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alayavijnana
January 2009 
What is Alayavijnana?
Posted on Aug 6th, 2008
by 
True Eloquence
True Eloquence
Usually, it is translated as "the store-house consciousness". It is where all the karmic seeds (bijas) are stored. Mhm...what does it mean by that?...Okay, for instance, you've done something to someone when you were like 15 years old, and after many years, you met him/her again, and suddenly you remembered that action (remorseful or rewarding...depending on that particular action). So now where did that come from? That did not just come by itself. That memory/experinece must have been stored somewhere in the sub-consciousness. According to Yogacara, it was stored in "Alayavijnana" and it came from there...yeah. Anyway, we have an earliest description of what is it like in the "Mahayana-abhidharma-sutra". Lets see how it was defined there:
"anadikaliko dhatuh
sarvadharma-samsrayah/
sati tasmim gatih sarva
nirvana-adhigamas capi//
(Causal Element of beginless time
is the basis of all dharma.
Where it is there,
there is the whole phenomena of existence, as well as the realization of nirvana)
So, it looks like we have been accumulating karma from a beginless time. The mutual perfuming of the seeds (causal elements) give rise to all the dharmas (conditioned things). Because of that (positive and negative), we have Samsara on one hand and nirvana on the other. But it is all stored in that alayavijnana. The whole world of our experinece is built in the "alayavijnana". All kinds of seeds are stored there and these seeds have the potentiality to give rise to anything anytime. That's why we experience all kinds of things (not everything at the same time), just like the waves in the ocean, it is always there, but they arise at different occassions due to the wind, etc. Now there is only one way left for us. That is to transform all the grossness, heaviness, badness, non-pliability (dausthulya) into calmness, lightness, pliability, workibility (prasrabdhi). And that transformation (asraya-paravrtti) is in a state of full purification (parinispanna). It is described as "such-ness" (tathata), because it is simply ineffable.
"anadikaliko dhatuh
sarvadharma-samsrayah/
sati tasmim gatih sarva
nirvana-adhigamas capi//
(Causal Element of beginless time
is the basis of all dharma.
Where it is there,
there is the whole phenomena of existence, as well as the realization of nirvana)
So, it looks like we have been accumulating karma from a beginless time. The mutual perfuming of the seeds (causal elements) give rise to all the dharmas (conditioned things). Because of that (positive and negative), we have Samsara on one hand and nirvana on the other. But it is all stored in that alayavijnana. The whole world of our experinece is built in the "alayavijnana". All kinds of seeds are stored there and these seeds have the potentiality to give rise to anything anytime. That's why we experience all kinds of things (not everything at the same time), just like the waves in the ocean, it is always there, but they arise at different occassions due to the wind, etc. Now there is only one way left for us. That is to transform all the grossness, heaviness, badness, non-pliability (dausthulya) into calmness, lightness, pliability, workibility (prasrabdhi). And that transformation (asraya-paravrtti) is in a state of full purification (parinispanna). It is described as "such-ness" (tathata), because it is simply ineffable.
Access: Public
thank you, love. Sounds like this storehouse is existance?
Mom, yes! To be more precise though, we can say this storehouse is the BASIS of the whole phenomena existence.
I will ask you a question: what constitutes a cognition or perception? In another word, how do you come to an understanding of something? Like when you see an a vase on the table, how do you know it is a vase and not an aeroplane? (just try answering from what you feel, I think this could be fun discussing)
Anyone joining Mom…
Thank you, beautiful post. Yes, this is the only reason for being…., to me, the real purpose.
How I know a vase is a vase? From memory… that is the learned name of it, and learned use of it.
Assaji..maybe to switch perspectives, karmic seeds are stored in the causal body or Vijnamayakosha of the Advaita Vedanta nomenclature….this would place it in the superconmscious, so to speak, rather than the developmental unconscious of western psychology…accumulation of repetative karmic patterns would give rise to samskaras, or prenatal tendencies which bloom as tendencies to action which shape the responses to our earliest experiences…which would explain why different individuals react differently to differing traumas of parental mesattunement in early childhood….
