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Yongjia’s Song of Actualizing the Way Observing the Mind Awakening from a Dream

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YONGJIA’S SONG OF ACTUALIZING THE WAY and OBSERVING THE MIND, AWAKENING FROM A DREAM

Front Matters

BDK English Tripiṭaka Series YONGJIA'S SONG OF ACTUALIZING THE WAY (Taishō Volume 48, Number 2014) OBSERVING THE MIND, AWAKENING FROM A DREAM (Taishō Volume 71, Number 2312) Translated by A. Charles Muller BDK America, Inc. 2021

Copyright © 2021 by Bukkyō Dendō Kyōkai and BDK America, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transcribed in any form or by any means —electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise— without the prior written permission of the publisher. First Printing, 2021

ISBN: 978-1-886439-86-3

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021951273 Published by

BDK America, Inc.

1675 School Street

Moraga, California 94556

Printed in the United States of America

A Message on the Publication of the

English Tripiṭaka

The Buddhist canon is said to contain eighty-four thousand different teachings. I believe that this is because the Buddha's basic approach was to prescribe a different treatment for every spiritual ailment, much as a doctor prescribes a different medicine for every medical ailment. Thus his teachings were always appropriate for the particular suffering individual and for the time at which the teaching was given, and over the ages not one of his prescriptions has failed to relieve the suffering to which it was addressed.

Ever since the Buddha's Great Demise over twenty-five hundred years ago, his message of wisdom and compassion has spread throughout the world. Yet no one has ever attempted to translate the entire Buddhist canon into English throughout the history of Japan. It is my greatest wish to see this done and to make the translations available to the many English-speaking people who have never had the opportunity to learn about the Buddha's teachings. Of course, it would be impossible to translate all of the Buddha's eighty-four thousand teachings in a few years. I have, therefore, had one hundred thirty-nine of the scriptural texts in the prodigious Taishō edition of the Chinese Buddhist canon selected for inclusion in the First Series of this translation project. It is in the nature of this undertaking that the results are bound to be criticized. Nonetheless, I am convinced that unless someone takes it upon himself or herself to initiate this project, it will never be done. At the same time, I hope that an improved, revised edition will appear in the future.

It is most gratifying that, thanks to the efforts of more than a hundred Buddhist scholars from the East and the West, this monumental project has finally gotten off the ground. May the rays of the Wisdom of the Compassionate One reach each and every person in the world.

NUMATA Yehan

Founder of the English

August 7, 1991 Tripiṭaka Project

Editorial Foreword

In the long history of Buddhist transmission throughout East Asia, translations of Buddhist texts were often carried out as national projects supported and funded by emperors and political leaders. The BDK English Tripiṭaka project, on the other hand, began as a result of the dream and commitment of one man. In January 1982 Dr. NUMATA Yehan, founder of Bukkyō Dendō Kyōkai (Society for the Promotion of Buddhism), initiated the monumental task of translating the complete Taishō shinshū daizōkyō edition of the Chinese Tripiṭaka (Buddhist canon) into the English language. Under his leadership, a special preparatory committee was organized in April 1982. By July of the same year the Translation Committee of the English Tripiṭaka was officially convened. The initial Committee included the following members: (late) HANAYAMA Shōyū (Chairperson), (late) BANDŌ Shōjun, (late) ISHIGAMI Zennō, (late) KAMATA Shigeo, (late) KANAOKA Shūyū, MAYEDA Sengaku, (late) NARA Yasuaki, (late) SAYEKI Shinkō, (late) SHIOIRI Ryōtatsu, (late) TAMARU Noriyoshi, (late) TAMURA Kwansei, (late) URYŪZU Ryūshin, and (late) YUYAMA Akira. Assistant members of the Committee were as follows: KANAZAWA Atsushi, WATANABE Shōgo, Rolf Giebel of New Zealand, and Rudy Smet of Belgium. After holding planning meetings on a monthly basis, the Committee selected one hundred and thirty-nine texts for the First Series of the project, estimated to be one hundred printed volumes in all. The texts selected were not limited to those originally written in India but also included works composed in China and Japan. While the publication of the First Series proceeds, the texts for the Second Series will be selected from among the remaining works; this process will continue until all the texts, in Japanese as well as in Chinese, have been published. Given the huge scope of this project, accomplishing the English translations of all the Chinese and Japanese texts in the Taishō canon may take as long as one hundred years or more. Nevertheless, as Dr. NUMATA wished, it is the sincere hope of the Committee that this project will continue until completion, even after all the present members have passed away.

vii

Publisher’s Foreword

Editorial Foreword

Dr. NUMATA passed away on May 5, 1994, at the age of ninety-seven. He entrusted his son, Mr. NUMATA Toshihide with the continuation and completion of the English Tripiṭaka project. Mr. Numata served for twenty-three years, leading the project forward with enormous progress before his sudden passing on February 16, 2017, at the age of eighty-four. The Committee previously lost its able and devoted first Chairperson, Professor HANAYAMA Shōyū, on June 16, 1995, at the age of sixty-three. In October 1995 the Committee elected Professor MAYEDA Sengaku (then Vice President of Musashino Women's College) as Chairperson, and upon the retirement of Professor Mayeda in July 2016, the torch was passed to me to serve as the third Chairperson. Despite these losses and changes we, the Editorial Committee members, have renewed our determination to carry out the noble ideals set by Dr. NUMATA. Present members of the Committee are Kenneth K. Tanaka (Chairperson), MAYEDA Sengaku, ICHISHIMA Shōshin, KATSURA Shōryū, MINOWA Kenryō, SAITŌ Akira, SHIMODA Masahiro, WATANABE Shōgo, and YONEZAWA Yoshiyasu.

The Numata Center for Buddhist Translation and Research was established in November 1984, in Berkeley, California, U.S.A., to assist in the publication of the translated texts. The Publication Committee was organized at the Numata Center in December 1991. In 2010, the Numata Center's operations were merged with Bukkyō Dendō Kyōkai America, Inc. (BDK America), and BDK America continues to oversee the publication side of the English Tripiṭaka project in close cooperation with the Editorial Committee in Tokyo.

At the time of this writing, in July 2017, the project has completed about sixtyfive percent of the seven thousand one hundred and eighty-five Taishō pages of texts selected for the First Series. Much work still lies ahead of us but we are committed to the completion of the remaining texts in order to realize the grand vision of Dr. Numata, shared by Mr. Numata and Professor Hanayama, to make the Buddhist canon more readily accessible to the English-speaking world. Kenneth K. Tanaka

Chairperson

Editorial Committee of

the BDK English Tripiṭaka

viii

Publisher's Foreword

On behalf of the members of the Publication Committee, I am happy to present this volume as the latest contribution to the BDK English Tripiṭaka Series. The Publication Committee members have worked to ensure that this volume, as all other volumes in the series, has gone through a rigorous process of editorial efforts. The initial translation and editing of the Buddhist scriptures found in this and other BDK English Tripiṭaka volumes are performed under the direction of the Editorial Committee in Tokyo, Japan. Both the Editorial Committee in Tokyo and the Publication Committee, headquartered in Moraga, California, are dedicated to the production of accurate and readable English translations of the Buddhist canon. In doing so, the members of both committees and associated staff work to honor the deep faith, spirit, and concern of the late Reverend Dr. Yehan Numata, who founded the BDK English Tripiṭaka Series in order to disseminate the Buddhist teachings throughout the world. The long-term goal of our project is the translation and publication of the texts in the one hundred-volume Taishō edition of the Chinese Buddhist canon, along with a number of influential extracanonical Japanese Buddhist texts. The list of texts selected for the First Series of this translation project may be found at the end of each volume in the series.

As Chair of the Publication Committee, I am deeply honored to serve as the fifth person in a post previously held by leading figures in the field of Buddhist studies, most recently by my predecessor, John R. McRae.

In conclusion, I wish to thank the members of the Publication Committee for their dedicated and expert work undertaken in the course of preparing this volume for publication: Managing Editor Marianne Dresser, Dr. Hudaya Kandahjaya, Dr. Carl Bielefeldt, Dr. Robert Sharf, and Rev. Brian Kensho Nagata, Director of the BDK America English Tripiṭaka Project.

A. Charles Muller

Chairperson

Publication Committee

Contents

A Message on the Publication of the English Tripiṭaka NUMATA Yehan v

Editorial Foreword Kenneth K. Tanaka vii Publisher's Foreword A. Charles Muller ix Yongjia's Song of Actualizing the Way Contents 3

Translator's Introduction 5 Yongjia's Song of Actualizing the Way 9 Notes 23

Observing the Mind, Awakening from a Dream Contents 27

Translator's Introduction 31 Observing the Mind, Awakening from a Dream 53 Notes 191

Glossary 201

Bibliography 223

Index 227

A List of the Volumes of the BDK English Tripiṭaka (First Series) 247 xi xi

YONGJIA’S SONG OF ACTUALIZING THE WAY

YONGJIA'S SONG OF ACTUALIZING THE WAY

Contents Translator's Introduction 5 Yongjia's Song of Actualizing the Way 1. Cutting Off Learning 11 2. Extinction 11 3. Poor Disciples of Śākyamuni 4. Waking is Chan, Sitting is Chan 5. Once You're Enlightened, That's All 6. Not Seeking the Truth, Not Rejecting the False 7. The Great Person 15 8. It Can't Be Disparaged, Nor Can It Be Praised 9. Banner of the Dharma 10. The Sandalwood Forest 17 11. Observing as One Wishes 12. The Power of Liberation 12 13

Appendix: The Activities of the Master of No Marks 21 Notes 23 3

Translator’s Introduction

Translator's Introduction

Background of the Project

This contains a translation of Taishō number 2014, which consists of two texts. The primary text is the Yongjia zhengdao ge (usually referred to simply as Zhengdao ge), attributed to the Tang-period monk Xuanjue of Yongjia (665-713). The second is a short biographical sketch of Xuanjue, attached as an appendix. Modern scholarship has arrived at the consensus that this attribution is problematic,1 but since the present task for the BDK English Tripiṭaka project includes the translation of this biography contained as an appendix to the main text (poem), I will start by introducing its ostensive author.

I first encountered Xuanjue and his works while preparing my Ph.D. dissertation and then my first book, The Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment: Korean Buddhism's Guide to Meditation (with Commentary by the Sŏn Monk Kihwa) (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1999), both of which dealt with the early Joseon monk Gihwa (1376-1433) and his commentary on the Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment (Won gak gyeong hae seorui). Gihwa, along with his commentary on the sutra, had also written an exegesis of Xuanjue's Yongjia ji, the Yonggajip gwaju seorui. Gihwa and other Seon figures of the Goryeo and early Joseon were deeply involved in the study of the formative texts of early Chan, including the Platform Sutra, the Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment, the works of Yongjia, and so forth. The works of the early formative period of Chan during the Tang (seventheighth centuries) constitute a distinctive layer of the Chan corpus, reflecting an era in which the better-known gong'an literature had not yet emerged, when Chan was still in the process of establishing its distinct identity apart from the scriptural tradition. This identity establishment was occurring through the thought and writings of emerging meditation masters, some of whom had started out as members of the established doctrinal traditions. In the biography contained here, Xuanjue is clearly presented as having Tiantai roots, being especially interested in the contemplative aspects of Tiantai, most notably the system of calm abiding 5

Yongjia's Song of Actualizing the Way

and clear observation (zhiguan) that had been in practice for more than two centuries. But as Yi-hsün Huang has shown, some traditions identify Xuanjue as strictly a Chan monk, and furthermore, both claims of affiliation are clearly later attributions from historians of these respective traditions. In any case, it is clear that at least two of Xuanjue's closest friends were Tiantai monks who were ardent practitioners of meditation.

