The Kashmiri Kṣatriya, and the Fourth Sect Opened

Examining what people of the time actually said, tenth. In the seventh year of Hongshi under the Later Qin [405 CE], there was a kṣatriya from India who crossed the sea and came to Chang'an. Hearing that Kumārajīva was expounding Mahāyāna learning, he brought the Treatise on Correct Contemplation and other such texts to question and test him on. Kumārajīva expounded and resolved his questions for him, and he received it with bowed head, praising it without end and unable to stop himself. He then addressed Kumārajīva, saying: "This brilliant light ought to be shining forth across India itself — how did it come to be that this very jewel was kept hidden away, out here in a border land?"

"While I was in India, I heard the various treatise-masters there deeply puzzled that Kumāralāta, a Hīnayāna scholar of Kashmir, should style himself 'the shining of the bright moon' — a one-sided intelligence and a narrow talent to which that image scarcely applies. And Harivarman, grieving for the sake of his own teacher, was wounded by his teacher's talent and troubled by his teacher's intelligence; this is why he composed this treatise, to discriminate the reality of really existing phenomena, and to make clear the provisional character of what depends on that reality — hence it is named the Satyasiddhi, 'establishing what is real.'" Testing the matter by this Indian kṣatriya's own words, both Harivarman and his teacher were, alike, Hīnayāna scholars.

Coming down to the time of Wenxuan, Prince and Minister of Works under the Qi dynasty — a man of sincere faith in the Three Jewels, who was repeatedly graced with auspicious signs — in the tenth month of the tenth year of Yongming under the Qi [492 CE], he invited more than five hundred renowned and virtuous monks to expound the teaching at Puhong Monastery. Wenxuan always took the Mahāyāna sūtras and treatises as the ford and shore by which the way is trodden, and as the pivotal mechanism of the true Dharma; yet he saw that later students were casting aside the root in favor of the branch, and so he had various Dharma masters abridge this Satyasiddhi treatise into nine fascicles, and commissioned Zhou Yong to compose a preface for it — fearing that an exclusive devotion to this lesser treatise might come to eclipse the Mahāyāna enterprise entirely.

From that time onward, down to Emperor Wu of Liang, the Mahāyāna was vigorously promoted, and the various masters of Satyasiddhi were pushed aside and broken apart — the record of this is too extensive to set down here in full.

Question: If, by these ten considerations, Satyasiddhi is proven to be Hīnayāna, how does it rank against the Abhidharma? Answer: A verse from Guṇavarman's surviving writings says: "The various treatises each have their own divergent starting-points, yet the principle of actual practice admits of no duality. Those who cling one-sidedly fall into disputes of right and wrong; those who have truly penetrated it have no quarrel with one another." Again, the Treatise on the Great Perfection of Wisdom says there are four gates: first, the gate of Abhidharma; second, the gate of emptiness; third, the Piṭaka gate, meaning "basket" or "repository"; fourth, the gate of neither emptiness nor existence. Without the skillful means of prajñā, studying the Abhidharma gate leads one to fall into the view of existence; studying the gate of emptiness leads one to fall into the view of emptiness; studying the Piṭaka gate leads one to fall into the view of both emptiness and existence at once; studying the gate of neither emptiness nor existence leads one to fall into a treatise of sheer folly. But should one attain prajñā, the mind is without defilement or attachment, and one adapts to circumstance in transforming beings, penetrating the way and benefiting others without any of these gates standing in conflict with the rest. Satyasiddhi and the Abhidharma, however, each cling respectively to existence and to emptiness, pushing each other aside in mutual rejection — obstructing the way and increasing views, both alike losing the Buddha's true intent.

Question: Surely it is only by comprehending emptiness and cutting off the fetters that one attains the path at all — how could a mind that merely takes existence as its object ever set one apart from the ordinary run of beings? On this basis, it may be known that the Abhidharma runs contrary to the true tradition, while Satyasiddhi has actually grasped the principle. Answer: If it is said that seeing emptiness alone accomplishes sagehood, and that seeing existence never sets one apart from the ordinary, then the entire teaching-gate of the Three Baskets ought never to have produced anyone who attained the path at all — and Śākyamuni's whole transformative teaching of the Hīnayāna would have been an empty and futile construction from the start, waiting idly for Satyasiddhi to arise long afterward before any great benefit could finally occur. How could this possibly be so?

