by Red Pine
Yin-shun says, “This bodhisattva who has attained mastery over the insights of prajna does not necessarily refer to the bodhisattva of Potalaka Island (home of Avalokiteshvara). Whoever possesses the power of unobstructed reflection is worthy of being called Avalokiteshvara.”
2. WHILE PRACTICING THE DEEP PRACTICE OF PRAJNAPARAMITA: gambhiran prajna-paramita caryan caramano
The word cara here serves as both a verb and a direct object and means to practice the practice, to walk the walk. In early texts, the Buddha’s disciples were distinguished as to whether they were still in training (shaiksha) or no longer in need of training (ashaksha), and the Buddha’s teachings were referred to as a system of training (shiksha). Thus, Buddhism is better understood as a skill or an art to be practiced and perfected rather than as information or knowledge to be learned and amassed.
This practice is described here as gambhira, or “deep.” The same adjective is also used in Sanskrit to describe the two bodily clefts of the navel and the vagina that link one life to another, and its use here recalls the Buddha’s teaching to Subhuti in the Diamond Sutra: “From this is born the unexcelled, perfect enlightenment of tathagatas, arhans, and fully enlightened ones. From this are born buddhas and bhagavans” (8). Nothing could be deeper than the womb of Prajnaparamita, the Goddess of Transcendent Wisdom, with whom all buddhas are linked, belly to belly.
In the longer, later version of this sutra, this is also the name of the samadhi (union of subject and object in meditation) in which the Buddha remains while Avalokiteshvara speaks this sutra: Gambhira Avabhasan (Manifestation of the Deep). As noted, gambhira refers to such bodily clefts as the vagina and the navel, while avabhasan can mean “illumination” or “manifestation” and is probably derived from the same root as avatara, which refers to the “incarnation” of a deity. Thus, in a Tantric sadhana (ritual enactment) associated with the Heart Sutra, the Buddha’s entry into this samadhi is also described as representing the Buddha’s entry into the womb of Prajnaparamita (cf. Donald Lopez, Elaborations on Emptiness, pp. 131-140). Elsewhere, the Buddha is described as residing in the vaginas of deities that represent the heart of all buddhas (cf. S. Bagchi, ed., The Guhyasamaja Tantra, p. 1). The reason a buddha enters this deepest of wombs is to show by example how to become a buddha.
While Prajnaparamita is sometimes personified as the goddess of the same name, more often this refers to the teaching that gave rise to Mahayana Buddhism. In its initial formulation in such scriptures as the Ratnagunasancaya Gatha and the Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousand Lines, this teaching focuses on the application of transcendent wisdom to the mundane understanding of the world as well as to the metaphysical understanding of the Abhidharma. This new approach, born of yogic insight rather than philosophical speculation, involved the dissolution of analytical categories without establishing any new ones to take their place. Thus, the teaching of Prajnaparamita could be characterized as Lao-tzu did the Tao, “The way that becomes a way / is not the Eternal Way / the name that becomes a name / is not the Eternal Name” (Taoteching: 1). Still, Lao-tzu proceeded to write eighty-one verses on what has no name.And the Buddha likewise spoke at great length on the Prajnaparamita.
This teaching developed quite naturally from the early Buddhist practice of the Three Skandhas, or Pillars: morality (sila), meditation (dhyana), and wisdom (prajna). With the introduction of the paramitas, or perfections, this threefold practice became sixfold: generosity (dana) now preceded morality, which was followed by forbearance (kshanti) and vigor (virya), after which came meditation and wisdom. According to some commentators, the first two paramitas of generosity and morality were the focus of lay practice and were intended to increase a person’s punya, or merit, and the last two paramitas of meditation and wisdom were the focus of monastic practice and were intended to increase a person’s jnana, or knowledge. The middle two paramitas of forbearance and vigor were the proper concern of all practitioners, lay and monastic, and were intended to increase a person’s compassion and resolve.
