成唯識論 破我執

The refutation of self-grasping reads like a long debate, but the treatise uses one method throughout: it does not deny what you feel; it presses you on the specifications of the thing you claim.

First round, size. You say the self is a permanent, single, real entity — then how large is it? If it is the size of the body, then it grows as the body grows and is not permanent. If it is minute as a mote, how does it work this whole body? If it pervades everywhere, then your self and another's overlap, and you would act while another reaped. All three answers close.

Second round, relation. Is the self identical with the five aggregates or different? If identical, the aggregates arise and cease, and so does it — no permanent self. If different, then apart from form, feeling, conception, formations and consciousness, can you point to it? If you cannot, it has no place to stand.

Third round, most direct: does this self do anything? If it acts, action entails change, and it is not permanent. If it does not act, what is it for — a thing neither moving nor receiving, with no bearing on you at all, why call it "I"?

The heterodox refuted, the treatise turns to the Vātsīputrīyas of the Lesser Vehicle, who posited an "inexpressible self," of which one may not say it is the same as the aggregates or different, and yet held it real. The reply is short: what cannot be spoken of cannot be posited as real.

At the last, a distinction. Self-grasping is of two kinds. Discriminated self-grasping is acquired — one hears a doctrine and grasps accordingly; it is severed at the path of seeing. Innate self-grasping is born with one, arising spontaneously, and is not exhausted until the path of cultivation and beyond.

That distinction matters — it explains why one may understand the argument entirely and still go on exactly as before. Understanding cuts the discriminated layer. The layer beneath it is not what understanding reaches.

〔Verse expounded〕

The two words "self" and "dharmas" are in fact only a name we set up provisionally, said this way for convenience — there is no actual thing standing there. Precisely because [they are] thus conventionally set up, manifold differing appearances show forth, turning forth one after another. This whole passage is out to break thoroughly the two attachments of "there really being a self, there really being a dharma," and thereby to establish the principle that "there is only consciousness; outside the mind there is no object."

A. Refuting the Self-Attachment

1. General statement: a real self and real dharmas cannot be found

How can we be sure that outside the mind there is in fact no real object — that what there is, is only the inner consciousness manifesting something that "looks as if it were outside the mind"? The reason is just this: go looking for a real "self" or a real "dharma," and you simply cannot find one — and so it is said, "a real self and real dharmas cannot be found."

2. Refuting the three kinds of "measure of self" (permanent-and-pervasive / indeterminate / utterly fine)

Why is it that a real self cannot be found? First look at the "self" that worldly people hold to; it falls roughly into three kinds. The first kind maintain: this self is "permanent and pervades everything"; its size is boundless, just like space, and it can go everywhere making karma and everywhere undergoing pain and pleasure. The second kind maintain: this self, though permanent and undying, is "of no fixed size" — it shrinks and stretches with the body's size, now contracting, now expanding. The third kind maintain: this self is permanent but "utterly tiny," small as a single atom (極微, the smallest unit matter can be divided down to), hidden within the body where it moves to and fro and carries out its various tasks.

Take first the first kind (those who maintain the self is "both permanent and pervasive, vast as space"); this account fails right at the outset. Why? If you say the self is permanent, pervades everything, and is as vast as space, then this self ought, like space, not to follow the body in undergoing pain and pleasure (how would space undergo pain and pleasure?). Moreover, since it is permanent and pervasive, everywhere at once, it cannot move or turn at all; and if it cannot so much as move, how could it follow the body in making all sorts of karma?

Press the question further: this "self" you speak of — across all sentient beings, is it "one and the same," or "a separate one for each"? Take first the road of "one and the same": if all beings under heaven share a single self, the trouble is great — when one person makes karma, everyone should make karma along with him; when one person undergoes the fruit, everyone should undergo it; when one person attains liberation, everyone should attain it. This is plainly an untenable, gross fault.

Now take the road of "a separate one for each": you say each person has his own self — but each such self also pervades everything, so they overlap and spread together; your self spreads over to where I am, mine spreads over to where you are, all stirred together and inseparable. And when this person makes karma and undergoes the fruit, the place where that karma and fruit sit is in fact the very same place as where everyone else's selves sit (all of them pervade, all in the one place); so one is forced to say that this karma and this fruit are made and undergone by everyone's selves together (back to all sharing the load).

At this point the opponent may plead: "Making karma and undergoing the fruit each has its own owner — this karma belongs to this self, that karma to that self — so the above fault does not arise." But this still does not work. Why? This karma and fruit, together with this body, are already joined with "every one of the pervasive selves" (each self spreads over to here); so to insist that "it belongs to this self alone, not that one" makes no sense — when all pervade and all sit in the one place, how could you still tell them apart? And again, when one person attains liberation, everyone should attain it too, since the path he cultivates and the truth he realizes are likewise joined with all the pervasive selves (being all joined, they are liberated all at once).

