清淨道論 義疏通講 · 冊11Visuddhimagga · Exposition Throughout · Vol. 11

Ten shots follow a meal from leaving the dwelling at dawn to discharge the next day—not to teach disgust with life, but to see “eating” as it actually is

The Big Picture — Development of the One Perception

The forty meditation subjects have reached the “one perception”: perception of repulsiveness in food. The text first distinguishes the four nutriments—physical nutriment, contact, volition, and consciousness, each with its danger and simile—and fixes the contemplated object as physical nutriment alone (vernacular §1). It then unfolds the ten modes one by one: by going, seeking, use, abode, storage, what is undigested, what is digested, fruit, outflow, and smearing (vernacular §§2–7). In effect, these are ten shots following a meal through its whole course: leaving the dwelling, entering the village, entering the mouth and belly, passing the night, and leaving the body. The last section gathers its result: it reaches access alone; its name is tied to perception; and full understanding proceeds from one food to the five cords of sensual pleasure and then to the form aggregate (vernacular §8). This unit’s realism belongs to the same method as the seven sources of gestation in Chapter 16: it neither averts its gaze nor beautifies, but restores the most familiar everyday act as a field that can be contemplated. 〔Observation〕

§01 The Four Nutriments and the List of Ten Modes → Vernacular §1

“Nutriment” is so called because it brings about: physical nutriment brings about materiality with nutritive essence as the eighth constituent; contact brings about the three feelings; volition brings about rebirth-linking in the three kinds of becoming; and consciousness brings about name-and-form at the moment of rebirth-linking. The four dangers are longing, approach, arising, and rebirth-linking; the four similes are a son’s flesh, the flayed cow, the pit of glowing coals, and the hundred spears. Here the object contemplated is physical nutriment alone—what is eaten, drunk, chewed, and tasted. The perception that arises by apprehending the aspect of repulsiveness in it is perception of repulsiveness in food. The meditator receives the meditation subject, retires alone, and examines its repulsiveness by ten modes (vernacular §1). 〔Reading〕 The four nutriments and four similes form a far-reaching table—contact like a flayed cow, for every contact hurts; consciousness like a hundred spears, for rebirth-linking itself wounds—but the author immediately narrows the field: this meditation subject works only with physical nutriment. It begins with the coarsest and most ordinary kind.

§02 One: By Going → Vernacular §2

After reciting and doing his duties at dawn and attending to the meditation subject twenty or thirty times, the bhikkhu must leave the austere forest with its delight in seclusion and go toward the village for food “like a jackal heading toward a charnel ground.” He steps across bedding covered in foot dust and gecko droppings; sees porches fouled by rat and bat droppings, lower stories by owl and pigeon droppings, dwellings soiled by the urine, feces, saliva, and snot of sick novices and by rainwater and mud, and monastery lanes; after paying homage to the stūpa and Bodhi tree he does not look back at the stūpa like a heap of pearls or the Bodhi tree like peacock-tail feathers, but enters roads with stumps and thorns, washed out by water; puts on the lower robe like covering a boil, fastens the belt like binding a sore, puts on the upper robe like covering bones, and takes the bowl like taking a medicine vessel; then meets carcasses of elephants, horses, cattle, buffalo, humans, snakes, and dogs near the village gate—the sights cannot be avoided, nor can the stench. “Alas, friend, how repulsive food is!” (vernacular §2) 〔Reading〕 The force of the first shot lies in its contrast montage: behind him stands the stūpa like a heap of pearls; ahead lies a road of stinking carcasses—all for one meal. The four comparisons—covering a boil, binding a sore, covering bones, and taking a medicine vessel—quietly restore robes and bowl to medical equipment: the body is an illness and food is medicine. This is the undertone of the Buddhist reflection on receiving food.

§03 Two: By Seeking → Vernacular §3

Entering the village, he wears the outer robe and walks from house to house like a poor man with a bowl. In the rains both feet sink in mud to the calves; in the hot season dust and grass cover his body. At each doorway lie drains mixed with fish-washing water, meat-washing water, saliva, snot, dog feces, and pig feces, swarming with worms and bluebottle flies. He cannot avoid seeing or even stepping in them, while flies settle on robe, bowl, and head. Inside the houses, some give stale rice or spoiled cakes; some say “Please go elsewhere,” pretend not to see him, turn their faces away, or insult him with “Go away, baldhead!” Only after begging through the village like a poor man can he leave (vernacular §3). 〔Reading〕 This shot is unusually candid: almsgoing is not merely dirty; it also wounds dignity. The author enters every cold look and harsh word in the ledger of repulsiveness. The repulsiveness “by seeking” lies not in the food itself, but in the full cost of the posture of seeking.

§04 Three: By Use → Vernacular §4

Seated outside the village, he can still invite a senior or conscientious bhikkhu to share before putting his hand into the bowl; once he has reached in, the invitation would embarrass him. As he kneads the food, sweat runs down his five fingers and moistens the dry rice. He forms a lump and puts it into his mouth: the lower teeth are a mortar, the upper teeth a pestle, and the tongue a hand. Like dog food in a trough it is pounded and turned, then soiled by saliva from three places and dental grime. In an instant its distinction of color, odor, and shape disappears, like a dog’s vomit in a trough; yet once it has passed beyond the range of vision, it must be swallowed (vernacular §4). 〔Reading〕 “Mortar, pestle, hand” reduces the mouth to a crushing machine. “Passed beyond the range of vision” is sharper still: the same lump is a delicacy while visible, but once unseen there is only swallowing. Much of food’s beauty, it turns out, lives in the eyes.

