The Truth of the Path Begins
The treatise's fourth and final noble truth opens with the classical five stages of the path — resource, preparation, seeing, cultivation, and culmination — before working through the first two in careful detail: the ordinary discipline and threefold wisdom that constitute the resource stage, and the four aids to penetration whose final moment opens directly onto the breakthrough of seeing.
1. The Path's Own Mark, and Its Five Stages
云何道諦？謂由此道故知苦斷集證滅修道，是略說道諦相。道有五種，謂資糧道、加行道、見道、修道、究竟道。
What is the truth of the path? That by which suffering is known, origination is severed, cessation is realized, and the path itself is cultivated — this, in brief, is the mark of the truth of the path. The path is of five stages: the resource stage, the preparatory stage, the stage of seeing, the stage of cultivation, and the culminating stage.
2. The Resource Stage
何等資糧道？謂諸異生所有尸羅，守護根門、飲食知量，初夜後夜常不睡眠，勤修止觀正知而住。復有所餘進習諸善，聞所成慧、思所成慧、修所成慧，修習此故得成現觀解脫所依器性。
What is the resource stage? An ordinary being's own moral discipline: guarding the sense doors, knowing moderation in food and drink, remaining constantly wakeful through the first and last watches of the night, and diligently cultivating calm-abiding and insight while abiding in clear awareness. There is, further, wholesome practice progressively developed beyond this — wisdom born of hearing, wisdom born of reflection, and wisdom born of cultivation — and it is by developing these that one becomes a genuinely fit vessel for direct realization and liberation.
3. The Preparatory Stage: Four Aids to Penetration
何等加行道？謂有資糧道皆是加行道，或有加行道非資糧道。謂已積集資糧道者所有順決擇分善根，謂煖法、頂法、順諦忍法、世第一法。
What is the preparatory stage? Everything belonging to the resource stage also belongs to the preparatory stage — but there is preparatory-stage practice that does not belong to the resource stage as such: specifically, the wholesome roots aiding penetration possessed by one who has already gathered the resource stage's own provisions — the stage of heat, the stage of summit, the stage of forbearance in accord with the truths, and the supreme mundane stage.
云何煖法？謂各別內證於諸諦中明得三摩地鉢羅若及彼相應等法。云何頂法？謂各別內證於諸諦中明增三摩地鉢羅若及彼相應等法。云何順諦忍法？謂各別內證於諸諦中一分已入隨順三摩地鉢羅若及彼相應等法。云何世第一法？謂各別內證於諸諦中無間心三摩地鉢羅若及彼相應等法。
What is the stage of heat? The concentration and wisdom, together with their associated factors, by which one inwardly, individually realizes the very first glimmer of illumination with respect to the truths. What is the stage of summit? The concentration and wisdom, together with their associated factors, by which that same illumination increases further still. What is the stage of forbearance in accord with the truths? The concentration and wisdom, together with their associated factors, by which one has already, in part, genuinely entered into accord with the truths. What is the supreme mundane stage? The concentration and wisdom, together with their associated factors, forming the single uninterrupted mind that immediately precedes the breakthrough itself.
The four aids to penetration are traditionally read as a single, continuous intensification of the same underlying insight, and their names are worth taking as a deliberate metaphor: heat is the very first warmth given off before a fire is fully kindled — the earliest, faintest illumination of the four truths, still easily lost. Summit is that same illumination grown strong enough to reach its highest point while still remaining, technically, a mundane attainment, capable (unlike heat) of never regressing back to nothing once reached. Forbearance in accord with the truths marks the stage at which the practitioner has genuinely, though only partially, accepted and settled into the truths' own reality without further wavering. And the supreme mundane stage is a single, unrepeatable moment of mind — the very last instant of ordinary, worldly consciousness, immediately followed, with no gap whatsoever, by the noble path's own direct breakthrough. Together, these four stages chart out exactly how gradual, cultivated insight finally tips over into the sudden, irreversible transformation Part 53 takes up next.
Part 52 Complete
The path's own mark, its five stages, the resource stage's discipline and threefold wisdom, and the four aids to penetration are now examined. Part 53 turns to the path of seeing itself — the sixteen-instant sequence of forbearances and knowledges through which a practitioner directly, irreversibly breaks through to the four truths for the very first time.
Continue to Part 53 — The Path of Seeing →