Take next the second kind (those who maintain "the self is permanent, but its size is unfixed, stretching and shrinking with the body"); this too fails. Why? Since this self is permanent and unchanging, it ought not to stretch open and shrink shut along with the body. And since it does stretch and shrink, it is like the air in a bellows, swelling and shrinking with the bag — how could such a thing still count as permanent? Moreover, since this self [changes size] along with the body, it ought to be divisible, cuttable apart; so how can you insist that "the self is a seamless one, indivisible"? Hence this account is just like children's make-believe prattle.

Take next the third kind (those who maintain "the self is utterly tiny, like a single atom"); this likewise fails. Why? Your self is small as a single atom — so how could it set this whole great body moving all over? The opponent may plead: "Though the self is small, it patrols swiftly back and forth within the body, just as a torch whirled fast is seen as one whole ring of fire, so it looks as if the whole body were moving." But this very plea turns his own self into something "not one, and not permanent" — for anything that comes and goes, that runs back and forth, is necessarily not permanent-and-unchanging and not a seamless one (what moves has change, has parts).

3. Refuting the three kinds of "self and aggregates" (identical / apart / neither-identical-nor-apart)

From another angle — looking at the relation between the "self" and the five aggregates (色受想行識, the five heaps of form, feeling, perception, formations, and consciousness, the five classes of things that make up body-and-mind) — the "self" worldly people hold to again falls into three kinds. The first says "the self just is the five aggregates" (there is no self apart from the aggregates), called "identical with the aggregates." The second says "the self is something else, outside the five aggregates," called "apart from the aggregates." The third says "the self is neither one and the same as the five aggregates nor two separate things from them," called "neither-identical-nor-apart."

Take first the first kind, "the self just is the five aggregates"; this one does not hold up at the very start. If you say the self just is the five aggregates, then the self ought to be exactly like the aggregates — impermanent, and many heaps (the aggregates are by nature impermanent and several in kind) — yet you say the self is permanent and one; that is a contradiction. Then, testing it heap by heap: the "form" within the body (that is, the five sense-faculties — eye, ear, nose, tongue, body) is definitely not a real self, because, like things outside the body, it has shape and obstructs, taking up space (how could such a thing be the self?); "mind and the mental factors" (the mind-king and the various mental activities) are likewise not a real self, because they are not unbrokenly continuous and need a confluence of conditions to arise (now arising, now ceasing, dependent on conditions — how could they be the permanent, unitary self?); and the remaining "formations-aggregate" (the various shaping forces) and certain other "forms" (such as the invisible "unmanifest form") are also not a real self, because, like space, they have no capacity for awareness at all (how could something without awareness be the self?). Test the aggregates heap by heap in this way, and not one heap is the self — so "the self just is the five aggregates" cannot stand at all.

Take next the second kind, "the self is something else outside the five aggregates"; this too does not hold. If you say the self exists separately, apart from the five aggregates, then it ought, like space, to be able to do nothing at all — neither make karma nor undergo the fruit (apart from the body-mind aggregates it has no means to act and no means to experience; so what kind of self is that?).

Take next the third kind, "the self is neither identical with nor apart from the five aggregates"; this still does not hold. Since you concede that this self is "set up in dependence on the aggregates" (neither apart from them nor identical with them), it is then just like a pot or a basin — a pot too is assembled in dependence on the four great elements (earth, water, fire, wind), and you can say neither that the pot just is the four elements nor that the pot is apart from them; the pot is a conventional thing "provisionally set up in dependence on the four elements," not a really-existent pot. Your self is the same — a provisionally set-up conventional name, not a real self.

There is a further layer. This self of yours that is "neither identical nor apart" — by your own account, it cannot be called "conditioned" (有為; for to say "it just is the aggregates" makes it a conditioned thing that arises and perishes) and cannot be called "unconditioned" (無為; for to say "it is apart from the aggregates" makes it an unconditioned thing that neither arises nor perishes); you refuse to grant either side. But by the very same reasoning, you can then no longer even say whether it "is a self" or "is not a self" — since you have sealed off both sides and will affirm nothing, you cannot so much as pin the label "self" onto it. Hence the real self you hold simply cannot be established.

