Wisdom's Object, and the Aggregates Section's Close

The aggregates section's eighth overall topic, wisdom's object, unfolds across four further parts: the two kinds of wisdom together with their shared object, the transformation of pleasure and the other formations, sūtras spoken upon request or unrequested, and nirvāṇa's two kinds — each taken up individually in what follows.

The two kinds of wisdom and their object explains wisdom's object's first topic — the Buddha and outsiders alike observe the same world of sentient beings and container world, yet arrive at entirely different conclusions.

The Buddha and his noble disciples take the very same world of sentient beings and container world as their object as any outsider does, and from this same object arise both right wisdom and wrong wisdom, depending entirely on who is observing.

Right wisdom recognizes the aggregates as impermanent, suffering, empty, and without self, grasping them exactly as they truly are; wrong wisdom, like the outsider Pūraṇa Kāśyapa observing people's sudden anger and equally sudden calm and concluding that affliction and purity arise entirely without cause, grasps the very same object wrongly.

The same object, observed through the noble teaching and wise attention, yields right wisdom; observed through a wrong teaching and unwise attention, yields wrong wisdom — the very same event interpreted two entirely different ways depending on what precedes the observation.

A lamp lit in a dark room does not destroy the table sitting there — it only reveals what was already present, unseen. Right wisdom works the same way: it does not annihilate the five aggregates, only illuminates them as they truly are, impermanent and suffering, freeing the mind from clinging rather than from the aggregates themselves.

The transformation of formations explains wisdom's object's second topic. Pleasant feeling, being impermanent, inevitably shifts toward pain, and even neutral feeling, escaping neither, carries the pervasive suffering of formation itself — the deepest, most ultimate kind of suffering, known only to the noble.

Were pleasant feeling truly permanent, as outsiders claim of all phenomena, it could never shift into pain or neutrality at all — yet plainly it does, proving no formation ever holds still.

The aggregates carry birth, aging, sickness, death, and separation from the loved forward without pause; health gives way to illness, and continued craving guarantees a further birth carrying the same suffering forward again.

Were self and world truly permanent, as outsiders claim, youth would never fade into old age or death — yet plainly it does.

Search the body, the feelings, the thoughts, the will, or consciousness itself, and no ruling master can ever be found anywhere among them — every one simply shifts according to whatever conditions happen to be present.

Sūtras spoken upon request or unrequested explains wisdom's object's third topic, corresponding to sūtras 147-148.

Whenever a disciple, seeking to tame their own affliction, requests teaching on the aggregates, the elements, the sense-spheres, dependent origination, what is and is not possible, or the foundations of mindfulness, the Buddha teaches accordingly.

Nirvāṇa's two kinds explains wisdom's object's fourth and final topic. Complete nirvāṇa is reached by according with a teacher's own instruction, rightly observing the aggregates, sense-elements, and sense-spheres accordingly, and thereby permanently cutting off every affliction.

The Buddha teaches through three kinds of miraculous transformation: supernormal power (moving faithless disciples to respect and attention), prophetic speech (reading another's mind and declaring it), and admonition (teaching each disciple exactly what their own capacity and progress require) — together, complete instruction.

Entering concentration, the Buddha can read a disciple's mind across three depths: thoughts from the distant past, the very thought at a past death, or a thought presently arising — and, rising from concentration, declares exactly what he perceived, mapped respectively onto distant-past mind, immediately-preceding-moment intention, and present consciousness.

Having read a disciple's mind, the Buddha then admonishes accordingly: guarding the senses with wise attention in daily activity, replacing the eight kinds of distracting thought with right reflection on no-self during formal stillness, and, in diligent cultivation itself, permitting the actual cutting off of remaining affliction all the way to nirvāṇa.

Observing the aggregates across past, future, and present, inner and outer, coarse and fine, as impermanent, suffering, empty, and without self, is complete nirvāṇa's second embracing part.

The three contaminations are desire (every desire-realm affliction apart from ignorance itself), existence (every form- and formless-realm affliction apart from ignorance), and ignorance (the outsider's own settled wrong view, whether mistaking sensory pleasure or a meditative absorption for ultimate truth, obscuring the mind regardless of whether desire has actually been left behind).

A worthy companion is marked by eight qualities (settled in precepts, sharp innate wisdom, realization through calm and insight, tireless benefit to others, fearless eloquence, patience under contempt, sustained clear exposition, and language that draws listeners toward the ultimate truth without ever distorting it), and is drawn near through four means (attending them in health and illness alike, greeting and serving them respectfully, supporting them with the four requisites, and following their teaching faithfully, without wavering, whatever hardship it may bring).

Partial nirvāṇa — nirvāṇa's second kind — means partial, not complete, realization. Knowing the aggregates' suffering as urgent as a fire already at one's own head, seeing the danger each kind of feeling breeds (craving from pleasure, aversion from pain, delusion from neutrality), and thereby finding the strength to press on past sorrow toward the path itself — these three conditions together make partial realization possible.

Recognizing the aggregates' own many kinds of suffering — birth, aging, sickness, death, separation from the loved, meeting the unloved, not getting what is sought, and countless further sufferings — as they touch the mind and provoke sorrow, is the first step toward genuine realization; without it, one cannot even recognize suffering as suffering, let alone transcend it.

Suffering's manifestation traces to a seed (cause), ripening through contact between the senses and their objects (condition), and expressing itself through the deep, unconscious habit of relating everything back to self and what-belongs-to-self (its own formation-nature) — seeing all this across past, future, and present finally supplies the will to actually cut sorrow off at the root.

Sorrow, lament, pain, grief, and vexation form a natural progression — an inner ache deepening first into audible sighing, then physical anguish, then unresolved resentment, then a mind thrown into genuine confusion.

