解脫道論 行陰諸法

The aggregate of formations is defined by exclusion: apart from feeling and perception, all mental factors belong to the aggregate of formations. The treatise gives no total; it simply lists the names and then explains them one by one.

Every individual explanation is poured from a single mold—one meaning, one simile, one basis.

Mindfulness is the mind’s protection; it is like carrying an oil bowl; its basis is the four establishments of mindfulness. Concentration is the mind’s unification; it is like a lamp in a hall; its basis is the four jhānas. Wisdom is the mind’s seeing; it is like a person with eyes; its basis is the four noble truths. Thirty-two items, not one omitted.

These three parts each answer one question, but readers often read only the first.

The first answers “What is it?” Every definition begins with “the mind”: the mind touches an object, the mind moves, the mind rejoices, the mind rises, the mind retreats. All thirty-two mental factors are cast as some activity of the mind.

The second answers “What does it resemble?” Almost all the similes draw on everyday things: sunlight touching a wall, building a house, reciting a scripture, a person obtaining something, a person holding scales, a person holding a rudder, and someone hot in summer bathing in cold water. On the unwholesome side there are boiling water, an angry venomous snake, a hibernating snake, blind people touching an elephant, and an evil king. Not one simile draws on a heavenly realm or supernormal powers.

The third answers “Where does it stand?” It carries the densest information, yet is the easiest to skip. Mindfulness stands on the four establishments of mindfulness, concentration on the four jhānas, wisdom on the four noble truths, non-hatred on the four immeasurables, and desire on the four bases of power—this column reconnects the qualities of the aggregate of formations, one by one, to methods already taught earlier in the treatise. The unwholesome side likewise has its own origins: ignorance stands on the four inversions, view on hearing another’s voice and incorrect recollection, doubt on improper attention, and laziness on eight fields of indolence.

The mold has two breaks. The first occurs at the very beginning: all thirty-two items close with “basis,” except the first, “contact,” which reads “its place is perception,” lacking the character for “basis.” The critical note falls precisely here—the Ming witness has that character. Regularity of form is a tempting reason, but it cannot prove the wording, so this edition follows the base text and records the Ming reading alongside it. The other break is that the basis formula takes two forms, beginning either with “that” or with “this is its”; both are used without being made uniform.

There is one more thing worth seeing for oneself. All thirty-two definitions take “mind” as their subject, yet among those thirty-two items one is itself called “mind”—“Mind is the mind’s clarity.” The same character serves once as the common subject of all the items and once as one member among them. Is it the same mind? The treatise does not say, and this edition does not distinguish them on its behalf.

(Keep this in mind as well: the heading list contains only twenty-nine expressions, but the individual explanations contain thirty-two items—the three strings “joy-mind,” “energy-mindfulness,” and “agitation-play” each contain two items; in the last string, moreover, the second half is listed as “play” but explained as “remorse.”)

(One further point should be remembered: this passage has fifteen critical notes. In two cases, the critical text has already changed the displayed body: it shows “柂” and “墯,” where the Taishō originally reads “施” and “墮”; the text here follows the characters displayed by the critical text. On the same line, however, the critical text merely records that the Korean witness reads “報” for “執” and does not alter the body, so the text here retains “執.” Recording and changing are two different acts.)

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Shi Huijing · Waken · The Path of Freedom · Qualities of the Aggregate of Formations · Doorway · Summer 2026

The Heading List

Question: What is the aggregate of formations?

Answer: contact, volition, initial application, sustained application, joy-mind, energy-mindfulness, concentration, wisdom, life faculty, restraint, non-greed, non-hatred, shame, moral dread, tranquility, desire, release, equanimity, attention, greed, hatred, ignorance, conceit, view, agitation-play, doubt, laziness, shamelessness, and fearlessness in wrongdoing. All mental factors apart from feeling and perception are the aggregate of formations.

Punctuation yields twenty-nine expressions, while the explanations below contain thirty-two items. Three strings are each divided in two: joy and mind, energy and mindfulness, agitation and remorse. In the last, the heading’s second character means “play,” while the explanation has “remorse.” The received forms are preserved without editorial segmentation or correction.

