Chapter 3: Real existence in the three times, dharma-substance in time¶

The preceding chapter finished arranging the table, but one task remains. Every compartment must have an instance in each of the three times. This is precisely what the three Chinese characters of "all exists" (一切有) govern. This chapter takes up the essay's central subject and the point at which criticism of Sarvāstivāda is most concentrated. Both sides have left texts. As far as possible, this chapter lets each have its full say.

The title holds a surprise. This chapter is entitled "Real existence in the three times," yet the four Chinese characters 三世实有 never occur in the Mahāvibhāṣā's 200 fascicles. A search of the complete work finds the nearest statement at the end of fascicle 76: the causal and resultant natures of dharmas in the three times are successively established; substance truly always exists, neither increasing nor decreasing; existence and nonexistence are spoken of only in terms of activity.¹ The statement occurs once, in no prominent place, as a passing summation at the end of a discussion of aggregation. This does not mean that Sarvāstivāda lacks the claim. Quite the reverse. All 200 fascicles are built on it. What it means is that the treatise never gives the claim a separate section in which to prove itself. It makes its entrance in another way.

It enters as a statement that blocks an objection. The Mahāvibhāṣā has a fixed opening exchange: why discuss this problem here? To refute other schools and display the correct reasoning. The pattern is used more than a hundred times in the work. In three places, it seeks to refute the same people: those who hold that past and future dharmas have no real substance, and those who hold that present dharmas are unconditioned. The three appearances introduce unrelated topics: the homogeneous cause; "when a mind is past, that mind has changed and perished"; and "when a fetter is past, that fetter has bound." They occur in fascicles 17, 37, and 60.¹ The wording is nearly identical each time. Each declares the opponent wrong before moving to the topic at hand, without providing an argument in between.

The distribution is itself testimony. In the Mahāvibhāṣā, real existence in the three times is not a conclusion awaiting proof but a premise already in force. It is repeatedly asserted, never repeatedly argued. It stands at the entrances to other topics, checking qualifications for admission. Only two passages, in fascicles 76 and 77, truly treat it as a topic. One deals with the difficulties it produces; the other chooses among four explanations. No section is devoted to what establishes the claim itself.

The three jobs it must do. The preceding chapter recalled the three groups of gaps arranged in Chapter 1. We need only recall that real existence in the three times directly fills the second group and also takes care of both halves of the first. One concerns what maintains the connection after karma has ceased but before its fruit arises; the other concerns the object of cognition directed toward the past and future. Together, the three jobs give a cause-dharma a status after it has passed away, allowing it to be taken as an object and to serve as a condition.

The fullest formal arguments for these three jobs are found not in Sarvāstivāda's own books but in Vasubandhu's account. Part 2 of Chapter 5 of the Kośa, "Distinguishing the Latent Tendencies," organizes them into two scriptural proofs and two rational proofs. The scriptural proofs are these. First, the Buddha says that if past matter did not exist, a learned noble disciple should not diligently cultivate disenchantment with it and relinquish it; if future matter did not exist, the disciple should not diligently eliminate delight in and longing for it. Second, the Buddha says that consciousness arises from two conditions. If past and future dharmas did not really exist, consciousness arising with them as objects would lack its object condition. The rational proofs are these. First, consciousness must have an object when it arises: with an object, consciousness arises; without one, it does not. Second, karma already performed has a future fruit. If past karma had no substance, there would be no present cause when the fruit arose. After setting out the four, Vasubandhu gives a judgment: precisely because this school holds that dharmas really exist in all three times, it is called Sarvāstivāda.²

No corresponding set of four can be found in the Mahāvibhāṣā. A search of the complete work finds no quotation of either scriptural phrase, "diligently cultivate disenchantment and relinquishment" (勤修厌舍) or "diligently eliminate delight and longing" (勤断欣求). "Consciousness arises from two conditions" (二缘生识) does occur nine times, but all nine are in fascicle 23. They distinguish which portions of dependent arising are addressed by "formations condition consciousness," "name-and-form conditions consciousness," and "consciousness arises from two conditions," with no connection to the existential status of the three times.¹ In other words, relative to the extant Mahāvibhāṣā, the four proofs repeated in textbooks as Sarvāstivāda's standard argument were organized into this form only later. This book does not infer that Sarvāstivāda lacked the reasons at the time. They are scattered about, and fascicle 76 has a set of its own. The point concerns who arranged them. Vasubandhu made them two scriptural and two rational proofs, a list that could be refuted item by item. A claim often reaches its clearest form when it comes under challenge.

The four masters: where change is placed. Chapter 1 of Essay 3 in Part I already put the four masters' accounts and their four analogies into a table; this chapter does not repeat it. All four agree that dharma-substance does not change. Where, then, does each put the little change needed to distinguish the three times? Part I did not ask this question.

