Chapter 5 · Refuting Self and Dharmas — What "Consciousness-Only" Actually Denies

Part Two · Doctrine

The stone is plainly there; the "self" too is plainly here — so what, in the end, does consciousness-only refute? And once it has refuted, what remains?

Part Two begins with refutation, because the core treatise of this school opens in just this way. The first thing the Thirty Verses on Consciousness-Only does is not to proclaim the eight consciousnesses, but to field a challenge:

「If there is only consciousness, how is it that the world and all the sacred teachings speak of self and dharmas?」

If there is only consciousness, then how are we to account for the "self" that everyone in the world speaks of, and the "dharmas" (the various things) that the sacred teachings speak of at every turn? The opening verse answers:

「Because self and dharmas are provisionally spoken of, various characteristics arise and unfold. 　These rest upon what consciousness transforms; and this transforming [consciousness] is only threefold.」

These four lines are the foundation of the whole school; let us slow down line by line. 「Because self and dharmas are provisionally spoken of」 — self and dharmas are both provisional designations: this does not say they are utterly fictitious, but that names are set upon them in dependence on the stream of experience. 「Various characteristics arise and unfold」 — the treatise itself glosses 「unfold」: 「'unfold' means that, according to conditions, the designations differ」; it says that the characteristics of self and of dharmas take on, according to conditions, various designated differences — it is not that the name first gives birth to the appearance. The treatise then asks back: since they are provisional designations, upon what are they established? It answers: 「Those characteristics are all provisionally designated in dependence on what consciousness transforms.」 Only when there are first the characteristics that consciousness transforms — the other-dependent characteristics such as the image-aspect and the seeing-aspect — is self and dharmas then provisionally set up upon them. 「And this transforming [consciousness] is only threefold」 — the transforming consciousnesses are in all three kinds (reserved for Chapter Six to unfold). The sequence of refutation is therefore very clear: the grasped real self and real dharmas must be refuted; the other-dependent characteristics that consciousness transforms are not thereby erased.

1 · Refuting Grasping — Two Depths of Grasping

What is to be refuted is not the word "self," but the grasping at "self" and "dharmas" — the seizing of a provisional designation as really existent. But since the chapter title plainly says "refute self," one cannot merely announce the conclusion; the Cheng weishi lun first seals off the possible positions of a real self relative to the five aggregates into three routes:

「Moreover, the self that is grasped is of three kinds: first, identical with the aggregates; second, apart from the aggregates; third, neither identical with nor apart from the aggregates.」

First, if it is a self identical with the aggregates — the self just is form, feeling, perception, formations, and consciousness — then the self would, like the five aggregates, be manifold, dependent on conditions, and changing moment by moment, and would not be the permanent, single sovereign that is grasped; the treatise says 「the self would be like the aggregates, hence neither permanent nor single」. Second, if it is a self apart from the aggregates — a self existing separate from the five aggregates — then it would be like empty space, unconnected with the activities of body and mind, unable to act and unable to receive fruit; hence it says 「it would be like empty space, hence without acting or receiving」. Third, if one says the self is neither identical with nor apart from the aggregates, yet admits that it is established in dependence on the aggregates, then it is like a jar provisionally set up in dependence on its materials and its parts — merely a designation, still not a real self. The treatise concludes its judgment: 「Therefore the real self that they grasp is not established.」 This does not deny the continuity of body and mind, nor the conventional naming of a "self"; it only seals off the three routes of positing a permanent, single substance within, outside, or between the five aggregates.

Having refuted the structure of a real self, we look next at how grasping arises. The Cheng weishi lun says that grasping at self and grasping at dharmas each have two depths; it first sets out grasping at self in general: 「Now grasping at self is, in brief, of two kinds: first, innate; second, discriminated.」 Grasping at dharmas likewise opens into two kinds. Below, we use the original text on grasping at dharmas to see the difference between the two:

「Innate grasping at dharmas: through false perfuming from beginningless time, by the force of inner causes, it is ever present together with the body; not depending on wrong teaching or wrong discrimination, it operates spontaneously — hence it is called innate.」

Innate grasping is inborn — it needs no one to teach it, needs no reasoning; it 「operates spontaneously」: it runs of itself. An infant has never studied philosophy, yet when it grasps its milk-bottle it already takes the bottle as a real thing outside the mind. The other kind is grasping that arises through discrimination: 「it arises only in dependence on wrong teaching and wrong discrimination」 — grasping added on only after one has heard a mistaken theory or made a mistaken inference. Differing in depth, they differ also in their cure: discriminated grasping 「being coarse, is easily severed」, removed upon the path of seeing; innate grasping 「being subtle, is hard to sever」, requiring that one 「in the later ten grounds repeatedly cultivate the excellent contemplation of the emptiness of dharmas, and only then be able to eliminate it」 — that long road of the ten grounds in Chapter Eleven severs precisely this.