§05 Four: By Abode, and Five: By Storage → Vernacular §5

By abode: once inside, food is smeared according to the predominance of the places of bile, phlegm, pus, or blood, like madhuka oil, juice of nāgabala leaves, sour-curd whey, or dye. Even Buddhas, paccekabuddhas, and wheel-turning monarchs have one of these four, while those of little merit have them all. By storage: food is stored neither in gold, jewel, nor silver vessels. What a ten-year-old swallows remains as though in a cesspit unwashed for ten years, and what a hundred-year-old swallows as though in one unwashed for a hundred (vernacular §5). 〔Reading〕 “Even Buddhas have one” is the telling sentence: repulsiveness is not the property of sinners but the construction of a body—even a Buddha’s body is no exception; the only difference is that people of little merit have all four places. Dating the cesspit by a person’s age binds the repulsiveness of “storage” to the age of this body: however old you are, that pit has gone unwashed for just as many years.

§06 Six: By What Is Undigested; Seven: By What Is Digested; Eight: By Fruit → Vernacular §6

Undigested: what was swallowed today, yesterday, and the day before merges into one, wrapped in a membrane of phlegm, boiling in the bodily fire, and covered with foam—like grass, leaves, mat fragments, and the carcasses of snakes, dogs, and humans in a pit at the gate of an outcaste village, rained on out of season and scorched by the sun. Digested: unlike gold or silver ore becoming gold or silver, it becomes excrement filling the receptacle for digested food and urine filling the bladder, like finely ground yellow clay put into a tube. Fruit: properly digested, it produces the various foul things beginning with head hair, body hair, nails, and teeth; improperly digested, the hundred illnesses beginning with ringworm, itching, sores, leprosy, vitiligo, consumption, cough, and diarrhea (vernacular §6). 〔Reading〕 “Not like gold or silver ore” presses the question: ore enters the furnace and yields gold; food enters bodily fire and yields only excrement and urine. Digestion is not refinement but degradation. The section on fruit records every product of the body: its good result is nails and hair, its bad result a hundred diseases. There is nothing downstream of food to boast of.

§07 Nine: By Outflow, and Ten: By Smearing → Vernacular §7

Outflow: food enters through one door and leaves through many—eye grime through the eye, ear grime through the ear, and so on. It enters with a great retinue of companions but leaves in solitude. On the first day a person is exultant and rapture and gladness arise; on the second he covers his nose and grimaces in disgust. The four verses of the Ancients say: it enters by one door and exits by nine; companions attend its eating but its discharge is hidden; eating brings joy and discharge disgust; one night’s storage makes everything putrid. Smearing: during consumption it smears hand, lips, tongue, and palate and requires repeated washing; afterward, as bran overflows and smears the rim and lid of a cooking pot, dental grime, saliva, phlegm, eye grime, ear grime, snot, urine, and feces smear the body’s doors. Daily washing leaves them neither clean nor pleasing; some places require cow dung, earth, or scented powder two or three times (vernacular §7). 〔Reading〕 The four verses of the Ancients are a folk-song version of the ten modes; all four share one structure: the difference between yesterday and today. With one night between them, the same object goes from a feast to filth that must be hidden. Time is the best teacher of perception of repulsiveness in food.

§08 Accomplishment in Development and Its Fruit → Vernacular §8

By examining through the ten modes and striking repeatedly with thought and applied thought, physical nutriment becomes manifest under the aspect of repulsiveness; through repeated practice, development, and cultivation the hindrances are suppressed. Yet because physical nutriment is an intrinsic-nature dhamma and profound, the mind does not reach absorption; it becomes concentrated only by access concentration. Because perception becomes manifest through apprehending repulsiveness, the meditation subject is called perception of repulsiveness in food. Its fruit: the mind recoils, shrinks, and turns away from craving for flavors; like one crossing a wilderness who eats a son’s flesh, he consumes without conceit and only to cross suffering. Through full understanding of physical nutriment he fully understands craving for the five cords of sensual pleasure; through the five cords, the form aggregate. Development of mindfulness of the body reaches fulfillment, and he enters the way conforming to perception of foulness. Even if he does not reach the deathless in this life, his destination is a good destination (vernacular §8). 〔Reading〕 Three things close the division. First, the meditation subject reaches only access: its object is an intrinsic-nature dhamma, a real phenomenon rather than a concept, and its profundity prevents absorption; this contrasts with the ten kasiṇas. Second, the name comes from “perception”: the ten modes cultivate a way of seeing. Third, its chain of fruits is remarkably long: seeing through one meal activates the five cords of sensual pleasure, the form aggregate, mindfulness of the body, and perception of foulness. Food is craving’s most ordinary entrance, and therefore the most accessible place to begin full understanding. 〔Observation〕

For the General Reader

This unit is easily misread as teaching aversion to food. It does not. Its ten shots slow down and re-view the act of “eating,” which habit has concealed: the cost of leaving, the posture of asking, the instant color, odor, and shape vanish inside the mouth, the four inner places and the cesspit, the difference after one night. Its purpose is stated in the final section: the mind turns away from craving for flavor—like someone crossing a wilderness who eats a son’s flesh, only to cross over, not for taste. One everyday frame is “by use”: at your next meal, notice the moment the food passes out of sight. More of flavor lives in the eyes than one imagines. The analysis of the four elements follows: it takes this eating body apart into earth, water, fire, and air.

To read this unit in full: vernacular §§1–8 gives the four nutriments, four dangers, and four similes; the complete ten modes—going, seeking, use, abode, storage, undigested, digested, fruit, outflow, and smearing; the four verses of the Ancients; the determination that the practice reaches access alone; and the fruits of development, all translated paragraph by paragraph.

