Fire, Fuel, and the Self That Was Never There
Examining a Prior Self — Examining Suffering觀本住品第九 — 觀苦品第十二
These four chapters ask one question from four directions: is there someone who exists prior to and independently of experience? Chapter 9 goes looking for the one who sees and hears behind the seeing and the hearing, and cannot find him. Chapter 10 sets out the image the whole tradition would afterward use for the relation of a self to its aggregates — fire and fuel, neither the same nor different — and Chapter 11 denies that the process they belong to has any findable beginning. Chapter 12 finishes by asking who it is that suffers, running the four-cornered analysis of Chapter 1 on the most personal question there is.
The Text
Chapter 9 · Examining a Prior Self 觀本住品第九
The chapter title's term is 本住, literally "what abides originally" — the one who was already there before the eyes and ears and feelings got going, and who owns them. The opponent's argument is not stupid, and it is the argument almost everyone makes silently: something must be having all this. Twelve verses go looking for that something.
問曰：有人言：
Question: Some say:
眼耳等諸根， 苦樂等諸法，
誰有如是事？ 是則名本住。
若無有本住， 誰有眼等法？
以是故當知， 先已有本住。
The eye, the ear, and the other faculties,
pleasure, pain, and the other states —
whoever it is that has such things,
that is what is called a prior self.
If there were no prior self,
who would have the eye and the rest?
Therefore one should know
that a prior self is already there beforehand.
眼耳鼻舌身命等諸根，名為眼耳等根。苦受、樂受、不苦不樂受、想、思、憶念等心心數法，名為苦樂等法。有論師言：先未有眼等法，應有本住。因是本住，眼等諸根得增長。若無本住，身及眼等諸根，為因何生而得增長？答曰：
The faculties of eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and life are what is meant by "the eye, the ear, and the other faculties." Painful feeling, pleasant feeling, feeling that is neither painful nor pleasant, perception, volition, recollection, and the other mind and mental factors are what is meant by "pleasure, pain, and the other states." Certain masters of the treatises say: before the eye and the rest are there, there must be a prior self. It is in dependence on this prior self that the eye and the other faculties are able to grow. Without a prior self, from what cause would the body and the eye and the other faculties arise and grow? Answer:
若離眼等根， 及苦樂等法，
先有本住者， 以何而可知？
If apart from the eye and the other faculties,
and apart from pleasure, pain, and the rest,
a prior self is there beforehand —
by what could it possibly be known?
若離眼耳等根、苦樂等法先有本住者，以何可說？以何可知？如外法瓶衣等，以眼等根得知；內法以苦樂等根得知。如經中說：可壞是色相，能受是受相，能識是識相。汝說離眼耳苦樂等先有本住者，以何可知說有是法？
If apart from the faculties of eye and ear and from the states of pleasure and pain a prior self is there beforehand — by what could it be spoken of? By what could it be known? Outer things such as pots and cloth are known by way of the eye and the other faculties; inner things are known by way of the faculties of pleasure, pain, and the rest. As a sūtra says: what can be broken down is the mark of form; what can feel is the mark of feeling; what can cognize is the mark of consciousness. You say that apart from eye and ear and pleasure and pain a prior self is there beforehand: by what could it be known, so that you could say there is any such thing?
問曰：有論師言：出入息、視眴、壽命、思惟、苦樂、憎愛、動發等是神相。若無有神，云何有出入息等相？是故當知，離眼耳等根、苦樂等法先有本住。
Question: Certain masters of the treatises say: breathing in and out, looking and blinking, the span of life, thinking, pleasure and pain, aversion and affection, movement and exertion — these are the marks of a soul. If there were no soul, how could there be marks such as breathing in and out? Therefore one should know that apart from the faculties of eye and ear and from the states of pleasure and pain, a prior self is there beforehand.
答曰：是神若有，應在身內，如壁中有柱；若在身外，如人被鎧。若在身內，身則不可壞，神常在內故。是故言神在身內，但有言說，虛妄無實。若在身外覆身如鎧者，身應不可見，神細密覆故。亦應不可壞，而今實見身壞。是故當知，離苦樂等先無餘法。若謂斷臂時神縮在內不可斷者，斷頭時亦應縮在內不應死，而實有死。是故知離苦樂等先有神者，但有言說虛妄無實。
復次若言身大則神大、身小則神小，如燈大則明大、燈小則明小者，如是神則隨身不應常。若隨身者，身無則神無，如燈滅則明滅。若神無常，則與眼耳苦樂等同。是故當知，離眼耳等先無別神。
復次如風狂病人不得自在，不應作而作。若有神是諸作主者，云何言不得自在？若風狂病不惱神者，應離神別有所作。如是種種推求，離眼耳等根苦樂等法先無本住。若必謂離眼耳等根苦樂等法有本住者，無有是事。何以故？
Answer: If this soul exists, it must be either inside the body, like a pillar inside a wall, or outside it, like a man wearing armor. If it were inside the body, the body could not be destroyed, since the soul would always be within it. So to say the soul is inside the body is mere speech, false and without substance. And if it were outside, covering the body like armor, the body would be invisible, since the soul would cover it so finely and closely; and the body would also be indestructible — yet in fact one sees bodies destroyed. Therefore one should know that apart from pleasure, pain, and the rest there is no further thing there beforehand. And if you say that when an arm is severed the soul shrinks back inside and cannot be cut, then when the head is severed it too should shrink back inside and there should be no death — but in fact there is death. So we know that to hold that a soul is there prior to pleasure, pain, and the rest is mere speech, false and without substance.
Furthermore, if you say that when the body is large the soul is large and when the body is small the soul is small — as a large lamp gives a large light and a small lamp a small one — then the soul follows the body and cannot be permanent. And if it follows the body, then when the body is gone the soul is gone, as the light goes out when the lamp goes out. And if the soul is impermanent, it stands on exactly the same footing as eye, ear, pleasure, pain, and the rest. Therefore one should know that apart from the eye, the ear, and the rest there is no separate soul.
Furthermore, a man deranged by wind-sickness is not his own master and does what he ought not to do. If there were a soul that was the master of all his acts, why would we say he is not his own master? And if wind-sickness does not trouble the soul, then there must be acting that goes on apart from the soul. Searching in these various ways, there is no prior self standing before the faculties of eye and ear and the states of pleasure and pain. And if you insist that apart from the faculties of eye and ear and the states of pleasure and pain there is a prior self, there is no such thing. Why?
若離眼耳等， 而有本住者；
亦應離本住， 而有眼耳等。
If apart from eye and ear and the rest
there were a prior self,
then apart from the prior self
there ought equally to be eye and ear and the rest.
若本住離眼耳等根、苦樂等法先有者，今眼耳等根、苦樂等法亦應離本住而有。
問曰：二事相離可爾，但使有本住。
答曰：
If the prior self is there beforehand apart from the faculties of eye and ear and the states of pleasure and pain, then the faculties of eye and ear and the states of pleasure and pain must equally be there apart from the prior self.
Question: Let the two be separable, then — so long as there is a prior self.
Answer:
以法知有人， 以人知有法；
離法何有人？ 離人何有法？
By the states one knows there is a person;
by the person one knows there are states.
Apart from the states, what person is there?
Apart from the person, what states?
