瑜伽師地論 義疏通講 · 冊17

One · The Last of the Seventeen Stages — Where Do the Words "Without Remaining" Fall?

Having walked through sixteen stages, we come to the very end of the Basic Section. This last stage differs from the one before it by a single character: with remaining basis, without remaining basis — 有餘依, 無餘依. This single-character difference — where does it lie?

The Stage with Remaining Basis (Stage 16) is the nirvāṇa-station of the arhat in whom "the affliction, the karma, and the suffering are already stilled, yet the aggregates of one last body still remain"; by the Stage without Remaining Basis, even the aggregates of this one last body have ceased. The Cheng Weishi Lun puts it most directly: nirvāṇa without remaining basis "means just suchness that has passed out beyond the suffering of birth-and-death; the afflictions being already exhausted, the remaining basis too is extinguished, and all sufferings are forever quiescent". What "remains" in "with remaining" is precisely that latter-end body; in "without remaining," the remaining basis too is extinguished. So the Section on Ascertainment marks off the difference between the two realms with a set of matched couplets: "One who dwells with remaining basis falls within the count of [sentient] beings; one who dwells without remaining basis does not fall within the count. One who dwells with remaining basis still has the mass of sufferings; one who dwells without remaining basis is forever apart from the mass of sufferings" — while the body remains, one falls within the count of sentient beings and still has the mass of sufferings; when the body is extinguished, one departs from the count and is apart from suffering.

The treatise subsumes this stage under three aspects: the establishing-designation of the stage, the establishing-designation of quiescence, and the synonyms of quiescence. Let us follow them in order.

Two · How Is Its "Territory" Marked Out? — The Establishing-Designation of the Stage

It is a curious thing: this stage does not first say what it "is"; it first says which "territory" it occupies. Why mark it out in this way?

Because the Stage without Remaining Basis is not some further stage set up outside the seventeen, but that one portion "cut out" from the earlier stages. The treatise says: the Stage without Remaining Basis = the "one portion of five stages" removed earlier — the Stage without Mind, the Stage of What is Attained through Cultivation, the Śrāvaka, the Pratyekabuddha, and the Bodhisattva Stage. Kuiji describes this pair of shears very finely: within the Stage without Mind there are five phases of mindlessness, and of these it is uniquely the phase of "entering nirvāṇa without remaining basis" that belongs to the Stage without Remaining Basis; within the Stage of What is Attained through Cultivation, "its unconditioned [portion] is the substance of the Stage without Remaining Basis, and is here removed"; and from the Śrāvaka and the other stages, "the unconditioned [reached by] the exhaustion of the fruit is selected out". In other words, whatever within these five stages points to "the unconditioned that is ultimate quiescence" all belongs to this last stage. And so Kuiji says of the Stage without Remaining Basis: "the substance of this stage is just what remains over from the earlier stages; its sense is to be inferred from what precedes" — its substance is that portion left over from the earlier stages, the portion pointing to ultimate quiescence.

This is a very deep way of establishing a thing: ultimate nirvāṇa is nowhere else; it is right at the far end of that "unconditioned" toward which each of the stages of practice points, gathered together into a single stage.

Three · There Are Two Kinds of "Extinction" — The Quiescence of Stillness and the Quiescence of Freedom from Harm-and-Distress

When one speaks of "quiescence," it is most easily mistaken for a stubborn emptiness in which nothing at all is left. Precisely here the treatise divides extinction into two kinds, to hold off that mistake.

The quiescence of stillness — this is the aspect of "ceasing." The four kinds of stillness already directly realized in the Stage with Remaining Basis attain their most excellent form in the realm without remaining basis: the stillness of teaching-and-number (the numbers of verbal teaching all cease), the stillness of all bases (departure from the former eight bases), the stillness of the suffering [that arises] from the bases (the suffering born of the eight bases is forever extinguished), and the stillness of the anxious doubt [arising] from the suffering [that arises] from the bases (even that anxious doubt over "whether future suffering will or will not arise" is gone) 〔Dunlun cites Master Jing's explanation〕. To this aspect the treatise fits a simile —

"Because he is without a lowly and inferior mind, he can endure toil and hardship; the liberation toward which he tends is like the extinction of a lamp when [its fuel] is spent." 〔The base text has the final line as 「燈盡滅」 "the extinction of a lamp when [its fuel] is spent"; the Song, Yuan, Ming, and Palace editions have 「證涅槃」 "realizes nirvāṇa," the Sheng and Zhi editions 「燈涅槃」 "the lamp['s] nirvāṇa"; since Dunlun's adjudicating explanation sets up its simile precisely on "the extinction of a lamp," the base text is followed.〕 Dunlun judges the fourth line of this verse to be "the fruit without remaining". When the lamp's oil is spent the flame goes out of itself — it is not that some other hand comes to blow it out; and so it is with the quiescence without remaining basis: the causes, the affliction, the karma, and the suffering, being already exhausted, and the endurance of toil already accomplished, the later suffering does not continue, and it goes out like a lamp whose fuel is spent, with no remaining basis left to burn. Quiescence is not an annihilation that is manufactured; it is the flame going still of itself because its cause is spent.

