Is a Pot Ever Actually Seen?
Refuting the Objects破塵品第六
Chapter Five could find no faculty capable of seeing. Chapter Six turns to what was supposed to be seen, and opens with an observation so obvious that nobody notices it: a pot has a color, a smell, a taste and a hardness, and only one of those four is available to the eye. What you see is never a pot. And even the color is half concealed behind itself, since a shape has a far side. From there the chapter works down through atoms, through the four great elements, and finally to time itself — asking whether there is any present moment for perception to occur in, and answering with a pair of sandals.
1. Only the Color Is Visible
The Outsider's argument is the plainest possible: things get taken hold of, and taking hold requires something to take hold with. The reply does not dispute that anything is grasped. It asks what, exactly, the eye grasped.
外曰：應有情瓶等可取故(修妬路)。今現見瓶等諸物可取故。若諸情不能取諸塵，當用何等取？是故知有情能取瓶等諸物。
內曰：非獨色是瓶，是故瓶非現見(修妬路)。瓶中色現可見，香等不可見。不獨色為瓶，香等合為瓶。瓶若現可見者，香等亦應現可見。而不可見，是故瓶非現見。
Outsider: There must be faculties, because pots and the rest can be taken hold of.sūtra We see before us now that pots and other things can be taken hold of. If the faculties cannot take hold of the objects, what is one to take hold with? Therefore one knows that there are faculties, able to take hold of pots and other things.
Insider: Color alone is not the pot, and therefore the pot is not seen before us.sūtra Of the pot, the color is visible before us, but the smell and the rest are not visible. Color alone is not the pot; smell and the rest combine to make the pot. If the pot were visible before us, then smell and the rest should be visible before us too. But they are not — and therefore the pot is not seen before us.
Stop and check this against your own experience, because it is not a technicality. A clay pot is a colored shape, a certain smell, a certain coolness and hardness, a sound when struck. The eye receives exactly one item from that list. Everything else you take yourself to be seeing — its weight, its temperature, the fact that it would hold water — is not arriving through the eye at all.
So the pot is never the object of sight. What is seen is a patch of color, and "pot" is the name of an assembly of which sight delivers a fifth. The argument depends on the analysis of a physical object into five sensory constituents (五身) that both parties accept, and it is the same whole-and-part instrument used in Part 7, now turned on perception instead of on being.
Notice the register the chapter is working in. 現見, which we render "seen before us," is the technical term for direct perception — pratyakṣa, the first and least disputed of the means of knowledge in Indian philosophy, the one everybody grants. The chapter's business is to show that the thing everybody claims to perceive directly is not among the things direct perception delivers.
2. A Part Is Not the Whole, and Color Hides Behind Itself
The natural reply is that seeing part of something counts as seeing it — nobody thinks they have failed to see a pot merely because they cannot smell it from across the room. The Insider grants that this is how people talk, and then makes an observation about shape that is harder to shrug off.
外曰：取分故一切取信故(修妬路)。瓶一分可見，故瓶名現見。何以故？人見瓶已，信知我見是瓶。
內曰：若取分不一切取(修妬路)。瓶一分色可見，香分等不可見，今分不作有分。若分作有分者，香等諸分亦應可見。是故瓶非盡可見，是事如破一破異中說。
Outsider: Because taking hold of a part is taking hold of the whole, and because everyone grants it.sūtra One part of the pot is visible, and so the pot is said to be seen before us. Why? Because when a man has seen a pot, he grants and knows: "I saw that pot."
Insider: If a part is taken hold of, the whole is not taken hold of.sūtra The pot's part that is color is visible, and its parts that are smell and the rest are not visible; and a part does not constitute the whole that has parts. If a part did constitute the whole, then the parts that are smell and the rest should be visible too. Therefore the pot is not wholly visible — as was set out in the refutation of oneness and the refutation of difference.
外曰：有瓶可見，受色現可見故(修妬路)。汝受色現見故，瓶亦應現見。
內曰：若此分現見，彼分不現見(修妬路)。汝謂色現見，是事不然，色有形故。彼分中分不現見，以此分障故，彼分亦如是。復次如前若取分不一切取，彼應答此。
Outsider: The pot is visible, since you accept that color is seen before us.sūtra Since you accept that color is seen before us, the pot must be seen before us too.