With wisdom's object entirely closed, the aggregates section's ninth overall topic, contention, opens with its own seven-part verse: contention (why the Tathāgata is free of it, sūtras 149-150), the sprout (how further existence's sprout arises, sūtra 151), view as the great defilement (self-view as the greatest of all defilements, sūtra 152), the one direction (the single direction every practitioner's training follows from ordinary being to noble one, sūtra 153), training (what should be learned from the ordinary stage through the stage of training, sūtra 154), the four fears (four fears obstructing nirvāṇa, sūtras 155-156), and the distinction in recollecting past lives within well-taught versus wrongly-taught traditions (sūtras 157-158).

Contention explains the aggregates section's ninth topic. The Buddha never seeks conflict — he simply teaches according to sound principle, plain truth, and genuine benefit, sometimes even using the world's own conventional language, yet confused beings still perceive disagreement as hostility.

The principle of dependence shows every dharma as arising only in dependence on conditions, hence without any real self-nature of its own; the principle of function recognizes that each dharma, though empty, still has its own real function — wind moves, water moistens, the eye sees; the principle of proof establishes truths like impermanence and no-self through authoritative teaching, inference, and direct perception together; and the principle of what is naturally so accepts certain facts (earth is solid, fire is hot) simply as reality's own nature, not further explicable. Teaching through these four is what makes the Tathāgata's own speech genuinely "according to dharma."

The Buddha teaches from settled principle, truth, and benefit, never from a wish to provoke disagreement — any conflict that arises is entirely the world's own confused reaction, not his intention.

Ordinary beings contend because they seek to defeat another in order to establish themselves; the Buddha, free of self-view, self-clinging, and self-love, needs no victory over anyone, since another's own benefit already is his own.

Wherever the world's own wise already recognize a truth, the Buddha affirms it too — impermanence being the clearest example, something any thoughtful person can already see for themselves.

Mātaṅgī, a woman of the lowest caste who swept streets for a living, might still be given a grand, ironic nickname like "Wealthy" or "Abundant" by others — the Buddha, knowing the truth, still uses whatever name convention has settled on, without contradicting it needlessly.

Genuine hostility disqualifies speech from being any of the four kinds just explained — the Buddha's own freedom from contention differs from a mere śrāvaka's avoidance of provoking others, since it actively benefits beings rather than simply keeping the peace. With this, the Tathāgata's freedom from contention, corresponding to sūtra 149, is complete.

The Compendium of Synonyms lists seven such terms for the Buddha's unprompted teaching — provisional designation, establishment, discrimination, disclosure, revealing, instruction, and disclosing equally to all — the last meaning he holds nothing back as some secret teaching reserved for an inner circle, unlike an ordinary teacher's cupped hand.

The sprout explains contention's second topic, corresponding to sūtra 151 — the future aggregates likened to a sprout, its cause being consciousness carrying affliction's own seed, and its conditions being the four abodes of consciousness and delight-craving together, drawing forth a future body.

Among the five aggregates, consciousness itself, carrying affliction's own dormant seed forward, is the primary cause from which future existence's sprout can grow.

Consciousness clinging to form, feeling, perception, and formation as its four abodes continually steeps affliction's seed into further self-view, giving the seed a condition through which to sprout.

Even one who has long steeped affliction's seed through the four abodes of consciousness and craving can still, through drawing near good companions and diligent practice, reach arhatship, burning the seed so thoroughly that no sprout can ever grow from it again — like a seed already charred by fire.

Even with the seed and its abode intact, removing craving's own nourishment alone can be enough to stop the sprout from growing — proof that the two conditions are not always both required together in equal force.

A non-returner has already cut off every desire-realm affliction; only a faint residue of craving for existence's very peak remains, through occasional lapses in mindfulness — but since the lower realm's own sprout has already been extinguished, no future birth there is possible any longer.

View as the great defilement explains contention's third topic, corresponding to sūtra 152 — distinguishing self-view, the root defilement, from every other kind of affliction that grows from it.

Self-view is the root from which greed, hatred, and every other affliction grow — cut the root and the rest necessarily falls too, like finding the loose end of a tangled thread; but merely suppressing greed or hatred, without cutting self-view itself, leaves the root fully intact.

Mere worldly concentration can suppress every affliction up through the base of nothing-whatsoever, yet self-view itself remains entirely untouched — proof that suppressing subsidiary afflictions, however thoroughly, never by itself reaches the root.

Before his own awakening, the Buddha studied under a second teacher, Udraka Rāmaputra, and mastered the base of neither perception nor non-perception, the most tranquil worldly attainment possible — yet found self-view still fully intact, no genuine transcendence of the three realms at all. Concentration alone suppresses affliction without uprooting it, like a stone pressing down grass; even reborn at existence's very peak, one inevitably falls back.

The supramundane path cuts self-view off at the root first — even with only the preparatory stage of concentration, not full absorption — and every other affliction necessarily follows; pulling a weed out by its root, unlike merely mowing its blades, ensures it never grows back.

The one direction explains contention's fourth topic, corresponding to sūtra 153 — the ordinary being's own stage, the stage of training, and the stage beyond training all following the very same single direction toward the noble path.

The same fivefold observation of the aggregates carries a practitioner from the ordinary stage through the stage of training all the way to arhatship — deepening in purity at each stage, but never changing in kind.

Training explains contention's fifth topic, corresponding to sūtra 154 — the same five places examined more deeply once the stage of training is reached.

The four fears explains contention's sixth topic, corresponding to sūtras 155-156 — four causes that generate fear specifically regarding cessation and the path, obstructing delight in the noble teaching and in nirvāṇa itself.

The two places subject to fear are cessation and the path themselves — fear of the conditioned formations' own change, and fear of nirvāṇa's own quiescence, obstructing delight in either.

