Commentary on the Mahāyāna Treatise of the Hundred Dharmas Through the Gate of Clarity — Part Three

Now let's continue with the fourth category of mental factors—the afflictions (烦恼). There are six of them.

1. Greed (贪). Greed arises in relation to agreeable conditions; it's the root of suffering. In spring, people tend to feel drowsy. You wake up just enough to know it's light out and time to rise, but your body refuses to move—that's greed at work, greed for sleep… Wait, you're mistaken—that's desire (欲), not greed. Let me use sleep again to explain. I've slept a full night, and getting up now wouldn't affect my health at all, yet I still don't want to rise. When you've had enough sleep but still want to oversleep, that's greed. In the early days of capitalism, when capitalists were accumulating capital, they forced workers to rest only three or four hours a day. The labor was too grueling and the rest too short, harming their health—in that situation, wanting a little more sleep is desire. Here's another example: a young man wants to get married but has no house. His wanting to own a house is desire. But a government official who already has plenty of housing still wants to grab an extra unit, claiming it's set aside for his seven-year-old grandson—that's greed.

2. Hatred (嗔). Hatred arises in relation to adverse conditions; it's the root of evil karma. At the Buddhist Academy of Mount Jiuhua, meals are taken in the dining hall. To be fair, the cooks aren't bad, but they do something strange: the dishes come swimming in broth, while the noodles come with not a drop of it—completely backwards. Once, during a walk-through, the supervising master was in a playful mood. While we were reciting the offering verse, he ladled me a full scoop of tofu soup first. My mind flared right up: "What's going on here—are we eating dishes or drinking soup?!" That's hatred. One Saturday at noon I went for a haircut. When I arrived, another student was already at the shampoo station, but they insisted on serving me first: "The Master is busy—please go ahead." My heart immediately soured: "All I want is to blend in with everyone, but you keep pushing me apart—why must you make things difficult for me?!" That was still hatred.

3. Delusion (痴). Taking what is true to be false, and what is false to be true—failing to understand how things really work. What does that mean? "Things" (事) refers to the conventional truths of cause, condition, and effect; "principle" (理) refers to the ultimate truths of the two emptinesses and suchness. To be inwardly bewildered about these two truths, not understanding what's actually going on—that's delusion. During the War of Resistance, Mr. Feng Zikai's Yuyuan Hall (缘缘堂) was destroyed by fire. Mr. Feng's aunt complained: "Your teacher Master Hongyi was a great monk—why didn't the Buddha protect Yuyuan Hall?" Naturally, the old lady didn't understand the principle at work. Everyone says the virtuous and the wicked each receive their due, so why does person A practice kindness all his life and end up destitute? Why does Zhang San take bribes and embezzle yet gain both fame and fortune? Just why? I don't get it! If I stop eating pork, won't pigs become useless in this world? This patient is in agony—wouldn't a merciful lethal injection be a kindness? These are all delusion. Greed, hatred, and delusion are the root of birth and death. With them, we cannot end the cycle or escape the six realms.

4. Conceit (慢). It comes in several varieties.

A. Within a unit, suppose A has a degree but B doesn't. When it comes to professional titles and the like, B is simply passed over. A will inevitably feel a sense of superiority. Of course, a well-bred person won't openly show contempt for B. Another example: A graduated from Peking University in 1985, B in 1986. One day someone comes to visit, and in conversation reveals admiration for B. A immediately says: "B is my junior—I'm very happy for him." Strip away the surface, and what A really means is, "I'm also from Peking University, and I was there first." That's conceit.

B. A and B are roughly equal in ability, but A always thinks himself stronger than B. That's conceit at odds with fact. Or B is clearly stronger than A, but A refuses to accept it and says B is nothing special. It is said that Wang Dan once remarked: "If I were premier, I'd certainly do better than Li Peng." This is called over-conceit (过慢).

