A Buddhist Dictionary: Many Names, One Meaning

This first verse previews eight terms to be unpacked: teacher — every kind of person a disciple might rightly rely on and be relied upon by; foremost — the Buddha as first, most honored, highest, and unsurpassed among all beings; the two wisdoms — wisdom's own vast synonyms, gained wisdom, vast wisdom, and pure wisdom among some twenty-two further terms; the four kinds of skillful teaching — perfection in text, in meaning, in result, and in the teacher's own conduct; having cause and occasion — the five excellences of the true dharma already met in fascicle 82 (having cause, having leading-out, having what is relied upon, having boldness, having miraculous transformation); and giving, discipline, and the path, each explained at length — generosity's own many synonyms, discipline's many distinctions, and the many components of the noble path (the foundations of mindfulness, right efforts, bases of power, faculties, powers, factors of awakening, and path-factors). Two further middle-length verses on discipline and the path, embedded beneath this first verse, will unfold within this same fascicle.

Three tiers of teacher, each named for its relation to the Buddha's own teaching. The great teacher is the Buddha himself. The foremost disciples — Śāriputra foremost in wisdom, Maudgalyāyana foremost in spiritual power, and, more broadly, any arhat who has accomplished their own goal, from Piṇḍola-bhāradvāja to Cūḍapanthaka — earn the name "foremost" precisely by having realized nirvāṇa, their own self-benefit complete. And those who carry the teaching forward into later generations take five forms: the preceptor who models and teaches proper conduct; the instructing teacher, particularly the precept-master at full ordination; a fellow practitioner accomplished enough in hearing, practicing, or realizing the dharma to serve as an example; one able to open a disciple's understanding through skillful, timely instruction; and one able to remind a disciple of a past transgression or a forgotten point of dharma. Together these five keep the teaching alive long after the Buddha's own direct instruction has passed.

A teacher who rightly expels a disciple guilty of serious misconduct — whether temporarily, with compassion, for a lesser fault, or for life, in the gravest cases — acts out of the same underlying kindness as one who instead praises and encourages a disciple's genuine progress in discipline, concentration, and wisdom; both discipline and praise serve the same end of moving a disciple out of what is unwholesome and into what is wholesome. A teacher able to skillfully show a disciple which response fits which occasion embodies both correction and reward at once.

Three depths of guidance, each addressing a deeper layer of disturbance. Dispelling doubt about a teacher, a teaching, a practice, or an instruction settles the mind's uncertainty. Dispelling remorse addresses something subtler still — the mental factor of regret itself, which broods over a past deed, good or bad, and which the treatise elsewhere defines by its very nature: a mind that keeps returning to what was done, obstructing the calm needed for meditation. And dispelling every root and secondary affliction reaches furthest of all, guiding a disciple out of greed, hatred, delusion, and their whole family of derivative afflictions entirely.

Severing doubt itself unfolds in three stages of increasing depth: drawing out a meaning still hidden in the text; refining a meaning already drawn out until it is fully clear and pure; and, for the most profound passages of all — teachings such as consciousness-only or dependent origination's own emptiness — penetrating them through the wisdom born of hearing, reflection, and cultivation, and then unfolding them widely for the disciple in turn.

A ship crossing open water needs a guiding light; a "second companion" is exactly that light — a teacher who has vowed to serve as preceptor and model, supporting a practitioner dwelling alone in solitude for the sake of calm-abiding and insight. A "good friend" walks the noble path alongside a disciple, companion in practice rather than merely in vow. And "acquaintance" names only a shared past — friends or family from lay life, with no claim on spiritual guidance implied by the word alone.

Nirvāṇa itself is the sought-after matter — delighting in the noble path and its fruit is delighting in benefit. The commentarial tradition distinguishes benefit four ways: present good versus future good, worldly good versus transcendent good, freedom from evil versus taking up what is wholesome, and merit versus wisdom — all converging on what the Bodhisattva Ground names simply as settling beings, once and for all, in ultimate nirvāṇa and the Tathāgata's own vast wisdom.

Read this way, "benefit" names not the goal itself but the wholesome bodily and verbal conduct — giving, discipline, and cultivation — that a joyful mind naturally produces; equally, it names rescuing beings from what is unwholesome and settling them in what is wholesome. Benefit here is the cause, and ease, as the Bodhisattva Ground puts it, is its fruit: whoever is given real benefit is thereby given real ease as well.

Having examined the teacher's own side, the treatise now turns to the disciple who relies on such a teacher, beginning with faith's own gradual sequence. Trusting compliance is simply undistorted, correct conduct toward everything a good friend teaches — giving, discipline, cultivation, hearing, reflection, discernment, and benefiting beings alike — a mind genuinely willing to obey, visiting and honoring the teacher whenever occasion allows.

This names faith taken toward the Buddha, a good friend, or another person directly — faith grounded in a person, also called the faith of one who follows through faith.

Where ordinary faith takes a person as its object, pure faith takes the dharma itself, arising once the Three Jewels' own virtue, power, and wisdom are truly heard and understood, according with truth's own principle — the faith of one who follows through dharma. Its outward marks are unmistakable: hearing a teaching or a chant and finding the hair rise on one's own arms, or tears falling unbidden — genuine signs of faith reaching all the way through.

Trusting what fascicle 82 already explained — that abiding in the benefit of training, wisdom foremost, and firm liberation genuinely leads to what should be attained — gives rise to real delight in the wholesome dharmas that lead there, gathering in both effort and skillful means. The Śrāvaka Ground names four kinds of this aspiration: aspiring to realize the higher liberation one longs for; aspiring to ask questions, seeking out accomplished companions in the monastic community to hear what has not yet been heard, fully; aspiring to gather the necessary provisions, growing ever more careful in discipline, in guarding the senses, in moderate eating, and in reduced sleep; and aspiring to accord with yogic practice itself, delighting in uninterrupted, earnest effort in the very course of cultivation.

Where aspiration is the wish, effort is the wish carried into actual bodily, verbal, and mental action — boldness meaning steady advance in wholesome dharmas without ever slipping back, fierceness meaning genuinely wholesome rather than merely neutral exertion, which is why effort belongs to the wholesome mental factors alone. The Śrāvaka Ground names four kinds: effort toward hearing, resolving to hear fully what has not yet been heard; effort toward reflection, pondering alone in solitude the meaning of what was heard; effort toward cultivation, practicing calm-abiding and insight at set times in stillness; and effort toward purifying obstacles, diligently walking and sitting by day and night to cleanse the mind of whatever hinders it.

Once bold effort has begun — reciting sūtras, prostrating, keeping discipline, cultivating calm-abiding and insight — spurring oneself on keeps that boldness diligently sustained. The Bodhisattva Ground names four all-encompassing efforts of this kind: effort freeing one from defilement, preventing every unarisen fetter and affliction and cutting off what has already arisen; effort drawing in wholesome dharmas, causing every unarisen wholesome dharma to arise and every arisen one to remain, grow, and never be forgotten; effort purifying karma, keeping body, speech, and mind entirely pure; and effort increasing wisdom, gathering and growing the wisdom born of hearing, reflection, and cultivation.

Firm resolve is the endurance to see effort through — bearing whatever bodily fatigue or mental strain hearing, reflection, cultivation, or benefiting others may bring, without collapsing halfway. Going beyond then adds thoroughness to endurance: a bodhisattva does not stop at one virtue practiced well, but pursues discipline together with generosity and the whole range of perfections, and benefits beings as opportunity allows, comprehensively rather than partially — effort complete enough to genuinely surpass where one presently stands.

Of the night's three watches — the first from six to nine, the middle from nine to three (reserved for rest), the last from three to six — "past the middle watch" means the pre-dawn hours, "the first watch" the early evening; either way, a practitioner takes up calm-abiding and insight as though arming for war. The Bodhisattva Ground's own account of "armored effort" makes the image vivid: before any actual application begins, the mind first dons a vow of its own — willing to spend a full day and night in hell for each being rescued from suffering, for as many great eons as it takes, without the resolve ever weakening, and pressing forward regardless of how much longer buddhahood itself might take — armor donned in spirit before a single step of practice is taken.

Rousing oneself further carries the armored resolve into actual practice, majestic and bold rather than merely determined in the abstract, echoing the Compendium of Bases' description of a bodhisattva unafraid before the vast scope of the Dharma. Sharp, piercing resolve then adds a clear-sighted reason to persevere: seeing plainly the great benefit already gained, and the greater benefit still to come, sustains uninterrupted effort toward it.

Hard to overcome describes a practitioner who, hearing of realizations vast, profound, and hard to fathom, never belittles their own capacity or grows timid, confident there is more still to reach. Never satisfied with little describes the same confidence turned toward what has already been gained: no small attainment is mistaken for the whole path, and effort continues undiminished rather than resting content — the very "unsatisfied, unretreating effort" the Bodhisattva Ground and Compendium of Bases both describe.

Outside formal meditation, mindfulness simply guards against greed, hatred, and delusion arising at all; within meditation, the same vigilance treats the five hindrances and their kin as the very faults they are, purifying the mind of whatever obstructs before it takes root — together sustaining the mindful, equanimous abiding the Bodhisattva Ground calls even cultivation across every wholesome dharma alike.

A third sequence, right conduct, unfolds in twelve stages, beginning where all genuine practice begins: faith itself, without which wholesome aspiration and bold effort have nowhere to take root — faith is rightly called the very source of the path and the mother of all virtue.

Once faith is established, heedfulness guards it in practice — keeping the mind clear of the five desires and five hindrances that obstruct renunciation, and constantly taking up calm-abiding, insight, and every other wholesome cultivation in their place.

