by Ben Connelly
I have not attained nirvana. I’m still affected by karma, I see my past habits emerge in my life, and I suffer and cause harm. However it’s very common in Consciousness Only literature to speak of a revolution at the root or consciousness that makes the store consciousness into great mirror wisdom that perfectly reflects without obscuration or coloration—a vast mind untainted by afflictive emotions, delusion, or conditioning. Though I’m still bound to this river of karma, I have confidence based in experience that you can begin to sense this mirror through practice. You can allow for the complete transformation of consciousness into something purely available to and manifesting what is, whose every action is made from the perspective of universal connection, infinite compassion.
5
Mind Makes Self and Other
Dependent on the store consciousness and taking it as its object,
Manas, the consciousness of a self, arises, which consists of thinking. || 5 ||
The manas, or consciousness of a self, is (along with the store consciousness) a defining Yogacara innovation. The idea that we have a sense of being I, that we think there are things that are me and mine, is central to many forms of Buddhist thought, but the idea that there is an aspect of consciousness that creates this sense of self is distinctly Yogacarin. The manas consciousness, depending on the karma of the store consciousness, believes part of experience to be self, I, and in so doing it causes the other aspects of experience to appear to be other.
An important part of the practice laid out in Early Buddhist sutras is seeing that the five aggregates—form, sensation, perception, mental formations, and consciousness—are not-self. That is to say, realizing that bodily sensations, and the body itself, is not I, me, or mine; impulses to act are not I, me, or mine; being aware is not I, me, or mine. We see this through nonjudgmentally observing things arise and go away, seeing that all phenomena, including those that we’d normally categorize as being “ourselves,” are just fleeting things that are happening. As this realization deepens, our tendency to get stuck on our desires fades. For example, instead of thinking, “I need my son to clean this room,” we can be aware that there is tension in the body and mind, along with images of clothing scattered on the floor in our field of vision, and impulses to speak in a loud and angry voice. This allows us to take care of the suffering that is right in front of us (in what is conventionally thought to be our own body and mind) and then act truly on behalf of our child, speaking kindly, to help him have a clean space and healthful habits, rather than trying to control him in order to alleviate our own suffering, the pain of our own anger and judgment.
In an Early Buddhist sutra, written long before the idea of manas was developed, we see a seed of its development. An old and ill monk is visited by some younger monks. They ask him whether he has seen, through his practice, that the five aggregates are not-self, to which he answers in the affirmative, but he goes on to say that he still experiences “the residual conceit, ‘I am.’” This old monk is in essence saying that he still experiences manas.
He’s talking about his own direct experience, not parroting teachings or trying to show off his attainments. He is attached to his self and his life, albeit in a very soft and wise way, and he shows these young monks, as he nears death, not a magical message of liberation, nor a religiously correct view, but merely what he knows from his own deep practice of looking at life coming and going. In the Yogacarabhumi, one of the most comprehensive Yogacara texts, whose authorship is not known, manas is defined using this same language: “Manas . . . is conceiving, I-making, the conceit ‘I am.’” The honesty and depth of practice of one old monk was carried through hundreds of years to the Yogacarabhumi and right into this text and our minds, right now.
This manas creates the sense that our hand is our own, that our thoughts are our own, that we are looking out at a world from inside our bodies. It is central to our sense of separation and alienation, but it’s also a fundamental and useful aspect of a healthy human consciousness. Psychologists tell us babies develop a sense of self, manas, in their first year. Before their egos develop, they cry when they are tired, or hungry, or grumpy until someone takes care of their needs. Over the years we need to develop a sense of self-regulation and autonomy so that when things are difficult we don’t have to be overwhelmed, and so we can allow who we are as unique aspects of the universe to flower for our own well-being and for everyone. We need to make our own lunches, clean our own rooms, take care of our personal boundaries, and make our own particular offerings—whatever they may be. The first half of the “Thirty Verses” presents a model for developing a healthy ego by working with consciousness, one that is not overcome by afflictive emotion, that softens and doesn’t need to hold on so tightly. The second half gives a means to see through and let go of the sense of self.
