Chapter Six: Transformation of the Basis—The Stages of the Path and Its Fruit¶

What this chapter must do. The account of mechanisms opens out into practice. Three matters follow in order: the sequence of five stages, the exact definition of transformation of the basis, and its fruit. The second is the focus, because ‘basis’ refers to precisely what Chapters Two and Seven dispute.

Eligibility for entry: two kinds of spiritual lineage. Before the five stages, the commentary establishes a threshold: ‘One must possess two kinds of Mahāyāna spiritual lineage. First, innate lineage: the causes of uncontaminated dharmas, obtained by the nature of things, that have depended on the fundamental consciousness since beginninglessness. Second, lineage formed through habituation: what is formed through perfuming by hearing and the like after hearing the Dharma that flows from the Dharma realm. Only with both these natures can one awaken and enter.’¹

The names of these two kinds of lineage correspond word for word to Chapter Three’s dispute over innate and newly perfumed seeds. Seeds abiding in original nature and seeds accomplished through habituation become two conditions for entry on the path, and both must be present. In Chapter Three, the author’s reason for adopting the combined account was the consistency of the mechanism. Here a further reason is added: if everything is innate by the nature of things, practice has nowhere to exert its force; if everything comes from perfuming through hearing, there is nowhere to receive the perfuming. The settled view in the three-way dispute becomes, in practice, a clause requiring two qualifications together.

The sequence of five stages. The final five verses of the Thirty Verses establish the characteristics stage by stage. They are reproduced in full in the table.¹

The verse on preparation must be read separately: it is this essay’s strongest self-restraint. ‘If one posits a little something before oneself and calls it consciousness-only nature, because something is apprehended, one does not truly abide in consciousness-only.’ As long as consciousness-only nature is treated as a little something that can be posited before oneself, as long as there is ‘something apprehended,’ one has not truly come to abide in consciousness-only. This is the same clause as the Twenty Verses’ ‘this very consciousness-only nature, as grasped by another consciousness, is also absent in its underlying reality,’ quoted in Chapter Five—one on the side of argument, the other on the side of practice. The school writes ‘one may not elevate one’s own thesis into an apprehensible thing’ into a formal gate on the path. Without passing this gate, one cannot reach penetration. This clause must also be filed as evidence of a pattern. The two-part package established in Chapter Four—add a thing, declare it not a thing—now reveals its rhythm. What has been added is the name of the school’s own thesis; the declaration that it is not a thing arrives on schedule, this time as a gate with actual adjudicating power on the path. The declaration has real effect, placing this clause among those that deliver at the functional level. Its punctual arrival is itself a regularity to be filed under Chapter Eight’s two readings of clause density.

The stage of penetration then supplies the affirmative form: ‘When wisdom apprehends nothing at all in relation to its object, then one abides in consciousness-only.’ Seeing consciousness-only nature means wisdom’s apprehending nothing at all in relation to its object; at this point, even the characteristic of consciousness-only is not established. The summit of the account of mechanisms is letting go of its representations.

Another passage on accumulation deserves a brief mention. At this stage the two obstacles have not been subdued, and three kinds of discouragement arise in cultivating superior practices. The commentary lists three ways of tempering the mind. The first discouragement is: ‘On hearing that the buddhas’ complete transformation of the basis is extremely difficult to realize, the mind becomes discouraged.’¹ Transformation of the basis itself appears among the occasions of discouragement—a very concrete record.

The definition of transformation of the basis, this chapter’s focus. The defining sentence in fascicle nine of the commentary must be examined word by word.

‘“Basis” means the supporting basis, namely the dependently arisen, because it supports defiled and pure dharmas. The defiled means the falsely imagined; the pure means the real perfected nature. Transformation has two parts: transformation by abandonment and transformation by acquisition. Repeated cultivation of nonconceptual wisdom cuts off the coarseness of the two obstacles in the fundamental consciousness. One can therefore abandon the imagined upon the dependently arisen and acquire the perfected nature within the dependently arisen. By transforming afflictions, one attains great nirvāṇa; by transforming the cognitive obstacle, one realizes unsurpassed awakening.’²

Broken down, this says three things.