Dharmatrāta puts it in mode. The same gold is fashioned into different objects: its shape changes, its color does not. Milk turns into curds: its taste and potency are relinquished, its color is not. As a dharma passes from future to present, it relinquishes its future mode and acquires its present mode, while dharma-substance is neither acquired nor relinquished.¹ Ghoṣaka puts it in characteristic. A dharma in any one time has the characteristics of all three. Being associated with one characteristic does not entail separation from the other two, just as a man lusting after one woman's beauty is not thereby free of lust for other women. Vasumitra puts it in position. A counting rod placed in the units position is called one, in the tens position ten, and in the hundreds position a hundred. Its positions differ; the rod's substance does not. What has not yet had activity is called future; what has activity now is called present; what has ceased to have activity is called past. Buddhadeva puts it in relativity. The same woman is called daughter in relation to her mother and mother in relation to her daughter. Though her substance does not differ, different relations give her the names daughter and mother. A dharma is called past relative to what follows, future relative to what precedes, and present relative to both.

Ultimately, the four accounts are four ways of hiding change. Mode gives the dharma a replaceable outer garment. Characteristic has it wear three garments at once, revealing them in turn. Position gives it no garment, drawing compartments outside the dharma instead. Relativity removes the compartments, leaving only descriptions of before and after in relation to one another. The first two place change within the dharma itself; the last two place it outside the dharma.

Figure terminology. The four names carry the honorific “Venerable” in the Chinese figure: Dharmatrāta, Ghoṣaka, Vasumitra, and Buddhadeva. “Function” means activity (作用), and the “critics’ choice” is the choice of the treatise’s adjudicators (评家).

The figure and the chapter differ at three points. The figure places all four accounts of change outside dharma-substance; the chapter places Dharmatrāta’s and Ghoṣaka’s accounts within the dharma itself, and Vasumitra’s and Buddhadeva’s outside it. In the milk-to-curd example, the figure says that taste changes while color and potency remain; the chapter and its quoted passage say that taste and potency are relinquished while color remains. In Ghoṣaka’s example, the figure contrasts desire for one woman with no desire for the others; the chapter and its quoted passage say that desire for one woman does not mean freedom from desire for the others.

The adjudicator chooses by elimination. The commentator proceeds in reverse order, refuting Buddhadeva first, then Ghoṣaka, and finally Dharmatrāta. All three refutations show that the account confuses the three times or conflicts with correct reasoning.

Against Buddhadeva: if times are relative to before and after, each time itself contains three times. Earlier and later moments of the past can be called past and future, with the middle called present; the same applies to the future and present. A present dharma lasting one moment, related to what follows, what precedes, and both, can yield three times. This is unreasonable. Against Ghoṣaka: his three times are likewise confused, since he admits that a dharma in any one time has the characteristics of all three. The refutation of Dharmatrāta is shortest and harshest: apart from a dharma's intrinsic nature, what exactly is this "mode" of yours? Moreover, when a dharma passes from future to present, its previous mode should cease; when it passes from present to past, a later mode should arise. There would thus be arising in the past and cessation in the future, which is also unreasonable.¹

The question put to Dharmatrāta deserves a pause. It asks about the existential status of mode. If mode is not apart from intrinsic nature, intrinsic nature changes. Dharma-substance moves, and "all exists" collapses on the spot. If mode is another thing apart from intrinsic nature, what dharma is it, and what allows it to change? The dilemma is closed at both ends. Chapter 1's discussion of the real and nominal said that Sarvāstivāda's criterion asks whether something dissolves under breaking or analysis. The refutation of Dharmatrāta uses exactly that criterion, turned against one of the school's own. Sarvāstivāda is not gentle with insiders.

Then comes the ruling, one sentence in full: "Therefore only the third account rightly establishes the times, because formations can have times of activity."¹ The three closing refutations contain 154 Chinese characters, compared with 16 in the verdict, about 9.6 times as many. The eight-character reason within the closing verdict is 諸行容有作用時故: formations can have times of activity. The preceding account has already explained how Vasumitra distinguishes the three times through activity. In this book’s judgment, the closing assessment nevertheless settles the issue chiefly by eliminating the other three accounts, without developing a further argument here. This book regards that detail as crucial. A ruling reached by elimination can be no more reliable than the completeness of the elimination. The treatise never asks whether there might be a fifth explanation beyond the four.

Where each master places the change, and how the adjudicator treats the account:

The account that survives in this column is precisely the one that moves change out of dharma-substance most thoroughly. The adjudicator does not say whether this is the criterion of choice, but the ordering of the four fits it exactly.

A difference in Vasubandhu's account should be noted. In restating the same four views, he adds a charge against Dharmatrāta absent from the Mahāvibhāṣā: anyone who accepts transformation of dharma-substance should be classed with the non-Buddhist Sāṃkhyas.² The commentator's criticism is internal, asking what your mode amounts to. Vasubandhu's is external, declaring that you have ceased to be Buddhist. The same flaw is used by one to make repairs, by the other to assign a classification.

