rājagṛha. The royal teacher Dhara, knowing himself to be old and his physiognomy inauspicious, was defeated in debate and lost his fief; he therefore gave his daughter to Upatiṣya in marriage.

While pregnant, his wife dreamed of a person wearing armor and holding a vajra pestle who smashed every mountain peak and finally stood beside a single mountain. Awakening with heaviness in her body, she asked her husband the dream's meaning. He said, “The child you bear will defeat every master of debate. He will lose to only one person and finally become that person's disciple.”

The child's maternal uncle was Kauṣṭhila. Ordinarily he always defeated his elder sister in debate, but after she became pregnant he could no longer outargue her. The younger brother thought: this is not my sister's own power; there must be a wise person in her womb whose eloquence is expressed through his mother's mouth. If he is already like this in the womb, how much more so after birth? He therefore left home and traveled in all directions to study. He had no time even to cut his nails, and people called him the Long-Clawed Brahmacārin [and so forth].

The two dragon kings Nanda and Upananda lived near Rājagṛha, protected the city, and caused rain to fall in season, so that the country had no barren years. Each year the king and his subjects held a great assembly and set up three high seats for the king, the crown prince, and the master of debate. Śāriputra came to the assembly at age eight and asked the purpose of the three seats. Hearing the answer, he passed through the crowd and mounted the debate seat.

The scholars were all ashamed and refused to debate the child in person. Defeating him would bring no fame, while losing would be too humiliating, so they sent attendants to convey their questions. Śāriputra's replies surpassed every question and toppled the debate banners of all the schools. No one dared answer his challenge. The king and his subjects celebrated beyond measure, believing that the country would soon be at peace because a wise person had appeared in the world.

By age sixteen, he had exhausted the study of every scripture in Jambudvīpa. There was nothing with which he was unfamiliar. Broadly versed in past and present, he could freely expound profound meanings. He was unrivaled in debate throughout the sixteen great states and foremost in the five regions of India. He studied under the brahmacārin Sañjaya and learned all his teacher's arts of the path. All two hundred and fifty of the teacher's disciples also gave their allegiance to Śāriputra and were instructed and brought to accomplishment by him.

At the moment of his death, Sañjaya suddenly became joyful and laughed. Śāriputra asked why, and the teacher said, “Worldly people lack the wisdom eye and are bound by affection and intimacy. I see that the king of the Golden Land has died and his queen is about to cast herself into the fire, wishing to be reborn together with the king.” Having spoken, he died. Later Śāriputra met merchants from the Golden Land and questioned them; events had occurred exactly so. He regretted, “I did not finish learning my teacher's arts. Did he not teach me this one because I was not a suitable person, or did he deliberately keep it secret?” Knowing that his understanding was incomplete, he continued to seek a higher Dharma but could find no one else to serve as teacher. Apart from this one art in which he did not equal his teacher, he had mastered everything and was therefore foremost among outsiders.

On the road he saw Aśvajit, whose bearing was calm and orderly, and asked about his teacher and Dharma. The meaning of Aśvajit's reply was: all dharmas arise from causes and conditions, and his teacher therefore explains those conditions; the causes and conditions of dharmas and the ending of those conditions are what his teacher proclaims. Upon hearing this, Śāriputra attained stream-entry. After coming before the Buddha, within seven days he comprehended the profound ocean of the Buddhadharma. Another account says that he attained arhatship after fifteen days.

He served as preceptor to Rāhula, while Gavāṃpati served separately as teacher. Among the śrāvakas he was the Buddha's disciple on the right. When Devadatta split the Saṅgha and led away five hundred monks, Śāriputra went to teach and transform them, causing the five hundred to return [and so forth]. Raudrākṣa competed with him in supernormal power. Raudrākṣa conjured a flower pond; Śāriputra transformed himself into a great elephant, uprooted the flowers, and trampled the pond. Raudrākṣa conjured a yakṣa spirit; Śāriputra transformed himself into Vaiśravaṇa. Each transformation surpassed the other's and brought Raudrākṣa into submission. The Madhyama Āgama uses the simile of mothers: Śāriputra is the mother who gives birth to the Dharma body and wisdom-life of the fourfold assembly, while Maudgalyāyana is the mother who rears it [and so forth].

13. Śāriputra and Pūrṇa's Questions on the Seven Carriages

The second fascicle of the Madhyama Āgama says that monks who had spent the rains retreat in various places constantly praised Pūrṇa Maitrāyaṇīputra for few desires and contentment, vigor and secluded dwelling, single-minded right mindfulness, uncontaminated wisdom, and his frequent encouragement of others to arouse and praise these dharmas. Hearing of him, Śāriputra thought, “When will I be able to see this person? When will he come before the Buddha?” Others told him that Pūrṇa had a clear fair complexion, a high nose, and a mouth like a parrot's.

The two later met in Andhavana, translated as Victorious Grove. Śāriputra asked, “Does the worthy one cultivate the holy life under Gautama?” Pūrṇa answered yes. Śāriputra then asked in sequence: Is the holy life cultivated for purity of discipline? For purity of mind, purity of view, purity in crossing beyond doubt, purity in knowing what is and is not the path, purity of knowledge and vision of the path's course, or purity of knowledge and severance of the path's course? To every question Pūrṇa answered no.

Śāriputra asked, “Earlier you said yes, but now you answer no to every item. What does this mean?” Pūrṇa replied, “The holy life is cultivated for nirvāṇa without remainder.” Śāriputra again asked item by item: Is nirvāṇa without remainder designated by purity of discipline? And so on through purity of knowledge and severance of the path's course? Pūrṇa answered no to each.

Śāriputra again asked the meaning. Pūrṇa said that if purity of discipline were equated with nirvāṇa without remainder, what has remainder would be called without remainder. The same applies through equating purity of knowledge and severance of the path's course with nirvāṇa without remainder. Yet if one could dispense with these seven purities, ordinary people too should attain parinirvāṇa, precisely because ordinary people lack the seven purities. Practice cannot dispense with the seven purities. One must therefore proceed from purity of discipline to purity of mind, and successively through purity of knowledge and severance of the path's course.

He then used seven carriages as a simile. King Prasenajit wished to travel from Kosala to Sāketa and stationed seven carriages along the road. Upon taking the first carriage to one place, he left it and mounted the second, continuing until he left the sixth and mounted the seventh. People in Sāketa asked whether the king had arrived on the first carriage alone, and the king said no. They asked whether he had arrived on the seventh carriage alone, and again he said no. They asked whether he had arrived apart from the seven carriages, and he again said no. The relationship among the seven purities in practice can be understood through this simile.

Śāriputra asked the other's name and how those cultivating the holy life addressed him. Pūrṇa said, “My father is named Full, my mother Compassionate; those cultivating the holy life call me Son of Full and Compassionate.” Śāriputra praised him as a disciple of the Tathāgata whose wisdom and eloquence were lucid and decisive, secure and fearless, who had attained great eloquence and the amṛta banner and personally realized amṛta. Those who encountered him gained great benefit, and all who cultivated the holy life should wrap their robes around their heads and carry him upon their crowns in reverence.

Pūrṇa also asked Śāriputra's name. Śāriputra said that his father's style-name was Upatiṣya and his mother was Śāri, so everyone called him Śāriputra. Only then did Pūrṇa exclaim, “Without knowing it, I debated such a disciple of the World-Honored One! Without knowing it, I debated a second World-Honored One! Without knowing it, I debated the Dharma general, the disciple who turns the Dharma wheel again after it has been turned! Had I known this was the elder, I could not have answered even one sentence, much less taken part in so profound a discussion.” He likewise praised Śāriputra and said that disciples of the Tathāgata such as this should be carried upon people's crowns [and so forth].

When the Buddha spoke only one sentence, Śāriputra could take that sentence as root and roar the lion's roar for seven days and nights, developing different expressions and different flavors of meaning without exhausting it. How then could Śāriputra's wisdom and eloquence be exhausted when the Buddha said more?

14. Śāriputra and Maudgalyāyana Test Their Supernormal Powers

The twentieth fascicle of the Madhyama Āgama says that when the Buddha was at Lake Anavatapta, the dragon king noted that the assembly had not seen Śāriputra and asked the Buddha to summon him. The Buddha sent Maudgalyāyana to call him from Jetavana Monastery. Śāriputra was then sewing a five-patch robe and replied, “Go on ahead; I shall follow.” Maudgalyāyana said, “I have come at the Buddha's command. How could I leave by myself?” Maudgalyāyana swept his hand across the robe and it was instantly sewn.

Śāriputra thought that Maudgalyāyana was testing him and decided to test Maudgalyāyana in return. He threw the robe-cord to the ground and asked whether Maudgalyāyana could lift it. Knowing that Śāriputra was testing him, Maudgalyāyana exerted all his strength but could not raise the cord. Śāriputra first tied the cord to the jambū tree. When Maudgalyāyana pulled, the entire world system shook but the cord did not move. He then tied it to two, three, and four world systems, yet even four world systems could not make the cord move. Next he tied it to a small chiliocosm, a medium chiliocosm, and a great chiliocosm, but it still did not move. Finally he tied it to the foot of a buddha's seat in another land, and all buddha worlds in the ten directions remained steady and unmoved.

Maudgalyāyana thought: I am foremost in supernormal power, but now I cannot move this. Have I lost my power? He urged Śāriputra to hurry, but Śāriputra still told him to go first. When Maudgalyāyana returned to the Buddha, he found Śāriputra already seated before him.

Seeing the earth shake, the dragon king asked the Buddha the cause. The Buddha said that the two men had been testing their power. The dragon king and five hundred monks consequently looked down upon Maudgalyāyana. The Buddha told them that Śāriputra had mastery over the four supernormal powers and Maudgalyāyana did as well. Maudgalyāyana could not pull up the robe-cord because the Buddha's power held it in place. The Buddha then instructed Maudgalyāyana to manifest his power. Maudgalyāyana placed the five hundred monks in a bowl-net and lifted them to Brahmā's palace. He set one foot on Mount Sumeru and extended the other to Brahmā's palace, where he recited a verse whose sound filled the great trichiliocosm. Only then were the five hundred monks convinced [and so forth].

15. Śāriputra: Wisdom under the Four Teachings, Origin and Trace, and Contemplating the Mind

The wisdom of the Tripiṭaka is the ten knowledges of one beyond training. It can sever the bonds, realize the ultimate, and assist the Buddha in spreading the teaching. The fortieth fascicle of the Treatise on the Great Perfection of Wisdom calls Śāriputra the great general on the right, precisely in this sense.

The wisdom of the Shared Teaching is illustrated when Śāriputra states in the Prajñāpāramitā Sutra why he is a mahāsattva: he destroys the view of self, the view of beings, the view of buddhas, the view of bodhi, and the view of turning the Dharma wheel, and so is called a mahāsattva. Sages of old spoke their own Dharma for themselves, unlike people today who presumptuously speak the Dharma. From this one can know that Śāriputra destroyed not only the view of birth and death but also the views of buddhas, bodhi, the Dharma wheel, and nirvāṇa. Such wisdom differs from that of the first teaching.

The wisdom of the Distinct Teaching must be distinguished through the five flavors. If at first one hears only of milk and curds and not of the remaining flavors, and when arousing the aspiration to practice one practices only milk and curds, this is the wisdom of the first teaching. If one hears only of curds and regards curds as not coming from milk—holding that the nature of good and evil has always been empty, that there is no need to cultivate good to destroy evil or extinguish form in order to grasp emptiness, and cultivating only immediate emptiness—this is the wisdom of the Shared Teaching.

If from the beginning one hears of clarified essence and, to obtain it, milks the cow for milk, cooks the milk into curds, turns curds into raw ghee, raw ghee into refined ghee, and only then obtains clarified essence, cultivating in this sequence is the wisdom of the Distinct Teaching. If from the beginning one hears only that a cow eating the herb of patient endurance can produce clarified essence, that consuming clarified essence can cure every illness, and that the properties of all medicines are contained within it, and one practices for this purpose, this is the wisdom of the Perfect Teaching.

