The Emptiness at the Heart of the Heart Sutra

Here's something inspired by James Ford's recent Facebook reference to his earlier blog post "How to Live Forever: a Meditation on the Heart Sutra" from December 4, 2014.

Thanks James. Good words.  Loving the Heart Sutra is inconceivably deep.

The word “skandha” is often translated as aggregate or heap, but I think the more accurate translation is “shoulder,” where the arm branches off, or “crotch,” as in the crotch of the tree where branches part.  The skandha is that part of the stem or trunk where the branches begin, or a large branch or bough that stems therefrom.  The five skandhas are the five shoulders or crotches of the five main branches of the tree of a person. The terms heaps or aggregates creates the image of separate entities piled into heaps, as if counting all the pieces and bits that make up a person and putting them down into one of the five categories.  However, this image is too artificial and contrived for the organic interconnectedness of what the  psychological paradigm of the skandas is pointing toward, which is the holistic living limbs of the psyche of the person. The five are not heaps of bits, they are the five living branches of the tree of life. The appearance of many bits and pieces are actually the living manifold twigs and leaves on these five branches, not disconnected items piled up like lifeless gravel.

I’m confused about what is meant by “The traditional list is form or matter, sensations or feeling, mental formations or impulses, and consciousness, discernment.”  Is that four or five?  It looks like four to me:  (1) form or matter [1^st rupa], (2) sensations or feeling [2^nd vedana], (3) mental formations or impulses [4^th samskara], and (4) consciousness, discernment [5^th vijnana]. It seems the 3rd skandha of perception or samjna is missing from the list.

By using the common Latin root "capere"--to seize, take, grasp, lay hold of, etc.-- in its combining forms such as -cipere and -cep, to show their mutual interrelationships, I like to list the five skandhas as (1) inception/to incept, (2) reception/to receive, (3) perception/to perceive, (4) conception/to conceive, and (5) deception/to decieve.  This formulation of the five skandhas as the five forms of "ception" and pointing out that consciousness is inherently deceptive is worth an essay in itself.  Suffice to say, the "vi" in "vijnana" refers to the division, bifurcation, or polarizing of knowing, "jnana." It is this inherent split that is both the benefit and the bane of consciousness.  This split or division of our knowing makes self-consciousness possible, but it is also the basis for all the false dualities and oppositions arising out of the conceived  "self" that are the root of our suffering and vexations.  This "vi," or duality within the 5th skanda's consciousness "vijnana," is the deception at the heart of the myth of eating form the tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden. This is why self-consciousness is inherently deceptive and why we feel banished from the primordial Garden upon eating from the tree of knowledge.  Until we encounter the flaming sword that "cuts us into one" held by the Bodhisattva Manjusri, i.e., the Archangel Michael standing at the Gates of Eden in the Christian context, we can not reenter the Garden.     

"Manjusri's most dynamic attribute is his sword, the vajra sword of discriminating wisdom or insight. The sword cuts through ignorance and the entanglements of conceptual views. It cuts away ego and self-created obstacles. Sometimes the sword is in flames, which can represent light or transformation. It can cut things in two, but it can also cut into one, by cutting the self-other dichotomy. It is said the sword can both give and take life."

I mostly like Red Pine's translation, but I feel compelled to pick two nits. First, the use of the word "memory" for the 4th skandha is very problematic, not so much because of the technical application of the terminology, if the word memory is used in its widest possible connotation, but because of the common usage of the English word memory, which is very much more limited and narrow than the 4th skandha's "samskara," which literally means “putting together,” “making complete,” “correctly together” etc.  Memory is commonly conceived of as information that is encoded, stored, and retrieved, thus nominalizing it as data rather than seeing it as the active living function of mind’s organic patterning in fields that make self-consciousness possible.  Memory is commonly used with the file cabinet or computer analogy of encoding, storage, and retrieval, and to the extent this limited view is what the word is conjuring up, then it is wrong to use “memory” for samskara.   

The 4th skandha is the most psychologically challenging of the 5 skandhas to understand. Carl Jung coined the term “complex” in his attempt to describe this very function of the psyche, while in other contexts he simply called it the function of "thinking."  In the context of Jungian archetypal psychology, the 4th skandha includes all the complex mental formations that at one end of the spectrum are the individual complexes upon which we base our idea of impulses and our self-image of personal volition, and at the other end are all the mental formations we call the archetypes of the collective unconscious that act upon us a the deepest levels and upon which our worldviews are established.  If we remember (pun intended) that “memory” is the mental activity and function, not just the data, that includes entirely all the mental formations and complexes, both individual and collective, that make up our self-identity and worldview then the word memory is not an invalid translation.

 

Second of less concern, but still concerning, is Red Pine’s use of the designation “mantra of great magic,” also because the term magic conjures up the paranormal or illusory.  As Ford suggests when he points out the problems with seeing a mantra as a tool of magical efficacy, most people will read “magic” and hear “mantra of great illusion” or “mantra of great superstition” or ‘manta of great hocus-pocus.”  This reading is funny but does a disservice to the Heart Sutra.  If seen as the “great magic” that is a child’s smile, or at the sea shore with the waves revealing marvelous shells, or the supernatural magic of drawing water and carrying firewood, then no harm , no foul.

 

I greatly appreciate Ford's discussion of emptiness and the warning against being too reductive.  Becoming worm food is most definitely not what emptiness is about, and he has hit the bull’s eye with the phrase “a vastly more wonderful truth.”  

 

I lament that there has been so much focus on the first example of “form is emptiness, emptiness is form” while the other four skandas are overlooked and neglected.  Yes, there are four more parts of that formula that are rarely examined and only contained in the phrase “also like this” or “the same holds for…”  To be whole, and to avoid one-sidedness, we should always include in the discussion of emptiness in relation to the Heart Sutra the remaining four variables in the formula: “sensation is emptiness, emptiness is sensation; perception is emptiness, emptiness is perception; “complex-formation is emptiness, emptiness is complex-formation; and consciousness is emptiness, emptiness is consciousness.”  For more on this, see my blog on the Heart Sutra without the shortcuts.