All three vehicles' practice of calm-abiding and insight share the name yoga, meaning simply union with the dharma. Five steps carry a practitioner there: receiving and retaining what is heard in mind; reading and reciting it aloud until it is memorized; questioning and discussing it with a teacher or fellow practitioner, since a question honestly asked is itself a kind of wisdom; discernment, thinking the matter through with inference once scriptural authority has been received; and rightly cultivating application, tasting the truth directly through calm-abiding and insight. The first three belong to the wisdom born of hearing, discernment to the wisdom born of reflection, and right cultivation to the wisdom born of practice — yoga's true practice spans all three trainings and all three wisdoms at once.

Holding the ultimate teachings — emptiness, the dharma-realm, reality's own limit — in mind, a practitioner examines them carefully by scriptural authority, by inference, and by direct observation in turn, until the mind itself accords with reality as it truly is.

Daily habituation to hearing and reflecting on the dharma from morning to night builds a genuine power of recollection — contemplations on impurity or impermanence held firmly in mind, and even distant past words and deeds accurately remembered, so that mindfulness and clear comprehension pervade every present moment.

Grounded in correct understanding, wholesome investigation takes the form of thoughts free of ill will and harm, aimed at renouncing every defiled dharma and realizing every pure one — a constant self-check on whether one's own mind still runs with affliction or has genuinely turned toward the wholesome.

The first six marks all belong to the stage of accumulation; here, at "knowledge," the sequence advances to the stage of preparation — the non-discriminating wisdom that arises approaching realization, though technically still contaminated, already oriented toward what is uncontaminated. "Understanding" then names the fruit that preparation leads to: the fundamental non-discriminating wisdom itself, realized at stream-entry for a śrāvaka or the first ground for a bodhisattva — mind and truth finally united without mediation.

Once fundamental non-discriminating wisdom is realized, a noble one goes on to reflect on worldly and transcendent dharmas alike through subsequently gained wisdom — still discriminating in form, unlike an ordinary being's discrimination, but free of the grasping that makes ordinary thought impure. Observation then keeps this same honesty turned inward: checking, by scriptural authority, inference, and direct perception together, exactly which afflictions are cut off and which remain — no self-deception permitted.

The eightfold path earns the name "pure conduct" (brahmacarya) three ways: it is conduct that leads to brahma — nirvāṇa itself, free of defilement; it is conduct free of what is not brahma — affliction; and it arises from the Tathāgata's own pure, brahma-like voice. Pure conduct in this sense also means simply freedom from craving-bound sexual desire.

The verse's second topic turns from the teacher himself to the Buddha as foremost among all beings, unpacked across three complementary explanations. In the first, "first" simply names the Buddha's own accomplished goal — unsurpassed, unconditioned nirvāṇa realized — making him first throughout the three realms.

Where "first" named self-benefit alone, "honored" names the Buddha's complete success in benefiting others — helping every being toward nirvāṇa and wholesome practice, the most honored being among gods and humans. "Excellent" then names both together, self-benefit and other-benefit perfected as one — no being in the three realms surpasses him.

Having shown the Buddha's foremost status through wording, the treatise now demonstrates the same status by simple comparison — beginning with desire-realm creatures sorted by the crudest possible measure, how many legs they walk on: none, like snakes or earthworms; two, like humans, gods, or birds; four, like cattle, dogs, pigs, or sheep; and many, like centipedes, cockroaches, or spiders.

The verse's third topic, wisdom, unfolds into some fifty-four distinct synonyms across twenty-two sections — the largest single term explored in this entire compendium. This first section names three: gaining wisdom, wisdom that draws toward nirvāṇa and keeps growing, whether at the preparatory or subsequently gained stage; vast wisdom, simply the relative comparison between a lesser, middling, and superior grade of the same wisdom; and pure wisdom, wisdom cultivated across many past lifetimes until it fully matures and can finally cut off affliction.

Accomplishing wisdom marks stream-entry and beyond, affliction genuinely cut off; perfecting wisdom marks the very summit — buddhahood in the Mahāyāna, arhatship for a śrāvaka; and non-regressing wisdom marks the security that comes with genuine realization, never again falling back to an ordinary being's condition.

Three images of quickness and keenness: nimble wisdom grasps a hundred things from hearing one; swift wisdom moves without any hesitation or blockage; and sharp wisdom cuts all the way through, taking in both a dharma's full particular extent and its shared, unchanging nature at once.

Once access concentration is reached, two paths diverge: the worldly path just named, requiring emerging wisdom, and the transcendent path, requiring discerning wisdom — penetrating the four noble truths directly and realizing the fruits from stream-entry to arhatship. This non-discriminating wisdom serves as the very cause that brings nirvāṇa about, earning it the further name "supreme discerning wisdom."

"Great wisdom" is called great because it can resolve any question whatsoever, without exhaustion; "vast wisdom" is called vast because its field of objects — the entire trichiliocosm, and the whole of the twelve divisions of scripture — is thoroughly, deeply, and completely penetrated.

Even a dull-faculty śrāvaka's wisdom already surpasses every ordinary being's own — hence "without equal" among worldly wisdom generally. Among the five faculties (faith, effort, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom), wisdom is foremost, the very jewel that makes the other four shine — the three concentrations of emptiness, wishlessness, and signlessness, once joined to wisdom, are what actually bring a śrāvaka's own attainment to completion, hence "the jewel of wisdom accomplished."

The eye of wisdom is innate, the fruit of wisdom cultivated across past lives and carried forward unbidden into this one; the light of wisdom is instead drawn out through a good teacher's own instruction, the wisdom born of hearing, reflection, and cultivation kindled by another's guidance.

Where "the light of wisdom" named wisdom kindled by a teacher generally, glow and radiance distinguish its two stages more finely: the wisdom born of hearing and reflection is the first glimmer, the "glow," and the wisdom born of cultivation that grows from it is the fuller "radiance."

A teacher who can reveal a sūtra's own profound doctrines — emptiness, dependent origination — evenly and clearly is rightly called a lamp of wisdom. And whoever follows the sacred teaching faithfully at every time, whether taking a single passage, the whole teaching, or its measureless breadth as their own object of practice, carries that same light forward like a torch, never departing from the Buddha's own authoritative word.

Illuminating wisdom genuinely understands the dharma, yet only through what has been heard from a teacher — real understanding, but not yet direct, personal realization of emptiness or reality itself. Wisdom without darkness names the moment that gap closes: ignorance's long night finally ended, the mind itself tasting reality directly rather than through another's report.

The faculty of wisdom still learns by following what the Buddha or a good teacher has realized, not yet one's own direct realization, though the resolve it produces is already strong enough to nourish further growth toward the path. The power of wisdom builds on that same root once it has grown firm — like a well-rooted tree finally able to withstand wind and storm — carrying a practitioner into the seven factors of discernment near the very threshold of realization, strong enough now to actually cut off affliction rather than merely grow toward doing so.

Wisdom is one of the seven kinds of noble wealth, untouched by flood, fire, or storm, and carried forward into future lives — a mastery that lets a wise person control their own mind, cultivate concentration, and freely manifest whatever provisions they need through mastery in meditation. Every outward, worldly treasure ultimately traces back to this inward wealth as its root cause.

The Great Perfection of Wisdom Sūtra ranks the two images by depth: a bodhisattva who perfects the perfection of wisdom is said to have great power; having that power, to hold a sharp blade; and only once fundamental and subsequently gained wisdom operate together — as a two-edged sword cuts where a single-edged blade cannot — is that same wisdom said to hold a sharp sword, capable of subduing every army of Māra rather than merely wielding a single cutting edge.

A staff wards off affliction and every kind of demon — the aggregates, affliction, death, and the sixth-heaven god alike; reins let the mind's own faculty run freely, yet always across wholesome ground rather than astray; and "never falling" describes a body no longer subject to the five aggregates' own decay, having realized instead the indestructible body born of the dharma's own true nature.

Like the great house in the Lotus Sūtra, vast and old, sheltering hundreds within a single gate — a śrāvaka's wisdom surrounds every dharma while taking nirvāṇa alone as its one entrance, and a bodhisattva's surrounds every dharma while taking the aspiration to help all beings reach unsurpassed awakening as that same single gate. The stairway then names the wisdom of the path of preparation, climbing toward realization; and the hall names arriving at last in the innermost room — fundamental non-discriminating wisdom itself realized, stream-entry for a śrāvaka, the first ground for a bodhisattva, a disciple now truly received into the house.

Worldly right view names the ordinary capacity to skillfully understand what the Buddha has taught — a first step the treatise now distinguishes from the wisdom of learners and of those beyond learning.

"Learner" is a broader term than it first appears — the Compendium of Abhidharma defines it simply as the wholesome dharma of one still seeking liberation, spanning every practitioner from the stage of accumulation onward, ordinary being and noble one alike. The wisdom of a learner in its earliest form, at the stages of accumulation and preparation, is proper attention that gradually frees mind and wisdom from affliction; in its later, properly noble form, it belongs specifically to the first three fruits — stream-entry, once-returning, and non-returning — genuine but not yet complete.

The Bodhisattva Ground pairs these exactly: subtle wisdom enters what is knowable as it truly is, its unchanging nature; thorough wisdom enters what is knowable in its full extent, every particular content without remainder — the same as-it-is and full-extent pairing met throughout this treatise, now given two further names.

"Perceptive" describes someone whose sharpness comes from cultivated practice, proper attention still at the stage of an ordinary being; "keen" describes someone whose sharpness is innate, the fruit of wisdom already gathered across past lives and carried forward unbidden.