In terms of Origin and Trace, Śāriputra originally abides in the true mark and takes the perfection of wisdom as mother. Wisdom is born from its object; the object is the body and wisdom the son. Out of compassion for beings, he extends traces manifesting the five flavors. To turn the evil blood of beings' afflictions into wholesome milk, he appears as a wise outsider and great master of debate. To cook milk into curds, he manifests Tripiṭaka wisdom and serves as a second World-Honored One. To guide curds into raw ghee, he conceals the great Dharma and manifests the lesser Dharma, undergoing Vimalakīrti's rebukes. To guide raw ghee into refined ghee, at the prajñā assembly he comforts and benefits his companions in the holy life and receives the teaching-command. To guide refined ghee into clarified essence, he initially awakens at the Lotus assembly. These are outward manifestations in the Trace; the truth inwardly stored in his original ground has been complete since the distant past.

In terms of contemplating the mind, the three contemplations in a single mind can encompass all wisdom. Contemplating mind as immediately empty encompasses the wisdom of the curd flavor. Contemplating mind as immediately provisional encompasses the wisdom of raw and refined ghee together with worldly wisdom. Contemplating mind as immediately the middle encompasses the wisdom of clarified essence. In contemplation of the mind, this is called one wisdom being all wisdom and all wisdom being one wisdom, neither one wisdom nor all wisdom [and so forth].

16. Mahāmaudgalyāyana: Name and Deeds of Supernormal Power

“Mahāmaudgalyāyana” is a surname, translated as Laudatory Recitation. The Sutra of Mañjuśrī's Questions translates it as Radish Root. Paramārtha said that mudgala is translated as mung bean. Radish roots and mung beans were both foods enjoyed by an ancient hermit and were therefore used to name the lineage. The Treatise on the Great Perfection of Wisdom says that he was the son of an auspicious diviner and that his father was named Kolita. Kolita was the name of a tree; his parents prayed to the tree deity and obtained a son, whom they therefore named after the tree. He was also named Maudgalyāyadu. The Sutra of Causes and Fruits in the Future calls him Mahāmaudgalyāyanāyana. Because many people had the same name, “Mahā,” great, was added.

The Treatise on the Great Perfection of Wisdom says that Śāriputra was respected for his penetrating talent and intelligence, while Maudgalyāyana was esteemed for heroic openness and directness. Their abilities and intelligence were equal, and their virtues matched one another. The Ekottarika Āgama says that among the Buddha's disciples Mahāmaudgalyāyana was foremost in rising lightly through supernormal power and flying to the ten directions. The forty-first fascicle of the Treatise on the Great Perfection of Wisdom calls him the disciple on the left.

Five hundred outsiders, teachers and disciples, cast spells to move a mountain. After a month, the mountain had begun to shake. Maudgalyāyana thought that if it truly moved, many beings would be harmed. He therefore sat cross-legged in the sky above its summit, and the mountain immediately became stable and still. The outsiders discussed among themselves: by their arts the mountain had already begun to move and should certainly shift on the appointed date. Why was it now as stable as at first? This must be an ascetic's doing. Recognizing that their own power was weak, they turned their minds to the Buddha's path and caused immeasurable people to leave home in accord with the true Dharma.

The brother dragon kings Nanda and Upananda lived in the sea beside Mount Sumeru. The Buddha frequently flew through the sky above them on his way to Trāyastriṃśa Palace. Angered, the dragons asked why the bald-headed man always passed over them. Later, when the Buddha was about to ascend to heaven, they breathed out black clouds and dark mist, obscuring the three lights of sun, moon, and stars. All the monks asked to subdue the two dragons, but the Buddha did not permit them. Maudgalyāyana said that he could subdue them.

A dragon wound its body seven times around Mount Sumeru, stirred the seawater with its tail, and rested its head on the summit. Maudgalyāyana made his own body twice as large, wound fourteen times around the mountain, extended his tail beyond the sea, and rested his head against Brahmā's palace. The dragon grew still angrier and rained down adamantine sand, which Maudgalyāyana transformed into light, soft, and lovely jeweled flowers. The dragon's anger still did not cease. Maudgalyāyana transformed himself into a minute body, entered the dragon through its eye and emerged from its ear, then entered through the ear and emerged from the nostril. He bored and bit within the dragon's body, causing it such pain that its mind submitted. Maudgalyāyana withdrew the transformations of enormity and minuteness, resumed his ascetic form, and brought the two dragons before the Buddha.

Devadatta took five hundred monks as his followers. Maudgalyāyana caused him to fall sound asleep, snoring like thunder and making sounds from his lower wind; Kokālika kicked him with his foot, but he still did not wake. Śāriputra taught the Dharma to the five hundred monks and turned their minds back, while Maudgalyāyana supported them in his hand and carried them home. The Saṅgha was reunited.

The twenty-ninth fascicle of the Saṃyukta Āgama says that when the Buddha was in Śrāvastī for the half-month recitation of the precepts, he remained silent. Ānanda asked him four times to recite the precepts. The Buddha told him, “The Saṅgha is impure. From now on I will no longer personally recite the precepts. You may ask a senior elder, a holder of discipline, or a reciter of the precepts to chant them.” Maudgalyāyana immediately entered concentration and examined who had made the assembly impure. Seeing the monks Aśvaka and Punarvasu, he personally led them outside, closed the door, and again asked the Buddha to recite the precepts. The Buddha said that he did not speak two different ways: having said that he would no longer personally recite the precepts, he would not recite them again. Maudgalyāyana also said, “The Saṅgha is impure. I too will no longer serve as disciplinarian.”

Jīvaka is translated as Firmly Alive. After his death he was reborn in Trāyastriṃśa Heaven. One of Maudgalyāyana's disciples fell ill, so Maudgalyāyana used supernormal power to ascend to heaven and inquire about him. He encountered the devas leaving their garden to enjoy themselves. Jīvaka remained seated in his carriage and did not descend, merely joining his palms in greeting. Maudgalyāyana used his power to stop the carriage. Jīvaka said that the devas' pleasures made them so hurried that they had no time even to look at one another, and asked the elder what he wanted. Maudgalyāyana explained his purpose. Jīvaka answered that fasting was essential. Maudgalyāyana released the carriage, which only then could proceed.

After defeating the asuras in battle, Śakra built the Hall of Victory. Its towers and galleries of seven treasures were splendid and extraordinary. The joints between beams and pillars had only a thread's width between them; without touching, they sustained one another, displaying the marvelous power of heavenly merit. Maudgalyāyana flew there, and Śakra showed him the hall. Ashamed to be seen by Maudgalyāyana, all the heavenly women hid themselves and did not appear. Maudgalyāyana thought that Śakra was attached to pleasure and did not cultivate the basis of the path. He therefore conjured a great fire that burned the Hall of Victory. The hall visibly collapsed, and he immediately explained impermanence to Śakra at length. Once Śakra rejoiced, the hall became complete as before without any trace of ash or smoke. Maudgalyāyana also once carried five hundred arhats in a net-bag, as described above.

The Tathāgata's Brahmā voice was profound and far-reaching; even at an extreme distance it sounded no different than beside the Buddha. Wishing to know how far the Buddha's voice could travel, Maudgalyāyana journeyed ever farther, yet the voice always sounded as though heard nearby. Through supernormal power he flew westward past lands as numerous as the sands of the Ganges and still heard Śākyamuni Buddha's voice exactly as before. He continued until his power was exhausted and his body fatigued.

At that time an assembly in another land was eating together. Maudgalyāyana stopped and paced along the rim of a bowl. The people there exclaimed, “Where did this tiny worm with a human head come from?” The buddha of that land told the assembly, “This is the foremost disciple in supernormal power of a buddha named Śākyamuni, beyond immeasurable buddha lands to the east. He came here while tracing the Buddha's voice; he is not a worm.” The Nirvāṇa Sutra also says that when the Buddha sought an attendant, his mind was upon Ānanda, as the sun rising in the east shines upon the western wall [and so forth].

17. Mahāmaudgalyāyana: Supernormal Power under the Four Teachings, Origin and Trace, and Contemplating the Mind

Relying on the four dhyānas, one accomplishes fourteen transformations. Relying further on contemplation, training, perfuming, cultivation, the eleven totalities, and uncontaminated circumstantial dhyāna, one can perform eighteen transformations. This is supernormal power within the first teaching. Wisdom is generated by relying on emptiness, and the various supernormal powers are cultivated with the mind of empty wisdom: this is the supernormal power of the Shared Teaching. The powers are cultivated sequentially in reliance on the three truths—ultimate, conventional, and middle—progressing level by level and surpassing the two vehicles: this is the supernormal power of the Distinct Teaching. Supernormal power attained in reliance on the true mark does not see buddha lands through dual characteristics. Its function arises from the true limit and, without moving the true limit, pervades the ten Dharma realms: this is the supernormal power of the Perfect Teaching [and so forth].

In a past life, Maudgalyāyana once helped a pratyekabuddha shave his hair, wash and dye cloth, and sew a kāṣāya. He thereby vowed to attain supernormal power [and so forth].

In terms of Origin and Trace, he originally abides in the Śūraṅgama Samādhi of the true limit. In one thought he can respond throughout the ten directions and make various manifestations to accomplish buddha-work. Out of compassion, he extends a trace manifesting the supernormal powers of the five flavors and guides beings into the ultimate [and so forth].

In terms of contemplating the mind, contemplate how a single mind can suddenly contain all minds, then contemplate how all minds can suddenly be free of every mind. Since mind is neither existent nor nonexistent, penetrating the true mark is the contemplation of supernormal power.

18. Mahākātyāyana: Name and Ten Questions Refuting Annihilationism

“Mahākātyāyana” is translated as Literary Ornament and also as Carried on the Shoulder. Some say this is a scribal error and should be Fan-Cord. It is also translated as Fine Shoulders, and he is also called Kala, translated as Thought Surpassing. All these use the surname as the name. The Ekottarika Āgama says that Kātyāyana was foremost in skillfully distinguishing meanings and expounding the teaching of the path.

The Dīrgha Āgama records an outsider who held an annihilationist view and asserted that there was no other world. Their exchange had ten rounds. First, the outsider said that there is no other world. Kātyāyana answered: Are today's sun and moon devas or humans? Do they belong to this world or another world? If there were no other world, there would be no tomorrow.

Second, the outsider said that he had seen people die and never return to report their suffering; he therefore knew that there was no other world. Kātyāyana answered: once a criminal has been arrested, can he freely return home?

Third, the outsider asked why those reborn in heaven did not return, proving that there was no other world. Kātyāyana answered: after someone falls into a latrine and climbs out, would he be willing to return to it? Moreover, one day in heaven equals a hundred human years. After only three or five heavenly days, someone reborn there has not yet even thought of returning. Even if he later returned, you would already be dead; how could you know?

Fourth, the outsider said that he put criminals into a pot and cooked them, sealed the lid tightly, and watched, but never saw consciousness emerge; therefore there was no other world. Kātyāyana answered: while you sleep during the day, can the people beside you see your consciousness leave?

Fifth, the outsider said that he skinned a dead person, cut apart the flesh, and smashed the bones without finding consciousness; therefore there was no other world. Kātyāyana answered: if a child splits firewood inch by inch to find fire inside it, can he find it?

Sixth, the outsider said that when he weighed a dead person, the body was heavier after death. If consciousness had departed, the body should have become lighter. Therefore consciousness did not depart and there was no other world. Kātyāyana answered: when fire combines with iron, the iron becomes lighter; when iron loses the fire, it becomes heavier. A living person is light because consciousness is present; after death, the body is heavy because consciousness has departed.

Seventh, the outsider said that he repeatedly turned a dying person over but could not find consciousness; therefore there was no other world. Kātyāyana answered: if you turn a conch shell over and over in order to find its sound, can you find the sound itself?

Eighth, the outsider said that even though the elder refuted him by various methods, he had held this view for a long time and still could not abandon it. Kātyāyana answered: a person harvesting wild grain first sees hemp and gathers it. Later he abandons the hemp for hemp fiber, abandons the fiber for thread, the thread for cloth, the cloth for silk, the silk for silver, and the silver for gold. People should abandon what is inferior and take what is superior. Why say that an old view cannot be abandoned?

