Lineage I — Six Kinds in the Lesser Vehicle, Five in the Greater
Differences in What Is Taught, II — Spiritual Lineage, Part One所詮差別・種性差別
Having asked what consciousness is, Fazang now asks a harder question: who, exactly, is capable of becoming enlightened? The Hīnayāna answer is a tidy six-part scheme that reserves buddhahood for a single grade of a single lineage. The Initial Teaching's answer is more troubling — five lineages, one of which has no capacity for liberation at all — defended through Yogācāra's distinction between a lineage one is born with and a lineage one cultivates, and closed with the opening line of a debate that will occupy the rest of this sub-topic: can the icchantika, the being cut off from wholesome roots, ever become a buddha?
1. The Hīnayāna: Six Lineages, and Three Grades Inside the Sixth
Fazang's Hīnayāna lineage scheme borrows a classification the Sarvāstivāda abhidharma tradition originally built for arhats — how firmly an arhat holds what has been attained — and repurposes it as a doctrine of who can attain what at all.
第二明種性差別者。若依小乘種性有六種。謂退．思．護．住．昇進．不動。不動性中有三品。上者佛種性。中者獨覺性。下者聲聞性。如舍利弗等。雖於此中說佛一人有佛種性。然非是彼大菩提性以於佛功德不說盡未來際起大用等故。是故當知於此教中除佛一人餘一切眾生。皆不說有大菩提性。餘義如小乘論說。
Second, clarifying the differences in lineage: according to the Hīnayāna, there are six kinds of lineage — the retrogressive, the reflective, the protective, the abiding, the advancing, and the unmoving. Within the unmoving lineage there are three grades: the highest is the buddha-lineage, the middle is the pratyekabuddha-lineage, and the lowest is the śrāvaka-lineage, as with Śāriputra and others. Although a buddha-lineage belonging to the Buddha alone is spoken of within this scheme, it is not that same great bodhi-nature of the Mahāyāna, since with respect to a buddha's own merits this teaching does not speak of activity arising that extends to the very limit of future time, and so on. One should therefore know that, in this teaching, apart from the Buddha alone, no other being whatsoever is said to possess the great bodhi-nature. The remaining meaning is as the Hīnayāna treatises explain.
The six terms — retrogressive, reflective, protective, abiding, advancing, unmoving — are the Abhidharmakośa's own sixfold typology of arhats, graded by how easily their attainment can be lost: the "retrogressive" type can fall from arhatship under pressure, while the "unmoving" type cannot fall at all. Fazang's move here is to treat this scale, originally about the stability of an already-attained fruit, as a doctrine of lineage — of what a being was capable of attaining from the outset. Only within the single most stable grade, the unmoving lineage, does a further threefold division open up into pratyekabuddha and buddha capacities above the ordinary śrāvaka.
Śāriputra is the example given, and the placement is exact: tradition holds him among the very steadiest of arhats, of unmoving lineage — yet still only at its lowest internal grade, the śrāvaka-lineage, not the buddha-lineage above it. Even the Buddha's own capacity for buddhahood, on this reckoning, is not the same "great bodhi-nature" the Mahāyāna teachings ahead will describe: this teaching never credits a buddha with activity extending endlessly into the future, so its "buddha-lineage" names only the greatest attainment among a fixed, closed set of possibilities — not an open, universal buddha-nature. That is the entire difference this sub-topic exists to trace across the Five Teachings.
2. The Initial Teaching: Five Lineages, and a Fifth With No Lineage at All
The three-vehicle teachings widen lineage from a closed set of arhat-grades to five categories spanning all beings — but the Initial Teaching still cannot bring itself to include everyone. Fazang cites the Xianyang Shengjiao Lun for the doctrine's own justification.
若依三乘教種性差別略有三說。一約始教。即就有為無常法中立種性故。即不能遍一切有情。故五種性中即有一分無性眾生。故顯揚論云。云何種性差別五種道理。謂一切界差別可得故。乃至云。唯現在世非般涅槃法。不應理故。乃至廣說。是故當知由法爾故。無始時來一切有情有五種性。第五種性無有出世功德因故。永不滅度。由是道理。諸佛利樂有情功德無有斷盡。
According to the three-vehicle teachings, the differences in lineage are set out, in brief, in three accounts. The first, according to the Initial Teaching: because lineage is established within conditioned, impermanent dharmas, it cannot pervade every sentient being equally. Hence, among the five lineages, there is one portion of beings entirely without lineage. So the Xianyang Shengjiao Lun says: "What are the five principles behind the differences in lineage? That the differences among all the various realms of beings can indeed be apprehended" — and, further on: "that it would be unreasonable [to hold that a being] merely present in this one life is without the dharma of parinirvāṇa" — and so on at length. One should therefore know that, simply because this is how things naturally are, since beginningless time all sentient beings have possessed the five lineages. The fifth lineage, having no cause whatsoever for the merit that transcends the world, will never attain cessation. By this principle, the buddhas' meritorious work of benefiting sentient beings is never exhausted.