法者，眼耳苦樂等。人者，是本住。汝謂以有法故知有人、以有人故知有法。今離眼耳等法何有人？離人何有眼耳等法？復次：
"The states" means eye, ear, pleasure, pain, and the rest. "The person" means the prior self. You hold that because there are states one knows there is a person, and because there is a person one knows there are states. But now: apart from the states of eye and ear, what person is there? And apart from the person, what states of eye and ear are there? Furthermore:
一切眼等根， 實無有本住；
眼耳等諸根， 異相而分別。
In all the faculties, the eye and the rest,
there is in truth no prior self;
the eye, the ear, and the other faculties
discriminate by their several distinct marks.
眼耳等諸根、苦樂等諸法，實無有本住。因眼緣色生眼識，以和合因緣知有眼耳等諸根，不以本住故知。是故偈中說「一切眼等根，實無有本住」，眼耳等諸根，各自能分別。問曰：
In the faculties of eye and ear and in the states of pleasure and pain there is in truth no prior self. Depending on the eye and taking form as its object, eye-consciousness arises; it is by this coming together of causes and conditions that one knows there are the eye, the ear, and the other faculties — not by way of any prior self. This is why the verse says, "In all the faculties, the eye and the rest, there is in truth no prior self." The eye, the ear, and the other faculties each discriminate on their own. Question:
若眼等諸根， 無有本住者，
眼等一一根， 云何能知塵？
If in the eye and the other faculties
there is no prior self,
then how can each single faculty,
the eye and the rest, know its object?
若一切眼耳等諸根、苦樂等諸法無本住者，今一一根云何能知塵？眼耳等諸根無思惟，不應有知。而實知塵，當知離眼耳等諸根，更有能知塵者。
答曰：若爾者，為一一根中各有知者？為一知者在諸根中？二俱有過。何以故？
If in all the faculties of eye and ear and in all the states of pleasure and pain there is no prior self, then how does each single faculty know its sense-object? The eye, the ear, and the other faculties do not think, and so ought to know nothing at all. Yet sense-objects are in fact known. One should therefore recognize that apart from the eye, the ear, and the other faculties there is something further that knows the sense-object.
Answer: If that is so, then is there a knower in each single faculty, or one knower present across all the faculties? Both carry faults. Why?
見者即聞者， 聞者即受者，
如是等諸根， 則應有本住。
If the one who sees is the one who hears,
and the one who hears the one who feels,
then in all such faculties
there would indeed be a prior self.
若見者即是聞者、聞者即是受者，則是一神。如是眼等諸根應先有本住。色聲香等無有定知者，或可以眼聞聲，如人有六向隨意見聞。若聞者、見者是一，於眼等根隨意見聞，但是事不然。
If the one who sees is the very one who hears, and the one who hears the very one who feels, then there is one single soul, and in the eye and the other faculties there would indeed be a prior self there beforehand. But then form and sound and smell and the rest would have no fixed knower, and one might just as well hear a sound with the eye — as though a man had six doorways and could see and hear through whichever he pleased. If hearer and seer are one, he would see and hear at will through any of the faculties. But this is not how things are.
若見聞各異， 受者亦各異，
見時亦應聞， 如是則神多。
If seeing and hearing are each distinct,
and the one who feels distinct again,
then at the time of seeing there should be hearing too —
and in that case the souls are many.
若見者、聞者、受者各異，則見時亦應聞。何以故？離見者有聞者故。如是鼻舌身中，神應一時行。若爾者，人一而神多，以一切根一時知諸塵。而實不爾，是故見者、聞者、受者不應俱用。復次：
If the one who sees, the one who hears, and the one who feels are each distinct, then at the time of seeing there should also be hearing. Why? Because the hearer exists apart from the seer. And in the same way the soul would have to be at work in nose and tongue and body all at once. In that case the man would be one and his souls many, since every faculty would be knowing its object at the same moment. But in fact it is not so. Therefore seer, hearer, and feeler cannot all be in use together. Furthermore:
眼耳等諸根， 苦樂等諸法，
所從生諸大， 彼大亦無神。
The eye, the ear, and the other faculties,
pleasure, pain, and the other states,
and the great elements they arise from —
in those elements too there is no soul.
若人言離眼耳等諸根、苦樂等諸法別有本住，是事已破。今於眼耳等所因四大，是四大中亦無本住。
問曰：若眼耳等諸根、苦樂等諸法，無有本住可爾。眼耳等諸根、苦樂等諸法應有。
答曰：
If someone says that apart from the faculties of eye and ear and the states of pleasure and pain there is a separate prior self, that has already been broken. And now: in the four great elements on which the eye and the rest depend, in those four elements too there is no prior self.
Question: Granted that in the faculties of eye and ear and the states of pleasure and pain there is no prior self. Still, the faculties of eye and ear and the states of pleasure and pain must themselves exist.
Answer:
若眼耳等根， 苦樂等諸法，
無有本住者， 眼等亦應無。
If in the faculties of eye and ear
and in the states of pleasure and pain
there is no prior self,
then the eye and the rest must be absent too.
若眼耳苦樂等諸法無有本住者，誰有此眼耳等？何緣而有？是故眼耳等亦無。復次：
If in the states of eye, ear, pleasure, pain, and the rest there is no prior self, then who is it that has this eye, this ear, and the rest? By what condition are they there at all? Therefore the eye, the ear, and the rest are absent too. Furthermore:
眼等無本住， 今後亦復無，
以三世無故， 無有無分別。
The eye and the rest have no prior self;
now and hereafter it is absent too.
Since it is absent in all three times,
there is no discriminating existence from non-existence.
思惟推求本住，於眼等先無，今後亦無。若三世無，即是無生寂滅。不應有難：若無本住，云何有眼等？如是問答、戲論則滅。戲論滅故，諸法則空。
Searching out the prior self by reflection: it is not there before the eye and the rest, and it is not there now or hereafter. And if it is absent in all three times, that is simply non-arising, the quiescence of things. Nor should the objection be pressed, "If there is no prior self, how can there be an eye and the rest?" With that, question and answer alike — all conceptual elaboration (prapañca) — is quieted. And because elaboration is quieted, things are empty.
Notice how the opponent's argument works, because it is the one every reader is already making. He does not begin with scripture or with a soul-doctrine. He begins with a grammatical fact: seeing has a seer, feeling has a feeler, and possession has an owner. 誰有如是事 — who is it that has such things? The self he wants is not a mystical entity; it is whatever the word "my" refers to. Everyone thinks they know.
Nāgārjuna's reply in verse 3 is a demand for evidence, and it is devastating precisely because it is so ordinary. We know pots and cloth by seeing them; we know inner things by feeling them. Every route by which anything gets known runs through the faculties. So a self defined as standing prior to and apart from the faculties has, by its own definition, cut off every road by which it could ever be found. It is not that we have looked and failed. It is that the description guarantees the failure.
Piṅgala's three physical arguments have a rough, almost comic literalness that is easy to condescend to, but do not miss what they are doing. Is the soul inside the body like a pillar in a wall — then why do bodies break? Is it outside like armor — then why is the body visible, and why does the armor fail? Does it retract when an arm is cut off — then why does beheading kill? Is it large in large bodies like lamplight in a large lamp — then it goes out when the lamp does. Each argument takes the soul's alleged relation to the body seriously enough to ask what would follow. The point is not that the soul is a small physical object; it is that every way of specifying its relation to the body either makes it a physical object with a physical object's liabilities, or makes it so unrelated to the body that it does no work.
The wind-sickness argument is the sharpest of the four, and the most modern. A man in delirium does what he does not intend. If a soul were the master of his acts, that could not happen; and if the illness cannot touch the soul, then his acting is going on without the soul's participation — in which case the soul was never what was doing the acting. Either way the proprietor is out of a job. Anyone who has watched illness, exhaustion, or fear take the wheel of their own behavior has the data for this argument already.
