摩訶止觀 義疏通講 · 冊3

The joy of dhyāna is lucid, body and mind are light and at ease, and distraction has temporarily ceased. Is this not precisely what practice seeks? Yet after demonic affairs, the Mohe Zhiguan establishes meditative concentration itself as the sixth object of contemplation. The reason is direct: without meditative concentration, one loses a powerful aid to the path; once meditative concentration is attained, attachment to it binds one through concentration. Fire should indeed be avoided, but falling into water while escaping fire does not mean danger has truly been escaped.

This chapter therefore neither teaches people to pursue a succession of extraordinary experiences nor urges them to reject every concentrated object. It first distinguishes how ten gates of dhyāna are opened and combined; their outflowed and outflow-free dimensions; their depths; and their mutual arising. It then explains in detail how past habituation arises as signs of body and mind. Only at the end does it return to the decisive question: once dhyāna has arisen, how can it be prevented from producing bondage within the six destinies and instead be transformed into a gate of calming-and-contemplation? Seed, rain, sun, and sprout; wheat, ferment, mash, and wine; corpse, bone-light, cucumber, and streams entering the sea—a sequence of images all answers this question.

〔Section §1〕 Why Dhyāna Can Also Become an Obstruction

Prolonged illness, long travel, many affairs, and excessive recitation can prevent mind from abiding. These obstructions to dhyāna are easy to see. What is truly difficult to distinguish is the obstruction that arises after dhyāna has appeared. If demonic affairs have passed but true luminous wisdom has not arisen, past habituations will arise in profusion through general cultivation of calming-and-contemplation. The coolness, wonder, and happiness present at such a time most readily make one mistake the experience for arrival at the path.

If an arisen sign of dhyāna is taken as noble realization, overbearing pride follows. If fear of error makes one rebuke and abandon everything indiscriminately, one loses an aid to the path. The former is attachment and the latter escape; neither truly contemplates the object. The treatise establishes the object of meditative concentration separately precisely to transform “What have I attained?” into “How does this object arise, how does it abide, and how does it make one attach?” Dhyāna factors can assist the path, but assistance is not the fruit of the path. Happiness can become a wholesome condition and can also become subtle bondage.

This measure determines how the whole chapter must be read. The various contacts, lights and colors, recollection of the Buddha, and superknowledges that follow would reverse the chapter’s intent if read only as powers to pursue. They are described in detail so they can be recognized when they arise and contemplated after recognition—not so the arising sign itself can be raised into the endpoint.

〔Section §2〕 Why Five, Ten, and Fifteen Gates Can All Be Established

The gates of dhyāna are immeasurable. The treatise provisionally selects ten: the four root dhyānas, sixteen special excellences, penetrating illumination, nine perceptions, eight relinquishments, Great Impurity, loving-kindness, dependent origination, recollection of the Buddha, and superknowledge. These ten are neither the only possible classification nor an arbitrary count. They stand between five and fifteen gates and thereby preserve the scope of phenomenal dhyāna.

If the five gates are not opened out, the special excellences and penetrating illumination within breath-counting, and the relinquishments and Great Impurity within impurity, cannot each reveal their own arising signs. Superknowledge arises in dependence upon many kinds of dhyāna and cannot be forced into a single gate. Yet if all fifteen gates were retained, subtle contemplations of principle such as loving-kindness conditioned by Dharmas, unconditioned loving-kindness, dependent origination as retribution, and dependent origination in one thought would be mixed into this chapter. Breath-counting and impurity are therefore each unfolded; loving-kindness, coarse dependent origination across three lives, and recollection of the response-body Buddha retain their original names; and the five superknowledges are separately established as one gate, making ten.

The principle of opening and combining lies not in the number but in the level contemplated. This chapter distinguishes how phenomenal dhyāna from past habituation arises, so it opens phenomenal marks and temporarily hides subtle principle. The Dharmas temporarily hidden are not denied; each belongs to a later passage. This also reminds the reader that one Dharma-name can be opened or combined differently according to the contemplative gate. Sectional headings guide observation; they do not cut the Dharma realm into ten fixed substances.

〔Section §3〕 If Phenomenal Dhyāna Is Outflowed, How Can It Produce the Outflow-Free?

Viewed only through substance and marks, all ten gates are phenomenal dhyāna and can be called outflowed. Viewed through whether they can condition world-transcending wisdom, they cannot be judged with one undifferentiated cut. The four root dhyānas already exist in the world and can be attained in common by ordinary people and non-Buddhists; cultivated exclusively on their own, they increase only the outflowed. The sixteen special excellences and penetrating illumination already possess contemplative wisdom and, when disclosed within Buddha-Dharma, can produce the outflow-free, yet they still retain phenomenal concentration. The nine perceptions, impurity, and related contemplations exert such strong disenchantment that they can become an initial condition for the outflow-free without separately awaiting wisdom concerning the truths.

The key is not to rename phenomenal dhyāna contemplation of principle, but to distinguish “what this Dharma itself is” from “what this Dharma can produce.” One stone medicine makes a dose heating and another cooling; phenomenal dhyānas likewise can act differently upon afflictions. Without convergence with wisdom concerning the truths, root dhyāna cannot sever views and thought on its own. Contemplation of impurity can directly weaken the defilement of desire and open the gate of the establishment of mindfulness of body and the factors of the path.

Loving-kindness, dependent origination, recollection of the Buddha, and superknowledge cannot be judged apart from the concentrations upon which they depend. Loving-kindness arising in dependence upon root dhyāna follows its outflowed concentration; arising in dependence upon impurity or relinquishment, it can instead follow an outflow-free condition. These Dharmas have no fixed meditative ground of their own, and their depth and purity must be judged from their support. “Outflowed” and “outflow-free” are therefore not permanent labels pasted onto the names of the ten gates. They are layered observations according to substance, conditions, and the wisdom produced.

〔Section §4〕 Is the Sequence of Ten Gates a Staircase Everyone Must Climb?

The treatise first explains how this chapter differs from the Sequential Dhyāna Gate and the earlier counteractive methods. There, to accomplish the perfection of dhyāna, dhyāna first arises and its goodness or evil is then tested. Counteractive Dharmas are deliberately cultivated as aids to the path in order to break obstructions. This chapter comes after the objects of afflictions, karma, Māra, and the rest and contemplates the spontaneous arising of past habituation. The names of the Dharma gates may be the same, but their purposes differ.

The ten gates still form a pedagogical arc from shallow to deep. Root dhyāna is readily attained but has little contemplative wisdom. The special excellences turn from savor to purity. Realized signs in penetrating illumination are finer. The nine perceptions use forceful preliminary visualizations to subdue desire. The eight relinquishments turn from outward objects to treating inner mind. Great Impurity expands the contemplated object from direct to circumstantial retribution. Loving-kindness broadly cultivates merit after disenchantment. Dependent origination establishes correct worldly view. Recollection of the Buddha turns from lower causes toward higher results. Superknowledge reveals the sovereign function of meditative concentration.

Yet arrangement does not mean every practitioner experiences these gates in the same order. Past habituations have their own before and after, and the gates of dhyāna can bring one another forth. Sequence only enables one to distinguish depth, function, and relation. Treating chapter order as the sole order of arising forces one route upon actual experience; refusing all distinctions of depth mixes savor-attached dhyāna, contemplative dhyāna, and world-transcending conditions into one confused mass.

〔Section §5〕 If Every Seed Is Present, Why Does Each Ripen at a Different Time?

The arising of dhyāna has inner causes and outer conditions. Since the remote past, beings have cultivated various concentrations; these past habituations resemble seeds in the earth, while present calming-and-contemplation resembles rain. The rain falls at once, yet plum, peach, pear, and persimmon bear fruit in different months. Although the Dharma-condition encountered is the same, the arising signs of dhyāna ripen unevenly according to past habituation.

“Natural arising” therefore does not mean birth without cause. It means only that one is not at this moment deliberately cultivating that particular gate, while what was perfused in the past appears under corresponding conditions. If one practiced in sequence in the past, the gates may now arise in sequence. If one phenomenally cultivated a phenomenal Dharma in the past, a phenomenal sign may now arise. Different seeds yield various forms of mutual arising.

Seeds alone are still insufficient. Even if seed is present in the ground, it does not sprout without sunlight. Sentient beings’ wholesome roots must correspond with the Buddha’s power and Dharma-conditions. A great bell can sound by itself, yet the volume depends upon the striker. The Buddha’s empowerment is equal; the depth of what arises depends upon beings’ habituations. Delivering oneself and being delivered through hearing Dharma appear opposed, but one says the inner cause cannot be replaced and the other that outer conditions cannot be absent. Attributing everything to buddha-power erases one’s own cultivation by infusion; attributing everything to self-power fails to see the reciprocal response of capacity and stimulus.

〔Section §6〕 From Coarse Abiding to the First Dhyāna, How Are the Signs Distinguished Correctly?

After the body is upright, mind gathered, and breath regulated, the course of mind becomes clear and quiet. Though it has an object, it does not race or scatter; this is coarse abiding. Finer and more stable is fine abiding. Between them, a Dharma that sustains the body may make it naturally upright. A wholesome sustaining makes the body neither tight nor slack; an evil sustaining brings stiffness and pain when it comes and fatigue when it leaves. One level deeper, the body resembles the shadow of a cloud and the mind-ground has one measure of brightness and purity, yet body and mind are still seen and the dhyāna factors are not present. This is desire-realm concentration.

