The Profound Meaning of the Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā Sutra from the Consciousness-Only Perspective (Second Edition)

Chapter 6  Seeing the True Reality as It Is, Five

Seeing the true reality as it is means seeing the true reality and actual dharma, not seeing false and illusory dharmas, and not taking illusory dharmas as real. This chapter, following the breaking of the four marks, goes a step deeper to break all marks, including the Buddha's bodily marks, in order to highlight the Tathāgata's Dharma body and highlight the dharma of ultimate reality.

Original text: 须菩提。于意云何。可以身相见如来不。须菩提答。不也。世尊。不可以身相见如来。

Explanation: Subhūti, what do you think? To see the Tathāgata, does one see the Tathāgata's physical body? Is only one with a physical body the true Buddha? Does one see the Tathāgata through bodily marks? Subhūti said: It is not so, World-Honored One; seeing the Tathāgata is not done through bodily marks.

The true Buddha does not necessarily have marks, because Māra can also transform into a Buddha with the thirty-two marks; one with marks is not the true Buddha's body. The Buddha has three bodies: the Dharma body, the reward body, and the manifested body. The Dharma body is the true suchness principle-body, which cannot be seen, heard, or touched; the Dharma body has no marks, yet no mark is not He, none is not manifested by Him, none is not accomplished by Him. The Dharma body is also called the great mirror-like wisdom (ādarśa-jñāna), whose light shines upon the great trichiliocosm and the worlds of the ten directions; there is no dharma not under His illumination, no dharma that can escape outside this great mirror—all are images within the mirror. He possesses immeasurable and boundless vast wisdom; there is no dharma He does not know, no dharma He cannot manifest; His merits are perfect and complete, and all dharmas are fully endowed in Him; He is also called omniscience/wisdom of all aspects (sarvākārajñatā). The Sambhogakāya Buddha is the adorned physical body retributively attained through the Buddha's cultivation over three great asaṃkhyeya kalpas. Śākyamuni Buddha's reward body resides in the palace of the Akaniṣṭha Heaven, expounding the Dharma to the great bodhisattvas of the Dharma body from the first bhūmi to the tenth bhūmi, proclaiming the wisdom of the varieties of paths and the wisdom for attaining buddhahood, teaching the bodhisattvas to cultivate and learn the seed functions contained within the tathāgatagarbha. But a bodhisattva must have meditative concentration (samādhi) at the level of the fourth dhyāna or above in order to be born in the highest heaven of the form realm to hear the Buddha personally expound the Dharma.

The Sambhogakāya Buddha has a self-enjoyment body and an enjoyment-for-others body. The self-enjoyment body is enjoyed by the World-Honored One Himself; the enjoyment-for-others body is manifested by the World-Honored One for the bodhisattvas. Because bodhisattvas' levels of realization differ, the body size and bodily marks of the reward body Buddha they see also differ; this is brought about by the bodhisattvas' merit and wisdom, not because the Buddha has discrimination. The lifespan of the Sambhogakāya Buddha is seven million asaṃkhyeya kalpas; one asaṃkhyeya kalpa contains countless great kalpas; one great kalpa contains four intermediate kalpas of formation, abiding, decay, and emptiness; one intermediate kalpa contains twenty small kalpas; one small kalpa is 16.8 million years. The Buddha's reward body is of extremely vast size; compared with the Buddha's body, the Earth is like a ping-pong ball in the Buddha's hand; one white hair curl between the Buddha's two eyebrows, when extended, can encircle five Mount Sumerus.

The Nirmāṇakāya Buddha is a physical body similar to sentient beings, manifested in response to the faculties of sentient beings of the ten directions, with a similar lifespan, requiring the passing through the eight marks of attaining the path to become a Buddha: descending from Tuṣita, entering the mother's womb, emerging from the womb, leaving home, subduing Māra, attaining buddhahood, turning the wheel of Dharma, and parinirvāṇa. After leaving home, the World-Honored One manifested behaving like sentient beings—alms-begging, eating, bathing, sleeping, daily activities. The Buddha did not need these; He deliberately manifested them to sentient beings, because sentient beings' faculties are dull; if He were not equal with sentient beings, they could not follow and learn, and the Buddha could not teach and transform them. When the Nirmāṇakāya Buddha enters parinirvāṇa, unlike an arhat who burns off the body and extinguishes consciousness, extinguishing the five aggregates body, He retains a liberated form (mokṣa-rūpa) to benefit sentient beings: having passed into extinction in this world, He manifests a physical body in other worlds; and that physical body is liberated, without afflictions or habitual tendencies, having severed all ignorance, including the ignorance of one thought, beginningless ignorance, and ignorance like dust and sand. The ignorance of one thought can only be completely severed by an arhat of the fourth fruit; only when it is completely severed can one transcend the three realms. Beginningless ignorance is severed by bodhisattvas after their realization; sentient beings, from beginningless kalpas, have not known that there is a mind of ultimate reality, the tathāgatagarbha; after realization, beginningless ignorance is broken. The ignorance like dust and sand refers to the matters and principles sentient beings do not understand, as numerous as dust and sand in their minds; after enlightenment, ignorance is gradually broken to the end, and the Buddha path is perfectly accomplished.