An ordinary being, unskilled in the four truths and the five aspects for observing the aggregates already explained, has no protection against fear when confronted with cessation or the path.

Self-view breeds fear whenever aging, sickness, or death actually strikes the body one clings to, and equally breeds fear through the sixty-two wrong views' own confused speculation about existence, non-existence, and comparison — both varieties of change obstruct delight in the teaching and in nirvāṇa alike.

Three aspects trace the same anxious pattern across time: dread of a loved thing's future loss, distress at its present decline, and wistful longing for its past, better state — youth, health, or fortune already gone.

Recollection of past lives distinguished explains contention's seventh and final topic, corresponding to sūtras 157-158 — both the well-taught and the wrongly-taught may possess genuine clairvoyant recollection of former lives, yet interpret what they see in radically different ways.

Both outsider and Buddhist practitioners may genuinely recall past lives through clairvoyance, but only the Buddhist reading, grounded in right view, avoids the same eternalism, partial-eternalism, annihilationism, or no-cause doctrines that fascicle 87's sixty-two wrong views already catalogued at length — the very same power, put to entirely different use depending on the view that interprets it.

An outsider's own past-life recollection, uninformed by the truth of suffering, breeds only further relish — nostalgia for the past, anticipation for the future, and no weariness toward the present at all.

The third distinction shows how an outsider's uninformed recollection compounds into four kinds of defilement that actively draw forth further existence, each unpacked next.

Karma's defilement is simply the failure to resolve old karma while continuing to create new; self-view's own comparison with others — better, equal, or worse — breeds conceit's own affliction, a wasted, unproductive habit that only obstructs the path.

Craving's entanglement covers hoarding (self-love toward one's own being), guarding (protecting loved ones like a spouse or children), and grasping (attachment to what belongs to self, like house or car); its latent seed is simply this same craving's own dormant residue, constantly present beneath the surface even without active manifestation.

Karma is the first defilement standing alone; the remaining three (view-conceit, craving, their latent seeds) together constitute affliction, itself divided into active manifestation (entanglement) and dormant seed (latent tendency).

Self-view arising alone is simple wrong clinging; comparing that self against others adds conceit — both belonging to ignorance's own category, the root affliction from which craving, the category of love, then follows.

Ignorance (wrong clinging, then conceit) and love (craving following from it) together gather saṃsāra's own cause; the same sūtra collection elsewhere confirms: "wherever right view prevails in the world, though a hundred thousand further lives may follow, one never falls into a lower destiny" — right view alone is the indispensable first step, since craving cannot truly be cut off without it.

Cutting off all four defilements makes both partial and complete nirvāṇa attainable within this very life — an outsider, unable to cut off even one, cannot reach either.

"High sight" captures the comparative, self-elevating character of view and conceit; "smoke" captures craving's own hazy, disorienting effect on the mind.

With contention entirely closed, the aggregates section's tenth overall topic, weariness and freedom from desire, opens with its own eight-part verse: weariness and freedom from desire (distinguishing genuine householder and renunciant believers), undisturbed questioning and answering, the marks of the conditioned and unconditioned, obstruction to the path, the Buddha's own extraordinary qualities, the doctrine of no cause, genuine versus false self-praise and disparagement of others, and the pure combined with the defiled.

Merely believing in nirvāṇa and impermanence is not enough — a genuine householder believer must also recognize the home itself as a place of danger, worth relinquishing attachment to even while remaining within it, treating whatever is enjoyed as provisions for eventual liberation rather than an end in itself.

The second sub-topic of 無厭攝, undisturbed questioning and answering, opens. The two kinds of discernment are: correctly recording, without adding to or subtracting from, the momentary arising and ceasing of every formation; and correctly recording, apart from both extremes, the cultivation of the holy path — neither clinging to the nirvāṇa named in words as truly existent, nor supposing the word-transcending state of nirvāṇa to be nonexistent. Whether facing the stream of cyclic existence or the stream of its cessation, one who neither over-adds nor over-subtracts is the discerning one described below.

A sentient being is only a provisional designation, with no real substance to be found — only the causally-conditioned dharma of arising and ceasing. Yet the illusory, dream-like formations do exist provisionally in the present, arising and ceasing in turn — this too cannot be denied. To cling to existence and to cling to emptiness are both mistaken; only recording arising and ceasing with respect to the formations alone, established this way, is answering without confusion.

To hold that a real Zhang San exists is the extreme of addition, since a sentient being is only a provisional name with no real substance; to hold that no such person, and no phenomenon of birth-and-death, exists at all is the extreme of subtraction, equally mistaken. Like a shadow — with no real substance, yet its illusory appearance does exist — the fool clings to the shadow as real (addition) or denies the shadow exists at all (subtraction); the middle way affirms neither. This closes the answer given to a person of pure faith.

The third sub-topic of 無厭攝, the marks of conditioned and unconditioned dharmas, opens. Where earlier teachings usually list four conditioned marks — arising, abiding, changing, ceasing — here abiding and changing are combined into one, "abiding-and-changing nature," since even while a formation abides, it is already ceaselessly changing.

Taking a single life's fruit-body as the measure: birth is arising, death is ceasing, and everything between — infancy through old age — is one continuous abiding still marked by ceaseless change from stage to stage, hence "abiding-and-changing nature."

Sameness-changing nature: as when one moment of mind reading this treatise resembles the next moment reading it, though what is read has already moved on — like a body healthy one moment and still healthy, but renewed, the next. Transformation-changing nature: as when a body healthy one moment falls ill with a cold the next — an unresembling continuation.

