楞伽阿跋多羅寶經 卷三 · 相續解脫·三和合

A silkworm — no one binds it; it merely spins its thread, mouthful by mouthful. And spinning on and on, the thread winds into a cocoon and seals it up inside — fast bound, yet bound inch by inch with a thread of its own.

That bondage we undergo day and night is just such a cocoon we spin ourselves. Thought continues on into thought, deed into deed, one life joining the next without a break; you take it for a rope destiny has tied on from without, but it is the false imagining of your own mind — saying "being," saying "non-being," greedy for this, hating that, taking each phrase for real, and winding one loop for every phrase.

In this passage the World-Honored One shows you the rope from the beginning: three strands — greed, hatred, delusion — twist it, and stretched on toward the future it runs on into the five destinies. Yet turn a layer over, and within that reality there was, from the first, no continuum, and no liberation to be found either — the thread was spun by false imagining, and false imagining was empty all along.

So to cut the cocoon, there is no need to go looking outside for shears. The verse leaves only one line: the foolish common person is bound because he "does not contemplate the continuum." Turn it about — be willing to look back and see one thing as-it-is, that this thread was from the first false imagining, and false imagining from the first without intrinsic nature — and the thread is spun no more; the cocoon opens of itself.

Now enter this passage, and look: beneath your own body and mind, that one bout of spinning-and-binding-oneself — who, after all, is it that is bound, and by whom is it to be untied?

Technical terms of this division (the continuum, the non-continuum, the three [kinds of] continuum, the threefold union of conditions, the threefold liberation, the imagined nature, intrinsic nature, noble wisdom, the emptiness-dharma, the seal of reality-as-it-is) are kept as they stand.

〔Question〕Mahāmati asks the meaning of the continuum and the meaning of liberation

At that time the bodhisattva Mahāmati again said to the Buddha: "World-Honored One! I only ask that you expound for me the meaning of the continuum and the meaning of liberation of all dharmas. If one can skillfully discern the mark of the continuity and the non-continuity of all dharmas, then I and the bodhisattvas will be able to understand well the skillful means of all continuity, and will not fall into clinging to the continuum upon 'the meaning as it is spoken.' If one can know well the mark of the continuity and the non-continuity of all dharmas, and be apart from the discriminating awareness of words and letters, then one will be able to roam to the buddha-fields of all the buddhas, and amid measureless great assemblies win the seal of power, sovereignty, spiritual penetration, and dhāraṇī, working transformations of every kind and sending forth a shining radiance. With the skill of awakened insight one enters the ten inexhaustible phrases and walks the practice that needs no contriving. Like the sun, the moon, the maṇi-jewel, and the four great elements, upon every ground one is apart from the marks and views of one's own false imagining, and sees all dharmas to be like an illusion, like a dream, and the rest. Entering the body of the buddha-ground, amid all the realms of sentient beings one teaches the Dharma to them and leads them each according to what befits him, so that they all come to abide in 'all dharmas are like an illusion, like a dream, and the rest,' apart from the two categories of being and non-being, apart from the false imagining of arising and ceasing, apart from the meaning that is 'other than what is said' — and so his body turns and turns and grows ever more excellent."

The Buddha told Mahāmati: "Excellent, excellent! Listen closely, listen closely, and reflect well upon it; I shall expound it for you."

Mahāmati said to the Buddha: "Very good; I will receive the teaching."

The Buddha told Mahāmati: "The measureless dharmas, all of them, are clung to as a continuum upon 'the meaning as it is spoken.' That is: the clinging to the continuum of mark, the clinging to the continuum of condition, the clinging to the continuum of being-and-non-being, the clinging to the continuum of the false imagining of arising-and-not-arising, the clinging to the continuum of the false imagining of ceasing-and-not-ceasing, the clinging to the continuum of the false imagining of vehicle-and-non-vehicle, the clinging to the continuum of the false imagining of conditioned-and-unconditioned, the clinging to the continuum of the false imagining of the particular marks of ground upon ground, the clinging to the continuum of the false imagining of one's own uninterrupted false imagining, the clinging to the continuum of the false imagining of the outsiders who rely upon the categories of being-and-non-being, the clinging to the continuum of the false imagining of the uninterruptedness of the three vehicles and the one vehicle. Furthermore, Mahāmati! these, and the rest of the foolish common beings besides, all raise up the continuum of their own false imagining. Because of this continuum, the false imagining of the foolish common person is like a silkworm making its cocoon — with the thread of false imagining it binds itself, and binds others too, and so there comes the clinging to the mark of the continuum of being and of non-being.

