瑜伽師地論 義疏通講 · 冊1

The Provenance of the Treatise: Spoken by Maitreya, Translated by Xuanzang at Imperial Command

Before reading this stage, we should know where the treatise comes from. Its six-character attribution says it all: "Spoken by the bodhisattva Maitreya; translated by the Tripiṭaka master Xuanzang at imperial command." According to the preface to the new translation, this treatise was, after the Buddha's parinirvāṇa, spoken by the bodhisattva Maitreya, who descended from Tuṣita Heaven to the country of Ayodhyā in central India and taught it for the bodhisattva Asaṅga, by whom it was set down; and in the Tang, Xuanzang, at the command of Emperor Taizong, translated it into the language of the Tang at Hongfu Monastery. So this is no private word of a single school: the one who spoke it is Maitreya, the buddha-to-come; the one who recorded it is Asaṅga, founder of the Consciousness-Only school; the one who translated it is Xuanzang, who traveled to India for seventeen years and there obtained the Sanskrit manuscripts — and the work was carried out, moreover, at an imperially decreed translation bureau, collated together by twenty-one monks versed in both the inner and outer learning. The trustworthiness of the treatise is established first of all here.

The Frame of the Whole Treatise: The Stages of the Yoga Practitioner Are the Seventeen Stages

The treatise, at its very first breath, poses itself a question: "What are the stages of the yoga practitioner?" It answers with a clean stroke: "They are the seventeen stages." — So the entire content of this treatise, the Stages of the Yoga Practitioner, is seventeen "stages." "Yoga" means correspondence (all phenomena — of object, practice, and fruit — carry the sense of a skillful, corresponding fit, and so are called yoga; thus Dunlun and Jinaputra gloss it); "the yoga practitioner" is one who cultivates this correspondence; and "stage" is bhūmi, a ground upon which the practitioner rests, ranges, and passes. Put together: what this treatise expounds is the seventeen stages of ground that a practitioner must traverse from ordinary being to sage.

Those seventeen the treatise first gathers wholesale into a single "uddāna" (a summary verse, a mnemonic offered for easy retention): "The [stage] associated with the five consciousnesses, the mental; the three of applied-and-sustained thought and the rest; together with meditative [equipoise] and the one that is not; the [stage] with mind, the stage without mind; [what is established] through hearing, reflection, cultivation; and thus complete with the three vehicles; the one with [remaining] basis and the one without — these are called the seventeen stages." The verse is extremely terse, compressing the names of the seventeen stages into a chantable line; it then unfolds them one by one, from first to seventeenth.

These seventeen stages are no flat list; they have their own skeleton. The ancient masters — Kuiji, in his Concise Compendium — gather them under a threefold division of "object, practice, and fruit": the first nine stages (from the five sense-consciousnesses through the stage without mind) are gathered as the "object" to be contemplated; the middle six (hearing, reflection, cultivation, śrāvaka, pratyekabuddha, bodhisattva) as the "practice" that contemplates; and the last two (with remaining basis, without remaining basis) as the "fruit" to be realized. The verse's phrase "thus complete with the three vehicles" especially deserves notice: the śrāvaka (thirteenth), pratyekabuddha (fourteenth), and bodhisattva (fifteenth) stages stand side by side, showing exactly that this treatise does not lean toward a single vehicle but embraces the practice-and-fruit of all three — this is why it is called "the utmost ground of the Dharma-gate, unfolding the profound purport of the five vehicles."

And the stage we are reading at this very moment, the "Stage Associated with the Five Sense-Consciousnesses," is precisely the first of these seventeen stages — the beginning of "object," the head of the whole treatise.

A Treatise of a Hundred Fascicles — Why Begin with "Eye-Consciousness"?

The Yogācārabhūmi runs to a hundred fascicles; the Basic Section sets up seventeen stages and is the "root" of the treatise. Yet the very first of these seventeen stages is not some lofty state, but "eye-consciousness, ear-consciousness, nose-consciousness, tongue-consciousness, body-consciousness" — the five consciousnesses we use at every moment and yet never notice. Why should a great Consciousness-Only treatise begin from these most superficial, most unremarkable five consciousnesses?