While the statement, “there is no part of us that is outside the phenomenal world,” is not incorrect, it is problematic as it may be easily misunderstood.   The problem, as I see it, is that most people begin from the stand point that there is a “phenomenal world” that is outside us, and conceive of the “inside of us” as outside the outside of us.  So to point out that there is no “part” of us that is separate from the phenomenal world is correct if we mean that everything that is identifiable as a “part” of anything is exactly a thing of the phenomenal world, even all the parts that we think of as "inside us."  But this does not address the deception of a "phenomenal world," as it is the emptiness of those parts themselves that is the second fold of the two-fold emptiness of self (atman) and things (dharmas), and I fear that, while many people will acknowledge that the “parts” of us are not outside the phenomenal world, they will still conceive of those parts as existing inside a “phenomenal world,” rather than becoming free of the whole conceptual apparatus of “outside and inside” and of “phenomenal world.” 

The "phenomenal world" is not outside or separate from mind.  The phenomenal world is mind. Mind is the phenomenal world.  That is, while "it" is not a “part" and "it" is not "outside,” there is "that one who is shining brilliantly," who is neither outside nor inside the phenomenal world, and who is listening right now to the Heart Sutra.  That one is the emptiness of the Heart Sutra.  

Are plants sentient beings?

An article in the Guardian reviews a new book Brilliant Green that asks "Are plants sentient?"  I answer with a general yes. Obviously the entire range of flora have different degrees of sentience just as the entire range of fauna have differing degrees of sentience. The wide meaning of sentience means feeling-perception-awareness, e.g., any kind of sense of environment, and the narrow meaning is self-conscious or intelligence measured by self-consciousness.

With the wider meaning, all living beings have some degree of sentience, i.e., awareness. Otherwise they would not be living beings. Traditionally, with the earlier and less sophisticated narrower views of sentience, only people were considered sentient beings having our kind of self-consciousness as our definition of intelligence, and animals and plants were not considered sentient. No recognizable self-consciousness meant no consciousness and therefore no sentience or intelligence.   However, life means interaction, relationship, stimulus and response, so I include all living beings in the category set of sentient beings because responding to the environment, no matter how simplistic or limited, is the sign of "feeling" and the presence of awareness and is thus being active in the response to the environment. Therefore to me, all living beings are sentient.

Next is the question of the degree of sentience. Obviously, there is a spectrum of sentience with mammals at one end and perhaps mold or plankton at the other end. Here, I think the question of self-consciousness is relevant. While all sentient beings are sentient, not all are self-conscious to the same degree.  However we have to watch for species-centric bias because as mammals, we humans can't even access the ranges of sentience on the sensory spectrum that some other mammals can. For example, we can't hear the range of sound that a dog or dolphins can. So there may be many areas of the field of sentience that we are unaware of. An open grass prairie and a redwood forest have different feelings to them for us, and these different feelings arise from them, not just our imagination. The different feelings that we are sensing are our limited perception of the sentient fields of those different plant communities.

In Buddhism, there is the concept of Buddha fields or Buddha lands which are of infinite variety and relate to all the fields of sentience of all the sentient beings. In addition to Buddha lands being other dimensions or other planets or galaxies, they are also other being's fields of consciousness, such as the Elephants' Buddha land where beings can communicate with stomping on the earth or dolphins' Buddha land where beings communicate by whistling, clicking, sounds.

When trying to assess a degree of sentience in terms of self-consciousness, the Buddhist model of the 5 Skandhas is helpful. All living beings have the activity of all five skandhas, (1) sensory data, (2) feeling-reception of senses, (3) perception (4) complex activity for identifying and responding to the perception, and (5) consciousness.    It is the degree of the complexity of the fourth skandha's unconscious formations and complexes that conditions the degree of self-consciousness of the fifth skandha. From our human perspective, ants, bees, and other hive creatures appear to lack an individual self-consciousness as we would understand it, yet we perceive what appears to be some kind of group- or hive-mind self-consciousness.

Again, we are high up on the predatory food chain and have "conquered" the planet according to our own species-centric assessment, yet there is much we do not understand about other creatures, both animals and plants, and when we destroy our own ability to live on the planet by pollution, climate change, or nuclear war or power radiation, there are other species of sentient beings who will survive, and then from their perspective they will be the meek who have inherited the earth.

Heart Sutra without the shortcuts.

The Great Prajna Paramita Heart Sutra is the classic short sutra of Mahayana Buddhism. It is concise and condensed to minimalist perfection.  Who would dare to mess with it? 
I guess that means me. 
While the Heart Sutra sets the standard, the one thing I have always been unhappy with are the very shortcuts that give the sutra its conciseness.  It takes shortcuts with reference to the 5 skandhas, the 18 dhatus (realms of senses), and the 12 nidanas (links of causation).
For the 5 skandhas, we always (ad nauseum?)  hear the formula "form is emptiness; emptiness is form" stated and restated.  But when do we hear "sensation is emptiness; emptiness is sensation" or "consciousness is emptiness; emptiness is consciousness"? We don't because the Heart Sutra just says "the same with sensation, perception, mental reactions, and consciousness."  That shortcut of "the same with" is just what I object to.
Then when we come to the 18 dhatus and 12 nidanas we get "and so on to."
Well, I've "fixed" the problem. LOL! 
There many English translations of the Heart Sutra here is the one my sangha, Rocks and Clouds Zendo, uses with the shortcuts removed and the lists restored to their full contents.


The Great Prajna Paramita Heart Sutra

Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva, practicing deep Prajna Paramita,
clearly saw that all five skandhas are empty, transforming all suffering and distress.

