Space, Time, Direction, Atoms, and Nirvāṇa
Refuting the Permanent破常品第九
The Outsider has been holding five things in reserve, and he now plays them. Space, time, direction, the atom and nirvāṇa have no causes — so nothing established about caused things touches them. It is a genuinely strong position, and the chapter answers it five times over: space would need somewhere to be; the east is only whoever happens to be having morning; the atom that joins another has a side that joins and a side that does not; and nirvāṇa, if it is what the Outsider says, is the most frightening thing there is. The chapter ends with a lamp going out, and a question about which direction it went.
1. Things With No Cause at All
The objection is well constructed. Everything refuted so far has been refuted through its causes; here are five things that have none, and so lie outside the reach of every argument the treatise has made.
外曰：應有諸法，無因常法不破故(修妬路)。汝雖破有因法，不破無因常法。如虛空、時、方、微塵、涅槃是無因法，不破故應有諸法。
內曰：若強以為常，無常同(修妬路)。汝有因故說常耶？無因故說常耶？若常法有因，有因則無常。若無因說常者，亦可說無常。
Outsider: There must be things, because the permanent things that have no cause have not been refuted.sūtra Though you refute things that have causes, you do not refute the permanent things that have none. Space, time, direction, the atom and nirvāṇa are things without causes; and since they are not refuted, there must be things.
Insider: If you force them to be permanent, they are equally impermanent.sūtra Do you call them permanent because they have a cause, or because they have none? If a permanent thing has a cause, then having a cause it is impermanent. And if you call it permanent on the ground that it has no cause, one may just as well call it impermanent.
外曰：了因故無過(修妬路)。有二種因：一作因，二了因。若以作因，是則無常。我虛空等常法，以了因故說常，非無因故說常，亦非有因故說無常，是故非強為常。
內曰：是因不然(修妬路)。汝雖說常法有因，是因不然，神先已破，餘常法後當破。
Outsider: There is no fault, because it is a revealing cause.sūtra There are two kinds of cause: first the productive cause, second the revealing cause. If it were by a productive cause, then indeed the thing would be impermanent. But our permanent things — space and the rest — are called permanent by way of a revealing cause. They are not called permanent because they have no cause, nor impermanent because they have one; and so they are not forced to be permanent.
Insider: That cause will not do.sūtra Though you say permanent things have a cause, that cause will not do. The self has been refuted already, and the remaining permanent things will be refuted below.
外曰：應有常法，作法無常故，不作法是常(修妬路)。眼見瓶等諸物無常，若異此法應是常。
內曰：無亦共有(修妬路)。汝以作法相違故名不作法，今見作法中有相故，應無不作法。復次汝以作法相違故不作法為常者，今與作法不相違故是應無常。所以者何？不作法、作法同無觸故，不作法應無常。如是遍常不遍常悉已總破。今當別破。
Outsider: There must be permanent things, for since made things are impermanent, the unmade is permanent.sūtra The eye sees that pots and other things are impermanent; and whatever is other than these must be permanent.
Insider: What is not there is equally there along with it.sūtra You name the unmade by its being contrary to the made; but since marks are observed to be present within made things, there should be no unmade thing at all. Furthermore, you take the unmade to be permanent because it is contrary to the made; yet in this respect it is not contrary to the made, and so it must be impermanent. Why? Because the unmade and the made are alike untouchable — and so the unmade must be impermanent. In this way the pervasive permanents and the non-pervasive permanents have now been refuted together. Now let them be refuted one by one.
The distinction the Outsider reaches for is the same one that appeared in Part 8, where being was said to reveal the pot as a lamp reveals what is already in the room. A productive cause makes its effect and so makes it impermanent; a revealing cause only lets an already-existing thing be known. It is a real and useful distinction, and it is exactly what he needs: space can have a cause of our knowing it without having a cause of its being.