C. After an exam, A scores 99 and B scores 95. Normally A gets around 70, so this time he's made great progress and the teacher praises him. B thinks: "How can the teacher judge by one result? I'm usually much better than A. The teacher is deliberately provoking me." Indians always say: "Our sweet potatoes here are number one in East Asia." Parents always think their own child is best, and try every means to prove how clever their child is. This is called conceit-upon-conceit (慢过慢).

D. Zhang San is better than me. Rather than striving to learn from him, I think: "Doesn't he eat and sleep just like the rest of us? So what if he's better!" This is called inferiority-conceit (卑慢).

E. During an epidemic, we all fell ill except for Xiao Wang, who boasted of his robust constitution. Some girls are utterly unknown, but the moment they win a beauty pageant or are crowned Miss Asia, their stock shoots up: even a thirty-second commercial fetches them 300,000 yuan. This is attachment to form and appearance—it's called self-conceit (我慢)… That's right, you've got it. But note: if you see a disabled person at a bus stop and give alms with a pure heart, that isn't self-conceit—you're a bodhisattva. But if you feel a sense of superiority and call out, "Here, take this and eat," then your state of mind is self-conceit.

F. A cultivator who has accomplished something—say, attained meditative absorption (禅定) or developed supernatural powers—will then look down on others. As soon as someone opens his mouth, you say, "No, that's wrong! I know how it should be done!" This is called superior-conceit (增上慢).

G. Heretical conceit (邪慢). For the sake of fame and profit, one uses every means to publicize one's own virtue. The newspapers reported that Chen Xitong once said he would strongly support education, making educators feel warm and fuzzy inside, singing his praises—and then later… In Hong Kong and Taiwanese film and television, many government officials turn out to be triad bosses. These are all examples. The seven situations above all aim to elevate oneself, but without solid grounding—using improper methods.

5. Doubt (疑). Inability to have deep faith in the truth. Amitābha Buddha vowed that anyone who wishes to be born in his land may come. But someone like me, so rotten, always looking for a bargain—will Amitābha have me? What would he want me for? To sneak some gold out of his Pure Land and bring it back? That's doubt of the Dharma. Studying the history of Indian Buddhism, do you know about the "Five Propositions of Mahādeva" (大天五事)? Mahādeva was a pioneer of Mahāyāna Buddhism. He claimed to have attained the fruit of arhatship and gave verification to his disciples. Some people raised five propositions in doubt. These five are part of Buddhist history. This is doubt of the teacher… You say, nowadays, well, there are many disciples who look down on their teachers. After ordination, when you've shaved their head, they'll say: "My master is just plain troubled and afflicted all day. I revere him, but I don't know whether he can really help me escape the sea of suffering!" This is doubt of the teacher. Once you doubt your teacher, it's very hard to revere him. The basic reverence essential to cultivation can't be practiced. In Pure Land, this means the Three Meritorious Practices haven't been cultivated, and cultivation won't bear fruit! Now someone has invented a new kind of funeral: after death, the ashes are sent into space. I wonder—is that really true? British scientists cloned a sheep named Dolly—is it really true? This is doubt of facts. Zen speaks of "great doubt, great enlightenment; small doubt, small enlightenment." The starting point of that doubt is to clarify the truth—it isn't a mental affliction. The doubt mental factor, by contrast, is this: when a situation arises, you don't investigate or seek out the truth, you simply doubt directly. Afterward, nothing follows—it isn't like Zen doubt, which leads to intensive investigation. That's the difference.

6. Wrong View (不正见). Incorrect understanding.

A. View of a personal self (萨迦耶见), also called the body-view. "Sat" (萨) means "liable to decay," and "kaya" (迦耶) means "combination" or "aggregation." Together it means something that can be destroyed at any moment yet come together again through conditions. What thing is like this? The four great elements and the five aggregates. It refers to grasping at the self and what belongs to the self, formed by the four elements and five aggregates, as truly existent and permanent.