Shariputra, form is no other than emptiness, emptiness no other than form;
form is exactly emptiness, emptiness exactly form;

sensation is no other than emptiness, emptiness no other than sensation;
sensation is exactly emptiness, emptiness exactly sensation;
,perception is no other than emptiness, emptiness no other than perception;
perception is exactly emptiness, emptiness exactly perception;
mental reaction is no other than emptiness, emptiness no other than mental reaction;
mental reaction is exactly emptiness, emptiness exactly mental reaction;
consciousness is no other than emptiness, emptiness no other than consciousness;
consciousness is exactly emptiness, emptiness exactly consciousness.

Shariputra, all things are essentially empty-- not born, not destroyed; not stained, not pure; without loss, without gain.

Therefore in emptiness there is no form, no sensation, no perception, no mental reaction, no consciousness;

no eye, no ear, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind,
no color, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch, no object of thought;
no seeing, no hearing, no smelling, no tasting, no touching, no thinking;,
no ignorance and also no ending of ignorance,
no mental reaction and also no ending of mental reaction,

no consciousness and also no ending of consciousness,
no name and form and also no ending of name and form,
no six sensory abodes and also no ending of six sensory abodes,
no contact and also no ending of contact,
no sensations and also no ending of sensations,
no craving and also no ending of craving,
no grasping and also no ending of grasping,
no becoming and also no ending of becoming,
no birth and also no ending of birth,
no old age and death and also no ending of old age and death;
no suffering, no cause of suffering, no cessation of suffering, no path to cessation of suffering;
no wisdom and no attainment.

Since there is nothing to attain, the bodhisattva lives by Prajna Paramita,
with no hindrance in the mind; no hindrance and therefore no fear;
far beyond delusive thinking, right here is Nirvana.
All Buddhas of past, present, and future live by Prajna Paramita,
attaining Anuttara-samyak-sambodhi.
Therefore know that Prajna Paramita
is the great sacred mantra, the great vivid mantra,
the unsurpassed mantra, the supreme mantra,
which completely removes all suffering.

This is truth not mere formality.
Therefore set forth the Prajna Paramita mantra,
set forth this mantra and proclaim:
Gate gate paragate parasamgate, Bodhi Svaha!

The Anima and Animus in Buddha Dharma

My intellectual goals regarding psychology and Buddhism are to harmoinze Buddha Dharma with archetypal depth psychology, as the truth of mind is necessarily both the basis of Buddha Dharma and of anything that can be called modern psychology (not to be confused with modern neuro-science masquerading as psychology).

In his archetypal depth psychology, Carl Jung presented the psychological view of the structure and function of consciousness that is remarkably similar, and I would say virtually identical, to the Buddhist analysis of the Five Skandhas and Eight Consciousnesses. That is, in looking at a zebra, it might be described by some as a horse with stripes or as a donkey with painted lines, but though the words differ the description indicates the same thing is being viewed. Likewise, though Jung's archetypal psychology uses a different framework and language, it is absolutely clear to me that he is observing the same mind and the same structure and function of consciousness that the Buddhist masters have observed. This is what makes it clear to me that mind is not something culturally conditioned, though cultural conditions may lead us to argue about our observations of the mind.

Question: I wonder how the Jungian anima and animus reflect in the five skandhas. It does look as though patriarchy reflects in both Buddhism and Jungian thought quite well. A hero with a thousand faces, sure, but all the faces are male. Zeus is a male. God is a male. Mohamed is a male. Brahman is male. And of course Buddha is male. 

Okay, let's see.

Q. How does the Jungian anima and animus reflect in the five skandhas?

Anima and animus are primary functions in relation to the ego complex, and I see them as aspects primarily of the fourth skandha.  To speak of the full complexity of the situation means to acknowledge that the anima and animus also rely on the first three skandhas, but their primary expression is as configurations of the fourth skandha upon which self-consciousness is constructed. 

The anima or animus is the reflective image of our ego-complex that takes our identity beyond the personal into the impersonal. It is the vital aspect of our feeling our life to be "animated" and filled with life. We come to know this aspect of our psyche throught the image of the "other", but it is the "other" that we are drawn to through the psychic energy called libido. As this "other" is the one that draws out our libido from being wrapped up in our personal self-image to move toward the world, it is met or felt through the image of the contra-sexual personification. Thus the male imagines the feminine anima, and the female imagines the masculine animus.  This is why sexual energy is the physical(ized) aspect of the psychic energy of libido, that is why we encounter the libido first as sexual energy.

Appreciation of the function of polarity and opposites that is expressed in the anima-animus analysis is also integral to the analytic framework of the skandhas.  This is made clear by Great Master Huineng in the Platform Sutra when he discusses the opposites in the context of teaching about the 5 skandhas and 18 Realms (dhatus).  Though he doesn't mention the specific pair of opposites of "male and female" he mentions pairs like "sun and moon," and "shady and sunny" (the synonyms of Yin and Yang") which are common images for male and female.  It is the polarity function of the skandhas that is the point of how the opposites of consciousness arise from the skandhas and manifest as opposites which confuse us and become false thinking when we disjoint the opposities and believe they can exist independently of the other.

The anima and animus is the function of consciousness that entices us out of the defensive position of the ego into engagement with the world. For example, using some of the opposites used by Huineng, if we see the world as cruel, the anima or animus can draw us into engagement through the anima or animus appearing compassionate. If we see the world as muddy, the anima or animus can draw us out by appearing clean or pure. Form and emptiness are likewise like this.

Q. A hero with a thousand faces, sure, but all the faces are male. Zeus is a male. God is a male. Mohamed is a male. Brahman is male. And of course Buddha is male.

Sure, we can't argue aginst the fact that patriarchy took over most of the world's societies.  But that does not mean that patriarchy is the truth, or that Buddhism is limited to patriarchy.  Over the years, the recognition of the problem of one-sided patriarchy became apparant.
Of course, Zeus was accompanied by the goddess Hera, and only a partisian of the patriarchy would dare to undervalue Hera and the other goddesses.

