 Title
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Preface
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 Chapter 1: Pramuditā
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Chapter 2: Vimalā
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Chapter 3: Prabhākarī
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Chapter 4: Arciṣmatī
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Chapter 5: Sudurjayā
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Chapter 6: Abhimukhī
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Chapter 7: Dūraṃgamā
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Chapter 8: Acalā
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Chapter 9: Sādhumatī
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Chapter 10: Dharmameghā
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Chapter 11: buddhabhūmi
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Furthermore,
It makes no sense that grasped and grasper are the same,
Why?
Since act and actor then would be identical.
The grasper means the one who assimilates by performing the grasping, while the act is the assimilation that takes place when something is grasped. And here, the grasper is a reference to the self, while the grasped refers to the five aggregates. If the self is the mere collection of form and so forth, then the grasper and the act are identical. But this would not be acceptable, since it would then follow that the elements and the material components they make up, and the pot and the potter, are identical. As stated:
If fuel were the fire,
Act and actor are identical.1
And,
The fire and the fuel thus fully clarify
All such relationships,
The self and what is assimilated, along with things
Like earthen pots, woollen cloths and such.2
Here it is saying that, just as fire and fuel cannot be claimed to be identical, this claim does not hold for the self and the assimilated either.
One might think, ‘There is no existent assimilator doing the acting, there is nothing more than the mere collection of the assimilated.’
But to explain how this is unreasonable:
‘There is no actor, just the act,’ you might then think.
But no, since without actor there can be no act. (6.137)
Thus it can’t be like that: if one does not accept an actor, the act which is then unfounded cannot be accepted. As the Treatise states:
And assimilation should thus be understood,
As act and agent is then excluded.
Through the case of agent and action
All remaining things can be made clear.3
Here, the verb root has been combined with the lyuṭ-suffix4 , making upādāna, with reference to the act of assimilation. But since a verb root cannot occur isolated from its function, the way it functions implies that which is assimilated and the assimilator; since in the word in question, assimilation (upādāna), the verb has been supplied with a lyuṭ-suffix, by the rule which states, ‘kṛt and lyuṭ are inclusive,’5 it is also expressive of that which is assimilated.
Thus, just as it is in relation to an actor that the acted is designated, and in relation to the acted that an actor is designated, the assimilator is similarly designated in relation to the assimilated, and the assimilated in relation to the assimilator. It states:
So it is neither distinct from the assimilated,
Nor the same as the assimilated.
There is no self without the assimilated,
Still one can’t conclude that it does not exist.6
This is saying that there cannot be an act in the absence of an actor. And when it is stated that, ‘Though the actor is not apprehended, the act still exists, as does its result,’7 this is meant to refute an inherently existent actor. It is not to be understood as saying that conventional norms of what is dependently designated should be discarded. As stated:
A person affected by ignorance generates meritorious formations…8