摩訶止觀 方便

The potter has chosen the ground, stopped miscellaneous affairs, cured bodily illness, and put clay, wheel, and cords in order. But if he will not begin, works without diligence, forgets the method, lacks skillful means, or cannot remain single-minded, the vessel still will not appear.

This is why the Mohe Zhiguan teaches twenty-five preparatory means. Cultivation of calming-and-contemplation is not finding a secret shortcut. It is making five groups of conditions genuinely converge: five conditions settle what you rely upon; five desires no longer pull you outward; five hindrances no longer cover you from within; food, sleep, body, breath, and mind reach neither excess nor deficiency; and finally aspiration, effort, mindfulness, skillful wisdom, and one-pointed mind carry your whole being toward correct contemplation.

What is most dangerous is often not discarding everything at the outset. The rākṣasa first asks for the whole flotation bladder. Refused, it asks for half, then a hand’s span, a finger’s span, and finally only a speck of dust. If you say, “This little bit does not matter,” water begins to enter through the tiny hole. Precepts are like this, and so are desires and hindrances: what truly sinks a person is often the small opening repeatedly permitted.

But exertion too must remain regulated. Lute strings too tight will snap; too loose, they make no melody. Food should leave you neither hungry nor full, sleep neither harshly restricted nor indulged, body neither loose nor tense, breath neither rough nor slippery, and mind neither sunken nor floating. When calming is too strong, it too can sink; when contemplation loses measure, it too can float. Cultivation does not mean applying ever more force. It means hearing, again and again, which string has gone out of tune.

The five Dharmas are therefore still needed at the end. One-pointed mind is like a ship’s rudder, skillful wisdom like its nod toward the course, and aspiration, effort, and mindfulness like poles and oars. Without one, the boat cannot remain steady. Especially here, “one-pointed mind” first means deciding the direction; it does not mean you have already entered concentration. Where you intend to go determines how the other four are used. Whether seeking the first dhyāna, leaving birth and death, transforming beings, seeking prajñā, or entering the Middle Way, the same five Dharmas turn with their direction.

At the deepest reach of preparatory means, you no longer grasp inner and outer, distant and proximate. Attain their meaning and both inner and outer are gates. Miss their meaning and even the finest conditions become new bonds. What you truly lack may not be another method, but for every Dharma you already know finally to face the same one matter.

Mohe Zhiguan, Fascicle Four〔Upper〕

Taught by Great Master Zhiyi of Tiantai in the Sui; recorded by his disciple Guanding.

General Statement of Preparatory Means〔Section One〕

Sixth is the explanation of preparatory means. Its first meaning is skillfulness: cultivating through skillfulness enables even a few wholesome roots to accomplish immeasurable gates of practice, open understanding, and enter bodhisattva stations. The Treatise on the Great Perfection of Wisdom says that a little giving and a few precepts can surpass śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas; this is the meaning. Its second meaning is the conjunction of many conditions. Such a conjunction can accomplish a cause and combine to obtain a result. The Great Perfection of Wisdom says that the Tathāgata’s body is not born from one cause and one condition, but from immeasurable merits. Preparatory means are so named to reveal this skillful capacity.

In terms of the gradual teachings, there are four kinds of preparatory means, each with distant and proximate. In the Abhidharma, for example, the five calming contemplations are distant and the four wholesome roots proximate; distant and proximate in Shared and Separate can be understood by analogy. In the Perfect Teaching, nominal identity and the stations of the five grades of contemplative practice are still far from true realization and are called distant; purification of the six faculties resembles true realization and is called proximate.

Here distant and proximate are distinguished only within nominal identity before the five grades: the twenty-five Dharmas are distant preparatory means, the ten objects proximate. The ten objects and ten contemplations extend comprehensively horizontally and vertically, accomplish the station of contemplative practice, and can arouse resemblance and true realization; hence proximate. The distant preparatory means explained here divide briefly into five sections: fulfilling five conditions, rebuking the five desires, abandoning the five hindrances, regulating five matters, and practicing five Dharmas.

The path does not move by itself in isolation; people must propagate it. To propagate a supreme Dharma, people also require conditions for advancing on the path, so the five conditions come first. Once conditions are complete, cravings must be cut away. Once external cravings are dismissed, the inner mind must be purified. Once mind is quiet, the five matters are tested and regulated. Once regulated, practicing the five Dharmas necessarily reaches the intended destination.

A potter making a vessel first selects good ground without gravel or salty soil and with plentiful grass, timber, and water before establishing the workshop. Next, other social affairs must stop; how could work be completed otherwise? Though external conditions cease, one cannot begin if the body is ill. Though the body is strong, no vessel can be made if clay and wheel are unregulated. Even when these conditions are ready, nothing is completed if the craft is not pursued continuously but undertaken and abandoned by turns. The five sections of calming-and-contemplation are the same. The dependent body needs support, like choosing good ground. Rebuking and leaving sensory desires is like stopping external conditions. Abandoning the five hindrances is like curing inner illness. Regulating the five matters is like learning to turn wheel and cord. Practicing the five Dharmas is like continuing the craft without neglect.

Even shallow worldly tasks cannot succeed without many conditions; how much less the world-transcending path? Without guidance, how could one easily ascend its stages? One therefore passes through the twenty-five Dharmas, cultivates contemplation by lodging in phenomena, regulates the coarse to enter the subtle, and restrains scatteredness to quiet mind, using them as distant preparatory means for calming-and-contemplation. Of these five sections, three come from the Treatise on the Great Perfection of Wisdom, one from a Dhyāna Sūtra, and one was established by meditation masters.

Fulfilling Five Conditions: General List and Names of the Precepts〔Section Two〕

First is fulfilling five conditions: pure observance of precepts, complete clothing and food, secluded quiet dwelling, ceasing conditioned engagements, and obtaining good spiritual friends. A Dhyāna Sūtra says that even when the first four are complete, guidance still depends on a good teacher. These five Dharmas therefore form a stairway for entering the path; lacking any one obstructs the work. The Sequential Dhyāna Gate gives the detailed explanation. Pure observance of precepts here has four intents: listing their names, explaining observance, explaining violation, and explaining purification through repentance.

First are the names. Scriptures and treatises give many precept-names; the Explanatory Treatise provisionally supplies ten: not deficient, not broken, not punctured, not mixed, following the path, unattached, praised by wisdom, autonomous, following concentration, and complete. All ten take intrinsic precepts as their root. The Treatise on the Great Perfection of Wisdom says intrinsic precepts are śīla and comprise eight bodily and verbal disciplines: three of body, four of speech, and abstaining from alcohol; they also include pure livelihood and guarding the mind-ground. It also says the ten wholesome actions are śīla. Because they always exist in the world even when no Buddha appears, they are called “old precepts.” Ordinary beings also cultivate the eight meditations when no Buddha appears, hence “old concentration.” The sixty-two wrong views and other non-Buddhist wisdom resemble the milk medicine of old physicians, hence “old wisdom.” Some commonly say there is no later “guest concentration,” only the eight meditations guided by non-outflow wisdom. But if so, there should likewise be no guest precepts, only the ten wholesome actions guided by non-outflow. Since precepts and wisdom each have guest Dharmas, why would concentration alone have none?

The Three Refuges, five precepts, and 250 precepts now form the root of guest precepts. There are ten ways to obtain full ordination. The Buddha’s own words “Come, monk” naturally confer it. Mahākāśyapa obtained it by self-vow; Kauṇḍinya by seeing truth; the nun Mahāprajāpatī through the eight rules of respect; the nun Dharmadinnā through a messenger; the novice Sudaya through doctrinal debate; Yāśas and other monks by “Come”; Bhadrapāla of Laṅkā through the Three Refuges; in border regions from a fifth Vinaya master; and in the central country through a formal motion and three proclamations by ten persons. These are people of guest precepts. Root pure dhyāna and contemplation, refining, perfuming, and cultivation are guest concentration; wisdom of the Four Truths is guest wisdom. All arise only after a Buddha appears.

Intrinsic precepts do not depend on whether one has received vows. Violation is offense and preservation wholesome. For the ordained, observance produces the merit of vows and violation their offense. For the unordained, wholesome conduct lacks that merit, and violation lacks the offense of betraying a vow. Cutting grass and killing an animal, for example, both violate prohibitions; after confession, both prohibitive offenses are extinguished. The Treatise on the Great Perfection of Wisdom explains that the offenses against nonmanifest precept-substance are alike extinguished, while the karmic repayment of life remains. Received and intrinsic precepts thus differ. When the Dharmaguptaka Vinaya asks about disqualifications, it asks whether one has committed a disqualifying offense; this is an intrinsic offense. It obstructs even lay precepts, much more full ordination. Pure intrinsic precepts are the root of the perfection of precepts and first cause of liberation; only upon them does the nonmanifest precept received through ordination exist.

Hīnayāna says nonmanifest precepts belong to a third aggregate outside form and mind. The Mahāyāna Dharma Drum Sūtra speaks only of form and mind, with no third aggregate. Because mind is inexhaustible, precepts are inexhaustible. For disciplinary precepts, nonmanifest action can be understood. Nonmanifest precepts shared with concentration arise with concentration. Some say they exist in concentration and disappear upon emerging; others say they depend upon concentration and remain while it remains but cease when concentration is lost. Nonmanifest precepts shared with the path depend upon the path; since the path is not lost, neither are they. Disciplinary precepts, precepts shared with concentration, and precepts shared with the path are all called precepts and take intrinsic precepts as their root. Thus scripture says that depending upon these precepts produces meditative concentration and wisdom extinguishing suffering.

Observing Precepts: Phenomenal Observance and Principial Contemplation〔Section Three〕

Second is observance. These ten precepts encompass all precepts.

The precept not deficient means preserving intrinsic precepts through the four grave ones, guarding them purely like a bright jewel. Violation makes a chipped vessel unusable, places one outside Buddha-Dharma, no longer a śramaṇa or child of the Śākya, and loses the Dharma of a monk; hence deficient.

The precept not broken means preserving the thirteen saṅghāvaśeṣas without damage; violation resembles a broken vessel.

The precept not punctured means preserving the pāyantika and other precepts. Violation resembles a leaking vessel unable to hold the path-Dharma; hence punctured.

The precept not mixed means preserving precepts shared with concentration. One may preserve discipline while the mind still thinks of violations; this is mixed. Precepts shared with concentration guard inwardly so desire does not arise; hence unmixed. The Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra says that even without bodily union with a woman, joking conversation, hearing bracelets beyond a wall, or watching men and women pursue each other can stain pure precepts. The Daśabhūmika Vibhāṣā says precepts are impure if, although the act is restrained, one lets a woman wash, wipe, or massage one, gazes or speaks with defiled mind, observes precepts only for a fixed number of days, or does so for future wealth, heavenly pleasure, and indulgence. None of these thoughts exists when the unmixed precept is maintained.

The precept following the path accords with the principle of truths and breaks delusions of views. The unattached precept belongs to one who has seen truth and become noble and is no longer stained by delusions of thought. These two concern observance according to true truth. Precepts praised by wisdom and autonomous precepts concern bodhisattvas transforming others: their conduct is praised by buddhas and unobstructedly autonomous in the world, observance according to conventional truth. Precepts following concentration and complete precepts follow Śūraṃgama Samādhi: without emerging from cessation concentration, one displays every deportment and bodies in all ten Dharma realms to guide and benefit sentient beings. Deportments move while naturally remaining still; the original therefore calls this the “precept fallen into concentration.” Earlier precepts still use discipline to prevent and are called incomplete; the Middle-Way precept lacks none and is complete. This is observance according to the first-meaning truth of the Middle. Because Middle-Way wisdom enters all Dharmas, scripture says “training”; here training means Mahāyāna precepts.

The Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra explains five-branched and ten kinds of precepts with broadly the same movement. Other scriptural and treatise accounts of precept-characteristics do not exceed these ten sections.

The first three—neither deficient, broken, nor punctured—together form disciplinary precepts: sustaining wholesome Dharma and preventing evil from the root precepts through not punctured, pure to the smallest detail. Even scattered ordinary beings can preserve them. The next, unmixed, guards mind through concentration; mind does not move falsely, body and speech are quiet, and the three actions are bright like a mirror. In concentration it is naturally unmixed, and afterward body and speech remain gentle and unconfused; ordinary beings can preserve it upon entering concentration. Following the path is preserved after stream-entry sees truth and becomes noble, not by ordinary beings. Unattached is preserved by practitioners of the third fruit, not the first. Praised by wisdom and autonomous are required by bodhisattvas benefiting others, not preserved by the Two Vehicles. Following concentration and complete are preserved by those of great faculties; even bodhisattvas of the Six Perfections and Shared Teaching cannot preserve them, much less ordinary beings and the Two Vehicles. This distinguishes their phenomenal meanings by station.

In principial contemplation of mind, one can preserve all ten. First gather them into four intents. The first four are conditionally arisen Dharmas and together form the object contemplated. The next two contemplate conditionally arisen Dharmas as immediately empty and are emptiness-observance. The following two contemplate them as immediately provisional and are provisional-observance. The final two contemplate them as immediately middle and are middle-observance.

To contemplate mind as conditionally arisen is to observe that when one thought arises from evil conditions, it breaks the root precept through the unmixed precept and conflicts with goodness, hence evil. A mind following wholesome Dharma now prevents the evil mind, enabling the root through unmixed precepts to be accomplished without damage. It is called wholesome mind and prevention. When evil mind stops, bodily and verbal evil stop. Prevention is the goodness of calming; accordance is the goodness of practice. Practice-goodness is contemplation and calming-goodness is calming. This is preserving four precepts by contemplating the conditionally arisen mind.

Next contemplate the conditionally arisen wholesome and evil mind as immediately empty. The Vajracchedikā says that seeing a Dharma-mark or a non-Dharma-mark produces attachment to self, person, sentient being, and life span; seeing neither Dharma nor non-Dharma does not. As the raft simile shows, even Dharma should be abandoned, much more non-Dharma. Only the quiescence of both is observance. Here Dharma means the provisional names and real Dharmas of wholesome and evil minds. Seeing their provisional names or their real Dharmas produces attachment to self and person. A non-Dharma-mark means seeing wholesome and evil provisional names as nonexistent, or their real Dharmas as nonexistent; both likewise produce attachment.

Why? A view arising in reliance on nonexistence should not be grasped; through a view relying on neither existence nor nonexistence, all are attachments to self, person, sentient being, and life span. Contemplating all these Dharmas and non-Dharmas as immediately empty accords with non-outflow and prevents the sixty-two views of existence and nonexistence; this is following the path. Repeatedly examining until contemplation is mature, one encounters conditions and objects and sees every form and sound as empty; this is unattached. It prevents delusions of thought and accords with true truth. This is preserving two precepts by contemplating conditionally arisen mind as empty.

Next contemplate conditionally arisen mind as immediately provisional. Know mind is not fixed mind and Dharma not fixed Dharma, yet do not remain forever in nonmind and non-Dharma. Through skillful wisdom of the varieties of the path, establish mind and Dharma within nothing possessed and draw out many mental Dharmas to guide and benefit sentient beings; this is praised by wisdom. Although innumerable mental Dharmas are broadly distinguished, know them as mere names like space, without craving or confinement by marks of delusion; this is autonomous. Provisional contemplation prevents ignorance and accords with conventional principle: prevention is calming and accordance contemplation. This is preserving two precepts through provisional contemplation.

Next contemplate conditionally arisen mind as immediately middle. The mind’s nature is ultimately quiescent, originally neither empty nor provisional. Not provisional, it is not worldly; not empty, not world-transcending; neither noble nor ordinary Dharma. The quiescence of both extremes is mind-nature. Contemplating so is supreme concentration; mind resting there is Śūraṃgama. Originally quiescent and unmoving, it simultaneously illuminates the two truths, manifests many deportments, and lacks nothing while following concentration. This contemplation prevents ignorance and evils of the extremes and accords with the one real principle of the Middle: prevention is calming and accordance contemplation. This is preserving two precepts as immediate middle.

The Brahmā’s Net Sūtra says the precepts are called Mahāyāna and light of first meaning, neither blue, yellow, red, nor white; they are also called filiality, and filiality accordance. Filiality is calming-goodness and accordance practice-goodness. The root teacher recited so, and I recite so. Middle-Way wondrous contemplation is therefore the proper essence of precepts; supreme purity is ultimate observance. The Daśabhūmika Vibhāṣā says that no self or what belongs to self, distance from conceptual play, and nothing possessed is supreme śīla. The Vimalakīrti Sūtra says offense-nature is not within, outside, or between; mind-nature and defilement are likewise. Understanding this is good understanding and observance of discipline.

Contemplative observance has five further names. First is precept. Prevention is its meaning, and contemplation likewise prevents: the three contemplations prevent the three delusions. This prevention pervades the Dharma realm and is not limited to body and speech〔and so forth〕.

Second is Vinaya, meaning extinction. Discipline extinguishes wrongs of body and speech; contemplation of mind also extinguishes. Empty contemplation extinguishes wrongs of views and thoughts, provisional contemplation those of dust-and-sand, and middle contemplation ignorance. Such extinction pervades every wrong in the Dharma realm rather than merely the seven bodily and verbal branches. This is the Vimalakīrti’s “directly extinguish it; do not disturb the mind.”

Third is prātimokṣa, preserving liberation. Contemplation of mind does the same. Without contemplating the three truths, the three delusions cannot be liberated; seeing the three truths necessarily liberates them. This liberation pervades the Dharma realm, not merely liberation from the three evil paths or birth and death.

Fourth is recitation: carrying words and recollecting them inwardly. Contemplation of mind does the same. The names of the three contemplations express the principles of the three truths and are words. Knowing names are not fixed names, investigate mind in the truths, continue contemplation, keep it present, and produce no false thought; this is recitation. It recites the Dharma realm, not merely eighty recitations.