The Individual Explanations: One Meaning, One Simile, One Basis

Here:

Contact is the mind touching an object, like sunlight touching a wall; its place is perception.

Volition is movement of mind, like methods used in building a house; its basis is the door of activity.

Initial application is verbal activity, like reciting a scripture mentally; its basis is perception.

Sustained application is the mind examining an object, like following and reflecting on meaning; its basis is initial application.

Joy is the mind’s gladness, like a person obtaining something; its basis is elation.

Mind is the mind’s clarity, like making water clear with an incantation; its basis is the four factors of stream-entry.

Energy is the mind’s vigor, like a strong ox bearing a load; its basis is the eight fields of activity.

Mindfulness is the mind’s protection, like carrying a bowl of oil; its basis is the four establishments of mindfulness.

Concentration is the mind’s unification, like a lamp inside a hall; its basis is the four jhānas.

Wisdom is the mind’s seeing, like a person with eyes; its basis is the four noble truths.

The life faculty is an immaterial quality and a lifespan, like water for an utpala; its basis is name-and-form.

Restraint is the mind stopping and leaving evil, like one who cherishes life avoiding poison; its basis is practice for the four jhānas.

Non-greed is the mind relinquishing attachment, like release from debt; its basis is departure.

Non-hatred is the mind without anger, like cat skin; its basis is the four immeasurables.

Shame is the mind ashamed of evil, like loathing excrement and urine; its basis is reliance on oneself.

Moral dread is the mind fearing evil, like fearing an official superior; its basis is reliance on the world.

Tranquility is the ending of the mind’s disturbance, like a person hot in summer bathing in cold water; its basis is joy.

Desire is delight in doing good, like a faithful donor; its basis is the four bases of power.

Release is the bending of mind, like water flowing toward a depth; its basis is initial and sustained application.

Equanimity is the mind neither going nor coming, like a person holding scales; its basis is energy and the other qualities.

Attention makes a rule or quality arise in the mind, like a person holding a rudder; its basis is the wholesome and unwholesome.

Greed is the mind’s taking up, like a “my-bird”; its basis is delightful and pleasing form.

Hatred is the mind’s agitation, like an angry venomous snake; its basis is the ten fields of hatred.

Ignorance is the mind’s failure to see, like a blind person; its basis is the four inversions.

Conceit is the mind’s elevation, like two people wrestling; its basis is the three kinds.

View is the mind’s grasping, like blind people touching an elephant; its basis is hearing another’s voice and incorrect recollection.

Agitation is the mind’s unrest, like boiling water; its basis is rapid energy.

Remorse is the mind’s retreat, like delighting in impurity; its basis is doing evil and retreat from good.

Doubt is the mind not grasping one thing, like a person traveling to a distant country or standing between two roads; its basis is improper attention.

Laziness is the mind’s indolence, like a snake hidden in hibernation; its basis is the eight fields of indolence.

Shamelessness is the mind having no shame in doing evil, like a caṇḍāla; its basis is disrespect.

Fearlessness in wrongdoing is the mind having no fear in doing evil, like an evil king; its basis is the six kinds of disrespect.

This is called the aggregate of formations.

Two Irregularities in the Pattern

All thirty-two entries define a quality as a movement of mind, give a simile, and attach a basis. Only the first, contact, ends with “its place is perception” rather than “its basis.” The Ming witness adds the character for “basis.” The base is followed and the difference recorded.

The final phrase also has two forms: some entries begin it with “that,” others with “its.” Both are retained without being made uniform.

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Shi Huijing · Waken · The Path of Freedom · Qualities of the Aggregate of Formations · Vernacular · Summer 2026

The preceding two units contain no similes at all. On reaching the aggregate of formations, the treatise suddenly gives thirty-two similes in one succession.

Put the observation first: This passage uses one mold from beginning to end—every item has three parts, “one meaning, one simile, one basis”; and the mold has exactly two breaks, both in places a reader can easily pass over.