A second, equally valid reading simply swaps the two: "keen" associated instead with drawn-out wisdom, "perceptive" with innate wisdom — the treatise leaving both pairings open rather than insisting on one alone.

Following the sixteen aspects of the four noble truths: the "eye" names dharma-wisdom, the contaminant-free understanding that directly sees the desire realm's own four truths and thereby cuts off its afflictions of view; "knowledge" names inferential wisdom, understanding the form and formless realms' own four truths by analogy with the desire realm's, and thereby cutting off their afflictions of view in turn.

"Clarity" names wisdom bright enough to enter the particular characteristics of every dharma — dependent origination, the aggregates, elements, and bases, their full extent taken in; "realization" names wisdom that instead enters their shared, unchanging nature.

The verse's second topic, four kinds of skillful teaching, opens with completeness in text and meaning together. Well spoken names text perfected — the Ground of Thought Cultivation gives three marks of genuinely skillful speech: pleasing to hear, free of any taint, and simply good — twelve qualities in all, from being unagitated and gentle to being boundless and inexhaustible. Well realized names meaning perfected — the very meaning of unsurpassed, complete awakening itself skillfully manifested, since only a buddha who has fully realized reality's own ultimate truth can speak it with both text and meaning equally complete.

The third kind of skillful teaching, perfection in conduct, opens with two marks: a disciple who faithfully teaches according to the sūtras, discipline, and treatises never contradicts what the great teacher himself taught, each reinforcing the other; and genuine practice of the noble eightfold path stands as firm and unshakable as a stūpa, immovable by any outside doctrine, demonic power, or worldly opinion.

The verse's third topic revisits, on this same term, the five excellences of the true dharma already met in fascicle 82's account of the listener's fifth reason — here presented as their own primary topic. Having cause and occasion means the Buddha's precepts are never issued in the abstract: only after an actual instance of misconduct — the group of six monks' own failings supplying the classic example — does the Buddha lay down the corresponding rule, discipline in particular being the clearest case of this pattern.

Since discipline exists to benefit beings, the Buddha likewise established a lawful path of confession, so a disciple who has broken a precept still has a genuine way back to purity rather than being left with no recourse at all.

Here the "four reliances" name something more concrete than the fourfold reliance on dharma over person met earlier — the four basic requisites of monastic life kept deliberately simple: robes (patched, dyed, or gathered from refuse), food (received and eaten mindfully, never for indulgence), bedding (as plain as a seat beneath a tree for the strongest, minimal even for the frail), and medicine (used only when actually needed, humble rather than costly). Living within these simple reliances, a renunciant is thereby established beyond the whole range of corrupted precepts and their violations — a disciple who takes up full ordination on this basis genuinely "has what is relied upon."

Some outside teachings mistake pleasure itself for nirvāṇa; others mistake self-inflicted suffering — starvation, drowning, fire — for the cure. The Buddha's own precepts transcend both extremes, keeping to the middle path that genuinely prevents wrongdoing and actually accomplishes purity, rather than either indulgence or needless harm.

The verse's fourth topic, "giving, discipline, and the path, explained at length," opens with giving. The Śrāvaka Ground defines blameless giving as giving that adorns and supports the mind, aids yogic practice, and aims at the supreme good — body, speech, and mind all pure, joined with freedom from greed, hatred, and delusion, and with diligence. Practiced this way, giving subdues stinginess, provisions calm-abiding and insight, and is dedicated not toward a pleasant rebirth but toward liberation itself — hence "liberating" giving.

An ever-open hand pictures a giver whose generosity is habitual and wholehearted, not grudging or occasional. Joy in letting go names three moments of purity together: gladness anticipating the gift, purity in the act itself — no clinging to a giver, a receiver, or a gift, the three circles empty — and freedom from regret afterward, since regretted giving, even if it still ripens into merit, brings no real enjoyment when that merit finally arrives.

Even ritual giving, familiar in ordinary practice, must be lawfully sourced — wealth never gained through cruelty — and offered regularly and fully, like a monastery's own daily offerings, rather than as a one-time gesture.

Fields of merit are threefold — the field of reverence (the Three Jewels), the field of gratitude (parents and teachers), and the field of compassion (the poor and suffering) — and giving joyfully to any of them, sowing seeds that ripen into merit as a field ripens into harvest, is complete giving. The Sūtra on the Field of Merit names five virtues that make the monastic community itself such a field: renouncing the world for the path, discarding worldly adornment for the robe, cutting off attachment to kin, giving up bodily comfort for the sake of good, and seeking the Mahāyāna in order to liberate others. And giving is complete in a final, humbler sense too — shared evenly and repeatedly among one's own parents, spouse, children, and kin, not withheld from those closest simply because they are familiar.

Discipline, the second element of "giving, discipline, and the path, explained at length," unfolds under its own middle-length verse into four sections: distinctions of discipline itself, distinctions of the dharma and discipline as categories, distinctions concerning killing, and distinctions of complete discipline.

The Śrāvaka Ground names discipline six further ways: the root, since it establishes and sustains every worldly and transcendent blameless happiness; an ornament, beautiful on anyone who wears it, in any age; a fragrant balm, cooling the fevered distress that broken precepts bring, as sandalwood cools the body's own heat; an incense, whose fragrance — a practitioner's own good reputation — travels far on the wind; excellent conduct, since its purity leads toward wondrous ease and a wondrous heavenly destiny; and restraint itself, guarding, stilling, and renouncing every unwholesome deed at the root.

The Śrāvaka Ground traces a clear chain: discipline well purified first brings freedom from regret; freedom from regret brings genuine joy and ease; that ease brings the mind to right concentration; and right concentration finally brings true seeing and knowing. "Completeness" names discipline's own gathering-in of regret-free joy; "purity" names its further role as the very ground concentration is built upon.

Discipline is wholesome because it ripens into a pleasing rebirth, and blameless because it harms no one, self or other. It is harmless because a disciplined practitioner, body and speech restrained, never resorts to weapons or quarrels and so is not attacked in turn; and it is accordant because it grounds the fruits of stream-entry through arhatship, and further excellences such as the concentration free of contention or the concentration of aspiration-knowledge.

A disciplined practitioner hides their own virtue rather than displaying it for praise, content with little, and just as readily discloses their own faults rather than concealing them, correcting course through honest shame. Seventeen further qualities — contentment, diligence, wisdom, and the rest — together make up a renunciant's own natural dignity; and a livelihood free of the five wrong forms of gain, joined to right view and proper conduct, makes such a person a genuine field of merit for others to plant seeds in.

Though "dharma" broadly spans all three trainings, the sūtras typically reserve "discipline" (Vinaya) for the training-grounds specifically, leaving "dharma" here to mean concentration and wisdom — comprised of vast principle and sustaining excellent virtue. The Compendium of Bases names four marks of a truly well-taught teaching: it leads to stillness, nirvāṇa with residue; it leads to final nirvāṇa, without residue; it leads to awakening, the unsurpassed complete awakening of śrāvakas and solitary buddhas alike; and it is well-gone discernment, taught by the unsurpassed great teacher's own direct, ultimate realization. "Discipline" (Vinaya), also translated "cessation," names the precepts that subdue and extinguish affliction.

"Noble" names the dharma's power to keep defilement from ever arising at all; "wholesome" names the pleasing, blameless fruit that wholesome cause reliably produces.

The fourth and final element of discipline explained at length, complete discipline, lists four requisites in turn, the first being discipline itself, already unpacked at length in the Śrāvaka Ground through six aspects: abiding complete in discipline, the general statement — body, speech, and mind unimpaired, precepts kept without gap or breach; guarding the individual-liberation vows, all two hundred fifty precepts for a monk, three hundred forty-eight for a nun, each one upheld; perfect deportment, walking, standing, sitting, lying down, begging, and every daily task done in a way that draws no censure from fellow practitioners or the world; perfect conduct, avoiding the five places a renunciant should not visit and going elsewhere only with proper timing and measure; seeing great danger in even minor faults, out of fear of failing the path in this life or falling to a lower rebirth, confessing instantly whenever a lapse occurs; and training in the training-grounds, receiving, studying, and reciting the precepts until their full scope — what is permitted, what is not, and how to return to purity — is genuinely understood.

The second requisite, restraint of the senses, unfolds through five further aspects: closely guarding the gateways, the general statement, meeting each sense object without grasping at its overall appearance or its finer detail, so that affliction never takes root; guarding through mindfulness, the wisdom born of hearing, reflection, and cultivation keeping the mind unstained at contact; guarding through sustained mindfulness, that same vigilance held constantly and earnestly, without interruption; guarding the mind through mindfulness, the crucial proper attention exercised specifically at the level of the sixth, mind-consciousness; and abiding in equanimity, meeting any defilement that does arise with either wholesome redirection or simple neutral non-engagement, so that greed, hatred, and delusion find nothing to continue on.

The third requisite has a renunciant reflect before every meal — not eating for indulgence, not for pride, not for outward beauty or dignity, but only to sustain the body, support it a while longer, and preserve the strength needed for pure conduct, dwelling at ease and blameless while the path is completed.

The third and final element of "giving, discipline, and the path, explained at length" gathers the thirty-seven factors of awakening together with the four immeasurables, unfolding across five sections in turn: the foundations of mindfulness, right efforts and the bases of power, the faculties and powers, the factors of awakening and path-factors, and finally the immeasurables.

