Desire's Eight Dangers, and the Unwholesome Portion

Whatever is loved and clung to — one's own body and mind, or any further object held and received — is empty of any true master, hence without self; it is deceptive, since ordinary beings mistake what is genuinely impure for pure, unaware of the affliction concealed within; and being unreal, arising from causes and conditions, it is ultimately suffering, its pleasure only apparent, never genuine. With this, desire's mark as inverted is closed. The treatise turns next to desire as a false dharma.

Desire, like an illusionist's conjuration, deceives only fools, never sages: one who has neither heard the dharma nor practiced it cannot truly know desire, and so is endlessly deceived through birth-and-death's long night, taking deep delight and clinging in it — and since desire is itself subject to change, that very clinging is pressed and driven by the suffering of its own eventual ruin. The wise, having accumulated the wisdom born of hearing, reflecting, and cultivating, know desire's impurity directly, and so are never so deceived; the Buddha further taught that among every kind of desire, the desire between the sexes is the most severe of all. A companion passage adds: whether of this life or the next, whether present or future, form and every desire alike are Māra's own domain, bait that lures beings back into birth-and-death, giving rise to countless unwholesome states, discursive thought, hatred, and even open strife. With this, the three marks of desire — inverted, a false dharma, and deceiving of fools — are closed in their entirety. The treatise turns next to eight similes for desire's danger, beginning with a dry bone.

A hungry traveler comes upon a fruit tree heavy with ripe fruit, but none has fallen; wanting to eat, he climbs the tree. A second hungry traveler arrives, unable to climb, and instead takes an axe to fell the whole tree — leaving the first traveler, still aloft, in mortal danger of a broken arm or worse when the tree comes down. Ripe fruit at a treetop's end is exactly such a perilous, deadly place — whoever loves and clings to desire invites exactly this kind of danger from others. With this, all eight similes for desire's danger — the dry bone, the piece of meat, the grass torch, the pit of coals, the venomous snake, the dream, borrowed finery, and rotten fruit at a treetop's end — are closed in their entirety. The treatise turns next to desire's unclean names.

A body born through sexual desire is by nature unclean from the start, and must further be sustained by food, which spoils within the body — hence foul stench in general; its spoiled residue becomes urine and feces, the foul place; and its spoiled nourishment becomes flesh and blood, raw stench. Since a desire-realm body is itself formed through the practice of sexual desire spoiling and changing, it should be shunned with revulsion rather than clung to — for clinging to it only guarantees a further such body to come. Foul stench, the foul place, and raw stench all trace back to sexual desire in the end; without it, there would be no need to consume food, and no such unclean resultant body at all — which is exactly why cultivating the contemplation of uncleanliness on this very desire-realm body can free a practitioner from attachment to physical form. With this, desire's three kinds — its marks, its eight similes, and its unclean names — are closed in their entirety, completing the fourth verse's first topic. The treatise turns next to invitation, the second topic.

The Buddha and the noble disciples are the world's unsurpassed field of merit, the very object worldly people should serve and give to, since giving to them yields an immeasurable, boundless reward. A companion sūtra describes a monk who, seeing form with the eye, hearing sound with the ear, and so through the remaining senses, dwells always in supreme equanimity, neither pained nor pleased, mindful and clearly comprehending — one who accomplishes these six constant practices, as the venerable Śāriputra and the other great elders did, is rare in the world, worthy of the world's service, reverence, and offering, the world's own unsurpassed field of merit. With this, invitation, the fourth verse's second topic, is closed in its entirety. The treatise turns next to the dharma, the third topic.

The Compendium explains each phrase through the one that follows it: cessation is called a dwelling because it is the basis of blameless joy — safe to rest in, like a house. It is called an island because it explains "blameless joy," an island being a sandbar that cuts a sea off from its shore, exactly as cessation cuts off the three realms, the ultimate basis of blameless joy. It is called rescue because it explains "cutting off the three realms" — cessation's own virtue can block every great suffering and calamity, thereby cutting a being off from the three realms' birth-and-death. It is called refuge because it explains "blocking every great suffering and calamity" — nirvāṇa's own state is the basis of pure aspiration and skillful means free of false discrimination, and so naturally invites no calamity at all. And it is called the destination a practitioner ultimately turns toward because it explains "the basis free of false aspiration and means" — cessation is the very basis every noble nature turns toward and relies upon, where every sage ultimately arrives. A companion sūtra lists some twenty further names alongside nirvāṇa itself — the unconditioned, hard to see, unmoving, unbending, deathless, undefiled, sheltering, an island, a crossing, a support, a protection, free of drifting, free of blazing, free of burning, flowing forth, cool, subtle and wondrous, secure, without sickness, without anything at all — of which this treatise explains only a select few. With this, cessation's own many synonyms, the first half of the realization-dharma, are closed in their entirety. The treatise turns next to the path's own gradual unfolding.

Being touched names the six faculties meeting the six objects and thereby truly knowing one's own mind's purity or defilement in that very contact; being realized as a witness names actually attaining the noble fruit through surpassing wisdom, exactly as the Buddha's own words declare: "I have already realized the path." A companion sūtra records the Buddha teaching the monks that, before his own awakening, it was through right reflection that he came to know the noble truth of suffering, its arising, its cessation, and the path leading to its cessation, right view thereby arisen — and the Compendium of Bases adds that, once the four truths are seen, undifferentiated undefiled right view arises across all three times identically: called already-arisen with respect to the past, now-arising with respect to the present, yet-to-arise with respect to the future; worldly right view should be safeguarded; a trainee's right view, together with the fruit of what it has cut off, should be touched; and a trainee-beyond-training's right view, together with its own fruit of freedom from bondage, should be realized as a witness — and liberating wisdom follows the very same fourfold pattern. With this, the path's gradual unfolding — right view, its four marks, safeguarding, touching, and witness — is closed in its entirety, completing the realization-dharma, and with it, both halves of the dharma topic's inner content. The treatise turns next to the third subtopic of the dharma: the manner of teaching it well.

A true teacher does not teach for the sake of material gain, honor, or fame — not for robes, food, medicine, or lodging, and not for the worship it might bring — wishing only that the listener come to awaken in the true dharma. Nor should a teacher ever hold contempt for a listener who fails to understand or asks an off-point question, nor grow arrogant, claiming "only I truly understand this dharma and discipline, people like you never will," nor endlessly praise their own virtues while pointing out others' faults, nor claim that only their own teaching is correct and every other teaching false. With this, all ten sections of the manner of teaching well — timeliness and preamble, earnestness, sequence and hidden meaning, the three kinds of listener, praise and reproof, the four kinds of reasoning, benefit and coherence, fitting the assembly, the threefold mind, and freedom from dependence or contempt — are closed in their entirety. The treatise turns next to the manner of listening well.

A listener should never dismiss a teaching merely for its plain wording, as though only elegant phrasing deserved respect; nor should a listener look down on a teacher for a humbler birth or lesser standing than their own — both are forms of the same contemptuous defilement. With this, freedom from contemptuous defilement, revering the teacher, not disparaging the dharma, and not disparaging the teacher together, is closed in its entirety. The treatise turns next to freedom from timid defilement.

A listener must equally avoid the opposite fault of self-doubt — never claiming incapacity to understand the dharma, never shrinking timidly before the very highest awakening the Buddha himself realized, as though it could never be one's own to attain. With this, a mind free of defilement — freedom from arrogant defilement, from contemptuous defilement, and from timid defilement — is closed in its entirety. The treatise turns next to a mind free of distraction.

Finally, mindfulness should hold every dharma ever heard without gap — a listener so genuinely absorbed that understanding arises the instant it is heard, nothing left unknown, nothing left unpenetrated, no moment of listening ever wasted. With this, a mind free of distraction — reverence, single-direction focus, attentive ears, a trained mind, and unbroken mindfulness — is closed in its entirety, completing the manner of listening well. And with it, the dharma topic's full four subtopics — the teaching-dharma, the realization-dharma, the manner of teaching well, and the manner of listening well — are closed in their entirety, completing the fourth verse's third topic. The treatise turns next to the saṅgha, the fourth topic.

Śrāvaka practitioners, not yet having realized a fruit, cultivate the noble eightfold path with nirvāṇa as their aim; Mahāyāna practitioners cultivate the thirty-seven factors of awakening and the six perfections with unsurpassed awakening as their aim — these causal-stage efforts toward realizing nirvāṇa or unsurpassed awakening are together called conduct that follows the dharma. Such practice continues arising in succession because, having heard a good teacher's own voice, the mind remains in accord with the true dharma, correctly and properly reflecting exactly as the Buddha taught — from which the aspiration for unsurpassed awakening arises, and diligent practice that follows the dharma proceeds. With this, right conduct's four terms — conduct in accord with reason, upright and direct conduct, harmoniously reverent conduct, and conduct that follows the dharma — are closed under their first reading. The treatise turns next to a second reading of the same four terms.

A second angle on the same four terms: conduct in accord with reason now names the undefiled eightfold path itself, succeeding in practice, and the power, once a fruit is realized, to extinguish affliction — this is what it truly means to accord with reason, joined to the undefiled noble path. Upright, direct conduct now names practicing exactly as the Buddha's own noble teaching directs, with no flattery or deceit performed for others' eyes, nothing dressed up to win material gain — simply shown just as it truly is. Harmoniously reverent conduct now names accord with the six firm dharmas — the Yogācārabhūmi Notes, fascicle 22, confirm the six firm dharmas are simply the six kinds of harmonious reverence themselves, body, speech, mind, discipline, view, and benefit shared with the community; a saṅgha that sustains this sixfold harmony ensures the Buddha's own teaching endures long in the world. And conduct that follows the dharma admits two further readings here: first, "the dharma" names nirvāṇa itself as the goal, and "following the dharma" names the eightfold path as the cause that leads toward it; second, "the dharma" names the sūtras, vinaya, and treatises, and "following the dharma" names practice carried out in accordance with them. With this, right conduct's own many synonyms, read through both explanations, are closed in their entirety. The treatise turns next to the many synonyms for right conduct's own fruit.

An arhat has permanently exhausted every defilement of craving and view alike — the full extended description, already given in fascicle 34's own account of the Śrāvaka Stage, is not repeated here, only referenced. With this, right conduct's attainment — its own synonyms across two readings, and its fruit — is closed in its entirety, completing the saṅgha topic's first section, right conduct. The treatise turns next to the saṅgha's remaining four sections.

