瑜伽師地論 義疏通講 · 冊2

With the three words "mind · mentation · consciousness," the Stage of the Mental sets up the eight consciousnesses; the seventh, the constantly-operating mentation (manas), first breaks the surface here — the hidden axis of self-grasping; and the accompanying aids subsume the whole of the fifty-one mental factors — the treatise-source of the Hundred Dharmas.

Why the Second Stage Is Not Called the "Stage of Mental Consciousness" but Simply the "Stage of the Mental"

The five consciousnesses have been expounded; the second stage is the "Stage of the Mental." Yet the moment one opens it a small doubt arises: the five foregoing consciousnesses were the eye-consciousness, the ear-consciousness, and so on — the next in turn ought to be "mental consciousness," so why is this stage not called the "Stage of Mental Consciousness," but named by a single word, "the Mental"?

This abbreviation by one word conceals one of the most essential structural layers of the whole Consciousness-Only teaching. Jinaputra, in his commentary, says it in a single stroke: "As for the Stage of the Mental, the sixth, seventh, and eighth consciousnesses alike depend on the mentation-faculty. Omitting the three words 'consciousness,' 'body,' and 'associated,' it therefore says only 'mentation'" 〔Jinaputra's Commentary〕. So this stage does not expound the sixth mental consciousness alone; it gathers the sixth, seventh, and eighth consciousnesses — those that "turn in dependence on the mentation-faculty" — all together into one. Why can they be gathered together? Because these three consciousnesses all carry the sense of "mentation (deliberating)": "the eighth holds the seeds, and the sense of mind is the stronger in it; the sixth universally discerns object-fields, and the sense of consciousness is the stronger in it; [the seventh] — all are subsumed under the deliberating mentation-faculty." The three consciousnesses alike share the senses of mind, mentation, and consciousness, yet they are threaded through by the single sense of "mentation (deliberating)," and so are named together "the Stage of the Mental." This abbreviation by one word marks out the deep mind in which "mind, mentation, and consciousness" are three layers in one body.

The Intrinsic Nature Is the Eight Consciousnesses: Amassing-and-Arising Is Named Mind, Deliberating Is Named Mentation, Discerning Is Named Consciousness

And so, expounding the intrinsic nature of the mental, the treatise leads off with three words: "mind, mentation, and consciousness." These three words are no mere synonymous repetition; they cut open the whole depth of mind-and-consciousness layer by layer. Mind, the treatise says, is "the store consciousness that the whole of the seeds attend upon, that is itself able to appropriate, and that is subsumed under karmic maturation": the eighth store consciousness that holds and contains all the seeds, appropriates the bodily faculties, and is drawn forth by karma. Mentation, the treatise says, is "the constantly-operating mentation, together with the mentation that is the just-ceased-without-interval of the fivefold body of consciousness": the one being the constantly and unceasingly operating "constantly-operating mentation" (that is, the seventh, manas), the other being the "just-ceased-without-interval mentation" that, the prior six consciousnesses having just ceased, opens the way for the following moment. Consciousness, the treatise says, is that which is "present before one, discerning the object-field taken as its object": the prior six consciousnesses that, in the present, discern the six sense-objects.

The Cheng Weishi Lun glosses these three words most clearly: "Amassing-and-arising is named mind, deliberating is named mentation, discerning is named consciousness … The eighth is named mind, because it amasses the seeds of all phenomena and gives rise to all phenomena; the seventh is named mentation, because it takes the store consciousness and the rest as its object and constantly, searchingly deliberates on it as a self and so forth; the remaining six are named consciousness, because upon the six distinct objects they discern in a coarse, active, and intermittent way" 〔Cheng Weishi Lun〕, and it cites a verse from the Laṅkāvatāra in witness: "The store consciousness is named mind; the nature of deliberating is named mentation; that which can discern the marks of objects — this is called consciousness." — Mind is the storehouse (amassing the seeds and giving rise to phenomena); mentation is the hidden undercurrent that constantly and searchingly grasps a self; consciousness is the surface layer of discerning. The eight consciousnesses are, only at this stage, systematically set up one name at a time, in the order of their depth.

The Constantly-Operating Mentation: The Hidden Axis of Transmigration, Here Appearing for the First Time

Of the three, the one at which we should most pause is the line "mentation is the constantly-operating mentation." When Stage One spoke of the seed-support, the eighth store consciousness had already quietly stepped onto the stage; now, at the Stage of the Mental, the seventh manas — this "constantly-operating mentation" — formally shows itself for the first time.

Wherein lies its importance? It lies in that one word "constantly." The prior six consciousnesses are "coarse, active, and intermittent": once one is asleep, or has fainted, or has entered a mindless attainment, the prior six consciousnesses stop. Yet the seventh constantly-operating mentation does not stop — it "constantly and searchingly deliberates," constantly and in fine subtlety grasping the eighth store consciousness "as a self." The Cheng Weishi Lun says it "takes the store consciousness and the rest as its object and constantly, searchingly deliberates on it as a self and so forth": day and night, unresting, in a place you never notice at all, it settles that there is a "self." This is the very site of "self-grasping," the hidden axis of the flow of birth-and-death. And so the Consciousness-Only work of breaking the self, only here, recognizes its object clearly. Stage One's "defilement lies after deciding" breaks the surface layer — the defilement of grasping and clinging that mental consciousness performs at the point of deciding after a single moment of seeing or hearing; that is visible, and can be intercepted. But what the Stage of the Mental brings to light is a still deeper, still harder-to-counter "grasping that operates constantly": manas, not waiting on any deciding and not waiting on any external object, of its own accord constantly grasps the store consciousness as a self. Surface defilement can be broken awake in the present moment, but deep self-grasping must await the profound path of cultivation before it can be transformed. When Consciousness-Only speaks of "transforming consciousness into wisdom," the reason the transformation of the seventh manas into the "wisdom of equality" is the hardest and most crucial has its root precisely in this word "constantly." That never-closing "self" behind a single moment of seeing or hearing is just this.

The Object Is All Phenomena; the Accompanying Aids Subsume the Whole of the Mental Factors

The five consciousnesses each take their own object (the eye takes visible form, the ear takes sound), but the mental is not so — the treatise says the mental's "object is all phenomena." The aggregates of feeling, perception, and formations; the unconditioned; invisible-and-unresistant form; the six inner sense-bases; and even all the seeds — there is nothing it cannot take as object. The mental is what can universally take everything as object, and this too is the ground of why it can create karma, can cultivate the path, and can accomplish wisdom.