Fifth is discipline: weighing light and grave, distinguishing violation and nonviolation. Contemplation of mind does the same. Views and thoughts are coarse, evil, heavy dregs; ignorance within the realms is smaller and lighter; dust-and-sand as adventitious defilement arises laterally and is heavy within the small; root ignorance is subtlest, as already explained in the mind of awakening. Contemplating three principles through three contemplations is nonviolation; three delusions obstructing them is violation. Three medicines treat three illnesses without error, not missing by a hair.

Phenomenal precepts also have three grades. The highest brings heavenly retribution, middle human, lowest asura. Violating the highest loses heaven, middle humanity, lowest asura and enters the evil paths. The evil paths also have three grades: light as hungry ghost, next animal, grave hell. Human retribution has upper, middle, lower, and lowest forms across the four continents; heavenly retribution has many grades throughout the heavens of the three realms.

The three principial grades empty, provisional, and middle each also have high, middle, and low. For immediate emptiness, low is śrāvaka, middle pratyekabuddha, high Shared-Teaching bodhisattva; retreat loses them by levels. For immediate provisionality, low is Tripiṭaka bodhisattva, middle a Shared bodhisattva emerging into the provisional, high Separate bodhisattva. For immediate middle, low is Separate bodhisattva, middle Perfect bodhisattva, high Buddha; only the Buddha’s pure precepts are complete. Or low may correspond to the five grades, middle to purification of six faculties, high to first abode. This is only an abbreviated judgment of grades through contemplation of mind. Middle-Way contemplation is the Dharma realm and the Mahāyāna comprehensively contains every Dharma; understand according to the intent without further elaboration.

Someone privately asks: if low and middle are both judged through arousing the true, why is the highest instead divided by true and resembling? Answer: the first three paths are not yet integrated and can be distinguished horizontally. Immediate middle is integrated and should be judged vertically through one path. If a horizontal judgment is also desired, use the three grades the Separate receiving the Shared, Separate, and Perfect〔and so forth〕. Such distinction weighs gain and loss, light and grave, throughout the Dharma realm; how could it be limited to disciplinary matters such as boiling, burning, and concealment?

The five names of contemplative observance are now clear. One who is careful only in phenomena and preserves the first four precepts while the mind is full of mixed thoughts lacks stable phenomenal precepts, like an unfired clay jar broken by the evils of craving and views. One who contemplates mind and preserves the latter six has clear principial contemplation and unmoving false thoughts. Even encountering evil conditions, one remains firm. When principle does not move, phenomenal precepts naturally succeed. The Vimalakīrti says that one able to be so understands well and observes discipline; this is the proper intent.

Violating Precepts: The Two Rākṣasas Craving and Views〔Section Four〕

Third is violation. Destruction of pure precepts does not exceed foolish craving and inverted wrong views. These are enemies of precepts, represented as two rākṣasas. The Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra tells of someone carrying a flotation bladder across the ocean. A rākṣasa asks first for all, then gradually down to a mote, but the traveler gives none. Practitioners likewise arouse mind, undertake precepts, and vow to cross the ocean of birth and death; the two rākṣasas craving and views then demand the bladder of precepts.

The craving-rākṣasa promises safe entry into nirvāṇa, actually calling gratification of desire nirvāṇa, like food for the hungry, treasure for the poor, or wine for a monkey. It entices with pleasure. Following craving and breaking the four grave precepts discards the whole bladder and is violation. If craving arises but the practitioner reflects, “I mean to cross birth and death. If precepts are impure, I fall again into the three evil destinies and concentration and wisdom cannot arise,” great fear arises and one would rather be killed than surrender the bladder; this is observance.

Craving arises again through pleasurable touch. Following it gives half the bladder and is violation. If the practitioner reflects that half the prohibitions cannot be lost—hellish suffering results and presently one suffers humiliating punishment and expulsion—one guards them and does not follow desire; this is observance. Craving asks next for a grave preliminary act, like a hand-span; then a pāyantika, like a finger-span; then a duṣkṛta, like a mote. Though small, a duṣkṛta opens the door of heedlessness. Though a mote is little, water gradually enters until one sinks and dies.

This is craving breaking disciplinary precepts. Reaching for the five desires breaks precepts shared with concentration. Deep attachment to birth and death and making karma for existence breaks the immediate-empty precept. Failing to stop worldly censure or protect others breaks the immediate-provisional precept. Disbelieving that precepts and goodness equal space, contain the Buddha-Dharma, and are ultimately pure breaks the Middle-Way precept. The rest can be understood accordingly〔and so forth〕.

Next the views-rākṣasa asks for the bladder. Everyone readily encounters breaking precepts for wealth and sex, an evil already arisen to be severed through single-minded effort. When views are sharp and create faults within one’s own constructed Dharma, understanding is partial and wrong; this is an evil not yet arisen to be prevented through single-minded effort. Although views have not yet arisen, a practitioner who gains a little concentration without good teachers or friends may cling to it and produce grave fault.

When the Buddha lived, a monk attained four dhyānas and thought he had attained the four fruits. At death he saw an intermediate state and slandered the Buddha: “An arhat is not reborn. Why do I have an intermediate state?” Ānanda asked where he was born; the Buddha said he had fallen into hell. Even observance and attainment of outflow concentration cannot justify believing one’s own measure of realization. If so in the Buddha’s time, how much more foolish people of a later age with deep offenses and attachments?

The Great Ākāśagarbha Sūtra therefore says that producing an evil view is the third pārājika. What is an evil view? Someone gains an understanding of emptiness and a little wisdom, makes their own mind the teacher, and claims realization of nonarising. Strong views destroy Dharmas: no Buddha or sentient beings, no worldly or world-transcending cause and result. The Lotus’s “some eat human flesh and others devour dogs” conveys this.

Such a person destroys right view, deportment, and livelihood while claiming all is equal and undifferentiated. What is offense or no offense? To distinguish is obstruction, and obstruction cannot be true. One should not fear obstruction amid craving; unobstructedness is awakening. The person calls only this real and everything else false. Meeting an evil teacher and teaching makes the poison blaze like a wrong spirit entering mind; inverted conduct becomes unrestrained, views and arrogance tower, and everyone is despised. Seeing goodness, the person calls it attainment and treats others like dirt, surrendering the whole bladder.

If not wholly surrendered, the person may think: “Though the principle is so, I have not actually seen it; how could I discard everything suddenly?” and for a while withholds it. Views arise again: all Dharmas are empty, so what marks of touching or not touching men and women exist? Embracing and kissing loses half; grave preliminary acts through duṣkṛta follow. Claiming all Dharmas empty and quiescent, why preserve complex phenomena? No mote of precept remains; the emptiness-mind grows stronger like water leaking through a hole, “unobstructedness” becoming slick until all discipline is swallowed and the bladder sinks forever.

Wrong views are terrifying. If four grave offenses and offenders are empty and the five heinous acts empty, why not commit them? Strong emptiness views should deny parents and see incest or killing as unobstructed; one should likewise not avoid king and queen. Such a view should deny their real existence, yet the person cherishes life and knows violating the ruler brings death. This foolish emptiness cannot empty the person’s life or the king. Why then insult parents and slight Buddhism by calling grave and heinous acts empty? One cannot see even the nearby fault of grasped emptiness, much less what is distant.

Discarding the Buddha’s prohibitions through evil emptiness breaks disciplinary precepts. Emptiness views disturbing mind break concentration-shared precepts. Fixed attachment to one’s view breaks immediate-empty precepts. Polluting others’ wholesome minds breaks immediate-provisional precepts. Disbelieving that the mind of views equals space and is itself ultimately pure Buddha-Dharma breaks immediate-middle precepts. Partial emptiness is dreadful; falling into it means long sinking, without even human, heavenly, or nirvāṇa attainment, much less great parinirvāṇa.

A treatise therefore says the sage taught emptiness to treat attachment to existence; those attached instead to emptiness cannot be transformed even by buddhas. Scripture says doubt about Dharmas can break Sumeru-like afflictions, but a fixed view cannot be transformed. The Sūtra on Nonpractice says “craving is itself the path.” Partial people cite only this as proof of unobstructedness; why not also cite the same scripture saying those attached to unobstructed Dharma are far from the Buddha and that true emptiness never breaks precepts〔and so forth〕? This is the views-rākṣasa destroying prohibitions, in broad outline〔and so forth〕.

Four Clauses of Vehicle and Precepts〔Section Five〕

Earlier observance and violation were discussed separately; now the observance and violation of ten precepts are not fixed. Broadly, whatever moves one to liberation may be called a vehicle, hence five vehicles including human and heavenly. Whatever prevents may be called precept, hence disciplinary, concentration-shared, and path-shared precepts. Distinguished, the three phenomenal grades are precepts, outflow Dharmas unable to move one out; the three principial grades are vehicle, non-outflow Dharmas able to move one out. Their pairing gives four clauses: both urgent; vehicle urgent and precepts lax; precepts urgent and vehicle lax; both lax.

First, both urgent. As in the earlier characteristic of observance, ten precepts are pure, phenomena and principle flawless, and contemplation continuous; one should attain the path in this life. If not, this karma is strongest and draws first, necessarily into a good place. Urgent disciplinary precepts lead to human or heavenly birth in the desire realm; urgent unmixed precepts follow dhyāna into Brahmā worlds. Whichever of three principial vehicles is most urgent determines what is heard and attained. With immediate middle strongest, one meets Maitreya in human or heavenly form and attains the path as sharp faculty under the Avataṃsaka. With the high-grade emergence into provisionality strongest, one meets him and attains as dull faculty in that assembly. With high or middle entry into emptiness strongest, one hears Vaipulya, Prajñā, and other teachings and attains paths of the Three Vehicles. With low-grade entry into emptiness strongest, one hears Tripiṭaka scriptures and attains the path. Human or heavenly birth comes from phenomenal precepts; seeing a buddha and attaining the path from vehicle-contemplation. Both are therefore indispensable.

Second, precepts lax and vehicle urgent. This person has thin virtue and heavy defilement, is driven by afflictions, and lets rākṣasas consume phenomenal precepts, yet exclusively preserves principial precepts and continuous contemplation, like the earlier awareness-of-mind samādhi amid six obscurations and Aṅgulimāla. Because phenomenal precepts are lax, death brings evil-destiny retribution; the strongest vehicle still draws first. Strong analytical emptiness leads one in an evil-destiny body to meet Maitreya and attain through Tripiṭaka teaching; urgent immediate emptiness through Prajñā and Vaipulya; urgent provisionality through Avataṃsaka and other teachings as dull faculty; urgent middle through Avataṃsaka as sharp faculty. Thus dragons, spirits, animals, and beasts attend when the Buddha teaches gradual and sudden scriptures. Breaking phenomenal precepts gives the evil body; principial contemplation gives vision of the Buddha and the path. The Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra says lax precepts are not true laxity, but lax vehicle is.

Third, precepts urgent and vehicle lax. Phenomenal precepts are strict to a hair, but the three contemplations are unknown. Urgent precepts bring human or heavenly birth or Brahmā birth through dhyāna, where one clings to meditative pleasure. Even if a Buddha teaches in the world, it gives no benefit and cannot be understood. Some in the whole land of China remain unaware; three hundred million in Śrāvastī neither heard nor saw; pleasure-attached devas and beings in obstructed difficulties do not attend. Like a prisoner who pays someone powerful to delay the case while hoping for pardon, those born human or heavenly hope for a good spiritual friend to teach vehicle-cultivation and liberate them. If they do not cultivate vehicle there, merit ends and they fall; even a hundred thousand buddhas cannot bring attainment.

Fourth, phenomena and principle both lax. All ten precepts are violated, one falls forever into the mud plow of hell, loses human and heavenly results, and the consciousness is dark and blocked without a time of attaining the path, repeatedly sinking and difficult to liberate.

Practitioners should observe their minds: which phenomenal or principial precept is lax or urgent? Which of the three phenomenal grades is strongest, which principial grade weak? Thus know one’s depth and future good or evil retribution; knowing oneself, one can know others. Such contemplation also explains why scriptures list particular assemblies and why the Tathāgata teaches great or small according to conditions.

Spirits in the Avataṃsaka say they abide in the Dharma gate of inconceivable liberation: provisional manifestations come to guide real beings whose formerly cultivated inconceivable vehicle is urgent. The Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra’s assembly is the same. Careful inquiry can pass first through the Four Teachings to distinguish causes of lax and urgent vehicle and precepts, then through the five flavors to distinguish results. Since causal and resultant ascent and descent differ, how could one ask why phenomenal precepts are needed if principial precepts attain the path? Fortunate enough to receive the path as human or deva, why insist on suffering in evil destinies?

Purification through Repentance: Entry, Grave Offenses, and Upstream and Downstream Minds〔Sections Six and Seven〕

Fourth is purification through repentance. Phenomenal and principial violations both obstruct calming-and-contemplation and prevent concentration and wisdom from arising. How can one repent so offenses are extinguished and no longer obstruct?

Vinaya texts give repentance methods for light phenomenal offenses. When completed, this is purity: precepts purified and obstructions transformed, calming-and-contemplation readily shines forth. A grave offender is a dead person in Hīnayāna Buddha-Dharma with no repentance method. Mahāyāna permits repentance, as the four samādhis explained earlier and later passages will explain again.

If principial contemplation has only a small deviation, fails to accord with truth, and attachment is thin rather than rigid, correct contemplation alone can break the view. Produce shame and conscience, bow and reproach oneself, and urge mind back to its course; the obstruction is removed and calming-and-contemplation can arise. If attachment to views is grave, repentance within contemplation of mind is still required, as explained later.

For grave phenomenal offenses, the four samādhis still provide repentance. The Samantabhadra Contemplation says sitting upright and recollecting true mark is foremost repentance. The Wondrous Supreme Concentration says nothing but meditative concentration can save the four grave offenses and five heinous acts. The Vaipulya says that if repentance from the Three Refuges and five precepts through 250 precepts could not make wholesome Dharmas arise again, that would be impossible. The Inviting Avalokiteśvara says a breaker of pure conduct who performs the ten evils can sweep away filth and regain purity. Mahāyāna thus permits repentance for these offenses.

Offense arising from grave conditions must be repented with grave earnestness so the two counteract each other. Repentance without earnestness gives no benefit. If obstruction is not removed, calming-and-contemplation remains dark. A grave offense newly committed in this life is more readily removed by painful repentance, like a traveler only recently lost; grave obstructions from the past are hard to turn, like one long lost far away.

To repent grave obstructions of present and past lives through the four samādhis, know the ten downstream minds and their faults, then activate the ten upstream minds as counteraction. These twenty minds are the shared root of every repentance method.

The ten downstream minds are:

First, from beginningless time consciousness-mind is dark and confused, intoxicated by afflictions and falsely reckoning person and self. That reckoning gives rise to the view of body, then inverted delusion, craving, anger, and ignorance; from ignorance one broadly makes karma and follows karma through birth and death.

Second, afflictions are present within and evil friends encountered outside; they fan wrong Dharma and delude the mind, doubling evil’s force.

Third, with inner and outer evil conditions complete, one extinguishes wholesome mind within and wholesome deeds without and never rejoices in another’s goodness.

Fourth, one indulges all three actions of body, speech, and mind and commits every evil.

Fifth, although the deeds are not broadly distributed, evil mind pervades every place.

Sixth, evil mind continues day and night without interruption.

Seventh, one conceals and disguises faults, unwilling for others to know.

Eighth, one is violent and reckless, unafraid of evil destinies.

Ninth, one lacks shame and conscience.

Tenth, one denies cause and result and becomes an icchantika.

These ten follow the stream of birth and death, fainting in evil like insects enjoying a latrine without awareness. Their accumulated grave offenses are incalculable, from the four grave and five heinous acts to icchantika, amid limitless birth and death.

To repent now, reverse this stream through ten minds that overturn evil Dharmas.

First, deeply believe cause and result. They are definite and distinct; karmic seeds do not perish even over long time, and no one else experiences the result of one’s own karma. Precisely know wholesome and evil without doubt. This deep faith overturns the icchantika mind.

Second, produce grave shame and conscience. Reproach oneself: “I am a most base offender, shameless, practicing animal Dharma and abandoning the first pure adornment. Alas, like an elephant without a hook, I have committed grave offenses.” Devas see offenses committed in concealment, so feel shame before them; people know manifest offenses, so feel conscience before people. This overturns shamelessness.

Third, fear evil destinies. Human life is impermanent; if one breath does not return, one departs for a thousand years. The dark road is long and without provisions; the sea of suffering deep and without a raft. Worthies and sages reject one, leaving no refuge. Years pass, and the wind-blade gives no pardon—how can one sit awaiting agony? A jackal loses ears, tail, and teeth and feigns death to escape, but on hearing its head will be cut off becomes terrified. Birth, aging, and illness already give warning; death grants no pardon. Fear leaves no leisure to cling to the five objects and six desires, like feet in boiling water or fire. King Aśoka heard a caṇḍāla ring a bell each morning, knowing one day had passed and he would die after six; although surrounded by desires, he did not cling for one thought. Practitioners repent in painful fear, sparing no life, resolute like the jackal and thinking of nothing else like the condemned king. This overturns fearlessness of evil destinies.

Fourth, disclose. Do not conceal defects. Thieves, poison, and weeds must be removed quickly; expose a root and branches wither, dry a source and flow ceases. Concealment is the conduct of a bad person. Kāśyapa’s dhūta requires disclosure before the assembly; Vaipulya repentance before one person; other practices sincere reform before an image of the Buddha. A hidden poisoned sore causes death if covered and untreated. This overturns concealment.

