Desire, and the Five Natures
Vajragarbha's chapter settled the theoretical doubt about original buddhahood; Maitreya now turns to the practical question left underneath it — what actually keeps a being circling in the turning wheel, and why do beings who set out to be free of it end up so differently equipped for the task? The answer names desire as the root of saṃsāra itself, traces how it flowers into every rebirth from hell-realm to heaven, and sorts practitioners into five differing natures depending on which of two hindrances still binds them.
Maitreya's Question
於是彌勒菩薩在大眾中即從座起，頂禮佛足右遶三匝，長跪叉手而白佛言：「大悲世尊！廣為菩薩開祕密藏，令諸大眾深悟輪迴，分別邪正，能施末世一切眾生無畏道眼，於大涅槃生決定信，無復重隨輪轉境界起循環見。世尊！若諸菩薩及末世眾生，欲遊如來大寂滅海，云何當斷輪迴根本？於諸輪迴有幾種性？修佛菩提幾等差別？迴入塵勞，當設幾種教化方便度諸眾生？唯願不捨救世大悲，令諸修行一切菩薩及末世眾生，慧目肅清，照耀心鏡，圓悟如來無上知見。」作是語已五體投地，如是三請終而復始。
爾時，世尊告彌勒菩薩言：「善哉！善哉！善男子！汝等乃能為諸菩薩及末世眾生，請問如來深奧祕密微妙之義，令諸菩薩潔清慧目，及令一切末世眾生永斷輪迴，心悟實相，具無生忍。汝今諦聽！當為汝說。」時，彌勒菩薩奉教歡喜，及諸大眾默然而聽。
Then Maitreya rose from his seat in the midst of the great assembly, bowed at the Buddha's feet, circled him three times to the right, knelt with palms joined, and said to the Buddha: "Greatly Compassionate World-Honored One — you have broadly opened this secret treasury for the bodhisattvas, letting this great assembly deeply awaken to the nature of saṃsāra and distinguish the crooked from the true, able to give every sentient being of the final age a fearless eye for the path, giving rise to settled and decisive faith in great nirvāṇa, so that they no longer follow, again and again, whatever turning realm they encounter into yet another circling view. World-Honored One: if bodhisattvas and sentient beings of the final age wish to journey upon the Tathāgata's great ocean of ultimate quiescence, how should they cut off the root of saṃsāra? Among all the varieties of saṃsāra, how many natures are there? Cultivating the bodhi of a buddha — how many differing grades are there along the way? And when one turns back into the dust and toil of the world, how many kinds of teaching and skillful means should be set out to bring sentient beings across? I ask only that you, not withholding your world-saving great compassion, let all bodhisattvas who practice, and every sentient being of the final age, have a purified, clarified wisdom-eye, illuminating the mirror of the mind, fully awakening to the Tathāgata's unsurpassed knowledge and vision." Having said this, he prostrated himself, all five limbs to the ground, and repeated this same request three times, beginning again each time it ended.
At that time the World-Honored One said to Maitreya: "Excellent, excellent! Good sons — you are able to ask the Tathāgata about this profound, secret, and subtle meaning, letting bodhisattvas purify their wisdom-eye, and letting every sentient being of the final age forever cut off saṃsāra, awaken their mind to true reality, and attain the patience of non-arising. Now listen closely — I will explain it for you." Then Maitreya, rejoicing to receive this teaching, fell silent together with the whole assembly, and listened.
Zongmi reads Maitreya's four-part question — how to cut off saṃsāra's root, how many natures of saṃsāra there are, how many grades of bodhi practice, and how many methods for turning back into the world to teach — as splitting cleanly into a question about wisdom (the first two, "entering emptiness from having") and a question about compassion (the last two, "entering the provisional from emptiness"), a division the Buddha's answer will honor by reversing: Maitreya asked wisdom first, but the answer addresses compassion first, "for the sake of showing that wisdom implicit in compassion and compassion implicit in wisdom have no fixed order between them." He glosses Maitreya's own qualification for asking this particular question: as a bodhisattva of the tenth ground, one lifetime removed from buddhahood himself (一生補處), Maitreya has already worked through the coarser afflictions and is uniquely positioned to dig out the subtlest remaining root — desire — which is exactly what this chapter goes on to do.
