Tiantai on Buddhahood, Conceivable and Inconceivable

 

Brook Ziporyn

(Draft—a shorter version will be published in Rafal Stepien, editor, The Three Jewels: Essaying Buddhist Philosophy of Religion (forthcoming).

 

 

The Lotus Sutra (SK: Saddharmapundarīkasutra, CH: Miaofalianhuajing) is a Mahāyāna Buddhist text that makes some surprising claims about Buddhism, and about Buddhas.  Every Buddha, the Buddha Sakyamuni says there, is engaged in only one endeavor: “to disclose and demonstrate what is known and experienced by Buddhas （tathāgatajñāna-darśana， 佛之知見）, and to allow sentient beings to realize and enter into it themselves.”[1]   In other words, Buddhas teach only what it is like to be Buddhas; that is their sole goal, determining their every word, action, and state of existence.  All their endeavors are really ways to enable all sentient beings to experience the world as a Buddha does.  It is to see and know and live and experience what a Buddha feels and experiences and sees and lives and knows.   What is a Buddha?   What is it like to be one?   What is Buddhahood?

It is only in terms of the answers to these questions that another famously controversial claim of this sutra can be understood: that the beginning and end of the Buddha’s career as described above are not what they appear to be—that he has already long been a Buddha, and will long continue to be a Buddha, so long that no starting point or ending point in past or future can ever be conceived.  In some sense he is never really gone from the conditioned world of samsara, and while in that world all he’s doing is compassionately interacting with deluded and suffering sentient beings and finding ways to liberate them.  “Liberating them,” however, now means to always be showing them what it’s like to be a Buddha, and allowing them to experience that too  (and what that’s like is: to be always showing them what it’s like to be a Buddha, and allowing them to experience that too….).  This is new information about what it is like to be a Buddha: it is to be constantly in the conditioned world of samsara, while also seeming to appear and disappear in it.  It is to reveal and make available this experience of being a Buddha, which now includes being always present in the conditioned world.  To be a Buddha is to always be endeavoring to enable sentient beings to experience being a Buddha, but the experience of being a Buddha has just been asserted to be nothing besides the experience of the constant endeavor to enable sentient beings to experience being a Buddha….  This might seem to lead to an emptily recursive infinite regress.  Is there anything else entailed in “experiencing the world as a Buddha does”?   What relation does it have to experiencing oneself as constantly present even in one’s apparent absence, and constantly engaged in compassionate interaction with all manner of sentient beings, throughout the entire conceivable range of conditioned states both past and future?

