Karma, the Reality of Things, and Time
Examining Karma — Examining Time觀業品第十七 — 觀時品第十九
Chapter 17 is the longest and most patient argument in the treatise, and it takes on the hardest question emptiness raises: if there is no enduring self and no action with a nature of its own, how does a deed done now ripen into a result years or lifetimes later? Two Buddhist answers are put forward in good faith — a continuum of moments running from deed to result, and an "unperishing" record that works like a promissory note — and each is examined until it fails. Chapter 18 then reaches the summit of the whole work: the refutation of self and of what belongs to a self, the definition of what is real, and the famous account of why the buddhas teach a self, teach no self, and teach neither. Chapter 19 closes with a short, exact dismantling of time.
The Text
Chapter 17 · Examining Karma 觀業品第十七
This is the treatise's longest chapter and its most genuinely difficult, because for once the objector has a case that will not go away. Everything Nāgārjuna has argued so far threatens something Buddhism cannot give up: that what we do matters, and goes on mattering after we have stopped doing it. The chapter opens by letting the opponent state the doctrine of action in full technical detail, and then follows him through two increasingly ingenious rescues before the refutation lands.
The Objector's Case: What Karma Is
問曰：汝雖種種破諸法，而業決定有，能令一切眾生受果報。如經說，一切眾生皆隨業而生，惡者入地獄、修福者生天、行道者得涅槃，是故一切法不應空。所謂業者：
Question: Though you have broken things in every sort of way, karma definitely exists, and it makes all sentient beings undergo the ripening of their deeds. As the sūtras say, all sentient beings are born in accordance with their karma: the evil enter the hells, those who cultivate merit are born in the heavens, those who practice the path attain nirvāṇa. Therefore all things cannot be empty. As for what karma is:
人能降伏心， 利益於眾生，
是名為慈善， 二世果報種。
When a person can subdue his own mind
and work for the benefit of sentient beings,
this is called kindness and goodness,
the seed of fruit in both this life and the next.
人有三毒，為惱他故生行。善者先自滅惡，是故說降伏其心利益他人。利益他者，行布施、持戒、忍辱等，不惱眾生，是名利益他，亦名慈善福德，亦名今世後世樂果種子。復次：
People have the three poisons, and out of them arise the actions by which they trouble others. The good person first extinguishes evil in himself, and this is why the verse speaks of subduing one's own mind and benefiting others. To benefit others is to practice giving, to keep the precepts, to be patient, and so on, without troubling sentient beings. This is called benefiting others; it is also called the merit of kindness and goodness; and it is also called the seed of pleasant fruit in this life and in lives to come. Furthermore:
大聖說二業， 思與從思生，
是業別相中， 種種分別說。
The Great Sage taught two kinds of action,
intention, and what arises from intention;
and within the several marks of these actions
distinctions of every sort are drawn.
大聖略說業有二種：一者思、二者從思生，是二業如阿毘曇中廣說。
The Great Sage taught in brief that action is of two kinds: first, intention; second, what arises from intention. These two kinds of action are set out at length in the Abhidharma.
佛所說思者， 所謂意業是；
所從思生者， 即是身口業。
What the Buddha called intention
is the action of mind;
and what arises out of intention
is action of body and of speech.
思是心數法，諸心數法中能發起、有所作，故名業。因是思故起外身口業。雖因餘心心數法有所作，但思為所作本，故說思為業。是業今當說相。
Intention is a mental factor, and among the mental factors it is the one that sets things in motion and gets something done; that is why it is called action. It is on account of intention that the outward actions of body and speech arise. Although other minds and mental factors also get something done, intention is the root of what is done, and so intention is said to be action. The marks of this action will now be stated.
身業及口業， 作與無作業，
如是四事中， 亦善亦不善。
從用生福德， 罪生亦如是，
及思為七法， 能了諸業相。
Action of body and action of speech,
the act manifest and the act unmanifest:
among these four
there is the good and there is the not-good.
Merit that arises from another's use,
and wrongdoing arising in the same way,
and intention — these seven things
make the marks of action known.
口業者，四種口業。身業者，三種身業。是七種業有二種差別，有作、有無作。作時名作業，作已常隨逐生，名無作業。是二種有善、不善。不善名不止惡，善名止惡。復有從用生福德，如施主施受者，若受者受用，施主得二種福：一從施生；二從用生。
如人以箭射人，若箭殺人，有二種罪：一者從射生；二者從殺生。若射不殺，射者但得射罪，無殺罪。是故偈中說罪福從用生，如是名為六種業。第七名思，是七種即是分別業相。是業有今世、後世果報，是故決定有業、有果報故，諸法不應空。
答曰：
Action of speech means the four kinds of speech-action; action of body means the three kinds of body-action. These seven kinds of action admit of two distinctions: there is the manifest and there is the unmanifest. At the time of the doing it is called the manifest act; once the doing is over, what keeps following along and arising is called the unmanifest act. Both may be good or not-good. Not-good means not stopping evil; good means stopping evil. Then there is merit that arises from use: when a donor gives to a recipient and the recipient makes use of the gift, the donor gains two sorts of merit — one arising from the giving, one arising from the use.
It is as when a person shoots another with an arrow. If the arrow kills, there are two sorts of wrongdoing — one arising from the shooting, one arising from the killing. If the shot does not kill, the shooter incurs only the wrong of shooting and not the wrong of killing. This is why the verse says that wrongdoing and merit arise from use. In this way there are six kinds of action; the seventh is called intention, and these seven are what the analysis of action's marks comes to. This action has its ripening in the present life and in lives to come. Therefore, since action definitely exists and its ripening exists, things cannot be empty.
Answer:
業住至受報， 是業即為常；
若滅即無業， 云何生果報？
If an action abides until its ripening is undergone,
then that action is permanent;
and if it has ceased, there is no action —
how then does it produce a fruit?
業若住至受果報，即為是常。是事不然。何以故？業是生滅相，一念尚不住，何況至果報！若謂業滅，滅則無，云何能生果報？
問曰：
If an action abides until the ripening is undergone, it is permanent — which will not do. Why? Because action has the character of arising and ceasing; it does not abide even for a single moment of thought, let alone until the ripening. And if you say the action has ceased, then having ceased it is not there — how could it produce a fruit?
Question:
Before the refutation, notice how much room the text gives the opponent. Five verses and a page of technical prose go by before Nāgārjuna says a word, and what they describe is not a caricature — it is the working legal code of Buddhist ethics, and it is impressively careful. Action is not merely what your body does. It begins in intention, 思, and issues outward into deeds of body and speech. Each deed has a visible face (作, the act as performed) and an invisible residue (無作, the act as it goes on following you afterward). And the archer's arrow is a genuinely subtle piece of moral analysis: shooting and killing are counted separately, so that a shot which misses leaves you with less to answer for than a shot which lands. Merit works the same way in reverse — the donor earns twice, once for giving and once when the gift is actually used.
Hold on to why this matters. The opponent is not defending karma out of piety. He is defending it because it is the one place where emptiness looks not just wrong but dangerous. If nothing has a nature of its own, then the man who gave and the man who is repaid are not the same man, the deed has long since ceased, and the ripening arrives with nothing to connect it to what was done. This is precisely the worry Piṅgala named in the treatise's opening pages — if everything is ultimately empty, how can one still distinguish wrongdoing from merit? The objection has now come back with its homework done.
And Nāgārjuna's opening reply is only four lines, because the dilemma is genuinely that simple. Either the deed lasts until payday — in which case it never ceased, and something impermanent has turned out to be permanent — or it ceased when it was done, in which case there is nothing left to do the ripening. Piṅgala sharpens it to the point of discomfort: an action does not last one moment of thought, let alone thirty years. Every solution offered in the rest of the chapter is an attempt to get out from between these two walls.
The First Rescue: A Continuum
The objector's answer is the standard one, and it is a good one: nothing has to last, because a series can carry what no single member of it carries. He reaches, as this treatise always does, for the grain of seed.
如芽等相續， 皆從種子生，
從是而生果， 離種無相續。
從種有相續， 從相續有果，
先種後有果， 不斷亦不常。
如是從初心， 心法相續生，
從是而有果， 離心無相續。
從心有相續， 從相續有果，
先業後有果， 不斷亦不常。
The continuum of sprout and the rest
all arises out of a seed,
and from that the fruit arises;
apart from the seed there is no continuum.
Because of the seed there is a continuum,
because of the continuum there is fruit;
the seed first and the fruit after —
so neither cut off nor permanent.
Just so, from a first moment of mind
a continuum of mental events arises,
and from that there is fruit;
apart from mind there is no continuum.
Because of mind there is a continuum,
because of the continuum there is fruit;
the action first and the fruit after —
so neither cut off nor permanent.