Once a cattle butcher has divided the cow, perception of “cow” disappears and perception of “meat” arises—when the body is cut apart according to elements, perception of a “being” disappears in the same way

The Big Picture — Development of the One Defining, Part One

The last of the forty meditation subjects is defining of the four elements—defining this body by the earth, water, fire, and air elements. This unit establishes its overview: the meaning of the name and its two transmissions (in brief in the Mahāsatipaṭṭhāna Sutta, in detail in the Mahāhatthipadopama and two other discourses, vernacular §1); the explanation of the butcher simile (vernacular §1); the detailed scriptural passage and its difficult phrases, giving forty-two modes of the four elements (vernacular §2); and the division according to faculties in the method of development—the brief apprehension for one of keen wisdom (vernacular §3) and the first two of four methods for one less keen, in brief with constituents and by analysis with constituents (vernacular §§4–5). The framework of four methods crosses into the next unit, where apprehension of each of the forty-two parts unfolds “analysis with constituents” in full. This meditation subject already approaches the wisdom division: what it dismantles is precisely the perception of a “being” or “person.” 〔Observation〕

§01 Meaning of the Name, Two Scriptural Presentations, and the Simile of the Butcher → Vernacular §1

“Defining” means determining by observing intrinsic nature. Attention to the elements, the meditation subject of the elements, and defining of the four elements are one in meaning. Two transmissions: in brief in the Mahāsatipaṭṭhāna Sutta; in detail in the Mahāhatthipadopama Sutta, Mahārāhulovāda Sutta, and Dhātuvibhaṅga Sutta. The butcher simile: a skilled cattle butcher slaughters and cuts apart a cow, divides it portion by portion at a crossroads, and sits; a bhikkhu reviews this body, however positioned and disposed, according to the elements—“In this body are the earth, water, fire, and air elements.” The explanation points straight at the crucial matter: before the butcher divides it, perception of “cow” does not disappear; after he divides it and sits, perception of “cow” disappears and perception of “meat” arises. He does not think, “I am selling a cow,” but only, “I am selling meat.” Before a bhikkhu analyzes the compact, perceptions of “being,” “person,” and “individual” do not disappear; after reviewing according to elements, the perception of “being” disappears and the mind settles on elements alone (vernacular §1). 〔Reading〕 This is one of the sharpest similes in the whole work. A perception disappears not by denial, but by analysis. The name is not refuted; it loses what it referred to. “Selling meat, not a cow” completes the practical account of not-self.

§02 Scriptural Source for the Detailed Method and Explanation of Its Difficult Phrases → Vernacular §2

Four passages from the Mahāhatthipadopama Sutta are quoted in full: the internal earth element—hard, become rough, appropriated, from head hairs through excrement; the internal water element—watery, become water, from bile through urine; the internal fire element—that by which one is heated, ages, burns, and digests what is eaten and drunk; and the internal air element—up-going, down-going, in the belly, in the bowels, coursing through the limbs, and in- and out-breath. The difficult phrases are explained one by one. “Internal” and “individually one’s own” are synonyms for “one’s own”; “hard” is a word for the characteristic and “become rough” for the mode; “appropriated” means firmly taking as “I” and “mine.” With the brain added, the earth element has twenty modes, water twelve, fire four, and air six—forty-two modes of the four elements. Of the fire element’s four operations—heating, aging, burning, and digesting—the first three are originated by fire and digestion solely by kamma. Of the six winds, the first five have four origins; in-breath and out-breath are originated solely by mind (vernacular §2). 〔Reading〕 The number forty-two is established here; the next unit’s list of part-by-part apprehensions is this very list. Pause over the explanation of “appropriated”: the teaching on elements is aimed not at the body, but at clinging to the body as “I” and “mine.” The four elements are neutral; appropriation is the lesion.

§03 Method of Development—the Brief Apprehension for One of Keen Wisdom → Vernacular §3

The simile for the division by faculties concerns two bhikkhus reciting a canonical passage with many abbreviations. One of keen wisdom expands a passage once or twice and thereafter recites from the two endpoints; the slower one expands every abbreviation. Each reproaches the other: “What kind of recitation is this?” In the same way, one of keen wisdom apprehends briefly—“Whatever is hard is earth; whatever coheres is water; whatever digests is fire; whatever supports is air”—then repeatedly turns toward, attends to, and reviews them as elements alone, not a being, and lifeless. Before long there arises concentration that is embraced by wisdom illuminating the differentiation of elements and, because it has intrinsic-nature dhammas as object, does not reach absorption but is access only. Or, following the General of the Dhamma’s four portions—the space enclosed by bones, sinews, flesh, and skin is called form—he repeatedly cuts apart with the hand of knowledge that moves along the intervals and apprehends them (vernacular §3). 〔Reading〕 The two-bhikkhu simile generously admits that the method has no hierarchy; suitability to the person is the criterion. The keen find the detailed method prolix; the less keen find the brief method obscure. Neither reproach is sound. “Hand of knowledge” is a beautiful phrase: the blade that divides this body is not a knife, but wisdom.

§04 Four Methods of the Detailed Presentation and the Brief Method with Constituents → Vernacular §4

One not of very keen wisdom learns the elements from a teacher under forty-two modes and develops by four modes: in brief with constituents, by analysis with constituents, in brief by individual characteristics, and by analysis of individual characteristics. The first method, in brief with constituents, defines the hard mode in twenty bodily parts as earth, cohesion in twelve as water, digestion in four as fire, and support in six as air. Once defined, the elements become manifest; through repeated turning and attention, access concentration arises (vernacular §4). 〔Reading〕 “With constituents” (retaining the names of the bodily parts) and “by individual characteristics” (taking only the element’s characteristic), crossed with “in brief” and “by analysis,” yield four methods—a staircase from coarse to subtle. This section climbs the first step.