Fifth, cut off continuity. Decisively end old evil and make no new evil; this is repentance. Reoffending after repentance resembles law that pardons a first offense but increases punishment for the next. On first entering the sanctuary, offense is readily removed; committed again, it is hard. How could one eat what was vomited? This overturns constant recollection of evil.

Sixth, arouse the mind of awakening. Formerly one sought personal ease, ignored others’ danger, and troubled every object. Now broadly raise the mind of universal aid throughout space to benefit others. This overturns evil mind pervading all places.

Seventh, cultivate merit to repair faults. Formerly the three actions made offenses day and night; now urge wholesome body, speech, and mind without rest. Without moving mountains, how fill rivers and seas? This overturns indulging the three actions.

Eighth, guard true Dharma. Formerly one destroyed one’s own and others’ goodness, neither rejoicing oneself nor delighting in others’ practice. Now guard all goodness and skillfully enlarge it without interruption, like the great merit of preserving a city. The Śrīmālā says guarding and embracing true Dharma is foremost. This overturns failure to rejoice.

Ninth, recollect the buddhas of the ten directions. Formerly one drew near evil friends and accepted evil speech; now recollect unobstructed compassion as an uninvited friend and unobstructed wisdom as great guide. This overturns following evil friends.

Tenth, contemplate offense-nature as empty. Penetrate craving, anger, and ignorance as gates of quiescence. If they arise, where do they abide? In false thought; false thought in inversion; inversion in view of body; view of body in view of self; self-view has no abode. Sought throughout ten directions, self is unattainable, mind originally empty, offenses and merit without owner. Deeply penetrate their characteristics and illuminate ten directions; when empty wisdom accords with mind, they vanish like morning dew at sunrise. Every mind is a gate of quiescence revealing quiescence. This overturns dark ignorance.

These ten repentances follow nirvāṇa and oppose birth and death, extinguishing four grave and five heinous acts. Without understanding them or knowing right and wrong, how can one repent? Entering a sanctuary would be futile asceticism without great benefit. The Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra says it is impossible for diligent ascetic practice to be a proximate condition of great nirvāṇa. This is repentance for grave phenomenal offenses.

Offenses of Views and Repentance through Both Phenomena and Principle〔Section Eight〕

Next repent offenses of views. Views make one follow birth and death, as above. The preceding ten minds used phenomenal repentance for offenses of dull dispositions; now principial contemplation supports repentance for offenses of sharp dispositions. If views are fierce and produce grave afflictions, phenomenal repentance also assists, like adding croton seed to a purgative so every obstruction is expelled. Ten Dharmas again explain this repentance.

First, overturn disbelief. Point directly to the mind of body-view so ignorance and suffering-and-origin are recognized. Udraka Rāmaputra attained the concentration of neither perception nor nonperception and was revered like a buddha, yet did not recognize suffering and origin and fell when retribution ended. Subhadra attained the same, without coarse thought but still subtle affliction. The sharp-witted brahmin Long Nails clung to accepting and not accepting. Even brilliant non-Buddhists did not escape views and did not attain nirvāṇa; how could a shallow person inferior to Udraka call their road true rather than deeply partial and wrong?

Such a person craves wisdom contemplating emptiness without recognizing it; this is ignorance. It produces opposition and accord, and view-based action. View and action depend upon form and become name-and-form, which is suffering and the rest. Confusion about suffering produces craving and existence; existence produces future birth and death. How could this continuity be quiescence? Claiming birth and death exhausted is empty speech. Calling the ignorant mind of views the path takes nonpath as path and noncause as cause—attachment to precepts, theft of cause. Calling future evil-destiny suffering nirvāṇa is attachment to views, taking nonresult as result, theft of result. Body-view, extreme view, and wrong view follow. This mind of views is suffering and origin, not cessation and path; if not even Tripiṭaka cessation and path, how Mahāyāna?

Recognizing this knows worldly and world-transcending cause and result. The Great Perfection of Wisdom says prajñā reveals worldly characteristics: what is path and not path. This deeply recognizes suffering and origin in views. Deeper, know not only ignorant suffering and origin but Tripiṭaka cause and result, the Four Truths of conditionally arisen Dharmas as empty, the immeasurable Four Truths of immediate provisionality, and the inactive Four Truths of immediate middle. Within one mind of views recognize every cause and result. The Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra calls measuring immeasurable birth and death in one thought inconceivable. This deep faith overturns disbelief.

Second, produce grave shame and conscience. One should be ashamed not to see the three truths in mind. In principial contemplation’s human and heavenly hierarchy, feel shame before people of the dry-wisdom and nature grounds and conscience before the pure heavens of the four fruits, people of thirty minds, meaning-heavens of ten grounds, people of five grades and purified faculties, and heavens of forty-two stations. Retribution attained through intention is human; naturally attained retribution heavenly. In principial contemplation, skillful means are human and manifestation of true principle heavenly. Offenses of views cover three truths and fall below all three human-and-heavenly classes. This overturns shamelessness.

Third, fear. Know the grave faults made by views. The Treatise on the Great Perfection of Wisdom says buddhas teach emptiness to leave views; if one again sees an existent emptiness, buddhas cannot transform one. Great offense now arises from views. When this world is destroyed, one is born in another hell; when remade, one returns, without limit. Truly describing the resultant body could make one vomit hot blood and die. Grave views are not non-outflow and cannot leave birth and death. Afflictions moisten karma; falling is certain. If one life does not return, there is no day of emergence. Great fear overturns fearlessness of evil destinies.

Fourth, disclose. Formerly views produced craving, covered the three truths, and prevented definite faith. Now know their fault, remove the three doubts about self, teacher, and Dharma, and conceal nothing so truth-nature is exposed. This overturns concealment.

Fifth, cut off continuity. Do not interrupt contemplation of the three truths; use the Eightfold Path to treat the three delusive minds and do not perfume them again after severance. This overturns continuous evil mind.

Sixth, arouse the mind of awakening. Condition the three truths and know them like space. Because space is boundless, pity and universally liberate all. Former confusion produced boundless delusion and offense; now the mind of awakening and inactive goodness pervade the Dharma realm, overturning inactive evil formerly made throughout space. When the lion-lute sounds, all other strings break; this is the meaning.

Seventh, cultivate merit to repair faults. Path factors of three truths are the bodhisattva’s Jewel-Torch Dhāraṇī, the road of practice and gate toward nirvāṇa. Making them continuous is repair. Formerly one clung to a view as nirvāṇa, stopped there, and did not cultivate path factors. Moving from existence to nonexistence resembled an inchworm leaving one spot but still not cultivating. Knowing both as views without reifying them is views moving but no path-factors. Analyzing and breaking views while practicing factors is views moving and factors practiced. Embodying views as empty, provisional, and middle allows three sets of factors to be cultivated where views do not move. This repairs indulgence in views.

Eighth, guard true Dharma. Formerly one guarded one’s views against refutation and skillfully promoted them. Now guard the emptinesses of three truths against wrong views; wherever obstruction exists, skillfully propagate, preferring death to loss of true Dharma, like parents guarding a child. This overturns destruction of goodness.

Ninth, recollect the buddhas of the ten directions. Formerly one consumed view-poison insatiably, thirsting for it and meeting evil teachers like salt added to thirst; abandoning suffering through suffering, proud and crooked, one did not hear “Buddha” for eons. Now recollect the three truths as neither coming nor going, hence Buddha; nonarising Dharma is Buddha, and truth-principle constantly protects. This overturns evil friends.

Tenth, contemplate offense-nature as empty. The three delusions are originally quiescent; ignorance falsely distinguishes right and wrong, like a fevered patient seeing dragons and spirits. Now contemplate views as illusion and transformation, coming from nowhere and leaving no trace, going to no direction; offense and merit are the same. If one is empty, all are empty; emptiness is offense-nature and offense-nature emptiness. This overturns inversion.

While activating these ten repentances, deeply contemplate three truths and add phenomenal methods with grave earnestness, sparing no life; this is the second strong man. These are the two repentances, phenomena and principle. Offenses obstructing the path are extinguished, śīla pure, samādhi present, and calming-and-contemplation opens. With phenomenal precepts pure, root samādhis appear and worldly and mind-reading wisdom opens. With nonarising precepts pure, true-truth samādhi appears and omniscience opens. With immediate-provisional precepts pure, conventional-truth samādhi appears and wisdom of the varieties of the path opens. With immediate-middle precepts pure, king samādhi appears and omniscience of all aspects opens.

The samādhi of three truths attained is king samādhi, embracing every samādhi and producing every meditation; nothing is absent, hence calming. It possesses every wisdom, hence contemplation. Pure observance and earnest repentance are therefore the first assisting conditions of calming-and-contemplation.

Fulfillment of Clothing〔Section Nine〕

Second is fulfillment of clothing and food. Clothing covers form and ugliness; food sustains life and fills hunger’s wound. When the body is settled, the path flourishes and the root is established. Form, life, and cultivation all depend upon clothing and food. Thus it is said that after eating the Tathāgata attained unsurpassed complete awakening. Though minor conditions, clothing and food accomplish a great matter. Naked, hungry, and unsettled in body and mind, where could the path-Dharma be? They must therefore be complete.

Clothing has four functions: covering ugliness, heat and cold, insects, and adorning the body. Phenomenal clothing has three grades.

First, the great person of Snow Mountain leaves social traces, lives in a deep ravine apart from humans, mats grass and wears deerskin, without formal receipt or declaration of purity. Patience is mature, thick warmth unnecessary, and no travel among people requires support. This is the superior person.

Second, one practicing the twelve dhūtas keeps exactly three robes. Leaving villages and entering forests, one is properly clothed, hence three robes. This is the middle person.

Third, in very cold lands one may keep the 101 supporting articles but must declare them pure, seeking only enough for use. Seeking more is painful, guarding it painful, disturbing one’s cultivation and donors. Being content with little is the lower person.

As clothing in contemplative practice, the Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra says that although monks wear kāṣāyas, their minds are not yet dyed with the Mahāyāna Dharma robe. The Lotus says to wear the Tathāgata’s robe, a gentle and forbearing mind. This is patience of quiescent extinction. The two extremes birth-and-death and nirvāṇa are coarse, yet nondual with Middle-Way principle; hence gentle. Resting securely in the Middle is patience. Far from the clamor of extremes is quiescent; crossing the two deaths segmentary and transformational is extinction.

This mind covers evils of the two extremes, the robe covering ugliness; removes afflictions of the five dwellings, blocking heat; breaks ignorant views, blocking cold; has neither disturbance of birth and death nor scattered intent of emptiness and abandons applied thought on the extremes, blocking insects. This patience possesses every Dharma, like a mirror displaying images while rubble cannot. The middle possesses all marks, partial emptiness none. Thus one deeply penetrates offense and merit, illuminates ten directions, and uses the subtle pure Dharma body with thirty-two marks to adorn the Dharma body. This contemplation has every virtue and is both clothing and adornment, not cloth cut and sewn in nine, seven, or five strips.

The three robes are the three contemplations, covering ugliness on three truths, the heat and cold of views and craving, and the insects of three applied thoughts, while adorning three bodies. The three contemplations as clothing are patience of subjugation, gentle accord, and nonarising quiescent extinction. Or views are cold and craving heat. Calming-and-contemplation’s understanding of seeing truth provides warmth so views do not arise; its understanding of reflection provides coolness so craving does not arise. Five faculties free of evil are merit-adornment; the mind-ground free of evil, wisdom-adornment. Clothing on the other two contemplations follows accordingly.

The 101 additional robes are all auxiliary path-practices. They assist the three contemplations, cover delusions, and adorn the three bodies. This is cultivating patience as clothing throughout all Dharmas.

Fulfillment of Food〔Section Ten〕

Food comes from three sources to support body and nourish the path.

First, in inaccessible deep mountains far from people, one takes only delicious fruit and good water, one vegetable or fruit, or eats pine and cypress to sustain vital energy, like Snow Mountain’s fragrant lotus root. After eating one recollects, meditates, and has no other affair. This is superior food.

Second, one dwells in an araṇya, practices dhūta, leaves the sounds of herding, and sustains oneself by alms. All seven past buddhas taught begging, as do Vaipulya, Pratyutpanna, and Lotus. Too far a route exhausts and obstructs the path; too near is noisy. Neither far nor near makes alms easy. This is middle food.

Third, one unable to abstain from grain and eat fruit or practice dhūta and beg may accept support brought by an external protector or food ritually purified in the Saṅgha. This is lower food.

As food in contemplation of mind, the Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra says that although monks beg, they have never obtained Mahāyāna Dharma food. Dharma food is the Tathāgata’s Dharma-joy and dhyāna-delight, equal great wisdom contemplating all Dharmas unobstructedly. The Vimalakīrti says equality regarding food is equality regarding Dharma, and equality regarding Dharma equality regarding food. It also makes afflictions fuel and wisdom fire, cooking nirvāṇa food delicious to every disciple.

This food nourishes the Dharma body and increases wisdom-life. Like having eaten milk gruel and needing nothing more, it is true liberation, which is the Tathāgata. Dharma-joy and dhyāna-delight pass through all Dharmas as one flavor: not a single color or fragrance is other than the Middle Way. The one Middle-Way Dharma possesses every Dharma and gives fullness without need, like the mountain superior sustained by one grass or fruit.

In contemplation of mind, dhūta begging applies when one cannot cultivate true-mark wisdom in the Middle within phenomena, so regulates mind sequentially through three contemplations and enters the Middle. Because sequential, it is begging; finally seeing the Middle brings fullness. This is the middle person.

Food sent by a donor applies when one can neither penetrate within phenomena nor contemplate through Dharmas and has no food oneself. One follows a good spiritual friend who explains prajñā, discriminates well, and brings understanding and vision of the Middle through hearing. Because dull faculties gain understanding from hearing, this is receiving food, like one unable to perform the first two practices receiving a delivery. Saṅgha-purified food means realizing the forest of factors and merits of dhyāna and awakening through concentration.

Practitioners should therefore constantly recollect Mahāyāna Dharma food and no other flavor.

Mohe Zhiguan, Fascicle Four〔Upper〕

Mohe Zhiguan, Fascicle Four〔Lower〕

Taught by Great Master Zhiyi of Tiantai in the Sui; recorded by his disciple Guanding.

Secluded Quiet Dwelling〔Section Eleven〕

Third is secluded quiet dwelling. With clothing and food complete, where should one stay? The samādhi of following one’s own intent can be cultivated anywhere; the other three require a good place. Three are good: deep remote valleys, a dhūta place, and an araṇya monastery.

First, remote valleys with difficult roads and no human trace or disturbance allow free meditation, thought after thought on the path, unmoved by praise or blame. This is best.

Second, a dhūta place at least three miles from habitation has sparse interaction and can spur one against afflictions. It is second.

Third, an araṇya monastery is a quiet temple. Live alone in one room, avoid affairs, close the door, sit quietly, and examine correctly. This is lower.

Other places are unsuitable. Dwelling among lay villages invites fault and shame; noisy temples near markets are likewise improper. To settle the body and enter the path, choose carefully, never casually. Once found, do not move often〔and so forth〕.

As dwelling in contemplation of mind, truth-principle is dwelling. The Middle-Way Dharma is remote and profound, unreachable by tracks of the seven preparatory means, hence deep; high, broad, and unmoving, hence mountain; far from extremes, hence quiet; neither arising nor activated, hence secluded. The Great Perfection of Wisdom says that even a thousand yojanas away, a śrāvaka mind means body is far but mind not far. Mistaking clamor for nonclamor is not true distance. Even beside a city, absence of Two-Vehicle mind is distance. This is superior dwelling.

The dhūta place in contemplation of mind is provisional contemplation. Adjacent to emptiness like an araṇya to a village, it rests in conventional truth, distinguishes medicines and illnesses, shakes off ignorance, and purifies wisdom of the varieties of the path. This is middle dwelling.

One room in a quiet temple is the contemplation entering emptiness from provisionality. A temple is a communal, noisy place, yet one room can be quiet. Provisional truth is dust and clamor, yet within provisionality one can be empty; true truth is therefore dwelling.

Only abiding in the principle of three truths is the place of calming-and-contemplation, not fleeing shadows into forests or hiding the body in a sealed room〔and so forth〕.

Ceasing Conditioned Engagements〔Section Twelve〕

Fourth is ceasing conditioned engagements. Affairs have long obstructed meditation. An araṇya monk leaves clamor for quiet; how could one undertake production and affairs that destroy araṇya conduct? Four engagements are livelihood, human affairs, skills, and learning.

First, livelihood. Schemes for sustaining life bring entanglement everywhere, gaining one thing and losing another, destroying the path and confusing mind. Diligent affairs within the samādhi of following one’s own intent belong to that practice and are not discussed here.

Second, human affairs. Congratulations, condolences, social deference, visits and invitations: one goes there, others come here, without end. How much more many people mutually entangled and pursuing? One left family and teacher to seek the essential path, yet now befriends three provinces and cultivates five commanderies—where is one going? It is like wearing clothes backward while seeking the collar or drilling fire while seeking water.

Third, skills: medicine, divination, masonry, carpentry, painting, games, calligraphy, spells. Rhinoceroses are killed for patterned hide and valuable horn; oil for burning; bells for sound. Skills endanger even worldly bodies. Cultivating the world-transcending path while planting woods to attract birds or stench to attract flies invites ruin and disgrace.

Fourth, learning: reciting scriptures and treatises and competing in debate. Receiving and retaining exhaust mind; verbal exchange muddies water and darkens the jewel. Where is leisure for calming-and-contemplation? Even this must be abandoned, much more the first three〔and so forth〕.

In contemplation of mind, livelihood is craving, which moistens karmic seeds like water. Craving produces worry and worry fear. Severing craving ceases livelihood.

Human affairs are karma, causing birth in three realms and movement through five destinies. Craving moistens karma and produces birth everywhere. Without karma, craving has nothing to moisten. Though karmas have power, they do not pursue one who makes none; nonproduction ends birth and death.

