Perception and Formation, and Swift Penetration

The aggregates section's third overall topic, perception and formation, unfolds across ten further parts of its own: perception and formation, delusion's mark, the eye, benefit, nine kinds of wisdom, freedom from delusion, advancement, the view of self distinguished, threefold mark and formation, and the threefold dharma summary further explained. Perception and formation, delusion's mark, the eye, and benefit correspond to the Saṃyukta Āgama's own thirty-sixth sūtra; the nine kinds of wisdom correspond to the thirty-seventh and thirty-eighth; freedom from delusion corresponds to the thirty-ninth and fortieth, both concerning knowledge and ignorance; advancement corresponds to the forty-second; the view of self distinguished corresponds to the forty-fourth; threefold mark and formation corresponds to the forty-third; and the dharma summarized corresponds to the forty-fifth, explained through the three gates of liberation.

Perception and formation's own first section names five approaches to cultivating the perception of impermanence toward the aggregates, whether one's own body or another's, past, present, future, inner or outer, coarse or fine, far or near — each to be unpacked individually in what follows.

Whether one's own body or another's, past, present, or future, inner or outer, coarse or fine, far or near, every formation alike decays moment by moment — were this not so, aging and death could never occur; a body healthy today will nonetheless sicken in time, its vigor and complexion fading in increments too subtle to notice directly, hence impermanence. Even setting momentary change aside, a single lifetime itself has its own fixed limit — seventy, eighty, a hundred years, or more — never truly enduring forever, hence inconstancy, distinguished from impermanence by looking to time's larger span rather than the instant. The physical world fares no better: mountains and rivers pass through formation, continuance, decay, and emptiness in turn, gone entirely once the kalpa of decay arrives — a sudden flood or landslide can just as easily sweep away field and home within a single day, proof enough that even the physical world cannot endure. Even before one's own natural lifespan is exhausted, unexpected conditions can bring an untimely death that ought not yet have come — hence unreliability. And, finally, even granting a full and healthy life, no single day passes in unbroken ease — some ache here, some sorrow there — this too is the very nature of change and ruin. Once these five marks are genuinely seen, a practitioner gradually releases attachment to the aggregates, hastens toward wholesome practice, and moves toward escaping the three realms entirely, even unsurpassed awakening itself; for a śrāvaka specifically, this means cutting off craving and views so that no further such body need ever be taken up again.

Perception and formation's second section, delusion's mark, names three ways an ordinary being's own foolishness manifests, each concerning the comparison of self to others, to be examined individually in what follows.

An ordinary being, still bound by self-clinging, cannot reflect on the aggregates' own fivefold impermanence, and instead endlessly measures self against other within a superiority and inferiority that was never genuinely real to begin with, concluding — however momentarily sharp their own faculties may seem — that they themselves come out ahead, never recognizing that with no genuine self at all, no one is truly superior, equal, or inferior to anyone else; the aggregates themselves are illusory, no real self to be found in them, and comparing at all is simply a dream born of ignorance. The Yogācārabhūmi Notes confirm: every formation's own superiority or inferiority is merely a provisional distinction established through mutual comparison, never genuinely real — one may seem clever measured against a fool, yet foolish measured against someone still cleverer; each person is sharper in some respects and duller in others, and any comparison drawn depends entirely on which respect is chosen, never a fixed, objective fact. Taking such comparison as genuinely real, and taking pride in coming out ahead, is exactly the ordinary being's own first mark — and, without encountering the true dharma, this same restless, beginningless comparing continues without any hope of ever waking from it.

Believing oneself merely equal to another, or genuinely inferior, is the same delusion as believing oneself superior — all three alike arise only because the self one is comparing was never real to begin with, and all three alike breed further affliction through the very act of dividing self from other. The wise one, contrariwise, understands that superiority, equality, and inferiority are all merely provisional distinctions set up through mutual comparison, never genuinely real; where some deficiency does show up, one need only gather the right conditions and apply oneself further to make it up, so no one is ever truly, fixedly superior, equal, or inferior to anyone else. Understanding no-self and no-what-belongs-to-self, the wise one never engages in such pointless comparison at all.

The eye's own section explains the "eye" in the first line of perception and formation's particular verse. Among the five eyes — flesh, heaven, wisdom, dharma, and Buddha — this concerns the wisdom-eye, purified through being far from dust and free of defilement, echoing the Saṃyukta Āgama's own line, "far from dust, free of defilement, the dharma-eye purified." A practitioner who cultivates calm and insight upon the four truths' sixteen aspects, penetrating the five aggregates' impermanence, suffering, emptiness, and no-self, enters direct realization of the noble truths and turns from ordinary being into a noble one, gaining the wisdom-eye — this is called being far from dust and free of defilement. What follows unpacks the two through two further methods.

One entering the path of seeing cuts off the discriminated afflictions proper to that path — those arising chiefly from one's own views and reasoning, clinging to the five aggregates as self or as belonging to self, and the further afflictions this spawns across the three realms. Freed from their actual manifestation, this is far from dust — dust here being the coarser, more visible kind. Freed even from their seed, the subtler defilement remaining after the coarse dust is gone, this is free of defilement.

Practicing insight within calm abiding, observing the five aggregates as without self and without what belongs to self, a coarse conceit can still slip in — a fleeting sense that "only I can practice this observation," a subtle pride arising with or without one's noticing. Once one thoroughly knows the observed aggregates, the observing mind itself, and their shared object all alike to be without self, grasper and grasped become equal and conceit no longer arises — its actual manifestation cut off, this is far from dust. Continuing into the union of calm and insight until all one hundred and twelve latent tendencies cut off by the path of seeing across the three realms are cut off at the root, this alone is properly called free of defilement.

Through cultivating calm and insight, a practitioner accomplishes uncontaminated wisdom, is freed from both the discriminated self-clinging's actual manifestation and its seed, and thereby gains the dharma-eye — seeing directly, through one's own experience, the five aggregates' impermanence, suffering, emptiness, and no-self. Ten distinct benefits follow, unpacked one by one below.

Seeing the dharma is the first fruit, penetrating the four truths by direct uncontaminated wisdom. Gaining the dharma follows once the discriminated afflictions of the path of seeing are cut off and the dharma-eye purified. Knowing the dharma means the stream-enterer knows for themselves that this life's causes for the three lower realms are exhausted — even though seeds for those realms remain, the conditions to ripen them no longer arise — and that stream-entry, never again to fall back into ordinary being, has been attained. The Yogācārabhūmi Notes explain "attained stream-entry, and so on at length" as including the full exhaustion of the seven, two, or single further rebirth still owed by a once-returner or a family-to-family stream-enterer, detailed already in fascicle 85. Thoroughly firm in the dharma is the fourth benefit: uncontaminated faith in the Three Jewels arising together with uncontaminated wisdom at the moment the truths are realized, and this faith, unshakeable by any outsider, is called thorough firmness.

Having directly realized suffering as suffering, its cause as its cause, cessation as cessation, and the path as the path, the stream-enterer has awoken from ignorance's great dream and holds no confusion at all about their own realization. And having realized this for themselves, they likewise recognize the same quality in another who has realized it, holding no doubt about it either.

Having gained fundamental wisdom, the stream-enterer needs no text, no teacher's further instruction, to expound the four truths in subsequently attained wisdom — having walked the ancient sages' own path in person, they simply relate what they themselves have verified. Their wisdom already accords with right view, so no outside doctrine, however presented, can shake their confidence in the Buddha's dharma and discipline. And, having personally realized the true character of all dharmas, they can declare exactly which afflictions among the three realms' one hundred and twelve are resolved and which remain, without any trace of dread when others come to challenge them.

The Buddha was dwelling at Rājagṛha, in the Bamboo Grove; the venerable Śāriputra was staying on Vulture Peak. A householder's son, Śroṇa, often came there and asked Śāriputra why ascetics and brahmins, comparing their own impermanent, ever-changing, unsettled body to another's, conclude "I am superior," "I am equal," or "I am inferior" — precisely the three foolish marks already explained above — and what clings beneath such thinking that keeps them from seeing things as they truly are.

Rather than answering directly, Śāriputra questioned Śroṇa in turn: is form permanent or impermanent? Impermanent, Śroṇa answered. Then is it suffering? It is suffering. Then would the Buddha's noble disciples, knowing form to be impermanent and therefore suffering and subject to change, cling to it as self, as other than self, or as self-in-form and form-in-self? No, Śroṇa answered — a noble disciple sees no self in form, no self apart from form, no self in form or form in self. The same holds for feeling, perception, formation, and consciousness. Śāriputra then explained that a practitioner observes each aggregate's exhaustive nature across past, future, present, inner, outer, coarse, fine, superior, inferior, far, and near, and its shared nature — not self, not other than self, not mutually contained — and this, sustained through calm and insight, is called knowing as it truly is; from it come weariness — the fruit of the path of seeing — freedom from desire — the fruit of the path of cultivation — liberation, and the knowledge of liberation, until one knows: birth for me is exhausted, the pure life established, what had to be done is done, no further existence is to be known. Hearing this, Śroṇa himself cut off the discriminated afflictions, both their manifestation and their seed, and attained the first fruit — then rose, knelt, and took refuge in the Three Jewels as a lay follower for the rest of his life, departing in joy.

The nine kinds of wisdom, in "九智無癡與勝進," explain the aggregates section's third particular verse. Ordinary beings are all troubled by the aggregates' own blazing suffering; accomplishing these nine allows one to thoroughly know and transcend the formations rather than remain controlled by them.

Delight here is a kind of craving, distinct from outright greed: delight is the joy felt toward an object not yet met, as an intermediate-state being feels joy glimpsing its future parents; greed is the clinging that follows once the object is actually before one, like a cup filled till it overflows. Delight leads to craving, craving leads to grasping, grasping leads to becoming, becoming leads to birth — so delight's gathering gives rise to form's gathering, entering a mother's womb. Contact between the six sense-faculties and their six objects gives rise to the six kinds of contact, and from contact arise the corresponding feeling, perception, and formation — so contact's gathering gives rise to feeling's, perception's, and formation's gathering. And consciousness continues only because of name-and-form — the mind-dharmas and physical dharma present from conception onward — so name-and-form's gathering gives rise to consciousness's gathering. The Yogācārabhūmi Notes (fascicle 87) explain further: every formation's cause divides into a shared cause, delight, common to both mind and matter, whose ripening does not wait on further conditions since it was seeded by a prior joy already directed at that place of rebirth; and unshared causes proper to matter or mind separately — contact, the immediately preceding cessation of mind, co-arisen mental factors, and the ten kinds of matter — each of which still needs its own further conditions, moment by moment, before it can actually arise, even once the prior seed is present.

As fascicle 85 already explained: observe relish, danger, and escape through three matters and two marks to see whether one's own mind is defiled or pure. First, observe whether relish for the formations is present — relish for suffering is itself suffering, and relish keeps one from being freed from suffering, so relish is the very condition of defilement. Second, observe the aggregates' great faults and calamities — their impermanence, suffering, emptiness, no-self — for only by truly seeing the danger does one come to weariness, the condition of purity; ordinary beings prize the five aggregates as a treasure and cling to them all the more tightly for it, which is exactly why purity is so hard to reach, while a noble one like Maudgalyāyana, at death, let go of the aggregates as one lets go of a poisoned vessel, without the least attachment. Third, observe purity itself directly — whether desire and craving toward one's own or another's body, or toward form, sound, smell, taste, and touch, has actually been left behind, whether some degree of awakening and accordant realization has arisen. This threefold observation is relish, danger, and escape together: relish is the condition of defilement, danger's observation is the condition of purity, and escape is purity's own accomplishment, from cutting off affliction's actual manifestation through to cutting off its seed.

Fascicle 34's Śrāvaka Section teaches ten aspects for observing the truth of suffering, entering its four aspects — impermanence, suffering, emptiness, no-self. The first five aspects (changing, perishing, being separated from, having the nature of a conditioned dharma, and being bound up together) belong to the wisdom of impermanence; the next three (being fettered through pleasant feeling, being unlovable through painful feeling, being unsettled through neutral feeling — since even neutral feeling keeps moving on toward further pleasure or pain) belong to the wisdom of suffering; the ninth (finding nothing at all to grasp as self within the aggregates) belongs to the wisdom of emptiness; and the tenth (being unable to master oneself, since the aggregates simply arise from conditions) belongs to the wisdom of no-self. Fascicle 34 explains this in full; here it need only be introduced. One likewise observes the truth of the cause through cause, gathering, arising, and condition; the truth of cessation through cessation, calm, excellence, and departure; and the truth of the path through path, suchness, practice, and deliverance — sixteen aspects altogether cultivated within calm abiding, through which the noble path is realized.

