The Treatise Concludes

This opens **thorough knowledge (庚七遍知4), the SEVENTH of the nine matters**, named by the verse's own word — thorough knowledge (遍知, also 遍智) means wisdom that fully penetrates and understands its object — beginning with marking (辛一標).

This opens inquiring (辛二徵), the second of thorough knowledge's four sections.

This opens listing (辛三列), the third of thorough knowledge's four sections — the basic constituents are the five aggregates, the eighteen elements, and the twelve sense-fields underlying experience; offense concerns knowing what constitutes a genuine transgression; persons concerns understanding a given being's own character; drawing beings toward benefit concerns three ways of leading others toward genuine practice; and affliction concerns the five kinds of self-inflicted present distress ordinary beings bring on themselves.

This opens explaining (辛四釋5), a fivefold structure matching the five matters just listed, beginning with thorough knowledge of the basic constituents (壬一事遍知) — the Śrāvaka Grounds names this fivefold skill: skill in the aggregates, skill in the elements, skill in the sense-fields, skill in dependent origination, and skill in sound versus unsound reasoning — the last distinguishing an account of cause and effect that genuinely accords with dependent origination (sound) from one that does not (unsound). Mastering all five requires sustained study, detailed further in the embrace of the alternate approach's own treatment of the five-consciousness-body-conjoined ground and the mental ground, fascicles 53 through 57.

This opens **thorough knowledge of offense (壬二罪遍知4), the second of thorough knowledge's five matters**, beginning with inquiring (癸一徵).

This opens marking (癸二標), the second of thorough knowledge of offense's four sections.

This opens listing (癸三列), the third of thorough knowledge of offense's four sections — these five marks together determine whether an offense occurred at all, and, if so, its precise gravity.

This opens explaining (癸四釋5), a fivefold structure matching the five marks just listed, beginning with thoroughly knowing the cause and condition of the offense (子一遍知犯罪因緣) — every offense ultimately traces to one, two, or all three of the root afflictions, since afflictive defilement is what drives karmic defilement.

This opens thoroughly knowing how the offense arose (子二遍知犯罪等起2), beginning with setting forth the distinctions (丑一出差別) — seven possible combinations of body, speech, and mind exhaust every way an offense can actually arise.

This opens thoroughly knowing the offense's own object (子三遍知犯罪事) — killing or quarreling involves a sentient-being object; mishandling robes and bowl, or wrongly bounding or purifying ground, involves an insentient object.

This opens thoroughly knowing the effort behind the offense (子四遍知犯罪加行) — doing what should not be done is an offense of commission; failing to do what should be done — neglecting the precepts, samādhi, and wisdom one ought diligently to cultivate — is an offense of omission.

This opens thoroughly knowing the offense's completion (子五遍知犯罪究竟2), beginning with marking the meaning (丑一標義) — an offense carried through to its full completion, without interruption, is graver than one abandoned partway; the treatise distinguishes a preparatory ("cause") offense from the completed ("fruit") offense — an attempted killing that fails to kill incurs only the preparatory offense, lighter than the completed offense of an actual killing.

This opens distinguishing and deliberating (丑二料簡2), beginning with the class an offense belongs to (寅一所犯罪聚) — the embrace of the bases, fascicle 99, already named the five classes of offense (defeat/remainder/downfall/individual-confession/wrongdoing); a preparatory act toward a defeat or remainder-class offense that falls short of completion still incurs its own lesser offense (downfall or wrongdoing class) as a derivative rather than root offense, and this gradation of gravity continues down even within the downfall class's own preparatory acts.

This opens alternate names for what is committed (寅二所犯異名6), the second of distinguishing and deliberating's two sections, beginning with offense with remainder and offense without remainder (卯一有餘罪無餘罪) — the four lesser classes still leave room for repentance; defeat, gravest of all, leaves none, at least under the ordinary rule for the śrāvaka precepts.

This opens not accumulating and not failing to accumulate (卯二不積聚非不積聚) — wisely handled and swiftly disclosed, an offense does not compound into further derivative offenses through ongoing concealment; concealed and left undisclosed, it accumulates a fresh offense for each day it remains hidden.

This opens already disclosed and not yet disclosed (卯三已顯說未顯說) — not yet disclosed describes concealment: a genuine offense one dares not admit and has taken no lawful step toward repenting.

This opens with resolve and without resolve (卯四有期願無期願) — some offenses, being grave, cannot be repented on the spot and require a larger quorum to gather; disclosing the offense now while genuinely resolving to complete repentance once the occasion allows still counts as with resolve, distinct from harboring no intention to repent at all.

This opens with formal establishment and without formal establishment (卯五有制立無制立) — some transgressions are explicitly named as training-grounds within the vinaya's own text; others, though not individually codified, still incur an offense in terms of karmic cause and effect even without an explicit precept naming them.

This opens marking (癸二標), the second of thorough knowledge of persons' four sections.

This opens listing (癸三列), the third of thorough knowledge of persons' four sections — the same offense carries different gravity depending on who commits it (a monk's offense is graver than a novice's for the same act), on the offender's own inherent and cultivated qualities, on their level of realization, and on how carefully any charge against them is weighed before being raised.

This opens explaining (癸四釋5), a fivefold structure matching the five marks just listed, beginning with distinctions in mental conduct (子一由行差別) — the Śrāvaka Grounds establishes persons' distinctions across eleven angles altogether (by sharp or dull faculty; by the seven assemblies; by mental conduct; by vow — śrāvaka, solitary-realizer, or great vehicle; by the path traversed — painful-slow, painful-swift, pleasant-slow, pleasant-swift; by the eight stages of realization; by faith-following or dharma-following preparatory practice; by cessation-attainment; by the eightfold rebirth-pattern of the first three fruits; by reversible or irreversible liberation; and by which obstruction, afflictive or meditative, remains). Here only mental conduct is unpacked in full, yielding seven kinds of person: one in whom craving predominates, one in whom aversion predominates, one in whom delusion predominates, one in whom pride predominates, one in whom discursive thought predominates, one of equal proportion (all five present without any one predominating), and one of thin defilement (all five present but faint) — the first five sharing the further marks of being both fierce and long-enduring.

This opens by reason of distinctions among the assemblies (子二由眾差別) — the same act's gravity, and the standard for judgment, differs across monks, nuns, novices, novice-nuns, probationary nuns, laymen, and laywomen.

This opens **by reason of distinctions in what is heightened or diminished (子三由增減差別2), the third of thorough knowledge of persons' five marks**, beginning with distinguishing (丑一辨2), beginning with respect to innate endowment (寅一約俱生辨) — those born to noble lineage, wealth, or fine appearance need careful guidance to temper any resulting pride and bring them to keep the precepts on equal footing with everyone else; those of ordinary background need encouragement instead, to draw out their own potential.

With this, with respect to cultivated effort (寅二約加行辨) closes, closing **distinguishing (丑一辨2: 約俱生辨/約加行辨) entirely** — those who have cultivated broad learning and a sharp conscience deserve guidance suited to their own readiness, becoming, in time, capable stewards of the true dharma; others, requiring more patience and repetition, deserve exactly that instead — one teaching does not fit every disposition.

This opens **by reason of distinctions in attainment (子四由證得差別2), the fourth of thorough knowledge of persons' five marks**, beginning with marking (丑一標).

This opens **by reason of distinctions in observation (子五由觀察差別2), the fifth of thorough knowledge of persons' five marks**, beginning with distinguishing (丑一辨2), beginning with observing the one who raises a charge (寅一觀察所舉) — when Śāriputra asked the Buddha what conditions a monk must examine in himself before raising a charge against another, the Buddha named five: whether the charge is factually true; whether the timing is right; whether it is genuinely meant to benefit, not merely to embarrass; whether it can be delivered gently rather than harshly; and whether it comes from a compassionate mind free of aversion. Discourse 497 further describes how a genuinely upright monk — free of deceit, possessed of faith, precepts, shame, mindfulness, samādhi, and wisdom, diligent, reverent toward the precepts, valuing renunciant conduct, honoring nirvāṇa, and having gone forth for the dharma rather than mere livelihood — receives a charge with joy, like drinking nectar; a monk of the opposite character, deceitful and indifferent to the precepts, is far more likely to react with anger or even retaliation, so the one raising a charge must weigh in advance whether doing so risks provoking real harm, a lasting grudge, or even a schism in the saṅgha, and refrain if so.

This opens observing the one who would raise a charge (寅二觀察能舉2), beginning with the kind of person able to raise it (卯一能舉品類) — the same five-point examination runs in reverse: the accused should weigh whether the charge is factually grounded, well-timed, genuinely beneficial, gently delivered, and free of malice before responding — and if genuinely at fault, should come forward and repent without further delay.

This opens **thorough knowledge of drawing beings toward genuine benefit (壬四引攝義利遍知2), the FOURTH of thorough knowledge's five matters**, beginning with inquiring (癸一徵) — this concerns whether one's own conduct, in raising or receiving a charge, genuinely draws oneself and others toward benefit and ease.

