Chapter 4 of Vajra Treasury
Scriptural Text: At that time, in the midst of the great assembly, Bodhisattva Vajra Treasury rose from his seat, bowed at the Buddha’s feet, circumambulated three times to the right, knelt with palms joined, and said to the Buddha:
“Great Compassionate World-Honored One, You have well proclaimed to all the bodhisattvas the Tathagata’s pure Perfect Enlightenment, the great dharani, the Dharma-practices of the causal ground, and the expedient gradual stages, thereby opening the ignorance of sentient beings. The Dharma assembly here, receiving the Buddha’s compassionate instruction, has had its illusory cataracts suddenly cleared away, and the eye of wisdom has become pure.
World-Honored One, if all sentient beings are originally Buddhas, why is there still all this ignorance?
If beings originally possess ignorance, then by what causes and conditions does the Tathagata say that they are originally Buddhas?
If beings in the ten directions originally accomplished Buddhahood, and only afterward gave rise to ignorance, then at what time do all Tathagatas once again give rise to afflictions?
We pray that You will not withhold Your priceless great compassion, but for the bodhisattvas open the treasury of the secret teaching, and also for all sentient beings in the Dharma-ending age who hear this Sutra’s teaching of the definitive Dharma gate, so that they may forever cut off doubt and regret.” Having said this, he prostrated with five points touching the ground, and repeated this request three times in the same way.
Commentary: The main point of this passage is that Vajra Treasury Bodhisattva wonders: where there is ignorance, that is called sentient being; only where there is no ignorance is one called Buddha. Yet the Tathagata says, “Sentient beings have already been Buddhas from the very beginning.”
If beings have already been Buddhas from the very beginning, then ignorance should no longer remain. If ignorance no longer remains, then they should no longer be called sentient beings. Why, then, does the Buddha still call them sentient beings?
Further, if beings inherently possess ignorance, then it cannot be said that they were originally Buddhas. Why, then, does the Buddha say that beings were originally Buddhas?
Sentient beings must cultivate through three countless eons before becoming Buddhas. If after becoming Buddhas ignorance can arise again and they become sentient beings once more, then when will cultivation ever end? Further, all Buddhas have now become Buddhas, so when will they again give rise to ignorance and become sentient beings?
This passage is similar to the Shurangama Sutra, when Purna Maitrayaniputra asked the Buddha: “If true mind is originally pure, why do mountains, rivers, the earth, and sentient beings suddenly arise?”
Scriptural Text: Then the World-Honored One told Bodhisattva Vajra Treasury: “Excellent, excellent!
Good man, you are able, for the sake of all bodhisattvas and sentient beings in the Dharma-ending age, to ask the Tathagata about the profound secret and ultimate expedient means. This is the supreme instruction for bodhisattvas, the definitive Mahayana teaching, able to cause bodhisattvas in the ten directions and all beings in the Dharma-ending age to gain decisive faith in their cultivation and study and to forever cut off doubt and regret. Listen carefully now, and I shall explain for you.”
At that time Vajra Treasury Bodhisattva, together with the whole great assembly, joyfully received the instruction and listened in silence.
Commentary: Vajra means a precious substance, the hardest and sharpest among jewels. It can destroy other things, yet nothing can destroy it. In this passage Vajra Treasury Bodhisattva stands and asks about the most difficult points, symbolizing that only vajra wisdom can cut through these deep confusions of ignorance.
Vajra Treasury Bodhisattva is also one of the foremost among the bodhisattvas.
Scriptural Text: “Good man, all worlds, with beginning and end, birth and extinction, before and after, existence and nonexistence, gathering and dispersing, arising and ceasing, thought after thought in uninterrupted succession, revolving back and forth, with all kinds of taking and rejecting, are all samsaric turning. If one has not yet left samsara and yet tries to discriminate Perfect Enlightenment, then that very Perfect Enlightenment nature will also seem to be in flux. If one wishes to escape samsara in this way, there is no such possibility.
It is like moving eyes that seem to shake still water; or like fixed eyes that, because of a whirling firebrand, see a circle of fire; or clouds moving so that the moon seems to race, or a boat moving so that the shore seems to travel. It is also like this.”
Commentary: The main point is that a person still within delusion who discusses awakening makes that awakening itself into delusion. If one uses the mind of sentient beings to conceive the realm of Buddha, the Buddha-realm becomes a sentient-being conception. If one uses samsaric mind to speculate about Perfect Enlightenment, then Perfect Enlightenment seems samsaric too.
