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Session 8 - Encouragement

REVIEW

PART ONE: Eight Reasons for writing the Awakening of Faith

  1. To cause people to free themselves from suffering
  2. To provide a correct interpretation of the Dharma (Part Three, Ch 1)
  3. For those with faith to become non-regressing in it (Part Three Ch 3)
  4. For those without faith, to develop it (Part Four)
  5. As upāya to free people from evil karmic obstructions
  6. To explain the practice of śamatha & vipaśyanā (Part Four)
  7. To explain the upāya of mindfulness, being ‘born’ before buddhas (Part Four, end)
  8. To encourage by pointing out the advantages of it (Part Five)

PART TWO: ‘Outline’ - ‘Establishing the meaning’ of the word Mahā-yāna

“There are two aspects to Mahāyāna: 1. dharma (the ‘thing/object’), and 2. ārtha (the meaning)”

PART THREE: Interpretation / Elucidation

CH 1: Revealing the Correct Meaning

Two aspects of the One Mind:

  • The Suchness of Mind
  • The arising and ceasing of Mind
    • Awakened Mind
      • Innately Awakened
      • Awakened in Stages
    • Not awakened Mind - Giving rise to three aspects:
      • Ignorant karmic action
      • A perceived subject
      • A perceived realm of objects (’perceptual field’)

“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 ( ‘mindstream’ / citta-santāna) and sentient beings have never been free from conceiving.”

The cause and condition of arising and ceasing:

  • Thought (manas) - incorrectly perceiving and reproducing the world of objects and, conceiving that the reproduced world of objects is real, continuing to develop deluded thoughts
  • Thought Consciousness (vijñāna) - positing of ‘self’ and ‘mine’ as real and clinging to them
  • Mind (citta) - which is defiled or pure

Habituation / Permeation (’perfuming’)

Four factors of habituation:

  • Suchness - ‘Pure Dharma’
  • Ignorance - The Cause of all Defilement
  • Karmic Consciousness - The False / Deluded Mind that breaks the equilibrium of suchness
  • The Six Dusts - Falsely Constructed Perceptual Fields

The Function of Suchness in the Mind as Arising and Ceasing

  • Dharmakāya (’Dharma Body’) - the inherent Dharmadhātu…body
  • Saṃbhogakāya (’Bliss Body’) - with countless forms of unlimited pleasure
  • Nirmāṇakāya (’Transformation Body’) - a manifestation of manas that the Two Vehicles mistake as something else

CH 2: Controlling Evil Attachments

“All wrongly held views are based on the view of self One will have no wrongly held views if one frees oneself from self. There are two kinds of view of self:

  • The view that there is an inherently existent self (ātman)
  • The view that there are inherently existent phenomena (dharmas)

CH 3: Three Types of Aspiration for Enlightenment

  • Through faith -
  • Through understanding - conforming to the practice of the six pāramitās
  • Through realization - Of Suchness, explained as a perceptual field based on the operating consciousness. With this realization, however, there are no perceptual fields; there is only cognition of Suchness, which is called the Dharma Body.

PART FOUR: Practices for Cultivating the Faithful Mind

  • Giving - according to capacity
  • Moral Discipline - Observing the Precepts
  • Patience - to endure vexation and not harbor feelings of revenge
  • Vigor - a mind not slacken, overcoming the mundane affairs of Mara
  • Śamatha and Vipaśyanā - experienced together, without separating one from the other
    • The Samadhi of Suchness
    • The Upaya of Amitabha Buddha’s Pure Land

PART FIVE: Encouragement & Advantages