瑜伽師地論 義疏通講 · 冊3

The first gateway of the three stages beginning with the Stage with Both Applied and Sustained Thought — "the Designation of Elements." By means of eight items it lays open the whole ladder of meditative cultivation and the whole truth of pleasure and pain across the three realms — the former is "where am I to cultivate toward," the latter is "why must I cultivate at all." This piece unfolds item by item, and wherever a passage is hard, it is taught with a simile the treatise itself already carries.

First, a Question: Why Are These Three Stages Divided by "Applied and Sustained Thought"?

The earlier stages — the Stage Associated with the Five Sense-Consciousnesses, and the Stage of the Mental — spoke of "how the mind operates." At the third stage the treatise shifts its angle: it no longer divides by "which consciousness," but by "how deep the mind has settled into concentration" — and the measuring-rod is "applied thought" (vitarka) and "sustained thought" (vicāra). Applied thought is the coarser layer of deliberation within the mind (the "stir" of first hitting upon a matter); sustained thought is the finer layer of examination (the "scrutiny" of keeping one's gaze on a matter and looking slowly). When one sits and enters concentration, the mind grows still layer by layer: first there is both applied and sustained thought (coarse and fine both present), then no applied thought with only sustained thought remaining, and last both applied and sustained thought come to rest. The treatise takes these three layers as its coordinates: the Stage with Both Applied and Sustained Thought (the desire realm plus the first dhyāna of the form realm — where most of us now stand); the Stage with Sustained Thought Only (the "intermediate absorption" between the first and second dhyānas — cultivate to this and one may become the Great Brahmā); and the Stage with Neither Applied nor Sustained Thought (from the second dhyāna up to the summit of the formless realm).

Here there is a detail exceedingly important, and exceedingly easy to mistake, which the treatise deliberately picks out: to say "neither applied nor sustained thought" is a matter of "whether or not one has left behind the craving for applied and sustained thought," not merely a matter of "whether applied and sustained thought happen to be stirring at this moment." Why? Because one who has not yet left craving may now and then throw up a thought free of applied and sustained thought, and one who has left craving may now and then still have applied and sustained thought actively present — if one looks only at the phenomenon, the two cannot be told apart. What cultivation is concerned with is "whether or not that root has been cut," not the presence or absence of a passing moment. The treatise adds a further stroke: the first dhyāna as subsumed under uncontaminated concentration, though it takes suchness as its object, is likewise called "with both applied and sustained thought" (entered in dependence on the phenomena that are the ground of applied and sustained thought, not by discriminative activity being present) — and this carries "applied and sustained thought" all the way from the concentration of the ordinary being through to uncontaminated concentration, setting it up as the entry-coordinate for the whole cultivation and realization of tranquillity-and-insight. The ancient masters divide the matter here in fullest detail: Jinaputra's Commentary picks out "applied thought means to seek out, sustained thought means to examine" — the wisdom of reflection seeking and searching upon an object, the coarse phase named applied thought, the phase of fine examination named sustained thought — "and now, on the basis of these two, the three stages are established"; Kuiji's Concise Compendium and Dunlun's Notes on the Yogācārabhūmi both cite the second master of the Commentary-treatise, and take "the leaving-behind of the craving for applied and sustained thought" (rather than applied-and-sustained-thought's momentary presence or absence in activity) as the criterion for dividing the three stages — Dunlun settling it with a single sentence: "these three are established solely by realm and stage."

The Establishment by Eight Items Draws "a Whole Map of Cyclic Existence"

Having fixed the coordinates, the treatise uses eight items — number, location, the measure of sentient beings, the lifespan of sentient beings, the enjoyments of sentient beings, birth, one's own embodiment, and cause-condition-fruit — to lay open the whole of the three realms. These eight items look as though they were speaking of geography, lifespan, pleasure and pain; but in truth they are one map, letting the practitioner see clearly where he himself stands, what surrounds him, and why he cannot but set out.

"Number" first frames the scope: the three realms (desire, form, formless) are the entire arena of cyclic existence, and there is besides a "class not subsumed under falling" (the expedient path, the cessation of the view of a self, the uncontaminated realm) which is the place of departure. "Location" marks out each cell: thirty-six locations of the desire realm (from the eight hot and eight cold hells at the very bottom, up to the six heavens of the desire realm), eighteen locations of the form realm (the heavens of the four dhyānas, including the Five Pure Abodes where the noble ones dwell exclusively), four locations of the formless realm — cell by cell, from the Unintermittent Hell up to the sphere of neither-perception-nor-non-perception, marked out with perfect clarity. "The measure of sentient beings" and "the lifespan of sentient beings" then mark out the bodily measure and the span of life in each cell: hell-beings live as long as one intermediate eon, and the sphere of neither-perception-nor-non-perception has a lifespan of eighty-thousand great eons — and this very length of time is meant to let a person see that "one endures within cyclic existence, and endures with no way out." The treatise even uses a nested reckoning to press this length of time before one's very eyes: fifty years among humans amount only to a single day and night in the Heaven of the Four Kings, and a full lifespan in the Heaven of the Four Kings amounts only to a single day and night in the Hell of Reviving… the further down one goes, the more the "single day" of enduring suffering stretches out to a dreadful length. It also sets up the "six kinds of superiority" to puncture an illusion — that in these six respects (bodily measure, support, condition of suffering, division of time, mental strength, and vessel of suffering), the more "superior" (the greater, the longer, the more) they become, the more "superior" the suffering grows along with them. And so the bigger the body and the longer the life, the better it is not; on the contrary, the deeper and longer the suffering — and this single stroke cuts through the inverted worldly craving to "seek birth in the heavens, seek long life."

The Item of "Enjoyment" Is the Weight of the Whole Piece: Seeing Through the Truth of "Pleasure"

Of the eight items, "enjoyment" is treated at greatest length and with greatest weight, because here lies hidden the most crucial turn of mind in all of cultivation — seeing through what "pleasure" actually is. The treatise divides it into three: the enjoyment of pain and pleasure, the enjoyment of food and drink, and the enjoyment of sexual desire.

First it writes suffering through to the end. The treatise writes out the eight great hot hells one by one, not evading a single one, and the name of each hell is a lesson in "the fruit of action": sentient beings are slain, a voice in the air cries "you may revive again," and they come back to life to be slain once more, and so it is called "Reviving"; struck by hell-wardens who first snap a chalk-line with a black cord and then hack and chop along the line, it is called "Black Cord"; crushed between two iron mountains (an iron ram's head, an iron elephant's head…) with blood streaming from every orifice, it is called "Crushing-Together"; entering an iron house where fire breaks out and, in the extremity of pain, they wail aloud, it is called "Wailing"; that iron chamber being airtight as a womb-enclosure and the suffering yet worse, it is called "Great Wailing"; pierced through the body by an iron fork and turned over the fire like a broiled fish, it is called "Scorching Heat"; pierced through the crown by a three-pronged iron fork, wrapped in copper sheeting, and then flung head-down into an iron cauldron of ash-water to be boiled until only white bones remain, it is called "Extreme Scorching Heat"; and fire pressing in without intermission from the four directions, east, west, south, north, the suffering without a gap, it is called "Unintermittent" (mostly those who have committed the five unintermittent deeds are born there in the next life). Writing the eight hot hells being not yet enough, the treatise writes out the eight cold hells as well — the body, at the touch of extreme cold, shrinks and curls into blisters, and so it is called "Blister"; the sores fester and run with pus, and so "Burst-Blister"; the skin frozen and cracked, livid-blue like a blue lotus, crimson-red like a red lotus, split into a hundred pieces like a great red lotus, and so they are called "Blue Lotus, Red Lotus, Great Red Lotus." Even the "four adjoining gardens" outside the four gates of the great hells it writes to the full, that desolation of seeking to live and being unable: the hell-being goes out the gate "seeking a dwelling-place (seeking a house), and no sooner does his foot touch the ground than he first sinks into hot ash up to the knee (the ember-pit), then sinks into the mire of corpse-dung to be bitten and devoured by worms, then walks the road of upturned sword-blades, the forest of falling blade-leaves, the iron thorn-trees whose thorns point up and down, and at last plunges into the great river of boiling ash-water — every step he takes for a haven, and every step is a fresh torment.

Why write it so finely, so mercilessly? Not to frighten — but to make one remember, "teaching every word," that these are not the punishments of a god: every single one is the fruit of "an evil deed of a former life not yet exhausted, not yet passed through," and the root of the suffering lies in one's own action. The suffering of the three evil destinies each has its own character: the hell-beings undergo the "suffering of punishment," the animals undergo the "suffering of devouring one another" (the strong preying on the weak, and again being driven and whipped by humans and gods), the hungry ghosts undergo the "suffering of hunger and thirst" — and the hungry ghosts are further divided into three: those of "outer obstruction" (drawn by the karma of stinginess, who upon reaching a spring or pool are barred by guardians, and if they force a drink the water turns to pus and blood), those of "inner obstruction" (whose mouths are small as a needle and throats slender as a torch, who even when they get food cannot swallow it down), and those "without obstruction" (like the "Blazing-Garland" ghost, whose food burns the moment it enters the mouth; like the "Dung-Eating" ghost, who can swallow only the foulest and most stinking things). This whole picture of the evil destinies follows directly upon the gateway of "the defilement of action": delusion produces action, action draws down suffering, and the three evil destinies are the destinations to which the force of action is heaviest.

Next it sees through pleasure. The treatise turns its brush to the wealth and joy of the heavens — food-trees and clothing-trees, wish-fulfilling stones, Śakra's Hall of Universal Victory — the gods having whatever they wish. But immediately it punctures this: even the greatest heavenly blessing cannot escape the "suffering of death and falling" (when a god-son is about to fall, the five signs of decline appear, and even his attendant maidens have all followed after others); even heavenly pleasure is "the suffering of dissolution" (when pleasure dissolves, that is suffering). And so the treatise gives the practitioner a measuring-rod for discerning pleasure — "there are two kinds of pleasure": "the pleasure that arises from what is not noble wealth" (arising from the four requisites — wealth, sex, fame, food, and the rest) and "the pleasure that arises from noble wealth" (arising from the seven noble kinds of wealth — trust, discipline, conscience, shame, learning, relinquishment, and wisdom); and it distinguishes them clearly by fifteen points: the pleasure of non-noble wealth can be seized away by kings, thieves, water, and fire, cannot be carried to a later life, grows the emptier the more it is used, and is at root craving and aversion; the pleasure of noble wealth cannot be snatched away, can be carried onward, grows the fuller the more it is used, and can cut off the great suffering of later lives.