Desire-realm concentration can abide for a long time but remains fragile. Only when it silently turns so that body and head, clothing, and bedding no longer appear, and open vacuity becomes stable, is there a sign of access concentration. The disappearance of bodily marks does not mean nonarising has been realized. Fire covered by ash still burns anyone who steps upon it because the flame is unseen. Empty quiescence in concentration is the same: the obstruction of nature remains, so stillness cannot be passed off as noble forbearance.

From coarse abiding through neither perception nor non-perception, four divisions—retreat, protection, abiding, and advance—apply throughout. Retreat can come from improper regulation of body or breath, or from inner obstruction, Māra, grief, or craving. Protection guards mind through skillful means; abiding remains stable without loss. Advance can be spontaneous or effortful, arise horizontally or vertically, and progress gradually or suddenly. Every division can again contain all four. A dhyāna-object is not a straight line that only ascends and never retreats.

When the eight contacts of movement, itching, lightness, heaviness, cold, warmth, roughness, and smoothness arise in access concentration, the treatise does not first cling to a decision that they emerge from within or arrive from without. Counting breaths makes mind subtle; mind and the four elements transform in sequence, like wheat becoming ferment, ferment becoming mash, and mash becoming wine. The first dhyāna need not be a new thing arriving from outside, yet one cannot therefore grasp it as truly self-produced. The eight contacts are only a skillful classification of the mutual increase of the substance and function of the four elements.

Correct contact must possess the ten merits of emptiness, brightness, concentration, wisdom, wholesome mind, softness, joy, happiness, liberation, and correspondence. Excess and deficiency must be distinguished within each merit: emptiness is not extinction of awareness, brightness is not pursuit of intense light, concentration is not rigid immobility, and correspondence is not loss of discernment. The first dhyāna lies near the border of the desire realm, where deviant Dharmas readily enter through openings. A ghost can follow deviance into dhyāna, but that does not make the substance of dhyāna a ghost. Wind can make rain and can also destroy it. The stronger an arising sign, the more carefully one must test whether its merits are balanced and correct.

The five factors arise together yet become manifest in sequence according to strength. Initial contact with the object is awareness; fine distinction, examination; celebration of attainment, joy; peaceful pleasure, happiness; and quiescence, one-pointed mind. They resemble one mallet striking a bell, with coarse and subtle tones appearing in sequence within one sound. They also resemble opening a treasury: first knowing that it contains treasure, then distinguishing gold and silver, then rejoicing, becoming happy, and entering one-pointed mind.

When awareness and examination are rebuked away, the first dhyāna retreats. If the intervening bare concentration is not lost through grief or regret, inner purity arises as the second dhyāna. Joy is then rebuked and one enters the third dhyāna, with happiness throughout the body; noble ones can relinquish it, ordinary people with difficulty. Happiness is then rebuked and one enters the unmoving concentration of the fourth dhyāna. After that, form is extinguished and space conditioned; space is relinquished and consciousness conditioned; consciousness is relinquished and nothingness conditioned; and then one enters neither perception nor non-perception. Although this summit concentration of the three realms is exceedingly subtle, it remains dark realization. Non-Buddhists mistake it for nirvāṇa, but when its retribution is exhausted they still do not escape circulation.

〔Section §7〕 Why the Sixteen Special Excellences Resemble a Tonic within a Purgative

Contemplation of impurity can act too forcefully; it once made bhikṣus so disenchanted with the body that they sought death. The sixteen special excellences therefore retain a dimension that regulates and nourishes body and mind while purging afflictions. If rhubarb and croton purged without restoring, a weak body would instead be harmed. The special excellences activate practice more powerfully than root dhyāna and accommodate body and mind better than impurity. Because they possess contemplative wisdom, they can communicate with the outflow-free; because their counteraction is less forceful than intense visualization, they can still be called outflowed.

They begin by knowing the length of breath, that inhalation comes from nowhere and exhalation goes nowhere. Root dhyāna only realizes darkly that body and bed no longer appear; the special excellences use contemplative wisdom to see breath pervade the entire body. When the mind-eye opens further, the thirty-six substances within the body are distinct like grains in a storehouse, with inhalation and exhalation encompassing them. Practitioners thereby see impurity, impermanence, suffering, emptiness, and no-self and no longer commit evil for the body. Awareness, examination, joy, happiness, and one-pointed mind remain, but their Dharma-flavor is transformed by contemplative wisdom.

The sixteen Dharmas advance step by step through the four establishments of mindfulness of body, feeling, mind, and dharmas. Even at the fourth dhyāna, unmoving concentration is contemplated as impermanent. On entering the sphere of space, one knows emergence from scatteredness; on entering the sphere of consciousness, one leaves desire for scatteredness; on entering nothingness, one contemplates the cessation of consciousness; and on entering neither perception nor non-perception, one can still abandon subtle attachment. Root dhyāna resembles food without salt, while the special excellences resemble food receiving salt. No strange flavor is added; the same object of dhyāna is no longer obscure because of contemplative wisdom.

〔Section §8〕 Why Penetrating Illumination Sees Body, Breath, and Mind as One Affair

The thirty-six substances contemplated in the special excellences remain general marks. Penetrating illumination makes the three affairs of body, breath, and mind interpenetrate during cultivation and converge as one upon realization. Through fine contemplation it can produce the three illuminations and six superknowledges and even enter the attainment of cessation of feeling and perception; hence “penetrating illumination.” The factor of awareness knows not only mind but also the ultimate and conventional: contemplation of the ultimate makes form, breath, and mind disappear without difference, while contemplation of the conventional again sees fine signs of skin, flesh, bones and organs, the movement of worms through their apertures, and even implantation and embryonic formation.

The treatise explains continuity from earlier to later through a wax seal pressed into clay. Past karma resembles the wax seal and the parents’ reproductive fluids the clay. That old karma does not remain is the breaking of the seal; that a new period of name-and-form forms is the completion of the impression. Five colors, sounds, vital energies, and flavors are then used to distinguish the formation of the five organs and the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and body. These passages do not establish a secret bodily history existing separately from mind. They unfold how, within conventional truth, karma, consciousness, and name-and-form depend upon one another.

When concentration arises, the three affairs resemble a plantain trunk without substance at access concentration; foam at the first dhyāna; a floating cloud at the second; a shadow at the third; and a mirror-image at the fourth. From there, one enters cessation of feeling and perception through space, consciousness, nothingness, and neither perception nor non-perception. Every simile loosens substantial attachment to body, breath, and mind; it does not establish plantain, foam, cloud, or shadow as a fixed meditative sign to collect.

〔Section §9〕 Why the Nine Perceptions Do Not End in Disgust toward the Body

The nine perceptions proceed from swelling, destruction, blood-smearing, festering, blue-blackening, being devoured, scattering, bones, and burning. Practitioners who destroy the Dharma-support hasten to the stage beyond learning and burn away even the bone-person, retaining no further merits of phenomenal concentration, superknowledge, and the rest. Practitioners who preserve the Dharma-support stop at the perception of bones, providing a basis from which streaming light, relinquishments, spheres of mastery, contemplation, refinement, cultivation by infusion, and higher cultivation can continue to develop. Both cultivate disenchantment, but their aims and the preparatory means retained differ.

A corpse is seen first because, although not counted among the nine, it is their root. A person able to speak a moment ago suddenly loses breath and becomes cold; rich or lowly, old or young, upright or ugly, none escapes. The corpse is then seen swelling, splitting, flowing with blood, festering, turning blue-black, being devoured by birds and beasts, and scattering into separate bones. Concentrated mind deepens as the signs change, while defiled attachment ceases through directly seeing the body’s destination.

This does not substitute disgust for wisdom. After the fire of desire is counteracted forcefully, the nine perceptions can also open the outflow-free and the Great Vehicle. Treating the later six perfections and four immeasurable minds merely as textual displacement would overlook that a bodhisattva can arouse vast practice within the very first perception. The treatise compares the method’s force to a rhubarb decoction, yet still returns it to the factors of the path and benefit of others rather than stopping at hatred of the body.

〔Section §10〕 Do the Relinquishments Turn Their Backs on Form or on the Attached Mind?

“Turning one’s back” means becoming disenchanted with the pure five desires of a lower ground and one’s present ground. “Relinquishing” means abandoning the defiled and attached mind. While afflictions are unexhausted and concentration incomplete, the method is called only relinquishment. Only when severance of delusion is ultimate and phenomena and principle complete is it called liberation. Naming the result within the cause or the cause within the result can each be valid in context, but neither erases the distinction between cultivation and realization.

In the first relinquishment, one inwardly contemplates one’s own skin, flesh, and white bones and outwardly contemplates a corpse. The body swells and splits from toes to crown, skin and flesh fall away, and the joints support the skeleton. Practitioners thereby no longer reckon an inner self or love outer things. The bones then emit the eight colors, beginning with blue, yellow, white, and dove-gray; light follows mind upward and downward and universally illuminates the ten directions. Every color likewise possesses eight contacts, ten merits, five factors, and deviant and correct signs. The presence of light does not make a sign correct; mottled confusion must still be removed.

When the inner bone-person disappears and only outer form and the eight colors remain, this is the second relinquishment. When pure color is further tempered through a pure conditioned object so happiness is felt throughout the body without defiled attachment, this is the pure relinquishment. One then transcends all form and enters space, abandons space and conditions consciousness, abandons consciousness and enters nothingness, and finally abandons subtle feeling and perception to accomplish the relinquishment of cessation of feeling and perception. What the relinquishments break at each stage is not merely coarse form, but the mind’s renewed cherishing of each progressively purer object.

