解脫道論 四諦種種、次第廣與攝

This is the final passage of Chapter Eleven. The last three of the eleven approaches are completed here, and the fifth doorway of the five methods closes—when this fifth method closes, the chapter too comes to an end.

The approach of diversity first divides the four truths into two truths, assigning nine items to each and pairing them item by item: affected by influxes against free from influxes, fettered against unfettered, bound against unbound, caught in currents against free from currents, subject to peril against free from peril, covered against uncovered, touchable against not touchable, grasped against free from grasping, and afflicted by defilements against free from defilements. Nine against nine, without a single item missing. This same group of nine appeared in the method concerning the aggregate of consciousness; there it appeared as a single list, while here each item is turned into its opposite and the two lists are set side by side.

The final set has four statements: suffering can be known, arising can be abandoned, cessation can be realized, and path should be cultivated. Yet three units earlier, when the treatise defended the number of the four truths, it said “should be known, should be abandoned, should be realized, should be cultivated”—all four use “should.” The same set of four statements is not worded alike in the two places.

The extended-sequence approach is the longest list in this chapter: it counts from one kind through ten kinds, and each round sets out the four truth-positions of suffering, arising, cessation, and path—ten rounds and forty truth-positions.

Here is a tool to carry away: When you meet a list introduced by “as a certain number,” do not read only what it says; first count whether the countable names in the three positions of suffering, arising, and path actually equal that number.

Checked in this way, not one of the seven rounds from four through ten is off: the four body-nature loci, four inversions, and four establishments of mindfulness; the five destinations, five hindrances, and five faculties; the six contact bases, six bodies of craving, and six dhammas of release; the seven stations of consciousness, seven tendencies, and seven factors of awakening; the eight worldly dhammas, eight wrong extremes, and eight right factors; the nine abodes of beings, nine craving-root dhammas, and nine right-attention-root dhammas; the ten directional courses, ten fetters, and ten perceptions. Across seven rounds, all twenty-one countable names agree one for one with their numbers; the cessation position separately says “abandon that” or “abandon such-and-such.”

The second round is the one most worth examining. The base text reads, “Name-and-form is suffering, is ignorance; craving for becoming is arising.” Read literally, suffering gets three items and arising one, which does not agree with “as two.” Test it by the count: name and form are two, calm and insight are two, so if the arising item is “ignorance and craving for becoming,” it too is exactly two. Each of the three positions has two, without a single slot out of place.

Thus “is ignorance” belongs below, not above. What restores the division is not the meaning but the “two” that this very round reports for itself.

There is one place worth pausing over. The third round immediately after it will not check out: the arising item, “the three unwholesome roots,” is three, and the path item, “morality, concentration, and wisdom,” is three, but the suffering item reads “pain-as-pain,” and its two source characters do not visibly yield three.

Where is the number in this round’s suffering item? Only three things can be checked: each of the other two positions yields three; the suffering item reads “pain-as-pain”; there is no critical note here.

The absence of a critical note is especially important to remember. The critical edition does not treat this as a variant, so this differs from the second round: there the count can restore the punctuation; here the count can tell us only that “it does not match,” but cannot supply the reading that would make it match. This edition records it as it stands without supplying the missing reading.

The final approach is inclusion: three kinds of inclusion—inclusion by aggregates, by bases, and by elements.

Set the four inclusion passages in this chapter side by side: the aggregate method includes bases, elements, and truths; the base method includes aggregates, elements, and truths; this passage includes aggregates, bases, and elements; the conditionality method alone speaks of “four kinds of mutual inclusion” and takes in all four. Each of the first three “threefold inclusion” lists omits the category named by the method under discussion; the list here contains no “truths.” This is how the wording of the four passages compares; the treatise does not expressly state why.

The closing then proceeds through three levels: first it closes the inclusion approach, next the method concerning the noble truths, and last it appends the parenthetical note “The method concerning the noble truths is complete.”

The fifth doorway has closed. With this closing, all five methods are complete: aggregates, bases, elements, conditionality, and noble truths, one completion for each. The chapter opening listed five names, and within the chapter five matching “is complete” notices answer them, neither one more nor one fewer.