§05 Analysis with Constituents—How It Differs from Mindfulness of the Body → Vernacular §5

If the first method does not succeed, one turns to the second, analysis with constituents. One uses the seven kinds of skill in apprehending and ten kinds of skill in attention from mindfulness of the body, omitting none of the thirty-two modes, beginning with forward and reverse recitation of the skin pentad and carrying out every method stated there. There is only one difference: mindfulness of the body settles the mind upon repulsiveness; here it is settled upon elements. Thus, after attending to head hairs and the rest by color, shape, direction, location, and delimitation, attention finally turns according to elements (vernacular §5). 〔Reading〕 This section states the relation between Chapter 8’s mindfulness of the body and this meditation subject in one sentence: the same course in thirty-two parts, but a different place for the mind to settle—there on “repulsive,” here on “elements alone.” One body can train two meditation subjects. The part-by-part apprehension of forty-two parts unfolds from here in the next unit. 〔Observation〕

For the General Reader

First hold firmly to the butcher simile. Once the butcher divides the cow, “I am selling meat”: the name has not lost an argument; its object has disappeared. Defining of the four elements does this with the collective terms “I” and “person,” analyzing them into four qualities—earth as hardness, water as cohesion, fire as heat, and air as motion. Once the compact is analyzed, perception of a “being” disappears by itself, and the mind settles on elements alone. Four sentences suffice for one of keen wisdom; one less keen receives an entire staircase, unfolded part by part in the next unit. Like perception of repulsiveness in food, this meditation subject reaches access only—but it already has one foot in the wisdom division. The distinguishing of name-and-form in purification of view, Chapter 18, is its downstream course.

To read this unit in full: vernacular §§1–5 gives the meaning of the name and two scriptural presentations; the butcher simile and its explanation; the detailed scriptural passage and phrase-by-phrase explanation establishing forty-two modes; the simile dividing the keen and less keen and the brief apprehension; and the list of four methods and first two methods, all translated paragraph by paragraph.

Thirty-six closing formulas repeat without changing a word: non-conscious, indeterminate, empty, not a being—the anthill does not know the sparse grass, and the grass does not know the anthill; bodily part and bodily part do not know one another

The Big Picture — The Entire Course of Part-by-Part Apprehension

The second of the four methods, analysis with constituents, unfolds here in full as part-by-part apprehension of forty-two parts: earth’s twenty (vernacular §§1–4), water’s twelve (vernacular §§5–6), fire’s four and air’s six (vernacular §7), followed by the third and fourth methods—in brief and by analysis of individual characteristics—and the list of thirteen modes (vernacular §8). The unit’s very prose is the practice. Every part uses the same format: location, simile, mutual unknowing, closing formula. At thirty-six places the closing formula repeats without changing a word: “an individual bodily part, non-conscious, indeterminate, empty, not a being.” This unwearied repetition is not lazy writing but a metronome for attention: read one part, strike once. 〔Observation〕

§01 Earth Element, Part One—Head Hairs, Body Hairs, Nails, Teeth, and Skin → Vernacular §1

Head hairs grow on the skin covering the skull—like sparse grass atop an anthill: the anthill does not know, “Grass grows here on me,” and the grass does not know, “We grow atop the anthill.” They are mutually devoid of inclination and reviewing; head hairs are an individual part, non-conscious, indeterminate, empty, not a being, hard, and the earth element. Body hairs, like thatching grass at an empty village; nails, like children playing by piercing fruit kernels with little sticks; teeth, like carpenters using glue to stand posts in stone mortars; and skin, like raw cowhide covering a great lute, follow the same form (vernacular §1). 〔Reading〕 The first group establishes the syntax of the whole division. Each part asks twice and answers no: the support does not know what it supports, and what is supported does not know its support. Hair, a favorite residence of “mine,” has the same order of existence as grass on an anthill.

§02 Earth Element, Part Two—Flesh, Sinews, Bones, Marrow, and Kidneys → Vernacular §2

Flesh covers the collection of bones as thick clay covers a wall; sinews bind the bones as vines bind wall timbers. Bones alone receive a long passage: heel supports ankle, ankle shin, shin thigh, thigh hip, hip vertebrae, vertebrae neck, and neck skull; then each “stands upon” the one below in reverse order. Yet, like a pile of bricks, timber, and cow dung, what is below does not know, “I support what is above,” and what is above does not know, “I stand on what is below.” Fourteen statements negate each relation in turn. Marrow in bones is like rattan ends in bamboo joints; kidneys tied by a thick sinew like two mangoes on one stalk (vernacular §2). 〔Reading〕 The skeleton passage is the unit’s pinnacle. A tower carries you every day, but no brick in the tower knows that it carries. Support does not need to know it supports. The seven sentences of “stand” and “support” scan the skeleton from feet to head and back from head to feet.

§03 Earth Element, Part Three—Heart, Liver, Membranes, Spleen, and Lungs → Vernacular §3

The heart upon the rib cage is like a piece of flesh on an old cart frame; the liver on the right side like two lumps of flesh stuck to a potsherd; membranes covering flesh like an old cloth wrapping meat; the spleen on the upper stomach membrane like a lump of cow dung against the top of a granary; the lungs hanging inside the body like a bird’s nest in an old granary (vernacular §3). 〔Reading〕 Notice the level from which the similes take their materials: the heart is flesh on an “old cart,” the spleen a “lump of cow dung,” the lungs a “bird’s nest in an old granary.” Not one of the viscera is a precious object. The poverty of the similes is the teaching: viscera stand to the body as odds and ends to an old storehouse, merely deposited there.