Verses 8 and 9 set the trap that gives this chapter its force, and it deserves to be felt rather than merely followed. Grant that there is a knower behind the senses. Then either it is one knower for all six, or a separate knower for each. There is no third option.
If it is one, then the seer and the hearer are the same entity — and Piṅgala draws the strange consequence with a wonderful image: a man with six doorways, free to look out of whichever he likes. If the knower is genuinely one and genuinely distinct from the faculties, nothing ties it to any particular one of them, and it should be able to hear through the eye. If it is many, then the several knowers are all operating at once, and one person turns out to be a crowd of souls, each with its own private stream. Notice that both horns fail in the same way. The unity we were trying to explain — the sense that it is one me who sees and hears and feels — is destroyed either by making the knower too unified to belong to any sense, or too dispersed to be one.
Then verse 11 makes the move that catches readers off guard, and it should be read slowly, because a great deal in later Madhyamaka depends on it. The opponent has retreated to a safe-looking position: fine, no self, but at least the eyes and the feelings are real. Nāgārjuna refuses him the retreat. The faculties were never self-standing either; they were defined all along as somebody's faculties, and once the owner goes, what is left is not a set of ownerless objects but a description with a hole in it. Take away the possessor and the possessions do not stay behind as bare facts.
And here is where an English reader is most likely to go wrong, so it is worth stating flatly: none of this says that seeing does not happen. Piṅgala's own explanation of how we know there are eyes at all is entirely positive — depending on the eye, with form as its object, eye-consciousness arises. Seeing occurs. What has been refused is the extra item we imagined standing behind the seeing and doing it. The last line of the chapter is the point of the whole exercise: when the question and the answer both stop, elaboration is quieted, and things are empty. Emptiness here is not a discovery about the world. It is what is left when a badly-formed question stops being asked.
Chapter 10 · Examining Fire and Fuel 觀燃可燃品第十
This is the chapter the rest of the tradition would quote for the next fifteen centuries. The opponent, pushed off the prior self, tries a subtler model: perhaps the self is to the aggregates as fire is to fuel — not a thing standing behind them, but something that arises with them and depends on them. Sixteen verses test that relation to destruction, and the two horns are worth holding in mind from the start. If fire and fuel are one, then the agent is its own act. If they are two, fire should burn with no fuel at all.
Words Used Without Being Bought 隨世俗法言說
問曰：應有受、受者，如燃、可燃，燃是受者、可燃是受，所謂五陰。
答曰：是事不然。何以故？燃、可燃俱不成故。燃、可燃若以一法成，若以二法成，二俱不成。
問曰：且置一異法。若言無燃、可燃，今云何以一異相破？如兔角龜毛，無故不可破。世間眼見實有事，而後可思惟。如有金，然後可燒可鍛。若無燃、可燃，不應以一異法思惟。若汝許有一異法，當知有燃、可燃。若許有者，則為已有。
Question: There must be what is appropriated and one who appropriates it, as there are fire and fuel: fire is the appropriator and fuel is what is appropriated — namely, the five aggregates.
Answer: It is not so. Why? Because neither fire nor fuel is established. Whether fire and fuel are established as one thing or as two, neither way holds.
Question: Set identity and difference aside for a moment. If you say there is no fire and no fuel, how can you then break them by way of the marks of identity and difference? A hare's horn or a tortoise's hair, being nothing at all, cannot be broken. It is only where the world's eyes see that something really is there that one can go on to reflect on it: there must first be gold before it can be smelted and forged. If there were no fire and no fuel, they could not be examined by identity and difference at all. And if you allow that identity and difference apply to them, you must grant that fire and fuel exist; and to grant that is to have them already.
答曰：隨世俗法言說，不應有過。燃、可燃若說一若說異，不名為受。若離世俗言說，則無所論。若不說燃、可燃，云何能有所破？若無所說，則義不可明。如有論者欲破有無，必應言有無，不以稱有無故而受有無。是以隨世間言說故無咎。若口有言便是受者，汝言破即為自破，燃、可燃亦如是。雖有言說亦復不受，是故以一異法思惟燃、可燃，二俱不成。何以故？
Answer: To speak in accordance with conventional usage incurs no fault. To speak of fire and fuel as one, or as different, is not to accept them. Apart from conventional speech there would be nothing to discuss at all. If one does not speak of fire and fuel, what would there be to break? And if nothing is said, the meaning cannot be made clear. A debater who wishes to refute existence and non-existence must speak of existence and non-existence, and he does not accept existence and non-existence merely because he has named them. So there is no blame in speaking as the world speaks. If having a word in one's mouth were already to accept the thing, then your own word "refute" would refute itself. It is the same with fire and fuel: though they are spoken of, they are still not accepted. Therefore, examining fire and fuel by way of identity and difference, neither way holds. Why?
Before a single verse is commented on, the chapter has to clear away an objection that will occur to any careful reader, and the exchange is one of the most useful passages in the whole treatise. The objection is this: you cannot refute what you have not first admitted exists. Nobody bothers refuting the horn of a hare. If Nāgārjuna argues about whether fire is the same as fuel or different from it, he has already conceded there is fire.
The reply draws a distinction that governs everything Madhyamaka does with language. Naming a thing is not endorsing it. A person who sets out to refute the categories "existent" and "non-existent" has to say the words "existent" and "non-existent" — that is how refutation works — and saying them does not sign him up to them. Piṅgala's counter-thrust is the elegant part: if merely uttering a term committed you to what it names, then your own word "refute" would have to refute itself. The objection, taken seriously, destroys the possibility of objecting.
Hold on to the phrase 隨世俗法言說 — "speaking in accordance with conventional usage." This is the two-truths distinction operating as a practical rule rather than a doctrine. Fire and fuel are perfectly good words. Wood burns; the kitchen works; nobody in this chapter is confused about how to boil water. What is under examination is not the practice but a claim smuggled into it: that somewhere in the fire there is a fire-nature, and in the fuel a fuel-nature, each standing on its own. The words survive the examination intact. It is only the extra claim that does not.
One Would Make the Agent Its Own Act 作作者則一
若燃是可燃， 作作者則一；
若燃異可燃， 離可燃有燃。
If fire is the very fuel,
then act and agent are one;
and if fire is other than fuel,
then there is fire apart from fuel.
燃是火、可燃是薪。作者是人、作是業。若燃、可燃一，則作、作者亦應一。若作、作者一，則陶師與瓶一。作者是陶師、作是瓶，陶師非瓶、瓶非陶師，云何為一？是以作、作者不一；故燃、可燃亦不一。若謂一不可則應異。是亦不然。何以故？若燃與可燃異，應離可燃別有燃。分別是可燃、是燃，處處離可燃應有燃。而實不爾，是故異亦不可。復次：
Fire is the flame; fuel is the firewood. The agent is the man; the act is the deed. If fire and fuel were one, then act and agent would have to be one too. And if act and agent were one, the potter would be one with the pot. The agent is the potter and the act is the pot; but the potter is not the pot and the pot is not the potter — how could they be one? So act and agent are not one, and therefore fire and fuel are not one either. If you say that since they cannot be one they must be different, that will not do either. Why? If fire were other than fuel, there would have to be a fire found separately, apart from fuel. One could say of this that it is fuel and of that that it is fire, and everywhere apart from fuel there ought to be fire. But in fact it is not so; and so difference will not do either. Furthermore:
如是常應燃， 不因可燃生；
則無燃火功， 亦名無作火。
Then it would burn perpetually,
not arising in dependence on fuel;
there would be no labor of kindling a fire,
and it would be a fire with no work to do.