From the sentence “in five fields he should arouse a method” to this point, the chapter has run its course.

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Shi Huijing · Waken · The Path of Freedom · Diversity, Extended Sequence, and Inclusion of the Four Truths · Doorway · Summer 2026

Ninth Approach: Diversity

Question: How are the truths known through diversity?

Answer: as two truths—worldly truth and supramundane truth.

Worldly truth is affected by influxes, fettered, bound, caught in currents, subject to peril, covered, touchable, grasped, and afflicted by defilements. It comprises suffering and arising.

Supramundane truth is free from influxes, unfettered, unbound, free from currents, free from peril, uncovered, not touchable, free from grasping, and free from defilements. It comprises cessation and path.

The two truths each carry nine items, opposed item by item without one missing: affected by influxes and free from influxes; fettered and unfettered; bound and unbound; caught in currents and free from currents; subject to peril and free from peril; covered and uncovered; touchable and not touchable; grasped and free from grasping; afflicted by defilements and free from defilements. They are recorded here as they stand.

Again, three truths are conditioned, while the cessation truth is unconditioned. Three truths are immaterial, while the suffering truth is both material and immaterial. The arising truth is unwholesome, the path truth is wholesome, the cessation truth is indeterminate, and the suffering truth is wholesome, unwholesome, or indeterminate.

The suffering truth can be known; the arising truth can be abandoned; the cessation truth can be realized; the path truth should be cultivated.

Thus the truths can be known through diversity.

In the last set of four statements, the first three use “can” and the last uses “should”; earlier, where the treatise explains why there are four truths, the text reads “should be known, should be abandoned, should be realized, should be cultivated,” with “should” in all four. The wording in the two places is not uniform. It is recorded here as it stands, without being made uniform.

Tenth Approach: Extended Sequence

Question: How are the truths known through extended sequence?

Answer:

As one—the conscious body is suffering; conceit is arising; abandoning that is cessation; mindfulness of the body is path.

As two—name-and-form is suffering; ignorance and craving for becoming are arising; abandoning that is cessation; calm and insight are path.

The base here reads, “name-and-form is suffering, is ignorance; craving for becoming is arising,” and its punctuation attaches “is ignorance” to the suffering entry. This round announces itself as two: name-and-form is already two (name and form), and calm and insight are already two; if the arising entry is read as “ignorance and craving for becoming,” it too yields exactly two. It is restored above on this basis. The original characters are recorded here as they stand; this edition does not add punctuation on their behalf.

Formed as three—namely, pain-as-pain is the truth of suffering; the three unwholesome roots are arising; abandoning that is cessation; morality, concentration, and wisdom are path.

Formed as four—the four body-nature loci are suffering; the four inversions are arising; abandoning the inversions is cessation; the four establishments of mindfulness are path.

Formed as five—the five destinations are suffering; the five hindrances are arising; abandoning the hindrances is cessation; the five faculties are path.

Formed as six—the six contact bases are suffering; the six bodies of craving are arising; abandoning the bodies of craving is cessation; the six dhammas of release are path.

Formed as seven—the seven stations of consciousness are suffering; the seven tendencies are arising; abandoning the seven tendencies is cessation; the seven factors of awakening are path.

Formed as eight—the eight worldly dhammas are suffering; the eight wrong extremes are arising; abandoning the eight wrong extremes is cessation; the eight right factors are path.

Formed as nine—the nine abodes of beings are suffering; the nine craving-root dhammas are arising; abandoning that is cessation; the nine right-attention-root dhammas are path.

Formed as ten—the ten directional courses are suffering; the ten fetters are arising; abandoning the fetters is cessation; the ten perceptions are path.

Thus the truths can be known through extended sequence.

The labels of the ten rounds: the first two read “as one” and “as two,” without the word “formed”; each of the following eight adds “formed” after its numerical phrase in the source. They are recorded here as they stand, without being made uniform.