Tiantai Buddhism takes these claims from the Lotus Sutra in all seriousness.  Its de facto founder, Tiantai Zhiyi (538-597), thus feels an urgent need to delineate the specific characteristics of Buddhahood, what it is that a Buddha is experiencing—the aim of all Buddhist practice.   The Tiantai approach to this question is no different from its approach to any and every question about what something is or is like, to the very general question about what it means to refer to something, to designate and identify something, to say something is determinate, to say that it possesses certain characteristics that distinguish it from other entities.   Zhiyi adopts for this purpose the Madhyamaka unpacking of the core Buddhist concept of universal dependent co-arising (yuanqi 緣起, pratītyasamutpāda).  On his reading, this implies that every such putatively determinate entity is merely provisionally determinate: its determination as thus and so is not a simple fact full stop, but is rather dependent on certain provisos.  It is designated to be thus and so as a conventional designation only, a contextually-dependent positing whose determinacy as this or that is dependent on its relations to other determinations, all of which are in exactly the same boat.  This lack of its own essence, endemic to all determinacy, is the Emptiness (kong 空, sūnyatā) entailed by all provisional positing.  Whatever is in any sense determinate is thus also, in this other sense, indeterminate.   For Zhiyi, though, the reverse is also true: all determinacy is, to be sure, in addition to being determinate also indeterminate, but by the same token, all indeterminacy is also determinate.  There is no pure indeterminacy simpliciter, just as there is no pure determinacy simpliciter.  In other words, “indeterminacy” and “determinacy” themselves are each also both determinate and indeterminate, both specific and ambiguous.  Each can always also be read as the other.  This is why Emptiness must be understood not simply as indeterminacy or vagueness or blankness or lack, much less simply being dependent on other things and lacking of a self-nature but still definitely thus and so.  It must be understood, in Tiantai, specifically as ambiguity:  there is always and everywhere some specific determinacy showing up, but always also that determinacy’s indeterminacy, and always the reversibility between these two, so that every determinacy is also indeterminate and every indetermination is also determinate—and even determinacy per se is itself indeterminate, and indeterminacy per se is itself determinate.  There is never no coherence, but every coherence ceases to register coherently as that coherence when other contexts are brought to bear, since its initial coherence was entirely dependent on what contexts were being considered relevant to it, which has no non-arbitrary limits.  It is locally coherent, but globally incoherent.  But this global incoherence is not some blurry blank (which would just be the definite coherence of “blurry blankness”) but the ambiguity between the initial quite clear and distinct coherence and every alternate clear and distinct coherence (including the clear and distinct coherence of “blurry blankness”).   It is not only that initial coherence, but other seemingly incompatible coherences as well. The more complete view of any determinacy is its determinacy-indeterminacy; the more complete view of any indeterminacy is its indeterminacy-determinacy.  They are ultimately synonyms, two senses pertaining to the same referent, as “morning star” and “evening star” both refer to the same object, the planet Venus. In Tiantai, though, while the “senses” are distinguished with different names merely provisionally, with different emphases in different intersubjective contexts for practical reasons of soteriological instruction, the fact that there are more than one “senses” applicable to any referent is itself necessarily entailed by the presence of even a single “sense,” of having a referent per se.  This is the Middle Way, the non-duality between the determinacy and indeterminacy.  This also means that each determinacy(-indeterminacies) entails all other (indeterminate-) determinacies—what it entails are not simply definite entities, but are determinate-indeterminate entities.   Hence we have the Tiantai Three Truths: Provisional Positing (local coherence), Emptiness (global incoherence) and the Middle (the synonymity of local coherence and global incoherence, and hence the intersubsumption of all possible local coherences).

One of these Three Truths, provisional positing 假諦, is separately given a threefold treatment of its own.  Creatively adopting terminology lifted from the Chengshilun 成實論, Zhiyi regards every possible determinacy as determined by three forms of dependence, three forms of provisional positing 三假.[2]

First there is “The Provisional Positing of Construction Through Causes.” 因成假  This refers to synchronic causal conditions and construction through constituent elements.   One example he gives of this is the relation between sense-organs and objects (causes) and the moment of consciousness that arises at their interface due to their conjunction.  Another example is the relation between a pillar and the particles of matter into which it can be exhaustively analyzed.   The pillar is composed of the assembled particles.   Through a shift of perspective, I can see that what I call pillar as a collection of particles.  The determinacy “pillar” depends on this other determinacy, “particles,” which is also coextensive with it.

Next there is the Provisional Position of Diachronic Succession.  相續假This is typically applied to a temporal series of events, especially the succession of mental states, in interrogating the relationship between a prior thought and a subsequent thought. They are not coextensive, as in the former case, but rather mutually exclusive, though causally linked in real time.  The prior state both causes and is replaced by the latter moment.

And finally we have the third type of Provisional Positing: The Provisional Positing of Mutual Contrast相待假, for which the typical examples are conceptual opposites: long and short, existence and nonexistence.  These “depend on” one another not as a whole depends on its parts (as material elements that something is made of), nor as one temporal experiential state brought on by a previous one that precedes it (as in diachronic succession), but as requiring contrast to one another for their very intelligibility.