What do you think?
warmly, Jon.
PS eloquent post.
Soul, thank you. Yeah from memory, that's how the science also says to us. And if I am not wrong, memory is something physical in the brain, right? The different nerve-systems connect and works and that's where we get memory. Now the question is: what happens to our brain when we passed away?. Obviously, if the memory is something physical, it will wash away by the physical death, right. So, I think science, in that sense, is limited, because it doesn't go further than that.
But we don't have to accept everything science says, do we?. We know how limited it is. That's why I think the spiritual movements around the world grew in the past seeking answers to life and they have found actually (well some did, and some did not, more accurately), like the doctrine of “alayavijnana” and it explains the nature of existence thoroughly and reasonably.
Anyway, my questions, in the first place, were posted in order to examine how we come to an understanding of something, like a vase as a vase and not an aeroplane and are they necessarily true in the ultimate sense, or are we giving names/concepts/projections/views/interpretations only. It looks like we are giving names to it. And whatever that essential nature is, it is never brought out in language. Which is why it is ineffable. In the first place, depending on the external object (vase) and the eye, there arises eye-consciousness. The eye then perceives the vase. The second time, with the help of the first conception of “how it looks like”, it is blue/white/green or whatever, it comes to understand “oh yes that's a vase”….and that's how each and every dharmas (conditioned things) are made up, including our very pyscho-physical being.
mm, Son I'm going to have to catch up on the conversation!
How do we see or know a vase to be a vase?
This brings me so much to my wonderings the past few days… (…or my whole life)
My thoughts have been:
what is essentially 'me'…
It I were to, say, lose my sight
would I be a 'different me'
If I were to lose my limbs and no longer be able to do anything or interact with my environment as I've known it - who would 'I' be?
when I sleep,
'who am I'
If I were to lose consciousness - or go into a coma
'who' would 'I' be?
Coming back to the vase…
I see a vase based on my learned experience of it.
If I were to be here in another lifetime where vases were redundant
I would not know what this object is
Or if tomorrow I were to be knocked hard over the head
I would no longer recognise it as a vase…
So a vase is simply my perception
- it is here as I perceive it
and ceases to exist when I do not
this applies to 'me' too…
my head functions in one way right now
and I see 'me' as I perceive myself today.
Tonight I sleep
and during my dream
me as I knew myself in my waking does not exist
Tomorrow I wake
and possible there is some life changing event which takes place
and 'I 'have changed again…
mm… these have been my thoughts
… but I do not know what am I essentially…
the answer seems to be tied up in my quest
for enlightenment
Jon, Long time no see (hehe I am using a phrase from Asia)
What do you think?
I think…yes it can be, because there had been a close relationship between Advaita Vedanta and Yogacara in the 4h-5th century CE. They have influenced each other. There are definitely similarities, but there are also differences, like the Buddhists won't accept the “Atma” theory that is being consumed finaly by the Brahma. But hey, I would love if you can further say something about the relationship between the “causal body” and the “super-conscious” and how they are different from the “developmental unconscious of western psychology”.
In Yogacara, the 8 vijnanas (consciousnesses) are:
1. Eye consciousness
2. Ear-consciousness
3. Nose-consciousness
4. Tongue-consciousness
5. Body-consciousness
6. Mind-consciousness
7. Defiled-consciousness
8. Storehouse-consciousness
So, the first 7 consciousness-es make up the 8th consciousness. It is in the Alayavijnana (storehouse-consciousness) that all the fruits of other consiousnesses are stored/sticking to).
I am posting few web-pages here, so you can read through… instead of me just mentioning them in a nutshell. It will be helpful for anyone interested.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yogacara
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Store_consciousness
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight_Consciousnesses
http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-ADM/richard.htm
Mom, I love the way you bring up the whole issue here so rhythmically. It is really moving and well cogitated.
So, the other day I was having a question game with a friend who asked me a similar question to yours. I am posting it here for you to read:
X: Okay, so, if someone asked you if you know exactly what you want from this life, would you KNOW the answer to it?
