The Alaya
Consciousness -- Neither Matter nor Spirit
I
named my tea room, my place for retreat and quiet thought, Yuishikian, or the
Hut of Consciousness Only because I regard the Buddhist philosophy of Consciousness
Only as the bible for the Philosophy of symbiosis that we need to transcend the
dualism of Modernism. The philosophy of Consciousness Only is one of the major
supports of Mahayana Buddhism, which is deeply rooted in Japan. When we consider
the essence of the Buddhist teaching, we see that the philosophy of Consciousness
Only occupies perhaps the most important place within that religion.
The appearance
of the Buddha wrought a great change of the world of Indian thought and religion.
Prior to the Buddha, the concept of samsara, or transmigration, had been one of
the central concepts of the Indian tradition. Transmigration meant that all phenomena
were bound to repeat themselves infinitely over the long and cyclical span of
cosmic time. Another important feature of pre-Buddhist thought in India was, as
articulated in the Upanishads, the concept of the absolute self, atman, and its
identity with the ultimate truth of the cosmos, or Brahman. NOTE 1 The atman was
destined to pass through life after life, its fate decided by the good and evil
deeds of the self.
The Buddha, however, denied the existence of the absolute
self. He taught that no self-existing, integral, unchanging, and imperishable
subject existed. All that did exist was a series of selves, born and extinguished
from moment to moment. This was the revolutionary Buddhist teaching of non-self
(anatman), which denied the existence of samsara as a substantial entity.
It
was the philosophy of Consciousness Only which eventually reconciled the opposing
notions of samsara and no-self. According to the teachings of Consciousness Only,
the subject that migrated was not a self but a consciousness -- or, specifically,
the alaya consciousness. The alaya consciousness was a part of the human subconscious,
a source of inexhaustible possibilities and potentialities. NOTE 2 The sources
of all existence and all events are in the alaya consciousness. These sources
are known as bija, or seeds.
As the capacity of the seeds ripens and they
come into contact with causes and conditions, they appear as actual phenomena.
At the same time, those phenomena produce instant feedback in the alaya consciousness.
The alaya consciousness is not only the source of all matter but the source of
all spirit as well. In sharp contrast to Descartes' declaration that all existence
can be divided into matter and spirit, the philosophy of Consciousness Only insists
that matter and spirit are both nothing more than the manifestations of a certain
primal existence. I see the alaya consciousness, neither matter nor spirit, as
akin to DNA -- a life code, a life energy. How fascinating it is that the intuitions
of the religious philosophers of ancient India have reached across the boundaries
of time and agree to agree with the discoveries of modern science.
Gook, Evil, and the Intermediate, Neutral Zone
The
beginnings of the teaching of Consciousness Only can be traced back to Nagarjuna.
NOTE 3 Before Nagarjuna, there was a school of Buddhist thinkers centered around
the numerous Prajnaparamita, or Perfection of Wisdom, sutras. They are now sometimes
called the Madhyamikas, or those of the Middle View. Their philosophy was based
on the concept of emptiness (sunyata) taught in the Prajnaparamita sutras. According
to the early Madhyamikas, all phenomena were no more than conventional names.
Since the names lacked substantial existence, the phenomena they identified also
lacked substantial existence. The material world was a phantasmal thing, a parade
of names and concepts without true existence.
Nagarjuna revised and systematized
this school of thought, rescuing the concept of emptiness from falling into mere
nihilism. In his Mulamadhyamika Sastra, he states, "I am not a nihilist.
By rejecting both being and non-being, I illuminate the path in nirvana."
Nagarjuna articulated his "unobstructed middle way," in the famous eight
negations of the Middle way, and from his interpretation of the concept of emptiness
originated a philosophy that transcended Western dualism.
Sometime after his
death, in about 300 A.D., Nagarjuna's stream of thought took shape as the Sandhinirmocana
Sutra, which is also regarded at the first scripture of the Consciousness Only
school. In the centuries that followed, three great Buddhist thinkers appeared
who fully developed and firmly established the Consciousness Only philosophy:
Maitreya, Asanga, and Vasubhandu. NOTE 4 The central concept of the Consciousness
Only philosophy, the alaya, is described in the Sandhinirmocana Sutra as "the
undefiled and ethically indeterminate consciousness that contains all seeds."
Unlike Christianity, with its sharp distinction between good and evil, the Consciousness
Only philosophy recognizes three categories: goo, evil and the ethically indeterminate.
An intermediate zone exists between good and evil, a zone that is neither. The
"consciousness that contains all seeds" is an existence that, like DNA,
contains the seeds of all things.
