CHAPTER 5

Mahayana Thought

Chinese Buddhism has always included and practiced both Mahayana and Hinayana together, and integrated the exoteric and esoteric teachings harmoniously. Even if it views the Hinayana from the Mahayana point of view as not being the ultimate Buddha Dharma at all, nevertheless learning the Mahayana still requires the three Hinayana studies of discipline, meditation, and insight as a foundation. Not only that; if we speak in terms of vehicles or ways, Chinese Buddhism has stages equivalent to five vehicles.

The first is the human vehicle. The study of Buddhism first must begin with being human. Everything that demands careful attention in terms of human social virtues must be accomplished to arrive at doing good and getting rid of evil, thus to abide in the state of perfect goodness. By way of sublimation through the human vehicle, it is then possible to arrive at the more advanced practice of the second vehicle, which is the celestial vehicle; the celestial human is born from perfect goodness in being human.

Third is the sravaka vehicle of the Hinayana, which consists of Hinayana practitioners who detach from the world and learn to cultivate practical application of the four truths of suffering, accumulation, extinction, and the path. Beyond this is the fourth vehicle, that of pratyeka-buddhas. These are Hinayana practitioners who observe the conglomeration and dissolution of the conditions of the world. When they can observe through meditation accomplishment the arising of conditions and the perishing of conditions, in accord with the principle of the twelve causal conditions, they can abandon the world to stand alone transcendentally beyond things.

The fifth vehicle is finally the path of the bodhisattvas of the Mahayana. "Bodhisattva" is a Sanskrit word composed of the roots bodhi (enlightenment) and sattva (sentient being). It includes the meanings of self-help and helping others, as well as the meanings of self-enlightenment, enlightenment of others, and complete fulfillment of awareness and action proper to the fruit of Buddhahood. When the term is expressed through direct Chinese translation of the meaning, "bodhisattva" is rendered as "enlightened being," or "great being," or "awakened being." In modern terms, a bodhisattva is a sympathetic illuminate possessed of a kindness and compassion devoted to saving the world. Later Chinese literature contains the expression, "nonmundanity is the skeleton of immortality; sympathy is the heart of Buddhahood." This is really an appropriate picture, beautifully expressed.

The Mahayana bodhisattva path also has three kinds of courses. The first course is to initially seek one's own benefit, such as beginning with Hinayana transmun-dane practice, before setting out to save others. In this course, only after one's own salvation is complete does one devote oneself fully to helping others. The second course is first seeking to help others before seeking to liberate oneself. The third is to pursue the course of trying to simultaneously help oneself and others as well.

In sum, the conduct of the Mahayana involves being physically in the world while mentally beyond the world; it is founded on helping society and saving sentient beings, and can be regarded as sacrificing one's own self for the salvation of the world and humanity. The Mahayana view of all sentient beings is to regard them as all of the same body as oneself, thus producing the power of vows of kindness and compassion. The Mahayana kindness and compassion in helping beings are unconditional and make no demands; they are absolutely altruistic attitudes that are produced by oneself and awakened by oneself. Summing up these two ideas, they are called "empathie kindness and unconditional compassion."

The Mahayana system of thought fully extends the Hinayana teachings of discipline, concentration, insight, liberation, and liberated knowledge and insight, to form the stages known as the six ways of transcendence (six paramitas) or the ten ways of transcendence.

The first of the so-called six ways of transcendence is giving. Mahayana thought starts here because all sentient beings create suffering as a result of egotistic and selfish craving. In the Mahayana, all that belongs and pertains to the ego is used to make charitable gifts to satisfy the desires of sentient beings, so as to influence and transform their stinginess and greed.

Giving is divided into three types. The first type is the giving of externals: here, making gifts of material goods, physical life, and so on, is called material giving while making gifts of knowledge, learning, and wisdom is called giving of teaching. The second type is internal giving, which is to make one's own inner mind relinquish all greedy and covetous attitudes. The third type is giving of fearlessness, which means to give all sentient beings peace, security, freedom from fear, spiritual support, and assurance.

The second way of transcendence is discipline, beginning with not killing, not stealing, not abusing sexuality, and not telling lies, and extending to the motivations that arouse the mind, all of which are to be regulated by discipline. The Mahayana rules of discipline are not just rules of conduct and appearance; in reality, they are mental precepts intended to govern the mind completely. For example, if the motive for doing good is to gain a reputation, this is considered in violation of the Mahayana bodhisattva precepts. The subtlety of application is truly such that it cannot be exhausted in a few words.