Because the seventeen stages proceed in the order of "object, practice, fruit," and an object becomes an object only from the instant consciousness touches the world. Apart from the consciousness that apprehends, there is no such thing as an object. To speak of all phenomena, to establish Consciousness-Only, one must first take this most intimate single moment of seeing and hearing and pull it apart to see it clearly — see just how it arises, on what it depends, and what it brings with it when it comes. Jinaputra, glossing the naming of this stage, says: "Although many phenomena are distinguished within this stage, the five consciousnesses are its principal matter, and so it is named after them"; and he takes for a simile the "discourse concerning a king, the discourse concerning a thief" of the Vinaya: a discourse that arises in dependence on a king, or in dependence on a thief, is called a king-discourse or a thief-discourse; this stage is established in dependence on the fivefold body of consciousness, and what it expounds — the intrinsic nature, support, object, accompanying aids, and activity — are all phenomena "subsumed under" the fivefold body of consciousness, and so it is named "associated with the five consciousnesses" 〔Jinaputra's Commentary〕. The very name of the stage has already taught us one thing: to know a consciousness, one cannot look only at itself, but must look at which things it "subsumes" and sets turning along with it.

The Five Items: Five Incisions for Taking Apart a Consciousness

And so the treatise sets up "five items" as its rubric: intrinsic nature, support, object, accompanying aids, activity. These five incisions ask five things about one and the same consciousness — what it is (intrinsic nature), on what it arises (support), which object it grasps (object), what company it keeps (accompanying aids), and what it does once arisen (activity). The intrinsic nature of eye-consciousness the treatise states in a single line: "in dependence on the eye, it discerns visible form." The very nature of a consciousness is just this — "depending on a certain faculty, discerning a certain object." It never stands independent and self-existent; the moment it is defined, it is already "dependence" and "discernment." This line looks plain, yet it has already buried the whole seed of Consciousness-Only: a consciousness arises dependent on another and appears by discerning an object; there is no "consciousness-in-itself" standing free of conditions.

The Support Conceals Thunder: The Seed-Support Is the Store Consciousness

Among the five items, the true thunderbolt is hidden in "support." The treatise says the support of eye-consciousness is threefold: the coexistent support is the eye-faculty (a support present at the same time); the immediately-antecedent support is mentation (the support that, having just ceased in the prior moment, yields place to the next); and the seed-support is "the store consciousness that appropriates and is the basis for all seeds, and is subsumed under karmic maturation."

Reading the line "the seed-support is this store consciousness bearing all seeds," we should pause. This treatise, while discussing so plain a question as "on what does the eye rely to see," quietly and without fanfare brings out the eighth consciousness, the store consciousness — and not as some remote metaphysical substance, but as the fundamental support that, when eye-consciousness arises into activity, supplies the seed and lets it arise at all. Behind a single moment of eye-consciousness stands a maturational consciousness holding all seeds: eye-consciousness is the wave of the present activity, the store consciousness the current flowing beneath.

This is precisely the treatise-ground of the teaching set forth in the Saṃdhinirmocana-sūtra, in its Chapter on Mind, Mentation, and Consciousness. That sūtra shows the eighth consciousness under three names — the ādāna (the appropriating), the ālaya (the storing), and the citta (the amassing) — and says: "In dependence on this consciousness … and taking it as their basis and establishment, the six consciousnesses turn"; and it gives the simile of a torrent — "if the condition for the arising of a single wave is present, only a single wave turns; if the conditions for two or many waves are present, many waves turn; yet this torrent of water flows on of its own kind, constant, unbroken, unexhausted" 〔Saṃdhinirmocana-sūtra〕. What is here in the Basic Section — "the seed-support is the store consciousness" — and what is there in the sūtra — "the ādāna as basis, the six consciousnesses turn" — are two faces of one meaning: the sūtra shows the whole (one consciousness as support for the six), the treatise analyzes the particular (each single consciousness taking the seed-support as its support). The later Cheng Weishi Lun, speaking of the six characteristics of a seed — momentary cessation, coexistence with its fruit, constant continuance, determinacy of nature, dependence on a concurrence of conditions, and the drawing-forth of its own fruit 〔Cheng Weishi Lun〕 — is precisely laying bare, meaning by meaning, the seed of this "seed-support." Within the support of a single moment of eye-consciousness, the whole science of the eighth consciousness and its seeds is already held.

The Treatise Asks Itself: On What Ground Do You Say the Store Consciousness "Exists"?

