摩訶止觀 義疏通講 · 冊2

One moment of mind is very small. It is so small that it ceases as soon as it arises, so small that we ordinarily take it to be only one thing among innumerable things. Yet the Mohe Zhiguan says that whenever such a moment of mind is present, the ten Dharma realms, three kinds of world, and three thousand kinds of world are all fully present. If this is heard merely as “the mind contains the whole universe,” it immediately falls into the horizontal arrangement refuted by the treatise. If it is heard as “all Dharmas emerge successively from mind,” it falls instead into the vertical arrangement the treatise refutes.

The inconceivable object is difficult not because it hides an incomprehensible answer, but because it drives to their limit our habitual arrangements of mind and Dharma, subject and object, possession and arising, truth and falsity. The treatise master first gathers aggregates, sense fields, and elements back into one thought of consciousness-mind, then unfolds in full the ten realms, three worlds, and ten suchnesses. Having unfolded them, he asks whether all these ultimately belong to mind, to conditions, to both together, or to something apart from the two. No answer supplies a place to rest, yet the three thousand do not thereby fall into annihilating nonexistence.

Why Gather Aggregates, Sense Fields, and Elements Back into Consciousness-Mind?

The first step is not to speak immediately of mysteries but to identify clearly what is contemplated. The five aggregates, twelve sense fields, and eighteen elements are three ways of expanding and contracting the same world of form and mind. When delusion concerning mind predominates, mind is expanded into the four aggregates of feeling, perception, formations, and consciousness, while form is contracted into one aggregate. When delusion concerning form predominates, form is expanded into the ten sense fields and part of the Dharma sense field, while mind is gathered into the mental sense field and part of the Dharma sense field. When both form and mind are objects of delusion, they are expanded into eighteen elements.

There have also been two inherited accounts of the order of the five aggregates. One establishes consciousness as mind-ruler and feeling, perception, formations, and the others as mental factors, holding that ruler and factors arise simultaneously. The other follows the sequence of discrimination, reception, taking a mark, oppositional or concordant construction, and production of form, holding that the five aggregates produce one another in order. From producer to produced, the movement can proceed from subtle to coarse; when beginning from practice, it can instead proceed from coarse to subtle. The treatise master presents both accounts but does not let contemplative practice stop in a nominal dispute over which ultimately comes first.

What must actually be faced is that the recompense form and mind of one lifetime, neutral perception and feeling, the two defilements of views and craving, wholesome and unwholesome bodily and verbal karma, transformational craftsmanship, the preparatory means of the five wholesome roots, and the uncontaminated state of the four fruits—the nine kinds of five aggregates—all emerge from mind. Mind is like a painter’s hand, capable of painting the colors of hell beings, hungry ghosts, animals, asuras, humans, and gods, and also every world beyond the realms. Ordinary eyes cannot see clearly even what is near. If one merely quarrels over names and marks, one remains like a thirsty deer chasing a mirage or a mad dog biting at thunder, never touching true principle.

The treatise therefore makes a powerful contraction. From the broad three categories it gathers down to the five aggregates, like leaving a fathom and taking a foot. Then from the five aggregates it provisionally sets aside form, feeling, perception, and formations and contemplates consciousness alone, like leaving the foot and taking an inch. It is like first finding the root point when cauterizing an illness. The branching marks of objects are boundless; without a place for initial contemplation to stand, contemplative Dharma cannot operate. It therefore first finds, in the one thought of consciousness-mind presently arising and ceasing, the entry into the whole.

The Ten Dharmas Are Not Ten Rungs of a Ladder

There are ten levels of the Dharmas that contemplate: contemplating the inconceivable object, arousing compassion, skillfully settling calming-and-contemplation, pervasively breaking through Dharmas, discerning passage and obstruction, cultivating the factors of the path, using counteraction to aid the opening of the correct path, knowing stages, being capable of patient endurance, and freedom from attachment to Dharmas. On the surface, this looks like a sequence traveled from first to tenth. In practice, every Dharma prepares the conditions for all the others.

Penetrating the wondrous object prevents one from fixing compassionate vows upon a delusive object. Once beings and one’s own mind are seen together within the Dharma realm, compassionate vows immediately arise. For vows to be realized, calming-and-contemplation must be skillfully established. If calming-and-contemplation is to break through pervasively, passage must still be distinguished from obstruction. The factors of the path and aids to the path keep the preceding contemplative practice from stopping at conceptual understanding. Knowledge of stages prevents one from misrecognizing advance and retreat in oneself or others. Patient endurance prevents honor and disgrace within and without from taking away one’s resolve. Finally, one does not abide even in attachment to the Dharma of the Middle Way.

The simile of the Supreme Hall speaks of structure: neither sparse nor dense, even its seams exactly fitted. The simile of skillful painting speaks of life: outline, image, bone-method, and spirit move as one, something never accomplished by adding a few colors afterward. The ten Dharmas are likewise. Horizontally they mutually contain one another; vertically they have an order of arising. At the beginning, true and false objects are distinguished. In the middle, principal and auxiliary practices augment each other. At the end come patient endurance and nonattachment. In explanation they can be unfolded item by item, but in practice they operate simultaneously within one mind. Turn them into ten disconnected checkpoints, and the Supreme Hall becomes ten piles of material, while skillful painting becomes no more than coloring in.

Why Explain the Conceivable before the Inconceivable?

The treatise master first asks how the objects differ when both the Small and Great Vehicles say that mind produces all Dharmas. The Small Vehicle contemplates the causes and results of the six paths and transmigration in the three realms as produced by mind; rejecting ordinary stages and aspiring to noble ones, it escapes upward from below, finally reducing the body to ash and extinguishing mental knowing. The Great Vehicle can further open the Dharmas produced by mind into ten realms. Evil in three grades becomes the causes and results of the three evil paths; good in three grades becomes those of asuras, humans, and gods. Contemplating all six grades as impermanent and arising and ceasing, with the contemplating mind itself not abiding from thought to thought, one sees subject and object together as conditionally arisen and therefore empty: the causes and results of the Two Vehicles. Neither sinking into emptiness nor becoming stuck in existence, one arouses compassion, enters provisionality, and transforms beings: the causes and results of bodhisattvas. Deliverer and delivered are ultimately pure, and good and evil, existence and nonexistence, delivering and nondelivering all enter the true mark of the Middle Way: the causes and results of the Buddha realm.

Although the ten realms deepen from level to level and are encompassed by the Great Vehicle’s immeasurable four truths, they can still be differentiated in order and are therefore called the conceivable object. This layer is taught first so that the distinctions, causes and results, and pedagogical placements of the ten realms acquire clear outlines, making the inconceivable easier to reveal. If even the arising of the six paths through the Buddha realm from mind has not been made clear, “full possession in one thought” can easily be misconstrued as erasing good and evil and confusing cause and result. The conceivable teaching draws the frame; contemplation of the inconceivable makes bone-method and living energy appear at once.

How Do the Ten Realms Become Thirty Kinds of World?

Mind is like a skilled painter, constructing the various five aggregates; no world is separate from construction by mind. “Dharma realm” first has three meanings: the number ten is dependent and Dharma realm is its basis; the ten realms each have their own causes and results, unmixed with the others; and the intrinsic substance of every realm is itself Dharma realm. The first meaning says that the ten realms have a basis, the second preserves their distinctions, and the third keeps any realm from falling outside the Dharma realm.

All ten realms can generally be called aggregates, sense fields, and elements, yet their contents differ. The three evil paths are contaminated and unwholesome, the three good paths contaminated and wholesome, the Two Vehicles uncontaminated, bodhisattvas both contaminated and uncontaminated, and buddhas neither contaminated nor uncontaminated. To say a buddha lacks aggregates, sense fields, and elements means lacking the impermanent ones of the first nine realms. To say a buddha has aggregates, sense fields, and elements means having the permanently abiding ones of nirvāṇa. Permanence and bliss can accumulate layer upon layer; loving-kindness and compassion can cover universally. “Aggregate” has not been left solely on the side of birth and death.

Gathering the five aggregates and establishing a provisional name produces the world of beings. The three evil paths contain beings suffering for offenses; humans and gods, beings experiencing happiness; the Two Vehicles, truly noble beings; bodhisattvas, great beings; and buddhas, the supreme beings. Beings each have a place of residence, producing the world of lands: from red-hot iron, earth, water, air, ocean shore and ocean floor, the human earth, and celestial palaces through the Land of Expedient Means, Land of True Recompense, and Land of Eternally Quiescent Light. The five aggregates are real Dharmas, a being is a provisional name established by gathering aggregates, and a land is the support of primary recompense. The three kinds of world are thereby complete.

The five aggregates of every realm further possess mark, nature, substance, power, function, cause, condition, result, recompense, and the ultimate equality of beginning and end. Mark is externally discernible, while nature is inwardly unchanging. Substance is the principal material of form and mind; power is capacity for function; function actively establishes. Cause can bring about a result, condition can assist karma, result is what the habituated cause obtains, and recompense is the response to cause in a later life. From mark as beginning to recompense as end, all are ultimately equal from the three perspectives of emptiness, provisionality, and the Middle.

These ten suchnesses are not an abstract list. Mind possesses all marks, as a person’s external signs can disclose what is within. Mind possesses all natures, as fire-nature within bamboo cannot be seen yet can burn everywhere when conditions meet. Mind possesses all powers, as a many-skilled wrestler cannot exercise them while ill but reveals native ability when healed. Mark is mark without having a fixed mark; recompense is recompense without having a fixed recompense. Clinging only to the outer mark prevents one from seeing nature and substance, while saying only that everything is empty prevents one from seeing how earlier cause and later result disclose one another.

Gathering the ten realms further into four classes, the ten suchnesses of the three evil paths disclose suffering and evil; those of the three good paths, happiness and good; those of the Two Vehicles, nirvāṇa and liberation; and those of bodhisattvas and buddhas, the conditioning, revealing, and correct causes, four great vows, six perfections and myriad practices, and two adornments. Cause and condition also have concordant and contrary directions. Contaminated karma and craving and grasping follow birth and death within the three realms; uncontaminated wisdom and mutually aiding practices reverse it. Uncontaminated wisdom and ignorance can follow transformational birth and death beyond the realms; wisdom of the Middle Way and the myriad practices reverse it. Beings and lands likewise each possess the ten suchnesses. Distinction is not swallowed by perfect interfusion, and interfusion is not established elsewhere outside distinction.

Are the Three Thousand Stored inside Mind?

Each of the ten realms possesses all ten realms, making one hundred realms. One realm possesses three kinds of world, and each world has ten suchnesses, so one realm possesses thirty worlds. The hundred realms therefore become three thousand kinds of world. The treatise master consequently says that the three thousand are in one moment of mind. Whenever the subtlest moment of mind is present, the three thousand are fully present.

But “fully present” does not treat the three thousand as objects stored inside a mind-shaped container. If mind existed first and then produced all Dharmas, mind and Dharmas would form a vertical before-and-after. If mind contained all Dharmas side by side in the same instant, mind and Dharmas would form a horizontal array. The treatise accepts neither.

The simile of the eight marks moving an object sharpens the issue. If the object preceded its moving marks, an object without those marks should not be moved. If the moving marks preceded the object, what could they move before any object existed? Movement cannot be found outside the object, nor the object outside movement. One can speak of movement only with reference to an object and of the object only with reference to movement. Mind and Dharmas are likewise: one can say only that mind is all Dharmas and all Dharmas are mind. They are neither vertical nor horizontal, neither one nor different. If mind and Dharmas are first cut into two things and we then ask which contains or produces the other, the question has already begun from the wrong place.

If All Four Alternatives Are Broken, Do the Three Thousand Disappear Too?

The treatise master himself raises the strongest challenge. Since the arising of mind necessarily depends on conditions, do the three thousand belong to mind, to conditions, to both together, or apart from both? If mind already possessed them itself, its arising would not need conditions. If conditions possessed them themselves, everything would be unrelated to mind. If the two possessed them jointly, when each lacked them before conjunction they could not suddenly become present at conjunction. If they were present apart from the two, they should even less be called possessed by mind. When none of the four alternatives can stand, on what basis can the three thousand still be said to be fully present?

The Dilun masters place the support of truth and falsity in Dharma-nature, while the Shelun masters place the support of all seeds in ālaya, apparently standing on the two sides of possession by mind and possession by conditions. The treatise master does not choose one as the final answer but asks in return: if Dharma-nature is neither mind nor condition, why permit arising only from mind but not from conditions? If ālaya stands outside Dharma-nature, it is unrelated to Dharma-nature. If it is not separate from Dharma-nature, ālaya’s serving as support cannot exclude Dharma-nature’s serving as support.

Sleep and dream turn inquiry through the four alternatives into immediate experience. If dream depended on mind, one should dream while awake. If it depended only on sleep, a corpse, which resembles a sleeper, should also dream. If the conjunction of mind and sleep produced dreams, why does one sometimes sleep without dreaming? Two things that each lack a dream cannot suddenly have one when conjoined. If dream existed apart from mind and sleep, empty space, being apart from both, should dream constantly. No fixed birthplace for dream can be found in any of the four, yet during sleep hundreds, thousands, and myriads of events appear vividly.

Since the four horizontal alternatives are unobtainable, the vertical alternatives—ceasing, not ceasing, both ceasing and not ceasing, neither ceasing nor not ceasing—also fail one by one. The cessation of mind cannot produce one Dharma, much less three thousand. Ceasing and not ceasing oppose each other like water and fire. Neither ceasing nor not ceasing supplies either producer or produced. Here the road of language is severed and the place of mental activity ceases; within the ultimate truth, not one Dharma can be obtained.

Yet unobtainability does not mean that nothing exists. Although not one Dharma can be obtained in the ultimate truth, one mind possesses immeasurable Dharmas in the conventional truth. Just as dream has no fixed nature that can be found in mind, sleep, both, or neither, the many events appearing in dream cannot be denied. The four alternatives break fixed natures of arising, not dependently arisen phenomena. To read their refutation as the destruction of all Dharmas turns the inconceivable into another annihilationist view to grasp.

If It Is Inexpressible, Why Does the Buddha Still Teach?

Ignorance cannot be found internally, externally, in their conjunction, or apart from them; yet the Buddha says that it exists precisely in this way. All four modes of arising are unobtainable, yet great compassion still arises in relation to beings and provisionally establishes names and marks within what lacks them. The four siddhāntas that follow each unfold four modes of expression.

The worldly siddhānta aims to produce delight and can speak of arising from mind, conditions, both, or neither. The three realms constructed by one mind are arising from mind. The five desires causing descent and a spiritual friend enabling one to see the Buddha are arising from conditions. Mercury and pure gold coating colored images are joint arising. The twelve links of dependent origination being made by no agent and naturally so are arising apart.

The individually adapted siddhānta aims to generate faith and also has four alternatives: faith as the source of the path is through mind; rootless faith arising upon meeting the Buddha is through condition; the water of mind becoming limpid so the jewel appears, and roots of loving-kindness enabling one to see, are a conjunction of cause and condition; wisdom being gained through neither internal, external, nor internal-and-external contemplation is apart from the four alternatives. The counteractive siddhānta aims to break evil: one-pointed settlement extinguishing myriad deviations, hearing the radiance of great wisdom making the mind immovable, reflection and a teacher’s instruction each contributing a part, and no Dharma being obtainable at the seat of awakening while beings are still delivered expediently are each correlated with the four alternatives. The ultimate siddhānta aims to enable seeing principle: mind opening into understanding, hearing Dharma and attaining completion, a swift horse seeing the whip’s shadow, and nonattainment itself being attainment each provide gates of self, other, both, and neither.

The same treatise master breaks all four alternatives on one side and teaches them all on the other. The whiteness of milk can be explained to a blind person through four white similes: shell, rice flour, snow, and crane; each speaks from one side, and the blind person thereby understands milk’s color. The conventional truth is itself the ultimate truth, so one speaks all day without speaking all day, and does not speak all day while speaking all day. Both extremes are simultaneously negated and illuminated; breaking is establishing, and establishing is breaking. Vasubandhu and Nāgārjuna each established one gate according to the needs of their time, without partial attachment. Attachment arose when later people defended one side and attacked one another.

The Three Contemplations in One Mind Are Not Three Separate Acts of Looking

If one understands that one mind is all minds and all minds are one mind, yet they are neither one nor all, one can proceed through one aggregate and all aggregates, one sense field and all sense fields, one element and all elements, one being and all beings, and one land and all lands. One then proceeds from one mark through all marks and onward through one ultimate and all ultimates. Every item remains within “one is all, all is one, yet neither one nor all”; every item is therefore the inconceivable object.

Dharma-nature combining with ignorance and manifesting aggregates, sense fields, and elements is the conventional truth. All elements and sense fields being one Dharma realm is the true truth. Neither one nor all is the ultimate truth of the Middle Way. In terms of contemplation, one Dharma being all Dharmas means they are conditionally arisen and provisionally designated; this is contemplation of provisionality. All Dharmas being one Dharma is contemplation of emptiness. Neither one nor all is contemplation of the Middle Way.

The three contemplations are not emptiness first, provisionality second, and the Middle last. One emptiness is all emptiness: neither provisionality nor the Middle fails to be empty. One provisionality is all provisionality: neither emptiness nor the Middle fails to be provisional. One Middle is all Middle: neither emptiness nor provisionality fails to be Middle. Thus, of emptiness, provisionality, and the Middle in the same mind, each contemplation encompasses the other two. According to what is illuminated, they are called the three truths; according to what is generated, the three contemplations; when contemplation is accomplished, the three wisdoms; in teaching others, the three modes of speech; and in final return, the three destinations. Names differ according to function, but the meaning disclosed is not divided.

The wish-fulfilling pearl, three poisons, and dream finally illuminate the same structure from three sides. A wish-fulfilling pearl is as small as a mustard or millet seed, yet the seven treasures and five desires emerge from it according to wish. They are neither stored inside beforehand nor brought in from outside; however much it gives, the pearl neither increases nor is exhausted. When conditions meet, the three poisons can expand into views of self and extremes, sharp and dull agents, and ultimately eighty-four thousand afflictions. If they existed beforehand, why would they need conditions? If originally nonexistent, why would they suddenly arise when conditions meet? Hundreds, thousands, and myriads of events occur in a dream, yet none is present after waking. Zhuang Zhou dreams of being a butterfly for what seems a hundred years, yet on waking is neither a butterfly nor someone who has actually passed a century. In one dream, the practitioner of peaceful practices passes from arousing the mind through buddhahood, teaching Dharma, delivering beings, and entering nirvāṇa; on waking, it was only a dream.

None of the three similes turns “possession” into finished objects already stored in a warehouse, nor turns “emptiness” into annihilating nonexistence. The pearl manifests functions according to what is sought, delusion arises when conditions meet, and dream appears in dependence on sleep. They exist without fixed existence and, without fixed existence, exist. Looking back from this point at the ten Dharmas: when the object appears, wisdom, vows, and gates of practice are all fully present. Though explanation has before and after, practice is wholly within one mind. The inconceivable object is not the first stepping-stone of the ten vehicles but the root point from which the other nine Dharmas together receive their direction.

Through the Eye of the Fuxing

The reading above has followed the treatise’s own sequence from fixing the object and enumerating contemplation to properly clarifying the wondrous object. Zhanran’s Fuxing further illuminates, one by one, several joints most easily confused.

First, the object of aggregates, sense fields, and elements divides into “first, clarify the object anew” and “next, clarify cultivation of contemplation.” The three categories, nine kinds of five aggregates, leaving the fathom for the foot, and leaving the foot for the inch all clarify what is contemplated anew. Only with the general outline of the ten Dharmas does the text turn to what contemplates. Provisionally setting aside form and retaining mind among the five aggregates, then provisionally setting aside mental factors and contemplating mind-ruler among mind and mental factors, first fixes the aggregate of consciousness for initial contemplation; it does not declare form and mental factors henceforth excluded from contemplation. The ten Dharmas are also called the ten contemplations, the contemplations that accomplish, and the vehicle that is accomplished. Their explanation has an order of arising; in practice, the first four mutually contain one another, while the latter six enable the first four to penetrate, advance, and become free of attachment to Dharmas.

Second, the conceivable object is explained first to make the inconceivable easy to reveal. If one sees that the conceivable is not the proper contemplation here, discards it, and seeks another inconceivable elsewhere, both are lost. The conceivable ten realms preserve the stages of causes and results by which provisional teachings explain mind’s production of the six paths, Two Vehicles, bodhisattvas, and buddhas. Only the inconceivable object reveals original possession in one mind. The former is the introduction and the latter what is contemplated; this is not the replacement of an incorrect account with a correct slogan.

Third, mind’s construction must be divided into construction in principle and construction in phenomena. Phenomenal construction does not extend beyond actions in past, present, and future; construction in principle is mind’s original possession of all Dharmas. Phenomenal function arises in dependence on principial possession, and contemplative practice here properly contemplates principial possession. The three meanings of Dharma realm also illuminate different aspects. Having a basis reveals that all ten realms depend on Dharma-nature. Differentiated causes and results preserve distinctions within the conventional truth. Each intrinsic substance being Dharma realm reveals the Middle Way. If the three meanings are compressed into one, interfusion may swallow cause and result, or distinction may instead conceal the Dharma realm.

Fourth, the ten suchnesses are the very substance of the true mark of all dharmas. Zhanran first records Nanyue’s placement of “suchness” at the end of each phrase and then explains Tiantai’s three turns of the reading according to emptiness, provisionality, and the Middle. Unless one moment of mind is related to the ten realms, it does not universally encompass phenomena. Without the three truths, it does not fully embrace principle. Without the ten suchnesses, cause and result remain incomplete. Without the three kinds of world, dependent and primary recompense cannot be exhausted. The mutual possession of ten realms multiplied by thirty worlds makes the three thousand; differentiated causes and results and each substance being Dharma realm must therefore be maintained simultaneously.

Fifth, inquiry through the four natures does not break the three thousand into total nonexistence. Seeking them through self, other, both, and neither and finding them unobtainable returns the contemplation of cultivated virtue to original principle; it does not establish a separate annihilationist emptiness. The opposed positions of the Dilun and Shelun masters are borrowed to refute one another. The four alternatives of sleep and dream turn an abstract dispute into immediate experience. Four modes of inexpressibility conclude self-practice in nonattainment, while expression because causes and conditions are present opens transformation of others. Worldly, individually adapted, counteractive, and ultimate each receive four alternatives, making precisely sixteen modes of teaching. At the ultimate purity of the Buddha’s purport, all four are inexpressible and all can be taught according to capacity.

Sixth, the simile of the blind person and milk must preserve the treatise’s own use. The treatise says that after hearing the four accounts of shell, rice flour, snow, and crane, the blind person understands milk; the related scripture instead concludes that even with four similes the person cannot recognize milk’s true color. Zhanran explains the treatise as four gates according with principle and does not exchange wording between the two conclusions. This difference illuminates the passage’s point more clearly: teachings adapted to capacity have a function, but no single simile may be grasped as the whole of milk.

Seventh, the three truths, contemplations, wisdoms, modes of speech, and destinations are different names for the same wondrous object according to what is illuminated, what is generated, completed contemplation, teaching others, and final return. Total emptiness, total provisionality, and the total Middle each universally encompass the other two; they are not three successive projects. The wish-fulfilling pearl shows function manifesting according to conditions without increase or exhaustion; the three poisons show neither prior existence nor original nonexistence; the three dreams show that many and one, long and short, delusion and awakening never depart from one mind. The first object is also the common basis of the following nine Dharmas. If the object is misfixed, compassion, calming-and-contemplation, and breaking through Dharmas have no basis for establishment. Zhanran finally concludes with “explanation has a sequence; practice has no before and after”: the inconceivable object is both the first Dharma of the ten vehicles and actively present within every Dharma.

The preceding contemplation has brought us before the inconceivable object: one suffering is not an isolated suffering, and one thought is not a closed thought. Yet seeing deeply does not mean that vows have already been established or practice accomplished. If old habits still draw the mind away, even the highest view remains at the threshold. This passage therefore raises two questions in succession. Having seen the object, why must one still arouse the mind? Having aroused it, how does one truly settle? The four great vows answer the first; calming-and-contemplation answers the second.

If Beings Are Seen as Empty, Who Remains to Be Delivered?

The treatise master does not begin with a grand ideal but with how a person harms oneself. Drowning in forms and sounds and indulging the three kinds of karma is clearly suffering. Yet trying to escape evil destinations while using a mark-grasping mind merely to exchange them for human and celestial fortune also remains within a trade in suffering and pleasure. A fish enters a trap for bait; a moth flies into fire for light. One drinks saltwater when thirsty and grows thirstier. Dragon whiskers bind more tightly in water, and ox hide contracts more tightly in sunlight. Every simile asks the same question: when what one does appears wholesome, why does it still fail to free one truly from suffering?

The problem lies not in precepts, goodness, or cultivation of merit, but in taking an obtainable recompense as the final destination. One leaves a dangerous place only to stop in the grass hut of a poor village. After painfully crossing a narrow road, one takes temporary rest for home. When the practitioner sees from personal transmigration that others are trapped in the same way, compassion ceases to be mere sadness and becomes two vows from which one cannot retreat: though beings are boundless, vow to deliver them; though afflictions are numberless, vow to sever them.

Yet if beings and afflictions are both unobtainable, do the vows not become empty? The treatise answers exactly the reverse. Knowing them to be like space, one still does not abandon delivering and severing. Faced with boundless numbers, one does not retreat because they are boundless. Seeing the thusness of beings as nondual with the thusness of the Buddha and seeing afflictions as themselves the true mark, one still delivers and still severs. Emptiness does not cancel vows and practice; provisional existence does not establish entities. A bird flies through the sky, neither abiding in it nor leaving any trace. Vows and practice unfold in this same nonabiding between two extremes.

Why Still Accomplish Buddhahood within Possessionlessness?

Compassion enters through suffering; loving-kindness enters through mistaking what happiness is. Beings seek happiness but take rubble for a wish-fulfilling pearl and a firefly for the sun or moon. The seeking is not wrong; the error is failure to know happiness’s true cause. Two further vows consequently arise: though Dharma gates are immeasurable, vow to know them; though the Buddha-path is unsurpassed, vow to accomplish it.

The similes here are more severe. Dharma gates are quiescent like empty space, so practice is like painting space. Buddhahood is not an obtainable thing, so becoming a buddha is like planting a tree in empty space and still making it flower and bear fruit. On the surface, every act is impossible. The treatise master uses them, however, to show that possessionlessness does not make practice futile; it frees practice from possessing an attainment. Neither cultivation nor noncultivation, yet one cultivates. Neither realization nor attainment, yet one realizes and attains. Cultivation and realization are not established as graspable entities, but neither are the acts of cultivating and realizing discarded.

Thus “true” and “correct” do not mean general sincerity and uprightness. True first excludes poison and falsity from the vows; correct then excludes partial emptiness and craving-governed views. The four great vows and wisdom of the inconceivable object are also not two matters, one first understanding principle and the other later adding compassion. The treatise master says compassion is wisdom and wisdom is compassion. If wisdom does not spontaneously remove suffering and naturally give happiness, it has not completed the object it sees. If compassion departs from objectless, thought-free engagement, it becomes bound by deliverer and delivered. The four vows therefore arise together as four directions of the same mind of awakening.

Once Vows Have Arisen, Why Must the Mind Still Be Settled?

Vows establish direction; practice fills the vows with substance. This is why settling the mind immediately follows arousing it. The treatise master does not begin with a set of external exercises but with the relation between ignorance and Dharma-nature. Delusive ignorance is itself Dharma-nature, like cold making water freeze or sleep making mind dream. Ice never leaves water and dream never leaves mind, yet the obstruction of ice and inversion of dream cannot therefore be denied. The question is whether, at the place where inversion arises and ceases, one can see that it never departs from Dharma-nature and stop chasing its marks.

“Calming” is established here. A spun torch appears as a wheel of fire arising and ceasing; if mind chases the wheel’s mark, it flows along with arising and ceasing. Now see the intrinsic substance of delusive thought as Dharma-nature and focus Dharma-nature upon Dharma-nature until delusive thought is unobtainable and even a Dharma-nature that could be held is unobtainable. Then one returns to the original source, the Dharma realm becomes quiescent together, and transmigration finally stops. Calming does not move delusive thought outside Dharma-nature and destroy it; at the place of delusive thought, one ceases to believe that it has an independently existing substance of arising and ceasing.

“Contemplation” illuminates from Dharma-nature through all wholesome and unwholesome delusive thoughts, seeing them as nondual, undifferentiated, and ultimately empty and quiescent. Wherever the great fire at an eon’s end reaches, everywhere is fire. Wherever Ākāśagarbha manifests, everywhere is empty. When Ocean-Wisdom arrives, the assembly sees water everywhere. The three similes do not transform the world into one material; they reveal nonduality, nondifference, and universal emptiness. Thinker, thought, and even the subtlest thought are all empty in their intrinsic substance, while emptiness itself cannot become a new abode. The Dharma realm thereby becomes penetratively bright. This is contemplation.

If Calming Is Wisdom, Why Still Distinguish Calming and Contemplation?

The treatise master pushes general settling toward an almost contradictory sentence: calming is simply wisdom and wisdom simply calming. Unmoving wisdom illuminating Dharma-nature is both contemplation settled and calming settled. Unmoving accord with Dharma-nature is both calming settled and contemplation settled. Calming and contemplation are nondual in substance yet remain distinguishable in function. Calming discloses nonmovement and quiescence; contemplation discloses illumination and clarity. This neither forces two methods together nor erases two functions because their substance is one.

The truly difficult question immediately follows. What if the principle is understood, yet neither calming nor contemplation settles the mind? Mind is sometimes dark and sometimes swift and drifting. Thoughts rise and cease rapidly, suddenly coming and going. Try to calm them and they race faster; try to contemplate and they grow darker. The harder one works, the stronger distraction and delusion become, like a powerful enemy restraining a weak soldier or a snipe and clam locking each other in place, unable to advance or retreat. The treatise master neither blames Dharma-nature for this failure nor tells one simply to apply more force. Instead he opens “turning preparatory means”: because general settling does not yet correspond, use present faculties to find another entrance.

How Does a Teacher Know Which Medicine Fits?

Settling the mind therefore first divides into teaching others and self-practice, while teaching others divides again between noble and ordinary teachers. A noble teacher has three powers: knowing Dharma, knowing the illness, and administering medicine in accord with the illness. With different disciples, Upagupta made one climb a tree, used food with another, and rebuked another through a female image. The methods look wholly different, but all awaken the person at precisely the moment of ripening. Such teaching neither seizes the occasion too early nor misses it afterward and is therefore extremely difficult to encounter, like a blind turtle meeting the hole in a floating yoke or a mustard seed falling onto a needle’s point.

If an ordinary teacher lacks this complete vision of faculties, does that make teaching impossible? The treatise master still gives a practicable route: like a physician unable to read the pulse, first ask about the symptoms and then prescribe according to the answer. This does not guarantee perfect accuracy. Even Śāriputra once misjudged faculties; an ordinary person can still less presume to be an infallible guide. An ordinary teacher’s skill begins not by displaying how much the teacher knows but by acknowledging the need to hear the other person’s symptoms.

The teacher therefore first asks: do you delight in concentration or wisdom? Does hearing of quiescent cessation enter your heart, or do discerning explanations bring delight? The answers do not place a lifelong, unchanging label on someone; they reveal an entrance usable now. The Dharma-medicine is the same while symptoms differ, and the same person may change over time. Asking about the illness must therefore precede administering medicine.

Which Is Sharp and Which Dull: Faith-Practice or Dharma-Practice?

Entering through hearing is called faith-practice; entering through reflection, Dharma-practice. Under a single measure, one might easily say Dharma-practice is sharp because it contemplates for itself, while faith-practice is dull because it relies on hearing from another. The treatise master immediately supplies the opposite side: faith-practice may awaken upon a single hearing and therefore be sharp, while Dharma-practice may have to inspect each Dharma and therefore be dull. Even one person may have sharp wisdom of hearing and dull cultivated wisdom, or sharp cultivated wisdom and dull wisdom of hearing.

This movement back and forth dismantles fixed rankings. Faculties are formed through long habituation but do not become immovable identities. Some people contemplate for a long time without penetration and awaken as soon as they hear; others hear for a long time without understanding and decide the matter after a little reflection. If a teacher predetermines one class as necessarily sharp and the other dull, a classification intended to accord with faculties becomes a new obstruction.

More importantly, faith-practice does not mean hearing without reflection, nor Dharma-practice reflection without hearing. The mutual support explained later shows precisely that each name is established from the stronger or more prevalent side. A sentence heard can be taken back to the seat for reflection; a blockage on the seat can be opened by hearing again. Hearing and reflection are not mutually exclusive roads but two powers that assist each other.

Must All Eight Modes of Settling Be Traversed One by One?

For a faith-practitioner, the treatise first correlates calming with four needs and then contemplation with the same four. First is following inclination: one who delights in quiescent calming is delighted through calming, while one who delights in discrimination is delighted through contemplation. Second is following suitability: calming is like a dragon king raising clouds and raining so scorched wholesome roots sprout again; contemplation is like the moon opening lotuses or the sun raising people to work, enabling merit to unfold. Third is counteraction: calming is like a hook controlling a drunken elephant, a lamp lit in a sealed chamber, or a golden scalpel removing a membrane, breaking distraction and torpor; contemplation is like a general recognizing an enemy, wind sweeping clouds, water extinguishing fire, or an ax splitting firewood, breaking unwholesome Dharmas. Fourth is the ultimate meaning: calming enables one through concentration to see arising, ceasing, and nonarising; contemplation is like sunlight revealing treasure in a well or objects in a dark room, enabling one to see the true mark of all dharmas.

A Dharma-practitioner likewise receives eight modes, but the explanation first follows that person’s inclination and broadly praises calming. Cognitive engagement is like a spinning fire-wheel: when the hand stops, it ceases; when wind stops, surging waves become clear. Calming is further unfolded into the ten functions of giving, precepts, patient endurance, diligence, meditative concentration, wisdom, preparatory means, vows, power, and knowledge. According to illness it then becomes wall, pure water, morning dew, great loving-kindness, illumination spell, and good medicine. If calming makes the person sink into quiescence without delight, the teaching turns to contemplation. Investigation of Dharmas, correct view, and prajñā all take contemplative wisdom as guide. Contemplation can generate good and break evil, finally opening, revealing, awakening, and entering where contemplator and contemplated are both unobtainable.

The eight modes are not eight steps that must be completed in sequence but a Dharma-net formed by two methods responding to four needs. If delight is presently needed, first produce delight. If wholesome roots do not arise, cause them to arise. If unwholesome Dharmas are powerful, first counteract them. If mind is about to accord with principle, follow its momentum and open understanding. One person may need only one sentence, or may shift repeatedly as symptoms change. The breadth of the number serves the precision of adaptation; it does not turn practice into a complicated checklist.

What Do the Numbers from Thirty-Two to 128 Count?

In teaching others, faith-practice has four modes each of calming and contemplation, and Dharma-practice likewise has four each. Both faculties can shift into each other, making thirty-two. Self-practice uses the same principle to contemplate this mind: delight in quiescence or hearing, good not arising or evil not being broken, excess distraction or sinking, and impending opening each receive a corresponding calming or contemplation. Adding shifts between faith and Dharma again makes thirty-two. Self-practice and teaching others together make sixty-four.

Yet hearing and reflection do not stand alone. A Dharma-practitioner can hear one sentence concerning calming or contemplation, return to the seat and reflect, and thereby delight, generate good, break evil, or approach awakening. When reflection on the seat does not open a faith-practitioner, rising and hearing Dharma can produce the same four benefits. Less hearing and more reflection is still called Dharma-practice; less sitting and more hearing is still called faith-practice. Mutual support also has self-practice, teaching others, shifting, and not shifting, making another sixty-four. Only by combining the two groups do we reach 128.

What these numbers protect is the variability of beings’ mental activities. They preserve self and other, hearing and reflection, calming and contemplation, four needs, and shifting and not shifting one by one, allowing no side to be omitted. Remember only the number and forget the symptoms, and the reason for counting is lost. Reject the number as overly complex and merge the distinctions, and the exact medicine genuinely needed disappears.

Why Does Partial Use of One Gate Make One Lose That Gate?

Calming and contemplation are like drink and food, both sustaining life. They are also like pills and powders, medicines selected according to cold and heat, and like yin rain and yang sun: excessive rain rots a tender shoot and excessive sun scorches it. The problem is not drink or food, pill or powder, yin or yang; it is fixing one side as the eternally exclusive answer without asking about the body, examining the illness, or observing the season.

Two dhyāna masters each benefited through one gate: one permitted only calming and forbade contemplation, while the other permitted only contemplation and forbade calming. Their own entrances were not necessarily wrong. The error was using their personal way of benefiting to teach everyone. Milk can nourish, but someone who consumes milk exclusively without knowing how it is processed cannot obtain even whey, much less ghee. When a method becomes fixed, the gate that originally rescued someone becomes a partial attachment obscuring other faculties.

The treatise therefore passes the 128 through three further rounds of calming-and-contemplation and adds the original calming-and-contemplation of one mind, making 512. The number grows, yet the conclusion becomes simpler: if mind has settled in the truth, one sentence is sufficient. Only while it remains unsettled must more preparatory means be skillfully turned. The sky is not forever clear, a physician does not use only powdered medicine, and people do not forever eat one food. The functions of calming and contemplation likewise turn according to faculty, illness, and time.

If the Dharma-Net Has Many Meshes, Why Is the Bird Caught in Only One?

A net with one mesh does not spread into a net and cannot catch a bird. When a bird is actually caught, however, it lands in one particular mesh of the whole net. This simile answers the final tension in the passage: why explain hundreds of ways of settling and still say one sentence is sufficient? Teaching faces many kinds of mental activity, but entry into Dharma always occurs for a concrete person, at a concrete moment, through a concrete gate.

Many people may share one mental activity, while one person may display many over time. One cannot prepare only one Dharma for one person, yet in teaching many one cannot forget that each enters through the gate fitting that individual. Broadly establishing the Dharma-net prevents distinctions from being omitted. The bird’s being caught in one mesh prevents every method from being pressed upon one person at once.

Arousing and settling the mind thus meet here. The four great vows prevent a practitioner from abandoning beings because beings are empty. The Dharma-net prevents a teacher from erasing differences in faculties because Dharma-nature is equal. The former establishes vows within possessionlessness; the latter acts according to capacities within one Dharma-nature. Neither abides on one side, and neither abandons what must be done now.

Through the Eye of the Fuxing

Zhanran first reminds us that this is not the work’s first discussion of arousing the mind. Although the meaning of arousal was already present earlier, after the inconceivable object it must be “renewed to accomplish contemplation,” engaging principle and benefiting others. This placement is crucial. Read the four great vows only as aspirations before entry, and their function of correcting direction when contemplation is obstructed disappears. Read them as a new beginning unrelated to the preceding text, and continuity among object, vows, and practice is severed.

The treatise places compassion before loving-kindness. Zhanran explicitly says this follows phenomenal sequence and convenience in practice: first remove suffering, then give happiness, while “in principle there is no before or after.” The first two vows and latter two therefore cannot be ranked in value, nor compassion treated as elementary and loving-kindness advanced. In principle all four are simultaneous and unfold textually only according to the sequence of suffering and happiness. This also explains why the treatise next says that loving-kindness and compassion and object-wisdom are neither before nor after but arise simultaneously.

General and distinct settling are also easily misread. General settling directly contemplates Dharma-nature and says calming is simply wisdom and wisdom simply calming. Distinct settling temporarily uses calming or contemplation according to faculties and can appear to retreat into two separate methods. Zhanran specifically says such partial use “is not permanently separate” but the same substance with different functions temporarily suited to practice. Distinct settling does not replace the Dharma-nature substance of general settling; when general settling does not correspond, it temporarily brings one function of same-substance calming-and-contemplation to the foreground.

Teaching others explains faith-practice before Dharma-practice, while self-practice reverses the order; neither order marks a hierarchy. Zhanran points out that teaching others takes exposition of Dharma as its basis and therefore begins with entry through hearing, while self-practice commonly occurs through reflection and therefore begins with entry through Dharma. The earlier separate explanation of calming and contemplation does not mean they never combine; the later combination in one person does not mean they never differ. Faculties, setting, and function determine the order of exposition; the order cannot be reversed into fixed identities for people.

The ultimate siddhānta especially requires restraint. In the mutual-support passage, “about to awaken” can be classified as ultimate whenever it does not belong to the first three siddhāntas and already has a quality connected with principle; realization of principle need not have occurred. Spaciousness, brightness, and dimness about to open must therefore remain signs of impending opening. A practitioner cannot be written as already awakened merely because the mode is named ultimate. This boundary keeps the four siddhāntas methods for settling the mind instead of advance announcements of a practitioner’s stage.

Zhanran explains the conclusion of 512 most clearly. First are the 128 modes of the original one mind of perfect-and-sudden contemplation; the same 128 then opens into three sequential contemplations, making four sets of 128. “One mind” returns finally to and concludes in the original perfect-and-sudden method; it is not a fourth kind of calming-and-contemplation secretly invented inside the count. The numerical unfolding thus returns to initial general settling. Broad explanation never leaves the substance, and return to the original does not cancel broad explanation.

Finally, Zhanran places “one sentence is sufficient” beside the broadly spread Dharma-net. If mind has settled in the truth, one can enter through one sentence of general settling in Dharma-nature. Only while it remains unsettled does general open into distinct, using one siddhānta or many sentences. The many meshes are prepared for one person’s changes over time and many people’s different faculties; at actual entry, no one must carry every mesh simultaneously. Broad and brief are therefore not rivals but two perspectives: the teaching’s provision for faculties and the practitioner’s actual entry.

〔Section §01〕 If Dharma-Nature Cannot Be Broken, Why Speak of Breaking?

Question: Dharma-nature is pure, neither joined nor dispersed, beyond the reach of speech and thought. Since it is neither breakable nor unbreakable, what does “pervasively breaking through Dharmas” actually break?