And a last, clinching simile: the treatise says that this body of the three realms is to be regarded as "like a poisoned, feverish carbuncle (a poison-hot abscess)" — when a pleasant feeling arises in the body, it is like the poisoned sore momentarily meeting a touch of cool; when a painful feeling arises, it is like the poisoned sore being scalded by hot ash; when a feeling neither painful nor pleasant arises, it is like both cool and hot having departed — yet the feverish poison of the sore itself is still there. And so the Buddha says: pleasant feeling is "the suffering of dissolution," painful feeling is "the suffering of suffering," feeling neither painful nor pleasant is "the suffering of conditioned formations" — all three feelings are suffering. He uses too a string of similes — "sensual pleasures are like an illusion, like an echo, like a shadow, like a mirage, like a dream, like the adorning ornaments of a conjured phantom" — to speak the whole falseness of sensual pleasure through. Only the "freedom from craving, freedom from aversion, freedom from delusion" of the uncontaminated realm is truly "constant bliss." This one simile of the "poison-hot abscess" gathers the whole contemplation of enjoyment into a single sentence: to seek pleasure within the three realms is to seek a touch of cool upon a poisoned sore — and this is precisely the disenchantment and the will to depart that "the Designation of Elements" means to arouse in a person.

Food-and-drink and sexual desire each carry their own layer of teaching too. As to food, the treatise establishes the "four foods" (morsel-food, contact-food, mental-volition-food, and consciousness-food) which sustain the lifespan of sentient beings across the three realms, while the coarse "morsel-food" belongs to the desire realm alone — above it, there is no need even to "eat." As to sexual desire, the treatise writes out a line of "the gradual diminishing of desire as one leaves it behind" that is exceedingly worth savoring: hell-beings, pressed by suffering, raise no desire between male and female; humans and ghosts, and animals, must couple two by two; up in the heavens of the desire realm, craving thins layer by layer — the Heaven of the Four Kings and the Heaven of the Thirty-Three must still couple before the fever of passion is stilled, the gods of the Yāma-heaven need only embrace, the gods of the Tuṣita-heaven need only hold hands, the gods of the Nirmāṇarati-heaven smile at the sight of one another, and the gods of the Paranirmita-vaśavartin-heaven need only glance eye-to-eye, and the fever of passion is stilled. The further up one goes, the thinner the desire — and this very gradient is itself a graduated scale of "to leave desire is to advance," turning the abstract "leaving of desire" into a visible sequence.

Three Items Remain: Birth, One's Own Embodiment, Cause-Condition-Fruit

"Birth" treats three kinds of birth-in-desire (the humans and gods who dwell amid present sense-objects; the gods of the Nirmāṇarati-heaven who conjure their own sense-objects; the gods of the Paranirmita-vaśavartin-heaven whose sense-objects are conjured by others) and three kinds of birth-in-pleasure (the joy-and-bliss born of seclusion, the joy-and-bliss born of concentration, and the sublime bliss of freedom-from-joy — of the first, second, and third dhyānas), and gathers them under the "three seekings" — the seeking of desire, the seeking of existence, and the seeking of the holy life; the first two seekings are still within cyclic existence, and only "the unsurpassed seeking of the holy life" seeks the uncontaminated realm. "One's own embodiment" treats the four circumstances of obtaining one's own embodiment (this present span of life): self-harmed-not-other-harmed (like the gods who fall through indulging in pleasure and losing mindfulness), other-harmed-not-self-harmed (like the one within the mother's womb), both-harmed, and neither (like the gods of the form and formless realms, and one dwelling in his final body) — pointing out the fragility of life and its lack of self-mastery.

The Summit of the Doctrine: The Ten Causes, Four Conditions, and Five Fruits

The first seven items have drawn the "characteristics" of cyclic existence; the eighth item, "cause-condition-fruit," gives the "principle" of cyclic existence — this is the doctrinal summit of the whole piece, and the general outline of the consciousness-only theory of causation. In a single breath the treatise sets up the entire framework: the ten causes (the cause of predication, the cause of dependence, the cause of drawing-in, the cause of arising, the cause of appropriation, the cause of inducing, the cause of fixed distinction, the cause of joint action, the cause of contradiction, the cause of non-contradiction), the four conditions (the causal condition, the immediately-antecedent condition, the objective-support condition, and the dominant condition), the five fruits (the maturational fruit, the outflowing fruit, the fruit of disjunction, the fruit of a person's effort, and the dominant fruit), and it fits them, moreover, to fifteen kinds of "site," speaking to the very end of "what a cause is, and how it functions as a cause."

Two strokes here are the ones most to be held in mind: First, the "causal condition" among the four conditions is precisely the seed — and this stroke ties the whole arising-and-perishing of the three realms firmly to the seeds of the store consciousness; the treatise cites the scripture: "action is the cause that draws down birth, and craving is the cause that gives rise to birth" — action perfumes into a seed, and craving comes to moisten and bring it forth; first the drawing-in, then the arising, and a span of life is thus turned along, driven by cause and fruit (this is precisely the two causes of inducing-and-producing that the next stage, "the defilement of birth · the twelvefold dependent origination," will unfold in full relief). Second, the closing "seven characteristics of establishing a cause" is as pointed as seven sluice-gates: only an impermanent phenomenon can be a cause (a permanent, abiding thing cannot serve as a cause), it must be already-arisen-and-not-yet-ceased, it must obtain the remaining conditions, it must produce alteration, it must have a corresponding capacity, and it must be fitting and accordant — condition upon condition, saying precisely that "causation is not something dead, but living, awaiting conditions to arise." This whole set of ten causes, four conditions, and five fruits is the root of the theory of cause and fruit in the later Treatise on the Hundred Dharmas' Gateway to Understanding and of the doctrine of the four conditions in the Cheng Weishi Lun — the Cheng Weishi Lun, in its eighth fascicle, gathers it into a single sentence: "Thus the four conditions, in dependence on the fifteen sites, are, by the difference of their meaning, set up as ten causes" (the four conditions being the bone, the fifteen sites the joints, and the ten causes the names established in dependence on the joints) — which is just the consciousness-only elaboration of this one item of "cause-condition-fruit."

The Intent of This Gateway

The Designation of Elements is on its surface a gazetteer of the geography of the three realms, but at its bone it is a "primer for setting out on cultivation and realization": by applied and sustained thought it marks out the ladder of meditative cultivation (where do I go), by the eight sufferings and eight pleasures and the simile of the poison-hot abscess it lays open the truth of cyclic existence (why must I go), and finally by the ten causes, four conditions, and five fruits it points out the mechanism of cause and fruit (the principle by which the going can succeed). See this map clearly, and disenchantment arises of itself, and there is a road out of it — this is precisely the original intent of the opening first gateway of the three stages with applied and sustained thought, and it sets up the coordinates for the four gateways to follow (characteristics, the well-reasoned, the ill-reasoned, and defilement).

Carrying Forward

The three stages' division by applied and sustained thought → the layered elaboration of the same three stages in the four later gateways (characteristics · the well-reasoned · the ill-reasoned · defilement); the body of the three realms as a poison-hot abscess · all three feelings are suffering → the contemplation of the truth of suffering and the four foundations of mindfulness in the Śrāvaka Stage; the ten causes, four conditions, and five fruits · the causal condition being the seed → the cause and fruit of the Treatise on the Hundred Dharmas' Gateway to Understanding (this series) · the four conditions in the seventh fascicle and the ten causes in the eighth fascicle of the Cheng Weishi Lun; action as the cause that draws down birth, craving as the cause that gives rise to birth → the two causes of inducing-and-producing in the twelvefold dependent origination of 03-05-03, the defilement of birth; the three realms as arising solely from action, the store consciousness as the master of the general recompense → a single continuous thread with the death-and-birth of the Stage of the Mental and the establishment of the world in 02-03/04.

The second gate, "Characteristics," speaks specifically of the two mental factors, applied thought and sustained thought, themselves. The preceding gate used applied and sustained thought to divide out the three stages; only in this gate does the treatise turn back and set applied and sustained thought out clearly — their essential nature, their relation to "discernment," and their differing faces across the six destinies.

First, Getting Applied and Sustained Thought Exact: Applied Thought Is "Volition," Sustained Thought Is "Wisdom"

We commonly say, loosely, that "applied and sustained thought are coarse and fine deliberation." This gate gives the precise definition: applied thought is that which, toward its object, does not search into the depths — its substance is the mental factor "volition" (思); sustained thought is that which searches into the depths — its substance is the mental factor "wisdom" (慧). The one is shallow, the other deep; the one is a coarse stirring of the mind, the other a fine scrutiny. The ancient masters gloss this essential nature with the utmost precision — Dunlun, in his Notes: 「不推度是思，推度是慧，是則尋伺」 tr. "not searching is volition, searching is wisdom — this, then, is applied and sustained thought" (that instant of not searching deeply is "volition"; that instant of searching deeply is "wisdom"). What both take as object is "the meaning expressed by name, phrase, and letter" — that is to say, applied and sustained thought turn along with linguistic concepts, which is why the treatise says that the moment they stir they "bring up speech." This also points to the pivot of the later cultivation of concentration: to still the mind, one must let this applied-and-sustained thought that runs along with concepts come to rest.

An Important Ascertainment: Applied and Sustained Thought Are Discernment, but Discernment Is Not Only Applied and Sustained Thought

Here the treatise inserts a concise piece of analysis: whatever is applied and sustained thought is necessarily discernment; but some discernment is not applied and sustained thought. Why? Because once "supramundane wisdom" is taken as the measuring-stick, all the remaining minds and mental factors within the three realms — however fine — count one and all as "discernment," yet they are not all applied and sustained thought.

This one line draws the scope clear: applied and sustained thought are but one member of the great family called "discernment." What the practitioner is to transcend looks, on the surface, like the coarse and fine of applied and sustained thought, but at the root it is the whole of "discernment" — only when supramundane wisdom comes forth is discernment truly left behind. This is precisely the direction of the Consciousness-Only "transforming consciousness into wisdom": the resting of applied and sustained thought is the first step; the exhaustion of discernment is the ultimate.

The Six-Destiny Faces of Applied and Sustained Thought: A Chart of "Why Practice Works"

Most interesting is the seventh, "coursing-about." Using six questions (the emotional bent, what object is contacted, what is drawn forth, with what it is associated, what it seeks, what function it sets in motion), the treatise arranges the differing faces of applied and sustained thought across the six destinies into a staircase running from suffering to pleasure:

• The hells and the hungry ghosts: applied and sustained thought are invariably of grief, what they meet is entirely bad objects, what they draw forth is entirely suffering, they are forever seeking release from suffering, and they constantly "disturb the mind."
• Animals, humans, and the mighty hungry ghosts: suffering and pleasure mixed, much suffering and little pleasure, still "disturbing the mind."
• The gods of the desire realm: it has turned over — much pleasure and little suffering, yet still "disturbing the mind."
• The gods of the first dhyāna: invariably glad, invariably contacting the inner lovely states, invariably drawing forth pleasure, seeking only not to be parted from pleasure — and moreover no longer disturbing the mind.

What this staircase states is precisely "why cultivating concentration works." Note the turn in the last line: by the first dhyāna, applied and sustained thought have not vanished (the first dhyāna is itself "with applied and sustained thought"), but they have changed from "disturbing the mind" to "not disturbing the mind" — the very same applied and sustained thought are a disturbance within a scattered mind, yet abide without disturbing within a mind of concentration. Practice is not a matter of forcibly throttling applied and sustained thought to death, but of settling the mind so that applied and sustained thought naturally stir no more. As the power of concentration deepens further, reaching "with sustained thought only" and then "with neither applied nor sustained thought," applied and sustained thought layer by layer truly come to rest. This is the graded sequence of practice-and-realization that the three stages of applied-and-sustained thought lay out all along, and from the "coursing-about" chart of this very gate it can already be seen plainly.

