攝大乘論 心要連讀

Is there a single book that lays out the whole of Mahāyāna Buddhism as one complete system?

The Mahāyānasaṃgraha — the "Summary of the Great Vehicle" — is that book. Its author, the master Asaṅga (around the fourth or fifth century), is a founder of the Yogācāra tradition. If his younger brother Vasubandhu is the "engineer" who refines, argues, and finishes the house, Asaṅga is the "architect" who drew the whole blueprint from scratch. This treatise is that blueprint.

The title means "drawing together the essentials of the Great Vehicle." Asaṅga's method is elegant: he reduces the entire Great Vehicle to ten topics — beginning with "what does everything we experience actually rest on?" and running all the way to "what is it like, once the path is complete and one becomes a buddha?" Read straight through, the ten topics are a complete map, from the deepest layer of the mind to full awakening.

The treatise also answers a question many people ask: is Mahāyāna Buddhism really the word of the Buddha? Asaṅga's answer is built into these very ten topics.

If the map intrigues you, you can follow the ten topics one by one. But you don't have to dive in at once — for now, just take a look at the map.

Everything we have ever done, every thought we have ever had, passes and is gone — so where does it all go? How can an act committed in this life ripen lifetimes later? And here is the harder question: if the mind is stocked with nothing but the habits of affliction, where could the pure power that sets us free possibly come from?

The first of the ten topics of the Mahāyānasaṃgraha, "the foundation of the knowable," exists to answer this question of what everything rests on. Asaṅga's answer is a deep layer of mind we never notice, yet which never stops working — the ālaya-vijñāna, the "storehouse" consciousness.

It is like a reservoir that, from beginningless time, ceaselessly takes in and ceaselessly gives forth: every stirring of the mind is "perfumed" into it as a seed, and when conditions ripen the seed gives rise to a fresh active state. The continuity that runs through birth and death, the safekeeping of karmic force, the very coherence of rebirth — all of it rests on this quiet, underlying store.

But the finest step comes later. If the store holds only what is defiled, how could liberation be possible at all? Asaṅga's answer is a beautiful one: when we hear the true Dharma that flows out of the utterly pure reality realized by the buddhas, it perfumes into this same store a wholly new and pure kind of seed — one that lodges within the defiled consciousness yet does not belong to it, like milk held within water. As that pure seed grows and the defiled seeds wane, the entire basis of one's existence is gradually exchanged. This is the "transformation of the basis" — the true hinge on which an ordinary being becomes a sage.

The underlying mind, the seeds, dependent arising, why this consciousness must exist, and how liberation becomes possible — you can follow these one stretch at a time. But you need not dive in all at once — for now, it is enough to meet this "storehouse."

The world in front of you — mountains and rivers, sounds, this very page in your hand — looks so real, so plainly "out there." But press the question even a little: how much of it is "really there, outside the mind," and how much has the mind itself added on? With that one question you step onto the single most important map in all of Yogācāra.

The third topic of the Mahāyānasaṃgraha, "the characteristic of the knowable," exists to answer just this: everything we know — what does it actually look like? Asaṅga's answer is the three natures — three angles from which to see all things.

First, the other-dependent: nothing in the world springs up on its own; all of it is "consciousness" in flux, a momentary convergence of conditions, arising and perishing in an instant. Second, the wholly-imagined: there is really only this flux of consciousness, yet we insist on seizing, upon it, a "thing that exists outside the mind" — a layer that seems utterly vivid and present, yet, search as you will, is nowhere to be found, and was never there. Third, the perfectly-accomplished: right upon this condition-born flux of consciousness, to see through completely that "the falsely-grasped external object is forever void" is to disclose, then and there, suchness — and that is the perfectly-accomplished.

Here is the insight that can make everything fall open at once: the three natures are not three things side by side, but three faces of one and the same other-dependent. The perfectly-accomplished is nowhere else — it just is "the eternal absence, upon the other-dependent, of what we falsely grasp." See this, and many a seemingly contradictory word of the Buddha comes loose: birth-death and nirvāṇa turn out to be not two (one other-dependent — its grasped face is birth-death, its grasp-fallen-away face is nirvāṇa), permanent and impermanent are not two, and even the afflictions can be turned into the very stuff of awakening. Asaṅga leaves us a lovely image: the mind is like a lump of gold-bearing ore — before the fire of wisdom has burned, only the "soil" (the false appearance) shows; once the fire works, the soil hides and the true gold (suchness) appears. Practice is just this smelting of ore to bring out the gold.