Skills mean supernatural powers should not be cultivated before attaining the noble path; false Dharmas obstruct prajñā. Prajñā is like space, without conceptual play or writing. Attaining it is like obtaining a wish-fulfilling jewel. Practice single-mindedly—why hurry to use powers?

Learning means cultivating worldly wisdom, eloquence, intelligence, and discrimination before endurance of nonarising. They are rubble and grass, not the true jewel. Stop, let the water clear, look through crystal, and take the jewel slowly. Then what worldly arising-and-ceasing marks and categories cannot be known? Know through omniscience of all aspects and see with the Buddha eye. One walking the great road should not first study those paths.

Obtaining Good Spiritual Friends〔Section Thirteen〕

Fifth, good spiritual friends are the great condition transforming practitioners so they see a buddha. Ānanda called them half the condition for the path; the Buddha said they are the complete condition. There are three: external protector, fellow practitioner, and instructor.

First, external protector. One dwelling independently in remote mountains needs none; cultivating the other three samādhis requires superior supporting conditions. Lay or monastic, the protector manages necessities without watching faults, disturbing, overpraising, or publicizing and causing harm. Like a mother raising a child or tiger carrying its cub, strength is precisely adjusted. Only a long-practiced person can do this.

Second, fellow practitioner. Following one’s own intent and peaceful practice need not require companions. Vaipulya and Pratyutpanna require good companions who spur one another, prevent sleep and scattering, advance daily, polish each other, share mind and vow like one boat, and honor each other like the World-Honored One.

Third, instructor. This person explains prajñā, shows path and nonpath, and judges inner and outer preparatory means, openness and obstruction. Skillful teaching demonstrates, instructs, benefits, delights, and breaks attachment. One able to judge preparatory means may practice alone; one unfamiliar with obstacles should not leave the instructor. Scripture says following a good teacher lets one see Ganges-sands buddhas.

In contemplation of mind, the Great Perfection of Wisdom calls buddhas, bodhisattvas, and arhats good spiritual friends; so are six perfections and thirty-seven factors; so are Dharma-nature and reality-limit. The light of buddhas and bodhisattvas covers and nurtures: external protection. Perfections and factors are gates of entry: companions. Dharma-nature and reality-limit are truth-principle, teacher of buddhas; object arouses wisdom: instruction.

Each class has all three meanings. Buddhas and saints protect by spiritual power. They also remove necklaces, wear dirty clothes, carry a vessel for excrement, and harmonize their light to benefit beings: companions. They teach through one sound so each understands: instructors.

The perfections and path factors also have three. Auxiliary paths protect the primary path; primary and auxiliary practice join as companions; following their norms without loss opens the three liberation gates, instruction.

Dharma-nature likewise has three. As object and teacher, invisibly perfuming and benefiting, it protects. Object and wisdom corresponding are companions. Before principle is seen one is blind; truth manifest gives eyes and unbiased wisdom. Scripture says cultivators of my Dharma know personally upon realization; without real inward practice, what use asking? This is instruction.

The three classes each having three make nine clauses, plus the first three, twelve. The first six are phenomenal good spiritual friends and the latter six principial. Applied to three truths: in empty contemplation, saints protect, immediate-empty factors accompany, true truth instructs, making six phenomenal and six principial; provisional and middle likewise. Three truths form thirty-six modes, eighteen phenomenal and eighteen principial; passing through four siddhāntas yields more. Understanding this Dharma gate explains Sudhana’s entry into the Dharma realm.

Although all are called good spiritual friends, the Avataṃsaka speaks of demons of spiritual friends, samādhi, and the mind of awakening. A demon not only turns goodness to evil but can make one fall into the Two-Vehicle ground. Thus an arhat practicing only true truth is not truly a good spiritual friend. If an arhat inwardly a bodhisattva but outwardly śrāvaka is taken as one, bodhisattvas may also manifest as deva or dragon to lead into true mark; then any identity can be a good spiritual friend.

The demon here is one actually realizing only arhatship, who leads only to the conjured city. It is merely a half-word friend, practicing half the path of awakening and damaging half the afflictions. According to giving and withholding, it can be called friend or demon. The Separate Teaching without the Middle-Way intent is also a demon of good spiritual friends; only the three Perfect kinds are genuine. Samādhi-demon and mind-of-awakening-demon follow accordingly〔and so forth〕.

Rebuking the Five Desires: Phenomenal Characteristics〔Section Fourteen〕

Second is rebuking the five desires: form, sound, fragrance, flavor, and touch. The Daśabhūmika Vibhāṣā compares restraining the six faculties to tethering a dog, deer, fish, snake, ape, and bird. Dogs love villages, deer mountains, fish ponds, snakes holes, apes forests, birds the sky. Ordinary shallow wisdom and weak resolve cannot subdue the faculties’ love of objects; only wisdom, firm mind, and right mindfulness can. This is the general simile.

Individually: eyes crave form, which has shape and image like a village, so eyes are dogs. Ears crave sound, without shape like open mountains, so ears are deer. Nose and fragrance are fish; tongue and flavor snake; body and touch ape; mind and dharmas bird.

The mental faculty is set aside here and the first five objects discussed. Objects are not themselves desires, but their flavor makes practitioners seek and crave, hence five desires. Like a potter summoned by guests who cannot finish the work, the five desires lead into demonic objects. Even with the five conditions complete, mind cannot be gathered and settled; they must be rebuked.

Desire for form includes red and white, tall and short, bright eyes and skillful glances, white neck, jade brows, clear teeth, red lips, and external red, yellow, vermilion, purple, and jewels. Its harm is deep, driving madness and drunkenness; the root of birth and death often begins here. Nanda observed precepts for desire and retained much habituation even after arhatship; how much more bound ordinary beings? Kings have ignored state and ancestral temples and entered enemy lands for desire; ancient houses and countries here also fell, as Bao Si destroyed the Zhou. Scripture says sentient beings ravenously crave wealth and sex and therefore cannot attain the path. A Contemplation Sūtra says people driven by form become slaves to affection. Knowing the fault prevents deception; rebuking stops desire and conditioned thought, allowing concentration.

Sound-desire includes seductive words, sexual speech, strings and pipes, bracelets, bells, and pendants.

Fragrance-desire includes thick perfume, orchids, musk, powerful scents, and bodily fragrances of men and women.

Flavor-desire includes wine, meat, delicacies, fat and grease, sweet, sour, spicy, butter, oil, and fresh blood.

Touch-desire includes cold and warm, fine and smooth, light and heavy, hard and soft, fine garments, and bodies of men and women.

Five similes show their faults. Form is a heated golden ball that burns on grasping; sound a poisoned drum that kills on hearing; fragrance the breath of a stifled dragon that sickens on smelling; flavor boiling honey that rots the tongue or honey on a blade that cuts the licker; touch a sleeping lion that bites the approacher. Desires never satisfy but make evil mind blaze like fuel on fire, more savage than enemies. For eons they have stolen and destroyed body and consciousness; just as one seeks meditative quiet, they return. Deep knowledge of their faults stops defilement. Phenomenal details are in the Dhyāna Gate〔and so forth〕. An eminent monk of old wrote: far from desire it is easy to be resolute; near it, feeling is hard to guard. Fragrance and flavor topple high resolve; sound and form destroy body and life.

Rebuking the Five Desires through Contemplation of Mind〔Section Fifteen〕

In contemplation of mind, form’s flavors are immeasurable: permanent or impermanent, self or non-self, pure or impure, suffering or bliss, empty or existent, conventional or first meaning. The Treatise on the Great Perfection of Wisdom says form has no fixed flavor-mark and ordinary beings should not cling. Saying form permanent, impermanent, both, neither, or making the fourteen indeterminate claims about Tathāgata and world are all views arising through form. They contend and take themselves as real, destroy the wisdom-eye with conceptual play, judge right and wrong, and make karma through form. Once existence exists, birth and death exist. Such contemplation increases desire rather than rebuking it.

Now contemplate all sixty-two views of existence and nonexistence arising through form as relying on ignorance. Ignorance is impermanent, constantly arising and ceasing, rapidly decaying and wearing away thought by thought, without self or master, immediately quiescent nirvāṇa. Views born from it are likewise impermanent and quiescent. With no master-self, who is true or false? No more birth-and-death karma is made through form; karma and result cease. This rebukes form into emptiness and liberation. Sound, fragrance, flavor, and touch are the same. This is the Tripiṭaka analysis rebuking five desires. The Mūlamadhyamakakārikā calls it unskillfully extinguishing conceptual play.

Mahāyāna rebuking form directly penetrates all views as relying on ignorance, ignorance as empty, hence views empty. The Vajracchedikā says a stream-enterer is named entering the stream but enters nothing—not form, sound, fragrance, flavor, or touch. Only if form really existed to be analyzed could it be entered; since form is empty in its very essence, there is no form to enter. With no stream or resultant karma, conceptual play is skillfully extinguished. The other desires follow.

Yet rebuking form only as empty enters form-emptiness without distinguishing forms, so how liberate all beings? Their attachments form many origins and sufferings, requiring immeasurable medicines of path and cessation. To transform others, do not stop after realizing emptiness. Know emptiness without sticking, enter provisionality, and penetrate Ganges-sands Buddha-Dharmas. Otherwise one still receives and enters form-emptiness. More deeply rebuke grasping at form-emptiness, neither receiving nor entering, while broadly distinguishing form. Knowing distinctions as mere names and names as empty is provisionality. The other desires follow.

Next rebuke the two extremes of form. The Great Perfection of Wisdom says form has no flavor-mark for ordinary beings to cling to and no separation-mark for the Two Vehicles to leave. Breaking ignorance and views of existence or nonexistence upon form rebukes flavor; breaking sinking into emptiness and grasping realization rebukes separation. Fixed flavor could not be left; fixed separation could not have flavor. Neither is fixed, so neither flavor nor separation. Not clinging to either reveals form’s Middle-Way true mark.

The Explanatory Treatise says the Two Vehicles rebuke form for dhyāna, not perfection. Bodhisattvas rebuke form and see its true mark, identical to dhyāna’s true mark; hence perfection and arrival at form’s further shore. That arrival is seeing form’s middle; distinguishing form sees conventional truth; illuminating form-emptiness sees true truth. Rebuking form to its source accomplishes three-truth samādhi and three wisdoms. Deep rebuke forms preparatory means for calming-and-contemplation. The other desires follow.

Abandoning Five Hindrances: Five Characteristics and Counteractions〔Section Sixteen〕

Third is abandoning craving, anger, sleep, restlessness-and-remorse, and doubt. They cover and bind, darkening mind so concentration and wisdom cannot arise. Earlier, five faculties encountered present objects and produced five consciousnesses. Now those consciousnesses enter mind, pursue past and anticipate future objects, forming great inner obstruction. Like an ill potter unable to work, hindrances must be removed like poisonous trees and thieves. The Great Perfection of Wisdom says to leave desires and evil Dharmas: desires are the five just rebuked, evils the hindrances.

What are their characteristics?

Craving remembers past desires: beautiful form before the eyes, lovely sound at the ears, fragrance opening affliction’s gate, flavor making saliva flow, remembered touch raising hair and shivering body. Repeated planning intoxicates mind and loses right mindfulness. One secretly schemes to regain what was had or constantly imagines and seeks what was not. Mind remains in objects without pause; coarse applied thought covers dhyāna. This is craving-hindrance.

Anger remembers someone harming oneself or kin or praising enemies. Three troubles across three times make nine, and hatred binds. Mind heats, breath coarsens, fury continues, seeking opportunity to injure the other and settle oneself. Poisonous anger burns merits; how could dhyāna’s forest of factors grow? This is anger-hindrance.

In sleep, darkened mind is drowsiness; blocked consciousness and slack limbs are sleep. It grows mental factors and covertly covers, hard to guard against. The faculties are senseless like a corpse with one breath, hence “small death.” Those who delight in sleep gain more. The Satyaka Sūtra says much sleep produces indolence and obstructs attainment, losing what is gained. To attain the supreme path, remove sleep, doubt, and heedlessness and urge thoughts with effort. The Explanatory Treatise calls sleep great darkness stealing clarity, like resting among blades in battle, living with a poisonous snake, or being bound and led to execution. This is sleep-hindrance.

Restlessness-and-remorse here is applied and sustained thought equally ranging over Dharmas, not one affliction already counted elsewhere: suddenly craving, anger, or wrong foolishness, blazing without rest, rising and falling in confusion. Aimless bodily wandering and useless speech are restlessness. Alone it is not yet a hindrance; afterward one asks why one lost control and becomes shamefully worried. Remorse then binds mind and blocks dhyāna.

Repentance for the past produces remorse, but meditators should know the fault and not repeatedly think it. Remorse alone does not liberate; one must cultivate pure concentration. Why let it obstruct the great matter? Once repented, do not grieve or cling; doing what should not be done and neglecting what should is the meaning. This is restlessness-and-remorse.

Doubt here obstructs concentration, not seeing truth, and has three kinds: self, teacher, Dharma gate. Doubting self thinks one low and unfit. Doubting teacher thinks their conduct displeasing and questions deep meditation or wisdom. Doubting Dharma questions whether the received method accords with principle. Indecision remains and prevents concentration; even if it arises, it is lost. This is doubt-hindrance.

How abandon them? Examine which illness is strongest and treat it first.

For craving, use impurity contemplation. What was thought pure is a bag of pus and saliva with nothing delightful. Revulsion arises as if pursued by an enemy; what wise person loves it? This medicine removes craving and settles mind.

For anger, recollect kindness. Its fire burns present and future merit, makes beings unwilling to see one another, and perpetuates enmity. Regard everyone as parents and kin and give them happiness. If they lack it, work for it—how be hostile? Anger ceases and dhyāna begins.

For sleep, diligently urge body and mind, reflect on Dharma, and select wholesome from evil so sleep cannot enter; Dharma-joy makes mind bright. Do not lose two lives’ happiness and return empty from a treasure mountain. Guard skillfully by shaking a bamboo staff three times, placing or tossing a wool ball to alert sleep, blowing a conch, extending the legs, rising to view stars, or washing feet and face.

For restlessness, count breaths. It comes unnoticed and is known late. Failed or forgotten counting reveals scattering; recognize and restart. When counting succeeds, applied and sustained thought are subdued. Untreated, restlessness covers a lifetime.

For self-doubt, think: “I am the blind child of a wealthy house, inherently possessing the unsurpassed Dharma-body treasure but covered by afflictions and unopened in the path-eye. I will cultivate without abandoning. Conditioning causes from immeasurable eons are not fixed; why miss the opportunity through doubt? Human form and aspiration are hard to gain.”

For teacher-doubt, recall that past sages sought Dharma without judging appearance: Snow Mountain’s youth asked a spirit for a verse; Indra bowed to an animal. The Great Treatise says not to discard gold because the bag stinks; pride is a high mountain that holds no rain, humility an ocean receiving rivers. Seek Dharma and honor the teacher. The Puchao Sūtra says people should not measure one another; only Tathāgata-wisdom can. Śāriputra vowed never again to judge who enters birth and death or nirvāṇa. Honor future buddhas; how doubt the teacher?

For Dharma-doubt, think: “My Dharma eye is unopened; unable to distinguish, I first enter through faith. Buddha-Dharma is an ocean entered by faith alone. The Lotus says śrāvakas enter by faith, not their own wisdom. Blind and unbelieving, where else can I go? Only sink without exit.” The story of Hegali〔and so forth〕. The story of Upagupta teaching a disciple in a tree〔and so forth〕. Faith lets Dharma perfume mind; doubt resembles an overturned vessel.

Abandoning Five Hindrances: Examination〔Section Seventeen〕

Question: Do all five obstruct dhyāna?

Answer: Some call ignorance the direct obstruction because dhyāna has ordered gates and knowing opposes ignorance; thus doubt and sleep. Some call scattering direct because concentration opposes it; thus restlessness-and-remorse. Some call craving and anger direct because dhyāna is gentle goodness and hardness opposes it.

Each takes one side. All five obstruct; direct and secondary depend on strength. If craving is strongest, it directly obstructs and the others secondarily; likewise each. Four elements can all cause illness but need not erupt together; whichever moves directly kills. Treat the strong first and the weak recede, allowing dhyāna〔and so forth〕.

The Daśabhūmika Vibhāṣā says heedless people are covered and find even heaven hard, much more fruition; diligent effort rends hindrances and fulfills wishes. This is phenomenal abandonment.

Abandoning Five Hindrances: Sharp Dispositions, Emptiness, Middle, and Perfect Contemplation〔Sections Eighteen and Nineteen〕

Question: When first dhyāna arises, are the hindrances ultimately severed?

Answer: Distinguish. Divide craving, anger, and ignorance into four parts: each predominating alone makes three; all equal, the fourth. When one predominates, applied and sustained thought are few; when all three, many. The Satyasiddhi calls this momentary mind conditioning all three poisons, with wholesome or evil already formed. Abhidharma calls it only indeterminate ignorance, not yet wholesome or evil, conditioning all three but belonging to none; though not evil itself, it causes them and is their equal-arising cause. Different accounts, both explain the fourth equal part.

Open four into five hindrances: craving and anger one each; ignorance into sleep and doubt; equal part into restlessness-and-remorse. Broadly each part has 21,000 afflictions, 84,000 total. As suffering they are 84,000 Dharma treasuries; origin, 84,000 dust-and-labor gates; path, 84,000 samādhis and dhāraṇīs; cessation, 84,000 perfections. Their reach is deep and broad, so hindrances should be understood broadly.

How can Abhidharma confine craving to desire realm, call it affection above, and deny anger above? The Satyasiddhi challenges: if light craving above is affection, light anger should be renamed. Such labels lower surface expression but do not penetrate. Here four-part hindrances extend to buddhahood. The earlier dull-disposition hindrances obstruct only first dhyāna and end when it arises; ordinary discussion covers only this layer.

