What This Concept Is About
The two characters 增減 (vṛddhi-hāni, "increase and decrease") — a modern person's first reaction is usually the plus and minus signs from math class, or profit and loss on a ledger. That is the most natural association in the contemporary context, but it is also precisely the reading furthest away from this Buddhist concept.
In the context of the 《大乘莊嚴經論》 (Mahāyānasūtrālaṃkāra, T1604), 增減 is not a numerical game but a pair of words that describe movement. It speaks of the momentum by which things in time go from nourished to dried up, from flourishing to fading. The treatise contains a very central statement —
「由滋及由涸，性動增亦減。」 *Paraphrase: "From nourishment and from drying — nature being in motion, it increases and decreases at once."*
In just nine characters, it links "increase" and "decrease" into a single whole ("增亦減" — "increase and also decrease"), stressing that: all things are not sitting still; they are in motion, and the way they move is by sometimes increasing, sometimes decreasing. This is different from the point-like quantitative description of "increased" or "decreased"; what it cares about is the process of a tree from sprouting to fruiting to shedding its leaves, the full arc of a relationship from warm to cold.
But 《大乘莊嚴經論》 does not use this pair of words on only one level. It places 增減 in several different contexts, each giving the terms a slightly different shade of meaning, and only together do they compose the complete picture. We will walk through them one by one, following the thread of the classical entries.
First Layer: The Increase and Decrease of 業 (karma) vs. the Arising and Ceasing of 事 (events)
The treatise says:
「依空業無間，而業有增減；依界事不斷，而事有生滅。」 *Paraphrase: "Relying on emptiness, karma is uninterrupted, yet karma has increase and decrease; relying on the realm, events are unbroken, yet events have arising and ceasing."*
This is a very fine-grained distinction — 增減 (vṛddhi-hāni, "increase and decrease") is used specifically of 業 (karma, "karmic action"), while 生滅 (utpāda-nirodha, "arising and ceasing") is used of 事 (events, phenomenal occurrences). The two are set in parallel, but on different levels.
「事」 is events, facts, what happens before one's eyes. A meeting ends and it is over; a project goes live and it is done — this is "arising and ceasing" (生滅), with a beginning and an end. 「業」 is different: karma is a continuative force. The lie you told today, the person you hurt, the good you accumulated — none of it returns to zero the moment the telling is done; it keeps "working" (作業), slowly accumulating or eroding in your mind-nature, your relationships, your habits. Thus karma is characterized by 「無間」 ("uninterrupted") — it continues without a break — yet even so, it still increases and decreases. The goodwill you maintained for three months "increases"; the irritability you sustained for a week "decreases." This increase and decrease is not the arising and ceasing of the event itself, but the rise and fall of that momentum (動能).
Second Layer: The Marks Apprehended by Discrimination (分別)
The treatise lists "ten kinds of discrimination" (分別有十种), one line of which reads:
「無體體增減，一異自別相。」 *Paraphrase: "Non-substance, substance, increase-decrease, one, different, own-mark, distinguishing-mark."*
增減 is placed in this group of dharma-terms, alongside 無體 (non-substance), 體 (substance), 一 (one), 異 (different), 自相 (own-mark), 別相 (distinguishing-mark). This means: when you use concepts to analyze the world, "increase" and "decrease" themselves are also a kind of mark/appearance (相狀) discriminated out. This is not describing that real increase or decrease has occurred; it is describing how our mind pastes the label "increase" or "decrease" onto things. For example, if a friend is slightly cooler toward you today, the judgment "he is distancing himself from me" immediately springs up in your mind — that is discrimination; and within that discrimination there is the mark of 增減 (originally warm, now decreased).
Third Layer: One of the Six Kinds of 精進 (vīrya, diligence)
When the treatise discusses the kinds of diligence, it says:
「增減及增上，捨障亦入真，轉依與大利，六說精進種。」 *Paraphrase: "Increase-decrease and augmentation, abandoning hindrances and entering truth, revolution of the basis and great benefit — in six ways the seeds of diligence are spoken."*
This is a crucial sixfold division. Diligence (精進, vīrya, "diligence") is not just one temperament called "effort"; it has six different directions of force: 增減 (increase-decrease), 增上 (augmentation), 捨障 (abandoning hindrances), 入真 (entering truth), 轉依 (āśraya-parāvṛtti, "revolution of the basis"), 大利 (great benefit). Among these, 增減 is one — you can make your wholesome roots and merits become more, and you can make your afflictions become less; this is a concrete work of diligence.
