Web search unavailable, but the provided materials are comprehensive. I'll write the interpretation grounded in the classical entries and the well-known Two Truths framework from Nāgārjuna's *Mūlamadhyamakakārikā* (《中論》), which I can reference reliably.
世俗智 (saṃvṛtijñāna) — Worldly Knowledge: The Intelligence You Cannot Skip
这个概念在说什么 (What This Concept Is Actually Saying)
世俗智 (saṃvṛtijñāna, "worldly knowledge" or "conventional knowledge") is the first of the ten knowledges (十智, daśa jñānāni) enumerated in Vasubandhu's *Abhidharmakośa* (《阿毘達磨俱舍論》, T1558). And its placement at the head of the list is not accidental hierarchy — it is structural honesty. The treatise begins by dividing all knowledge into two camps: contaminated (有漏, sāsrava) and uncontaminated (無漏, anāsrava). Then it states flatly:
"有漏智總名世俗智，無漏智有二，謂法智、類智。" ("All contaminated knowledge is collectively called worldly knowledge; uncontaminated knowledge has two types: knowledge of the Dharma [法智, dharma-jñāna] and knowledge of the analogical [類智, anvaya-jñāna].")
This single sentence tells you something radical: every act of understanding you have ever performed — every insight, every analysis, every "aha" moment, up until the direct realization of the Four Noble Truths — belongs to this category. The physicist parsing quantum fields, the therapist tracking transference, the meditator noting impermanence with conceptual precision — all are operating within 世俗智. Not because their content is trivial, but because the cognitive apparatus still carries the fine sediment of āsrava (漏, "outflow" or "contamination"): the latent habit of grasping at a subject who knows an object.
Why is it called "worldly"? The Kośa gives a disarmingly concrete reason: "多取瓶等世俗境故" — "because it mostly takes objects like pots and the like, which are conventional things." Not because it is stupid. Not because it is wrong. Because its native habitat is the world of named, shaped, countable, usable things — bottles, bodies, bank accounts, beliefs. It traffics in saṃvṛti (世俗, "convention," literally "covering over"), the shared symbolic order that lets us point at clay and say "pot."
Its nature (自性, svabhāva): "世俗智者，非勝義智為自性" — "Worldly knowledge has non-ultimate knowledge as its nature." This is a definition by negation, and the negation is the whole point. What makes something 世俗智 is not its content but its *mode*: it does not see things as they are in the ultimate sense (勝義, paramārtha) — empty of self-nature, beyond conceptual proliferation. It sees through the lens of distinction, designation, and duality. Even when its content is "emptiness," if it grasps "emptiness" as a thesis held by a thinker, it remains 世俗智.
Its scope is total. The Kośa uses the word "遍" (universal, all-pervading): 世俗智 can take as its object all conditioned dharmas (有為法) *and* all unconditioned dharmas (無為法). It can even take all ten knowledges as its objects — you can think *about* dharma-jñāna, analyze *about* path-knowledge, theorize *about* nirvāṇa. This universality is unique. Dharma-jñāna is restricted to the Four Truths of the desire realm; analogical knowledge to the Four Truths of the upper realms. Only 世俗智 ranges without boundary. The text states: "世俗遍為十智境" — "The worldly [knowledge] universally serves as object for all ten knowledges." But note the asymmetry: path-knowledge (道智, mārga-jñāna) does *not* take 世俗智 as its object, because 世俗智 does not belong to the path (非道所攝). The path looks forward; it does not turn back to validate the very ground it has left.
Its moral neutrality. Here the Kośa makes a distinction that should stop us cold: 世俗智 spans all three moral natures — wholesome (善, kuśala), unwholesome (不善, akuśala), and indeterminate (無記, avyākṛta). The other nine knowledges are exclusively wholesome. This means 世俗智 includes the cunning of a con artist planning the perfect manipulation, the cold calculation of an algorithm optimizing for addiction, the brilliant rationalization that lets a person hurt someone and feel justified. Intelligence, in the Buddhist taxonomy, is not inherently virtuous. This is one of the most sobering claims in the entire Abhidharma.
Its range of support (所依). It can arise on the basis of any realm from the desire realm (欲界) up through the peak of existence (有頂, bhavāgra) — the very summit of saṃsāric meditation. Even the most refined formless absorption, if it has not broken through to the uncontaminated, is still 世俗智.