Aspiration is the very ground effort depends on, arising here specifically to counter improper attention's own fault. Effort, whose nature is boldness, then counters laxity — what the Compendium of Bases calls effort fallen into sluggishness, no longer genuinely diligent. And diligent exertion counters the two secondary afflictions that most obstruct the foundations of mindfulness — dullness and agitation, standing in for the fuller list of five hindrances (dullness, drowsiness, agitation, remorse, and doubt) compressed here into their two chief representatives.

Boldness means real cultivation of the four foundations of mindfulness never belittles its own capacity within the vast scope of the dharma — a superior grade of effort, not an inferior one. Sharpness means resisting the pull of external temptation while practicing. And being unconquerable means whatever small measure of progress has already occurred is never mistaken for the whole path — cultivation continues undiminished.

Right mindfulness holds the object of practice in mind without forgetting what has been taught; clear comprehension watches whether the present mind still accords with wholesome dharma, protecting a practitioner from any lapse into greed, hatred, or delusion; and heedfulness, effort's own constant companion, simply never lets the mind stray from the wholesome yoke of the four foundations of mindfulness.

Effort is likened to the sun's own heat and light, burning away the mind's dullness the way sunlight clears fog — a practitioner who abides in this heat naturally remedies laziness. Right resolve then remedies broken discipline through five kinds of heedfulness the Bodhisattva Ground describes: heedfulness spanning what came before, what comes after, and the present moment together, heedfulness prepared in advance, and heedfulness sustained moment to moment — complete in all five, discipline stays genuinely unbroken.

Investigating dharmas belongs specifically to one who has already realized the noble path — stream-entry and beyond — whose attention toward the four noble truths is genuinely free of contaminants rather than merely aspiring toward that freedom.

Taking the truth of suffering as the working example, three depths of discernment unfold in sequence: first, grasping suffering as a single whole category — the noble truth of suffering itself; second, breaking that whole apart into its eight particular kinds — birth, old age, and the rest, each recognized in its own distinct character; and third, grounding both of these in the sūtras' own words, since discernment must ultimately rest on the Buddha's own authoritative teaching, confirmed through settled reflection, before "suffering is truly suffering" becomes genuine right view rather than mere assumption. As the Compendium of Abhidharma Commentary distinguishes it: the first two belong to the path of seeking, the third to the path of settled determination.

The fifth and final section, path-factors, opens with right view's own two aspects. Astuteness recognizes that any object's apparent mark is itself nothing but discriminating mind's own arising — every dharma known to be mind-only, never separate from this very moment of awareness. Penetration goes further still, recognizing that even the mind that discriminates is itself dependently arisen and so equally unfindable as some fixed thing — object and mind together seen through to their shared unreality.

Right view's second aspect pairs a widening examination — grasping a dharma's particular content and its shared nature ever more broadly and finely — with the memory that keeps every stage of that examination from being lost along the way.

Right view's third aspect names its two sources: an innate sharpness of mind capable of discerning dharmas without prior training, and a clarity earned instead through diligent, cultivated practice — anyone who genuinely cultivates right view is, in this sense, both awakened and made clear.

Engagement names the application of resolve — investigating, say, the body's impurity, and letting the mind actually settle into that object without wandering. Absorption then names the fuller reception of both its particular and shared character, spanning the successive applications from withdrawal through the very fruit of that culmination.

Two explanations of the same pair. First, by scope: investigation grasps the overall marks — the Buddha's thirty-two major marks, say — while deeper investigation grasps the finer eighty subsidiary excellences within them. Second, by depth of reflection: investigation is the coarser searching mind, noting impermanence in the passing of seasons or the blooming and fading of flowers; deeper investigation is the finer scrutinizing mind, tracking that same impermanence moment to moment, even instant to instant.

Right speech, action, and livelihood — the discipline-factors of the eightfold path — unfold across five sections, tracing a practitioner's whole relationship to discipline from beginning to end: first the wholehearted decision to renounce wrongdoing, then actually receiving the vow from a preceptor, then guarding it continuously once received, and finally, should a lapse occur despite every care, confessing and returning to purity rather than concealing the fault.

Three further stages describe discipline maturing in community life: stillness arises from the patience and gentleness that let disagreements with fellow practitioners simply pass without friction; restraint arises from genuine contentment with little — never seeking recognition for one's own virtue — joined with a compassionate spirit toward the precepts themselves; and closely guarding the sense gateways, sustained long enough, makes right conduct effortless, wrongdoing no longer even tempting.

Three further guarantees against wrongdoing: the vow itself, taken from a preceptor, already commits body, speech, and mind against it; correct understanding of what is permitted and what is not keeps it from ever manifesting; and sustained mindfulness — guarding attention so carefully that forgetfulness has no opening — keeps it from manifesting even by accident.

Discipline pictured as a bridge spans the flood of wrongdoing directly beneath it; pictured as a raft on the great river of birth-and-death, it carries even the most confused, path-lost being across whatever blocks the way, all the way to the far shore of nirvāṇa.

Having closed the first verse's eight great topics in full, the treatise now opens the wholesome portion's second verse, previewing a fresh set of terms to be unfolded in turn: wisdom and proclaiming the dharma; wholesome aspiration; the blazing energy of diligence, solitude, and freedom from the dust of affliction; a set of comparisons — the five aggregates likened to sickness and the rest; the many senses in which "I" is spoken of, and cessation, exhaustion, and their kin; the heavens, the world, and sentient beings as further categories; reliance and its own distinctions; and finally the self and what belongs to the self, closing the verse.

The verse's second topic, wisdom, opens with four wisdoms matched to the four grounds from which speech itself arises: speech grounded in seeing, reporting what the eye has directly witnessed; speech grounded in hearing, reporting what was heard from another; speech grounded in awareness, reporting one's own private reflection, neither seen nor heard; and speech grounded in cognizance, reporting what was inwardly felt, realized, touched, or attained. A person's wisdom shows itself precisely through the speech these four grounds give rise to — someone who observes the seasons turning or flowers blooming and fading may awaken insight into impermanence through sight alone; someone who tastes, touches, or smells directly awakens it through the three sense-consciousnesses paired always with the fifth, accompanying mental consciousness, called cognizance here.

A second pairing of the same two terms: knowledge here reaches toward the past and future, not directly witnessed — corresponding to inferential wisdom of a kind; sight reaches only toward what stands directly before the mind right now — corresponding to direct dharma-wisdom of the desire realm's own truths.

Clarity is contaminant-free wisdom's own direct opposition to ignorance, whether innate or acquired through wrong views. Realization takes as its object reality's own two aspects — a dharma's unchanging nature, and its full particular extent — named the Bodhisattva Ground's "truly existent meaning." And realized wisdom neither adds what is not truly there (the four distortions: mistaking the impermanent for permanent, the painful for pleasant, the impure for pure, and the selfless for a self) nor subtracts what genuinely is there (as wrong views that deny giving and its fruit do) — wisdom exactly matched to reality, neither embellishing nor denying it.

Four stages of a single teaching act: proclaiming answers a listener's own question; establishing arranges the actual words in proper sequence — "intent" here meaning simply the words themselves, as fascicle 81 already explained, the very path by which a teaching gets set down; setting forth delivers that arrangement briefly; and unpacking follows with the fuller explanation, drawing out whatever deeper intent the brief statement left implicit.

Disclosing resolves doubt however it has spread among listeners passing a question along; revealing goes further, showing others what the teacher has personally realized of emptiness and dependent origination's own profound depths, not merely repeating what was heard.

The Buddha's own words praise this same threefold goodness: his dharma is good in beginning, middle, and end alike — good at every age of life, at entering, practicing, and completing it; good because it first restrains evil, then relinquishes even merit's own attachment, and finally relinquishes everything; good because it is taught consistently across all three periods, never mixed with error as outside teachings are; good because the wise delight in it at every stage; and good because its depth never runs shallow at the start and thin at the end, as lesser teachings do.

Wondrous meaning names the content — teachings genuinely leading to a settled, wholesome mind and real ease of body and mind; skillful text names the form — names, phrases, and syllables arranged with the eight perfected qualities already explained (correspondence, mutual support, and the rest), content and form together making the teaching complete.

The Ground of Cultivation pictures a stream-enterer already tasting vast dharma-joy, longing intensely for arhatship still ahead — wondering, again and again, when they too might fully abide in that noble state as an arhat does, the three knowledges and six spiritual powers complete, every affliction of the three realms exhausted, never to be reborn again. Without such longing driving continued effort, a practitioner easily slackens, treating the goal as optional rather than urgent.

Where intense aspiration is the wish, intense fondness is genuine delight in the actual doing — the Śrāvaka Ground's own "right application," repeatedly forming resolve toward an object and repeatedly clearing away what obstructs it, insight and calm-abiding alternating in proper practice, and a practitioner who truly loves this work rather than merely tolerating it.

A genuinely urgent practitioner never tells themselves "tomorrow" — constant awareness of impermanence keeps effort blazing rather than deferred, unlike the deliberate, well-earned rest that supports a longer journey.

Whatever the practice taught — the six perfections, the four noble truths — a diligent practitioner's actual effort should match or exceed what was asked, never quietly settling for less.

Solitude here means outward simplicity taken to its limit — a single set of robes, no spare belongings, no one else sharing the dwelling — the physical circumstance that supports genuine retreat.

Where solitude named the outward circumstance, renunciation names the corresponding inward state — a mind touched by neither greed, hatred, nor delusion, and free even of the dull, uncomprehending neutrality that accompanies delusion, only wholesome attention remaining.

Constant inward watching catches desire, ill will, or harmful intent — and their subtler cousins, thoughts of homeland, of immortality, of family status, of contempt for others — the instant they arise, checking them before they take hold; and that same vigilance actively settles the mind in hearing, reflection, cultivation, or the three trainings instead, rather than merely suppressing what is unwholesome.