Carrying Forward

Applied thought = volition · sustained thought = wisdom, as their essential nature → the definition of the four indeterminate factors (applied thought · sustained thought) in the Treatise on the Hundred Dharmas (this series); applied-and-sustained thought ⊂ discernment, all but supramundane wisdom being discernment → the Consciousness-Only sense of "discernment" and of transforming consciousness into wisdom; the staircase of applied-and-sustained thought from disturbing the mind to not disturbing the mind → connecting on to the three gates of "correct / incorrect attention" and "defilement," and to the later cultivation-and-realization of the meditative absorptions.

The third gate, "attention in accord with principle." The same applied and sustained thought, the same pondering — set its direction rightly, and it becomes the engine of every wholesome deed and every merit. What this gate speaks of is just this: what "pondering with its direction rightly set" comes to bear.

First, One Question: The Same Applied and Sustained Thought — Where Does the Watershed Lie?

The gate before this told us that applied and sustained thought, within a scattered mind, is what "disturbs the mind." But here a question arises: it is the same pondering — so why is it that some people, the more they think, the more afflicted and the deeper they sink, while others, the more they think, the clearer they grow and the more they turn toward the wholesome?

The watershed lies just in the protagonist of this gate — "attention in accord with principle," that is, "a use of mind that accords with the principle, correct thinking." Applied and sustained thought is in itself a neutral instrument; paired with "attention in accord with principle" it turns toward purity and bears merit; paired with the "attention not in accord with principle" that the next gate will speak of, it turns toward defilement and bears affliction. So this gate and the next are a pair: one and the same applied and sustained thought — direction set rightly is blessing, direction set wrongly is calamity.

The Eight Items Paint "How a Person Who Uses His Mind in Accord Lives His Days"

The treatise uses eight items to make concrete, into a shape of life, the "applied and sustained thought associated with attention in accord with principle." In the ground of occurrence, it arises upon these six occasions — resolving, quieting, doing work, subduing desire, severing desire, and benefiting others (the ancient masters, following fascicle 55 of the Yogācārabhūmi, match out one by one the wholesome mental factors that arise at each time: at the time of resolving, "faith" arises; at the time of quieting the defiled, "shame and embarrassment"; at the time of doing wholesome deeds, "vigor and the three wholesome roots"; on the worldly path, "pliancy"; on the supramundane path, "non-heedlessness and equanimity"; when gathering in sentient beings, "non-harm" — one sees that attention in accord with principle is no vague "thinking rightly," but the very arising, then and there, of this whole train of wholesome mental factors). In the affair, it accomplishes these wholesome deeds — giving, precepts, cultivation, hearing, reflection, discernment, and benefiting others. In the seeking, it seeks wealth by no unlawful and no ferocious means. In the enjoyment — this item shows the true skill most of all — having obtained wealth, it is yet "unstained, unsettled, un-besotted, unbound, unbenighted, unattached, not clutched-and-held-fast," and instead uses it while "deeply seeing its danger and knowing how to escape."

Note this "enjoyment": attention in accord with principle does not teach a person to want no money and do no work, but teaches him, at the very moment of using, to see through and not to stick. Holding the same wealth, the ordinary being grips it the tighter and grows the greedier the more he uses it, while the person of attention in accord with principle uses it on the one hand and, on the other, sees clearly its danger and stands ready at every moment to lay it down. To use and yet not stick — this is the real skill of attention in accord with principle, landed in daily use. In the right conduct, it becomes the concrete wholesome deeds of revering father, mother, teachers and elders, dreading the offenses of cause and effect, and practicing giving and keeping precepts.

From a Single Grain of the Wholesome, the Provisions of the Three Vehicles Grow

Of the eight items, the last three the treatise merely names, leaving the content for later: the provision of the śrāvaka vehicle it will speak of in the "Śrāvaka Stage," the provision of the pratyekabuddha vehicle in the "Pratyekabuddha Stage," the means of the perfections in the "Bodhisattva Stage." This arrangement carries a deep sense — it is saying: this single wholesome thought of attention in accord with principle is precisely the starting point of the noble path of the three vehicles. The ordinary person right before us — who "seeks wealth by no unlawful means, uses it yet does not stick, reveres elders and dreads offenses" — if he follows attention in accord with principle and cultivates all the way up, links right up with the great provisions of the three vehicles: śrāvaka, pratyekabuddha, and bodhisattva. Practice does not drop from heaven; it begins from just this one thought of setting applied and sustained thought in the right direction.

Afterward the treatise, again taking up the one affair of "giving," lays out in detail the four marks each of donor, precept-keeper, and cultivator of concentration; the six kinds of person who receive a gift; the eight kinds and six kinds of affliction of sentient beings; the six ways of enriching sentient beings; the marks of the good friend and of the one who is not a good friend; and even "the four kinds of attending and serving in accord → resting on the four grounds → calling forth the five fruits" (from calling forth great wealth and a name heard everywhere, all the way to realizing nirvāṇa). These are no trivial checklists, but the setting of the merit that "attention in accord with principle" bears down onto solid ground, item by item — letting one see: use the mind rightly in a single thought, and how great a tree of merit can grow from it, reaching in the end even to nirvāṇa.

The Intent of This Gate

Attention in accord with principle is the very pivot that turns neutral applied and sustained thought toward purity. Landed in daily use, it is "using yet not sticking, revering elders and dreading offenses, seeking wealth lawfully"; grown upward, it is the merit of "giving, precepts, cultivation, hearing, reflection," and even the provisions of the three vehicles. The first step of practice lies not in some remote and lofty place, but in "setting this one thought of pondering in the right direction" — this is precisely the intent behind the three stages of applied and sustained thought purposely setting up this gate, and it stands, too, as an opposed pair with the next gate, "attention not in accord with principle."

Carrying Forward

Attention in accord with principle is the beginning of merit and of the provisions of the three vehicles → it links forward to the provisions of the "Śrāvaka Stage," the "Pratyekabuddha Stage," and the "Bodhisattva Stage"; attention in accord with principle ↔ attention not in accord with principle (the next gate) form an opposed pair; and the enjoyment-view of "using yet not sticking, deeply seeing the danger and knowing how to escape" → carries forward the measure of pleasure set out in the designation of the realms, the "noble and non-noble wealth of pleasure," opening onto the counteragents of the gate of defilement.

The fourth gate, "attention contrary to principle" (不如理作意), stands exactly opposite the third gate, "attention in accord with principle" (如理作意), as one paired contrast. It is the same applied-and-sustained thought throughout: turned in the right direction it binds up merit; turned in the wrong direction it breeds wrong views. The treatise lays out "the sixteen heterodox theories" (十六異論) as specimens and refutes them school by school — this is a demon-revealing mirror by which a practitioner discerns wrong views. This piece first sets out the method of refutation, then treats each school by group — where it errs, and what simile the treatise uses to break it — and finally looks to the consciousness-only right view that shows through the breaking. The hard points are all expounded with similes the treatise itself already holds; nothing is added from thin air.

One: First, a Single Question — Why Must Practice First Learn to "Break Views"?

We always suppose that practice is a matter of "cultivating" — sitting in meditation, keeping the precepts, doing good. Yet this gate reminds us: before cultivating, the "view" must first be right. Because if the view is wrong, the cultivation is wholly wrong — you take yourself to be liberating, when in fact you are deepening a wrong view; you take yourself to be purifying, when in fact you are creating karma. So the treatise, right after "attention in accord with principle," proceeds at once, taking a whole gate and the wrong views of sixteen heterodox schools as its specimens, laying out for you one by one just what "attention contrary to principle" will bind into fruit. These sixteen schools, from philosophical speculation (a fruit already present within its cause; the real existence of the three times) to folk superstition (bathing to wash away sin; astrology fixing fortune and misfortune), all but catch in one net the principal types of human wrong view.

Two: The Method of Refutation Is Itself Worth Learning — Thesis → Reason → Principle

For each school refuted, the treatise uses one and the same procedure, and this procedure is itself a discipline of "right reasoning" (正理): first set out his assertion, then ask on what ground he holds it (the treatise says in every case "by teaching and by reasoning" — "teaching" is the received scriptures of a lineage, "reasoning" is his own inference while dwelling upon the "stage of ratiocination" 尋思地), and finally break it by principle. The engine of the refutation is always the same dilemma: "Which side, in the end, do you assert? If A, then [such-and-such principle] will not go through; if B, then [such-and-such other principle] will not go through either." It blocks off, one by one, every possible line of retreat for the opponent, so that under any interpretation whatsoever he cannot stand.

This is no mere display of eloquence — it does not press people down by authority, but relies on principle alone: laying open every possibility of a statement and testing each one for whether it is reasonable. Once you have learned this discipline, then whatever assertion you read, you can put the one question: "So which meaning, in the end, do you intend? Does this meaning go through?" — this is the very eye for discerning the Dharma (擇法眼) that a practitioner ought to have. Below, in six groups, we look at what each of these sixteen mirrors reflects.

Three: Refuting the Two Schools of "the Fruit Already Present" — A Fruit Already Present within Its Cause; A Manifesting-Forth from Conditions

The theory that the fruit is already present within its cause (因中有果論, the Sāṃkhya "Rain-Multitude heterodox school" 雨眾外道) asserts that "the fruit lies hidden within the cause from the start" — and so from this cause only this fruit is produced, and one seeking the fruit takes only this cause. The treatise first counters with a question: are cause and fruit the same or different? If the same, then there are no two distinct kinds, cause and fruit, to be divided; if different, then is the fruit within the cause "not yet arisen" or "already arisen"? If not yet arisen, yet you call it "present"; if already arisen, then why need it be produced again from the cause? Both ends are blocked. More importantly, the treatise takes the chance to teach one principle of right reasoning: for a thing truly to "be present," it must be known through five characteristics — obtainable in a location (as water within a jar); obtainable in a support (as eye-consciousness within the eye); obtainable through its own characteristic; obtainable through its own operation; and, through the alteration of causes and conditions, its fruit alters accordingly. The fruit within the cause cannot be verified by even one of these five characteristics, and so "a fruit already present within its cause" cannot be established. What is set up is the dependently-arisen right view that "the fruit awaits conditions before it arises — not present before, present now."

The theory of a manifesting-forth from conditions (從緣顯了論) steps back and says: "the fruit is present from the start; it is merely 'manifested forth' by conditions, not 'produced.'" The treatise breaks it with a simile from daily life: darkness can screen off the water within a jar — yet it screens off that very jar together with it — if the obstructing condition truly obstructs, how could it obstruct only the fruit and not the cause? Both being alike "present," on what ground does it manifest the fruit alone and not the cause? At every point it contradicts itself. The treatise also, in passing, clarifies a point easily confused: some things are indeed "present yet unseen," but that is because they are too far off, are screened off, are too subtle, the mind is scattered, the faculty is damaged, or the corresponding knowledge has not yet been attained — not because they "are present, hidden, and awaiting manifestation."

