瑜伽師地論 義疏通講 · 冊10

Teaching arc: the Stage of What is Attained through Hearing sets up the beginning of wisdom with the "five sciences," and among them the Inner Science is foremost; the first three aspects are one whole "map of all the names and marks" and one "framework of what is to be practiced" that the wisdom-born-of-hearing must come to recognize. The eye of this fascicle is a single line of Kuiji's: "In the Western regions, 'name' is mostly called 'concept'" — every name and mark is provisionally posited by the mental factor of conception; the object of the wisdom-born-of-hearing is already the whole doctrine of marks of the entire Consciousness-Only teaching.

Why the First Step toward Wisdom Is "Listening" — and Why One Must Even Listen to Medicine, Language, and the Crafts

All the way here — the five consciousnesses, the mental, the three stages of applied-and-sustained thought, meditative equipoise (concentration) — and now, at the tenth stage, the topic of the treatise turns to "wisdom." But wisdom is not one single thing; the treatise divides it into three layers: the wisdom attained through hearing, the wisdom attained through reflection, and the wisdom attained through cultivation. Jinaputra gathers these three stages under the joint name of "the three wisdom-stages," saying that they "take the mind and mental factors of the class of the three wisdoms, and the fruit thereby obtained, as their intrinsic nature". And the first of the three wisdoms is, of all things, "hearing."

Why is it hearing? Because wisdom does not arise out of nothing. The treatise says at its very opening: one must "within the boundless distinctions of the word-bodies, phrase-bodies, and syllable-bodies of the five sciences, take discerning insight as the forerunner, and by it hear, receive, recite, and hold in memory" — first, with discerning insight as the guide, one goes and listens; only when what is heard has come in and been understood without error is there the capital for the reflection and cultivation that follow. If the first step is empty, all that follows is empty.

Yet the moment one opens up the "five sciences," there is a spot that makes one knit the brows: besides the Inner Science (the Buddha's Dharma), one must, it turns out, still study the science of medicine, the science of language (grammar), the science of reasoning (logic), and the science of the crafts (agriculture, commerce, divination, music … twelve kinds of handiwork). Why should a follower of the Buddha trouble to master these worldly skills? — Because this is the wisdom of a bodhisattva: to bring sentient beings to maturity, one must be able to cure the sick, be versed in the local tongues, out-argue false doctrines, and get the work done; only then does wisdom come down to solid ground. But the five sciences are by no means a flat heap of equals. A single line of the Section on Ascertainment settles their high and low: "As for that Inner Science, among all the treatises and schools of all the sciences, it is the utmost and the foremost. Why? Because of the meaning of the fourfold purity" — the Inner Science gathers all the meanings of defilement and purity, is not overpowered by other doctrines, is easy to enter, and, once entered, its right practice does not fail; the other four sciences all revolve around it. And so this fascicle first expounds the Inner Science; and the Inner Science first sets out four aspects, of which this fascicle expounds the first three.

Event-Designation: All the Buddha's Words, Gathered into Three Baskets

The first aspect of the Inner Science is called "the aspect established by event-designation." In one line: by three kinds of "event," the whole of the teaching of all the buddhas is gathered together — the sūtra event (the discourses), the vinaya event (the discipline), and the mātṛkā event (the matrix, the treatises). Kuiji makes the point: this "event" is "the substance-event that is the basis of all the meanings that are expounded" — the three baskets are not three stacks of paper, but the three classes of substance on which all the holy teaching rests.

Here the treatise sets down only their names, and immediately says "they will be distinguished at length in the Section on the Gathering of Events" — the extended exposition is left to the later Section on the Gathering of Events (from fascicle eighty-five onward). This is the style of the Stage of What is Attained through Hearing: first take stock of the Buddha's words, the "household goods," and count them into the three baskets; the fine particulars are reckoned in the later text. The first lesson of the wisdom-born-of-hearing is just to recognize: what I am listening to never departs from these three baskets.

Why Is "the Discernment of Concepts" Called "Concept" and Not "Name" — Kuiji Lays It Bare in a Single Line

The second aspect most rewards a close look. It is called "the aspect established by the designating of the discernment of concepts," and beneath it, four uddānas (summary verses) govern forty-five gates: phrase, delusion, idle proliferation, abiding, the real, the pure, the sublime, the tranquil … gate by gate, they are plainly all speaking of "names and titles." Then why not honestly call it "the discernment of names," but rather mark it with a "concept"?

Kuiji lays it bare in a single line: "That is, the designating name — because name, phrase, and syllable are all born of concept, it is named 'concept.' Again, in the Western regions, 'name' is mostly called 'concept.' Again, name and the rest are without substance of their own; provisionally posited upon sound, and understood according to one's concept, they are titled the designating [names] — and so name and the rest are called 'concept'".

Chew this line over slowly: name (together with phrase and syllable) is what "concept" (saṃjñā) gives birth to; the Western regions did from the first mostly call "name" by "concept"; and — more important — the latter half: name and the rest are without substance of their own; provisionally posited upon sound, and only when understood according to one's concept do they become "designating names." A name has no substance of its own; hung upon a sound, it is a provisional positing, and it must depend on that single thought of "concept" of yours to understand it before it comes to be a "designating name" at all.

This one line has already buried the root of the Consciousness-Only teaching of "the provisional positing of names-and-words." The myriad dharmas that we take to be really existent, traced to the bottom, are nothing but names, each provisionally posited by the mental factor of conception — and following the name we grasp a mark, and cling to the mark as real. And so these forty-five gates are not a dead word-list: they are one whole "map of names and marks" that the wisdom-born-of-hearing must come to recognize, and in the very act of recognizing it, one ought to know that every name on the map is originally a provisional positing of concept.

On This Map, the Whole of the Consciousness-Only Teaching Is Already Drawn

Look closely at the "phrase" gate, and the deep intent shows the more. Here the treatise reels off, in a single breath, the objects of the wisdom-born-of-hearing: the inner six sense-bases, the three realms, the three-thousand realms, the three feelings, the three times, the three jewels, the four noble truths, the nine successive attainments, the thirty-seven factors of awakening, the four fruits of the renunciant … laying them out all the way to the Tathāgata's ten powers, four fearlessnesses, and thirty-two marks. And among them there stand out, unmistakably: the three intrinsic natures (the wholly-imagined, the other-dependent, the true), the three naturelessnesses, the extensive Great Vehicle's five items (mark, name, discrimination, suchness, right knowledge), the two emptinesses and two no-selves, the four investigations, the four knowledges of things as they really are, the five immeasurable conceptions, and the great awakening of five marks.

