Selected Lectures on the Sūtra of the Collection of Father and Son

Original text: 大王。最后识灭。名为死蕴。最初识起。名为生蕴。

Explanation: The Buddha said: Great King, at the very end of life, when the consciousness-mind has all ceased, the five aggregates are called the aggregate of death; when the very first consciousness-mind arises, the five aggregates are called the aggregate of birth.

The magnitude of the karmic offense also lies in the mental activity, in the degree of anger, and in whether there is a mind of anger and whether there is a mind to kill. For example, suppose there is a whole living person inside a burlap sack, and a person unintentionally kills him—not knowing there is a person inside the sack, thinking it is a lifeless object—and as a result stabs a knife into it, and the person dies. This does not count as intentional killing, and after death one will not fall into hell to undergo retribution. Even so, in the future when meeting that person, one will also be unintentionally killed once by that person; it is just that one does not fall into hell to undergo evil retribution. When killing occurs, one must look at whether the killing was intentional or unintentional: intentional killing is the offense of killing, constituting the karma of killing a person; unintentional killing is not a complete act of killing a person, but there is still cause and effect. On the other hand, if what is inside the sack is a piece of wood rather than a person, and someone, out of anger and hatred, kills it mistaking it for another person—originally the head is not a life, and killing it would be like chopping firewood—but because that person harbors hatred and murderous intent in the mind, treating it as a person and killing it, the offense is then great. The magnitude of the offense lies in the intention.

If one crushes an ant to death with an extremely evil mind, this offense is also very great, because the mind of anger is too heavy; it is different from ordinary killing. Ordinary killing is sometimes unintentional, and sometimes carries just a bit of anger; the retributive results are all different. So it is the same with sentencing under the law: it is divided into intentional killing and unintentional killing, and the sentencing outcomes are all different.

To sum up, cultivation is the cultivation of the deluded mind of the seven consciousnesses. When the deluded mind is well cultivated and the mind becomes tranquil (praśama), and there are no seeds of evil karma in the Ālayavijñāna, one becomes a Buddha and can restore one's original countenance. The karmic seeds contained in our present Ālayavijñāna have defilements and ignorance; our mind of the seven consciousnesses has the afflictions of greed, anger, and delusion, whereas the Buddha's mind of the seven consciousnesses is entirely pure, has already transformed the consciousnesses into wisdom, and is completely without self.