Ninth, the outsider said that he was not alone in this assertion; many people said the same, so how could he alone be wrong? Kātyāyana answered: two caravans met a ghost. The ghost took human form and told them that the road ahead had ample rice and abundant pasture, so there was no need to carry old rice and grass. One caravan leader believed him and discarded everything. On the road ahead, both people and oxen starved and were eaten by the ghost. The other leader said that they would discard the old provisions only after actually obtaining new rice and grass; therefore neither people nor oxen were eaten. The deluded statements of the crowd are like the ghost's deception. Rejecting true words is like discarding old provisions before obtaining new ones. Now that you have obtained a superior new teaching, why not abandon the old view?

Tenth, the outsider said that he simply could not abandon it and would become angry if urged again. Kātyāyana answered: you are like a pig-keeper who sees dung on the road, puts it on his head, and carries it home. Rain falls halfway along the road, and dung-water runs down, fouling his head and face. When others urge him to throw it away, he becomes angry and blames them, saying that only because they do not raise pigs do they want him to discard it.

In this way Kātyāyana analyzed and refuted the outsider round after round, extensively expounding different meanings. The outsider finally submitted and praised him: “When the elder first answered with the sun and moon, I already understood. I continued to raise objections only because I wished to hear more of your wise eloquence. Excellent indeed!” Such was Kātyāyana's skill in discourse on meaning.

19. Mahākātyāyana: Teaching and Transformation, Discourse under the Four Teachings, Origin and Trace, and Contemplating the Mind

The Vinaya says that Kātyāyana was skilled at teaching people to take refuge and receive precepts. He had a butcher observe precepts at night and a lustful person observe them by day. When they later received their results, each saw during day or night the signs of pleasure obtained from formerly observing the precepts [and so forth].

A brahman named Lokāyata asked five hundred Śākyans whether anyone could debate him. The five hundred said that within the country there was the Śākya Gomukha, who had no talent or wisdom, no learning, and ugly, clumsy speech; among those who had left home there was also Cūḍapanthaka, likewise regarded as the lowest. Only if Lokāyata could defeat these two would they be willing to debate him. Lokāyata thought that defeating them would bring no distinction, while losing to them would be too humiliating.

Later he met Panthaka on the road and asked his name. Panthaka said that one should ask about meaning; why ask a name? Lokāyata asked whether he could discuss meaning. Panthaka replied, “I can debate even Brahmā, how much more a blind man without eyes like you?” Lokāyata said, “Blind means without eyes, and without eyes means blind. Is this not repetition?” Cūḍapanthaka then manifested the eighteen transformations. Lokāyata said that this person could only fly and transform and did not understand meaning.

Kātyāyana heard them from afar with his divine ear. He concealed Panthaka, manifested in Panthaka's form, and descended from the sky. Lokāyata asked his name. He answered that he was named Male Man. Lokāyata said, “Male means man and man means male; is that not also repetition?” Lokāyata finally called a halt, set aside such miscellaneous argument, and turned to profound meaning.

Lokāyata asked whether nirvāṇa could be attained without relying on dharmas. Kātyāyana answered that nirvāṇa could be attained without relying on the dharmas of the five aggregates. He asked on what the five aggregates depended for their arising, and Kātyāyana answered that they arose from craving. He asked how craving could be severed, and Kātyāyana answered that it could be severed by relying on the noble eightfold path. On hearing this, Lokāyata became far removed from dust and defilement and attained the pure Dharma eye. His other discussions of meaning can be understood by analogy.

In discourse on meaning according to the teaching, refuting annihilationist and eternalist views through impermanence, suffering, emptiness, and not-self is discourse according to the first teaching. Refuting annihilationist, eternalist, craving, and speculative views through emptiness, nothing whatsoever, and unobtainability is discourse according to the Shared Teaching; the goddess therefore says that her eloquence is possible because she has attained nothing. Using dhāraṇī and the four eloquences, observing capacities and illuminating the conventional, applying corresponding medicines to cure different illnesses, and refuting annihilationist and eternalist views is discourse according to the Distinct Teaching. Relying on the true mark, ultimately neither existent nor nonexistent, to refute annihilationist and eternalist views is discourse according to the Perfect Teaching.

In terms of Origin and Trace, he originally abides in the two adornments of merit and wisdom and can both ask and answer. Out of pity for beings, he extends a trace serving as a master of discourse on meaning through the five flavors.

In terms of contemplating the mind, contemplative knowledge investigates its object and the object in turn activates contemplative knowledge. Knowledge and object repeatedly activating one another is discourse on meaning through contemplating the mind.

20. Aniruddha: Freedom from Poverty, Lineage, and the Divine Eye

“Aniruddha” is also rendered Anuruddha or Aniruddha, merely different segmentations of the Sanskrit sound. It is translated as Freedom from Poverty, Wish-Fulfilled, or No Hunting; this is his given name. During a famine in a past life, he offered barnyard-millet rice to a pratyekabuddha. For ninety-one kalpas thereafter, his karmic results were always abundant, and so he is called Freedom from Poverty. Here the root text instead writes Freedom from Greed.

The following explains his lineage. When the world first formed, great waters moved under the force of wind and were structured into a world. When the lifespans of the beings in the Ābhāsvara Heaven ended, they were spontaneously born as humans. Their bodies emitted light, they could fly through the sky, and they fed on joy. There was no distinction between male and female or honored and lowly. Because the multitude lived together, they were called sentient beings.

At first the earth naturally produced earth-essence, which tasted like clarified essence, had the color of raw ghee, and was as sweet as honey. Those who ate too much lost their bodily radiance, became haggard, and could no longer fly; those who ate little retained their luster. They then developed thoughts of superiority and inferiority and praised or disparaged one another. Consequently the earth-essence disappeared, and they began to eat naturally occurring earth-skin. Later they again slighted one another, so the earth-skin disappeared and they ate earth-fat. When manifold evils arose, the earth-fat also disappeared and they ate naturally occurring fine rice.

After eating rice, male and female organs appeared, and people formed couples. Out of shame, they built houses and also stored large quantities of rice. Later the rice grew husks and chaff; once cut, it no longer grew again by itself, and only dry stalks remained in the ground. People stole from one another, so together they selected a fair and capable person to serve as Lord of the Fields and settle disputes. This was King Mahāsammata, the Great Elect.

Mahāsammata had a son named Jewel, and Jewel a son named Fine Flavor. From the first establishment of Mahāsammata, golden-wheel kings appeared in succession down to Good Thought. The four generations from King Ikṣvāku to King Śuddhodana were iron-wheel kings. Altogether there were eighty-four thousand two hundred and ten kings.

The Sutra of Twelve Years' Travels says that long ago a king lost his parents while young, entrusted his country to his younger brother, and himself served a brahman. The brahman told him to take off his royal robes and change his surname to Gautama. He did so, and people called him the Younger Gautama. He lived in a sugarcane garden.

Thieves who had stolen another's wealth passed through the garden. Pursuers followed their tracks, mistakenly seized the Younger Gautama, impaled him on a wooden stake, and shot him dead with arrows, covering the ground in blood. Grieving, the Elder Gautama gathered the bloodstained earth and returned it to the garden. He placed it in two vessels, one on each side, and cast a spell: “If this Gautama's mind was sincere, the gods should transform his blood into human beings.” After ten months, the left vessel became a boy and the right a girl. The Gautama lineage thereby continued. Gautama is translated as Pure and Gentle and is also called Śākya; Śākya is a noble surname.

At the beginning of the Auspicious Kalpa, when Jewel Tathāgata appeared in the world, Gautama's consciousness first took birth. According to this meaning, the surname Gautama had existed since Mahāsammata. King Ikṣvāku had four sons: the first was named Facial Radiance, the second Elephant-Eater, the third Road-Finger, and the fourth Adornment. Objects of suspicion, they moved north of the Snow Mountains to the Straight-Tree Grove. So many countrymen followed them that the place was like a marketplace, and it gradually became a powerful state. The father king praised his sons as “capable,” and the four took their surname from “capability.”

The śāka trees of that region were also especially luxuriant, and Śākya is translated as Straight Grove. Since they established their country within this grove, they took the grove as their surname. A single word in a foreign language may have many meanings: Śākya carries both the meanings straight and capable.

King Śuddhodana descended through King Adornment's branch. Adornment was Ukkāmukha; Ukkāmukha begot Ukkāmukharāja, Ukkāmukharāja begot Nyagrodha, Nyagrodha begot Sīhahanu, and Sīhahanu was Lion-Cheek. Lion-Cheek begot the three Śuddhas. Droṇodana had two sons, the elder Mahānāma and the younger Aniruddha.

Thus Aniruddha was King Śuddhodana's nephew, the younger son of King Droṇodana, the World-Honored One's cousin, Ānanda's elder cousin, and Rāhula's uncle. He was no ordinary person. The Duke of Zhou once lamented: “I am the son of King Wen, younger brother of King Wu, and uncle of King Cheng. I am not a lowly person under heaven; yet while washing my hair I hold the wet hair up three times, and while eating I spit out the food in my mouth three times, hurrying to honor worthy men. How much more should others do so?”

The Sutra of the Wise and Foolish says that during a famine in the final Dharma of Puṣya Buddha, a pratyekabuddha named Riṣṭa went out seeking alms and returned with an empty bowl. A poor man saw him and was grieved. Asking whether the elder would accept barnyard-millet rice, he immediately offered the meal he himself was about to eat. When the pratyekabuddha had finished, he manifested the eighteen transformations.

Later the poor man went again to gather millet. A rabbit leapt onto his back, clung to him, and turned into a corpse; no one nearby helped remove it. When he reached home after dark and laid the corpse on the ground, it immediately became a golden man. If a finger was pulled off, the finger at once grew back; if a foot was taken, it too grew again. The gold could be used without exhaustion. When evil men or evil kings came to seize it, they saw only a corpse; the poor man himself saw nothing but gold and treasure. Through this, for ninety-one kalpas his results were abundant, and he was titled Freedom from Poverty.

After his birth, his family's property increased day and night. His parents wished to test him. They covered an empty vessel and sent it to him; when it was opened, food of a hundred flavors was already complete inside. Every day twelve thousand people regularly came to his gate, six thousand to borrow and six thousand to repay their principal. After he left home, wherever he went people rejoiced on seeing him. Whatever he needed was as easily obtained as in his own house.

Aniruddha practiced vigorously and did not close his eyes for seven days and nights. Sleep is the eyes' food; after seven days without sleep, his eyes lost their sight. When his physical eyes became blind, the Buddha taught him to seek the divine eye. He fixed his mind on its object, and pure form constituted by the four elements issued from half his head. It could penetrate obstructions and see all things inside and outside, in light and darkness.

He told the Brahmā king that he saw Śākyamuni Buddha's great trichiliocosm as one sees a fruit in the palm of the hand. The Ekottarika Āgama says that within the Buddhadharma the monk Aniruddha was foremost in penetrating and seeing clearly with the divine eye.

After Aniruddha lost his physical sight, the Buddha and the monks often cut and sewed his clothing for him. While the Buddha was dwelling in the Kosala Cave at Śrāvastī, he gathered with eight hundred monks to make Aniruddha's three robes. The Buddha himself stretched out the cloth, while the monks divided the work of cutting and sewing; the robes were completed in one day. The Buddha then extensively taught how those who have left home receive robes and live and move together in harmony, causing immeasurable people to attain the path.

In terms of the teaching, generating the divine eye in reliance on dhyāna-concentration belongs to ordinary people and outsiders; generating it in reliance on uncontaminated circumstantial dhyāna is the meaning of the Tripiṭaka Teaching. Generating practices from the uncontaminated wisdom that directly realizes dharmas, then generating the divine eye from those practices, is the meaning of the Shared Teaching. Generating the physical eye from dispersed goodness, the divine eye from dhyāna-concentration, the wisdom eye from the ultimate truth, the Dharma eye from the conventional truth, and the buddha eye from the middle path is the meaning of the Distinct Teaching. Generating the divine eye from the true mark, so that the divine eye is immediately the buddha eye, is the meaning of the Perfect Teaching.