These are precisely the whole doctrine of marks of Consciousness-Only that the wisdom-born-of-cultivation is later to realize in person. The three natures are the "wholly-imagined mark, other-dependent mark, and true mark" of the Saṃdhinirmocana-sūtra's Chapter on the Marks of All Dharmas; the four modes of principle gathered under the "principle" gate (the principle of dependence, of function, of establishing proof, and of the nature of things) are the four modes of principle of the Saṃdhinirmocana-sūtra's Chapter on the Tathāgata's Accomplishing of What Is to Be Done. The "object" of what is attained through hearing is not shallow in the least — its objective realm is the whole doctrine of marks that the wisdom-born-of-cultivation is to realize. And so "what is attained through hearing" is by no means a superficial rote memorizing: it is to first hear clearly, one by one, and understand without error the names and marks of the entire teaching; only when the map is well recognized do reflection and cultivation have a road to walk.

As for the same uddāna's "delusion" being the four inversions, "idle proliferation" being all the afflictions and the aggregates mixed with affliction, and "direct realization" being the six direct realizations (as already stated in the Stage with Both Applied and Sustained Thought) — each and every title is a coordinate that the wisdom-born-of-hearing must first set up and afterward counter.

Gathering the Meaning of the Holy Teaching: What Is One to Do with the Dharma One Has Heard — Ten "Oughts"

The first two aspects took stock of the "Buddha's words (the three baskets)" and of the "names and marks (the forty-five gates)"; the third aspect, "the aspect of gathering the meaning of the holy teaching," turns to a more practical question: what is one to do with this Dharma one has heard?

The treatise lists ten kinds of dharma, which is exactly to sort all the holy teaching by "what is one to do with it": the dharma that can be cultivated (the wholesome dharmas single-mindedly, continuously, and by skillful means diligently cultivated), the dharma to be cultivated (the wholesome dharmas themselves), the dharma that has fault (to be fully understood), the dharma that is defiled (to be not clung to, to be subdued, first to be abandoned), the obstructing dharma (that which runs counter to the culmination of direct realization), the conforming dharma (that which conforms to the culmination of direct realization), the dharma gathered by suchness (to be awakened to), the dharma gathered by excellent qualities (to be drawn forth), the dharma conforming to the world (to be practiced, to be abandoned, and that still operates after abandonment), the dharma of reaching the culmination (to be realized as the ultimate of one's own meaning).

To put it in one word: which are to be fully understood, which to be abandoned, which to be realized, which to be drawn forth. Come to this point, the wisdom-born-of-hearing not only recognizes the names, but must recognize the position of every dharma within practice-and-realization — and this pushes on from "knowing its name" to "knowing its use," reading the one map of names and marks into a work-sheet of practice-and-realization.

Carrying Forward

What the first three aspects set up are the two base-materials of the wisdom-born-of-hearing: one whole "map of all the names and marks" (gathered by the three baskets, listed in the forty-five gates) and one "framework of what is to be practiced" (the ten kinds of dharma — to be fully understood, to be abandoned, to be realized). The extended exposition of the three events is carried on by the Section on the Gathering of Events (from fascicle eighty-five onward); the Consciousness-Only doctrine-numbers listed in the "phrase" gate (the three natures, the four modes of principle, the five items) are afterward set forth at length, one by one, by the Saṃdhinirmocana, the Cheng Weishi Lun, and the Hundred Dharmas; and the tranquillity-and-insight gates of the fourth uddāna of the discernment of concepts (the nine settlings of mind, the object by the distinction of six matters, the seven attentions) are carried on by the Stage of Meditative Equipoise and the Śrāvaka Stage and become the practice of the wisdom-born-of-cultivation. The Stage of What is Attained through Hearing first sets the names, marks, and framework properly in place; only upon them can the later treatises arouse reflection, arouse cultivation, and realize.

The teaching arc: the site of what the Buddha's teaching should have us know gathers, by "number," the matters expounded by the Buddha — from two up to ten, weaving a single net that draws in the knowable. But the numbering is no dry contrivance: the Ascending-Two gate alone already hides within it the three natures of the Saṃdhinirmocana and the emptiness-teaching of the Prajñā. This sub-unit's point of the eye is to see how, within the ascending-enumeration gate, the aggregates-realms-sense-fields, the limbs of the path, the four truths, and the emptiness of the three natures come to be woven into a net by number. All that is expounded is what the treatise-text itself already holds and what the ancient masters have themselves explained; not one meaning is added.

Why the Buddha's Teaching Can Be "Numbered" Out

The wisdom-of-hearing must come to recognize "the site of what the Buddha's teaching should have us know" — all the things worth knowing that the Buddha expounds. But the Buddha-dharma is vast; how is it to be held in hand? The method the fourth aspect of the Inner Science gives is, unexpectedly, simple: use "number." From two, three, four, on up to ten, it takes the matters the Buddha expounds and marshals them by their number. Kuiji fixes the point in a single phrase: 「從二數佛教所詮事，增益乃至十種佛教所詮事，名佛教所應知處相」 tr. "from the number two it increases the matters expounded by the Buddha's teaching, on up to ten kinds of matters expounded by the Buddha's teaching — this is named the aspect that is the site of what the Buddha's teaching should have us know".

This is the ancient method of the Abhidharma "matching-of-dharmas": taking number as the guiding thread, it weaves a net, so that every dharma worth knowing has a place to hang, and the wisdom-of-hearing is thereby saved from gazing helplessly out at the sea. This sub-unit expounds its opening: first a passage of "three kinds" (the dwelling of sentient beings: day-by-day dwelling, life-long dwelling, and the dwelling that goes on turning ever onward through the lovely births of wholesome dharmas), and then it raises the Ascending-Two, the Ascending-Three, and the Ascending-Four.