The fourth sub-topic of 無厭攝, obstacles to accumulating the provisions for nirvāṇa, opens. The wealthy rarely wish to practice, being too occupied with indulgent enjoyment, even wishing for many descendants to inherit their fortune; without a good teacher's guidance one does not know how to cultivate discipline, concentration, and wisdom; and death may strike before the true dharma is even heard, let alone attained.

The three, by contrary implication: first, without broad enterprise or vast wealth, one has little occasion for indulgence, since making a living by labor alone leaves no room for a wealthy person's excess; second, one meets a good teacher who opens up the correct way of practice; third, one has the chance to hear the true dharma — as with encountering this very treatise in this life — and, ideally, comes to accomplish discipline, concentration, and wisdom before death, accumulating nirvāṇa's provisions rather than wasting the rare opportunity of a full human life.

The detailed difference among the three absences of obstacle — no obstacle of death's condition, no obstacle of skillful means, no obstacle of a place of reliance — begins with the first: at death, the noble one's six faculties are clear and pure, without affliction or attachment, like casting aside a container of poison, even rejoicing at the body's approaching end since suffering is finally left behind. "The faculties clear and pure" refers to the five wholesome faculties — faith, effort, mindfulness, concentration, wisdom — through which the noble one has attained the four kinds of pure confirmed faith in the Buddha, dharma, saṅgha, and precepts, transformed from ordinary being into noble saṅgha possessing the precepts a noble one cherishes.

The Reading Notes, citing the *Explanation of Illumination Treatise* (顯揚聖教論), gloss the three marks as three fruits predicted for three reasons: prediction by pure confirmation, for the stream-entrant who has attained the four confirmed faiths through seeing the path; prediction by the abode of joy, for the once-returner nearing the fundamental concentration and already tasting a portion of joy; and prediction by recollection, for the non-returner who has attained the fundamental concentration, sees the heavenly assemblies, and converses with them, predicted according to whatever level of merit remains to be fulfilled. The *Yogācārabhūmi Compilation* instead reads the three marks as: knowing the dharma, according with the dharma, and not disturbing the basis of the true dharma — that is, having understood the holy path, following it, and not disturbing the Buddha and one's good teachers who themselves practice accordingly. Since a fully-lineaged arhat's practice is already complete, the Buddha need not predict a definite-lineage noble one's future destination upon entering nirvāṇa without remainder — prediction is reserved for the indeterminate-lineage śrāvaka who may yet turn toward the greater vehicle, extending their lifespan through the four bases of supernatural power to accomplish the bodhisattva path.

No obstacle of skillful means means already knowing how to cultivate the path — drawing near good persons, hearing the true dharma, correctly reflecting, and practicing the dharma and that which accords with it. With these four limbs of stream-entry accomplished, there is no obstacle of skillful means.

The fifth sub-topic of 無厭攝, the Buddha's own extraordinary qualities, opens.

These three marks — the qualities of buddhahood itself, the wondrous content of the teaching, and the mark of self-awakened supreme enlightenment without a teacher — are praised throughout the ten directions in beautiful language and vast verse, giving rise to faith in those who have none.

The teacher-mark refers to the ten epithets of the Tathāgata's merit, detailed earlier in the Compendium of Synonyms and the Bodhisattva Stage. The teaching-mark's goodness in beginning, middle, and end means: joy upon first hearing it; freedom from difficulty in the middle of practice, through the middle-way path apart from both extremes; and, at the end, freedom from the defilements of craving and view, ultimate freedom from desire — the teaching being excellent in both its meaning and its expression, singular, complete, pure, and unshared with outsiders, self-liberating in nature and leading the practitioner toward liberation through the eightfold noble path.

Two readings of "this world, the other world" are given: first, the desire realm versus the form-and-formless realms; second, the present life versus the past life — the future is not mentioned here, since the Buddha has already attained buddhahood in the present.

The sixth sub-topic of 無厭攝, the doctrine of no cause, opens. Not knowing that afflictions are the cause of karmic fruit, and that cutting off affliction ends both karma and its suffering fruit, proponents of this view easily fall into asserting that things arise and cease with no cause at all, not knowing existence and nonexistence can transform into one another.

The three stages — the stage of conception, the stage after birth, and the stage of experience as one grows — each show the formations arising and ceasing, pleasure and pain never remaining fixed; asserting that everything exists without cause and cannot cease directly contradicts this plain fact evident to anyone in the world.

The seventh sub-topic of 無厭攝, self-praise and disparagement of others, opens. Ordinary verbal self-praise, boasting of one's own merit while faulting others' wrong views, is afflicted; teaching the dharma as right practice — one of the ten dharma-practices, opening and expounding the teaching out of compassion so that listeners gain benefit — carries no affliction, and indeed has merit, even though it is, in substance, a form of the same act.

An outsider who merely disparages others in speech while claiming merit for themselves is typically driven by jealousy over a rival's gain and honor — inner affliction alone, harming no one but themselves, and no mark of a genuinely virtuous person.

When the Buddha or a noble disciple teaches the true dharma and practices rightly, no word of self-praise or of blaming others is spoken — and yet this is where true merit lies.

The eighth and final sub-topic of 無厭攝, pure and defiled combined, opens. The eleven marks, drawn from the earlier Decisions on the Grounds Associated with the Five Consciousness-Bodies and the Mind-Ground (五識身相應地意地決擇): past, future, present; internal, external; coarse, fine; inferior, excellent; far, near — together displaying every aspect of the five aggregates in terms of causal relation, location, subtlety, and quality.

"Grasping" itself means affliction — wanting to seize what craving desires; whatever is grasped, however it is grasped, is contaminated, since nothing grasped is ever truly real.

A learner still on the path has aggregates spanning both: uncontaminated while abiding in non-discriminating wisdom, and a mixture of contaminated and uncontaminated once out of that absorption.