In Christianity, the mother Goddess was indeed missing in the Garden of Eden and only appears through her earthly messenger the serpent, who then becomes vilified by the father God, but this is rectified by the development of the Madonna image to take the place of the missing mother in the Garden.

In Buddhism, the the importance of and reintegration of the feminine arose in several ways. One way was the designation of the Prajna-paramita as the mother of the Buddhas. Another way was in the Sutras such as the Vimalakirti Sutra and Queen Srimala's Lion's Roar Sutra that explicitly portrayed women as every bit the equal of men. 

So, strictly speaking all the faces are not male.  But admittedly, in Buddhist countries the cultural patriarchy has been slow to respond (if at all) to the equality of opposites that Buddhism teaches. This is largely due to Buddhism usually taking a nonconfrontational approach to such cultural politics, or in some countries actually turning a blind eye to the problem of patriarchy.    

Q. How does the anima and animus function in relation to the defensive position of the ego?

The most important example of this within the context of the Buddha story is the appearance of the maiden Sujata. If we view the life story of Buddha as an embodied archetypal story of the journey of awareness to awakening, then the anima appears in a most pivotal and crucial role, that of the milk maid who rescues Buddha from the impending death caused by his own asceticism. 

While Buddha remained in the castle, he was still within the domain of family and tribe and so could not develop the individuation necessary for awareness to awaken. The ego must be developed for this. When Buddha left the palace this was the necessary initial stage of individuation of the ego. Buddha initially developed the ego by study of the Dharmas of any teacher he could find.  However, this is not sufficient on its own because the development of the ego under the sway of the fight or flight instincts creates the defensive position vis a vis the environment, i.e., the world, or an attack position. Thus the ego either defends against the world or wants to become a world conqueror. Study becomes a way of trying to conquer the world. Modern science shows us how this path turns out.  Thus for a conscientious ego, it becomes clear that the world cannot really be conquered by study, only more questions arise with every one answered, Only more ways that we are conquered by the world are shown to us, for example, DDT, radiation poisoning, global warning, as the humbling responses of the world to our attempts to conquer it.

In the Buddha’s story the ego-complex is played out by Buddha adopting the ascetic approach in which the world is simultaneously both defended against and attempted to be conquered by the same ascetic practices.  The ascetic believes the world can be conquered by not allowing it to attack oneself through the desires and needs of the flesh, The ascetic believes that the impure, dirty, confusing, and entangling world cannot conquer oneself if one literally removes oneself from the world’s influences. However, this is where the conscientious ego, though necessary in the developmental scheme of awareness, also comes to the limit of itself and the anima and animus are necessary to be constellated for the journey to continue to fruition.

The Buddha’s extreme indulgence of asceticism is the perfect example of the ego’s self aggrandizement and defending itself against the world by creating an image of the world’s muddy, impurity, ignorance, etc. and the ego-based idea that to overcome the world one must separate oneself from all of that muddiness, impurity, ignorance, etc.  Here the story of Buddha engaging in asceticism with five fellow ascetics is noteworthy because it show Buddha as the sixth consciousness of thinking attempting to remove himself from the world along with the five sense consciousnesses.  However, because Buddha carries this to the extreme, he is able to come to realize the hopelessness of this one-sided approach of the ego. At this stage then the anima is constellated first in the form of a lute, then in the form of the milk maid.

At first the anima comes to us in odd ways that we don’t necessarily recognize in anthropomorphic images.  Buddha at the edge of his despair is roused from his anguish by the sounds of the lute being played.  From this experience he comes to understand the embodied meaning of the Middle Way. If the strings are too loose they cannot make the melodious sound, if they are too tight they will break and not make any sound. Only the Middle Way of tuning between too loose and too tight will allow the string to vibrate and make music.  In the life story of Buddha, this is the first recognition of the Buddha that can truly be called Buddha Dharma. From this awareness of the Dharma activity of opposites heard in the vibrations of a lute string, the Buddha Dharma is born. Some versions of the story say that it was Indra who appeared in the passing boat playing the lute. This obviously points to the archetypal or mythic aspect of consciousness as the source of the experience. The lute itself is the anima image that through its sweet voice has drawn Buddha back to engagement with the world by the recognition of melody, tone, sweetness, etc. as playing their role and that the Way is to be found not by defending against or attempting to conquer the world. 

However, at this point the Buddha is so weak that he cannot even walk, so this means that the ego, if left only to its own resources will starve itself to death.  Something deep in the psyche is moved to rescue the ego from this predicament, and the Buddha story portrays this next anima movement (animation) by the milk maid.  There are several versions of this story, as there should be with any truly archetypal story. One version has a passing goat herd boy come by and offer goat’s milk to rescue the Buddha, but this seems to be a version tinged with patriarchal aversion to the female image that is intended to erase the sexualized aspects of the anima from the story. This misunderstanding comes because the tree that Buddha was sitting under was called “the tree of the goatherd” (ajapala).  Other versions just say “villagers brought him food.” The more archetypically authentic stories portray the milk maid version. Here’s one.

The young woman was named Sujata (“well born”).  (Here it should be noted that Sujata also is one of the names or epithets of the Buddha himself, so this is another way of pointing to the archetypal context of the story where the maid Sujata is the anima figure of the Buddha Sujata.)   Sujata the maid had been lamenting her inability to conceive a child. She goes to the village sage who tells her that in order for her to become pregnant that she must provide the tree [i]deva[/i] (or divinity of the tree) with a special mixture of rice milk.   Sujata prepares the milk by using milking the best cows and feeding that milk to better cows and then feeding that milk to better cows until she has the best milk possible. Then she mixes is with the best rice and goes to the forest to offer it to the tree deity of “the goatherd tree.”  Buddha happens to be sitting under this tree and in his completely emaciated state he is unrecognizable as a human and Sujata believes him to be the tree deva and offers her milk and rice mixture to Buddha in a golden bowl. . Buddha receives the rice milk and is saved from starvation and revived.   The archetypal story continues with the golden bowl being tossed into the river and floating upstream with the involvement of the Nagas but that can be explored at another time.  At this point it suffices to say that the involvement of the Naga here is the transition of the anima figure to the deeper imagery of the psyche.