Answer: What is broken is not Dharma-nature but the attachments beings produce through inversion. If skillfully settling the mind has already brought forth concentration and wisdom so that mind accords with contemplation, no separate breaking is needed. If they do not yet accord, concentration-endowed wisdom must examine every inversion and purify it completely. The direction of breaking is therefore clear. It does not find something outside Dharma-nature and destroy it, nor does it judge all language indiscriminately to be wrong. Rather, whenever mind grasps a provisionally established conditioned Dharma as real existence, it pursues that attachment to the point where it cannot stand.

“Pervasively” does not merely indicate that many things are broken. If mind is loosened in only one place, it can flee to another. If coarse views alone are broken, subtle views can take a new stand in nonexistence, both, neither, or even wordlessness. Pervasive breaking through Dharmas requires that horizontally no Dharma remain where attachment can hide, and vertically that examination extend from a view’s first arising to the subtlest view beyond words. When inversion is exhausted in this way, pure Dharma-nature is not newly produced through breaking; it appears because obstruction has been removed.

〔Section §02〕 If All Four Gates Communicate, Why Begin with the Birthless Gate?

Question: Words, contemplative practice, wisdom, and principle can all serve as gates, and the Perfect Teaching further has four gates—existence, nonexistence, both existence and nonexistence, and neither existence nor nonexistence. Why does this passage take only the empty and birthless gate?

Answer: A gate’s function is communication. Verbal teaching gives rise to contemplation; contemplative practice develops wisdom; wisdom communicates with principle. Every gate is in turn established through principle. Principle has nowhere else to go, yet it can bring every gate to ultimate, pervasive communication. Thus there is nothing communicated with and nothing with which it does not communicate.

The Tripiṭaka Teaching’s four gates and the Shared Teaching’s four gates can break views and thought, but they sever only the four abodes. The Distinct Teaching’s four gates sequentially sever the five abodes; they are vertically pervasive but not horizontally pervasive. In the Perfect Teaching, one object is all objects and one mind is all minds; every Dharma, horizontally and vertically, converges upon mind. Break attachment within mind and all attachments are broken together, so each of the four gates can break pervasively. This passage provisionally sets the other three gates aside and enters through the birthless gate alone. It walks one gate through completely; it does not judge the other three to be impassable.

The birthless gate also works in two directions. Practicing in reliance on the teaching can communicate with forbearance concerning nonarising and reach the causal stage; when concentration and wisdom are complete, it can also communicate with the result. A Dharma gate does not disclose itself but must be practiced by a person. Just as the function of a dwelling’s gate appears only when travelers enter and leave through it and reach places beyond it, when people practice calming-and-contemplation along the birthless gate, teaching communicates with contemplation, wisdom, and principle. When calming-and-contemplation is accomplished, it in turn makes the birthless gate communicate wherever it touches.

〔Section §03〕 How Can One Gate Vertically Embrace Cause and Result in Self-Practice and Agent and Object in Teaching Others?

Question: How can the birthless gate reach from cause to result and also gather both bodhisattva self-realization and teaching others into a single gate?

Answer: The treatise unfolds this through four alternatives: not-arising-arising, not-arising-not-arising, arising-not-arising, and arising-arising. The first states the cause in self-practice. Calming-and-contemplation is settled in the conventional truth, turning the object originally separated and differentiated by ignorance into the inconceivable object. When contemplative practice is accomplished, it is like being carried in and emerging from the noble embryo: one first opens the Buddha’s knowledge and vision and gains forbearance concerning nonarising. No longer seeing the conventional truth of ignorance is called not-arising; the development of prajñā wisdom is called arising.

The second states the result in self-practice. The mark of arising is exhausted, and through cultivating the path one realizes great nirvāṇa. When the virtue of severance is complete, ignorance no longer arises; when the virtue of wisdom is complete, prajñā no longer arises separately. Hence not-arising-not-arising. In the preceding alternative wisdom arose from not-arising; here the two virtues of wisdom and severance are both complete. Cause and result are thereby complete.

The third first states the extinction of delusion in self-practice and then restates the agent in teaching others. The death of ignorance at the root of the conventional truth is called arising-not-arising. Yet after a bodhisattva breaks birth driven by binding karma, the bodhisattva can instead receive birth freely and enter the realm of beings to transform them. “Arising” has the same name in both contexts, but first it means the activation of binding karma and later manifested birth in teaching others. “Not-arising” likewise has the same name, but one place emphasizes the virtue of wisdom and another the virtue of severance. Identical wording must not be allowed to conflate them.

The fourth states the object of teaching others. The contaminated Dharmas of beings continue thought after thought. Precisely because bodhisattvas see this uninterrupted mass of arising, they give rise to great compassion and manifest freely received birth. Cause and result in self-practice and agent and object in teaching others are therefore not four scattered matters. Together they form the birthless gate’s entire vertical path from self-realization to benefiting others.

〔Section §04〕 One Spit Extinguishes Fire and One Breath Forms a World: Do Breaking and Establishing Come in Sequence?

Question: Breaking delusion and establishing Dharmas appear opposed. Why does the treatise use a breath and a spit to say they are not divided between two thoughts?

Answer: When the fire at an eon’s end blazes, one spit extinguishes it; after the world has perished, one breath forms it. The simile does not first use one thought to break and then raise a second to establish. The treatise master explicitly says that within one spit there is both extinguishing and forming. The inner meaning revealed through this outward simile is that the birthless gate breaks all through one breaking and establishes all through one establishment. If mind inwardly lacked the virtue in which breaking and establishing are nondual, the great function could not appear outwardly.

Placed back within contemplation of mind, the approaching end of a being’s lifetime resembles the end of an eon, and the three poisons resemble the three disasters, beginning with fire. Calming makes the three poisons cease, like a spit extinguishing fire. Contemplation illuminates causes and conditions and reveals the establishment of every Dharma, like a breath forming a world. Calming and contemplation are not split into two unrelated roads, just as breath and spit cannot be ordered as before and after.

The four alternatives contain the same structure. Not-arising-arising is like a breath within a spit: delusion does not arise while wisdom opens. Arising-not-arising is like a spit within a breath: a bodhisattva manifests birth while birth driven by binding karma has already ceased. With cause and result complete, breaking inversion and establishing transformative function are accomplished together. If breaking remains mere negation, it cannot establish beings, faculties and conditions, or voiced teaching. If establishing preserves real attachment, it is not truly establishment from nonarising.

〔Section §05〕 How Do the Four Alternatives Gather Self-Practice and Teaching Others Together?

Question: The four alternatives have already distinguished cause and result in self-practice and agent and object in teaching others. Why does the treatise further explain the bodhisattvas of the fourth abode through six abodes?

Answer: Because arising-not-arising cannot be understood merely as sinking into quiescence after delusion has been extinguished. The scripture reinterprets it through the freedom in birth of bodhisattvas in the fourth abode, thereby directly extending the severance of delusion in self-practice into the arising of the path of transformation. When bodhisattvas sever the four-abode delusions, birth compelled by binding karma is broken and they can manifest birth freely rather than through karma. Even comparatively shallow severance can thus benefit others, revealing by contrast the transformative function of deeper stages.

The treatise uses six abodes to state this path. The lineage abode makes wholesome roots advance without retreat. Understanding-and-practice is the preparatory stage before the first ground. The pure-mind abode enters the first ground and leaves the ordinary obstruction of the mark of self. The traces-of-path-practice abode extends from the second through the seventh ground, directly abiding in cultivation of the path. The certainty abode is the eighth and ninth grounds, where one neither returns nor retreats. The ultimate abode is the tenth ground, where the practices of learning are exhausted and complete. The scripture’s fourth abode is correlated with the traces-of-path-practice abode precisely to explain freely manifested birth in entering provisionality and teaching others.

This correlation of stages continues to serve the four alternatives. Not-arising-arising opens wisdom in self-practice; not-arising-not-arising completes the virtues of its result; arising-not-arising makes the agent of transformation free; arising-arising reveals the beings transformed. Keeping only the first two would make nonarising easy to read as self-realization alone. Speaking only of the latter two would obscure that birth for teaching others is no longer driven by delusion and karma. Only when the four alternatives are viewed together does self-practice become complete and teaching others arise from it.

〔Section §06〕 If All Six Alternatives Are Inexpressible, Must Even Correct Understanding Be Discarded?

Question: The six alternatives call conceivable delusion, conceivable understanding, inconceivable delusion, and inconceivable understanding all inexpressible. Does this mean there is no difference between understanding and delusion and that even correct understanding must be broken?

Answer: The six alternatives examine the mind’s fixation upon the names and marks of understanding and delusion. Delusion beyond the realms arises attached to substance and is called not-arising-arising. Delusion within the realms circulates as branches and tips and is called arising-arising. Since the object transformed is unobtainable, the transforming agent has nowhere to stand, so both alternatives are inexpressible. Understanding within the realms dispels only birth and death in sections and is called arising-not-arising. Understanding beyond the realms dispels both birth and death in sections and transformational birth and death and is called not-arising-not-arising. Although understanding has shallow and deep forms, principle cannot be fixed by a name for either shallow or deep, so these two alternatives too are inexpressible.

The final two alternatives directly examine ignorance and perfect understanding. Because of ignorance there is arising, and arising in turn discloses ignorance. Ignorance is unobtainable and arising is likewise unobtainable, so arising is inexpressible. Perfect understanding is divided into beginning and end, cause and result, but principle is neither a partial name nor another perfect name that can be grasped, and it has no fixed beginning or end. Thus not-arising is inexpressible.

The Buddha’s explanation of each alternative further shows that inexpressibility does not mean refusing to speak. Dharma-nature is named arising; Dharmas arisen from causes and conditions are immediately empty and immediately Middle; prajñā arises from neither self, another, both, nor no cause; the ultimate result is attained through cultivating the path; conditioned arising originally has no intrinsic nature; the principle attained transcends mind and speech. Each is a precise discrimination that drives attachment to the place where it can no longer stand. Language is used here to remove the real attachment produced through language, not to reject every distinction.

〔Section §07〕 After the Inexpressible, Why Can Ten Causes and Conditions Be Expressed?

Question: If all six alternatives are inexpressible, why does the treatise immediately say that the ten causes and conditions can be expressed? Do the two passages contradict each other?

Answer: Inexpressibility reveals that self-realization cannot be fixed by names and marks; expressibility reveals that after self-realization one must still teach others. One’s own Dharma is what the Tathāgata realizes, without increase or decrease. Originally abiding Dharma is like the road to an ancient city and abides constantly from the beginning. A person sees a level road, follows it into the city, and receives happiness. The road was not made by the traveler, nor was the city made by the one who arrived. Because self-realization and originally abiding Dharma cannot be altered by verbal discrimination, the Buddha says that between the two nights he did not speak a single word.

Yet after realization one cannot stop in silence. The ten causes and conditions from ignorance through existence establish three things. First they establish beings: the two past causes and five present results act as causes and conditions for one another, conjoin the five aggregates, and provisionally receive the name being. Second they establish faculties and conditions: the four kinds of analytical, embodied, gradual, and sudden practice and karma from the past are moistened by ignorance and bring about the five present results; each then produces craving, grasping, and existence and forms four kinds of faculties. Third they establish voiced teaching: the four kinds of craving, grasping, and existence separately bring about the Tripiṭaka, Shared, Distinct, and Perfect Teachings, allowing arising-arising, arising-not-arising, not-arising-arising, and not-arising-not-arising all to be taught according to capacities.

Once beings are established, every delusion, karma, cause and result, and object transformed is established. Once faculties and teaching are established, every understanding, practice, cause and result, and transforming agent is established. The birthless gate does not first negate the world and then move the same broken world back into place. Where every Dharma lacks intrinsic nature, it establishes beings, faculties and conditions, and voiced teaching through causes and conditions. Thus one breaking breaks all, and one establishment establishes all.

〔Section §08〕 Why Do Vertical, Horizontal, Nondual, Empty, Provisional, and Middle All Return to One Mind?

Question: Pervasive breaking through Dharmas has three modes—vertical, horizontal, and neither horizontal nor vertical—and also the three contemplations of empty, provisional, and Middle. Does this create six separate sets of contemplation?

Answer: Vertical breaking follows the single birthless gate from beginning to end and exhausts its source and depths, emphasizing height. Horizontal breaking passes through all the gates and exhausts the source and depths of each, emphasizing breadth. When vertical enters horizontal, nowhere broad is not also deep. When horizontal enters vertical, no level deep is not also broad. Height and breadth mutually enter, revealing what is neither horizontal nor vertical and a Dharma without high or low.

The three contemplations are not three minds. Entering emptiness from provisionality breaks views and thought; entering provisionality from emptiness treats stagnation in emptiness; contemplation of the Middle doubly negates the two extremes. Because the wondrous Dharma is difficult to understand, three sequential names are provisionally used to reveal one mind. They are explained in textual sequence so what is broken and where one enters remain clear. In actual contemplation of mind, if one thought can illuminate provisional establishment as lacking intrinsic nature, it does not leave emptiness, does not thereby destroy conditioned provisional names, and does not fall into either extreme of emptiness or existence.

This unit first follows entry into emptiness through the provisionality of views and is only the first of the three contemplations. Yet within itself it must still break pervasively existence, nonexistence, both, neither, and wordlessness. If this first phase is not completed, the latter two contemplations inherit a view of existence that has not been purified. If it is mistaken for the whole, stagnation in emptiness may itself become a new view of nonexistence.

〔Section §09〕 If “View” Originally Means Seeing Principle, Why Is It Called the Delusion of Views?

Question: A view should mean seeing principle, and seeing the real is not delusion. Why then is the delusion obstructing the path called an affliction of views and also a provisional view?

Answer: The affliction of views arises in dependence upon the true substance and then turns back to obscure it, like shimmering heat arising in dependence upon empty space and making space appear to move, or like a dream depending upon sleep and sinking the sleeper within the dream. Until the dream stops, the sleeper cannot wake. Until delusion is removed, the true substance cannot appear.

It is called “view” not because it has itself already seen principle, but because this delusion can be severed when principle is seen; it takes its name from the understanding that can treat it. It is called “provisional” on account of its own false and inverted nature. The two names therefore point to different places. If an affliction of views is understood to mean that true seeing itself is delusion, agent of severance and object severed are inverted. If one merely calls it provisional without actually examining and breaking it, the provisional name becomes an empty phrase.

The affliction of views first opens into the single four views: existence, nonexistence, both existence and nonexistence, and neither existence nor nonexistence. It then opens into the compound four views, making each alternative carry existence and nonexistence. It next opens into the fully endowed four views, making each principal alternative possess all four alternatives. Outside each set of four, a separate wordless view can again be established. The net of views does not disappear naturally as one moves from coarse to subtle. Whenever mind releases one place, it may again grasp the next understanding as a real Dharma.

〔Section §10〕 How Do the Three Provisionalities Extend Together through Mind, the Body of Form, and Dependent Recompense?

Question: Are provisionality formed by causes, provisionality of continuity, and provisionality of relation merely an analysis of one thought of mind?

Answer: In terms of mind, a Dharma-object facing the mental faculty gives rise to one thought: formation by causes. Thoughts continuing without interruption before and after are continuity. Mind established in relation to no-mind is relation. Yet the three provisionalities do not belong only to psychology. Formative karma from a past life relying on parents to obtain the body is the body of form’s formation by causes. Its uninterrupted course from embryo to old age is the body’s continuity. Body established in relation to what is not body is the body’s relation. A pillar formed through the conjunction of four subtle elements is dependent recompense’s formation by causes. Its uninterrupted change through the seasons is dependent recompense’s continuity. Pillar in relation to what is not pillar, long in relation to short, and large in relation to small are dependent recompense’s relation.

The Small Vehicle can explain the three provisionalities according to phenomena, and the Great Vehicle can also explain them according to principle. Dharmas produced through ignorance are like illusions and transformations, possessing names alone while their reality is unobtainable. If even the four subtle elements forming an illusory pillar are unobtainable, the pillar formed, its continuity through time, and its relational length and shortness have still less real nature. Form is empty in its intrinsic substance; one need not wait until form has ceased for it to become empty.

Relational existence, nominal existence, and Dharma-existence reveal the same problem from another side. Long and short, east and west exist through relation and have names but no reality. Curds formed from the conjunction of color, fragrance, flavor, and touch exist only nominally: they neither truly exist nor are wholly nonexistent like a hare’s horns or turtle’s hair. The conjunction of the four subtle elements of color, fragrance, flavor, and touch is called Dharma-existence. The three provisional designations of Dharma, reception, and name can likewise be correlated respectively with formation by causes, continuity, and relation. Names can communicate with one another, but examination must still return to causes and conditions, before and after, and relational contrast. The three names must not themselves be grasped as three real Dharmas.

〔Section §11〕 If the Brief Contemplation Already Speaks of Ultimate Purity, Why Is Extended Breaking Still Needed?

Question: When one thought arises, contemplating shimmering heat as depending upon space and dream as depending upon sleep already allows one to say that beginning and end are both quiescent and ultimately pure. Why then unfold a long examination through the four alternatives?

Answer: A person of sharp faculties can awaken as soon as this is heard, so the brief contemplation is sufficient. When mind arises, it necessarily falls within one of the single four views, and each view possesses the three provisionalities and eighty-eight agents. If the practitioner can embody and penetrate that shimmering movement depends upon the mirage and the mirage in turn upon space, while space itself cannot be grasped, hundreds and thousands of sorrows and joys become like a dream upon waking, with beginning and end both quiescent. This is called calming. One then contemplates ignorance as itself Dharma-nature: Dharma-nature neither arises nor ceases, and the deluded mind of ignorance has no separate arising or ceasing. Contemplating and contemplated are both like empty space and ultimately pure. This is called contemplation entering emptiness through provisionality.

Yet when a person of dull faculties hears of ultimate emptiness, instead of awakening the person may add another fault. “Everything is pure” may be grasped as a pure object. “Agent and object are like space” may be grasped as an empty contemplator. “Nonarising” may be grasped as real nonexistence. Extended breaking therefore does not add another principle to brief contemplation. It opens every possible hiding place within the brief contemplation and asks, alternative by alternative, whether arising comes from self, another, both, or no cause, until the single, compound, fully endowed, and wordless views have nowhere left to abide.

〔Section §12〕 If One Thought Arises from Neither Self, Another, Both, nor No Cause, What Remains?

Question: From where does the one thought within provisionality formed by causes actually arise? Once all four alternatives have been broken, does only an annihilating nonexistence remain?

Answer: If mind produces itself, then if consciousness already exists within the faculty, faculty and consciousness stand side by side and there is neither producer nor produced; if the faculty contains no consciousness, what lacks consciousness cannot produce it. Establishing a separate nature of consciousness must still undergo examination through existence and nonexistence, identity and difference. If an external object produces mind, then if the object is mind this returns to self-production, while if it is not mind it lacks the power to produce mind. Establishing a nature of production within the object likewise cannot escape existence and nonexistence.

If faculty and object produce together, then if mirror and face each possess an image, their conjunction should produce two images; if neither possesses one, conjunction cannot produce one. If the image arises only when they become one, mirror and face never actually become one. If it arises while they remain separate, each should possess an image while standing in its own place. If mind arises apart from faculty and object, then if there is a real separation, that separation is still a cause; if there is no separation, nonexistence cannot produce. Sought in the four places of self, another, both, and separation, mind is unobtainable.

Unobtainability does not erase conditioned phenomena. Once real nature is broken, “mind arises” is seen to be only a name. The name is neither inside, outside, nor between and does not exist constantly by itself. Seeking nature through the four alternatives and not seeing it is called nature-emptiness. Seeking the name through the four alternatives and not seeing it is called mark-emptiness. According to the different things emptied—faculty, object, conjunction, separation, and the four alternatives—this can further open into internal emptiness, external emptiness, internal-and-external emptiness, emptiness of emptiness, and the remaining eighteen emptinesses. All eighteen names are established according to the matter examined; eighteen emptinesses do not separately exist outside one thought.

Provisionality of continuity then asks whether the preceding thought ceases, does not cease, both ceases and does not cease, or neither ceases nor does not cease before the later thought arises. Every alternative either falls into self, another, both, or no cause; makes arising and ceasing contradict each other; or incurs both the faults of annihilation and permanence. Provisionality of relation next asks whether mind arises in relation to nonarising, arising, both, or neither. Relation to nonarising still takes nonarising as another. Relation to arising is like long standing in relation to long. Both incurs the fault of joint production. Neither still cannot escape existence and nonexistence. When the three provisionalities are pursued to the end, what is broken is real nature and a real name, not thought-by-thought continuity and conditioned relation reduced to sheer nonexistence.

〔Section §13〕 After the View of Existence Is Broken, Why Does the View of Nonexistence Resemble Realization Even More?

Question: Once the three provisionalities of the view of existence have been broken, mind indistinctly enters concentration and body and mind seem wholly empty. Why say this may still be only a view of nonexistence?

Answer: Three kinds of faculties respond differently. A person of superior faculties hears of arising, knows arising as nonarising, breaks attachment, and awakens. A person of middling faculties has lighter attachment, first subdues views, and forms the path of preparatory means. A person of inferior faculties hears that arising is unobtainable and grasps nonarising itself as truly existent. Abandoning existence and attaching to nonexistence resembles a measuring-worm stretching and contracting between two ends, or a monkey leaving one branch only to grasp another. The position changes, but grasping has not ceased.

When separately breaking the view of nonexistence, the treatise lays out the signs most easily mistaken for realization. Inner and outer are no longer seen, before and after are no longer seen, one abides quiescently in concentration, and one may even suddenly feel that body and mind have completely vanished and everything is pure. If this is taken to mean that concentration and wisdom have been accomplished, an empty Dharma-object has already been established in correspondence with a contemplating mind. Once a contemplator is established, self-view is established. From self-view, extreme view, deviant view, grasping precepts, grasping views, craving, anger, delusion, conceit, and doubt can all arise again.

The true hinge is not whether an empty object appears but whether, as soon as empty mind arises, one immediately knows that “arising is itself craving.” A Dharma-object of nonarising facing the mental faculty gives rise to formation by causes. The mind of arising ceases and the mind of nonarising continues: continuity. Sudden nonarising stands in relation to preceding arising: relation. Examining the mind of nonarising through self, another, both, and separation likewise finds neither nature nor mark. If emptiness is grasped, it becomes a new illness. Only by knowing that it too consists of the three provisionalities can calming-and-contemplation continue to follow and pursue it.

〔Section §14〕 Both and Neither Claim to Be the Middle Way: How Do the Four Truths Expose Their Faults?

Question: The one who knows is existence and the known nonarising is nonexistence, hence both existence and nonexistence. One then leaves existence and nonexistence and speaks of neither existence nor nonexistence. This seems to draw step by step closer to the Middle Way, so why does it remain a view?

Answer: As soon as the mind of both existence and nonexistence is accepted, the aggregate of feeling is present. Perceiving its appearance is perception; applying this Dharma is formations; discerning it is consciousness. The four aggregates stand plainly present and depend in turn upon the aggregate of form. When mental faculty and Dharma-object interact, elements and sense fields are also established. This is suffering. Thinking “I can practice, receive, and know” produces self-view. Self-view then unfolds into extreme view, deviant view, grasping precepts, grasping views, and the five dull agents; passing through the three realms, they become eighty-eight agents. This is accumulation. Using four-alternative calming-and-contemplation to break them is the path. Their being subdued or severed is cessation.

The view of neither existence nor nonexistence must undergo the same test of the four truths. It assigns the view of existence to conditioned arising, the view of nonexistence to emptiness, both to provisionality, and itself to the Middle. Yet as long as this correlation is firmly grasped as real, a verbal view has arisen. Because this mind arises and ceases, it is not permanent. Because it is appropriated and grasped, it is not pleasurable. Because it lacks mastery, it is not self. Because it bears the defilement of views, it is not pure. Calling what is not the path the path is grasping precepts. Taking it as nirvāṇa is grasping views. Destroying worldly and world-transcending cause and result becomes deviant view.

Poisonous herb and king of medicines are not determined by their names. If the same expression “Middle Way” produces ten agents, the three provisionalities, suffering, and accumulation, it is poisonous herb. Only when calming-and-contemplation breaks nature and mark and subdues and extinguishes the view does the medicine of path and cessation appear. Here the four truths are not doctrinal categories imposed from outside. They point out suffering, accumulation, path, and cessation within each view so practitioners are not blinded to their actual mental conduct by a lofty name.

〔Section §15〕 If Principle Lies beyond Words, Why Has One Still Not Left Speech?

Question: All four alternatives are provisional and principle lies beyond words. If the place of mental activity ceases and the road of language is cut off, why can this not be judged directly as the wordless path of nonarising?

Answer: Because outside the four alternatives there are further levels. One may leave the single four alternatives yet remain within the second of the compound four, or fall within the first of the fully endowed four. Outside the alternatives at every level, another wordlessness can be established. The net of views resembles demons and goblins present everywhere; surface silence does not make it disappear by itself.

More fundamentally, “wordlessness” is still established in relation to “not wordless.” Without not-wordless standing opposite, the judgment of wordlessness could not arise. Because it exists through relational contrast, it remains provisionality of relation. It resembles trying to escape empty space: wherever one goes, one remains within space. Silence itself is not the fault. The error is grasping silence or an indistinct state as real principle.

The preceding sections in fact each contain both horizontal and vertical dimensions. Unfolding the three provisionalities and four alternatives within one view of existence is horizontal. The layered accumulation of the four views is vertical. Formation by causes is predominantly horizontal, continuity predominantly vertical, relation both horizontal and vertical, and the general breaking neither horizontal nor vertical. Overall, however, the preceding work still examined one view from within in a horizontal manner. The text now turns to vertical breaking, using the actual arisings, nonarisings, both, and neither taught at the stages of the various teachings to examine level by level the mind that claims to have gone beyond words.

〔Section §16〕 Why Test One Statement of Nonarising through Ten Levels of Not-Not-Arising?

Question: A practitioner says only that mind exists or that mind does not arise. Why ask from the five methods for calming mind all the way through wondrous awakening and further open ten kinds of nonarising and not-not-arising?

Answer: If mind is grasped as existent, ask which kind of arising it is: the arising of the five methods for calming mind and establishments of mindfulness; the arising of warmth, summit, forbearance, and highest worldly Dharma; the arising of the path of seeing and renewed reflection; the arising of dry wisdom and the grounds of eight persons and seeing; the arising of a bodhisattva’s true understanding on the suppressive path; the arising of the iron wheel or bronze wheel; or mastery of arising throughout the Dharma realm. If the attachment accords with none of these levels, it cannot claim merely through the word “existent” not to be a view.

If mind is grasped as unborn, one must likewise ask which nonarising it is among views, thought, residual habit, dust-and-sand delusion, ignorance, karma, recompense, practice, and principle. The three buddha-bodies can further open multiple correlations through principle, delusion, karmic practice, and the three causes—direct, revealing, and conditioning. Hearing the gate of the letter a should allow one to understand every meaning pervasively. As a sharp mattock digs into earth until reaching vajra, hearing one statement of nonarising should penetrate and see nonarising throughout every level of the Dharma realm.

The ten kinds of not-not-arising specifically prevent one phrase from flattening all stages. A non-Buddhist’s wordlessness still contains subtle perception, and the Vātsīputrīyas’ inexpressible treasury still calculates a self. Two-Vehicle practitioners in the Tripiṭaka Teaching sever the direct agents while residual habit arises; a Tripiṭaka buddha exhausts both. Two-Vehicle practitioners in the Shared Teaching embody views and thought while residual habit remains; a Shared-Teaching buddha exhausts direct agents and residual habit but knows only birth and death in sections. In causal stages of the Distinct Teaching, higher portions of delusion still arise; a Distinct-Teaching buddha exhausts those higher portions but remains within skillful provisionality. Practitioners in causal stages of the Perfect Teaching still possess higher-ground practice, wisdom, and recompense. Only at wondrous awakening is wisdom full, delusion exhausted, and practice, wisdom, and recompense ultimately unborn.

Double negation is therefore not wordplay. Practitioners must state clearly how far their nonarising reaches and how far their not-not-arising reaches. If it accords with no stage at all, a grand claim of nonarising is merely an unexamined view.

〔Section §17〕 How Are Silence, Realizing Principle, and the Ten Kinds of Four Alternatives Distinguished?

Question: A brahmin’s observance of silence, Dīghanakha’s refusal to accept anything, the Vātsīputrīyas’ inexpressible, and realization of principle in all four teachings can each be called wordless. How can one avoid judging only by outward silence?

Answer: The same “inexpressible” can occupy entirely different positions. One person observes silence and does not speak. Another grasps refusal to accept any Dharma. Another places self within an inexpressible treasury. The Tripiṭaka, Shared, Distinct, and Perfect Teachings each further possess inexpressibility because their four gates communicate with principle. If a calculation does not even equal the Vātsīputrīyas’ inexpressible assigned only to conventional truth yet elevates itself as nirvāṇa, identical names have plainly concealed different meanings.

The ten kinds of four alternatives further separate the functions of these formulations. The direct four establish the alternatives directly. The endless four unfold them layer upon layer. The stage-concluding four assign them according to the scope of ordinary and noble. The collecting-and-restating four gather ordinary people, the Two Vehicles, bodhisattvas, and buddhas into four alternatives. The awakening-gaining four make any alternative a possible gate. The classifying four assign what is awakened to among the Dharma gates. The provisional-and-real four distinguish skillful means from reality. The opening-and-revealing four bring provisional alternatives into the one real. The intent-losing four grasp the Buddha’s words and dispute. The intent-gaining four use treatises to break attachment, after which delusion is dispelled and the work of treatise ceases.

The ten names are not intended to make the net of views more elaborate. They prevent “I stand outside the four alternatives” from becoming a claim without coordinates. The four alternatives can be the abiding attachment of ordinary people or the skillful means of noble ones. Whether their intent is gained depends not on whether the four are spoken but on whether one enters principle through them and, after entering principle, no longer abides in them.

〔Section §18〕 What Is Wrong with Forcing Different Kinds of Inexpressibility into Equality?

Question: Daoism also says that the Way cannot be spoken and the name cannot be named, while Buddhism too speaks of the inexpressible. Why does the treatise so sternly oppose declaring them broadly equal?

Answer: The treatise’s criterion is not that both expressions contain surface negations. It returns them to the character of the teachings on which they rely, the suffering and accumulation they sever, and the factors of the path they cultivate. The preceding text has already listed inexpressibility outside the single, compound, and fully endowed alternatives, the Vātsīputrīyas’ inexpressibility, and the inexpressibility of the four teachings. If an account has not passed even the first levels of examination, it cannot be equated with the wordlessness of realizing principle merely because the words look similar. Insects eating wood may accidentally leave the shape of characters; resemblance of shape does not mean the insects know their meaning.

The treatise further rebukes this conflation item by item through origins and traces, bodily marks, teaching, deportment, and relinquishment of status for homelessness. These sharp comparisons serve one argument: the inexpressible must be judged according to the principle realized, the path practiced, and the result produced. A lofty Buddhist name cannot be stolen and placed upon another view whose suffering and accumulation remain unbroken. The distinction between deviant and correct returns here to the three provisionalities, suffering and accumulation, and factors of the path; it does not stop in a contest over terminology.

If an opponent again uses wordlessness to break nonarising and nonceasing, the treatise opens six alternatives: wordlessness breaks nonarising and nonceasing, and conversely; wordlessness cultivates nonarising and nonceasing, and conversely; wordlessness is itself nonarising and nonceasing, and conversely. The six make the two names mutually break, mutually cultivate, and mutually identify, so neither side can place itself outside alternatives. Before an ordinary person enters the noble path, the slightest thought of calculation brings forth the three provisionalities and all the agents. Calming-and-contemplation must therefore keep pursuing and refuse to let wordlessness become the final hiding place.

〔Section §19〕 What Does Each of the Three Contemplations Break, and What If Calming-and-Contemplation Becomes a New View?

Question: Contemplation entering emptiness has already broken immeasurable vertical and horizontal views. What remains for the latter two contemplations to break? Calming-and-contemplation is cultivated as medicine, so how can the contemplative Dharma itself become an illness?

Answer: In summary, contemplation entering emptiness breaks views and thought and is collectively called breaking existence. Entering provisionality breaks stagnation in emptiness and is collectively called breaking nonexistence. Contemplation of the Middle doubly negates existence and nonexistence and directly reveals the Middle Way. Ordinary people generate attachments wherever they make contact, so views of existence extend immeasurably in every direction. After people of the Two Vehicles sever views and thought, they no longer calculate horizontally but realize emptiness alone; the Great Vehicle collectively calls the emptiness in which they stagnate a view of nonexistence. However broadly the provisionality of views is broken in entering emptiness, this remains only the work of the first contemplation.

Gain and loss must be considered along the two axes of old and new delusion. Old delusion unremoved while new delusion arises is like taking medicine without curing the old illness and then becoming ill from the medicine. Old delusion removed while new delusion arises is like curing the original illness only for the medicine to become an illness. Someone may cultivate contemplation and slightly still dull delusions such as craving food and clothing, yet guard a new view like a thirsty horse guarding water, even denying cause and result. This is precisely contemplative medicine becoming an illness of views.

Old delusion unremoved while new delusion does not arise is the path of preparatory means. Although craving and anger remain, as soon as one thought arises the practitioner recognizes the three provisionalities, and calming-and-contemplation follows it to break nature and mark, subduing the sixty-two views. Old delusion removed while new delusion does not arise means that nature and mark are both empty, the true arises, and principle is seen. Medicine’s function is not to be preserved forever; when the illness is cured, the medicine ceases with it. Whether one recognizes what arises within contemplation as also provisional is precisely the boundary between Dharma-medicine and the illness of views.

〔Section §20〕 How Do Subduing Views, Breaking Views, and Forbearance concerning Nonarising Converge as Calming-and-Contemplation?

Question: All four teachings speak of subduing and breaking views. Since the names are the same, are their attainments the same? How does this unit finally return to calming and contemplation?

Answer: The Tripiṭaka Teaching subdues and severs with analytical-Dharma contemplative wisdom. Subduing occurs at the establishments of mindfulness and other preparatory stages, and breaking views enters the first fruit. The Shared Teaching subdues and severs with embodied-Dharma contemplative wisdom, advancing from the grounds of dry wisdom and nature to those of eight persons and seeing. The Distinct Teaching subdues and severs with sequential contemplative wisdom, subduing at the ten faiths and breaking at the ten abodes. The Perfect Teaching subdues and severs with the contemplative wisdom of one mind, subduing at the five grades and breaking at purification of the six faculties. The names subduing and severing are shared, but the contemplative wisdom differs greatly; stages must not be conflated on the basis of names alone.

When an old view arises during contemplation, the contemplative Dharma has not necessarily produced a new delusion. It may resemble medicine stirring an old illness with its power; once the old illness moves, it is soon cured. The two axes of old and new must decide the case. Listing the Tripiṭaka, Shared, and other stages also lets practitioners know whether what arises is shallow or deep and recognize that half-word skillful means can become supports for the Distinct and Perfect paths, like servants and guards surrounding a great carriage. Skillful means do not stand outside reality, yet their inclusion must not be used to claim they are ultimate.

Finally, when the revolving of views ceases, entry into principle never retreats and remains forever quiescent: this is called calming. Penetrating that views lack intrinsic nature, that nature is empty and mark is empty: this is called contemplation. Seeing the principle of the true truth is called nonarising. Since principle neither arises nor ceases, it is called forbearance concerning nonarising. Afflictions of views not arising is nonarising of cause; no longer receiving evil-destination recompense is nonarising of result. Cause and result neither arising nor ceasing is likewise called forbearance concerning nonarising. Thus the birthless gate communicates with calming-and-contemplation, and calming-and-contemplation accomplishes the birthless gate. This conclusion gathers only entry into emptiness through the provisionality of views. The vajra blade pursues views without pause until views cease and the two emptinesses become clear; only then is this first phase truly complete.

Through the Eye of the Fuxing

The reading above has followed the treatise’s own sequence from the rationale for pervasive breaking through the cessation of views, the two emptinesses, and forbearance concerning nonarising. Zhanran’s Fuxing Chuanhong Jue on the Mohe Zhiguan supplies several crucial hinges along this long road where levels are especially easy to conflate.

First, settling the mind and pervasive breaking do not divide concentration from wisdom. Settling the mind emphasizes wisdom-endowed concentration; pervasive breaking emphasizes concentration-endowed wisdom. Both possess concentration and wisdom and are named differently only according to the function emphasized in each passage. “Mind has not yet accorded” means that although object, arousing the mind, and settling the mind have already been understood, mind has not truly settled. It does not turn pervasive breaking into a separate method containing analysis alone and no stability.

Second, all four Perfect-Teaching gates can break pervasively, but the birthless gate alone is selected here because beginners enter through what is easy and appropriate. Choosing one gate means using it to embrace horizontally and exhaust vertically before entering the other gates again. It does not declare the gates of existence, both, or neither ineffective. T1913, the Principles of the Meaning of Calming-and-Contemplation, later places beginning reliance upon teaching, reliance upon nonarising, and the perfect interfusion of the three truths side by side, thereby preserving both an expedient point of entry and ultimate pervasive breaking.

Third, the sequence of the four alternatives cannot be arranged by wording alone. The Fuxing expressly assigns not-arising-arising to the cause in self-practice, not-arising-not-arising to the result in self-practice, arising-not-arising to the agent in teaching others, and arising-arising to the object of teaching others. It further assigns the first explanation of arising-not-arising to extinguishing delusion in self-practice and its restatement to freedom in the path of transformation. Breath and spit as nondual thus become more than a strange image: development of the virtue of wisdom, accomplishment of the virtue of severance, and manifested birth for benefiting others mutually contain one another.

Fourth, the six inexpressibles break attachment to the names of understanding and delusion. Conceivable and inconceivable, arising and nonarising, partial and perfect must all be examined and broken, but the principle realized is not thereby broken. The Fuxing particularly points out that the nirvāṇa attained in a noble one’s mind is not broken. Principle cannot be fixed by a partial name, nor can it again be fixed by a perfect name. The expressible must be clarified after the inexpressible because self-realization must be followed by teaching others. The ten causes and conditions establish beings, faculties, and teaching, returning self-realization directly to transformation.

Fifth, the three modes of pervasive breaking and the three contemplations are discriminations provisionally established to reveal one mind. The horizontal must be all-pervasive and the vertical must exhaust the depths, after which their nonduality is recognized. Empty, provisional, and Middle are divided in the text but return in practice to one nondual mind. Later, T1937, the Record of the Teachings and Practices of the Venerable Siming, answers this difficulty by saying that the text appears sequential while its intent is perfectly interfused, and that in practice raising one is immediately all three, neither before nor after. This reception can clarify the intent of practice, but it does not remove the need to distinguish what each section of the treatise breaks.

Sixth, “provisional views” has two layers of naming. “View” is first taken from the understanding that sees principle, while “provisional” is then taken from the false substance of delusion. The three provisionalities too are used only to break delusion and should not instead make practitioners produce three new delusions. Although nature-emptiness and mark-emptiness appear sequentially in explanation, the Fuxing judges the two truths simultaneous. Breaking nature first and name afterward is the order of analysis, not mind first dwelling in one nature-emptiness and reaching mark-emptiness only after an interval.

Seventh, the Fuxing organizes faith-practice, Dharma-practice, and the transitions of the three faculties into sixty-four iterations; it further expands the six alternatives of wordlessness and nonarising and nonceasing into fourteen sets of six. These numbers belong to the commentator’s gathering of the treatise’s scattered lines of examination into a net; they are not lists that Zhiyi itemized in the main text. The commentary shows that examination reaches everywhere, but reading the treatise still requires preserving its actual sequence: the three provisionalities of the view of existence, the view of nonexistence, both, neither, and wordlessness, followed by the turn from horizontal to vertical.

The Fuxing also analyzes the numbers within the net of views more clearly. The eighty-eight agents of the three realms divide into fifty-two dull and thirty-six sharp agents. The 108 arise from one faculty engaging three kinds of object, with six defiled and pure divisions for each, making thirty-six, then passing through the three times to become 108. These calculations do not use large numbers to overwhelm the reader. They show how one apparently simple view of existence rapidly spreads into a dense net when extended through faculties, objects, the three times, and all the agents. Dīghanakha’s claim to accept nothing still accepts and attaches to nonacceptance, likewise showing how the briefest negation can bring back the entire net of views.

For the three provisionalities, the Fuxing first explains formation by causes through the conjunction of inner faculty and outer object. It then preserves the treatise’s unfolding from mind to form and from form to pillar by saying that once direct recompense is provisional, dependent recompense follows like a shadow. The Great Vehicle’s principial account of the three provisionalities says that ignorance produces illusions and transformations and that when formation by causes is absent, continuity and relation are also absent. It does not erase phenomena into nothingness; it prevents provisional establishment at any level from turning back into intrinsic nature. The correlations among the three existences and the three provisional designations are likewise partly alike and partly different. Recognizing where they communicate does not erase each group’s own distinctions of meaning.

The passage on the view of nonexistence especially requires this mirror. When practitioners no longer see the three provisionalities, what they have gained may be only a semblance of nature-emptiness and mark-emptiness. Non-Buddhists too can contemplate emptiness; the difference lies in taking its mark and becoming attached. As soon as empty mind arises, know the fault; knowing the fault, leave it; leaving is itself the continuation of contemplation. This keeps the measuring-worm simile from becoming a rejection of emptiness. What is broken is not the principle of nonarising but the guarding of a nonexistence after leaving existence, still establishing its own position through relational contrast.

At the turn from horizontal to vertical, the Fuxing says vertical breaking uses vertical Dharmas as tests. From the Tripiṭaka Teaching’s five methods for calming mind through the Perfect Teaching’s wondrous awakening, every teaching and stage becomes a touchstone. With which level does the attached arising, nonarising, both, or neither actually accord? Within the ten kinds of not-not-arising, two kinds of delusion still arise and must be broken at every intermediate level; only at wondrous awakening are wisdom and severance said to remain eternally full. Read this way, the long sequence of stage names is not a digression. It prevents one phrase, “nonarising,” from leaping over and swallowing every shallow and deep level.

The Fuxing also divides the four alternatives of gain and loss into two groups. The first two show how contemplative medicine, when turned by attachment, produces gains and losses like those of non-Buddhists. The latter two distinguish the gains and losses of Buddhist disciples within preparatory means and the arising of the true. The point of this grouping is not to attach identity labels first but to examine whether old and new delusions are actually removed or produced. Although the stages for breaking views in the four teachings all list subduing and severing, their sequence must still be preserved to reveal the nonsequential. Identical names with different wisdom directly illuminate the tension running through the entire text between “textual sequence” and “practice in one mind.”