But here we must ask a question on the reader's behalf — a question the treatise also asks on its own behalf: on what ground do you (the author), having quietly set down a "store consciousness" at the "support of eye-consciousness," say that it "exists"? The eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind — those six consciousnesses we can more or less point to in experience; but this eighth consciousness is unseen and untouchable, so on what ground do you determine that it is there?

The author does not evade it. In the treatise's second section, the Section on Ascertainment, its very first line returns to this spot in the Basic Section: "Earlier it was said that the seed-support is the store consciousness. But it has not been said that it exists, nor the reason for its existence … On what ground is it known to exist?" 〔Section on Ascertainment〕 — plainly admitting that the Basic Section has only "stated" that the seed-support is the store consciousness, and has not yet "proved that it exists." The author first cites the ādāna verse of the Saṃdhinirmocana-sūtra in reply (this consciousness is deep and subtle, and the Buddha does not expound it to the ignorant, lest they grasp it as a self — which is why the Basic Section abbreviates and does not prove it), and then, by "eight characteristics, proves that the store consciousness definitely exists": the appropriation that is the basis; the first arising; the clarity; the seed; the difference of activity; the difference of bodily feeling; the abiding through the mindless attainments; and the moment of dying — "if the store consciousness were absent, none of these eight would stand to reason."

These eight characteristics fall, one and all, upon the most intimate phenomena of life; they are no idle talk. To take just three: First, the consciousness at the moment of dying — when a person dies, the cold of the body "arises gradually," from above or from below, growing cold inch by inch; if there were no consciousness pervading and appropriating the whole body and relinquishing it in sequence, how would this body grow cold gradually rather than all at once? What relinquishes the body in sequence is precisely the store consciousness. Second, abiding through the mindless attainments — for one who enters the attainment of no-perception or the attainment of cessation, the six turning consciousnesses have all stopped; if apart from the six there were no further consciousness, would not one in such an attainment be no different from a corpse? Yet he emerges still alive — proof that within the attainment there remains a subtle consciousness holding the body, not yet departed. Third, the appropriation that is the basis — this body of ours "has appropriation": it is warm, sentient, able to feel pain and pleasure; but the six turning consciousnesses come and go by turns (in sleep or in a faint they are absent), so who, in those mindless phases, still constantly appropriates the material faculties and keeps them from rotting? Again, the store consciousness.

So the Basic Section and the Ascertainment interlock, before and behind, into one complete method of reasoning: the Basic Section "states" (that the seed-support is the store consciousness), and the Section on Ascertainment "proves" (by eight characteristics, that it definitely exists). One and the same treatise sets up its own meaning, asks after its own existence, and proves its own establishment. In reading this unremarkable "seed-support" of Stage One, we must know that it is no isolated assertion hanging in the air — its proof is written into the treatise's own second half.

Two Kinds of Support: Material and Non-Material

The treatise then gathers the three supports into two kinds: material and non-material. The eye-faculty is material (the subtle matter derived from the four great elements, invisible yet resistant); mentation and the seed are non-material. This gathering distinguishes the two foundations on which the apprehending consciousness rests: one a material faculty (the subtle-matter faculty), the other a mental support (the prior-moment mentation, the seed-consciousness). For a consciousness to arise, neither the material nor the mental side can be lacking — this too is the groundwork for the later Consciousness-Only analysis of the "concurrence of faculty, object, and consciousness."

Accompanying Aids: One Object, Distinct Modes, Each from Its Own Seed

Look next at the accompanying aids. When eye-consciousness arises, it never arises alone; there is always a cluster of mental factors coexisting and associated with it — attention, contact, feeling, perception, volition, and the rest. Here the treatise lays down three exceedingly important lines: "they take one and the same object; their modes of apprehension are not one; coexisting and associated, they operate one by one"; and "they arise each from its own seed."