若燃、可燃異，則燃不待可燃而常燃。若常燃者則自住其體、不待因緣，人功則空。人功者，將護火令燃。是功現有，是故知火不異可燃。
復次若燃異可燃，燃即無作。離可燃，火何所然？若爾者，火則無作。無作火，無有是事。
問曰：云何火不從因緣生，人功亦空？
答曰：
If fire and fuel were different, then fire would not wait upon fuel and would burn perpetually. And if it burned perpetually it would stand in its own substance, waiting upon no causes or conditions, and human labor would be pointless. By "human labor" is meant the tending and guarding of a fire to keep it burning. That labor plainly exists; and so we know that fire is not other than fuel.
Furthermore, if fire were other than fuel, fire would have no work to do. Apart from fuel, what would a fire burn? In that case fire would have nothing to do at all — and a fire with nothing to do is no such thing.
Question: How does it follow that fire would not arise from causes and conditions, and that human labor would be pointless?
Answer:
燃不待可燃， 則不從緣生；
火若常燃者， 人功則應空。
If fire does not wait upon fuel,
then it does not arise from conditions;
and if fire burns perpetually,
then human labor must be pointless.
燃、可燃若異，則不待可燃有燃。若不待可燃有然，則無相因法，是故不從因緣生。復次若燃異可燃，則應常燃。若常燃者，應離可燃別見有燃，更不須人功。何以故？
If fire and fuel were different, there would be fire without its waiting upon fuel. And if there were fire without its waiting upon fuel, there would be no relation of mutual causation, and so it would not arise from causes and conditions. Furthermore, if fire were other than fuel it would burn perpetually; and if it burned perpetually, one ought to see fire separately, apart from fuel, and no human labor would be needed at all. Why?
若汝謂燃時， 名為可燃者；
爾時但有薪， 何物燃可燃？
If you say that at the time of burning
the thing is called fuel,
then at that time there is only firewood —
what is it that burns the fuel?
若謂先有薪，燒時名可燃者，是事不爾。若離燃別有可燃者，云何言燃時名可燃？復次：
If you say that the firewood is there first and is called fuel at the time of burning, that is not so. If there were a fuel standing separately, apart from fire, how could you say that it is called fuel at the time of burning? Furthermore:
若異則不至， 不至則不燒，
不燒則不滅， 不滅則常住。
If they are different, fire does not reach the fuel;
not reaching it, it does not burn it;
not burning it, it does not go out;
not going out, it abides forever.
若燃異可燃，則燃不應至可燃。何以故？不相待成故。若燃不相待成，則自住其體，何用可燃？是故不至。若不至，則不燃可燃。何以故？無有不至而能燒故。若不燒則無滅，應常住自相。是事不爾。
If fire were other than fuel, fire ought not to reach the fuel. Why? Because it would not be established in dependence on it. And if fire is established without depending on anything, it stands in its own substance — what use has it for fuel? So it does not reach it. And if it does not reach it, it does not burn the fuel. Why? Because nothing burns what it does not reach. And if it does not burn, there is no going out, and it would abide forever in its own character. This is not how things are.
Here is the argument the whole treatise has been building toward, and it is worth stating in the plainest possible terms before following the details. You have a body and a mind — the five aggregates — and you have the sense of being the one who has them. Is that one the same as them, or different from them? There is no third answer, and both answers break.
If the self simply is the aggregates, then act and agent collapse into one, and Piṅgala reaches for the potter. The potter is not the pot. If he were, the making would have no one to do it and nothing to be done to; the words "makes" would have nothing left to mean. A self identical with what it experiences is not a self having an experience — it is the experience, with the word "having" doing no work at all.
If the self is other than the aggregates, then it should be findable without them, the way fire ought to be findable somewhere apart from anything burning. Verse 2 draws the consequence with real force: a fire independent of fuel would burn perpetually, need no kindling, and have nothing to do. And here Piṅgala makes the argument's most human move, the one worth remembering when this chapter is quoted abstractly. His disproof is 人功 — human labor: the ordinary work of tending a fire, feeding it, keeping it alive. If fire were self-standing, that work would be pointless. It is not pointless. Everyone who has kept a fire going knows it is not. A fire depends utterly on being fed, and a self that had to be fed the way this fire has to be fed would not be the independent thing the argument wanted.
Verse 5's chain deserves one careful reading. Different means not touching; not touching means not burning; not burning means never going out; never going out means permanent. What the chain shows is that "different" and "permanent" are the same mistake wearing different clothes — which is exactly why the eight negations of Chapter 1 paired not identical, not different with not permanent, not annihilated. Separate the self from experience cleanly enough and you have made it eternal and inert: it cannot be touched by anything, which means it cannot be affected, which means it cannot be liberated either. The prize turns out to be worthless the moment it is won.
Neither Reaching Nor Depending 相待
問曰：
Question:
燃與可燃異， 而能至可燃；
如此至彼人， 彼人至此人。
Fire is other than fuel
and yet is able to reach the fuel,
just as this person reaches that one,
and that person reaches this.
燃與可燃異，而能至可燃；如男至於女，如女至於男。
答曰：
Fire is other than fuel and yet is able to reach the fuel — as a man goes to a woman and a woman to a man.
Answer:
若謂燃可燃， 二俱相離者，
如是燃則能， 至於彼可燃。
If fire and fuel
each stood apart from the other,
then indeed fire would be able
to reach that fuel.
若離燃有可燃、若離可燃有燃，各自成者，如是則應燃至可燃。而實不爾。何以故？離燃無可燃、離可燃無燃故。今離男有女、離女有男，是故汝喻非也。喻不成故，燃不至可燃。
問曰：燃、可燃相待而有，因可燃有燃、因燃有可燃，二法相待成。
答曰：
If there were fuel apart from fire and fire apart from fuel, each established on its own, then fire would indeed reach fuel. But in fact it is not so. Why? Because apart from fire there is no fuel, and apart from fuel there is no fire — whereas there is a woman apart from a man and a man apart from a woman. So your simile is wrong; and since the simile does not hold, fire does not reach fuel.
Question: Fire and fuel exist in dependence on each other. In dependence on fuel there is fire, and in dependence on fire there is fuel: the two are established by mutual dependence.
Answer:
若因可燃燃， 因燃有可燃，
先定有何法， 而有燃可燃？
If fire is by way of fuel
and fuel is by way of fire,
which of them is fixed and there first,
such that there come to be fire and fuel?
若因可燃而燃成，亦應因燃可燃成。是中若先定有可燃，則因可燃而燃成。若先定有燃，則因燃可燃成。今若因可燃而燃成者，則先有可燃而後有燃，不應待燃而有可燃。何以故？可燃在先、燃在後故。若燃不燃可燃，是則可燃不成；又可燃不在餘處，離於燃故。若可燃不成，燃亦不成。若先燃後有可燃，燃亦有如是過。是故燃、可燃二俱不成。復次：
If fire is established in dependence on fuel, then fuel must equally be established in dependence on fire. Now if fuel is fixed and there first, then fire is established in dependence on fuel; and if fire is fixed and there first, then fuel is established in dependence on fire. But if fire is established in dependence on fuel, then the fuel is there first and the fire afterward, and the fuel cannot be waiting upon fire in order to be fuel. Why? Because the fuel is earlier and the fire later. And if the fire does not burn the fuel, then the fuel is not established as fuel; nor is the fuel to be found anywhere else, apart from fire. And if fuel is not established, fire is not established either. And if fire is first and fuel comes afterward, fire falls into exactly the same fault. Therefore neither fire nor fuel is established. Furthermore:
若因可燃燃， 則燃成復成；
是為可燃中， 則為無有燃。
If fire is by way of fuel,
then what is established as fire is established again;
and in that case, within the fuel
there would be no fire at all.