What is the necessary food that the anima brings to us to save us from the starvation diet of the ego complex and aid us in our enlightenment?  We learn something from Bodhidharma when he is asked about this in the work attributed to him called “The Discourse on Breaking Up Appearances” (破相論), loosely translated by Red Pine as “The Breakthrough Sermon.” 

This discourse is historically important to Zen as it clarifies many points of differentiation between the Three Vehicles approach to Buddha Dharma already present in China when Bodhidharma arrived, and the perspective of the One Vehicle Lineage of Southern India that Bodhidharma brought to China.   The Discourse is presented in the classical style as interrogatories on points of Dharma with Bodhidharma’s responses.  The gist of the Discourse is that “Only the one Dharma of contemplating Mind unites and includes all Dharmas and is superlative for introspecting the essential.”  After this point is made, the Discourse explores how the Buddha Dharma is perceived from this perspective. 
At one point the interrogator asks about the story of Buddha having to receive Sujata’s offering before realizing enlightenment. This doesn’t make sense to the questioner if just contemplating Mind is the direct Dharma Gate to enlightenment. 

Here’s Red Pine's translation:

[Q.] But when Sbakyamuni was a bodhisattva, he consumed three bowls of milk and six ladles of gruel prior to attaining enlightenment. If he bad to drink milk before be could taste the fruit of buddhahood, how can merely beholding the mind result in liberation?

[A.] What you say is true. That is how he attained enlightenment. He had to drink milk before he could become a Buddha. But there are two kinds of milk. That which Shakyamuni drank wasn’t ordinary impure milk but pure dharma-milk. The three bowls were the three sets of precepts. And the six ladles were the six paramitas. When Shakyamuni attained enlightenment, it was because he drank this pure dharma-milk that he tasted the fruit of buddhahood. To say that the Tathagata drank the worldly concoction of impure, rank-smelling cow’s milk is the height of slander. That which is truly so, the indestructible, passionless dharma-self, remains forever free of the world’s afflictions. Why would it need impure milk to satisfy its hunger or thirst?
The sutras say, "This ox doesn’t live in the highlands or the lowlands. It doesn’t eat grain or chaff. And it doesn’t graze with cows. The body of this ox is the color of burnished gold." The ox refers to Vairocana. Owing to his great compassion for all beings, he produces from within his pure Dharma-body the sublime Dharma-milk of the three sets of precepts and six paramitas to nourish all those who seek liberation. The pure milk of such a truly pure ox not only enabled the Tathagata to achieve buddhahood but also enables any being who drinks it to attain unexcelled, complete enlightenment. (From [i]Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma[/i], translated by Red Pine, p. 91-93.

Here's my translation:

Question. The Sutra says that at the time the Tathagata of the Sakyas was a Bodhisattva he had already drank three pecks (about 6 gallons) and six liters of milk and rice gruel just to complete the Buddha Way. Before, because he drank the milk, afterwards he could bear witness to the Buddha fruit. How could it be that merely contemplating mind attains liberation?!

Answer: Truly know that which you declare is without falsehood! Certainly, because he ate the milk like that at first, he became Buddha. Of that which is declared to be “eating milk” there are two kinds. That which is the food of the Buddha was not indeed the worldly milk of impurity and actually was the clear and pure Dharma milk of True Suchness! That which was three pecks exactly was the three collected pure precepts. That which was six liters exactly was the six paramitas. At the time of completing the Buddha Way from eating the clear and pure Dharma milk like this, just then he could bear witness to the Buddha fruit. If it is declared that the Tathagata ate the worldly concoction that was the rank and malodorous milk of the ox of impurity, h1ow could it not be the extreme of the wrong of slander?!
That which is true suchness itself is the indestructible diamond (vajra) without leakage, the Dharmakaya forever free from every and all sufferings of the world. How could it be necessarily so, that the milk of impurity is used to fill the hunger and thirst? It is like the (Mahaparinirvana) Sutra which articulates, “This ox does not dwell in the high plains and does not dwell in the low wetlands, does not eat unhulled rice, horse grain, chaff or bran, and doesn’t participate with the bull ox in common with the herd. The color of this ox body is made violet as burnished gold." That which is declared here as “the ox” is Virocana Buddha! Because of using great compassion and sympathy for everyone, from within the embodiment of the clear and pure Dharma is produced like this the subtle Dharma milk of the three collected pure precepts and the six paramitas to nurture everyone of those who seek liberation. So indeed the milk of clarity and purity from the ox of true purity is not only to complete the Way of the Tathagata’s drinking; for everyone of the multitude of beings, if they are those who are capable of drinking, then in all cases they attain unexcelled unified thorough enlightenment.

Here we see that Bodhidharma takes the story out of the literal to the archetypal level and explains that what Buddha received at the hands of Sujata was not common milk but the Milk of the Dharma of the Cosmic Buddha. This is important to understand because it is not the anima that provides enlightenment; the anima is the intermediary who brings the initial taste of enlightenment. The anima does not give us enlightenment but is the one who enables us to be fortified to find the place where we can realize enlightenment.  Thus Buddha was able to rise from underneath the “goatherd tree” and move to sit under the Bodhi Tree by the nourishment provided by the anima.

