Mark and Marked, One and Different, Existent and Non-existent
Three gates, working the same joint from three angles. Gate Five asks what a mark could possibly attach to — something that already has a mark needs none, and something with none has nothing there to receive one. Gate Six presses on the relation itself: is a mark the same as what it marks, or different from it? The opponent offers three careful models, drawn from consciousness, from nirvāṇa, and from right view, and all three are answered. Gate Seven turns to a doctrine of the Abhidharma that had tried to build perishing into things from the start — every existent thing arises together with its own impermanence — and shows that a destroyer which does not destroy is no destroyer at all.
Examining What Has a Mark and What Has None
Gate Four established that arising, abiding, and ceasing cannot serve as marks of the conditioned. Gate Five widens the attack from those particular marks to marking as such. The dilemma is exhaustive and takes one line to state: whatever a mark is applied to either has a mark already, or has none. In the first case the mark is redundant; in the second there is nothing there for it to characterize.
復次，一切法空。何以故？
Furthermore, all things are empty. Why?
有相相不相， 無相亦不相；
離彼相不相， 相為何所相？
In what has a mark, a mark does not mark;
in what has no mark, it does not mark either;
and apart from those two, the marked and the unmarked,
what is there for a mark to mark?
有相事中相不相。何以故？若法先有相，更何用相為？復次，若有相事中相得相者，則有二相過：一者先有相，二者相來相是相。是故有相事中相無所相。無相事中相亦無所相。何法名無相而以有相相？
In a thing that has a mark, a mark does not mark. Why? If a thing already has a mark, what further use is a mark? Furthermore, if in a thing that already has a mark the mark could still mark, there would be the fault of two marks: first, the mark it had already, and second, the mark that comes to mark it. So in a thing that has a mark, a mark marks nothing. And in a thing that has no mark, a mark marks nothing either. What thing is it that you call markless, such that one might mark it with a mark?
如象有雙牙，垂一鼻，頭有三隆，耳如箕，脊如彎弓，腹大而垂，尾端有毛，四脚麁圓，是為象相。若離是相，更無有象可以相相。如馬竪耳、垂鬃，四脚同蹄，尾通有毛，若離是相，更無有馬可以相相。
An elephant has a pair of tusks, a hanging trunk, three swellings on its head, ears like winnowing baskets, a back like a bent bow, a great sagging belly, hair at the tip of its tail, and four thick round legs: these are the marks of an elephant. Apart from these marks there is no further elephant for a mark to mark. A horse has upright ears, a hanging mane, four feet alike with hooves, and a tail haired all along: apart from these marks there is no further horse for a mark to mark.
如是有相中相無所相，無相中相亦無所相；離有相、無相，更無第三法可以相相，是故相無所相。相無所相故，可相法亦不成。何以故？以相故知是事名可相。以是因緣故，相、可相俱空。
Thus in what has a mark, a mark marks nothing; and in what has no mark, a mark marks nothing either; and apart from what has a mark and what has none, there is no third thing for a mark to mark. Therefore a mark marks nothing. And since a mark marks nothing, what is marked is not established either. Why? Because it is by a mark that a thing is known, and that is precisely what "what is marked" means. For this reason mark and marked are both empty.
相、可相空故，萬物亦空。何以故？離相、可相，更無有物。物無故，非物亦無；以物滅故名無物，若無物者，何所滅故名為無物？物、無物空故，一切有為法皆空；有為法空故，無為法亦空；有為、無為空故，我亦空。
And since mark and marked are empty, the myriad things are empty too. Why? Because apart from mark and marked there is no thing at all. Things being absent, non-things are absent too; for it is by a thing's ceasing that one speaks of a non-thing — and if there were no thing, what would have ceased, that one should call it a non-thing? Since thing and non-thing are empty, all conditioned things are empty; the conditioned being empty, the unconditioned is empty too; and the conditioned and the unconditioned being empty, the self is empty as well.
