The Tree of Enlightenment
An Introduction to the Major Traditions of Buddhism
by Peter Della Santina
---o0o---
Part Three
The Vajrayana
---o0o---
Chapter Twenty-Three
Philosophical and Religious Foundations
It is important to examine the philosophical and religious foundations
of the
Vajrayana so as to better understand how it fits into the Buddhist
tradition as a whole. As
we look at the Vajrayana tradition in more detail, we will find that it
incorporates a
number of important Mahayana ideas. Three religious and philosophical
ideas that are
prevalent in the Mahayana play a vital role in the Vajrayana as well.
These are the ideas
of (1) emptiness, (2) Mind Only, and (3) expedient or skillful means.
In Chapter 22, I had occasion to refer to the fact that the Tibetan
tradition regards
Nagarjuna and Asanga as the founders of the Vajrayana path. In addition
to the Vajrayana
elements contained in their biographies, as discussed in Chapter 22,
there is an equally
significant way Nagarjuna and Asanga can be considered Vajrayana's
founding fathers--
namely, because of their advocacy and explanation of the ideas of
emptiness and the
primacy of consciousness (or Mind Only). A number of Vajrayana works in
the Tibetan
canon are attributed to Nagarjuna and Asanga, though this attribution
is disputed by
modern scholars. Whether or not Nagarjuna and Asanga actually wrote
specifically
Vajrayana works, it is quite clear that, without the ideas they put
forward, the Vajrayana
would be unintelligible, and very likely impossible as well.
Let us look first at the idea of emptiness, which is so characteristic
of the writings of
Nagarjuna. In Chapter 22, I referred to a situation in which Nagarjuna
is said to have
transformed base objects into gold. This can be seen as a metaphor for
the main project
with which the Vajrayana is concerned: transforming common experience
into the
experience of enlightenment. If we look at this analogy of alchemy, we
see that, for
transformation to be possible, the base object cannot have any real,
permanent nature of
its own. For instance, if a piece of coal were to have an unchanging,
intrinsic nature, it
could never be changed into anything else. Yet we know that a piece of
coal can, under
certain conditions, become a diamond.
The idea of an unchanging, independent character is expressed in
Sanskrit by the term
svabhava, which means 'own-being' or 'self-existence.' The absence of
own-being is
nihsvabhava, which is synonymous with emptiness. Emptiness is, of
course, not
nothingness. It is, rather, a kind of openness, a situation in which
phenomena exist
dependent on causes and conditions.
Although this idea of emptiness is most commonly associated with
Nagarjuna and the
Middle Way school, like the other important doctrines of the Mahayana,
it also exists in
the Theravada tradition. For example, according to the Theravada canon,
the Buddha
likened all phenomena to the flame of an oil lamp, which exists
dependent on the oil and
the wick. The flame is nothing in itself. Similarly, all phenomena
depend on causes and
conditions.
In the Mahayana, where this idea is elaborated at great length, all
phenomena are likened
to a magical illusion. An illusory elephant, for example, appears
dependent on some
basis, like a hill of earth or a piece of wood, and is brought into
being by a magician
using certain magical spells and so forth. Thus illusory appearances
come about
dependent on certain causes and conditions. Similarly, all phenomena
exist dependent on
certain causes and conditions. It is because of this dependence, this
emptiness, that
transformation is possible.
Nagarjuna says that if there were any own-being, transformation by
means of the path of
liberation would be impossible. In other words, if that lump of coal we
referred to a
moment ago had an unchangeable nature, it could never become a diamond.
Similarly, if
each and every one of us had an own-being or permanent existence as
ordinary, afflicted
sentient beings--if this were our identity--then no matter how much we
practiced the
Dharma, we could never become enlightened. It is because we are subject
to the
afflictions (ignorance, attachment, and aversion) that we have the
nature of ordinary
sentient beings. But if we replace ignorance with wisdom, attachment
with lack of
attachment, and aversion with love and compassion, we can change these
conditions. By
changing these conditions, we can change the nature of our being and
become Buddhas.
