Chapter 6: The Transformation of the Basis¶

The science of machinery has its exit in practice. The five stages, in order: at the stage of provisioning one accumulates; at the stage of applied practice one subdues the grasping; at the stage of penetration, which is the path of seeing, one realizes directly the nature of consciousness-only; at the stage of cultivation one perfumes and cultivates again and again; at the final stage the transformation of the basis is complete. The exact sense of the stage of penetration is worth a sentence to itself. To see the nature of consciousness-only is for wisdom to attain nothing at all in the object it takes, and at that moment even the character of consciousness-only is not posited. The high point of the science of machinery is a letting go of the science of machinery's own appearance.

The transformation of the basis is the name this school gives to liberation in the language of the science of machinery. The verse: "without attainment, inconceivable — such is the wisdom beyond the world; because the two coarse burdens are cast off, one thereupon realizes the transformation of the basis."¹ Two senses run side by side. The basis is transformed: within the storehouse consciousness the force of the two classes of seed waxes and wanes, contaminated seeds being suppressed and cut off while uncontaminated seeds grow. And the defiled is cast off and the pure obtained: the two coarse burdens, the hindrance of the defilements and the hindrance to the knowable, are laid down. Liberation here is not a departure from the machine; it is a rewriting of the machine — one and the same continuum, with the composition of the seeds it runs on exchanged.

The fruit of the transformation of the basis is the turning of the eight consciousnesses into the four knowledges. First stands "the class of mind associated with the great mirror knowledge," which is "like a great round mirror, wherein the images of all forms appear";² the knowledge of equality, the knowledge of wondrous observation, and the knowledge that accomplishes what is to be done follow after it. The last verse closes the whole treatise: "this is the uncontaminated realm, inconceivable, good and constant; it is the blissful body of liberation, that which in the Great Sage is called the dharma."¹

Two entries against the theorem. The first: after Chapter 9 of Part 18 had withdrawn the case for nirvāṇa as an entity, it said that the discourse of path and fruit returns to the floor with the standing of the science of machinery, and this chapter is the place where that sentence is redeemed. The five stages, the transformation of the basis, the four knowledges are one and all process vocabulary, legitimate items at the level of E2. The second is a case filed. The last verse calls the uncontaminated realm inconceivable, good and constant; and the word constant, if it is read here as a property of a process (that after the transformation of the basis there is no falling back again), is safe, whereas if it is read as the permanent abiding of an E3 item, then the case of the perfected nature (Chapter 2) acquires one more item joined to it. This case goes forward, together with the fuse of Chapter 7, to Chapter 8.

References¶