如從穀有芽，從芽有莖葉等相續，從是相續而有果生。離種無相續生，是故從穀子有相續，從相續有果。先種後有果，故不斷亦不常。如穀種喻，業果亦如是。初心起罪福，猶如穀種。因是心，餘心心數法相續生，乃至果報。先業後果故，不斷亦不常。若離業有果報，則有斷常。是善業因緣果報者，所謂：
Just as from a grain there is a sprout, and from the sprout a continuum of stalk and leaf and the rest, and out of that continuum fruit arises. Apart from the seed no continuum arises; and so from the grain of seed there is a continuum, and from the continuum there is fruit. The seed comes first and the fruit after, and so there is neither being cut off nor permanence. As with the simile of the grain of seed, so it is with action and its fruit. A first moment of mind gives rise to wrongdoing or to merit, just as the grain of seed does; on account of that mind the remaining minds and mental factors arise in a continuum, all the way to the ripening. Since the action comes first and the fruit after, there is neither being cut off nor permanence. Were there a ripening apart from the action, you would have annihilation and permanence both. And as for the ripening that is the fruit of good action, namely:
能成福德者， 是十白業道，
二世五欲樂， 即是白業報。
What brings merit to completion
is the ten white paths of action;
the pleasures of the five senses in both lives
are the ripening of white action.
白名善淨。成福德因緣者，從是十白業道生，不殺、不盜、不邪婬、不妄語、不兩舌、不惡口、不無益語、不嫉、不恚、不邪見，是名為善。從身口意生是果報者，得今世名利，後世天人中貴處生。布施恭敬等雖有種種福德，略說則攝在十善道中。
答曰：
"White" means good and pure. What causes merit to be complete arises from these ten white paths of action: not killing, not stealing, not committing sexual misconduct, not lying, not speaking divisively, not speaking harshly, not speaking uselessly, not being envious, not being angry, not holding wrong views. These are called good. As for the ripening that arises out of body, speech, and mind: one gains reputation and gain in this life, and in the next is born in an honored place among gods and humans. And though giving, reverence, and the rest are merits of many kinds, stated in brief they are all gathered into the ten paths of good action.
Answer:
若如汝分別， 其過則甚多，
是故汝所說， 於義則不然。
If one analyzes as you have done,
the faults are very many;
and therefore what you have said
does not hold as to its meaning.
若以業果報相續故，以穀子為喻者，其過甚多，但此中不廣說。汝說穀子喻者，是喻不然。何以故？穀子有觸有形，可見有相續。我思惟是事，尚未受此言，況心及業，無觸無形不可見。生滅不住欲以相續，是事不然。
復次從穀子有芽等相續者，為滅已相續？為不滅相續？若穀子滅已相續者，則為無因。若穀子不滅而相續者，從是穀子常生諸穀。若如是者，一穀子則生一切世間穀。是事不然，是故業果報相續則不然。
問曰：
If, because action and its ripening form a continuum, you take the grain of seed as your simile, the faults are very many, though they will not be set out at length here. The simile of the grain that you offer does not hold. Why? A grain of seed can be touched and has a shape, and its continuum can be seen. Even about that, when I think the matter through, I have not yet granted you your account — how much less about mind and action, which cannot be touched, have no shape, and cannot be seen. To want a continuum out of what arises and ceases and does not abide will not do.
Furthermore, when there is a continuum of sprout and the rest from a grain of seed, is it a continuum after the seed has ceased, or one in which the seed has not ceased? If the continuum comes after the grain of seed has ceased, then it is without a cause. And if the grain of seed does not cease and yet there is a continuum, then that grain of seed will go on producing grain forever — and if that were so, a single grain would produce all the grain in the world. That will not do. Therefore a continuum of action and its ripening will not do either.
Question:
The continuum answer deserves respect, because it is very nearly right and it is what most Buddhist schools settled on. Nobody claims the seed survives to become the fruit. The claim is that seed, sprout, stalk, leaf, and grain form an unbroken series in which each member conditions the next, so that nothing has to endure and yet nothing is lost. Not permanent, because no member lasts; not cut off, because the series never has a gap. Applied to a deed: an angry moment of mind conditions the next moment, and that the next, on and on, until something unpleasant arrives that no single moment in the chain was carrying.
Piṅgala's counter has two parts, and the first is the more interesting because it is an objection about evidence, not about logic. A seed can be picked up, weighed, cut open, watched. The continuity of a plant is something you can stand in a field and observe. A mental continuum can be none of these things — 無觸無形不可見, untouchable, shapeless, invisible. The simile does its persuasive work by borrowing the visibility of the field for something that has no visibility at all. And notice the concession buried in the sentence: even about the seed I have not yet granted you your account. Chapter 1 already took the grain and sprout apart. The opponent is illustrating a contested case with a case that was contested first.
The second part is the dilemma that will keep returning: does the seed cease before the sprout, or not? If it ceases first, the sprout arises from something that is no longer there — which is arising without a cause. If it does not cease, then it is still a seed, still able to sprout, and there is no reason it should ever stop; one grain would seed the world. Either way the series has no joints. What looks like a smooth handing-on from moment to moment turns out, when you ask what happens at any single junction, to be exactly the problem the series was invented to solve, now repeated an infinite number of times.
The Second Rescue: The Unperishing, and the Debt-Note
The objector now produces the most ingenious solution in the chapter, and one with real institutional weight behind it. Grant that the deed perishes. Posit alongside it a separate entity that does not — a bookkeeping entry, morally colorless in itself, which records what was done and remains until the debt is paid. The image he chooses is commercial, and exact.
今當復更說， 順業果報義，
諸佛辟支佛， 賢聖所稱歎。
Now let it be stated once again,
the account that accords with action and its ripening,
which the buddhas and the pratyekabuddhas
and the noble ones have praised.
所謂：
Namely:
不失法如券， 業如負財物，
此性則無記， 分別有四種。
見諦所不斷， 但思惟所斷，
以是不失法， 諸業有果報。
若見諦所斷， 而業至相似，
則得破業等， 如是之過咎。
一切諸行業， 相似不相似，
一界初受身， 爾時報獨生。
如是二種業， 現世受果報，
或言受報已， 而業猶故在。
若度果已滅， 若死已而滅，
於是中分別， 有漏及無漏。
The unperishing is like a promissory note
and an action like goods taken on credit;
its nature is indeterminate,
and analyzed it is of four kinds.
It is not abandoned by seeing the truths,
but abandoned only by cultivation;
and because of this unperishing thing
actions have their ripening.
If it were abandoned by seeing the truths,
and the action passed on to what resembles it,
then such faults as the destruction of action
would follow upon that.
Of all actions whatever,
like and unlike,
when a body is first taken up in one realm
the ripening at that time arises alone.
Of these two kinds of action
the ripening is undergone in this present life;
or else it is said that, the ripening undergone,
the action nonetheless remains.
It ceases on passing beyond a fruit,
or it ceases upon death;
and within this one distinguishes
the tainted and the untainted.
不失法者當知如券，業者如取物。是不失法，欲界繫、色界繫、無色界繫亦不繫。若分別善、不善、無記中，但是無記。是無記義，阿毘曇中廣說。見諦所不斷，從一果至一果，於中思惟所斷。是以諸業，以不失法故果生。若見諦所斷而業至相似，則得破業過。是事阿毘曇中廣說。
復次不失法者，於一界諸業相似不相似，初受身時果報獨生，於現在身從業更生業。是業有二種，隨重而受報。或有言，是業受報已業猶在，以不念念滅故。若度果已滅、若死已而滅者，須陀洹等度果已而滅，諸凡夫及阿羅漢死已而滅。於此中分別有漏及無漏者，從須陀洹等諸賢聖，有漏、無漏等應分別。
The unperishing should be understood as the note, and the action as the taking of the goods. This unperishing thing may be bound to the realm of desire, to the realm of form, to the formless realm, or bound to none of them. If one sorts it among the good, the not-good, and the indeterminate, it is only indeterminate; the sense of "indeterminate" is set out at length in the Abhidharma. It is not abandoned by the seeing of the truths; going from one fruit to the next, it is within that course that it is abandoned by cultivation. And so it is that actions produce their fruit because of the unperishing. If it were abandoned by the seeing of the truths and yet the action passed on to what resembles it, the fault of destroying action would follow; this matter is set out at length in the Abhidharma.
Furthermore, as to the unperishing: among the actions in a single realm, like and unlike, when a body is first taken up the ripening arises alone, and in the present body action gives rise to further action. These actions are of two kinds, and the ripening is undergone according to which is the weightier. Some say that after the ripening has been undergone the action still remains, since it does not perish moment by moment. As to "it ceases on passing beyond a fruit, or it ceases upon death": for the stream-enterer and the rest it ceases on passing beyond the fruit, and for ordinary people and for the arhat it ceases upon death. And as to distinguishing the tainted and the untainted within this: from the stream-enterer onward, among the noble ones, the tainted and the untainted and the rest are to be distinguished.
答曰：是義俱不離斷常過，是故亦不應受。
問曰：若爾者，則無業果報。
答曰：
Answer: This account too fails to escape the faults of annihilation and permanence, and so it should not be accepted either.
Question: If that is so, then there is no ripening of action at all.
Answer:
This is the most inventive move anyone makes in the chapter, and it is worth admiring before watching it fail. The problem was that the deed perishes and the result arrives late. The solution: stop asking the deed to do the carrying. When you take goods on credit, the goods are consumed, digested, forgotten — and the debt survives them, because the debt was never the goods. It was a note. So too, alongside every action, there arises something the Abhidharma called 不失法, the "unperishing" — a record entered in the ledger of a person's stream, which does not perish when the deed does, and which is cancelled only when the account is settled.
