Explanation of the Mahāyāna Sūtra on the Revelation of Consciousness

Original text: 贤护白佛言。世尊。众生虽知有识。如宝闭在箧中。不显不知。世尊。不知此识。作何形状。何故名识。众生死时。手足乱动。眼色变异。制不自由。诸根丧灭。诸大乖离。识迁于身。去至何所。自性如何。作何色相。云何舍离此身。更受余身。

The main obstacles to the arising of the first dhyāna are the five hindrances: greed/desire, ill will, sloth-and-torpor, restlessness-and-remorse, and doubt. Especially the hindrance of greed/desire among the five hindrances — if one's desires for the human world and the desire realm heavens are heavy, the first dhyāna of the form realm cannot arise. Only when all cravings for the human world and the desire realm heavens have been subdued can the first dhyāna of the form realm arise. To bring about the first dhyāna of the form realm, one must subdue all kinds of desires, including sexual desire and the desire for food and drink, and so on. If a person is particular about food, clothing, housing, and daily necessities, and delights in forms, sounds, smells, tastes, and touches, the first dhyāna cannot be cultivated successfully; if one is too concerned about one's living environment, meditative concentration will also not arise. Only if one can truly feel indifferent to any living environment — good or bad, neither craving the good nor resenting and loathing the bad, with no mental activity arising toward the environment — can meditative concentration arise. The moment a craving thought arises, there is no concentration; only by truly achieving indifference does one cease to give rise to mental activity. In daily life, if one is indifferent to and unconcerned with everything, indifferent to whether the environment is good or bad, only by truly achieving this can meditative concentration arise. If one is still particular about food, about nutrition, about color, aroma, and flavor, the first dhyāna will not arise, and one cannot enter the concentration of the form realm.

At the time of just having realized the fruit and seeing the mind, if meditative concentration cannot arise or deepen, once this period and this opportunity have passed, it will not be easy to bring about the first dhyāna later on. One should seize the moment when the view of self has been eradicated and the light of awareness appears, when inner joy arises, and diligently cultivate meditative concentration. If there is no light of awareness and the power of concentration is shallow, then afterward one should not even think about the first dhyāna — it will not easily appear. Especially for lay practitioners, whose lives are too closely tied to daily affairs, it is even harder to bring about the first dhyāna; monastics have it relatively a bit easier, being more distant from worldly things. It is very difficult for lay practitioners to cultivate the Buddha-dharma; in life, everywhere there are things that trigger one's mental activity, making it hard to attain meditative concentration.

Among the non-Buddhist ascetics of the past, after they left home — let alone the first dhyāna — there were those who attained the four dhyānas and the four formless absorptions, and some could even attain the highest of all meditative absorptions, the concentration of the sphere of neither perception nor non-perception. They went deep into the mountains to cultivate meditative concentration exclusively, and truly could remain without any seeking toward anything in the world. Yet now we find it so difficult even to cultivate preparatory concentration (anāgamya-samādhi) or the concentration of the desire realm. From this point of view, we are now not even the equal of the non-Buddhists.

How can the faculties of us present-day Buddhist learners compare with those non-Buddhists, and yet we still look down on them. Those non-Buddhists cultivated the four dhyānas and eight absorptions, never shouting slogans about letting go, yet they truly let go of the five desires and the six sense objects — they were people who genuinely practiced and realized meditative concentration. But we Buddhist learners shout slogans all day long, yet in a whole lifetime have not been able to give up even a little bit of worldly things. Their practice of non-Buddhist paths was merely due to unfavorable karmic conditions from past lives — for example, in a past life they may also have cultivated meditative concentration, only it was a non-Buddhist method, without having taken refuge in the Three Jewels or received the precepts, and thus in this life they did not encounter the true Dharma of the Buddha. Therefore taking refuge in the Three Jewels is very important: if in this life one takes refuge in the Three Jewels, then in the next life one will again take refuge in the Three Jewels, and one will not go off to practice non-Buddhist paths. For learning Buddhism, not encouraging receiving the five precepts and not taking refuge in the Three Jewels is absolutely unacceptable; in that way the foundation is unstable, and in future lives one can easily drift into non-Buddhist paths. If in this life one does not cultivate meditative concentration, in the next life one will still be estranged from cultivating and realizing it, still unable to enter the threshold of cultivating concentration, and the Buddha-dharma cannot be realized. Therefore, whatever dharma the Buddha tells us to cultivate, we should cultivate that dharma; we should not engage in our own inventions and innovations. However the Buddha tells us to cultivate, that is how we should cultivate. Everything the Buddha taught is the sage's word (āptavāda), and we must follow it one hundred percent in order to gain the benefits of the Buddha-dharma.

The Bodhisattva Bhadrapāla asked the Buddha: "What is its self-nature? What form and appearance does it have? How does it abandon this body and take up another body?" The self-nature spoken of here refers to the Ālayavijñāna, the eighth consciousness. He has His own self-nature, whereas all other dharmas have no self-nature of their own — they are all manifested by Him. What is the self-nature of the Ālayavijñāna? What form and appearance does He have? At the end of life, how does the Ālayavijñāna abandon the present physical body and then take up another physical body? How does He go on to manifest and generate other bodies? The Bodhisattva Bhadrapāla asked the crucial question concerning the transmigration of sentient beings. This "taking up" refers to the Ālayavijñāna going on to grasp and uphold another body, discarding this body that is about to die, and manifesting, upholding, and accepting another physical body.