Xuanjue lived in Yongjia in the Wenzhou region (located in present-day Zhejiang). According to his biographical account (more lengthy versions are found in various places in the canon), he entered the sangha at the age of eight, first studying the canon, with an emphasis on Tiantai doctrine, becoming deeply versed in the Lotus Sutra, as well as the Vimalakīrti and Nirvana Sutras. He also became an ardent practitioner of the Tiantai meditative technique of calm abiding and clear observation. He is said to have constructed a small hermitage in a cliff next to Longxing Temple in Wenzhou, where he devoted himself to concentrated study and Chan meditation practice. The eminent Tiantai monks Zuoxi Xuanlang (673-754) and Dongyang Xuance (seventh-eighth centuries) were his comrades in practice and co-travelers seeking instruction in the Dharma. Xuanjue is recorded as having traveled with Yuance to the monastery of the sixth Chan patriarch, Huineng. The centerpiece of his biographical account is the narrative of his encounter with the Patriarch. In this story, Xuanjue goes toeto-toe with the renowned master in a Dharma battle that results in Huineng's acknowledgement of Xuanjue's enlightenment. He stays at Huineng's temple only one night, which leads to his being nicknamed Yisujue, or "One-night Enlightened" (T.2014:397a). Xuanjue is known as the author of two very popular short Chan texts, the Zhengdao ge (T. 2014, Song of Actualizing the Way, often rendered as Song of Enlightenment; also available in cleaner form in T. 2076) and the Anthology of Yongjia of the Chan School (Chanzong Yongjia ji). His posthumous title was Wuxiang Dashi.2

According to the Bussho kaisetsu daijiten, the Zhengdao ge has received commentarial treatment at least two dozen times. Among these, the three best known, with the same title Zhengdaoge zhu, are contained in the Zokuzōkyō (CBETA Xuzangjing), numbers X1241, X1292, and X1293.3 In working on this translation I relied mainly on X1241, which seems to be the most thorough of the three. For modern Japanese treatments, my two main resources were the book-length translation and study by the Japanese scholar Sawaki Kōdō, Zen 6

Translator's Introduction

to wa nani ka: Shōdōka shinyaku,3 and the study/translation by Yanagida Seizan in the Zen no goroku series.5 I found Yanagida's version to be extremely well researched and documented, so it became the most important resource for comparison with my own translation. There are several translations into European languages, some of which are gathered online at the Terebess site (https://terebess. hu/zen/sodoka.html).

Following my standard procedure, I finished a full first draft of my own translation before looking at any other works on the text. Subsequently reading the other translations, I found that each had strong and weak points. After looking through several, I felt that the renditions by Charles Luk and D. T. Suzuki were most useful for comparison.

The main difference between my translation and the others is that the other translators have all made an earnest attempt to make their translations sound poetic. I admire their efforts and I think it is reasonable to attempt this, since the text is originally a poem. But at least one problem with this approach is that what might sound poetic to a Chinese scholar like Luk writing in the 1930s or a Japanese scholar like Suzuki writing in the 1960s quite often ends up sounding quaint or even weird to the modern reader. While it might be debatable whether this is a good practice or not, at least Luk's and Suzuki's renderings remain fairly close to the original Chinese. Looking into most of the other English translations, one finds that they tend to drift off into poetic fantasy. It is not clear to me at this point whether any of the prior translators aside from Yanagida have tried to use any of the Chinese commentaries.

I had an important advantage over the earlier translators in coming to this project, being able to take full advantage of the wealth of lexicographical and digital tools at my disposal. Between SAT, CBETA, the DDB and so forth, I was able to identify many words and terms that earlier scholars could have only guessed at. Since I prefer not to gloss over precise terminology in an effort to make my rendering "poetic," I have decided not to be overly concerned about this. In the few places where my interpretation differs significantly from my predecessors I have explained my reasoning in the notes.

Content and Structure

As mentioned above, the intent of this text is to provide a condensed summary to help in clarifying the emerging Chan approach, which had, up to this point, 7

Yongjia's Song of Actualizing the Way

only been laid out in a few works—most importantly the Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch and the Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment. The emphasis is on the superiority of the Chan method of cutting off discrimination and devalorizing efforts to master the scriptural corpus. One should stop discriminating, stop grasping and rejecting, directly see one's own buddha-nature and actualize it. When you are criticized by other Buddhists for doing this, you should take it as a kind of medicine to develop your tolerance and further spur on your practice. In terms of structure, in their translations Suzuki and Luk elected to break the text down into fifty-six units, each of four or five lines or so, and later translators have followed this structure. I don't know where the rationale for this structure comes from; it is not indicated in any classical commentary and does not appear to be explained anywhere. These structural breaks seem arbitrary and without thematic grounding, so I have decided not to follow them here. Sawaki's translation breaks the text into several units, to which he has attached thematic labels, but I was not able to agree with his labels or his break points in several places. Yanagida's division of the text and his section labels made the most sense to me, so I have adopted them here. The text could, of course, be left without sections as in the original source, but I think it is useful for readers to offer some kind of thematic organization for the text, so I have adopted Yanagida's section headings.

The BDK submitted this text to one anonymous reviewer, who offered numerous helpful comments and suggestions. I am deeply grateful to this reviewer. 8

Yongjia’s Song of Actualizing the Way

Yongjia's Song of Actualizing the Way By the Tang Monk from Shenshui, Xuanjue

1. Cutting Off Learning

Don't you see?

The man at ease in the Way who has cut off learning and is unconditioned, Does not remove deluded thoughts, does not seek for the truth. [For he knows that] the essence of nescience is none other than the buddha-nature.

[And that] this illusory, vacuous body is none other than the Dharma body.

When you are fully awakened to the Dharma body, there is not a single thing.

Your original nature is the authentic Buddha. The floating clouds of the five aggregates fleetingly come and go. The foaming bubbles of the three poisons vacuously emerge and vanish. When reality is witnessed, there is neither person nor dharma. In an instant you jettison the karma leading to the avīci hell. If you would deceive sentient beings with nonsense, You will have your tongue yanked out for countless eons. Sudden awakening is the Chan of the tathāgatas, You fully embody the myriad practices subsumed in the six perfections. When you are dreaming, the six destinies exist, as vivid as can be, After enlightenment, they are utterly empty; there is no chiliocosm to be found.

[Here] there is neither punishment nor reward, neither loss nor gain. Within the nature of extinction, there is nothing whatsoever to seek for. Up to now the dirty mirror has never been polished. Today it is clear, awaiting scrutiny.6

Who is free from thought? Who is free from birth? If there is really no birth, [then there is] no nonbirth. Summon a marionette and ask:

If you are trying to attain buddhahood, when can you achieve it?7 2. Extinction

Let go of the four elements—do not grasp them. In the state of quiescence, eat and drink as needed. 395c

3. Poor Disciples of Śākyamuni

Yongjia's Song of Actualizing the Way

396a

To see that all conditioned things are impermanent, all are empty. This is precisely the Tathāgata's great perfect enlightenment, The decisiveness of his pronouncement shows that he is a true monk.8 There are those who do not accept that and stubbornly object. The direct cutting of the roots (of delusion) is approved by the buddhas, [So] picking through the leaves and searching for the branches is something I can't do.

People are unaware of the maṇi-gem [that they possess] It is covered closely within the womb of the Tathāgata. The marvelous function of the six faculties is empty and nonempty. The single round luminosity [of the gem] is with and without form. Purify the five eyes; obtain the five powers. Only when you witness it do you know how hard it is to fathom. Seeing shapes in a mirror is not difficult,

But how are you going to get hold of the moon in the water? Always going alone, always walking alone,

The adepts are [his] companions on the road to nirvana. Investigating the ancient, one's spirit is purified; dignity comes naturally.

Despite his emaciated appearance, the tough fellow pays no heed. 3. Poor Disciples of Śākyamuni

The poor disciples of Śākyamuni are said to be impoverished, But their poverty is of the body; their Way is not impoverished. The bodily impoverished always wear coarse rags, When it comes to the Way, the mind conceals a priceless gem. The priceless gem is used without exhaustion, Bringing benefit to beings according to their capacity, one is never unsparing.

The three bodies and the four kinds of purified cognition are perfected in oneself;

The eight kinds of liberation and the six kinds of supranormal cognition are the seal of the mind-ground.

With a single determination, the superior disciple realizes all; 12

Yongjia's Song of Actualizing the Way

The middling and inferior disciples learn much, but there is much that they don't believe.

If you can only within your mind cast off your soiled clothing, Who dares to show pride in one's vigorous effort? Let others criticize and condemn me;

Holding out a torch trying to burn the heavens, all they do is tire themselves out.

I listen to their taunts as if I am drinking sweet nectar. It all melts away, and I suddenly enter into the inconceivable. I look on their harsh words as my blessings, for They serve as my spiritual guide.

Without relying on the criticism that gives rise to enemies and friends,9 How can we express our unproduced compassionate tolerance?10 The doctrine is thoroughly realized, its explanation is thoroughly delivered;

Meditation and wisdom are perfectly illuminated without getting stuck in emptiness.

It is not only me who now realizes this;

Buddhas more numerous than the grains of sand in the Ganges have realized the same thing.

Hearing the fearless preaching that is like the roar of a lion, The brains of all the beasts are shattered, And the elephants stampede as if in heat, losing their dignity. The celestials and snake spirits (nāgas) quietly listen, giving rise to joy. 4. Walking is Chan, Sitting is Chan

I have sailed on the rivers and seas, trekked through the mountains and streams,

Seeking teachers, inquiring about the Way so as to practice Chan. Having come to attain the Way of Caoxi (the Sixth Patriarch), I realize that birth and death has nothing to do with me. Indeed, walking is Chan; sitting is Chan;

Whether speaking or silent, moving or still, your essence is at peace. Serene in the face of sharp swords,

5. Once You’re Enlightened, That’s It

Yongjia's Song of Actualizing the Way Even if you are poisoned you will be at ease. Our teacher (Śākyamuni) was able to meet Dīpaṃkara Buddha, many eons after he had been the monk Kṣāntivādin. How many times being born, how many times dying? Birth and death go on and on, without end. Since my sudden awakening to the nonarising of phenomena, How could I suffer over humiliation or exult in glory? I entered the deep mountains, staying in a secluded place, On the high mountain peaks, in the deep valleys, under the tall pines. An unconstrained, peacefully sitting rustic monk, In quiet retreat, silently abiding, truly unbridled. 5. Once You're Enlightened,

That's It

Once you are enlightened, that's it—you don't need to keep striving; All conditioned phenomena are not the same. Alms given with attachment earn heavenly rewards, Just like an arrow, shot into the sky, Which exhausts its momentum and falls back to earth. The rebirth you invite will not be as you like it. How could it compare with the unconditioned reality? In a single leap, you directly enter the stage of Tathāgata. Just grasp the roots, don't worry about the branches; It is like a pure beryl gem containing the moon. Having understood this wish-fulfilling gem, Using it for the benefit of yourself and others, it will never be exhausted. The moon reflects in the river, a breeze wafts through the pines; What's to be done during the long, still night? For the buddha-nature is the gem of the precepts, the seal of the mind-ground;

The mist, dew, clouds, and haze are garments on our bodies. The dragon-subduing bowl, the tiger-separating staff: The two-pronged truths, the golden rings of the six perfections,11 each ringing clearly.

