Lecture 8: Weishi’s Conscious-Only School

Question 1

Which two monks and two works are most important in Chinese Weishi Buddhism?

Answer 1

• Xuanzang who wrote Cheng Weishilun (Treatise on the Establishment of the Doctrine of Consciousness-Only).
• Kuiji who wrote Cheng Weishilun Shuji (Notes on the Treatise on the Establishment of the Doctrine of Consciousness-Only).

Question 2

What are the two most interesting philosophical problems in the Weishi school?

Answer 2

• First, the structure of consciousness and its purification—why was this school developed in India? For the practice of yoga. The master should know where the disciple is; that is, there is a lot of things going on inside of you, so they came up with levels of consciousness so that the master could know where the disciple is consciously.
• Second, the transformation of consciousness into wisdom (zhuanshi chengzhi), because it suggests that being conscious, having ideas and information, is not enough to have wisdom.

Question 3

What are the five consciousnesses, the sixth consciousness, the seventh consciousness, and the Alaya-consciousness?

Answer 3

• 5th consciousness: Five sensible perceptions—sight, smell, taste, touch, and hearing.
• 6th consciousness: Empirical self-consciousness, or your ego.
• 7th consciousness: Transcendental self-consciousness, or the transcendental ego. You never see your transcendental self, but you can’t have any experiences without it because transcendental means “before experience,” it’s what makes experience possible. The 7th consciousness is the thought-centered consciousness—the manasvijñāna—all human willing and thinking attach to their imagined center as its own true self.
• Alaya-consciousness: The storehouse consciousness, or the Ultimate Reality.

Question 4

What is zhuanshi chengzhi (transformation of consciousness into wisdom)?

Answer 4

• This idea presupposes that one obtains the Ultimate Reality, either as ālayavijñāna, the 8th consciousness (according to Xuanzang), or as bhūtatathatā itself, true-thusness (according to Paramārtha).
• From this Ultimate Reality, there starts a process of transforming different consciousnesses into wisdoms.
• Wisdom is the outcome of obtaining the Ultimate Reality, and transforming every different level of reality into wisdom.

Question 5

What are the two processes involved in the transformation of consciousness into wisdom?

Answer 5

• On the one hand, there is the process of retracing self-awareness, going back to deeper and more original layer of consciousness (from 5 consciousnesses, or senses), to the 6th to the 7th to the 8th consciousness, and attaining the Ultimate Reality.
• On the other hand, there is the process of transformation, first that of the 8th consciousness into wisdom of grand perfect mirror; then that of the 7th consciousness into wisdom of equality; then that of the 6th consciousness into wisdom of marvelous observation; and finally that of the 5th consciousness into wisdom of achieving all deeds.

Question 6

What are the factors in Weishi Buddhism that make it hard to accept, and therefore not well-developed, by Chinese people?

Answer 6

• Buddha nature is the nature by which everything can metaphysically become Buddha; every sentient being has the potential to become Buddha (just like how Confucius thought anyone could become a sage or king). The thesis of universal Buddha nature was not accepted by the Weishi School.
• We find here a category of “sentient being without Buddha nature” (youqing wuxing), which originated in the Lankāvatāra sūtra. Xuanzhang was reluctant to introduce it to China. But since his Indian Master the Venerable Śīlabhadra insisted, he nevertheless kept to it in his writings, later developed by his disciples.
• This was also one of the reasons why Weishi failed to become more popular among Chinese people, who preferred Daosheng’s saying that “all sentient beings have Buddha nature.”