"One and the same object": the mind-king and its mental factors grasp one and the same object. "Modes of apprehension not one": yet they each take one facet of this object — contact is contact-against, feeling is reception, perception is the grasping of an image, volition is the shaping — their modes differing one from another. "Operating one by one": they are each their own, arising together yet unmixed. "Each arising from its own seed": and each mental factor arises from its own seed, not divided out from the mind-king. — These four lines state cleanly the relation of "mind-king and mental factors": they share one object yet differ in function, arise together yet remain distinct, and each has its own seed. When the Cheng Weishi Lun speaks of the five mental-consciousness co-arisers and of the fourfold sense in which mental factors are "associated" (same time, same support, same object, distinct in substance), it is inheriting exactly this passage's sense of "same object, distinct modes, each its own seed" 〔Cheng Weishi Lun〕. The very moment of seeing a form is, in fact, a co-arising of one king and many factors, sharing one object yet distinct in mode, each from its own seed.

Activity and the Three Minds: A Micro-Phenomenology of a Single Moment of Seeing and Hearing

The last of the five items is activity, and the treatise lists six activities; but what truly brings to life "how a single moment comes to be established" is the passage on the "three minds" that follows.

The treatise says: from the arising of eye-consciousness, three minds may be found, in sequence — the spontaneous mind, the investigating mind, the deciding mind — "the first is eye-consciousness, the latter two lie within mental consciousness." In the first instant there is the "spontaneous" touch of eye-consciousness, purely and without discrimination striking upon the object; immediately mental consciousness raises the "investigating," then raises the "deciding"; and "only after the deciding mind is there defilement or purity," and only thereafter is there an outflowing eye-consciousness operating as wholesome or unwholesome.

This passage is a micro-phenomenology of a single moment of seeing and hearing. It tells us: that first instant in which eye-consciousness touches its object is unassigned, undiscriminating, admitting of no good or evil — defilement and purity lie not at the instant of seeing, but in mental consciousness's grasping after the "deciding." In other words, affliction is born not from "seeing" but from the "deciding and grasping" after seeing. This meaning is an exceedingly important point of the eye for practice: to cut off defilement is not to abolish seeing and hearing, but, within this exceedingly brief seam of "spontaneous → investigating → deciding," to recognize that one instant not yet defiled. The Cheng Weishi Lun establishes the "five minds" (spontaneous, investigating, deciding, defiled-or-pure, outflowing) to expound in detail the sequence of a consciousness's arising — opened precisely from these three minds 〔Cheng Weishi Lun〕.

Two Similes: Seeing the Five Consciousnesses as a System of Other-Dependent Functions

Finally the treatise sets up two similes to draw things to a close. First: the support is like the mount ridden by one traveling to another region; the object like the errand to be done; the accompanying aids like traveling companions; the activity like one's own capability. Second: the support is like the house of one who dwells at home; the object like the things enjoyed; the accompanying aids like servants; the activity like each one's function.

What both similes show is one and the same meaning: the five consciousnesses are not a self-sufficient "thing," but a system of functions "accomplished in dependence on others" — there must be a mount (faculty), an errand (object), and companions (mental factors) for a single journey (a single moment of discernment) to come off at all. Remove any one facet, and this "seeing" does not stand. The treatise closes with these two homely similes precisely to bring the word "dependence" in the opening line, "in dependence on the eye it discerns visible form," down to solid ground: the five consciousnesses are, through and through, dependently arisen.

Carrying Forward

The Stage Associated with the Five Sense-Consciousnesses may look like a mere itemized "psychology of the senses," but it has in fact quietly buried, within a single moment of seeing and hearing, several of the main veins of the whole Consciousness-Only tradition: the seed-support is the store consciousness — the eighth consciousness makes its first appearance here (opening the way to the ādāna of the Saṃdhinirmocana, the six seed-characteristics of the Cheng Weishi Lun, the Thirty Verses' "first, the store consciousness, maturational and bearing all seeds"); one object, distinct modes, each from its own seed — the association-and-distinctness of mind-king and mental factors, each with its own seed (opening the way to the Cheng Weishi Lun's doctrine of the association of mental factors); the three minds of the spontaneous, and defilement after deciding — the sequence of a consciousness's arising and the trigger of defilement or purity (opening the way to the Cheng Weishi Lun's five minds); in dependence on the eye it discerns; the two similes of dependence — consciousness without intrinsic nature, arisen in dependence on others (opening the way to the "other-dependent" of the threefold nature — wholly-imagined, other-dependent, and true). A whole Consciousness-Only teaching sets out from this most ordinary single glance, single hearing; and to recognize how this one moment arises in dependence and then defiles itself at the point of deciding is to recognize just what it is that the hundred fascicles to follow set out to break through and to transform.