Sharp-disposition hindrances obstruct true truth. A person of emptiness views calls their own grasp real and everything else false. Opposition brings anger, accord craving. Dark ignorance mistakenly grasps without clear knowing: sleep. Useless conceptual play and contention: restlessness-and-remorse. Apparently doubtless now, later great doubt arises when the view is broken. These hindrances prevent seeing truth.

After rebuke, the path arises and stream-entry is realized. Above it, attachment to true truth is craving, abandoning delusions of thought anger, unexhausted delusions sleep, lost mindfulness restlessness, not reaching beyond-training doubt. These hindrances extend through the third fruit; removing them is beyond-training.

Next, hindrances arising through emptiness obstruct conventional truth. Sinking into emptiness and satisfaction like a poor person with a little is craving. Hating and refusing to contemplate birth and death is anger. Abiding in unconditioned quiet and unable even to distinguish five salts is sleep. Calling beings who disturb one in emptiness outside one’s sphere is restlessness-and-remorse. Unclear provisional wisdom is doubt. Unless removed, wisdom of the varieties of the path and conventional samādhi do not appear; removed, the Dharma eye clears.

Next, hindrances arising through the Middle obstruct it. Bodhisattvas seek Buddha-Dharma insatiably like oceans taking rivers; loving Dharma and producing path-conforming craving is craving. Disliking the Two Vehicles like a tree rejecting resentful birds is anger. Ignorance remains portion by portion even in high grounds; the Great Treatise repeatedly mentions samādhi breaking ignorance because what is broken initially must be broken again. Lack of wisdom-light is sleep. Bodhisattva actions have no ordinary fault but fall short beside a buddha: restlessness-and-remorse. Initial and later principle is equally perfect, but initial wisdom falls short: doubt.

Unless abandoned, these never accord with true mark. Removed, thusness appears and Buddha-knowledge opens. They exist at every ground, not just the beginning; only the Buddha completes 84,000 perfections. The Bodhisattvabhūmi’s ninth pure dhyāna separated from all views shows this. Hindrances are long and deep, not just desire-realm five.

Sequential verbal classification separates dull and sharp hindrances abandoned by ordinary beings, conventional hindrances by the Two Vehicles, and middle hindrances by bodhisattvas. Later steps separate from earlier; Daśabhūmika and Mahāyānasaṃgraha masters often teach so, making results irrelevant to ordinary beings and preventing cultivation within phenomena.

The Perfect Teaching differs. If wondrous Dharmas were only for higher grounds, a Dharma-nature Buddha in a Dharma-nature land should teach Dharma-nature bodhisattvas. Why manifest in the three realms? To liberate ordinary beings here, making cultivation possible. Otherwise, for whom are provisional Dharmas established and where do they lead? Understanding this, an initial ordinary being can perfectly abandon hindrances in one thought.

The Great Perfection of Wisdom says all Dharmas tend toward desire and do not pass beyond; desire itself is unattainable, much more tendency or nontendency. Tendency is existence: one tending and object tended reveal conventional truth. Desire unattainable is emptiness, without either, revealing true truth. No separate tendency or nontendency reveals the Middle. Three truths are in one desire.

Broad explanation makes it clear. All Dharmas tend toward desire because desire is Dharma realm and root. The first thought already possesses all Dharmas; coarse mind does not know. Desire grows slick and uncontrollable, becoming actual perfuming. One act briefly eases inner heat; repeated acts leave no moment without thought until one returns home to seek desire. Unsatisfied, one steals, robs, coerces, or trades. Obtaining desire requires support, so one steals wealth or kills for pleasure; rich people indulge in offenses, poor people in vast evil thoughts.

Once desire’s offense and karma are complete, present tendency and established desire-existence bring future birth and death. In every destiny desire blazes more; from embryonic form it grows life after life, twelve links revolving without end. Every Dharma tends toward desire, with none outside its Dharma realm; all hindrances are complete in the first thought of desire. Desire is conditionally arisen; this reveals its meaning.

How contemplate desire-Dharma-realm as empty? Seeking among outer objects, inner mental faculty, intermediate consciousness, together or apart, past condition, present cause, or future result finds nothing. Horizontally and vertically, ultimately quiet, desire is empty in its very essence. All Dharmas born from desire are empty, and emptiness itself unattainable. This emptiness contemplation abandons sharp and dull hindrances.

Knowing one thought of desire as all desire reveals all beings likewise. In humanity alone, forms, sounds, mental conduct, and environments differ, showing immeasurable causes. One person’s cause and result are endless; how much more many? One realm so, much more ten; one Dharma, much more a hundred.

Enemy raiders are the root of martial achievement: defeating them brings fame and wealth. Immeasurable cravings are Tathāgata-seed, giving bodhisattvas innumerable Dharma gates. Much wood makes strong fire; rotten manure produces flowers. “Craving is the path” means this. If craving is first severed and one remains in its emptiness, what produces gates? Scripture says that without severing five desires one purifies faculties. Thus conventional hindrances purify naturally.

Still, desire’s real nature is not seen. It is neither empty nor provisional. Not provisional—where is immeasurability? Not empty—where is quiescence? Both absent, neither tendency nor nontendency. With no tendency, sharp and dull hindrances vanish; no nontendency, conventional hindrances vanish; knowing middle removes another set. Without separate cutting, four sets are perfectly removed in one thought. Breaking twenty-five existences and seeing desire’s real nature is king samādhi, possessing all Dharmas. This is perfect contemplation abandoning perfect hindrances.

Unheard and ununderstood, this gate is identity in principle; understood, identity in name; initially contemplated, identity in contemplative practice. Rebuking form purifies eyes; sound ears; fragrance nose; flavor tongue; touch body; abandoning hindrances mind. Six faculties purified is resemblance; three delusions broken and truths revealed partial truth; exhausting desire-hindrance ultimate. The other four hindrances are perfectly abandoned likewise.

Regulating Five Matters: Phenomenal Regulation〔Section Twenty〕

Fourth is regulating five matters: food, sleep, body, breath, and mind. As in the earlier potter simile, a vessel cannot be made if clay and water are not properly balanced; if these five matters are not properly regulated, one cannot enter dhyāna. Sleep and food are regulated outside concentration, while body, breath, and mind are regulated when entering, abiding in, and emerging from concentration.

In regulating food, one should not eat what increases illness, sleepiness, or affliction, but should eat what settles the body and cures illness. In brief, neither hunger nor fullness marks regulated food. The Nirgrantha Scripture says that overeating makes the body difficult to move, produces indolence and negligence, leaves food hard to digest, and loses the benefits of both this and future lives; sleep itself then causes suffering, leaving one dazed and hard to awaken.

In regulating sleep, know that sleep is food for the eyes. It should not be restricted excessively, for that multiplies mental factors and damages one’s work; neither should it be indulged. The earlier rebuke of the five hindrances required sleep to be removed outright because it directly obstructs entry into concentration. Here, scattered mind permits the four elements to relax, so the two teachings have different purposes. In brief, neither harsh restriction nor indulgence marks regulated sleep.

Body, breath, and mind must be regulated together because they depend on one another and cannot be separated. At the first reception of an embryo there are already three matters: warmth, life, and consciousness. Warmth is the material form made from what the parents transmit; life is breath, continuously sustained by karmic-result wind; consciousness is the mind-master of that lifetime. The three are present at conception and grow together, changing every seven days. At the end of thirty-eight such periods, birth occurs and one is called an infant. When the three abide steadily, this is adulthood; when they weaken, old age; when they cease and break apart, death. From beginning to end, the three cannot be separated and therefore must be regulated together.

When first entering concentration, regulate the body so it is neither loose nor tense, breath so it is neither rough nor slippery, and mind so it is neither sunken nor floating. Move from coarse regulation into subtlety and abide in dhyāna. While abiding in concentration, immediately notice and inspect whatever is unregulated and adjust it until stable. It is like tuning a lute and beginning to play: if the melody later fails, one knows a peg or string is out and corrects it as soon as it is noticed. When emerging from concentration, return gradually from subtlety to coarseness, as explained in detail in the Sequential Gate of Dhyāna.

If one can regulate an ordinary person’s body, breath, and mind, they can be transformed into the noble person’s three Dharmas of morality, concentration, and wisdom. The physical body is the basis from which morality arises; breath is the gate for entering concentration; inner mind is the cause from which wisdom arises. This morality relinquishes the base body of evil destinies and ordinary existence, accomplishes the noble person’s six perfections, and fulfills the Dharma body. This breath turns scattered movement and unwholesome discursive thought into the joy of dhyāna and delight in Dharma; wisdom arises from dhyāna and becomes the noble person’s life. This mind turns the mind of birth and death into the mind of awakening, the noble consciousness of true constancy. These three Dharmas together form the noble embryo; from the first mind through the later mind, they can never be separated〔and so forth〕.

Regulating Five Matters: Regulation through Contemplating Mind〔Section Twenty-One〕

To regulate the five matters through contemplation of mind, first take delight in Dharma and the joy of dhyāna as food. The concentration and wisdom produced by initial contemplation of true truth mostly enter emptiness and eliminate Dharmas; this is the mark of hunger. The Lotus Sutra speaks of being hungry, emaciated, and covered with sores and ringworm—this is that mark. Concentration and wisdom produced by the second contemplation of conventional truth mostly support convention and provisionally establish Dharmas; this is the mark of fullness, hence cultivation through kalpas of Buddha-Dharmas as numerous as Ganges sands. The contemplations of emptiness and provisionality are respectively hungry and full, both unregulated. The joy of dhyāna and delight in Dharma of the Middle Way are balanced and moderate, without the partiality of either extreme; this is called neither hungry nor full〔and so forth〕.

To regulate sleep through contemplating mind: the contemplation of emptiness has not yet broken ignorance, so ignorance joins with emptiness, sinks into it, and preserves itself; the mark of sleep is abundant. Emerging into the provisional distinguishes phenomena and subdues ignorance; the mark of sleep is sparse. Contemplation of the Middle Way is relaxed and balanced. If ignorance were completely severed, there would be nowhere for any wholesome Dharma to arise, for dust and toil themselves are Tathāgata-seed: without severing delusion and craving, one can give rise to illuminations and liberations. Yet if ignorance were indulged, how could unsurpassed Buddhahood be achieved? Scripture says that when ignorance turns it becomes illumination, and that by practicing the non-path one penetrates the Buddha-path. The nature of ignorance and the nature of illumination are neither two nor different. How could one sever the nature of ignorance and separately cultivate a nature of illumination? Abiding neither in regulation nor in nonregulation is regulation of sleep through principle-contemplation.

There are also three rounds in contemplating mind to regulate body, breath, and mind together. The Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra speaks of the body that fulfills the six perfections; regulate this body so it is neither loose nor tense. The Great Perfection of Wisdom Sutra says that sudden arising of joyful eloquence is a demonic affair and that its failure to arise suddenly is also a demonic affair. Suddenly arising and urgently practicing the six perfections is tense; suddenly abandoning them is loose; neither tense nor loose marks regulation of body.

In regulating breath, take the joy of dhyāna, delight in Dharma, and wisdom-life as breath. The Great Perfection of Wisdom Sutra says that prajñā is neither sharp nor dull: dullness is roughness, sharpness is slipperiness, and neither dull nor sharp marks regulation of breath. In regulating mind, deeming the mind of awakening very difficult to attain is sinking; deeming it very easy is floating. Neither difficult nor easy marks regulation of mind.

Next, regulate these three matters according to the three contemplations. First take a subtle, wondrous wholesome mind as the mind of awakening, as in the four kinds of mind of awakening discussed above. The Tripiṭaka and Shared Teachings sever bonds, enter emptiness, and take truth as realization; this mind sinks. The Distinct Teaching emerges into the provisional to transform others, distinguishes medicine and illness, and broadly knows Dharma gates; the mind of awakening it generates floats. The Perfect Teaching contemplates the principle of true mark, simultaneously occluding and illuminating. Because it is not empty, it does not sink; because it is not provisional, it does not float. Generating this mind is called the mark of regulation.

In regulating body, the Shared Teaching’s severing delusion while clarifying the six perfections is tense; the Distinct Teaching’s emergence into the provisional and differentiation is loose; the Middle Way, relying on neither extreme, is neither loose nor tense. In regulating breath, the Shared Teaching’s wisdom-life entering emptiness is slippery; the Distinct Teaching’s entering provisionality is rough; the Middle Way, relying on neither extreme, is neither rough nor slippery.

Again, within each of the three contemplations regulate body, breath, and mind. In the first contemplation, calming body, breath, and mind is tense, slippery, and sunken, while contemplating body, breath, and mind is loose, rough, and floating. Regulated to the mean, they become preparatory means for entering true truth. In the second contemplation, calming body, breath, and mind is likewise tense, slippery, and sunken, while contemplating body, breath, and mind is likewise loose, rough, and floating. When calming and contemplation reach the mean, they become preparatory means, produce wisdom of the varieties of the path, and see the principle of conventional truth〔and so forth〕. In the Middle Way, calming body, breath, and mind is tense, slippery, and sunken, while contemplating body, breath, and mind is loose, rough, and floating. Regulated to the mean, calming and contemplation become relaxed and balanced, serving as preparatory means to enter the Middle Way and see the principle of true mark.

Practitioners should skillfully regulate these three matters so they entrust themselves to the noble embryo. When about to cultivate but the mind still has nowhere to return, they should diligently unite preparatory means and wisdom-perfection as the pair of parents and entrust themselves to the noble embryo. How could they instead be born into the embryo of hell, the three evil destinies, humans, or gods?

Practicing Five Dharmas〔Section Twenty-Two〕

Fifth is practicing five Dharmas: aspiration, effort, mindfulness, skillful wisdom, and one-pointed mind. The earlier potter simile means that even when every requisite is prepared, the work will not succeed if the potter does not wish to make the vessel, or works without diligence, or does not keep the method in mind, or works without skill, or cannot be single-minded. So too here: although the preceding twenty Dharmas are complete, calming-and-contemplation cannot appear without joyful aspiration and longing, intense exertion of body and mind, continuity thought after thought, skillful preparatory means, and one-pointed resolve.

When one delights in cultivation without weariness, is unremitting day and night, continues thought after thought, skillfully grasps the meaning, and remains of one undivided mind, one can advance along the road. One-pointed mind is like a ship’s rudder, skillful wisdom like nodding toward the course, and aspiration, effort, and mindfulness like poles and oars; lacking one, the vessel cannot remain secure. It is also like a flying bird, which sees its direction with its eyes, steers with its tail, and advances with both wings. Without the five Dharmas, even phenomenal dhyāna is difficult to accomplish, much more concentration in principle. Thus these five serve universally as preparatory means for Lesser and Great Vehicles, phenomenal dhyāna, and concentration in principle.

The Satyasiddhi Treatise takes the four factors of initial application, sustained application, joy, and bliss as preparatory means and one-pointed mind as the substance of concentration. If so, all four dhyānas possess one-pointed mind, and one-pointed mind itself has no distinctions; how could the four dhyānas be distinguished? This account is therefore not adopted here. The Sutra of the Bodhisattva’s Necklace of the Primary Activities says all five factors are preparatory means and the sixth, silence, is the substance of concentration; yet all four dhyānas possess silence, so they remain hard to distinguish. The Abhidharma, however, takes the five Dharmas as preparatory means and all five factors as the substance of concentration, thereby distinguishing what is common and particular among the four dhyānas. One-pointed mind is their common substance, while the factor unique to each dhyāna is its particular substance. Thus it speaks of dhyāna accompanied by initial and sustained application, down through dhyāna accompanied by equanimity. A particular factor arises simultaneously with one-pointed mind and thereby distinguishes the depth or shallowness of that one-pointed mind. The Great Treatise agrees with this account, which is adopted here.

The Great Treatise on the Perfection of Wisdom explains the five Dharmas. First, aspiration means wishing to go from the desire realm to the first dhyāna. Second, effort is needed because the desire realm is difficult to cross; without effort one cannot leave it, like a defector returning to the homeland who finds the frontier hardest to cross. The treatise says that giving, keeping precepts, and patience are ordinary worldly practices, like the courtesies between guest and host, which should naturally be supplied. Seeing evildoers punished, one dares not offend; or, lacking strength, one endures. These do not necessarily require exceptional effort. But to produce prajñā now, one must rely on meditative concentration, and this is impossible without great effort. Only by urgently exerting body and mind can it be accomplished. The Buddha says that even if blood, flesh, fat, and marrow all dry up and only skin and bones remain, one must not relinquish effort; only then are meditative concentration and wisdom attained. Having attained effort, meditative concentration, and wisdom, every undertaking can be accomplished. Great effort is therefore necessary.

Third, mindfulness means constantly keeping the first dhyāna in mind and thinking of nothing else. Fourth, wisdom distinguishes the first dhyāna as honored and precious and the desire realm as deceptive and detestable. The first dhyāna is sought upward as superior, wondrous, and emergent; the desire realm is rejected downward as painful, coarse, and obstructive. Cause and result together yield twelve contemplations. If one relies only on this formulation, it is the same as the six practices of non-Buddhists. But non-Buddhists seek dhyāna exclusively, whereas Buddhist disciples borrow deviant marks to enter the correct mark, cultivate with an uncontaminated mind, and turn it into correct Dharma. Only this is called skillful wisdom. Fifth, one-pointed mind means that in cultivating this Dharma one concentrates a single resolve and does not engage anything else. This is decisiveness of one-pointed mind, not the one-pointed mind that is the substance of concentration after concentration has been entered.