The dismissal is unusually brusque — the cause will not do, the self has been refuted, the rest will be refuted below — and readers may find it unsatisfying. It is worth saying plainly that the treatise is here writing a promissory note and then paying it: the whole of the rest of the chapter is the argument that this first exchange does not supply.
The second exchange, on the unmade, is the most compressed passage on this page and its reasoning is genuinely hard to follow. The Outsider's inference is simple: made things are impermanent, so unmade things are permanent. The reply appears to be that contrariety in one respect does not license contrariety in all — the made and the unmade share the property of being untouchable, so they are not opposites across the board, and the inference from "not made" to "not impermanent" does not go through. We translate the clauses as they stand and flag the obscurity rather than smoothing it into an argument the Chinese may not be making.
2. Space Would Need Somewhere to Be
Space first, and it comes with the best credentials of the five: everyone accepts it, everywhere and always. Two arguments are made for it — from universal assent, and from the fact that things move — and each gets a distinct answer.
外曰：定有虛空法常，亦遍亦無分，一切處一切時信有故(修妬路)。世人信一切處有虛空，是故遍信過去未來現在一切時有虛空，是故常。
內曰：分中分合故分不異(修妬路)。若瓶中向中虛空，是中虛空為都有耶？為分有耶？若都有者則不遍。若是為遍，瓶亦應遍。若分有者，虛空但是分無有。有分名為虛空，是故虛空非遍亦非常。
Outsider: Space certainly exists and is permanent, pervasive and without parts, because everyone grants it in every place and at every time.sūtra People grant that there is space in every place, and so it is pervasive; and they grant that there is space at all times, past, future and present, and so it is permanent.
Insider: Since a portion joins with a portion within a part, the part is not different.sūtra Take the space within a pot, or within a doorway: is the space there present entire, or present as a part? If it is present entire, then it does not pervade; and if it is pervasive in that way, then the pot too should pervade. And if it is present as a part, then space is nothing but parts, with no whole. What has parts is here being called space — and therefore space neither pervades nor is permanent.
外曰：定有虛空，遍相亦常，有作故(修妬路)。若無虛空者，則無舉無下、無去來等。所以者何？無容受處故。今實有所作，是以有虛空，亦遍亦常。
內曰：不然。虛空處虛空(修妬路)。若有虛空法，應有住處。若無住處，是則無法。若虛空孔穴中住者，是則虛空住處空中，有容受處故。而不然，是以虛空不住孔穴中。亦不實中住。何以故？實無空故(修妬路)。是實不名空。若無空則無住處，以無容受處故。
Outsider: Space certainly exists, is pervasive and is permanent, because there is activity.sūtra If there were no space, there would be no raising and no lowering, no going and no coming. Why? Because there would be no room to contain anything. But activity really occurs, and so there is space, both pervasive and permanent.
Insider: Not so. Space would need a space to be in.sūtra If there is such a thing as space, it must have somewhere to be; and if it has nowhere to be, then it is not a thing at all. If space abides in a hollow, then space's place of abiding is inside a hollow, since that is where there is room to contain it — and that will not do, so space does not abide in hollows. Nor does it abide in what is solid. Why? Because in the solid there is no space.sūtra What is solid is not called space; and if there is no space there, there is no place for it to abide, since there is no room to contain it.
復次汝言作處是虛空者，實中無作處故則無虛空，是故虛空亦非遍亦非常。復次無相故無虛空，諸法各各有相，以有相故知有諸法，如地堅相、水濕相、火熱相、風動相、識知相，而虛空無相，是故無。
外曰：虛空有相，汝不知故無。無色是虛空相。
Furthermore, you say that the place where activity occurs is space; but in what is solid there is no place for activity, and so there is no space there — and therefore space neither pervades nor is permanent. Furthermore, there is no space, because it has no mark. Each thing has its own mark, and it is by having a mark that a thing is known to be: earth has hardness for its mark, water wetness, fire heat, wind motion, consciousness knowing. But space has no mark — and so it is not.