The "Number" Is No Dry Contrivance — Within the Ascending-Two Already Lies the Deepest Sūtra

Do not suppose that arranging by number makes things shallow. The ascending count has only reached "two," and it already points toward the deepest teaching. The treatise lists a gate: 「於如來所說所有甚深、相似甚深、空相應經，一切緣性及諸緣起，隨順作意數數思惟」 tr. "in accordance with the profound, the semblance-profound, and the emptiness-corresponding sūtras spoken by the Tathāgata, and toward all conditionedness and the various dependent arisings, giving conforming attention and pondering again and again" 〔the treatise〕. Kuiji points directly at what these two kinds of sūtra are: the "profound sūtra" is precisely the teaching, such as the Saṃdhinirmocana, in which the three natures are made manifest; the "semblance-profound, emptiness-corresponding sūtra" is precisely the emptiness-teaching of the Prajñā.

A single "Ascending-Two" gate has already drawn the three natures of Consciousness-Only and the emptiness of the Prajñā together into the net-eyes of "what should be known." The object of the wisdom-of-hearing, at this point, reveals its depth and breadth — the ascending enumeration does not number the Buddha-dharma thin; it weaves even the deepest teaching into a graspable set of guiding threads.

The Eye of the Ascending-Two: The Grasper and the Grasped, the Two Views of Permanence and Annihilation, Shame-toward-Self and Shame-toward-Others

Among the twenty-four pairs of the Ascending-Two, there are several places most worth pausing over, and all are joints that the treatise-text itself holds —

The very first pair at the opening, 「能取之法，及彼所依、所取之法」 tr. "the dharma that grasps, and the dharma that is its support and is grasped," already gathers up all the matters of idle proliferation: all idle proliferation, traced to the bottom, is nothing other than the grasper and the grasped. The third pair is more incisive still: 「薩迦耶見增上力故，推求我常、推求我斷」 tr. "through the dominant force of the view of the reifying self, seeking out 'the self as permanent,' seeking out 'the self as annihilated'" — the two forking paths of the permanence-view and the annihilation-view have, in fact, the very same root, the "view of self"; recognize this one point, and the two-extreme views of the outsiders are more than half seen through. Then there is the sixth pair, where the treatise says the two dharmas of 「於自非法不可愛果無有顧慮、於所作罪無有羞恥」 tr. "having no concern for the unlovely fruits of one's own unrighteousness, and no shame at the sins one commits" can most gravely transgress right conduct, and that 「與此相違即是白品」 tr. "the reverse of these is precisely the white category" — turned around, this is just shame-toward-self and shame-toward-others. Let the wisdom-of-hearing come to know these several pairs by heart, and it is as though it has grasped in hand just those few joints that lie between defilement and purity.

The Ascending-Three and Ascending-Four: Weaving the Aggregates-Realms-Sense-Fields, the Limbs of the Path, and the Four Truths into a Net by Number

Climbing on up to the Ascending-Three and the Ascending-Four, the net-eyes grow denser still. The Ascending-Three draws in the three feelings, the three times, the three kinds of awakening-to-the-knowable, and the three eyes — the fleshly eye illumines the manifest and unobstructed forms, the divine eye illumines the manifest-and-unmanifest, obstructed-and-unobstructed forms, and the wisdom-eye illumines all kinds of dharmas, whether form or non-form — and, further, the three knowledges-clear.

The Ascending-Four draws in the whole skeleton-of-bone of the path of cultivation: the four foundations of mindfulness (the treatise says they precisely counteract the "four bonds" of grasping, receiving, discerning, and clinging — the mind is bound toward the body by the bond of grasping, toward feeling by the bond of receiving, toward the object-realm by the bond of discerning, toward the body and the rest by the bond of the afflictions' clinging, and the four foundations of mindfulness are established to counteract them), the four right cuttings-off, the four bases of supernatural power, the four meditative absorptions, the four immeasurables, the four formless [attainments], the four abodes of consciousness, the four foods, the four births (egg, womb, moisture, transformation), and the four deaths. Among these, most worth looking at is "the four kinds of the truly-real that is knowable": the treatise explains them with 「染污品果、彼品因、清淨品果、彼品因」 tr. "the fruit of the defiled category, the cause of that category, the fruit of the clean category, the cause of that category" — this is precisely the cause-and-fruit, defiled-and-clean reading of the four truths of suffering, origin, cessation, and path, and it draws the four truths, too, into the "four" square.

Numbering upward in this way all along, the wisdom-of-hearing gradually weaves a guiding net in hand: which dharmas belong to two, which to three, which to four — the aggregates-realms-sense-fields, the limbs of the path, the four truths, and the emptiness of the three natures each have their landing-place.

One Simile: The Provisionally-Established "Fire" That Turns a Wrong Resolute-Conviction

In the ascending-enumeration passage there is a vivid simile. The Ascending-Three says: 「又有三火……雖實非火，假立火名：一者父母，二者妻子，三者真實應供福田」 tr. "Further, there are three fires … though truly not fire, 'fire' is provisionally set up as their name: first, father-and-mother; second, wife-and-child; third, the true field-of-merit worthy of offerings". It turns out this is for the sake of converting those outsiders who "delight in serving fire" — they hold, with resolute conviction, that serving fire is purity. The Buddha does not hard-break their feeling of service, but instead turns "fire" to point at father-and-mother, wife-and-child, and the field-of-merit worthy of offerings: the "fire" that should truly be served is these three kinds of grace-field and merit-field. By provisionally setting up a "fire"-name, he turns round a wrong resolute-conviction. Reading to this point, the wisdom-of-hearing tastes the skillfulness of the Buddha's exposition of the Dharma — not hard-breaking, but skillfully turning.