The Fuxing likewise locates the criterion for the repeatedly appearing similes of poisonous herb, king of medicines, and taking medicine in their effects. What produces suffering and accumulation is poison; what accomplishes path and cessation is medicine. An old illness being stirred and ultimately removed does not mean the medicine has produced a new illness. If an attainment from cultivation is guarded like water by a thirsty horse, it must again undergo examination through the four alternatives. Calming-and-contemplation is not a possession that, once acquired, remains correct forever. It continues to be applied to every thought of attachment.

Eighth, each of the three contemplations has its object of breaking. The first breaks views and thought, summarized as breaking existence. The next breaks the nonexistence to which one is attached. Contemplation of the Middle doubly negates the two extremes. The Fuxing therefore judges the closing sentence of this unit to disclose the wondrous purport of the first section, not to mean that the whole of pervasive breaking through Dharmas is complete. At the end, “views cease and one enters emptiness” belongs to calming; “one penetrates views and the two emptinesses” belongs to contemplation. The long examination through the four alternatives thereby returns to the simplest test: have views truly ceased, and have nature-emptiness and mark-emptiness become truly clear? If one has merely gained another view of the inexpressible, the vajra blade must continue forward.

1. Once the Afflictions of Views Are Broken, Why Does Mind Still Move?

The first fruit has seen the true truth. Why, then, do craving, anger, and delusion still arise, and even conceit amid comparisons of self and others? Zhiyi first separates two easily conflated matters. The root of the afflictions of views is calculating persons and Dharmas as real. The power of the afflictions of thought is the momentum that continues to moisten karma and draw one into birth even after principle has been seen. The first resembles facing the wrong direction. The second resembles old momentum underfoot continuing even after one turns the right way. A flame may flare even more strongly just before a lamp goes out. The stream-enterer’s attachment to views has broken while desire, anger, and delusion remain incompletely exhausted; this is precisely the scene.

Why, then, call them the correct three poisons or correct afflictions? “Correct” does not mean afflictions are proper. It means a stream-enterer’s conduct is no longer governed by deviant views: desire remains, but does not lead to sexual misconduct with one who is not a spouse; anger remains, but does not lead to deliberate harm of life while tilling earth; delusion remains, but no longer calculates intrinsic nature as real. The path-accompanying precepts spontaneously prevent wrongdoing. Affliction remains, yet crooked conduct has been cut off. The difference between views and thought is therefore not the difference between having and lacking delusion, but whether delusion has joined erroneous understanding into a single force.

Why are they also called afflictions of thought? Not because every thought is delusion, but because this kind of delusion can be severed only by repeatedly examining the principle seen after seeing the true. At the first seeing of the true, contemplative understanding remains shallow and phenomenal obstruction persists. Through repeated consideration of true principle, delusion is removed part by part. The name comes from the contemplative understanding that can sever, not from the surface of ordinary mental thought.

As for the dispute over calling the desire realm craving and the higher realms attachment, Zhiyi concludes it with the simile of removing excrement. When clearing filth, the first task is to remove the impurity, not to dispute which name must be used. If a name can identify the site of illness, it has fulfilled its expedient role. Turning the distinction of names into victory and defeat only delays the cure.

2. From Where Does One Thought of Desire Actually Come?

The afflictions of thought extend through nine grounds in the three realms, so why begin with the mind of desire? Because when desire appears, the relations among faculty, object, blood and pulses, mental continuity, and action can be seen most readily. Six objects of desire—color, appearance, deportment and posture, verbal sound, smooth touch, and the mark of a person—move the faculties, and mind and body change with them as the mark of desire appears. The point is neither to condemn the object nor compress desire into an abstraction, but to see how it is established through conditions.

An external object moving the mental faculty and producing a mind of desire is provisionality formed by causes. Desire continuing thought after thought until it moves action is provisionality of continuity. The mind with desire requiring relation to the mind without desire for its name to appear is provisionality of relation. “Provisional” here is not settled merely by saying “illusory.” It means that apart from conditioned conjunction, before-and-after continuity, and relational contrast, no independent and unchanging desire can be found.

Does desire arise from the faculty? If so, it should arise by itself before the faculty faces an object. Does it arise from the object? Since the object remains outside, how could it independently produce my mind of desire? Do faculty and object produce it together? If each possesses productive power, they should produce two minds. Does it arise apart from faculty and object and without a cause? Without a cause there is no basis for speaking of arising. Pursued in all four places, desire has no obtainable source. If its source is unobtainable, its destination is also unobtainable. This does not move an already arisen desire somewhere called emptiness. At the very moment it appears, one sees neither coming nor going, ultimately empty and quiescent.

If a person of sharp faculties accords in one contemplation, one grade of thought-delusion departs and one part of true principle becomes clear. What if one does not accord immediately? One does not declare failure. One harmonizes calming-and-contemplation and uses the four siddhāntas to make faith-practice and Dharma-practice shift and advance repeatedly. If entry still does not occur through provisionality formed by causes, move to continuity and ask whether the later thought arises from the preceding thought’s cessation, nonceasing, both, or neither. When none of the four is obtainable, turn again to relation. The contemplative gate can be traversed repeatedly, but not one of the three provisionalities contemplated is omitted.

As with the first grade, so with the remaining eight; as with craving, so with anger, delusion, and conceit. Principle appearing is nonarising of principle. Exhaustion of delusive cause is nonarising of cause. Desire-realm result no longer arising is nonarising of result. Since there is no arising, there is no ceasing. Entry into emptiness through provisionality occurs within this thought-by-thought examination, not by leaving present mind and seeking an empty principle elsewhere.

3. Why Speak of Nine Grades and Then Say There Are Far More Than Nine?

The three realms have nine grounds, each with nine grades, making eighty-one. Does this mean affliction acts only eighty-one times, or that each ground contains exactly nine psychological events? Zhiyi himself prevents this reading. The uncontaminated mind on the path of seeing is swift and can sever views without emerging from contemplation, so no grade sequence is discussed. The path of cultivation proceeds more deliberately and repeatedly uses preparation and progression. If advancement occurs again and again, how could there be only nine grades? Nine is a broad division.

The different arrangements of suppression, severance, and realization in the Satyasiddhi Treatise and Abhidharma further show that the grades are not one rigid psychological scale. One account says unobstructedness suppresses and liberation severs; the other says preparation and progression suppress, unobstructedness severs, and liberation realizes. Whichever account is followed, a path is not completed through naming alone. Every grade must still undergo contemplation, severance of delusion, and realization of the place without delusion.

The eighty-one grades therefore have two sides. On one side they cannot be discarded, because they prevent a momentary understanding from being mistaken for exhaustion of the afflictions of thought throughout the three realms. On the other they cannot be reified, because they are not eighty-one fixed boxes waiting to be checked in order. The number provides road markers for the path of cultivation; contemplative practice moves slowly or swiftly according to the sharpness of faculties.

4. As Meditative Concentration Deepens, Why Does It Remain an Object of Contemplation?

Does leaving the desire realm mean leaving craving? Zhiyi’s answer is direct: meditative concentration itself can become an object of attachment. In the first dhyāna, the eight contacts touch the body and the merits of the five factors arise. Their savor produces craving. Feeling superior to those who have not attained them produces conceit. Failing to know that dhyāna still possesses suffering and accumulation produces delusion. The development of dhyāna is not the endpoint of contemplative practice; it presents subtler delusions directly to view.

Every dhyāna ground therefore still possesses the three provisionalities. The conjunction of the eight contacts or inner purity and other Dharma-objects with the mental faculty is formation by causes. The thought-by-thought continuity of dhyāna mind is continuity. Developed and undeveloped dhyāna, bliss and absence of bliss, standing in contrast is relation. Without contemplative breaking, one receives birth according to concentration. Only through breaking does one pass from preparation and progression into unobstructed severance and realization in liberation. As with the first grade, so with the remaining eight; as with craving, so with conceit and delusion.

Phenomenal and nature obstructions offer another warning: development of an intermediate state of concentration does not mean the delusive obstruction to root dhyāna has been removed. When phenomenal obstruction in desire-realm concentration departs, the not-yet-arrived concentration can develop; when nature obstruction departs, the first dhyāna develops. When phenomenal obstruction in the first dhyāna departs, the intermediate can develop; when nature obstruction departs, the second dhyāna develops. The second and third dhyānas are likewise. The subtlety of practice lies in not mistaking the appearance of a state for exhaustion of delusion’s nature.

The Heaven without Perception is called without perception, but is mental perception truly absent? Ordinary emotion sees the body of form preserved and mind extinguished and therefore calls it no perception, yet the perception that appropriates no-perception remains. It must still be broken through the three provisionalities and four alternatives. In the five Pure Abodes, uncontaminated mind intermixedly perfuses contaminated concentration, making concentration on form brighter and recompense more excellent. Yet when superior concentration appears, craving, conceit, and delusion still each possess nine grades and three provisionalities. The more excellent the state, the less it automatically removes the mind that can attach.

Continuing into the formless realm, the station of space relinquishes three kinds of form; the station of consciousness relinquishes space and conditions consciousness; the station of nothingness relinquishes abundant consciousness and conditions nothingness. If nothingness is read as only a small amount of consciousness remaining, consciousness is still being used; how could it be the station of nonuse? At neither perception nor nonperception, the preceding station of consciousness resembles a swelling and nothingness a sore, and the practitioner seeks an even subtler quiescent concentration. Yet this concentration still contains ten subtle Dharmas and still possesses the three provisionalities. Absence of coarse affliction is not absence of affliction. From the most visible six desires of the desire realm through the subtlest mental Dharmas at neither-perception, embodied contemplation never changes its work.

5. Why Draw the Stages in Such Dense Detail?

If the contemplative method always embodies provisionality and enters emptiness, why list in detail the stages of the Tripiṭaka, Shared, borrowed-Distinct-for-Shared, Distinct, and Perfect Teachings? Because although the same views and thought are severed, the principle taken as object, the wisdom used, and whether one can emerge into provisionality and teach others after severance differ. Stages do not add names to contemplative practice. They prevent identically named severances from being judged identical realization.

According to the desire realm’s nine grades, the Tripiṭaka Teaching establishes the path to once-returning, family-to-family, the fruit of once-returning, one-going-and-returning, the path to nonreturning, one-seed, and the fruit of nonreturning. Then from the first grade of the first dhyāna through the eighth at neither-perception, all are collectively called the path to arhatship. Finally the unobstructed path severs the ninth grade at neither-perception and liberation realizes arhatship. Nonarising of afflictions, principle, wisdom, and recompense separately distinguish severance of delusion, realization of principle, fullness of wisdom, and no further existence, preventing one name for gaining a fruit from conflating them.

The Shared Teaching presents ten grounds: dry wisdom, nature, eight persons, seeing, thinning, freedom from desire, completed work, pratyekabuddha, bodhisattva, and buddha. The three vehicles pass through them together, yet higher and lower differ. After wood is burned, some becomes charcoal, some ash, while an eon-fire leaves neither. The śrāvaka’s severance of direct agents resembles charcoal; the pratyekabuddha’s encroachment upon residual habit, ash; the bodhisattva’s additional severance of ignorance concerning form and mind and cultivation of transformation, further burning; and the buddha ground’s one corresponding thought forever exhausting residual habit, the eon-fire. What is shared is the stages traversed and the direct agents severed; what is not shared is merit and wisdom, residual habit, and transformative function.

6. When Names Are Borrowed, Can They Carry Away the Original Meaning?

Why borrow the Distinct Teaching’s names of ten grounds for the Shared Teaching? Because the Distinct Teaching’s stage-meaning of severing views is longer and can mark beginning and end through a third and fourth ground. In the Shared Teaching, entry into uninterrupted samādhi severs views without leaving a single contemplation, and its stage-meaning is shorter. Names can be borrowed, but the mode of severance cannot change with them. If borrowing names such as Joy, Stainless, and Luminous grounds turns the Shared Teaching’s severance without emerging from contemplation into the Distinct Teaching’s eon-by-eon sequence, the names have obscured the meaning they were meant to express.

By the same principle, separately opening ten Shared-Teaching bodhisattva grounds does not overturn the stages shared by the three vehicles. It reveals the bodhisattva side that does not take nirvāṇa and freely receives birth grade by grade. Because realization suits the Two Vehicles, they are judged through wisdom and severance. Relative to a buddha, bodhisattvas remain on causal ground and can endure the toil of birth and death without entering nirvāṇa; hence forbearance concerning nonarising. Forbearance is cause and wisdom result; the first fifteen minds are named forbearance and the sixteenth wisdom. When the same severance of delusion is placed within different vows and practices, its names reveal different functions.

Why does the desire realm have the same nine grades yet more fruit-stages? Zhiyi answers with a dangerous road and city walls. A perilous region has many dangers, so many walls must be built for travelers to rest. Desire-realm delusion brings many dangers, so many fruits are established. Why not establish more dhyānas? Because the desire realm is not a ground of concentration and cannot establish meditative concentration. Uncontaminated conditioning of principle extends throughout, so noble fruits can be established. Numbers of names arise according to the function needed on the path and cannot be inferred arithmetically from the number of grades alone.

7. What Is Passed over When One Leaps over Fruits?

With eighty-one grades, how can someone leap in one thought to nonreturning or even arhatship? If leaping means attaining a higher fruit while severing fewer grades, the whole sequence loses meaning. The treatise says that practitioners need not enter according to the sequence of grades, yet the delusions of the grades are still exhausted and their concentrations developed. Sharp faculties may leap over the grades, but their sequence cannot be discarded.

Leaping through prior severance occurs when an ordinary person used worldly wisdom to sever a number of desires or already attained the first dhyāna through neither-perception and, after developing uncontaminated wisdom, leaps directly according to that prior severance. Small leaping occurs when someone without dhyāna removes several desire-realm grades as the sixteen minds are completed and becomes family-to-family, one-seed, or the like. Great leaping occurs when one hears the Buddha teach and becomes an arhat on hearing “Welcome.” Very great leaping resembles a buddha’s one corresponding thought, in which direct agents and residual habits are exhausted together. None of the four erases what must be severed; sharp faculties simply do not pass through it sequentially.

Why, then, did Śāriputra, the sharpest, not leap? Because he had to be a general turning the Dharma wheel and distinguish the grades for others. Ānanda had to serve as attendant. Bodhisattvas must bear beings and lead the assembly. Their vows and practice make them refrain from leaping; it is not inability. Perfect-Teaching practitioners have sharp faculties and rely on the real, so they are most able to leap. Their weighty compassionate vows also make them most able not to leap. In terms of the true mark, the names leaping and not leaping are both quiescent. In terms of adaptive transformation, slow and swift responses occur everywhere without obstruction.

8. If the Same True Principle Is Attained, Why Are There Sixteen Gates?

Views and thought obstruct principle; breaking obstruction and revealing principle require a gate of communication. The Tripiṭaka, Shared, Distinct, and Perfect Teachings each have four gates—existence, emptiness, both existence and nonexistence, and neither—making sixteen. “Gate” already indicates that it is not the endpoint. A city may have four gates, but entering from east, west, south, or north does not split it into four cities.

The Tripiṭaka gate of existence accepts that person and self are unobtainable while real Dharmas exist, breaking views and thought through the part-by-part arising and ceasing of Dharmas. The gate of emptiness contemplates self and person as originally nonexistent and real Dharmas as floating and empty, with provisional and real alike empty. The gate of both lets the existence and nonexistence of real Dharmas proceed together at ease. The gate of neither leaves existence and nonexistence. Chanda’s attaining a Small-Vehicle path through double negation shows precisely why the words “neither” cannot by themselves be equated with the Great Vehicle’s Middle Way. If the four gates remove views and thought, all can gain the path; if they are grasped as views, all become obstructions.

Zhiyi therefore uses the city gates, five hundred monks, and Guṇavarman’s verse to break dispute among gates. Although treatises establish different positions, the principle toward which practice proceeds is nondual; only partial grasping produces right and wrong, while penetration leaves no contrary dispute. The true truth is originally without speech. How could a gate’s name be raised as an immovable banner? The gate of existence need not fail, nor does emptiness alone succeed. Gain the intent of the four siddhāntas and the treatise and numerical schools both stand; lose it and both fail.

The Shared Teaching’s four gates further loosen dispute over real Dharmas: everything is like illusion. The gate of existence says that although illusory Dharmas are empty, illusory arising remains. The gate of emptiness says illusion, transformation, and even nirvāṇa are empty; like an illusory person fighting empty space, agent and object are both quiescent. The gate of both resembles an image in a mirror, visible yet not truly obtainable. The gate of neither does not fix illusory Dharmas as existent or nonexistent. The Tripiṭaka resembles analyzing a real pillar; the Shared resembles viewing the pillar’s image in a mirror, which lacks real substance even while appearing. A great flame cannot be grasped from four sides, while a cool pond can be entered through all four gates. Entry and nongrasping are two sides of the same gate.

Three animals cross one river. Although all are called crossings, this cannot be expanded into a claim that what the three vehicles see and practice has no higher or lower. It answers the earlier similes of charcoal, ash, and eon-fire: sharing principle does not flatten wisdom and practice, and different gates need not make realized principle conflict.

9. Do the Distinct and Perfect Teachings Differ because Each Has Another Principle?

The Distinct Teaching contemplates distinct principle, severs distinct delusion, and sequentially cultivates precepts, concentration, wisdom, and other practices. It guides all Dharmas through the mind of great nirvāṇa. After illusory delusive form is exhausted, a separate true, wholesome, wondrous form remains; gold wrapped in torn cloth and an image hidden in an earthen mold reveal buddha-nature. It also teaches Kapilavastu, tathāgatagarbha, and great nirvāṇa as empty; uses jars of water, wine, and curds to reveal that emptiness and nonemptiness cannot be fixed partially; and finally transcends the four and leaves the hundred, taking double negation as a gate. When the intent of the four gates is gained, they communicate with the true mark; without it, they become only preparatory means that suppress delusion before the grounds. Sequential cultivation and realization are the form of the Distinct Teaching’s gates.

The Perfect Teaching does not add a fifth gate outside the Distinct Teaching’s four. It makes every gate immediately and fully possess the remaining three. Contemplating the provisionality of views and thought as the Dharma realm, fully possessing the Buddha-Dharma, is the gate of existence. Contemplating illusory views and thought, all Dharmas, self, and nirvāṇa as empty, with even the illness of emptiness empty, is the gate of emptiness. Seeing that although views and thought lack reality, distinctions of provisional names are inexhaustible, is the gate of both. Contemplating views and thought as Dharma-nature and that not a single color or fragrance is other than the Middle Way is the gate of neither.

A great-thousand scripture scroll within a mote of dust and one earth producing many kinds of sprout express precisely the nonobstruction between absence of intrinsic nature and inexhaustible difference. If provisional names are deleted because of emptiness, the scripture scroll cannot unfold and the various sprouts cannot appear. If abundant distinctions are grasped as real existence, the one Dharma realm cannot be seen. Interfusion within the Perfect gates does not bleach away distinctions; it prevents them from becoming barriers.

10. Why Distinguish First and Finally Say There Is Nothing Distinguished?

How does one gate become four? Contemplating Dharmas arisen from causes and conditions is the first gate. The first is immediately empty; one emptiness is every emptiness, making the second gate. The first is immediately provisional; one provisionality is every provisionality, making the third. The first is immediately Middle; one Middle is every Middle, making the fourth. The first gate is the other three and the three the first; one name is selected only according to conditions. Gate names are four, but the three truths illuminated contain no separation.

The preceding use of the birthless gate to break views and thought is precisely the gate of emptiness. Because one gate is all gates, one breaking is every breaking and one emptiness every emptiness. Entry into emptiness through provisionality therefore does not merely empty birth and death, nor does it close the gate after breaking views and thought alone. When its intent is gained, the birthless gate is a gate of the Perfect Teaching.

If so, why spend a long passage distinguishing grade by grade, stage by stage, and gate by gate? Ordinary emotion is dark and dull and cannot know without being told, so many roads are first opened and one is later brought into the One Vehicle. Truly understanding the One Vehicle allows one to distinguish all day long without any discrimination to grasp. If the detailed distinctions are skipped and only the words “no discrimination” remain, darkness and dullness have not thereby been illuminated and broken. Sequential unfolding and convergence upon the One Vehicle do not cancel one another; they are the sequence of opening and entering a gate.

Only here does “pervasive” in pervasive breaking through Dharmas appear. It extends from the four alternatives of one thought of desire through eighty-one grades in the three realms, from the stages at which the three vehicles sever thought through the sixteen gates of the four teachings. Every item is distinguished without omission, yet none is allowed to congeal as a fixed Dharma. Agent and object of pervasive breaking finally lose their barriers within one gate as all gates.

Through the Eye of the Fuxing

Reading this long passage, Zhanran first places boundary markers at its most unstable hinges. Nine grades are a broad abbreviation for establishing teachings and judging fruits: wisdom becomes clear part by part and delusion gradually ends; in reality there are far more than nine. Thus the nine cannot be compressed into one generic phrase, nor reified as nine psychological events. “Correct” in the correct three poisons contrasts with the crooked agents of views and residual habit. They can still moisten birth but no longer bring about the four evil destinations.

Within desire-realm contemplation, the Fuxing Chuanhong Jue on the Mohe Zhiguan especially distinguishes the six desires and provisionality of continuity. The six derive from the Great Treatise’s seven attachments by setting aside the general and retaining the particular. Saying continuity eventually culminates in action means restraining desire’s continuity before it reaches action, not judging every continuous mind already to have acted. Each of the three provisionalities can separately turn through the four alternatives and conclude in nonarising, emptiness of beings, and emptiness of Dharmas. Sharp faculties according in one contemplation and dull faculties repeatedly shifting contemplations move slowly or swiftly, but the objects contemplated are not merged.

Regarding the form and formless realms, Zhanran explains phenomenal obstruction through beds, seats, and the like and nature obstruction through desire-delusion remaining unremoved. He also divides the form extinguished on entering the station of space into visible and resistant, invisible and resistant, and invisible and nonresistant. The Vibhāṣā citation on neither perception nor nonperception is expressly judged abbreviated, while the teacher’s explanation is not wholly wrong; the tradition preserves both without refutation. The highest concentration still contains ten subtle Dharmas—feeling, perception, formations, contact, intention, desire, understanding, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom—so absence of coarse delusion cannot be rewritten as absence of delusion.

Concerning stages, shared grounds do not mean identical wisdom and practice. Naming the Shared through borrowed Distinct terms borrows names of long stages to express Shared-Teaching meaning; the borrowed names cannot silently replace the teaching on which the meaning depends. Leaping over fruits is illustrated by a person with spiritual powers and an ordinary traveler: their speed differs, but the distance does not disappear. Only within this boundary can the four leaps be read without mistaking leaping over fruits for realization before severance.

In the passage on gates, Zhanran expressly marks four gates in each of four teachings, making sixteen, all able to contemplate views and thought. Chanda’s double negation distinguishes Small-Vehicle attainment from the Great Vehicle’s Middle Way and cannot be conflated merely because both use “neither.” The Shared Teaching’s embodied breaking is breaking without breaking. The flame, four marks, and cool pond all confirm that the four gates cannot be grasped. Whether the Distinct Teaching’s four gates enter reality depends on gaining the intent and leaving attachment, not on their names guaranteeing entry by themselves.

The mirror further illuminates the two treatises’ different grade-paths. The Satyasiddhi Treatise and Abhidharma judge grades differently because they use different paths. Preparation, progression, unobstructedness, and liberation respectively suppress, sever, and realize and cannot be kneaded into one generic gradual stage. At exhaustion-knowledge and nonarising-knowledge, the commentary further distinguishes phenomenal and principial nonarising: because afflictions are exhausted, phenomena no longer arise; because the principle of true truth is penetrated, principle no longer arises. Exhaustion of eighty-one grades and disclosure of true principle thereby retain separate referents and meet again where embodied contemplation concludes.

The commentary also supplies the intermixed perfuming of the five Pure Abodes and noble relinquishment of the third dhyāna’s bliss. Noble ones possess contemplation of the noble lineage within every ground and can therefore relinquish deep bliss. Only the successive arising of many uncontaminated thoughts makes contaminated concentration on form increasingly bright. These additions show that superior concentration is not naturally pure but must still be perfumed and cultivated through uncontaminated contemplative practice.

In adding Distinct- and Perfect-Teaching stages for breaking thought, Zhanran explains that although the direct unfolding of entry into emptiness emphasizes the Tripiṭaka and Shared Teachings, the Distinct and Perfect must still reveal differences among scriptural accounts of wisdom and severance and the perfectly interfused purport of the text. Shared-Teaching bodhisattvas and the Two Vehicles can be compared as having identical wisdom and severance yet differing in teaching others. Distinct- and Perfect-Teaching bodhisattvas can be compared with Two-Vehicle practitioners in the Tripiṭaka and Shared Teachings as having different wisdom while severing the same views and thought. If these two axes are compressed into one phrase, “same severance, different wisdom,” the differences among bodhisattvas’ free receipt of birth, the Two Vehicles’ taking realization, and the Perfect Teaching’s immediate emptiness, provisionality, and Middle all disappear together.

The final judgment is first to distinguish and then integrate. One gate is three gates; nonarising is foremost without rejecting the other three. The text remains sequential all day long, yet its purport and return do not fall into sequence. This does not use perfect interfusion to cancel the eighty-one grades, stages, and sixteen gates. It explains precisely how detailed distinction can omit nothing while what is distinguished creates no barriers. Later, the Principles of the Meaning of Calming-and-Contemplation gathers this through practice necessarily following the person and vertical breaking revealing nonduality; Siming further says that the text appears sequential while its intent is truly perfectly interfused. Both inherit Zhanran’s conclusion concerning the text’s purport and return.

After entering emptiness, is there still a road? If all Dharmas are empty and beings, afflictions, buddha-lands, and transformation cannot be obtained, why should the bodhisattva return to the human world of ten thousand distinctions? If he again distinguishes the illnesses of beings and the medicines of Dharma gates, does he not reestablish as real the provisional existence already broken?

The Mohe Zhiguan does not rush past the problem with a single formula such as “empty yet not empty.” It first asks why one must enter the provisional, then what enables one to enter. It next unfolds transformation into three tasks—knowing illness, recognizing medicine, and administering medicine according to illness—and finally asks at what stage this capacity begins, when its benefit becomes true, and what makes it worthy of the name pervasive breaking through Dharmas. Entering the provisional from emptiness is therefore not a departure from contemplating mind in order to discuss transformation elsewhere. It tests whether the wisdom of emptiness can function freely within every distinction.

1. If Emptiness Cannot Benefit Others, It Is Not the Bodhisattva’s Dwelling Place

People of the Two Vehicles can also realize the true. Why are they not called bodhisattvas? The boundary lies not in whether one has entered emptiness, but whether one has great compassion. In terms of one’s own liberation, entry into emptiness can sever bondage. In terms of rescuing others, remaining in emptiness has no function. The bodhisattva enters emptiness from the provisional to break his own attachment; he enters the provisional from emptiness to break the attachments of others. The first step distinguishes him from ordinary beings; the second distinguishes him from the Two Vehicles.

Entering the provisional is therefore not renewed contamination by existence. Its form is to dwell amid the myriad existents without being stained, recognize the properties of medicines with the Dharma eye, match compassion to illness, and help beings without weariness. The wisdom of emptiness has not been abandoned. Precisely because provisional existence cannot bind it, it can enter provisional existence.

The treatise then uses two nearly impossible images. The first is planting a tree in empty space: without earth, how could the tree take root, flower, and bear fruit? The second is continuously shooting arrows into the air: the nock of each later arrow supports the preceding one so that none falls to earth. Both similes drive the difficulty to its extreme. With no ground to rely on, the tree must still produce branches, leaves, flowers, and fruit. Without falling to earth, each arrow must still be supported by the next. The bodhisattva does not abide in emptiness, yet retains the function of benefiting others. If he abides in emptiness and never emerges, beings can never gain benefit. The resolve to benefit others is therefore not a benevolent addition made after entering the provisional; it is the fundamental intent of entry itself.

2. Is Wisdom What Carries a Person Out of Emptiness?

If sharp wisdom by itself enabled entry into the provisional, why did Śāriputra still abide in emptiness? The treatise lists five conditions precisely to dismantle this misunderstanding.

The first is compassion. When the bodhisattva first sees beings imprisoned by inversion, he already cherishes them as his only child. After severing delusion and entering emptiness himself, his grief of the same body becomes still deeper. The second is the original vow. Were he alone to escape suffering, he would betray his former vast vow to remove suffering and give happiness. He must therefore enter beings’ lives, share their affairs, and guide them. The third is sharp wisdom. Its true sharpness consists in seeing the fault of abiding in emptiness the moment one enters it: one cannot purify buddha-lands, transform beings, or complete Buddha Dharma. The fourth is skillful means. One enters birth-and-death and affliction without damaging wisdom; obstructions and difficulties instead become supporting conditions for transformation. The fifth is diligence. Though the Buddha path is distant and beings innumerable, the mind remains firm and does not weary or retreat because the road is long.

These five are not five attractive virtues displayed for admiration. They resemble five concrete resources needed to enter a dangerous battle: kin who can help, a compact one must keep, a strategy one can follow, strength one can employ, and courage with which to advance. Four kinds of warriors further separate bodily strength from courage. A weak body can possess courage, and a strong body can possess courage; a person with strength may still be timid, while another may lack both strength and courage. Conversely, someone with somewhat dull faculties can still enter provisional existence if the other four conditions are profound. There are therefore four alternatives: sharp faculties abiding in emptiness, dull faculties abiding in emptiness, sharp faculties entering the provisional, and dull faculties entering the provisional. A single scale from sharp to dull cannot decide who is a bodhisattva.

The sickroom of the Vimalakīrtinirdeśa Sūtra gives the five conditions a concrete voice. Pitying another’s illness through one’s own is great compassion of the same body. Remembering immeasurable suffering undergone in former lives is not forgetting the original vow. Benefiting beings from thought to thought is recognizing the fault of abiding in emptiness. Recalling cultivated merit while maintaining pure livelihood is skillful means. Not giving rise to sorrow but constantly arousing diligence is vigor. Comforting the sick is not only exhorting them to contemplate the body’s impermanence and enter emptiness, nor is it immediately proclaiming the highest Middle Way. Between the two, they must also be taught to move through illness toward beings.

3. Why Does Knowing One Illness Require Immeasurable Alternatives?

Contemplation in entering the provisional first undertakes three tasks: knowing illness, recognizing medicine, and administering medicine according to illness. Illness includes the delusions of views and thought. Medicine includes the worldly, supramundane, and supramundane supreme. Administration must also be distinguished according to faculties. These three together form the discipline of the great physician.

Knowing illness begins with the delusions of views and thought. Views take the view of self as their root, and the view of self in turn takes one thought of deluded mind as its root. A thought of mind arises through deluded conception, and a self arises through inversion. From here immeasurable deviant views unfold; deviant views produce fetters and karma, and beings fall and revolve as a torch in the hand becomes a wheel of fire. To stop the wheel, one does not chase and extinguish every streak of fire around its rim. One stops the hand that turns the torch. When deluded conception and inversion cease, the root ceases and the branches naturally depart.

If the root is only one thought of deluded mind, why still distinguish dwelling place, season, land, food, poverty and wealth, bodily form, and temperament? Because the same inversion, situated within different dependent recompenses, direct recompenses, and karmic conditions, forms different views. One person renounces honor and office, another delights in gathering wood and fishing; one strikes an ox horn seeking ministerial rank, another carries a cooking vessel seeking high office; one favors civil arts, another martial affairs; one craves flavors, another drink; one is irascible, another joyful. Outer marks reveal inner karma; the tip discloses the root. If one merely says that everything is deluded conception but cannot see how deluded conception differs by place, time, and person, one still cannot administer medicine according to illness.

Duration is likewise a case history. Some views have accumulated across many lives; some arose only recently; some have just appeared in this life; others will flourish in the future. The same view takes different depths and degrees of gravity within different habits. The same dose of medicine cannot be administered without first asking how the illness has developed.

The counts of grades are the most daunting. One view of existence unfolds as three provisionalities; each provisionality as four alternatives; the four alternatives as four siddhāntas; each again as nature-emptiness, mark-emptiness, calming, and contemplation. Multiply these by practice through faith and Dharma and their mutual transitions, by the four views and their simple, compound, and complete forms, by breaker and broken, and by one’s own practice and transforming others: the result is 72,384 alternatives. Further unfold the sixty-two views and eighty-eight agents, and their number becomes immeasurable.

The point of these calculations is not to turn affliction into an enormous catalog, as though memorizing another number removed another portion of delusion. A “view” is never one isolated opinion. It has a manner of arising, a form of expression, an occasion for teaching, a treatment and what is treated, one’s own cultivation and cultivation taught to others. Only by knowing how many conditions together constitute this view and how many constitute another can the bodhisattva avoid error regarding their depth and gravity. This is called knowing origination; through knowing how origination circulates, he knows suffering.

The delusion of thought likewise requires knowledge of its root, conditions, duration, and grades, except that it takes delusion as its root. The eighty-one grades of the nine grounds each unfold through understanding by faith, attainment by seeing, the four siddhāntas, mutual transition between faith and Dharma, the three provisionalities, four alternatives, and the two emptinesses of nature and mark. Layer by layer, one’s own practice and transforming others yield 277,136 alternatives. If every meditative concentration and grade is further subdivided, the count cannot be exhausted. Views resemble forty li of water. Though thought does not arise laterally and conditions only one truth, it can still resemble ten li of water; calling it one drop certainly does not mean that its quantity is small.

People of the Two Vehicles enter emptiness directly through one gate and therefore make no prior distinctions. Before entering emptiness, bodhisattvas have already known the marks of illness in outline. When emerging into the provisional, they again use the calming that stills conditioned thoughts and the contemplation that takes the provisionality of thought as its object, thereby assisting the opening of the Dharma eye. It resembles the study of Vinaya. One need not stuff the five divisions into one’s chest, but must be able to correct oneself and others when conditions arise. If the numbered alternatives cannot be put immediately into practice, they are only a burden. When they can be used amid the conditions of illness, their abundance does not obstruct clarity.

4. Why Can Worldly Wholesome Dharmas Also Be Called Medicine?

Illnesses are immeasurable, and medicines are likewise immeasurable. The treatise divides medicines into worldly, supramundane, and supramundane supreme. This sequence first acknowledges something easily overlooked: if beings do not yet possess supramundane faculties, directly giving them profound Dharma may exceed what they can receive. Worldly wholesomeness that first keeps them from evil destinations and stabilizes human relationships is a genuine provisional rescue.

Benevolence, righteousness, ritual, wisdom, and trustworthiness can correspond to not killing, not stealing, not committing sexual misconduct, not becoming intoxicated, and not speaking falsely. Wood, metal, water, earth, and fire can likewise be integrated with the Five Precepts. The Book of Rites, Book of Music, Book of Odes, Book of Documents, and Book of Changes protect against corresponding faults through restraint, harmonizing mind, moral satire, righteousness and yielding, and gauging yin and yang. The five constant virtues established by the Duke of Zhou and Confucius can thus become Dharma medicine for governing the world. The bodhisattva cannot enter the world merely by knowing their names. He must penetrate worldly wisdom until people trust and follow him; only then can he guide them as a teacher.

Worldly medicine does not, however, treat the ultimate illness. Contaminated meditative concentration resembles water poured into a leaking vessel: though filled, it will empty. Worldly wholesomeness resembles colored clothing caught in rain: its hues eventually mottle and peel away. An illness temporarily cured later returns. Acknowledging the usefulness of worldly medicine does not elevate it into supramundane liberation. Seeing that it is not ultimate does not justify refusing rescue when beings cannot yet receive profound Dharma.

Supramundane Dharma medicine can consist of one path, two paths, or three Dharmas, up to 84,000 Dharma gates. The samādhi of one practice is one path. Concentration and wisdom are two wheels. Ethical discipline, concentration, and wisdom are three trainings. There are also the four foundations of mindfulness, five powers, six recollections, seven factors of awakening, Eightfold Path, nine perceptions, and ten knowledges. Every Dharma again has various names, marks, and treatments. If a maritime guide knows only one route, he cannot lead others when winds and currents change. A bodhisattva gathering Dharma medicine for beings must likewise pervasively know these unfoldings and contractions.

Supramundane supreme Dharma medicine also unfolds from one through ten. One Dharma is the single truth of reality. Two are calming and contemplation. Three are calming, contemplation, and ethical discipline following the path, as well as the three samādhis of emptiness, signlessness, and wishlessness. Four are the foundations of mindfulness contemplating form as neither pure nor impure, feeling as neither suffering nor pleasure, perception and formations as neither self nor no-self, and mind as neither permanent nor impermanent. Five unfold calming-and-contemplation as the five faculties and powers. Six recollect Buddha, Dharma, Saṅgha, ethical discipline, deities, and relinquishment within calming-and-contemplation. Seven gather tranquility, equanimity, and concentration under calming; investigation, joy, and diligence under contemplation; and mindfulness under both. Eight unfold the four alternatives that break provisionality as the Eightfold Path. Nine unfold the nine perceptions from the impure aggregates. Ten employ the ten knowledges to know suffering, origination, path, cessation, and the differences among beings.

How can one calming-and-contemplation unfold into so many medicines? Because a prescription is determined not by a number but by an illness. Shennong tasted plants: one, two, ten, or many ingredients could form a prescription. Medicinal substances have bark, flesh, sap, fruit, roots, stems, branches, and leaves; come from mountain, sea, water, land, and soils in the four directions; and must be harvested and dug, dry or moist, in season. The bodhisattva must likewise know which Dharma accords with a being’s aspirations and which does not; which is suitable as skillful means and which is not; which directly counteracts and which cannot; which leads into the ultimate and which does not.

One medicine may suffice to treat one illness in oneself. To become a great physician, one must pervasively know all medicines. From one concentration of quiescence, calming-and-contemplation unfolds immeasurable calming practices; from one great wisdom, immeasurable contemplations. Yet it still resembles measuring river water into sheng and ge, neither increasing nor decreasing the dose. Causes of illness, pain, prescription, treatment, and recovery all differ; therefore there are decoctions, emetics, purgatives, needles, cautery, pills, and powders. Knowing the origination of the afflictions of views and thought, the suffering caused by wholesome and unwholesome conduct, the path of every Dharma gate, and the cessations realized by beings, all medicine and illness remain within the various Four Truths.

5. Why Can an Old Prescription Not Be Followed Forever?

Shennong left original prescriptions. Why did Hua Tuo and Bian Que still examine the time and the medicines and establish new prescriptions? Because northern and southern regions differ; bodies differ in strength; foods and medicines differ in intensity; and illnesses differ in gravity. Rigidly preserving an original prescription may fail to treat later people. Formulating one according to the time can instead bring recovery.

When the Buddha appeared, beings’ faculties were mature. He taught according to their faculties, and none failed to awaken. In later ages, emotional attachments and delusions changed. Simply handing scriptural words directly to beings might not benefit them. Bodhisattvas therefore transmit scripture and compose treatises, establishing names and explaining meanings in accordance with scriptural Dharma. The criterion is not newness or antiquity but whether beings thereby awaken and enter. Preserving the old in a way that blocks transformation betrays the intent of entering the provisional. Establishing new terms apart from scripture and principle ceases to be Dharma giving. The wisdom of emptiness prevents the bodhisattva from clinging to an old prescription; compassion prevents him from amusing himself with novelty; the Dharma eye judges what is truly suitable amid differences of time, place, person, and medicine.

Administering medicine also begins from what beings can actually receive. If they lack supramundane faculties, the bodhisattva first stabilizes the world through the relations of ruler and minister, parent and child, ritual, music, virtue, and wisdom. Ritual assists ethical discipline; music assists concentration; the highest virtue and essential path assist wisdom. Remote antiquity was not suited to the supramundane, and distant lands had not called forth a buddha’s appearance. Ritual and righteousness were therefore opened first so that Great- and Small-Vehicle scriptures could later be trusted and received. Worldly medicine is not the destination, but it can be the indispensable bridge preceding profound Dharma.

Once supramundane faculties are present, medicine is administered according to lower, middling, higher, and supreme faculties. Those with lower faculties have narrow aspirations, weak practice, heavy five turbidities, and dull wisdom; they are treated through arising and cessation, the six perfections as concrete practices, strenuous counteraction, and severance of sexual desire, anger, and delusion. Four treatises and gates further accord with their aspirations toward existence, nonexistence, both, or neither. Middling faculties are somewhat stronger and receive the medicine that conditioned arising is immediately empty. Higher faculties have broad minds, lighter obstructions, and great wisdom; they receive the immeasurable Four Truths and sequential entry into the Middle. Supreme faculties have no equal; they are directly taught that wholesomeness arises like empty space, obstruction ceases like empty space, and the ultimate path is entered. Each of the four faculties has four gates, making sixteen truths of path and cessation that counteract sixteen truths of suffering and origination.

One cloud releases rain, yet every plant and tree grows according to its own nature. The bodhisattva likewise emits wondrous sounds according to beings’ kinds, causing Dharma sound to enter their minds so they take the corresponding medicine and each gains benefit. If one refuses to teach sixteen gates because there are no Dharmas in emptiness, there is no entry into the provisional. If one abandons the wisdom of emptiness while teaching the sixteen gates, one loses what was gained by entry into emptiness.

6. Must One Reach a Very High Stage before Returning to Deliver Others?

Practitioners often think: the delusions of views are not yet exhausted, and the delusions of thought are more distant still; how could I have the capacity to emerge into the provisional? This thought resembles hearing of a distant mountain of seven treasures and binding one’s feet for the journey, only to retreat immediately because the road is dangerous. It also resembles a ruined seed already sunk into emptiness that later hears of bodhisattva merit and can only weep in remorse. If entry into the provisional is always postponed to a distant fruit, there will never be a first step today.

