楞伽阿跋多羅寶經 卷四 · 阿羅漢·斷肉·末偈

That piece of meat on your plate — you take it only for a meal. But in this passage the Buddha would have you look past it to what lies behind: to see where it came from, and where it draws you on to.

Mahāmati asks five questions in a string, each of them barbed, forcing the World-Honored One to attest his own perfection. Yet the World-Honored One first takes "buddha" apart into two layers to see it: the one who manifests his body according to the occasion, suffers men's slander, and is guarded by warriors is the transformation-buddha, like the vessel a potter turns out at the touch of the wheel; the one who is apart from all that the sense-faculties can measure, unmoving and yet ever expounding the dharma, is the true Tathāgata. The whole board of contradictions, once told apart, falls away. Following this parting, the scripture lays bare the two obstructions and the two deaths, and the deepest sentence of all — one and the same Tathāgata-womb is at once the cause of birth-and-death and the cause of nirvāṇa. The earlier statement that it is "named the consciousness-store" when perfumed and Scroll One's ocean-and-waves simile may illuminate this sentence, but neither erases the condition attached to that naming.

Then the theme turns, and comes down onto the knife's edge: one taste of meat. Sentient beings have been, turn upon turn, one another's six kinds of kin; the meat in your bowl today, how do you know it was not, in a former time, your own flesh and blood? The money with which you buy the meat is a net that, cast down but once, draws in every being of the air, the water, and the land. Even the "three kinds of pure meat" the śrāvakas permitted, the Buddha here closes the last gate upon — there is not, in the whole world, one piece of meat truly killed by no one for you.

Now enter this passage. See how the single line running from the prophecy down to the abstaining from meat gathers the highest doctrine of consciousness up into the most intimate thing of all — one mouthful of your food.

Technical terms of this division (the arhat, anuttarā-samyak-saṃbodhi, nirvāṇa, the remainderless nirvāṇa, the śrāvaka vehicle, the great vehicle, the transformation-buddha, the dharma-buddha, the true Tathāgata, the two obstructions, the obstruction to knowledge, the obstruction of the afflictions, the no-self of persons, the no-self of dharmas, the two kinds of death, the four grounds of abiding, the ground of ignorance, mind-mentation-and-consciousness, the Tathāgata-womb, the store consciousness, the vajra-holding warriors, abiding in the bliss of the present dharma, the three kinds of pure meat, the three vehicles) are kept as they stand.

Mahāmati asks the World-Honored One about the five matters concerning the arhat's prophecy

At that time the bodhisattva Mahāmati again said to the Buddha: "World-Honored One! The World-Honored One gives the arhat his prophecy, saying that he shall attain to anuttarā-samyak-saṃbodhi, in no way different from the bodhisattvas. But if all sentient beings do not, as to the dharma, enter into nirvāṇa, then who is it that reaches the buddha-path? Again it is said: from the first attainment of buddhahood right up to the parinirvāṇa, in all that time the Buddha never spoke a single word, nor ever made any answer — for the Tathāgata dwells ever in concentration, without deliberating and without examining, it being a transformation-buddha that manifests and performs the buddha's deeds. If that is so, why then is it also said that 'consciousness is a mark that perishes moment by moment, evolving on in succession'? And again it is said: the vajra-holding warriors are ever in attendance at his side. And again: he does not set up any first limit. And again: he shows forth Māra and the manifold works of Māra, and the fruits recompensing evil karma too — such as being slandered by the brahmin-woman Ciñcā and by Sundarī, or holding out an empty bowl as he went. These obstructions of evil karma the Tathāgata likewise shows forth, one and all. Said thus, how can the Tathāgata be reckoned to have won omniscient knowledge and yet not be apart from the manifold faults?"

The Buddha told Mahāmati: "Listen well, and listen well! Ponder it well and bear it in mind — I shall expound it for you."

Mahāmati said to the Buddha: "It is well, World-Honored One! With all my heart I receive the teaching."

The Buddha answers: it is the transformation-buddha that prophesies, so as to draw and urge on the two vehicles

The Buddha told Mahāmati: "This is spoken for the sake of the remainderless nirvāṇa; it is to draw and urge on those who practise the bodhisattva-practice. In this world and in other worlds there are those practising the bodhisattva-practice who take delight in the nirvāṇa of the śrāvaka vehicle; and so as to make them leave the śrāvaka vehicle and advance toward the great vehicle, the transformation-buddha gives the śrāvakas their prophecy — it is the transformation-buddha that prophesies, and not the dharma-buddha. Mahāmati! It is for just this reason that the śrāvakas are prophesied to be in no way different from the bodhisattvas.