若欲因可燃而成燃，則燃成已復成。何以故？燃自住於燃中。若燃不自住其體，從可燃成者，無有是事。是故有是燃從可燃成，今則燃成復成，有如是過。復有可燃無燃過。何以故？可燃離燃自住其體故。是故燃可燃相因待，無有是事。復次：
If you wish to establish fire in dependence on fuel, then what is already established as fire is established over again. Why? Because fire abides of itself in fire. That fire should not abide in its own substance but be established out of fuel is no such thing. So if there is a fire established out of fuel, then a fire already established is established a second time — such is the fault. And there is the further fault that the fuel has no fire in it. Why? Because in that case the fuel stands in its own substance apart from fire. Therefore there is no such thing as fire and fuel being established by mutual dependence. Furthermore:
若法因待成， 是法還成待；
今則無因待， 亦無所成法。
If a thing is established through dependence,
and that thing in turn establishes what it depends on,
then there is no dependence at all,
and nothing that gets established.
若法因待成，是法還成本因待。如是決定則無二事。如因可燃而成燃，還因於燃而成可燃，是則二俱無定。無定故，不可得。何以故？
If a thing is established through depending on something, and that thing in turn establishes the very thing it depended on, then on such an account there are not two things at all. Thus fire is established in dependence on fuel and fuel is in turn established in dependence on fire, so that neither of the two is fixed. And being unfixed, neither can be found. Why?
若法有待成， 未成云何待？
若成已有待， 成已何用待？
If a thing is established by depending,
then while unestablished, how can it depend?
And if it depends when already established,
once established, what use is depending?
若法因待成，是法先未成，未成則無，無則云何有因待？若是法先已成，已成何用因待？是二俱不相因待，是故汝先說燃，可燃相因待成，無有是事。是故：
If a thing is established through dependence, then beforehand it is not yet established; and being unestablished it is not there; and not being there, how could it depend on anything? And if the thing is already established beforehand, then being established, what use has it for dependence? So in neither case do the two depend on each other, and what you said earlier — that fire and fuel are established by mutual dependence — is no such thing. Therefore:
因可燃無燃， 不因亦無燃；
因燃無可燃， 不因無可燃。
Depending on fuel there is no fire;
not depending, there is no fire either.
Depending on fire there is no fuel;
not depending, there is no fuel.
今因待可燃，燃不成；不因待可燃，燃亦不成。可燃亦如是。因燃、不因燃，二俱不成，是過先已說。復次：
Depending on fuel, fire is not established; not depending on fuel, fire is not established either. It is the same with fuel: whether depending on fire or not depending on fire, it is established neither way. These faults have already been stated. Furthermore:
燃不餘處來， 燃處亦無燃，
可燃亦如是， 餘如去來說。
Fire does not come in from elsewhere,
nor is there fire in the place of burning;
and it is the same with fuel —
the rest is as told in "Going and Coming."
燃不於餘方來入可燃，可燃中亦無燃，析薪求燃不可得故。可燃亦如是，不從餘處來入燃中，燃中亦無可燃。如燃已不燃，未燃不燃、燃時不燃，是義如〈去來〉中說。是故：
Fire does not come in from some other quarter to enter the fuel, nor is there fire within the fuel — for split the firewood and search for fire, and it cannot be found. And it is the same with fuel: it does not come in from somewhere else to enter the fire, nor is there fuel within the fire. Just as what has already burned does not burn, what has not yet burned does not burn, and what is now burning does not burn — this is the point made in the chapter on Going and Coming. Therefore:
The objector's simile in verse 6 is a good one and should not be dismissed too quickly. Two people who are genuinely different can still meet; difference does not prevent contact. Why should fire and fuel be any different? Piṅgala's answer is exact and turns on a single asymmetry: a man exists apart from a woman and a woman apart from a man, but there is no fire anywhere apart from fuel. Two things can approach each other only if there were two things to begin with, each standing somewhere on its own. Fire has no such standing place. It is not that fire is prevented from reaching the fuel; it is that there is no fire waiting at a distance to do the reaching.
So the opponent makes the move that any modern reader will want to make, and it is the best move available: forget priority — they are mutually dependent, each making the other what it is. This looks like it should satisfy everyone. It sounds like dependent arising itself. And verses 8 through 11 refuse it, which is the hardest thing in this chapter to sit with.
The refusal is not a rejection of dependence. It is a rejection of dependence understood as a transaction between two established parties. Verse 11 puts the dilemma at its bluntest: if a thing is not yet established, it is not there, and what is not there cannot depend on anything; if it is already established, it has no further need to depend. Mutual dependence pictured as two things holding each other up requires each to exist before the holding — and that is precisely what neither of them has. Two people can lean on each other. Fire and fuel cannot, because neither is standing there prior to the leaning.
What survives, then? Not a relation between two independent items, and not two independent items either. Only the burning: a single process that our language cuts into a burner and a burned after the fact. Verse 13's small experiment is the whole chapter in one gesture — split the firewood and look for the fire. Nothing in the wood is fire. Nothing arrives from outside. And yet the wood burns. Apply this where the chapter means it applied: split yourself open looking for the one who is living your life, and the same nothing is found, and the living goes on exactly as before.
What the Simile Was For 受與受者
可燃即非燃， 離可燃無燃；
燃無有可燃， 燃中無可燃，
可燃中無燃。
Fuel is not itself fire;
apart from fuel there is no fire.
Fire does not possess fuel;
there is no fuel in fire,
and no fire in fuel.
可燃即非燃。何以故？先已說作、作者一過故。離可燃無燃，有常燃等過故。燃無有可燃、燃中無可燃、可燃中無燃，以有異過故，三皆不成。
問曰：何故說燃、可燃？
答曰：如因可燃有燃，如是因受有受者。受名五陰，受者名人。燃可燃不成故，受受者亦不成。何以故？
Fuel is not itself fire — because of the fault, already stated, of act and agent being one. Apart from fuel there is no fire — because of the fault of a perpetually burning fire, and the rest. Fire does not possess fuel, there is no fuel in fire, and there is no fire in fuel: because of the faults attaching to difference, none of these three holds.
Question: Why speak of fire and fuel at all?
Answer: Just as there is fire by way of fuel, so there is an appropriator by way of what is appropriated. "What is appropriated" means the five aggregates; "the appropriator" means the person. Since fire and fuel are not established, what is appropriated and the appropriator are not established either. Why?
以燃可燃法， 說受受者法，
及以說瓶衣， 一切等諸法。
By the case of fire and fuel
are explained the appropriated and the appropriator,
and pots and cloth are explained as well,
and all things whatsoever.