The treatise distinguishes three faculties within each of the four teachings. A person of lower faculties in the Tripiṭaka Teaching formally enters the provisional only in the third incalculable eon; one of middling faculties can transform beings in the second; one of higher faculties seeks from the first arousal of mind to deliver everyone and, although knowing emptiness, does not abandon beings. A person of lower faculties in the Shared Teaching must exhaust delusion; one of middling faculties can enter the provisional after severing views; through wisdom born of hearing, one of higher faculties embodies the immediate emptiness of views and thought at the initial mind and can at once become a refuge for beings. A person of lower faculties in the Distinct Teaching cultivates the provisional in the ten practices after the ten abodes; one of middling faculties obtains the uncontaminated and irreversible at the initial mind of the ten abodes and can immediately emerge and function; one of higher faculties already knows at the first arousal of mind that merit is illusory while still cultivating skillful means. In the Perfect Teaching, purification of the six faculties certainly sees all ten realms, yet disciples of the five grades who practice the six perfections and teach Dharma extensively have already entered the provisional. Since the initial mind perfectly contemplates the three truths, it can be immediately the Middle and immediately provisional.

Why, then, do scriptures also say that one cultivates emergence into the provisional only at the eighth, sixth, or seventh ground? Those are single paths explained according to particular faculties and do not encompass every kind. Cultivating only emptiness through the sixth ground resembles a great bird three hundred yojanas long whose body is enormous but whose two wings are absent, falling from heaven. The more the body of emptiness, signlessness, and wishlessness is fattened while the wings of contemplating the provisional fail to grow, the more one risks falling into the ground of the Two Vehicles. The wondrous Dharma that can treat such a ruined seed does not deny the emptiness previously cultivated. It causes the mind whose wisdom was extinguished to produce Great-Vehicle wholesome roots anew.

All four teachings have three faculties. If one fixed stage of entering the provisional must be designated, the treatise uses lower faculties as the standard. First, this follows the sequence of a teaching. Second, on reaching this point one is definitely irreversible. People of middling or higher faculties may enter earlier but can still advance or retreat, so their stages do not define the teaching’s representative stage. This judgment preserves two things at once. One may not say that everyone is complete at the initial mind merely because higher faculties can enter early. Nor may one deny the possibility of benefiting others from the initial mind merely because lower faculties enter later.

Entry into emptiness itself also has conceptual, approximate, and true entry. Conceptual entry is not scattered emotion or imagination. Before approximate and true realization, contemplation taking truth as its object first corresponds to the Dharma of emptiness. Even if one retreats, repeated recollection and cultivation later yield great benefit. The Shared Teaching can enter and emerge but cannot immediately be the Middle. The Distinct Teaching enters and emerges sequentially but cannot do so in one mind. The Perfect Teaching enters and emerges in one mind and, according to faculties, can enter one truth more and the other two less. Although their proportions increase and decrease, none of the three truths is absent. The ability to be perfect does not obstruct the manifestation of distinctions.

7. What Is True Benefit?

The bodhisattva originally cultivates emptiness for beings. Because he does not prize emptiness, he does not abide in it. Because he seeks to benefit beings, he arises in response from the true, with the Dharma eye according with faculties. For those to be delivered through a buddha-body, he manifests a buddha-body. For those to be delivered through bodhisattvas, the Two Vehicles, gods, nāgas, and the eight classes, he manifests the corresponding bodies. Accomplishing beings and purifying buddha-lands together form the complete shape of benefit.

Although Tripiṭaka-Teaching bodhisattvas emerge into the provisional, they still rely on contaminated superknowledges and worldly discrimination and can provide only limited benefit. Although Shared-Teaching bodhisattvas know medicine and illness, their diagnosis and recognition of medicine are not yet deep or far-reaching, and their superknowledges still arise through intentional effort. True response-transformation has beginning and end. One first becomes parent or teacher, forms affinities life after life, and regulates beings everywhere; when their faculties mature, one is born in a royal palace, sits beneath the tree of awakening, turns the Dharma wheel, enters nirvāṇa, and leaves relics. A sudden appearance followed by disappearance provides only a fragmentary moment of benefit and cannot yet be called accomplishment.

After entry into the grounds in the Distinct Teaching, one body can manifest immeasurable bodies; knowing illness exhausts its sources, recognizing medicine exhausts its treasury, and administering medicine fits as one seal to another without error. Harmonizing one’s light and mingling with the dust begins the formation of affinities; the eight marks of awakening conclude a period of transformation. All who see or hear gain benefit, and everything done purifies buddha-lands. True benefit is likewise present from the first abode onward in the Perfect Teaching.

Transformation by itself is therefore not proof. Māra can transform into a buddha image, non-Buddhists can display strange arts, and the five worldly superknowledges can produce immeasurable forms. If the mere sight of something extraordinary were enough to establish true response, deviant transformation would be confused with response descending from the Dharma body. The criterion is not how astonishing an appearance may be, but whether it arises naturally in response from the ground of the Dharma body throughout the ten realms and truly accomplishes beings and purifies buddha-lands.

8. Why Must the Text Conclude by Speaking of Pervasiveness Again?

Before true wisdom arises, the hundreds, thousands, and tens of thousands of objects of clinging are all called views. Blind people asked the color of milk and mistook the colors of other objects for milk’s color. Blind people touched an elephant and said it resembled a rope or pestle. A sick person spoke deliriously and took deluded perception as true. If even one point among the simple, compound, and complete four views remains unbroken, one cannot enter emptiness. According to textual sequence, pervasive breaking through Dharmas occurs only when views and thought are exhausted.

The treatise immediately moves one level deeper. Views and thought are ignorance; ignorance is Dharma-nature. Breaking views and thought is breaking ignorance; breaking ignorance is seeing Dharma-nature. Only entry into the emptiness of the true mark is true pervasiveness. The same applies to entering the provisional from emptiness. Illness-Dharmas, medicine-Dharmas, and administration-of-medicine Dharmas are immeasurable. As long as even one point among them remains unpenetrated, breaking is not yet pervasive. Before the Dharma eye arises, one may distinguish, but one’s vision remains only partial.

At purification of the six faculties, distinguishing one illness reveals many kinds, understanding one sentence of Dharma penetrates immeasurable sentences, and the simultaneous teaching of the buddhas of the ten directions can all be received and retained at once. Yet this is only the breath of approximation. When ignorance obstructing superknowledge is broken and true and conventional are illuminated together, it is called pervasive breaking through Dharmas.

The final answer, then, is not to multiply the seventy-two thousand alternatives into a still larger number. Sequential breaking layer by layer cannot yet be called pervasive; only nonsequential breaking is pervasive. Because the preceding contemplations unfold in so many overlapping layers that practitioners might lose their way, the treatise uses pervasive breaking through Dharmas as its conclusion after contemplation in entering emptiness and contemplation in entering the provisional.

Through the Eye of the Fuxing

Zhanran first gathers the intent of entering the provisional under “great compassion benefiting beings” and clearly judges planting a tree in empty space to be the mark of emerging into the provisional. The arrow simile does more than display remarkable technique. The arrow of prajñā is shot into emptiness first; the arrow of skillful means follows and supports it, preventing its fall onto the ground of nirvāṇa. This explanation illuminates at once not falling into birth-and-death and not abiding in nirvāṇa. As for “grief of the same body,” Zhanran limits it to seeing beings’ suffering as one’s own and does not read it as the identity of substance associated with unconditioned great compassion.

The five conditions and five similes are paired one by one in the mirror. Kinship is an inborn bond corresponding to compassion of the same body. Compact is a binding covenant corresponding to the original vow. Strategy is an extraordinary plan corresponding to skillful means. Strength is vigor corresponding to sharp wisdom. Courage is intrepidity corresponding to diligence. This makes the preceding four alternatives of sharp and dull faculties concrete: wisdom occupies only one place, and emergence into the provisional still depends on whether the other four conditions are complete. The threefold consolation in the Vimalakīrtinirdeśa Sūtra is Zhiyi’s judgment of the chapter on inquiring about illness. Entry into the provisional occupies the place between entry into emptiness and entry into the Middle; the scripture itself does not list these three headings.

Zhanran explicitly says that not one of the three Dharmas—knowing illness, recognizing medicine, and administering medicine according to illness—may be lacking, and gives the great physician and good spiritual friend as their classical background. Within the calculations of the delusions of views, direct totals and totals that include the roots coexist, which makes the number sequence appear to jump. The point of the five divisions of the Vinaya is likewise not to memorize a chestful of titles, but to prepare a cause for opening the Dharma eye so one can correct oneself and others when conditions arise.

In Zhanran’s judgment, the three kinds of Dharma medicine all belong to what a bodhisattva emerging from emptiness into the provisional must pervasively know. The treatise’s own term at the conclusion, however, is “ignorance obstructing superknowledge”; the two cannot be substituted for one another. Supramundane and supreme medicines may share counts and names, but the meanings of supreme medicines must return to the Perfect and Distinct. In the simile of medicinal substances, bark, flesh, sap, and fruit respectively correspond to the four siddhāntas; roots, stems, branches, and leaves correspond to faith, ethical discipline, concentration, and wisdom; and the soils of the four directions represent the four gates within each of the four teachings. These are meanings unfolded in the mirror, not items explicitly stated one by one by the author in the main text.

In the passage on Shennong, Hua Tuo, and Bian Que, Zhanran compares Shennong to the Buddha and later skilled physicians to bodhisattvas emerging into the provisional. Composing treatises in reliance on scriptures is the making of new prescriptions. Regarding “I dispatched three sages,” the mirror separately names an old scripture and associates Yan Hui, Confucius, and Laozi with particular bodhisattvas, but Zhanran immediately records that many catalogs suspect the work to be spurious. The main treatise names no scripture there. What the Fuxing records therefore combines a supplementary source attribution with language of doubt.

The four faculties—lower, middling, higher, and supreme—are named by viewing the four teachings in relation to one another. The sixteen gates arise because every gate possesses the Four Truths, yielding sixteen truths of path and cessation to counteract sixteen truths of suffering and origination. For the rain from one cloud, the mirror judges the cloud to be manifested bodies and the rain to be the teaching of Dharma. Heavenly rain is impartial, yet what plants and trees receive differs. This qualification locates difference in the faculties receiving Dharma, not in partiality of the Dharma rain.

Regarding stages, scriptural references to the eighth and other grounds in the Shared Teaching are only initial explanations according to faculties; they cannot comprehensively cover the universally applicable intent. The great-bird simile is likewise Zhiyi’s adaptive reuse according to meaning, and its details are not listed verbatim in a Shared-Teaching scripture. Zhanran judges purification of the six faculties in the Perfect Teaching to be entry into the provisional for lower faculties and says its function already exceeds the ten dedications of the Distinct Teaching. The core of the five exchanges that follow the stage discussion is that one mind can also make distinctions, because superior capacity can encompass inferior capacity.

The mirror’s judgment of the benefits passage is stricter still. True benefit from emerging into the provisional necessarily begins at the first ground of the Distinct Teaching or first abode of the Perfect Teaching. Bodhisattvas of the Tripiṭaka and Shared teachings do not truly arise in response. The treatise first describes their limited benefits; the Fuxing separately uses stages to restrict what counts as true benefit from emerging into the provisional. Distinguishing deviant from correct transformation is necessary precisely because demonic objects can assume similar appearances; the ground from which a response arises and the reality of its accomplishment must determine the judgment.

At the conclusion of pervasiveness, Zhanran first distinguishes wording from original intent. Textually, pervasively breaking views and thought is only entry into emptiness. In intent, one must see that views and thought are ignorance and ignorance is Dharma-nature. Entering the provisional from emptiness likewise has both sequential textual marks and nonsequential textual intent. The “ignorance obstructing superknowledge” that is broken is explicitly identified in the mirror as ignorance that obstructs the superknowledges of the inconceivable path of transformation. The conclusion could have been left until after contemplation of the Middle Way, yet it gathers the discussion here because all the preceding layered unfoldings ultimately do not go beyond one mind. Through this eye, “pervasive” does not become a total count of categories but returns to whether one mind can be immediately empty, immediately provisional, and unobstructedly penetrating.

For the simile of the whirling wheel of fire, Zhanran further judges fettering karma to be origination and falling into painful destinations to be suffering, showing suffering and origination revolving through one another. In the similes of the leaking vessel and colored garment, meditative Dharma is water, mind-nature the vessel, and mental conduct the leak; worldly meditative concentration is the colored garment, mental conduct the rain, and loss of attainment the fading of color. In both cases, every element of the simile is bound back to the Dharma meaning being taught without expanding the image into another sequence never stated by the author.

Contemplation of emptiness breaks the grasping of the Dharmas of birth-and-death as real. Contemplation of the provisional distinguishes beings’ illnesses and medicines within emptiness. Both are already wisdom. Why, then, does the Mohe Zhiguan say that in relation to the Middle Way they can become obstructions? If wisdom itself can obstruct, on what can a practitioner finally rely?

The passage on the Middle Way in pervasive breaking through Dharmas begins from precisely this most difficult point. It first explains arising nonarising, nonarising arising, and nonarising nonarising separately, establishing one’s own practice, transforming others, double negation, and double illumination. It then immediately points out that these distinctions exist only to make understanding easier. The three textual passages are successively identical: there is no fixed self, no fixed other, and not even a double negation or double illumination that can be grasped as two destinations.

Contemplation of the Middle does not therefore add a third thing outside emptiness and provisionality. Its task is to illuminate the ignorance that the first two contemplations have not yet penetrated, prevent emptiness and provisionality from settling into two extremes, and finally return every horizontal gate and vertical contemplation to one thought-mind. The path unfolds through intent, conditions, direct cultivation, stages, and benefits, then turns from the one gate of nonarising into immeasurable gates, and finally gathers itself as the three contemplations in one mind.

What Does the Third Contemplation Actually Add?

The Tripiṭaka and Shared teachings can both provisionally establish a third contemplation, yet neither necessarily posits another principle. Tripiṭaka bodhisattvas illuminate the conventional, the Two Vehicles enter the true, and the Buddha possesses both truths. In the Shared Teaching, the Two Vehicles embody emptiness, bodhisattvas enter the provisional, and the Buddha causes both truths to flow together. The third contemplation first marks the difference between what the Buddha and his disciples see; it cannot on that account manufacture another substance outside the two truths.

The Distinct Teaching knows the Middle Way but must first break grasping at marks and see emptiness, then break ignorance and see the provisional. Only afterward does it proceed to cultivate the Middle Way, break one portion of ignorance, and see one portion of the Middle. The first two contemplations are indispensable means. Before they are completed, one cannot hurry into the third; after they are complete, one cannot mistake means for the ultimate.

The Perfect Teaching also breaks two delusions. Its difference is not that it breaks one less thing, but that all three contemplations become directions of practice together from the initial mind. The simile of three layers of bandits makes this clear. Someone with blunt weapons, a weak body, and few strategies breaks two layers first, reorganizes personnel and provisions, and only then attacks the third. Someone with a strong body, sharp weapons, and many strategies breaks all three in one day. The two pieces of iron make the same point: one must be repeatedly fired and worked before it becomes sharp; the other becomes sharp as soon as it encounters fire. All three layers still have to be broken, and the iron must still enter the fire. The perfect-and-sudden does not do less; it refuses to divide the three contemplations into three unrelated stretches of life.

This answers what the third contemplation adds. It does not add another object, but prevents the first two contemplations from each guarding one extreme. It does not abolish sequence, but directs every step of sequence toward the same Middle Way.

Why Must Contemplation of the Middle Begin with Compassion?

The first of the five conditions for cultivating contemplation of the Middle is not mysterious principle but unconditioned compassion. This compassion grasps no fixed mark of beings and is therefore not attached love or views. It grasps no fixed mark of nirvāṇa and is therefore not empty quiescence. Abiding in neither beings nor nirvāṇa, it nevertheless covers the Dharma realm, removes the root of suffering, and gives ultimate happiness.

“Unconditioned” does not mean without causes or without beings. The point of the magnet attracting iron is spontaneous reception. If an obstruction lies between them, the iron still cannot be drawn in. Beings’ mind-nature does not depart from unconditioned compassion, but the veil of ignorance prevents compassion from appearing and functioning spontaneously. Cultivating the Middle means breaking this intervening obstruction so that immeasurable Buddha Dharmas and beings no longer lie outside compassion.

Ordinary water cannot extinguish fire born in water; fire itself must extinguish it. The first two contemplations can break the delusions of views and thought and those innumerable as dust and sand, yet the wisdom they accomplish can leave a subtler obstruction. Contemplation of the Middle does not negate those contemplations. It treats the final barrier that they cannot treat by themselves.

The second condition is fulfilling the original vast vows. What the contemplations of emptiness and provisionality know and sever resembles branches and leaves; unbroken ignorance is the root. Their cultivation of the path and realization of cessation resemble a torch in the hand that cannot illuminate the darkness of all the mountains. A hundred rivers cannot fill the sea, but one rain from a nāga king fills the pool. Contemplation of the Middle extends knowing suffering, severing origination, cultivating the path, and realizing cessation throughout the Dharma realm, so that the four vast vows first made are not fulfilled only in part.

The third is seeking Buddha wisdom. Eyes without feet cannot reach the pool; feet without eyes may fall into a pit. On arriving at the cool pool, personally drinking its water is what Buddha knowledge knows, while seeing its circumference, depth, and color is what the Buddha eye sees. The practitioner needs both eyes and feet; at the pool, what is known and what is seen unfold according to different parts of the simile.

The fourth is learning great skillful means. Maitreya first teaches irreversible practice, Vimalakīrti then breaks the view of awakening, and afterward teaches that quiescent cessation, nonduality, and beings do not depart from awakening. The two great beings strike like hammer and anvil, not to defeat one another but to mature the faculties of the celestial youths. The real is often revealed only after skillful provisionality opens the way. Without skillful means, profound Dharma may become the language of only a few.

The fifth is great diligence. One does not spare even body and life, much less possessions; one does not rest even after attaining awakening, much less before. Contemplation of the Middle confronts the root of ignorance and cannot be completed through strength seeking only a small measure of security. Taken together, the five conditions give a complete movement: compassion supplies direction, vast vows breadth, Buddha wisdom the goal, skillful means the capacity to benefit others, and diligence the refusal to retreat throughout.

When Wisdom Itself Becomes an Obstruction

Direct cultivation of the Middle first admits something difficult to admit. The wisdoms of emptiness and provisionality are wisdom when breaking delusion, yet can become delusion in relation to the Middle Way. Combining with ignorance, they obstruct the wisdom of the Middle and are therefore called cognitive obstruction.

Cognitive obstruction can be understood from three sides. First, the two preceding wisdoms themselves become what actively obstructs. Second, wisdom of the Middle is obstructed, so the name is established from what is obstructed. Third, delusion is active and wisdom of the Middle passive, and the two are named together cognitive obstruction. To reduce this to “knowing too much prevents awakening” would flatten a subtle active-passive relationship into an anti-intellectual slogan.

The criterion for whether the two wisdoms are already illumination is direct. If wisdom of all modes were present, the buddhas’ ten powers, fearlessnesses, and all Dharmas would be perfectly and completely awakened to. Since this is not yet so, existing understanding cannot be passed off as ultimate illumination. At this stage, the danger is that wisdom has become sufficient to break coarse delusions and therefore ceases to see what it has not broken.

Contemplation of the Middle does not tell the practitioner to discard wisdom. It returns wisdom itself to contemplation. If contemplating wisdom is never itself observed, it quietly assumes the position of final sovereign. Only when contemplator and contemplated are both like empty space can dependence cease.

First Round: How Can Four Alternatives Be Gates Yet Also Burn a Person?

The first round contemplates ignorance through the most basic four alternatives. Do the two wisdoms arise from Dharma-nature, from ignorance, from both together, or apart from both? Dharma-nature does not arise, and ignorance is unreal. Arising together bears both faults; arising apart is causeless. Investigation through every alternative fails to find an obtainable self-nature.

In this contemplation, mind becomes serenely pure and does not abide in any alternative. Although the true has not yet arisen, clinging has decisively stopped. This stage resembles seeing a stump from afar in darkness. It seems to move in six bodily parts and might be a person; then it seems unmoving and might be a stump. After long contemplation, one still does not see clearly, yet has ceased decisively to cling. A distance remains between nonclinging and direct realization.

The wisdom of the preceding two contemplations resembles vajra: it has penetrated views and thought and phenomena innumerable as dust and sand. Now contemplation breaks cognitive obstruction and is called contemplation that penetrates contemplation; establishing mind in this principle is called contemplation that reaches contemplation. Vajra was a sharp implement at the preceding layer, but at a deeper layer becomes what must itself be penetrated. This shows that no attainment can forever enthrone itself as ultimate.

The precept-keeping bhikṣu examining insect-free water preserves the same measure. Seeing something move, he wonders whether it is an insect or dust. An insect has living movement; dust does not. After long contemplation, he knows it does not seem to be an insect but still does not see completely clearly. The practitioner thus decisively knows that ignorance lacks the four natures and the movement of self-arising, yet does not grasp “unmoving” as another substance.

The four alternatives are therefore both indispensable and ungraspable. Without them, contemplation has no entrance. Grasp them, and one seals the entrance oneself. Entering principle through one, the others naturally interpenetrate and need not be accumulated one by one as property. Before entry, however, all four must still be cultivated diligently. A gate lets a person pass; it also becomes an obstruction when someone stops upon it.

Second Round: Does Recognizing Dharma-Nature Mean One Has Awakened?

After the four alternatives find ignorance unobtainable, the practitioner may produce an understanding or meditative concentration and immediately decide that ignorance is Dharma-nature. The treatise gives a specific warning: this is still contemplative understanding, not an awakened mind. Recognizing in darkness that something resembles a stump is not the same as seeing it clearly in light.

Contemplation must therefore turn toward Dharma-nature. Does Dharma-nature arise only after ignorance ceases? A Dharma already ceased cannot produce anything. Does it arise while ignorance has not ceased? Then illumination and ignorance coexist. Both ceasing and not ceasing carries both faults; neither ceasing nor not ceasing is causeless. Dharma-nature likewise cannot arise from self, another, both, or no cause.

This round reveals a subtle attachment. In the first, the practitioner no longer clings to ignorance; in the second, one may cling to a newly appearing Dharma-nature. Contemplation of the Middle does not replace a false substance with a correct one. Ignorance is unobtainable, and Dharma-nature is not manufactured by contemplative understanding. Even without awakening, one can still determine that contemplation of the Middle Way can break ignorance, cultivate it constantly, and stop seeking some exotic method elsewhere.

Third Round: Which Reveals Which—True Cultivation or Cultivation according to Conditions?

The third round contemplates true cultivation and cultivation according to conditions by first asking how wisdom receives its name. Horizontally, the buddhas of the ten directions possess wisdom and illumination, while I now have neither. Vertically, the future breaks darkness and attains illumination, in relation to which the present is nonwisdom and ignorance. Wisdom and nonwisdom are both established through relation.

It then asks whether permanent wisdom arises from cultivation according to conditions, true cultivation, both together, or apart from both. How could impermanent conditioned cultivation produce the permanent? If the true is originally permanent, why would it need cultivation? One lineage says conditioned cultivation reveals true cultivation; another says true cultivation appears by itself after conditioned cultivation ceases. The former falls under arising from another, the latter under self-arising; together they fall under arising from both, and apart under causeless arising. Grasp any explanation as real, and wisdom of the Middle cannot arise. Without grasping, all four can become gates.

Yet while attachment must not fix any of the four explanations, teaching can employ all four according to faculties. One person awakens on hearing that the permanent arises from the impermanent, another on hearing of the lineage-nature of the Dharma King, another that extinguishing ignorance obtains the lamp of awakening, another that wisdom comes from neither within nor without. The same statement need not have the same function when breaking attachment and adapting to faculties. The Middle Way does not forbid all speech; it means not being bound by one’s own words while speaking.

Bodhisattvas composing treatises may likewise predominantly expound one gate. One treatise takes support in suchness as its governing theme; another ultimate emptiness, with other Dharmas serving as accompanying adornments. The gates expounded differ, but the principle encountered does not. Relying on meaning rather than words, one need not turn different treatise-gates into weapons of contradiction. Delight, suitability, counteraction, and entry differ, but differing entrances do not make two true principles out of attainment of the path.

Ignorance Is Dharma-Nature—not Two Things Combined into One

When ignorance is broken, is Dharma-nature also broken? When Dharma-nature appears, does ignorance also appear? The treatise answers that true principle originally has no name and is called Dharma-nature only in relation to ignorance. When Dharma-nature appears, ignorance transforms into illumination. Once ignorance is broken, no counterpart remains in relation to which Dharma-nature could still be discussed.

If ignorance no longer exists, with what is it identical? The simile of ice and water resolves the difficulty. To someone unfamiliar with ice, one points to water and calls it ice, then points to ice and calls it water. These are two provisionally established names, not two real things glued together. One jewel produces water when turned toward the moon and fire when turned toward the sun, yet the jewel was never first divided into a water-jewel and a fire-jewel. One thing has two functions according to conditions; two substances do not first exist and then combine.

“Ignorance is Dharma-nature” therefore cannot mean that delusion already equals realized virtue, nor that ignorance should be preserved. What it breaks is the imagination of identity between two things. If ignorance and Dharma-nature are first each established with self-nature and then declared identical, identity itself becomes a third adhesive. Names turn according to delusion and awakening while one thing has never become two: this is the destination of both similes.

How Far Is Contemplation of the Middle from the Initial Mind?

In the Shared Teaching received into the Distinct, cultivation occurs at the seventh ground and realization at the eighth. In the Distinct Teaching, cultivation occurs in the ten dedications and realization at the first ground. These stages are so high and distant that an ordinary beginner has not even reached the stage where cultivation starts; contemplation of the Middle appears as a sheer cliff.

The Perfect Teaching, however, perfectly contemplates the three truths from the beginning of the five grades. Sitting on the Tathāgata’s seat, wearing the Tathāgata’s robe, and entering the Tathāgata’s room do not proclaim an ordinary being a buddha; they say that the initial practice is already oriented toward the Middle Way. From the first through fifth grades, contemplation becomes increasingly clear and an approximate Dharma arises. Seeing a swan and knowing there is a pool, or smoke and confirming fire, remains only approximate seeing. Only on entering the first abode is one portion of ignorance broken.

“Cultivated within one life and realized within one life” does not bind everyone to one timetable. In contrast to the Distinct Teaching’s eons and the Shared Teaching’s lofty stages, it reveals that the Perfect Teaching does not postpone contemplation of the Middle beyond the beginner’s reach. Placing a Perfect stage low does not lower its merit. The one grade of the first abode itself has immeasurable distinctions, just as meditative concentration is summarized in nine grades although its actual depths far exceed nine.

At the first abode one can perform Buddha work throughout the Dharma realm and even manifest the eight marks. Direct contemplation of the Middle relies on neither two extremes nor four alternatives, is ultimately pure, and has neither dependence nor attachment. Breaking one, it breaks all. Only here is pervasive breaking through Dharmas in the Middle Way formally concluded.

If One Gate Communicates with the Path, Why Open Immeasurable Gates?

The three contemplations are cultivated vertically within the gate of nonarising; the remaining gates arrayed beside it are horizontal. Passing directly through successive gates and entering through gates arranged side by side can both bring one before the king. The eight negations are merely the first eight gates listed. Neither existent nor nonexistent, neither defiled nor pure, neither abiding nor attached, neither accepting nor grasping, neither bound nor liberated—all can communicate with principle.

Nonarising and nonceasing can encompass the other gates. Nonarising is nondifference, nonpermanence, noncoming, nondefilement, nonincrease, nonbondage, and nonexistence. Nonceasing is nonidentity, nonannihilation, nongoing, nonpurity, nondecrease, nonliberation, and nonnonexistence. This does not mean that reciting “nonarising and nonceasing” completes every gate. It means that every Dharma cultivated within nonarising can be transposed into other gates.

Aggregates, sense fields, and elements; the three obstructions and four māras; arousing the mind of awakening; four vast vows; establishing mind in calming-and-contemplation; transitions between faith and Dharma; four siddhāntas; various views; 72,384 forms of calming-and-contemplation; cognitive obstruction’s arising from self, another, both, and no cause; its ceasing through self, another, both, and no cause; and its relation through self, another, both, and no cause—every gate can unfold emptiness, provisionality, the Middle, and the three contemplations in one mind.

The Sūtra on the Nonpractice of All Dharmas turns all truths, wisdoms, arousals of mind, contemplative practices, delusions, stages, and teachings into the gate of nonpractice. The Diamond Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra turns giving, ethical discipline, prajñā, ten grounds, object and wisdom, and compassion into the gate of nonabiding. Nonabiding does not only enter emptiness. Abiding in the conventional through nonabiding enters the provisional; abiding in the true mark through nonabiding enters the Middle. One meaning thereby turns into different Dharma gates.

But if nonarising can expound everything, are other gates redundant? The treatise answers from two sides. In one’s own practice, the gate of correspondence differs by person. If cultivation through nonarising produces joy, wholesome mind, broken attachment, and proximity to awakening, it is the gate of the path; otherwise one must try nonceasing, neither defilement nor purity, and other gates. In transforming others, beings’ faculties and conditions differ. One person attains the path on hearing nonarising; another may need to hear neither defilement nor purity. The number of gates does not multiply principles; it reflects the number of illnesses of mind and points of entry.

Why Do the Horizontal and Vertical Finally Leave Only One Mind?

The horizontal and vertical are profound and broad. They break deviant attachment, expound scriptures and treatises, cultivate contemplative practice, and adapt to faculties. Yet the more broadly they are explained, the harder it becomes to find where to begin. The treatise therefore gathers them into one sentence: the Dharma produced through conditions in one thought of ignorance is immediately empty, immediately provisional, and immediately the Middle.

This sentence does not abolish the foregoing. Precisely because aggregates, sense fields, and elements; simple and compound views; thought throughout the nine grounds; sixteen gates; three provisionalities and four alternatives; and illness, medicine, and administration have already been explained one by one, the statements “one mind is conditionally arisen,” “one mind is immediately empty,” “one mind is immediately provisional,” and “one mind is neither empty nor provisional” reveal what one mind contains. Without the broad preceding explanation, “one mind possesses all” easily becomes a hollow slogan.

“Suspended transcendence” is not skipping but simultaneous inclusion. The foregoing sequential conditioned Dharmas, emptinesses, provisionalities, and forms of neither existence nor nonexistence are now recognized together within one mind. Their marks may be explained sequentially; in terms of principle, there is only one thought immediately empty, immediately provisional, and immediately the Middle.

The treatise says one instant has three marks—arising, abiding, and ceasing—and that they differ. Arising represents provisional existence, ceasing empty nonexistence, and abiding neither empty nor existent. The three contemplations in one mind differ without becoming three minds taking turns on duty. When greed, anger, and delusion arise, grasping a self and the mark of beings arises. Within that very thought, contemplate it as immediately empty, immediately provisional, and immediately the Middle; calming-and-contemplation is simultaneously complete. Contemplation is called Buddha knowledge and calming Buddha vision. This is where beings begin opening the Buddha’s knowledge and vision.

The contemplation’s formation is the first grade of rejoicing. Reading and recitation assist it to form the second. Teaching according to practice forms the third. Concurrent practice of the six perfections forms the fourth, and their complete practice the fifth. One then enters the approximate stage of purification of the six faculties and advances to the first abode, where ignorance is broken. Principial possession has not abolished contemplative practice, and contemplative practice has not departed from one thought.

This one mind must also be examined in desire, anger, and pride; the three contemplations in one mind cannot be discussed only when calm. The preceding passage principally contemplated the consciousness aggregate, so consciousness must also be used by analogy for the other four aggregates, twelve sense fields, and eighteen elements. If one mind exists only in abstract understanding and fails upon encountering desire, anger, pride, or form, feeling, perception, and formations, breaking is not truly pervasive.

What Does the Final Analysis of Cognitive Obstruction Warn Us About?

The treatise ends by presenting another lineage’s explanation of cognitive obstruction. Consciousness-knowledge follows discriminated marks and can therefore be called knowledge; the substance of its discrimination impedes realization-knowledge of things as they are and can therefore also be called obstruction. Afflictive obstruction is discussed principally through craving, and cognitive obstruction through ignorance. Craving continues the existences; ignorance leaves what is knowable unilluminated.

Delusion about principle and delusion about phenomena can each be called cognitive obstruction. Although wisdom illuminating principle and wisdom illuminating phenomena have two aspects, they are not two categorically different substances. Cognitive obstruction and ignorance likewise do not have two natures. Abandoning discrimination can move toward purity, but treating wisdom itself as a real thing that must be annihilated falls into the other extreme. Merit assisting the path must still be cultivated; one cannot use nondiscrimination as a name under which every wholesome practice is discarded.

The final exchange on stages preserves the same measure. The eighth ground, first ground, and first abode must be read together with the Shared, Distinct, and Perfect teachings rather than arranged as three answers inside one teaching. Contemplation of emptiness begins from the ground of ordinary beings and therefore does not judge three faculties through later stages. The provisional and Middle are cultivated after entering stages and can therefore distinguish depth through stage. The entire passage on the Middle Way does not erase distinctions. It keeps every distinction from departing from perfect interfusion and keeps perfect interfusion from becoming a pretext for canceling distinctions.

Through the Eye of the Fuxing

The preceding reading followed the treatise’s own sequence from the third contemplation, five conditions, three rounds of direct cultivation, stages and benefits, and horizontal gates to one mind. Zhanran’s Fuxing Chuanhong Jue illuminates several joints where layers are easily confused.

First, the treatise’s three passages have an expository sequence, but the real intent of contemplative practice is not sequential. Zhanran says they are successively identical precisely because one’s own practice, transforming others, double negation, and double illumination are all provisional establishments. The analysis through four teachings finally reveals specifically the three contemplations at the initial mind in the Perfect Teaching. This does not cancel the treatise’s divisions; it separates textual unfolding from perfect cultivation during practice.

Second, although the five conditions have the same names as those listed under entering the provisional, their meanings differ. Zhanran specifically points out that unconditioned compassion must possess both preceding kinds of compassion. The magnet attracting iron takes the meaning of spontaneous action. In the pool simile, seeing corresponds to the Buddha eye and drinking to Buddha knowledge, while knowledge and vision are one in substance. Maitreya and Vimalakīrti as hammer and anvil represent provisional and real mutually revealing one another and together maturing the celestial youths. These correlations of pool, hammer, and anvil come from Zhanran, not headings in the treatise itself.

Third, “cognitive obstruction” must preserve three grammatical readings: both words belong to what actively obstructs; both are spoken from the perspective of what is obstructed; or obstruction is active and cognition passive. The three rounds of direct cultivation are further judged different names for the three provisionalities: contemplating ignorance is formation by causes, contemplating Dharma-nature continuity, and contemplating the true and conditions relation. The names of the provisionalities make the structure of the three investigations visible but are not original subsection headings in the treatise.

Fourth, the stump and insect-water similes both occupy a contemplative stage that has not yet become clear. Zhanran correlates person and insect with ignorance, and stump and dust with Dharma-nature, but their function is not to establish the latter as a graspable substance. They show attachment to the four alternatives gradually ceasing before true vision arises. When the four alternatives communicate with principle, they are gates; when one grasps them, they destroy the gate. Entering through one, the others interpenetrate.

Fifth, the ice-and-water exchange on ignorance and Dharma-nature is explicitly judged to concern two Dharmas without substance, possessing only provisional names. The nature of wetness is originally nondual, and the jewel does not first contain two substances; it reveals water or fire only through the conditions of moon or sun. This frees “identity” from two things glued together and frees “breaking ignorance” from annihilating Dharma-nature.

Sixth, the eighth ground of the Shared Teaching, first ground of the Distinct Teaching, and first abode of the Perfect Teaching each retain their teaching distinction. Zhanran judges the five grades of the Perfect Teaching as preliminary to approximate seeing and separately illuminates not relying on four alternatives and being without dependence or attachment as nature-emptiness and mark-emptiness. Only when direct contemplation of the Middle concludes pervasiveness is breaking one and thereby breaking all formally gathered.

Seventh, horizontal gates are not merely parallel. Zhanran says every gate has three truths and no horizontal gate lacks the vertical; finally he gathers horizontal and vertical into one mind. The “tune” in transposing a tune is musical. One meaning of nonarising turns into other gates as the same strings and pipes yield different melodies. “Suspended transcendence” means all are present in one mind and sequence no longer remains; it never means one can skip the preceding study without learning it.

Eighth, examination of other one minds and analogy to the remaining aggregates and sense fields must be read separately. “Examination” in the former means inspecting the minds of desire, anger, pride, and the rest. The latter extends from the consciousness aggregate to the other aggregates, sense fields, and elements because the preceding passage concerned consciousness alone. Aggregates do not go beyond mind and mind does not leave aggregates, but this does not merge two divisions.

Ninth, the Dharmottara passage reports another school’s meaning of cognitive obstruction. Zhanran clearly warns that when presenting that school’s meaning one must not mix the cited explanation into the perfect Tiantai meaning of the present passage. Both delusion about phenomena and delusion about principle can be established. The statement that cognitive obstruction cannot be severed follows from its not being categorically separate; it does not instruct anyone to preserve ignorance.

Tenth, the final exchange on the conditions of emptiness and analysis through four gates still takes perfect interfusion as its intent. Contemplation of emptiness does not lack five conditions; they were only abbreviated earlier. Embodied emptiness extends through Small and Great Vehicles and partial and Perfect teachings; because their purposes differ, four-gate analysis is needed. The provisional and Middle do not mix with Small-Vehicle teachings and therefore need not repeat it. This reading prevents differences in textual detail from being mistaken for presence or absence in Dharma meaning and prevents the three contemplations from splitting into isolated systems.

Eleventh, Zhanran judges the explanations of cognitive obstruction as delusion about phenomena and principle to have reason. Although wisdom illuminating phenomena and wisdom illuminating principle are spoken of as two, they are not separate substances. The conclusion returns again to the three readings of active and passive obstruction, showing that the preceding grammatical distinctions remain coherent throughout and that one sentence cannot be extracted to establish a separate definition.

Finally, “its textual position is likewise not sequential” judges only the final exchange on the three faculties as supplementary and cannot describe the entire Middle Way passage. This mirror does not change all sequence into nonsequence. It lets every layer know its place: exposition may unfold sequentially, while practice is the three contemplations in one thought; gates may be immeasurable, while what they encounter is nondual; wisdom can become an obstruction, yet wisdom itself illuminates that obstruction.

The hardest obstruction to recognize on a road is often not the wall directly ahead but the route that seems already open. The Mohe Zhiguan (Great Calming-and-Contemplation) places discerning passage and obstruction after pervasively breaking through Dharmas precisely because practitioners may already know how to contemplate emptiness and break attachment yet come to cherish the very wisdom that breaks it. Once what actively breaks is grasped, it becomes an obstruction just like what it breaks.

The fifth vehicle therefore asks not only what obstruction is but also what passage means and whether passage can turn back into obstruction. The sixth vehicle immediately continues the same question: once the road’s openings and blockages are known, how should bodily and mental practices be regulated to the proper measure so that buoyancy and sinking do not run out of balance? The first vehicle here resembles a guide who knows the route; the second, a brewer who balances flavor. One discerns direction and the other regulates the pace, and both concern the beginner’s present thought.

Are Passage and Obstruction Not Obvious at a Glance?

Not necessarily. Obvious greed, deviant views, and afflictions are certainly obstructions, but cherishing the wisdom that contemplates emptiness is an obstruction too. When the wisdom that actively breaks is grasped, it takes the same side as the delusion it breaks and must itself be examined again. Only when contemplative wisdom is not grasped can one break obstruction while preserving passage.

The treatise states this measure precisely through two images. Treating an eye disease means removing the film while nurturing the jewel; one must not damage the bright jewel while removing the film. A campaign means defeating bandits while protecting the general; one must not destroy the good general together with the bandits. Discerning passage and obstruction does not break everything into a blank. At every act of breaking it knows what should be removed and what should be protected.

Discerning passage and obstruction is therefore also called knowing gain and loss and knowing word and nonword. Passage and obstruction concern understanding; gain and loss, practice; word and nonword, teaching. One must hear correctly, distinguish correctly, understand conditions correctly, and genuinely awaken to where passage lies and where obstruction lies. Merely happening upon the names of the three contemplations resembles insects boring into wood and accidentally leaving the shapes of written words: the insects themselves do not read. Name, understanding, and practice must illuminate one another.

Five Hundred Yojanas: What Five Stretches of Road Are They?

The five hundred yojanas come from the simile of the dangerous road and phantom city, but they cannot be forced onto one linear scheme. The treatise examines six old explanations: some correlate them with stages; some with types of birth-and-death; some join the three realms to the Two Vehicles to make five hundred; some correlate them with the five abiding afflictions; and some count only the delusions of thought, dust-and-sand delusions, and ignorance. Each explanation catches one aspect but cannot simultaneously accord with the five hundred, the phantom city at the three-hundred point, the Two Vehicles entering the city together, and the other implications of the sūtra. This resembles using a key with one notch to open a lock with three teeth. The key is not wholly without shape; it simply does not match the complete lock.

Zhizhe therefore does not establish one exclusive correlation but gives three rounds of five hundred. Seen through places of birth-and-death, recompense in the three realms is three hundred, the Land of Skillful Means with Remainder four hundred, and the Land of Unobstructed Real Reward five hundred. Seen through afflictions, delusions of views, the five lower fetters, the five higher fetters, dust-and-sand delusions, and ignorance successively form the five hundreds. Seen through contemplative wisdom, contemplation of emptiness knows three hundred, contemplation of provisionality four hundred, and contemplation of the Middle five hundred. Places are what is traversed, afflictions what is severed, and contemplative wisdom what knows. Only by seeing all three sides together does the guide truly know the passage and obstruction of the dangerous road.

This rereading also resolves two apparently different correlations in the Great Treatise. Counting the Two Vehicles as four hundred follows the Shared Teaching in regarding nirvāṇa beyond the three realms as the utmost point. Counting them as one hundred instead speaks from the standpoint of bodhisattvas entering the provisional, who leave the nirvāṇa of the Two Vehicles and reenter the three realms. The numbers are not forcibly flattened into one scheme; each returns to the contemplative method on which it depends.

If the Stages Are So Remote, How Does a Beginner Inspect This Very Step?

If passage and obstruction are placed only at noble stages many eons away, beginners who have not even severed delusions of views have no way to practice. The treatise therefore draws the road back into every thought and divides its inspection into horizontal and vertical dimensions.