This opens explaining (癸二釋2), beginning with marking and listing (子一標列) — genuine benefit unfolds across three relationships: toward oneself in receiving support, toward another in helping them emerge from an offense, and toward the whole community in removing a genuine wrongdoer so the saṅgha may dwell at ease.

This opens elaborating (子二隨釋2), beginning with the first kind (丑一初一種2), beginning with distinguishing the five factors (寅一辨五支5), beginning with genuineness (卯一真實) — support is genuine when the giver's own generosity is untainted and the receiver, even without full freedom from affliction, at minimum observes "making pure" (加法) — formally relinquishing any excess robe or medicine to a fellow practitioner as designated custodian, who then returns it for the original holder's own use — a practice specifically designed to check the very seed of accumulating attachment before it takes root.

This opens genuinely drawing toward benefit (卯二能引義利) — a gift whose very substance is unfit for renunciant use (Master Cháng Bǎi's example: a mahjong table sent as a donation) fails this test regardless of the giver's intent; a genuinely useful gift that supports cultivation, such as a complete canon of scripture, passes it and may rightly be kept.

This opens timeliness (卯三應時) — support still within its useful window, suited to present circumstance, satisfies this third factor.

This opens companionship (卯四有伴) — support shared equally among the community, rather than singled out for one recipient alone, satisfies this fourth factor.

This opens the latter two kinds (丑二後二種2), beginning with drawing another toward emergence from offense (寅一引攝他身出罪義利2), the second of drawing toward genuine benefit's three kinds, beginning with distinguishing the five factors (卯一辨五支5), beginning with genuineness (辰一真實) — just as with one's own support, a charge against another must first and foremost be factually true.

This opens genuinely drawing toward benefit (辰二能引義利) — the charge must be raised in genuine confidence that it will actually help the offender toward reform, not merely to expose or embarrass them.

This opens timeliness (辰三應時) — a charge withheld until the person is not otherwise occupied in some wholesome undertaking respects the moment's own propriety.

This opens companionship (辰四有伴) — a charge others in the community also concur with, rather than one raised in isolation, satisfies this factor.

This opens **drawing the saṅgha toward expelling the precept-breaker and dwelling at ease (寅二引攝僧伽擯斥犯戒安樂義利2), the third of drawing toward genuine benefit's three kinds**, beginning with by analogy, the same (卯一例同) — where the first kind addresses a lesser fault resolved through reproach or repentance, this kind addresses a grave offense requiring formal expulsion from the community, so that the saṅgha as a whole may dwell at ease; the same five factors apply to both.

This opens revealing the distinction (卯二顯別2), beginning with raising the genuinely drawn benefit (辰一舉引義利) — beyond the five general factors, formal expulsion carries an additional test: it must not provoke the expelled person into retaliating against the one who expelled them, destroying communal property, damaging a stūpa, or harming any other practitioner.

This opens **thorough knowledge of affliction (壬五損惱遍知2), the FIFTH and final of thorough knowledge's five matters**, beginning with inquiring (癸一徵) — this concerns recognizing certain self-inflicted forms of present distress that ordinary beings bring upon themselves without realizing it.

This opens explaining (癸二釋3), beginning with marking (子一標) — five patterns of behavior, genuinely sane yet carried out as though deranged, accomplish nothing but their own futile delay, however common among the unenlightened.

This opens inquiring (子二徵), the second of explaining's two sections.

This opens explaining (子三釋2), beginning with listing the afflictions (丑一列損惱5), a fivefold structure, beginning with the first affliction (寅一第一損惱) — excessive grief at a loved one's death, even to the point of losing one's reason, is common among the unenlightened; the noble ones, understanding impermanence, feel loss without succumbing to it — Ānanda, still at the first fruit when the Buddha entered final nirvāṇa, wept, while those of the third fruit and above, craving already severed, did not. Master Cháng Bǎi tells of a man reborn, through his wife's clinging grief at his deathbed, as a worm in her own mucus, saved only when an arhat intervened; of a family who mourned a father for three years until the father, now blissfully reborn in a heaven, appeared to them disguised as a herdsman weeping over a dead ox, to shock them into recognizing their own folly; and of Milarepa, whose own mother's grief and desire for revenge first drove him toward black magic, before his eventual realization allowed him to genuinely liberate his parents through meditative power — the point in each case being that indulged grief neither helps the dead nor serves the living, while diligent cultivation and dedicated merit genuinely can.

This opens the second affliction (寅二第二損惱) — deliberately maiming oneself to solicit pity and alms, when honest livelihood remains genuinely available, trades real self-harm for a shortcut that yields nothing of lasting value.

This opens **the third affliction (寅三第三損惱2), beginning with marking the kind (卯一標種類)** — a genuinely wealthy person who denies themselves and their own family any real comfort, hoarding rather than using what they have, exemplifies this affliction. Master Cháng Bǎi tells of one such miser whom Śakra sought to reform by taking his exact double form, entering his house, and lavishly giving away the entire household fortune; when the real miser returned and found his double already installed, no one — not even his own family — could tell them apart until a hidden birthmark settled the matter in court, and even then his wife declared she preferred the generous double to her own real husband. Ashamed, the miser repented, abandoned his stinginess, and took up genuine generosity himself.

This opens explaining the defilement of stinginess (卯二釋慳垢4), the second of the third affliction's two sections, beginning with inquiring (辰一徵) — this unpacks stinginess itself in finer detail than the third affliction's own opening mark.

This opens marking (辰二標), the second of explaining stinginess's four sections.

This opens listing (辰三列), the third of explaining stinginess's four sections, beginning with the first four kinds — the fourth, corrupting right conduct by withholding generosity from a recipient one judges lacking in virtue or even precept-breaking, is itself, the 披尋記 clarifies, born of one's own aversion rather than the recipient's actual unworthiness; generosity given equally, without such discrimination, remains the correct practice.

This opens **the fourth affliction (寅四第四損惱)** — self-destructive austerities undertaken in the mistaken belief that they lead to heavenly rebirth describe various outside practitioners' own extreme ascetic practices, a genuine present-day phenomenon as much as an ancient one.

This opens inquiring (壬二徵), the second of raising what inspires faith's four sections.

This opens listing (壬三列), the third of raising what inspires faith's four sections — a saṅgha visibly complete in precepts, view, deportment, livelihood, and harmony naturally deepens the faithful's own faith and draws the faithless toward it.

This opens explaining (壬四釋5), a fivefold structure matching the five factors just listed, beginning with the completeness of moral discipline (癸一尸羅圓滿) — the Śrāvaka Grounds names ten deficiencies whose absence constitutes completeness: wrongly received from the outset (ordaining with an improper motive); excessively sunken (lacking shame, sluggish, never repenting); excessively scattered (falsely accusing oneself or others out of misplaced scrupulousness, or judging others harshly); embraced by heedlessness (failing to repent promptly, past, present, or future); giving rise to a wrong vow (keeping precepts merely for heavenly rebirth or worldly gain, rather than for nirvāṇa or, for a bodhisattva, unsurpassed enlightenment); deficient protocol (violating either ordinary social convention or the vinaya's own specific rules of conduct); deficient pure livelihood (pursuing the four requisites through improper means, including the five classic forms of wrong livelihood — feigned deportment to inspire donations, false claims of attainment, staged poverty to invite pity, harsh badgering of donors, and using comparative flattery to pressure giving); falling to either extreme (whether outside practitioners' harsh austerity or an inside practitioner's own unchecked indulgence — the middle way alone is correct); inability to gain release (clinging to precept-attachment or view-attachment, mistaking mere rule-keeping itself for liberation); and what was received being ruined (outwardly appearing to keep the precepts while inwardly having already broken them, a false renunciant appearance). Completeness means simply avoiding all ten.

This opens the completeness of right view (癸二正見圓滿) — severing the innate view of a self superimposed onto the five aggregates, and the eternalist or nihilist extremes that follow from it; severing the opposite error of denying even conventional cause and effect, as certain nihilist philosophers do; severing attachment to one's own view or to precept-and-vow observance as inherently liberating; severing superstitious belief in lucky charms and omens, when genuine auspiciousness lies only in sustained mindfulness and wholesome cultivation; and severing every distorted claim that what is merely imagined is truly real, or that what is truly real (the dependent and the perfected natures) does not exist — together these five sever every root confusion and complete right view.

This opens the completeness of protocol (癸三軌則圓滿) — though this and pure livelihood might seem already covered under moral discipline generally, the treatise singles them out for their own daily, practical importance. Three grounds of duty (occasion-based tasks such as rotating chores; wholesome undertakings such as morning and evening liturgy; and deportment in walking, sitting, and lying down) combine with two standards (according with ordinary social convention, such as traffic rules, and according with the vinaya's own specific protocols) to make five in all.

This opens the completeness of pure livelihood (癸四淨命圓滿), the fourth of raising what inspires faith's five factors — the five classic forms of wrong livelihood, already named earlier in this fascicle (feigned deportment, false claims, staged poverty, harsh badgering, comparative flattery), are what a monastic must avoid to pursue the four requisites purely; their absence completes pure livelihood.