The transformation body is the immeasurable physical bodies the Buddha manifests through supernatural powers and meditative absorption (samādhi), distributed throughout the worlds of the ten directions to broadly deliver those with affinities, manifesting whatever body is needed for deliverance and expounding the Dharma, sharing the same activities and conduct with sentient beings. The reward body, the manifested body, and the transformation body are all born from the Dharma body; they are subject to arising and ceasing, impermanent, and are not the true Buddha; therefore, to see the Tathāgata one must not see through bodily marks. The true Buddha is without marks; with marks, it is not true.

Original text: 何以故。如来所说身相。即非身相。

Explanation: Why is this said? Because the bodily marks the Tathāgata speaks of are marks that are without bodily marks.

After Subhūti turned his mind toward the Mahāyāna, he cultivated and studied the principle of ultimate reality and true suchness; his wisdom was penetrating and fluent, and he could deeply understand the true meaning of what the Buddha said. What kind of mark was the Tathāgata's bodily mark that the World-Honored One spoke of in the previous sentence? Subhūti said that the bodily mark the Tathāgata spoke of is a mark without the mark of a physical body—a markless mark. The Dharmakāya Buddha possesses the principle of the eightfold negations of the middle way and the immeasurable middle ways; it has true merits and functions, possessing the virtue of prajñā, the virtue of liberation, and the virtue of nirvāṇa. The virtue of liberation means the Dharma body does not attach to any dharma, does not abide in any dharma, is not bound by any dharma; He is not in the three realms, yet is not not-in the three realms; He is not outside the three realms, yet is not not-outside the three realms; toward all dharmas He is suchness is immovable (tathatā-acalita). The virtue of nirvāṇa means the Dharma body possesses the nature of neither arising nor ceasing, the nature of neither coming nor going, the nature of true permanence, the nature of quiescent extinction, the nature of purity (viśuddha), the nature of unchangingness, and the nature of permanence, bliss, self, and purity. The virtue of prajñā means the great wisdom of the Dharma body to give birth to all dharmas.

Why can one not see the Tathāgata through bodily marks?

The Tathāgata is the virtue of nature, is true suchness, is the Dharma body, and has no bodily marks; therefore one cannot see Him through bodily marks. Whether it is the bodily marks of sentient beings or the bodily marks of the Tathāgata, neither is real, neither is unborn and unceasing, neither is forever unchanging; they are provisionally named bodily marks. Therefore a marked body represents neither sentient beings nor the Tathāgata. If one takes the bodily marks as sentient beings and the bodily marks as the Tathāgata, then when the bodily marks perish, the sentient beings vanish, and the Tathāgata also disappears. But the Tathāgata is eternally unchanging and never disappears.

The Tathāgata is also the Buddha's virtue of nature, the true suchness mind-body of permanence, bliss, self, and purity; He is without marks, without the features of a physical body; therefore, taking bodily marks as the Tathāgata, one cannot see the Tathāgata. To see the Tathāgata, one must, through bodily marks, see the virtue of nature, see the markless true body. The markless is true; the marked is false—a name provisionally established for false marks, provisionally named bodily marks. Then how did these bodily marks come about? Through the Buddha's cultivation over three great asaṃkhyeya kalpas, the retributive body of thirty-two marks and eighty excellent characteristics was retributively attained from accumulated wisdom, merit, and virtue; it was manifested by the Buddha's tathāgatagarbha, the undefiled consciousness (amala-vijñāna); it is an arising-and-ceasing body coming from nonexistence into existence, and therefore it is false and illusory.

Then how can one see the Tathāgata, see the true Buddha? The Buddha gave a four-line verse as the answer: All marks are false and illusory; if one sees that all marks are no-marks, then one sees the Tathāgata. The answer is the result; the process of obtaining the answer is investigating Chan, meditative inquiry; the prerequisite conditions are the full possession of precepts, meditative concentration, and wisdom, the perfection of the bodhisattva's six perfections, and even more the full possession of the Small Vehicle's thirty-seven aids to enlightenment, because if the Small Vehicle cannot realize it, the Great Vehicle even less can.

