Reader's Guide: Expansion, Necessary Repetition, and Deeper Analysis¶

The first and second divisions both belong to Volume I, but they perform different tasks. The first is a history of philosophy: it maps the terrain accurately in each tradition's own terms and generally suspends judgment. The second is an analysis: it advances arguments, reaches judgments, and lays out one by one the questions left open in the first. The two divisions occasionally take different positions. On whether dependent arising spans three lives or operates in the present, for example, the first division presents both interpretations, while the second reaches a decision. Historical exposition and philosophical analysis have different responsibilities. When they diverge, read them according to this division of labor: the second division states this book's current position; the first preserves the original shape of the historical account.

The parts are numbered straight through from the first division into the second: the second begins at Part 13 and does not start a count of its own. A reference by number therefore has a single referent, and there are never two parts numbered one.

Expansion. To preserve its historical line, the first division had to pass over many subjects in a single chapter. The second restores them to the space they require, and the multiples are plain enough. In the first division, Part 1, Chapter 5, “The Earliest Teachings,” expands here into the eight chapters of Part 13, “Analysis of Early Teachings.” Part 3, Chapter 4, “Theravāda Abhidhamma,” expands into the whole of Part 14. The first two chapters of that same Part 3, on the Sarvāstivāda and the Mahāvibhāṣā, expand into the whole of Part 15, with further parts to come. Expansion does not mean thinning the old text out. Where the first division reported a conclusion, the second has to set out the grounds one by one—and where the grounds cannot be set out, to say plainly that they cannot.

The three parts side by side, with what each was expanded from and what each hands on:

The three rows expand by different multiples, and the reason stands in the last column: a summing-up is not a conclusion but the setting of the next question. Part 13 set enough questions for the two parts after it, Part 14 set exactly one part's worth, and what Part 15 sets at its close is what the parts below have to take up.

Necessary repetition. Each part in the second division stands on its own, so readers may enter it independently. Explanations that overlap with the first division are deliberately retained as foundations, not padding. Repeated material is told briefly; deeper analysis begins on new ground. One exception should be flagged in advance: Part 14 and Part 15 were written as a pair, and the closing chapter of the second answers, item for item, the table of vacancies left standing by the closing chapter of the first. A reader who takes up Part 15 alone will want that table first.

Deeper analysis. The first division is primarily narrative; the second is primarily argumentative. It goes as far as the arguments permit and states plainly where they stop. Inferences are always marked “this book argues”; unverified Chinese–Pāli parallels are always marked “to be checked”; tables are a standing aid to reading. Reading the table before the prose is also a legitimate route through the material.

Texts first. The second division will repeatedly draw on modern and contemporary theories: quantum field theory, neuroscience, psychoanalysis, and recent language models. A warning must be posted at the entrance, for the reader and for the author, who sometimes makes this mistake as well. Here these theories serve only as limited corroboration and analogy. The texts always come first. The order cannot be reversed: let the scriptures finish speaking, then ask which modern framework happens to pass nearby. To arrive instead with a favored framework, hunt for scriptures to fit it, and force them inside is to prejudge the evidence. Doctrine already has a name for the machinery of prejudice: contact gives rise to feeling; feeling gives rise to craving; craving conditions clinging; and among the forms of clinging is clinging to views. Imposing a framework on Buddhism is this production line at work today. If a book about dependent arising steps into that line itself, it becomes its own negative example. The hinge here is exceedingly fine and calls for the greatest care.

The shape of a part. Part 13 set the original sequence. It first draws the outline—the history of the questions and a map—then analyzes each issue in turn; a penultimate chapter closes the file by taking stock of the part's restraint and its gaps, and the final chapter changes to the first person and records the author's reflections. The first chapter of that part was heavy enough to be divided into two halves, which was a local expedient and not a precedent. Two changes have been made since.

First, the outline has been lifted out of Chapter 1 and set at the head of the part as Chapter 0, a guide to the part. That chapter says why the part must exist, how it is to be read, and where its data come from: a set of instructions rather than an argument. Left inside the body, it obliged Chapter 1 to spend half its length on procedure before reaching the matter; taken out, it lets Chapter 1 begin arguing in its first sentence.

Second, no further chapter of personal reflection has been written. It was never a fixture. Part 13 has one because that part treats the allure of metaphysics and the author has lived inside it; the two parts after it treat two taxonomies and an ontology, and such subjects do not invite the first person. Where a later part has something worth saying in that voice, the chapter will return.

The closing chapter, by contrast, is a fixture. The last chapter of every part takes stock of what the part has settled and what it has left unprovided for, and that reckoning is often the subject of the part that follows.

The manner of organization will change again. The second division is not finished; the three parts written so far end with Part 15. Up to this point every part has been organized by question: a list of problems is drawn up, and each is asked in turn on what ground it stands and at what cost. The parts that turn to the Mahāvibhāṣā and the Abhidharmakośa will not work that way. What is to be asked there is how an orthodoxy came to be adjudicated into existence and how it was afterwards taken apart by its own people, and both questions follow the arrangement of a particular book; cutting by question would cut the book to pieces, and the approach has to be through the text instead. When that point is reached, the guide to the part will set out its procedure, and the reader need prepare nothing in advance. It is said here only so that it comes as no surprise: the procedure of the second division follows its object, and is not one fixed mold.