This opens **freedom from mutual contention (癸五遠離展轉鬥諍圓滿2), the fifth of faith-and-its-absence's five factors**, beginning with marking what should be avoided (子一標遠離) — a community free of internal strife is itself among the most persuasive testimonies to genuine practice.

This opens explaining the roots of dispute (子二釋諍根2), beginning with pointing to the sūtra's own statement (丑一指經說) — the six are resentment, hatred, concealment of one's own faults, arrogant pride, deceit, and flattery, each a distinct affliction capable of setting a community at odds with itself.

This opens explaining their establishment (丑二明建立5), a fivefold structure, beginning with marking (寅一標).

This opens inquiring (寅二徵), the second of explaining their establishment's five sections.

This opens listing (寅三列), the third of explaining their establishment's five sections — a mind without goodwill toward fellow practitioners; a mind that hides its own faults behind pride rather than admitting them; craving for material support and reverence that breeds deceit and flattery in pursuit of it; and breakdowns in each of the three higher trainings themselves together account for every genuine dispute within a community.

With this, correlating (寅四配) closes — the six grounds map directly onto the six roots: an unbeneficial disposition breeds resentment and hatred; concealing faults with pride breeds concealment and arrogance; craving support breeds deceit and flattery; and transgressing each higher training breeds, respectively, shamelessness, dullness and drowsiness (undermining samādhi), and restlessness and wrongdoing-remorse (undermining wisdom). The embrace of the alternate approach further traces corrupted samādhi and wisdom to three underlying gateways: undermining the "calming" aspect of practice (an object of meditation drawn too narrow, breeding dullness and drowsiness); undermining the "lifting" aspect (attention drifting into worldly discursive thought, breeding restlessness and wrongdoing-remorse); and undermining the "equanimity" aspect, where calming and lifting fail to balance, breeding a wider host of afflictions including disbelief and doubt. Genuine meditative progress, Master Cháng Bǎi notes, is marked by a session that seems to pass in an instant, free of affliction and full of quiet joy; a session beset by drowsiness, wandering thought, or restlessness is itself the plain, felt symptom of these same three underlying breakdowns.

This opens explaining (寅五釋2), the fifth of explaining their establishment's five sections, beginning with separately distinguishing two grounds (卯一別辨二處2) — singling out for closer treatment the two of the six roots the treatise judges hardest to grasp — beginning with delighting in concealing one's own faults, gripped by arrogant pride (辰一樂隱己過憍慢執持2), beginning with distinguishing that mark (巳一辨彼相2), beginning with delighting in concealing one's own faults (午一樂隱己過) — a well-known, well-supported person who transgresses and then hides it, rather than repenting openly, suffers real inward torment once the concealment is exposed before others.

This opens craving for support and reverence actually manifesting (辰二利養恭敬欲愛現行2), the second of the two separately distinguished roots, beginning with setting forth what it is for (巳一出所為) — courting a wealthy, well-connected figure purely for the material benefit that closeness brings, with no genuine regard for them or for the dharma, exemplifies this root in its plainest form.

This opens explaining the reasoning (巳二釋思惟2), beginning with engaging in deceitful conduct (午一行矯偽行2), beginning with toward the preceptor one relies on (未一於依止師) — deliberately choosing an easygoing, forbearing preceptor precisely because they are easy to take advantage of is itself the calculating mindset this root describes.

This opens toward fellow practitioners (未二於同梵行2), beginning with not doing what should be done (申一不作應作) — befriending diligent, capable companions specifically to offload one's own duties onto them describes the same self-serving calculation extended to peers.

This opens inquiring (壬二徵), the second of the five powers' four sections.

This opens listing (壬三列), the third of the five powers' four sections — actual effort in the threefold training; the resolve to repent swiftly upon any transgression; the initiative to seek out and offer instruction; the wisdom to discern genuine teaching from its semblance; and an honest, undistorted uprightness in following the teaching together give a practitioner's mind its full, right conduct.

This opens explaining (壬四釋5), a fivefold structure matching the five powers just listed, beginning with the power of preparatory practice (癸一加行力) — the level attained through reflection describes the stream-enterer and once-returner, still short of full liberation, through the image of a swimmer: "every limb toiling, not yet at the bottom, not yet across" — lacking the deeper calm-abiding that would let them touch bottom, and lacking fully purified clear-seeing that would let them cross, such a practitioner, riding the float of the noble path already attained, must still kick with the feet of vigorous effort toward calm-abiding and row with the hands of vigorous effort toward purified clear-seeing. Preparatory practice is exactly this ongoing, actual exertion — dedicated, reverent, and continuing right up to the point of genuine realization.

This opens the power of resolve (癸二意樂力) — swift repentance upon transgressing a precept is the paradigm case, but the same resolve applies equally to correcting a lapse in samādhi (dullness remedied through the "lifting" gate) or in wisdom (restlessness remedied through the "calming" gate) — resolve to return promptly to right practice, whatever the training involved.

This opens the power of clear exposition (癸三開曉力) — a "self-loving good son" is one genuinely diligent in extinguishing craving, aversion, and delusion; actively seeking instruction from the learned, and, once understood, passing it clearly on to others, together constitute this power.

This opens the power of right wisdom (癸四正智力) — hearing dharma from a teacher is not itself sufficient; genuine discernment is needed to separate authentic teaching from a spurious discipline (such as mistaking silence-only precepts for genuine restraint) or a semblance of the true dharma (already surveyed at length earlier in this project — teaching that hearing alone suffices, or claiming expertise too demanding to leave time for actual practice). Even on matters the Buddha never directly addressed, one of broad learning can reason out, by analogy with what is already known, whether a given course accords with or runs contrary to genuine renunciant conduct.

This opens **the power of uprightness (癸五質直力2), the fifth and final of the five powers**, beginning with distinguishing the mark (子一辨相) — an upright practitioner neither expands the Buddha's own allowances beyond what was actually granted, nor quietly discounts them, and treats fellow practitioners honestly rather than as a means to offload one's own effort — this last point recalling, by direct contrast, the deceit and flattery already surveyed as one of the six roots of dispute.

This opens **the five kinds of person (辛二五補特伽羅2), the SECOND of the powers and the rest's three parts**, beginning with setting forth the distinctions (壬一出差別2), beginning with marking (癸一標) — this catalogs five patterns of ordained life, from the most fragile resolve to the most advanced.

This opens explaining (癸二釋2), beginning with the first four kinds (子一初四類2), beginning with distinguishing the faults (丑一辨過失4), beginning with the first kind (寅一第一類) — a genuine initial resolve to ordain, if not quickly acted upon, easily cools once ordinary affliction and worldly craving reassert themselves — a wise teacher who welcomes and acts on a sincere aspirant's resolve without delay, Master Cháng Bǎi notes, offers a crucial supporting condition many later regret not having received.

This opens the second kind (寅二第二類) — one who has genuinely gone forth but still succumbs to deliberate, not merely inadvertent, transgression finds ordained life harder than expected, and regret itself becomes a further source of affliction.

This opens the third kind (寅三第三類) — genuine dissatisfaction with renunciant life, coupled with regret over the original decision itself, often traces to a resolve that was never truly one's own — perhaps ordained under pressure or persuasion from others rather than by sincere personal choice.

This opens the fifth kind (子二第五類2), beginning with setting forth the trainee (丑一出有學) — a noble one of the first three fruits or the path toward the fourth, not yet fully liberated from craving and views across the three realms, but already progressing steadily toward the arhat's final, complete liberation.

This opens **wayward practice in the threefold training (辛三三學邪行2), the THIRD and final part of the powers and the rest**, beginning with marking (壬一標) — even genuine progress in precepts, samādhi, or wisdom can, at each stage, harbor its own characteristic wayward turn.

This opens explaining (壬二釋3), a threefold structure matching the three kinds just marked, beginning with the first wayward practice, in the higher training of precepts (癸一於增上戒第一邪行) — a genuine original resolve toward nirvāṇa that quietly redirects itself toward mere heavenly comfort, settling for precept-purity alone as though that were the whole of the path, describes a mind still turned outward — "bound outwardly," not yet gathered in.

This opens the second wayward practice, in the higher training of mind (癸二於增上心第二邪行) — genuine attainment of samādhi, mistaken for the path's own final destination rather than a tool along the way, becomes its own subtle bondage — no longer scattered outward, but now caught "inwardly," savoring the absorption itself instead of advancing toward direct realization of the four noble truths.

This opens distinguishing dharma-characteristics' foundational treatise (丁三分別法相摩怛理迦3), the third and final section of the embrace of the bases, beginning with concluding what came before and giving rise to what follows (戊一結前生後) — this final section shifts from summarizing sūtra and vinaya content to explaining the treatise's own reasoning method: how to think through and analyze the characteristics of any dharma.

