by Ben Connelly
Thus everything is projection only. Everything, the All, our ideas, our feelings, what we see and hear, the sound of the breeze in the trees, the memory of a long-loved cat, the thrum of hunger in the belly, our righteous rage, and our vast compassion—it’s all projection only.
“Projection only” is a translation of the term vijnapti-matra. The famous school of thought associated with this text is called Consciousness Only, citta-matra, and I can see why; Projection Only does not have the same ring to it. But Vasubandhu never uses citta-matra in this text, only vijnapti-matra. Vasubandhu is precise and careful. He avoids the term “consciousness only” because he knows people might get confused and think he means the universe is made of consciousness or some such unknowable thing. He is saying instead that consciousness is all we can experience and that it is constructed by the habits of conceptualization in that process of consciousness itself. In short, all we really know is that we are seeing projection—projection only.
Lest you start to go down some strange and solipsistic mind-road, let me remind you of the context of this teaching. If we know that everything is projection only and we have the model for working with consciousness presented in the first half of this book, we can have some faith that, through practice, we can transform the processes of consciousness so they produce equanimity rather than anger, nonviolence rather than desire, carefulness rather than laziness, energy rather than sluggishness, humility rather than selfishness. We can transform everything—projection only—so that it is well and it is kind in the here and now.
18
The Process of Consciousness
Consciousness is all the seeds transforming in various ways
Through mutual influence producing the many conceptualizations. || 18 ||
I have a memory, quite possibly faulty, of a very old Chinese text on Consciousness Only, perhaps by Xuanzang, that says, “truly, the store consciousness runs the whole show.” I can’t find the text, but the message stays with me. The degree to which our conditioning colors experience is profound. Recently I was leading a climb of a small mountain in the Rockies as part of a meditation/backpacking retreat. As we prepared for the climb, I pointed out our route. The more experienced members of our group understood the plan, but a few others clearly could not even see the elements of the landscape—the gullies, the places where loose rock was slightly less steep—that I was pointing out. As we were descending some of us were calmly and happily making our way down a couloir when I realized one member of the group was near panic. Where some of us saw a nice little rock ladder to climb down, he saw a vast chasm opening up over a thousand-foot drop-off. I have been on both sides of this myself; I once crawled in terror across a narrow ridge as my climbing companions jauntily jogged back and forth saying, “This is plenty wide enough to walk on!” Although we would all agree that we were in the same place, our perception of that place was profoundly different due to the conditioning of our mind and the projections it created.
I have already introduced much of the material in this verse earlier in the book, but it’s worth a review, and Vasubandhu gives us some more specifics on how our karmic seeds produce experience. First he points out the completeness of the power of karmic seeds:
Consciousness is all the seeds transforming in various ways
Through mutual influence producing the many conceptualizations.
All these conceptualizations that we’ve been talking about in the last verse are the fruit of karma, the fruit of the seeds of our mental conditioning. The importance of this statement is twofold: it is a message of humility and a message of empowerment. If we know that everything in our consciousness is a conceptualized projection of our karma, we can be humble about what we know. We can realize that we are born as children of conditioned delusion in every moment. When we are getting really angry, we can remember that everything we are seeing and thinking is not the truth but projection. Likewise, if we know this, we can taste a deep and profound sense of empowerment. Since everything we perceive, experience, or think is a projection of karma, and karma is a product of our intentions, our mental formations, we can devote ourselves to making our best effort to cultivate positive intentions in every moment. We can plant the seeds that will produce more beneficial projections. As the seminal Buddhist text the “Five Remembrances” says, in Nyanaponika Thera’s translation, “I am the owner of my actions [karma], heir of my actions, actions are the womb (from which I have sprung), actions are my relations, actions are my protection. Whatever actions I do, good or bad, of these I shall become their heir.”
This verse also makes explicit some aspects of the operation of the eight consciousnesses. The transformation of seeds is the activity of the store consciousness, so we can paraphrase this verse to say, “Consciousness is the activity of the storehouse producing the many conceptualizations.” Manas and the perception of the six senses are what is produced by the karmic activity of the storehouse. They are the conceptualizations. So these seeds produce a sense of self, that there is an I here, and since there is an I, they produce a sense that there are other things: colors, sounds, tastes, thoughts, attention, volition, etc. If there is an I, it by definition creates a sense of other.
This process is often described as being like a waterfall, in part because long, long ago some Chinese translators rendered “like a river flowing,” from the fourth verse, as “like a waterfall.” The phrasing of this eighteenth verse also carries the feeling of the rushing activity of seeds transforming, influencing, producing, and proliferating experience. If we practice meditation we begin to see this—feelings, thoughts, and sensory perceptions rush along unbidden. If we commit to meditation, we may also sometimes see that the production of conceptualizations can slow down; analysis fades away, and the experience of the senses softens and slows. We may see, as did the old Indian monk I wrote about earlier, that although things are calm and kind in our mind, there is still this “residual conceit, ‘I am.’” We may come a little closer to the roots of the way our mind makes a world with which it can be dissatisfied.