4. Interrogation by three considerations (cogitation / function / the object of the self-view)

Now to put the question another way: this "real self" you hold — does it "cogitate" (does it think things over) or not? There are only two possibilities. If you say it "does cogitate," then it must be impermanent — for cogitation is not present at all times; it now arises, now stops (what arises and stops has change, and so is not the permanent self). If you say it "does not cogitate," then it is like space, sitting dully unable to do anything, neither making karma nor undergoing the fruit (so what kind of self is that?). Neither road — cogitating or not — works, so the self you hold cannot stand.

Again, to put it another way: this real self you hold — does it "have function" (can it act, can it get things done) or not? Again only two roads. If you say it "has function," then it is just like hands and feet — hands and feet can function, but hands and feet are impermanent, so your self too must be impermanent (not the permanent self you claim). If you say it "has no function," then it is just like a hare's horn — a hare's horn does not exist at all, so your self too must be non-existent, not a real self. Neither road — having function or not — works, so the self you hold cannot stand.

Again, to put it another way: this real self you hold — is it the object that the "self-view" (我見, the view that grasps body-and-mind as a "self") refers to? Again only two roads. If you say "it is not the object the self-view refers to," then on what basis do you know there is such a real self at all? — if it is not something any view can reach, you have no way to know it exists. If you say "it is the object the self-view refers to," then there ought to be a kind of "self-view" that does not count as deluded — for on your account it really does refer to a real self (and since what it refers to is genuinely there, that view would not count as mistaken).

But follow this road (that the self-view is not deluded, that it really did see a real self) and it falls apart: if the self-view really were faithful and undeluded, then why do even the highest sacred teachings that you self-graspers yourselves revere all, without exception, condemn the self-view and praise "no-self" — all saying that only the view that sees "no-self" can realize nirvāṇa, while clinging to the view of "there being a self" only makes one sink in birth-and-death? On your account the "self-view" becomes the correct view and the "no-self view" becomes the wrong one — which would make it so that the wrong view (no-self view) actually realizes nirvāṇa, while the correct view (the self-view) actually dooms one to sink in birth-and-death. Where under heaven is there such a logic? (Clearly the self-view must be deluded; it never referred to any real self at all.)

Next this is proved by inference. Step one: the various "self-views" do not refer to a real self — the reason being that a self-view "has an object" (it has something it refers to), and in this it is just like any other mind that refers to its various objects; and those minds refer to what is not a real self, so the self-view too refers to what is not a real self. Step two: "the thing the self-view refers to" is definitely not a real self — the reason being that it is "a referred-to object," and in this it is just like all other referred-to dharmas; those referred-to dharmas are none of them a real self, so this one is not a real self either. Joining the two steps gives the conclusion: the self-view never refers to any real self at all; it merely refers to "the aggregates (the body-mind phenomena) that the inner consciousness manifests," and then each person, following his own deluded fancy, guesses this way and that and takes it to be "the self" (wrongly grasping it as a self).

5. The two self-attachments (innate · discriminated) and their stages of severance

Now the various "self-attachments" (the fault of grasping a self) fall roughly into two kinds. One is called "innate" (俱生) — present from birth, carried inborn. The other is called "discriminated" (分別) — arising later, after one has been influenced and has gone through a round of discriminating and reckoning.

Take first the "innate self-attachment." It is perfumed by deluded habit-energy, time after time, from beginningless time; relying on this inner force, it is ever present with the body, accompanying life itself. It need not wait for any false teacher to instruct it, nor pass through a round of mistaken discriminating reckoning; spontaneously it shows forth and turns — and so it is called "innate" (carried inborn).

This "innate self-attachment" itself divides into two. The first is "ever-continuous": it occurs in the seventh, the manas consciousness (the consciousness that lies between the sixth and the eighth and is in charge of grasping a self), which refers to the eighth, the ālaya consciousness (the root consciousness that stores all things) — manifesting an image in its own mind and grasping it firmly as a real self. The second is "intermittent": it occurs in the sixth, the mental consciousness, which refers to the appearance of the "five grasping-aggregates" (五取蘊, the five heaps of body-mind phenomena seized and held) that consciousness manifests — sometimes referring to them all together (taking the five aggregates lumped together as a self), sometimes singling one heap out (grasping a self in one particular aggregate) — likewise manifesting an image in its own mind and grasping it as a real self.

These two innate self-attachments, being subtle and deeply hidden, are hard to sever; they can be removed only later, in the stage of "the path of cultivation" (修道, the long stage of repeated practice that follows after one has seen the truth), by cultivating again and again the excellent "contemplation of the emptiness of persons" (生空觀, also called the contemplation of person-emptiness — contemplating that "there is no real personal self").