This opens marking and explaining the distinct marks (戊二標釋別相2), beginning with marking (己一標) — every teaching in the sūtras and vinaya ultimately concerns just two matters: transmigration through affliction and karma (defilement) and cessation through the path (purity). This final section exists to gather and re-present that same substance once more, from the angle of how the treatise itself reasons about dharma-characteristics.

This opens explaining (己二釋2), beginning with briefly prefacing and broadly analyzing (庚一略序廣辨2), beginning with the summary verse marks (辛一嗢柁南標) — the treatise's own method: any given dharma is properly explained by drawing on some other, distinct body of doctrine, never by circularly restating the very same term to define itself. A short verse first sketches the outline; a fuller long-form treatment then follows.

This opens the long-form explanation (辛二長行釋3), beginning with marking the meaning (壬一標義) — genuine exposition of a dharma requires stepping outside the term itself, using one framework to mark it out in general and a different framework to analyze it in detail; explaining a term using only its own vocabulary, without any outside reference point, fails to genuinely clarify anything at all, however the practice of composing a treatise is properly to be done.

This opens raising an example (壬二舉事), the second of the long-form explanation's three sections — explaining "the conditioned" by way of the five aggregates, a genuinely different framework, satisfies the principle just stated; explaining "the conditioned" merely by repeating "the conditioned" explains nothing at all.

This opens revealing the marks (壬三顯相2), the third of the long-form explanation's three sections, beginning with marking and listing (癸一標列) — every topic in this final section will unfold in this same two-step pattern: a brief outline first, then a full analysis.

This opens elaborating (癸二隨釋2), beginning with briefly prefacing the matter (子一略序事2), beginning with inquiring (丑一徵).

This opens explaining (丑二釋2), beginning with distinguishing defilement and purity (寅一辨染淨3), beginning with generally marking (卯一總標) — every teaching in the entire treatise ultimately concerns just these two matters: what characterizes bondage, and what characterizes liberation.

This opens separately explaining (卯二別釋2), beginning with defilement (辰一雜染) — this passage functions as a compact glossary-index of every major defilement-side topic the treatise has already treated at length elsewhere: the six consciousnesses' own nature, support, object, and mental factors (detailed in the five-consciousness-body-conjoined and mental grounds, fascicles 1-3); the aggregates, elements, and sense-fields (detailed across fascicles 51-57); dependent origination; the three feelings, three times, and four conditions; karmic and afflictive defilement; the three realms; the tenfold existence (distinguished by freedom from desire — desire/form/formless-existence; by destiny — the six realms; by karma as what draws a result forth; and by the intermediate state as what moves toward rebirth); the eleven abodes of consciousness (the four aggregates any consciousness rests on, plus the seven realms consciousness delights to dwell in, distinguished by whether body and perception are uniform or varied across each realm); the nine dwelling-places (the seven abodes plus the fourth-dhyāna non-percipient heaven and the peak of existence); the five destinies, four kinds of birth, and four ways of entering the womb (distinguished by whether one has clear awareness entering, dwelling in, and leaving the womb — full awareness marking a buddha, partial awareness a solitary-realizer or a wheel-turning king, and none at all an ordinary being); the four ways a life ends (by oneself alone, by another alone, by either, or, for the intermediate state, by neither); the four foods, four bases of speech (sight/hearing/reflection/direct sense), four kinds of karmic feeling (crossing present and future experience with wholesome and unwholesome cause), the four inverted views (permanence/pleasure/self/purity wrongly imputed), and the truths of suffering and of origin. None of these categories receives fresh teaching here — each is a pointer back to its own extensive treatment earlier in the treatise's hundred fascicles.

With this, gathering in everything (寅二攝一切) closes, closing **explaining (丑二釋2: 辨染淨/攝一切) entirely**, closing **briefly prefacing the matter (子一略序事2: 徵/釋) entirely** — a second, complementary lens on the same total field: mind (the eight consciousnesses); mental factors (the fifty-one or, as this treatise counts, fifty-three factors accompanying mind, including its own additions of deviant desire and deviant confident-resolve); form (the eleven or, combined with the four great elements, fourteen matters of physical form); factors dissociated from mind — neither mind nor form, but posited only relative to their interplay (twenty-four in number, including birth, aging, persistence, and impermanence); and the unconditioned (eight kinds in this treatise, space and the various cessations among them, themselves only provisionally posited relative to the conditioned). Every defiled or purified matter just surveyed falls under one of these five.

This opens broadly analyzing the marks (子二廣辨相2), the second of elaborating's two sections, beginning with inquiring (丑一徵).

This opens explaining (丑二釋4), beginning with marking (寅一標) — four lenses, applied to any topic already briefly prefaced, together constitute its full analysis.

This opens inquiring (寅二徵), the second of explaining's four sections.

This opens listing (寅三列), the third of explaining's four sections — this is the treatise's own genuine methodological key, applicable to any topic whatsoever: distinctions among synonyms (a single thing carries many names, each highlighting a different facet — a person is called a "person," a "repeated-taker-of-destinies," a "living one," a "nurtured one," and more); distinctions in essential nature (each dharma's own defining character, not shared with any other — eye-consciousness distinguished by depending on the eye to discern form, ear-consciousness by depending on the ear to discern sound, and so on); distinctions in etymological explanation (the embrace of the exegesis names five bases for comparative reasoning by which a term's meaning may be drawn out: resemblance of characteristic, resemblance of essential nature, resemblance of function, contiguity of relation, and resemblance of cause and effect); and distinctions among categories (eight further angles: existent versus non-existent, difference versus non-difference, realm and stage, temporal phase, location, continuity, positional distinction, gradation, and underlying principle). Applied together to any single topic — the four foods, for instance — these four lenses in turn draw out its synonyms, its own defining nature, its etymology, and its distinctions across the three realms, giving the treatise's author, Master Cháng Bǎi notes, an inexhaustible method for composing systematic doctrinal analysis.

This opens explaining (寅四釋2), beginning with explaining the first three (卯一釋前三種) — since these three are already covered at length in the embrace of the exegesis, the treatise simply points there rather than repeating itself. That earlier passage names its own four angles for explaining any dharma's particular meaning — distinguishing its various names, distinguishing its own essential nature, etymological explanation, and distinctions of meaning-approach — the first three matching this section's synonyms/essential-nature/etymology exactly, and the fourth (itself fivefold: by own-nature, by realm, by time, by positional state, and by person) corresponding to this section's fourth mark, categorical distinction, to be unpacked next.

This opens broadly analyzing the fourth (卯二廣辨第四3), beginning with marking and listing the kinds (辰一標列種類) — eight further angles from which to categorize any given dharma; the first of these eight, existence and its distinctions, will occupy an especially deep treatment in what follows, since it bears directly on how deeply one understands dependent origination itself, and, through it, both conventional and ultimate truth.

This opens elaborating their marks (辰二隨釋其相8), an eightfold structure matching the eight categorical distinctions just listed, beginning with existent and non-existent, different and non-different in nature (巳一有非有異非異性差別2), beginning with general inquiry (午一總徵).

This opens separately distinguishing (午二別辨2), beginning with existent and non-existent (未一有非有2), beginning with raising existence (申一舉有性2), beginning with marking and listing (酉一標列) — real existence is posited relative to the dependent nature, provisional existence relative to the imagined nature, and ultimate existence relative to the perfected nature. The level attained through reflection elsewhere gives a finer fivefold division (existence by own-characteristic, by shared characteristic, by provisional characteristic, by causal characteristic, and by resultant characteristic) that maps onto this same threefold scheme at a different grain.

This opens elaborating (酉二隨釋3), beginning with real existence (戌一實有) — form, feeling, and the other aggregates are real in this sense: whatever shape a given instance of form takes, however it arises or perishes, the designation "form" applies without interruption. A vase, by contrast, is form only provisionally: once shattered, it is no longer called a "vase," only "shards" — the name fails to track the substance once its condition changes, unlike "form" itself, which tracks every configuration of matter without exception. The level attained through reflection specifies four conditions for this kind of real "characteristic-existence": a name can be found for it; a substance the name designates can genuinely be found; the name's application to that substance is never indeterminate (unlike "clay vase," which becomes merely "clay" once broken); and the name and substance track each other without obstruction across every context, never applying only to some special subset (as "house" fails to designate a village, or "tree" fails to designate root, stem, flower, and fruit individually) and never shifting arbitrarily with circumstance (as "clay vase" does). Only what satisfies all four conditions counts as genuinely, characteristically real.

This opens provisional existence (戌二假有2), beginning with distinguishing the distinction (亥一簡差別) — "food" names no single, distinct substance of its own; it is a functional label applied to whatever aggregation of color, smell, taste, and touch happens to be edible, and the same label cannot cover a drink instead, since it fails to apply universally to every configuration of matter. Form, taste, smell, and touch themselves, present in every such aggregation without exception, are what is genuinely real; the further labels — food, vehicle, vase, clothing, ornament — layered on top of particular configurations of that same underlying material are what is only provisionally real.