This describes, in precise technical terms, the very last obstacle before stream-entry. At the stage of preparation — heat, summit, forbearance, and supreme worldly dharma — a practitioner's wisdom, though genuinely arisen through contemplating the four noble truths, is still contaminated, "already arisen but not yet complete." Even here, a subtle conceit can still intrude, intermittently or continuously, in thoughts like "I have long wandered in birth-and-death; I will realize nirvāṇa; these truths, this emptiness, are mine" — self-clinging quietly persisting even amid genuine insight into suffering, its origin, cessation, and the path. This is "dust." As contemplation deepens through the three grades of forbearance and reaches supreme worldly dharma, this coarse conceit's active manifestation is finally overcome — "far from dust" — though its seeds, along with the whole category of afflictions cut off at the path of seeing, still remain latent — "defilement." Only at the sixteenth moment of the path of seeing, the moment of direct realization itself, are these seeds finally and permanently severed — true stream-entry, and genuine freedom from both dust and defilement together.

Whatever the object of contemplation, its own particular character and its shared, universal character must both be understood before the dharma-eye can open. Called an "eye" as wisdom's own metaphor, this realization sees directly, not through inference, that the five aggregates are only dharma, illusory and empty, with no genuine self anywhere to be found within them.

Four stages, each the fruit of the one before: seeing the dharma directly through fundamental non-discriminating wisdom; attaining one of the four fruits as a result; knowing, through subsequently gained wisdom, exactly which fruit has been attained and that no fall back to an ordinary being's state is possible; and, finally, unshakable confirmed faith — one of the four marks of confirmed purity — toward the Three Jewels and the precepts one now holds, sincere without a trace of doubt.

A noble one harbors no confusion about their own realization, and no doubt that others, following the same path, can reach the same result.

Genuine realization is entirely self-verifying — no longer resting on what was merely heard or reasoned about, unshakeable by any rival doctrine, and confident enough to face even hostile challenge without fear, since impermanence, suffering, emptiness, and no-self have already been directly and personally confirmed.

Ordinary beings drift with the current of craving and birth-and-death; even one who has attained worldly meditative absorption only suppresses affliction's manifestation while its latent seeds still carry them downstream. Only a noble one, having genuinely realized the path, can truly swim against that current toward nirvāṇa.

The verse's next topic asks how the five aggregates come to be compared to sickness, an abscess, an arrow, and harm. The Compendium of Bases names three progressively advancing contemplations a noble one cultivates toward their own further goal: the contemplation of aversion (itself fourfold — the aggregates seen as a sickness, an abscess, an arrow, and a source of harm), the contemplation of fault (impermanence and suffering — the aggregates recognized as a conditioned, arising-and-passing result laden with the three or eight kinds of suffering), and the contemplation of true meaning (emptiness and no-self — the aggregates seen as merely a conditioned aggregation, without any controlling self to be found). The aggregates, entangled with affliction's active manifestation, are like an illness leaving body and mind unfree; carrying affliction's own latent seeds, they are like an abscess concealing a hidden threat; bound up with craving's own residue, they are like being struck by an arrow whose affliction follows relentlessly; and being the very source of manifold vexation, they are like harm itself, blocking every worldly and transcendent virtue.

Impermanence, the shared mark of every conditioned dharma, shows itself two ways: coarsely, in the body's own visible stages of change, and subtly, in the ceaseless, moment-to-moment turnover an ordinary mind is simply too coarse to notice, mistaking yesterday's self for today's as though nothing had truly changed at all.

The first kind is the familiar suffering of birth, aging, sickness, death, separation from loved ones, and the rest — suffering no one would dispute is suffering. The second is subtler: every feeling, painful, pleasant, or neutral, is ultimately suffering. Painful feeling is plainly suffering-as-suffering; pleasant feeling is suffering-as-decay, since what depends on something outside itself for its pleasure inevitably turns painful once that pleasure is exhausted or lost — as satisfying hunger becomes, past a point, its own discomfort; and neutral feeling is suffering-as-conditioning, since the aggregates themselves, arising and perishing moment to moment, press on body and mind regardless of what is felt.

A sharp-eyed practitioner sees one life give way to the next without interruption, and each new life bring its own aging and dying in turn — realizing the suffering of birth directly through this endless continuity. And seeing that same continuity's own moment-to-moment arising and perishing, the practitioner realizes that every feeling, without exception, shares in suffering's own nature.

Three feelings, three faces of the same underlying truth: pleasant feeling inevitably decays into distress, hence suffering-through-decay; painful feeling is already suffering the moment it arises, growing worse the longer it persists — as pain from a blow only compounds with time; and neutral feeling, neither painful nor pleasant, is still suffering simply because the impermanent, ever-perishing aggregates it belongs to never stop turning over.

The impermanent nature already established is here traced directly to its effect on the first two feelings — pleasant feeling's own impermanence guarantees eventual decay, and painful feeling's own impermanence means fresh suffering keeps arising for as long as it continues, both rooted in the very same impermanence already explained.

Neutral feeling never escapes suffering's own reach at either end: what has already ceased was suffering the moment it decayed, since it too was impermanent, and what has only just arisen is already suffering in advance, since its very nature guarantees it will decay in turn — impermanence leaving no neutral feeling genuinely neutral.

The moment pleasant feeling arises, craving's latent seed stirs beneath it, and that very craving, through grasping and karmic action, draws in suffering yet to come; and within this present life, once that pleasant feeling inevitably decays, suffering follows immediately after. Pleasure, seen this way, is never innocent — it is impermanent, self-perpetuating, and quietly seeded with its own future pain.

"Arrow" is elsewhere named a synonym for affliction itself — restless, and trailing far behind wherever it strikes. Once painful feeling has actually arisen, it vexes and wounds continuously, exactly like a poisoned arrow still lodged in the flesh, unremoved — a fitting image for why painful feeling should be contemplated with such urgency.

Reasoning by inference: a past instance of neutral feeling, already having ceased, proves its impermanence directly; a present instance, not yet ceased, still carries the same nature of decay within it, guaranteeing its own future cessation — either way, neutral feeling is suffering.

Ordinary beings instinctively assume some permanent, unchanging, substantial self dwells within the five aggregates; in truth, the aggregates are impermanent, momentarily arising and perishing, containing no such constant, unchanging, real self at all. As the Connected Discourses puts it, every renunciant or brahmin who posits a self does so only by projecting it onto these very five aggregates clung to — aggregates that are, in fact, impermanent, inconstant, and ever-changing, leaving no real self to be found anywhere within them.

Three complementary modes of teaching. Interpreting explains a dharma's own particular nature directly — mind versus form, form further divided into the senses and their objects, term by term. Disclosing frames the same teaching around the four noble truths specifically: suffering to be fully known, its origin to be permanently cut off, cessation to be realized, the path to be cultivated — the very positive program already described elsewhere as disclosing what dispels doubt and revealing what is personally realized. Clarifying then argues the negative case — what danger follows if a practitioner fails to heed this program, endlessly tossed in the boundless ocean of birth-and-death's own suffering.

Three depths, matched to the seven applications of attention on the path of preparation. Comprehending is the first application, simply grasping clearly what a given object's mark actually is — no-self, or emptiness, whatever the object of contemplation. Resolving is stronger still, a forceful, lasting grasp that does not fade the way a shallow first impression would. And knowing belongs to direct realization itself, spanning withdrawal, gathering joy, observation, the culmination of effort, and its fruit — the applications through which affliction is actually, personally verified and cut off.

This treatise uses "comprehension" language in more than one sense across its many fascicles. Elsewhere in this very fascicle, comprehension names attention first awakened toward a known matter, comparative comprehension names the further seeking that follows, and near-complete comprehension names the settled certainty that concludes it. Fascicle 84 will further gloss comprehension itself as the wisdom born of hearing, comparative comprehension as the wisdom born of reflection, and thorough comprehension as the wisdom born of cultivation — the same family of terms, examined from several complementary angles across the whole compendium.

Astuteness surveys a dharma's own complete particular content in full — the very mark of genuine sharpness when practicing calm-abiding and insight; penetration then grasps its shared, unchanging nature by way of that same full survey, since only thorough particular knowledge makes genuine penetration of the universal possible — the two working together, never truly apart, as this treatise has already shown from two further angles earlier in this same fascicle.

The verse's seventh topic, "I," opens the widest single family of terms yet, eight in all. Ordinary beings cling to the five aggregates — each marked by "grasping," meaning bound up with affliction — as either a self or something a self possesses, whether taken all together or singled out one by one: form as self and the rest as what belongs to it, or feeling as self, and so through every possible combination. Whether taken jointly or separately, this clinging always assumes the same three qualities of a genuine self: permanence, unity, and mastery — the very view named "I."

"Sentient being," another name for "I," carries two readings at once, reflecting two depths of wisdom applied to the same object. For the noble ones, whose wisdom sees truly, there is only the five aggregates — no controlling, permanent self dwelling within or behind them at all, cycling through birth-and-death or attaining the path. For ordinary beings, "sentient" points instead to feeling itself — an unreasoning attachment and affection constantly bound up with the aggregates, the very clinging a bodhisattva's compassion aims to awaken and free.

The ordinary sense of "I" arises from discriminating mind — form itself never distinguishes "this tooth is me, this hand is me," but consciousness does exactly that, which is why "I" belongs, at root, to the mind's own category.

This term, literally "young brahmin student," pictures self-clinging as restless and energetic as youth itself — constantly rising and falling in its endless discriminations, active in every waking moment except the rare states of no-conception, cessation, deep sleep, or unconsciousness, until the noble path finally stills it.

