Zen/Chan and Vajrayana/Tantra

I’m leaving the details of these ideas out of my series because they didn’t strictly have originating ideas in the first millennium of Indian Buddhist thought and practice. They are of course developments that have influenced Japanese/Chinese and Tibetan Buddhism especially.

In brief, though, if it helps, Zen and Chan Buddhism both consider the nature of the mind to be both something and nothing. They also both consider and attempt the realisation of our Buddha-natures.

As far as Vajrayana/Tantra is concerned it is informed by the Yogacara view of the three kayas. Asanga’s ‘turning around’, they also believe, is a beginning-point for the radical realisation of our Buddha-natures.

In the remaining posts I’m returning to discussion of some of the things that unite especially but no only Mahayana Buddhists (just as I considered in earlier posts what united Buddhists before the advent of Mahayana (and still unites Theravada Buddhists and Mahayana Buddhists to some extent today)).

Yogacara and Experience and Mind-Only

So as I’ve mentioned in an earlier post, Yogacara was more than a doctrinal position. It was about experience and meditation. The doctrine is clear however, there are three natures and that’s what Yogacarins are hoping to experience. The explanations of doctrinal matters are also methods for getting to this final result. Within the practice, practitioners gain an understanding that the appearance (abhasa) of things is clouded in their initial unenlightened condition by vijñana (literally “divided knowing”) and then clarified for the enlightened (that have correctly followed the practice) by buddhajñana. A Buddhist saying illustrating the course of this practice goes something like this: “at first, before I became a monk, I saw rivers and mountains. Then I became a monk and saw that there were no rivers and mountains. Then I became enlightened and I realised that there were rivers and mountains”. So, one goes progressively through two divided visions to one real realisation. Another saying goes something like “If you see a Buddha on the road, kill him!” The idea here is that we must realise the Buddha that is inside us rather than seek one outside us. In one of the Maitreya-Asanga treatises the author explains that sunyata is about the non-existence of the subject-object duality [it’s therefore in accord with Madhyamika teachings in this] but then adds that sunyata also means that this very non-existence has an existence.

It may be argued given its focus on how the enlightened mind can make non-existence existent that Yogacara is a Mind-Only teaching but is it and indeed what does this mean? It sounds solipsist or something of that kind. In fact that has been an argument against Yogacara – that its Mind-Only aspect is mere solipsism also tended to the eternalism that is also a Buddhist issue with Hinduism. Yogacarins argue that their teaching is rather a therapy than an actual view as such and so can’t be solipsist. The aim is merely to reveal to us that we are living in a world that we can’t understand and that realising both that we can’t understand and that we are living a life is to understand the world as it really is. So it’s a therapy all about the mind and our experience of the mind but that doesn’t mean there is nothing but mind. Mind is also just the same as everything around it: sunyata. One of the Sutras (I think possibly the Lankavatara) says that the world is only in our mind but that there is something outside that but that that something is outside our experience. What’s more, cittamatra (Mind-Only) is therefore naturally regarded as being about the experience of more than merely mind – so mind is clearly not the ultimate and only real thing for the Mind-Only view that is one feature of the Yogacara view.

Nevertheless, there is no distinction to be made between mind and object of mind (from the earliest Asanga writings this was made clear as an object of the teaching). Yogacara isn’t dualist.

It may be fair to say that some Chinese versions of Yogacara verge rather strangely even more closely to idealism of some kind (subject to their own caveats). It might also be fair to say that Descartes’ solipsist cogito ergo sum starting point is idealist but it was only a starting point for him however illogical his argument out of it may have been. Cittimatrata is the truth of cittimatra (which is a multitude of things depending on what stage of understanding you are at within the school).

More on what seemed to make Yogacara such an Improvement

So what was really so positive about this change? A few doctrinal notes follow:

Tathagatagharba:

This is the idea of the Buddha Nature (or Essence or Matrix or Seed) in all of us. In this sense we are all Buddhas. Our Buddha-seed needs to be grown, though, and that means we must nurture it in an analogous way to the way we would nurture plant seeds if we wanted to grow a garden. We need to give it the sun it needs, the right amount of water (neither too much nor too little – Buddhism is all about the Middle path, after all), etc. We are sleeping Buddhas because our minds are just like Buddha minds ready to become awakened.