〔Section §11〕 Why Does the Object Expand from One Corpse to the Entire World?

Small Impurity mainly contemplates the direct retribution of oneself and others: one corpse, two corpses, and eventually corpses throughout villages and countries. Great Impurity includes circumstantial retribution as well—houses, wealth, food and drink, clothing, mountains and rivers, gardens and forests, rivers and seas. A house resembles a tomb, money a dead snake, soup foul liquid, a mountain a mass of flesh, and a pond a river of pus. Once the power of contemplation gathers force, like fire no longer choosing its fuel, neither direct nor circumstantial retribution can continue to support attachment to desire.

Yet the treatise also asks: what thing has a fixed purity or impurity? Through retribution from wholesome karma, tiles and stones can become gold and silver. Through retribution from evil karma, the flesh of a body may appear as fields, forests, mountains, and houses in hell. Great Impurity does not establish another eternally impure world. Through strong contemplative power it overturns the great inversion, “This thing is certainly lovable.” Form Dharmas can transform according to karma and concentration precisely because they lack a fixed mark that cannot be transformed.

The spheres of mastery then make mind transform many and few, beautiful and ugly, and the eight colors with sovereignty. “Knowing with mastery” means mind is not bound by form and can transform it. “Seeing with mastery” means pure and impure are both understood clearly within contemplation. At the totalities, blue pervades the ten directions and the remaining colors likewise pervade; the colors enter one another without confusion. What pervades issues from inner mind rather than grasping an external leaf. Only when mind can first transform can transformation of an outer object be discussed.

This sovereignty must in turn be realized within the six perfections. If even body can be relinquished, how could one be stingy with wealth? Seeing wealth and sex as filth, how could one break moral discipline for them? Refusing to contend with another person over impure things accomplishes patient endurance. Not retreating because body or land is impure is diligence. Full possession of contemplation, refinement, cultivation by infusion, and higher cultivation is meditative concentration. The unobtainability of contemplative subject and contemplated object is wisdom. If spiritual transformation is not turned into moral conduct and benefit of others, only a subtler attachment remains.

〔Section §12〕 If Impurity Has Broken the Mark of Beings, Whom Can Loving-Kindness Still Condition?

Concentration of loving-kindness first apprehends the sign of sentient beings attaining happiness. Moving gradually from loved ones through neutral people to enemies and making them equal is called broad, great, and immeasurable. Moving from one direction through the four intermediate directions to the ten directions is likewise unfolded as broad, great, and immeasurable. If mind inwardly and decisively forms the perception of beings attaining happiness while outwardly not seeing them receive it, this is unhidden within and hidden without. If inner mind is bright and pure and attainment of happiness is seen outwardly, both are unhidden.

In dependence upon root dhyāna, loving-kindness can possess the five factors of awareness, examination, joy, happiness, and one-pointed mind, yet its Dharma-flavor is deeper than root dhyāna alone. It can also possess contemplative wisdom in dependence upon the special excellences and penetrating illumination, or arise mutually with impurity. A question then appears: if impurity has contemplated the body of beings as destroyed, who remains to receive happiness? The treatise answers that although an outflowed happiness attained by a being is unobtainable, the happiness of nirvāṇa can still be conditioned, transforming the method into loving-kindness conditioned by Dharmas.

Pure and impure marks do not mutually exclude one another. Seeing the body as impure does not prevent seeing a person’s clothing and appearance as upright. The arising of loving-kindness concentration does not prevent knowing that the body will disintegrate. Disenchantment without loving-kindness readily seeks only to escape; loving-kindness without truthful contemplation readily sticks to lovable marks. Only when the two arise mutually can one avoid deception by bodily marks without abandoning sentient beings.

〔Section §13〕 How One Thought of Grasping Unfolds Birth and Death through Three Lives

Dependent-origination dhyāna can trace backward from one present thought. Mind conditions wholesome or evil, and conditioning subject and conditioned object form existence. Existence arises from grasping, grasping from craving, craving from feeling, feeling from contact, contact from the six sense fields, the six sense fields from name-and-form, name-and-form from consciousness implanted in the womb, consciousness from karmic formations, and formations from ignorance. The existence formed by present craving and grasping then draws forth future birth and aging-and-death. The three lives revolve; every link depends upon another and no master exists within them.

This inquiry is itself wisdom in character, yet it can still correspond with root dhyāna and arise as five factors. If dependent origination is understood within and the inversion of self broken while outward marks remain unclear, this is hidden. If implantation, wholesome and evil karma, and future birth and death are seen so all three lives are distinct, this is unhidden. One can also proceed in reverse from the existence of the root dhyānas and trace, level by level, hope, savor-attached craving, receiving, conjunction of faculties and objects, name-and-form, consciousness, karma, and ignorance.

Dependent-origination samādhi still precedes the establishments of mindfulness and belongs to phenomenal contemplation that settles mind. It makes mind resemble a sealed room without wind, fit to become the basis for further contemplation of principle. Pūrṇa’s statement that knowing ignorance prevents grasping and existence from arising already belongs to wisdom from hearing. A shared word “wisdom” cannot collapse the interval between enabling mind to settle and truly penetrating nonarising into one stage.

〔Section §14〕 When Does Dependent-Origination Dhyāna Turn from Arising Signs to the Ten Modes?

Once the Dharma of dependent origination has arisen, the ten meanings of calming-and-contemplation are explained through it. The treatise first describes arising signs of dependent origination across three lives and then immediately asks: since the twelve links contain all birth and death, can the ten modes of calming-and-contemplation be clarified through this very object? The answer unfolds through four kinds of wisdom.

Inferior wisdom transforms ignorance into illumination of arising and ceasing and accomplishes the śrāvaka path. Middling wisdom contemplates neither arising nor ceasing and accomplishes pratyekabuddha awakening and the awakening of the Shared Teaching. Superior wisdom cultivates distinct successive practices through sequential illumination and accomplishes Distinct-Teaching awakening. Most superior wisdom contemplates from the initial arousal of mind that the twelve links are the three buddha-natures. Ignorance, craving, and grasping can be transformed into prajñā; formations and existence into liberation; and the seven links beginning with consciousness can disclose Dharma body. The three paths are not removed so that three virtues can be installed elsewhere. The three virtues are disclosed by transforming delusion into awakening, neither vertical nor horizontal.

The twelve links can also be correlated with the ten suchnesses and ten objects. Aggregates, sense fields, and elements together with illness largely correspond to the resultant links; afflictions, views, and pride largely to ignorance, craving, and grasping; and karma, Māra, meditative concentration, the Two Vehicles, and bodhisattvas largely to formations and existence. Dispersed among different minds, they merely arise and cease and are conceivable. Contemplating one person’s one thought as possessing the ten realms, ten suchnesses, and twelve links does not mean placing all Dharmas into a small mind as a container; it speaks of one within neither-one-nor-different. One thought in a dream can pass through immeasurable lives, already showing that time and enumerated Dharmas cannot be measured through ordinary emotion.

The true mind of awakening thereby removes five kinds of causal suffering and seven kinds of resultant suffering in the ten realms, transforms the five causal links into the correct and assisting paths, and sees the seven resultant links as originally peaceful and happy. Settling mind contemplates the seven links as immediately Dharma-nature so the eight inversions do not arise, and calms the inversions of formations and existence. Pervasive breaking horizontally contemplates the twelve links of the ten realms as only one thought and vertically breaks views and thought, dust-and-sand, lack of knowledge, and ignorance. Passage and obstruction, factors of the path, the three liberations, and counteraction through the six perfections can all be established upon the twelve links.

The Buddhas’ sitting at the site of awakening, turning the Dharma wheel, and entering nirvāṇa likewise do not depart from the twelve links. The sites of awakening of the four teachings, teaching through the five flavors, and four kinds of nirvāṇa are all skillful means suited to faculties. Finally the Six Identities distinguish stages: beings being the One Vehicle in principle does not mean identity in name, contemplative practice, resemblance, partial realization, and ultimate identity have no difference. Moonlight gradually becomes full while the moon’s substance has never separately arisen. Stages have higher and lower, while suchness originally neither arises nor ceases. Only by knowing both sides does one avoid both abandoning oneself and producing overbearing pride.

Patient endurance gathers the ten objects back into the twelve links. Karma, Māra, meditative concentration, the Two Vehicles, and bodhisattva practices largely arise from formations and existence. Greed, anger, various views, and different attachments to wisdom arise from ignorance, craving, and grasping. Aggregates, sense fields, and elements; the eight winds; and illness arise from the resultant links. If the three obstructions are seen as not departing from buddha-nature, one does not turn with adverse or favorable objects. Although resembling wisdom, merit, and Dharma-nature are delightful, each still carries ignorance, karma, and birth and death. If one loves only the Buddhas’ merits and rejects expedient means, the three paths cannot truly be transformed into the three virtues.

〔Section §15〕 Why Seeing a Buddha’s Light Is Not Necessarily the Samādhi of Recollecting the Buddha

Recollection of the Buddha can arise first and bring forth various dhyānas, or arise through those dhyānas. Within concentration, practitioners contemplate the Buddha’s spiritual power, wisdom, merit, marks, and excellences, and further know the substance, result, and karma of each mark. The five factors then arise together with the Dharma of recollecting the Buddha. Since the Buddha’s merits are immeasurable, the samādhis, five factors, and forest-like attendant merits that arise are likewise immeasurable.