Emptiness is therefore absolutely necessary to allow for transformation
from the
condition of samsara to the liberation of nirvana.
Let us look now at the second idea, that of the role of the mind in
experience. Here
Asanga and his younger brother Vasubandhu made two general points: (a)
that objects
have no stable or fixed form of appearance, and (b) that objects appear
even without an
external stimulus.
Like other major tenets of the Mahayana and Vajrayana, these two points
are not absent
from the Theravada tradition. The first is evident in a number of
Buddhist texts. For
example, the incident involving the Elder Tissa is well known within
Theravada circles:
when asked whether he had seen a woman on the road, Tissa replied that
he did not know
whether it was a man or a woman, but only that he had seen a heap of
bones going up the
road. This shows that objects have no stable or fixed form of
appearance; what appears as
an attractive woman to one man appears as a heap of bones to another.
The Mahayana tradition elaborates on this by recourse to the experience
of a number of
altered states of consciousness. For example, one feels the earth move,
or that one has
enormous power, when one has imbibed too much alcohol. Similarly, under
the influence
of psychedelic substances, one's perception of objects is different. In
his Twenty Verses
on Cognition Only, Vasubandhu illustrates this with reference to the
experience of the
beings of the six realms (see also Chapter 19). There, he spells out
the diverse ways
objects appear depending on the subjective conditions of the perceiver,
concluding that
objects appear in different shapes and forms to different sentient
beings according to their
karmic condition.
The second point, that objects appear even without an external
stimulus, is also found in
the early Theravada tradition. For example, in Buddhaghosha's
explanation of the three
stages of concentration (preliminary, proximate, and accomplished), the
image of
meditation becomes internalized at the proximate stage. If a meditator
uses, say, a blue
disk at the first stage, at the second stage that disk becomes
internalized and he now
meditates on a mental replica of it. Consequently, whereas on the first
stage he uses a
physical object as his object of meditation, on the second stage of
concentration he no
longer needs that external support. The object now appears to him
without the need of an
external stimulus. We can also see this in dreams, where the dreamer
experiences objects
without any external stimuli.
Vasubandhu adds to this the case of the wardens of the hell realms. If
these wardens were
reborn in the hells because of their own karma, they, too, would
experience the sufferings
there. But since wardens are in the hells simply to torment hell
beings, Vasubandhu
suggests that they are mere creations of the minds of the hell beings
themselves. In other
words, because of their unwholesome karma, hell beings project images
of wardens who
then proceed to torment them.
In all these cases--the experiences of meditation, of dreaming, and of
hell beings--
objects appear without any external stimulus. This is why it is said
that, just as a painter
might paint a portrait of the demon and then be terrified by it, so
unenlightened beings
paint a picture of the six realms of samsara and then are tormented and
terrified by that
picture. Through the power of our minds, we create the six realms of
existence and then
circle in them endlessly. We are able to create these six realms
precisely because there is
no own-being.
These first two ideas--the idea of emptiness and the idea of the role
of the mind in
creating experience--go together. Objects have no independent
existence. Their existence
is relative to causes and conditions--most importantly, the mental
causes and conditions
of ignorance, attachment, aversion, greed, anger, jealousy, and the
like. Because of these
mental conditions, and because of the fact that phenomena are empty,
the mind constructs
and creates
experience in a particular form, in the form of the
suffering of the six
realms.
Just as the mind can work unconsciously and automatically to create the
experience of
suffering in the six realms, so the mind can be made to work
deliberately and consciously
to bring about a change in that experience, to bring about the
experience of liberation.
This is quite clear in the example of the experience of meditation that
we considered a
moment ago. Ordinarily, the mind functions unconsciously and
automatically to create
experience. We respond to an object, such as the form of a woman,
because of our
habitual conditioning, because we are subject to desire and ignorance.