The technical details reward attention because they show how seriously this was worked out. The note itself is 無記, morally indeterminate — a record of a good deed is not itself a good deed, any more than an invoice is a purchase. It survives the awakening of insight (見諦, the seeing of the truths), because otherwise the moment a person understood the Four Truths their entire moral history would be wiped clean, and the deeds of a lifetime would go unanswered; it is worn away instead by long cultivation. It is cancelled at the crossing of each stage of the path, and at death for those still on the road. This is an accounting system, and a good one.
Piṅgala's rejection is one sentence long, and its brevity is the argument: this account too fails to escape annihilation and permanence. Ask the simplest possible question of the note — does it perish? If it does not, you have smuggled in a permanent entity, which is exactly what Buddhism denies; the deed was made impermanent and the receipt was made eternal. If it does perish, it has the same problem the deed had, and you will need a note for the note. The device did not solve the difficulty. It moved the difficulty one step back and gave it a name.
And the objector's despairing reply is the honest one, the one any reader should be feeling by now: then there is no ripening of action at all. That sentence is the pivot of the chapter. Everything up to here has been demolition. What comes next is the only constructive move Nāgārjuna makes in these three chapters, and it is worth slowing down for.
Empty, and Therefore Not Lost
雖空亦不斷， 雖有亦不常，
業果報不失， 是名佛所說。
Though empty, it is not cut off;
though there is being, it is not permanent;
action and its ripening are not lost —
this is what the Buddha taught.
此論所說義離於斷常。何以故？業畢竟空、寂滅相、自性離，有何法可斷、何法可失？顛倒因緣故，往來生死亦不常。何以故？若法從顛倒起則是虛妄無實，無實故非常。復次貪著顛倒不知實相故，言業不失。此是佛所說。復次：
The account given in this treatise is free of annihilation and of permanence. Why? Action is ultimately empty, has the character of quiescence, and is apart from any inherent nature — so what is there to be cut off, and what is there to be lost? And because of the conditions that are our distortions we come and go in birth and death, so it is not permanent either. Why? If a thing arises out of distortion it is false and unreal, and being unreal it is not permanent. Furthermore, it is because of craving and clinging and distortion, and because one does not know the reality of things, that action is said not to be lost. This is what the Buddha taught. Furthermore:
諸業本不生， 以無定性故；
諸業亦不滅， 以其不生故。
若業有性者， 是則名為常，
不作亦名業， 常則不可作。
若有不作業， 不作而有罪，
不斷於梵行， 而有不淨過。
是則破一切， 世間語言法，
作罪及作福， 亦無有差別。
若言業決定， 而自有性者，
受於果報已， 而應更復受。
若諸世間業， 從於煩惱生，
是煩惱非實， 業當何有實？
Actions never arose in the first place,
because they have no fixed nature;
and actions do not cease either,
because they never arose.
If an action had a nature,
then it would be permanent;
and what was never done would still be action,
since what is permanent cannot be done.
If there were action that was never done,
one would incur wrongdoing without acting;
one would not have broken the holy life
and yet would bear the fault of impurity.
This would destroy every
convention of worldly speech,
and doing wrong and doing merit
would have no difference between them.
If you say that action is fixed
and has a nature of its own,
then once its ripening had been undergone
it would have to be undergone again.
If the actions of the world
arise out of the afflictions,
and those afflictions are not real,
how could the actions be real?
第一義中諸業不生。何以故？無性故。以不生因緣故則不滅，非以常故不滅。若不爾者，業性應決定有。若業決定有性則為是常，若常則是不作業。何以故？常法不可作故。
復次若有不作業者，則他人作罪此人受報，又他人斷梵行而此人有罪，則破世俗法。若先有者，冬不應思為春事，春不應思為夏事。有如是等過。復次作福及作罪者則無有別異，起布施持戒等業名為作福，起殺盜等業名為作罪。若不作而有業，則無有分別。
復次是業若決定有性，則一時受果報已復應更受。是故汝說以不失法故有業報，則有如是等過。復次若業從煩惱起，是煩惱無有決定，但從憶想分別有。若諸煩惱無實，業云何有實？何以故？因無性故業亦無性。
In the ultimate truth, actions do not arise. Why? Because they have no nature. And because they do not arise, they do not cease — not that they fail to cease by being permanent. Were it otherwise, action would have to have a fixed nature; and if action definitely had a nature it would be permanent, and if permanent it would be action that was never done. Why? Because what is permanent cannot be done.
Furthermore, if there were action that was never done, then one person could do the wrong and another undergo the ripening; another could break the holy life and this person incur the fault — which destroys the conventions of the world. And if it were there beforehand, then in winter one would have no need to plan for spring's work, nor in spring for summer's. Faults of this sort follow. Furthermore, doing merit and doing wrong would not differ at all: to give rise to the action of giving, of keeping the precepts, and so on is called doing merit, and to give rise to the action of killing, of stealing, and so on is called doing wrong. If there could be action without any doing, there would be no telling them apart.
Furthermore, if this action definitely had a nature, then having once undergone its ripening it would have to undergo it again. Therefore your claim — that there is a ripening of action because of the unperishing — carries faults of this sort. Furthermore, if action arises out of the afflictions, those afflictions have nothing fixed about them; they exist only out of remembering and imagining and discriminating. And if the afflictions are not real, how could action be real? Why? Because the cause has no nature, the action has no nature either.
問曰：若諸煩惱及業無性不實，今果報身現有，應是實。
答曰：
Question: If the afflictions and action have no nature and are not real, still the body that is their ripening is present here and now, and that at least must be real.
Answer:
諸煩惱及業， 是說身因緣；
煩惱諸業空， 何況於諸身。
The afflictions and actions
are said to be the causes of a body;
and if afflictions and actions are empty,
how much more so bodies.
諸賢聖說煩惱及業是身因緣，是中愛能潤生，業能生上中下好醜貴賤等果報。今諸煩惱及業，種種推求無有決定，何況諸身有決定果？隨因緣故。
The noble ones say that the afflictions and action are the causes of a body. Within this, craving is what moistens and brings to birth, and action is what produces the ripening — high, middling, and low; handsome and ugly; noble and base. Now if the afflictions and action, sought out in every sort of way, have nothing fixed about them, how much less can bodies be a fixed fruit? For they follow upon conditions.
Verse 20 is the answer the whole chapter has been building toward, and it is easy to read past because it sounds like a slogan. It is not. Read it as a diagnosis of where the objector went wrong. He assumed that if a deed is empty then it is gone, and that something extra therefore had to be built to carry the result forward. Nāgārjuna's reply is that being cut off is a fate that can only befall something that was really there in the first place. 有何法可斷、何法可失 — what is there to be cut off, and what is there to be lost? Loss requires a possession. If the deed never had a nature of its own, nothing has gone missing when it ends, and no receipt is needed for a debt that was never a thing.
This is the inversion the treatise keeps performing, and it is the point at which readers most often go wrong. It looks as though emptiness is the threat to karma and the note was the rescue. In fact the reverse holds: it was inherent existence that made karma unworkable. Verse 25 makes this brutally plain. If an action had a fixed nature, it would still have that nature after ripening — so the ripening would repeat, forever, and no debt could ever be paid. A deed with a real nature would be a permanent deed, and a permanent deed cannot be done at all, since what is permanent was never made. Verses 22 through 24 walk out the consequences with something close to sarcasm: unperformed actions, one man punished for another's crime, the celibate condemned though he kept his vows, and finally no difference whatsoever between giving alms and killing. The one homely image in the run is the sharpest — in winter you would not need to plan for spring. If the harvest were already fixed in the nature of things, farming would be superstition.
Verse 26 then pulls the floor out from underneath, and it is worth noticing how far it reaches. Actions arise from afflictions; afflictions arise from 憶想分別, remembering and imagining and drawing distinctions. Anger is not a substance that arrives from outside. It requires an insult, an insulter, a self who was insulted — a small manufactured world, built and then believed. When the manufacture is seen through, the affliction has nothing left to stand on, and the action built on it has nothing either. Nāgārjuna is not saying anger does not happen. He is saying that when you go looking for the thing itself, you find a construction all the way down.
The Doer, and the Conjured Person
問曰：汝雖種種因緣破業及果報，而經說，有起業者。起業者有故，有業有果報。如說：
Question: Though you have broken action and its ripening by every sort of reasoning, the sūtras speak of one who sets action going. And because the one who sets action going exists, action exists and its ripening exists. As it is said:
無明之所蔽， 愛結之所縛，
而於本作者， 不即亦不異。
Shrouded over by ignorance,
bound fast by the fetter of craving,
one is, with respect to the original doer,
neither the same nor different.