And here the treatise plants a line able to awaken every reader:

「In order to dispel the deluded grasping at objects really existing outside of mind and mental factors, it is said that there is only consciousness. But one who grasps consciousness-only itself as truly existent — just as one grasps external objects — this too is grasping at dharmas.」

To say "consciousness-only" is to dismantle the grasping at "objects really existing outside the mind"; but if you seize "consciousness-only" itself as a really existent truth — congratulations, you have manufactured yet another grasping at dharmas, the very same disease as grasping at external objects. This school marks its own tenet as a medicine, and forbids its being enshrined as an idol. Whoever finishes this book having gained one more grasping, called "consciousness-only," has read the book backwards.

2 · Consciousness-Only, No Object — The Precise Scope of the "No"

So then, what exactly do the four characters 「唯識無境」 — "consciousness-only, no object" — do away with? The definition at the opening of the Twenty Verses on Consciousness-Only must be read with not one word too many and not one word too few:

「[We] establish that in the Mahāyāna the three realms are consciousness-only, because the scriptures say the three realms are mind-only; 'mind,' 'thought,' 'consciousness,' and 'cognizing' are differences of name. Here, in saying 'mind,' 'thought' also includes the mental factors. It only negates external objects; it does not dispel their concomitants. When inner consciousness arises, it arises resembling an external object — as one with clouded vision sees hairs, flies, and the like. Herein there is not the least bit of real substance.」

The key eight characters: 「it only negates external objects; it does not dispel their concomitants」. The word 「only」 negates just one thing — an external object existing independently, apart from consciousness; it does not negate the mental factors (the various functions concomitant with mind), still less does it negate experience itself. 「When inner consciousness arises, it arises resembling an external object」 — when consciousness arises, it arises precisely in 『the guise of an external object』: the stone you see is really and truly seen; only its layer of 「self-existing outside the mind」 is what has been added on — as a person with a diseased eye sees hair-threads and floating flies in the air: the hairs and flies are vivid before the eyes (the experience is not false), yet in the air there is 「not the least bit of real substance」 (the external thing is absent). So consciousness-only does not say that the world is a hallucination, that other people do not exist, that the stone vanishes when you close your eyes — that is solipsism, precisely the crude reading this school spends twenty verses refuting. What is absent is 「the object apart from consciousness」, not the object; what is refuted is the grasping, not persons, and not the world.

To bring the matter down to the granularity of daily life, since most misunderstandings happen right here: 『I see the stone; I close my eyes; the stone is still there — and yet you say its existence is something added on?』 No. Two things must be told apart.

The first: that after the eyes close the stone 「is still there」 — this reliability the school fully grants, and itself steps forward to explain it. Eye-consciousness is only the outermost wave-crest of the mind (detailed in Chapter Six); closing the eyes merely stops this one wave; the deeper consciousness has never once ceased, day or night. Speaking of the office of the deep consciousness, the Cheng weishi lun says:

「The ālaya-vijñāna, by the force of causes and conditions, when its own substance arises, inwardly transforms into the seeds and the body with its faculties, and outwardly transforms into the receptacle [-world]; and it takes what it has transformed as its own object.」

What the deep consciousness transforms and manifests is not only the inner seeds and this body of ours, but also the 「receptacle」 — the receptacle-world: mountains, rivers, and the great earth, the stone included. The stone's 「being still there」 hangs upon this deep stream that runs unbroken day and night — and not upon your stream alone: sentient beings each transform and manifest, their shared karma resembling and according with one another, 「like the light of many lamps, each pervading and seeming as one」 — many lamps in one room, light interpenetrating light, seeming to be one light yet each having its own source. So when you close your eyes, I still see it; your eyelid cannot cut off the deep manifestation of each of the many. The stone's 「being still there」 does not hang upon that pair of eyes of yours. That the stone does not perish when the eyes close is just as daylight does not perish when one switches off a desk lamp — what you switched off was only ever your own lamp.

