The Root Stanzas of the Middle Way Read online
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Cause darkness to be dissipated?
11
If, even without meeting it,
The flame dispels the dark,
The darkness found throughout the world
Is scattered by the flame that’s present here.
12
If the flame illuminates
Itself and other things,
There is no doubt that darkness too
Obscures itself and other things.
13
How could this arising, unarisen,
Generate itself?
But if, arisen, it so generates,
Then, being arisen, what is there to generate?
14
The born, the not yet born, the being born
Are not produced in any way.
This has been explained
By means of “going, gone, and not yet gone.”
15
Since, even if arising does exist,
Something that’s arising is not found,
How can you say that something that’s arising
Does so in dependence on arising?
16
Whatever is dependently arisen
Is by its very nature “peaceful.”
Therefore something that’s arising,
And arising too, are peace itself.
17
If somewhere there existed
An unarisen thing,
That very thing must needs arise.
But how will it arise, if it is nonexistent?
18
If that arising generates
What is now arising,
What arising is it that
Produces that arising?
19
If it’s produced by yet one more arising,
Then we have an infinite regress.
If it arises unproduced,
Then likewise all things will arise.
20
For what exists and what does not exist
Arising is untenable.
The same applies for things that both exist and don’t exist,
As we have previously explained.
21
For something that is in the act of ceasing,
Arising is not tenable.
Whatever is not in the act of ceasing
Cannot be accepted as a real existent thing.
22
An abiding entity does not abide;
A nonabiding entity does not abide.
What is actually abiding—even this does not abide.
And what thing, unarisen, can abide?
23
For something that is in the act of ceasing
Abiding is not tenable.
Whatever is not in the act of ceasing
Cannot be accepted as a real existent thing.
24
Since at all times everything
Is subject to both age and death,
What abiding thing is there
That does not age and does not die?
25
Through itself the abiding thing cannot abide
Nor through an abiding other than itself—
Just as an arising thing
Is not produced through itself or another.
26
For what has ceased there is no ceasing.
No ceasing is there for the not yet ceased,
Nor even for what’s in the act of ceasing.
What unarisen thing can cease?
27
For something that’s abiding
Ceasing is not tenable.
For something that does not abide
Ceasing is not tenable.
28
One stage of abiding
Is not ended by the self-same stage.
And one stage of abiding
Is not ended by another stage.
29
As much as the arising of all things
Is unacceptable,
To that extent the ceasing of all things
Is likewise unacceptable.
30
Indeed for an existent thing
Cessation is not tenable.
For it cannot be that in a single object
Being and nonbeing coincide.
31
Neither is cessation tenable
For a nonexistent thing.
It’s just as there’s no cutting
Of one’s head a second time.
32
There’s no cessation through itself
Or yet by virtue of another,
Just as arising is not brought about
Either by itself or by another.
33
Arising and abiding and decay are not established.
Thus compounded things do not exist.
And since compounded things are not established,
How could the uncompounded be established?
34
Like a dream and like a mirage,
Like a city of gandharvas,
So arising and abiding
And cessation have been taught.
8
An Examination of Agent and Action
An existent doer
Does not do existent deeds;
Neither does a nonexistent doer
Do a nonexistent deed.
2
In what exists, no doing can be present,
For then there’d be a deed without a doer.
In what exists no doing can be present,
For then a doer there would be without a deed.
3
If a nonexistent doer
Did a nonexistent deed,
Of such a deed there’d be no cause,
And also of the doer there would be no cause.
4
If these are without cause,
Both fruit and cause will be untenable.
If these do not exist,
The “done,” the “doer,” and the “doing” are impossible.
5
If doing and the others are impossible,
There is neither virtue nor nonvirtue.
If there’s neither virtue nor nonvirtue,
No effects will come from them.
6
If there are no effects,
To freedom and to higher realms no path can we accept.
Our doings, each and every one,
It follows, must be meaningless.
7
A doer that exists and yet does not exist
Does not do an action that exists and yet does not exist.
For where can “is” and “is not”—mutual contradictories—
Be present in a single thing?
8
An existent doer does not do
A nonexistent deed;
Neither does a nonexistent doer do existent deeds,
For here too all the faulty consequences follow.
9
An existent doer
Does not do a nonexistent deed
Nor one that both exists and yet does not exist,
And this for reasons that were shown above.
10
A nonexistent doer
Does not do existent deeds,
Nor yet a deed that is both nonexistent and existent—
For the reasons that were shown above.
11
A doer that is nonexistent and existent
Does not do a deed that’s nonexistent and existent.
This also should be understood
For reasons that above were shown.
12
The doer, then, depends upon a deed;
The deed occurs depending on that very doer.
Apart from this, we do not see
A cause for their establishment.
13
It’s thus that we should understand appropriation—
As in this refutation of the doer and the deed.
And through the doer and the deed
Let all remaining entities be understood.
An Examination of the Foregoing Entity
“Sight and hearing and so forth,6
Feeling and the rest7—
Their appropriator comes before them.”
This some people have declared.
2
For if there were not such an entity
How could sight and all the rest arise?
Consequently prior to them,
This entity is present and exists.
3
But this entity existing prior
To sight and hearing and the other senses,
Feeling and the rest—
By what means can it be affirmed?
4
And if it could be there,
When sight and all the rest are absent,
There’s no doubt that these in turn
Could, in its absence, also come to be.
5
Someone is revealed by something;
Something is revealed by someone.