Horizontally, three structures are examined at once: suffering and origination are obstruction, while the path and cessation are passage; ignorance and the twelve links of dependent origination are obstruction, while the cessation of ignorance is passage; the six obscurations covering mind are obstruction, while the six perfections are passage. Vertically, three levels of advance are examined: views and thought together with fragmentary birth-and-death are obstruction, while entering emptiness from provisionality is passage; lack of knowledge and transformational birth-and-death are obstruction, while entering provisionality from emptiness is passage; ignorance and causal birth-and-death are obstruction, while correct contemplation of the Middle Way is passage.

Neither horizontal listing nor vertical listing alone is sufficient; the horizontal must be woven through the vertical. When cultivating contemplation entering emptiness, one must distinguish truths, dependent origination, and perfections within every mind, everything that contemplates, and everything contemplated. When cultivating contemplation entering the provisional, illness, medicine, and administering medicine undergo the same inspection. When cultivating contemplation of the Middle, this step cannot be omitted in relation to ignorance, Dharma-nature, and true conditions. Emptiness, provisionality, and the Middle are not three passes granting automatic passage. Each contemplation can generate obstruction within truths, dependent origination, and perfections, and each requires breaking obstruction and nurturing passage.

What is most easily overlooked is what contemplates. The view contemplated is immediately empty, but the mind that embodies and penetrates it is immediately empty too. Even an arhat’s mind is called the uncontaminated five aggregates; how could the beginner’s not-yet-real contemplation be treated as pure wisdom outside the five aggregates? Once what contemplates is reckoned truly existent, fetters, karma, and birth-and-death arise from it again. What is contemplated must be inspected, and what contemplates must also be inspected. Only then does discerning passage and obstruction cease to mean searching outward for errors.

If Emptiness, Provisionality, and the Middle Are Complete, Why Are They Still Said Not to Fit the Intended Use?

Because the three contemplations still leave passage and obstruction when divided from one another. Seen vertically, the first two are passage within their own scope but become obstruction in relation to the contemplation above. The last surpasses the lower contemplations and is passage, yet becomes obstruction again when isolated from the lesser Dharmas. Seen horizontally, each contemplation is passage within its own division, but their inability to include one another is obstruction.

The treatise uses walking, riding a horse, and superknowledge as similes. Walking and riding both require choosing open routes and avoiding obstructions. When one flies by superknowledge, mountain walls are like empty space and there seems no route left to choose. Yet dividing the three into separate stretches still leaves three meanings dispersed. The real issue is not replacing one mode of travel with another of increasing speed, but whether the mind still cuts the three contemplations into three mutually exclusive roads.

Three contemplations in one mind break vertical separation; the three contemplations as one mind break horizontal separation. Emptiness immediately possesses emptiness, provisionality, and the Middle and is therefore not merely a stretch traveled on foot. Provisionality immediately possesses all three and is therefore not merely a stretch traveled on horseback. The Middle immediately possesses all three and does not even retain attachment to the unobstructedness of superknowledge. When one mind can immediately be empty, provisional, and the Middle, mountains, rivers, stone walls, hordes of māras, and groups following other paths are all like empty space. One need neither leave low ground to climb high nor avoid mountains to follow valleys. Every place touched opens passage to the place of jewels.

This does not blend emptiness, provisionality, and the Middle into a slogan. Every Dharma, everything that contemplates, and everything contemplated must still be concretely inspected. At every point one must see whether truths, dependent origination, and perfections are immediately empty, provisional, and the Middle. One mind does not eliminate distinctions; it prevents all distinctions from becoming closed to one another.

If There Is No Obstruction, Must Passage Still Be Spoken Of?

No separate passage need be established. Passage is spoken of relative to obstruction. If everywhere touched is like empty space, obstruction is unobtainable and passage cannot stand alone. Yet if “neither passage nor obstruction” is itself seized as a new view, suffering, origination, ignorance, and obscuration arise there again. The superknowledge that formerly crossed mountain walls is lost, and even the capacities to ride and walk are lost with it.

Neither passage nor obstruction therefore does not mean ending inspection; it means illuminating passage and obstruction together. Faced with a Dharma, what contemplates, and what is contemplated, one neither fixes obstruction as a real thing nor appropriates passage as an attainment. If there is obstruction, one breaks it; if there is passage, one nurtures it; and one illuminates even attachment to breaking and nurturing. This also explains the four intersecting questions. Seen roughly, horizontal obstruction can obstruct vertical passage, and vertical passage seems able to treat horizontal obstruction. Distinguished finely, horizontal obstruction is near and cannot block the profound and remote vertical passage; horizontal passage is weak and cannot pass through vertical obstruction; vertical obstruction need not become a horizontal barrier; and vertical passage treats only its corresponding obstruction. The answer changes with the level of observation; a first-order answer must not be used to foreclose second-order distinctions.

Having Already Pervasively Broken through Dharmas, Why Regulate the Factors of the Path?

Because knowing the direction does not mean body and mind are tuned to walk it. Even after pervasively breaking through Dharmas and discerning passage and obstruction, one still has difficulty quickly corresponding with true Dharma if the thirty-seven factors are not regulated. At the initial mind, contaminated factors serve as preparatory means for the uncontaminated. When these means lose their measure, entry into true principle becomes difficult.

The simile of brewing wine speaks precisely to this word “proper.” Water turns into wine only when the ferment has the right warmth. If yeast and malt are excessive or deficient, no flavor forms. The factors of the path likewise do not work merely because all items are present. One must know when they arise, how one succeeds another, and how they mutually regulate buoyancy and sinking.

The treatise first presents four arrangements. Individually defined means that the foundations of mindfulness, right efforts, bases of spiritual power, faculties, powers, factors of awakening, and path can each attain the path within their own scope. Mutually inclusive means that the foundations include the other factors and the other factors also include the foundations. According to stages means distributing the seven groups across warmth, summit, tolerance, foremost in the world, seeing the path, cultivating the path, and other stages. All three explain the factors but do not yet regulate them. Only mutual arising—foundations producing right efforts, right efforts activating bases of spiritual power, bases producing five faculties, faculties producing five powers, powers producing seven factors of awakening, and seven factors entering the Eightfold Path—reveals skillful regulation.

Nor are the factors exclusive to the Two Vehicles. If one set of thirty-seven is a cause of nirvāṇa, unfolding it through four kinds of the truth of the path and sixteen gates produces immeasurable sets of thirty-seven Dharmas assisting awakening, which become causes of great nirvāṇa. This does not invent a separate set outside the factors, just as there is no fifth truth outside the four truths. The factors can be called the direct path or the assisting path. They can serve as contaminated preparatory means in the desire realm, access concentration, and first dhyāna, and can become uncontaminated practice within seeing the truths and cultivation. Their names change according to stage and function; what is regulated remains these same thirty-seven factors.

With So Many Factors, Where Does a Beginner Start?

Begin with the four foundations of mindfulness, but do not leave the other thirty-three for a remote future. The treatise extensively explains only the thirty-seven factors of the nonconstructed truth of the path and first gathers the aggregates and sense fields of the ten Dharma realms within one thought-moment. Because Dharma-nature arises through conditions, one seed can be every seed. Because Dharma-nature is empty, no form, feeling, mind, or Dharma can be fixed. Because Dharma-nature is provisional, one form is every form, one feeling every feeling, one mind every mind, and one formation immeasurable formations. Because Dharma-nature is the Middle, it is fixed neither as one nor divided into all, yet illuminates one and all together. Each of the four foundations—body, feelings, mind, and Dharmas—is immediately empty, provisional, and the Middle.

The earth’s power to produce various sprouts is the central image of this contemplation. However many herbs, trees, groves, and forests there are, the earth does not divide into many earths. However immeasurable the forms and minds of the ten Dharma realms are, they do not obstruct the Dharma-nature of one thought. Conversely, the earth’s oneness does not cause sprouts and leaves to lose their respective shapes and colors. Every seed and one seed, all Dharmas and one thought-moment, do not cancel one another here but open passage into one another.

The four foundations simultaneously break the eight inversions of ordinary beings and the Two Vehicles. Take the foundation of the body. The form of Dharma-nature is not fixed purity. When ordinary beings reckon it pure, immediate emptiness breaks their defiled attachment and fulfills the withered foundation. The form of Dharma-nature is also not fixed impurity. When followers of the Two Vehicles reckon it impure, immediate provisionality breaks their stagnation in emptiness and extinction of body and knowledge, fulfilling the flourishing foundation. Contemplating form next as neither empty nor provisional makes it neither pure nor impure, neither flourishing nor withered. It leaves the two extremes without establishing another midpoint; only this is called the midst of the twin trees.

The inversions of pain and pleasure in feelings, permanence and impermanence in mind, and self and no-self in Dharmas are contemplated through the same structure. Immediate emptiness makes all inversions and all flourishing and withering quiescent. Immediate provisionality establishes both twin trees of the extremes. Immediate Middle makes everything the Dharma realm. There are four Dharma medicines for treating inversion. Contemplative wisdom of Dharma-nature, which actively contemplates, is called mindfulness; the one truth immediately being three truths, which is contemplated, is called a foundation. In only one thought-moment, its function is this vast. If one can enter through it, beginning and end are complete and no other Dharma need be cultivated. Only if one still has not entered does regulation proceed to the next factor.

If One Has Not Entered through One Factor, How Does the Next Take Over?

The transition does not declare the preceding factor a failure. It sees the present imbalance and uses the next factor to regulate it. Diligently contemplating the foundations is the four right efforts: preventing already-arisen evils of views and thought from arising again; preventing not-yet-arisen evils of dust-and-sand delusions and ignorance from arising; increasing the already-arisen wisdom of emptiness; and developing the not-yet-arisen wisdom of the varieties of the path and wisdom of all modes. If mind remains scattered and agitated, one enters wholesome quiescence and cultivates the four bases of spiritual power within superior concentration.

The base of aspiration directs mind exclusively toward the Dharma cultivated. The base of diligence makes cultivation uninterrupted and unmixed. The base of mind makes one mind abide correctly. The base of contemplation skillfully distinguishes preparatory means without moving or scattering. If the concentrated mind still has not entered, the five faculties take over: faith in the three truths, redoubled diligence, mindfulness of direct and assisting paths alone, stability without forgetting or movement, and the intrinsic nature inwardly illuminating itself. If the faculties remain weak, cultivate the five powers, so faith breaks doubt, diligence breaks indolence, mindfulness breaks deviant thinking, concentration breaks distraction, and wisdom breaks deviant attachment.

When the mind is buoyant, the seven factors use tranquility, equanimity, and concentration to settle it. When the mind sinks, diligence, investigation of Dharmas, and joy arouse it. Mindfulness holds both buoyancy and sinking. If entry still does not occur, employ the Noble Eightfold Path: correct view contemplates the three truths; correct intention activates contemplation; correct speech benefits oneself and others; correct action is not drawn by the two extremes; correct livelihood feels no distress at others’ gain and remains content with one’s own; correct effort skillfully enters the correct truth; correct mindfulness neither moves nor forgets; and correct concentration abides with certainty.

This sequence finally returns to the four foundations. Four kinds of diligence within the foundations are the four right efforts, and four kinds of concentrated mind are the four bases of spiritual power. The arising of wholesome roots is called faculties; the growth of those roots is called powers; distinguishing the path’s function within the foundations is called awakening; and traveling securely on the path of the foundations is called the Eightfold Path. The seven groups are not seven assembled parts but different names for the same contemplative Dharma as it becomes diligent, concentrated, strengthened, regulated, and secure in practice.

The tree of the path makes this line of growth still clearer. Dharma-nature and the Dharma realm are the earth, the foundations of mindfulness the seed, the right efforts the sprout, the five faculties roots growing downward, the five powers stems and leaves spreading upward, the seven factors flowers, and the Eightfold Path ripened fruit. When the fruit forms, one reaches the place of jewels, enters the secret treasury, and sees buddha-nature. Root, stem, flower, and fruit each have their season, yet none ever leaves the same earth and seed.

The Uncontaminated City Has Three Gates: Should One Enter through Concentration or Wisdom?

Both routes are possible. The thirty-seven factors bring practitioners to the uncontaminated city, whose three gates are emptiness, signlessness, and nonaction, also called the three gates of liberation and three samādhis. If one enters meditative concentration through correct view and correct intention and then produces uncontaminated wisdom from concentration, wisdom is the chief minister and correct concentration the great king; because the name is established from concentration, these are the three samādhis. If correct view arises from correct concentration and uncontaminated wisdom then arises from correct view, concentration is the chief minister and wisdom the great king; because the name is established from wisdom, these are the three liberations. They can also be distinguished as the path of suppression and the paths of severance and realization, or, because meditative concentration and wisdom unite, samādhi can be called liberation and liberation samādhi.

The three gates mean different things within different contemplative methods. The Tripiṭaka Teaching distributes emptiness, signlessness, and nonaction across the sixteen practices of the four truths. The Shared Teaching first contemplates suffering and origination as illusory and immediately empty, then dispels both the mark of emptiness and attachment to what contemplates. The Distinct Teaching enters provisionality from emptiness and then advances to the Middle Way, or explains emptiness, signlessness, and wishlessness amid immeasurable illnesses and medicines. Perfect contemplation takes the true mark of all dharmas as object and calls both emptiness and nonemptiness the Middle Way.

The simile of dream and sleep reveals the difference. Searching one by one for eighteen unobtainable events within a dream still explains the eighteen emptinesses through the events produced. Perfect contemplation also finds unobtainable the very Dharma of sleep that produces the dream, so all inner and outer Dharmas produced from it become unobtainable. The eighteen emptinesses are not eighteen sealed empty rooms; all return to the one emptiness of the true mark of Dharma-nature. One emptiness is three gates and three gates are one gate; each gate further possesses all three liberations without mutual obstruction.

If Sharp Faculties Can Enter Everywhere, Why Travel All the Way to the Twin Trees?

Because teaching and transformation have different seasons. The Avataṃsaka is like the sun first illuminating high mountains and predominantly reveals the four flourishing trees. Deer Park predominantly reveals the four withered trees. The Vaipulya and Prajñā periods regulate the withered into flourishing and guide the Small back toward the Great. At the twin trees of the Crane Grove, teaching and transformation are complete and the Buddha enters nirvāṇa amid flourishing and withering. Those of extremely dull faculties who are difficult to transform complete the path only at the end, while those of sharp faculties and clear understanding can enter everywhere.

Eight thousand śrāvakas received predictions of buddhahood in the Lotus Sūtra, like autumn harvest and winter storage. This round of teaching and transformation was already complete; they did not need to wait for the twin trees. Six people including Śāriputra could also adorn the twin trees, and if they could adorn them one cannot say they had not seen buddha-nature. If even śrāvakas can enter everywhere, this is all the clearer for bodhisattvas. The road has an order of teaching and transformation, but its entrances are not monopolized by the final station.

Discerning passage and obstruction thus combines with regulating the factors of the path to form one complete route. First discern whether what actively breaks has again become what is broken, then inspect every mind through the horizontal and vertical. Next see whether the factors are regulated into mutual arising and whether one knows how to shift factors when mind floats or sinks. Finally, enter one gate and see three gates, enter one season without obstructing all seasons. Skill in knowing passage and obstruction is not merely the ability to point out where the road is blocked. It returns every step to three contemplations in one mind so that even a beginner genuinely advances toward the place of jewels.

Through the Eye of the Fuxing

Zhanran first divides discerning passage and obstruction into four levels: horizontal, vertical, horizontally distinct, and one mind. Pervasively breaking through Dharmas in the preceding passage breaks attachment to Dharmas; here, what actively grasps is examined more finely. Even when the Dharma contemplated is itself correct, once attachment arises toward what contemplates, the attached mind is identical with deviant grasping. “Breaking obstruction and preserving passage” therefore does not preserve some passage that may be possessed; both what breaks and what is broken undergo inspection.

After the six schools’ correlated explanations, Zhanran marks the three rounds of five hundred as “the correct explanation of our tradition” and explains weaving the horizontal through the vertical with warp and weft. The three vertical contemplations are warp; the horizontal truths, dependent origination, and perfections are weft. Only their interweaving forms the patterned text of the three truths. Entering emptiness, entering provisionality, and contemplating the Middle must each pass through Dharma, what contemplates, and what is contemplated. Being called contemplation of the Middle does not exempt one from inspecting passage and obstruction.

The three kinds of bodhisattva and three similes of travel cited by the treatise also involve layers of scriptural use. Zhanran points out that the order of the three kinds of bodhisattva has been divided and rearranged. In the treatise recension, the travel similes originally use riding a sheep, riding a horse, and superknowledge; the present treatise substitutes walking for riding a sheep. These differences reveal how Zhizhe takes up a text’s meaning and should not be silently flattened against the wording of current recensions.

Zhanran judges the one-mind passage most strictly. One mind possesses three, breaking sequential vertical separation; the three contemplations are only one mind, breaking horizontal dispersion. If “neither passage nor obstruction” is grasped anew, it remains an obstruction with a distinct mark. Passage and obstruction, gain and loss, and word and nonword concern understanding, practice, and teaching respectively. The three names share one purport but carry different responsibilities.

Among the four meanings of the factors of the path, Zhanran judges only mutual arising to be regulation because it tests and adjusts the seven groups in sequence. Contaminated factors serve as preparatory means for the uncontaminated; their scope is regulation at the initial mind, yet they can become a cause for the uncontaminated first abode. Both direct-path and assisting-path readings must be preserved; one cannot be chosen to eliminate the other. The extensive explanation of the thirty-seven nonconstructed factors is the direct intent of this passage, while the other three kinds of the truth of the path are provisionally set aside.

Although the nonconstructed foundations are written sequentially as body, feelings, mind, and Dharmas, Zhanran reminds the reader that actual contemplation never leaves one thought-moment. Although the wording of the four right efforts appears sequential, their meaning remains perfectly interfused. Although the four bases of spiritual power belong to concentration, concentration and wisdom must be balanced. The five faculties are called the five powers only when cultivated further and increased. The seven factors regulate through quiescent illumination, the groups of tranquility and equanimity, and the group of diligence; mindfulness holds both groups. Although the Noble Eightfold Path is the highest in sequential stage, this passage still says only that it can be cultivated by a beginner.

The opening of the nonconstructed foundations successively uses the Prajñā, Avataṃsaka, and Lotus scriptures. Zhanran judges this as unfolding the meaning of the preceding scripture through the one that follows, not three scriptures independently restating one sentence. He further gathers one thought’s hundred realms and thousand suchnesses and the three thousand worlds into the three truths of emptiness, provisionality, and the Middle, explaining how “every seed” is present in the current thought. Although body, feelings, mind, and Dharmas are unfolded one by one in the wording, what is contemplated never leaves this thought and never excludes the nine Dharma realms from the Buddha realm.

In the simile of the tree of the path, the treatise moves directly from seed and sprout to the five faculties without explicitly correlating the bases of spiritual power. Zhanran merely adds in his explanation that the upward-reaching trunk may symbolize those bases; he does not rewrite the root text. Nor may one insist on only one correlation of king and ministers for the three samādhis and three liberations. In the Perfect gates, emptiness itself is signlessness and nonaction, and one gate is three gates; nevertheless, one must first distinguish the respective objects of the Tripiṭaka, Shared, Distinct, and Perfect teachings so that identical names do not conflate different meanings.

Zhanran judges the closing five periods as teaching and transformation through the five flavors. From the six disciples and the Tathāgata, the five aggregates and five liberations at the twin trees, he reads the three buddha-natures and the neither-identical-nor-separate relation of the six Dharmas. This mirror gathers the exertion of the entire passage into “regulating” and “discerning.” Discerning does not mean multiplying judgments but knowing at every joint whether what contemplates has become attached. Regulating does not mean adding another Dharma but causing the existing factors to rise and sink appropriately and mutually arise within one thought.

The later Zhiguan Yili summarizes discerning passage and obstruction through “three calmings and three contemplations within one mind” and “inspection at every joint,” and takes the foundations of mindfulness as the substance of the factors. The Zhiguan Dayi joins “when obstruction arises within passage, break it; when passage is gained within obstruction, protect it” into one line with the sequential testing and adjustment of the seven groups. Neither short text invents another method. Both reveal again the skeleton of this passage, from self-inspection of what contemplates through the mutual arising of all the factors.

If One Is Already Cultivating the Path, Why Are Aids Still Needed?

The treatise does not rush to prescribe medicine. It first asks separately about “faculties” and “obstructions.” Whether faculties are sharp concerns the ability to understand and enter contemplation; whether obstructions are present concerns whether afflictions in concrete matters will pull away and damage the contemplating mind. These are not the same thing, so their intersection produces four cases.

Sharp faculties without obstruction resemble strong legs on a level road and easily enter the cooling pool. With sharp faculties and obstruction, affliction may disturb one, yet concentration on the three gates of liberation prevents obstruction from overwhelming lucid faculties. Dull faculties without obstruction may progress slowly but can be regulated step by step through the factors of the path, turning dullness into sharpness. Only the final case has dull faculties and heavy obstruction: before the gates have opened, obstruction has already dragged away the contemplating mind, so counteraction must first enable secure entry.

This makes a very practical distinction: seeing principle and handling affairs do not always advance together. Those at the first and second fruits have seen true principle, yet afflictions in concrete affairs can still obstruct them. Someone who suppresses and severs affliction through worldly wisdom may have light concrete obstruction without having seen noble principle. One must neither claim entry into principle because conduct happens to proceed smoothly nor belittle concrete obstruction because one already possesses understanding. Aids to the path work precisely in this gap. They do not replace correct contemplation; they keep untreated habits of life from pulling it down.

The Six Obscurations Are Not a List but the Scene of Contemplating Mind

Why are the six perfections taught first among immeasurable counteractions? Because during cultivation of samādhi the six obscuring illnesses appear in exceedingly concrete forms.

Stinginess and greed do not mean merely loving money. They grip body, life, and wealth tightly and make mind chase desirable objects; the harder one tries to suppress them, the tighter they adhere. Breaking precepts is not merely making an error against a rule. Deportment becomes coarse and bodily and verbal conduct unrestrained, rendering pure prohibitions insubstantial and samādhi difficult to produce. Anger becomes resentment, harsh and divisive speech, and disputes over right and wrong, directly poisoning concentrated mind. Indolence resembles repeatedly stopping while wood drilled for fire is about to grow hot: one cannot finish even a worldly affair, much less open the gate of samādhi. Distraction leaves the body nowhere settled, the mouth sounding without cease, and mind like a lamp in the wind, so Dharma cannot appear. Delusion runs into walls of annihilation and permanence, person and self, unable in any matter to see clearly how to advance or retreat.

Giving, moral discipline, tolerance, diligence, meditative concentration, and wisdom are therefore not six neatly arranged virtues but six actions forced forth by six illnesses. Giving loosens the fist. Moral discipline gathers in body and speech. Tolerance cuts off the poison of anger. Diligence prevents the fire from dying just as it begins to catch. Meditative concentration stills the windblown lamp. Wisdom keeps one from standing face-first against a wall. Each perfection begins with an illness discernible now and therefore offers a treatment practicable now.

One must ask further: if mind has moved, must body and speech already have moved? Not necessarily. When an obscuration is thin, the illness moves faintly only within mind. When it is thick, body and speech manifest outwardly only because mind has already moved first. Practice cannot wait until external marks run out of control before knowing illness is present, nor assume an internal illness has disappeared because external marks are temporarily quiet. Only by looking from within outward and discerning thickness can one know how much force is needed and at what layer to apply it.

If One Dose Fails, Should It Simply Be Increased?

The treatise’s answer is not to strengthen the same medicine without limit but to “weigh skillfully.” Take stinginess and greed. Some people enjoy giving, while others resist at its mere mention. During giving, some produce wholesome minds, while others instead compare, seek reputation, and feel dissatisfied. Some loosen the knot of stinginess with one gift; others give yet keep gripping. Some thereby help the gate of contemplation open; others still cannot enter. The name of the illness is the same, but patients need not respond identically.

There are therefore four forms of adjustment. If giving directly treats stinginess, apply the opposite head-on. If the original Dharma does not fit, rotate to another. If one Dharma is too weak, combine several. Finally, one can treat through the ultimate meaning. The other five obscurations are weighed likewise. Aids to the path therefore do not become a rigid prescription: they neither abandon concrete practice nor absolutize any one practice.

More importantly, the six perfections cannot be seen merely as six isolated wholesome deeds. If giving once leaves only the thought “I completed an act of giving,” it may not have touched the stingy mind. If one instance of endurance merely suppresses anger, strength of tolerance may not arise. By requiring contemplation of assisting practices as inconceivable and capable of including all Dharmas, the treatise returns every concrete action to the whole path of cultivation: illness is seen, practice actually occurs, and contemplation of principle unfolds with it. The three cannot be separated.

Which Is Greater, Six Perfections or Ten?

The treatise first breaks the habit of judging by number. Some suppose that six is abbreviated and ten extensive and therefore use the two counts to judge the greatness of teachings. Zhizhe points out that six and ten are only expansion and contraction. Dhyāna already contains vows, wisdom, power, and superknowledge, which can be opened into separate names. Prajñā already contains wisdom of the varieties of the path and wisdom of all modes, which can likewise be opened into separate names. Spoken separately, they are ten; gathered, still six.

It resembles one hand spoken of as five fingers or as palm and fingers forming one hand. Expansion makes functions clearer; contraction keeps their common root from dispersing. Judging ten necessarily profound and six necessarily shallow merely because ten exceeds six mistakes the number of labels for the depth of Dharma meaning. The real question is not how many items there are but how each perfection includes Dharmas, breaks obscuration, and corresponds with contemplation of principle.

The treatise therefore begins with the perfection of giving including the awakening factor of equanimity and continues through the Buddha’s powers, fearlessnesses, distinctive qualities, unobstructed knowledges, superknowledges, dhāraṇīs, and marks and excellences. “Including” does not cram myriad Dharmas into six drawers. It reveals the functions of one practice at different levels. Relinquishment can mean releasing wealth, the emptiness of all three matters, or abandoning the two extremes. Moral discipline can guard deportment or prevent faculties and objects from harming one another. Wisdom can break the inversion of self or illuminate the immeasurable differences among faculties and objects. The names remain six, but depth and function are not sealed within six words.

Why Does Perfect Relinquishment Still Require Actually Giving Something Up?

The passage on giving states the treatise’s central tension most clearly. Perfect relinquishment in contemplation of principle does not grasp a real giver, gift, or recipient and therefore does not fall into the extreme of existence. Nor does it annihilate the three matters into empty nonexistence and therefore does not fall into the extreme of emptiness. Only when body, life, and wealth are immediately empty and provisional without entering either extreme can they meet the permanent abiding of the Middle Way. If only concrete marks are discussed, giving may be heroic yet lack contemplation of principle. If one understands only perfect relinquishment yet refuses to release a hair’s worth when concrete matters arise, contemplation remains in one’s chest and speech.

Zhizhe deliberately makes the gap sharp: the mouth can discourse on the true mark while the hands guard possessions and will not release them; one understands body and life as illusory while calculating every exertion when hardship arises; one says all three matters are empty while cherishing life when actual yielding is required. This does not demand spectacular conduct as proof. It demands that “relinquishment” truly reach the obscuration of stinginess. If the stingy mind does not move at all, this understanding has not opened the gate of liberation.

Concrete giving therefore resembles oil added to the lamp of the other five perfections and factors of the path, increasing its light. It follows a complete route: repent at the site of practice and see the obscuration of stinginess; make a decisive vow to relinquish body, life, and wealth; practice oneself and teach others, praise the Dharma and rejoice in its practitioners; finally regard wealth as excrement, body as a poisonous vessel, and life as a moving cloud, relinquishing them like a discarded mustard seed when conditions allow beings to benefit. Contemplation of principle is not replaced by concrete practice but tested and strengthened within it.

Moral discipline, tolerance, and diligence unfold along the same route. Precepts resemble a flotation bladder for crossing the sea and are not damaged on the pretext of preserving the fleshly body. Tolerance resembles rivers and seas receiving filth, bridges accepting footsteps, and targets receiving arrows; its strength grows within adverse objects. Diligence puts death directly before one’s eyes and delays no longer in the first, middle, or final watch. No perfection is a momentary surge. Each means practicing oneself, transforming others, praising the Dharma and practitioners, establishing a vow, and seeking witness until concrete practice corresponds with the factors of the path.

Why Can One Not Simply Choose the Gate One Likes?

Dharmas of dhyāna are numerous. The treatise selects only five gates—counting breaths, impurity, loving-kindness, dependent origination, and recollection of the Buddha—because this passage concerns counteraction. The five gates are not personality preferences but five illnesses and five medicines.

When initial and sustained application are excessive and mind chases the three poisons everywhere, counting breaths gathers it. If mind wanders midway, one recognizes that and brings it back, counting again from one. When lust adheres, coldness, discoloration, worms, pus, and stench after death illuminate and break what was once cherished. The nine perceptions, liberations, spheres of mastery, totalities, and eight recollections unfold according to differences in mastery of objects and fear. When mind chases anger, loving-kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity rotate it: removing suffering, giving happiness, rejoicing when others obtain happiness, and leaving love and hate for impartiality each become an object for entering concentration.

When deviant views and inversions arise, contemplation of dependent origination breaks self. Seen across three lives, annihilation and permanence cannot stand; across two, no fixed self moves from a former birth into the present; within one thought, intrinsic nature is unobtainable. When torpor and wrongdoing obstructing the path arise, recollection of the Buddha takes the markless marks of the response Buddha as object, clarifies what is contemplated, breaks obstruction, and enables one to see the Buddha. If the illness is lust but one refuses contemplation of impurity merely because one likes counting breaths, or the illness is anger but one only analyzes dependent origination ever more finely, the medicine may not fit the disease. The sequence of five gates teaches one first to distinguish the illness and then select the gate.

Does the Body Truly Deserve Such Cherishing?

The perfection of wisdom does not begin by giving an abstract answer but by contemplating the body from head to foot. It breaks the inversion of purity through five levels of impurity. The joining of components left by one’s parents is impurity of seed. Ten months in the womb amid filth is impurity of dwelling place. The constant flow of earwax, tears, mucus, foul breath, sweat, and grime is impurity of intrinsic mark. The internal gathering of intestines, pus, blood, fat, marrow, and nests of worms is impurity of intrinsic nature. The four elements dispersing at death, worms and birds pecking, and stench carrying for several li are ultimate impurity.

This contemplation is easily misread as hatred of the body. The treatise’s real question is why a body formed under such conditions and discharging filth within and without is imagined as permanently pure, and why one creates every kind of wrongdoing to cherish it. A dung beetle’s fondness for its ball does not make the dung fragrant. Fine clothing and food, stroking the head, and wiping the neck do not change the body’s composition from birth to death merely because people cherish it. Contemplation of impurity breaks an inversion; it does not fabricate another self who hates the body.

The inversion of pleasure is broken through the three sufferings. The four great elements resemble four mutually injuring snakes in one box: earth and water damage each other, wind and earth impede each other, and water and fire oppose each other. Hunger, thirst, cold, heat, birth, aging, illness, and death press inwardly and outwardly. Suffering added to suffering is the suffering of suffering. The four elements attacking and destroying one another is the suffering of change. Movement from thought to thought without abiding is the suffering of conditioned formations. Once one sees a thorn in the wound, one no longer mistakes temporary relief from pain for real pleasure.

The inversion of permanence is broken through breathing. Consciousness is tied by karmic rope within the cage of the four elements. This cage breaks and another forms, like the destruction of a seal-mold followed by the appearance of its impression, without a single thought abiding. An exhalation cannot guarantee another inhalation; one breath not returning is death. Karma further resembles a group of creditors: as an earlier debt nears repayment, later debts compete to arrive. People still amass from the four directions and leave alone before they are satisfied. Seeing impermanence swifter than flood, violent wind, or lightning, with no escape in mountain, sea, sky, or marketplace, one seeks an exit as if rescuing one’s head from fire.

The inversion of self begins with the question “Where am I?” When praise or insult comes, one says another praises or insults me. One adheres to self while walking, standing, sitting, and lying down, like a hand coated in glue sticking to whatever it grasps. Yet searching head, feet, limbs, and joints one by one reveals no ruler. The body is only an empty aggregate provisionally formed by the mechanism of karmic force. At night one mistakes an old acquaintance in a room for a ghost; in an empty pavilion two ghosts fight over a corpse and replace its limbs one by one. These show more clearly that the self grasped is only a provisional name assembled through conditions. Wisdom does not find a more hidden self; it causes the inversion of self to cease.

Why Is Escape through the Three Vehicles Drawn as Three Animals?

Once the four inversions are broken, the mind of the path arises and birth-and-death closes in like a hunting enclosure. A śrāvaka resembles a roebuck that hears the enclosure closing and suddenly bolts, without time even for water or grass beside the road, seeking only its own escape. A pratyekabuddha resembles a deer that has broken out yet looks back and cries sorrowfully for the herd left inside. It feels compassion but lacks the power to return and rescue them, so it can only continue in grief.

A bodhisattva resembles a great elephant king. It too fears blades and arrows and is not insensible to birth-and-death. Yet seeing the young elephants and the herd, and knowing its strength can bear the danger, it cannot bear to leave alone. When bodhisattvas’ contemplations of impermanence and no-self become clear, fear of birth-and-death presses urgently on their hearts; great compassion arises at the same time and prevents them from abandoning blind, darkened beings. They patiently remain in birth-and-death without craving the five desires. They bear beings without yet being omnipotent.

The treatise therefore also draws a small elephant. Although beginners wish to block arrows, insufficient strength may injure both themselves and others and even cause loss of wholesome roots. This prevents great compassion from being romanticized. The vow to enter birth-and-death deserves praise, yet one must still cultivate the wholesome roots of the six perfections extensively and increase the Dharma body and wisdom-life. One differs from ordinary beings by dwelling in birth-and-death without pursuing the five desires; from the Two Vehicles by fearing birth-and-death without abandoning beings; and from the Buddha fruit by the need to accumulate direct and assisting practice continuously until one can bear the task.

Which Is Superior, the Six Perfections or the Factors of the Path?

The treatise answers with three pairs and six statements. If the factors cannot meet the true, the six perfections break obscuration: the perfections break the factors. If the six perfections cannot reach the other shore, the factors bring awakening and entry: the factors break the perfections. First using the six perfections to break obscurations and then cultivating the factors until they naturally mature is the perfections cultivating the factors. Equanimity, correct action, the forms of mindfulness, diligence, concentration, and wisdom within the factors in turn cultivate the six perfections: the factors cultivate the perfections. Finally, giving is immediately the Great Vehicle and the four foundations of mindfulness are immediately the Great Vehicle. The perfections and factors are unobtainable and nondual: each immediately is the other.

This does not debate which set of Dharma gates has higher status. It asks whether they benefit practice. If one side cannot break obscuration, the other breaks it. When they advance cultivation, they cultivate one another. Seen through principle, they immediately are one another. The boundary between direct and assisting is therefore clear without becoming rigid: clear because amid illness there truly are principal and assisting medicines; not rigid because the same Dharma can at different moments be what breaks, what is broken, what cultivates, or what is cultivated.

The similes of being taught at the places of two trillion buddhas yet forgetting midway and of carrying a jewel in one’s garment without knowing it show precisely that a seed of the Great Vehicle cannot function merely because it “has always been there.” Awakening fear of birth-and-death through a lesser Dharma and gradually guiding one back to the father’s house is medicine according to illness. The sick son of a wealthy family must take yellow-dragon broth; his parents do not begrudge good medicine. The Buddha’s use of preparatory means likewise does not begrudge the Great Vehicle. The value of an assisting Dharma is not decided by whether it is ultimate but by whether it can cure the present illness and open the gate.

How Do the Six Faculties Become the Site of Practice for the Six Perfections?

The treatise places the six perfections layer by layer within eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind, showing that regulation does not leave contact and seek some other pure place.

At the first level, not receiving the six objects is giving; not being harmed by them, moral discipline; tolerating adverse objects, tolerance; tirelessly guarding faculties and objects, diligence; remaining undistracted before objects, dhyāna; and knowing objects as impermanent, suffering, empty, and quiescent, wisdom. At the level contemplating emptiness, faculties and objects are empty and one constantly relinquishes; they cannot harm each other; opposition and accord, tolerance and intolerance, are unobtainable; one constantly trains in emptiness without retreat; one neither becomes distracted nor savors; and one is neither deluded nor wise. The six perfections are not added to the six faculties but are six transformations as faculties encounter objects.

At the next level, each faculty and object possesses the immeasurable causes and fruits of the ten Dharma realms. Distinguishing without attachment is giving; responding to faculties without error and without harming wholesome roots is moral discipline; abiding in the conventional truth amid opposing and agreeable objects is tolerance; facing immeasurable differences without thoughts of difficulty and distress is diligence; distinguishing without mental disorder is dhyāna; giving medicine at the proper time through wisdom of the varieties of the path without defiled attachment is wisdom. Regulation now means not merely closing the senses but responding to capacities within immeasurable distinctions.

Perfect contemplation takes the eye faculty as its example. The eye faculties of the nine Dharma realms are not outside the Buddha Dharma realm, and one faculty is immediately empty, provisional, and the Middle. Relinquishing the two extremes is giving; not being harmed by them, moral discipline; not being moved by them, tolerance; naturally flowing into the ocean of omniscience, diligence; contemplating the eye’s real nature, concentration; and illuminating the Middle Way through wisdom of all modes, wisdom. What is true of eye is true of ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind; what is true of faculties is true of objects and all Dharmas. At this point “regulation” no longer merely suppresses the six faculties but makes every seeing, hearing, sensing, and knowing a place in which all six perfections are complete.

How Can the Initial Mind Speak of the Buddha’s Ten Powers?

The treatise extends the inclusion of Dharmas by the six perfections all the way to the Buddha’s deportment. First, the four kinds of four truths include the ten powers. Knowing which cause necessarily brings which fruit and which path necessarily leads where is unerring knowledge of what is possible and impossible. One knows karma and recompense, depth of meditative concentration, beings’ past faculties, present desires, future natures, where paths lead, past lives, the divine eye, and exhaustion of contaminants. Although the ten powers appear as ten names, at their root they are one mind’s wisdom making truthful judgments regarding ten kinds of objects.

Why can the same ten powers have four explanations? The treatise uses the simile of a king’s secret expression and a wise minister understanding his intent. The Buddha teaches with one sound, neither allowing lesser faculties to slander the great nor crushing lesser faculties beneath a great Dharma. Bodhisattvas know in which teaching the expression’s intent lies and ask corresponding questions on beings’ behalf. Wisdom knows not only the literal surface of a sentence but also through which gate this person at this time should receive benefit.

If beginners have not become buddhas, how can they cultivate the ten powers? The treatise answers in two directions. If the initial mind had no Buddha Dharma at all, there could be no question of not abiding in the ten powers. Precisely because one already cultivates and possesses a share must deep attachment be broken; precisely because they are not ultimate must one not abide. Obtaining a share of the ten powers at the initial arousal of mind does not mean the powers are full. Contemplating body and bodily karma, speech and verbal karma, mind and mental karma, and even Buddha, Dharma, Saṅgha, and precepts as not fixed objects, and contemplating the three times as equal like empty space, already cultivates preparatory means for the ten powers. This has the same structure as the preceding aids: what is not yet ultimate is not therefore nonexistent, and possessing one share does not authorize claiming the ultimate.

How Are Immeasurable Buddha Dharmas Still Included by the Six Perfections?

The four fearlessnesses are the outward function of the ten powers. When inward judgment regarding suffering, origination, path, and cessation is clear, one teaches outwardly without timidity. Within the eighteen distinctive qualities, no faults of body or speech are included by correct action, correct speech, and correct livelihood. The concentrated mind never lost is included by the eight concentrations. Desire, diligence, and mindfulness without decrease are included by the eight kinds of diligence. Wisdom, liberation, and knowledge and vision of liberation without decrease, together with bodily, verbal, and mental action following wisdom, are included by the ten wisdoms. Inclusion does not say Buddha qualities number only as many as the factors; it reveals how cultivated causes lead to qualities of fruition.

The four unobstructed knowledges further unfold Dharma teaching. Knowledge of Dharma knows that one name can open immeasurable names. Knowledge of meaning knows that myriad names return to meaning as it truly is. Knowledge of phrasing penetrates the expressions of the ten realms. Joyful eloquence rotates the four kinds of four truths in response to faculties so that each receives benefit. The divine eye, divine ear, and supernatural power follow from regulation of the faculties; knowledge of others’ minds, past lives, and exhaustion of contaminants follow from the ten powers; the three illuminations are as explained among the six superknowledges. Giving, kind speech, beneficial action, and cooperation return respectively to relinquishment, correct action, speech, and livelihood, and the various concentrations.

Dhāraṇī resembles an intact vessel holding water, retaining wholesome Dharmas without leakage, and a thorn fence protecting fruit, blocking evil Dharmas from intrusion. The four right efforts are thus drawn as four actions: evil already arisen is like a venomous snake to be severed; evil not yet arisen like flowing water to be blocked in advance; goodness already arisen like fruit saplings to be irrigated; and goodness not yet arisen like fire within wood to be drilled out. At the thirty-two marks the treatise still asks through what substance, karma, and fruit a mark forms. If one clings only to external marks, a wheel-turning king and Māra can resemble them too. Sweeping marks away through empty wisdom cannot end in extinction of every mark. The Middle Way resembles a bright mirror, originally without a fixed image yet reflecting myriad images according to conditions. Thirty-two is no longer a limit; eighty-four thousand and even oceans of marks remain within the inclusion of the six perfections.

Thus the conclusion that “twelve categories are raised to reveal the beginning of the meaning” does not cap all wholesome Dharmas. It lets the reader see one line running through the entire passage: wherever heavy obscuration appears, treat it there through the six perfections. When the perfections and factors are practiced together, they regulate the faculties, include the powers, accomplish fearlessness, open eloquence, retain goodness and block evil, and adorn marks and excellences. If aids to the path can unfold this far, the direct path is still more inexhaustible.

Through the Eye of the Fuxing

The reading above follows the treatise’s own sequence from selecting capacities through four alternatives, treating the six obscurations, and using the six perfections to include Dharmas, through the Buddha’s deportment. Zhanran further locks several joints at which layers are most easily confused.