There is an important point here in that when Buddha accepted the food from the anima Sujata, the five ascetic companions left him in disgust as if he had given up on the quest for awakening.  This is the portrayal of the abandonment of the five sense consciousness as the sixth consciousness turns inward toward the eighth consciousness. More importantly, it shows that when the anima brings the ego out of the self-world opposition, the awareness now can either chose to re-engage in the world as ego or turn away form the world and ego to go further and deeper in contemplating the mind. As Buddha is the one who awakens, the Buddha story tells us the anima’s nourishment is to be used to continue the journey to the Bodhi Tree, not to return to the ordinary world. Thus the awareness that has transcended mere ego awareness by the help of the anima now turns from engagement with the five senses to engagement in direct contemplation of mind.  At this point the seventh consciousness appears in the archetypal figure of Mara and attempts to dissuade, confuse, and scare us from the task of directly perceiving the eighth consciousness. 

So the role of the anima (or animus for female practitioners) is crucial for awakening as awakening is told in the story of Buddha.

The Five Skandhas

Here are some comments about the Buddhist analytical framework known as the Five Skandhas.  I'm riffing off of the answer.com entry by Barbara O'Brien.

The block quotes are from Ms. O;'Brien:

What are the skandhas? Here is a basic guide. (The non-English names given for the skandhas are in Sanskrit unless otherwise noted.)

The First Skandha: Form (Rupa)

Rupa is form or matter; something material that can be sensed. In early Buddhist literature, rupa includes the Four Great Elements (solidity, fluidity, heat, and motion) and their derivatives. These derivatives are the first five faculties listed above (eye, ear, nose, tongue, body) and the first five corresponding objects (visible form, sound, odor, taste, tangible things).

Another way to understand rupa is to think of it as something that resists the probing of the senses. For example, an object has form if it blocks your vision -- you can't see what's on the other side of it -- or if it blocks your hand from occupying its space.

In one sense, the Skandha of Form is the trickiest to think about. Why? Because it is the suggestion of what is beyond thinking by using objectifying language. In other words it is the psychic view of "the physical."  As Carl Jung pointed out, once we take the POV of psychology, we have to stand within the field of the psyche and can no longer pretend that we are standing within the field of the physis or physical world.. In other word what we call "form", "matter", "material", "things" are all categories or differentiations of mind. This is the view of the Lankavatara and the other Mahayana sutras that teach the unity of mind.  Once the unity of mind is recognized there is no way to "step outside" of mind.  Therefore there is no "form" outside of the differentiation of mind, only our attempts to develop a consensual reality.  This why the first skandha is all important but so often overlooked in discussion of the skandhas.  In Zen, when phrases like "the bottom of the bucket opens" or "dropping mind and body", it is the letting go of the materialist view of the first skandha that is being referred to by the "bottom breaking" or "dropping body." 

Each skandha has one or more core polarities associated with it, indeed we can say it is the field of that polarization that makes the skandhas identifiable as a numbered skandha.  With the first skandha, it is the polarization of "inside and outside", "subjective and objective", that is primary.

The Second Skandha: Sensation (Vedana)

Vedana is physical or mental sensation that we experience through contact of the six faculties with the external world. In other words, it is the sensation experienced through the contact of eye with visible form, ear with sound, nose with odor, tongue with taste, body with tangible things, mind (manas) with ideas or thoughts.

It is particularly important to understand that manas -- mind -- in the skandhas is a sense organ or faculty, just like an eye or an ear. We tend to think that mind is something like a spirit or soul, but that concept is very out of place in Buddhism.

Because vedana is the experience of pleasure or pain, it conditions craving, either to acquire something pleasurable or avoid something painful.

 By referring to "the external world" Ms. O'Brien is showing that she is standing on the first skandha as if it exists objectively.  Here we see how the skandhas begin to construct a worldview, or a view of reality.  The second skandha is also called "reception" because it acts in relation to this primal split between internal and external. In other words, what we call sensory data is discriminated on the basis that there is an internal and external reality and that the data is coming from an external reality.  This works fine for light and sound which we say come from outside, and becomes a little fuzzy with smell and taste as they are sensed as being in the nose and mouth, and then very fuzzy with touch sensations in the body and completely fuzzy with ideation in the mind.   

 By receiving sensory data pre-screened as it were by the first skandha's polarized division into inside and outside, (me and not me, etc.) the next primary polarization is the allotment of that sense data into the categories of the primary characterization of "pleasure and pain" or "attractive and repulsive", etc. Now we have four boxes for every sensory quantum which are (1) the inside and pleasurable, (2) the inside and not pleasurable, (3) the outside and pleasurable, and (4) the outside and not pleasurable. This basic framework is the foundation for the construction of the house of views that we build.

The Third Skandha: Perception (Samjna, or in Pali, Sanna)

Samjna is the faculty that recognizes. Most of what we call thinking fits into the aggregate of samjna.

The word "samjna" means "knowledge that puts together." It is the capacity to conceptualize and recognize things by associating them with other things. For example, we recognize shoes as shoes because we associate them with our previous experience with shoes.

When we see something for the first time, we invariably flip through our mental index cards to find categories we can associate with the new object. It's a "some kind of tool with a red handle," for example, putting the new thing in the categories "tool" and "red." Or, we might associate an object with its context -- we recognize an apparatus as an exercise machine because we see it at the gym.

I very much disagree with Ms. O'Brien's statement that most of what we call thinking fits into the samjna skandha.  Thinking is much more complex and in fact we don't even have conscious thinking until the fifth skandha so most of what we "call" thinking is conscious thinking, so is not often even considered at these unconscious levels of the first four skandhas. 

This skandha is of course as she points out integral to the formation of thinking because it is the beginning of the putting together of the differentiations of mind that becomes thinking. It is the third skandha that begins to relate all the items previously labeled according to the four boxes of the first two skandhas, and by using these four-colored building blocks the third skandha puts them together into the nearly infinitely varied patterns (dharmas) of our consciousness code like the four amino acids of DNA are put together to form the mind boggling number of combinations in the genetic code. 