The three parts work as follows. “Mindfulness is the mind’s protection, like carrying a bowl of oil; its basis is the four establishments of mindfulness” 〔T32 447c20–21〕—the first part says what it is (the mind’s protection), the second what it resembles (carrying a bowl of oil), and the third where it stands (the four establishments of mindfulness). “Concentration is the mind’s unification, like a lamp inside a hall; its basis is the four jhānas” 〔T32 447c21–22〕, and “volition is movement of mind, like the methods used in building a house; its basis is the door of activity” 〔T32 447c14–15〕, follow the same pattern. Thirty-two items, with not one omitted.

There are two breaks: the first item lacks the word “basis,” and the wording of the basis clause has two forms. They are taken up separately below.

Count First: Twenty-Nine in the Heading, Thirty-Two in the Explanations

The heading list begins, “Question: What is the aggregate of formations? Answer: contact, volition, initial application, sustained application, joy-mind, energy-mindfulness, concentration, wisdom” 〔T32 447c10–11〕, and continues through the series with enumeration commas. Its definition is a single exclusion: “all mental factors apart from feeling and perception are the aggregate of formations” 〔T32 447c13〕—once form, feeling, perception, and consciousness are set aside, all the remaining mental factors belong to the aggregate of formations. The treatise gives no total.

Count the heading items one by one and there are only twenty-nine expressions. The individual explanations begin with “Here, contact” 〔T32 447c13〕 and proceed one sentence per item through “fearlessness in wrongdoing” 〔T32 448a17〕, actually yielding thirty-two items.

The three-item difference lies in three strings written together: “joy-mind” contains joy and mind as two items, “energy-mindfulness” contains energy and mindfulness as two, and “agitation-play” contains agitation and remorse as two. Twenty-nine minus three plus six gives exactly thirty-two.

This is the fourth time the treatise has compressed a list in this way. There was 11-01’s “impermanence-morsel-food-domain form,” 11-02’s “arising-form-morsel-food-four-elements,” 11-03’s “water-element-morsel-food-domain form,” and now “joy-mind,” “energy-mindfulness,” and “agitation-play.” In the first three cases, the number reported by the treatise allowed the items to be recovered; this time the treatise reports no number, and the individual explanations themselves are what separate them.

The third string also has an extra layer: the heading has “agitation-play,” but the explanations give “Agitation is the mind’s unrest, like boiling water” 〔T32 448a11–12〕 and “Remorse is the mind’s retreat, like delighting in impurity” 〔T32 448a12–13〕—it is not only divided into two items; the character in its second half does not match (the heading has “play,” while the explanation has “remorse”). This edition records both without correcting them.

Reading Practice: Separate the Three-Part Form

The reading practice offered by this passage is concrete: when you meet a three-part form such as “one meaning, one simile, one basis,” separate the three parts and ask one question of each.

The first part answers “what is it?” and is always led by “it is the mind”—the mind touching an object, the mind moving, the mind rejoicing, the mind protecting, the mind becoming unified, the mind seeing. The treatise places all thirty-two mental factors in “some particular activity of the mind.”

The second part answers “what is it like?” Nearly all the similes are taken from everyday things: sunlight touching a wall, building a house, reciting a scripture, a person obtaining something, carrying a bowl of oil, a lamp inside a hall, a person with eyes, a person holding scales, a person holding a rudder, and someone hot in summer bathing in cold water; on the unwholesome side there are boiling water, an angry venomous snake, a snake hidden in hibernation, a caṇḍāla, an evil king, and blind people touching an elephant. Not one simile needs recourse to a heavenly realm or a supernormal feat.