But note: there is a very easy trap here. 「增減」 is not the same as 「增上」. The treatise explicitly lists them as two different kinds of diligence. 「增減」 occurs in pairs — one increase, one decrease, like the two ends of a balance; 「增上」 is singular, referring to a certain ability or merit being elevated to a higher level (when the treatise speaks of the transformation of the five faculties (五根, pañcendriya), it says 「五根转，变化得增上」 — "the five faculties turning, the transformation attains augmentation" — and 「功德千二百」 — "merits of twelve hundred"; it uses 增上, not 增減). The former is the mutual waxing and waning of quantity/degree; the latter is a qualitative leap.
Fourth Layer: The "Increase of Merit" (德增) and "Regression and Decline" (退減) in Virtue Practice
When it comes to the concrete description of virtuous cultivation, the treatise does not use the abstract word 增減 but rather two specific terms:
「調靜除德增」，「悲深離退減」。 *Paraphrase: "Taming, calming, removing, and increasing merit"; "with deep compassion, free from regression and decline."*
「德增」 ("increase of merit") is making merit grow; 「退減」 ("regression and decline") is not letting practice regress or letting merit diminish. These two words are more grounded, more concrete than the abstract 增減 — they tell you: a cultivator must both know how to add and know how to guard. The adding is 德增; the guarding is 不退減 (especially not letting compassion regress).
Fifth Layer: The Momentariness of External Phenomena (外法)
When the treatise speaks of the momentary change of the external world (外法, external dharmas), it again uses 增減:
「由滋及由涸，性動增亦減。」 *Paraphrase: "From nourishment and from drying — nature being in motion, it increases and decreases at once."*
"由滋及由涸" — nourishing and drying up; "性動增亦減" — its nature is in motion, so it both increases and decreases. This says: everything external is at once growing and declining, and this increase-decrease happens simultaneously in the same instant (not first increase then decrease, but "增亦減" — increase and also decrease). A cup of hot water is radiating heat, its temperature is "decreasing"; but the water vapor is diffusing, the air humidity is "increasing." Increase and decrease are never two events that happen in sequence; they are two faces of the same movement.
Sixth Layer: The Six Increases and Six Decreases (六增六減)
Finally, the treatise contains a more technical usage:
「六增及六減，成生與進地。」 *Paraphrase: "Six increases and six decreases — accomplishment, arising, and entering the stages."*
Increase can be divided into six kinds, and decrease can also be divided into six kinds; these six pairs of increase-decrease are connected with the cultivation stages of 「成」 ("accomplishment"), 「生」 ("arising"), 「進地」 ("advancing through stages"), 「大覺」 ("great awakening"). This is a finer classification system for practice — for example, the six increases of 「信心增」 (increase of faith), 「念增」 (increase of mindfulness), 「慚增」 (increase of shame), 「愧增」 (increase of remorse), 「善根增」 (increase of wholesome roots), 「聞持增」 (increase of hearing and retention), with six corresponding decreases. It brings the abstract "increase-decrease" down to concrete, countable contents of practice.
Summary: The Core Running Through All the Usages
Looking at the six layers together, you find that the word 增減 is always describing one thing: a dynamic, directed, ebbing-and-flowing change. It is not mathematics; it is meteorology. Not statistics; it is the tide.
It differs from 生滅 (arising and ceasing — the beginning and end of events, a 0/1 switch); it differs from 增上 (augmentation — a qualitative leap, a stepwise ascent); and it differs slightly from 無常 (anitya, "impermanence") — which stresses more that things cannot remain constant, whereas 增減 stresses a dynamic rising and falling. Its closest meaning is: things have a force (一股勁兒) flowing through them, and this force sometimes gathers, sometimes disperses.
A Walk-Through in Daily Life
In this section, we pick several scenes familiar to contemporary people and map them onto the six layers above, one by one. The point is not to "list Buddhist terms with their corresponding life examples," but to walk strictly according to the classical definitions, and to point out in passing where the mapping most easily goes wrong.
