The Final Concealed Teachings, and Why This Treatise Bears Its Name

Read literally, this passage describes the exact opposite of generosity — yet each phrase, T1606 explains, conceals a genuine perfection beneath its negative-sounding surface. "Increasing the very nature of stinginess" means permanently severing the underlying tendency toward stinginess, together with its habitual imprint, and thereby realizing that very dharma's own true nature as suchness itself through transformation of basis — "increasing" its true nature, in other words, precisely by eliminating its afflictive expression. "Growing weary of giving" means vowing to undertake the long, difficult practice of giving without complaint, sustained so thoroughly that it might be described, ironically, as an endless, tireless "weariness" freely embraced. "Despising those who beg" means wishing that recipients could simply take what they need without having to beg at all, so averse is the bodhisattva to the very indignity of needing to ask. "Never giving even the smallest gift" means giving at every single time and with every single possession, so that no gift is ever small by comparison with what continues to be given. And "remaining distant from giving" means permanently keeping one's distance from giving motivated by hope of any return — a distance not from generosity itself, but from generosity corrupted by self-interest.

T1606 explains this passage's own foremost purity of conduct as the supramundane path itself, and unpacks each of its five deliberately paradoxical phrases in turn. "Constantly seeking, through desire, to be free of desire" means using precisely this thorough, penetrating knowledge to permanently sever desire itself — the very wisdom that fully comprehends suchness serving, ironically, as the "desire" that brings all desire to an end. "Abandoning and severing the very dharma of desire" means constantly examining and abandoning whatever skillful means would otherwise fall short of genuinely pure conduct. "Firmly seizing desire-craving the moment it has arisen" means that the instant any desire-craving arises within, it is immediately, firmly seized and expelled outward, rather than allowed to take root. "Being terrified of the dharma that counteracts desire" means proclaiming desire's own genuine dangers so vividly that every sentient being is moved to a wholesome fear of it, and thereby establishing the very antidote that rescues them all. And "repeatedly meeting, two by two" means repeatedly, directly realizing, again and again, the paired mundane and supramundane paths, and the paired practices of calm-abiding and insight, each operating together within the differentiated causes and effects of defilement and purification set forth across the four noble truths.

T1606 explains each of the three senses in turn. It is equally compiled because it was jointly gathered by great bodhisattvas who have themselves genuinely realized direct realization of reality — its compilers share equally in this same realization, rather than any one of them possessing it while the others merely record it secondhand. It is comprehensively compiled because it gathers together, without omission, every point of careful analysis and determination found throughout the entire body of Mahāyāna Abhidharma scripture — nothing essential left standing outside its scope. And it is correctly compiled because the very means by which it was compiled are themselves free of distortion, leading, through this undistorted compilation, all the way to the actual realization of buddhahood itself. It is for these three reasons together — equal, comprehensive, and correct compilation — that this treatise bears the name it does.