《無始經》中說，眾生為無明所覆、愛結所縛，於無始生死中往來，受種種苦樂。今受者於先作者，不即是、亦不異。若即是，人作罪受牛形，則人不作牛、牛不作人。若異則失業果報，墮於無因，無因則斷滅。是故今受者於先作者，不即是、亦不異。
答曰：
The Sūtra of No Beginning says that sentient beings, covered over by ignorance and bound by the fetter of craving, come and go in a birth and death that has no beginning, undergoing pains and pleasures of every kind. The one who undergoes now is, with respect to the one who did the deed before, neither the very same nor a different one. If they were the very same, then when a person does wrong and takes the form of an ox, the person would not become the ox and the ox would not become the person. And if they were different, then action and its ripening are lost and one falls into causelessness, and causelessness is annihilation. Therefore the one who undergoes now is, with respect to the one who did the deed before, neither the very same nor a different one.
Answer:
業不從緣生， 不從非緣生，
是故則無有， 能起於業者。
無業無作者， 何有業生果？
若其無有果， 何有受果者？
Action does not arise from conditions,
nor does it arise from non-conditions;
and therefore there is no such thing
as one who sets action going.
With no action and no doer,
how should action produce a fruit?
And if there is no fruit,
how should there be one who undergoes it?
若無業、無作業者，何有從業生果報？若無果報，云何有受果報者？業有三種：五陰中假名人是作者，是業於善惡處生，名為果報。若起業者尚無，何況有業、有果報及受果報者？
問曰：汝雖種種破業、果報及起業者，而今現見眾生作業受果報。是事云何？
答曰：
If there is no action and no doer of action, how should there be a ripening produced by action? And if there is no ripening, how should there be one who undergoes the ripening? Action is of three kinds; the person, a mere name imputed upon the five aggregates, is the doer; and this action producing birth in a good or an evil destiny is what is called the ripening. If not even the one who sets the action going exists, how much less can there be action, a ripening, or one who undergoes the ripening?
Question: Though you have broken action, its ripening, and the one who sets action going in every sort of way, we plainly see sentient beings performing actions and undergoing the ripening. How is this?
Answer:
如世尊神通， 所作變化人，
如是變化人， 復變作化人。
如初變化人， 是名為作者，
變化人所作， 是則名為業。
諸煩惱及業， 作者及果報，
皆如幻與夢， 如炎亦如嚮。
As by the World-Honored One's spiritual power
a conjured person is made,
and that conjured person in turn
conjures up a conjured person of his own:
just as the first conjured person
is what is called the doer,
so what the conjured person does
is what is called the action.
The afflictions and the actions,
the doer and the ripening —
all are like an illusion and a dream,
like a mirage, like an echo.
如佛神通力所作化人，是化人復化作化人。如化人，無有實事但可眼見，又化人口業說法、身業布施等，是業雖無實而可眼見。如是生死身作者及業，亦應如是知。
諸煩惱者，名為三毒，分別有九十八使、九結、十纏、六垢等無量諸煩惱。業名為身、口、意業。今世、後世分別有善、不善、無記，苦報、樂報、不苦不樂報，現報業、生報業、後報業，如是等無量。作者名為能起諸煩惱業、能受果報者。果報名從善惡業生無記五陰，如是等諸業皆空無性，如幻如夢、如炎如嚮。
Just as a conjured person is made by the Buddha's spiritual power, and that conjured person in turn conjures another. Like a conjured person, it has nothing real about it and yet can be seen with the eyes; and the conjured person's speech-action of teaching the Dharma, his body-action of giving, and the rest — these actions, though unreal, can be seen with the eyes. The doer and the actions belonging to this body in birth and death are to be understood in just this way.
The afflictions are the three poisons, and analyzed they are the ninety-eight proclivities, the nine bonds, the ten entanglements, the six defilements, and afflictions beyond counting. Action means the actions of body, of speech, and of mind. Sorted by this life and the next, there is the good, the not-good, and the indeterminate; ripening as pain, ripening as pleasure, ripening as neither pain nor pleasure; action ripening in this present life, action ripening in the next birth, action ripening later still — and so on beyond counting. The doer is the one who can set the afflictions and actions going and who can undergo the ripening. The ripening is the indeterminate five aggregates produced out of good and evil action. All such actions as these are empty and without any nature, like an illusion, like a dream, like a mirage, like an echo.
The chapter's last objection is the one that should have been made at the beginning, and it is the strongest: never mind the deed, what about the doer? Somebody did it, somebody is paying for it, and the sūtras themselves say so. The objector even quotes the middle formula correctly — the one who suffers now is neither identical with nor different from the one who acted then — and his example, the man reborn as an ox, is chosen to show that strict identity is as absurd as strict difference.
Nāgārjuna's reply is not to deny that anyone acts. It is to point out that "doer" has been leaning on "action" the whole time. Piṅgala says it exactly: the person is 五陰中假名人, a name imputed upon the five aggregates. There is no agent standing behind the deed who could be found independently and then asked whether he is the same man as before. Doer, deed, and result are three positions in one relation, and when the relation is seen to have no self-standing terms, all three positions empty at once — the same reciprocity that dispatched cause and fruit in Chapter 1.
Then the image that closes the chapter, and it is one of the finest in the treatise. A buddha conjures a person; the conjured person conjures another; the second one gives alms and teaches the Dharma. Now ask: is the giving happening? Yes — you can watch it. Is anybody there giving? No. And notice what the image is not saying. It is not saying that ordinary life is a hallucination behind which the real thing hides. The conjured man is not a screen concealing an actual man. There is no further layer. What the image says is that visibility and reality have come apart: 無有實事但可眼見 — nothing real about it, and yet plainly seen.
This is the answer to the whole chapter. The objector wanted a mechanism to make the deed reach the result. He is told there is no mechanism, because there is nothing to be conveyed and nobody to convey it — and that the ripening happens anyway, exactly as reliably as it ever did, in the way a conjured man's gift is really given. A mirage takes no water to shimmer; an echo needs no second voice. That deeds bear fruit was never a fact requiring a carrier. It was a pattern, and patterns are precisely what empty things are made of.
Chapter 18 · Examining the Self and Things 觀法品第十八
Twelve verses, and they are the summit of the treatise. Every other chapter takes something apart; this one, for a few lines, says what is left — and then says why saying it is impossible. It contains the refutation of self and of what belongs to a self, the definition of the reality of things, the four alternatives by which the buddhas teach, and the line about teaching a self and teaching no self that has been argued over ever since. Piṅgala's commentary here is also his longest and most philosophical, including a full epistemological demolition of the soul that has no counterpart in the verses.
The Question of Entry
問曰：若諸法盡畢竟空、無生無滅，是名諸法實相者，云何入？
答曰：滅我我所著故，得一切法空。無我慧名為入。
問曰：云何知諸法無我？
答曰：
Question: If all things are utterly empty, without arising and without ceasing, and this is what is called the reality of things — then how does one enter it?
Answer: By extinguishing attachment to a self and to what belongs to a self, one gains the emptiness of all things. The wisdom of no-self is what is called entering.
Question: And how is it known that things have no self?
Answer:
若我是五陰， 我即為生滅；
若我異五陰， 則非五陰相。
若無有我者， 何得有我所？
滅我我所故， 名得無我智。
得無我智者， 是則名實觀；
得無我智者， 是人為希有。
內外我我所， 盡滅無有故，
諸受即為滅， 受滅則身滅。
業煩惱滅故， 名之為解脫，
業煩惱非實， 入空戲論滅。
If the self were the five aggregates,
the self would arise and cease;
and if the self were other than the five aggregates,
it would not bear the marks of the five aggregates.
If there is no self at all,
how should there be what belongs to a self?
Because self and what belongs to a self are extinguished,
one is said to gain the knowledge of no-self.
One who gains the knowledge of no-self —
this is what is called seeing truly;
one who gains the knowledge of no-self —
such a person is rare.
Because self and what belongs to a self,
within and without, are wholly extinguished,
the graspings come to an end,
and when grasping ends the body ends.
Because action and the afflictions are extinguished
this is what is called liberation;
action and the afflictions are not real —
entering emptiness, elaboration ceases.
The first verse is the oldest argument in Buddhist philosophy, compressed to twenty characters. Whatever a self is, it is either the aggregates — body, feeling, perception, formations, consciousness — or something apart from them. If it is the aggregates, it arises and ceases as they do, and a self that is a different self every moment is not what anybody meant by the word. If it is apart from them, then it has none of their characteristics, and there is nothing left for it to be made of, nothing for it to do, and no way anyone could ever encounter it. There is no third option; that is the whole of the argument.
What is new here is verse 2, and it is easy to skim. If there is no self, how should there be what belongs to a self? The Chinese pair is 我／我所, self and mine, and the second is where the doctrine actually bites. Nobody spends their day asserting a metaphysical ātman. What people do all day is mine — my time, my reputation, my body, my opinion, my side, my grievance. Every one of those possessives is a claim staked by an owner, and the claim is only as solid as the owner. Verse 2 says the second collapses with the first, and it says so in the order in which the collapse is actually experienced: you do not lose the self and then lose the mine. You stop being able to sustain the mine, and discover there was nobody there holding it.