The Buddha tells Vajra Treasury Bodhisattva: if you remain within the domain of false relativity, where there are saints and ordinary beings, sentient beings and Buddhas, and so on, and from there discuss the absolute, inconceivable realm of the Buddhas, it cannot be reached. Therefore, anyone who wants to understand the lofty meaning of Buddhism must practice; it cannot be understood by empty talk.
In this passage the Buddha uses ordinary worldly examples, such as blinking eyes, moving clouds, and a moving boat, to show how water appears to ripple, the moon appears to move, and the shore appears to run.
Scriptural Text: “Good man, when the turning has not yet stopped, wanting objects to stop first is impossible. How much less can one, while still in the defiled mind of birth and death that has never been pure, contemplate the Buddha’s Perfect Enlightenment as non-turning? Therefore you generate these three doubts.”
Commentary: Because one uses the defiled, deluded, discriminating mind of sentient beings to contemplate the Buddha’s realm, the Buddha’s realm is turned into a relative and deluded conception. Because Vajra Treasury Bodhisattva used discriminations of being/nonbeing, birth/extinction, saint/ordinary, and so on, he saw sentient beings as not yet Buddhas and Buddhas as already accomplished. That is why the three doubts arose.
If he had entered the pure nature of Perfect Enlightenment, then all dual marks such as saint and ordinary, pure and defiled, birth-death and nirvana, sentient beings and Buddha, would no longer remain. At that point such doubts would no longer arise. Therefore, in the later passage, the Buddha reproves him by saying that his questions are not yet correct.
Scriptural Text: “Good man, it is like illusory eye disease causing one falsely to see flowers in space. If the eye disease is removed, one cannot then ask, ‘Now that this disease is gone, when will all these diseases arise again?’ Why? Because the diseased eyes and flowers are mutually dependent. Likewise, when the flowers in space disappear into space, one cannot ask, ‘When will space again produce flowers in space?’ Why? Because space originally has no flowers, and so there is no question of arising or ceasing.”
Commentary: The main point here is that ignorance and all delusive objects are unreal, like flowers in space and diseased vision. Since flowers and eye disease are not real entities, they do not truly arise or cease. Therefore, after the eye disease is cured, one should not ask, “When will the disease return?” And when the flowers are gone, one should not ask, “When will they arise again?”
Flowers and eye disease may appear and disappear falsely, but space remains pure and still. Likewise, ignorance and delusive objects may arise and cease falsely, but Perfect Enlightenment nature remains pure, complete, and beyond them.
Space, being equal, can appear square or round according to the form of objects. Likewise, Perfect Enlightenment nature, being equal, manifests all dharmas according to conditions.
Space does not temporarily exist because flowers appear, nor temporarily vanish because flowers disappear. Its nature is always present and equal, while flowers come and go without affecting it.
Scriptural Text: “Birth and death and nirvana are alike in their arising and ceasing; wondrous awakened complete illumination is free from the flowers and eye disease.
Good man, you should know that space is not temporarily existent and not temporarily nonexistent. How much less can the Tathagata’s Perfect Enlightenment, which accords with and is the fundamental equal nature even of space, admit such dualities within it?”
Commentary: Likewise, the Tathagata’s pure Perfect Enlightenment nature is always present, equal, and accommodating to all dharmas. It does not temporarily appear when ignorance ends, nor temporarily disappear when ignorance arises. It accords with all things, without obstruction.
Scriptural Text: “Good man, it is like smelting gold ore. Gold is not produced because of smelting. Once it has become pure gold, it does not become ore again. Even after limitless time, the nature of gold is indestructible. One should not say that pure gold was not originally accomplished. The Tathagata’s Perfect Enlightenment is just like this.”
Commentary: The Buddha uses gold as an analogy for Perfect Enlightenment nature, and ore as an analogy for sentient beings. When gold is still within ore, it is like Buddha-nature within the shell of sentient being. Because it relies on a Buddha-nature already present, the Buddha says that beings have already been Buddhas.
When the ore is smelted and all dross is removed, only pure gold remains, and it no longer becomes ore. Likewise, when beings have cultivated over time and filtered away ignorance and afflictions, Perfect Enlightenment nature appears, and once Buddhahood is realized, ignorance and afflictions do not arise again.
Even before smelting, gold is already present in the ore. When refining removes the dross and pure gold is revealed, that is not the moment gold first comes into existence. Perfect Enlightenment is the same: when one is a sentient being, it is already present, and thus it is said that beings are originally Buddhas. Through cultivation, ignorance and afflictions are removed, and Perfect Enlightenment appears, but it is not newly born at that moment.