Self-clinging "nurtures" future rebirth the way a parent nurtures a child — sustaining and feeding the karma that produces the next existence — and it likewise nurtures every ordinary human function, since whatever anyone does is done from the standpoint of this same "I."

Bound by craving for one's own continued existence and for sense objects, an ordinary being cycles endlessly through the three realms and five destinies, never once satisfied or willing to renounce — self-love is trouble enough on its own, but self-view is the very root of birth-and-death itself.

The moment of stream-entry itself permanently severs the three fetters — self-view, clinging to rules and rituals, and doubt — and stills all craving for further existence anywhere in the three realms. From that foundation, continued contemplation of impermanence — everything arising and passing away — goes on to cut off the innate afflictions still remaining: conceit, ill will, craving, ignorance, and extreme views.

Continuing to cultivate the sixteen aspects of the four noble truths after stream-entry cuts off conceit's own manifestation and seed together; the 披尋記 extends the same "and the rest" to cover the remaining higher fetters as well — craving for form and formlessness, restlessness, and ignorance — all likewise uprooted through genuine realization, self-love's every latent trace finally gone.

The verse's tenth topic unpacks the famous fourfold declaration of realization — "birth for me is ended, the pure conduct established, what was to be done is done, no further existence is to be known" — beginning with its first phrase, which differs by which of the four fruits has actually been reached. A stream-enterer, even at their slowest, has at most seven more returns between the human and heavenly worlds before arhatship, so an eighth birth is already ruled out; a once-returner, having removed six to eight of the nine grades of desire-realm affliction, returns at most once more before final release, wherever that single further birth occurs; a non-returner, all nine grades removed, will never again be reborn in the desire realm, taking rebirth only in the form or formless realms — the 披尋記 lists nine distinct patterns by which such a non-returner reaches final nirvāṇa, some in the intermediate state, some shortly after birth in a higher realm, some only after ascending through further heavens; and an arhat undergoes no further existence of any kind whatsoever. "Birth for me is ended" thus means something different, and increasingly complete, depending on which fruit has actually been realized.

This phrase applies most fully to the non-returner, whose freedom from desire-realm affliction means no falling back to that realm, and to the arhat, whose noble path is entirely complete; extended more loosely, it can also describe the stream-enterer and once-returner, who likewise never regress to an ordinary being's own condition, even though the phrase is less commonly applied to them.

Where the 披尋記 mapped each of the four phrases directly onto one of the four fruits, the treatise itself offers a second, complementary mapping. Birth of the body applies especially to the stream-enterer, whose eighth rebirth is definitively ruled out; birth of affliction applies especially to the once-returner, whose afflictions have already thinned to almost nothing, even if not yet entirely gone — "ended" describing sparseness as much as absolute cessation.

Having removed the final three of the nine grades of desire-realm affliction to be cut off through cultivation, the non-returner is free of impure craving entirely — the very meaning of "pure conduct established" applied precisely to this third fruit.

The verse's eleventh topic asks which beings the Buddha's teaching actually addresses. "Heavenly world" divides first into Māra — the highest lord of the desire realm's sixth heaven, the Heaven of Free Enjoyment of Others' Creations, who alone enjoys sense pleasure entirely at will rather than merely as the desire realm's other inhabitants do — and Brahmā, the first meditative absorption's own heaven, itself threefold by depth of concentration (the assembly of Brahmā, the ministers of Brahmā, and Great Brahmā), complete with investigation, analysis, joy, ease, and one-pointedness. Between them, Māra and Brahmā represent the whole heavenly world's two poles — still bound by desire, and already free of it.

"Renunciant" broadly names any Indian ascetic, not Buddhists alone; "brahmin" names the priestly or highest caste. Among human beings, this second category names specifically those whose practice, whatever its outward form, aims at eventually becoming a Māra or a Brahmā themselves.

Three depths of liberation from craving toward the five aggregates, matched to the seven applications of attention a practitioner cultivates once access concentration is reached. First, discipline (literally, "taming") merely restrains affliction, through grasping the mark — learning through hearing and reflection that desire is perilous and how to renounce it — and resolve, where that same understanding, now settled through sustained meditative practice rather than mere thought, subdues affliction without yet cutting it off. Second, severance builds on that resolve through withdrawal, gathering joy, observation, and the culmination of effort — withdrawal removing the coarsest afflictions, gathering joy the middling ones, observation checking whether any residual conceit about what has already been left behind remains, and the culmination of effort finally removing even the subtlest — affliction's active manifestation now genuinely cut off through the power of insight. And third, transcendence, the fruit of that same culmination, is the moment craving for the desire realm is fully surpassed and the discriminated afflictions of all three realms are cut off — stream-entry itself.

The nine fetters — craving, hatred, delusion, conceit, doubt, views, clinging, envy, and stinginess — trace to nine distinct grounds the Compendium of Bases enumerates: craving and hatred toward loved and unloved objects, whether sentient or not; conceit toward other sentient beings; three kinds of wrong resolve arising from wrongly taught doctrines, wrong reflection, and practice not properly grounded in skillful means; lack of resolve even toward the rightly taught doctrine; poverty of wisdom among renunciants; and poverty of wealth among householders. Freedom from all nine fetters, and full liberation from every future birth, aging, sickness, and death, together describe an arhat's own complete release from the afflictions of the three realms.

The treatise now turns to whether spiritual practice is undertaken for oneself, for others, or both. A stream-enterer, realizing the path of seeing, is freed from the ordinary distortions of taking the impermanent for permanent, the painful for pleasant, the impure for pure, and the selfless for a self; but the desire-realm afflictions still to be cut off through cultivation require continued, sustained practice at the path of cultivation to fully remove.

Wholesome conduct genuinely benefits the one who practices it, while cultivating discipline, concentration, and wisdom without harming body, speech, or mind — one's own or another's — brings real ease.

A practitioner's own wholesome, harmless conduct naturally extends into compassion for others; and "meaning" here names nirvāṇa itself, the sought-after matter behind every genuine spiritual pursuit. The Bodhisattva Ground explains this through the bodhisattva's own three concentrations: emptiness concentration, the mind settling on every matter as free of any real basis in language; wishlessness concentration, seeing the same matters, bound up with wrongly conceived affliction and manifold suffering, and no longer wishing for their future continuation; and signlessness concentration, directly and truly knowing that every discriminating elaboration about them has finally, utterly stilled. Conditioned dharmas make wishlessness concentration fitting, since they are genuinely to be renounced; unconditioned nirvāṇa makes signlessness concentration fitting, since it alone is genuinely to be aspired toward — desired object and desiring mind together, nirvāṇa the sought-after matter and the three concentrations the means of seeking it.

The verse's twelfth topic, reliance, names first the five grasped aggregates themselves — the most basic thing an ordinary being clings to — and then seven further categories of attachment the Ground of Mind enumerates in turn, beginning here with parents (the very source of one's birth) and spouse and children (wife and offspring, or husband and offspring), with servants, wealth, and the rest still to come.

Four kinds of grasping: grasping desire itself, craving bound to the five sense pleasures; grasping views, clinging to wrong views (other than self-view specifically) as though they were supreme; grasping rules and rituals, the many pointless ascetic vows of outside teachings, such as imitating a dog's or an ox's own behavior, which lead nowhere near liberation; and grasping the notion "I," self-clinging itself, the very craving bound up with self-view. The Compendium of Bases locates these four across two groups: householders who still enjoy sense pleasures, and renunciants of poorly taught outside disciplines. The Buddha himself declared that he, as the great teacher of the doctrine that fully understands and permanently severs every form of grasping, does not establish these four kinds of grasping for those who have genuinely vowed to practice within his own teaching — since a true renunciant has already left behind desire's pull, and clings to no view, no rule, and no notion of self. This is why grasping is left "unnamed" for insiders and "named" for householders and outside renunciants alike.

Consciousness in the three realms habitually rests on four of the five aggregates — form, feeling, perception, and formations — the very ground on which affliction takes hold. A companion sūtra develops this at length in the Buddha's own words: an unlearned ordinary being, fearful even where there is nothing to fear, dreads the teachings of no-self and nothing-belonging-to-self, and so clings instead to these four stations, nourishing and expanding consciousness's own attachment to form especially, and equally to feeling, perception, and formations — imagining, when questioned, that consciousness must somehow rest "elsewhere," yet unable to say where, since consciousness in fact has nowhere else to rest at all. But a practitioner who becomes free of craving toward form, and thereby free of the mental bondage that craving produces, no longer lets consciousness settle on form to grow and expand there; and the same freedom, extended to feeling, perception, and formations in turn, leaves consciousness with nowhere left to rest, no further activity, no further pursuit — only genuine contentment, and through that contentment, real liberation, taking nothing more from the world, clinging to nothing, and directly knowing nirvāṇa for oneself: "birth for me is ended, the pure conduct established, what was to be done is done, no further existence is to be known." Such an arhat's own consciousness, the sūtra says, can no longer be located in any direction whatsoever — east, west, north, south, or anywhere between — utterly at peace, every trace of suffering and its origin finally stilled, cool and free.

Every affliction, driven by craving as its condition, actively pulls toward the five grasped aggregates and the seven kinds of what one holds dear already named — its own genuine ground of reliance — and this active pulling, wrapping around a being the way an entangling vine wraps a tree, is exactly what "entanglement" describes.

The verse's final topic opens with self-view itself — also called the view of a perishable, aggregated body, or simply the view of a person — the mistaken belief, taken toward one's own embodied continuum, that "this is I" or "this belongs to me."