"Mahāmati! To say 'in no way different' means that the śrāvakas, the pratyekabuddhas, and the buddha-tathāgatas alike cut off the obstruction of the afflictions and alike win the one taste of liberation; it does not mean that they cut off the obstruction to knowledge as well. Mahāmati! The obstruction to knowledge is cut off only by seeing the no-self of dharmas, supreme and purified. The obstruction of the afflictions is cut off thus: having first practised the seeing of the no-self of persons, one cuts off the seven consciousnesses and makes them cease, and the obstruction to the dharma is undone, and the perfuming stored in consciousness ceases — and only then is there ultimate purity.

The two obstructions are cut off severally · the two kinds of death are left behind · the Tathāgata-womb is the cause of birth-and-death and nirvāṇa, pain and pleasure

"Because there is a dharma abiding from the very origin, the earlier limit and the later limit are alike without [own-]nature. And because of the inexhaustible original vow, the Tathāgata — though without deliberating and without examining — is yet able to expound the wondrous dharma: this is because it is what right knowledge manifests, and because right mindfulness is unforgetting; and so, without deliberating or examining, he is able to expound the dharma. Because the perfuming of the four grounds of abiding and of the ground of ignorance is cut off, both obstructions — the obstruction of the afflictions and the obstruction to knowledge — are cut off; and thereupon the two kinds of death are left behind, the no-self of persons and the no-self of dharmas are awakened to, and both obstructions are cut off entire.

"Mahāmati! Mind, mentation, and mental consciousness, together with the eye-consciousness and the rest — these seven consciousnesses, because the moment-by-moment cause of the perfuming that arises is left behind, and the one portion that is good and undefiled is left behind too, no longer evolve in birth-and-death. Mahāmati! This Tathāgata-womb is the very cause of birth-and-death and of nirvāṇa, of pain and of pleasure. It is empty and confounds the foolish mind. Mahāmati! This is what the foolish common person cannot awaken to.

The transformation-buddha is not the true Tathāgata · the potter's wheel simile

"Mahāmati! What the vajra-holding warriors attend upon and guard is only the transformation-buddha, and not the true Tathāgata. Mahāmati! That true Tathāgata is apart from all that the sense-faculties can measure. For all common persons, śrāvakas, pratyekabuddhas, and outsiders — the measuring of their sense-faculties is, in him, wholly extinguished; he wins the abiding in the bliss of the present dharma, and wins the unhindered forbearance of the knowledge of the dharma, and so is not one whom the vajra-holding warriors guard. None of the transformation-buddhas is born of karma. That transformation-buddha, transformed from a transformation — to call him buddha, he is not; to call him apart from buddha, he is yet not apart from buddha. He is one who, following the marks made by the workings of sentient beings — as a potter's wheel turns out its vessels — expounds the dharma for them; it is not that in the place of his own realization and penetration he expounds the realm of his own awakening.

The foolish, resting on the ceasing of the seven consciousnesses, give rise to the annihilation-view · not awakening to the store consciousness, they give rise to the eternalist view

"Furthermore, Mahāmati! the foolish, resting on the ceasing of the body of seven consciousnesses, give rise to the annihilation-view; and because they cannot awaken to that store of consciousness, they give rise to the eternalist view. It is by their own false imagining that they do not know the first limit. When the wisdom that is their own false imagining ceases, only then do they win liberation. When the perfuming of the four grounds of abiding and of the ground of ignorance is cut off, all faults whatsoever are thereby cut off."

Restating this meaning · the verse that the three vehicles are no [ultimate] vehicle

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

　　The three vehicles are in truth no [ultimate] vehicle,　nor is the Tathāgata worn away and cut off;
　　all this is what every buddha has taught,　taught so as to teach men to leave the manifold faults.
　　For the sake of that unhindered knowledge,　and for the sake of the remainderless nirvāṇa,
　　to draw and urge on the manifold lowly ones,　it is therefore taught under a veil.
　　The knowledge to which the buddhas give rise　discriminates and expounds the manifold paths;
　　in truth the [several] vehicles are no [ultimate] vehicle,　nor is that the true nirvāṇa.
　　Desire, form, existence-craving, and view —　these are called the four grounds of abiding;
　　they are what the mental consciousness gives rise to,　consciousness the dwelling, mentation abiding therein.
　　When mentation and the eye-consciousness and the rest　are cut off and cease, it is called impermanence;
　　but at times a man gives rise to the view of nirvāṇa,　and so for him it is taught as eternally abiding.