19
The Ripening of Karma
Karmic impressions and the impressions of grasping self and other
Produce further ripening as the former karmic effect is exhausted. || 19 ||
The unconscious stream of conditioning that creates our experience of this moment surges on. The store consciousness, the ripening, is ever changing, dynamic. We cannot know what our mood will be tomorrow or even in a few hours. In each moment new karma is created and exhausted. One minute we may be calmly scrolling through the news on a website, the next feeling rising aggravation at the fact that the next page of our article won’t load. In that moment of aggravation we feel, whether we know it or not, separate, cut off. The conditioning that we’ve been developing since we were born, to feel annoyed when we don’t get what we want, is dependent on the hard and solid sense that there is an I, which should get what it wants.
Vasubandhu continues with the theme of the onrushing, dynamic flowing of the process of the ripening of karma. In this verse he reminds us of the key Yogacara idea that the center of the problem of human suffering is the split between self and other.
On a few occasions I’ve found myself flowing through a beautiful yoga sequence, in perfect tune with the motion of my body and breath, when suddenly a thought of some past slight someone did to me comes into my head, and anger rises throughout my body and mind. I thought the karmic effect of my emotional response to that nasty thing my friend said to me years ago was exhausted, but here I am, lost in an internal dialogue and cut off from my body and breath. Countless unknown seeds in my storehouse came together to form furthering ripening in me. When it arises, it’s my job to take care of it.
In each moment karmic effects are manifesting: we feel located in a body; there are emotions, tranquility, anger, perhaps joy; there are thoughts; there are beliefs, for example, that God is here, or isn’t here, that the shape in the corner of my
field of vision is a chair, that time is passing, that some people are evil. These are momentary ripenings of karma. They are the way our conditioning produces our sense of the world as we know it. Their effects appear and are exhausted; however with them come impressions or momentary perfumes. When these impressions, or vasana, and manas are present, there will be further karmic ripening; there will be another moment in what we experience as conventional human life. With this way of looking at karmic processes, we can remind ourselves that in this moment we can direct our consciousness toward beneficial intentions and in so doing create beneficial karmic impressions and the condition for a more harmonious life. We have this capacity for liberation from our conditioning.
Let’s say you feel angry because your mother-in-law has given a lot of unwelcome advice about your children. There is a lot of karma operating here, but in simplest terms there is karmic ripening of anger, probably accompanied by a lot of thinking, perhaps some long internal arguments. When this anger karma ripens, it produces angry karmic impressions. That, combined with the continuous sense of your existence separate from everything else, produces more angry karma. This means you are likely to feel angry in the next moment, too. More importantly seeds of anger will be produced that will manifest days or even years from now in the form of more anger. Someday, you’ll find yourself angrily explaining to your children how to raise your grandchildren or perhaps angrily explaining how your children shouldn’t give so much advice. It’s a ridiculous web, but we don’t have to be caught in it.
The key is mindfulness. If we are really present to our own anger and intimately know the feeling, we create—in the very moment that the former angry karma’s effect is exhausted—impressions of nonviolence, tranquility, and lack of desire. We don’t have to force the anger to stop—that would be violence. We can observe it in stillness, with tranquility, and we can focus not on desiring to be some other way than how we are, or make someone else be other than how they are, but instead simply be wholeheartedly available to what is: our own aching heart. As a seed of the karma of past angers carried through infinite generations and our entire lives is exhausted, rather than unconsciously creating more angry karma, we can choose to be mindful of our emotions and thus let that seed of painful karma be completely exhausted with no residue. We can put one seed of peace and kindness into the ready soil of this great earth.
As well as pointing out how our practice affects the karmic process, this verse deals with the idea that for karma to ripen, for the process that creates suffering to work, you don’t only need karma; you also need to be grasping at the ideas of self and other. This is also known as the twofold grasping, or graha-dvaya. It is the impressions of karma and the impressions of grasping self and other that produces the further ripening. We should recall that, in Early Buddhist thought, nirvana is the complete cessation of suffering, the point at which karma ceases to function and is exhausted. The end of the “Thirty Verses” is a description of total liberation, centering on the end of the twofold grasping.
Earlier, we were introduced to the manas and the six senses. The manas, through its continuity, creates the sense of self, and it reflexively creates an “other,” the name it gives to the contents of the six senses. So now Vasubandhu describes the tendency of consciousness to create this sense of I and other as grasping, graha. We hold on to this sense, unconsciously clinging in our conditioned way. “Grasping,” “clinging,” “craving,” “holding” are all terms closely related in Buddhist teaching to the root of suffering.
Let me take us back to the two barriers to realization: afflictive emotion and delusion. The Yogacara view is that Early Buddhist teachings emphasize dealing with the first, and so there are countless Early Buddhist texts holding up the value of dispassion and calm, the opposites of affliction. Mahayana teachings focus on delusion and hold up prajnaparamita, the perfection of wisdom, as its opposite. Abhidharmists, inspired by the Earliest Buddhist texts, teach that we should see all phenomena, dharmas, appearing in the moment, and that realizing that they are not ourselves is liberation. As Buddhaghosa taught, “There is suffering, but no one who suffers.” Mahayanists counter that these dharmas themselves are empty of their own self-nature. As the Heart Sutra says, “There is no suffering.”
