Lankavatara Sutra
Chapter I.
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Thus have I heard. The Blessed One once
appeared in the Castle of Lanka which is on the summit of Mt.Malaya in the midst of the
great Ocean. A great many Boddhisattva-Mahasattvas had miraculousy assembled from all the
Buddha-lands, and a large number of bhikshus were gathered there. The
Bodhisattva-Mahasattvas with Mahamati their head were all perfect masters of the
various Samadhis, the tenfold Self-mastery, the ten powers, and the six Psychic Faculties.
Having been anointed by the Buddha`s own hands, they all well understood the significance
of the objective world ;
they all knew how to apply the various
means, teachings and disciplinary measures according to the various mentalities and
behaviours of beings; they were thoroughly versed in the five Dharmas, the three
Svabhavas, the eight Vijnanas, and the twofold Egolessness.
The Blessed One, knowing of the mental
agitations going on in the minds of those assembled (like the surface of the ocean
stirred into waves by the passing winds), and his great heart moved by compassion, smiled
and said : In the days of old the Tathagatas of the past who were Arhats and
fully-enlightened Ones came to the Castle of Lanka on Mt.Malaya and discoursed on the
Truth of the Noble Wisdom that is beyond the reasoning knowledge of the philosophers as
well as being beyond the understanding
of ordinary disciples and masters ; and
which is realisable only within the inmost consciousness
; for your sakes, I too, would discourse
on the same Truth. All that is seen in the world is devoid
of effort and action because all things in
the world are like a dream, or like an image miraculously
projected. This is not comprehended by the
philosophers and the ignorant, but those who thus
see them truthfully. Those who see things
otherwise walk in discrimination and, as they depend
upon discrimination, they cling to
dualism. The world as seen by discrimination is like seeing
one`s own image reflected in a mirror, or
one`s shadow, or the moon reflected in water , or an
echo heard in the valley. People grasping
their own shadows of discrimination become attached
to this thing and that thing and failing
to abandon dualism they go on forever discriminating
and thus never attain tranquillity. By
tranquillity is meant Oneness, and Oneness gives birth to
the highest Samadhi which is gained by
entering into the realm of Noble Wisdom that is realiseable
only within one`s inmost consciousness.
Then all the Boddhisattva-Mahasattvas rose
from their seats and respectfully paid him homage
and Mahamati the Boddhisattva-Mahasattva
sustained by the power of the Buddha drew his upper
garment over one shoulder, knelt and
pressing his hands together, praised him in the following verses
: As thou reviewest the world with thy
perfect intelligence and compassion it must seem to thee like an etheral flower of
which one cannot say : it is born, it is destroyed, for the terms being and
non-being do not apply to it. As thou reviewest the world with thy perfect
intelligence and compassion, it must seem to thee like a dream of which it cannot be
said : it is permanent or it is destructible, for being and
non-being do not apply to it. As
thou reviewest all things by thy perfect intelligence and compassion, they must seem
to thee like visions beyond the reach of the human mind, as being and
non-being do not apply to them.
With thy perfect intelligence and
compassion which are beyond all limit, thou comprehendest the ego-lessness of things
and persons, and art free and clear from the hindrances of passion and learning and
egoism.
Thou doest not vanish into Nirvana, nor
does Nirvana abide in thee, for Nirvana transcends all duality of knowing and known,
of being and non-being. Those who see thee thus, serene and beyond conception, will
be emancipated from attachment, will be cleansed of all defilement, both in this
world and in the spiritual world beyond.
In this world whose nature is like a
dream, there is place for praise and blame, but in the ultimate Reality of the
Dharmakaya which is far beyond the senses and the disciminating mind, what is there
to praise? O thou most Wise!
Then said Mahamati the
Boddhisattva-Mahasattva : O blessed One, Sugata, Arhat and Fully-Enlighened One,
pray tell us about the realisation of Noble Wisdom which is beyond the path and
usage of the philosophers ; which is devoid of all predicates such as being and
non-being, oneness and otherness, bothness and non-bothness, existence and non-existence,
eternity and non-eternity : which has nothing to do with individuality and
generality, nor false-imagination, nor any illusions arising from the mind itself ;
but which manifests itself as the Truth of Highest Reality. By which, going up
continuously by the stages of purification, one enters at last upon the stage of
Tathagata-hood, whereby, by the power of his original vows unattended by any
striving, one will radiate its influence to infinite worlds, like a gem reflecting
its variegated clors, whereby I and other
Bodhisattva-Mahasattvas will be enabled to bring all beings to the same perfection of
virtue.
Said the Blessed One: Well done, Well
done, Mahamati!
And again, well done, indeed! It is
because of your compassion for the world, because of the benefit it will bring to many
people both human kind and celestial, that you have presented yourself before us to make
this request. Therefore, Mahamati, listen well and truely reflect upon what I shall say,
for I will instruct you.
Then Mahamati and the other
Bodhisattva-Mahasattvas gave devout attention to the teaching of
the Blessed One.