Y: I don't exactly know what I want from this life, really. People are telling me different things and my reasons and emotions are in conflit. But I am centain that life is changing always, impermanent, and one thing at least I would do before I die is do something for the world, like helping people to be better human beings, at least I can die with joy in my heart (there are ofcourse things I want to own for me, but then reality hits).
X: Good answer!!
Y: Even wanting to be a musician/teacher/or doing whatever jobs, is not going to solve our basic problems in life, I guess there is something that we need to find out still.
X: Yeah exactly.
Y: So can you answer this same question?
X: I would answer that i dont really know what i want exactly from this life, but thats part of what makes like interesting for me, finding out what i want and what i dont. there were some things i thought if i had (or didnt have) would make life feel complete for me, but in reality they didnt. i mean, i want to do something in my life that actually matters, that makes a difference for someone else besides just ME, u know, but i also want to find what matters to me, FOR me, since i have no real idea in actuality.
Y: Wow that's really good answer.
X: So was yours.
Y. Actually I have found an answer, but it will take time to achieve that state, like many life times probably, I just found out this question in life, when my teacher was teaching about it, I suddenly realized that's what I have been looking and questioning. (I am not sure I am clear).
X. I think I understood what you said, yeah.
Y. Yeah, that's also what you exactly have in mind, like you said “i want to do something in my life that actually matters, that makes a difference for someone else besides just ME…but i also want to find what matters to me, FOR me.”
X: Yeah exactly.
Y: So, I will share what I found out.
X: I think that each of us can do both things, i think we all need BOTH, to find what we can do for others, AND what we can do for ourselves, i guess.
Y: Neither addition nor substraction to an object that we experience, but that thing itself is not different, nor non-identical, it is like you are that same person say “Sandra”, at the same time, you are not what other perceive you as “Sandra” - this is very hard to grasp, describe - and infact, ineffable! That reality you can't express in language. We can give various terms to it, but never as it it.
X: Since its hard to put into words I dont know for a fact that we are thinking of the same thing.
Y: Like I was saying “Sandra” is essentially her, substracting her or adding something to her is the problem - you know what I mean - and that's the reality. But that thing to properly understand, it is so hard for us, coz we are projecting our own views and giving names and so on, thinking that is it…he/she is like this and that…which makes us go around in our own circle of ignorance and that creates that whole cycle of birth and death (=existence).
X: Hm, well i actually used to always contemplate that when i was a little girl, like 5 years old, I could never find words for it though when someone would ask me what i was thinking about…but id contemplate it like every night lol so now im totally used to the concept of it.
Y. That's great to hear.
So Mom, that's it. I think we all are seeking one way or another the same questions in life and also going through the same problems, only in different degrees. The only truth that we all finally meet to is each one of us is essentially what we are and at the same time nor different from others. Just like all the rivers finally become one with the ocean. Individual eivers are not completely lost therein, at the same time they are not different from the whole ocean.
Hi Assaji.
In response to yr last question:
Colloquially, the unconscious is the repository of everything we are not aware of but which is a part of ourselves…..Freud coined the term to describe memories and process-motivational narratives which give rise to many of our thoughts, words and deeds whose origins are unknown to us but whose motifs are repeatable…..these are prerational in nature
Since Freud denied (publically, at least, but only publically and that's fodder for a narrative in itself) the existence of transrational states of awareness cultivated by meditation or given by Grace, the notion of the transpersonal states of consciousness (itemised by e.g.the Buddhist jhana system or the ashtanga classical yoga pathworking) all got detelescoped into the prerational…..the transrational desire for kosmic union in a nondual state got redefined as a prerational return to prenatal serenity, for example….since both are nonrational it's easy to lump the two together when you're a scientific rationalist…..
Thus, the unconscious becomes synonymous with the nonconscious ….but the nonconscious can embrace not only the prerational unconscious but also the transrational states of awareness which lie dormant in nonmeditators and/or the unGraced….