The elephant is the whole gate in one image. List its features — tusks, trunk, the three swellings, the winnowing-basket ears, the bowed back, the sagging belly, the tufted tail, the four thick legs — and then ask what is left over to be the elephant that has those features. Nothing is left over. There is no bare elephant standing behind the description, waiting to receive it. And this is not a claim that elephants are unreal; the description is perfectly good, and one could pick out an elephant with it in any village. What the argument denies is that the description attaches to some further underlying thing.
The closing move about things and non-things repeats a structure the treatise has now used three times, and it is the mechanism that makes emptiness stop short of nihilism. "Non-thing" is not a spare category waiting to receive whatever gets emptied. It is defined as the ceasing of a thing, so it goes out with the thing it was defined against. Emptiness does not leave a void behind; it removes both terms of the pair, void included.
Two small notes for readers following the Chinese. The horse's mane is written in the Taishō edition with a rare composite character; we give it as 垂鬃, the reading the commentarial tradition supplies, as we did with the ox's dewlap in Gate Four. And at the end of Gate Four we were told that the robe simile "will be dealt with more fully in the fifth gate below." This gate treats the general principle — that marklessness cannot function as a mark — but never returns to the robes themselves. Whether a fuller passage was lost, or whether the cross-reference was always meant loosely, we cannot say, and we have not supplied what is not there.
Examining Sameness and Difference
1. Neither One nor Different
Gate Six takes the pair Gate Five just emptied and asks about the relation between its two terms. The verse is brief because the work is done in the exchange that follows — and this is the treatise's best-argued objection, in which the opponent produces not a complaint but three worked models of how marking might function.
復次，一切法空。何以故？
Furthermore, all things are empty. Why?
相及與可相， 一、異不可得；
若無有一、異， 是二云何成？
A mark and what is marked
are not to be got as one, nor as different;
and if there is neither sameness nor difference,
how are the two of them established?
是相、可相，若一不可得，異亦不可得；若一、異不可得，是二則不成，是故相、可相皆空。相、可相空故，一切法皆空。
Mark and marked are not to be got as one, and not to be got as different; and if they are to be got neither as one nor as different, the two are not established. Therefore mark and marked are both empty; and since mark and marked are empty, all things are empty.
2. The Opponent's Three Models
The reply is the most substantial objection anyone raises in the treatise, and it deserves its space. Rather than deny the dilemma, the opponent accepts it and fills in both horns with real cases, adding a third the verse had not considered: sometimes the mark is a portion of what it marks.
問曰：「相、可相常成，何故不成？汝說相、可相，一、異不可得，今當說：凡物，或相即是可相，或相異可相，或少分是相餘是可相。
如識相是識，離所用識更無識；如受相是受，離所用受更無受，如是等相即是可相。
Question: Mark and marked are established all the time — why do you say they are not? You claim that mark and marked are to be got neither as one nor as different. Let me now say this. In general: either the mark just is what is marked, or the mark is different from what is marked, or a small part is the mark and the remainder is what is marked.
Thus the mark of consciousness is consciousness itself — apart from the consciousness that is exercised there is no further consciousness. The mark of feeling is feeling itself — apart from the feeling that is exercised there is no further feeling. In such cases the mark just is what is marked.
如佛說滅愛名涅槃，愛是有為有漏法，滅是無為無漏法；如信者有三相，樂親近善人、樂欲聽法、樂行布施，是三事身、口業故色陰所攝，信是心數法故行陰所攝，是名相與可相異。
如正見是道相，於道是少分；又生、住、滅是有為相，於有為法是少分，如是於可相中少分名相。
是故，或相即可相，或相異可相，或可相少分為相；汝言一、異不成，故相、可相不成者，是事不然。」
Again, the Buddha said that the extinguishing of craving is called nirvāṇa; craving is a conditioned thing with outflows, while extinguishing is unconditioned and without outflows. Or again, one who has faith has three marks — delight in drawing near to good people, delight in wishing to hear the Dharma, and delight in the practice of giving; and since these three are bodily and verbal action, they are included in the aggregate of form, whereas faith, being a mental factor, is included in the aggregate of formations. Here mark and marked are different.