In meditation we
train the mind to function in a chosen, decisive way to change our
experience. Through
the experience of meditation, we can change our perception of the
object in the same way
the Elder Tissa changed his perception so that he was able to see the
form of a woman as
only a heap of bones.
Again, we ordinarily perceive different colors automatically, in an
undirected and
unspecified way. Through meditation, we can alter that situation so
that we can, at will,
visualize and create a particular patch of color within our mental
experience. The idea of
emptiness and the idea of the creative power of the mind are clearly
present in the
structure of the Vajrayana techniques of meditation, which we will be
looking at in
greater detail in Chapter 29. Emptiness and the creative power of the
mind together
give
us the ability and the methodology needed to transform our experience.
We can transform
our experience because nothing has any nature of its own, and the way
we transform it is
through using the power of our minds to create and determine the way we
experience
objects.
As mentioned in Chapter 22, the Vajrayana is one with the Mahayana both
in its starting
point and in its goal. The fundamental idea in the Mahayana tradition
is the
enlightenment thought or mind (bodhichitta, the resolve to achieve
enlightenment for the
sake of all sentient beings), and the fruit of this resolve is the
attainment of Buddhahood,
with its transcendental dimension and its phenomenal dimension. The
phenomenal
dimension is an expression of the Buddha's great compassion, which
manifests itself in
skillful means--the third idea prevalent in the Mahayana and crucial to
the Vajrayana as
well.
Skillful means is the ability to reach all sentient beings at their own
levels. In many
Mahayana sutras, this is explained with the help of analogies, such as
the parable of the
three carts and that of rainfall and the light of the sun and moon in
the Lotus Sutra (see
Chapter 15) The phenomenal dimension of the Buddha appears to all
sentient beings
according to their particular needs and abilities. It manifests itself
in a variety of forms,
such as that of the beautiful maiden whom the Buddha caused to appear
for the sake of
Kshema (see Chapter 22). In many Mahayana discourses and treatises, the
Buddha
manifests himself in the form of ordinary people or gods in order to
assist sentient beings
along the path to liberation.
It is in this way, too, that the Buddha manifests himself in the
special forms of the deities
of the Vajrayana pantheon according to the needs and propensities of
sentient beings. For
example, in the case of the five celestial Buddhas, the Buddha
manifests himself in five
special forms that correspond to the particular karmic propensities of
sentient beings.
Thus he manifests as the Buddha Vairochana especially for sentient
beings whose
primary affliction is ignorance, while it is Akshobhya who appears to
those whose
primary affliction is ill-will and Amitabha to those whose primary
affliction is
attachment. The Buddha manifests himself in these different forms to
best assist different
sentient beings with particular karmic problems.
These manifestations of the Buddha interact with sentient beings to
bring about their
liberation. There is a kind of interdependence between the
manifestations of the Buddha
(in the forms of the Heavenly Buddhas and of deities of the Vajrayana
pantheon) and the
development of sentient beings through the practice of meditation. To
illustrate this, let
me return to the story of Asanga and the future Buddha Maitreya. Asanga
meditated for
twelve years before he was able to perceive Maitreya. Maitreya was with
him all along,
but Asanga had to develop his vision so that he was in a position to
experience Maitreya
directly. In the same way, the manifestations of the Buddha are around
us all the time, but
to perceive them directly we must develop our minds through meditation,
through the
careful purification of our beings. This purification of the mind may
be likened to the
process of tuning a television set to receive a particular
transmission. The transmission is
there all along, but unless and until the receiver is tuned to the
correct frequency to
receive it, the picture cannot be seen.
If we remember these three principles--the principle of emptiness, the
principle of the
power of the mind to determine the nature of our experience, and the
principle of skillful
means, we will be able to understand how the Vajrayana path can work.
We will also be
able to understand the diversity of the forms and images that the
Vajrayana uses to
expedite the process of transformation.
---o0o---
Contents
|
01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06 | 07 | 08 | 09 | 10 | 11
| 12 | 13
| 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41
---o0o---
Layout: Nhi Tuong
Update : 11-05-2002
