by Ben Connelly
It is the inconceivable, wholesome, unstained, constant realm,
The blissful body of liberation, the Dharma body of the great sage. || 30 ||
1
Self and Other
Everything conceived as self or other occurs in the transformation of consciousness. || 1 ||
I invite you to take a moment to investigate what you are experiencing right now. In all likelihood, you have a sense of being in a location, perhaps in a chair or a bed. There are sensations in a body that you think of as yours, there is a visual field that can be scanned from left to right (that is to say, from what you probably think of as your left and right), there are things behind you that you cannot see but you can feel: the soft back of a chair perhaps. There are words in front of you that you conceive to be my words that you would likely say that you are reading. We can divide everything in this moment of experience into things that we conceive to be ourselves and things that we conceive to be other than ourselves, with ourselves unconsciously placed in the center. Whether we know it or not, this division and this self-centering is constantly occurring, and this division—and the problems it causes and the possibility of transcending them through intimacy with them—is the principal subject of the “Thirty Verses.”
A brief investigation of our consciousness like the one above is likely to lead us to the idea that we have a consciousness that experiences things: consciousness is the self, and the world around us is other. At the start of this work, Vasubandhu points toward another view: “Everything conceived as self or other occurs in the transformation of consciousness.” Neither the self nor the other is consciousness; they are merely conceptions occurring within a process of consciousness.
The transformation of consciousness is a constant flow. If you look at experience there are not fixed elements or even moments; there is simply a process, a transformation. The first thing these verses give us is an opportunity to experience a sense of wonder about what we are experiencing right now, a sense that our most basic understanding of where and what we are in the world is not quite right, that we are instead involved in a mysterious, flowing unfolding. We see this teaching reflected in the Tibetan classic The Thirty-Seven Practices of the Bodhisattva by Tokme Zangpo (1245–1369):
Whatever arises in experience is your own mind.
Mind itself is free of any conceptual limitations.
Know that and don’t generate self-other fixations—
this is the practice of a bodhisattva.
Consciousness Only puts forth the split between subject and object as the ultimate aspect of our consciousness we must see through if we want to realize our capacity to appear in the world in a purely kind and joyful way. As we will see at the end of the “Thirty Verses,” letting go of the sense that we are a self experiencing things is the way to enter this mysterious flowing unfolding, so that whatever is here that we might call ourselves is just a natural, generous, joyful, compassionate occurrence. The Buddha called himself tathagata or “that which is thus coming and going.” He described himself as merely a flowing occurrence, and the outward form that took was constant, calm, compassionate availability to people who came to him for help. This is the way of being these verses offer to you.
In Sanskrit the first two words of this text are atma and dharma. Atma is a key Indian term meaning “self” or “soul.” Dharma means various things, but here it means “phenomenon,” something that is experienced, something other than ourself. Many Early Buddhist practices involved investigating phenomena and realizing that they were not one’s self: for example, seeing that one’s thoughts are not one’s self, the sensations in the body are not one’s self, feelings are not one’s self, etc. By seeing that all these things are not our selves we become liberated from the endless cycle of dissatisfaction that characterizes human experience. We see that that there is no I to be dissatisfied. We can let go of clinging, let go of feeling upset over and over again because the world does not function according to our desires.
These practices were developed over the years, and great bodies of literature and practice grew around them: the Abhidharma. The Abhidharma view came to be that although atman didn’t exist, dharmas did. Abhidharmists refined a complex system of categorization of dharmas that were to be seen and memorized. Deep practice was to see the constant flow of phenomena, of dharmas, without having a sense of one’s self in the midst of it. As the great fifth-century Theravada monk Buddhaghosa wrote:
There is suffering, but none who suffers;
Doing exists although there is no doer;
At some point, Mahayana Buddhists started to think that the Abhidharmists had gotten stuck. Stuck on their investigation of dharmas. Stuck on memorizing, categorizing, and believing in their system. Great bodies of Mahayana literature sprang up teaching that dharmas were empty of self-existence. As it says at the beginning of the most widely chanted and celebrated Mahayana text, the Heart Sutra, the bodhisattva of compassion, Avalokiteshvara, relieves all suffering by seeing that all dharmas, all phenomena, are empty, without their own self-nature. Deep practice in the Mahayana tradition was to see that nothing at all had its own self-nature. So in the early part of the first millennium, there were great debates about whose view or method was correct, or most helpful.
Yogacara, in general, sought to reconcile divisions in Buddhist thought. And here Vasubandhu, using Consciousness Only teachings, pursues that end. He says that whatever conceptions one has about self and other occur in the transformation of consciousness, they are all Consciousness Only. That is to say, within this transformation of consciousness, one can realize that no phenomena is our self, as the Abhidharmists say, and one can also realize that phenomena are not themselves, that they are empty of an independent, lasting nature. This verse gives us a ground on which to do our practice, including the practice of realizing that there is no ground. This ground is this ineffable transformation of consciousness far beyond any conceptions we may have of what it is—it is just this moment of experience.