B. Extremist view (边见). Some people think life is permanent; after a person dies, twenty years later they'll be a fine young man again—even bandits facing execution say this. Others say that when a person dies, it's like a lamp going out. This grasping at annihilation or permanence is the extremist view.

C. Heretical view (邪见). Denial of cause and effect. During the Northern and Southern Dynasties, Fan Zhen wrote an essay titled "On the Extinction of the Spirit" (《神灭论》). In explaining why people are poor or rich, noble or base, he offered an analogy: it's like leaves on a tree. A wind comes and blows many leaves off. Some land in the hall, like the rich and noble; others land in the latrine, like the lowly. But this view is heretical—why is this leaf blown into the hall and that one into the latrine? They're leaves from the very same tree! It fails to account for cause and effect.

D. View of grasping at superlative views (见取见). An error in one's view. There's a story in the Buddhist scriptures: a young man heard a non-Buddhist teacher say that if he killed one hundred people, he would ascend to heaven. He went on killing, but after ninety-nine he couldn't find anyone else—everyone had been scared off. He was about to kill his mother when the Buddha happened to come by with his alms bowl and awakened the youth. The notion that killing one hundred people lets you ascend to heaven is itself a wrong cause. Can a correct fruit come from a wrong cause? This is "taking what is not the fruit as the fruit."

E. View of grasping at precepts and practices (戒禁取见). A wrong understanding regarding precepts. A certain cultivator, while in meditative absorption one day, discovered that a cow died and immediately ascended to heaven. Coming out of absorption, he thought: why did the cow ascend to heaven? The cow had never left home to cultivate the Way. If we say the cow created good causes, it was always forced to work by others. After much thought he had a kind of realization: it must be that the cow only eats green grass. So from then on, this cultivator imitated the cow and ate only green grass, hoping to be reborn in heaven. This view of holding the "cow-precept" in order to ascend to heaven is called the view of grasping at precepts and practices—namely, "taking what is not the cause as the cause."

Conceit, doubt, and wrong view are the fundamental obstructions to the path. With them, cultivation is very hard to advance. The six—greed, hatred, delusion, conceit, doubt, and wrong view—can only be cut off at the stages of seeing the path (见道位) and cultivating the path (修道位).

The fifth category of mental factors is the secondary afflictions (随烦恼), which derive from the fundamental afflictions. There are twenty in all. The first ten are called the minor secondary afflictions, the eleventh and twelfth the intermediate, and the last eight the major.

1. Anger (忿). For example, if someone curses me, I become very unhappy, my heart is troubled, and I may curse back.

2. Resentment (恨). If someone curses me, my mental state at that moment is anger; my heart is disturbed. But I pay it no attention, I don't curse back. Yet afterward, the more I think about it, the more something feels off. Now my heart isn't just troubled and disturbed—it's become resentment. The distinction: when the situation is right in front of you and your heart is disturbed, that's anger. Once the situation has passed but your heart remains disturbed, that's resentment.

3. Annoyance (恼). Take the cursing example again. After A curses me and I experience anger and resentment, my body and mind become even more severely disturbed. Just then B comes along. B doesn't notice my mood and wants to ask me a question, but I immediately open my mouth and curse: "Get lost!" B is left utterly bewildered. Teacher Fei got into an argument with his wife, was so angry he slapped his thigh, and finally smashed the television too—luckily it was only an 18-inch black-and-white set, and afterward he bought a 24-inch TCL color TV. That's the look of annoyance. Annoyance is the renewed eruption of the anger and resentment in your heart when a new adverse situation arises.

4. Harmfulness (害). Causing harm. When I had just left home, I was chatting with a senior brother about physiognomy one day. My senior brother could read faces. As we talked, I poured a cup of freshly boiled water onto an ant hill, scalding many ants to death on the spot. Did the ants provoke me? No… Another morning, I saw a dog lying there and, for no reason at all, gave it a kick. That's harmfulness. There was a man who married into his wife's family, but they treated him badly, so he poisoned the food at his father-in-law's house. This is the great explosion after anger, resentment, and annoyance have built up to a certain point—also harmfulness.

