大乘起信論 真如用・應身報身・入真如門

This passage speaks of “function”—how qualities inherently present come forth as activity for sentient beings.

That function begins in a vow. The vow has two clauses, and neither can be omitted.

Taking and Not-Taking

“They took all sentient beings as their own bodies, yet did not take up the marks of sentient beings.”

The sentence holds two movements together. Taking removes the distance between self and other; not-taking keeps that intimacy from becoming possession.

Taking sentient beings as one’s own body is compassion; not taking up their marks is wisdom.

Without the first there is indifference. Without the second there is attachment: to clutch another person’s mark is not compassion but an added burden for both.

The author gives a judgment rather than an exhortation: “They knew in accordance with reality that all sentient beings and their own bodies are equal in suchness, without difference.”

Compassion is not a feeling forced into existence. It is the natural form a judgment takes once that judgment has become real.

On the Buddha’s Side, Nothing Is Being Deliberately Done

“Equal to suchness, pervading everywhere, yet with no mark of function to be found.”

Its range is everywhere, but no separate function can be seized. The next sentence explains why:

“The buddhas and Tathāgatas are only the body whose mark is the wisdom of the dharma-body. They are the ultimate truth, without any object-realm of conventional truth and apart from deliberate activity. Sentient beings nevertheless gain benefit according to what they see and hear; for this reason it is called ‘function.’”

The name function is established on the side where sentient beings receive benefit.

Sunlight falls upon people without the sun choosing whom to illuminate.

What Kind of Buddha Appears?

The buddha is the same. One person sees a bodily form arriving from outside; another sees immeasurable forms, marks, excellent features, and adornments.

The response body is what ordinary beings and those of the two vehicles see “in dependence upon the object-discriminating consciousness.” Because they “do not know that it is manifested by the evolving consciousness,” they take it to come from outside and can apprehend only bounded form.

The reward body is what bodhisattvas see “in dependence upon the karmic consciousness,” from the first arousing of the aspiration through the ultimate bodhisattva stage. Its “body has immeasurable forms; its forms have immeasurable marks, and its marks have immeasurable excellent features.”

The buddha has not changed twice. The consciousness that sees has changed.

Instead of asking what the buddha looks like, the passage therefore asks what consciousness is doing the looking.

Understanding Has Come, but Discrimination Remains

Bodhisattvas who have newly aroused the aspiration already know that those forms and adornments “neither come nor go, are apart from limitation, manifest only in dependence upon mind, and do not depart from suchness.”

The understanding is present. Then comes the qualification: “Yet these bodhisattvas still discriminate, because they have not entered the stage of the dharma-body.”

There remains a stretch of road between understanding and correspondence. The author does not call the bodhisattva wrong; he says only that the stage of the dharma-body has not yet been entered.

Finally, the Direction Never Turned

“It is shown that one can enter the aspect of suchness directly from the aspect of arising and ceasing.”

How? Look for the form and mind of the five aggregates, the six sense-objects, and the shape of mind itself: “though one seeks it throughout the ten directions, it can never be found.”

One is not merely told that it cannot be found. One searches and fails to find it.

Then comes the simile:

“It is like a person who, because of delusion, calls east west, though the directions have not in fact turned.”

The mistake belongs to recognition, not to space itself.

“So it is with sentient beings. Deluded through ignorance, they call thought the mind, though the mind in fact has never moved.”

The analogy transfers the same distinction from direction to mind: ignorance misnames, but does not move what it misnames.

“If one can observe and know that mind is without thought, one then accords with and enters the aspect of suchness.”

The task is not to force thought down. It is to see that what has always been taken for mind was never mind itself.

Composed by the Bodhisattva Aśvaghoṣa; translated by Paramārtha, Tripiṭaka Master of Western India, under the Liang. The Awakening of Faith in the Great Vehicle, “The Function of Suchness, the Response and Reward Bodies, and Entry into the Aspect of Suchness,” from “Again, as for the function of suchness” to “one then accords with and enters the aspect of suchness.” The bracketed figures at the head of each segment give the Taishō page, register, and line.

