瑜伽師地論略纂 7.18

7.18

Regarding "In the verse 'Neither internal nor external', etc., up to 'capable of producing defilements'": here it intends to show that among the five verses elucidating the support, similarity, and temporal division of the defiled category, the first two verses elucidate the defilements of affliction, karma, and rebirth; the following three verses elucidate that defilements can be produced in dependence on past and present formations, but defilements are not produced in dependence on the future. The meaning of the first seven lines clarifies that the future does not produce defilements; the latter five lines show that defilements can be produced in dependence on the past and present. That is, defilements are not produced in dependence on future internal sense faculties and external dusts, because formations have not yet arisen; formations can be found to arise in the past and present periods, hence it is said that they 'can be found at times', which conversely shows that in the future they can never be found. Another explanation: When the future is in the future, producing defilement cannot be found; when the future reaches the present, producing defilement can at times be found. "Even if formations have already arisen, based precisely on this characteristic there is no conceptual construction": this explains the verse's statement, "Even if formations have already arisen, because of this none is found." That is, even among formations that have already arisen in the past and present, if one performs the previous contemplation of not being internal, external, or arising in between, because of this contemplation there is still no conceptual construction, and one cannot produce the three kinds of defilement. "The future has no characteristics, therefore there is no conceptual construction": this explains the verse's statement, "The future has no characteristics." It means that the characteristics of the future are completely non-existent, and there is no conceptual construction whatsoever to produce defilement. "Because what is thus and so in the future is definitively unknowable": this concludes that because the future is definitively difficult to know, it does not produce defilements. "If not conceptually constructed in this way, a different category might at times be found": if not conceptually constructed in this way, since the future is of a different category from past and present, one might at times doubt that in the future there could be found something to induce and produce defilements. "If in the past, it can indeed be conceptually constructed, because characteristics that once existed thus and so can be conceptually constructed": this explains "the past can be conceptually constructed" in the verse, as being capable of producing defilements. "Not only what was experienced can be conceptually constructed, up to producing defilements": this explains "One conceptually constructs what was experienced, and also conceptually constructs what was not experienced" in the verse. The meaning of this statement shows that it is not only past objects that were experienced that can be conceptually constructed to produce defilements; present objects that have not been experienced, because they have not been experienced, though their characteristics are not distinctly grasped, nevertheless in accordance with the kinds previously experienced in the past, these present new objects can also be conceptually constructed to produce defilements. The concluding text can be understood. "Although formations are without beginning, a beginning can nevertheless be found": from beginningless time they constantly arise in pursuit, therefore they are without beginning; yet because they arise ever anew, a beginning is not absent.