First, not everyone among the four alternatives separately requires this counteraction. Zhanran expressly judges that the first three do not; only those with dull faculties and heavy obstruction employ counteraction. Using the two ends represented by people at the first and second fruits and by those who sever delusion through worldly wisdom, he further shows that seeing principle and concrete obstruction cannot be conflated into one axis. “Assisting opening” therefore has a definite substance that it assists and does not call every wholesome action an aid to the path indiscriminately.

Second, the six perfections are used here because they oppose the six obscurations, first treating heavy obscurations through six practicable concrete acts. If one treatment does not remove the illness, the four adaptations can unfold into direct, rotated, combined, complete, and ultimate-meaning treatment. Zhanran further extrapolates through the four teachings: one obscuration can have twenty-three treatments, making 138 for all six. This number is obtained by the commentator’s expansion of the treatise’s formula and cannot be written backward as if Zhizhe had listed 138 Dharmas one by one.

Third, six and ten are only expansion and contraction. Zhanran expressly refutes the old explanation judging the size of a tenet or teaching by the abbreviated or extensive counts of six and ten. He points out that the textual meaning of the six perfections extends through the four teachings and that each also contains ten perfections. Still more crucial is “practicing together”: profound and subtle contemplation of principle without concrete practice and concrete giving without contemplation of principle are both partial. The treatise’s later three pairs and six statements precisely make concrete aids and contemplation of principle mutually break, cultivate, and immediately be one another.

Fourth, the five gates are selected from among the Dharmas of the perfection of dhyāna and prescribed according to five illnesses; the wisdom passage reveals the benefit of concrete aids. The literal “dwelling place” differs from “place of birth” in the Great Treatise. Zhanran says only that the two passages share one meaning and does not change the treatise’s graph. The commentary titles the Pūrṇa story as coming from the Ekottarika, but its extant direct parallel is in the Saṃyukta Āgama. It abbreviates the four brothers’ escape from death as the “Dharmapada Sūtra,” while the current work directly carrying the story is titled Sūtra of Parables in the Dharmapada. Such layers can only be preserved side by side; one text found later should not overwrite another.

Fifth, mutual breaking and mutual cultivation accomplish aids to the path in terms of provisional and real, while mutual identity opens provisional and real and accomplishes practicing together. In particular, Zhanran expressly explains the treatise’s “existent, nonexistent, and neither existent nor nonexistent” as beneficial, unbeneficial, and mutually identical, directly rejecting correlation of the three with the three truths as a loss of the passage’s purport. This judgment makes “benefiting practice” in the preceding text the center for reading the three pairs and six statements, instead of rewriting a question about gates of practice as another table of doctrinal labels.

Sixth, the four teachings each use the six perfections to regulate the faculties, and Zhanran expands this into twenty-four rounds. Including what acts and what receives yields forty-eight. These too are commentary calculations. In the Perfect Teaching’s verse on the eye faculty, the treatise reads “clearly and distinctly,” while the current scripture differs. Zhanran himself points out that the scripture lacks “clearly,” that the treatise speaks according to meaning, and that the sentence on the mind faculty likewise follows meaning. Since the commentary explicitly marks a layer of rewriting, the treatise’s sentence cannot be passed off as the current scripture’s verbatim text.

Seventh, the ten powers, fearlessnesses, distinctive qualities, and the rest are called the Buddha’s deportment because Buddha qualities lie not only in bodily marks but in complete inward wisdom and fearless outward function. Regarding the question of beginners, Zhanran uses three scriptures and treatises to establish that they already cultivate and possess a share of realization without reaching the ultimate. In the passage on the eighteen distinctive qualities, the current treatise reads “eleven Dharmas in all,” while the text Zhanran saw quotes “twelve Dharmas in all” and judges it perhaps mistaken, then reconciles the wording as eleven and supplies five Dharmas. This is a transmission difference left by two layers and cannot be silently collated into one sentence.

Eighth, although the treatise gathers everything from the four unobstructed knowledges onward in one sweep, Zhanran still distinguishes every item. Of the six superknowledges, three follow regulation of the faculties and three follow the ten powers. The three illuminations are established by removing obstructions from among the six superknowledges. Gathering in through cooperation first shares and afterward differs. Dhāraṇī, treated specifically, exists only in the Great Vehicle; treated generally, it can extend to bodhisattvas of the Tripiṭaka Teaching, and its capacities to block and retain are correlated with the four right efforts. These judgments show that “including” does not merge items because their names are similar; each Dharma must account for the function of the six perfections or factors of the path from which it opens. The meanings must not be conflated. Dhāraṇī in this unit concerns only retaining goodness and blocking evil; no separate spell is listed and none need be added from outside the text.

Finally, the passage on marks and excellences opens from the first thirty-two into immeasurable oceans of marks. Zhanran judges the first two teachings as provisional discourse within teaching and the latter two as the Dharma body markless yet manifesting marks. This is the commentary’s conclusion and should not be poured prematurely into the treatise’s earlier passage. The whole mirror guards one boundary throughout: Zhizhe answers through gates of practice how correct contemplation can function again when obstruction is heavy; Zhanran marks which items are schematic calculations, which rewritings according to meaning, and which inclusions are judgments of provisional and real. Distinguishing the two layers prevents aids to the path from being demoted into miscellaneous practices added from outside or elevated into another road replacing the direct path.

The preceding contemplative methods have unfolded the contemplated object, arousal of the mind of awakening, settling the mind, breaking through dharmas, discerning passage and obstruction, the factors of the path, and aids to the path in sequence. At this point the treatise abruptly turns its gaze toward the practitioner: where, in fact, has one now arrived? When wisdom first opens, can one endure the press of people from without and disturbances arising within? Just as one is about to enter the real, might one instead become enamored of the lucidity now before one? Stages, patient endurance, and freedom from attachment to dharmas guard against different dangers, yet all three dangers arise precisely when practice has begun to yield something.

First Question: If Dharma Meaning Is Already Understood, Why Discern the Stages?

Because understanding clearly is not the same as realizing clearly. Both the stage of the real and the stage of semblance possess knowledge and vision of liberation. Their outward appearance is close, yet in actuality they resemble vermilion and purple, each with its own true color. If practitioners do not know what they have severed and realized and what they have not yet severed or realized, they may take the four wholesome roots for the first fruit or take the first fruit for the stage beyond training. On the bodhisattva path, they may also occupy an exalted stage while possessing only the mind of an ordinary person at its first arousal. Stages are not names supplied for contests over rank. They keep practitioners from declaring the unattained to have been attained.

The names of stages taught in the four teachings are not entirely alike. The śrāvaka path is comparatively brief in duration, while the bodhisattva course is long and its road far-reaching. The Tripiṭaka, Shared, Distinct, and Perfect teachings each possess different depths of practice and severance; the Distinct teaching also has many horizontal and vertical routes according to its four gates and its responses to capacities. Scriptures and treatises that appear to conflict are not necessarily negating one another. To seize upon a single scripture or treatise and denounce all other gates instead loses sight of the expedients by which teachings are established for differing capacities. If one knows that the various roads all return to the One Vehicle and the various teachings all reach the ground of all-knowledge, doubt readily subsides and contention has nowhere to arise.

The treatise accordingly proposes ten intentions through which the Buddha-Dharma may be integrated. First, understand that principle is originally quiescent and cut off from words: the four truths, three truths, two truths, one truth, and even no truth are opened or gathered according to sentient understanding and wisdom. Second, grasp the structural framework of the teachings and know how gradual, sudden, indeterminate, and secret teaching, together with the Tripiṭaka, Shared, Distinct, and Perfect teachings, encompass the spoken teaching. Third, use the four siddhāntas to penetrate the words and meanings in scriptures and treatises that appear contradictory, neither forcing them together through subjective views nor overpowering others with erudition. Fourth, know how attachment creates blockage and then skillfully break it through single, repeated, complete, and wordless gates; once breaking is exhausted, retain no dharma that performs the breaking.

Fifth, join the correct Dharma gate to the stage currently practiced so that practicable expedients, realized gradations, provisional and real, great and small, worthy and noble are not confused with one another. Sixth, move vertically and horizontally without obstruction within one Dharma gate while still forming an ordered composition. Seventh, open the sections and divisions so that what precedes and follows interlocks in succession. Eighth, explain the scriptural text closely so that wording and meaning correspond. Ninth, also penetrate Sanskrit and Chinese names and enumerations so that language does not become an obstacle. Tenth, on hearing a phrase or verse, cultivate in accord with what one has heard so that scriptural meaning enters mind and becomes contemplation, while contemplative practice is itself confirmed by scriptural teaching, rather than counting another person's treasures outside the gate. Stages constitute one of these ten intentions: they return what has been learned to what is practiced and realized.

Second Question: From What Step Do the Stages of the Perfect Teaching Begin to Take Shape?

The answer lies in the five forms of repentance. Contemplation of mind should always include repentance, but mental activity is subtle and contemplative strength is initially slight and sparse, so grave, dark karma is not easily opened all at once. Body and speech must therefore assist the karma of intention through utmost sincerity. To repent is openly to disclose evils previously committed and to change what has passed while cultivating what is to come. Practitioners recollect how, from beginningless time, they have been pressed by ignorance and moved body, speech, and mind within the three realms, creating the ten evils and harming the Three Treasures, the six kinships, and beings in the four modes of birth and five paths, even doing evil themselves, teaching others to do it, and rejoicing upon seeing it done. At this moment one does not merely list transgressions coolly. With voice and tears pouring forth, one prostrates with all five limbs like a great tree crashing down, simultaneously toppling the elevation of self and person.

Entreaty begins in knowing one's own lack of power. Śrāvakas directly repent their own transgressions. Bodhisattvas see that beings do not understand the suffering of transgression and revolve through long kalpas, so they entreat the buddhas of the ten directions to turn the Dharma wheel and remain in the world to liberate beings. Entreating the turning of the Dharma wheel causes beings to produce eye, knowledge, illumination, and awakening with regard to the four truths. Entreating buddhas to remain in the world resembles asking that a great torch not be extinguished but continue illuminating all for a long time. Universal entreaty resembles requesting sweet rain everywhere: although one's own field is small, it too receives nourishment. What is sought appears to be for beings, yet the practitioner's own transgression and suffering are also removed within this universal peace and joy.

Rejoicing is delighting in the goodness of others. One rejoices without exception in the meritorious goodness of beings in the three times, the uncontaminated goodness of the three vehicles, and all the goodness of buddhas from their first arousal of mind through their entry into extinction; one also encourages others to rejoice. Like the buyer of incense, the seller of incense, and the person standing nearby, all three of whom receive its fragrance, those who transform, those transformed, and those who rejoice all receive the perfuming of goodness. Seeing beings deluded naturally brings sorrow; seeing goodness in beings should bring still greater reverence and the constant mind of Never Disparaging. Beings inherently possess the three causes—correct, conditioning, and revealing. Though these have not yet become manifest today, they will eventually arise. The immeasurable future buddhas are present among the beings before us who have not yet accomplished the path.

Dedication turns all goodness toward awakening. Practitioners rejoice in the vast merit of all worthies and sages but do not keep the resulting merit for themselves. If beings lack goodness, practitioners give their own goodness to beings and then turn it together toward awakening, like returning a sound into a horn so that it carries farther. True dedication does not grasp a person who dedicates, cling to a destination of dedication, or regard dharmas as really arising and ceasing. Agent, object, and result all exist through the conjunction of deluded conceptions. Only dedication that accords with the true mark of non-arising and non-ceasing avoids bondage and fault.

Vows gather and sustain the preceding goodness through solemn resolve. When an object is promised to someone without a contract, its transfer may remain uncertain; when goodness is given to beings without a determining intention, regret and retreat may arise midway. A vow resembles the driver of an ox cart, giving the course of practice a direction. It also resembles a dhāraṇī, able to retain goodness and ward off evil, and an unfired clay vessel placed into fire, thereafter becoming capable of holding things. Practitioners of the two vehicles take the exhaustion of birth as their limit, whereas bodhisattvas transform beings birth after birth. Thus they need the shared vows of the four universal vows as well as particular vows made with every wholesome practice.

Repentance breaks the transgression of grave evil karma; entreaty breaks the transgression of slandering the Dharma; rejoicing breaks the transgression of jealousy; dedication breaks the transgression of greedy attachment to the various forms of existence; and vows further direct practice toward emptiness and signlessness.

Once the Gate of Contemplation Opens, How Do the Five Grades Grow Layer by Layer?

Through diligent practice of the five forms of repentance, which assist in opening the gate of contemplation, the three truths in one mind suddenly become luminous, like viewing all colors throughout a clean mirror. Perfect understanding within a single thought becomes spontaneously distinct; correct faith is steadfast and cannot be shifted by outside force. This is the first grade, profound faith and rejoicing. Its crucial point is to hear of the Buddha's far-reaching lifespan and produce one thought of faithful understanding, hearing the scripture without disparaging it and arousing profound faith and rejoicing.

One continues cultivating the five forms of repentance upon this perfect understanding and additionally reads and recites, bringing the wondrous meaning in the scripture together with one's inner mind. Like oil added to a flame, contemplation of mind becomes more luminous: this is the second grade. One then cultivates the five forms of repentance with an increasingly excellent mind and also teaches the Dharma to others, turning inner understanding into benefit that guides others. The merit of transforming others returns to nourish one's own mind, advancing contemplative practice another layer: this is the third grade.

The fourth grade still takes the five forms of repentance as its basis and concurrently cultivates the six perfections. The power of merit doubly assists contemplation of mind and makes it deeper. In the fifth grade one directly cultivates the six perfections; self-practice and transforming others, concrete practice and contemplation of principle, gradually become complete, and contemplation of mind is unobstructed and surpasses the preceding grade. The five grades progress from faithful understanding, reading and recitation, teaching the Dharma, concurrent practice of the six perfections, to direct practice of the six perfections without discarding the preceding grade. At each advance, another layer of practice is added to the contemplative practice already present.

The five grades may be spoken of as preceding the ten faiths, or they may correspond with the five minds among the ten faiths according to teachings responsive to capacities. Here the treatise preserves the measure implicit in saying that the Buddha's intent is difficult to know and does not force differing accounts into one rigid yardstick. Returning to contemplation of the object of the aggregates, sense fields, and elements itself, the darkened aggregates, sense fields, and elements are the stages of the three evil paths; the clear and wholesome aggregates, sense fields, and elements are the stages of the three wholesome paths; the aggregates, sense fields, and elements of wholesome expedients are the semblance stage of the Lesser Vehicle; the uncontaminated aggregates, sense fields, and elements are the real stages of the two vehicles; the aggregates, sense fields, and elements of transformational birth are the stages of five kinds of persons; and form, feeling, perception, formations, and consciousness as the permanently abiding Dharma-nature constitute the buddha stage. Stages do not build another staircase apart from the present thought. They discern the depths of delusion and awakening upon these same aggregates, sense fields, and elements.

As the five grades gradually turn luminous and pure, one suddenly enters wisdom from hearing and faith becomes steadfast. From faith arise mindfulness, diligence, wisdom, concentration, retention, moral discipline, protection, dedication, and vows. When the ten faiths are complete, this is called the semblance stage of purification of the six faculties. One then enters the first abode, breaks ignorance, and sees buddha-nature, only then entering the stage of the real. From there one passes through the forty-two stages until ultimate wondrous awakening, each with its own measure and without usurping what does not belong to one. The purpose of knowing stages is precisely to know where one now stands and how to take the next step, not to affix the highest names to oneself in advance.

When Wisdom First Becomes Keen, Why Does the Real Test Arrive Instead?

Patient endurance is often not confronting a dull beginner who knows nothing. As practitioners move from contemplation of the aggregates, sense fields, and elements through knowledge of stages, obstruction gradually turns and wisdom gradually opens. Even before entering a grade, or just after entering the first grade, their spiritual intelligence may become lucid and keen, cutting whatever it touches like a sharp blade or flying frost. Scriptures and treatises never studied before are suddenly understood. At a glance, the organizing purport of another's commentary becomes evident. On wishing to explain one line of meaning, eloquence seems inexhaustible.

The best course is to conceal understanding as though hiding a precious jade and advance silently and diligently. Yet when an awl is placed in a bag, its point readily protrudes. Seeing lecturers depart from principle or practitioners depart from proper standards, one is moved by compassion and offers a correction. It begins with one or two sentences of Dharma or one or two sections on meditation, first spoken to one person. Word gradually spreads, a crowd gathers, and eventually one cannot stop even when one wishes to. At first this appears able to benefit others. In actuality the benefit may be very slight, one's own grade not only fails to advance, and old obstructions arise again.

The treatise uses several grave images. A young elephant with insufficient strength charges into battle and is instead buried beneath blades and arrows. A handful of hot water poured into an icy pool not only fails to melt the ice but makes the frozen layer still thicker. One's reputation may shake the four quarters and hundreds or thousands of followers may gather, an appearance of great flourishing, yet at life's end one may still regret having led a congregation too soon, unable to accomplish the original aim. The four connected repetitions of “choose” require practitioners to examine their wisdom and capacity to bear responsibility again and again.

This does not counsel abandoning beings forever. If wisdom is powerful and can truly bring vast benefit, one may emerge to transform others like a great elephant leading a herd. If strength is not yet full, first endure patiently and cultivate samādhi deeply; after practice is accomplished and strength manifest, teaching and guiding will not be too late. It resembles taking medicine to regulate and nourish the body, then returning to one's work after recovery. Though the body temporarily withdraws from people, mind has not abandoned beings. Only at purification of the six faculties, when what one says can be trusted and hearers rejoice, has one reached the stage capable of transforming others.

External reputation, gain and support, and retinues resemble nets, cords of hair, and a tree where flocks of birds gather: they exhaust branches and leaves from without and bore into them from within. The first step is to decline them, neither accepting nor attaching. If they cannot be declined and instead cling to one, contract the appearance of virtue and expose flaws, appearing wild and careless outwardly while concealing reality within, so that thieves do not see the gold and jewels. If one still cannot escape, depart for another region and concentrate on studying the path where no one knows one. Faced with invitations from thousands and tens of thousands, there are only three words: decline, conceal, depart.

If what comes from within is affliction, karma, concentration, views, or pride, illuminate and break it through the three contemplations of emptiness, provisionality, and the Middle. Even if one's flesh is cut to pieces, inner mind does not move or scatter. The crushing weight of the earth does not sink the mind. Violent winds, freezing ice, and raging fire cannot alter correct contemplation. On obtaining a small measure of meditative concentration, do not rush to rejoice; upon merely seeing a little evil, do not rush to grieve. An unfired clay vessel easily collapses back into a mass of mud, and the udumbara flower rarely bears fruit. The greater the undertaking, the more patient endurance is required at precisely this moment.

Once Inner and Outer Obstructions Have Passed, Why Can There Still Be a “Fall from the Summit”?

Because what finally remains may be attachment precisely to wholesome dharmas. The preceding nine dharmas have been practiced and inner and outer obstructions have passed, so one should by rights enter the real. If one still remains in place, the reason lies not in reputation and gain or in affliction, but in attachment to the lucidity one has attained. At this point one neither enters the stage nor falls into the two vehicles. One simply fails to enter when one should enter and remains at the summit of what resembles the path.

The treatise uses two boats under the same sail as a simile: both set out together, one advances while the other remains still; the one that stops is abiding in attachment. It also compares inner obstruction to sand and outer obstruction to the bank. The boat now touches neither sand nor bank, yet remains upon the water because the wind has ceased. Neither advancing nor retreating appears secure, but the opposite shore is still distant. Attachment to dharmas is difficult to sever precisely because its object is not evil but a dharma that has already appeared within cultivation.

If one can break attachment to dharmas, one enters the three gates of liberation, arouses the real Middle Way, possesses a wisdom-body not awakened through another, naturally flows into the ocean of all-knowledge, and abides in patience with non-arising and patience with extinction. Thereafter the merit is vast and only a buddha can know it ultimately. The expedients for advancing in calming-and-contemplation taught by this treatise escort the practitioner only as far as entry into the first abode; the merit after entering the abode is not unfolded in this section.

Why Must the Ten Dharmas That Complete the Vehicle Become One Great Carriage?

Because the ten dharmas are not ten scattered implements but a complete vehicle-body capable of carrying the practitioner. The great carriage of the Lotus Sūtra is high, broad, and magnificently adorned, and every carriage part reveals one aspect of contemplation. Every thought of mind being none other than Dharma-nature and the true mark is the great carriage bestowed equally; every mind being empty, provisional, and the Middle is the carriage each person receives. It is high because it penetrates the source of the three truths, broad because it encompasses the ten Dharma realms, and adorned with many treasures like the immeasurable factors of the path.

The four right efforts block evil and sustain goodness, and vows further gather and sustain what is practiced, like railings encircling the carriage and making its body secure. Unobstructed knowledge of Dharma, meaning, diction, and eloquence proclaims the Dharma sound like bells hanging on all four sides. Loving-kindness and compassion universally shelter beings like an awning stretched above. The excellent merit of buddhas encompassed by the factors of the path resembles adornment with precious jewels. The determining mind of the four universal vows does not retreat, like jeweled cords interlaced; the four means of gathering delight beings, like flowered tassels hanging down; dhyānas and samādhis arouse superknowledges, like layered cushions spread out; and the four gates return together to one principle, in which all practices find rest, like a crimson pillow placed securely.

The wisdom of the four establishments of mindfulness breaks the darkness of the eight inversions and is the white ox that draws the carriage. The four right efforts increase wholesome dharmas, making the ox stout and powerful, and sever evil dharmas, making its hide clean. The four bases of supernormal power and the four unobstructed knowledges give it a fine form. The five faculties are firm like sinews, and the five powers can ward off evil like physical strength. The seven factors of awakening skillfully select, like its gait; the eightfold noble path is stable, like evenly placed steps; and counteractive aids to the path broadly encompass dharmas, like numerous attendants and guards. Finally, breaking attachment to dharmas and ignorance, entering the ocean of all-knowledge, and swiftly arousing the real is its speed like the wind. The great carriage is called great not only because it points high and far but because its Dharma gates are complete and it can truly carry beings directly to the place of awakening.

The same vehicle can also be spoken of in five forms according to the depth of what becomes manifest. The wondrous Dharma inherent in everyone is the vehicle in principle. Hearing the Buddha's teaching and joyfully receiving it is the vehicle in name. Practicing according to the teaching and entering the five grades is the vehicle in contemplative practice. Attaining purification of the six faculties is the vehicle in semblance. Beginning with the first abode, proceeding through the ten abodes, ten practices, ten dedications, and ten grounds, and reaching wondrous awakening is the vehicle of the real unfolded from that point. If merely abandoning evil and choosing emptiness is called the Great Vehicle, it resembles a bald and broken carriage, unable to contain the complete Dharma gate or truly carry the practitioner.

Beyond the Meditation Cushion, Where Are the Ten Dharmas to Be Used?

They are to be used in the six activities of walking, standing, sitting, lying down, speaking, and acting, and also when eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind encounter forms, sounds, odors, tastes, tangibles, and dharmas. Seated contemplation of the aggregates, sense fields, and elements has already been explained in detail. But if one can contemplate only while sitting upright and loses the contemplative method as soon as one rises, how could one swiftly correspond with principle?

Take walking as an example. When the foot is raised and lowered, the foot is form, and form is moved by mind. Mind arising in dependence upon form is the form aggregate; receiving this walking is the feeling aggregate; reckoning that an “I” is walking is the perception aggregate; wholesome or unwholesome walking is the formations aggregate; and the discriminating mind within walking is the consciousness aggregate. The object of walking in relation to mind also includes sense fields and elements. The aggregates, sense fields, and elements are all present within a single raising and lowering.

The aggregates, sense fields, and elements within this walking arise from the conjunction of ignorance and formations as conditions, yet do not depart from Dharma-nature. Dharma-nature is precisely the Dharma realm. All dharmas converge upon the present act of walking, and nothing surpasses it. The one contains all and the all do not obstruct this one: this is the inconceivable object within walking. When one sees this object, loving-kindness and compassion arise simultaneously. Through long kalpas one has been deceived by the aggregates and sense fields, and beings too remain in intoxication, invertedly understanding without knowing it. One therefore vows to break ignorance and become a refuge for beings.

Next, still within walking, one settles in concentration and wisdom and universally breaks the three obstructions of views and thought, lack of knowledge, and ignorance. One discerns passage and obstruction without turning medicine into illness; cultivates the factors of the path and the six perfections as counteractions; discerns one's own stage and knows that one is not yet equal to the noble ones, thereby advancing in practice through shame and conscience; subdues reputation and gain outwardly and the three obstructions inwardly, enduring patiently without movement; and does not allow attachment to dharmas to cause stagnation, thereby completely accomplishing the ten dharmas. Each step can thus winnow away the bran of ignorance and reveal the rice of Dharma-nature. Raising and lowering the foot, one always comes from the place of awakening. Standing, sitting, lying down, speaking, and acting can be unfolded according to the same structure. Although some samādhis include no practice of lying down, contemplation can still be cultivated while lying down within the samādhi of following one's own mind. A king of old awakened to pratyekabuddhahood while lying down, demonstrating precisely that bodily deportment need not become a break in contemplative practice.

When the Eye Sees One Form, Why Can the Whole of Calming-and-Contemplation Unfold?

When the eye encounters form, if one reckons there is an “I capable of receiving,” one object contains three receptions and the six objects together contain eighteen receptions. Eye seeing form also includes five aggregates, three elements, and two sense fields. If one contracts these into only a few Dharma categories, one cultivates with diminution. Complete contemplative method sees, at the arising of one thought of mind in relation to eye and form, that it is precisely the Dharma realm, contains all dharmas, and is empty, provisional, and the Middle.

Investigation through the four alternatives finds nothing obtainable, and thus it is empty. In the form of a single thought are incalculable arisings and ceasings of the five aggregates, ranging from the characteristic forms of ordinary people to the characteristic forms of those on all the grounds; feeling, perception, formations, and consciousness are likewise. Some can even know a being's place of birth from the sound of striking its skull, revealing that the concrete matters encompassed by one object are immeasurable, and thus it is provisional. The provisional is not fixed as any particular provisional, nor is emptiness fixed as any particular emptiness: this is neither empty nor provisional. Like space, both existence and nonexistence are quiescent; like sun and moon, it illuminates every darkness.

From this one mind, the five eyes are taught. Illuminating coarse form arisen through causes and conditions is the physical eye; illuminating subtle form arisen through causes and conditions is the divine eye; illuminating the emptiness of conditioned form is the wisdom eye; illuminating the provisionality of conditioned form is the Dharma eye; and illuminating conditioned form in the Middle is the buddha eye. The five eyes are complete in one mind. They are not pieced together from eyes separately attained by ordinary people, devas, practitioners of the two vehicles, and bodhisattvas. Rather, the buddha eye possesses all five powers, like streams entering the sea and each losing its former name. The three contemplations in one mind are therefore cultivation without diminution. One eye possessing five powers is therefore the gate of clear seeing and entry.

Here the treatise itself raises a difficult question. If a buddha possesses five eyes, those eyes should illuminate five objects. Yet scripture says that with five eyes a buddha does not see beings in the three groups, and it also says that seeing form is like being blind. If it is like blindness, how can coarse and subtle forms be illuminated?

The answer is this: all five objects darkly accord with the true mark, and the true mark is originally invisible, so it is compared to blindness. But invisibility does not mean that illuminating function is diminished. The five eyes still penetrate completely and the various objects remain distinctly clear. To speak of five kinds of seeing does not mean that something truly exists to be illuminated; to speak of blindness does not mean total annihilation. This is precisely arrival without coming and seeing without seeing, quiescence and activity not obstructing one another.

From this inconceivable object one arouses loving-kindness and compassion, settles in concentration and wisdom, and breaks every obstruction to dharmas. Within eye and form one discerns passage and obstruction, cultivates the establishments of mindfulness, learns counteractions, and knows the six identities. Although the eye presently contemplated possesses the five eyes, one may oneself still be only at the stage of name or contemplative practice and must not thereby claim the interfunctioning of the six faculties. If virtue and reputation gradually become established, one must further patiently endure internal and external obstructions. Only when attachment to dharmas does not arise can one avoid lingering and swiftly enter the eye of the real. Those entering through the eye often perform buddha-work through light; those entering through the ear often perform buddha-work through sound. Nose, tongue, body, and mind likewise each possess expedients, while one faculty can also interpenetrate all the others. The purpose throughout is to bring beings ultimate peace and joy.

Final Question: Knowing So Much, Why Can One Still Let a Whole Life Pass in Vain?

Because hearing without use resembles a black serpent carrying a jewel: the precious jewel brings no benefit at all to the long snake itself. At the end, the treatise uses three similes—a commander, a physician, and a master of the Dharma—to join knowledge and practice together again.

An ordinary soldier trains with only one blade and one arrow, defeats one or two enemies, and receives a small reward sufficient to sustain one household. To accomplish a great affair for the state, however, one must possess both civil and martial arts, devise strategy within the command tent, and repel conflict ten thousand miles away. The study of calming-and-contemplation is the same. Knowing only calming or only contemplation, breaking a little evil, gaining a little concentration, and gathering a few followers resembles the courage of an ordinary soldier. To break great afflictions, reveal immeasurable wholesome dharmas, and benefit immeasurable beings, one must thoroughly comprehend the ten dharmas and use them amid the six conditions and six receptions as situations arise. One who merely knows without using, or uses them but repeatedly fails, cannot rescue even oneself, much less extend benefit to others.

A village shaman knows only one technique, occasionally saves one person, and receives one payment. A great physician, however, must examine treatments throughout, broadly cure many illnesses, and become increasingly refined in application as pulses change. A meditator specializing in one Dharma may temporarily treat one delusion before the eyes but cannot thereby encompass the great path. Even knowing medicinal formulas well, one will not recover if one does not take the medicine according to the formula. Likewise, although reading and reciting calming-and-contemplation brings immense benefit, patience with non-arising will never appear if mind does not put it into practice.

Someone concerned only with parrying one question and one answer may show off for a time. To become a master of the Dharma, one must know different divisions well, overcome timidity before an assembly, and turn a hundred ways in response to capacities, answering questions that range vertically and horizontally without a fixed formula. Practitioners of contemplation must likewise make contemplative method available wherever they encounter conditions and objects. Whether Māra's armies can be broken, the grave illness of afflictions cured, and the profound meaning of Dharma-nature revealed does not depend on how much conceptual understanding exists on paper. It depends on whether the ten dharmas truly operate whenever an object appears.

Through the Eye of the Fuxing

Zhanran first fixes this long section in its place within the whole fascicle: stages constitute only the fifth among the ten intentions that integrate the Buddha-Dharma; they do not rename the ten dharmas of the vehicle as the ten intentions. The ten intentions explain how teaching and contemplation form a complete composition. Within them, practice and stage accompany one another so that practicable expedients and realized gradations are not confused. The ten dharmas, by contrast, are the ten methods actually operating while contemplating the object of the aggregates. Both groups contain ten, but their functions differ.

Regarding the five forms of repentance, Zhanran establishes them as the initial causes of the Perfect stages and clarifies their sequence of arising. If old transgressions have not been removed, entreaty and the other wholesome practices lack a pure foundation. After repentance comes entreaty; having heard the Dharma, one rejoices; one universally gives the merit of rejoicing to beings through dedication; and then solemn vows hold practice to its course. The five forms of repentance thereby become not merely a parallel list but a continuous path that opens contemplation. Each of the five grades further possesses a direct explanation and scriptural verification. From the first grade until entry into the abodes, their remote causes never depart from these five expedients.

Concerning stages, Zhanran especially prevents classifying inclusion from being confused with actual function. The five grades, purification of the six faculties, and the first abode belong respectively to contemplative practice, semblance, and the real. The name “first reliance” can broadly include the preceding five grades through purification of the six faculties, but the treatise explicitly places trustworthy speech and the capacity to transform others at the culmination of purification of the six faculties. This does not mean that those in the five grades possess no mind to transform others. It means that the strength of stage required to lead a congregation and teach the Dharma cannot be borrowed prematurely merely because both are included under the first reliance.

In the section on patient endurance, Zhanran calls reputation, gain and support, and retinues the soft thieves that come from without, while calling affliction, karma, concentration, views, and pride the strong thieves arising from within. The three methods for the external are neither accepting nor attaching, contracting virtue and exposing flaws, and departing far away. The three methods for the internal are emptiness, provisionality, and the Middle. Both groups contain three, but what they treat differs. If practitioners can already endure patiently within the object of the aggregates, the subsequent nine objects will not be triggered by adverse or favorable conditions. This means only that practitioners need not personally pass through those objects; it does not delete the teaching of the subsequent nine objects.

Regarding a fall from the summit, Zhanran clearly distinguishes a fall through regression from a fall through remaining. What the Tripiṭaka and Shared teachings describe can be regression and loss of wholesome roots. What this section describes within the Perfect stages, however, is the exhaustion of inner and outer obstructions followed by remaining at the summit of semblance without advancing; it is not regression to a lower stage. The boat touches neither sand nor bank and stops only because the wind of freedom from attachment to dharmas does not arise. This is precisely remaining at the summit being called a fall. Only when this attachment to dharmas is broken do the ten dharmas carry the practitioner into the first abode. Thus this section stops after explaining entry into the real and does not unfold the vast merit after entry into the abode.

The matching of Dharmas to the great carriage also has an order easily misread. Zhanran points out that meanings here are matched one by one according to the sequence of carriage parts in the scripture, rather than reordered according to the original sequence of the ten dharmas. The carriage simile functions as a summation: beginning with the object of the aggregates, the ten dharmas have now completed one vehicle. What patient endurance endures are the adverse and favorable conditions within the five grades, enabling the practitioner to enter purification of the six faculties. What freedom from attachment relinquishes is attachment to dharmas at the semblance stage of the six faculties, enabling entry into the first abode. Its height, breadth, adornment, and speed like the wind are therefore not a static enumeration of Dharma categories but the whole contemplative practice now capable of carrying one forward.

Zhanran also supplies the color distinction in the simile for the stages of the real and semblance. Vermilion is a primary color, like the stage of the real; purple is an intermediate color, like the stage of semblance. The two colors appear close, precisely why they must be clearly distinguished, not because the knowledge and vision of liberation already present at the stage of semblance should be erased. In the section on eye and form, he further says that neither form nor consciousness departs from consciousness-only. Thus, although the entrance can open through form or mind, what is contemplated does not split into two sets of dharmas. The five eyes are likewise not five unrelated powers of sight. Within the three contemplations in one mind, their names are established from illuminating coarse conditioned form, subtle conditioned form, emptiness, provisionality, and the Middle. Like streams entering the sea, their former names disappear, yet the nature and function of water are not annihilated. This supplementation allows “invisible” and “seeing without diminution” to hold simultaneously: the true mark contains no object to be grasped, but illuminating function is not thereby diminished.

Moreover, Zhanran does not isolate knowledge of stages as a table of ranks. He repeatedly carries stages into what follows. The danger of emerging early to transform others must be measured by the distinction between the five grades and the six faculties. The danger of remaining through attachment to dharmas must be seen through the distinction between semblance and the first abode. When encountering conditions and objects, knowing that one is only at the stage of name or contemplative practice prevents the inherent completeness of the five eyes from being mistaken for realized function already attained by oneself. Knowledge of stages is thus not information explained at the beginning and then set aside. It remains a continual means of self-calibration from patient endurance and freedom from attachment through the functioning of the six faculties.

Finally, Zhanran reads encountering conditions and objects as the place where the ten dharmas are genuinely tested. Among the six activities, walking is first taken as the example; among the six objects, eye and form are then the example, and the rest are extended from these. Both form and mind can become an entrance, and one faculty can also interpenetrate the others. The concluding similes of commander, physician, and master of the Dharma all press the same question: if conceptual understanding cannot appear when an object suddenly arises, one remains a black serpent carrying a jewel. Only when one knows one's stage without usurpation, endures obstructions without moving or retreating, and breaks attachment without remaining do the ten dharmas become, from meanings heard, the vehicle that leads directly to the place of awakening.

Why Does Cultivating Contemplation Instead Stir Afflictions?

When one has contemplated the aggregates, sense fields, and elements without awakening and continues observing, greed and anger that formerly lay concealed may suddenly erupt. This does not mean that cultivation of contemplation creates afflictions. Ordinarily one moves along with the current of afflictions and does not easily notice their power; only on going against the current does their fierce rush become manifest. The treatise therefore neither regards the intense delusion now present as an accident outside cultivation nor lets it drag away the contemplating mind. It changes the contemplated object in time: because the aggregates, sense fields, and elements have stirred afflictions, one leaves the preceding object and contemplates the afflictions now present.

Question: Dharmas of retribution are always present, and afflictions have never been absent. Why establish a separate object now?

Answer: Ordinary retribution and scattered activity continue without interruption and are still comparatively easy to rebuke and relinquish. Intense greed and anger that suddenly flourish, however, are difficult to control. The treatise explains this difference through iron and fire: before entering fire, iron is only black; once it enters fire, it glows red throughout. It also uses flowing water: while moving downstream one does not know its speed, but place a log crosswise and ripples and surging force immediately appear. A strong person angered when provoked and a sleeping lion roaring when startled likewise reveal latent power erupting upon meeting conditions. If one fails to recognize it, affliction not only prevents calming-and-contemplation from being accomplished but also draws one into grave transgressions and increases evil karma. Turning contemplation therefore does more than change topics. It guards contemplative practice at the point where one is most likely to lose one's footing.

Sharp and Dull Are Not Two Fixed Lists of Names

The name “affliction” indicates a dark and agitating dharma that vexes and disorders mental awareness, and also that it causes mind to become agitated and suffer disturbance. Although views and thought, sharp and dull, can provisionally be distinguished, in fact each includes the other. Crawling creatures cannot reason, yet still glare proudly and magnify themselves. Inferior ordinary people do not necessarily establish a view first, yet continually produce a mind of self amid walking, standing, sitting, and lying down. Thus what is called dull also has sharp characteristics. Conversely, people with fierce delusions of views also possess anger and desire, so the sharp likewise has dull characteristics. The names sharp and dull both extend across views and thought; they cannot cut people into two classes according to one static classification.

The treatise immediately differentiates them according to stage. Before dhyāna arises, even if one possesses worldly wisdom, eloquence, and intelligence, the strength of views and conceptions remains weak, and the ten proclivities receive their name from the dull. After views arise from concentration, the mind of views becomes fierce, and the ten proclivities receive their name from the sharp. It resembles one person grasping only language and another grasping Dharma meaning; their strength differs in debate. Delusions of views arising after dhyāna are reserved for the later object of views. Only intense afflictions arising before dhyāna are directly contemplated here. This boundary keeps the object that must now be contemplated from being confused with the later object of views.

Opened broadly, sharp and dull can become eighty-four thousand. For the present they are gathered into four divisions: greed, anger, and delusion arising predominantly are three divisions, while the three poisons arising equally are the equal division. When the poisons arise predominantly, initial and sustained thought are not abundant; when they arise equally, initial and sustained thought are abundant. These kinds of scattered activity imbued with affliction obstruct concentration, while indeterminate scattered activity of retribution does not. Thus the scriptural account of emerging from the concentration of cessation into scattered mind and then entering various concentrations from scattered mind cannot be extended into the claim that all scattered mind fails to obstruct concentration. Here only the general characteristics sufficient for entering contemplation are discerned; exhausting the detailed categories of views and thought is not urgent.

Why Not Investigate Every Name and Characteristic of Affliction Here?

Question: Since the characteristics of affliction are too vast to exhaust, would increasingly fine distinctions not increasingly assist contemplative practice?

Answer: The treatise replies with removing excrement and receiving a wage. Excrement represents affliction and wisdom the day's wage. The crucial task is diligent removal. If one remains only at distinguishing how much excrement there is, one never receives the wage. For now, one need only know the four divisions generally as defilement. This does not oppose distinctions or reject scriptural and treatise learning. To preserve the Buddha-Dharma, lead the community, and penetrate challenges, the five hundred arhats had to distinguish extensively; practitioners entering the provisional from emptiness should likewise distinguish in full. But when one is just about to enter the path and strength is not yet full, extensive analysis is not the task at hand.

Each of the four divisions further has a distinction between within and beyond the realms. The four divisions within the realms are shared afflictions severed in common by practitioners of the two vehicles. The four beyond the realms are not severed by them and are called particular afflictions. Shared delusion resembles branches and particular delusion the root; true wisdom severs the branches, while wisdom of the Middle severs the root. Viewed from the inconceivable, afflictions within the realms are themselves awakening, so shared and particular cannot be cut into two unrelated things. General knowledge of the four divisions thus does not obstruct detailed differentiation later, and severing branches first does not mean the root is already exhausted.

Arising Has Two Axes; Causes and Conditions Have Three Kinds

Affliction has four characteristics of arising: deep but not acute, acute but not deep, both deep and acute, and neither deep nor acute. “Deep” means that when it arises it is heavy and difficult to restrain and increases further upon touching an external object. “Acute” means that it arises repeatedly and is heavy each time. One describes intensity and difficulty of restraint; the other, recurrence and rapidity, so the two can cross to form four alternatives. Neither deep nor acute is the ordinary, continuous characteristic of retributive delusion. The other three alternatives move outside the ordinary pattern and therefore are the arising characteristics of affliction explained here.

The causes and conditions of arising are habit, karma, and Māra. Habit resembles a swift current: through immeasurable kalpas its seeds have ripened and its perfuming continued. While following the current of birth and death one does not notice its speed; only upon cultivating the factors of the path and moving against the current of the various forms of existence does one see affliction rise imposingly. Karma resembles carrying a debt and also a still river suddenly struck by violent wind. Evil conduct from past lives does not willingly let one escape; waves of delusion rise like mountains. If sails and rudder are dropped, the boat is destroyed at once, but if one single-mindedly keeps fore and aft correctly aligned, disaster can still be escaped. Māra resembles a makara drawing in the sea. When practitioners attempt to leave the realms, the ten armies come to seize them and deep, acute delusion suddenly presses close. When human strength cannot resist, one must single-mindedly invoke the Buddha's name. Although all three causes are listed, the direct object here is affliction arising when contemplation stirs habitual tendencies. Karma and Māra are each explained separately under later objects.