It can also be explained in terms of cultivation. Cultivating the physical eye through dispersed goodness and the divine eye through dhyāna-concentration belongs to the Tripiṭaka Teaching. Cultivating the physical and divine eyes together through emptiness belongs to the Shared Teaching. Cultivating in sequence the physical eye, divine eye, wisdom eye, Dharma eye, and buddha eye belongs to the Distinct Teaching. Cultivating the five eyes without sequence belongs to the Perfect Teaching.

In terms of Origin and Trace, he originally abides in the true divine eye of the true mark and does not see any buddha land through dual characteristics. Extending a trace, he manifests only the divine eye issuing from half his head.

In terms of contemplating the mind, contemplating the wholesome mind born of causes and conditions is the physical eye; contemplating the mind born of causes and conditions as empty is the divine eye; contemplating it as provisional is the Dharma eye; and its being immediately the middle is the buddha eye [and so forth].

21. Kapphiṇa: The Chamber Constellation and Lodging

“Kapphiṇa” is translated as the Chamber Constellation. His parents prayed to the star of the Chamber Mansion and obtained this son, so they named him after the star. This is a name derived from his birth-body.

When this monk first left home, he had not yet seen the Buddha and was traveling toward the place where the Buddha dwelled. Meeting rain at night, he sought lodging in a potter's room and made a seat from grass. A little later another monk also came seeking shelter. The monk who had arrived first pushed the grass seat toward the newcomer and sat on the ground himself. At midnight they conversed. The later arrival asked where he was going, and he said he was seeking the Buddha. The later monk then taught him the Dharma; the words can be found in the Āgamas. On hearing them, he suddenly awakened and attained the path. The later monk was the Buddha himself.

He shared one room with the Buddha and thereby saw the Dharma body. He was therefore named Kapphiṇa from the place where he attained the path. The heavenly king Vaiśravaṇa followed Kapphiṇa holding a jeweled parasol. Vaiśravaṇa is lord of the constellations; once their lord came to serve him, the constellations likewise followed.

This monk was also skilled in observing the constellations and understood their diagrams, so he was further named from his own knowledge. The Ekottarika Āgama says that within the Buddhadharma the monk Kapphiṇa was foremost in knowing the constellations, sun, and moon.

In terms of the teaching, analyzing and breaking apart the house of faculties and objects and dwelling with the Buddha in the house of ultimate truth is the meaning of the Tripiṭaka Teaching. Directly realizing faculties and objects and immediately dwelling with the Tathāgata in the house of ultimate truth is the meaning of the Shared Teaching. Distinguishing every house of faculties and objects throughout the ten Dharma realms and seeing the Buddha within them is the meaning of the Distinct Teaching. Seeing every house and every buddha within the house of a single faculty and object is the meaning of the Perfect Teaching.

In terms of Origin and Trace, he originally dwells with the Tathāgata in the true mark. Extending a trace, he manifests only the various meanings of chambers and constellations.

In terms of contemplating the mind, contemplate the house of the five aggregates: analyzing it as empty is lodging with the transformation buddha; contemplating the house of the five aggregates as immediately provisional is lodging with the reward buddha; contemplating it as immediately the middle is lodging with the Dharma buddha [and so forth].

[At this point the second part of fascicle one ends in the received edition. The first part of fascicle two follows, still headed “Spoken by the Great Master Tiantai Zhizhe.”]

22. Gavāṃpati: Cow-Chewing and Delight in Dwelling in Heaven

“Gavāṃpati” is translated as Cow-Chewing. The Sutra of Immeasurable Life calls him Ox King, while the Ekottarika Āgama calls him Ox-Track. For five hundred past lives he had been an ox king. After oxen eat, they always chew with empty mouths. Because his residual karmic result had not yet been exhausted, he still constantly smacked his lips and chewed in this life, and people called him Cow-Chewing.

In the past there were five hundred geese, one of which regularly gathered flowers and fruit to offer to the goose king. Later, during a summer retreat when the Buddha accepted King Agnidatta's offering, five hundred monks had nothing to eat but horse-barley. Gavāṃpati alone remained in the Śirīṣa Garden in heaven, receiving offerings from the heavenly king. The Ekottarika Āgama says that the monk Ox-Track was foremost in enjoying residence in heaven and disliking the human world.

His delight in heaven accords with his own desire for pleasure and belongs to the worldly siddhānta. His ability to receive heavenly offerings results from the merit of formerly making offerings to the goose king and belongs to the individual siddhānta. His dwelling in heaven to prevent people's ridicule belongs to the counteractive siddhānta. The devas' not mocking him belongs to the siddhānta of the ultimate meaning [and so forth].

It is also said that worldly people see only outward form and do not know inner virtue; mocking an arhat brings demerit. To prevent people from creating demerit through ridicule, he always dwelled in heaven. The devas knew his virtue and did not mock his appearance, so he remained there.

After the Buddha entered cessation, Kāśyapa gathered one thousand great arhats and sent a junior monk to invite Gavāṃpati. Gavāṃpati asked where the Buddha and his preceptor were. The messenger answered that both had entered cessation. Gavāṃpati then said, “When the Buddha appeared in the world, I appeared in the world. While the Buddha abided in the world, I abided in the world. Now that the Buddha has entered cessation, I too enter cessation.” Four streams of water immediately flowed toward Mahākāśyapa, and a verse sounded from the water [and so forth]. Its meaning was: now that the great elephant has departed, the elephant calf should follow; since the World-Honored One and my preceptor have both entered cessation, why should I remain here? This also belongs to the ultimate meaning.

In terms of the teaching, dwelling in a heavenly garden manifests good, while chewing like an ox bodily manifests evil: this is the meaning of the Tripiṭaka Teaching. Attaining the path in a body that chews like an ox shows that evil is not truly evil, while chewing even when dwelling in a heavenly garden shows that good is not truly good: this is the meaning of the Shared Teaching. Manifesting good and evil within and beyond the realms is the meaning of the Distinct Teaching. Manifesting that good and evil are both the true mark is the meaning of the Perfect Teaching.

In terms of Origin and Trace, he originally abides in the four fearlessnesses and rests with the noble lord, like an ox king dwelling in the heaven of the ultimate meaning. Extending a trace, he manifests ox-chewing and delight in dwelling in heaven.

In terms of contemplating the mind, contemplate the principle of the middle path within mind-nature: its tread is stable, level, and correct, while its speed is swift as the wind. This is contemplation of the ox king.

23. Revata: Constellation, Provisional Combination, and Constantly Making a Sound

“Revata,” also rendered Revata, is translated as Constellation or Chamber Constellation and also as Provisional Combination. The Sutra of Mañjuśrī's Questions calls him Constantly Making a Sound. His parents prayed to the stars for a son, and after obtaining him named him after the constellation. Even after leaving home, he continued to use his original name.

For the meaning “provisional combination,” some cite an explanation from the Treatise on the Great Perfection of Wisdom. He once lodged in an empty pavilion and saw two ghosts fighting over a corpse. They demanded that he decide whose it was. Whether he answered according to principle or against it, he could not avoid being harmed, so he simply reported what he had actually seen. The larger ghost immediately tore off his hands and feet; the smaller ghost took hands and feet from the corpse and fitted them onto him. The two ghosts finished eating the corpse, wiped their mouths, and departed.

Revata was consequently distressed and did not know whose body he now had. Hence Provisional Combination. “Constantly Making a Sound” means that he remained in doubt: if this was his own original body, he had seen with his own eyes that its hands and feet were torn off; if it was another's body, why did it follow him when he walked or stayed? He asked everyone he met, “Have you seen my body?” Hence Constantly Making a Sound.

The Saṅgha thought that this person would be easy to deliver and told him, “Your body was originally another person's remains and never belonged to you.” Upon hearing this, he attained the path [and so forth]. The Ekottarika Āgama says that the monk Revata was foremost in seated meditation and concentration with a mind free of inversion and distraction.

In terms of the teaching, analyzing the five aggregates and destroying attachment to them as one's possession is the meaning of the Tripiṭaka Teaching. Directly realizing that the five aggregates have never been one's possession is the meaning of the Shared Teaching. Distinguishing that the five aggregates throughout the ten Dharma realms are none one's own possession is the meaning of the Distinct Teaching. Penetrating that the five aggregates are neither one's own possession nor another's and seeing the true mark through the five aggregates is the meaning of the Perfect Teaching.

In terms of Origin and Trace, he originally abides in the samādhi of the sun and constellations. Extending a trace, he manifests this name.

In terms of contemplating the mind, contemplate the mind recollecting the Buddha and see the numerous buddhas of the ten directions, as though looking up at the multitude of stars at night [and so forth].

24. Pilindavatsa: Residual Habit

“Pilindavatsa” is translated as Residual Habit. For five hundred past lives he had been a brahman, and the residual habit of haughtiness remained. When crossing the Ganges he scolded the river goddess, saying, “Little slave-girl, stop the current!” The goddess divided the river into two streams.

The river goddess complained before the Buddha, who instructed Pilindavatsa to apologize. Joining his palms, he said, “Little slave-girl, do not be angry.” The assembly laughed because even while repenting he was still insulting her. The Buddha said that this was only a habit from the past and that inwardly he had no haughtiness. The Ekottarika Āgama says that the monk Vatsa was foremost in enduring hard sitting beneath trees without avoiding wind and rain.

In terms of the teaching, extinguishing haughtiness and having no conceit is the meaning of the Tripiṭaka Teaching. Haughtiness being immediately no conceit is the meaning of the Shared Teaching. Distinguishing every high and low throughout the ten Dharma realms is the meaning of the Distinct Teaching. Possessing the eight masteries of self and every Buddhadharma is the meaning of the Perfect Teaching.

In terms of Origin and Trace, he originally abides in the eight masteries of the self of permanence, pleasure, self, and purity and also possesses the subtle Brahmā voice. Extending a trace, he manifests only a conceited mind and harsh speech.

In terms of contemplating the mind, contemplate coarse, violent speech and gentle speech as both finally returning to the ultimate meaning [and so forth].

25. Bakkula: Fine Appearance, Long Life, Freedom from Illness, and Secluded Dwelling

“Bakkula” is translated as Fine Appearance. It is also translated as Imposing Form, Great Plumpness, Soft Sack, Rough and Stout, or Selling Disposition. Because his appearance was upright and handsome, however, he is called Fine Appearance. He lived to one hundred and sixty years of age, was never ill, and did not die prematurely. He received the result of surviving five threats to his life.

His stepmother once put him into a hot griddle, into a cooking pot, and into water. He was swallowed by a fish and cut open with a knife, yet he did not die. Because in the past he had observed the precept against killing, for ninety-one kalpas his life was never cut short. Because he had once donated a single harītakī fruit to the Saṅgha, his body was always free of illness. He could maintain one precept and adorn it with the other four, resolutely never violating it. Even when encountering fire and water he did not abandon the precept. Others might receive the five precepts but frequently transgressed them [and so forth].

He delighted in quietude, regularly dwelled in secluded places, and disliked being among crowds. His eyes did not enjoy seeing black, yellow, and other colors; his ears did not enjoy hearing worldly sounds; his nose did not smell worldly fragrances or odors; his tongue never spoke even one or two unnecessary sentences for others; and his mind constantly abided in dhyāna-concentration without distraction. Even the stupa containing his relics after death delighted in seclusion and quiet.

King Aśoka venerated the stupas of the arhats. When he reached Bakkula's stupa, he spoke a verse meaning: although you personally cured yourself of ignorance, you brought little benefit to the world. He therefore offered only twenty cowrie shells. The Ekottarika Āgama says that the single coin and cowries he donated all flew from the stupa and landed at the king's feet. His ministers were astonished and only then understood that Bakkula possessed so few desires and so delighted in quiet that even his relic stupa retained this power. The Ekottarika Āgama also says that Bakkula was foremost in exceptionally long life without ever dying prematurely and in constant delight in secluded dwelling away from crowds.