The "not-self" observation and its limits. The Kośa describes a remarkable capacity: 世俗智 can observe all dharmas with the aspect (行相, ākāra) of "not-self" (非我, anātman). But — and this is crucial — it must exclude its own "category" (自品): itself, its associated mental factors (相應法), and its co-arising dharmas (俱有法). Why? Because the object and the subject-facing-awareness (境與有境) are distinct; those dharmas share the same object and are too proximate to the knowledge itself to be grasped by it in that very moment. Like an eye that sees everything except itself.
Furthermore, this "not-self" total observation belongs only to the desire realm and form realm, and is produced by hearing (聞所成, śruta-mayī) or reflection (思所成, cintā-mayī) — *not* by meditative cultivation (修所成, bhāvanā-mayī). The reason given is precise: meditative wisdom operates realm-by-realm, stage-by-stage; if it could observe everything at once with the not-self aspect, one would be instantly freed from all afflictions (頓時離染), which contradicts the observed gradual path.
Its role in purification. Despite being contaminated, 世俗智 is not soteriologically inert. An ordinary person (異生, pṛthagjana) who repeatedly cultivates 世俗智 can abandon the afflictions abandoned by cultivation (修所斷隨眠) that correspond to it. This is how pre-Buddhist meditators suppressed desire-realm afflictions through form-realm absorption — entirely within 世俗智. The path of purification *begins* here, even if it does not end here.
現觀邊世俗智 (pratyavekṣaṇā-pārśva-saṃvṛti-jñāna): "Worldly knowledge at the edge of direct realization." This is a remarkable sub-category. During the path of seeing (見道, darśana-mārga), after each of the three subsequent knowledges concerning suffering, origination, and cessation, the practitioner can simultaneously cultivate a *worldly* knowledge that takes the corresponding Truth as its object with the corresponding aspect. It is obtained by the power of the path of seeing (見道力而得), belongs to preparatory attainment (加行所得), and the Kośa calls it an "unborn dharma" (不生法) — while also recording an ancient teacher's (古師) explanation that the path's power obtains the *basis* for its future arising, which is why it can still be called "cultivation" (修). The text preserves both explanations without collapsing them. This detail matters: even at the threshold of liberation, the conventional mind is not discarded — it is recruited, refined, and set to work alongside the uncontaminated.
Its role in the highest accomplishments. Perhaps the most stunning claim: the Buddha's Great Compassion (大悲, mahākaruṇā) *has 世俗智 as its nature.* Why? Because Great Compassion must universally observe all sentient beings (遍緣一切有情) and operate with the three aspects of suffering — suffering-as-suffering (苦苦), suffering-as-change (壞苦), and suffering-as-conditioned-existence (行苦). This universal, differentiated, being-by-being attention to the world's pain is, in its cognitive structure, 世俗智. Similarly, the arhat's "non-contentious conduct" (無諍行, araṇā-vihāra) — the ability to prevent others from generating greed or anger in relation to oneself — is exclusively 世俗智 in nature, based on the fourth dhyāna. And of the four unobstructed knowledges (四無礙解, catasraḥ pratisaṃvid), two — unobstructed knowledge of dharmas (法無礙解) and unobstructed knowledge of words (詞無礙解) — are exclusively 世俗智.
Read that list again. The Buddha's compassion. The arhat's social grace. The master's ability to teach in any idiom. All are 世俗智. The highest fruit does not *transcend* conventional knowledge; it *perfects* it.
The Two Truths context. While the Kośa's analysis is Abhidharmic and structural, the broader Mahāyāna framing comes from Nāgārjuna's *Mūlamadhyamakakārikā* (《中論》), chapter 24, verse 8:
"諸佛依二諦，為眾生說法：一以世俗諦，二第一義諦。" ("The Buddhas teach the Dharma to sentient beings relying on two truths: the conventional truth [世俗諦, saṃvṛtisatya] and the ultimate truth [第一義諦, paramārthasatya].")
And verse 10:
"若不依俗諦，不得第一義；不得第一義，則不得涅槃。" ("Without relying on the conventional truth, one does not obtain the ultimate; without obtaining the ultimate, one does not obtain nirvāṇa.")
