Mahāyāna Sūtra on the Manifestation of Consciousness (38)

Original text: 识在于身, 如闇之体。视不可见, 不可执持。如母怀子, 不能自知。是男是女。黑白黄色。根具不具。手足耳目。类与不类。饮食热刺。其子便动。觉知苦痛。众生来去。屈伸视瞬。语笑谈说。担运负重。作诸事业。识相具显。而不能知。识之所在。止于身中。不知其状。

Explanation: The ālayavijñāna in the body of the five aggregates is like darkness—formless and colorless. If you try to see it with your eyes, you cannot see it; if we try to grasp hold of it, we cannot grasp it; if we try to touch it, we cannot touch it—we simply cannot hold on to it. This describes its characteristic of being formless and without marks, yet able to manifest within all dharmas. It is like a mother who is pregnant yet does not herself know whether the child she carries is a boy or a girl, whether the skin color is black, white, or yellow, or whether the six faculties are complete or incomplete. Because in that past era there were no testing devices, during pregnancy there was no way to determine whether the fetus was male or female; the appearance of the physical body was also unknown, and whether it had hands and feet, eyes and ears, and so forth was all unknown.

However, when the mother is eating, if she eats hot food, the child, stimulated by the heat, will move about restlessly in the womb. The fetus fears heat, and when the child moves, the mother feels intense pain. If the mother wants to eat something cold, the child also cannot bear it and will also move about restlessly, and the mother can feel the pain. At this point the mother knows of the child's movements.

The child in the womb is a metaphor for the ālayavijñāna, and the mother is a metaphor for the sentient being's five aggregates. When the sentient being's five aggregates come and go—bending and stretching, glancing with the eyes, speaking and laughing in conversation, carrying water and hauling firewood, bearing heavy loads, and performing all kinds of activities—the characteristics of the ālayavijñāna are fully manifested. Yet sentient beings do not know where the ālayavijñāna is operating; the ālayavijñāna dwells within the body, but sentient beings do not know what state it is in, just like a pregnant mother who does not know her child.

The ālayavijñāna is formless and without marks; sentient beings do not know what it looks like. But when the five aggregates are operating, one can know that the ālayavijñāna is present. With this, a Chan kōan emerges, and the ālayavijñāna becomes quite easy to realize—awakening to the true mind can come rather quickly. This sūtra almost explicitly reveals the ālayavijñāna. When one later engages in Chan investigation of kōans, it becomes very easy to investigate it out. Investigating Chan is actually not difficult; it is merely that meditative concentration is insufficient, so realization is somewhat harder, while intellectual understanding is quite easy. Previously the direction of Chan investigation could not be grasped, but now, having studied this passage from the Mahāyāna Sūtra of Manifest Consciousness, one can be very clear: the ālayavijñāna has never been separate from the five aggregates; the true dharma is never separate from the false dharma, and of course the false dharma is also not separate from the true dharma—within the operation of the false dharma, the true dharma is manifested. This direction for Chan investigation is very clear. Yet some Buddhist practitioners investigate Chan for thirty years and, even at death, still do not know in which direction to investigate; they do not understand how to attain realization of the ālayavijñāna, nor do they know that Chan investigation is about awakening to the eighth consciousness, awakening to the tathāgatagarbha.

"Sentient beings come and go, bending and stretching, glancing; speaking and laughing in conversation, carrying and hauling, bearing loads; performing all activities—the characteristics of consciousness are fully manifested." If these lines were to be explained in detail, then ordinary Chan kōans could be understood. However, even if one can understand them, if one still does not know the actual operation of the ālayavijñāna within them, it is merely intellectual understanding, not true realization. One still needs to investigate carefully, to investigate out the specific workings of the ālayavijñāna—only this is true realization. After true realization, wisdom immediately improves. If one investigates Chan and gets only a general picture, without knowing the specific operation, without knowing the details, it is at most intellectual understanding. The ālayavijñāna is within sentient beings' bodies, but one does not know what kind of state it is in. Generally, when one's correct views are not yet complete, one only knows that the ālayavijñāna functions everywhere, but one does not know exactly where it functions or what function it performs. At this point there is still some distance from true realization, and one must continue to strive.