Again, right view is a mark of the path, and is a small part of the path; and arising, abiding, and ceasing are marks of the conditioned, and are a small part of conditioned things. In such cases a small part of what is marked is called the mark.
So: either the mark just is what is marked, or the mark is different from it, or a small part of what is marked is the mark. Your saying that neither sameness nor difference is established, and that therefore mark and marked are not established, is not so.
Each model is chosen with care, and each is drawn from settled Buddhist teaching rather than from outside. For sameness: consciousness is not something that has the property of cognizing, it simply is cognizing; there is no bearer standing behind the activity. For difference: nirvāṇa is marked by the extinguishing of craving, and extinguishing is unconditioned while craving is conditioned, so mark and marked here fall on opposite sides of the deepest division Buddhism draws. For portion: right view is one item of the eightfold path, and the path is recognized by it — mark and marked overlap without coinciding.
The three between them look genuinely exhaustive of how marking works in practice, which is what makes the objection strong. Nāgārjuna's replies will take them one at a time, and the third will be dispatched by showing it was never a third option at all.
3. Nothing Knows Itself
The answer to the first model rests on a principle the treatise has already used against the self-lighting lamp, now stated in its own right: nothing performs its characteristic operation on itself.
答曰：「汝說或相是可相，如識等。是事不然。何以故？以相故可知，名可相，所用者名為相。凡物不能自知，如指不能自觸，如眼不能自見，是故汝說識即是相、可相，是事不然。
「復次，若相即是可相者，不應分別是相、是可相；若分別是相、是可相者，不應言相即是可相。
「復次，若相即是可相者，因果則一。何以故？相是因，可相是果，是二則一；而實不一，是故相即是可相，是事不然。
Answer: You say the mark may just be what is marked, as with consciousness and the rest. This is not so. Why? Because what is known by a mark is called what is marked, and that by which it is known is called the mark. And nothing whatever can know itself — as a finger cannot touch itself, as an eye cannot see itself. So your saying that consciousness is at once the mark and what is marked is not so.
Furthermore, if the mark just is what is marked, one ought not to distinguish "this is the mark" from "this is what is marked"; and if you do distinguish them, you ought not to say the mark just is what is marked.
Furthermore, if the mark just is what is marked, then cause and fruit are one. Why? The mark is the cause and what is marked is the fruit, so the two would be one — and in fact they are not one. Therefore that the mark just is what is marked is not so.
A finger cannot touch itself, an eye cannot see itself. The two images are exact and worth keeping. A fingertip presses against another fingertip, never against itself; an eye sees a reflection of an eye, never itself. The operation requires a gap between what operates and what is operated on, and self-application closes the gap that made the operation possible. This is the same insight that killed the self-lighting lamp in Gate Four, now generalized: it was never about light in particular.
The second argument is quieter and is the one that catches the opponent in his own speech. He has just spent a paragraph carefully distinguishing marks from marked things in order to argue that in some cases they coincide. But drawing the distinction is using it. If the two really were identical, the sentence explaining their identity could not have been formulated.
4. And Nothing Is Marked by What Is Wholly Other
The second and third models are answered together, and the third turns out not to be a separate position at all.
「汝說相異可相者，是亦不然。汝說滅愛是涅槃相，不說愛是涅槃相；若說愛是涅槃相，應言相、可相異；若言滅愛是涅槃相者，則不得言相可相異。
「又汝說信者有三相，俱不異，信若無信則無此三事，是故不得相、可相異。又相、可相異者，相更復應有相，則為無窮。是事不然，是故相、可相不得異。」
You say the mark is different from what is marked; this too is not so. You said the extinguishing of craving is nirvāṇa's mark — you did not say craving is nirvāṇa's mark. Had you said craving is nirvāṇa's mark, you could say mark and marked are different; but since you say the extinguishing of craving is nirvāṇa's mark, you cannot say mark and marked are different.