Question: The Abhidharma makes clear only the emptiness of the person, while Satyasiddhi makes clear the twin emptiness in full — how, then, can it be said that there is no difference of superior and inferior between the two treatises? Answer: Within the Hīnayāna, three grades may be distinguished. First, those who attain neither emptiness at all — as the Vātsīputrīya school holds that, where the four great elements combine, there exists the eye-faculty as a real phenomenon, and that, where the five aggregates combine, there exists, additionally, a real person distinct from them. These are persons of the lowest faculty. Second, the followers of the Sarvāstivāda, who attain only the emptiness of the person but not the emptiness of phenomena — these are persons of the middling faculty. Third, the followers of the Sautrāntika and of Harivarman, who attain both emptinesses in full — these are persons of the highest faculty. Measured by the depth of their sense of emptiness, the Abhidharma is thus the inferior teaching within the Hīnayāna, and Satyasiddhi is the superior teaching within the Hīnayāna.

Question: The Treatise on the Great Perfection of Wisdom says that after the Buddha's parinirvāṇa, [his followers] divided into two groups: one that believes only in the emptiness of the person but not the emptiness of phenomena, and one that believes in the twin emptiness of both person and phenomena together. This gives only two groups — how, then, can there properly be three? Answer: The Vātsīputrīya school, on entering true contemplation, does see the emptiness of the self, even while holding that, on emerging into the conventional truth, there exists, distinctly, a real substance of the person. Nāgārjuna's own division into two groups is made specifically with reference to the moment of entering contemplation — this is why he speaks of only two, not three.

Question: That the three treatises rebuke the outsiders and the Abhidharma is fair enough — but Nāgārjuna arose first, and Harivarman came forth only afterward, separated from him by a great span of time. How, then, can the earlier be said to refute the later at all? Answer: Wherever a person falls into the same clinging and attachment, that very attachment is thereby refuted — what does it matter which came first and which came after? If it were held that an earlier treatise cannot refute a later confusion, then by the same reasoning an ancient prescription ought to be powerless against a disease that only appears today, and the art of the physician Bian Que would be of no use whatsoever to later ages. [Yet this is plainly false.]

Question: If Dharmaśrī and Harivarman composed their lesser treatises in order to make the Three Baskets understood, while Aśvaghoṣa and Nāgārjuna composed the great teachings in order to propagate the broad Mahāyāna canon, then the vast and the narrow each flow in their own separate channel — what need is there, then, for either to refute the other? Answer: When the Buddha taught the Hīnayāna, it was, from the very outset, meant to point toward the great. Those who cling stubbornly to the dark hold on to the pointing finger and forget the moon it points to — and the sūtras themselves already rebuke this very error. This is why the authors of these treatises simply follow the Buddha's own lead in doing the same.

Question: There are those who say that the Satyasiddhi-śāstra draws on the great in order to expound the small — what fault is there in holding this view? Answer: This has already been made clear above; such confusion inevitably follows from it, and it is worth restating once more here. To "draw on the great in order to expound the small" is, in the end, to gather in neither the small nor the great: advancing, one does not gallop forth on the great white ox-cart; retreating, one has already lost one's harnessing to the goat-cart and the deer-cart alike. The charge of being a mere "mule treatise" — belonging fully to neither parent tradition — has stood confirmed against this reading for a long time now.

Rebuking the mistaken grasp of the Mahāyāna, fourth. First, establishing the position; second, refuting it. There is a Mahāyāna master who says: "The four schools of India and the three mysteries of China are alike outer teachings. The Abhidharma and Satyasiddhi are simply Hīnayāna — their exposition of principle is incomplete, and what their texts contain falls short. Since they already obstruct the Mahāyāna, reason demands that they be refuted. But as for the vast, all-encompassing tradition of the broad Mahāyāna canon, the very track followed by the whole assembly of sages — its teaching is called the full and complete script, and its principle is said to be without remainder. To believe in it is to gain blessing without limit; to slander it is to incur a crime greater than any other. One need only submit one's whole being to it as sweet dew, and bear it upon one's head as the bridge to the Dharma. It ought not to be refuted at all."

