Chapter 2 · The Root System — Abhidharma, the Schools, and the Southern Answer

Part One · Sources and Formation

The Southern tradition teaches non-self so thoroughly, and yet consciousness-only posits an ālaya-vijñāna (store-consciousness) — is this a contradiction?

To answer this question, we must first see clearly the common origin of both sides: after the Buddha's parinirvāṇa, for several hundred years the disciples did one and the same thing — they took apart the mind spoken of in the sūtras and saw it clearly. This tradition is called Abhidharma (which means "facing the dharmas": the discipline of confronting the dharmas and discerning them). This chapter proceeds in four steps: why the analytic tradition arose; how the schools handled the problem of non-self-yet-continuity and of the basis on which the seeds rest; what answer the Southern tradition gave; and the one further step the yogins took beyond analysis.

1 · The Path of Abhidharma — Analysis Is the Precondition of Practice

To break the mind down into individual "dharmas" (the basic items that constitute experience) sounds like an academic obsession. The verse of homage that opens the Abhidharmakośa states the motive of the whole tradition:

「If, apart from the discernment of dharmas, there is assuredly no other superior means able to extinguish the defilements — 　since it is through the defilements that the world drifts on the ocean of existence, for this reason the Abhidharma that the Buddha spoke is transmitted.」

"Discernment of dharmas" (擇法) is the sorting-out and distinguishing of the dharmas — seeing each one clearly, item by item: this is feeling, this is perception, this is greed, this is wisdom. The verse's claim is categorical: apart from the discernment of dharmas there is "assuredly no other" — nothing else whatever — superior method "able to extinguish the defilements." Why? "It is through the defilements that the world drifts on the ocean of existence": it is the afflictions that set the world adrift on the ocean of birth-and-death; and the afflictions hide where they cannot be seen. You cannot extinguish what you cannot recognize. The prose passage puts it still more plainly:

「If one departs from the discernment of dharmas, there is no superior means able to extinguish the defilements.」「Apart from the exposition of the Abhidharma, disciples cannot discern the characteristics of the dharmas according to principle.」

So analysis is not a discipline lying outside of practice; it is the preliminary procedure of practice — only when the mind has been taken apart to a granularity at which it can be identified does the work have a place to lay hold. (The hundred dharmas and the fifty-one mental factors treated in Chapter Six of this book are precisely the finished product of this path within this school.)

The Yogācārabhūmi, the foundational treatise of the yogins, inherits precisely this analytic gene. In a passage of its Manas Ground (意地), it formally assigns distinct roles to the three words that Chapter One found used side by side in the Āgamas:

「What is the intrinsic nature of manas? It is citta, manas, and vijñāna. Citta means the ālaya-vijñāna: that which is accompanied by all the seeds, accompanied by the nature of serving as basis; the nature, the substance able to appropriate [the body], comprised within maturation. Manas means the ever-operating manas, together with the immediately-ceased manas of the six groups of consciousness. Vijñāna means the presently-manifest discerning of the objective realm that is its object.」

Slow down, item by item. "Vijñāna" is that which, right now, is discerning an object — the presently active cognition that sees a color, hears a sound, thinks a thought. "Manas" is that constantly operating layer of self-referring mind (together with the "immediately-ceased manas" that, once the prior thought-moment has ceased, opens the way for the succeeding one). "Citta" — note the key words in the definition — "accompanied by all the seeds," "able to appropriate," "comprised within maturation": the layer that carries and holds all the seeds, appropriates this body, and bears the ripening of karmic fruit is named the ālaya-vijñāna. Three words are here divided into three offices. One must keep the chronology firm: the Āgamas provide only the three words "citta, manas, vijñāna" used side by side; distributing the three words as ālaya, ever-operating manas, and present discernment is the classification of the later Yogācāra treatises, and it must not be inverted into saying that the original Āgama sentences already set out the eight consciousnesses explicitly. Even for the five sense-consciousnesses, the most surface layer, the treatise ties every sentence back to the deep layer: "The support that is the seeds — namely the ālaya-vijñāna that is all the seeds." — In the Yogācārabhūmi, from its very first page, the analysis is indeed carried out hanging upon the question of "who holds [the seeds]."

2 · The Schools' Answer — "By a Different Approach, with Veiled Intent, It Has Already Been Taught"

The question of what holds the seeds, left over from Chapter One, each of the schools answered in its own way. At the opening of the Mahāyānasaṃgraha, Asaṅga himself draws up this account:

「Furthermore, within the Śrāvaka Vehicle too, by a different approach and with veiled intent, the ālaya-vijñāna has already been taught, as that Ekottarikāgama says: 「Beings of the world crave the ālaya, delight in the ālaya, are gladdened by the ālaya, rejoice in the ālaya……」」 「In the Āgama of the Mahāsāṃghikas, too, by a different approach and with veiled intent, this is called the root-consciousness, like a tree depending on its root. Among the Mahīśāsakas, too, by a different approach and with veiled intent, this is called the aggregate that lasts to the end of birth-and-death.」