The concentration of recollecting the Buddha can be bright within and hidden without, or bright both within and without. If mind can distinguish the Dharma gates of the Buddha’s merits, outwardly sees light, marks, and spiritual form, and thereby increases wholesome roots, the experience corresponds. If inner mind is dark, does not recognize a single Dharma gate, and sees only intense light filling the eyes, the treatise directly judges it a sign of Māra. The criterion for deviance and correctness lies not in how magnificent the form appears, but in whether the Dharma is correct and wholesome roots increase.

The Tathāgata’s manifestation likewise need not be fixed as a buddha-body with ten-foot radiance. Teachers, monastics, parents, and even deer, horses, and monkeys can appear according to what beings delight in, what suits them, what counteracts their illness, and what enables their deliverance. Only when a form-image and Dharma gate arise together and existing wholesome roots increase is this called the samādhi of recollecting the Buddha. If form-marks alone are grasped, there is no way to distinguish a Māra-image from a clay sculpture, wooden carving, or painting. The Dharma gate and transformation toward good are the eye of discernment.

〔Section §16〕 Is Superknowledge the Substance or the Function of Dhyāna?

The five superknowledges—divine eye, knowledge of others’ minds, divine ear, knowledge of past lives, and bodily mastery—can arise only in dependence upon dhyāna; dhyāna cannot arise in return from superknowledge. Dhyāna is the substance of concentration and superknowledge its function. Substance can bring forth function; function cannot independently produce substance. Scripture therefore says that deeply cultivating meditative concentration attains the five superknowledges, not that superknowledge is attained first and produces dhyāna afterward.

Every dhyāna can produce all five, though the ease differs. The special excellences and penetrating illumination often produce lightness and elevation; relinquishments and spheres of mastery, sovereign transformation. Concentration of loving-kindness conditions a person’s appearance and knows suffering and happiness, readily producing knowledge of others’ minds and divine hearing. Contemplation of the three lives through dependent origination readily produces knowledge of past lives and divine vision. Unhidden recollection of the Buddha likewise often produces divine vision. Every superknowledge still possesses the five factors of awareness, examination, joy, happiness, and one-pointed mind.

The substance of dhyāna may sometimes produce only inward understanding while outward marks remain unclear and therefore can be hidden. Superknowledge, as the function of concentration, must be clear when present and is therefore unhidden. This distinction acknowledges the clear function of superknowledge while still placing it after the substance of dhyāna, preventing function from eclipsing substance.

〔Section §17〕 Once Dhyāna Has Arisen, What Is Ultimately Contemplated?

Only at its end does the chapter enter the fourth major section: cultivating calming-and-contemplation after dhyāna arises. Without skillful means, attachment to dhyāna-flavor leads to birth according to dhyāna and may even make attainment of concentration produce pride, broken moral discipline, and karma. A snake entering a bamboo tube becomes temporarily straight but curves again upon emerging. Body and speech becoming gentle and subdued within concentration does not mean the root of afflictions has been severed. A cucumber can serve as a condition for various results; dhyāna likewise can produce the ten Dharma realms.

When dhyāna corresponds with loving-kindness, benevolence, ritual propriety, righteousness, and the ten wholesome actions, it can produce human and heavenly realms. Impurity and relinquishment can produce the śrāvaka outflow-free. Contemplating the circulation of causes and conditions within dhyāna can accomplish the pratyekabuddha realm. Breaking the six obscurations through dhyāna can accomplish the six perfections. Contemplating a conditionally arisen Dharma as immediately empty, provisional, and the Middle can further open the Dharma realms of the Shared, Distinct, and Perfect Teachings. Dhyāna itself does not decide a person’s destination; grasping and the method of contemplation unfold it toward different Dharma realms.

Conceivable contemplation draws all moral discipline, concentration, and wisdom of the nine Dharma realms into the king samādhi like streams entering the sea. Entry is gathering in; disappearance of fresh flavor is cessation; formation of the ocean’s flavor is arising. Concentration of loving-kindness can be transformed into unconditioned loving-kindness and compassion; recollection of the Buddha into the great ocean of recollecting the Buddha; superknowledge into the Tathāgata’s skillful means. Noble practice, heavenly practice, brahmā practice, illness-practice, and infant-practice then produce the ten merits. Yet this remains a gathering that can be taught sequentially and is not the true object of the chapter.

Inconceivable contemplation directly takes one thought of concentrated mind. When savor-attached dhyāna, pure dhyāna, or even superknowledge appears, know that this one thought is precisely ignorance, Dharma-nature, and the Dharma realm; neither the concentration nor distraction of the ten realms departs from it. Delusion about Dharma-nature produces all distracted evil Dharmas; understanding Dharma-nature produces all Dharmas of concentration. Concentration and distraction are immediately ignorance, and ignorance immediately Dharma-nature. Sentient beings and the attainment of cessation cannot be said to be wholly identical or wholly different: apart from sentient beings there is nowhere to seek concentration, so they are not separate; ordinary sentient emotion does not equal noble concentration, so they are not identical. Neither identity nor separation is precisely the contemplative gate.

If direct hearing of this meaning brings awakening, the following nine modes need not be applied. If not, arouse mind through great compassion, settle mind through the three calmings and three contemplations, pervasively break horizontal and vertical delusion through the three contemplations in one mind, distinguish passage and obstruction, open the factors of the path, and cultivate the six perfections as assisting counteractions. Emptiness, provisionality, and the Middle are not arranged before and after within one thought, and the three calmings and three contemplations possess no fixed marks to grasp. Their names are established only to break partiality.

The final three Dharmas prevent practice from falling near the goal. Knowing stages prevents inner overbearing pride. Patient endurance guards against the external eight winds and the three obstructions and four Māras. Freedom from Dharma-attachment prevents resembling wisdom, merit, and Dharma-nature from becoming a fall from the summit. Only when the ten Dharmas are accomplished does meditative concentration cease to be another object in which one abides and become the jeweled vehicle proceeding directly to wondrous awakening, complete in one’s own practice and transformation of others.

Through the Eye of the Fuxing

The reading above has followed the treatise’s own sequence from the rationale for the object, through the arising signs of the ten gates, to cultivation through the ten modes. Zhanran’s Zhiguan Fuxing Chuanhong Jue further illuminates several junctions where levels are most easily confused.

First, the purpose of the meditative-concentration object is not to praise attainment of concentration. The Fuxing explains the opening obstructions through five matters that make meditative results retreat. It further says that preserving dhyāna without contemplating it makes views and craving arise through dhyāna, while abandoning dhyāna and refusing to train in it makes one return to scattered mind. Taking dhyāna as object simultaneously avoids indulgence in its savor and abandonment of what has arisen. This also limits the chapter’s subject: not general step-by-step cultivation of dhyāna, but contemplative treatment after past habituation spontaneously arises within the four kinds of samādhi.

Second, the opening and combining of ten gates retain only phenomenal dhyāna. Zhanran expressly says that loving-kindness conditioned by Dharmas and unconditioned loving-kindness belong to principle; the meanings of dependent origination as retribution and in one thought are likewise subtle and are attached to principle rather than included among the chapter’s ten gates. This judgment preserves the distinction between phenomena and principle. Yet phenomenal dhyāna can serve as a condition for the outflow-free, so the ten gates cannot all be judged as producing only the outflowed. “Able to serve as an outflow-free condition” and “outflow-free in substance” are two different claims.

Third, the shallowness and depth of the ten gates form the textual sequence, not a requirement that every practitioner fully experience them grade by grade. The Fuxing restricts the chapter’s structure through the phrase “here there is only arising through attainment” and removes the pair of deliberate activation from the nine pairs of mutual arising because the nine objects all arise spontaneously. Past habituation is the inner cause, while calming-and-contemplation and noble empowerment are outer conditions. Zhanran reads together the two accounts in the Jingdu Jing through the stimulus of beings’ capacities and the Buddha’s response, allowing neither self-deliverance nor deliverance by the Buddha to cancel the other.

Fourth, desire-realm concentration and access concentration must be distinguished according to the person. Treatises that state only their existence or nonexistence are gathered by Zhanran as differing according to faculties and conditions; one school alone cannot be held as exhaustive. Correct and deviant forms of the eight contacts must likewise be distinguished. A deviant Dharma can enter by riding upon dhyāna, but that does not make the substance of dhyāna a ghost. Excess and deficiency within the ten merits provide the measure for testing a contact. Light, total quiescence, or bodily movement by itself never suffices as proof.

Fifth, differing treatise explanations of the five factors of the first dhyāna are not forcibly harmonized. The Abhidharma says they arise simultaneously; the Satyasiddhi Treatise, successively; and the attribution in the Great Collection also involves a sixth silent mind. Zhanran preserves each account in turn. The variant readings “a person obtains a treasure-store” in this treatise and “a poor person obtains a treasure-store” elsewhere in the received texts should likewise be recorded side by side, each remaining in its own location. A later or more complete phrase must not overwrite the wording of the treatise.

Sixth, the boundary between the special excellences and penetrating illumination lies in the coarseness or fineness of contemplative wisdom. The special excellences have more concentration and less wisdom; penetrating illumination keeps concentration and wisdom in greater balance. The Great Collection uses only the name Jewel Torch and does not establish “Penetrating Illumination” as a scriptural title. The nine perceptions belong to contemplative dhyāna, not the three classes of refinement, cultivation by infusion, and higher cultivation. Although they subdue desire through disenchantment, they can still produce the Great Vehicle. Relinquishment is shared generally by the Two Vehicles and belongs specifically to bodhisattvas; relinquishment is cause and liberation result. Whether phenomena and principle and the severance of delusion are complete determines which name applies, and the names must not be conflated.

