Commentary on the Diamond Sutra: No Attainment and No Teaching, Seven

Original text: 须菩提。于意云何。如来得阿耨多罗三藐三菩提耶。如来有所说法耶。

Explanation: Subhūti, what do you think? Has the Tathāgata attained anuttarā-samyak-saṃbodhi? Has the Tathāgata spoken any dharma?

Anuttarā-samyak-saṃbodhi is the unsurpassed, right and perfect enlightenment—attaining the supreme, true awakened realization, exhausting all ignorance, with the mind filled entirely with luminosity and awakening, thereby realizing ultimate bodhi, accomplishing the Buddha Way, and fulfilling the Buddha fruit. Since there is no fixed dharma called anuttarā-samyak-saṃbodhi, there is likewise no truly fixed and unchanging one who attains buddhahood; all dharmas are formed through causes and conditions. The dharma the Buddha speaks is also formed through causes and conditions: according with the conditions of sentient beings, when there is the cause of beings wishing to become buddhas, he expounds the dharma that enables beings to attain buddhahood. When conditions differ, the dharma the World-Honored One teaches differs. Therefore, the dharma the Buddha has taught should not be grasped at in the end either, because it is not a fixed dharma that never perishes or transforms. Any dharma that can be spoken is not an inherently existing, fixed, and unchanging dharma of true suchness; yet these dharmas also cannot be generated apart from the self-nature of true suchness.

Then who accomplished the Buddha Way and attained the Buddha fruit? A bodhisattva of wondrous awakening (saddharma... miao jue) is the final-body bodhisattva before buddhahood; in order to become a buddha, he comes to the human world and accomplishes the path through the eight manifestations. When entering his mother's womb, the bodhisattva's physical body ceases, and the manas along with the vipāka consciousness—the eighth consciousness—enters the womb. At birth, the six faculties are complete, the six consciousnesses are complete (in humans there is no eye consciousness within the first seven days), and the five aggregates are complete, outwardly no different from ordinary beings. This new set of five aggregates is no longer the five aggregates of the wondrous-awakening bodhisattva—the physical body and the six consciousnesses have all been replaced; only the manas and the vipāka consciousness remain the original ones, continuing on. Then he leaves home to cultivate the path. When he greatly awakens and sees his nature upon beholding the morning star at night, the ignorance of the seven consciousnesses is exhausted: the sixth consciousness transforms into the wisdom of wondrous observation, the manas transforms into the wisdom of equality, and then the first five consciousnesses transform into the wisdom of accomplished deeds. When all seven consciousnesses have completed their transformation, and the defiled seeds of the seven consciousnesses stored within the eighth, the vipāka consciousness, are utterly extinguished, it becomes the great perfect mirror wisdom (ādarśajñāna), also called the undefiled consciousness (amala-vijñāna). When all eight consciousnesses have completed their transformation, the Buddha Way is fulfilled, the Buddha fruit is attained, and he is called a Buddha.

Let us then contemplate: who accomplished this Buddha Way, and who attained the Buddha fruit? First, the Buddha's undefiled consciousness is a mind that attains nothing; it itself does not wish to attain anything. Even if it attained something, there would be nowhere to put it—nothing can be attained. He has no thoughts, no mental activity, and never considers himself to be real, to be himself a buddha, or to be this or that. All names are bestowed upon Him by people—what He is and what He is not; He has no such concepts. He also does not grasp at any dharma whatsoever, including the wholesome and the unwholesome, the defiled and the undefiled. Because He does not grasp, He is never perfumed or stained and has no ignorance; because He does not grasp, He also does not do anything and does not become anything. Therefore He does not take up the Buddha's fruit, does not act as a buddha. If one says He is the Buddha, that too is a title conferred upon Him by people, not something He claims or seals for Himself.

Next, consider the Buddha's five aggregates. The five aggregates of sentient beings are called the five coverings (pañcaskandha); "covering" means to obscure and block—blocking sentient beings from recognizing the true and correct principle, thereby giving rise to wrong views. But the Buddha's five aggregates do not obscure the Buddha's wisdom; the Buddha has already realized ultimate awakening, so they are called the five aggregates. The five-aggregate body of one who has become a Buddha is adorned with the thirty-two marks and eighty excellent characteristics, extremely sublime, yet it must also perish at parinirvāṇa. A dharma of arising and ceasing is not the Buddha; it cannot take up the Buddha fruit or act as the Buddha. Although the Buddha's aggregate of feeling, aggregate of perception, aggregate of formations, and aggregate of consciousness can grasp, they are also conditioned dharmas of arising and ceasing, all of which must perish at parinirvāṇa; these four aggregates are not the Buddha and cannot act as the Buddha. Although the manas can go on to future lives forever, remaining perpetually without perishing, it is still of a nature of arising and ceasing—it is capable of ceasing; in order for the Buddha's physical body and five aggregates to arise forever, it is deliberately not extinguished. Moreover, the manas alone with the wisdom of equality cannot act as the Buddha. Thus bodhi is something attained by nothing, and so there is no fixed dharma that can be called anuttarā-samyak-saṃbodhi.