5. Jealousy (嫉). I can't remember the name of a novel, but it describes A and B. When A is promoted to section chief, B goes to his superiors and slanders A with various accusations to attack him—that's the jealousy mental factor at work. There was a British scientist named Humphry Davy, who discovered potassium, sodium, barium, magnesium, calcium, strontium, and others. While he was president of the Royal Society, he discovered another scientist who was still unknown at the time—Michael Faraday. Faraday's main discoveries, including electromagnetic induction, laid the foundation for modern electrical engineering. At first, Davy as an elder did his best to support Faraday, but as Faraday's status rose, Davy began to suppress him and opposed his entry into the Royal Society. That's jealousy. Jealousy is feeling uneasy about others' achievements. A person with this state of mind is narrow-hearted—jealous of the worthy and unable to tolerate the capable, unable to bear others' success. The above—anger, resentment, annoyance, harmfulness, jealousy—are all aspects of hatred. Hatred arises when adverse circumstances appear and ignorance is stirred up blindly—an inability to tolerate the three sufferings and their causes. It's far more harmful than anger, resentment, annoyance, harmfulness, or jealousy, and far broader in scope.

6. Concealment (覆). I've done something bad and think to myself, fortunately no one else knows. This state of mind is called concealment… You're going to bring up doing good deeds? Honestly, the Earth Store Sutra says: …beings in Jambudvīpa, with every thought that arises, are nothing but sin, every thought nothing but karma… where is any good deed? … Of course, if it's a genuine good deed done with a pure heart, not letting others know isn't concealment. I don't remember the exact wording of the definition. It's in the sixth volume of the Treatise on the Establishment of Consciousness-Only (《成唯识论》). The gist is: one has committed evil and, fearing that this evil karma will cost one the fame and profit already acquired, conceals it. Moreover, concealment is one of the afflictions. Think about it: having committed evil and hidden it so no one knows—Mencius said that everyone has a heart of compassion. That means you can't escape the torment of conscience. You can fool others, but you can't fool your own conscience. With conscience tormented, tell me—is that not afflictive?

7. Deceit (诳). Deceiving others to obtain fame and profit. In history there was Zhang Yi, who carried deceit to perfection. Su Qin single-handedly held the seals of prime minister for six states, forming a united front against Qin. After Zhang Yi gained the trust of King Huiwen and became prime minister of Qin, he went to Chu and said to King Huai: "Let our two states form a friendly alliance, and Qin will grant you the Shangyu region—six hundred li of land." King Huai of Chu, greedy for those six hundred li, broke off relations with the other five states. When envoys were sent to receive the six hundred li of Shangyu, Zhang Yi changed his tune: "Land is the foundation of the state—how can it be lightly given away?" Chu was furious and went to war with Qin. Of course, it couldn't defeat the mighty Qin. Chu turned to Qi for help, but it had been the first to break off relations, so no one helped it, and in the end the great state of Chu suffered a devastating blow. The tactic Zhang Yi used was deceit—deceiving for personal gain.

8. Flattery (谄). Brown-nosing, in other words. Here's a joke: a man who had passed the imperial examination was about to leave the capital for his post, and went to take leave of his teacher. (The teacher of old wasn't someone who taught you day to day—only the one who taught you to read, recognize characters, and write essays could be called "master" [先生]. The one who presided over the exam and selected you was the one you had to call "teacher" [老师].) So this man went to take leave of his teacher, who said: "Being an official isn't easy—you must be prepared." The man replied: "I've prepared a hundred tall hats, ready to sell at any time." The teacher's face darkened: "If you prepare that way, you'll be a corrupt official!" The man replied: "Of course it depends on the person—if I met a man like you, Teacher, I wouldn't sell." That's a textbook example of flattery. The fame of A, the great flatterer, reached even King Yama. After A died, King Yama intended to punish him: "I hate flatterers the most!" A said: "I don't flatter willingly. People in the world like being flattered, so I have no choice. If everyone were like you, Your Majesty, who would flatter?" Even King Yama was flattered into dizziness!