Together, the paramitas represented a regimen of positive spiritual development, as opposed to earlier more proscriptive views of religious conduct, and a regimen that gave equal weight to lay practice. But what set the Six Paramitas apart from earlier conceptions of practice was their stress on the central role played by wisdom and the non-attachment that arises from its practice. Concerning the first paramita of generosity, Bodhidharma once told his disciples, “Since what is real includes nothing worth begrudging, practitioners give their body, life, and property in charity, without regret, without the vanity of giver, gift, or recipient, and without bias or attachment. And to eliminate impurity, they teach others, but without becoming attached to form” (Red Pine trans., The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma, p. 7). Thus, since the practice of the paramita of generosity is based on an insight as to what is real, early Mahayana practitioners focused on wisdom as the key that makes the other paramitas effective. Wisdom is often described as the center of a five-petalled flower from which the fruit of buddhahood grows. In the Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousand Lines, the Buddha tells Ananda, “The paramita of wisdom incorporates the other five paramitas by means of practices that are based on all-embracing knowledge. Thus does the paramita of wisdom include the other five paramitas. The ‘paramita of wisdom’ is simply a synonym for the fruition of all six paramitas” (80-82).
Taken together, the paramitas are also likened to a boat that takes us across the sea of suffering. The paramita of generosity, according to this analogy, is the wood, light enough to float but not so light that it floats away. Thus bodhisattvas practice giving and renunciation but not so much that they have nothing left with which to work. The paramita of morality is the keel, deep enough to hold the boat upright but not so deep that it drags the shoals or holds it back. Thus bodhisattvas observe precepts but not so many that they have no freedom of choice. The paramita of forbearance is the hull, wide enough to hold a deck but not so wide that it can’t cut through waves. Thus bodhisattvas don’t confront what opposes them but find the place of least resistance. The paramita of vigor is the mast, high enough to hold a sail but not so high that it tips the boat over. Thus bodhisattvas work hard but not so hard that they don’t stop for tea. The paramita of meditation is the sail, flat enough to catch the wind of karma but not so flat that it holds no breeze or rips apart in a gale. Thus bodhisattvas still the mind but not so much that it withers and dies. And the paramita of wisdom is the helm, ingenious enough to give the boat direction but not so ingenious that it leads in circles. Thus bodhisattvas who practice the paramitas embark on the greatest of all voyages to the far shore of liberation.
Fa-tsang says, “The practice of prajna is of two kinds: shallow prajna, whereby persons are seen to be empty, and deep prajna, whereby dharmas are seen to be empty. Here, to note the difference, it describes prajna as deep. Prajna is the substance and means ‘wisdom,’ which is the spiritual awakening to the subtlest mysteries and the wondrous realization of the true source. Paramita is the function and means ‘to reach the other shore,’ which is to use this marvelous wisdom to transform sansara until one reaches completely beyond it to the realm of true emptiness.”
Ching-mai says, “When bodhisattvas practice the Prajnaparamita, they do not think ‘I am practicing the Prajnaparamita, or not practicing the Prajnaparamita, or not not practicing the Prajnaparamita. If bodhisattvas can practice like this, they can benefit countless beings. But they do not think there is any benefit. And why not? Because bodhisattvas do not perceive anything inside dharmas or outside dharmas.”
Chih-shen says, “To practice means to proceed according to the principle of suchness thought after thought without stopping for a moment.”
Huai-shen says, “This is the Mahayana practice of deep wisdom, not the Hinayana practice of superficial wisdom. It includes all practices that are not practiced and not clung to that never stop helping other beings. It is like when a magician performs magic in order to make peop
le aware of illusion. This is why it is called ‘the deep practice of Prajnaparamita.’”
Hui-ching says, “When a person is asleep, they might dream they’re in a boat, that they’re crossing a river and reaching the other shore. Then they suddenly wake up at home, and the river and the person in the boat are gone. When bodhisattvas cultivate the Way, they understand that both people and dharmas are empty. And after approaching the end of the path and gaining the forbearance of birthlessness, they realize that the person who cultivates and the path they cultivate are nothing but a dream or illusion.”