The first sub-topic of 少欲住攝 opens. When the Buddha's teaching work for a time is finished, he enters concentration to abide peacefully in the present; some disciples deeply favor stillness and quiet sitting, and the Buddha's own example of concentration strengthens their practice; and for disciples who favor constant activity over practice, the Buddha's entering concentration demonstrates that even amid many affairs, joy in practice remains foremost.

The second sub-topic of 少欲住攝, own-nature and the rest, opens. Three natures among the Buddha's disciples: the foolish and indulgent, without wisdom and given to laxity; the extremely inferior-minded, strongly craving desire; and the able practitioner, who cultivates diligently and correctly.

Keen aspiration for the fruit of the noble path becomes the driving force of practice; delight in its means — the six perfections, the four foundations of mindfulness, the eightfold path, and the rest of the thirty-seven factors of enlightenment — sustains practice according with the dharma; ardent reverence for the Buddha subdues conceit and wrong view; and strong pure faith in the teaching itself sustains diligent study and meditation.

The third sub-topic of 少欲住攝, recording three, opens — here speaking in terms of the śrāvaka vehicle: the arhat's exhaustion-wisdom, non-arising-wisdom, and unlearner's right-view-wisdom are the supremacy of wondrous wisdom; constant abiding in the highest equanimity, body, speech, and mind all according with the noble dharma, is the supremacy of right practice; and complete liberation from the afflictions of craving and view is the supremacy of liberation.

Exhaustion-wisdom, from the complete exhaustion of craving and view; non-arising-wisdom, knowing there is no further rebirth in the three realms; the unlearner's supramundane, uncontaminated right view — together the arhat's supreme wisdom. Unmoving mind-liberation is the sharp-faculty, non-regressing arhat, whose holy path and concentration, gained through uncontaminated power, never fall away.

Stream-entrants, once-returners, and non-returners still have something above them — the arhat's own wondrous wisdom, right practice, and liberation. Whether an arhat is liberated by wisdom alone or liberated both ways, since the seeds of craving and view are extinguished, the mind is at ease at every moment, and every task of practice is complete — hence every arhat, regardless of the depth of concentration attained, delights in swift penetration. With this, recording three (記三)'s account of the three supreme things closes.

The fourth sub-topic of 少欲住攝, recording three (記三), continues with the second of its three matters recorded — self-view (薩迦耶見) — examined across both an ordinary being's stage and a stream-entrant's stage of seeing, by four angles: its own-nature, the location it depends on, the affliction it co-arises with, and the fruit it obstructs.

Self-view arises by computing the five aggregates, taken together or separately, as self or as belonging to self — the aggregates within a self, a self within the aggregates, or the aggregates as something a self possesses. Taking the aggregates as its object, whenever the body changes — gaining or losing weight, say — the mind naturally attributes the change to "myself," not realizing this is merely earth- and water-element increasing or decreasing, with no self to be found; a pleasing object breeds firm attachment, an unpleasant one breeds dejection, and either way attachment to self and what is self's own only grows.

"Co-arising" is craving arising equally alongside self-view: not knowing an object is empty of self and of what belongs to self, contact conditioned by the root ignorance of grasping-view breeds feeling — pleasant, painful, or neutral — and feeling in turn breeds ever more self-love. In the fuller sequence, the "elements" are the seed-cause, namely the ignorance of self-grasping and dharma-grasping present within the five aggregates; from this, contact with varying objects breeds varying feelings, feeling breeds craving, and craving breeds grasping to secure the self ever further. Since every link in this chain is dependently arisen, every link is necessarily impermanent.

The first moment is an ordinary being's preparatory examination of the five aggregates through mundane right view before entering the path of seeing; the second is at the attainment of stream-entry itself; the third is a non-returner's approach to the vajra-like concentration that yields arhatship — self-view can obstruct at each.

An ordinary being, still bearing self-view's latent tendency, cultivates the four noble truths and comes to doubt self and self's own only partially — but at the threshold of direct realization, fear surfaces: not that the formations will cease, but that "I" will disappear. This mistaken fear of annihilation, not the true nature of nirvāṇa, is what causes the mind to shrink back from entering it.

Even a stream-entrant who has already attained direct realization may still think "I am the one who has realized" — the discriminated self-view is removed, but the innate latent tendency lingers even through the non-returner stage, surfacing as conceit whenever mindfulness lapses, comparing itself to others as superior, equal, or inferior. The first two stages' obstruction comes from the latent tendency itself; the third, near arhatship, comes only from its lingering habitual residue.

The third sub-topic of 少欲住攝, recording three (記三), covers recording the formations, the three places, and consolation. Recording the formations begins with correct recording by five aspects: own-nature, the root of flow and cessation, cessation, flow, and the means of flow and cessation — the first being simply the own-nature of the five aggregates themselves.

The same word, desire, roots both directions: craving for continued existence anywhere in the three realms — even a modest human birth or the first dhyāna's retinue of Brahmā — roots one in flow, while wholesome desire for practice, cultivated to the exhaustion of the contaminants, roots one in cessation.

Since an arhat still has the five aggregates yet no more affliction, affliction cannot simply be the aggregates themselves; and since affliction plainly does cease, it cannot be some separate unconditioned entity either. Cutting off affliction is not eliminating the body and mind, but removing the ignorance-driven grasping within them — correct wisdom leaves form, feeling, perception, formation, and consciousness intact, only now free of contamination, no longer the five grasping-aggregates.

This "designated as having only two kinds of cause" refers back to the three conditions for the formations' growth given earlier — past karma and affliction, aspiration, and present conditions — with present conditions set aside here, leaving only karma/affliction and aspiration as causes drawing forth a future life, since present formations themselves need no further "drawing forth." Present causes, by contrast, sustain what already exists: the four great elements for form, contact for the mental factors, and the mutual dependence of consciousness and name-and-form for the mind-king itself.