〔1 · Function comes from vows on the causal ground〕（0579b09）Again, as for the function of suchness: the buddhas and Tathāgatas, while originally on the causal ground, aroused great compassion, cultivated the pāramitās, and gathered and transformed sentient beings.

〔2 · One taking and one not-taking〕（0579b10）They established the great vow to deliver all sentient beings, as numerous as the realm of sentient beings itself, without setting any limit of eons, through the end of the future. They took all sentient beings as their own bodies, yet did not take up the marks of sentient beings.

〔3 · How this is possible〕（0579b12）What does this mean? They knew in accordance with reality that all sentient beings and their own bodies are equal in suchness, without difference.

〔4 · Function pervades everywhere, yet has no mark of function〕（0579b13）Because they possessed this great wisdom of skillful means, they extinguished ignorance and saw the original dharma-body. Diverse forms of inconceivable activity then arose spontaneously—equal to suchness, pervading everywhere, yet with no mark of function to be found.

〔5 · Why there is no mark of function〕（0579b15）Why? The buddhas and Tathāgatas are only the body whose mark is the wisdom of the dharma-body. They are the ultimate truth, without any object-realm of conventional truth and apart from deliberate activity. Sentient beings nevertheless gain benefit according to what they see and hear; for this reason it is called “function.”

〔6 · Function has two kinds: the response body〕（0579b18）This function has two kinds. Which two? First, what ordinary beings and those of the two vehicles see in their minds in dependence upon the object-discriminating consciousness is called the response body. Because they do not know that it is manifested by the evolving consciousness, they take it to come from outside; they apprehend the limits of its form and cannot know it exhaustively.

〔7 · The reward body〕（0579b21）Second, what bodhisattvas from the first arousing of the aspiration through the ultimate bodhisattva stage see in their minds in dependence upon the karmic consciousness is called the reward body.

（0579b22）This body has immeasurable forms; its forms have immeasurable marks, and its marks have immeasurable excellent features. The supporting fruition in which it dwells likewise has immeasurable adornments of every kind. Whatever it manifests is boundless and inexhaustible, apart from any mark of limitation; according to what is appropriate, it can always abide and be sustained without decay or loss.

〔8 · Where the reward body’s qualities come from〕（0579b25）Qualities such as these are all brought to completion through the perfuming of undefiled practices such as the pāramitās and through inconceivable perfuming. Complete in immeasurable marks of bliss, it is therefore called the reward body.

〔9 · The coarse form seen by ordinary beings〕（0579b27）What ordinary beings see is its coarse form, seen differently according to each of the six destinies, of many dissimilar kinds and without marks of experiencing bliss. It is therefore called the response body.

〔10 · What bodhisattvas who have newly aroused the aspiration see〕（0579c04）Again, as for what bodhisattvas who have newly aroused the aspiration and others see: because they deeply trust the dharma of suchness, they see it in small measure and know that its forms, marks, adornments, and the like neither come nor go, are apart from limitation, manifest only in dependence upon mind, and do not depart from suchness.

（0579c06）Yet these bodhisattvas still discriminate, because they have not entered the stage of the dharma-body.

（0579c07）When they attain the pure mind, what they see is subtle and its function becomes increasingly excellent, until, at the exhaustion of the bodhisattva stages, they see it completely.

（0579c08）If the karmic consciousness is left behind, there is no mark of seeing, because among the dharma-bodies of the buddhas there are no separate forms and marks that see one another.

〔11 · Question: if the dharma-body is apart from form and marks, how can it manifest form?〕（0579c11）Question: “If the dharma-bodies of the buddhas are apart from forms and marks, how can they manifest form and marks?”

〔12 · Answer: form and mind are nondual〕（0579c13）Answer: “Precisely because this dharma-body is the substance of form, it can manifest as form.

（0579c14）“That is to say, from the beginning form and mind have been nondual. Because the nature of form is wisdom, the substance of form is formless and is called the wisdom-body. Because the nature of wisdom is form, the dharma-body is said to pervade everywhere.

（0579c16）“The forms manifested have no limits. In accordance with mind, they can manifest throughout the worlds of the ten directions: immeasurable bodhisattvas, immeasurable reward bodies, and immeasurable adornments, each distinct. All are without limits and do not obstruct one another.

