Three Conditions That Decide a Fall to the Evil Destinies
Continuing directly from fascicle 58's foundational account of affliction defilement's five establishing aspects, the treatise completes its extensive analysis of how affliction actually operates, closes the entire topic with its own summary verse, and then opens karma defilement, working through all ten unwholesome karma-paths in exhaustive detail, their defining factors, their concrete methods, and their underlying motives, from a bodhisattva's compassionate exception to killing down to why one particular denial alone is singled out and named wrong view.
1. Section: Which Afflictions Generate Karma, and the Three Conditions for a Fall
Fascicle 58 closed having established affliction defilement through five aspects, its intrinsic nature, its specific varieties, its defiled-and-pure distinction, its confusion-and-severance distinction, and its antidote distinction, and having correlated this entire account against the sutras' own varied imagery. The treatise now turns to a considerably more extensive analysis of affliction defilement's own detailed workings, opening with a direct question: among the ten root afflictions, greed, hatred, conceit, ignorance, doubt, self-view, view-attachment, precept-attachment, extreme-view, and wrong view, how many are actually capable of generating karma, and how many are not? The answer is that every one of them can. Yet a crucial qualification follows: only when these afflictions, whether craving-type or view-type, manifest with real force and vehemence are they capable of generating karma strong enough to carry a being down into the evil destinies, never when they manifest merely through a passing lapse of mindfulness, since even a lapse of mindfulness that generates some affliction is comparatively weak, easily noticed, and easily corrected, and the karma it generates lacks the power to bring about such a fall. Karma capable of leading to the evil destinies, moreover, arises specifically from afflictions generated through discrimination, the very afflictions severed at the path of seeing, rather than from innate afflictions arising spontaneously and severed only gradually through cultivation. As fascicle 58 already explained, three conditions together determine whether such discrimination-arisen affliction in the desire realm will definitely lead to the evil destinies: cultivating it extensively, taking it seriously and continuously as though it were a virtue, never perceiving its faults or dangers, and indulging it without restraint; using this very affliction as the basis for unwholesome bodily, verbal, and mental conduct, both committing it and causing it to grow; and using this affliction to cut off another being's own wholesome roots while implanting unwholesome ones in their place — when an affliction is accompanied by all three conditions together, it becomes forceful enough to determine a fall into the evil destinies and the ripening of its corresponding painful fruit.
問：貪等十煩惱幾能發業？幾不能發？答：一切能發。若諸煩惱猛利現行，方能發起往惡趣業，非諸失念而現行者。又分別起能發此業，非任運起。
Question: among the ten afflictions, greed and the rest, how many can generate karma, and how many cannot? Answer: all can generate it. Only when these afflictions manifest with force and vehemence are they able to generate karma leading to the evil destinies, never when they manifest merely through a lapse of mindfulness. Also, it is discrimination-arisen affliction that can generate this karma, not affliction arising spontaneously.
Master Cháng Bǎi treats the distinction between forceful manifestation and a mere lapse of mindfulness as genuinely reassuring for any sincere practitioner prone to occasional lapses: an isolated moment of irritation or careless craving, quickly noticed and quickly released, simply does not carry the same karmic weight as affliction cultivated deliberately, indulged without restraint, and used as a platform for harming others' own wholesome growth. He highlights the three conditions determining a fall to the evil destinies as this section's own practical checklist, less a doctrine about cosmic bookkeeping than a description of what habitual, self-justifying, other-harming affliction actually does to a person over time, and by extension a clear indication of exactly what sincere practice is meant to interrupt before it ever reaches that point.
2. Section: Three Marks Every Affliction Shares
The treatise next asks how many marks belong to affliction in general, answering that there are three in brief: its own particular mark, its mark held in common with every other affliction, and its distinguishing mark. Its own particular mark is whatever nature belongs specifically to greed, to hatred, and so forth, each affliction possessing a character entirely its own — greed, for instance, arising through associating with unwholesome companions, hearing improper teaching, and attending incorrectly, or else through a mere lapse of mindfulness, taking as its very essence a defiled attachment, whether discriminated or undiscriminated, to agreeable objects both external and internal; hatred arising through these same conditions, taking as its essence instead a defiled aversion toward disagreeable objects both external and internal. Its mark held in common with every other affliction is that all afflictions, without exception, share the single character of inner unrest: wherever affliction is genuinely present, the mind cannot be still, its own thoughts scattering and proliferating, unable to settle into concentration, and thereby obstructed from ever accomplishing the noble path — this shared quality of restlessness being the one mark every affliction, however different their own particular natures, ultimately holds in common.
問：諸煩惱有幾相？答：略有三相。一、自相，二、共相，三、差別相。自相者，謂貪瞋等各各自性所攝相。共相者，謂諸煩惱無有差別，一切皆同不寂靜相。
Question: how many marks does affliction have? Answer: in brief, three. First, its own particular mark. Second, its mark held in common. Third, its distinguishing mark. Its own particular mark is whatever nature belongs specifically to greed, hatred, and the rest, each falling under its own essential character. Its mark held in common is that all afflictions, without distinction, share alike the single mark of being without inner stillness.
Master Cháng Bǎi treats the shared mark of inner unrest as a genuinely useful diagnostic tool for a practitioner uncertain whether some particular mental state actually counts as affliction: rather than needing to correctly classify every subtle mind-state into its proper technical category first, one can simply notice whether the mind, right now, has lost its own stillness, since that single quality, present without exception across every named affliction from the crudest to the subtlest, quietly gives the whole game away regardless of which particular affliction happens to be responsible. He notes that the treatise's own next step, the distinguishing mark that sets each affliction apart from the others despite this shared restlessness, is still to come.
3. Section: Twenty-Six Names, Seven Angles — Affliction's Distinguishing Marks
The treatise turns to affliction's third mark, its distinguishing mark, itself of two further kinds. The gate-distinguishing mark refers to the very door, so to speak, through which affliction enters and troubles a being, and accounts for why the same underlying affliction receives so many different names across the twenty-six terms already catalogued in an earlier stage of the treatise: it is called a knot because it binds a being together with suffering; a bond because, once present, it keeps a being from freely practicing virtue as they wish; a latent tendency because its own seed follows a being everywhere, ready to bring about rebirth's fruit throughout the three realms and five destinies; a secondary affliction because it inverts and defiles the very mind it touches; and an entanglement because it repeatedly manifests and coils itself around a being, robbing them of their own freedom — each name capturing a different functional angle on what is, at root, the very same affliction. The turning-distinguishing mark, by contrast, refers to the many different ways affliction actually arises and unfolds: through the turning of its own latent seed, through the turning of whatever object it takes, through the turning of its active manifestation, through the turning of its own grade, whether mild, moderate, or intense, through the turning of whether it arises forcefully through discrimination or merely spontaneously, through the turning of cause and effect, its seed giving rise to manifestation or its manifestation giving rise to further habituated result, and through the turning of confused conduct, the very way a deluded mind moves through its own activity.
差別相者，復有二種。一、門差別相，二、轉差別相。門差別相者，謂結、縛、隨眠、隨煩惱、纏等，如本地分已說。轉差別相者，謂隨眠轉故、所緣轉故、現行轉故、品差別轉故、力無力轉故、因果轉故、迷行轉故。
The distinguishing mark is further of two kinds. First, the gate-distinguishing mark. Second, the turning-distinguishing mark. The gate-distinguishing mark refers to knot, bond, latent tendency, secondary affliction, entanglement, and so forth, as already explained in the Basic Section. The turning-distinguishing mark refers to the turning of latent tendency, the turning of its object, the turning of manifestation, the turning of grade-differentiation, the turning of force or forcelessness, the turning of cause and effect, and the turning of confused conduct.
Master Cháng Bǎi treats the twenty-six names for affliction as proof that the tradition never regarded naming as a merely academic exercise: each term, knot, bond, latent tendency, secondary affliction, entanglement, isolates one specific consequence affliction produces, so that a practitioner encountering any one of these words in the sutras can immediately recognize which particular danger is being pointed to, binding to suffering, restricting freedom of action, or persistently coiling around the mind, rather than treating them as interchangeable synonyms. He notes that the seven angles of turning-distinguishing mark, still to be explained one by one, promise an even more detailed picture of affliction's own internal mechanics, tracking not just what affliction is called but exactly how it moves from dormant seed to active manifestation and back again.
4. Section: Eighteen Kinds of Latent Tendency, and Who Can Never Be Severed of Them
The treatise now details the turning of latent tendency itself, naming eighteen kinds in brief, arranged as eight paired or grouped contrasts. Latent tendency pursuing one's own realm belongs to whichever of the three realms a being is presently born into, while latent tendency pursuing another realm follows a being even after they have been reborn into a higher or lower realm, the seeds of the realm left behind still trailing along. Damaged latent tendency has been weakened and suppressed, unable to manifest, through a mundane path of meditative cultivation that has freed a being from desire for some lower ground; undamaged latent tendency, whether belonging to a realm already freed of desire or one not yet freed, remains fully intact. Increasing latent tendency belongs to one's own present realm, its own seed growing ever stronger through repeated habituation in that realm's own activity; non-increasing latent tendency belongs to some other realm one is not presently reborn into, and so is never repeatedly habituated or strengthened. Complete latent tendency is what an ordinary, unawakened being still carries in full, every seed entirely intact and unsevered; incomplete latent tendency is what a noble learner, from the first fruit up through the approach to the fourth, still carries, having already severed a portion while some innate affliction still remains. Destructible latent tendency belongs to those of the three vehicles' own uncontaminated potential, capable of reaching final nirvana and thereby capable of severing every one of their own latent tendencies; indestructible latent tendency belongs instead to a certain class of beings lacking any wholesome root of that uncontaminated potential at all, whose latent tendencies, the treatise states plainly, cannot be severed.
復次，隨眠轉相略有十八。一、隨逐自境隨眠，二、隨逐他境隨眠，三、被損隨眠，四、不被損隨眠，五、隨增隨眠，六、不隨增隨眠，七、具分隨眠，八、不具分隨眠，九、可害隨眠，十、不可害隨眠。隨逐自境隨眠者，謂三界中自地所攝隨眠。隨逐他境隨眠者，謂生上下地，下上煩惱所逐隨眠。被損隨眠者，謂世間離欲下地隨眠。不被損隨眠者，謂已離欲、或未離欲自地隨眠。隨增隨眠者，謂自地隨眠。不隨增隨眠者，謂他地隨眠。具分隨眠者，謂諸異生所有隨眠。不具分隨眠者，謂諸有學非異生者所有隨眠。可害隨眠者，謂般涅槃法所有隨眠。不可害隨眠者，謂不般涅槃法所有隨眠。
Moreover, the turning of latent tendency is, in brief, of eighteen kinds. First, latent tendency pursuing one's own realm. Second, latent tendency pursuing another realm. Third, damaged latent tendency. Fourth, undamaged latent tendency. Fifth, increasing latent tendency. Sixth, non-increasing latent tendency. Seventh, complete latent tendency. Eighth, incomplete latent tendency. Ninth, destructible latent tendency. Tenth, indestructible latent tendency. Latent tendency pursuing one's own realm is that belonging to one's own ground within the three realms. Latent tendency pursuing another realm is that of the lower or higher afflictions still following one born into a higher or lower ground. Damaged latent tendency is the latent tendency of a lower ground freed of desire through a mundane path. Undamaged latent tendency is the latent tendency of one's own ground, whether already freed of desire or not yet freed. Increasing latent tendency is latent tendency of one's own ground. Non-increasing latent tendency is latent tendency of another ground. Complete latent tendency is all the latent tendency belonging to ordinary beings. Incomplete latent tendency is the latent tendency belonging to noble learners who are not ordinary beings. Destructible latent tendency is the latent tendency of those with the potential for final nirvana. Indestructible latent tendency is the latent tendency of those without the potential for final nirvana.
Master Cháng Bǎi treats the pairing of complete and incomplete latent tendency as a precise map of the spiritual path's own progress: an ordinary being carries every seed entirely intact, while a noble learner, having already broken through at the path of seeing, carries a steadily shrinking remainder, the very shape of the path itself traceable in how much of this eighteen-fold inventory still applies to a given practitioner at a given stage. He treats the distinction between destructible and indestructible latent tendency as one of the treatise's own most doctrinally weighty and carefully guarded statements, since it touches directly on the difficult question of whether every being without exception possesses the potential for final liberation, and notes that later Yogācāra masters would debate this very point at great length, some reading it as describing only a temporary, not a permanent, condition of certain beings.
5. Section: Waking and Sleeping Seeds — Completing the Eighteen
The treatise completes its eighteenfold catalogue of latent tendency. Superior latent tendency belongs to whichever affliction dominates a given person's own temperament, some beings carrying an especially forceful seed of craving and so being called craving-natured, others carrying an especially forceful seed of hatred, delusion, discursive restlessness, conceit, or doubt, and so being called by that affliction's own name in turn. Equal latent tendency belongs instead to those whose various afflictions all carry roughly the same, unremarkable strength, no single one standing out above the rest. Inferior latent tendency belongs to those whose afflictions overall are simply faint, thin as dust rather than thick. Awakened latent tendency is the very seed that has, upon meeting suitable conditions, actually given rise to its own active manifestation, precisely as a seed sprouting into a sapling might be likened to something finally waking up; unawakened latent tendency, by contrast, is the seed still slumbering, unmanifested, within the storehouse consciousness, its own causal power fully intact even while dormant. Latent tendency capable of generating much suffering belongs to the desire realm, productive of the suffering of pain, the suffering of change, and the suffering of formations alike; latent tendency capable of generating only little suffering belongs to the form and formless realms, whose own afflictions, faint and largely inert, generate only the suffering of change within pleasant feeling and the suffering of formations within neutral feeling, far milder than the desire realm's own outright pain. And latent tendency incapable of generating suffering at all belongs to bodhisattvas of the eighth ground and beyond, who, having attained forbearance with respect to the birthlessness of all things, have permanently suppressed every affliction's own manifestation, its power to draw them back into the cyclic suffering of the three realms entirely spent, sustained instead only by their own great vow of compassion until the very last instant before buddhahood, within diamond-like absorption, finally severs every remaining seed.
增上隨眠者，謂貪等行所有隨眠。平等隨眠者，謂等分行所有隨眠。下劣隨眠者，謂薄塵行所有隨眠。覺悟隨眠者，謂諸纏果與纏俱轉隨眠。不覺悟隨眠者，謂離諸纏而恆隨逐隨眠。能生多苦隨眠者，謂欲界隨眠。能生少苦隨眠者，謂色無色界隨眠。不能生苦隨眠者，謂得自在菩薩所有隨眠。
Superior latent tendency is the latent tendency belonging to those whose conduct is dominated by craving and the like. Equal latent tendency is the latent tendency belonging to those of evenly balanced conduct. Inferior latent tendency is the latent tendency belonging to those of thin, dust-like conduct. Awakened latent tendency is the latent tendency whose manifestation-fruit turns together with its own manifestation. Unawakened latent tendency is the latent tendency that, apart from any manifestation, still constantly follows along. Latent tendency generating much suffering is the latent tendency of the desire realm. Latent tendency generating little suffering is the latent tendency of the form and formless realms. Latent tendency generating no suffering is the latent tendency belonging to bodhisattvas who have attained mastery.
Master Cháng Bǎi treats the image of a seed "waking up" into its own manifestation as a genuinely precise way of describing something practitioners can actually observe in their own minds: an old, familiar pattern of craving or irritation that seemed dormant for months can suddenly stir the instant a suitable trigger appears, exactly as though it had merely been asleep rather than gone. He highlights the eighth-ground bodhisattva's suffering-free latent tendency as the treatise's own remarkable description of a being who still, technically, carries affliction, yet whose own great compassionate vow has so thoroughly repurposed whatever residual seed remains that it no longer has any power left to draw them back into ordinary cyclic suffering at all, a condition he notes as pointing toward buddhahood's own final, complete severing still to come.
6. Section: Why an Arhat's Body Still Differs From Their Own Severed Seeds
The treatise now turns from latent tendency itself to the broader notion of coarse-heaviness, the very quality of incapacity that latent tendency's own intrinsic nature is said to bear, asking first whether affliction-class coarse-heaviness actually differs from the aggregates and other conditioned phenomena it accompanies, or is simply one and the same thing. The answer is that they do indeed differ, and the reason is direct: an arhat has permanently destroyed every coarse-heaviness belonging to affliction, every discrimination-arisen and every innate affliction-seed alike entirely severed, and yet that very arhat's own continuing stream of aggregates, form, feeling, perception, formations, and consciousness, has not thereby been cut off at all, continuing on exactly as before until the natural end of that lifetime — proof enough that affliction's own coarse-heaviness and the conditioned aggregates it once accompanied are genuinely two different things, not a single, inseparable whole. Turning next to coarse-heaviness in its own right, the treatise names eighteen kinds in brief: intrinsic ripening-coarseness, intrinsic affliction-coarseness, intrinsic karma-coarseness, affliction-hindrance coarseness, karma-hindrance coarseness, ripening-hindrance coarseness, hindrance-coarseness of the five obstructions, coarseness of improper discursive thought, coarseness of sorrow and distress, coarseness of fear, coarseness of toilsome exertion, coarseness of food and drink, coarseness of sleep and dreams, coarseness of sexual desire, coarseness of the body's own elemental imbalance, coarseness of the changes brought by time, coarseness of dying itself, and coarseness that pervades everything without exception — a rich and wide-ranging catalogue the treatise now proceeds to unpack one by one.
問：如說麤重體性名隨眠，此煩惱品麤重望彼諸行，當言有異？為不異耶？答：當言有異。何以故？由阿羅漢永害一切煩惱麤重，而諸行相續猶未斷絕故。問：有幾麤重攝諸麤重？答：略有十八。一、自性異熟麤重，二、自性煩惱麤重，三、自性業麤重，四、煩惱障麤重，五、業障麤重，六、異熟障麤重，七、蓋麤重，八、不正尋思麤重，九、愁惱麤重，十、怖畏麤重，十一、劬勞麤重，十二、飲食麤重，十三、眠夢麤重，十四、婬欲麤重，十五、界不平等麤重，十六、時分變異麤重，十七、終沒麤重，十八、遍行麤重。
Question: as it is said that the very nature of coarse-heaviness is called latent tendency, does this affliction-class coarse-heaviness differ from those conditioned formations, or not? Answer: it should be said that they differ. Why? Because an arhat has permanently destroyed every affliction-class coarse-heaviness, and yet the continuity of those conditioned formations has still not been cut off. Question: how many kinds of coarse-heaviness comprise every coarse-heaviness there is? Answer: in brief, eighteen. First, intrinsic ripening-coarseness. Second, intrinsic affliction-coarseness. Third, intrinsic karma-coarseness. Fourth, affliction-hindrance coarseness. Fifth, karma-hindrance coarseness. Sixth, ripening-hindrance coarseness. Seventh, coarseness of the obstructions. Eighth, coarseness of improper discursive thought. Ninth, coarseness of sorrow and distress. Tenth, coarseness of fear. Eleventh, coarseness of toilsome exertion. Twelfth, coarseness of food and drink. Thirteenth, coarseness of sleep and dreams. Fourteenth, coarseness of sexual desire. Fifteenth, coarseness of elemental imbalance. Sixteenth, coarseness of the changes of time. Seventeenth, coarseness of dying. Eighteenth, coarseness that is pervasive.