Treating Illness Requires Knowing the Relation between Illness and Medicine

The Lesser Vehicle has five treatments: direct, rotated, unrotated, combined, and complete. In direct treatment, each of the four divisions contains three kinds, producing twelve illnesses, and twelve treatments are arrayed against them like a formation against raiders. In rotated treatment, an existing treatment does not fit this person and therefore is changed. The medicine can rotate while the illness does not, or both illness and medicine can rotate. Contemplation of impurity, for example, originally treats sexual desire, but if it does not suit someone, it is rotated into contemplation of purity and loving-kindness so that mind gains release. In unrotated treatment, although the illness changes, the treatment never changes; the one Dharma suited to this person treats the illness whether or not it rotates. In combined treatment, one or two illnesses combine and one or two medicines combine with them, as when sexual desire combines with anger and contemplation of impurity is practiced together with loving-kindness. Complete treatment joins all the preceding methods to treat one illness. Only after the five treatments is wisdom of the truths applied, enabling entry into the real.

The Great Vehicle separately explains treatment through the ultimate meaning, like agada medicine treating every illness. Within emptiness and non-arising, affliction and what treats it are both unobtainable. Since no truly existent affliction exists, there is no thing to rotate and no combined or complete treatment to grasp; the single medicine of non-arising treats everything universally. This does not turn treating illness into leaving illness unattended. Seeing illness and medicine as both non-arising is precisely why treatment through the ultimate meaning is called treatment. The treatise indicates this only with extreme brevity and requires practitioners to grasp its intent skillfully.

First See How One Thought Sequentially Produces Dharmas

Cultivation of calming-and-contemplation still follows the ten intentions, beginning with distinguishing the conceivable object. At first one thought of desire is very subtle, but unless immediately stopped it gradually increases. When greed and desire lead one into the four grave transgressions and five heinous deeds, this is the hell realm. When they make one lose shame, conscience, propriety, and righteousness, this is the animal realm. When they make one begrudge what belongs to oneself and others, this is the hungry-ghost realm. When they produce jealousy, suspicion, defensiveness, and schemes to cause another's defeat, this is the asura realm. Desire expressed through ritual marriage, restraint, and righteousness, together with keeping the five precepts for future pleasure, is the human realm. Disdaining coarse human desire, seeking celestial desire, and cultivating the ten wholesome actions is the realm of the six desire heavens. Rebuking desire, becoming pure, and producing dhyāna are the form and formless realms.

Contemplating desire as accumulation, suffering as evoked by accumulation, and becoming disenchanted with suffering and accumulation in order to seek escape is the śrāvaka realm. Contemplating desire as ignorance, creating formations through desire and revolving without cease, then stopping desire so that ignorance, formations, and the rest cease is the pratyekabuddha realm. Contemplating desire as a covering, arousing loving-kindness and compassion, practicing relinquishment, and applying the corresponding perfections to its other characteristics is the realm of the six perfections. Contemplating desire as not originally arising, not abiding now, and not ceasing in the future—desire itself empty and emptiness itself nirvāṇa—is the realm of the Shared Teaching. Contemplating the mind of desire as having immeasurable characteristics, suffering and accumulation as likewise immeasurable, and knowing faculties, desires, and natures in full detail is the realm of the Distinct Teaching. The remaining three divisions of affliction similarly produce dharmas in sequence. Because these realm-dharmas are established sequentially according to conduct and contemplative understanding, this is called the conceivable object.

If Affliction Is the Path, Why Must It Still Be Neither Followed nor Severed?

Question: Since the four divisions of affliction are themselves the path, may one follow them?

Answer: They may neither be followed nor severed. Follow affliction and it leads one to evil paths. Suppose the path exists only after affliction has been completely severed, and one falls into overweening pride. Producing illumination and liberation without leaving delusion and craving is what is called the path. Thus one does not abide in lack of discipline or in discipline. Ordinary people greedily cling to the four divisions and heap birth and death upon birth and death, abiding in lack of discipline. People of the two vehicles fear birth and death, hastily leave the three realms, and, with delusion exhausted and nothing left to discipline, abide in discipline. Bodhisattvas are courageous in birth and death without being defiled, like a flower in mud and a physician treating illness. They do not savor nirvāṇa; they know emptiness without abiding in emptiness, like a bird flying through space without stopping there. Entering nirvāṇa without severing afflictions means precisely neither indulging desire nor taking annihilative severance as ultimate.

Two errors of the latter age offer counterevidence from both extremes. The first person hears neither discipline nor lack of discipline and interprets unobstructedness as publicly engaging in unlawful conduct, like breaking a mango pit to seek sweetness or eating too much salt and becoming sick from saltiness and thirst. This person abides in lack of discipline and is exceedingly far from the Buddha path. The second person fears both extremes and insists on first severing greed and desire before agreeing that greed and desire are the path. This person still abides in discipline and likewise does not nonabide. Some beginners obtain a slight benefit from one act of indulgence, continue it for a long time, and teach others to imitate them. The result only increases the pleasure of desire without benefit of the path, eventually defiling precepts and disgracing the Sangha. Unobstructedness apart from moral discipline and contemplative wisdom becomes the greatest obstruction. If what is not the path only increases what is not the path, it does not transform itself into the Buddha path.

Eight Propositions Are Not Eight Mutually Exclusive Options

The complete eight propositions place on one side not abiding in discipline, not abiding in lack of discipline, not abiding in neither, and not abiding in both; on the other, also abiding in discipline, also abiding in lack of discipline, also abiding in neither, and also abiding in both. Afflictions are themselves empty, so one does not abide in lack of discipline. Afflictions are themselves provisional, so one does not abide in discipline. Afflictions are themselves the Middle, so one does not abide in both. They simultaneously illuminate both, so one does not abide in neither. Although not abiding in the propositions, one truly abides in them; although truly abiding in them, one truly does not abide in them. Contemplative practice does not partially seize one proposition, because one proposition encompasses all the others. All dharmas converge upon greed and desire, and greed and desire are the place to which all dharmas return; one object can therefore be carried throughout all propositions.

Whether to abide must be weighed by real benefit to self and others, immediate and remote. Sometimes one embodies greed and desire as ultimately pure, free like empty space, and gains benefit through abiding in discipline. Sometimes one releases mind and observes greed and desire from beginning to end, discerning how much is illness and how much medicine, and like Vasumitrā liberating beings at the limit of freedom from desire, gains benefit through abiding in lack of discipline. Benefit can also come through negating both or contemplating both. Xigen knew capacities skillfully and taught a skillful method of crossing that enabled laypeople to attain patience. Shengyi disbelieved and suffered at the time, yet planted a later-life cause. These cases place the four siddhāntas at the center of judgment. Without knowing capacities, whether one abides or does not abide, one only weaves one's own net of craving and obstructs self and others.

Light and Darkness Simultaneous: Precisely the Inconceivable Object

When one thought of affliction arises, it contains the ten realms and hundred dharmas without mutual obstruction. The many are not an accumulation that becomes truly existent, and the one is not annihilation into nothingness. The many do not differ and the one is not identical; the many are the one and the one the many. The shadow of a tree in darkness remains visible to the divine eye though ordinary eyes do not see it: this is light within darkness. Wisdom can itself be obstructed: this is darkness within light. A newly lit lamp dwells together with darkness. When the lamp arrives, darkness cannot be found to have gone anywhere; when the lamp is extinguished, darkness cannot be found to have returned from anywhere. Seek darkness and no darkness is found, so light has nothing to break. Seek light and no light is found, so darkness has nothing to cover. Yet the functions of breaking and covering remain distinct.

Therefore what newly arises is not received, what arose formerly is not attached to, there is no thinking because nothing is grasped inwardly, and no discrimination because nothing is grasped outwardly. Wondrous wisdom is lucid; light and darkness neither obstruct nor remove one another. When the lamp of worldly wisdom is extinguished, dark delusion returns. If the light of wisdom of the Middle Way abides constantly and immovably like a divine jewel always shining, darkness does not return. Only by contemplating the darkness of affliction as itself the light of great wisdom can the Buddha's awakening be revealed. The wondrous object does not pretend darkness is light or use one thing to annihilate another. Within unobtainability it sees the functions of breaking and covering exactly as they are.

After the Wondrous Object, Not One of the Ten Intentions Is Missing

After seeing the wondrous object, one grieves over one's own faults and feels universal compassion for beings. Compassion arises from the darkness of suffering and accumulation, loving-kindness from the light of path and cessation, and the great vows arise together with the object. To fulfill these vows, calming-and-contemplation becomes the essential practice. The four divisions of affliction being themselves empty is calming that embodies the real and contemplation entering emptiness. Contemplating the medicines, illnesses, and other dharmas within afflictions is calming that follows conditions and contemplation entering the provisional. Contemplating afflictions as identical with the true limit is calming that rests the two extremes and contemplation entering the Middle Way. Settling mind skillfully in this way, the three calmings and three contemplations return to the three eyes and three wisdoms in one mind.

When eye and wisdom have not opened, one breaks obstructions and makes breaking pervasive. Contemplating every thought of the four divisions through the three provisionalities, leaving self, other, both, neither, and the single, repeated, and complete alternatives, delusions of views and thought do not arise. Knowing illness and recognizing medicine, lack of knowledge does not arise. Being neither true nor conditioned cultivation, ignorance does not arise. One then discerns passage and obstruction within emptiness, provisionality, and the Middle. Turning suffering and accumulation into creations within immediate emptiness is obstruction; penetrating suffering and accumulation as themselves empty is passage. Turning Dharma medicine into illness is obstruction; knowing medicine within illness is passage. Turning Dharma-nature into ignorance is obstruction; turning ignorance into illumination is passage.

The factors of the path are cultivated upon the mind of the four divisions itself. The five aggregates are defiled by affliction, while one aggregate contains immeasurable aggregates. Contemplating the aggregates as empty breaks the inversions of ordinary people and completes the small withering. Contemplating them as provisional breaks the inversions of the two vehicles and completes the great flourishing. Contemplating them as the Middle renders the two extremes of withering and flourishing quiescent, enters great nirvāṇa, opens the three gates of liberation, and enters the cooling pool. If obstructions are heavy, twelve assisting treatments provide support: three kinds of greed respectively use impurity, liberations, and spheres of mastery; three kinds of anger use loving-kindness conditioned by beings, conditioned by dharmas, and unconditioned; three kinds of delusion use dependent origination across three lives, two lives, and one thought; three kinds of initial and sustained thought use counting, observing, and following the breath.

Upon gaining a little understanding or meditative concentration, one must inspect one's stage and not mistake grass, wood, tiles, and gravel for a beryl jewel. While delusions of views and thought, dust-and-sand delusions, and ignorance remain unsevered, and neither contemplative practice nor semblance corresponds, one cannot usurp a higher stage. When inner and outer obstructions arise, patient endurance is required; only by enduring through them can bodhisattva practice remain intact. On obtaining meditative concentration and wisdom resembling the path, one must also leave attachment to dharmas. Only when attachment does not arise can one become free and unobstructed, advance to break ignorance, accomplish patience with non-arising, and ride the high and broad jeweled carriage directly to the place of awakening. The four divisions of affliction containing all Buddha-Dharmas, practicing what is not the path and penetrating the Buddha path, afflictions being awakening, and entering nirvāṇa without severing afflictions thereby cease to be isolated declarations and become complete contemplative practice.

Thirty-Six Propositions Connect Liberation, Wisdom, and Dharma-Body

“Entering nirvāṇa without severing afflictions” first establishes four root propositions through severing and not severing, entering and not entering, then opens four from each. The resulting sixteen detailed propositions plus the four roots make twenty propositions of entering nirvāṇa. Severing and not severing, emerging and not emerging, further open sixteen propositions of emerging from nirvāṇa. Establishing a separate set of roots for entering and emerging makes forty propositions; sharing four roots makes thirty-six. These gates of propositions are assigned according to ordinary people, non-Buddhists, trainees, those beyond training, bodhisattvas, and true principle. They can also unfold through the four gates of emptiness, existence, both, and neither, and through the four siddhāntas. They therefore universally encompass Lesser and Great, analytical and embodied, and are not a numerical game.

Question: Since nirvāṇa possesses thirty-six propositions, how do prajñā and Dharma-body correspond?

Answer: When Buddha, nirvāṇa, and prajñā are contemplated according to Dharma, the three share one true mark. Prajñā first places dharmas arising and not arising against prajñā arising and not arising, giving sixteen propositions in which object produces wisdom. It then places prajñā arising and not arising against dharmas arising and not arising, giving sixteen in which wisdom illuminates object. With the four root propositions, these again make thirty-six. Dharma-body takes the four bodies—Dharma, recompense, response, and transformation—as roots. Each body can give rise to four, making sixteen; each of the four can also enter one body, making another sixteen; adding the four root bodies again makes thirty-six. Every body is the Dharma realm, so they can mutually arise from and enter one another. Although nirvāṇa, prajñā, and Dharma-body are separately explained through their own gates of propositions, all finally return to the same Dharma realm without losing the gate-characteristics each reveals.

Through the Eye of the Fuxing

Zhanran first draws a strict boundary around this object. It must arise from contemplation of the aggregates, and intense greed and the like must suddenly become manifest, before it is called this object. Ordinary desire, the five hindrances, and retributive scattered activity are still handled with the preceding object, while fierce delusions of views arising after dhyāna belong to the later object of views. He further says that what is actually taken here is only the four divisions within the dull. The sharp/dull classification is established according to whether views presently arise from concentration and to the delusion those views produce; fixed names of proclivities are not applied directly to every activity of mind. Thus the treatise's first saying that sharp and dull extend into one another and later differentiating them by stage do not obstruct each other.

Habit, karma, and Māra are listed together as three causes, yet Zhanran concludes that only habitual accumulation is contemplated here; karmic force and Māra's stirring each await a later object. After the five treatments, the ultimate-meaning treatment is explained, and he expressly states that this first displays the Great Vehicle's superior treatment; it does not abolish expedient counteractions. Otherwise the twelve assisting treatments below would lose their place. “The path itself” has the same boundary. Zhanran uses illumination and liberation to explain not following and discipline and lack of discipline to explain not severing. The four divisions being themselves the path permits neither indulgence nor prior annihilation followed by seeking the path elsewhere.

The mind of desire sequentially producing the ten realms is, in Zhanran's judgment, the initial distinction of the conceivable object. From the inconceivable object through freedom from attachment, the ten modes of contemplation used for the object of the aggregates remain in operation, with additional explanation only because the illness faced is different. The final great carriage, practicing the non-path to penetrate the Buddha path, afflictions being awakening, and entering nirvāṇa without severing afflictions all gather and return to the preceding ten contemplations; they do not establish several new roads apart from them.

For the eight propositions, Zhanran takes abiding as the function of the Middle Way and nonabiding as its essence. Every proposition contains all the others, so abiding and nonabiding are not mutually exclusive options but are skillfully opened and gathered according to the four siddhāntas for self and others, immediate and remote. Vasumitrā reveals benefit in the present; Xigen and Shengyi reveal that benefit can be immediate or remote. If knowledge of capacities is abandoned and only outward appearance imitated, one falls precisely into the two errors refuted by the treatise.

Zhanran also identifies the scriptural and treatise contexts of many short similes in the treatise. The dead mare connects to Nandi's story in the vinaya; the ten armies, makara, Xigen, and Shengyi connect to the Great Treatise; the mango pit and tree shadow in darkness connect to the great scripture; and the great carriage connects to the Lotus. These title sources make the similes' original scenes visible. The treatise takes the sharpened point of each simile, while the source scriptures and treatises preserve the original scene.

After light and darkness are mutually present in one thought, Zhanran judges that the eight propositions have completed the inconceivable object. He further matches newly arising, formerly arising, inward grasping, and outward grasping respectively with not receiving, not attaching, not thinking, and not discriminating, showing how contemplation of mind avoids bondage by new and old, inner and outer. These word-by-word correspondences are the commentator's mirror, clarifying the practical direction of the four terms without turning them into another outline previously established by the treatise.

Although the text of the subsequent nine intentions is brief, Zhanran explicitly says that the number of gates is not incomplete. Pervasively breaking through dharmas merely abbreviates administering medicine and the unfolding of ignorance and Dharma-nature within the three provisionalities. The factors of the path briefly conclude with withering and flourishing and the three liberations. Thus, although the text is abbreviated, all ten modes remain complete. Zhanran expressly says that it follows the preceding text and lacks only administering medicine and ignorance and Dharma-nature within the three provisionalities, while the factors of the path only conclude with withering and flourishing and the three liberations.

Regarding the final gates of propositions, Zhanran points out that “emerging” in the later sixteen propositions is always emerging by entering the provisional from emptiness. The preceding text first distinguishes the Tripiṭaka and Shared teachings through analytical and embodied dharmas; the analytical discussion afterward further includes the four gates of the Distinct and Perfect teachings. The first sixteen prajñā propositions have object produce wisdom, and the later sixteen have wisdom illuminate object. The four bodies of Dharma-body mutually giving rise to and entering one another gather its function in transforming according to conditions. The three groups separately reveal liberation, prajñā, and Dharma-body. Zhanran finally concludes, “although one, they are three”: the one Dharma realm does not prevent the three virtues from each having its own name and meaning, while the three distinct virtues have never left that one Dharma realm.

If Having a Body Is Already Illness, How Can Illness Become a Separate Object?

Question: The treatise opens by saying, “Having a body is itself illness.” If a body is already inseparable from illness, is illness not simply part of the aggregates, sense fields, and elements? Why establish it as a separate object?

Answer: Four snakes sharing one place do not become one snake; water and fire dwelling together still oppose one another. Owls sharing a roost and pythons and rats inhabiting one hole describe sharing a place while differing in nature. Four neighboring states describe temporary peace while powers are equal and annexation when one exploits a weakness. The body may ordinarily appear stable, but the four elements have not thereby ceased to conflict; their powers merely hold one another temporarily. The object of illness appears in the interval between this “temporary harmony” and “exploiting a weakness.”

The treatise therefore does not first promise a body that will never decay and then treat illness as an accidental event. It sees burden in the body's very constitution. A poisonous vessel holds poison; a heavy load continually presses the shoulders; a thicket of suffering is where many sufferings gather. Before illness arises, the four elements hold one another; when illness arises, their incompatibility becomes manifest. Practice need not wait until the body recovers to some ideal state, because the body one is waiting for has always stood between rest and unrest, increase and decrease.

Yet illness further divides into real and expedient. Vimalakīrti relied on illness to raise the teaching, and the Tathāgata entrusted himself to extinction to discuss permanence: they guided beings by manifesting illness. The illness contemplated in this object is the illness genuinely undergone by a body born through karmic retribution. Distinguishing expedient and real first prevents a noble one's manifestation from being taken as an ordinary person's already-realized object, and prevents ordinary suffering from being beautified as accomplished transformation of others. The place where practice can begin now lies only in this ill body that one is undergoing, that is abolishing cultivation, and that is also pressing one to apply mind.

Since Illness Obstructs the Path, How Can It Instead Intensify One's Application of Mind?

Question: Illness can damage cultivation. Why does the treatise also say that if it can be contemplated, it instead increasingly benefits application of mind? Are these two statements not opposed?

Answer: Illness can indeed become a great obstruction. It can make one destroy precepts like puncturing the flotation bladder that crosses the sea, lose concentration like dismantling a bridge over a river, and cherish a foul body of pus and blood, producing wrong inversions and forgetting the pure Dharma-body. Illness is not naturally a spiritual friend. If it merely carries one away, one may destroy moral discipline, damage concentration, produce wrong inversion, and ruin the pure Dharma-body.

Yet relaxed indolence during health often postpones the great matter of birth and death. Acute illness instead places impermanence directly before one. Some people therefore apply mind more intensely and accomplish what they ordinarily could not. Illness becomes an object not because pain itself possesses merit but because the practitioner turns to contemplate. The same illness can make someone regress or awaken, cherish only body and life or see their impermanence.

A great tree needing ten thousand axe-blows to fall and a massive rock needing a hundred million strikes to be pierced illustrate repeated explanation for those who have not yet penetrated. If patient endurance has already been penetrated through the preceding object, illness can be illuminated as soon as it comes, without renewed discussion. If it has not, another axe-blow and another strike are required. Repetition does not change to a different path; it enables the same calming-and-contemplation to pass through this hard layer of illness.

Why Do the Five Sections First Discern Illness and Only Then Cultivate Calming-and-Contemplation?

Question: Since calming-and-contemplation is the purport, why not directly contemplate mind? Why first discuss characteristics and causes of illness, treatments, and harm and benefit?

Answer: The treatise first establishes five sections: characteristics of illness, causes of illness, methods of treatment, harm and benefit, and calming-and-contemplation. This order prevents “contemplation” from becoming a slogan that flattens differences. Pulses differ as surging and straight, light and floating, sharply thrusting, linked like beads, or heavy and slow. Bodies differ as painfully heavy and hardened, vacuous and swollen, blazing hot and aching, or suspended, dazed, and distressed. Mutual harm among the five viscera further unfolds different signs in eyes, mouth, chest and flanks, waist and knees, skin, and elsewhere. Although the medical art is not exhausted here, characteristics of illness must still be known briefly; treatment cannot be applied at will before any distinction is made.

The six causes of illness press the differences another step deeper. Disharmony of the four elements, immoderate food and drink, unregulated seated meditation, ghosts and spirits gaining an opening, what Māra creates, and what karmic force produces cannot be mixed into one cause. Treatments for labor, walking, and food do not substitute for those for dysregulation in seated meditation. Ghost, Māra, and karmic illnesses likewise each have the counteractions established by the treatise. “First know the source, then apply treatment” is the joint hinge preserved by the first four sections.

This also shows that the final section does not escape the preceding four. If one does not know what method is being used, why it is used, or whether it brings harm or benefit, so-called application of mind readily becomes another form of dysregulation. When calming-and-contemplation enters the object of illness, it does not cancel discerning illness; it gives discerning illness, applying treatment, and contemplating mind each its place.

Why Are the Causes of Illness Traced All the Way to the Mind's Object?

Question: Among the six causes, the range is already broad, from cold, heat, and food to ghosts, Māra, and karma. Why does unregulated seated meditation further divide into the eight contacts, stopping mind above or below, five colors and five sounds, and even what is seen in meditation and dreams?

Answer: Because seated meditation is not merely “sitting.” Leaning against a wall or pillar and lying down before the proper time concern bodily deportment and contemptuous indolence. Breath-counting conflicting with the eight contacts is a mismatch between breathing and tactile feeling. Stopping mind too low, too high, too urgently, or too loosely is bias in calming. Shifting the contemplated object from one thing to another, exclusively guarding one thing, mistaking arising for ceasing, or forcing an uncorresponding contemplation is bias in contemplation. Body, breath, calming, and contemplation can each become dysregulated layer by layer.

The treatise matches each of the objects form, sound, odor, taste, and touch to the five viscera, then lists blue, red, white, black, and yellow; calling, speech, crying, chanting, and song; rank, scorched, raw, foul, and fragrant odor; sour, bitter, pungent, salty, and sweet taste; hard, warm, light, cold, and heavy touch. It reveals that where mind goes and how excessively it goes are not wholly unrelated to the body. Excessive conditioning can produce one-sided movement.

The simile of walking with an infant reveals this most clearly. One need only follow the child's steps. Pull urgently in hopes of arriving early, and harm instead results. An unstable contemplated object naturally produces contention and chaos, but single-mindedly guarding an object while expecting a response can likewise trap wind and heat within it. Deviations in practice do not occur only during indulgence; they can also occur through excessive effort and an urgent demand for results.

Why Is No One of the Six Treatments Supreme?

Question: The treatments are calming, qi, breath, provisional visualization, contemplation of mind, and techniques. Since contemplation of mind can seek inwardly and outwardly and see mind as unobtainable, why retain all the preceding treatments?

Answer: Different causes of illness require different applications. Care with formulas and medicines cannot replace regulation of breath and contemplation within seated meditation, and regulation within seated meditation cannot replace every formula or medicine. The same holds within the six treatments. Calming has different objects, including the navel, cinnabar field, soles, and site of illness. Qi has the six forms 吹, 呼, 𡁱, 呵, 噓, and 𡀗. Breath first distinguishes wind, qi, panting, and breath; then it discusses inhalation and exhalation in relation to the eight contacts and separately twelve breaths accompanied by visualization. Provisional visualization, contemplation of mind, and techniques each have their own uses.

The similes of door and wind, king and thief state the principle of stopping mind directly. When a door opens, wind arrives; when it closes, wind is still. When the king is settled, the thief disperses. Yet the treatise immediately adds that mind need not be stopped only at the site of illness. This turn prevents the simile from being grasped as a fixed Dharma. Urgent calming, relaxed calming, stopping at the crown, and stopping at the feet face different conditions. The six qi likewise require increase and decrease to be weighed among cold, heat, pain, vexation, phlegm, and weariness. The crucial matter is not an impressive name for a treatment but whether it directly corresponds to the illness.

The section on techniques makes selection still clearer. To protect the four samādhis, temporarily settle a fragile, foam-like body, and preserve practice of the path, a technique may be borrowed. If it is used to solicit reputation and gain or startle worldly society, it should be abandoned immediately. The same technique, according to the mind that uses it and the end toward which it is directed, may become a preparatory means protecting the path or descend into Māra's illusion. The six treatments are not six abilities for display but six classes of method that must be situated according to illness, time, harm, and benefit.

What Do the Ten Principles of Harm and Benefit Regulate?

Question: If the treatments have already been listed, why separately explain harm and benefit and further add ten principles such as faith, application, diligence, and constancy?

Answer: Because the same treatment, applied to different people, different degrees of illness, and in different ways, can produce gradual or sudden results, harm or benefit. Sharp mind with light illness, sharp mind with grave illness, dull mind with light illness, and dull mind with grave illness cannot all be summarized by saying merely “it was used.” Excessive use of breath can suddenly overturn the five viscera; before sudden overturning, it can also gradually intensify. Through skillful cultivation, some people suddenly benefit, while others recover step by step like taking medicine over years.

The ten principles place treatment back within long-term practice. Faith without application resembles holding a sharp sword but not using it against thieves. Diligence without constancy resembles stopping midway while drilling wood for fire. Applying treatment recklessly without recognizing illness cannot correspond directly to it. Without preparatory means, one resembles a zither string still too loose or tight to produce harmonious sound. Without knowing what to retain and discard, one keeps what harms and stops what benefits. Without knowing how to care and protect, one's movements and food violate the prohibitions anew. Faith, application, diligence, constancy, distinguishing illness, preparatory means, duration, retaining and discarding, care and protection, and recognition of coverings and obstructions together regulate both the method and the person using it.

The two images of zither strings and drilling for fire concern measure and continuity respectively. Continuity without measure may overapply a treatment; measure without continuity cannot penetrate chronic illness. The ten principles therefore do not add ten more treatments outside the six. They enable the six to be applied correctly and continuously, with harm and benefit understood.

How Do the Four Samādhis Return the Ill Body to the Place of Awakening?

Question: After the fascicle title reappears, the treatise again speaks of the four kinds of samādhi, support by the “unseen blade,” and not sparing body or life. How does this relate to the preceding treatments of illness?

Answer: The preceding discussion does not establish “absence of illness” as the highest result of practice. If the four samādhis are cultivated skillfully and fittingly regulated, power of the path and support by the “unseen blade” can lessen the obstruction of illness. Even if obstructions rise like peaks, practitioners still vow to complete the place of awakening. The body should be cared for, but does not become a reason to retreat from vows. Body and life may be protected, but are not worth exchanging for the work of the path.

When the governor is strong, the defenders are strong; when the governor is timid, they panic. Mind is the body's master, so the treatise finally returns protection to one mind. Śakra's palace makes lesser ghosts respectfully withdraw; a ghost sticking to five places still cannot make a diligent person stop the mind. Both images place the emphasis on non-retreat. The purpose of treating illness is not to make one revolve around illness forever but to settle the body and preserve the path. If illness remains, one still does not abandon the place of awakening.

How Can the Same Illness Produce the Ten Dharma Realms?

Question: Upon reaching cultivation of calming-and-contemplation, why does the treatise first explain the ten Dharma realms produced because of illness, yet then say these are not the object of correct contemplation?

Answer: Because illness itself does not decide a person's direction. Some people lose their original mind because of illness, slander the Three Treasures, indulge food and the five desires to sustain life, and create the three evils from illness. Others recollect that illness was evoked by former unwholesomeness, produce profound shame and conscience, and preserve wholesome mind even in extremity, creating the three kinds of goodness from illness. Some fear birth and death because of illness and seek quiescent nirvāṇa. Others contemplate backward from aging and death through birth, existence, grasping, craving, feeling, contact, six sense fields, and name and form, then from the four elements and five viscera to the four minds, past formations, ignorance, and delusive conception, producing correct wisdom of dependent origination.

The crazed and thirsty person pursuing a mirage is the longest simile in this passage. Mistaking shimmering heat for water, he chases south without finding it, hears an echo and runs north, pursues all four directions, then claws the ground and enters darkness, only exhausting himself. Tongue pursues taste, ear sound, nose odor, eye form, body touch, and mind ignorance. The six faculties run after the six objects like the madman chasing water, with nowhere truly able to yield what is sought. Only when running stops do body and mind settle; only when they settle does correct wisdom of dependent origination arise.

Others feel compassion for other people's illness because of their own and arouse the vows and practices of the six perfections. Some contemplate illness and delusive conception as both empty. Some know ultimate emptiness yet do not rush to extinguish feeling and grasp realization. These realm-minds arising sequentially from illness all have cause and result that can be explained and sequences that can be discerned; they are therefore called the conceivable object. They are distinguished first in order to see clearly how illness can draw mind in ten directions. Correct contemplation cannot stop in any one direction.

What, Ultimately, Does the Inconceivable Object of Illness See?

Question: If the three evil, three wholesome, two-vehicle, and three bodhisattva realms are all not correct contemplation, must correct contemplation seek a pure mind elsewhere, apart from illness?

Answer: It seeks nothing else. This one thought of ill mind is neither real nor existent and is itself Dharma-nature and the Dharma realm. All dharmas converge on the object of illness, and not one leaves the Dharma realm. This does not expand illness into the one real existence. The substance, before and after, and fixed characteristics of illness are all unobtainable. A wish-fulfilling jewel falls into neither emptiness nor existence and is neither before nor after. Ill mind likewise cuts off speech, leaves characteristics, and is quiescent and pure.

“Having penetrated the real limit of illness, what is there to rejoice or grieve over?” does not mean bodily feeling henceforth lacks suffering and pleasure. It means what is contemplated is no longer locked within the two extremes of joy and grief. Illness removed merely by hearing one sentence is the simile of the first contemplation. Grave illness healed only by compounding many medicines is the simile of the continuous accomplishment of the remaining contemplations. The first contemplation does not cancel the subsequent nine dharmas, nor do the subsequent nine seek another object apart from the first.

The inconceivable therefore does not make illness mysterious. It refuses to fix ill mind as form, as mind, or as arising from self, other, both, or no cause. Mountains, forests, and corpses do not undergo illness and distress, so form itself is not illness. Seek ill mind inwardly and outwardly, and none of the four alternatives can be obtained. Illness is still being undergone, but a fixed intrinsic nature of the one who undergoes and of ill mind cannot be obtained. Correct contemplation unfolds at this point of neither escape nor fixation.

Why Do All Three Contemplations Occur between Parents and an Ill Child?

Question: Emptiness, provisionality, and the Middle are contemplations of dharmas. Why does the treatise repeatedly say in every contemplation that when the child is ill, the parents are ill too?

Answer: Because regulating one's own mind is not the end of correct contemplation. All beings possess this principle yet cannot recognize it, and a bodhisattva therefore produces compassion. To regulate mind through contemplation of emptiness is to see beings following the stream of views and thought into the sea of fragmentary birth and death and wish to give the joy of the path and cessation of emptiness. To regulate through contemplation of the provisional is to see practitioners of the two vehicles unable to distinguish the various Dharma gates and wish to remove the suffering of lack of knowledge and give the joy of wisdom of the varieties of the path. To regulate through contemplation of the Middle is to see beings unable immediately to enter the Middle Way and wish to remove the suffering of ignorance and give ultimate joy.

Within each contemplation, real illness is removed because mind is regulated, while expedient illness arises because of loving-kindness and compassion. The parents do not become ill through ignorance of illness, nor can they merely stand on the shore and watch. When the child is ill, the parents enter the child's condition with a body sharing the illness. When the child's illness heals, the parents' illness heals. Here illness changes from private suffering into shared responsibility, and contemplation from self-regulation into consolation of beings.

The three illnesses arise in one mind; the three forms of regulation are regulated through one contemplation; the three forms of loving-kindness and compassion are perfectly universal; the three manifestations are the universal-gate manifestation; the three consolations are teaching in one voice. They were divided into three for ease of understanding. What they actually indicate is inconceivable loving-kindness and compassion. The exchange between Mañjuśrī and Vimalakīrti states this completely: illness arises from great compassion; because beings are ill, the bodhisattva is ill; when beings heal, the bodhisattva heals. While beings' delusion and craving remain unexhausted, the path of transformation does not rest. As vows equal empty space, manifested illness fills the Dharma realm.

How Are All Ten Modes Practiced upon the Sickbed?

Question: When bodily strength declines in illness, how do the ten modes of contemplation avoid becoming only a sequence on paper?

Answer: After arousing mind, first settle mind skillfully. Straighten the body, establish correct mindfulness, cultivate only calming and only contemplation, and regulate appropriately. In one sitting one feels cool and refreshed; whether illness decreases suddenly or gradually, one is no longer drawn away by disorder. Next, investigate and break the dharma of illness. If form itself were illness, forests and corpses should also undergo illness. If illness is only reckoned by mind, contemplate the four alternatives of ill mind as unobtainable and inner and outer as empty. It is not the earth element and does not depart from the earth element; it combines neither with body nor mind.

Then discern the four truths, dependent origination, and six perfections within every proposition and know passage and obstruction, attainment and loss. Regulate the factors of the path through purity, impurity, and double negation so that all thirty-seven can be accomplished upon bed and pillow. If correct contemplation does not remove illness, borrow the preceding six treatments as auxiliary practice. Primary and auxiliary are practiced together, without mistaking auxiliary for correct contemplation or refusing auxiliary because of correct contemplation.

Beryl at the bottom of a deep pool is the image for knowing stages. Principle can be distinctly seen without one's hand already having reached it. Contemplative wisdom at the stage of name cannot be passed off as semblance-understanding, much less as patience with non-arising. The gradual lightening of causal illness does not mean resultant illness has appeared. Resultant illness can still occur after entry into non-arising, but this does not mean an ordinary person's real illness is already a noble one's manifestation. Because beryl is visible, one does not belittle oneself. Because the deep pool still intervenes, one does not become proud.

Finally come patient endurance and freedom from attachment. Inner and outer obstructing conditions cannot make primary and auxiliary practice stop. The diminishing of illness and clarification of contemplation cannot make one cling to what has been attained. If one remains unmoving and non-retreating amid illness, the task is accomplished. If attachment does not arise when contemplation becomes clear, the ten dharmas are genuinely complete. The opening had a poisonous vessel, heavy burden, and thicket of suffering; the conclusion obtains one great carriage. This does not decorate the ill body as treasure. It means illness no longer merely drags one toward regression and the practitioner can instead swiftly enter the Great Vehicle Dharma stream.

Through the Eye of the Fuxing

The first crucial distinction Zhanran makes line by line is to bring the distinction between expedient and real illness into the object of correct contemplation. Vimalakīrti and the Tathāgata's manifested illnesses are expedient; what is actually contemplated here is real illness produced by increase and decrease among an ordinary person's four elements. He further matches the opening four snakes, owls, pythons, and rats one by one to the four elements and gathers poisonous vessel, heavy burden, and thicket of suffering under suffering of the aggregates. These line-by-line correspondences illuminate the flow of the text without replacing the original forms of the treatise's similes.

Regarding why the teaching is repeated, Zhanran judges the great tree and ten thousand axes, massive rock and hundred million strikes as “because dull faculties and grave illness require repeated discernment of contemplative practice”〔T1912 0397c15〕. He further gathers destruction of moral discipline, damage to concentration, and production of wrong inversion under the three trainings, expressly recording, “moral discipline and concentration are as in the text; from ‘producing wrong inversion’ onward is loss of wisdom”〔T1912 0397c23〕. These are judgments of the Zhiguan Fuxing Chuanhong Jue and are not inserted retrospectively as the treatise's direct speech.

Within the sequence of five sections, Zhanran especially preserves “briefly know the characteristics of illness in order to recognize illness and apply treatment.” Pulse signs of the five viscera indicate only that one viscus is too strong or too weak and are not identical with the later mutual overcoming among the five viscera. Characteristics of illness among the six spirits are expressly judged to rely on secular accounts and are not elevated to scriptural proof. Lack of regulation in seated meditation unfolds through bodily deportment, the eight contacts conflicting with breath, excessive use of calming, and one-sided contemplation. Ghost and Māra both gain openings through wrong thought, yet injure body and life versus the contemplating mind. These divisions prevent the six causes from being kneaded into one.

Among the six treatments, Zhanran distinguishes the six voiced qi from retributive and dependent breath, situates the twelve breaths as arising dependent upon mind and accompanied by visualization, and supplements from an older recension the events of treating a goiter, the golden needle, warm ghee, and swallowing a snake. The two phonetic passages are judged only to be incantations, whose function is explained through the counteractive siddhānta; no Sanskrit is invented from their sounds. Only at the mode of aids to the path are the earlier calming, qi, breath, provisional visualization, contemplation of mind, and techniques regathered as auxiliary practice when correct contemplation has not removed obstruction. The six treatments can assist the correct but do not replace correct contemplation.

For harm and benefit, Zhanran gathers the body into four propositions: sharp mind and light illness is sudden benefit; sharp mind and grave illness gradual benefit; dull mind and light illness gradual harm; dull mind and grave illness sudden harm. He further divides the lower-fascicle passage on the four samādhis into the four intentions of power of the path, unseen aid, methods of treatment, and not sparing body or life. One group distinguishes results from applying treatments, the other protection at the place of awakening, preventing “illness healed” and “path accomplished” from being confused as one measure.

At the head of the ten modes, Zhanran distinguishes the two events in the Suvarṇaprabhāsa Sūtra: illness removed merely by hearing reveals the first contemplation, while many medicines treating grave illness reveal the subsequent nine modes beginning with arousal of mind. Each of the three contemplations of consolation contains four levels—self-regulation, compassionate manifestation of birth, receiving benefit within manifested birth, and conclusion establishing the contemplation's name—and finally remains gathered in one mind. He explains the great medicine for settling mind as “only quiescence and only illumination, seeking nothing else,” and points out that treatment through the ultimate meaning simultaneously carries unconditioned loving-kindness and compassion. Quiescence and illumination do not separate; regulating mind and feeling compassion for beings do not separate.

Within the sequence of consolation through three contemplations, Zhanran distinguishes three real illnesses as views and thought, lack of knowledge, and ignorance, and situates the places where expedient illness appears within the three lands of fragmentary birth and death, expedient means, and true recompense. After distinguishing them, he still gathers them through the three contemplations in one mind and loving-kindness and compassion in one mind. Parents falling ill with their child therefore do not establish another cause of illness. They mean that a bodhisattva manifests shared activity according to the level of beings' delusion. He also reads Mañjuśrī's inquiry after illness as directly striking this capacity: great compassion arises along with delusion and craving, and the path of transformation does not rest while beings remain unhealed. Manifested illness in the square chamber and back pain at Maocheng are thereby both included within the textual current of great compassion responding through illness.

Regarding arousal of mind amid illness, Zhanran does not call every forceful endurance a genuine great mind. If one deceives beings and seeks something by exploiting the Three Treasures, one remains in falsehood. Only the power of sincere arousal of mind can remove illness without awaiting subsequent dharmas. This distinction connects to settling mind below: first inconceivable loving-kindness and compassion determine its direction; then quiescence and illumination regulate mind, without seeking reputation or results as a substitute for arousal of mind.

Thereafter, pervasively breaking through dharmas traces illness as reckoned by mind and investigates its causal accomplishment and continuity. The factors of the path unfold in sequence according to the inversions broken, the truth-object conditioned, the wisdom that contemplates, and what the Dharma gate represents. Knowledge of stages distinguishes beginning and end through the six identities: the presence or absence of bodily illness cannot alone determine realization, and distinctly seeing principle at the stage of name cannot be promoted into a claim of realization. Although patient endurance and freedom from attachment receive no long commentary, they must still be established in the original sequence of the ten modes. The great carriage at the end marks the complete accomplishment of all ten dharmas, not certification based on reduction of illness alone.

Why do things unseen in ordinary life suddenly appear while one cultivates calming-and-contemplation? Is what appears wholesome or unwholesome, a former cause or a later result, an aid to the path or an obstruction? If what one sees truly relates to past karma, may a practitioner use signs to judge people and predict good or bad fortune? If all dharmas are equal, on what basis can signs of good and evil be established?

Zhiyi does not avoid these questions. He first acknowledges that karmic signs appear, then distinguishes in sequence the causes and conditions of their arising, the levels of habit and retribution, the types of good and evil, and the reversals through which signs do or do not obstruct. Yet he does not let the reader stop at distinguishing signs. By the end of the passage, karmic signs have been carried into the ten modes of contemplation: first seeing a sign, then not grasping it; first distinguishing good and evil clearly, then seeking karma throughout the three times and finding it unobtainable; finally concluding with the three forms of retribution—pure, unsurpassed, and sovereign.

This path is carefully measured. It neither dismisses signs as delusion in a single stroke nor raises them into authorities that may govern cultivation. Signs may be examined and karma must be distinguished, but the path cannot be surrendered to signs.

Why the Equal Mirror Still Reflects Good and Evil

At the outset, the treatise raises an objection: since the Great Vehicle teaches equality, what signs remain to discuss? Its reply begins precisely from equality. Because the substance of the mirror is pure, various images can appear. Rejecting every sign on the grounds of equality would be like denying that a stainless mirror contains images.