§04 Earth Element, Part Four—Intestines, Mesentery, Stomach Contents, Excrement, and Brain → Vernacular §4

The intestines are like the coiled carcass of a decapitated snake in a trough of blood; the mesentery stitching the twenty-one intestinal coils like threads stitching a ring of rope for wiping feet; stomach contents like a dog’s vomit in a dog’s trough; excrement in the receptacle for digested food, like a bamboo joint eight fingerbreadths long, is like fine yellow clay in bamboo; the brain inside the skull like a lump of dough in an old gourd shell (vernacular §4). 〔Reading〕 The twenty divisions of earth end with the brain. Its “lump of dough” echoes the food-repulsiveness image of dough being steamed; the dog’s vomit comes from the same source as well. The two meditation subjects share an image bank: perception of repulsiveness in food sees the body’s process; defining of the four elements sees its materials.

§05 Water Element, Part One—Bile, Phlegm, Pus, Blood, Sweat, and Fat → Vernacular §5

Bile is twofold: unbound bile pervades the body like oil in a cake; bound bile fills its sac like rainwater a loofah shell. A bowlful of phlegm lies on the stomach membrane like foam on a cesspool. Pus has no fixed place; where an injury makes blood ripen, it forms like resin flowing from an axe-cut tree. Blood is twofold: circulating blood follows unbound bile, while accumulated blood fills a bowl and moistens kidneys, heart, liver, and lungs like a broken pot dripping upon clods of earth. Sweat flows from the openings of hair pores like water from the gaps of freshly lifted lotus roots. Fat pervades the fat person and rests on the thin person’s calves like yellow cloth over a heap of meat (vernacular §5). 〔Reading〕 The water-element formula changes two words: “become juice, with the mode of cohesion.” Water’s meaning is cohesion, gathering what is scattered; all twelve parts are the body’s fluids. Pus shows the sharpest observation: it “has no fixed place,” the only bodily part defined by an event—injury—rather than a location.

§06 Water Element, Part Two—Tears, Grease, Saliva, Snot, Oil-of-the-Joints, and Urine → Vernacular §6

Tears fill the eye sockets like water in the hollow of a tender palmyra kernel; grease on palms, feet, nose, forehead, and shoulders like oil over rice-water; saliva descending from the cheeks to the tongue like an unbroken flow into a riverbank well; snot like sour curds in a shell; oil-of-the-joints lubricating one hundred and eighty joints like oil on a cart axle; urine in the bladder like a mouthless resonating jar cast into a cesspool, into which foul liquid seeps while the jar does not know (vernacular §6). 〔Reading〕 The well simile is exact in its “unbroken flow”: saliva is a rate of flow, not a stored amount. The resonating-jar simile—the Chinese name for the vessel is this edition’s own reading—is apt in being “mouthless”: the inlet is invisible and the outlet distinct, just like the bladder. The twelve parts end here, each closed with “mode of cohesion.”

§07 Attention to the Four Divisions of Fire and Six Divisions of Air → Vernacular §7

The four divisions of fire are apprehended not by location but by function: that by which one heats, ages, burns, and properly digests what is eaten and drunk—each is a part, has the mode of digestion, and is the fire element. The six divisions of air are apprehended by course: upward, downward, in the belly, in the bowels, through the limbs, and in- and out-breath—each is a part, has the mode of supporting, and is the air element. With this attention the elements become manifest and access concentration arises (vernacular §7). 〔Reading〕 The architecture of the forty-two parts is now clear: earth and water are counted by “things” (twenty plus twelve); fire and air by “functions” (four plus six). Solids and liquids can be pointed out; heat and motion can be recognized only through function and course. Because the four elements exist differently, their doors of apprehension differ.

§08 In Brief and by Analysis of Individual Characteristics; List of Thirteen Modes → Vernacular §8

The third method, in brief by individual characteristics, no longer proceeds part by part. In the twenty parts it defines “hardness as characteristic is earth” and there defines the other three elements; it turns through the twelve, four, and six parts in the same way, finding all four elements in every group. The fourth method, analysis of individual characteristics, defines four elements individually in each and every part, the finest step. Each method closes with “the elements become manifest and access concentration arises.” The end lists thirteen modes: meaning of words, grouping, particles, characteristics and the rest, origination, diversity and unity, separability and inseparability, similarity and dissimilarity, internal and external distinction, inclusion, condition, nonconcurrence, and analysis of conditions. They unfold in the next unit (vernacular §8). 〔Reading〕 The four methods make a staircase from coarse to subtle: in brief with constituents (grasping each mode by element), analysis with constituents (each named part), in brief by individual characteristics (cycling four elements through each group), and analysis of individual characteristics (seeing four elements in one part). At the fourth method, every single hair contains earth, water, fire, and air. If development fails, descend to the next step; when it succeeds, stop. The staircase is not a syllabus but a safety net. 〔Observation〕

For the General Reader

This unit’s form is its practice: thirty-six identical closing formulas—“an individual bodily part, non-conscious, indeterminate, empty, not a being.” Do not skim them. Repetition is a metronome for attention: read one part and strike once. Every simile comes from ordinary worn objects—anthill, empty village, old cart, old granary, dog trough, gourd shell. Their poverty is the point: this body is a storeroom of odds and ends, not a palace. The deepest sentence hides in the skeleton passage: support does not need to know it supports. In the tower that carries you every day, not one brick knows you. The close examination through thirteen modes follows in the next unit.

To read this unit in full: vernacular §§1–8 gives the location, simile, and closing formula for each of the earth element’s twenty and water element’s twelve parts; attention to the four fire and six air divisions; the two methods in brief and by analysis of individual characteristics; and the list of thirteen modes, all translated paragraph by paragraph.