Four: Refuting the Two Schools of "Real Existence" — the Real Existence of the Past and Future; the Reckoning of a Self (Where the Consciousness-Only Color Is Thickest)

The theory of the real existence of the past and future (去來實有論, the Sarvāstivāda) asserts that "the past and the future are really existent just as the present is." This refutation shows the consciousness-only color most of all. The opponent hauls out the Buddha's scriptures — "whatever is existent is just the twelve sense-fields" (一切有者即十二處), "there is past karma" (有過去業) — as his backing, and the treatise dismantles them one by one for him: the so-called "past karma" is not that there really still exists some past karma persisting, but is a designation posited in dependence on the latent impression (習氣); within the conditioned formations, wholesome and unwholesome karma once arose and then ceased, perfuming a force that "continues on, ascending and altering" — this is called the latent impression, and it is in dependence on this latent impression that pleasing and unpleasing fruits arise. Replacing "the really-existent three times" with "the latent impression / the seed" — this stroke cuts right to the lifeblood of the consciousness-only doctrine of seeds: one need not grasp the three times as really existent; cause and effect go through by the continuance of seeds. The treatise further sets up a careful distinction: past and future form and the rest are said to "be present" in dependence on the concealed intent of the three characteristics — the causal characteristic, the intrinsic characteristic, and the resultant characteristic — not that there truly is a self-substance existing within the three times. The opponent has one more counter: if past and future are non-existent, how is it that we can still "think of" them? The treatise's answer is exquisite — we plainly can raise a cognition that "grasps a non-existent," such as "there is no self, no rabbit's horn, no barren woman's child" (沒有我、沒有兔角、沒有石女兒); it is evident that a cognition can arise taking even "the non-existent" as its object, and this "being able to think of it" in no way proves that what is thought of is really existent. In one phrase it breaks the mistaken inference that "we can recall the past, therefore the past is really existent."

The theory that reckons a self (計我論) asserts that "there is a permanently-abiding, really-existent self (a being 薩埵, a person 補特伽羅)." This is the longest engagement; the treatise presses the question from more than a dozen angles. It first breaks two of the opponent's illusions: one, "without any deliberation there arises the cognition 'there is a sentient being'"; two, "in every act one must first have the thought 'I will do it.'" The treatise answers: to see form and shape ought only to raise the cognition "form"; to see suffering and pleasure ought only to raise the cognition "feeling"; to see discerning ought only to raise the cognition "mind"; to force onto these five aggregates an added "being" (薩埵) — that is precisely the inversion. Then it presses the question layer upon layer: this self of yours — is it right upon the five aggregates, or apart from the five aggregates? Is it permanent or impermanent? Is it the "seer" itself, or the "instrument of seeing"? And it blocks off the claim that "the self is able to act" with a string of similes: you say the self is able to cut, like a sickle (鎌刀)? But apart from the sickle, other things too can cut; you say the self is able to burn, like fire (火)? Fire, apart from a "burner," burns of itself — why set up an additional self? You say the self is able to hold things up like the great earth (大地), or to receive and contain like space (虛空)? The operations of earth and space are plainly to be seen, whereas the operation of that "self" of yours is nowhere to be seen at any point. Finally it presses out the conclusion: what is called "self" is only "posited, in dependence on the phenomena, as being present" (在諸法上假立為有), and is not really existent.

And here the treatise is especially compassionate: since there is no self, why does the Buddha nonetheless everywhere say "there is a self"? The treatise sets up the four reasons for positing a self by convention (假立有我四因) — to make worldly speech convenient; to accord with the world; to remove the dread of "annihilation into no-self"; and, as a skillful means, to expound the merits and faults of oneself and others. Breaking the real self and positing a conventional self — this is precisely the root of the consciousness-only "no-self of persons" (人無我), one thread continuous with the "self as characterized by the ultimate meaning" (第一義我相) of the Stage of the Mental.

Five: Refuting the Two Schools of "Permanence and Annihilation" — the Reckoning of Permanence; the View of Annihilation

The theory that reckons permanence (計常論) grasps that "the self and the world are both permanently abiding, incapable of being harmed, accumulated and abiding, like iṣīkā (伊師迦)" (the ancient masters have two Western glosses: it points either to the solid, tall Iṣīkā mountain beside Rājagṛha, or to the true, unwithering iṣīkā reed — both figuring the self and the world as permanently abiding and solid). The treatise asks on what ground it holds this: it turns out that in cultivating concentration it raised "the recollection of former abodes" (宿住隨念), able to recall past lives beyond measure, yet it did not know dependent origination as it really is (不如實知緣起), and so mistook "an unbroken continuance" for "a permanent, unchanging abiding." There is also a school that grasps that "the subtle particle is permanent" (極微是常) — analyzing gross things layer by layer down to the finest subtle particle, it then says gross things are impermanent and the subtle particle permanent; the treatise breaks it: if the subtle particle, once dispersed, is only more feeble, how can it be called permanent? And if it is different from the gross fruit, how can it produce the gross fruit?

The theory of the view of annihilation (斷見論) is just the opposite, grasping that "this body of mine, a provisional composite of the four great elements, upon death is annihilated and destroyed into nothing, like a broken tile or stone that cannot be rejoined" (瓦石破了不能再合). The treatise breaks it: is what is annihilated the aggregates, or the self? The aggregates continue on unbroken in cause and effect, so it will not go through to call them annihilated; the self has no real substance to begin with, so still less can annihilation be spoken of. The view of permanence takes continuance for permanence; the view of annihilation takes continuance for a rupture — both ends are biased. What the treatise sets up is the dependently-arisen right view of "neither permanent nor annihilated" (非常非斷).

Six: Refuting the Three Schools of "Cause" — the Cause of Former Deeds; a Sovereign Maker; the View of No Cause

These three schools err, one and all, in the positing of "cause and effect" — and err, fittingly, in three directions: the cause too rigid, the cause lodged in a god, and no cause at all.

The theory of the cause of former deeds (宿作因論, the Jaina "Unbound heterodox school" 無繫外道) grasps that "all suffering is fixed by dead reckoning through the karma of former lives, and can only be exhausted by ascetic austerities spitting out the old karma." The treatise breaks it: if suffering is purely due to former karma, then what cause is your present asceticism? And it sets up the characteristic of cause as it really is (如實因相) — suffering is in fact of three kinds: that summoned purely by former karma; that produced by mixed causes (as suffering summoned by wronging a king); and that got purely by present exertion (as making new karma, hearing the right Dharma, learning a craft). It splits "fatalism" apart into three. The theory of a sovereign maker (自在作者論, that Maheśvara made the world) grasps that "the myriad things are transformed forth by a god." The treatise breaks it item by item with an uddāna outline — is the god's "capacity" to make things caused or uncaused? Does the god himself belong to the world or not? Is what is made of use to the god or of no use? Every fork becomes a fault. The theory of the view of no cause (無因見論) grasps that "the self and the world both arise without cause." Its "grounds" are that it sees the world constantly holding a mark of "discontinuity" — a great wind suddenly rises, then in an instant grows still and stops; a torrential river swells in flood, then in an instant runs dry to a visible bed; flowers and fruit are suddenly luxuriant, then in an instant wither and fall — and so it supposes the myriad things to be without cause. The treatise breaks it: without cause, they ought to arise perpetually, or ought perpetually not to arise; how would they be now present, now absent? This precisely proves that there is a cause. All three schools are broken, and what is set up in each is "dependent arising" (緣生).

Seven: Refuting the Three Schools of "Wrong Dharma and Wrong Practice" — Harm as the Right Dharma; Falsely Reckoning Purity; Falsely Reckoning Auspiciousness

The theory of harm as the right Dharma (害為正法論) grasps that "in sacrifice, killing living beings by incantation lets the one who sacrifices, the one who is killed, and the assisting companions all be reborn in heaven." The treatise does not go by way of principle, but directly exposes its provenance: this is a fawning, deceiving fabrication that the brahmins of the corrupt eon (壞劫) devised for the sake of eating meat (為了吃肉), and is in no way set up by observing principle. And it sets up the characteristic of what is non-Dharma (非法之相): harming others; summoning unpleasing fruit; declared unwholesome by the wise; what one does not oneself wish; and what arises from a defiled mind — all these are non-Dharma. The theory of falsely reckoning purity (妄計清淨論) sees liberation crookedly — some grasp that "sporting and receiving pleasure in the five desires" is nirvāṇa in the present dharma; some grasp that "bathing in the holy rivers, the Sundarikā and the Gaṅgā (孫陀利迦河、殑伽河)" washes clean all evils; some hold the dog-vow, the ox-vow, the oil-and-ink vow, the naked vow, the ash vow, the self-mortification vow, and the filth vow (狗戒、牛戒、油墨戒、露形戒、灰戒、自苦戒、糞穢戒) to be purity. The treatise breaks them with great crispness: the pleasure-taker has not left desire — how speak of liberation? Bathing removes only the outer dirt; the inner dirt of greed, hatred, and delusion it cannot remove; to hold the dog-vow and the rest is to practice a wrong and evil practice — how could it attain purity? The theory of falsely reckoning auspiciousness (妄計吉祥論) takes "eclipses of sun and moon, and the constellations straying from their courses" to be the chief causes of calamity and fortune, and so sacrifices to fire, chants incantations, sets out kuśa grass, and fills jars with bilva fruit to avert misfortune and pray for blessing. The treatise breaks it: the world's rise and decline, its suffering and pleasure, are plainly summoned by the wholesome and unwholesome karma each person creates to the end of his lifespan; to mistake this for "what the sun, moon, and stars have done" is precisely not to know the dependently-arisen principle that karma and its fruit correspond.

Eight: Refuting the Three Schools of "Boundary, Equivocation, and the Supreme"

The theory of the bounded and the boundless (邊無邊論) splits hairs over the "boundary" of time and space: recalling "the eon of dissolution" it feels the world is bounded; recalling "the eon of formation" it feels it is boundless; failing to find a bottom searching up and down it feels it is bounded; failing to find an edge searching in the four directions it feels it is boundless. The theory of the deathless and equivocation (不死矯亂論) simply does not answer straight — asked about good and evil, asked about suffering, its origin, cessation, and the path, it dodges vaguely and turns about with whatever words the questioner uses; the treatise points out that the root of these four equivocations is all dread (怖畏) — fear of false speech, fear of others knowing one's own not-knowing (ajñāna), and fear of wrong view. The theory that falsely reckons the supreme (妄計最勝論) grasps that "the brahmin caste is the most honored, born from the mouth and belly of Great Brahmā." The treatise breaks it plainly and forcefully: is not the brahmin too produced from a mother's womb (從母胎產生)? Does he not likewise make good and evil, receive pleasing and unpleasing fruit, enter a mother's womb and be born? What inborn superiority or inferiority is there in caste — superiority and inferiority lie only in the virtues of discipline, learning, and the like, not in bloodline.