It is this conceptualization of associations that we call "perception" in that we are now beginning to be able recognize patterns and call them things (dharmas).   Here the multitude of polarities abound and there is no primary polarity as associated with the first, second, and fourth skandhas. That is, the entire world is polarized with such polarities as "soft and hard", "smooth and rough", "male and female",  etc.

The Fourth Skandha: Mental Formation (Samskara, or in Pali, Sankhara)

All volitional actions, good and bad, are included in the aggregate of mental formations. How are actions "mental" formations? Remember the first lines of the dhammapada (Acharya Buddharakkhita translation)--

Mind precedes all mental states. Mind is their chief; they are all mind-wrought. If with an impure mind a person speaks or acts suffering follows him like the wheel that follows the foot of the ox.

Mind precedes all mental states. Mind is their chief; they are all mind-wrought. If with a pure mind a person speaks or acts happiness follows him like his never-departing shadow.

The aggregate of mental formations is associated with karma, because volitional acts create karma. Samskara also contains latent karma that conditions our attitudes and predilections. Biases and prejudices belong to this skandha, as do interests and attractions.

This is the most psychologically challenging of the skandhas to understand. In the context of Jungian archetypal psychology, the fourth skandha is all the mental formations that at one end are the individual complexes and at the other end are the archetypes of the collective unconscious.  The "ego" or "self" is only one of the complexes, though it is the individual pole of the primary axis of the mental formations that at the other end is the collective pole that goes by the names of "Self", "God", "Atman" etc. The two ends of this primary axis of mental formations are the "I thou" relationship.  However, the mental formations are not a completely connected structure, but more like a solar system or galaxy in which many formations are whirling around in a gravitational relationship but have their own sense or appearance of autonomy in various circumstances.

It is the appearance of autonomy within the central mental formation of the "ego complex" that is the basis for our sense of personal independence and identity. It is this sense of personal independence and identity that is the basis for our self-mage of responsibility and intention. It is this sense of responsibility and intention that is the basis for our karma. That is why the fourth skandha is sometimes identified as "volition." 

Ms. O'Brien's saying "All volitional actions, good and bad..." points to another important factor. It is with the fourth skandha that the primary polarity of "good and bad" is developed. At the level of the second skandha there is "pleasure and pain" that acts as the seed of the polarity of "good and bad", but it is not until the activity of the fourth skandha that second skandha polarity becomes developed in the mental formations and "good and bad" are materialized.   This is why pleasure is not the sole determining factor of what is "good" though it is a significant factor.  The ability to substitute an ideal as a higher good than pleasure is a function of the mental formations as the ego complex interacts with other complexes that create identities such as tribal or national identity in which we would sacrifice our personal pleasure for a greater good. In the religious context it is those factors that become associated with the "god pole" of the central axis that become identified with "the greatest good."  For those who do not identify the collective pole of the central axis with a personality image such as a father god or mother goddess, other images may act as substitutes such as "the people", "the nation", "money,"  "family" etc.

In Zen, getting free from the control of the polarized fields of the fourth skandha's mental formations is what is referred to as "not thinking good and evil."  

The Fifth Skandha: Consciousness (Vijnana, or in Pali, Vinnana)

Vijnana is a reaction that has one of the six faculties as its basis and one of the six corresponding phenomena as its object. For example, aural consciousness -- hearing -- has the ear as its basis and a sound as its object. Mental consciousness has the mind (manas) as its basis and an idea or thought as its object.

It is important to understand that consciousness depends on the other skandhas and does not exist independently from them. It is an awareness but not a recognition, as recognition is a function of the third skandha. This awareness is not sensation, which is the second skandha. For most of us, this is a different way to think about "consciousness."

It is also important to remember that vijnana is not "special" or "above" the other skandhas. It is not the "self." It is the action and interaction of all five skandhas that create the illusion of a self.

Having an appreciation of the fifth skandha of consciousness and how it functions within the scheme of analysis known as the five skandhas is essential to understanding the wisdom pointed to by the analytical framework.

Ms. O'Brien's caveats about remembering that consciousness is neither separate nor independent from the other four skandhas is well taken. Another way of saying this is that the distinction of the five skandhas are an expedient means of discussing "one mind" or "one suchness."

However, I would add another caveat that consciousness is not just "a reaction that has one of the six faculties as its basis and one of the six corresponding phenomena as its object." since that conceptualization is a construct of the four skandhas as well.  The terms "six faculties" and "six corresponding phenomena" are both phrases that are the result of the first four skandhas.  There is no such thing as a "phenomena" that is outside the skandhas. There is no such thing as a "faculty" that is outside the skandhas.  "Phenomena" and "faculty" are third skandha appearances that become associated with the "good and bad" evaluations of the fourth skandha so that we congratulate ourselves for the good idea that consciousness is a reaction that has one of the six faculties as its basis and one of the six corresponding phenomena as its object. 

To the extent that the term "consciousness only" became associated as consciousness without the appreciation of the other four skandhas the term became one-sided and thus "mind only" was necessary to point to the conscious and unconscious functions that result in our conscious awareness.  Awareness of itself is crystal clear, but it is by the friction created by the polarizations of mind that light and shadow are created that then becomes developed into "self consciousness" by which we humans are able to engage in a level of awareness that we call awakening to get free from the selfishness of self consciousness and realize the consciousness of no self, no nature, no mind.

 

The 10 Stages of Delusion That Go With the 10 Stages of Awakening

In Zen, the stages of awakening are known popularliy through the collection known as the "10 Oxherding Pictures." The 10 Oxherding pictures represent the natural stages of human consciousness finding its way back from delusion about its true condition to direct awareness of its true condition. There are various versions of the pictures, some with an elephant instead of an ox or water buffalo, some that have the stages identified differently (one 10-stage version ends with the empty circle and another 10-stage version has the empty circle as the 8th stage and ends with the 10th stage of "returning to the market place"), and there is an early version with only 8 stages ending in the empty circle.