9. Stinginess (悭). A miser, a penny-pincher. I really like my string of prayer beads. When a certain layperson wanted one, I said: "A gentleman doesn't take what others love—how greedy of you." I wouldn't give it to him. While I was calling this layperson greedy, I myself was being stingy. When Newton first discovered the law of universal gravitation, he was startled, thinking he had uncovered the secret of God. He didn't publish it but locked his findings in a safe, saying he couldn't betray God. He was terrified that what he possessed would be known by others. That's stinginess. Because Leibniz published the law of universal gravitation, Newton spent the latter half of his life writing a great deal of theological work, repenting of the sin of betraying God. Natural scientists have called this period his "producing garbage." That isn't stinginess anymore—it's delusion.

10. Pride (骄). Self-aggrandizement and self-conceit. In recent years there emerged Wang Shuo, a hot-shot who wrote novel after novel and produced TV series after TV series, all sensational. He said: "Carelessly, I wrote a Gone with the Wind." Saying that, he was full of pride. After the storm passed, Wang Shuo quieted down too. Jia Pingwa, when he wrote Ruined Capital (《废都》), called it the contemporary Dream of the Red Chamber and Jin Ping Mei. That may not really be Jia Pingwa's pride but an atmosphere created by the press that made him appear proud. Or perhaps not—after all, Jin Ping Mei was also a banned book. Whenever a person gives rise within himself to the thought "I am truly extraordinary," that is pride. Intoxicated with one's own success, one grows arrogant.

Let's compare pride and conceit side by side. Conceit is: first I compare myself with A, and after comparing, a sense of arrogance arises. Pride, however, doesn't require comparing with others. As soon as one has fame and profit, one becomes self-important and proud.

Having finished the ten minor secondary afflictions, let's turn to the intermediate ones. There are two.

1. Lack of shame (无惭). It's the opposite of the shame mental factor—one doesn't reflect on one's own faults. Even though one clearly knows one is in the wrong, one feels no inner guilt, no sense of shame, no intention to repent, even considering it no big deal. To put it bluntly, it means having no self-respect, not honoring one's own dignity. Everyone knows about Huang Tianshuai, who refused to kneel: he was a migrant worker, and when the Korean boss forced everyone to kneel, only Huang Tianshuai firmly refused. A commented: "As long as it's for money, what's the big deal about bending a knee?" …Look at A—he has no self-respect, valuing money more than his dignity. Getting last place on an exam and still thinking oneself unattached to grades—that's lack of shame. You'll damage the image of Buddhism.

2. Lack of conscience (无愧). This is the opposite of conscience—when one has done something, of course people will have their say. What I've done is widely recognized as bad. A criticizes and condemns me, or perhaps offers kindly advice. In response, I resort to sophistry to defend myself. For example, Kong Yiji was caught stealing books and had his legs broken. When others mocked him, he said: "A scholar's business of taking a book isn't theft." That shows thick-skinnedness and a lack of any sense of shame. How do we distinguish between lack of shame and lack of conscience? With lack of shame, after doing wrong, one abandons oneself in despair; if you do wrong and refuse to heed advice, that's lack of conscience. What's the difference between these two intermediate factors and the minor ones mentioned earlier? Or rather, why are these two called intermediate and the previous ten called minor? Look at the minor ones: take anger as an example—when anger is my current mental state, resentment, annoyance, and so on won't be present; only the single anger will arise. If my current mental state is resentment, then absolutely no anger, annoyance, deceit, or the like will join in—only the single state of resentment. And these ten minor secondary afflictions correspond only to the sixth consciousness; only the sixth mind-king can mobilize them—they take no commands from the others. To sum up: the minor ones act in mutual opposition, each arising separately, while the intermediate ones arise together with all unwholesome minds.