如可燃非燃，如是受非受者，作作者一過故。又離受無受者，異不可得故。以異過故，三皆不成。如受受者，外瓶衣等一切法皆同上說，無生畢竟空。是故：
Just as fuel is not fire, so what is appropriated is not the appropriator — because of the fault of act and agent being one. And there is no appropriator apart from what is appropriated — because difference cannot be found. Because of the faults attaching to difference, none of the three holds. And as with the appropriated and the appropriator, so with outer things, pots and cloth and all the rest: everything said above applies to them. They do not arise; they are ultimately empty. Therefore:
若人說有我， 諸法各異相；
當知如是人， 不得佛法味。
If someone says there is a self,
and that things have their several distinct marks —
know that such a person
has not tasted the flavor of the Buddha's teaching.
諸法從本已來無生，畢竟寂滅相，是故品末說是偈。若人說我相，如犢子部眾說：不得言色即是我、不得言離色是我，我在第五不可說藏中。如薩婆多部眾說：諸法各各相，是善、是不善、是無記。是有漏、無漏、有為、無為等別異。如是等人不得諸法寂滅相，以佛語作種種戲論。
Things have from the very beginning never arisen; their character is ultimate quiescence — and that is why this verse comes at the chapter's end. Some assert a mark of self, as the Vātsīputrīyas do, who say that one may not say form is the self, and may not say the self is apart from form, but that the self is contained in a fifth, inexpressible category. Others assert that things have their several marks, as the Sarvāstivādins do, who say that things each have their own character: this is wholesome, this unwholesome, this indeterminate; this is with outflows, this without outflows, this conditioned, this unconditioned, and so on, each distinct from the others. People of this sort do not attain the quiescent character of things; they take the Buddha's words and make of them every sort of conceptual elaboration.
Only now, at verse 14, does the chapter say what it has been doing. Fire and fuel were never the subject. They were the model — and the five relations denied in verse 14 are the five ways a self could stand to the aggregates. It is not them. It is not somewhere apart from them. It does not own them. It is not inside them, and they are not inside it. Every position anyone has ever taken about what a person is falls somewhere in that list.
The technical pair is 受 and 受者 — what is appropriated and the one who appropriates it, Sanskrit upādāna and upādātṛ. The metaphor buried in the word is a good one to feel: taking up, grabbing hold, the way a fire takes up its wood. A person, on this analysis, is not a thing that owns a body and a mind; it is a taking-up that has no taker standing behind it. The fire does not seize the wood — the seizing is the fire.
And then the closing verse, which is one of the fiercest lines in the treatise, and which Piṅgala reads with unusual specificity. He names two Buddhist schools, not two heresies from outside. The Vātsīputrīyas had tried the most careful compromise anyone ever devised: the person is neither identical with the aggregates nor separate from them, but belongs to a fifth, "inexpressible" category — an answer that anticipates the fire-and-fuel analysis and tries to survive it by declining to be stated. The Sarvāstivādins had gone the other way, keeping no self at all but building an inventory of things each with its own fixed character. One school saved the self; the other saved the parts. Nāgārjuna's verse says both have missed the taste.
That word is worth pausing on: 味, the flavor. Not the doctrine, not the argument — the taste. It is possible to have the analysis exactly right, to be able to recite the aggregates and defend no-self in debate, and still be doing what these schools were doing: producing ever more refined categories, and taking the refinement itself for understanding. Piṅgala's diagnosis in the last sentence is the same one he gave in Chapter 1 for why the treatise was written at all — they take the Buddha's words and make of them every sort of elaboration. The failure is not one of intelligence. Both schools were formidably intelligent. The failure is that the machinery never stopped.
Chapter 11 · Examining the Beginning 觀本際品第十一
The term is 本際, the "prior limit" (pūrva-koṭi) — the point at which saṃsāra started. The Buddha had said flatly that no such point can be found. The objector notices something odd about that saying: it seems to grant that there are beings, and that there is a birth-and-death for them to be traveling through. Eight verses take the concession back.
問曰：《無本際經》說：眾生往來生死，本際不可得。是中說有眾生、有生死。以何因緣故而作是說？
答曰：
Question: The Sūtra on the Absence of a Prior Limit says that sentient beings come and go in birth-and-death, and that no prior limit can be found. In saying this it speaks of there being sentient beings and of there being birth-and-death. For what reason is it put this way?
Answer:
大聖之所說， 本際不可得，
生死無有始， 亦復無有終。
The Great Sage has declared
that no prior limit can be found:
birth-and-death has no beginning,
and it has no end either.
聖人有三種：一者外道五神通；二者阿羅漢辟支佛；三者得神通大菩薩。佛於三種中最上，故言大聖。佛所言說，無不是實說。生死無始。何以故？生死初後不可得，是故言無始。汝謂若無初後，應有中者，是亦不然。何以故？
There are three kinds of sage: first, non-Buddhist adepts with the five supernormal powers; second, arhats and pratyekabuddhas; third, great bodhisattvas who have gained the supernormal powers. The Buddha is highest among the three, and so is called the Great Sage. Nothing the Buddha says is other than a true saying. Birth-and-death has no beginning. Why? Because neither a first nor a last of birth-and-death can be found; and so it is said to have no beginning. And if you hold that where there is no first and no last there must at least be a middle, that will not do either. Why?
若無有始終， 中當云何有？
是故於此中， 先後共亦無。
If there is no beginning and no end,
how could there be a middle?
And therefore in this case
before, after, and both together are absent too.
因中、後故有初，因初、中故有後。若無初無後，云何有中？生死中無初、中、後，是故說先後共不可得。何以故？
It is in dependence on a middle and a last that there is a first, and in dependence on a first and a middle that there is a last. If there is no first and no last, how could there be a middle? In birth-and-death there is no first, no middle, and no last; and so it is said that before, after, and both together cannot be found. Why?
若使先有生， 後有老死者；
不老死有生， 不生有老死。
若先有老死， 而後有生者；
是則為無因， 不生有老死。
If birth came first
and aging-and-death after,
there would be birth without aging-and-death,
and aging-and-death without birth.
And if aging-and-death came first
and birth after,
then it would be without a cause:
aging-and-death without birth.
生死眾生，若先生、漸有老而後有死者，則生無老死。法應生有老死、老死有生。又不老死而生，是亦不然；又不因生有老死。若先老死後生，老死則無因，生在後故；又不生，何有老死？若謂生老死先後不可，謂一時成者，是亦有過。何以故？
For beings in birth-and-death: if birth comes first, aging sets in by degrees, and death comes after, then birth would be without aging-and-death. But the rule is that birth has aging-and-death and aging-and-death has birth. Moreover, to be born without aging and dying will not do; and on such a view aging-and-death would not depend on birth at all. And if aging-and-death came first and birth after, then aging-and-death would be without a cause, since birth would be later; and without birth, how could there be aging-and-death? And if you say that birth and aging-and-death cannot be before and after, and hold that they are established at the same time, that carries a fault too. Why?
生及於老死， 不得一時共；
生時則有死， 是二俱無因。
Birth, together with aging-and-death,
cannot occur at one and the same time;
for then at the time of birth there would be death,
and both would be without a cause.
若生老死一時，則不然。何以故？生時即有死故。法應生時有、死時無，若生時有死，是事不然。若一時生，則無有相因。如牛角一時出則不相因。是故：
If birth and aging-and-death were simultaneous, that will not do. Why? Because then at the moment of birth there would already be death. The rule is that at the time of birth a thing is there and at the time of death it is not; so for there to be death at the time of birth is not possible. And if they arose at one time, there would be no mutual causation between them — as an ox's two horns come out together and are not causes of each other. Therefore:
若使初後共， 是皆不然者，
何故而戲論， 謂有生老死？
If first, and last, and both together
are none of them possible,
why elaborate the matter at all
and claim that there is birth and aging-and-death?