世俗智 is the *cognitive* correlate of 世俗諦 (conventional truth). If the conventional truth is the *content* — the world as named, structured, and shared — then 世俗智 is the *capacity* by which that content is known, navigated, and communicated. Nāgārjuna's verse makes the soteriological stakes explicit: you do not leap over the conventional to reach the ultimate. You go *through* it. 世俗智 is not the obstacle; it is the vehicle.
生活里的走查 (A Walk-Through in Everyday Life)
Let us trace 世俗智 through a single contemporary day, mapping each moment to its precise classical definition.
7:15 AM — The alarm and the groan. Your phone alarm sounds. You recognize the sound (a marimba ringtone, specifically), feel the unpleasant sensation of being jolted from sleep, and think "I don't want to go to work." All of this — the recognition of a named object, the categorization of an experience as unpleasant, the narrative construction of a self who "doesn't want" — is 世俗智 in its most basic operation. It is "多取瓶等世俗境": taking conventional objects (the phone, the ringtone, the job, the "I") as its field. It is also morally indeterminate (無記): there is nothing wholesome or unwholesome about groaning at an alarm. The Kośa's claim that 世俗智 spans all three natures is visible here — this moment is neither virtue nor vice. It simply *is* the conventional mind doing its work.
Where people mis-map: Many would say "that groan is my *feeling*, not my *knowledge*." But in the Abhidharma taxonomy, the recognition ("that's the alarm"), the hedonic tone ("unpleasant"), and the volitional response ("I don't want") are all accompanied by 世俗智 as the encompassing cognitive mode. 世俗智 is not one mental factor among others; it is the *type* of awareness within which all these factors operate, so long as that awareness has not broken through to the uncontaminated.
8:00 AM — The commute and the podcast. You listen to a neuroscience podcast explaining how dopamine prediction errors create the illusion of a unified self. You think: "Fascinating — so the self is a construction. Buddhism was right." This is 世俗智 observing all dharmas with the "not-self" aspect (非我行相). You are genuinely, correctly deploying the concept of anātman. And yet — the Kośa would note — this is 聞所成 (hearing-produced) or 思所成 (reflection-produced) knowledge, not 修所成 (meditation-produced). Why does it matter? Because you can listen to this podcast every day for ten years, and the next time someone cuts you off in traffic, the "self" that is furious will be entirely intact. Conceptual not-self observation does not restructure the latent tendencies (隨眠, anuśaya). The Kośa's restriction — that this total not-self observation is *not* 修所成 — is not a putdown of intellectual understanding. It is a precise description of its limits. The podcast is necessary. It is not sufficient.
Where people mis-map: The contemporary "mindfulness" industry often sells exactly this: a conceptual understanding of non-self packaged as transformation. "Just realize the self is a narrative, and suffering dissolves." The Kośa, written sixteen centuries ago, already diagnosed why this fails: 聞思 and 修 are different orders of operation. The former can observe "not-self" universally; the latter works locally, stage-by-stage, and actually uproots.
10:30 AM — The work meeting and the algorithm. You are a product manager. You review engagement metrics and decide to move the notification trigger earlier in the user's evening, when willpower is lowest. This is 世俗智 in its *unwholesome* (不善) mode. The intelligence is real — the data analysis is sophisticated, the behavioral model is accurate, the execution will be effective. But it is yoked to a volition that exploits vulnerability. The Kośa's insistence that 世俗智 is the *only* knowledge-type that spans all three moral natures is not a footnote. It is a warning: cognitive brilliance and ethical direction are orthogonal axes. A person can be extraordinarily intelligent — operating at the highest levels of 世俗智 — and cause enormous harm. The algorithm does not know it is causing suffering. It *cannot* know, because the knowledge-type required for that universal, being-by-being compassion (大悲) is a *perfected* 世俗智, one that has been through the fire of the path.
Where people mis-map: We tend to conflate "smart" with "good," or to assume that more information automatically produces better decisions. The Kośa's three-nature analysis says: no. The same cognitive apparatus that designs a life-saving medical protocol can design an addictive slot machine. The difference is not intelligence; it is the ethical orientation (善 vs. 不善) of the volition (思, cetanā) driving it.