Mahāmati asks in verse about wine, meat, onions, and garlic

At that time the bodhisattva Mahāmati made his request in verse:

　　Those bodhisattvas who seek the buddha-path —
　　wine, meat, and onions among their foods, how are these to be regarded?
　　I pray the unsurpassed World-Honored One, in pity for us, will expound it.
　　These are what the foolish crave,　foul and of no good repute,
　　the relish of tigers and wolves —　how can they be taken as food?
　　The one who eats them gives rise to manifold faults;　not to eat is the blessing and the good.
　　I pray you will expound for us　the sin and the merit of eating and not eating.

When the bodhisattva Mahāmati had finished making his request in verse, he again said to the Buddha: "I pray the World-Honored One will expound for us the merit and the fault of eating meat and not eating meat. I and the bodhisattvas, in the present and in the future, would expound the dharma severally for the manifold sentient beings who long to eat meat, that those sentient beings might turn toward one another with a mind of kindness. Having won the mind of kindness, each in his own ground would be pure and clear, and would soon win the ultimate, unsurpassed awakening. Even the śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas, resting in the ground each has reached, would likewise accomplish the unsurpassed awakening. Even that company of outsiders who hold to evil and false doctrines, clinging to the false views of annihilation and eternity, calculating and clinging upside-down — even they yet have a restraining dharma and do not permit the eating of meat; how much less the Tathāgata, the world's protector and refuge, the accomplisher of the true dharma — how should he eat meat?"

The Buddha told Mahāmati: "It is well, it is well! Listen well, and listen well! Ponder it well and bear it in mind — I shall expound it for you."

Mahāmati said to the Buddha: "Yes, with all my heart I receive the teaching."

The Buddha expounds at large the manifold reasons why one should not eat meat

The Buddha told Mahāmati: "There are measureless reasons why one should not eat meat; now I shall expound them for you in brief. That is to say: all sentient beings, from the very origin, in the turning wheel of causes and conditions, have ever been one another's six kinds of kin; because one is to hold them as kin, one should not eat meat. The flesh of donkey, mule, camel, fox, dog, ox, horse, human, and beast — the butcher sells it all mixed together, past telling apart; therefore one should not eat meat. Meat grows from an unclean semen-and-blood source; therefore one should not eat meat. When sentient beings so much as smell the scent of one who eats meat, they are all struck with terror — as when they meet a caṇḍāla or a ḍombha and the like, whom the very dogs abhor at sight, barking in terror by the pack; therefore one should not eat meat. Eating meat, moreover, keeps the mind of kindness from arising in the one who practises; therefore one should not eat meat. Meat is what the foolish crave, foul and unclean, of no good repute; therefore one should not eat meat. Eating meat keeps the manifold spells from being accomplished; therefore one should not eat meat. Because the one who kills, at the sight of the shape and color of that flesh, gives rise to a perceiving and clings deeply to the relish of the meat; therefore one should not eat meat. The one who eats meat is spurned by the gods; therefore one should not eat meat. Eating meat makes the breath foul; therefore one should not eat meat. Eating meat brings on many evil dreams; therefore one should not eat meat. In the open and silent forest, tigers and wolves catch the scent of the meat and come; therefore one should not eat meat. Eating meat makes food and drink know no measure or limit; therefore one should not eat meat. Eating meat keeps the mind of world-weariness from arising in the one who practises; therefore one should not eat meat. I have ever said: whatever one eats and drinks, one is to hold the thought that it is the flesh of one's own child, and to hold the thought that it is the taking of medicine; therefore one should not eat meat. To say that eating meat is permitted — there is no such principle at all.

King Siṃha-saudāsa ate men and lost his kingdom

"Furthermore, Mahāmati! in the past there was a king named Siṃha-saudāsa. He ate the manifold kinds of meat, and ate on until at last he came to eating men; his ministers and people could not endure it, and so they revolted, cut off his stipend, and put him from his place. Because eating meat has such a fault as this, one should not eat meat.