A Creative, Vague State Which Is Neither This Nor That
I
think that many creative possibilities are concealed in the vague state of the
"ethically indeterminate," possibilities for today. From now on, people
will constantly be forced to choose new systems of values. Because of that, we
will repeatedly find ourselves in an ambiguous situation in which it is impossible,
at least from the present perspective, to make clear choices. Action based on
a simple yes-no dichotomy is no longer an adequate response to society's demands.
I believe that a trichotomy, in which a third, neither-yes-nor-no element is added
to yes and no, will become necessary. The state of neither yes nor no is the state
of thinking, when a conclusion might be reached, or might not be. But compared
to either yes or no, when thinking stops and becomes action, it is an extremely
creative state.
The principle of majority rule, the modus operandi of democracy,
does not value vagueness. As such, it encourages the suppression of thought. It
forces us to choose either yes or no, and the simple majority wins, even if the
final vote is, for example, fifty-one in favor and forty-nine opposed. But if
an indeterminate category were allowed, people would be able to show that they
wanted to think the issue over further. And the results of their deliberations
might well be the opposite of a premature yes-or-no vote. We can even conceive
of cases in which the best answer to a question being voted on is, in fact, neither
yes nor no. There have no doubt been many such errors in our majority rule decisions
so far, and the risk of ignoring the possibilities of neither yes nor no will
only increase in the future. How we meet that risk and handle it in our social
policies will be a major issue from now on.
The Buddhism that has been nurtured
in Japan over the centuries is mainly Mahayana Buddhism. As the core of Mahayana
Buddhism, the philosophy of Consciousness Only has also made deep inroads into
Japanese thought and culture. Its teachings are the key to transcending dualism.
The Symbiosis of Life and Death
Some time ago, in a televised discussion
between a well-known film director and a critic, the director spoke of his experience
of living on the African savanna and described the mixture of life and death he
observed there, and I paraphrase his remarks below.
The animal realm is one
of eating and being eaten. It was completely natural to see a lion, for example,
kill a giraffe and eat it. Of course the giraffe cries out when it is killed,
but only for a moment. Once the lion is finished with his meal and his stomach
is full, quiet returns to the veldt and other giraffes nearby go on peacefully
grazing.
In contrast to this intimacy of life and death in the animal world,
human beings are convinced that single human life is the most important thing
in the world, a thing of the greatest value. In that belief, a rigorously dualistic
view of life and death can be detected. The human fear of death is nearly hysterical
when compared to other animals. Isn't it Modernism that has inflated that fear
to the highest degree?
I was deeply impressed by the director's remarks to
this effect. The Buddhist teaching of migration is linked to a view of life in
which the lives of human beings, animals, plants, and even Buddhas are given life
by a great life that transcends phenomenal life and death. The Buddhist teaching
of impermanence does not only mean that all if vanity; it suggests that since
all is vanity we must live in symbiosis in the cycle of that great life. It may
well be that the time is coming when we human beings must arrive at reconciliation,
a philosophy of the symbiosis of life and death. The Modernism and the West has
taught us that death is fearful and hell is frightening, so we have denied death
and pursued life with all our might. Death has come to be thought of as nothingness,
non-being, or something even more fearful. Perhaps it is time to relax just a
bit and look this greatest dualism of human existence, life and death, in the
face.
Footnotes:
1. The Upanishads
are group of sacred texts that have been appended to the Vedas, the ancient texts
of the Brahman religion in India. One of the most striking teachings of the Upanishads
is that each human being possesses an absolute self (atman) which is identical
to the great universal self Brahma), and that the two can be unified through religious
practice. The Upanishads also are the first Indian text to offer a theory of karma,
or deeds and their results.
2. The alaya was conceived of as a stream
of continuity, but in orthodox Buddhist philosophy it is said to by "empty"
-- that is, have no substantial existence. The concept of the alaya is a recognition
of process apart from substance.
3. Nagarjuna lived in the mid second
century in southern India. Of Brahman birth, he converted to Mahayana Buddhism.
The central concepts of Nagarjuna's writings are the "middle" and emptiness.
Emptiness means that no phenomena has substantial existence; and the mean refers
to the Middle Way between all dualistic extremes, such as illusion and enlightenment,
or nonexistence and existence.
4. Maitreya (not to be confused with Bodhisattva
of that name) was a Buddhist scholar of fourth century India. He was the teacher
of Asanga, who also lived in the fourth century, in west India (Gandhara). In
his many writings he taught that the stream of the alaya consciousness could be
purified, transforming our consciousness into enlightenment itself. His brother
Vasubandhu was the most prolific writer of the three and with him the philosophy
of Consciousness Only reached its completion. His doctrinal innovations included
distinguishing the sense of self from the alaya consciousness and his encyclopedia
listing of the afflictions that pollute the human mind.