1:00 PM — Lunch and the friend in crisis. A friend calls, crying. Her partner has been unfaithful. You listen. You track the details — who, when, what was said. You feel compassion. You offer practical suggestions: a lawyer, a therapist, a place to stay for the night. All of this is 世俗智 operating at its best: navigating conventional reality (names, relationships, legal systems, emotional sequences) with precision and care. Notice what is *not* happening: you are not contemplating emptiness. You are not deconstructing the self. You are *in* the conventional, using its logic, speaking its language. And the Kośa would say: this is exactly right. This is the domain where 世俗智 is irreplaceable. If you responded to your friend's crisis with "Well, ultimately, there is no self, no partner, no betrayal" — you would be committing what Nāgārjuna calls the error of misapplying the ultimate. 世俗智, deployed with kindness, *is* the appropriate response.
Where people mis-map: Spiritual communities sometimes valorize "transcending" conventional concerns — relationships, money, career — as if attending to them were a failure of realization. The Kośa's framework says the opposite: the Buddha's own Great Compassion is 世俗智 in nature. Attending to beings in their specificity, their names, their particular pain, is not a lower activity. It is the activity of a Buddha.
6:00 PM — The meditation cushion. You sit. You note sensations arising and passing. For twenty minutes, there is less narrative, less naming. Then the mind wanders: "Did I reply to that email? What's for dinner?" You notice the wandering and return. This entire session — including the moments of relative stillness — is, in the Kośa's strict taxonomy, still 世俗智 unless and until the direct, non-conceptual realization of the Four Truths (見道) occurs. This is not a judgment. It is a map. The Kośa says that even the formless absorptions at the peak of existence (有頂) are still 世俗智 if they have not broken through. The implication: the distance between "my meditation" and "the path of seeing" is not a matter of degree — it is a qualitative discontinuity. And that is *fine*. The path begins within 世俗智. The repeated cultivation (數習) of 世俗智 can already suppress the afflictions abandoned by cultivation (修所斷隨眠). You do not need to be a saint to make progress. You need to be honest about where you are.
9:30 PM — Scrolling before bed. You scroll through social media. Each post is a "pot" — a conventional object, named, shaped, designed to be grasped. Your mind takes each one: image, caption, emotional reaction, judgment, next. This is 世俗智 in its most diffuse, least directed mode. It is still knowledge — recognition, categorization, evaluation are all happening. But it is 世俗智 without the "not-self" aspect, without ethical direction, without any soteriological aim. It is the cognitive equivalent of treading water. Not drowning. Not swimming. Just... suspended in the conventional. The Kośa does not condemn this. It simply notes: this is what 世俗智 does when it is not recruited for anything. And the question the whole path poses is: can this same apparatus be turned? Can it be made to observe itself, to see its own "not-self" nature, to be present at the "edge of direct realization" (現觀邊) when the breakthrough comes?
当代人为什么需要它 (Why Contemporary People Need This Concept)
1. It rescues intelligence from moralism — and morality from anti-intellectualism.
Contemporary discourse oscillates between two errors: (a) "Smart people are the problem; expertise is elitist" — a populist suspicion of cognitive achievement; and (b) "If you're smart enough, you'll figure out the right thing to do" — a technocratic faith that information solves ethics. The Kośa's analysis of 世俗智 dissolves both. Intelligence (世俗智) is *real* and *necessary* — the Buddha's compassion, the master's teaching ability, the arhat's social awareness all require it. But it is morally neutral in its raw form. It can serve greed as easily as generosity. This means: cultivate intelligence *and* cultivate ethical direction, and never assume one substitutes for the other.
2. It names the specific limitation of "learning about" awakening.
We live in an era of unprecedented access to Buddhist teachings. Podcasts, books, apps, YouTube lectures by renowned teachers — all available instantly. And yet depression, anxiety, and relational dysfunction are not decreasing. The Kośa's distinction between 聞所成/思所成 (hearing/reflection-produced) and 修所成 (meditation-produced) knowledge gives a precise diagnosis: you can know *about* not-self with perfect conceptual clarity (and this is genuine 世俗智, genuinely valuable) while the deep structures of grasping remain untouched. The concept of 世俗智 tells you *exactly where you are* on the path — and "where you are" is not a failure. It is the starting condition. The path of seeing (見道) is not built by skipping 世俗智; it is built by *going through* it, as Nāgārjuna insists: "若不依俗諦，不得第一義."
