瑜伽師地論 義疏通講 · 冊13

Teaching arc: The Śrāvaka Stage lays out the whole course of practice in four yoga-stations, yet the first step is not to teach anyone "how to practice" — it first asks "who is the one who can succeed in practice, and on what does he succeed?" The point of the eye in the Stage of Lineage is a single phrase, "natural endowment" (fǎ'ěr): the capital for liberation is a single "naturally endowed" uncontaminated seed, possessed from the start, not something cultivated into being. Yet a seed alone is not enough — it must still meet with conditions. This gate, standing between these two poles of "possessed from the start" and "awaiting conditions," sees clear through the inner constitution and the destination of a practitioner.

At the Very Opening It Does Not Teach Sitting; It First Asks: Someone Ought to Be Liberated — Why, After Ten Thousand Eons of Flowing On, Is He Still Not Liberated?

At the opening of the Śrāvaka Stage, Maitreya does not first speak of counting the breath, nor first of the contemplation of impurity; he first sets up a question that sinks the heart: suppose a person possesses from the very start the nature of nirvāṇa — then by what cause and condition does he have "the dharma of nirvāṇa, and yet from the prior limit onward flow on for a long time and not attain final nirvāṇa"? Since the capital is already in his person, how can it be that a debt of measureless eons still stands unpaid?

To answer this question, one must first recognize what that "capital" is. The treatise says: the one who dwells in lineage has, in his person, "a seed-dharma, because it is present and existent," and, meeting an excellent condition, "then has the fitness and then has the power, toward his nirvāṇa able to attain and able to realize." This seed is not something cultivated into being. The treatise asks "with what is it constituted as its substance," and answers cleanly: "it adheres to the support, has such-and-such a character, and is subsumed under the six sense-fields. Come down transmitted onward from beginningless time, it is attained as a natural endowment". "Natural endowment" means innately possessed of itself, not produced by contrivance.

Master Tai, fearing that people would not grasp this "possessed from the start yet not to be seen," gave an excellent simile: 「如產女有能生子用，說有人種，然其女身中未曾有胎」 tr. "It is like a woman able to bear: you may say she 'has the seed of offspring,' yet in her body there has never been a fetus" 〔Dunlun〕 — a woman capable of childbearing, of whom you say she "has the seed of a descendant," yet at this moment there is no fetus in her womb. Lineage is precisely so: it is a fitness not yet cashed out; you cannot detect a ready-made thing, yet the capacity to realize nirvāṇa is truly there. Hence "having a seed" is spoken, and "natural endowment" too — for it is not attained by cultivation.

This answer, at a stroke, blocks off two forked roads: lineage is not forcibly manufactured by practice (else it would not be called a natural endowment), nor does it come uncaused and for nothing (it is a really-existent seed, transmitted onward from beginningless time). Possessed from the start, yet awaiting conditions — this is the very backbone of the whole Stage of Lineage.

Seed, Element, Nature: Three Names, One Seed — and Where It Lodges

The treatise says next that this "lineage" has three distinct names: 「或名種子，或名為界，或名為性」 tr. "it may be named seed, or named element, or named nature". The ancients marked out the fine distinctions of these three names: 「梵本云『馱都』（dhātu），此云界，是因義也」 tr. "the Sanskrit text reads dhātu, here rendered 'element,' which is the sense of cause" — to name it "element" is to take it as able to generate present activity, as cause; 「〔濕縛娑縛〕此云性，是體性義也」 tr. "〔svabhāva〕 here rendered 'nature,' which is the sense of intrinsic substance" 〔Dunlun; Kuiji in the same words〕 — to name it "nature" is to take it as the intrinsic substance of a person. Though the names are three, the matter is one.

And this one seed — where does it lodge? The treatise's answer is full of import: it "falls within a single continuum," not many continuums. Why? Because it is not like the ten form-dharmas or the eight consciousnesses, each with its own distinct substance, each flowing on of itself; it "does not have a character distinct and other upon the six sense-fields," but only "precisely within such a kind and phase makes the six sense-fields excellent". Master Jing brings this out plainly: is lineage spread across the eighteen elements, or does it fall within a single station? The answer — 「唯墮賴耶意界一相續中」 tr. "it falls solely within the single continuum of the store consciousness, the mental element" 〔Dunlun〕. At the very opening, the first gate of the Śrāvaka Stage, the skeleton of Consciousness-Only has already shown itself: the seed of liberation is lodged within the eighth store consciousness, and is transmitted along with a single bodily continuum. (And it is precisely here that the ancients left a divergence they did not adjudicate: whether the innately-possessed seed is really existent — Jing and Tai, following the Great Vehicle, allow it; Nanda and others "do not allow the innate seed" 〔Dunlun〕. The Notes only records the difference and does not sever the right and wrong of it; here too it is merely transmitted.)

The Seed Will Grow: Fine and Coarse, Nature-Seed and Cultivation-Seed

Lineage has a distinction of "fine and coarse." The treatise says: the seed, "not yet able to yield a fruit, not yet cultivated into a fruit, is therefore named fine"; once "it has already yielded a fruit and already been cultivated into a fruit," then, whether as seed or as fruit, it is named coarse. Master Jing then renders this "growing-up" as the names of two phases: while not yet increased it "is named only the nature-seed lineage," and "afterward, by the increase borrowed from conditions, once it has yielded a fruit … it is then named the cultivation-seed"; and in a single line he points out the division of labor between this gate and the gate below — 「今種姓地意明性種，後趣入地方明習種」 tr. "the present Stage of Lineage means to clarify the nature-seed; the later Stage of Entry then clarifies the cultivation-seed" 〔Dunlun〕.

So what the Stage of Lineage speaks of is that capital still undischarged, latent (the nature-seed lineage); how the seed meets conditions and sprouts, growing into the practice of the path in present activity, is the business of the next gate, the Stage of Entry. This gate first speaks through the "possessed from the start"; the gate below then speaks of the "starting up."

A Seed Alone Is Not Enough: Four Causes and Conditions Bar the One Who Ought to Be Liberated at the Door

Returning to the question at the opening — having lineage, why still flow on? The treatise answers, 「四因緣故，不般涅槃」 tr. "by four causes and conditions, one does not attain final nirvāṇa": first, being born into an unfree state (born in a borderland, or among the Dasyus and Mlecchas, places where the fourfold assembly and the virtuous never reach, without so much as a chance to hear the Dharma); second, the fault of heedlessness (born in a good place, yet, wealthy and noble, indulging desires, seeing no danger, knowing no emergence); third, wrong understanding-and-practice (covered over by the evil views of outsiders, giving rise to the annihilationist views of "no giving" and "no existence hereafter"); fourth, the fault of being obstructed (having met a buddha and encountered a friend, yet by mischance dull and mute, or committing deeds of immediate retribution, or long giving rise to afflictions).

These four, from outer to inner, deepen layer by layer: first no opportunity at all; next, opportunity yet self-indulgence; next, having heard yet believing wrongly; last, a hard obstruction carried in one's own body-and-mind. However true the lineage, once pinched by these four barriers, then "though he has the dharma of final nirvāṇa, he does not attain final nirvāṇa." Only when he meets a buddha and hears the Dharma, gains the concordant admonition, and those four conditions are once removed, does he then "have his wholesome roots ripen, and gradually, and at last, attain final nirvāṇa." — The nature possessed from the start turns out to be this afraid that the conditions should be wrong.

Then What Is "the Right Condition"? Two Words Hold Up the Whole of Śrāvaka Practice

The treatise then asks it head-on: what after all is the "condition" for nirvāṇa, lacking which one does not attain nirvāṇa? The answer is only two kinds — 「一勝、二劣」 tr. "first, the excellent; second, the inferior".

The excellent condition is just two things: "the voice of another dominant in the true Dharma" (that sound of someone proclaiming the true Dharma to you) and "inward attention in accord with principle" (your own inward thinking in accord with principle). Well-speaking without, right reflection within — where these two poles connect, that is the excellent condition leading straight toward the path of seeing. Master Tai puts it through and through: 「聞思慧等名勝緣，自餘外緣皆是劣緣」 tr. "the wisdoms of hearing and reflection and the like are named the excellent condition; all the remaining outer conditions are the inferior condition" 〔Dunlun〕.

The inferior condition, on the other hand, is a whole staircase; the treatise lists twelve members in a row, from "self-perfection and other-perfection" at the start, to "relying upon meditative concentration" at the end. Do not slight the word "inferior" — this is no inferior product; it is the entire provisioning ground on which the excellent condition can arise. It is in fact a miniature blueprint of śrāvaka practice:

First there must be self-perfection (one's own conditions complete): gaining a human body well, being born in a noble place, having the faculties unimpaired, pure faith toward the excellent object, being free of the karmic obstructions — a human body, a good place, whole faculties, faith arisen, no grave offense. Then there must be other-perfection (the outer conditions complete): the buddhas appearing in the world, the speaking of the teaching of the true Dharma, the long endurance of the teaching, the teaching-abiding handed on, and being an object of another's compassion — a buddha, a teaching, the teaching still present, someone to hand it on, a donor to supply. With these ten laid down, the stage for practice is at last set up.

The work upon the stage, the treatise ranks rung by rung upward: the desire for wholesome dharmas (giving rise to the vow of going forth to practice) → right going-forth (receiving the full precepts) → the discipline of moral restraint (seeing even a minute offense as a great terror) → the discipline of the faculties (at the gates of the six faculties not grasping the mark, not grasping the features, holding fast and not leaking) → knowing the right measure in food (food only to support the body and uphold the practice of purity, not for arrogance and indulgence) → the yoga of wakefulness (not craving sleep in the first and last watches, lying on the right side dwelling in the conception of light) → dwelling with right knowing (walking, standing, sitting, lying, speaking, silence, all clearly known) → delighting in seclusion (casting off clinging to bedding, dwelling in the free and open āraṇya) → the purifying of the hindrances (purifying away the five hindrances of sensual desire, ill-will, dullness-and-drowsiness, restlessness-and-remorse, and doubt) → relying upon meditative concentration (keeping far from desire and entering the first absorption, down to the fourth absorption's purity of equanimity and mindfulness).

This whole road, "more and more excellent, more and more increasing, more and more advancing," cultivated to "a mind pure and white and bright, free of all flaw … abiding and unshaken," then, relying on the four noble truths and giving rise to attention in accord with principle and to right view, one "toward the four noble truths enters the true direct realization, is perfectly liberated, and attains final nirvāṇa in the realm of nirvāṇa without remaining basis". The treatise itself turns back to draw the conclusion: from right view to nirvāṇa without remaining basis is "the true cultivating-and-gathering of lineage"; from self-perfection to relying upon meditative concentration is the cultivating-and-gathering of "the inferior condition"; the voice of another in accord with the teaching of the four truths, and the attention in accord with principle, is the cultivating-and-gathering of "the excellent condition". — This one gate, the establishment of lineage, amounts to compressing the whole śrāvaka path, from taking birth and gaining a human body to entering final nirvāṇa, into a single condensed rehearsal beforehand.

Looking at It in Reverse: What the Person Without Lineage Looks Like — the Mirror of the Snail's Conch-Tone

When the treatise speaks of "the characteristics of one who dwells in lineage," it uses the method of setting-off-by-contrast: whatever is 「與一切無涅槃法補特伽羅諸相相違」 tr. "contrary to all the characteristics of the person who has no dharma of nirvāṇa" is the characteristic of one who dwells in lineage. So it simply paints six portraits of the person "without lineage," that you may recognize the one by reversing the other.

The first portrait weighs heaviest: that person's 「阿賴耶愛，遍一切種皆悉隨縛」 tr. "craving for the store consciousness tightly binds him throughout all kinds," is subordinate to the support, cannot be uprooted, is in the end firm and solid, and 「一切諸佛所不能救」 tr. "cannot be rescued by all the buddhas". Master Jing glosses: 「計賴耶為我，以愛我故、愛我眾具故」 tr. "he reckons the store consciousness as a self, and because of craving the self, and craving the requisites of the self," this craving binds throughout all kinds and further grows the remaining defilements; having neither a path of severance nor a seed as cause, "therefore the buddhas by their outer conditioning cannot rescue him" 〔Dunlun〕. — Again the store consciousness. The lodging of lineage is the store consciousness; the dead knot of no-lineage is likewise the craving for the store consciousness: a single thought grasping the store as a self bolts the door of rescue from within.

The most memorable is the fifth portrait — the false going-forth. The treatise says such a person, pressed by a king, a raging bandit, a creditor, terror, or the fear of not making a living, goes forth; and having gone forth, dwells in noisy commotion, gives rise to wrong vows, violates the moral discipline, 「內懷朽敗，外現真實，如水所生雜穢蝸牛，螺音狗行」 tr. "harbors rot and decay within, presents the true and real without — like the foul and filthy snail born in the water, uttering a conch-tone and coursing in the coursing of a dog". This simile all three ancients were loath to let go: Master Tai says 「佛法如水，破戒苾芻如水中眾雜穢蝸牛；又如狗好聲如螺，然有狗行——形相似實，實性惡行」 tr. "the Buddha's Dharma is like water; the precept-breaking bhikṣu is like the many foul and filthy snails in the water; and again like a dog fond of a sound resembling a conch, yet with the coursing of a dog — the form and appearance resemble the real, but the true nature is evil conduct" 〔Dunlun〕; Kuiji says 「破戒比丘如水上眾多雜穢〔之〕牛……又如狗高叫，似吹螺明，然有狗行」 tr. "the precept-breaking monk is like the many foul and filthy 'snails' on the water … and again like a dog barking loudly, resembling the clear blowing of a conch, yet with the coursing of a dog". The Dharma is clear water, and such a person stirs up filth and turbidity in it; a dog's bark feigns the solemnity of a conch-tone, but at the bone runs the coursing of a dog. The treatise cuts it clean in a phrase: this is called "going forth in mere semblance," merely "upholding the semblance of going-forth, falling within the number of the gone-forth" — draped in the semblance, listed among the ranks of the Saṅgha, but by his ground not one gone forth. The other four portraits (not wearying of birth-and-death; shamelessness and non-embarrassment of the highest grade; hearing the four truths yet unable to resolve or shed a tear; every wholesome deed done in mere longing after existences) are all different angles of one and the same mirror: what they reflect is a mind that does not give rise to a single thought of true desire for liberation.

The Same "Dwelling in Lineage," Yet Each Stands in a Different Position

The last gate divides again the person who "already dwells in lineage," giving the practitioner a chart to locate himself. First it divides by progress into three layers: only dwelling in lineage but not yet entered and not yet emerged; already entered but not yet emerged; already entered and already emerged (the one who has emerged being the one who "has already realized the noble path and the fruit of the noble path, and the detachment from the afflictions"). Then it cuts across into various distinctions: soft / middling / sharp faculties (the slowness or fierceness of the faculties toward the objective realm, the speed of penetrating the meaning of the dharmas), greed-coursing / hatred-coursing / delusion-coursing (whichever affliction is fierce and long-lasting), born into an unfree or a free state, with or without heedlessness, wrong practice, obstruction, far / near, not yet ripened / already ripened, not yet purified / already purified.

Of these, "far and near" shows most of compassion and most of warning: the treatise says "far" is of two — "farness in time" (must pass through many hundreds of thousands of births before meeting the excellent condition) and "farness in effort" (though dwelling in lineage, not yet entered, unable to give rise to an excellent effort); "near" is likewise of two — "nearness in time" (dwelling in the last body, by this very body to attain nirvāṇa) and "nearness in effort" (already entered, before long able to give rise to effort). The same naturally-endowed seed — one man is near, in his very last life; another is far, hundreds of thousands of births away; and the divide lies not in the presence or absence of the seed, but in meeting the condition and giving rise to practice.

At the gate's end, Maitreya draws the close warmly: precisely to deliver these who stand in different positions, "the buddhas, the world-honored ones, appear in the world" — causing those not yet entered to enter, those not yet ripened to ripen, those not yet purified to be purified, "turning the wheel of the true Dharma and setting up the points of training". The Stage of Lineage begins from the sinking question "having the seed yet not liberated," and closes with "the Buddha appears in the world to deliver them": the seed possessed from the start must, in the end, be watered by this living stream of the Buddha's Dharma.

Appended: On lineage there is the distinction of "fixed and unfixed" and the difference of the five vehicles — the sūtra has its own teaching. The Saṃdhinirmocana-sūtra makes clear that "all śrāvakas, pratyekabuddhas, and bodhisattvas share this one fine and pure path," while "there is only one vehicle" is a statement of hidden intent; within the realm of sentient beings it is not the case that there is no difference of dull, middling, and sharp-faculty lineage, and it further sets up separately the "śrāvaka wholly bound for quiescence" and the "śrāvaka who turns toward awakening". This scriptural teaching and the meaning of lineage in the present stage are as outer and inner face to one another; here it is merely transmitted as the sūtra's word, without further adjudication.

Carrying Forward

The Stage of Lineage sets up the "root" and the "awaiting" of the śrāvaka path: as for the root, the uncontaminated seed that is attained as a natural endowment and lodged in the single continuum of the store consciousness, the mental element; as for the awaiting, the excellent and inferior conditions, from self-perfection and other-perfection all the way to the four meditative absorptions. This gate clarifies the nature-seed, not yet set in motion; the condition being complete and the seed sprouting, turning toward the practice of the path, is what the Stage of Entry carries on (clarifying the cultivation-seed); the seed having entered, and, relying on the inferior and excellent conditions, cultivating the mundane and supramundane path and emerging, is what the Stage of Emergence carries on — and this gate's "twelve members of the inferior condition," the discipline of moral restraint, the discipline of the faculties, knowing the right measure in food, the yoga of wakefulness, and dwelling with right knowing, are all cultivated at length later in the Stage of Emergence (the ancients repeatedly note "in the twenty-third and twenty-fourth fascicles it will be explained at length" 〔Dunlun〕). In the Section on Ascertainment, the Śrāvaka Stage further ascertains the distinctions of lineage by "the various elements and natures"; and the Cheng Weishi Lun carries forward this gate's meaning of "the seed attained as a natural endowment," opening the two lineages of "the naturally-abiding" and "the accomplished-through-cultivation". A single naturally-endowed seed, once its establishment is here fixed, is that upon which the later entry, emergence, and even the ascertainment and the Consciousness-Only treatises all arise.

Teaching arc: The Lineage Stage left a suspense — the seed is naturally, inherently possessed, yet how does it "get set going"? — and the Entry Stage, at its very first breath, takes it up. The point of the eye is a single line from Dunlun: the Lineage Stage is the "lineage of nature," the Entry Stage is the "lineage of practice" — one and the same seed that exists by its very nature, only truly kindled upon meeting a Buddha and hearing the Dharma, and from there advancing turn by turn, ranged all the way up to the arhat. And most moving of all, the treatise uses "the insect in honey" to teach you how to recognize, from the inside, whether you yourself have "entered" or not.

That Seed, There from the Outset — What Makes It Turn from Latent into Setting Out on the Path?

The Lineage Stage left one suspense: the seed is possessed by its very nature — yet how does it "get set going"? The Entry Stage, opening its mouth, takes it straight up: "The person abiding in the lineage, in whom the seeds of nirvāṇa are constituted by their very nature. If, at that time, a Buddha has arisen in the world, and he is born in a central country and not born among the Daśyus or Mlecchas … for the first time he is able to see a Buddha and the Buddha's disciples, goes forth to attend upon them, hears the Dharma from them, and gains, for the first time, right faith, upholds the pure precepts, takes on much learning, increases his generosity, and softens his views".

Dunlun makes this junction exceedingly clear: the upper clause, "in whom the seeds of nirvāṇa are constituted by their very nature," is "a recalling of the preceding Lineage Stage — namely, the lineage of nature"; the lower clause, "a Buddha has arisen in the world … hears the Dharma from them," is only then "properly setting forth the substance of the Entry Stage — namely, the lineage of practice". What the Lineage Stage spoke of is the latent capital (the lineage of nature); what the Entry Stage speaks of is the moment when this capital, meeting its conditions, is kindled, and begins to grow into the practice of the path in actual operation (the lineage of practice). The conditions that kindle it are the coming-together of two outer matters and one inner matter: a Buddha's arising in the world, and the meeting with good friends (outer), plus one's own willingness to go forth and attend, to hear the Dharma and give rise to faith (inner).

And once it is kindled, it is not accomplished at a single stroke; it is "serving in turn as one another's supporting cause and lending one another force": this life's right faith, precepts, learning, generosity, and softened views bring about, in the coming life, the excellent faculties subsumed under the six sense-fields; and these excellent faculties in turn serve as the support for a still higher layer of faith, precepts, learning, and generosity. Thus, "in each later and later birth he advances turn by turn, until he obtains a body in his final existence". Once the seed is set going, it is like a rolling snowball, each later stage more excellent and more subtle than each earlier one.

"Way, Road, Right Course of Conduct" — Only by These Three Words Does One Deserve to Be Called "Having Entered"

The treatise asks itself: why is it named "having entered"? Its answer carries real weight: "If there is a way, if there is a road, if there is a right course of conduct that can attain nirvāṇa and proceed toward nirvāṇa; then this person, at that time, is able to ascend, able to enter, able to conduct himself rightly along it". Dunlun makes each of these three words solid: "'Way' means the path of the seven means; 'road' means the eight right roads of the factors of the path and the like; 'right course' is the contemplation of the four noble truths". — So entry is not the vague raising of some wholesome thought; it is truly setting foot on this road that the former sages have walked: the seven means, the eightfold right path, the contemplation of the four truths. Having set foot on it, able to ascend, to enter, to conduct oneself along it, advancing step by step toward the consummation — only then does it count as "entry."

From "Capacity" to Arhat: Six Positions, a Full Map of the Śrāvaka Path from First to Last

The treatise gathers all who enter into "six classes of person," and this is in fact a map of the śrāvaka path from beginning to end. Dunlun fixes each position in turn:

One, capacity — the person who abides in the lineage but has not yet entered (the capital is there, the fire not yet kindled); two, accomplished in the lower grade of wholesome roots — has gained the first right faith and the rest, has set out toward entry but has not yet passed through births in cultivation; three, accomplished in the middle grade of wholesome roots — has already cultivated through many births, but has not yet reached the body of the final existence; four, accomplished in the higher grade of wholesome roots — abides in the final body, has cultivated his way into the stage of the sage; five, the final means — has already obtained a body in the final existence, and, in order to exhaust all the contaminants, rightly cultivates the intensified practice, has already realized stream-entry, once-returning, and non-returning, but has not yet arrived at arhatship; six, arrived at the final consummation — the contaminants forever exhausted, the task done, the foremost coolness attained — this is the arhat.

The treatise's closing line lays bare the intent of these six positions: "By the right conduct cultivated by all the śrāvakas of the beginning, the middle, and the end, the six kinds of person are established" — a śrāvaka practitioner, no matter which square he stands upon, can find himself on this map, and can also see where the road ahead leads.

From the Seed Being Set Going to Realizing the Fruit — How Long? Even the Fastest Takes Three Births

So, from entry to final nirvāṇa, how long does it take? The treatise says there is "no fixed measure," with differences of long, not-long, and utmost-speed according to the conditions met; and even the "utmost speed" one must still "pass through three births". Dunlun matches these three births to the methods of cultivation, and it makes for an exceedingly concrete timetable: in the first birth, one gives rise to the aspiration and cultivates the "wholesome roots of the portion conducive to liberation — the five settling contemplations of the mind, and the general and particular foundations of mindfulness"; in the second birth, one cultivates the foundations of mindfulness, proceeds to warmth and summit, and enters acceptance (accomplishment); in the third birth, from acceptance one gives rise to the supreme worldly dharma, enters the path of seeing, and so on up to the arhat. Even the sharpest of faculties must still take three births to walk the whole way; and if one dies midway, at the body of the first fruit, one must still undergo seven existences (seven rounds of birth-and-death) before attaining final nirvāṇa by the means. Once the seed is set going, the road must still be walked step by step.

How to Recognize, from the Inside, That You Have "Entered" — That Insect in the Honey

The most savorable thing in this chapter is that the treatise teaches you what "one who has entered" looks like — and it does not preach some grand principle; it speaks of an insect.

The treatise says: one who has truly entered, meeting a badly-proclaimed Dharma and Vinaya, even though others praise it through countless gateways as possessing excellent virtue, still cannot believe it in, cannot delight in it, and even if he goes forth for a while, he "very quickly casts it off and turns back" — his nature simply cannot abide there, "like an insect born in honey placed into strong vinegar; or like one who loves to enjoy fine sense-pleasures, placed into mire". Conversely, meeting a well-proclaimed Dharma and Vinaya, even if he hears but a small portion for a while, or even hears nothing at all, he is yet able to "very quickly believe, understand, and enter, delighting in cultivating it … entering to the very end, never turning back" — his nature is simply at ease there, "like an insect born in honey placed into the finest honey; or like one who loves to enjoy fine sense-pleasures, placed among excellent fine sense-pleasures".

The wonder of this figure lies in the two words "by nature": an insect born in honey, placed into thick vinegar, is wrong in every fiber; placed into fine honey, it is like a fish in water — this is not a matter of what it wants, but of how its "nature" simply is. The truth or falsity of entry, likewise, is not in how beautifully one talks, but in whether that mind of yours, the moment it meets the wholesome Dharma or the bad Dharma, "naturally abides" or "naturally cannot stay." The treatise itself makes the point plain: this abiding is "sustained by the force of the fine and wholesome causes of former lives" — it is a disposition formed after the seed was set going, and it cannot be faked.

The treatise then adds seven more marks, all of them different aspects of the appearance of the same one insect: hearing the virtues of the Buddha, Dharma, and Saṅgha, his "body bristles with hair on end, he weeps aloud with tears raining down"; his nature is of "fierce conscience and shame," giving rise to deep shame in the places of offense; in upholding, reciting, reflecting, and seeking the wholesome Dharma he "has deep desire and delight, fierce desire and delight"; in blameless wholesome undertakings he "gives rise to it firmly, over a long time, with resolve"; he is "thin in dust and grime, weak in affliction," and though afflictions arise they do not abide long, and he is without flattery, without deceit, able to subdue arrogance and the grasping at self; and he is able to "skillfully store and protect his mind," not belittling himself in regard to the vast things to be realized. Having set down these eight marks, the treatise closes with one line of measure: one who abides in the lower grade of wholesome roots and enters is called "having gaps, not yet well purified"; only one who abides in the higher grade of wholesome roots and enters is "without gaps, already able to be without interval, already well purified". Though it is the same "entry," the depth still divides into three grades.

The treatise leaves one warm and generous reminder at its end: these "auspicious marks of a great being" others may not be able to judge accurately — "only the Buddha, the World-Honored One, and the disciples who have arrived at the foremost final consummation, with well-purified and excellent, subtle knowledge and vision, directly see and directly realize" — who has truly entered, and to what depth, is in the end a matter for the Buddha's eye.

Carrying Forward

What the Entry Stage establishes is the "setting going" of the seed: the lineage-of-nature seed of the Lineage Stage, here, upon meeting a Buddha and hearing the Dharma, becomes the lineage of practice, and along the way and right course of the seven means, the eightfold path, and the four truths, advances turn by turn in each later and later birth. It arranges śrāvaka cultivation-and-realization into six positions (capacity → lower, middle, higher grades of wholesome roots → the final means → arrived at the final consummation), lays out the timetable of three births and seven existences, and, by the figure of "the insect born in honey," sets down the verifying mark of entry as "abiding by nature." Once the seed has entered, cultivating the mundane and supramundane paths in dependence on the two conditions, inferior and superior, in the quest for deliverance, is what the Deliverance Stage takes up; its means of "the four roots of penetration (warmth, summit, acceptance, supreme worldly dharma) → the path of seeing," and its first cultivation of "the five settling contemplations of the mind · the foundations of mindfulness," are later opened out at length in the Stage of Meditative Equipoise and the Deliverance Stage. One seed, there by its very nature: the Lineage Stage speaks of its "being," the Entry Stage speaks of its "moving," the Deliverance Stage speaks of its "completion" — the three joints of the śrāvaka path, set in sequence within the First Yoga-Station.

Teaching arc: the Stage of the Lineage spoke of the seed's "being," the Stage of Entry of its "stirring"; the Stage of Deliverance speaks of how it "comes to be" — there are two roads out of the three realms (the mundane path and the supramundane path), and to walk either one you must first lay in provisions. Of the fourteen gateways of provisions, the first to be formally expounded is "restraint by the precepts." The point of the eye is that chain at the treatise's close, the "chain of the precepts' fruit": only when the precepts are pure is non-remorse attained; only with non-remorse do gladness, pliancy, bliss, and concentration arise; only with concentration does one know-and-see as it really is, give rise to disenchantment, part from defilement, and reach liberation — the precepts are not the end-point of a binding, but the starting-point of concentration, wisdom, and liberation.

Two Roads Out of the Three Realms: One Climbs Rung by Rung, One Cuts Through at a Stroke

The Stage of Deliverance, at its opening, sets out two roads to freedom from desire; they look to stand side by side, yet in temperament they are utterly unlike.

The mundane path is "climbing layer upon layer, ever upward": one regards the lower ground (the desire-realm) as "coarse in aspect" and the higher ground (the first meditative absorption's joy-and-bliss born of seclusion) as "calm in aspect," and by dwelling much in this contemplation one thereupon becomes free of desire toward the desire-realm and enters the first meditative absorption; then one regards the first absorption as coarse and the second as calm … and so climbs all the way up to "being free of desire on up to the base of nothing-whatever, and entering the base of neither-perception-nor-non-perception". This is the road walked in common by the ordinary and the noble; it relies on "disgust for the lower, delight in the higher" to suppress the afflictions layer by layer — but it only suppresses, it does not cut off.

The supramundane path is "cutting through at a stroke": drawing near to good persons, with respect to the four noble truths "knowing suffering, knowing origination, knowing cessation, knowing the path as they really are," accomplishing the knowledge-and-vision of one still in training, gradually cultivating the noble path, and "throughout all the phenomena to be abandoned by seeing and by cultivation across the three realms, himself able to be freed from bondage and himself attaining liberation". The ancient masters pinpoint this "himself freed from bondage, himself liberated" very exactly: the very moment the uncontaminated knowledge cuts off the afflictions is the "uninterrupted path" 〔無間道 tr. the uninterrupted path〕; the very moment that, the cutting-off done, one attains the unconditioned and gives rise to a superior resolve is the "path of liberation" 〔解脫道 tr. the path of liberation〕 〔Dunlun; Kuiji〕. This road relies on the wisdom of the four truths to cut off truly, and is able forever to pass beyond the three realms.

