The Doctrine of 'Consciousness Only'

The doctrine of Vijnapti-matrata (Japanese: Yuishiki), or 'Consciousness-Only', was the special contribution made to Mahayana Buddhist Metaphysics by the Vijnanavada, or Yogacara, school of India. This Third Turning of the Wheel of the Law was set in motion by Maitreyanatha and his two great followers, the brothers Asanga and Vasubandhu, in the fourth century A. D. It was to provide the theoretical basis for most of the later developments in the Mahayana, including both Tantra and Zen. It arose as a way of compensating the imbalance of the negative extreme arrived at by the followers of Nagarjuna.'s Madhyamaka, the second Turning of the Wheel of the Law, which it largely superseded.

The Madhyamaka school, it will be recalled, developed a dialectic of fourfold negation aimed at demonstrating the untenability of all four possible logical positions: sat (is), asat (is not), both sat and asat, and neither sat nor asat. But the Vijnanavadins countered this sweeping rejection of all logical propositions as invalid by pointing out that behind it still lies hidden one all-important implicit assumption. This is the necessary prior reality of Consciousness. The tacit presupposition made by every possible statement, positive or negative, that can be advanced by the Madhyamaka or any other school of thought is that both the speaker and his audience are already in possession not only of consciousness, but of a human consciousness, and even more of a human consciousness in the waking state.

For, so far as we know, animals do not engage in rational debate, nor does even the most logical positivist philosophize while in a state of deep dreamless sleep. Though it is conceded that creative ideas may appear from or mature during the dream state, to be remembered and elaborated on waking, the dream state is still a mode of consciousness. So in Nagarjuna's apparently impregnable fortress of negative criticism, there is one fatal oversight that demolishes his position of no position. Because the object depends on the subject and the subject on the object, he dismisses both as unreal; but to use consciousness to prove the unreality of consciousness is self-contradictory.

There is yet another unmentioned prerequisite for all intelligible discourse: speaker and audience must possess a language in common, normally though not invariably verbal; for lacking any such conscious means of communication, no argument, logical or not. can be affirmed or refuted. And because both supporters and opponents have heard, comprehended, and replied, they have virtually admitted that language is a conscious means of communication. Obviously language cannot be employed to prove the invalidity of language.

But even granting the truth of the Madhyamaka criticism that all experience dichotomized into subject and object is illusory and that Shunyata alone is real, that still presupposes a Consciousness capable of becoming aware of the illusion and of rejecting it, and this Consciousness cannot, on pain of self-contradiction, be illusory but must be real. Shunyata, or the Ultimate Reality, itself can only be realized by the transcendent and immediate Insight of prajna, in other words by Awareness in its most exalted mode. Buddhism is the Doctrine of Awakening, and its goal has always been recognized as Enlightenment, which is synonymous with the All-Knowing and Universal Consciousness of the Buddha.

Attempts to refute the Vijnanavada by the logicians of later schools, like the Prasangika, whose method was to reduce all arguments put forward by their opponents to absurdity, prove to be a mere smoke-screen of logomachic sophistry; for the same objection applies: any reductio ad absurdum still presupposes Consciousness. 'How can there be Consciousness without an object of Consciousness?' asked Candrakirti. But no true Vijnanavadin maintained that Consciousness, Cit, is without contents, Citta. For him Consciousness is not only the clear white Light of the Void but is also prismatically split by Maya, the Cosmic Illusion, into those coloured, image-bearing, rays that project the various worlds. This is necessarily so because of the nondual principle. advanced by the Madhyamaka itself, that Nirvana is Samsara and Shunyata is Suchness.

It is undeniable therefore that some mode of Consciousness is the conditio sine qua non for all experience, illusory or real, from the earthiest empirical observation and experiment of the materialist to the loftiest intellectual abstractions of the metaphysician. So the Vijnanavada, or Yogacara, school, realizing this self-evident precondition, made it the foundation of its doctrine of Consciousness-Only. This view is obviously incontrovertible, since to overturn it the critic must first be in possession of consciousness.

According to Vijnanavada doctrine, a Basic Consciousness therefore underlies not only the five kinds of sense-consciousness (consciousness of sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch) but in addition subsumes the sixth or mental consciousness (mano-vijnana) which, like the medieval European sensus communis, collects and co-ordinates the reports of the senses. It also forms the substratum of the seventh consciousness, manas, or mind, which in a state of Ignorance gives rise to the illusion of an ego. This Eighth, or Depth, Consciousness is called the Alaya-vijnana (Japanese: Arayashiki), or Storehouse Consciousness, and is at once individual and universal. It is this Repository Consciousness which the klishta-mano-vijnana, or Sixth Consciousness, still defiled by rational discrimination motivated by desire or aversion, mistakes for a permanent self or immortal soul. But since, in its own nature, the Alaya-vijnana remains pure and unsullied, once it is cleared of the false ego-imputation it reveals itself as no other than the Amala-vijnana, the Ninth, or Pure, Consciousness of Buddhahood. So, on reaching Enlightenment, the Alaya-vijnana is transformed into the Wisdom of the Magnificent Mirror, a symbol of Pure Consciousness and the special attribute of Akshobhya Buddha.