At the next level, aspiration means wishing to go from birth and death into nirvāṇa. In effort, being unmixed with contamination is vigor, while single-minded pursuit is advance. Mindfulness keeps only the quiescence of nirvāṇa in mind and thinks of nothing else. Skillful wisdom distinguishes the faults of birth and death, rebuked by sages, from the peace and bliss of nirvāṇa, praised by the noble ones. One-pointed mind decisively fears birth and death, cultivates the eightfold noble path, and goes straight onward without turning back. With these five Dharmas as preparatory means, one can enter true truth.

At the next level, aspiration means wishing broadly to transform beings and accomplish Buddha-Dharma. Effort means vowing never to retreat or regret even though the natures of beings are many and Buddha-Dharma is far-reaching. Mindfulness is compassion piercing to the bone, like a mother thinking of her child. Skillful wisdom means knowing the many illnesses well, clearly recognizing Dharma-medicines, and fitting them appropriately to the capacities. One-pointed mind means decisively transforming others and vowing to liberate beings, without a different or divided mind.

At the next level, aspiration is like Sadāprarudita wishing to hear prajñā and not cherishing body or life. Effort is his weeping in an empty forest for seven days and nights in order to hear prajñā, then constantly walking or standing for seven years without sitting or lying down. Mindfulness is constantly wondering when he will hear prajñā, without any other thought. Skillful wisdom means that even when there are obstacles, they cannot obstruct him: when he sells his body, Māra cannot conceal him; when Māra hides the water, he pierces himself and sprinkles blood upon the ground, turning demonic affairs into Buddha-work. One-pointed mind is an aspiration fixed without change, never producing a second thought.

At one further level, aspiration means wishing to leave the two extremes of emptiness and existence and enter directly into the Middle Way. Unmixed with the two extremes is vigor; effortless flowing inward is advance. Binding conditions to the Dharma realm so that one thought itself is the Dharma realm is called mindfulness. Cultivating the preparatory means of middle contemplation is called skillfulness. Once the two extremes subside, the mind-water clears and can know the marks of worldly Dharmas’ arising and ceasing without dividing the mind in two; pure and constantly one, it can then see prajñā. This is one-pointed mind.

Summary of Preparatory Means〔Section Twenty-Three〕

These twenty-five Dharmas universally serve as preparatory means for every dhyāna and wisdom. As the gate of contemplation cultivated differs, preparatory means change accordingly, like different melodies requiring different ways of tuning strings. Detailed differentiation would yield immeasurable preparatory means; the writing would become too extensive to record them all, so they may be understood according to the meaning. Here the twenty-five are provisionally treated as preparatory means outside concentration, also called distant preparatory means; by regulating mind through them, one suddenly sees principle. At the moment principle is truly seen, who still divides inside from outside? Where could distance or proximity be fixed?

The Great Perfection of Wisdom Sutra says that this wisdom is not attained through inner contemplation, outer contemplation, or contemplation both inner and outer; neither is it attained apart from outer contemplation, inner contemplation, and contemplation both inner and outer, nor through complete absence of contemplation. The present account provisionally follows this meaning in speaking of external preparatory means, but one must not grasp them as fixed and thereby create disputes over right and wrong. Understanding this meaning, sinking and floating each find their place, and both inner and outer become preparatory means. Failing to understand it, neither inner nor outer is a preparatory means.

Mohe Zhiguan, Fascicle Four〔Lower〕

The place has been chosen, external affairs have stopped, the body is free from illness, and clay, wheel, and cords are all in order. Must the vessel now appear? Not necessarily. If the potter will not begin, works without diligence, forgets the method, lacks skillful means, or cannot remain single-minded, every preparation still comes to nothing. Through this image of pottery-making, the Mohe Zhiguan explains why twenty-five preparatory means are needed before correct cultivation.

Preparatory means do not turn a difficult road into a shortcut. They make every necessary condition work together in its proper place. Possessing five conditions settles what cultivation relies upon. Rebuking five desires cuts off outward enticement. Abandoning five hindrances clears inner obstruction. Regulating five matters keeps food, sleep, body, breath, and mind from excess or deficiency. Practicing five Dharmas then makes the whole person genuinely move forward. If one link is missing, calming-and-contemplation may remain only an aspiration. As the five divisions follow one another, coarse distraction gradually enters subtle stillness.

Why Are Preparatory Means Not a Shortcut?〔Section One〕

What are preparatory means? The treatise first answers in terms of skillfulness: when a few wholesome roots are skillfully employed, they can accomplish immeasurable practices, generate understanding, and enter the bodhisattva stages. It then answers in terms of converging conditions: a Tathāgata’s body does not arise from a single cause or condition; both cause and result require many conditions to accomplish them together. The power of preparatory means therefore lies not in skipping steps, but in preventing a slight cause from being wasted and directing dispersed conditions toward one result.

Why, then, distinguish distant and proximate? Distance and proximity are established only in relation to correct contemplation. The twenty-five Dharmas regulate the coarse into the subtle and inspect distraction until it becomes still; these are distant preparatory means. The ten objects and ten contemplations directly accomplish contemplative practice and generate resemblance and true realization; these are proximate preparatory means. Distant does not mean inferior, nor can the proximate stand alone by leaping over the distant. Just as a vessel cannot be formed apart from workshop, health, clay, wheel, and hands, the work of shaping it nearby has already received the many conditions prepared at a distance.

The sequence of the five divisions arises naturally from this. The path is propagated by persons, and persons advance along the path through conditions. Once the conditions are complete, one first cuts away fond desires. With external desires set aside, one next purifies the inner mind. When the inner mind is quiet, one tests and regulates the five matters. Once those five are regulated, one practices the five Dharmas. This does not divide life into five compartments. It lets the space cleared at each level become the place where the next can work.

What Do the Five Conditions Settle First?〔Section Two〕

What must be present first in cultivating calming-and-contemplation? The treatise lists purity in keeping precepts, adequate clothing and food, quiet dwelling in a secluded place, cessation of entangling affairs, and attainment of good spiritual friends. Body and life require clothing and food; one’s place of practice must allow quiet; external affairs cannot continually pull at mind; and the Dharma gate requires a good teacher’s guidance. A lack in any one may obstruct the other four.

Why is the first condition, keeping precepts, unfolded at greatest length? Because keeping precepts is not a single prohibition. It reaches from fundamental good and evil in life all the way through concentration, wisdom, and contemplation of mind. The treatise lists ten precepts: not deficient, unbroken, unpunctured, unmixed, path-conforming, unattached, praised by wisdom, sovereign, concentration-conforming, and complete. The first three protect moral restraint; the unmixed precept protects the concentrated mind. Path-conforming and unattached penetrate true truth. Praised by wisdom and sovereign penetrate transformation of others. Concentration-conforming and complete preserve the movement of deportment and the constant stillness of the Middle Way at once.

Intrinsic precepts and precepts received through ordination must not be conflated. Intrinsic precepts apply whether or not one has received them; doing evil itself has karmic consequence. After precepts are received, violating the nonmanifest precept entails an additional offense. The Three Refuges, five precepts, full ordination, and the like are received according to regulations established after a buddha appears in the world. Contemplation, training, perfuming, cultivation, and wisdom of the Four Truths each also have a later disclosed level. Root and adventitious Dharma depend upon one another: one neither says regulated precepts always existed in the world, nor treats the form of receiving precepts as the whole of wholesome and unwholesome karmic result.

Why Do Precepts Move from Outward Safeguarding into Contemplation of Mind?〔Section Three〕

If one merely avoids violating bodily and verbal precepts, is keeping precepts already pure? The treatise first affirms the necessity of phenomenal keeping, then asks whether mind is still defiled. A vessel that is not deficient, unbroken, and unpunctured can of course be used. But if the inner mind still pursues acts that break precepts, the outwardly intact vessel resembles an unfired clay blank: when adverse conditions of craving and views arrive, it will break.

The ten precepts are therefore gathered into four levels. The first four take wholesome and unwholesome minds born through causes and conditions as objects of contemplation and use a wholesome, concordant mind to prevent an unwholesome one. Prevention is the goodness of calming; concordant activity is the goodness of practice and also contemplation. The path-conforming and unattached precepts contemplate wholesome and unwholesome, Dharma and non-Dharma, as entirely empty in their immediacy, without generating another view by relying on existence, nonexistence, or even neither existence nor nonexistence. The two precepts praised by wisdom and sovereign know that mind-Dharma has no possession, yet still distinguish medicines and illnesses within provisional names and guide beings without being confined by those names. The concentration-conforming and complete precepts contemplate mind as originally neither empty nor provisional: the two extremes are quiescent while both truths are simultaneously illuminated.

Why can contemplation of mind also possess the five names precept, vinaya, liberation, recitation, and discipline? Because the three contemplations can prevent the three delusions, and this prevention extends throughout the Dharma realm. They can extinguish views-and-thought, dust-and-sand, and ignorance, and this extinguishing also extends throughout the Dharma realm. Seeing the three truths allows the three delusions to preserve liberation. Names disclose the principles of the truths, and contemplative mindfulness continues to appear—this is recitation. The contemplations can also weigh the coarse and subtle dimensions of the three delusions and the medicine-and-illness relation of the three contemplations without the slightest error—this is discipline. The movement of precepts from body and speech deep into contemplation of mind does not abandon phenomenal precepts. It gives them a root not easily destroyed by craving and views.

Phenomenal precepts can bring differing grades of retribution among asuras, humans, and gods; emptiness, provisionality, and the Middle within precepts of principle likewise each have depths and shallows. Different stages entail different capacities for keeping them. Yet contemplation of mind in the Middle Way universally embraces all Dharmas. One must neither slight phenomena because principle is high, nor suppose that careful phenomenal conduct naturally completes contemplation of principle.

Why Does the Rākṣasa Ask for Only One Speck of Dust?〔Section Four〕

How does breaking precepts begin? The treatise does not depict only a sudden abandonment of every precept-Dharma. It has the rākṣasa of craving ask first for the whole flotation bladder, then half, a hand’s span, a finger’s span, and finally an amount no larger than a speck of dust. If the practitioner says that so little is harmless and a duṣkṛta does not matter, the gate of negligence has already opened. Though the hole is tiny, seawater gradually enters and can finally drown the one crossing the sea.

The rākṣasa of craving disguises pleasure as nirvāṇa. Sensual delight is like food to the hungry, treasure to the poor, or wine to a monkey: the immediate gratification entices a person to hand over the flotation bladder of precepts. It does not break only moral restraint. Reaching greedily for the five desires also breaks precepts shared with concentration; deep attachment to birth and death breaks emptiness in its immediacy; failure to protect another’s mind breaks provisionality in its immediacy; and disbelief that the goodness of precepts is equal to empty space and possesses every Buddha-Dharma breaks the Middle Way.

The rākṣasa of views is harder to recognize. Having gained a little understanding of emptiness or a small portion of meditative concentration, a practitioner without a good teacher or friend may take the personal mind as teacher, decide that the unborn has been realized, and invoke nondiscrimination to dismiss cause and result and destroy deportment. The monk in the Buddha’s time who attained the four dhyānas but mistook them for the four fruits, then saw the intermediate state at death and slandered the Buddha in return, clearly shows that contaminated concentration cannot guarantee the correctness of one’s own perceptions.

If emptiness could truly erase every offense, why would one who grasps emptiness still cherish personal life and fear the king? Such a person cannot empty self or worldly power, yet declares parents and the Buddha’s precepts empty. This reveals so-called nonobstruction as merely language protecting desire and conceit. The Dharma of emptiness originally treats existence. If emptiness itself is fixed into a real view, it becomes another rākṣasa, swallowing wisdom-life together with the bladder of precepts.

Which Can Be Relaxed, Keeping Precepts or Cultivating the Vehicle?〔Section Five〕

May phenomenal precepts and the vehicle of principle be reduced to only one side? The treatise answers with four alternatives. If vehicle and precepts are both urgent, one may not attain the path in this life, but powerful karma first draws one to a wholesome realm, where the contemplative vehicle already cultivated enables one to see a buddha and attain the path. If precepts are relaxed but the vehicle urgent, breaking phenomenal precepts may bring a body in the three evil destinies, yet the force of contemplation of principle enables one to hear Dharma and attain the path in that very body. If precepts are urgent but the vehicle relaxed, one may be born among humans, gods, or in a Brahmā heaven, yet attachment to merit and concentration prevents understanding even when a buddha appears. If vehicle and precepts are both relaxed, one loses the human and heavenly results, consciousness becomes benighted, and one sinks through long kalpas.

Why do these four alternatives not glorify relaxed precepts and an urgent vehicle as a heroic shortcut? Because seeing a buddha and attaining the path comes from the vehicle’s power, while receiving a body in the three evil destinies is precisely the result of breaking phenomenal precepts. Dragons, ghosts, and animals who come to assemblies in scripture can reveal urgency of the vehicle in past lives; this does not rename the suffering of evil destinies as preparatory means. If one can receive the path as a human or god, why deliberately enter the three courses in misery?

Conversely, urgent precepts and a relaxed vehicle are not a secure destination. It resembles a bound prisoner using wealth to have someone delay the execution while awaiting a pardon. Human or heavenly merit merely extends the time. Without meeting a good spiritual friend and cultivating the vehicle, one falls when that retribution ends. Practitioners must therefore examine themselves: which of the phenomenal and principial sides is stronger or weaker? Which grade of phenomenal precepts is urgent, and which grade of the vehicle of principle is relaxed? Only by knowing one’s own causes can one see the future result of rising or sinking.

Is There Still an Entrance to Calming-and-Contemplation after a Grave Offense?〔Section Six〕

If breaking precepts already obstructs concentration and wisdom, can one begin again? Light transgressions are removed through repentance according to the vinaya. Once precepts become pure, the obstruction turns and calming-and-contemplation can easily clarify and arise. In the Lesser Vehicle, grave offenses have no repentance. The Great Vehicle, however, opens a gate of repentance through the four kinds of samādhi. If contemplation of principle has only a slight deviation and attachment remains weak, correct contemplation can also break the view; ashamed and self-reproaching, the mind returns to the correct track.

But why can repentance not consist only of saying that the nature of offense is empty? A grave offense arises through weighty conditions and must be treated with an earnest mind. A present grave offense is like losing the road nearby: turning back with anguish is comparatively easy. A long-past grave obstruction is like having wandered far and deep: reversal is harder. Sitting upright and recollecting true mark, entering meditative concentration, practicing according to repentance rites, and following teachings on restoration each show that a grave offense can be transformed. At the same time, they require practitioners not to use empty words to omit the physical and mental anguish of repentance.

To repent the grave obstructions of this and a past life, one must first recognize the ten minds flowing with birth and death, then employ the ten minds flowing against it. Repentance thus does more than look back upon an old deed. It finds how the current of birth and death continues in the present and where it can turn.

Why Must the Ten Minds Move against the Current?〔Section Seven〕

How does the current of offense move from subtle to grave? At first, ignorance falsely reckons person and self. From the view of a body arise inversion, greed, anger, delusion, and many karmic acts. Afflictions are present within, evil friends encountered without, and the force of evil grows. One next extinguishes wholesome mind within and wholesome deeds without and does not rejoice in others’ goodness. Then the three kinds of conduct are indulged, letting an unwholesome mind spread and continue day and night. Concealment follows, then lack of fear of evil destinies, absence of shame before oneself or others, and finally denial of cause and result. Like a privy worm delighting in a privy without knowing its filth, mind follows a familiar road and is pushed from one thought to the four grave offenses, five heinous acts, and even icchantikahood.

Moving against the current is not reciting those ten in reverse order. Every step overturns one habit. Deep faith that karmic seeds do not disappear however long they remain breaks denial of cause and result. Shame before heaven and remorse before persons break shamelessness. Recollecting that life lasts only one breath—like the jackal suddenly hearing of beheading or King Aśoka hearing the bell of death each day—breaks lack of fear of evil destinies. Disclosure, like exposing roots so branches wither or drying a source so its stream runs out, breaks concealment. Cutting continuity, like refusing to swallow again what has been vomited, breaks repeated action.

One further generates the mind of awakening, turning concern only for personal safety into aid extending throughout the realm. With wholesome body, speech, and mind unceasing day and night, one cultivates merit and repairs fault as though moving a mountain or filling a sea. One safeguards wholesome Dharmas in self and others instead of envying or destroying them. Recollecting the compassion and wisdom of buddhas in the ten directions, one leaves evil friends. Finally, one follows greed, anger, deluded thought, inversion, the view of a body, and the view of self backward level by level and discovers that neither self nor mind has an abiding place. Offense and merit have no master, like morning dew disappearing suddenly when the sun rises.

These ten minds accord with the path to nirvāṇa and oppose the current of birth and death. Merely entering a sanctuary and enduring pain without distinguishing right and wrong does not naturally become repentance. Truly turning the current requires knowing which new mind overturns each old one.

Why Do Offenses of View Especially Require Both Phenomenal and Principial Repentance?〔Section Eight〕

How can delusions of view repent when they claim a principle of their own? The treatise still uses the ten minds as its frame, but carries observation more deeply into the mind of views. It first points out that Udraka Rāmaputra, Subhadra, Dīrghanakha, and others had deep concentration and sharp intelligence yet still had not escaped subtle delusion and the many views. To call the ignorance-mind that loves emptiness the path is to reckon a non-path as the path and a noncause as cause; to call the future painful result nirvāṇa is to reckon a nonresult as result. Only upon seeing that the mind of views itself is suffering and accumulation does one genuinely establish deep faith in worldly and world-transcending cause and result.