And as for your saying that one who has faith has three marks — these are not different at all; for if there were no faith, these three things would not be there. So mark and marked cannot be different. Moreover, if mark and marked were different, the mark would in turn require a mark of its own, and so on without end. That is not so — and therefore mark and marked cannot be different.
問曰：「如燈能自照亦能照彼，如是相能自相亦能相彼。」
答曰：「汝說燈喻，三有為相中已破。又自違先說，汝上言相、可相異，而今言相自能相亦能相彼。是事不然。又汝說可相中少分是相者。是事不然。何以故？此義或在一中、或在異中，一異義先已破故，當知少分相亦破。如是種種因緣相、可相，一不可得、異不可得，更無第三法成相可相，是故相、可相俱空。是二空故，一切法皆空。」
Question: As a lamp lights itself and also lights other things, so a mark marks itself and also marks other things.
Answer: Your lamp simile was already refuted in the discussion of the three marks of the conditioned. Besides, you contradict what you said before: above you said mark and marked are different, and now you say the mark marks itself as well as marking others. This is not so. And as for your saying that a small part of what is marked is the mark — this too is not so. Why? Because this must fall either under sameness or under difference; and since sameness and difference have already been refuted, the small-part account is refuted along with them. In this way, by every sort of reasoning, mark and marked are not to be got as one and not to be got as different, and there is no third thing by which mark and marked could be established. Therefore mark and marked are both empty; and since these two are empty, all things are empty.
The reply to the nirvāṇa case is a piece of close reading rather than metaphysics, and it is well done. The opponent needed a mark that falls on the far side of a real division from what it marks. But he did not choose craving as the mark — he chose the extinguishing of craving, which is unconditioned, exactly as nirvāṇa is. The two terms he offered as an example of difference are on the same side of the line. The example refutes itself, and only the careless wording made it look otherwise.
The faith case falls the other way. The three delights were supposed to be genuinely other than faith, since they are counted under a different aggregate. But take away faith and the three vanish, which is precisely what we mean by saying something is not independent. Between the two examples, the pattern is clear: candidates for "difference" turn out on inspection either to be not really different, or not really the mark.
And the third model collapses because it was never a third thing. A part is either the same as the whole or other than it — there is nowhere else for it to stand. Having refuted both, Nāgārjuna gets the small-part account without further argument, which is why the gate can end as abruptly as it does.
Examining Existence and Non-existence
1. Never Together, and Never Apart
Gate Seven takes up a specific and rather beautiful Abhidharma doctrine. The tradition had noticed the difficulty of explaining why anything ever perishes, if perishing has to come from outside, and solved it by building the ending in: every conditioned thing arises together with its own impermanence, which is present from the first moment and does its work at the last. Nāgārjuna's target is that co-arising.
復次一切法空。何以故？有、無一時不可得，非一時亦不可得。如說：
Furthermore, all things are empty. Why? Because existence and non-existence are not to be got at one time, and are not to be got at different times either. As it is said:
有、無一時無， 離無有亦無，
不離無有有， 有則應常無。
Existence and non-existence are not there at one time;
apart from non-existence, existence is not there either;
and if existence is never apart from non-existence,
then existence would always be non-existent.
有無性相違，一法中不應共有。如生時無死、死時無生，是事《中論》中已說。若謂離無有有無過者。是事不然。何以故？離無云何有有？如先說法生時通自體七法共生。如阿毘曇中說，有與無常共生。無常是滅相故名無。是故離無，有則不生。
Existence and non-existence are contrary in their nature, and ought not to be present together in one thing. As there is no death at the time of birth, and no birth at the time of death — a matter already treated in the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā. And if you say that existence taken apart from non-existence is free of fault, this is not so. Why? Apart from non-existence, how should there be existence? As was said before, when a thing arises, seven things arise together, counting the thing itself. And as the Abhidharma says, existence arises together with impermanence. Impermanence is the mark of ceasing, and is therefore called non-existence. So apart from non-existence, existence does not arise.