Outsider: Space does have a mark; you simply do not know it, and so say there is none. Absence of form is space's mark.
內曰：不然。無色名破色，非更有法。猶如斷樹，更無有法。是故無有虛空相。復次虛空無相。何以故？汝說無色是虛空相者，若色未生，是時無虛空相。復次色是無常法、虛空是有常法，若色未有時，應先有虛空法。若未有色無所滅，虛空則無相，若無相則無法。是故非無色是虛空相，但有名而無實。諸遍常亦如是總破。
Insider: Not so. "Absence of form" names the negation of form; it is not some further thing — as with a felled tree, there is no further thing there. And so there is no mark of space. Furthermore, space has no mark. Why? If you say absence of form is space's mark, then before form has arisen there is at that time no mark of space. Furthermore, form is impermanent and space is permanent; so at a time when form did not yet exist, space must already have existed. But if form did not yet exist there was nothing to be negated, and so space had no mark; and having no mark, it was not a thing. Therefore absence of form is not space's mark: space has a name only and no reality. All the pervasive permanents are refuted together in this same way.
The first argument is the whole-and-part dilemma from Part 7, applied to something that was expressly declared to have no parts. Look at the space inside a pot. Is that all of space? Then space is pot-sized and does not pervade — and if it does pervade while being wholly inside the pot, so does the pot. Is it a portion of space? Then space has portions, and a partless pervader has just acquired parts.
The second argument is the sharpest thing on this page, and it is worth stating in its own terms. Space was introduced as that which provides room. Now ask where space itself is. If it is in the hollows, then the hollows contain it — and a container was exactly what space was supposed to be, not to need. And it is not in solid things, because a solid is precisely where there is no room. So the universal provider of place has nowhere to be, and by the Outsider's own criterion — nothing exists without a place — it does not exist.
Then the mark argument, and the felled tree. The Outsider's move is to define space as the absence of form, and the reply is a point about negation that this treatise has made before and will make again in Part 14: a negation is not a positive item. Cut down a tree and you do not thereby have a new object called "the absence of the tree." So "absence of form" does not name a thing with a nature; it merely says that form is not there.
And the temporal argument that follows is the neatest of the set, because it uses the Outsider's own two commitments against each other. Space is permanent; form is impermanent. So there was a time when space existed and form did not. At that time, what was space's mark? Not "absence of form" — there was no form to be absent, and a negation with nothing to negate is nothing at all. The very permanence that was space's glory guarantees a period during which it had no identity.
3. Time
Time next, and the Outsider argues for it exactly as he argued for the self in Part 5 — by inference from what can be seen. Nobody sees time; everybody sees the seasons.
外曰：有時法，常相有故(修妬路)。有法雖不可現見，以共相比知故信有。如是時雖微細不可見，以節氣花實等故知有時，此則見果知因。復次以一時不一時、久近等相故，可知有時。無不有時，是故常。
內曰：過去未來中無，是故無未來(修妬路)。如泥團時現在、土時過去、瓶時未來，此則時相常故，過去時不作未來時。汝經言時是一法，是故過去時終不作未來時，亦不作現在時。若過去作未來者則有雜過。又過去中無未來時，是故無未來。現在亦如是破。
Outsider: There is time, because its permanent mark exists.sūtra There are things which, though not directly visible, are granted to exist because they are inferred from a shared mark. Just so, time, though subtle and invisible, is known to exist from the seasons, the flowers and the fruits — and this is knowing the cause by seeing the fruit. Furthermore, one can know there is time from the marks of simultaneous and not-simultaneous, long ago and lately. And there is no occasion when time is not — and so it is permanent.
Insider: The future is not within the past, and therefore there is no future.sūtra The time of the lump of clay is present, the time of the earth is past, the time of the pot is future. Since on your account the mark of time is permanent, past time never becomes future time. Your text says that time is one thing; and therefore past time can never become future time, nor become present time either. And if the past did become the future, there would be the fault of confusion. Moreover, future time is not within the past — and therefore there is no future. The present is refuted in this same way.