It seems clear that Vasubandhu hoped to bring people together with these verses and to reconcile systems of thought, but his interest was not academic. He reconciles these two systems of thought because they are both valuable for helping people find peace, compassion, and kind action. The Abhidharma system of dharmas, as we will see in verses 10–14, focuses on whether the mind contains beneficial or afflictive emotions and provides a method for cultivating the beneficial ones and letting go of the afflictive ones, so that we may be profound peace and kindness. Its psychological precision helps us to know and let go of harmful habits, even those of which we are usually unaware. The Mahayana emphasis on emptiness of all phenomena can allow us to be completely liberated from the delusion of separateness, our constantly arising tendency to put ourselves at the center, so that we may be vast freedom and compassion. Yogacara teachings, including the “Thirty Verses,” refer to two barriers: afflictive emotion and delusion. The Abhidharma teachings and practices in the first half of this book are to help you let go of afflictions; the Mahayana-style teachings in the second half are to help you let go of delusion. The vision of the “Thirty Verses” is that both of these methods combined are more powerful than either alone, and they can provide anyone willing to do the practice a way to shed suffering and step into a life of ease, joy, and compassionate action.
2
The Eight-Consciousnesses Model
This transformation has three aspects:
The ripening of karma, the consciousness of a self, and the imagery of sense objects. || 2 ||
This verse introduces us to the main subject of the first fifteen verses of this work: the Yogacara model for understanding consciousness. The purpose of this model is to help us see how we can let go of tendencies that lead to afflictive, painful, and difficult emotions and cultivate the capacity to manifest beneficial ones: emotions that are both more pleasant to experience and conducive to kindness toward others. This verse begins to explain the eight-conscious
nesses model, a Yogacara innovation that is an expansion of Early Buddhism’s teaching of the six consciousnesses, sometimes called the All.
In the earliest Buddhist teachings, Buddha says that to be free from suffering it’s necessary to understand the All, which is comprised of these six consciousnesses: sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, and thought. This All is the totality of our momentary conscious experience. We are instructed to direct our attention toward and directly know these six consciousnesses. The point is not that we develop some theory or ideas about them; rather, we should know them intimately, in a way that is much deeper than words can describe and that is suffused with compassion. In Buddhist practice we come to know things through mindfulness, through nonjudgmental, moment-to-moment awareness. As we pay attention to sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, and thoughts, we begin to see that they are just things that come and go. We begin to dis-identify with them, to not hold tightly but let them be. The realization that our thoughts are just something that is coming and going, that they are not ourselves, is often one of the most striking and liberating aspects people experience when they begin meditation.
This All is what this verse describes as “the imagery of sense objects.” When Vasubandhu says that there are three aspects of the transformation of consciousness, these six together make up the third of these transformations.
We call them transformations because they are just coming and going; they are simply a process of endless change. And imagery literally means the language used in literature to paint a vivid sensory picture in order to elicit emotion. This is a somewhat free translation of the Sanskrit term vijnapti, which is key to the last half of the “Thirty Verses” and will be discussed in detail later in the book. The purpose of its use here is to point out that what we take to be reality, the basic data of our sense experience, is actually in large part a creation of the habits of our consciousness, or we might say a manifestation of our unconscious narratives, and is intimately connected to the way we experience emotions.
So, this third transformation, the imagery of sense objects, is a process we know as experience: the All is readily apparent to us. Right now you can see this text, you are experiencing thought and sensations in the body, as a result of the six consciousnesses.
The first transformation, described in this verse as “the ripening of karma,” and the second, “the consciousness of a self,” are referred to in Sanskrit as alaya-vijnana, or store consciousness, and manas, respectively. These are the two elements that Yogacara added to its model of consciousnesses: your past conditioning and your sense that there is a “you” that is experiencing things.
The store consciousness is a way to describe the process by which karma ripens. The conditioning of our past is depicted as karmic seeds and the way those manifest in our present-moment experience as karmic fruit. Have you ever been standing in the rain and seen one person shuffling along scowling at the clouds and another smiling and bouncing along in the downpour? The emotional reactions and conduct of the two people is the result of their karmic conditioning. Karma doesn’t make rain; it makes smiles and frowns, it makes hugs and fists.
THE EIGHT CONSCIOUSNESSES
8
Alaya, or store consciousness: “the ripening of karma”
7
Manas: “consciousness of self”
The All:
“imagery
of sense objects”
6
Mind/thought
5
Sight
4
Sound
3
Smell
2
Taste
1
Touch
The manas consciousness creates the sense that there is a self that experiences objects. In meditation as the storytelling mind relaxes and we settle into the coming and going of phenomena—the crying of gulls, the occasional sighs of the meditator next to us, the worrying about how soon the bell will ring—we often notice that there is a persistent aspect of mind that is a sense of experiencing things. In the Early Buddhist teachings, one meditation adept called this “the residual conceit: ‘I am.’” Katagiri Roshi called it “the observer” and said that this is one of the hardest things to let go of in meditation. This is manas, the sense that there is an I experiencing things.
