Mind Is Like An Artist, Able to Paint The Worlds, Avatamsaka Sutra, Vol. 10

"Mind is like an artist,

 Able to paint the worlds; 

The five clusters all are born thence;

There's nothing it doesn't make.

As is the mind, so is the Buddha;

As the Buddha, so living beings;

Know that Buddha and mind

Are in essence identical."

                           

 

《大方廣佛華嚴經》卷10

「心如工畫師，　　畫種種五陰，

　一切世界中，　　無法而不造。

　如心佛亦爾，　　如佛眾生然，

    心佛及眾生，　　是三無差別。」

Remarks: 

The mind here denotes the absolute origin (C:本際) of all sentient beings, including Buddhas, bodhisattvas, and living beings.

 The correct principles of the Consciousness-Only doctrine during the Third Turning of the Dharma Wheel can be explained in two ways: by explicitly explaining “selflessness” through the unreal aspect of the Consciousness-Only doctrine (C:虛妄唯識門) and by explicitly explaining the “True Self” through the real aspect of the Consciousness-Only doctrine (C:真實唯識門).

 In the unreal aspect of the Consciousness-Only doctrine, the pervasive teachings of “selflessness” explicitly explain the cause and conditions of having the five aggregates, twelve sense fields, and eighteen elements of a sentient being. Then come the forms, sensations, perceptions, formations, and consciousnesses, which make up the five-aggregate self of sentient beings. Thus, the “self” that sees, hears, perceives, and knows can finally come to exist. The “sentient being self” begins with the material factors, which rely on the tathāgatagarbha as the cause and on karmic seeds as the conditions. Karmic seeds are accumulated through the defiled and pure deeds committed by the mental consciousness together with the mental faculty in the previous lives. The conditions of parents and the four great elements are also combined to bring forth our physical bodies.

 The physical body is the prerequisite for the perceptive mind to see, hear, perceive, and know. This teaching has already shown us the following: The “self,” which we have taken as real and indestructible, is actually unreal and is brought about by the conjunction of the cause (the storehouse vijnana; the tathāgatagarbha) and of various conditions existing only temporarily. The unreal aspect of the Consciousness-Only doctrine illuminates the fact that the “self” brought forth through the conjunction of the five aggregates, twelve sense fields, and eighteen elements is not real and is only a figment of the imagination, and is not indestructible. The unreal aspect of the Consciousness-Only doctrine then reveals that all dharmas are selfless.

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#twelvesensefields #eighteenelements #absoluteorigin