Master Cháng Bǎi treats the arhat's still-continuing body as this section's own clearest possible proof that severing affliction and dissolving the body are two entirely separate accomplishments: a being can genuinely finish the deepest work there is, every affliction-seed permanently gone, and still spend the remainder of an ordinary lifetime eating, aging, and eventually dying exactly like anyone else, the difference invisible from the outside and entirely a matter of what no longer stirs within. He notes that this newly opened eighteenfold catalogue of coarse-heaviness reaches considerably further than the earlier, narrower discussion of affliction's own coarse-heaviness in fascicle 58, extending now into ordinary bodily and circumstantial burdens, food, sleep, fear, toil, even the sheer passage of time, as areas the treatise is about to show are themselves shaped by coarse-heaviness in their own right.
7. Section: From the Five Heinous Crimes to "No Samadhi in Old Age"
The treatise defines its remaining kinds of coarse-heaviness, ranging from the gravest to the most ordinary. Karma-hindrance coarseness belongs specifically to the five heinous deeds, killing one's father, killing one's mother, killing an arhat, causing schism in the harmonious monastic community, or shedding a buddha's blood, deeds so grave that they leave a being simply incapable of cultivating calming and insight or attaining the noble path at all, unlike the far lighter karma an ordinary person commits. Ripening-hindrance coarseness is the incapacity built directly into one's own present result-body, an innate dullness of mind or weakness of the senses inherited from past karma that leaves a family, sometimes, devoting its entire life merely to managing an inherited condition rather than to study or practice. Hindrance-coarseness of the five obstructions is the covering cast by craving, hatred, torpor and sleepiness, restlessness and worry, and doubt over the mind's own capacity for wholesome states. Coarseness of improper discursive thought is the disturbed, defiling movement of the eight kinds of wrong thinking, thoughts of desire, harm, kinsfolk, homeland, and the rest, unsettling the mind's own stillness. Sorrow, fear, toilsome exertion, and the extremes of over- or under-eating each, in their own way, leave body and mind without the capacity to sustain practice; sleep and dreams leave the body outside one's own control and the mind dulled; sexual desire exhausts body and mind alike; imbalance among the body's own four elements produces restlessness, swelling, breathlessness, or rigidity; the changes brought by time are simply aging itself, from which arises the old saying that samadhi does not come easily in old age; dying is the disordering of every faculty as the four elements finally dissolve at life's very end; and pervasive coarseness is nothing other than the suffering of formations itself, running through pleasant, painful, and neutral feeling alike, since no conditioned state, however momentarily comfortable, escapes its own constant, restless changeability. All eighteen, the treatise confirms, fall entirely within the two broader kinds of coarse-heaviness already explained in the previous fascicle, outflow-coarseness belonging to affliction itself, and outflow-possessing coarseness belonging to the ripened, habituated body that even a fully liberated arhat still, for a time, continues to carry.
業障麤重，是指殺父、殺母、殺阿羅漢、破合和僧、出佛身血等五無間業使令有情沒有堪能性修止觀、得聖道。異熟障麤重，是果報上的麤重，滿業的麤重。蓋麤重，蓋即蓋覆之義。不正尋思麤重，不正尋思是指不正思惟、不合道理的分別心。時分變異麤重，時分變異是指老了、退化了，老的時候身心退化，不能隨心意而轉，因此有人說：老來無三昧。遍行麤重者：此謂行苦。應知遍行一切若樂受中、若苦受中、若不苦不樂受中故。如是麤重，如前應知。
Karma-hindrance coarseness refers to the five heinous deeds, killing one's father, killing one's mother, killing an arhat, causing schism in the harmonious community, and shedding a buddha's blood, which leave a being without the capacity to cultivate calming and insight or attain the noble path. Ripening-hindrance coarseness is coarseness in the ripened result, the coarseness of one's fulfilling karma. Coarseness of the obstructions refers to the meaning of covering. Coarseness of improper discursive thought refers to improper thinking, discrimination not in accord with reason. Coarseness of the changes of time refers to aging and decline; when old, body and mind decline and no longer follow the will as they once did, and so it is said that there is no samadhi in old age. Pervasive coarseness is the suffering of formations. It should be known that it pervades pleasant feeling, painful feeling, and neutral feeling alike. Such coarseness should be understood as already explained before.
Master Cháng Bǎi treats this eighteenfold catalogue as a deliberate widening of the lens: where the earlier discussion in fascicle 58 spoke only of affliction's own coarseness, this new list ranges across the five heinous crimes at one extreme and the mundane friction of hunger, sleep, and aging at the other, showing that "coarse-heaviness" names not one narrow technical phenomenon but the entire spectrum of incapacity, moral, karmic, and simply physical, that keeps a being from sustained practice. He highlights the pervasive coarseness of the suffering of formations as the treatise's own reminder that even a moment of genuine pleasure is never actually exempt, since its own restless, ever-changing nature is present within it from the very start, whether or not that fact happens to be noticed in the moment.
8. Section: Seven Ways a Confused Mind Moves
The treatise briefly notes several further turnings of affliction, referring back to earlier discussions for their full detail: the turning of object and manifestation will be explained extensively in its own proper place further ahead; the turning of grade-differentiation, mild, moderate, and intense, should be understood exactly as already explained under the skillful understanding of the aggregates; and the turning of force or forcelessness should likewise be understood as already explained in the Basic Section, affliction arising with real force when driven by close association with unwholesome companions, hearing improper teaching, and attending incorrectly, but arising without force when it is merely a spontaneous lapse of mindfulness, more habit than deliberate act. The turning of cause and effect notes that affliction, karma, and rebirth alike all take ignorance as their root cause, and that the very result these three produce becomes, in its own turn, a further cause for renewed affliction, though the treatise is careful to specify that only unwholesome affliction within the desire realm actually ripens into such a result, other neutral or wholesome states never doing so. The treatise then turns to a seventh and final turning, the turning of confused conduct, already named in seven kinds in an earlier discussion: wrongly understanding, failing to understand, uncertainly understanding, wrongly understanding with clinging attachment, being rooted in a particular cause, arising from a particular fear, and arising spontaneously. Taking up the first three of these in turn, wrongly understanding conduct belongs to self-view, extreme-view, and wrong view together, each generating a mistaken grasp of what is actually known, confused specifically about the four noble truths; failing to understand conduct belongs to ignorance alone, the simple absence of any clear grasp at all; and uncertainly understanding conduct belongs to doubt, a mind caught wavering between two paths, unable to settle whether the four truths are genuinely so or not.
復次，所緣、現行二轉，於其自處當廣宣說。品差別轉，當知如前蘊善巧說。力無力轉，當知如前本地分說。因果轉者，謂煩惱業生皆以煩惱為因。果亦如是，隨應當知。欲界一分不善煩惱，有異熟果。應知所餘，無異熟果。迷行轉者，如本地分七種已列。謂薩迦耶見、邊執見、邪見，此三於所知境起邪了行，於四聖諦迷行轉故。無明一種，是不了行。疑，是了不了行。
Moreover, the turning of object and the turning of manifestation shall be explained extensively in their own proper place. The turning of grade-differentiation should be understood as already explained under the skillful understanding of the aggregates. The turning of force and forcelessness should be understood as already explained in the Basic Section. The turning of cause and effect is that affliction, karma, and rebirth all take affliction as their cause, and the result should likewise be understood accordingly. A portion of unwholesome affliction in the desire realm has a ripened result; the rest should be known to have no ripened result. The turning of confused conduct is as the seven kinds already listed in the Basic Section. Self-view, extreme-view, and wrong view, these three, generate wrongly understanding conduct with respect to what is known, being confused with respect to the four noble truths. Ignorance alone is failing-to-understand conduct. Doubt is uncertainly-understanding conduct.
Master Cháng Bǎi treats the cause-and-effect turning's closing qualification, that only unwholesome desire-realm affliction actually ripens into karmic result, as an important safeguard against over-generalizing: not every mental state technically classed as affliction carries the same weight, and the treatise is careful throughout to distinguish affliction that merely disturbs the mind from affliction forceful and unwholesome enough to actually shape a future rebirth. He highlights the sevenfold confused-conduct turning, now being unpacked one careful step at a time, as the treatise's own increasingly fine-grained map of exactly how a mind can fail to understand the four truths, whether through outright wrong belief, sheer blankness, or simple unresolved uncertainty, each a genuinely different failure requiring, in the end, a different remedy.
9. Section: Closing Confused Conduct, and Which Afflictions Reference a Real Object
The treatise completes its sevenfold account of confused conduct. Wrongly understanding conduct joined with clinging attachment belongs to view-attachment, precept-attachment, and the greed, hatred, and conceit that take some view as their own object, all rooted in self-view and arising through discrimination, and so severed at the path of seeing. That same wrongly understanding conduct, considered specifically as rooted in its own cause and basis, is delusion about the truths of suffering and origination, the very causal ground from which the whole cycle of birth and death proceeds; considered instead as arising from a particular fear, it is delusion about the truths of cessation and the path, the reluctance and dread that keeps a being from pursuing the very practice that would free them. And confused conduct arising spontaneously belongs to whatever affliction manifests innately, without discrimination, severed only gradually through cultivation. These seven, the treatise notes, are simply the same ten root afflictions already catalogued at length, self-view, extreme-view, wrong view, view-attachment, precept-attachment, greed, hatred, conceit, ignorance, and doubt, now viewed from a different angle entirely, sorted according to how they confuse a mind about reality rather than according to their own names. The treatise then turns to a subtler question still: of these afflictions, how many reference some genuinely real object, and how many do not? Views and conceit, it answers, reference no real object at all, since they operate by discriminating a self where, among the conditioned formations that actually make up a being, no such self has ever genuinely existed; greed and hatred, by contrast, do reference a real object, arising specifically with respect to conventionally real agreeable or disagreeable things in the world; while ignorance and doubt run through both categories at once, arising equally with respect to what is real and what is merely imagined.
見取、戒禁取及貪瞋等，緣見為境、見所斷者，彼一切皆是執邪了行。即此一切迷苦、集諦者，是迷彼因緣所依處行。即此一切迷滅、道諦者，是迷彼怖畏生行。即彼一切任運所起修道斷者，是任運現行迷執行。問：如是諸煩惱，幾有事？幾無事？答：諸見與慢是無事，於諸行中實無有我而分別轉故。貪、恚是有事。無明、疑通二種。
View-attachment, precept-attachment, and greed, hatred, and the rest that take a view as their object and are severed at the path of seeing, are all wrongly understanding conduct joined with attachment. All of this delusion about the truths of suffering and origination is conduct rooted in that cause and basis. All of this delusion about the truths of cessation and the path is conduct arising from that fear. All of this affliction arising spontaneously, severed by the path of cultivation, is spontaneously manifesting confused conduct. Question: of these afflictions, how many reference a real object, and how many do not? Answer: views and conceit are without a real object, since they discriminate a self where, among the formations, no self genuinely exists. Greed and hatred reference a real object. Ignorance and doubt run through both.
Master Cháng Bǎi treats this closing observation, that the seven kinds of confused conduct are simply the familiar ten root afflictions viewed from a new angle, as the treatise's own reassurance that its analysis, however proliferating in category and terminology, is not multiplying the actual phenomena being studied, merely illuminating the same small set of afflictions from ever more useful vantage points. He highlights the distinction between afflictions with and without a real object as this section's own sharp diagnostic tool: greed and hatred, at least, are mistaken only about how to relate to something genuinely there, while self-view and conceit are mistaken about something far more fundamental, positing an owner and a self where careful examination finds only an ever-changing stream of conditioned formations and nothing more.
10. Section: Which Afflictions Arise Spontaneously With Every Kind of Feeling
The treatise now asks how many afflictions correspond to the pleasant faculty of feeling, and so on through each of the five, pleasant, painful, joyful, distressed, and neutral. Answering first with respect to affliction arising spontaneously, innately, and without discrimination, the treatise explains that every such affliction can, in principle, manifest alongside any of the three basic kinds of feeling, since spontaneous affliction is not particular about the character of whatever object it happens to encounter, arising just as readily toward an agreeable circumstance, productive of ease in body and mind, as toward a disagreeable one, productive of distress, or toward a neutral one, productive of neither. More specifically, spontaneous affliction that operates through the five sense-consciousnesses together with the sixth corresponds to all five feelings, pleasant, painful, joyful, distressed, and neutral alike, while spontaneous affliction confined to the mental sphere alone, not shared with the five sense-consciousnesses, corresponds only to the three feelings proper to that sphere, joy, distress, and neutrality, since bodily pleasure and bodily pain specifically require the five physical senses to arise at all. The treatise then turns to affliction that is not spontaneous, but rather arises through active discrimination, promising to explain in turn, affliction by affliction, exactly which of the five feelings each one corresponds to, beginning with greed.
問：是諸煩惱，幾與樂根相應？乃至幾與捨根相應？答：若任運生一切煩惱，皆於三受現行可得。是故通一切識身者，與一切根相應；不通一切識身者，與意地一切根相應。不任運生一切煩惱，隨其所應諸根相應，我今當說。
Question: of these afflictions, how many correspond to the pleasant faculty, and so on through the neutral faculty? Answer: if affliction arises spontaneously, all such affliction can manifest amid any of the three feelings. Therefore, affliction common to all consciousness-bodies corresponds to every faculty; affliction not common to all consciousness-bodies corresponds only to every faculty within the mental ground. Affliction not arising spontaneously corresponds to its respective faculties accordingly, which shall now be explained.
Master Cháng Bǎi treats the distinction between spontaneous affliction's indiscriminate reach across every feeling and discriminated affliction's own far more particular correspondences as a genuinely useful practical marker: the deep, habitual affliction that colors experience regardless of circumstance is precisely the harder kind to catch, since it does not announce itself only in obviously pleasant or unpleasant moments but quietly persists through neutral ones as well, while the sharper, discrimination-driven afflictions about to be catalogued one by one tend to arise more legibly, tied to specific and nameable feelings a practitioner can more readily learn to recognize.
11. Section: Greed and Hatred Through the Five Feelings
The treatise now works through each root affliction's own correspondence with feeling in turn, beginning with greed. Greed corresponds to distress and pain when a being wishes to unite with pleasant feeling and never be parted from it, yet that very wish goes unmet, pleasant feeling remaining unattained or already lost, or when a being wishes never to unite with painful feeling, yet that very wish likewise goes unmet, painful feeling arising regardless; greed corresponds instead to joy and pleasure under the opposite circumstance, the wish for pleasant feeling actually being fulfilled, or the wish to avoid painful feeling actually succeeding; and greed corresponds to neutral feeling whenever craving attachment arises with respect to whatever aggregates are, at that moment, neither pleasant nor painful, as when one simply craves and clings to one's own body regardless of what it happens to be feeling. Hatred follows a related but distinct pattern. It corresponds to distress and pain when a being's own body and mind are directly pressed upon by suffering, giving rise to inward resentment toward that very suffering, or when hatred arises with respect to disagreeable beings or circumstances one dwells upon with aversion; it corresponds instead to joy and pleasure when a being harbors ill will toward an enemy, wishing that enemy to sink into misery unaided or to be denied happiness altogether, and that very wish is then actually fulfilled, the satisfaction of a cruel hope realized bringing its own perverse pleasure.
貪於一時樂、喜相應，或於一時憂、苦相應，或於一時與捨相應。如有一，或於樂受起會遇愛、不乖離愛而現在前，遂於樂受不會遇、非會遇，若乖離、非和合；或於苦受起不會愛、若乖離愛而現在前，遂於苦受合會、非不合會，不乖離、非乖離。由是因緣，貪於一時憂、苦相應。與此相違，喜、樂相應。若於不苦不樂位而生味著，當知此貪捨根相應。恚於一時憂、苦相應，或有一時喜、樂相應。如有一，自然為苦逼切身心，遂於內苦作意思惟，發恚恨心；或於非愛諸行有情及諸法所作意思惟，發恚恨心。由是故恚憂、苦相應。如有一，於怨家等非愛有情起恚惱心，作意思惟：願彼沒苦，沒已不濟；或不得樂，得已還失。若遂所願，便生喜、樂。由是故恚喜、樂相應。
Greed at times corresponds to pleasure and joy, at times to distress and pain, and at times to neutral feeling. If one generates a wish for union with pleasant feeling and non-separation from it, yet that pleasant feeling is not met, or is met with separation rather than union; or generates a wish for non-union with painful feeling and separation from it, yet that painful feeling is met with union rather than separation — for these reasons, greed at times corresponds to distress and pain. The opposite corresponds to joy and pleasure. If attachment arises with respect to the neutral state, this greed should be known to correspond to the neutral faculty. Hatred at times corresponds to distress and pain, and at times to joy and pleasure. If one is naturally pressed upon in body and mind by suffering, and thereupon reflects inwardly on that suffering, giving rise to a resentful, hateful mind; or reflects upon disagreeable formations, beings, or things, giving rise to a resentful, hateful mind — for these reasons, hatred corresponds to distress and pain. If one generates a hateful, malicious mind toward an enemy or other disagreeable being, reflecting: may they sink into misery, and once sunk, be unaided; or may they fail to attain happiness, or having attained it, lose it again — and this wish is then fulfilled, joy and pleasure arise. For this reason, hatred corresponds to joy and pleasure.
Master Cháng Bǎi treats hatred's own capacity to correspond with joy and pleasure as one of this section's own most unsettling observations, since it names something ordinary experience readily confirms: the grim satisfaction some hearts genuinely feel upon learning that an enemy has suffered or failed, a real pleasure, however corrosive, arising directly from another's misfortune rather than from any benefit to oneself. He notes that greed's own three-way split, distress when thwarted, joy when satisfied, and mere neutral clinging when the object itself is neither pleasant nor painful, maps with uncomfortable precision onto ordinary daily experience, the same underlying craving simply taking whichever emotional coloring its own momentary success or failure happens to produce.
12. Section: Self-View, Wrong View, and the Perverse Comfort of Denying Karma
The treatise turns to self-view and extreme-view. When the eternalist form of these views regards whatever aggregates accompany pleasant feeling as a self or as belonging to a self, or regards them as permanent, it corresponds to the joyful faculty; when it regards the aggregates accompanying painful feeling in the same way, it corresponds to the distressed faculty; and when it regards the aggregates accompanying neutral feeling in the same way, it corresponds to the neutral faculty. The annihilationist form of extreme-view runs entirely the opposite way, since fearing the loss of a self identified with present pleasure corresponds instead to distress, while welcoming the imagined cessation of a self identified with present pain corresponds instead to pleasure. View-attachment and precept-attachment, taking self-view or extreme-view as their own object, simply follow whichever correspondence belongs to the particular view they cling to. Wrong view follows a stranger pattern still: one who has, in the past, performed virtuous deeds, upon adopting the wrong view that denies any karmic fruit whatsoever, corresponds to the distressed faculty, since they now regret that virtue as entirely wasted effort; while one who has, in the past, performed unwholesome deeds, upon adopting that same wrong view denying karmic fruit, corresponds instead to the joyful faculty, relieved and even pleased to believe that no painful consequence will ever follow such deeds after all — a perverse comfort drawn directly from denying the very moral order that would otherwise hold one accountable.