Vasubandhu teaches that grasping self and other is the fundamental problem to be overcome. Once we let go of this grip, we realize that all phenomena are not ourselves, since there’s no I to see them, and we can see that all phenomena do not have their own self-nature, they are not themselves, since there’s no other. He reconciles competing views with a teaching that points to the possibility of complete liberation. He will provide more descriptions of what this liberation looks like in the final verses; what we need to know here is that he defines the tendency to grasp or hold on to the idea that there is an I that is separate from others as critical to the karmic process. Knowing this, we can turn our minds toward being intimate with our feelings and letting go of the stories our minds create to keep us separate. We can open up to the possibility of deepening our sense of connection to everyone in the world, even those we don’t like, to everything that occurs, even our sadness when we see the springtime flowers fall.
20
Three Natures
Whatever thing is conceptualized by whatever conceptualization
Is of an imaginary nature; it does not exist. || 20 ||
Here Vasubandhu begins his teaching on the Yogacara model for understanding phenomena as having three natures: the imaginary nature; the other-dependent nature, and the complete, realized nature. This model of understanding is designed to enable us to realize the depth of our delusion; the completeness of our connection to all the things; and the dynamism, unknowability, and liberation possible when we realize this delusion and intimacy with everything.
The imaginary nature of things is our projections and beliefs. The other-dependent nature of things is their merely being manifestations of infinite conditions. The complete, realized nature is beyond all dualistic views. This doctrine of the three natures has a close kinship with the more commonly known Mahayana teachings on the idea of absolute and relative natures, or the two truths doctrine.
When you look at an object, or a person, or an emotion, you can see the three natures in each of these things. Using the example of a tree, for instance, we would say that a tree has many characteristics that you know and understand; it is itself, distinct and separate from other things. This is its imaginary nature; the conceptual habits of your consciousness construct it. Of course, many people would agree about its nature and characteristics, for we have extremely similar conceptual conditioning.
The tree also has other-dependent nature; it is sunshine, seeds, air, earth, rain. The elements upon which it depends are infinite, including every drop of rain that has ever fallen on earth, which are all connected, and your gaze as you look at it, without which it would not be the thing you perceive, and all the infinite conditions that came to create that gaze. We have not even begun to scratch the surface of the tree’s dependence on other things.
The complete, realized nature is beyond any conceptions although it excludes nothing. It is not the imaginary, and it is not the other-dependent, and it is not other than them either. In “The Song of the Grass-Roof Hermitage,” Shitou says, “The vast inconceivable source can’t be faced or turned away from.” The complete, realized nature is vast, inconceivable. We can provisionally call it a source because, without it, we could not experience the imaginary nature of things that we take to be reality. It can’t be faced or turned away from. It is both beyond grasping and always right here and now.
Perhaps this all seems rather heady: I mean really, it’s a tree. Look at it! Actually, just stopping and looking at a tree is a good way to allow the mind time and space to soften and open up to a sense of these three natures. To stop and look at a tree allows the mind to touch something in an intimate way and to relax the pace of trying to figure things out. This ca
n plant a seed of presence, and someday you may see a tree in complete realization beyond and intimate with all your ideas about it and your total connection to and interdependence with it.
To call everything conceptualized by any conceptualization “imaginary,” to say that everything we think and perceive is imagination, as this verse does, might seem kind of extreme. However recall that in verse 17, Vasubandhu already wrote that anything that is conceptualized doesn’t exist. If it doesn’t exist and we think it is real, “imaginary” seems like a good description. This doesn’t mean there isn’t anything that exists. It means we don’t know what things actually are. We don’t know because they come through the filter of our consciousness.
It is not recommended that we ignore everything of an imaginary nature. We would starve to death. If you’re hungry, please consider responding to the imaginary phenomena of hunger, cupboard, plate, and food, and go have some lunch. The problem is that we are totally out of balance. Most people are completely entranced, mesmerized, and driven exclusively by imaginary phenomena. We believe the thought that occurs to us that a better car is what we really need. We believe the stories we repeat in our minds that we are unlovable, or unrecognized in our genius. We see someone driving aggressively or slowly and know that they are a terrible person. We are caught in a dream of dissatisfaction, chasing after our imaginations, powerless as we fall to the ground, or locked in immobility as we try and flee shadowy terrors, ashamed and naked as we struggle to finish an exam for a class for which we are unprepared. To be aware that things conceptualized are imaginary is to be able to realize we are in a dream, profoundly conditioned by our unconscious, and relax.
Countless times I have dreamed I was trying to complete some task but was constantly plagued by impediments and errors, overwhelmed by frustration. Slowly it dawns on me: “This is a dream; I don’t actually have to be upset about this.” In a passage in a long Prajnaparamita sutra, I recall a section where someone is asked how a bodhisattva responds to realizing that life is just a dream. The answer is “with compassion.” The reason given in the sutra is that this realization of life as a dream is balanced with realizing the other-dependent nature and the complete, realized nature as well.