The sūtras often liken the six sense-gates to an empty village: external form, sound, smell, taste, touch, and mental objects are like thieves seeking to plunder — but an empty village, with no one living inside, offers nothing to steal. Only because a self is presupposed does craving arise when the six objects are encountered at all; without that presupposed self, seeing a sight is simply seeing a sight, and the "thief" finds no treasury of merit to rob.

Recording the three places, the second matter of recording three (記三), opens. The three places are: the view of self and what belongs to self, that is, self-view itself; discriminated conceit, arising from comparing oneself to others once self-view is present; and innate conceit, arising spontaneously whenever mindfulness lapses. Only a noble one, having realized non-self, can truthfully report whether self-grasping or conceit remains within; an ordinary being has no access to this except by hearsay from a good teacher.

Self-view is the first place; discriminated conceit, which relies on self-view to arise, is the second. Even after a stream-entrant cuts off self-view and its discriminated conceit, the innate conceit tied to the still-uncut seed of self-grasping continues to manifest as before, right up until arhatship.

Discriminated conceit, once self-view is cut off at stream-entry, never returns; but innate conceit's seed remains until the path is fully cultivated at arhatship, surfacing briefly whenever mindfulness lapses, kept alive only by self-view's lingering habitual residue rather than by self-view itself.

An ordinary being's comparison of self to others is so habitual that even the general reflection on impermanence, suffering, and non-self across all five aggregates cannot fully settle it — let alone the more particular reflection on each aggregate's own mark, where the mind readily falls into judging appearance, wealth, background, and body.

Self-view's discriminated seed and manifestation are both cut off by a noble one, though its habitual residue lingers through the learner stages; conceit, by contrast, has neither its seed nor its manifestation cut off until arhatship — a still more stubborn affliction.

Even a stream-entrant or once-returner may still have a household life, and a non-returner may still relish existence in the higher realms — wherever any desire remains uncut by the path of cultivation, conceit's entanglement, comparing self as superior, equal, or inferior, keeps recurring through it.

Recording consolation (記慰問), the third and final matter of recording three (記三), opens — the ordinary courtesies fellow practitioners extend one another.

"Troubled in mind" asks about mental suffering — is the illness weighing heavily on your spirits? "Body under duress" asks about physical suffering — is the pain bearing down on the body itself?

"Blameless contact" points back to the Śrāvaka Stage's teaching on eating: taking food neither for indulgence nor adornment, but to relieve hunger and thirst, sustain the holy life, and abide without fault or affliction. The Decisions gloss four terms there: the old feeling of hunger arising from past karma; the painful feeling of craving and aversion bred around food; nurture, which strengthens the body to aid concentration and the joy of dwelling in the present dharma; and being without fault, meaning the food's source is proper and the mind free of greed while eating — the true field of merit. Peaceful abiding, ultimately, is not bodily ease but the mind's ease once affliction is cut off.

The fourth sub-topic of 少欲住攝, resembling the true dharma (似正法), opens. The Buddha's actual teaching is that an arhat, having only cut off self-grasping and not yet dharma-grasping, still carries a non-defiling ignorance regarding the ultimate, non-abiding nirvāṇa of the greater vehicle — hence sometimes "non-conforming" toward the unconditioned. Those holding this resembling-but-false view misread "non-conforming" instead as meaning that after an arhat's parinirvāṇa, nothing at all persists — an annihilationist misreading, since after parinirvāṇa there is no further discrimination to be conforming or non-conforming about in the first place.

Refuting the four false claims (斥四法), the second matter, is a single terse verdict: the view just stated, however plausible it sounds, is a resemblance of the true dharma, not the true dharma itself.

Clarifying its cutting-off (明彼斷), the third matter, opens: fellow practitioners correct this view out of compassion, to spare the holder a fall into the lower destinies through propagating it, and out of reverence for the teaching itself, to keep it from being obscured by a distorted reading.

The four turnings are four verbal designations: conditioned, unconditioned, neither-conditioned-nor-unconditioned, and neither-unconditioned-nor-conditioned. Provisionally, nirvāṇa with remainder is designated conditioned and nirvāṇa without remainder is designated unconditioned; from the word-transcending ultimate truth, however, the conditioned is neither conditioned nor unconditioned, and the unconditioned is neither unconditioned nor conditioned. Whether by conventional or ultimate truth, no flowing-on or ceasing "person" can ever be found.

Even śrāvaka, solitary-realizer, and buddha are themselves only provisional names — an uncontaminated conditioned dharma while abiding with remainder, and a provisionally-designated unconditioned once entering nirvāṇa without remainder. But the ultimate truth's own word-transcending nature admits no such duality: "conditioned" as spoken is not truly conditioned, since the word itself is only a designation answering to nothing substantial, and likewise "unconditioned" as spoken is not truly unconditioned — both terms exist only to point beings toward what language itself cannot reach. Since neither by conventional designation nor by ultimate reality can any flowing-on or ceasing person be pinned down, the mistaken view collapses on either reading.

The benefits of cutting off (斷勝利), the last matter under clarifying its cutting-off, opens with the promise of six marks of awakening that dissolve the mistaken view for good.

Every contaminated consciousness utterly ceasing in the present life is "extinguishing"; the learner's liberation, cutting off the discriminated afflictions and attaining the realm of cutting-off, is "tranquility"; the unlearner's liberation, cutting off both discriminated and innate affliction along with the suffering of future existence and attaining the realm of departure, is "coolness"; and passing from nirvāṇa with remainder into nirvāṇa without remainder, the retribution-body entirely exhausted, is "eternal submergence." Together with impermanence and suffering, these six marks constitute the full awakening.