The first five kinds of wisdom belong to the wisdom of the abiding of dharmas; the last four belong to nirvāṇa-wisdom. Only by relying on the dharma-abiding wisdom can nirvāṇa-wisdom be realized. Without all five, one cannot genuinely know the aggregates by the truths' own principle — mere realization is still required, not mere intellectual understanding. And even having that knowledge, without also fully realizing the four truths one cannot go on to cut off affliction with the antidote's power and transcend the aggregates entirely; only a fourth-fruit arhat transcends them completely, never again to take up a future aggregated body. With this, the nine kinds of wisdom are fully explained — corresponding to the Saṃyukta Āgama's thirty-seventh and thirty-eighth sūtras.

An ordinary being's mind is never at ease, forever burdened by concern for their own body, their possessions, or their relationships with others; one who has accomplished the observation of no-self carries none of this burden — watching the body as one watches grass or wood, even scraped to the bone and unmoved, since there is no "self" at all among the formations to be cut. A practitioner of wisdom, free of delusion regarding all three times, dwells unafflicted and at ease, and is said to belong to the category of clarity.

Whoever fails to understand the formations of all three times as impermanent stands opposite the non-deluded abiding just explained, and so is said to abide in delusion, covered over by ignorance.

Greed, hatred, and delusion each show a different face depending on the conditions that give rise to them, and so each carries many further names, unpacked one by one below.

Greed arises through nearness to unwholesome companions, hearing false teaching, unwise attention, or simply through habitual forgetfulness, taking either discriminated or innate form. Delight is joy toward a not-yet-met but hoped-for object; craving is attachment to the desired object of the five senses; cherishing is lingering attachment to the past; gladness is delight in a satisfying thought already achieved; desire is the wish to obtain what is not yet had and to enjoy what already is; intimacy is the wish to draw near a loved object; fondness is simple pleasure in an agreeable object; hoarding is self-love, cherishing one's own being; guarding is love extended to another's being; clinging is pursuing desired objects without any restraint; wishing is the defiled longing that loved objects provoke; indulging is settled, unwilling-to-release attachment to what is already had; love is joy and pleasure in what is loved; attachment is settled enjoyment; and thirst is craving redoubled, an ever-unsatisfied wanting more. Together these are greed's fifteen names.

Hatred, like greed, may be discriminated or innate — some are simply born quick-tempered, flaring at the slightest discomfort. Ill will is displeasure verging on the wish to harm; aversion is distaste; anger is one of the three poisons and five hindrances, scorching body and mind and provoking further unwholesome action; indignation shows in a reddened, contorted face; the wish to harm seeks to diminish or destroy what displeases; intolerance is displeasure that cannot be borne in silence; defiance is open contradiction and rebellion; violence names hatred's sheer force; stinging speech is words sharp as a blade, cutting the listener though spoken softly; opposition is the urge to stand against another; cruel poison names the venom mixed into an angry mind; venting fury is the release of anger in word or even weapon; resentful regret dwells on "why wasn't it done my way"; sullen dwelling is a settled, joyless discontent with whatever one meets; and sudden turning against is the abrupt reversal from friend to foe, "changing face like turning a page." Together these are hatred's fifteen names.

Lack of wisdom is not understanding the formations of past and future; lack of insight is not understanding present matters directly before one; absence of direct realization is failing to genuinely penetrate the four noble truths; dullness names any settled slander or wrong view, obscuring the mind like a fog; foolishness is mistaking what is not a cause for a cause, what is not a fruit for a fruit, embellishing what is not real; ignorance is failing to skillfully penetrate what can be known, whether the ultimate truth or even the plain sense of ordinary words; and darkness is simply not correctly knowing a real matter, as one blind to wisdom cannot see anything clearly at all. The Yogācārabhūmi Notes point back explicitly to the Compendium of Synonyms' own black-portion synonyms (fascicle 84) — where greed, hatred, and delusion were already unpacked at length — for further detail; the black portion belongs to affliction's own domain, as the white portion belongs to wisdom's.

Six angles distinguish delight from greed. First, by feeling's own basis: joy toward one's own body-based feeling — as the ease felt after a hot spring — is delight, a self-love; craving toward the feeling an outer object provokes — coming to crave the hot spring itself — is greed, an object-love. Second, by timing relative to obtaining: joy that a winning ticket has been drawn, before it is even collected, is delight; attachment to the money once collected, and to multiplying it further, is greed. Third, by timing relative to enjoying: the eager joy of a trip already booked, not yet begun, is delight; the attachment that extends the return flight once the trip is actually underway is greed. Fourth, by means versus object: enjoying gambling as a quick means to money is delight; attachment to the money itself is greed. Fifth, by future versus present: craving for a future existence is delight; craving for the present object is greed. Sixth, by self versus other: rejoicing in a loved one's own honor and gain is delight; joy in one's own honor and gain is greed.

An ordinary being seeking the never-yet-attained first fruit is obtaining the not yet obtained. A stream-enterer, relying on that fruit, seeking to meet the second and third fruits, is meeting the not yet met. One who has reached the third fruit, still seeking arhatship and the realization that cuts off every subtle affliction, is realizing the not yet realized. And an arhat liberated by wisdom but not yet accomplished in the four fundamental absorptions still advances further to gain the ease of a present dwelling in joy, pleasure, and equanimity born of meditative concentration — the fourth advancement.

The Abhidharmakośa explains a present dwelling in ease as the joy directly present through the four pure, uncontaminated fundamental absorptions.

Regarding one's own accomplishment of nirvāṇa, a stream-enterer observes the five aggregates through three further practices, advancing from there to the second fruit and beyond: weariness and turning away toward the aggregated body as a disease, a boil, an arrow, or an affliction; danger — the perception of impermanence and suffering — observing the aggregates as a conditioned, arising-and-ceasing fruit of past karma, inseparable from suffering; and true meaning — the perception of emptiness and no-self — observing the aggregates as a mere conditioned assembly, with no ruling self to be found in them at all.

As a disease: the elements — earth, water, fire, wind, space, consciousness — falling into disorder brings bodily sickness and suffering; recognizing this danger, one cultivates weariness and turning away. As a boil: the aggregates, produced by affliction and karma, are like a poisoned growth, their very nature suffering — wherever conditions meet, affliction flows out from them, dooming one to further suffering ahead; recognizing the aggregates as carrying the seeds of every affliction, hidden trouble festering beneath the surface, one cultivates weariness and turning away. As an arrow: the aggregates' danger is like an enemy's arrow lodged deep in the body, agonizing and hard to draw out; recognizing this, one cultivates weariness and turning away.

The Notes gloss "loss of loved ones, wealth, and the like" as the death or estrangement of loved relatives, the loss of one's wealth, or the loss of one's own health, and "one's own wrong reckoning" as the unwise discrimination that turns such loss into suffering. Because beings wrongly conceive of self and what-belongs-to-self within the aggregates, the ordinary losses of relatives, wealth, and health become occasions of anguish — recognizing this, one cultivates weariness and turning away, completing the fourfold contemplation.

Impermanence is every conditioned dharma's shared mark: the body ages, sickens, and dies; thoughts never cease shifting; feeling swings ceaselessly between pain, pleasure, and neither; consciousness discriminates without a moment's rest. Being impermanent, none of it can hold lasting ease, hence suffering — recognizing the aggregates' great danger through these two, a practitioner advances further.

No-self means there is no self within the aggregates; emptiness means there is no self apart from the aggregates either, inside or outside — hence empty. Through repeated hearing, reflection, and cultivation of calm and insight, one first cuts off the discriminated self-clinging and, further, the innate clinging to self and to what belongs to self. The treatise explains that only after cultivating danger and true meaning does weariness and turning away truly settle — the four-aspect contemplation (disease, boil, arrow, affliction) is a stream-enterer's own advancement, its fruit, described first; the impermanence/suffering/emptiness/no-self contemplation that precedes stream-entry is the cause, described after. In practice, all eight are cultivated both before and after the first fruit, only with a shifting emphasis: before stream-entry, weariness through disease-boil-arrow-affliction leads into impermanence-suffering-emptiness-no-self and the uninterrupted concentration that enters the path of seeing; after stream-entry, the same weariness-contemplation purifies what has already been seen, still resting finally on the same four marks, all the way through the fourth fruit and the present dwelling in ease.

The view of self distinguished explains the third line of perception and formation's verse, "the view of self distinguished, threefold mark and formation," corresponding to sūtra 44.

The discriminated view of self is what outsiders' own texts and doctrines argue for explicitly, clinging to the aggregates as self or as belonging to self — though in truth any ordinary being not yet awakened to reality carries both this and the innate view, not outsiders alone; the treatise singles out outsiders here only to mark Buddhism's basic difference from them, since outsiders alone refuse to teach no-self. The innate view needs no argument at all — even an animal facing a tiger instinctively flees, a pig or sheep led to slaughter instinctively panics, proof enough that every being clings instinctively to its own life. The view conditioned on one's own basis, clinging to a real self within this present body, is called the view of a perishable aggregate; the view conditioned on another's basis takes another's aggregated body as a genuinely real other being, and from this comparison the discrimination of self, other, and others-among-others arises.

Standing before a clean mirror, one's reflection appears; wrongly taking that reflection to be "me" is the view of self conditioned on one's own basis. Seeing another's body then calls up a corresponding image in one's own mind, wrongly taken as another real self — the view of self conditioned on another's basis. Comparing these two, before and after, or against another, gives rise to the thought of inferior, equal, or superior — precisely conceit. Master Yin Shun distinguishes the view conditioned on one's own basis (the view of a perishable aggregate, a direct felt sense of one's own reality) from the view conditioned on another's basis (clinging to a person as a real being, called the view of a person) — the two are quite different, since the perishable-aggregate view concerns only one's own body and mind directly, while the view of a person can regard even animals as real beings without generating any sense of "self" in them.

Where the mirror was man-made, standing for the discriminated view comparing self against other, the water is entirely natural, standing for the innate view, which needs only one's own reflection to arise — seeing one's own eyes and ears in the water and thinking, unprompted, "how fine my eyes are," "what fortunate ears I have." The mirror-conceit arises by placing oneself above another, elevating self over other; the water-conceit arises simply by clinging fondly to one's own excellence, closer to what is elsewhere called pride — arising from one's own basis alone, without any comparison to another at all.

Only the Buddha's own dharma and discipline — nowhere found among outsider teachings — can permanently cut off all four kinds of perishable-aggregate view; the Buddha and the noble disciples who transmit this liberation from generation to generation hold immeasurable kindness toward beings. The Buddha himself, across countless kalpas of difficult practice, sought out and realized this very dharma for the sake of beings; relying on it to attain genuine liberation is therefore called true repayment of that kindness.

A practitioner still diligently cultivating toward liberation, whether for their own sake or for the sake of all beings, but not yet established in the pure life, has not yet fulfilled the hope of cutting off self-view — yet this sincere effort is itself already, by its very nature, an offering to the great teacher, and so is called partial repayment. The Notes cite the Cultivation-Perfected Ground: a teacher who rightly practices the dharma in accordance with the dharma, manifesting complete awakening only to establish the true teaching, thereby shows others how to practice rightly in turn.

The venerable Pūrṇa Maitrāyaṇīputra, foremost in teaching the dharma, once told Ānanda at Kauśāmbī's Ghoṣila Park: beings cling to arisen dharmas as self, not to the unarisen — no one clings to unconditioned nirvāṇa as self, but the moment-to-moment continuity of the arisen body is clung to as self, and likewise for feeling, perception, formation, and consciousness. Using the same mirror and clear-water similes just explained, Pūrṇa showed Ānanda how the discriminated and innate self-views arise. Questioned in turn, Ānanda confirmed the aggregates as impermanent, hence suffering — the truest, most ultimate suffering, known only to the noble — hence not self, not other than self, not mutually contained; observing each aggregate's exhaustive nature across past, future, present, inner, outer, coarse, fine, superior, inferior, far, and near, and its shared nature, leads to weariness, freedom from desire, and liberation, up through all four fruits. Ānanda declared that Pūrṇa's teaching this very method was what had first brought him to the dharma-eye and the first fruit, and that he himself had transmitted this same method ever since — his own true repayment of kindness, a method found nowhere outside the Buddha's own teaching. With this, the view of self distinguished, corresponding to sūtra 44, is complete.

Threefold mark and formation explains the verse's fourth line, distinguishing nirvāṇa with residue — where the aggregated body remains but affliction is already gone — from nirvāṇa without residue, where the aggregates themselves are entirely extinguished, through these three marks.

This present aggregated body was produced by past karma and affliction and by a past craving for further existence; its permanent cessation, at the exhaustion of this life's span, is the first mark.