The Tiantai claim is that these three seemingly wildly disparate forms of conditionality, of dependence, all apply at once to every entity.  Further, when thought through with the help of Madhyamaka emptiness arguments, and elaborated into the Three Truths, each of them ends up implying the other two, such that an absolute distinction between them cannot be sustained.   That is, just the relation that a thing has to its own elements, the way a whole depends on its parts, also applies to how a successive moment of experience depends on a prior one, and how conceptual contrasts depend on one another.   Each thing depends on other things in all three ways at once, and the characteristic relation to otherness of each form of dependence apply to all of them.  A thing relates to its component parts (type 1) also as mutually contrasting othernesses (type 3), the apprehension of which are prior to or posterior with the apprehension of itself (type 2).   An apprehension of prior and posterior conditions of a thing (type 2) define its presence by contrast (type 3), and are inextricably inherent to its being what it is (type 1).  Conceptual contrasts (type 3) require temporal succession of apprehensions (type 2), which though other to it are as inalienable from its identity, as the otherness that are its constituent parts (type 1).  This means that a whole depends on its parts not only as 1) what it is made of synchronically, but also 2) what succeeds or proceeds it in diachronic experience, and 3) what is external to it, mutually exclusive with it, and yet intrinsic to its existence.    Successive moments of experience depend on one another not only in being 1) conditioning and limiting one another as succeeding or proceeding, but also 2) in being actually made of one another!, and 3) in being what are mutually external, mutually exclusive, and yet intrinsic to the existence of one another.  Mutually exclusive conceptual contrasts depend on one another not only in being 1) being mutually external and exclusive yet intrinsic to the existence of one another, but also 2) actually made of one another!,  and 3) conditioning by proceeding and succeeding one another.   In the final analysis, in fact, the three are synonymous, unfolding three distinct but mutually entailing dimensions of all dependence, all conditionality, all coherence.

This is what it means in Tiantai to say that each entity “is identical to” what is external to it, what is opposite to it, without ceasing to be necessarily different from it, indeed precisely because of its contrastive difference.  It is also why every conceivable coherence is said to have no definite inside or outside, and thus, though only virtually present at its apparent locus, to be equally virtually present everywhere.   Tiantai “identity” and “omnipresence” must be understood as entailing all three of these modes of dependence—including difference in all these specific ways.[3]   Things are defined by their contrast to what they are not, and it is from this very fact that Zhiyi will conclude that they are only ambiguously what they are, and thus equally ambiguously precisely the opposite of themselves against which they were initially defined, and thus ambiguously present everywhere, as whatever else is ambiguously present.  It is through their difference that their identity is asserted, and through their very conceivability that their inconceivability is demonstrated.  Things are literally made of what they are not; their outside is their inside.

The above is exactly the rubric Zhiyi applies also to the question “What is Buddhahood?”   To ask what it is like, what the characteristics of Buddhahood are, is addressed in many places in his work, but none are perhaps more illuminating than his account in the Mohezhiguan.   He is explaining the distinctive form of Tiantai practice, the centerpiece of the Tiantai life, which he calls “the contemplation of the Inconceivable Object.”  The method he adopts is to tell us first what it is not: the application of the third form of Provisional Positing, the Provisional Positing of Contrast.  Hence he begins by directing our attention not to the inconceivable, but to the conceivable, to all that is thinkable, including what we think when we think of “Buddhahood”—as a way of going on to tell us how thinking through the thinkable allows us to contemplate his real target, the deluded conditional mind that produces this thinkable thought as the Inconceivable Object.   That deluded mind is what Tiantai meditation focuses on, in order to reveal that this conditioned deluded mind itself turns out to, upon examination, inconceivable and unthinkable, the truly conditioned as the truly unconditioned that intersubsumes all conditioned phenomena, including the Buddha that it has thought up.  Here is how it comes to think that up:

 

First, we present the contemplation of the mind as the Inconceivable Object.   But this object is hard to talk about, so let us first explain all conceivable objects, to make it easier to present the Inconceivable Object.   Of conceivable phenenomena, even the Hinayanists say that mind generates all phenomena, by which they mean the causes and effects of the cycle of the six paths of samsara [all generated by the intentional karma of sentient beings].   They then reject the ordinary and aspire to sageliness, dropping all of this and emerging above it all, leaving only a withered body and extinguished consciousness.  This is the Four Noble Truths considered as deliberate activity, with beginnings and ends in real time [有作四諦].  All such things as these are among the conceivables.

 

Now in the Mahāyāna it is also said that mind generates all dharmas, by which is now meant rather the Ten Dharma Realms [i.e., the prior six plus śrāvakas, pratyekabuddhas, bodhisattvas and buddhas]:

 

Contemplating the mind as existent, it is seen to have both good and bad mental states.  The bad are the causes and effects of the three evil paths of hells, hungry ghosts and animals, while the good are the causes and effects of the three paths of Asuras [ferociously competitive titans], humans and gods.    These six types are then contemplated as all being impermanent, arising and perishing constantly.  The mind that does this contemplating is also seen to be changing with every thought, never dwelling for a moment.  Further, both what contemplates and what is contemplated are conditioned arisings, and all conditioned arising is Empty of self-nature.  Such are the causes and effects of the Two Vehicles, sravakas and pratyekabuddhas.