Turning the Four Elements through Thirteen Facets: Disassembled to the Group of Eight Dhammas, the “Mechanism of Elements” Seen Through—One Who Develops It Penetrates Emptiness and Abolishes the Perception of a Being, and the Concentration Door Closes Here

The Big Picture — Minute Examination and Closure

After part-by-part apprehension in the preceding unit, the thirteen modes turn the four elements from face to face: meaning, group, particles, characteristics, origination, diversity and unity, separability and inseparability, similarity and dissimilarity, internal and external distinction, inclusion, condition, nonconcurrence, and analysis of conditions (§1–§6). This is the book’s most exacting analysis of “materiality,” approaching in depth the analysis of the materiality aggregate in Chapter 14. Section 7 gathers its fruit—penetration of emptiness and abolition of the perception of a being—while §8 is the closure of the entire training in concentration: the explanation of the question “How should it be developed?” is complete; both access and absorption have been developed. The concentration door formally closes, and the ground of wisdom opens in Chapter 14. 〔What Is Seen〕

§01 Three Modes: Meaning, Group, and Particles → Vernacular §1

Meaning: because it is spread out, it is earth; because it reaches, is increased, and causes growth, it is water; because it heats, it is fire; because it moves, it is air. Generally, they are called “elements” because they bear their own characteristics, take up suffering, and deposit suffering. Group: “Color, odor, taste, nutritive essence, and the four elements: from the assemblage of these eight dhammas comes the conventional name ‘head hair’; once they are separated, there is no conventional name ‘head hair.’” A head hair is only a group of eight dhammas; one produced by kamma adds the life faculty and sex, making a group of ten. Earth and water are named according to predominance. Particles: in an average body, the earth element broken into fine dust measures about one doṇa. It is held together by half as much water, maintained by fire, and supported by air, and therefore does not scatter or break apart; thus it turns into the distinctions of female and male form. Water rests on earth and is maintained by fire and supported by air, so it neither flows away nor leaks; fire rests on earth and is held by water and supported by air, so it matures the body and brings fullness of complexion; air rests on earth and is held by water and maintained by fire, so it supports the body and keeps it upright. Thus “this mechanism of elements, which deceives fools with the forms of female and male and so forth, and which is like a magical apparition, keeps turning in this way” (Vernacular §1). 〔Reading〕 The group verse is the foundation of this unit: a name extends only as far as the group; once the group is divided, the name vanishes. The particles passage is the diagram of mutual support among the four elements—a doṇa of dust depends on three companions before it stands as a “person.” The phrase “mechanism of elements,” like a magical apparition, plants in advance the thread leading to the magician simile in §3.

§02 Two Modes: Characteristics and Origination → Vernacular §2

Characteristics and so forth: earth—hardness as characteristic, establishing as function, receiving as manifestation; water—flowing, augmenting, cohesion; fire—heat, maturing, bestowal of softness; air—support, motion, propelling. Origination: among the forty-two parts, stomach contents, excrement, pus, and urine are produced only by temperature; tears, sweat, saliva, and snot by temperature and consciousness; the fire of digestion only by kamma; the in-breath and out-breath only by consciousness; all the rest by the four modes of origination (Vernacular §2). 〔Reading〕 The origination table files the bodily parts according to “who made them”: tears shed in crying are jointly made by consciousness and temperature, while the digestive fire is entirely the work of kamma—one body, the products of four factories. This table forms warp and woof with the numerical analysis of elements in 15-02 and the analysis of origination in the materiality aggregate of Chapter 14.

§03 Diversity and Unity—Five Explanations of the Name “Great Elements” → Vernacular §3

Diversity: their characteristics, functions, and manifestations differ. Unity: they are one according to materiality, great elements, elements, dhammas, and impermanence, suffering, and not-self. “Great element” (mahābhūta) has five explanations: great manifestation—in unappropriated continuity, the great earth is two hundred thousand and four nahutas thick; in appropriated continuity, the ocean contains individual forms a hundred leagues long; resemblance to great beings—like a magician who displays a jewel from what is not a jewel and gold from what is not gold, the elements, not themselves blue, display blue derived materiality; like a yakkha as a great being, whose place can be found neither inside nor outside the seized person although it does not stand independently of that person; and like a female yakkha as a great being, who conceals her frightening appearance with agreeable color and the play of form, the elements conceal their intrinsic characteristics of hardness and so on with agreeable skin color, the shape of limbs, and the movement of fingers and brows, thereby deceiving fools; great maintenance, because large quantities of food and clothing must be supplied daily; great alteration, because at the destruction of an aeon fire rises to the Brahmā world and water dissolves and air scatters a hundred thousand koṭis of world-spheres, while disturbance of the elements makes the body rigid, putrid, burning, or severed as though bitten by the four snakes with wooden, putrid, fiery, or blade-like mouths; and great and existent, because great effort is required to apprehend them and they are present. The passage ends with the general explanations of element, dhamma, impermanence, suffering, and not-self (Vernacular §3). 〔Reading〕 Of the five, “resemblance” is the most literary: bhūta is a pun, meaning both element and spirit, and the commentator simply lets the four great elements dress as magicians and female yakkhas—matter is a master of disguise, hiding the reality of a doṇa of dust beneath skin color and the play of the brows. The four-snake simile in turn redefines “illness” as an internal mutiny of the elements.

§04 Four Modes: Separability, Similarity, Internal and External Distinction, and Inclusion → Vernacular §4

Separability and inseparability: conascent within a single group, the elements are inseparable by location but separable by characteristic. Similarity and dissimilarity: the first two, earth and water, are heavy; the latter two, fire and air, are light, and the two pairs are mutually dissimilar. Internal and external distinction: internal elements are the bases of consciousness, intimation, and the faculties, have postures, and have four modes of origination; external elements are the opposite. Inclusion: what is kamma-produced is included with what is kamma-produced, and the same pattern applies to consciousness, nutriment, and temperature (Vernacular §4). 〔Reading〕 These four short modes each supply a quick blade. The crucial one is “inseparable by location but separable by characteristic”: the four elements are not four piles of material but four properties at the same point. What separates them is never a pair of tweezers, but wisdom.