Insider: If this part is seen before us, that part is not.sūtra Your claim that color is seen before us will not do, since color has shape. The far portion within it is not seen before us, being blocked by the near portion — and the same holds of the far part in its turn. Furthermore, the earlier line, "if a part is taken hold of, the whole is not taken hold of," answers this as well.
外曰：微塵無分故不盡破(修妬路)。微塵無分故，一切現見有何過？內曰：微塵非現見(修妬路)。汝經言，微塵非現見，是故不能成現見法。若微塵亦現見，與色同破。
Outsider: Since an atom has no parts, the refutation is not complete.sūtra Since an atom has no parts, what fault is there in its being seen before us entire?
Insider: An atom is not seen before us.sūtra Your own text says that an atom is not seen before us, and so it cannot establish anything as seen before us. And if the atom too were seen before us, it would be refuted along with color.
The middle exchange is the best thing in the chapter and it is worth testing on the nearest object. Look at a cup. You are seeing the near surface. The back of it is not in view, and it is not in view because the front is in the way — 以此分障故. Walk around and you get the back and lose the front. There is no vantage from which the color of a solid thing is wholly present, because color, having shape, occludes itself.
So the retreat from "I see the pot" to "well, I see its color" does not reach safe ground. Even the color is given in part, and the part-versus-whole objection simply reappears one level down. The Insider says so explicitly: the previous root line answers this too.
Then the Outsider reaches, as he did in Part 8, for the partless atom — the one thing with no far side to hide behind. And this time the refutation takes a single sentence, because his own school has already conceded the point: atoms are, by definition, below the threshold of sight. He has escaped the problem of partial visibility by fleeing to something wholly invisible. Whatever direct perception is delivering, it is not that.
3. Not Seeing a Pot Is Not the Absence of a Pot
Common sense again, and then a sharp little argument about what would have to happen when a pot comes into view.
外曰：瓶應現見，世人信故(修妬路)。世人盡信瓶是現見，有用故。
內曰：現見無，非瓶無(修妬路)。汝謂若不現見瓶，是時無瓶者，是事不然。瓶雖不現，見非無瓶，是故瓶非現見。
Outsider: The pot must be seen before us, because the world grants it.sūtra Everyone in the world grants that the pot is seen before us, since it has a use.
Insider: The absence of being seen is not the absence of the pot.sūtra Your supposing that when a pot is not seen before us there is at that time no pot will not do. Though a pot is not present to sight, that is not the absence of a pot — and therefore the pot is not a thing constituted by being seen.
外曰：眼合故無過(修妬路)。瓶雖現見相，眼未會時，人自不見是瓶，非不現見相。
內曰：如現見生無，有亦非實(修妬路)。若瓶未與眼合時未有異相，後見時有少異相生者，當知此瓶現見相生。今實無異相生，是故現見相不生。如現見相生無，瓶有亦無。
Outsider: There is no fault, since the eye must meet it.sūtra Though the pot has the mark of visibility, at times when the eye has not met with it a man does not see the pot; but that is not the absence of the mark of visibility.
Insider: As the arising of visibility is absent, so its being is not real either.sūtra If, when the pot has not yet met the eye, there were no differing mark in it, and afterward at the time of seeing some slight differing mark arose, then one would know that the pot's mark of visibility had arisen. But in fact no differing mark arises, and so the mark of visibility does not arise. And as the arising of the mark of visibility is absent, so the pot's being is absent too.
The first reply is a piece of carefulness that keeps the whole chapter from tipping into idealism, and it is worth noticing for that reason. The Insider is not saying that the unseen pot goes out of existence. He explicitly denies it: an unseen pot is not thereby an absent pot. What is being refused is the identification of the pot with something perceived — 瓶非現見, the pot is not a thing whose being consists in being seen.
The second reply is the more searching. The Outsider has said that visibility is a standing property of the pot, which simply goes unexercised when no eye is present. Very well: look for the difference. When the pot comes into view, is there any change in the pot — some slight new mark that was not there in the dark? There is none. The pot is exactly as it was. And a property that makes no difference to its bearer, whether present or absent, is not a property of that bearer at all. Whatever "being seen" is, it is not something that happens to the pot.