Precisely because it can universally take everything as object, the mental's "accompanying aids" are also the most abundant — here the treatise lists, in one breath, the whole of the mental factors: the five universals (attention, contact, feeling, perception, volition), the five object-specific (desire, resolve, mindfulness, meditative concentration, discernment), the eleven wholesome (faith, shame, embarrassment; the three wholesome roots of non-greed, non-hatred, non-delusion; energy, pliancy, non-heedlessness, equanimity, non-harming), the six root afflictions (greed, anger, ignorance (avidyā), conceit, [wrong] view, doubt), the twenty secondary afflictions (wrath, resentment, concealment, spite, envy, stinginess, deceit, dissimulation, arrogance, harming; non-shame, non-embarrassment; torpor, restlessness, non-faith, indolence, heedlessness; wrong desire, wrong resolve, forgetfulness, distraction, non-discernment), and the four indeterminate (remorse, drowsiness, applied thought, sustained thought). This long string is precisely the treatise-source of the "mental factors" of the later Treatise on the Gateway to the Hundred Dharmas — the whole map of mental activity is laid out here, in the "accompanying aids" of the Stage of the Mental.

And when it has finished the list, the treatise adds the relation of mind-king and mental factors, in the same key as Stage One but drawn tighter: "they take one and the same object, yet their modes of apprehension are not one and the same; at one time they coexist, and each operates one by one, each arising from its own seed; they are further mutually associated, each having its mode of apprehension, its object, and its support" — taking one and the same object yet each distinct in mode, co-arising yet each from its own seed, and mutually associated with one another. Stage One had already set up this sense when speaking of the accompanying aids of the five consciousnesses; the Stage of the Mental now spreads it across the whole of the fifty-one mental factors.

Activity: The Mental Is the Master-Mind of Creating Karma and of Discerning

Last is spoken the activity: the mental can discern its own field, the particular mark and the shared mark, and the past, future, and present — the three times; it can discern in an instant or discern in continuous succession; it can act as "turning and turning-along, setting in motion the karma of all phenomena, pure and impure"; it can take on agreeable and disagreeable fruit; and it can draw forth the remaining bodies of consciousness and set arising the outflowing bodies of consciousness. In a word: the mental is the master-mind that discerns most widely and creates karma most powerfully — the five consciousnesses discern only the present field before them, whereas the mental reaches through the three times, ranges over all phenomena, and, setting in motion pure and impure karma, draws on fruit. 〔Mental consciousness has, besides, fourteen superior activities by which it surpasses the remaining consciousnesses; see M2 in detail.〕

The Essential Point of This Passage

The five items set up the skeleton of the Stage of the Mental all at once: intrinsic nature (mind · mentation · consciousness — the eight consciousnesses), support (the immediately-antecedent support · the seed-support), object (all phenomena), accompanying aids (the fifty-one mental factors), and activity (discerning and creating karma). The deepest hidden thread among the five is, within the intrinsic nature, "mentation is the constantly-operating mentation" — the seventh manas, here formally showing itself for the first time. Its "constantly and searchingly deliberating on a self" is that "constantly" which the prior six consciousnesses, "coarse, active, and intermittent," do not have; the very "self" that the whole of Consciousness-Only sets out to transform and to break has its hidden axis buried in this one word. The accompanying aids, listing the fifty-one mental factors in one breath, spread out the whole map of mental activity, becoming the treatise-source of the later Hundred Dharmas. The five items statically set up the eight consciousnesses; the later gathering-together of birth-and-death, of the world, and of the three characteristics all unfolds dynamically upon this very skeleton.

Carrying Forward

The intrinsic nature of the mental, "mind · mentation · consciousness," is carried forward and greatly filled out by the later Consciousness-Only treatise-storehouse: the Cheng Weishi Lun, in fascicles four and five, sets up the chapter on the seventh manas (constant, searching deliberation · its association with the four afflictions — self-delusion, self-view, self-conceit, self-love · the distinctions of its three phases), and in fascicles two and three expands upon the eighth store consciousness and the several mental factors; the Thirty Verses of Consciousness-Only — "next, the second transformation; this consciousness is named manas; in dependence on that it turns and takes that as object; deliberating is its nature and its mark" — sets up its verse precisely in inheritance of the "constantly-operating mentation"; and the "mental factors in five positions" of the Treatise on the Gateway to the Hundred Dharmas (the universals · the object-specific · the wholesome · the afflictions · the secondary afflictions · the indeterminate) are just the treatise-basis of the fifty-one mental factors listed in the accompanying aids of this stage. The Section on Ascertainment further re-ascertains, upon the Stage of the Five Sense-Consciousnesses and the Stage of the Mental — proving by eight characteristics that the store consciousness definitely exists, and broadly ascertaining the defiled manas — deeply ascertaining, in inheritance of this stage's intrinsic nature, the two consciousnesses of "mind" and "mentation."

Mental consciousness is the stage on which distinguishing and the several "states" play out — the turn of defilement and purity in a single thought within the seven distinguishings, the middle way of deliberating in accord with principle, the drunk-mad-dreaming-awake-faint-revived that set off by contrast the constancy of manas and the store consciousness, and the cutting off of the wholesome roots that does not uproot the seed.

Mental Consciousness's Distinguishing and Its Differences of State: It Can Defile and Can Purify, Can Be Cut Off and Can Be Resumed

Mental consciousness "has distinctive activity as against the other bodies of consciousness," and the treatise spreads out a long string of them — distinguishing, deliberating, drunk-mad-dreaming-awake-faint-revived, setting action in motion, becoming free of craving, cutting off and resuming the wholesome roots, dying and being born. This is no random heap of a list; it is stating one thing: mental consciousness is the stage of "distinguishing," and also the stage of the several "states." The five sense-consciousnesses discern only the object of their own field present before them, whereas mental consciousness can distinguish, can deliberate, can rise and fall among the several states, and can even cut off the roots of the wholesome and then resume them.

