3.2 (a): The Dhyāna in the Laṅkāvatāra sūtra

[Full title: 3.2: The Dhyāna in Mahāyāna Sūtras (a): The Dhyāna in the Laṅkāvatāra sūtra (i.e., “the Sūtra of Psychological Perspectives”)]

In order to bring the spiritual and intellectual context of the dhyāna into clearer relief, however, we can focus on the great Mahāyāna sūtras that enjoy a special proximity to the dhyāna. These sūtras give voice to the new spiritual inspiration of Mahāyāna and offer an important stimulus to speculative reflection. Suzuki’s early, more academic;writings contain a wealth of material on the relationship between the dhyāna and the Mahāyāna sūtras. ^[1] At first, Western literature on the dhyāna did not pay sufficient attention to this relationship; for a long time, fascination with the early Chinese masters of whom the chronicles and kōan collections speak overshadowed the Indian sūtras.

The two decisive components of the dhyāna are the Mahāyāna sūtras, which provide its religious-metaphysical roots, and the Chinese spirit, which provides its distinctive dynamism. Any attempt to understand the spiritual environment of the dhyāna must take both elements into account. It was only when the Chinese leaven was added to Mahāyāna Buddhism that the fermentation process began that resulted in the dhyāna. In this chapter we shall examine the significance of certain Mahāyāna sūtras for the dhyāna.

Of the many sūtras that were introduced into China since the first century A.D., the one in which the principles of the dhyāna are more expressly and directly expounded than any others, at least those that were in existence at the time of Bodhidharma, is the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra (i.e., “the Sūtra of Psychological Perspectives”). The dhyāna, as its followers justly claim, does not base its authority on any written documents, but directly appeals to the enlightened mind of the Buddha. It refuses to do anything with externalism in all its variegated modes; even the sūtras or all those literary remains ordinarily regarded as sacred and coming directly from the mouth of the Buddha are looked down upon, as we have already seen, as not touching the inward facts of the dhyāna. Hence its reference to the mystic dialogue between the Enlightened One and Mahākāśyapa on a bouquet of flowers. But Bodhidharma, the founder of the dhyāna in China, handed the Laṅkāvatāra over to his first Chinese disciple Hui-k’ê as the only literature in existence at the time in China in which the principles of the dhyāna are taught.^[2]

There are three Chinese translations of the sūtra still in existence. There was a fourth one, but it was lost. The first in four volumes was produced during the Lu-Sung dynasty (A.D. 443) by Guṇabhadra, the second in ten volumes comes from the pen of Bodhiruci, of the Yūan-Wei dynasty (A.D. 513), and the third in seven volumes is by Śikshānanda, of the T’ang dynasty (A.D. 700). The last-mentioned is the easiest to understand and the first the most difficult, and it was this, the most difficult one, that was delivered by Dharma to his disciple Hui-k’é as containing the ‘essence of mind’. In form and in content this translation reflects the earliest text of the sūtra, and on it are written all the commentaries we have at present in Japan.^[3]

The Laṅkāvatāra Sutra is “one of the nine principal texts of Mahāyāna in Nepalese Buddhism; in China and Japan it also occupied an important position in the philosophy of Mahāyāna Buddhism.”^[4] The special interest it takes in the psychological aspects of the process of enlightenment is evident in its preference for terms that describe psychological states and changes in the subject.^[5] The sūtra is focused on the doctrine of the “storehouse-consciousness” (ālayavijñāna) from which issue the seven other consciousnesses, together accounting for the entire psychic life of the individual in this world of becoming. Identical with the storehouse-consciousness is the impersonal “womb of the Perfected One” (rathāgatagarbha), in which the karmic seeds (bīja) of all past experiences are preserved. When, for reasons that elude explanation, the seeds are set in motion, the unconscious recollection of all activities, which resides in the storehouse of consciousness, works like a delicate fragrance or “impression” (vāsanā) to stimulate the psychic processes. The narcotic effect of this deceptive “fragrance” propels sentient beings in ignorance and desire through the realm of rebirths. ^[6]

The idea of dhyāna as explained in the Laṅkāvatāra, however, is different from what we generally know in Hīnayāna literature^[7] —that is, from those kinds of dhyāna mentioned in the previous part of this essay. The sūtra distinguishes four dhyānas: the first is practiced by the unlearned (bālopacārika), such as the Śrāvakas, Pratyekabuddhas, and devotees of the Yoga. They have been instructed in the doctrine of nonātman, and regarding the world as impermanent, impure, and painproducing, they persistently follow these thoughts until they realize the samādhi of thought-extinction. The second dhyāna is designated ‘statement-reviewing’ (artha-pravicaya), by which is meant an intellectual examination of statements or propositions, Buddhist or nonBuddhist, such as ‘Each object has its individual marks,’ ‘There is no personal Ātman,’ ‘Things are created by an external agency,’ or ‘things are mutually determined’; and after the examination of these themes the practice of this dhyāna turns his thought on the non-ātman-ness of things (dharmanairātmya) and on the characteristic features of the various stages (bhūmi) of Bodhisattvaship, and finally in accordance with the sense involved therein he goes on with his contemplative examination. The third dhyāna is called ‘Attaching oneself to Thatness’ (tathatālambana), whereby one realizes that to discriminate the two forms of non-atman-ness is still due to an analytical speculation and that when things are truthfully (yathābhūtam) perceived, no such analysis is possible, for then there obtains absolute oneness only. The fourth and last is ‘Tathāgata-dhyāna.’ In this one enters into the stage of Buddhahood where he enjoys a threefold beatitude belonging to the noble understanding of self-realization and performs wonderful deeds for the sake of all sentient beings.