A monastic disciple enjoys the same undefiled noble wealth the Buddha himself enjoys — faith, discipline, moral shame, moral dread, learning, generosity, and wisdom, the seven noble treasures — differing only in fullness or portion, yet genuinely resembling the Buddha's own undefiled enjoyment, hence an equal portion of the dharma. With this, all five names for a true child of the Buddha — born of the womb, born of the mouth, born of the dharma, transformed by the dharma, and an equal portion of the dharma — are closed in their entirety. The treatise turns next to their twofold perfection.

"Transformed by the dharma" shows that a practitioner, however shallow their present attainment, can, by following the same path step by step, eventually realize a dharma-body resembling the Buddha's own — the concealed meaning of that fourth term. "An equal portion of the dharma" shows that a practitioner who follows the teaching faithfully can likewise come to enjoy an undefiled dharma-wealth resembling the Buddha's own reward-body enjoyment — the fifth term's meaning. Together, these two reveal perfection in a dharma resembling the father's own: since the Buddha, the father, has already realized the dharma-body, a practitioner who follows his teaching can likewise realize a resembling dharma-body — no longer a life composed of a father's and mother's impure seed and blood, but a life whose very body is now the dharma itself. With this, sons of the great teacher — their five names and their twofold perfection alike — are closed in their entirety, completing the saṅgha topic's second of five sections. The treatise turns next to preface and gathering, the third section.

Though a fruit is properly born of its cause, realizing the noble path still requires manifold supporting conditions cultivated with effort, layered onto that original cause, before the fruit is actually reached — cause remains fundamental, condition secondary; a two-vehicle practitioner's own lesser lineage as a starting cause, for instance, produces no true fruit no matter how many of the four remaining conditions are supplied. Matched against the earlier explanation, "gathering" is the later phrase and "preface" the earlier one — since the cause must first be present for the condition to have anything to rely upon, later explaining earlier: cause as the basis, condition as its supporting power, cause and condition uniting only then to give rise to the noble path and the Buddha's own fruit. With this, preface and gathering — their distinction, their further names, and how they jointly establish the fruit — are closed in their entirety, completing the saṅgha topic's third of five sections. The treatise turns next to skillful seeing, the fourth section.

Skillful, sharp wisdom and skillful penetration together reveal skillful seeing's own true nature — the emptiness of all dharmas skillfully seen, the former still at the level of knowing clearly how the path is to be cultivated, the latter having personally, directly realized it. Skillful knowing and skillful reflection together reveal the necessary preparation beforehand — hearing's own wisdom, then reflection's own wisdom, exactly according with correct principle. A companion sūtra, spoken at Rājagṛha's Bamboo Grove, teaches that this body belongs neither to oneself nor to another — that the six consciousnesses, contacts, feelings, perceptions, and volitions born through the six faculties meeting the six objects together bring about the great mass of future birth, aging, sickness, death, and sorrow, arising through cause and condition; and that once ignorance itself is absent, none of this arises, the great mass of suffering itself ceasing to accumulate — a learned noble disciple who wishes to truly know the world's arising and cessation must pass through skillful seeing, skillful awakening, and skillful entry in turn, moving from the wisdom of hearing to the wisdom of cultivation, exactly matching this passage's own four terms: skillful knowing, skillful reflection, skillful sharp wisdom, and skillful penetration. With this, skillful seeing — its four terms and their closing distinction between nature and preparation — is closed in its entirety, completing the saṅgha topic's fourth of five sections. The treatise turns next to the noble, the fifth and final section.

Decisive attainment names one who, having realized the noble path, has ultimately renounced affliction down to its very seeds, never again to regress. With this, the noble — undefiled nature, renunciation, and decisive attainment — is closed in its entirety, completing the saṅgha topic's fifth and final section. And with it, all five sections of the saṅgha topic — right conduct, sons of the great teacher, preface and gathering, skillful seeing, and the noble — are closed in their entirety, completing the fourth verse's fourth topic. The treatise turns next to the excellent qualities that give, the fifth topic — the ninth verse-word's remaining term, explained not through literal giving but through the Buddha's own qualities.

The dharma the Buddha teaches allows a practitioner to accomplish every kind of benefit — drawing forth worldly virtue, such as the eight surpassing results the Bodhisattva Stage describes as arising from cultivating the six perfections, and drawing forth the wisdom of the transcendent noble path, unsurpassed awakening itself. Every flourishing thing, whether worldly merit or the noble path's own transcendent excellence, flows from the Buddha's own teaching — hence his being the support for every possible benefit. With this, the excellent qualities that give — root, eye, and support; the eye and wisdom; meaning and dharma; resolving what is implicit; and the support for every meaning — are closed in their entirety, completing the fourth verse's fifth topic. And with it, all five of the verse's first five topics — desire, invitation, the dharma, the saṅgha, and the excellent qualities that give — are closed in their entirety. The treatise turns next to weariness, the sixth topic.

Weariness and freedom from desire both still belong to the preparatory stage, effort not yet complete — first growing weary of the distinctly-arisen craving and views, then further removing the innately-arisen ones; cessation alone belongs to the stage beyond training, where the arhat's fruit is realized and every reliance finally extinguished, entering nirvāṇa without residue. With this, weariness sorted by stage of realization is closed in its entirety. The treatise turns next to weariness sorted by its own characteristic marks.

Liberation names a practitioner who, having grown free of craving, rests securely in profound concentration, afflictions suppressed, the mind no longer bound by their active manifestation — still only a partial liberation. Complete liberation goes further, naming affliction cut off entirely, so that birth, aging, sickness, death, and every further suffering can never arise again. With this, weariness — sorted by stage, sorted by mark, and its own liberation — is closed in its entirety, completing the fourth verse's sixth topic. The treatise turns next to the brahmin, the seventh topic.

Since every seed of affliction is permanently cut off, no latent tendency of clinging follows any resultant body of the past, present, or future. The past five aggregates, already ceased, are called non-existence; the present five aggregates are called existence; and the future five aggregates, yet to come, are likewise called existence. Once every seed of the three realms' craving and view is cut off, no further aggregates will ever arise — neither clinging to past form, delighting in future form, nor grasping present form: exactly this fifth mark, no latent tendency of attachment to existence or non-existence. With this, all five marks of a true brahmin — reaching the far shore, freedom from doubt, cutting off evil deeds, freedom from craving, and freedom from the latent tendency toward existence and non-existence — are closed in their entirety. The treatise turns next to a further distinction clarifying their meaning.

Fashioning pursuit names hoping for a better circumstance in a life to come — greater wealth, greater standing than the present one affords; fashioning motion names then actually acting on that hope, cultivating merit toward that future reward, since this life's own suffering has bred a longing for further existence. Together with grief over the past and the five attachments of the present, these two attachments of the future complete all eight kinds of attachment in their entirety. The treatise turns next to a further, twofold classification of the same eight.

A further lens cuts across all three times at once, by what can and cannot be eaten: toward inedible things — gold, silver, and whatever else can be traded — a being carries an intensely heavy attachment, since such possessions can always be exchanged for further pleasing objects; and toward edible things, an intense relish, a strong craving for taste itself. Even one who insists on eating only plainly, wherever they go, may simply have shifted the same attachment onto plainness itself — clinging to either richness or plainness is still clinging. The sub-commentary glosses "all three domains" as simply the three times, past, present, and future, time itself serving as their basis. With this, the eight kinds of attachment — grief over the past, five attachments of the present, two of the future, and this further cross-cutting pair of heaviness and relish — are closed in their full enumeration. The treatise turns next to why each one arises.

Heaviness names an intense attachment to non-food objects across all three times — gold, silver, and other tradeable goods that can be exchanged for further pleasing things, an attachment bound up especially with gain and honor. Relish names the same intensity directed toward food itself, an equally strong craving for taste. With this, why each of the eight attachments arises is closed in its entirety — and with it, the first reading of the five marks of a true brahmin, from their overall observation through this full account of what should not be clung to, is closed in its entirety. The treatise turns next to a second reading of the same five marks.

Freedom from uncertainty means a noble one, having discerned and confirmed the four noble truths for themselves, is left with no doubt about that very realization. Cutting off evil deeds means never losing mindfulness in body, speech, or mind, so that no lapse into a defiled deed of forgetfulness ever arises. Freedom from craving means, being free of craving for gain and honor, never again generating merit-bound, demerit-bound, or unmoving karma that would produce a future cause of suffering. And freedom from the latent tendency toward existence and non-existence means the seeds of affliction tied to past, present, and future aggregates alike are exhausted, so the coarseness that would otherwise seed present suffering is likewise cut off. A second explanatory angle draws the same four terms from the noble eightfold path directly: not clinging to any mark comprised within the desire realm removes gain; not clinging to any mark of the higher two realms' meditative states removes honor, cutting off the cause of future suffering; and contemplating the markless realm is what "non-existence" itself means — a trainee, though having cut off the manifest activity of craving, still carries its latent seed, along with the four defilements of discursive thought, idle talk, attachment, and conceptual grasping, as the Yogācārabhūmi Elucidation explains, while only the arhat has cut off even those seeds entirely, leaving the present aggregates free of any coarseness born of a latent tendency — this being the second way of drawing the same distinction, between the trainee who still carries a latent tendency and the one beyond training who carries none. With this, matching the remaining four marks to attaining the path's own fruit is closed in its entirety. The treatise turns next to a closer naming of existence, non-existence, and attachment themselves.

Discursive thought and idle talk, the first two defilements, belong to monastic life — a monastic is not directly disturbed by desire's own objects, yet the mind can still wander into discursive thought about desire and idle verbal proliferation; attachment and conceptual grasping, the latter two, belong to lay life, since a layperson meets desire's objects directly, more readily clinging and grasping at their marks. Whether monastic or lay, it is the underlying latent tendency of attachment that allows any of these four to arise at all. With this, how the four defilements are classified between monastic and lay life is closed in its entirety. The treatise turns next to why each pair specifically arises.