The Seven Distinguishings: Defiled or Undefiled Turns on a Single Thought

"Discerning-and-distinguishing its object" lists seven kinds of distinguishing, and the watershed lies in the last two. Defiled distinguishing — "hankering after the past, hoping-and-delighting toward the future, clinging to the present," together with craving, ill-will, and harm: a sticking-fast to the objects of the three times. Undefiled distinguishing — renunciation, non-ill-will, non-harm, associated with wholesome factors such as faith. One and the same mental consciousness, and one and the same distinguishing: turned toward hankering and clinging, it defiles; turned toward renunciation and non-hatred, it purifies. Practice does not lie in abolishing distinguishing (the very nature of mental consciousness is distinguishing; it cannot be abolished), but in turning defiled distinguishing into undefiled distinguishing — exchanging the habitual momentum of "hankering — hoping-and-delighting — clinging" for a continuity of "renunciation — non-ill-will — non-harm."

Deliberating in Accord with Principle: The Just-as-It-Is That Neither Adds Nor Subtracts

For that which is drawn forth in accord with principle, the treatise's two lower phrases are exceedingly precise: "it does not superadd to what does not truly exist" (it does not falsely add where there is no reality — as with the four inversions: adding permanence to the impermanent, pleasure to the painful, purity to the impure, self to the not-self), and "neither does it subtract from the things that truly do exist" (it does not falsely subtract where there is reality — as with wrong views: denying that there is giving, cause, and effect). Accord-with-principle = a just-as-it-is that neither adds nor subtracts — inversion is superaddition, wrong view is subtraction, and accord-with-principle stands in the middle, illumining things just as they are. This is precisely the epistemology of the Middle Way.

Drunk-Mad-Dreaming-Awake-Faint-Revived: Mental Consciousness Can Be Cut Off, Manas Cannot

Drunken confusion, the wit-loss of madness, the clouded dimness of dreaming, fainting away, and reviving out of it — these several altered states of mental consciousness quietly mark one point: mental consciousness can be disturbed and can be interrupted. In fainting the mental consciousness is cut off, yet the person has not died — which is exactly the principle of the "attainment of mindlessness" that Stage One held down in reserve and that the Section on Ascertainment proves: the six consciousnesses may be cut off, but the appropriating store consciousness (ālaya) is not cut off. Set against this, the "constancy" of the seventh, the ever-active manas, grows all the clearer: the six consciousnesses are coarse, in motion, and intermittent (in drunkenness, madness, and fainting they are gone), and only manas and the store consciousness are ever-active and uninterrupted. The variability of mental consciousness sets off, by contrast, the constancy of the two deeper consciousnesses.

Cutting Off the Wholesome Roots Does Not Uproot the Seed: For Turning Back, Room Is Always Left

Most worth savoring is "cutting off the roots of the wholesome." The one who cuts off the wholesome roots is of keen faculties, with a superior grade of evil intent, gaining bad friends, the entanglement of wrong views extremely heavy to the utmost, doing evil without fear and without pity — evil to the extreme. Yet the treatise at once adds a line of decisive weight: "Here the seed too is called a root of the wholesome … but it is only by reason of a contrary continuity being set up against the present enactment of the wholesome roots that this is named cutting off the roots of the wholesome; it is not by reason of any permanent uprooting of those seeds." What is cut off is only the continuity of the present enactment of the wholesome roots (interrupted by a superior grade of evil enactment); the seed of those wholesome roots is not permanently uprooted. It is exactly because the seed remains that the treatise goes straight on to "resuming the roots of the wholesome": seeing kin and friends cultivate merit, hearing the true Dharma, having doubt arise and thereby coming to a settled conviction — the wholesome roots then are resumed once more.

This is the answer, at its most intimate bearing on "whether a person can turn back," that the doctrine of seeds gives: even in one so evil as to cut off the wholesome roots, the room for turning back is always left — what is cut off is the present enactment; the seed abides always. The seed-support and the store consciousness laid down by Stages One and Two here show their most compassionate face: that store consciousness which holds all seeds also holds the possibility, for anyone whatever, of turning back.

The Essential Point of This Stage

The Stage Associated with the Five Sense-Consciousnesses is the wave on the surface of the sea; the Stage of the Mental is the deep structure of the whole sea: mind (the store consciousness · the granary of all seeds), mentation (manas · the hidden current that ever examines and grasps a self), and consciousness (the six turning consciousnesses · the surface layer of discernment), together with the whole psychological activity of the fifty-one mental factors, all spread out in this stage. Among them, the one sense in which the seventh, the ever-active manas, "ever examines and reckons [things] as a self" is the most deeply buried thread of the whole Basic Section — it drives "self-grasping" onward from the surface-layer "defilement after deciding" of Stage One into the deep-layer "ever-active grasping at a self." That very "self" which the whole of Consciousness-Only sets out to transform and to break through shows its true dark axis only at the Stage of the Mental.

Carrying Forward

The Stage of the Mental's own nature, "mind, mentation, and consciousness — the three," is inherited and greatly amplified by the later Consciousness-Only treatises: the Cheng Weishi Lun, in fascicles four and five, sets up the chapter on the seventh, manas (ever examining and reckoning · associated with the four afflictions · the differences of the three phases), and in fascicles two and three expounds at length the eighth consciousness and the mental factors; the Thirty Verses' "next, the second that can transform is the consciousness named manas; in dependence on that it turns, and it takes that as object; its nature and character are reckoning" inherits the verse of the "ever-active mentation"; and the Hundred Dharmas Treatise's five classes of mental factors (the universal · the object-specific · the wholesome · the afflictions · the secondary afflictions · the indeterminate) are the treatise-source of the accompanying aids listed in this very stage. The Section on Ascertainment further re-ascertains the Stage of the Five Sense-Consciousnesses and the Stage of the Mental (proving the store consciousness by eight characteristics · expounding manas at length).

The Stage of the Mental, 02-03, Death and Birth (the inner cycle of death and birth in the flux of transmigration). Following upon the five items' teaching that "the intrinsic nature [of the mental] is the three: mind, mentation, and consciousness," and the fourteen doorways' teaching that "mental consciousness is able to die and able to be born," this passage opens the matter head-on: in the flux of death-and-birth, that which "sustains the body, reconnects rebirth, is maturational, and holds all seeds" is precisely the eighth, the store consciousness.

A Single Question: When a Person Dies, Who Is It That Transmigrates?

The fourteen doorways said earlier that mental consciousness "can be cut off" — in fainting, in the mindless attainments, and on down to death, the first six consciousnesses stop. Yet death is no annihilation: this present bodily span perishes, and then the next bodily span is joined onto it. What, then, is it that spans two lives at the place where the six consciousnesses are cut off, and shoulders over karma and seeds together in one carrying?