若不離無常有有生者，有則常無。若有常無者，初無有住，常是壞故。而實有住，是故有不常無。若離無常有有生者。是亦不然。何以故？離無常有實不生。
And if existence arises never apart from impermanence, then existence is always non-existent. If existence were always non-existent, there would be no abiding at all from the very first, since it would always be perishing. And in fact there is abiding — so existence is not always non-existent. And if existence arises apart from impermanence, this too is not so. Why? Because apart from impermanence, existence in truth does not arise.
The reference to the root treatise is explicit and worth following up: the point that birth and death cannot occupy the same moment is argued at length in the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, and this treatise cites it rather than repeating it — one of two places where it names the longer work directly.
The vice tightens in two turns. If a thing is never separable from its own impermanence, then perishing is a feature it has at every moment of its existence, including its first — so it never lasts even an instant, and there is no abiding, which contradicts what everyone observes. But if a thing can exist apart from its impermanence, then impermanence is not intrinsic to it after all, and the doctrine's whole point is surrendered. Neither the tight coupling nor the loose one can be held.
2. A Machinery of Six, Each Waiting Its Turn
The opponent's reply is a real piece of Abhidharma engineering, and among the most technically detailed passages in the treatise. Yes, impermanence is present from the start — but present is not the same as active. Six factors co-arise with every conditioned thing, and each waits for its own moment to do its work.
問曰：「有生時，已有無常而未發，滅時乃發壞是有。如是生、住、滅、老、得皆待時而發：有起時生為用，令有生；生滅中間住為用，持是有；滅時無常為用，滅是有；老變生至住，變住至滅；無常則壞；得常令四事成就。是故法雖與無常共生，有非常無。」
Question: When existence arises, impermanence is already present but not yet active; only at the time of ceasing does it become active and destroy that existence. In this way arising, abiding, ceasing, aging, and acquisition all await their proper time before becoming active. When existence comes up, arising is the one at work, causing existence to arise; between arising and ceasing, abiding is at work, sustaining that existence; at the time of ceasing, impermanence is at work, bringing that existence to an end; aging alters it from arising to abiding, and from abiding to ceasing; impermanence then destroys it; and acquisition constantly brings the other four to completion. So although a thing arises together with impermanence, existence is not always non-existent.
"Acquisition" here renders 得, prāpti — a distinctively Sarvāstivāda item, the factor that binds a given dharma to a particular continuum so that it is this being's arising and not another's. Its appearance, together with the seven co-arising dharmas cited a moment earlier, tells us exactly whose position is under examination throughout these middle gates.
The distinction the opponent draws is a sensible one and has modern analogues: a thing can possess a capacity long before it exercises it. A seed has the capacity to sprout in the packet. The reply will not deny the distinction in general. It will ask what it means for this capacity in particular, given how the school itself defined impermanence.
3. A Mark Is What a Thing Does
The refutation turns on a principle stated with unusual clarity, and illustrated by a run of seven examples: a mark is not a dormant credential but an activity. Where the activity is absent, the mark is absent.
答曰：「汝說無常是滅相與有共生，生時有應壞，壞時有應生。
「復次，生滅俱無。何以故？滅時不應有生，生時不應有滅，生滅相違故。
「復次，汝法無常與住共生，有壞時，應無住，若住則無壞。何以故？住、壞相違故。老時無住，住時無老。是故汝說生、住、滅、老、無常、得本來共生，是則錯亂。
Answer: You say impermanence is the mark of ceasing and arises together with existence. Then at the time of arising, existence ought to be perishing; and at the time of perishing, existence ought to be arising.
Furthermore, arising and ceasing are both absent. Why? At the time of ceasing there ought to be no arising, and at the time of arising no ceasing, since arising and ceasing are contrary to one another.
Furthermore, on your doctrine impermanence arises together with abiding. When existence is perishing there should be no abiding; and if it abides, there is no perishing. Why? Because abiding and perishing are contrary. At the time of aging there is no abiding, and at the time of abiding there is no aging. So your claim that arising, abiding, ceasing, aging, impermanence, and acquisition all arise together from the very start is a confusion.
