Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c22.s1.5

c22.s1.5

Suchness in its ineffable absoluteness is thus beyond all comprehension and expression. Its real importance for us is that it comes into contact with empirical reality; by some mysterious act of self-determination, no better defined than as spontaneous, the absolute self affirms itself in the form of the receptacle intelligence (*ālaya-vijñāna*), which presents the two aspects of enlightenment and non-enlightenment. These, it must be remembered, have no separate and independent existence, but have being merely as relative to each other, and neither has any absolute existence, so that from the standpoint of absolute truth they can be identified. The origin of ignorance in the receptacle intelligence results in that which sees, that which represents, that which apprehends an objective world, and that which constantly particularizes, the entity which performs these functions being styled mind (*manas*). Five different aspects of its operations are distinguished. The first is activity intelligence (*karma-vijñāna*), when the unenlightened mind begins to be disturbed by the agency of ignorance; the second is intelligence as particular or evolving (*pravṛtti-vijñāna*), for, when the mind is disturbed, there arises the vision of an external world; the third is representation intelligence, when the mind reflects an external world as presented by the means of the senses; the fourth is particularization intelligence, which discriminates between things pure and infected; the fifth is succession intelligence: the mind directed by attention retains all experiences, securing the retribution of action, providing for the possibility of memory, and of the anticipation by imagination of the future. We see thus that from the absolute under the influence of ignorance we have the production of the self as a perceiver; of an external world, which exists for him and has no independent being as in the view of the Vijñānavāda; and of the constant round of births which mean misery. The unreal external world is the source of the origin of six phenomena on which misery depends. In the first place the mind, affected by the external world, becomes conscious of the distinction between what is agreeable and what is disagreeable. Secondly, it retains these feelings in a constant succession of changing states. Thirdly, from the retention and succession of feelings arises the desire of clinging. By clinging there is attachment to names and ideas which are ascribed to reality; from attachment to these concepts action is produced, and from action arises suffering. Every form of existence, the worlds of desire, of matter, and of non-matter, is merely a mental creation due to ignorance, precisely as in the Vijñānavāda.