Nine: The Eye of the Whole Piece — Refuting the View of Emptiness, Establishing the Middle Way of the Threefold Nature

Among the sixteen schools, the thirteenth, the theory of the view of emptiness (空見論), is the most crucial, because what it refutes is the wrongly-grasped emptiness (惡取空) — repudiating giving, repudiating the fruits of wholesome and unwholesome karma, and even repudiating the substance-and-characteristic of all phenomena whatsoever (this is precisely the various wrong views above fallen to their worst point). The treatise points out the root of its illness: being unable to awaken as it really is to "the Tathāgata's profound Dharma beyond words," it thrusts everything at once into "there is nothing at all." The treatise finally shows its trump card: you say "there is no substance-and-characteristic of any phenomena whatsoever"? Then I ask you — these three characteristics, the perfectly-accomplished mark, the other-dependent mark, and the wholly-imagined mark (圓成實相、依他起相、遍計所執相), are they present or absent? Say present, and your "no substance-and-characteristic of any phenomena" will not go through; say absent, and then there is no inversion, and no defilement or purity either, which still less will go through. Kuiji's Concise Compendium (《略纂》) matches this "refuting emptiness by the threefold nature" most distinctly (Dunlun's Notes 《論記》 judges the same, giving it as "the inverted-grasped; the defiled other-dependent; the pure perfectly-accomplished"): "In refuting the inner view of emptiness, 'there ought to be no inversion' is the [imagined-]grasped; 'the defiled' is the other-dependent; 'the pure' is the perfectly-accomplished" — the wholly-imagined nature answering to that "inversion," the other-dependent nature answering to that "defilement" (the three defilements), the perfectly-accomplished nature answering to that "purity" (the two purities); if within the ultimate meaning these three were all absent, then "there would be no birth-and-death, and no nirvāṇa either — what to delight in, what to weary of; what to attain, what to relinquish," and that is what truly will not go through. Refuting the wrongly-grasped emptiness by the consciousness-only threefold nature — this one phrase draws a decisive line between the consciousness-only standpoint of "neither existent nor empty, the Middle Way" and the heterodox schools' obstinate emptiness: what consciousness-only calls "non-existent" is the wholly-imagined nature (the falsely-grasped real self and real dharmas); what consciousness-only calls "existent" is the other-dependent nature and the perfectly-accomplished nature. To repudiate all into utter non-existence is a wrong view that ruins cause and effect — it is not consciousness-only.

Ten: The Intent of This Gate

Attention contrary to principle is the root of every wrong view; the sixteen heterodox theories are the sixteen kinds of fruit it binds. The treatise sets up this gate: first, to teach you to discern — hold up these sixteen mirrors, and the world's every wrong view takes on visible form; second, to teach you to break — learn the discipline of discerning the Dharma, "thesis → reason → principle," and you have a demon-revealing mirror of your own; third, to show forth the right by way of breaking: in refuting the reckoned self it establishes the conventional self (the no-self of persons); in refuting the real existence of the past and future it establishes the latent impression and the seed; in refuting permanence and annihilation it establishes dependent arising; in refuting the view of emptiness it establishes the Middle Way of the threefold nature — the right view of consciousness-only is precisely what stands upright at the place where wrong views are broken through and through. And what counters attention contrary to principle is, from first to last, the third gate's "attention in accord with principle" together with the right contemplation of dependent arising; the next gate, "defilement" (雜染), will treat just how these attentions contrary to principle bind into the whole cycle of afflictions, karma, and birth in saṃsāra.

Carrying Forward

Refuting the reckoned self → the no-self of persons · the four reasons for the conventional self (carrying forward the "self as characterized by the ultimate meaning" of the Stage of the Mental, 02-03; opening the way to the two kinds of no-self in the Cheng Weishi Lun); refuting the real existence of the past and future → the doctrine of the latent impression / the seed (carrying forward the all-seeds consciousness of the Stage of the Mental; opening the way to the six senses of the seed in the Cheng Weishi Lun); refuting the view of emptiness → the perfectly-accomplished, other-dependent, and wholly-imagined threefold nature (the consciousness-only threefold nature · the root of the Middle Way · expanded in the Chapter on the Meaning of Reality of the Bodhisattva Stage, the Madhyāntavibhāga, and the Cheng Weishi Lun); refuting permanence and annihilation → the dependently-arisen right view (opening the way to the twelvefold dependent arising, 03-05-03).

The gate of defilement treats the threefold cycling of affliction, karma, and suffering; this piece is the first, "the defilement of afflictions" (delusion). By nine items the treatise spreads open, as if in a family tree, the nature of affliction, its kinds, its causes, its dormancy and activity, its inversion, its various alternate names, and its dangers — this is the adversary the practitioner most needs to recognize.

First, One Question: What Exactly Is an Affliction?

Every day we say "affliction," yet what is it, really? The definition the treatise gives at its very opening is plain and precise: when a certain dharma arises, its mark "of itself grows unquiet," and stirs up a train of the unquiet that turns on thereafter — this is an affliction. The ancient masters mark the source of this "unquiet": Dunlun, in his Notes, cites the Abhidharma[-samuccaya] (the sixth [fascicle]), "the unquiet is the common mark of all afflictions," and opens this "unquiet conduct" into six kinds — distraction, inversion, agitation, torpor, negligence, and shamelessness; from which one sees that affliction is no vague "badness," but these six concrete agitations.

Mark the three words "of itself grows unquiet." Affliction is no abstract label of "evil," but a concrete psychological fact: the mind, in that very moment, grows agitated, grows unsettled, is stirred up. When greed arises the mind is hooked; when hatred arises the mind is scorched; when conceit arises the mind is lifted up; when doubt arises the mind hangs and will not come to rest — all of this is "unquiet." The "quiet" that practice seeks is precisely the reverse of this "unquiet." Recognize this one point, and one knows that to counteract affliction is not to hate it or to press it down, but to let that stirred-up mind come to rest and grow quiet again.

Two Levels: The Dormant "Latent Proclivity" and the Active "Enwrapment"

In treating the "phase" and the "gate" of affliction, the treatise points out a distinction most crucial to Consciousness-Only — affliction has two levels: the dormant seed is called the "latent proclivity," the arisen activity is called the "enwrapment."

This distinction is the key to practice. When you sit in meditation, greed and hatred seem to vanish; but that is only the "enwrapment" not being, for the moment, in activity — the "latent proclivity" (the seed) still lies dormant within the store consciousness, and springs up again upon meeting a condition. So the treatise says that affliction lies latent "because the seed follows along" — the old home of affliction is the seed. Truly to cut off affliction is not to hold down the active enwrapment (that is only stone pressing on grass), but to cut off, seed (latent proclivity) and all, to the last. This is exactly the Consciousness-Only doctrine of seeds brought to bear upon the theory of affliction: there is cycling because the seed is present; there is liberation because the seed is cut off.

A Map: The One Hundred Twenty-Eight Afflictions, and the Paths of Seeing and Cultivation

The treatise divides afflictions from one kind, two kinds … all the way to "one hundred twenty-eight afflictions" — seemingly fussy, but in fact drawing a chart of the stages for cutting off affliction.

Its skeleton is: "the ten afflictions (the view of a real self, the view seizing an extreme, wrong view, view-grasping, the grasping of mere rule and vow, greed, hatred, conceit, ignorance (avidyā), doubt) deludedly seizing the twelve truths (the four truths in each of the three realms)." Why arranged so? Because this determines "which afflictions are cut off at the path of seeing, and which must wait for the path of cultivation to be cut off." The treatise says afflictions may be divided into "those abandoned by the path of seeing, and those abandoned by the path of cultivation" — roughly speaking, those "discrimination-arisen" afflictions occasioned by acquired wrong views and wrong teachings (like wrong view, view-grasping, the grasping of mere rule and vow, and doubt) are cut off all at once at the path of seeing (the moment of seeing the truth); while those "innate" afflictions that arise together with birth, deep, subtle, and spontaneous (like innate greed, hatred, conceit, and ignorance) must be cut off portion by portion, gradually, on the path of cultivation. First the view-delusions are cut, then the thought-delusions — this chart of one hundred twenty-eight is precisely the route-map of the sages' path in cutting off delusion.

The Root of Inversion: The Four Inversions of Permanence, Pleasure, Purity, and Self, and Their Counteraction by the Four Foundations of Mindfulness

Why do afflictions arise? Treating "subsumption under inversion," the treatise lays bare the cognitive root of affliction — the seven inversions, whose core is the "four inversions": taking the impermanent as permanent, taking suffering as pleasure, taking the impure as pure, taking the not-self as self.

These four inversions are the cognitive foundation of all afflictions: because one takes the impermanent for the permanent, the suffering for the pleasant, the impure for the pure, the not-self for a self, therefore one is greedy, therefore one clings, therefore one is conceited. And the treatise makes plain that "the root of inversion is ignorance" — all inversion has its root in that one thought of "defiled not-knowing (ajñāna)."

This too, conversely, yields the counteraction: the Buddha sets up "the four foundations of mindfulness" — contemplating the body as impure, contemplating feeling as suffering, contemplating mind as impermanent, contemplating dharmas as not-self — which precisely break the four inversions one by one. Trace the family tree of affliction upward and it is inversion, it is ignorance; walk the counteraction of practice downward and it is the four foundations of mindfulness, it is clarity. Break one ignorance, and the four inversions loosen, and a train of afflictions crumbles along with them.

The Many Faces of Affliction, and Where It Leads

The treatise closes with a long string of alternate names — fetter, bond, latent proclivity, enwrapment, flood, yoke, grasping, tie, hindrance, outflow, fire, dense thicket, entanglement … twenty-odd names, each name shining light on one function of affliction: what glues suffering together is called "fetter," what drowns a person is called "flood," what covers over the truth is called "hindrance," what burns up the wholesome roots is called "fire," what tangles into a thicket one cannot get out of is called "dense thicket." One and the same affliction, seen from different angles, has a different dreadfulness.

And the item "dangers" settles the account to the last: when an affliction arises, it first disturbs one's own mind, then gives rise to inversion, makes the seeds firm, draws on harm to self and harm to others, gives rise to fault in the present and later lives, grows far from nirvāṇa, falls away from the wholesome dharmas, spreads an evil name, brings grief and remorse at death, and after the body's breaking casts one down into the evil destinies — measureless, boundless. The treatise lists these not to frighten, but to make a person see clearly: affliction (delusion) is precisely the engine of the "karma" and "birth" (suffering) below it. Delusion makes karma, karma draws on birth; the three defilements interlock ring within ring. Only by recognizing this first ring, affliction, can one go on to speak of breaking karma and ending birth-and-death.

The Purport of This Piece

The defilement of afflictions is the first ring of the cycling of delusion-karma-suffering, the adversary of practice from first to last. The treatise sets up nine gates to teach one to recognize it clearly: its nature is "the mind grows unquiet," its old home is in "the seed of the latent proclivity," its structure is "the one hundred twenty-eight abandoned by seeing and cultivation," its cognitive root is "the four inversions and ignorance," its face is "the many names of fetter, bond, outflow, hindrance, and the rest," and its destination is "the great suffering of karma and birth." Recognize this family tree, and cutting off delusion has a place to take hold — and the place to take hold is, from first to last, the "methodical attention" set opposite to "unmethodical attention," joined with right contemplation.