Many people in many traditions have described experiences of life without any sense of being a self separate from other things. The language of these descriptions tends in this way: boundless, infinite, compassionate, joyful, emptiness, intimate, blissful. One young man came to me for a practice meeting a few months after he’d woken from a coma. As he came back to the world his consciousness was not producing a sense of separateness. He’d felt deep peace and unity with everything, and major problems he’d had with his family were completely gone. But as the effects of the coma faded, the boundless appreciation and connection faded, and he wanted to do Zen practice to get it back. It was an amazing story, and I was pained to follow the best way I know and to tell him he shouldn’t try to get that back, that pursuing that sense would only feed the karma of desire that makes the manas afflicted. I encouraged him to practice just to be in life right now as it is, for this is the way to plant the seeds in the storehouse that grow to a sense of boundless intimacy.
This verse says manas “consists of thinking,” and indeed the word manas is a common Sanskrit word that means “thinking.” Yogacarins use this word in a particular and technical way. In this case thinking does not just mean having word-based thoughts moving through the mind. As we will see in a couple of verses, the manas is almost always functioning, even when there are not what we’d usually call “thoughts.” This verse provides a particular, technical definition of thinking: I-making, or having the sense of being a self.
Here Vasubandhu merely begins a description of manas as a basic aspect of consciousness. Although it is intimately associated with how it comes to be that people suffer and cause harm, and although Vasubandhu will describe at the end of these verses that its cessation is vast, blissful, compassionate liberation, we are not instructed here to reject it. The path laid forth here is to know it, be intimate with it, see it manifesting here in this moment. The way to practice with manas is to be aware, to be attentive, to take care of it.
6
Stuck on the Self
It is always associated with four afflictions, self-view, self-delusion, self-pride, and self-love,
And is obstructed but karmically neutral. Along with these four, || 6 ||
Manas, the consciousness that creates a self, is intimately related to our tendency to be dissatisfied, to suffer. It gives rise to a focus on the self that results in confusion about the nature of what’s happening in the moment—creating tendencies known as “afflictions” because they cause us to suffer.
In his first discourse Buddha teaches what he describes as the Noble Eightfold Path: right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. Life, he says, is characterized by dukkha, dissatisfaction and suffering, caused by wanting things to be other than they are; the Eightfold Path offers a practical model for promoting well-being, a model of healing. In later teachings, dukkha is described in more detail as kleshas, afflictions.
The most well-known kleshas are desire, aversion, and delusion: things that arise in consciousness and are painful, or create dissatisfaction. Further along in the “Thirty
Verses” we will see some more extensive lists of afflictions, and here in this verse we encounter four: self-view, self-delusion, self-pride, and self-love.
The word klesha is sometimes translated as “defilement,” but “affliction” is a much more accurate and helpful translation of this term. In Sanskrit, klesha generally carries the meaning of affliction or illness, not defilement or a lack of purity. Importantly, by describing what arises in mind and causes harm as an affliction, an illness, we are more easily moved toward compassion, toward a nonjudgmental impulse to heal. The language of “defilement” and “purity” can easily give rise to shame and pride. When we see afflictions, on the other hand, we have an opportunity to be present to the suffering and open our hearts to the possibility of wellness.
Vasubandhu tells us that when manas is functioning, which is during most of human experience, these afflictions arise: self-view, self-delusion, self-pride, and self-love. Self-view is having the viewpoint, or sense, that there is a self. Self-delusion is being confused about what the self is. Self-pride is placing undue importance on oneself in relation to other things. And self-love is clinging to the self’s interest in a way that causes suffering.