Take the three items one by one. First, the Mahāyānasaṃgraha claims of itself that the Śrāvaka Vehicle's Ekottarikāgama (增壹阿笈摩) has already taught the ālaya "by a different approach, with veiled intent," and adduces as evidence the sense of the phrases "craving the ālaya, delighting in the ālaya, being gladdened by the ālaya, rejoicing in the ālaya"; this is a citation within Asaṅga's treatise, and it is not equivalent to a declaration that the same sentences can be verified in the extant Ekottara Āgama (增一阿含). Second, the Mahāyānasaṃgraha says that the Mahāsāṃghika Āgama takes "root-consciousness" (根本識) as its different approach, likened to a tree's dependence on its root. Third, it says the Mahīśāsakas take "the aggregate that lasts to the end of birth-and-death" (窮生死蘊) as their different approach. Whether the three names were originally one and the same teaching cannot be adjudicated on their behalf over the head of each school's own textual context; what can be established is that Asaṅga harmonizes them into this one office, the ālaya-vijñāna. His conclusion gathers it up in a single line:

「By this different approach, the ālaya-vijñāna becomes a great royal road.」

"A different approach" (異門) means a different gateway; "veiled intent" (密意) means a purpose held partly in reserve — in the Mahāyānasaṃgraha's own account, the several gateways merge into the one "royal road." (The state of correspondence between the scriptures cited and the extant recensions is recorded, per this book's standard discipline, in the philological layer.) Stated precisely: Asaṅga uses the various schools' alternative names to build a prehistory, internal to the teaching, for the ālaya-vijñāna; this is the treatise-author's harmonization, not our declaring on behalf of all the schools that they meant the same thing.

Between "seeds" themselves and the ālaya-vijñāna there stands one further bridge that cannot be passed over: the Sautrāntika had already used seeds and causal continuity to explain the succession of before and after, but the locus in which the seeds are lodged differs. Kuiji's Notes (述記), commenting on the three words "within the root-consciousness" (本識中) in the Cheng weishi lun (Demonstration of Consciousness-Only), states plainly that they are meant "to distinguish [this] from the Sautrāntika masters' holding of seeds in form, mind, and the like"; that is, the Sautrāntika hold the seeds in the continuity of form, mind, and so on, whereas consciousness-only locates the seed-holding function in the root-consciousness. The Cheng weishi lun, from the standpoint of its own school, mounts a further critique: "The causal continuity of the Sautrāntika masters and the rest does not hold up in principle either, because they do not admit that there is an ālaya-vijñāna able to hold the seeds." Here two layers must be kept distinct: the problem of seeds / causal continuity did not first arise with consciousness-only; the key thing consciousness-only newly adds is the thesis that there must be an ālaya-vijñāna, perpetually turning and able to hold the seeds, serving as the support. As for the detailed mechanism of seeds and perfuming, Chapter Eight of this book expounds it in a dedicated chapter.

3 · The Southern Answer — the bhavaṅga-Mind

To this same problem of continuity-under-non-self, the Southern Abhidharma also gave its own answer, named bhavaṅga — rendered into Chinese as "yǒufēn" (有分), the "component" (分: constituent, substratum) of "existence" (有: living existence). It is not said here that the bhavaṅga-mind holds seeds; the comparison is only of how it accounts for the continuity of life between one cognition and the next. This teaching has a ready witness in the Chinese canon: the Chinese translation of a treatise of the Southern lineage, the Vimuttimagga (解脫道論). Its defining sentence:

「Now, as for the bhavaṅga-mind: in this existence it is the root-mind, like a drawing thread.」 〔《解脫道論》T32n1648 0449b09·梁 僧伽婆羅譯·巴利平行 Vism XIV／Abhidhammattha-saṅgaha 有分諸節·待譯〕

The bhavaṅga-mind is the root-mind of this one span of life, like a drawing thread — cognitions rise and fall, while the thread all the while draws on beneath them. How it operates, the treatise gives in a complete simile, worth quoting in full:

「It is as when a king lies asleep in his palace hall with the city gate shut: a hunchbacked girl kneads the king's feet, the queen sits by, the great ministers and the palace guards are ranged before the king, and a deaf man keeps the gate, stationed at the city gate. At that time a park-keeper takes a mango and knocks at the gate; the king hears the sound and wakes, and the king commands the hunchbacked girl: You shall open the gate. The hunchbacked girl at once obeys the order and, by signs, speaks to the deaf man. The deaf man understands the meaning and opens the city gate, and sees the mango. The king takes up a knife; the girl receives the fruit and brings it in, presenting it to the great minister. The great minister hands it to the queen; the queen washes it clean and sets each — ripe or unripe — in its own place, and then offers it to the king. The king gets to eat it, and having eaten, at once pronounces its merits and demerits, then goes back to sleep again. Just so, as the king lies asleep, so the bhavaṅga-mind is to be understood.」 〔同前·0449b18–26·待譯〕