Money for a net · in this scripture all is cut off entire

"Furthermore, Mahāmati! all those who take life do so for the sake of gain and profit; only so do they take life, slaughter, and sell. Those foolish sentient beings who eat meat make of money a net to catch that meat. Those who take life, whether with goods or with hook and net, catch the manifold sentient beings that fly in the air, that dwell in the water, that walk on the land — slaying them in manifold ways, slaughtering and selling for profit. Mahāmati! Nor is there ever a case of one who 'never taught the killing, never sought the killing, never gave rise to the thought of killing' and yet came to have fish and meat of himself. For this reason, one should not eat meat.

"Mahāmati! At times I have also taught the barring of five kinds of meat, or laid down the restraint of ten. But now, in this scripture, it is for all kinds and at all times that I take away the expedients formerly permitted — all meat whatsoever is cut off entire. Mahāmati! The Tathāgata, the Worthy One, the Perfectly Awakened One, eats nothing whatever — how much less fish and meat! Nor does he teach others to eat. Because he goes with great compassion for his forerunner, regarding all sentient beings as though they were his only child, he does not permit others to eat the flesh of his child."

Restating this meaning · the long verse on abstaining from meat

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

　　Sentient beings have all been one another's kin;　and meat, moreover, is base, foul, unclean, and confused,
　　growing from what is unclean —　sentient beings smelling its scent are all struck with terror.
　　All meat and onions,　and the manifold leeks, garlic, and the like,
　　and the manifold wines that make men heedless —　the one who practises should ever keep far from these.
　　He should ever keep far from sesame oil too,　and from beds that are bored through with holes,
　　for in the holes of such beds are tiny creatures,　and within them there is utmost terror.
　　Food and drink give rise to heedlessness,　heedlessness gives rise to the manifold thought-imaginings,
　　from thought-imagining is craving born;　therefore one should not eat meat.
　　From eating meat craving is born,　craving in turn makes the mind drunk,
　　drunkenness fosters the desire of love,　and so from birth-and-death there is no release.
　　For the sake of profit sentient beings are slain,　goods are made a net to catch that meat;
　　the buyer and the slayer, these two alike do evil karma,　and after death fall into the howling hells.
　　If there be truly no teaching, thinking, or seeking,　then there is no such thing as the three kinds of pure meat;
　　that meat is not something that comes to be without cause,　therefore one should not eat it.
　　Those who practise, for this reason,　should one and all keep far away;
　　the buddha-world-honored-ones of the ten directions　with one voice reproach the eating of meat.
　　Sentient beings, in turn, devour one another,　and after death fall among tigers and wolves and the like;
　　foul, loathsome, and abhorrent,　the place where they are born is ever a place of delusion.
　　Many are born as caṇḍālas,　or born as hunters, or of the ḍombha stock,
　　or born as ḍākinīs,　and the manifold kinds whose nature is to eat meat,
　　rākṣasas, cats, and civets and the like —　all take birth within this [company].
　　In the Hastikakṣya and the Mahāmegha,　in the Aṅgulimālika,
　　and in this Laṅkāvatāra-sūtra,　I have in every one restrained and cut off meat.
　　The buddhas, together with the bodhisattvas and śrāvakas,　with one accord reproach the eating of meat;
　　the man who eats meat and yet feels no shame　lives, birth after birth, ever in the dark of delusion.
　　Formerly it was said: the meat seen killed, heard killed, or suspected killed for oneself is one and all cut off;
　　that is because, out of false imagining, they cannot awaken to it, and so come to be born where meat is eaten.
　　Just as the faults of craving-desire　obstruct the sage's liberation,
　　so wine, meat, onions, leeks, and garlic　are all likewise obstructions to the noble path.
　　Sentient beings of the ages to come,　concerning the eating of meat, will foolishly say:
　　that this meat is pure and without fault,　and that the Buddha permits us to eat it.
　　In truth, in eating one should hold the thought of taking medicine,　and should hold too the thought of eating the flesh of one's child;
　　knowing measure and giving rise to world-weariness,　the one who practises should keep to the alms-round.
　　Of the one who rests in the mind of kindness,　I say that he should ever keep to world-weariness;
　　even with tigers, wolves, and the manifold evil beasts,　he may roam and rest as their companion.
　　If one eats the manifold blood and flesh,　sentient beings are all struck with terror;
　　therefore the one who practises,　with a mind of kindness, does not eat meat.
　　The one who eats meat is without compassion,　forever turned away from true liberation,
　　and runs counter to the mark of the sages;　therefore one should not eat.
　　To win birth in a brahmin's stock,　and in the manifold places of practice,
　　in a house of wisdom and of wealth —　all this is by reason of not eating meat.