Desire Is the Root of Saṃsāra
「善男子！一切眾生從無始際，由有種種恩愛貪欲，故有輪迴。若諸世界一切種性，卵生、胎生、濕生、化生，皆因婬欲而正性命，當知輪迴愛為根本。由有諸欲，助發愛性，是故能令生死相續。欲因愛生，命因欲有，眾生愛命，還依欲本；愛欲為因，愛命為果。」
"Good sons: all sentient beings, from beginningless time, have had saṃsāra precisely because they have had every kind of affection and desirous craving. In every world, every kind of being — born from an egg, from a womb, from moisture, or by transformation — fixes its very life and nature through sexual desire; know, therefore, that craving is the root of saṃsāra. Because there are objects of desire, they help bring forth the nature of craving, and it is this that allows birth-and-death to continue without a break. Desire arises because of craving; life exists because of desire. Sentient beings, craving their own life, still depend on desire as its root — craving desire is the cause, craving life is the result."
Zongmi distinguishes "affection" (恩愛) from "craving" (貪欲) carefully before treating them as a single root: affection covers the debt owed to parents, gratitude for a kindness received, or spontaneous attachment to one's own body, reputation, sensory pleasure, and kin, while craving is the desirous reaching-out toward an object such affection has already made attractive — the two arise together, in his account, more often than either arises alone. He further divides craving itself into three grades worth keeping distinct through the rest of the chapter: unwholesome craving (indulgence in sensual pleasure, reputation, and gain), wholesome craving (desiring a favorable karmic result, as when giving or keeping precepts is itself craved as a good outcome), and dharma-craving (attachment to correct doctrine or to the fruit of the path itself, prefigured here for the chapter that follows on the five natures) — a threefold distinction that becomes important later, when the sūtra will insist that even attachment to nirvāṇa is still, in its own way, a form of craving.
How Desire Flowers Into Every Realm of Rebirth
「由於欲境起諸違順，境背愛心而生憎、嫉，造種種業，是故復生地獄、餓鬼。知欲可厭，愛厭業道，捨惡樂善，復現天、人。又知諸愛可厭惡故，棄愛樂捨，還滋愛本，便現有為增上善果，皆輪迴故，不成聖道。是故眾生欲脫生死，免諸輪迴，先斷貪欲及除愛渴。」
"Because of objects of desire, one gives rise to what one finds agreeable and disagreeable; when circumstances run against one's craving mind, resentment and jealousy arise, and one creates every kind of karma — this is why beings then take rebirth in the hells and among hungry ghosts. Knowing that desire is something to be wearied of, cherishing that weariness as itself a kind of karmic path, one abandons the unwholesome and delights in the wholesome, and so is reborn among gods and human beings. And knowing further that even this kind of craving is itself something to be wearied of, one casts off craving and delights in renunciation — but this still only nourishes the very root of craving all over again, and so brings about the exalted, conditioned fruits of the higher realms. All of this, being still saṃsāra, does not accomplish the sagely path. This is why, if sentient beings wish to be free of birth-and-death and escape saṃsāra entirely, they must first cut off craving and desire, and remove this thirst for good."
Zongmi reads this passage as tracing three grades of karmic result — unwholesome, leading to the hell-realms and hungry ghosts; wholesome, leading to rebirth among gods and human beings; and what he calls "unmoving karma" (不動業), the meditative absorptions of the form and formless realms, which he glosses carefully: a practitioner who has grown weary even of wholesome craving turns to cultivating the four dhyānas and four formless absorptions, but the very delight taken in that renunciation is, on close inspection, still craving wearing a subtler disguise — hence "this still only nourishes the very root of craving." All three levels alike remain saṃsāra, he notes, because none of them addresses craving's root; only the tenfold unwholesome actions must be eliminated outright, while the wholesome actions and the higher absorptions are not wrong in themselves so much as insufficient — they treat craving's symptoms while leaving its underlying cause untouched. This is the diagnostic point the sūtra needs settled before it can go on, in the section that follows, to explain why beings who do finally set out to cut off that root nonetheless end up so differently capable of doing so.
The Two Hindrances and the Five Natures
「善男子！菩薩變化示現世間，非愛為本，但以慈悲令彼捨愛，假諸貪欲而入生死。若諸末世一切眾生，能捨諸欲及除憎愛，永斷輪迴，勤求如來圓覺境界，於清淨心便得開悟。
「善男子！一切眾生由本貪欲，發揮無明，顯出五性差別不等，依二種障而現深淺。云何二障？一者理障，礙正知見；二者事障，續諸生死。云何五性？善男子！若此二障未得斷滅，名未成佛。若諸眾生永捨貪欲，先除事障，未斷理障，但能悟入聲聞、緣覺，未能顯住菩薩境界。善男子！若諸末世一切眾生，欲汎如來大圓覺海，先當發願勤斷二障。二障已伏，即能悟入菩薩境界；若事、理障已永斷滅，即入如來微妙圓覺，滿足菩提及大涅槃。善男子！一切眾生皆證圓覺，逢善知識，依彼所作因地法行，爾時修習便有頓漸；若遇如來無上菩提正修行路，根無大小，皆成佛果。若諸眾生雖求善友，遇邪見者，未得正悟，是則名為外道種性，邪師過謬，非眾生咎。是名眾生五性差別。」
"Good sons: when a bodhisattva manifests and appears within the world through transformation, this is never rooted in craving — it is only, out of compassion, to lead others to give up craving that they, too, take on the appearance of desire and enter birth-and-death. If sentient beings of the final age are able to give up every desire and remove both hatred and craving, forever cutting off saṃsāra, and diligently seek the Tathāgata's realm of Perfect Enlightenment, they will attain awakening within a pure mind.
