I have to be upfront with you before I start: the classical entry you provided for 三種墮 ("three kinds of falling/decline") is a single sentence. There is no breakdown of the three sub-types, no sutra citations, no quotations from a commentarial tradition, and no indication of which school or text this comes from.
This matters, because the format you've asked for requires me to give each component its classical definition, preserve each classical metaphor in its proper slot, and not "narrow down" or "gloss over with name-matching." Without source material for the three sub-types, any specific threefold breakdown I produced would be fabrication — I'd be inventing classical definitions, attributing metaphors that may belong to entirely different concepts, and citing sutras I haven't actually seen.
So rather than deliver something that looks authoritative but isn't, let me do what I can responsibly: sketch what "墮" (duò, "falling/decline") generally means in Buddhist practice literature, flag the most likely candidates for what "三種墮" might refer to in canonical sources, and tell you plainly where my knowledge runs out. If you can supply the actual source (a 摩訶止觀 passage? A 瑜伽師地論 section? A 攝大乘論 reference?), I can write the full deep-dive properly.
What "墮" Means in Buddhist Practice
In the practice literature, 墮 (also written 退 in related contexts) is the verb for *retrogression* — falling back from a level of cultivation already attained. The worry is not that someone hasn't climbed; it's that someone has climbed and then slid down. A monk who has reached a certain 禪定 (jhāna, meditative absorption) and loses it, a bodhisattva who has established a 菩提心 (bodhicitta) and lets it weaken, a lay practitioner who has stabilized precepts and breaks them — these are all forms of 墮.
So when a text names "three kinds of falling," it is doing something specific: it's taxonomizing the *routes* by which established practice deteriorates. The reason this matters theologically is that prevention then becomes targeted — you don't just say "be careful," you diagnose which door the decline tends to come through.
The Most Likely Canonical Referents
Three candidates are plausible, and I want to be honest that I can't tell from your one-sentence entry which is meant:
Candidate A — Three poisons as causes of decline (煩惱墮 / 業墮 / 報墮 framing) Some texts, especially in the 唯識 (Yogācāra/Consciousness-Only) tradition's discussion of bodhisattva retrogression, frame decline as driven by the three poisons: 貪 (greed), 瞋 (aversion), 癡 (delusion). The "three kinds" here would be three affective roots producing fall. *Caveat: this is my inference from the framing, not a confirmed citation.*
Candidate B — Three doors of decline in Chan/contemplative manuals In 摩訶止觀 and related Tiantai meditation texts, Zhiyi and his lineage discuss faults in 止觀 (śamatha-vipaśyanā, calm and insight) practice. Some passages enumerate multiple kinds of "falling" — for example, falling into 沈 (dullness/sinking), into 散 (scatteredness), or into wrong 見 (view). I do not have a specific 摩訶止觀 passage titled "三種墮" confirmed in my training data, but the conceptual neighborhood is right.
Candidate C — Decline via precepts, views, and livelihood In some Vinaya-adjacent materials, a practitioner's fall is diagnosed along three axes: 戒 (precept-discipline), 見 (view), and 利養 (livelihood/support). This is a known framing for spiritual decline, but again I cannot confirm it is *the* "三種墮" you're referencing.
Candidate D — Something I genuinely don't have in my knowledge It's also possible this is a specific technical term from a text I don't have direct access to — perhaps a particular 宗派 (sect/school) teaching, a 懺法 (repentance ritual) text, or a 密教 (esoteric Buddhist) source. If so, I'd be inventing rather than retrieving.
What I Refuse to Do Here
The format you specified requires that each sub-type have a *correct classical definition* with *correct classical metaphors* in *correct corresponding slots*. If I write "the first is 戒墮, the metaphor is like a cracked vessel" and that is wrong for your source — if the actual source puts 戒 in the second slot, or uses a different metaphor, or defines 戒墮 differently — then I have not just slightly erred, I have produced a confidently wrong teaching text that someone might later quote as if it were canonical. That is a worse failure than refusing the assignment.
What Would Let Me Write This Properly
If you can tell me any of the following, I can produce the full deep-dive as specified:
1. The source text (e.g., "摩訶止觀 卷X," "瑜伽師地論 X處," "天台 X師 X文") 2. Even partial content — if you have the three terms (e.g., "戒、見、利養" or "貪、瞋、癡" or something else), I can work from those 3. The school/tradition it comes from (天台, 唯識, 律宗, 禪宗, 密教, etc.) 4. A longer passage from the 庫 entry — even two more sentences would help enormously
With proper source material, this becomes a piece I can write with full integrity: the three classical definitions, the metaphors in their right slots, the place of the concept in the 解脫道 (path of liberation), the contemporary walk-through, and the misreadings to correct. Without it, anything I produced would be performance rather than teaching.
*The honest summary: 三種墮 is a real concept, "墮" as retrogression from attained practice is well-attested across traditions, but a single sentence is not enough source for me to identify which specific threefold classification you mean. Please feed me the longer entry and I'll give you the full article.*