This opens broadening the categories (亥二廣種類2), beginning with marking and listing (天一標列) — six distinct ways something can be provisionally, rather than really, said to exist: a self or an army, posited on an aggregate; a future dharma not yet arisen; cessation through discernment, itself a fruit; a past event only recollected; the impermanent marks of arising and the like; and empty space, posited only relative to form's own absence.

This opens elaborating the six (天二隨釋6), beginning with provisional existence through aggregation (地一聚集假有) — "self," "person," "sentient being" name nothing beyond the five aggregates themselves in some particular configuration; the aggregates alone are really existent, and the unifying label laid over them for the sake of ordinary communication is merely provisional.

This opens provisional existence through cause (地二因假有) — a seed already present, whose corresponding fruit has not yet manifested, is provisionally spoken of as that future fruit's own cause, though the fruit itself does not yet really exist.

This opens provisional existence through effect (地三果假有) — the Diamond Sūtra's own teaching that a stream-enterer does not think "I have attained the fruit of stream-entry" makes exactly this point: the fruits of the path, from stream-entry through arhatship, are posited only relative to affliction's own future non-arising, not as some substantial thing newly acquired. Just as recovering from a stomachache means only that the pain's cause has ended, not that a "bad stomach" was traded for a "good" one, a genuine noble one's own realization carries no residue of self, person, being, or life-span to cling to as an actual attainment — the affliction that is not-arising, and the freedom this brings, are what is real; the "fruit" as a nameable thing is provisional.

This opens provisional existence through what is cognized (地四所行假有) — recalling yesterday's own lecture, neither yesterday nor the self who gave it still actually exists; what remains is only a present recollection taking that vanished event as its object, existing provisionally as a mental cognition rather than really as the past event itself.

This opens provisional existence through positional state (地五分位假有) — arising, persisting, changing, and ceasing describe only the relative positional pattern of the five aggregates' own continuity across time (a same-kind continuity called "persisting," a changed continuity called "changing," an ended continuity called "ceasing") — there is no separate, freestanding entity called "arising" or "aging" existing apart from the aggregates that arise and age.

This opens **provisional existence through relative dependence (地六觀待假有2), the sixth and final kind**, beginning with setting forth its substance (玄一出體) — space and this second kind of cessation carry no substance of their own; each is posited only relative to the absence of something else.

This opens explaining the marks (玄二釋相2), beginning with space, the unconditioned (黃一虛空無為) — "space" simply names the absence of form in a given location, as with the open area where no house or tree stands; nothing real existence's own test (a name with a substance genuinely to be found) can locate corresponds to this label.

This opens **different and non-different (未二異不異3), the second half of the first categorical distinction**, beginning with marking and listing (申一標列) — four lenses for judging whether two things are genuinely distinct: their underlying seeds (eye-consciousness and ear-consciousness stemming from distinct seeds), what they rely on (eye-consciousness resting on the eye-faculty, ear-consciousness on the ear-faculty), their distinct functions (seeing versus hearing), and their position in time (past, present, future).

This opens elaborating (申二隨釋2), beginning with distinguishing the marks (酉一辨相2), beginning with the first three kinds (戌一前三種) — the 披尋記 clarifies that "and the rest" here covers the second and third marks (what is relied upon, function) alongside the first (underlying cause), all three following this same basic test.

This opens the fourth kind (戌二第四種) — every conditioned factor genuinely arises and perishes moment by moment; the coarse difference visible as aging, illness, and death is simply the accumulated effect of this ceaseless, imperceptibly fine change, invisible to an untrained mind that mistakes "yesterday" and "today" for the same unchanging thing.

This opens **realm and stage (巳二界地差別3), the SECOND of the eight categorical distinctions**, beginning with inquiring (午一徵).

This opens marking (午二標), the second of realm and stage's three sections.

This opens explaining (午三釋3), a threefold structure matching the three realms just marked, beginning with the desire realm (未一欲界2), beginning with explaining its marks (申一釋相) — the desire realm spans the full vertical range from the deepest of the hells, through the animal, hungry-ghost, and human realms, the six desire-heavens, and up to Māra's own palace beyond the highest of them; everything within it, inner being and outer world alike, is produced by and remains bound to the desire realm's own characteristic afflictions across past, present, and future.

This opens the form realm (未二色界), the second of the three realms — the first three absorptions each contain three heavens (nine in all), and the fourth contains eight (including the five pure-abode heavens reserved for noble ones), together making seventeen grounds in the form realm.

This opens **temporal phase (巳三時分差別2), the THIRD of the eight categorical distinctions**, beginning with inquiring (午一徵).

This opens explaining (午二釋3), a threefold structure matching the three temporal phases, beginning with the past (未一過去世) — the level attained through reflection distinguishes five finer-grained kinds of "past": the instant just gone; a being's own death and its immediate aftermath; a world-system's own destruction at the close of an eon; a lapsed wholesome attainment or samādhi once had and now lost; and, most profound of all, the utter extinguishing of body and mind at the arhat's final passing into nirvāṇa without remainder.

This opens the future (未二未來世) — a mirroring fivefold breakdown: the very next instant; the whole of one's next life (comparable to karmic ripening due immediately upon rebirth); a future eon's own formation; a wholesome quality or samādhi not yet actually cultivated; and, at the far horizon, an arhat's own final moment of mind still to come.

This opens **continuity (巳五相續差別2), the FIFTH of the eight categorical distinctions**, beginning with inquiring (午一徵).

This opens explaining (午二釋2), beginning with distinguishing the kinds (未一辨種類) — one's own body, another's body, the six sense-faculties, and the six sense-objects each continue moment to moment throughout the round of rebirth.

This opens **gradation (巳七品分差別4), the SEVENTH of the eight categorical distinctions**, beginning with inquiring (午一徵).

This opens marking (午二標), the second of gradation's four sections — every dharma can be sorted into one of two grades: a fault requiring correction, or the corrective quality itself.

This opens listing (午三列), the third of gradation's four sections — fourteen paired categories, twenty-eight factors in all, each pair naming first what needs remedying and then its remedy: defiled/undefiled, inferior/excellent, coarse/subtle, grasped/ungrasped, and so through the remaining ten pairs — a comprehensive grid for sorting any dharma along its own corrective axis.

This opens explaining the fourteen (午四釋14), beginning with defiled and undefiled factors (未一染不染法2), the first of gradation's fourteen paired categories, beginning with raising the defiled factors (申一舉染法3), beginning with marking (酉一標).

This opens listing (酉二列), the second of raising the defiled factors' three sections — pleasant feeling breeds craving's own increase, since beings naturally wish pleasure to continue; painful feeling breeds aversion's increase, since beings naturally wish pain to end; and neutral feeling, subtler and less noticed, breeds delusion's increase — the very ground on which the four inverted views (permanence, pleasure, purity, self wrongly imputed onto what is impermanent, painful, impure, and selfless) take root. Beyond this, a defiled factor draws in affliction's own coarse residue, ripens into unwanted fruit, binds rebirth's own continuity, and obstructs every wholesome factor and the wisdom that would remove the obstruction to what is knowable.

This opens illustrating the undefiled (申二例不染2), beginning with by analogy, the opposite (酉一例相違) — a factor lacking all five defiling marks just listed is, by this same measure, undefiled.

This opens **inferior and excellent factors (未二下劣勝妙法2), the SECOND of the fourteen paired categories**, beginning with by the principle of ultimate meaning (申一由勝義道理2), beginning with inferior (酉一下劣2), beginning with separately distinguishing the marks (戌一別辨相3), beginning with impurity (亥一不淨) — bodily decay and mental affliction, both named among the Śrāvaka Grounds' sixfold impurity, together mark the inferior as impure.

This opens suffering (亥二苦) — from a noble one's own vantage, every feeling within the three realms, painful, pleasant, or neutral alike, is ultimately suffering.

This opens by the principle of relative comparison (申二由相待道理3), the second of inferior-and-excellent's two principles, beginning with marking (酉一標) — this ordinary, worldly sense of "inferior" and "excellent" depends entirely on what is being compared to what.

This opens explaining (酉二釋) — the form realm's own luminous, inward-turned freedom from desire, aversion, and harm surpasses the desire realm's coarse embodiment; the formless realm's freedom even from form's own confinement surpasses the form realm's lingering physicality; and nirvāṇa alone, transcending all three realms entirely, surpasses every one of them.

This opens **coarse and subtle factors (未三麤細法2), the THIRD of the fourteen paired categories**, beginning with marking the establishment (申一標建立2), beginning with the first meaning (酉一第一義2), beginning with the coarseness and subtlety of form (戌一有色麤細) — form is graded coarse or subtle along three axes: how conspicuous it is, how pure or defiled it is, and how strong or weak its own force and function.

This opens explaining the distinctions (申二釋差別4), a fourfold structure, beginning with subtle and conspicuous (酉一微著) — the "subtle particle" is a conceptual unit posited by discerning wisdom, not a literal physical atom, meant to help practitioners see through attachment to form's own seeming solidity; anything coarser than this analytical minimum, directly perceptible to the five senses, counts as conspicuous.