"All marks" refers to all marks whatsoever: the mark of self, the mark of person, the mark of sentient being, the mark of life span, the marks of the five aggregates (pañca-skandha), phenomenal marks, object marks, mind marks, dharma marks—without exception they are all no-marks, all false and illusory, born and transformed from the vajra mind (vajra-citta). If one wishes to see the Tathāgata, to see the vajra prajñā mind of ultimate reality, one must through investigating Chan inquire into these marks on all marks: what in essence are these marks, why do all these marks exist, why do all these marks arise and cease. When the inquiry is thoroughly penetrated and the vajra prajñā mind is realized, one will know that these marks are all empty and without self-nature, none is the mark of the original substance, all are the functions of the vajra mind.

It is like the wind blowing and the tree swaying: the tree itself cannot sway; the phenomenon of swaying is not the tree's own phenomenon but the force of the wind's action. Thus when the mark of the wind blowing appears and the wind is realized, the mark of the tree swaying is broken. Likewise, within all marks one can realize the markless vajra mind and the wondrous true suchness nature, thereby breaking all marks and realizing that all marks are no-marks—this is the profound meaning of the Buddha's words, "if one sees that all marks are no-marks, then one sees the Tathāgata." If one sees all marks as all marks, that is the flesh eye of an ordinary person; if one sees that all marks are not all marks, yet are named all marks, that is a sagely bodhisattva. Although all marks are provisionally named all marks, the false marks still exist, the illusory functions still exist, and cannot be entirely extinguished; therefore all marks are no-marks, and not no-marks—free from the four propositions, cut off from the hundred negations.

Original text: 凡所有相。皆是虚妄。若见诸相非相。即见如来。

Explanation: All marks in the world whatsoever are false and illusory; if within all marks one sees a dharma that is without marks, one sees the self-nature Tathāgata. (This is said from the level of prajñā; if from the level of Yogācāra, if one sees that all marks are not all marks, that they all have no marks, then one has seen the self-nature Tathāgata.)

All marks include the forms seen by the eye: the universe and empty space, mountains, rivers, and the great earth, flowers, grass, trees, birds, beasts, people, and so forth; the sounds heard by the ear: human and animal sounds, cosmic sounds, river sounds, the sounds of all things, and so forth; the various fragrant, foul, sour, and rotten smells smelled by the nose; the sour, sweet, bitter, and spicy tastes tasted by the tongue; the sense objects of touch felt by the body—hunger and thirst, cold and heat, soft and hard, soreness and numbness, fatigue, tranquility (praśama), vexation, fullness, bloating, pain, and so forth; as well as all the dharma marks discriminated by the mind, such as the wholesome and unwholesome, true and false, good and bad (kuśala-akuśala, satya-mithyā, śubha-aśubha). These six sense-object marks appear to sentient beings to be real and to have real functions; from the standpoint of actual reality, these marks are all false and illusory, all born and manifested from the tathāgatagarbha.

Within the tathāgatagarbha there are the four great element seeds of earth, water, fire, and wind; these four great element seeds combine together in certain proportional structures, transforming into the universe's material world, Mount Sumeru, heavenly palaces, the four great continents, the four great oceans, minerals and plants, and so forth; the physical bodies of sentient beings are also transformed and born from the tathāgatagarbha. Because the manas carries afflictive habitual tendencies and attachments from beginningless kalpas and refuses to extinguish itself, always wanting a physical body to use, after death there is the neutrino-body (antarā-bhava); seeing the future life's parents uniting, it rushes toward them and participates therein. One who is to be born as a male develops craving-attachment toward the future mother; one who is to be born as a female develops craving-attachment toward the future father; at the final instant of the parents' union, a mind of joy arises, and the manas and tathāgatagarbha are seized and held within the father's sperm and mother's blood, forming a fertilized egg and entering the mother's body. The tathāgatagarbha absorbs nutritive elements from the mother's body and continuously transforms the fertilized egg, changing every seven days, producing the head, limbs, five sense faculties, and the five internal organs and six bowels; after four or five months, the mind consciousness, ear consciousness, nose consciousness, and body consciousness arise; when body and mind are mature, the tathāgatagarbha blows the karmic wind, and the fetus, head downward, exits the mother's body and becomes an infant; then through drinking milk and eating food, the tathāgatagarbha absorbs nutritive elements from the food and transforms the physical body. Therefore the physical body is manifested by the tathāgatagarbha.