Yongjia's Song of Actualizing the Way This is not the mere display of deportment, or holding to vacuous matters,

They are intimate traces of the jeweled staff of the Tathāgata. 6. Not Seeking the Truth,

Not Rejecting the False

He does not seek the truth, or reject the false. He fully understands these two to be empty, without marks. Marklessness is neither empty nor nonempty; This is the real mark of the Tathāgata. The mind-mirror is clear, reflecting without obscuration, Boundlessly and brilliantly permeating countless worlds; Myriad forms in full array are displayed within; A single perfect illumination which has neither inside nor outside. Unbridled emptiness rejects cause and effect; Such looseness will invite disaster. And the sickness of rejecting existence and clinging to emptiness is just as bad—

It's like jumping into a fire to avoid drowning. If you abandon delusion and cling to reality, The attitude of selecting and rejecting leads to deception. If the trainee engages in practice without realizing this, He will be like a man mistaking a thief for his own son. The spoiling of your Dharma assets, the squandering of your merit Occurs only though your consciousnesses. Therefore, in the Chan school we completely abandon thought, And instantly actualize the power of the insight into the nonproduction of phenomena.

396b

7. The Great Person

The Great Person wields the wisdom-sword; The prajñā-spear, the vajra-flame.

Not only does he smash the minds of the non-Buddhists; He has already crushed the impudence of Māra-deva. 15

8. It Can’t Be Disparaged, Nor Can It Be Praised

Yongjia's Song of Actualizing the Way Rousing the Dharma thunder, beating the Dharma drum, He spreads clouds of compassion and sprinkles down sweet nectar. Dragons and elephants run loose, spreading blessings in all quarters, Awakening all those of the three vehicles and the five natures. A rich grass grows without admixture in the Himalayas, [The cows that feed on it] produce pure ghee, which I always enjoy. One nature pervades all natures;

One dharma embraces all dharmas.

One moon is reflected in all waters; The moons in all the waters are contained in one moon. All Dharma bodies of the buddhas comprise my own nature; My nature is one with that of the tathāgatas. One stage includes all stages;

There is neither form, nor mind, nor activity. With a snap of the fingers, you perfectly accomplish the eighty-four thousand teachings,

In an instant you erase three incalculably long eons. All categories are noncategories;

How can they be compared to my numinous enlightenment? 8. It Can't Be Disparaged,

Nor Can It Be Praised

It can't be disparaged, nor can it be praised; Its essence is like space, lacking any limit. Not separated from the here and now, always as if filled to the brim; If you seek it, know that you won't find it. You won't get it by grasping, nor by letting go; It is only in its unattainability that you will get it. It is spoken in silence, and is silent when spoken; When you open the gate of great charity, there is nothing that will close it down.

Should someone ask what teaching I elucidate, I tell them it's the power of great prajñā. Whether I'm right or wrong—nobody knows; Whether I'm defying the norm or not—even the gods cannot fathom it. 16

Yongjia's Song of Actualizing the Way

I have already passed through many eons of practice, This is not just a careless deception.

9. Banner of the Dharma

Hoist the banner of the Dharma, set forth the tenets of our school, This was clearly the Buddha's transmission all the way up to Caoxi (Huineng).

Kāśyapa was the first to transmit the lamp, Which was passed down through twenty-eight generations in India. The Dharma flowed to the East and entered this land, Where Bodhidharma became the First Patriarch. The transmission of the robe through six generations is well known, And countless others attained the Way afterward. Truth is unposited; the false is originally empty; With being and nonbeing both rejected, the nonempty is emptied. The twenty kinds of emptiness are originally unattached; The single-nature Tathāgata is the same as all things in essence. The mind is a faculty; concepts are its objects; Both are like blemishes on a mirror.

Only when the blemishes are wiped away can the mirror reflect. When mind and objects are both forgotten, one's nature is true. Alas! In this evil age of the degeneration of the Dharma, The virtue of people is shallow and they are difficult to restrain. The Sage has long since departed and wrong views run thick; With Māra strong and the Dharma weak, fear and malice are rampant. When they hear the Tathāgata's teaching of sudden enlightenment, Regrettably, they abandon it like discarded tiles.12 Creation happens in the mind, and troubles come to the body, So there is no use in accusing or blaming others. If you wish to avoid inviting unremitting karma, You should never disparage the Tathāgata's true Dharma wheel. 10. The Sandalwood Forest

The sandalwood forest has no underbrush; Only the lion lives deep in the jungle. 17

11. Observing as One Wishes

Yongjia's Song of Actualizing the Way

396c

In the quiet forest he roams as he pleases; The birds and the beasts all run away. The lion cubs, at first following behind, Can roar loudly by the time they are three years of age. If jackals try to imitate the King of the Dharma, After a hundred years these demons open their mouths and nothing comes out.13

The perfect and sudden teaching is beyond human reasoning; Unresolved doubt must be confronted head on. If not, the rustic monk assumes the notion of a self, And his practice may fall into the pit of annihilationism or eternalism. Wrong and not wrong, right and not right; A hair's breadth of difference at the beginning results in an error of a thousand li later on.

When it is "right," a nāga-maiden suddenly attains buddhahood,14 When it is "wrong," Sunakṣatra falls into hell while still alive.15 In my youth I accumulated much learning, Investigating the commentaries, poring over the scriptures and treatises. I never rested in the work of discriminating names and appearances; Which turned out to be as useless as diving into the ocean to count its grains of sand.

On the other hand, receiving the Tathāgata's strict admonishment, Being questioned on what is to be gained in counting another's treasures, I now see my previous struggles as wasted activity; For many years I have been a foolish, aimless traveler. 11. Observing as One Wishes

My basic nature wrong, my understanding was skewed, I could not grasp the Tathāgata's sudden and perfect system. The adherents of the two vehicles fully apply themselves, but don't grasp the mind of the Way.

Clearly the intelligence of the non-Buddhists is not wisdom; Rather, it is folly; indeed, stupidity. The empty fist16 and the finger pointing upward produce true understanding,

Yongjia's Song of Actualizing the Way

But if you attach to the finger as the moon, you waste your efforts; Within the senses, and the physical and mental objects, you vainly fabricate absurdities.

Not seeing a single dharma, you are a tathāgata, And then you can be called Avalokitêśvara (Observing as One Wishes). If you comprehend, then karmic hindrances are originally empty; If you don't get it, you'll have to pay your karmic debts. Hungry, and encountering a royal feast, you are unable to partake in it; Ill, you meet an excellent doctor, but you cannot be healed. Even while remaining in desire, cultivate the Chan power of insight; The lotuses that grow in fire are after all indestructible. Burdened by his heavy crimes, Heroic Giving awakened to nonarising; He attained buddhahood long ago and remains such till this day, Fearlessly expounding the Dharma like the roar of a lion. Deeply pitiable are the dull and stubborn,

They merely understand that grave offenses obstruct bodhi, They do not see the profound secret uncovered by the Tathāgata. There were two monks: one committed lustful acts and the other took a life;

Upāli's firefly-like wisdom increased the tethering to their crimes. Mahāsattva Vimalakīrti instantly removed their doubts, The way the hot sun melts frost and snow.

12. The Power of Liberation

Inconceivable, the power of liberation!

It has marvelous and limitless functions, as numerous as the grains of sand in the Ganges.

Offering the four necessities, how dare one complain about the trouble? You shouldn't hesitate to offer ten thousand pieces of gold. Suffering equivalent to grinding one's bones into powder and smashing the body will not suffice for recompense;

By understanding one phrase, you leap over billions of passages. The king who is the most excellent in the Dharma, And tathāgatas as numerous as the sands of the Ganges, share in the same enlightenment.

Appendix: The Activities of the Great Master of No Marks18

Yongjia's Song of Actualizing the Way I now release this wish-fulfilling gem; Those who have faith in it all respond. Completely understanding, you see that there is not a single thing: Indeed no person, indeed no buddhas. The numberless worlds in the chiliocosm are like bubbles in the ocean; All the sages and worthies exist like flashes of lightning. Even an iron wheel spinning on top of your head Cannot distract your perfectly clear concentration and wisdom. The sun may turn cold and the moon may turn hot, The legions of Māra cannot destroy the true teaching. When the elephant-drawn carriage slowly heads down the road, Who can see the mantis trying to block its path?17 Large elephants don't travel on rabbit paths; Great enlightenment is not grasped in trifles. Don't complain about the vast blue sky while looking at it through a narrow tube;

If you still don't get it, let me clarify it for you. 20

Appendix

The Activities of the Great Master

of No Marks18

Composed by Yang Yi, Hanlin Academician, Grand Master for Closing the Court, Serving for the Left, Remonstrator, Drafter of Proclamations; at the same time working as State Historian, Vice-Historian, Assistant Archivist; Pillar of the State of Nanyang County, an Enfeoffed Noble and Provider for a Town of One Thousand One Hundred Households, Invested with the Purple Robe and Goldfish-shaped Pouch Insignia

Chan Master Yongjia Xuanjue of Wenzhou was a native of Yongjia, originally with the surname Dai. He entered the sangha as a youth, studying the Tripiṭaka widely and deeply, becoming particularly well versed in the meditative teachings of Tiantai and the teachings of the Lotus Sutra. Whether walking, standing, sitting, or lying down he was always absorbed in meditative contemplation. Later, based on the encouragement of Meditation Master Zuo Xilang, he went, along with Meditation Master [Xuan]Ce of Dongyang, to call on [the Sixth Patriarch in] Caoxi.

When he first arrived, he shook his staff and held a vase, after which he circumambulated the Patriarch three times. The Patriarch said, "A śramaṇa fully observes the three thousand regulations and the eighty thousand detailed practices. Where do you come from, my good monk, that you demonstrate such arrogance?" The Master said, "Birth and death are a great matter, and impermanence is swift." The Patriarch said, "Why don't you attain birthlessness, and realize that which is not swift?" [The Master] said, "Attainment is none other than birthlessness, and realization originally has no speed." The Patriarch said, "So it is, so it is."