Scene One: After Three Months of Overtime, You Decide to Quit
The event itself — from being hired to resigning — is 「生滅」 (arising and ceasing), at the level of 「事」 (events): it happened, and it passed.
But what remains in your mind is 「業之增減」 (the increase and decrease of karma). If during that period of overtime you learned deep focus, built some trust with colleagues, gained real competence in an area — these momenta are "increasing." If at the same time you also wore down your health, grew skeptical of the meaning of work, and drifted apart from family — these are "decreasing." The characteristic of karma is 「無間」 ("uninterrupted") — it does not reset to zero the day you resign; it continues to act in your next job, in your next relationship.
Where the mapping commonly goes wrong: many people think the decision to resign is the endpoint of "decrease" or the beginning of "increase." In fact, the increase and decrease of karma are cumulative — you may in the same period have both merit increasing and karma being damaged. This is not a contradiction; it is that karma and events are simply two different levels.
Scene Two: The Psychological Shift While Scrolling Short Videos
You open a short-video app, intending to watch for five minutes, and half an hour passes. You notice yourself swiping faster and faster, the content more and more stimulating, your dwell time shorter and shorter — several layers are operating simultaneously in this phenomenon.
From 「外法剎那性」 (the momentariness of external dharmas; 剎那, kṣaṇa, "instant"): your phone's battery is decreasing; the blue light from the screen is accumulating on your face (an increase); your attentional resources are being consumed — increase-and-also-decrease, every second both directions are changing at once.
From 「分別所取之相狀」 (the marks apprehended by discrimination): your mind is doing something subtle — it is pasting labels on each video: "this one is boring," "this one is interesting," "this one makes me comfortable," "this one makes me anxious." This act of "label-pasting" is discrimination (分別, vikalpa); within discrimination there are marks of increase and decrease (this one is more stimulating than the last, so it is an "increase"), and your mind follows this judgment of increase-decrease along the way.
Where the mapping commonly goes wrong: many people feel that "short videos leave you empty" because "the content is bad" — this attributes increase-decrease to the level of 「事」 (whether the content is good or bad). But the more fundamental increase-decrease happens at the level of 「業」: your attentional habits, your desire threshold, your emotional stability are being reshaped with each swipe. The content is 「事」; the reshaped you is 「業」.
Scene Three: "He's Been Cold to Me Lately" in a Relationship
A friend's replies have recently gotten slower. The judgment "he's distancing himself" starts surfacing in your mind.
The event itself (that he replied slowly one day) is 「事之生滅」 (the arising and ceasing of events) — one concrete thing.
That "sense of distancing" in your mind is 「分別」 (discrimination) — you are pasting a "decrease" label on the event, one of the many modes of discrimination listed alongside 無體 (non-substance), 體 (substance), 一 (one), 異 (different), 自相 (own-mark), 別相 (distinguishing-mark). Strictly speaking, this "distancing" is not caused by him; it is your mind taking a "increase-decrease" mark and applying it to him.
And what about the actual 「業之增減」? If, because of your suspicion, you start testing, complaining, going cold — these behaviors themselves are karma. If the other person really does step back because of it, your fear increases and your sense of security decreases — this too is karma.
What practice truly requires is to respond on two levels: whether to communicate at the level of events (the arising-ceasing level), and whether to first put down that label "he is decreasing me" at the level of mind (the discrimination level).
Where the mapping commonly goes wrong: the vast majority of people treat "he is cold to me" as a single "event + feeling," without separating the three layers of 事之生滅, 業之增減, and 心之分別. The result is either entanglement in the event (endlessly asking "why didn't he reply") or drowning in the feeling (the more you think, the more wronged you feel). When the three layers are separated, the space for action is completely different.
Scene Four: Practicing Meditation or Any Kind of Self-Improvement
You persist in meditating 20 minutes a day. The first week feels refreshing, the third week is instead irritable, the eighth week stabilizes again.
This is the typical face of 增減 within 「精進六種」 (the six kinds of diligence) — your diligence is not a monotonically increasing straight line but a wave with increases and decreases. The "increase" is the accumulation of concentration, awareness, calm; the "decrease" is the mutual waxing and waning of irritability, distraction, avoidance. That "regression" in the third week is not failure; it is the necessity of decrease — after the early stage's rapid increase, the mind rebounds, and it must pass through a phase of decrease to integrate.