「何以故？是有若與無常共生，無常是壞相，凡物生時無壞相，住時亦無壞相，爾時非是無無常相耶？
「如能識故名識，不能識則無識相；能受故名受，不能受則無受相；能念故名念，不能念則無念相。起是生相，不起則非生相；攝持是住相，不攝持則非住相；轉變是老相，不轉變則非老相；壽命滅是死相，壽命不滅則非死相。如是壞是無常相，離壞非無常相。
Why? If this existence arises together with impermanence, and impermanence is the mark of perishing — yet when a thing arises there is no mark of perishing in it, and when it abides there is no mark of perishing either — then is the mark of impermanence not simply absent at that time?
It is by being able to cognize that a thing is called consciousness; where it cannot cognize, there is no mark of consciousness. It is by being able to feel that a thing is called feeling; where it cannot feel, there is no mark of feeling. It is by being able to recollect that a thing is called mindfulness; where it cannot recollect, there is no mark of mindfulness. Coming up is the mark of arising; where nothing comes up, there is no mark of arising. Holding together is the mark of abiding; where nothing is held together, there is no mark of abiding. Altering is the mark of aging; where nothing alters, there is no mark of aging. The ending of the life-span is the mark of death; where the life-span does not end, there is no mark of death. Just so, perishing is the mark of impermanence; and where there is no perishing, there is no mark of impermanence.
若生、住時，雖有無常不能壞有、後能壞有者，何用共生為？如是應隨有壞時乃有無常。是故無常雖共生、後乃壞有者，是事不然。
「如是有、無共不成，不共亦不成，是故有、無空。有、無空故，一切有為空；一切有為空故，無為亦空；有為、無為空故，眾生亦空。」
If, at the time of arising and abiding, impermanence is present but cannot destroy existence, and only later destroys it — what use was there in its arising together with existence at all? On that showing, impermanence should be there only when existence is perishing. So the claim that impermanence arises together with existence and only later destroys it is not so.
In this way existence and non-existence are not established together, and not established apart either; and therefore existence and non-existence are empty. Since existence and non-existence are empty, all conditioned things are empty; all conditioned things being empty, the unconditioned is empty too; and the conditioned and the unconditioned being empty, beings are empty as well.
The seven examples are the heart of the gate, and the principle they establish is worth stating plainly: in this analysis a dharma is not a substance that happens to have a function, it simply is its function. Consciousness is not a thing that does cognizing; consciousness is cognizing. Mindfulness is not a thing that recollects; it is recollecting. This is Abhidharma's own way of speaking, and Nāgārjuna is holding the school to it. If a dharma is identical with its activity, then a dormant impermanence — present but not perishing anything — is not an inactive impermanence. It is no impermanence at all.
The closing question makes the cost visible: what use was there in its arising together with existence at all? The whole point of building impermanence in from the first moment was to explain why things end without needing an outside destroyer. But if impermanence only counts as impermanence when it is actually destroying, then it might as well have arrived at the end, and the co-arising has bought nothing. The doctrine either makes the thing perish immediately, or the impermanence in it is idle and therefore not there.
One detail of the last line rewards attention. The closing formula has run "how much more the self" in earlier gates; here it ends instead with beings are empty as well, and the same wording closes Gate Ten. It is a small shift, but a real one — from the metaphysical question of a self to the beings whose suffering the treatise was written to reach.
Part Five Complete
This closes Gates Five, Six, and Seven: a mark shown to have nothing available for it to mark, since whatever it approaches either has one already or has nothing there to take one; the relation of mark to marked, refused as sameness, as difference, and as partial overlap, with the opponent's three best models answered one by one; and the Abhidharma's co-arising impermanence, which must either destroy its thing at once or wait idly, and is no impermanence while it waits. Part Six takes up Gates Eight and Nine — and with them the treatise's most important doctrinal passage, where an opponent charges that emptiness destroys the Four Noble Truths, and receives the answer of the two truths.
Continue to Part 6 — No Nature, the Two Truths, and Cause and Fruit →