Chapter Eighteen: Analysis of the Self and Phenomena

 
 
 
If the self were the aggregates,
It would arise and cease.
If it were different from the aggregates,
It would have none of their characteristics. [18.1]

When the self does not exist,
How could that which belongs to it?
Due to the pacification of self and that which belongs to it,
The belief in an “I” and a “mine” will cease.  [18.2]

 
The one who does not grasp onto “I” and “mine”.
Does not exist either.
The one who sees what lacks the grasping of “I” and “mine,”
That one does not see.  [18.3]

When the sense of “I” and “mine” that is based
On the inner and outer is exhausted,
Appropriation comes to an end.
As that is exhausted, so is birth.  [18.4]

Liberation follows from the exhaustion of action and affliction.
Action and affliction are due to thought,
And thoughts proliferate due to mental construction.
They are brought to an end by emptiness.  [18.5]

 
"Self" is stated
And also "no-self" is taught,
The Buddhas even teach that there is neither
Self nor absence of self.  [18.6]

The expressible is annulled,
Because the domain of the mind is annulled.
The intrinsic nature, unarisen and unceasing, 
Equals the transcendence of suffering.  [18.7]

Everything is real and unreal,
Real and indeed not real,
Not unreal and not real--
That is the thorough teaching of the Buddha.  [18.8]

Not known by anything else, peace,
Not constructed through constructs,
Absence of concepts, and absence of a different meaning---
These are the characteristics of reality.  [18.9]

That which arises in dependence on something else
Is not identical with it,
Nor is it something other.

Hence, it is neither annihilated nor permanent.  [18.10]

The Buddhas, protectors of the world,
Grant the elixir of teaching
Without sameness or difference of meaning,
Without annihilation and without permanence.  [18.11]

When a perfect Buddha has not appeared
And the listeners have disappeared,
The wakefulness of self-realized buddhas
Will, in the absence of a teacher, arise in full, [18.12]    
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