Two roads, one suppressing and one cutting; and whichever one walks, one must first lay in "provisions" — and this leads out into the fourteen gateways.

The Fourteen Gateways of Provisions — Why Is "the Precepts" the First to Be Formally Expounded?

The provisions for the two paths list fourteen gateways: self-completeness, other-completeness, the aspiration for the wholesome Dharma, restraint by the precepts, restraint of the sense-faculties, knowing the measure in food, the yoga of wakefulness, dwelling with clear comprehension, good-friendship, hearing the true Dharma, reflecting on the true Dharma, being without obstruction, cultivating munificent giving, and the śramaṇa's adornment. The treatise itself explains: the first three gateways (self- and other-completeness, the aspiration for the wholesome Dharma) "have already been distinguished among the inferior conditions of the Stage of the Lineage," and so this fascicle formally begins its exposition from the fourth gateway, restraint by the precepts 〔Dunlun〕 — this gateway is in fact the extended cultivation of the single branch "restraint by the precepts" within that list of "inferior conditions" in the Stage of the Lineage.

And that restraint by the precepts stands first among the gateways of actual practice is no accident. Further on, the treatise will use a whole "chain of the precepts' fruit" to tell you: concentration and wisdom do not descend from the sky, but grow up out of the precepts.

"Restraint by the Precepts" Is Not Merely "Not Transgressing" — It Has Fivefold Weight

When the treatise expounds restraint by the precepts, it does not finish with the three words "do not transgress the precepts," but distinguishes a fivefold weight (the ancient masters open it as "the distinguishing-of-three, extended into six passages of text" 〔Dunlun〕):

First, dwelling in the full precepts — bodily and verbal action undamaged, without lack and without breach; second, being well able to guard the restraint of the individual liberation — guarding the individual-liberation precepts received by the seven assemblies (here spoken of only for the bhikṣu; the ancient masters gloss "because [the others] cannot enter the noble path" it is only in dependence on the bhikṣu 〔Dunlun; Kuiji agrees〕); third, fullness of comportment — even the paths of deportment, the tasks to be done (down to such small matters as using water, the tooth-stick, alms-begging, washing the feet), and the preparatory practice of the wholesome classes are all "conforming to the world, not transgressing the world; conforming to the Vinaya, not transgressing the Vinaya"; fourth, fullness of the domain of conduct — keeping far from five kinds of place-that-is-not-a-domain-of-conduct (the house of the crier, the house of the harlot, the house of the liquor-seller, the house of the king, the house of the caṇḍāla and kaṭhina); fifth, seeing great dread in the slightest fault ＋ receiving and training in the training-precepts — even a slight, remediable fault "not deliberately transgressed even were there a cause endangering life," and the more than two hundred and fifty training-precepts all vowed of oneself to be trained in.

The treatise further gathers this fivefold weight into "two rounds of three meanings": one round is "the characteristic of being without loss-and-ruin · the characteristic of intrinsic nature · the characteristic of the merit of the intrinsic nature," within which fullness of comportment-and-domain-of-conduct is "the augmentation upon others" (causing bystanders — the unbelieving to believe, the believing to increase), while seeing dread in the slightest fault and receiving-and-training-in the training-precepts are "the augmentation upon oneself" (oneself to be reborn in the good destinies, to attain what has not been attained). The fullness of the precepts, it turns out, faces one way toward others and one way toward oneself.

The Three Faces of the Precepts, and That Most Crucial Saying: The Precepts Are a Gate, Not a Wall

The treatise then opens up the "three natures of the precepts," and this is the doctrinal pivot of the gateway: first, the receiving-and-upholding nature (dwelling in the full precepts — being able to hold to them); second, the deliverance nature (being well able to guard the restraint of the individual liberation); third, the cultivating nature (fullness of comportment-and-domain-of-conduct, seeing dread in the slightest fault, receiving-and-training-in the training-precepts — being able to cultivate them finely).

Of the three, the single phrase "the deliverance nature of the precepts" carries the greatest weight, and the treatise states it with iron finality: "The pure precepts subsumed under the restraint of the individual liberation should be known to be named the higher discipline training; and it is in dependence on this higher discipline training that one cultivates the higher mind training and the higher wisdom training, and thereby is able to attain the exhaustion of all suffering and the ultimate deliverance; such deliverance takes the higher discipline as the site of support for what goes before". — This fixes the place of the precepts once and for all: the precepts are the first of the three higher trainings (discipline · concentration · wisdom), the site of support for what goes before for concentration and wisdom. In other words, upholding the precepts is not to pen a person within a wall, but to open a gate for concentration and wisdom; without this gate, concentration and wisdom have no way in. The four words "the deliverance nature of the precepts" say precisely this: the precepts are what makes deliverance passable.

How the Precepts Are Ruined: From Impure Motive to Becoming a "Sham Śramaṇa"

Having established the fullness of the precepts, the treatise at once throws into relief the ten ways the precepts are ruined (the ten causal conditions of loss), from shallow to deep, exceedingly cautionary: the initial evil receiving (being pressed by a king, a creditor, dread, or the fear of not staying alive to go forth — the motive impure from the start); being too extremely sunk-down (shameless and slack) and being too extremely floating-scattered (forcing others to follow oneself); negligence and indolence (transgressing and unwilling to make it pure in accord with the Dharma, craving sleep and reclining); giving rise to wrong vows (upholding the precepts only to be reborn in heaven, or for gain and reverence); loss of comportment; loss of pure livelihood — this one the treatise writes longest and finest: deceitfully displaying comportment, arrogantly seeking a name, wearing worn robes to dupe the donor, disparaging to their face what one has obtained in order to provoke more offerings … every appearance of wrong livelihood that "uses a small gain to fish for a large one" the treatise lays bare one by one; falling into the two extremes (one extreme addicted to the enjoyment of extreme pleasure, the other fond of the practice of self-mortification — relying on thorns, serving fire, mounting the water, standing on one foot and turning with the sun; the ancient masters enumerate ten kinds of self-mortification 〔Dunlun, and Tai adds a further meaning〕, and the treatise judges both extremes to be wrong); being unable to bring deliverance (the outsiders' grasping at precepts-and-restraints, pure though it be, is not named deliverance); ruin of what was received — and this last kind returns once more to that snail: "inwardly harboring rot while outwardly showing chastity and truth, like the snail born in pure water, giving off the conch's cry and going the dog's way, truly no śramaṇa yet calling himself a śramaṇa". Among the ten, the treatise especially points out that "being unable to bring deliverance" and "ruin of what was received" — these two — the World-Honored One separately calls "the hardship of śīla" 〔Dunlun〕: to be ruined to these two steps is no longer mere loss, but hard to save.

The Six Faces of the Precepts — the Treatise Uses Six Figures to Teach You to Recognize the Precepts

Having finished loss-and-completion, the treatise changes to a warmer manner of teaching: in various places the World-Honored One has given śīla six names, each name matched with a verse and matched with a figure, bringing the abstract "precepts" to life:

The precepts are named "the root" — "like the great earth, which establishes and sustains all herbs, plants, and thickets and forests, causing them to be produced and to grow": the precepts are like the great earth, and all merits mundane and supramundane grow up out of them. The precepts are named "the adornment" — the world's gold-and-silver rings and bracelets look well on the young and vigorous, ill on the old and failing; but this adornment, the precepts, "for every class and at every time, is marvelously beautiful in whoever wears it": the precepts pick out neither age nor season — whoever wears them is adorned. The precepts are named "the anointing fragrance" — "like the time of most extreme scorching heat, when by anointing with sandalwood and dragon-brain all the sultry steaming is dispelled": the precepts are like a cooling anointing-fragrance, able to dispel the bodily-and-mental burning-vexation "of which the breaking of the precepts is the cause." The precepts are named "the wafting fragrance" — "the manifold root-and-stalk fragrances … following the wind, drift and scatter throughout every quarter," able to waft downwind and upwind alike: the good name of one complete in the precepts travels far, down and upwind. Add "excellent conduct" (able to proceed toward marvelous bliss and marvelous heavens) and "restraint" (guarding, stilling-and-dispelling, keeping-far-away). Six names, six figures, all saying one and the same thing: the precepts are not a constraint, but the root that makes one cool, fragrant, adorned, and able to give rise to merit.

The Heart of the Whole Passage: When the Precepts Are Pure, Concentration, Wisdom, and Liberation Grow Up Segment by Segment

The doctrinal summit of the gateway is the "ten merits and excellences" at the treatise's close — and the first merit is that famous "chain of the precepts' fruit":

"On beholding of oneself that the precepts are pure one thereupon attains non-remorse; because of non-remorse, gladness; because of gladness there arises joy; because the mind is joyful the body attains pliancy; because the body is pliant one then receives excellent bliss; because of bliss the mind is concentrated; because the mind attains concentration one is able to know-and-see as it really is; because of really knowing-and-seeing one is then able to give rise to disenchantment; because of being able to give rise to disenchantment one then attains freedom from defilement; because of freedom from defilement one realizes liberation … on up to being one who, in the sphere of parinirvāṇa without remaining basis, will attain parinirvāṇa".

This one chain states through and through the inner dynamism of the whole path of liberation: the starting-point is not concentration, not wisdom, but the single thought of "non-remorse" that the purity of the precepts brings — only when the heart is clean, with nothing to regret, can one grow glad and settle at peace; at peace and glad, the mind can then hold concentrated; concentrated, one can then see truly (know-and-see as it really is); seeing truly, one can then be disenchanted, part from defilement, and be liberated. And so the precepts are no supporting player in practice, but the engine. The remaining nine merits (dying well at the end, a fair name heard afar, sleeping and waking at peace, protection by the gods, no fear of violence, protection even by enemies, non-humans not troubling one, gain without hardship, vows fulfilled on up to rebirth in heaven and the realization of nirvāṇa) all arise around this one root-chain. The treatise draws things to a close by citing the verse the World-Honored One spoke for Rāhula 〔羅怙羅 tr. Rāhula〕: "You, now, Rāhula! In bodily, verbal, and mental action, should contemplate rightly again and again, keeping in mind the noble teaching of the buddhas" — upholding the precepts brought down to solid ground is just this: to contemplate day after day one's own three actions of body, speech, and mind, drawing back from the black class and not doing it, joyfully cultivating much of the white class.

Carrying Forward

Restraint by the precepts establishes the "base" of the path of deliverance: the two paths out of the three realms, the mundane and the supramundane, both take the provisions as their heading-toward, and the first of the provisions is the higher discipline training. This gateway carries forward the precept-branch among the "inferior conditions" of the Stage of the Lineage and cultivates it at length, distinguishing the precepts' fivefold modes, the three natures of the precepts, the ten losses, and the six alternative names, and closes by using the "chain of the precepts' fruit" to display the precepts as the support of concentration, wisdom, and liberation. The precepts once established, the gateways of restraint of the sense-faculties, knowing the measure in food, the yoga of wakefulness, and dwelling with clear comprehension (from 13-01-04 onward) go on to complete the provisions, on up to the concentration of the Stage of Meditative Equipoise, the wisdom of the supramundane path, and the realization of the Stage of What is Attained through Cultivation. The one line "non-remorse in sequence draws on nirvāṇa" has already laid the first foundation-stone for the whole path of the śrāvaka's practice-and-realization.

Teaching-arc: the restraint of discipline guards body and speech; what this item guards is the "faculty-gates" and "food and drink" — the two places where a practitioner most daily, most easily, leaks. Its eye is the one incisive stroke of the treatise's "two kinds of restraint of the faculties": guarding the faculties is one thing, but "being able to press down the present activity" (the power of discernment, subduing enwrapment) and "being able to uproot the seed" (the power of cultivation, brushing away the latent proclivity) are two different matters — the former is only the subduing of the path of provisions, the latter the cutting-off of the stage of freedom from desire. Even in eating, the treatise would have you hold "the thought as of the flesh of one's child," eating a single meal as the medicine for continuing life and cultivating the path, and not as an appetite of the belly and mouth.

Discipline Guards Body and Speech; What This Item Guards Is That Single Thought at "the Eye's First Glance, the Ear's First Hearing"

What the restraint of discipline manages is the non-transgression of body and speech; but the gate through which affliction truly enters is the six faculties. And so what comes next is "restraint of the faculties" — the guarding of the faculty-gates.

The treatise says the point of entry for the restraint of the faculties is "not grasping at its mark, not grasping at the accompanying features". Take care: this is not to tell a person to shut his eyes and stop his ears and look at nothing — it is that, having looked, having listened, he does not, upon that "mark," give rise to greed and anger. The treatise divides it very finely: "grasping the mark" is eye-consciousness, when it takes form as object, grasping and holding that general mark; "grasping the accompanying features" is the "discriminating mental consciousness" that arises immediately after eye-consciousness, upon that mark giving rise to greed, to anger, to delusion. What truly goes wrong is that latter discriminating mental consciousness.

And so the treatise sets the crucial point at "guarding the mind with mindfulness." Dunlun expounds it most vividly: eye-consciousness has only just "spontaneously" (abruptly) met with an agreeable or disagreeable form, and forthwith the discriminating mental consciousness arises to "investigate and decide"; if one does not, here, guard this discriminating mental consciousness, the next step is to "enter the position of the defiled-or-pure mind and give rise to the various afflictions" — which is why it is said to be "about to arise" 〔Dunlun〕. — The pivot of guarding the faculties lies precisely in this single instant of "about to arise, not yet arisen": with right mindfulness one blocks at the gate that mind about to give rise to greed and anger, causing it to "course in the position of equanimity" (to abide in wholesome equanimity or indeterminate equanimity; Master Bei glosses: "when it is associated with wholesome or indeterminate equanimity, and there is mindful guarding, this is called the position of equanimity"). If one can guard this single thought, then form, sound, smell, taste, touch, and phenomena can be subdued.

The Blade of the Whole Passage: Being Able to Press Down Is Not the Same as Being Able to Uproot

When the restraint of the faculties comes to its condensed meaning, the treatise suddenly opens out a division — and this is the doctrinal summit of the whole item — the "two kinds of restraint of the faculties": first, that subsumed under the power of discernment; second, that subsumed under the power of cultivation.

Both "deeply see the peril in the object-field"; the difference lies in the latter half of the sentence: the power of discernment "is not able, toward all this peril, to dispel it and cut it off and annihilate it," the power of cultivation "is also able, toward all this peril, to dispel it and cut it off and annihilate it." The treatise puts it more penetratingly: the power of discernment can cause the "enwrapment" of affliction (the present activity) to arise and be present no more, but toward the "latent proclivity clinging to and adhering to its basis" (the seed lying dormant) it is not able to cut it off, not able to uproot it forever; the power of cultivation, on the other hand, is able even toward "all the latent proclivities clinging to and adhering to their basis to cut them off, to uproot them forever." Dunlun pins it in a single phrase: the mindfulness-and-wisdom associated with the wisdom-of-reflection is the "path of subduing," the mindfulness-and-wisdom associated with the wisdom-of-cultivation is the "path of cutting-off" — "the power of discernment subdues the enwrapment but does not stir up the latent proclivity; the power of cultivation subdues the present activity and further brushes away the latent proclivity". And the treatise judges their standing: the restraint of the faculties subsumed under the power of discernment "is subsumed under the path of provisions," the restraint of the faculties subsumed under the power of cultivation "falls within, and is subsumed under, the stage of freedom from desire."

This one stroke is cut most crucially: many people suppose that guarding the faculties until the "present activity does not arise" is already arriving home, but the treatise insists on reminding you — that is only "subduing"; the seed (the latent proclivity) is still there, and, meeting conditions, will surge up again. The true restraint of the faculties must walk on to the "stage of freedom from desire" and brush the latent proclivity out by the root — that alone is "cutting-off." The work of guarding the faculties, from the subduing of the path of provisions, must be cultivated all the way to the cutting-off of the stage of freedom from desire — and this lays a buried thread for the concentration (the Stage of Meditative Equipoise) and the wisdom (the supramundane path) that follow: what concentration and wisdom cut off is precisely this "latent proclivity."

Even Eating Is to Be Cultivated: Eating a Meal into Medicine, Not into Desire

Having finished guarding the faculty-gates, the treatise expounds the sixth item, "moderation in eating" — a practitioner must even eat "by rightly discerning". Why is a single meal treated so gravely? Because food and drink are most of all the entrance-point of the greed for desires.

The treatise first teaches you to "contemplate the three perils of material food," to break open, by illumination, the greed for food: the peril of enjoyment — however fine the food and drink, once in the mouth and chewed, once enwrapped in saliva, it "is like vomit"; rightly bearing in mind this filthy mark, one cannot even eat the still-unaltered delicacies; the peril of transformation — food enters the body and turns into blood, flesh, and feces, and moreover gives rise to the various illnesses (the treatise lists a long string of disease-names); the peril of seeking — for the sake of food, hoarding and toil, guarding and anxiety, quarrel among kin, kingly campaigns, being pressed into a king's service, down to committing evil and falling into the evil destinies — the treatise lists six kinds of suffering. Illuminated on these three sides, the "fine" mark of food and drink is broken.

Having broken the greed, the treatise gives the heart-method of rightly enjoying food, and two similes are the warmest. First is "eating material food with the thought as of the flesh of one's child" — this "thought of a child's flesh" is originally the Buddha's own simile for material food: a husband and wife, taking their only child, would cross a wilderness of steep and perilous ways; their provisions exhausted and starving to the utmost, holding back their grief and dripping tears they forced themselves to eat the flesh of their child, only in order to "gain the crossing of the wilderness," in no way craving the taste of that flesh 〔Saṃyukta-āgama 373〕; one is to eat material food just so — with not the least craving for its taste, only to continue life and pass the peril. One should think: this single mouthful is "in order to requite the donors' kindness" (the donors bestow it as though cutting their skin and drawing their blood), in order, in dependence on this temporarily-abiding body, to complete the holy life. Second is "one should go to the donor's house in accord with the simile of the moon" — Master Tai and Kuiji alike say that "the moon is able, cool and refreshing, to benefit people, and entering the donor's house makes them cool and benefited"; and Dunlun further cites the Nirvāṇa-sūtra: "as the moon in the sky, from the first day to the fifteenth, gradually waxes, so too is the good friend, who summons his students gradually to keep far from evil states and to increase wholesome states". A renunciant entering the donor's house should be like the clear moon, benefiting others and gradually increasing wholesome states — not going to beg for alms, to beg for reverence, to beg for much, for the fine, for the swift; the treatise breaks open even this petty, greedy calculation of the mind.

Thus the "for the sake of" and the "not for the sake of" of eating are divided cleanly: not for wanton play (the greed for desires and lascivious license), not for intoxicated indulgence (relying on freedom from illness, youthful vigor, and long life to go and contend in martial contests), not for adornment and beautification (bathing, anointing with perfume, adorning oneself); but rather the "six for-the-sake-ofs" — for the sake of dispelling hunger and thirst, for taking up the holy life, for cutting off the old feeling, for causing that a new feeling shall not arise afresh, for nourishing strength and ease to come, faultlessly and at ease. In a phrase: food is the medicine of cultivating the path (taking up the holy life), not the desire of belly and mouth. The treatise closes with "balanced eating / unbalanced eating": eating that is not-too-little, not-too-much, not-unfit, not-undigested, not-defiled — this alone is balanced eating; too little brings hunger and emaciation, too much brings heaviness, undigested becomes illness, defiled has sin; only the "balanced" is able to "dwell faultlessly and at ease" 〔Dunlun, judging by keeping-far-from-fault and taking-up-of-virtue〕.

Carrying Forward

What this item establishes is the provisions of "inner guarding": beyond the restraint of discipline that guards body and speech, the restraint of the faculties guards the six faculty-gates, and moderation in eating regulates enjoyment; the three together are the preliminaries of the path of freedom from desire. Its doctrinal eye, the "two kinds of restraint of the faculties" — the power of discernment subduing enwrapment (the path of provisions), the power of cultivation brushing away the latent proclivity (the stage of freedom from desire) — has already pointed out the direction for the cutting-off of delusion by the later concentration and wisdom: subduing the present activity is not the ultimate; only uprooting the latent proclivity forever is cutting-off. Moderation in eating takes "for the sake of taking up the holy life" as its aim, transmuting the desire of belly and mouth into the medicine for continuing life. The guarding of the faculties and the moderating of food being established, the items of the yoga of wakefulness (not craving sleep) and dwelling with right knowing (clearly aware in walking, standing, sitting, and lying) (13-01-05) go on to complete the provisions, down to the concentration of the Stage of Meditative Equipoise, the wisdom of the supramundane path, and the latent proclivities that are cut off.

Teaching arc: After guarding the faculties and moderating food, these two gates push "practice" into the two places that look least like practice — sleep and everyday deportment. The yoga of wakefulness says: even sleeping is practice — do not crave slumber through day and night, and purify away the five hindrances one by one; dwelling with right knowing says: going and returning, glancing and gazing, bending and stretching, wearing the robes, taking food, walking, standing, sitting, lying, speaking, keeping silent — down to taking a nap — there is not one of them that is not the training-ground of "right knowing." The point of the eye is the "back-turned mindfulness" of seated meditation — the mind turning its back on birth-and-death and facing toward nirvāṇa — and that "lion-king" of sleep — lying on the right side, the body without agitation, the mindfulness without lapse.

Even Sleeping Is Homework: A Day-and-Night Timetable of Practice

The yoga of wakefulness, taken literally, is "the corresponding practice of staying awake," but it is in fact a day-and-night timetable of practice: by day, walking meditation and seated meditation; in the first watch of the night, walking meditation and seated meditation; in the middle watch, lying on the right side; in the last watch, waking swiftly — from morning through the night, "without interval, in continuous succession" purifying and cultivating the mind. "Wakefulness" is not not-sleeping; it is "not craving slumber, lying down in season, sleeping with a mind free of defilement, and rising in season." At its close the treatise gathers this into "four kinds of right course of action": while awake, not forsaking the wholesome and being vigorously energetic; lying down in season and not out of season; sleeping with a mind free of defilement; and waking in season, rising not past the time. Practice is not only on the cushion — even how one sleeps this one night, and at what hour one rises, is counted.

What walking meditation and seated meditation are set to counteract is the "five hindrances" — sensual desire, ill will, sloth-and-torpor, restlessness-and-remorse, and doubt. The treatise divides this ingeniously: walking meditation chiefly counteracts sloth-and-torpor (while walking, one "abides in the perception of light," recollects the Buddha, the Dharma, the Saṅgha, discipline, generosity, and the gods, and by countless gates reproaches sloth-and-torpor — down to washing the face with cold water and gazing at the stars and moon); seated meditation chiefly counteracts the remaining four hindrances — removing sensual desire by the "contemplation of the impure" (the nine aspects: the bluish-discolored, the festering-and-rotting, down to the chained skeleton), removing ill will by "the mind conjoined with loving-kindness" pervading measureless worlds, removing restlessness by "settling the mind within and accomplishing single-directedness," and removing doubt by "attention in accord with principle."

This section on "removing doubt" is the deepest. The treatise says: do not go dwelling on "did I exist in the past or not? whence do I come in the present? whither do I go after death?" — that is unprincipled conceptual proliferation; rather, attend in accord with principle to past, future, and present, "seeing only that there are phenomena, seeing only that there are events; knowing the conditioned as conditioned, the unconditioned as unconditioned" — right within all phenomena, impermanent, suffering, empty, without self, knowing them as impermanent, suffering, empty, without self. The ancient masters split this "was I in some wise in the past" into two questions: one asks "what phenomenon was there in the past" (the substance of the phenomenon), the other asks "whence did this phenomenon come" (the cause of the phenomenon) 〔Dunlun〕. The severing of the doubt-hindrance is severed upon this one contemplation of "seeing only that there are phenomena (without self)" — and this is already the wisdom of no-self that tends toward the path of seeing.

Mindfulness Must "Turn Its Back on Birth-and-Death": That One "Back-Turned Mindfulness" of Seated Meditation

The posture of seated meditation, the treatise says, is "sitting cross-legged, holding the body erect and the aspiration upright, abiding in back-turned mindfulness." The first three are easy to understand; the two words "back-turned mindfulness" are the most crucial. The ancient masters point this out superbly: "abiding in back-turned mindfulness — the mind attaining nirvāṇa, mindfulness seeking to transcend the world, turning its back on birth-and-death: therefore it is called back-turned mindfulness"; and they cite the "abiding in face-to-face mindfulness" of the Vajracchedikā-prajñāpāramitā to bring out the sense — "this face-to-face mindfulness is precisely turning the back on birth-and-death and being mindful, delighting in nirvāṇa" 〔Dunlun; Kuiji〕. So the one thought guarded in sitting is not a vague pressing-down of the mind, but a thought that has a direction: back turned toward birth-and-death, face toward nirvāṇa. That the sitting-posture is erect and upright is so as not to be bound by sloth-and-torpor, not to be scattered by outer objects — the body upright is for the sake of the mindfulness being upright.

Even the Sleeping Posture Has Its Rule: That "Lion-King" Lying on the Right Side

Where it is most finely detailed is that the treatise teaches even "how to lie down." Why lie "on the right side"? The treatise answers: because it resembles "the manner in which the lion-king lies down". The lion-king among the hundred beasts is brave, fierce, firm, and strong, foremost of all; the monk who cultivates the yoga of wakefulness, rousing diligent energy, brave and fierce and firm and strong, is likewise foremost — hence the manner of lying is alike — unlike the slothful and slack manner of "a ghost lying face-down, a god lying face-up, one given to lusts lying on the left side" (so the ancient masters contrast 〔Dunlun〕). Lying on the right side like a lion, "the body is without agitation, the mindfulness without lapse, the sleep not overly heavy, and one sees no evil dreams"; the reverse possesses every fault.

When lying down one must still cultivate "four skillful means": abiding in the perception of light (bringing to mind the light of the gods, so that, though lying down, the mind is not dark and dull), right mindfulness (so that wholesome phenomena carry on continuously even in sleep and dream), right knowing (so that the moment an affliction arises in sleep one is aware and swiftly relinquishes it), and the perception of rising set in mind (keeping the thought "when it is time to rise, rise"). The treatise gathers this with a comparison: one should be "like a deer in the wild" — the wild deer, fearing harm from men, sleeps yet sleeps alertly; the practitioner too, when lying down, should be thus, not indulging the mind into sinking into a dark stupor 〔Dunlun〕. Even one bout of sleep the treatise would have you sleep with mindfulness, with awareness, with expectancy.

Every Deportment Is a Training-Ground: Dwelling with Right Knowing

The eighth gate, "dwelling with right knowing," extends practice from the cushion and the sleeping-mat to the whole of daily life. The treatise lists in one breath nine kinds of deportment: whether going or returning, whether looking or gazing, whether bending or stretching, bearing the outer robe (saṅghāṭī) and the robe and bowl, whether eating or drinking or chewing or tasting, whether walking or standing or sitting or lying, in the time of being awake, whether speaking or keeping silent, and when dispelling fatigue in sleep — for each and every one, one must "dwell with right knowing".

What is "right knowing"? The treatise gives one unified measure: for each matter one is able rightly to know well its "own character, what befits, the fitting time, and as befits". Take "going and returning," for instance: to know of oneself that I go and I return, to know whether one should or should not go, should or should not return, when to go and when to return, and with what deportment to go and return; and even "looking" is divided into two kinds — an inadvertent glance is called "looking" (the ancient masters call it the abrupt eye-consciousness), an intentional beholding is called "gazing" (the equally-flowing two consciousnesses) 〔Dunlun〕.

The treatise then brings this right knowing down to the highly concrete sequence of the alms-round: which households one should not approach (the butcher's, the tavern, the harlot's, the king's, the household of a despised clan, and any household that has thoroughly slandered) and which one may; "one should approach the donors' households after the likeness of the moon" — as the clear moon enters a person's house, causing the donor to gain the benefit of coolness, oneself being furnished with shame and abashment and not seeking gain and honor. The visible forms one sees along the road into the village are likewise divided into "what should be looked at" and "what should not be looked at": music and dancing and singing, and the beauty of a woman's form, should not be looked at (they can ruin the holy life); whereas the aged, the diseased, a corpse being devoured by birds and beasts, and the wailing of a house in mourning — this class "I should observe" — for observing these accords with the holy life and can make wholesome examination operative. Even the robes worn must not hang down like an elephant's trunk nor tilt up like a dragon's head (on which the ancient masters, in five houses, each give their gloss 〔Dunlun〕), and in receiving food one must not cover the broth with rice, nor gluttonously lick the bowl. That a practitioner is a practitioner turns out to lie right within this "right knowing" of each single movement.

At its close the treatise gathers the nine deportments into "the five undertakings in walking, the five undertakings in dwelling, and the four undertakings across walking-and-dwelling": the five in walking are the undertakings of body, eye, limbs, robe-and-bowl, and food-and-drink; the five in dwelling are the undertakings of body, speech, mind, day, and night; and the "four undertakings" running through them all are: guarding by right mindfulness, non-heedlessness, acting in accord with principle, and thereby being without fault in this life and the next, and, for the sake of gaining the not-yet-gained, amassing the equipment. Worth noting is the gate of "silence": when dwelling alone, one "settles the mind within — even settling, abiding, close settling, taming, quieting, thoroughly quieting, single-directedness, and holding-in-equipoise" (this is precisely the nine mental abidings of what follows), and one "cultivates the yoga-practice in insight" — dwelling with right knowing, at its utmost, is already the preliminary to serenity and insight.

Carrying Forward

These two gates establish the equipment of "walking, standing, sitting, and lying are all practice": the yoga of wakefulness inherits knowing-the-measure-in-food and thereby regulates sleep, and by counteracting the five hindrances inherits the restraint of the faculties and thereby purifies the mind; the "back-turned mindfulness" of seated meditation is mindfulness facing toward nirvāṇa, and the "seeing only that there are phenomena" of removing doubt has already disclosed the wisdom of no-self; while dwelling with right knowing pushes the guarding from within sitting out to every deportment, and its "silence" gate's nine mental abidings and insight are precisely the preliminaries to the concentration of the Stage of Meditative Equipoise and the insight of the world-transcending path. Guarding the faculties, moderating food, regulating sleep, and right knowing now being complete, the gates that follow — the character of a good friend, the true Dharma of hearing and reflection, freedom from obstruction, the cultivation of generosity, and the ornaments of the renunciant (13-01-06) — go on to furnish the rest of the equipment, and the practice of separation-from-desire along the two paths is thereupon complete.