Beyond the latent tendency itself, two further conditions bring the four defilements into actual manifestation: improper attention, reflecting along a mistaken path rather than the Buddha's own truth, and the presence of circumstances that favor that improper attention arising — together, these two conditions are exactly why discursive thought, idle talk, attachment, and conceptual grasping come to arise at all. A companion sūtra confirms this from the Buddha's own side: whenever monastic or lay alike give rise to any of these wrong states, the Buddha takes no delight in it — since a monastic caught in discursive thought and idle talk, or a lay person caught in attachment and conceptual grasping, thereby takes no delight in the true dharma, falling instead into the eightfold wrong path rather than the eightfold noble path, and this is precisely what displeases the Buddha. With this, attachment's own account — its substance, its distinction between trainee and arhat, its classification by monastic and lay life, why each pair arises, and its two underlying causes and conditions — is closed in its entirety. And with it, naming existence, non-existence, and attachment together is closed, completing the second reading of the five marks in its entirety, and with it, the fourth verse's seventh topic, the brahmin, in its complete entirety. The treatise turns next to impermanence, the eighth topic.

A being's six kinds of feeling, arising when the six faculties meet the six objects, are certain to change and be destroyed — indeed, each feeling ceases the very instant it arises, its own nature impermanent through and through, and therefore every feeling whatsoever is suffering. With this, both answers to why the impermanent is entirely suffering — the suffering shared by every impermanent being, and the suffering inherent in feeling's own instant arising and ceasing — are closed in their entirety. The treatise turns next to why the impermanent is also empty and without self.

A being's own resultant suffering — birth, aging, sickness, death, and the suffering of change and destruction — is, on close examination, entirely without self: form, feeling, perception, volition, and consciousness, arising from causes and conditions, admit no permanent, singular, sovereign self to be found anywhere within them. The Yogācārabhūmi Notes explain this from two angles at once: since no self can be found among the formations themselves, this is called "not self," opening the way into emptiness; and since each formation's own characteristic — matter's own resistant form, feeling's own registering, perception's own grasping of marks, volition's own constructing, consciousness's own discerning — is bound up with impermanence and suffering, all arising from conditions and thus never self-governing, none can be a self either, hence "in that place there is likewise no self." No-self stresses the absence of any governing agency; emptiness stresses the absence of any such self's own substance. A companion sūtra confirms the whole progression directly: contemplating form and the other aggregates as impermanent leads to suffering, suffering leads to knowing there is no self capable of mastery and nothing that is truly one's own, no substantial self at all — hence empty, hence without self; contemplating impermanence, suffering, emptiness, and no-self in this way is true and correct insight, capable of liberating a being from birth, aging, sickness, death, sorrow, grief, and every affliction. With this, the truth of suffering's four aspects — impermanence, suffering, emptiness, and no-self — are closed in their entirety. The treatise turns next to the wisdom and forbearance that come to fully understand them.

As a practitioner's forbearance in accepting impermanence deepens through hearing, reflection, and cultivation in turn, the corresponding joy deepens too: hearing that every formation is impermanent brings joy; reflecting on it further, giving rise to genuine resolve, brings equal joy; and diligently cultivating calm and insight until impermanence is directly, bodily experienced brings complete joy, filling body and mind alike. With this, wisdom and forbearance are closed in their entirety, completing the truth of suffering's full account under the first section of the impermanence topic. The treatise turns next to impermanence traced through contemplative practice.

Impermanence's own power harms the six inner faculties and, at length, the sixteen outer things comprising the material world — the full account already given in the Śrāvaka Stage, fascicles 27 and 34. This briefer passage stands as an abbreviated restatement of the earlier extended teaching on impermanence, suffering, emptiness, and no-self, revealing impermanence through directly watching oneself or another pass from youth to old age, the body's own condition shifting moment to moment, each successive formation never quite the same as the last — proof enough of every formation's impermanent nature. It further reveals impermanence's own power to obstruct the noble path: even a practitioner who repeatedly grows weary and fearful before the truths of suffering and its arising, and repeatedly aspires deeply toward nirvāṇa, may still fail to enter it wholeheartedly, precisely because a coarse residue of self-conceit continues to arise and obstruct direct realization — only once that coarse affliction, impermanence's own persistent obstacle to the noble path, is finally cut off can a practitioner rest in effortless, unconditioned practice at last. With this, the fourfold contemplation of breath and impermanence's own power to obstruct the path are closed in their entirety. The treatise turns next to what contemplative practice actually realizes.

Though the five aggregates possess no true nature of permanence, pleasure, self, or purity, they nonetheless appear to — the World-Honored One taught repeatedly that no genuine pleasure exists among the conditioned formations an ordinary being clings to, this very body of five aggregates being nothing but a great mass of suffering. He likewise taught them empty, since no self can be found among the aggregates, its own substance ungraspable, its own governing function equally ungraspable — hence empty and without self. He taught them false, since they falsely present as pure — "a thin skin covers what is unclean, so its filth is not seen" — when in truth, beyond the body's nine orifices ceaselessly discharging impurity, even its seed, its dwelling place, its manner of conception, and its nourishment are all impure, as fascicle 26's six kinds of impurity already explained: impurity of decay, impurity of suffering, impurity of baseness, impurity relative to comparison, impurity of affliction, and impurity of swift ruin. And every conditioned formation is certainly impermanent, as fascicle 34's own five aspects of formation — change, destruction, separation, the very nature of dharmas, and coming-together — make plain, hence not firm as well. This is the detailed account of what "without inversion" truly means: only a practitioner who cultivates the contemplation of impermanence and genuinely penetrates this can be said to be free of the four inversions of permanence, pleasure, self, and purity. With this, contemplative practice — its fourfold contemplation, impermanence's power to obstruct the path, what is realized through it, and freedom from the four inversions — is closed in its entirety, completing the fourth verse's eighth topic, impermanence, in its complete entirety. The treatise turns next to things like foam, the ninth and final topic of the fourth verse.

The body is no single, solid, real object, yet once earth, water, fire, and wind gather through causes and conditions, something that looks like a real object appears — and seeing it, one at once mistakes it for a single sentient being. What truly makes a person a person is not this body but the eighth consciousness's own single thought; once that thought departs, as when a corpse is left in the charnel ground, insensate as a log, the truth becomes plain — the body was only ever a borrowed union of earth, water, fire, and wind, incapable of lasting or standing firm, merely wearing the appearance of solidity, which is exactly what deceives the ordinary mind. A noble one is not deceived, seeing this same body as thoughtless as a log, a mere material thing, understanding that only the mind's own grasping leads beings to mistake it for a sentient being at all. With this, form's comparison to a mass of foam — its four reasons, its inability to be reshaped, and its being no true mass despite the appearance of one — is closed in its entirety, completing the first of the five aggregates' comparisons. The treatise turns next to feeling, compared to a floating bubble.

Just as a raindrop strikes the ground, contact strikes when faculty meets object and consciousness arises. And like the bubble the raindrop's own strike raises on a puddle's surface, feeling arises the instant contact meets its object — and vanishes again just as quickly, never remaining firm, whether painful or pleasurable. With this, feeling's comparison to a floating bubble — its own meaning, and the ground, clouds, rain, rain's strike, and bubble it resembles — is closed in its entirety, completing the second of the five aggregates' comparisons. The treatise turns next to perception, compared to a mirage.

The third of the five aggregates, perception, gives rise to every kind of mental image, and so is compared to the shimmering mirage a hot sun casts across open ground — restless, whirling, forever in motion, exactly like wind. Once perception grasps a mark, further marks and finer characteristics follow in endless variation; and once grasped, the four inversions of permanence, pleasure, self, and purity readily arise regarding that object, making it seem all the more vivid and real — mistaking a woman's beauty for something genuine, for instance, is already an inversion, growing only more convincing the more it is dwelt upon, though no true beauty exists at all, since the body itself is impure at its core. A mind free of perception's own grasping would never let such an image arise; but an ordinary being's ceaseless perceiving makes every object seem supremely vivid, and from this the many worldly distinctions — such as male and female marks — come to be drawn at all. With this, perception's comparison to a mirage is closed in its entirety, completing the third of the five aggregates' comparisons. The treatise turns next to volition, compared to a banana tree.

A noble disciple searching the five aggregates for any true self finds nothing at all — this is the very truth a long search ultimately confirms: what an ordinary being takes to be self is never firm or abiding, because there simply is no self to find. Someone might claim perception itself is self — "I think, therefore I am" — yet the mental factor of thought never stops changing moment to moment; which moment's thought, then, could possibly be the self? On close examination, no self is found anywhere, let alone any permanent, truly substantial self that acts or experiences and could ever actually be seen. Most take whatever makes a decision to be the self, but even that deciding thought is constantly shifting, itself only the functioning of the mental factor of volition, dependent on manifold conditions — past experience, upbringing, social environment, inherited custom, present circumstance — never a fixed, real entity of its own. With this, volition's comparison to a banana tree — the question posed, the clear-eyed man entering the forest, seeking and cutting the trunk, and finding nothing firm within — is closed in its entirety, completing the fourth of the five aggregates' comparisons. The treatise turns next to consciousness, compared to an illusion.

What does the illusionist conjure? Elephant troops, cavalry, chariots, and infantry — the mind, as illusionist, conjures these four kinds of army as though preparing for battle, appearing entirely convincing, yet containing no genuine elephant's or horse's body at all — exactly as the mind conjures countless circumstances that, however convincing they seem, are never truly real. With this, the illusionist's verse — the illusionist itself, the four stations, and the four conjured illusions — is closed in its entirety. The treatise turns next to matching this simile to the actual dharma it illustrates.

Consciousness itself remains hidden within its objects, invisible as such — an ordinary being, not understanding that every circumstance is simply the mind's own projection, fails to see that the mind conjures each of its countless, differing appearances, exactly as a conjured illusion displays a mark quite different from what actually underlies it. With this, consciousness's comparison to an illusion — the question posed, the illusionist's own verse, and both readings of its meaning — is closed in its entirety, completing the fifth and final aggregate-comparison, and with it, things like foam, the fourth verse's ninth and final topic, in its complete entirety. And with this, as the source material itself now confirms directly, the particular verses of the wholesome portion continued from fascicle 83 through this fascicle are now, in their entirety, fully explained — the wholesome portion (白品) of the Compendium of Synonyms is closed. The treatise turns next to the unwholesome portion (黑品), its own remaining verse.

Having fully explained the wholesome portion's own many synonyms — corresponding to the wholesome dharmas scattered throughout the sūtras and treatises — the treatise now turns to the unwholesome portion, gathering the many differing explanations of unwholesome states: suffering, birth-and-death, and their kind. This marks the opening of the Compendium of Synonyms' second and final major division.