By the time the Stage of the Mental reaches this passage, it holds the answer out plainly. It does not directly cry out the three syllables "ālaya"; rather, by a whole intricate process of "death — the intermediate existence — entering the womb — rebirth-reconnection," it lets that continuing one show itself. The point of the eye in reading this passage is just to watch how "the consciousness," at the juncture of death and birth, relinquishes, sustains, and continues.

Death and Birth Are Simultaneous, Like the Two Ends of a Balance — What Relinquishes Here and Receives There Is One and the Same Consciousness

The treatise says of receiving birth: 「彼所依體由二種因增上力故，從自種子，即於是處中有、異熟無間得生。死生同時，如秤兩頭，低昂時等。」 tr. "That body which is its support, through the dominant force of the two kinds of cause, arises from its own seeds; that is, right there the intermediate existence and the maturational [consciousness] arise without interval. Death and birth are simultaneous, like the two ends of a balance-beam: as one dips and the other rises, they are equal in time." One end dips (this body dies) and one end rises (that body is born), simultaneous and equal — these are not two affairs but one and the same "maturational consciousness" relinquishing here and, right there, receiving there. What alone can join on "without interval" in this way, not falling into annihilation, is that eighth consciousness which continues on at all times. The first six consciousnesses, coarse-moving and intermittent, cannot carry this burden of "death and birth simultaneous."

Where the Consciousness Is Relinquished From — The Death Signs of the Body-Sustaining Consciousness

The treatise tells it in the finest detail: 「作惡業者，識於所依從上分捨」、「造善業者，識於所依從下分捨」 tr. "for one who did evil karma, the consciousness relinquishes its support beginning from the upper part"; "for one who wrought wholesome karma, the consciousness relinquishes its support beginning from the lower part" — the cold sensation arises according to where the consciousness is relinquished, relinquished gradually on down to the region of the heart; 「當知後識唯心處捨，從此冷觸遍滿所依。」 tr. "It should be known that the last consciousness is relinquished only at the region of the heart. From this the cold sensation pervades the whole support." The reason the body still has warmth and does not yet rot and decay is that "the consciousness" still appropriates it; wherever the consciousness relinquishes, there the warmth (the cold sensation) recedes; the last moment of consciousness is relinquished at the "fleshly heart," and only then does the whole body go cold through.

This is precisely the death-bed portrait of one sense of the store consciousness's "appropriating the material faculties": it is that body-sustaining consciousness among the three — lifespan, warmth, and consciousness — that rest upon one another. When the Section on Ascertainment jointly ascertains the Stage of the Five Sense-Consciousnesses and the Stage of the Mental, it proves by eight characteristics that the store consciousness definitely exists, and among these the "consciousness at the moment of dying" and the "appropriation of the material faculties" are just this principle. Who is it that sustains the body? The six consciousnesses, which can be cut off, cannot sustain it; what sustains it to the last moment, and is relinquished from the heart-region, is the eighth.

Self-Love Drives the Flux — The Hidden Thread of the Manas Shows Itself at Death and Birth

The five items said that the manas is "the ever-active mentation, ever examining and reckoning [the store consciousness] as a self"; there it was still only statically posited. By this passage on death and birth, it stirs into motion: 「諸眾生將命終時……長時所習我愛現行。由此力故，謂我當無，便愛自身。由此建立中有、生報。」 tr. "when sentient beings are about to end their lives … the self-love long habituated becomes active. Through this force, thinking 'I am about to be no more,' he then loves his own body. Through this, the intermediate existence and the requital in the [next] birth are established." What is most feared at the end of life is that "I am about to be no more," and so, all the more fiercely, one loves one's own body; and it is precisely this one thought of self-love that hooks fast the intermediate existence and draws out the next life. The engine of transmigration shows itself here.

The treatise further gives the differences among the noble ones as proof: the stream-enterer and once-returner — 「我愛亦復現行，然……由智慧力數數推求，制而不著」 tr. "self-love likewise becomes active, yet … by the force of wisdom they seek it out again and again, and curb it so as not to cling to it" (like a robust man subduing a frail one); the fruit of non-returning — 「我愛不復現行」 tr. "self-love no longer becomes active." The presence or absence, the strength or weakness, of self-love marks out exactly the bondage and the release of the flux — this hidden thread is the manas, and what is to be counteracted is likewise the manas. The buried seed set down in the five items is gathered here at death and birth.

The Intermediate Existence and Entering the Womb — Only at "Union and Reliance" Does the Ālaya Formally Step Onto the Stage

The intermediate existence "necessarily has all the faculties complete," is like the gleam of a black ram (evil) or the sheen of white cloth (wholesome), is seen only by the divine eye, dies and is reborn at seven days at the most, and on up to seven times seven days will certainly obtain the condition for birth; it is also named gandharva (seeking scent) and "mind-moving" (taking mind as its support, going to the place of birth). Entering the womb requires the "presence of three conditions" (the mother in fit condition and the time right, the father and mother in passionate desire, the gandharva present before them) together with "the absence of three hindrances" (the defects of the birth-place, of the seed, of former karma). At the entering of the womb there arises inverted craving and love (when to be male, craving the mother; when to be female, craving the father), and one is held fast by the object — these fine details the treatise states, not for the sake of curiosity, but to lay the ground toward that one decisive moment:

「爾時父母貪愛俱極，最後決定各出一滴濃厚精血，二滴和合住母胎中，合為一段，猶如熟乳凝結之時。當於此處，一切種子異熟所攝執受所依阿賴耶識和合依託。」 tr. "At that time, the father's and mother's craving and love being both at their utmost, at the last each definitely emits one drop of thick semen-and-blood; the two drops unite and abide within the mother's womb, joining into a single mass, as at the time when boiled milk congeals. Right there, the store consciousness — which is all-seeds, subsumed under maturation, and the basis of appropriation — unites with it and takes reliance upon it." At this point, that continuing one which all along the way had been spoken of as "the consciousness" and "the maturational" is set right by its proper name: the store consciousness. The instant it "takes reliance," then 「說識已住結生相續。即此名為羯羅藍位」 tr. "it is said that the consciousness has come to rest, reconnecting rebirth and continuing it. This very [stage] is named the kalala position."