Take next the "discriminated self-attachment." It comes about through present, acquired outer conditions (the people one meets and the words one hears in this very life); it is not inborn. It must first have a false teacher to instruct it, plus a round of one's own mistaken discriminating reckoning, and only then does it arise — and so it is called "discriminated." It occurs only in the sixth, the mental consciousness (the seventh and eighth consciousnesses do not raise this kind of discriminating reckoning).

This "discriminated self-attachment" also divides into two. The first: referring to the "appearance of the aggregates" that a false teacher describes (how he portrays the five aggregates), it manifests an image in its own mind, then discriminates and reckons over it, and grasps it as a real self. The second: referring to the "appearance of a self" that a false teacher describes (what the self set up by the heterodox is portrayed to be like), it likewise manifests an image in its own mind, discriminates and reckons, and grasps it as a real self.

These two discriminated self-attachments, being coarser and more conspicuous, are easy to sever. At the first moment of "the path of seeing" (見道, the very first time one truly sees the truth), one need only contemplate the "person-emptiness suchness" (生空真如, the true principle disclosed on the side of "there being no personal self") shown forth by all dharmas, and they can be removed.

6. The object of the self-attachment is definitely the impermanent five grasping-aggregates

Take all the self-attachments described above, in terms of "what it is they refer to." Those "aggregates" outside one's own mind (that is, outer objects) are sometimes present and sometimes not (they are not necessarily really set out there); but those "aggregates" that one's own mind manifests (that is, the inner mental image) are every one of them present, always there (whenever self is grasped, this inner image is there to be referred to). And so it is said: every self-attachment refers to this "appearance of the impermanent five grasping-aggregates" (that is, what the inner consciousness manifests), and then mistakes it for a "self."

Yet two things must be kept distinct here. The appearances of the aggregates, since they arise from a confluence of conditions, are "existent as a magician's conjuring is existent" — they are not utterly nothing, but neither are they really existent; they are merely illusion-like existents. But the "self" that deluded fancy grasps, being something rigged up out of thin air by wild guessing and reckoning, is "simply non-existent" — it does not so much as reach the level of illusory existence; it is utterly nonexistent.

And so a scripture spoken by the Buddha contains this passage: "Monks, you should know: whatever self-views the ascetics, brahmins, and the like of this world hold, all of them arise with reference to the five grasping-aggregates." (This precisely proves that the self-view refers only to the five aggregates, and that there is no real self standing there.)

7. Interrogation: with no real self, how do memory, recognition, recitation, practice, etc. come about?

〔Q〕 The opponent rejoins: if there is no real self, then how can there be such things as remembering, recognizing, reciting, growing practiced, and bearing gratitude or grudge? (These all seem to require some unchanging self, the same one throughout, threaded through the middle — otherwise who is it that remembers, who grows practiced, who bears a grudge?)

〔A〕 Turn it back on him: this real self you hold, since it is permanent and forever unchanging, runs into trouble — "later" ought to be exactly like "earlier" (since it does not change). But memory and the like are precisely things that "only crop up later": since you say the self never changes, where would any newly cropped-up memory come from? These later-arising things ought not to occur at all. Conversely, "earlier" ought to be exactly like "later": so "what earlier was not yet present" ought not to count as "not present" either (since earlier and later are forever the same, there is no this-moment-arising or that-moment-ceasing). At bottom this is because, on your account, the self at "later" and at "earlier" has not the slightest difference in substance (forever one and the same, unchanging). Reasoned out this way, memory, recognition, and such cannot be established at all — setting up a permanent, unchanging self is exactly what seals these things off.

If the opponent then pleads, "What changes is the self's function, shifting from earlier to later; the self's substance does not change" — this too does not work. For "function" is inseparable from "substance," so the function ought to be as permanent as the substance (being joined to the substance, the function ought to stay just so, with no change); and conversely, "substance" is inseparable from "function," so the substance ought to be as changeable as the function (being joined to the function, the substance ought to change along with it, and not stay permanent). Substance and function are one inseparable affair; you cannot say in one breath that the substance is permanent and the function changes, splitting them into one-permanent-and-one-changing.

So how should it be put according to right principle? Every sentient being has his own "root consciousness" (本識, the eighth ālaya consciousness, the root consciousness that stores all things); it is ever of one and the same kind, unbrokenly continuous, spontaneously holding the seeds, and serving reciprocally as cause with all dharmas; precisely because of this force of repeated perfuming, there come to be such things as memory and recognition. So the challenge you posed in fact lands on "yourself" (the one who posits a real self) and pokes at your own fault, not at the fault of "our consciousness-only school" — it is your positing of a permanent self that fails to work, whereas our account of the continuity of consciousness works perfectly well.