"Good sons: all sentient beings, because of their fundamental craving and desire, bring forth ignorance, and thereby manifest five differing natures, unequal to one another, appearing at differing depths according to which of two hindrances still binds them. What are the two hindrances? The first is the hindrance of principle, which obstructs right knowledge and views; the second is the hindrance of activity, which continues the succession of births and deaths. What are the five natures? Good sons: if these two hindrances are not yet cut off and dissolved, one is called not-yet-a-buddha. If sentient beings have forever given up craving and desire, and have removed the hindrance of activity but not yet cut off the hindrance of principle, they are able to awaken only as far as the level of the śrāvaka and the pratyekabuddha, and cannot yet manifest and abide in the bodhisattva's realm. Good sons: if sentient beings of the final age wish to sail upon the Tathāgata's great ocean of Perfect Enlightenment, they should first make the vow to diligently cut off both hindrances. Once both hindrances are subdued, they are able to awaken into the bodhisattva's realm; and once both the hindrance of activity and the hindrance of principle are forever cut off and dissolved, they enter the Tathāgata's wondrous Perfect Enlightenment, fully complete in bodhi and great nirvāṇa. Good sons: all sentient beings already realize Perfect Enlightenment — but on meeting a good spiritual friend and relying on whatever practice of the causal ground that friend teaches, the cultivation that follows will differ, sudden or gradual; and if one happens upon the Tathāgata's unsurpassed, correct path of practice, then regardless of whether one's own capacity is great or small, one will, without exception, accomplish the fruit of buddhahood. But if sentient beings, though seeking a good friend, instead encounter someone of wrong views, and so fail to attain right awakening, this is called the nature of an outsider — and the fault lies with the mistaken teacher, not with the sentient being. These, then, are the five differing natures of sentient beings."
Zongmi maps the two hindrances directly onto the Awakening of Faith's architecture, already translated on this site: the hindrance of principle (理障) is that treatise's root ignorance itself, "not penetrating the one dharma-realm, the mind failing to correspond to it, thought suddenly arising" — an obstruction to right view as such, prior to any specific afflicted conduct; the hindrance of activity (事障) is the six kinds of defiled mind that treatise catalogues in detail, running from the subtlest karmic mark down through the coarsest grasping-at-names, all of which sustain the ongoing succession of birth-and-death. Because these two hindrances can each be present or absent independently, four combinations result, and Zongmi is careful to note the five natures named here are not a fixed, innate taxonomy (unlike the "five natures" of the Yogācāra Faxiang school, which the text is deliberately echoing and revising) but a record of what has actually been "newly perfumed" into a being's character by encounter and habit: the two-vehicle nature, having removed the hindrance of activity but not of principle; the bodhisattva nature, both hindrances subdued and then finally severed; the indeterminate nature, capable of sudden or gradual awakening depending entirely on which teacher is met; and the "outsider" nature, produced not by any innate deficiency but purely by the accident of having met a teacher with wrong views — which is why the text insists, pointedly, that "the fault lies with the mistaken teacher, not with the sentient being."
A fifth nature, un-named in this passage but implied by its own logic, Zongmi supplies from elsewhere: the being in whom neither hindrance has yet been touched at all, "not yet perfumed" by any teaching whatsoever — corresponding to what other texts, such as the Laṅkāvatāra, already translated on this site, call the icchantika or "no-nature" category. Zongmi's point in drawing this comparison is precisely to mark the difference: where some traditions treat "no fixed nature for buddhahood" as a permanent metaphysical fact about certain beings, this sūtra's own five natures are explicitly the product of what a being happens to have encountered so far, not a ceiling fixed on what they could still become.