Sarvāstivāda later returned this charge to its sender. Saṅghabhadra restates the four accounts and reaches the same ruling as the Mahāvibhāṣā: "There are four kinds here, differences of mode, characteristic, position, and relativity; the third, in terms of activity, best establishes the times." But at Dharmatrāta's account he stops to say: no. Dharmatrāta says that as dharmas move through the times, their substance and characteristic remain the same while their mode differs. He does not say that the substance of conditioned dharmas is permanent, with dharmas concealed and revealed as they traverse the three times. This agrees in part with Vasumitra's account, so how can it be judged the same as non-Buddhist Sāṃkhya? Saṅghabhadra adds a separate passage to distance himself from it. Some people who profess discernment but are actually blind say that his school agrees with the Yellow Sage's doctrine. That is unreasonable: the Yellow Sage holds that the cause transforms into the fruit's substance, and the fruit then disappears back into intrinsic nature, so their substance remains one across past, present, and future. In Saṅghabhadra's school, by contrast, activity belongs only to a single present moment. Cause and fruit are distinct and do not become each other; dharmas once ceased do not arise again; fruits do not disappear into intrinsic nature.³ Vasubandhu gives one of his own school's predecessors a non-Buddhist classification. Saṅghabhadra sends it back, because concealment and manifestation do not mean the same thing in the two systems. We will need this distinction again at the end of the chapter.

Once the account by position stands, all the weight falls on one point. The account offers a clean division. Dharma-substance does not move at all, and the presence or absence of activity entirely distinguishes the three times. The cost lies in the same place. The whole claim now rests on activity, yet Chapter 1's separation of substance and activity showed that activity has no status in Sarvāstivāda. Asked whether activity and substance are identical or different, the commentator answers that they cannot definitely be said to be either, "and therefore this should not be challenged." There it was a closing statement; in this chapter it becomes an open breach. Earlier scholarship has specifically traced how, in the disputes among the schools, existence and activity gradually hardened into two things that could be placed separately.⁴

Chapter 1 quoted the challenge about arising in fascicle 76: does a conditioned dharma about to arise in the future arise because it already exists or because it does not yet exist? Both have difficulties. The commentator chooses "already existing and arising," then immediately adds that substance already exists but has no activity; now, on meeting causes and conditions, activity arises.¹ There we examined where the inquiry stopped. Here we ask what the answer spent.

It has effectively moved the whole word "arising" to a new home. Arising no longer means a dharma's passage from nonexistence to existence. It means that a dharma which has always existed begins to be active. Among the four characteristics of conditioned dharmas, arising henceforth describes only the start of activity, not the acquisition of existence. This word is the first price Sarvāstivāda pays to preserve dharma-substance.

The same exchange contains a more urgent statement that Chapter 1 did not use. If the substance of a time is said to be produced, then when one dharma arises, all dharmas in the future should arise with it. Once this dharma has arisen, the future should be empty; once it has ceased, the present should also be empty. The entire principle of "all exists" in the three times would be destroyed.¹ The commentator uses this to block a side path, but it also exposes the system's strain. As long as a dharma is in the future, it must remain motionless with all other future dharmas; if one moves, all must move. To prevent any change in dharma-substance, real existence in the three times has to transfer the entire share of change to activity, leaving nothing behind. The issue is not restraint; there is nowhere else to put the change.

Figure terminology. “Function” means activity (作用), and “critics” refers to the treatise’s adjudicators (评家).

The cost the commentator himself records. Fascicle 76 contains another series of questions and answers. This book regards it as the treatise's most honest passage on real existence in the three times, and its least quoted.

The exchange checks definitions against instances, aggregate by aggregate. If a dharma is matter, is it subject to alteration and resistance? The answer is that what is subject to alteration and resistance is certainly matter, but some dharmas are matter without alteration and resistance. These are past and future matter, as well as present atoms and nonmanifest material form. If a dharma is feeling, can it experience? What can experience is certainly feeling, but some dharmas are feeling without being able to experience: past and future feeling. The same answers are given for perception and grasping images, formations and forming, consciousness and cognizing.¹

Notice what this series says. Alteration and resistance define matter; experiencing defines feeling; grasping images defines perception; forming defines formations; cognizing defines consciousness. All five aggregates are named by their functions. Yet by the commentator's own checks, matter in the past and future has no alteration or resistance, feeling in the past and future does not experience, and consciousness in the past and future does not cognize. They are still called matter, feeling, and consciousness because their intrinsic natures remain. But not one of the reasons for calling them matter, feeling, and consciousness is still there.

What, then, is the substance that always exists in the three times? By the answers in this section, it is what remains of a dharma after everything by which it is defined has been subtracted. Chapter 1 said that Sarvāstivāda glosses intrinsic nature with seven synonymous terms without yielding content. We can now be more specific. The glosses yield no content because the content has been deducted. The share belonging to function has been assigned to activity. Once that share is removed, substance retains only a position. It remains on the list, can still be counted, taken as an object, and treated as a cause, but does nothing that makes it what it is.