Not one moment of the aggregates truly abides — arisen, they ruin themselves of their own accord; an ordinary being's afflictions, uncut, water the seeds of language and karma into a further life, so the aggregates never cease for good, only an arhat truly permanently ceasing them. And since every affliction is cut off root and branch, no further cause remains to draw a future life's aggregates into being — with these three marks together, the formations cease entirely, and this is nirvāṇa without residue.

Nirvāṇa without residue must not be clung to as utter nothingness — quiescence is inconceivable, an absolute beyond the relative, neither rightly called existent nor non-existent. The Investigation into the Ground of Wisdom Born of Reflection rejects all four possible positions as unreasonable to ask, answer, or think: that nirvāṇa is different from conditioned dharmas — impossible, since it is only what conditioned dharmas' own cessation reveals, with no nirvāṇa apart from them; that it is not different — equally impossible, since defilement and purity, the impermanent and the permanent, are simply not the same; that it is both different and not different — mere idle speculation, since nirvāṇa is realized, not spoken of; and that it is neither different nor not different — itself a form of annihilationism, equally unreasonable. Nirvāṇa's true mark is only what every wholesome dharma — precept, concentration, wisdom — reveals: quiescent, beyond all speculation, realized only within, a matter where words and mental grasping both give out, known only by direct realization, never to be settled by declaring it existent or non-existent in advance.

The Investigation further explains conditioned dharmas by five marks (the future not yet arisen, the past already ceased, the present abiding in its own mark, causes continuing in succession, and effects continuing in succession) and unconditioned dharmas by the reverse of these five — since affliction, karma, and suffering are neither identical nor separate, nirvāṇa likewise can be called neither the same as nor different from conditioned dharmas; its mark is known only through direct realization.

The dharma summarized explains the verse's fourth line, "the dharma summarized, and further extensively explained afterward," corresponding to sūtra 45 — effectively the four dharma seals, expressed through the three gates of liberation that lead to nirvāṇa.

Seeing the aggregates' exhaustive and shared nature as impermanent and hence suffering brings weariness and, at last, freedom from any wish for further existence in the three realms — this is wishlessness, an arhat's own case. Seeing the aggregates, past, present, future, inner, outer, coarse, fine, superior, inferior, far, and near, as neither self nor belonging to self, no fixed ruling self ever to be found in or apart from them, is the gate of emptiness.

Having seen the aggregates as empty and without self or what-belongs-to-self, one comes to see that what the self depended on — the aggregates themselves — is equally ungraspable, and thus enters signlessness; realizing all signs as ungraspable is itself liberation. Nirvāṇa is called quiescent precisely because it carries no mark of the aggregates or the six sense-faculties at all. Fascicle 50 further distinguishes four kinds of quiescence within nirvāṇa with residue (of suffering, of affliction, of not harming beings, and of equanimity) and four within nirvāṇa without residue. Altogether: the gate of wishlessness establishes impermanence and suffering; the gate of emptiness establishes no-self; the gate of signlessness establishes nirvāṇa's quiescence — the four dharma seals in full.

Firm-conviction desire is an unshakeable, wholehearted grasp of the four dharma seals; intention-accompanying desire is the sincere, joyful motivation to actually apply them in order to cut off affliction. Encountering the seals — impermanence, suffering, no-self, quiescence — and delighting in investigating whether the aggregates truly bear these marks, taking up the three gates of liberation with genuine joy, is desire accompanied by firm conviction.

One may recognize nirvāṇa's supreme benefit yet still fail to actually practice toward it; may doubt one's own capacity to attain it, never settling into pure faith regarding a truth as strange, at first, as waking from a dream; may take no joy at all in a signless object and so cannot abide in it; or may simply feel no conviction, no wish to delight in it — any one of these four turns the mind back from quiescence.

Reversing all four marks — actually entering upon seeing the benefit, believing wholeheartedly that one can attain it, delighting in and abiding in its signless object, and holding firm conviction that truly delights in it — is genuine intention-accompanying desire, the real wish to practice, never retreating from nirvāṇa's quiescence.

Not yet well habituated in no-self, a practitioner reaches the point of understanding the aggregates as merely aggregates, without self — and yet, unbidden, the old question resurfaces: if I become a noble one, where does the "me" of before go? This lingering, subtle search for self is exactly what obstructs insight practice; it mistakes "the formations will no longer arise" for "I will cease to exist," when in truth there never was a self to lose in the first place. Clinging to the view of a perishable self, the mind wavers and, in terror, pulls back from quiescence rather than entering it.

First, take the fear honestly to a wise, accomplished companion rather than hiding it. Second, still moved by wholesome desire for nirvāṇa, let a mind of understanding arise — seeking to truly hear and grasp the dharma — and from it a pliant mind, freed of affliction, genuinely willing to release self-view and follow right view.

Three conditions bring joy in hearing the dharma resolve one's fear: a worthy teacher able to actually address the problem, a teaching genuinely equal to freeing one from the three defilements of affliction, karma, and suffering, and one's own capacity to receive and rightly understand what is taught, without distortion.

A pliant mind's first mark is right view accompanying the wisdom born of hearing — not yet fully familiar in practice, but sincerely and diligently applied.

Guided by a teacher's own explanation, a practitioner comes to see exactly how self-view arises: through clinging to three matters (explained next), which seeds the latent tendency underlying both eternalism and annihilationism, whose actual manifestation is that same seed's fruit.

Self-view is never a single, indivisible thing but always this threefold operation together. The grasped object is simply the five aggregates. The grasper is the four kinds of grasping: grasping through desire (chiefly a householder's clinging to bodies, one's own and another's); grasping through view (wrong views such as eternalism, annihilationism, and the sixty-two views, chiefly among outsider renunciants); grasping through rules and vows (an outsider's mistaken belief that certain observances alone bring liberation); and grasping through the assertion of self (self-clinging built into the very word "I," common to renunciant and householder alike). As for how grasping occurs: consciousness abides in and clings to form, feeling, perception, and formation — the four abodes of consciousness — taking each as its object; form thus becomes the basis of the grasped mind through being clung to and taken as an object, while the coarse residue this clinging leaves behind becomes the basis of the grasper mind, and the same holds for feeling, perception, and formation. Fascicle 89 offers a related but distinct account, worth reading alongside this one.

Fascicle 85 already explained self-clinging's causes through two kinds: the object-cause (inner body, outer matters, or both) and the condition-cause (hearing false teaching, unwise attention, affliction's own seed). The pliant mind's third mark, what should be drawn forth, is precisely the fruit of thoroughly knowing all this: permanently cutting off self-clinging's actual manifestation and its seed, through one's own direct realization of the noble truths, no longer needing any teacher's further aid.

Three stages of a growing right view: the first, wisdom born merely of hearing, has no power yet to cut off affliction; the second, wisdom born of reflection, can suppress affliction's manifestation while its seed remains; the third, wisdom born of cultivation, finally has the power to draw forth direct realization of the noble truths and cut off the seed itself. Right view, like anything worth having, is built gradually — through hearing, reflection, and cultivation in turn — never gained all at once.

Swift penetrating wisdom means the wisdom that swiftly and permanently exhausts every contamination — not a supernormal power, but wisdom into reality itself. The power of wisdom is right view, first conforming to liberation and then to decisive discernment, cultivating calm and insight upon the aggregates' exhaustive and shared nature until the truths are directly realized. The power of non-laxity is diligence, guarding the mind against greed, hatred, and delusion. The power of habituation is patient, unhurried repetition, never giving up before realization, however long it takes.

The power of wisdom belongs to one still on the paths of seeing and cultivation, uninterruptedly cutting off craving and views — an adept beyond training has no further need to speak of "uninterrupted exhaustion," the work already done. "Wisdom" (智) generally names understanding of past and future, "vision" (見) understanding of the present; the nine distinctions between them follow below. The power of non-laxity is simply continuing to guard the mind against the five hindrances once uncontaminated wisdom is gained. The power of habituation is patient, results-blind practice — like a seed sown in the ground: checking daily for a sprout and despairing when none appears only breeds the very weariness that causes one to quit, whereas a digger who keeps digging the same well, without giving up, eventually strikes water; digging halfheartedly in many places never does.

Nine angles distinguish wisdom (智) from vision (見), all belonging to the power of wisdom. By the three times: illumining what is absent, past or future, is wisdom; illumining what is directly present is vision. By grasped and grasper: wisdom knows the grasped object's own impurity; vision knows the grasper's antidote. By the three kinds of understanding: hearing and reflection give wisdom, direct cultivation gives vision — texts speak of "seeing the dharma" and "seeing the dharma, nirvāṇa" but never "knowing the dharma, nirvāṇa," marking vision as the deeper attainment. By cutting off versus realizing: the uninterrupted path that actually cuts off affliction is vision; the path of liberation that then realizes freedom is wisdom.

By own mark and shared mark: wisdom knows each aggregate's own particular character across past, present, future, inner, outer, coarse, fine, and so on; vision knows the shared mark all dharmas carry — impermanent, suffering, empty, without self. By provisional versus real: using conventional names — self, being, god, nāga, army, forest, house, mountain, and the like — to know an object is wisdom; penetrating to the nameless reality beneath such conventions, both an object's own and shared mark, is vision. By seeking versus examining: a first, coarser survey of the dharmas is wisdom; closely, minutely observing their particular and shared traits afterward is vision. By calm's non-discriminated image versus insight's discriminated image: cultivating calm abiding on an undivided object is wisdom; cultivating insight on a discriminated object is vision. By material versus immaterial: taking a material knowable-object's own image as condition — observing its own and shared mark — is vision; mind observing mind, taking feeling, perception, or formation's immaterial image as condition, is wisdom. With this, the nine ways of distinguishing wisdom and vision are complete.

These four skillful matters are simply the thirty-seven factors of awakening regrouped. Observation is the four foundations of mindfulness — body as impure, feeling as suffering, mind as impermanent, dharmas as without self — countering the four inversions of permanence, pleasure, self, and purity, since every affliction traces back to clinging on the five aggregates. Renunciation and adoption is the four right efforts: ending unwholesome dharmas already arisen, preventing those not yet arisen, cultivating wholesome dharmas already arisen, and generating those not yet arisen.

The four bases of supernormal power — desire, effort, mind, and examination — strengthen concentration so the mind, like a foot, moves freely; the four absorptions transcend displeasure (first absorption), pain (second), joy (third), and pleasure itself (fourth, the unmoving ground), progressively freeing a practitioner from every disturbing feeling desire beings are otherwise subject to. The five faculties (faith, effort, mindfulness, concentration, wisdom) take root through repeated cultivation of the four foundations of mindfulness and become the five powers once strong enough to actually subdue affliction; the seven limbs of awakening and the eightfold path are the same practice named differently as it deepens toward and beyond direct realization. All of this is simply the four foundations of mindfulness intensified by stages, here regrouped into the four skillful matters explained above.

A trainee's uncontaminated wisdom, though already gained, remains wrapped in the innate shell of ignorance until purified through this fourfold path: steeping oneself in the true teaching and correct meditative practice, relying on good companions, tempering the mind through discipline and restraint, and, in solitude, letting the joy born of calm and insight themselves become one's wings toward arhatship.

The five stages: gathering the provisions — wholesome desire complete for self and other, precepts and restraint of the senses, moderation in food, wakeful vigilance, good companionship, unobstructed hearing and reflection, the ornaments of renunciation; cultivating calm and insight upon that basis; reaching direct realization and firm conviction in nirvāṇa on the path of seeing; refusing contentment with any partial fruit, growing ever more weary of the aggregates and ever more joyful in genuine virtue; and, finally, the vajra-like concentration — diamond-hard, capable of shattering the very last, subtlest affliction (the clinging to self within the peak of the formless realm, neither-perception-nor-non-perception) — the uninterrupted path immediately preceding the path of liberation that yields arhatship for a śrāvaka or buddhahood for a bodhisattva, hence also called the vajra uninterrupted path.

One's own being explains swift penetration verse's second topic — "自體," corresponding to sūtra 47 — unpacking the five aggregates' impermanence and their fulfilled mark through five causes, taken up individually next.

Unlike a lump of clay, which one may hold or release entirely at will, this body — bound to a fixed lifespan by past karma — cannot be extended by even a single instant once that span is exhausted, no matter how strongly one might wish it. This is the first of five causes proving the aggregates' impermanence.

The present aggregates are the fruit of a past cause, and this very present activity is itself the cause of a future fruit — cause and fruit following one another without end is itself impermanence, the second and third causes. And even the longest-lived, most magnificent beings — the heaven of the four kings living five hundred years where a human lifetime is but a single day and night, the higher heavens longer still, up through the form realm's great Brahmā, the desire realm's Śakra, and a wheel-turning king ruling the four continents — all alike eventually exhaust their span; splendor itself proves nothing against impermanence, the fourth cause.

Every scripture, Mahāyāna and Śrāvakayāna alike, teaches the same impermanence — not as speculation, but as what the Buddha himself directly saw and personally realized as the aggregates' own nature. With this fifth cause, the five causes proving impermanence are complete.