At that time in the large audience, there were none who were not astounded. The Master then paid obeisance to the Patriarch with full decorum, and soon after announced his departure.19

397a

Notes

Yongjia's Song of Actualizing the Way

The Patriarch said, "Are you leaving so quickly?" The Master said, "I have originally not moved; how could I be quick?" The Patriarch said, "Who is it that is aware of nonmovement?" He replied, "It is you, sir, who makes this discrimination." The Patriarch said, "Indeed, you have grasped the meaning of nonarising." The Master replied, "How can nonarising have a meaning?" The Patriarch said, "If there is no meaning, who should discriminate it?" He replied, "Even if you discriminate it, it is still meaningless." Pleased, the Patriarch said, "Excellent, excellent! Can't you stay for just one night?" Therefore, in those days people referred to the Master as Enlightened in One Night. The next day, Mr. Ce and Master Enlightened in One Night left the monastery and returned to Wenjiang, where many trainee monks gathered around him. He was posthumously titled Great Master of True Enlightenment. He revealed the Chan school's perfect teaching of enlightenment and cultivation, from the shallow to the deep. Wei Jing, Prefect of Qingzhou, bound his works into ten sections, calling them the Anthology of Yongjia and the Song of Actualizing the Way under a separate heading. Both became popular works. 22

Notes

1 As Yi-hsün Huang points out, several scholars, including Walter Liebenthal, are convinced that Xuanjue is not the author of the Zhengdao ge, though he is accepted as the author of the Yongjia ji (T. 2013). See Huang, "A Study of the Development of Yongjia Xuanjueʼs Biographies: With a Focus on Their Relationship to the Concept of School (zong 宗) in Chinese Buddhism," Chung-Hwa Buddhist Journal 23 (2010): p. 120. 2 For his biography, see T.2061:758a-b and T.2014:397a.

3 For details, see the entry 證道歌註 in the DDB.

4 Also translated into English (from a 1962 French translation) as Commentary On the Song of Awakening: A Twentieth Century Japanese Zen Master's Commentary on the Seventh Century Poem by the Chinese Ch'an Master Yung-Chia Hsüan-Chüeh (Tokyo: Seishin shobo, 2010). In Benjamin Brose's review in the Journal of Religion in Japan 6/1 (2017): 63-70, he writes, "The 'Song of Realizing the Way' provides the frame or pretext for Sawaki's dharma talks. While not terribly helpful for unlocking the mysteries of this sometimes elusive poem, Sawaki's digressions are the most delightful aspect of the book. . . ." (p. 64).

5 Kajitani Sōnin, Seizan Yanagida, and Kōichi Tsujimura, Shinjinmei, Shōdōka, Jūgyūzu, Zazengi, in Zen no goroku 禅の語録 16 (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 2016). 6 Pouxi 剖析, which I have rendered here as "scrutiny," is problematic; the term has been rendered in a wide range of ways by previous translators. Yanagida takes it to mean "break" or "defeat"; see Sōnin, Yanagida, and Tsujimura, Shinjinmei, Shōdōka, Jūgyūzu, Zazengi. "Break" is indeed one of its dictionary definitions, but a search through the classical Chinese corpus and the Taishō shows that in the vast majority of cases it is rendered as "to scrutinize" or "analyze," a synonym of 分析. Although from an iconoclastic Chan perspective it might make sense to "smash the mirror" after cleaning it up (viz., Huineng's "there is no mirror stand"), it seems to make more sense that one would take the opportunity to examine, enlighten, or penetrate the mind at this point. There is also a line below that reads "Only when the blemishes are wiped away can the mirror reflect."

7 Miaogong (X1241) explains thus: Yongjia, thinking of the above verses that emphasize nonarising and unobtainability, is afraid that people will become attached to a nihilistic view, taking the mere state of not-thinking as the ultimate goal. If they did this they would be the same as a lifeless puppet, which also does not think, and through this approach they will never attain perfect enlightenment. Miaogong says that zǎowǎn 早晚 is Song-period Jiangsu-Zhejiang slang, meaning "when" 何時.

8 T. 2076 has zhensheng 眞乘 here. I follow Yanagida, Miaogong, et al., in retaining the original.

Yongjia's Song of Actualizing the Way

9 T. 2076 and the commentaries use yuanqin 怨親 instead of yuanqin 冤親. 10 In other words, if you are never criticized by others, you won't have the opportunity to develop your compassion and tolerance.

11 Miaogong's 妙空 commentary 證道歌註 glosses 兩鈷金鐶 as: 兩鈷者, 表眞俗二諦也. 六鐶者, 表六波羅蜜也. This is corroborated in the Hongjie fayi 弘戒法儀 X1126 , which has the line 二諦也. 兩而復兩. 四諦法也. 兩鈷六環. 六度行也. 六而復六. 十二因緣也.

下以三錞. 三乘法也. 及戒定慧. Charles Luk understands this as "two hangers of metal rings"; see "Yung-Chia's Song of Enlightenment," in Ch'an and Zen Teaching: Third Series (London: Rider & Co., 1962), pp. 102-145. Yanagida gives a similar explanation, saying that a "tiger-separating staff" has two prongs with six rings attached, used to scare away wild animals.

12 This expression means something like "you can bring a horse to water, but you can't make it drink," etc. Here I take wasui 瓦碎 as shorthand for powa suishi 破瓦碎石. 13 I have not found a classical source that properly identifies the meaning of "hundredyear demons." Miaogong reads 年 as 千. Thus, "a hundred thousand demons will vainly open their mouths." Yanagida, Shinjinmei, Shōdōka , Jūgyūzu, Zazengi, p. 83, considers both options, mainly understanding hundred-year demons to be the jackals mentioned in the prior line, who after having for a hundred years attempted to imitate the roar of the lion end up voiceless.

14 Nāgakanyā, the daughter of Sāgaranāgarāja, the dragon king at the bottom of the ocean, is presented in the Lotus Sutra becoming a buddha under the tutelage of Mañjuśrī.

15 According to the Nirvana Sutra, Sunakṣatra was a son of the Buddha who became the Buddha's disciple and always attended him. Although he mastered all the teachings in the twelve categories of the canon, eliminated the afflictions of the desire realm, and attained the fourth level of meditation, due to his association with deluded teachers he developed wrong views rejecting the law of karma. He reviled the Buddha and the Dharma, and as a result he fell into the hell of unremitting suffering (avīci) while he was still alive.

16 The term "empty fist" in the sutras usually refers to the skillful means of leading on a child by pretending to have something to give to her/him in one's closed hand. 17 From the Zhuangzi, Chapter 4: "Don't you know about the praying mantis that waved its arms angrily in front of an approaching carriage, unaware that they were incapable of stopping it? Such was the high opinion had of its talents. Be careful, be on your guard!" See Burton Watson, trans. Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964), p. 59.

18 This version of Yongjia's biography seems to be pasted together from various other versions. For example, the biography contained in T. 2013 does not include the Huineng episode. See Huang, "A Study of the Development of Yongjia Xuanjue's Biographies," for an overview of Xuanjue's biographies.

19 T.2008:357c9-15; cf. John R. McRae, The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch (Berkeley: Numata Center for Buddhist Translation and Research, 2000), p. 86. 24

OBSERVING THE MIND, AWAKENING FROM A DREAM

Translator's Introduction 31 Observing the Mind, Awakening from a Dream Preface 55

I. The Canonical Source of the Tradition 57 II. The Classification of the Teachings in Terms of Periodization 59 1. Refuting Earlier Classification Schemes 59 2. The Three Periods of the Teaching 59 III. One Hundred Dharmas and Two Kinds of Emptiness 63 1. Overview 63

2. The Hundred Dharmas 63 A. The Eight Mind Dharmas 64 i. The Five Sense Consciousnesses 64 ii. The Manovijñāna 65

iii. The Manas 65

iv. The Ālayavijñāna 65

B. The Six Categories of Mental Functions 66 C. The Five Omnipresent Factors 66 D. Five Object-contingent Mental Functions 67 E. Eleven Wholesome Factors 68 F. The Afflictions 69

G. Derivative Afflictions 71 i. Minor Derivative Afflictions 71 ii. Middling Derivative Afflictions 73 iii. Major Derivative Afflictions 74 H. Four Indeterminate Mental Functions 75 I. Dharmas of Form 76

Observing the Mind, Awakening from a Dream i. Five Faculties 76

ii. Five Objects 76

J. Dharmas Not Concomitant with Mind 78 K. Unconditioned Dharmas 80 L. The Two Hindrances 81 i. Definition 81

ii. The Two Hindrances in the Context of the Paths of Seeing and Cultivation 82

iii. The Two Hindrances in the Three Kinds of Karmic Moral Quality 83

3. The Two Kinds of Emptiness 83 A. Emptiness of Person 84 B. Emptiness of Dharmas 86 C. Nominal Selves and Dharmas 90 IV. The Four Aspects of Consciousness 93 1. General Framework of the Four Aspects 93 2. Detailed Questions about the Four Aspects 94 3. The Four Aspects and the Eight Consciousnesses 99 4. The Raw Data of the Seen Aspect of the Eighth Consciousness 100 V. The Three Kinds of Objects 103 1. Real Objects 103

2. Arbitrarily Imagined Objects 103 3. Objects Derived from Raw Data 104 VI. Seeds and Perfuming 107 1. Production from Seeds 107 2. The Composition of Seeds 107 3. Detailed Discussion of Perfuming 108 4. Distinctions in the Connotations of Seeds 110 A. Karmic Seeds 110

B. Verbal Expression Seeds 110 C. Ripening Indeterminate Seeds 111 D. Availing of Supporting Factors 111 28

Contents

E. Untainted Seeds 113 i. Bodhisattva Seeds 113 ii. Seeds of Pratyekabuddhahood 116 iii. Seeds of Śrāvakahood 116 iv. Indeterminate Seeds 116 F. About the Four Predispositions 117 G. Those Lacking the Predisposition 117 H. Questions and Answers Regarding the Doctrine of the Five Predispositions 117 I. Questions Regarding Doubts Deriving from Mundane Awareness J. Further Clarification of the Principle of the Five Predispositions K. Answers to the Questions on Predispositions i. Response to Question One ii. Response to Question Two iii. Response to Question Three iv. Response to Question Four VII. Twelvefold Dependent Arising 127 1. Explanation of the Twelve Limbs 2. Characteristics of Transmigration 129 3. Nescience and the Nescience Entrenchments 4. Admonition against Disparagement 131 VIII. The Three Kinds of Natures 1. General Explanation 133 2. One Kind of Emptiness and Existence in the Three Natures A. The Middle Way of the Fabricated B. The Middle Way of the Other-dependent C. The Middle Way of the Perfectly Real 119 121

122

124

125

127

130

133

137

D. Two Kinds of Emptiness and Existence in Each of the Three Natures 138

3. Various Connotations of the Middle Way 139 4. Detailed Discussion of There Being neither Identity nor Distinction among Phenomena 141 29

Translator’s Introduction

Observing the Mind, Awakening from a Dream 5. Detailed Discussion of Nonidentity and Nondistinction among Principles 143

6. Detailed Discussion of Nonidentity and Nondistinction between Principles and Phenomena 145

7. Detailed Explanation of Identity IX. Three Kinds of Non-nature 146 151

X. The Mutual Dependence of the Two Truths 155 XI. Two Levels of the Middle Way 159 1. General Explanation 159

2. Resolving the Issue Relying on the Three Natures 162 3. Analyzing Through Questions and Answers 163 A. The Middle Way of the Other-dependent and the Perfectly Real 163 B. The Middle Way of the Basic Verse 163 C. Three Natures in a Single Dharma 164 XII. The Doctrinal Principles of Consciousness-only 167 1. The Practice of Calm Abiding and Clear Observation 175 XIII. Three Incalculable Eons in an Instant 177 1. Outline of the Stages of Practice 177 2. The Three Paths 177