Here we set the stage for our investigation of consciousness, so that we can be intimate with it, so that we may understand how to help it be well. The first half of the “Thirty Verses” will deal with the store consciousness, manas, and the six senses. We will see how by mindfulness of what appears in or as the six senses, we can experience and let go of the seeds of suffering in the storehouse, and plant and cultivate beneficial seeds. In so doing, we can participate in this transformation of consciousness, rather than being unconsciously swept along with it. We can offer our effort to allowing this process to be one that is conducive to well-being. We can see that the beneficial states of mind are ones where we are kind and compassionate toward whatever or whoever is here in the present moment. We can see how that softens and erodes our sense that we are self, separate from anything else. We can realize the Buddhist promise of our ability to joyfully disappear into the pure harmonious dynamic activity of the moment—consciousness only.
3
Store Consciousness
The first of these is also called alaya, the store consciousness, which contains all karmic seeds.
What it holds and its perception of location are unknown. || 3 ||
The store consciousness is a way of describing how past conditions come together to form our present experience. We can think of it as an unconscious aspect of our life that colors and is the basis for that of which we are conscious. It is where all the impressions of the past, our karmic seeds, are constantly involved in a process of transformation that our mind believes to be reality.
The concept of this aspect of consciousness is a model for understanding why we act the way we do, but most importantly it addresses the issue of how we can transform or let go of afflictive emotions. As we will see in later chapters, we can cultivate karmic seeds that are conducive to happiness and kindness through mindfulness and a gentle approach to letting go of harmful tendencies. Thus we can transform the contents of the storehouse so that our unconscious tends to produce peace and harmony rather than anxiety, aggravation, and dissatisfaction.
Some people are more likely to be at ease, some more likely to worry and hurry, some more likely to shout and slam doors, and some more likely to laugh. The idea of a karmic storehouse provides an explanation for why this is so. The idea that our past profoundly influences our present is central to Buddhist thought. Karma, which means “action” in its simplest definition, is a complex concept and is treated and understood variously throughout Buddhist and other Indian literature. In this context, it means the process by which our past actions, intentions, and emotional states influence what we experience and do in the present—and how, in the present, they influence our future.
The tendencies we have stored up in our alaya are known as “karmic seeds.” When they manifest in the present moment they are known as “karmic fruit.” The results of our present-moment intentions are known as “impressions.” Our impressions produce seeds, which produce fruit, which produce impressions, and so on and so on. This process occurs in the store consciousness, though we could also say that the store consciousness is this process.
The idea of karma is generally understood to be something that carries over through many cycles of rebirth. Evidence suggests that Vasubandhu, the historical Buddha, and most Buddhists throughout history have believed that rebirth occurs, or at least that such a belief was helpful. These days, many Buddhists do not agree. Many teachings on karma don’t refer to the idea of rebirth at all and make perfect sense without it. Vasubandhu’s teachings on karma rarely allude to anything related to rebirth, and they make clear that we cannot know the contents of the storehouse. The power of our habits is evidence e
nough to me of the vastness of those stores of seeds, but whether they came from previous incarnations or not is outside of my knowledge. Whether rebirth occurs, and whether our karma is carried over from past lives and into future ones or not, has little bearing on the practice and value of this text’s teachings. The “Thirty Verses” shows an understanding of what is here right now rather than in a previous life or a future one, not many eons ago, nor tomorrow. It shows a path with benefits that can be clearly seen in this very lifetime, in this very moment, and perhaps in some future incarnation.
We carry a lot of karmic seeds around, and they manifest in many ways. When I was working as a bike messenger in the nineties, I recall I was almost struck by a car on a snowy day in downtown Minneapolis. I felt a brief shock of fear as I dodged out of the way of the massive speeding machine, and then I felt rage. I furiously chased down the car, dodging traffic through icy streets as it sped away. When I caught up to it, I pounded on its frosty window, shouting. Eventually the driver, livid, drove off without ever opening the window. When I was exposed to the danger of the car, the seeds from the emotional reactions and survival strategies I developed as a young child; the seeds from all the time I spent with intense, often troubled and angry bike messengers; the seeds of cultural conditioning I internalized to transmute all bad feelings into aggression; and countless other seeds from countless generations manifested in the form of rage. It was very unpleasant to experience for me, and I acted in a way that was unkind, producing a very unpleasant experience for the driver that probably did not improve their attitude toward bicyclists. This way of conducting myself produced another impression, planted another seed of rage in my storehouse, that manifested many other times. However, the pain of that rage also touched other seeds: seeds from my past that made me want to be happy and at peace. I began to realize that yelling at dangerous drivers was not going to promote my welfare and the thing to do was take care of my reactivity, my consciousness. This was just as I was beginning Zen practice.