Then verses 4 and 5 lay out the sequence, and it should be read as a chain rather than a list. Self and mine end; grasping ends (諸受 — the appropriative reaching that takes hold of the next thing); the body — meaning the endless taking-on of further bodies — ends; action and afflictions end; and that is liberation. But the last line refuses to let the chain be mechanical. Action and the afflictions are not real; entering emptiness, elaboration ceases. The afflictions do not get defeated the way an army does. They are seen to have been constructions, and what has been seen through cannot be re-erected. This is why Nāgārjuna will insist, at the end of the chapter, that emptiness is not a nihilism: what ends here is not a world but a manufacture.
The Reality of Things
諸佛或說我， 或說於無我，
諸法實相中， 無我無非我。
諸法實相者， 心行言語斷，
無生亦無滅， 寂滅如涅槃。
一切實非實， 亦實亦非實，
非實非非實， 是名諸佛法。
The buddhas sometimes teach a self,
and sometimes teach that there is no self;
but in the reality of things
there is neither a self nor no-self.
The reality of things:
the workings of mind cut off, the way of words cut off,
without arising and without ceasing,
quiescent, like nirvāṇa.
All is real; all is not real;
all is both real and not real;
all is neither real nor not real —
this is what the buddhas teach.
Verse 7 is the closest this treatise ever comes to a positive statement, and it is worth having by heart: 諸法實相者，心行言語斷，無生亦無滅，寂滅如涅槃. Four clauses, and every one of them takes something away. The workings of mind cut off — this is not a state you can think your way into, because thinking is the traffic that has to stop. The way of words cut off — no formula, including this one, is a description of it. Without arising and without ceasing — it is not an event that begins when you understand it. Quiescent, like nirvāṇa — and Piṅgala will be asked, a few pages on, why "like," when the sūtras say things simply are quiescent from the beginning. His answer is that the simile is a concession to people who have divided the world into a noisy half and a peaceful half; for anyone who has not, the word "like" can go.
The English word "reality" is doing heavy work here and can mislead. 實相 is not a hidden true object underneath appearances — that would be one more thing with a nature of its own, and the treatise has spent seventeen chapters making such things impossible. It is how things are when nothing has been added to them. The whole difference between Madhyamaka and the mysticism it is often mistaken for lies in that distinction. Nothing is being unveiled. Something is being put down.
Verse 6 is the most quoted line in the chapter and the most frequently misused. It is not saying that the Buddha contradicted himself, or that truth is whatever helps. Piṅgala's gloss is specific about who gets told what, and it is worth taking seriously as pedagogy rather than as diplomacy: a self is taught to those not yet ripe, who would otherwise conclude that nothing they do matters and stop fearing to do harm; and a self can be spoken of harmlessly to those who already know it is a name. No-self is taught to the person who has kept the precepts and grown weary of the round, and who is now afraid that nirvāṇa is a personal extinction — the fear that emptiness will annihilate him. Each teaching is aimed at a particular way of being stuck, which is why neither is the last word.
And verse 8's fourfold formula is not a mystical paradox either. Read it alongside the three grades of student Piṅgala describes and it becomes almost pedestrian: the beginner is told that some things are real and some are not — nirvāṇa lasts, the world is a sham; the middling student is told that everything is real conventionally and unreal ultimately; and the advanced student, who no longer needs either scaffold, is given neither. The four corners are not four truths. They are four rungs, and the point of a ladder is that you do not stay on it.
What Reality Is Recognized By
自知不隨他， 寂滅無戲論，
無異無分別， 是則名實相。
若法從緣生， 不即不異因，
是故名實相， 不斷亦不常。
不一亦不異， 不常亦不斷，
是名諸世尊， 教化甘露味。
若佛不出世， 佛法已滅盡，
諸辟支佛智， 從於遠離生。
Known for oneself, not following another,
quiescent, without elaboration,
without variety, without discrimination —
this is what is called reality.
If a thing arises from conditions,
it is neither the same as its cause nor other than it;
and therefore it is called reality,
neither cut off nor permanent.
Neither one nor different,
neither permanent nor cut off:
this is the taste of deathless nectar
with which the World-Honored Ones teach.
If no buddha appears in the world
and the Buddha's Dharma has died out,
the knowledge of the pratyekabuddhas
arises out of solitude.
有人說神，應有二種：若五陰即是神、若離五陰有神。若五陰是神者，神則生滅相，如偈中說。若神是五陰，即是生滅相。何以故？生已壞敗故。以生滅相故，五陰是無常。如五陰無常，生滅二法亦是無常。何以故？生滅亦生已壞敗故無常。神若是五陰，五陰無常故，神亦應無常生滅相；但是事不然。
若離五陰有神，神即無五陰相，如偈中說。若神異五陰，則非五陰相，而離五陰更無有法。若離五陰有法者，以何相何法而有？若謂神如虛空，離五陰而有者，是亦不然。何以故？〈破六種品〉中已破，虛空無有法名為虛空。
若謂以有信故有神，是事不然。何以故？信有四種：一現事可信；二名比知可信，如見烟知有火；三名譬喻可信，如國無鍮石喻之如金；四名賢聖所說故可信，如說有地獄、有天、有欝單曰。無有見者，信聖人語故知。是神於一切信中不可得，現事中亦無，比知中亦無。何以故？比知名先見故後比類而知，如人先見火有烟，後但見烟則知有火。神義不然，誰能先見神與五陰合，後見五陰知有神？
若謂有三種比知：一者如本；二者如殘；三者共見。如本名先見火有烟，今見烟知如本有火。如殘名如炊飯，一粒熟知餘者皆熟。共見名如眼見人從此去到彼，亦見其去；日亦如是，從東方出至西方。雖不見去，以人有去相故，知日亦有去。如是苦樂憎愛覺知等，亦應有所依。如見人民，知必依王。
是事皆不然。何以故？共相信先見人與去法合而至餘方，後見日到餘方，故知有去法。無有先見五陰與神合，後見五陰知有神，是故共相比知中亦無神。聖人所說中亦無神。何以故？聖人所說皆先眼見而後說，又諸聖人說餘事可信故，當知說地獄等亦可信。而神不爾，無有先見神而後說者，是故於四信等諸信中求神不可得，求神不可得故無，是故離五陰無別神。
復次〈破根品〉中見、見者、可見破故，神亦同破。又眼見麁法尚不可得，何況虛妄憶想等而有神，是故知無我。因有我故有我所，若無我則無我所，修習八聖道分，滅我我所因緣故，得無我無我所決定智慧。
Some speak of a soul, and it would have to be one of two things: either the five aggregates are the soul, or there is a soul apart from the five aggregates. If the five aggregates are the soul, then the soul has the marks of arising and ceasing, as the verse says. If the soul is the five aggregates, then it has the marks of arising and ceasing. Why? Because what has arisen breaks down. Having the marks of arising and ceasing, the five aggregates are impermanent; and as the five aggregates are impermanent, so the two things, arising and ceasing, are impermanent as well. Why? Because arising and ceasing, too, break down once they have arisen, and so are impermanent. If the soul were the five aggregates, then since the five aggregates are impermanent, the soul too would be impermanent and bear the marks of arising and ceasing — but that will not do.
And if there were a soul apart from the five aggregates, the soul would bear none of the marks of the five aggregates, as the verse says: if the soul is other than the five aggregates, it does not bear the marks of the five aggregates — and yet apart from the five aggregates there is no further thing at all. If there were a thing apart from the five aggregates, by what mark and as what thing would it exist? And if you say that the soul is like empty space, existing apart from the five aggregates, that will not do either. Why? It has already been refuted in the chapter Refuting the Six Elements: there is no thing that goes by the name of empty space.
And if you say that there is a soul because there are grounds for believing so, that will not do. Why? Grounds for belief are of four kinds. First, what is evident to the senses may be believed. Second, what is known by inference may be believed — as one knows there is fire on seeing smoke. Third, what is known by comparison may be believed — as in a country that has no brass one likens it to gold. Fourth, what is spoken by the noble and the wise may be believed — as when it is said that there are hells, that there are heavens, that there is Uttarakuru: no one has seen these, but one knows them by trusting the sages' words. Now the soul cannot be found among any of these grounds for belief. It is not among things evident to the senses, and it is not among things known by inference. Why? Inference means that, having seen something before, one afterward knows by likeness — as a person who has seen before that fire has smoke afterward knows, on merely seeing smoke, that there is fire. It is not so with the soul. Who has ever first seen the soul joined with the five aggregates, so that afterward, on seeing the five aggregates, he knows there is a soul?
Suppose you say that inference is of three kinds: first, from the prior case; second, from the remainder; third, from what is seen in common. "From the prior case" means that, having seen before that fire has smoke, one now sees smoke and knows that, as before, there is fire. "From the remainder" means as with cooking rice: one grain being done, one knows the rest are done. "From what is seen in common" means as when the eye sees a person go from here to there and sees his going; and so with the sun, which comes out in the east and reaches the west — though one does not see it go, because a person has the mark of going one knows that the sun has a going too. And in just this way pain and pleasure, hate and love, awareness and knowing must have something they depend upon — as, seeing the people, one knows they must depend upon a king.
