Dharma Transmission Verse of Buddha Vipaśyin

Original text:身从无相中受生，犹如幻出诸形象。幻人心识本来无，罪福皆空无所住。

Explanation: The first line, "The body arises from the signless," refers to the physical body being the aggregate of form (rūpa), which can obscure the minds and consciousnesses of sentient beings, causing them to take the false as real. Sentient beings have always believed that this physical body is "I" and is real. "Signless" refers to the ālayavijñāna, the eighth consciousness, the tathāgatagarbha. This is the true mind, formless and without signs, having no signs of form, sound, smell, taste, touch, or dharmas, and no sign whatsoever within the three realms. It is like empty space yet is not empty space; empty space is a dharma that does not exist, a false appearance, whereas this mind truly exists—it is real suchness, having a real self-nature and real functions.

The true mind can produce all dharmas, including the physical body; the physical body takes birth from this mind. Because sentient beings' grasping at self is unceasing, and the manas clings to itself, after death there is an antarā-bhava (intermediate body). Upon encountering parents with whom there is karmic affinity, the manas, carrying the eighth consciousness, enters the womb, forming nāma-rūpa—that is, the fertilized egg. Because the eighth consciousness possesses the four great seeds of earth, water, fire, and wind, it contacts the four great elements within the mother's body and transforms them into the fertilized egg, which changes every seven days, growing a head, limbs, eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and body. At around five months, the mind consciousness appears, discerning the environment for survival. When the six faculties are complete, the eighth consciousness blows the wind of karma, and the fetus emerges from the womb head-first. The eighth consciousness then absorbs the four great elements to transform the infant into a child, a youth, an adult, and an elderly person, until final death. Therefore, the physical body is transformed into being from within the eighth consciousness, and the eighth consciousness is signless—signless, yet it can manifest all signs.

The second line: "Like illusions manifesting various forms." The physical body manifested by the eighth consciousness is just like a magical conjuration—from nothing at all to a fertilized egg and then to a body as large as an adult's, and even bodies as large as an elephant, a dragon, or the golden-winged great peng bird. It is like a magician suddenly conjuring a beautiful woman in empty space, or like a painter freely depicting landscapes and figures on a blank canvas. It is like white clouds in the sky, gathering and dispersing to form a cat, a dog, or a flower. These illusory things come from emptiness and go to emptiness, utterly impossible to grasp; no matter how one clings to them, they will vanish and depart.

The third line: "The illusory person's minds and consciousnesses are originally nonexistent." Within the fertilized egg, sentient beings originally have no six consciousness-minds and no capacity for discrimination. Only at around five months does the sixth consciousness (mind consciousness) arise, followed by the ear consciousness, nose consciousness, tongue consciousness, and body consciousness; only seven days after birth can the eye consciousness discriminate. These discriminating consciousness-minds arise and cease moment by moment and are not real. Within a single instant there are eighty-one thousand instances of seeds arising and ceasing, which enables sentient beings to discriminate the six sense objects. Each seed is delivered by the ālayavijñāna; if one or a few seeds fail to be delivered in between, the discriminating capacity of the consciousness-mind ceases to exist. For example, for a lamp to shine there must be electric current; the current is formed by electrons—one electron arises and ceases, then the next electron immediately arises and ceases, and countless electrons linked in succession form a current that passes through the lamp, and the bulb lights up.

The seeds of mind and consciousness are just like those electrons. The formation of a stream of water is also formed by drop after drop of water connected without interruption. The seeds of mind and consciousness are just like those water drops. The water stream is guided out by a pump; the electrons are output by a generator. The ālayavijñāna is like the generator and the pump, delivering seed after seed of consciousness; in one instant, eighty-one thousand consciousness seeds succeed one another without interruption, forming the consciousness-mind. With the activity of the consciousness-mind, there is the function of discrimination. If the ālayavijñāna departs and stops working, the consciousness-mind is not born, and discrimination also ceases. The body is then just a piece of wood.

The fourth line: "Sin and merit are both empty, abiding nowhere." Sinful karma and meritorious karma are both created by the deluded mind. While the deluded mind engages in bodily, verbal, and mental actions—whether wholesome, unwholesome, or neither—the ālayavijñāna records and stores them all. When karmic conditions ripen in the next life, the ālayavijñāna outputs the karmic seeds, and sentient beings undergo retribution. But the five aggregates undergoing retribution have changed; they are not those of the previous life. Both the one who creates karma and the one who undergoes retribution are arising-and-ceasing, illusory, and unreal, and sinful karma and meritorious karma are likewise arising-and-ceasing and illusory. Once meritorious reward is enjoyed, it is gone; once sinful karma has been undergone or repented, it disappears—all are conditioned dharmas subject to arising and ceasing, impermanent dharmas.

Take the karma of false speech, for example. Before it is created, it is not stored anywhere; after it is created, the words are gone and the karmic action has ceased; and after ceasing, it does not go anywhere. Yet the entire course of the action is completely recorded by the ālayavijñāna. The dharma of false speech is illusory—then who is it that speaks falsely? The body cannot speak falsely, the mouth cannot speak falsely, the tongue cannot speak falsely—otherwise dead people could also speak falsely. The tongue consciousness and the mind consciousness cannot speak falsely, and they arise and cease from moment to moment. The manas also cannot speak and cannot utter falsehood. And the ālayavijñāna has no mouth and no tongue, and even less can it speak falsely. There is fundamentally no person who speaks falsely, so the karma of false speech is illusory.

Sentient beings are conjured forth by the ālayavijñāna, and an illusory fake person, like a robot or a puppet, engaging in karmic actions, is also illusory. One cannot assign guilt to them; even if guilt were assigned, they would not undergo it. It is the same with illusory sentient beings. The illusory nature of sin and merit can be proven by many facts. Take the case of King Ajātaśatru: King Ajātaśatru killed his father, and when his karmic retribution manifested, he went to see the World-Honored One. The World-Honored One analyzed for King Ajātaśatru the illusory nature of the dharma of "father"; thus the dharma of killing one's father was illusory. After Ajātaśatru understood this, his sinful karma disappeared, and at the end of his life, not only did he not fall into the Avīci hell, he was even reborn in the land of bliss (Sukhāvatī). This shows the illusory nature of sinful and meritorious karma.

Another example: for one who has realized the first fruit of the arhat path (stream-enterer, Srotaāpanna) or who has awakened to the true mind, the sinful karma of the three evil destinies accumulated over beginningless kalpas is eliminated, and in the future they will never undergo retribution in the three evil destinies, only suffering among humans. All dharmas, including sinful and meritorious karma, are subject to arising and ceasing, impermanent, empty, and illusory. If one profoundly dissects this principle, one will awaken to the Mahāyāna principle of non-arising and become a bodhisattva of true meaning.