8. Interrogation: with no real self, who makes karma and undergoes the fruit, who transmigrates and goes to nirvāṇa?

〔Q〕 The opponent asks again: if there is no real self, then who makes karma, and who undergoes the fruit? 〔A〕 Again turn it back on him: this real self you hold, since it is forever unchanging and sits there like space, how could it make any karma or undergo any fruit (space can do nothing)? And if you say it does change, then it has become impermanent, no longer the permanent self you first claimed. So how should it be put according to right principle? Each being's mind and mental factors, by the force of various causes and conditions, are continuous and unbroken, thought succeeding thought; it is precisely on this continuity that karma gets made and the fruit gets undergone — not the slightest contradiction in principle, and no need at all to set up a separate real self.

〔Q〕 The opponent asks once more: if there really is no self, then who is it that transmigrates round and round through the destinies in birth-and-death? And who is it that, wearied of suffering, seeks to reach nirvāṇa? 〔A〕 Still turn it back on him: this real self you hold, since it neither arises nor perishes, how can you say it "transmigrates in birth-and-death" (a thing that neither arises nor perishes cannot be spoken of as transmigrating at all)? Since it is forever like space, untroubled by suffering, why would it weary of anything or seek nirvāṇa (not suffering at all, it has nothing to weary of and nothing to seek)? So the opponent's whole account keeps landing back on himself — positing a permanent self is exactly what makes both transmigration and liberation impossible to account for.

So how should it be put according to right principle? Beings, as a class, have body and mind in unbroken continuity; it is just by being driven by the two forces of affliction and karma that they transmigrate through the destinies; and it is just because they have wearied of the various sufferings that they seek nirvāṇa — all of which the continuity of body and mind is enough to account for, with no need to set up a separate real self.

9. Resolving into "there is definitely no real self"

Through this whole train of refutations it can be settled: there is definitely no real self. There are only the various consciousnesses, which from beginningless time "perish in the prior moment and arise in the later," so that cause is succeeded by fruit and fruit becomes cause again, thought after thought in unbroken continuity; and with the added force of deluded habit-energy perfumed time after time, they manifest an appearance that "looks as if it were a self." The deluded then, upon this "self-resembling" image, forcibly take it to be a real self — when in fact, go looking, and not one real self can be found.

This section picks up from the thesis stated in the previous one. To establish that "there is only consciousness, no external object," we first have to establish that neither a real self nor real dharmas can be found. Here the author trains his fire on the real self — like an enormously patient debater, he takes up every way people imagine a "self" and presses each one, round by round, all the way to its breaking point.

This refutation of a real self, for all that it reads like a single sustained debate, has scripture and treatise behind every line. At the very end the author calls the Buddha's own word in the canonical sūtra as witness: whatever renunciants and brahmins suppose there to be a "self," every one of them sees that self only upon the "five aggregates of clinging" — reckoning that form and the rest are the self, or that they are other than the self, or that the self resides within them, or that they reside within the self — running the same four propositions across each aggregate in turn. With that one statement the Buddha pins down "the object of self-view" upon the five appropriated aggregates, leaving no separate real self to be cognized; this is the scriptural root of the present section's refutation. On the treatise side, the basis is the Yogācārabhūmi: the foolish, upon the five appropriated aggregates, raise the "twenty propositions of the view of the perishing aggregates" — upon each of the five aggregates of form, feeling, perception, formations, and consciousness they set up the four propositions "this is the self · the self possesses this · this belongs to the self · the self resides in this," five times four making twenty, of which five propositions see the self directly and the remaining fifteen see "what belongs to the self," all of them arising in dependence on the five appropriated aggregates. The sūtra's teaching that self-view cognizes the five aggregates, and the treatise's verdict that the view of the perishing aggregates cognizes only the five aggregates, are precisely the ground for this treatise's doctrine that "upon dharmas that are not the self one deludedly construes a self" and that all such construal "cognizes the appearance of the impermanent five appropriated aggregates." What follows expounds the refutation in the order the author lays it down.

Why This Must Be Refuted

How do we know that there is, in fact, no object lying outside the mind — that there is only the inner consciousness transforming itself so that it appears like an external object? The author's point of entry is this: because a real self and real dharmas simply cannot be found. So he begins by refuting the real self.

First Round: Just How Large Is This "Self" You Speak Of?