The life faculty's arising names giving up the shared grouping of a past life and taking up a new lifespan's own shared grouping — the shared likeness that makes one human resemble another human, one ape resemble another ape. A companion sūtra, teaching dependent origination, confirms this whole fivefold account of birth directly: attaining the aggregates is the stage of name-and-form; attaining the realm is name-and-form's own many seeds; attaining the bases is name-and-form's growth to the six bases' full completion; and attaining the life faculty is giving up the old grouping and taking up the new — together, birth itself. With this, birth — arising, equal arising, and emergence; present manifestation and continued rising; the three attainments; the aggregates' manifestation; and the life faculty's own arising — is closed in its entirety, completing the unwholesome portion's first topic. The treatise turns next to aging, the second topic.

The faculties, having reached full ripeness with age, thereafter only decline, losing all further capacity; the formations decay because the six faculties' own physical basis inevitably wears down through long use; and the body rots away because that same faculty-basis itself continues to decline and change — the Stage With Both Inquiry and Analysis, fascicle 10, glosses this last phrase as the lifespan nearing its end, the body's own form approaching ruin, no longer capable of any intended activity. A companion sūtra vividly confirms every mark named across these six sections: birth is certain to bring aging and death — white or balding hair, wrinkled skin, the faculties fully ripened yet failing, weakened limbs, a bent back, a bowed head, frequent groaning, short breath, a forward-leaning body, walking only with a cane, darkened skin, blemishes scattered across the limbs, dulled memory and wisdom, like ripe fruit about to fall, movement grown difficult, extreme feebleness and frailty — all of this together is called aging. With this, aging — its six marks, from stumbling and white-headedness through the faculties' own final ripening — is closed in its entirety, completing the unwholesome portion's second topic. The treatise turns next to death, the third topic.

Death itself is the store-consciousness finally abandoning the region of the heart and chest, leaving the body entirely; passing away is simply death's own further name, spanning the period following death, whether one week or two or three further weeks have passed. A companion sūtra, teaching dependent origination from ignorance through birth to aging-and-death, confirms this account of death directly: the lifespan exhausted, warmth departed, the life faculty extinguished — precisely this treatise's own "life faculty extinguished" — the five aggregates given up entirely, this is called death. With this, death — passing and its end, bereavement and perishing in two readings, the lifespan and warmth receding, the life faculty's extinguishing, and death's own passing away — is closed in its entirety, completing the unwholesome portion's third topic. The treatise turns next to the storehouses and the rest, the fourth topic.

A lay person's attachment centers especially on form, sound, scent, taste, and touch, above all a craving relish for one's own family and dependents; a monastic's attachment takes a different shape, the six faculties, through laziness and negligence conjoined with greed, hatred, and delusion, unable to be released from affliction across the board. A companion sūtra confirms this whole topic directly: should a monk or brahmin grow accustomed to the eye drawing near to form, that one falls under Māra's own dominion, giving rise to affliction beyond release, and the same for ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind — becoming accustomed, bound, attached, relishing, drawing near, gathering, seized, held, clung to as one's own, sought after, desired, thickened, intensified, unable to be let go — the very same teaching repeated across sūtras 360 through 373. All of this affliction, differently named across these six sections — storehouses, guarding, and concealing; relish, bondage, and union; the latent tendency, attachment to a group, and clinging; clinging to what belongs to self and conceit; longing and heavy attachment; sweet relish and inability to let go — describes a single underlying clinging viewed from many angles: wherever the six faculties cling to the six objects in any of these ways, that being falls under Māra's own dominion, unable to find liberation. With this, the storehouses and the rest — clinging's six full facets — are closed in their entirety, completing the unwholesome portion's fourth topic. The treatise turns next to what is welcomed and the rest, the fifth topic.

A second reading resorts the same four terms: what is welcomed now names the future, hoping to obtain something pleasing; what is pleasurable names the present, an object currently possessed yet never fully satisfying; what is pleasing names the past, recollecting a satisfying circumstance once experienced; and what is endearing names any sufficiently wondrous form, pleasing across past, present, and future alike, regardless of time. With this, the fourfold distinction of what is welcomed and the rest, read through both explanations, is closed in its entirety. The treatise turns next to a further explanation matching each term to its proper case.

Pleasing form, sound, scent, taste, touch, and the desire between the sexes are exactly the ground on which the affliction of greed operates, giving rise to defiled clinging. With this, what is welcomed and the rest — the fourfold distinction, each term matched to its proper case, and desire's own further account — is closed in its entirety, completing the unwholesome portion's fifth topic. The treatise turns next to affliction, the sixth topic.

Affliction drives karma, and karma drives birth, aging, sickness, death, sorrow, grief, and every further great suffering, keeping a being cycling through birth-and-death without end — through affliction's own continued momentum, a being cycles again and again through the human, heavenly, hell, hungry-ghost, and animal destinies, unable to find escape — the matter of destination. With this, all five kinds of matter that affliction unites with — the bound, the binding, fault, continuation in kind, and destination — are closed in their full enumeration. The treatise turns next to a more detailed account of the matter of fault.

A companion sūtra records the venerable Śāriputra's own answer to the question "what is a bond?": nine bonds — the bond of craving, the bond of hatred, the bond of conceit, the bond of ignorance, the bond of view, the bond of taking up another's view, the bond of doubt, the bond of envy, and the bond of stinginess — each of which unites a being with the five kinds of matter just explained. Asked whether any path exists to cultivate and thoroughly cultivate in order to cut off these bonds, Śāriputra answered: yes, the noble eightfold path, right view through right concentration. With this, bond — its name, the five kinds of matter it unites with, their detailed marks, fault examined in detail, and this concluding ninefold list — is closed in its entirety, completing the first of affliction's twenty-four intrinsic-nature synonyms. The treatise turns next to fetter, the second synonym.

Bound by the causes and conditions of greed, hatred, and delusion, a being wishes to be free of these three poisons yet cannot manage it, the mind held fast by its own affliction, unable to move freely — hence fetter. The Determinations, fascicle 66, explain the three feelings' own role directly: resting on pleasant feeling, greed correspondingly increases, giving rise to defiled attachment; resting on painful feeling, hatred correspondingly increases, giving rise to resentment and anger; and resting on neutral feeling, delusion correspondingly increases, giving rise to inversion — taking the impermanent formations of one's own being as permanent, the painful as pleasurable, the impure as pure, and the selfless as possessing self. With this, fetter — its three kinds and the reason for its name — is closed in its entirety, completing affliction's second synonym. The treatise turns next to the latent tendency, the third synonym.

The Compendium of Bases, fascicle 89, explains these seven root latent tendencies through the distinction between those not yet free of desire and those already free of it: one not yet free of desire carries the latent tendencies of desire-realm craving and hatred, since wanting what cannot be had breeds resentment; one already free of desire carries the latent tendency of existence-craving instead, its object now meditative absorption itself rather than sense pleasure; and both alike, whether free of desire or not, carry four further latent tendencies common to both — conceit, ignorance, view, and doubt, since both a desire-bound being and a meditator can equally grow proud, cling rigidly to their own opinion as correct, or waver in indecision. In sum, the seven are: desire-realm craving, hatred, existence-craving (belonging to the form and formless realms), and, common to all three realms, conceit, ignorance, view, and doubt. With this, the latent tendency — its name and its seven root kinds — is closed in its entirety, completing affliction's third synonym. The treatise turns next to secondary affliction, the fourth synonym.

Beyond the seven root latent tendencies already named — desire-realm craving, hatred, existence-craving, conceit, ignorance, view, and doubt — every other defiled mental factor counts as a secondary affliction, each arising in dependence on some root affliction, one defiled dharma giving rise to further defiled dharmas in a chain. With this, secondary affliction — its name and its own substance — is closed in its entirety, completing affliction's fourth synonym. The treatise turns next to entanglement, the fifth synonym.

The Compendium of Bases, fascicle 89, sorts these eight kinds of entanglement across four different trainings, each pair obstructing its own: while training in the higher discipline, shamelessness and lack of moral dread repeatedly manifest as obstacles; while training in the higher mind (meditative concentration), dullness and drowsiness repeatedly manifest as obstacles; while training in the higher wisdom, discerning the dharma, restlessness and regret repeatedly manifest as obstacles; and while sharing wealth and dharma with fellow practitioners, envy and stinginess repeatedly manifest as obstacles. With this, entanglement — its name and its eight kinds, each tied to a different training — is closed in its entirety, completing affliction's fifth synonym. The treatise turns next to the stump, the sixth synonym.

Sorted instead by greed, hatred, and delusion themselves, each its own distinct stump, three kinds of stump are named — as the Stage With Both Inquiry and Analysis, fascicle 8, likewise explains. With this, the stump — its name, its five grounds of doubt, and its three kinds sorted by the three poisons — is closed in its entirety, completing affliction's sixth synonym. The treatise turns next to stain, the seventh synonym.

Affliction's seventh synonym, stain, names simply and directly affliction's own polluting nature, rendering an otherwise pure mind impure. With this, stain is closed in its entirety, completing affliction's seventh synonym. The treatise turns next to nīga, the eighth synonym.

Affliction constantly harms both oneself and others alike, a second reason for the same name. With this, nīga — its constant flowing and its constant power to harm — is closed in its entirety, completing affliction's eighth synonym. The treatise turns next to the arrow, the ninth synonym.

Affliction's ninth synonym compares its presence to a poisoned arrow's own wound — body and mind remain unable to settle so long as the arrow, like the affliction itself, is not yet pulled free. With this, the arrow is closed, completing affliction's ninth synonym. The treatise turns next to possession, the tenth synonym.

Affliction is said to take possession of the resultant body it depends on — greed, hatred, and delusion the possessor, the five aggregates the possessed — dominating a being's own body, speech, and mind toward further karma, and in doing so obstructing generosity itself. It is likewise named possession because its own conceptual proliferation leaves body, speech, and mind restless, obstructing the equanimity meditative concentration requires. The Compendium of Bases, fascicle 87, glosses possession as meaning the utterly base and filthy — affliction being exactly that.

Once affliction is active, it accords with unwholesome dharmas and produces unlawful conduct — the cause; and that unlawful conduct, mistaking the wrong cause for the right one in hope of a pleasing result, instead produces an unbalanced, unpleasing result, as with certain non-Buddhist ascetic practices. The Determinations, Stage of Concentrated Equipoise, fascicle 62, confirm: unlawful conduct is so named because it is not genuinely wholesome; unbalanced conduct is so named because its result is not genuinely pleasing.