This opens pure and impure (酉二淨穢) — the intermediate state's own subtle form and the form realm's own form are pure relative to the desire realm; within the desire realm itself, gods are purer than humans, and humans purer than the three lower destinies.

This opens force and function (酉三勢用) — a hard object contains water, fire, and wind alongside earth, but earth's own force predominates, making solidity the conspicuous, "coarse" quality while the other elements remain hidden and "subtle."

This opens **grasped and ungrasped factors (未四執受非執受法2), the FOURTH of the fourteen paired categories**, beginning with raising the grasped factors (申一舉執受法2), beginning with what is grasped (酉一所執受) — the living body's own sense-faculties are held and animated by mind and mental factors; body and mind rise and fall together so long as this grasping continues, and only ceases — allowing decay — once the store-consciousness releases its hold at death.

This opens what does the grasping (申二能執受) — five marks establish "grasped" status: the pure form of the sense-faculties themselves; the coarser physical body those faculties depend on; both sustained by the store-consciousness's own unreleased grasp; and two further marks concerning how such grasped form changes — through external contact (harmful or beneficial), through the four elements' own internal balance or imbalance, through the frequent activity of afflictions like craving and aversion, and through whether the mind's own reflection on its object is correct, incorrect, or neutral. Body and mind, once genuinely grasped together, rise and fall as one.

With this, **resistant and non-resistant factors (未七有對無對法), the SEVENTH of gradation's fourteen paired categories**, closes in a single section — resistance is established through five marks: occupying its own distinct location so that nothing else can occupy the same space; obstructing another aggregation's own capacity to be received or to pass through, unlike empty space, which obstructs nothing; being subject to damage through contact with a hand, foot, stone, or blade; being the object the pure sense-faculties take; and being the object the resulting sense-consciousnesses take. Mental-only form (法處所攝色) has neither visibility nor resistance; the desire realm's ordinary sense-faculties and objects are fully resistant. Non-resistant factors simply lack all five of these marks.

This opens the long-form explanation (辛二長行釋5), a fivefold structure matching the summary verse's own five parts, beginning with aggregation and mutual embrace and the rest (壬一聚相攝等5), beginning with marking (癸一標) — the treatise's own final review opens with nine great aggregates said to embrace absolutely every dharma there is.

This opens inquiring (癸二徵), the second of aggregation and mutual embrace's five sections.

This opens listing (癸三列), the third of aggregation and mutual embrace's five sections — nine aggregates spanning the full moral and soteriological map of every dharma: the three moral qualities, what a trainee severs at the moment of first insight versus through sustained cultivation, what needs no further severing at all (an arhat's own liberated state), and three further groupings by karmic fixity.

This opens explaining (癸四釋7), a sevenfold structure matching seven of the nine aggregates, beginning with wholesome and the other two aggregates (子一善等法聚) — the treatise simply points back to the mental ground's own detailed ninefold analysis of these three basic moral qualities (their basis, own-nature, mental conjunction, conventional versus real existence, grade of intensity, occasion of arising, distinct function, virtue and fault, and what remedies what) rather than repeating it here.

This opens the aggregate of factors severed by the path of seeing (子二見所斷法聚) — for the śrāvaka path, this names ten conceptually-generated afflictions permanently uprooted the instant one enters the path of seeing: the five sharp, easily-severed views (self-view in the five aggregates; extreme views of eternalism or nihilism; wrong view denying karma and the three treasures; wrongly grasping an ineffective precept or vow as liberating; and holding any of the first three as supreme) together with five duller, view-dependent afflictions (craving, aversion, pride, delusion, and doubt toward karma, the truths, and the three treasures). Distributed across the four noble truths and the three realms (the upper two realms lacking aversion, since it cannot arise there), these total 112 distinct afflictions, together with the specific unwholesome karmic acts they generate — the whole of what a stream-enterer's own single moment of direct insight severs all at once.

This opens the aggregate of factors severed by the path of cultivation (子三修所斷法聚) — sixteen innate afflictions remain even after the path of seeing: desire-realm beings retain innate self-view, extreme view, craving, aversion, pride, and delusion (six), while form and formless-realm beings, incapable of aversion, retain only five each — these, together with every wholesome factor still tainted by outflows and the store-consciousness's own seeds, are what sustained cultivation gradually wears away.

This opens the aggregate of factors requiring no severing (子四無斷法聚) — a trainee's own genuine absorption in supramundane realization, and everything belonging to an arhat beyond training, carry nothing further left to sever.

This opens the aggregate of factors fixed in a wrong nature (子五邪性定法聚) — killing one's father, mother, or an arhat, causing a schism in the saṅgha, or drawing a buddha's blood, together with comparably grave acts and the state of having entirely lost the present activity of every wholesome root (though not necessarily its seed), together constitute what is fixed, decisively and without wavering, in a wrong nature.

This opens the aggregate of factors fixed in a right nature (子六正性定法聚) — a noble one's own qualities, from stream-entry through arhatship, are fixed decisively in a right nature, mirroring the wrong-nature aggregate's opposite extreme.

This opens **accomplishment and the rest (壬二成就等3), the SECOND of the final summary's five parts**, beginning with distinguishing accomplishment (癸一辨成就2), beginning with what can be found (子一可得2), beginning with accomplishing wholesome and neutral factors (丑一成就善法及無記法) — a noble one who has genuinely severed craving for the desire realm, whether by degree at each of the four fruits, no longer manifests unwholesome karma at all; an ordinary being who has merely suppressed desire through meditative attainment shares this same freedom from unwholesome manifestation, but only at the level of present activity — the underlying seed remains, since their attainment has not truly uprooted it.

This opens clarifying attainment and relinquishment (癸二明得捨3), the second of accomplishment-and-the-rest's three sections, beginning with generally marking (子一總標) — whether a given factor is present or absent in a given life turns entirely on the specific conditions that bring it about or let it lapse.

This opens raising the categories (子二舉類) — twelve distinct occasions (death and rebirth counted as two) on which a factor is either newly attained or relinquished, each to be explained individually in what follows.

This opens explaining their marks (子三釋相9), a ninefold structure matching nine of the twelve occasions, beginning with through receiving and relinquishing what is received (丑一由受捨所受) — formally taking novice or full ordination confers the corresponding precept-substance; formally relinquishing it surrenders that same status.

This opens through wrong and right seeking (丑二由邪正推求) — unwise attention toward a given object leads reasoning astray and squanders wholesome factors already gained; wise, correct reflection, aligned with a noble one's own understanding, recovers and builds them.

This opens through a change of physical sex (丑三由轉形) — the traditional vinaya rule that ordination status tracks physical sex, with dual-sexed manifestation permanently disqualifying either monastic status.

This opens through the natural course of things (丑四由法爾) — before a fire-eon's own destruction, every being still in the desire realm or first dhyāna naturally rises to the second dhyāna heaven of its own accord, without deliberate cultivation, purely as the natural unfolding of cosmic law, before the first dhyāna itself is consumed in flame.

This opens through freedom from desire (丑五由離欲) — leaving desire-realm craving behind opens access to the form and formless realms' own finer wholesome qualities.

This opens through preparatory effort (丑六由加行) — sustained, unbroken, earnest cultivation of calm-abiding and clear-seeing is what actually draws forth the mundane absorptions and, ultimately, the supramundane path's own qualities.

This opens through regression (丑七由退失) — samādhi alone, never having severed affliction's own seed, can lapse the instant a sufficiently strong object provokes craving or aversion, dropping a practitioner straight back to the desire realm's own condition; the noble path itself, by contrast, once genuinely attained, never regresses.

This opens through attaining a fruit (丑八由得果) — genuine realization of a path-fruit brings right view free of every outflow, releasing attachment to worldly, proliferation-laden factors; the fundamental wisdom this realization first yields in turn gives rise to a subsequently attained wisdom that sees worldly phenomena as illusion-like, so that whatever further mundane absorption a noble one still cultivates only grows brighter and purer for no longer being grasped at all.

This opens through death and rebirth (丑九由死生2), the ninth and final of the individually-explained occasions, beginning with raising what is attained (寅一舉所得) — rebirth in the desire realm brings back the full range of all three moral qualities; rebirth in the form or formless realm brings only wholesome and neutral factors, since unwholesome karma cannot manifest there.

This opens explaining the underlying principle (癸三釋道理2), the third of accomplishment-and-the-rest's three sections, beginning with mind and mental factors' own conjunction and embrace (子一諸心心所相應相攝) — craving and aversion, being mutually contrary, can never arise conjoined in the very same instant; only genuinely compatible factors, of the same instant, can accompany one another — the very same principle already implicit in how attainment and relinquishment were shown never to coincide.