The selves that ordinary people cling to can be sorted, the author observes, into three sizes (three claims about the self's spatial magnitude), and he refutes each. Kuiji's Notes (the Shuji) points out that this first one — the self that is "permanent, all-pervading, and vast as space" — is exactly what the two schools of Sāṃkhya and Vaiśeṣika cling to: Sāṃkhya holds the "self" to be the experiencer, for whose sake the "three constituents (primordial nature)" do the work; Vaiśeṣika places the self under the "category of substance," saying that this self can itself both act and experience. The refutation that follows is aimed at this sort of "permanent, all-pervading real self."

Those who hold that the self is permanent, all-pervading, and vast as space. Then such a self ought not to feel pain or pleasure along with the body — space, after all, never aches or itches. And since it is both permanent and all-pervading, filling every location, it ought to be incapable of moving at all; so how could it travel along with the body to perform the various deeds that generate karma? Press the point a further step: is this "self" one and the same across all sentient beings, or is there a separate one in each? If it is one and the same, then when a single person acts, everyone should be acting; when one person reaps a result, all should reap it; when one person is liberated, all should be liberated at once — which is absurd. And if there is a separate self in each being, yet each of these selves is also all-pervading, then they would overlap one another and their very natures would be mixed together. Worse: since they overlap everywhere, when one person acts and receives the result, that place is indistinguishable from where every other self is present, so the act and its result would have to count as something all the selves jointly performed and jointly received. Nor can the objector rescue the view by saying "the acting and the receiving each belong to their proper owner and do not get mixed up." The deed, its fruit, and the body all coincide with every one of those all-pervading selves; to insist arbitrarily that they "belong only to this self and not to that one" cannot be made coherent. And once again, when one person is liberated, all should be liberated — because the practice undertaken and the realization attained likewise coincide with all the selves.

Those who hold that the self is permanent, but of indeterminate size — expanding and contracting to fit the body. If you say it is permanent, then it ought not to stretch and shrink with the body. And if it does stretch and shrink, then it is like the air inside a bellows (swelling and collapsing with the bag) — which means it is not permanent after all. Moreover, since it can grow large or small to match the body, it can be cut apart and divided into pieces; so how can you still call the self "one undivided whole"? This view the author dismisses outright as no better than a child's make-believe talk.

Those who hold that the self is extremely small — minute as a single atom, moving stealthily through the body to get its work done. How could so tiny a point set the whole great body into motion all at once? Suppose the objector rescues the view by saying, "Though it is small, it races around the body so swiftly — like a whirling torch that looks like a continuous ring of fire, so that the whole body seems to move." Then this "self" has become something neither single nor permanent — for whatever comes and goes, racing about from place to place, is by that very fact not permanent and not one undivided whole.

Second Round: What Is the Relation Between the "Self" and the Body-Mind (the Five Aggregates)?

Shifting the angle, the author now refutes the self by way of its relation to the five aggregates, again in three forms.

Those who say the self just is the five aggregates. Then the self ought to be, like the aggregates, impermanent and many (the aggregates by nature arise and perish, and they are a heap of items). Tested aggregate by aggregate, this too fails. The bodily aggregate of rūpa (the five faculties) is not the real self, because, like the physical matter outside the body, it has the property of resistance and obstruction. Mind and the mental factors (citta and caitta) are not the real self either, because they cannot continue uninterruptedly and must wait on a gathering of conditions to arise. And the remaining factors of the saṃskāra aggregate, and the remaining rūpa, are not the real self, because, like space, they have no property of awareness. Every one of the aggregates fails to be the self; so the "self that is the aggregates" cannot stand.

Those who say the self exists really, apart from the five aggregates. Then it would be like space — without the function of generating karma or receiving its fruit. (Once it is severed from the body-mind, with what would it act, and with what would it receive?)

Those who say the self is neither identical with nor separate from the five aggregates. Kuiji's Notes (the Shuji) identifies this position as belonging to the Vātsīputrīya school (a school formed by a non-Buddhist of the Vātsī clan who went forth under the Buddha, also called the Pudgalavāda) and the Sāṃmitīya school — who set up a "self" that is neither identical with nor separate from the aggregates it depends on, yet has a real substance of its own and is neither permanent nor impermanent, and who further set up "five repositories of dharmas" (past, present, future, the unconditioned, plus this "inexpressible self"). It is this that the author refutes. Since you grant that this self is set up in dependence on the aggregates, then it ought to be like a pot (which is likewise set up in dependence on the four great elements and is neither identical with nor separate from them) — a merely conventional, posited thing, not a real self. And further: this self cannot be called conditioned (for to be identical with the aggregates would make it conditioned), nor can it be called unconditioned (for only what is apart from the aggregates is unconditioned). In just the same way, then, it can be called neither "a self" nor "not a self" — both exits are sealed shut, and this self cannot so much as be given a name. Kuiji also supplies the inference by which the author refutes the Vātsīputrīya: the self you cling to ought not to be a real self; for since you allow it to be "set up in dependence on the aggregates, neither identical with the aggregates nor separate from them," it is on a par with conventional things such as pots and basins (all of which are set up in dependence on something else and have no real substance of their own).