（0579c18）“This cannot be known through the discrimination of mind and consciousness, for it is the free function of suchness.”

〔13 · Entering the aspect of suchness directly from the aspect of arising and ceasing〕（0579c20）Again, it is shown that one can enter the aspect of suchness directly from the aspect of arising and ceasing. Investigate the form and mind of the five aggregates and the object-realm of the six sense-objects: ultimately they are without thought. Because mind has no form or mark, though one seeks it throughout the ten directions, it can never be found.

〔14 · The simile of mistaking east for west〕（0579c22）It is like a person who, because of delusion, calls east west, though the directions have not in fact turned.

（0579c23）So it is with sentient beings. Deluded through ignorance, they call thought the mind, though the mind in fact has never moved.

〔15 · The entrance is here〕（0579c24）If one can observe and know that mind is without thought, one then accords with and enters the aspect of suchness.

The preceding passage spoke of “mark”—the qualities already present. This passage speaks of “function”: how those qualities come forth and become activity for sentient beings.

Its most important move is its answer to one question: why, when the buddha is the same, does one person see a bodily form arriving from outside while another sees immeasurable forms, immeasurable marks, immeasurable excellent features, and limitless adornments?

The author’s answer does not lie on the side of the buddha.

Function Begins with a Vow

“Again, as for the function of suchness: the buddhas and Tathāgatas, while originally on the causal ground, aroused great compassion, cultivated the pāramitās, and gathered and transformed sentient beings.”

Function is not an uncaused capacity. It comes from vows and conduct on the causal ground. The vow is stated concretely, and two of its clauses must be read together:

“They took all sentient beings as their own bodies, yet did not take up the marks of sentient beings.”

The sentence refuses to separate its two movements. Taking removes the distance between self and other; not-taking keeps that intimacy from hardening into an object.

To take sentient beings as one’s own body is compassion; not to take up their marks is wisdom. Without the first, there is indifference. Without the second, compassion congeals into attachment: clutching another person’s mark adds a burden to both sides.

The author’s reason is a judgment, not an exhortation: “They knew in accordance with reality that all sentient beings and their own bodies are equal in suchness, without difference.” Taking and not-taking can coexist because the suchness of self and other is known to be equal from the beginning.

Compassion is not an emotion forced into existence. It is the natural form taken by a judgment once that judgment has become real.

This deserves a pause. Compassion is often imagined as something produced by stretching the heart wider and cultivating a stronger feeling. Here its root is an act of knowing: knowing in accordance with reality that the suchness of self and other is equal and without difference. When the knowing is true, taking sentient beings as one’s own body is effortless; when it is not, compassion sustained by force will eventually tire. Throughout this treatise, conduct is placed upon understanding; nowhere is that clearer than here.

Pervading Everywhere, with No Mark of Function

“Because they possessed this great wisdom of skillful means, they extinguished ignorance and saw the original dharma-body. Diverse forms of inconceivable activity then arose spontaneously—equal to suchness, pervading everywhere, yet with no mark of function to be found.”

Pervading everywhere is easy enough to hear. The phrase no mark of function to be found asks for a pause.

The author explains: “The buddhas and Tathāgatas are only the body whose mark is the wisdom of the dharma-body. They are the ultimate truth, without any object-realm of conventional truth and apart from deliberate activity. Sentient beings nevertheless gain benefit according to what they see and hear; for this reason it is called ‘function.’”

On the side of the buddha, nothing is being deliberately done. There is no agent carrying out an operation and no separate deed manufactured by that agent. The name function is established on the side of sentient beings who receive benefit through seeing and hearing.

This dismantles a familiar picture: a buddha somewhere watches, deliberates, and then intervenes. The treatise says instead: apart from deliberate activity. Sunlight falls upon people without the sun choosing whom to illuminate.

Yet this must not be read as indifference. Freedom from deliberate activity is not absence of benefit. The very next clause says that it is called function because sentient beings receive benefit through seeing and hearing. The benefit is real; it simply does not issue from a calculating agent. Nothing here cancels the vows, compassion, or taking of all sentient beings as one’s own body stated just above. What is cancelled is only the image of an operator standing opposite the beings operated upon.