Teaching arc: discipline, faculties, food, sleep, and clear comprehension have all now been laid out in a row; these last six gates round the provisions off to completeness — the good friend (a fine teacher), hearing the Dharma, reflecting on the Dharma, freedom from obstruction, giving, and the "adornments of the ascetic" (沙門莊嚴) into which all the foregoing virtues are gathered. The point of the eye is the "four principles" (四道理) of reflecting on the right Dharma: how must one think about the Buddha-dharma so that the thinking does not go astray? The treatise hands the yoga practitioner a measuring-rod for cognition — the principle of dependence, the principle of activity, the principle of establishment, and the principle of the nature of things. By the time the Stage of Deliverance has walked this far, a śrāvaka practitioner has already been so adorned with virtues that "his radiance shines everywhere."

Practice needs a fine teacher: the eight conditions of a good friend

As the path of deliverance walks into its closing stretch, the treatise first expounds "good friendship" (善友性) — what kind of person is fit to be your good spiritual friend. The treatise lists eight conditions: abiding in the restraint of the precepts, being possessed of much learning, being able to have something realized, being compassionate by nature, being of a mind that never wearies, being well able to endure, being without fear, and being complete in speech. Of these, the condition "being able to have something realized" (能有所證) is the thickest: he must have realized the perceptions of impermanence and the rest, the four meditative absorptions (四靜慮), the four formless [attainments] (四無色), the four immeasurables (四無量), the four fruits of the ascetic life (四沙門果), the five superknowledges (五神通) up to arhatship — and be able, moreover, to display for others the "three miracles" (三神變): the miracle of spiritual power, the miracle of declaration, and the miracle of instruction; the ancient masters match these three with the three wheels and three superknowledges: the wheel of spiritual power (the superknowledge of [magical] power over the body), the wheel of mind-reading (the superknowledge of others' minds), and the wheel of teaching the Dharma (the superknowledge of the exhaustion of the outflows) 〔Dunlun〕. And the condition "being well able to endure" (善能堪忍) shows character most of all: "reviled, he does not revile in return; angered against, he does not return anger; struck, he does not strike in return; mocked, he does not mock in return" 〔罵不報罵、瞋不報瞋、打不報打、弄不報弄〕, and though he meets with slight, insult, and abuse, "his fundamental nature undergoes no change or alteration whatever, and he only ever holds toward them the thought of their welfare and benefit" 〔本性都無變改，唯常於彼思為義利〕.

Possessed of these eight limbs, the good friend can then do five things for a person: he can well admonish and call to account (pointing out faults in accord with the Dharma — truthfully, at the right time, beneficially, gently, and out of a good friend's kindness, not out of hatred or envy); he can well cause to remember (reminding of what has been transgressed and of the meaning of the Dharma heard); he can well instruct (teaching tranquillity and insight, teaching few desires and contentment); he can well admonish-and-warn (reproving and disciplining in accord with the Dharma so as to bring under control); and he can well expound the right Dharma (first expounding giving, discipline, and birth in heaven, and afterward the four noble truths). A good spiritual friend is no casual acquaintance; he is one complete in virtue, realization, compassion, and eloquence together — and one, moreover, who is willing to admonish and willing to teach.

Hearing is the twelvefold teaching; the hard part is how to "think"

The tenth gate, "hearing the right Dharma" (聞正法), speaks of what is heard — the twelvefold teaching spoken by the Buddha and the Buddha's disciples (the sūtras, the geya, the vyākaraṇa, the gāthā, the udāna, the nidāna, the avadāna, the itivṛttaka, the jātaka, the vaipulya, the adbhuta-dharma, and the upadeśa), subsumed under the three baskets. Hearing is of two kinds: hearing its wording, and hearing its meaning.

What truly costs effort is the eleventh gate, "reflecting on the right Dharma" (思正法) — how, once it has been heard in, one must think so that the thinking does not go astray. The treatise first marks off six forbidden zones (the six matters not to be reflected upon): do not reflect and dispute over "a self," over sentient beings, over the world (why the receptacle-realm is arranged as it is), over the maturational fruit of sentient beings' karma, over the state of those who have entered concentration, and over the state of the buddhas — these six lie beyond the measure of an ordinary being's reckoning, and to force one's thinking upon them only vainly disturbs the mind. What one should think about is the "own-mark and common-mark" (自相、共相) of all phenomena, thought through by two methods: one is "the mode of enumeration" (算數行相) — counting the phenomena out one by one and clearly (as, which factors each of the five aggregates subsumes); the other is "the mode of weighing" (稱量行相) — and this draws out the doctrinal summit of the whole passage: the "four principles" (四道理).

The heart of the whole passage: how to "think" about the Buddha-dharma in accord with principle — the four principles

The treatise teaches you to weigh all phenomena with four measuring-rods:

The principle of dependence (觀待道理) — in everything, look at "what it depends upon": the arising of the aggregates must depend upon causes and conditions (dependence-in-arising); the designation of the aggregates must depend upon names, phrases, and syllables (dependence-in-designation). Not one phenomenon arises in isolation; each is by mutual dependence.

The principle of activity (作用道理) — look at "what function it can set up": the eye can see forms, the ear can hear sounds … the mind can cognize dharmas, each with its own distinct activity.

The principle of establishment (證成道理) — look at "on what ground it stands established": that all the aggregates are "impermanent, arisen from a concourse of conditions, suffering, empty, and without self" — this is no empty assertion; it must be proved and tested by the "three means of knowledge": the means of knowledge that is authoritative teaching (the words of the sages), direct perception (personal realization within concentration), and inference (reasoning, as when from arising-through-conditions one infers impermanence) 〔Dunlun〕. The ancient masters further draw a fine distinction whereby "the means of knowledge that is the utmost teaching" (至教量) surpasses the mere name "the words of the sages": "it is the teaching that is utmost; because the principle is utmost, whether inner or outer it is in every case called the utmost teaching" 〔即至極之教，以理至極，無問內外皆名至教〕 — where the principle has reached the utmost, one does not ask whether it be inner or outer, but counts it all as utmost teaching 〔Kuiji〕.

The principle of the nature of things (法爾道理) — pressed to the very end, some things are simply "so of themselves": why is fire warm, why is water wet, why are all phenomena without self, why is nirvāṇa quiescent? Answered down to the root, it is that "the fundamental nature is thus, the own-nature is thus, the nature of the dharma is thus" 〔本性應爾、自性應爾、法性應爾〕; press further and there is nothing more to ask — this "settles the mind and brings the mind to clarity" 〔令心安住、令心曉了〕.

These four principles are the full set of tools for the yoga practitioner's "reflecting in accord with principle": whenever he meets a phenomenon, he weighs it from four sides — what it depends upon, what function it sets up, on what ground it is established, and how ultimately it is so of its own nature. That reflective wisdom does not go astray lies wholly in this measuring-rod. (This is also precisely the outline that the later Stage of What is Attained through Reflection will open out at length.)

The three obstructions on the path — above all that "obstruction to tranquillity-and-insight"

The twelfth gate, "freedom from obstruction" (無障), throws obstruction into relief by reversal: obstruction that depends on the inner (not cultivating merit; sharp and severe greed, hatred, and delusion; much sickness from past karma; many affairs and much attachment), and obstruction that depends on the outer (relying on bad friends, dwelling in a bad place). The treatise then gathers these into three obstructions: the obstruction to preparatory effort (sickness and pain press upon the body, so that one lacks even the strength to apply oneself), the obstruction to seclusion (heavy eating, many affairs, love of talk, love of sleep, love of clamor, love of dwelling amid company, love of frivolous discourse — one who cannot let go of the bustle cannot settle into the quiet), and the obstruction to quiescence (寂靜障).

The third is the deepest. The treatise says that "quiescence" is tranquillity-and-insight, so the obstruction to quiescence is the twofold obstruction to tranquillity and to insight: the obstruction to śamatha (奢摩他障) is "heedlessness and abiding in the wrong place" (放逸及住非處) — through heedlessness, torpor and drowsiness enwrap the mind; or, having gained a little concentration, one relishes it and clings to a base, dim, and murky object; the obstruction to vipaśyanā (毘鉢舍那障) is "taking pleasure in self-exaltation, and distraction" (樂自恃舉及掉亂) — "I am born of a high clan, I am possessed of fine looks, I am of much learning and good in debate; the rest of the bhikṣus are not like this" 〔我生高族、我具妙色、我多聞善辯，諸餘比丘則不如是〕 — and, exalting himself thus, he is unwilling to inquire of the aged and much-knowing, and others too do not expound the profound sentences and meanings for him, so that the wisdom of insight can go no further in; or, the mind scattered and the faculties agitated, thinking ill and speaking ill, insight too cannot be brought to completion 〔Dunlun〕. The treatise's aim is exceedingly exact: what obstructs concentration is heedlessness, and what obstructs insight is self-conceit and distraction — the two things a practitioner should most guard against turn out to be just these.

Giving and adornment: the perfection of merit, and a whole body of virtue arrayed as ornament

The thirteenth gate, "cultivating the giving-up that is generosity" (修惠捨), is the provision of merit, and the treatise expounds giving fully by six questions: who can give (the giver, the donor); to whom one gives (four sorts of recipient: those who suffer, those who have shown kindness, those who are dear and loved, those who are honored and superior); with what one gives (things belonging to sentient beings, things not belonging to sentient beings — wealth, grain, dwellings); what the mark of giving is (the volition and the acts of body and speech that operate together with non-greed, and the relinquishing of the thing given); how one gives (with pure faith, with earnestness, with reverence, at the fitting time, without harm or vexation, and pure and free of regret); and why one gives (out of loving-kindness and compassion toward those who suffer, out of gratitude toward those who have shown kindness, out of love and respect toward those who are dear, and out of seeking the surpassing virtue toward those who are honored and superior). That giving be "without fault" lies wholly in all six of these sides being right.

At last the fourteenth gate, "the adornments of the ascetic" (沙門莊嚴), gathers all the foregoing virtues into a single body of adornment. The treatise lists the virtues of fourteen gates: right faith, freedom from flattery, few sicknesses, vigor, excellent wisdom, few desires, contentment, being easy to support, being easy to satisfy, the virtues of the dhūta, dignified bearing, knowing the measure, the manner of a worthy and good person, the marks of the wise and discerning, endurance, gentleness and harmony, and worthy goodness. Of these, the "virtues of the dhūta" (杜多功德) — the twelve or thirteen ascetic practices — the treatise expounds most movingly, and even fits to it a simile: "it is as when wool or fine cloth, before it has been beaten, before it has been fluffed, before it has been teased apart, before it has been split, is matted together, not soft and not light, and unfit to be worked with; but once it is beaten, fluffed, teased apart, and split, it becomes soft, light, and fine, and fit to be worked with" 〔譬如或毛或㲲，未鞭未彈未紛未擘時相著、不軟不輕，不堪造作；若鞭彈紛擘，則柔軟輕妙、堪任造作〕 — a person's greed for food, clothing, and bedding is just like unbeaten coarse wool, sticky and hard to use; the ascetic practices (ever begging food, keeping only the three robes, dwelling in the wilderness …) are just that stretch of beating and fluffing that scatters the greed apart and makes the mind "pure and upright, soft and pliant, and fit to cultivate the holy life." One by one the treatise fits out the three sorts of greed that the dhūta practices sever: begging food and one-sitting-eating sever greed for food; the three robes, felt robes, and cast-off-rag robes sever greed for clothing; and the wilderness, the foot of a tree, the charnel ground, and sitting upright sever greed for bedding.

At the gate's close, the treatise gathers up the whole Stage of Deliverance with one perfect simile: a person of the world, in the flush of vigor and comely and upright, bathed and anointed with fragrance, his body arrayed with necklaces of gold and silver, is exceedingly wondrous; "just so, the practitioner, adorning himself with the various virtues of the true ascetic as with wondrous ornaments of adornment, has his virtue blazing and his radiance shining everywhere" 〔如是行者，以正沙門種種功德妙莊嚴具而自莊嚴，其德熾然、威光遍照〕. — A single seed of the nature-of-things belonging to the Lineage Stage, cultivated all the way along through Entering and through Deliverance, has by this point been so adorned with discipline, concentration, wisdom, few desires, endurance, the dhūta, and every other virtue that its whole body gives off light. This is what it looks like for a śrāvaka practitioner to have his "provisions perfected."

Carrying Forward

These last six gates gather the provisions of the path of deliverance to completeness: the good friend as outer condition, hearing and reflecting on the right Dharma as the provision of wisdom (the four principles being the true contemplation of reflective wisdom), freedom from obstruction removing the twofold obstruction to tranquillity-and-insight, giving as the provision of merit, and the adornments of the ascetic gathering all the virtues into the adornment of a single body. The Stage of Deliverance (the mundane path, the supramundane path, and the fourteen gates of the provisions of the two paths) is by this point complete; the "existence" of the Lineage Stage, the "stirring" of the Entering Stage, and the "accomplishment" of the Deliverance Stage — these three joints being now set up, the First Yoga-Station is finished. Its "four principles and three means of knowledge" will be expounded at length later in the Stage of What is Attained through Reflection (Stage 11); its "twofold obstruction to tranquillity-and-insight" is precisely what the concentration of the Stage of Meditative Equipoise (Stage 6) is set to counteract; and next comes the Second Yoga-Station, which will further make clear the distinctions and the establishment of the person (補特伽羅, pudgala). A single seed of the nature-of-things has, by this point, become an ascetic whose radiance shines everywhere.

The teaching arc: the First Yoga-Station spoke, all the way through, of the "being" of the lineage, the "movement" of entering-in, and the "accomplishment" of departure — it spoke of the path. The Second Yoga-Station shifts to a different way of asking: the ones who walk this path — what kinds of "person" are they? At its opening it first sets out eighteen subjects, the very first of which is "the person" (pudgala, the human being, the one who repeatedly takes up the destinies). In a single breath the treatise lays out twenty-eight kinds of person, and then takes eleven measuring-rules to establish them. The point of the eye is that these twenty-eight persons are in fact a single "whole-course map of persons" for the śrāvaka's cultivation-and-realization; and each one's habitual disposition of affliction is precisely the target that the next passage, "the object," will set out to counteract — first make the person clear, and only then can the counteracting be aimed with precision.

A Different Way of Asking: The Ones Who Walk the Path — What Kind of Person?

The stage of departure has finished expounding a whole śrāvaka path. The moment the Second Yoga-Station opens its mouth, what it asks is not "how is the path cultivated?" but: "within the stage of departure shown before, how many classifications of persons can realize departure?" — turning the lens from "dharma" to "person." The treatise then lists the eighteen subjects this station will expound at length (the person, establishment, the object, instruction, training, the dharmas conducive to training, ruin, yoga, attention, the yoga practitioner, doing, cultivation, fruit, the alternate names, the one who takes up the destinies, cause, the deeds of Māra, the fruitless), gathering them together with a single uddāna, and then directly expounds the first two: the twenty-eight kinds of person, and the eleven measuring-rules that establish these persons.

The Twenty-Eight Persons Are, in Fact, a "Whole-Course Map"

Do not be frightened off by the number twenty-eight. Read it in its natural order and you will find that it is a single line — running from "the starting-point's innate stock" through to "the terminus's ultimate":

Look first at the innate stock: is a person of dull faculties or of sharp faculties (quick or slow in understanding)? Which kind of affliction is predominant in him — is craving, hatred, delusion, conceit, or discursive thought "predominant"? Or is he one of the "even-balance" in whom the five are all level, or one of the "thin dust-nature" whose afflictions are thin? These several kinds mark out the ground-stock each person brings with him before cultivating the path.

Look next at the advance: "coursing toward" and "abiding in a fruit" — coursing along the four coursings-toward (the coursing toward stream-entry, toward once-returning, toward non-returning, toward arhatship), abiding in the four fruits. The one who practices by following through faith and the one who practices by following the dharma are the two roads of persons before the path of seeing: one relies on a teacher and cultivates out of faith, the other relies on himself and cultivates by following the dharma; when they reach the touching-realization of a śramaṇa-fruit, the former changes its name to "convinced through faith," the latter to "arrived at seeing" — one takes its title from the faith-faculty, the other from the wisdom-faculty 〔Dunlun〕. The "body-witness," in turn, is the person who has borne witness to the eight liberations with the body, but who has not yet exhausted the outflows.

Look, finally, at the fine points of the finish, all of which branch out upon this one fruit, "non-returning." The stream-enterer has "at most seven returns of existence," going and coming among gods and humans at most seven times over and then exhausting suffering; the quicker "household-to-household" and "single interval" are persons in the stream-entry and once-returner stations who are nearing the next fruit. Arriving at non-returning, the treatise distinguishes five [modes of] parinirvāṇa: reaching parinirvāṇa in the interim, upon being born, without exertion, with exertion, and by flowing upward — divided out finely according to "where, with how much effort, and how far he goes before he realizes nirvāṇa." Last come the two paired contrasts of the arhat: regression and non-regression (liberated at times / of the unshakable dharma), and liberated by wisdom and liberated in both parts. In one passage of twenty-eight persons, the whole of the śrāvaka's persons — before and after the path of seeing, in the desire realm and the form realm, with remaining basis and without — is gathered in.

A Good Example to Teach With: The Three Sparks of Parinirvāṇa-in-the-Interim

Of the twenty-eight persons, the one with the most vivid image is "parinirvāṇa in the interim" — the non-returner who reaches parinirvāṇa while yet in the "intermediate existence" (the transitional body between this life and the next). Fearing that you will not grasp just how fleeting the "intermediate existence" is, the treatise strikes off three sparks in a row as similes:

The first kind reaches parinirvāṇa the moment the intermediate existence arises — 「如小札火，微星纔舉，即便謝滅」 tr. "like a tiny sliver of kindling-fire, whose faint spark has barely leapt up when it thereupon dies away." The second kind pauses a little, and reaches parinirvāṇa before it has rushed toward the next life — 「如鐵摶鋌，炎熾赫然，鎚鍛星流，未下便滅」 tr. "like a lump-ingot of red-hot iron, blazing and glowing crimson, from which, when it is struck with the hammer, sparks flow forth — the sparks die out before they have fallen." The third kind has already rushed toward the next life, yet reaches parinirvāṇa before it has joined to it — 「如彼熱鐵，椎鍛星流，下未至地，即便謝滅」 tr. "like that hot iron, from which, when it is beaten, sparks flow forth — the sparks fall, and, before they have reached the ground, they thereupon die away."

Three sparks, three degrees of speed — all of them speak of one and the same thing: this kind of person is so short-lived that he need not even join to the next term of life, but settles the matter of birth-and-death right there in the transitional body. (One must note this: these three spark-similes are struck by the treatise-text itself; the ancient masters Dunlun and Kuiji do not, here, restate the three similes. Dunlun separately cites the Saṃyukta-Abhidharma-hṛdaya's three kinds of parinirvāṇa-in-the-interim — "in the desire realm, not far off / at the halfway of the coursing / on the verge of reaching the form realm" — to gloss it: this is a different way of dividing, recorded alongside, not mixed in.)

The Eleven Measuring-Rules: How the Person Is "Established"

Merely listing twenty-eight persons is still not enough; the treatise asks again: on what ground do you divide persons in this way? The answer: by eleven "differentiating principles" — faculties, assembly, practice, vow, mode of coursing, path-and-fruit, preparatory effort, concentration, birth, regression-and-non-regression, obstruction. Each measuring-rule cuts out one group of persons: faculties cut out the two kinds, dull and sharp; assembly cuts out the seven congregations, bhikṣu and bhikṣuṇī down to the male and female who serve-in-proximity; practice cuts out the seven practitioners, craving-practitioner, hatred-practitioner, and so on … all the way to "obstruction," which cuts out the liberated-by-wisdom (liberated only from the affliction-obstruction) and the liberated-in-both-parts (liberated from the concentration-obstruction as well). The Tripiṭaka-master Xuanzang saw through it clearly, saying that these eleven in fact "do not exceed nine" — because the differentiation of assembly can be folded into the differentiation of practice, and the mode of coursing can be folded into path-and-fruit; they are just repetitions 〔Dunlun〕.

Among these eleven measuring-rules there is one that is especially weighty: the differentiation of vow. The treatise says that the "vow" a person makes can be shifted and can be cast off — even if a person of the śrāvaka lineage should for a time make a pratyekabuddha vow or a Great-Vehicle vow, he will later "determinedly still cast off that vow" and in the end return to the śrāvaka vow; but his "lineage" is determinedly unable to be shifted, unable to be cast off. The vow can change; the lineage cannot — this connects right back to what the Stage of Lineage taught, "the natural lineage is inherently present": the seed is a ground-color that cannot be altered. And so at the close of this passage there is a special declaration: within the Śrāvaka Stage, only the person of "the śrāvaka-vehicle vow and the śrāvaka lineage" is taken up to be spoken of.

Why Speak of the "Person" First: The Counteracting Must Have a Target

As for that passage on "the differentiation of practice," the treatise expends great effort in delineating the "marks" of the five practitioners — the craving-practitioner, whose faculties are glad-and-cheerful, who smiles and speaks first, and is deeply attached to the goods of livelihood; the hatred-practitioner, whose faculties are withered-and-dry, whose brow and face are knitted-and-frowning, given to much hatred and much envy; the delusion-practitioner, whose faculties are dim-and-dull, whose mindfulness much forgets-and-loses, who uses his hands in place of speech; the conceit-practitioner, who exalts himself and slights others, delighting in gains-and-support; the discursive-thought-practitioner, whose faculties are drifting-and-flighty, who is fond of idle proliferation. The ancient masters point out the eye of this passage: the one enwrapped in craving is a case where 「為境制伏心，非心能伏境」 tr. "the object subdues the mind, and it is not that the mind is able to subdue the object" — before counteracting, it is the object that leads the mind along, and not the mind that keeps the object in hand 〔Dunlun · Kuiji〕.

To know the ground-stock of a person's afflictions this finely has its purpose: the "five mind-stilling contemplations" of the next passage, "the object" — the impure as the counter to craving, loving-kindness-and-pity as the counter to hatred, the contemplation of natures and of dependent origination as the counter to delusion, the differentiation of elements as the counter to conceit, mindfulness of the in-and-out breath (ānāpāna) as the counter to discursive thought — are precisely a medicine mixed, dose by dose, against these five practitioners. First sort out the patients clearly, and only then can the medicine be prescribed rightly. This is the very sequence by which the Second Yoga-Station sets up the "person" first and speaks of "the object" afterward.

A single śrāvaka path, grown up from the natural seed of the Stage of Lineage, has by this point grown into twenty-eight "persons," each with a name and a mark; and once the persons are made clear, the text below will go on to fit them out with the objects that counteract.

Carrying Forward

This "map of persons" of the Second Yoga-Station is the pivot that carries forward from the First Yoga-Station and opens onward to the counteracting. Carrying forward: the opening question — "within the stage of departure shown before, how many classifications of persons can realize departure" — gathers precisely the practitioners accomplished by the Stage of Lineage ("being"), the Stage of Entering-In ("movement"), and the Stage of Departure ("accomplishment") into twenty-eight kinds of person, each with name and mark; and the differentiation-of-vow line, "the vow can be shifted, the lineage is determinedly unable to be shifted," directly inherits the Stage of Lineage's sense that "the natural lineage is inherently present and cannot be shifted" — which is why the Śrāvaka Stage takes up only the person of the śrāvaka-vehicle vow and the śrāvaka lineage (13-01-01, the Stage of Lineage). Opening onward: the ground-stock of the faculties-and-practice of the twenty-eight persons (the five practice-marks of predominant craving, hatred, delusion, conceit, and discursive thought) is precisely the occasion to be counteracted by the "object," the five mind-stilling contemplations of purifying practice in the next sub-unit — the impure as the counter to craving, loving-kindness-and-pity as the counter to hatred, the contemplation of natures and dependent origination as the counter to delusion, the differentiation of elements as the counter to conceit, mindfulness of the in-and-out breath as the counter to discursive thought (13-02-02); the person is established, and only thereafter is the counteracting aimed with precision. Those among them that touch upon the concentration-grounds of the form and formless realms — parinirvāṇa in the interim (the intermediate existence), flowing upward (to the Highest-of-Form Heaven / neither-perception-nor-non-perception), the body-witness and the liberated-in-both-parts (the eight liberations · the concentration-obstruction) — are to be cross-read with the Stage of Meditative Equipoise: the "concentration-obstruction" that the liberated-in-both-parts liberates himself from is exactly what that stage counteracts (Stage 06, the Stage of Meditative Equipoise). A single passage on the classifications of the person, carrying forward the one thread of the lineage above and opening the counteracting object below, is the opening move of the Second Yoga-Station's sequence of "first establish the person, then expound the dharma."

Teaching arc: the prior unit sized up the "person" — the twenty-eight kinds of person, the five modes of temperament. This unit compounds the medicine for them. The treatise first hands over a "for everyone" universal object (the four images of the pervasive object, which are in fact a single map of tranquillity-and-insight), and then hands over the "medicine matched to the sickness" of the five settling-of-mind contemplations: the impure to treat greed, loving-kindness to treat hatred, the object-nature and dependent origination to treat delusion, the differentiation of elements to treat conceit, and the counting of breaths to treat discursive thought. The two points of the eye: one is the four principles by which dependent origination must be "contemplated" if it is to be contemplated aright; the other is the sixteen excellent practices = the four foundations of mindfulness to which the counting of breaths comes at its end — this joins the śrāvaka's contemplative practice onto the thirty-seven factors of awakening in the following text.

First a Universal Object: The Pervasive Object Is in Fact a Map of Tranquillity-and-Insight

Before speaking of the five settling-of-mind contemplations, the treatise first sets up the "pervasive object" — pervasive meaning the object that, whichever contemplation one cultivates, is held in common and pervasively active. It has four items, and taken together they are precisely a single road from tranquillity-and-insight to the transformation of the basis:

The image endowed with discernment — after you have heard the Dharma and received the teaching, there arises in the mind an "image concordant with the object known" (not the actual present object, but that likeness-image which appears within the concentrated mind), and you take up vipaśyanā (insight) to contemplate it, to sort and select, to investigate it. This is the "insight class."

The image devoid of discernment — when you have contemplated enough, you take up and rest in that image-mark, no longer sorting and selecting, and use śamatha (tranquillity) alone to still the mind, causing the mind to abide by the nine modes of activity (inward abiding, even abiding, settled abiding, close abiding, taming, stilling, utmost stilling, one-directedness, and equipoise). This is the "tranquillity class" — that is, the nine abidings of the mind.

The limit of the object — you touch the very edge of both the "measure" and the "nature" of the object: the exhaustive-nature (all form does not exceed the aggregate of form; all dharmas do not exceed the elements and the sense-fields; all that is known does not exceed the four truths), and the such-as-it-is-nature (the true suchness that is the nature of the object-appearance, possessed of the principled character by way of the four principles).

The consummation of what is to be done — when tranquillity and insight have been cultivated to maturity and attention is perfected, one gains the "transformation of the basis," and coarse heaviness comes to rest; at this moment one "surpasses the image" and gives rise directly, toward the object known, to a non-conceptual direct-perceptual knowledge and vision — no longer seeing across an image, but directly and personally seeing by direct perception.

The ancient masters took the simile of "a thing coming out of the mouth of a jar": the concentrative object (that image) can generate the concentrated mind and, in continuous succession, enter concentration — just as water comes out of the mouth of a jar, just as food enters the belly by way of the mouth; and so this image is also called "the mouth of samādhi, the gate of samādhi" 〔Jing · Tai〕. The treatise also appends a passage of the Revata Sūtra — the elder Revata asks the Buddha, "How does a monk rest the mind upon the object?"; and of the four lines the Buddha answers, the first, "rest the mind upon a concordant object," leads straight into the five settling-of-mind contemplations below.

Medicine Matched to the Sickness: The Five Settling-of-Mind Contemplations

The three words "a concordant object" are the key to this whole passage: the medicine must match the sickness. The prior unit said that a person may be predominantly given to greed, or to hatred, or to delusion, or to conceit, or to discursive thought; this unit prescribes for each in turn 〔Dunlun〕—

The impure treats greed. The treatise lists six kinds of the impure (the rotting-and-foul / the suffering-and-distressing / the low-and-mean / the relative / the affliction-bound / the swiftly-perishing), and the one that carries the most weight is the "rotting-and-foul impure": inwardly, one contemplates the more-than-thirty impure things within this body of one's own — hair, body-hair, nail, tooth, skin, flesh, sinew, bone, heart, liver, spleen, kidney, pus, blood, dung, urine; outwardly, one goes to the "charnel road" (the cool grove, the corpse-depositing place) to contemplate the changes of a corpse — dead now one or two days on to seven days, devoured by crows and magpies, hungry dogs, kites and vultures, foxes and wolves (livid-blue, festering, bloated, devoured); then on to where, with skin, flesh, and blood gone, only the sinews bind it together (turned red); then on to the bones, the fettered-bones, the bone-chain; and at last where the hand-bones and foot-bones lie each scattered apart, "their color fresh and white as a conch-shell, or like the color of a dove" (scattered-and-destroyed). Taking up this corpse-mark, one turns it back upon one's own body — "of just this same nature, and unable to surpass just this dharma-nature." Greed is of five kinds (greed for the inner body, licentious greed for the outer body, for the object, for form, for the identity-view), and licentious greed is further divided into four — color, shape, fine touch, and being-waited-upon; the treatise matches each with its antidote corpse-mark. (The ancient masters note in passing that "turned red" is glossed differently by the Lesser Vehicle and the Great Vehicle, and point out that for the fourth of the licentious greeds, "greed for being-waited-upon," the treatise lists only the name and sets up no separate antidote 〔Dunlun〕 — these are recorded side by side, not adjudicated.) For the two words "charnel-road," the ancient masters also point out a double sense: it is both the desolate, unpeopled corpse-depositing place, and the stilling of nirvāṇa — to perform the contemplation of the impure is precisely the "road" that leads toward that stilling.

Loving-kindness treats hatred. Toward the three kinds of person — dear, hostile, and neutral — one rests equally in the mind that "wishes them to gain benefit," giving rise to the resolute conviction of a joyous concentrative ground of the lesser, middling, and superior grades (the bliss of the desire-realm is called "vast," the bliss of the first two absorptions "great," the bliss of the third absorption "measureless"). To wish to give bliss to one who is without suffering and without bliss is "loving-kindness"; to wish to draw out suffering from one who suffers, and to wish to rejoice at one who has bliss, are "compassion and sympathetic joy." When one of hateful temperament cultivates in this way, hatred grows thin.

