The Two Classes, and How Abandonment Works
The ninth and tenth of the ten gates for examining the afflictions close this long analysis: an exact combinatorial count of one hundred twelve afflictions abandoned through the breakthrough of seeing, and sixteen abandoned only through the slower work of cultivation, followed by the treatise's own careful account of what "abandonment" itself actually consists in — not the destruction of some substance, but the arising of a fitting antidote precisely displacing an affliction's own underlying heaviness.
1. Two Classes: One Hundred Twelve, and Sixteen
何等眾故？謂二眾煩惱：一見所斷眾、二修所斷眾。見所斷眾復有四種：一見苦所斷眾、二見集所斷眾、三見滅所斷眾、四見道所斷眾。欲界見苦所斷具十煩惱。如見苦所斷，見集滅道所斷亦爾。色界見苦等四種所斷各九煩惱，除瞋。如色界，無色界亦爾。如是見所斷煩惱眾，總有一百一十二煩惱。
What are the afflictions' classes? Two: the class abandoned through seeing, and the class abandoned through cultivation. The class abandoned through seeing is, further, of four kinds: abandoned through seeing suffering, through seeing origination, through seeing cessation, and through seeing the path.
In the desire realm, seeing suffering abandons all ten afflictions in full; so too for seeing origination, cessation, and the path. In the form realm, each of these same four kinds of seeing abandons nine afflictions, hatred excepted; so too in the formless realm. The class abandoned through seeing, altogether, totals one hundred twelve afflictions.
欲界修所斷有六煩惱，謂俱生薩迦耶見、邊執見及貪、瞋、慢、無明。色界修所斷有五煩惱，除瞋。如色界，無色界亦爾。如是修所斷煩惱眾，總有十六煩惱。
In the desire realm, the class abandoned through cultivation numbers six afflictions: the innate view of a substantial body, the innate extremist view, craving, hatred, conceit, and delusion. In the form realm, the class abandoned through cultivation numbers five, hatred excepted; so too in the formless realm. The class abandoned through cultivation, altogether, totals sixteen afflictions.
The arithmetic behind one hundred twelve is worth spelling out: the desire realm alone contributes ten afflictions under each of the four truths (40 total), while the form and formless realms each contribute nine under each of the four truths (72 total, since hatred is structurally impossible above the desire realm, as already established in Part 37) — 40 + 72 = 112. The sixteen abandoned through cultivation follow the same hatred-exclusion pattern: six in the desire realm (the innate, not deliberately learned, forms of self-view and extremist-view, together with the four ever-active root afflictions craving, hatred, conceit, and delusion), and five each in the form and formless realms (the same set minus hatred) — 6 + 5 + 5 = 16. T1606 notes the crucial distinction underlying why some afflictions belong to the "seeing" class and others to "cultivation": only the deliberately learned, doctrine-dependent forms of view and doubt (requiring exposure to a wrong teaching to arise at all) collapse the instant direct realization occurs on the path of seeing; the innate forms of self-view and extremist-view, along with the four ever-present root afflictions, are too deeply, habitually entrenched to be dislodged by a single moment of insight, and must instead be worn down gradually through sustained cultivation — a point already anticipated in this treatise's earlier discussion of abandonment modes.
2. What Abandonment Actually Is
何等斷故？謂如此差別斷、由此作意斷、從此而得斷。如此差別斷者，謂遍智故、遠離故、得對治故。遍智者，謂彼因緣事遍智、自體遍智、過患遍智。遠離者，雖彼暫生而不堅執。得對治者，謂未生者令不生故，已生者令斷故，得對治道。
What is abandonment? It is examined through the distinct stages that constitute it, the specific attention through which it occurs, and precisely what it is abandoned from.
The distinct stages that constitute abandonment are three: complete understanding, distancing, and attaining the antidote. Complete understanding is, further, of three kinds: complete understanding of the affliction's own causal basis, complete understanding of its own essence, and complete understanding of its own drawbacks. Distancing means that, though an affliction may still momentarily arise, one no longer clings to it fixedly. Attaining the antidote means attaining the very path capable of preventing an affliction not yet arisen from arising at all, and of severing one already arisen.
由此作意斷者，何等作意能斷耶？總緣作意觀一切法皆無我性，能斷煩惱無常等行，但為修治無我行故。從此而得斷者，從何而得斷耶？不從過去，已滅故；不從未來，未生故；不從現在，道不俱故。然從諸煩惱麁重而得斷為斷。如是如是品麁重生，如是如是品對治。若此品對治生，即此品麁重滅。平等平等，猶如世間明生暗滅。由此品離繫故，令未來煩惱住不生法中，是名為斷。
What specific attention brings about abandonment? Comprehensively-directed attention, contemplating that all dharmas are without self, is what actually severs affliction — not attention to impermanence and the like as such, since these are cultivated only to prepare the ground for the selfless attention that alone accomplishes the severing.
Precisely what is abandonment abandoned from? Not from the past, since the past has already ceased; not from the future, since the future has not yet arisen; not from the present, since the path and the affliction it severs cannot both occupy the very same moment together. Rather, abandonment occurs specifically with reference to the afflictions' own underlying heaviness. For each specific grade of underlying heaviness that has arisen, a correspondingly specific antidote arises; and the moment that antidote's own grade arises, that exact grade of underlying heaviness ceases — the two matched precisely, the way light arising and darkness vanishing are exactly matched. It is through this grade being freed from bondage that future affliction is caused to abide permanently within the state of non-arising — this is what abandonment means.
The treatise's answer to "from what, precisely, is affliction abandoned?" is a genuinely careful piece of Abhidharma reasoning, ruling out the three obvious candidates one by one: not the past (already gone, nothing left to sever), not the future (not yet arisen, nothing yet there to sever), and — more surprisingly — not even the present moment, since the antidote and the affliction it is meant to counter can never, strictly speaking, coexist in the very same instant; wherever the antidote is actually present, the corresponding affliction, by that very fact, is already absent. The resolution is that abandonment targets neither a past, present, nor future instance of the affliction itself, but rather the affliction's own underlying heaviness (麁重) — the standing, latent capacity for that affliction to arise again in the future, already introduced as the technical basis for the latent tendencies in Part 34. The light-and-darkness simile closes the point vividly: one does not first destroy darkness and only then bring in light; light's mere arising already is darkness's ceasing, the two events being, in the most exact sense, one and the same occurrence seen from two sides — and this, the treatise says, is exactly how a specific antidote's arising simply is a specific grade of affliction's own permanent cessation.
The Afflictions' Ten Gates Complete
All ten gates for examining the afflictions — number, mark, conditions for arising, object, association, distinct varieties, wrongful conduct, realm, class, and abandonment — are now complete, closing the first half of the truth of origination. Part 39 turns to the second half: karma itself, opening with the classical distinction between volitional karma and karma-after-volition, the ten karma-paths, and the fivefold structure used to analyze any single unwholesome act.
Continue to Part 39 — Karma Begins →