The third way of transcendence is tolerance. To explain the overall essentials simply according to the Mahayana, two expressions can be used to sum up the "Tolerate what others cannot tolerate, carry out what others cannot carry out." The whole thing starts out from the intention to save the world with kindness and compassion, yet it is necessary to reach the point at which one does not have any idea of tolerance in the inner mind; only then does it count as tolerance.

The fourth way of transcendence is diligence. This means diligently arousing a constant determination, at all times and in all places, to exert effort to seek realization. Therefore, diligence is a companion of the foregoing giving, discipline, and tolerance, as well as of the subsequent meditation and wisdom. Whatever the way of transcendence one is working on, unflagging diligence is necessary. It is a matter of actively doing good, not passively waiting for goodness.

The fifth way of transcendence is meditation concentration. This includes the contents of the four meditations, eight concentrations, and nine successive stages of concentration, fully extending them to where one is in a state of meditation concentration at all times and in all places, in movement and stillness, inside and outside. Even if one ascends to heaven and experiences bliss there, or descends into hell to liberate sentient beings, in all events it is imperative to master oneself by not leaving meditation concentration for so much as a single instant.

The sixth way of transcendence is prajna. Prajna is a Sanskrit word that is translated into Chinese as "wisdom." However, the Chinese word "wisdom" is often associated with intelligence; in Buddhism, intelligence is called "worldly knowledge and discursive intelligence," which comes from keenness of the sense organs, clarity and brilliance of ears and eyes, none of which is adequate to represent the inner wisdom of prajna.

The wisdom of prajna contains five meanings. One is the prajna of the character of reality, which is realization of knowledge of the fundamental substance of the life of myriad beings in the cosmos and the root source of the essence of mind. Second is the prajna of states, which comes from the different states produced by the basic capacity of the essence of mind, and includes the various phenomena of the spiritual world. Third is the prajna of words, which is literary and linguistic genius deriving from the philosophy produced by wisdom. Fourth is the prajna of expedient means, referring to the methods of applying wisdom, including the domain of learned knowledge. Fifth is auxiliary prajna, which is the totality of the virtue deriving from the preceding five ways of transcendence.

The first five ways of transcendence, from giving to meditation, are all bases of the virtues of the intensive Mahayana practice of perfect goodness. By diligent practice of goodness and virtue until one opens up the door by oneself, one arrives at the ultimate fruit of achieving prajna wisdom. Therefore, in the highest attainments of both Mahayana and Hinayana Buddhism, emphasis is placed on the liberation of wisdom and the perfection of wisdom; neither depend on blind faith.

By extension of the fulfillment of the six ways of transcendence, making them into means of entering the world to help society and help people, there come to be four additional ways of transcendence. The seventh way of transcendence is skill in means, which are methods of promoting self-help and help for others. The eighth way of transcendence is vowing, which is the eternal infinite power of vows of kindness and compassion for all sentient beings. Therefore, Mahayana bodhisattvas make vows to save the world, with firm promises as expressed by the famous sayings, "Space may have an end, but my vows will have no end," and "As long as hell is not emptied, I promise not to become a Buddha."

The ninth way of transcendence is power, which means producing the great power of determination to help oneself and help others by firm and unshakably faithful commitment. The tenth way of transcendence is knowledge, the great knowledge by which one ultimately arrives at "self enlightenment and enlightenment of others, awareness and action completely fulfilled," and attains the fruit of Buddhahood.

Mahayana Practice

The philosophy of the Mahayana bodhisattva path opens up the Hinayana philosophy of detachment from the world, transforming it into a spirit of active entry into the world. It aims not only to use the transmundane mentality to leap into the fiery hell of the human realm to save the world and save people; it also aims to save all sentient beings. It does not aim to liberate and transform only good people, but also aims to liberate and transform monsters as well. It does not laud only good men and women who sincerely believe in the truth of the Buddha Way; it also lauds other religions and different paths that have this same truth and same principle: Even if they have formulated dissimilar methods and styles of teaching because of differences in their highest visions, as long as they have at heart this same kindness and compassion and awakening of the world, they are recognized as worthy companions engaged in the same activity, the same as the Mahayana bodhisattva path.

This sort of transmundane mentality that does not contend with the world, this completely unconditional, spontaneous commitment to enter the world to save sentient beings, is just like the symbol of the lotus blossom used in later Buddhism. The lotus is a flower of sacred purity that is completely clean and undefiled; but it does not grow on high plateaus or mountain summits: it must be where it is dirty and muddy to bloom and produce fruit.

It is because of this that whenever there is talk about the rules of discipline practiced in the Mahayana, it is always said that there are eighty-four thousand of them, using this expression to describe their manifold details. But this is not a fixed number, it just illustrates the different changing forms of good and bad psychological patterns in the realm of sentient beings: in the space of a single thought, there are eighty-four thousand different ways of slipping.