The object-nature and dependent origination treat delusion — here is one of the doctrinal points of the eye of the whole passage. Delusion is to see cause-and-condition upside down; the antidote is to "contemplate dependent origination in accord with principle." But how must dependent origination be "thought" if it is not to go astray? The treatise gives a ruler — the four principles 〔Dunlun〕: The principle of dependence-and-attendance: the formations are what come to be only in dependence upon and attendance on ignorance (avidyā) (they arise attending on a condition, they do not spring up of themselves). The principle of activity: ignorance has only the one activity of "giving rise to the formations," and each limb has its own several activity; there is no superfluous agent behind them driving them on. The principle of establishing-proof: one proves by the three means of knowledge — the means of authoritative teaching (the dependent origination, the suffering and its origin, that the Buddha spoke), direct perception (the knowledge of suffering and impermanence personally seen within concentration), and inference (verifying by reasoning against a disputant). The principle of the very-way-things-are: whether a buddha appears or not, "ignorance conditions the formations" — its nature is thus of itself, the dharma-nature is just so, not by an agent, and not by an experiencer. One phrase draws it to a close: "There are only dharmas that draw forth dharmas; there is no agent and no experiencer." When one of deluded temperament reflects in this way, delusion grows thin. (These four principles Dunlun expounds through, line by line, in fascicle seven; but Kuiji here notes only the single line "the object-nature is the four conditions, dependent origination is the twelvefold causation," and does not unfold the four principles — this divergence is recorded side by side.)

The differentiation of elements treats conceit. One takes the body apart into six elements — earth, water, fire, wind, space, and consciousness — and each element has its inner and outer (the inner earth-element = the solid nature within the body, such as bone and tooth; the outer earth-element = tile, stone, mountain, cliff …). Conceit is rooted in taking this body, assembled out of the six elements, as "a single unified self" and exalting it; the contemplation of the differentiation of elements is precisely to "part from the mark of the single unified" — the body is nothing but the six elements provisionally combined; where is there a single seamless "self" to be conceited about? The ancient masters point out that this is precisely the meaning of the Prajñāpāramitā's "the Tathāgata speaks of a single unified mark" 〔Kuiji〕.

Mindfulness of breathing (the counting of breaths) treats discursive thought. One of discursive temperament, his thoughts drifting and scattering, uses the counting of the breath to gather the mind in. The treatise expounds it in the finest detail: the two causal conditions of the in-and-out breath, the two supports, the two courses, the two grounds, the four alternative names, the two faults (too slack breeds torpor, too tense injures body and mind), and then the five cultivations — counting (taking one as one, taking two as one, in forward order, in reverse order, and advancing-onward, counting until the mind abides spontaneously and, having passed the "ground of counting," need count no more), penetrating the aggregates (penetrating the five aggregates from breath and body-and-mind), penetrating dependent origination (tracing forward and back: breath ← body-and-mind ← the life-faculty ← prior formations ← ignorance), penetrating the noble truths (entering the direct realization of the four truths by way of impermanence, suffering, emptiness, and no-self), and at last the sixteen excellent practices. (The ancient masters note in passing that the Tibetan transmission divides it into the six gates of counting, following, resting, contemplating, returning, and purifying, while here five gates are set up — the merging and dividing differing — recorded side by side.)

The Counting of Breaths at Its End: The Sixteen Excellent Practices Are the Four Foundations of Mindfulness

The sixteen excellent practices are the further cultivation, after the path of seeing, for severing the remaining fetters, and so are called "excellent practices" (excelling the work before the path of seeing). Their marvel has, since ancient times, been consistently seen by matching them four-by-four to the "four foundations of mindfulness" 〔Dunlun · Kuiji〕:

• Contemplating the breath long, contemplating the breath short, being aware of the whole body, and stilling the bodily formation — these four are contemplation of the body; (of these, the line "stilling the bodily formation" reads "taking as object the state of emptiness of the out-breath and the in-breath"; the base text reads "out … in," while the Sheng-canon text transposes the two words "out / in" — a single-word change that does not alter the contemplation-method; the variant reading is recorded side by side in the ⟨Apparatus⟩.)
• Being aware of joy, being aware of bliss, being aware of the mental formation, and stilling the mental formation — these four are contemplation of feeling;
• Being aware of the mind, gladdening the mind, restraining-and-holding the mind, and liberating the mind — these four are contemplation of the mind;
• The contemplation attendant on impermanence, the contemplation attendant on severance, the contemplation attendant on the fading of desire, and the contemplation attendant on cessation — these four are contemplation of dharmas.

The contemplation carried along a single breath — from the awareness of the breath's length-and-shortness and its pervading the body, to attending on the breath through the four absorptions and being aware of joy and bliss and taming the mental formation, to the various contemplations of the mind (with greed and parted from greed, torpor and agitation, liberated and not liberated), and at the last, taking the three elements as object (the element of severance, the element of the fading of desire, the element of cessation) and performing the four contemplations attendant on impermanence, severance, the fading of desire, and cessation — "all the afflictions to be severed on the paths of seeing and of cultivation are severed forever, and one becomes an arhat." A single breath, and it is the whole course of the four foundations of mindfulness of body, feeling, mind, and dharmas.

So this one unit, which looks as though it is expounding "objects," has in fact already erected the two crux-points of the śrāvaka's contemplative practice: one is how dependent origination is to be contemplated in accord with principle (the four principles), the other is how the breath is to be contemplated into the four foundations of mindfulness (the sixteen excellent practices). The prior unit made the person clear; this unit compounds the full complement of medicine; and within this medicine, the "four foundations of mindfulness" is precisely what joins onto the thirty-seven factors of awakening in the next unit (13-02-04, the Cultivation of Yoga) — a road that runs from the taming of a single thought-breath to the thirty-seven aids of the path is thereby laid out.

Carrying Forward

The object-unit receives "the person" above and opens onto "cultivation" below. Receiving what precedes: the prior unit set up the twenty-eight persons and the five modes (greed, hatred, delusion, conceit, discursive thought) as the "faculty"; this unit's five settling-of-mind contemplations (the impure / loving-kindness / the object-nature and dependent origination / the differentiation of elements / mindfulness of breathing) are the "medicine" that treats each one in turn — the Revata Sūtra's "rest the mind upon a concordant object" plainly signals that medicine and sickness must be matched, first setting up the person and then treating it, the two units of a single piece (13-02-01, the Persons). Opening onto what follows, three veins: first, the four principles of the object-nature-and-dependent-origination object (dependence-and-attendance / activity / establishing-proof / the very-way-things-are) are amply set forth later in the Stage of What is Attained through Reflection, and this unit has already established their use in the right contemplation of the twelvefold dependent origination (Stage 11, the Stage of What is Attained through Reflection); second, the nine abidings of the mind of the pervasive image devoid of discernment, together with the marks of stilling, exerting, and equanimity, and the transformation of the basis, are to be read together with the Stage of Meditative Equipoise (Stage 6); third, the sixteen excellent practices at the end of mindfulness of breathing have already been matched four-by-four to the four foundations of mindfulness (contemplation of body, feeling, mind, and dharmas), and precisely open onto the thirty-seven factors of awakening of the next unit's Cultivation of Yoga — the four foundations of mindfulness being their head (13-02-04). A single object of treatment, receiving before it the faculty of the persons and opening after it onto the cultivation of the factors of awakening, is the joint at which the second yoga-station turns from "the person" to "the dharma."

Teaching arc: the preceding unit fitted out the "medicine to match the sickness" (the five settling-the-mind objects). This unit first completes the objects — skillfulness (which cures dullness) and affliction-purifying (which severs affliction); with these, the four kinds of object are told out to the end. Then the treatise shifts altitude and lays open the whole skeleton of the matter of "training": how one is instructed (the instruction), what one learns (the three higher trainings), by what one is set in accord (the factors conducive to training), what ruins it (the ruining of yoga), by which powers it goes (the four yogas), and with what manner of attention it is applied (the four attentions). The point of the eye is the spine down the middle — the three higher trainings (discipline, concentration, wisdom): they are not only the master-outline of the śrāvaka path, but the very ground on which the whole of the later Consciousness-Only path of cultivation (equipment → intensified practice → seeing → cultivation → culmination) rests.

Completing the Objects: Skillfulness Cures Dullness, Affliction-Purifying Severs Affliction

The five settling-the-mind objects were "medicine laid down against the five kinds of conduct-nature," but there remain two kinds of object that "cure dullness and affliction alike."

The skillfulness objects cure "dullness" — the five skillfulnesses in aggregates, elements, sense-fields, dependent origination, and the possible-and-impossible. The most crucial is skillfulness in the aggregates: the treatise says that, once one skillfully knows the "manifold differences, the not-one-but-many" of the five aggregates, one must go further and see that "apart from these aggregates, nothing whatever is to be found" — "only aggregates are to be found, only bare events are to be found; apart from the aggregates there is no 'self' to be found, nor anything constant and unchanging to be found, nor is there any single dharma that is 'mine'". In other words, skillfulness in the aggregates is to take the dissecting-knife of the five aggregates and cut away the illusion of "self." Skillfulness in the elements sees that the eighteen elements each arise from their own separate seeds (element = the sense of cause); skillfulness in the sense-fields sees the six consciousnesses flowing on by way of three conditions (the dominant, the object, and the immediately-antecedent-and-equal); skillfulness in dependent origination sees the twelve links as merely dharmas drawing forth dharmas, impermanent and without self; skillfulness in the possible-and-impossible sees that cause and effect are not disordered (the wholesome brings a liked fruit, the unwholesome an unliked fruit). The five skillfulnesses gather down into two: skillfulness in the aggregates manifests "skillfulness in intrinsic characteristics," the other four manifest "skillfulness in common characteristics."

The affliction-purifying objects cure "affliction," and divide into two roads. One is the mundane path: one contemplates the lower ground as "coarse" and the upper as "peaceful" — the desire-realm, set beside the first meditative absorption, is deep in fault, heavy in suffering, its life-span short, and so is "coarse"; the first absorption is utterly peaceful and utterly sublime, and so is "peaceful." Thus, ground by ground, one loathes the lower and delights in the upper, subduing from the desire-realm up to the base of nothing-whatever. But this is only a "temporary severance," not a final one (in a later time it will resume its course). The other is the supramundane path: one contemplates the four noble truths. Here the treatise strikes off a set of easily-remembered sickness-and-cure similes — the truth of suffering is like a sickness (to be thoroughly known), the truth of origination is like the cause-and-condition of the sickness (to be kept far off), the truth of cessation is like the state of no-sickness (to be touched-and-realized), and the truth of the path is like a fine medicine (to be cultivated, cultivated much). It also expounds suffering as threefold: the suffering of suffering (painful feeling itself), the suffering of change (the suffering that arises when pleasant feeling deteriorates and affliction binds the mind), and the suffering of conditioned states (even the neither-painful-nor-pleasant five appropriating-aggregates, being impermanent, gross-and-heavy, and not one's own to command, are of themselves suffering).

Here there is one buried thread worth marking. The ancient master Dunlun says: "If one goes by the gate of true principle, the store consciousness's feeling of indifference is the very substance of the suffering of conditioned states"; and, glossing the consciousness-aggregate's "mind, mentation, and consciousness," he allows that "the store consciousness may be named 'mind,' mentation named 'the deliberating,' and the six consciousnesses named 'consciousness'". The Śrāvaka Stage, in speaking of the four truths and of the consciousness-aggregate, has at bottom already let show the shadow of the store consciousness and of mentation — this is one line with "falling into the store, into the element of mentation" in the Stage of Lineage (13-01-01). (This is the ancient masters' Consciousness-Only reading, recorded here and not taken over as a one-way inheritance.)

With this, all four kinds of object — the all-pervading, the purifying-of-conduct, the skillfulness, and the affliction-purifying — are told out to the end.

The Spine of the Whole Passage: The Three Higher Trainings

The objects told out, the treatise turns into "training." First it says how one is to be instructed (the four instructions: unerring, gradual, teaching, realization, with the "instruction complete in every aspect" of the three miracles added), and then it comes to the spine of the whole passage — the three higher trainings: the higher training in discipline, the higher training in mind, and the higher training in wisdom.

The treatise poses a good question: why are the trainings just three, no more and no fewer? The answer points out the division of labor among the three: discipline "establishes concentration" (keeping the precepts brings the mind to a single object and can touch samādhi); concentration is "that on which knowledge rests" (right concentration causes a true knowing-and-seeing of the thing to be known to arise); and wisdom "discerns what is to be done" (a purified knowing-and-seeing can realize the final severance of affliction, and to sever affliction is the highest self-benefit, than which there is none more excellent). The order of the three, too, is not idly arranged; the treatise gives a fine "chain of the fruits of discipline": pure śīla → freedom from worry and regret → gladness → ease and joy → the mind's attaining of right concentration → knowing-and-seeing as it truly is → disenchantment → freedom from defilement → liberation → the actionless final nirvāṇa. A single chain of cause and effect running from keeping the precepts to nirvāṇa, link engendering link.

Why are they called "higher"? In two senses: the sense of that-toward-which-one-tends (one cultivates the lower training for the sake of tending toward the upper — keeping precepts for the sake of tending toward concentration, cultivating concentration for the sake of tending toward wisdom, cultivating wisdom for the sake of tending toward the severance of affliction), and the sense of the most excellent (these three trainings belong to the Buddha's holy teaching alone, not held in common with the outer paths). The treatise adds one further and pressing line: "one who has discipline does not necessarily have wisdom, but one who has wisdom necessarily possesses all three trainings" — wisdom is the highest term, discipline and concentration its foundation.

These three higher trainings do not only draw the śrāvaka path to a close; they are the whole master-outline of the later Consciousness-Only path of cultivation. What the Hundred Dharmas, the Thirty Verses, and even the path to buddhahood teach — the equipment, the intensified practice, the path of seeing, the path of cultivation, and the culmination — all have their skeleton in this "discipline → concentration → wisdom" higher training. What the Śrāvaka Stage sets up here is a base-map of the path of cultivation running through both the great and the small vehicles. The treatise then, in accordance with the three trainings, distinguishes three persons (not-yet-freed-from-desire / doubly-freed-from-desire / already-freed-from-desire, answering to the stream-enterer / the once-returner / the non-returner), three faculties (the "I-shall-come-to-know-the-unknown," the "already-knowing," and the "endowed-with-knowing"), and three doors of liberation (emptiness / wishlessness / marklessness).

How One Is Set in Accord, How It Comes to Ruin

Merely having the framework of training is not yet enough; the treatise further speaks of the two faces of "conformity" and "ruin."

The factors conducive to training: it first lists ten "factors contrary to training" (women's beauty, clinging attachment to the conditioned, indolence, the view of the transitory collection as a self, craving for fine flavors, worldly frivolous talk, the eleven kinds of fault in pondering the attention of yoga, relishing the pleasure of concentration, dissipation, craving for life…), and then gives the countering "ten conceptions" (the conception of the impure, of impermanence, of the suffering in impermanence, of the no-self in suffering, of loathing food, of the world as not to be delighted in, of light, of dispassion, of cessation, of death). Among them, the "conception of light" is established upon four kinds of light: the light of the Dharma (the wisdom-of-hearing reaching to the taught teaching), the light of the meaning (the wisdom-of-reflection deciding the meaning), the light of tranquillity, and the light of insight. The ancient master Jing puts the point through: when the teaching is dark, one cures it with the wisdom-of-hearing's light of the Dharma; when the meaning is dark, one cures it with the wisdom-of-reflection's light of the meaning; but as for the light of tranquillity-and-insight, here one deliberately "sets it aside and does not take it up" — because tranquillity-and-insight are themselves precisely "the substance of the training," and one cannot take the substance of the training and make of it a tool for countering hindrances. Added to these are ten positive "factors conducive to training" (past causes, conformity to the teaching, application in accordance with principle… freedom from over-weening pride).

The ruining of yoga is of four kinds, and the one most worth reading is the fourth, "that which is done by wrong conduct". Here the treatise all but writes out a cautionary tale: there is one heavy with affliction yet clever, who can preach the Dharma and can draw in offerings, and is honored by people as an arhat; fearing that his disciples will bring true yoga to question him and that, unable to answer, he will lose his offerings, he "makes up a yoga of his own" — but this thing "does not accord with the discourses, does not appear in the disciplines, and runs counter to the nature of dharmas," and so he dares only transmit it in private and dares not show it to one versed in the Tripiṭaka (fearing to be exposed the moment it is checked against sūtra, discipline, and the nature of dharmas). The treatise's one verdict upon it: this is "a semblance of the true Dharma, not the truly true Dharma, able to obstruct the true Dharma." For those who, greedy for name and gain, forge a method of cultivation, this is a demon-revealing mirror — and it warns the practitioner too that every yoga must be checked against the three rulers of the discourses, the disciplines, and the nature of dharmas.

The Practitioner's Gears: The Four Yogas and the Four Attentions

The last two rubrics are the "gears" by which the practitioner operates. The four yogas = trust, aspiration, effort, and skillful means — from trust one deeply gives rise to conviction, from trust one raises glad aspiration, from glad aspiration one goads on effort day and night, from effort one takes up skillful means, and one is able to attain the not-yet-attained and realize the not-yet-realized (each divided into four, sixteen in all). The four attentions = the attention that operates by forcing (the beginner in the work reins in the mind and makes it abide on a single object), the attention that operates with intervals (having gained attention, but broken into by scattered thought, not yet pure), the attention that operates without interval (pure cultivation without break), and the attention that operates effortlessly (the fruit of the culmination of effort · spontaneous and effortless). The treatise further subdivides the four remaining attentions, the four aspects of what is pondered (the object, the cause-and-condition, what is to be kept far off 〔sinking, agitation, attachment, distraction〕, and what is to be cultivated), the nine resolute convictions, and the three kinds of yoga-practitioner (the beginner in the work / one already practiced in conduct / one who has passed beyond attention) — laying out the whole course by which a practitioner, from raw hand to seasoned adept, applies the mind, as a clear stair.

This unit both gathers up "the objects" and sets up the whole skeleton of "training": skillfulness breaks the self, affliction-purifying severs affliction, the three trainings are the master-cord, conformity is the aid, the discernment of ruin is the caution, and yoga-and-attention are the function. With both the objects and the training made ready, the next unit (13-02-04) will formally enter the content of "cultivation" — the thirty-seven factors of awakening — and its very first item, "the four foundations of mindfulness," is precisely what the sixteen excellent practices of the preceding unit have already connected up to.

Carrying Forward

This unit gathers "the objects" together and sets up the bones of "training," and both ends have their taking-up. Carrying forward from before: skillfulness (in aggregates, elements, sense-fields, dependent origination, the possible-and-impossible) cures the occasion of "dullness toward intrinsic and common characteristics," carrying on precisely the one vein of the all-pervading objects' Hastikakṣya-sūtra — "dullness toward the intrinsic characteristic of the conditioned → skillfulness in the aggregates"; the affliction-purifying mundane path (contemplating coarse-and-peaceful) opens the way to the dispassion of the third yoga-station, and the supramundane path (contemplating the four truths) opens the way to the path of seeing (13-02-02 objects). The spine reaches backward: the three higher trainings (discipline, concentration, wisdom) not only draw the śrāvaka path to a close, but are the master-outline on which the Hundred Dharmas, the Thirty Verses, and even the whole five-stage Consciousness-Only path of cultivation (equipment → intensified practice → seeing → cultivation → culmination) rest — the "why only three trainings · their order · the sense of 'higher'" set up in this unit is their very root; the four attentions (forcing / with-intervals / without-interval / effortless) are to be read together with the seven attentions of the Stage of Meditative Equipoise (Stage 06), and the light of tranquillity-and-insight of the ten factors conducive to training, together with the three kinds of yoga-practitioner (beginner in the work / already practiced in conduct / passed beyond attention), open the way to the next unit's thirty-seven factors of awakening of the cultivation-of-yoga (the four foundations of mindfulness first · 13-02-04). As for the buried thread of the store consciousness and mentation that the ancient masters read out at the consciousness-aggregate and at the suffering of conditioned states ("the store consciousness named 'mind,' mentation named 'the deliberating'" · "the suffering of conditioned states has the store consciousness's indifferent feeling for its substance"), it runs one line with "falling into the store, into the element of mentation" in the Stage of Lineage — this being the ancient masters' Consciousness-Only reading, recorded and not taken over as a one-way inheritance. Within a single unit, the objects cure dullness, the three trainings raise the master-cord, and the store consciousness lets show its buried thread: the base-map of the Śrāvaka Stage's path of cultivation and the ground-color of Consciousness-Only are laid down at one and the same time.

Teaching arc: the object-supports have been readied and the framework of training has been set up; this sub-unit is the true content of "cultivation" — the thirty-seven factors of awakening. To read it in order is to read a staircase mounting from taming the mind to realizing the fruit: the four foundations of mindfulness (seeing clearly into body, feeling, mind, and phenomena) → the four right exertions (severing the evil, giving rise to the good) → the four bases of supernormal power (cultivating concentration · will, effort, mind, and investigation) → the five faculties and five powers (the maturing of strength · igniting the four wholesome roots) → the seven awakening-factors (the path of seeing) → the eightfold noble path (the path of cultivation · attaining arhatship). The point of the eye lies in two places: how the four foundations of mindfulness break, one against one, the four inverted views; and how the five faculties and five powers, like drilling wood to make fire, drill out the uncontaminated holy dharma of the path of seeing.

Before Cultivating, First "Conceive": The Cultivation of Conceptions

Before the formal cultivation of the factors of the path, the treatise first sets down a passage on "the cultivation of conceptions" — the cultivating of various conceptions that serve as antidotes: when cultivating the mundane path, one cultivates toward the lower stage the "conception of its perils"; when cultivating the path to nirvāṇa, one cultivates toward the element of severance (the exhaustion of the view-cut afflictions), the element of dispassion (the exhaustion of the cultivation-cut afflictions), and the element of cessation (the exhaustion of the remaining contaminants) the three conceptions of "severance, dispassion, and cessation"; when cultivating calm-abiding, one cultivates the "conception of up-and-down" (from crown to foot contemplating this body as filled with every kind of impurity — carrying on from the impurity-contemplation of the previous sub-unit); and when cultivating insight, one cultivates the "conception of before-and-after" — and this last is the most interesting of all: "abiding, one contemplates the seated; seated, one contemplates the reclining; walking behind, one contemplates the walking ahead" — which is in fact using the wisdom of insight to look upon the formations dependently arisen across the three times: the present attention, already arisen (abiding), contemplates the future not-yet-arisen (seated); the present, on the verge of cessation (seated), contemplates the past already ceased (reclining); the present newly arisen grasping attention contemplates the just-ceased-without-interval grasped attention (walking behind contemplates walking ahead). In a single breath in and a single breath out, in the space between a single sitting and a single reclining, all is the very site of the flux of the three times.

The First Rung of the Staircase: The Four Foundations of Mindfulness — Breaking, One Against One, the Four Inverted Views

The cultivation of the factors of awakening is just to draw near to, to accumulate, and to cultivate the thirty-seven factors-of-awakening dharmas. Its first section, "the four foundations of mindfulness," joins directly onto the sixteen excellent practices of the mindfulness of in-and-out breathing from the previous sub-unit (13-02-02) — cultivate breath-contemplation to its end and it is just the four foundations of mindfulness in body, feeling, mind, and phenomena, and here they are formally unfolded.

The treatise asks most basically: what is body? what is "abiding, contemplating the body along the body"? what is mindfulness, what is a foundation of mindfulness? "Body," laid open, comes to thirty-five kinds (inner body and outer body; that gathered by the faculties and that not gathered by the faculties; sentient and non-sentient; hell-being's body, animal's body, human's body, deva's body; woman's body, man's body, the body of infancy, youth, age …); "abiding, contemplating the body along the body" is to contemplate rightly through the three wisdoms of hearing, reflection, and cultivation that take the body as their governing basis; "mindfulness" is a mind that does not lose or forget within the cultivation-and-realization of the right dharma; "a foundation of mindfulness" is the discerning and settled abiding of that mindfulness (guarding mindfulness, being undefiled amid objects, settling upon the four object-supports). The foundations of mindfulness of feeling, of mind, and of phenomena are managed likewise — feeling laid open to twenty-one feelings (or nine feelings), mind laid open to twenty kinds of mind, phenomena laid open to the twenty dharmas of the black and white, the defiled and the pure.

Of these four foundations of mindfulness, the most essential thing is "breaking the four inverted views": the foundation of mindfulness of body breaks "reckoning the impure as pure" (contemplating the four charnel-ground corpse-transformations of the body — this is the very same charnel-forest of the previous sub-unit); the foundation of mindfulness of feeling breaks "reckoning the painful as pleasant" (all feelings are painful); the foundation of mindfulness of mind breaks "reckoning the impermanent as permanent" (mind arises and ceases moment by moment); the foundation of mindfulness of phenomena breaks "reckoning the selfless as self" (the aggregates have only their particular and shared characteristics, and there is no self at all). The ancient master's Notes on the Treatise further matches these to the "four preponderant contemplations": in body one preponderantly contemplates impurity, in feeling preponderantly the painful, in mind preponderantly the impermanent, in phenomena preponderantly the selfless 〔Dunlun〕. Put another way, the four foundations of mindfulness also remove four kinds of "confusion": to remove "confusion about the matter that is the self's basis" one sets up the foundation of mindfulness of body; to remove "confusion about the matter of receiving" the foundation of mindfulness of feeling; to remove "confusion about grasping a self in mind-mentation-consciousness" the foundation of mindfulness of mind; to remove "confusion about the matter that can defile and purify" the foundation of mindfulness of phenomena.

(The ancient masters here further distinguish one essential point: as for the "intrinsic nature" of the four foundations of mindfulness, the Great Vehicle takes the two dharmas of "mindfulness and wisdom"; the Lesser Vehicle takes only a single item — Dunlun holds it to be "wisdom only," Kuiji holds it to be "mindfulness only" — both recorded.)

The Second and Third Rungs: The Four Right Exertions and the Four Bases of Supernormal Power

The four right exertions (also named the four right conquerings, or the four right endeavors) are the four floodgates of severing the evil and giving rise to the good: to cause the already-arisen evil to be severed; to cause the not-yet-arisen evil not to arise; to cause the not-yet-arisen good to arise; to cause the already-arisen good to abide and increase and grow — and each floodgate calls for one to "give rise to will, to spur oneself on, to put forth vigorous effort, to urge on the mind, and to sustain the mind." The treatise further divides them into the exertion of restraint (severing the already-arisen evil), the exertion of severance (not giving rise to the not-yet-arisen evil), the exertion of cultivation (giving rise to the not-yet-arisen good), and the exertion of guarding (guarding the already-arisen good). The gist in brief is a single sentence: upon the relinquishing-and-taking-up of the black and white classes of dharmas, "the fullness of the governing resolve" (through giving rise to will) plus "the fullness of the applied practice" (through spurring on, vigor, urging the mind, and sustaining the mind).

The four bases of supernormal power are the four governing strengths that cultivate "concentration": the concentrations of will, of effort, of mind, and of investigation, together with the "eight abandoning-practices" (will, spurring-on, faith, tranquillity, mindfulness, right knowing, intention, and equanimity — the ancient masters say these eight abandoning-practices are just the four yogas of the previous sub-unit: will, vigor, faith, and skillful means, formerly named "the eight provisions for action" 〔Kuiji〕). The treatise here explains a fine name: why are they called "bases of supernormal power"? "Just as one who has feet can go and can return, can leap up vigorous and strong," able to walk to the surpassing dharmas of the world — the surpassing dharma is named "supernormal," and because one can reach it, it is named "foot"; likewise, one whose concentration is complete has a mind pure and bright-white, able to go and to return, able to realize the world-transcending dharma, and the world-transcending dharma, most surpassing and sovereign, is the "supernormal," while what can realize it is the "foot". Concentration is just the feet of the world-transcending dharma.

The Fire of the Fourth Rung: The Five Faculties, the Five Powers, and the Four Wholesome Roots

To cultivate up to the five faculties (faith, effort, mindfulness, concentration, wisdom) and the five powers is the stage at which strength matures. The treatise distinguishes "faculty" from "power": the five dharmas of faith and the rest have the meaning of "being able to give rise to" and are named faculties, and the meaning of "being hard to subdue" and are named powers. The treatise even asks an interesting question — "By whom cannot they be subdued?" The answer: this pure faith no deva, māra, śramaṇa, brahmin, or worldly one is able to draw away or seize, and no bond of the afflictions can bend it, and so it is named "hard to subdue"; these powers possess great and awesome force, able to crush all the armies of māra and to realize the exhaustion of all contaminants. The five faculties and five powers also correspond, one to one, with the earlier factors of the path: the faculty-and-power of faith = the pure faith of the four factors of stream-entry; the faculty-and-power of effort = the four right exertions; the faculty-and-power of mindfulness = the four foundations of mindfulness; the faculty-and-power of concentration = the four meditative absorptions; the faculty-and-power of wisdom = the wisdom of the four noble truths.

At this point the treatise ignites the brightest fire of the whole section — the simile of drilling for fire. As the five faculties and five powers are gradually cultivated and gradually practiced, there arise the four wholesome roots that partake of the aspect of penetration (warmth, summit, acceptance conforming to the truths, and the supreme worldly dharma). It is like drilling wood to make fire: below, dry wood is set down; above, a drill-and-flint is applied; and one drills with diligence and valiant vigor — the lower wood first gives rise to "warmth" (this is the "warmth" wholesome root, the antecedent sign of the uncontaminated fire that burns the afflictions); the warmth grows and the heat-vapor rushes upward ("summit"); next smoke rises ("acceptance conforming to the truths"); a flameless fire suddenly flows forth ("the supreme worldly dharma"); and the fire, without interval, sends forth a fierce blaze (this fierce blaze is just the world-transcending uncontaminated holy dharma given rise to without interval by the five faculties and five powers subsumed under the supreme worldly dharma). A single stretch of the cultivation-and-realization of the stage of applied practice is written by the treatise as a scene of drilling wood for fire — heat, smoke, fire, going from dark toward bright, and at the last the fierce blaze leaping up.