Obscurations (avarana) are hiding these facts from us, in this doctrine, as clouds hide the vastness of the sky beyond on a very dark (and wild and woolly) day. This concern at avarana (and its imagery) especially appealed to Mahayana Buddhists in China but affected all of Mahayana Buddhist thinking. There are two types of avarana, klesa avarana (caused by passions and the idea of self) and jñeya avarana (caused by cognition), and Arhats are supposed to have only dealt with the first type.

The Three Kayas of Buddhas

These are three dimensions or bodies of Buddhas. Works popular in the second turning literature had mentioned two bodies: rupakaya (Siddhartha himself as a man was a rupakaya) and dharmakaya (some kind of ultimate Buddha dimension). Yogacara tradition calls the formed rupakaya dimension nirmanakaya (a ‘measured-out’ dimension), uses the same word for the same second dimension and adds sambhogakaya. This translates as the enjoyment dimension. The distinction between all three is believed to be such a subtle one that only a Bodhisattva at a somewhat advanced level can perceive it.

Ordinary beings can somewhat experience all the kayas, however, by experiencing a statue of a Buddha. The final kaya is held to link the first two somehow. Thus the studied iconography I will mention in a future post is regarded as important as its proper execution is the avenue that best allows this luminous kaya linkage to be experienced by the ordinary mortal. This is part of the reason for the jewellery and elaborate clothing often depicted – that’s the best material way to indicate (if unfortunately imperfectly) the greatness of the luminosity.

Meditating on the Buddhas (as many Mahayana Buddhists do) can even somewhat reveal this three-kaya complex for normal mortals, too. It’s meant to ‘tap into’ our own Buddha-like dimensions.

This all may be a rationale for lay devotionalism but it is stressed that only the advanced Bodhisattva may experience the radiance to the full extent. Again Chinese and Zen Buddhists have some confusing sayings (in this case along with some from the Tantric/Vajrayana form of Tibetan Buddhism) that arise from this idea of the three kayas. In Zen, for example, it has been said that “the trees, stones and mountains all preach sunyata” and that “the teaching of vulture peak [where Siddhartha preached about sunyata] is still going on”. This is meant to mean that there is Buddha-radiance around today for those who will see it and learn from the sambhogakaya.

The devotional “Pure Land” Schools such as Amitabha devotees connected especially with the idea of sambhogakaya.

The Eight Consciousnesses

Regular Buddhism notes six consciousnesses (the five Western senses and the sense of mind). Yogacara adds what it calls store-consciousness and defilement of mind bringing the total to eight.

Store-consciousness contains our karmic seeds (vasana or samskara) that affect us by making us see ourselves as subjects. Other Buddhists have claimed that this doctrine sneaks the idea of self back into a Buddhism where it doesn’t belong. The Yogacarins counteract this criticism by reaffirming the impermanence and dependence of all of the consciousnesses and asserting that the difficulty of this doctrine for the human mind is part of the reason it is part of the third turning. They ask for trust that this doctrine is in no way eternalist.

The defilement of mind (klistamanas) is the consciousness that perceives the store-consciousness to be an ego and formulates the idea of subject and object.

The clear aim of Buddhism in this connection, then, is to purify our minds of these last two consciousnesses.

The Three Natures (Svabhavas)

These three new philosophical concepts are needed, according to the Yogacara view, to give an adequate account of reality (in this philosophical role, they replace the two truths in a way). There are two things regarded as being wrong to do: attribution (samoropa) and negation or “cutting off (vccheda)”, linked to the first two turnings. Our experience, then, goes on and produces appearances and there are three progressive aspects of this:

1) Parikalpita – constructed and mistaken knowing (an issue for epistemology);

2) Paratantra – dependent existence (an ontological question); and

3) Parinispanna – perfected existence (a soteriological matter).

