Chapter 3: Three Thousand in One Thought¶

The text that lays the doctrine down stands in the section of the Mohe zhiguan on the contemplation of the inconceivable object: "One mind possesses the ten dharma-realms, and each dharma-realm possesses in turn the ten dharma-realms, making a hundred dharma-realms; one realm possesses thirty kinds of world, and the hundred dharma-realms accordingly possess three thousand kinds of world. These three thousand are in a single thought of mind. If there is no mind, there is an end of it; but let there be the least stirring of mind, and it possesses the three thousand."¹ The arithmetic is the product of three axes of classification: the mutual inclusion of the ten realms makes a hundred realms, each of the hundred realms possesses the ten suchnesses, and each suchness opens out into the three kinds of world. The ten suchnesses come from the chapter on skilful means in the Lotus: "Only a buddha together with a buddha can exhaust the real character of the dharmas, namely that the dharmas are of such an appearance, of such a nature," and so on through substance, power, activity, cause, condition, effect, and recompense, gathered up in "such an ultimate equality of beginning and end."² The punctuation of these ten suchnesses comes from Kumārajīva's rendering and does not agree with the Sanskrit; the old case in philology is logged here with a signpost expressly set up.

Where the doctrine stands as a piece of machinery shows most clearly when it is set against the storehouse of Part 20. The ālaya model runs vertically: seeds are stored first and come forth into activity when they meet with conditions, the registration standing before and the discharge after. Three thousand in one thought sets up no storehouse: the present thought is complete as it stands, and there is no storing first and manifesting afterwards. Zhiyi wrote the point into a line of defence in so many words: "Neither is it said that the one mind is prior and all dharmas posterior." To say that mind produces all dharmas — "this, then, is the vertical"; to say that mind contains all dharmas at one time is the horizontal; and neither the vertical nor the horizontal will do.¹ This line of defence belongs to the same house of method as the warning label carried by the verse on the appropriating consciousness in Part 20, and it goes further than that label did: it guards not only against a reading of mind as a self, but seals off the genetic reading entire. Three thousand in one thought is not the claim that a universe comes forth out of a single thought; it is an inventory in which, at the site of a single thought, three thousand classifications can all be pointed to at once.

The standing of mind itself is settled in another passage of the Zhiguan, one that presses the question through the four alternatives. When a single thought of mind arises, that arising "has no nature of its own, no nature of another, no nature of both together, and no nature of being without a cause"; and pressed to the bottom, "there is only a name, and the name given it is mind."³ Only a name, and the name given it is mind: those eight characters are Tiantai's own text for a ruling at E2, and the ruling is that mind is a conventional designation and not a substrate. Should the machine of Part 18 come round to inspect the register, the entry here is entirely in order. The single thought, taken as the object contemplated, has first been contemplated as empty in its own right, and at no point is anything set up as an item that does not break up under analysis.

The doctrine of nature-inclusion is established along with the three thousand: the three thousand being what nature includes from the outset, good and evil are alike among them. That nature includes good and evil is Tiantai's own open case. The text that states it directly stands in the Guanyin xuanyi, which is not yet in the library, and this part does not quote it; together with Zhanran's extension of the doctrine, that insentient things possess the nature, it is entered and shelved for Chapter 6.

A check in the form of the theorem closes the account. Three thousand in one thought is judged to be a work of classification at the E2 level. The product of the three axes is a phenomenological inventory; the single thought is an index point and not a substrate; the legislator sealed off with his own hand both of the genetic readings, the vertical and the horizontal, and ruled the index point itself to be a conventional designation. That it rests content in the standing of what is nominally posited is a judgment with a double guarantee in the original text. The open case lies not in the mechanism but at the word good in nature-inclusion, and Chapter 6 registers it.

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