This one sentence is the most direct scriptural ground for the store consciousness as the "consciousness of rebirth-reconnection and continuity." Its three senses appear together here: all-seeds (holding in store the entire stock of seeds for one lifetime), subsumed under maturation (the requital-body summoned by karma), and the basis of appropriation (appropriating this first-congealed semen-and-blood as its own body, and so "the form does not rot and decay; they share safety and peril in common"). The single point at which the kalala is first relied upon is named the "fleshly heart" — 「識於此處最初託，即從此處最後捨」 tr. "the consciousness first takes reliance at this site, and from this site it is at the last relinquished": the opening and the close of a life are alike the affair of this one consciousness.

The Intrinsic Body of the All-Seeds Consciousness — How the Seed Is "New," How It "Transforms"

Rebirth-reconnection once established, the treatise goes on to expound at length the intrinsic character of this "all-seeds consciousness," and several key Consciousness-Only theses are set down here:

• The seeds are mutually inclusive, following along with the intrinsic body: within the desire-realm intrinsic body there are also all the seeds of the form and formless realms — the seeds, stored throughout the ālaya, are not limited to the realm of the present life.
• The sense in which the seed is "new": 「種子體無始時來相續不絕……然由淨不淨業差別熏發，望數數取異熟果，說彼為新。」 tr. "the body of the seeds, from beginningless time, continues on unbroken … yet through the differential perfuming by pure and impure karma, in view of its repeatedly taking up the maturational fruit, it is called 'new.'" The seed by nature has existed from beginningless time (the innate), yet because of the perfuming by karma is called "new" (the newly perfumed) — the innate and the newly perfumed: this passage already lets their source show. The Cheng Weishi Lun's later six senses of the seed, and its dispute over the innate and the new, are rooted here 〔Cheng Weishi Lun, the doctrine of the seed〕.
• The seed is suffering, is coarse-heaviness and latent tendency: the seeds of the affliction-class are named "coarse-heaviness" and "latent tendency"; all intrinsic bodies that serve as basis are "attended by coarse-heaviness, born of coarse-heaviness, and coarse-heaviness in their very nature," and so are established by the buddhas as suffering — "by reason of the suffering of conditioned formations." The doctrine of the seed and the truth of suffering are here made to open onto one another.
• The other names of the seed: element, lineage, intrinsic nature, cause, the personal body (satkāya), idle proliferation, the store (ālaya), grasping, suffering, the resting-basis of the view of a personal self, the resting-basis of self-conceit — "ālaya" is here plainly listed as one of the other names of the all-seeds, sealing, front and back, with the five items' "the intrinsic nature is the ālaya."
• The transformation of the basis: 「般涅槃時，已得轉依諸淨行者，轉捨一切染污法種子所依……轉得內緣自在。」 tr. "at the time of parinirvāṇa, the pure practitioners who have attained the transformation of the basis relinquish, by transformation, the basis of all the seeds of defiled dharmas … and turn to attain the mastery of inner conditioning." The counteracting face of the flux is here pointed out as well: to relinquish, by transformation, the basis of the defiled seeds is the transformation of the basis. Death and birth speaks of the flux, but the flux's very terminus (the transformation of the basis) is already buried in advance.

The Essential of This Passage

This passage on death and birth is, on the surface, an intricate description of receiving birth and entering the womb; at bottom it is the scriptural establishing of the store consciousness's four senses — rebirth-reconnection and continuity · appropriating and sustaining the body · maturation · all-seeds — and it is also the place where the manas's "self-love that drives the flux" shows itself. The five items posited the eight consciousnesses statically; death and birth performs the eight consciousnesses dynamically: who transmigrates, who sustains the body, who reconnects rebirth, how the seed is new and how it transforms — the Stage of the Mental, by one span of birth-and-death, brings the Consciousness-Only theory of the flux down to solid ground.

Carrying Forward

The senses of the store consciousness's rebirth-reconnection and continuity, its appropriation, and its maturation are ascertained at length by the Section on Ascertainment through eight characteristics; the Cheng Weishi Lun, fascicle three, establishes the three characteristics of the ālaya (maturation · all-seeds · appropriation) and expounds at length the six senses of the seed and the dispute over the innate and the new; the fine detail of the intermediate existence and of entering the womb has its ground in the Sūtra of Other-Dependent Arising and the Sūtra on Entering the Womb (the treatise itself cites, "as the Bhagavat expounded at length in the Sūtra on Entering the Womb").

The Mental, 02-04, the Establishment of the World (the outer division — the receptacle-world and the world of sentient beings). Following 02-03, death-and-rebirth (the inner division), this passage turns to the outer division — the forming and ruin of the receptacle-world and the manifold marks of the world of sentient beings. The first question that occurs to a reader is exactly the point of the eye of this passage.

A Question: The Stage of the Mental Speaks of Mind and Consciousness — How Does It Suddenly Take Up Cosmology?

Reading this far, one is brought up short. What came before — the five items, the fourteen doorways, death-and-rebirth — all spoke of mind, mentation, consciousness, seeds, and taking birth: perfectly good Consciousness-Only mind-doctrine. How does it now suddenly spread out the three catastrophes (fire, water, wind), Mount Sumeru, the seven gold mountains, the four great continents, the forming-abiding-ruin-void of the aeon, and even the dimensions of the sun, moon, and stars? This great stretch of "world-geography" — why is it established within "the Stage of the Mental"?

The treatise itself gives the clue, and it lies in two places, the head and the tail of this very passage. At the head, speaking of the ruin and forming of the outer division, it says: "by reason of the world-forming and world-ruining karma that sentient beings are able to bring about." Turning to the forming of the world, it says again: "when such twenty middling aeons have passed, by the dominant force of the karma of all sentient beings, the world forms again." The key lies in those few words — "the dominant force of karma," "the karma able to bring [it] about": the receptacle-world is no dead thing that stands of itself, apart from sentient beings; it is what the shared karma of sentient beings brings about, draws forth, and establishes. The Stage of the Mental speaks of consciousness, and having spoken this far, it is just now drawing "the world" too into the track of "karma and consciousness" — and this is precisely the reason it is written into the Stage of the Mental.

