The Root Afflictions and the Five Views
The treatise now turns to the roots of defilement: craving, hatred, conceit, delusion, and doubt, followed by an unusually extended treatment of the fifth root — wrong view — broken into its five classical forms, complete with a twenty-item breakdown of exactly how the view of a substantial body misconceives the five aggregates, and the simile that has defined this view for the whole tradition since: mistaking a rope for a snake.
1. Craving, Hatred, Conceit, Delusion, Doubt
何等為貪？謂三界愛為體，生眾苦為業。何等為瞋？謂於有情苦及苦具心恚為體，不安隱住惡行所依為業。何等為慢？謂依止薩迦耶見心高舉為體，不敬苦生所依為業。何等無明？謂三界無知為體，於諸法中邪決定疑雜生起所依為業。何等為疑？謂於諦猶豫為體，善品不生所依為業。
What is craving? Its nature is love for the three realms; its function is producing every kind of suffering.
What is hatred? Its nature is a mind of ill will toward sentient beings' suffering and the causes of that suffering; its function is serving as the basis for an unsettled abiding and for wrongdoing.
What is conceit? Its nature is a mind that exalts itself, relying on the view of a substantial body; its function is serving as the basis for disrespect and the arising of suffering.
What is delusion? Its nature is ignorance regarding the three realms; its function is serving as the basis for the arising of wrongful, mistaken conviction and confused doubt with respect to the dharmas.
What is doubt? Its nature is hesitation with respect to the truths; its function is serving as the basis for wholesome qualities failing to arise.
2. The Five Views
何等薩迦耶見？謂於五取蘊等隨觀執我及我所，諸忍欲覺觀見為體，一切見趣所依為業。何等邊執見？謂於五取蘊等隨觀執或斷或常，諸忍欲覺觀見為體，障處中行出離為業。
What is the view of a substantial body? Its nature is the acceptance, wish, cognition, and outlook that clings to the five grasped aggregates as self or as what belongs to self; its function is serving as the basis for every speculative view.
What is the extremist view? Its nature is the acceptance, wish, cognition, and outlook that clings to the five grasped aggregates, taken this way, as either annihilated or as permanent; its function is obstructing the middle way and liberation.
何等見取，謂於諸見及見所依五取蘊等，隨觀執為最為勝為上為妙，諸忍欲覺觀見為體，執不正見所依為業。何等戒禁取？謂於諸戒禁及戒禁所依五取蘊等，隨觀執為清淨為解脫為出離，諸忍欲覺觀見為體，勞而無果所依為業。何等邪見？謂謗因謗果、或謗作用、或壞實事、或邪分別，諸忍欲覺觀見為體，斷善根為業，及不善根堅固所依為業、不善生起為業、善不生起為業。
What is clinging to views? Its nature is the acceptance, wish, cognition, and outlook that clings to one's own views, and to the five grasped aggregates those views depend on, as supreme, superior, highest, and finest; its function is serving as the basis for holding fast to a wrong view.
What is clinging to rules and rituals? Its nature is the acceptance, wish, cognition, and outlook that clings to rules and rituals, and to the five grasped aggregates they depend on, as pure, liberating, and leading to release; its function is serving as the basis for fruitless, exhausting hardship.
What is wrong view? Its nature is the acceptance, wish, cognition, and outlook that denies cause, denies effect, denies causal function, denies real entities, or holds any other wrongful discrimination; its function is severing wholesome roots, serving as the basis for unwholesome roots becoming fixed, giving rise to what is unwholesome, and preventing what is wholesome from arising.
These five definitions match, almost word for word, the Cheng Weishi Lun's own treatment of the same five views in its sixth fascicle — a passage that treatise builds directly on this one. T1606 traces the sequence as a logical progression: the view of a substantial body is the root error, positing a self out of the five aggregates; the extremist view is what that posited self gets stretched into once questioned (does it end at death, or persist unchanged forever?); wrong view proper is the catch-all for denying cause and effect outright; and the last two — clinging to views and clinging to rules and rituals — are what happens once any of the above gets defended as the genuine path to purity, producing endless dispute in the first case and pointless austerity in the second.
3. Increase or Decrease, and the Views' Wider Reach
如是五見，幾增益見？幾損減見？四是增益見，謂於所知境增益自性及差別故、於諸見中增益第一及清淨故。一多分是損減見。計前後際所有諸見，彼於此五幾見所攝？謂或二或一切。於不可記事所有諸見，彼於此五幾見所攝？謂或二或一切。
Of these five views, how many superimpose something that is not there, and how many deny something that is? Four superimpose, since they superimpose an essential nature and distinguishing features onto the object of knowledge, and superimpose supremacy or purity onto the views themselves. The fifth is mostly a matter of denial.