Mahamati, since the ignorant and
simple-minded, not knowing that the world is only something seen of the mind itself, cling
to multitudinousness of external objects , cling to the notions of being and non-being,
oneness and otherness, bothness and non-bothness, existence and non-existence, eternity
and non-eternity, and think that they have a self-nature of their own, all of which rises
from the discriminations of the mind and is perpetuated by habit-energy , and from which
they are given over to false imagination. It is all like a mirage in which springs of
water are seen as if they were real. They are thus imagined by animals, who, made thristy
by the heat of the season, run after them. Animals, not knowing that
the springs are an hallucination of their
own minds, do not realise that there are no such springs.
In the same way, Mahamati, the ignorant
and simple-minded, their minds burning with the fires of greed, anger and folly, finding
delight in a world of multitudinous forms, their thoughts obsessed with ideas of birth,
growth and destruction, not well understanding what is meant by existent and non-existent,
and being impressed by the erroneous discriminations and speculations since beginningless
time, fall into the habit of grasping this and that and thereby becoming attached to them.
It is like the city of the Gandharvas
which the unwitting take to be a real city though it is not so in fact. The city appears
as in a vision owing to their attachment to the memory of a city preserved in the mind as
a seed ; the city can thus be said to be both existent and non-existent. In the same way ,
clinging to the memory of erroneous speculations and doctrines accumulated since
beginningless time, they hold fast to such ideas as oneness and otherness, being and
non-being, and their thoughts are not at all clear as to what after all is only seen of
the mind. It is like a man dreaming in his sleep of a country that seems to be filled with
various men, women, elephants, horses, cars, pederastrians, villages, towns, hamlets,
cows, buffalos, mansions, woods, mountains ,rivers and lakes, and who moves abcut in that
city until he is awakened.
As he lies half awake, he recalls the city
of his dreams and reviews his experiences there; what do you think, Mahamati, is this
dreamer who is letting his mind dwell upon the various unrealities he has seen in his
dream , - is he to be considered wise or foolish? In the same way,m the ignorant and
simple-minded who are favorably influenced by the erroneous views of the philosophers do
not recognise that the views that are influencing them are only dream-like ideas
originating in the mind itself, and consequently they are held fast by their notions of
oneness and otherness, of being and non-being. It is like a painter`s canvas on which the
ignorant imagine they see the elevations and depressions of mountains and valleys. In the
same way there are people today being brought up under the influence of similar erroneous
views of oneness and otherness, of bothness and non-bothness, whose mentality is being
conditioned by the habit-energy of these false-imaginatrions and who later on will declare
those who hold the true doctrine of no-birth which is free from the alternatrives of being
and non-being ; to be nihilists and by so doing will bring themselves and others to ruin.
By the natural law of cause and effect these followers of pernicious views uproot
meritorious causes that otherwise would lead to unstained purity. It is like the dim-eyed
ones who seeing a hairnet exclaim to one another: "It is wonderful! Look, Honorable
Sirs, it is wonderful!". But the hairnet has never existed ; in fact, it is neither
an entity, nor a non-entity, for it has both been seen and has not been seen. In the same
manner those whose minds have been addicted to the discriminations of the erroneous views
charished by the philosophers which are given over to the realistic views of being and
non-being, will contradict the good Dharma and will end in the destruction of themselves
and others.
It is like a wheel of fire mde by a
revolving firebrand which is no wheel but which is imagined to be one by the ignorant. Not
is it not-a-wheel because it has not been seen by some. By the same reasoning, thse who
are in the habit of listening to the discriminations and views of the philosophers will
regard
things born as non-existent and those
destroyed by causation as existent. It is like a mirror reflecting colors and images as
determined by conditions but without any partiality. It is like the echo of the wind that
gives the sound of a human voice. It is like a mirage of moving water seen in a desert. In
the same way the discriminating mind of the ignorant which has been heated by
false-imaginations and speculations is stirred into mirage-like waves by the winds of
birth, growth and destruction.
Then said Mahamati to the Blessed One:
Why is it that the ignorant are given up
to discrimination and the wise are not? The Blessed One replied : It is because the
ignorant cling to names, signs and ideas; as their mind move along these channels they
feed on multiplicities of objects and fall into the notion of an ego-soul and what belongs
to it ; they make discriminations of good and bad among appearances and cling to the
agreeable. As they thus cling there is a reversion to ignorance, and karma born of greed,
anger and folly, is accumulated. As the accumulation of karma goes on they become
imprisoned in a cocoon of discrimination and are henceforth unable to free themselves from
the round of birth and death.
Because of the folly they do not
understand that all things are like maya, like the reflection of the moon in water, that
there is no self-substance to be imagined as an ego-soul and its belongings, and that all
their definitive ideas rise from their false discriminations of what exists only as it is
seen of the mind itself.
They do not realise that things have
nothing to do with qualified and qualifying, nor with the course of birth, abiding and
destruction, and instead they assert that they are born of a creator, of time, of atoms,
of some celestial spirit. It is because the ignorant are given up to discrimination that
they move along
with the stream of appearances, but it is
not so with the wise.