Again, in each of the seven rounds from four through ten, the three positions of suffering, arising, and path carry numbered names that can be checked against the number the round announces—the fourfold round has the four body-nature loci, the four inversions, and the four establishments of mindfulness; the fivefold round has the five destinations, the five hindrances, and the five faculties; the sixfold, sevenfold, eightfold, ninefold, and tenfold rounds have the same agreement. The cessation position instead reads either “abandoning that” or “abandoning the named item.” In the third round, the suffering entry reads “pain-as-pain,” and its number is not visible in the name. This is recorded as it stands; nothing is supplied.

Eleventh Approach: Inclusion

Question: How are the truths known through inclusion?

Answer: through three kinds of inclusion—inclusion by aggregates, inclusion by bases, and inclusion by elements.

In this matter, suffering is included in the five aggregates, arising and path are included in the formation aggregate, and cessation is not included in the aggregates.

Suffering is included in the twelve bases. The other three truths are included in the dhamma base.

Suffering is included in the eighteen elements. The other three truths are included in the dhamma element.

Thus the truths can be known through inclusion.

Through this practice, knowledge of the noble truths is made to arise. This is called the method concerning the noble truths. (The method concerning the noble truths is complete.)

One Pattern Seen Beside the Other Four Methods

In their inclusion approaches, the aggregate method and the base method both read “three kinds of inclusion”; the conditionality method reads “four kinds of mutual inclusion”; and this passage reads “three kinds of inclusion,” naming aggregates, bases, and elements. Those three instances of “three kinds of inclusion” each omit the category bearing the same name as the subject under discussion. This is how the wording of the four passages appears when set beside one another; the treatise does not explicitly state why. It is recorded here as it stands.

Again, with this passage completing the method concerning the noble truths, all five methods are complete. The phrase “the method is complete” occurs five times in the entire treatise, and this passage is the last. Chapter Eleven ends here.

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Shi Huijing · Waken · The Path of Freedom · Diversity, Extended Sequence, and Inclusion of the Four Truths · Vernacular · Summer 2026

Chapter Eleven has reached its final passage. The last three of its eleven approaches are now completed, and the fifth doorway of the five methods closes here—when the five methods close, the chapter itself also comes to an end.

State the finding first: In extended sequence, the count runs from one to ten, and each of the ten rounds lists four truth-positions: suffering, arising, cessation, and path. The positions for suffering, arising, and path regularly have countable names, while the cessation position says “abandoning that” or “abandoning the named cause.” When the announced number is checked against those countable names, the punctuation displaced by one place in the second round corrects itself; yet the suffering member of the third round cannot be counted to three. Within the same approach, counting resolves one place and cannot resolve another.

First, Read the Positive and Negative Lists

The diversity approach begins by dividing the four truths into two truths: “Answer: two truths, worldly truth and supramundane truth” 〔T32 453a29〕.

Then nine items are attached to each, and the nine correspond item for item: “Answer: two truths, worldly truth and supramundane truth. Worldly truth is affected by influxes, fettered, bound,” 〔T32 453a29〕 “caught in currents, subject to peril, covered, touchable, grasped, and afflicted by defilements, namely suffering and” 〔T32 453b01〕 “arising” 〔T32 453b02〕; “arising. Supramundane truth is free from influxes, unfettered, unbound, free from currents, free from peril, free from” 〔T32 453b02〕 “coverings, not touchable, free from grasping, free from defilements, namely cessation and path” 〔T32 453b03〕.

Affected by influxes is paired with free from influxes; fettered with unfettered; bound with unbound; caught in currents with free from currents; subject to peril with free from peril; covered with uncovered; touchable with not touchable; grasped with free from grasping; afflicted by defilements with free from defilements—nine against nine, without a single item missing.

This set of nine was not newly made here. The method concerning the consciousness aggregate already has the series “worldly dhammas are affected by influxes, fettered, bound” 〔T32 448b20〕—there it appears as a single list; here it is turned into its negative and placed beside itself. The same set of items is stated positively in one place and in positive-and-negative pairs in the other.

Then come three shorter groups: three truths are conditioned while cessation is unconditioned; three truths are immaterial while suffering is both material and immaterial; arising is unwholesome, path is wholesome, cessation is indeterminate, and suffering may be wholesome, unwholesome, or indeterminate.