Beginning from a hard question

Mahāmati's question here is put with no courtesy at all. He ranges out, one by one, the very things the World-Honored One is wont to say, and forces from them a contradiction. You give the arhat his prophecy and say he shall become a buddha, in no way different from a bodhisattva; yet you also say that no sentient being enters, as to the dharma, into nirvāṇa — then who is it, in the end, that walks through to the buddha-path? You say that from your attainment of buddhahood to your parinirvāṇa you never spoke a single word, that the Tathāgata dwells ever in concentration, without deliberating and without examining; then how do you come to say a thing so fine-drawn as "consciousness is a mark that perishes moment by moment, evolving on in succession"? You say the Tathāgata has won omniscient knowledge; then why are there vajra-holding warriors in attendance, why does he show forth the works of Māra, why does he suffer the slander of the empty bowl — all these obstructions of evil karma? In a word: if the Tathāgata is truly perfect, from where do these "imperfect" marks come?

The question looks like fault-finding, but it strikes at the very root of the buddha-body. To untie it, one must first see "buddha" in two layers. The World-Honored One's answer takes hold precisely here: the one who prophesies the arhat's buddhahood is not the dharma-buddha prophesying, it is the transformation-buddha; and the one attended, showing Māra, suffering slander, is not the true Tathāgata either, but the transformation-buddha. Once the true buddha and the transformation-buddha are told apart, the whole board of contradictions falls away. And this telling-apart is just where the scriptural source of the Yogācāra doctrine of the buddha-bodies lies — so we borrow the mirror of Yogācāra to light up the threefold sense of this passage: how the two obstructions are cut off severally, how the two deaths are left behind, how that Tathāgata-womb is at once the cause of birth-and-death and the cause of nirvāṇa.

The first: the obstruction to knowledge and the obstruction of the afflictions, and why they are cut off severally

The World-Honored One says it plainly: to say the arhat and the bodhisattva are "no different" is to say so at one point only — they alike cut off the obstruction of the afflictions and alike win the one taste of liberation; it is not that the obstruction to knowledge, too, is alike cut off. This one sentence draws the line between the two vehicles and the buddha sharp and clear.

The obstruction of the afflictions is cut off by first practising the seeing of the no-self of persons. When, within body and mind, you can find no "self" that presides, greed, hatred, and delusion lose the ground they stood on, and so the present activity of the seven consciousnesses is cut off and the perfuming stored in consciousness ceases too — this is as far as the two vehicles can reach, and the one taste of the liberation from birth-and-death is here. The obstruction to knowledge is otherwise. It is cut off only by seeing the no-self of dharmas — by seeing, upon all dharmas, that they are without own-nature, supreme and purified; and this the two vehicles never set their minds to, and the bodhisattva alone drives to the bottom.

Light it up with the mirror of Yogācāra, and these two obstructions are just what the later treatises establish as "the obstruction of the afflictions" and "the obstruction to the knowable" — the one obstructing liberation, the other obstructing awakening; cut off the first and one issues from birth-and-death, cut off the second and one accomplishes the buddha-knowledge. Zonglei points it beautifully: knowledge is fundamentally what breaks the delusions, and the delusions are the twofold clinging to person and to dharma; but if you give rise, upon knowledge itself, to a further clinging, then that knowledge turns instead into an obstruction. This one line lays bare why the obstruction to knowledge is an obstruction: it is not that knowledge is itself an obstruction, it is that the sticking to knowledge becomes the obstruction. The two vehicles, having realized the emptiness of persons, take it that they have reached the end, and this one fine clinging upon dharmas they do not break — this is precisely "knowledge becoming an obstruction." And so the buddha and the two vehicles alike cut off one obstruction, while the buddha alone cuts off one obstruction more — this is no contest of high and low, it is the difference of the thorough and the not-yet-thorough. The scripture here sets the line firm, and the later Yogācāra teaching of the "two obstructions" runs, blood and vein, from this place.