The Last Two Rungs: The Seven Awakening-Factors and the Path of Seeing; the Eightfold Noble Path and the Path of Cultivation

That "fierce blaze" — the world-transcending uncontaminated holy dharma — what is it? It is just the seven awakening-factors. For one who has already entered the certainty of the right and departed the birth [of the mundane], the wisdom that awakens things as they truly are uses these seven as its factors (mindfulness, discernment-of-dharmas, effort, joy, tranquillity, concentration, equanimity), subsumed under three classes: discernment-of-dharmas, effort, and joy = the insight class; tranquillity, concentration, and equanimity = the calm-abiding class; mindfulness = the all-pervading. To obtain the seven awakening-factors for the first time is just named "seeing the traces of the noble truths" — this is the path of seeing, and one has already severed all the afflictions cut off by the path of seeing. (The ancient masters distinguish: the seven awakening-factors are in the path of seeing, the eightfold rightness in the path of cultivation; that the Notes on the Treatise says "the path of cultivation uses the name 'awakening,' the path of seeing uses the name 'path'" is likewise only a saying that follows the aspect — both recorded 〔Dunlun〕.)

To sever the remaining afflictions cut off by the path of cultivation, one then cultivates the eightfold noble path, subsumed under three aggregates: right view, right thought, right effort = the aggregate of wisdom; right speech, right action, right livelihood = the aggregate of discipline; right mindfulness, right concentration = the aggregate of concentration. Of these, "right action" is just the abiding with right knowing in the deportments of daily life (in seeking robe and food, in walking, standing, sitting, lying, and even in relieving fatigue and sleeping, all with right knowing), and "right livelihood" is to keep far from wrong livelihood and to seek in accordance with the dharma. Here the treatise sets up a beautiful name — the discipline beloved of the noble ones: the noble and worthy ones through the long night love, delight in, and yearn after "when shall I be able to obtain that restraint of 'not speaking falsely, not harming life, not stealing, not committing sexual misconduct, not practicing wrong livelihood'" — and so, when it is obtained, it is named "beloved of the noble ones"; the ancient masters say this is just the uncontaminated discipline concomitant with the path (the restraint of not-doing), and by its governing strength the verbal action, bodily action, and livelihood-nourishing at the time of the path of cultivation all come to be named right speech, right action, and right livelihood 〔Dunlun〕. The eightfold noble path is again gathered under "that which is without doing" (right speech, action, livelihood) and "that which abides in doing" (calm-abiding and insight: right view, thought, effort = insight; right mindfulness, concentration = calm-abiding); taking the pure right speech, action, and livelihood as basis, one cultivates calm-abiding and insight at all times and severs the fetters, until, severing them permanently and without remainder, one obtains the supreme fruit of arhatship. (The clause "able to sever the fetters" — the base text reads "sever," while the Song, Yuan, Ming, and Sheng four editions read "realize" — "sever" clarifies the work done, while "realize" speaks in terms of realizing the fruit; the difference of a single character has its own reading in each, both recorded in the ⟨Apparatus⟩.)

A path that sets out from taming a single breath (the sixteen excellent practices of the previous sub-unit), passes through the four foundations of mindfulness that see clearly into body and mind, the four right exertions that sever the evil and give rise to the good, the four bases of supernormal power that cultivate concentration, the five faculties and five powers that drill out the fire of the path of seeing, the seven awakening-factors that see the truths, and the eightfold noble path that severs the cultivation-cut afflictions — reaches here at the arhat. These thirty-seven factors of awakening are the entire skeleton of the śrāvaka's cultivation-and-realization; and their framework — curing the four inverted views, the applied practice of the four wholesome roots, the two paths of seeing and cultivation — is precisely the shared track of the later Consciousness-Only path of cultivation. Cultivation being now accomplished, the next sub-unit (13-02-05) will speak of its "fruit."

Carrying Forward

This sub-unit, the cultivation of yoga, is the very body of "cultivation," with something received before it and something opened after it. It receives two veins from before: first, the four foundations of mindfulness join directly onto the sixteen excellent practices of the mindfulness of in-and-out breathing of the previous sub-unit — cultivate breath-contemplation to its end and it is already the four-by-four matching of the four foundations of mindfulness (contemplating body, feeling, mind, phenomena), and the cultivation of the factors of awakening in this sub-unit takes the four foundations of mindfulness as its head and formally unfolds them, the two sub-units of a single line (breath-contemplation → foundations of mindfulness · 13-02-02); second, the urging and sustaining of the mind in the four right exertions and the eight abandoning-practices in the four bases of supernormal power (that is, the four yogas: will, vigor, faith, and skillful means) run through with the four yogas of the six categories of training and the calm-abiding-and-insight of the dharmas conforming to training, while the further cultivation of the five faculties and five powers is just the making-concrete of the higher training in mind and the higher training in wisdom (13-02-03, the three excellent trainings). And it opens what comes after: the five faculties and five powers (warmth, summit, acceptance, supreme worldly dharma) → the seven awakening-factors (path of seeing · seeing the traces of the noble truths) → the eightfold noble path (path of cultivation · severing the cultivation-cut afflictions) — the whole map of the skeleton of the śrāvaka's cultivation-and-realization is laid out, and next comes the four fruits of the śramaṇa of the sub-unit on the fruit of cultivation (13-02-05). As for its influence: the thirty-seven factors of awakening, the four foundations of mindfulness curing the four inverted views, and the discipline beloved of the noble ones (the uncontaminated discipline concomitant with the path) are the shared track of the later-emerging Consciousness-Only path of cultivation (the applied practice of the four wholesome roots · the two paths of seeing and cultivation) — this root treatise here sets up its whole outline, and the later treatises carry it forward, each taking up its own place. The factors of the path that were raised up by the taming of a single breath here come to form the śrāvaka's two paths of seeing and cultivation, and also bury, for the later-emerging treatises, the shared skeleton of the map of the path of cultivation.

Teaching arc: the thirty-seven factors of awakening having been cultivated to completion, the last sub-unit of the Second Yoga-Station comes to gather it all up — first it speaks of the "fruit" of cultivation (the four fruits of asceticism, and how each one counteracts one of four kinds of affliction), then it looks back over the "person" on the path of cultivation (the six alternate names, the three kinds of practitioner and their differing pace), and the "Māra" on the path of cultivation (the four māras and the deeds of Māra that are everywhere), and finally gives the whole station a summation: with equal diligence, why do some bear fruit and some labor in vain? The point of the eye is in two places: how the four fruits cut off affliction to exhaustion in a sequence of depths; and those three conditions of the closing "setting out to empty and fruitless result" — the faculties, the instruction, and the meditative stability — lacking any one, it does not come off.

The Fruit of Cultivation: the Four Fruits of Asceticism, Counteracting Four Kinds of Affliction

The fruit of cultivation is just the four fruits of asceticism: stream-entry, once-return, non-return, and the supreme arhat. "Asceticism" is the noble path (the ancient masters say that "asceticism" here means "toil and weariness" — diligent, painstaking practice, extinguishing evil and giving rise to good), and "fruit" is the cutting-off of affliction (the analytic cessation provisionally spoken of at the site, within suchness, where confusion is cut off).

The treatise asks a good question: why are four fruits established? The answer: to counteract four kinds of affliction, cutting them off in a sequence of depths 〔Dunlun〕 —

• The fruit of stream-entry cuts off the "baseless afflictions": the view-confusions able to draw on the evil destinies, headed by the view of the transitory collection as a self (this view "reckons the existent out of the non-existent," reckoning a self that is fundamentally not there, and so is called "baseless"). The World-Honored One gathers it up as "cutting off the three fetters": the householder's view of the transitory collection as a self (afraid, one dare not enter the path), the follower of deviant dharmas' clinging to precepts and observances (having entered the path, one yet practices deviant ways), and the person within the right Dharma's doubt (not deviant, yet hesitating and doubting) — the three fetters once cut, one enters the noble kind, and at most undergoes seven further births.
• The fruit of once-return cuts off the affliction of "reborn continuation" (the middle several grades of the cultivation-confusions of the desire-realm), and at most comes and goes once more among gods and humans, one going and one returning.
• The fruit of non-return cuts off the affliction "able to draw one back to be born here" (the latter three grades of the cultivation-confusions), and from then on is reborn only in the form and formless realms, no longer returning to the desire-realm.
• The fruit of the arhat cuts off "every affliction able to draw on existence-with-birth," the confusions of the three realms being exhausted. The ancient masters give three senses of "arhat": the worthy of offerings (accomplished in both knowledge and cutting-off, fit to receive offerings), the slayer of the thief (slaying the thief of affliction), and the unborn (undergoing no further existence) 〔Dunlun〕.

A single road, from cutting off the view-confusions (stream-entry), through gradually cutting off the cultivation-confusions (once-return, non-return), to the exhaustion of the confusions (arhat) — this is the whole map of the "fruit" of the śrāvaka path.

Appended: a One-Character Difference Reveals the Transmission — "Bind" and "Attenuate"

This passage cites the World-Honored One's verse on the four fruits, and at the very line for the "fruit of once-return" the various editions of the canon have exactly a one-character difference — and it happens to be a window onto "how the scriptural teaching was handed down." The Taishō base text reads "forever cutting off the three fetters, 'binding' (縛) greed, hatred, and delusion, establishes the fruit of once-return"; but the Song, Yuan, Ming, and Sheng editions — all four canon-editions — read "attenuate" (薄) — and even the Taishō's own collation note records "縛 = 薄 〔Song, Yuan, Ming three editions · Sheng edition〕"; and the ancient master Dunlun's gloss, in his Notes on the Treatise, likewise reads "attenuate greed, hatred, and delusion". On the one side, a single Taishō edition reads "bind"; on the other, four canon-editions plus the ancient-master's gloss plus the Taishō's own collation note all read "attenuate."

Which should one follow? Here there is no need for any person to "settle" it — the scriptural teaching speaks for itself; look at how it apportions the four fruits and it becomes clear: the fruit of stream-entry cuts off the three fetters (the view of self, clinging to precepts and observances, doubt); the fruit of once-return, on top of cutting off the three fetters, further makes "greed, hatred, and delusion grow attenuated" (attenuated but not yet cut off); the fruit of non-return cuts off the five lower fetters; the fruit of the arhat cuts off every affliction to exhaustion. Once-return (sakṛdāgāmin) is precisely the stage at which the three poisons "grow thin," and so the settled formula of this line is originally "attenuate greed, hatred, and delusion" (the Āgamas and this treatise expound the four fruits alike). Were it to read "bind" (bondage), it would not stand within this sequence of "gradually attenuating, gradually cutting off." What is more, the two characters 薄 "attenuate" and 縛 "bind" are close in form, and in the course of transmission and copying were easily mistaken for one another. When the four canon-editions, the ancient-master's gloss, and the doctrinal structure of the four fruits — all three — set their seal together, the original face of this one character becomes clear.

This is precisely the measure of care one ought to have in reading the canon: do not cling in life-and-death to a single base text, but let the "variant editions, the ancient-master's gloss, and the doctrinal structure" collate one another — this is the science of collation, and it is exactly the effort by which the Buddha's teaching, "rely on the meaning, not the letter; rely on the explicit meaning, not the inexplicit," is brought down to a single character and a single phrase. A one-character difference reveals the care of the transmission; therefore this translation keeps the base-text 縛 "bind" in the vernacular body, and records the four editions' 薄 "attenuate" together with the reasoning here under the Apparatus, both readings preserved together.

The Person on the Path of Cultivation: Six Alternate Names, Three Grades of Faculty

The fruit having been spoken of, the treatise turns back to look at the "person." Among practitioners there are six alternate names (in fact all of them are other designations for "the one who takes up existence again and again," the person, pudgala): ascetic (further divided into the surpassing path 〔the Well-Gone Ones who have cut off greed, hatred, and delusion〕, the taught path 〔those who teach the right Dharma〕, the living path 〔ordinary beings who cultivate wholesome conduct〕, and the ruined path 〔those who transgress the precepts and practice evil〕 — the ancient masters say that the fine point of the "living path" lies in this: the ordinary being, though he has not yet realized the noble state, nonetheless "has present in him the warmth of the wholesome dharmas, able to give rise to and nourish the life-faculty of the noble wisdom," and so is "living," not "dead", and this word "warmth" joins straight onto the warmth-wholesome-root of the fire-drilling simile); brahmin (three kinds: by caste / by name and notion / of right conduct); one of pure conduct (three kinds: undertaken as seclusion / temporary cutting-off / final cutting-off); monk (five kinds); one who strives (three kinds: stilling transgression of the precepts / stilling the object-fields / stilling the afflictions); one gone forth (two kinds: within the well-spoken Dharma / within the ill-spoken Dharma). The World-Honored One also points out one essential line: these four kinds of ascetic are "in the teachings of the outsider ascetics and brahmins empty and utterly absent" — only where the noble eightfold path is established is there a true ascetic.

Looking again from the side of faculty: earlier the treatise spoke of the five kinds of practitioner with a preponderance of greed, hatred, delusion, conceit, or discursive thought; here it adds another two kinds: the even-portioned type (the five afflictions level, none preponderant; when he cultivates the five stilling-the-mind contemplations he "only makes the mind settle, does not purify his conduct," because he has no preponderant confusion to counteract) and the thin-dust type (the dust-defilement of afflictions thin, cultivating most swiftly). The pace of the three kinds: the preponderant type realizes the settling of the mind only after a long time, the even-portioned type in not too long, the thin-dust type most swiftly. Why is the thin-dust type swift? Because he "has no three obstructions" (no karmic, affliction, or maturational obstruction), his precepts and view are pure, his requisites already complete, and his faith, wisdom, and merit all full. (The ancient masters, in passing, discriminate a point easily misunderstood: some say "the even-portioned type also cuts off confusion by cultivating the five stilling-the-mind contemplations," and Dunlun and Kuiji both plainly deny it — "not so"; the even-portioned type only makes the mind settle, and does not cut off confusion; and they further say that the breath-counting contemplation removes only "applied thought" and not "sustained thought," because sustained thought is a submerged and fine examining-of-the-object, whereas applied thought is scattered — hence "it removes applied thought." Recorded together.)

The Māra on the Path of Cultivation: the Four Māras and the Deeds of Māra Everywhere

Cultivation is not a road with none to bar the way. The treatise lists the four māras: the aggregate-māra (the five appropriating aggregates), the affliction-māra (the afflictions of the three realms), the death-māra (untimely dying and perishing), and the deva-māra (the god of the highest heaven of the desire-realm, who specially makes obstruction to those who diligently cultivate the transcending of the former three māras). These four māras are established by four senses: only with the five appropriating aggregates is there a "basis of death"; by the afflictions one is "able to cause death"; the exhaustion and cessation of the life-faculty is "being death itself"; and the deva Māra "makes obstruction to death." The treatise also says a stern thing: one not yet free of desire is "in Māra's hand, doing as desire wills"; and even one who by the mundane path has become free of desire is still bound by Māra, has not yet slipped Māra's snare — because he must return to be born in this realm again.

More to the point are the "deeds of Māra" — Māra does not always show himself; he hides in every seam of slackening: the wholesome zeal arises and is straightway dragged back by the desires — a deed of Māra; one guards the gates of the faculties yet grasps at marks and fineness — a deed of Māra; one knows the measure in food yet craves delicious flavors — a deed of Māra; one ought to be diligently wakeful yet craves sleep and lying down — a deed of Māra; one abides with right knowing yet is drawn off by comely forms and fine things — a deed of Māra; one gives rise to doubt toward the Three Jewels and the four truths — a deed of Māra; in a forest hermitage one sees a terrifying thing and is frightened, or sees a false ascetic's form urging one to cast off the good and take up the evil — a deed of Māra; one craves gain and reverence, or gives rise to miserliness, wrath, resentment, and deceit (these being precisely the dharmas counteracted by "the ascetic's adornment") — also a deed of Māra. "Such measureless and boundless enterprises of Māra are all done by the four māras." This passage, and the earlier warning about the counterfeit-right-Dharma of "the ruin of the yoga of deviant conduct" (13-02-03), are a paired demon-revealing mirror: one reveals false dharmas, the other reveals slackening, and both call on the yoga practitioner to "rightly and thoroughly know, and keep apart from" them.

The Summation of the Whole Station: Setting Out to Empty and Fruitless Result

Finally, the treatise sets down over the whole Second Yoga-Station a concluding verdict — with equal diligence in setting out, why do some bear fruit and some labor in vain? By three conditions: the faculties gathered and accumulated, the instruction according, and the power of meditative stability strong. Lacking any one of the three, "diligently setting out is empty and fruitless"; possessing all three, "definitely fruitful."

For "the instruction does not accord," the ancient masters cite a famous story: Śāriputra taught "the washerman" the breath-counting contemplation and taught "the bead-stringer" the contemplation of the unclean — the dharma, though a good dharma, was matched to the wrong disposition, and so neither attained the noble path 〔Dunlun〕. The dharma not matched to the disposition, though diligent, is fruitless. Kuiji further rules: what this "empty and fruitless" is empty of is the "fruit of the uncontaminated path," not the mundane fruit — though one attain meditative stability, without true instruction the uncontaminated cannot arise, and so one accomplishes nothing.

These three conditions in fact gather back the whole intent of the eighteen headings that opened the Second Yoga-Station: "faculties" (the faculties of the person), "instruction" (the heading on instruction), "meditative stability" (the stability accomplished through the object and attention) — the person, the dharma, and the stability all complete, and only then is the śrāvaka path truly walkable. The Second Yoga-Station is here brought to completion; and the thread of "the one who takes up existence" (the person), which expounds cultivation-and-realization by entering from the "person," is now to be carried on into the Third Yoga-Station.

Carrying Forward

The sub-unit on the fruit of cultivation is the tail of the Second Yoga-Station, and here the threads of the preceding four sub-units each come to their close. Carrying forward three lines from before: first, the previous sub-unit cultivated the thirty-seven factors of awakening to completion into the paths of seeing and cultivation, and this sub-unit speaks of their "fruit" — the four fruits of asceticism (stream-entry → arhat) as the utmost of śrāvaka cultivation-and-realization, counteracting the four afflictions and cutting them off to exhaustion in sequence (13-02-04 the cultivation of yoga); second, the six alternate names for the person (ascetic, brahmin, and the rest) are of one vein with the twenty-eight classes, and the even-portioned and thin-dust types carry straight on from the five modes and the five stilling-the-mind contemplations (the objects for purifying conduct) — this sub-unit clarifies the pace of the three kinds of practitioner in cultivating the preparatory effort, the thin-dust type being most swift because it has no three obstructions (13-02-01 the person · 13-02-02 the object); third, the four māras and the measureless deeds of Māra are, with the warning about the "counterfeit right Dharma" of the ruin of the yoga of deviant conduct in the sub-unit before last, a paired demon-revealing mirror, both being obstructions to the path of cultivation, which the yoga practitioner should rightly and thoroughly know and keep apart from (13-02-03 the ruin of yoga). Gathering toward what comes after: the closing heading, the three causes and conditions of "setting out to empty and fruitless result" (the faculties, the instruction, the meditative stability), gathers up the dispositions of the eighteen headings that opened the station — the faculties being the person, the instruction being the heading on instruction, the meditative stability being the stability accomplished through object and attention — and the verdict of fruitful or fruitless is precisely the summation of the Second Yoga-Station. The Second Yoga-Station being concluded, the thread of "the one who takes up existence," expounding cultivation-and-realization by entering from the "person," carries on into the Third Yoga-Station (13-03). Within this one station, the five sub-units — the person, the object, the training, the cultivation, and the fruit — join head to tail, and here the whole course of the śrāvaka path comes to its summit.

Teaching arc: the moment the Third Yoga-Station opens its mouth, what it speaks of is cultivating yoga in earnest. Yet it is in no hurry to teach you how to enter concentration; instead it first lays out a long string of preliminary means — going to receive a teacher, being questioned, establishing the five sites, guarding-and-nurturing the provisions, choosing a place of seclusion and sitting down. The treatise, at its very opening, carries its own "master uddāna," setting out all eight matters of the whole station in one breath: going-and-greeting-and-inquiring · searching-out · establishing · guarding-and-nurturing · departure (seclusion) · one-pointedness · the purifying of obstruction · the cultivation of attention; the ancient masters read it as "three gates in all, the third gate then subdivided into five" 〔Kuiji · Dunlun〕. This leaf treats the first five. The point of the eye is this single line: cultivating concentration is not a matter of "I want to, so I do"; it is a matter of "meeting the aptitude" — one must first let a person who has been through it recognize what kind of faculties you are, what basis of affliction you have, before one knows where to settle you and what dharma to give you; only when the provisions stand firm and body and mind are drawn in does concentration sit steady. The preliminaries are not a delay; they are the foundation.

Why Must Cultivating Concentration Begin with Going to Receive a Teacher and Be Questioned?

Practice is not a thing one can accomplish shut up alone behind closed doors. The treatise says: a self-cherishing beginner in cultivation, at the very start of setting out, must first abide in right mindfulness at "four sites" — seeking single-mindedly to comprehend (holding no mind that wrangles to dispute), giving rise to deep reverence (holding no conceited mind), seeking only the surpassingly good (not to display one's own ability), purely to nurture the roots of good in oneself and others (not for gain, honor, or renown) — and only bearing such a mind does he go to visit the preceptor of conduct and the personal instructor who have penetrated yoga 〔ancient masters' transliteration: the preceptor of conduct is the ācārya, the personal instructor is the upādhyāya, the "upstairs-teacher / master"; see the apparatus〕.

Arriving before the teacher, he first requests permission and asks about the proper time, then bares his shoulder and sets his right knee [to the ground], joins his palms and lowers his face, and with gentle words inquires: "In this practice of yoga I wish to seek instruction; may you expound it for me." — This passage paints the very bearing and tone of a practitioner meeting his teacher for the first time.

The teacher is first to "console, encourage, and rouse" him. Here the treatise strikes out nine paired contrasts, each one saying "beings are thus, yet you alone can be so":

Beings fall into heedlessness and delight in heedlessness — you alone can be unheedful and delight in cultivating departure; Beings have long fallen into the perilous dungeon of grief and suffering — you alone seek liberation from this dungeon; Beings are constantly bound by the fetters, manacles, cangue, and chains of craving, hatred, and delusion — you alone seek to break this binding; Beings walk the perilous road of the wilderness of birth-and-death — you alone seek to cross beyond this perilous road; Beings meet with a famine of the roots of good — you alone seek roots of good rich and abundant; Beings fall into the robber-foes of affliction, into vast dread — you alone seek the ultimate, ever-blissful nirvāṇa; Beings are devoured by the grievous illness of affliction — you alone seek the foremost illness-free nirvāṇa; Beings are drowned in the four kinds of torrent — you alone seek to cross over this torrent; Beings have entered the vast darkness of ignorance (avidyā) — you alone seek the light of great wisdom.

Read down all nine in one breath, and the weight of "all others drown, I alone seek to be pulled out" comes forth — the teacher does not first teach the dharma; he first hammers into the disciple's heart the four words "rare and precious," describing this road. After rousing him, the teacher then examines him at the "four sites of examining inquiry": Have you single-mindedly taken refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Saṅgha, and left the outsider ways? Have you already purely cultivated the holy life, your moral conduct pure and your view upright? Have you heard and retained the noble-truth teachings? Did you truly go forth to realize the quiescent nirvāṇa? — With these four questions answered, the teacher has the measure of the disciple's grounding in mind.

By What Does the Teacher Recognize Your Aptitude?

Having questioned him, if the disciple answers "Yes," the teacher then formally "searches him out" in four matters: what vow he has set forth, what lineage, what faculties, what conduct. Searching-out has four methods — examining inquiry, discourse, observing the marks of what he does, and the knowledge of another's mind. The ancient masters point out a sequence: for a person of sharp faculties, the first method alone, "examining inquiry," suffices to search it out; a person of dull faculties cannot even state it for himself, and one must then use the latter three methods to test him minutely 〔Kuiji · Dunlun citing Kuiji〕.

The most instructive part is the passage on "testing lineage and testing conduct by discourse." Testing lineage: the teacher speaks in turn the dharma corresponding to each of the three vehicles — śrāvaka, pratyekabuddha, Great Vehicle — and watches which vehicle, when heard, makes the disciple leap up in joy and deeply understand; whichever lineage is within him, hearing the corresponding dharma makes him rejoice, and hearing another leaves him unmoved; the lineage is thus "tested" out. Testing conduct shows even more of the brush's power:

To a person of the conduct of craving, when "the pure and sublime" is spoken of (the adornment of the buddha-land wrought of the seven jewels), he gives rise to the utmost pure faith and loving delight, his body-hairs all stand erect, he weeps tears of moving sorrow, outwardly glossy-smooth, inwardly gentle — here the ancient masters especially single out: this "pure and sublime" refers to the adornment of the buddha-land, not to the outer objects of desire; the objects of desire cannot arouse such pure faith 〔Dunlun · Kuiji〕. A person of the conduct of hatred reacts exactly the reverse of the above. A person of the conduct of delusion, hearing the dharma of "the definite penetration of nirvāṇa," gives rise instead to the utmost fright and dread — the ancient masters say: he is like a person of dull faculties, who must strain even to understand a coarse and shallow dharma, how much more nirvāṇa, and so is frightened the moment he hears it 〔Dunlun〕. A person of the conduct of conceit, hearing the right Dharma, does not much take it to heart in faith; a person of the conduct of discursive thought lends his ear to listen yet is scattered in mind, losing what he hears as he hears it, asking again and again.

The point of the eye of this passage the ancient masters mark out plainly. That a person of the conduct of craving, hearing "the pure and sublime," gives rise to pure faith — the masters make clear that this "pure and sublime" refers to the buddha-land's adornment of the seven jewels, not to outer objects of desire 〔Dunlun · Kuiji〕. When all is said, this is "the object leading the mind along" — the very same meaning that, in another fascicle, at the passage on "craving's enwrapment dwelling in the body," the ancient masters point to in their sharpest single line: 「為境制伏心，非心能伏境」 tr. "it is the object that subdues the mind, not the mind that can subdue the object" 〔Dunlun · Kuiji〕: before the counteragent has been applied, it is the object that leads the mind along, not the mind that holds down the object. To recognize a person's basis of affliction to just this degree serves a purpose: in the later passage on "the cultivation of attention" (Subject 8), the five kinds of conduct are each to be matched, dose by dose, with a counteracting object (craving matched with the impure, hatred with loving-kindness, delusion with dependent origination, conceit with the differentiation of elements, discursive thought with counting the breath). Take the sick one's pulse accurately first, and only then is the medicine prescribed aright.

Establishing at the Five Sites: Laying the Foundation for Cultivating Concentration

The aptitude tested and now clear, the teacher then establishes the disciple at "five sites": guarding-and-nurturing the provisions for concentration, seclusion, the one-pointedness of mind, the purifying of obstruction, and the cultivation of attention. The latter three are matters of the true cultivation of calm-and-insight, kept for a later leaf; this leaf first lays the foundation of the first two — the provisions and seclusion.

Guarding-and-nurturing the provisions for concentration the treatise does not build from a fresh hearth. The ancient masters state it plainly: these provisions are precisely the "fourteen gates of the provisions for the two paths, mundane and supramundane," already expounded in the stage of departure of the First Yoga-Station — from the discipline of the moral code, the discipline of the faculties, knowing the measure in food, the yoga of wakefulness in the first and last watches, and abiding with right awareness, all the way to the adornments of the śramaṇa; here it is "expounded at length as there, and its text taken up again" 〔Dunlun〕. What is called "guarding-and-nurturing" is to keep these wholesome dharmas already gained from being lost, and further to give rise to yearning for the more surpassing wholesome dharmas and to be ever diligent. The household won by the earlier cultivation of departure must, when one is about to enter concentration, first be held fast — this is guarding-and-nurturing.

Seclusion is divided into three fullnesses: of place, of deportment, and of seclusion. First, "place": whether an āraṇya (a place empty and quiet — the ancient masters say one must go a krośa and a half from the village 〔Dunlun〕), or the foot of a forest tree, or an empty and quiet room. These place-names in the treatise all carry a picture, and the ancient masters gloss two out-of-the-way terms in passing: a "heap of rice-straw" is a stack piled up from the rice-stalks left in the fields of the Western Country after the harvest, where a practitioner may take shelter beneath the stack; "bedding of the margins" is bedding utterly coarse and worn, broken past anyone's wanting, cast away on the ground 〔Dunlun〕 — to choose such a spot and use such bedding shows exactly the true colors of one secluded, who does not covet ease. The place must further have "five fullnesses": a spot comely and pure, delightful to dwell in; day and night still, with few mosquitoes, gadflies, and poisonous touches; without the terrors of tigers, wolves, robbers, and the like; where robes and food and requisites are not hard to seek; and where good spiritual friends and co-practitioners take one in and set one right — with all five complete, only then is it a good place for cultivating severance.

The Five Reasons within the Sitting-Posture: Why Must One Sit Cross-Legged?

The passage on "fullness of deportment" most deserves a close telling. The treatise says the practitioner, in the three periods of the day and the first watch, does walking and seated meditation, in the middle watch lies on the right side, and in the last watch quickly rises again — the schedule set first. Then, coming to the sitting, why must one sit specifically "cross-legged"? The treatise does not bid you fold your legs out of nothing; it rightly discerns five reasons and only so sits:

First, once the body is drawn in, pliancy most easily arises — this posture best conduces to the arising of pliancy; second, one can sit long, not tiring easily; third, this is an "uncommon dharma" — outsiders and their treatises have no such way of sitting; fourth, the form is comely, and others, on seeing it, at once give rise to faith and reverence; fifth, this is the sitting permitted alike by buddha after buddha and their disciples, praised alike by the noble ones. See the five reasons plainly, and one knows that sitting upright cross-legged is no mere form; it has its own reason of body and mind.

Seated, one must further "straighten the body, righten the vow, and abide in turned-back mindfulness." Straightening the body is rousing and raising the body to make it straight and erect — the body once erect, torpor and drowsiness cannot entangle it. Rightening the vow is making the mind free of flattery and deceit, pliant, upright, and straight — the mind once upright, outer objects cannot scatter it. Turned-back mindfulness is abiding in a mindfulness that "turns its back": the mindfulness corresponding to attention in accord with principle turns its back on all the black class [of dharmas]; the mindfulness taking the mark of concentration as its object turns its back on and dispels all the objects of the non-concentrated ground — hence it is called "turned-back mindfulness," turning its back on the defiled dharmas of birth-and-death, facing toward the uncontaminated ground of concentration. 〔Dunlun and Kuiji already identify these five reasons for sitting cross-legged and two senses of turned-back mindfulness in an earlier seated-meditation passage. They expressly say "there are five [restatements], as will be expounded at length in the thirtieth fascicle" — directing the detailed gloss to the present fascicle.〕

Fullness of seclusion is gathered at the last, divided into the two of body and mind: bodily seclusion is not dwelling mingled with the throngs of householders and those gone forth, alone and without companion; mental seclusion is secluding oneself from all defiled and neutral attention and cultivating only the attention of the concentrated ground, wholesome in nature and able to draw forth benefit and welfare, together with the preliminary attention that is the provisions for concentration. The body secluded from clamor, the mind secluded from defilement, the four — place, deportment, body, and mind — are gathered as one matter and named together seclusion.