The continuum is of itself quiescent · false imagining does not arise

"Furthermore, Mahāmati! within that reality there is likewise no mark of continuity and non-continuity. Because one sees that all dharmas are of themselves quiescent, and that false imagining does not arise. The bodhisattva-mahāsattva sees that all dharmas are of themselves quiescent. Furthermore, Mahāmati! when one has awakened to the being and non-being of the outer object, then that mark which is one's own mind's manifestation is of itself nothing whatever. Following along in the observation of the measure of one's own mind's manifestation, all natures of being and of non-being are without mark; and because one sees that the continuum is of itself quiescent, there is thereupon, regarding all dharmas, no mark of continuity or of non-continuity.

Neither bondage nor liberation

"Furthermore, Mahāmati! within that reality there is likewise nothing bound and nothing liberated. It is the rest of those who have fallen into 'not awakening to it as it is' who have bondage and liberation. Why is this said? It is because, within the being and the non-being of all dharmas, there is no sentient being to be found.

The three [kinds of] continuum · the continuum of the five destinies

"Furthermore, Mahāmati! the foolish common person has three kinds of continuum, namely: greed, hatred, and delusion, together with craving for the future and the arising-together of delight-and-craving. Because there are these three kinds of continuum, there is therefore the continuum of destiny, and that continuum runs on into the five destinies. Mahāmati! for the one whose continuum is cut off, there is then no mark of continuity or of non-continuity.

The threefold union of conditions · the continuum of consciousness · the threefold liberation

"Furthermore, Mahāmati! when the three conditions in their union make the contriving that clings, the continuum of consciousness arises without break. Once there is the contriving that clings, there is the continuum. When the consciousness [born] of the threefold union of conditions is cut off, and one sees the threefold liberation, all continuity does not arise."

At that time the World-Honored One, wishing to restate this meaning, spoke in verse:

　　The false imagining that is not real —　this is what is called the mark of the continuum;
　　if one knows that reality,　the net of the continuum is then cut off.
　　Not-knowing regarding the natures of things,　one grasps and takes according to words —
　　just like that silkworm,　weaving its net and binding itself:
　　the foolish common person is bound by false imagining,　and does not contemplate the continuum.

Mahāmati again said to the Buddha: "As the World-Honored One has said, by that particular false imagining one falsely imagines that particular nature; yet there is, in truth, no such intrinsic nature — there is only the nature that is false imagining."

Mahāmati said to the Buddha: "World-Honored One! if there is only the nature that is false imagining, and there is no 'nature' and 'non-nature' set up in mutual dependence, then would this not become the fault the World-Honored One has spoken of, that 'affliction and purity are both without nature'? For all dharmas are of the nature that is false imagining, and are of no nature."

The Buddha told Mahāmati: "It is so, it is so! It is just as you have said. Mahāmati! it is not that the 'intrinsic nature' the foolish common person falsely imagines is real. This nature that is false imagining has not that substance in which 'nature' and 'intrinsic nature' stand over against each other. Mahāmati! as for the intrinsic nature that noble wisdom has — it is seen by noble knowing, noble seeing, and the eye of noble insight; an intrinsic nature such as this is then the knowable."

