The Depths of a Single Seed

5.3 The Depths of a Single Seed

"Thus the formal act of reception perfumes the deluded mind, and within the underlying store-consciousness forms a wholesome seed—this is the precept-substance."

This chapter moves into that sentence and lives there, taking the word "seed" apart to see.

One layer of explanation first. When Daoxuan and Yuanzhao speak of the precept-substance, their own brushwork is utterly spare—"a seed perfumed into the store-consciousness," four characters, a touch and no more; the full doctrine of the seed they never unfolded. To see this seed through and through, one must borrow another house's family method: the Yogācāra school—the Cheng weishi lun, translated by Xuanzang, is exactly the treatise that speaks of seeds with the greatest precision. What follows borrows the Yogācāra framework to say in full what the Perfect-Teaching seed doctrine says in brief. Take it this way: the original commentary gives a few strokes in the freehand manner, and what is supplied here is a fine-brush painting—the brush is a later hand's, but the meaning runs the same way.

A Seed Is a Capacity

The Cheng weishi lun's definition of a seed is a single sentence:

"It is the differentiated capacity, within the root consciousness, that directly produces its own fruit."

A seed is a capacity, deep in the mind, that can itself produce its own fruit. Mark the word capacity—a seed is not a mote of dust stored in the mind, not a real object; it is a stored ability, and meeting conditions it issues forth. Like what? Not like writing on paper—paper is dead; like a habit grown into a person—wherever the person goes it goes with him, and meeting a situation it works of itself.

The treatise establishes six meanings of a seed; take three of them, and each one answers the question chapter one pressed. One is momentary cessation: a seed arises and ceases thought by thought—it is alive, not a dead lump. One is continuous flow: "it must continue long in series, of a single class, up to the final stage"—continuing on, over long time, in one same manner. The person who has received the precepts falls asleep, his mind wanders—where is the precept? Here: in the depths of the store-consciousness, in continuous flow. One is the producing of its own fruit: plant melons and you get melons, plant beans and you get beans—the precept-seed bears the precept-fruit, without a hair's deviation.

One more point matters: this precept-seed is not innate, not there from birth; it is perfumed into being at the very moment of reception—the treatise calls such seeds "seeds formed by habituation," "what comes to be through repeated active perfuming." Look back at the solemnity of the reception rite—the three masters and seven witnesses, the threefold karman, even self-vow before the image requiring three declarations—so that is what each round upon round was doing: perfuming. The deeper the perfuming, the firmer the planting. Part Four asked what happened at the moment of reception; the Yogācāra answer: a perfuming happened, and a seed fell into the field of the mind.

Where the Seed Lives

The next question: in which layer of the mind is this seed stored?

Yogācāra says the human mind has eight layers. The first six consciousnesses—eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind—rise and fall; present this thought, gone the next, like ripples on water: nothing can be kept there. Only the deepest, the eighth consciousness, the ālaya, also called the store-consciousness, can serve as the storehouse—it abides firmly and continues in series, one unbroken thread from birth to death; its nature is neutral, with room for wholesome seeds and unwholesome alike; and it can receive perfuming. The treatise fixes it: "only the maturation consciousness possesses these four marks and can be the perfumable." Only the eighth consciousness can bear the office of the perfumable storehouse.

The precept-substance lives in the deepest storeroom of the mind—deeper than thought, deeper than dream, deeper than coma. This is where "within the underlying store-consciousness forms a wholesome seed" comes home.

And among the marks of the perfumer there is one called "increase-and-decrease"—the seed's force can grow, and it can be damaged. One day of keeping, and this seed gains one more measure of perfuming; one act of breaking, and it suffers one measure of harm. Yuanzhao, annotating the Karman-Commentary, cites the Saṃyukta-abhidharma-hṛdaya: Tiaoda—Devadatta—committing the deeds of immediate retribution, "destroyed the wholesome seed" and entered the Avīci hell. The man from Part Three who passed the tally-sticks and split the Saṅgha appears here once more: transgress to the uttermost, and the seed can be destroyed. This is why, in the last chapter, Daoxuan laid his whole weight on following—to build rooms inside the perimeter wall day by day is to bank up the earth around this seed day by day.

Beside the Storehouse Stands a Shadow

But between this storehouse and this wholesome seed, Yogācāra points out, there also stands a shadow.

The seventh consciousness: the manas. The Thirty Verses on Consciousness-Only says of it:

"Next, the second transformer: this consciousness is named manas; depending on that and taking that as its object, cogitation is its nature and mark. Four afflictions are always conjoined with it—self-delusion, self-view, self-conceit, and self-love."

Day and night without pause, the manas does one thing only: it takes the eighth consciousness as its object and cogitates, ever and deliberatively—"this is I." Self-delusion, self-view, self-conceit, self-love: the four afflictions are always conjoined with it. It is not like the sixth, the thinking consciousness, now arising, now ceasing; constantly, minutely, without one moment's rest, it grasps at a "self."