This accounts for the interior states of awareness….looking at the Kosmos from the inside out we disclose consciousness…and looking at Kosmos from the outside-in we see bodies, forms…..adopting the kosha system, we have the higher three koshas….manomaya-, vijnamaya- and anandamaya-kosha which are bodies vibrating too subtly to be seen or felt unless you are trained to do so…..the higher transrational states of consciousness are latent and their bodies are therefore existent…..the bodies are the outer manifestations of the inner latent awareneses….the vijna and anandamaya bodies exist in the high-subtle and causal realms respectively….within the anandamayakosha lie the samskaras or seeds of karma…tendencies to act…..but they are not consciously discernible until the energies contained within them sublimate or “root downwards” into the manifest environment we share where they bear the fruits of action and future karma….
Their origins, then, are not conscious but “superconscious” or transrational as opposed to” unconscious” or prerational…if you are a materialist (and you Assaji are as much a materialist as Popeye is an Air Force Man) then you will reduce all things nonconscious into the unconscious because for you there is no superconscious….
Ken Wilber refers to this as the pre-trans fallacy…Freud reduces whilst Jung by-and-large elevates prepersonal archetypes into the transpersonal realms…actually, the only well-defined transpersonal archetypes I know of are the Five Buddha Families in the high-subtle, or Sambhogakaya realm of the Mahayana Canon.
Hope this is clear and not too long-winded and proves of use.
Blessings to you, friend, Jon x
Hi Assaji,
I don't know much about science… but I do agree that names are just names, and do not describe the true nature, and I agree with you in your description of how dharmas are made up.
Hummingbird… You have seen that what we call “I changes from day to day. My question/s to you is(and one that doesn't need answering)…Who is it that perceives those changes, or who is it that witnesses or is aware of those changes? What does all the changing phenomena arise and pass in? That I think you know.The doubts we may have are thought only and are also part of the impermanet, fleeting “I”…
Assaji,
Here's a bit about the merging of science and spirituality… or the awakening of science… ” The Monk in the Lab”:
http://www.mindfulness.net.au/publications.html
I find this discussion very interesting. finally you have arrived at merging science and spirituality. Actually both are same but certain groups stiil find it difficult to accept the fact. Learn any divison of science finally it will bring you to spiritualism. i find the same truths explained in physics, chemistry, biology, anatomy, psychology etc. will appear the same as in spiritualism. Famous Atomic scientist Albert Einestein too have accepted this. Religions may have small differnces about these theories but we need not worry about that. First you will have experience all these phenomena. Until then it will remain as a jugglery of words.
Soul, that article was very interesting (The Monk in the Lab). Well, I recommend now everyone to read that. We can learn lots of things from there about today's merging science and spirituality. HH Dalai Lama has expressed it really well there. It was indeed moving. But heh yeah again, science is still in a developmental state, so it needs spiritual back ups to help it achieve greater success for the good of the world. HH Dalai Lama also warned “the calamity of 9/11 demonstrated that modern technology and human intelligence guided by hatred can lead to immense destruction. Such terrible acts are a violent symptom of an afflicted mental state. To respond wisely and effectively, we need to be guided by more healthy states of mind”. I am glad to see Australia is not in any sort of conflicts with the world (or is it?), even though it has achieved great technological sucesses. I wonder why? Is it their mentality or have they been getting lots of spiritual supports? But I bet America has also lots of spiritual back-ups too (or they are solely materialists), but why still invade other nations. Is it because, in the name of terrorism/God, they have an excuse to possess the oils or whatever it is craving for? Or is it that any powerful nations in the world just want to control other weaker nations?
Thank you, son, for your responses and for this blog.
And thank you for all the posts here from all of you.
We're all on a journey, sometimes taking different paths - leading to the same ocean - or mountain top or whatever metaphor we prefer to use.
Soul - yes I have asked myself that question and been asked it…
'who is this who witnesses…'
and been aware of this temporary 'I' or ego
- which is mortal and tries to understand by means of intellect.