Deva says, “Prajnaparamita is the name of the dharma-kaya, the body that is neither born nor destroyed, that neither comes nor goes, that has the dimensions of emptiness, that is changeless, that fills the entire universe and includes all things and yet fits inside a mustard seed or a mote of dust, and for which metaphors fail.”
3. LOOKED UPON THE FIVE SKANDHAS: vyaavalokayati sma panca skandhas
The verb avaloka means “to look (down) upon,” and vya is an emphatic. Hence, the literal meaning of vya-avaloka-yati is “to look down upon intently.” Thus, Avalokiteshvara practices the practice for which he was named, looking down from above, and perhaps thereby betrays an association with the hill gods of ancient India, if not with the deva Santushita at the summit of Mount Sumeru.
In the earliest texts that deal with meditation, practitioners are advised to begin by focusing their attention on four subjects (catvari smirti-upasthanani): form, sensations, mind, and finally dharmas, the constructs of the mind that such sects as the Sarvastivadins maintained were the underlying substance of reality. This fourfold scheme was probably an earlier variation of the Five Skandhas, which also began with form and sensation but which then divided mind into perception, memory, and consciousness. It didn’t bother with dharmas, because they were subsumed under the various skandhas.
The reason Buddhists focused on the Four Smirti Upasthanas or the Five Skandhas is that they provide everything we need in our spiritual explorations. They are not only equivalent to what we normally think of as our selves; they are equivalent to the entire universe, as we experience it. They include all of creation. This is what Avalokiteshvara looks down upon. The Greek philosopher Archimedes once claimed he could move the world if he had a place to stand and a long enough lever. Avalokiteshvara has found such a place and such a lever.
The Western inquiry into reality generally follows the Cartesian dictum “I think, therefore I am.” The Five Skandhas are an early example of the Buddhist solution to the same sort of self-reflection. But instead of taking the Archimedean standpoint vis-à-vis an external world, the Buddhist analysis never goes beyond our immediate experience. And as a result of reflecting on this experience, Buddhists conclude: “I am aware, therefore I neither am nor am not.” Thus, by taking his stand on the emptiness of self-existence, Avalokiteshvara uses the lever of prajna to move the world of the skandhas.
The Sanskrit word skandha refers to the trunk of a tree, and I think the trunk of a banyan, or Ficus indica, might have been what the Buddha had in mind when he started using this term. The banyan is one of the world’s most unusual trees. It begins as an aerial root that descends from a seed dropped by a bird in the canopy of another tree, such as a palm. After the seed sprouts, its root descends until it reaches the ground, and once established, it strangles its host. As it continues to grow, its branches put forth their own aerial roots, and these, in turn, form additional trunks. In the course of a hundred years, the original trunk becomes impossible to distinguish among the grove of roots that develop into trunks. In Sri Lanka, there is a banyan that has more than 350 major trunks and 3,000 minor ones and that forms its own forest. Thus, the banyan is called “the tree that walks.”
The Buddha frequently sought shelter within the wide, outstretched root structure of such trees. And we know from Vatsyayana’s commentary on the aphorisms of Akshapada in the Nyaya Sutras (II: 1087) that from a distance a skandha was sometimes mistaken for a human being. Hence, it is not surprising that the Buddha chose a word like this to refer to this host-strangling-root that looks like a person. But instead of seeing the individual as a single skandha, the Buddha saw five skandhas, as he considered a person’s experience of the world from five different perspectives. Whether this fivefold analysis originated with Shakyamuni or he learned about it from someone else is unknown. The Jains also used the word skandha for any whole object, including the individual. But the Buddha appears to have been alone in analyzing the individual and the individual’s experience of reality from five points of view. The fact that he often had to explain what he meant by the Five Skandhas suggests they represented a form of analysis not widely known, even to the disciples of other teachers.