§05 Two Modes: Condition and Nonconcurrence → Vernacular §5

Condition: earth conditions the three great elements by establishing them, while being held by water, maintained by fire, and supported by air; water conditions them by cohesion; fire by maturing; and air by supporting. The four elements are one another’s scaffolding. Nonconcurrence: the earth element does not know “I am the earth element,” nor “I condition the three great elements by establishing them”; the other three do not know that it conditions them. The same applies throughout (Vernacular §5). 〔Reading〕 “Condition” and “nonconcurrence” are deliberately placed back to back. The first has just described how precisely the four elements support one another; the next immediately delivers the cut: not a single pole in this scaffolding knows that it is supporting anything. The syntax echoes the skeleton passage in 11-03, but goes deeper: even “elements” do not know one another.

§06 Analysis of Conditions → Vernacular §6

The four conditions—kamma, consciousness, nutriment, and temperature—are assigned in turn. Each is a producing condition for what it produces, and in a qualified sense a decisive-support condition, postnascence condition, presence condition, non-disappearance condition, and so on for the rest. The kamma-produced earth element conditions the other elements in the same group through conascence, mutuality, support, presence, and non-disappearance, together with establishing, but not through producing; it conditions the other three continuities only through support, presence, and non-disappearance. The same pattern is worked through element by element. As to the arithmetic of occurrence: three conditioned by one occur in four ways, one conditioned by three in four ways, and two conditioned by two in six ways—fourteen modes of occurrence. In the postures, earth conditions pressing; conforming to water, it establishes; water conforming to earth lowers; fire conforming to air lifts; and air conforming to fire carries forward and aside. As the elements become evident through these doors, access concentration arises. This concentration arises through the power of knowledge that defines the four elements and therefore is called defining of the four elements (Vernacular §6). 〔Reading〕 The last mode is an Abhidhamma-level calculation whose full terminology belongs in Chapter 17. The passage on posture brings it back to the ground: with every step, the four elements take shifts—pressing, establishing, lowering, lifting, and carrying. Between lifting and placing the foot, each great element has its role. The reason for the name closes on knowledge: this concentration is born of “the power of knowledge.” At the end of the training in concentration it already bears the appearance of the training in wisdom.

§07 Fruit of Developing the Defining of the Four Elements and Concluding Verse → Vernacular §7

Its fruit is to penetrate emptiness and abolish the perception of a being. One does not make distinctions concerning wild beasts, yakkhas, or rakkhasas; one endures fear and dread, endures discontent and delight, and does not rise and fall over the agreeable and disagreeable. One becomes a person of great wisdom, with the Deathless as one’s end or destined for a good rebirth. The concluding verse says that this defining of the four elements, of such great power and the sport of a thousand supreme yogins, should always be cultivated by the wise (Vernacular §7). 〔Reading〕 This list of fruits belongs to a different register from that of most meditation subjects. Elsewhere the result is concentration and mastery; here it is endurance of fear and a mind without rise and fall, because once the perception of a being is removed, yakkhas and beasts too are only groups of elements. “One of great wisdom” identifies its allegiance: this is a meditation subject of wisdom inside the door of concentration.

§08 The Answer in the Exposition of Concentration Is Complete—The Determination of Two Kinds of Concentration → Vernacular §8

The volume closes: among the questions beginning “What is concentration? In what sense is it concentration?” the explanation in every aspect of the phrase “How should it be developed?” is complete. Only two kinds are intended: access concentration, the one-pointedness in ten meditation subjects and in the mental states preceding absorption, and absorption concentration, the one-pointedness in the remaining meditation subjects. Since the meditation subjects have been developed, both kinds have been developed (Vernacular §8). 〔Reading〕 The accounts are now complete for the ten meditation subjects that reach only access—the eight recollections, perception of repulsiveness in food, and defining of the four elements—and the thirty meditation subjects capable of absorption. Chapter 3 set out the question; Chapters 3 through 11 answered it. The nine-chapter training in concentration closes with this sentence. The remaining question, on the benefits of concentration, is answered in the next unit, which closes the chapter. 〔What Is Seen〕

For the General Reader

You need not memorize all thirteen modes. Carry away three things: the verse on the group—eight dhammas combine and the name “head hair” appears; divide them and the name disappears, for a name extends only as far as a group; the female-yakkha simile—matter is a master of disguise, concealing the reality of a doṇa of dust beneath skin color and the play of the brows; and the sentence on scaffolding—the four elements support one another with precision, while not a single pole knows that it supports. When walking, you can try the contemplation from the posture passage: fire and air take the shift in lifting the foot, water and earth in placing it. Within “I am walking,” nothing can be found beyond the roster of shifts. The training in concentration closes here; the benefits of developing concentration and the conclusion of Part One come in the next unit.

To read this unit in full: Vernacular §§1–8 gives the complete, mode-by-mode rendering of the thirteen modes—meaning, group, particles, characteristics, origination, diversity and unity, separability and inseparability, similarity and dissimilarity, internal and external, inclusion, condition, nonconcurrence, and analysis of conditions—together with the five explanations of “great elements,” the verses on the four snakes, the allocation of roles in posture, the fruits and concluding verse, the determination of the two kinds of concentration, and the completion of the answer in the exposition of concentration.