Fairness is necessary here. Sarvāstivāda conceals nothing. It writes these answers into its own textbook, calmly, in a way that plainly shows a considered choice rather than a slip. It would rather have past matter without alteration and resistance than have no past matter. Whether function or existence deserves preservation is open to dispute. Sarvāstivāda chose the latter, and knew what it was choosing.

The discussion of aggregation: a tool already in the house. Fascicle 76 next asks whether past and future dharmas aggregate like a present wall. As usual, both answers have difficulties. If they aggregate, is a donor's work in making something wasted, since the thing exists before being made? Do past and future dharmas occupy locations? Do walls become permanent? Should past and future things be visible? If there is no aggregation and each remains dispersed, how are we to explain the sūtras' statements that there was a king named Mahāsudarśana in the past and will be a Buddha named Maitreya in the future? What does knowledge of recollecting past lives observe in the past, or knowledge of death and rebirth in the future?

One view holds that the past and future also have aggregation and stoutly answers each difficulty. The commentator declines it and gives an adjudication: past and future things do not aggregate like present things, but remain individually dispersed.¹ Having chosen this side, the commentator must find another way out for the second half of the difficulties. The way offered is this: speaking of past things as once present involves no fault; speaking of future things as yet to be present also involves no fault. Knowledge of recollecting past lives observes what was formerly experienced; knowledge of death and rebirth observes what will be experienced.

This method is called "once present" and "yet to be present." The three Chinese characters "once present" (曾现在) occur only here in the entire work.¹ Remember them, because this is precisely the tool Vasubandhu will use decades later to refute real existence in the three times. A past dharma is said to exist because it once existed; a future dharma is said to exist because it will exist. Existence spoken of this way is not real existence like that of the present.² Sarvāstivāda uses the tool to handle walls and does so neatly. When Vasubandhu uses the same tool on the claim itself, Sarvāstivāda refuses it.

A rarely noticed situation emerges here. The resources for refutation are not brought in from outside. They have been in the house all along, merely registered under a smaller problem. Sarvāstivāda can say "exists because it once existed"; it is unwilling to apply this to its own banner. If it did, past and future dharmas would no longer really exist as present ones do, and the "exists" of "all exists" would have to be read differently. This book sees the school here as defending a boundary rather than an argument. Once the boundary is held, another argument can be found.

Where Vasubandhu attacks. The objections in the Kośa's chapter on latent tendencies all fall on activity. The first is most direct: if dharma-substance always exists, it should be active at all times. What blocks it, so that the activity of one and the same dharma-substance occurs at some times and not others? The question closes off a retreat in advance. It will not do to answer that the conditions have not come together, because on the school's own account, the conditions also always exist.

The second question concerns regress: to which time does activity itself belong? If activity too must be divided into three times, another activity must be established within activity to determine the three times of the first level, and so without end. If activity does not belong to the three times but is still said really to exist, it becomes an unconditioned dharma and should never be absent. There would then be no reason to speak of activity as already ceased or not yet present. The third question concerns identity and difference. Sarvāstivāda answers that activity is not different from dharma-substance. Vasubandhu seizes on this: then your establishment of the three times loses its meaning. If activity is dharma-substance and dharma-substance always exists, activity should always exist too. How could it sometimes be called past and sometimes future?²

The three questions tighten in sequence and end in mockery. Vasubandhu first states in prose that to accept the constant existence of substance while calling its nature impermanent is an unprecedented doctrine and way of speaking. Then he adds a verse: "You accept that dharma-substance always exists, yet say its nature is impermanent. But nature and substance are not different: this is truly the Lord's doing." The force emerges only when all four lines are read together. The first two set the opponent's claims side by side. The third identifies their conflict: if nature and substance do not differ, and substance always exists, nature should be constant too. The fourth calls it the handiwork of Īśvara, meaning that no reason can be given: it becomes whatever one wants it to be. Chapter 1 listed four things Sarvāstivāda does not claim. The fourth was that conditioned dharmas are permanent, described there as the easiest point to misread and the hardest to explain clearly. We can now explain it. Sarvāstivāda's defense is that what always exists is substance, while impermanence lies in activity's momentary arising and ceasing; conditioned dharmas remain subject to the four characteristics. For this defense to hold, substance and activity must be separable, with permanence predicated of substance and impermanence of activity. But whether they can be separated is precisely Vasubandhu's question. The defense assumes what needs to be proved. This book's judgment is that Sarvāstivāda's own account by position has forced it into a position it cannot explain clearly; misreading is not the issue. To say it holds conditioned dharmas permanent is unfair. To say it has already settled permanence and impermanence is equally unfair.

The move with the inactive corresponding state. Here Vasubandhu's refutation shows its greatest skill and deserves separate attention.

