The Hearts of All Buddhas First: To Recollect the Buddha Was Always to Recollect the Mind

5.6 The Hearts of All Buddhas First: To Recollect the Buddha Was Always to Recollect the Mind

Tradition tells it this way. Bodhidharma came from the West, placed a sūtra in four fascicles — the Laṅkāvatāra — into the hands of Huike, the Second Patriarch, and said one sentence: "I have looked through all the teachings of this land; only these four fascicles of the Laṅkā can be used to seal the mind."

"Sealing the mind" — certifying the awakening of a person's mind-ground. Chinese Chan took this sūtra as its founding root.

But open this Laṅkāvatāra carrying the eye of buddha-recollection, and you run into a fact that stops you cold —

The entire Laṅkāvatāra, from beginning to end, does not once say "recollect the Buddha." Not once "recollect the Tathāgata." Not once "contemplate the Buddha."

A sūtra that never gives buddha-recollection a single word — how could the patriarchs of Chan take it as the very root of sealing the mind?

"The Hearts of All Buddhas First" — Which Kind of "Heart"?

To untie the riddle, take hold of one line in the sūtra: "The hearts of all Buddhas stand first." The "heart" of all Buddhas is first — is what matters most.

But this "heart" — which heart is it?

The original text of the Laṅkāvatāra, directly beneath this line, deliberately tucks in a small interlinear note: "This 'heart' is like the solid heartwood of a tree — not the deliberating mind."

That small line is the key. It says: this "heart" is not the heart we ordinarily live with, the one thinking this way and that, thought after thought without pause — the "deliberating mind" (that activity of consciousness). It is the "solid heartwood of a tree" — the firmest heartwood at the very center of a great tree, its most core essence.

So "the hearts of all Buddhas" does not mean "what the Buddhas are thinking." It means "the innermost nature of all Buddhas — their core essence."

And this one word's difference turns the whole direction of buddha-recollection around.

If "the hearts of all Buddhas" meant the Buddhas' mental activity, then to recollect the Buddha would be to take my thoughts and chase the Buddhas' thoughts — one outside, one inside, chasing back and forth, two things forever facing each other. But if "the hearts of all Buddhas" is the Buddhas' essential nature, then what buddha-recollection recollects is that innermost nature. And that nature — as we are about to see — is one and the same as your own.

The Core of Your Heart Is the Core of All Buddhas

The Laṅkāvatāra then draws an equals sign between this "heart of all Buddhas" and two terms: the tathāgatagarbha, and the storehouse consciousness — the ālaya-vijñāna.

In the second fascicle, the bodhisattva Mahāmati cites what the Buddha often says:

The tathāgatagarbha is by nature pure, bearing the thirty-two marks, present within the bodies of all sentient beings — like a jewel of great price wrapped about by a soiled garment.

The tathāgatagarbha is pure in its nature, complete with the thirty-two marks, right within the body of every being — like a priceless jewel, wrapped round and round in a filthy robe. The jewel is pure; the garment that wraps it is foul.

In the fourth fascicle the Buddha says further:

The womb of the Tathāgata is the cause of the wholesome and the unwholesome … Perfumed by the false, evil habits of beginningless time, it is named the storehouse consciousness … its own nature stainless, ultimately pure.

This one and the same storehouse is the cause of all good and ill; perfumed by the false, evil habits of beginningless time, it is called the storehouse consciousness; yet in itself "its own nature is stainless, ultimately pure." The pure face is called the tathāgatagarbha; the perfumed face is called the storehouse consciousness — not two things, but two faces of one mind, which the sūtra plainly calls together "the tathāgatagarbha storehouse-consciousness."

Now join the threads. The heart of all Buddhas (that solid essence) = the tathāgatagarbha = the storehouse consciousness. And the tathāgatagarbha is innate in everyone, lying in the deepest stratum of your own mind.

So a conclusion that splits the sky open rises up by itself: the "heart of all Buddhas" you recollect turns out to be the deepest core of your own mind. The Buddhas' essence and your essence are one and the same.

To recollect the heart of all Buddhas is to recollect your own heart.

The Silence Was an Invitation All Along

Now return to the riddle — why does the Laṅkāvatāra never spend one word on buddha-recollection?

Because it does not need to.

It never tells you to call anyone's name or to seek birth anywhere. What it does is lock the object of buddha-recollection — fast, immovably — onto "mind": the heart of all Buddhas is your tathāgatagarbha, the deepest core of your own mind. Once the object is locked there, the act of recollecting the Buddha turns, of itself, from "calling a name outward" into "looking inward at your own mind."