How the three natures work, how eleven kinds of consciousness weave our entire world, why "breaking the false" need not collapse into the void, and how to wield that key that "resolves every contradictory word of the Buddha" — you can follow these one stretch at a time. But you need not dive in all at once — for now, it is enough to take in this one map of the "three natures."

The previous chapter handed us a map — the three natures: the external object we grasp as real was never there; what flows is only condition-born consciousness; the suchness disclosed when that false grasp falls away is what is real. But understanding a map is one thing; actually walking into the country and realizing it for oneself is another. This chapter, "Entering the Characteristic of the Knowable," is about the latter: having grasped the doctrine of the three natures, how does one move, step by step, from "having heard and understood" to "directly realizing" it — from an ordinary being into a noble one?

The capital for setting out is "the perfuming of much learning" — the pure force laid down in the mind by extensively hearing the true dharma; and the one who can set out is the bodhisattva well stocked with both merit and cognition, of settled faith. On the road one first administers three tonics to the heart against faltering (the three temperings) and severs four states of mind that drag one back (the four severings).

The real method Asaṅga calls "the four investigations and the four cognitions of the real": seeing through, one by one, the "name, meaning, essence, and distinction" we take to be real, and finding that all of them are merely posited by language — not one is a thing outside the mind.

The loveliest part is the snake-and-rope simile: in the dark you take a rope for a snake. First you see through "there is no snake" (dispelling the wholly-imagined — the external object was never there), and fall back to "it is only a rope" (entering the other-dependent — it is really only consciousness); but look closer, and even the "rope" is just a mark assembled from color, smell, taste, and touch — even the cognition "this is a rope" must be set down. Entering consciousness-only goes exactly so: dispel the external object, keep consciousness-only, and finally set down even the notion of "consciousness-only" — consciousness-only is the boat for crossing the river; once on the far shore, the boat too is left behind. The moment the boat is let go, the non-discriminating cognition — object and subject equal, free of all discrimination — dawns, and the bodhisattva ascends the first ground (Great Joy) then and there: this is the "path of seeing," the first direct vision of suchness, the true turn from ordinary to noble.

How the four investigations are actually done, how the snake-rope simile peels away tier by tier, how to climb the ladder of the path of preparation (heat, summit, forbearance, the supreme mundane dharma), and how, after the path of seeing, one deepens it ground by ground in the path of cultivation — you can follow these one stretch at a time. But you need not plunge into the details at once — for now it is enough to hold the shape of the road: see through the posited → dispel the object and keep consciousness → set down even the notion of consciousness → the non-discriminating cognition dawns, and you ascend the ground and see the path.

The previous chapter taught how one "enters consciousness-only"; this chapter asks two things: by what is that entering nourished, and once entered, what flows out of it? The answer is the most familiar checklist in all of Mahāyāna — the six perfections: giving, morality, forbearance, vigor, meditation, and wisdom ("perfection," pāramitā, means "gone to the far shore").

Asaṅga's insight is that the six are both the cause that ferries one into consciousness-only and the fruit that flows forth naturally once one has entered. Why the cause? — because the great enemy of entering is "distraction," and the six counter it precisely: not coveting wealth, not breaking morality, unmoved by suffering, untiring in cultivation — only then can the mind settle and penetrate consciousness-only. Why the fruit? — because once one has entered, the six are upgraded from "gritting one's teeth and doing them" into "a natural flowing-forth," borne effortlessly by a purified resolve.

The chapter treats the six in fine detail: why they are neither more nor fewer than six (countering three hurdles — never setting out, setting out then turning back, not turning back yet deteriorating), what makes an ordinary good deed a "going to the far shore" (it must possess the "six supremacies" — rooted in the awakening-mind, dedicated to enlightenment, and so on), where each name comes from (giving shatters stinginess, morality extinguishes the evil destinies …), how they are cultivated (five modes), and the three kinds of each.

The most moving part is the six resolves — the six dispositions a practitioner should have: vast (offering to the buddhas until buddhahood and still unsatisfied), long-time (this heart never interrupted), joyful (benefiting beings, one is happier than the beings benefited), gratitude-bearing (having helped beings, one feels that they have done one a kindness — given one the very occasion of one's accomplishment — rather than that one has been kind to them), great-aspiration, and wholly-good. That single thought of "gratitude-bearing" inverts the whole posture of the benefactor — the loveliest reach of the Mahāyāna heart.