Chapter 1 recorded a Sarvāstivāda patch: a present eye faculty in the inactive corresponding state, not currently seeing, remains present because, although it lacks the activity of seeing, it certainly has the activity of projecting a fruit. The patch keeps a dozing eye faculty from dropping out of the present. Vasubandhu picks it up: very well, what activity does such an eye faculty have? Can it not project and give a fruit? If projecting and giving a fruit count as activity, a past homogeneous cause can also give a fruit, so past dharmas must have activity too. Some dharmas would then have only half an activity, and the characteristics of the three times would be confused.²

The accuracy of this objection lies in its last two Chinese characters: "confused" (杂乱). This is precisely the criterion the Mahāvibhāṣā used to eliminate Buddhadeva and Ghoṣaka: no account that blurs the distinctions among the three times is accepted. One reason the adjudicator gave for choosing Vasumitra was that "the times established by this master are not confused." Vasubandhu turns the same standard on the survivor and finds the same ailment as in the two eliminated accounts. He introduces no new criterion; he uses Sarvāstivāda's own. This book regards it as the strongest objection in the entire exchange, because Vasubandhu's readers need accept no Sautrāntika premise.

Vasubandhu's scriptural evidence and its absence from the Mahāvibhāṣā. After the refutation, Vasubandhu presents his own reading through the Sūtra on Emptiness in the Ultimate Sense: the eye comes from nowhere when it arises and is not stored anywhere when it ceases. The discussion here expresses that reading in the formula "what did not exist before now exists; having existed, it no longer exists." The note distinguishes this formula, used in the Sarvāstivāda treatises, from the Chinese scripture's own wording. If past and future eyes really existed, this reading could not describe the eye as previously nonexistent.⁵

This reading of the scripture directly conflicts with the Sarvāstivāda position. As noted earlier, the author of fascicle 76 preferred the view that what already exists arises, because the alternative would entail that all dharmas previously nonexistent now come to exist. Once that was admitted, the Sarvāstivāda position could no longer stand. Nor is this the only case. In its treatment of the twelve links of dependent arising, fascicle 23 is more explicit: affirming the two past links blocks the view that birth and death were previously nonexistent and now come to exist, while affirming the two future links blocks the view that, after existing, they cease to exist.¹ "What did not exist before now exists" and "having existed, it no longer exists" are thus two wrong views that the Mahāvibhāṣā seeks to exclude. The conflict claimed here concerns how the scripture is read through this formula. It is not a word-for-word opposition between the Chinese scripture quoted in the note and the Mahāvibhāṣā.

How, then, does the Mahāvibhāṣā handle this sūtra? It does not. A search of the complete work finds the three characters "emptiness in the ultimate sense" (胜义空) only twice. Neither is a sūtra quotation; both are entries in a list of ten kinds of emptiness, alongside internal and external emptiness.¹ Statements such as "when the eye arises, it comes from nowhere" never occur in the work. Across 200 fascicles, no attempt is made to reconcile a sūtra that directly conflicts with the school's central claim. Chapter 1 said that Sarvāstivāda borrowed "all" from the sūtras and gave it another job. We can add that it is diligent in borrowing words, but walks around a sūtra that is harder to borrow.

Vasubandhu's own resting place is the more famous sūtra statement: what is called "all" is the twelve bases.⁵ This is the sūtra quoted at the opening of Chapter 1. Sarvāstivāda borrowed the two characters for "all" (一切) from it and read scope as existence. Vasubandhu brings the sūtra back, demanding that each dharma be said to exist in the way it actually does. One sūtra appears twice: first as the starting point for Sarvāstivāda's establishment of its position, then as the endpoint of Vasubandhu's refutation. Chapters 1 and 3 of this essay are thus joined.

Vasubandhu's linguistic attack in the same passage should also be noted. He says that ordinary speech already allows "there is a lamp that did not exist before," "there is a lamp that will not exist afterward," and "there is a lamp that has gone out; I am not extinguishing it now." In ordinary language, "there is" has never implied that the thing spoken of really has a substance. Sarvāstivāda's move from scope to existence in the sūtras' two characters for "all" (一切) presupposes that "exists" has only one use. That premise fails even in everyday language.²

Saṅghabhadra's defense. In fascicle 52 of the Nyāyānusāra, Saṅghabhadra meets Vasubandhu's challenge directly and more finely than standard summaries suggest. He first says that the whole objection comes from failing to understand the nature of dharmas, then divides the powers spoken of by Sarvāstivāda into two: activity and function. Only the function that projects a fruit is called activity. Activity does not encompass all function; some functions are not activities. The example that draws the distinction is an eye in the dark. Darkness obstructs its function of seeing visible form, so the eye cannot see in the dark. Its activity of projecting a fruit is not obstructed by darkness, so it still projects a fruit there. The establishment of the times depends only on activity: "the present is established solely in dependence on activity." Though a past cause can give a fruit, it has no activity, and the characteristics of the three times are therefore not confused.^{3 6}

The answer is stronger than the usual summary. Activity and function are not parallel names; their relation is one of inclusion. Function is the wider category. Only the function that projects a fruit is promoted to activity, and only that governs the division of the three times. A past cause's ability to give a fruit is no longer a counterexample: it has function without activity, and since function does not mark the times, it remains safely in the past. Vasubandhu's first question, why the activity of the same dharma-substance is sometimes present and sometimes absent, also takes a form that need not be answered directly. Being active and inactive follow from the division of labor between two levels of power, not from switching the same thing on and off. Saṅghabhadra makes the point concrete in a symmetrical statement: the past should have two names, since its intrinsic characteristic really exists and its activity once existed; the present should also have two names, really existent and presently existent, since activity now occurs in its real substance. One name governs substance, the other activity, each in its own place.