The thing I've been wondering about more recently is
- say, I have an accident and suffer brain damage
- and this 'I' can no longer be located -
and my perceptions change…
…I am aware that I' am the 'ocean' - or infinity or all which is one
- but what I'm wondering is
- what is the awareness of one who is enlightened
- one who is not limited to perception which is dependent on 'I' or ego?
PS I mentioned this journey at the end of my latest blog
This is in response to sangmun's post where he wrote:
First you will have experience all these phenomena. Until then it will remain as a jugglery of words.
This is a very important statement. Acceptance comes after the fact. Unless or until you actually experience things, it is mostly or just an intellectual exercise made up of wonder and assumptions. Now, the secret is how to actually experience it. You have to learn it yourself by doing. If you do experience “it”, it is not easy,(or possibly useless), to try to tell others, because you will not be believed or understood. That's because words are inadequate to describe spiritual experiences, though the Indian yogis did an extremely good job at trying to explain things.
Anything I wrote here is just my opinion,based on what I have personally experienced, nothing more.
namaste, mimi
Dear Sweet Hummingbird,
I hope you never lose your sight or limbs, but if you are wondering if you would be a different you, or who you would be, let me tell you that you would still be you inside.
Your outside can be altered, how you do things might need alteration or take longer, but your essence remains intact. When we have struggles and challenges, we use whatever resources we have to make the best life for ourselves and still find joy. This is never an easy task at first when faced with loss of bodily functions that we rely on so heavily.
When I suffered several brain attacks, even in my complete brain fog, trying to speak, walk, understand instructions, how to put clothes on, every physical action a near impossibility - I still knew - I WAS IN THERE - AND INTACT!
During one severe attack, I lay in a hospital bed for almost 3 weeks, just laying on my back, holding on to sheets I wound around my wrists to have something to hold onto. I was fine, just laying there in perfect peace, (undrugged) though I knew that this was not a reasonable thing to do - that I should be standing up and moving. There is something - maybe survival instinct that urges us on. I also got an new concept of brain, mind, senses and how they work together.
About the vase in another lifetime and notprobably knowing what it was…I don't have to wait till the next lifetime, because I don't recognize objects now. When flyers come from Future Shop with all the technological stuff - Wi's, ipods, blue tooth, blackberries and most stuff in there - i have absolutely no idea what anything isor it's use.. I recognize big screen TV's, cordless phones, and maybe DVD players. I don't know if a DVD and a CD are the same thing, or if you can put a CD in a DVD. I own a VCR and don't own a cell phone.
When and if we come back in another lifetime, we will be newborn and like all newborns we have to learn to navigate our new world as it exists then, just like we have to learn to navigate our world that exists right now, right here. I am here, I am the observer, I am the Doer. I exists and navigate in this lifetime with lots of unknowns. It's all ok as is.
namaste,
\mimi
Hi Assaji!
Thanx for the post and all who are sharing to bring mutual awareness here.
I will contribute here by talking a little about science and spirituality
Sentient beings are everywhere
and Science is full of them too
many of whom are in search of the same things
that spiritual seekers are
Indeed, many of the greatest scientific minds are deeply “spiritual” beings
in the sense that they are searching for the same things yogi's are
Issac Newton viewed his greatest work to be in the field of religion, and not science
If one studies the history of great scientists
one sees a recurring pattern of a fascination with reality
Scientists who spend their lives “looking for new patterns and finding them
cannot help but see the order in reality
hence the famous expression
“god does not play dice”
coined by Einstein to express his discomfort with the intrinsic random nature of the universe
implied by quantum physics
If one looks at the history of science and where it now sits
one can see science's built in “proof” mechanism bringing it to a view merging with spirituality
The buddha said that we should use our minds, our own reasoning to make the final determination in all matters important
He meant that we should discover these truths for ourselves rather than simply digest dogma
Science has this central buddhist doctrine as it's own fundamental operating principle as well.