3. It reframes the relationship between AI and human understanding.
Large language models operate entirely within what the Kośa would call 世俗智's domain: they take conventional objects (tokens, patterns, named entities), they range universally across all topics (遍), they can deploy the "not-self" aspect as a textual pattern ("the self is a construction..."), and they are morally neutral — capable of generating a compassionate letter or a manipulative scam with equal fluency. This is not a proof that AI "has" 世俗智 (the Abhidharma's framework presupposes a continuum of mental factors, karmic conditioning, and the possibility of path-attainment that do not obviously apply to silicon). But the *structural parallel* is illuminating: AI demonstrates, at civilizational scale, what the Kośa already knew — that universal, flexible, conventionally accurate cognition is *not the same as* liberation. You can have perfect 世俗智 (in the functional sense) and zero movement toward the uncontaminated. The question for humans living alongside AI is not "will machines think?" but "given that conventional cognition can be outsourced, what remains that cannot be?" The Kośa's answer: the breakthrough to 無漏 — the direct, non-conceptual seeing that no amount of conventional processing can simulate.
4. It dignifies the "ordinary" work of living.
Parenting. Nursing. Teaching. Mediating a conflict between coworkers. Filling out tax forms. These activities require 世俗智 — the ability to navigate named, shaped, particular conventional realities with attention and care. The Kośa does not place these below meditation. It places them on the same cognitive continuum. And it says that the Buddha's Great Compassion — the highest emotional-cognitive achievement in the Buddhist universe — is *structurally* the same type of knowledge. This is not a demotion of compassion. It is an elevation of attentive, particular, conventional care. When you sit with your child's nightmare at 2 AM, tracking the specific fear, offering the specific comfort, using the specific words that will land for *this* child in *this* moment — you are exercising the same cognitive type that a Buddha exercises toward all beings. The difference is scope and purity, not kind.
5. It provides a framework for intellectual honesty about spiritual progress.
Many contemporary practitioners suffer from a peculiar anxiety: "Am I *really* progressing, or am I just accumulating Buddhist concepts?" The Kośa's answer is refreshingly clear: yes, you are accumulating concepts. That is 世俗智. And that is *necessary*. The 現觀邊世俗智 — the worldly knowledge at the edge of direct realization — shows that even *within* the breakthrough moment of the path of seeing, conventional cognition is present, active, and recruited. You do not shed 世俗智 like a cocoon. You bring it with you, transformed. So the question is not "am I beyond concepts?" but "is my conceptual understanding (聞思) being deepened by meditative cultivation (修)? Is it being oriented toward the path? Is it being made available for compassion?" These are answerable questions. They do not require you to pretend you are more advanced than you are.
常见误读与澄清 (Common Misreadings and Clarifications)
Misreading 1: "世俗智 means ordinary, dumb, everyday thinking — the opposite of 'real' knowledge."
Clarification: This is perhaps the most damaging misreading, and the name invites it. "Worldly knowledge" sounds pejorative in English, as if it meant "mere common sense." But the Kośa's 世俗智 includes *everything* from the delusions of a hungry ghost to the fourth-dhyāna-based unobstructed knowledges of an arhat. It includes the Buddha's Great Compassion. It includes the analytical brilliance required for 法無礙解 (unobstructed knowledge of dharmas). What makes it "worldly" is not its sophistication but its *mode*: it operates within the subject-object structure, within naming and distinction, within the "covering" (saṃvṛti) of convention. A Nobel laureate's insight and a toddler's recognition of "mama" are both 世俗智. The difference is clarity, scope, and ethical orientation — not the type of knowledge.
Misreading 2: "The goal is to get rid of 世俗智 and replace it with 勝義智."
Clarification: The Kośa's own structure refutes this. The 現觀邊世俗智 arises *within* the path of seeing — the very moment of breakthrough. The Buddha's Great Compassion *is* 世俗智 in nature. The four unobstructed knowledges, which enable a Buddha to teach any being in any language, are (two of them) exclusively 世俗智. The goal is not elimination but *transformation*: 世俗智 that has been through the path, that has been made transparent to its own conventional nature, that no longer *mistakes* itself for the ultimate. Nāgārjuna's verse is definitive: "若不依俗諦，不得第一義." You do not discard the raft after crossing; you discover the raft was always part of the far shore.
Misreading 3: "If 世俗智 can observe 'not-self,' then studying philosophy is equivalent to meditation."