The Stage With Both Inquiry and Analysis, fascicle 8, names three roots — greed, hatred, and delusion — from which every further affliction, and every unwholesome deed capable of leading a being to the evil destinies, ultimately springs. Why single out only these three as roots, among affliction's many kinds? The Determinations, fascicle 58, explain: karma has, in brief, three originating causes — craving for pleasure, harming another, and clinging to a false teaching as established truth — and greed, hatred, and delusion correspond exactly, each to one of these three causes.

Affliction gives rise to craving and grasping, craving and grasping give rise to existence, existence gives rise to birth, and birth gives rise to aging and death — tracing the chain back to its root, affliction is always the cause; an ordinary being creates karma through affliction, that karma ripens into result, and a further life is thereby drawn forth, hence affliction alone is named outflow. Why is only affliction named outflow, and not karma itself? The Abhidharma-mahāvibhāṣā, fascicle 47, explains: karma is not fixed in its effect — some karma keeps a being long in birth-and-death, while other karma actually counters birth-and-death's own affliction — so karma alone cannot bear this name; and further, karma is itself rooted in affliction, since karma is never truly abandoned without affliction first being cut off, which is exactly why only affliction is called outflow.

Affliction's fourteenth synonym, deprivation, names the sense of lack that aging, sickness, and death bring — old age brings declining vigor, strength, faculties, enjoyment, and lifespan itself, no longer whole as before; sickness ruins a once-pleasing bodily form, deepens sorrow, denies the enjoyment of what was once loved, and forces the further unpleasantness of medical treatment; and all of this leaves most people feeling that life itself has come up short, however rich or poor, however fair or plain, however excellent or humble one may be — birth is always followed by death. Yet it is precisely affliction that keeps beings endlessly indulging in desire, never satisfied, forever troubled by this very sense of deprivation — hence affliction is also called deprivation.

Whenever an unwanted circumstance is forced upon a being, a beloved one is lost, or gain is craved and not obtained, affliction manifests and burns body and mind alike — hence burning. Craving here, distinct from mere indulgence, names pursuing what has not yet been gained through active striving, as this same fascicle later explains, while indulgence names clinging firmly to what has already been gained without further striving; fascicle 8 likewise explains burning as what leaves desire perpetually deprived. This synonym roughly corresponds to the first seven of the eight sufferings: outflow corresponds to the suffering of birth; deprivation, to the sufferings of aging, sickness, and death; and burning, to the sufferings of meeting the unloved, parting from the loved, and not obtaining what is sought — affliction truly does unite with suffering at every turn.

When affliction arises, it plunges a being into sorrow, lamentation, and grief — hence distress; fascicle 8 explains it as bringing about decline and loss, corresponding chiefly to the suffering of change. Blazing fire, burning, and distress differ subtly: blazing fire describes the intensity of defiled clinging the moment a desired object is actually obtained; burning describes the affliction of deprivation before a desired object is obtained at all; and distress describes the suffering that follows once an already-obtained object later changes and is lost — three distinct moments in the same underlying process, to be distinguished further below.

Affliction carries a being helplessly downstream along birth-and-death's own current, adrift and drowning, scarcely able to find escape — hence torrent. Fascicle 8 names four torrents: the torrent of desire, of existence, of view, and of ignorance; fascicle 17 instead names six, sorted by the six faculties, six consciousnesses, and six objects endlessly intermingling from dawn to dusk, birth to death, giving rise to boundless affliction exactly as a waterfall's own current never ceases — two differing classifications of the very same underlying torrent.

A past life's own affliction becomes the very means by which present life continues — this present existence was itself obtained because affliction, in the past, drove karma that now bears its fruit. Hence affliction is called yoke, binding a being fast to birth-and-death's own torrent exactly as a yoke binds an ox or horse to the cart it cannot escape pulling.

This present life's own unresolved affliction becomes the foremost means by which a further existence arises in the current of birth-and-death yet to come — hence affliction is also named grasping, typically divided into four: the grasping of desire, of view, of rules and vows, and of self-assertion.

Affliction is difficult to escape — cutting off its own seed above all is no easy task — hence it is also named bondage; fascicle 8 confirms this exact wording, and further names four kinds: bodily bondage through greed, bodily bondage through hatred, bodily bondage through clinging to rules and vows, and bodily bondage through clinging to this-alone-is-true views.

When affliction arises, it leaves a being unable to penetrate the aggregates, elements, and sense-bases clearly — obstructing wisdom itself and preventing any wholesome mind from unfolding, hence hindrance. With this, hindrance is closed, completing affliction's twenty-first synonym. The treatise turns next to the five fetters, the twenty-second synonym.

Opposite the lower fetters, the five upper fetters belong to the form and formless realms and are cut off only through the path of cultivation: craving for the form realm, craving for the formless realm, restlessness, conceit, and ignorance — a noble one beyond the third fruit must cut off all five to realize arhatship, while cutting off only the five lower fetters yields merely the third fruit. The Yogācārabhūmi Elucidation clarifies which lower fetter belongs to which of the two lower marks: greed and hatred, both belonging to the desire realm, fall under the realm-based distinction, spanning both distinctly-arisen and innately-arisen forms; while the view of a perishable self, clinging to rules and vows, and doubt — three afflictions of view — fall under the path-based distinction, cut off at the path of seeing. The text's own phrase "according to what applies" simply leaves this correspondence for the reader to infer rather than spelling it out. Since the three view-afflictions are already cut off at the path of seeing, only innately-arisen greed and hatred remain to be cut off through the path of cultivation before a practitioner can fully exhaust all five lower fetters and realize the third fruit. With this, the five fetters — the two lower marks, their naming, and the five upper fetters — are closed in their entirety, completing affliction's twenty-second synonym. The treatise turns next to the forest, the twenty-third synonym.

Affliction leads to karma, and karma leads to suffering's own resultant fruit — every single thought is itself a seed of cause and effect, and a single moment's affliction, left unchecked, can produce a mighty fruit of suffering; left unchecked day after day, that suffering accumulates beyond counting, tree upon tree gathering into a vast forest. And because beings hold their own affliction dear, never recognizing its danger — often not even noticing anger has arisen, believing it justified — that same affliction only continues to grow, once seen through the lens of the dharma. A bodhisattva fears the cause; an ordinary being fears only the fruit — a disciple of the Buddha should hold right mindfulness always, watching every arising thought with care, since each one, however small, bears its own fruit of suffering. Fascicle 8 confirms: countless great trees of self gathered together are called a dense forest — affliction draws a being through one resultant body after another across the five destinies, as numerous and thick as trees in a vast forest, hence also named a dense forest.

Affliction unsettles the mind, and that very imbalance readily gives rise to disputes, lawsuits, anger, and rivalry — hence affliction is also named contention: driven by craving-affliction, a being commits every manner of evil in the scramble for power and gain; driven by view-affliction, a being clings stubbornly to their own opinion, breeding further dispute in its wake. With this, contention is closed, completing affliction's twenty-fourth and final intrinsic-nature synonym — and with it, all twenty-four synonyms comprising affliction's own intrinsic nature are closed in their entirety. The treatise turns next to the meaning of reproach, affliction's second major section.

A practitioner should never draw affliction close — hence what should be kept distant. Keeping it at a distance first requires recognizing it clearly; without watching one's own mind and noticing affliction the instant it stirs, there is no keeping it at bay at all — only sustained mindfulness, proper attention, and genuine recollection of the true dharma can actually hold it at a distance. With this, the first five terms under the meaning of reproach — darkness, meaninglessness, base inferiority, culpability, and what should be kept distant — are closed in their entirety. The treatise turns next to the sixth and final term, itself unfolding through several further readings.

Where the previous two terms named the underlying fault, these two name the false claim itself directly: having lost the genuine nature of a monastic, still insisting one possesses it is falsely claiming chastity; and never having realized the noble path at all, still declaring oneself the very first, truest renunciant, is falsely claiming renunciant status. With this, breaking the precepts — all seven sub-terms of its first reading, from violating the received precepts through falsely claiming renunciant status — is closed in its entirety. The treatise turns next to a second reading of these same seven terms.

False speech, idle chatter, and harsh words all count as this final wrongful speech — falsely proclaiming oneself a Buddhist renunciant, telling others one is free of desire, yet never speaking a single word that actually accords with such freedom, speech remaining bound to unwholesome, meaningless talk. Genuinely desireless speech benefits both speaker and listener alike; a true renunciant's words should accord with the noble path, or else silence is the better choice. With this, the second reading of all seven sub-terms is closed in its entirety, and with it, "breaking the precepts," affliction's sixth term under the meaning of reproach, is closed across both readings in its complete entirety — completing the meaning of reproach's own full six terms, and affliction topic's second of three major sections in its entirety. The treatise turns next to affliction's third and final major section, a reference to fuller treatment elsewhere.

This closing reference gathers up everything already explained under the unwholesome verse's first two lines — birth, aging, death, the storehouses and the rest, what is welcomed and the rest, affliction — noting that each term finds its own proper place elsewhere, and signals that the treatise will next explain greed, hatred, and delusion at length. "Roasted chicken" carries two readings: first, a being's own life is like a chicken slow-roasted alive, forever pursued by the fire of impermanence and suffering; second, it images a monastic who has broken the precepts, whose grave fault leaves them likewise pursued by manifold suffering, restless as a chicken over the flame — the Yogācārabhūmi Notes, fascicle 22, record both readings directly. This passage itself marks the hinge point: everything before it traces back to greed, hatred, and delusion; everything after unpacks those three in full detail. A companion sūtra collection, compiled by the modern scholar Yin Shun, lists some twenty-four variant sūtras built on this same template — substituting "all impermanence" for "all suffering," and so on through each term — demonstrating that liberation can be approached through any single one of these many angles alike. With this, a reference to fuller treatment is closed, completing affliction topic's third and final major section — and with it, affliction, the unwholesome portion's sixth and by far most extensive topic, spanning all three major sections (intrinsic nature's twenty-four synonyms, the meaning of reproach's six terms, and this closing reference) is closed in its entirety. The treatise turns next to greed, hatred, and delusion explained at length, the seventh topic.

Every kind of fine enjoyment — springtime outings, delicious food, gentle words, warm hospitality, and the rest — becomes an object of desire, a wished-for dream one hopes never to wake from, each its own dwelling place for craving. With this, what greed stains, what pride occupies, and what is desired are closed in their entirety. The treatise turns next to what is drawn near to and what is delighted in.