The quiescence of freedom from harm-and-distress — this is the aspect of "manifesting," and it is also the Consciousness-Only knot of this whole stage. The treatise says it "is not associated with any basis whatsoever, runs counter to the flow-and-turning of all afflictions and sufferings — the true uncontaminated realm made manifest by the arising of the transformation of the basis," and that "it is made manifest by this pure suchness, and is throughout without stain." Mark this well: the extinction without remaining basis is not a nothing-at-all; it is the true uncontaminated realm "made manifest by the transformation of the basis" — the turning-away-from the basis of the afflictions, and the turning-toward the manifesting of suchness. Dunlun points directly to the Consciousness-Only sense of the transformation of the basis: "Following the Mahāyānasaṃgraha's account of the six kinds of transformation of the basis, what is here distinguished is just the perfect and complete transformation". So the other aspect of "without remaining" is precisely the fullness of "suchness made manifest" — what is emptied out is the basis of affliction, karma, and suffering; what is made manifest is the pure suchness throughout without stain. This one line joins the nirvāṇa without remaining basis of the two vehicles onto the very same suchness of the Consciousness-Only transformation of the basis.

The treatise further cites a passage of the Buddha's word to guard this measure: there truly is the "unborn, unarisen, unmade, unconditioned" nirvāṇa, and precisely because there truly is it, one can then speak of the conditioned, flowing-and-turning dharmas as having a "forever going-forth-and-out." Nirvāṇa is not the fictitious opposite of the flowing dharmas; it is the truly existent unconditioned realm that serves as the basis for going forth and out.

Four · Why Pile Up So Many Names? — The Synonyms of Quiescence and the "Inexpressible"

In the last aspect the treatise piles up, all in one breath, some two dozen names: the constant, the enduring, the long-abiding, the dwelling-house, the island, the refuge, the ambrosia, the disease-free, nirvāṇa, the forever cutting-off of all idle proliferation … Why should a single quiescence be set with so many synonyms?

Because it "cannot be numbered." The treatise glosses itself: profound (its merits hard to comprehend), vast (utterly broad and ample), measureless (without exhaustion), numberless (number cannot number it, there being nothing dual to be spoken of). And the reason that "number cannot number it" is a string of "cannot be spoken of": whether it "is" or "is not" cannot be spoken of, whether identical with form or apart from form cannot be spoken of, on down to whether identical with consciousness or apart from consciousness cannot be spoken of — this suchness-made-manifest falls into none of the sentences "is / is-not," "identical-with-the-aggregates / apart-from-the-aggregates."

Precisely because no single sentence can exhaust it, it is pointed at from every side through measureless synonyms: from the side of constant abiding come "the constant, the enduring, the long-abiding, the unchanging"; from the side of taking refuge come "the dwelling-house, the island, the rescue-and-shelter, the refuge, that toward which [beings] tend"; from the side of ease and bliss come "the secure, the ambrosia, the sorrowless, the disease-free"; from the side of departing defilement come "the stainless, the unburning, the unblazing"; and it closes with "nirvāṇa, the forever cutting-off of all idle proliferation." The piling-up of names is not fussiness; it is because the thing itself is apart from speech — it can only be indicated pointing-around from many sides, and can never be exhausted in a single utterance.

Five · Carrying Forward — How the Later Treatises Continue This Stage

The Stage without Remaining Basis is the end of the seventeen stages and the ultimate of the fruit of the three vehicles; the treatises that come after each take up one facet of it and ascertain it broadly, adjudicate it deeply. The veins of the carrying-forward run as follows.

• With the Stage with Remaining Basis (Stage 16) it forms the pair of the two nirvāṇa-realms: with remaining (the body remains · falls within the count · has suffering) / without remaining (the body is extinguished · does not fall within the count · is apart from suffering). The Section on Ascertainment's "proper ascertaining of the two stages, with and without remaining basis" joins the two stages in one ascertainment, distinguishing them broadly through fourteen gates — release-from-bondage, transformation of the basis, dwelling, difference, and the rest; and it ascertains in particular that the transformation of the basis without remaining basis "takes as its cause only the cultivating of the path whose object is suchness … it is not to be fully known, not to be cut off, and so cannot be extinguished" — the suchness-transformation-of-the-basis of the realm without remaining basis is constantly abiding and inextinguishable, not an annihilation.

• The four nirvāṇas of the Cheng Weishi Lun: intrinsically pure by original nature / with remaining basis / without remaining basis / non-abiding. "All sentient beings possess the first; those of the two vehicles who are beyond training may possess the first three; only our World-Honored One may be said to possess all four". Those of the two vehicles beyond training halt at the "dwelling in quiescence" of the [nirvāṇa] without remaining basis; the bodhisattva has further the "quiescent yet non-abiding" of the non-abiding nirvāṇa. The [stage] without remaining basis of the Basic Section is precisely the ultimate toward which those of the two vehicles beyond training tend, and it is likewise the third of the four nirvāṇas of Consciousness-Only.

• The Pratyekabuddha Stage (14) · the Stage with Remaining Basis (16) · the Stage without Remaining Basis (17) in one line: the pratyekabuddha "tends one-pointedly toward quiescence" → the [stage] with remaining basis is "dwelling in quiescence (the body remains)" → the [stage] without remaining basis is "quiescence-and-extinction (the body extinguished)" — the sequence of the fruit of the three vehicles reaches its end here.

• The Stage of What is Attained through Cultivation (12): Jinaputra judges that "the Stage of What is Attained through Cultivation is also a stage with and without remaining basis" — the unconditioned merit accomplished by the wisdom of cultivation is subsumed upward into the [stage] without remaining basis. The fruit of the wisdom of cultivation here passes into the stage of ultimate nirvāṇa. The end of a single stage is, from the first, the resting-place of the whole of practice-and-realization.