A. The Path of Seeing 177

B. The Path of Cultivation 179 C. The Path of No More Applied Practice 179 D. Reaching the Goal 183

E. Partial Realization 184

3. Conclusion 186

Notes 191

Translator's Introduction

Origins of Yogâcāra

While Yogâcāra Buddhism is well known to specialist researchers in Buddhist studies, it is still relatively unknown by ordinary Buddhists in Asian countries that have a Buddhist tradition, and almost completely unknown to Buddhist practitioners and other nonspecialist students in the West. One reason for this is that despite the enormous influence of the school during the formative periods of Mahayana Buddhism in India, Yogâcāra died out on the Indian subcontinent, more or less along with Buddhism in general, toward the end of the first millennium. In Tibet, the school had great impact on the new schools that formed, but did not take root as a distinct tradition. In East Asia, Yogâcāra did exist as a distinct tradition, but for practical purposes it ceased to wield any significant influence after the thirteenth century. In East Asia, Yogâcāra ended up losing influence in the face of various forms of competition with (1) doctrinal schools whose teachings proved to be more resonant with the East Asian worldview, and (2) in competition with more popularly oriented schools such as the Pure Land and Meditation (Chan/Seon/Zen) schools, which offered a curriculum of teaching and practice much more readily apprehensible to the ordinary believer. Despite its lack of enduring status as a separate school, however, the teachings of Yogâcāra have survived to the present in both Tibet and East Asia. Yogâcāra teachings about karma, meditation, cognition, and path theory had a deep impact on the other Mahayana schools that developed during the time of the importation of Yogâcāra to these areas, such that much of the technical terminology on which other Mahayana schools based their epistemological and psychological discourse was absorbed from Yogâcāra.

The founders of Yogâcāra were profound philosophers of religion, who were forced, through apparent contradictions and doctrinal complexities inherent in the Buddhist explanation of the nature of the human mind, to try to work out solutions that were rationally apprehensible. In the process of working out such 31

Observing the Mind, Awakening from a Dream

solutions they ended up needing to do a very thorough investigation of how, exactly, it is that we know things, and how, exactly, our bodies and minds change and develop. The problems dealt with by the Yogâcārins are Buddhist problems, through and through, and thus to understand the motivations behind the works of these thinkers, a brief overview of what, exactly, were these problems is provided. No-self

The core problem dealt with in Buddhist doctrine and practice is that of the mistaken attachment to an imaginary notion of a self, ego, or eternal soul. From the erroneously generated notion of a clearly delimited, enduring, unitary self all troubles arise, and due to this erroneous notion beings entrap themselves ever deeper in fictions that tend to engender further troubles. Śākyamuni Buddha's direct discourse on this matter came in the form of the refutation of an idea prevalent in the India of his time, that of an eternal self or soul, called ātman, which was explained as the basis for the existence of all living beings. In the general Indian Brahmanistic worldview during the sixth century B.C.E. and afterward, the ātman was understood to be the subject of reincarnation, a cycle that only ended in the attainment of an experience of liberation, wherein individual ātmans were dissolved into their source, brahman, the eternal world-soul. While on one level we can understand the refutation of a self to be directed historically toward early Indian suppositions about an eternal ātman, the object of the deconstruction of selfhood taught in Buddhism is not limited to this particular event in Indian intellectual history, and thus it has relevance for modern people in any culture. Most of us have probably never been formally inculcated with a specific religious or philosophical doctrine advocating the existence of an "eternal self," yet even the most learned scientists and philosophers cling to a semiconscious intuition of unitary, enduring, independent selfhood. After all, we all possess a stream of memory that goes back to our earliest childhood, providing a cohesive narrative. We have all been conditioned to identify with our own names and various first- and second-person pronouns since before we can remember. We all feel uncomfortable at being disparaged and joy when we receive praise. From a Buddhist perspective, we are deeply attached to an "I," an ego that we see as possessing its own inherent identity. This ego, or "I," is accompanied by the notion of "mine" (technically described in Buddhism as "objects of self"), referring to all the perceivable objects within 32

Translator's Introduction

one's environment. In regard to these objects, we give rise to imbalanced (and logically unsupportable) emotions of like and dislike, which further generate a whole range of afflictive feelings such as pride, jealousy, anger, attachment, and so forth. These not only bring us pain but further impair the clarity of our thinking. Thus, a wide variety of contemplative techniques developed later in various doctrinal and cultural forms of Buddhism, most of which had as their ultimate goal to deconstruct or refute this notion of "I," one way or another. The full annihilation of egoistic identification was said to result in liberation, called in Buddhism mokṣa, or nirvana, a state in which afflictive mentation has ceased. A key point here is that for this experience to occur, it is not enough to merely gain an intellectual understanding of the fictional character of the self through a logical, discursive, approach. Intellectual understanding alone is not powerful enough to change (for Buddhists) uncountable lifetimes of habituation of the "I"-notion. It was thus understood that applying repeated meditative techniques that work toward undermining the notion of self was necessary. Dependent Arising

Of critical importance in the exercise of refuting the concept of an eternal identity is the Buddhist view of dependent arising. The main reason Śākyamuni considered such a thing as an independent "self" to be an impossibility rose from his view of the way all things arise, subsist, and cease. Śākyamuni explained that living beings do not exist as distinct, independent entities but only come into being as provisional combinations of a vast array of causes and conditions. This mode of existence, called in Sanskrit pratītyasamutpāda, commonly is rendered into English as "dependent arising." The Buddha thus denied the belief in a "higher" or "more real" substance present in living beings as an eternal "self" enclosed in one's body/mind. Instead, he saw living beings as nothing other than a vast network of complex factors: physical matter and sensory, perceptive, emotional, and psychic forces joined in a marvelous combination.

The traditional description of dependent arising taught by Śākyamuni at an early stage in his teaching career elaborates the process of the construction of perception and cognition engendering birth and death in an unending cyclical fashion. In this twelve-limbed model of dependent arising each event occurs with the prior as precondition. The twelve-linked model was used in early Indian Buddhism primarily to deconstruct the notion of a defined, eternal self. Later 33

Observing the Mind, Awakening from a Dream

on, the implications of dependent arising, especially as they developed in later forms of Mahayana Buddhism, are explained in a broader manner, more akin to the approach of modern-day physics that recognizes the lack of borders between things at the subatomic level. There was a recognition that it was not only sentient beings that do not exist as separate, monolithic entities—all of the myriad objects surrounding us also lack any kind of delimited permanent identity, and exist only by virtue of their dependence on other factors and conditions. Thus, the implications of dependent arising came to be that we should not only not grasp to the notion of an "I," we should also not grasp to the objects that surround us. This notion of lack of inherence in the objects around us is represented in the well-known Buddhist concept of emptiness (śūnyatā). According to this view, even the most basic factors of existence are impermanent: they too arise and cease from moment to moment. And it is precisely because of this constant flux that causation is possible.

In early Buddhist texts the principle of dependent arising is expressed as follows:

When this is, that is;

This arising, that arises;

When this is not, that is not;

This ceasing, that ceases.1

Several important notions follow from this. First, the principle of causality (idaṃpratyayatā) is explained as the functional dependence of any specific element of experience upon a variety of other elements. "Real things" are not produced from causes and conditions that exist completely independently of them; nor is it possible to isolate a single principle as their ultimate cause. Nonetheless, even though Śākyamuni Buddha rejected the Brahmanical view that reduced everything in the universe to a single, ultimate, permanent cause, he also vehemently rejected the views of the materialist-nihilists, who denied causation altogether and thought that everything occurred just by chance. In response to both, he affirmed the reality of causal interaction.

Second, dependent arising is therefore characterized as the middle path that is free from two extreme views: the annihilationist view (ucchedavāda) that the effects of actions cease as soon as they are over, and the eternalistic view (śāśvatavāda) that the true nature of all phenomena is an unchanging, eternal 34

Translator's Introduction

essence. From Śākyamuni's perspective, annihilationism cannot account for continuity, rebirth, and the working of karma, and eternalism leaves no possibility for change. Both of these extreme views prevent an adequate understanding of causation: ucchedavāda leads to the extreme of nonexistence, while śāśvatavāda constitutes the extreme of existence. Śākyamuni Buddha's understanding of causation, indeed his teaching as a whole, is thus designated as the middle path (madhyamā pratipad).2

Third, dependent arising depicts the cessation as well as the arising of conditioned phenomena (saṃskṛta-dharmas, phenomena that arise depending on causes and conditions). This possibility of cessation—of nirvana—provides the foundation for the Buddhist path to liberation.

In short, dependent arising refers to the basic principle of causality that makes change and transformation possible, particularly as it applies to the arising and cessation of cyclic existence. The specific causal patterns depicting this are typically described in terms of the formula of twelve-limbed (nidāna) dependent arising.3 The twelve-limbed model of dependent arising serves two purposes: on the one hand, it reveals the causal patterns that perpetuate cyclic existence, and on the other hand, it shows how liberation from cyclic existence is achieved, first by understanding these causal patterns and then by reversing them. In Buddhist parlance, dependent arising describes both the perpetuation (pravṛtti) of cyclic existence as well as its reversal (nivṛtti). An understanding of how cyclic existence comes about from these causal patterns is necessary for realizing how they can be reversed through a process of pacification. In later soteriological language, this is expressed as the realization of the original quiescence of things, or nirvana. This soteriological model of the attainment of an aboriginal quiescence that is achieved through the realization that phenomena are conditioned, was first articulated in the Prajñāpāramitā texts, and was subsequently accepted by both the Madhyamaka and Yogâcāra schools. This model also provided the foundation for the nondualistic philosophies of both these schools.

The contrast between the mistaken or "unskillful" (akuśala) way of seeing oneself and phenomena (i.e., as inherently existent, delimited entities) and the correct or "skillful" (kuśala) way of seeing them (i.e., as momentary and dependently arisen) clearly shows that the basic cause of human suffering is the mistaken way we perceive and understand the world. At base, Buddhists see the human problem as an epistemological one, a problem with our modes of understanding. 35

Observing the Mind, Awakening from a Dream

Thus, although Buddhist meditators clearly recognized and sought to remedy emotional afflictions through such means as cultivating mental focus and observing moral precepts, they prioritized being able to identify and correct cognitive errors through rational analysis and suprarational, direct observation. The juxtaposition of the mistaken way of seeing oneself and things, i.e., as inherently existent, delimited entities, with the correct way of seeing things as impermanent and dependently arisen, indicates that the most fundamental problem confronting human beings is their mistakenly habituated mode of knowing things. In Western philosophical parlance, the Buddhist problem is primarily an epistemological one, a problem we have with our mode of knowing things. So the investigations, research, and contemplations undertaken by the Yogâcārins were centered on uncovering, demonstrating, and correcting these sorts of errors. In these efforts, the Yogâcāra masters can be said to have simply been carrying out a deep and elaborate extension of the basic eightfold Buddhist path, said to have been taught by the Buddha at his first sermon as the method for extricating ourselves from affliction and delusion. The first of the eight items in this path is "right view," which means, simply stated, seeing things as they really are, with the obvious implication that those who are trapped in an existence marked by suffering are not seeing things as they really are. Their view of themselves and their world is colored and distorted by a range of mental obstructions: prejudices, attachments, assumptions, and inaccurate perceptions and conceptions of things, which, again, are produced from the mistaken imputation of the selfhood of persons and things. Karma

Once we get a basic grasp of the notion of selflessness, we can see that logical problems must arise for Buddhist thinkers when they attempt to reconcile this understanding with the important Buddhist notions of karma and transmigration. Karma, according to Buddhism, is the universal law of cause and effect; it can be compared, to some extent, to Einstein's law of the conservation of energy: there is no action anywhere in the universe that does not have a corresponding reaction. There is no cause that does not have some kind of effect. However, while Einstein's theory was primarily directed at clarifying the function of matter and energy at the level of measurable physics, the Buddhist understanding of the flawless binding of cause and effect extends into the mental realm, where 36

Translator's Introduction

all actions, speech, and thoughts are understood to possess their own qualities, or values, that engender some kind of negative, positive, or neutral/indeterminate moral effect. The moral quality of one's activities in the present moment brings about the creation of the being (ourselves) who is being continually recreated in the ensuing second, minute, year—and, in the case of Buddhism, lifetime. The existence of this law of karma provides the main rationale for the aspect of Buddhist practice that deals with morality.