Refuting non-cutting-off (斥未斷), the fourth and final matter of resembling the true dharma (似正法), opens. The five aggregates are, in truth, an enemy causing suffering — yet the ordinary being clings to them as self or self's own, the root cause driving the great suffering of saṃsāra and, in this very life, blocking the noble wisdom that alone could end it.

Not recognizing self-view itself as the true enemy, the ordinary being instead treats the five aggregates as something to please and protect — pursuing every agreeable sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch to keep them satisfied — never suspecting that this very accommodation is what lets the enemy draw close enough to strike, binding one ever more tightly to the cycle of birth-and-death.

The fifth sub-topic of 少欲住攝, the place of doubt and delusion (疑癡處所), opens. Relying on self-view, the view of existence takes the aggregates to be eternal, the view of non-existence takes them to end in nothingness at death — outsiders, seeing the Buddha condemn both views yet still predict rebirth for one disciple and no-rebirth for another, mistake this for a contradiction, not understanding that neither prediction implies any real, continuing self at all.

The same two causes as before — uncut self-view, and the false imagining of a flowing-on or ceasing person — and the same two antidotes — teaching impermanence and non-self in sequence, and the four turnings showing no such person can be found — apply here as well.

"Hard to enter" is spoken from the standpoint of the dharma-nature itself, profound and difficult to realize; "hard to understand" is spoken from the standpoint of the outsiders themselves, who lack the subtle, careful examination needed to grasp it — even the conceptual, verbal notion of non-self they may form only resembles, and does not actually reach, the true word-transcending non-self nature.

Non-self's nature is beyond the reach of mere words or thoughts — saying "eating an apple" or picturing it is not the same as tasting it — so any verbal or conceptual grasp of non-self only resembles its profundity without truly touching it (non-deceptiveness); it must be personally verified through calming-and-insight rather than merely heard about, even from a buddha's own words (self-realized); and, per the ultimate truth's five marks — apart from verbal designation, without duality, beyond the domain of speculation, beyond sameness-or-difference between all dharmas, and pervading everything with one taste — it lies entirely outside what conceptual thought or logical inference, both bound to dualistic verbal marks, could ever reach (uncommon meaning).

The Compendium glosses "subtle" as penetrating the profound meaning of true reality; "thorough" as able to realize every meaning fully; "wise" as joined with wisdom cultivated through learning; and "sagacious" as joined with innate wisdom accumulated from past lives — different wording here for the same substance. With this, difficulty of entry and difficulty of understanding (難入難了) together are closed.

Teaching-wisdom is an ordinary being's dharma-abiding wisdom, built from hearing, reflecting, and the contaminated wisdom of cultivation; realization-wisdom is the uncontaminated root wisdom of the learner and unlearner, together with the mundane wisdom subsequently attained from it.

The sixth sub-topic of 少欲住攝, not recording (不記), opens — the well-known fourteen unanswerable questions, among them whether the Tathāgata exists, does not exist, both, or neither after death, all set aside by the Buddha as bringing no benefit to answer.

The seventh sub-topic of 少欲住攝, transformation and decay (變壞), opens.

Bodily decline with age is one kind of decay; the grief an ordinary being feels while the faculties fail is a second, distinct kind — the mind's own old age and sickness layered on top of the body's.

The eighth sub-topic of 少欲住攝, the great teacher's prediction (大師記), opens. Good grasping of the dharma and good reflection come from hearing, reflecting, and cultivating; good manifestation and good penetration come from realizing things as they truly are and the full range of what there is — together enabling both a disciple's proper question and the Buddha's skillful answer.

The four kinds of grasping — grasping at sensual desire, grasping at views, grasping at self-referential statements, and grasping at precepts and vows — must be cut off through wisdom that penetrates both the shared and particular marks of the formations; this treatise on their cutting-off and full knowing is the basis for both a disciple's proper question and the teacher's proper answer.

The first asks what the four graspings themselves are — their own-nature; the second asks how to eliminate them.

Outsider teachers, though they too speak of cutting off and fully knowing affliction, can never establish a complete teaching for it: those who renounce household life can teach cutting off grasping at sensual desire, but not at views, precepts, or self-statement; those who additionally differ from other outsiders in view, while sharing their precepts, can partially address grasping at views as well; those who differ in precepts too can partially address grasping at precepts as well — but grasping at self-referential statements, since every outsider without exception still holds some notion of self, is never addressed by any outsider teaching regarding either themselves or others. And even where outsiders suppress some grasping through concentration, its seed remains unuprooted and can manifest again in future lives — so no outsider ever achieves the ultimate release from the three realms that the inner teaching, opposite to all this, provides.

Because of self-grasping, when one's own body or mind that has already been attained changes for the worse — health failing, a loved one lost — grief and sorrow follow directly.

Craving what has not yet been gained drives all manner of unwholesome bodily and verbal action in pursuit of it — the second fault of uncut grasping, to be followed by the four kinds of suffering such pursuit gives rise to.

The ninth sub-topic of 少欲住攝, the three views' fullness (三見滿), opens.

The first is, strictly, still an ordinary being — one at the summit stage of preparatory practice, endowed with undistorted mundane right view and so loosely termed a "worthy one" though not yet a noble one in the strict sense; the second is the learner from stream-entry through the path toward arhatship; the third is the arhat.

Having already accomplished mundane dharma-abiding wisdom, the summit-stage practitioner is freed from the many sufferings bred by outsiders' self-view-driven disputes; the learner, though not yet fully purified, no longer falls to the evil destinies; the arhat, view fully purified, is entirely free of the suffering of any further existence at all.