None of this will do. Why? In inference from what is seen in common, one first sees a person joined with the act of going and arriving elsewhere, and afterward, seeing the sun arrive elsewhere, knows that there is an act of going. But nobody has ever first seen the five aggregates joined with a soul, so as afterward, on seeing the five aggregates, to know that there is a soul. Therefore the soul is not to be found in inference from what is seen in common either. Nor is the soul to be found in what the sages have said. Why? What the sages say is always first seen with their own eyes and then spoken; and because the sages' statements about other matters may be believed, one knows their statements about the hells and the rest may be believed too. But it is not so with the soul: there is no one who first saw a soul and then spoke of it. Therefore among the four grounds of belief and all the rest the soul cannot be found by searching; and because it cannot be found by searching, it does not exist. Therefore apart from the five aggregates there is no separate soul.
Furthermore, since seeing, the seer, and the visible were refuted in the chapter Refuting the Faculties, the soul is refuted along with them. And if even the coarse things the eye sees cannot be found, how much less can there be a soul by way of false remembering and imagining. Therefore one knows there is no self. It is because there is a self that there is what belongs to a self; if there is no self, there is nothing belonging to a self. By cultivating the eight limbs of the noble path, and because the causes of self and of what belongs to a self are extinguished, one gains the settled wisdom of no self and nothing belonging to a self.
Piṅgala's long excursus is the most thoroughly epistemological passage in the whole commentary, and it changes the register of the argument. The verses refute the self metaphysically: it cannot be the aggregates and it cannot be apart from them. Piṅgala now refutes it evidentially, by going through the standard Indian list of what counts as a ground for belief and showing that the self does not appear on any of them. Not perception — nobody has seen one. Not inference — inference requires that you have previously observed the two things together, as you once saw fire with its smoke, and no one has ever observed a soul in the company of the aggregates so as to infer it later from them. Not comparison. Not testimony — because the sages report what they saw, and none of them saw this.
The rich part is the objection he lets his opponent make. Notice the sun argument: you never actually see the sun move, but because you have watched people cross a room you attribute a going to it. And then the extension — pleasure and pain, love and hate, knowing and noticing must all rest on something, as, seeing the people, one knows they must depend upon a king. That is an unusually candid statement of why anyone believes in a self at all. Experiences seem to require an experiencer; a kingdom implies a monarch. It is the argument almost every reader is privately running.
Piṅgala's answer is precise and does not dodge. He grants the inference from what is seen in common — but points out what makes it work. It works because you first watched a person and his going together, and only later transferred the pattern to the sun. For the self, there is no such first observation available; nobody ever caught the aggregates and their owner in the same view. The analogy has nothing to be an analogy to. Which leaves the reader with a question worth sitting with rather than answering quickly: when you look for the one who is reading this sentence, what exactly do you find, other than the reading?
The Two Nirvāṇas, and Why a Self Is Ever Taught
又無我無我所者，於第一義中亦不可得。無我無我所者，能真見諸法。凡夫人以我我所障慧眼故，不能見實。今聖人無我我所故，諸煩惱亦滅。諸煩惱滅故，能見諸法實相。內外我我所滅故諸受亦滅，諸受滅故無量後身皆亦滅，是名說無餘涅槃。
問曰：有餘涅槃云何？
答曰：諸煩惱及業滅故，名心得解脫。是諸煩惱業皆從憶想分別生、無有實，諸憶想分別皆從戲論生。得諸法實相畢竟空，諸戲論則滅，是名說有餘涅槃。實相法如是。
諸佛以一切智觀眾生故，種種為說，亦說有我亦說無我。若心未熟者，未有涅槃分，不知畏罪，為是等故說有我。又有得道者，知諸法空，但假名有我，為是等故說我無咎。又有布施持戒等福德，厭離生死苦惱畏涅槃永滅，是故佛為是等說無我。諸法但因緣和合，生時空生、滅時空滅，是故說無我，但假名說有我。又得道者，知無我不墮斷滅，故說無我無咎。是故偈中說，諸佛說有我，亦說於無我，若於真實中，不說我非我。
Moreover, "no self and nothing belonging to a self" is itself not to be found in the ultimate truth. One who is without self and without what belongs to a self is able to see things truly. Ordinary people, because self and what belongs to a self obstruct the eye of wisdom, cannot see what is real. But the noble one, being without self and without what belongs to a self, has his afflictions extinguished as well; and because the afflictions are extinguished he can see the reality of things. Because self and what belongs to a self, within and without, are extinguished, the graspings are extinguished too; and because the graspings are extinguished, the countless bodies still to come are extinguished as well. This is what is meant by nirvāṇa without remainder.
Question: And what of nirvāṇa with remainder?
Answer: Because the afflictions and action are extinguished, the mind is said to have gained liberation. These afflictions and actions all arise out of remembering and imagining and drawing distinctions, and have nothing real about them; and all remembering and imagining and drawing of distinctions arises out of conceptual elaboration. When one attains the reality of things, ultimate emptiness, all elaboration is extinguished. This is what is meant by nirvāṇa with remainder. Such is the reality of things.
The buddhas, contemplating sentient beings with omniscience, teach them in every sort of way: they teach that there is a self, and they teach that there is no self. For those whose minds are not yet ripe, who have no share in nirvāṇa yet and do not know to fear wrongdoing — for such as these a self is taught. And there are those who have attained the path and know that things are empty and that a self exists as a mere name; for such as these there is no fault in speaking of a self. And there are those who have the merit of giving and of keeping the precepts, who are weary of the sufferings of birth and death and yet fear nirvāṇa as an everlasting extinction; and so for such as these the Buddha teaches no-self. Things are only the coming together of causes and conditions: when they arise it is an empty arising, and when they cease an empty ceasing. Therefore no-self is taught, and a self is spoken of only as a name imputed. And for one who has attained the path and knows that no-self does not fall into annihilation, there is no fault in teaching no-self. This is why the verse says that the buddhas teach a self and also teach no self, and that in what is truly real they teach neither self nor non-self.
問曰：若無我是實，但以世俗故說有我，有何咎？
答曰：因破我法有無我，我決定不可得，何有無我。若決定有無我，則是斷滅生於貪著。如《般若》中說菩薩有我亦非行、無我亦非行。
問曰：若不說我非我、空不空，佛法為何所說？
答曰：佛說諸法實相，實相中無語言道、滅諸心行。心以取相緣生，以先世業果報故有，不能實見諸法，是故說心行滅。
Question: If no-self is what is real, and a self is spoken of only for convention's sake, what fault is there in that?
Answer: It is by refuting the doctrine of a self that there comes to be a no-self. If a self can in no way be found, how should there be a no-self? And if there definitely were a no-self, that would be annihilation, and craving and clinging would be born out of it. As it says in the Prajñāpāramitā: for a bodhisattva, "there is a self" is not the practice, and "there is no self" is not the practice either.
Question: If neither self nor non-self is taught, neither empty nor non-empty, then what is it that the Buddha's Dharma teaches?
Answer: The Buddha teaches the reality of things; and within that reality there is no way of words, and all the workings of mind are extinguished. Mind arises by taking up marks as its object, and exists because of the ripening of action in former lives; it cannot see things as they really are. That is why it is said that the workings of mind are extinguished.
問曰：若諸凡夫心不能見實，聖人心應能見實，何故說一切心行滅？
答曰：諸法實相即是涅槃。涅槃名滅，是滅為向涅槃，故亦名為滅。若心是實，何用空等解脫門？諸禪定中，何故以滅盡定為第一？又亦終歸無餘涅槃。是故當知，一切心行皆是虛妄，虛妄故應滅。諸法實相者，出諸心數法，無生無滅、寂滅相，如涅槃。
問曰：經中說，諸法先來寂滅相即是涅槃。何以言如涅槃？
答曰：著法者分別法有二種：是世間、是涅槃。說涅槃是寂滅，不說世間是寂滅。此論中說一切法性空寂滅相，為著法者不解故，以涅槃為喻。如汝說涅槃相空無相寂滅無戲論，一切世間法亦如是。
Question: If the minds of ordinary people cannot see what is real, surely the mind of a noble one can. Why then say that all the workings of mind are extinguished?
Answer: The reality of things is just nirvāṇa. Nirvāṇa means extinction; and this extinction, being directed toward nirvāṇa, is also called extinction. If mind were real, what use would there be for the gates of liberation — emptiness and the rest? And among the meditative attainments, why is the attainment of cessation counted the highest? And in the end it all comes home to nirvāṇa without remainder. Therefore one should know that all the workings of mind are false, and being false are to be extinguished. The reality of things goes beyond all mental factors: without arising, without ceasing, bearing the character of quiescence, like nirvāṇa.
Question: The sūtras say that things have from the very beginning borne the character of quiescence, and that this is nirvāṇa. Why then say "like nirvāṇa"?
Answer: Those who cling to things divide them into two kinds: this is the world, that is nirvāṇa. They say nirvāṇa is quiescent, and do not say the world is quiescent. This treatise says that all things are empty by nature and bear the character of quiescence; and because those who cling to things do not understand this, nirvāṇa is used as a simile. Just as you say that nirvāṇa's character is empty, markless, quiescent, free of elaboration — so are all the things of the world.