In terms of the teaching, extinguishing commotion and entering the ultimate truth is the quiet of the Tripiṭaka Teaching. Entering the ultimate truth amid commotion itself is the quiet of the Shared Teaching. Leaving the two extremes and entering the middle path is the quiet of the Distinct Teaching. Being amid the two extremes and immediately in the middle path is the quiet of the Perfect Teaching.

In terms of Origin, he originally abides in the great concentration of quiescent cessation. Long life represents permanence, freedom from illness represents pleasure, not dying prematurely represents self, and quiet represents purity. Abiding in the origin of these four virtues, he extends a trace manifesting the quietude of the six faculties.

In terms of contemplating the mind, the middle path of mind-nature is immediately empty, immediately provisional, and immediately the middle. This is contemplation of permanence, pleasure, self, and purity.

26. Mahākauṣṭhila: Great Knees, Long Claws, and the Four Eloquences

“Mahākauṣṭhila” is translated as Great Knees. He was Śāriputra's maternal uncle. In the past he always defeated his elder sister in debate, but after she became pregnant he could no longer win. He therefore knew that the fetus's wisdom was expressing itself through the mother. If it possessed such eloquence even then, how much more after birth? [And so forth.]

He immediately left home for southern India and studied eighteen great scriptures. People of the time mocked him: “These texts are difficult to master over many lifetimes. How could you finish them in one?” He lamented, “At home I lost to my sister; after leaving, I am slighted by others.” He therefore vowed to study without rest. He had no time even to cut his nails, and people called him the Long-Clawed Brahmacārin.

Returning home after completing his studies, he asked where his nephew was. People said that Śāriputra had become the Buddha's disciple. He immediately grew extremely proud, thinking that his nephew's fame had shaken the five regions of India when he was only eight. What art of the path could that ascetic possess, to lure away his sister's son? He went directly before the Buddha and thought for a long time, yet could find no single dharma on which to base an argument.

He said to the Buddha, “I accept no dharma whatsoever. To accept is to abide. When I say that I accept no dharma, I mean that I can refute every dharma so that not one can stand.” The Buddha asked, “Do you accept this view of yours?” He immediately fell into two defeats. If he accepted his own view, he contradicted his earlier claim to accept nothing. If he did not accept even his own view, he had no ground from which to defeat the Buddha. He could only lower his head, and at once attained the pure Dharma eye. Śāriputra stood nearby fanning the Buddha; hearing his uncle debate the Buddha, he instead realized arhatship.

The Ekottarika Āgama says that Kauṣṭhila was foremost in attaining the four eloquences and answering whenever challenged. Virūḍhaka, heavenly king of the south, regularly followed and served him.

In terms of the teaching, externally mastering the four Vedas and internally mastering the Tripiṭaka is the fourfold eloquence of the Tripiṭaka Teaching. “I have attained nothing, and therefore my eloquence is like this” is the eloquence of the Shared Teaching. Names and meanings pervading the ten Dharma realms is the eloquence of the Distinct Teaching. Relying on the true mark and pervading every kind of eloquence is the eloquence of the Perfect Teaching.

In terms of Origin, he originally abides in the secret of speech and the inconceivable teaching and transformation performed by the wheel of speech, possessing great concentration and great wisdom. Extending a trace, he manifests great knees.

In terms of contemplating the mind, contemplating mind as immediately empty is concentration, while contemplating it as immediately provisional is wisdom. One adorns one's own mind with concentration and wisdom [and so forth].

27. Nanda: Wholesome Joy

“Nanda,” also called Nanda the Cowherd, is translated as Wholesome Joy or Delighted Pleasure. King Śuddhodana compelled one hundred thousand Śākyans to leave home, and Nanda was among them. One teacher says that this is Upananda mentioned in the Vinaya.

In terms of the teaching, circumstantial joy together with no joy in principle is the meaning of the Tripiṭaka Teaching. Circumstantial joy being immediately joy in principle is the meaning of the Shared Teaching. The Ground of Joy is the meaning of the Distinct Teaching. The Abode of Joy is the meaning of the Perfect Teaching.

In terms of Origin, he originally abides in the true limit, neither joyful nor not joyful. Extending a trace, he is named Joy.

In terms of contemplating the mind, contemplative mind corresponds by resemblance with true principle, and so this is called the contemplation of joy.

28. Sundarananda: Handsome Appearance, Love for His Wife, and Leaving Home

“Sundara” is translated as Well-Loved or Handsome. The meaning of “Nanda” is as above, and his lineage is explained in the Aniruddha passage. He was born on the ninth day of the fourth month and stood only four finger-widths shorter than the Buddha. His bearing was erect and outstanding, unlike that of worldly people. When he entered an assembly, those who did not know him thought that the Buddha had arrived.

The Mahīśāsaka Vinaya says that in Magadha there was a naked outsider of exceptional intelligence whom the people called a wise man and a seer. He debated Śāriputra, was finally defeated in both reasoning and words, produced a wholesome mind, and wished to leave home within the Buddhadharma. Seeing Nanda's tall and handsome appearance, he exclaimed, “The wisdom of a short monk is already unfathomable. How much more must this imposing great man possess!” Nanda then delivered him into the homeless life.

Nanda's wife was named Sundarī and was exceptionally beautiful. Husband and wife were never apart when eating or resting. When the Buddha and Ānanda came to his house seeking alms, the couple were eating in an upper chamber. Nanda immediately rose to receive the Buddha. His wife admonished him, “You must return before I have finished eating.”

Nanda told the Buddha that he belonged to the lineage of wheel-turning kings and asked how he could personally perform so lowly a task, yet still filled the Buddha's bowl with food. The Buddha at once returned to Nyagrodha Grove and told Ānanda to have Nanda bring the food. Ānanda conveyed the Buddha's intent, and Nanda had no choice but to deliver the meal. The Buddha then ordered someone to shave his head. Nanda raised his fist and threatened the barber: “Do not bring a knife near the crown of the king of Jambudvīpa!” But under the Buddha's firm command he could not prevent it and had to be shaved.

The next day the Buddha and five hundred monks left to accept an invitation. Nanda asked to remain and guard the monastery, but inwardly intended to flee. The Buddha instructed him to close the doors and sweep the ground. When he closed the south door, the north door opened; when he swept this side clean, the other side became dirty. Fearing that the Buddha would return, he finally left the monastery and fled.

On the way home he met the Buddha and hid behind a tree. The tree rose into the air, leaving him nowhere to conceal himself. The Buddha saw him, called him back, and asked why he had left. Nanda replied that when he parted from his wife the previous day, she had said she would wait for him to return before finishing her meal. Missing his wife, he had fled. The Buddha then took him on a journey through heaven and hell [and so forth]. This Nanda is therefore distinguished by his wife's name.

In terms of the teaching, there is Dharma joy in the conventional truth and no joy in the ultimate truth: this is the Tripiṭaka Teaching. Conventional joy being immediately ultimate joy is the Shared Teaching. Opening conventional Dharma joy and middle-path Dharma joy from shared Dharma joy is the Distinct Teaching. Joy that is immediately shared and possesses every Dharma joy is the Perfect Teaching.

Origin and Trace and contemplating the mind can both be understood by analogy with the preceding Nanda [and so forth].

29. Pūrṇa Maitrāyaṇīputra: Fulfilled Vow, Son of Compassion, and Foremost in Teaching the Dharma

“Pūrṇa” is translated as Fulfilled Vow, “Maitra” as Compassion, and “yaṇī” indicates a woman. His father prayed to Brahmā for a son beside the Full River just when its waters were brimming. He also dreamed that a vessel of the seven treasures, filled with precious objects, entered the mother's womb. She became pregnant, the father's wish was fulfilled, and everything he sought accorded with his desire. Hence the name Fulfilled Vow.

His mother was named Maitrāyaṇī, translated as Compassionate Conduct and also as Knowledge. One section of the four Vedas was called Maitrāyaṇī. His mother could recite this section and therefore took it as her name. Yaṇī is a general designation for a woman just as na is a general designation for a man. Because he was born to the woman Compassion, he is called Son of Compassion.

The Ekottarika Āgama records him saying of himself: “My father is named Full, my mother Compassion; those cultivating the holy life call me Son of Full and Compassionate.” His name thus derives from causes and conditions on both his father's and mother's sides. He was thoroughly acquainted with scriptures both internal and external; there was nothing he did not know. Because his knowledge was complete, he was also named Full.

The Ekottarika Āgama says that the Son of Fulfilled Vow was foremost in skillfully explaining at length and distinguishing meanings. A later passage of this sutra also says that he was foremost among those who taught the Dharma. “Foremost” precisely reveals that his teaching of the Dharma was complete.

He wished to return to his own country to benefit beings. The Buddha told him that the people of that country had evil dispositions and asked how he would respond. He said that he would practice patient endurance: if someone insulted him, he would be grateful that the person had not struck him with a fist; if struck by a fist, grateful that he had not been beaten with a wooden staff; if beaten with a staff, grateful that he had not been wounded with a blade; if wounded with a blade, grateful that he could leave behind the poisonous vessel of the five aggregates. This is the completion of the practice of patience, and so he is named Full.

In the Sutra of the Simile of the Seven Carriages, the greatly wise Śāriputra praised him, saying that all who cultivated the holy life should wrap their robes around their heads and carry him upon their crowns, and that everyone who saw him obtained great benefit. This is the completion of praise, and so he is named Full.

In terms of the teaching, diligently analyzing all dharmas and completing what had to be done is fulfillment of the vow in the Tripiṭaka Teaching. Directly realizing that all is immediately empty and realizing within the Dharma of emptiness is fulfillment of the vow in the Shared Teaching. Complete possession of the Dharma eye is fulfillment of the vow in the Distinct Teaching. Abiding in the secret treasury is fulfillment of the vow in the Perfect Teaching.

In terms of Origin and Trace, his original vow was fulfilled long ago. Extending a trace, he manifests being foremost in teaching the Dharma and serves beings as a good spiritual friend.

In terms of contemplating the mind, this can be understood by relying on the contemplations in the Great Calming and Contemplation of good spiritual friends as persons, practices, principles, and so forth.

30. Subhūti: Born of Emptiness, Wholesome Karma, and Wholesome Fortune

“Subhūti” is translated as Born of Emptiness. When he was born, the granaries, bamboo baskets, chests, boxes, and vessels in his house all became empty. His family consulted a diviner, who said this was an auspicious sign. Because he was born in connection with emptiness, his style-name was Born of Emptiness. An empty omen manifested through the dependent result of the household vessels was used to name the body that was the direct result; because dependent and direct results were both auspicious, he was called Born of Emptiness.

He constantly cultivated the practice of emptiness, so he was also named Wholesome Karma. Those who made offerings to him could receive the result in this very life, so he was further named Wholesome Fortune. He regularly delighted in wandering and resting in quiet places such as secluded groves and stone caves. All his practices took emptiness as their basis. He constantly entered the concentration of emptiness, abided in the samādhi free of contention, delighted in teaching the Dharma of emptiness, and distinguished the meaning of emptiness in every exposition and discussion.

Everywhere he protected beings and did not allow others to create obstructions on his account. If others disliked his walking, he stopped; if they disliked his staying, he departed.

When the Buddha descended from Trāyastriṃśa Heaven, people throughout the country converged upon him like spokes at the hub of a wheel, contending to advance and bow at his feet. Subhūti instead sat upright in a stone chamber, recollecting the emptiness of all dharmas: form is not the Buddha, extending through consciousness is not the Buddha; the eye is not the Buddha, extending through the mind is not the Buddha. He thereby suddenly awakened to the path.

The Buddha told Utpalavarṇā Bhikṣuṇī, “You were not the first to venerate the Buddha. You venerated only the form body; Subhūti had already seen the Dharma body.”

In terms of the teaching, there is the arising of wisdom that extinguishes form to attain emptiness, and the arising of wisdom that directly realizes form as immediately empty. Empty wisdom arises from existent wisdom, conventional wisdom from empty wisdom, and middle wisdom from conventional wisdom. Born of Emptiness is existent wisdom; what is explained here is instead the arising of complete empty wisdom.

