Commentary on the Mahayana Vijnaptimatrata Sutra
Chapter 8 The Cause of Love-Desire and the Cause of Precept-Grasping
Original text: 大药王子白佛言。世尊。云何见欲因。佛言。大药。互因生欲。犹如钻燧。两木互因。加之人功。而有火生。如是因识。及因男女。色声香味触等。而有欲生。
Explanation: Prince Mahauṣadhi said to the Buddha: World-Honored One, how can one see the cause that produces sexual desire? The Buddha said: Mahauṣadhi, the arising of desire takes the two factors of male and female as its cause; because the two attract each other, the desiring mind arises. It is like kindling fire with a fire-drill: two pieces of wood are the cause of producing fire, and with the friction of human effort, fire arises from between the two pieces of wood. Desire is also like this: because there is the Ālayavijñāna, there are the six consciousnesses, and there are the man and the woman together with the six sense-object realms of form, sound, smell, taste, touch, and dharmas, desire arises between the man and the woman.
The desire here mainly refers to the sexual desire of sentient beings in the desire realm (kāmadhātu), as well as the craving for the five desires and the six sense objects. Sentient beings in the desire realm have all kinds of cravings; sexual desire is the heaviest, while other desires, such as the desire for money, the desire for food, the desire for power, the desire for fame, and so on, are secondary. "Mutual cause" means the two sides serve as cause and condition for each other: love and desire arise because of the other party, just as fire arises when two pieces of wood are rubbed together—a single piece of wood will not catch fire; it takes the causes of both the man and the woman for love and desire to arise. The Ālayavijñāna is the cause that produces all dharmas; relying on the Ālayavijñāna, together with the man and the woman and form, sound, smell, taste, touch, and so on, love and desire arise among sentient beings.
Original text: 譬如因花生果。花中无果。果生花灭。如是因身显识。循身求识。识不可见。
Explanation: Furthermore, it is like the fact that only when there is a flower can fruit result; there is no fruit within the flower, and when the fruit is born, the flower withers away. Likewise, it is through the body of the five aggregates that the functions of the Ālayavijñāna are manifested, yet when one searches the body of the five aggregates thoroughly from top to bottom, one cannot find the Ālayavijñāna. The Ālayavijñāna is not seen by the eye consciousness, not heard by the ear consciousness, not smelled by the nose consciousness, not tasted by the tongue consciousness, and not touched by the body consciousness; therefore, the Ālayavijñāna cannot be found on the material body.
It is just like the fact that only with a flower will fruit be produced, yet there is no fruit within the flower; once the fruit comes out, the flower perishes. The Ālayavijñāna is manifested by means of sentient beings' five-aggregate material body, but if one searches for the Ālayavijñāna on this material body, one cannot find it, because He has no form and no shape; yet, being formless and shapeless, He can have infinitely many functions.
Original text: 业果生。身便谢灭。身骨髓等。不净诸物。咸悉销散。又如种子。持将来果。味色香触。迁植而生。识弃此身。持善恶业。受想作意。受来生报。亦复如是。
Explanation: When the karmic fruit of this period comes to an end and the karmic fruit of the next period ripens, when the karmic conditions appear, the material body of this life withers and perishes, and the impure substances of the body, such as the marrow and the internal organs, all disperse. It is also like a seed that carries the taste, color, smell, and touch of the future fruit; after being moved and planted in the soil, it takes root and sprouts, blossoms and bears fruit. The Ālayavijñāna is also like this: it abandons this body, carries the wholesome and unwholesome karma together with the seeds of feeling, perception, and attention, and receives the five-aggregate retribution of the coming life; thus the life of the next existence is born.
The karma that sentient beings create in this life, once its karmic fruit matures, must be received as the retribution of causes and conditions in the next life; the life of this period must then come to an end, and so the material body withers away, and these impure substances such as the internal organs and the marrow all disperse along with it. When the karmic fruit of the next life manifests, it is just like a seed holding the color, smell, taste, and touch of the flowers and fruits that have not yet come into being: this seed is a metaphor for the Ālayavijñāna, and the flowers and fruits of the next life that have not yet been born are a metaphor for the retribution of the next life; the retribution of the next life is contained within the seed, and the retribution of sentient beings' next life is contained within the Ālayavijñāna.
When the Ālayavijñāna transmigrates to the next life, sentient beings have the retribution of the next existence. The Ālayavijñāna holds sentient beings' wholesome and unwholesome karma, holds the seeds of feeling, perception, attention, and the six consciousnesses, and then receives the retribution of the coming life. The retributive body of the coming life also contains feeling, perception, and attention, but the retribution includes both pleasure and suffering; it is all karmic retribution manifested in accordance with wholesome and unwholesome karma.