Chapter II.
Then Mahamati the Bodhisattva-Mahasattca
spoke to the Blessed One, saying : You speak of the erroneous views of the philosophers,
will you please tell us of them, that we may be on our guard against them?
The Blessed One replied, saying :
Mahamati, the error in these erroneous teachings that are generally held by the
philosophers lies in this ; they do not recognise that the objective world rises from the
mind itself;
they do not understand that the whole
mind-system also rises from the mind itself; but depending upon these manifestations of
the mind as being real they go on discriminating them, like the simple-minded ones that
they are ; cherishing the dualism of this and that, of being and non-being, ignorant of
the fact that there is but one common Essence.
On the contrary my teaching is based upon
the recognition that the objective world, like a vision, is a manifestation of the mind
itself ; it teaches the cessation of ignorance, desire, deed and causality ; it teaches
the cessation of suffering that arises from the discrimination of the triple world. There
are some Brahman scholars who, assuming something out of nothing, assert that there is a
substance bound up with causationa which abides in time, and that the elements that make
up personality and its envoirment have their genesis and continuation in causation and
after thus existing, pass away. Then there are other scholars who hold a destructive and
nihilistic view concerning such subjects as continuation, activity, breaking-up,
existence, Nirvana, the Path, karma, fruition and Truth. Why? Because they have not
attained an intuitive understanding of Truth itself and therefore they have no clear
insight into the fundamentals of things. They are like a jar broken into pieces which is
no longer able to function as a jar; they are like a burnt seed
which is no longer capable of sprouting.
But the elements that make up personality and its envoirment which they regard as subject
to change are really incapable of uninterrupted transformations. Their views are based
upon erroneous discriminations of the objective world ; they are not based upon the true
conception. Again, if it is true that something comes out of nothing and there is a rise
of
the mind-system by reason of the
combination of the three effect-producing causes, we could say the same of any
non-existing thing ; for instance, that a tortoise could grow hair, or sand produce oil.
This proposition is of no avail ; it ends in affirming nothing. It follows that the deed,
work and cause
of which they speak is of no use, and so
also is their reverence for being and non-being. If they argue that there is a combination
of the three effect- producing causes, they must do it on the principle of cause and
effect, that is, that something comes out of something and not out of nothing. As long as
a world of relativity is asserted, there is an ever recurring chain of causation which
cannot be denied under any circumstance, therefore we cannot talk of anything coming to an
end of cessation. As long as these
scholars remain on their philosophical
ground their demonstration must conform to logic and their textbooks and the memory-habit
of erroneous intellection will ever cling to them. To make the matter worse , the
simple-minded ones , poisoned by this erroneous view, will declare this incorrect way of
thinking taught by the ignorant, to be the same as that presented by the All-knowing One.
Miscellaneous
All such notions as causation, succession,
atoms, primary elements that make up personality, Personal Soul, Supreme Spirit, Sovereign
God,Creator - are all figments of imagination, and manifestations of the mind.
Nevertheless transcendental Intelligence
is not Noble Wisdom, it is only an intuitive awareness of it. Noble Wisdom is a perfect
state of imagelessness:It is the All-conserving Divine Mind which in its pure Essence
forever abides in Perfect Patience and Undisturbed Tranquility.
Transcendental Intelligence Rises when the
intellectual Mind reaches it limitsand , if things are to realised in their true and
essential Nature, its processes of mentation, which are based on particularised ideas,
discrimminations and Judgementsm, must be transcended by an appeal of some higher faculty
of
cognition, if there be such a higher
faculty.There is such a faculty in the intuitive Mind (Manas) which as we have seen is the
link between the intellectual Mind and the Universal Mind.
While Intuition does not give information
that can be analysed and discrimminated,it gives that which is far superior -
Self-realisation through Identification.There are four things by the fulfilling which an
earnest disciple may gain Self-Realisationand Noble Wisdom. First ; He must have a clear
undrstanding that all things are only manifestations of the mind itself. Second ; He must
clearly understand the egolessness
of both things and persons.As to the
first: he must recognize and be fully convinced that this triple world is nothing but a
complex manifestation of one`s mental activities ; that it is devoid of selfness and its
belongings. That there are no strivings, no comings and no goings.He must recognize and
accept the fact that this triple world is manifested and imagined as real only under the
influence of habit-energy that has been accumulated since the beginning-less past, by
reason of memory, false-imagination, false-reasoning, and attachments to the
multiplicities of objects and reactions in close relationship and in conformity to
ideas of body-property-and-abode. As to the Second thing ; he must recognize and be
convinced that all things are to be regarded as forms seen in a vision and a dream, empty
of substance, un-born without self-nature, that all things exist only by reason of a
complicated network of causation. As for the third; He must recognize and patiently accept
the fact that his own mind and personality is also Mind-constructed, that it is empty of
substance, unborn and Egoless.
Source: http://www.best.com/~mlee
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Update: 01-12-2001