Carrying Forward

At this point the preliminaries stand complete. Looking back over what this passage has done: first it tests the aptitude (letting the teacher recognize your vow, lineage, faculties, and conduct), then it sets up the provisions (holding fast the household of moral good won in the stage of departure), and last it accomplishes seclusion (choosing a spot empty and quiet, straightening the body and sitting upright, body and mind both secluded). The root of cultivating concentration is here made firm.

The next step — only then does it come to "the one-pointedness of mind" (Subject 6, the later leaf 13-03-02) — the true cultivation of calm-and-insight, the nine kinds of mental abiding and the four kinds of vipaśyanā, which are to be expounded in earnest from there. Kuiji, glossing to the end of this leaf, likewise runs straight on into "what is the one-pointedness of mind". The preliminaries are not an appendage to cultivating concentration; they are its root; the aptitude tested clear, the provisions set up, seclusion accomplished — only then does this tree of calm-and-insight have soil in which to grow. The whole map of the śrāvaka's cultivation of yoga sets out in earnest from this passage of establishing.

Teaching arc: with the preliminaries established, this leaf takes up in earnest the teaching of "cultivating meditation" — how the mind is bound in place step by step (tranquillity), and how, from being bound, it turns into contemplative illumination (insight). Tranquillity has one full chart: the nine mental abidings, from hauling the mind back by force to running on effortlessly of itself; the six forces are what push it along, and the four attentions are the tightening and loosening of the mind's effort. Insight then has the four insights and the object-differentiated-by-six-matters, applied dose by dose to the five stilling contemplations. The eye is in the last layer: the "object-image" that the tranquillity-and-insight cultivated by the śrāvaka rests upon — the Saṃdhinirmocana-sūtra judges it in a single stroke — the image is nothing but the appearance of consciousness. The one-pointedness of mind of the Śrāvaka Stage is pointed by the sūtra itself toward Consciousness-Only. This is the greatest difference between this leaf and the establishing passage (whose eye is light): on this leaf the doctrinal eye is heavy.

What Counts as "Meditation" at All?

First the definition. What is "one-pointedness of mind"? It is not nailing a single thought fast and unmoving, but "repeatedly recollecting an object of the same class, flowing on, consorting with a blameless ease, keeping the mind in unbroken continuity" — again and again recollecting an object of one same class, the mind flowing on continuously like water, unmixed with any taint of fault, consorting with a certain settled ease. "An object of the same class" is not the grasping of one single point, but "a class resembling the thing-to-be-known" (many, yet of one same class); to make the mind operate rightly with this same-class object as its field is what is named meditation.

This one-pointedness of mind opens toward both sides: the one within the nine mental abidings is the tranquillity (śamatha) division; the one within the four wisdom-practices is the insight (vipaśyanā) division. Within one leaf, both tranquillity and insight are complete.

The Nine Stations: From Hauling the Mind Back by Force to Running On Effortlessly

The nine mental abidings are one full chart of the whole course of tranquillity. Do not take them for nine coordinate names set side by side; they are a single line along which the mind is broken in:

• Inner abiding — at the first, the mind is gathered back in one grip from the outer colors, sounds, smells, tastes, and touches, and bound within. This is hauling by force.
• Even abiding — the just-bound mind is still coarse and restless; by the two expedients of "continuity" and "clarifying," it is ground fine and gathered all round into abiding.
• Settled abiding — once mindfulness is lost it scatters out again, and one gathers it back and settles it upon the inner object.
• Close abiding — relying on repeated abiding in mindfulness, attending again and again so that the mind abides within, and not letting it wander off far.
• Tamed — the marks of color, sound, smell, taste, and touch, and of greed, hatred, delusion, man and woman, are what most hook the mind into scattering; first take these marks as "fault," and once the thought of fault is roused, the mind is broken and no longer flows loose.
• Stilled — evil thoughts of desire, ill-will, and harm, and the secondary afflictions such as the hindrance of covetousness, come to stir it; likewise take them as the thought of fault, and the mind is brought to rest.
• Utterly stilled — should mindfulness be lost for a moment and those two (evil thoughts, secondary afflictions) briefly poke up, at once they are not endured but "severed, expelled, vomited out."
• Single-pointed absorption — reaching here, there is still exertion and effort, but already the meditative equipoise abides continuously, without gap and without break.
• Holding-in-equipoise — repeated cultivation has become the cause and condition, and one attains the path that is "without exertion, without effort, running on of itself"; not relying on force, the mind continues of itself, unscattered.

Looked at across the nine stations, this is a road "from exertion to spontaneity": at the head one must haul by force, grind, and again and again gather back; in the middle one holds down scattering and affliction by the thought of fault; at the last it comes of itself, and the mind abides down of its own accord.

What pushes these nine stations along is the six forces — hearing, reflection, recollection, full awareness, vigor, and repeated practice. The ancients match force to abiding cleanly: the two forces of hearing and reflection accomplish inner abiding and even abiding (at the first, hearing and reflecting set the mind up within); the force of recollection accomplishes settled abiding and close abiding (once mindfulness is lost, one relies on recollection to gather it back); the force of full awareness accomplishes tamed and stilled (relying on full awareness to regulate the marks and afflictions); the force of vigor accomplishes utterly stilled and single-pointed absorption (severing what momentarily rises relies on vigor); the force of repeated practice accomplishes holding-in-equipoise 〔Dunlun · Kuiji〕.

And the tightening and loosening of the mind's effort is the four attentions: inner and even abiding require "striving-operation" (exertion); from settled abiding to utterly stilled is "interrupted-operation" (there is still gap and break); single-pointed absorption is "uninterrupted-operation" (no more gap and break); holding-in-equipoise is "effortless-operation" (running on of itself without strain). The effort goes from tight to loose, matching exactly that road from exertion to spontaneity. The ancients further point out that these same four attentions serve when one comes to cultivate insight, so the four attentions "run through both the tranquillity and insight divisions" 〔Dunlun〕.

〔Appended: of the nine abidings, the ancients gloss only a few names — "even abiding (apart from sinking and floating) · all-round abiding (examining and contemplating all round) · clarifying (apart from disorder, stilled) · utterly stilled (mindfulness lost, something suddenly rises, and is at once expelled)" — the rest following the treatise's own statement. Kuiji also cautions: these nine abidings "are not necessarily the mind within meditative equipoise, but abiding upon a single object is just this" — at the first, gathering the mind is not necessarily attaining meditative equipoise, and so it is said to be "of the tranquillity kind," not that every one is already tranquillity.〕

Tranquillity Turns into Insight: The Four Insights, the Six Matters as Gateway

Once meditation is set and settled, one turns to cultivating insight. The four insights (the four wisdom-practices of contemplation) arise resting upon inner tranquillity: correctly discerning the "extent-of-being" (the range of all things and their marks) · utterly discerning the "way-of-being" (the true principle of things and marks) · thorough investigation (grasping the mark, discerning) · thorough examination (probing and searching with care).

Insight further has "three gateways" (following-the-mark-only → following-investigation → following-examination, from shallow to deep) and the "object-differentiated-by-six-matters." The six matters are the six points of focus of insight — meaning (what meaning a word has) · thing (the two things, inner and outer) · mark (the particular-mark, the common-mark) · class (the fault of the dark class, the merit of the white class) · time (past, future, present) · principle (the four principles of reliance, function, proof, and the nature of things; under proof there open further the three means: authoritative teaching, inference, and direct realization). The treatise says of itself: these six matters are in fact opened out from the "three cognitions" — discerning meaning rouses the cognition of word-meaning, discerning the thing and the particular-mark rouses the cognition of the bounds of the thing, discerning the common-mark, class, time, and principle rouses the cognition of things-as-they-are; the field known to one who cultivates yoga is just this much: word-meaning, together with the extent-of-being and the way-of-being of the thing-to-be-known.

Dose by Dose, Matched to the Five Stilling Contemplations

The six matters are not spoken in a void; the treatise applies them one by one to the five stilling contemplations — five doses against five kinds of affliction:

• The contemplation of the impure remedies desire. The most vivid part is right here: contemplating a corpse from fresh to ruined, the treatise sets out nine marks of decay — bruised-blue, festering, rotted-and-bloated, devoured, the discolored-red, scattered, then bone, chain, bone-chain. One body, from its blood run dry to nothing but a white bone-chain — let desire look down this road, and it thins. In passing the ancients point out the difference between "malodor" and "raw stink": what stinks only once it has decayed is like dung and filth; what stinks the moment it is born is like scallion, garlic, leek, and shallot 〔Dunlun · Kuiji〕.
• The contemplation of loving-kindness remedies hatred. It divides beings into three classes — friend, foe, and neutral — and wishes them all to gain happiness; toward the friend it is not hard, toward the foe it is hardest; yet "there is no reviler and no reviled, no striker and no struck, only sound, only names," and from the beginningless past there is no foe who has not once been my father, mother, or teacher, and friend and foe are not fixed (a friend turns into a foe, a foe into a friend), so one should rouse toward all a "mind of evenness".
• The contemplation of dependent origination remedies delusion. Contemplating the twelve members, "this arising, that arises," within which there is no agent and no experiencer, only two causes (the drawing-in cause, the giving-rise cause) drawing out two fruits (the self-body fruit, the enjoyed-realm fruit), gathering together the whole great mass of nothing but suffering.
• The contemplation of the differentiation of elements remedies conceit. It takes apart this body of one lumped mark into the six elements (earth the hard, water the moist, fire the warm, wind the moving, space the unobstructing, consciousness the discerning), and knows that "body" is only the six elements, a concurrence of many conditions ringing round empty space, designated a "body"; and conceit can no longer stand.
• Mindfulness of breathing (counting the breath) remedies discursive thought. Binding the mind to the in- and out-breath, knowing it long, knowing it short, knowing it pervading the whole body, knowing that in- and out-breath are bound to body and mind and are all impermanent, the scattered, restless discursive thought is gathered in.

Each dose runs the full six matters (meaning, thing, mark, class, time, principle) — this is the consistent format in which the treatise teaches insight.

★The Object-Image Is Nothing but Consciousness: The Consciousness-Only Knot of Śrāvaka Tranquillity-and-Insight

Here we must bring out the heaviest single eye of this leaf. When cultivating insight, what the mind rests upon is an "image" (an object-mark that arises within meditation). What is this image? In the Saṃdhinirmocana-sūtra, the Chapter on the Yoga of Analysis, the bodhisattva Maitreya asks and the World-Honored One answers, cutting through in a single stroke —

「我說識所緣，唯識所現故。」 tr. "I say that the object of consciousness is nothing but the appearance of consciousness." 〔Saṃdhinirmocana〕

The World-Honored One presses the point further with a mirror simile:

「如依善瑩清淨鏡面，以質為緣還見本質，而謂我今見於影像。」 tr. "As, in dependence on a well-burnished, clean mirror-face, with the substance as condition one sees again that very substance, and yet says, 'I now see an image.'" 〔Saṃdhinirmocana〕

Like gazing into a mirror ground to the highest polish, the "image" that appears in the mirror is in fact just the appearance of that substance, and there is no second thing there; the meditation-image that the one who cultivates insight rests upon is likewise "no different from this mind, because that image is nothing but consciousness." And so the sūtra goes on to say that one-pointedness of mind is precisely "penetrating that the image ranged over in meditative equipoise is nothing but consciousness; or, having penetrated this, further reflecting on the way-of-being" 〔Saṃdhinirmocana〕 — first penetrating that the image is nothing but consciousness (this is the "extent-of-being" layer), then reflecting on suchness (this is the "way-of-being" layer). This leaf's "correctly discerning the extent-of-being, utterly discerning the way-of-being" is thus read by the sūtra into the two layers of Consciousness-Only.

This eye is momentous: the tranquillity-and-insight cultivated by the Śrāvaka Stage — the object-image it rests upon is judged by the sūtra itself to be the appearance of consciousness. The tranquillity-and-insight that the śrāvaka cultivates communicates here with the Consciousness-Only meaning — this is a pivot within the scripture, not a later gloss forced on from outside (this rests on the Saṃdhinirmocana scriptural text · spoken by the Buddha · Xuanzang's translation · not a modern reading).

Carrying Forward

Cultivated to the last, tranquillity and insight are not two separate things. The treatise says: resting upon tranquillity, insight is swiftly purified; and resting upon insight, tranquillity grows and expands — tranquillity and insight operate jointly, each benefiting the other.

This leaf applies the object-of-six-matters only to "the five stilling contemplations of the purifying practices"; as for running the six matters upon "the object of skill" (the aggregates, elements, bases, dependent origination, and the possible-and-the-impossible) and "the object that purifies the afflictions" (the mundane and supramundane paths), the treatise says plainly, "I shall speak of these in their own place," pointing to the later section. And these nine mental abidings on this leaf are, moreover, the source of the "nine mental abidings" carried forward by the later Maitreya-Asaṅga treatises (such as the Mahāyānasūtrālaṃkāra and the Mahāyānasaṃgraha lineage) — one full chart of śrāvaka tranquillity, which became the ladder relied upon in common by the Mahāyāna's own tranquillity-and-insight. The essential form of the tranquillity-and-insight that the śrāvaka cultivates in yoga is here complete; on the next leaf, we come to how, within cultivation, one intensifies practice and purifies the obstacles.

Teaching arc: the essence and character of tranquillity-and-insight now set up, this leaf teaches "the working hand and eye of cultivation" — how to apply oneself so that the mind swiftly gains concentration (the nine preparatory efforts of the bright class), how, when the mind rises and falls, to correct it by the four practices of tranquillity, insight, exertion, and equanimity (when the mind is agitated, use tranquillity; when it sinks, use exertion; when it is even, use equanimity), how, when one meets an obstruction in cultivation, to purge it (the four steps of purifying the obstructions, purging the four obstructions), and how, by four kinds of attention, to train the mind so that it can weary and can rejoice (the cultivation of attention · the simile of the goldsmith). The eye is still heavy: the yoked working of tranquillity and insight, reaching the ninth station of mind, "the path turns spontaneously, turns without exertion," and that path of yoked working, that one-pointedness of mind, the Saṃdhinirmocana still adjudges as "penetrating that the image is only its own consciousness" — continuing the consciousness-only eye of doctrine from the nine-stations-of-mind leaf; and this time, the Section on Ascertainment and the Section on the Gathering of Events attest it back again from within the scripture.

The Nine Ways of Applying Oneself: the Right and the Wrong

Cultivating concentration is not a matter of merely sitting hard with the head down; there is a right and a wrong in how one applies oneself. The treatise lists "nine preparatory efforts subsumed under the bright class" (the nine methods of applying oneself in accord with cultivation), and contrary to them are the nine dark-class preparatory efforts — the bright class makes the mind swiftly gain concentration and the meditative concentration advance, the dark class delays at every turn. The nine are:

Corresponding (medicine suited to the disease: one who acts from greed cultivates the impure; from hatred, loving-kindness; from delusion, dependent origination; from conceit, the difference of the elements; from discursive thought, mindfulness of breathing — the ancient masters pierce it through with a single phrase, "medicine corresponds to disease" 〔Dunlun〕); repeated-practice (one has already practiced tranquillity and insight repeatedly, not every thing from the beginning); unslackened (not slackening — coming out of concentration to attend to affairs, one only seeks to finish quickly and then returns to sit; meeting assorted crowds, though one exchanges greetings one does not enter into chatter; more urgent still, one constantly reflects on sudden death and cultivates the perception of impermanence: wind, heat, and phlegm within the body, undigested food, venomous vermin, humans and non-humans can all bring a man to an untimely end, and so even if there be left only one day, one hour, or the span of "an in-breath to an out-breath," this one breath's worth of effort, one must still diligently cultivate yoga upon the Buddha's holy teaching); unerring (one learns as taught by a good teacher, taking nothing in an inverted way, without self-conceit); timely (detailed in the next section); understanding (having taken and understood the several marks well, when one wishes to enter one enters, to abide one abides, to rise one rises); insatiable (with respect to wholesome dharmas one is never satisfied, one seeks ever higher step by step, not taking a little for enough); yoke-not-cast-off (guarding the points of training, not taking up the mark of a beautiful form, being even-minded toward food, diligently cultivating wakefulness, few affairs and few undertakings — like an ox that does not lay down its load, keeping the mind from scattering); correct (detailed in the next section). Of the seventh and eighth, the ancient masters say only the single phrase "the seventh and eighth may be known," and do not gloss them further 〔Dunlun〕.

When the Mind Is Agitated Use Tranquillity, When It Sinks Use Exertion, When It Is Even Use Equanimity

Among the nine preparatory efforts, "timely preparatory effort" most deserves close treatment — it teaches you to watch the state of the mind and use the right method. In cultivation one must, at each and every moment, cultivate the mark of tranquillity, the mark of insight, the mark of exertion, the mark of equanimity, and one must recognize the "intrinsic nature, mark, and time" of each practice:

• Tranquillity: this is the nine marks of mental settling, making the mind markless, non-discriminating, quieted, and unmixedly one. When does one use tranquillity? When the mind is agitated, or when one fears it is about to become agitated.
• Insight: this is the practice of insight of the four practices, three gateways, and six matters. When does one use insight? When the mind sinks, or when one fears it is about to sink.
• Exertion: taking up one "pure and excellent object," one displays, urges on, and gladdens the mind, spurring it up. When does one use exertion? When the mind sinks down, or when one fears it is about to sink down.
• Equanimity: toward the object the mind is undefiled and even, and tranquillity and insight are supple, upright, and turn spontaneously. When does one use equanimity? When the agitated mind within the class of tranquillity and insight has already been liberated, then one uses equanimity — no longer spending further vigor.

Tranquillity counters agitation, exertion counters sinking, equanimity counters evenness — this hand-and-eye of "watching the state and using the right medicine" is spoken exactly the same in the Saṃdhinirmocana-sūtra, where the bodhisattva Maitreya asks and the World-Honored One answers: 「若心掉舉或恐掉舉時……是名止相；若心沈沒或恐沈沒時……是名舉相；……諸無功用作意……是名捨相」 tr. "when the mind is agitated or when one fears agitation … this is named the mark of tranquillity; when the mind sinks or when one fears sinking … this is named the mark of exertion; … the several attentions of no-exertion … these are named the mark of equanimity" 〔Saṃdhinirmocana〕. Not only does the scripture speak thus; the Section on Ascertainment's Śrāvaka Stage also says it over again word for word (「由下劣心慮恐下劣便正修舉，由掉舉心慮恐掉舉便修內止，心得平等便修上捨」 tr. "by an inferior mind, fearing inferiority, one duly cultivates exertion; by an agitated mind, fearing agitation, one cultivates inner tranquillity; the mind gaining evenness, one cultivates the higher equanimity"), and the Section on the Gathering of Events points back still more plainly: these marks of tranquillity, exertion, and equanimity are, 「如聲聞地……已辯其相」 tr. "as the Śrāvaka Stage … has already discriminated their marks" — that is, precisely this present passage of this leaf. Within and without the scripture, they attest one another.

The Painter's Apprentice's Work: Repeated Clearing, Repeated Removing

"Correct preparatory effort" teaches another hand — repeatedly arousing resolute conviction, repeatedly correctly clearing away. With respect to the object-domain, on the one hand one arouses resolute conviction (bringing the object-mark plainly and clearly to presence), and on the other hand one correctly clears it away (setting it down); having aroused it one removes it, having removed it one arouses it again. Fearing you will not understand, the treatise strikes a simile of the painter's apprentice:

The painter's apprentice at first learns to paint; having received the model from his master, he contemplates it and contemplates it and makes that shape after it; having made it, he straightaway wipes it out; having wiped it out, he makes it again. Thus wiping it out and making it repeatedly again, the shape turns ever after clearer, purer, and thoroughly manifest; learning on in this way, after much time he is acclaimed a great painter. If he refuses to wipe out and only paints over the same draft round after round, that shape can never have any hope of clarity and purity.

Cultivating insight is likewise: if one is willing to "repeatedly clear and repeatedly remove," the resolute conviction becomes ever clearer, purer, and more thoroughgoing, and can proceed onward to direct realization; if one merely arouses resolute conviction and refuses to clear it away, one stops right there and cannot advance. Correct clearing-away is of five kinds (inwardly gathering the mind, the attention of not-minding, attention upon another, the attention of counteraction, the attention of the markless element), but what is here properly taken up is only the first two — "inwardly gathering the mind" and "the attention of not-minding." There is yet another hand in cultivation called "how one practices": with respect to the object one "neither takes up nor casts off" — because the practice of tranquillity turns upon the object it is not named casting-off, and because one makes no mark and does not discriminate it is not named taking-up, and thus one inwardly gathers the mind and clears away the object. 〔The ancient master here glosses only as far as the phrase "it is not named casting-off"; the meaning of "not taking up" is stated by the treatise-text itself — see the source.〕

To this point the eighteen preparatory efforts, dark and bright together, have been spoken, and the treatise gathers it in a single line: 「如是名為心一境性」 tr. "such is what is called one-pointedness of mind." — The meaning of sub-section 6, "one-pointedness," which began to be expounded from the nine-stations-of-mind of the previous leaf, is here at last fully expounded.

The Four Obstructions in Cultivation, and the Four Steps for Purging Them

On the road of cultivating concentration one meets obstructions. The treatise says: the yoga practitioner who correctly cultivates preparatory effort is able, by four causal factors, to purge the several obstructions — thoroughly knowing the intrinsic nature of the obstruction, thoroughly knowing the causes and conditions of the obstruction, thoroughly knowing the faults of the obstruction, cultivating the counteraction. The obstructions are of four kinds:

• The obstruction of faint-heartedness: when one diligently cultivates renunciation and seclusion, there is still longing, displeasure, hankering, and grief toward defiled dharmas (the mind softens, retreats). It has six causes and conditions (feebleness of body, excessive preparatory effort, not cultivating preparatory effort, first cultivating preparatory effort, the afflictions being ablaze, not yet having practiced seclusion repeatedly).
• The obstruction of covering-over: this is precisely the five hindrances — sensual desire and the rest.
• The obstruction of discursive thought: this is precisely the defiled discursive thoughts — of desire, of ill-will, of harm, and the rest.
• The obstruction of self-exaltation: having gained a little inferior knowledge-and-vision one exalts oneself — "I can attain it, others cannot."

The causes and conditions of the latter three obstructions lie wholly in "unprincipled attention" — reflecting on the pure mark when one should reflect on the impure, on the mark of hatred when one should reflect on loving-kindness, on darkness when one should reflect on brightness, on the merriments of kin and homeland when one should reflect on tranquillity, on a self and what belongs to a self among the formations of the three times when one should reflect on dependent origination. The counteraction for purging the obstructions likewise fits the disease: for faint-heartedness, use recollection to gladden the mind; for feebleness of body, excess, and first cultivation, use "the even exercise of vigor"; for not cultivating, use reverent listening and inquiry; for the afflictions being ablaze, use such objects as the impure; for not having practiced repeatedly, use the means of reasoned discernment (thinking: because I did not practice repeatedly, therefore now I am faint-hearted, and if I do not practice again the world to come will still be like this, and so I ought to cultivate the delight of seclusion); for the rest — covering-over and the like — use "the principled attention contrary to it" as the counteraction.

The Yoked Working of Tranquillity and Insight: at the Ninth Station of Mind, Turning Spontaneously without Effort

Cultivating to the depths, tranquillity and insight are no longer two separate matters, but can "work yoked together." The treatise says: the two dharmas, one-pointedness of mind and pliancy of body and mind, successively depend upon and belong to each other; and only if these two dharmas gain the transformation of the basis are they thoroughgoing — pliancy of body and mind departing from coarseness-and-heaviness is called "the transformation of the basis," and one-pointedness of mind departing from scatteredness is called "gaining the transformation of the basis" 〔Dunlun points out these two senses〕; and having gained the transformation of the basis, toward the thing known there arises "direct-perception knowledge."

To what point is it named "the path of the yoked working"? The treatise answers: reaching the ninth (meditative equipoise) of the nine marks of mental settling, and, taking this consummate meditative concentration as one's support, cultivating the higher wisdom within the contemplation of dharmas; at that time "the path turns spontaneously, turns without exertion, not through preparatory effort," and insight is pure and bright-white and turns supple, following tranquillity — this alone is named the two, tranquillity and insight, joining together and, in even balance, turning together, and is named the path of the yoked working.

And what is this "path of the yoked working, this one-pointedness of mind"? The Saṃdhinirmocana-sūtra settles it in a single phrase: 「謂通達三摩地所行影像唯是其識；或通達此已，復思惟如性」 tr. "namely, penetrating that the image ranged over in meditative concentration is only its own consciousness; or, having penetrated this, further reflecting on its suchness-nature" 〔Saṃdhinirmocana〕. When the śrāvaka cultivates to the yoked working of tranquillity and insight, the image taken as object is still adjudged by the scripture to be manifested by consciousness-only — this is precisely the continuation of the consciousness-only eye of doctrine from the nine-stations-of-mind leaf above, the one same pivot by which the śrāvaka's tranquillity and insight open onto consciousness-only.

The Goldsmith's Work: Training the Mind by Four Kinds of Attention

Reaching "the cultivation of attention" (sub-section 8 is raised), the treatise teaches the use of four kinds of attention to train the mind so that it can weary and can rejoice: the mind-training (making the mind avert in weariness toward dharmas that may be found wearisome), the mind-moistening (making the mind rejoice with delight toward dharmas that may be found admirable), the pliancy-producing (after wearying and rejoicing, abiding in the inner quieting, counteracting coarseness-and-heaviness of body and mind, producing pliancy of body and mind), and the pure-knowledge-and-vision (using the inwardly stilled mind to cultivate the higher wisdom within the contemplation of dharmas). Of the wearisome there are four grounds (the decline of oneself and of another present before one; the flourishing of oneself and of another passed and altered-and-ruined), and of the admirable three grounds (the Three Jewels, the purity of moral discipline, what one has oneself realized), each recollected so as to make the mind either weary or rejoice.

The treatise strikes a simile of the goldsmith to draw it to a close:

Like a wise and skillful smith of gold and silver (or his apprentice), who at each and every moment smelts and refines the gold and silver, making it cast off all impurity and filth; and again at each and every moment casts it into cool clear water, making it supple and fit; and then, among whatever ornaments he requires, fashions and accomplishes them in various ways.

One who cultivates yoga is likewise: in order to make the mind turn its back on greed and all impurity and filth, one deeply gives rise to weary aversion toward dharmas that may be found wearisome (this is "smelting and casting off the filth," by the mind-training); in order to make the mind proceed toward the delight of pure and wholesome classes, one gives rise to rejoicing-delight toward dharmas that may be found admirable (this is "casting into water and making supple," by the mind-moistening); and then, with respect to whichever class — of tranquillity or of insight — one wishes to establish oneself in, one is able to cleave to it well and harmonize with it well, and accomplish all just as one is convinced.

〔A distinguishing note: the "cultivation of attention" spoken of in this leaf is these four kinds of attention (mind-training · mind-moistening · pliancy-producing · pure-knowledge-and-vision); the "fifth, cultivation of attention" glossed by Kuiji in the ninth fascicle of the Concise Compendium speaks instead of the seven attentions of the later dispassion passage (apprehending-the-aspect → the fruit of the culmination of effort) — the names are the same but what they refer to differs, and the two are not to be confounded.〕

Carrying Forward

This leaf has laid out in full "the working hand and eye of cultivation": the nine ways of applying oneself, the correcting of the mind by tranquillity, insight, exertion, and equanimity, the work of repeated clearing and repeated removing, the four steps of purifying the obstructions, the thoroughgoingness of the path of yoked working, and the training of the mind by the four kinds of attention. The cultivation of attention has only just had its frame set up; the next leaf (13-03-04) will go on to say: how one who is at first cultivating the work "duly establishes himself" in dependence on this cultivation of attention, and cultivates from the beginning — bringing the whole instruction of this one place of tranquillity and insight down onto a person who has just set out on the road. The word "cultivate" in the śrāvaka's cultivation of yoga only there truly comes down to the ground.

Teaching arc: the essence and character of tranquillity-and-insight, the working hand and eye of cultivation, the attention that trains the mind — all three of the earlier leaves have been taught; this last leaf brings the whole set of instructions down onto a single person who has just set out on the road, and shows how the teacher leads him, step by step. First he teaches him to seize the five kinds of aspect, tuning the mind from weary aversion to gladdening delight; midway, by a "simile of the oil-bowl" (spoken by the World-Honored One in a hidden intent) he presses out the concentration of the four foundations of mindfulness; then, following the five mind-stilling contemplations, he moves from "attention of resolute conviction" to "attention to the real" and enters into the four foundations of mindfulness. When the greed-conduct is taught through, the loving-kindness, the dependent origination, the difference of elements, and the counting of the breath — one path is given to each of the other four conducts. Last comes "the accomplishment of attention": the pliancy of body and mind grows from faint and slight to a filling of the whole body, and only then does the practitioner first gain "one possessed of attention" — the single word "cultivate" of the Third Yoga-Station only here truly comes down onto the ground and first tastes its fruit.

First Seize the Five Kinds of Aspect, and Tune the Mind

The teacher teaches the beginner in practice that, when he first sets out to cultivate, he must, in dependence on the three occasions of "seeing, hearing, and inferring by mind," first seize the five kinds of aspect: the aspect of weary aversion, the aspect of gladdening delight, the aspect of danger, the aspect of light, and the aspect of the discernment of matters. These five aspects are not something added out of nowhere — the ancient masters point it out plainly: the aspect of weary aversion, the aspect of danger, and the aspect of the discernment of matters are just the "mind-training" (making it weary) spoken of in the earlier cultivation of attention; the aspect of gladdening delight is just the "mind-moistening" (making it glad); only the aspect of light is newly brought out here 〔Dunlun〕. In other words, to seize the five aspects is precisely to bring the two attentions of "training and moistening" from the previous leaf down into concrete aspects one can lay a hand on.