The third part answers “where does it stand?” This is the part most easily passed over, yet it contains the densest information: mindfulness has the four establishments of mindfulness as its basis, concentration the four jhānas, and wisdom the four noble truths 〔T32 447c22–23〕; non-hatred has the four immeasurables, and desire the four bases of power. This column connects each quality of the aggregate of formations back to practices the treatise has discussed earlier. The unwholesome qualities likewise have their own places of origin: ignorance has the four inversions as its basis 〔T32 448a08–09〕, view has “hearing another’s voice and incorrect recollection” 〔T32 448a11〕, doubt has improper attention 〔T32 448a13–14〕, and laziness has the eight fields of indolence.

The basis column contains something finer still: part of it points not outside the list but back into the list itself. “Initial application is verbal activity, like reciting a scripture mentally; its basis is perception” 〔T32 447c15–16〕—the basis of initial application is perception. “Sustained application is the mind examining an object, like following and reflecting on meaning; its basis is initial application” 〔T32 447c16–17〕—the basis of sustained application is initial application. Tranquility has joy as its basis 〔T32 448a01〕, and equanimity has energy and the other qualities 〔T32 448a04〕. Perception lies over in the aggregates of feeling and perception; joy, initial application, and energy are within this very list.

In other words, these thirty-two are not thirty-two unrelated entries: some of them stand on other entries. The treatise does not set this relationship out in a separate section; it embeds it in the basis column. If the reader skips the third part, this whole layer disappears from view.

Each part answers one question. Read only the first part, and the section looks like a table of terms; read all three together, and it becomes a three-column table of “what it is—what it resembles—where it comes from.”

Break One: The First Item Is Missing One Character

All thirty-two items close with “basis.” The sole exception is the first: “Here, contact is the mind touching an object. Like sunlight touching a wall, its place is perception” 〔T32 447c13–14〕—it says “place of perception,” without the word “basis.”

The critical note falls precisely here: the Ming witness reads “perception-basis.” In other words, if the Ming reading is followed, this item becomes “its basis is perception,” and the pattern of all thirty-two items is complete; under the base text, the first item alone differs.

This edition follows the base text and records the difference without changing it. Only two things can be verified: the base has no “basis” here, and the Ming witness does. The treatise itself does not provide enough evidence to decide whether the base lost a character or Ming supplied one—and it is precisely because “this item alone is irregular” and “the critical note falls exactly here” are both true that neither reading can be settled merely by appealing to formal regularity. Formal regularity is a very tempting reason, but it cannot prove the text.

The second break is much smaller: the basis clause has two forms. One is led by “that”—“that four-establishments basis” 〔T32 447c21〕—and the other by “its”—“its initial-application basis” 〔T32 447c17〕. The two forms are used side by side without being made uniform; this edition records them without harmonizing them.

Pause: “Mind” Is Itself on the List

One more point is especially worth pausing over.

All thirty-two statements of meaning are led by “the mind is”—the mind touching an object, the mind moving, the mind rising, the mind retreating. Yet among the thirty-two, one item is itself called “mind”: “Mind is the mind’s clarity, like making water clear with an incantation; its basis is the four factors of stream-entry” 〔T32 447c18–19〕.

The same word “mind” therefore does two jobs in the same passage: in one position it is the common subject of all thirty-two items (some particular activity of mind); in another it is one of the thirty-two items (listed beside contact, volition, initial application, and sustained application).

Pause and ask one question: is this the same mind?

This passage cannot answer. The treatise neither explains why it defines mind by mind nor says how “mind” as one item differs from “mind” as the subject. Only the wording can be verified: the statements of meaning for all thirty-two items take “mind” as their subject, while the sixth item is named “mind” and is defined as “the mind is clear.” This edition records the wording without correcting or reconciling it—it neither divides two meanings on the treatise’s behalf nor infers a doctrine of consciousness from it.

This passage has one more instance of the same “same name in a different position”: “The life faculty is an immaterial quality and a lifespan, like water for an utpala” 〔T32 447c23–24〕, explicitly calling this item immaterial. Yet the name “life faculty” has also appeared under the aggregate of form—both in the list of derived forms 〔T32 445c23〕 and in the kamma-born “life-faculty-nine” 〔T32 446b18〕. The same name belongs to the aggregates of form and formations, and neither passage mentions the other. This edition records both without reconciling them.