Carrying Forward

What the ascending-enumeration gate sets up is a single "net of the knowable" for the wisdom-of-hearing: from two up to ten, it takes the aggregates-realms-sense-fields, the limbs of the path, the four truths, and the emptiness of the three natures that the Buddha expounds, and by number weaves them into a graspable set of guiding threads. Some eyes of the net the treatise itself marks as broadly explained elsewhere — the four foods will be 「攝事分中當廣分別」 tr. "broadly analyzed in the Section on the Gathering of Matters," and the nine-aspect abiding of mind and the selecting-and-discerning of the various dharmas by six matters will be 「如聲聞地當廣分別」 tr. "broadly analyzed as in the Śrāvaka Stage": here the wisdom-of-hearing weaves the net and marks the eyes, and the wisdom-of-cultivation, following the marked eyes, broadens its practice. The later treatises of the matching-of-dharmas (the Abhidharma-samuccaya, the Abhidharma-samuccaya-vyākhyā) carry forward this very body of ascending-enumeration gathering-of-dharmas; the various treatises of Consciousness-Only, for their part, carry forward the deep teaching of the three natures and of emptiness at which the Ascending-Two points.

Teaching arc: the net of ascending enumeration, from the fetters-of-five up to ten, grows denser all the way, and at last closes off with the single sentence "all are subsumed under the Site of the Inner Science." This unit is meant to let you see: the two aggregations of the defiled and the pure in ascending-to-five, and the five kinds of parinirvāṇa; the great function of the element of consciousness in ascending-to-six; the three wisdoms standing at the head of the long-abiding of the right Dharma in ascending-to-seven; the liberations-by-resolve reaching over to the Stage of Meditative Equipoise in ascending-to-eight — until, at ascending-to-ten, the Inner Science is complete, and everything the Buddha sets forth lies within this net. All that is expounded is the treatise's own and the ancient masters' own explanations; not one meaning is added.

Tying the Net to Its Peak: From Five to Ten, the Inner Science Closes Off Here

The previous unit (ascending-to-two through ascending-to-four) has already tied more than half the net of the Abhidharma. This unit then continues upward: ascending to five, six, seven, eight, nine, and ten — and when the count reaches ten, at the point where the mesh of the net is densest, the treatise closes off with a single sentence: 「如是已說十種佛教所應知處……當知皆是內明處攝」 tr. "Thus have been stated the ten kinds of things-to-be-known-in-the-Buddha's-teaching … one should know that all are subsumed under the Site of the Inner Science" 〔this treatise〕.

This closing-off is weighty. It answers back to that judgment of higher-and-lower given earlier in the "first three marks of the Inner Science": that among the five sciences the Inner Science 「為最為勝，由四清淨」 tr. "is the most and the highest, by reason of the four purities" 〔the Section on Ascertainment〕. Why is it the highest? One has only to look at this net to understand — everything the Buddha sets forth, from the five aggregates to nirvāṇa, from the worldly to the world-transcending, can all be gathered, by the numbers from two to ten, into this one Site, the "Inner Science." The other four sciences — medicine, grammar, logic, and craft — each governs a single corner; only the Inner Science gathers up, exhaustively, every meaning of the defiled and the pure.

The Eye of Ascending-to-Five: The Two Aggregations of the Defiled and the Pure, the Five Fetters, the Five Kinds of Parinirvāṇa

Ascending-to-five is deep from the moment it opens its gate: the five "aggregations of formations trailed after by the coarse-and-heavy of the class of craving-desire and subsumed under the defilement of continued flowing-turning" — the support-and-object (form), the receiving-and-experiencing (feeling), the discriminating-and-grasping-of-marks (perception), the exerting-of-a-function (formations), and the discerning (consciousness) — are precisely the five aggregates; and that which is "the opposite of these" is precisely the five aggregates that are apart-from-desire, of cessation-and-return, and subsumed under the pure. One and the same five aggregates: as they are trailed after by the coarse-and-heavy of craving-desire they flow-and-turn, and as they are apart from craving-desire they cease-and-return; the pivot of flowing-turning and of cessation-and-return lies just here, between the defiled and the pure of this single aggregation.

Further down, the five fetters of the lower portion (the view of a real self, the grasping of precepts-and-prohibitions, doubt, craving-desire, anger) bind the desire-realm fast, and the five fetters of the upper portion bind the form and formless realms fast — and the treatise further makes a fine judgment: craving for form and craving for the formless are "fetters without distinction," while the restlessness, conceit, and ignorance (avidyā) of the higher meditative absorptions are "fetters with distinction". Further down again, the five kinds of parinirvāṇa (the intermediate-attainer, the birth-attainer, the effortless-attainer, the effortful-attainer, the upward-flowing-attainer) lay out the five differences of the time-period in which the non-returner realizes nirvāṇa. When the wisdom-of-hearing reads to this point, the coordinates of the five aggregates, the five fetters, the five kinds of parinirvāṇa — of the defiled and the pure, and of the noble stations — have all been set up.

The Eye of Ascending-to-Six: The Great Function of the Element of Consciousness

What most deserves a pause within ascending-to-six is the element of consciousness among the "six elements." The treatise says the six dharmas — the four great elements, the element of space, the element of consciousness — are that on which the material faculties accordingly rely, unobstructingly guiding-and-sustaining them; and the one dharma, the element of consciousness, 「能於現在積集任持福非福業，能引當來愛非愛果，亦能執持識所依止五種色根及所依處，令不爛壞」 tr. "is able, in the present, to accumulate-and-maintain the actions of merit and non-merit, is able to draw forth the loved and unloved fruit of the time-to-come, and is also able to appropriate the five kinds of material faculties on which consciousness relies, together with their supporting-locations, and make them not rot-and-decay" — accumulating-and-maintaining action, drawing-forth the fruit-to-come, appropriating the faculty-body and keeping it from ruin. What consciousness is as a great function, the treatise says here plainly: it is not merely discerning, but is the root that maintains action, draws forth fruit, and appropriates the body. When the wisdom-of-hearing keeps this one stroke in mind, then, later, when the wisdom-of-cultivation reaches through toward the deep meaning of mind-and-consciousness, it will have this buried thread ready.

Besides this, ascending-to-six has also the six unsurpassed counteractions (by the four immeasurables, the markless-mind concentration, and the forever-exhausting of self-conceit, to transcend the three places-hard-to-transcend of the desire-realm, the present-operation of aspects-of-formation, and the Summit-of-Existence), and the six recollections (the three practices of taking-refuge in the Three Jewels, and the three practices of heading-toward nirvāṇa, toward resources-and-wealth, and toward rebirth in the heavens) — each one an item that the wisdom-of-hearing ought to recognize.