Buddha-recollection became seeing-the-mind.

Bodhidharma's later sayings — "do not set up words," "directly pointing at the human mind," "seeing the nature and attaining buddhahood" — sound like a counter-song to buddha-recollection. They are not. Bodhidharma did not oppose buddha-recollection; he locked the object of buddha-recollection utterly onto "mind." Once the object is locked, recollecting the Buddha is seeing the mind, and seeing the mind is recollecting the Buddha — never again to be pulled apart, never again to be set against each other.

The silence of the Laṅkāvatāra did not leave buddha-recollection out. It is inviting you: do not stop at the surface of the words "recollect the Buddha" — follow them, and look at the thing buddha-recollection points to: that one heart which is your own and the Buddhas' alike.

One Sentence That Joins Chan and Pure Land into One

This reading is no later embroidery. As early as the seventh century, Daoxin — the Fourth Patriarch of Chan — pressed it into one clean formula.

My dharma-gate, he said, "relies on the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra: the hearts of all Buddhas first; and relies further on the Mañjuśrī Prajñā Sūtra: the One-Practice Samādhi." The first sūtra fixes the object of recollection (the hearts of all Buddhas); the second fixes the method (the One-Practice Samādhi: single-mindedly calling the name of one Buddha). Put the two together, and one sentence comes out:

The very mind that recollects the Buddha is the Buddha.

— the mind with which you recollect the Buddha is, right now, the Buddha.

Then Daoxin said it through to the end: "To recollect the Buddha is to recollect the mind; to seek the mind is to seek the Buddha. Apart from the mind there is no other Buddha; apart from the Buddha there is no other mind."

Recollecting the Buddha is recollecting the mind; seeking the mind is seeking the Buddha. Leave the mind, and there is no second Buddha anywhere; leave the Buddha, and there is no second mind.

Look at it — Chan cries "recollect the mind, see the nature"; Pure Land cries "recollect the Buddha, seek rebirth"; the two seem to walk separate roads. Yet this one sentence of Daoxin's joins them into the two faces of a single act. Spoken from the side of the object, it is called recollecting the Buddha; spoken from the side of one's own mind, it is called recollecting the mind. What is said is one thing.

At the last he gave a place to begin: "Constantly calling the Buddha to mind, while clinging does not arise, will dissolve into formlessness." Keep the Buddha constantly in mind; do not let the stray thoughts that grasp at this and clutch at that come up; and as the recollection goes on, even "marks" melt away, settling into a markless stillness.

Still You Recollect — Only Now You Know Whom

At this point, one thing must not be taken wrongly.

"Recollecting the Buddha is recollecting the mind" does not mean "then I need not recollect the Buddha at all — the mind is the Buddha anyway." That drops you straight back into the disease of passivity we met a few sūtras ago.

What it means is what Master Zhili taught earlier: the phenomenal and the noumenal running side by side. You still recollect the Buddha plainly and steadily, still call the name (this is the phenomenal — it is really to be done); only, you understand in your heart that the Buddha you recollect is not at the edge of the sky, not outside the mind — He is your own deepest, originally pure heart (this is the noumenal).

Recollect with that measure of understanding, and recollecting the Buddha becomes the most direct seeing of the nature: every time you call the Buddha once, it is your own mind turning its head and taking one look at itself.

And this joins exactly the principle of "mother and child recollecting each other" in the first chapter of this part: the Buddha was never outside, never once went far — the Buddha is that mother, recollecting you, the child, all along. When you recollect the Buddha, you are not reaching for a stranger in the distance; this heart, so long lost on the outside, is at last turning its head and recognizing its own original face.

Here at the Laṅkāvatāra, buddha-recollection reaches its deepest layer yet: it is no longer only an affair between you and a Buddha outside — it is your own mind's deepest moment of recognition with itself.

But How Does That Heart Turn Over?

Yet the Laṅkāvatāra also left a piece of work unfinished.

It says: the Buddha you recollect is that deepest "storehouse consciousness" in your mind, that tathāgatagarbha. But here is the problem — this storehouse consciousness is at the same time the great warehouse of all your defiled habits. Pure in its nature, yes; but piled over with the dust of beginningless time.

Then how, exactly, does recollecting the Buddha take this warehouse — pure and defiled at once — and turn it, little by little, from defiled to pure? Where does the mechanism of that turning sit?

That question, the next great sūtra — the Ghanavyūha — takes over. It speaks of buddha-recollection as the mechanism by which that whole warehouse is turned entirely over.

In the next chapter, we go to watch that turning — the deepest of them all.