Third Round: Three Blunt Interrogations

The author presses to the very end with three matched pairs of questions.

Does this "real self" think, or does it not? If it thinks, then it must be impermanent (for thinking comes and goes, starting and stopping, never continuously present). If it does not think, then it is like space and can neither generate karma nor receive its fruit. Both roads are blocked.

Does it have function, or does it not? If it has function, then it is like hands and feet (whatever has function is impermanent) and must be impermanent. If it has no function, then it is like the horns of a hare (whatever has no function is not really existent) and must not be a real self. Once again both ends are blocked.

Is it, or is it not, the object grasped by the "self-view" (the very thought that clings to a self)? If it is not the object of any cognition whatever, then on what grounds could you even know that there is such a self? And if it is the object grasped by the self-view, then there should be a kind of "self-view" that is not mistaken — for it would have truly cognized a real self just as it is. Yet even the scriptural authority that the self-clinger himself reveres condemns self-view across the board and praises the absence of self, teaching that the "view of no-self" can realize nirvāṇa while the "view that clings to a self" sinks one into birth-and-death. Where is there any case of a "wrong view" that can, on the contrary, realize nirvāṇa, or a "right view" that, on the contrary, makes one sink? This shows that self-view is, in the end, mistaken, and that it has not cognized any real self at all.

The author then adds a tight further inference. The self-view does not cognize a real self — because it "has an object," just like any mind that cognizes some other object (every mind that has an object is one that fails to cognize a real self). And what the self-view takes as object is likewise certainly not a real self — because it "is an object that is cognized," just like all other dharmas (whatever is cognized is not a real self). The conclusion, then, is this: self-view does not cognize any real self at all. It merely cognizes "the five aggregates produced by the transformation of the inner consciousness," and then, following each person's own deluded disposition, construes and takes them, in all sorts of ways, to be a self.

Self-Clinging Comes in Two Kinds: One Inborn, One Acquired by Learning

The author next divides self-clinging into two classes.

Innate self-clinging is present from birth. Through the false perfuming that has gone on without beginning, and through an inner causal force, it follows the body and life continuously — needing no one to teach it, requiring no deliberate discrimination, arising spontaneously. It is itself of two kinds. One is "constantly continuous": in the seventh consciousness, the manas, it cognizes (the perceiving-aspect of) the eighth consciousness, generates an image of it, and grasps that as a real self. The other is "intermittent": in the sixth consciousness, the mental consciousness, it cognizes the appearance of the "five appropriated aggregates" produced by consciousness — taking them either together or separately — generates an image, and grasps that as a real self. These two forms of innate self-clinging are very subtle and hard to sever; only later, in the path of cultivation, by repeatedly practicing the "contemplation of the emptiness of persons" again and again, can they be removed.

Discriminated self-clinging is acquired. It is triggered by present outer conditions, is not inborn, and arises only after one has met the teaching of a misguided teacher and roused a mistaken discrimination. Moreover, it occurs only within the sixth, mental consciousness. It too is of two kinds: one cognizes the "appearance of the aggregates" as set out in the mistaken teaching, the other cognizes the "appearance of a self" as set out in the mistaken teaching — each generating its image and construing and grasping it as a real self. These two forms of discriminated self-clinging are comparatively coarse and obvious, and easy to sever: at the very first "path of seeing," the moment one illuminates the "suchness disclosed by the emptiness of persons" (the suchness revealed when persons are seen as empty), they are extinguished.

So What Is Self-Clinging Actually Grasping At?

Take all the forms of self-clinging together. What they cognize — the "aggregates" lying outside one's own mind — may or may not exist (the external object is not necessarily real). But the "aggregates" transformed within one's own mind always do exist. So every form of self-clinging is, in truth, cognizing the appearance of the "impermanent five appropriated aggregates" and deludedly grasping it as a "self." And these aggregate-appearances, being produced by a gathering of conditions, are "existent as an illusion is existent" (neither nonexistent nor truly existent); while the "self" grasped by the deluded disposition is purely something fabricated by construal laid on top — and so is "definitively nonexistent." This is exactly what the Buddha says in scripture: a monk should know that the self-views of all the renunciants and brahmins in the world, every one of them, arise in dependence on the five appropriated aggregates.