薩迦耶見及邊執見，若於樂俱行蘊觀我我所，或觀為常，喜根相應。若於苦俱行蘊觀我我所，或觀為常，憂根相應。若於捨俱行蘊觀我我所，或觀為常，捨根相應。斷見攝邊執見，當知一切與彼相違。見取、戒禁取，取彼見故，隨其所應，如彼相應。邪見一種，先作妙行，憂根相應；先作惡行，喜根相應。
Self-view and extreme-view, if they regard the aggregates accompanying pleasant feeling as self or self-belonging, or regard them as permanent, correspond to the joyful faculty. If they regard the aggregates accompanying painful feeling this way, they correspond to the distressed faculty. If they regard the aggregates accompanying neutral feeling this way, they correspond to the neutral faculty. Extreme-view of the annihilationist kind should be known to run entirely opposite to this. View-attachment and precept-attachment, taking that view as their object, correspond accordingly, just as that view does. Wrong view, having previously performed virtuous deeds, corresponds to the distressed faculty; having previously performed unwholesome deeds, corresponds to the joyful faculty.
Master Cháng Bǎi treats wrong view's peculiar joy at one's own past unwholesome deeds as this section's own most morally instructive example of how a false belief can actively reward itself: denying karma does not merely fail to warn a person away from harm, it perversely rewards their own past wrongdoing with a comforting sense of having gotten away with something, while punishing their own past virtue with the sting of having wasted it, thereby generating fresh emotional incentive to keep disbelieving the very teaching that would set them straight. He notes the mechanical symmetry running through self-view, extreme-view, view-attachment, and precept-attachment, each simply inheriting whatever feeling-correspondence belongs to the underlying view it grasps, as the treatise's own demonstration that these derivative afflictions add no new content of their own, only a firmer grip on whatever mistaken view came first.
13. Section: Relief in Doubting Bad News — Conceit, Doubt, and Ignorance
The treatise names two kinds of conceit in brief: elevated conceit and lowly conceit. Elevated conceit itself takes three forms, each corresponding to joy: comparative conceit, the mind lifted up upon genuinely surpassing others; discerning conceit, the mind lifted up by one's own quickness and clarity of understanding; and possessions conceit, the mind lifted up by one's own greater wealth compared to others. Lowly conceit runs the opposite way, corresponding instead to distress, since it belongs to one who, though genuinely lacking by comparison, insists the gap is not so great after all, or that being unclear is really no worse than being clear, or that being poor now is only temporary and hardly worth minding. Doubt corresponds to distress when someone, having previously trusted that virtuous conduct genuinely brings gain, honor, praise, and a pleasant rebirth, is then led by an unwise companion to waver over whether any of this is actually true, the once-comforting certainty dissolving into unease. Doubt corresponds instead to joy under the opposite circumstance, when someone who had trusted that unwholesome conduct genuinely brings loss, disrespect, mockery, and a painful rebirth is instead led to waver over whether any of this is actually true, the once-feared certainty dissolving into a strange relief. Ignorance alone, the treatise notes, corresponds indiscriminately to all five feelings at once, since ignorance of reality accompanies every state of mind a being not yet awakened can ever pass through. The correspondence of every remaining secondary affliction with the feeling-faculties is here left unexplained for brevity's sake. This entire fine-grained account, the treatise explains, deliberately goes well beyond the earlier, coarser account already given, which was suited only to beginning practitioners needing a simple, unconfused starting point; this more detailed treatment is offered instead for long-practicing students, equipping them to recognize the many differing ways affliction actually operates, both within their own minds and within the minds of others.
答：略有二慢。一、高舉慢，二、卑下慢。此高舉慢，喜根相應。若卑下慢，與彼相違，憂根相應。疑，若於利養、恭敬、稱譽、樂善趣等決定事中，他所導引令猶豫者，憂根相應。於無利養、不敬、譏毀、苦惡趣等決定事中，他所導引令猶豫者，喜根相應。無明，通與五根相應。所餘相應，引事指斥，文不復現。先辯煩惱諸根相應，但約麤相道理建立，令初行者解無亂故。今約巨細道理建立，令久行者了自他身種種行解差別轉故。
Answer: in brief, there are two kinds of conceit. First, elevated conceit. Second, lowly conceit. This elevated conceit corresponds to the joyful faculty. Lowly conceit, opposite to that, corresponds to the distressed faculty. Doubt, if someone is led by another to waver regarding the settled matters of gain, honor, praise, and a pleasant destiny, corresponds to the distressed faculty. If someone is led by another to waver regarding the settled matters of no gain, disrespect, mockery, and a painful destiny, it corresponds to the joyful faculty. Ignorance corresponds indiscriminately to all five faculties. The correspondence of the rest, illustrated by example, does not appear again in the text. The earlier explanation of affliction's correspondence with the faculties was established only according to coarse principles, so that beginning practitioners might understand without confusion. This present explanation is established according to both coarse and fine principles, so that long-practicing students might understand the many differing turnings of conduct and understanding in themselves and others.
Master Cháng Bǎi treats doubt's own strange correspondence with joy, relief at doubting that one's own past wrongdoing will actually bring painful consequences, as this section's own quiet warning about how comforting uncertainty itself can become when the certainty in question is unwelcome: doubt is not always experienced as distressing, and a mind eager to escape accountability may in fact welcome doubt about bad news with genuine, if misguided, relief. He highlights the treatise's own explicit distinction between its earlier coarse account and this present fine-grained one as a rare and valuable moment of methodological self-awareness, the treatise openly explaining why it is willing to say the same thing twice at two different levels of resolution, tailored to two different audiences at two different stages of their own practice.
14. Section: Three Clusters of Affliction, Bound to Three Realms
The treatise now turns to a new topic, the clustering of affliction, naming in brief three clusters: those bound to the desire realm, those bound to the form realm, and those bound to the formless realm. Asked how many of these three clusters are unwholesome and how many are neutral, the treatise answers that only a portion of the first cluster, the one bound to the desire realm, is unwholesome, while the remaining two clusters, bound to the form and formless realms, are entirely neutral, specifically of the obscuring yet karmically indeterminate kind, defiled enough to cloud the mind and obstruct the noble path, yet too weak in their own force to actually ripen into any determinate karmic fruit. It is specifically the unwholesome portion, and only that portion, that carries a genuine ripening result, capable of drawing a being down into an evil destiny; every other portion, whether neutral or belonging to the higher two realms, produces no such ripening result at all.
復次，諸煩惱略有三聚。一、欲界繫，二、色界繫，三、無色界繫。問：如是三聚，幾不善？幾無記？答：初聚一分是不善，餘二聚是無記。諸不善者是有異熟，非餘。
Moreover, in brief, afflictions form three clusters. First, those bound to the desire realm. Second, those bound to the form realm. Third, those bound to the formless realm. Question: of these three clusters, how many are unwholesome, and how many are neutral? Answer: a portion of the first cluster is unwholesome; the remaining two clusters are neutral. Only the unwholesome ones have a ripening result; the rest do not.
Master Cháng Bǎi treats this threefold clustering as a natural continuation of the treatise's own consistent theme across this entire fascicle: affliction bound to the upper two realms, however genuinely present and however much it clouds the mind and blocks the noble path, simply lacks the raw force that desire-realm affliction carries, and so never actually ripens into the kind of determinate result that draws a being down into an evil rebirth. He notes that this same asymmetry, weaker affliction in the higher realms, stronger and more consequential affliction in the desire realm, has now appeared from several different angles across this fascicle, in the fifteen latent tendencies of fascicle 58, in this clustering by realm, and in the ongoing question of which afflictions actually generate karma capable of shaping a future rebirth.
15. Section: Eight Questions Every Practitioner Actually Wants Answered
The treatise closes its account of the desire realm's own numerous, forceful, externally-directed, evil-conduct-generating, much-suffering-producing, gravely culpable, slowly-abandoned affliction, set against the upper two realms' own scarce, mild, internally-directed, non-evil-conduct-generating, little-suffering-producing, lightly culpable, already-abandoned affliction, offering a summary verse at this point in the chapter to hold the whole comparison together: numerous, defiling, and external in its door; generating evil conduct and manifold suffering; culpable, and slow to leave desire; opposed to concentration, and scattered rather than single in what it generates. With this comparison closed, the treatise turns to a cluster of questions that any sincere practitioner genuinely wants answered: how, exactly, is affliction actually severed? At what point can one rightly say affliction has been severed? From which affliction can severing meaningfully be spoken of at all? Is severing sudden or gradual? In what sequence does it proceed? How many kinds of severing are there? What marks appear once affliction has genuinely been severed? And what benefit does severing affliction actually bring? Taking the first two questions together, the treatise answers first by way of five successive stages: affliction begins to be severable once the provisions of wholesome dharma have been fully accumulated at the resource stage; once access to the very threshold of realization has been gained at the stage of joined practice, heat, summit, forbearance, and supreme worldly dharma; once the ground of seeing has genuinely been attained; and once habituated practice has continued at the ground of cultivation — while affliction can rightly be said to have been entirely severed only once the ultimate ground itself has been reached, an arhat, a solitary awakened one, or a buddha having exhausted every affliction there is to exhaust.
中嗢柁南曰：多染惱外門，惡行生諸苦，有罪遲離欲，三摩地生等。復次，云何能斷煩惱？齊何當言已斷煩惱？從何煩惱而可說斷？斷諸煩惱為頓、為漸？云何次第斷諸煩惱？諸煩惱斷，復有幾種？煩惱斷已，有何等相？諸煩惱斷有何勝利？謂善法資糧已積集故，已得證入方便地故，證得見地故，積習修地故，能斷煩惱；得究竟地，當言已斷一切煩惱。
The verse placed at the chapter's midpoint says: numerous, defiling, external in door; generating evil conduct, generating manifold suffering; culpable, slow to leave desire; opposed to concentration, generating the scattered. Moreover, how is affliction severed? At what point can affliction be said to have been severed? From which affliction can severing be spoken of? Is the severing of affliction sudden or gradual? In what sequence is affliction severed? How many kinds of severing of affliction are there? Once affliction is severed, what marks appear? What benefit does severing affliction bring? Because the provisions of wholesome dharma have already been accumulated, because access to the ground of skillful means has already been attained, because the ground of seeing has been attained, and because habituated practice at the ground of cultivation has continued, affliction can be severed; once the ultimate ground is attained, it can be said that every affliction has been severed.
Master Cháng Bǎi treats these eight opening questions as the treatise's own remarkably direct acknowledgment of what every sincere practitioner is actually asking underneath all the technical vocabulary, not abstract curiosity about affliction's own nature, but practical questions about their own path: when will I know I have actually made progress, is this something that happens all at once or only gradually, and what will it even feel like when it does. He highlights the five-stage answer to the first two questions as a map any practitioner can locate themselves on, resource-gathering, threshold-approach, the breakthrough of seeing, the long labor of cultivation, and the ultimate ground, each stage marking a genuinely different relationship to affliction rather than a single undifferentiated progress bar.
16. Section: Four Kinds of Yoga — Faith, Aspiration, Diligence, and Skillful Means
The treatise offers a second way of answering the same two questions, this time by way of four kinds of yoga, already explained in full in the Stage of the Hearers. The yoga of faith requires two aspects, trusting and complying with what the Three Jewels and the four truths teach, and generating a genuinely pure confidence in their real, existing virtues, resting on two grounds in turn, observing for oneself that the very principle of defiled and pure cause and effect genuinely holds, and witnessing directly the spiritual power of an awakened teacher or noble disciple. The yoga of aspiration requires wishing for attainment of the noble path or unsurpassed awakening itself, wishing to diligently seek out and question genuinely accomplished teachers, wishing to earnestly gather the provisions such attainment requires, and wishing to follow wholeheartedly wherever the cultivation of calming and insight actually leads. The yoga of diligence requires sustained effort in hearing the teaching, in reflecting upon it, in actually cultivating it through repeated practice, and in clearing away, day and night, whatever obstacles, foremost among them the five hindrances, stand in the way of accomplishing calming and insight. And the yoga of skillful means requires the strengthening power of moral discipline, guarding one's own mindfulness carefully, thereby remaining free of heedlessness in body, speech, and mind alike, and settling the mind correctly inward in actual meditative cultivation. It is through diligently applying these four kinds of yoga together, the treatise explains, that affliction becomes severable at all, and it is only once these same four have been thoroughly and skillfully mastered that affliction can rightly be said to have been entirely severed.
復有差別。謂由修習四種瑜伽，能斷煩惱；若善修習如是四種，當言已斷一切煩惱。四種瑜伽，如聲聞地已說其相。
There is a further difference. Through cultivating four kinds of yoga, affliction can be severed; once these four have been well cultivated, it can be said that every affliction has been severed. The four kinds of yoga are as their characteristics were already explained in the Stage of the Hearers.
Master Cháng Bǎi treats the four yogas, faith, aspiration, diligence, and skillful means, as a genuinely complete account of what sustained spiritual effort actually requires, moving in careful order from trust, without which no one would ever begin, through wish, without which trust alone goes nowhere, through sustained effort, without which wish alone accomplishes nothing, to concrete method, without which effort alone can easily be misdirected. He notes that the treatise's own willingness to answer the same question twice, once through the five stages and now again through these four yogas, reflects two genuinely different and complementary ways of describing the very same process, the first tracking a practitioner's objective position along the path, the second tracking the actual inner qualities that carry them forward from one position to the next.
17. Section: Five Steps of Comprehensive Knowing
The treatise offers a third angle on how affliction becomes severable and how it is finally severed entirely, framed this time around the very conditions leading to nirvana: continuity's own maturation, corresponding to the completeness of one's birth circumstances; receiving compliant teaching, corresponding to the completeness of hearing correct dharma; correct inward attention, corresponding to taking nirvana as one's own guiding aim and to the ripening of the very wisdom that leads to liberation; and the arising of the antidote path, corresponding to actually cultivating the antidote itself — four steps leading affliction to become severable, while reaching total purification, both mundane, the four meditative absorptions and four formless attainments, and transcendent, the noble path carried from its first fruit through to full arhatship or unsurpassed awakening, is what allows one to say every affliction has finally been severed. A fourth angle follows, framed around comprehensive knowing and permanent severing, unfolding in five steps: knowing affliction's own basis, the very ground, itself unclean, from which affliction actually arises; knowing affliction's own intrinsic nature, its shared quality of inner unrest together with each affliction's own particular character; knowing affliction's own faults, the harm it has caused, is causing, and will continue to cause across past, present, and future alike; no longer clinging firmly to affliction the moment it does arise, recognizing it immediately as mistaken and letting it go rather than dwelling in it; and finally taking up the antidote itself through correct attention, actually cultivating calming and insight. Only by passing genuinely through all five of these steps does affliction become severable at all, and it is the completed arising of this very antidote that allows one to say, at last, that every affliction has been severed.
復有差別。謂了知煩惱事故，了知煩惱自性故，了知煩惱過患故，煩惱生已不堅著故，攝受對治故，能斷煩惱；對治已生，當言已斷一切煩惱。
There is a further difference. Because affliction's own basis is known, because affliction's own intrinsic nature is known, because affliction's own faults are known, because one does not cling firmly once affliction has arisen, and because the antidote is taken up, affliction can be severed; once the antidote has arisen, it can be said that every affliction has been severed.
Master Cháng Bǎi treats these five steps of comprehensive knowing as a practical sequence any practitioner can actually walk through in real time: first learning where a particular affliction tends to come from, then learning its own specific character, then genuinely absorbing just how much damage it causes across a whole lifetime, then catching it early and refusing to dwell in it once it does arise, and only then, on that foundation, applying the actual antidote of calming and insight — a sequence, he notes, in which skipping any earlier step tends to leave the later ones considerably weaker than they could otherwise be.
18. Section: "Skillfully Cultivating Both Together, Only Then Are Both Released"
The treatise offers a fifth angle, framed around the skillful cultivation of calming and insight together: cultivating calming alone, or cultivating insight alone, is not enough; only cultivating both makes affliction severable, and only once the bondage of grasped characteristics has genuinely been released, together with the bondage of coarse-heaviness itself, can one say that every affliction has been severed. Mark-bondage is the mind's own habitual grasping at the characteristics of whatever object appears before it, taking cups, people, and every ordinary thing encountered as simply, solidly real; coarse-heaviness-bondage is the deeper bondage of the affliction-seed itself. As the Blessed One himself declared in a verse the treatise now quotes directly: mark-bondage binds sentient beings, and coarse-heaviness bondage binds them too; only by skillfully cultivating both calming and insight together are both bonds finally released. Insight cultivated alone easily degenerates into a dry, ungrounded cleverness; calming cultivated alone, lacking insight's own wisdom, likewise fails to sever anything at all — genuine release from both bonds requires both practices in full, sustained partnership. A sixth angle follows, framed around what the actual practice of yoga accomplishes: knowing thoroughly the very object one meditates upon, and delighting in that object once its own true nature is understood, are what make affliction severable in the first place; and once the very basis harboring affliction's seed has been destroyed, and that basis has genuinely been transformed from its defiled state into a purified one, no longer turning through birth and death, one can say that every affliction has finally, entirely been severed. With this, the treatise closes its answer to the first two of its eight opening questions, how affliction can be severed, and at what point severing can rightly be declared complete.
復有差別。修奢摩他故，修毗鉢舍那故，能斷煩惱；若諸相縛已得解脫，諸麤重縛亦得解脫，當言已斷一切煩惱。如世尊言：相縛縛眾生，亦由麤重縛。善雙修止觀，方乃俱解脫。復有差別。謂了知所緣故，喜樂所緣故，能斷煩惱；所依已滅故，已得轉依故，當言已斷一切煩惱。
There is a further difference. Through cultivating calming and cultivating insight, affliction can be severed; once the bondage of characteristics has been released, and the bondage of coarse-heaviness has likewise been released, it can be said that every affliction has been severed. As the Blessed One said: mark-bondage binds sentient beings, and coarse-heaviness bondage binds them too. Only by skillfully cultivating both calming and insight are both released together. There is a further difference. Because the object is thoroughly known, and because the object is delighted in, affliction can be severed; because the basis has already been destroyed, and the transformed basis has already been attained, it can be said that every affliction has been severed.
Master Cháng Bǎi treats the Buddha's own quoted verse as one of this entire fascicle's own most memorable and quotable teachings, precisely because it names, in four short lines, a genuine trap many sincere practitioners fall into: pursuing calming alone in search of peace, or pursuing insight alone in search of clever understanding, each producing real but incomplete results that leave one or the other bond fully intact. He highlights the treatise's own careful naming of these six separate angles on the very same two questions, by stage, by yoga, by nirvana-condition, by comprehensive knowing, by calming-and-insight, and by yogic task, as its own demonstration that a single genuine event, severing affliction, can be truthfully described from an entire range of complementary vantage points, none of them the single correct answer to the exclusion of all the others.