Why the six are six, what counts as "going to the far shore," how the six resolves unfold one by one, the three kinds of each, and how they mutually contain one another — you can follow these one stretch at a time. But you need not plunge into the details at once — it is enough to keep this one line: the six perfections are both the practices that ferry you into consciousness-only and the practices that continue to mature as its fruit.

The previous chapter showed that the six perfections are the cause and fruit of entering consciousness-only. But though the practice is the same six, how far apart stand a bodhisattva newly arrived at the path of seeing and one on the verge of buddhahood? This chapter gives a map with visible gradations — the bodhisattva's ten grounds: from the "Ground of Great Joy," where one first steps onto the noble path full of joy, all the way to the "Dharma-Cloud Ground," on the verge of buddhahood, where wisdom covers every obstruction like a great cloud.

Asaṅga's deepest line is this: the ten grounds are not ten different suchnesses, but "one and the same suchness, seen to ten depths." Suchness is of one taste, equal throughout; it is only veiled, layer upon layer, by "ten ignorances." Strip away one, and one facet of the dharma-realm is disclosed (all-pervading, supreme, streaming forth the teaching …) — hence ten grounds, each breaking one ignorance and realizing one characteristic. And because the ten grounds realize one and the same dharma-realm, once one penetrates it at the first ground, one penetrates them all at a stroke.

The chapter also details how each ground gets its name (from "Great Joy" to "Dharma-Cloud"), how a ground is "attained" (four marks), how it is "cultivated" (five modes of calm-and-insight, bearing five fruits), how the six perfections here open into ten (adding the perfections of skillful means, vow, power, and cognition), and how long the whole road takes — the famous "three incalculable eons."

The one image worth carrying away is the "Dharma-Cloud Ground": cultivated to the last, the bodhisattva's wisdom is like a vast cloud that can cover an obstruction as wide as space, and can turn to dharma-rain that waters the dharma-body to fullness. The ten grounds are not ten destinations but one sky of suchness, cleared cloud by cloud — and at the Dharma-Cloud Ground the cloud has become rain, one step short of buddhahood.

Which ignorance each ground breaks, which facet of the dharma-realm each realizes, the details of the names and the four attainments and the five cultivations and five fruits, how the six open into ten — you can follow these one stretch at a time. But you need not plunge into the details at once — it is enough to keep this one line: the ten grounds are one and the same suchness, seen to ten depths; rung by rung, the clouds part and the sun shows.

With the map of the ten grounds complete, the next three chapters take up the thread that runs the whole length of the road — the "three higher trainings," a loftier grade of morality, concentration, and wisdom. This chapter takes the first: morality. The question is just one line: in what is the bodhisattva's morality more excellent than the śrāvaka's? Asaṅga answers with "four excellences." (This is the treatise's shortest chapter — because Asaṅga says plainly: the details are all in the Bodhisattva Grounds; here I set out only the headings.)

The four are: distinction — the bodhisattva's morality has three kinds, not merely "guarding oneself from doing evil" (restraint) but also "actively doing good" (gathering wholesome dharmas) and "actively benefiting beings"; to fail to benefit beings is itself a falling-short. Common and uncommon — what is evil by nature (natural offenses, such as killing and stealing) the bodhisattva, like the śrāvaka, never commits; but certain "safeguard" precepts the bodhisattva may, for beings' benefit, even open. And the bodhisattva's morality governs even the stirrings of thought (the three moralities of body, speech, and mind), where the śrāvaka governs only body and speech. Vastness — its precepts, merit, intent, and goal are boundless on every side. Profundity — the deepest and most delicate face: if the bodhisattva acts purely from great compassion and with skillful wisdom, then even where he displays deeds ordinarily unwholesome, such as killing, he is not only without fault but generates great merit (the classic illustrations: appearing as a king who wields punishment, or the birth-stories where he seems to afflict while truly gathering in).

This "profound" face points to the soul of the bodhisattva's morality: its root is not clinging to the letter of the rules, but "benefiting beings." This "opening" is an utterly exceptional case predicated on fully developed compassion and wisdom.

How the four excellences unfold one by one, the content of the threefold morality, where the lines of the common-and-uncommon and the profound are drawn — you can follow these one stretch at a time. But you need not plunge into the details at once — it is enough to keep this one line: the point of the bodhisattva's morality is not "what not to do," but "for beings' sake, what to do."