外曰：受過去故有時(修妬路)。汝受過去時故，必有未來時，是故實有時法。
內曰：非未來相過去(修妬路)。汝不聞我先說過去土不作未來瓶。若墮未來相中，是為未來相，云何名過去？是故無過去。
Outsider: Since you accept the past, there is time.sūtra Since you accept past time, there must be future time — and so time really exists.
Insider: What bears the mark of the future is not the past.sūtra Did you not hear me say above that past earth does not become a future pot? If a thing falls within the mark of the future, then it bears the mark of the future — how should it be called past? And so there is no past.
外曰：應有時，自相別故(修妬路)。若現在有現在相、若過去有過去相、若未來有未來相，是故有時。
內曰：若爾一切現在(修妬路)。若三時自相有者，今盡應現在。若未來，是為無。若有，不名未來，應名已來。是故此義不然。
Outsider: There must be time, because each has its own distinct mark.sūtra The present has the mark of the present, the past the mark of the past, the future the mark of the future — and so there is time.
Insider: If so, everything is present.sūtra If the three times exist with their own marks, then all of them must be present now. If a thing is future, it is not there at all; and if it is there, it is not called future but should be called already come. So this account will not do.
外曰：過去未來行自相故無咎(修妬路)。過去時、未來時，不行現在相。過去時行過去相，未來時行未來相，是各各行自相故無過。
內曰：過去非過去(修妬路)。若過去過去者，不名為過去。何以故？離自相故。如火捨熱，不名為火，離自相故。若過去不過去者，今不應說過去時行過去相。未來亦如是破。是故時法無實，但有言說。
Outsider: There is no fault, since past and future exercise their own marks.sūtra Past time and future time do not exercise the mark of the present. Past time exercises the mark of the past, and future time the mark of the future; and since each exercises its own mark, there is no fault.
Insider: The past is not past.sūtra If the past has passed, it is not called past. Why? Because it has left its own mark behind — as fire that has given up its heat is not called fire, having left its own mark. And if the past has not passed, then one should not now say that past time exercises the mark of the past. The future is refuted in the same way. Therefore time has no reality: it is words only.
Everything here follows from a single premise the Outsider volunteered and cannot withdraw: 時是一法, time is one thing, permanent and unchanging. That is what makes it a candidate for the list of uncaused permanents. And a permanent thing cannot alter — which means past time can never turn into present time, since turning into something is a change.
So the three times are sealed off from one another. Nothing can travel from the future into the present, or from the present into the past, because travelling is exactly what a permanent thing cannot do. The Outsider wanted an unchanging container for change, and the container's unchangingness prevents anything from moving through it.
The last exchange is the finest, and the fire returns one final time to make it. Ask whether the past has, in fact, passed. If it has, then it has lost the thing that made it past — and a fire that has surrendered its heat is not a fire. If it has not passed, it is not past. The Outsider's phrase 行自相, "exercising its own mark," was meant to let each time be securely itself; and it turns out that a past which is busy exercising pastness is a past that has not yet gone anywhere.
The conclusion — 時法無實，但有言說, time has no reality and is words only — should be read alongside the same formula in Part 10 about new and old. It is not the claim that nothing happens before anything else. It is the claim that no permanent, self-standing Time underlies the happening. The Mūlamadhyamakakārikā's chapter on time makes the same argument at greater length and reaches the same place.
4. Whose Morning Is East?
Direction, and the refutation is the most concrete passage in the treatise — a piece of Buddhist cosmography deployed as a thought experiment about frames of reference.
外曰：實有方，常相有故(修妬路)。日合處是方相。如我經說，若過去、若未來、若現在，日初合處是名東方。如是餘方隨日為名。
Outsider: Direction really exists, because its permanent mark exists.sūtra The place the sun meets is the mark of direction. As our text says: whether past, future or present, the place the sun first meets is called the east; and the remaining directions are named from the sun accordingly.
