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As the Perfection of
Wisdom/Discernment tradition evolved, various attempts to explain the
doctrine of emptiness were proposed, the most notable of which centered
on the notion of the tathagata-garbha:
The earliest Sutra to discuss it—the Tathagata-garbha Sutra—illustrated
the concept with a series of similes: an excellent child in the womb of
a poor woman; honey in a beehive; gold fallen into the mud. Some of
these similes, such as the honey or the gold, suggest something already
pure. Others, like the child, suggest something that needs to be
conceived and nurtured. Still others, like the womb, suggest a
nurturing power. Later Mahayanists, both in India and beyond, worked
out the practical implications of each of these ways of conceiving the
potential for Buddhahood, and divided into broad camps over which
concept provided the most reliable guide to meditation practice.
There was also the question of how this doctrine related to the doctrine of not-self. Some of the tathagata-garbha Sutras, such as the Mahayana Mahaparinirvana Sutra, stated flatly that this potential was one’s true self. Others, such as the Lion’s Roar of Queen Srimala, denied that this potential is a self, for it is impersonal: the womb/embryo of the Dharma realm, the Dharma body, the transcendent.... Still, the impression that the tathagata-garbha was simply a way of sneaking a permanent self in the back door of Buddhist thought seems to have persisted, for another sutra—the Lankavatara (Descent into Lanka)—takes up just this question. It employs the canonical image the Buddha as doctor to explain how Dharma teachings should be understood: in terms of their intended purpose in bringing the mind to Awakening, just as medicine can be properly understood only in terms of its purpose in curing illness. In the same way that different illnesses require different medicine, different mental defilements require different teachings. Thus the Lanka explains the tathagata-garbha teachings in terms of its purpose: to assuage the fears of those who are disconcerted by the not-self teaching. As for the not-self teaching, its purpose is to clear away the mind’s habit of imputing imagined categories to reality. Ultimately, however, all doctrines must be abandoned to allow for an experience of Awakening, which is totally inexpressible. [BR, 109-10]
Asanga and Vasubandhu The Foundation of Yogacara Approximately two
hundred years after Nagarjuna was establishing the Madhyamika...the
monk Vasubandhu converted to the Mahayana and helped further establish
the Vijnanavada school, also known
as the Yogacara or
the Citamatra, school. In
English, it is often referred to as the Mind-Only, or the
Consciousness-Only, school....
The granary consciousness contains all the seeds;
its transformation takes place according to a process of give and take
between it and the false discriminations to which it gives rise [and
which in turn affect it. This process leaves in the granary
consciousness] residual impressions [vasana] of actions, which along
with the residual impressions of dualistic grasping give rise to a
new “coming to fruition” when the former “fruition” has
died out....
As long as consciousness is
not content with being perception only, there will continue to be a
tendency toward dualistic grasping. This is so even with the
thought “all this is perception only.” If you come to
apprehend
this and set it up in front of you, you are not being content
with “this only.” But when consciousness truly no longer
apprehends
any object of consciousness, it abides as consciousness only; for when
what it grasps does not exist, there is no grasping. It is then
free of thought, nondependent, transcendent knowledge. This is
the fundamental revolution of all consciousness, the destruction of the
double depravity. This element is also free from evil
attachments, unimaginable, meritorious, constant, blissful. It is
the liberation body, which is called the Dharma body of the Buddha.
[EB, 167]
The way in which the Lanka
defines all experience in terms of consciousness has led some modern
scholars to interpret it as an early form of ontological idealism, or
the theory that nothing exists except the mind and its contents. And
some of the Sutra’s traditional interpreters in Asia have seen it in
just that light. Other modern scholars, however, have interpreted
the Lanka’s
approach more as a type of phenomenology, focusing on experience in and
of itself for the purpose of ending defilement, without concern for
abstract theorizing beyond that purpose. Given the Sutra’s
provisional, tactical approach to the Dharma, this interpretation seems
closer to its actual intent. [BR, 111]
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