When sentient beings' eyes see form, they think they can truly see form; in fact, sentient beings have never seen the external form; what the eye faculty contacts is only a false mark, a shadow. If the external form were truly pressed against the eye faculty, one could not see that external form. If the eye could truly contact form, then when the eye sees a sharp knife and the knife tip contacts the eye, it would certainly pierce the eyeball; when the eye sees fire and the fire contacts the eye, it would certainly burn the eyeball; when the eye sees sand and the sand contacts the eye, it would certainly blind the eye. The eye faculty and form cannot make contact; form must be at a certain distance from the eye faculty to transmit the four great element particles of the form sense-object; the tathāgatagarbha, through the eye faculty contacting the external form, transforms the external form into an identical shadow, and only then can it be seen; if the form were pressed against the eye faculty, with no spatial distance, the form could not be seen. The nose faculty, tongue faculty, and body faculty can directly contact the external scent objects, taste objects, and touch objects, without needing a certain distance and space, and the three consciousnesses can then be generated to cognize scent, taste, and touch.

This shadow seen by the eye consciousness differs from the matter of the external form; it is not the actual thing, and only then can it be transmitted through the retina and the conducting nerves to the supreme faculty (indriya) in the back of the brain that governs vision; the tathāgatagarbha there produces the eye consciousness, and the eye consciousness discriminates the form sense-object. This form seems the same as the external form, but is actually a similar shadow, and sentient beings take it as real. Likewise with the ear faculty, nose faculty, and tongue faculty: none can contact the external sounds, scents, or tastes; all are contacted by the tathāgatagarbha and then manifested. Whatever is born is false and illusorily transformed—this is the principle that all dharmas are created by the mind alone. In short, all marks whatsoever are false and illusory. If one can, on the various marks of the five aggregates and eighteen realms, find a tathāgatagarbha that has no marks and is not a mark, that is seeing the Tathāgata—seeing the mind, realizing enlightenment, and seeing ultimate reality.

Since all marks are born and manifested by the tathāgatagarbha, the operation of all marks cannot be separated from the tathāgatagarbha; when seeing marks, a person with wisdom can discover the ultimate reality that is together with the marks. Who discovers the ultimate reality, the vajra mind? It is the deluded mind; enlightenment is the deluded mind realizing the true mind. Within the various illusory marks of the operating five aggregates and eighteen realms, the vajra mind can be realized everywhere—for example, in raising the hand and moving the foot, in greeting and seeing off, in recollection of the Buddha (buddhānusmṛti) and prostrating to the Buddha, in hitting people and scolding people, the vajra mind is operating together throughout. The Fifth Patriarch said: If one has seen the nature, even wielding a knife on the battlefield one sees it—this is exactly the principle.

The Vimalakīrti Sūtra says: Whether the bodhisattva lifts his foot or sets it down, he comes from the place of the Path. Layman Pang of the Tang dynasty said: Carrying firewood and hauling water—supernatural powers and wondrous function. Deshan used a staff to strike people to reveal this principle to students; Linji used a great shout to point it out to students; Zhaozhou simply said: Go have some tea; Yongming the Chan Master told his disciples: Go prostrate to the Buddha. All these Chan masters were using zen repartee and means to point things out to students; when merit and affinities are complete, one will awaken to ultimate reality and clarify the great matter. A disciple came to his master and said: Since I arrived here it has been three years, and I have never seen the master expound the Buddha-dharma for me. The master said: Where have I not expounded it? When you hand me water, I drink; when you bring me food, I eat; when you salute me, I return the salutation (vandana)—where have I not expounded the Buddha-dharma? The disciple pondered after hearing this. The master said: If you want to see, then see—what are you pondering? The disciple immediately awakened.

A Chan master had a disciple who was always being hit and scolded. One day the disciple finally could not bear it and said to the master: Why are you always either hitting or scolding? Hearing this, the master pointed his finger at him and said: You dare slander me? Raising his hand as if to strike, the disciple cried out for help; the master covered his mouth with his hand, and the disciple was suddenly greatly enlightened. How well this Chan master could expound the Dharma—hundreds and thousands of meditative concentrations/meditative absorptions (samādhi) are right therein. A disciple asked his master about the Buddha-dharma; the master said: Go plant the fields. This foolish disciple did not understand, and really went to plant the fields; after finishing the fields he still had not understood, and went again to ask about the Buddha-dharma; the master said: Go sweep the courtyard. The foolish disciple went to sweep the courtyard; sweeping and sweeping, suddenly he swept his way to understanding—so that is how it was—he was enlightened; the courtyard was not swept in vain. Within sweeping there are mysteries; everywhere there are mysteries; it depends on the person knowing how to inquire, applying the mind correctly, finding the right path. In our daily life, everywhere there is the figure of the tathāgatagarbha, manifesting a mark that is not a mark; if you find it, that is seeing the Tathāgata.