As a result, scientific revolutions happen and these cause major paradigm shifts to occur (i.e. quantum mechanics displacing Newtonian Determinism)
In science, however, it is often the case that the revolutionaries of yesterday,become the old guard of today and this simply illustrates an attachment to concepts AND the impermanent nature of concepts themselves. For as much as we like to think that “concepts” are reality, they aren't! “Strings” are no more real than a “number” is real, or, any “thing” else, as a matter of fact. Science simply uses common everyday language and that other language, mathematics, to create its own metalanguage which scientists around the world standardize on.
The models of science are always being replaced and updated and as they are, they seem to be converging with religious models that describe reality. The Quantum Physics of the last century was a stepping stone towards this. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle brings the observer into the picture where before, the observer was completely ignored. Now, another movement is occurring, spurred on by the likes of neuroscientists like Alan Wallace, who has been at the interface between science and spirituality by working with the Dalai Lama and who is proposing to establish consciousness as the foundation for all of science. Materialism, the foundations of science and the also lay mind's way of modeling the world, is being shaken to its roots.
The new science will be unlike anything seen before. Even neuroscientists like nobel lauruate Gerald Edelman who are staunch materialists have been doing research on areas that were once the domain of philosophy and religion…how human beings create conceptual classifications when there is no classification system at all to begin with….just the raw data flowing into our 5 sense channels. These theories are still materialistic as they propose self-organizing neural systems that react to the sense phenomena to create all the conceptual objects that we come to take for granted as adults.
The new scientific theories will bring about a major paradigm shift. The consciousness, the observer who has been observing the scientific experiments, will become even further entangled with the observed. Indeed, the spiritual quest of the yogi is the complete integration of the observer and the observed. This may also ultimately become the quest of science as well once it begins to dawn that this is the ultimate nature of reality.
Another recent story that explores the interface between science and sprituality comes from Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroscientist who turned a traumatic disease into the most amazing oppurtunity a neuroscientist can have….the once in a lifetime oppurtunity to study the brain, not just from the outside, but by having a stroke, she observed the effects on her own consciousness.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html
(P.S. The TED talks are generally excellent and all of them are worth exploring!)
Well, that's it for me! Suffice it to say that I began my own journey in Science and found my way into spirituality. I still love science and technology but meditation and genuine spiritual practice that acknowledges the wonder of each and every moment is the highest form of scientific discovery of all! Perhaps the day will come when science catches up and then its profound power can be unleashed in the service of all living beings.
I love every word Gien has written. These words pour because of his experince. I mentioned the experience as important because after that you will need no explanation on these matters. You will come to understand every word in all the scriptures without any help from any one, until then we will be struggling with the words alone. Practice will bring the experience.
Jon, sadhu sadhu!
1. Can we say their origins are from themselves (=emptiness/dependent origination), rather than unknown?. I mean, it could be that one consciousness sees the other
consciousness and that consciousness sees the other consciousness. So the whole process goes on a series seeing one after another, having their origin on emptiness (=dependent origination). For instance, I see Jon today and I build a consciousness. Tomorrow depending on my yesterday's consciousness, I see you again, but in a different way and I build another consciousness. But who you really are can be totally different thing. I can communicate with you my whole life, but I won't necessarily know you entirely. But my perceptions/consciousnesses are just my perceptions. I may meet you another life time with all these perceptions lying in my store-consciousness (alayavijnana) without knowing that I already have accumulated karmic seeds with you. I can see the process going around and it looks like a real person/being to me, but in reality they are just perceptions seeing other perceptions and they are in fact sunya/dependently originated. In dreams for instance, we don't just dream things out of nowhere. I think something in the past or present must be related to it, even though we may not be able to interprete it in the full sense. If those dreams are just some unknown random things, then I think it cannot be called a consciousness in the full sense of the term. It would be like calling a paper-tiger a real tiger. But since they must have some hidden meanings, they are real consciousnesses/sub-consciousnesses which are actually in existence in the conventional level. I don't know if we are talking about the same thing.
2. The nonconscious looks like having two levels of reality, the prerational and the transrational states of awareness. It is quite similar to the “alayavijnana” of Yogacara in which the both “dausthulya” as well as the “prasrabdhi” resides. The dausthulya represents the pre-rational/rational level, while the prasrabdhi represents the consciousness of meditation/concentration.