This opens the distinctions in how conditioned factors flow in cause and effect (子二諸行因果流轉差別2), beginning with the flow of birth and death (丑一生死流轉2), beginning with revealing there is a fruit (寅一顯有果) — by conventional truth, the aggregates, elements, and sense-fields that constitute saṃsāra's own round have no power to sever themselves; only the truth of the path can accomplish that. By ultimate truth, there is, more radically, no genuinely real conditioned factor there to sever in the first place — realizing this directly is itself what shows that birth and death, rightly seen, never truly occurred at all.

This opens **own-nature and the rest (壬三自性等6), the THIRD of the final summary's five parts**, beginning with no second own-nature (癸一無二自性) — each dharma arises from its own distinct seed, one kind of seed never producing another kind of factor; since no two seeds of the very same kind ever arise together at once, no factor ever has a second, alternative own-nature standing alongside its actual one.

This opens no second conjunction (癸二無二相應) — the same self-continuity that governs eye-consciousness, one instant ceasing exactly as the next arises, never two instances of it existing at once, follows directly from there being no second own-nature to begin with.

This opens no second function (癸三無二作用) — eye-consciousness discerns form and nothing else; a wholesome factor carries only its own wholesome function, never simultaneously the opposite.

This opens not operating by reliance on itself (癸四不依自轉) — no conditioned factor stands independently; its own seed alone is never sufficient, some further supporting condition is always required — this is simply what it means to say the conditioned is dependently arisen.

This opens not accompanying itself (癸五不與自俱) — a seed of one kind is never simultaneously present with another seed of that same kind, and no seed unfolds simply by "following" its own earlier self, since each instance depends afresh on its own full complement of conditions; eye-consciousness, for instance, depends on the sixth consciousness's own attention to actually unfold, not on some prior instance of itself.

This opens **cause and the rest (壬四因等2), the FOURTH of the final summary's five parts**, beginning with ruling out what is not a cause (癸一簡非因) — causation never runs backward from a later effect to an earlier cause, and a wholesome factor's own seed never directly causes an unwholesome factor, or vice versa.

This opens the long-form explanation (癸二長行釋14), a fourteen-part structure matching the summary verse's own fourteen topics, beginning with the grounds (子一諸地3), beginning with marking and listing the kinds (丑一標列種類) — the ground of provisions covers a śrāvaka's own thirteen (or fourteen) provisions of practice, and, for a bodhisattva, the vast accumulation of merit and wisdom prior to genuine confidence in mind-only teaching; the ground of preparatory approach covers the four wholesome roots (heat, summit, forbearance, supreme worldly dharma) leading right up to the path of seeing; the ground of contemplative practice names forbearance and supreme worldly dharma specifically, closest of all to direct realization; the ground of seeing is the path of seeing's own fifteen or sixteen moments of direct insight; the ground of cultivation covers every mundane and supramundane path from the first fruit onward; the trainee's ground spans the first three fruits and their approaches; the ground beyond training is the arhat's own complete five-part liberated body; the ground of the noble ones gathers seeing, cultivation, trainee, and beyond-training together; and the ground of ordinary beings gathers provisions, preparatory approach, and contemplative practice together.

This opens briefly explaining the sequence (丑二略釋次第) — from gathering provisions, through preparatory practice's four wholesome roots contemplating the sixteen aspects of the four truths, to the single instant of entering the path of seeing (called "freedom from birth" for severing the very karma that would otherwise draw one to a lower rebirth), and onward through cultivation to the four fruits — a single, unbroken progression from ordinary being to full realization.

This opens **the paths (子八諸道2), the EIGHTH of the final summary's fourteen topics**, beginning with marking and listing (丑一標列) — nine distinct ways of naming the path, according to whether it transcends the world, its stage in a given effort, or its own relative intensity.

This opens elaborating the nine (丑二隨釋9), beginning with the worldly path (寅一世間道) — the four mundane absorptions and four formless attainments, along with the ten wholesome deeds that lead merely to a good rebirth (or their opposite, leading to a lower one), all belong to the worldly path; even genuine meditative attainment, the Compendium of Abhidharma cautions, remains worldly so long as craving for the absorption itself, wrong views born of psychic powers, pride, or lingering doubt about the reality of the noble path continue to defile it — bodhisattva samādhis, by contrast, are said to number in the hundreds and thousands, far beyond a śrāvaka's own more limited scheme of four absorptions and four formless attainments.

This opens the supramundane path (寅二出世道) — dharma-wisdom and analogical wisdom's own four aspects (knowledge of suffering, origin, cessation, and the path) directly and permanently sever affliction's own seed, not merely suppress its current activity.

This opens the path of preparatory effort (寅三加行道) — the six-fold worldly preparatory contemplation (seeing the lower stage as coarse, painful, and confining, the upper stage as calm, excellent, and liberating) belongs to the worldly path; the supramundane path's own preparatory effort instead takes up the four noble truths directly as its object.

This opens the path without interruption (寅四無間道) — the moment of active severance itself, with no gap between effort and result.

This opens the path of liberation (寅五解脫道) — the moment immediately following severance, where the mind actually experiences its own transformed, liberated basis; corresponding to the culminating effort's own resultant mental application.

This opens the path of further advancement (寅六勝進道) — advancing beyond a given liberation to press on toward severing the next, subtler grade of affliction; on a stricter reading, this simply names the preparatory-effort, without-interruption, and liberation paths themselves, viewed relative to what still remains to be severed further on.

This opens the inferior-grade path (寅七下品道) — the coarsest, most fiercely manifest afflictions, being the most conspicuous, are also the easiest to remedy, requiring only a modest degree of path-strength — like wiping away the heaviest surface grime first.

This opens the middle-grade path (寅八中品道) — a moderate degree of path-strength for affliction of matching intensity.

This opens **the remedies and the rest (子九諸對治等2), the NINTH of the final summary's fourteen topics**, beginning with setting forth the kinds (丑一出種類3), beginning with the remedies (寅一諸對治) — these four map directly onto the seven mental applications already discussed at length across this project: aversion-and-destruction (seeing the five clung-to aggregates as diseased and afflicted) corresponds to grasping the object and confident resolve; severance-and-extinction (the actual severing of affliction) corresponds to withdrawal through culminating effort; sustaining (the resultant liberation) corresponds to the culminating fruit; and distancing (every further mental application cultivated afterward, at an ever-higher stage) corresponds to whatever continues once liberation is sustained, carrying it further and further from what was already severed.

This opens the aspects (寅二諸行相), the second of setting forth the kinds' three sections — four aspects illuminate each of the four truths: suffering as impermanent, painful, empty, and selfless; origin as cause, accumulation, arising, and condition (all traced to craving, which both draws forth future suffering and "moistens" the karmic seeds that give rise to rebirth); cessation as extinction, stillness, excellence, and liberation (nirvāṇa as supreme precisely because it is free of both the suffering and the causes that produce it); and the path as genuine path, true method, sustained practice, and true emergence. The Śrāvaka Grounds unfolds this contemplation across the seven mental applications in full: grasping the object first surveys these sixteen aspects broadly across both directly and indirectly observed aggregates; confident resolve deepens this into a settled, boundless conviction (that suffering, its causes, and their ending are all without limit) through both a "comprehensive" and a "essential-nature" mode of reflection — the latter turning the same sixteen aspects onto the practitioner's own present mind-moment, watching it arise, cease, and depend on conditions in real time. A well-documented pitfall appears here: even at this refined stage, a subtle self-conceit can creep back in — "I have wandered saṃsāra long, I shall attain nirvāṇa, I contemplate suffering as truly suffering" — dressing the very insight meant to dissolve self-view in the grammar of "I" once again; genuinely working through this conceit is itself the fourth aspect of the path (emergence). From here, four wholesome roots ripen in sequence — heat, summit, forbearance, and supreme worldly dharma, the discernment growing from lower through middle to upper grade — until, in a single instant beyond conceptual thought entirely, one enters the path of seeing itself, permanently severing all 112 conceptually-generated afflictions across the three realms and the four truths at once (or, for one who has already tamed desire through prior meditative attainment, arriving directly at the third fruit). Withdrawal, gathered joy, and culminating effort then carry cultivation on through to the vajra-like samādhi that finally, at arhatship's own threshold, severs even the last, subtlest residue of self-grasping — and culminating effort's own fruit is arhatship itself: the five-part liberated body of precepts, samādhi, wisdom, liberation, and the knowledge and vision of liberation, able to dwell freely in the noble, heavenly, or divine abidings at will.

This opens cultivation (寅三諸修習), the third of setting forth the kinds' three sections — eight distinct senses in which practice is said to be "cultivated," to be listed and explained in what follows.