Seventh, the great and small in Great Impurity and Small Impurity distinguish general from specific and coarse from subtle, not higher from lower in value. Whether concentration of loving-kindness is outflowed or outflow-free is likewise judged according to whether it depends upon root dhyāna, the special excellences, penetrating illumination, impurity, or another support. At the method of dependent origination the contemplative chapter truly turns. Zhanran expressly says that the other nine dhyānas are contemplated only after they arise, while dependent-origination dhyāna can be contemplated immediately. The ten modes therefore open separately after the arising signs across three lives; the entire passage cannot be counted merely as a description of dhyāna arising.

Eighth, one thought in the contemplation of dependent origination cannot be read as a container grasped by worldly people. Zhanran unfolds one thought’s full possession as the ten realms, ten suchnesses, and twelve links, then integrates dependent origination, the three paths, and the three virtues level by level. The three substances are neither vertical nor horizontal and have no before or after. Here the Six Identities prevent intrinsic possession by sentient beings from being passed off directly as ultimate resultant realization.

Ninth, the passage on recollecting the Buddha explains only signs arising from past habituation. Zhanran explains the Buddha’s responsive manifestation through four causes and conditions: what beings delight in, what suits them, what counteracts their illness, and what enables their deliverance. The criterion therefore remains the Dharma gate and wholesome roots rather than a fixed form or appearance. The passage on superknowledge likewise distinguishes arising signs only. Phenomenal superknowledge is a function of dhyāna and does not equal outflow-free superknowledge; one who has not attained noble fruit is not thereby encouraged to seek extraordinary powers widely.

Tenth, the final passage turns from what has arisen to the application of contemplation. The Fuxing first uses the cucumber to explain that dhyāna can produce the ten realms, then distinguishes the conceivable and inconceivable. Nonduality of concentration and distraction in one thought must still be guarded by the Six Identities so an ordinary being does not usurp a noble stage. Zhanran further judges that from contemplating the object through assisting counteractions, the Dharmas of correct contemplation are already complete. Stages prevent usurpation, while patient endurance and freedom from attachment spur the shallow onward into the deep. These three are important but do not add three more contemplative substances outside the ten modes.

The source judgments also reveal the restraint of this mirror. Concerning the thirty-six defilements, Zhanran directly records that he had not examined the source; later readers cannot revise that into a successful retrieval. Concerning the three phrases about white bones, fine soup, and sentient beings being precisely the attainment of cessation, he still assigns them to the Great Sūtra; the same wording has not been found in the extant scripture, but his source judgment cannot therefore be erased. “The sixth silent mind is the substance of concentration” is attributed by the treatise to the Great Collection, while parallel wording in the extant canon appears instead in the Yingluo. Both ends must be preserved. Commentary supplies transmitted judgments; it does not authorize readers to replace the treatise silently with a later, fuller sentence.

The Zhiguan Yili further explains the vertical sequence of the ten dhyānas as a sequence for breaking partiality and expressly says that actual practitioners need not proceed from shallow to deep. The opening and combining of the ten dhyānas and the arising signs of the ten objects are established specifically so signs can first be recognized and then cultivated through the gate of practice. The Zhiguan Dayi says that past habituations must be recognized when they arise and that the arising of various objects is not fixed: among the four root dhyānas, special excellences, penetrating illumination, nine perceptions, relinquishments, recollection of the Buddha, and superknowledges, whichever gate is nearest ripeness arises. Though the arisen sign is difficult to know, its handling still returns to quiescence and illumination; an extraordinary object does not require a different contemplative method.

Later reception develops these same junctions. The Siming line contrasts savor-attached dhyāna with the conception that the Six Wondrous Gates and higher methods are outflow-free, refusing to reduce the samādhi of recollecting the Buddha to the phenomenal alone. It further uses the king samādhi to gather all samādhis, directly titles the meditative-concentration object as lodging cultivation within the object to distinguish arising, and traces from the link of existence to know result from cause and cause from result. These are rereadings of the chapter’s scene. They show how its meaning was transmitted but still cannot be written backward as Zhizhe’s original phrase-by-phrase sectional judgment.

The Fuxing mirror finally refocuses the chapter’s immense table of meditative signs and gives discernible criteria before, during, and after arising: chapter sequence is not the order of arising; arising signs are not resultant realization; phenomenal dhyāna does not belong only to the outflowed; and light or superknowledge does not equal correct Dharma. The true turn remains at one place throughout—whether one can recognize the object when it appears, avoid attachment after recognition, and then contemplate concentration and distraction together as the inconceivable Dharma realm.

The most dangerous moment for a view is often not when it is dim, but when it is all too clear.

A whole system of principle suddenly opens within the mind. Questions and answers are endless, citations come freely, others cannot break it, and one no longer doubts oneself. This power can resemble an arrow shot into empty space, traveling unobstructed, or a curved shot circling a bird and leaving the other person nowhere to escape. The question then arises: is this wisdom becoming clear, or the net of views tightening?

Zhizhe does not judge from the sharpness of language. He first asks whether the afflictions have been suppressed and the mind of the path arisen together with the understanding. Then he asks whether that understanding can lead a person through the gate, or instead makes one remain at the entrance arguing over tiles and timbers. Contemplating the object of views means placing the attachment that most resembles wisdom back within calming-and-contemplation and illuminating it there.

〔Section §14.0〕 What Is a View, and Why Does It Follow the Object of Dhyāna?

“Various” means that the number is not one. “View” means an understanding formed through improper reasoning—slanted, lucid, and held with certainty. It is not a casual remark or a vague conjecture. Precisely because it can form a system of its own and become immovably firm, it warrants establishment as a separate object.

Does mastery of names and characteristics, then, mean that a view has arisen? Not necessarily. If a person who learns through hearing merely guards the words without contemplating principle, his understanding arises from text and dies without verification. If a dhyāna practitioner speaks only of mental comprehension without recognizing a single name or characteristic, that is merely another partial lack. Guarding a tree stump and claiming wondrous awakening each occupy one extreme, and their judgments of one another will both miss the standard. One genuinely enters this object when views and names begin to operate freely in every direction: one can ask and answer, extend one meaning through many meanings, and remain unobstructed under challenge.

Is this madness? The treatise answers that it is not. A person possessed by a ghost becomes foolish when the ghost leaves; one in whom a view has arisen does not. Is it noble realization? It is not that either. Old craving and anger have not departed, while the new attachment instead increases afflictions, and the eighty-eight agents still bind one in vast profusion. The view has the acuity of wisdom but lacks the noble path's result of severing delusion; it is therefore called the arising of view-wisdom.

Where do views come from? One route is hearing and another dhyāna, with conditions of dhyāna more common. Dhyāna may precede the view, dhyāna and view may arise together, or the view may precede dhyāna. Its placement after the object of meditative concentration does not mean that every view must wait for dhyāna to be completed. Rather, contemplative power within meditative concentration can suddenly unfold past habituation. If sharp faculties have matured, a person may still correct himself by checking his fault against the scriptures and treatises. If he meets a good spiritual friend who clearly reveals right and wrong, the view may also be broken. The greatest difficulty is when he can neither awaken by himself nor find a teacher: his mind resembles crooked timber dragged through a dense forest, pulled ever deeper.

The chapter therefore opens into four questions. What persons grasp what Dharmas? How do these views arise? Where precisely do their faults lie? And how does someone in whom a view has arisen cultivate calming-and-contemplation?

〔Section §14.1〕 First Question: What Persons Grasp What Dharmas?

〔Section §14.1.1〕 Roots and Branches of Non-Buddhists outside Buddha-Dharma

The treatise begins outside Buddha-Dharma. Kapila reckons that the result exists within the cause; Ulūka-Sāṃkhya that the result does not exist within the cause; and Ṛṣabha that the result both exists and does not exist within the cause. From the four schools of oneness, difference, both oneness and difference, and neither oneness nor difference, the account then unfolds to the six teachers of the Buddha's time. Although their names, translated meanings, and doctrines differ, broadly they can all be traced to the four views.

Why list the persons before their Dharmas? Because one doctrinal system is not merely an abstract proposition. It can become a Dharma of knowledge of all that interprets everything, correspond with meditative concentration and become a Dharma of superknowledges, or absorb writing, astronomy, medicine, warfare, and commerce and become a Dharma of the Vedas. Once the root of what is grasped has been established, superknowledges and knowledge both turn back to testify on its behalf. The Dharma gates may appear numerous, yet when traced to their final principle, all still point to that first view alone.

〔Section §14.1.2〕 Borrowing the Buddha's Words to Establish Another View

The second kind does not stand outside Buddha-Dharma but arises by attaching itself to Buddha-Dharma. After reading a treatise, a Vātsīputrīya locates the self outside the four propositions in the fifth repository of the inexpressible. After reading the Buddha's ten similes, a Vaipulya practitioner grasps neither arising nor ceasing and illusion and transformation as a personal doctrine of empty illusion.

The problem is not that they have failed to read Buddhist texts, but that after reading, they seal themselves inside one determinate understanding. The Buddha's words become material, while attachment establishes a separate center. From then on, more scripture does not necessarily bring them closer to entering principle; it may only add adornment to one view.