The last group consists of four directives: “unwholesome; path is wholesome; cessation is indeterminate; suffering is wholesome, unwholesome, and indeterminate. Suffering” 〔T32 453b05〕 “can be known, arising can be abandoned, cessation can be realized, and path should be cultivated” 〔T32 453b06〕.

One detail of wording must be recorded here. Of the four directives, the first three use “can,” while the last uses “should.” Yet three units earlier, when the treatise argued for the number of the four truths, it said, “Further, they should be known, should be abandoned, should be realized, should be” 〔T32 452c02〕 “cultivated” 〔T32 452c03〕—all four use “should.”

The wording of the same four directives is uneven in the two places. It is recorded as it stands, without being made uniform.

Reading Practice: When You Meet “In So Many Ways,” Count Each Item

Extended sequence is the longest list in this chapter: it counts from one way to ten ways, and each round lists the four positions of suffering, arising, cessation, and path—ten rounds and forty truth-positions.

The reading practice this passage hands us is this: When a list begins “in so many ways,” do not read only what it says; first count the countable names item by item and see whether they actually reach the announced number.

Checked in this way, every one of the seven rounds from four through ten comes out exactly: “path. Formed as four: the four body-nature loci are suffering; the four inversions are arising,” 〔T32 453b12〕 abandoning the inversions is cessation, and the four establishments of mindfulness are path—four, four, four; the five destinations, five hindrances, and five faculties; “Formed: the six contact bases are suffering; the six bodies of craving are arising; abandoning the bodies of craving is cessation,” 〔T32 453b15〕 and the six dhammas of release are path; the seven stations of consciousness, seven tendencies, and seven factors of awakening; the eight worldly dhammas, eight wrong extremes, and eight right factors; the nine abodes of beings, nine craving-root dhammas, and nine right-attention-root dhammas; and, in “is cessation; the ten perceptions are path” 〔T32 453b22〕, the ten directional courses, ten fetters, and ten perceptions.

Across the seven rounds, the twenty-one countable names match their numbers item for item. In each round, the cessation position is expressed separately as “abandoning that” or “abandoning the named cause”; it is not a numbered name.

Second Round: The Number Corrects the Punctuation Itself

Now look at the second round.

The base text reads: “the conscious body is suffering; conceit is arising; abandoning that is cessation; mindfulness of the body is path. As two” 〔T32 453b08〕 “ways, name-and-form is suffering, is ignorance; craving for becoming is arising; abandoning that is cessation,” 〔T32 453b09〕 “calm and insight are path” 〔T32 453b10〕.

Read according to its punctuation, suffering is “name-and-form, is ignorance,” while arising is “craving for becoming.” But this round announces two ways.

Check it by number: name-and-form is already two—name and form—and calm and insight are also two. If the names under arising are read as “ignorance and craving for becoming,” they too make exactly two. All three positions contain two, without one place missing.

By contrast, under the base punctuation, the suffering member yields three—name, form, and ignorance—the arising member yields one—craving for becoming—and the path member yields two—not in accord with “two ways.”

The words “is ignorance” in this sentence should therefore belong to what follows, not to what precedes. The ground for recovering the division is not an interpretation of the meaning; it is the “two” announced by this very round. This edition records the original characters as they stand and does not add punctuation on their behalf; it only notes this verifiable recovery.

Along this path through the chapter, the announced number has already restored punctuation several times—the general heading for the twelve bases, the four items of the conditionality approach, and the entries of the twenty modes. This is one more use of the same tool.

Third Round: The Same Tool Cannot Resolve It This Time

Yet the immediately following third round cannot be made to add up.

“Calm and insight are path. Formed as three, namely pain-as-pain” 〔T32 453b10〕 “is the truth of suffering; the three unwholesome roots are arising; abandoning that is cessation; morality, concentration, and wisdom are” 〔T32 453b11〕 “path” 〔T32 453b12〕.

The arising member is “the three unwholesome roots”—three. The path member is “morality, concentration, and wisdom”—three. But the suffering member is “pain-as-pain” 〔T32 453b10〕, and those two characters do not reveal three.

Pause and ask: where is the number in the suffering member of this round?