19. Section: Sudden Breakthrough, Gradual Labor — And Where Practice Actually Begins
Turning to its fourth question, whether severing is sudden or gradual, the treatise gives a clear answer: affliction severed at the path of seeing is severed suddenly, not gradually, since the very realization that directly and truly beholds the four noble truths is what severs it, and this realization corresponds to an attitude of genuine renunciation toward the very objects it examines, so that, in three swift mind-moments, inwardly negating the false imputation of a real being, inwardly negating the false imputation of real dharmas, and comprehensively negating both together, every one of the hundred and twelve afflictions confused about the four truths, ten in the desire realm's own case for each truth, nine in the form and formless realms' own case since hatred is absent there, are cut through all at once, entirely and without remainder. Affliction severed by the path of cultivation, by contrast, is severed only gradually, requiring repeated, sustained practice rather than a single breakthrough, since it is innate rather than discrimination-based and does not yield to a single moment of direct realization the way discrimination-arisen affliction does. Turning to its fifth question, the actual sequence in which affliction is severed, the treatise begins where practice itself actually begins: a householder must first sever unwholesome livelihood, such as killing, and the wrong views that deny cause and effect altogether; one who has gone forth from the household life must next sever whatever obstructs the very joy of renunciation itself, the discursive thoughts of desire, of ill will, and of harming others; one whose mind is not yet settled in concentration must next sever whatever obstructs the attainment of meditative absorption, the discursive thoughts of one's own family, one's own homeland, and the wish to postpone practice indefinitely under the comfortable illusion of not dying anytime soon; and one who has begun to settle the mind in meditation must next sever whatever obstructs the very attainment of stabilized mental application, the five hindrances together with the body's own accumulated fatigue and heaviness.
復次，見斷煩惱頓斷，非漸。所以者何？由現觀智諦現觀故，能斷見道所斷煩惱。然此現觀與壞緣諦作意相應，是故三心頓斷一切迷苦諦等見斷煩惱。修斷煩惱漸次而斷，數數修道方能斷故。復次，最初應斷不善事業及諸惡見。謂在家者。次復應斷樂出家障。謂欲尋思、恚尋思、害尋思。次復應斷不定心者三摩地障。謂眷屬尋思、國土尋思、不死尋思。次復應斷得作意障。謂樂遠離品身諸麤重。
Moreover, affliction severed at the path of seeing is severed suddenly, not gradually. Why is this so? Because it is by the direct realization that truly beholds the truths that the affliction severed at the path of seeing is severed. This realization corresponds to an attitude directed at renouncing its object, and so, in three mind-moments, all affliction confused about the truth of suffering and the rest, severed at the path of seeing, is severed all at once. Affliction severed by the path of cultivation is severed gradually, only through repeated cultivation of the path. Moreover, one should first sever unwholesome livelihood and wrong views — this refers to householders. Next, one should sever whatever obstructs the joy of renunciation — namely, discursive thought of desire, discursive thought of ill will, and discursive thought of harm. Next, one should sever whatever obstructs concentration for one whose mind is not yet settled — namely, discursive thought of family, discursive thought of homeland, and discursive thought of not dying. Next, one should sever whatever obstructs the attainment of mental application — namely, the body's own coarse-heaviness belonging to the class that delights in seclusion.
Master Cháng Bǎi treats the sudden severing of the hundred and twelve afflictions at the path of seeing as this section's own vivid demonstration of just how much a single genuine breakthrough can accomplish at once, three swift mind-moments accomplishing what an entire catalogue of named afflictions, painstakingly built up across this and the preceding fascicle, might otherwise suggest would require severing one at a time. He highlights the eight-stage practical sequence, beginning with a householder's own unwholesome livelihood and wrong views, as the treatise's own reminder that this entire towering edifice of technical analysis ultimately rests on the most basic and unglamorous starting point imaginable, an ordinary person simply choosing not to kill and not to deny that actions have consequences, long before any question of meditation or sudden realization ever enters the picture.
20. Section: Nine Ways to Name a Single Severing
The treatise completes its eight-stage sequence: next to be severed are the hundred and twelve afflictions belonging to the path of seeing itself; next, the sixteen afflictions belonging to the path of cultivation, self-view, extreme-view, greed, hatred, ignorance, and conceit in the desire realm, and the same minus hatred in the form and formless realms; next, whatever afflictions specifically obstruct meditative absorption and are tied to painful, distressed, pleasant, joyful, and neutral feeling respectively, the first meditative absorption freeing one from distress, the second from pain, the third from joy, the fourth from pleasure, and the signless absorption beyond even the four formless attainments freeing one from neutral feeling itself; and finally, for the bodhisattva alone, whatever belongs to the hindrance to what is to be known, beyond the hindrance of affliction itself. By this sequence, the treatise concludes, affliction is to be severed. Turning to its sixth question, how many kinds of severing there are, the treatise answers that there are, in brief, two: the severing of manifestation, and the severing of latent tendency. The severing of manifestation itself unfolds through nine further distinctions, severing the five dull afflictions and the five sharp views in turn, severing whatever is bound to the path of seeing through the path of cultivation in turn, severing whatever is bound to each of the three realms in turn, and, following affliction's own natural progression, severing it first as scattered distraction, then as something clearly recognized once awakened to, then as something progressively weakened, then as something suppressed through the power of meditative absorption, and finally as something entirely freed from its own binding tie — and it is specifically this last, being freed from the binding tie, that the treatise identifies as nothing other than the severing of latent tendency itself, the very seed at last uprooted.
次復應斷見斷煩惱。次復應斷修斷煩惱。次復應斷屬苦、屬憂、屬樂、屬喜，及屬諸捨諸定障品障礙煩惱。次復有一補特伽羅，應斷所知障品諸障。由此次第，應斷煩惱。復次，諸煩惱斷，當知多種，略則為二。一、諸纏斷，二、隨眠斷。諸纏斷者，謂貪瞋斷乃至疑斷，薩迦耶見斷乃至邪見斷，見苦所斷斷乃至修道所斷斷，欲界所繫斷乃至無色界所繫斷，散亂斷、曉悟斷、羸劣斷、制伏斷、離繫斷。當知離繫斷，即是隨眠斷。
Next, one should sever the afflictions severed at the path of seeing. Next, one should sever the afflictions severed at the path of cultivation. Next, one should sever whatever hindering afflictions belonging to the class of meditative hindrances are tied to pain, to distress, to pleasure, to joy, and to every neutral state. Next, for a certain person alone, one should sever whatever hindrances belong to the class of the hindrance to what is known. By this sequence, affliction is to be severed. Moreover, the severing of affliction should be known to be of many kinds; in brief, two. First, the severing of manifestation. Second, the severing of latent tendency. The severing of manifestation is severing greed and hatred through doubt, severing self-view through wrong view, severing what is severed by seeing suffering through what is severed by the path of cultivation, severing what is bound to the desire realm through what is bound to the formless realm, and severing as scattered, as awakened, as weakened, as suppressed, and as freed from binding tie. It should be known that severing as freed from binding tie is precisely the severing of latent tendency.
Master Cháng Bǎi treats the five-stage progression of scattered, awakened, weakened, suppressed, and finally freed as a genuinely honest description of how affliction actually loosens its grip over time, rather than a tidy theoretical scheme: a practitioner rarely moves straight from full-blown affliction to its complete uprooting, but instead passes through real, felt stages, first simply noticing how scattered and reactive the untrained mind is, then gradually recognizing affliction clearly the moment it arises, then watching it grow weaker with practice, then suppressing it through the real strength of meditative absorption, and only at the very end actually severing its underlying seed for good. He highlights the closing identification of the freed-from-binding-tie stage with the severing of latent tendency as the treatise's own reminder that everything short of this final stage, however much genuine progress it represents, still leaves the deepest root of affliction technically intact.
21. Section: A Single Coin Refused — What Severed Affliction Actually Looks Like
Turning to its seventh question, what marks appear once affliction has genuinely been severed, the treatise names four. First, the three poisons simply do not arise: confronted with an agreeable object, whether inferior or superior, present or absent, and even when deliberately, forcefully bringing the most desirable object imaginable to mind and examining it closely, no attachment forms; and exactly as with the agreeable, so too with whatever might once have provoked anger or confusion, no aversion and no bewilderment arise either. Second, the mind abides in supreme equanimity, mindful and clearly comprehending: seeing a form with the eye, hearing a sound with the ear, and so through every one of the senses down to the mind's own cognition of mental objects, neither joy nor sorrow arises, only an unshaken, level abiding, fully aware and fully present. Third, such a person genuinely accomplishes the ascetic's own qualities: true, unfeigned fewness of desire, wanting others to know nothing of whatever virtues one actually possesses; contentment with whatever little one has; genuine seclusion from defilement; vigorous diligence in wholesome practice; sustained mindfulness of the Three Jewels; settled meditative stability; and a wisdom evident in body, speech, and mind alike. A story from the sutras illustrates fewness of desire at its most extreme: after the Buddha's final nirvana, King Aśoka, making offerings of treasure at stupa after stupa, heard of the venerable Bakkula's own legendary lack of desire, and offered him a single coin as a test, only to have the temple guardian spirit fling the coin straight back out, moving the king to exclaim in genuine admiration, truly, this is fewness of desire indeed, unwilling to accept even a single coin. Fourth, such a person is free of idle conceptual proliferation, naturally and effortlessly delighting in what is free of all such chatter, while needing to deliberately exert and rouse the mind merely to engage, when necessary, in ordinary worldly talk of kings, nations, thieves, or food. These four together, the treatise concludes, are the very marks of affliction already, genuinely severed.
復次，煩惱斷已，於可愛法若劣、若勝、若現在前、若不現前，雖猛利見而觀察之，亦不染著。如於可愛而不生愛，如是於可瞋法亦不生瞋，於可癡法亦不生癡。又眼見諸色，不喜不憂，但住於捨，正念正知。如眼見色，乃至意知法亦爾。又性少欲，成就第一真實少欲。如少欲，如是喜足、遠離、勇猛精進、安住正念、寂定、聰慧亦爾。於無戲論任性好樂，於有戲論策勵其心方能緣慮。如是等輩，當知煩惱已斷之相。
Moreover, once affliction has been severed, with respect to agreeable dharmas, whether inferior or superior, present or not present, though examined closely with forceful attention, no attachment arises. Just as with the agreeable, so too with what might provoke anger, no anger arises, and with what might provoke confusion, no confusion arises. And seeing forms with the eye, one is neither joyful nor sorrowful, but abides in equanimity, mindful and clearly comprehending. As with seeing forms, so too through cognizing mental objects with the mind. One is by nature of few desires, accomplishing the very first, genuine fewness of desire. As with fewness of desire, so too with contentment, seclusion, vigorous diligence, abiding in mindfulness, settled stability, and wisdom. One naturally delights in what is free of conceptual proliferation, and must rouse the mind with effort to engage what involves it. Such as these should be known as the marks of affliction already severed.
Master Cháng Bǎi treats King Aśoka's single refused coin as one of the treatise's own most charming and instructive stories, precisely because it tests fewness of desire under the mildest possible pressure, not a fortune offered, but a single coin, and shows that genuine non-attachment holds even there, when a lesser resolve might easily rationalize accepting so small a thing. He highlights the fourth mark, natural ease amid the absence of conceptual chatter paired with real effort needed to engage in it when necessary, as this whole passage's own most quietly demanding standard: an awakened mind is not merely unbothered by ordinary talk of politics or food, it must actively rouse itself even to participate in such talk at all, its own natural resting place lying somewhere entirely different.
22. Section: Eight Questions Closed — Security, Coolness, and a Task Complete
Turning at last to its eighth and final question, what benefit severing affliction actually brings, the treatise offers an extended answer. Through attainment of the four meditative absorptions, a practitioner transcends distress, pain, joy, and pleasure in turn; through attainment of the four formless absorptions, transcends the very perception of form and every perception bound to sense-based resistance; through attaining the fruit of a learner on the noble path, transcends the suffering of the evil destinies; and through attaining the fruit of one beyond further learning, an arhat, transcends every kind of suffering there is, the suffering of birth and all that follows it, entirely and for good. Beyond this transcending, five further benefits follow. A learner who has severed a portion of affliction attains security, freedom from the dread affliction itself always carries with it; an arhat who has severed every affliction entirely attains the very first, the foremost security there is. In just the same way, a learner attains coolness, relief from affliction's own burning heat, while an arhat attains the very first, foremost coolness, the basis of every beneficial thing that follows from it. A practitioner attains as well the very first, most excellent dwelling in present joy, freely entering, at will, whatever noble abiding, divine abiding, or sublime abiding they wish, emptiness, signlessness, wishlessness, or the cessation of feeling and perception among the noble abidings, the four absorptions or four formless states among the divine abidings, or loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity among the sublime abidings. Whatever such a person has thereby attained, moreover, in walking or in standing, never again regresses, unlike the meditative attainments of the merely worldly path, which can indeed be lost. And such a person's own genuine good is, at last, entirely and completely fulfilled, with nothing further left to accomplish, having already done everything there truly was to do. With this, the treatise has now answered every one of its eight opening questions concerning the severing of affliction in full.
復次，煩惱斷者有多勝利。謂隨證得超越憂、苦，超越喜、樂，超越色想及與有對種種性想，超惡趣苦，超越生等一切種苦。又證安隱第一安隱。又證清涼第一清涼。又得第一現法樂住，隨其自心自在而轉。若行、若住，隨所欲樂所證之法無復退轉。於自義利圓滿究竟，於諸所作無復希望。
Moreover, one who has severed affliction has many benefits. According to attainment, one transcends distress and pain, transcends joy and pleasure, transcends the perception of form and every perception of sense-based resistance, transcends the suffering of the evil destinies, and transcends every kind of suffering belonging to birth and the rest. One also attains security, the very first security. One also attains coolness, the very first coolness. One also attains the very first present-life joyful abiding, turning freely according to one's own mind. Whether walking or standing, whatever is attained according to one's own wish no longer regresses. One's own good is fulfilled to its very completion, with nothing further left to be done.
Master Cháng Bǎi treats the closing line, nothing further left to accomplish, having already done everything there truly was to do, as this entire long inquiry's own quiet resting point, the natural terminus toward which every one of the preceding seven questions has been building: not endless further striving, but a genuine completion, a task actually finished rather than merely managed. He highlights the distinction between a learner's still-partial security and coolness and an arhat's own complete, foremost security and coolness as a fitting close to this whole eight-question inquiry, showing that severing affliction is not an all-or-nothing event but a graduated deepening, every stage along the way already genuinely worthwhile even before its own final completion. With all eight questions on the severing of affliction now fully answered, spanning how it is severed, when it can be called severed, from which aspect severing is spoken of, whether it is sudden or gradual, in what sequence it proceeds, how many kinds there are, what marks appear once it is accomplished, and what benefit it brings, this entire extensive analysis of affliction defilement's own workings reaches a natural and complete resting point of its own.
23. Section: Benefiting Every Being, and Fifteen Objects Affliction References
The treatise adds one final benefit to its account, this one belonging specifically to the bodhisattva path: a certain practitioner, having severed affliction, cultivates conduct that benefits others as well as themselves, wishing to bring benefit and ease to countless beings, moved by genuine compassion for the world, so that both the celestial and human realms alike come to receive real benefit and ease through them, this altruistic accomplishment made possible precisely because they have severed not only the hindrance of affliction but, going even beyond the solitary path of the hearers, the hindrance to what is to be known as well. Severing affliction, the treatise concludes, brings benefits as numerous and as far-reaching as these, both for one's own path and, for the bodhisattva, for the sake of the entire world besides — an answer that brings the treatise's entire eightfold inquiry into the severing of affliction to its full and complete close. The treatise now turns to a related but distinct question, cataloguing in brief fifteen kinds of object that affliction actually references. Comprehensive referencing belongs to self-view and its companions, which take in every matter without restriction as their object. Partial referencing belongs to greed, hatred, and conceit, which reference only whatever portion of a matter happens to be agreeable or disagreeable to them. Real-object referencing belongs to those afflictions, mostly severed only by cultivation, that reference the conventionally real aggregates actually produced by causes and conditions. And unreal-object referencing belongs to the ten afflictions severed at the path of seeing, confused specifically about principle rather than about any genuinely existing matter, arising instead through sheer discrimination where, on careful examination, nothing real is actually there to be found at all.
或復有一修利他行，為欲利益安樂眾生，哀愍世間，令諸天人利益安樂。當知煩惱斷者，有如是等眾多勝利。復次，煩惱緣境略有十五。一、具分緣。謂身見等。二、一分緣。謂貪瞋慢等。三、有事緣。謂諸有事煩惱。四、無事緣。謂諸無事煩惱。
There is also one who cultivates conduct that benefits others, wishing to bring benefit and ease to sentient beings, having compassion for the world, causing gods and humans to attain benefit and ease. It should be known that severing affliction has such benefits as these, and many more. Moreover, the objects affliction references are, in brief, fifteen. First, comprehensive referencing, belonging to self-view and the rest. Second, partial referencing, belonging to greed, hatred, conceit, and the rest. Third, referencing a real object, belonging to those afflictions that have a real object. Fourth, referencing an unreal object, belonging to those afflictions that have no real object.
Master Cháng Bǎi treats this final, altruistic benefit as the treatise's own deliberate widening of the entire preceding inquiry's own horizon: everything said before about security, coolness, mastery, non-regression, and self-fulfillment could easily be mistaken for a purely personal achievement, yet the treatise insists on adding, as its very last word on the subject, that the whole point, at least for the bodhisattva, was never simply personal at all. He highlights the new fifteen-fold catalogue of affliction's objects as a considerably more granular version of the five-fold catalogue already given in fascicle 58, distinguishing now not only which broad category of object an affliction references but the finer question of whether that object is grasped in whole or only in part, and whether it is genuinely real or merely a projection of confused discrimination.
24. Section: Inner and Outer, Present and Absent, One's Own Kind and Another's
The treatise continues its fifteenfold catalogue. Inner referencing belongs to whatever affliction, whether arising in one settled in meditative absorption or in one not so settled, takes the six inner sense-bases themselves as its object. Outer referencing belongs to whatever affliction takes the exquisite five sensory pleasures lying outside the body as its object. Present referencing belongs to affliction that takes some currently manifest object as its own. Absent referencing belongs instead to affliction that takes some past or future object, not currently present at all, as its own. Referencing one's own kind belongs to affliction that takes affliction belonging to its own realm as its object, desire-realm affliction referencing other desire-realm affliction, and so on. Referencing another kind belongs instead to affliction that takes affliction belonging to a different realm, or the very matters bound up with that different realm's affliction, as its object, a lower realm's affliction able to reach up and reference a higher realm's affliction and its objects, though a higher realm's affliction, its own coarser counterparts no longer active, can never reach back down to reference a lower realm's affliction in turn. Existence-referencing belongs to whatever affliction takes future rebirth itself as its object, from which an eternalist view of continued existence can arise; and non-existence-referencing belongs instead to whatever affliction takes the very cutting-off of future rebirth as its object, the wish that this life simply never continue again, from which an annihilationist craving for non-existence arises in turn.