The reasoning here is almost the mirror image of what it seems to argue for. Fazang is not simply reporting that the Initial Teaching excludes some beings from liberation — he is explaining why it has to. Because this teaching grounds lineage in "conditioned, impermanent dharmas" rather than in an unconditioned buddha-nature, lineage becomes a fact about a particular being's own causal history, and causal histories can simply fail to contain the right cause. A being permanently without the cause for transcending the world — the fifth, lineage-less category — is the logical cost of keeping lineage this concrete. The Xianyang Shengjiao Lun, Asaṅga's compendium translated in full elsewhere on this site, is Fazang's proof text that this exclusion is not an embarrassment to be explained away but a considered doctrine with its own five supporting principles.
3. Innate Lineage and Acquired Lineage
For those beings who do have lineage, Fazang turns to the Yogācārabhūmi's foundational distinction between the lineage one is simply born with and the lineage one builds through practice — and to the delicate question of how the two relate.
其有種性者。瑜伽論云。種性略有二種。一本性住。二習所成。本性住者。謂諸菩薩六處殊勝有如是相。從無始世。展轉傳來法爾所得。
As for those who do possess lineage, the Yogācārabhūmi says: lineage is, in brief, of two kinds. The first is the innate lineage; the second is the acquired lineage. The innate lineage means that the bodhisattva's six sense-bases bear an especially excellent character of this kind, obtained since beginningless time simply as a matter of course, handed on from one occasion to the next.
習所成者。謂先串習善根所得。此中本性。即內六處中意處為殊勝。即攝賴耶識中本覺解性為性種性。故梁攝論云。聞熏習與阿賴耶識中解性和合。一切聖人以此為因。然瑜伽既云具種性者方能發心。即知具性習二法。成一種性。是故此二緣起不二。隨闕一不成。亦不可說性為先習為後。但可。位至堪任已去。方可約本說有性種約修說為習種。然有二義而無二事。如上攝論云。二義和合為一因故得知也。
The acquired lineage means what is obtained through prior, sustained cultivation of wholesome roots. Here, the "innate" nature means that, among the inward six sense-bases, the mind-base is especially excellent — that is, within the ālayavijñāna, the capacity for original enlightenment's own understanding is taken as the lineage-by-nature. Hence the Mahāyānasaṃgraha says: the perfuming of hearing the Dharma combines with the capacity for understanding within the ālayavijñāna, and all the sages take this as their cause. Yet since the Yogācārabhūmi also says that only one endowed with lineage can give rise to the bodhi-mind, one thereby knows that the two dharmas — nature and habituation — together form a single lineage. Hence these two, dependently arisen, are not two; lacking either one, lineage cannot be formed. Nor can it be said which comes first, nature or habituation. It can only be said that, once the stage of capability is reached, one may speak, in terms of the innate basis, of the lineage-by-nature, and, in terms of cultivation, of the lineage-by-habituation. There are thus two meanings, but not two separate realities — as the Saṃgraha above says, the two meanings combine to form a single cause. From this one may know it.
The puzzle Fazang is navigating is a real one for any theory of spiritual potential: if lineage must be cultivated to be manifest, then a being without prior cultivation seems to have no lineage yet — but if lineage can arise from nothing through cultivation, it starts to look less like an innate capacity and more like an achievement anyone could reach. Yogācāra's answer, which Fazang endorses, is to deny that either factor is temporally first. The innate lineage — identified here with the ālayavijñāna's own capacity for original enlightenment, the same "understanding-nature" this gate discussed under the storehouse consciousness in Part 9 — and the acquired lineage built through habituated practice are "dependently arisen... not two." Neither can be pointed to in isolation; a being's lineage only becomes visible, retrospectively, once cultivation has actually borne fruit.