The king asleep deep in his palace — this is the bhavaṅga-mind: when the six gates of eye, ear, and the rest have no business, the mind is not cut off and extinguished, but rests, sunk down upon this baseline. The park-keeper knocking at the gate with a mango — the external object rapping at the door of the senses. Then a whole series of offices operates in turn: the hunchbacked girl relays the word, the deaf man opens the gate, the knife-holding girl receives the fruit, the great minister passes it along, the queen washes it clean, the king eats it and judges its taste — the treatise itself supplies the correspondences ("As the hunchbacked girl, by signs, instructs the deaf man to open the gate, so the adverting mind is to be understood. As the deaf man opens the gate and sees the mango, so the eye-consciousness is to be understood."): a single act of "seeing," within this analysis, is a relay of seven functions of consciousness. At the last — "As the king sleeps once more, so the passing-back into the bhavaṅga-mind is to be understood" — the event over and gone, the mind withdraws back into bhavaṅga, and the king falls asleep again.

Now the two answers can be set side by side. The problem is the same: there is no self, yet there is continuity; cognitions arise and perish moment by moment — from what does the continuity between them arise? The answers differ: the Southern bhavaṅga is like a drawing thread — it is the baseline "between" cognitions; when a cognition arises it yields its place, and when the cognition falls away the mind returns to it. The consciousness-only ālaya is like a torrent (the verse of Chapter One) — it turns together with every cognition simultaneously, on the one hand holding the seeds, on the other receiving the perfuming, not waiting for the front stage to fall dark before it appears. The one is the interlude backdrop of a single-tier stage; the other is the underground river of a two-tier stage. Near-identical problems, different answers — a resonance, not an identity. This book passes no judgment of higher and lower; the juxtaposition only makes clear that non-self-yet-continuity is a problem the two traditions treat in common, and one cannot infer backwards that the whole Buddhist analytic tradition admits a single deep mind. The Sautrāntika of the previous section, holding seeds in the continuity of form, mind, and the like, shows precisely that what is shared is the problem, not the answer.

4 · From Analysis to the Whole Map of Practice — the Yogins' Reorganization

Here one must not write the Abhidharma as capable only of analysis, with practice beginning only at the Yogācāra school: the Abhidharmakośa quoted at the head of this chapter has already said plainly that the discernment of dharmas is the root of extinguishing the defilements. What the Yogācāra school does further here is to reorganize and expand the analysis of mental dharmas, the hearing-reflecting-cultivating, the objects of meditative concentration, the practice-stages of the three vehicles, and the fruition-and-basis into a single complete map of practice in seventeen grounds. The Yogācārabhūmi, at its very opening, announces its framework:

「What are the yogins' grounds? They are the seventeen grounds.」

The seventeen grounds — the seventeen layers of ground traversed by the yogin (the practitioner of meditative contemplation) — set out from the analysis of the Ground Associated with the Five Sense-Consciousnesses (五識身相應地) and the Manas Ground (意地); in the middle stand three complete grounds, the Ground Consisting of Hearing, the Ground Consisting of Reflecting, and the Ground Consisting of Cultivating (聞所成地、思所成地、修所成地) — here, hearing-reflecting-cultivating are not three adverbs but three tracts of territory; they are laid out all the way to the Śrāvaka Ground and the Bodhisattva Ground, and end at the ground with residual basis and the ground without residual basis. It does not replace the Abhidharma with "having practice"; rather, with its own architecture of a treatise-on-grounds it re-arranges analysis and the path of practice, and greatly unfolds the Bodhisattva Ground. This is exactly the weight the two words "yoga" carry in the structure of this treatise (set out in detail at the opening of Chapter Three), and it is also the close of this chapter —

Return to the question that opened the chapter: a contradiction? The Southern tradition and consciousness-only both keep guard over non-self; both acknowledge that the problem of continuity must be answered; and each has given an answer that keeps non-self intact: the bhavaṅga is not a self — a thread, not a soul; and the ālaya carries, moreover, a warning sign set up by the Buddha's own mouth — "for fear they should discriminate it and grasp it as a self." The two are not one and the same doctrine of a mind-substance; their function, their relation of arising-and-ceasing, and the treatise-systems to which they belong all differ; they can be read side by side only on this one question — 'how to keep non-self intact while accounting for continuity.' And to extend the ālaya-vijñāna from an explanation of continuity into a path — one whose operation can be contemplated, whose defiled-and-pure basis can be turned, and by which the attainment of buddhahood can be explained — is part of the system built by the three treatise-masters of the next chapter.

To follow the primary texts: on the reading-path, Station Eight the Yogācārabhūmi, and Station Six the Mahāyānasaṃgraha at its "Basis of the Knowable," and so on; the Abhidharmakośa is the root for auxiliary reference.

Author · Shi Huijing CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · 二〇二六 · 夏