First, the ‘basis’ is the dependently arisen. The expression ‘transformation of the basis’ sounds as though one foundation were exchanged for another. The commentary’s definition, however, fixes the basis as the dependently arisen. The basis does not move.

Second, ‘transformation’ is the decline and growth of two things on the same basis. What is abandoned is the imagined upon the dependently arisen; what is acquired is the perfected nature within the dependently arisen. Abandonment and acquisition both occur at the dependently arisen level. There is no second site.

Third, this structure corresponds point by point to Chapter Two’s three natures. They are already three qualities of the same visual field: impaired vision with misapprehension, impaired vision without misapprehension, and no impairment. Transformation of the basis is this field’s passage from the first quality to the third. It is therefore a change in the operating composition of seeds within the same continuum, not the replacement of one continuum by another. Chapter Two called the three natures semantics. This chapter can add: transformation of the basis is the temporal form of that semantics.

The commentary makes another declaration about itself, equal in weight to the preceding three points: ‘Although suchness is pure by nature, its characteristics are defiled. Thus, when it is freed from defilement, it is provisionally called newly pure. This very new purity is called transformation of the basis.’² Suchness is originally pure by nature but defiled in its characteristics. Only when freed from defilement is it provisionally called newly pure; transformation of the basis is this provisionally named new purity. ‘Provisionally called’ is another clause against reification: transformation of the basis produces no new thing. It belongs to the same family as the exclusion clauses in Chapter Three’s six qualities of seeds and the three self-limitations in Chapter Five’s Twenty Verses. This essay has now received its third entry. Their locations deserve to be set beside one another: one at the establishment of seeds, one at the establishment of the thesis, and one at the establishment of the fruit. Wherever something is established, a sentence saying it is not a thing comes with it. Chapter Four has already judged this rhythm to be a two-part package: add a thing, declare it not a thing. Clauses collected with such organization must be recorded on both sides. Read as self-restraint, they defend every key position. Read as a pattern, they show precisely that something has been added at every key position. The method of adjudicating the two readings appears in Chapter Eight’s passage on clause density.

Two obstacles and two fruits of transformation of the basis. The obstacles are defined in the same fascicle: ‘The afflictive obstacle means grasping at an imagined real self, headed by the view of personal identity … Because it can obstruct nirvāṇa, it is called the afflictive obstacle’; ‘the cognitive obstacle means grasping at imagined real dharmas, headed by the view of personal identity … It conceals the undistorted nature of knowable objects and can obstruct awakening, so it is called the cognitive obstacle.’³ One grasps a real self, the other real dharmas; one obstructs nirvāṇa, the other awakening.

One point deserves recording in this table of two obstacles and two fruits: both things eliminated are defined as ‘grasping at the imagined.’ An obstacle is an attitude of grasping, not some other object. What eliminates it is merely nonconceptual wisdom bringing that attitude to rest. No new thing is created.

The commentary also establishes four meanings of transformation of the basis: the path that transforms, the basis transformed, what is abandoned, and what is acquired. It states, ‘Although transformation of the basis has four meanings in all, here only the two things acquired are taken,’² because the verse says ‘realizes transformation of the basis.’ What is abandoned is the seeds of the two obstacles; what is acquired is awakening and nirvāṇa. As for the route: ‘Within the ten stages, one cultivates ten superior practices, cuts off ten weighty obstacles, and realizes ten kinds of suchness; through these, the two transformations of the basis are realized.’ The details of the ten stages are listed for future treatment in this essay.