"Wealth makes the path hard" — one whose resources are abundant, whose body is strong and largely free of sickness, and whose virtue and reputation draw offerings from many, rarely feels any urge to renounce; caught in samsara without seeking escape, mistaking suffering for pleasure, such beings pass their lives in idle proliferation rather than practice.

Giving yields resources; precepts and restraint of the senses yield a strong and fulfilled being; cultivating boundless loving-kindness — wishing all beings well and harming none — yields vast and distinguished offerings, since every blessing wished on another eventually returns to oneself.

Wisdom's object explains swift penetration's third topic, corresponding to sūtra 48. Wisdom already attained is subsequently attained wisdom; wisdom not yet attained is uncontaminated wisdom still in preparatory application; unerring wisdom is fundamental non-discriminating wisdom. The fourth knows what is truly absent as absent — for a śrāvaka, that no self is ever found within the aggregates. The fifth knows what still remains as not empty — the aggregates themselves, illusion-like yet functioning, arising and ceasing though selfless, never to be denied outright. The sixth sees the aggregates' suffering and impurity; the seventh, their moment-to-moment perishing. A practitioner seeking to cut off craving and views observes the aggregates through all seven angles together.

The body is roughly seventy percent water — blood and the rest — proof enough it is no true self, only resembling one by its constant presence before the mind. Nor does it obey the will: one wishes for good eyesight, yet the eyes water at the mere effort of reading; unlike a lump of clay shaped at will, the body cannot be commanded not to age or change. Like foam thrown up by rushing water, form crumbles bubble by bubble, always dissolving even as it seems to hold together.

Sense-faculty, object, and consciousness come together as contact, and from contact comes feeling — appearing real, but only ever a dharma resembling reality, arisen from a threefold meeting, as clouds (the object), earth (the sense-faculties), and rain (consciousness) come together to produce sudden rainfall. Like a bubble that rises where a raindrop strikes the ground and vanishes again almost at once, feeling appears and dissolves in the same fleeting instant.

Perception displays an object the way a mirage shimmers on the horizon; it then burns the mind the way a thirsty deer, chasing a mirage's illusory water, only inflames its own craving; and, being merely a confused resemblance of the real, mistaking it for truth breeds the very confusion that hardens, over time, into fixed wrong view. Formation — willed action of body, speech, and mind — is what ordinary beings most readily mistake for a controlling self; but peeling it apart like a plantain trunk, leaf by leaf, reveals no solid core at all, cutting self-view off at the root. Three reflections dissolve it: first, that it is hollow at the center, like the plantain; second, that its many categories all trace to differing causes and conditions, never one fixed "I" deciding; third, that no single decision even persists a moment before shifting to the next, so the very sense of a strong, ruling will is itself an illusion — will, too, is without self.

Flowing explains swift penetration's fourth topic, corresponding to sūtra 49. Every conditioned formation falls into one of two worlds: sentient beings, whose turning is birth-and-death by category, or the container world — mountains, rivers, cities, dwellings — whose turning is the birth-and-death of formation, continuance, decay, and emptiness itself.

By cause: the container world is shaped by shared karma, held in common by all who dwell in it, while each being's own birth is shaped by unshared, individual karma — the karma for a male body yields a male body, and so on, unshared with any other. By time: the container passes through formation, continuance, decay, and the empty kalpa — during which it vanishes entirely, dark as an inkwell, no day or night — before forming again after twenty empty kalpas, an interruption sentient beings' own birth-and-death, whirling like a firebrand without beginning, never shows. By remedy: the container is destroyed in stages by fire, water, and wind at the great kalpa's end, while a being's birth-and-death is ended only by cutting off affliction. By permanence of cause: as long as any being exists, the container's cause can never be fully exhausted, while an individual's own cause for rebirth can be cut off through the noble path. By continuation: the container, once emptied, forms again after the interval, while an arhat's own birth-and-death, once cut off, never resumes.

What ultimately drives craving is simply not understanding the emptiness of self and of dharmas — ignorance itself is craving's root cause, from which every turn of saṃsāra unfolds.

Ignorance-driven craving and grasping drive body, speech, and mind to create the karma that leads to rebirth among gods and humans or among the three lower realms — willingly embraced in the first case, dragged into against one's wishes in the second, but a fetter either way.

Craving accompanied by delight and greed unfolds in three stages, as with a traveler crossing a desert: joy at first glimpsing an oasis from afar; sharper joy on cupping the cool water in one's hands; and full, unrestrained craving on finally drinking one's fill and plunging in, unwilling ever to leave.

Running is toward what one is glad to pursue — the fetter of craving toward present, agreeable objects among gods and humans; flowing is toward what one cannot help but be dragged into — the chain of craving toward the future rebirth and objects hoped for out of suffering. The difference is willingness: running is chosen, flowing is compelled.

Since beginningless ignorance has driven karma after karma in unbroken succession, the aggregates have never once paused — asking when they first began is itself a mistaken assumption of some fixed starting nature, since the formations, having no nature of their own, simply appear wherever conditions gather; hence the former limit is hard to know. And unless ignorance is actually cut off through practice, the latter limit remains equally without end — these are the five marks of flowing that explain birth-and-death's own cause and fruit: craving's cause (ignorance), craving's fruit (karma leading to good or bad destiny), craving's own nature (the three or two kinds), causes succeeding one another (hence the hard-to-know beginning), and the endless latter limit if ignorance goes uncut.

Bound to a place: bound to a fortunate or unfortunate destiny. Bound through ignorance. Truly binding: the suffering of formation itself. Bound in dependence on the future aggregates. Having something to undergo: the many sufferings of birth and the rest.

Neither a fortunate nor an unfortunate destiny grants any real freedom — both are simply binding posts of a different kind, one welcomed, one resisted, but both the fruit of craving and karma acting together.

Not recognizing even neutral feeling as itself a form of suffering — the pervasive suffering of formation, known only to the noble — an ordinary being keeps craving the same kind of feeling into the next life, never wearying of it, life after life resembling life before in continuous succession; this pervasive, unrecognized suffering of formation is what truly binds, more fundamental than either the fortunate or unfortunate destiny it produces.

Contentment (喜足) explains swift penetration's fifth topic. Ignorant ordinary beings delight in and cling to four kinds of contaminated five-aggregate existence, and those who cling in this way are, for the most part, outsiders: contentment with a human body; with a heavenly body in the desire realm; with birth in the Great Brahmā heaven; and with birth at the outermost limit of the worldly path — the formless realm's heaven of neither perception nor non-perception, the peak of existence. What follows matches these four to going, standing, sitting, and lying down.

Contentment with a human body springs from love of desire, which sets one pursuing it — hence going toward. Desire-realm gods enjoy the five sense pleasures without having to work, as though dwelling in a palace — hence standing. Those born in the Brahmā world of the first absorption possess meditative concentration, as though seated — hence sitting. And at the peak of existence, the summit of the three realms, the state is quieter still, like lying at rest on a bed — hence lying down.

Further existence: hoping, at death, to obtain yet another body as karmic fruit — wishing, for instance, that one's next life be as wealthy and honored as this one. Objects sought in the future: greed for future pleasant objects. Objects about to be obtained and now before one: joy as a desirable object about to be gained appears. Objects already obtained: joy at what one wanted, now at hand though not yet enjoyed. Objects presently being enjoyed: craving toward what one is enjoying right now.

The first is craving for further existence; the second, craving for this or that source of joy; the third through fifth, craving accompanied by delight and greed.

The five paths of craving can likewise be described, in their order, by the differences among going toward, standing, sitting, and lying down — four terms for five paths, sorted out next.

Going toward (趨) means heading for, that is, pursuing, and it covers two: craving for further existence, pursuing the fruit of a coming life, and craving for this or that source of joy, pursuing desirable objects in the future. Standing (住) is waiting expectantly for a desirable object about to be obtained and now before one; sitting (坐) is being ready to enjoy what has been obtained but not yet enjoyed; lying down (臥) is the whole craving mind sinking into the object presently being enjoyed.

Mental karma that seeks is the mind's own wish to pursue some fruit, or some desirable form, sound, smell, taste, or touch. Driven by it, body and speech set out to act; obtaining is at last gaining what one had longed for.

Following the Yogācārabhūmi Notes, the third refers to objects already obtained, the fourth to objects presently being enjoyed: there, delight and greed operate together, each strengthening the other (展轉增上), so that craving both manifests and is further impressed as seeds, continuing without a break — this is what "either manifesting or becoming habituated" (若轉、若習) means.

Here craving shows the path it travels by rousing the actions of body, speech, and mind.

Mental karma setting out to pursue objects is going toward; the karma of body and speech, set in motion to pursue them, is standing; the object already obtained is sitting; and the craving mind that, within what is obtained, manifests and becomes habituated as it wishes, pervading every object, is lying down.

The same four terms describe the outsider's four kinds of contentment (a human body, a desire-realm heavenly body, the Brahmā world, the peak of existence) and the ordinary being's five paths of craving. Toward all such objects, joy and pleasure is going toward; idle proliferation is standing; defiled attachment to the fruit obtained and the object present is sitting; and indulgence and immersion in the object presently enjoyed is lying down.

When craving is active, it changes both body and mind. The distinction of mind: as craving appears, the six consciousnesses each seize upon form and their other objects, with going toward, standing, sitting, and lying down regarding the beings and environments of the three realms. The distinction of body: as the mind differs, the body changes with it, so that, following what the mind craves, bodily form differs across the three realms and five destinies.

As the Ground of the Five Consciousness-Bodies and the Mental Ground explain, any moment of mind arises through five factors: its own nature, its support, its object, its accompanying factors, and its activity. When these conditions differ, the mind differs; here the five are gathered into two.

Own nature is what a dharma does not share with any other: relying on the eye and discerning form is eye consciousness, and so on up to mind consciousness, relying on the mind faculty and discerning mental objects. Support is what a consciousness depends upon in order to arise: the co-existent support (for eye consciousness, the eye faculty; for mind consciousness, the mind faculty); the immediately preceding support, which is both the cessation of the previous moment of consciousness and the defiled mind, the seventh consciousness; and the seed support, each consciousness's own seeds held in the storehouse consciousness.

Object: a consciousness arises only when a faculty meets its object. Accompanying factors are the mental factors that arise together with it — the five omnipresent ones beginning with attention, the object-specific ones, and wholesome or unwholesome ones. The fifth factor, activity, is the function of the consciousnesses — for mind consciousness, seventeen kinds in all, such as discriminating, examining objects, drunkenness, madness, dreaming, waking, fainting, reviving, rousing karma, becoming free of desire, dying, and being born. When these come together, differing minds arise.

The six root afflictions — greed, hatred, delusion, conceit, doubt, and wrong view — together with the major, middling, and minor secondary afflictions, accompany the arising mind and give it its various defiled marks.

The body is the fruit brought about by the mind: affliction rouses karma, karma for gods and humans yields a heavenly or human body, karma for the three lower destinies yields a body there.

Following the Yogācārabhūmi Notes, from the Brahmā world downward, bodily forms differ in kind — the distinction of diverse bodies; from the second meditative absorption upward, every god's body shines alike with light — the distinction of a single kind of body. Beings of the formless realm have no body to distinguish. The meaning is as explained in the Ground Consisting of Hearing (fascicle 14), in its account of the seven abodes of consciousness.

Because the mind holds afflictions, it becomes the cause of both bodily distinctions, the diverse and the single. To cut off the body's sufferings, one must work on the mind itself, without inversion, repeatedly applying attention in accordance with principle and diligently cultivating calm and insight.

Taking cause and fruit of mind and body together gives four: where the distinction lies (fortunate or unfortunate destinies, speaking of the fruit); what produces it (the defiling afflictions of greed, hatred, delusion, and the rest); what it lies in (the body taken up by the five aggregates); and how it comes about (beings' not knowing, as they truly are, the formations' defiling and purifying causes and conditions and purity itself, from which arise joy and pleasure and the rest, and going toward and the rest).

Craving different objects, beings create wholesome and unwholesome karma, and so meet the differing fruits of fortunate and unfortunate destinies.

With a mind defiled by greed, hatred, and delusion, one creates non-meritorious karma and meets the fruit of an unfortunate destiny; with a wholesome mind, one creates meritorious karma and meets the fruit of a fortunate one. The difference between the destinies comes from this difference in the mind, wholesome or defiled.

Form, feeling, perception, formation, and consciousness, taken up as the body, differ in many ways: since each person's karma differs, the body received as its fruit differs too, so that even twins are not alike in every respect.