Shame and remorse also change: one is ashamed that one has not seen the three truths and remorseful before practitioners of preparatory means and those to whom true principle has appeared. Fear sees that the offense of grasping emptiness flows with karma and is not uncontaminated. Disclosure removes the three doubts concerning self, teacher, and Dharma so that the nature of the truths can appear. Cutting continuity lets contemplation of the three truths remain uninterrupted. The mind of awakening extends throughout the Dharma realm, overturning evil throughout the realm with uncontrived goodness. Cultivating merit and repairing fault then no longer merely moves from a view of existence to a view of nonexistence; upon the view itself, it cultivates path factors that are empty, provisional, and middle in their immediacy.

Safeguarding correct Dharma no longer protects one’s own view; it protects the three truths from destruction by wrong views. Recollection of the Buddha means recollecting the three truths as neither coming nor going, and unborn Dharma itself as Buddha. Contemplating the emptiness of offense-nature sees the three delusions as illusions: they come from nowhere and leave no trace. When one is empty, all are empty; offense-nature itself is empty.

Why add phenomenal Dharma after principial repentance? The mind of views is fierce and can bring forth grave afflictions, like a serious illness requiring stronger medicinal support. Deep contemplation of the three truths is aided by earnest phenomenal practice, like two strong persons, one wiping the body and the other washing the clothes, together subduing a venomous snake. Purity in phenomenal precepts produces root concentration and worldly wisdom. Purity in the precept of the unborn produces concentration of true truth and wisdom of all phenomena. Purity in the precept of provisionality in its immediacy produces concentration of conventional truth and wisdom of the varieties of the path. Purity in the precept of the Middle in its immediacy produces king samādhi and wisdom of all modes. With phenomena and principle supporting one another, calming-and-contemplation once again has an entrance.

How Does Clothing Turn from Covering the Body into Dharma Robes?〔Section Nine〕

Is clothing merely a minor matter of warding off cold and covering the body? Without clothes, body and life are unsettled and the path has no support. Clothing can cover what is unsightly, ward off heat and cold and mosquitoes and horseflies, and put the body in order. Practitioners in snowy mountains are content with grass mats and deerskins. Practitioners of the dhūta practices possess only three robes. Practitioners in cold lands may accept the hundred-and-one requisites that aid the body, but must have few desires and know contentment. Though superior, middling, and inferior provisions differ, all share one boundary: let clothing support the path, and do not let seeking and protecting clothing become a new affair.

What does the clothing of contemplative practice cover? Gentleness and patience make the two extremes of birth-and-death and nirvāṇa neither two nor different from the Middle Way. Settling mind in the Middle Way is patience; leaving the clamor of the two extremes is stillness; passing beyond the two deaths is extinction. The patience of still extinction covers the evils of the two extremes as clothes cover ugliness, removes the five abiding afflictions as clothes shield from heat, breaks views born of ignorance as clothes ward off cold, and relinquishes the discursive thought of the two extremes as clothes repel mosquitoes and horseflies. It does not declare phenomenal clothing useless. It asks whether mind has also put on Dharma robes when the body wears the kāṣāya.

The three robes can be turned into the three contemplations, covering the cold and heat of views and cravings upon the three truths and adorning the three bodies. The hundred-and-one additional garments can be turned into all practices that assist the path, together assisting the three contemplations. Clothing thus expands from an external requisite into the cultivation of patience throughout Dharmas. Of everything relied upon, one asks: is it covering delusion and aiding the path, or adding the burden of acquisition and protection?

How Does Food Nourish Dharma Body and Wisdom-Life?〔Section Ten〕

Does food sustain only the physical body? Practitioners deep in the mountains sustain themselves with fruit, water, pine, and cypress, then bind mind to seated dhyāna after eating. Practitioners in an araṇya go on alms rounds at a distance neither too far nor too near from a settlement. Those unable to abstain from grain or beg for food accept meals delivered by donors and pure food within the saṅgha. All three arrangements serve one purpose: fill the sore of hunger without letting the search for food obstruct the path.

Where does Dharma-food come from? Delight in Dharma and the joy of dhyāna are great impartial wisdom. Taking afflictions as fuel and wisdom as fire, they make the food of nirvāṇa, nourish the Dharma body, and lengthen wisdom-life. When not a single color or fragrance is other than the Middle Way, one is like the superior person for whom one blade of grass or one fruit is enough: this is obtaining food through the phenomenon in its immediacy. Those unable to enter the Middle through phenomena proceed through the three contemplations sequentially, like a dhūta practitioner begging for food, and finally see the Middle Way and become full. Those unable to contemplate through phenomena in their immediacy or progressively through Dharmas follow a good spiritual friend able to speak prajñā and generate understanding from hearing, like accepting a meal delivered by a donor. Or they awaken through the forest of merit in the factors of concentration, like receiving pure food in the saṅgha.

Dharma-food therefore does not use abstruse principle to cancel physical food. Physical food settles bodily life; Dharma-food increases wisdom-life. If one side is unregulated, the other is difficult to sustain. True contentment does not mean needing nothing. It means that once what one receives can support the path, one is no longer drawn away by additional flavors.

Must a Truly Quiet Place Be in the Mountains and Forests?〔Section Eleven〕

Does greater distance necessarily make mind quieter? Specific samādhis require a chosen place. Deep mountains and remote valleys, cut off from human traces, best allow unimpeded dhyāna-contemplation. A dhūta place lies at least three li from a settlement, where interaction is sparse yet afflictions are kept under warning. In a secluded monastery, one may live alone in a room, avoid entanglement in affairs, and think correctly. Lay settlements readily invite faults; noisy monasteries beside a market are unsuitable. Once an appropriate place is found, one should not move frequently.

Yet if a śrāvaka mind arises, even a body a thousand yojanas away is not called secluded. A body living beside a city but free from the mind of the Two Vehicles may instead be called secluded. The Middle Way is hidden, distant, and profound, unreachable by the tracks of the seven preparatory ranks, like deep mountains. It is lofty, broad, and unmoving, like a mountain mass. Separation from the two extremes is quiet; nonarising and nonactivation are secluded. The contemplation that emerges into the provisional neighbors emptiness while distinguishing medicines and illnesses, like a dhūta place neighboring a settlement. Entering emptiness through provisionality is like abiding in a single room even within a noisy monastery.

Mountains, forests, and rooms provide outward stability, but the principle of the three truths is the place where mind truly settles. If one only hides one’s shadow in mountains and forests while the mind of the two extremes does not cease, even the deepest valley can remain clamorous. Settled in the three truths, one may be secluded even beside a city.

Does Ceasing Entangling Affairs Mean Abandoning Every Activity?〔Section Twelve〕

Why cease the four affairs of livelihood, social relations, skills, and learning? The issue here is which matters continue to pull at mind after an araṇya practitioner has already left clamor for quiet. Managing a livelihood gains one thing and loses another. Congratulation, condolence, betrothal, and inquiry continue without end. Medicine, divination, crafts, spells, and arts invite others to seek one’s services. Reading, reciting, questioning, answering, and competing over superiority weary mind and muddy its water. One originally leaves kin and follows a teacher to seek the essential path; forming broad connections throughout prefectures and commanderies again is like putting on a robe upside down while looking for its collar, or drilling fire in search of water.

The four affairs are not judged by outward form alone. The practice of following one’s own intent has its own inclusions and is not discussed here. Reading sūtras and treatises is itself Buddha-work; only when it falls into competition over memory and obstructs calming-and-contemplation does it become an affair of learning. Medical knowledge and skills are likewise not offenses in themselves. But pursuing marvels before attaining the noble path resembles possessing beautiful hide and fine horns that instead invite injury to the body.

In contemplating mind, affairs of livelihood return to craving that moistens karmic seeds; severing craving ends them. Social affairs return to karma that makes beings come and go among the five paths; nonaction severs birth and death. Skills return to delusive conceptual play that obstructs prajñā. Learning returns to pursuing worldly intelligence and eloquence before attaining patience in the unborn and seeing only tiles, stones, plants, and trees. Once water stops, it clarifies by itself. Then one knows with wisdom of all modes and sees with the Buddha-eye, without running along narrow paths.

Why Is a Good Spiritual Friend the Whole of the Causes and Conditions?〔Section Thirteen〕

Can a good spiritual friend help only halfway while the other half depends entirely on oneself? In the cadence of the Buddha’s answer to Ānanda, the treatise says that a good spiritual friend is the whole of the causes and conditions for attaining the path. An external protector arranges necessities without prying into faults, causing disturbance, or offering hollow praise, like a mother raising a child or a tiger carrying its cub. Fellow practitioners spur one another, neither sleeping nor scattering, like passengers crossing together in one boat. An instructing teacher can distinguish path from non-path, inner from outer preparatory means, and penetration from obstruction and impediment, skillfully turning and breaking a person’s mind. Each keeps one face of the work, and together they protect the practitioner from taking the unknown as a personal authority.

Nor is a good spiritual friend limited to the form of one person. Buddhas, bodhisattvas, and noble ones shelter and nurture through majestic radiance—this is external protection. The six perfections and path factors are gates into the path, like fellow practitioners. Dharma-nature and ultimate reality are what all buddhas take as teacher; the object can generate wisdom—this is instruction. Conversely, buddhas and noble ones each possess all three meanings themselves: they shelter and protect, harmonize their light to accompany others, and guide through one voice. The six perfections and path factors protect and aid the correct path, accord with correct practice, and lead into the three gates of liberation. Dharma-nature can invisibly perfume and protect, correspond with wisdom, and give sight to the blind.

Why might a good spiritual friend still become a Māra? If someone leads a person only to the transformation city of the Two Vehicles, reducing half the afflictions and traveling half the path of awakening, then from what is gained that guide is a spiritual friend, but from what is taken away the guide is a Māra. Good spiritual friends, samādhi, and the mind of awakening can all aid the path. If they make someone stop at the half-word and fail to comprehend the Middle Way, they too become objects of attachment. One therefore cannot choose a teacher by outward appearance alone, nor absolutize any guidance in the quest for the whole.

Why Do the Five Objects Become the Five Desires?〔Section Fourteen〕

Are form, sound, fragrance, flavor, and touch themselves desires? The treatise expressly says that the five objects are not desires. The appealing savor within an object makes a practitioner generate desire and pursuit; only this is called one of the five desires. Each of the six faculties has its own rush outward: the eye is like a dog loving a village, the ear a deer loving mountains and marshes, the nose a fish, the tongue a snake, the body a monkey, and mind a bird. If one blames only the outer object and does not examine the faculty’s appropriation, one cannot grasp how desire arises.

Phenomenally, forms include shape, complexion, and jewels; sounds include seductive words, strings and flutes, and tinkling girdle ornaments; fragrances include orchids, musk, and bodily scent; flavors include liquor, meat, sweetness, sourness, curds, and blood; touches include cold, warmth, delicacy, smoothness, fine clothing, and bodily distinctions. Respectively, they resemble a hot pellet of gold, a poisoned drum, the breath of a lurking dragon, boiling honey and a honeyed blade, and lying beside a lion. At first approach they seem to have savor; after being obtained they never satisfy. An unwholesome mind is like a fire fed with fuel, plundering form and mind life after life.

Rebuking desire therefore does not mean hating the world. It means seeing the cost of desire as it is. Even after Nanda attained the fruit, habitual residue remained. A king may disregard ancestral temple and realm for sexual desire, and households and states may be overthrown by it. When the fault is seen, the thought that reaches out can cease and mind can genuinely enter concentration.

Why Must Rebuking Desire Pass through Emptiness, Provisionality, and the Middle?〔Section Fifteen〕

Does merely saying that form is impermanent thoroughly rebuke form? Upon form, people can establish permanence, impermanence, both permanence and impermanence, neither permanence nor impermanence, and the sixty-two views, contesting with one another and making karma for form. Analytical contemplation first sees ignorance and the many views being ground away thought after thought, without self or master, until karma recedes and result disappears. Contemplation that embodies emptiness further sees ignorance as empty in its immediacy and the many views likewise empty. There is no current of form to enter and no karmic result produced by entering form.

But if one remains in the emptiness of form, how can one distinguish the immeasurable suffering and accumulation that beings produce in dependence upon form and establish the medicines of immeasurable path and cessation? One therefore emerges from emptiness into the provisional, broadly distinguishing form while knowing it to be only a name, and the name empty in its immediacy. Differentiation does not return to grasping existence. It enables the wisdom of emptiness to transform others.

Finally, one must rebuke savor itself and leave both extremes. Ordinary beings savor form; the Two Vehicles savor separation from form. If savor were fixed, one could not separate; if separation were fixed, savor should never recur. Neither savor nor separation is fixed. Neither savor nor separation reveals the Middle Way within form. Distinguishing form sees the conventional; form empty in its immediacy sees the true; nonattachment to either extreme sees the Middle. The samādhis of the three truths open from the same desire for form. Rebuking form is like this, and so too are sound, fragrance, flavor, and touch.

Why Are Hindrances Harder to Detect than Outer Objects?〔Section Sixteen〕

Once the five desires have been rebuked, why must the five hindrances still be abandoned? The five desires arise when the five faculties face present objects and produce consciousness. With the five hindrances, an object has already entered the mental field; mind again pursues the past and imagines the future, repeatedly covering itself from within. Though the guest outside has departed, illness remains in the potter’s body, and the work still cannot be done.

The hindrance of craving replays past forms, sounds, fragrances, flavors, and touches and secretly devises means to obtain them again. The hindrance of anger forms resentments from the nine vexations across the three times, letting the fire of anger burn the forest of merit. The hindrance of sleep blocks the six consciousnesses in darkness and lets the four limbs droop, like a small death that steals illumination every day. The hindrance of restlessness-and-remorse first ranges across greed, anger, deviancy, and delusion as the body wanders and the mouth laughs, then binds mind in regret. The hindrance of doubt suspects that one is not a vessel for the path, the teacher lacks deep wisdom, or the Dharma received does not accord with principle. Each hindrance has its own entrance and cannot be reduced to a vague category of distraction.

Their treatments also differ. When craving is heavy, contemplate impurity; when anger is heavy, cultivate kindness; when sleep is heavy, spur body and mind diligently and generate delight in Dharma; when restlessness disperses, count breaths. For the three doubts, discriminatingly establish confidence in oneself, teacher, and Dharma. One seeking Dharma does not judge a teacher by outward appearance, just as one does not discard gold because its sack smells bad. Trusting Dharma does not prohibit questioning. Before the Dharma eye opens, it means not first covering the vessel with a blind mind. Only by recognizing which illness is especially strong does one know where to apply medicine first.

Which Hindrance Is the Direct Obstruction?〔Section Seventeen〕

Do the five hindrances equally obstruct concentration? Some take lack of knowledge as the direct obstruction and therefore emphasize doubt and sleep. Some take scattered movement as the direct obstruction and therefore emphasize restlessness-and-remorse. Some take the softness of dhyāna as treatment for hardness and therefore emphasize craving and anger. The treatise does not choose one hindrance as the eternally unique direct obstruction. It examines which is especially strong in this practitioner. When craving is heavy, craving is direct and the others peripheral; anger, sleep, restlessness-and-remorse, and doubt follow the same pattern.

This is like the four elements: any can become an illness, but they do not necessarily erupt together. Whichever element is disturbed now directly endangers life. Treating the strong hindrance first may let the weaker ones recede with it, so that meditative concentration can arise. This question and answer brings treatment back from abstract ranking to self-examination. One does not first decide the worst affliction in the world; one recognizes honestly the one most capable of covering mind at this moment.

When the First Dhyāna Arises, Are All Five Hindrances Exhausted?〔Section Eighteen〕

Once the first dhyāna arises, do the five hindrances disappear forever? The treatise first speaks of four divisions according to the predominant or equal arising of greed, anger, and delusion, then opens these into the five hindrances of craving, anger, sleep, doubt, and restlessness-and-remorse. Insofar as the five dull-driven hindrances obstruct the first dhyāna, this layer is removed when that dhyāna arises. Yet if the four divisions are broadly opened, each may contain 21,000 afflictions, together making 84,000. Through suffering, accumulation, path, and cessation, these can further open into a Dharma treasury, gates of dust and toil, samādhis and dhāraṇīs, and the perfections. The meaning of hindrance cannot be confined to coarse marks of the desire realm.

One who holds a view of emptiness takes that personal view as real, loving what agrees and becoming angry at what opposes. Deluded fixation through ignorance resembles sleep; conceptual play and disputes of views resemble restlessness-and-remorse; after one’s view is broken, great doubt arises. This layer of five hindrances obstructs true truth. Even after realizing a fruit, appropriation of the true, abandonment of thought-delusions, delusions not yet exhausted, lost mindfulness, and failure to reach beyond-training can likewise be examined in terms of craving, anger, sleep, restlessness, and doubt.

Sinking into emptiness and appropriating realization produces another layer of hindrances. Cherishing and preserving emptiness is craving. Rejecting birth and death and refusing to contemplate it is anger. Refusing to illuminate the provisional is sleep. Treating beings as disturbances is restlessness-and-remorse. Lack of clarity in provisional wisdom is doubt. These obstruct conventional truth and wisdom of the varieties of the path. Bodhisattvas seeking Buddha-Dharma may likewise love the Dharma, reject the Two Vehicles, fail to exhaust ignorance, retain faults in their three kinds of conduct when compared with a buddha, and possess less wisdom in the initial mind than the later mind. Left unexamined, these still obstruct the Middle Way. The arising of meditative concentration is therefore not permission to stop examining. It makes subtler coverings appear level by level.

How Does One Thought of Desire Become a Gate of Perfect Abandonment?〔Section Nineteen〕

Must perfect abandonment of the hindrances wait until a high stage? The treatise asks in return: if the wondrous Dharma were only for Dharma-nature bodhisattvas, why teach it to ordinary beings in the three realms? It is precisely because ordinary beings can cultivate that provisional teachings are conferred here to lead into the real. What the initial mind must examine is not some other Dharma far away, but the present thought of desire.