4. What Cannot Be Touched Cannot Be Joined to What Can
The Outsider makes a fair procedural complaint — only one of the five constituents has been attacked — and gets an argument about how the five are supposed to be assembled in the first place.
外曰：五身一分破，餘分有(修妬路)。五身是瓶，汝破一色，不破香等。今香等不破，故應有塵。
內曰：若不一切觸，云何色等合(修妬路)。汝言五身為瓶。是語不然。何以故？色等一分是觸，餘分非觸，云何觸不觸合？是故非五身為瓶。
Outsider: You have refuted one part of the five constituents; the remaining parts stand.sūtra The five constituents are the pot. You have refuted the one that is color, but not smell and the rest. Since smell and the rest are not refuted, there must be objects.
Insider: If not all of them are tangible, how do color and the rest combine?sūtra You say the five constituents are the pot. That will not do. Why? Of color and the rest, one part is tangible and the remaining parts are not tangible — how then should the tangible and the intangible combine? Therefore the five constituents are not the pot.
外曰：瓶合故(修妬路)。色分等各各不合，而色分等與瓶合。
內曰：異除，云何瓶觸合(修妬路)。若瓶與觸異者，瓶則非觸，非觸云何與觸合？若除色等更無瓶法，若無瓶法云何觸與瓶合？
Outsider: They combine with the pot.sūtra The parts of color and the rest do not each combine with one another; rather, the parts of color and the rest combine with the pot.
Insider: Difference being excluded, how do pot and touch combine?sūtra If the pot is different from the tangible, then the pot is not tangible; and how should the intangible combine with the tangible? And if, setting aside color and the rest, there is no further pot-dharma, then, there being no pot-dharma, how should the tangible combine with the pot?
The objection is a real one about method and the treatise deserves to be held to it: refuting the visibility of color does nothing to a pot's smell. But the reply changes the subject in a legitimate way, from whether the five exist to whether they can be bound into one object.
Only one of the five is tangible. Smell, taste, sound and color are not things a hand can meet. So when the five are said to combine into a pot, a tangible item is being joined to four intangible ones — and joining is a relation between things that can touch. The Outsider's repair is to route the connection through the pot itself: the parts do not join each other, they each join the whole. And that walks straight into the dilemma of Chapters Three and Four, which is why 異除, "difference being excluded," is enough of a root line. If the pot is other than the tangible, it is intangible and the same problem recurs. If the pot is nothing over and above the five, there is no third party for them to join.
5. In a Fire, Everything Is Hot
The Outsider appeals to the Buddhist's own scripture — a good move, since the Abhidharma definition of form does say that visible form is directly perceived. The reply follows the definition down to the four great elements underneath it.
外曰：色應現見，信經故(修妬路)。汝經言色名四大及四大造。造色分中色入所攝是現見，汝云何言無現見色？內曰：四大非眼見，云何生現見(修妬路)。地堅相、水濕相、火熱相、風動相，是四大非眼見者，此所造色應非現見。
Outsider: Color must be seen before us, since you trust your own scripture.sūtra Your scripture says that "form" names the four great elements and what is derived from them. Among the derived forms, what is included in the sense-field of visible form is seen before us. How then do you say there is no visible color?
Insider: The four great elements are not seen by the eye — how then should they produce what is seen?sūtra Earth has hardness for its mark, water wetness, fire heat, and wind motion; and since these four great elements are not seen by the eye, what is derived from them should not be seen before us either.
外曰：身根取故四大有(修妬路)。今身根取四大，故四大有。是故火等諸物四大所造，亦應有。
內曰：火中一切熱故(修妬路)。四大中但火是熱相，餘非熱相。今火中四大都是熱相，是故火不為四身。若餘不熱，不名為火，是故火不為四身。地堅相、水濕相、風動相亦如是。
Outsider: The four great elements exist, since the body-faculty takes hold of them.sūtra The body-faculty does take hold of the four great elements, and so the four great elements exist. Therefore fire and other things, being made from the four great elements, must exist as well.
