Chapter 7: Latent Defilements and Their Severing¶

[PLANNED] This chapter has not yet been written; what follows is a skeleton. Items may be added or removed, and the order may change.

What this chapter does. Whether the latent defilements are associated with mind or dissociated from it — the great divide against the Dārṣṭāntika line, and the question of the ontological standing of defilement. Then the ninety-eight, the stages of the path of seeing and the path of cultivation, and the map of the three realms and nine grounds. Part 15 expanded none of this; this chapter supplies it, holding on to the question of the part: is the ever-finer table of stages an achievement of classification or a specimen of multiplication.

Structure.

First, the dispute over standing. The reasons on the associated side and the dissociated side; the ruling and its ground.

Second, the ninety-eight. The path of expansion from the root defilements to ninety-eight (the criterion of division to be verified).

Third, seeing and cultivation. The sequence of stages; the unhindered and the liberated paths; whether the table of stages describes practice or legislates it.

Fourth, the three realms and nine grounds. The map itself, and how the two tables mesh; together they are one of the grandest exhibits of Vaibhāṣika multiplication.

Data and sources. The division of the ninety-eight, the standard listing of the nine grounds and the fascicle references are on the verification list; the Kośa's chapters on the latent defilements and on the noble ones serve as the comparison face.

To Chapter 8. The tables arrange how a person walks through time; next, what time itself was rewritten into.