4. Reconciling Yogācāra With the Renwang and Benye Sūtras
Fazang next resolves an apparent conflict between the Yogācārabhūmi's two lineages and a similarly-named pair of terms in two other scriptures, which place them at different points along the path.
問此二種性與仁王及本業經中六種性內習種性種性。有何差別耶。答彼經大都約位而說。以初習為習種性。久習積成為性種性故。說習種在十住性種在十行。三賢之前。但名善趣不名種性。瑜伽中。久習名習種。約本為性種。而此二種非初非中後。是故經說習故成性。論中說為依性起習。良以此二互成緣起無二相故。經論互說義方備足。又經說種性在發心後。論中種性在發心前。何以爾者。以其至得位時功能方顯。是故經說在三賢位中。然彼功能必有所依。是故論中說在位前。要由功能顯方可說有故。經不違論。要由有性方起功能故。論不違經。亦是互舉義意融通。
Question: how do these two lineages differ from the "lineage-by-habituation" and "lineage-by-nature" among the six lineages spoken of in the Renwang and Benye sūtras? Answer: those sūtras speak of the matter chiefly in terms of stages. They take the initial habituation as the lineage-by-habituation, and habituation accumulated over a long time as the lineage-by-nature — hence they say the lineage-by-habituation belongs to the ten abodes and the lineage-by-nature to the ten practices; before these, within the three worthy stages, one is called merely "of good destiny" and not yet named "of lineage" at all. In the Yogācārabhūmi, by contrast, long habituation is called the lineage-by-habituation and what is by nature is called the lineage-by-nature, and these two are neither strictly first, middle, nor last. Hence the sūtras say that lineage is formed through habituation, while the treatise says that habituation arises in dependence on the innate nature. It is precisely because these two mutually constitute a single dependently-arisen character, without duality, that sūtra and treatise, spoken together, complete each other's meaning. Again, the sūtras place lineage after the arising of the bodhi-mind, while the treatise places lineage before it. Why is this so? Because it is only upon reaching the stage of attainment that the capacity becomes manifest — hence the sūtras place it within the three worthy stages. Yet that capacity must always have something on which it depends — hence the treatise places it before the stage is reached. Since it is only through the manifestation of the capacity that its existence can be spoken of, the sūtras do not contradict the treatise; and since it is only because the nature already exists that the capacity can arise, the treatise does not contradict the sūtras. This too is a case of each source raising the matter from its own side, the meanings fusing into one.
This is Fazang's harmonizing method at its most procedural: rather than choosing between the Yogācārabhūmi's account and the Renwang and Benye sūtras' differently-timed version of the "same" two terms, he shows that each source is simply looking at a different moment of the identical process. The sūtras describe when lineage becomes visible — after the bodhi-mind arises, once its fruits can be tracked stage by stage through the ten abodes and ten practices. The treatise describes what lineage depends on — a capacity that must already be there before the mind arises, or the mind's arising would have nothing to draw on. Fazang will use this same "sūtra names the effect, treatise names the cause — no contradiction" pattern repeatedly across this collection whenever two authoritative sources appear to disagree about timing.
5. From Foolishness to Capability, and the Five Lineages Restored
A chain of four further questions works out the consequences: when exactly does lineage become real, does a being without habituation truly lack a nature, and — the sharpest challenge — if lineage only shows itself through habituation, does that not collapse the promised five lineages back down into one?
問又以何義。知種性至堪任位耶。答以論說種性必具性習。既已有習必已修行。若已修行必至堪任。若不從愚夫至堪任已來中間修此串習行者。更何位修也。以於愚位未修習故。得位已去具第二住故。是故當知從愚位未修串習行。至彼堪任串習方成故得性習通融以為種性。
Question: by what reasoning is it known that lineage reaches the stage of capability at all? Answer: because the treatise says lineage must comprise both nature and habituation. Given that there is habituation, there must already have been cultivation; given that there has been cultivation, one must reach the stage of capability. For if it were not the case that, somewhere between the state of the ordinary fool and the stage of capability, this sustained cultivation were being practiced, then at what stage would it ever be practiced at all? In the state of foolishness, one has not yet cultivated this habituation; once the stage is attained, one already possesses the second abode. One should therefore know: from the state of foolishness, where sustained cultivation is not yet practiced, up to the point where capability is reached and sustained cultivation comes to completion, nature and habituation are fused together into one, and this is how lineage is obtained.