In terms of Origin, he originally abides in the Dharma body of the true mark. Extending a trace, he manifests birth upon seeing emptiness.

In terms of contemplating the mind, mind is not inside, outside, or between, nor does it inherently exist of itself. This is contemplating the Dharma body through mind.

31. Ānanda: Joy, Freedom from Defilement, Great Learning, and Upholding the Teaching

“Ānanda” is translated as Joy and also as Freedom from Defilement. King Śuddhodana had originally hoped that the crown prince would become a golden-wheel king, dominate the four directions, and glorify the clan. The crown prince suddenly abandoned his country and royal station, and the king was so distressed that he nearly ceased breathing. Māra came to deceive him, saying that the prince had died. Weeping, the king said that since the prediction of the seer Asita had proved false, none of the earlier auspicious signs had been fulfilled.

Before long a deity came with another report, saying that the crown prince had become a buddha. While the king still doubted, reliable news immediately arrived: heaven and earth had shaken greatly the previous night, and the crown prince had attained buddhahood. The king rejoiced greatly. At that same time King Śuklodana reported the birth of his own son. Everyone throughout the country rejoiced, so the child was named Joy. This was the name given by his parents.

Ānanda was handsome, and everyone rejoiced on seeing him. The Buddha therefore ordered him to wear a robe covering his shoulders. A woman brought her child to a well. On seeing Ānanda, she could not take her eyes from him and unknowingly tied the well-rope around the child's neck.

The Madhyama Āgama says that whether members of the fourfold assembly heard Ānanda teach the Dharma at length or briefly, none failed to rejoice. When Ānanda prepared to answer a question, he first cleared his throat softly, and the assembly rejoiced even on hearing this. Even if the fourfold assembly merely watched him in silence—watched him walk, stand, sit, or lie down; watched him direct and arrange things, advance and retreat, move and turn—they all rejoiced.

Ānanda was born on the eighth day of the fourth month, the day the Buddha attained the path, and served the Buddha for twenty-five years. According to this calculation, the Buddha was then fifty-five and Ānanda twenty-five. When the Buddha sought an attendant, five hundred people all asked to serve, as described above. The assembly urged Ānanda to accept; he complied, and all five hundred rejoiced greatly.

Maudgalyāyana stated three requests on Ānanda's behalf. First, that he not receive the Buddha's old, worn robes. Second, that he not receive leftover food obtained by the Buddha. The Buddha said that Ānanda made these two requests because he foresaw that people in later ages might criticize him. Third, for the benefit of his own practice, he requested permission to enter and leave freely when needed without being restricted to fixed times. The Buddha confirmed and granted the requests.

The Buddha said that Ānanda surpassed the attendants of past buddhas. The attendants of past buddhas understood only after a buddha had spoken. Now, before the Buddha even opened his mouth, Ānanda already understood the Tathāgata's intent and knew what was and was not needed. The Buddha therefore entrusted the Dharma to Ānanda, and the Tathāgata too rejoiced.

The four heavenly kings each offered the Buddha a bowl. The Buddha stacked the four bowls and pressed them into one, while four rims remained clearly visible. This bowl was extremely heavy, yet Ānanda joyfully carried it and never tired.

The seventh fascicle of the Madhyama Āgama says that Ānanda served the Buddha for twenty-five years and could recite all eighty thousand skandhakas that he heard. He forgot none of them and never needed to ask about a single sentence twice. This is joy produced by the power of recollection.

Ānanda followed the Buddha into heavenly palaces, the human world, and dragon palaces. When he saw heavenly women, human women, and dragon women, his mind was never defiled. Although residual delusions of thought had not yet been completely severed, he could face everything without defilement. There was also no deva, human, dragon, or spirit that did not delight in him.

After the Buddha entered cessation, Ānanda sat upon the lion throne. Kāśyapa and the assembly praised him: his face was like the pure full moon, his eyes like blue lotuses; all the waters of the ocean of the Buddhadharma had flowed into Ānanda's mind.

Ānanda decided to enter nirvāṇa while seated, but thought: if I remain on one shore, the Licchavis will resent me; if I go to the other shore, King Ajātaśatru will resent me. He therefore entered the swift-wind samādhi in the middle of the Ganges and divided his body into four portions: one for the devas, one for the dragons, one for Vaiśālī, and one for Ajātaśatru.

King Aśoka venerated Ānanda's stupa, offered ten million taels of gold, and praised him in verse: Ānanda could gather and uphold the Buddha's Dharma body and cause the true Dharma to abide long through the Dharma lamp. His power of recollection was vast enough to receive the ocean of the Buddha's wisdom, so the finest offering should be established. He remembered and upheld his great learning, subtle words flowed from his mouth, and he was praised by the World-Honored One and revered and loved by devas and humans.

The Ekottarika Āgama says that Ānanda was foremost in knowing the proper time, understanding affairs so that he encountered no doubt or difficulty wherever he went, remembering without forgetting, possessing broad and penetrating learning, and being capable of receiving and upholding the Buddhadharma.

In terms of the teaching, Ānanda Joy represents the Tripiṭaka Teaching; Ānanda the Worthy represents the Shared Teaching; Ānanda the Repository represents the Distinct Teaching; and Ānanda the Ocean represents the Perfect Teaching.

In terms of Origin and Trace, he originally abides in neither joy nor nonjoy. His Dharma body is like empty space and his wisdom like cloud and rain; he can both receive and uphold and encompass and contain. Extending a trace, he is named Joy.

In terms of contemplating the mind, contemplative mind corresponding by resemblance with immediate emptiness, immediate provisionality, and the immediate middle is the joy of contemplating the mind. The same applies through correspondence with true contemplation [and so forth].

32. Rāhula: Ten Causes and Conditions of Covering Obstruction

“Rāhula” is translated as Covering Obstruction. First, in a past life he once blocked a mouse-hole and also failed for six days to go see a brahman. Because of this cause and condition, he is named Covering Obstruction.

Second, the crown prince asked to leave home, but his father the king did not permit it. The prince pleaded repeatedly. The king said that he would allow him to leave home only if he had a son. The bodhisattva pointed at the consort's abdomen and said, “Six years from now, you will give birth to a boy.” Rāhula remained in the womb for six years, and so he is named Covering Obstruction.

Third, Paramārtha Tripiṭaka said that Rāhu was originally the name of an asura who could cover the sun and moon with his hand, so the translated meaning should be Obstructing the Moon. The Buddha said, “My Dharma is like the moon. This child obstructs me from leaving home at once. Life after life he obstructs me, and life after life I am able to relinquish him. Hence the name Covering Obstruction.”

Fourth, after the Buddha left home, Yaśodharā was pregnant. All the Śākyans became angry, questioned how she could be pregnant, and wished to punish and kill her. Her ill repute spread along every road. Gopā, the jeweled woman, bore witness for her, but could only lessen the suspicion and slander somewhat.

Yaśodharā then had a fire pit dug and made a great vow: “If I have done what is contrary to principle, may mother and child perish together. If this is truly the crown prince's child, may the gods bear witness for me!” Holding the child, she cast herself into the fire pit. The pit immediately became a pool, and a lotus supported mother and child. Only then did the king and countrymen cease to doubt. Because pregnancy produced suspicion and slander, he is named Covering Obstruction.

Fifth, after the Buddha returned to his country, Yaśodharā had Rāhula offer a ball of delight to the Buddha. Although Rāhula was very young, he walked directly through the assembly to the Buddha and handed him the ball. Yaśodharā thereby put an end to the slander. Because the slander arose from having a son, he is named Covering Obstruction.

Sixth, his grandfather King Śuddhodana rejoiced greatly, thinking that although he had lost a son, he had gained a grandson. If the grandson became a golden-wheel king, what cause for regret would remain? He looked forward to Rāhula's growing up and hoped that the numinous treasures of a wheel-turning king would appear. The Buddha, however, asked that Rāhula be allowed to leave home. The father king did not consent, and Yaśodharā took the child to a high tower. Maudgalyāyana flew through the air and carried him away. The Buddha delivered him into the homeless life and gave him to Śāriputra as a disciple. When Rāhula left home, the royal succession was also lost, and so he is named Covering Obstruction.

Seventh, while still a novice, Rāhula enjoyed telling lies. When kings, ministers, brahmans, and householders came seeking the Buddha, he always answered that the Buddha was absent, preventing immeasurable people from seeing him. This was obstructing others. The Buddha therefore reproached him for false speech.

Once, when the Buddha returned from a journey, he instructed Rāhula to wash his feet. Afterward the Buddha kicked the basin with his foot, turning it face down three times and face up three times. Finally he left it overturned on the ground and told Rāhula to pour water into it. Rāhula said that because the basin was overturned, it could not hold water. The Buddha said, “You are like an overturned basin. The water of the Buddhadharma cannot remain in your mind. From now on you should speak truthfully and never speak falsely.”

Eighth, Rāhula later practiced the path vigorously but still could not realize it, so he went to ask the Buddha. The Buddha asked whether he had ever explained the five aggregates to others. He answered no. The Buddha instructed him first to explain them to others. When he had done so and returned, the Buddha asked whether he had taught the twelve sense fields and eighteen elements. He proclaimed each of them to others in turn. Teaching the Dharma is the gate to attaining the path; if one wishes to attain the path, one should first teach the Dharma to others. After he had extensively taught the Dharma, he attained the path. Because he had previously failed to attain it, he is named Covering Obstruction.

Ninth, once he had attained the path, his delusions of views and craving were both exhausted, and birth in the three realms had ended. Because he could obstruct and sever views and craving and birth in the three realms, he was still named Covering Obstruction.

Tenth, once birth in the three realms was exhausted, worldly vow-karma could no longer draw him into rebirth, and so he is named Covering Obstruction. On the other hand, the Buddha commanded four great arhats not to enter cessation but to wait until the Buddhadharma had entirely disappeared. Rāhula has therefore remained until the present and has not yet entered nirvāṇa without remainder. This is also obstructing entry into the remainderless, and so he is named Covering Obstruction [and so forth].

In terms of the teaching, using the truth of the path attained through analyzing dharmas to obstruct and sever the four abiding afflictions is the meaning of the Tripiṭaka Teaching. Using the truth of the path attained through directly realizing dharmas to obstruct and sever the four abodes is the meaning of the Shared Teaching. Using the three sequential wisdoms to obstruct and sever the five abodes is the meaning of the Distinct Teaching. Using the three wisdoms in a single mind to obstruct and sever the five abodes is the meaning of the Perfect Teaching.

In terms of Origin and Trace, he originally abides in the middle path and blocks the two extremes. Eight kinds of obstruction are used to obstruct the extreme of nirvāṇa, one kind to obstruct the extreme of birth and death, and another neither obstructs birth and death nor nirvāṇa but obstructs abiding in nirvāṇa without remainder.

Contemplating the mind can be understood according to the preceding examples [and so forth].

33. Conclusion: Known and Recognized by the Assembly

The sixth division concludes the passage. Concerning “such ones, known and recognized by the assembly,” one interpretation holds that knowing is itself recognizing. Another says that hearing a name is knowing and seeing a form is recognizing. Yet another reverses them: seeing a form is knowing and seeing a person's mind is recognizing.

In terms of Origin and Trace, these elders in their original grounds serve beings as good spiritual friends of the full-character teaching; extending traces, they serve as good spiritual friends of the half-character teaching [and so forth].

Good spiritual friends in contemplative practice can be understood according to the explanation in the Great Calming and Contemplation.

All twenty-one elders possess a multitude of practices. Why, then, is only one virtue cited for each? The scripture lists twenty-one names, but the treatise begins by saying that these disciples all possess many practices and are merely named according to one virtue. This raises the most important question of the whole passage. If what each person possesses is not limited to one virtue, why not state their virtues in full? Why instead allow one quality—wisdom, supernormal power, ascetic practice, the divine eye, teaching the Dharma—to stand out?