In Hinduism, as well as in certain esoteric schools of the West, this Universal Storehouse Consciousness is known as the Sphere of the Moon, which symbolizes the Cosmic Memory and is regarded as the doorway to the higher realms of conscious being. For example, the Kaushitaki Upanishad (1, 2) says: 'Those who depart from this world to the Moon, in truth they go. Verily the door to the heavenly worlds is the Moon'. For in the Cosmic Memory of the Alaya-vijnana are stored the traces of all that has ever been experienced by individual or species as well as the primordial bija (Japanese: shuji), or 'seeds', which are the prototypes and potentialities of all that can ever enter into manifestation. Even the contents of the individual human memory, though not fully accessible to the waking ego, can be recalled in every minute detail, at least as far back as birth, while under hypnosis: that is to say, in the induced dream state.

Osawa Pond at night provides an adequate poetic symbol for the muddy lower waters of the psyche, the Alaya-vijnana still not purified of Ignorance but polluted by the karmic sediment of past actions and passions, those latent dispositions and habitual propensities (samskara) awaiting an opportune moment to remanifest. Among such undissolved residues of previous karma are to be found those 'psychic corpses' which are mistaken by mediums and their consultants for the 'spirits' of the dead, and which are strictly excluded from entering the Pure Land.

The darkness of the sky overhead and the darkness of the lake beneath correspond to two realms of Mind that, to continue the spatial metaphor, lie one 'above' and the other 'below' the limited ego-consciousness of everyday. Although the ego may very well be unconscious of either or both of these realms, it does not follow that they are in themselves without consciousness. This double darkness only appears because ego-consciousness is considered as being our sole source of illumination. This most restricted mode of awareness is taken as the norm and criterion for judging all experience, and whatever lies outside its narrow individual beam of light is regarded as of dimmer interest and relegated to 'the Unconscious'. But that vast and vague category must then indiscriminately include many heterogeneous states that are called non-conscious, unconscious, pre-conscious, subconscious, extra-conscious, as well as super-conscious and supra-conscious.

Because of the confusions that have arisen from such jargon, which means different things to different psychologists and philosophers, it seems better to use the Indian terms, which possess the advantage of clarity, simplicity, and closeness to natural human experience. So let us rather speak of the waking state (jagrat), in which we are aware of the 'outer' world; the dream state (svapna), in which we are aware of the 'inner' world; and the state of deep dreamless sleep (sushupti), in which we are no longer conscious of the distinction between the outer and the inner worlds but only of their undifferentiated unity. This corresponds to the unqualified Shunyata of Mahayana Buddhism. Finally turiya, which means simply the fourth state, designates that Infinite Consciousness which interpenetrates and subsumes the other three and resists all formulations of word or thought. This corresponds to the Buddhist Bodhi, or Enlightenment, attained by ascending through the hierarchical stages of contemplation. It might be paradoxically described as being fully awake and aware of the images of everything in the Universe while attached to nothing and enjoying the bliss of being fast asleep.

And so though both the higher and lower reaches of the Mind may appear to be 'unconscious' to the ignorant ego, there can be no absolute unconsciousness, for even in deep dreamless sleep, a mode of consciousness persists. How else can we rise from its depths to the dream state or be awakened out of these and return to the consciousness of the outside world? And when we are restored to the waking state, how could we recall our previous 'identity' or, rather, the continuity of conscious process with that experienced before falling asleep? Besides, even while in the waking state the undisciplined natural mind is continually passing through the state of unselfconscious reverie or day-dreaming to that of selfless sleep and back again in an undulatory rhythm. And even waking consciousness can become aware of deeply hidden psychic urges through the imagery of myths, legends, poetic visions, and ordinary dreams remembered from sleep. So they should be assigned to the subconscious or dream state rather than to the unconsciousness of deep dreamless sleep, of which we can only say that it is blissfully restorative, the nightly death that is a necessity for daily life. In reality, all these states interpenetrate, and the expanded consciousness of the heights, the ego-consciousness of the earth, and the oceanic depth-consciousness are all aspects of the One and Only Consciousness of the Buddha.

So it should be observed that whereas the lower waters of the psyche, still unillumined by the Moon that rules over them and evokes their regenerative powers, are as black as lacquer, the upper waters of the night sky are not totally dark, but rather a dusk, dimly lit by moonlight overcast with the clouds of the skandhas.

Now just as there is a dual darkness as mentioned earlier, so there are two moons, one in the night sky above, the other in Osawa Pond below. But whereas the Lunar Source of Illumination afloat in the clear upper waters is never directly described, one can see the similitude, split and dispersed into wavering reflections in the obscure lower waters of the mind. Yet every stir of unrest, every disquieting ripple must be stilled before those fleeting and fluctuating gleams of quicksilver, the mental materia of the alchemists, will run together and reunite into the whole round glowing image of mindfulness, that smack smrti, or complete recollection, which is the mirror of the Universal Mind. Only when the surface of the individual mind grows smooth and serene can it receive the enlightening influence that shines from the Sphere of the Moon.

It is at this moment of reintegration that the Alaya-vijnana, no longer muddied by the karmic residues of its past, miraculously turns into the Pure Consciousness of the Amala-vijnana, in whose depths lies hidden the treasure-store of the jewelled seeds of all that has been or can be manifested. Then the ripples on the surface of this lacustrine consciousness become as smooth as the shining Mirror-Wisdom of the Buddha Akshobhya 'in which the images of all forms (rupa) are reflected without distortion in their pristine purity'.

Source

http://www.nembutsu.info/hsrconsciousness.htm