Carrying Forward

The latent proclivity (seed) / the enwrapment (activity) → the Consciousness-Only doctrine of seeds · the store consciousness holding the seeds of affliction (carrying forward from the Stage of the Mental, the all-seeds consciousness — "the seeds of the affliction class are called grossness and are also called latent proclivity," 02-03); the ten afflictions · the root six · the abandoned by seeing and cultivation → the six afflictions and the twenty secondary afflictions of the Hundred Dharmas Treatise (this series) · the chapter on afflictions of the Cheng Weishi Lun; the seven inversions and four inversions → the counteraction by the four foundations of mindfulness · the cultivation of contemplation in the Śrāvaka Stage; delusion → karma → birth → continuing on to 03-05-02, the defilement of karma, and 03-05-03, the defilement of birth (dependent origination).

The second of the three defilements, "karma." The afflictions (delusion) are the motive, birth (suffering) is the outcome, and the hand that turns motive into outcome is "karma." Under nine items the treatise expounds to the end the essence of karma, its kinds, its gravity, how it gives fruit, and how it inverts. This piece unfolds it item by item.

First, a Question: Why, Doing the Very Same Deed, Does One Person Meet Pleasure and Another Suffering?

The hardest thing in the world to make sense of is this business of "retribution" — the good do not always meet with good, the evil do not always meet with evil. In this gate the treatise gives the Consciousness-Only answer: the key lies in "karma." Karma is that middle link, produced by the afflictions (the delusion) and summoning birth (the fruit of pleasure and pain). Once one sees through karma, the whole chain of delusion, karma, and suffering can be joined up.

The treatise first marks out the essence of karma: the intrinsic nature of karma is "doing" — the moment the mind stirs to do, it draws out the actions of body and mouth. So karma is not merely an outward movement; its root lies in that single thought, the "volition that does." This is the root of the Consciousness-Only teaching that "karma has volition for its substance": first there is volition (mental karma), then the bodily and verbal karma aroused after volition.

The Ten Wholesome and Unwholesome Courses of Action: A List Both Utterly Plain and Utterly Crucial

The core of karma is the "ten wholesome and unwholesome courses of action" — the three of the body (killing, theft, lust), the four of the mouth (false speech, divisive speech, harsh speech, frivolous speech), the three of the mind (covetousness, ill will, wrong view), and the ten wholesome deeds that are their reverse. Here the treatise does a very fine piece of work: it takes the sūtra-text of each course of action and unfolds it phrase by phrase. Why does the sūtra, for "the one who kills," say "utterly savage, his hands smeared with blood, without shame, without pity"? — "Utterly savage" is the murderous mind being fully present; "his hands smeared with blood" is the bodily mark altering for the sake of killing; "without pity" is bringing upon the other the suffering of what is unwished. It even explains "why the sūtra says 'toward all sentient beings' and 'toward real sentient beings'": it turns out to be for refuting the non-Buddhist paths — there was an "Unbound path" (Nirgrantha) that held "only beings within a hundred yojanas (the range) count," and so the sūtra says "all sentient beings," not limited by range; and another path held "trees too have life," and so the sūtra says "real sentient beings," marking off the non-sentient. This phrase-by-phrase exegesis is not fussiness; it is "teaching every word" — letting one see clearly that each word of a single precept has its object to be countered and its exact measure. The ancient masters expound this "teaching every word" in finer detail still: Dunlun's Notes gathers the two masters Jing and Kuiji — Master Jing "gathers the nine into four," first marking out killing's "appearance" (his hands smeared with blood) and its "operation" (harming, harming utterly, seizing); Kuiji (Master Ji) makes a still finer phrase-by-phrase judgment: the "cause and condition" is the first phrase, "the utterly savage murderous mind being fully present," while the remaining "latter six phrases" (without shame, without pity, toward all sentient beings, toward real sentient beings, down even to the lowest — the gnat, the ant, and such beings, if one has not yet abstained from the act of killing) are the "differences in acts and uses." And Kuiji's Concise Compendium further points out that the sūtra's "toward all sentient beings" and "toward real sentient beings" are precisely "the two counters to the Unbound non-Buddhist path" — "if one does not kill all sentient beings, why should there be a real counter only within a hundred yojanas? If one does not kill grass and trees — since these are non-sentient — it is named the unreal counter" 〔Kuiji, Concise Compendium〕.

Especially worth remembering is the wholesome category of "abstaining from the ten evils": the treatise particularly points out that true "good speech" is not merely not reviling others, but is "pleasing to the ear, answering to the heart, lovable, exquisite, distinct, easily understood, without dependence, boundless and inexhaustible" — speech that can draw a person toward nirvāṇa. The wholesome is not the passive not-doing of evil; it is a positive power able to benefit others and turn them toward the path.

How Karma Summons Fruit: The Phase Summons the Five Destinies, and the Five Gates with Their Five Fruits

The most marvelous and the most just thing about karma is its "giving of fruit." Here the treatise runs two lines.

One is "the phase of karma summons the five destinies" — the gravity of karma decides which destiny one is born into: upper-class greed, ill will, and delusion (unwholesome) summon the hells; middling-class summon the hungry ghosts; the weak class summon the animals; the weak class of non-greed, non-ill-will, non-delusion (wholesome) summons humans; the middling class summons the gods of the desire realm; the upper class summons the form and formless realms. The very same greed, ill will, and delusion, differing in gravity, land one in destinies worlds apart — this is the precision of karmic summoning: there is no god sitting in judgment; it is karmic force itself that fruits according to class and category.

The other is "the five gates of giving fruit" — the maturational fruit, the outflow fruit, the dominant fruit, the present-life fruit, the fruit that dominates another; and for each gate the treatise gives a teaching one can feel. The "outflow fruit" is the most thought-provoking: even after the one who kills has come out from the evil destinies and been born among humans, he is still "short of life, meets with much slander, has increased fierce ill will" — the evil habit flows on like water running downhill, its aftermath rippling on and on. The "dominant fruit" pushes retribution out into the outer environment — in a place of much unwholesome karma, even the fruits are "without sweetness, without constancy, empty and without fruit." The "present-life fruit" (retribution in this very life) is summoned by eight kinds of "resolve" (intense states of mind), as when one does evil toward the Buddha, Dharma, and Saṅgha by a "hatred-and-harm resolve," or does good toward the Three Jewels by a "pure-faith resolve" — taking effect in this very life. And the "fruit that dominates another" is the warmest: in the place where a Buddha, a wheel-turning king, or a bodhisattva abiding in the concentration of loving-kindness dwells, measureless beings are "without sickness, without epidemic, and gain a peaceful and happy abiding" — one person's wholesome karma can shade a whole region. Karma concerns not only oneself; it moves the whole world. The treatise also specially lists the "five deeds of immediate retribution" (killing one's mother, killing one's father, killing an arhat, splitting the Saṅgha, drawing the Buddha's blood) and their "like-portion" (grave karma close to the immediates), marking out the very heaviest end of karma — the utterly evil that may be requited in this very life.

Karma Has Gravity, and Also Truth-or-Falsity: The Gate of Dominance and Increasing Karma

Doing the very same course of karma, why is it sometimes light and sometimes grave? The treatise sets up the six aspects of "the dominance of karma" to teach one to weigh gravity: application (the fiercer the greed, ill will, and delusion at the doing, the graver), habituation (the more one does it again and again through the long night, the graver), intrinsic nature (the course of action itself has gravity and lightness), the matter (toward the objects of reverence such as the Buddha, Dharma, and Saṅgha, doing harm or benefit alike becomes grave karma), one class of what is to be countered (a whole life doing only evil, without a single moment of wholesomeness), the harm to what is to be countered (able to sever evil and cultivate the wholesome, and so becoming superior karma). Among these, the "intrinsic nature" item ranks out the order of gravity and lightness of the ten courses of action — frivolous speech is lighter than harsh speech, harsh speech than divisive speech, divisive speech than false speech; sexual misconduct is lighter than taking what is not given, taking what is not given than killing; greed is lighter than ill will, ill will than wrong view. The further along, the graver; wrong view and killing are the two heaviest ends. On the wholesome side, giving does not match discipline, discipline does not match cultivation — the more inward, the more excellent.

More crucial still is the distinction the treatise draws in "the difference of karma" between "increasing karma" and "non-increasing karma" — it is not that once done, a deed must summon fruit. The treatise lists ten kinds of "non-increasing" karma: done in a dream, done in not-knowing (ajñāna), done without deliberate intent (unpremeditated), done in madness and derangement, done in loss of mindfulness, done without wish and desire … these, though there is a deed, because they lack that single thought of "deliberate volition," do not "increase" into a seed that summons fruit. In other words, karma must be "deliberate volition + doing + habituation-increase" to truly become a seed of future retribution; a dream, one slip of the hand, one thought of derangement, does not count. This precisely points out that the life-root of karma lies in "volition" (deliberate intent) — and it gives the practitioner a measure too: what truly must be guarded against is the deliberate, repeatedly-habituated karma.

Two Dangerous Inversions, and One Seam of Liberation

The treatise expounds "the inversion of karma," pointing out two utterly dangerous views. One is the "inversion of appropriation" — raising up a wrong view, denying cause and fruit, saying "there is no one able to kill and nothing killed, no sin and no merit," even saying "to kill a being who ought to be hated is merit alone and no sin." This is precisely the fruit of the previous gate's "doctrine of the view of emptiness" landing upon karma: to deny karmic retribution is the worst wrong view, for it dismantles the last brake on a person's doing of evil. The other is the "inversion of glad delight" — being glad, as if playing a game, while doing evil. Seeing through these two inversions, one grasps why "the right view of karmic retribution" is the first line of defense in practice. (There is also the "inversion of function" — wishing to kill A, one kills B by mistake; there is no sin of "killing A," yet there is the sin of "resembling killing" — which divides the "mind" and the "object" of karma exceedingly fine.)

And within the "difference" of karma, the treatise has buried a seam of liberation — the teaching of "black-and-white maturation": black karma (evil) summons black retribution, white karma (imperturbable) summons white retribution, black-and-white karma (meritorious) summons a mixed retribution; yet at the last there is still one kind of karma that is "neither black nor white, without maturation, and able to exhaust the several karmas," namely the world-transcending uncontaminated karma. It no longer summons the fruit of birth-and-death; it is, on the contrary, the "severing counter" of the former three karmas. This one line is the most crucial: so long as one still spins within black and white karma, one cannot get out of the round; only uncontaminated karma can "exhaust" all karma. The ultimate of practice is not to cultivate more white karma (that is still within the three realms), but to cultivate uncontaminated karma — this is, within the gate of the defilement of karma, the one and only exit toward release. The ancient masters point this through: Dunlun's Notes, glossing "the karma neither black nor white, without maturation, able to exhaust the several karmas," says — "because it is undefiled it is named non-black; because it is not contaminated wholesomeness it is named non-white … because it can sever the former three karmas it is named able to exhaust the several karmas, so one takes all the uncontaminated expedient-path and unimpeded-path, the two paths, for the fourth karma" 〔Dunlun, Notes〕; and Kuiji's Concise Compendium gathers the whole gate of karma-doctrine into a single line: "the four karmas above, according to what is fitting, though they differ as defiled and pure, all have volition for their substance" 〔Kuiji, Concise Compendium〕 — from black karma and white karma to uncontaminated karma, in the end all are a turning of one and the same "volition": deluded, one does black and white; awakened, one accomplishes the uncontaminated.