At first blush, we might well ask what is so special about the insight that causes and effects are inextricably bound to each other? Is it not obvious? While it may be obvious within the limits of the measurable sensory realm it is certainly not obvious within the mental/spiritual sphere. We see that some people live out their lives treating others unfairly with no apparent retribution to be seen, while others whose lives are spent engaged in activities characterized by generous caring meet with continuous misfortune. What guarantee is there of recompense for the deeds, words, and thoughts that one carries out? And if karma is indeed accurately transferred—if we will indeed be held accountable for all of our rights and wrongs and in-betweens, by what kind of process can this be explained? This is one problem.

The second problem, associated with that of karma, is that of transmigration. If it is supposed that beings are reborn in circumstances dictated by the quality of their prior actions, and if there is no "I," how can the process of rebirth be posited? Exactly who, or what, is being reborn? And if there is rebirth, how is individuated karma transmitted between lifetimes?

Explaining the Doctrine:

Abhidharma

Given the flourishing state of competing philosophical schools in India during the period of the rise and development of Buddhism, Buddhist thinkers must have felt compelled to attempt to offer answers for the problems raised above. Arising in response to these sorts of questions was a range of philosophical schools, whose doctrinal inquiries came to be known broadly in India as Abhi dharma ("about the Dharma"). Abhidharma became a large and diverse scholarly project that endeavored to elaborate a theoretical background that could explain the phenomena of incessant coursing through cyclic existence, as well as the means of escape therefrom. The Abhidharmists analyzed our experience of the 37

Observing the Mind, Awakening from a Dream

world into sets of evanescent events referred to as dharmas, which are not fixed entities but physical and mental processes in a continual state of flux. As identified in a relatively early stratum of Buddhist literature, these dharmas are subsumed within the dynamic relationship between the six internal sense bases (āyatanas), their six types of respective objects, and the six types of consciousness that arise when these two come into contact. These three sets of six added up to eighteen fundamental factors (dhātus) that constitute our basic cognitive processes. The standard Buddhist analysis of cognition focuses on the relations between, on the one hand, what we perceive through our sensory and mental faculties (i.e., the six classes of objects) and, on the other hand, a sheer awareness (vijñāna) of those objects accompanied by various mental factors (caitta), such as feelings (vedanā), perceptions (saṃjñā), and volitions (saṃskāra). These mental factors can be either wholesome or unwholesome in moral quality, depending on the motivations associated with them. Buddhist analysis of bondage and liberation, its soteriology, is thus grounded in the recognition that we engage the world both cognitively and affectively.

At the individual level, the human personality is analyzed both in terms of the twelve sense bases and the five psychophysical aggregates (pañca-skandhas). These five aggregates include both the person and world, insofar as we perceive and experience it. In the Buddhist view there is no other immutable and substantial essence above, beyond, within, or below this. According to Śākyamuni, the arising of duḥkha and its eventual cessation, the whole drama of bondage and liberation, takes place within the five skandhas. Since both bondage/delusion and liberation/ awakening occur in terms of the five skandhas, it would be superfluous to posit another "self," an immutable, eternal essence such as the Hindu ātman. One of the key differences between these two worldviews is that for the Brahmanical thinkers, all change is illusory once one discovers the immutable Brahman, the ultimate cause and reality of the universe. For Buddhists, however, it is exactly the opposite. Such immutability is nothing but the superimposition of deluded ideas onto a constantly flowing reality. It is precisely our attachment to the superimposed concepts of a permanent self and its correlative, a permanent universe, that invites all kinds of cognitive and behavioral faults (doṣa). These wrong views and the attachments they elicit are "unskillful" (akuśala) because they bind sentient beings to samsara. To see the human personality (pudgala) as a form of eternal self (ātman) is itself nothing but an illusion constructed out 38

Translator's Introduction

of a particular configuration of dharmas, which are, in fact, constantly changing from one moment to the next.

Six Consciousnesses

One of the things the Abhidharma tradition is noted for is its investigation into the problems of causation and rebirth within the matrix of individuated consciousness. Over time, the Abhidharma thinkers developed elaborate schemes to explain these phenomena, built upon extensive technical terminology. One of the major products of their work was the articulation of a well-defined map of human consciousness, divided into six regions according to distinct cognitive functions. This set of six is well understandable from the perspective of modern psychology and physiology, since its first five regions are none other than the five senses, and the sixth is the mind. The principal activity of the mind was understood to be thinking, carried out primarily through concepts: linguistic constructs and mental images. The faculty of mind, as understood by Abhi dharmists, had as its principal objects (1) the perceptions received from the five sense consciousnesses, (2) language, and (3) images and other symbols contained in the memory. This model was apparently satisfactory for theoretically oriented Buddhists for a certain period of time, but it also presented new logical problems that required more thoroughgoing treatment. In response to some of these problems the school known as Yogâcāra was born. Yogâcāra and its

Various Projects

Yogâcāra began to take form in the fourth century both as a result of continued aims at refining the theories of the mind developed by the Abhidharmists, and in response to certain philosophical positions found in the discourse of the competing Madhyamaka ("Middle Way") school, which had carried out detailed articulations of the notion of emptiness (śūnyatā). The word yogâcāra is comprised of the two components yoga and ācāra; "yoga" in this case refers to meditative analysis, and ācāra means "practice." Thus, this school arose as a system of meditative practices aimed at the attainment of liberation. The underlying motivation of the school is salvific—aimed at saving living beings from their suffering. In the process of this work, however, Yogâcāra masters also sought to articulate as comprehensive and rational an account as possible for the psychological/spiritual processes involved in the attainment of liberation.

Observing the Mind, Awakening from a Dream

The Eight Consciousnesses

This model of the five sense consciousnesses together with the sixth, "thinking" consciousness might suffice to explain the function of everyday waking awareness and thought in this life. Yet there are a number of problems that present themselves, such as the fact that Buddhism accepts as a basic principle the doctrine of transmigration and declares, furthermore, that transmigration operates strictly by means of the flawless principle of cause and effect, karma. We can readily see that when the body passes away the senses will also pass away, which means that the mental consciousness will also lose its means of input and its place of residence. Thus, at death, it must be the case that all six consciousnesses are going to disappear. In the absence of a transcendent, enduring self, or ātman, what would be there to continue into existence in a subsequent lifetime? Leaving aside for the moment the question of the continued existence of a distinct living being, how do we maintain continued awareness of anything at all? Obviously, the continuity of our mental experience does not occur by virtue of an unbroken, conscious, holding-in-awareness of all the thoughts and experiences we have incurred. That would be impossible—an incredible overload of our faculties would occur almost immediately. Yet when a thought, or a sensory or emotive experience leaves us, we are somehow able to recall it in the future, despite the fact that we do not continue to maintain it at the forefront of our conscious awareness. Not only are we able to let things disappear from our consciousness and recall them again later on; we are able to accumulate distinctive forms of knowledge, as well as physical and mental skills and to continue to build on these, for example, when we learn how to play tennis, or learn a foreign language, or learn calculus. Where are these batches of information and these abilities all being stored? And how are we able to retrieve them when the need arises? Again, assuming that the sensory and perceptive faculties of human beings function in pretty much the same way, the fact is that a vegetable patch is seen in a radically different way by a farmer than by a city-dwelling office worker. The perceptions of the farmer are deeply colored by his prior experience but where, in this case, is that coloration coming from? Where is it being stored? Our definition of what comprises the mind gets more complicated when we attempt to reconcile it with basic Buddhist doctrines such as no-self and transmigration. It also was getting gradually more complicated for the Abhidharmists 40

Translator's Introduction

who were trying to offer a rational and coherent explanation of the mind and human being in the context of the Buddhist teachings of dependent arising, suffering, and release from suffering. What some thinkers began to conclude was that the mind had to have at least two very distinct regions: (1) an active, manifest region that included thinking, feeling emotion, reception, and interpretation of sensory contact, and (2) a subliminal, subconscious aspect that had the capacity for storage and the maintenance of continuity of karma, in terms of both the day-to-day experiences of the present lifetime and the continuity of a distinct flow of apparent individuality between lifetimes. Thus, an additional consciousness came to be established, a sort of "root consciousness" (mūlavijñāna), or "adhering consciousness" (ādānavijñāna), which served as the source of continuity on which the other consciousnesses could rest. After a period of time of working with these theories, the Yogâcāra thinkers saw the need to further distinguish the base consciousness into two aspects. One aspect, called the manas (which means "mind" in a broad sense) was seen to play the role of a sort of preconscious tendency to assume the existence of an actual self, construing the base consciousness to be ātman. This consciousness was numbered as the seventh, after the sixth/thinking consciousness (mano vijñāna). Since it was the source of attachment to ego, it was also seen to be the origin of all selfish views and tendencies, thus, it was termed the "defiled consciousness" (kliṣṭavijñāna). The remaining aspect of the consciousness, which now came to be seen as the ultimate ground of experience, was understood to be thoroughly the locus of the storage and reproduction of karma, and the consciousness that continued to exist after death and form the basis for the new being in the next life. It was numbered as the eighth consciousness, and called the ālaya, or "store," consciousness. The resulting scheme was of the five sense consciousnesses, the sixth, liminal manovijñāna (taken together these are called "the prior six consciousnesses"), the seventh consciousness, manas, and the eighth, ālayavijñāna. Yogâcāra: The Middle Path

and Mind-only

Yogâcāra can also be seen to arise as a reinterpretation of the Madhyamaka teaching of emptiness in the continuing context of the dependent arising of mind, 41

Observing the Mind, Awakening from a Dream

in terms of its theories of mind-only (cittamātra) or representation-only (vijñapti mātra). By refocusing on consciousness (citta/manas/vijñāna)4 the Yogâcāra school reasserts the fundamental Buddhist concern with direct human experience. The experience of suffering (duḥkha) and freedom from suffering (mokṣa), also called the "arising and cessation of the world (loka)," is considered to be a "transformation of mind" (vijñānapariṇāma); that is, it occurs in terms of the complex of the mind (citta) and its associated mental factors (caitta). This is the sense of mind-only or representation-only. Only within our mental experience does the perpetuation of the world (pravṛtti) as well as its reversal (nivṛtti) occur. The perpetuation of the world is brought about by reifying the ongoing flux of experience into the static categories of persons (pudgala) and phenomena (dharmas). Liberation is the reversal this process (nivṛtti), brought about by realizing that the reifications of persons and phenomena are merely modes of mental representation, merely transformations of consciousness. They do not reflect reality as it is (yathābhūtam). Rather, they reflect the way we mistakenly construe reality in terms of the reified entities of selves and things. The Madhyamakas object to this formulation on the grounds that the mind complex and its objects5 are also empty of inherent existence and that the ultimate truth of emptiness cannot be predicated by any of the four logical positions (catuṣkoṭi) of existence, nonexistence, both, and neither. In their view, to apply the predicate "exists," even to something as seemingly self-evident as experience, is misguided if not actually mistaken. For Yogâcārins, however, the Madhyamakas' relentless deconstruction tends toward annihilationism6 inasmuch as it denies the obvious fact that we experience the world through mind or consciousness, which is the basis of both samsara and nirvana. Moreover, in the post-Madhyamaka context the Yogâcārins were operating in, to say that something exists ultimately was not to say that it exists with an inherent nature (svabhāva), only to say that it was irreducible.