Original text: 又如男女爱欲。欢会分离而去。识业和合。恋结爱着。味玩贪吝。报尽分离。随业受报。父母因缘。中阴对之。以业力生。识获身果。爱情及业。俱无形质。欲色相因。而生于欲。是为欲因。
Explanation: The Buddha said, furthermore, it is like a man and a woman who have love and desire: after their joyful union, they each leave and part ways. The Ālayavijñāna is also like this: conjoined with the karmic seeds, the five aggregates give rise to various bonds of craving and attachment; toward the objects it craves, it savors and toys with them, greedily grasping and stingily hoarding, with the afflictions of greed, hatred, and delusion manifesting without cease. When the karmic retribution ends, the five aggregates vanish and one enters the intermediate body (antarābhava); when the causes and conditions of father and mother present themselves, because of sentient beings' karmic power, a new set of five aggregates is born, and the Ālayavijñāna causes the retribution of the material body and five aggregates of the next life to appear. Sentient beings' love, hatred, passions, and grudges, as well as their karmic seeds and karmic power, all have no form or shape and no material obstruction; the love of desire, together with the cause of a material body, gives birth to desire—this is the cause of sentient beings' desire.
Sentient beings' afflictions and habitual tendencies all exist as seeds in the Ālayavijñāna. When the retribution of this life is exhausted, the Ālayavijñāna separates from the karmic seeds and separates from the material body, and in accordance with other karma it again produces the material body of the next life. Before the next material body is born, there is still the intermediate body; in the intermediate body one encounters the condition of father and mother, and then enters the womb to receive the retributive body of the next life. Sentient beings' minds of attachment and their wholesome and unwholesome karma are all formless and shapeless; because of craving-attachment, with external forms, male and female forms, and so on serving as causes, the mind of love and desire is produced. The reason sentient beings give rise to the mind of love and desire is that the craving-attachment within their minds has not been eradicated; then, with conditions such as male and female forms present, the mind of love and desire manifests. The original craving exists as a seed in the Ālayavijñāna; when the causes and conditions are complete, the seed becomes active and the mind of love and desire arises—this is the cause of desire.
Original text: 大药。云何见戒取因。戒谓师所制戒。不杀不盗。不邪淫。不妄语。不饮酒等行。取谓执取。是戒作如是见。因是持戒。当得须陀洹果。斯陀含果。阿那含果。
Explanation: Mahauṣadhi, how can one know that upholding the precepts is the cause of attaining the fruits? The precepts are the precepts established by the Teacher of Gods and Humans, the Buddha, the World-Honored One, such as the five precepts: the precept against killing, the precept against stealing, the precept against sexual misconduct, the precept against false speech, and the precept against drinking alcohol. "Grasping" means to grasp and to carry out. The reason for receiving and upholding the five precepts should be like this: because one can observe the five precepts, the bhikṣu precepts, and the bhikṣuṇī precepts without violating them, in the future one will be able to attain the first fruit of srotāpanna, the second fruit of sakṛdāgāmin, and the third fruit of anāgāmin.
Here it is not said that a layperson upholding the five precepts can attain the fourth fruit of arhat. Generally speaking, to attain the fourth fruit of arhat, one must leave home and cultivate the practice in order to attain it. This does not include the case of those who already attained the fourth fruit of arhat in a previous life; but even if one attained the fourth fruit of arhat while practicing at home, because his mind is already empty and without desire, he will certainly leave home—he definitely could not go on living in a household and could not adapt to household life.
Original text: 以是因故。获于胜有。谓受人天等身。斯皆是有漏善。非无漏善。无漏之善。无阴熟果。
Explanation: Because of upholding the precepts and attaining the first, second, or third fruit, one can obtain the supreme worldly retribution within the three realms; in future lives one can obtain a human body or a heavenly body and will not fall into the three evil destinies. However, because the afflictions have not been eradicated, or because the afflictions have not been exhausted, the mind still has outflows; with outflows, wholesome dharmas can leak away. Therefore, all of these are wholesome karma with outflows, not wholesome karma without outflows. Wholesome karma without outflows is possessed only by the arhat of the fourth fruit: after extinguishing all the afflictions of greed, hatred, and delusion, no wholesome dharmas leak away any longer, and in the end one has the ability to extinguish the body of the five aggregates and enter nirvāṇa without remainder (anupadhiśeṣa-nirvāṇa), which is tranquil and cool, without a trace of affliction or suffering, no longer in the three realms, liberated from the suffering of the three realms.
Original text: 今此戒取。是有漏种植之。于识执善恶业。识不淳净。烦恼因故。受热恼苦。是为见戒取因。
Explanation: Now, what is obtained through this kind of precept-upholding are karmic seeds with outflows, which are planted in the Ālayavijñāna. When the Ālayavijñāna contains seeds of wholesome and unwholesome karma, it is still not pure enough; there is still affliction and suffering, and in the future one will still have to undergo the suffering of afflictions. This is the reason sentient beings uphold precepts: to obtain goodness with outflows and receive human and heavenly retribution.