How can there be someone without something?
How can there by something without someone?
6
Granted [you may say] there is no entity
Preceding sight and all the other senses.
But the different senses, sight and so forth,
Make it clear at different times.
7
But if it does not preexist
The senses—sight and so forth—all together,
How could it then precede
The senses, sight and so forth, separately?
8
If that which sees is also that which hears
As well as that which feels,
These senses it must needs precede.
But this does not make sense.
9
If the seer is different from the one who hears
And different also from the one who feels,
Then, when there is the seer, there would also be the hearer
And thus there would be many selves.
10
Neither does this self exist
In what gives rise
To seeing, hearing, and so forth,
Feeling and the rest.
11
Sight and hearing and so forth,
Feeling and the rest—
If what possesses them does not exist,
They too do not exist.
12
And so, regarding that which does not come before
The senses, such as sight, and all the rest,
Which does not coincide with them nor follow after,
The notions that “it is” or “is not” are arrested.
10
An Examination of Fire and Fuel
If the [burning] fuel were fire,8
The agent and the object would be one.
If the fire were other than the fuel,
It could arise with no fuel present.
2
The fire would blaze for evermore;
And since it did not come from any cause for burning,
No purpose would there be in making it.
This being so, no action would occur.
3
Not dependent upon something else,
It would not come from causes for its burning.
And since it would always be burning,
There would be no need for making it.
4
If, by thinking thus, one understands
That what is burning is the fuel,
If the burning is just this,
Then what is it that burns the fuel?
5
If fire is other than the fuel, the fire and fuel don’t meet;
And if there is no meeting, there’s no burning.
If there is no burning, there is no extinguishing.
Not extinguished, fire remains just as it is.
6
It’s just as when a woman joins with a man [you say]
And a man is joined with a woman.
Though fire is other than the fuel,
It’s fitting that it meets with it.
7
If fire and fuel were mutually
Excluded, one from the other,
It could be said that, though they are distinct,
The fire and fuel can meet.
8
If fire depends on fuel
And fuel depends on fire,
Which of them comes first,
Whereon the other, fire or fuel, depends?
9
If fire depends on fuel,
A fire will be established that’s already there.
And you would have a fuel
That on the fire does not depend.
10
If something that has been established in dependence on a thing
Is that on which depends
That very thing’s existence,
What has been established in dependence upon what?
11
If something you establish in dependence
Is not itself established, how can it depend?
If you say “established things depend,”
This makes no sense. They cannot be dependent.
12
There is no fire dependent on its fuel,
Or fire that’s not dependent on its fuel.
There is no fuel dependent on the fire,
Or fuel that’s not dependent on the fire.
13
Fire does not emerge from other sources,
Nor is fire within the fuel.
All the other arguments concerning fuel
Are shown in “going, gone, and not yet gone.”
14
The fuel is not the fire;
Neither is there fire apart from fuel.
The fire is not a thing possessed of fuel.
The fuel is not within the fire, nor fire in fuel.
15
This analysis of fire and fuel
Exhaustively explains
The links between the self and what it grasps,
Together with all other things like pot and cloth.
16
Those who teach identity or difference
With regard to self and other entities,
Are not, I think, proficient
In the meaning of the Doctrine.
11
An Examination of Earlier and Later Limits
To the question: “Is the earliest limit known?”
The Mighty Sage replied that it is not.
Samsara is beginningless and has no end:
No earlier or later limit does it have.
2
To what has no beginning and no end
What midpoint can there be?
Thus the earlier and the later stages
And the two at once are all untenable.
3
If Birth comes first
With Age-and-Death to follow,
Birth is free of Age-and-Death
And without dying one would come to birth.
4
If Birth comes afterward,
With Age-and-Death preceding,
Age-and-Death are without Birth.
But how can they arise without a cause?
5
Birth and Age-and-Death
Can’t happen both at once.
One would be dying in the act of being born;
Both birth and death would be uncaused.
6
Why therefore should we theorize
On Birth and Age-and-Death,
Which are impossible as steps that happen
Earlier, or later, or together both at once?
7
Samsara’s not the only thing
That has no earlier limit.
It is the same for cause and fruit,
For character and characterized,
8
For feeling and the one who feels—
And indeed for anything at all.
Indeed it’s true for ev
ery thing:
There is no earlier limit.
12
An Examination of Self-Production and Other-Production
Some say that suffering9 is self-produced;
Some say that it’s produced from something else;
Some that it’s produced from both, and others that it has no cause.
None of these positions is correct.
2
If it is self-produced,
Then it does not arise dependently.
Yet it is on the basis of foregoing aggregates
That present aggregates arise.
3
If those [that went before] were alien to the ones here present,
And the present alien to the ones that went before,
Then suffering would be made by something else;
These aggregates would be produced by other ones.
4
If by one’s own person
Suffering is produced,
What is this pain-producing person
That from suffering stands apart?
5
If from another person
Suffering arises,
How can there be someone, who from suffering stands apart,
To whom the pain is given, made by someone else?
6
If from another person
Suffering comes,
What is this person that from suffering stands apart
Who, making it, bestows it on another?
7
If it is not established as created by oneself,
How could suffering be created by another?
For the suffering that the other has produced
Was, for that other, created by himself.
8
Suffering is not “self-made”—
It does not make itself.
And if another does not make it,
How is suffering “other-made”?
9
If suffering were produced by each of these,
The Root Stanzas of the Middle Way