The second: that which is 「added on」 is a different layer — the metaphysical verdict that 『the stone is a thing that exists on its own, apart from all consciousness』. As an epistemological pointer, one may note: what we actually lay hold of is always a stone that is seen, touched, or recalled; once it has become something experienced, it already stands within the object-structure of consciousness. This only reminds us that one cannot take an object that is by definition forever outside cognition and pass it off as evidence that one has already directly experienced it; it is not the demonstration given in the Twenty Verses, nor can consciousness-only be derived merely from 『whatever is experienced is together with consciousness』. The treatise-author's real argument is the point-by-point answering, in the next section, of the four difficulties of place, time, continuum, and efficacy, and its showing — by way of shared karma, the efficacy of dreams, and the like — that even without a real object apart from consciousness, publicness and effectiveness can still be established. Here one sentence gathers it up only this far: the stone, as a reliable appearance within the shared-karma stream of consciousness, is not cancelled; what is negated is that, apart from consciousness, there is another real object of the kind that is grasped.

3 · The Answer to the Four Difficulties — Dream and Hungry Ghost

No sooner does 「no object apart from consciousness」 appear than challenges surge up. The Twenty Verses poses, on the opponent's behalf, four difficulties, gathered in a single verse:

「If consciousness has no real object, then determinacy of place and time, indeterminacy of continuum, and efficacy should not be established.」

Let the four difficulties be laid out one by one. First, determinacy of place: if the object is only consciousness, why does one see a village in this place and not in another? Consciousness travels with the body, yet what is seen is tied to a location. Second, determinacy of time: why is it seen at this time and not at that? Third, indeterminacy of continuum: 「continuum」 refers to the stream of mind-consciousness of each individual sentient being — if the object is only a thing within each person's mind, why do many people see one and the same thing in common? You ought not to see my hallucination. Fourth, efficacy: eating and drinking in a dream does not relieve hunger — only a real thing has real effect; if there is no real object, whence comes efficacy? Taken together, the four difficulties are the whole defensive line of common sense: the publicness, the regularity, and the effectiveness of external objects. The treatise-author answers in verse:

「Place and time determined, as in a dream; bodies not fixed, as with the ghosts; 　seeing the river of pus in common, and the like; efficacy, as loss in a dream.」

Three examples dismantle the four lines of defense. The dream answers the first two difficulties:

「That is: just as in a dream, though there is no real object, yet in some place one sees villages, gardens, men, women, and such things — not in every place. And even at that place, at some time one sees those villages, gardens, and the like — not at every time.」

In a dream not one thing is real, yet a dream has its own dream-geography and dream-moments — the village is at 「that place」 in the dream, not everywhere; it appears at 「that time」 in the dream, not at all times. Regularity needs no external thing to guarantee it; experience without a real object still has its place and its time all the same. The hungry ghost answers the third difficulty:

「That is: just as hungry ghosts, through the maturation of the same karma, gather many bodies together and all see a river of pus」

Many hungry ghosts gather at the riverbank and all see one river of pus and blood — humans see it as water, ghosts see it as pus. They see it in common not because there is an 「objective river of pus」, but because of 「the maturation of the same karma」: identical karma calls forth identical seeing. Publicness needs no external thing to guarantee it; shared karma alone suffices for shared seeing. The dream answers the fourth difficulty again: 「And just as, though the objects in a dream are not real, there is still the effect of losing vital essence and the like.」 The dream-realm is wholly empty, yet what happens in the dream can leave a real physiological effect upon the body — effectiveness, too, needs no external thing to guarantee it. For each of the four lines of defense there is a counter-example lacking an external object; 「a real object apart from consciousness」 is, in the explanation, a superfluous supposition. (This treatise has, further, a disputation of nine difficulties, whose reckoning is finer still; for selected reading, follow an edition of the Twenty Verses.)

4 · Refuting to the Very End — What the Two Emptinesses Reveal

Grasping at self, refuted, becomes emptiness of self (the selflessness of persons); grasping at dharmas, refuted, becomes emptiness of dharmas (the selflessness of dharmas); together they are called the two emptinesses. When the refutation is carried to its utmost, what remains? This school's answer is unexpected — what remains is not 「nothing」, but 「revealing」:

「What the two emptinesses reveal, perfectly-accomplished — the real nature of all dharmas — is named the perfectly-accomplished [nature].」

The two emptinesses do not tear the world down into vacant ground; they tear down the covering, letting the original real nature of all dharmas be revealed — this 「what is revealed」, named the perfectly-accomplished [nature], is the protagonist of Chapter Seven, and here the brush is set down for it. Refutation is the means, revealing is the end; this school's 「refutation」 has from the very start moved toward an affirmative direction. In its chapter on refuting grasping, the Cheng weishi lun cites the Buddha's words as witness — precisely that sūtra encountered again and again in Chapters One and Eleven of this book:

「Maitreya, you should know: what the consciousnesses take as object is only what consciousness manifests; the other-dependent nature is like an illusory thing, and so forth.」

What the consciousnesses take as object is only what consciousness manifests — of one bloodline with the line the Buddha spoke to Maitreya in meditation: the theory of refuting grasping and the observing-and-checking upon the seat cite one and the same sūtra passage. This only points out what contemplative practice rests upon; the direct realization that departs from the characteristics of the two graspings still has the path of seeing as its boundary, and cannot be drawn in advance from a single line of theory.

And the four characters 「like an illusory thing, and so forth」 are the most easily misread, and must here be read rightly — the misreading looks like this: 『So everything is a hallucination after all.』 No. A magician conjures up an elephant: the elephant is not there, yet the appearance of the illusory elephant is not utterly nothing — it arises within the corresponding consciousness, in dependence on the magic art, the props, and the conditions of viewing. To say that all dharmas are 「like an illusion」 says precisely this structure: the appearance arises in dependence on conditions, only it does not exist in the manner that is grasped (self-standing, self-existing). In the same chapter the treatise itself draws these two layers apart with perfect clarity:

「Yet the semblance-characteristics of dharmas, since they arise from conditions, are illusion-like existents; the grasped real dharmas, being falsely wholly-imagined, are definitely non-existent.」

The semblance-characteristics of dharmas arise from conditions, and so are 「illusion-like existents」 — existent, but only existent in the manner of an illusion; the grasped real dharmas issue from false imagining, and are 「definitely non-existent」. Within this one sentence, 「existent」 and 「non-existent」 each go to their own place. Take a daily example to hold this measure down: the rainbow. The rainbow is not utterly nothing — it can be photographed, it can be predicted from such conditions as the sun facing the rain after a shower and the angle of view; yet if you walk toward it, you will never arrive before a rainbow-bridge hung at the edge of the sky. The rainbow 『as a dependently-arisen appearance』 exists in dependence on conditions; the rainbow 『as a self-existing bridge』 is added on. When this school says the myriad dharmas are like an illusion, it says that on just this point the myriad dharmas are like the rainbow: the appearance exists in dependence on conditions; self-existence is absent. This only determines the dependently-arisen manner of appearance; it does not guarantee that every appearance is free of cognitive error — dreams, clouded vision, and illusions can equally arise in dependence on their own conditions. And for this reason, since what is revealed when refutation reaches its utmost is named 「the real nature of all dharmas」, this school's final attitude toward the world cannot possibly be cancellation, but faithfulness to reality: neither augmenting what appears into a self-natured real existence, nor diminishing the dependently-arisen appearance into an annihilated utter nothing.

5 · The Laṅkāvatāra's Attestation — Wind and Sea

The Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra gives this chapter a summarizing image:

「Just as a bright mirror manifests the images of many forms — Mahāmati! it is like a fierce wind blowing the water of the great ocean: the wind of external objects tosses the ocean of mind, and the waves of consciousness are unceasing.」

Mind is like the sea, the consciousnesses like waves; what is called 「external objects」 is the wind that ruffles the sea's surface — note the sūtra's wording: the wind, too, is called 「the wind of external objects」, an object resembling something external playing the role of wind, while wave and sea have always been one water. The wave is not false (the waves of consciousness are unceasing); the wave has also never once departed from the sea. The refutation of grasping can be gathered to a close here: the stone is still there (the wave is present), the days of the "self" go on as before (the sea keeps flowing), and all that has been torn down is the single misrecognition that 「the wave is outside the sea」. The verse in which the Cheng weishi lun concludes this point accounts, in passing, for the source of the misrecognition:

「As the foolish discriminate them, external objects are in truth all non-existent; habit-energies disturb and defile the mind, so that it turns, arising in their semblance.」

External objects are really absent, yet the mind 「turns, arising in their semblance」 — why? 「Habit-energies disturb and defile the mind」: the habit-energies from beginningless time are stirring. What the habit-energies are, where they reside, how they stir — that is the account of Chapter Eight. And what the mind looks like once its grasping has been torn away — the next chapter, where that map of the eight consciousnesses is spread open.

To follow the primary texts: the second station of the reading path, the whole of the Twenty Verses on Consciousness-Only, and the seventh station, the chapter on refuting grasping in fascicle one of the Cheng weishi lun, await.

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