The Eye of Ascending-to-Seven: The Seven Abodes of Consciousness, and the Three Wisdoms at the Head of the Long-Abiding of the Right Dharma

Ascending-to-seven has two places that most deserve looking at.

One is the seven abodes of consciousness — 「有七種有情受生處所，於彼受生有情諸識現前相續而住」 tr. "there are seven kinds of places-of-rebirth for sentient beings, in which the consciousnesses of the reborn sentient beings appear-before-them and abide in continuity". The treatise makes a fine judgment of the sameness and difference of their bodies and their perceptions: from the Brahmā world down the bodily forms are of differing classes; when the Brahmā world first receives rebirth, the Brahmā-multitude think "we were all born of the Great Brahmā" and the Brahmā-king thinks "all the Brahmā-multitude were born of me," and therefore their perception is without difference (various bodies, a single perception); from the second meditative absorption upward, because the bodily radiance illumines equally, they are a single kind of body, but among the multitude of the Radiant-Sound heaven those born earlier, "beholding the fierce flames of the Brahmā world burning-and-blazing," then have the differing perceptions of fright and no-fright (a single kind of body, various perceptions). On this point the ancient masters both cite the judgment of body-and-perception in the eighth [fascicle] of the Abhidharmakośa 〔Kuiji · Dunlun〕. Consciousness "abiding in continuity" in seven places is precisely the groundwork for probing, later, the continuity of mind-and-consciousness.

The other is the seven dharmas of the "long-abiding of the right Dharma": the treatise lists the wisdom attained through hearing, the wisdom attained through reflection, and the wisdom attained through cultivation as the first three — and this is exactly the position of this very stage (What is Attained through Hearing) itself: that the right Dharma long-abides and does not regress has its root in the three wisdoms; and the beginning of the three wisdoms is precisely the "hearing" established in this stage. When the Inner Science reaches this point, it is as though it points to itself and says: this one Site of mine is just where the lifeline of the long-abiding of the right Dharma is bound.

The Eye of Ascending-to-Eight: The Liberations-by-Resolve Reaching over to the Stage of Meditative Equipoise

Ascending-to-eight gathers the framework-bones of the path of cultivation most neatly: the eightfold noble path is divided into the three cultivations of precepts (right speech, action, livelihood), concentration (right mindfulness, concentration), and wisdom (right view, thought, vigor); the eight persons are precisely those practicing the four path-towards and abiding in the four fruits. What especially deserves looking at is the "eight liberations-by-resolve" — the treatise says they 「能引諸聖神通及最勝住」 tr. "can draw forth the various noble supernormal knowledges and the most-superior abiding," that the five liberations-by-resolve, cultivated well in sequence, 「能引想受滅等至最勝住」 tr. "can draw forth the most-superior abiding of the attainment of the cessation of perception-and-feeling," and that the after-means path of the first three liberations subsumes the "three dominant bases". These eight liberations-by-resolve, the three dominant bases, and the cessation of perception-and-feeling (the attainment of cessation) are precisely the eight liberations, the eight dominant bases, and the attainment of cessation that the Stage of Meditative Equipoise (Stage 06) broadly clarifies — the wisdom-of-hearing marks their names here, and the concentration-stage broadens their practice. The stage of hearing and the stage of cultivation are, on this one gate, joined tenon-to-mortise.

Ascending-to-Nine and Ascending-to-Ten: The Net Tied to Its Peak, Mostly Pointing to the Section on the Gathering of Matters

For ascending-to-nine (the nine fetters, the nine abodes of sentient beings) and ascending-to-ten (the ten totalities, the ten factors of the adept), the treatise speaks very sparingly: the nine fetters 「如攝事分當廣建立」 tr. "will be broadly established in the Section on the Gathering of Matters," and the liberations, dominant bases, and totalities 「如攝事分當廣分別」 tr. "will be broadly differentiated in the Section on the Gathering of Matters" — handing the broad explanation over to the later "Section on the Gathering of Matters." Only the ten factors of the adept the treatise itself points out plainly: they are precisely the "five aggregates of the adept" — precepts, concentration, wisdom, liberation, and the knowledge-and-vision of liberation, the fivefold virtue-and-merit that is perfected at the station of the adept. The net is tied up to ten and there it stops, and the last item falls upon the perfection of "the adept" — exactly the finest way for a "net of the knowable" to bring itself to a close.

Carrying Forward

Ascending-to-five through ascending-to-ten fill in, by the numbers, the net of the Abhidharma — the defiled-and-pure of the five aggregates, the fetters, the parinirvāṇas, the great function of the element of consciousness, the seven abodes of consciousness, the three wisdoms, the eight liberations-by-resolve, and the five aggregates of the adept — and close it off with "all are subsumed under the Site of the Inner Science," bearing witness to the Inner Science being the highest of the five sciences. Among the items in the net, the nine fetters, the liberations-dominant-bases-totalities, and the seven [ways of] settling disputes the treatise itself points to the "Section on the Gathering of Matters" for their broad explanation; the eight liberations-by-resolve and the three dominant bases the Stage of Meditative Equipoise broadly practices; and the seven abodes of consciousness the ancient masters cite the Abhidharmakośa to judge in detail. The wisdom-of-hearing having finished tying the net, the wisdom-of-reflection and the wisdom-of-cultivation, relying on this net, raise up contemplation and reach realization — and the "highness" of the Inner Science, at this point, comes to rest, word by word, upon solid ground.

Teaching arc: the science of reasoning is not the flaunting of one's tongue but the real capacity to "examine meaning-and-principle" — the treatise, at its very opening, adjudicates the true and the false in debate. The seven members of reasoning set forth, one by one, how one sets up a discourse in accordance with principle, debates, decides victory and defeat, and knows when to advance and when to withdraw; and its teaching aids are, throughout, the living examples the treatise itself supplies (inferring fire from smoke, seeing water in a mirage, the thirteen aspects of bending the word, the three examinings before a debate). All that is expounded is what the treatise itself has and what the ancient masters have explained; not one meaning is added.