The treatise draws its own “function” back one level because it understands what happens otherwise: once a reader imagines the buddha as an agent, the next move is to ask that agent to intervene rather than to transform the consciousness through which one sees.

Two Bodies: The Difference Lies in the Seeing Consciousness

“This function has two kinds.” The basis of that division is the point to remember.

First, the response body: “What ordinary beings and those of the two vehicles see in their minds in dependence upon the object-discriminating consciousness is called the response body. Because they do not know that it is manifested by the evolving consciousness, they take it to come from outside; they apprehend the limits of its form and cannot know it exhaustively.”

The limitation is epistemic. The object-discriminating consciousness externalizes what the evolving consciousness manifests and therefore encounters only bounded portions of form. One traditional reading says it plainly: ordinary beings and those of the two vehicles “do not yet understand consciousness-only.”

Second, the reward body: “What bodhisattvas from the first arousing of the aspiration through the ultimate bodhisattva stage see in their minds in dependence upon the karmic consciousness is called the reward body.”

The buddha seen by bodhisattvas is the reward body: “this body has immeasurable forms; its forms have immeasurable marks, and its marks have immeasurable excellent features.” Its supporting fruition has immeasurable adornments, is “apart from any mark of limitation,” and “can always abide and be sustained without decay or loss.” One traditional reading identifies the stages: bodhisattvas from the Ten Understandings onward comprehend consciousness-only and know that there are no external sense-objects; they see the buddha-body in accord with the karmic consciousness, and so it is called the reward body.

Where do such qualities come from? The author says that they “are all brought to completion through the perfuming of undefiled practices such as the pāramitās and through inconceivable perfuming.” It is still perfuming. The theme of the preceding passage comes to fruition here.

The coarse form seen by ordinary beings differs according to the six destinies, taking various dissimilar forms without marks of experiencing bliss. It is therefore called the response body.

The point is this: the distinction between the two bodies does not arise because the buddha changes twice; it arises because the consciousness that sees differs. What body appears depends on the consciousness through which the one reality is seen.

This also resolves an old difficulty. If the buddha is free from deliberate activity, why say that one body appears to this person and another to someone else? On the account given here, the buddha has not selected two modes of appearance. Two kinds of consciousness each precipitate the appearance they are able to bear. One moonbeam falls on clear and muddy water; each water bears its own reflection, while the moon never divides itself.

For the same reason, differences among scriptural accounts of seeing buddhas need not be read as partiality on the buddha’s part. Difference lies on the receiving side, not on the giving side.

This judgment has a practical bearing: instead of asking “What does the buddha look like?” ask “Through what am I looking?” The first question has no single answer; work can begin with the second.

Understanding, Yet Still Discriminating

The author adds an intermediate position, and it is the position of many readers: bodhisattvas who have newly aroused the aspiration, “because they deeply trust the dharma of suchness, see it in small measure.”

They know that the forms, marks, adornments, and the like “neither come nor go, are apart from limitation, manifest only in dependence upon mind, and do not depart from suchness.” The understanding is already present.

Then comes the qualification: “Yet these bodhisattvas still discriminate, because they have not entered the stage of the dharma-body.”

One may understand and still discriminate. There remains a stretch of road between understanding something and corresponding to it. The author does not condemn the bodhisattva as mistaken; he says only that the stage of the dharma-body has not yet been entered.

Beyond this: “When they attain the pure mind, what they see is subtle and its function becomes increasingly excellent, until, at the exhaustion of the bodhisattva stages, they see it completely.” The final statement is more thorough still: “If the karmic consciousness is left behind, there is no mark of seeing, because among the dharma-bodies of the buddhas there are no separate forms and marks that see one another.”

Once the karmic consciousness is gone, the mark of seeing is gone. Dharma-bodies do not look across at one another. Seeing itself belongs to the receiving side.

If the Dharma-body Is Apart from Form, How Can It Manifest Form?

The second question and answer receives a hard, single-sentence reply:

“Precisely because this dharma-body is the substance of form, it can manifest as form.”

Form is not fabricated somewhere outside the dharma-body. Its capacity to appear follows from the dharma-body being the substance of form itself.