A first reading sorts these two terms by time: what is drawn near to names a fond, lingering craving for some now-past person or circumstance, the affection outliving the thing itself; what is delighted in names present joy and craving, an object currently enjoyed with real excitement. A second reading instead sorts them by habituation: craving habitually cultivated within this very life is drawn near to, while craving whose habit was already formed in a past life, now simply resurfacing, is delighted in — as when a child shows an inborn gift and love for music from earliest childhood, its root already laid in a prior existence. With this, what is drawn near to and what is delighted in, across both readings, is closed in its entirety. The treatise turns next to what causes bewilderment.

Facing an object without discerning its actual virtue or fault, a being grows bewildered before it, and greed arises from exactly that confusion — fulfilling the earlier-deferred promise to explain bewilderment here. With this, what causes bewilderment is closed, completing greed's tenth distinction. The treatise turns next to what is greedily clung to and what is bound by affliction.

Wherever greed exists, an indulgent, pleasure-seeking mind exists alongside it — a fine object is exactly where that indulgent mind dwells. And when greed actively manifests, a being is thereby prevented from following the wholesome — bondage. The Compendium of Mixed Topics, fascicle 6, names three kinds of bondage: bondage by greed, which binds beings to the suffering of change; bondage by hatred, which binds beings to the suffering of suffering itself; and bondage by delusion, which binds beings to the suffering inherent in all conditioned formations — since greed, hatred, and delusion constantly lie latent beneath pleasant and other feelings alike, and because they leave a being unable to move freely toward wholesome means, they are named bondage, exactly as an outward physical binding leaves a person unable to wander freely or to act freely within their own dwelling; the same holds for affliction's own inward binding of greed, hatred, and delusion.

Once an object is craved, a defiled longing for it arises — what is longed for. And once the mind is fettered by that craving, every further affliction follows in its wake, one drawing forth another: craving for existence gives rise to grasping, grasping gives rise to volition and the remaining links, and existence in turn gives rise to a future life's great mass of birth, aging, death, and suffering — hence what is fettered is called the dwelling place of every fetter. With this, what is greedily clung to, what is bound by affliction, what is longed for, and what is fettered are closed in their entirety, completing greed's eleventh and twelfth distinctions. The treatise turns next to what is itself evil.

Greed is able to unite with killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, false speech, and every one of the ten unwholesome deeds, producing evil karma directly — hence what is itself evil. With this, what is itself evil is closed, completing greed's thirteenth distinction. The treatise turns next to joy, speech, and urgency, three marks tied to body, speech, and mind.

These three mark greed's escalation through mind, speech, and body in turn: hoping a desired object will simply appear is still purely a matter of mental aspiration; voicing that longing through actual words is discursive thought turned into speech; and once greed grows strong enough to drive urgent bodily pursuit, it has become full bodily action. With this, joy, speech, and urgency are closed in their entirety, completing greed's fourteenth distinction. The treatise turns next to indulgent dwelling.

Once form, sound, scent, taste, touch, or the desire between the sexes has been obtained, a being clings to it and refuses to release it at all — indulgent dwelling. With this, indulgent dwelling is closed, completing greed's fifteenth distinction. The treatise turns next to equal defilement, equal evil, and equal delusion, sorted by the three feelings.

Toward pleasant feeling, greed arises together with craving for union with what is loved; toward painful feeling, hatred arises together with craving for separation from what is unloved; and toward all three feelings alike, failing to see them as illusory and insubstantial, delusion arises together with craving neither for union nor for separation. With this, equal defilement, equal evil, and equal delusion are closed in their entirety, completing greed's sixteenth distinction. The treatise turns next to fond memory, mental attachment, and toilsome pursuit, sorted by the three times.

A third sorting by the three times: fond memory clings to what is past, unable to let it go; mental attachment fixes hope on what is yet to come; and toilsome pursuit names the present labor of actually chasing after a craved object right now. With this, fond memory, mental attachment, and toilsome pursuit are closed in their entirety, completing greed's seventeenth distinction. The treatise turns next to blazing fire, burning, and distress, examined here specifically as forms of greed.

These same three terms, already met among affliction's own twenty-four synonyms, reappear here specifically as marks of greed: blazing fire names the intense defiled clinging the moment a desired object is actually obtained; burning names the affliction of deprivation when a desired object is lost before ever being obtained; and distress names the suffering that follows once an already-obtained object later changes and is lost. With this, blazing fire, burning, and distress are closed in their entirety, completing greed's eighteenth distinction. The treatise turns next to praying, touching, longing, and delighting, four ways greed's own craving is displayed.

Praying for a loved object to come true reveals craving for good fortune; endlessly fondling and handling a present, cherished object reveals craving for physical touch; constantly hoping for the gain and benefit an object might bring reveals craving for advantage; and a face lighting with joy the moment something pleasing appears reveals craving for whatever matches one's own wish — greed's own mark made visible through these four kinds of outward behavior. With this, praying, touching, longing, and delighting are closed in their entirety, completing greed's nineteenth distinction. The treatise turns next to turning the mind toward purity, greed's own point of release.

For a full account to be complete, greed's own many distinctions should include how greed is actually released — hence the treatise here simply points back to the Stage of Concentrated Equipoise's own earlier account of the five realms of release from desire, rather than repeating it. With this, turning the mind toward purity is closed, completing greed's twentieth distinction. The treatise turns next to greed's remaining distinctions.

Pursuing intoxicated pride names actively seeking out and adopting whatever practice promises freedom from sickness, lasting youth, or a long life the moment one hears of it — itself a mark of greed. And conceit born from desire names the conceit that grows directly from indulging in desire without ever recognizing its fault — a lowlier desire breeding a lesser conceit, a middling desire a middling conceit, and a grander desire a grander conceit, each simply a further form of pride born from failing to see desire's own danger. With this, pursuing intoxicated pride and conceit born from desire are closed in their entirety, completing greed's twenty-first and twenty-second distinctions. The treatise turns next to ease, experience, and pursuit of feeling.

Ease names the contented, peaceful satisfaction felt while enjoying desire, unrecognized as impermanent and selfless, greed quietly accumulating unnoticed beneath it. Experience names every kind of feeling desire's enjoyment produces — painful feeling toward a lesser desire breeding hatred, neutral feeling toward a middling desire breeding delusion, pleasant feeling toward a superior desire breeding greed — all alike impermanent, suffering, empty, and selfless, yet, failing to recognize this shared mark, a being pursues pleasant feeling all the more, itself a further form of greed. And pursuit of feeling names actively cultivating the wholesome conditions of gods and humans — the very faculties and circumstances that produce pleasant feeling, and the karma that brings a pleasing result now and in the future — precisely in order to obtain the pleasant feeling a fine desire produces; in short, practicing worldly virtue for the sake of craving desire itself. With this, ease, experience, and pursuit of feeling are closed in their entirety, completing greed's twenty-third distinction. The treatise turns next to a concluding reference closing greed's account entirely.

This closing reference points back to the Stage of the Wisdom Born of Hearing's own fivefold account of greed: greed for inward desire itself, hoping for a pleasing resultant reward among gods or humans and delighting in the present body already obtained, never leaving the desire realm; greed for outward sexual desire; greed for circumstantial objects; greed for form, belonging to the form realm alone; and greed for a perishable self, spanning all three realms — the first three confined to the desire realm, the fourth to the form realm, the fifth running through all three. That same source further offers six descriptive terms for how beings indulge food specifically: defiled love, indulgent craving, gluttony, bewilderment, firm clinging, and steeped attachment — useful terms for understanding restraint as well, which names being hemmed in and hindered by whatever object one has grown attached to, exactly as the saying goes, "descending from luxury to frugality is hard." And wanting differs subtly from greed, as this same Compendium of Synonyms itself already explained: wanting names hoping to obtain or enjoy something, whether already possessed or not; greed names the firmer attachment that grows once genuine joy is taken in its enjoyment. With this, greed's full twenty-four distinctions, from defilement and attachment through this concluding reference, are closed in their entirety, completing the unwholesome portion's seventh topic's first major section. The treatise turns next to hatred, examined across eight further sections.

Hatred, once arisen, sears like a raging fire, drawing forth manifold suffering; its manifest activity is intense; joined with hatred, gentleness is lost and the mind turns hard; and hatred itself brings a bitter, aching pain, altogether unwelcome, unpleasurable, unendearing, and displeasing. The Compendium of Bases, fascicle 91, explains this same fourfold reversal directly: unwelcome names displeasure toward the future; unpleasurable names an unpleasant memory of the past; unendearing names displeasure on contact with the present; and displeasure names discomfort toward feeling generally. With this, suffering, intensity, hardness, bitterness, and displeasure are closed in their entirety, completing hatred's fourth distinction. The treatise turns next to violence, hatred's own overall statement.

Even once the outward outburst and violence have subsided, the one who felt them may still sit with a furrowed brow, silent and unhappy; and repeatedly dwelling on some past slight, nursing a deep grudge, keeps stirring hatred up again and again, that very hatred continually disturbing the mind's own peace. With this, violence — stinging words and resentful writing, resentment, outburst, and violent harm, and this lingering, recurring hatred — is closed in its entirety, completing hatred's fifth distinction. The treatise turns next to suffering, its own presence, deprivation, calamity, and heat.

Heat, matched to each of the three feelings, names greed's fire arising toward pleasant feeling, hatred's fire toward painful feeling, and delusion's fire toward neutral feeling, each according to what applies. A further, alternate reading sorts its own presence and deprivation instead by time: its own presence names a past unpleasant experience already suffered, while deprivation names a present pleasant feeling's own coming change, a loss anticipated for the future. With this, suffering, its own presence, deprivation, calamity, and heat — examined by cause and condition, by the three feelings, and by this further temporal reading — are closed in their entirety, completing hatred's sixth distinction. The treatise turns next to harm, the enemy, and the grudge.

Harm names a superior, more severe grade of resentment and grievance — a mind actually stirring toward inflicting injury on another. The enemy and the grudge simply repeat the inward enemy and inward grudge already explained above: the inward enemy draws forth unwelcome circumstances the moment hatred manifests; the inward grudge, harboring even a wish to harm, drives improper conduct in its wake. With this, harm, the enemy, and the grudge are closed in their entirety, completing hatred's seventh distinction. The treatise turns next to subduing, ruining, and the rest.

