The Culminating Path
The path of the truth of suffering's cessation reaches its own final stage: the culminating path, anchored in the vajra-like concentration that permanently stills every remaining coarse heaviness at once, and the threefold transformation of basis — of mind, of the path itself, and of coarse heaviness — that this single concentration brings about.
1. The Culminating Path Defined
何等究竟道？謂依金剛喻定，一切麁重永已息故、一切繫得永已斷故、永證一切離繫得故，從此次第無間轉依，證得盡智及無生智十無學法等。何等為十？謂無學正見乃至無學正定、無學正解脫、無學正智。如是等法名究竟道。
What is the culminating path? It is this: in dependence on the vajra-like concentration, every coarse heaviness is permanently stilled, every bondage-attainment is permanently severed, and every freedom-from-bondage-attainment is permanently realized. From this, in immediate and unbroken sequence, transformation of basis occurs, and one realizes exhaustion-knowledge and non-arising-knowledge together with the ten factors of one beyond training. What are the ten? Correct view of one beyond training up through correct concentration of one beyond training, correct liberation of one beyond training, and correct knowledge of one beyond training. These several factors together are called the culminating path.
2. Bondage-Attainment, Freedom-from-Bondage-Attainment, and the Vajra-Like Concentration
繫得者，謂於麁重積集，假立繫得性。離繫得者，謂於麁重離散，假立離繫得性。金剛喻定者，謂居修道最後斷結道位所有三摩地。此復略有二種，謂方便道攝、無間道攝。方便道攝者，謂從此已去，不為一切障所礙，而能破一切障。無間道攝者，謂從此無間盡智、無生智生。又此三摩地，無間、堅固、一味、遍滿。云何此金剛喻定名無間？謂此相續流非世間行所間缺故。堅固者，非一切障所壞，能壞一切障，極堅猛故。一味者，無分別性，純一味故。遍滿者，緣一切所知法共相真如為境故。為顯此義，薄伽梵說：如大石山無缺無隙無穴一段，極善圓滿，十方猛風所不動轉。
Bondage-attainment is a designation provisionally applied to the very accumulation of coarse heaviness itself. Freedom-from-bondage-attainment is a designation provisionally applied to the dispersal of that coarse heaviness.
The vajra-like concentration is the concentration present at the very last stage of severing the fetters, at the culmination of the path of cultivation. This concentration is, in brief, of two kinds: that included within the path of preparatory application, and that included within the uninterrupted path. As included within the path of preparatory application, from this point forward it is obstructed by no obstacle whatsoever, and is able to break through every obstacle. As included within the uninterrupted path, it is immediately followed, without any gap, by the arising of exhaustion-knowledge and non-arising-knowledge.
Further, this concentration is uninterrupted, adamantine, of a single flavor, and all-pervading. Why is this vajra-like concentration called uninterrupted? Because its own continuous stream is never broken by any mundane activity whatsoever. It is called adamantine because it is destroyed by no obstacle at all, while being itself able to destroy every obstacle, being utterly firm and forceful. It is called of a single flavor because it is free of conceptual discrimination, purely uniform throughout. And it is called all-pervading because it takes as its object the shared true nature of everything knowable without exception. To make this meaning clear, the World-Honored One said: it is like a great mountain of solid stone, without flaw, without crack, without hollow, one single unbroken mass, utterly perfect and complete — unmoved by even the fiercest wind blowing from any of the ten directions.
T1606's four descriptive terms for this final concentration — uninterrupted, adamantine, of a single flavor, all-pervading — each answer a distinct possible doubt about whether such a total, once-and-for-all breakthrough is really plausible. Uninterrupted rules out the worry that ordinary mundane activity might somehow break its continuous flow before it finishes its work. Adamantine rules out the worry that some remaining obstacle might still be strong enough to resist or damage it. Of a single flavor rules out the worry that it might operate through the same piecemeal, conceptually mediated discrimination that ordinary cognition uses, rather than through a single undivided act of realization. And all-pervading rules out the worry that its scope might be partial, confined to some objects of knowledge but not others, when in fact it takes the shared true nature of everything knowable as its single object at once. The World-Honored One's own simile — an unbroken mountain of solid stone that no wind from any direction can move — is offered precisely to make vivid what a concentration answering to all four descriptions at once would actually be like: not one victory among many still to come, but the single decisive act that finally leaves nothing further still to overcome.
3. The Threefold Transformation of Basis
無間轉依者，謂已證得無學道者所有三種轉依。何等為三？謂心轉依、道轉依、麁重轉依。心轉依者，謂已得無學道，證得法性心自性清淨，永離一切客塵隨煩惱故，名為轉依，即是真如轉依義。道轉依者，謂昔世間道於現觀時，轉成出世，說名有學，餘有所作故。若永除一切所治、永離三界欲時，此道自體究竟圓滿，立為轉依。麁重轉依者，謂阿賴耶識一切煩惱隨眠永遠離故，名為轉依。
Immediate transformation of basis is the threefold transformation of basis possessed by one who has already realized the path beyond training. What are the three? Transformation of basis in mind, transformation of basis in the path, and transformation of basis in coarse heaviness.
Transformation of basis in mind is this: one who has already attained the path beyond training realizes the true nature of the mind's own intrinsically pure essence, permanently free of every adventitious secondary affliction — this is what is called transformation of basis, in the specific sense of the transformation of basis into suchness itself.
Transformation of basis in the path is this: the mundane path of former times, at the moment of direct realization, turns into the supramundane, at which point it is called the path of one still in training, since further work still remains to be done. Once every counteracted state has been permanently removed and desire for all three realms permanently left behind, this very path's own essence reaches its final, complete perfection — and this is what is established as transformation of basis.
Transformation of basis in coarse heaviness is this: because every affliction's underlying tendency within the storehouse consciousness has been permanently and completely left behind, this too is called transformation of basis.
These three transformations name three genuinely distinct things that all reach completion at the very same moment, and distinguishing them keeps this treatise's account of liberation from collapsing into a single vague notion of "becoming enlightened." Transformation of basis in mind is the purely ontological fact: the mind's own intrinsically pure nature — always present, even while obscured — is now simply realized as it always already was, with the adventitious defilements that had covered it permanently gone. Transformation of basis in the path is a claim about the path's own status: what began as an ordinary mundane path, still operating within the very afflictions it was working to counteract, becomes at the moment of direct realization a genuinely supramundane path, and only reaches its own final completeness once every last trace of the three realms' desire has actually been removed. And transformation of basis in coarse heaviness names the change specifically within the storehouse consciousness itself — the underlying tendencies toward every affliction, seated there since beginningless time, are now permanently uprooted rather than merely suppressed. Mind, path, and the storehouse consciousness's own underlying tendencies: three different loci of the very same single event, each transformed together and inseparably at the culminating path's own completion.
Part 67 Complete
The vajra-like concentration and the threefold transformation of basis it brings about are now examined. Part 68 turns to the treatise's own detailed catalogue of the twenty-four kinds of coarse heaviness that this single concentration finally and permanently stills.
Continue to Part 68 — Twenty-Four Kinds of Coarse Heaviness →