Original text: 须菩提言。如我解佛所说义。无有定法。名阿耨多罗三藐三菩提。也无有定法。如来可说。何以故。如来所说法。皆不可取。不可说。非法。非非法。一切圣贤。皆以无为法而有差别。

Explanation: Subhūti said: As I understand the meaning of what the Buddha has taught, there is no fixed dharma called anuttarā-samyak-saṃbodhi, nor is there any fixed, definitive dharma that the Tathāgata can expound. Why is this so? Because the dharmas the Tathāgata teaches are all not to be grasped and are unspeakable. The dharma the Tathāgata teaches is neither the true dharma that is unborn, unceasing, and unchanging—not the originally existing unconditioned dharma—nor is it not the unconditioned dharma. All sages and noble ones differ by virtue of the unconditioned dharma.

Anuttarā-samyak-saṃbodhi is also called the unsurpassed, right and perfect enlightenment, that is, the accomplishment of the Buddha Way. Becoming a buddha is not a dharma innately existing and fixed and unchanging; it is accomplished through cultivation over three great asaṃkhyeya kalpas. Therefore it is also subject to arising and ceasing, coming into being from non-being; hence it is not a fixed dharma, nor a truly existent dharma.

The Tathāgata likewise has no fixed dharma to teach. Why is this so? Because the Tripitaka and twelve divisions of scriptures the Tathāgata taught over forty-nine years in the Sahā world cannot be grasped as truly existent; indeed, all the dharmas the Tathāgata taught in the worlds of the ten directions cannot be grasped as truly existent. Why can they not be grasped as truly existent? Because all the dharmas the Buddha taught arose through various causes and conditions; without causes and conditions, these dharmas would not exist, and the Buddha would not teach any dharma. So the dharma the Buddha speaks is also subject to arising and ceasing and cannot be grasped as truly existent and unchanging. Even such a great matter as the Buddha's deliverance of sentient beings requires the ripening and completeness of causes and conditions, requiring beings' merit, causes and conditions, roots of goodness, and the aspiration for liberation, and so forth. Lacking any single condition, the Buddha cannot deliver sentient beings. And the dharma taught to deliver beings is determined according to conditions, determined by beings' spiritual faculties, merit, and wisdom. Therefore, there is no fixed dharma to be taught.

A fixed dharma is a dharma that is fixed and unchanging, originally existing, that does not turn with causes and conditions, does not vary with causes and conditions—a truly real, immutable dharma, using the same dharma for all sentient beings regardless of beings' capacities, and regardless of what conditions manifest. Clearly, the facts are not so; no such dharma exists. Dharmas produced by causes and conditions, not innately existing dharmas, are not fixed dharmas. Therefore it is said that the Tathāgata, in delivering sentient beings, has no fixed dharma to teach. The dharma the Tathāgata teaches comes into being from non-being, exists and then ceases, and is abandoned upon reaching the shore; it is also an empty dharma. Hence it is merely named "dharma"; in reality, dharmas have no self-nature and no self-substance to speak of; therefore it is not-dharma. Yet it is also not entirely not-dharma, for after all there is its illusory function—though a provisional dharma, it can be used provisionally and borrowed: beings who use it can attain buddhahood, and after attaining buddhahood, they discard it. Therefore the dharma the Buddha teaches is also not-not-dharma; it is not that it is not dharma.

Since all the dharmas the Tathāgata teaches are not-dharma—dharmas produced by causes and conditions, with no fixed dharma—then when the Tathāgata teaches different dharmas to beings of different spiritual faculties according to different conditions, and beings cultivate and study them and realize the unconditioned dharma at different levels—including the unconditioned of the Great, Middle, and Small Vehicles, and even within the same vehicle there are differences in the unconditioned dharma—sages and noble ones of different levels and different distinctions are thereby accomplished. All sages and noble ones, because of differences in roots of goodness, merit, and causes and conditions, differ by virtue of the unconditioned dharma they have realized.