Five Benefits, Each Matched to Its Person: Pleasant Abiding for Those Whose Taints Are Destroyed, Insight for Trainees, Direct Knowledge for Its Adepts, Excellent Becoming for Ordinary Persons, and Cessation for Noble Ones—A Threefold Close, and Part One Shuts

The Big Picture — A Threefold Close

The question opened in Chapter 3, “What are the benefits of developing concentration?” is answered here: five benefits, each matched to its person and each tied to its scriptural citation (§1). Then the threefold close expands level by level: the close of a division, when the answer on benefits is finished; the close of a part, when the concentration door in the verse “A person established in virtue, possessing wisdom” has been explained—the chapter colophon in §2; and the close of a larger whole, with the table of contents for the eleven chapters of Part One and the declaration that Part One of the Visuddhimagga is complete (§3). This unit is the curtain call for the book’s training in concentration: nine chapters of concentration close with a list of benefits, a verse of exhortation, and a page of contents. 〔What Is Seen〕

§01 Five Benefits of Developing Concentration → Vernacular §1

The five benefits in sequence are: pleasant abiding here and now—one whose taints are destroyed enters attainment “to spend the day pleasantly with a unified mind” (the Blessed One tells Cunda that this is not called effacement in the discipline of the noble ones, but a pleasant abiding here and now); insight—trainees and ordinary persons “emerge from attainment to contemplate with a mind that has obtained concentration,” since concentration is insight’s proximate cause (“a bhikkhu who has concentration understands according to actuality”); absorption has this benefit and, in the sense of “gaining an opening amid confinement,” access does too; direct knowledge—one with the eight attainments enters the jhāna that is the basis for direct knowledge and seeks such powers as becoming many from one (“wherever there is an occasion he reaches the capacity for realization in each such case”); excellence of becoming—an ordinary person whose jhāna does not decline is reborn in the Brahmā world, since one who develops an inferior first jhāna is reborn among the devas of Brahmā’s Retinue, and access concentration likewise brings excellence in a good destination of the sense sphere; and cessation—a noble one, a non-returner or arahant, enters the attainment of cessation, “becomes mindless for seven days, and here and now attains the cessation called nibbāna and abides pleasantly.” The concluding verse says that in the practice of developing concentration, with its many benefits and its cleansing of the stains of defilements, the wise should not be heedless (Vernacular §1). 〔Reading〕 What is most striking in this table is the pairing of person and benefit. The same concentration is happiness in the hands of one whose taints are destroyed, the proximate cause for insight in the hands of a trainee, and a stair toward the next life in the hands of an ordinary person. Concentration has no intrinsic use of its own; its use follows the person. Access concentration is specially named twice, in connection with insight and with a good destination: even one who does not reach absorption has not labored in vain. The second benefit is the pivot of the entire book. Concentration as the proximate cause for insight is precisely the joint that allows “virtue → concentration → wisdom” to become a chain.

§02 Close of the Concentration Division and End of the Chapter → Vernacular §2

At this point, within the Visuddhimagga expounded through the three doors of virtue, concentration, and wisdom on the basis of the verse “A person established in virtue, possessing wisdom,” concentration too has been explained. The chapter colophon states that in the Visuddhimagga, composed to bring joy to good people, the eleventh chapter, named the Exposition of Concentration, is complete (Vernacular §2). 〔Reading〕 One sentence closes nine chapters, Chapters 3 through 11. Of the three doors in the opening verse, the virtue door occupies Chapters 1–2, the concentration door reaches this point, and the wisdom door begins in Chapter 14. The skeleton of the whole book is exposed in this sentence.

§03 Table of Contents for the Eleven Chapters of Part One → Vernacular §3

The table lists the chapters in sequence: Virtue, Ascetic Practices, Taking a Meditation Subject, Earth Kasiṇa, Remaining Kasiṇas, Foulness, Six Recollections, Remaining Recollections, Divine Abodes, Immaterial States, and the exposition of the pair, Perception of Repulsiveness and Defining of the Elements. These are the eleven chapters of Part One, and Part One of the Visuddhimagga is complete (Vernacular §3). 〔Reading〕 The table leaves an intriguing note on this chapter. The four-line colophon calls it “Exposition of Concentration,” but the table calls it “Exposition of the Pair—Perception of Repulsiveness and Defining of the Elements.” One chapter has two names, which this edition records as they stand. Nor does the treatise itself name the next chapter: the first part simply closes, and the connection to Part Two, the ground of wisdom, comes through editorial ordering rather than a heading supplied by the treatise. At precisely this point, the interpretive edition before the reader has completed the entirety of the work’s own Part One. 〔What Is Seen〕

For the General Reader

The five benefits can be used as a mirror: why do you develop concentration? To seek happiness, as pleasant abiding here and now; to seek clear seeing, as insight; to seek ability, as direct knowledge; to seek a good destination, as excellence of becoming; or to seek stilling, as cessation. Each answer stands, and the commentator does not rank them but ties each to a text. Yet there is only one pivot: concentration is the proximate cause for insight. The reason the whole book turns from the concentration door into the ground of wisdom lies here. The two express mentions of access concentration are worth remembering too: failing to reach absorption does not make the work fruitless. Here Part One of the Visuddhimagga—virtue and concentration, eleven chapters—is complete in this interpretive edition. The five chapters of the ground of wisdom—aggregates, bases and elements, faculties and truths, dependent origination—and the seven purifications of Chapters 18–22 have already been built earlier; only a few chapters remain in the whole-book map.

To read this unit in full: Vernacular §§1–3 gives the complete paragraph-by-paragraph rendering of the persons and textual witnesses for the five benefits, the two places assigned to access concentration, the concluding verse, the close of the concentration division and chapter colophon, the table of contents for the eleven chapters of Part One, and the completion of that part.