In these dhyānas we observe a gradual perfection of Buddhist life culminating in the utmost spiritual freedom of Buddhahood, which is above all intellectual conditions and beyond the reach of relative consciousness. Those wonderful, unthinkable (acinlya) deeds issuing from spiritual freedom are technically called ‘deeds performed with no sense of utility’ (anābhogacaryā), or the ‘deeds of no purpose’ as referred to elsewhere, and mean the perfection of Buddhist life.

The Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra also refers to the “supreme knowledge” (pariniṣpanna) that transcends all duality as a “self-realization” (svasiddhānta).^[8] Such a view is also commonly found in dhyāna. When dhyāna speaks of enlightenment as “seeing into one’s own nature” or “the original countenance one had before one was born,” it is clearly referring to an experience of the self. Such an interpretation applies to Chinese Buddhism and the way it identifies one’s own nature with the Buddha nature or with the cosmic body of the Buddha.

The experiential quality of supreme knowledge is thus linked directly to the ineffability that results when rational thought patterns are overcome. Although suprarationality does not necessarily imply irrationality, the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra, in stressing the reluctance to use words, seems to move toward the irrational when it reports of Buddha lands in which the Buddha truth is not passed on by words but by a mere gaze or a contraction of the facial muscles, by raising the eyebrows or frowning or smiling, by spitting or winking, or by similar gestures.^[9] The dhyāna is well known for having invented a motley collection of such concrete expressions for enlightenment. We read of Zen masters grimacing or lifting a finger or uttering a cry in order to trigger enlightenment in a disciple. In so doing they considered themselves to be in imitation of the Buddha who, in the celebrated sermon on the Vulture Peak, took a flower and held it up to the assembled multitude.

Master Wumen celebrates this episode, to which the dhyāna traces the beginning of the transmission of the supreme truth “without written signs and words,” in the following verse:

As he lifts up the flower
The serpent appears.
Kayapa twists his face into a smile,
And humanity and heaven do not know what to do.^[10]

The Laṅkāvatāra was thus handed over by Bodhidharma to his first disciple Hui-k’ê as the most illuminating document on the doctrine of dhyāna. But the development of the dhyāna in China naturally did not follow the line as was indicated in the sutra–that is, after the Indian fashion;the soil where the dhyāna of the Laṅkāvatāra was transplanted did not favour its growth in the same manner as it did in the original climate. The dhyāna was inspired with the life and spirit of the dhyāna of the Tathāgata, but it created its own mode of manifestation. Indeed this was where it showed its wonderful power of vitality and adaptation.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

In particular, nearly the entire third volume of his Essays in Zen Buddhism and considerable parts of the first two volumes, as well as his Manual of Zen Buddhism (New York, 1960), treat this question in detail. During his creative period Suzuki provided extensive analysis of the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra (See his Studies in the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra).

[2]:

Dīgha-Nikāya T. Suzuki. Essay in Zen Buddhism, Vol. I., Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd., 2005, pp. 86-7.

[3]:

Ibid. p. 87.

[4]:

Quoted from Dīgha-Nikāya T. Suzuki in his Studies in the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra (London, 1930), p. 3.

[5]:

Suzuki gives particular attention to Sanskrit combinations using the terms gocara, gatti, gatigama, and adhigama, which stress the aspect of experience in enlightenment. Studies, p. 422.

[6]:

H. Dumoulin 2008: pp. 52-53.

[7]:

There is however a Sūtra in the Samyukta Āgama, fas. XXXIII, p. 93b (Anguttara-Nikāya, XI, 10), dealing with true dhyāna (ājāniya-jhāna) which is to be distinguished from untrained dhyãna (khalunka-jhāna). The latter is compared to an ill-disciplined horse (khalunka) kept in the stable that thinks nothing of his duties but only of the fodder he is to enjoy. In a similar way dhyãna can never be practised successfully by those who undertake the exercise merely for the satisfaction of their selfish objects; for such will never come to understand the truth as it is. If emancipation and true knowledge are desired, anger, sleepiness, worrying, and doubt ought to be got rid of, and then the dhyāna can be attained that does not depend upon any of the elements, or space, or consciousness, or nothingness, or unthinkability–the dhyāna that is not dependent upon this world or that world or the heavenly bodies, or upon hearing or seeing or recollecting or recognizing–the dhyāna that is not dependent upon the ideas of attachment or seeking–the dhyana that is not in conformity with knowledge or contemplation. This ‘true dhyana’ then, as is described in this Sūtra in the Nikāyas, is more of the Mahāyāna than of the Hīnayāna so called.

[8]:

Suzuki puts special emphasis on this point, Studies in the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra, Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd., 2007, pp. 418-19; see also his introduction to The Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra, p. xxxiii.

[9]:

See Dīgha-Nikāya T. Suzuki. Studies in the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra, Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd., 2007, p. 107.

[10]:

See H. Dumoulin 2008: p. 54.