The fruit of transformation of the basis: four wisdoms. The affirmative content of the culminating stage is the four wisdoms. Fascicle ten of the commentary gives a passage for each; their defining sentences follow.⁴

The class of consciousness associated with great mirror wisdom ‘is free from all discriminations; its object and mode of cognition are subtle and hard to know … Like a great round mirror, it manifests images of many forms.’ The class associated with equality wisdom ‘contemplates all dharmas and sentient beings, self and others, as wholly equal. It is constantly associated with great loving-kindness, compassion, and the like.’ The class associated with discerning wisdom ‘skillfully contemplates the own and common characteristics of dharmas, operating without obstruction … It showers the great rain of Dharma and cuts off all doubts.’ The class associated with action-accomplishing wisdom ‘manifests various transformations of the three kinds of action throughout the ten directions, in order to benefit and bring happiness to sentient beings, accomplishing what must be done through the power of its original vows.’

The text directly states the correspondences between the four wisdoms and eight consciousnesses: “These are obtained, in this order, by transforming the associated classes of the contaminated eighth, seventh, sixth, and first five consciousnesses.” The eighth transforms into great mirror wisdom, the seventh into equality wisdom, the sixth into discerning wisdom, and the first five into action-accomplishing wisdom. The times of first arising are a separate question with alternative answers. For great mirror wisdom, one view places it at diamond-like concentration and another at the first attainment of Buddhahood; the text concludes with the latter. For action-accomplishing wisdom, one view places it during the bodhisattva’s path of cultivation and another only upon Buddhahood; again the text concludes with the latter. Equality wisdom first arises at the bodhisattva’s path of seeing. The person-emptiness class of discerning wisdom can first arise at the two vehicles’ stage of seeing, and its dharma-emptiness class at the bodhisattva’s stage of seeing.⁴ The correspondences have direct textual evidence and need not be inferred from these stages; a table simply arranges the stated sequence.

Of the four wisdoms, the passage on equality wisdom has another phrase relevant to this essay’s question: ‘where nonabiding nirvāṇa is established.’ Nonabiding nirvāṇa is the school’s affirmative arrangement for nirvāṇa: abiding neither in saṃsāra nor in nirvāṇa. The topic is listed for future treatment; its material is in the same fascicle.

The final verse closes the entire text: ‘This is the uncontaminated realm, / inconceivable, wholesome, permanent; / the blissful liberation body, / called the Dharma body for the Great Sage.’¹

Four points of alignment with the theorem.

First, after dismissing the case of nirvāṇa as an entity, Chapter Nine of Essay Eighteen said that discourse about path and fruit returns as an account of mechanisms. This chapter fulfills that statement: the five stages, transformation of the basis, four wisdoms, ten stages, ten obstacles, and ten kinds of suchness are all vocabulary of processes and ranks—legitimate items at level E2.

Second, the verse on preparation should enter this essay’s inventory of evidence. Within this system, establishing its own thesis as something present and apprehensible is a fault formally judged to fall short of entry. Chapter Eight judges self-cognition, seeds, and the storehouse by the legislators’ own texts. Here another clause is added, this time from a gate on the path. Its weight differs from that of a definitional clause. A definition says that the thing is not a bearer of own-nature; a gate says that whoever grasps it as something apprehensible has not yet set out.

Third, ‘provisionally called newly pure’ blocks the productive reading of transformation of the basis. If transformation is read as moving from a defiled foundation to a pure one, neither ‘“basis” means the supporting basis, namely the dependently arisen’ nor ‘provisionally called newly pure’ permits it.

Fourth, one case is registered alongside the preceding two. If ‘permanent’ in the closing verse’s ‘inconceivable, wholesome, permanent’ describes the irreversible process after transformation of the basis, it is safe. If it describes the permanence of an E3 item, it shares the case of the perfected in Chapter Two. An external opponent has already challenged this case directly in Chapter Seven. The Yogācāra theorist recorded in the second fascicle of the Treatise on the Jewel in the Palm defends ‘it is unreasonable to say suchness is not really existent,’ and Bhāviveka replies with the objection concerning the non-Buddhists’ self. The three points now converge and pass to Chapter Eight for an overall verdict.

References¶