The second: leaving behind the two kinds of death, and what that dharma abiding from the origin is

Right upon this the scripture draws out a sentence of the greatest weight: because there is a dharma abiding from the very origin, the earlier limit and the later limit are alike without own-nature.

There is a dharma abiding from the origin, and so neither the earlier limit nor the later can be said to have real own-nature. It is just because there is this abiding ground beneath that the Tathāgata can, by the inexhaustible original vow — though without deliberating and without examining — yet expound the wondrous dharma. Here one must not slip past: that he can expound the dharma without deliberating or examining rests on its being what right knowledge manifests and right mindfulness holds unforgetting. And this is the very thread laid down for the transformation-buddha to come — the true Tathāgata abides unmoving, and the one who expounds the dharma is the transformed working that right knowledge manifests.

And when the perfuming of the four grounds of abiding — desire, form, existence, view — and of the ground of ignorance is once cut off, the two afflictions are exhausted, and thereupon one "leaves behind the two kinds of death." These "two kinds of death" the scripture only names and does not unfold; light them up with the mirror of Yogācāra, and they are birth-and-death by allotted portion and birth-and-death by transformation — the coarse, allotted body the two vehicles leave behind on cutting off the obstruction of the afflictions; the fine, transforming body exhausted only on cutting off the obstruction to the knowable, on becoming a buddha. Two obstructions against two deaths, the cutting of the obstruction being just the leaving-behind of the death; the scripture's one line — the two afflictions cut off, the two deaths left behind, the twofold no-self awakened to, the two obstructions cut off — strings the four, obstruction, death, no-self, awakening, upon a single thread. And this strung line is the scriptural source of the very framework of the Yogācāra path of stages.

The weighty thing is that "dharma abiding from the origin." It is the ground on which the leaving-behind of the two deaths rests — for without some abiding, unborn-and-unceasing dharma to lean on, "leaving death behind" would have no place to stand. What is this abiding ground? The next passage unveils it of itself.

That Tathāgata-womb, at once the cause of birth-and-death and the cause of nirvāṇa

The scripture then speaks the deepest sentence of the whole passage: the Tathāgata-womb is the cause of birth-and-death, and of nirvāṇa, of pain and of pleasure.

One and the same Tathāgata-womb is the cause of birth-and-death and the cause of nirvāṇa; the cause of pain and the cause of pleasure. This sounds like a self-contradiction — how can one thing be at once the cause of both the defiled and the pure? Yet this is the very marrow of the Laṅkā's problem of cross-reading the Tathāgata-womb and the consciousness-store, and just why it "empties and confounds the mind," beyond the foolish common person's awakening.

Light it up with the mirror of Yogācāra. The preceding passage first says that the Tathāgata-womb, when perfumed by beginningless false and harmful habit-energy, is named the consciousness-store; this movement then says that the Tathāgata-womb is the cause of birth-and-death and nirvāṇa, pain and pleasure. Read together, the store-consciousness name depends on the condition of perfuming: following defiled conditions, there are birth-and-death and pain; following pure conditions, the course turns toward nirvāṇa and pleasure. This is a conditioned reconciliation. It neither cuts the two into wholly unrelated things nor erases the perfuming condition and makes them unconditionally identical. Scroll One's store-consciousness-ocean-and-waves simile may be cross-read here: the ocean figures the store consciousness, objects are like wind, and the consciousnesses are like waves. It clarifies the store consciousness evolving together with the active consciousnesses, but does not cancel this movement's distinction between intrinsic purity and adventitious perfuming. The two passages illuminate one another because one support can disclose the two courses of defilement and purity—not because the whole relation can be reduced to "the Tathāgata-womb simply is the store consciousness."