Scriptural Text: “Good man, the wondrous Perfect Enlightenment mind of all Tathagatas originally has no bodhi and no nirvana, no becoming Buddha and no not-becoming Buddha, no delusive samsara and no non-samsara.”
Commentary: When Perfect Enlightenment nature has been fully revealed, ignorance and afflictions can no longer arise again. Therefore it is said: once Buddhahood is realized, one does not return again to being a sentient being.
Scriptural Text: “Good man, even the realm realized by the sravakas, where body, mind, and speech are all extinguished, still cannot reach that personally realized nirvana. How much less can one use a mind of conceptual thought to measure the Tathagata’s realm of Perfect Enlightenment? It is like taking the light of a firefly to burn Mount Sumeru: it could never ignite it. Using samsaric mind to produce samsaric views and enter the Tathagata’s great ocean of quiescent extinction can never succeed. Therefore I say that all bodhisattvas and sentient beings in the Dharma-ending age must first cut off the root of beginningless samsara.”
Commentary: From the relative standpoint, because there are afflictions, there is bodhi; because there is birth and death, there is nirvana; because there is samsara, there is liberation; because there are sentient beings, there is Buddha. But from the standpoint of absolute principle, speaking of the Tathagata’s wondrous Perfect Enlightenment mind, affliction is already absent, so bodhi is absent; birth and death are absent, so nirvana is absent; and since sentient beings are absent, Buddha is absent too.
At this level, speech misses the mark and thought does not reach it. The practitioner must personally enter and realize it.
Scriptural Text: “Good man, any intentional thought that arises from mind is all of the six sense-objects, the conditioned energy of false imagination, not the true substance of real mind. It is like flowers in space. If one uses such thought to discriminate the Buddha’s realm, it is like expecting flowers in space to bear fruit in space. This is merely revolving false imagination; there is no such possibility.”
Commentary: Even the nirvana of the sravakas is a lesser, inwardly quiescent realm, and still cannot be reached through ordinary conceptual thinking. How much more so the utterly supreme realm of the Buddha. If one tries to think about the Tathagata’s Perfect Enlightenment with the delusive samsaric mind of ordinary beings and the partial understanding of the lesser vehicle, one can never understand it. It is just like trying to burn Mount Sumeru with the light of a firefly.
Therefore the Buddha teaches that one must first cut off the root of beginningless birth-and-death samsara, namely the discriminating delusive mind. This is the same point made in the Shurangama Sutra, where the Buddha clearly taught two fundamental roots:
One must cut off the root of birth-and-death samsara, the delusive mind.
One must abide in the true root.
Scriptural Text: “Good man, this floating false mind produces many clever views and cannot accomplish the expedient means of Perfect Enlightenment. Such discriminating inquiry is not a correct question.”
Commentary: After the World-Honored One cultivated through three countless eons and became the Buddha named Shakyamuni, he taught: “So-called becoming Buddha is not becoming something else; it is simply returning to the Buddha-nature already present.” Hence the sutras say: “Becoming, yet not truly becoming,” or, “Having awakened, it is the same as before awakening, for there is no other dharma and no other mind.”
This Buddha-nature is not possessed by the Buddha alone; all sentient beings already have it. On the basis of that already-present Buddha-nature, he says: “All sentient beings have Buddha-nature,” and the Avatamsaka says: “All sentient beings fully possess the Tathagata’s wisdom and virtues.” Therefore the Buddha says: “Sentient beings have long since become Buddhas.”
If one wishes to understand this principle, one must enter the Buddha’s realm and rise nearly to the Buddha’s level. If one merely uses the coarse, defiled, discriminating mind of sentient beings to calculate the Buddha’s realm, how could it be understood? It is like trying to understand the speech of an eighty-year-old elder: one must at least be near that level of maturity. If a child of five or ten uses childish intelligence to think about the elder’s words, how could it understand?
Therefore the Buddha says that these questions are still products of false discrimination and are not yet truly correct questions.
Scriptural Text: At that time the World-Honored One, wishing to restate this meaning, spoke verses:
Vajra Treasury, you should know:
The Tathagata’s quiescent nature
Has never had beginning or end.
If with samsaric mind
One reflects, it becomes turning still.
One reaches only samsara’s shore,
And cannot enter the Buddha-ocean.
It is like refining gold ore:
Gold is not produced by refining.
Though pure gold is originally present,
It is only through smelting that it is accomplished.
Once true gold is formed,
It does not become ore again.
Birth and death and nirvana,
Ordinary beings and all Buddhas,
Are alike as flowers in space.
Thought itself is like illusion;
How much more so false questioning.
If you can thoroughly understand this mind,
Then seek Perfect Enlightenment.