內曰：不然。東方無初故(修妬路)。日行四天下，繞須彌山，欝單越日中、弗于逮日出，弗于逮人以為東方。弗于逮日中、閻浮提日出，閻浮提人以為東方。閻浮提日中、拘耶尼日出，拘耶尼人以為東方。拘耶尼日中、欝單越日出，欝單越人以為東方。如是悉是東方、南方、西方、北方。復次日不合處，是中無方，以無相故。復次不定故，此以為東方、彼以為西方，是故無實方。
Insider: Not so. Because the east has no first place.sūtra The sun travels over the four continents, circling Mount Sumeru. When it is noon in Uttarakuru, the sun is rising over Pūrvavideha, and the people of Pūrvavideha take that for the east. When it is noon in Pūrvavideha, the sun is rising over Jambudvīpa, and the people of Jambudvīpa take that for the east. When it is noon in Jambudvīpa, the sun is rising over Godānīya, and the people of Godānīya take that for the east. When it is noon in Godānīya, the sun is rising over Uttarakuru, and the people of Uttarakuru take that for the east. In this way every place is east, and south, and west, and north alike. Furthermore, where the sun does not meet, there is no direction, since there is no mark of it. Furthermore, it is unfixed: this man takes a place for the east and that man takes it for the west — and so there is no real direction.
外曰：不然。是方相一天下說故(修妬路)。是方相因一天下說，非為都說，是故東方非無初過。
內曰：若爾有邊(修妬路)。若日先合處是名東方者，則諸方有邊，有邊故有分，有分故無常。是故言說有方，實為無方。
Outsider: Not so. Because the mark of direction is stated with reference to one continent.sūtra The mark of direction is stated with reference to a single continent, not to all of them together; and so the east does not fall into the fault of having no first place.
Insider: If so, it has a boundary.sūtra If the place the sun first meets is called the east, then the directions have boundaries; having boundaries they have parts; and having parts they are impermanent. Therefore direction exists in speech, and in reality there is no direction.
The four continents of Buddhist cosmology are arranged around Mount Sumeru — Jambudvīpa to the south, Pūrvavideha to the east, Godānīya to the west, Uttarakuru to the north — and the sun circles them in turn. The passage is precise about the mechanism: when one continent has noon, the next is having sunrise, and so on around.
The consequence is stated flatly and it is what makes the passage remarkable: 如是悉是東方、南方、西方、北方 — in this way every place is east, and south, and west, and north. There is no place that is the east. There is only whichever place is currently having its morning, and every place takes its turn. A reader who wants to update the cosmology can do so without touching the argument: on a rotating globe the result is the same, only more so.
The Outsider's retreat is to relativize the frame — the east is defined for one continent at a time — and it is a reasonable thing to say. The reply notes what it costs. A direction defined for one continent stops at that continent's edge; a thing with an edge has a boundary; a thing with a boundary has parts; and a thing with parts is impermanent. The whole-and-part instrument that has run through this treatise since Part 7 arrives here in four short steps.
5. The Atom, Finally
The atom has been promised a proper refutation twice — in Part 8, where the treatise said outright that it would be dealt with later, and again in Part 10. Here it arrives, and it is four arguments with a single shape: whatever the atom does, it turns out to have sides.
外曰：雖無遍常，有不遍常微塵，是果相有故(修妬路)。世人或見果知有因、或見因知有果，如見芽等知有種子。世界法見諸生物先細後麁故，可知二微塵為初果，以一微塵為因，是故有微塵圓而常，以無因故。
Outsider: Though there is no pervasive permanent, there is a non-pervasive permanent — the atom — because the mark of the fruit exists.sūtra People sometimes see a fruit and know there was a cause, and sometimes see a cause and know there will be a fruit — as on seeing a sprout one knows there was a seed. And it is the way of the world that things which arise are first fine and afterward coarse; from which one may know that the double atom is the first fruit, having the single atom for its cause. Therefore there are atoms, round and permanent, since they have no cause.