To teach the greed-conduct person, one then, in dependence on the contemplation of the impure, proceeds along these five aspects. First he seizes the aspect of weary aversion — hearing of, and seeing before his own eyes, others (and even himself) first delighted and afterward suffering, declining and losing, impermanent, and so gives rise to a deep weary loathing: this birth-and-death is heavy suffering; the body one has gained is got with the utmost hardship; and its flourishing too comes at last to ruin. Then he seizes the aspect of gladdening delight — turning back to look at the purity of his own moral discipline: discipline being pure there is "no remorse," no remorse being there is "gladness," gladness being there is "joy," and so all along it moistens and enriches his mind. Weary aversion and gladdening delight, the one pushing and the one drawing, tune the mind onto "turning its back on the dark class and facing the white class."

The Simile of the Oil-Bowl: Concentration Is Something Pressed Out

At the segment on the aspect of danger, the treatise cites a simile the World-Honored One spoke in a hidden intent, which most bears close exposition 〔the treatise · scriptural source the Saṃyukta-āgama no. 623〕:

There was a man of wisdom who said to a man: "You are to hold this bowl brimful of oil and pass through the midst of a great crowd — there where there are ravishing beauties, and singing, dancing, and music, all of which you must avoid; and moreover there is an executioner, following behind you with a bared, drawn sword, and if you let one drop of the bowl's oil fall to the ground, he will there and then cut off your head and sever your life." — Would such a man still let his mind wander off to gaze at those beauties, that singing and dancing?

He would not. Seeing the sharp sword following at his back, in the utmost dread, he single-mindedly guards that bowl of oil — how should he have any care to spare for the crowd's good things and songs and dances? The World-Honored One says: My disciples, reverent and earnest, cultivating the four foundations of mindfulness with a concentrated mind, are just like this. The treatise matches the simile point for point 〔the corresponding simile established by the treatise itself〕: "the crowd's good things" figures the dharmas that can rouse up greed; "the singing, dancing, and music" figures the dharmas that draw on ratiocination and idle elaboration; "the great, and the like, being born, and the like" figures the ten aspects of form and the rest; "the man of wisdom" figures the practitioner of yoga; "the level, brimful bowl of oil" figures the mind that abides in tranquillity; "the executioner with the bared, drawn sword" figures the aspect of danger seized beforehand; and "single-mindedly guarding the bowl, not letting one drop fall to the ground" figures the path that examines and clearly knows the aspect of being-disturbed and not-disturbed, and takes up and holds tranquillity.

The force of this one simile lies here: concentration is not something forcibly clenched out, but something pressed out by "danger." First one looks upon the aspects, the ratiocination, and the accompanying afflictions as a danger "like a sharp sword following behind," and the mind of itself no longer dares to scatter onto the songs and dances and beauties — and this is precisely the place to lay one's hand on the cultivation of the four foundations of mindfulness. 〔This simile is spoken by the World-Honored One in a hidden intent; its Chinese scriptural source is the Saṃyukta-āgama no. 623; the point-for-point corresponding simile is established by the treatise itself.〕

From Resolute Conviction to the Real: When the Feigned Is Practiced to Ripeness, the Real Seeing Comes of Itself

To teach the contemplation of the impure, the treatise uses a two-step course of "attention of resolute conviction → attention to the real." First the attention of resolute conviction: he contemplates a single blue-festered corpse; ripe at that, he contemplates two, three, five, ten, a hundred, a thousand, and so on to an immeasurable number of blue-festered corpses (and on to the chain of bones) filling every quarter and region, without a gap or interval — this is "feigned imagining" to train the mind. Trained to ripeness, he then enters into the attention to the real: he considers — these immeasurable blue-festered corpses I have made by feigned imagining are, compared with the real, still far short of them: from beginningless time, in birth-and-death, the corpses I have cast off in dying and perishing, and the blue-festered corpses that arose, are immeasurable and boundless, and were they gathered up, all the great earth could not hold them; the ones cast off in a single aeon alone would pile up like the "vast and broad flank-mountain" (Mount Vipula to the west of Rājagṛha, narrow above and broad below, shaped like a man's flank 〔Tai's gloss〕). Thus, by what is trained through feigned imagining and by what is illumined through the real, tranquillity-and-insight is no longer imagination but a real seeing.

One Path Leading into the Four Applications of Mindfulness

When the contemplation of the impure is cultivated to ripeness, he then "enters into the four foundations of mindfulness" — upon the inner body (the thirty-six substances), the outer body (the blue-festered corpses in the charnel-ground), and the inner-and-outer body, he cultivates the contemplation that follows over the body; and upon the four immaterial aggregates, dividing them into the class of tranquillity, the class of non-distraction, and the class of insight, he cultivates the contemplation that follows over feeling, over mind, and over dharmas. Inner = one's own body, outer = another's body, inner-and-outer = self and other; this format of "following over body, feeling, mind, and dharmas, inner and outer" is the common bridge by which the five mind-stilling contemplations lead into the four foundations of mindfulness.

Five Kinds of Conduct, Five Paths

The greed-conduct, in dependence on the contemplation of the impure, has been walked through; the remaining four conducts each have their own gate of entering-in —

• The hatred-conduct, in dependence on the contemplation of loving-kindness: upon the three classes of the dear, the hostile, and the neutral, out of the aspiration of "benefit and ease," he first resolves upon one dear, one hostile, and one neutral one, then two, three, and so on to a resolute conviction filling every quarter and region, wishing that all sentient beings gain ease; and when he enters into the attention to the real, he further illumines that, from beginningless time, the hostile and the dear have turned into one another, and there is no true dearness-nature or hostility-nature, and so he gives rise to a "mind of even regard." The ancient masters, moreover, weigh it out: the merit of the real contemplation of loving-kindness surpasses that of the feigned-imagining contemplation of loving-kindness by a hundredfold, a thousandfold, and on to the "upaniṣad fraction" (the utmost in number, for which there is no name that can be rendered 〔Tai〕), which does not reach even a fraction of it.
• The delusion-conduct, in dependence on the contemplation of dependent origination: he illumines that sentient beings, through the four kinds of inversion (reckoning the impermanent as permanent, reckoning suffering as ease, reckoning the impure as pure, reckoning the not-self as self), give rise to greedy craving, work karma, and draw on the pure-and-great mass of suffering; such a right contemplation of the conditioned-nature and dependent origination is all attention to the real.
• The conceit-conduct, in dependence on the contemplation of the difference of elements: he seizes the aspects of the outer six elements — the solid, the moist, the warm, the moving, space, and consciousness — and turns to illumine the six elements of his inner body, then analyzes them layer by layer down to the subtle particle, down to the pores of the space-element, taking apart "the body that is a single aggregated mass," and the conceit-mind can no longer stand. There is furthermore a "variant gate": he contemplates his own body, at the time of death, festering and rotting, burned by fire and scattered by wind, until only the faint, dim space-element remains.
• The ratiocination-conduct, in dependence on the mindfulness of in-and-out breathing: he seizes the aspect of a blow-pipe and a bellows-bag, of a mass of wind coming and going, and, taking the inner in-and-out breath as object, gives rise to resolute conviction, and on to where the wind at all the pores of the whole body follows along in-and-out, as light as "tūla-cotton" (the willow-catkin sort of cotton-down).

Four paths, matched to the malady of the four conducts; and adding the greed-conduct's contemplation of the impure, these are precisely the five mind-stilling contemplations, each the counteragent to each of the five conducts.

★Cultivating to "One Possessed of Attention": the Fruit of the Third Yoga-Station

At the last, the treatise speaks of "the accomplishment of attention" — and this is the fruit of the whole Third Yoga-Station. When one first gives rise to right preparatory effort, the one-pointedness of mind, and the pliancy of body and mind, are still faint and slight, hard to be aware of; later, cultivating the surpassing tranquillity and surpassing insight, body and mind grow gradually clarified and pliant, and that faint-and-slight pliancy grows on and on by degrees. Then a certain "foretoken" arises: it is as though a heavy thing were pressing upon the crown of the head (yet this is not a harming or a distress) — and by this aspect, the coarseness-and-heaviness of mind that can obstruct the "gladdening severance of the afflictions" is wholly removed; the mind's pliancy and pliant-ease arise; and next, a great element of "a preponderant increase of the wind-element" enters the body, the coarseness-and-heaviness of body too is expelled, and the body's pliancy fills the whole body, as though it were overflowing. When it first arises it makes the mind leap up in joy; thereafter its force gradually eases, there is a subtle pliancy that goes along with the body, and the mind turns upon its object in stillness.

From this time on, this beginner in practice is called "one possessed of attention," and falls within the number of "those possessed of attention." Why? Because he has, for the first time, gained "a small portion of the subtle right attention subsumed under the ground of concentration of the form realm" 〔the treatise〕. Having gained this attention, though he enter various lovable objects, sharp and fierce greed does not arise; and even should it arise, a single application of attention expels it; sitting in repose and holding the mind, the pliancy of body and mind arises swiftly, swiftly — and these are the pure characteristics of "one possessed of attention."

A person who has just set out on the road — from seizing the five aspects, to pressing out concentration in dependence on danger, to practicing the real out of resolute conviction, to entering the four foundations of mindfulness, and on to the pliancy of body and mind filling him whole and the first gaining of a small portion of the right attention of the ground of concentration of the form realm — the "cultivate" of the Third Yoga-Station, only here, may be reckoned to have truly come down to the ground and first borne its fruit.

Carrying Forward

With this, the whole course of tranquillity-and-insight of the Third Yoga-Station has been walked through: the preliminary establishing (13-03-01) → the essence of tranquillity-and-insight in the nine stations of mind (13-03-02) → the working hand and eye of cultivation in the nine preparatory efforts that purify the obstructions (13-03-03) → the beginner in practice coming down to the ground and accomplishing "one possessed of attention" (this leaf). And "one possessed of attention" is not the terminus but only the threshold — the treatise says that one who gains this attention "has the strength and the capacity to cultivate well the preparatory effort of the object that purifies the defilements." The mundane dispassion of the object-that-purifies-the-defilements (the seven attentions), and the supramundane direct realization of the truths, are set forth at length only in the Fourth Yoga-Station. In cultivating yoga, the śrāvaka first gains this key of "one possessed of attention"; only in the next station is the door of dispassion and direct realization formally pushed open.

The teaching arc: the Third Yoga-Station set the foundation of "concentration" firmly in place (preliminary practice → the nine stations of mind → the purifying of hindrances → the accomplishing of one who has attention); by the Fourth Yoga-Station, the road forks — for one who has already attained attention, only two paths remain onward: the worldly path (suppressing the afflictions by the six aspects, becoming free of the taint of the lower ground, and being reborn upward among the several heavens) and the world-transcending path (contemplating the four truths, severing the afflictions, and realizing nirvāṇa). This leaf first expounds how the worldly path "becomes free from desire." What the treatise gives is not a single formula but seven stages of work: apprehending-the-aspect · resolute-conviction · seclusion · joy-gathering · investigation · culmination-of-effort · fruit-of-culmination — step by step suppressing the taint of the desire realm, of the superior class, the middle class, and the inferior class, in succession. The point of the eye lies at the last stage of work: the "suppression" of the worldly path can suppress what is active but cannot suppress the root of the seeds — 「此由暫時伏斷方便，非是畢竟永害種子」 tr. "this is by the expedient of provisional suppression-and-severance, and is not the ultimate permanent harming of the seeds." That one thread of the seed is left for the world-transcending path's vajra-like concentration to "permanently harm." The ceiling of the worldly path is drawn just here.

After Cultivating to "Having Attention," Only Two Roads Remain

At the end of the Third Yoga-Station, the practitioner accomplished "having attention" — he attained a partial right attention of the form-realm concentration-ground. The treatise says that, at this step, 「唯有二趣，更無所餘」 tr. "there are only two courses, and nothing further remains": one is the worldly 〔path〕, the other is the world-transcending 〔path〕. The practitioner cultivates this attention much; his pliancy and one-pointedness of mind grow more expansive by day and night; and once the attention is firm and vigorous, he rightly grasps the characteristics in both the tranquillity class and the insight class, readying himself to set intensified effort in motion toward either the worldly path or the world-transcending path.

Which persons will walk the worldly path? The treatise lists four kinds: all non-Buddhists; those in the true Dharma whose faculties are weak and inferior, who have first cultivated the practice of tranquillity; those whose faculties are indeed sharp but whose roots of goodness are not yet matured; and — all bodhisattvas, because they delight in realizing great awakening in a future life and do not seek realization in the present life. The ancient masters expounded the fourth kind thoroughly: the bodhisattva's buddha-fruit is a matter of the future; though he does set intensified effort in motion in the present life, it is a walking of the worldly path "to ripen sentient beings within birth-and-death"; and the moment his mind turns toward the future buddha-fruit, that is the world-transcending path 〔Kuiji; Dunlun citing Kuiji〕. Among these four kinds, there are further the ordinary beings "with the full bond" and those still in training "not with the full bond" — showing that the worldly path is no monopoly of ordinary beings: noble ones still in training can also use it to suppress the afflictions and be reborn upward. Shentai (Tai) reads it further as "four kinds of person suppressing the afflictions by the six aspects," naming each one by one 〔Dunlun citing Tai〕.

To Become Free from the Desires of the Desire Realm Is to Walk Seven Stages of Work

To become free from the desires of the desire realm, the treatise says one 「由七作意方能獲得」 tr. "can obtain it only through the seven attentions." These seven stages of work are one road that suppresses the taint of the desire realm in succession:

The attention that apprehends the aspect — first see the "desire" clearly and see the "concentration" as calm: by the six matters (meaning · thing · characteristic · class · time · principle) investigate the coarse aspect of the desires of the desire realm, and know the calm aspect of the first meditative absorption. This is still only the stage mingled with hearing and reflection. The attention of resolute conviction — passing beyond hearing and reflection, using cultivation alone, giving rise to resolute conviction toward the coarse aspect and the calm aspect again and again. The attention of seclusion — the "path that severs the afflictions" first arises, severing the superior-class afflictions of the desire realm. The attention that gathers joy — delighting in severance and in seclusion, touching a partial joy-and-bliss of seclusion, severing the middle-class afflictions. The attention of investigation — turning back to examine whether one still has any covetous desire toward the desires, casting aside the overweening pride of "I am already free from desire." The attention of the culmination of effort — the counteragent-attention against all afflictions arises, severing the inferior-class afflictions. The attention that is the fruit of the culmination of effort — one enters upon the root first meditative absorption concentration, the joy-and-bliss born of seclusion pervades the parts of the body, and one abides with the perfected five factors — this is named "the successive realizing of freedom from the desire of the desire realm."

The seven stages of work are matched with the successive severing of the superior, middle, and inferior classes: seclusion severs the superior class, joy-gathering severs the middle class, the culmination of effort severs the inferior class. The ancient masters further pick out a distinction between the lesser and the greater vehicle: the lesser vehicle, expounding these six matters and six aspects, must do all six in full; the greater vehicle, however, 「唯一行即得」 tr. "attains it by a single aspect alone," accomplishing it by any single one of the six aspects, whatever attention it be 〔Kuiji; Dunlun citing Kuiji〕.

The Attention that Apprehends the Aspect: Seeing the Coarseness of "Desire" down to the Bone

The first of the seven attentions costs the most contemplative force. Apprehending-the-aspect must investigate the "coarseness" of the desires to the full — and the treatise strikes eight similes in a row to display how perilous, brittle, and tainted-and-evil the desires are: the desires are 「猶如骨鎖、如凝血肉、如草炬火、如一分炭火、如大毒蛇、如夢所見、如假借得的莊嚴具、如樹端的果」 tr. "like a chain of bones, like a lump of congealed blood-and-flesh, like a torch of straw, like a portion of glowing coals, like a great venomous snake, like what is seen in a dream, like ornaments obtained on loan, like fruit at a tree's tip". Kuiji brings out each simile's point: like a chain of bones, they are detestable; like congealed blood-and-flesh, they are unreal and to be wearied of; like a torch of straw, they are extinguished in a moment; like a portion of glowing coals (a bit of fire) they can burn up mountains and marshes — a little desire can burn up the roots of goodness 〔Kuiji〕. The eight similes all take one and the same image: desire looks to have relish, but is in truth a chain of bones and congealed blood, a torch of straw and glowing coals — not to be touched, not to be kept. Only when one has seen the coarseness of the desires to this degree can the mind give rise to "wearied-detachment" toward the desire realm and to "gladness" toward the first meditative absorption — the work of apprehending-the-aspect lies precisely in this one thought of "gladness toward the above, wearied-detachment toward the below."

The Two Ends of the Scale: Apprehending-the-Aspect Has Not Yet Severed the Afflictions, Yet the Afflictions No Longer Arise

Here there is a difficult point the ancient masters love to ask. When the attention that apprehends the aspect arises, the practitioner is still of a form-realm mind, and the afflictions of the desire realm have not been severed at their root — this is like a steelyard, at the instant when its two ends dip low and rise high: how, then, can one count it as "having attained apprehending-the-aspect," as having conformed to seclusion?

Kuiji poses and answers it well of his own accord: before apprehending-the-aspect, the hearing and reflection of the desire realm had also performed a "wearying-of desire," yet could not conform to the severing of the afflictions of the lower realm; only at apprehending-the-aspect and resolute-conviction can one conform to seclusion and sever the desires of the lower realm. Therefore apprehending-the-aspect and resolute-conviction, though they cannot "sever" the afflictions, can make the afflictions "not arise" — just as one at the first fruit has not yet cultivated freedom from desire, yet has already attained the not-yet-arrived concentration; and just as, when a wholesome mind arises, the evil mind does not arise — but this "not arising" is "a not-arising not by way of severance" (not that it is severed and so does not arise, but that the wholesome mind holds it down so that it does not arise); only at the attention of seclusion is it truly a "not-arising by way of severance" 〔Kuiji; Dunlun〕. This simile of the two ends of the scale points out exactly, and clearly, that subtle position of the worldly path — "suppressed, but not yet severed."

★ Suppression — To What Point Does It Suppress? — The Ceiling of the Worldly Path

When the seven attentions reach "the culmination of effort," it is the closing stage of freedom from desire on the worldly path, and also the point of the eye of this leaf. The treatise itself draws a line: from all the afflictions of the desire realm the mind 「心得離繫」 tr. "attains release-from-bond," but 「此由暫時伏斷方便，非是畢竟永害種子」 tr. "this is by the expedient of provisional suppression-and-severance, and is not the ultimate permanent harming of the seeds". — Released from bond, yet not with the seeds of the afflictions severed at their root.

The ancient masters expound this line more finely. Kuiji asks: this "suppression" — what does it suppress? He answers: 「此伏斷若伏上心，若伏種子，二俱須伏」 tr. "this suppression-and-severance, whether it be the suppressing of the active mind or the suppressing of the seeds, must in both cases suppress" — one must suppress both the active mind that has arisen and the seeds; but only when one suppresses to the point that "the seeds' capacity to produce the fruit of active manifestation" is blocked does it count as an uninterrupted path 〔Kuiji; Dunlun citing Kuiji〕. In other words: the worldly path's suppression of the afflictions by the six aspects can suppress the seeds' vigor of "producing active manifestation," yet cannot suppress away the very substance of the seeds. This is the ceiling of the worldly path — it can carry you to freedom from desire and rebirth upward, even to birth in the sphere of neither-perception-nor-non-perception, yet cannot sever the root of birth-and-death.

That one thread of the seed is settled only at the end of the world-transcending path: once the vajra-like concentration (vajropama-samādhi) arises, it 「無間永害一切煩惱品麁重種子」 tr. "without interval permanently harms the coarse-and-heavy seeds of all the classes of affliction" (see 13-04-04). The worldly path's suppression of the active manifestation's capacity, and the world-transcending path's harming of the seeds' very substance — the one suppressing, the other harming — the watershed of the two paths lies just upon this "seed." The doctrine of seeds in the śrāvaka's cultivation of the path buds precisely from this one word "suppress" of the culmination of effort.

Seven Stages of Work, Gathered into Four Modes of Mind

Finally, the treatise gathers the seven attentions into four modes of mind: apprehending-the-aspect and resolute-conviction are together named "conforming attention" (operating together with the counteragent of wearied-destruction); seclusion and the culmination of effort are together named "counteragent attention" (operating together with the counteragent that severs); joy-gathering is both a counteragent and an "attention conducive to purity" — the ancient masters say that "conducive to purity" is the cultivating of the six recollections (recollection of the Buddha and the rest), taking as one's object the pure nirvāṇa and the qualities of the Buddha, and so it is named pure 〔Kuiji〕; investigation is named "attention conducive to investigation." As for the "fruit" stage, the attention that is the fruit of the culmination of effort, the ancient masters say it is not gathered into these four gates — because the seventh attention is a fruit, while the former six and these four are all causes; causes may subsume one another, but a fruit is not subsumed 〔Kuiji; Dunlun〕. Seven causes and one fruit, orderly and distinct.

Carrying Forward

This set of seven attentions is used not only at the first meditative absorption. The treatise says, "just as the first meditative absorption concentration has seven kinds of attention," so the second, third, and fourth absorptions, and up to the sphere of infinite space and the sphere of neither-perception-nor-non-perception, 「各有七種作意」 tr. "each have seven kinds of attention" — change the ground, and one regards the lower ground as coarse and the higher ground as calm, and walks the seven stages of work once again. Unfolded to the apprehending-the-aspect of the second meditative absorption, one has already come to regard "applied and sustained thought" as the coarse aspect (applied thought being the coarse mind-speech nature, sustained thought the fine mind-speech nature); and the extensive expounding of the concentration-characteristics of the four absorptions and the four formless attainments then unfolds in the next leaf (13-04-02, "the several concentrations, extensively expounded").

And that "thread of the seed" left by this leaf — suppressing the active manifestation, not yet harming the seed — is the buried foreshadowing of the whole Fourth Yoga-Station: it runs all the way to the path of seeing of the world-transcending path (the seed-basis of the knowledge-of-dharma and the knowledge-in-kind · 13-04-03), and to the "permanent harming of the seeds" of the vajra-like concentration (13-04-04). The worldly path delivers a person to the summit of the three realms; only the world-transcending path uproots the root of birth-and-death. The whole map of the śrāvaka's freedom from desire and cultivation of the path is, from these seven stages of work, formally spread open.

Teaching arc: the previous leaf (freedom from desire by the seven attentions) told "how one becomes free"; this leaf tells "once free, what is it that one attains" — the four meditative absorptions, the four formless attainments, the two mindless attainments, the five supernormal powers, and, going as far as this, where one is reborn by cultivating these concentrations (the differences of rebirth). The treatise takes the fixed formula of each concentration and takes it apart word by word (born of seclusion, joy and bliss; born of concentration, joy and bliss; secluded-from-joy, sublime bliss; the purity of equanimity and mindfulness…) — it is a map, drawn to the real, of the mundane path's stages of "departing the lower defilement, realizing the higher concentration." The point of the eye lies in three places of ancient-master reading flavored with consciousness-only: one and the same feeling of joy is, with respect to its gladdening of the store consciousness, named "bliss," and with respect to its gladdening of the mental consciousness, named "joy"; the "nothingness" of the base of nothingness is what the other-dependent nature manifests, while its principle-that-there-is-truly-nothing is of the perfectly-accomplished nature 〔Tai, citing the Treatise on the Buddha-Ground〕; when an arhat enters the state without remaining basis he must enter the attainment of cessation, extinguishing the mind of the six consciousnesses and abiding only in the store consciousness as he passes into death. — This "store consciousness" line carries down from the previous leaf's "subduing the seeds" and opens up the transcendent path's "the store consciousness as the truth of origination" (13-04-03); it is one vein in which the śrāvaka's several concentrations run through into the consciousness-only meaning.

Freed from Desire — What Concentration Is It That One Attains? — The Four Meditative Absorptions Taken Apart Phrase by Phrase

In treating the four meditative absorptions, the treatise gives no vague impression; it takes that string of fixed formulas in the scriptures and glosses it one word, one word, straight through.

The first meditative absorption, "born of seclusion, joy and bliss": "seclusion" is having obtained the attention of the culmination of effort and having become secluded from the several unwholesome states of the desire-realm; "born" is that which is produced without interval from this, and so is named "born of seclusion"; "joy and bliss" is having obtained the aim-and-benefit one had sought, and having obtained a vast pliancy, a well-attuned harmony of body and mind. The ancient masters add a note on the difference between the keen and the dull: the keen-faculty person, on the ninth path of liberation, enters the root absorption straightway, and so it is said "born, joy and bliss"; the dull-faculty person, on the ninth path of liberation, still resides in the access-concentration, and only after some time enters the root 〔Dunlun citing Kuiji〕. That "dwelling settled" reaches to seven days and seven nights — the ancient masters say this is because, in the desire-realm, abstaining from morsel-food one can hold out seven days 〔Dunlun citing Kuiji〕.

The second meditative absorption, "born of concentration, joy and bliss": here there is an important distinction — both alike are "born, joy and bliss," yet the first meditative absorption is called "born of seclusion" and the second "born of concentration"; where lies the difference? The ancient masters pick it out cleanly: the first meditative absorption is "the first departure from the bondage of the desire-realm," and so is named born of seclusion; the second meditative absorption is "having already obtained concentration first," born by the skillful means proceeding without interval from the root absorption, and so is named born of concentration 〔Dunlun · Kuiji〕. Again, the term "inner unified purity" the Lesser Vehicle glosses as "trust" (trusting-and-knowing that the afflictions of the concentration-ground can be departed), whereas the Great Vehicle uses "equanimity, mindfulness, and correct knowing, secluded from the disturbance of applied and sustained thought" to gloss it 〔Dunlun〕 — a difference of Greater- and Lesser-Vehicle reading, which the ancient masters record side by side.

The third meditative absorption, "secluded-from-joy, sublime bliss": free of desire for joy, dwelling settled in equanimity, having correct mindfulness and correct knowing. The ancient masters say that below the third meditative absorption there is also "bliss," but that is the gladdening of "joy"; only at the third meditative absorption, where the gladdening of the mind is at its utmost, is it properly named "bliss" 〔Dunlun citing Kuiji〕. The fourth meditative absorption, "the purity of equanimity and mindfulness": the cutting-off of bliss, the cutting-off of pain; the calamities of the lower grounds — applied and sustained thought, joy and bliss, in-breath and out-breath — are all cut off, and the mind dwells unmoving.

★One and the Same Feeling of Joy — Why Divided into "Bliss" and "Joy"?

This is the first place in this leaf where the flavor of consciousness-only is the point of the eye. The "bliss" and "joy" of the first and second meditative absorptions the treatise sets side by side; and the ancient masters ask: these two are both, at bottom, "the feeling of joy" — how are they divided into two names? Dunlun answers in a thoroughly consciousness-only way: "The bliss of the first and second absorptions, at bottom, is both the feeling of joy; by meaning it is divided into two — with respect to the side gladdening the store consciousness it is named bliss, with respect to the side gladdening the mental consciousness it is named joy". One and the same feeling of joy, falling on the side of "gladdening the store consciousness," is called "bliss"; falling on the side of "gladdening the mental consciousness," is called "joy." A single feeling is, by the depth or shallowness of the consciousness it stirs, divided out into the two names of bliss and joy — and this already reads the śrāvaka's concentration-bliss into the structure of the eight consciousnesses.

Climbing Up to "Nothingness" — What Can Still Be Taken as Object? — The Four Formless Attainments and the Dependent-and-True

The four formless attainments are the peeling-away, layer by layer, of the "conception of form": the base of infinite space transcends the conception of form, the conception of resistance, and the manifold conceptions; the base of infinite consciousness takes infinite consciousness as object; the base of nothingness casts off even consciousness and forms the imagined-supposition resolute conviction of "there being nothing at all"; the base of neither-perception-nor-non-perception passes beyond even the "conception of nothingness," retaining only a subtle conception coursing with respect to the object-without-mark. The ancient masters set out in full the Tripiṭaka-master's (Xuanzang's) gloss that there are three kinds of person who "give rise to the space-concentration" — the noble one, the inner ordinary being, and the outsider — each taking object differently, the outsider going so far as to reckon the space-concentration to be the utmost fruit 〔Dunlun〕.

The second place where the flavor of consciousness-only is the point of the eye lies at the "base of nothingness." Shentai asks: the base of nothingness forms a "no-object" reading — then what is it that is manifested? The answer (citing the Treatise on the Buddha-Ground): "Because it forms a no-object reading, there is a 'markless' [something] manifested facing the mind, and this is subsumed under the other-dependent nature; the true principle-that-there-is-nothing is subsumed under the perfectly-accomplished nature; the nothing that the mind manifests is subsumed under the other-dependent nature" 〔Tai, cited by Dunlun〕. — That mark of "nothingness" which the base of nothingness manifests is transformed by the mind and belongs to the other-dependent nature; while the "true principle-that-there-is-nothing" that it denotes belongs to the perfectly-accomplished nature. Even the object of the highest formless attainment the ancient masters judge, by the threefold nature, as to its belonging. 〔This reading was set forth by Shentai and recorded by Dunlun's Notes; it is not Dunlun's own gloss, nor is it found in Kuiji's Concise Compendium.〕

The Attainment of No-Perception and the Attainment of Cessation: The Two "Mindless" States of the Worldling and the Noble One

In dependence on the meditative absorptions one is further able to enter "two mindless attainments." The treatise divides worldling and noble one very cleanly: the attainment of no-perception only the various ordinary beings (worldlings) are able to enter, by the skillful means of the "attention that turns away from perception," being free of desire for the Heaven of Universal Purity but not yet free of desire for the Heaven of Great Fruit; the attainment of cessation only the various noble ones are able to enter, by the skillful means of the "attention that stills perception and feeling," it being what a trainee free of desire for the base of nothingness, or an arhat, enters. The one is a worldling "wearying of perception and seeking no-perception," the other a noble one "stilling perception and feeling" — both alike "mindless," yet the manner of the path and the rank of position are entirely different.

