解深密經 心要連讀

A great sūtra — where does it set its first stroke?

In this chapter the World-Honoured One is in no hurry to speak doctrine; first He lets us behold a realm: light most pure, the adornment of the seven jewels, a great hall without bound. But look closely at a single clause — all of that is no real thing standing apart from consciousness, but "having for its mark the utmost-sovereign pure consciousness": it is what the pure mind manifests. The vein of Consciousness-Only already lies hidden within this opening adornment, waiting only to be recognized.

Below it, ten bodhisattvas are seated foremost. They are no mere accompaniment: their presence anticipates the principal interlocutors and the arc of the seven chapters to come — mind-and-consciousness, the three natures, the three non-natures, calm and insight, the grounds and perfections, and the fruit of Buddhahood.

An introduction is never merely an introduction. See, then, how this great hall manifested by pure consciousness lifts its curtain, and how the ten leaders anticipate the principal interlocutors of the later chapters. He Who Unravels the Hidden Intent of the Profound Meaning is a respondent in Chapter Two, most of the others are questioners, and the list is not exhaustive—Elder Subhūti, the fourth Chapter Two interlocutor, is not among the ten.

Whenever there is "the most ultimate real," we always want to find it a phrase, to point out an object for it.

This chapter turns, just at the end of that road: that ultimate truth is apart from all speech — you say "conditioned," you say "unconditioned," and these are only provisionally set-up names; it is beyond all reckoning — no place that reasoning can reach, realized only by the noble ones in their own minds; it is neither one with nor other than the ten thousand dharmas — not standing outside the dharmas, yet not merged into them, like that one streak of fresh white upon a conch, neither one with the conch nor other than it; and it pervades all dharmas in a single taste — like space amid the manifold motley colours, markless, undivided, equal and reaching everywhere.

Those who cling to one side, each saying his own say, are stuck just here, at this "single taste," and cannot get through.

The chapter, by the skilled conjuror and by space, points out, one by one, this thing that cannot be spoken. So let your hand that would "point it out" rest a while, and see how that inexpressible matter fills all the ten thousand dharmas, and is not two.

A waterfall, seen from afar, looks like a still white sash hung against the cliff; seen up close, not a single drop of it is at rest.

Beneath our body-and-mind there seems, likewise, to sit a "self" forever the same. Yet what the World-Honoured One discloses to Bodhisattva Broad Wisdom in this chapter is another matter altogether: that which there bears birth-and-death, stores up all the seeds, and holds up our seeing, hearing, and knowing is not a "self," but a stream — profound, subtle, never ceasing day or night: "all its seeds, like a torrent."

It has three names, and not one of them is a "self"; and just because it is so easily mistaken, the Buddha does not lightly open His mouth about it to the foolish and unlearned.

The torrent is unbroken, yet there is not a drop in it to be grasped. Enter, then, this chapter, and see for yourself who that is whom you have been calling "I."

A clear crystal, joined with blue dye, looks like a blue jewel; joined with yellow dye, it looks like true gold. The foolish man takes the "jewel" for real and goes to seize it, and so is deceived — yet the crystal, when did it ever change?

In this chapter, for Bodhisattva Root-of-Virtue, the World-Honoured One gathers up the characteristics of all dharmas into three, to be seen as one: the crystal itself is the "other-dependent" — the mark born of conditions; that tint of colour you misread and cling to so fiercely is the "wholly-imagined" — the false mark established by names and words; and the crystal's original purity is the "perfectly-accomplished" — the suchness displayed, right upon the conditionally-arisen mark, once the false clinging is left behind.

The three are not three things, but three faces upon one and the same jewel. This chapter is important scriptural material for the Consciousness-Only teaching of the three natures; its precise relations to later treatises remain bounded comparisons at their explicit passages.

To learn, upon the conditionally-arisen mark, to see which layer is the deceit and which the truth — let it begin from this chapter.

The Buddha first said, "Dharmas each have their own characteristic, each to be fully known, each to be wholly cut off"; and afterward He said, "All dharmas are without intrinsic nature, without arising and ceasing, quiescent from the very first, by their own nature in nirvāṇa." Do not the two collide?