思惟生老死三皆有過故，即無生，畢竟空。汝今何故貪著戲論生老死，謂有決定相？復次：
Since reflection shows that all three alternatives for birth and aging-and-death carry faults, there is no arising: it is ultimately empty. Why then do you crave and cling and elaborate over birth and aging-and-death, claiming that they have fixed characteristics? Furthermore:
諸所有因果， 相及可相法，
受及受者等， 所有一切法，
非但於生死， 本際不可得，
如是一切法， 本際皆亦無。
Whatever there is of cause and fruit,
of the mark and what is marked,
of the appropriated and the appropriator —
all things whatsoever:
it is not only in birth-and-death
that no prior limit can be found;
in all things alike
there is no prior limit either.
一切法者，所謂因果相可相、受及受者等，皆無本際，非但生死無本際。以略開示故，說生死無本際。
By "all things" is meant cause and fruit, the mark and what is marked, the appropriated and the appropriator, and the rest: none of them has a prior limit. It is not only birth-and-death that has no prior limit. It was in order to show the matter briefly that birth-and-death alone was said to have none.
The objector has spotted something real. "Beings wander in birth-and-death and no beginning can be found" sounds like a statement about an enormously long history — as though the Buddha had looked back along the road and simply not seen the start of it. Read that way, the saying grants everything: the road exists, the travelers exist, and only the milestone at the far end is missing. The chapter's work is to show that this is not what the saying means.
Verse 2 makes the structural point, and it is more interesting than it first looks. We think of first, middle, and last as three separate items, one of which happens to be unavailable. They are not separate. A middle is only a middle between a beginning and an end; strike out the two ends and the middle does not survive as a lonely stretch of road — it has nothing to be in the middle of. So the absence of a first moment is not a gap in an otherwise solid history. It infects the whole.
Verses 3 through 5 then take the smallest case, one turn of the cycle, and show the same structure failing there. Put birth first and you get birth that does not age or die, which is not birth as anyone means it. Put aging-and-death first and you get dying with nobody having been born — an effect with no cause. Put them together and you get an infant already dead, plus a pair of items as causally unrelated as the two horns of an ox, which come up side by side and make nothing of each other. The link between birth and death that seems so obvious survives none of the three ways of arranging it in time.
The point is not that saṃsāra is infinitely old. That would still be a story about a real thing with a real duration. The point is that the sequence itself is not a findable object — and this is why the chapter's last verses widen the claim to everything: cause and fruit, mark and marked, the fire and fuel of the previous chapter. There is a real relief available in this, and it is worth naming, because the chapter can otherwise read as pure demolition. What has no beginning has no accumulated weight behind it pressing forward. The past that seems to have made you into what you now are is not a thing sitting behind you with its hand on your back. It cannot be found there — and it is not an act of forgetting to notice that, but of looking.
Chapter 12 · Examining Suffering 觀苦品第十二
The four corners return — self-made, other-made, both, neither — but the question has changed. In Chapter 1 they were applied to arising, a question about the world's machinery. Here they are applied to suffering, which is to say: to the reader. Ten verses ask who is doing this to whom.
有人說曰：
Some put it thus:
自作及他作， 共作無因作，
如是說諸苦， 於果則不然。
Made by itself, or made by another,
made by both, or made without a cause —
to speak of sufferings in these ways
will not do as an account of the fruit.
有人言：苦惱自作；或言他作；或言亦自作亦他作；或言無因作，於果皆不然。於果皆不然者，眾生以眾緣致苦，厭苦欲求滅。不知苦惱實因緣有四種謬，是故說於果皆不然。何以故？
Some say suffering is made by itself; some that it is made by another; some that it is made both by itself and by another; some that it is made without a cause. As accounts of the fruit, none of them will do. To say that none will do as an account of the fruit is to say this: sentient beings come to suffering by way of a host of conditions, and being weary of suffering they seek its cessation; but not knowing what actually conditions suffering, they fall into these four errors. That is why it is said that none of them will do as an account of the fruit. Why?
苦若自作者， 則不從緣生，
因有此陰故， 而有彼陰生。
If suffering were made by itself,
it would not arise from conditions;
but it is because these aggregates are there
that those aggregates arise.
若苦自作，則不從眾緣生，自名從自性生。是事不然。何以故？因前五陰有後五陰生，是故苦不得自作。
問曰：若言此五陰作彼五陰者，則是他作。
答曰：是事不然。何以故？
If suffering were made by itself, it would not arise from a host of conditions, for "by itself" means arising from its own inherent nature (svabhāva). That will not do. Why? Because it is in dependence on the earlier five aggregates that the later five aggregates arise; and so suffering cannot be self-made.
Question: If you say that these five aggregates make those five aggregates, then it is made by another.
Answer: It is not so. Why?
若謂此五陰， 異彼五陰者，
如是則應言， 從他而作苦。
If these five aggregates
were other than those five aggregates,
then indeed one could say
that suffering is made by another.
若此五陰與彼五陰異，彼五陰與此五陰異者應從他作。如縷與布異者，應離縷有布。若離縷無布者，則布不異縷。如是彼五陰異此五陰者，則應離此五陰有彼五陰。若離此五陰無彼五陰者，則此五陰不異彼五陰，是故不應言苦從他作。
問曰：自作者，是人人自作苦、自受苦。
答曰：
If these five aggregates were other than those, and those other than these, then suffering could be made by another. Take thread and cloth: if they were different, there would be cloth apart from thread. But if there is no cloth apart from thread, then cloth is not other than thread. In the same way, if those five aggregates were other than these, there would be those aggregates apart from these; and if there are no such aggregates apart from these, then these five aggregates are not other than those. Therefore one should not say that suffering is made by another.
Question: "Made by itself" means this: the person himself makes his own suffering and himself undergoes it.
Answer:
若人自作苦， 離苦何有人？
而謂於彼人， 而能自作苦。
If a person makes his own suffering,
then apart from suffering what person is there,
of whom you could then say
that he makes his own suffering?
若謂人自作苦者，離五陰苦，何處別有人而能自作苦？應說是人，而不可說，是故苦非人自作。若謂人不自作苦，他人作苦與此人者，是亦不然。何以故？
If you say the person makes his own suffering, then apart from the suffering that is the five aggregates, where is there a separate person able to make his own suffering? You would have to point him out — and he cannot be pointed out. Therefore suffering is not made by the person himself. And if you say the person does not make his own suffering, but that another makes suffering and gives it to this person, that will not do either. Why?
若苦他人作， 而與此人者；
若當離於苦， 何有此人受？
If suffering is made by another
and handed over to this person,
then, apart from the suffering itself,
what "this person" is there to receive it?
若他人作苦與此人者，離五陰無有此人受。復次：
If another makes suffering and gives it to this person, then apart from the five aggregates there is no such person to receive it. Furthermore:
苦若彼人作， 持與此人者；
離苦何有人， 而能授於此？
If that person makes the suffering
and carries it over to this one,
then apart from suffering what person is there
able to hand it over?
若謂彼人作苦授與此人者，離五陰苦，何有彼人作苦持與此人？若有者，應說其相。復次：
If you say that that person makes suffering and hands it to this one, then apart from the suffering that is the five aggregates, what "that person" is there who makes suffering and carries it over to this one? If there is such a one, say what his characteristics are. Furthermore:
自作若不成， 云何彼作苦？
若彼人作苦， 即亦名自作。
If self-making is not established,
how could another make suffering?