The answer lies not in compiling a complete catalogue of virtues for every elder but in the words “drawing those with partial inclinations.” Beings delight in different things: some enter through wisdom, some through austerity, others through supernormal power, eloquence, stillness, or learning. A name first brings one approachable virtue before the eyes, allowing people of different inclinations to find an entrance. Although the entrance is partial, the path entered is not thereby incomplete. The passage makes the twenty-one names into twenty-one doors, then uses the fourfold interpretation to open each door successively through person, teaching, original identity, and present mind.

1. Does Naming One Virtue Reduce a Person to One Ability?

If “particular virtue” is read as meaning that a person can do only one thing, the list of names becomes a ranking of abilities. The treatise blocks this reading at once with “all possess a multitude of practices.” “Particular” does not mean that an elder lacks other virtues. It means only which aspect beings first see. Śāriputra's renown for wisdom does not mean that he lacks supernormal power; Maudgalyāyana's renown for supernormal power does not mean that he lacks wisdom. The virtue named is an interface of guidance, not a boundary on ability.

This also explains why the general framework cites three groups who follow together: seniority, profound and incisive wisdom, and great supernormal power. Virtue not only marks an individual; it also forms affinities through which groups draw near. Beings first approach through correspondence and then enter complete practice through the virtue they approach. A name is thus not a static label but the first meeting of stimulus and response.

The fourfold interpretation established after the listing further confirms that a name cannot be treated merely as an etymological gloss. If the only question were how to translate an Indic name, the discussion could end when its meaning was given. Instead, the treatise asks: through what causes and conditions was the name established? How does the same virtue become a contemplative Dharma? How does the elder's original abode connect with what is presently manifested? How does the reader return what has been heard to the mind? Once a name enters these four questions, it becomes a path rather than a designation.

2. If the Fourfold Interpretation Is the General Framework, Why Are the Accounts Unequal in Length?

The treatise says that every arhat can be explained through the fourfold interpretation, yet the actual accounts differ greatly in length. Kauṇḍinya, Mahākāśyapa, Śāriputra, and Maudgalyāyana receive extensive treatment, while Nanda and others are concluded in only a few sentences. This does not mean the framework has failed. The fourfold interpretation is meant to unfold according to the virtue singled out.

Causes and conditions first preserve the texture of life carried by a name. Surname, parents, former vow, sequence of attainment, conduct, and inherited accounts are all set out at this level. Interpretation in terms of the teaching does not leave the person behind to construct an abstract taxonomy. It takes hold of the inner verb of the virtue: how Kauṇḍinya's “knowing” becomes contemplation of nonarising; how Kāśyapa's ascetic practice becomes shaking off; how Śāriputra's wisdom unfolds; how Maudgalyāyana's supernormal power reaches the true mark.

Origin and Trace then ask whether the one virtue visible before us is already the whole. The elders' original abodes are vast; to guide beings they manifest one name and practice. Trace is not a false shell but the manner in which original virtue becomes encounterable by beings. Interpretation through contemplating the mind finally keeps readers from merely admiring others in biographies and turns nonarising, shaking off, wisdom, supernormal power, eloquence, the divine eye, and stillness into gates through which one can look back.

The fourfold interpretation is therefore four directions that must be remembered, not four boxes that must be filled to identical lengths. The long accounts open one virtue completely; the short accounts allow readers to understand by the examples already seen. Forcing every person into four equal sections for the sake of formal symmetry would instead conceal the distinctive voice of each virtue.

3. Why Is Kauṇḍinya's “Already Knew” Explained through the Morning Star, a Mirror, the Ocean, and Seeds of Suffering?

Kauṇḍinya attained the path first, and his name is also translated as “already knew.” If “knowing” meant only being the first to know an answer, it would not explain why the treatise devotes so much space to nonarising. What is known here is not one item of information but how arising begins and how nonarising is established.

The simile of the morning star first discloses sequence. In the long night, before the sun's disk rises, the morning star appears. Its light is not the whole light of day, but it marks that darkness has begun to break. Kauṇḍinya's first attainment of the knowledge of nonarising likewise does not leave everyone else permanently in darkness. His early awakening begins the lights of the assembly. “First” here is both first in events and first in guiding others.

The mirror simile then turns knowing into contemplation. A blind person before a mirror sees neither face nor image, representing the nonarising of both present cause and future fruit. A conjured person holding a conjured mirror asks whether the image is born from the mirror, from the face, from their combination, or apart from them. Birth cannot be found in any of the four places. Nonarising is therefore not closing one's eyes and seeing nothing, but seeing that the dependently formed image has no fixed place of origin.

Next, blue, yellow, red, and white, large and small, long and short in the mirror make causes and fruits of the ten Dharma realms distinct. Finally one contemplates only the mirror's round completeness and does not grasp its back or front, brightness or darkness, or images. The four levels of the mirror simile do not repeat the same statement four times. They move from stopping the arising of cause and fruit, through direct realization of illusion and sequential distinction, to taking the true mark as object without leaving any phenomenon.

The ocean simile moves contemplation into one present thought. A finite body of water still has two shores. Only after the eye sees form, gives rise to craving, and body, speech, and mind follow it in producing karma does it become an ocean capable of drowning the world. Form is the waves; craving, the whirlpools; unskillful reflection, the evil fish and poisonous dragons; jealousy and defiling desire, the rākṣasas and female ghosts. The scene is not meant merely to inspire fear. It unfolds one instant of contact between eye and form into the chain of ignorance, craving, grasping, existence, old age, death, grief, and sorrow.

The simile of the seed of suffering closes the sequence in reverse. Greed and anger are seeds; thoughts of desire are sprouts; the six faculties grasping their objects are like foul liquid flowing out; wholesome and unwholesome actions contending are like maggots and flies gathering. To keep later fruit from arising, one does not wait until the maggots and flies are everywhere and then drive them off; one does not plant the seed of suffering. “Ājñāta” thus changes from a name into a clear question: what is this present thought planting?

4. Why Does the “Great” in Mahākāśyapa Finally Come Down to Clothing, Food, and Lodging?

The Mahākāśyapa passage begins with his bodily radiance, family wealth, leaving home, and receiving a robe, then successively explains greatness in renunciation, reception, practice, stage, compilation, and preservation of the Dharma. If “great” were reduced to high status, these dimensions would collapse into praise. The treatise's true concern is how he bears the Buddhadharma.

He can abandon enormous wealth, receive the Buddha's discarded-rag robe, continue alms-round and ascetic practice in old age, and use his conduct to illuminate later generations. Whether the Buddhadharma remains long in the world does not depend only on preserving speech; it also depends on whether people remain willing to bear difficult practices. Greatness in preserving the Dharma therefore does not leave greatness in practice behind, and compiling the teachings does not leave behind the life formed through one robe, one bowl, and one dwelling place.

The twelve ascetic practices especially return elevated virtue to daily life: two concerning clothing, six concerning food, and four concerning lodging. Fine clothing brings suffering while it is sought, fear after it is acquired, and distress when it is lost; having many garments adds sewing, washing, and carrying. Multiple ways of obtaining food consume time, increase sleep, and obstruct practice. Even a dwelling under a tree can become a new object of attachment. Shaking off is not adorning oneself with hardship; it is repeatedly seeing how dependency forms again within the most ordinary parts of life.

By taking only the act of seeking alms, the treatise opens the entire contemplative path. When food comes easily, joy arises; when it is difficult to obtain, anger arises. Fine food produces craving and poor food grief. Grief and joy arise in dependence on form; feeling experiences it, perception takes its characteristics, formations propel action, and consciousness discriminates. The five aggregates are all present. The thought “I am able to seek alms” is grasped, and alms-seeking itself is taken as the path and as real. The compulsions thus arise in an act originally meant as practice.

The turn is sharp. The outward form of ascetic practice is meant to release attachment, yet if one grasps ascetic practice as oneself and one's attainment, it too becomes origination. Conversely, by recognizing the four inversions of permanence, pleasure, self, and purity while seeking alms, cultivating the path, and extinguishing the compulsions, clothing and food become a site of the four truths. The key to shaking off is therefore not only how little one possesses, but whether the mind ties itself up again at each gain and loss.

The next three levels unfold along this same verb. The wisdom of emptiness shakes off deluded thought; Dharma body, prajñā, and the practices shake off affliction, karma, and suffering; finally lodging, clothing, and food are no longer three separate things. Contemplating the mind uses immediate emptiness to shake off grasping at characteristics, immediate provisionality to shake off the dust-like delusions, and the immediate middle to shake off ignorance. Turning ascetic practice from outward form into contemplative wisdom does not discard outward conduct; it reveals the bond that the conduct was meant to loosen.

5. Are Wisdom, Supernormal Power, and Doctrinal Analysis Three Competing Paths?

The passages on Śāriputra, Maudgalyāyana, and Kātyāyana preserve many stories of winning and losing: ascending the debate seat as a child, contests of wit between uncle and nephew, testing supernormal powers against one another, subduing dragons and moving mountains, ten rounds of refutation, and defeating outsiders in debate. If readers merely follow the stories to see who wins, the particular virtues are again made into a contest. At the end of each passage, the treatise turns the virtue toward contemplative practice precisely to change this perspective.

Śāriputra's wisdom unfolds from “son of Śāri.” Wisdom is born from its object as a child from its mother. Among outsiders he was a great debate master; within the Buddhadharma he became the Dharma general and could expound for seven days and nights from one statement of the Buddha. Yet wisdom is not measured only by the number of answers. The prajñā passage says that one must break the view of self and the view of beings, through to views of buddha, awakening, and the Dharma wheel. The deeper the view broken, the clearer it becomes that wisdom is not the accumulation of displayable answers but the refusal to let any view become a new abode.

The simile of milk turning into curds, curds into raw and refined ghee, and refined ghee into clarified essence also shows that wisdom has a guiding sequence. Different forms of wisdom are displayed outwardly in order to lead beings step by step from where they are. The original wisdom of the true mark is not divided into separate pieces by the sequence of outward display. Contemplating the mind gathers all wisdom in the three contemplations of one mind and finally says that one wisdom is all wisdom, precisely to loosen fixation on any one named form of wisdom.

Maudgalyāyana's supernormal power is filled with reversals of large and small, far and near, motion and stillness. A dragon's body coils around a mountain, and he manifests a still greater body. Vajra sand rains down, and he transforms it into precious flowers. Outsiders move a mountain, and he sits in space and keeps it still. He follows the Buddha's voice into a distant world, yet what is far away is still heard as though near. Together these stories press one question: does true “penetration” mean moving faster and becoming larger, or responding everywhere without moving the limit of reality?

The explanation in terms of the teaching therefore finally gathers supernormal power into the true mark: responses arise from truth and extend throughout the ten Dharma realms while the limit of reality does not move. Contemplating the mind says that one mind suddenly contains every mind and every mind suddenly contains no mind. Only by abiding in neither existence nor nonexistence does one penetrate the true mark. Outward transformations are not denied but relocated. Without compassion and the true mark as their root, extraordinary abilities remain only astonishing phenomena.

Kātyāyana's doctrinal analysis uses sun and moon, prison, latrine, sleep, splitting firewood, iron and fire, the sound of a conch, hemp and gold, merchants and ghosts, and a pig farmer carrying dung—one simile after another—to dismantle annihilationist views. The similes do not allow a debater to crush an opponent with words. They move the opponent's fixed proposition into visible daily experience so that its unstable premise becomes apparent. The object stimulates wisdom, and wisdom examines the object; the back-and-forth of question and answer is the contemplation of doctrinal analysis.

The three virtues are not set side by side so that wisdom defeats supernormal power, supernormal power defeats eloquence, or each person guards a separate territory. Wisdom must break what it abides in; supernormal power must not leave the limit of reality; doctrinal analysis must let object and wisdom stimulate each other. All three ask how the same mind can avoid being bound in return by the ability it performs best.