The author then carries the relation of form and mind to its limit: “From the beginning form and mind have been nondual. Because the nature of form is wisdom, the substance of form is formless and is called the wisdom-body. Because the nature of wisdom is form, the dharma-body is said to pervade everywhere.”

The nature of form is wisdom, and so the substance of form is formless; the nature of wisdom is form, and so the dharma-body pervades everywhere. The two clauses are inner and outer faces of one statement: from the side of form, it is formless; from the side of wisdom, it is omnipresent.

The forms manifested are “without limits”: immeasurable bodhisattvas, immeasurable reward bodies, and immeasurable adornments can appear throughout the worlds of the ten directions, “each distinct, all without limits and not obstructing one another.” They differ without mutual obstruction because none possesses a separate boundary of its own.

At the end, the author marks a limit: “This cannot be known through the discrimination of mind and consciousness, for it is the free function of suchness.” Analysis cannot master this point. A treatise that reasons at every turn is willing here to identify where reasoning ends, and that restraint is itself part of the teaching.

Entering the Unmoving Aspect through the Moving One

The section on showing the right meaning closes with a declaration: “It is shown that one can enter the aspect of suchness directly from the aspect of arising and ceasing.”

Earlier the two aspects were said each to contain all dharmas. That was the establishment; here the way of entry is given.

How does one enter? “Investigate the form and mind of the five aggregates and the object-realm of the six sense-objects: ultimately they are without thought. Because mind has no form or mark, though one seeks it throughout the ten directions, it can never be found.”

The instruction is to look: look for the form and mind of the five aggregates, the six sense-objects, the form of mind itself. Search through all ten directions, and it is not found.

The point is not to be told that it cannot be found, but to search and fail to find it oneself. Those are far from the same event.

Then comes the simile: “It is like a person who, because of delusion, calls east west, though the directions have not in fact turned.”

The simile places all movement on the side of mistaken designation. Orientation itself remains intact.

Applied to mind: “So it is with sentient beings. Deluded through ignorance, they call thought the mind, though the mind in fact has never moved.” Ignorance misnames what it encounters; it does not move what it misnames.

One traditional reading adds evidence through investigation. Search for the moving thought: what has ceased is already gone, what has not arisen is not yet present, and between them there is nowhere to abide. The moving thought itself offers no place in which its movement can be found.

The final sentence is the entrance: “If one can observe and know that mind is without thought, one then accords with and enters the aspect of suchness.”

To know that mind is without thought is not to suppress thoughts. It is to see clearly that what has always been taken for mind was never mind itself.

This statement and the earlier statement in the aspect of mind as suchness—“if one is free from thought, this is called entry”—are two formulations of one entrance. The earlier speaks from the unmoving aspect; this one, from within the moving aspect. Here one can see that the two aspects do not part.

Carrying Forward—How the Commentators Read This Passage

The foregoing is the sense of this passage in itself. What follows lets the commentators’ eyes shine on it from the side—a commentary is not the treatise, only the same matter seen from another position.

Fazang’s Record of the Meaning of the Awakening of Faith in the Great Vehicle takes up and explains this passage sentence by sentence. Its sharpest contribution concerns the two bodies. On the response body, he says that ordinary beings and those of the two vehicles “do not yet understand consciousness-only”: the key is that the seeing consciousness does not know consciousness-only. On the reward body, he says that bodhisattvas from the Ten Understandings onward can comprehend consciousness-only and know that there are no external sense-objects; they see the buddha-body in accord with the karmic consciousness, and so it is called the reward body. He thereby identifies the distinction between the two bodies as a difference on the seeing side.

In explaining “the mind in fact does not move,” Fazang adds evidence through investigation: seek the moving thought, and between the already-ceased and the not-yet-arisen there is nowhere for it to abide. The missing step between simile and application is supplied. The simile says the directions do not turn; the application says mind does not move. How is its nonmovement known? By seeking the “movement” and finding nowhere in which it abides.

Wonhyo’s Commentary on the Awakening of Faith does not recopy the treatise in this passage but explains it according to its outline. Nor do the two commentaries offer conflicting judgments here for side-by-side record.

The treatise’s own words—“the directions have not in fact turned”—still stand where they were, needing neither a commentator nor a stage.