How can one thought of desire possess all Dharmas? When awareness of desire first arises, the coarse mind does not know it. Growing progressively smooth and sharp, it becomes habit. One then retreats from precepts and seeks the object, stealing, robbing, coercing, and trading for desire, killing to obtain wealth, indulging offenses when rich, and proliferating evil thoughts when poor. Once the offense and karma of desire are complete, “present tendency” and “this existence” draw forth birth and death, and the twelve links revolve in their wake. The five hindrances and birth and death are not added suddenly at the end. They are already present in the first thought.

Desire cannot be found when sought among the five outer objects, the inner mental faculty, or the consciousness between; neither when inner and outer are joined or separated, nor when past condition, present cause, or future result is sought. Desire is empty in its immediacy. From one’s own desire one also sees the immeasurable causes of desire, forms, sounds, mental conduct, and dependent environments of beings, as defeating raiders makes achievement possible, abundant fuel intensifies fire, and rotting manure produces flowers. Only by not abiding in the emptiness of desire can one produce hundreds and thousands of Dharma gates from the illnesses of beings’ desires.

Finally, because the real nature of desire is neither empty nor provisional, there is neither tendency nor nontendency. Without separately cutting or breaking, four sets of five hindrances are perfectly removed in one thought. From possession in principle through hearing and understanding, beginning contemplation, purification of the six faculties, breaking delusion and revealing the truths, until the hindrance of desire is exhausted, the six identities unfold along one line. “Desire itself is the path” does not make a slogan of perfection. It means not stagnating in emptiness within emptiness, not indulging desire within provisionality, and not retaining either extreme in the Middle Way.

Why Is Regulating Body, Breath, and Mind Like Tuning a Lute?〔Section Twenty〕

Once the hindrances have been abandoned, why still regulate food, sleep, body, breath, and mind? Clay and water that are out of balance cannot make a vessel; five matters not skillfully regulated likewise cannot enter dhyāna. Food is measured by whether it increases illness, sleep, or affliction and should leave one neither hungry nor full. Sleep is food for the eyes. Excessive restriction harms mind and body, while indulgence directly obstructs concentration; it should therefore be neither harshly restrained nor indulged.

Body, breath, and mind resemble warmth, life, and consciousness at conception: from infancy and adulthood through decline, old age, and death, they cannot be separated. On entering concentration, body is neither loose nor tense, breath neither rough nor slippery, and mind neither sunken nor floating. While abiding, one notices whatever is unregulated and corrects it; when emerging, one returns from subtlety to coarseness. If a melody fails after the lute strings have begun to sound, one goes back and adjusts strings and pegs. One does not suppose that tuning once at the beginning ends the need to inspect them.

When these three matters of an ordinary person are regulated, they can also turn into morality, concentration, and wisdom. The physical body becomes the basis for generating morality; breath becomes the gate for entering concentration; mind becomes the cause for producing wisdom. Morality relinquishes a body in the evil destinies and accomplishes the Dharma body. Breath turns scattered movement and unwholesome discursive thought into the joy of dhyāna and delight in Dharma. Mind turns the mind of birth and death into the mind of awakening. The three Dharmas together form the noble embryo and never separate from the initial mind to the later mind.

How Does Contemplating Mind Regulate Hunger, Fullness, Sinking, and Floating?〔Section Twenty-One〕

Does contemplation of mind also have hunger and fullness? Concentration and wisdom that enter emptiness mostly eliminate Dharmas and resemble hunger. Concentration and wisdom that support convention broadly establish Dharmas and resemble fullness. Delight in Dharma in the Middle Way inclines toward neither extreme and alone is neither hungry nor full. When emptiness-contemplation combines with ignorance, sinks into emptiness, and preserves itself, it resembles abundant sleep. Emerging into the provisional distinguishes phenomena and subdues ignorance, resembling little sleep. The Middle Way neither severs the nature of ignorance so that wholesome Dharmas have nowhere to arise nor indulges ignorance so that Buddhahood cannot be accomplished. It abides neither in regulation nor in nonregulation.

Suddenly rushing to practice the six perfections or suddenly abandoning them is tension or looseness of body. Prajñā falling into sharpness or dullness is slipperiness or roughness of breath. Describing the mind of awakening as too difficult or too easy is sinking or floating of mind. Regulation can also be distinguished according to entering emptiness, emerging into the provisional, and the Middle Way. Inclination toward the true easily sinks; breadth in the provisional easily floats; only true mark’s simultaneous occlusion and illumination is neither sunken nor floating. Severing delusion is tense, emerging into the provisional loose, and the Middle Way relies on neither extreme. Entering emptiness is slippery, entering the provisional rough, and the Middle Way is neither rough nor slippery.

Within each contemplation, if calming is too strong, body, breath, and mind become tense, slippery, and sunken; if contemplation is too strong, they become loose, rough, and floating. Only when calming-and-contemplation reaches the mean does it respectively become the preparatory means for entering the true, seeing the conventional, and entering the Middle Way. Regulation is not a single eternally fixed point. It means continual awareness within the contemplation being cultivated, allowing preparatory means and wisdom-perfection to unite and form the noble embryo.

Why Are the Final Five Dharmas Not Superfluous?〔Section Twenty-Two〕

If the preceding twenty Dharmas are complete, what remains lacking? If the potter does not wish to work, works without diligence, forgets the method, lacks skillful means, or cannot concentrate, no vessel appears. Practitioners likewise require aspiration, effort, mindfulness, skillful wisdom, and one-pointed mind: delighting in what is cultivated, remaining unremitting day and night, continuing thought after thought, skillfully grasping the meaning, and resolving without divergence. One-pointed mind is like a ship’s rudder, skillful wisdom like its nod toward the course, and the first three Dharmas like poles and oars. A flying bird likewise requires eyes, tail, and wings together.

The five Dharmas can first be explained in relation to the first dhyāna. Aspiration seeks to leave the desire realm; effort crosses the most difficult frontier; mindfulness remains bound to the first dhyāna; skillful wisdom distinguishes the first dhyāna’s excellence and wonder from the desire realm’s pain and coarseness; and one-pointed mind concentrates its resolve without engaging anything else. Here, one-pointed mind is decisive, exclusive pursuit, not the one-pointed mind that serves as the substance of concentration after entry.

The same five can turn toward true truth. Aspiration leaves birth and death for nirvāṇa; effort advances directly without mixture with contamination; mindfulness recollects only quiescent extinction; wisdom distinguishes the faults of birth and death from the bliss of nirvāṇa; and one-pointed mind cultivates the eightfold noble path without turning back. Turned toward transformation of others, aspiration broadly transforms beings, effort vows not to retreat, mindfulness resembles a mother remembering her child, skillful wisdom knows illness and recognizes medicine, and one-pointed mind decisively liberates. Turned toward seeking prajñā, they resemble Sadāprarudita, who did not cherish body or life, wept for seven days, constantly walked for seven years, and still sold his body and pierced himself for blood when meeting Māra’s obstacles, turning demonic affairs into Buddha-work. Turned toward the Middle Way, aspiration leaves the two extremes, effort remains unmixed and proceeds effortlessly, mindfulness binds itself to the Dharma realm, skillful means cultivates middle contemplation, and one-pointed mind clears into nonduality and sees prajñā.

Each time the five Dharmas turn, they preserve the same five names without carrying the goal of the preceding level into the destination of the next. When direction changes, what aspiration longs for, what effort leaves, what mindfulness binds itself to, what wisdom distinguishes, and what one-pointed mind resolves all change with it.

When Distant Preparatory Means Reach Their End, Do Distance and Proximity Remain?〔Section Twenty-Three〕

Do the twenty-five Dharmas apply to only one kind of dhyāna-contemplation? The treatise says they serve universally as preparatory means for every dhyāna and wisdom. As the object contemplated differs, preparatory means also turn, like different melodies requiring different ways of tuning lute strings. Differentiated in detail, they become immeasurable and cannot be exhausted by a fixed checklist.

Here the twenty-five are provisionally called external to concentration and distant so that practitioners have a place to begin. Once mind is regulated through them and suddenly sees principle, who can still establish a fixed inner and outer? Where could any real distance or proximity remain? Wisdom is not attained solely from inner contemplation, outer contemplation, or both inner and outer contemplation. Nor is it attained apart from these contemplations, and still less through complete absence of contemplation.

The conclusion therefore does not establish external preparatory means as a sectarian position. When the meaning is attained, sinking and floating each find their place and both inner and outer become preparatory means. When the meaning is missed, neither inner nor outer is a preparatory means. True skillfulness does not grasp one extreme as the only correct road. It lets every condition carry a person to the seeing of principle, then does not turn the gate traversed into a new bond.

Through the Eye of the Fuxing

The reading above has followed the treatise’s five divisions and its images of pottery-making, the flotation bladder, the strong men, six animals, lute-tuning, and the ship’s rudder. Zhanran’s Fuxing further illuminates several joints in the long text where levels can easily be confused.

First consider the overall outer frame. Zhanran’s direct explanation begins with “explaining the twenty-five preparatory means” and ends with a lament that people do not understand inner and outer preparatory means. The next passage begins to explain correct contemplation and has already moved into the following chapter. His commentary carries the text in thirteen long segments: the general heading and five conditions, keeping, transgression, vehicle and precepts, and repentance and purification each have their own passage; clothing, food, place, affairs, and good spiritual friends follow; and finally rebuking desire, abandoning hindrances, regulating matters, and the five Dharmas close the sequence. This frame supports a finer division of the present chapter according to meaning, but does not permit material on correct contemplation from the next chapter to be imported early into preparatory means.

At the outset of explaining preparatory means, Zhanran first uses skillfulness to show how the few can oppose the many, then uses convergence to show how many conditions accomplish the work together. Distant and proximate are named in relation to correct contemplation, not to disparage the distant and honor the proximate. He also points out that each of the five divisions has textual sources, without reducing their provenance to a claim that each division was copied item by item from one book. Skillfulness therefore names both the function of cultivation and Zhiyi’s ability to organize materials dispersed among sūtras and treatises into a practicable sequence.

First, Zhanran comprehensively gathers the whole chapter under four levels: wording, meaning, principle, and intent. The wording opens the five divisions; their meaning returns to phenomena and principle; principle further has sequential and nonsequential forms; and the chapter’s intent is only one—to aim exclusively at correct contemplation. These do not add four more divisions beside the five. They show that if the five phenomenal inventories are separated from correct contemplation, they lose the name preparatory means; if contemplation of principle is separated from phenomena, it has no body, mind, conditions, or objects to regulate.

“Aiming exclusively at correct contemplation” does not demote the first four divisions into optional preliminaries outside the gate. Precepts and conduct, clothing and food, place, desires and hindrances, and body and mind all exist within the Dharma realm. Every phenomenal adjustment aims toward contemplation; if contemplation cannot illuminate those phenomena in return, it has not yet displayed the skillfulness by which many conditions converge.

Second, the ten precepts within possessing five conditions are not a neatly copied passage from one sūtra or treatise. Zhanran first points to recollection of precepts in the prajñā scriptures, the Great Treatise on the Perfection of Wisdom, the ten treasuries of the Flower Ornament Sutra, and other texts. At the ten modes of receiving full ordination, he says they draw principally on the Ten Recitations Vinaya while also taking meanings from the Vibhāṣā. In the end, he expressly judges that they do not rely exclusively on one work. Zhiyi’s sequence of ten items is itself therefore a synthesis of sūtra, vinaya, and treatise.

Third, Zhanran judges the reading order of the precept-keeping passage to be phenomena first and principle later. Moral restraint, precepts shared with concentration, precepts shared with the path, and differences among stages are established first; contemplation of mind through emptiness, provisionality, and the Middle is opened afterward. The latter makes phenomenal keeping firm; it does not declare that phenomenal precepts can now be removed. Although the passage on transgression is long, Zhanran gathers its nine textual sections into two meanings: transgression through craving and transgression through views. Begging for the whole flotation bladder, half, and a speck of dust unfolds in layers at the level of the text. What truly drives all nine is the two rākṣasas of sensual craving and wrong view; they must not be mislisted as nine parallel causes of transgression.

Within the story of breaking precepts, Zhanran also expressly locates the monk of the four dhyānas in fascicle nineteen of the Great Treatise on the Perfection of Wisdom. The received text says that he attained the four dhyānas, became overbearingly proud, mistook them for the four paths, generated a wrong view upon seeing the mark of the intermediate state at death, and later fell into Avīci. The treatise’s brief account of four fruits and hell and the received source’s four paths and Avīci each have their textual context. Read together, they make the warning against overbearing pride clearly traceable.

Fourth, when reading repentance and purification, Zhanran first distinguishes light from grave. Light offenses are repented phenomenally. For grave offenses, phenomena and principle support one another, with contemplation of mind primary. This judgment corresponds to the treatise’s simile of the second strong man. Rite and contemplation of the unborn assist one another, while disclosure, cutting continuity, and earnest practice each find their place. The twenty minds flowing with and against the current also interweave craving and views, phenomena and principle. The current flows from ignorance gradually to denial of cause and result; the countercurrent turns back by beginning with deep confidence in cause and result. Nearby, it restores pure precepts; farther away, it aids correct practice. The commentary’s structural judgment reveals this crosswise synthesis of the twenty minds while leaving the treatise’s item-by-item unfolding at its own level.

Fifth, clothing, food, place, entangling affairs, and good spiritual friends each have a joint where phenomenal marks turn into contemplation of mind. Zhanran especially judges the good-spiritual-friend passage to be phenomena first and principle later. External protector, fellow practitioner, and instructor are first persons and conditions upon whom the practitioner relies; only afterward does each of the three meanings appear within buddhas and noble ones, path factors, and Dharma-nature. Thus the “whole of the causes and conditions” is neither narrowed to dependence upon a single teacher nor abstracted into dependence only upon an inner Dharma-nature.

For the story of the good spiritual friend as half or whole, Zhanran expressly names the final portion of the Chronicle of the Causes and Conditions of the Dharma Treasury. For Improper Measure of Persons and Śāriputra’s personal vow, he expressly names the second fascicle of the Samantabhadra’s Transcendent Scripture. He connects the verse on regulating food to the text in which a Nirgrantha answers a king. These explicit judgments reconnect the treatise’s condensed retellings to concrete settings, letting Zhiyi’s précis and the source scriptures’ fuller accounts illuminate one another as two levels.

Zhanran’s fine judgments on clothing and food likewise preserve the relation between three grades and contemplation of mind. The three modes of clothing are first divided into superior, middling, and inferior according to place of practice and requisites; the clothing of contemplative practice then uses patience to cover the two extremes. The three modes of food are first distinguished as provisions in deep mountains, alms food, and food delivered by donors; Dharma-food then opens understanding through phenomena in their immediacy, sequential practice, hearing from another, or reliance on concentration. Once the text turns into contemplation of mind, the original clothes and food are not judged delusive. They remain necessary conditions for stability of body and life.

Sixth, rebuking the five desires likewise proceeds first through phenomena and then principle. Form, sound, fragrance, flavor, and touch first stop enticement through their faults; analytical emptiness, embodied emptiness, emergence into the provisional, and the Middle Way then penetrate their source and bottom. Abandoning the five hindrances moves from their five marks and five treatments into questions and answers, then opens sharp drivers, reliance upon emptiness, reliance upon the Middle, and perfect contemplation. Zhanran marks each transition passage by passage. The treatments of impurity, kindness, breath-counting, confidence in Dharma, and the like in the earlier passage are the actual first steps inherited by the later perfect abandonment in one thought.

At the questions and answers on the five hindrances, Zhanran also marks the boundary of the analysis: the first question asks whether all five hindrances obstruct concentration; only the next asks whether they are ultimately exhausted when the first dhyāna arises. The first establishes direct and peripheral hindrances according to whichever is strongest in a practitioner. Only the latter extends from dull to sharp drivers, reliance upon emptiness, and reliance upon the Middle. The perfect explanation does not arrange these levels as a stairway belonging only to later stages. It says that because the wondrous Dharma is taught to ordinary beings in the three realms, the initial mind has a gate it can cultivate. Perfection and sequence thus illuminate one another rather than cancel one another.

Seventh, in regulating the five matters, Zhanran points out that food and sleep are regulated separately, while body, breath, and mind must be regulated together when entering, abiding in, and emerging from concentration. Regulation through contemplating mind is another turn. Practicing the five Dharmas differs: Zhanran expressly says it is no longer divided into phenomena and principle. The same aspiration, effort, mindfulness, skillful wisdom, and one-pointed mind turn according to their direction. The preceding four divisions disclose principle through phenomena; the fifth turns within the phenomenal Dharmas themselves. The treatise’s five repetitions of “at the next level” reveal the same five Dharmas continually changing direction.

Where various schools differ on the five Dharmas, Zhanran particularly uses the Great Treatise on the Perfection of Wisdom’s agreement with the Abhidharma position to illuminate the account adopted by the treatise: one-pointed mind is the common substance, while the distinct factor of each dhyāna reveals its depth or shallowness. This does not change the treatise’s sequence in presenting the Satyasiddhi Treatise, the Necklace Scripture, the Abhidharma, and the Great Treatise. It explains why Zhiyi finally adopts one account among them. More importantly, the initial one-pointed mind among the five Dharmas remains decisive and exclusive aspiration; it must not be read prematurely as the substance of concentration after entry.

Finally, Zhanran turns the concluding prajñā statement back toward attaining or missing the meaning. The twenty-five Dharmas may be called external to concentration and distant, but there is no eternally fixed inner or outer, distant or proximate. If the meaning is attained, both inner and outer can lead into correct contemplation; if missed, both become attachments. This mirror therefore does not make another road beside the treatise. It only lets each of the five divisions take its proper place: phenomena do not leave principle, principle does not abandon phenomena, sequence does not obstruct perfect contemplation, and all skillfulness returns to correct contemplation. This is the measure indispensable to reading Preparatory Means.