6. Do the Shorter Accounts of the Remaining Elders Amount Only to Biographical Supplements?

From Aniruddha onward, the accounts grow shorter, but names and stories remain closely tied to their virtues. “Free from Poverty” arises from giving a meal of millet; after his physical eyes lose sight, the divine eye opens. “House Mansion” moves from sharing a room with the Buddha to dwelling together in ultimate truth and the true mark. “Ox-Rumination” preserves the outward appearance of a residual habit but stays in heaven to prevent worldly people from mocking him and producing wrongdoing. “Provisional Conjunction” asks to whom the body belongs after two ghosts exchange its parts. “Residual Habit” explicitly shows that old habits of speech do not necessarily mean that arrogance still remains within.

All these stories undo a linear inference from outer appearance to inner virtue. Blindness does not mean absence of vision. Chewing does not mean absence of noble virtue. Hearing rough speech does not prove inner conceit. Seeing beauty, longevity, seclusion, or fortunate retribution likewise cannot stop at an enviable outward result. Interpretation in terms of the teaching, Origin and Trace, and contemplating the mind repeatedly open the outward appearance so that one phenomenon discloses different depths.

Bakkula's longevity, freedom from illness and untimely death, and quiet seclusion are gathered under permanence, bliss, self, and purity. Mahākauṣṭhila argues from “accepting nothing,” only to be asked whether he accepts his own nonacceptance, and thereby releases what he held. Nanda's name means joy, while Sundarananda cannot abide in pure conduct because of his love for his wife; circumstantial joy must be transformed into Dharma joy. A name does not guarantee that its bearer embodies the meaning in every moment. It exposes precisely what must be transformed.

Pūrṇa's “fullness” is established successively through his father's vow, his mother's name, knowledge, teaching the Dharma, patience under insult, and the praise he receives. If another reviles him, he is glad that he has not yet been struck by a fist; when struck, glad that he has not yet been hit with a staff; finally he can endure even death as departure from the poisonous vessel of the five aggregates. Fullness does not mean that the external world finally conforms to one's wishes. It means that as adversity draws ever closer, the practice of patience remains complete.

Subhūti receives his name when the household vessels are found empty at his birth, but he does not leave emptiness as an auspicious birth sign. He abides in the samādhi of emptiness and practices noncontention. When everyone races to welcome the returning Buddha, he remains alone in his stone chamber, contemplating form, feeling, perception, formations, and consciousness as none of them the Buddha, and therefore sees the Dharma body first. Ānanda's joy likewise does not lie only in being pleasing to everyone, but in his capacity to receive and preserve: before hearing the Buddha's words he already knows the Buddha's intent; eighty thousand Dharma gates enter his mind and are not lost; after the Buddha's extinction he keeps the Dharma lamp alight.

Rāhula's “obstruction” opens one name into many causes and conditions: former karma, time in the womb, obstructing the Buddha's departure from home, provoking suspicion and slander, losing a royal position, blocking others through false speech, failing to attain the path, severing views and craving and birth within the three realms, and remaining through the power of a vow. “Obstruction” sometimes means concealment, sometimes the blocking of afflictions, and sometimes a vow that keeps one from entering remainderless nirvāṇa. If the same word is fixed under one negative meaning, the treatise's transformation of a name according to practice and virtue cannot be read.

7. Why Does Origin and Trace Repeatedly Open Another Level after the Stories?

Once the account through causes and conditions has described names, families, former vows, and actions, why is Origin and Trace still needed? Because the visible story can show only the side beings are able to encounter. The treatise does not allow concrete narrative to lock an elder's original virtue into one birth, ability, or outward appearance.

Kauṇḍinya manifests the first attainment of the path to guide beings sequentially into nonarising. Kāśyapa manifests circumstantial ascetic practice, then guides them into the shaking off of emptiness, the middle, and the true mark. Śāriputra outwardly manifests different wisdoms and Maudgalyāyana different supernormal powers. The three Kāśyapas guide people through forest, river, and city, while in origin prajñā, liberation, and Dharma body illuminate one another. Extending a trace does not reduce original virtue to a false role. It opens a stairway that beings can walk.

At the same time, origin cannot be detached from trace and made into a remote imagination. Without the concrete matters of first hearing the Dharma, a rag robe, alms-seeking, debate, blindness, sharing a room, ox-rumination, seclusion, attending upon the Buddha, and receiving admonition for false speech, original virtue would have nowhere to meet beings. The fourfold interpretation clasps the two ends together: causes and conditions preserve the visible trace, Origin and Trace disclose where that trace comes from, and contemplating the mind lets readers seek a practicable origin through the trace they see.

8. Does Contemplating the Mind Turn the Twenty-One Elders into Subjective Psychological Similes?

If contemplating the mind merely replaced ancient stories with subjective feelings, both the persons and the scripture would lose their weight. The treatise follows the opposite order: it first establishes causes and conditions fully, then unfolds the teaching through each virtue, distinguishes Origin and Trace, and only at the end returns to mind. Contemplating the mind does not erase the first three levels; it assumes responsibility for the questions they have raised.

To contemplate nonarising is to see, when eye and form meet, whether a seed of suffering is being planted. To contemplate shaking off is to see, amid gain, loss, grief, and joy, whether attachment is being tied again. To contemplate wisdom is to see how one wisdom contains all wisdom without abiding in views. To contemplate supernormal power is to see how the presence and absence of minds penetrates the true mark. To contemplate eloquence is to let object and wisdom stimulate each other in return. The other contemplations—dwelling, ox king, constellations, rough and gentle speech, stillness, joy, Dharma body—likewise proceed from the virtue principally represented by each person.

The twenty-one people are therefore not reduced to twenty-one psychological symbols, nor does the reader leap over them to speak immediately about the self. Precisely because every name and virtue is first respected, contemplating the mind has a definite object. Precisely because the account must finally return to the mind, the reader cannot leave the elders' virtues as treasure belonging only to others.

9. Why Does the Listing of Names Conclude with “Known to the Assembly”?

After the twenty-one names have each been explained, the conclusion does not say that the assembly merely knew their names, but that they were known and recognized by the assembly. The treatise further distinguishes three levels: hearing the name, seeing the form, and seeing the mind. “Known” and “recognized” may be treated as synonyms or distinguished according to what is heard and seen. Recognition is thereby not only widespread reputation but the way beings pass from a name and appearance toward contact with a person's mental conduct.

At the beginning, beings recognize an elder through the virtue favored by their own inclination. Once the fourfold interpretation unfolds it, this recognition no longer stops at a title. Name is joined to causes and conditions, virtue to teaching and contemplation, the function of the trace to original identity, and what is heard to the present mind. Those “known to the assembly” are thus spiritual friends able to guide people through different entrances.

The passage finally speaks of full and half words through Origin and Trace and closes with contemplative knowledge and recognition. An elder may extend a trace and first guide beings through the aspect they can presently understand, but what original virtue seeks to accomplish is not permanent residence halfway along the path. Each of the twenty-one particular virtues opens a door. Beyond the doors are not twenty-one isolated endpoints, but ways by which every inclination can move from a name known into a path that can be practiced.

Through the Eye of the Wenjuji

Zhanran first marks five levels in the general framework for listing the names and returns “all possess a multitude of practices, each named according to one virtue” to the context of the many foremost bhikṣus in the Ekottarika Āgama. This mirror prevents a particular virtue from becoming one isolated ability. The scripture cites briefly so that one virtue can encompass the name; the commentary explains extensively so that the practice, origin, and contemplation behind the name can reappear.

In the Kauṇḍinya passage, Zhanran distinguishes surname, name, vow, practice, and first attainment, indicates the transmitted source for the former vow of the red-eyed great fish, and carefully explains the blind mirror, conjured mirror, and nonarising under the four teachings. He records a chronology from the Sutra of Twelve Years' Travels different from both the root text and the present canon. Such divergence does not obstruct the treatise's use of “first” to unfold the meaning of Ājñāta, but it reminds readers that exposition may follow the root treatise's pedagogical line while the apparatus must leave all three chronologies in their proper places.

In the Mahākāśyapa passage, Zhanran explains one by one the several forms of “great”—name, golden color, family wealth, receiving the robe, sharing the seat, compilation, and preservation of the Dharma—and gathers the twelve ascetic practices into two on clothing, six on food, and four on lodging. He especially clarifies that the passage on alms-seeking does not leave ascetic practice to discuss cumbersome numerical categories; in one activity it displays the aggregates, entrances, realms, four truths, and compulsions. Outward shaking off and contemplative shaking off thereby correct one another.

From the three Kāśyapas onward, the Record both supplies textual indications and refuses to force every transmitted account into one original scene. It points the ten transformations toward extensive related passages in scriptures and Vinaya without saying that each text contains the same ten-item list. It explicitly says that Kātyāyana's refutation of King Pāyāsi borrows the questions and answers of Kumāra-Kāśyapa as an example. For Kapphiṇa's sharing a room, it uses the celestial horse and the mansion constellation to clarify a stellar name. In the Sundarananda passage it states directly that the Vinaya figure is actually Upananda and is borrowed only because of the shared name. These judgments belong in the mirror layer and cannot be back-projected as a personal history already distinguished by the root text.

Zhanran frequently preserves several paths for explaining a person's name without flattening them. Ox King, Ox Track, and Ox Rumination each indicate something different. Revata's constellation, provisional conjunction, and constant sound each arise from different circumstances. Subhūti's Empty-Born, Wholesome Action, and Auspicious cannot be collapsed into one meaning. Ānanda's Joy and Stainless likewise illuminate different virtues. Multiple names are not disordered materials but several entrances into one person; the fourfold interpretation remains the framework that gathers them.

The Rāhula passage most clearly displays the Record's stratifying discipline. Different scriptures and biographies give different accounts of his birth, time in the womb, and various obstructions. Zhanran explicitly says, “The differences appear separately and need not be harmonized.” This is not abandoning textual distinction; it refuses to make later explanation dissolve ancient divergences by force. In Origin and Trace he then draws out “eight kinds of obstruction”—saying that originally Rāhula abides without obstruction while in trace he manifests various obstructions, so that obstructing nirvāṇa, obstructing saṃsāra, and obstructing remainderless nirvāṇa each has its place. Distinguishing divergent transmissions and interpreting Origin and Trace thereby both stand: the first does not force materials together, while the second does not abandon the root text's own path of meaning.

In the Śāriputra passage, Zhanran first places the former-life and prenatal stories under the worldly siddhānta, the country's arising of confidence and the encounter with Aśvajit under producing goodness, Devadatta and Durdharṣa under counteraction, and the praise in the Madhyama Āgama under ultimate meaning. In the Maudgalyāyana passage he distinguishes the father's name, Auspicious Divination, says that the five graphs of Maudgalyāyana are all Indic sounds, and uses the calculating Maudgalyāyana to show that many people shared the name. These boundaries keep long biographies from becoming unordered story heaps and prevent wisdom and supernormal power under the teaching and Origin and Trace from prematurely covering the causal layer.

From Aniruddha onward, the Record's shorter notes still hold closely to each person's causes and conditions. Aniruddha's lineage material points toward related scriptures and treatises and then divides the four siddhāntas through the Worthy Eon, Aniruddha, and the Buddha making robes for him. Kapphiṇa's movement from never having seen the Buddha, through sharing a room and hearing the Dharma, to sudden attainment is likewise marked according to the textual sequence. Bakkula's hundred and sixty years, delight in seclusion, and other statements are divided under producing goodness, counteraction, and ultimate meaning. Subhūti's constant cultivation of emptiness, abiding in noncontention, and seeing the Dharma body first from Trāyastriṃśa supply entrances into the four siddhāntas. The mirror does not fill every name with the same answer; it makes visible the turns compressed in the root text's brief strokes.

The Record closes its fascicle after Rāhula's contemplation of the mind, and the next fascicle enters directly into the less widely known assembly. It has no independent mirror passage for the root text's “Sixth, conclusion.” The mirror must therefore stop here. It cannot invent a Zhanran explanation of “known” and “recognized,” full and half words, merely for formal symmetry. This absence manifests the same standard: where explanation exists, receive it in a distinct layer; where it does not, preserve the empty place. The mirror enables readers to see the root treatise more clearly, while the main path remains the naming according to one virtue, its opening through the fourfold interpretation, and its final return to contemplative knowledge and recognition.