Insider: Because in a fire everything is hot.sūtra Among the four great elements only fire has heat for its mark; the rest do not. But in a fire, all four of the great elements are hot — and so fire is not composed of the four constituents. And if the others were not hot, it would not be called fire — and so again fire is not composed of the four. Earth's hardness, water's wetness and wind's motion are just the same.
The first reply notices something odd about the standard definition of form that is easy to read past. Every one of the four great elements is defined by a tangible mark: hardness, wetness, heat, motion. Not one of them is defined by anything the eye could receive. Yet visible form is said to be derived from them. Where in that derivation does visibility enter? A cause that has no color cannot hand color on.
The fire argument is the sharper of the two and can be checked directly. Take hold of a flame. Every part of what you meet is hot — there is no cool earth-portion in it, no unheated water-portion sitting alongside. But the doctrine says fire is a compound of four elements of which only one is hot by nature. So either the other three have surrendered their marks, in which case they are not there as themselves; or they have kept them, in which case a fire contains something that is not hot, which nobody finds. The dilemma is the salt argument from Part 2 in physical form: a mark abides in what it is the mark of, and combination does not transfer it.
It is worth registering that this is the treatise turning on its own side's Abhidharma analysis, not on a rival school's. The Outsider quoted a Buddhist scripture, and the reply does not defend the scripture — it presses the analysis until it gives way. That is consistent with what Chapter One said in Part 3 about even pure merit being something to set down.
6. Sandals That Were Ageing on the First Day
The Outsider's last defense is time. Perception happens now; there must be a now for it to happen in; and the reality of the present moment guarantees the reality of what is perceived in it. The reply is the finest single image in the treatise.
外曰：色應可見，現在時有故(修妬路)。以眼情等現在時取塵故，是名現在時。若眼情等不能取色塵等，則無現在時。今實有現在時，是故色可見。
Outsider: Color must be visible, because there is a present time.sūtra It is because the eye and the other faculties take hold of objects in the present time that we call it the present time. If the eye and the rest could not take hold of color and the other objects, there would be no present time. But there really is a present time — and therefore color is visible.
內曰：若法後故初亦故(修妬路)。若法後故相現，是相非故時生，初生時已隨有，微故、不知故，相轉現是時可知。如人著屐，初已微故隨之，不覺不知，久則相現。若初無故後亦無，是應常新。若然者，故相不應生。是以初微故隨之，後則相現。今諸法不住故則無住時，若無住時無取塵處。
Insider: If a thing is old later, it is old at the outset too.sūtra If a thing's mark of age appears later, that mark did not arise at the time of its being old; it was already there, following along from the first moment of arising, and because it was slight and went unnoticed it was not known — and when the mark has developed and shows itself, then it can be known. It is as when a man puts on new sandals: from the first, a slight ageing follows along with them, unfelt and unknown, and after a long time the mark appears. If there were no ageing at the outset, there would be none later either, and they would be forever new; and if that were so, the mark of age should never arise at all. Therefore from the first a slight ageing follows along, and later the mark shows itself. Now since things do not abide, there is no time of abiding; and if there is no time of abiding, there is no place in which to take hold of an object.
The sandals argument is worth following step by step, because it establishes something much larger than it appears to.
A pair of sandals, five years old, is visibly worn. Where did the wear come from? Two options. Either ageing began at some later moment, in which case there was a stretch of time during which the sandals were not ageing at all — and something that is genuinely not ageing does not age; it is 常新, forever new, and no amount of not-ageing accumulates into wear. Or ageing was present from the first day, too slight to feel, and what changed over five years was only its visibility.
The second option is the only one that works, and its consequence is total. There was never a moment when the sandals were simply new and at rest. From the instant they existed they were going, and every apparently stable object is in the same condition. 諸法不住 — things do not abide.
And that is the answer to the Outsider's argument from the present. He wanted a present moment in which perception could take place. What the sandals show is that there is no such moment: there is no stretch, however small, in which a thing sits still and can be met. 若無住時無取塵處 — with no time of abiding, there is no place in which to take hold of an object. Perception was supposed to be a contact between two things at a time, and time has now been removed from underneath it.
7. New, Middle, Old — and What Is Gained
The Outsider makes one last attempt, cleverly using the reply against itself: talk of new and old presupposes a present in which they are noticed. And then, at the end, he asks the question a reader may have been wanting to ask for two chapters. What is any of this for?