But if one day you suddenly see clearly, in sitting meditation, some deep emotional pattern — that is not 增減; it is 增上 — a qualitative leap that cannot be described in the increase-decrease language of "today I am calmer than yesterday" (even though superficially it looks like it). The treatise deliberately separates the two, precisely so that people know: diligence is not only quantitative accumulation.
Where the mapping commonly goes wrong: the biggest trap of contemporary self-improvement culture is translating all progress into 增減 — how many kilometers today, how many hours today, what score today. This language makes 增上 (qualitative transformation) invisible. Those who practice meditation for three months and feel no change are often not unchanged, but they have been using an increase-decrease ruler to measure an augmentation event.
Scene Five: Caring for Aging Parents
Your parents' health declines year by year; the companionship you can give is decreasing, and the responses they can give you are also decreasing.
From the angle of 「德增」 (increase of merit): every time you listen patiently, accompany without complaint, merit is growing — even if the other cannot respond to you, karma is still "increasing," because you are 「調靜除」 (taming, calming, removing) your own irritability.
From the angle of 「退減」 (regression and decline): you cannot let compassion regress because you are tired, because you feel rejected, because you feel "useless" — this is the boundary that 退減 protects.
From the angle of 「外法剎那性」 (the momentariness of external dharmas): the parents' body is an external dharma; "由滋及由涸" ("from nourishment to drying") is its natural dynamic — you see it, you accompany it, rather than fantasizing about "making them strong again."
Where the mapping commonly goes wrong: many caregivers attribute all regression to themselves ("am I not trying hard enough? did I do something wrong?") and all increase of merit to the parents ("do they appreciate me?"). But 德增 is your own karma, unrelated to whether the other responds; 退減 is also your own karma, and what is to be guarded is your own mind. The increase and decrease of karma has never been double-entry bookkeeping.
Why Contemporary People Need It
Why, in the twenty-first century, does reading this pair of ancient words feel so apt?
Because contemporary life is an era hijacked by the single dimension of "growth."
Open your phone: stocks must rise, followers must grow, KPIs must rise, the weight number must fall, fuel consumption must fall, the mortgage balance must fall. Every app interface tells you — either you are "increasing" or "decreasing," there is no third state. You have been trained into a "plus-minus-sign reader."
But 《大乘莊嚴經論》 offers a different picture: increase and decrease are never two opposing things; they are two faces of the same movement. Not "I should increase everything and avoid decrease," but "I should see clearly that this force is moving."
Behind this lie several contemporary significances:
First, it dissolves the oppression of "everlasting growth." A large part of contemporary anxiety comes from the obsession "am I progressing?" But "由滋及由涸" ("from nourishment to drying") tells you — drying is itself part of nourishment. You are not "failing"; you are "in the dynamic." The drying phase is not something to be ashamed of; it is something to be seen clearly.
Second, it distinguishes 增減 from 增上, giving us another ruler. A person may have zero quantitative growth (followers didn't rise, income didn't rise, weight didn't fall), but he may have undergone one 增上 (augmentation) in quality — the way he sees things changed, the capacity to respond to suffering changed, self-acceptance changed. The contemporary evaluation system is almost blind to this kind of change, because it produces no quantifiable data. Buddhism at least preserves another language of diligence.
Third, it makes the level of 業 (karma) visible again. In the contemporary context, almost only 「事」 remains (what happened, what result was obtained), while 「業」 (what momentum the event accumulated or eroded in me) has become invisible. But the quality of your life is by no means determined only by the sequence of events; it is determined more by the cumulative effect of events. Seeing the increase and decrease of karma again is seeing again where your own force is flowing.
Fourth, it provides vigilance toward 「分別」 (discrimination). Contemporary people are trained to be "label-pasting machines" — everything must be judged "increased or decreased," "good or bad," "won or lost." The treatise lists 增減 as one of the "ten kinds of discrimination" (分別十種), reminding us: "increase" and "decrease" themselves are conceptual frameworks made by the mind, not the nature of things. If you can see this framework, you can slow down one beat before being led by the nose.