〔Section §14.1.3〕 How a Correct Gate Turns into Inner Deviance

The third kind is closer still: a person directly studies Buddha-Dharma but attaches himself to a teaching gate, produces afflictions, and cannot enter principle. Entering the Abhidharma, he falls into existence; entering emptiness, he falls into nonexistence; entering the Piṭaka of Categories, he falls into both existence and nonexistence. Even the Great Vehicle's four gates will burn one with deviant fire if skillful means in prajñā is lost.

Does this mean the Dharma gate itself is wrong? The treatise answers clearly: no. In their own time, people who cultivated in dependence upon these treatises could attain the path; practitioners today who cling to them have lost the true intent. The person has failed, not the Dharma. When the Great Vehicle rebukes the Small, it takes only the aspect that has not seen the principle of the Middle and does not take away the function of the preparatory gate. The illness does not lie in the gates of existence, emptiness, both existence and nonexistence, or neither existence nor nonexistence. It lies in sealing what can serve as a passage into an ultimate dwelling place.

〔Section §14.1.4〕 Why Attainments Differ within the Same Teaching

One teacher can produce three Dharmas. Using one view to interpret everything is called the Dharma of knowledge of all. Producing the five superknowledges in dependence upon dhyāna is called the Dharma of superknowledges. Comprehending worldly writing and various arts is called the Dharma of the Vedas. Each of Buddha-Dharma's four gates can likewise produce understanding, superknowledges, and writing, so even within a gate of the same name, attainments remain diverse.

When the true intent is attained, one Tripiṭaka gate can possess the establishment of mindfulness through intrinsic nature, the conjoined establishment of mindfulness, and the establishment of mindfulness through conditions; realization of the result can further yield liberation through wisdom, liberation in both respects, and liberation without doubt. When the intent is lost, the same enumerations are instead swallowed by one's own view. The standard therefore cannot be merely whether someone can discuss principle, display superknowledges, or demonstrate broad learning. It must ask whether these attainments finally cause him to leave attachment, or cause him to deem himself right and everyone else wrong.

〔Section §14.2〕 Second Question: How Do Views Arise?

〔Section §14.2.1〕 A Spring Blocked by Earth and Stones

Across long kalpas, sentient beings have been perfumed by innumerable views. After the separation of a lifetime, memory no longer appears, like a spring blocked by earth and stones. When the obstruction thins, whether meditative concentration opens or hearing stirs a past habit, once the blockage gives way, the water becomes a river.

The experience of an arising view is not a scattering of thoughts but an unfolding that lasts for days. A person continually challenges and answers himself. Whatever he grasps appears real and comprehensible everywhere; whatever he does not grasp appears false and refutable everywhere. The factor of examination resembles a swift horse already sweating, racing forward beyond control. Without the moisture of concentrated power, forced discrimination may harm body and mind. Moistened by concentrated power, a view readily takes shape.

Investigating that the result exists within the cause becomes Kapila's view; investigating that it does not exist becomes Sāṃkhya's; investigating both existence and nonexistence becomes Ṛṣabha's. Locating the self outside the four propositions becomes the Vātsīputrīya view. Taking everything to be the same illusory transformation becomes the Vaipulya view. Arising in dependence upon the Tripiṭaka's four gates yields the views of existence, emptiness, both existence and nonexistence, and neither existence nor nonexistence. Each of the Shared, Distinct, and Perfect Teachings can likewise produce views through its four gates.

Why can correct teachings also produce views? Because as soon as true speech is grasped, it becomes language that produces a view; even ambrosia harms life when taken in excess. The teaching does not thereby become false, but it becomes a deviant attachment in a mind that has lost skillful means. Reckonings of intrinsic nature, other-nature, conature, and causelessness can likewise be reestablished within different teaching gates. More elevated names do not guarantee thinner attachment.

Arising through hearing does not mean reliance on distracted listening alone. A practitioner may already possess dhyāna but not yet have produced a view. Upon hearing one sentence that corresponds to a past habit, the mind suddenly opens and hundreds and thousands of layers of meaning well out like a spring among stones. Hearing that the result exists in the cause may produce Kapila's view; hearing of the fifth repository of the inexpressible may produce a Vātsīputrīya view; hearing one gate of the Tripiṭaka or Great Vehicle may also produce a view through that gate. The new statement heard is only a point of contact; what surges forth far exceeds it.

〔Section §14.2.2〕 From Three Dharmas to One Hundred and Forty

Once views arise, some people attain only understanding, some only superknowledges, some only writing, and some attain combinations of two or fully possess all three. Counting three simple attainments, three compound attainments, and one fully endowed attainment gives seven types of people within one school. The three houses, six teachers, Vātsīputrīya, Vaipulya, and the four gates within Buddha-Dharma can all be unfolded in this way.

Although all may be called knowledge of all, their root doctrines differ and so they devour one another. Although all may be called superknowledges, their supporting dhyāna grounds differ and so their functions are broad or narrow. Although all may be called the Vedas, the amounts read differ and so knowledge is broad or narrow. Knowledge, ability, and reputation can make it as difficult to know whether a person is mature as whether an āmra fruit is ripe. The genuine method of verification remains tracing the source and then examining the final doctrine: to what attachment do all his explanations ultimately return?

〔Section §14.3〕 Third Question: Where Do the Faults of Views Lie?

〔Section §14.3.1〕 A Doctrine of Spontaneity Can Produce Good, Evil, and the Indeterminate

The treatise first borrows China's Three Mysteries for explanation. One doctrine of spontaneity can still pursuit, prevent arrogance amid wealth and honor and distress amid poverty and low status, and become a guide for doing good. It can also cause someone to neither take nor reject, abide casually as things proceed, and become indeterminate. Or it can be raised as a reason to indulge in evil.

The inquiry here is not merely whether a statement sounds elevated. One must ask whether it destroys the cause, whether it destroys the result, and what conduct of body, speech, and mind it actually elicits. The same word “spontaneity” can be used to still desire or indulge it. Gain and loss are not determined automatically by the wording.

〔Section §14.3.2〕 Why the View of Emptiness Is Strongest

The Indian view of emptiness then serves as the example. It can destroy the cause without destroying the result or the result without the cause; it can destroy cause and result together while retaining the three unconditioned Dharmas; or it can destroy cause, result, and every Dharma. Deviant emptiness and Buddhist emptiness cannot be distinguished only through the terms substantive and analytical. The boundary lies among deviant causes and conditions, no causes and conditions, and correct causes and conditions.

A view of emptiness arising from deviant causes and conditions can also produce good, evil, and indeterminate conduct, with evil the most fierce. It establishes emptiness as a locus of conflict: loving those who agree, angered by those who refute, proud toward those who do not understand. It calls itself unobstructed yet still protects and cherishes the body; it speaks of equality yet still loves praise and grieves over blame. Emptiness was meant to break attachment but has instead become the firmest object of attachment.

The mind of views resembles a dog that can never eat its fill. As long as one Dharma remains unbroken, it is not satisfied; only after everything is broken does it feel complete. Emptiness and existence refute one another like dogs baring their teeth. Self-praise resembles prolonged barking. It seizes others' faults and drags along its own doctrine. Emptiness does not make the person do evil; the mind attached to emptiness turns emptiness into a locus of anger, love, dispute, and reckoning.

Inner deviance is the same. The Tripiṭaka's four gates were originally ways out, yet when someone does good solely for retribution or does evil to protect one gate, that gate instead closes. The sublime true statements of the Shared, Distinct, and Perfect Teachings can, when grasped perversely, become roots of praise and blame, sorrow and love, pride, reputation, and gain. Dharmas may differ as vastly as heaven and earth, while the afflictions produced by attachment to Dharma remain identical to those of non-Buddhists.

〔Section §14.3.4〕 Four Resemblances and Four Judgments

How are truth and falsity judged together? The treatise gives four similes.

First are gold and iron chains. Although name and material differ, insofar as both bind, neither provides liberation.

Second are a rough jade and a rat-stone. Their outward names may be equally pure and beautiful, while the afflictions within are genuine in one case and false in the other.

Third are cow's milk and donkey's milk. Their colors resemble each other, yet after refinement one can be completed and the other cannot.

Fourth are kālaka and zhentou fruits. Their outward forms resemble one another, but one harms and the other benefits.

Names, afflictions, successful refinement, and harm or benefit must therefore be observed separately. Compassion may be only compassion born of views of love; patience may be only forced endurance; superknowledge may be only transformation with outflows; broad learning may be only worldly wisdom. If the eighty-eight agents still surge vast, a pure and beautiful name cannot turn bondage into liberation.

〔Section §14.3.5〕 The Gate Is Not at Fault; Dwelling at the Gate Is

The Dharmas upon which non-Buddhists depend originally possess outflows. An attached mind attaches to an attachable Dharma, and cause and result both remain in conflict. The correct Dharma's four gates, by contrast, resemble four city gates, all originally capable of leading to the king. Someone urgent to see the king enters through any gate and has no time to remain judging beauty and ugliness. A sick person takes medicine to be healed and likewise should not merely discriminate the medicine's name.

Yet if someone dwells at the city gate, counts the tiles and timbers, and judges north and south, east and west, thick and thin, coarse and fine, he turns a thoroughfare into an obstruction. The gate is not at fault; the person refuses to proceed. If he even places the poison of reputation, followers, superiority, and gain into good medicine, the correct Dharma increases suffering and origination within him.