Thus it is obvious that the fundamental spirit of what we call the disciplinary rules of the Mahayana is in the discipline of mind. In general, it is "correcting your nature whenever you stir your mind." The inner motives within the arousing of intent and stirring of thought immediately break the bodhisattva rules of discipline if they include any bad thoughts at all, or if they emerge from selfishness and self-serving.

Since the T'ang and Sung dynasties, the bodhisattva precepts used in China proper are based on the Brahmajala sutra; whereas those used in the borderlands and Tibetan regions are based on the bodhisattva precepts of the Yogacarya shastra. However, with both of these books of precepts, the principles and rules and the subtleties of their application are still of one mind.

Most of the principles contained therein are the same as the way of the sage, the wise, and the exemplary as taught in Confucianism, and the conduct proper to people imbued with the Tao. If you read them together with corresponding parts of the Book of Rites, which is among the five classics of traditional Chinese culture, you will be able to understand the great work Shakyamuni Buddha did for human morals and mores. It really evokes serious respect from people and induces implicit faith. Rather than call these the precepts of his religion, it would be preferable to say that they are the highest principles of human educational philosophy.

So we know that the spirit of practice of the Mahayana is far from encompassed within the framework of the precepts of the Hinayana. Therefore, the Buddhism in China since the T'ang and Sung dynasties, with its tendency to take from both Mahayana and Hinayana precepts, placing importance on both together, and especially its preference for the practice of Mahayana precepts, is in these respects quite different from Southern Buddhism.

This also shows that China's past cultural tradition did not take in Buddhism all of a sudden: first it had to go through assessment by the yardsticks of Confucian and Taoist thinking before its value was recognized and accepted. Even so, if we speak in terms of the spirit of self-sacrifice of the Mahayana bodhisattva, elevating the aspirations to the heights of devotion to saving the world, of course this is admired by celestials and humans, and none can repudiate it. But when it comes actually to treading that path, it is easier said than done.

Even the altruism shown by the Chinese sage Mo-tzu in wearing himself out to help the world has already been called excessively idealistic by some people, to say nothing of those who surpass Mo-tzu in being able to give up their heads, eyes, brains, and marrow. Therefore, scholars of later eras who earnestly believed in Confucianism presented a hierarchy of benevolence and love, "be familiar with relatives, be benevolent to the people, be loving to beings," which they considered to be a philosophy for saving the world that was rather closer to human sentiment.

Thus learned disquisitions arose that argued about proprieties of conduct according to Confucianism and Buddhism. But when all is said and done, "a high mountain is looked up to, a great deed is to be undertaken." Even if it is too high to climb or too far to reach, nevertheless take the best example; this too is an imperative requirement for teaching and development.

Usually when people ask me if I am a Buddhist, my answer is that I do not have the qualifications to be a Buddhist. When people ask me how one must be to be worthy of being called a Mahayana bodhisattva, the example I give is this. Suppose you were way out on the ocean and ran into a typhoon, and you were about to drown in the billowing waves; at that moment, suppose you had only one lifesaver. Would you sincerely and respectfully give it to the next person? Suppose you were in a famine, on the brink of death from starvation, and you had one bowl of rice, but you preferred to give it to the next person, who was also starving. If you have this kind of heart, then whether or not you have any faith, or have different faiths, you are all equally on the path of the bodhisattva.

A story in Mahayana Buddhism tells of a filial son who approached a bodhisattva who was practicing the path, and requested that the bodhisattva donate his eye so it could be made into medicine to cure his mother. This bodhisattva gouged out his left eye without any reluctance and gave it to the young man, but the filial son objected, "You were too hasty, and made a mistake; I need your right eye to cure my mother." Hearing this, the bodhisattva hesitated a moment, then gouged out his right eye and handed it over. The filial son then said, "I don't need it; your hesitation and reluctance to give it up have rendered the eye ineffective as a medicine."

Hearing this story, we can understand how difficult it is to sacrifice oneself to help the world and help people in actual practice. Of course, in this world of multitudinous sentient beings, there are quite a few examples of "giving up one's life unbegrudgingly, dying for justice serenely," as well as numerous examples of selfless work for others, in various forms, in various manners, some great, some small. As a matter of fact, everywhere is naturally filled with the spirit of the Mahayana bodhisattvas; you cannot say they are not bodhisattvas because they have no religious faith, or because they have different faiths.

When it comes to their theoretical foundation, the bodhisattva precepts clearly define the tendencies and modes of right and wrong, good and bad, in a most thorough and detailed manner. If this sort of spirit is misused, it is not only of no help to the world and of no benefit either to others or oneself; in extreme cases it can even be counterproductive. That requires a separate discussion.