Of the three higher trainings, after morality comes concentration — the treatise calls it "higher mind." The question is the same: in what is the bodhisattva's concentration more excellent than the two vehicles'? Asaṅga answers with "six differences." The first five give its scale (its object is the Mahāyāna dharma; its kinds are numberless; it clears the defiled seeds from the storehouse consciousness by "driving out a wedge with a wedge"; it can take birth at will even amid the bliss of absorption; it draws forth supernormal powers throughout all worlds). But the real centerpiece is the sixth — the "difference of function": what the bodhisattva's concentration can actually do.

This gate is astonishingly vast: first the great powers that quake the heavens and furl and unfurl worlds; then the "ten difficult practices" (taking the great vow of buddhahood, unmoved by suffering, never abandoning the wicked, unstained though born in the world …); and then the two deepest passages —

Penetrating hidden speech: the Buddha sometimes teaches in "overtones" — on the surface like paradox, even like talk of doing wrong, but at heart pure right dharma. For instance: "What is 'taking life'? — Cutting off beings' stream of birth-and-death (what is slain is saṃsāra)." "What is 'false speech'? — Amid the false, declaring truly that it is false." Every line uses the most jarring of evil names to force you to penetrate the deep sense beneath the letter. This requires the bodhisattva to "follow-and-awaken" — to go along with the words and break through to their hidden intent; a reader who dies on the letter misreads it utterly.

Profound buddha-dharmas: the paradox is pushed to its peak — "the permanent" is a buddha-dharma, and "cessation" too; and most startling of all, "having greed, having hatred, having delusion" are buddha-dharmas as well! Because the Buddha, out of great compassion, takes these affliction-ridden beings wholly "as his own body"; beings' afflictions become the object of the Buddha's compassion. The "profundity" of the buddha-dharma lies just here: it is boxed in by no concept on any side.

How the six differences unfold one by one, the content of the ten difficult practices, and how those two sets of veiled speech turn line by line — you can follow these one stretch at a time. For now, keep the reading rule of this division: each particular statement carries an answering clause that discloses its intent, so statement and answer must be read together rather than by the surface wording alone. This is the defined scope of "following and awakening" here; it does not make all Buddha-dharma into paradoxical speech.

After morality and concentration, the three higher trainings reach the highest: wisdom. But "wisdom" here has a proper name — the non-discriminating cognition: the fundamental cognition free of all false discrimination. It is what directly realizes suchness at the path of seeing, and it is the true body of "prajñā." The whole Yogācāra path reaches its summit here.

The first misunderstanding to clear away: is "non-discrimination" just the blankness of "thinking nothing"? Asaṅga marks it off with five negations: it is not the blank of torpor, not the dead stillness of the cessation-attainment, not the no-perception state, not the insentient "non-discrimination" of wood and stone, and it raises no extra thought upon suchness to go searching. So "non-discrimination" is not "having no awareness," but a supremely high awareness that "raises no false discrimination, yet vividly illumines the real."

The most vivid simile is "closing and opening the eyes": the fundamental cognition is like a person with eyes closed — entering suchness, all marks effaced; the subsequently-attained cognition is like the same person opening the eyes again — emerging, returning among phenomena to deliver beings. First closing the eyes to see the nature, then opening them to act: these are the cognition's two faces.

And it can be "non-discriminating" because, at root, "the object was never there": one and the same river is seen by hungry ghosts as pus-and-blood, by fish as a mansion, by humans as water, by gods as crystal — the object transforms with consciousness, never real in itself. Once the object is emptied, "consciousness" too falls away with it; object and consciousness effaced together is the ultimate of consciousness-only.

Finally Asaṅga makes it plain: this "non-discriminating cognition" just is "prajñā"; and what most divides it from the śrāvaka's wisdom is that it has "great compassion for its substance" — the śrāvaka's wisdom liberates himself, while the bodhisattva's aims to carry all beings the whole way. He even adds a very concrete question: if the bodhisattva already has mastery, why not give wealth to all the poor? The answer shows that true wisdom is no indiscriminate kindness — sometimes want itself draws out the wish to practice, and a gift can become the capital of wrongdoing; whether to give, the bodhisattva sees exactly.

How the sixteen aspects unfold one by one, that long string of similes and the consciousness-only arguments, prajñā's five positions, the five śrāvaka–bodhisattva differences — you can follow these one stretch at a time. But you need not plunge into the details at once — it is enough to keep this one line: the non-discriminating cognition is not blanking-out, but the wisdom that "closes its eyes to see the true and opens them to save the world"; it just is prajñā, with great compassion for its substance.