Thus a person of sharp faculties may covertly awaken to correctness by borrowing a slight cause and condition from a deviant Dharma, while a person of dull faculties may turn the correct Dharma into deviant attachment. A flying flower or moving leaf may prompt a pratyekabuddha's awakening, but the flower and leaf do not thereby become correct teachings. The four gates can enable arhats to depart, but someone attached to a gate does not thereby automatically attain the path. Both the Dharma depended upon and the mind that depends upon it must be examined.

〔Section §14.3.6〕 One Hundred and Forty Is Not the Endpoint

Five rounds with four gates each make twenty gates. Each gate has seven types—three simple, three compound, and one fully endowed—making one hundred and forty. This is a brief scheme of expansion; an extensive account would be immeasurable. Cultivating calming and contemplation in this life provides the shared assisting condition, while the distinct root cause lies in what was studied, heard, and cultivated in past lives.

What is mature and recent arises first; what is unfamiliar and distant is difficult to produce. Superknowledges and writing belong to phenomena and are easily forgotten between lives. Views belong to the nature of wisdom and are harder to forget, like someone who remembers a name after a long separation but has forgotten the face. An external affinity with a ghost may produce ghostly dhyāna and ghostly views; an external affinity with a noble one may also provide correct guidance. The appearance of views has conditions and cannot be understood by looking only at one instance of hearing or seated dhyāna in the present.

〔Section §14.3.7〕 Why Not Cut It Off Immediately?

If it is known to be a deviant view, why not sever it immediately? The treatise uses abdominal worms as its simile: first nurture a tape-worm and let it devour the worms in the abdomen; afterward, use dried-pearl medicine to purge the tape-worm. View-wisdom can devour some dull afflictions and also lies close to correct contemplation, so it may provisionally serve as a forerunner. Yet the simile clearly includes a later medicine; it does not retain the tape-worm as ultimate.

It further resembles a swift horse awakening at the sight of a whip's shadow. Someone with a mind of views who receives the Buddha's teaching may turn around at a single contact. A person without any capacity for understanding remains stubborn beyond the cutting power of ten thousand axes. Noble ones can therefore become teachers and friends and guide through indirect means, turning an arisen view into the correct path. The direction of “nurturing views and examining the mind” is guidance inward, not indulgence. Whether the path is entered still depends upon whether the mind of views is finally illuminated and broken by correct contemplation.

〔Section §14.4〕 Fourth Question: Once a View Has Arisen, How Is Calming-and-Contemplation Cultivated?

〔Section §14.4.0〕 Gather In First, or Break First?

In addressing views, Buddha-Dharma teaches both gathering in and breaking. Refusing to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of others is gathering in. Taking up knives and staves and even beheading is breaking. Giving and taking away follow different roads but share the aim of benefit. Views that cause circulation must be severed without remainder. The aspect that can assist refinement of spiritual understanding and turn the mind back toward correctness may be gathered in.

One person does not produce every view simultaneously. Even if many views arise together, they devour one another until one core regarded as real remains. If every view were individually opened into a Dharma gate, ninety days would not suffice to explain them. If all views were gathered into one gate of contemplation, the Dharmas within that one gate would likewise be inexhaustible. Multiplicity and unity can both be used freely; the example now taken is the view of emptiness, which can destroy everything most effectively.

〔Section §14.4.1〕 Conceivable: How the View of Emptiness Produces the Ten Realms

A cucumber is not hot but can cause hot illness. The view of emptiness is not the ten realms but can serve as their cause and condition. Once it arises, it may elicit the three conducts of good, evil, and indeterminate. Rebellion and harm, shamelessness, and stinginess and greed can form the three evil destinies. Moral discipline, the ten good acts, and root dhyāna can form the good destinies and the form realm. This explains in causal sequence how the view of emptiness produces the six destinies.

〔Section §14.4.1B〕 How Can the Four Truths Be Present within the View of Emptiness?

A false view of emptiness arises in dependence upon the form-body of retribution. Grasping the appearance of emptiness, discriminating emptiness as superior to other Dharmas, and producing consciousness when the dust-object of emptiness faces the faculty of mind mean that the aggregates, sense fields, and elements are already fully present. This is suffering. The view of emptiness further becomes a dwelling place for anger, love, pride, doubt, and the five views, unfolding the eighty-eight agents of the three realms. This is origination.

If in this one thought of the view of emptiness one contemplates form as impure, feeling as suffering, mind as impermanent, and Dharmas as without self, the four inversions of permanence, happiness, self, and purity can be broken and the four establishments of mindfulness arise. Diligent cultivation produces the right efforts, bases of spiritual power, five faculties, five powers, seven factors of awakening, and eightfold path. This is the path. As the four inversions and ten agents cease in sequence, both the bondage of seeds and the bondage of result are broken. This is cessation. The view of emptiness was originally taken to be the path; now it becomes the suffering and origination contemplated. Making this turn enables one to move out of the view.

〔Section §14.4.1C〕 How Does the View of Emptiness Become Contemplation of the Twelve Links?

Falsely reckoning a view of emptiness that is not empty as empty is inversion; inversion is ignorance. Ignorance leads to grasping, grasping to existence, craving to grasping, feeling to craving, contact to feeling, and the sense fields to contact. Through name-and-form, consciousness, and karma, this is traced back to past ignorance. Consciousness resembles a seed, karma a field, craving water, and ignorance a covering; the sprout of name-and-form then arises.

If one only draws lines of existence and nonexistence, inversion produces further inversion and ignorance continues ignorance. If one penetrates that the intrinsic nature of ignorance is originally unreal and exists only through a conjunction of causes and conditions of false thought, then when ignorance comes to rest, formations and all the links through aging and death come to rest. This is true of the view of emptiness and can likewise be true of all one hundred and forty views. Conversely, producing karma for a view resembles a silkworm spinning thread and binding itself; one ultimately cannot leave the net.

〔Section §14.4.1D〕 How Do the Four Vast Vows and Six Perfections Arise from One Thought of the View of Emptiness?

Recognizing suffering, origination, path, and cessation within the view of emptiness means knowing both illness and medicine. Recognizing one's own illness and seeing sentient beings produce countless sets of five aggregates thought after thought, one vows to deliver boundlessly many sentient beings. Seeing immeasurably many afflictions in each thought, one vows to sever immeasurably many afflictions. Seeing that every view possesses a correct and assisting path, one vows to know inexhaustibly many Dharma gates. Seeing that immeasurably many view-delusions can all cease, one vows to accomplish unsurpassed buddhahood.

The six perfections likewise turn upon abandoning views. Giving while attached to emptiness is demonic giving; knowing the faults of the view of emptiness and urging others to abandon views turns it into generosity. Observing precepts while attached to emptiness is no different from attachment to chicken and dog precepts; protecting oneself and others from harm by the view of emptiness turns it into moral discipline. Forced endurance while anger and attachment remain is merely the patience of someone too weak and fearful to resist; suppressing the view of emptiness and urging others to endure it turns this into patience.

Effort that does not remove the view of emptiness is mixed with a deviant view and cannot be called pure advance. Preventing the view of emptiness from arising is purity; breaking the karma of that view and departing is advance. Dhyāna attained without breaking the view of emptiness most often becomes a ghostly Dharma; knowing the faults of emptiness and remaining unmoved by it alone makes correct dhyāna and correct superknowledges. Discussing wisdom without recognizing the view of emptiness is only worldly wisdom. Dissolving afflictions through impermanence and nourishing merit through vows and practices alone turns it into prajñā. Thus the same view of emptiness is no longer merely a cause of descent; it can also become the diseased object illuminated while vows are produced and practices cultivated.

〔Section §14.4.1E〕 Immediately Empty without Abandoning Sentient Beings

Proceeding further, the view of emptiness is precisely ignorance and ignorance in its very substance is empty. The suffering and origination produced from ignorance, and even the establishments of mindfulness and factors of awakening and path that treat them, are all unfindable. The Two Vehicles know immediate emptiness and sever suffering to enter cessation. Bodhisattvas know immediate emptiness yet still produce compassionate vows and practices. Delivering sentient beings resembles delivering empty space; extinguishing afflictions resembles battling empty space; producing Dharma gates resembles producing them from empty space. Although vows are practiced and beings delivered, no sentient being actually attains extinction.

〔Section §14.4.1F〕 Why Do the Four Teachings Treat the Same View yet Yield Different Attainments?

The view of emptiness possesses immeasurably many characteristics, and both what produces and what is produced bear only provisional names. Tracing ignorance as arising from Dharma-nature resembles following a dream back to sleep; one thereby recognizes the tathāgata-garbha from the view of emptiness and cultivates immeasurably many Dharma gates to reveal the pure nature. As for the Perfect Teaching, the treatise gathers it briefly under “as above and as below,” then immediately turns to treating views.

View-delusion resembles water forty li across; the remaining force of thought-delusion resembles one drop. View-delusion is difficult to remove and cannot be treated merely by proclaiming emptiness. If fire arises within water, the water instead cannot extinguish it. One must first recognize the view of emptiness itself as the illness of suffering and origination and only then treat it with wisdom of the truths. The Tripiṭaka Teaching uses wisdom of impermanence; the Shared Teaching, wisdom of immediate emptiness; the Distinct Teaching first enters emptiness and then leaves it for provisional existence; in the Perfect Teaching, one does not deliberately remove the view, yet it naturally disappears. It is like treating the same cold illness with ginger and cinnamon, the five minerals, the multi-storied formula, or the golden elixir. Although the illness is the same, the strength, complexion, lifespan, and wondrous functions attained differ. The view treated is one; the treating Dharmas differ.