 

Contemplating this sort of Emptiness [of the Two Vehicles] and this sort of Being [of the Six Paths of Samsara] as both trapped in the dualistic morass of these two extremes, either sinking into Emptiness or obstructed by being, great compassion arises, and one enters into the Provisional to transform and liberate beings.   Though there is no body in reality, one provisionally creates a non-literal body.   Though there is no emptiness in reality, one provisionally speaks non-literally of emptiness.  Thus does one guide and transform them all.   These are the causes and effects of the bodhisattvas.

 

Contemplating these phenomena of both liberators and liberated, seeing each as precisely a phenomenon exemplifying the Ultimate Reality of the Middle Way, all of them are thus known to be ultimately pure.   Who is the good and who is the evil?   Who is the existent and who the non-existent?  Who is the liberated and who is the not liberated?   All dharmas are like this.  These are the causes and effects of a Buddha.[4]

 

Here we have a derivation and description of exactly what Buddhahood is.  Let us retrace these steps.

First we have the world of conditioned arising, everything that arises and perishes, the six realms of samsara: (blissful gods, rational and responsible human beings, egomaniacal warlike asuras, dull-minded animals, rapacious hungry ghosts and tortured beings in the purgatories).  All of this is suffering, impermanent, non-self, because it is conditioned.   That applies to all of us, every being and every state that begins at one time and ends at another, that begins in one place and ends at another, is circumscribed in time and space, is simply what and where and how it is and nothing besides.  Everything with a boundary, everything enclosed within limits, everything finite, everything definite: all of it is born, ages, dies.   All of it, however temporarily happy or sad, suffers changes that are not in its control and eventually perishes.   In this sense, all of it is suffering; even bliss, including the bliss of the gods, arising due to conditions not within its control, is powerless to sustain itself, is suffering in the sense of passively undergoing conditions imposed upon itself (in the archaic sense of “suffering” meaning passivity).   To be finite is to be conditioned, both because it is causally dependent on other things outside itself for its arising, and also because it is definitely this rather than that, meaning that its presence is conditioned by one state of things being so rather than another. Whatever is identifiable is to that extent definite; whatever is definite is finite; whatever is finite is conditioned; whatever is conditioned is suffering.

The Two Vehicles, representing “Hīnayāna” Buddhism as understood by the Mahāyāna, arise in response to the hopelessness of any and every possible endeavor within the six realms of samsara, in the recognition that any and every state of arising and perishing is intrinsically and completely suffering.   It means a thoroughgoing and exceptionless repudiation of any possibility of happiness in any state that could be attained, and thus a complete renunciation of all rebirth in any possible definite state.   The achievement of Arhatship, of “Hīnayāna” Nirvana, the goal of the Two Vehicles, is understood as the total transcendence of all such definite states of being: it is the realization of a thorough negation of the entire world of conditionality.   This and this alone is the content of the Arhat’s Nirvana: it is determined only as the negation of all conditioned states.   Nirvana is thus characterized simply as the unconditioned, non-samsara, nothing more and nothing less.   The idea of Nirvana is thus generated and grasped simply through negation; regarded the realm of conditionality as a whole and negating the value of that whole, positing instead the absence of that entire realm as the sole real value.  An Arhat is regarded as someone who has realized this value, who exists only as a “withered body and extinguished consciousness,” a mind emptied of all determinate content.  Zhiyi describes this as “the Four Noble Truths of deliberate activity,” meaning that one sees on the one hand the Suffering and Arising of Suffering of the first two Truths, and endeavors to transition instead to the Nirvana of the Third Truth via the Path of the Fourth Truth.   The Four Truths describe four definite specific states, and one must negate the first two via the third to reach the fourth.  Just as in the conceivability of the transitions from state to state in six realms of samsara themselves, the transition from suffering to the end of suffering is here conceived merely in terms of the transformation of one state into a different and completely mutually exclusive state, for example, as firewood transforms into fire, such that firewood is not fire and does not have the characteristics of fire, but merely can or will become fire, or have the characteristics of fire, at some absolutely distinct future moment in time.

