宗鏡錄 62.29

62.29

Answer: They are all real. For holy persons there is no falsity, because the three poisons have already been uprooted. Because all dharmas lack a fixed characteristic individually, therefore the earth [characteristic] can be transformed into or made into the characteristic of water. Just as butter, glue, and wax belong to the earth category, yet on receiving fire they melt into water and take on the characteristic of wetness; water on meeting cold freezes into ice and takes on the characteristic of hardness; stone mineral juice turns into gold, and gold corrodes into copper or returns to stone. Sentient beings are also like this: bad can become good, and good can become bad. By this reason it is known that all dharmas have no fixed characteristic. Second, the cognition of consciousness without an objective referent (anālambanavijñāna-jñāna): consciousness without an objective referent refers to all ordinary beings taking their own sixth, individually arisen discursive mental consciousness (manovijñāna) to grasp the past, the future, the moon in water, an image in a mirror, and so forth, transforming and giving rise to a nominal nimittabhāga. These nimittabhāgas are merely the falsely constructed, fully conceptualized objects of sentient beings' sixth consciousness, transformed and arisen according to sentiment; there is no real external object outside the mind at all. This is called 'consciousness without an objective referent.' As for 'cognition,' this refers to the apprehending mind of bodhisattvas of the ten grounds. A bodhisattva says: 'The nominal nimittabhāgas transformed by these ordinary beings are all not separate from the transforming mind of all ordinary beings; this is their consciousness-only.' Thus by using this analogy for all real objects, they too are not separate from the apprehending mind of all sentient beings. Outside of the mind, there is not a single thing further. The old saying, 'Grasping nothing, thought does not arise,' is incorrect.