Clarification: The Kośa explicitly denies this. The not-self observation of 世俗智 is 聞所成 or 思所成 — produced by hearing or reflection. It is *not* 修所成 (meditation-produced). And the reason given is not arbitrary: meditative wisdom works stage-by-stage, realm-by-realm (依地各別而緣). If it could observe all dharmas at once with the not-self aspect, one would be instantly freed from all afflictions (頓時離染) — which plainly does not happen. The implication is compassionate: your intellectual understanding is *real* and *necessary*, but do not mistake the map for the territory. The podcast, the book, the philosophical discussion — these are 聞思. They prepare the ground. But the actual uprooting of latent tendencies (隨眠) requires 修 — the slow, local, embodied work of meditative cultivation.
Misreading 4: "世俗智 is 'relative truth' in the sense of 'not really true' — a convenient fiction."
Clarification: Saṃvṛti (世俗) does not mean "false." It means "conventional," "covering," "mutually agreed upon." A pot is not *false* — it genuinely holds water. A name is not *false* — it genuinely summons a person. The conventional is *real at its own level*, and the Kośa's 世俗智 is the knowledge appropriate to that level. The error is not in using conventional truth; the error is in *forgetting* that it is conventional — in reifying the pot into an eternal, independent, self-existent Pot. 世俗智 becomes problematic not when it operates, but when it *conceals its own operation* — when the covering (saṃvṛti) forgets it is a covering and presents itself as the final word. This is why the Kośa defines it by negation: "非勝義智為自性." Its nature is *not* to be the ultimate. As long as it knows that about itself, it is healthy, functional, and — in the case of a Buddha's compassion — sublime.
Misreading 5: "The Kośa says 世俗智 can abandon afflictions, so I don't need the 'uncontaminated' path at all."
Clarification: It is true that an ordinary person (異生) can, through repeated cultivation (數習) of 世俗智, abandon the afflictions abandoned by cultivation (修所斷隨眠). This is how pre-Buddhist yogis attained form-realm and formless-realm absorptions. But the Kośa's own framework shows the limit: these afflictions are *suppressed*, not *uprooted*. The 見所斷隨眠 (afflictions abandoned by the path of seeing) — the fundamental misapprehension of the Four Truths — cannot be touched by 世俗智 at all. They require 無漏智: dharma-jñāna and anvaya-jñāna. So 世俗智 can take you very far — to the peak of existence (有頂), to extraordinary meditative stability, to the suppression of gross desire and anger. But it cannot take you across the final threshold. For that, the qualitative leap to the uncontaminated is required. The Kośa is not diminishing 世俗智 by saying this. It is *honoring* it by showing exactly how much it can do — and then, with precision, showing where its jurisdiction ends.
Misreading 6: "世俗智 is a single, uniform thing — all 'worldly thinking' is the same."
Clarification: The Kośa goes to extraordinary lengths to differentiate *within* 世俗智. There is the 世俗智 of a deluded being grasping at a pot. There is the 世俗智 of a yogi in the fourth dhyāna observing the possibility of others generating afflictions (無諍行). There is the 世俗智 of a Buddha's Great Compassion, universally observing all beings with three aspects of suffering. There is the 現觀邊世俗智, arising at the very edge of liberation, obtained by the power of the path of seeing. These are all "世俗智" in the same way that a puddle, a river, and an ocean are all "water." The category is defined by a shared *mode* (conventional, dualistic, within saṃvṛti), not by a shared *quality*. To flatten them is to miss the entire pedagogical point: the conventional mind is not one thing. It is a spectrum. And the path does not abandon the spectrum; it *traverses* it, from the puddle to the ocean, and then — at the edge — through.
A final word. If there is one thing 世俗智 teaches the contemporary reader, it is this: *you are not the wrong kind of mind.* You do not need a different brain, a different century, a different teacher, a different tradition. The mind that checks its phone, that worries about rent, that feels tenderness toward a sleeping child, that understands a sentence — *this* mind is the material of the path. Not despite its conventionality, but *through* it. The Kośa places 世俗智 first among the ten knowledges not as a concession to human weakness, but as a statement of structural fact: the path starts here. It starts with the pot, the name, the concept, the distinction. It starts with the groan at the alarm clock. And if Nāgārjuna is right — if without the conventional, one does not obtain the ultimate — then the groan is not an interruption of practice. It *is* the practice, in its first, honest, unadorned form.
The covering is not the enemy. Forgetting it is a covering — that is the enemy. And the moment you notice the forgetting, you are already using 世俗智 to look at itself. Which is, the Kośa tells us, exactly where the path begins.