Before considering what the Five Skandhas include, I should note that translators have generally settled on “aggregate” as their preferred rendering of this term in English. Given the word’s multiple meanings, such a translation is possible, though, I suggest, inappropriate in this context. For it emphasizes a derivative meaning that distorts the word’s basic frame of reference. This derivative meaning was the one chosen by Vasubandhu in his Abhidharmakoshabhasaya, and it has been used ever since by commentators cognizant of this classic work on the Abhidharma. However, skandha refers to a tree trunk or a pillar made from a tree trunk and not a pile of wood. I will not belabor the point and only hope future translators and commentators will continue to explore this issue.
In his use of the word skandha, the Buddha views the universe of our awareness as supported by these five trunks or pillars, or as consisting of these five aspects, which are separate in name only, and each of which exhausts everything of which we are aware from a different point of view. I have sometimes thought of them as overlays in an anatomy textbook: the skin, the musculature, the skeleton, the circulatory system, and the nervous system, to name only five. But this, of course, is only an analogy and should not be misconstrued as referring to an actual body or an individual self. Rather they represent a system of analysis designed to find our actual bodies or individual selves.
The first skandha in this analysis of our awareness is rupa, or form. Rupa is not the material world. It is simply the outside world, in contrast to what we presume is an inside world. Thus, the word rupa does not actually refer to a concrete object but to the appearance of an object. Form is like a mask that cannot be removed without revealing its own illusory identity. Such a mask might be worn by a table or a sunset or a number or a coin (the rupee), or a universe. Whether such things are real is not relevant. The important thing is that they make up a presumed outside to a presumed inside.
In the Buddha’s system of analysis, the skandha of form includes not only appearances but also the means by which those appearances are apprehended. Thus, form is not an objective category but a subjective one extrapolated from a person’s own experience and beyond which it has little, if any, meaning. In order to substantiate the existence of an external world, and thus to prove the existence of an inner one, a means is needed whereby that external world can be known. The Buddhist definition of form thus includes the powers of the eyes, the ears, the nose, the tongue, and the skin as well as the domains in which they function: sight, sound, smell, taste, and feeling. Hence rupa is not limited to what we normally think of as our body; it includes the sun and the wind and the bamboo outside the window and the window and whatever else we might find in and through the five senses.
To provide some members of his audience with a more accessible entrance into this universe of form, the Buddha further analyzed these powers and domains as representing different combinations of the Four Elements: earth (solidity), water (moisture), fire (heat), and wind (motion). These were already part of general discourse in the Buddha’s day, and his inclusion of them was more like sugar-coating for the materialist members of his audience. But while the materialists of ancient India also included the element of space (akasha) in their five-element view of the universe, the Bud
dha omitted this as having no relevance for what was basically a phenomenological approach. Essentially, form is a conceptual category established in order to give meaning to mind. Form does not represent a separate reality outside of mind, merely a stage on which to proceed with the analysis.
Altogether, there are ten kinds of form, or fourteen, if the four elements are included as a subcategory. As noted, the ten include the five powers of sensation and their five respective domains. Several centuries after the Buddha’s Nirvana, some Abhidharma schools, notably the Sarvastivadins, added an eleventh category for forms that were presumed to exist but whose existence could not be verified by the five senses. For the Sarvastivadins this category was primarily intended to allow the existence of past and future dharmas. However, it was not accepted by other schools, in particular the Darshtantikas. This category and the difference of opinion regarding its validity are worth noting because the position of the Darshtantikas, and later that of the Sautrantikas, was to treat all dharmas, including this eleventh kind of form, as so many ripples in the stream of consciousness and empty of any self-existence. This was in stark contrast to the Sarvastivadins, who held that all dharmas were essentially real. Thus, the teaching of the Heart Sutra did not simply fall out of the sky but more likely evolved out of such conflicts as this over the status of form (cf. “On the Possibility of a Nonexistent Object of Consciousness: Sarvastivadin and Darshtantika Theories” by Collett Cox in the Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, vol. 11, no. 1, 1988).