This explains why mind and body differ at all. Not knowing as they truly are the defiling causes and conditions of the formations' flowing, the purifying causes and conditions of their reverse cessation, and the pure state that escapes the affliction of craving, beings give rise to joy and pleasure, idle proliferation, defiled attachment, and indulgence and immersion in birth-and-death, going toward, standing, sitting, and lying down within it. With this, contentment, corresponding to the Saṃyukta Āgama's fiftieth sūtra, is complete.

Practice according with the current (行順流) explains swift penetration's sixth topic, the last item of the summary verse's second line: how ordinary beings follow the current of birth-and-death. Unable to penetrate the impermanence of the five aggregates and relying on self-view, they keep flowing on.

Where: between the two banks of fortunate and unfortunate destinies. Through what: immersion in the river of craving. Relying on what: the five aggregates as karmic fruit. In what manner: not knowing the formations as they truly are, reckoning them as self and what belongs to self. The marks at that time: though one treasures the body and wishes it to last, this can never be achieved.

Rising and sinking in the stream of the six destinies, ordinary beings drift now to the bank of a fortunate destiny, now to the bank of an unfortunate one, crossing back and forth through the long night; whichever bank they reach, they are still being swept away.

Craving is the chief force in the current of birth-and-death: steeped in the river of craving, beings give no thought to escape, and this habit of soaking in craving is the main reason they drift in the current through the long night.

Following the Yogācārabhūmi Notes, the first mark speaks of craving for objects: inclining toward the desire realm, called the lower portion — and since most beings love desire, the desire realm holds the most beings. The second speaks of craving for one's own being: born together with the body, its operation is hard to discern, hence called subtle — unawakened beings constantly protect and love this body, held by consciousness as their own being, without ever noticing it.

The rest, the Notes say, is easy to understand. The third is craving for objects that, meeting fine sights, sounds, and the like, or the quiet joy, pleasure, and equanimity of meditative absorption, cannot turn back. The fourth is craving for existence, that is, for form and the formless — holding fast to the radiant bodies of the form heavens and to the absorptions of the formless heavens up to the peak of existence; the Saṅgītiparyāya (fascicle 1) defines craving for existence as the greed of the form and formless realms, storing, guarding, and clinging. The fifth is craving's own mark: as an affliction, it leaves the mind unquiet and disturbs body and mind.

Beings are swept away relying on the five aggregates as karmic fruit: on both banks, fortunate and unfortunate, they cling again and again to form, feeling, perception, formation, and consciousness, in the five ways of craving just described, and, following the river of craving, keep sinking and surfacing with no time of escape.

Following the Yogācārabhūmi Notes, the matters of flowing and the rest are, as said before, the formations' flowing in defilement, the causes and conditions of purification, and purity itself, which beings do not know as they truly are; and, as also said before, relish is the cause and condition of defilement, danger the cause and condition of purification, and escape purity itself. Not rightly observing the formations, one does not know them as they truly are.

Spelled out, this means not knowing, in order, form's gathering, form's cessation, its relish, its danger, and its escape, and likewise for feeling through consciousness — and so clinging to the aggregates as self or what belongs to self, giving rise to self-view, and drifting in the long river of birth-and-death. Fascicle 85 already set out observing defilement and purification through three matters: observing relish as relish, danger as danger, and escape as escape.

Rising and sinking in the stream, beings treasure and love the body, yet conditioned dharmas by nature arise and perish moment by moment and cannot long remain — how much less this one lifetime's body. Even the heaven of neither perception nor non-perception, with a lifespan of eighty thousand great kalpas, returns to the round of rebirth when its time is up. This completes the direct account of following the current.

Opposite to everything just described is the kind of practitioner who goes upstream, against the current of birth-and-death.

The practitioner who goes against the current is now described through ten marks of the wise, which together include every mark of keen intelligence and wisdom.

Innate wisdom comes from provisions of wisdom gathered in past lives; as fascicle 93 says, disciples who earlier gathered the provisions of wisdom accomplish keen innate wisdom and so are called wise — able in this life to grasp much from little. The second is accomplishment in hearing, reflecting on, and cultivating the dharma.

The third is a mind not easily moved, with body, speech, and mind all wholesome: thoughts that benefit self and others and never seek to harm beings or cling to desires; speech that benefits its hearers, whether noble speech on the dharma or noble silence; and bodily action devoted to cultivating merit and wisdom. Following the Yogācārabhūmi Notes, the mind is called unwavering because the grounds of concentration are called the unmoving, each absorption leaving behind the faults of the one below, up to the fourth, the unmoving ground. Even within the desire realm, some, with greater concentration or wisdom, are not easily turned by objects.

Following the Yogācārabhūmi Notes, this speaks of one whose life is noble wisdom: enjoying the true dharma, living purely by unsurpassed wisdom — unlike those outside who have desire, enjoy sense objects, and seek robes, food, bedding, and medicine for illness from others in ways contrary to the dharma. Hence it is said that one never depends on others for the sake of one's livelihood.

A renunciant, for instance, knows how robes, food, bedding, and medicine are to be obtained in accordance with the dharma and lives by right livelihood, never attaching himself to others through improper seeking merely to keep alive.

What the wise seek brings ease to self and others: for one of the great vehicle, unsurpassed awakening; for a śrāvaka, ultimate nirvāṇa. Whatever they seek, they pursue through right action of body, speech, and mind, obtaining every requisite in accordance with the dharma. A wise householder guards property and goods properly so they are not lost, managing them well so they can serve offerings to the Three Jewels and charity over the long term. In using them, the wise first observe their dangers: they are impermanent and suffering, and enjoyment that breeds craving keeps one turning in birth-and-death.

Illness, too, has causes and conditions; relying solely on repentance and recitation while refusing treatment is foolish. The Dharmapada Parable Sūtra tells how the Buddha warned a sick man who refused a doctor that there are three kinds of wrongful death — not treating illness, being careless in treatment, and not believing in cause and effect — and urged him both to treat the imbalance of the four elements and to practice the true dharma. Medicine is one of the five sciences, and the Buddha also treated the mind's three great illnesses, greed, hatred, and delusion, with the contemplation of impurity, loving-kindness, and wisdom; the wise observe and select medicine suited to the illness, and take it.

Untimely death is dying before one's lifespan is exhausted. The wise protect themselves skillfully against its causes, avoiding needless danger and harmful food, so that the body does not perish before the path is complete.

These ten marks fully contain every mark of the wise. With this, practice according with the current — following the current and, by contrast, going against it — corresponding to the Saṃyukta Āgama's fifty-first sūtra, is complete.

Knowing the mark of cutting off (知斷相) explains swift penetration's seventh topic, the first item of the summary verse's third line. Clinging to self is the root affliction that gives rise to birth-and-death; only by relying on the truth of no-self can one thoroughly know the formations and cut off self-clinging. The ordinary being who has not yet known and cut off, and the noble one who has, are distinguished, in brief, by three marks.

Such a person, though having learned much through hearing the true dharma, remains at the stage of hearing and reflection, self-view not yet cut off — unlike the monks of the Buddha's time who gained the pure dharma-eye on hearing a single teaching. Regarding form, feeling, perception, formation, and consciousness, mindfulness is mostly lost, contemplation of no-self cannot be held at all times, and mindfulness seldom stays; still unfamiliar with suchness empty of self and of dharmas, one knows yet cannot cut off — knowing is easy, practicing hard — and so the first fruit, or the first ground, is not attained.

One who has permanently cut off self-view constantly holds the right mindfulness of no-self-wisdom, meeting each moment of cognition with contact accompanied by clear knowing (明觸) — a noble one freed from birth-and-death, the very opposite of the ordinary being who often loses mindfulness.

The ordinary being with hearing and reflection mostly loses mindfulness; a noble one still in training is mostly mindful and only occasionally not; an arhat is wholly mindful, at all times meeting objects with contact accompanied by clear knowing.

The second difference names three reasons self-view is not cut off; the first is letting the mind leak outward (令心流漏). Toward vast, desirable objects, such a one mostly feels joy, pleasure, and relish; toward lowly, disagreeable ones, mostly sorrow and distress, not wishing to meet them. Left unguarded, the mind gives rise to affliction whenever it meets an object.

The second reason is loss of mindfulness (令失正念). When desirable or undesirable objects appear, even the diligent practitioner cannot fully hold right mindfulness, let alone the indulgent; ordinary worldly people swing between joy and sorrow and so lose mindfulness, for objects sway them powerfully.

The third reason is lack of clear comprehension (令不正知). Meeting pleasant and painful objects, self-view manifests and wraps around the mind, so that it cannot rightly understand these objects to be only the mind's own false discrimination, like illusions — and practice cannot be brought to bear.

One who has permanently cut off self-view is not deluded by objects, and the marks are the reverse: the mind does not leak outward, mindfulness is not lost, and comprehension is clear — even if mindfulness slips for a moment, it is caught and ended as soon as it arises, like a drop of water on a hot pan.

The ordinary being can know but cannot cut off; the noble one both knows and cuts off.

Such a person cannot regard the five aggregates of their own body as insentient things, like grass, trees, or leaves outside oneself; still taking the aggregates as self, they cannot cut off self-clinging.

A noble one who has permanently cut off self-view regards the inner aggregates as one regards grass and leaves. In the Mahāratnakūṭa (fascicle 78), a bodhisattva in whom anger still arises reflects: if pain is in the body, the body is like grass, wood, tiles, stones, and reflections, without awareness, neither self nor other; if in the mind, the mind is formless, arising and perishing moment by moment, neither self nor other.

Master Cháng Bǎi also recounts how Āryadeva, Nāgārjuna's disciple, mortally wounded by a resentful follower of an opponent he had defeated in debate, gave his attacker his robes and bowl and urged him to flee; when his disciples who had not yet gained acceptance of the dharma cried out for revenge, he taught them that within the suchness of dharmas there is no one harmed and no one harming — what was struck down was karmic fruit, not himself — and then passed away peacefully. Truly having cut off self-view and regarding the body like grass and wood, one gives rise to no anger even under unjust harm.

This completes the three marks distinguishing one who has cut off self-view from one who has not.

The stream-enterer, having cut off the discriminated view of a perishable self, enters the noble stream against the current of birth-and-death and, after at most seven rebirths among gods and humans, attains nirvāṇa, permanently cutting off every affliction that would bring further existence in the lower destinies; the second and third fruits each cut off such afflictions to a different depth, and the arhat cuts them off entirely.

Following the Yogācārabhūmi Notes, after entering direct realization of the truths, one cultivates the path just as it was attained — relying on the powers of wisdom, non-laxity, and habituation, repeatedly reflecting on the aggregates' impermanence, suffering, emptiness, and no-self, and cultivating the four noble truths — and so swiftly gathers the antidotal path, cutting off even the innate afflictions up to the stage beyond training, as the Ground Consisting of Cultivation (fascicle 20) already explains.

Having accomplished one's own aim, nirvāṇa, as an arhat, one uses the same method as before — contemplating the aggregates of gods and humans as impermanent, suffering, empty, and without self — to cultivate meditative concentration diligently, and as concentration deepens, body and mind settle in the utmost ease. One who has not cut off self-view still has much grief, pain, joy, and pleasure, which keep arising to disturb the mind in meditation. With this, knowing the mark of cutting off, corresponding to the Saṃyukta Āgama's fifty-second sūtra, is complete.

Perception (想) explains swift penetration's eighth topic, the second item of the summary verse's third line: the practitioner must cultivate the perception of the impermanence and suffering of form, feeling, perception, formation, and consciousness. Master Yìnshùn, in his Collated Edition of the Saṃyukta Āgama Sūtras and Treatise, takes perception and establishing together as one topic, whereas Hán Qīngjìng here keeps perception separate and joins establishing to the next topic, establishing what runs counter to the provisions.

The question introduces the four distinctions listed next.

The distinction of fruit: what cultivating the perceptions of impermanence and suffering yields. Own nature: three angles from which these perceptions differ in themselves. Category: their kinds, shown through the fruit of cultivation and through similes. Means: the methods by which these perceptions are brought to the stage beyond training.

Constantly cultivating insight that observes the impermanence and suffering of the five aggregates removes all craving for desire, for form, and for the formless, together with the restlessness, conceit, and ignorance that meditative concentration can bring. Of these, form-greed, formless-greed, restlessness, conceit, and ignorance are the five higher fetters, the afflictions of the form and formless realms.

Craving for desire easily brings restlessness; craving for the form-realm absorptions easily brings conceit, which usually follows relish for concentration; and relish for the formless realm comes with ignorance, for when concentration deepens into the state of neither perception nor non-perception, one easily feels there is an abiding true mind and comes to cling to a spiritual self.

An arhat has cut off both the five lower fetters that bind beings to the desire realm — the view of a perishable self, attachment to rules and vows, doubt, and the desire realm's greed and hatred — and the five higher fetters of the form and formless realms. The distinction of fruit thus shows that the afflictions cut off at each fruit differ in depth, until at arhatship every affliction of craving and view in the three realms is cut off.