The Science of Reasoning: Not Quarreling, but the Real Capacity to "Examine Meaning"

The third of the five sciences is the science of reasoning — which the treatise defines as "all the various matters that fall within the examining of meaning" 〔this treatise〕. Hearing the words "debate" and "dispute," one is apt to picture a quarrel; but the treatise, at its very opening, divides debate into the true and the false. Among the six kinds of essential nature of debate, discourse in accord with the right and instructive discourse are "true and real, able to draw out benefit-and-profit, and to be cultivated," while disputatious discourse and slanderous discourse are "untrue and unreal, able to draw out what is without profit, and to be kept far off," and plain discourse and esteemed discourse are judged according to the use to which they are put. One sees, then, that the true body of the science of reasoning is not the flaunting of argument, but discourse in accord with the right and instructive discourse — spoken "so as to cut off the doubt and confusion of sentient beings, so as to reach the deep sense of the phrases, and so as to make knowing-and-seeing utterly pure." The seven members of reasoning are just this capacity for "debate in accordance with principle," taken apart and taught one member at a time.

To Set Up a Debate: First There Is the "To Be Established," Then the "That Which Establishes"

The grounds of debate hold ten dharmas: the two kinds of meaning to be established (the intrinsic nature and the particular distinction) plus the eight factors that establish (the setting-up of the thesis, the arguing of the reason, the adducing of the example, the like class, the unlike class, direct perception, inference, and authoritative teaching). First there is "what is to be proved" — the thesis; then there is "what is brought to prove it" — the reason, the example, and the three means of knowing.

The treatise even sets up its own questions and answers to bring out this sequence: Why set up the thesis first? "In order first to display the meaning of the thesis that one holds dear." Why argue the reason next? "In order, by the definite principle of a presently-seen matter, to make the other take up the meaning of the thesis set up." Why adduce the example next? "In order to display the presently-seen matter on which the principle that establishes rests". One layer clasps the next — first make plain the claim, then give the reason, then give an example that can be commonly seen. The whole method of setting up a debate lies just here.

The Three Means of Knowing: What It Takes to "Really Know"

The backbone of "that which establishes" is the three means of knowing — direct perception, inference, and authoritative teaching. This is the epistemological heart of the science of reasoning, and the treatise teaches it with the utmost vividness.

Direct perception requires that it be "presently seen, not awaiting consideration, and not errant." The treatise does not simply state "what is not errant"; rather, in one breath, it adduces five examples of error to show it by contrast: taking a mirage or a deer's thirst for water (error of notion); one with a film-clouded, dizzy eye seeing many moon-images where there is one moon (error of number); taking a whirling fire for a single wheel of fire (error of shape); the kāmalā disease impairing the eye-faculty, so that one sees everything as yellow (error of color); and, clenching the fist and running, seeing the trees rushing in flood (error of function) — all of these are not direct perception; only a present seeing that does not fall into these errors counts as direct perception. Inference is "reckoning from an aspect," and the treatise's examples are each drawn from ordinary life: seeing a banner, one knows there is a chariot; seeing smoke, one knows there is fire; hearing a roaring, one knows it is a lion; hearing a bellowing, one knows it is the bull-king; seeing a distant thing that does not stir, with a bird perched upon it, one knows it to be a withered stump. Authoritative teaching is the verbal teaching of an all-knowing one, and must be complete in three characteristics: it does not contradict the sages' word, it is able to counteract defilement, and it does not contradict the characteristics of phenomena. Of these, "not contradicting the characteristics of phenomena" is the most exacting — to increase what is without a characteristic into having one (as clinging to a self, a sentient being, a life-holder, or clinging to the permanent and the annihilated), or to take "all formations are impermanent, all the contaminated is suffering, all phenomena are empty and without self" and falsely judge it as "a part permanent, a part impermanent," is called contradicting the characteristics of phenomena. Only when the three means of knowing are set up rightly can a debate stand firm and knock the other down.

Adornment, Defeat, Deliverance: The Character and Measure of the Debater

What is rare is that the science of reasoning speaks not only of "principle" but, more, of "the person" — the character and measure a debater ought to have.

The adornments of debate are five (being good at one's own and others' schools, fullness of expression, fearlessness, gravity, and worthiness of reverence), and to these are added twenty-seven praiseworthy merits: being revered by the assembly, one's word being surely believed and accepted, being without fear in the midst of a great assembly, eloquence being inexhaustible — and, above all, "well guarding one's own mind so that it is without anger, well according with another's mind so that it is without resentment, causing the mind of one's opponent in debate to give rise to pure faith". The treatise even uses a striking simile: as one adorns himself with jewels of maṇi, true pearl, and lapis lazuli, his majestic power blazing and his radiance shining forth everywhere, so does the good debater adorn those five adornments of debate with the twenty-seven merits, and thus too his radiance shines forth everywhere.

The defeats of debate are the reverse side — to lose, and where the loss lies. The treatise portrays it to the very bone: yielding the word (begging pardon and withdrawing with thirteen phrases of surrender); bending the word (when subdued, withdrawing on the pretext of some other matter, bringing in outside chatter to change the subject, displaying indignation, hatred, and arrogance, down to "hunching the shoulders and hanging the face" and "sinking into thought with the wording exhausted" — thirteen aspects in all; and the treatise further judges them finely: the first two are deceitful and deranging conduct, the middle seven are the setting in motion of wrong conduct, and the last four are the reckoning-conduct of being at the end of one's resources); and faults of the word (confusion, coarseness-and-fierceness, lack of articulation … the nine faults that defile speech). The many forms of losing composure that come over a person when his principle is exhausted and his words run dry are here shown with perfect clarity — and this is precisely the self-appearance that the practitioner ought to see through and to still.

Deepest in intent is the deliverance in debate: before opening one's mouth, one first decides, by three kinds of examining, "whether this mouth ought to be opened at all." Examining gain-and-loss — "could this discourse I set up be a harm to myself, a harm to others, or a harm to both? … could it fail to have pity on the world?" If one knows it can harm oneself, and even leave gods and men without meaning and without profit, then one exhorts oneself that one ought not to set up the discourse; only if it can draw out benefit-and-profit and gladness does one set up the right discourse. Examining the time and the assembly — is this assembly biased-and-clinging, or worthy-and-upright, and does it have skill or none? If it has only biased clinging, is not worthy and upright, and is not skilled, one does not set up the discourse. Examining the skilled and the unskilled — am I skilled in the seven members of reasoning, do I have the power to set up my own discourse and break down the other's, can I win free from the places of defeat? If not, one does not enter into debate. These three examinings raise the science of reasoning at a stroke from "flaunting argument" to "compassion and self-knowledge": the mouth that need not be opened is left shut, and only the mouth that ought to be opened is opened — this, precisely, is the mark of deliverance in the science of reasoning.