If you are alert, you will have immediately noticed that there is a flip side to these stages that represents the original development which arrives in the condition of delusion where the 10 Oxherding pictures begin. And guess what? That side too has 10 stages, but they are very seldom discussed these days. Fortunately, Zen Master Guifeng Zongmi has already discussed them in several of his works from the 9th Century.

We don't need to get too worked up over the exact number of the stages or levels. The development is fluid and trying to define the boundaries between the stages is like trying to say on which day a child become a teen and a teen become an adult and exactly how many stages of human development are there from birth to death. Some of it is generally obvious and some of it generally obscure. Still, I think we can have a general consensus about the fact of human development and likewise we can approach the development of awakening with the same attitude of only requiring a general consensus of 10 stages, while remembering that having any consensus at all is useless if we don’t personally go through those stages in our own life.

In his preeminent work “Introduction to Zen” (also known as “Ch’an Preface" or "Chan Prolegomenon") written around 830, Zongmi presented his reciprocal stages of 10 each from Root Enlightenment to delusion and then from delusion to Buddhahood and Sudden or Immediate Enlightenment. Zongmi based his scheme on the widely known and esteemed “Discourse on the Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana.” It seems likely that Chinese Zen masters who adapted the 8 stages of the early Ox Herding pictures into the 10 stages format had either read Zongmi’s work or had been inspired in the same way as he had been by the “Awakening of Faith.”

Zongmi described the arising of delusion in 10 stages as the process of becoming a common or ordinary person, which I paraphrase, and to whiich I add the refrences to the Eight Consciousnesses and Five Skandhas, as follows.

1. All beings possess the true mind of root awakening. From our perspective of delusion this is called the Eighth Consciousness, i.e., the Storehouse Consciousness (alayavijnana) or (citta), while from the perspective of awakening it is the true suchness.

2. When the mind moves it moves in its sleep of non-awakening or unenlightenment. It moves in the dark so to speak as there is no reflection or spark of light. Out of the root of unity comes the separation of duality as a silent still string begins to vibrate with the first wave, but there is no self-awareness of the sound as yet. This is the stirring of the 8th Consciousness giving rise to the Seventh Consciousness, i.e., the Aware or Reflective Intelligence (manas), also called the Obscuring Ideation Consciousness (or Afflicted Ideation Consciousness) (klistamanovijnana) as it is the activity of discriminations.

3. Thoughts then arise as a result of the movement in the dark. This is like the light separating from the dark or the sound of the plucked string now vibrating the air surrounding it. This is the active functioning of the 7th Consciousness giving rise to the Sixth Consciousness, i.e., the Rational, Cognitive, or Ideation Consciousness (manovijnana).

4. The first intimations of a self-image appear as thoughts in their nascent or initial reflective function. Thoughts become aware (this is, awareness become condensed into thought) and its first activity is to be aware of the true mind of its own root awakening but through the filter of unenlightened activity that separates all awareness into the polarized duality of wave formations. Thus the first reflective sense of thought is to bifurcate itself and imagine itself as a “seer” or subject peering into the darkness of reality. This is the activity of the 6th Consciousness reflecting back on the 7th Consciousness.

5. From the position of a supposed “seer”, all things of awareness become sorted into the two categories of the “seer” and the “seen” and the so-called objective world of perceived objects appears. This is the 6th Consciousness stirring and reflecting on the Five Consciousnesses of the seen, heard, smelled, tasted, and touched.

6. Unaware that the appearance of objects seen of the 5 Consciousnesses has arisen from the thinking and polarizing activity of the our own mind (i.e, the 6th, 7th , & 8th Consciousnesses) we develop desires and aversions toward these imagined objects based on our constructed self-image embedded in our thinking process. This is the 6th Consciousness grasping at the 1st to 5th Consciousnesses as things of real existence.

7. Unaware that this grasping at and rejection of objects is based on our unconscious self-image, our framework of distinctions between subject and objects becomes fixated and aggrandizes the subject giving rise to an orientation to reality that is self-grasping or egocentric and called attachment to self. This is the activity of the 6th Consciousness discriminating every thing within the 1st to 5th Consciousness in reference to the constructed image seen by reflection in the 7th Consciousness.

8. Based on the intrinsic interactivity of our self-image, attachment to objects and attachment to self we then manifest an active relationship to all things within awareness and fall into clinging to our body of four elements (First Skandha) as our physical self, and fixating our attitudes of feelings and perceptions (Second and Third Skandhas) into polarized frames of reference that bring all things (dharmas) into its field. This activity of this polarized field is called the activity of the Three Poisons and the world of afflictions. Our 6th Consciousnesses relates to all things in light of its consciousness being colored by these three: desiring and loving, hating and despising, and the ignorance of confusion and delusion.

9. From this fixation of the first three Skandhas, the Fourth Skandha of mental configurations becomes fixated and our 6th Consciousness acts with a sense of relation to a solid self, which is actually a misidentification of the true mind of root awakening. On the basis of these mental configurations formed by the three poisons into the building blocks of our fixed identity that then molds and characterizes our sense of volition and intention, our actions (karma) arise to generate consequential light and dark results, that is, results that our identity structure categorizes as “good or bad” karma, “beneficial or unbeneficial” karma.

10. Once the karma-activity arises it follows its natural and determined course (in what we could call the gravity-well of Dharma), and we experience the consequences accordingly. The consequences of our karma-activity are inescapable from this stage, and they become manifested within the spectrum of the six frames of reference that are called the six paths of the wheel of birth and death, i.e., hellish, hungrily haunted, bestial, human, titanic, or heavenly.

The reciprocal path from this 10th stage of ordinary delusion (“all the world’s a stage”) to awakening is what is pictured in the 10 Ox-herding pictures.