Realisation that normal knowledge (parikalpita) is mistaken leads to an end of externalising and ideas of subject and object and of paratantra which also leads to parinispanna, the true realisation of paratantra. Rationalisation of paratantra is not sufficient, realisation is required, and paratantra is not negation as that would be productive of a nihilist parinispanna. Parinispanna is regarded as a cleansing of parikalpita from paratantra (as a nugget of gold is refined out of its usual ore).

The Yogacara Reaction (a Third Turning Exemplar)

Was it a reaction to problems with Madhyamika? Certainly, the problems it claims to address are that of negativity and the potential for nihilism of the Madhyamika way (how Middle Way can negation really be, it essentially argued?) This school also (as with Madhyamika) arose out of the practice of meditation more than as a purely scholastic divergence. Its name means “practice (cara) of (a) discipline (yoga)” and it rose to prominence in the 4^th and 5th Centuries CE – so it was the latest starter I’ve so far considered (though I’ve briefly mentioned later-developed schools such as Zen and the Tibetan Vajrayana schools and also modern day divisions).

The Mahayana view, generally, had begun to dominate India and Buddhist thought was experiencing one of its heydays. One of its greatest thinkers and the great Sarvastivadan scholastic abhidharma commentator Vasubandhu lived at this time and eventually converted to the less scholastic Yogacara Mahayana view himself after producing his great Sarvastivadan commentary (in which he noted with concern the Sarvastivadan school’s decline), though he remained a thinker and commentator, just with the reduced scholastic pressure inherent in this meditative school. He was apparently converted by his half-brother Asanga and clearly went on to become a key philosopher of the new school.

Asanga had been Sarvastivadan but become a devotee of the not-yet-Buddha, Maitreya, and was also the originator (with alleged assistance of Maitreya during meditation) of much of the Yogacara School’s ideology. According to a popular fable, Asanga’s complete conversion to Maitreya devotion had come about after much searching and prayer to Maitreya for guidance. Finally, when he had reached a point close to despair if not of actual despair, he saw a dog ridden with worms. Further, he realised in his then state that the only way to rid the extremely weakened dog of the worms without killing it was to lick the worms out of its body one by one and proceeded to do so (whereupon the dog revealed itself to be Maitreya and explained that his compassion and wisdom had finally allowed him to see the Maitreya, who had always been with him, in the dog). Besides the Sandinirmocana that I refer to below, Asanga was given five other Sutras by Maitreya (hence their author is usually cited as Maitreya-Asanga). There is a story of one of these Sutras being recited to Asanga by the alleged voice of Maitreya in front of an assembly that was unable to see Maitreya (could Asanga (or Maitreya) have been a great ventriloquist?)

The view’s major special claim to fame is its explicit emphasis on the idea that we all have a Buddha nature (remembering from an earlier post that there was a class of Sutras that had this emphasis – it is, generally, a Yogacara-specific class of Sutra). One of its pre-eminent ones is called the Sandinirmocana, which explicitly mentions that its teachings are a third turning of the wheel of dharma and discusses the limitations of the other turnings (without supplementation by the affirmation and negation of Yogacara that is the true Middle way).

The most completely Yogacara-only class of Mahayana scriptures is the Mind Only class (in terms of what different Mahayana Siddhantas view as useful Mahayana texts). As a rule, it has a more positive-sounding spin on things than Madhyamika. There is for this new view something in the sunyata of an excellent or even an ordinary mind that luminesces, radiates and possesses clarity (prabhasvara).

The difference between these schools is perhaps reminiscent of the difference between Plato and Aristotle later further developed in Western philosophy on the nature of mind and in fact this school may have been inspired by debate within the Hellenistic world that came to the attention of Buddhists.

The Avatamsaka Sutra uses an analogy that suggests all Buddhas are like jewels in an infinite cosmological net all reflecting off each other for us to experience in all their splendid co-reflected awesomeness. This became an especially important Sutra in China where it was seen by many as the highest explanation of what Siddhartha’s actual way of experiencing the universe was (once he became a Buddha). Many of the apparent paradoxes and confusions generally found in Zen and Chan commentaries and thought can be partly traced back to this particular idea of Siddhartha’s (and, by extension, enlightened ones') experiences. For instance, when asked what the ultimate principle of Buddhism is, a Zen master might answer “the oak tree in the garden” because the enlightened Zen monk is expected to see the luminescence, radiance and 'thusness' or 'suchness' (tathata) in all things where the ordinary person isn’t looking.