3. I don't know if the “superconscious” can be non other than the “parinispanna-svabhava” (purified nature), because it is quite dynamic. What do you think? Like the consciousness of the Buddhas. It is not the normal one like that of the ordinary beings, but totally a transformed one. Mom (HummingBird) was asking the same question: ”what is the awareness of one who is enlightened - one who is not limited to perception which is dependent on 'I' or ego?” I would say this “parinispanna-svabhava” (=sunyata, tathata, nirvana, pratityasamutpada) is the awareness of one who is enlightened, if we at all try to define it in language for our convinience.
Wtih Metta,
Assaji
this morning Gien read me something beautiful:
http://www.thebuddhadharma.com/issues/2003/winter/thrangu_rinpoche.html
Thank you, Mimi, for sharing your experience
It is so precious how life teaches us with lessons
and out of circumstances many may find debilitating
you tap the nectar of awareness
Assaji, as to your blog post, how is this related to “dependent arising”? I forgot the original Buddhist term. Thank you for this spirited conversations and exchange,
Samme
Many thanks, Samme. It is a good question. The original Buddhist term for “dependent arising” is ”pratitya-samudpada” in Sanskrit or ”Paticca-samuppada” in Pali. When the Buddha attained enlightenment, it seems he contemplated on “pratitya-samudpada” for seven days and wondered how he is ever going to communicate this teaching with the rest, because it was so profound that only few would understand it. Once when Ananda (one of the disciples) commented that ”it appears to me as clear as clear”, Buddha admonished him ”Do not say that! Paticca samuppada is profound and appears profound. It is through not understanding, not penetrating this doctrine that this generation has become like a tangled ball of string, covered as with a blight, tangled like coarse grass, unable to pass beyond states of woe, the ill destiny, ruin and the round of birth-and-death.” Yet, out of compassion for the world, He reconsidered to speak this subtle and sublime teaching, hoping at least those with little dust on their eyes be able to see through.
This has become the central teaching of Buddhism. And for centuries commentaries grew around it. When the Yogacara form of Buddhism emerged in late 2nd to 5th century A.D., this has reached its peak of development in Indian soil. I am giving this background information, because it is essecial that we understand its development.
Your question has to be understood in terms of the “Three Natures” of the Yogacara system of perceiving the world. I personally will link the world to be the “alayavijnana” as the ultimate basis of phenomenal existence as well as the cause of pollution. But first of all, what are the three natures by which we perceive our world. They are: 1. Parikalpita (literally “fully conceptualized”, or Imaginary Nature, wherein things are incorrectly apprehended based on conceptual construction, through attachment and erroneous discrimination), 2. Paratantra (literally “other dependent”, or Dependent Nature, by which the correct understanding of the dependently originated nature of things is understood), and 3. Parinispanna (literally “fully accomplished”, or Absolute Nature, through which one apprehends things as they are in themselves, uninfluenced by any conceptualization at all). I see this teaching of “Three Natures” as a further development of the teaching of “pratitya-samudpada” in a broad systematic way with new terms and language.
It is in this sense that it is related to “dependent arising” as the ultimate reality of the phenomenal existence. I have equated “pratitya-samudpada” (dependent-arising) also with “sunyata” (emptiness), ”tathata” (such-ness), ”nirvana” and also “parinispanna”. They are all synonymous.
“Whoever sees dependent-arising (pratitya-samutpada) sees the Dhamma; and whoever sees the Dhamma sees Dependent-arising” - Buddha
i love to read it .. but want to say nothing ..
as a brother of love i take you i my arrms.. your examan let me fell happy with you thanks
i learn lot about your teaching .. next life i would like a non ..and in ten years i cut my hair with
60 .. thats the shell .. but the inner is still a nonnun ..lol,andrea
thank you, sister andrea
it is a great honour to have your presence here
one does not need too many words to make another happy, one word spoken from heart is enough…lol and you did that.
happiness and blessings
I agree with Sanmugan on Gien's writing. It's well presented. Thank you both of two for sharing with us.