Review of Session 1 - The Suchness of Mind
The Awakening of Faith in the Mahāyāna is a commentary in five parts: 1. The Reasons for Writing, 2. An Outline (of Mahā-yāna), 3. The Elucidation, 4. Practices, and 5. Encouragement.
The Elucidation has three chapters. Ch. 1 begins with two ‘gateways’ pertaining to the Mind:
- The Suchness of Mind
- The Arising and Ceasing of Mind
First Gateway: The Suchness of Mind
“That which is called “the essential nature of the Mind” neither arises nor ceases. It is only through illusions that all things come to be differentiated. If one is freed from illusions, then there will be no appearances (lakṣana) of [independently existent] objects; therefore all things from the beginning transcend all forms of verbalization, description, and conceptualization and are, in the final analysis, undifferentiated, free from alteration, and indestructible. They are only of the One Mind; hence the name Suchness. All explanations by words are provisional and without validity, for they are merely used in accordance with illusions and are incapable [of denoting suchness]. The term Suchness likewise has no attributes [which can be verbally specified]. The term Suchness is, so to speak, the limit of verbalization wherein a word is used to put an end to words. But the essence of Suchness itself cannot be put an end to, for all things [in their absolute aspect] are real; nor is there anything which needs to be pointed out as real, for all things are equally in the state of Suchness.”
Second Gateway: The Arising and Ceasing of Mind
“The arising and ceasing of mind exists based on the tathāgatagarbha (’Womb of Thus Come Ones). This is to say, non-arising and non-ceasing combine with arising and ceasing: they are neither the same nor different.”
“This is called the ‘alaya consciousness.’ As the collector and producer of all dharmas, this consciousness has two aspects:
- Awakened
- Not awakened
Awakened
- Innately Awakened - Because “The single characteristic of the ‘realm of reality’ (dharmadhātu) is none other than the undifferentiated Dharmakāya, the “essence body” of the Tathāgata.”
- Initial Awakening - Because there is non-awakening (because there is innate awakening)
- Semblance Awakening - Not clinging to the appearances of characteristics
- Partial Awakening - The Bodhisattva Dharmakāya, thought without abiding in characteristics
- Final Awakening - Bodhisattvas having completed all the stages
- “Not all sentient beings are called awakened. This is explained as beginningless ignorance because thought-moment after thought-moment have always followed one another in a continuous flow (念念相續) and sentient beings have never been free from conceiving (念). If they manage to be without conceiving then they will recognize the mind’s characteristics as 1. arising, 2. abiding, 3. changing, and 4. ceasing.”
- Regarding the Innately Awakened Mind - as it pertains to defilement there are two characteristics:
- Pure Knowledge - Which breaks apart the characteristics of the combined consciousness and extinguishes the characteristics of the ‘continuously flowing mind’ (citta-santāna, ’mindstream’) 破和合識相，滅相續心相
- Inconceivable Karmic Action - Which accords with the capacities of sentient beings.
And because they are without conceiving, there is no difference between those four, and no difference from awakening.