Practitioners may all cultivate the contemplations of impermanence and suffering, but at differing depths. Connected only with the wisdom of hearing — understanding the words without deep reflection — it is merely drawing near. With the wisdom of reflection one enters cultivation, with strong power to suppress afflictions — cultivating. With the wisdom of cultivation, able to cut off afflictions, which requires at least the preliminary concentration (未到地定) and insight repeated again and again, it is extensively cultivating.

In the attention that discerns characteristics, one is still reflecting on the marks of impermanence and suffering — as in the Śrāvaka Ground's long account (fascicle 34) of fifteen perceptions of the inner body's impermanence, sixteen of outer things, three aspects of suffering, and five of impermanence — still cultivating the wisdom of hearing: this is drawing near.

The attentions of firm conviction, seclusion, gathering delight, and examination — seclusion cutting off the desire realm's higher-grade afflictions, gathering delight its middling ones — are cultivating, reaching into reflection and cultivation. The attention of culmination of application, reaching the uninterrupted path that cuts off the subtlest affliction of the desire realm, is extensively cultivating; next comes the path of liberation, the attention that is the fruit of culmination of application.

The three trace, in order, how cultivating these perceptions builds the noble path: the sense faculties are the support, the perception of impermanence and suffering is the object, and attention in accordance with principle, unceasing, is the means — support like a vehicle, object like the task to be done, and attention, the mind and its factors that do it, following along to build the noble path.

Following the Yogācārabhūmi Notes, the Ground of the Five Consciousness-Bodies (fascicle 1) says one should regard the five consciousnesses' support as the vehicle ridden by one going elsewhere, and their object as the task for which one goes; the present passage should be read in the same way.

Thoroughly ripened is the fruit of habitual practice built up day by day. Well received means understanding the meaning of impermanence and suffering rightly and without error; well aroused means rousing oneself to cultivate these perceptions, which serve as a basis for wholesome dharmas both worldly and world-transcending.

Cultivating the perception of impermanence without error swiftly cuts off the seeds of affliction, letting one relinquish even the desire realm's wholesome dharmas and take up and accomplish those of the form and formless realms. The corresponding sūtra 53 compares this to a farmer at summer's end and autumn's start who plows deep and pulls the weeds out by the roots before sowing: cutting weeds at the root is cutting the seeds of affliction.

So cultivating impermanence and suffering keeps desire-realm craving from growing while the higher realms' wholesome dharmas mature and keep advancing — and, as a fierce wind shaking the branches brings down every mango from the tree, these perceptions shake loose craving for desire, form, and the formless, together with restlessness, conceit, and ignorance.

Compared with the perception of impurity, loving-kindness, and the rest, the perceptions of impermanence and suffering are highest and broadest, for every conditioned formation of the three realms is impermanent and suffering. Form-realm beings have radiant bodies, hard to fit to the contemplation of impurity, and formless beings have no body at all; but in every realm the aggregates are impermanent and suffering — if not the suffering of suffering, then the suffering of change, and if not that, the suffering of formation.

The sūtra's simile is the elephant's footprint, the largest of all creatures' footprints. Following the Yogācārabhūmi Notes, the Compendium of Synonyms (fascicle 83) says the elephant's footprint stands for being first among the perceptions of impurity and the rest, because its object is vast — which is why this passage says it sustains well and pervades everything.

Seeing the known object as impermanent and suffering, one turns the same observation on the very mind that grasps it, which shares that nature; once free of clinging to the object's mark, the grasping mind too can accomplish the uncontaminated perception of impermanence, and the wisdom and vision of impermanence arises.

In the sūtra, the simile is a pavilion's central beam, the firm frame on which all the other timbers rest: the perceptions of impermanence and suffering are the frame of every contemplation, and cultivating them extensively cuts off the afflictions of the three realms.

The sūtra's simile: every river flows into the great ocean, foremost because it receives them all; so these perceptions encompass every other. At first, the perceptions of impermanence and suffering are only mixed into wholesome and unwholesome thoughts, and through the stages conducive to liberation and conducive to penetration they are still contaminated; only from the path of seeing onward are they uncontaminated. Yet, contaminated or not, they accord with nirvāṇa (the wholesome roots conducive to liberation), incline toward it (those conducive to penetration), and verge on entering it (the path of seeing and beyond).

The wisdom gained by constantly cultivating these perceptions is like the rising sun dispelling the darkness of the earth, counteracting the great darkness of ignorance in beings' minds. Without deeply recognizing the aggregates as suffering, without holding firmly to the right view of impermanence with the urgency of one whose head is on fire, ignorance lingers.

With that right mindfulness, one wastes not a single moment, and can permanently cut off the afflictions, reaching what is pure and bright white — pure meaning free of defilement, bright white meaning that purity continuing unbroken.

An arhat's fully perfected perception of impermanence and suffering is called the perception beyond training; it is brought to completion as the uncontaminated right view and uncontaminated perceptions of stream-enterers, once-returners, and non-returners, still in training, gradually exert their dominant power. Hence the arhat is likened to a wheel-turning king, highest of all kings across the four continents.

Dwelling alone in solitude and applying attention repeatedly without inversion, one observes the impermanence of the inner body, outer things, and both. From impermanence one finds that form and the other formations are without self, being neither in control nor permanent, and so abides in the perception of no-self — impermanence, no-self, and nirvāṇa being of a piece. After the path of seeing, the noble one in training still has innate self-clinging, and to destroy self-conceit permanently keeps cultivating impermanence and suffering in the same way.

On "accordingly attains nirvāṇa, both kinds complete" (隨得涅槃二種皆具), the Yogācārabhūmi Commentary Notes take the two as the path of means, where one in training accords with nirvāṇa through the seven attentions, and the unobstructed (uninterrupted) path, where afflictions are actually being cut off. The Yogācārabhūmi Notes instead take them as nirvāṇa with remainder and without remainder, citing the Śrāvaka Ground (fascicle 34): an arhat dwelling in the realm of nirvāṇa with remainder has crossed the sea of birth-and-death and reached the far shore, holding only a final body; when the aggregates drawn forth by past karma and afflictions cease of themselves, with nothing further grasped and no continuation, the arhat attains parinirvāṇa in the realm of nirvāṇa without remainder.

Master Cháng Bǎi finds both readings tenable, since one who attains arhatship in any case accomplishes both kinds of nirvāṇa. With this, perception, corresponding to the Saṃyukta Āgama's fifty-third sūtra, is complete.

Establishing what runs counter to the provisions (立違糧) explains swift penetration's ninth topic, the last item of the summary verse's third line. A practitioner who wishes to end birth-and-death and abide in nirvāṇa, yet has not gathered the provisions of wholesome dharmas, is held in place by five dharmas that run counter to the provisions — dharmas every practitioner should avoid.

First: though wishing to cultivate the noble path, one keeps recalling past talk, laughter, play, merriment, and being served and flattered; longing for those pleasures, one finds practice dry and bitter and grieves and sighs. The mind, matching desire rather than wholesome dharma, runs counter to the provisions of renunciation — most easily in one whose resolve to renounce is still weak. Second: because of such recollection, one finds no joy in the dharma being learned and no fit with impermanence, suffering, emptiness, and no-self, and often loses mindfulness, so that nirvāṇa and the ultimate truth cannot appear clearly in the mind.

Third: eating too much makes the body heavy, eating too little leaves it weak and unfit for practice, contrary to the Buddha's teaching of moderation in food. Fourth: loving sleep and never training to cut it off, going to bed early and rising late, one is wrapped in the heaviest torpor and cannot practice the yoga of wakefulness. Fifth: keeping close to noisy company, whether laypeople or renunciants given to idle chatter and laughter, one cannot get away from crowds to reflect single-mindedly on the true dharma, nor apply oneself to calm and insight.

Beyond the five dharmas themselves, there are five further dharmas that go along with and support them, listed next.

Following the Yogācārabhūmi Notes, freedom from desire comes by two different paths, the worldly and the world-transcending, hence two kinds; diligently cultivating wholesome qualities and obtaining the right antidote correspond, in order, to worldly and world-transcending freedom from desire.

Worldly freedom from desire is meditative concentration, which keeps afflictions from manifesting, accomplished through diligently gathering the provisions for freedom from desire and cultivating calm; world-transcending freedom from desire cuts off affliction entirely, cultivating insight within calm to eradicate its seeds. One who has achieved neither — and without the worldly kind, the world-transcending is out of reach — will often grow restless, recalling past pleasures, obstructing both calm and insight.

Not guarding the six sense faculties, letting them chase their objects without vigilance even while enjoying them, one cannot raise mindfulness toward the ultimate dharma received, often loses mindfulness, and cannot guard the mind with mindfulness — this goes along with the second opposing dharma. Not knowing moderation in eating goes along with the third: the body must be healthy to be fit for practice, and too much or too little food makes it heavy or weak.

Failing, in the first and last watches of the night — roughly six to nine in the evening and three to six in the morning — to walk and sit in meditation and practice the yoga of wakefulness, as the Śrāvaka Ground teaches, goes along with the fourth, for the highest grade of torpor obstructs diligence. Being unable to observe the culmination of wholesome dharmas — not knowing what is wholesome or unwholesome, nor what an arhat or a buddha is — one spends precious time in idle chatter, which drifts into talk of others' faults and makes right mindfulness ever harder to raise; failing to cultivate calm and insight constantly through to completion, one goes along with the fifth.

Reversing the five dharmas contrary to the provisions (違資糧法) gives the five dharmas according with the provisions (順資糧法): not restlessly recalling the pleasures of the past; keeping right mindfulness constantly present; moderation in food; diligently practicing the yoga of wakefulness; and being able to examine the ultimate of wholesome dharmas.

Reversing their five supporting causes likewise gives the five according dharmas: attaining at least one of the two kinds of freedom from desire, worldly or world-transcending; cultivating restraint of the senses; moderation in food; practicing the yoga of wakefulness; and examining the ultimate of wholesome dharmas.

The teacher's own establishment (明師制立) shows what the Buddha set down for his śrāvaka disciples who are practicing the provisions and the causes that support them: in the course before the noble path is accomplished, while still seeking nirvāṇa, they are given five teachings that accord with the noble path. Three belong to times of dwelling and two to times of activity, explained next.

A practitioner moves from wisdom born of hearing to wisdom born of reflection, and only then comes to accord with wisdom born of cultivation. At the outset one examines whether the dharma one has heard accords throughout with the three seals: all formations impermanent, all dharmas without self, nirvāṇa quiescent. Reflecting with worldly attention, still working through names and words, is contaminated attention; yet to be free of perplexity and doubt, seeing the matter clearly and no longer half believing, one must at least accomplish worldly right view.

This belongs to the early, shallower stage: when one sits to cultivate calm and insight, one first observes the dharma one has heard, and the content of that reflection is chiefly the three seals.

While dwelling, for instance sitting quietly in one place, one does not cling to wrong discursive thought arising from three matters. The first is the requisites that sustain life, which one does not chase after. The second is thoughts of desire, ill will, and harm that would injure others. The third is being reproached by others: if the fault is one's own, one corrects it; if not, one practices patience and does not keep recalling the harm, since the past cannot be grasped.

The Yogācārabhūmi Notes (披尋記) explain the disagreeable occurrence as any one transgression against the six dharmas that are delightful, lovable, worthy of respect, and free of dispute, that is, the six harmonies (六和敬): harmony in precepts, views, intention, dwelling, speech, and shared gain. Holding a different view, wanting more than others of a donor's offerings, staying away from the community's gatherings, or wishing to leave the community are all examples. Where the community keeps all six, it lives together in harmony; the six are lovable because they help one cultivate the noble path, worthy of respect because such a community follows the teaching, and free of dispute. Going against any one of them is what the treatise calls disagreeable.

Afflictions lie in one's own mind, not outside; without right view, one's own false discrimination produces this wrong discursive thought wherever one goes, and only by applying wise attention again and again can it be cut off.

Relying first on a good friend's instruction and hearing the wholesome dharma explained, one applies wise attention, gives rise to right view, and through right view cuts off wrong view. While seeking nirvāṇa one draws near good friends and gives time to reading the sūtras and treatises; after hearing, one keeps reflecting wisely, coming to recognize form, feeling, perception, formation, and consciousness as impermanent, suffering, empty, and without self, and the truth of the emptiness of self and of dharmas, as the Bodhisattva Ground (fascicle 36) teaches that there is consciousness only and no external object.

Observing in this way again and again, one knows what to do when sitting in meditation and is not weighed down by having nothing to work on; through calm and insight one then becomes aware of principles never noticed before.