The Yogâcārins do not deny that there is some kind of real world. For them, the main problem is how we perceive reality, not what the "world" might be like in and of itself, independent of our engagement with it. It is necessary to know reality as it actually is (yathābhūtam) since this leads to liberation, but to accomplish this we must see reality directly, unmediated by the representations (vijñapti) and reifications constructed by our deluded minds. 42

Translator's Introduction

The problem, then, is that our deluded or unawakened minds imagine that there are real pudgalas and real dharmas. In order to eliminate these tendencies, the Yogâcārins analyze how they occur, classifying these processes into three modes or transformations of consciousness: viṣaya-vijñapti (representation of objects), manana (reflection) and vipāka (ripening). Each of these three modes fulfills a specific function in constructing and sustaining the apparent reality of pudgalas and dharmas. The first refers to the six forms of active consciousness (pravṛtti-vijñāna): the five forms of sensory consciousness and conceptual or mental consciousness, which arise in relation to their respective objects. The second is called manas (intellect) because mind is constantly reflecting; insofar as it is constantly conceiving an enduring (yet illusory) self, toward which four basic afflictions continuously arise, it is also referred to as the afflicted mind (kliṣṭamanas). The third mode refers to the store consciousness, or ālayavijñāna.7 This level of consciousness is called "store consciousness" because it retains and records the results of the activities of the other consciousnesses in the form of seeds (bīja) and habitual tendencies (vāsanā). When conditions are appropriate, the store consciousness provides the seeds, the causes, for the arising of new forms of active consciousness. This is why the store consciousness is also referred to as sarvabījakam: "containing all seeds."

The notion of the store consciousness is an important contribution to Buddhist thought because it resolves both the problems of continuity of mind and the preservation of the effects from past actions, problems that other Abhidharmic models had failed to adequately explain. Since the first seven forms of consciousness are constantly changing from moment to moment, and therefore cannot "contain" the karmic seeds, it became necessary to conceptualize the dimension of consciousness that actually did persist, relatively unchangingly, throughout our present lives as well as across multiple lifetimes. Liberation in Yogâcāra

The ultimate goal of the Mahayana Buddhist path has always been awakening (bodhi). For the Yogâcārins as well as other Mahayanists, to "be awakened" means to realize buddhahood, with all its salvific implications. Philosophically, this is seen as a process of correcting or eliminating unwholesome mental processes, both affective and cognitive, and replacing them with wholesome 43

Observing the Mind, Awakening from a Dream

emotions and accurate cognitions. This is accomplished through an intricate course of contemplative practice in which one cultivates ways of seeing themselves and their environment as they actually are, rather than as they imagine them. After all, the elaborate Yogâcārin analyses of cognitive processes was developed not to create a better theory of mind but to attain liberation. To this end, the Yogâcārins devised a bodhisattva path consisting of forty-one stages (a better-known path consisting of fifty-two stages appears in Tathāgatagarbha, Tiantai, and Huayan works). In the final stages of the Yogâcāra path, the four classes of consciousness (the five sensory consciousnesses; the sixth, thinking consciousness; the seventh, afflicted-with-self consciousness; and the eighth, store consciousness) are said to be thoroughly purified and their mode of functioning radically transformed. Liberation is thus explained in terms of four transformations: (1) the five sense consciousnesses become able to transcend their normal physical limitations; (2) the sixth, thinking consciousness, is able to discern phenomena with perfect accuracy; (3) the seventh, afflicted-with-self consciousness, is stripped of its self-centeredness and able to perceive the equality of all phenomena; and (4) the store consciousness perfectly reflects all phenomena like a clear mirror, constituting what Mahayana Buddhists call "omniscience" (sarvajñajñāna). The perfect accomplishment of these four purifications is called "transformation of the basis" (āśrayaparāvṛtti).

The Base Consciousness: Pure, Defiled,

Neither, or Both

Buddhism began to spread gradually into China during the first and second centuries C.E., and eventually more quickly into the entire East Asian region. Giving foundation to Buddhism as a new tradition in East Asia were voluminous translations of Buddhist scriptural texts from Sanskrit into Chinese. In the earliest period of the transmission of Buddhism into East Asia, Yogâcāra proper had not yet been born (although its Abhidharmic predecessors were hard at work). As Yogâcāra developed, however, its texts were also translated into Chinese, and these naturally attracted the attention of Chinese masters of Buddhist doctrine. Later developments of Yogâcāra and Tathāgatagarbha thought in both India and China evince other forms of confluence, as well as a wealth of complications as the schools, lineages, and authors identified with one tradition are often credited with works produced in another. This confusing situation is especially 44

Translator's Introduction

evident in sixth-century China, when both the Dilun school,8 which soon broke into two lineages, and the Shelun school emerged. The southern branch of Dilun was based on the views of Ratnamati (fifth-sixth centuries), who was followed by the eminent scholars Fashang (495-580) and Huiyuan (523-592); the northern branch adhered to the interpretations of Bodhiruci (?-527). The Shelun school was formed around the doctrine articulated in Paramârtha's (499-569) translation of the Mahāyānasaṃgraha, a seminal Yogâcāra treatise composed by Asaṅga. The major doctrinal differences between these schools derived from their distinctive schemes for analyzing consciousness. Some scholars posited seven consciousnesses, others posited eight, and scholars such as Paramârtha posited nine, with the ninth characterized as an undefiled (amala) consciousness. Even among those groups that held an eight-consciousness model there were various interpretations concerning the nature and composition of the store consciousness, its relationship to the defilements, the objects of the world, suchness (tathatā), and so forth. For some, the eighth consciousness was wholly grounded in worldly conditions and therefore inherently defiled. For others, the eighth consciousness was equal to the pure ground of reality, and defilement was found only in the first seven. There were also thinkers who considered the eighth consciousness to be simultaneously defiled and pure, but they understood this dual modality in different ways. Differences could also be seen between the earlier and later writings of individual scholars (such as Huiyuan), as well as differences in their way of explaining consciousness depending upon which text they were interpreting.9 Some of the basic Yogâcāra texts were translated in the fifth and sixth centuries by Paramârtha and his contemporaries, but among this earlier set of texts many were incomplete. It took a fair amount of time before the Yogâcāra corpus was accurately and adequately understood in East Asia. During the Sui and early Tang periods, the Chinese Buddhist scholar Xuanzang (602-664), who held a deep interest in Yogâcāra, became increasingly concerned about both the quality and quantity of the translated Yogâcāra materials that were available in China, and he was also perplexed by the various accounts of the constitution of the base consciousness. He eventually became so consumed with the matter of rectifying these accounts that he ignored an imperial edict against foreign travel and took off on a seventeen-year journey, most of which was spent in India. The story of Xuanzang's trip to India is famous, well known from a variety of perspectives in East Asian cultural history. When he returned to Chang'an in 45

Observing the Mind, Awakening from a Dream

645 he brought back with him wagonloads of scriptures and treatises representing all sorts of different Buddhist traditions, and the subsequent translation of these texts had a profound, lasting effect on the entire East Asian Buddhist tradition. For Xuanzang personally, however, the real treasures in the corpus he brought back were the Yogâcāra texts, and most important were such texts as the Saṃdhi nirmocana-sūtra, the Yogâcārabhūmi-śāstra, and the Mahāyānasaṃgraha. Xuanzang and his team translated these texts with a precision and mastery unequaled in the East Asian tradition of scriptural translation. Based on his new translations, the understanding of the Yogâcāra system in East Asia was dramatically transformed. Practically speaking, there was no sharp distinction to be seen between, on the one hand, the Yogâcāra and Tathāgatagarbha traditions in China prior to Xuanzang's return from India in 645, and his subsequent translations of the major texts of Asaṅga, Vasubandhu, and other Yogâcārins. Clear lines were drawn, however, with Xuanzang's publication of the Cheng weishi lun, in which he set out a new understanding of the Yogâcāra system gained from his extensive studies in India and the wide range of texts he had worked on, the most important of which was the Yogâcārabhūmi-śāstra. His retranslations of Yogâcāra texts previously translated by Paramârtha also helped delineate the clear differences in their respective understandings of key Yogâcāra doctrines, particularly their philosophies of mind. Paramârtha, especially in the Tathāgatagarbha-oriented texts, tended to equate the deepest stratum of mind with an unsullied suchness, while Xuanzang, in the Cheng weishi lun as well as the Yogâcārabhūmi and other texts, understood the most fundamental dimension of mind, ālayavijñāna, as neutral at best.10

The Indian Yogâcāra texts translated by Xuanzang and his assistants were instrumental in directing the subsequent spread of this doctrinal system in East Asia. In terms of the influence of a single text on the East Asian tradition, however, none equaled the Cheng weishi lun, composed by Xuanzang and his disciples. The Cheng weishi lun was written as an attempt to systematize the main points of the Yogâcāra teachings into a single work. While certain parts of the text drift to some extent from the doctrinal positions put forth in the Yogâcāra bhūmi and other texts, the Cheng weishi lun ended up becoming the definitive text for the Yogâcāra tradition as it developed in East Asia. In Japan it became the foundational text for the establishment of the Hossō school, and the earlier 46

Translator's Introduction

portions of the text translated here, the Kanjin kakumushō, can be seen in great part as a concise summary of the Cheng weishi lun.