Mahāmati said to the Buddha: "If, like the noble ones, one knows the intrinsic nature by noble knowing, noble seeing, and the eye of noble insight — not by the divine eye, not by the fleshly eye — knowing it thus, and not like the false imagining of the foolish common person: World-Honored One! then how is the foolish common person to become apart from this false imagining? For he does not awaken to the matter of the noble nature. World-Honored One! he is neither in error nor free of error. Why is this said? It is because he does not awaken to the intrinsic nature of the noble matter, and does not see the mark that is apart from being and non-being. World-Honored One! the noble one, too, does not see and does not falsely imagine as the foolish common person does; for the noble one does not take the realm of the particular mark as his realm. World-Honored One! the foolish common person, too, upon that 'mark of intrinsic nature,' brings up the nature that is false imagining in just this way, yet does not say whether it is with cause or without cause — and so he falls into the view of 'the mark of nature.' What he manifests is other than the realm of the noble one, and is not like that of the noble ones; and thus there comes the fault of 'infinite regress.' World-Honored One! this is because he does not awaken to the mark of intrinsic nature. World-Honored One! that false imagining of his, too, does not have as its cause the mark of intrinsic nature. How then is he to falsely imagine that which is not-false-imagining, and to know as-it-is the false imagining? World-Honored One! false imagining is one thing, and the mark of intrinsic nature is another. World-Honored One! by a cause that is not similar, one raises up the thought of the nature that is false imagining. How then is he, in each and every case, to not falsely imagine? The foolish common person does not know it as-it-is; yet, in order that sentient beings might become apart from false imagining, it is said that 'what is like the mark of false imagining is not as it really is.' World-Honored One! why is it that one restrains sentient beings from clinging, upon the matter of being-and-non-being-views, to intrinsic nature, and yet, upon the realm that noble wisdom walks, clings and falls into the view of being — saying that 'the emptiness-dharma is of no nature,' and speaking instead of that 'intrinsic-nature matter of noble wisdom'?"

The Buddha told Mahāmati: "It is not that I say 'the emptiness-dharma is of no nature,' nor that I fall into the view of being in speaking of the 'intrinsic-nature matter of noble wisdom'; rather, it is in order that sentient beings might become apart from the words and phrases that make for terror. From beginningless time sentient beings have clung to the mark of intrinsic nature, have clung to that intrinsic-nature-mark-view of the matter of noble wisdom, and so the emptiness-dharma is taught for them. Mahāmati! I do not say that there is a 'mark of intrinsic nature.' Mahāmati! it is only that I abide in the 'emptiness-dharma as it really is' that I myself have realized, apart from the mark-view of confusion, apart from the view of 'the being and non-being of one's own mind's manifestation.' I have won the threefold liberation, as sealed by that 'seal of reality-as-it-is.' Upon intrinsic nature, I have won the observation of 'awakening by one's own condition' and abide therein, apart from the view and mark of the matter of being and non-being.

Beginning from a single question

What Mahāmati asks here is the continuum and liberation: how it is that all dharmas run on in a continuum, and how one is liberated out of that continuum.

The question is plain, but the answer is of the gravest weight. For the bondage that a foolish common person undergoes his whole life long comes down, in the end, to just one thing — a continuum. Thought continues on into thought, deed into deed, destiny into destiny, and so there is birth and there is death, revolving without break. In answering this passage, the World-Honored One first sets out at length the eleven kinds of clinging-continuum, pointing out one by one how the foolish common person "clings upon the meaning as it is spoken"; then he turns a layer deeper and says that "within that reality there is, in truth, no continuum and no non-continuum either"; and only at the last does he gather it up into the cause of the three kinds of continuum, the cutting-off of the threefold union, and the threefold liberation. Read straight through, this passage in fact takes that rope called "the continuum" and shows it to you whole — from the tying of the knot, to the seeing-through, to the untying.

To look at this rope, one must first recognize who it was that knotted it.

This rope is a thread you spun yourself

The scripture gives an intimate simile: the false imagining of the foolish common person is like the silkworm making its cocoon — with the thread of false imagining it binds itself, and binds others too.

This one simile is the eye of the whole passage. It first says one thing outright: the bondage of the continuum is not something laid upon you from without; it is spun out by the false imagining of your own mind, and wound around by it too. No one binds the silkworm; it merely spins its thread mouthful by mouthful, and spinning on and on it seals itself inside the cocoon. So too the foolish common person: he clings upon "the meaning as it is spoken" — say "being," and he grasps a being; say "non-being," and he grasps a non-being; say arising, say ceasing, say vehicle, say ground, and every word he takes for a real thing and reaches out to attach himself to; grasp one phrase and he winds one loop, and so the clinging to mark, the clinging to condition, the clinging to being-and-non-being — eleven kinds of clinging bind on layer over layer, and the cocoon is made.

