Tathagata-garbha
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:
- tathagata: “Thus-Come One”
(a common Mahayana name for the Buddha)
- garbha: womb, embryo or matrix (depending
on the context)
- tathagata-garbha: (i) the “womb” in which Buddhahood
develops; (ii) the internal “embryo” that allows one to develop into a
Buddha; (iii) the “matrix” (i.e. web of reality) that is ever-present,
but only realized through the attainment of Buddhahood.
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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-gargbha 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....
...In a sense,
subject-object dualism is the “villain” for
Vasubandhu the way inherent self-existence was the “villain” for
Nagarjuna. [EB, 164-5]
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The Eight
Consciousnesses
6
Sense-Consciousnesses
7th “Mind” Consciousness
8th “Storehouse”
Consciousness |
In unpacking their notion of reality, the
Vijnanavadins were
very good at distinguishing between types of consciousness and
eventually developed a system of eight consciousnesses. The first
six
of these they shared with the Mainstream Buddhist schools: the
five
consciousnesses associated with the five physical senses (that is, the
consciousness involved in seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and
touching) and the mental consciousness associated with the brain seen
as one of the sense organs (that is, the consciousness involved in
thinking).
The third
transformation concerns the consciousnesses dependent on the six
senses: [the visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, tactile, and
mental consciousnesses]. [EB, 166]
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To these were added a seventh consciousness
called the
mind
(manas), which is chiefly involved in our giving to ourselves (and to
objects) a false sense of individuality...
The
intellectualizing consciousness is called “the mind”
[manas]. As
it develops, it is dependent on the granary consciousness and takes it
as its object. It is karmically indeterminate but obstructed by
four defilements to which it is always connectd. These are called
false view of the Self, delusion about the Self, pride of the Self, and
love of the Self. Whenever the mind comes into being, it is
accompanied by linkage to sense objects and by the other mental
factors: attention, feeling, conceptualization, and
volition. It ceases to exist at arhatship, or in the trance of
cessation, or in the supramundane path. That is the second
transformation of consciousness. [EB, 166]
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...and an eighth consciousness
called the storehouse consciousness (alaya-vijnana), or the
“granary
consciousness,” which is said to contain all the “seeds” for
what
become “consciousness-moments” or “consciousness-events” (what we usually call reality)...
The
consciousness that is called “coming to fruition” is the granary
consciousness (alaya-vijnana); it comprises all of the seeds
(bija). Its substratum, its disposition, its perceptions cannot
be discerned, but it is always accompanied by the following
factors: linkage to sense objects, attention, feeling,
conceptualization, and volition. Its feelings are [neither
pleasant nor unpleasant but] neutral, and it is undefiled and
karmically indeterminate....Its behavior is like the current of a
stream. At arhatship, there occurs in it a fundamental
revolution. [EB, 166]
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...Ultimately, then, reality might be
envisioned as but a series of seeds
(bija) in the granary consciousness that sprout, germinate, are
harvested, and are once again stored, all in the granary consciousness.
[EB, 164-5]
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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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