But in that case, these two realms of conditionality and unconditonality are opposed and mutually exclusive; this means that both are, in fact, conditioned, for they are conditioned by one another, in the sense of the Provisional Positing of Diachronic Succession (samsara is succeeded by nirvana) and also in the sense of the Provisional Positing of Mutual Contrast (samsara is not nirvana, nirvana is not samsara).   The realm of the Bodhisattva arises in response to this fact, seeing that the problem of conditionality, far from being solved by this renunciation of conditionality, is only exacerbated by it, since the allegedly unconditional Nirvana, if it excludes samsara and all its conditionality, is in fact thereby also conditioned.   Whatever is conditioned is suffering.  So this Nirvana is also suffering, and must also be transcended.  But how?

First, the bodhisattva sees not six realms of conditionality but ten.  He sees both the six realms on the one hand and their pure negation in the Two Vehicles on the other, making eight in all, as equally conditioned, equally suffering, equally one-sided: the first is stuck in conceptions of being, the second in conceptions of non-being, but these two conceptions are equally conditioned, being mutually determined by their contrast.   The two additional realms of bodhisattvahood itself, and its goal in Buddhahood, are now seen as the solution to the conditionality of both of these extremes.  But these last two states are also seen as conditioned.   Why then are they not suffering?  Because the bodhisattva has reconceived Nirvana not as the exclusion of conditionality, but as the Emptiness that is the real immanent nature of all conditionality.   This Emptiness of self-nature has all the characteristics Nirvana was supposed to have: it is unborn and unceasing, free of all conditional states, beyond all predication.  And yet it is now seen as immanent to all conditionality.   Realizing this non-nature as the true nature of all conditionality is the realization of the unconditionality that was formerly called Nirvana, and thus is, like Nirvana, the end of suffering.

The bodhisattvas thus see no possibility of ending the suffering through the elimination of samsara in favor of its negation in Nirvana.  But nor is there any need for it.   The nature of the task has changed entirely, although there is still a task.  For now it is the one-sided clingings to either of the two conditioned realms—the samsaric realm on the one hand and the allegedly unconditioned but actually, because exclusive of conditionality, equally conditioned realm of “Nirvana—regarding them as mutually exclusive that is the real source of suffering, and it is this that is to be transcended in bodhisattvahood and Buddhahood.  Bodhisattvahood is motivated specifically by compassion for this suffering, the endless suffering of seeing an either-or dichotomy between being and nothingness, samsara and Nirvana, conditioned and unconditioned, rather than comprehending that they are one and the same (i..e, that all samsara is in its nature already Nirvanic).   To overcome this dichotomization, he undertakes to engage in both, manifesting compassionately and without obstruction as either one or the other as the needs of suffering sentient beings demands, demonstrating their non-duality but also playing them against each other, using being to undermine attachment to nothingness and using nothingness to undermine attachment to being.   Though neither, considered in isolation, is real, the totality of both is real in their conjunction, and having realized the Middle that is their common nature, he transforms into whatever form is needed and teaches whichever ideas are effective.   Hence he never appears as anything other than a samsaric being or a Two Vehicles Buddhist, a purveyor of either conditioned being or the negation of all conditioned being, while yet remaining aloof from both in his ability to switch between the two at will, and in his awareness that these are only temporary interchangeable forms adopted solely to liberate sentient beings.  He is at every moment identical to these sentient beings of the Eight prior realms in all ways except that he is taking these forms at will, as the liberator, while they are stuck in this form through the compulsion of their ignorance and karma, as those in need of liberation.

It is this last distinction that is the final frontier of conditionality, requiring the Tenth realm, Buddhahood, which will give us our first answer to the question, What is Buddhahood?  Buddhahood applies the same move now to this final distinction.   The distinction between liberator and liberated, between the one embracing conditionality in its non-duality from unconditionality and one trapped in the very same conditionality ignorantly, is yet another relation of determination through contrast, the third kind of Provisional Positing, defined by their mutual exclusion.   As such, it too is a form of suffering, for all conditionality is suffering.   But where is there to go from here?   Simply positing another higher unification will not do; that would just repeat the previous step and lead to the same problem, where the free unity is distinguished from the constrained contents so unified, the all-embracing Middle distinguished from the two one-sided extremes.  Zhiyi’s characterization of “Buddha” emerges as the conception of that which negates the negation of the negation of the world of finite conditioned entities.