The Receptacle-World: What Shared Karma Brings About, Transformed Out of the Store Consciousness's Common-Mark Seeds

Here is the Consciousness-Only reading. What the store consciousness takes as its object is not only "the appropriated" (the material faculties and the seeds, that is, the inner-division self-body), but also "the place" — that is, the receptacle-world. The receptacle-world is the object-aspect transformed and manifested by the store consciousness in dependence on "common-mark seeds." And so it is that one and the same Sahā world is seen in common and dwelt in in common by all beings, because it is transformed out of "shared-karma common-mark seeds"; whereas each person's own material body and their body of pleasure-and-pain are brought about by "unshared-karma unshared seeds." This passage's division — "the outer division is brought about by shared, common karma; the self-body by separate, particular karma" — is precisely the treatise-ground of the later Cheng Weishi Lun's teaching that "the store consciousness takes as object the appropriated and the place" and that "shared and unshared seeds transform the receptacle-world" 〔Cheng Weishi Lun, the meaning of the store consciousness's object〕.

Once this layer is understood, the three catastrophes and Mount Sumeru are no longer a myth off the topic: they are the concrete unfolding of "the receptacle-world as manifested by consciousness." The three catastrophes of fire, water, and wind can ruin as far as the first, second, and third meditative absorptions; the fourth absorption, because there "body and palace arise together and pass away together," has no catastrophe that can ruin it — even the question of how far the world can be ruined is bound to the force of sentient beings' fixed karma, and not to physical accident. The forming-abiding-ruin-void of the world is the rhythm of karma.

Watch How the Treatise Itself Stages This Drama of "Established by Karma"

To say merely "karma brings about the world" is still abstract; the treatise goes on to stage it for you, scene by scene, and every scene proves one and the same thing: the world declines and forms in accord with the karma of beings, with no creator presiding over it from outside.

When it ruins, it ruins first in the human heart. Within one middling aeon, human lifespan, "taking up and practicing unwholesome factors," decreases all the way from eighty thousand years down to ten years, and this draws forth the "three minor catastrophes": the famine catastrophe when human lifespan is thirty years (famine so great that one can only boil rotten bones to stave off hunger; and to come upon a single grain of rice or wheat is like getting a maṇi-jewel-treasure to store in a box; the starved lie dead everywhere; it passes over seven years, seven months, seven days, and seven nights); the pestilence catastrophe at twenty years (plagues break out crosswise, passing over seven months, seven days, and seven nights); and the sword catastrophe at ten years (the moment one person sees another, a mind to kill arises; the grass, wood, tile, and stone snatched up by hand all become the keenest swords, and they slaughter one another, passing over seven days). It is the evil karma of beings that first ruins the human world, and only then does the receptacle-world ruin along with it — at the end of the ruin-aeon, "six sun-discs" appear one after another and dry up, one by one, the gullies, the rivers, the great heatless lake, and the great sea, until at last even Mount Sumeru and the great earth burn into a fierce blaze that scorches up to the Brahmā-world, and not ash or cinder remains. That catastrophe arises from karma — this thread is written out plainly.

When it forms, even the highest "Great Brahmā" is merely one who arrived first. As the world re-forms, the third-absorption receptacle-realm forms first, then the second, then the first. The treatise writes a most crucial stroke: there is a single being who, its lifespan exhausted above, first falls and is born into the first absorption, becoming the "Great Brahmā"; solitary and alone, it is glum and displeased, and it rouses a thought — "How now might I make the other sentient beings also come to be born here?" Just as it rouses this thought, the other sentient beings happen, each of them, to have their lifespan exhausted and fall down from the second absorption, born beside it. By writing it just so, the treatise precisely punctures the delusion of a creator — those sentient beings came each in dependence on its own karma, not born of Brahmā; Brahmā is nothing but a fellow-kind who arrived a step earlier, and yet easily misapprehends that "it was I who created them." This scene is the very root of the reckoning-and-clinging that the later 03-04, "the refutation of the doctrine of a sovereign maker," sets out to refute head-on.

Even the human hierarchy of high-and-low and the institution of kingship are gradually formed by karma and craving. The people of the aeon's beginning were originally of a radiant, mind-born body; through greed for the earth-savor, the earth-cakes, and the non-glutinous rice, their bodies became coarse and heavy and their radiance faded; through the rousing of craving there came male and female, and wrong conduct, and so they built houses to conceal themselves; through taking possession of the non-glutinous rice, they contended and seized, and "taking what is not given" (theft) arose, and so they publicly set up an "arbiter of covenants" as king (the first king named Great-Equal-Mind, Mahāsammata), whereupon the four castes — kṣatriya, brāhmaṇa, vaiśya, and śūdra — appeared. Kingship, private property, and class — not one of them is heaven-ordained; all are established, step by step, by karma and affliction — and this is exactly the plainest and yet deepest sense of the four words "the establishment of the world."

Inner and Outer Mirroring Each Other: Death-and-Rebirth (Individual Fruition) and the World (Shared Fruition) Are One Account

Set 02-03 and 02-04 side by side, and the intent of the Stage of the Mental becomes clear:

• The inner division, death-and-rebirth (02-03): the store consciousness links up rebirth and upholds the body, receiving the individual-fruition self-body — this is the "unshared" side.
• The outer division, the world (02-04): sentient beings' shared karma brings about the receptacle-world, receiving the environing fruition in common — this is the "shared" side.

One consciousness (the store consciousness) both transforms the material body and the receptacle-realm, and both upholds the individual fruition and the shared fruition. The Stage of the Mental does not first speak of mind and then throw in cosmology as an appendage; rather, using the two divisions, inner and outer, it spreads "all is but the manifestation of consciousness" into one complete account: the self-body is what it transforms, and the world too is what it transforms. The three-thousandfold great-thousand world "forms together and is ruined together," and even "this very three-thousandfold great-thousand world is called one buddha-field, wherein the Tathāgata manifests the attainment of right and full awakening" — the greatness of the world and the vastness of the buddha-field have their root, still, in the shared karma of sentient beings and the transformation of consciousness.