問曰：若佛不說我非我，諸心行滅、言語道斷者，云何令人知諸法實相？
答曰：諸佛無量方便力，諸法無決定相，為度眾生或說一切實、或說一切不實、或說一切實不實、或說一切非實非不實。一切實者，推求諸法實性，皆入第一義平等一相，所謂無相。如諸流異色異味，入於大海則一色一味。一切不實者，諸法未入實相時，各各分別觀皆無有實，但眾緣合故有。一切實不實者，眾生有三品，有上、中、下。上者觀諸法相非實非不實；中者觀諸法相一切實一切不實；下者智力淺故，觀諸法相少實少不實，觀涅槃無為法不壞故實，觀生死有為法虛偽故不實。非實非不實者，為破實不實，故說非實非不實。
問曰：佛於餘處說離非有非無，此中何以言非有非無是佛所說？
答曰：餘處為破四種貪著故說。而此中於四句無戲論，聞佛說則得道，是故言非實非不實。
Question: If the Buddha teaches neither self nor non-self, and the workings of mind are extinguished and the way of words cut off, how is anyone to be brought to know the reality of things?
Answer: The buddhas have measureless skill in means, and things have no fixed characteristics. In order to liberate sentient beings they say sometimes that all is real, sometimes that all is unreal, sometimes that all is both real and unreal, sometimes that all is neither real nor unreal. "All is real": when one searches out the real nature of things, all of them enter into the ultimate truth, level and of one character — that is, of no character at all. Just as streams of different colors and different tastes, on entering the great ocean, become one color and one taste. "All is unreal": so long as things have not been entered into as they really are, each one contemplated separately has nothing real about it, and exists only because a host of conditions has come together. "All is both real and unreal": sentient beings are of three grades, high, middling, and low. Those of the high grade contemplate the marks of things as neither real nor unreal; those of the middling grade contemplate the marks of things as all real and all unreal; those of the low grade, their power of understanding being shallow, contemplate the marks of things as a little real and a little unreal, seeing nirvāṇa, the unconditioned, as real because it does not break down, and seeing birth-and-death, the conditioned, as unreal because it is a sham. "Neither real nor unreal" is said in order to break both "real" and "unreal."
Question: Elsewhere the Buddha said one should be free of "neither existent nor non-existent." Why is it said here that "neither existent nor non-existent" is what the Buddha taught?
Answer: In those other places he spoke so in order to break the four kinds of craving and clinging. But here there is no elaboration within the four alternatives, and on hearing the Buddha's teaching one attains the path; and that is why "neither real nor unreal" is said.
問曰：知佛以是四句因緣說，又得諸法實相者以何相可知？又實相云何？答曰：若能不隨他。不隨他者，若外道雖現神力說是道是非道，自信其心而不隨之，乃至變身雖不知非佛，善解實相故心不可迴。此中無法可取可捨故，名寂滅相。寂滅相故，不為戲論所戲論。戲論有二種，一者愛論、二者見論，是中無此二戲論。二戲論無故，無憶想分別、無別異相，是名實相。
問曰：若諸法盡空，將不墮斷滅耶？又不生不滅或墮常耶？
答曰：不然。先說實相無戲論，心相寂滅言語道斷。汝今貪著取相，於實相法中見斷常過。得實相者，說諸法從眾緣生，不即是因亦不異因，是故不斷不常。若果異因則是斷，若不異因則是常。
Question: We understand that the Buddha spoke by way of these four alternatives for such reasons. But by what mark can a person who has attained the reality of things be recognized? And what is that reality? Answer: If he is able not to follow another. "Not following another" means this: even if a non-Buddhist displays supernatural power and declares "this is the path, that is not the path," he trusts his own mind and does not follow him; and even if the man transforms his body so that one could not tell he was not a buddha, because he understands reality well his mind cannot be turned. Since here there is nothing to be taken up and nothing to be put down, it is called the character of quiescence. Bearing the character of quiescence, it is not made into an object of elaboration. Elaboration is of two kinds: the elaboration of craving and the elaboration of views; and here neither of these two elaborations is present. Because the two elaborations are absent there is no remembering and imagining and drawing of distinctions, and no mark of difference. This is what is called reality.
Question: If all things are empty, does that not fall into annihilation? And does "without arising, without ceasing" not perhaps fall into permanence?
Answer: No. It was said before that reality is free of elaboration, that the marks of mind are quiescent and the way of words cut off. You are now craving and clinging and seizing upon marks, and so you see the faults of annihilation and permanence in what is real. One who has attained reality says that things arise from a host of conditions and are neither the very same as their cause nor other than it, and are therefore neither cut off nor permanent. If the fruit were other than the cause, that would be annihilation; and if it were not other than the cause, that would be permanence.
問曰：若如是解，有何等利？
答曰：若行道者能通達如是義，則於一切法不一不異、不斷不常。若能如是，即得滅諸煩惱戲論，得常樂涅槃，是故說諸佛以甘露味教化。如世間言得天甘露漿，則無老病死無諸衰惱。此實相法是真甘露味，佛說實相有三種：若得諸法實相、滅諸煩惱，名為聲聞法；若生大悲發無上心，名為大乘；若佛不出世，無有佛法時，辟支佛因遠離生智。若佛度眾生已入無餘涅槃，遺法滅盡。先世若有應得道者，少觀厭離因緣，獨入山林遠離憒鬧得道，名辟支佛。
Question: And if one understands it in this way, what benefit is there?
Answer: If one who practices the path can penetrate this meaning, then with respect to all things he holds neither identity nor difference, neither annihilation nor permanence. And being able to do so, he extinguishes all the afflictions and elaborations and gains the lasting bliss of nirvāṇa. This is why it is said that the buddhas teach with the taste of deathless nectar. As the world says, one who gets the gods' nectar has no aging, sickness, or death, and none of the miseries of decline. This reality is the true taste of the deathless. The Buddha said that the realization of reality is of three kinds. If one attains the reality of things and extinguishes the afflictions, this is called the teaching of the śrāvakas. If great compassion arises and one gives rise to the unsurpassed aspiration, this is called the Great Vehicle. And if no buddha appears in the world and there is no Buddha-dharma at all, the pratyekabuddha gives rise to knowledge on account of solitude. When a buddha has liberated sentient beings and entered nirvāṇa without remainder, and the Dharma he left behind has died out, then if there is someone from a former life who ought to attain the path, he contemplates a little upon the conditions for weariness and detachment, goes alone into the mountains and forests away from all clamor, and attains the path. Such a one is called a pratyekabuddha.
Two exchanges in this long stretch are worth stopping over, because between them they close off the two errors that ruin most readings of the chapter.
The first is short and easy to miss: "no self and nothing belonging to a self" is itself not to be found in the ultimate truth. The objector immediately presses on it — surely no-self is simply true, and the self is merely a convention? And the answer is the sharpest thing Piṅgala says all chapter. No-self was produced by refuting the self; it is the shape of a hole, and it has no more standing than the thing it was cut out of. If a self cannot be found at all, then there is nothing left for "no-self" to be the absence of. Push it into a thesis and it becomes annihilation, and — this is the detail that should sting — people will cling to it, 生於貪著. Craving does not need a self to fasten onto; it will happily fasten onto the absence of one. Hence the line quoted from the Prajñāpāramitā: neither "there is a self" nor "there is no self" is the bodhisattva's practice. This is Chapter 13's warning about emptiness becoming a view, applied to the doctrine every Buddhist is proudest of.
The second is the exchange about the simile. The objector, who has been reading his sūtras, catches Nāgārjuna in what looks like a downgrade: scripture says the world is quiescent from the beginning, so why "like nirvāṇa"? Piṅgala's answer is that the word "like" is a courtesy extended to a reader who has already split the world in two — a noisy realm here, a peaceful one over there — and who will only accept that things are at peace if it is said by comparison with the one place he already grants is peaceful. Take away the split and the simile becomes unnecessary. Then the sentence that quietly overturns the whole map: whatever you say nirvāṇa is — empty, markless, quiescent, free of elaboration — all the things of the world are that too. Nirvāṇa was never a destination somewhere else. It is what this is, once nothing has been added.
And notice, finally, what the chapter does not claim. The three grades of student, the three vehicles, the pratyekabuddha alone in the forest after the Dharma has died out — Piṅgala keeps the whole architecture of the path standing. Emptiness has not dissolved the difference between the person who understands and the person who does not, or made practice pointless. What it has dissolved is the idea that anything along the way, including the understanding itself, is a thing one could own.
Chapter 19 · Examining Time 觀時品第十九
Six verses, and after the density of Chapter 18 they come as a relief: a short, exact demolition carried out with a single argument. The objector's position is a sophisticated one — he does not claim the three times exist independently, but precisely that they exist by depending on one another, which sounds like exactly what Nāgārjuna has been recommending all along. The chapter shows why mutual dependence is not the same thing as mutual establishment.
問曰：應有時，以因待故成。因有過去時，則有未來、現在時；因現在時，有過去、未來時；因未來時，有過去、現在時。上中下一異等法，亦相因待故有。
答曰：
Question: There must be time, since it is established by mutual dependence. In dependence upon there being a past time there are a future and a present time; in dependence upon the present time there are a past and a future time; in dependence upon the future time there are a past and a present time. And things such as high, middling, and low, or identity and difference, likewise exist by depending upon one another.