For if that person makes the suffering,
from his own side that is self-making.
種種因緣彼自作苦不成，而言他作苦。是亦不然。何以故？此彼相待故。若彼作苦，於彼亦名自作苦。自作苦先已破，汝受自作苦不成故，他作亦不成。復次：
By all these various arguments, that suffering is made by itself is not established — and yet you speak of another making it. That will not do either. Why? Because "this" and "that" are established only relative to each other. If that person makes suffering, then from his own side it is called making his own suffering; and self-made suffering has already been broken. Since the self-made suffering you accept is not established, the other-made is not established either. Furthermore:
苦不名自作， 法不自作法，
彼無有自體， 何有彼作苦？
Suffering is not called self-made,
for a thing does not make itself;
and since that other has no substance of its own,
how could that other make suffering?
自作苦不然。何以故？如刀不能自割。如是法不能自作法，是故不能自作。他作亦不然。何以故？離苦無彼自性。若離苦有彼自性者，應言彼作苦，彼亦即是苦，云何苦自作苦？
問曰：若自作、他作不然，應有共作。
答曰：
Self-made suffering will not do. Why? A knife cannot cut itself. In the same way a thing cannot make itself, and so it cannot be self-made. Nor will other-made do. Why? Because apart from suffering that other has no inherent nature of its own. If apart from suffering that other had an inherent nature, one could say that he makes the suffering; but he too is simply suffering — and how would suffering make suffering out of itself?
Question: If neither self-made nor other-made will do, then it must be made by both together.
Answer:
若此彼苦成， 應有共作苦；
此彼尚無作， 何況無因作！
If suffering by this one and by that one held,
then there could be suffering made by both;
but this one and that one make nothing at all —
how much less could it be made without a cause!
自作、他作猶尚有過，何況無因作。無因多過，如〈破作作者品〉中說。復次：
Self-made and other-made already carry faults — how much more so making without a cause. Causelessness has many faults, as stated in the chapter Refuting the Act and the Agent. Furthermore:
非但說於苦， 四種義不成；
一切外萬物， 四義亦不成。
It is not only in the case of suffering
that the four alternatives fail;
of all the outer ten thousand things
the four alternatives fail as well.
佛法中雖說五受陰為苦，有外道人謂苦受為苦，是故說不但說於苦四種義不成，外萬物地水山木等一切法皆亦不成。
Although within the Buddha's teaching the five aggregates of appropriation are said to be suffering, there are non-Buddhists who take painful feeling alone to be suffering. That is why it is said that the four alternatives fail not only in the case of suffering: of the outer ten thousand things too — earth, water, mountains, trees, and all the rest — they equally fail.
Verses 4 through 6 are the heart of this chapter, and they are best read not as logic but as an attempt to locate something. Take an hour of real suffering — grief, humiliation, physical pain — and try to find, inside it, the one it is happening to. Not the body; the body is part of what is being suffered. Not the mind's activity; that is being suffered too. Piṅgala's demand is exactly right and impossible to meet: 應說是人，而不可說 — you would have to point him out, and he cannot be pointed out.
Then verses 5 and 6 do the same to the other side, and this is where the chapter becomes uncomfortable in a useful way. Blame is the most natural response to suffering: someone did this to me. But if suffering is handed over from one party to another, both parties have to be findable apart from it — and neither is. Apart from the aggregates there is no recipient waiting to be handed anything, and no giver standing over there holding it out. The transaction we imagine so vividly has no two ends.
Verse 7's move is the same reciprocity that dismantled self and other in Chapter 1, applied now where it stings. From his own standpoint, the person you call "that one" is "this one," and what he does is self-making. So "other-made" is not an independent option at all — it is "self-made" viewed from a different seat, and self-made has already fallen. The four corners were never four separate doors; two of them were the same door seen from either side.
Then the image everyone remembers from this chapter, and it is one line: 如刀不能自割 — a knife cannot cut itself. Nothing operates on itself; an act needs a division between what acts and what is acted on, and where that division is not real, the act is not either. Not that the pain is not real. That there is no doer of it findable inside it.
It is worth stopping to notice what has just happened structurally, because the treatise is showing its hand. Chapter 1 ran the four corners on arising: does a thing come from itself, from another, from both, or from nothing? That was a question about the world's machinery, and one could follow it with a certain detachment. Chapter 12 runs the identical four corners on suffering — and detachment is no longer available, because the reader is one of the terms.
The parallel is deliberate and the conclusions are formally the same, but their force is not. Nobody stakes their life on a theory of causation. Everybody stakes their life on some answer to "why is this happening to me" — and the four answers Nāgārjuna lists are the four answers people actually give. I did this to myself. They did this to me. It was partly me and partly them. It is just how things are, for no reason. Every hour spent turning a misfortune over in the mind is spent somewhere in that fourfold list, and Chapter 12's claim is that the list has no true member, because the parties it needs — a self that suffers, an other who inflicts — cannot be located.
Two things must be said clearly here, because both are easy to get wrong. First, this is not a denial that suffering occurs. Piṅgala says at the outset what he takes the true account to be: beings come to suffering by way of a host of conditions — 眾緣. Conditioned arising is the fifth option that the four corners never contained, and it is the one Nāgārjuna is defending. Suffering is entirely real and entirely conditioned; what it is not is the product of an agent, whether that agent is oneself or somebody else.
Second — and this matters for how these chapters are used — nothing here excuses harm or dissolves responsibility. Chapter 1 made this a guardrail in Piṅgala's own voice: a world where fruit comes without causes would put the generous in hell and the murderous in heaven, and Nāgārjuna will not have it. Conditions operate. Cruelty conditions suffering; that is why it matters what one does. What is denied is not the working of conditions but the fixed, findable proprietors we install at both ends of them — the solid "me" that was wronged and the solid "them" that did the wronging, both of which are the mind's own additions. Piṅgala names the practical stake in one clause at the very beginning, and it is the reason this chapter exists at all: beings 厭苦欲求滅 — they are weary of suffering and want it to stop. This analysis is offered as the way it stops.
Key Terms
| Term | Chinese | What it means here |
|---|---|---|
| prior self | 本住 | Literally "what abides originally" — the self supposed to exist before, and independently of, the sense faculties and feelings that belong to it. The target of Chapter 9. |
| soul | 神 | The ātman of the non-Buddhist schools, treated in Piṅgala's commentary as a quasi-physical inhabitant of the body — pillar in a wall, armor on a man, lamplight in a lamp. |
| fire and fuel | 燃・可燃 | The flame and the firewood. Chapter 10's model for the relation of a self to the five aggregates: neither identical, nor different, nor one containing the other. |
| upādāna / upādātṛ — the appropriated and the appropriator | 受・受者 | What is taken up (the five aggregates) and the one who takes it up (the person). The metaphor is a fire taking hold of its wood. |
| pūrva-koṭi — prior limit | 本際 | The starting point of saṃsāra, which the Buddha declared cannot be found. Chapter 11 extends the finding to all things, not only birth-and-death. |
| sense-object | 塵 | Literally "dust" — what a sense faculty knows: form for the eye, sound for the ear, and so on. |
| Vātsīputrīya | 犢子部 | The Buddhist school holding that the person is neither the aggregates nor separate from them, but belongs to a fifth "inexpressible" category. Named in Chapter 10 as having missed the point. |
| Sarvāstivāda | 薩婆多部 | The Abhidharma school holding that things each possess their own fixed character. Named alongside the Vātsīputrīyas as the other way of missing it. |