Then comes the weightiest sentence in the Cheng weishi lun:

"Because there is the manas perpetually generating the grasping at a self, it comes about that wholesome and other dharmas are tainted."

Precisely because the manas perpetually generates the grasping at a self, every wholesome dharma—giving and precept-keeping alike—is still a "tainted" good. The treatise carries a verse as well:

"Such is the afflicted mind, the support of consciousness; while this mind is not yet extinguished, the bondage of consciousness is never undone."

Hear this exactly: it does not say precept-keeping is useless—it says exactly where precept-keeping stands. If a person keeps the precepts strictly and finely, and at the floor of the heart there still sits an I—"it is I who am keeping the precepts"—then his precept earns the fortunate fruits of humans and gods, real and unfailing; but the bondage upon consciousness has not been undone, and there is no way out of birth-and-death. The treatise says it plainly: no tainted path can subdue this grasping at a self; what can subdue it is "the genuine insight of no-self" alone—the wisdom of no-self. The precept is the foundation, not the roof—that sentence this book has carried from Part One until now, and here Yogācāra draws its exact cross-section: the foundation is laid in the conduct of the sixth consciousness; the roof must be raised at the turning-place of the seventh.

The Turning, and a Bridge

That final turning Yogācāra calls the transformation of the basis. When that day comes, the manas does not die—it turns over to its other face:

"In the pre-transformation stage, it ever and deliberatively cogitates the grasped mark of a self; in the post-transformation stage, it still deliberatively cogitates—but now the mark of no-self."

Before the turning, it grasps at self thought after thought; after the transformation of the basis, the same constant, deliberate cogitation shines, thought after thought, on no-self. The mind that grasped at self turns into the wisdom of equality—beholding all dharmas, and self and other sentient beings, as wholly equal. The shadow turns around, and has become light.

The precept-keeper will ask: how far does my precept stand from that turning? Is there a bridge?

There is. The Cheng weishi lun teaches six stages of the transformation of the basis, and the first is called "the diminishing-the-force-and-augmenting-the-capacity transformation":

"By cultivated resolve and by conscience-and-shame, one diminishes the force of the defiled seeds in the root consciousness and augments the capacity of the pure seeds within it."

The motive power is named twice over: resolve, and conscience-and-shame. Conscience-and-shame—exactly the heart the precept-keeper uses day by day. In Part Two's portrait of the killing-precept, the words "dwells with conscience" stand right there. Precept-keeping does not turn the manas over directly; but with its daily conscience-and-shame it diminishes the force of the defiled seeds in the store-consciousness and augments the capacity of the pure—bending the whole of the mind, inch by inch, toward the day of the turning. The bridge is paved with conscience-and-shame; the legs that walk the bridge are the following-conduct.

The Vinaya Masters' Own Ten Meanings

At the last, back to the Vinaya school's own words. When Yuanzhao, in the Jiyuanji, explains this wholesome seed, he does not haul over the six Yogācāra meanings; staying close to the real seed in the field, he counts out ten meanings of his own—arising from the assembly of conditions; each distinct in nature; its living nature ever-present; growing of its own accord … "Seventh, it opens and blossoms when its season comes; eighth, seed and fruit do not miss each other; ninth, it continues in successive series; tenth, its issue multiplies many-fold. The non-acting possesses all of these—hence the comparison."

Opening when its season comes—the conditions arrive, and it opens of itself; seed and fruit not missing each other—whatever was planted, that is what is reaped; issue multiplying many-fold—one grain falls to the ground, and the harvest is a hundredfold. A doctrine of the precept-substance a farmer could read. And in the Zichiji Yuanzhao closes with a simile drawn from the Laṅkāvatāra: the consciousness-ocean and the consciousness-waves—"the waves rise from the ocean and return into the ocean; there is no wave apart from the wave—it is just ocean-water." Receiving the precepts is one wave raised on the ocean of the mind; the wave returns into the ocean, and the ocean carries, from then on, the force of that wave.

Here Part Five has been walked to its end.

We have taken the word "substance" apart: what is gained at the moment of reception is a wholesome seed perfumed into the depths of the store-consciousness—among the three schools' dispute Daoxuan judged it home to this, and Zhiyi settled it with the provisional and the real (chapter one); what carries this seed is a canonical standard of a thousand years—receiving is the perimeter wall; following is the house; receiving and following must sustain each other; only then is anything reached (chapter two); and in the seed's depths live its storehouse (the eighth consciousness), its shadow (the manas's grasping at self), its homecoming (the transformation of the basis), and a bridge paved with conscience-and-shame (chapter three).

One sentence to close Part Five: Chinese Buddhism has spoken the words "keeping the precepts" down to the deepest place of the mind.

But a seed can be wounded. Keeping augments it, breaking diminishes it, grave breach can even destroy it—Part Five has said so itself. Then what becomes of the one who has broken? In Part Four's blueprint there stand four characters—"re-purification after a breach." Where are those four characters to be made good?

There is a Buddha who, when He made His vows in the causal ground, set the road home for those who transgress into His own original great vows. He is in the east.