Dwelling means cultivating calm and insight, or simply abiding in the monastery; whether sitting, walking, or lying down, these three kinds of right reflection apply. First, regarding the truth one observes, one begins with worldly attention so that one's thinking accords with the three seals; though still unable to reflect apart from words, one must be free of perplexity and doubt about the written teaching, clearing up even the slightest unclarity, since half belief leaves one without deep faith in the dharma.

Second, one does not cling to wrong discursive thought arising from desire, ill will, and harm, and when it appears, one notices it and does not keep turning along with the affliction. Third, one gives rise to right view through hearing and reflection, that is, one cultivates the four limbs of stream-entry (四預流支), applies wise attention, builds up one's own right view, and cuts off wrong view. These are the teachings on the right path for times of dwelling (住時攝).

The teachings for times of activity (行時攝) are the Buddha's instructions on the noble path for the course of daily activity, as distinct from the three for times of dwelling just concluded.

When wise fellow practitioners come to advise one who holds dharmas contrary to the provisions, pointing out what is reasonable and what is not, what is contrary to the provisions and what accords with them, the one advised should not become angry. Among the provisions for the two paths, one should be moderate in food, diligent in the yoga of wakefulness, guard the gates of the senses, examine the ultimate of wholesome dharmas, and cultivate worldly and world-transcending freedom from desire; when reminded of these, one does not turn hatred toward the one reminding.

Nor is the mind vexed whether or not one obtains coarse requisites, or when the precepts require what one must do even unwillingly. In short, one gives rise to no hatred and cultivates the six harmonies. In the Buddha's time, Dravya Mallaputra was in charge of assigning quarters and bedding, and the monk Maitrabhūmika, junior in seniority, repeatedly received the poorest; growing resentful, he believed Dravya was partial and had his sister groundlessly accuse Dravya of breaking the precepts. Yet offerings are limited, and those last in line commonly receive what is poorer; such a moment is a chance to train right mindfulness, to feel shame at one's own lack of virtue, to rejoice in the elders' virtue, or to see it all as mere dependent arising, rather than clinging to the objects of the five desires and delaying the noble path, still less doing evil over it.

When others receive more excellent gain and honor, when they receive more than oneself, or when a donor makes offerings to them and not to oneself, the mind is not downcast or unhappy. One does not envy another's gain; the mind is unmoved, since each has his own causes and conditions.

In times of dwelling, the practitioner cultivates the three: freedom from perplexity and doubt through observing as heard, not clinging to wrong discursive thought about three matters, and right view born of hearing and reflection; in times of activity, the practitioner gives rise to no anger and is not dejected at others' gain. In this way one rightly practices the wondrous noble path to nirvāṇa, through these causes and conditions will before long accomplish nirvāṇa, and will never ultimately fall into ruin.

This passage, already met once in the Compendium of Synonyms (fascicle 83), is read here again. With this, establishing what runs counter to the provisions (立違糧), corresponding to the Saṃyukta Āgama's fifty-fourth sūtra, is complete.

The teacher's own task (師所作) explains swift penetration's tenth topic. These are the skillful means the Buddha uses in teaching the śrāvaka assembly. Rightly subduing (正折伏): when a disciple commits a grave offense or holds wrong views, a formal act of the community, carried out according to the dharma, subdues the offender so that he repents and reforms; if he will not, he is expelled. Rightly embracing (正攝受): the Buddha embraces disciples with the dharma, so there is dharma to hear and practice, and with material support, supplying robes, food, bedding, and medicine according to the dharma, attending to common understanding and fair sharing so that body and mind can dwell at ease.

Rightly rebuking (正訶責): when a disciple errs, the teacher rebukes him skillfully and correctly, so that he knows his fault and sets his mind right. Rightly teaching defilement (正說雜染): showing the causes of worldly defilement, the truths of suffering and its origin. Rightly teaching purity (正說清淨): showing the truths of cessation and the path, the method and sequence of practice, and so the attainment of quiescent, pure nirvāṇa. The first three are matters of admonition; the last two are instruction in concentration and wisdom.

The Yogācārabhūmi Notes (披尋記) explain that disputes among śrāvakas are, in brief, of four kinds, as the matters of discipline in fascicle 99 describe: disputes from another's accusation, disputes from mutual suspicion, disputes from one's own accusation, and disputes from mutual accusation. Since such disputes involve transgressing the points of training, the treatise speaks of śrāvakas who have transgressed. Once a dispute has been settled, the offense should not be raised again; here, however, for two reasons it is raised again, and this is called reopening and ruling again on the matter disputed.

The two reasons are that the dispute has not ceased and is already disturbing the assembly's practice, and that it must be handled through a formal act of the community according to the discipline. Master Cháng Bǎi gives the Vinaya's ways of settling each kind: a dispute from another's accusation is settled in the presence of the accused (現前毘尼); one from mutual suspicion is settled through recollection (憶念毘尼), or, where the act was done in a state of insanity, through a verdict of past insanity (不癡毘尼); one from one's own accusation is settled through one's own confession (自言治); and long-running mutual accusations between two communities are settled by covering over with grass (如草覆地), each side sending an elder to represent it, so that the dispute ends like mud covered with grass. The treatise raises the offense again here because it is explaining the Saṃyukta Āgama's fifty-fifth sūtra, in which the Buddha, after dealing with a dispute in the community, out of compassion embraces the monks once more.

First, monks who commit serious wrong conduct, such as the gravest class of offense, are expelled from the community. Second, a monk whose conduct for the most part fails to keep the precepts and the community's rules, and who repeatedly offends without repenting, may be expelled by a formal act to protect the community. Third, if the ācārya responsible for admonition or the elder upādhyāya responsible for instruction holds wrong conduct or wrong views and cannot admonish and instruct disciples according to the dharma and discipline, the Buddha, though they are senior, has them expelled by a formal act so that the community is not led astray.

Fourth, a monk or nun who commits grave offenses gains nothing from practicing together, while fellow practitioners are harmed and the community suffers, so they cannot dwell together. Fifth, one already expelled by one community may not be accepted by another. Sixth, failing to expel would bring many present faults. Seventh, expulsion is of two kinds, permanent expulsion and disciplinary expulsion, and both aim to keep the offender from repeating the fault: one who will not accept admonition is expelled permanently, while one who genuinely repents may remain in the community. In rightly subduing, the Buddha usually displays majesty and power.

Rightly embracing (正攝受) unfolds in seven parts, all ways the Buddha embraces beings. Dhūta means shaking off: rousing one's spirit to practice, refining away the afflictions within, and eliminating bad habits regarding robes, food, and bedding. The Four-Part Vinaya counts twelve dhūta practices: four concerning food, two concerning robes, and six concerning dwelling.

Some śrāvaka disciples did not like going for alms, though almsround spares one many affairs for practice and helps one leave conceit behind; seeing the Buddha himself go, they too would go rather than slack off, so he embraces them by sharing their activity. The fourth cause brings great light to beings, dispelling the darkness of ignorance, so that later beings will not disparage renunciants for begging. The Yogācārabhūmi Notes (披尋記) explain causing them to touch and realize as letting beings of the present directly see the Tathāgata entering the village for alms; Master Cháng Bǎi adds that some beings' wholesome roots ripen only on meeting the Buddha, whereupon they can touch and realize the true reality of dharmas.

Outsiders, who hold self-clinging and understand the dependent arising of the formations not at all or only partly, see the Buddha on almsround, are moved to awe, and turn from the wrong toward the right. Those who slander the dharma with their voices are kept from further faults of speech when they see his dignified form and quiet deportment, and turn to him of their own accord. Beings of the middle category, certain neither of the right nor of the wrong, make offerings when they see him, planting the cause for future liberation; those lacking faith in the Three Jewels or indulging greed, hatred, and delusion are moved to shame, take refuge, give, and gain great merit.

In the Sūtra of the Wise and the Foolish, five hundred blind people sought the Buddha; when their karmic obstructions were nearly exhausted and their roots ripe, the Buddha waited for them in Śrāvastī, his light touched them, their sight returned, and they took refuge. The eight classes of gods and nāgas, protectors of the dharma, follow the Buddha from house to house, admire those who are able to make offerings to him, and diligently protect them from harm by evil spirits.

The heavenly abiding (天住) means the four meditative absorptions, which the Buddha often enters. By his own example he leads disciples who like mixing with laypeople and monastics in idle talk toward seclusion and concentration; to those who already delight in calm and insight he shows that he delights in the same; in concentration his present aggregates abide at ease, joined with joy, pleasure, or equanimity. Entering the same state as the gods, he can meet with them and teach them; with the buddha-eye he surveys beings throughout the great trichiliocosm and goes to liberate those whose roots are about to ripen.

Seeing him in concentration, his disciples long for him and know that his concentration surpasses theirs. Some great śrāvakas, constantly cultivating calm and insight, penetrate the true reality of dharmas on hearing only a brief teaching, and the Buddha shows that this is possible because of such cultivation. Finally, he urges those attached to broad discussion without practice to give it up: the dharma in words is supreme compared with worldly things, yet compared with reality beyond words it is still proliferation. Hearing and reflection must serve as the basis, and with right view as support one must sit and cultivate repeatedly to penetrate reality.

Embracing through the dharma means teaching disciples the dharma. Embracing through material goods means the teacher provides robes, food, bedding, and medicine. Granting dependence means serving as the disciple's support, helping resolve whatever problems arise. Initial embracing means praising and compassionately embracing a disciple who is diligent. Embracing by expulsion means that when a disciple repeatedly breaks the precepts, he is rebuked, or even expelled, according to whether the fault is minor, middling, or grave, and is embraced anew once he genuinely reforms.

The Brahmā gods of the first absorption's heavens, together with Śakra and the gods of the Thirty-Three, come to hear the Buddha teach. Fourth, when everyone is attending the assembly, the gods follow along and join in hearing the dharma. Fifth, out of compassion for those present, they come so that the listeners' faith grows firmer and they gain more benefit from the dharma. Seventh, they know the Buddha has given rise to a worldly thought, teaching through names and words, and wishes the gods too to come and hear. In these gods, too, one sees conduct that benefits both self and others.

Those newly gone forth are of five kinds. Going forth late means going forth in old age. Going forth in childhood means the crow-chasing novices, aged seven or eight to thirteen. Going forth in youth means those aged fourteen to nineteen, novices fit for the dharma, able both to serve their teachers and to recite sūtras and sit in meditation. The novice (勞策) has just shaved the head and entered the order, diligently cultivating precepts, concentration, and wisdom and training the mind under the bhikṣus. Going forth with full ordination means one who has just received the full precepts and so has truly entered the saṅgha, able to take part in its formal acts. The first three are distinguished by age, the last two by the precepts received.

Not yet accustomed to the renunciant life, such newcomers come to regret what they have done in three situations: having transgressed a point of training, doing what should not be done or failing to do what should, and then reflecting on it; having vowed to receive the Buddha's dharma and discipline, being sincere enough to notice even a small fault at once and repent of it deeply; and having just left household life with a mind set on renunciation, so that remorse arises when they err.

The very highest seat shows how honored the dharma is, and the Buddha sits upon it with solemn dignity. On the second mark, Master Cháng Bǎi explains that the Buddha does not teach disciples who fail to abide in a deportment fit for hearing the dharma: as the Vinaya says, out of respect for the dharma, one standing does not teach one who is seated, one on a lower seat does not teach one on a higher seat, and one does not teach those whose heads are covered, whose hands are on their hips, or whose arms are folded. Before teaching, the Buddha clears his throat so that the disciples know he is about to speak, and surveys the assembly like a king of nāgas or of elephants, everything before him clearly known. This is the Buddha's deportment in teaching the dharma.

A śrāvaka who has broken a precept and feels shame goes to the Buddha to repent in three situations. First, one with a mind for the path examines oneself and knows clearly one has erred; the Buddha speaks of two kinds of strong person, one who never breaks a precept after receiving it, and one who, having broken it, feels shame, repents, and reforms. Second, when a teacher rightly corrects a disciple and the disciple answers back or protests, then later reflects on it and decides to repent before the Buddha. Third, when in community affairs or daily matters one has gone against the precepts, one brings one's deportment into order by various means and goes to the Buddha to disclose and repent.

With this, the seven ways the Buddha embraces the śrāvakas (正攝受攝) are complete.

Rightly rebuking (正訶責) is the third of the teacher's tasks. First, the Buddha rebukes a disciple whose way of making a living does not accord with the dharma and discipline, a shallow and inferior way of thinking and acting. Second, a disciple who went forth because he was sent by a king or by thieves, to escape debt, out of fear, or merely to survive, is rebuked for an impure motive. Third, one who, for the sake of livelihood, gladly engages in improper conduct is rebuked for going against the precepts; the Buddha forbade renunciants the four kinds of wrong livelihood (四邪命食).