五、內緣。謂緣六處定不定地所有煩惱。六、外緣。謂緣妙五欲所有煩惱。七、現見緣。謂緣現在所有煩惱。八、不現見緣。謂緣去來所有煩惱。九、自類緣。謂緣自類煩惱所有煩惱。十、他類緣。謂緣異類煩惱及緣煩惱事所有煩惱。十一、有緣。謂緣後有所有煩惱。十二、無有緣。謂緣斷無有所有煩惱。
Fifth, inner referencing, belonging to affliction, whether in meditative absorption or not, that references the six sense-bases. Sixth, outer referencing, belonging to affliction that references the exquisite five sensory pleasures. Seventh, present referencing, belonging to affliction that references what is currently present. Eighth, absent referencing, belonging to affliction that references what is past or future. Ninth, referencing one's own kind, belonging to affliction that references affliction of its own kind. Tenth, referencing another kind, belonging to affliction that references affliction of a different kind, and the matters bound up with that affliction. Eleventh, existence-referencing, belonging to affliction that references future existence. Twelfth, non-existence-referencing, belonging to affliction that references the cutting off of existence.
Master Cháng Bǎi treats the asymmetry between one's own kind and another kind of referencing, a lower realm's affliction able to reach a higher realm but never the reverse, as a pattern the treatise has now confirmed from several different angles across two fascicles, always tracing back to the same underlying fact that the higher realms' own afflictions are simply too faint and inert to reach downward with any real force. He highlights existence-referencing and non-existence-referencing as this section's own precise technical account of exactly how the eternalist and annihilationist extremes actually arise, not as free-floating philosophical positions adopted in the abstract, but as affliction taking a very specific object, future rebirth itself, or its wished-for cessation, and building an entire view outward from that single point of attachment or aversion.
25. Section: Twenty Kinds of Person Behind Every Manifestation of Affliction
The treatise completes its fifteenfold catalogue of affliction's objects. Own-realm referencing belongs to whatever affliction the desire realm generates toward its own inner and outer formations, and likewise for the form and formless realms toward their own. Other-realm referencing belongs instead to a higher realm's own conceit directed downward at a lower realm, the form realm looking down upon the desire realm, the formless realm looking down upon the form realm, precisely because beings born into that higher realm, possessing permanence, constancy, bliss, and purity as their own superior qualities, come to regard themselves as superior on this very basis; a lower realm, in turn, can still reference a higher realm's own greed and the like, since the higher realm's own coarser afflictions remain conceivable even from below. And no-object referencing belongs to whatever affliction takes as its object something discriminated but never genuinely encountered, the speculative computing of cessation or the path by one still bound to outflow-bearing practice, unable to grasp their true character and left holding only a name; or the vast, inconceivable Dharma of the Great Vehicle itself, likewise beyond an ordinary being's own direct grasp; or, among a certain kind of Mahāyāna practitioner who has badly misunderstood emptiness, the wrong view that slanders every single dharma as utterly nonexistent, mistaking the teaching of emptiness for a doctrine of blank annihilation. With this, the treatise closes its fifteenfold account and turns to a new, considerably more comprehensive catalogue: the active manifestation of affliction, said to be of twenty kinds, corresponding to twenty kinds of person, each generating their own manifestation of affliction according to their own twenty conditions. The treatise first names the twenty kinds of person: the householder, the renunciant, one holding wrongly taught doctrine, one holding correctly taught doctrine, one whose conduct is dominated by a single strong affliction, one of evenly balanced affliction, one of thin, dust-like affliction, one who has attained worldly freedom from desire, one not yet free of desire, one who has seen the noble path's own footprint, one who has not yet seen it, one who clings, one who does not cling, one given to sustained discursive examination, one asleep, one awake, one still young, one whose faculties have matured, one possessing the potential for final nirvana, and one lacking that potential altogether.
十三、自境緣。謂欲界於欲行煩惱，色界於色行煩惱，無色界於無色行煩惱。十四、他境緣。謂色界於欲行煩惱，無色界於色行煩惱。又復下地於上地煩惱。十五、無境緣。謂緣分別所計滅道及廣大佛法等所有煩惱。復次，煩惱現行有二十種。謂二十種補特伽羅，依二十緣，起二十種現行煩惱。云何二十補特伽羅？一、在家，二、出家，三、住惡說法，四、住善說法，五、增上煩惱行，六、等分行，七、薄塵行，八、世間離欲，九、未離欲，十、見聖跡，十一、未見聖跡，十二、執著，十三、不執著，十四、觀察，十五、睡眠，十六、覺悟，十七、幼少，十八、根成熟，十九、般涅槃法，二十、不般涅槃法。
Thirteenth, referencing one's own realm, belonging to the desire realm's affliction toward desire-realm formations, the form realm's toward form-realm formations, and the formless realm's toward formless-realm formations. Fourteenth, referencing another realm, belonging to the form realm's affliction toward the desire realm, and the formless realm's toward the form realm; also, a lower realm's affliction toward a higher realm. Fifteenth, referencing no real object, belonging to affliction referencing what is merely computed through discrimination regarding cessation and the path, and the vast Dharma of the Buddha. Moreover, the active manifestation of affliction is of twenty kinds, referring to twenty kinds of person who, according to twenty conditions, generate twenty kinds of manifest affliction. What are the twenty kinds of person? First, the householder. Second, the renunciant. Third, one abiding in wrongly taught doctrine. Fourth, one abiding in correctly taught doctrine. Fifth, one of dominant affliction conduct. Sixth, one of evenly balanced conduct. Seventh, one of thin conduct. Eighth, one worldly free of desire. Ninth, one not yet free of desire. Tenth, one who has seen the noble footprint. Eleventh, one who has not yet seen it. Twelfth, one who clings. Thirteenth, one who does not cling. Fourteenth, one who examines. Fifteenth, one asleep. Sixteenth, one awake. Seventeenth, one young. Eighteenth, one of matured faculties. Nineteenth, one with the dharma of final nirvana. Twentieth, one without the dharma of final nirvana.
Master Cháng Bǎi treats no-object referencing's inclusion of a Mahāyāna practitioner who mistakes emptiness for blank nonexistence as a genuinely important warning aimed squarely at Mahāyāna audiences rather than outsiders, since the very teaching most capable of liberating a mind can, badly misunderstood, curdle into its own nihilistic distortion, denying cause and effect altogether under emptiness's own borrowed authority. He highlights this newly opened twenty-person catalogue as the treatise's own most exhaustive attempt yet at a genuinely comprehensive taxonomy of practitioners, covering not just doctrinal position or stage of realization but ordinary human variables like age, wakefulness, and temperament, treating every one of them as relevant to how affliction actually shows up in a given person's own life.
26. Section: Twenty Ways Affliction Actually Shows Its Face
The treatise now names the twenty corresponding kinds of manifestation itself. Manifestation following one's own wish belongs to the householder, freely indulging desired pleasures; manifestation not following one's own wish belongs to the renunciant, still struggling against desire even while striving to overcome it. Manifestation without understanding belongs to one holding wrongly taught doctrine, practicing austerity without any real grasp of reality; manifestation with understanding belongs to one holding correctly taught doctrine, who knowingly indulges desire despite understanding perfectly well that they should not. Coarse manifestation belongs to one of dominant affliction, its presence obvious to any observer; balanced manifestation belongs to one of evenly distributed affliction; subtle manifestation belongs to one of thin affliction, easily set aside even when confronted with an attractive object, and quick to make progress in wholesome practice. Inner-door manifestation belongs to one worldly free of desire, whose affliction now arises with respect to their own inner faculties rather than external objects; outer-door manifestation belongs to one not yet free of desire, whose mind still constantly reaches outward. Lost-mindfulness manifestation belongs even to one who has already seen the noble path, since even a noble one's mind can momentarily lapse, though, as an old teaching puts it, a noble one's own wisdom evaporates such a lapse as swiftly as a hot pan boils away a drop of water; forceful manifestation belongs instead to one who has not yet seen that path at all. Discrimination-arisen manifestation belongs to one who clings; spontaneous manifestation belongs to one who does not cling, yet whose affliction, carried forward from habit, still arises unbidden all the same. Discursive manifestation belongs to one given to sustained examination of desired objects; uncontrolled manifestation belongs to one asleep, dreaming what waking restraint would never allow; controlled manifestation belongs to one awake, generating greed, hatred, or delusion with at least some awareness of doing so. Manifestation prior to its proper basis belongs to the young, whose affliction arises even before any of the usual conditions for it are fully in place; manifestation at its proper basis belongs to one whose faculties have matured into full adulthood. And curable manifestation belongs to one possessing the potential for final nirvana, capable of genuine healing, while incurable manifestation belongs, the treatise says plainly and based on long experience teaching beings, to one lacking that potential altogether, beyond the reach of persuasion no matter how sincerely offered.
云何二十煩惱現行？一、隨所欲纏現行，二、不隨所欲纏現行，三、無所了知煩惱現行，四、有所了知煩惱現行，五、麤煩惱現行，六、等煩惱現行，七、微煩惱現行，八、內門煩惱現行，九、外門煩惱現行，十、失念煩惱現行，十一、猛利煩惱現行，十二、分別所起煩惱現行，十三、任運所起煩惱現行，十四、尋思煩惱現行，十五、不自在煩惱現行，十六、自在煩惱現行，十七、非所依位煩惱現行，十八、所依位煩惱現行，十九、可救療煩惱現行，二十、不可救療煩惱現行。
What are the twenty kinds of manifest affliction? First, manifestation following one's own wish. Second, manifestation not following one's own wish. Third, manifestation without understanding. Fourth, manifestation with understanding. Fifth, coarse manifestation. Sixth, balanced manifestation. Seventh, subtle manifestation. Eighth, inner-door manifestation. Ninth, outer-door manifestation. Tenth, lost-mindfulness manifestation. Eleventh, forceful manifestation. Twelfth, discrimination-arisen manifestation. Thirteenth, spontaneous manifestation. Fourteenth, discursive manifestation. Fifteenth, uncontrolled manifestation. Sixteenth, controlled manifestation. Seventeenth, manifestation prior to its proper basis. Eighteenth, manifestation at its proper basis. Nineteenth, curable manifestation. Twentieth, incurable manifestation.
Master Cháng Bǎi treats the hot-pan image for a noble one's own momentary lost mindfulness as a genuinely comforting detail buried within an otherwise exhaustive taxonomy: even one who has already seen the noble path directly is not thereby rendered permanently immune to every lapse, the crucial difference being simply how fast that lapse evaporates once wisdom's own heat meets it, rather than whether it ever occurs at all. He highlights the frank final admission that some manifestation of affliction is simply incurable, offered as a plain statement drawn from long pedagogical experience rather than doctrinal despair, as the treatise's own sober acknowledgment that not every teaching effort succeeds, a note of realism sitting alongside its otherwise consistently hopeful account of affliction's own genuine severability.
27. Section: The Moment of Conception, Seen From the Inside
The treatise completes its twenty conditions, matching each to the person and manifestation already named, pleasure, suffering, neutrality, desire, discursive thought, contact, latent tendency, past habituation, bad companionship, hearing improper teaching, improper attention, disbelief, laziness, lost mindfulness, distraction, poor discernment, heedlessness, affliction itself, not yet being free of desire, and simply being an unawakened ordinary being by nature, this last belonging to one beyond any current cure. It is according to these very conditions, the treatise concludes, that affliction actually manifests, closing its full account of the twenty persons, twenty manifestations, and twenty conditions together. The treatise now turns to a related question of striking psychological depth: when a being's own rebirth-continuity links them to a new body within some particular realm, does the entire body of affliction belonging to that realm link along with them, or only a portion? The answer is that it is the entire body of affliction, not a portion. This holds first because one not yet free of desire is reborn specifically in the very place their own desire binds them to, never in a place they have already become free of; and it holds further because even a noble one who has seen the path but not yet fully freed themselves of desire still carries that realm's own affliction-seed bound to their present body, a seed that becomes, in its own turn, the very cause of their next, different body, so that even a stream-enterer or once-returner, entering the womb with genuine awareness of who their parents actually are, quite unlike an ordinary being's own utterly confused entry, is nonetheless still pulled along by this same residual seed — though poignantly, some such noble ones are said to forget their own attainment entirely upon birth, its memory only reawakened later by some fortunate condition. And it holds finally at the very moment of conception itself, when self-love arises toward one's own coming body, and, depending on whether that body will be female or male, attraction arises toward one parent and aversion toward the other, together with a flickering doubt, wondering whether this man, this woman, is truly the one now joined with oneself, and self-view, self-belonging-view, and conceit all arise there as well — from which it should be understood that every affliction belonging to that realm, not craving alone, truly participates in linking a being to their own rebirth.
依此諸緣故，煩惱現行。問：於彼彼界結生相續彼彼身中，當言全界一切煩惱皆結生耶？為不全耶？答：當言全，非不全。何以故？若未離欲，於自生處方得受生，非離欲故。又未離欲者，諸煩惱品所有麤重隨縛自身，亦能為彼異身生因。由是因緣，當知一切煩惱皆結生相續。又將受生時，於自體上貪愛現行，於男於女若愛若恚亦互現行。又疑現行。彼作是思：此男此女，今為與我共行事不？又於內外我我所見及我慢等皆亦現行。由此因緣，當知一切煩惱皆得結生相續。
It is according to these conditions that affliction manifests. Question: when linked in rebirth-continuity within a body belonging to a given realm, should it be said that the entire body of affliction belonging to that realm links along, or not entirely? Answer: it should be said entirely, not partially. Why is this so? Because one not yet free of desire is reborn precisely where their own desire binds them, not where they are already free of it. Also, one not yet free of desire carries the coarse-heaviness of every affliction bound to their own body, which becomes the cause for a different body's arising. For this reason, it should be known that every affliction links one to rebirth-continuity. Also, at the time of taking rebirth, self-love manifests toward one's own body, and, according to whether one will be male or female, attraction or aversion manifests reciprocally. Doubt also manifests, thinking: is this man, this woman, now truly the one acting together with me? Self-view, self-belonging-view, and self-conceit, both inner and outer, manifest as well. For this reason, it should be known that every affliction links a being to rebirth-continuity.
Master Cháng Bǎi treats this psychological account of the very moment of conception as one of the treatise's own most startlingly intimate passages, describing an experience no ordinary memory retains yet the tradition claims to know in precise and specific detail, self-love, gendered attraction and aversion toward the future parents, a flicker of doubt, and the full machinery of self-view already active before birth has even occurred. He highlights the poignant detail of a noble one forgetting their own attainment upon birth as a genuinely moving reminder of how fragile even real spiritual accomplishment can look from the outside, its own continuity sometimes needing to be coaxed back to conscious awareness by favorable conditions encountered later in that very life.
28. Section: Seven Ways a Being Is Linked to Their Own Rebirth
The treatise now names seven kinds of rebirth-linking in brief. Rebirth-linking through both manifestation and latent tendency belongs to ordinary, unawakened beings, carried along by both affliction's active presence and its underlying seed alike. Rebirth-linking through latent tendency alone belongs to those who have already seen the noble path, a stream-enterer or once-returner no longer driven by manifest affliction, yet still carried by the seed not yet fully exhausted. Rebirth-linking through conscious entry into the womb belongs to a wheel-turning monarch, who alone among those still driven by ordinary karma enters the womb with full awareness of the parents receiving them. Rebirth-linking through conscious entry and abiding belongs to a solitary awakened one, aware throughout both the entry and the entire duration of gestation. Rebirth-linking through unbroken mindfulness at every stage belongs to the bodhisattva, aware without any lapse whatsoever through entering the womb, abiding within it, and finally emerging from it, taking rebirth entirely by their own free vow rather than by compulsion. Rebirth-linking driven by karma belongs to every one of these except the bodhisattva, ordinary beings, noble learners, wheel-turning kings, and solitary awakened ones alike still ultimately drawn onward by the force of their own accumulated karma. And rebirth-linking driven by wisdom belongs to the bodhisattva alone, who takes on a new body not because karma compels it but because wisdom itself, joined with great compassion, freely chooses it for the sake of all beings.
復次，結生相續略有七種。一、纏及隨眠結生相續，謂諸異生。二、唯隨眠結生相續，謂見聖跡。三、正知入胎結生相續，謂轉輪王。四、正知入住結生相續，謂諸獨覺。五、於一切位不失正念結生相續，謂諸菩薩。六、業所引發結生相續，謂除菩薩結生相續。七、智所引發結生相續，謂諸菩薩。
Moreover, rebirth-linking is, in brief, of seven kinds. First, rebirth-linking through both manifestation and latent tendency, belonging to ordinary beings. Second, rebirth-linking through latent tendency alone, belonging to those who have seen the noble path. Third, rebirth-linking through conscious entry into the womb, belonging to a wheel-turning monarch. Fourth, rebirth-linking through conscious entry and abiding, belonging to solitary awakened ones. Fifth, rebirth-linking without loss of mindfulness at any stage, belonging to bodhisattvas. Sixth, rebirth-linking driven by karma, belonging to all except the bodhisattva's own rebirth-linking. Seventh, rebirth-linking driven by wisdom, belonging to bodhisattvas.
Master Cháng Bǎi treats this sevenfold hierarchy as a genuinely moving portrait of freedom's own gradual expansion across the spiritual path: an ordinary being carried helplessly by both manifest affliction and its seed, a noble learner carried by seed alone, a wheel-turning king or solitary awakened one at least conscious of the process even while still karmically bound, and finally the bodhisattva alone, for whom rebirth itself becomes not a fate to be endured but a freely chosen gift. He highlights the closing distinction between karma-driven and wisdom-driven rebirth as the entire sequence's own most important dividing line, since everything before the bodhisattva, however much awareness or purity it may involve, remains at bottom compelled, while the bodhisattva's own rebirth, alone among all seven kinds, is genuinely and entirely free.
29. Section: Affliction Defilement's Own Closing Verse — And Karma Defilement Opens
The treatise names two further kinds of rebirth-linking to close its sevenfold account: rebirth-linking that leads to no genuine benefit, belonging to karma-driven linking, and rebirth-linking capable of leading to genuine benefit, belonging to wisdom-driven linking, for seven kinds in total, or nine when these two are counted alongside the first seven. Noting that further doctrinal refinements, following the classical patterns of narrower-to-broader and broader-to-narrower questioning, will not be elaborated further here, the treatise offers its own closing verse to gather together everything this extensive analysis has covered: karma's generation, affliction's marks, its real and unreal objects, its correspondence with feeling, and the rest; the unwholesome clusters bound to each realm, and its severing; the objects it references, and its manifestation; and rebirth-linking, discussed last of all. With this verse, the treatise brings its entire extensive analysis of affliction defilement to its true and final close: the deciding discernment of affliction defilement has now been fully explained. The deciding discernment of karma defilement shall now be explained in turn. Karma defilement, the treatise begins, is established through five aspects of its own, closely paralleling affliction defilement's own five: the fundamental karma-path itself, comprising bodily, verbal, and mental karma, together with the preparatory means leading up to it and the after-effects following its completion — three aspects taken according to karma's own particular nature, and two taken according to its own further distinctions, five altogether.