Being all about meditation, it was natural for its focus to be on the mind, perception and experience. It attempted to deal with so-called false appearances to the mind (pravrtti) by a turning about of this false reality (paravrtti) to get around the false appearances. The focus is on the teaching that it is realisable that there are no objects or subjects, which it calls graspable things (grahyas) and graspers (grahakas), in this state. The unique emphasis here (by the unique use of these specific terms and rejection of the more usual Mahayana terms subject and object and thereby their existence) is thus on undermining whatever it is that ‘causes’ grasping by denying any possible graspability of any actual object by any actual subject.

More on the Three ‘Turnings’

Examining the idea of three ‘turnings’ again, we may strengthen our understanding of the history of Buddhism, so let’s give it a go.

The first turning was the basic teaching of the four noble truths and whatever else was taught in the discourses (Suttas/Sutras) in the Pali Nikayas/Sanskrit agamas, initial guidelines for religious orders (in the vinayas in both languages) and the idea of non-self (the idea of the skandhas was especially developed in the abhidharma and its commentaries also initially in both Pali and Sanskrit). This can be seen as Siddhartha’s ‘turning’ towards teaching a kind of ‘Middle Way’, the melding of the best of the Bramana and the Sramana ideas of India’s major religious tendencies.

The second turning was first called and is still regarded as Vaipulya (an extension) and not a repudiation of the first (as with the third). It was not uncritical of the abhidharmas, however. It represented, in fact, a ‘turning’ away from an excessive reliance upon an intellectual understanding of them. True understanding was beyond intellectual understanding and to underscore the great incomprehensibility of it all, ‘turning’ towards the intensely strange idea of no thing-ness became central to the ‘turning’ away from the intellect. This was arguably to ultimately aid in truly understanding the abhidharmas, however, not to supplant them.

The ‘turning’ was also, concurrently, and perhaps consolingly, to the relatively pro-social and thus most likely relatively comforting Bodhisattva ideal. It also ‘turned’ towards an explanation of cosmology admittedly in negative terms, explaining, as an extension of the idea of non-self, not what the universe (including nirvana) was, but what it was not. In this sense it may also be seen as true to the reluctance of Siddhartha to fully explain what the universe actually was and at the same time as a kind of answer to the questions; in effect, then, another ‘middle way’ and another partial answer.

Was the third turning, then, the full answer? What ‘turn’ happened? The ‘turn’ was indeed towards bringing an understanding of what is in contrast to what ‘it’ isn’t within the reach of the adept and even potentially the layperson. It was a ‘turning’ back to society, then (and back to reality, perhaps, albeit a rather magical one). No thing-ness could possess qualities, it taught, such as the radiance (prabhasvara – a special technical word in Buddhism that I’ll come back to) and beauty attainable by the Bodhisattva (among other qualities). It also ‘turned’ towards teaching the potential of all of us (even the meanest devil) to achieve this radiance by virtue of our innate Buddha Natures. It was thus not only humanist but in fact everythingist. The ten bhumis were taught for the Bodhisattva path (as I mentioned in an earlier post, the Arhat, either as a hermit or in a religious community, only had to get to number six and may or may not be re-born) and one could also, as a regular or even a religiously honoured layperson, simply choose to gain merit, by leading a good life, for a later, better re-birth).

So there were four main Buddhist Siddhantas (orthodoxies) of the three turnings in India: those of the first turning, Sarvastivada, represented by the Abhidharmakosa of Vasubandhu, and Sautrantika, outright rejecters of the abhidharma; that of the second turning, represented by the Madhyamika school, stressing emptiness and scripturally represented by the Mulamadhyamakakarika; and that of the third turning, represented by the Yogacara school and scripturally represented by the treatises of Maitreya-Asanga. They all argued over which turning represented the highest teaching of Siddhartha while the Theravadans were down in Sri Lanka doing their own Sarvastivadan thing and regarding all of the Indian versions including Sarvastivada as bastardised Siddhantas.