The third place where the flavor of consciousness-only is the point of the eye lies at the extremity of the attainment of cessation. Dunlun, citing the "text of the lower ascertainment," says: "When any arhat wishes to enter the state without remaining basis he must enter the attainment of cessation, extinguishing the mind of the six consciousnesses and abiding only in the store consciousness as he passes into death". When an arhat enters the nirvāṇa without remaining basis, the mind of the first six consciousnesses is all extinguished, and only the store consciousness holds the body as he passes into death. — This one line reads the śrāvaka's "entering cessation" down to the level of the store consciousness holding the body: the six consciousnesses can be extinguished, but the store consciousness is that which withdraws last. 〔Kuiji's Concise Compendium here says only "this is with respect to cutting off delusion and gaining realization," and does not bring out the store-consciousness language.〕

Concentration Can Issue the Supernormal Powers: The Twelve Conceptions and the Five Powers

Having obtained the root, pure meditative absorption, one cultivates in dependence on it the "twelve conceptions," and is able to draw forth the five supernormal powers. The ancient masters judge the twelve conceptions into five classes, matched with the five powers: the first five conceptions (lightness-and-buoyancy · softness · the element of space · the mutual conforming of body and mind · resolute conviction) cultivate the supernormal power of the divine bases; the sixth, the conception of recollecting in sequence what one has formerly undergone and done, cultivates the supernormal power of former abodes; the seventh, the conception of the sounds of the gatherings of the manifold sorts, cultivates the supernormal power of the divine ear; the eighth, the conception of the marks of light and color, cultivates the supernormal knowledge of death and rebirth (the divine eye); the ninth, the conception of the alterations of color wrought by the afflictions, cultivates the supernormal power of the differences of mind; the last three (the conceptions of liberation · the dominant bases · the totalities) draw forth the noble supernormal powers and non-contention, the knowledge of aspiration, and the four unobstructed discernments 〔Dunlun〕.

In treating these conceptions, the treatise's similes are all very solid: the conception of lightness-and-buoyancy, the body light as tūla-cotton (which the ancient masters gloss: the cocoon of the wild silkworm), like folded floss, like a wheel of wind; the conception of softness, the body soft as a floss-sack, as fur-down, as well-worked [soft material]. When the supernormal power of the divine bases is accomplished, there are the eighteen transformations — manifesting many bodies from one body, passing straight through walls unobstructed, treading water as on earth, flying through empty space, and so on to freedom-of-movement as far as the Brahma-world. The ancient masters judge it finely: "The transforming is the substance of the power, the transformation is the fruit of the power"; and the freedom-of-movement in the Brahma-world can revolve only the one portion of the derived matter that is "color and sound," and cannot revolve the tangible or the five faculties 〔Dunlun〕. The supernormal powers are not a boundless Dharma-might; they have their range and their principle-and-track.

Cultivating These Concentrations — Where Is One Reborn? — The Differences of Rebirth

To cultivate the mundane concentrations is not only to enjoy them in the present state; it also draws into motion one's receiving of rebirth in a coming life. The treatise matches them out one by one: cultivating the lower, middling, and higher grades of the four meditative absorptions, one is reborn, according to what befits, in the Heaven of the Brahmā-multitude, the Brahmā-ministers, the Great Brahmā, and so on up to the Heavens of No Clouds, of Merit-Born, of Great Fruit; the non-returner noble one, by interfusingly perfuming-and-cultivating with the uncontaminated fourth meditative absorption, is reborn in the Five Pure Abodes (No Affliction · No Heat · Good Manifestation · Good Vision · the Summit of Form); cultivating the four formless attainments, one is reborn in the four formless "attendant heavens"; cultivating the attainment of no-perception, one is reborn in the Heaven of Beings without Perception. The ancient masters gloss in order the reasons the several heavens get their names: the three heavens of the first absorption are "named from their departure from the defilement of desire, all named Brahmā"; the second absorption is "named from the strength or weakness of the bodily radiance"; the third absorption is "named from the pure bliss it attains"; the Five Pure Abodes are "born by the karma of uncontaminated interfused-perfuming cultivation" 〔Dunlun citing Jing · Kuiji〕. A map of the mundane path's "cultivating the cause and drawing on the fruit" is here fully rounded out.

Carrying Forward

The several concentrations extensively analyzed in this leaf are the real of what the previous leaf's "seven attentions" departed as lower defilement and realized as higher concentration — the seven attentions are "how one departs," the concentrations are "the stages one departs to." And that store-consciousness line running through them — bliss and joy divided respectively to store consciousness and mental consciousness · the base of nothingness as dependent-and-true · the attainment of cessation extinguishing the six consciousnesses and abiding only in the store consciousness — carries down from the previous leaf's culmination-of-effort "subduing the seeds (not harming the substance of the seeds)," and opens up the transcendent path: by the time of 13-04-03, the "craving" of the truth of origination will be judged by the ancient masters as "the latent-proclivity seed within the store-consciousness basis, the cause of future existence." The mundane path sends a person to the summit of the three realms, and even to the point of extinguishing the six consciousnesses and abiding only in the store consciousness; yet the defiling seeds of the store consciousness itself remain — and this is precisely the root that the transcendent path must go on to pull up. This leaf's closing "marks of one freed from desire" draws to an end, and fascicle 33 concludes; the treatise's fascicle 34 turns into "the path tending toward transcendence," which the next leaf opens up.

The teaching arc: the mundane path carries a person to the summit of the three realms, yet cannot cut off the root of birth-and-death (it only suppresses the active [afflictions], it does not injure the seeds). To truly cut it off, one must change one's road — the supramundane path: in dependence on the field that is the four noble truths, one cultivates all the way from the attention that apprehends the aspect up to the supreme worldly dharma, and enters the path of seeing. What this fascicle treats is the preparatory-effort segment "before the path of seeing": awakening to the truths by the sixteen modes of the four truths, with the truth of suffering further opened out into ten modes, impermanence established by the three sources of knowledge, and the non-Buddhist doctrine of a Sovereign Lord refuted; then, passing through the attention of resolute conviction, subduing that last "coarse-grade conceit 'I am,'" it reaches warmth, summit, acceptance, and the supreme worldly dharma — the last moment of the worldly mind. The point of the eye lies at the truth of origination: where, after all, is the root of birth-and-death struck down? The treatise-text says "the latent proclivity of affliction is attached to a support," and the ancient masters (Jing and Kuiji) point, in a single line, to the marrow of it — that "support" is the store consciousness / the fundamental consciousness, and the "craving" of the truth of origination is the latent-proclivity seed within the store-consciousness support, the cause of the after-existence of the future world. Here the śrāvaka's direct realization of the four truths joins its line to the store-consciousness doctrine of Consciousness-Only.

The Mundane Path Has Reached Its Summit — How Does One Truly Cut Off Birth-and-Death? — Turning to the Four Noble Truths

"Thus has been set forth the mundane path onward" — the mundane path has been discussed to its end. If one would proceed toward the supramundane path, the treatise says: "one should take as one's basis the field that is the four noble truths, and gradually arouse seven kinds of attention." It is the same seven attentions (apprehending the aspect → … → the fruit of the culmination of preparatory effort), but this time round what is taken as object is not "the lower ground is coarse, the higher ground is quiescent," but the four noble truths.

The first, the attention that apprehends the aspect, awakens to the aspect of the truths by four modes for each of the four truths: the four modes of the truth of suffering — impermanence, suffering, emptiness, no-self; the four modes of the truth of origination — cause, origination, arising, condition; the four modes of the truth of cessation — cessation, stilling, the sublime, departure; the four modes of the truth of the path — the path, the fitting, the coursing, the going-forth. The sixteen modes are the guiding rope of the supramundane apprehending-of-the-aspect. The ancient masters read the seven attentions as matched onto the five stages: apprehending-the-aspect falls in the five stilling-of-mind [contemplations] and the general-and-specific foundations of mindfulness; resolute conviction in the four wholesome roots; seclusion in the path of seeing; investigation in the path of cultivation; joy-gathering up to before the vajra-like concentration 〔Dunlun · Kuiji〕 — a whole map from ordinary being to sage.

Suffering Must Be Seen from Ten Sides

The apprehending-of-the-aspect of the truth of suffering costs the most contemplative effort. The treatise-text first opens out the four modes "impermanence — suffering — emptiness — no-self" into ten modes for contemplation (alteration · decay · separation · dharma-nature · coming-together · bondage-and-fetter · the unlovely · the insecure · the ungettable · the not-self-determining), and then establishes them by the three sources of knowledge: the source of authoritative teaching (the World-Honored One's saying that all conditioned things are impermanent, and the seven-suns fire-disaster burning up the receptacle-world), the source of direct seeing (the fifteen inner alterations and the sixteen outer alterations, seen one by one), and the source of inference (the momentary arising-and-ceasing is subtle, not got by direct perception, and so must be inferred). The ten modes are at last gathered back into four: the former five (alteration ~ coming-together) enter the mode of impermanence; three modes (bondage-and-fetter · the unlovely · the insecure) enter the mode of suffering; the mode of the ungettable enters the mode of emptiness; the mode of the not-self-determining enters the mode of no-self 〔Dunlun〕.

In this passage on the source of inference, the treatise-text, in passing, refutes the non-Buddhist "doctrine of a Sovereign Lord." The ancient masters lay bare the joints of this debate: if one says the "Sovereign Lord" (īśvara) is the cause of the conditioned things, then if the Sovereign Lord originally exists, the conditioned things should originally exist together with him, and should not be called "conditioned things" (for a conditioned thing is what has arising-and-ceasing); the non-Buddhist changes his tack and says "the Sovereign Lord originally exists, the conditioned things arise afterward," and the author of the treatise presses him with a single line — since the conditioned things arise afterward, they do not rely on the Sovereign Lord alone but must await further conditions (wish, effort, prayer), and then all conditioned things use another dharma as their cause; why falsely posit that useless Sovereign Lord 〔Kuiji · Dunlun〕? Layer upon layer he presses until the non-Buddhist has nowhere to stand.

★ Where Is the Root of Birth-and-Death Struck? — The "Craving" of the Truth of Origination and the Store Consciousness

This is the eye of this fascicle, and the pivot on which the śrāvaka's four truths open into the doctrine of Consciousness-Only.

The four modes of the truth of origination (cause · origination · arising · condition) — the treatise-text gives three "furthermore"s, each a layer deeper than the last. In the third "furthermore," the treatise says a weighty line on its own account: "namely, rightly knowing that the latent proclivity of affliction is attached to a support, and the latent proclivity of craving and the like is the cause of the arising of the after-existence of the future world". — The latent proclivity of affliction is "attached" to a certain "support"; and this latent proclivity of "craving" is precisely the cause of the arising of the "after-existence" (the next span of life) of the future world.

What, then, is that "support"? The ancient masters point it to the bottom in a single line. The master Jing says: "The attention that apprehends the aspect further rightly knows that the latent proclivity of craving and the like within the store-consciousness support is the cause of after-existence" 〔Dunlun〕 — that support is the store consciousness; the latent proclivity of craving is the cause of after-existence stored within the store consciousness. Kuiji puts it more finely: "knowing that the seeds of the various afflictions are attached to the support that is the fundamental consciousness … this one seed and the latter three active [modes] are named craving, and craving further gathers-and-amasses the after-existence, and so is named origination" 〔Dunlun quoting Kuiji · Kuiji, Concise Compendium, own composition〕 — the seeds of affliction are attached to the "fundamental consciousness" (the store consciousness); the "craving" of the truth of origination is "one seed + the latter three active [modes]": the seed's power to produce the future fruit is "cause," its gathering-and-amassing of the after-existence is "origination," its arousing of the present craving operating together with delight-and-greed is "arising," and its drawing-forth of the various future delights-and-cravings is "condition." All four senses of the truth of origination — cause, origination, arising, condition — turn about "the seed of craving gathered under the store consciousness."

This judgment reads the śrāvaka's "truth of origination" down to the level of the store consciousness: the root of birth-and-death is not in the outer object, not on the surface of the active afflictions, but in each and every "seed of the latent proclivity of craving" within the store consciousness. The mundane path can suppress the active [afflictions] but cannot suppress this root (the previous two fascicles); what the supramundane path must cut off is precisely this. 〔This is the reading of the ancient masters Jing and Kuiji, carrying forward the store-consciousness line of the previous fascicles; the treatise-text on its own account stops at "attached to a support," and the name of the store consciousness is what the ancient masters point out, transmitted according to what is real.〕

Cessation and the Path: Four Modes for Each

The truth of origination once made clear, the apprehending-of-the-aspect of the two truths of cessation and the path follows smoothly. The four modes of the truth of cessation: the ceasing-and-stilling of the truth of origination without remainder is named "cessation"; the quiescence of the truth of suffering without remainder is named "stilling"; this cessation-and-stilling, being foremost, most excellent, and unsurpassed, is named "the sublime"; being constant and abiding and a permanent going-forth-and-departure, it is named "departure." The four modes of the truth of the path: with respect to the objects to be known it can thoroughly seek out, and so is named "the path"; what is sought out is real and not false, and so is named "the fitting"; it can turn in accordance as it really is by way of the four-truths gateways, and so is named "the coursing"; it wholly and singly tends toward nirvāṇa, and so is named "the going-forth" 〔Kuiji · Dunlun〕. At this point the "attention that apprehends the aspect of the inward direct realization of the four noble truths" is complete. Further, the knowledge of the truths by direct seeing and the knowledge of the truths by inference contemplated by the apprehending-of-the-aspect and the resolute conviction — the treatise-text says these "are the support that is able to produce the seed of the knowledge of dharmas and the knowledge of the kinds" — the seeds of the two knowledges of the path of seeing are perfumed into being within this preparatory contemplation (the ancient masters' reading of the innate and the newly-perfumed [seeds] is left to the next fascicle, the path-of-seeing segment).

★ The Conceit "I Am": The Last Obstruction Before Direct Realization

The apprehending-of-the-aspect is still interspersed with hearing and reflection; what surpasses hearing and reflection and repeatedly arouses resolute conviction, wholly and singly in the meditative ground, is the attention of resolute conviction. At this point, within the field of the two truths of suffering and origination, one gains "the knowledge of the boundless," and arouses a whole train of "resolute convictions of the boundless" (of impermanence, suffering, emptiness-and-no-self, evil conduct, going to evil destinies…) — illumining that the flowing-and-turning of birth-and-death is boundless and limitless, and only the ceasing-and-stilling without remainder is the way out.

But it is just here that direct realization gets stuck. The treatise-text says: the practitioner, though in his heart he deeply aspires and delights in nirvāṇa, yet "cannot enter into it." Why? Because he still has a "coarse-grade conceit 'I am' that can obstruct direct realization" turning with interval and without interval — the thought it strikes is: "I can contemplate suffering, I can contemplate origination … such dharmas are what I possess." Even the thought "I am cultivating the four truths" is the conceit "I am." The ancient masters lay it out clearly: the attention of resolute conviction is said to be "wholly and singly within concentration" precisely because the apprehending-of-the-aspect was still interspersed with hearing and reflection, whereas resolute conviction is wholly and singly wholesome, taking a single object unmixed, and so is fit to counteract this conceit "I am" 〔Kuiji · Dunlun · Kuiji〕.

How is it broken? The method the treatise gives is "taking mind as the object of mind, singly diligent and without relief": casting off that attention which operates spontaneously in accordance [with the conceit] (carrying the conceit "I am" along with it), when the former contemplating mind fades and ceases, the later mind arises without interval to contemplate, thought following on thought without leaving a seam for the conceit "I am" to slip in 〔Kuiji〕. Turning back, too, he contemplates this "mind-continuum" itself: arising ever-newly, it is impermanent; entering the appropriating aggregates, it is suffering; being apart from a second self-dharma, it is empty; being born from conditions and not self-determining, it is no-self — with mind he contemplates mind, and enters into the four truths. The conceit "I am" once subdued, the right knowledge that "the object-that-apprehends and the object-apprehended are equal-and-equal" gets to arise.

Warmth · Summit · Acceptance · the Supreme Worldly Dharma: The Last Moment of the Worldly Mind

The right knowledge once arisen, one enters the four wholesome roots of preparatory effort. The ancient masters say that these four wholesome roots are "all named acceptance, in that they bear-and-receive the principle of the truths," and are given their names only by the three grades of lesser, middling, and superior 〔Jing · Tai · Dunlun〕: the equal-and-equal knowledge gathered by lesser acceptance is named warmth, that by middling acceptance is named summit, that by superior acceptance is named the acceptance in accord with the truths. Advancing further, he casts off the preparatory effort of the "further and further contemplating mind" and abides in a mind "without preparatory effort and without discrimination" — at this time his mind "seems to cease but has not really ceased, seems to be without an object yet is not without a condition" (the ancient masters: the non-conceptual knowledge is quiescent and subtle and named cessation; this one merely "seems" like it, is not really it, and so is named seeming-to-cease 〔Kuiji · Dunlun · Kuiji〕). The treatise-text also makes a special distinction: there is another sort of foolish person overcast by delightful sleep, who within "seeming-to-cease" gives rise to overweening conceit, taking himself for [one of] direct realization — this is not it.

At the last moment of the non-discriminating mind, giving rise to an inward attention with respect to the aforecontemplated principle of the noble truths — this is the supreme worldly dharma: the last boundary, the very verge, of the worldly conditioned things. From this without interval the supramundane mind arises, not a worldly mind.

Carrying Forward

This fascicle is the "preparatory effort" of the supramundane path — from the apprehending-of-the-aspect of the four truths, up to the supreme worldly dharma, "the last moment of the worldly mind." One step further, and it is the path of seeing: the supramundane mind arises, the afflictions-of-view are cut off all at once, and the third fruit is gained (the next fascicle, 13-04-04).

And that store-consciousness line running through it all knots into a joint at this fascicle: the mundane path suppresses the active [manifestation] of the seeds (13-04-01), the store consciousness holds the body and holds the defiled seeds (13-04-02), and here, the "craving" of the truth of origination is judged by the ancient masters to be "the latent-proclivity seed attached to the store-consciousness support / the fundamental consciousness, the cause of the arising of after-existence" — and the root of birth-and-death is recognized in the store consciousness. Recognizing this root, the vajra-like concentration of the path of seeing in the next fascicle at last has its target: "without interval, it permanently injures all the coarse-and-heavy seeds of the class of affliction." The śrāvaka cultivating the four truths seems not to speak of the store consciousness at all; but this vein of pointing by the ancient masters lets it join its line to the fundamental consciousness of Consciousness-Only — and this is exactly where the power of eye lies that reads the Yogācārabhūmi as "one treatise" rather than as two disjointed halves of śrāvaka and Consciousness-Only.

Teaching arc: the highest-worldly dharmas are "the last thought-moment of the worldly mind"; their very next thought is the transcendent — the path of seeing. This leaf begins from the path of seeing and runs all the way to the vajra-like concentration, the knowledge of exhaustion and the knowledge of non-arising, and the becoming of an arhat; and its final line, "all of this is named the Śrāvaka Stage," draws the whole Śrāvaka Stage (Stage 13, the four yoga-stations) to a close. The point of the eye: that store-consciousness/seed thread that runs through the Fourth Yoga-Station knots itself shut right here. The worldly path only "suppresses" the seeds' activity (13-04-01); the store consciousness "holds" the defiled seeds as the cause of further existence (13-04-02/03); and what the stage of preparatory effort cultivates is precisely the "perfuming" that draws out the seeds of the dharma-knowledge and consequent-knowledge of the path of seeing — the knowledge of the path of seeing arises from this "seed-support site"; and the moment the vajra-like concentration arises, it "harms forever, without interval, the coarse-and-heavy seeds of all the classes of affliction." Suppress, hold, know, perfume, eliminate — five acts all fastened to one and the same "seed," and it is only at the vajra-like [concentration] that the ultimate is reached. The whole course of the śrāvaka's practice-and-realization, at this one eliminating, comes to its curtain-fall.

The Next Thought after the Highest-Worldly Dharmas: the Path of Seeing, Eliminating the Afflictions of View All at Once

The highest-worldly dharmas are the last boundary-mark of the worldly formations. The treatise says: "with no interval after this, the transcendent mind arises, not the worldly mind" — the next thought steps across into the transcendent. This one thought is called the path of seeing: raising an inward attention upon the principle of the noble truths contemplated before, "the non-discriminating decisive knowledge and the directly-seeing knowledge arise," and the coarse-and-heavy of the classes of affliction of the three realms, "to be eliminated by the path of seeing, attached to the basis," is eliminated all at once.

The afflictions of view being eliminated, one gains the three fruits according to the depth of one's prior freedom from craving: one who has already, by the worldly path, become free of craving for the desire realm, on entering the path of seeing becomes a non-returner (the ancient masters call him the "leap-over non-returner" — he need not pass through the stream-enterer and once-returner; the moment he enters the path of seeing he leaps to the non-returner); one who is doubly free of craving gains the once-returner; one not yet free of craving gains the stream-enterer 〔Dunlun · Kuiji〕. The afflictions of the desire realm that the worldly path (the previous three leaves) "suppressed" have, at the path of seeing, their view-portion eliminated at last — the boundary between suppressing and eliminating shows itself once more.

The term "direct realization" the ancient masters gloss well: when at the path of seeing one realizes suchness, the object is thus markless and the knowledge too is markless, and "the two markless [factors] join together, without discord," observing [each other] face to face — hence the name "direct realization"; just as two kṣatriyas (of the same caste) join in one place, without discord or contention, because they are of one kind 〔Kuiji · Dunlun〕. Only when the knowing and the known are as one is it called "direct" realization.

Where Does the Knowledge of the Path of Seeing Come From? — the Seeds Perfumed by Preparatory Effort

This is the first point of the eye in this leaf. The path of seeing gives rise to two knowledges, the "dharma-knowledge and the consequent-knowledge"; from where do the seeds of this knowledge come? At the end of the previous leaf of the treatise-text there is a line: the directly-seen-truth knowledge and the inferring-truth knowledge contemplated in [the attentions of] the apprehension of aspects and of resolute conviction "are precisely the seed-support site able to give rise to the dharma-knowledge and the consequent-knowledge". The ancient masters read out two senses of this "seed-support site" —

Master Jing says: at the stage of preparatory effort (the previous three expedients), relying on the not-yet-attained concentration and raising the attention of the apprehension of aspects to contemplate the truths above and below, one "is able to perfume and awaken the innate seeds of the dharma-knowledge and consequent-knowledge in the aspect-portion of the path of seeing and cause them to increase" 〔Dunlun〕. Ji (Kuiji) puts it more plainly: making the fourfold-truth contemplation by the five stilling contemplations and the general and particular applications of mindfulness "is precisely the seed-support site of the later uncontaminated consequent-knowledge," and this has two senses — "first, the contaminated, being a condition, can draw forth the uncontaminated, and so is named a seed-support site — this is the sense of newly perfuming; second, at the very time of the five stilling contemplations, one can also once again increase the beginningless uncontaminated seeds" 〔Dunlun · Kuiji, Concise Compendium, own composition〕.

In other words: the fourfold-truth contemplation of the stage of preparatory effort, on the one hand "perfumes and awakens" the innate uncontaminated seeds and causes them to increase, and on the other "newly perfumes" uncontaminated seeds; and the dharma-knowledge and consequent-knowledge of the path of seeing arise from this perfumed "seed-support site." The seed-thread of the store consciousness here takes a turn: the previous leaf (the truth of origination) recognized the "defiled seeds" within the store consciousness (the latent proclivity of craving); this leaf perfumes the "uncontaminated seeds" within the store consciousness (the seeds of the dharma- and consequent-knowledge). One and the same store consciousness — its defiled seeds are to be eliminated, its pure seeds to be perfumed.

The Four Knowledges · the Twelve Marks: the Boundary between the Noble One and the Ordinary Being

With the path of seeing accomplished, the treatise-text lists "twelve marks," the very first being the gaining of the four knowledges: the knowledge that there is only dharma, the knowledge that is not [of] annihilation, the knowledge that is not [of] permanence, and the knowledge that conditioned formations are dependently arisen and like an illusion. The ancient masters point out one by one the ordinary being's false reckoning that each counteracts: "the knowledge that there is only dharma" — in the state of an ordinary being one falsely reckons a real self; on entering the path of seeing one dispels the real self and sees only that there is dharma; "the knowledge that is not [of] annihilation, the knowledge that is not [of] permanence" — the ordinary being falsely reckons annihilation and permanence; on entering the path of seeing one leaves the two views of annihilation and permanence; "the knowledge that the dependently-arisen is like an illusion" — one sees that all formations are dependently arisen and like an illusion 〔Kuiji · Dunlun〕. The remaining eleven marks — that he will finally not fall into the evil destinies, will not commit the five acts of immediate [retribution], will never again undergo an eighth existence, will accomplish the fourfold pure faith … — are all the seal-marks of "the division between the noble and the ordinary": once the path of seeing is past, these become forever irreversible.

From the Path of Cultivation to the Vajra: the Last Eliminating

The path of seeing eliminates the afflictions of view; there remain still the afflictions of cultivation to eliminate. The treatise-text next expounds the path of cultivation — "progressively eliminating the afflictions to be eliminated by cultivation" — and sets forth in sum "the eleven kinds of differentiation of the classes of cultivation" (calm-abiding · insight · the worldly path · the transcendent path · the lower-, middle-, and higher-grade paths · the paths of preparatory effort · the uninterrupted · liberation · further distinction). The attention of investigation investigates again and again what has been and has not been eliminated; the attention of joy-gathering draws near and cultivates; until "the meditative concentration of the last stage of the learner, likened to the vajra, arises", harming forever, without interval, the coarse-and-heavy seeds of all the classes of affliction.

This is the second point of the eye in this leaf, and the knot in which the store-consciousness thread ties itself shut. The ancient masters ask: why does the vajra-like concentration say only that the "uninterrupted path" can eliminate, and not the "path of preparatory effort"? Ji answers penetratingly: "if it is the eliminating of the seeds, it is only the uninterrupted path; if it is the suppressing of the seeds, the path of preparatory effort too has this sense"; the Abhidharma-samuccaya says that the vajra-like concentration takes in the path of preparatory effort as well, but that is said with respect to "suppressing the seeds," while this Yogācārabhūmi, on the strength of "eliminating the seeds," speaks only of the uninterrupted path 〔Dunlun · Kuiji〕. — "Suppressing" the seeds (keeping them from arising into activity) the path of preparatory effort can do, and the worldly path did it too (13-04-01, "the function of the seeds' arising-into-present-activity is suppressed"); but "eliminating" the seeds (harming their very substance forever) belongs to the uninterrupted path of the vajra-like [concentration] alone. Suppressing on one side, eliminating on the other — here they are told apart cleanly: that root the śrāvaka's practice-and-realization sets out to pull up — the defiled seeds within the store consciousness — is only at the vajra-like concentration truly eliminated to exhaustion.

The Arhat: the Thirty-Two Kinds of Excellent Quality

Without interval after the vajra-like concentration, one sets going the knowledge of exhaustion (the contaminants are exhausted — that is, "the knowledge that my birth is already exhausted") and the knowledge of non-arising (the fruit of suffering to come is finally not born), and becomes an arhat — the contaminants exhausted, what was to be done done, all the fetters of existence exhausted. The ancient masters judge the arhat's excellent qualities to be "thirty-two dharmas" 〔Kuiji · Dunlun〕: reaching the fruit of the adept is named "at the very utmost and ultimate"; eliminating the afflictions of the three realms to exhaustion is named "finally without stain"; surpassing the learner to the utmost is named "realizing the utmost limit of the holy life"; free of the "bolts and bars" of the prison of birth-and-death, of the torrent and the yoke; "crushing that iṣīkā" — the ancient masters say the iṣīkā is a lofty and steep mountain in the West; Master Jing takes it as a figure for "the self-exalting of conceit," so that crushing the iṣīkā is crushing the lofty standard of conceit 〔Dunlun〕. He also accomplishes the "six constant abidings" (the six faculties toward the six objects are without gladness and without sorrow, abiding in supreme equanimity, in right mindfulness and right awareness; the ancient masters: taking the three dharmas of equanimity, mindfulness, and right awareness as its substance 〔Kuiji〕); greed, hatred, and delusion exhausted forever, his mind "like open space undefiled, like pure water unclouded." Abiding in the realm of nirvāṇa "with remaining basis" (sustaining the last body possessed), the aggregates drawn forth by prior karma and affliction being exhausted, and there being no remaining grasping, he attains final nirvāṇa in the realm of nirvāṇa "without remaining basis" — "herein there is no one who attains final nirvāṇa at all, just as in birth-and-death there is no one who transmigrates."

All of This Is Named the Śrāvaka Stage

At this point, the treatise-text's one line, "all of this is named the Śrāvaka Stage," draws the whole Śrāvaka Stage to a close. The ancient masters say that this concluding text, "being brief, is lodged within the Fourth Yoga-Station"; and they gloss the final phrase — "the teaching-dharma associated with the śrāvakas is the root of the śrāvaka's practice, just as the assemblages of names, of phrases, and of syllables are the root of compositions, incantations, and heterodox treatises" 〔Dunlun · Kuiji〕. The expositions of Dunlun and Kuiji likewise end here; from here on begins the Pratyekabuddha Stage.

Carrying Forward

Look back over the one hidden thread that runs through the whole Fourth Yoga-Station — the store consciousness/seed: the worldly path "suppresses" the seeds' arising-into-activity, without harming their substance (13-04-01); the store consciousness "holds" the body, and in the attainment of cessation the six consciousnesses cease and only the store consciousness abides (13-04-02); the truth of origination recognizes that the root of birth-and-death is the defiled seeds of craving-as-latent-proclivity within the store consciousness, the cause of further existence-and-birth (13-04-03); and in this leaf, preparatory effort "perfumes" out the uncontaminated seeds of the dharma- and consequent-knowledge of the path of seeing, and the vajra-like concentration "eliminates" to exhaustion the defiled seeds of the afflictions. Suppress → hold → know → perfume → eliminate — five acts, fastened to one and the same "seed," one and the same "store consciousness," and it is only at the one eliminating of the vajra-like [concentration] that the śrāvaka's practice-and-realization reaches its ultimate.

The Śrāvaka Stage seems not to speak of the store consciousness; yet the pointing-out of this one lineage of the ancient masters (Jing · Tai · Ji) links the śrāvaka's path of cultivation up with the root consciousness of the Consciousness-Only teaching. This is exactly the eye that reads the Yogācārabhūmi as "one treatise" — the Śrāvaka Stage is not a "Hīnayāna passage" set at two poles from Consciousness-Only; within the very framework of its practice-and-realization, the seed-sense of the store consciousness lies already buried. The whole Śrāvaka Stage (13-01, the establishing of the first yoga-station; 13-02, the person; 13-03, the calm-and-insight of cultivating yoga; 13-04, the ultimate of the worldly and transcendent paths), at this one line, "all of this is named the Śrāvaka Stage," reaches its complete curtain-fall.