又有引無義利結生相續，謂即業所引發結生相續。又有能引義利結生相續，謂智所引發結生相續。如是總說結生相續，或七、或九。復次，於此處所，有餘一切順前句、順後句及四句等如理決擇文，更不復現。後嗢柁南曰：業相事樂等，不善等及斷，所緣與現行，續生最為後。如是已說煩惱雜染決擇。業雜染決擇，我今當說。如先所說業雜染義，當知此業亦由五相建立差別。
There is also rebirth-linking that leads to no benefit, namely karma-driven rebirth-linking. There is also rebirth-linking able to lead to benefit, namely wisdom-driven rebirth-linking. Thus, in total, rebirth-linking is said to be of seven, or of nine kinds. Moreover, in this place, all remaining deciding-discernment texts following the patterns of narrower-to-broader, broader-to-narrower, and the four alternatives do not appear again. The closing verse says: karma's generation, its marks, its objects, its correspondence with feeling, and the rest; the unwholesome and the rest, and severing; its objects referenced and its manifestation; rebirth-linking last of all. Thus the deciding discernment of affliction defilement has been explained. The deciding discernment of karma defilement shall now be explained. As already explained regarding the meaning of karma defilement, it should be known that this karma too is established through five aspects of difference.
Master Cháng Bǎi marks this transition as a genuinely historic turning point within this whole four-fascicle stretch of the treatise: affliction defilement, spanning back through the entirety of fascicle 58 and roughly the first two-thirds of fascicle 59, ten root afflictions, twenty-six secondary afflictions, five establishing aspects, an eightfold inquiry into severing, and this final extensive analysis of how affliction actually operates in a living mind, has now been completely and formally closed, and the treatise turns for the first time to karma defilement, the second of the three kinds of defilement framing this entire portion of the text. He notes that karma defilement's own five-aspect structure deliberately echoes affliction defilement's, a structural parallel meant to help the reader recognize familiar analytical machinery even while the actual subject matter shifts from the inner workings of affliction to the outward workings of karmic action itself.
30. Section: Five Factors for a Complete Act of Killing — And a Bodhisattva's Compassionate Exception
Taking killing as its paradigm case, the treatise asks how the very own-mark of the unwholesome karma-path of killing and its companions is established, and answers with five factors together: a defiled mind arises; the wish and intention to act on it arises; one proceeds specifically against the intended object; the deed itself is actually carried out; and the deed reaches its own completion. Only when every one of these five is genuinely present does an act qualify as the fully complete karma-path of killing, or any comparable unwholesome deed. A defiled mind means specifically that greed, hatred, or delusion obscures the mind at the moment of acting, one governed by greed driven to steal, one governed by hatred driven to kill, one governed by delusion driven into wrong view through simple ignorance of cause and effect. The treatise's own commentary notes an important exception here for the bodhisattva: should a bodhisattva observe a bandit about to murder many people out of greed, or about to harm a great teacher, a solitary awakened one, or a fellow bodhisattva, or about to commit one of the deeds of immediate retribution, and, reflecting with genuine care, think to themselves, if I do not end this being's life, they will commit this terrible deed and suffer immensely for it in hell; better that I alone bear the consequence of ending their life than let them fall into that suffering, and then, moved by a mind of compassion rather than hatred, and accepting full responsibility with deep humility regarding their own future accountability, actually takes that life — such a bodhisattva, the treatise states plainly, commits no violation of the bodhisattva precepts at all, and in fact generates great merit through this very act, precisely because the defiled mind of hatred that would otherwise be required is genuinely absent, replaced instead by compassion alone.
云何建立彼殺生等不善業道自相？謂染汙心起彼欲樂，即於是處彼業現行而得究竟，當知總名殺生等一切業道自相。染汙心者，謂貪者貪所蔽，瞋者瞋所蔽，癡者癡所蔽。
How is the own-mark of the unwholesome karma-path of killing and the rest established? A defiled mind arises together with the wish and intention to act, and precisely with respect to that object, the deed manifests and reaches completion — this in total is called the own-mark of the karma-path of killing and all such deeds. A defiled mind means that one of greed is obscured by greed, one of hatred is obscured by hatred, and one of delusion is obscured by delusion.
Master Cháng Bǎi treats the five-factor structure for a complete karma-path as one of the treatise's own most practically important ethical teachings, since it explains, with real precision, why two outwardly identical actions, a life ended by one person and a life ended by another, can carry entirely different moral and karmic weight depending on what was actually present in the mind behind them. He treats the bodhisattva's compassionate exception, drawn from the Bodhisattva Stage, as one of the entire treatise's own most morally demanding passages, precisely because it refuses the easy comfort of a simple rule against killing and instead asks the reader to imagine a bodhisattva knowingly accepting a personal karmic cost, out of love rather than self-interest, in order to spare another being an even greater one — a teaching Master Cháng Bǎi notes should never be casually generalized into a license, since it depends entirely on the near-impossible purity of motive the passage itself describes in such careful, deliberate detail.
31. Section: When a Killing Is Not Quite a Killing
The treatise completes its account of what fails to constitute a fully complete karma-path. A defiled mind and the wish to act may both be present, and the intended object correctly identified without any confusion, and yet the deed itself never actually manifests, and still the intended result comes about regardless, as when one intending to kill another never in fact lifts a hand, yet the intended victim, hearing of the threat, dies of sheer terror before the deed is ever carried out, or takes their own life first out of that same fear — even here, the karma-path remains incomplete, since the deed itself was never actually enacted. And a defiled mind, the wish to act, correct identification of the object, and the deed's own actual enactment may all be present, and yet the deed still fails to reach its own completion, as when one attacks an intended victim, believes them dead, and flees the scene, only for that victim to be fortunately rescued and survive after all — this too falls short of the fully complete karma-path. Only when every one of the five factors is genuinely present together, a defiled mind, the arisen wish, correct identification of the intended object, the deed's actual manifestation, and its own final completion, does an action qualify as the fully complete karma-path in question. By this brief account of the own-mark of an unwholesome karma-path, every one of the ten unwholesome karma-paths, not killing alone, should be understood and determined according to this same fivefold pattern, each requiring its own full complement of these five factors before it can properly be called complete.
設有染汙心及起彼欲樂，即於是處業不現行而得究竟，此業亦非圓滿業道所攝。設有染汙心及起彼欲樂，即於是處彼業現行而不究竟，此業亦非圓滿業道所攝。若有染汙心及起彼欲樂，即於是處彼業現行而得究竟，具一切支，此業乃名圓滿業道所攝。由此略說業道自相，一切不善業道自相應隨決了。
Suppose there is a defiled mind and the arisen wish, and with respect to that object, the deed does not manifest, yet completion is reached — this deed is also not included among the fully complete karma-path. Suppose there is a defiled mind and the arisen wish, and with respect to that object, the deed manifests, yet does not reach completion — this deed is also not included among the fully complete karma-path. If there is a defiled mind and the arisen wish, and with respect to that object, the deed manifests and reaches completion, possessing every factor, this deed is called included among the fully complete karma-path. By this brief account of the own-mark of the karma-path, every unwholesome karma-path's own-mark should accordingly be determined.
Master Cháng Bǎi treats the case of a victim dying purely of fear, before any actual deed has occurred, as this whole framework's own subtlest and most philosophically interesting edge case: the outcome the perpetrator wanted has genuinely come about, and their own mental state was every bit as malicious as in a completed killing, yet the treatise insists this still does not count as the full karma-path, precisely because karma is not simply a matter of wished-for outcomes lining up with reality, but requires the deed itself to be actually, physically enacted. He highlights the five-factor formula's careful symmetry, object, perception, wish, affliction, and enactment-with-completion, as a structure precise enough to distinguish intention from action, action from completion, and correct target from mistaken one, exactly the distinctions any fair system of moral accountability actually needs.
32. Section: A More Detailed Five — The Object and the Four Kinds of Perception
The treatise now offers a more detailed, expanded account of the ten unwholesome karma-paths' own specific varieties, naming five aspects in this fuller version: the object, the perception, the wish, the affliction, and the combined means and completion. The object refers to whatever particular basis each individual karma-path specifically depends upon, whether a sentient being or something not sentient at all, each of the ten unwholesome karma-paths turning upon whatever object properly belongs to it. Perception is of four kinds: perceiving that which is not the intended object as though it were not the intended object, but being mistaken about the object's own identity; perceiving that which is not the intended object as though it were the intended object; perceiving that which genuinely is the intended object as though it genuinely were; and perceiving that which is not the intended object as though it correctly were not — taking killing as the illustrative case, since killing depends specifically on a sentient being as its object, failing to recognize a given being as the very being one intends to kill is a mistaken perception, and just as easily, mistaking some other being, or even something not sentient at all, for the intended victim is likewise a mistaken perception; both such distortions belong to mistaken perception, and every other karma-path should be understood according to this same pattern in turn, while correctly recognizing the intended object as itself, and correctly recognizing what is not the intended object as not itself, are both, by contrast, entirely free of any such distortion.
復次，若廣建立十惡業道自性差別，復由五相。何等為五？一、事，二、想，三、欲樂，四、煩惱，五、方便究竟。事者，一一業道各別決定所依處事。或有情數、或非有情數，隨其所應，十惡業道依之而轉。想者，有四。謂於彼非彼想，非於彼彼想，於彼彼想，非於彼非彼想。
Moreover, if the specific varieties of the ten unwholesome karma-paths are established in more detail, there are five aspects again. What are the five? First, the object. Second, the perception. Third, the wish. Fourth, the affliction. Fifth, means and completion. The object is the particular basis each individual karma-path specifically depends upon, whether sentient or not sentient, each of the ten unwholesome karma-paths turning according to it. Perception is of four kinds: perceiving what is not the object as not the object, perceiving what is not the object as the object, perceiving what is the object as the object, and perceiving what is not the object as correctly not the object.
Master Cháng Bǎi treats this fourfold breakdown of perception as the treatise's own careful acknowledgment that misidentification can cut in two entirely different directions, mistaking the real target for something else, sparing them by accident, or mistaking something else for the real target, harming an innocent party by accident, and that both errors matter for how a given action is actually judged, even though they produce opposite practical results. He notes that this expanded five-aspect account does not contradict the earlier, simpler five-factor account already given, but rather refines it further, splitting what was previously folded into "correct identification of the object" into its own fully worked-out fourfold analysis of perception in its own right.
33. Section: Seven Combinations of Affliction, and Killing Worked Out in Full
The treatise completes its expanded five-aspect account. The wish to act may arise whether one's perception of the object was distorted or entirely accurate, the underlying motive present either way. The affliction driving the deed may be greed alone, hatred alone, or delusion alone, any two of these arising together or in succession, or all three arising together or in succession, seven possible combinations in total capable of driving a being toward any of the ten unwholesome deeds. And means and completion refers to actually setting the intended karma into motion and then reaching its own fulfillment, whether immediately, in that very moment, or only later, after some further time has passed. Applying these five aspects to killing specifically, its object is a sentient being; its perception is the killer's own correct, undistorted recognition of that being as the very one intended; its wish, resting on this correct recognition, is the resolve, I shall end this life; its affliction is whichever of the seven combinations of greed, hatred, and delusion happens to obscure the killer's mind at the time; and its means and completion is the actual carrying out of harm, whether by one's own hand or through another, the karma-path reaching its own completion the very moment the being dies without interruption, or, if death is delayed, only once that being's life actually ends at that later time — a distinction the tradition of the hearers holds to strictly, insisting the root karma-path is completed only at the moment of actual death, though this same strictness is not spelled out in quite the same terms within the Great Vehicle's own texts.
欲樂者，或有倒想、或無倒想樂所作欲。煩惱者，或貪、或瞋、或癡、或貪瞋、或貪癡、或瞋癡，或貪瞋癡一切皆具。方便究竟者，即於所欲作業隨起方便，或於爾時、或於後時而得究竟。殺生業道，以有情數眾生為事。若能害者，於眾生所作眾生想，起害生欲，此想即名於彼眾生名不顛倒想。依此想故，作如是心：我當害生。如是名為殺生欲樂。此能害者，或貪所蔽、或瞋所蔽、或癡所蔽、或二所蔽、或三所蔽，而起作心，是名煩惱。彼由欲樂及染汙心，或自、或他發起方便加害眾生。若害無間彼便命終，即此方便，當於爾時說名成就究竟業道。若於後時彼方捨命，由此方便，彼命終時乃名成就究竟業道。
The wish is the desire to act arising with either a distorted or an undistorted perception. The affliction is greed, hatred, or delusion, any two together, or all three together. Means and completion is setting into motion the intended karma, reaching completion either at that time or at a later time. The karma-path of killing takes a sentient being as its object. If the one who harms forms the correct perception of the being as that very being, and gives rise to the wish to harm, this perception is called undistorted with respect to that being. Based on this perception, forming the thought, I shall harm this life, is called the wish to kill. This one who harms, obscured by greed, hatred, delusion, two of these, or all three, gives rise to the intention to act, and this is called affliction. Driven by this wish and this defiled mind, whether by one's own hand or through another, one sets in motion the means of harming the being. If, without interruption, that being's life then ends, this very means, at that time, is called the accomplished, complete karma-path. If the being's life ends only later, it is only at that later time, when life ends, that the karma-path is called accomplished and complete.
Master Cháng Bǎi treats the seven combinations of affliction as the treatise's own acknowledgment that real motives are rarely pure or singular, a single unwholesome act often carrying some blend of craving, resentment, and confusion together rather than one cleanly isolated poison, and that moral responsibility must be assessed accordingly rather than forced into an artificially tidy single-cause account. He highlights the small but genuine difference between the tradition of the hearers and the Great Vehicle's own texts regarding exactly when the killing karma-path reaches completion as a reminder that even within a single overarching tradition, real scholastic disagreement persists on points of real consequence, here concerning the precise moment at which the gravest kind of unwholesome karma becomes fully and irreversibly established.
34. Section: Theft, Illicit Conduct, and False Speech Worked Out in Full
The treatise applies the same five-aspect pattern to theft: its object is property belonging to another, whether living or not; its perception is correctly recognizing that property without confusion; its wish is the desire to plunder or steal; its affliction is any of the seven combinations already named; and its means and completion is simply moving the object away from its original place, whether gathering it together within a village or a quiet place, or shifting it from where it properly belongs, even carrying off goods aboard a boat counting as theft the moment the boat itself moves. Applied next to sexual misconduct: its object is whatever partner or circumstance is not proper to engage, a woman one ought not approach at all, or, even with an otherwise proper partner, the wrong bodily part, the wrong place, the wrong time, or excess beyond what is fitting, and likewise any man or any person of indeterminate sex; its perception is correctly recognizing that partner without confusion; its wish is the desire to actually carry out the act; its affliction is again any of the seven combinations; and its means and completion is the union of the two bodies itself. Applied to false speech: its object is claiming to have seen, heard, sensed, or known what one has not, or denying having seen, heard, sensed, or known what one actually has; its perception is either accurately recognizing what was actually seen, heard, sensed, and known, or else inverting that very recognition; its wish is the desire to conceal the truth and speak falsely instead; and its affliction, again, is any of the seven combinations of greed, hatred, and delusion.
不與取業道。事者，謂他所攝物。想者，謂於彼彼想。欲樂者，謂劫盜欲。煩惱者，謂三毒，或具不具。方便究竟者，謂起方便移離本處。欲邪行業道。事者，謂女所不應行；設所應行，非支、非處、非時、非量；若不應理，一切男及不男。想者，於彼彼想。欲樂者，謂樂行之欲。煩惱者，謂三毒，或具不具。方便究竟者，謂兩兩交會。妄語業道。事者，謂見聞覺知，不見、不聞、不覺、不知。想者，謂於見等或翻彼想。欲樂者，謂覆藏想樂說之欲。煩惱者，謂貪瞋癡，或具不具。
The karma-path of taking what is not given: its object is property belonging to another. Its perception is correct recognition of that object. Its wish is the desire to plunder or steal. Its affliction is the three poisons, complete or incomplete. Its means and completion is setting means into motion and moving the object from its original place. The karma-path of sexual misconduct: its object is a woman not to be approached, or, even where approach is proper, the wrong part, place, time, or measure; and, where unfitting, any man or person of indeterminate sex. Its perception is correct recognition of that person. Its wish is the desire to carry out the act. Its affliction is the three poisons, complete or incomplete. Its means and completion is the union of the two bodies. The karma-path of false speech: its object is seeing, hearing, sensing, and knowing, or not seeing, not hearing, not sensing, not knowing. Its perception is correct recognition of what was seen and the rest, or its inversion. Its wish is the desire to conceal and speak falsely. Its affliction is greed, hatred, delusion, complete or incomplete.
Master Cháng Bǎi treats the detail that even shifting a boat's own position completes the karma-path of theft as this section's own vivid illustration of just how precisely the tradition tries to pin down the exact instant an unwholesome deed becomes irreversibly established, refusing to leave the boundary between mere intention and accomplished wrongdoing vague or a matter of guesswork. He highlights the object of false speech, the mismatch between what was genuinely seen, heard, sensed, or known and what is actually claimed, as the treatise's own precise technical definition of lying itself, locating the offense not in whether a statement happens to be objectively false but in the deliberate gap the speaker knowingly creates between their own genuine perception and what they choose to represent to another.
35. Section: Divisive Speech, Harsh Speech, and the Subtlety of Idle Chatter
False speech reaches its own completion once whoever is listening or engaged in the exchange understands what has been said, the karma-path complete the moment the falsehood actually lands. Divisive speech, sowing discord, takes as its object beings who are either presently in harmony or already estranged; its perception is correctly recognizing which of these two conditions actually holds; its wish is delighting in seeing them further estranged or kept from reconciling; its affliction is any combination of the three poisons; and its completion is reached once those very beings, whether once harmonious and now broken apart, or already estranged and now driven further apart still, actually come to understand what has been said and done. Harsh speech takes as its object whatever being one wishes to wound or offend; its perception, wish, and affliction follow the same pattern; and its completion, notably, requires nothing more than the scolding words themselves being spoken, the target's own understanding not required at all, unlike divisive speech, since harsh speech's own purpose is simply venting anger rather than accomplishing anything through the listener's own comprehension. Idle chatter takes as its object whatever talk leads to no genuine benefit; its perception, wish, and affliction follow the same pattern once more; and its completion is reached the very instant the words are spoken, whether as one of the three prior unwholesome speech-acts committed at the wrong time or without real purpose, or standing entirely on its own, as when reciting heretical texts to entertain another, or indulging privately in idle song, weeping, or lament even when no one else is present to hear it. Idle chatter, the tradition holds, is so pervasive and so subtle that only a fully awakened Buddha is able to sever its very root entirely, which is precisely why the Buddha alone, among all teachers, is honored with the title World-Honored One.