Answer:
若因過去時， 有未來現在；
未來及現在， 應在過去時。
If in dependence upon past time
there are a future and a present,
then the future and the present
must be inside past time.
若因過去時，有未來、現在時者，則過去時中應有未來、現在時。何以故？隨所因處有法成，是處應有是法。如因燈有明成，隨有燈處應有明。如是因過去時，成未來、現在時者，則過去時中應有未來、現在時。
若過去時中有未來、現在時者，則三時盡名過去時。何以故？未來、現在時在過去時中故。若一切時盡過去者，則無未來、現在時，盡過去故。若無未來、現在時，亦應無過去時。何以故？過去時因未來、現在時故名過去時。如因過去時成未來、現在時，如是亦應因未來、現在時成過去時。今無未來、現在時故，過去時亦應無。是故先說，因過去時成未來、現在時，是事不然。若謂過去時中無未來、現在時，而因過去時成未來、現在時。是事不然。何以故？
If in dependence upon past time there are a future and a present time, then future and present time must be present within past time. Why? Wherever a thing is established in dependence upon some place, in that place the thing must be. As light is established in dependence upon a lamp: wherever there is a lamp, there must be light. Just so, if future and present time are established in dependence upon past time, then future and present time must be within past time.
And if future and present time are within past time, then all three times are called past time. Why? Because future and present time are inside past time. And if all time is past, then there is no future and no present time, since all of it is past. And if there is no future and no present time, there must be no past time either. Why? Because past time is called past in dependence upon future and present time. Just as future and present time are established in dependence upon past time, so past time must be established in dependence upon future and present time — and since there is now no future and no present time, past time must be absent as well. Therefore what was said at the outset, that future and present time are established in dependence upon past time, will not do. And if you say that there are no future and present times within past time, and yet that future and present time are established in dependence upon past time, that will not do either. Why?
若過去時中， 無未來現在；
未來現在時， 云何因過去？
If within past time
there is no future and no present,
then how should future and present time
depend upon the past?
若未來、現在時不在過去時中者，云何因過去時成未來、現在時。何以故？若三時各異相，不應相因待成，如瓶衣等物各自別成不相因待。而今不因過去時，則未來、現在時不成。不因現在時，則過去、未來時不成。不因未來時，則過去、現在時不成。汝先說過去時中雖無未來、現在時，而因過去時成未來、現在時者。是事不然。
If future and present time are not within past time, how should future and present time be established in dependence upon past time? Why? If the three times each have their own distinct character, they cannot be established by depending upon one another — just as a pot and a cloth and such things are each established separately, without depending upon one another. Yet as things stand, without depending upon past time, future and present time are not established; without depending upon present time, past and future time are not established; without depending upon future time, past and present time are not established. What you said earlier — that although there are no future and present times within past time, future and present time are nonetheless established in dependence upon past time — will not do.
問曰：若不因過去時成未來、現在時，而有何咎？
答曰：
Question: And if future and present time are not established in dependence upon past time, what fault is there in that?
Answer:
不因過去時， 則無未來時，
亦無現在時， 是故無二時。
Not depending upon past time,
there is no future time
and no present time either;
and therefore the two times do not exist.
不因過去時，則不成未來、現在時。何以故？若不因過去時有現在時者，於何處有現在時？未來亦如是，於何處有未來時？是故不因過去時則無未來、現在時，如是相待有故，實無有時。
Not depending upon past time, future and present time are not established. Why? If there were a present time that did not depend upon past time, where would that present time be? And so with the future: where would that future time be? Therefore, not depending upon past time, there is no future and no present time. And since they exist in this way, by mutual dependence, there is in truth no time at all.
以如是義故， 則知餘二時，
上中下一異， 是等法皆無。
By this same reasoning
one knows the other two times,
and high, middling, low, identity and difference —
all such things do not exist.
以如是義故，當知餘未來現在亦應無，及上中下一異等諸法亦應皆無。如因上有中下，離上則無中下。若離上有中下，則不應相因待。因一故有異、因異故有一，若一實有，不應因異而有；若異實有，不應因一而有。如是等諸法，亦應如是破。
問曰：如有歲月日須臾等差別，故知有時。
答曰：
By this same reasoning one should know that the other two, the future and the present, must also be absent, and that things such as high, middling, and low, or identity and difference, must all be absent too. Just as it is in dependence upon "high" that there is a "middling" and a "low": apart from "high" there is no "middling" and no "low." And if there were a "middling" and a "low" apart from "high," then they would not depend upon one another. It is in dependence upon identity that there is difference, and in dependence upon difference that there is identity. If identity really existed, it would not have to exist in dependence upon difference; and if difference really existed, it would not have to exist in dependence upon identity. Things of this sort should all be refuted in the same way.
Question: Since there are distinctions such as year, month, day, and instant, one knows that time exists.
Answer:
時住不可得， 時去亦叵得，
時若不可得， 云何說時相？
因物故有時， 離物何有時？
物尚無所有， 何況當有時！
A time that stays cannot be found,
and a time that goes cannot be found either;
and if time cannot be found at all,
how can one speak of the marks of time?
It is because of things that there is time —
apart from things, what time could there be?
And things themselves have no existence:
how much less should there be time!
時若不住，不應可得，時住亦無。若時不可得，云何說時相？若無時相則無時。因物生故則名時，若離物則無時。上來種種因緣破諸物，物無故，何有時？
If time does not stay, it cannot be found; and a time that stays does not exist either. And if time cannot be found, how can one speak of the marks of time? And if there are no marks of time, there is no time. It is because things arise that we speak of time, and apart from things there is no time. All the reasoning above has broken things; and since there are no things, how should there be time?
The objector here is not naive, and it is important to see why. He is not claiming that time is a container sitting there independently. He is claiming something that sounds thoroughly Madhyamaka: the three times establish each other, the way "high" and "low" do, or "one" and "many." Past is past only relative to a present; future is future only relative to a now. Surely mutual dependence is the very thing this treatise has been recommending?
The reply turns on a distinction the objector has slid past. There is a difference between saying that our concepts of past, present, and future depend on one another — which nobody disputes — and saying that the past produces or establishes the other two as really existing things. Piṅgala pins it with the lamp: where a thing is established by something, there the thing must be found. Where there is a lamp there is light. So if the future is established by the past, the future must be somewhere in the past — and then, as the argument mercilessly unrolls, all three times are past, and since "past" only means anything by contrast with the other two, the past is gone as well. The alternative is that the future is not in the past, in which case the two have nothing to do with each other, and stand apart like a pot and a cloth on a shelf — each complete in itself, neither establishing anything.
Verse 6 is where the chapter lands, and it is the plainest sentence in the three chapters: 因物故有時，離物何有時 — it is because of things that there is time; apart from things, what time could there be? No one has ever met an hour. What we meet is a candle shortening, a shadow crossing a floor, a face in a mirror that is not the face of ten years ago. Time is read off change, the way length is read off things that have ends. Take away the changing things and the reading has nothing to be a reading of. And since eighteen chapters have now shown that the things themselves cannot be found as they seemed to be, the container we imagined they were sitting inside was never anything but the shape of their motion.
Which is worth pausing over before turning the page, because it is easy to hear as a loss. It is not a claim that nothing happens or that the past did not occur. It is a claim about where time lives. Not out there, a river we are carried down, indifferent to whether anything floats on it — but here, in the arising and passing of what is actually the case. The next chapter will take up the fruit and the ripening, and will need this result: for if there is no time in which a cause could sit and wait for its effect, then everything the treatise has said about deeds and their consequences has to be true in some way other than a temporal one.
Key Terms
| Term | Chinese | What it means here |
|---|---|---|
| cetanā — intention | 思 | The mental factor that initiates and directs. In the Abhidharma account of karma it is action proper; deeds of body and speech are what it issues into. |
| manifest and unmanifest act | 作／無作 | vijñapti and avijñapti: the deed as visibly performed, and the invisible residue that goes on following the doer after the doing is over. |
| the unperishing | 不失法 | An entity posited by some Abhidharma schools to bridge deed and result: morally colorless, it survives the perishing of the act like a promissory note surviving the goods bought on credit. Refuted at verse 20. |
| indeterminate | 無記 | Neither good nor bad — the moral category the "unperishing" was assigned to, since a record of a good deed is not itself a good deed. |
| self and what belongs to a self | 我／我所 | The pair Chapter 18 works on. The second is where the doctrine bites: every "mine" is a claim staked by an owner, and stands or falls with him. |
| the reality of things | 諸法實相 | Not a hidden true object beneath appearances, but how things are when nothing has been added. Defined at 18.7 as beyond mind and words, unarisen, unceasing, quiescent. |
| soul | 神 | Kumārajīva's word for the substantial self of the non-Buddhist schools (ātman, puruṣa). Piṅgala refutes it not metaphysically but evidentially, ground of belief by ground of belief. |
| pratyekabuddha | 辟支佛 | One who attains the path alone, in an age with no buddha and no surviving Dharma, on the strength of solitude and merit from former lives. |
| deathless nectar | 甘露味 | amṛta — the gods' draught that ends aging and death. Verse 18.11 makes the middle between identity and difference, permanence and annihilation, the true version of it. |