We must also see what the answer has not done. Dividing the levels does not abolish regress; it pushes regress out one level. Whether function and dharma-substance are identical or different is still unexplained. Saṅghabhadra introduces another analogy: a continuum has no separate substance, yet is allowed distinct work of its own; the principle of activity is the same. But for Sarvāstivāda, a continuum exists nominally. What it costs to use something nominally existent as the model for something really existent cannot be calculated until Chapter 7. By this point in the dispute, the two sides no longer use the same vocabulary.

The three questions and answers, set against one another:

The first two rows have answers; the third is empty. The empty row contains the shortest of the three questions.

What is this exchange really disputing? This book sees it as a contest over where questioning must stop.

All Vasubandhu's challenges reduce to a demand: if activity supports your distinction among the three times, give activity itself an existential status. Is it a dharma or not? Is it identical or different? Does it belong to the three times? All Saṅghabhadra's defenses reduce to a refusal: no such status need be given. Activity is a distinguishing characteristic of dharma-substance; such a characteristic is not something requiring a separate place. Questioning should stop here.

Neither has proved the other wrong. Vasubandhu has not proved that activity must have a status; Saṅghabhadra has not proved that it need not. Their disagreement lies not in a particular inference but further back: must something that supports other things first be given a place of its own? Those who answer yes keep asking until they reach something established in its own right, or admit that it cannot be reached. Those who answer no put up a sign somewhere saying, "This is the bottom." Sarvāstivāda places its sign at activity. Vasubandhu asks it to move the sign one level lower; Saṅghabhadra refuses.

A stopping line is not an argument, but neither can it simply be called an error. Every system must stop somewhere. The question is whether it accounts for where it stops. This book's judgment is that Sarvāstivāda's stopping line was forced out by questioning, not selected in advance. The statement in fascicle 76, "They cannot definitely be said to be identical or different; therefore this should not be challenged," is impatient in tone, not composed. The four Chinese characters "therefore this should not be challenged" (故不应责) mean that the question should not be asked, not that it has been answered. This is the second ground for Chapter 7's judgment.

Two statements put into someone else's mouth. Vasubandhu closes the debate with a scene. He writes that the Vaibhāṣikas say this: the past and future really exist like the present, and all questions that arise here cannot be explained away. Those who cherish their own school should think that the nature of dharmas is profound, beyond the domain of discursive thought. Can failure to explain it justify declaring it nonexistent?² This passage is widely repeated, usually as Sarvāstivāda's closing move after running out of arguments. Yet Saṅghabhadra accepts neither of the two elements in the scene.

First, the opening. Saṅghabhadra explicitly rejects "really exist like the present" twice. He tells the venerable sirs to listen: it is not his school that says the past and future really exist like the present. Dharmas really exist in all three times, but their modes are distinct. Elsewhere he says that the other man makes up "the past and future really exist like the present" to suit his own wishes. His own formulation is this: the position in which a conditioned dharma can project a fruit is called present. That position is absent before and afterward, and the three times differ accordingly. How could one say that the past and future really exist just like the present? A search of the three original works finds the four-character phrase 如现实有, "really exist like the present," three times in the Mahāvibhāṣā, all in fascicle 34 on taking refuge in the Three Jewels, unrelated to the three times; twice in the Kośa, both in fascicle 20, once in Vasubandhu’s own denial, ‘it does not mean that the past and future really exist like the present,’ and once in his report of the Vaibhāṣikas’ position. The Nyāyānusāra has one occurrence in fascicle 51, quoting and criticizing Vasubandhu’s account in terms of having existed and coming to exist. Its four occurrences in fascicle 52 are, respectively, a negative clarification, a rhetorical question, a quoted objection, and a renewed denial that the view belongs to his school. None of the five establishes that Saṅghabhadra affirms the same mode of existence for past and future as for the present.³ The difference is more than verbal. "Really exist like the present" gives the three times equal standing. Sarvāstivāda needs dharmas to exist in all three times, with the present alone distinctive. The substance is the same, the modes differ, and activity divides them. Change the formulation, and the question changes.