Comparing one's own appearance, learning, wealth, or even one's own spiritual attainments — meditative experience, discipline, wisdom — against others gives rise to this same conceit, whether feeling superior, feeling roughly equal, or feeling only slightly inferior; every such comparison, rooted in self-view, is itself affliction.

Anyone untrained in the dharma naturally thinks in terms of "I" without exception, so entanglement — self-view and self-conceit actively manifest — is most readily found among outside teachings specifically. The latent seed, by contrast, lies dormant in both those outside the teaching and those within it alike, until genuinely uprooted through the path.

The verse's first topic revisits the traditional ten epithets of a buddha, already explained from other angles in the Bodhisattva Ground and the Compendium of Bases — reciting a buddha's name meaningfully, understanding what each epithet actually points to, deepens faith far more than reciting it by rote. This Compendium of Synonyms now offers its own eightfold account of the same ten names.

The Bodhisattva Ground gives three reasons the Buddha earns this title: he has already attained every attainment there is to attain — nirvāṇa itself; he is fit to serve as the world's own unsurpassed field of merit; and he is worthy of reverence and offering from every being in all ten dharma-realms. Having perfected merit and wisdom both, he is the highest field anyone could plant a seed of generosity in — hence, Worthy One.

This epithet splits into two completions. Wisdom names the three knowledges — of past lives, of the heavenly eye, and of the exhaustion of contaminants — which the Ground of What Is Heard explains the Buddha alone holds in their true completeness: outside teachers may gain the first two through meditative power, yet remain unable to explain the causal chain behind what they see, falling into eternalism or annihilationism about the past and future, and mistaking either sensual pleasure or mere meditative absorption for nirvāṇa in the present; only the third knowledge, exhaustion of contaminants, actually cures this threefold confusion, which is why the Buddha's three knowledges are called complete where an outsider's two are not. Conduct then names two further completions: restraint, the Buddha's own utterly perfected guarding of the sense gateways, unlike an ordinary being whose six senses stay carelessly open to whatever passes in; and active conduct, body, speech, and mind kept entirely pure — or, by another reading, a livelihood perfectly aligned with the true dharma. The Bodhisattva Ground names this same completion simply as calm-abiding and insight both brought to their utmost perfection.

Conduct's earlier threefold division (restraint, active conduct, abiding conduct) collapses here into two: active conduct broadly covering both restraint and positive practice, and abiding conduct naming the four absorptions' own dwelling at ease. Pure, rightly-sourced bodily, verbal, and mental conduct completes active conduct; and guarding the six senses so that neither desire, aversion, nor delusion ever takes hold at contact — with attractive, unattractive, or neutral objects alike — completes restraint.

The Bodhisattva Ground explains "well-gone" as rising to the very highest point, never again to return — unsurpassed nirvāṇa attained and permanent. The Aggregation of Dharmas Treatise adds three further senses: the Buddha has gone toward the wondrous dharma in perfect ease, without hardship of any kind; he has permanently and completely severed every difficult path that craving, hatred, delusion, and their kin lead toward, root and branch, like a palm tree cut off at the crown, never to sprout again; and, exactly as every past buddha before him, he has traveled the one true, undistorted path to transcendent virtue, arriving once and for all, never to fall back — hence "well" (perfectly) "gone" (departed for good). Traditional commentary adds that "Tathāgata" names arriving well in this world, while "well-gone" names departing well toward the far shore, the two together picturing a buddha's perfect freedom of movement between this shore and that.

The sentient world spans every manner of being, defiled or pure, in all its bewildering variety; the vessel world names the physical universe itself — mountains, rivers, cities, dwellings — that sentient beings inhabit. The Buddha understands the causes and conditions of both completely.

Through the knowledge of past lives, the Buddha knows every being's own former names and circumstances, joys and sorrows, and the causes behind them; through the heavenly eye, he knows the moment of death and rebirth, favorable or unfavorable appearance, and destiny to come. Together these two knowledges let him fully penetrate all eighty-four thousand distinct habits of mind sentient beings display — a number the Fortunate Eon Sūtra traces through an elaborate scheme of perfections, afflictions, and their remedies, ultimately corresponding to the eighty-four thousand approaches to dharma, and the eighty-four thousand gateways of concentration a bodhisattva may attain through mastering them.

Compared against every being sorted by limb (footless, two-, four-, or many-footed), by form (with or without), or by conception (with, without, or neither), the Tathāgata stands foremost, most excellent, and highest among every one of them — the very meaning of "unsurpassed great being."

The Buddha rightly guides gods and humans toward the four foundations of mindfulness and every other right practice that frees them from suffering — teacher of these two specifically, and not of hell-beings, hungry ghosts, or animals, because only gods and humans genuinely have the capacity to understand profound teaching and diligently practice discipline, concentration, and wisdom.

Where an arhat has severed affliction but may still show its faintest habituated trace, the Buddha has severed both entirely — affliction and the obstruction to what is known both gone — and thereby manifests awakening genuinely equal to reality's own truth, complete and unsurpassed: the very meaning of "Buddha," anuttarā samyaksaṃbodhi realized in full.

Among the ten epithets, "Tathāgata" stands first, a general term of praise introducing the nine more particular epithets that follow.

This second and most fundamental epithet names the Buddha's own complete, universal awakening — fit to receive offerings as the world's own field of merit, precisely because both obstructions are permanently gone.

The third verse's second topic draws on a specific companion sūtra to unfold the perception of impermanence through four lenses in turn. Cultivation itself simply names the act — practicing, habituating, and repeatedly cultivating this perception spurs a practitioner's own resolve toward realizing the path.

Cultivating the perception of impermanence, as the sūtra itself explains, remedies craving for desire directly — its fruit being freedom from exactly the affliction that fuels continued bondage to the desire realm.

The source sūtra offers eight distinct similes for cultivating the perception of impermanence — later fascicles of this same compendium recount the same teaching in seven, or even five, similes, showing how flexibly the tradition itself handled the count.

The practical means is simple: withdraw to a quiet place and sit in contemplation of impermanence. Cultivated this way — practiced, habituated, and repeatedly cultivated — the perception of impermanence cuts off craving for the desire, form, and formless realms together with restlessness, conceit, and ignorance, severing both the lower and higher fetters and thereby leading all the way to arhatship. The sūtra illustrates this through a sequence of vivid similes: a farmer who, at the end of summer, ploughs deep enough to pull weeds out by the very root — a shallow cut lets them grow back with the spring wind, but tearing out the root ends them for good, exactly as sustained contemplation uproots craving's own seed rather than merely trimming its surface; a reaper who grasps the tops of tall grass and shakes it, so that everything already withered falls away on its own; a strong wind shaking ripe mango fruit from its branch, just as the perception of impermanence shakes loose the very fruits of suffering accumulated across the three realms; and a building's own central ridgepole, on which every other beam and rafter depends — the perception of impermanence serving the same load-bearing role for the whole structure of realization built upon it.

Three stages of the same seven applications already explained at length: cultivation begins with grasping the mark, contemplating the fifteen inner and sixteen outer forms of impermanence the Śrāvaka Ground enumerates; habituation deepens into resolve, a settled, forceful conviction rather than a mere first impression; and repeated cultivation spans the remaining applications — withdrawal, gathering joy, observation, and the culmination of effort — carrying the practice all the way to realization.

The six sense faculties, themselves impermanent, form the ground this contemplation rests upon; the six sense objects, contacts, and feelings that arise from them, likewise impermanent, form the actual matter observed — the practice always circling back to the same essential point: no fixed, controlling self anywhere to be found.

Accordance with no-self follows directly once attention is deliberately applied to impermanence; and once that same application has been repeated enough, familiarity lets the same insight arise effortlessly, whenever wished, without any struggle at all.

The first of three explanations: skillfully received names the wisdom born of hearing, first learning that the aggregates are momentarily impermanent; skillfully aroused names the wisdom born of reflection that follows, turning that hearing into genuinely focused inward contemplation.

Desire-realm craving stirs up restless, agitated pursuit of whatever is wanted; form-realm craving, once meditative absorption is attained without the balance of genuine dharma, easily breeds conceit toward those still bound to the desire realm's own distraction; and formless-realm craving, subtlest of all, breeds ignorance — a practitioner absorbed in the sphere of neither perception nor non-perception may mistake that very stillness for a genuine, abiding self, a profound misunderstanding indeed.

Just as the farmer of the earlier simile first turns his attention to the task of ploughing before the season for it arrives, a practitioner must first deliberately take impermanence itself as the object of attention before genuine cultivation can proceed.

A tall tower or pavilion pictures liberation itself — an arhat beyond learning, whose mind constantly abides in mindfulness, clear comprehension, and the perception of impermanence together, this very perception accompanying liberation as its own constant companion.

Just as a building's central beam supports every other beam and rafter, the perception of impermanence is the very causal support liberation depends on. And among the five purifying objects of contemplation — impurity (remedying craving), loving-kindness (remedying hatred), dependent origination (remedying delusion), analysis of the elements (remedying conceit), and mindfulness of breath (remedying restless thought) — impermanence stands foremost, since every conditioned dharma without exception falls within its scope, making its object broader than any of the other four.

A stream on its way toward the sea pictures a learner still on the path, the perception of impermanence accompanying and carrying them steadily toward nirvāṇa; and the rising sun pictures how this same perception, once established, dispels the darkness of self-clinging ignorance the way a single ray of dawn light breaks a long night's darkness.