內曰：二微塵非一切身合，果不圓故(修妬路)。諸微塵果生時，非一切身合。何以故？二微塵等果，眼見不圓故。若微塵身一切合者，二微塵等果亦應圓。復次若身一切合，二亦同壞。若微塵重合則果高，若多合則果大，以一分合故微塵有分，有分故無常。
Insider: Two atoms do not combine with their whole bodies, since the fruit is not round.sūtra When atoms produce their fruit, they do not combine with their whole bodies. Why? Because the fruits of two atoms and the rest are seen by the eye not to be round. If the atoms' bodies combined entirely, the fruit of two atoms would be round as well. Furthermore, if they combined with their whole bodies, the two would also be destroyed together. If atoms combine by stacking, the fruit is tall; if many combine, the fruit is large. And since they combine by one part, the atom has parts; and having parts, it is impermanent.
復次微塵無常，以虛空別故(修妬路)。若有微塵，應當與虛空別。是故微塵有分，有分故無常。復次以色味等別故(修妬路)。若微塵是有，應有色味等分。是故微塵有分，有分故無常。復次有形法有相故。若微塵有形，應有長短方圓等，是故微塵有分，有分故無常。無常故，無微塵。
Furthermore, the atom is impermanent, because it is distinct from space.sūtra If there is an atom, it must be distinct from space; and therefore the atom has parts, and having parts it is impermanent. Furthermore, because color and taste and the rest are distinct within it.sūtra If the atom exists, it must have the parts that are color and taste and the rest; and therefore the atom has parts, and having parts it is impermanent. Furthermore, because whatever has shape has marks: if the atom has shape, it must have length and shortness, squareness and roundness and so on; and therefore the atom has parts, and having parts it is impermanent. And being impermanent, there is no atom.
The four arguments attack from four directions and they are worth separating.
From combination. Two atoms join. Do they merge completely, body to body? Then the pair occupies no more room than one, and stacking a thousand would still give you a point — but the compounds we see are extended, and not round as they would be if each merger produced another sphere. So the joining must be partial: this side touching, that side free. And a thing with a touching side and a free side has sides.
From space. An atom is not space; there is a boundary where atom stops and space begins. A boundary is a limit, and a limit is where a thing's parts end.
From qualities. An atom has color and taste — the Outsider's own school says so, since atoms of earth and water differ. But color is not taste; two distinguishable aspects in one thing are two parts of it.
From shape. The Outsider called the atom 圓, round. Roundness is a shape, shape implies extent, and extent implies a near side and a far side.
Every one of the four ends in the same clause — 有分故無常, having parts it is impermanent — and that repetition is the point. The atom was posited as the floor: the thing at which analysis stops because there is nothing left to divide. What the chapter shows is that everything the atom is asked to do — touch its neighbors, be somewhere, have qualities, have a shape — requires it to have the very structure it was defined as lacking. It is not that atoms are too small to find. It is that a genuinely partless thing could not participate in the world it was invented to explain.
6. Nirvāṇa, and a Lamp Gone Out
The last of the five, and the one the treatise handles with the most care — because here the Outsider is defending something the Insider also holds. What follows is not a denial that there is liberation. It is a refusal to let liberation be made into an object.
外曰：有涅槃法，常、無煩惱，涅槃不異故(修妬路)。愛等諸煩惱永盡，是名涅槃。有煩惱者則有生死，無煩惱故永不復生死，是故涅槃為常。
內曰：不然。涅槃作法故(修妬路)。因修道故無諸煩惱，若無煩惱是即涅槃者，涅槃則是作法，作法故無常。復次若無煩惱，是名無所有。若涅槃與無煩惱不異者，則無涅槃。
Outsider: Nirvāṇa exists and is permanent, since nirvāṇa is not different from the absence of the afflictions.sūtra The final exhaustion of craving and the other afflictions is what is called nirvāṇa. Whoever has afflictions has birth and death; and since there are no afflictions, there is no more birth and death forever. Therefore nirvāṇa is permanent.