Now the latter half. The statement has a source, just not at this location. At the opening of fascicle 1, the Mahāvibhāṣā discusses who composed the treatise and begins: "The nature of knowable dharmas in all their aspects is exceedingly profound and subtle. Apart from the omniscient Buddha, the Blessed One, who can fully and perfectly awaken to it and reveal it?" The same fascicle then quotes sūtras in succession, the Buddha telling Śreṇika and Ānanda: "I have a profound Abhidharma, difficult to see and awaken to, not to be thought out, beyond the domain of discursive thought, knowable only to those of subtle, discerning wisdom."¹ This string of "difficult to see," "difficult to awaken to," and "not to be thought out" is language the Mahāvibhāṣā uses to establish Abhidharma's authority.

Yet a search of the 200 fascicles narrows the situation further. "The nature of dharmas is profound" (法性甚深) occurs three times, as does "beyond the domain of discursive thought" (非寻思境), all in fascicle 1, and the two halves are never joined. Of the former, two occurrences are in the introductory discussion of who composed the Jñānaprasthāna, and one explains the name Abhidharma. The latter three are three quotations of the same scriptural formula, describing the profundity of Abhidharma itself. As a continuous sentence, "the nature of dharmas is profound, beyond the domain of discursive thought" simply does not exist in the Mahāvibhāṣā. The four characters "thereupon declare it nonexistent" (便拨为无) occur zero times in the whole work. The substance of the matter is more crucial still. The direct discussion of real existence in the three times is in fascicle 76, and the two characters for "profound" (甚深) never occur in that fascicle.¹

Saṅghabhadra therefore accuses Vasubandhu of fabrication, in strong terms: "I now judge that you have secretly composed a treatise yourself and falsely given it the title Vibhāṣā. The true Vibhāṣā contains no such statement."³

This book's judgment is that Saṅghabhadra is entirely right on the wording, and right on the substance as well. Fascicle 76 of the Mahāvibhāṣā offers rigorous arguments: a reductio of the "thirteenth base" kind, a dilemma about maturation causes and fruits, and the analogy of fruit in a vessel devised to refute Dārṣṭāntikas and Vibhajyavādins. It does not offer a sentence exempting it from answering. It does have a fixed form for its verdicts, but the order is precisely the reverse. Fascicle 75 says: "If there were no space, this successive order of causes and fruits would not be established. To avoid this fault, the substance and characteristic of space therefore really exist and should not be declared nonexistent."¹ The reasons precede the verdict. There is no failure to explain followed by a prohibition on denying existence. Only one allowance can be made for Vasubandhu: "the Vaibhāṣikas say this" is Sarvāstivāda's conventional way of reporting a position and need not claim verbatim quotation. He may be reporting an attitude rather than a sentence. This book leaves that possibility here without ruling for either side.

What matters is what this transfer accomplished; who went too far is secondary. A statement saying that the discipline is so profound that only those with sharp faculties can enter it is moved to the point where argument fails. Its remaining function is solely to keep questions out. Vasubandhu makes the move, not the Mahāvibhāṣā. Yet it sounds plausible because Sarvāstivāda does have a stopping line. In the original work that line reads "therefore this should not be challenged," its tone impatient rather than composed. Vasubandhu rewrites impatience as solemnity. Both stop inquiry; after the rewriting, the position is harder both to refute and to defend. Chapter 1 said that Sarvāstivāda establishes its claims by giving each gap an existence. The second half to add here lies at another level: where it cannot do so, someone else supplies a sentence on its behalf, while where it truly can, what it supplies is an argument.

The last page of 200 fascicles. The Mahāvibhāṣā itself reached the doorstep of this problem, in the work's final fascicle.

In gathering the sixty-two views together, fascicle 200 draws a line. Some non-Buddhist eternalists hold to transformation, some to concealment and manifestation, and some to the permanence of a mind element that comes and goes; all belong to eternalism. Transformation and concealment/manifestation are assigned to non-Buddhist eternalist views. Then comes the work's last exchange: how do we know that transformation depends on the arising and ceasing of substance, rather than on concealment and manifestation? Vasumitra answers: if transformation were only concealment and manifestation, the stages of life in the womb, infancy, childhood, youth, middle age, and old age should all arise at once. But they arise successively, so transformation involves substance arising and ceasing, not concealment and manifestation. Vasumitra adds another blow: if it were only concealment and manifestation, those stages should have gaps between them, yet they do not. The Venerable says: we see in the world that dharmas arise when conditions come together and perish when conditions separate; concealment and manifestation have no such distinction. The last blow is heaviest: when a dharma transforms, its earlier and later characteristics differ, so its substance should also differ, because characteristic and substance are one. If a dharma were permanent, its characteristic would remain unchanged despite differences between concealed and manifest phases.¹

Read these four blows against what we have seen earlier in this chapter. The standard form of real existence in the three times is constant substance with arising and ceasing activity: one substance, different characteristics. Yet the last blow says that characteristic and substance are one, so differing characteristics entail differing substances. The first two are attributed to Vasumitra, precisely the master chosen by the adjudicator. The claim that characteristic and substance are one follows "the Venerable says," with no new speaker named. In textual sequence it should belong to the Venerable; this book assigns it to no other person. What matters is where it falls. Below it remains only a sentence saying that all the meanings of the subsection on verses are easily understood from the text and need no further explanation. Next come Xuanzang's two verses on completing the translation. The four Chinese characters "because characteristic and substance are one" (相体一故) are the last argument in 200 fascicles. Literally, they negate Ghoṣaka's account of different characteristics and also unsettle Vasumitra's account of different positions, since differences of position must be shown through differences of characteristic. And it is the Mahāvibhāṣā itself that classifies concealment and manifestation as non-Buddhist eternalism.