The World of Sentient Beings: All the Marks Are "Established," Not Real Apart from Consciousness

After the world forms, the treatise lists, sparing no detail: the five destinies, the four births, the six bases of support, the seven objects of acquisition, the ten bodily provisions, the eight numbered pursuits, the three worldly affairs, the three kinds of speech, the twenty-two outbursts, the sixty-two classes of sentient beings, and even the "many phrases of verbal expression" (letters gathering meanings, the seven paradigm-phrases, and so on). This long, seemingly natural-historical inventory, seen with the Consciousness-Only eye, is meant to state one thing: all the distinguishing marks of the world of sentient beings — status, livelihood, suffering-conceit-pride, verbal expression — are, without exception, distinctions "established" (designated), set up in dependence on karma and on verbal designation, and not possessed of an intrinsic nature apart from consciousness. That even the "phrases of verbal expression" are itemized in detail makes exactly the point: the manifold marks of the world are for the most part constructed by verbal designation (idle proliferation). This runs in one line, front and back, with death-and-rebirth's "delight in idle proliferation is the most excellent cause" and "the craving of idle proliferation follows wherever one is to be born" — idle proliferation and verbal designation construct the world; the transformation of consciousness manifests the manifold marks.

The Point of This Passage

The Establishment of the World is written into the Stage of the Mental not as a digression but as the finishing stroke: the receptacle-world is what shared karma brings about, transformed out of the store consciousness's common-mark seeds; the manifold marks of sentient beings are established by karma and by verbal designation. The inner division of death-and-rebirth (individual fruition · unshared) and the outer division of the world (shared fruition · shared) together compose the complete picture of "all is but the manifestation of consciousness." The grandeur of the three catastrophes and Mount Sumeru, and the fine profusion of the sixty-two classes and the phrases of verbal expression, are all gathered into one sentence — the dominant force of karma, the transformation of consciousness.

Carrying Forward

The meaning of the receptacle-world's shared and unshared karma, and of the store consciousness taking as object "the appropriated and the place," is expounded at length in the Cheng Weishi Lun, fascicles two and three; the marks of the world's forming and ruin and of Mount Sumeru and the four continents are detailed in the Sūtra on the Arising of Worlds and the Sūtra on the Arising of Worlds — the Root Cause and in Vasubandhu's Abhidharmakośa, the Chapter on the World, which illuminate this passage in mutual light.

The Stage of the Mental, 02-05, Gathering under the Three Aspects (chapter two). The five items, the fourteen gates, dying-and-being-born, the world — all of these speak of how consciousness operates and how it continues on; at this final section the treatise turns back and systematically gathers "all phenomena" — this is the doctrinal capstone of the Stage of the Mental.

A Turn of the Body: Having Finished with Consciousness, Why Set All Phenomena Out as a System?

The Stage of the Mental has run on all this while: the three of mind, mentation, and consciousness; the fifty-one mental factors; dying and taking rebirth; the establishing of the receptacle-world — all of these have been speaking of the one matter of "consciousness" under its various faces. At chapter two, the treatise suddenly turns its body around and opens with a single stroke: "the five items just spoken of, from intrinsic nature down through activity, are, be it known, all gathered under three loci: the aggregation of matter, the class of mind and mental factors, and the unconditioned." It means to gather everything scattered before into three great classes, and then, through eight gates (the aggregation of matter · the class of association · the three times · the four characteristics · the four conditions · the differentiations of the wholesome and the rest · the modes of skill · the nine matters), to establish them one by one.

This turn matters: consciousness-only does not merely say that "consciousness is in motion," but must also say clearly how the phenomenal marks of all phenomena are established. This section is precisely the Yogācāra source of the five-position-hundred-dharmas of the Treatise on the Hundred Dharmas That Open the Gate and of the consciousness-only doctrine of the four conditions. The point of the eye in reading it is to watch how "all phenomena" get folded into a systematic table — and the undertone of that table, from first to last, is "consciousness-only."

Three Loci Gather Everything — the Prototype of the Five Positions of the Hundred Dharmas

Which three are "the three loci"? The aggregation of matter (matter-dharmas), the class of mind and mental factors (the mind-king and the mental factors), and the unconditioned. The treatise then counts them out one by one: the mind-king, the fifty-three mental factors, the form subsumed under the mental-object base, the twenty-four dissociated formations, the eight items of the unconditioned. Set this side by side with the later-composed Treatise on the Hundred Dharmas, and the architecture is plain at a glance — mind-dharmas, mental factors, matter-dharmas, formations dissociated from mind, the unconditioned: precisely the "five positions" of the Hundred Dharmas. The numbers differ a little (Yogācāra: fifty-three mental factors, twenty-four dissociated, eight unconditioned; Hundred Dharmas: fifty-one mental factors, twenty-four dissociated, six unconditioned), but the skeleton of "the five positions gather all phenomena" was already set in place here at chapter two of the Stage of the Mental. The "all phenomena, five positions, hundred dharmas" that a student of consciousness-only commits to memory is rooted right here.

The Aggregation of Matter Has No Subtle Particle — Matter Is Aggregation Only, with No Really-Existent Smallest Grain

Within the gate of the aggregation of matter lies a crucial refutation: "within the aggregation of matter, no subtle particle ever arises singly … nor is the aggregation of matter formed by an assembling of subtle particles; it is only by the analysis of discerning cognition, dividing matter down to the farthest limit of its measure, that a 'subtle particle' is discriminated and nominally posited". When matter-dharmas arise, they arise as "aggregation" (whether fine, middling, or gross); never is there first a set of separate "subtle particles" that are then pieced together into an aggregation. What is called a "subtle particle" (paramāṇu) is merely a concept that discerning cognition, having analyzed matter to its very end, nominally posits — it is not a really-existent smallest grain.

This line carries enormous weight. It says: matter-dharmas have no "really-existent, partless subtle particle" for their foundation — the subtle particle simply is a "part," it cannot be divided again into other subtle particles, and so "the aggregation of matter has parts, the subtle particle has no parts" (「色聚有分非極微」 tr. "the aggregation of matter has parts; the subtle particle is not one that has parts"). The later Twenty Verses refutes the really-existent subtle particle of the non-Buddhists and of the lesser vehicle (a subtle particle, if it has spatial parts, is divisible; if it has no spatial parts, it cannot form an aggregation) — and where that treatise's lance was aimed, its root was already laid down here. Matter is not a heap of motes really existent apart from consciousness, but a manifestation that is "aggregation only, consciousness-transformation only" — the gate of the aggregation of matter, which looks as if it were discussing physics, is at bottom the phenomenal-mark foundation for consciousness-only's refutation of a really-existent outer matter.