Wherever a practitioner actually settles — a quiet monastery, beneath a tree, an empty hall, or open ground — the essential point is the same: possessions kept to the barest minimum, the whole of one's attention given over to practice rather than comfort.

The third verse's third topic takes its name from Tiṣya (底沙), a monk named for the lunar mansion under whose sign he was born — variants of the name translate as "coolness," "flourishing," or "one who ferries others across through teaching." Two companion sūtras tell his story. In the first, Tiṣya confesses before the assembly that he cannot distinguish wholesome from unwholesome dharmas, has no taste for meditation or pure conduct, and loves only sleep, his mind full of doubt. The Buddha, informed of this, diagnoses the cause with great compassion: Tiṣya fails to guard his senses, eats either too much or too little, neglects wakeful practice through the night watches, and lets existing virtue decay while new virtue never arises. Summoned before the Buddha and questioned gently rather than scolded, Tiṣya honestly admits that attachment to form, feeling, and the rest brings grief whenever those very things change, while non-attachment brings none — and the Buddha then offers the parable of two travelers, one who knows the road and one who does not, guiding the lost traveler past fork after fork (always choosing right over left — freedom from greed, hatred, and harm over their opposites; the noble eightfold path over its eight wrong counterparts), past ravines and thickets (affliction, and craving for reputation and gain), until the city of nirvāṇa is finally reached — the Buddha's own compassionate work as guide already complete, leaving only the traveler's own next step to be taken. In the second sūtra, an unrelated but similarly named Tiṣya, presuming on his status as the Buddha's own cousin, grows contemptuous and unwilling to be corrected by anyone, until the Buddha calls him in and gently redirects his misplaced pride: precisely because of that kinship, he should be all the more humble and patient with correction, not less — and Tiṣya, hearing this, gladly reforms.

Recalling Tiṣya's own confession — unable to distinguish wholesome from unwholesome, taking no delight in pure conduct, guarding no sense gateway, careless in eating, and asleep through both watches of the night — the first obstacle is simply doubt itself: without genuine, settled conviction in the dharma, a practitioner cannot even begin the journey toward the path.

Even a practitioner genuinely aspiring toward the path can be led astray into the desire realm's own thicket of sense pleasure by thoughts of desire, ill will, and harm — the second obstacle, aspiration present but attention wrongly directed.

The third obstacle is subtler still — free of the coarser thoughts of desire, ill will, and harm, yet still gripped by a settled wrong view, the eightfold wrong path mirroring the noble eightfold path point for point (wrong view, intention, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, and concentration) — leaving a practitioner unable to genuinely receive a teacher's guidance in either discipline or wisdom.

Wrong view breeds resentment the moment another tries to correct it; and it leaves a renunciant genuinely unfree, carried along by their own defilement rather than mastering it, finding even basic discipline burdensome, and showing coarse conduct in body and speech that leads toward unfortunate destinies — a mind so mixed with anger that joy has no room to arise.

Even a practitioner free of doubt, wrong thought, and wrong view can still be held back by simple attachment to material support and the esteem of others — preferring a comfortable city dwelling with abundant offerings to the quiet, unrewarded solitude genuine practice requires.

A dense thicket, in the parable, pictures the five sense pleasures themselves — a renunciant who has already given up parents, spouse, and children may still find craving for gain and honor entangling just as thoroughly. With this, all four obstacles that block the path — doubt, wrong investigative thought, wrong discriminated view, and craving for gain and honor — are fully explained. The treatise turns next to dread, the third verse's fourth topic.

The third verse's fourth topic examines the path's own faults, beginning with dread: without the noble eightfold path's own right view, a practitioner risks affliction rising like a bandit, and feigned dignity adopted merely to win gain and honor — both leading straight toward the terror of the three evil destinies.

Craving for gain and honor, pictured as the thicket of sense pleasure, hides its own predators — wild beasts and malevolent spirits standing for the many ways such craving can swallow up a practitioner's hard-won merit entirely unnoticed.

A mind still tangled in doubt and wrong view walks a path as hazardous as one strewn with poisoned thorns, danger present at every step.

Where the road itself names one's own bodily, verbal, and mental karma, "destiny" names the actual place that karma leads to — "debased" naming its inferiority, "evil" naming its association with manifold unwholesome dharmas, together describing the three evil destinies as karma's own fault made manifest.

The third verse's fifth topic gathers some twenty synonyms for nirvāṇa, unfolded here across six sections. Unmoving names its signless nature, free of every characteristic; unchanging names the exhaustion of craving that leaves the mind unmoved by any object whatsoever; and hard to see names its very profundity — the Determinations explain that every dharma's own true nature lies beyond conceptual elaboration and beyond the reach of language, graspable only provisionally, through language's own conventional support, which is exactly why ultimate reality remains so difficult to see directly.

Nirvāṇa is called ambrosia because entering it permanently ends the whole cycle of birth, aging, sickness, and death; security because it lies beyond every danger the hells, hungry ghosts, and animal realms could threaten; and coolness because only once every scorching affliction is genuinely stilled can true, peaceful coolness be tasted at all.

"Present-life ease" names the four meditative absorptions themselves, joy, ease, and equanimity unfolding in turn; taking the unconditioned as the very object of insight within that same absorption is both "what is truly good," since it is wholesome through and through, and "auspicious destiny," since it is precisely the object whose contemplation cuts off every affliction and leads a practitioner toward the most auspicious destination of all.

The unconditioned lies beyond every worldly object of attachment or aversion, and once genuinely realized, can never be lost again — true and final freedom from sorrow. And being itself unconditioned and unborn, it can never die, admitting no possibility of regression.

Affliction burns like a raging fire, disturbing body and mind and consuming whatever virtue has been cultivated; nirvāṇa, entirely free of affliction, is correspondingly free of that blazing fire, purity itself. And where ordinary craving for the desire, form, and formless realms leaves beings forever wanting, nirvāṇa's own freedom from all three realms' desire leaves nothing further to want — freedom from feverish distress.

The third verse's sixth topic draws on a monk's own question to the Buddha — when will "I" and "what is mine" cease to exist? — read here as a wish directed toward the future: self-clinging typically fastens onto the inner six sense faculties, and clinging to what belongs to self typically fastens onto the outer six sense objects and the seven kinds of attachment already explained; this monk's aspiration is that neither kind of clinging should arise again in any life to come.

The third verse's seventh topic, non-continuity, unfolds across four sections. Its first section names the arhat with residue whose lifespan has run out: once the present five aggregates die, no further resultant consciousness of a next life arises at all — non-continuity in its most direct sense.

Where an ordinary being's consciousness continually settles into form, feeling, perception, and volition, and where conception itself proceeds through consciousness conditioning name-and-form entering the womb, three factors uniting, an arhat who has permanently ended the round of birth-and-death in all three realms no longer enters name-and-form at all — precisely the state realized upon entering nirvāṇa without residue.

Since consciousness no longer settles into the aggregates, it can no longer enter a womb; without entering a womb, there is no name-and-form; and without name-and-form, there is nothing left to expand or grow further.

The third verse's eighth topic, emptiness, unfolds across three sections. Emptiness here names freedom from every distinctly-arisen and innately-arisen affliction of craving and view alike — the Compendium of Bases explains it as freedom from self, from what belongs to self, from the conceit of self, from clinging to these, and from their latent tendencies altogether. Its companion phrase, nothing to be gained, means the mind is free of every characteristic of self, person, being, or life-span whatsoever — a second angle on the same emptiness.

The Determinations, discussed-teaching stage, explain that both phrases reveal nirvāṇa with residue: the exhaustion of craving names a practitioner no longer hoping for love of self or love of its objects in any future aggregates, cutting off the very cause of further existence; freedom from desire names this present body itself no longer clung to for the pleasure its enjoyments bring.

The third verse's ninth topic, impermanence, unfolds across four sections. Its first section names impermanence directly: any dharma whose very nature is to decay and fall to ruin is impermanent — the Compendium of Bases, fascicle 87, explains this as formations already destroyed and formations bound to be destroyed alike being called impermanent.

Three further names for the same impermanent formations, now sorted across the three times: conditioned looks to past formations already considered; constructed looks to future formations a being still hopes to construct through further karma; and arisen-from-conditions looks to the present formations actually arising right now through the power of manifold causes and conditions.

A first way of distinguishing these two: while still alive, the aggregates can suffer a partial loss — a severed hand or foot, the body altered — impermanence claiming only a portion; at death, however, the aggregates are extinguished in their entirety, the whole given over to ruin at once. The Elucidation glosses the partial loss as the past portion, among the three times, already exhausted, and the whole extinguished as all three times together perishing at once.

This second reading reverses which word carries the "whole": now what has an end names the aggregates' total extinction — already exhausted, soon to be exhausted, or presently being exhausted, across all three times; what perishes instead names the continuous, moment-by-moment change and decay running through that same continuity. The Elucidation notes the two readings are not truly redundant, since the first speaks of total loss where the second speaks of ongoing continuity — distinct angles on the same impermanence.

The third verse's tenth and final topic, non-residue, unfolds across two sections, the first of which separately explains four further pairs of terms. "Without remainder" here means every affliction is cut off entirely, none left behind — stated first as a single overall summary before being unpacked term by term.

Permanently cast away describes the active manifestation of affliction now cut off; permanently turned out and vomited forth goes further, describing even affliction's own dormant seeds as cut off — the manifest fault, and its hidden root, both given up entirely.

A third triad, now sorted by time rather than by manifest-versus-latent affliction: liberation already accomplished with respect to the past is permanent exhaustion; liberation accomplished right now, in the present, is permanent freedom from desire; and liberation yet to come, with respect to the future, is permanent stillness.