Carrying Forward

The seven members of reasoning (the essential nature, settings, grounds, adornments, defeats, deliverance, and things that greatly further debate) are the ancient form of Yogācāra reasoning. Later the bodhisattva Dignāga regathered the science of reasoning into "eight gates and two benefits" — that which establishes, that which refutes, the semblance of establishing, the semblance of refuting, direct perception, inference, the semblance of direct perception, and the semblance of inference (the eight gates); and awakening oneself and awakening others (the two benefits); Śaṅkarasvāmin's Introduction to Logic (translated by Xuanzang) transmitted this, and Kuiji's Commentary on the Introduction to Logic (the Great Commentary) became the root commentary of the science of reasoning in the Chinese transmission. The earlier and the later forms are recorded so as to mark their inheritance-and-change, without adjudicating which is the better. As it bears on the wisdom-born-of-hearing, the science of reasoning is a sharp instrument for "examining meaning"; and its right use returns, in the end, to discourse in accord with the right and instructive discourse — debate carried on in order to cut off doubt, to reach the deep meaning, and to bring a person to settling and to liberation.

Teaching arc: why should a treatise on the stages of yogic practice teach medicine, teach grammar, teach farming and trade and the crafts? If that question is not answered first, the three worldly sciences read as nothing but a string of names. The answer is not in this passage but in the Bodhisattva Stage — what the bodhisattva seeks when seeking the true Dharma has the five sciences within it entire. Followed out from that question, the four skills of medicine, the six modes of grammar, and the twelve loci of the crafts cease to be a miscellany and become the bodhisattva's three gateways into the whole of the world. All that is expounded is what the treatise itself has and what the ancient masters have explained; not one meaning is added.

Why a Yoga Treatise Teaches Medicine and the Crafts

Among the five sciences, the science of inner meaning and the science of reasoning are the household's own gates — no surprise there. What surprises is the latter three: medicine, grammar, and the crafts, which look to be worldly skills through and through. How do they get into the stages of the yoga practitioner?

The treatise does not answer here. The answer is kept for the Bodhisattva Stage · Chapter on the Power-Lineage: "When those bodhisattvas seek the true Dharma, what should they seek?" What they should seek, besides all the dharmas of the bodhisattva-canon, is precisely "the five sciences: first, the science of inner meaning; second, the science of reasoning; third, the science of grammar; fourth, the science of medicine; fifth, the science of the crafts" 〔this treatise〕. The five together are what the bodhisattva seeks in seeking the true Dharma — not a leftover for after the Dharma has been learned, but something the very act of seeking the Dharma already contains.

That settles the direction. The three worldly sciences enter the treatise not for worldly fame or gain, and not for the sake of being widely accomplished, but for ripening sentient beings and for gathering in the cause of omniscience. Beings fall ill: you must know how to heal. Beings speak: you must understand how language works. Beings make their living: you must know what their livelihood actually is. Without entering these three gates, compassion stays a movement of one's own mind and never lands on another person. The Section on Ascertainment judges the inner science to be supreme among the five, and that too is a matter of proportion: the three worldly sciences are the branches that are subsumed, not the trunk — but if the branches do not grow, the tree shades no one.

The Science of Medicine: Four Skills That Are a Fourfold Truth

For medicine the treatise gives the barest outline — "know that this science has, in brief, four kinds": skill in the marks of illness, skill in the causes of illness, skill in cutting off an illness once it has arisen, and skill in the means whereby an illness once cut off does not arise again 〔this treatise〕. Dunlun, in his Notes on the Yogācārabhūmi, sets down only this: "As for the science of medicine, its wording is self-evident" — the listing of names is itself the explanation, and the ancients open no separate treatment.

But the order in which the four are laid out gives one a start on a second reading: first recognize the marks of the illness, then investigate its cause, then treat of how an illness already arisen is cut off, and last of how an illness once cut off does not arise again. Recognizing the illness, knowing its cause, curing it, preventing its return — this is the very frame of the four truths: suffering, its arising, its cessation, the path.

Nor does the treatise close the matter off. It adds at once: "The full and detailed sense of these four skills is as should be understood from the scriptures" 〔this treatise〕. The full sense is not in this treatise but in the scriptures — and in the scriptures the figure of medicine for the Dharma is everywhere: the Buddha is called the great king of physicians, and to speak of suffering is to speak of the disease, to speak of its arising is to speak of the cause, to speak of cessation is to speak of the cure, to speak of the path is to speak of the prescription. The reason medicine is a science a disciple of the Buddha ought to learn lies exactly here: its structure is one with the structure of the Buddha's own teaching. A physician who can see that layer holds, in the four skills in his hands, the four noble truths in his mind at the same time; the order in which he treats another's bodily illness is the order in which the Buddha treats the illness of the mind.

And just for that reason the treatise need not set out pharmacology and prescriptions here — those belong to the medical books of the world. What the treatise keeps is the bone of that fourfold sequence; the bone standing, the flesh grows according to each land.

Grammar: How Language Works, and the Five Virtues of One Who Speaks the Dharma

Grammar is the most detailed of the three. Kuiji, in his Concise Compendium, first adjudicates its structure: "first, concluding the foregoing and setting out the list; afterward, explaining each in turn" — the earlier passage concludes what precedes and sets out the six modes, the later explains them one by one. The six are: dharma, meaning, person, time, number, and locus-and-root-stock. The treatise binds them with a summary verse of its own, which shows that the six modes are meant to be committed to memory as a frame.

Establishing designation by dharma — the essence of grammar. The treatise says it is "the word-collection, the phrase-collection, and the syllable-collection, together with sound endowed with five virtues" 〔this treatise〕; and Kuiji points out that just this line "sets forth the essence of grammar." Word, phrase, syllable are the three levels of that which expresses: syllables make words, words make phrases, phrases make sense. The skeleton of language is no more than these three.