The unconditioned Nirvana of the “Two Vehicles” is determined simply as the negation of the conditioned.   The “Bodhisattvas” are determined simply as the negation of this both sides of this negation, seeing the unconditioned of the Two Vehicles to be just as conditioned as the conditionality they negate, inasmuch as it negates and therefore excludes something.  For to be determinate is to be provisionally posited via mutual exclusion, the third kind of provisional positing of Mutual Contrast.  But to exclude is to be conditioned, since it means to be what one is only on the condition that the contrasted other is excluded.

The realm of “Buddhahood” is then the reaffirmation of the ultimate reality of every conditioned phenomenon as the negation of this double negation.   The power of negation itself, in turn, derives wholly from the conditioned nature of the conditioned, rather than being added to it from outside.   For to be conditioned is precisely to have an outside, to be negated by something or other, to obtain only under certain conditions and not others.   It is this very negation, intrinsic to all conditionality, that is simply unconstrained at each progressive step, made explicit, allowed full play.   This full thinking through of the conditionality of the conditioned thus ends up giving us the triple negation that is Buddhahood.   This both reaffirms that conditionality, and the inextricability of every conditioned being, but also changes everything.     What exactly has changed, while nevertheless erasing not a single conditioned being, as the result of this triple negation?  What is the new form of affirmation that is identical with this triple negation?

The result is a view of the world that sees each thing as equally the ultimate reality, i.e., as the Middle Way that falls to neither of any two extremes (liberator versus liberated, conditioned versus unconditioned, neither-conditioned-nor-unconditioned versus conditioned and unconditioned, good versus evil and so on), such that both of the contrasted qualities are produced (negating the negation of the duality that would blur the distinction into a oneness) but neither can land definitively in any one locus, on any one side or the other (negating the duality as well as preserving it—who is X, who is non-X?)—which is what it means for them to be unconditioned, omnipresent, mutually intersubsumptive.   This is what Zhiyi means by saying, “contemplating all these phenomena of liberators and liberated, seeing each as precisely a phenomenon exemplifying the Ultimate Reality of the Middle Way, all of them are thus known to be ultimately pure.”  “Ultimately pure” means “Middle Way”—the Truth of the Middle.      Buddhahood thus means the perception of all of the above, encompassing all of the above steps, but now seeing all the distinctions both affirmed and negated at once: the name for this is “who?”   This is important to note, because Zhiyi’s language of “purity” here also makes available, when read inattentively, an unfortunate alternate reading, one which enabled the later Shanwai position in the Tiantai schisms of the Song dynasty, mistakenly assimilating Zhiyi to the kind of thoroughly apophatic monism that later became so prevalent in Chinese Buddhism, where all is the original purity of Buddha-nature that is beyond all predication and all distinctions are annulled.   When Zhiyi says, “Who is the liberating?  Who is the liberated?” and so on, he does not mean, “All is the purity of the Buddha-nature, which is also for some reason known as the Middle Way, so it is all one, there are no particular entities and no specifically designable entities, so who is liberator and who is liberated?  There are no such things.”   He means rather that there is still the distinct presence of liberator versus liberated—to negate the reality of these, dissolving all determinate distinctions into an apophatic unconditioned oneness, would simply land us back in the Emptiness of the Two Vehicles or the indeterminable but immanent nature of the Shared Teaching, where nothing at all is ultimately predicable of reality, setting up a conditioned relation of contrast between “there being liberator versus liberated” and “there not being liberator versus liberated,” another iteration of the conditionality (and hence suffering) that pertains to any form of unconditionality that differs in any way from conditionality, insofar as this means excluding something.   There is still samsara versus Nirvana, suffering versus liberation, for exactly the same reason.   But these are reaffirmed now with the realization that each of these roles entails all the others, that each is ambiguously equally all the others, that each is all the others appearing as this—just as the bodhisattvas have appeared as sentient beings or sravakas.   Now that there is also no distinction between the bodhisattvas and those whom they appear as, those others are also equally engaged in the “asness” relation to all other forms, and these bodhisattvas must also appear as those who are unschooled in the ways of asness.   The relation of asness is the relation of undecidability, now applying even to undecidability between asness and non-asness  As such, although the full panoply of conditioned forms is present and indeed indestructible, we can never definitely say which is which, who is who, what is what: the roles are always reversible, indeed always already reversing, already reversed.   It is this reversibility of mutual asness that finally solves the problem of conditionality.