Compassion and Wisdom, Vowed Without Beginning
「善男子！菩薩唯以大悲方便，入諸世間，開發未悟，乃至示現種種形相，逆順境界，與其同事，化令成佛，皆依無始清淨願力。若諸末世一切眾生，於大圓覺起增上心，當發菩薩清淨大願，應作是言：『願我今者住佛圓覺，求善知識，莫值外道及與二乘。』依願修行，漸斷諸障，障盡願滿，便登解脫清淨法殿，證大圓覺妙莊嚴域。」
"Good sons: a bodhisattva, using only the skillful means of great compassion, enters into every kind of world to open and awaken those not yet awakened — manifesting every kind of form, in circumstances both favorable and adverse, sharing the same tasks and circumstances as those he means to convert, bringing them to buddhahood — and all of this is rooted entirely in the power of a vow made pure since beginningless time. If sentient beings of the final age give rise to a resolute mind set on great Perfect Enlightenment, they should make the bodhisattva's own pure great vow, speaking these very words: 'I vow that I now abide in the Buddha's Perfect Enlightenment, and seek a good spiritual friend — may I never encounter an outsider or a follower of the two vehicles.' Practicing in reliance on this vow, one gradually cuts off every hindrance; once the hindrances are exhausted and the vow is fulfilled, one thereby ascends the pure hall of liberation, and realizes the wondrous, adorned domain of great Perfect Enlightenment."
Zongmi reads this closing section as answering Maitreya's two remaining questions — the grades of bodhi practice, and the methods for turning back into the world to teach — with compassion given first, reversing the order in which they were originally asked, precisely to show that neither wisdom nor compassion has priority over the other in practice, only in exposition. On "vowed since beginningless time," he is precise about what makes the vow "pure": it is neither a bodhisattva's private wish for personal advancement nor a debt repaid for some favor received, but the same compassion inherent equally in every being, awakened in some and dormant in others only by whether it has yet been recognized — which is why it can be called beginningless rather than newly generated at the moment of the bodhisattva's resolve. The vow the sūtra puts directly into a practitioner's mouth — "may I never encounter an outsider or a follower of the two vehicles" — he reads as a deliberate act of self-binding: having just been told, in the previous section, that meeting the wrong teacher is a matter of chance rather than fault, a practitioner cannot simply hope for good luck, but must actively vow toward the specific teacher most likely to secure it, since the vow itself, sustained over time, is what gradually wears the two hindrances down until nothing remains to obstruct.
In Verse
彌勒汝當知， 一切諸眾生，
不得大解脫， 皆由貪欲故，
墮落於生死。 若能斷憎愛，
及與貪瞋癡， 不因差別性，
皆得成佛道。
二障永銷滅， 求師得正悟，
隨順菩薩願， 依止大涅槃。
十方諸菩薩， 皆以大悲願，
示現入生死。 現在修行者，
及末世眾生， 勤斷諸愛見，
便歸大圓覺。
Maitreya, you should know:
every sentient being
fails to attain great liberation
entirely because of craving and desire,
and falls into birth-and-death because of it.
If one is able to cut off hatred and craving,
along with greed, aversion, and delusion,
then regardless of one's differing nature,
one will accomplish the path to buddhahood.
Once the two hindrances are forever dissolved,
seeking a teacher, one attains right awakening;
according with the bodhisattva's vow,
one rests upon great nirvāṇa.
Bodhisattvas throughout the ten directions,
all through the vow of great compassion,
manifest and enter birth-and-death.
Those who practice now,
and sentient beings of the final age,
diligently cutting off every craving view,
thereby return to great Perfect Enlightenment.
Zongmi notes that the verse's opening line folds greed, aversion, and delusion — the three root afflictions — in alongside hatred and craving, terms the prose used somewhat more narrowly, and reads this as the verse consolidating the whole chapter's diagnosis (craving, its karmic branching into three realms, and the two hindrances behind the five natures) into a single compact claim: whatever a being's starting nature, cutting off the root affections is what actually settles the matter, not which of the five categories a being happens to have started in. He treats this as the chapter's real point, restated for memory: the five natures describe where beings presently stand, not a ceiling on where they can still arrive.
Part 5 Complete
This closes Part 5: Maitreya's question about the root of saṃsāra, and the Buddha's answer — desire as the origin of every rebirth from hell to the highest heavens, the two hindrances of principle and activity, the five differing natures those hindrances produce, and the bodhisattva's vow of compassion, sustained since beginningless time, as what finally wears both hindrances away. Part 6 turns to Pure Wisdom's question about the stages of realization themselves — how bodhisattvas and buddhas differ, given that Perfect Enlightenment itself admits of no such differences at all.
Continue to Part 6 — Pure Wisdom, and the Stages of No Attainment →