The four teachings' establishments of mindfulness further open into nine kinds: the Tripiṭaka's three vehicles each cultivate their own; the Shared Teaching's three kinds of people cultivate in common; the Distinct Teaching has three preparatory establishments and one real establishment; the Perfect Teaching has the one reality. First the goat, deer, and ox carts each leave the burning house. Next the three kinds of people share one vehicle; then the bodhisattva progresses sequentially; finally all ride one great cart directly to the place of the path. One view of emptiness can open into the various delusions and treatments, like a mote of dust containing the scripture scrolls of the great-thousand world.

〔Section §14.4.2〕 Inconceivable: The Ten Realms Are Not Produced Later

The conceivable object says that the view of emptiness serves as cause and condition and produces the ten realms. The inconceivable object directly says that one thought of the view of emptiness fully possesses the ten Dharma realms and is precisely Dharma-nature. Dharma-nature is not a distant object; it is the mind of the view of emptiness itself.

The liberation of all buddhas must be sought within the mental activities of sentient beings and the sixty-two views. Sentient beings are awakening and cannot be attained anew: this is the liberation of perfect purity. The five aggregates are nirvāṇa and cannot be extinguished anew: this is the liberation of purity through skillful means. The suchness of sentient beings does not differ from the suchness of buddhas: this is the liberation of intrinsic purity. Name-and-form and sentient beings were originally mutually bound; now, contemplating the five aggregates as precisely nirvāṇa, one knows that bondage never existed.

The five aggregates of the mind of views are precisely Dharma-nature. One color can therefore fully possess all colors, one consciousness all consciousnesses, and one sentient being all sentient beings without mutual obstruction, like a bright, clean mirror displaying many images. The three liberations do not separate from one another. Neither vertical nor horizontal, they are perfectly and fully present and are all sought within this one thought of the view of emptiness.

Does knowing this complete possession mean the work is already finished? No. Precisely because one sees ignorance and Dharma-nature clearly present together within this object, one becomes alert to one's own long darkness and produces kindness and compassion for sentient beings who are likewise dark. Contemplate the view of emptiness as empty and still in its nature, pure like empty space; then skillfully settle the mind and examine ignorance and Dharma-nature. Investigate the aggregate of views and the provisional construction of views through the four propositions, illuminating both the obstruction of suffering and origination and the penetration of path and cessation within every proposition.

One aggregate is all aggregates; the three truths remain unmoved and the Dharma-body is understood. Contemplating the unmoving aggregate accomplishes prajñā; breaking the eight inversions is called liberation. One further produces all establishments of mindfulness within one establishment, cultivates the inconceivable thirty-seven factors, and enters the samādhis of emptiness, signlessness, and wishlessness. If one still does not enter, one makes great vows, inwardly abandons attachment to views, outwardly abandons life and possessions, and applies moral discipline, patience, effort, repentance, wisdom, and the various treatments to assist the opening of nirvāṇa.

Finally, one must still deeply recognize one's stage and not usurp a higher ground. Neither inner nor outer winds and dust can destroy it, and attachment to Dharmas conforming to the path does not arise. Mind after mind becomes quiescent, flows into the ocean of wisdom, and rides one great cart directly to the place of the path. Thus the endpoint of contemplating the object of views is not the establishment of one more supreme view, but leaving behind not even attachment to Dharmas that conform to the path.

Through the Eye of the Fuxing

Zhanran first narrows “view” from understanding in general: although many things may arise, only what arises contrary to principle is called a view. The two partial failures of merely guarding the words and merely esteeming contemplation of principle do not yet mean that a view has arisen. This object begins when views and names operate freely in every direction. The distinction prevents the whole chapter from mixing ignorance and ordinary opinions with determinate view-wisdom.

Concerning “neither mad nor noble,” Zhanran points out that views belong to the nature of wisdom and can therefore be lucid and acute, yet because the afflictions remain unsevered, they cannot be securely treated as noble realization. The more common cases of a view arising after dhyāna or view and dhyāna arising together do not mean views can appear only in a fixed sequence. When a view must be corrected, what is removed is the nature of attachment; view-wisdom itself is not erased in one stroke. This statement prepares a place for nurturing views and examining the mind later in the text.

Across the three levels of non-Buddhists outside Buddha-Dharma, non-Buddhists attached to Buddha-Dharma, and those who become non-Buddhists while studying Buddha-Dharma, Zhanran repeatedly separates Dharma gates from attachment to gates. Especially in the third category, losing skillful means means losing the Dharma gate's function of penetrating principle. The meaning of emptiness in the Chengshi Lun does not become identical to a non-Buddhist doctrine simply because its wording resembles nonexistence. When the Vimalakīrti Sūtra frustrates the Small Vehicle by comparing it to non-Buddhists, it rebukes only the aspect that has not seen the Middle Way; it does not take away the Small Vehicle's preparatory function.

For arising through hearing, Zhanran supplies the crucial condition: such arising does not occur in a distracted mind. “Through hearing” still means that dhyāna was already present and the sound heard served as the activating condition. The treatise retains only “and so forth” for Paramārtha's statement about China's two kinds of merit; its particular explanation belongs to the commentarial layer and should not be supplied in the vernacular body. One hundred and forty is likewise only one expansion calculated through five rounds, four gates, and seven types of attainment. If arising through hearing were separately calculated, there could be another one hundred and forty. The number cannot be taken as the maximum total of all views.

Within the section on faults, Zhanran identifies the view of emptiness as a support of afflictions and gathers the two chains of gold and iron, two rough stones of jade and rat-stone, two milks of cow and donkey, and two fruits of kālaka and zhentou into four levels of judgment. If a correct gate is grasped, the afflictions produced by the attaching mind can be the same as those of non-Buddhists; yet the correct Dharma depended upon still differs as vastly from the non-Buddhist deviant Dharma as heaven from earth. One cannot call the Dharma gates identical merely because the afflictions agree, nor excuse the mind attached to a gate merely because the gate is correct.

“Nurturing views and examining the mind” must especially be read through Zhanran's sequence. He explicitly judges the tape-worm simile as first nurturing the acute agents so that they devour the dull agents; after the dull agents are exhausted, the acute agents must still be treated. Nurturing views therefore does not stop at views but provisionally uses view-wisdom as a forerunner. The Small Vehicle's shifting the view means urgently severing that view. The Great Vehicle's not shifting it means immediately penetrating that the view itself is the factors of the path. This is not an everyday psychological opposition between suppression and acceptance, but two ways of entering the path.

Entering the fourth major section, Zhanran gathers the meanings of gathering in and breaking separately: gathering in is nurturing views and examining the mind; breaking means removing views without leaving so much as a blade of grass. Both serve entry into correctness. Gathering in cannot be understood as permanent retention, nor breaking as crude suppression without distinguishing faculties.

Within the conceivable object, Zhanran establishes its causal structure through “the view of emptiness as the cause of the ten realms.” The śrāvaka passage opens suffering, origination, path, and cessation in order. The pratyekabuddha passage answers a question about the twelve links with the sixty-two views not because question and answer diverge, but because it directly recognizes views as ignorance and contemplates the twelve links forward and backward from the views. Through the Shared Teaching bodhisattva passage, the treatise first explains the Tripiṭaka's three vehicles together within the same object and then turns to the Shared Teaching. The sections should not be mistaken for a disorderly juxtaposition merely from their surface arrangement.

The general eye through which the four teachings treat views is that view-delusion is one while the four treatments differ. The nine establishments of mindfulness are therefore not nine unrelated Dharmas. They are the Tripiṭaka's three vehicles, common cultivation in the Shared Teaching, preparatory and real practices in the Distinct Teaching, and the one reality in the Perfect Teaching, proceeding through the teaching method from three carts to convergence in one great cart.

Zhanran also separates the verbs of the conceivable and inconceivable levels. In the conceivable object, the view of emptiness acts as cause, and the ten realms arise in sequence through good and evil, the four truths, twelve links, four vast vows, six perfections, and the rest. The inconceivable object instead establishes the object from one thought of the view of emptiness intrinsically possessing the ten realms and five aggregates. The latter does not wait for the ten realms to arise successively. If causal production and intrinsic possession are collapsed into one statement, the sequence of the śrāvaka, pratyekabuddha, and bodhisattva passages loses its function, and the turn by which one thought of the view of emptiness is Dharma-nature becomes flattened.

In the śrāvaka passage on the four truths, Zhanran not only labels the long text with suffering, origination, path, and cessation, but also reveals the turn in the method of contemplation. Previously, the person attached to emptiness took emptiness as path and nirvāṇa. Now, within the view of emptiness itself, one instead distinguishes aggregates, sense fields, and elements and the eighty-eight agents, then produces the establishments of mindfulness and factors of the path, severs the agents, and realizes cessation. Contemplating the object of views does not mean seeking an abstract object apart from views; it means turning the very mind now attached to emptiness into what is contemplated. This judgment also runs through the later passages on the twelve links and the four vast vows and six perfections.

Within the inconceivable object, Zhanran calls the ten realms and five aggregates inside the mind of the view of emptiness “sentient beings,” so that the view of emptiness, sentient beings, and liberation are not separate. Although the long passage that follows does not label every item, he still points out the sequence of producing the mind, settling the mind, breaking through universally, discerning obstruction and penetration, and correcting and assisting. These judgments help reveal that the treatise does not stop after merely saying that one thought fully possesses everything. Upon the object of complete possession, it continues to produce the mind, initiate practice, discern stages, and leave attachment until the extant body of the text concludes.