This book does not read the passage as self-contradiction. The treatise judges the non-Buddhist kind of concealment and manifestation: a dharma is permanent, its phases merely concealed or manifest, its characteristic always unchanged. Sarvāstivāda does not want this. It wants unchanging substance with arising and ceasing activity, and that arising and ceasing is precisely a difference in characteristic. What separates the two is the relation between characteristic and substance. As noted earlier, Saṅghabhadra uses the same criterion to distance Dharmatrāta from Sāṃkhya: a cause transforming into the fruit's substance and the fruit disappearing back into intrinsic nature belongs to the Yellow Sage; activity belonging only to a single present moment and ceased dharmas never arising again belongs to his own school. There is a criterion, and it works. The trouble is that applied to the school itself, it gives the opposite result: if characteristic differs, substance differs, whereas Sarvāstivāda needs characteristic to differ without substance differing.

On its own last page, with non-Buddhists as its target, the Mahāvibhāṣā asks half the question Vasubandhu will later ask, then asks no further. This chapter stops here. Chapter 7 will pursue the other half.

Comparison with the Southern tradition: each loses one end. Chapter 6 of Essay 14 examined the Southern solution. It removes the persistence of dharma-substance: everything arises and ceases within a moment, and past dhammas have ceased without remainder. The cost is that the identity of a continuum has no bearer. Earlier and later can be connected only through the succession of conditions and the sequence of cognitive processes. The connections are finely worked out, but nothing truly crosses from one to the other.⁷ Sarvāstivāda preserves identity. Dharma-substance always exists in the three times, and what crosses them is immediately apparent. The cost is that temporal difference has no bearer, because activity, the only thing that can distinguish the three times, has no status of its own.

Each side loses one end. The Southern tradition loses the bearer of persistence; Sarvāstivāda loses the bearer of difference. The losses differ but their shapes are symmetrical. The Southern tradition confines reality to the present, leaving relations as the only connections across time. Sarvāstivāda spreads reality over the three times, leaving activity as the only distinctiveness of the present. Neither gets both. Chapter 7 will ask whether both can be had, or whether every system that tries to explain continuity under not-self must lose one of them.

One addition to the modern comparison. Chapter 1 of Essay 3 in Part I set out eternalism and presentism. This chapter does not repeat that account, adding only something Part I left unsaid. Sarvāstivāda's real existence in the three times does not neatly correspond to eternalism. In eternalism's classical form, the three times have wholly equal existential standing; the present is merely a position marked by an indexical word, with nothing distinctive in itself. Sarvāstivāda's present is privileged. Only present dharmas are active; only present dharmas can be perceived by the five consciousnesses, aggregate, and become a wall. The school needs a structure in which dharmas exist in all three times but the present is distinctive. This structure is difficult to place within the binary scheme of modern philosophy of time, and forcing it into place conceals its difficulties. The distinction has already been made; this book claims no originality for it. Kristie Miller compares Buddhist schools through eternalism, presentism, and the growing block. Her judgment is that Sarvāstivāda's ontology is indeed eternalist, but it also gives the present a privilege in causal efficacy, making it better classified with the moving spotlight than with the block universe.⁸ The moving spotlight is precisely a position outside the binary scheme. To say above that this structure is hard to place is to say that the binary scheme itself has no room for it. A difference still remains: the moving spotlight usually takes presentness as a primitive property, whereas Sarvāstivāda reduces it to activity. For Sarvāstivāda, presentness is conditional.

To Chapter 4. Real existence in the three times has given dharmas their place in time, but left one job undone: how qualifications, states, and relations on a continuum cross moments. Karma has been performed and its fruit has not yet arrived; who carries the interval between them? A person takes precepts and falls asleep; where is the substance of the precepts? On which dharma does the boundary between an ordinary person and a noble one fall? None of these asks whether a dharma exists. They ask how dharmas are hooked to people. Sarvāstivāda establishes another set of entities for this purpose. The next chapter examines each and what it in turn needs for support.

One further matter has only been touched on here. Real existence in the three times is not just a claim about time. Sarvāstivāda's entire account of causes and conditions is written in its vocabulary. Fascicle 17 opens its discussion of the homogeneous cause by declaring that the purpose is to refute other schools and demonstrate the real existence of past and future dharmas. This cause is established to support real existence in the three times; it does not follow from a prior theory of causality. This level belongs to Chapter 5.

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