瑜伽師地論略纂 16.32

16.32

Regarding "thoroughly understanding the basis, which furthermore has four [aspects]": the first can be understood; the second, "characteristics" (lakṣaṇa), refers to the essential nature and characteristic of concentration—characteristic being nature; the third, "focal object" (ālambana), refers to the objective sphere of concentration; "the causes and conditions of accomplishment" refers to the causes and conditions for attaining concentration, and it is also said that concentration is the cause and condition for accomplishing all merits. Regarding "thoroughly understanding merit, which refers to the absorption of cessation up to... this has five kinds: because of the state of cessation": this is the very essence of the absorption, which takes the functional capacity of the seeds of the non-concomitant mind of disgust as the entity of the state of cessation. Regarding "because it is a mental image resembling tranquility": this shows that concentration is nominally existent and lacks substantial reality, being merely a resembling mental image. Another explanation: as one wishes to enter this concentration, one takes nirvāṇa as the focal object; nirvāṇa is truly tranquil, and this concentration is a mental image resembling the tranquility of nirvāṇa, which is the absorption of cessation. Although it is conditioned, because it resembles nirvāṇa, it is called a mental image. "Contemplation through eight aspects" is as described at the end of the eighth chapter of the *Maulī Bhūmi*, and also as explained at the end of the fifty-third. Here, "mutual opposition" means: opposing painful feeling, speaking of pleasant feeling, neither pleasant nor painful. There are three such mutual oppositions; examine and correlate them as stated in the fifty-sixth.