Refuting a Mahāyāna Misreading
This short chapter closes Fascicle One with the third refutation the treatise promised at the outset — not of an outside school this time, but of a mistake some Mahāyāna practitioners make from within the tradition itself: treating "conventional truth" and "ultimate truth" as though they were two separately existing things, one simply present and one simply absent. The treatise's answer turns the very attachment to self-nature into its own case study, showing that neither truth can be pinned down as flatly existent or flatly non-existent.
What Is Ultimate, What Is Conventional?
復次為破大乘中學有偏執者應知。若汝說一切有皆由俗諦、一切無皆由真諦。應作此問：善友！何者是真實？何者是俗諦？答曰：一切諸法無有自性，是為真實。於無自性法中說有自性，是名俗諦，以於無中假說有故。
問曰：是執無有自性，為當依世俗言故有、為當唯是語言？若依世俗言有此執者，此執則不可說。何以故？執是無故。若此執唯是語言，則無所詮，世俗語言不成就故。若不成就是世俗者，是義不然。
又若汝謂於無自性中執有自性是名為俗，若執有者云何是無？答曰：為顛倒品類故，故無中說有，乃至於無常樂我等諸法說言皆有。常等諸德其體實無，但假說有。如此執者，為四倒攝，是故雖執是有而得是無。
Next, the refutation of those within the Mahāyāna tradition who hold a one-sided attachment should be understood. Suppose someone says: "Everything that exists does so by way of conventional truth; everything that does not exist does so by way of ultimate truth." One should then ask him: "Good friend, what, then, is the ultimate truth, and what is the conventional truth?" He answers: "That all dharmas have no self-nature — this is the ultimate truth. To speak of self-nature as existing within dharmas that have no self-nature — this is called conventional truth, since it is a matter of provisionally speaking of 'existence' within what is, in truth, without it."
Question: "This very attachment to self-nature — does it exist by virtue of conventional speech, or is it merely speech itself, with nothing behind it? If this attachment exists by virtue of conventional speech, then it cannot be spoken of at all — why? Because, on your own account, the attachment itself is ultimately non-existent. If this attachment is merely speech with nothing referred to, then it has no meaning, and conventional speech itself could not be established. But to say that the conventional is not established is not right either."
"And further, if you hold that attaching to self-nature within what has no self-nature is what is called 'the conventional' — if one attaches to it as existing, how can it also be said to be non-existent?" Answer: "Because this belongs to the category of inverted views: it is on this basis that 'existence' is spoken of within what is, in truth, without it — just as one speaks of permanence, bliss, and self as all 'existing' in dharmas that in reality possess none of these. The very qualities of permanence and the rest have, in truth, no real substance at all, and are only provisionally said to exist. Such attachment falls under the four inverted views; and it is precisely for this reason that, although one attaches to it as existing, it turns out, in truth, to be non-existent."
Neither Existent Nor Non-Existent
問曰：如此顛倒為有為無？若是有者，一切諸法無有自性，是義不然。若是無者，此執顛倒亦不得成。若無性中執有自性為俗諦者。是義不然。何以故？二諦不可說有、不可說無，非有非無故。真諦不可說有、不可說無者，無人法故不可說有、顯二空故不可說無。俗諦亦爾，分別性故不可說有、依他性故不可說無。復次真諦不定有無人法、無不無二、空有不有。俗諦亦爾，分別性故非決定無、依他性故非決定有。
Question: "Is this very inverted view itself existent, or non-existent? If it exists, then your claim that all dharmas have no self-nature does not hold. If it does not exist, then this inverted attachment itself could not be established either. So your claim that attaching to self-nature within what has no self-nature constitutes conventional truth does not hold." Why not? Because the two truths can be said neither to exist nor to not exist — they are neither existent nor non-existent. As for the ultimate truth being said neither to exist nor not to exist: since it has no person and no dharma, it cannot be said to exist; yet since it manifests the twofold emptiness, rather than being a sheer blank, it cannot be said to not exist either. The conventional truth is exactly the same: on account of its imagined nature, it cannot be said to exist; yet on account of its dependent nature, it cannot be said to not exist either. Furthermore, the ultimate truth is not fixedly existent or non-existent with respect to person and dharma; it is neither fixedly "not non-existent" nor fixedly "not existent" — being empty, it does not fixedly exist. The conventional truth is exactly the same: on account of its imagined nature, it is not fixedly non-existent; on account of its dependent nature, it is not fixedly existent.
This brief chapter is easy to read past too quickly, but it quietly settles something the whole treatise depends on. If a Mahāyāna student takes "ultimate truth = emptiness = non-existence" and "conventional truth = the world we describe = existence" too literally, as two separate boxes one thing goes into and another thing goes into, then buddha-nature itself becomes an impossible object: is it "really there" (ultimate, hence non-existent on this crude reading) or "just talk" (conventional, hence not really real)? The treatise's answer — that neither truth is simply existent or simply non-existent — is what lets it later claim, without contradiction, that buddha-nature is both truly present in every being right now and yet not a findable thing sitting somewhere the way a Vaiśeṣika substance was supposed to sit. Fascicle One has spent its entire length clearing away exactly this kind of crude either/or thinking, one opponent at a time — Hīnayāna, Vaiśeṣika, Sāṃkhya, and now a stray misreading from within the Mahāyāna itself — so that Fascicle Two can finally say what buddha-nature is without immediately being misread as either a solid thing or a mere word.
Fascicle One Complete
This closes Fascicle One and the entire "Part Refuting Attachments" (破執分): the Hīnayāna objection that some beings never attain nirvāṇa, the Vaiśeṣika and Sāṃkhya claims that dharmas possess fixed self-nature, and this final Mahāyāna misreading of the two truths — all refuted in turn, clearing the ground for the treatise's own positive teaching. Fascicle Two opens the "Part Revealing the Essence" (顯體分), the treatise's direct statement of what buddha-nature actually is, beginning with the three causes — the cause of what is to be attained, the cause of practice, and the cause of fulfillment — that make buddhahood possible for every sentient being.
Continue to Part 7 — The Three Causes and Three Natures →