The three trainings — morality, concentration, wisdom — told, those were the "cultivation of the cause"; the next two chapters take up the "fruit." This chapter is called "the Fruit of Severance": the fruit disclosed once the two obstructions, afflictive and cognitive, are severed. It bears a name peculiar to the Great Vehicle — non-abiding nirvāṇa: neither sunk in birth-and-death (the ordinary being) nor hidden away in nirvāṇa (the two vehicles), but a great mastery that "abides in neither."

How is it established? On the two words "transformation of the basis." To grasp it, first grasp this: birth-and-death and nirvāṇa are not two places but two faces of one and the same "other-dependent nature" (the dependently-arisen flow of consciousness) — the face defiled by false grasping is "birth-and-death," the face disclosed and pure once free of defilement is "nirvāṇa" (just as in Chapter Three's "gold-in-ore simile": the gold lies in the ore; remove the ore and the gold shows — they were one all along). So the transformation of the basis is not swapping one thing for another, but, upon "one and the same" support, turning away from its defiled portion and turning to attain the pure. What the bodhisattva washes away is the defilement, not birth-and-death itself — which is why he can "cast off the defiled yet not forsake birth-and-death."

Asaṅga sets the turning out in six kinds, from before the grounds all the way to buddhahood; and the contrast of "inferior" and "vast" turning lays bare the root divide between the two vehicles and the bodhisattva: the śrāvaka penetrates only "the emptiness of the person," and so single-mindedly flees birth-and-death; the bodhisattva penetrates also "the emptiness of dharmas," and so, right within birth-and-death, sees it intrinsically quiescent — though he severs the defilement he does not flee, but stays within birth-and-death to deliver beings. One saves himself; the other rides his vow into birth-and-death and delivers all.

The four closing verses come to rest on that stirring line — "birth-and-death just is nirvāṇa": if toward birth-and-death and nirvāṇa one gives rise to "the cognition of their equality," seeing through to their being one same suchness, then and there nirvāṇa is found within the birth-and-death now seen through. So toward birth-and-death, neither forsaking nor not-forsaking; toward nirvāṇa, neither attaining nor not-attaining — abiding in neither side, and so sovereign over both.

How the six turnings unfold one by one, the faults and merits of the inferior and the vast, how the four verses turn line by line — you can follow these one stretch at a time. But you need not plunge into the details at once — it is enough to keep this one line: nirvāṇa is nowhere else, but within the birth-and-death now seen through; the bodhisattva neither flees birth-and-death nor hides in nirvāṇa.

When practice reaches its end, how is the buddha-fruit displayed? This final chapter answers through three bodies: the self-nature body, the enjoyment body, and the transformation body. The latter two arise in dependence on the dharma-body but are not identical with the self-nature body.

The dharma-body, or self-nature body, is the support on which mastery over all phenomena turns. The enjoyment body depends upon it, abiding in pure buddha-lands and enjoying the Dharma-joy of the Great Vehicle in the buddha assemblies. The transformation body also depends upon it and displays birth, renunciation, cultivation, awakening, turning the Dharma-wheel, and entry into nirvāṇa. The treatise then gives six and eight reasons showing respectively that the enjoyment and transformation bodies are not the self-nature body.

This chapter expounds the dharma-body through ten gates. Its five marks are transformation of the basis, constitution by pure dharmas, non-duality, permanence, and inconceivability. Transforming the basis of the five aggregates brings five kinds of mastery; transforming the consciousness aggregate brings mastery over the four cognitions of mirror, equality, observation, and accomplishment. The root text does not assign the eight consciousnesses to these four one by one. The chapter also unfolds the dharma-body's profundity, pure buddha-land, and five works for beings.

The enjoyment and transformation bodies are impermanent, yet their supporting dharma-body is permanent; their enjoyment and repeated manifestation also continue without final break, and in this sense the tathāgata's body is called permanent. The transformation body does not finally abide for six stated reasons, including arousing longing and effort in beings. The final question asks whether the beginningless, undifferentiated, immeasurable dharma-body makes effort for attainment unnecessary. The verse establishes only that if beings cast off diligent effort, the cause of attainment cannot be formed; it does not declare that beings already possess the buddha-fruit.

How the five marks unfold, how the enjoyment and transformation bodies depend upon the dharma-body without being conflated with the self-nature body, the twelve profundities, the seven recollections of the buddha, the one vehicle, and the many buddhas — the text takes each in turn. For now, keep the chapter's frame: the fruit of cognition is displayed through three bodies; within the dharma-body the buddha both finally enters nirvāṇa through freedom from every obstruction and finally does not enter nirvāṇa because the work to be done has no end.