And when the treatise discusses how "the four great elements produce derived matter," it buries a still more thoroughgoing consciousness-only line: "the seeds of all the great elements, inner and outer, and of derived matter, all attach to the inner continuous mind". Even the seeds of the earth, water, fire, and wind outside the body (the outer portion) attach to this one continuous thought of mind; only once the seeds of the great elements arise do the seeds of derived matter arise in their train (and so the great elements are called the "producing cause" of derived matter, and have five functions — producing, depending, establishing, sustaining, nourishing). That even the most "outer" matter has its root gathered within the mind — this is where the gate of the aggregation of matter pushes consciousness-only to the limit.

Mind and Mental Factors in Association — the Establishing of the Five-Position Mental Factors and of the Other-Dependent Arising of the Eight Consciousnesses

The gate of association gathers the mental factors into five classes, and asks of each, by way of "dependent on what mind, in what stage, at what time," a question-and-answer: the five omnipresent (dependent on every mind · stage · time · universally), the five object-specific (dependent on every mind · stage, but not every time), the wholesome (dependent only on the wholesome), the defiled (dependent only on the defiled), and the indeterminate (dependent on every mind, but not every stage or time) — this is precisely the treatise-source of the Hundred Dharmas' five positions of mental factors, "omnipresent · object-specific · wholesome · root-and-secondary-afflictions · indeterminate."

More important still, this section spells out finely "how consciousness arises": the faculty unimpaired, the object present, and attention properly arising — only then can consciousness arise; once the five consciousnesses have arisen in a single moment, they must draw forth mental consciousness immediately after; thereupon the investigating mind and the deciding mind arise, and only then can the object be discriminated; "the eye and the other consciousnesses operate in dependence on mental consciousness" (「說眼等識隨意識轉」 tr. "the eye and the other consciousnesses are said to operate in dependence on mental consciousness"). This is the sequence of the dependent arising of the eight consciousnesses — the five consciousnesses like a door, mental consciousness like the master; the first five are only "drawn forth by what precedes" (without discrimination), and discrimination lies in mental consciousness. The single mind-moment, too, is established as a designation of "conventional speech" (not an arising-moment), and the abruptly-fallen mind takes only a past object — every single operation of consciousness is here made into a phenomenal mark and established.

The treatise also answers, in passing, an exceedingly practical question: why does the mind's "attention" always run off toward certain objects? It answers by four forces — the force of desire (the mind has craving and attachment toward it, and so attends to it again and again), the force of mindfulness (having grasped its mark well and remembered it firmly, one keeps going there), the force of the object (the object is especially vast or agreeable, and directly present), and the force of repeated practice (one has grown thoroughly habituated and thoroughly familiar with it). In a word: whatever you crave, whatever you dwell on, whatever you are used to — there the mind runs, again and again. This is not only a phenomenal mark but also a mirror that reveals one's own mind — what practice must turn around is precisely these four forces that drag the mind away.

The Four Conditions · The Four Characteristics — the Consciousness-Only Establishing of Other-Dependent Arising and of Arising-and-Ceasing

The four conditions are given their root definition here: the causal condition (the seed), the immediately-antecedent condition, the objective condition, the dominant condition; "the causal condition alone is both cause and condition; the rest are condition only" (「因緣一種，亦因亦緣，餘唯是緣」 tr. "the causal condition alone is both cause and condition; the rest are condition only"). Consciousness-only says that the arising of all phenomena does not go beyond these four conditions, and the definition is right here — the causal condition is the store-consciousness seed, and this ties dependent arising firmly to the seed-consciousness.

The four characteristics (arising, aging, abiding, impermanence) then make plain: arising-and-ceasing is not four really-existent entities standing outside phenomena, but is "established by way of the differentiation of the phase-positions of phenomena" (「約諸法分位差別，建立四相」 tr. "by way of the differentiation of the phase-positions of phenomena, the four characteristics are established") — within the continuity of seeds, the first arising is named arising, the alteration is named aging, the momentary abiding is named abiding, and the not-abiding-from-moment-to-moment is named impermanence. The four characteristics are nominally posited by phase-position (and so are subsumed under the dissociated formations), not really existent — impermanence, too, is a consciousness-only establishing, not a thing that exists independently apart from phenomena.

The Nine Matters Gather the Buddha's Words — Even the Sacred Teaching Is Folded into the System

Gathering under the three aspects, at its very end, gathers even "the words of the buddhas": all the Buddha's words are gathered under nine matters — the matter of sentient beings (the five appropriated aggregates), of what is enjoyed (the twelve bases), of arising (dependent origination), of abiding (the four nutriments), of defilement and purity (the four noble truths), of differentiation (the immeasurable elements), of the speaker (the Buddha and his disciples), of what is spoken (the factors of awakening), and of the assembly (the eight assemblies). Here the sweep of a phenomenal-mark gathering reaches its summit: not only are all "phenomena" gathered under three loci, but all "teaching" is gathered under nine matters. That the Stage of the Mental should close with this shows exactly the fundamental character of the Yogācāra school — "gathering all things by way of phenomenal marks."

The Essence of This Section

Gathering under the three aspects is the doctrinal capstone of the Stage of the Mental: it gathers all phenomena under three loci (matter · mind-and-mental-factors · the unconditioned), setting up the prototype of the five positions, the definition of the four conditions, the phase-position nominal-positing of the four characteristics, the establishing of the wholesome-and-evil among the three natures, and even the gathering of the whole of the Buddha's words under nine matters. Of these, "the aggregation of matter has no really-existent subtle particle" (matter is aggregation-only, consciousness-transformation), "the five-position mental factors" (the source of the Hundred Dharmas), and "the causal condition just is the seed" (dependent arising tied to the store consciousness) are the three strokes that most reveal the consciousness-only undertone. The five items set forth the motion of consciousness; gathering under the three aspects sets up the marks of phenomena — and at this point the Stage of the Mental gathers consciousness and phenomenal marks into one complete whole.

Carrying Forward

The five positions gathering all phenomena → the Treatise on the Hundred Dharmas That Open the Gate: eight mind-dharmas · fifty-one mental factors · eleven matter-dharmas · twenty-four dissociated formations · six unconditioned (this collection). The aggregation of matter having no really-existent subtle particle → the Twenty Verses' refutation of the subtle particle (this collection). The four conditions and the seed as causal condition → the Cheng Weishi Lun, the sense of the four conditions in fascicle seven, and the six senses of the seed in fascicle two. The nine matters gathering the Buddha's words → the ground of the Section on the Matters Gathered (the latter part of the Yogācārabhūmi).