問若要待習方說性者。愚位未習。豈無性種。如其無者後不應有。先無後有非性種故。如其有者無習有性。不應理故。論不說故。答此二既為緣起。故無習時亦無彼性。由此亦立無性有情。先無後有非性種者。此亦不然。以習成處定先有性。愚位未習故不說性。後起習已不名無習。是故習成後說有性。隨於諸乘串習何行。爾時即說本有彼性。
Question: if lineage can only be spoken of once habituation is awaited, then in the state of foolishness, before there is habituation, is there truly no seed of nature at all? If there is none, then none should be present later either — for what is absent at first and present afterward cannot be a genuine seed of nature. But if there already is one, then there is nature without habituation, which is unreasonable and which the treatise does not state. Answer: since these two are dependently arisen together, when there is no habituation there is also no manifest nature — and it is precisely on this basis that beings without lineage at all are also established. As for the objection that "what is absent at first and present afterward cannot be a genuine seed of nature" — this too does not hold. For wherever habituation comes to completion, the nature was necessarily already present there; it is simply that, in the state of foolishness, since habituation has not yet occurred, the nature is not spoken of. Once habituation subsequently arises, this is not to be called "being without habituation" — hence, once habituation is complete, the nature is then spoken of as existing. According to whichever vehicle's practice one habituates oneself in, at that time the nature one already inherently possessed all along is what is spoken of.
問若爾此即唯是一不定性。如何得有五種性差別耶。答即由此義安立五性何者。謂修六度串習行已。位到堪任成菩薩種性。若習小行到於忍位成聲聞性。故智論云。煖頂忍等名為性地。善戒經云。若得世第一法是名第二位。故知前三善根屬種性位。若依俱舍論。得順解脫分善根位方說有性。故彼論云。順解脫分者。謂定能感涅槃果善。此善生已令彼有情名為身中有涅槃法。獨覺準知。由此即立三乘種性。若於三行隨一修行未至本位。爾時立為不定種性。若於三行全未修行。爾時立為無有種性。由此當知。諸乘種性皆就習說。
Question: if that is so, then this is simply one indeterminate nature — how then can there be five distinct lineages at all? Answer: it is precisely on this basis that the five lineages are established. How so? Because once one has cultivated the six pāramitās through sustained practice and reached the stage of capability, one becomes of the bodhisattva-lineage; if one habituates oneself instead in the lesser practices and reaches the stage of forbearance, one becomes of the śrāvaka-lineage. Hence the Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra says: the stages of heat, summit, and forbearance are called the stage of nature. The Sūtra on the Good Precepts says: attaining the supreme worldly dharma is called the second stage — hence one knows that the first three wholesome roots belong to the stage of lineage. According to the Abhidharmakośa, it is only upon attaining the wholesome root that conforms to liberation that a nature is spoken of at all — hence that treatise says: "that which conforms to liberation" means a wholesome act certain to bring about the fruit of nirvāṇa; once this wholesome act has arisen, that being is said to have, within itself, the dharma of nirvāṇa. The pratyekabuddha may be understood on the same model. On this basis, the lineages of the three vehicles are established. If, among the three practices, one has cultivated any single one but not yet reached its own proper stage, one is then of indeterminate lineage. If one has cultivated none of the three practices at all, one is then of no lineage whatsoever. From this one should know: the lineages of all vehicles are spoken of entirely in terms of habituation.
問若愚位無習。即無性者。後縱起習何得為有。答有習非是無習位故。是故有習常恒有。無習自恒無。既不以無習而作習。亦不以無性而為性。以分位差別故。
Question: if, in the state of foolishness where there is no habituation, there is also no nature — then even should habituation later arise, how could this nature come to exist? Answer: the state of having habituation is simply not the same as the state of having none. Hence what has habituation always, invariably, has nature; what has no habituation, of itself, invariably has none. One does not thereby take "no habituation" and make it into "habituation," nor take "no nature" and make it into "nature." This is simply because the stages themselves are distinct from one another.
The pāramitā-by-pāramitā scale Fazang cites here — heat, summit, forbearance, and supreme worldly dharma as the four aids to penetration leading into the path of seeing — is standard abhidharma vocabulary shared by the Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra, the Sūtra on the Good Precepts, and the Abhidharmakośa; Fazang cites all three simply to show they agree on where, exactly, "lineage" first becomes a fact about a given practitioner rather than a mere possibility. The deeper point of this whole run of questions is structural, not doctrinal: Fazang defends the five lineages against the charge of being merely one indeterminate potential by insisting that lineage is only ever spoken of retrospectively, from within a completed act of habituation — which is exactly why a being who has habituated in none of the three vehicles' practices is, without contradiction, said to have no lineage at all. The seed was never separable from the fruit to begin with.