The Intent of This Gate

Karma is the hand between affliction and suffering. The treatise sets up nine gates to teach one to know it clearly: its essence is "the volition that does," its core is "the ten wholesome and unwholesome courses of action," its mechanism is "the phase summons the five destinies, the five gates with their fruit," its danger is "the inversion that denies cause and fruit," its exit is "uncontaminated karma able to exhaust the several karmas." To see through karma is to grasp the justice of cause-and-fruit that never fails, and to catch sight of that seam of release — and the source of all this is still the previous gate's affliction (delusion); while the delusion is unsevered, the karma does not cease. The next gate, "the defilement of birth," will take up the "birth" (suffering) that this karma summons and unfold it in the round, by the twelvefold dependent origination.

Carrying Forward

Karma has volition for its substance → the volition mental factor of the Treatise on the Hundred Dharmas, and the Cheng Weishi Lun's doctrine of karmic summoning (this series); karma perfumes into a seed (latent-tendency-phase karma = karma already arisen, already ceased, not present) · the store consciousness holds the karmic seed and summons maturation (karma conducive to neither-painful-nor-pleasant feeling = karma summoning the maturation of the store consciousness) → the Consciousness-Only doctrine of the karmic seed (carrying forward the all-seeds consciousness of the Stage of the Mental 02-03 · opening the way to the Cheng Weishi Lun's maturational consciousness); uncontaminated karma able to exhaust the several karmas → the severing-path of the Śrāvaka Stage and the Bodhisattva Stage · the Cheng Weishi Lun's transformation of the basis; the phase of karma summons the five destinies → the Designation of the Elements 03-01, the abodes and the birth-destinies; the ten courses of action → the training in discipline. Followed next by 03-05-03, the defilement of birth (karma → birth · the twelvefold dependent origination).

The third of the three defilements, "birth" (suffering), turns upon dependent origination — the doctrinal summit of the three stages of applied-and-sustained thought, and the very heart of the whole of the Dharma. This section unfolds it link by link: first the mark of suffering that is saṃsāra (its diversity, its arduousness, its uncertainty), then the full sweep of dependent origination (the flowing-on through the three time-frames, the twelve links, the two causes of drawing-forth and producing, the reverse-cessation, the profundity, the two knowledges, the nature of phenomena, and the closing upon the six direct realizations). Wherever a difficulty arises it is expounded through similes the treatise itself already holds — nothing is added out of the air.

I. First See Clearly What "Birth" Really Is: Diversity, Arduousness, Uncertainty

Dependent origination is hard to grasp, so the treatise is in no hurry to argue the point; it first lets you "see" the mark of suffering that is saṃsāra, and shakes the mind open — this is good teaching: first move the heart, then speak the reasoning.

How many kinds of birth there are (diversity): the three realms, the five destinies, the four modes of birth — thirty-six abodes in the desire realm, eighteen in the form realm, four in the formless realm, fifty-eight kinds of birth in all. Within the human destiny alone there are the differences of "birth prevailing in blackness" (birth into a lowly and impoverished household), "birth prevailing in whiteness" (birth into a house of great wealth and rank), and "neither black nor white" (a household of the middling sort) — the very same humanity, yet born into circumstances a world apart. This difference is no accident: it is what the karmic force expounded earlier under "the defilement of karma" brings about. A chart of the fifty-eight births, spread open, is "every square into which you might fall."

How bitter saṃsāra is (arduousness): here the treatise brings out the Buddha's own words directly, three shattering comparisons — the blood you have shed from your body in birth-and-death exceeds the water of the four great oceans (for you have been born countless times as elephant, horse, ox, or sheep, and slaughtered); the tears you have shed in losing kin and wealth are as many as that blood; and the mother's milk you have drunk is that much too. These three "exceeding the four great oceans" similes are no exaggeration: they are meant to take that abstract figure, "measureless kalpas of saṃsāra," and turn it into blood and tears that have run through your own body, so that you feel weariness and the wish to leave, here and now.

How impermanent the bonds of saṃsāra are (uncertainty): the Buddha says again — cut all the grasses and trees of the great earth into little tallies four fingers long, one tally for each of your fathers, one for each of your mothers — "this being was once my mother, and I too was once his mother" — the tallies are soon exhausted, yet your fathers and mothers cannot be counted to the end. He says again: there is not one small patch of ground where you have not undergone birth-and-death; it is hard to find a single being who has not been your father, mother, brother, or teacher; and the bones of one person's single kalpa, heaped up, are higher than Mount Vaipulya beside Rājagṛha. This whole train of similes is meant to break the clinging of "near and far," "mine": within beginningless saṃsāra, enemy and kin have already revolved through countless turns — where is there any fixed standard? Only when this "uncertainty" is seen clearly is one willing to let go, willing to seek release.

II. What Dependent Origination Is: Origination Pertaining to Oneself Is Precisely the Flowing-On

Once the heart is shaken open, the treatise speaks the reasoning head-on. It gives "flowing-on" an exceedingly clean definition: "The dependent origination that pertains to oneself is called flowing-on." There is no creator pushing from behind, no real self receiving within — only a string of conditions, "this being, that is; this arising, that arises," arisen in mutual dependence. Saṃsāra is not made by anyone; it is dependent origination turning of itself — and this is precisely the good news: since it is "conditioned" origination, cut the condition and it can cease.

The treatise frames the whole chain by the "three time-frames" (the prior frame, the middle frame, the later frame), and points out from the very start that this chain has two directions: after the middle frame is born, it heads either toward flowing-on, or toward the ultimate of purity — flowing-on is saṃsāra, purity is reverse-cessation. The teaching of dependent origination has never spoken only of how it turns; still more it speaks of how it is brought to an end.

III. The Distinctive Contribution of the Yoga Treatise: Making the Twelve Links Three-Dimensional as "Seed — Present Activity — Fruit"

The twelve links of dependent origination are the same twelve; but where the Āgamas mostly enumerate them flat, forward and backward, the treatise here makes them three-dimensional — and this is its most Consciousness-Only, most worthy-of-close-reading place. Two keys —

Key one: the pivot of dependent origination is the store consciousness; consciousness and name-and-form are mutually dependent "like two bundles of reeds." The ignorance (avidyā) and formations (karma) of the prior life perfume the seeds, and, borne by the "consciousness that follows upon karma," come into the womb of this life and take up birth. The treatise says: within the mother's womb, "consciousness conditions name-and-form, and name-and-form conditions consciousness, just as two bundles of reeds lean upon each other, and so on until the end of life, turning in mutual dependence." This "consciousness," at bottom, is precisely the store consciousness (the maturational consciousness, the seed-consciousness) — it appropriates name-and-form (the faculty-body) and turns in dependence on name-and-form, while name-and-form in turn abides in dependence on it; the moment one leans, both stand; the moment one loosens, both fall — like two bundles of reeds propping each other up. The treatise says one more exceedingly crucial thing: when the bodhisattva contemplates dependent origination in reverse, on pushing back to the link of "consciousness," the mind turns back and goes no further — because consciousness and name-and-form are mutual conditions, and here they are tied into a single knot, past which the pushing-back cannot go. Kuiji, in his Concise Compendium, states this step cleanly: "'To turn' is the sense of mutually being the condition of origination; 'to turn back' is that the contemplating mind reaches consciousness and turns back to old-age-and-death" — the contemplating knowledge, pushing back to consciousness, turns around, and it is by this that the whole set of the "forty-four knowledges and the seventy-seven knowledges" of the contemplation of dependent origination is established; Dunlun's Notes on the Treatise also says the bodhisattva "goes only as far as the link of consciousness and turns back upward." This simile of "the two bundles of reeds," this "reaching consciousness and turning back," are saying just this: the ground of dependent origination is the store consciousness. This is the lifeline of the Yoga treatise's theory of dependent origination, and the watershed dividing it from the flat dependent origination of the Lesser Vehicle.

Key two: the drawing-forth cause and the producing cause; the seeds, moistened, flush into fruit. The treatise says: consciousness is that which the "seed of the later name-and-form" follows upon, the seed of name-and-form is that which the "seed of the six sense-bases" follows upon, and so on down to feeling. So the first six links (ignorance, formations, consciousness, name-and-form, the six sense-bases, contact, feeling) are the "drawing-forth cause" — they sow the seed of the later existence; and the last three links (craving, grasping, becoming) are the "producing cause" — they moisten the seed and flush it into present activity. Seed (drawing-forth) → moistening (producing) → fruit (birth, old-age-and-death): this is the precise place where the treatise expounds the twelve links as "twofold cause-and-effect." They are not twelve things standing in a row; they are the layer-upon-layer mutual arising of seed and present activity. The treatise asks, "regarded against one another, how many kinds of condition are the links?" and answers with equal precision — between the several links there are the predominance condition, the immediately-antecedent condition, and the object condition (only the "cause condition" is absent, for the cause condition refers exclusively to the seed of a thing's own substance); and each link, toward the next, is at once a threefold "coexistent condition, the condition of immediate cessation, and the condition of distant cessation" — on one side veiling in the present, on one side drawing forth without interval, on one side pulling in from afar what is to come. That the "condition" of dependent origination should be taken apart this finely is precisely to make one see clearly: every link in the flowing-on is bound fast, and yet every one of them "can be cut."

IV. What Each of the Twelve Links Is (Recognizing Each Adversary Clearly)

To cut a chain, one must first recognize each link clearly. In the "distinguishing of the links," the treatise defines the twelve one by one; here is the gist: ignorance is the various kinds of "not-knowing (ajñāna)" regarding the four truths, karma-and-fruit, and dependent origination (the treatise lists nineteen kinds, seven kinds, five kinds of stupefaction — from the prior-frame not-knowing of "did I exist in the past?" to the not-knowing of the Buddha, Dharma, Saṅgha and of suffering, its origin, its cessation, and the path); formations are the bodily, verbal, and mental karma driven by ignorance (meritorious, non-meritorious, imperturbable); consciousness is the seed-consciousness perfumed and roused by karma, and its resultant consciousness; name-and-form is "name" (the four formless aggregates: feeling, perception, formations, consciousness) and "form" (the five faculties and the great elements); the six sense-bases are the six faculties; contact is the concurrence of faculty, object, and consciousness; feeling is the threefold reception of pleasant, painful, and neither-painful-nor-pleasant; craving is craving for the desire realm, for the form realm, for the formless realm (the defiled longing for the formations of the three realms); grasping is the fourfold clinging of grasping after desire, grasping after views, grasping after discipline-and-vows, and grasping after the doctrine of self; becoming is the "desire-existence, form-existence, formless-existence" that, perfumed and roused by karma and affliction, is settled to summon the later existence; birth is entrusting-to-birth, the arising-and-turning of the five appropriating aggregates; old-age-and-death is decline, aging, wrinkling, ripening, the wasting of strength… down to the parting of consciousness from the body (the treatise takes "old age" apart into a dozen or so marks of decline, and "death" apart into ending, exhaustion, ruin, and disappearance). Only by recognizing each link clearly does one know what practice is cutting off — and the treatise makes the point: the sequence of this string is not arranged at random; it is that "one is first stupefied about what is to be known (ignorance), and only then arouses wrong conduct (formations), and only then makes the mind, in its inversion, take up rebirth (consciousness)… and only then is there old-age-and-death"; link upon link is the necessity of cause-and-effect.