Turning the Question Around: Without a Real Self, How Can Memory, Karma, and Rebirth Be Established?

At this point the side that maintains a real self counters: if there were no real self, how could there be such things as memory, recognition, recitation and retention, repeated practice, gratitude and resentment? (Don't these require a self that runs consistently through earlier and later moments?)

The author first turns the charge back on the objector. The real self you cling to is, by your own account, "permanent and utterly unchanging." Then "afterward" ought to be exactly the same as "before" (if it never changes, where would a new memory come from), and "before" ought to be the same as "afterward." Since there is no difference at all in nature between before and after, a "later-arising event" such as memory ought, on the contrary, not to be possible. Suppose the objector shifts ground and says, "It is the self's function that changes, while the self's substance does not." This too fails: function cannot be separated from substance, so the function ought to be as permanent as the substance (in which case the function should not change either); and substance cannot be separated from function, so the substance ought to change just as the function does (in which case the substance should not be permanent either). One permanent, one changing — you cannot pry them forcibly apart. What truly lets memory and the rest be established is this: each sentient being has its own "root consciousness" (the eighth, the ālaya-vijñāna), continuing unbroken in one homogeneous class of nature, effortlessly maintaining the seeds, mutually causal with all dharmas; and by the force of perfuming, things like memory and recognition come about. So this difficulty stumps the one who maintains a real self — not the school that teaches consciousness-only.

In the same way, "without a real self, who generates karma, and who receives the result?" That self of yours — permanent as space, utterly unchanging — could never act or receive in the first place; and if it could change, it is no longer the permanent self you claimed. In reality it is the mind and mental factors of the sentient being, continuing unbroken by the force of causes and conditions, that generate karma and receive its result — and there is no difficulty in this at all. "Without a real self, who transmigrates, and who seeks nirvāṇa?" That self of yours, neither arising nor perishing, cannot possibly transmigrate; and being permanent as space and untouched by suffering and affliction, why would it ever need to grow weary and turn away, or seek nirvāṇa? This shows that by positing a permanent self you actually make both transmigration and liberation impossible to explain — permanence ends up harming the very position that asserts it. The truth is this: the body-mind continuum of the sentient being is driven through the various destinies by the afflictions and the force of karma; and because it grows weary of the mass of suffering, it then seeks to head toward nirvāṇa — and none of this requires a real self.

Conclusion: There Is No Real Self At All

After all this round-on-round questioning, we can conclude with certainty: there really is no "self." What there is, is only this — the consciousnesses, from time without beginning, with "the prior thought perishing and the later thought arising," continuing unbroken as cause and effect; and, owing to false perfuming, transforming themselves so as to manifest the semblance of a "self." Foolish people then take this self-like image and stubbornly treat it as a "self."

Onward Transmission

The doctrine established in this section — "refute the real self, settle that there is no self" — is the very foundation on which the whole consciousness-only system rests its account of "no-self," and the later treatises take it up one after another. The Hundred Dharmas treatise, among the root afflictions, lists the "view of the perishing aggregates (the view of self)" as the first of the five views — that is, the very thought refuted here, the one that, cognizing the five appropriated aggregates, deludedly grasps "I" and "what is mine"; and among the factors dissociated from mind it sets up the "person" (pudgala), expressly stating that this is only a conventionally posited name with no real substance, which is just the working-out of this section's doctrine that "the self is merely posited, not really existent." The Thirty Verses — the first half of verse one, "through provisional speech of self and dharmas" — is the very root-verse this section expounds; this section is the extended refutation of the real self packed into that one phrase, "self is provisionally spoken," verse answering to verse. The Madhyānta-vibhāga, in its chapter on characteristics, speaks of "false discrimination," saying that the dual grasping of self and dharmas is all wholly-imagined and has no self-substance at all — running together with this section's doctrine that "the appearance of a self manifests, but the construal of it is nonexistent." The Mahāyāna-saṃgraha, in its chapter on the characteristics of the knowable, sets up "the wholly-imagined nature," making clear that self and dharmas are nonexistent and only seem to appear in dependence on what the other-dependent nature transforms — and this is precisely the root from which "refuting self-clinging" is pushed onward toward the doctrines of the other-dependent and the wholly-imagined natures. As for the Twenty Verses, its main concern is to establish consciousness-only and refute the outsiders' clinging to real external objects (refuting external atoms), and it has no direct counterpart to the frontal refutation of the real self (what bears on refuting external objects and atoms belongs rather to the later chapter, "refuting the clinging to dharmas · refuting matter"); here it is honestly left aside.