6. The Icchantika: The Nirvāṇa Sūtra's Opening Word
Fazang closes this half of the lineage sub-topic with the single scriptural passage that will occupy the rest of it: the Nirvāṇa Sūtra's own paradoxical statement about the icchantika, a being said in the same breath to be permanently cut off from buddhahood and yet somehow still capable of generating the bodhi-mind.
如涅槃經云。三種人中畢竟死者。喻一闡提無佛性也。善男子。一闡提輩若遇善友諸佛菩薩。聞說深法及以不遇。俱不得離一闡提心。何以故。斷善根故。一闡提輩亦得阿耨多羅三藐三菩提心。所以者何。若能發菩提之心。即不復名一闡提性也。善男子。以何緣故說一闡提得阿耨多羅三藐三菩提。一闡提輩實不得阿耨多羅三藐三菩提。如命盡者等。乃至廣說。當知此中就位前後有無恒定不相由也。
As the Nirvāṇa Sūtra says: "Among the three kinds of persons, the one who is utterly dead is a metaphor for the icchantika who has no buddha-nature. Good sons, whether or not the icchantika meets with good friends among the buddhas and bodhisattvas and hears the profound Dharma taught, in either case he cannot be freed from the icchantika-mind. Why is this? Because he has cut off his wholesome roots. Yet the icchantika, too, can attain the mind of unsurpassed, perfect enlightenment. Why is this? Because, if he is able to give rise to the bodhi-mind, he is then no longer called one of icchantika-nature. Good sons, for what reason is it said that the icchantika attains unsurpassed, perfect enlightenment — when the icchantika truly does not attain unsurpassed, perfect enlightenment? It is like one whose life-span is exhausted" — and so on, at length. One should know that here, whether buddha-nature is present or absent is, before and after this stage, fixed in each case, and one does not depend upon the other.
The Nirvāṇa Sūtra's own wording is deliberately unstable, and Fazang quotes it precisely because it is unstable: in one breath the icchantika "has no buddha-nature" and can never be freed from the icchantika-mind by any encounter with the Dharma; in the very next, he "can attain unsurpassed, perfect enlightenment," because attaining the bodhi-mind simply means he is no longer an icchantika at all. Fazang's own closing gloss resolves this the way he resolved the sūtra-versus-treatise timing dispute above: the two statements describe two different stages, before and after the bodhi-mind arises, each fixed and true within its own stage, "not depending on the other." Before generating bodhicitta, the icchantika truly lacks the nature to attain buddhahood; the moment he generates it, the icchantika-nature has simply ceased to describe him.
This passage is the seed of a debate this site has already treated at length elsewhere — the Foxing Lun's second part works through the identical Nirvāṇa Sūtra tension over many pages, using much the same "he turns his back on the Mahāyāna, and it is this turning, not a fixed absence, that the sūtra calls icchantika-nature" resolution Fazang gestures at here. Fazang, however, is not finished: Part 11 pushes past this opening statement into the Final Teaching's much stronger claim — that buddha-nature pervades every being without exception — and Part 12 will bring the icchantika debate itself to its formal resolution by way of the Ratnagotravibhāga.
Part Ten Complete
This closes Part Ten: the Hīnayāna's six lineages narrowing buddhahood to one grade of one lineage; the Initial Teaching's five lineages, including the icchantika's lineage-less fifth category, defended through the Xianyang Shengjiao Lun's five principles; the Yogācārabhūmi's innate and acquired lineage shown to be dependently arisen rather than sequential; the harmonizing of Yogācāra with the Renwang and Benye sūtras' differently-timed terminology; the defense of five distinct lineages against the charge of collapsing into one indeterminate potential; and the Nirvāṇa Sūtra's own opening statement of the icchantika paradox.
Part Eleven turns to the Final Teaching, where the doctrine reverses entirely: buddha-nature is said to pervade every single sentient being, with not even one lineage-less exception — and the icchantika debate reopens in earnest, now as a direct contradiction to be resolved rather than a paradox to be stated.