A practitioner who recognizes hatred's own uselessness and manifold faults, working diligently through insight and corrective teaching to subdue it, keeps an unarisen wholesome dharma from ever being subdued by hatred, and keeps an already-arisen wholesome dharma from ever being ruined; free of hatred, no unarisen wholesome capability is overcome, and an already-arisen one continues to grow and prevail. The Yogācārabhūmi Notes clarify that, of the four terms just given, the first two concern a wholesome dharma's own active manifestation, while the latter two concern its underlying seed — this distinction should be understood accordingly. With this, subduing, ruining, and their reverse are closed in their entirety, completing hatred's eighth and final distinction — and with it, hatred, examined across all eight of its own sections, is closed in its entirety, completing the second of greed, hatred, and delusion's three major sections. The treatise turns next to delusion, the third and final section.

As noted under the previous section, Master Cháng Bǎi identifies this same transposition from the other side: this sentence's own content, concerning what is yet to arise, actually belongs to the second term above, while "the prior-and-latter extreme" properly names the present moment — the latter extreme relative to the past, and the prior extreme relative to the future at once. Read as the present properly intends, ignorance regarding the prior-and-latter extreme means failing to understand that present formations, moment by moment, are already ceasing entirely, arising and perishing so swiftly that nothing whatsoever can be held onto or mastered. With this, ignorance regarding the prior extreme, the latter extreme, and the prior-and-latter extreme together — delusion's own threefold blindness across all three times — is closed in its entirety. The treatise turns next to delusion's remaining kinds, already listed in fascicle 9.

Worldly delusion, the first of the seven kinds, names not understanding the true, selfless, impermanent nature of past, present, and future alike — and resting on that very ignorance, a whole train of improper reflection follows: which destiny did I inhabit in a past life, human, heavenly, hellish, or otherwise; what was my name then; who were my parents, my siblings; who am I now; who will ever truly know me; where has this present being come from, and where will it go once this life ends? With this, worldly delusion — its threefold temporal ignorance and the improper reflection it produces — is closed in its entirety, completing the first of the seven kinds of delusion. The treatise turns next to delusion regarding phenomena themselves, the second kind.

Inward names one's own six inner faculties; outward names the six outer objects beyond the body; and both together names another being's own six faculties and the mental-object base — since another's faculties are, from that being's own side, an inner basis, yet from one's own side, comprised within the outer world, they carry both names at once. In sum, failing to understand the inward body, the outward world, and other beings' own inward-and-outward nature alike gives rise to self-love and craving for further existence toward one's own body, craving for its objects toward the outer world, and craving for what belongs to self toward other beings — establishing these three kinds of ignorance: inward, outward, and both together. With this, delusion regarding phenomena is closed in its entirety, completing the second of the seven kinds of delusion. The treatise turns next to delusion regarding transmigration, the third kind.

Where the first two kinds concerned ignorance about karma alone and about its ripened result alone, this third kind concerns ignorance about the relationship between the two entirely, giving rise to the wrong view that a wholesome cause brings no pleasant fruit and an unwholesome cause brings no painful fruit — the wrong view that denies karma and its fruit altogether. The Yogācārabhūmi Notes explain: saying there is no excellent conduct, no evil conduct, and no fruit or ripened result belonging to either kind of karma is exactly this wrong view that denies both cause and effect — non-Buddhist ascetics who deny that keeping discipline and cultivating concentration counter affliction, or that such affliction brings any evil result, and who deny that generosity, wholesome in itself, brings any merit, or that stinginess brings any fault, exemplify this very denial of cause and effect. With this, delusion regarding transmigration — ignorance regarding karma, regarding its ripened result, and regarding the two together — is closed in its entirety, completing the third of the seven kinds of delusion. The treatise turns next to delusion regarding the supreme, the fourth kind.

Ignorance regarding the saṅgha names failing to understand what right conduct actually asks of a monastic — the Buddha established that a monk trains in the precepts for five years, a nun for six, learning the monastic life and its discipline from the ground up before turning to the study of the teachings, the practice of meditation, and the cultivation of calm and insight; a newly ordained monastic who instead grows lazy, unwilling to diligently pursue any of this, embodies exactly this ignorance, letting the time given for practice slip by empty. With this, ignorance regarding the Buddha, the dharma, and the saṅgha together is closed in its entirety, completing delusion regarding the supreme, the fourth of the seven kinds of delusion. The treatise turns next to delusion regarding the truths, the fifth kind.

A śrāvaka practitioner takes liberation as the very aim of practice, and the four noble truths' own sixteen aspects are the basic teaching that aim rests on — familiarity with these terms must come first, through hearing, before reflection and cultivation can follow toward genuine liberation. A practitioner who cannot apply real effort to this teaching, who fails to understand and put into practice the sixteen aspects of suffering, its arising, its cessation, and the path, is, however clever by worldly measure, no wise one in the Buddha's own eyes — only diligent practice through hearing, reflection, and cultivation makes one a genuine knower of the world's true nature. With this, delusion regarding the truths is closed in its entirety, completing the fifth of the seven kinds of delusion. The treatise turns next to delusion regarding defilement and purity, the sixth kind.

Defiled dharmas — affliction, karma, and birth — are unwholesome, culpable, and full of fault; pure dharmas — hearing, reflection, cultivation, discipline, concentration, and wisdom — are wholesome, blameless, and full of virtue; a practitioner should learn to distinguish them clearly. Karma performed in ignorance, unaware that dark deeds bring suffering, is dark karma; karma performed with the understanding that evil brings suffering, and so restrained toward good, is bright karma. Three kinds of ripening follow: dark-dark ripening, unwholesome, demerit-bound karma whose cause is dark and whose fruit — rebirth in the various hells — is dark as well; bright-bright ripening, unmoving karma such as the meditative absorption that leads to the form and formless heavens, whose cause and fruit are both bright; and the mixed portion, dark-and-bright, bright-and-dark ripening, the karma of desire-realm gods and humans, whose good deeds are mixed with occasional evil, bringing a correspondingly mixed result — some suffering even amid a fortunate human or heavenly birth, some small pleasure even amid an evil destiny's own particular karma. All of this — every karmic result of every kind of life — arises entirely through causes and conditions, hence "dependently arisen"; failing to understand any part of this whole process is delusion regarding defilement and purity. With this, delusion regarding defilement and purity — ignorance regarding the cause, regarding what the cause produces, and regarding defiled and pure dharmas together with threefold karmic ripening — is closed in its entirety, completing the sixth of the seven kinds of delusion. The treatise turns next to delusion regarding overestimation, the seventh and final kind.

This same preparatory practice further fails to truly penetrate the empty, selfless nature of the object contemplated: lacking any real understanding of the upper two realms' own aggregates, since they are not directly perceived; lacking genuine insight even into the desire realm's own five aggregates, though directly perceived; and, in every realm alike, never actually attaining direct realization of no-self through personal, immediate experience — failing, in short, to truly know the very dharma dependently arisen from causes and conditions, from which overestimation's own conceit arises. With this, delusion regarding overestimation, examined through both readings, is closed in its entirety, completing the seventh and final kind of delusion — and with it, all seven kinds of delusion already explained in fascicle 9, now unpacked here in full, are closed in their entirety. The treatise turns next to delusion's remaining structure.

"That" refers back to the already-explained failure to fully penetrate the six bases of contact; "this" refers to the not-yet-fully-unpacked meditative preparation that merely suppresses affliction temporarily, like a stone pressing down grass rather than genuinely uprooting its seed. Whether already explained or still to come, every such failure to truly know is delusion. With this, kinds enumerated — the seven already-explained kinds of delusion, and this closing statement pointing to every case at once — is closed in its entirety, completing delusion's first of three major sections. The treatise turns next to delusion's further names.

Darkness names simple failure to correctly grasp what is genuinely real. Foolishness names the opposite error, falsely superimposing real existence onto what has no true nature at all — an ordinary being's habitual over-imputation, mistaking mere convention for genuine substance, clinging to the imagined and the dependently-arisen alike as though self-born, other-born, jointly born, or causelessly real, or denying the perfected nature's own genuine reality and collapsing it into mere nihilistic emptiness. Benighted ignorance names an inability to skillfully grasp whatever is to be known, whether body, feeling, mind, or dharma, whether the aggregates, elements, or sense-bases — the Yogācārabhūmi Notes clarify this as failing to understand both the meaning taught and the very words that express it. And darkening names the settled wrong view that goes so far as to slander the true dharma outright — often born from a comparative mind that reckons one's own teaching supreme and every other teaching inferior. With this, darkness, foolishness, benighted ignorance, and darkening — delusion's six further names in their entirety — are closed. The treatise turns next to obstruction, hindrance, and ignorance, referred to fuller treatment elsewhere.

These four further names, the treatise notes, are treated at length in a Sūtra on Love — though only its name, not its text, survives to us today. The Nirvāṇa Sūtra, fascicle 5, teaches that every being possesses the Tathāgata's own true nature, boundless affliction merely concealing it from view; a commentary on the Ten Stages Treatise glosses concealment as a deluded mind's own opposition to right understanding; burial names the burying-over of truth so it cannot be seen; a commentary on the Sūtra of Contemplation on the Mind Ground glosses obscuration as affliction obstructing wisdom, foolish and unaware of its own condition; and pervasive obscuration names delusion spread across every circumstance without exception. With this, delusion's own further names — not knowing, not seeing, absence of direct realization, darkness, foolishness, benighted ignorance, darkening, obstruction, hindrance, ignorance, concealment, burial, obscuration, and pervasive obscuration — are closed in their entirety, completing delusion's second of three major sections. The treatise turns next to delusion's own power to obstruct, examined across seven further sections.

A third reading is simply referred onward to the Determinations' own fuller treatment. With this, disrespect and the rest, across all three readings, is closed in its entirety, completing delusion's obstruction of a practitioner's own field of merit toward the three jewels — the first of seven sections examining delusion's power to obstruct. The treatise turns next to failing to receive the teaching, and failing to listen carefully.

Failing to receive the teaching names lacking even the basic wholesome wish to hear the dharma at all; failing to listen carefully names hearing it yet failing to attend closely, the mind wandering off to other objects instead. Delusion is both the cause and the result here — it prevents genuine listening, and that failure to listen only deepens delusion further still, a vicious cycle that keeps a practitioner's own progress on the path from ever advancing. With this, failing to receive the teaching and failing to listen carefully are closed in their entirety, completing delusion's second obstruction. The treatise turns next to failing to abide in a reverent, teachable mind.

