Selected Lectures on the Sūtra of the Collection of the Father and Son (Pitāputrasamāgamanasūtra)

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 end of life, when all consciousnesses have ceased, the five aggregates are called the aggregates of death; when the very first consciousness arises, the five aggregates are called the aggregates of birth.

The magnitude of a karmic offense also lies in the mental conduct—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 complete living person inside a burlap sack, and someone unknowingly kills him—not knowing there is a person inside the sack, thinking it is a lifeless object, he stabs a knife into it, and the person dies. This does not count as intentional homicide, and after death he will not fall into hell to undergo retribution. Even so, in the future when he meets that person again, he will also be unintentionally killed by that person once; it is just that he will not fall into hell to undergo evil retribution. When killing occurs, one must see whether the killing was with intent or without intent. Killing with intent is the offense of killing, constituting the karma of homicide; killing without intent is not a complete act of killing, yet there is still cause and effect. From another perspective, if the sack contained a piece of wood rather than a person, and someone, out of anger and hatred, killed it mistaking it for another person—originally the head is not a life, and striking it would be no different from chopping firewood—but because his mind harbored hatred and the intent to kill, and he killed it as if it were a person, the offense is then great. The severity of the offense lies in the intention of the mind.

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 slight trace of anger—the retributive results are all different. This is also how sentencing works in the law: it is divided into intentional killing and unintentional killing, and the sentences handed down 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, there will be no seeds of evil karma in the ālayavijñāna, and one becomes a Buddha, able to restore one's original countenance. At present, the karmic seeds contained in our ālayavijñāna are defiled and include 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 tranquil, has already transformed consciousness into wisdom, and is completely without self.