And the seven consciousnesses — mind, mentation, mental consciousness, together with the eye-consciousness and the rest — once the moment-by-moment cause of their perfuming is left behind, and even the one good and undefiled portion is left behind, no longer evolve in birth-and-death. The waves are stilled. But the ocean is not stilled. This turns again to the one move of Scroll One: what ceases is the wave of the karmic aspect that is these seven consciousnesses; the true aspect of the store consciousness does not cease. Were even the store consciousness to cease, that would be no different from the outsiders' annihilation-view. And so in the latter part the scripture adds one further cut: the foolish, resting on the ceasing of the seven consciousnesses, give rise to the annihilation-view (taking the ocean too for a wave, and, the waves having stopped, pronouncing the water dried up); not awakening to the store consciousness, they give rise to the eternalist view (taking the waves for the ocean, and clinging to some constantly abiding self) — both ends are astray. Only when one sees the store consciousness ever-evolving and not cut off, without a resting-place and yet no self, do the two views of annihilation and eternity fall away together. This "neither cut off nor eternal" is just the scriptural warrant for the later Yogācāra establishing of the eighth consciousness as "ever-evolving like a torrent."

The potter's wheel: how the transformation-buddha can expound the dharma and not lose the true

Back, now, to the pivot that unties the knot — the true buddha and the transformation-buddha. The scripture gives a living figure: the transformation-buddha expounds the dharma "following the marks made by the workings of sentient beings, as a potter's wheel [turns out its vessels]."

The potter's wheel is of itself no fixed thing; it turns out a jar, turns out a bowl, following the potter's hand and the vessel wanted, manifesting as it is worked. So too the transformation-buddha's expounding: he manifests his body and his teaching following the marks that sentient beings make — whatever their capacity draws forth, that he manifests: prophesying, showing Māra, suffering slander, all within this "responding-and-manifesting according to the occasion." And so all those contradictions of Mahāmati's at the outset fall wholly to the transformation-buddha's side: what the vajra-holding warriors guard is the transformation-buddha, what shows the obstructions of evil karma is the transformation-buddha — these are all expedient marks manifested following the marks of sentient beings, and touch not the true Tathāgata at all.

And the true Tathāgata? He is "apart from all that the sense-faculties can measure." The whole apparatus of measurer-and-measured, the sense-faculties of common persons, of the two vehicles, of outsiders — in him is wholly extinguished; he wins the abiding in the bliss of the present dharma, wins the unhindered forbearance of the knowledge of the dharma, his merit-dharma-body ever together with concentration — where should there be any need of vajra-holding warriors to guard him? Zonglei's judgment here is of the clearest: the true buddha does not fall into the aggregates, elements, and sense-fields, abides constant in knowledge-and-cutting-off, and so needs no guarding; the transformation-buddha responds and manifests according to the occasion, is not born of actual karma, and so requires no guarding — both buddhas need no guarding, yet it is a needing-no-guarding of two kinds. Light it up with the mirror of Yogācāra, and this dividing of the true and the transformation is just the parting of the body of self-enjoyment and the transformation-body in the later doctrine of the buddha-bodies: the one the inwardly-realized body of one's own awakening, apart from all that the sense-faculties can measure; the other the transformed and working body that responds to capacity and manifests, following the marks that sentient beings make. The Laṅkā here sets the line between the two buddhas firm, and Mahāmati's bosomful of contradictions thaws clean away — those "imperfect" marks were, from the first, an affair of the transformed working, and never touched the true Tathāgata at all.

Turning from the doctrine of consciousness onto the knife's edge: one taste of meat

Mahāmati then changes his theme and asks in verse: for the bodhisattva who seeks the buddha-path, how are wine, meat, and onions to be regarded?

This turn seems to begin another passage, but blood and vein it is joined to the first. The first part spoke of "seeing" — seeing the two obstructions, the two deaths, the true and the transformation, and the Tathāgata-womb named in this movement; the latter part speaks of "practice" — this seeing is to come down onto the most intimate of things, a single mouthful of food. Just above, it said of the Tathāgata: "Because he goes with great compassion for his forerunner, regarding all sentient beings as though they were his only child"; and this regarding-as-an-only-child is the very root of abstaining from meat. So abstaining from meat is no solitary precept standing off by itself; it is where the foregoing sense of the Tathāgata-womb as cause and the sense of great compassion walk down onto the knife's edge, of necessity. That sentient beings have been, turn upon turn, one another's six kinds of kin is the scripture's own statement about their revolving through conditions; the meat in your bowl today, how do you know it was not, in a former time, your father, mother, or brother? Because one is to hold them as kin, this one mouthful will not go down.

The Buddha ranges out at large the reasons one should not eat meat, one clasped to the next: because they have been the six kinds of kin in turn; because the butcher sells it mixed past telling apart; because it grows from an unclean semen-and-blood source; because sentient beings smelling the scent are struck with terror; because it keeps the kindly mind from arising in the one who practises; because it keeps the spells from being accomplished; because the slayer, seeing the shape, gives rise to a clinging to the relish … down to the weightiest move of all — the breaking of the three kinds of pure meat.