Failing to abide in a reverent, teachable mind names one who studies calm and insight, or the practice of the pure land, at great length, yet has no genuine wish to put any of it into practice, content merely to study doctrine while neglecting calm, insight, and mindfulness of the Buddha alike. Failing to practice rightly names failing to genuinely aspire toward practice in accordance with the dharma — "the dharma" here meaning nirvāṇa itself, and practice in accordance with it meaning the noble eightfold path or the thirty-seven factors of awakening; or, read another way, "the dharma" meaning the sūtras, vinaya, and treatises, and practice in accordance with it meaning conduct that follows them. And failing to truly receive the teaching names being unable to actually realize the great teacher's own noble teaching, the mind never truly turning in accord with the real nature of things — understanding without practice, which only allows wrong view to grow and further obstructs the arising of genuine wisdom. All of this, arising from delusion as its cause, obstructs a practitioner's own progress toward liberation.

Indulging in sleep beyond what practice requires wastes the time that could cultivate the causes of a fortunate rebirth, and, through laziness and negligence, forfeits that fortunate result entirely; the same indulgence likewise wastes the time that could cultivate nirvāṇa's own cause, forfeiting nirvāṇa's own fruit as well — devoid of meaning in this life, devoid of benefit in the life to come. A companion sūtra teaches that a monastic should, in every posture, whether walking or sitting in stillness, keep proper attention ever-present as a refuge, thereby escaping two defilements. Excessive sleep is contrasted here with excessive discursive thought: even monastics who might otherwise doze rather than let the mind run wild through endless discrimination over form, sound, scent, taste, and touch understand that such discrimination breeds entanglement and dispute, harming both self and others; seeing a form or hearing a sound and grasping at its mark and its finer characteristics gives rise to manifold affliction and karma leading to the evil destinies, when in truth eye, form, and the eye-consciousness born from their contact are all impermanent, conditioned, and dependently arisen, feeling itself arising and passing in exactly the same way. A learned noble disciple reflects: I shall observe the body as impermanent, every dharma as mind-generated, and mind alone as the true root of all things; feeling itself, born from contact, is likewise impermanent, conditioned, and dependently arisen. Such a disciple, knowing sleep's proper time and measure, never indulges it to excess — excessive sleep is a foolish way to sustain a life, gaining neither the benefit of nirvāṇa nor the cultivation of merit — and remains equally free of clinging to mere discrimination, since habitual grasping at marks and finer characteristics breeds affliction, entanglement, and dispute that rob many others of nirvāṇa's own benefit and ease. Growing weary of attachment to the eye and its form, its contact, and the feeling born from that contact, weary of every thought and feeling arising from it, no longer delighting in pleasing form, sound, scent, taste, or touch, nor clinging to the faculties or their objects — this very weariness is liberation, and liberation brings the knowledge of liberation itself: for the noble disciple, birth is exhausted, the chaste life established, what was to be done is done, no further existence to be known — the same cultivated restraint applying equally to ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind. A companion passage adds a further caution on two additional dangers requiring proper attention: first, that one who carefully sustains their own life — through food, sleep, and every other necessity — may nonetheless meet sudden, unexpected death, and so must never neglect contemplating impermanence, since a single breath not returning can end everything; and second, that one must guard right mindfulness so that death, should it come, does not arrive amid an unwholesome state of mind and thereby cast one into the evil destinies, since escape from the three evil paths, once entered, is exceedingly hard to win back. The remedy for both dangers is proper attention itself: better to endure another's beating, even the loss of a limb or of life itself, than to die amid an unwholesome mind — and cultivating constant joy in the true dharma, especially joy in contemplating impermanence, is precisely what keeps unwholesome states from arising at the moment death actually comes. Two defilements are named here as arising from grasping at marks during ordinary activity and from distracting thoughts during seated practice, one a "resembling cause" for the other, urging a practitioner to notice how daytime habits of grasping return as evening's own distracted thoughts, and to remain watchful, ashamed of laxity, and continuous in mindfulness throughout. With this, delighting in sleep and squandering life — wasted, devoid of fruit, devoid of meaning, and devoid of benefit — is closed in its entirety, completing delusion's fourth obstruction. The treatise turns next to failing to inquire after one's fellow practitioners in the chaste life.

This third greeting inquires after a practitioner's own daily ease — whether food, once obtained and eaten, is properly digested without illness, leaving enough strength to continue practicing. With this, all three customary greetings — little sickness, little toil, and ease of daily life — are closed in their entirety. The treatise turns next to a reference for their remaining marks.

The third greeting's own deeper sense, the Śrāvaka Stage's earlier teaching on knowing the proper measure of food, already explained: food should sustain and nourish the body just enough to provide the strength practice requires, benefiting the body without causing illness, and never pursued through improper means. With this, failing to inquire after fellow practitioners in the chaste life — the three customary greetings and this reference to fuller treatment — is closed in its entirety, completing delusion's fifth obstruction. Failing to show reverence toward the Tathāgata or one's fellow practitioners is itself a form of delusion, obstructing the very arising of wisdom. The treatise turns next to failing to discern and failing to fully discern.

Discernment reflects on the dharma's own full extent; full discernment reflects on the dharma exactly as it truly is — failing to discern and failing to fully discern together simply mean failing to cultivate calm and insight at all. Delusion obstructs diligent practice, and that very failure to practice deepens delusion further, an unbroken cycle that keeps a practitioner's own path from ever advancing; the Śrāvaka Stage, fascicle 30, treats this at length under its account of the four kinds of wisdom-conduct. With this, failing to discern and failing to fully discern is closed in its entirety, completing delusion's sixth obstruction. The treatise turns next to failing to reflect and failing to weigh carefully, delusion's seventh and final obstruction.

The Śrāvaka Stage, fascicle 24, teaches hearing and reflecting on the true dharma in these terms: receiving and upholding the true dharma once heard, reciting it aloud whether alone or for others, reflecting on its meaning, and weighing it through careful, principled observation — carefully weighing means exactly this reasoned, attentive reflection; failing to reflect and failing to weigh carefully mean simply the absence of it. This too is an obstruction delusion produces, one a practitioner must actively counter. With this, failing to reflect and failing to weigh carefully is closed in its entirety, completing delusion's seventh and final obstruction — and with it, all seven obstructions delusion produces, from disrespect through this final pair, are closed in their entirety, completing delusion's third and final major section. And with this, delusion itself — its kinds enumerated, its further names, and its power to obstruct, across all three major sections — is closed in its complete entirety. And with this, greed, hatred, and delusion explained at length — the unwholesome portion's seventh topic, spanning greed's twenty-four distinctions, hatred's eight distinctions, and delusion's full threefold account — is closed in its complete entirety. The treatise turns next to scarcity and the rest, the eighth topic.

The unwholesome verse's fourth line's third word, scarcity and the rest, forms the unwholesome portion's eighth topic, naming three ways affliction stunts wisdom. Scarcity names wisdom left unable to grow lofty or expansive — whenever affliction actively manifests, the mind's own clarity narrows at once, and a practitioner who habitually indulges defilement never allows mindfulness the room to grow either high or wide, unable to accord with the noble teaching's own vast measure. Smallness names wisdom confined to a lowly, narrow measure — ignorance clouds its own light, leaving a practitioner content with a little learning or a lesser meditative attainment, unaware that further diligence is needed, unable to rise higher. And meagerness names wisdom reduced to accepting only whatever bare convention worldly speech allows — unable even to cultivate right view within ordinary worldly life, let alone approach any transcendent wisdom at all. With this, scarcity, smallness, and meagerness — three marks of affliction's own power to stunt wisdom — are closed in their entirety, completing the unwholesome portion's eighth topic. The treatise turns next to synonyms and the rest, the ninth and final topic.

The unwholesome verse's fourth line's final phrase, synonyms and the rest, closes the unwholesome portion with three terms for how many names can serve one meaning. Synonyms names a dharma's own distinct mark expressed through different wording: affliction is also called a bond, on through contention, because affliction's own nature can unite with fault and sorrow, or give rise to dispute and rivalry — each name grasping the same underlying nature from its own particular angle. Intent names a dharma's own worldly, conventional mark, considered as distinct: greed, for instance, unfolds into defilement, attachment, restraint, and gluttony precisely because each names a different worldly circumstance greed can take — the distinction between a dharma's own intrinsic nature and its worldly circumstance is exactly the distinction between a lamp's own essential nature, dispelling darkness, and the countless different lamps that circumstance produces, long or short, white or yellow. And distinctiveness names how different causal marks of affliction produce different resultant circumstances: hatred's own cause produces inward stain, subduing, and ruin among its many marks; delusion's own cause obstructs a practitioner's wisdom and produces disrespect through failing to reflect among its own improper conduct — every dharma's own intrinsic mark and worldly mark alike shift accordingly with its cause. With this, synonyms, intent, and distinctiveness are closed in their entirety, completing the unwholesome portion's ninth and final topic — and with it, the entire unwholesome portion (黑品) of the Compendium of Synonyms, its full nine topics from birth through this closing account of many names for one meaning, is closed in its complete entirety. The treatise turns next to a concluding statement closing the Compendium of Synonyms as a whole.

The treatise closes the entire Compendium of Synonyms with this final summary: everything explained across fascicles 83 and 84 gathers only the more prominent, more commonly used synonyms scattered throughout the sūtras, sorted here to display their distinct meanings clearly. Countless further synonyms and distinctions of meaning remain, spoken by the buddhas across immeasurable further teachings, which this treatise has not attempted to exhaust — but the direction it has charted, the body of learning it has modeled, and the manner of teaching it has demonstrated together offer a method: a practitioner who has followed this compendium's own reasoning should now be equipped to diligently reflect upon and discern any further synonym or distinction of meaning encountered elsewhere, bringing each one's own significance clearly to light in turn. With this, the Compendium of Synonyms (攝異門分) — the treatise's fourth of five major divisions, spanning fascicles 83 and 84 in their entirety, from the wholesome portion's five particular verses through the unwholesome portion's single verse and this closing statement — is closed in its complete entirety. Fascicle 84 concludes here; the treatise's fifth and final division, the Compendium of Bases (攝事分), begins in fascicle 85.