Mahayana Methods of Seeking Realization

The order of the process of actual practice of the Mahayana bodhisattva path is divided into ten steps, which in Buddhist terminology are called the "ten stages." Before one arrives at the first of these ten stages, one must experience four preliminary phases, which comprise forty different levels. Certainly differentiating the Mahayana path into a process of ten stages essentially lies in expanding the mental capacity for kindness and compassion to attain the ultimate principle of discovering truth and fulfilling nature, with the order of the Mahayana stages determined by matching them with the order of the ten transcendent ways.

But this still belongs to the domain of vision or perception; at the same time we must have meditation and concentration states for actual applied function (mental work and virtuous conduct), so that perception and practice complement each other. Thereby one may hope to attain the fruit of Buddhahood, in which perception and realization are fully complete, and great knowledge and great awareness are consummate. In reality, the methods used for seeking realization by the Hinayana, the four meditations, eight concentrations, and nine successive concentrations, are also methods common to the Mahayana.

To arrive at the ultimate limit of comprehension of human nature and comprehension of the nature of beings and things by fully expanding the mental capacity for kindness and compassion is the attainment of the insight and the enlightenment of the mind of the Mahayana bodhisattva. This belongs to the domain of the virtues of perception. At the same time it is necessary to combine states cultivated and realized by meditation and concentration. This is the Mahayana bodhisattva's actual experience, and belongs to the domain of accomplishment by deliberate effort.

However, it is decadent for a bodhisattva to become addicted to the pleasure of meditation concentration and give up the kind and compassionate mind of enlightenment, or not to seek progress in perception to arrive at the fruition of Buddhahood. In sum, the basic principle of Mahayana practice is to constantly keep to the great commitment to save the world and sentient beings. Its ultimate end is the perfection of great knowledge and wisdom to be in the world, yet beyond the world at the same time, with the mind itself liberated. This is what is meant by the expression "samsara and nirvana are like last night's dream; enlightenment and affliction are like flowers in the sky." Only then is the great work done by which one becomes an impeccable teacher of the celestial and the human.

Beyond this, the main scriptures of the various sections of Mahayana and Hinayana Buddhist learning all use the format of dialogue or records of Buddha's words to explain the truths of human life and the universe in thorough detail. Some start with an examination of body and mind to investigate the ultimate limits of the reality realm (a Buddhist technical term that includes the universe). Some analyze body and mind from the point of view of the inherent nature of the fundamental substance of the reality realm. The aim, however, is always to seek realization of liberation.

From the time of the Sui and T'ang dynasties, Chinese Buddhist schools, including the Esoteric Buddhism of the Tibetan regions, all set up their own system of organization and comparative criticism. Thus Buddhist teachings were analyzed and divided according to the T'ien-t'ai school, the Hua-yen school, and the Esoteric school, producing the systems of Chinese Buddhism. Even though each of these schools studied Buddhism from different points of view, their basic principles and doctrines did not diverge very much.

For example, scriptures such as the Flower Ornament and Complete Enlightenment sutras explain body and mind on the basis of the fundamental substance of the inherent nature of the reality realm. The Heroic March sutra and Diamond sutra are among those that trace their way back to the source of the inherent nature of the reality realm by way of introspective examination of body and mind. Scriptures such as the Lotus of Truth and Nirvana sutra say that mind, Buddha, and sentient beings are not different in essence, but change in a single thought between delusion and enlightenment. Scriptures such as the Great Sun sutra and the Esoteric Vehicle sutra speak of using the temporal to realize the true, based on the nonduality of reality and illusion.

Subsequently it became a standard custom to make a general distinction, in later Buddhism after the passing of Shakyamuni, between schools of essence expounding emptiness and schools of characteristics expounding existence. The schools of prajna and contemplation of the center represent the quintessence of the "ultimate emptiness" of the schools of essence; whereas the schools of Consciousness Only and characteristics of phenomena represent the mainstream of the "existence in the ultimate sense" of the schools of characteristics.

So those who liked simple clarity and disliked analysis followed a combination of the emptiness of prajna and the teaching of Zen, and those who liked detailed investigation and esteemed logical thinking followed the Consciousness Only teachings on existence to formulate a magnificent array of Buddhist thought. Not only can these be used to pursue a synthesis with and mutual elucidation of Western philosophy, psychology, logic, and other fields of learning imported in recent times; the trend is very much to want to use the Consciousness Only teachings to accommodate, coordinate, and criticize Western philosophy. But this process and goal are still at an early stage of first steps: the question of how to combine Eastern and Western cultures in the same furnace, to enable them to produce a new vista of light, still awaits the efforts and accomplishments of young students of today and people of tomorrow.