V. Reverse-Cessation: All the Way from "Hearing the True Dharma + Attending Wisely" to Nirvāṇa

Dependent origination speaks of flowing-on, but still more it must speak of "reverse-cessation" — this is the resting-place of practice, and the warmest part of this whole gateway. The treatise's road of reverse-cessation is a plainly-drawn single line: first "hearing the sound of the Dharma from another," then "attending wisely" (precisely the opposite of the "attending unwisely" that this very gateway opposes), whereby right view is born, and one attains in sequence the "pure knowledge-and-vision of the learner and of the one-beyond-learning"; and by this knowledge-and-vision, ignorance and craving are cut off forever, without remainder. When ignorance is cut, one attains "liberation of wisdom"; when the greed-and-craving in the mind associated with the feeling born of ignorance-contact is cut, one attains "liberation of mind." Here and now, upon this very body possessed of consciousness, one realizes "nirvāṇa with a remaining basis" (the body is still present, but one constantly experiences the "feeling free of bondage," no longer the "feeling with bondage"); and when the lifespan of this body is exhausted and consciousness together with all feeling ceases forever without remainder, one realizes "nirvāṇa without a remaining basis, the abode of ultimate quiescence."

The starting-point of this road is astonishingly plain — not some abstruse spiritual power, but simply "hearing the true Dharma + attending wisely." So the whole of Stage 03, laid down from the third and fourth gateways of "attending wisely / unwisely," comes truly to its close only here: attending unwisely bears the wrong views of the sixteen heterodox theses, bears the flowing-on of the three defilements of affliction, karma, and birth; attending wisely gives rise to right view, cuts off ignorance and craving, and opens onto nirvāṇa. The rightness or wrongness of a single moment's use of the mind divides the two roads of flowing-on and reverse-cessation — this is the deep intent behind the three stages of applied-and-sustained thought establishing "attention" as their two great gateways, and it is all made good, here, upon the reverse-cessation of dependent origination.

VI. The Profundity of Dependent Origination: Seemingly Existent yet Really Non-Existent, So by the Very Nature of Things

Finally the treatise spreads open the "profundity" of dependent origination — its philosophical summit, and the hardest of the hard. Relying on the four meanings of "impermanence, suffering, emptiness, no-self," the treatise establishes ten marks of profundity, whose core lies just in the four words "seemingly existent yet really non-existent":

• By the meaning of impermanence: the seed and conditions that give rise to fruit are, with respect to this thing "giving-rise," in truth "without doing, without use, without any carrying-on" — there is no thing that truly "manufactures" anything, and yet their function is "not not-existent" (not the non-existence of annihilation); and the links, ceasing swiftly moment by moment, yet present "a semblance of an abiding, moving mark" — as though there were some thing persisting there in motion, when in truth it is only moment-after-moment fresh arising-and-ceasing, the prior ceasing and the later arising, resembling one another in continuous succession, deceiving our eyes.
• By the meaning of suffering: the links of dependent origination are "of a single flavor, the mark of suffering," yet they present "a semblance of the three (painful, pleasant, neutral) marks" — we take it that there is suffering and there is pleasure, when in truth, upon the ground-tone of the suffering-of-conditioning, all is suffering.
• By the meaning of emptiness: the links of dependent origination are "apart from any sentient being, agent, or experiencer," yet they "appear as a semblance of not being apart (from a sentient being)" — it looks as though there were some "person" revolving in saṃsāra, when in truth there is no such person. Kuiji's Concise Compendium makes plain that this "emptiness" in fact cuts down two schools at a stroke: "the cause-nature is apart from the Vaiśeṣika's agent-self, the fruit-nature is apart from the Sāṃkhya's self-that-experiences-suffering" — on the side of cause there is no "manufacturing self" of the Vaiśeṣikas, on the side of fruit there is no "suffering-experiencing self" of the Sāṃkhyas.
• By the meaning of no-self: the links of dependent origination "in truth have no mark of self," yet "appear as a semblance of the mark of self" — it looks as though there were some "self" experiencing suffering, when in truth it is only a string of conditions without own-nature.

Gathered into one sentence: saṃsāra looks as though there were a self, experiencing suffering, manufactured by some thing — yet in truth all three of these are absent; there is only a string of conditions without own-nature, continuing on, seemingly existent yet really non-existent. Dunlun's Notes on the Treatise, glossing this "seemingly existent yet really non-existent," touches the very root: "as for its being, in the highest sense, wholly without anything at all — this is grounded on the principle that the really-existent activity of the wholly-imagined is, in the end, without anything at all" — what is utterly unfindable in the ultimate sense is that "really-existent activity" we falsely reckon (namely the wholly-imagined); the continuity of the force of conditions is not the non-existence of annihilation. This is precisely where dependent origination differs entirely from the four heterodox views of "self-made, made-by-another, made-by-both, arisen-without-cause": made by none, arisen from the force of conditions. To make this "without own-nature yet continuing on" more palpable, the treatise brings out a set of similes of lamp-flame and of sprout-and-tree: consciousness through feeling are the "sprout of suffering," craving through becoming are the water and soil that "guard and nourish the sprout of suffering," and birth-old-age-and-death are the grown "tree of suffering"; and again, consciousness through feeling are like the "wick," ignorance-formations-craving-grasping-becoming like the "lamp-oil," and birth-old-age-and-death like the "flame" — what burns this lamp of saṃsāra, what nourishes this tree of suffering, is precisely ignorance and the rest of the links. If you would put out the lamp, you need not go beating at the flame (birth-old-age-and-death, which is the fruit), but must cut off that oil (ignorance-craving-grasping, which is the cause) — this simile is itself a guide for practice.

VII. Dependent Origination Is Objective Truth: The Nature of Phenomena, the Abiding of Phenomena, the Realm of Phenomena, and the Two Knowledges

Since dependent origination is "seemingly existent yet really non-existent," is it then something the Buddha made up? The treatise cuts the matter through with certainty: it is not. The Buddha says, "the several dependent originations are not made by me, nor made by another; whether or not a buddha appears in the world, they abide in the nature of phenomena, the abiding of phenomena, the realm of phenomena." What are these three? Dependent origination's "nature of accomplishment-by-principle from beginningless time" is the "nature of phenomena" (it is inherently thus); its being established, just as it inherently is, through undistorted phrases and clauses, is the "abiding of phenomena" (the Buddha states it as it truly is); and that this establishing, taking the nature of phenomena as its cause, is what is called the "realm of phenomena." Kuiji's Concise Compendium states the relation of these three most precisely: "the phrases-and-clauses that express it are named the abiding of phenomena; hence this abiding of phenomena takes the nature of phenomena as its cause; hence this nature of phenomena is named the realm of phenomena. 'Realm' has the sense of 'cause'" — "realm" means precisely "cause": the nature of phenomena that is dependent origination is exactly that cause upon which the establishing of the sagely teaching (the abiding of phenomena) depends. In one sentence: dependent origination is a truth that is so by the very nature of things; the Buddha only awoke to it and proclaimed it — he did not invent it. This gives the practitioner the greatest of reliances — what you cultivate is not the word of some one school, but the principle inherent in the cosmos itself.

The treatise further gives two knowledges by which dependent origination is seen: "the knowledge of the abiding of phenomena" (knowing the marks of dependent origination without distortion, just as the Buddha has set them forth and disclosed them) and "the knowledge of the real" (as with the sage who has entered the path of seeing, directly contemplating the profound nature of dependent origination). The one knows its "marks" (how dependent origination is established), the other realizes its "nature" (the emptiness-and-no-self of dependent origination) — first, by the knowledge of the abiding of phenomena, to believe-and-understand; then, by the knowledge of the real, to realize directly: this is the sequence of dependent origination from "understanding" to "realizing." Kuiji's Concise Compendium also matches this sequence to the depth and shallowness of the wisdom of cultivation: "the knowledge of the abiding of phenomena is the wisdom of hearing; the knowledge of the real refers to reflection and cultivation," or, more finely judged, "the knowledge of the abiding of phenomena is the ordinary being's wisdom of hearing; the knowledge of the real is the sage's threefold wisdom" — from hearing, on to reflection and cultivation, is precisely this ladder from understanding to realizing.

VIII. Closing upon the Three Defilements, Opening the Prescription

Come this far, the treatise closes off the whole defilement-gateway: affliction (delusion), karma, and birth (suffering) — these three defilements interlock, link upon link, into saṃsāra; and "in order to cut them off, one is to cultivate the six direct realizations" — the direct realization of reflection, the direct realization of faith, the direct realization of discipline, the direct realization of the knowledge of the truths, the direct realization of the knowledge attendant upon direct realization of the truths, and the ultimate direct realization. Delusion-karma-suffering are the disease; the six direct realizations are the medicine. The three stages of applied-and-sustained thought, through the five gateways of realm, mark, wise attention, unwise attention, and defilement, have expounded the whole pathology of saṃsāra, and at the last write out this prescription, handing the baton directly to the stages of cultivation-and-realization that follow. Stage 03 comes to its consummation here; and the twelve links of dependent origination are the deepest map it leaves to the whole treatise, and to every practitioner: to see this string of conditions clearly is to see clearly whence one comes, whither one goes, and whence one can be brought to an end.

Carrying Forward

Dependent origination has the store consciousness as its pivot · consciousness conditions name-and-form in mutual dependence (the two bundles of reeds) → Consciousness-Only's store-consciousness dependent origination (carrying forward the all-seeds consciousness and rebirth-reconnection-and-continuity of the Stage of the Mental, 02-03; opening the way to the Cheng Weishi Lun's store-consciousness dependent origination and the dependent origination of the Madhyāntavibhāga and the Mahāyānasaṃgraha); the drawing-forth cause and producing cause · the twofold cause-and-effect across the three lives → the ascertainment of dependent origination in the Section on Ascertainment; the two liberations and two nirvāṇas of reverse-cessation → the cultivation-and-realization of the Śrāvaka Stage and the Bodhisattva Stage; the ten marks of profundity · the nature-abiding-realm of phenomena · the two knowledges → the Bodhisattva Stage · Chapter on the Meaning of the Real · the suchness of the Cheng Weishi Lun; the six direct realizations → the ground of the cultivation-and-realization of the later stages.