This opens **the fruits, the causes, and the conditions (子十一諸果等2), the ELEVENTH of the final summary's fourteen topics**, beginning with setting forth the kinds (丑一出種類3), beginning with the fruits (寅一諸果) — karmic ripening is the neutral, delayed, and often differently-natured fruit any wholesome or unwholesome deed deposits in the store-consciousness, ripening later into one of the six realms' own rebirth; the fruit flowing from its own kind resembles its own cause in nature, whether directly (a wholesome seed yielding a later wholesome seed or manifestation) or only by rough resemblance (a shortened life this life echoing a past life's own shortened span); dominant condition names whatever exerts special influence in producing a result (the eye-faculty for eye-consciousness, or, more broadly, the shared environment a community's own collective karma produces, or even the benefit one being's own merit confers on others, as when encountering a buddha brings ease to those who venerate him); the fruit of a person's own effort is whatever a skilled worker's labor directly produces, a harvest or a finished piece of craft; and freedom from bondage is the fruit of the noble eightfold path itself, the fruit of the four stages that frees the mind from every affliction's own binding grip — the only one of the five fruits an ordinary being, however accomplished otherwise, still entirely lacks.

This opens the causes (寅二諸因) — the bodhisattva grounds unpacks each of these ten causes across four parallel angles (its own essential nature, an illustration from ordinary farming, its role in defilement, and its role in purification), a pattern this note preserves in brief. The cause of what is merely designated is simply the name and concept that must exist before anything can be spoken of at all — "wheat," or, on the defiled side, the whole chain of terms from ignorance through aging-and-death, or, on the pure side, the four foundations of mindfulness through the eightfold path and nirvāṇa itself. The cause of relative dependence is whatever a thing's own existence or pursuit depends on — hands and feet enabling grasping and walking; hunger driving the search for food; craving driving affliction's own continuity; and the many faults of conditioned existence driving the wish for purification. The cause that draws forth is a seed reaching toward its own eventual fruit across a longer span — a grain's own seed, the karmic seeds already sown in this life that draw forth a future rebirth, or a practitioner's own innate spiritual lineage drawing them, in time, toward one of the three kinds of nirvāṇa. The cause that gathers in is every further supporting condition beyond the seed itself — soil, rain, and fertilizer for a crop; bad company, wrong teaching, and habituated fault for defilement; good company, right teaching, and a ripened wholesome disposition for purification. The cause of arising is a seed's more immediate production of its very next manifestation, nearer at hand than the drawing-forth cause's own longer reach — a sprout from a seed, or the seeds of the factors of enlightenment giving rise directly to their own present unfolding. The cause that induces is one stage's own result inducing the stage that follows it in turn — sprout inducing stem, stem inducing leaf, leaf inducing flower and fruit; the twelve links of dependent origination unfolding one into the next; or one fruit of the path inducing cultivation toward the next, stream-entry toward once-returning and onward to arhatship. The cause of fixed distinction is simply that a given kind of seed produces only its own kind of result and no other — wheat from wheat, never from barley; a śrāvaka's own path leading only to a śrāvaka's own nirvāṇa, a bodhisattva's path only to complete buddhahood. The cause of shared undertaking gathers all six of the preceding causes together as jointly necessary for any result to actually ripen, whether a harvest, a defilement, or a purification — remove even one, and the result fails to mature. The cause of opposition is whatever actively obstructs a result from arising — hail and frost ruining a harvest; being born in an age without a buddha's teaching obstructing purification; or, in six further named forms (verbal, logical, obstructing-arising, mutually-exclusive-like-light-and-darkness, adversarial-like-natural-enemies, and remedial-like-a-remedy-opposing-its-own-affliction) obstructing defilement's own further growth.

This opens the conditions (寅三諸緣) — a seed, whether functioning as a drawing-forth or an arising cause, is the causal condition proper; every other cause named above falls under dominant condition, the general category for any further contributing circumstance. The condition of equal and immediate succession names the simple fact that a mind and its mental factors can only arise once the immediately preceding moment of mind has itself ceased — the prior moment's ceasing is what opens the way for the next moment's arising, each thought-moment guiding in the one that follows. Object-condition names that any mind necessarily arises in dependence on both a faculty and an object it takes hold of — faculty and object condition one another, so that only where there is an object taken hold of does a mind or mental factor arise at all. A mental event thus requires all four conditions to arise — causal, immediate-succession, object, and dominant — while a physical form requires only two, causal and dominant.

This opens **establishing the noble persons (子十二諸補特伽羅2), the TWELFTH of the final summary's fourteen topics**, beginning with distinguishing (丑一辨3), beginning with the seven kinds (寅一七種), themselves distinguished by three further angles — differing effort, differing meditative attainment, and differing obstruction overcome. First, the follower through faith relies on a good teacher's own instruction and exhortation, trusting and carrying out what is taught rather than independently weighing the teaching. Second, the follower through the teaching itself independently reflects on and weighs what has been heard, practicing by their own strength without needing a teacher's continued direction. Third, once the follower through faith advances and realizes a fruit of the path, the very same person is renamed one liberated through resolute faith. Fourth, once the follower through the teaching likewise realizes the ultimate truth through their own hearing, reflection, and cultivation, the same person is renamed one who has arrived at seeing. Fifth, one witnessing with the body relies on the eight liberations across the four form-realm absorptions, the four formless absorptions, and cessation-attainment, freeing themselves from the afflictions of each lower stage in turn and personally experiencing this liberation bodily, though only a third-fruit or higher noble one who has not yet severed the very last portion of afflicted craving and views can accomplish cessation-attainment itself. Sixth, one liberated through wisdom has severed only the affliction-obstruction and not the meditative obstruction, attaining arhatship through wisdom's own culmination without necessarily attaining cessation-attainment. Seventh, one liberated in both ways has severed both obstructions entirely, possesses the eight liberations fully and the three insights and six supernormal powers besides, faith, effort, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom all evenly balanced.

This continues with the six kinds (寅二六種), this time six kinds of arhat distinguished by whether their meditative attainment can regress — the first five are called "liberated in time," dull in faculty, needing every supporting condition present before their attainment holds firm. First, one who regresses from the dharma is dull in faculty and, though afflictions of craving and views are already severed, still loses the present ease of meditative absorption over time. Second, one who has lost the dharma, having lost that ease, may even seek to end this present life's suffering by taking their own life in order to enter final nirvāṇa — the early discourses record such cases without either the Buddha's praise or censure. Third, one who guards the dharma must diligently practice without heedlessness precisely to keep that same absorption from regressing. Fourth, one who abides in the dharma neither easily regresses nor easily advances, simply remaining settled in absorption without further undertaking. Fifth, one capable of penetration is dull but diligent, continually sharpening a dull faculty into a sharp one through sustained practice. Sixth, one of unmoving dharma is sharp in faculty and liberated in both ways at once, whose absorption never regresses and who readily accomplishes the noble path under any circumstance whatsoever.

This continues with the eight kinds (寅三八種), commonly called the four pairs and eight kinds of noble persons: those practicing toward and those abiding in each of stream-entry, once-returning, non-returning, and arhatship — established, as this lecture already explained at length earlier in this fascicle, by the affliction each has severed rather than by any further attainment beyond severance itself.

This opens **the two culminations (子十四二究竟2), the FOURTEENTH and final topic of the final summary's fourteen topics**, beginning with setting forth the list (丑一標列) — from the practitioner's own side, two culminating perfections: wisdom's own perfection, and the perfection of severing affliction.

This opens explaining in turn (丑二隨釋2), beginning with the culmination of wisdom (寅一智究竟) — the knowledge that affliction is entirely exhausted is the knowledge of exhaustion; the knowledge that no future rebirth, and no further condition for one, will ever again arise is the knowledge of non-arising. Each further divides into a non-discriminating aspect, the root wisdom of direct realization itself, and a discriminating aspect, the subsequently attained wisdom able to reflect explicitly, "my own afflictions are exhausted," and "I have accomplished suffering, its origin, its cessation, and the path." Once an arhat has accomplished both the knowledge of exhaustion and of non-arising, affliction being wholly severed already, there remains nothing further to learn about how to sever it — this is precisely why such a one is called "beyond further training."

This opens the treatise's own concluding exhortation to study (丙四結勸所學2), beginning with pointing to the preceding aspect (丁一指前相) — a final review of the whole one-hundred-fascicle treatise's own five major divisions: the foundational stages (本地分, seventeen grounds from the five sense-consciousnesses' own ground through the ground with no further remainder, the treatise's own bedrock, to be thoroughly mastered), the embrace of further determination (攝決擇分, resolving the seventeen grounds' own hidden essentials with particular brilliance), the embrace of explanations (攝釋分, teaching how to properly interpret scripture itself), the embrace of synonyms (攝異門分, drawing out doctrine's many facets through paired bright and dark terms), and the embrace of the bases (攝事分, fascicles 85 through 100, just now closed, uniting sūtra matters, matters of monastic discipline, and foundational-treatise matters into one). The embrace of explanations, fascicle 81, teaches that any sūtra of fully drawn-out meaning, wherein the Buddha himself has already broadly distinguished every factor's own essential nature, may itself be called a mātṛkā — and that without a mātṛkā's own guidance, the twelve-fold body of the Buddha's teaching, suited to beings of every capacity, cannot be clearly understood, while with it, it becomes clear. This treatise builds exactly such a mātṛkā, so that anyone who masters it may in principle come to understand the entire canon through it — a work approaching an encyclopedia's own scope, hence its name, "the treatise that pervades every teaching."