The Truth of Origination Closes
The truth of origination — by far the treatise's longest topic, running since Part 32 — comes to its close. The treatise steps back to ask what karma, taken as a whole, actually explains about the differences among sentient beings, then acknowledges karma's own genuinely inconceivable reach at its outer limits, before summarizing the entire truth of origination in four final aspects.
1. How Karma Alone Accounts for Every Difference Among Beings
如世尊說：如是有情皆由自業，業所乖諍、從業所生、依業出離、業能分別一切有情高下勝劣。云何有情皆由自業？由自造業而受異熟故。云何業所乖諍？於受自業所得異熟時，善不善業互違諍故。云何從業所生？是諸有情遠離無因惡因，唯從業所生故。云何依業出離？依對治業解業縛故。云何由業有情高下？謂猶業故於善惡趣得自體差別。云何勝劣？謂諸有情成就功德過失差別。
As the World-Honored One said: sentient beings are all owners of their own karma, are contended over by karma, arise from karma, find release through karma, and are sorted into higher and lower, superior and inferior, by karma alone.
How are beings all owners of their own karma? Because they undergo a ripened result specifically through the karma they themselves have created. How are they contended over by karma? Because, at the very moment a being undergoes the ripened result of their own karma, wholesome and unwholesome karma actively contend against one another. How do they arise from karma? Because sentient beings, free of both no cause at all and an incorrect cause, arise specifically from karma and from nothing else. How do they find release through karma? Because it is precisely through the antidotal power of karma that karma's own bondage is dissolved. How are they sorted into higher and lower by karma? Because it is precisely through karma that one attains a given bodily existence within a fortunate or unfortunate destiny. What of superior and inferior? This names the differences among sentient beings in what virtues and faults they have actually attained.
This scriptural formula, unpacked phrase by phrase, is worth reading as the treatise's own closing statement of what the entire truth of origination has actually been arguing across its many parts: nothing about a sentient being's condition — their destiny, their circumstances, their character, their eventual freedom — traces back to any external, arbitrary cause, whether a creator god, blind chance, or sheer necessity; every single difference among beings, without remainder, is accounted for by karma alone, working precisely through the mechanisms of affliction and action this entire section has spent so long cataloguing in exhaustive detail. Even liberation itself, on this account, is not an escape from the domain of karma so much as karma's own antidotal power finally overcoming karma's binding power from within.
2. Karma's Own Inconceivable Scope
如世尊說：有情業異熟不可思議。云何業異熟可思議？云何業異熟不可思議？謂諸善業於人天趣得可愛異熟，是可思議。諸不善業墮三惡趣得不愛異熟，是可思議。即由此業感諸有情自身異熟等種種差別，不可思議。又即善不善業，處差別、事差別、因差別、異熟差別、品類差別等，皆不可思議。
As the World-Honored One said: sentient beings' own karmic ripening is inconceivable. What aspect of karmic ripening is conceivable, and what aspect is not? That wholesome karma obtains an agreeable ripened result among humans and gods is conceivable. That unwholesome karma obtains a disagreeable ripened result, falling into the three unfortunate destinies, is conceivable. But the precise, various ways this same karma brings about each individual sentient being's own particular ripened result is inconceivable. Likewise, wholesome and unwholesome karma's own distinctions of place, matter, cause, ripened result, and kind are all, in their full particularity, inconceivable.
復有種種外事差別，能感業用不可思議。又末尼珠、藥草、呪術，相應業用不可思議。又諸觀行者，威德業用不可思議。又諸菩薩，自在業用不可思議，所謂命自在故、心自在故、財自在故、業自在故、生自在故、勝解自在故、願自在故、神通自在故、智自在故、法自在故。諸大菩薩由如是等自在力故，所作業用不可思議。又一切佛，所作諸佛應所作事業用不可思議。
There are, further, various further external distinctions, and the karmic function capable of bringing them about is likewise inconceivable. The karmic function associated with wish-fulfilling jewels, medicinal herbs, and mantras is inconceivable. Accomplished meditators' own karmic function, exercised through majestic spiritual power, is inconceivable. Bodhisattvas' own karmic function, exercised through mastery, is inconceivable — mastery over lifespan, over mind, over wealth, over karma itself, over rebirth, over resolve, over vow, over supernormal power, over wisdom, and over the Dharma. It is through these very masteries that great bodhisattvas' own karmic function becomes inconceivable. And every buddha's own karmic function, exercised in whatever activity a buddha is fittingly called to perform, is inconceivable.
This passage draws a careful line between what genuinely is, and what merely appears to be, beyond ordinary explanation: the broad, general pattern of karmic cause and effect — wholesome action leading to fortunate rebirth, unwholesome action leading to unfortunate rebirth — is perfectly conceivable and lawlike, exactly the kind of regularity this entire treatise has been methodically laying out. What genuinely exceeds ordinary comprehension is the full, exact particularity of how that general law plays out for any specific individual being, down to the last detail — a complexity T1606 compares to trying to trace every drop of rain in a storm back to its own specific antecedent cause. The list then escalates through a graduated hierarchy of genuinely mysterious causal powers: unusual natural objects, the specific supernormal capacities cultivated through meditation, a bodhisattva's ten masteries (already familiar from this site's Mahāyānasaṃgraha pages), and finally a buddha's own unrestricted activity — each level, the treatise implies, is real and karmically grounded, yet increasingly beyond what an ordinary, unenlightened mind could ever hope to fully trace out or predict.
3. Origination's Four Aspects
如是集諦總有四種行相差別，謂因相、集相、生相、緣相。云何因相？謂能引發復有習氣因，是名因相。云何集相？謂彼彼有情所集習氣，於彼彼有情類為等起因，是名集相。云何生相？謂各別內身無量品類差別生因，是名生相。云何緣相？謂諸有情別別得捨因，是名緣相。
The truth of origination, altogether, has four distinct aspects: the aspect of cause, the aspect of accumulation, the aspect of production, and the aspect of condition.
What is the aspect of cause? The habitual-trace cause capable of drawing forth a further existence — this is the aspect of cause. What is the aspect of accumulation? The habitual traces each and every sentient being has accumulated, serving as the co-arising cause for that same being's own future arising — this is the aspect of accumulation. What is the aspect of production? The cause behind each individual being's own countless, distinctly varied production within their own particular embodied existence — this is the aspect of production. What is the aspect of condition? The cause by which sentient beings, each in their own distinct way, either acquire or relinquish a given rebirth — this is the aspect of condition.
These four aspects offer a compact, final restatement of everything this long section has established: cause names craving and the other afflictions as what draws a being toward further existence in the first place; accumulation names the specific habitual traces a given being has built up, which then function as the actual mechanism generating that being's own next existence; production names whatever accounts for the sheer, countless variety among individual embodied lives, rather than uniformity; and condition names the more fine-grained causal factors governing exactly which particular rebirth is taken up or relinquished. Read together, the four aspects move from the most general (why does further existence arise at all) to the most specific (why this particular being, in this particular form, gains or loses this particular life) — closing the truth of origination with the same systematic thoroughness that has characterized its treatment from the very first line.
The Truth of Origination Complete
This closes the truth of origination in full — running from Part 32's opening account of craving's sixfold pervasiveness through the afflictions' entire ten-gate analysis, the full structure of karma in all its named varieties, and this closing reflection on karma's own scope and four defining aspects. Part 50 opens the treatise's third noble truth: the truth of cessation, and the treatise's own twelvefold analysis of what nirvāṇa actually is.
Continue to Part 50 — The Truth of Cessation Begins →