外曰：受新故故，有現在時(修妬路)。汝受新相故相。觀生時名為新，觀異時名為故，是二相非過去時可取，亦非未來時可取。以現在時故，新故相可取。
內曰：不然。生故新，異故故(修妬路)。若法久生新相已過，是新相異新則名故，若故相生故則為新，是新是故但有言說，第一義中無新無中無故。
Outsider: Since you accept newness and age, there is a present time.sūtra You accept a mark of newness and a mark of age. Regarded at the time of arising, a thing is called new; regarded at the time of change, it is called old. These two marks cannot be taken hold of in past time, nor in future time. It is by there being a present time that the marks of new and old can be taken hold of.
Insider: Not so. Arising, it is new; changing, it is old.sūtra If a thing has long since arisen, the mark of newness has already passed; and this mark of newness, in changing from newness, is then called old. And if the mark of age arises, then in arising it is new. So "new" and "old" are words only: in the ultimate sense there is no new, no middle, and no old.
外曰：若爾得何利？內曰：得永離(修妬路)。若新不作中、中不作故，如種子芽莖節壞、華實等各不合，各不合故諸法不住，不住故遠離，遠離故不可得取。
Outsider: If that is so, what benefit is gained?
Insider: One gains permanent release.sūtra If the new does not become the middle, and the middle does not become the old — as seed, sprout, stalk, joint, decay, flower and fruit are each not conjoined with the others — then, each being unconjoined, things do not abide; and not abiding, they are far removed; and being far removed, they cannot be taken hold of.
The reply about newness has a neat circularity in it. Call something new and you have already located it after its arising, which is to say it has begun to age; and the mark of age itself, when it appears, is at that moment a new arrival — so the mark of age is new. Each term keeps turning into the other under pressure, which is what happens to a distinction that describes positions on a continuous change rather than states of a thing.
Then the conclusion, in a formula this treatise uses sparingly and always at moments of weight: 但有言說，第一義中…… — these are words only; in the ultimate sense there is no new, no middle, no old. This is the two-truths distinction operating before it is named. New and old are perfectly serviceable at the level of ordinary speech; they name nothing at the level of what is really so. The vocabulary is the same as the Twelve Gate Treatise's treatment of the two truths, and it is the ground on which Part 14 will finally answer the charge that all this contradicts the world. (Readers may note that 中, the middle term, appears here without having been introduced; the triad new-middle-old is assumed, and is spelled out in the next exchange.)
The last exchange is the one to keep. The Outsider asks what is gained — a blunt, practical question, and the treatise treats it as a good one. The answer, 得永離, permanent release, is unpacked through the life of a plant: seed, sprout, stalk, joint, decay, flower, fruit. Seven stages, and no two of them ever meet. The seed is not present at the fruit; there is no moment at which the sprout hands anything to the stalk, because by then the sprout is gone.
And the chain of consequences that follows is the point of the whole chapter, and arguably of the whole treatise so far: not conjoined, therefore not abiding; not abiding, therefore far removed; far removed, therefore not to be taken hold of. 不可得取. The verb is the same one the chapter opened with — the Outsider's confident 可取, "can be taken hold of." Six sections later it has been turned around. Nothing can be gripped, not because things are hidden, but because nothing stays still long enough to be gripped. And that is not a loss. It is what release means: 遠離, standing free of what was never available to be held in the first place.
Part Ten Complete
This closes Part Ten: the pot of which only a fifth reaches the eye; the color that hides its own far side; the atom fled to and found invisible; the pot that is no less a pot in the dark, and that acquires no new mark when the light comes; the tangible that cannot be joined to four intangibles; the four great elements, every one of them defined by touch, that were supposed to yield something visible; the fire in which everything is hot; the sandals ageing on the day they were bought; and release defined as the impossibility of taking hold.
With the self, the object, the faculties and their objects all gone, Chapters Seven and Eight turn to the oldest quarrel in Indian philosophy — whether an effect is already present in its cause. These two chapters are the same argument the Twelve Gate Treatise runs in its second gate, and the two texts are worth reading side by side.