A quick reading of these can give pause, for it seems that a few of these are actually fundamental aspects of a healthy, functioning person. Without self-view how would one know to leave an abusive relationship? This is one of the reasons that we are not instructed by Vasubandhu to somehow immediately amputate the manas. There are certainly Buddhist teachings, and many other mystic teachings, that encourage us to urgently and permanently drop away the self, but Vasubandhu in this first half of the “Thirty Verses” is deeply attuned to the psychological precision of the Early Buddhist model of practice. The Buddha’s Eightfold Path does include letting the sense of self go in deep states of concentration, but it also includes being and seeing the self as it is right now through ethical activity and mindfulness.
Self-view is helpful if a car is coming our way at high speed as we cross a street; it is a natural aspect of human consciousness designed for self-protection. Unfortunately it clouds our view so we don’t realize our total and profound connection to everything else, our capacity for self-preservation becomes obsessive, and we lose the vast spacious capacity of mind.
Self-delusion is the profundity of our confusion about who we are, which manifests in the form of certainty. Who are you? What are you? Who am I? These should instead be viewed as koans: practice questions whose value never dies, because if we dive into the question we see that there is no ultimate answer. Every idea we have about ourselves is delusion, and yet we often conduct ourselves as if our ideas are ironclad facts.
Self-pride is seeing ourselves in relation to everything else inaccurately—seeing ourselves as much more important than we are in the grand scheme of things. The term is a little confusing as it has two aspects; our view of ourself might be excessively positive or negative. For instance, if I’m thinking about how I know more than the fellow next to me about Yogacara, the affliction of self-pride is manifesting, cutting me off from my experience, my fellow, and the teaching. And if I’m thinking about how I am awful at gardening, or am a terrible mother, that too is self-pride; for I have cut myself off from what is happening through preconceptions about my relation to plants or children. I am not seeing my real relationship. Self-pride is the tendency to see ourselves as the bump on the universe.
Self-love is not about a healthy sense of self-esteem. Self-love is about clinging: clinging to what we want, clinging to life, and also pushing away what we don’t like. Often, afflicted by self-love, we eat just because we want to get some pleasure for ourselves, but it is possible to eat food not because you want it or it’s your favorite kind, but because you realize you have the capacity to be of service to others and you can’t do it without food. During formal meals on Zen retreats we chant, “we regard this food as medicine to sustain our life . . . for the sake of enlightenment we now receive this food.” It is possible and quite wonderful to eat without self-love, to eat with love for everything.
All of these appear in gross and subtle forms. Sometimes when I am angry and self-pride becomes very intense, I begin to feel very sure that I am right. I get tense and my mind churns over and over, imagining arguments I’ll never have. However, according to these verses and my experience, these four afflictions arise in subtle forms even when the mind is very, very quiet. Even in the fading light of the last sitting of a beautiful day devoted to meditation practice, this residual conceit “I am” is often there, quietly making a subtle sense of dissatisfaction. How soon will the bell ring? I hope the bell never rings!
Vasubandhu says this manas is “obstructed, but karmically neutral.” Even though it always arises with these four afflictions, and is thus obstructed, it, like the store consciousness, is not inherently negative. The manas is a space where these obscurations occur, but it can be transformed into clarity. In many Yogacara teachings, as the seeds of wellness are cultivated in the storehouse through practice, the storehouse is transformed into the great mirror wisdom, and the manas is transformed into the wisdom of equality. Rather than placing the self at the center of everything and constantly trying to control things to suit the self, the transformed manas appears merely as a way of seeing the equality and value of everything that appears, leaving behind judgments and manifesting total compassion for everything in every moment.
7
Seeing Through I, Me, and Mine
From where it is born come sense-contact, attention, sensation, perception, and volition.