Insider: Not so. Because nirvāṇa would be a made thing.sūtra It is by cultivating the path that the afflictions become absent; and if the absence of afflictions just is nirvāṇa, then nirvāṇa is a made thing, and being made it is impermanent. Furthermore, the absence of afflictions is a name for nothing at all; and if nirvāṇa is not different from the absence of afflictions, then there is no nirvāṇa.
外曰：作因故(修妬路)。涅槃為無煩惱作因。
內曰：不然。能破非破(修妬路)。若涅槃能為解脫者，則非解脫。復次未盡煩惱時應無涅槃。所以者何？無果故無因。
外曰：無煩惱果(修妬路)。此涅槃非是無煩惱，亦非無煩惱因，是無煩惱果，是故非無涅槃。
Outsider: It is a productive cause.sūtra Nirvāṇa is the productive cause of the absence of the afflictions.
Insider: Not so. What does the freeing is not the freedom.sūtra If nirvāṇa is what brings liberation about, then it is not itself the liberation. Furthermore, at a time when the afflictions are not yet exhausted there should be no nirvāṇa. Why? Because with no fruit, there is no cause.
Outsider: It is the fruit of the absence of afflictions.sūtra This nirvāṇa is neither the absence of the afflictions nor the cause of that absence; it is the fruit of the absence of afflictions. And so it is not the case that there is no nirvāṇa.
內曰：縛、可縛、方便，異此無用(修妬路)。縛名煩惱及業，可縛名眾生，方便名八聖道。以道解縛故，眾生得解脫。若有涅槃異此三法，則無所用。復次無煩惱是名無所有，無所有不應為因。
外曰：有涅槃，是若無(修妬路)。若縛、可縛、方便三事無處，是名涅槃。
Insider: The bond, the bound, and the means — apart from these it has no use.sūtra "The bond" names the afflictions and karma; "the bound" names sentient beings; "the means" names the eightfold noble path. It is by the path that the bond is loosened, and so beings attain liberation. If there were a nirvāṇa other than these three, it would have no use whatever. Furthermore, the absence of afflictions is a name for nothing at all, and what is nothing at all cannot be a cause.
Outsider: Nirvāṇa exists: it is where these are not.sūtra Where the three — the bond, the bound and the means — are absent, that is what is called nirvāṇa.
內曰：畏處云何可染(修妬路)。以無常過患故，智者於有為法棄捐離欲。若涅槃無有諸情及所欲事者，則涅槃於有為法甚大畏處，汝何故心染？涅槃名離一切著、滅一切憶想，非有非無、非物非非物，譬如燈滅不可論說。
Insider: How can a place of dread be a thing to long for?sūtra It is because of the danger of impermanence that the wise set aside conditioned things and turn from desire. But if nirvāṇa has no faculties in it and nothing that is desired, then measured against conditioned things nirvāṇa is a place of very great dread — so why is your mind attached to it? Nirvāṇa names the leaving behind of all clinging and the extinguishing of all recollection: neither existent nor non-existent, neither a thing nor not a thing — like a lamp gone out, of which nothing can be said.
外曰：誰得涅槃(修妬路)。是涅槃何人得？內曰：無得涅槃(修妬路)。我先說如燈滅，不可言東去南西北方四維上下去。涅槃亦如是，一切語滅，無可論說。是無所有，誰當得者？設有涅槃，亦無得者。若神得涅槃，神是常是遍故，不應得涅槃。五陰亦不得涅槃。何以故？五陰無常故，五陰生滅故。如是涅槃當屬誰？若言得涅槃，是世界中說。
Outsider: Who attains nirvāṇa?sūtra This nirvāṇa — what person attains it?