Surpassing contention (超違諍苦), the first of the three sufferings surpassed, begins its detailed account with the outsiders' views themselves, in five clusters: theories built directly on a self; the various theories of permanence, absence of cause, finitude, annihilation, or nirvāṇa already present in this life; theories denying rebirth and another world; theories of "life" as identical to or apart from the body; and theories built on divination, astrology, and omen-reading.

Contention arises from clashing desires — over possessions, honor, or even an unclaimed object of shared fascination — and from clashing views, whether self-view, annihilationism, eternalism, or the no-cause and wrong-cause theories, each breeding its own quarrels.

Losing a debate breeds immediate grief; winning breeds a subtler suffering, as the victor works to suppress the losing faction — as when, in India before Aśvaghoṣa's time, Buddhist teachers who lost debates were, by royal decree obtained by the victorious outsiders, forbidden even to ring bells or chant — and grows ever more attached to their own view as the sole purity, stirring up further speculation and inner unrest.

The summit-stage practitioner within the Buddha's teaching, whose mundane right view toward non-self is already firm and full, has already left behind every one of these contention-born sufferings that plague outsiders still caught in the sixty-two views.

Surpassing the evil destinies (超惡趣苦), the second of the three sufferings, opens: dharma-wisdom knows the desire realm's own aggregates directly, while inferential wisdom reasons by analogy to the unseen form and formless realms, both converging on the same suffering, emptiness, impermanence, and non-self. The Decisions describe this gathering into "one mass, one heap" as realizing the ālaya-consciousness holds every conditioned dharma of the three realms as a single accumulation with nothing real to be found within it — repeated cultivation of this truth-as-object gradually transforms the basis, eventually eliminating the ālaya-consciousness's defiled seeds entirely. The remaining practices besides impermanence are suffering, emptiness, and non-self.

The summit-stage practitioner still has the suffering of the evil destinies and of future existence ahead, plus the ordinary suffering of the present body; the learner has only future existence's suffering left, plus the present body's; the arhat has cut off every suffering but the present body's own — and even that, since formations are known through and through as illusion-like, no longer disturbs the mind.

The tenth and final sub-topic of 少欲住攝 — and, with it, the final sub-topic of the entire aggregates section (行擇攝) — the outsiders' foolish marks and the rest (外愚相等), opens. Besides the five marks of the foolish outsider, this topic's "and the rest" also covers the Buddha's lion's roar, the distinction between the theory of self and the theory of non-self, and the distinction between the learner and the unlearner.

Even a genuinely sharp-witted outsider cannot escape the conceit of their own cleverness, let alone a dull one; craving honor breeds self-praise and disparagement of others; and when offered correction by a noble one, the outsider's response is hostility rather than gratitude — three marks of the same underlying foolishness, with two more still to come.

The Buddha's lion's roar (子二論師子王), the second matter of 外愚相等, opens — the six qualities that make the Buddha "the unbroken lion king of debate," the first being that he engages outsiders in debate never from affliction, but purely from compassion.

As when Śāriputra's uncle, the wandering ascetic Dīrghanakha, declared "I accept no view at all," and the Buddha simply asked, "then do you accept that view?" — a single utterance sufficient to overturn him; or as with Sīhī's long back-and-forth exchange recorded earlier in this fascicle — whether one utterance or many, the Buddha's speech, being without duality, always accords with reality and so always prevails.

The distinction between the two theories (二論差別), the third matter of 外愚相等, opens. Non-self accords with reality and so prevails in debate; self-theory, resting on no genuine ground — whether the outsiders' unequal-cause or no-cause theories — inevitably loses, except when the Buddhist debater's own grasp of non-self is itself still shallow and unsteady, in which case even a losing position may not lose after all.

The self-theorist's claim, elaborating "the theory of self" from the pair just named: a self said to possess the formations, or to dwell fixedly within them pervading every part, generating and receiving karmic fruit through them as its field of action.

Just as a farmer relies on good land to cultivate crops, the self-theorist imagines a self relying on the formations to cultivate merit or demerit — as when one credits "myself" for the protection of gods and humans, or blames "myself" for a fall to the evil destinies. With this, the theory of self (我論) is closed.

The non-self theorist's own theory is built two ways: tearing down the self-theory first, then establishing non-self in its place.

Three challenges to a real, masterful self: it should generate only merit, never harm itself by choosing demerit; it should never grieve at the aggregates' inevitable change, since it stands apart from and unaffected by them; and, being permanent and thought-preceding, its activity should never vary — yet thought itself is plainly in constant flux, now craving food, now craving study, now craving an errand, refuting any claim to unchanging constancy.

With these three refutations, the Buddhist debater dismantles the outsider's claim to a real, masterful, permanent self. With this, refuting the theory of self (破我論) is closed.

Merit and demerit both depend on the full convergence of many conditions — mind, object, intention, and effort together, not any single actor — and the fruit received likewise depends on conditions, with no one truly presiding over the process. "Self" and its many synonyms are only provisional names laid over this causally-arisen, ever-changing flow — conventionally real, but with no true self-mark, person-mark, sentient-being-mark, or life-span-mark at the ultimate level.

The fourth and final matter of 外愚相等, the distinction between the learner and the unlearner (有學無學差別), opens. The unlearner's exhaustion-wisdom and non-arising-wisdom have nothing beyond them, and likewise the unlearner's eightfold path and liberation from affliction are complete; a learner's wisdom, practice, and liberation, still partial, always has something further to attain.

Even an arhat cannot see the Buddha's own self-nature dharma-body, since a Buddha's merit far surpasses that of a great arhat — only the fully purified wisdom-eye of the unlearner can view the dharma-body in the more accessible sense of the Buddha's teaching, his uncontaminated attainments, and the merit they embody. True service to the Tathāgata, likewise, is not ritual attendance but the perfected, undistorted practice of the noble path itself — complete only in the unlearner.