This passage cannot answer. Only three things can be verified: the three unwholesome roots and morality, concentration, and wisdom each yield three; the suffering member reads “pain-as-pain”; and there is no critical note here.

That there is no critical note here is especially important to remember—the critical edition does not treat this place as a variant. Thus it differs from the second round: there the number lets us recover the division; here the number can tell us only that the count does not match, but cannot supply the reading that would make it match.

This edition records the text as it stands and does not supply what is missing.

(One further detail of wording: among the markers for the ten rounds, the first two read “as one way” and “as two ways” without the word “formed,” while all eight later rounds add “formed” after the number. The same template does not click into place on its first two uses. The wording is recorded as it stands, without being made uniform.)

Inclusion: Three Kinds, with Truth Absent from the List

The eleventh approach is also the last: “Through inclusion? Answer: three kinds of inclusion—inclusion by aggregates, inclusion by bases, and inclusion by elements. Here the truth of suffering” 〔T32 453b23〕.

Three kinds of inclusion—the aggregates, bases, and elements.

Placed side by side, the chapter’s four inclusion approaches complete a thread: the aggregate method includes bases, elements, and truths; the base method includes aggregates, elements, and truths; this passage includes aggregates, bases, and elements; while the conditionality method alone speaks of “four kinds of mutual inclusion” and includes all four—aggregates, bases, elements, and truths 〔T32 451c16〕.

The verifiable wording is this: the first three instances of “three kinds of inclusion” each omit the category that bears the same name as the method under discussion. The method concerning conditionality is not itself named aggregate, base, element, or truth, and it lists all four.

The present list does not include “truth,” corresponding to the fact that its subject is the noble truths.

This is how the wording of the four passages compares; the treatise does not expressly state why there are three kinds in one case and four in the other. This edition records only the verifiable comparison and does not establish a causal explanation on the treatise’s behalf.

Five “Complete” Notices, the Last One Here

At the end come three levels of closing words: “known. Through this practice, knowledge of the noble truths is made to arise. This is called the method concerning the noble truths (the method concerning the noble truths” 〔T32 453b27〕 “is complete)” 〔T32 453b28〕—first the inclusion approach closes, next the method concerning the noble truths closes, and last a one-line parenthetical note is attached.

The fifth doorway has closed.

With this close, all five methods are complete: the aggregate method at 448c24, the base method at 449c24, the element method at 450a16, the conditionality method at 451c27, and the noble-truth method at 453b27. The chapter’s opening listed five names, and within the chapter five “complete” notices answer them—neither one more nor one fewer.

From the sentence at 445c13, “in five fields he should arouse a method,” to this point, the chapter has run its full course.

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Take away three things. One finding—the extended-sequence approach lists four truth-positions in each of its ten rounds; when the announced number is checked against the countable names in the suffering, arising, and path positions, the punctuation displaced by one place in the second round corrects itself—name and form, two; ignorance and craving for becoming, two; calm and insight, two 〔T32 453b09〕—but the third round’s suffering member, “pain-as-pain,” cannot be counted to three 〔T32 453b10〕. Within the same approach, counting resolves one place and cannot resolve another. One reading practice—when a list begins “in so many ways,” first count whether its countable names precisely reach that number: the chapter’s use of an announced number to restore punctuation appears here once again. One place to pause and ask—where is the number in the third round’s suffering member? And there is no critical note here. It therefore differs from the second round: there the number can restore the division; here it can only tell us that the count does not match. This edition records the text as it stands and does not supply what is missing.

Remember three smaller matters as well: of the four directives at the end of the diversity approach, the first three use “can” and the last “should,” unlike the four uses of “should” in 11-16 〔T32 452c02–452c03〕; the first two markers in the ten rounds lack the word “formed,” while the following eight have it; and when the chapter’s four inclusion approaches are compared, the first three each omit the category bearing the same name as the method under discussion, the present passage does not include “truth,” and the conditionality method lists all four categories—this is how the wording stands, and the treatise does not expressly state why.

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Shi Huijing · Waken · The Path of Freedom · Diversity, Extended Sequence, and Inclusion of the Four Truths · Exposition · Summer 2026