Of the many views that speculate about the beginning or the end of existence, which of these five do they fall under? Either two of them, or the whole set. Of the views concerning matters the Buddha left unanswered, which of these five do they fall under? Either two of them, or the whole set.
T1606 explains the increase/decrease split concretely: the view of a substantial body superimposes a self and what-belongs-to-self onto the aggregates; the extremist view superimposes either permanence or annihilation onto that same self; clinging to views superimposes supremacy onto a set of views that are not actually supreme; clinging to rules and rituals superimposes purity onto practices that do not actually purify — four cases of adding something that was never there. Wrong view proper, by contrast, works mainly by denial — rejecting cause, effect, and real entities outright — though T1606 notes it is only "mostly" denial, since wrong view's wrongful discrimination clause can, in specific cases, itself amount to superimposing a false alternative rather than simply subtracting a true one.
4. The Twenty-Item Breakdown of the View of a Substantial Body
Having placed the five views in relation to each other, the treatise returns to the first and most fundamental of them for closer analysis: exactly how many distinct ways a self can be superimposed onto the five aggregates, and which of those ways are properly "self-view" versus merely "self-belonging-view."
薄伽梵觀何過失故，於蘊界處以五種相非毀執我？由觀彼攝受薩迦耶見者有五種過失故，謂異相過失、無常過失、不自在過失、無身過失、不由功用解脫過失。於五取蘊有二十句薩迦耶見，謂計色是我、我有諸色、色屬於我、我在色中，如是計受想行識是我，我有識等、識等屬我、我在識等中。
Observing what fault, does the Bhagavat, with respect to the aggregates, elements, and sense fields, reject the clinging to self in five distinct ways? Because he observes that those who hold the view of a substantial body incur five distinct faults: the fault of a mismatched mark, the fault of impermanence, the fault of lacking mastery, the fault of having no body, and the fault of a liberation that would occur without any effort at all.
Twenty statements of the view of a substantial body apply to the five grasped aggregates: that form is the self, that the self possesses form, that form belongs to the self, that the self dwells within form; and likewise that feeling, perception, formations, and consciousness are the self, that the self possesses these, that these belong to the self, and that the self dwells within these.
於此諸見，幾是我見？幾是我所見？謂五是我見，十五是我所見。何因十五是我所見？由相應我所故、隨轉我所故、不離我所故。薩迦耶見，當言於事了不了耶？當言於事不得決了，如於繩上妄起蛇解。
Of these views, how many are properly self-view, and how many are self-belonging-view? Five are self-view; fifteen are self-belonging-view. Why are the fifteen self-belonging-view? Because of an associated sense of belonging, a following sense of belonging, and an inseparable sense of belonging.
Should the view of a substantial body be said to grasp the matter correctly, or not? It should be said that it never reaches a correct determination of the matter at all — like mistakenly seeing a snake in a rope.
T1606 spells out the five faults the Buddha is observing: a mismatched mark, because none of the five aggregates actually bears any mark resembling a self; impermanence, because if a self really dwelt in an impermanent aggregate, the self itself would have to be impermanent too, which contradicts what self-view actually wants to claim; lacking mastery, since a genuine self ought to control its own aggregates freely, yet no one controls their own form, feeling, and the rest in this way; having no body, since apart from the aggregates themselves no separate self can ever be found or pointed to; and effortless liberation, since — absurdly — if there really were no self bound up with the aggregates at all, liberation would already be automatic, requiring no practice whatsoever.
The twenty-item breakdown works through each aggregate four ways, and T1606 explains why only five of the twenty (the "is the self" cases) count as genuine self-view while the other fifteen are merely self-belonging-view: "the self possesses X" treats X as something the self is associated with and owns; "X belongs to the self" treats X as something that follows the self's own power, to be kept or discarded at will; and "the self dwells within X" treats the self as inseparably pervading X throughout, the way a substance runs through everything it saturates. All three of these fifteen presuppose a self already established elsewhere and merely relate the aggregate to it — whereas the five "is the self" cases are the one move that actually posits the self in the first place, which is why they alone count as self-view proper. The rope-and-snake simile that closes this section has remained the tradition's standard illustration ever since: exactly as no one who correctly perceives a coiled rope for what it is could ever mistake it for a snake, no one who correctly perceived the aggregates for what they are could ever mistake them for a self — the error is possible only because the true nature of the object was never clearly seen to begin with.
Part 5 Complete
The five root afflictions and the five views that expand the sixth are now fully defined, with the treatise's own account of how the view of a substantial body specifically misfires. Part 6 completes the fifty-one-factor catalogue: the twenty secondary afflictions and the four indeterminates that close the aggregate of formations.
Continue to Part 6 — Secondary Afflictions and the Indeterminates →