Chapter 9: The verdict, how commentary becomes a system¶

The essay closes in three steps, each gathering a set of evidence from the preceding chapters. Together they yield a single verdict, then pass the baton.

Step 1: The gap between bulk and complexity. Chapter 1 established that the two hundred fascicles result from a few formats multiplying across an immense array of doctrinal sets. The equal-length comparison yielded differences of ninefold and eighteenfold. "The same applies" occurs sixteen hundred times, and the four-alternatives formula three hundred times. The list of formats is there to see. The book is long because it carries out every multiplication its method calls for. It is not complex because there are only a few multipliers. This step gathers the phenomenon. Bulk is not the number of ideas.

Step 2: The cost of the method. Section 16 of Chapter 2 established that ontology comes first and argument afterward. The method requires every distinction to rest on an intrinsic nature. Classification therefore becomes ever finer, and entities ever more numerous. Once symmetry becomes an ontological requirement, even a lack must be established as something that exists. Possession and nonpossession generate acquisition and nonacquisition; these in turn generate acquisition of acquisition. There are three levels of expansion. Across the work, 自性, "intrinsic nature," occurs 1,536 times and 實有, "real existence," 252 times, while 假有, "nominal existence," used to relieve the pressure, occurs only five times.¹ The pressure-release valve has been made and is scarcely used. Across the whole work, it exemplifies the pattern of making instruments and leaving them unused discussed in Chapter 2. The method cannot supply its own stopping point because neither of its two exits is an explanation. One is intrinsic nature, where explanation ends without being given. The other is handing off to the next entity to continue the explanation. Explanation is postponed and again not given. A procedure with no completed state naturally cannot stop.

Step 3: The function of adjudication. Chapter 3 established that only "The evaluation states" can bring the process to a halt. What it brakes is usually the multiplication of entities generated by the treatise itself. "The evaluation states" is the book's brake, not its ornament. The very need to fit a brake writes the difficulty into the equipment. The three steps now join. Format explains its length, method explains its additions, and adjudication explains why it can still stop. The verdict is one sentence. Commentary becomes a system through adjudication because argument cannot do the job.

Two ways out, not one. Historically, two paths have led out of this difficulty. Vasubandhu's path is repair. He uses the same apparatus to ask whether the apparatus itself is needed. Is acquisition needed? Is nonmanifest material form needed? Are the three times needed? This reduces weight from within the system. Nāgārjuna's path is dismantling. He judges the whole apparatus, together with its way of proceeding, to be conceptual proliferation, rather than reducing weight from within. This essay hands over to the former. The next essay is devoted to that process of reduction. The connection to the latter was already established in Chapter 2. What the "Examination of Conditions" chapter attacks is precisely the level of the four conditions, the only level for which the Vibhāṣā itself claims scriptural evidence. Three limits govern this paragraph, and each must be stated. First, it does not say that Nāgārjuna read this treatise, only that he confronted this way of doing Abhidharma. Second, it does not say that "conceptual proliferation" is the Vibhāṣā's verdict on itself. The two characters 戲論 occur twenty-six times in the Vibhāṣā, all as itemized technical uses, and only twice in the Kośa. Nāgārjuna takes the term back from the level of the sūtra collection and turns it in the opposite direction. The difference itself is the evidence.¹ Third, rewriting and clearing away are metaphors. They may serve as metaphors, but they cannot serve as assertions.

Two textual witnesses to close. One is the isolated sentence in fascicle 30, "Because the intrinsic natures of all dharmas are fixed." It is the sole explicit statement of the entire method's axiom in the work.¹ The other is the plain statement in fascicle 16, "These six causes, however, are not taught in the sūtras. The sūtras teach only four conditions."¹ An axiom stated only once is ordinarily the air the work breathes. An invention acknowledged once shows that the work knows it is inventing. Together, the two sentences give the actual state of the book's self-understanding. It knows what its foundation is and which beams it has added itself. It simply regards this as the right thing to do. Two further places mark the boundaries. Knowledge of all aspects serves as an unanalyzable foundation whenever questioning reaches it. Śāriputra's answer on how the twelve sense bases encompass all dharmas in fascicle 74 is a rare explicit statement of the work's method.

Looking back to Chapter 7 of Essay 13. That chapter examined how later generations filled the Buddha's silence. This essay examines the proliferation of discourse itself. Both arise from the same procedure but follow different channels. Filling gaps produces new entities; proliferation produces new fascicles. They must not be collapsed into a single statement. The leaves in the hand were an image of restraint in that chapter. At the end of this essay, one sentence can be added. Once the leaves left the hand, what grew were pages, not leaves.

On to the next essay. The path of reducing weight deserves an essay of its own. One person used the Sarvāstivāda framework to compile its finest outline, then cast a dissenting vote at every crucial point. Why did he do so, and what remained of the system afterward? That is the next essay's subject.

References¶