In this chapter the World-Honoured One unties this knot for the bodhisattva Born of the Ultimate Meaning: that "absence of intrinsic nature" is said in dependence on a hidden intent — it is not to say that nothing whatever exists. The wholly-imagined is mere designation from the first, and so it is said to be without intrinsic nature as to mark; the other-dependent comes to be through conditions and is not there of itself, and so it is said to be without intrinsic nature as to arising; the perfectly-accomplished is the ultimate meaning made manifest by selflessness, and so it is said to be without intrinsic nature as to ultimate meaning. The "absence" is meant to dispel that layer of deluded clinging you force on top — not to strike out the real with a single stroke as well.

The sūtra goes further and declares itself: the Buddha's Dharma has three turnings, and this teaching is precisely the teaching of final meaning, the "fully explicit" of the third turning.

The one line "all dharmas are without nature" — how, in Kuiji's ancient-master reading of a Middle Way that is "neither empty nor existent," does it fall into neither annihilation nor permanence? Enter this chapter, and see it clearly.

Close your eyes and sit still; within the mind, raise up the image of a Buddha. That image — is it outside your mind, or within?

In this chapter, the World-Honoured One, at the request of the bodhisattva Maitreya, lays out in full sweep the whole road into the path — "calm" and "insight" — from its support and object, to seeking, the two paths, applied-and-sustained thought, and knowing the Dharma and the meaning, all the way to countering the obstructions and realizing awakening: eighteen gates complete, the longest chapter in the whole sūtra. Yet the backbone of this long road lies in a single sentence: the image contemplated within concentration is no realm separately existing outside the mind — "What I teach as the object of consciousness is only the manifestation of consciousness."

It is like a bright mirror manifesting an image: the image seems a separate reflection apart from its basis, yet in truth is not apart from the mirror-face. The seeing and the seen are, from the first, two faces of one consciousness.

The later Consciousness-Only passages on the four investigations, the four veridical knowledges, and the cultivative order of "now setting up a slight thing, calling it the nature of consciousness-only" can be cross-read with this sentence and the chapter's calm-and-insight teaching; no single line of derivation is asserted. So sit down, and watch how that image within the mind betrays the very bottom of "consciousness-only."

From the ordinary person to Buddhahood — how far is there to go? This chapter gives not a slogan, but a map.

The World-Honoured One spreads out this road for the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara: from the first ground, "Great Joy," all the way to the Buddha-ground — ten grounds, with the Buddha-ground, eleven levels in all; and each level has its own folly and coarse-heaviness to be countered — twenty-two follies and eleven coarse-heavinesses together — peeled away level by level. What is cultivated is the ten perfections: the six perfections of giving, discipline, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom, with the latter four — skilful means, vow, power, and knowledge — as their aids.

Raising the perfections upon their grounds, removing the obstructions by the perfections: the coarse is severed first, the subtle exhausted last, passing through three great incalculable aeons, the skin, flesh, and bone peeled clean layer by layer. And at the close, the World-Honoured One points further: the three vehicles share one Dharma-realm and one principle, and so, by hidden intent, are spoken of as One Vehicle; this does not erase differences among beings’ lineages.

Buddhahood, after all, has stages one may follow. Now behold this ladder of the ten grounds, how level by level it leads up to the ground of awakening.

Once one has become a Buddha, what, in the end, does it look like?

The object is made clear, the practice is cultivated; in this last chapter the World-Honoured One, for the bodhisattva Mañjuśrī, lifts the veil on the marks of the fruit of Buddhahood. The text explicitly speaks of the Dharma-body, the transformation-body, and mind arising without application, and distinguishes the two vehicles' liberation-body from the Tathāgata's Dharma-body. Woncheuk and Dunlun read these passages as a three-body structure, identifying the last with the enjoyment-body. The triad is their ancient exegesis, not terminology stated by T676 itself.

Following on down, there is the Buddha's "speech" and "wisdom" — the three baskets of speech, the four kinds of principle, the five marks of all-knowing-wisdom; there is the Buddha's great function — the Dharma-body sending forth the great wisdom-light and issuing measureless transformation-body images; and on to the difference between pure land and impure land.

The whole Saṃdhinirmocana-sūtra closes upon just this "mark of becoming a Buddha": the object and the practice set up before, only here are seen in their homecoming. Come, then, and look — that Buddha-fruit, functioning without application, what kind of fruit is it.