Insider: There is no attaining of nirvāṇa.sūtra I said above that it is like a lamp gone out, of which one cannot say that it went east, or south, or west, or north, or to the intermediate quarters, or up, or down. Nirvāṇa is just so: all speech is extinguished, and nothing can be said. It is nothing at all — who then should attain it? And even granting that there is nirvāṇa, there is still no one to attain it. If a self attained nirvāṇa, then — the self being permanent and pervasive — it ought not to attain nirvāṇa at all. Nor do the five aggregates attain nirvāṇa. Why? Because the five aggregates are impermanent, and because they arise and cease. To whom, then, should nirvāṇa belong? If one speaks of attaining nirvāṇa, that is spoken at the level of the world.
The Outsider tries four positions in turn, and watching him move is the best way to see what is at stake. Nirvāṇa is the absence of afflictions — but then it is produced by the path and impermanent, and besides, an absence is not a thing. Nirvāṇa causes that absence — but then it is the instrument and not the goal, and could not exist before the goal was reached. Nirvāṇa is the fruit of that absence — but then what work is left for it, given the bond, the bound and the means already account for the whole of liberation? Nirvāṇa is simply where those three are not — and that is the position the treatise finally accepts, though not in the way he means it.
Which is where the most startling sentence in the chapter lands. If nirvāṇa is the state in which there are no faculties and nothing that is wanted, then by the standards of a being who lives among conditioned things it is 甚大畏處, a place of very great dread. And so: why is your mind attached to it? The Outsider has spent the chapter arguing for the permanent existence of something he could not, on his own description of it, possibly enjoy. The question is not a debating point. It is aimed at a spiritual confusion — the wish to have liberation, which is the last and best-disguised form of the grasping that liberation is release from.
Then the formula, and it should be read slowly because every clause matters: 非有非無、非物非非物 — neither existent nor non-existent, neither a thing nor not a thing. Both halves of the negation are doing work. The first refuses the Outsider's permanent object. The second refuses the reading a hasty person takes away from the first, that nirvāṇa is simply nothing. It is neither, and the fourfold form of the denial is the same one this treatise will defend explicitly in Part 14, where the Outsider objects that a position that is neither existent nor non-existent cannot be stated at all.
The lamp gone out is one of the oldest images in Buddhism, and the treatise uses it exactly as the early discourses do. When a flame goes out, "where did it go?" is not a hard question with an unknown answer; it is a question with no application. North, south, up, down — none of them apply, and the failure is in the asking. So with the one who is released: 一切語滅, all speech is extinguished. This same argument, at greater length, is the substance of the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā's chapter on nirvāṇa.
And then the last line, which keeps the whole passage from being a denial: 若言得涅槃，是世界中說 — if one speaks of attaining nirvāṇa, that is spoken at the level of the world. People do attain liberation, and one may say so, and saying so is true in the way that ordinary speech is true. What cannot be sustained is the further thought that there is a permanent object called nirvāṇa and a permanent person who comes into possession of it. This is the two truths arriving one chapter before they are named, and the naming comes in the final part.
Part Thirteen Complete
This closes Part Thirteen and the last of the treatise's positive refutations: the revealing cause that was to exempt permanent things from every argument about causes; space, which is either pot-sized or has portions, and which has nowhere to be in either case, and whose only proposed mark is a negation with nothing to negate; time, sealed into three compartments by the very permanence that was its credential, with a past that is not past; the east, which is only whoever is having morning, and which acquires an edge the moment it is fixed; the atom, which needs sides in order to touch, to be located, to have qualities, or to be round; and nirvāṇa, which is not the absence, not the cause of the absence, and not its fruit — and which, described as the Outsider describes it, would be the most frightening thing in the world.
One chapter remains, and it belongs to the Outsider. For nine chapters he has been losing arguments to a man who defends no position, and in Part 14 he finally turns and asks the question that has been waiting since the first page: if everything is empty, what is your refutation made of? He calls his opponent a destroyer of dharma for the second time, and this time he gets a full answer — the two truths, the fourth position beyond existence and non-existence, and a mirage that a thirsty man runs toward.