The three kinds of pure meat: closing the last expedient gate too

Within the śrāvaka precepts there is, from of old, the permitting of "the three kinds of pure meat": meat not seen killed for oneself, not heard killed for oneself, not suspected killed for oneself — such meat may be eaten. This is an expedient gate. The Laṅkā means, precisely here, to close it.

The scripture's reasoning is of the sharpest: nor is there any "not-taught, not-sought, not-thought-of" and yet coming to have fish and meat. Where in the world is there a piece of fish or meat that no one was ever taught to kill, no one ever sought to buy, no one ever gave rise to the thought of? The money with which you buy the meat is itself that net. And the scripture gives the figure right here: the foolish meat-eating sentient beings "make of money a net to catch the meat." Though you do not take the knife in your own hand, this one buying of yours sets going that whole slaughter and trade; money and goods are as a net, and cast down but once, the sentient beings that fly in the air and walk the land and dwell in the water are all drawn into it. The buyer, the slayer — the two alike do evil karma. This being so, the so-called "three pure" — not seen, not heard, not suspected — simply cannot stand: so long as there is one who eats, there is one who kills; so long as there is money to buy, the killing-karma falls upon the buyer's head. "If there is no teaching, thinking, or seeking, then there is no such thing as the three kinds of pure meat" — turned about, since there is not in the whole world one piece of meat truly without teaching, seeking, or thinking, the three kinds of pure meat is an empty name. And so the Buddha sets down the last, settling word: the former barring of five kinds and restraint of ten was a gradual expedient; but now, in this scripture, for all kinds and at all times, taking away the [former] expedients, all is cut off entire. The expedient gates are closed one by one, and here in the Laṅkā the last of them is closed.

The birth-story of King Siṃha-saudāsa of the past is just the iron proof of why this gate must be closed. A king craved the relish of meat, and ate the manifold kinds of meat, and his clinging to the relish deepened until he came at last to eating men, and in the end all revolted and he lost his kingdom. The fault of eating meat lies not in the smallness of a single meal, but in this: that the clinging to the relish turns and grows, grows until you cannot stay it yourself. This one affair of a king plays the four words "eating meat gives rise to the manifold faults" out before you, and bloodily.

Onward Transmission

The senses this whole passage establishes may be cross-read with the later Yogācāra treatises. The two obstructions of the first part the treatises unfold into the obstruction of the afflictions and the obstruction to the knowable, the one obstructing birth-and-death, the other obstructing awakening; the leaving-behind of the two deaths the treatises unfold into the two kinds of birth-and-death, by allotted portion and by transformation; the true and the transformation buddhas the treatises establish as the body of self-enjoyment and the transformation-body. That Tathāgata-womb, "the cause of the pain and pleasure of birth-and-death and of nirvāṇa," must be read together with movement 17's statement that it is "named the consciousness-store" when perfumed before it can illuminate one scriptural line toward the treatises' ālaya as the support of defilement and purity. The treatises do not here cite this passage phrase by phrase; one may therefore speak of inherited sense and cross-illumination, but not rewrite movement 19 as directly establishing the ālaya. As for the verse of the store-consciousness ocean and waves and the gāthā of mind-mentation-consciousness, cited by the treatises in clarifying the eighth consciousness, those issue from Scroll One and form a more direct line of onward transmission for the store-consciousness sense.

The abstaining from meat of the latter part forms another road. The Buddha in the closing verse says the thing out to the last: in the Hastikakṣya and the Mahāmegha, in the Aṅgulimālika, and in this Laṅkā, I have in every one restrained and cut off meat — the Buddha with his own mouth placing this scripture into the roster of the scriptures in which he restrains and cuts off meat. This one line is one of the root scriptural sources of the Han-transmitted Mahāyāna precept of the vegetarian discipline. One taste of the flesh of sentient beings cuts off the two roads, compassion and liberation. Seeing and practice, in this one passage, close into one affair: see sentient beings being in turn the six kinds of kin, and this one mouthful of meat of itself will not go down; let this one mouthful not go down, and only then does the kindly mind stand firm, and only then is the buddha-path walked through.