But the five virtues that follow immediately are the most intimate thing in this whole mode: "not being vulgar, being easy, being sonorous, being fitting, and being sound in meaning" 〔this treatise〕. These five are not rules of grammar; they are the character of speech — speech that is not coarse or debased, speech another can receive without strain, speech clear and strong in the delivery, speech fitted to the one it is addressed to, and speech whose freight of meaning is wholesome. Let one who expounds the Dharma be ever so accomplished in grammar: if these five are missing from the speech, the voice is still an unfinished instrument. Turned the other way about, the five virtues are also a measure a hearer may take up against himself — the words I let out today, on which virtue did they fall, and in which were they wanting?

Establishing designation by meaning — what language expresses, which the treatise gathers into ten classes: the establishment of the faculties is "the meaning of seeing, of hearing, of smelling, of tasting, of touching, and of knowing"; of the great elements, "the meaning of upholding-and-supporting and the rest, of moistening-and-soaking and the rest, of illuminating and the rest, and of stirring-and-shaking and the rest"; of action, "the meaning of coming-and-going and the rest, of proclaiming and the rest, and of thinking-and-examining and the rest"; and thereafter seeking is the meaning of pursuing and inquiring, what is not the Dharma is "the meaning of killing, stealing, and the rest," the Dharma is "the meaning of giving, keeping precepts, and the rest," flourishing is "the meaning of attaining, rejoicing, and the rest," decline is "the meaning of ruin, dread, sorrow, and the rest," enjoyment is "the meaning of food and drink, covering-and-sheltering, embracing-and-holding, receiving-and-practicing, and the rest," and guarding is "the meaning of guarding, nurturing-and-rearing, filling-to-fullness, and the rest" 〔this treatise〕.

Take the ten together and one thing becomes visible: the map of language is the map of the world of sentient beings. From what the six faculties meet, to what the four great elements compose, to what body, speech, and mind perform, to the mind's own pursuing, to the two roads of good and ill, to flourishing and decline, enjoyment and guarding — everything a person says, say what he will, does not fall outside these ten. Beyond the ten the treatise sets six further meanings to exhaust their variation — "intrinsic nature, and cause, fruit, function, association, and alteration" 〔this treatise〕 — which is to look again, within any one meaning, at its own substance, its cause, its fruit, its function, its companion, and its alteration. The first ten gather across the classes; the latter six run down through the aspects.

The remaining four modes are brief but not to be passed over. Designation by person is "the establishing of the distinctions in the marks of sound for male, female, and neither-male-nor-female; or again, the establishing of the distinctions in the marks of sound for the beginning person, the middling person, and the superior person" 〔this treatise〕 — language marks the standing and the grade of the one who speaks and the one spoken of. Designation by time distinguishes the marks of sound for past, future, and present. Designation by number distinguishes the singular, the dual, and the plural. And under designation by locus and root-stock, locus has five kinds — continuity, name-and-title, general summary, that which benefits, and proclamation — while "if it is a 'section-verse' and the like, it is called 'root-stock'" 〔this treatise〕: the root and the shoot from which language grows, the section-verses being just such a thing.

One caution. Grammar in its own right concerns the study of the Sanskrit language, whereas what this treatise sets out are the headings of the designation of the marks of sound as transmitted in the Chinese translation — not a reconstruction of Sanskrit grammar. The treatise gives a frame, not a grammar book; the reader should keep to that measure here.

The Crafts: Twelve Livelihoods, All Within the Bodhisattva's Field of View

The science of the crafts is the shortest and shows the largest breadth of mind. The treatise says: "It is the marvelous knowledge, stated in brief, of the crafts in twelve loci — this is named the science of the crafts" 〔this treatise〕. The twelve are the craft of farming, of trading, of serving the king, of writing-reckoning-measuring-numbering-and-sealing, of divination, of spells, of construction, of breeding-and-raising, of spinning-and-weaving, of blending, of cooking, and of music 〔this treatise〕.

The farmer, the merchant, the servant of the king, the one who writes and reckons and measures, the diviner, the reciter of spells, the builder, the breeder, the weaver, the compounder, the cook, the musician — a treatise on yogic stages enters the twelve livelihoods of the human world one by one, and calls the knowledge of them "marvelous knowledge."

That list blocks a misunderstanding easily formed: practice is not a matter of leaving human livelihoods behind to set up some other thing elsewhere. The sentient beings a bodhisattva is to ripen live inside these twelve; not knowing the twelve, one's teaching has nowhere to land. The treatise does not teach you how to plow or how to weave — each trade has its own transmission for that. What the treatise establishes is the single judgment that these all fall within what a bodhisattva ought to know. The judgment once made, the boundary is opened.

Seen together, the three sciences fall into a clear order: medicine heals the body, grammar opens the speech, the crafts secure the livelihood. Body at ease, speech open, livelihood standing — only then is there anything to say about turning the mind by the inner science. That the three worldly sciences are "the branches that are subsumed" means just this: the branch is not the trunk, and yet without the branch nothing is shaded.

Inheritance and Extension

Of the five sciences this passage lists only three; the full scope of their scriptural warrant, and the reason for it, is anchored in the Bodhisattva Stage · Chapter on the Power-Lineage — that the bodhisattva's seeking of the true Dharma is the seeking of the five sciences, a meaning established by this treatise itself and not added by later hands. Later students took the five sciences as the general frame of the bodhisattva's field of training; the gate of medicine opened out into Buddhist medical learning, the gate of grammar was taken up by the study of syllabaries and of sound-and-sense in the Chinese lands, and the gate of the crafts became the warrant for Buddhism's meeting with the skills of the world — all of them carried on and extended from the headings established in these three passages.

Yet the pivot remains a single sentence: the reason the three worldly sciences are to be learned by a disciple of the Buddha lies not in the sciences themselves but in the mind that seeks omniscience and ripens sentient beings. If the mind is not there, one may exhaust the five sciences and have only gained a set of accomplishments; if the mind is there, then to recognize one illness, to set one word right, to master one skill — each is the bodhisattva's own field of practice.