Question: If it is truly a night-luminous pearl, then indeed it ought to be received with bowed head — yet I fear that much counterfeit treasure has been mixed in among it, and it must therefore be sifted and refined. If you maintain it is entirely without flaw, then set out its essentials for me. Answer: The Mahāyāna is vast and profound, and cannot be made fully clear in every particular; but governing its whole mechanism, two central ideas may be briefly set forth. First, that in discriminating the teachings, nothing goes beyond the five periods. Second, that in setting oneself apart from the ordinary run of beings, the guiding doctrine returns to the two truths.

As for what is meant by the five periods: long ago, when the Nirvāṇa Sūtra first crossed south of the Yangtze, the śramaṇa Huiguan of Daochang Monastery in the Song dynasty accordingly composed a preface for the sūtra. In it he briefly classified the Buddha's teaching into two categories in all. The first is the sudden teaching — that is, the teaching of the Avataṃsaka type, which reveals principle in its entirety solely for the sake of bodhisattvas. The second, running from the Deer Park at the very start to the twin śāla trees at the very end, proceeds from shallow to deep, and is called the gradual teaching. Within the gradual teaching, five periods are opened up in turn. First, the differentiated teaching of the three vehicles: for śrāvakas he taught the four truths, for pratyekabuddhas he expounded the twelve links of dependent origination, and for Mahāyāna practitioners he made clear the six perfections — the causal practice differing in each case and the fruit attained likewise differing; this is called the differentiated teaching of the three vehicles. Second, the Perfection of Wisdom, which transforms all three capacities in common; this is called the common teaching of the three vehicles. Third, the Vimalakīrti and Sī-yì sūtras, which praise the bodhisattvas and press down the śrāvakas; this is called the teaching of praise and depreciation. Fourth, the Lotus Sūtra, which brings the three vehicles together into a single ultimate destination; this is called the teaching of common return. Fifth, the Nirvāṇa Sūtra, called the teaching of eternal abiding. From the five periods onward, although there have been various modifications proposed, they all fall within this same basic scheme. Though the teaching unfolds across five periods, it never departs from the two truths: the three kinds of the provisional constitute the conventional truth, and the four kinds of the forgotten constitute the ultimate truth; and it is by reconciling these four kinds of the forgotten that the noble ones of the three vehicles come to be.

Refuting the mistaken grasp, second. First calling the five periods to account, next challenging the two truths. Question: Given that there are five periods, how are they to be divided between Hīnayāna and Mahāyāna? Answer: The first period is Hīnayāna; the latter four are Mahāyāna.

Question: As a matter of principle, does the Mahāyāna exist, or does it not exist? If it does exist, this is itself a view of existence. If you say it does not exist, then what, in that case, is even being established here? Furthermore, if it is held that "there is a great" set apart from and different from "a small," then there must equally be "a small" set apart from and different from "a great" — and this is called holding two views at once. The Larger Perfection of Wisdom Sūtra says: "Wherever there are two, there is neither the path nor its fruit." The Nirvāṇa Sūtra says: "The fool takes brightness and its absence to be two separate things." Moreover, if the Mahāyāna truly exists as a real thing, this constitutes something apprehended — and whoever apprehends something in this way belongs to Māra's own retinue, and is not a disciple of the Buddha. Moreover, whatever is thus apprehended neither moves nor departs, and possesses no sense of being a vehicle at all — it cannot properly be called a vehicle. Moreover, if the Mahāyāna's own central teaching is that birth-and-death is permanently cut off, this is precisely what is called the view of annihilation; and if nirvāṇa is held to be permanent, this is precisely what is called the view of eternalism. So it would be nothing but annihilationism and eternalism combined — where, in that case, would there be anything great about it at all?