方便究竟者，說這句話當時的聽眾或是對話的人，明白自己所說的話，只要對方明白，妄語業道就成就了。離間語業道。事者，謂諸有情或和不和。想者，謂俱於彼若合若離，隨起一想。欲樂者，謂樂彼乖離，若不和合欲。煩惱者，謂三毒，或具不具。方便究竟者，謂所破領解。麤惡語業道。事者，謂諸有情能為違損。想者，謂於彼彼想。欲樂者，謂樂麤言欲。煩惱者，謂三毒，或具不具。方便究竟者，謂訶罵彼。綺語業道。事者，謂能引發無利之義。想者，謂於彼彼想。欲樂者，謂樂說之欲。煩惱者，謂三毒，或具不具。方便究竟者，謂纔發言。
Means and completion is that whoever is listening or in dialogue at the time understands what was said; once understood, the karma-path of false speech is accomplished. The karma-path of divisive speech: its object is beings either harmonious or not harmonious. Its perception is forming a single perception of them as either joined or estranged. Its wish is delighting in their estrangement or disharmony. Its affliction is the three poisons, complete or incomplete. Its means and completion is that those broken apart come to understand it. The karma-path of harsh speech: its object is beings capable of being wounded. Its perception is correct recognition of them. Its wish is delighting in harsh speech. Its affliction is the three poisons, complete or incomplete. Its means and completion is scolding them. The karma-path of idle chatter: its object is whatever gives rise to no benefit. Its perception is correct recognition of it. Its wish is delighting in speaking it. Its affliction is the three poisons, complete or incomplete. Its means and completion is simply uttering the words.
Master Cháng Bǎi treats the contrast between divisive speech, which requires the target's own understanding to complete, and harsh speech, which requires only the utterance itself, as a genuinely precise piece of moral psychology: divisive speech aims at an actual outcome in another's mind, a rift genuinely created, while harsh speech aims only at the speaker's own release of anger, its own completion entirely independent of whether anyone was even listening. He treats the claim that only a Buddha can sever idle chatter's own root as one of the treatise's own most humbling admissions, since idle chatter, unlike outright lying or cruelty, rarely announces itself as a genuine fault at all, making it, paradoxically, one of the hardest unwholesome habits to ever fully outgrow.
36. Section: Covetousness, Malice, and Wrong View — The Tenth Karma-Path Complete
Covetousness takes as its object property, people, or things belonging to another; its perception is correctly recognizing them; its wish is the very craving itself, wanting them; its affliction is the three poisons, complete or incomplete; and its completion is reached once one firmly resolves that this very person, thing, or property must, one way or another, become one's own. Malice shares the same object and perception as harsh speech, whatever being one wishes to harm; its wish is the desire to injure, whether wishing death, physical harm, the loss of another's wealth or family, or simply that they suffer and grieve in whatever way; its affliction, again, is the three poisons, complete or incomplete; and its completion is reached the moment the intention to cause harm becomes firmly, decisively fixed in the mind, needing no further outward action at all. Wrong view takes as its object what genuinely, truly exists, the Three Jewels, the four noble truths, and the like; its perception is the distorted view that treats what genuinely exists as though it did not exist at all; its wish is delighting in and clinging to this very distortion as though it were correct; its affliction, once more, is the three poisons, complete or incomplete; and its completion is reached once the denial of what genuinely exists becomes firmly and decisively fixed as settled conviction. With this, the treatise completes its detailed working-out of every one of the ten unwholesome karma-paths according to the same five-aspect pattern. The treatise then turns to a further refinement specifically for the karma-path of killing, distinguishing three further kinds: killing whose fault continues to increase after the deed itself, killing whose fault does not increase, and killing that carries no fault at all.
貪欲業道。事者，謂屬他財產。想者，謂於彼彼想。欲樂者，謂即如是愛欲。煩惱者，謂三毒，或具不具。方便究竟者，謂於彼事定期屬己。瞋恚業道。事之與想如麤惡語說。欲樂者，謂損害等欲。煩惱者，謂三毒，或具不具。方便究竟者，謂損害等期心決定。邪見業道。事者，謂實有義。想者，謂於有非有想。欲樂者，謂即如是愛欲。煩惱者，謂三毒，或具不具。方便究竟者，謂誹謗決定。復次，殺生有三種。一、有罪增長，二、有罪不增長，三、無有罪。
The karma-path of covetousness: its object is property belonging to another. Its perception is correct recognition of it. Its wish is this very craving. Its affliction is the three poisons, complete or incomplete. Its means and completion is firmly resolving that it belongs to oneself. The karma-path of malice: its object and perception are as with harsh speech. Its wish is the desire to harm and the like. Its affliction is the three poisons, complete or incomplete. Its means and completion is firmly resolving the intent to harm. The karma-path of wrong view: its object is what genuinely exists. Its perception is regarding what exists as not existing. Its wish is this very craving. Its affliction is the three poisons, complete or incomplete. Its means and completion is firmly resolving to slander it. Moreover, killing is of three kinds. First, killing whose fault increases. Second, killing whose fault does not increase. Third, killing without fault.
Master Cháng Bǎi highlights the striking parallel between covetousness and killing's own completion condition, resolving that something must become one's own, or that someone must be harmed, purely as a fixed mental determination, with no outward deed required at all, as the treatise's own consistent reminder that these final three of the ten unwholesome karma-paths, unlike the seven bodily and verbal deeds preceding them, are purely mental, complete the moment conviction hardens, entirely independent of whether anything is ever actually said or done. He treats the newly opened threefold distinction for killing, fault-increasing, fault-non-increasing, and faultless, as a significant further refinement about to unfold, since it promises to explain how the very same outward act, the ending of a life, can carry dramatically different moral weight depending on factors the treatise has not yet even named.
37. Section: An Accidental Killing Repaid Across Two Lifetimes
The treatise explains its threefold distinction for killing through three generating conditions: arising from affliction, generating suffering, and reaching the satisfaction of one's own wish. Killing whose fault increases possesses all three conditions together, driven by greed, hatred, or delusion, producing genuine suffering for oneself or another, and reaching the killer's own satisfied wish, a gladness at having done what was intended. Killing whose fault does not increase possesses only the first two conditions, arising from affliction and producing suffering, but lacks the satisfaction of a fulfilled wish, as when the deed is completed yet immediately regretted, or attempted yet never actually completed. And killing that carries no fault at all possesses only the second condition, generating suffering alone, without any affliction driving it and without any wish being fulfilled, as when a bodhisattva kills purely out of compassion, entirely free of greed, hatred, or the wish to kill, even though the being killed still suffers regardless, or when killing occurs through simple accident, tied to karma from an earlier life rather than present malice. The tradition recalls the story of the monk An Shigao, who, knowing that he had accidentally killed another person in a past life, foresaw that he himself would be accidentally killed in the present life at Kuaiji, and used the very occasion of his own foreseen death to guide a young man toward renunciation and monastic practice — the debt of an accidental killing repaid, across two lifetimes, life for life, entirely without malice on either side, and so entirely without fault, even while genuine suffering still occurred.
生罪因緣，亦略有三。一、煩惱所起，二、能生於苦，三、希望滿足。初具三緣；次有二種，無希望滿；後唯生苦。復次，略由五相，建立貪欲、瞋恚、邪見圓滿自相。何等名為貪欲五相？一、有耽著心，謂於自財所。二、有貪婪心，謂樂積財物。三、有饕餮心，謂於屬他資財等事計為華好，深生愛味。四、有謀略心，謂作是心：凡彼所有，何當屬我。五、有覆蔽心，謂貪欲纏之所覆故，不覺羞恥，不知過患及與出離。
The conditions generating fault are, in brief, also three. First, arising from affliction. Second, generating suffering. Third, the satisfaction of one's wish. The first kind possesses all three conditions; the second kind possesses two, without the satisfaction of the wish; the last possesses only the generation of suffering. Moreover, in brief, by five aspects, the complete own-mark of covetousness, malice, and wrong view is established. What are the five aspects of covetousness? First, a mind of attachment, toward one's own wealth. Second, a mind of greed, delighting in accumulating wealth. Third, a mind of gluttony, regarding another's wealth as beautiful, generating deep craving and relish for it. Fourth, a mind of scheming, thinking: whatever belongs to another, how might it come to belong to me? Fifth, a mind of obscuration, covered over by the entangling grip of covetousness, so that one feels no shame, and recognizes neither the fault involved nor any need to escape it.
Master Cháng Bǎi treats An Shigao's own foreseen accidental death as one of the tradition's own most striking illustrations of karma operating with genuine precision even in the total absence of malice: two lives, two accidents, and a debt repaid exactly, life for life, with no villain and no crime anywhere in the story, only cause meeting its own effect in due course. He highlights covetousness's own fivefold psychological anatomy, attachment to what is already one's own, delight in accumulating more, craving what belongs to another, actively scheming to obtain it, and finally losing all sense of shame about the whole process, as the treatise's own careful dissection of how an ordinary, everyday feeling can deepen, stage by stage, into something genuinely capable of generating karma.
38. Section: "One Thought of Anger Arising Opens a Hundred Thousand Gates of Obstruction"
The treatise offers hatred's own five aspects, closely paralleling covetousness's own structure. A mind of hatred arises through discrimination based on past circumstance or present provocation, generating the wish to cause harm. A mind of intolerance is the inability to bear whatever is felt as unwelcome or disadvantageous. A mind of resentment dwells repeatedly, and not in accordance with reason, on ill will toward the disadvantage one has suffered, this affliction-tinged grudge persisting stubbornly in memory long after the original provocation has passed. A mind of scheming actively plots against the very being one resents, thinking of how to strike them, how to kill them, and further wishing upon them every manner of misery and grief. And a mind of obscuration, exactly as with covetousness, is so thoroughly covered over by hatred's own grip that one feels no shame at all, recognizing neither hatred's own genuine fault nor any need to escape it — as the old teaching warns, a single thought of anger arising opens a hundred thousand gates of obstruction all at once, and however much the other person may genuinely be at fault, it is the one who gives way to anger who is harmed first and worst of all, every accumulated merit consumed in that very fire, the practitioner's own basic understanding that anger has no place on the path having simply failed to take hold.
何等名為瞋恚五相？一、有憎惡心，謂於能損害相隨法分別故。二、有不堪耐心，謂於不饒益不堪忍故。三、有怨恨心，謂於不饒益數不如理隨憶念故。四、有謀略心，謂於有情作如是意：何當捶撻、何當殺害，乃至廣說故。五、有覆蔽心，謂如前說。
What are the five aspects of hatred? First, a mind of hatred, arising through discrimination following the mark of what causes harm. Second, a mind of intolerance, unable to bear what is disadvantageous. Third, a mind of resentment, repeatedly and unreasonably dwelling on what is disadvantageous. Fourth, a mind of scheming, thinking toward a being: how might I strike them, how might I kill them, and so on at length. Fifth, a mind of obscuration, as already explained.
Master Cháng Bǎi treats the parallel structure between covetousness's five aspects and hatred's own five, ending in the very same obscuring mind that erases all sense of shame, as the treatise's own demonstration that these two very different-feeling afflictions, wanting and hating, actually follow an identical underlying arc, an initial impulse, a hardening resistance, a settled grudge or craving, active scheming, and finally a total loss of moral self-awareness about the whole process. He treats the old saying about anger opening a hundred thousand gates of obstruction as this section's own most quotable and most urgently practical teaching, precisely because it locates the deepest cost of anger not in whatever conflict provoked it but in the burned merit and clouded mind of the one who gave way to it.
39. Section: Thunder in a Clear Cold Sky — Closing Self-Nature, Opening Method
Should even one of the five aspects be missing, hatred cannot be called complete; only when all five are genuinely present together does it qualify as such. The Sutra in Forty-Two Sections observes that anger in a householder still enjoying worldly pleasures is understandable enough, but that a renunciant who has genuinely left desire behind has no business harboring it at all, comparing such anger to a sudden bolt of thunder bursting out of an otherwise clear, cold sky, utterly out of place against the very stillness renunciation was meant to bring. Wrong view, too, has its own five aspects: a mind of delusion, failing to genuinely understand what is actually known; a mind of cruelty, delighting in every kind of evil deed; a mind transgressing the very stream of wholesome conduct, generated by unreasoned, incorrect speculation about the Three Jewels and the four truths; a mind of destruction, denying that giving, loving care, or reverent offering bring any genuine result at all, and slandering every virtuous practice as meaningless; and a mind of obscuration, so covered over by wrong view's own grip that one feels no shame, recognizing neither its fault nor any need to abandon it. As with covetousness and hatred before it, wrong view is complete only when every one of these five aspects is genuinely present together. With this, the treatise closes its account of the first of karma defilement's seven gates, self-nature, examined through the ten unwholesome karma-paths in full, and turns to its second gate, the actual means and methods by which such karma is carried out, beginning again with killing: by one's own hand, or with a stone, a club, a blade, by binding and confining, by starving, by torment, by punishment, by poisoned potions or curses, or even, the tradition records, through necromantic method, animating a corpse or a headless half-corpse by incantation to carry out the killing itself.
於此五相隨闕一種，即非圓滿瞋恚之相；若具一切，方名圓滿。何等名為邪見五相？一、有愚癡心，謂不如實了所知故。二、有暴酷心，謂樂作諸惡故。三、有越流行心，謂於諸法不如理分別推求故。四、有失壞心，謂無施與、愛養、祠祀等，誹謗一切妙行等故。五、有覆蔽心，謂邪見纏之所覆蔽，不覺羞恥，不知過患及出離故。於此五相隨闕一種，即非圓滿邪見之相；具一切分，乃名圓滿。復次，若以手等害諸眾生，說名殺生。如是以塊、杖刀、縛錄、斷食、折挫、治罰、呪藥、厭禱、尸半尸等害諸眾生，皆名殺生。
Should any one of these five aspects be missing, it is not the complete mark of hatred; only possessing all of them is it called complete. What are the five aspects of wrong view? First, a mind of delusion, failing to truly understand what is known. Second, a mind of cruelty, delighting in every evil deed. Third, a mind transgressing the stream, arising from unreasoned speculation about the dharmas. Fourth, a mind of destruction, denying giving, loving care, reverent offering, and slandering every excellent conduct. Fifth, a mind of obscuration, covered by the entangling grip of wrong view, feeling no shame, recognizing neither its fault nor the need to escape it. Should any one of these five be missing, it is not the complete mark of wrong view; possessing every part, it is called complete. Moreover, killing living beings with the hand and the like is called killing. Likewise killing living beings with a clod, a staff, a blade, by binding and confining, by cutting off food, by tormenting, by punishing, by spells and potions, by curses and imprecations, and by corpse or half-corpse, are all called killing.
Master Cháng Bǎi treats the thunder-in-a-clear-sky image as a genuinely sharp piece of spiritual accountability: the very same anger that might be forgivable, even expected, in someone still fully immersed in worldly life becomes something else entirely in one who claims to have set that life aside, the contrast between professed renunciation and actual conduct making the lapse far more jarring than it would otherwise be. He notes that the closing of self-nature and the opening of method mark a genuine shift in the treatise's own approach, moving from the inner psychological structure shared by every complete unwholesome act to the concrete, often startlingly specific external methods by which such acts have actually been carried out across recorded human history, including practices, like necromantic killing, that a modern reader might not expect to find catalogued in a philosophical treatise at all.
40. Section: For Profit, For Fear, For Sport — The Motives Behind Wrongdoing
The treatise names killing's own motives: for the sake of wealth and profit, out of fear of being harmed oneself, to eliminate a hated enemy, in the mistaken belief that killing is lawful or even virtuous, as certain outsiders hold that animals exist purely to be killed for human use, or simply for sport and amusement, as when insects, frogs, or fish are killed purely for entertainment — and whether carried out by one's own hand or through instigating another to do it, the offense of killing is equally incurred either way. Turning to theft, the treatise catalogues its own methods: open, undisguised robbery; stealthy theft; breaking through a wall or undoing a barrier, as in wartime plunder; ambush along a road; refusing to repay a debt one owes; refusing to return property entrusted to one's own keeping; obtaining goods through deception, flattery, or fraud, as when one falsely displays spiritual attainment one does not actually possess in order to secure offerings; feigning pitiable distress to elicit charity; using intimidation or a display of power to extort what belongs to another; and, once again, whether carried out personally or through instigating someone else. Its motives follow in turn: for oneself, for another, out of simple fear, to avoid being killed or imprisoned, to subdue an opponent, for one's own use, to support one's own family or teachers, or out of sheer envy at another's greater wealth — every one of these, the treatise concludes, constitutes the offense of taking what is not given.
為財利等害諸眾生，亦名殺生。或恐為損、或為除怨、或謂為法，乃至或為戲樂害諸眾生，亦名殺生。若自殺害，若令他害，皆得殺罪。復次，若有顯然劫他財物，名不與取。如是竊盜、攻牆解結、伏道竊奪，或有拒債、受寄不還，或行誑諂矯詐而取，或現怖畏方便而取，或現威德而取彼物，或自劫盜，或復令他，如是一切皆不與取。或有自為，或有為他，或怖畏故，或為殺縛，或為折伏，或為受用，或為給侍，或憎嫉故不與而取，此等皆名不與取罪。
Killing living beings for the sake of wealth and profit is also called killing. Also, out of fear of being harmed, or to eliminate an enemy, or believing it to be lawful, and so on, even killing living beings for sport is also called killing. Whether one kills personally or causes another to kill, the offense of killing is incurred either way. Moreover, openly robbing another of their wealth is called taking what is not given. Likewise stealth theft, breaking through walls and undoing bonds, ambush along the road, refusing a debt, failing to return what was entrusted, taking through deception and fraud, taking through a display of fear, or taking through a display of authority, whether stealing oneself or causing another to steal, all of this is taking what is not given. Whether for oneself, for another, out of fear, to avoid being killed or bound, to subdue another, for one's own use, to provide for dependents, or out of envy, refusing to give and taking anyway — all of these are called the offense of taking what is not given.
Master Cháng Bǎi treats this catalogue of motives as the treatise's own frank acknowledgment that wrongdoing is rarely simple or single-minded, encompassing everything from cold calculation to genuine terror to something as seemingly trivial as boredom or sport, and that each of these motives, however different they feel from the inside, still generates the very same karmic offense in the end. He highlights the false display of spiritual attainment for the sake of offerings as a particularly pointed inclusion within the catalogue of theft, since it names a form of deception the tradition takes with special seriousness, exploiting genuine religious devotion itself as the very instrument of the fraud.
41. Section: Wrong Part, Wrong Time, Wrong Place — Sexual Misconduct Catalogued
The treatise catalogues sexual misconduct's own forbidden circumstances in detail. Approaching one's own mother or any woman under another's protection, the sutras explain at length, is included among the gravest offenses, comparable in weight to the deeds of immediate retribution; an unmarried woman is understood to be protected in three ways, by her own respected family and kin, by royal or civil authority should she belong to a court or official household, and by whatever guardians keep watch over her, and approaching any woman so protected, or another man's own wife, is likewise forbidden; and, from the male practitioner's own perspective the text addresses, any man, and any person lacking full male faculties, is equally not to be approached, whether the acting party or the receiving one. Beyond the wrong partner, there is the wrong bodily part, anything other than the woman's own proper place being improper; the wrong time, during menstruation, during the final stage of pregnancy, while nursing an infant, while observing the eight precepts, or during illness where such activity would be harmful; the wrong place, any hall where the venerable gather, any shrine, any public setting, or any hard, uneven ground causing real discomfort; the wrong measure, more than five times in immediate succession being reckoned as excess; and simply failing to follow ordinary worldly custom altogether. Whether engaged in personally or arranged through another as go-between, and whether conducted openly or in secret, through deception, or by abusing a position of entrusted intimacy, every one of these circumstances constitutes the offense of sexual misconduct.