It is not found in enlightenment, the meditation of cessation, or the supramundane path. || 7 ||
Manas is born in each moment, because karma and other conditions arise in a way that supports its birth. In this verse these conditions are called “from where it is born.” Here is the place; the fact that you and I have a sense of being a self is the result of infinite conditions arising in this moment. The evolution of fur-bearing mammals, the way your parents taught you your name through countless repetitions, the effectiveness with which our categorizing minds have perpetuated the human species, the billboards that remind you that you should keep wanting things you don’t have, the pleasure you took from drinking tea this morning, the anger you felt when your mother criticized your housekeeping, the breath that is passing through your body right now—these are the ground for the place, this moment, where manas is born. The energy that has gone into creating a sense of self is vast beyond measure. Although our sense of a self is a basic aspect of why we suffer and cause harm, it is also just one of the infinite manifestations of the way things are. Let’s not make it an enemy. We can practice in a way that is kind to manas, that allows a transformation, that plants seeds of karma that can grow into a mind that is free of this sense of alienation from the moment, that clearly sees and is available to whatever appears.
Depending on conditions “where it is born,” manas arises with the five universal mental factors: sense-contact, attention, sensation, perception, and volition. Having introduced these in chapter 4, I will not discuss them here, though I will address them extensively as an object of meditation in chapter 10. Instead, let’s focus on the main theme of this verse: the conditions in which manas is not found.
As we will see toward the end of the “Thirty Verses,” Vasubandhu and Yogacara in general place the split between subject and object, self and other, at the very center of the problem of human suffering. Since the afflicted manas creates this split, by definition, its cessation is key. The conditions in which Vasubandhu says the afflicted manas is not found are enlightenment, the meditation of cessation, and the supramundane (bodhisattva) path.
By including all three of these, Vasubandhu, as is often the case, makes a way for divergent ideas to live happily under one roof. Many other texts in many other Buddhist traditions over the years have made fierce doctrinal arguments, claiming their side was righ
t. Vasubandhu devotes his vast knowledge of Buddhist thought and his deep practice, over and over again, to demonstrating how all these views can work together.
The meditation of cessation is a state of meditation that many yogis and Buddhists described, where their consciousness appeared to completely stop functioning. A monk would sit, enter the meditation of cessation, and hours later come back to the realm of form having had no experience, and no sense of a self having had an experience. That the manas was not functioning seemed clear, but when people came back from this meditation they were still carrying their old karma around; they had all their old memories, and they often saw the same emotional habits arise. This is why we say the afflicted manas isn’t found in the meditation of cessation, but the store consciousness still functions in it. Deep meditative states, called right concentration in the Eightfold Path, are a valuable aspect of the path to liberation. However deep meditative states are not the ultimate aspiration of Buddhist practice; the root aspiration is the alleviation of suffering.
Early Buddhists, and Theravadans today, revere arhats who have attained nirvana, the cessation of suffering. Mahayana Buddhists, on the other hand, view bodhisattvas who have devoted their lives to alleviating suffering in others as the great exemplars of the path. In this verse Vasubandhu tells us that manas is not found in enlightenment, the state of being one who has attained nirvana, nor in the supramundane path, a common Indian term for the state of being a bodhisattva. Many texts in the respective traditions agree with this assertion: the arhat sees that he or she can’t locate his or her self in anything, the bodhisattva realizes that nothing at all has its own selfhood, including his or her self. Vasubandhu is finding common ground. Early Buddhists describe nirvana as a state where there is no suffering, no desire, no aversion, no delusion. When there is no manas there is the profound peace that comes from not wanting things to be other than they are. Mahayana texts describe the bodhisattva manifesting infinite compassionate activity. When there is no manas, the activity of human form is always directed to taking care of everything that appears in the moment in the kindest possible way. The “Thirty Verses” declares that the best way to realize both of these ideals is to do both the Early Buddhist practices of observing the emotional tendencies of mind and the Mahayana practice of radically nondual meditation. In a few chapters we’ll begin to dig into the former, and in the second half of the book we’ll delve deeper into the Mahayana ocean of interdependence, emptiness, and thusness.