Held up to the mirror of Yogācāra, this simile shows the more clearly. This "clinging upon the meaning as it is spoken" is precisely the imagined nature that is universally-reckoned — a thing without intrinsic nature, grasped as real according to name and word. The silkworm's thread is not a rope that was there to begin with; it is spun out by the silkworm on the spot. Just so, the continuum of the imagined nature is not some "self" that was there to begin with, running on in a continuum; it is reckoned into being by false imagining on the spot. That is why the verse says: the false imagining that is not real is what is called the mark of the continuum. The mark of the continuum has for its substance the imagined nature — put more plainly, just that one portion which is universally-reckoned. Fix your gaze on this one line, and the bones of this passage stand up.

Here the ancient master brings down a blade. Zonglei says: to be not-knowing regarding all dharmas, and to grasp and cling according to words, is like the silkworm weaving its net, binding itself and binding others too, with never a break — and all of it because of not-contemplating. This blade falls on those three words, not-contemplating. The reason the cocoon binds ever tighter is not that the thread is so strong; it is that the silkworm never once looks back at what it is doing. And the reason the continuum does not break off is not that the continuum is so real; it is that false imagining never once contemplates itself as-it-is.

The rope was empty all along

Having recognized that the rope is a thread spun by oneself, the scripture at once turns and says a still harder thing: within that reality there is, in truth, no continuum and no non-continuity either.

This turn must be watched closely. It does not mean "first there is a continuum, and then it is cut off." It means: one sees all dharmas to be of themselves quiescent, and that false imagining does not arise at all, and so this pair of marks, continuity and non-continuity, has nowhere to be set up at all. The bodhisattva sees all dharmas quiescent — and quiescence is not the pressing-still of something that was moving; it is the awakening to the fact that the being and non-being of the outer object were only one's own mind's manifestation, of itself nothing whatever. Following along in the observation of the measure of one's own mind's manifestation, being and non-being alike, all natures are without mark; and the moment one sees that the continuum is of itself quiescent, the marks of continuity and non-continuity alike are not to be found.

Then the scripture adds a further line: within that reality there is likewise nothing bound and nothing liberated; it is those who have fallen into "not awakening to it as-it-is" who have bondage and liberation. Why? Because within the being and non-being of all dharmas there is no sentient being to be found. This one line empties out those two words, "liberation," as well — you supposed there was a "bound self" waiting to be untied, yet in the ultimate sense not even that sentient being is to be found: who then is bound, and who liberated?

The mirror of Yogācāra, held to this point, shows the layer that is the threefold naturelessness. The continuum belongs to the imagined, and the imagined is without intrinsic nature; hence the mark is said to be of itself quiescent. Bondage-and-liberation are provisional names set up with reference to the deluded feeling; on the side of the real that is the truly-perfected, one is apart from being, apart from non-being, nothing bound and nothing liberated. The previous section was still speaking of the silkworm binding itself; this section tells you that the thread, the cocoon — looked at in the ultimate sense — were of no real substance at all: the false, and there is this one bout of self-binding; the real, and even this one bout is not to be found. This turn takes "cutting off the continuum" from "putting one's force to cutting off a real thing" and turns it into "seeing as-it-is that it was without reality all along."

Where the three strands come from, and where the one blade cuts

Turning back down from this layer of self-quiescence, the scripture comes once more to rest on the plane of events, and points out just which strands this rope is twisted of, and on which stroke it is cut.

First it points out where they come from: the foolish common person has three kinds of continuum — greed, hatred, delusion, plus craving for the future, arising together with delight-and-craving. The three poisons are the cause, running on into the five destinies the fruit. Zonglei's ruling is clean and clear: greed-hatred-delusion are the cause of the continuum, the five destinies are the fruit of the continuum; by a past cause the present fruit is formed, and the present again makes itself a cause to draw on the recompense of the future, and so the three times run on in a continuum, link locking into link. What is called "craving for the future" is craving for the pleasing fruit-recompense of the life to come, arising together with delight-and-craving — and this one strand is the most fatal, for it stretches the rope on and on toward the future, so that destiny joins to destiny and runs on into the five destinies. Let the three poisons once be extinguished, and one is apart from the five destinies; the cause extinguished, the fruit extinguished — this is the continuum cut off.