若於母等、母等所護，如經廣說，名不應行。一切男及不男，屬自屬他，皆不應行。除產門外，所有餘分皆名非支。若穢下時、胎圓滿時、飲兒乳時、受齋戒時，或有病時，謂所有病匪宜習欲，是名非時。若諸尊重所集會處，或靈廟中，或大眾前，或堅硬地高下不平，令不安隱，如是等處說名非處。過量而行，名為非量。是中量者，極至於五，此外一切皆名過量。不依世禮，故名非理。若自行欲，若媒合他，此二皆名欲邪行攝。若有公顯，或復隱竊，或因誑諂方便矯亂，或因委託而行邪行，如是皆名欲邪行罪。
Approaching one's mother or a woman protected by another, as explained at length in the sutras, is not to be done. Any man and any person of indeterminate sex, whether belonging to oneself or another, is not to be approached. Apart from the proper place, every other part is called the wrong part. During menstruation, at the completion of pregnancy, while nursing a child, while observing the precepts, or during illness unsuited to such activity, is called the wrong time. Any hall where the venerable gather, any shrine, before a crowd, or on hard and uneven ground causing discomfort, is called the wrong place. Exceeding the proper measure is called excess; the measure here is five at most, and anything beyond is excess. Not following worldly custom is called improper reasoning. Whether engaging personally or arranging through another, both belong to sexual misconduct. Whether done openly or in secret, through deception, or by abusing entrusted intimacy, all of this is the offense of sexual misconduct.
Master Cháng Bǎi notes that this catalogue, drawn from classical Indian monastic and lay ethical sources, reflects the social and legal categories of its own historical setting, including its account of protected women and its treatment of certain relationships as inherently improper, and should be read as the treatise's own attempt to specify, with real precision, exactly what its own tradition regarded as improper conduct, rather than as timeless commentary detached from the world in which it was composed. He highlights the treatise's insistence that both the principal actor and any facilitating go-between share equally in the offense as a consistent pattern running through every one of the ten unwholesome karma-paths so far catalogued, closing off the excuse that arranging wrongdoing for another somehow escapes the wrongdoing itself.
42. Section: How a Lie Travels, and the Many Faces of a Cutting Word
The treatise turns to the remaining verbal karma-paths. False speech arises for one's own sake, for another's sake, out of fear, or for material gain, whether claiming to have seen, heard, sensed, or known what one has not, or denying having seen, heard, sensed, or known what one actually has, and may be conveyed in writing, through a deceptive silence taken as tacit agreement, through a gesture or expression of the body, through false testimony offered as proof, spoken personally, or spoken through another induced to say it. Divisive speech may rest on a true fact deliberately deployed to drive two parties apart, or on a fabricated falsehood invented for the very same purpose, or may be delivered under cover of intimacy, friendship, or service rendered to one party in order to win the trust needed to divide them from another; its own motives include simple self-interest, the wish to harm another, being instigated by a third party, falsely denigrating someone's genuine virtue as nonexistent or incomplete, or feigning fear to drive two parties apart, whether spoken personally or through another. Harsh speech may be delivered to someone's face or behind their back, before a crowd or in seclusion, whether the fault alleged is genuine or invented, in writing, or through a mockingly assumed manner; it may arise from one's own restless agitation or simple lack of inner calm, and the tradition records that it has, at times, taken the form of insults grounded in another's low birth, in another's own bodily or sensory impairment, or in another's past violation of precepts or discipline — every one of these named here as instances of this very unwholesome karma-path, condemned rather than condoned, whether spoken personally or induced through another.
復次，若自因故而說妄語，或他因故，或因怖畏，或因財利而說妄語，皆名妄語。若不見聞覺知言見聞覺知，或見聞覺知言不見聞覺知，皆名妄語。復次，若以實事毀訾於他，為乖離故而發此言，名離間語。或以不實假合方便以為依止，為損壞他而有陳說。復次，若有對面發辛楚言，名麤惡語。或不現前，或對大眾，或幽僻處，或隨實過不隨實過，或書表示，或假現相，或依自說，或依他說，或因掉舉，或因不靜，或依種族過失，或依依止過失，或依作業禁戒現行過失，或自發起辛楚之言，或令他發，如是皆名麤惡語罪。
Moreover, speaking falsely for one's own sake, for another's sake, out of fear, or for material gain, is all called false speech. Saying one has seen, heard, sensed, or known what one has not, or saying one has not when one has, is all called false speech. Moreover, using a true matter to disparage another, speaking so as to cause estrangement, is called divisive speech. Or relying on a fabricated, unreal matter, speaking so as to harm another. Moreover, delivering cutting words to another's face is called harsh speech. Whether not in their presence, before a crowd, or in a secluded place, whether following a genuine or invented fault, in writing, or through a feigned manner, whether spoken by oneself or by another, whether from agitation or from lack of calm, whether grounded in a fault of lineage, a fault of bodily basis, or a fault of conduct and precepts, whether arising from oneself or induced in another, all of this is the offense of harsh speech.
Master Cháng Bǎi notes that the treatise's own inclusion of caste-based and disability-based insults within its catalogue of harsh speech is a direct condemnation, not an endorsement, of such language, the tradition explicitly naming these as examples of the very unwholesome karma-path it is describing in order to close off, one by one, every avenue by which a speaker might otherwise excuse cruelty as merely stating a fact. He highlights divisive speech's own two possible bases, a true fact weaponized and an outright fabrication, as the treatise's own reminder that dishonesty is not the only way to fracture a relationship, since even something genuinely true can become a tool of real harm the moment it is deployed with the specific intention of driving two people apart.
43. Section: Even Craving a Reputation for Few Desires Is Still Covetousness
The treatise closes its account of idle chatter's many forms: verses composed to accompany dance, or set to music, or both together, or lyrics carrying no genuine purpose composed to neither; loudly reciting and enthusiastically praising, and broadly expounding to others, whatever books and treatises outside the Buddha's own teaching lead to no genuine benefit; speech arising from disputes, lawsuits, and rivalry, or delighting in holding forth before a crowd about the affairs of kings, ministers, bandits, or nations; and even false speech, divisive speech, or harsh speech itself, whenever spoken carelessly, without any real thought or discernment, all fall under this same broad category. Idle chatter is further explained through seven grounds: talk arising from dispute and contention; the evil incantations certain outside brahmins are known to recite; words spoken thoughtlessly under the pressure of one's own suffering; playful, joking, entertaining talk; ordinary, unfocused socializing carrying no connection to the Dharma; the ravings of a deranged mind; and speech aimed at securing one's own material support through flattery and false pretense — all of these together constituting the full offense of idle chatter. Turning to covetousness, the treatise names eight distinct forms this desire actually takes. The first arises in one who serves a master, wishing, how might I become just like my master myself, commanding servants and having whatever I wish carried out at my own word. The second wishes that everything belonging to that same master, their parents, spouse, servants, and every one of the seven kinds of holdings and ten kinds of life's necessities, should belong to oneself instead. The third, and this applies with particular force to renunciants themselves, wishes that others come to know and praise oneself as one of few desires, contentment, seclusion, vigorous diligence, settled mindfulness, calm stability, and wisdom, one whose outflows are entirely exhausted, generous in giving, strict in discipline, and broadly learned — the very moment such a wish for one's own reputation arises, even concerning genuinely wholesome qualities, it has already become covetousness, joined with an unwholesome state of mind. The fourth wishes that kings, merchants, monks, nuns, laymen, and laywomen alike come to revere, honor, serve, and make offerings to oneself.
又依七事而發綺語。謂鬥訟諍競語、諸婆羅門惡呪術語、苦所逼語、戲笑遊樂之語、處眾雜語、顛狂語、邪命語，如是一切名綺語罪。復次，若於家主起如是欲：云何我當同於家主，領諸僕使，隨欲所作。是名貪欲。又起是欲：即彼家主所有父母、妻子、奴婢及諸作使，廣說乃至七攝受事、十資身事，謂飲食等，皆當屬我。又起是欲：云何令他知我少欲、知足、遠離、勇猛精進，安住正念、寂定、聰慧，諸漏永盡，施戒多聞。又起是欲：云何令他供養於我。謂諸國王乃至商主，若苾芻、苾芻尼、鄔波索迦、鄔波斯迦等，皆當恭敬、尊重、承事、供養於我。
Idle chatter also arises through seven grounds: speech of dispute and contention, the evil spell-talk of brahmins, speech driven by suffering, speech of play and amusement, mixed idle talk among a crowd, deranged speech, and speech of wrong livelihood — all of this is the offense of idle chatter. Moreover, if one serving a master forms this wish: how might I become like my master, commanding servants, doing as I wish — this is covetousness. Also forming this wish: that master's own parents, spouse, servants, and workers, and in full the seven kinds of holdings and ten kinds of life's necessities, food and drink and the rest, should all belong to me. Also forming this wish: how might others know me as one of few desires, contentment, seclusion, vigorous diligence, settled mindfulness, calm stability, and wisdom, outflows exhausted, giving, disciplined, and learned. Also forming this wish: how might others make offerings to me — kings and merchants, monks, nuns, laymen, and laywomen alike revering, honoring, serving, and making offerings to me.
Master Cháng Bǎi treats the third form of covetousness, craving a reputation for fewness of desire itself, as one of the treatise's own sharpest and most self-implicating warnings, aimed squarely at sincere practitioners rather than obvious wrongdoers, since it shows that even the language of genuine spiritual accomplishment can be quietly hijacked by the very craving it claims to have overcome. He notes that this passage should give any diligent practitioner real pause, since wanting to be seen as virtuous is a subtler and more easily overlooked trap than wanting ordinary wealth, precisely because it wears the costume of virtue while still being, underneath, the very same grasping mind.
44. Section: Eight Forms of Covetousness Complete, and Malice Begins With Revenge
The treatise names covetousness's remaining forms. The fifth wishes for material provisions, profit, clothing, food and drink, bedding, and medicine for illness. The sixth wishes for rebirth in the heavens, there to enjoy the exquisite five heavenly pleasures at play. The seventh wishes for a superior rebirth still, in the outside teachers' own imagined realm of Rudra or of Viṣṇu, or as an especially wealthy and eminent human being, or even in the heaven of those who freely enjoy what others transform for them, delighting in the thought of enjoying whatever others have created purely for one's own pleasure. And the eighth wishes to obtain for oneself the very parents, spouse, servants, workers, friends, officials, relatives, siblings, or fellow renunciants that presently belong to someone else. All eight of these, the treatise concludes, belong entirely to the karma-path of covetousness. Turning to malice, the treatise begins its account through nine grounds of ill will, the first directed at oneself: should one think, he wishes me ill without cause, and so I shall wish him ill in return, this very thought is already malice — even ordinary worldly people, the tradition observes, are capable of repaying hatred with virtue rather than more hatred, so how much more should one walking the Buddhist path refuse to entertain such a thought at all.
又起是欲：云何令我當得利養、衣服、飲食、諸坐臥具、病緣醫藥及資生具。又起是欲：云何令我當生天上，天妙五欲以為遊戲。又起是欲：云何令我當生魯達羅世界、毗瑟笯世界，人中希有眾同分中，乃至令我當生他化自在眾同分中。又起是欲：云何令我乃至當得父母、妻子、奴婢、作使、朋友、宰官、親戚、兄弟、同梵行等所有資產。如是一切，皆名貪欲業道所攝。若作是思：彼於我所有無義欲，故我於彼當作無義。是名瞋恚。
Also forming this wish: how might I obtain profit, clothing, food and drink, bedding, and medicine for illness. Also forming this wish: how might I be reborn in the heavens, enjoying the exquisite five heavenly pleasures. Also forming this wish: how might I be reborn in the world of Rudra, the world of Viṣṇu, among rare and eminent humankind, or even among those who freely enjoy what others transform. Also forming this wish: how might I obtain the parents, spouse, servants, workers, friends, officials, relatives, siblings, or fellow renunciants belonging to another. All of this belongs to the karma-path of covetousness. If one thinks: he wishes me ill without cause, so I shall wish him ill in return — this is malice.
Master Cháng Bǎi treats the observation that even ordinary worldly people can repay hatred with virtue as a deliberately pointed rhetorical move, since it turns an argument that might otherwise sound like distinctively Buddhist idealism into something closer to a simple, almost embarrassing minimum standard, one that any decent person outside the tradition already meets, making a practitioner's own retaliatory thought look worse rather than more understandable by comparison. He notes the treatise's own move from covetousness's eight forms directly into malice's own nine grounds as a natural progression, wanting what belongs to another and wishing harm upon another being, in the end, two faces of the very same underlying grasping mind.
45. Section: Nine Grounds of Malice Complete — All Ten Karma-Paths' Methods Now Closed
The treatise extends malice's opening thought, wishing revenge for harm already suffered, being presently suffered, or expected in the future, from this same pattern applied to oneself outward to loved ones and to enemies alike, for nine grounds of malice altogether. Malice further includes wishing to gain power over one's own enemies and ill-wishing companions, freely binding, persecuting, banishing, or beating them, scattering their wealth, or seizing their spouse, friends, family, and home; wishing that such harm instead befall them at someone else's hand rather than one's own; and wishing that misfortune simply arise on its own, without any agent at all, imagining one's enemy spontaneously engaging in improper conduct of body, speech, and mind, thereby losing wealth, friends, family, reputation, happiness, and life itself, forfeiting every wholesome quality, and finally falling, upon death, into the evil destinies. Every such mind of ill will, the treatise concludes, belongs entirely to the root karma-path of malice. Turning finally to wrong view, the treatise names its own defining examples: the settled conviction that giving bears no result at all is wrong view, and, more broadly, denying that any cause operates, denying that any function operates, denying that any result follows, and destroying what is genuinely real, denying one's own parents, denying beings born spontaneously, and denying that any true arhat, outflows entirely exhausted, exists in the world at all, are every one of them the root karma-path of wrong view. With this, the treatise brings its detailed working-out of the actual methods behind all ten unwholesome karma-paths to its full and complete close.
如是廣說九惱害事，當知亦爾。又作是思：云何令我於能損害怨家惡友而得自在，縛害驅擯，或行鞭撻，或散財產，或奪妻妾、朋友、眷屬及家宅等。此惱害心亦名瞋恚。又起是思：云何令彼能損於我怨家惡友，於他處所遭如上說諸苦惱事。此損害心亦名瞋恚。又作是思：願彼自然發起如是如是身語意行，由此喪失資財、朋友、眷屬、名稱、安樂、壽命及諸善法，身壞當墮諸惡趣中。如是一切惱害之心，皆名瞋恚根本業道。復次，若作是思：決定無施。是名邪見。廣說乃至謗因、謗用、謗果，壞真實事，如是一切皆名邪見根本業道。
As broadly explained, the nine grounds of ill will should be understood likewise. Also forming this thought: how might I gain mastery over my enemies and ill-wishing companions, binding, harming, expelling, or beating them, scattering their wealth, or seizing their spouse, friends, family, and home — this mind of ill will is also malice. Also forming this thought: how might my enemies and ill-wishing companions suffer the aforesaid misfortunes at another's hands. This mind of harm is also malice. Also forming this thought: may they spontaneously engage in such conduct of body, speech, and mind, thereby losing wealth, friends, family, reputation, happiness, life, and every wholesome dharma, and upon the body's destruction, fall into the evil destinies. Every such mind of ill will is the root karma-path of malice. Moreover, if one thinks, there is certainly no giving, this is wrong view. Broadly speaking, denying cause, denying function, denying result, and destroying what is genuinely real, all of this is the root karma-path of wrong view.
Master Cháng Bǎi treats the extension of malice's ninefold structure from oneself to one's loved ones and to enemies across past, present, and future alike as the treatise's own thoroughgoing insistence that ill will is never confined to a single grievance, since the very same corrosive pattern of wishing harm can attach itself to any relationship and any point in time once it has taken root at all. He highlights wishing harm to arise spontaneously, without any agent, as this catalogue's own subtlest form of malice, requiring no plan and no action whatsoever, only the quiet, persistent hope that misfortune will simply find one's enemy on its own — proof that malice can be entirely passive and still count, in full, as the very same unwholesome karma-path as active cruelty.
46. Section: Why This One Denial Is Singled Out as "Wrong View"
The treatise closes this entire stretch of the text with a final question: since every distorted view could in principle be called wrong view, why does the Blessed One, specifically within the context of the ten karma-paths, single out only this denying, slanderous view and call it wrong view? Two reasons are given. First, this particular wrong view is the most severe among every kind of wrong view there is, since relying on it, a certain ascetic or brahmin comes to cut off every one of their own wholesome roots entirely, no longer giving, no longer keeping precepts, no longer practicing anything wholesome at all, doing nothing but evil from that point onward. Second, this same wrong view most strongly facilitates unwholesome conduct, since one who holds it, having denied cause, function, and result altogether, proceeds to act however they wish among every evil deed without the slightest restraint, and it is for this reason that this particular view is specifically singled out and placed within the unwholesome karma-paths. It should be understood, the treatise adds in closing, that every other distorted view remains, in its own right, genuinely wrong view as well, simply not the one selected for special emphasis here, this one alone being uniquely capable of severing wholesome roots entirely and uniquely capable of unleashing unrestrained evil in their place.
問：一切倒見皆名邪見，何故世尊於業道中，但說如是誹謗之見名為邪見？答：由此邪見，諸邪見中最為殊勝。何以故？由此邪見為依止故，有一沙門、若婆羅門斷諸善根。又此邪見最順惡業。懷邪見者，於諸惡法隨意所行，是故此見偏說在彼惡業道中。當知餘見非不邪見自相相應。
Question: every distorted view is called wrong view — why does the Blessed One, within the karma-paths, speak only of this slandering view as wrong view? Answer: because this wrong view is the most excellent among all wrong views. Why so? Because, relying on this wrong view, a certain ascetic or brahmin severs every wholesome root. Also, this wrong view most closely accords with unwholesome karma. One who holds wrong view acts as they wish among every unwholesome dharma, and for this reason this view is specifically said to belong among the unwholesome karma-paths. It should be known that every other view is not thereby excluded from being genuinely wrong view in its own right.
Master Cháng Bǎi treats this closing question and answer as a fitting capstone to the treatise's own entire detailed working-out of the ten unwholesome karma-paths, since it explains, with genuine precision, why the tradition reserves its single harshest technical label for exactly this one denial among the countless mistaken views a mind can hold: not because other errors are somehow innocent, but because this particular denial, cutting off cause, function, and result all at once, removes the very floor beneath every other safeguard against wrongdoing, leaving nothing left to restrain a mind that has embraced it. He notes that Fascicle 59's own source material comes to its natural close at exactly this point, having carried the reader from the extensive analysis completing affliction defilement, through karma defilement's own opening account of its five establishing aspects, its own self-nature examined through all ten unwholesome karma-paths in full, and now the actual methods and motives behind each of them worked out in complete and exhaustive detail — a fitting resting point before karma defilement's own remaining aspects continue in the fascicle that follows.