As for the cause of precept-grasping, the Buddha did not answer it in the preceding passage but answers it here. The five precepts are the precepts established by the Buddha; the precepts the Buddha established are not killing, not stealing, no sexual misconduct, no false speech, not drinking alcohol, and so on. "Grasping" means to grasp and hold: the karma of grasping not killing, not stealing, no sexual misconduct, no false speech, and not drinking alcohol is called grasping, and is also called upholding the precepts. It is because there is a mind of the wholesome and unwholesome that one needs to uphold the precepts; if the mind becomes pure, with no wholesome or unwholesome, there is no need to deliberately uphold precepts, nor will one violate them.
What retribution can be obtained by upholding these precepts with outflows—the five precepts, the eight precepts, and the ten precepts? One can obtain the fruit of srotāpanna (the first fruit), the fruit of sakṛdāgāmin (the second fruit), and the fruit of anāgāmin (the third fruit). Having attained the first, second, or third fruit, a material body will still arise in the future, but it will certainly be a human body or a heavenly body; there will be no more bodies of the three evil destinies. After attaining the first fruit and passing away at the end of life, one transmigrates seven times between the human world and the heavens—one time in the human world, one time in the heavens, which constitutes one round trip; after at most seven round trips, one attains the fourth fruit and can enter nirvāṇa without remainder, escaping the suffering of birth and death in the three realms. After attaining the second fruit and passing away at the end of life, one ascends to the heavens once and returns to the human world once; in the human world one can attain the fourth fruit and be liberated from the suffering of existence in the three realms. The third fruit means being born in the heavens and then realizing the fourth fruit and entering nirvāṇa without remainder; some, while in the intermediate body, realize the fourth fruit, enter nirvāṇa without remainder, and attain liberation. All of these are called the superior existence. Having attained these three fruits, one receives human and heavenly bodies and the like; only by attaining the fourth fruit can one leave the three realms, enter nirvāṇa without remainder, and never again have the outflows of afflictions.
Although the person of the third fruit has eradicated afflictions, he has not eradicated them completely; he still belongs to partial outflow. The outflow-free is the fourth fruit, where the afflictions are completely exhausted. The goodness without outflows is realized by the person of the fourth fruit. Among the six supernatural powers there is the power of the exhaustion of outflows (āsrava-kṣaya-abhijñā), which only an arhat can attain; those below the third fruit cannot attain the power of the exhaustion of outflows. In the Mahāyāna, bodhisattvas from the first bhūmi upward can realize partial goodness without outflows; bodhisattvas from the eighth bhūmi upward have goodness that is completely without outflows; bodhisattvas prior to the bhūmis all have outflows. Therefore, the first-bhūmi bodhisattva, because his mind attains the outflow-free state, can transform the consciousnesses into wisdom. When a bodhisattva who has seen the mind still has outflows, he cannot transform the consciousnesses into wisdom; because of the outflows, his wisdom is not perfect.
The goodness without outflows has no ripened fruit of the aggregates. It is just like the arhat of the fourth fruit, whose goodness is without outflows: because there is no ripened fruit of the five aggregates in a later life, there will be no five-aggregate life in the next existence; at the end of life, with no five aggregates, he enters nirvāṇa. The five precepts, eight precepts, and ten precepts that we uphold all have outflows. The arhat of the fourth fruit no longer needs to uphold the five precepts, because he has already reached the outflow-free state, without the afflictions of greed, hatred, and delusion, and will never again violate these precepts with outflows.
Those of the third fruit and below all have both wholesome and unwholesome karma, and still have the outflows of afflictions. For example, a person of the third fruit still has a mind of arrogance, and arrogance is unwholesome; he still has a scattered mind, still has craving-attachment to meditative concentration and to the material body, and still has self-grasping that is not fully eradicated—all of this is called unwholesome. Because of these outflows of afflictions, there is the ripened fruit of the aggregates, and there is still the five-aggregate retribution of the next life. Even the appearance of the intermediate body is a fruit; having ascended to the heavens, there is still the fruit of the five aggregates; the arhat of the fourth fruit no longer has the fruit of the five aggregates. Because sentient beings have afflictions, there is the suffering of burning vexation. Born among humans, there is the suffering of burning vexation; born in the heavens, there is suffering as well—for example, when the five signs of decay appear: before the material body of a heavenly being of the desire realm perishes, there is the suffering of burning vexation. In short, being able to attain the first, second, or third fruit of the Small Vehicle is the cause of precept-grasping.