Then it points out where the cut is: when the three conditions in their union together make the contriving that clings, the continuum of consciousness arises without break; where there is clinging there is the continuum, and let this condition and this consciousness be cut off and the threefold liberation seen, and all continuity does not arise. Zonglei says that this threefold union of conditions is the outsiders' false reckoning of the union of the three conditions of faculty, dust, and self, whereupon the consciousnesses arise in continuum one after another; once there is clinging, the continuum is without break, and if one understands the three conditions, is apart from all clinging, and sees the threefold liberation, the continuum right there does not arise. And here is the one line that matters most — Zonglei says: this threefold liberation is liberation pure by nature, liberation pure in fullness, and liberation pure by skillful means; to understand the three conditions is right there itself the threefold liberation, and there is not, apart from the three conditions, some further liberation.

This one line answers exactly to the Yogācāra sense of the transformation of the basis. Consciousness, depending on the threefold union of conditions, plus clinging, arises in continuum without break — this is to say that the continuum of consciousness is born of causes and conditions, and not that there is some real self or real dharma abiding there of itself in a continuum; where there is clinging the continuum arises, where clinging is cut off the continuum does not arise, the whole of it hanging on that one portion which is universally-reckoned. So what "cutting off the continuum" cuts off is not consciousness itself; it cuts off that false clinging that reaches out to the three conditions and clings. Let the false clinging once part, and the ocean of consciousness is still that same ocean of consciousness — only it no longer throws up the waves of birth-and-death. The transformation of the basis is not the changing of one thing for another; it is, right upon this one stretch of consciousness, the turning of the defiled into the pure — even as the threefold liberation is not apart from the three conditions, so the transformation of the basis is not apart from this consciousness. Zonglei's phrase, "there is not some further liberation apart" — those few words cut off at the root the notion that "liberation is to be sought somewhere else."

And so, back to the silkworm. The cocoon was spun and bound by the thread of oneself, and to cut the cocoon is likewise upon this one thread — not to go looking outside for a pair of shears, but to turn back and contemplate one thing as-it-is: this thread was from the first false imagining, and false imagining is from the first without intrinsic nature. One contemplation, and the thread is spun no more; the thread spun no more, the cocoon opens of itself. The verse's last line, "does not contemplate the continuum," said the other way about is the very gate of liberation: be willing to contemplate, and the net is cut off.

Onward Transmission

The sense established in this passage — "consciousness depends on causes and conditions for its continuum, and seeing the threefold liberation the continuum does not arise" — is inherited, one by one, by the later Yogācāra treatises.

Inherited most closely of all are these two places: the continuum of consciousness, and the transformation of the basis. The scripture says that consciousness, depending on the threefold union of conditions, arises in continuum without break — and this is precisely one of the scriptural sources of the later Yogācāra "the consciousnesses depend on causes and conditions and continue on thought by thought, and are not naturally eternal": the eighth consciousness ever-evolving like a flowing stream, the first seven arising according to condition, none of them straying beyond this line of reasoning — "causes and conditions, then continuity; clinging, then no break." The scripture says that seeing the threefold liberation the continuum does not arise, and that to cut off the continuum is to cut off the cause of the revolving — and this again is that on which the sense of the transformation of the basis rests: what the transformation of the basis cuts off, the two obstructions of the afflictive and the cognitive, is precisely this clinging-continuum that arises by reaching out to the threefold union; that the continuum is cut off and yet consciousness is not cut off is exactly of a piece with "the basis is transformed and yet the true aspect of the store consciousness does not perish." And the line that the mark of the continuum is just the false imagining that is not real, and that knowing the real as-it-is cuts off the net of the continuum — this falls more directly still upon the three natures: the continuum belongs to the imagined, the real belongs to the truly-perfected, and to dispel the false and disclose the real is just to cut off the net of the continuum; the later Yogācāra teaching of the three natures and the threefold naturelessness finds in this passage a scriptural warrant.

Chan reception sources must remain stratified. Jingjue T2837 records Bodhidharma telling Huike to practice in reliance on the four-scroll Laṅkā and thereby attain deliverance〔T85n2837 1284c24–25〕; Daoxuan T2060 records entrustment of the four-scroll Laṅkā〔T50n2060 0552b20–22〕. The formula "it may seal the mind" belongs to the Song preface〔T16n0670 0479c10–13〕. This movement may therefore be read within later Chan reception, but the Song formula cannot be backfilled into Tang sources and the movement cannot be declared Patriarchal Chan’s unique foundation.