The Trajectory of East Asian

Yogâcāra

The Yogâcāra school came to be defined in East Asian Buddhism in two different ways, reflected in its two names.The first, "consciousness-only" (Ch. weishi; Jp. yuishiki), refers to one of its central, yet most difficult, tenets: the epistemological point that nothing in the world is apprehended apart from one's various cognitive processes. The name that eventually came to identify the school, however, "characteristics of phenomena" (Ch. faxiang; Jp. hossō), was originally used by a rival school to disparage Yogâcāra. Huayan Buddhism (Jp. Kegon), a school with strong Tathāgatagarbha roots, was one of the major rivals to Xuanzang's Weishi circle in the early Tang period. Its proponents claimed that their own system focused on the true inner nature of phenomena (Ch. faxing; Jp. hosshō), unlike the Weishi school, which, they argued, was absorbed in the superficial manifestations of things. Thus they referred to it as the school that dwells on the "characteristics of things." The name "Faxiang" ended up sticking, and so this tradition was transmitted under that name to both Korea (Beopsang) and Japan (Hossō). Although Yogâcāra thought in general made a deep and lasting impact in Korea, Beopsang as a distinct school did not endure for more than a couple of centuries. In Japan, on the other hand, the equivalent Hossō school became one of the most powerful Buddhist institutions throughout the Nara, Heian, and early Kamakura periods. While it was eventually relegated to a minor role in Japanese Buddhism following the ascendance of Tiantai, Zen, and Pure Land, the Hossō school still exists in Japan, headquartered at Kōfukuji in Nara. Hossō continues as the formal name for this tradition, with no pejorative connotations.

In China, the Faxiang school eventually died out, succumbing first to the native Chinese doctrinal systems of Tiantai and Huayan, and finally to the popular, more lay-oriented schools of Pure Land and Chan. Although "Tathāgatagarbha" never existed as a distinct sect, its basic premise of innate buddhahood continued to form the doctrinal core of all other East Asian schools, particularly Tiantai, Huayan, Pure Land, and Chan. Similarly, although Weishi/Yuishiki disappeared as a distinct school in China, the surviving East Asian schools nonetheless continued to rely on Yogâcāra concepts and schemata whenever they were called 47

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upon to provide doctrinal explanations of such phenomena as karma, rebirth, and the gradual course to liberation.

The Transmission of Hossō

to Japan

The consciousness-only tradition began to arrive in Japan during Nara period, where it would take on the Japanized name of Hossō. According to Gyōnen's Essentials of the Eight Traditions,11 the first transmission to Japan came through Dōshō (629-700) of Gangōji, who traveled to the Tang in 653 and studied under Xuanzang. The second transmission came through two monks, Chitsū (d.u.) and Chidatsu (d.u.), who arrived to Chang'an in 658, and also studied with Xuan zang. In 703, Chihō (d.u.), Chiran (d.u.), and Chiyū (d.u.) went to China, studying with the third Faxiang patriarch Zhizhou (668-723). This is regarded as the third transmission. Finally, in 735 Genbō (?-746) returned to Japan from China, initiating what is regarded as the fourth transmission, at Kōfukuji. The first two transmissions are also known as the Southern Temple transmissions (also Gangōji transmissions), while the third and fourth transmissions are known as the Northern Temple transmissions (also Kōfukuji transmissions). From this era (Nara and early Heian periods) on the school flourished in Nara, producing many excellent scholars.

Among the more prolific Hossō scholiasts of the Heian period was Zenju (727-797), a disciple of Genbō. He was originally affiliated with Kōfukuji and later founded Akishino Temple. Writing prolifically on Yogâcāra doctrines, he was influenced by texts that came into Japan both from the Tang and Silla. He also wrote extensively on Buddhist logic (hetuvidyā).

The Hossō school maintained its energy going into the Kamakura period, featuring such figures as Jōkei (1155-1213), who became one of the outstanding thinkers of the Hossō-shū in the Kamakura period. Jōkei was a prolific writer on Yogâcāra, liturgical texts, and other topics. He was known for his strict observance of the precepts and for his devotion to Maitreya. Perhaps best-known among his many Yogâcāra-focused works is the Gumei hosshin shū (Anthology of Awakenings from Delusion). By Jōkei's time, Hossō was engaged in stiff competition not only with competing doctrinal schools such as Kegon, Tendai, and Shingon, but also the new popular schools of Pure Land and Zen. Faced 48

Translator's Introduction

with this trend, Jōkei sought to resystematize Hossō to make it more compatible with these competing traditions.

One of the last great representatives of Hossō-shū was the author of the present translation, Ryōhen (1194-1252), a prolific and influential writer on Yogâcāra doctrine. Born in Kyoto, he entered the Buddhist order as a youth at Kōfukuji, where he learned the Yogâcāra teachings and became especially proficient in Buddhist logic. In 1241 he secluded himself at Chikurinji in Ikoma and devoted himself to the systematization of the Hossō teachings in connection with Kegon, Tendai, Shingon, Madhyamaka, and Pure Land. Ryōhen's most famous work is the subject of this translation, the Kanjin kakumushō (Observing the Mind, Awakening from a Dream), a compendium of East Asian Yogâcāra teachings that summarizes the key doctrines articulated in the Cheng weishi lun, as well as responding to the critiques of Tendai and other traditions. Ryōhen defends the Hossō positions with scriptural citations and logic, but at the same time he makes an effort to find common ground with his interlocutors. After Ryōhen's time, the Hossō school gradually waned in influence, unable to compete with the popularity of the new schools of the Kamakura period. In 1892, Hōryūji, Kōfukuji, and Yakushiji were designated as the three head temples of the school.

The Kanjin kakumushō

The Kanjin kakumushō (T. 2312) is a work in three fascicles, comprising almost twenty-five pages in the Taishō. It is organized into thirteen chapters, each delving into a seminal Yogâcāra doctrinal theme. The book has two basic aims, first to provide a concise summary of the Yogâcāra system, explaining Yogâcāra understandings of karma, rebirth, cognition, practice, and liberation based almost exclusively as these are taught in the Cheng weishi lun and some of its major commentaries, most importantly those by the Chinese Yogâcāra masters Kuiji and Zhizhou. If we could rename the text to be more reflective of its content for a modern audience, it could be called "A Handbook of East Asian Yogâcāra."12 In this work Ryōhen pulls out what he considers to be the essentials of consciousness-only doctrine from the Cheng weishi lun and summarizes them neatly; however, the text is more than just a mere summary of that work. As mentioned above, the Hossō school had an early start in Japan, and received significant imperial support that helped it become one of the most powerful 49

Observing the Mind, Awakening from a Dream

Buddhist institutions during the Nara and early Heian periods. During the later Heian period, however, the rising influence of the Shingon school, founded due to the efforts of Kūkai, and the Tendai school, originating from the works of Saichō, began to offer strong competition to the status of Hossō. By the late Heian and early Kamakura periods lay-oriented schools, such as Pure Land, True Pure Land, Nichiren, and Zen, began to permeate the religious life of the common people. It was not simply the case that the field of Japanese Buddhism was crowded; the newer schools all had in common a later-developing Mahayana doctrinal position strongly based in belief in the One Vehicle to buddhahood, coupled with the notion of the universal possession of buddhahood by all living beings. This stood in sharp contrast to the central Hossō doctrine of distinct predilections of sentient beings, wherein it was thought that people were born with innate potentialities (called "seeds") that limited to a certain degree the level of their attainment of enlightenment. The Hossō also held that there were certain types of beings who were simply too evil to even attempt attaining buddhahood. This doctrine was a point of contention dating back to the original Faxiang school in China; it was also an issue in Korea and became a major problem for the Hossō school in Japan, and in fact remains a problem for the tradition today.13 The teaching that a practitioner needs three incalculably long eons of training before they can attain the goal was also distinctive to Yogâcāra, and it was seen as discouraging by other East Asian schools that taught a doctrine of sudden enlightenment.14

While the issue of universal buddhahood vs. the five predispositions distinction was probably the most contentious for Hossō, other doctrines that were seen as difficult and arcane were in constant need of re-explication. Foremost among these was the central doctrine of consciousness-only (vijñaptimātra) itself— that everything we experience is nothing but consciousness, or "representationonly"; i.e., objects do not exist outside the mind. This doctrine was not necessarily at odds with the teachings of other schools but it seemed to go against commonsense reality. It is thus also an important topic for Ryōhen to discuss in this text. Other issues, such as the Hossō notion of the Middle Way, its distinctive explanation of the two truths, its theory of the three natures of cognition, were all complicated and required further explanation.

There were other doctrines that were not really issues in Hossō at all, but which were important to competing doctrinal schools like Tendai and Kegon. 50

Translator's Introduction

These included identity and difference, distinction and mutual containment, and so forth, which Ryōhen also feels compelled to treat. Because of this, the Kanjin kakumushō has a much higher frequency of essence-function (Jp. tai-yū) and principle-phenomena (Jp. ri-ji) language than its precedent Yogâcāra Chinese works. The Kanjin kakumushō starts off reading like a fairly straightforward summary of yuishiki doctrine. Ryōhen first introduces the canonical sources of the tradition and the Faxiang teaching classification system. He then provides an account of the hundred dharmas and the two kinds of emptiness, basically taking the terminological definitions from the Cheng weishi lun and trimming them down. He then turns to the East Asian Yogâcāra idea of the four aspects of consciousness, followed by the doctrine of the three kinds of objects, seeds and perfuming, and the twelve links of dependent arising (Chapter VII). Around the middle part of the text the structure turns increasingly to a question-and-answer format, in which his interlocutors (ostensibly adherents of other traditions, but sometimes apparently Hossō followers) put Ryōhen through rigorous questioning on the finer points of the doctrine, raising the kind of objections that might be posed by a Tendai or Kegon adherent. No doubt Ryōhen had in fact fielded these kinds of questions often, so whether or not they actually represent recorded discussions is moot. This tendency toward questions and answers increases as he moves into the eighth and ninth chapters (on the three kinds of intrinsic natures and non-natures). The text concludes with by chapters on the mutual dependence of the two truths, the two levels of the Middle Way, the doctrinal principles of consciousness-only, and the containment of the path of practice in a single moment. Note on the Translation

The BDK English Tripiṭaka project contracted this translation in 2015, after previous arrangements with another translator fell through. While my specialty is Korean Buddhism, I had long known about this text and was interested in investigating it fully, so I happily agreed to take it on. I carried out the work in the following sequence: (1) I read through the kanbun source text aided by the data contained in the Digital Dictionary of Buddhism (DDB), looking up all technical terms, to get a general sense of the text. (2) I then did my own translation without looking at any other scholarship, trying to arrive at my own basic understanding of the work. (3) Reading through my rough translation in comparison with the study of the Kanjin kakumushō done by Ōta Kyūki, Kanjin kakumushō, 51

Nguồn: BDK America — English Tripiṭaka (bdkamerica.org).

Yongjia’s Song of Actualizing the Way Observing the Mind Awakening from a Dream

YONGJIA’S SONG OF ACTUALIZING THE WAY and OBSERVING THE MIND, AWAKENING FROM A DREAM

Front Matters

Copyright © 2021 by Bukkyō Dendō Kyōkai and BDK America, Inc.

Editorial Foreword

Publisher’s Foreword

Table of Contents

YONGJIA’S SONG OF ACTUALIZING THE WAY

Contents

Translator’s Introduction

Yongjia’s Song of Actualizing the Way

1. Cutting Off Learning

3. Poor Disciples of Śākyamuni

5. Once You’re Enlightened, That’s It

8. It Can’t Be Disparaged, Nor Can It Be Praised

11. Observing as One Wishes

Appendix: The Activities of the Great Master of No Marks18

Notes

OBSERVING THE MIND, AWAKENING FROM A DREAM

Contents

Translator’s Introduction