Spiritual Traps from The 5th Century

[Joshe]

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"The Fifty Deviant States

Ten states for each of the five skandhas. Every one carries the same verdict: a temporary state, not sagehood — harmless if not claimed as attainment, ruinous if it is.

1. His body can transcend obstructions — the body feels unobstructed, like open space, and it's taken as a spiritual power.
2. Internally the light pervades and he can extract intestinal worms — he can see and reach inside his own body without injury, and takes it as mastery.
3. His essence and souls alternately separate and unite — he hears the dharma being spoken in empty space and assumes an external teacher is speaking.
4. The state changes and Buddhas appear — the world turns gold, all beings appear as buddhas, Vairochana is seen on a light platform, and it's assumed to be real.
5. Space takes on the color of precious things — space appears jeweled and luminous, treated as a realm actually reached.
6. He can see things in the dark — vision in total darkness, taken as a faculty permanently opened.
7. His body becomes like grass or wood — the body goes insensible to pain, fire, or a blade, taken as having transcended the body.
8. He can see everywhere without obstruction — walls and distance stop blocking sight, taken as omniscience.
9. He sees and hears distant things — remote perception, taken as clairvoyance.
10. False visions and false words — visions arrive with speech and doctrine attached, taken as revelation.
11. Suppression of the self leads to sadness — overwhelming grief and self-reproach, read as compassion or purification.
12. He praises himself as being equal to the Buddhas — a surge of energy and certainty, read as parity with the enlightened.
13. Samadhi out of balance brings much reverie — sinking into dry absorption and daydream, mistaken for depth.
14. Wisdom out of balance brings much arrogance — clarity outruns stability, conceit follows, and the conceit is read as authority.
15. Passing through danger leads to anxiety — dread and weariness with living, read as an advanced trial on the path.
16. Experiencing ease leads to joy — uncontainable joy and laughter, taken as confirmation.
17. Seeing the sublime and becoming proud — he glimpses something genuinely fine and becomes proud of having seen it.
18. With wisdom comes lightness and ease, which leads to complacency — effortlessness read as completion; practice stops.
19. Becoming attached to emptiness and slandering precepts — emptiness used to deny cause and effect, which licenses misconduct.
20. Becoming attached to existence and indulging in lust — appetite reframed as teaching, compassion, or transmission.
21. Greed for clever skill — wants brilliance; gets fluency, and speaks doctrine he doesn't actually hold.
22. Greedy for adventure — wants extraordinary experience; becomes a restless seeker of states.
23. Greed for union — wants to merge with something greater.
24. Greed to analyze things — wants to understand everything; produces a totalizing framework.
25. Greed for spiritual responses — wants to be answered; signs and responses duly arrive.
26. Greed for peace and quiet — pursues seclusion well past the point of usefulness.
27. Greed to know past lives — claims knowledge of previous lives and dispenses it to others.
28. Greed for spiritual powers — wants displays and transformations, and sometimes gets real ones.
29. Greed for profound emptiness — wants extinction, and takes extinction for the goal.
30. Greed for immortality — wants longevity or deathlessness.
31. Two theories on the absence of cause — sees no beginning within his range of vision and concludes there was none.
32. Four theories regarding pervasive permanence — mistakes mind, the elements, the consciousnesses, or the cessation of thought for something eternal.
33. Four upside-down theories — splits permanence from impermanence: I am permanent and others aren't, or mind is and body isn't.
34. Four theories regarding finiteness — speculates on limits — of time, of what he perceives, of self and others.
35. Eight kinds of sophistry — evasion elevated to doctrine: only "no," only "yes," both, neither.
36. The sixteen ways in which form can exist after death — projects the self forward as persisting with form.
37. Eight ideas about the non-existence of form — projects the self forward as formless.
38. Eight kinds of negation — neither existence nor non-existence after death.
39. Seven theories on the cessation of existence — annihilation, at one level or another, taken as the truth.
40. Five kinds of immediate Nirvana — declares the present state final, whether it's sense pleasure or one of the four dhyānas.
41. Attachment to causes and that which is caused — takes the source of consciousness as the origin of all beings, making himself in effect their creator.
42. Attachment to an ability that is not actually an ability — identifies with a pervading capacity he does not possess.
43. Attachment to a wrong idea of permanence — takes what he has reached to be permanent.
44. Attachment to an awareness that is not actually awareness — mistakes a residue for pure awareness.
45. Attachment to birth that is not actually birth — mistakes an arising for genuine origination.
46. Attachment to a refuge that is not actually a refuge — takes a resting place for the destination.
47. Attachment to an unattainable craving — fixes on something that cannot be had and calls the fixation attainment.
48. Attachment to truth that is not actually truth — takes a partial truth for the whole.
49. Fixed-nature hearers — settles permanently at a real but lesser attainment.
50. Fixed-nature pratyekas — settles at solitary realization and goes no further.

1–10 form skandha · 11–20 feeling · 21–30 thinking · 31–40 formations · 41–50 consciousness

Headings are the text's own, from Yuan Ying's traditional outline. Descriptions are plain-language summaries. Full text free at cttbusa.org, Volume 8."

 

 

Edited 1 hour ago by Joshe

[Natasha Tori Maru]

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