Rightly teaching defilement (正說雜染) sets out wrong conduct and its causes. The fault in manifest activity: greed, hatred, and delusion are actively arising, the mind has no shame or conscience, and one cannot give up evil conduct. The fault of intention: an intention that is defiled. The fault of application: either never arousing vigor, or growing lax and lazy in the midst of effort. The fault of wisdom: not diligently pursuing the three kinds of wisdom, from hearing, reflection, and cultivation, losing right mindfulness, and mostly abiding in delusion. The fault of discursive thought: the mind wandering in unwise thought, giving rise to the eight kinds of discursive thought, such as desire, ill will, and harm. The fault of basis: because little was cultivated in past lives, only feeble and few wholesome roots are accomplished in this one.

With greed actively arising, a practitioner pursues gain with a defiled mind and does what is improper; with hatred actively arising, one feels hostility and gives rise to thoughts and acts that harm beings, and delusion and ignorance are present too. With intense greed, hatred, and delusion before the mind, one has no shame or conscience, and so indulges one's evil dharmas without giving them up. This fault chiefly stresses evil conduct produced by the active arising of greed, hatred, and delusion.

When a defiled mind is present and one does what is contrary to the dharma, the intention of greed within is the most inferior; when hostility is present and one harms beings, the intention of hatred within is the most inferior. The fault of intention means that such evil conduct arises because the mind is joined with greed, hatred, and delusion, so the motive itself is at fault.

A practitioner may never set vigor in motion at all; or there may be some vigor, but too slack and slow, drifting along, practicing one day and leaving off for many, never moving forward steadily. This is a fault of application.

Not yet having gone deeply into the wisdom born of hearing or of reflection, one often loses right mindfulness and mostly abides in delusion; having heard the dharma without reflecting on it carefully, one's wisdom does not grow. Without vigor, calm and insight are not accomplished, the mind is neither quiet nor concentrated, and without wisdom one cannot observe matters clearly or tell right conduct from wrong, and so is easily led astray and easily errs.

The evil, unwholesome thoughts that accord with household life are thoughts about one's relatives (親里尋思): recalling family, friends, and siblings, or the times once spent together chatting and laughing. When such thoughts arise much of the time, the mind is not on the right path, does not accord with the dharma and discipline, and becomes scattered and confused. Constantly thinking of family affection and worldly matters is a great fault for practice, a defiled fault of discursive thought, and a mind so confused easily commits evil conduct.

Because such practitioners planted few wholesome roots before, resting on past lives in which the wisdom of hearing, reflection, and cultivation was not cultivated and gathered as a cause, four marks appear in this life: faith in the dharma that is slight and narrow; precepts that are weak by nature, without diligent keeping; mindfulness never trained before, so that one is absent-minded and forgetful; and an innate wisdom, the native capacity of the sixth consciousness, that is not keen.

In short, because provisions were not gathered in the past, the five wholesome roots of faith, vigor, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom accomplished in this life are all slight. With shallow roots, one easily returns to lay life, breaks precepts, or loses mindfulness, and wrong conduct arises. With this, the six marks that together encompass every fault of a practitioner are complete.

First, even after entering the Buddha's gate and becoming a disciple of the Three Jewels, a person with a partly impure intention, lacking truly pure faith in the dharma, easily falls into wrong conduct. Second, one who delights in finding fault, seeking the Buddhist community's flaws and nursing grievances, is a thief within the true dharma, without real faith. These first two marks concern householders; the next two concern renunciants.

Third, one goes forth merely to sustain life, since renunciants easily obtain food and clothing; going forth with such a motive is to fill a place in the saṅgha under false pretenses and receive the offerings of the faithful without merit. Fourth, one goes forth out of fear of a king, of thieves, or of creditors; in ancient India a king could not punish a renunciant, so some who had committed crimes, were threatened by thieves, or would not repay debts went forth to escape. Because the motive is wrong, even with shaved head and dyed robe, wrong conduct easily arises.

The Yogācārabhūmi Notes (披尋記) explain that the first two marks ruin one's own aim as a householder and the last two ruin one's own aim as a renunciant. What is lovable and blameless is called one's aim (義); since the restraint of precepts can bring one's own aim about, the treatise distinguishes householder and renunciant. Master Cháng Bǎi points to the Compendium of Synonyms (fascicle 83), which calls it an aim because it is what is sought and brings benefit, being lovable and without blame; relying on the restraint of precepts to cultivate concentration and wisdom brings this lovable, blameless benefit to oneself.

A householder could have supported the Three Jewels, become a person of right faith, even practiced and realized the fruits; with an impure intention and a mind seeking faults in the noble teaching, he gains none of a lay Buddhist's benefit and stays where he is. A renunciant who practices single-mindedly could cut off the afflictions of birth and death; going forth merely to sustain life or to escape kings, thieves, or creditors, his resolve for the path is weak, he does not diligently apply himself, and he loses the renunciant's special benefit of arhatship, held back on the noble path and spending his life to no purpose.

Wrong conduct of the six or four marks just described arises from two causes: wrong discursive thought regarding three matters, and, before that thought, the grasping of signs and secondary features that gives rise to thoughts of desire, ill will, and harm. In short, wrong perception comes first and wrong discursive thought follows, and this is the cause of evil conduct.

The Yogācārabhūmi Notes (披尋記) point back to the earlier passage on not clinging to wrong discursive thought about three matters: first, the many requisites for sustaining life; second, the marks of harming others; third, either another's reviling and abuse, or any one disagreeable occurrence that manifests, a dharma out of accord with fellow practitioners of the holy life. They should be known as explained there.

When the six faculties meet the six objects, one first grasps an object's sign (取相), its general mark, and then its secondary features (取隨好), the particular details that make it attractive or hateful; following upon these come many further matters, stirring up more and more discursive thought and examination, and the eight wrong kinds of thought, such as desire, ill will, and harm, follow. Anger at a person works the same way: recalling only the face or name is grasping the sign, then thoughts of that person's unpleasant words and acts multiply until anger blazes.

Applied to the three matters: grasping the signs and features of forms, sounds, smells, tastes, touches, food, robes, bedding, and medicine with greed gives rise to wrong thought about the requisites; a mind bent on harming others, joined with hatred, gives rise to wrong thought about harm; and wishing to retaliate against another's abuse, or being irritated by a fellow practitioner's disagreeable conduct, gives rise to wrong thought about the third matter.

Rightly teaching purity (正說清淨) gives the antidotes to the two causes of wrong conduct, wrong discursive thought and wrong perception. The Yogācārabhūmi Notes (披尋記) explain the two practices as calm and insight. To cut off wrong discursive thought, one cultivates calm and insight without error and again and again; cultivating calm and insight here means cultivating the four foundations of mindfulness, body, feeling, mind, and dharmas, settling the mind well on the dharma and turning it toward the path, so that wrong discursive thoughts no longer multiply.

The Ground of Concentration (fascicle 12) defines the signless mind-concentration as reflecting on the cessation of the aggregates subject to grasping as quiescent, with the mind abiding on a single object. Here one reflects on the unconditioned, quiescent mark of the aggregates' cessation, leaving behind false grasping at signs, and the mind rests on a signless object, seeing form, feeling, perception, formation, and consciousness, eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind, as empty and without sign.

This concentration also cuts off wrong discursive thought: perception is the grasping of signs, and where signs and secondary features are not grasped, wrong discursive thought and confused thinking do not arise.

Whether cultivating the signless mind-concentration against wrong perception, or calm, insight, and the four foundations of mindfulness against wrong discursive thought, success requires keen vigor and a powerful wish. One must be willing to cultivate the foundations of mindfulness and the signless concentration again and again against one's own afflictions; one who drifts along idly, seeing no harm in discursive thought, reasoning that no one else knows what one is thinking, has too weak a motive to cut it off, cannot arouse vigor, and so remains defiled.

Why does a practitioner have a strong wholesome desire to cultivate calm and insight, the four foundations of mindfulness, and the signless concentration? First, one knows these two antidotes yield a great and special fruit, accomplishing nirvāṇa and cutting off the round of birth and death. Second, outsiders do not know how to cultivate the four foundations of mindfulness or the signless concentration. In its contaminated sense, the attainment reached through a signless concentration also extends to outsiders; the treatise here speaks of uncontaminated concentration.

The Yogācārabhūmi Notes (披尋記) refer this to fascicle 85: when the formations to be cut off on the path of seeing are cut off, this is named the realm of cutting-off; when the formations to be cut off on the path of cultivation are cut off, this is named the realm free of desire; while only the remaining support is present, this is named the realm of nirvāṇa with residue; when that support ceases, this is named the realm of cessation, also called the realm of nirvāṇa without residue. Since nirvāṇa with residue and without residue both fall within the realm free of desire, the two realms are established as the wondrous gate of ambrosia. The Compendium of Synonyms (fascicle 83) says nirvāṇa is ambrosia because birth, aging, sickness, and death are all permanently exhausted; relying on the realm of cutting-off and the realm free of desire, one can realize this fruit, and so they are called its gate.

Master Cháng Bǎi explains that cutting off the distinctly-arisen afflictions of craving and views, one hundred twelve in all, on the path of seeing and realizing the first fruit is the realm of cutting-off; on the path of cultivation one cuts off the innately-arisen afflictions. Following fascicle 85, he takes the realm free of desire as the non-returner's cutting off of the desire realm's afflictions, and reads the arhat, with every affliction of the three realms cut off and only the fruit of past contaminated karma remaining, as nirvāṇa with residue, and the arhat's passing at the end of life, body and mind no longer found, as the realm of cessation, nirvāṇa without residue. From the first fruit to the fourth, one cultivates the foundations of mindfulness and the signless concentration in this way; abiding in the two realms is already near the two nirvāṇas, yet they are not reached quickly, only through long and diligent practice.

The signless mind-concentration exists only within the Buddha's teaching, also called the inner dharma, and outsiders do not know how to cultivate it. Taken as contaminated concentration, the attainment reached through a signless concentration also extends to outsiders; the treatise here speaks of uncontaminated concentration.

The treatise asks why the signless concentration is not shared, and answers in two parts: why outsiders do not have it, and why it is found only within the inner dharma.

Outsiders who attain meditative concentration, when something is found, superimpose an observation that does not accord with reality, and so give rise to eternalism; when nothing is found, they falsely discriminate, and easily give rise to annihilationism. Most of the sixty-two views arise in this way within concentration, from misjudging the object seen in it. At root they do not understand no-self: from the view of a perishable self come eternalism and annihilationism and, branching from them, the sixty-two views; they are deluded about every conditioned dharma, the sentient-being world and the container world alike, and know nothing of the emptiness of self and of dharmas. Some cling to the body as self, some to one of the immaterial aggregates, feeling, perception, formation, or consciousness, as self and the rest as belonging to self, and some cling to self over name and form together.

Because they cling to self, when a state resembling the signless concentration appears they fear that the self will cease to be, and so take no delight in nirvāṇa, thinking that in nirvāṇa the self would be nothing at all. Not entering it, how could they abide in it? If outsiders truly came upon a signless state resembling nirvāṇa, they would only grow more alarmed, and their minds would retreat. With signs as their object they superimpose, clinging to form, or to feeling, perception, formation, or consciousness, or to both form and the formless, as self; facing signlessness they deny, taking it to be sheer nothingness, which is another clinging. Clinging to existence and clinging to emptiness are both imagined grasping; holding the view of self, outsiders fall into one or the other and cannot enter the uncontaminated signless concentration.

Holding right view of no-self, those who abide in the inner dharma do not lose heart before entering nirvāṇa. They know that there was never a self to begin with, so that realizing nirvāṇa is not the disappearance of a self; form, feeling, perception, formation, and consciousness were never to be found, not only once nirvāṇa is reached. They understand nirvāṇa as the complete stilling of every suffering, seeing only its virtue of quiescence and never imagining that the self is lost, for they have no clinging to self.

Those of the first three fruits, who have not yet fully realized nirvāṇa, do not seek a better fruit in a future birth; praying only that their own inner being reach cessation and accomplish nirvāṇa, they request instruction in concentration and wisdom and admonition in the precepts from other good friends.

An arhat beyond training is glad that inner cessation has at last been reached; every affliction already stilled, there is nothing further to cut off. The afflictions of craving and views of all three realms are entirely cut off, and only the present aggregates, the fruit body produced by past afflictions, remain, spontaneously and naturally tending toward cessation, and so the arhat enters nirvāṇa without residue.

With this, the teacher's own five tasks are complete: rightly subduing, rightly embracing, rightly rebuking, rightly teaching defilement, and rightly teaching purity. The teacher's own task, corresponding to the Saṃyukta Āgama's fifty-fifth sūtra, is complete, and with it swift penetration's ten topics, sūtras 46 through 55. Fascicle 87 continues the aggregates section with its fifth overall topic, cause (因攝).