To draw an analogy with modern science — ecology's "dynamic equilibrium," physics' "fluctuation," complex systems' "far-from-equilibrium states" all involve a similar insight: real systems do not rise monotonically; they maintain some overall structure amidst fluctuation. But this is only an analogy; we cannot claim that science has proven Buddhism — whether these scientific descriptions fully capture the level of 業 remains an open question to this day. Treating them as two windows that illuminate each other is more honest than treating them as mutual proofs.
Common Misreadings and Clarifications
Misreading One: 「增減」 Is Just Numerical Adding and Subtracting
Clarification: this is the most common and most fatal narrowing. In almost all usages in 《大乘莊嚴經論》, 增減 does not make a static quantitative judgment, but describes the dynamic process of things going from nourishment to drying, from flourishing to fading. A cup of water cooling is not "decreased by 5 degrees"; it is the dynamic of "the hot water's force dispersing." When reading this pair of words, switch the picture from "ledger" to "tide."
Misreading Two: 「增減」 = 「增上」
Clarification: the treatise explicitly lists the two as different terms. 「增減」 comes in pairs (one increase, one decrease), a mutual waxing and waning of degree/quantity; 「增上」 is singular, an ability and merit extending to a higher level (a qualitative leap). The former is "today I practiced 10 more minutes"; the latter is "after practicing today, my understanding of something suddenly became clear through one layer." Conflating the two makes you measure growth with a ruler — and all 增上 becomes invisible.
Misreading Three: 「增減」 = 「生滅」
Clarification: the treatise explicitly sets the two in parallel, but on different levels. 「生滅」 describes 「事」 — the presence or absence of events, their beginning and end; 「增減」 describes 「業」 — the rise and fall of momentum, the accumulation or erosion of habitual tendencies. You went out today and came back — that is 生滅; you lied when you went out and covered it up when you came back — that is 業之增減 — and that "karma" does not reset to zero just because you got home.
Misreading Four: 「增減」 Means "Good Things Coming = Increase, Bad Things Coming = Decrease"
Clarification: this flattens increase-decrease into a binary opposition of good and evil. In fact, increase can be the accumulation of suffering (increase of desire, increase of clinging), and decrease can be the growth of merit (decrease of affliction, decrease of arrogance, 我慢). The 「退減」 spoken of in 《大乘莊嚴經論》 is something to be kept away from (not letting practice regress), while 「減」 also includes the wisdom of actively reducing afflictions — the same character can mean exactly the opposite in different combinations. When reading this pair, do not directly apply value judgments; first see clearly which specific dynamic it refers to.
Misreading Five: Reading 「增亦減」 as "Increasing on One Side While Decreasing on the Other"
Clarification: the original line "由滋及由涸，性動增亦減" says "nature is in motion, therefore both increase and decrease" — increase and decrease are not two separate actions proceeding in parallel, but two inseparable faces of the same movement. This is completely different from accounting bookkeeping. A tree growing (increasing) is simultaneously consuming water (decreasing); these two things are two directions of the same life process, not two entries that occur in sequence.
Misreading Six: Treating 「六增六減」 as Mystical Numbers
Clarification: this is a tendency to mystify a concrete classification of practice. 「六增六減」 means that increase/decrease can each be subdivided into six kinds, connected with the cultivation stages of 「成」 (accomplishment), 「生」 (arising), 「進地」 (advancing through stages), 「大覺」 (great awakening). It is not an esoteric code; it is a classification system — bringing the abstract "increase" and "decrease" down to concrete contents of practice, giving diligence workable directions. If you feel "how mysterious" when reading this, return to the concrete content — it is increase of faith, increase of mindfulness, increase of shame and remorse, increase of hearing and retention, increase of wholesome roots, increase of right view… not six invisible, intangible esoteric indicators.
The last thing to say: the reason this pair of words 增減 was chosen for 《大乘莊嚴經論》 and placed in so many different contexts is not that it is mysterious, but that it is everyday. Every time you drink water, every time you get up, every time you open your phone, every time you reply to a message, every time you fall silent — you are at once increasing and decreasing. Seeing this movement, without clinging to any one direction — that itself is the beginning of a kind of liberation (解脫, vimokṣa, "liberation").