Zhiyi then cites scriptural evidence from both Great and Small Vehicles. When bodhisattvas are about to realize the ten grounds, signs arise first. When practitioners are about to realize the first fruit, the sign of a snake first perishes. The Lotus Sūtra speaks of deeply penetrating the signs of transgression and merit; the Vimalakīrtinirdeśa Sūtra of not moving within ultimate meaning while skillfully distinguishing all characteristics of Dharmas. Together, these witnesses answer one question: immovability and distinction do not cancel one another. If equality could be established only by failing to see differences, it would not yet be the equality capable of illuminating transgression and merit.

Contemplating karmic signs therefore does not set up a separate substance of good and evil outside Great-Vehicle equality. It first requires practitioners to acknowledge that when calming-and-contemplation gradually grows bright, karma performed over immeasurable kalpas but not yet requited may appear through signs. It then requires them not to confuse black and white when signs appear. The first step is not to explain every image, but to guard both poles: there are signs to distinguish, yet ultimate meaning does not move through their distinction.

Where Signs Come From, and Why Every Sign Need Not Be Pursued

Signs arise through internal and external causes and conditions. Internally, calming-and-contemplation examines mind; as mind gradually becomes bright and pure, good and evil are illuminated. Sometimes calming stops evil and evil is about to cease, while contemplation contemplates good and good is about to arise. Sometimes evil arises through stillness and good ceases through contemplation. These four changes already warn practitioners that one cannot infer from a single surface movement that calming invariably destroys evil or contemplation invariably produces good.

Externally, buddhas constantly respond to all beings through loving-kindness and compassion, but beings cannot see them because they lack responsive faculties. Through the power of calming-and-contemplation, buddhas display wholesome and unwholesome meditative concentrations, and karmic signs appear like someone holding up a garland for the assembly. Internally there is the polishing of a mirror; externally the display of a garland. Both describe how signs become visible.

Yet Zhiyi immediately draws the discussion back. The ability to distinguish transgression and merit finely, preventing confusion between black and white, may indeed suffice to discipline others. What matters here, however, is examining mind through calming-and-contemplation so karma subsides, practice succeeds, and one single-mindedly takes up the path. This turn is crucial. The treatise devotes great space to distinguishing karmic signs, yet before that distinction begins it says one need not circuitously pursue every sign. The value of distinguishing signs lies in not being deluded by them. If the distinction itself obstructs taking up the path, the tool has already become an obstruction.

Why Seeing an Image and Suddenly Producing a Thought Must Be Distinguished

When karmic signs actually appear, they have no fixed order. Six patterns are listed for clarity: only a retributive-result sign; only a habitual-cause mind; retribution first and habit afterward; habit first and retribution afterward; habit and retribution together; and an indeterminate sequence. Myriad signs arise in uneven and interwoven ways. The six patterns are not a temporal ladder, but a map for distinguishing their entanglement.

Habitual cause and habitual result are first explained through sequential continuity. A later thought continues the preceding one: the preceding thought is cause and the later thought result. Retributive cause and retributive result are explained through drawing forth across lifetimes: what can draw forth a body in one of the five paths in a later life is a retributive cause, while the body later received is a retributive result. Good and evil again arise within the present body. Viewed from the preceding life, they can be called result; viewed toward the following life, cause. The four names are not four fixed things, but must be seen according to sequence, past and present, and the direction of what they draw forth.

Applied to signs arising in seated meditation, the treatise gives a direct boundary: merely seeing various signs while sitting is classified as a retributive-result sign; seeing no sign but suddenly producing a thought is classified as habitual cause. The names of both may be borrowed from one another in relation to a preceding cause or later result, yet this passage retains an operational point of decision: what is seen belongs to retribution, what arises as mind belongs to habit. This boundary prevents one from conflating a seen image with an arisen thought, and prevents the possible interchange of names from erasing the immediate distinction.

The six perfections then unfold the six patterns of arising. In giving, one may see fields of merit or compassion, implements of giving, pure ground, or a giver; or one may see nothing but suddenly produce a mind of offering and relief. In moral discipline, one may see the ten teachers, robes and bowl, platform, pure deportment, or a keeper of precepts; or one may directly produce the mind of upholding discipline, correcting others, and mastering Vinaya. Patient endurance and diligence likewise each include seeing signs and producing thoughts. Arising before, afterward, together, and in intermixture further unfolds each perfection into several possibilities. Meditative concentration is deferred to the object of meditative concentration and wisdom to the object of bodhisattvas. This does not mean they fall outside the six perfections; the present passage simply does not explain them extensively here.

Why the Many Signs of Good and Evil Cannot Become a Chart of Fortune

Unwholesome signs are likewise explained through the six obscurations. The obscuration of stinginess reverses the signs of giving: teachers and kin appear gaunt, clothes tattered, people hungry and exhausted, monasteries desolate, property sealed away, or a stingy person appears. Under signs of broken moral discipline, bodily and verbal transgressions and drinking are listed: severed heads, split bodies, evil birds and venomous insects crawling over the body; impure, foul substances blocking the road and deep water cutting across it; the owner of stolen goods pressing a claim; verbal offenders slandering; a drunk person collapsed in vomit; and one's own body sunk in torpor. Inner pain, heaviness, and agitation are further connected respectively with habits of killing, stealing, and sexual misconduct.

These powerful images invite extraction into a chart that reads one sight as proof of one deed, but the treatise itself forbids that reading. Every obscuration still possesses the six meanings of retribution, habit, sequence, simultaneity, and indeterminacy. The listed signs are examples, not a one-to-one code matching an appearance to a transgression. By the section on discernment, even whether wholesome or unwholesome signs become obstructive depends on subsequent conduct of mind and cannot be decided from their first appearance alone.

The discussion of property owed to the Three Treasures makes this restraint concrete. Some say that repayment is required as soon as a sign appears. Nanyue instead asks whether someone without property should abandon practice and run everywhere in search of it. The treatise does not cancel the debt; it distinguishes cultivating the path from abandoning it. If one resolves to cultivate, repayment can be unfolded through accomplishment and establishment: after realizing patient endurance concerning nonarising, one makes extensive offerings; or one repays when meritorious practice, reputation, conduct, and retribution have become established. If one has left the place of practice and abandoned cultivation, one must seek property and repay at once. Karmic debt is real, and so is cultivating the path; neither may be crudely flattened by the formula that the appearance of a sign invariably demands one action.

How a Wholesome Sign Becomes an Evil Obstruction, and an Unwholesome Sign a Wholesome Condition

Discernment first establishes four alternatives: the nonobstructive becoming obstructive; the obstructive becoming nonobstructive; both sides becoming obstructive; and both sides becoming nonobstructive. These begin not as abstract doctrine, but as actual changes in practitioners.

When a wholesome sign first appears, it need not obstruct. Yet if practitioners develop craving and arrogance through it, belittle others, make the sign of realization a basis for pride, and gradually become stained by reputation and gain until mind retreats, Dharma is damaged, precepts abandoned, and evil committed, the original wholesome sign has become a great obstruction. When an unwholesome sign first appears, it is an obstruction. Yet if practitioners respond with shame, conscience, and fear, diligently repent, sever the mind of continuation, cease offending, and cultivate every good, the original unwholesome sign instead becomes a condition for accomplishing the path.

The direction of wholesome and unwholesome signs is therefore not determined by appearance alone. A wholesome sign appearing as good is about to cease may portend the arising of evil; an unwholesome sign appearing as evil is about to cease may portend the arising of good. If good does not cease and evil does not arise, both sides are nonobstructive. If evil does not cease and good does not arise, both obstruct. A judgment asking only whether the appearance is good or evil has failed to ask the most important question: after seeing it, where does this mind go?

The treatise further discusses obstruction layer by layer through the true, provisional, and Middle. Viewed from a later layer, the good and evil established at the preceding one may remain obstructive; thus obstruction has no end. This does not cancel good and evil. It prevents practitioners from sealing any attained understanding as the final point. Signs can obstruct and good can obstruct; even attachment to truth can obstruct. Cultivation is not completed merely by replacing its object with something loftier.

The Most Dangerous Moment Is Thinking One Already Knows How to Judge Signs

The arising of a habitual-cause mind is comparatively easy to recognize; the arising of a retributive-result sign is difficult. If a wholesome retributive sign supports wholesome mind and corresponds with it before and after, it can generally be judged intrinsic good; if it arises alone, nonmanifest good. If an unwholesome sign and mind support one another, it can generally be judged intrinsic evil; if an unwholesome habit arises without supporting sign, evil that violates the nonmanifest precepts. Yet the treatise does not let this preliminary judgment become a verdict. It instead says the principle is difficult to understand and easily mixed with Māra, so the ten dharmas and three characteristics must test it again.

The three characteristics are remaining a long time, returning repeatedly, and damaging the mind of meditative concentration. Possessing them marks a sign of Māra; only in their absence may a sign be judged nonmanifest. One may also observe three transformations in an unwholesome sign: anger on first appearance, calmness on the second, and joy on the third. Awakening through admonition or expelling the sign likewise indicates that the evil is about to cease. The layering of these conditions shows precisely why a sign cannot be judged from one glance, one moment, or one feeling.

Those able to distinguish finely may directly carry mind into contemplation of principle without becoming deluded by obstructions. Only if their practice has strength to spare do they distinguish the gate of karma and also teach others. Those unable to make minute distinctions still have a safe path: know generally that the sign is an obstruction, do not grasp it, and directly contemplate principle. Karma then cannot impede them. The true danger is not inability to judge finely, but lacking wise understanding, forming a deviant and partial intention, becoming attached on seeing signs, and letting Māra gain an opening so that people rely upon purported fortune and misfortune and exchange them for property and food.

The treatise therefore places two requirements upon public judgment of signs: one must personally have undergone actual verification and also have received oral instructions from a teacher. It then uses the spirits guarding the place of practice as a simile. Such spirits resemble military scouts: they can observe but cannot prevent a genuine karmic debt. No external protection turns former karma into something one need not face. Nor can any sign authorize an untested person to install oneself as a teacher.

Why Karmic Signs Need Not Be Distinguished Extensively, but Contemplation Must Be Complete

The names, teachings, substance, and characteristics of karmas can be sought extensively in the treatises, and contemplations that break karma have their own authoritative works. The present treatise, however, says its intent differs from both schools. It is enough to prevent confusion between good and evil at the phenomenal level so one can take up the path. Extensive distinction instead impedes the correct path. Yet if one merely says that everything is broken without knowing how the factors of the path and correct and assisting practices regulate one another, the method remains incomplete.

This creates an apparently paradoxical arrangement. The section on karmic signs lists examples repeatedly, then says it does not seek elaboration; the section on contemplation simply follows ten meanings in sequence, yet says its application has ample scope. The answer lies in the center of gravity. Signs are listed not to establish an endless science of signs but to carry practitioners safely into the gate of contemplation. Contemplation does not interpret the signs yet again; it changes the practitioner's relation to karma.

Thus the fourth section first lists the conceivable karmic object: the three evil paths, the three wholesome paths, unmoving karma, a śrāvaka's contemplation that karmic nature is empty, a pratyekabuddha's contemplation of the cessation of ignorance and formations, the Shared Teaching's contemplation of karma as illusion and immediately empty, and the Distinct Teaching's contemplation of karma as earth producing sprouts. Each has a definite contemplative method, yet none is the final contemplation employed here. Zhiyi turns from them toward deeply penetrating profound karma precisely within immediate, shallow karmic signs, neither intricately distinguishing the three realms nor passing beyond karmic signs directly into the extreme of emptiness.

How the Karma of One Thought Becomes the Dharma Realm without Erasing Transgression and Merit

The inconceivable object begins from “deeply penetrating the signs of transgression and merit.” Penetrating only the three evil paths but not the three wholesome paths of humans and devas is not deep. Fixing good and evil simply as good and evil is not yet deep either. Human and deva good and evil remain at the extreme of birth and death; the Two Vehicles' separation from good and evil remains at the empty extreme of nirvāṇa. Grasping either extreme is not genuine deep penetration.

Perfect contemplation does not leave shallow and immediate karmic signs to seek profound karma elsewhere. Contemplate one thought as it arises: it possesses the ten realms. The direct retribution of the ten realms and dependent retribution of the ten directions require one another, and nature, characteristic, beginning, end, and the other dharmas are present accordingly. All this is the karma of one thought, hence “one karma is all karma.” “All” is established in the ten realms' direct and dependent retributions and the hundred dharmas possessed within one thought.

The simile of earth producing sprouts returns here. The earth is one yet can produce poisonous and medicinal sprouts. When the ground of Dharma-nature receives the rain of practicing the path, sprouts of wholesome and unwholesome karma compete to arise in one thought. Karma is called the Dharma realm because it is where all dharmas converge. Poisonous and medicinal sprouts still each unfold according to their nature, just as wholesome and unwholesome karmic sprouts compete within one thought. Calling karma the Dharma realm does not erase the signs of transgression and merit.

Loving-kindness and compassion arise from this. The principle of transgression and merit has no fixed opposition or accord, yet becomes transgression or merit according to causes and conditions. Conventional name and form can be stolen, becoming unwholesome karma, or given, becoming wholesome karma. Opposing immediate emptiness becomes the outflowed karma of the six paths; according with it becomes the outflow-free karma of the Three Vehicles. Opposing the Middle Way becomes karma at the two extremes of outflowed and outflow-free; according with it becomes karma that is neither outflowed nor outflow-free. Having no fixed opposition or accord does not mean there is no opposition or accord. Precisely because good and evil form through conditions, bodhisattvas generate compassion toward opposition and loving-kindness toward accord.

Why Breaking Karma Does Not Deny Cause and Result

When mind is settled upon the emptiness, provisionality, and Middle of karma, evil ceasing is in each case calming and good according is contemplation. Pervasively breaking through Dharmas then asks where karma abides among the three times. If in the past, the past has subsided; if in the future, the future does not yet exist; if in the present, thoughts never remain. What has departed belongs to the past and what has not arrived remains future; what arises immediately ceases, so what can be called present? Asking again about the time of departure and the departing agent makes both karma and governing subject unobtainable.

Examined throughout the three times, all wholesome and unwholesome karma is ultimately pure. Yet the treatise immediately supplies the other side: the world continues to distinguish wholesome and unwholesome karma through conventional names in language. One may not hear a name and grasp it as real, nor cancel the establishment of good and evil because names lack intrinsic nature. What is broken is fixed intrinsic nature and fixed agency and reception, not all language of cause and result.

This also explains why discerning passage and obstruction, the factors of the path, and aids to the path follow pervasive breaking. If declaring karma empty were sufficient, there would be nowhere further to go. Precisely because emptiness does not end the discussion, practitioners still recognize suffering, accumulation, path, and cessation within karma, non-karma, both, and neither; contemplate the five aggregates of the ten realms as the four establishments of mindfulness; and rely on recollection of the Buddha to help break unwholesome karma of habitual cause and retributive result. The unobtainability of karma and transformation of unwholesome karmic obstruction stand together on one path of cultivation.

From Not Falsely Claiming Noble Stages to Naturally Flowing into Coolness

The final three modes are brief, but contain all the dangers of judging signs discussed earlier. While cultivating contemplation, one first does not falsely claim the stages of higher noble ones. Faced with inner and outer obstructions, one patiently endures them so practice remains unhindered. When only a state resembling the path has arisen, one does not treat it as genuine understanding and does not develop attachment to Dharma.

These three steps answer the first appearance of karmic signs. Seeing a wholesome sign does not mean realization; encountering an unwholesome sign does not mean retreat from the path; possessing a state resembling the path does not justify attachment. From the mirror first polished to reveal myriad images through the final nonarising of attachment to Dharma, the whole passage asks not how extraordinary signs are, but whether mind can avoid being carried away by them.

When attachment to Dharma does not arise, one proceeds spontaneously without stagnation and naturally flows into the cool ground. The pure, unsurpassed, and sovereign forms of retribution obtained through the ten contemplations correspond respectively to the Dharma-, recompense-, and response-bodies. Ultimately deeply penetrating transgression and merit without defilement is purity. Returning to the origin and source, with the illumination of wisdom perfectly complete, is unsurpassed. Extending bodily forms into the nine paths and manifesting through the universal gate is sovereignty.

Only here does the full arc of contemplating the object of karmic signs become visible. It begins with the appearance of wholesome and unwholesome former karma, passes through distinguishing, testing, and releasing attachment to signs, and ends not in a more accomplished art of reading signs but in making every karmic sign an object of the ten modes. It deeply penetrates transgression and merit without becoming stained by either and can extend bodily forms into the nine paths for the benefit of beings. One who truly passes through karmic signs is not a person able to judge everything, but one who still knows where the place of awakening lies, no matter how signs appear.

Through the Eye of the Fuxing

The reading above follows the four sections and ten modes of Zhiyi's treatise itself. Zhanran's Fuxing further illuminates several joints easily confused, preventing sign, karma, and contemplation from being inverted into one another.

First, Zhanran explains the polished-mirror simile through sunlight and myriad images. Calming-and-contemplation is like light; karmic signs are like images. Light makes images visible; it does not newly produce or extinguish them. The four alternatives—calming stopping evil as evil ceases, contemplation contemplating good as good arises, and the rest—describe practitioners seeing signs of the arising and cessation of good and evil. They do not mean that calming-and-contemplation manufactures good and evil at that moment. Internal and external causes and conditions cannot be split into an either-or choice: although wording may name the stronger side, in principle internal and external must unite. Cultivation of contemplation reveals the responsive capacity; buddhas reveal their response.

Second, the six ways in which signs arise extend through the subsequent wholesome and unwholesome classes. The first two are the separate arising of retributive result and habitual cause; the middle two their mutual arising; the fifth their simultaneous arising; the sixth their intermixture. That each perfection and obscuration does not repeat all six later does not mean the remaining patterns have vanished. The four names also admit two vantage points. When first discussed through habitual continuity and drawing forth results, although there are four names, they can be embraced by three meanings. When distinguished anew across lifetimes, each of the four names has four meanings. Compressing these two levels into one fixed chart of cause and result loses the treatise's usage of mutually viewing former and later lives.

Third, Zhanran narrowly defines what is explained in detail under the obscuration of broken moral discipline. Three bodily and four verbal acts form the seven branches of intrinsic precepts; drinking is merely one example selected from many prohibitory precepts. The remaining four obscurations are known by analogy. This outline prevents readers from mistaking the treatise's examples for a complete inventory of the six obscurations. The preliminary judgment of intrinsic and nonmanifest good and evil likewise cannot serve as certainty: mutual support and isolated arising are only initial distinctions, still requiring renewed testing through the ten dharmas and three characteristics. The stronger an appearance, the less one may skip the later tests.

Fourth, “personal verification through practice” does not mean realization of a noble stage. It means only that one has personally experienced the arising of such a sign and can test another's case against one's own experience. Only when this is joined with a teacher's oral instructions may one speak publicly. Zhanran says directly that judging another person's signs is truly difficult. This prevents the treatise's requirement of master and verification from becoming a claim to noble realization. It also permits those unable to distinguish signs in minute detail to return safely to direct contemplation of principle. Skill in reading signs has never been a certificate of entry into the path.

Fifth, the same simile of earth and sprouts functions differently in the Distinct and Perfect Teachings. In the earlier use, karma resembles earth and the ten realms various sprouts; producer and produced remain distinct. In the latter, the ground of Dharma-nature intrinsically possesses productive nature, and both producer and produced are none other than the Dharma realm. The karma of one thought is inconceivable not merely because there are many sprouts, but because earth, rain, poisonous sprouts, and medicinal sprouts never leave the Dharma realm. This reading also preserves good and evil: a poisonous sprout remains poisonous, yet no sprout can be expelled beyond the Dharma realm.

Sixth, the horizontal and vertical dimensions of pervasively breaking through Dharmas do not refer vaguely to making an exhaustive search. Zhanran treats comparison among the three times as vertical, then the comparison within each time between time and governing agent as horizontal. The question concerning the “departing agent” directly touches the governing self. At the factors of the path, the preceding Chengshi and Abhidharma passages present only two schools' correlations with the four establishments of mindfulness. Only when the treatise begins its own contemplation of the five aggregates of the ten realms does it directly enter the Perfect contemplation of the non-activating four establishments of mindfulness. The cited treatises and the Tiantai contemplation each retain their layer; their consecutive placement does not fuse them into one account.

Seventh, recollection of the Buddha as an aid to the path must be allocated distinctly according to habitual cause, retributive result, good, and evil. The Buddha of Dharma gates, marks and excellences, and merits each has its treatment. The final sentence speaks only of the transformation of unwholesome karmic obstruction, but Zhanran warns that in general both good and evil can obstruct; the text speaks from evil only because karma of the six obscurations is grave. This corresponds exactly to the preceding wholesome sign that later becomes a great obstruction. Good and evil are not finally decided by their initial names; one must still see whether they impede contemplative practice.

The mirror of the Fuxing repeatedly reduces the possibility of misjudgment: calming-and-contemplation reveals signs but does not manufacture karma; internal and external causes and conditions cannot be taken one-sidedly; none of the six meanings may be omitted; the four names cannot be confused across levels; the nonmanifest cannot escape testing; personal verification cannot be inflated into a noble stage; breaking karma cannot be reduced to one declaration of emptiness; and aids to the path cannot lose the distinction between good and evil. Karmic signs deserve examination but not attachment. Good and evil must be distinguished, but appearance alone cannot decide them. What ultimately leads people beyond signs remains the ten-mode calming-and-contemplation.

As cultivation gradually gains strength, why does clarity not necessarily arrive first, while disturbance may? The Mohe Zhiguan answers directly: just as evil is about to retreat and good to arise, Māra most fears that practitioners will leave his realm. He fears losing his retinue, fears that practitioners will turn to liberate others, and fears that after gaining superknowledge and wisdom they will return to subdue him. Demonic affairs are therefore not merely chance episodes outside the path. They may arise precisely at the pass where wholesome roots are about to mature and the path to turn.

Yet the treatise does not thereby teach people to imagine every adversity as Māra. It first draws the boundaries among the four Māras, then distinguishes three classes of arising signs, three kinds of harm, and three classes of treatment, and only afterward places demonic affairs fully within calming-and-contemplation. This sequence prevents fear from preceding observation and prevents recognition from stopping at pursuit of strange signs. The real questions remain: when an external object arrives, does mind accept and grasp it? Has the contemplating mind lost its order? Even after the demonic sign retreats, does wholesome Dharma genuinely arise through one's own power of mind?

Why One Cannot Expect Only Favorable Conditions as Good Is about to Arise

The rationale for demonic affairs has two sides. From Māra's side, he wishes to keep practitioners in his realm so they can neither leave it nor transform others. From the practitioners' side, when disturbance is seen as it truly is, it instead becomes the place where deviant and correct are made distinct. The treatise therefore first says Māra fears and destroys good, then immediately says, “Māra's coming is very good.”

These two statements do not conflict. If Māra is treated as an absolute enemy, mind is first carried away by hatred. If Buddha is treated as a favorable condition to be coveted, mind is again carried away by joy. Knowing that the suchness of the Māra realm and the suchness of the Buddha realm are equal and nondual, neither grieving because of Māra nor rejoicing because of Buddha, is abiding in the real limit. “Māra's coming is very good” does not praise disturbance itself. It means that when the deviant appears, it reveals whether practitioners can avoid being seized by it.

This object therefore forces an uncomfortable question: do we want wholesome Dharma, or only a path without resistance? If one will cultivate only when things proceed smoothly and comfortably and others provide support, Māra need not even appear in a terrifying form. A slight change in conditions is enough for mind to leave its original direction. Conversely, if deviant and correct are clear, then although external conditions move, the real limit does not. What comes cannot decide where the practitioner goes.

Drawing Boundaries First, So the Strange Does Not Immediately Cause Alarm

The four Māras are the Māra of the aggregates, the Māra of afflictions, death-Māra, and Māra as a heavenly son. The Māra of the aggregates has already been treated within the object of aggregates, sense fields, and elements; the Māra of afflictions within the object of afflictions; and illness as a cause of death within the object of illness. Although the present object reviews the four Māras, it directly discusses Māra as a heavenly son. This boundary matters: one word, “Māra,” can embrace several meanings, but identical terminology does not justify mixing distinct contemplative objects.

The treatise then looks beyond the realms. Although the Māras of fragmentary birth and death have been passed once the four inversions within the realms are broken, the four inversions beginning with impermanence, unequaled form, and one portion of death-Māra remain. There is no other Māra of the sixth heaven; the term is still conceptually applied because the red samādhi has not reached culmination. Only at wondrous awakening, when principle is perfect, ignorance exhausted, retribution not inhabited, and red samādhi complete, are demonic affairs exhausted. This passage may appear far removed from present seated meditation, but it issues a warning: the disappearance of coarse disturbance does not mean that all demonic affairs are exhausted. As long as one's stage is not perfect, its level must still be distinguished.

Returning to immediately arising signs, the treatise lists three classes. Chuiti disturbs through bodily contact and sound. Time-sprites transform according to the time into men, women, old or young people, birds, beasts, and other forms, entertaining or instructing. Māra operates through the five faculties, shooting agreeable, fearful, and ordinary objects into mind. These distinctions do not encourage collecting strange experiences. They show that some disturbance presses through contact and sound, some deceives through forms and language, and some works almost entirely through ordinary faculties and objects.

Why the Most Dangerous Arrow May Appear Ordinary

Māra's arrows include not only poisoned arrows, but flower arrows and arrows neither forceful nor gentle. A fearful form makes one withdraw and is easily recognized as a threat. An agreeable form makes one rejoice and is often mistaken for an aid. An ordinary form neither alarms nor delights and more easily slips by unnoticed. The ear, nose, tongue, and body operate in the same way. As soon as a faculty apprehends an object, it turns into mind in an instant, and an external sign becomes something received and grasped within.

The treatise's real warning concerns not the need to seal the gates of the faculties, but “acceptance and grasping.” Once an object is accepted and clung to, it may become illness; illness then obstructs meditative concentration and can turn the entire course of cultivation. A flower arrow is no safer than a poisoned arrow precisely because it does not compel through pain, but uses delight to make one open the gate oneself. The ordinary arrow is subtler still, because mind does not even feel that it has made a choice.

If inner shooting cannot enter, Māra turns to external fanning. Among donors, monastic teachers, fellow students, and disciples, one word of praise or blame or one disagreement between a Dharma master and followers can become an entrance. “External” does not mean that all responsibility lies with others. It means that demonic affairs flow through relationships. One different statement from the Dharma master angers followers; one resentful word from followers provokes the master to rebuke them. An arrow passes from one mind into another until the whole cultivating community leaves the matter at hand.

More troubling still, Māra does not guide people only into evil; he can also trap them in good. Building stūpas and monasteries can be wholesome, yet if distraction obstructs concentration, good affairs are being used to change the direction of the path. The liberation of the Two Vehicles has its truth, yet if used to persuade people to abandon the Great and study the Lesser, it becomes a branch road preventing entry into the Great. Emptiness and provisionality are Dharma gates, yet falling into partial emptiness or partial provisionality without preparatory means likewise prevents entry into the Perfect. The decisive issue is therefore not only whether an affair appears good or evil, but where it carries mind and whether it makes the original great practice lose its direction.

Why the Twenty Deviant Signs Include Goodness, Wisdom, Blessing, and Happiness

When demonic arrows first shoot through the five faculties, they create three harms: bodily illness, loss of the original sequence of the contemplating mind, or attainment of deviant dharmas. The first two are easier to notice. The third is most difficult, because a deviant dharma need not appear as “deviant.” It may appear as existence or nonexistence, pitch-black confusion or constant opening into brightness, chaotic movement of mind or a mind stopped like wood and stone.

The treatise therefore distinguishes ten opposing pairs: existence and nonexistence, brightness and darkness, concentration and disorder, foolishness and wisdom, grief and joy, suffering and happiness, calamity and blessing, evil and good, hatred and love, rigidity and softness. Judging by names alone, one would assume that brightness, concentration, wisdom, joy, happiness, blessing, good, and love must be correct and their opposites wrong. Yet the treatise places both sides among deviant signs and concludes with “whether excessive or deficient.”

This conclusion reveals what deviant signs share: they take away the freedom and order of the contemplating mind. Concentration that becomes rigid like wood and stone is not genuine stability. Wisdom that becomes only quick cleverness is not genuine wisdom. Good manipulated by an outside force, causing one both to give and to drive others to give, may not be the correct path. Love that becomes profound entangling attachment, like hatred that rejects others and withdraws into solitary dwelling, makes mind lose balance. A negative name is indeed not to be adopted, but a positive name is no talisman exempting something from examination.

One faculty has three feelings; one feeling has twenty deviant dharmas, so three feelings have sixty. Extended through the five faculties, they make three hundred. The number does not create a frightening catalog of strange signs. It forces observation down to every junction of faculty, object, and feeling. Although the deviant dharmas of the ninety-five non-Buddhist paths differ, they must initially pass through the five faculties. If observation is fine enough, the corresponding entrance can be found among these three hundred relations.

Why Treatment Begins with Nonacceptance but Does Not End There

Each of the three classes of demonic sign has a corresponding treatment. For Chuiti, one first recognizes its name and origin and rebukes it through the precepts. If it remains, one recites the precept preface and rules and lets the spirits of moral discipline guard one. This does not rely on a still more terrifying power to overpower a ghost, but stands firmly in one's own maintained moral discipline: it comes through causes and conditions of broken precepts, while one refuses its control through unbroken conduct.

For time-sprites, one recognizes the time and calls the name; one may also use a square mirror to reflect the image they cannot alter within it. Calling the name distinguishes the time from which they come; looking into the mirror distinguishes their reflected form. The internal and external treatments do the same work: they return an obscure and disorienting feeling to an observable sign. A demonic sign gains power through obscurity; recognition deprives it of a hiding place.

Māra has three treatments. First, rebuke and stop him at the initial awareness, like a gatekeeper preventing an evil person from entering a house. The general instruction is “accept nothing belonging to another.” Second, if it has already been accepted, inspect carefully from head to foot. From where does Māra come? Where is mind? Both the visitor and the one disturbed are sought and found unobtainable, like someone carrying a lamp and inspecting each place, leaving an evil person nowhere to abide. Third, if it remains after contemplation, resolutely resist, setting death as the limit and refusing to dwell with it.

These three steps do not replace one another. Resistance without contemplation can nourish fear. Contemplation of emptiness without resolve can mistake retreat for nonattainment. Initial refusal without recognizing that one has already accepted an object misses one's actual conduct of mind. The opening gate must therefore be swift, examination after entry fine, and response to prolonged presence firm. Skill consists in turning according to the stage one occupies, not using one posture for every demonic affair.

The Key Turn from Treating Māra to Contemplating Māra

If one seeks only to drive away an unpleasant object, its departure seems to end the matter. After methods of treatment, however, the treatise opens the ten dharmas. It first distinguishes the conceivable object: following Māra in evil produces dharmas of the three evil paths; following Māra into good can still leave one stained life after life; if Māra persuades one to take only one's own nirvāṇa, one turns into the Two Vehicles; if he makes one employ circuitous and awkward liberation, one cannot swiftly enter awakening. Demonic affairs thus unfold through the ten Dharma realms, each shallow or profound, yet remain within the conceivable.

Only then does the treatise ask how this object is contemplated without making Māra a fixed entity outside mind. It answers that one Māra contains all Māras and all Māras are one Māra; further, one Māra is all Māras and one Buddha all buddhas. The Māra realm does not leave the Buddha realm; they are nondual and not different. In this contemplation, the place of subduing Māra is itself the place of awakening, and Māra resembles firewood thrown into a fire, making contemplative wisdom blaze more brightly.

The Māra realm being the Buddha realm does not conflate deviant and correct. If it did, there would be no need for the preceding fine distinctions among arising signs, harms, and treatments, nor for rebuke, nonacceptance, examination, and resistance. Nonduality of the two realms breaks substantial attachment; it does not erase measured practice. Precisely because Māra lacks fixed intrinsic nature, Māra can be transformed. Precisely because the deviant creates concrete harm, practitioners cannot accept it through empty talk.

This also explains why the treatise presents calming and contemplation together. That eighty billion beings cannot shake mind is called calming; penetrating the Māra realm as itself the Buddha realm is called contemplation. Calming alone may be firm yet rigid. Contemplation alone may speak loftily of nonduality while following objects away. When mind remains unmoved yet illuminates, and illumination sees nonduality without losing its power to reject the deviant, demonic affairs turn from obstruction into the place of awakening.

How the Ten Dharmas Return a Disturbance to the Whole Path

After contemplating the inconceivable object, practitioners arouse loving-kindness and compassion through the nonduality of Māra and Buddha. Beings become lost within the Buddha realm, arbitrarily produce the Māra realm, and generate afflictions within awakening; one therefore has compassion for their delusion. To enable beings to know the Buddha realm precisely within the Māra realm and awakening within afflictions, one lovingly wishes for their awakening. Loving-kindness toward immeasurable buddhas and compassion toward immeasurable Māras no longer incline only toward the preferred side.

To fulfill this vow, settle mind through calming-and-contemplation. As demonic affairs arise, break them through the horizontal, vertical, single, and compound alternatives. The Tripiṭaka, Shared, Distinct, and Perfect Teachings each have shallower and deeper breaking of Māra; no one stage can flatten them. Although the eight Māras are said to be broken at the first abode, they are permanently exhausted only at wondrous awakening. Saying that the first abode breaks them cannot be grasped as one isolated moment of breaking. Saying that later awakening breaks them cannot cancel all preceding stages. Pervasive breaking still does not depart from actual stages of practice.

Within every breaking one must further distinguish passage and obstruction and regulate the factors of the path. Form possessed by the Māra realm is itself empty and therefore called impure, itself provisional and therefore called pure, itself the Middle and therefore called neither pure nor impure. The other four aggregates are contemplated in the same way. If the three gates of liberation have not opened, one must turn back to examine phenomenal obstruction and cannot blame every unopened gate upon an external Māra.

The treatise here presents an incisive self-examination: giving to seek retribution; maintaining precepts to seek gain and support; practicing patience from fear of others; practicing diligence to seek reputation; entering meditative concentration while sunk in ghostly dharmas; and producing wisdom within a net of discriminating views. All six can bear wholesome names while obscuring the three gates of liberation. The problem does not lie in giving, moral discipline, patient endurance, diligence, meditative concentration, and wisdom themselves, but in the motivation to which practitioners have surrendered them.

The correct six perfections therefore do not substitute a more attractive list; each treats one of the six obscurations. When obscurations depart and perfections are accomplished, the flame grows with the abundance of oil. If afflictions are mixed in, contemplation assists; if karmic obstructions, recollection of the Buddha assists. What the object of Māra elicits is not an isolated exorcistic technique, but a renewed correction of aids to the path, motivation, and the whole cultivation.

Why Attachment to Dharma Must Still Be Guarded against after Patient Endurance

If practitioners can resist demonic affairs, have they realized the true? The treatise immediately restrains this thought: the Small Vehicle's path of subduing is generally named wisdom through hearing, and even the five grades of the Perfect Teaching remain at that stage. Since it is not yet accomplished, one cannot confuse it with the real stage and produce overweening pride. The object of Māra tests not only whether fear causes retreat, but whether a little understanding causes self-authorization.

To enter the real stage, one must patiently endure single-mindedly, illuminate the most subtle points, and rebuke and resist with resolve. Even after entering the stage resembling realization and receiving a bestowal of Dharma, one must not produce pride or craving. A person of great merit demoted to a small district may lose salary or life: arousing semblance-understanding resembles receiving the small district, losing that understanding resembles losing salary, and falling into the Two Vehicles resembles losing life, because the Great Vehicle's family enterprise is thereby cut off.

This simile speaks heavily of “attachment to Dharma.” People ordinarily fear only losing what they have gained, but the treatise points out that clinging to an attainment is itself the beginning of loss. Only without attachment to Dharma can one pass from semblance into the real, discipline Māra as an attendant, and proceed directly to the place of awakening. Māra may force people back through a frightening appearance, or remain after a taste of Dharma in the form “I have attained.”

The general and specific intents finally gather one another. People of dull faculties first understand one shared intent, then circuitously enter each specific contemplated object. Each passage has a distinct meaning, yet all converge upon nonarising. The object of Māra thus has its own arising signs, harms, and treatments without leaving the contemplative method established earlier. If the general does not enter the specific, it becomes an empty principle; if the specific is not threaded by the general intent, it becomes a scattering of techniques.

Who Makes Wholesome Dharma Arise after Māra Departs?

The final question seems simple but turns the whole unit back upon the practitioner: after demonic disturbance ends, does wholesome Dharma naturally follow like spring after winter's cold? The answer is no. A difficult pass may be over and good still not arise. Māra is evoked through unwholesome conditions; good is produced through one's own power of mind. Removal of an external obstruction eliminates one resistance; it does not mean one's inner vows and practice are complete.

The treatise verifies this through stripping off skin to seek Dharma. In an evil age without a buddha, a bodhisattva diligently sought Dharma. Māra transformed into a brahmin and demanded skin as paper, bone as brush, and blood as ink before giving one verse. The bodhisattva immediately stripped off and dried his skin, but Māra disappeared. A buddha knew the mind seeking Dharma, emerged from below, taught the profound Dharma, and enabled the bodhisattva to attain patient endurance concerning nonarising.

The turn in this story is not that Māra finally became good, but that after Māra vanished, the mind seeking Dharma did not vanish with him. Skin-paper, bone-brush, and blood-ink press the power of mind to a place where it cannot be feigned. If one acts only because another promises a reward, action stops when that person disappears. If the mind seeking Dharma is genuine, deception can reveal it but cannot manufacture it. The whole unit therefore ends not with “Māra has been driven away,” but with “from what does good ultimately arise?” What contemplation of demonic affairs finally contemplates remains this mind.

Through the Eye of the Fuxing

The reading above unfolds according to the treatise's own five sections, ten dharmas, and final exchange. Zhanran's Zhiguan Fuxing Chuanhong Jue further marks several easily confused levels.

Zhanran explicitly explains: “One Māra is itself all buddhas”〔T1912 0409c16〕.

First, the opening “evil is about to subside and good wishes to arise” follows the preceding karmic object. Zhanran distinguishes phenomenal evil about to subside and good in principle about to arise, and says the entire rationale contains the four siddhāntas: leaving the Māra realm breaks through the worldly siddhānta; the arising of good in principle, the individual; superknowledge corresponding to calming and wisdom to contemplation, the counteractive; abiding in the one suchness of Māra and Buddha, ultimate meaning. He further limits what Māra fears to the good of awakening rather than outflowed good that still belongs to birth and death. These correlations illuminate the opening structure, but they are later interpretive judgments and cannot be reversed into headings explicitly given by the treatise.

Second, the present object directly takes Māra as a heavenly son. Zhanran says that the four Māras conceptually established beyond the realms through the inversions beginning with impermanence are general Māra names, not the Māra distinguished immediately in this object. The so-called Māra as a heavenly son beyond the realms is likewise only conceptually established because the red samādhi has not been exhausted. He further divides the ten Māras of the Avataṃsaka Sūtra into general and specific meanings and ultimately gathers them into the four Māras. Thus the four Māras, ten Māras, and three classes of arising signs each retain a distinct level and are not merged into one table because they share the name Māra.

Third, among the three classes of arising signs, Chuiti and time-sprites are distant subjects of Pāpīyas, while Māra is a close subject. Zhanran also explains the count in “destroying two kinds of good and increasing two kinds of evil”: the four vast vows are good already arisen; the various practices are good not yet arisen; views and thought are evil already arisen; ignorance is evil not yet arisen. The eighteen arrows arise because the five faculties apprehend objects and turn into the mental faculty, producing contact with dharmas; faculties and objects confronting one another make eighteen. External fanning likewise has eighteen, so self and other together have thirty-six. This phrase-by-phrase correlation is established only at the mirror layer; the main text retains the treatise's own numerical wording.

Fourth, the treatise's explicit count is three hundred deviant dharmas. Zhanran separately says that counting their passage into the mental ground yields 360. The later number is an expanded calculation of the commentary and cannot be backfilled into the treatise. The same restraint applies to the time-beasts: Zhanran wonders whether “carp” should be “eel,” and notes doubt concerning “cat” and another work's “swallow-rat.” Because these are only doubtful readings he records, the treatise's original graphs must be preserved rather than silently replaced.

Fifth, Zhanran explains “accept nothing belonging to another” as emptiness and nothing attained, adding that the five objects are Māra's five powers while the one power of non-negligence can repel them. Concerning Māra's six perfections, he gives a clear judgment: these six become perfections for Māra and obscurations for the practitioner. Both interpretations return treatment of Māra from resisting an external enemy to apprehension of objects and motivation, but the additional scriptural evidence and doctrinal judgments of the commentary must remain attributed and not be merged into the treatise's own statements.

Sixth, the treatise says that śrāvakas discipline Māra while the Great Vehicle does not teach disciplining Māra. Zhanran distinguishes the Small Vehicle, which severs delusion and therefore speaks of disciplining Māra, from the Great Vehicle, which embodies and penetrates all dharmas so Māra is originally the Dharma realm. This judgment does not cancel the preceding rebuke, examination, and resistance. It distinguishes whether agent and object of treatment are still grasped as two fixed entities. Rejecting the deviant in phenomena and nonduality in principle cannot replace one another.

Seventh, Zhanran marks each division among the ten dharmas: the Māra realm being the Buddha realm begins arousing mind; wishing to fulfill the vow begins settling mind; following the arising demonic affair enters pervasive breaking; then follow passage and obstruction, factors of the path, aids to the path, stages, patient endurance, and freedom from attachment to Dharma. In the story of Chisui and Vimalakīrti, he classifies the former as Distinct and the latter Perfect. This is a later teaching classification, not a self-label belonging to the figures in the scripture. He further says that a great-carriage simile should have appeared at the end of the ten dharmas but is abbreviated in the present text. Readers may recognize his judgment of abbreviation but may not supplement the treatise themselves.

Eighth, Zhanran judges “general use of one intent” as crowning the following nine objects with the ten dharmas of the object of the aggregates, hence calling it general. At each object one must still enter its specifics according to that object. At the final story of stripping off skin to seek Dharma, he records two proximate versions side by side, saying only that the latter explanation agrees with the present text and differs slightly from the treatise; he does not collapse the differences into one. What this mirror finally preserves is precisely the conclusion of the unit itself: removal of obstruction does not equal the arising of good. Later commentary can illuminate the text, but cannot replace the practitioner's own power of mind.