Fifteen Critical Notes, and Two of a Different Kind

This passage has fifteen critical notes, the most in any of these units. Most record a difference of one character: in “a person hot in summer bathing in cold water,” “summer” is “sorrow” in four witnesses; in “like a my-bird,” “my” is “goose” in the Ming witness; in “like an angry venomous snake,” “venomous” is “angry” in four witnesses; in “like blind people touching an elephant,” “touching” is “modeling” in three witnesses; and in “a person traveling to a distant country or at two roads,” “or” is “delusion” in four witnesses. This edition follows the base in every case and records the variants without changing it.

Two of the notes are different in kind and deserve to be singled out.

One occurs in “a person holding a rudder” 〔T32 448a05–06〕. The character “柂” in this sentence was originally “施” in the Taishō text; the critical edition changed it to “柂” on the evidence of the Fuzhou and Sixi witnesses and states those sources. The other occurs in “Laziness is the mind’s indolence” 〔T32 448a15〕: the character “墯” was originally “墮” in the Taishō text; the critical edition changed it to “墯” on the evidence of the Korean witness.

In both places this is not a note that “a certain witness reads a certain way”; the critical edition has already changed the body text. The “柂” and “墯” now before us are therefore not the original Taishō characters. This edition follows the characters presented by the critical text and, in its apparatus, records all three parts—the Taishō character, the critical edition’s change, and the witnesses on which it rests—stating plainly that its text does not follow Taishō.

There is a third note in the same passage that provides the counterexample. In “a person holding a rudder,” the character “執” is read “報” in the Korean witness; the critical edition records it but does not change the body text 〔T32 448a05〕. The text therefore still reads “執.”

Within a single line, the critical edition changes one character and merely records another—this is a ready-made example for distinguishing “recording” from “adopting.” The preceding unit’s “sleep/eye” belongs to the “recorded but not adopted” kind; this passage’s “柂” and “墯” belong to the “adopted” kind. If readers conflate the two, this edition will seem to follow the critical text at one moment and reject it at another. In fact there is only one standard: look at the character displayed in the body of the critical text.

Sparse and Dense: The Contrast among Three Adjacent Passages

Finally, one fact about the passage’s manner of presentation should be recorded.

The preceding two units—the arising, varieties, and unity of form, and the aggregates of feeling and perception—contain not one simile between them. In this passage, there is one simile for each item, thirty-two in succession.

Within the same chapter, these three adjacent passages move from passages with no similes at all to a passage made entirely of similes. What can be verified is the contrast itself. The passage does not say why the treatise uses similes so densely only here, and this edition does not construct a theory of its style from that silence. It simply records “where similes appear” and “where they do not,” allowing the reader to see that the treatise’s prose does not remain uniform from one passage to the next.

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Carry away three things. One observation: all thirty-two items are cast in the three-part sentence “one meaning · one simile · one basis”; the mold runs to the end with exactly two breaks (the first item ends in “place of perception” without the word “basis”; basis clauses are led either by “that” or by “its”). One reading practice: when you meet a three-part form, separate it and ask each question once: what is it (always led by “the mind is”), what is it like (the similes are drawn from ordinary things), and where does it stand (the basis column links the qualities back to practices described earlier in the treatise). One place to pause: the statements of meaning for all thirty-two items take “mind” as their subject, yet one item is itself named “mind” (its meaning is “the mind is clear”). Is this the same mind? The treatise does not explain; this edition records the wording without reconciling it.

Remember two smaller matters as well: the heading has twenty-nine expressions while the explanations have thirty-two items, the difference lying in the three run-together strings “joy-mind,” “energy-mindfulness,” and “agitation-play” (the fourth compression of this form in the treatise), while in the last string the heading has “play” and the explanation “remorse”; and the name life faculty belongs to both the aggregates of form and formations, with neither passage relating it to the other. This edition records both without reconciling them.

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Shi Huijing · Waken · The Path of Freedom · Qualities of the Aggregate of Formations · Exposition · Summer 2026