 

But even this thought, which emerges from this immanent structure of negation built into the very negativity of conditionality itself, considered as a particular single thought, one viewpoint among others, is produced as a thought in the conditioned mind, and though in its “who is X, who is non-X?” this perspective has reached the point where nothing is “thinkable” as either any X or any non-X, it itself, as one particular way of thinking as opposed to others, is still counted among what is “thinkable.”   We have not yet got beyond conditionality—because this state of perceiving asness is something described as potentially going on elsewhere and elsewhen, rather than always already going on in the very moment when one is considering this question and learning what Buddhahood means. The Buddha who sees things in this way is someone definitely different from the one learning that this is how the Buddha sees this at this moment when reading this text.   Hence Zhiyi goes on:

 

All these ten dharma-realms, in all their tangled connections, from the shallow to the deep, emerge from the mind.   Although this is all to be classed as belonging to the Innumerable Four Noble Truths 無量四諦of the Mahāyāna, it is still the conceivable.   This is not the focus of our present contemplation.[5]

 

Then he turns to the contemplation of the mind as Inconceivable.  But here too we continue our detailed tour of all forms of conventionally conceived conditioned beings.   He starts by quoting the Avataṃsaka Sūtra’s claim that “The mind is like an artist that creates (造, not 生) the various types of five aggregates…In all the world there is no thing that is not created through the mind.”   What is meant here is not the mind as karmic agent producing actual rebirths into various states by means of its intentions and deeds, but the mind as conceiving and imagining and perceiving these same objects moment by moment, with a stress on the variety signaled by the scriptural phrase 種種五陰: the mind creates “all the various types of five aggregates.”    Here, instead of looking at how a thought produces a rebirth, with each type of thought leading predictably and linearly to one particular outcome, we will have a single mind that “creates” a dizzying diversity of bodies and minds.   These are just the same objects as listed in the “conceivable” section: the five skandhas are the ten realms already described as conceivable, including the Buddha-realm with its experience of inconceivability (which is itself still conceivable, because this inconceivability is contrasted to and different from the conceivable experiences of other sentient beings).   We are now to contemplate the mind as creator of all these different conceivable states, as thinker of the thoughts about those states and about the various minds that create them. That is the Inconceivable Object to be contemplated here as Inconceivable.   What mind is doing this creation?  Not a universal mind serving as an ontological bedrock behind all phenomena.  Rather, the deluded thinking mind of any sentient being—in fact, the mind of the reader considering these words and “creating” all these forms and shapes of being in the imagination while reading.

This is why we here get a much more detailed description of the specific characteristics of each of the ten dharma realms, evoking each in turn, and dwelling on the separate, definite, contrasted, conventional attributes of all these possible states of existence (the aspect of conceptual contrast), but now also delineating what their prior causes are (the aspect of diachronic  succession) and their constituent parts (the aspect of construction through causes).   Buddhahood is described in detail in the same way, as one more state of sentient beings, albeit a very special one. All alike, including Buddahood, have specific aggregates of which they are composed (skandhas), have specific forms of contact with sense data (āyatanas), have specific realms of consciousness (dhātus).    Zhiyi tells us that in the case of the hell-beings, hungry ghosts and animals, these aggregates and sense-contacts and realms of consciousness are all forms of unwholesomeness susceptible to afflictions (āsravāṃ, youlou); in the case of asuras, humans and gods, these are all forms of wholesomeness susceptible to afflictions.  In the case of the Two Vehicles, these are all unsusceptible to afflictions (anāsravāṃ, wulou).  In the case of bodhisattvas, these are all “both susceptible to afflictions and insusceptible to afflictions” (yiyoulou yiwulou 亦有漏亦無漏)  In the case of Buddhas, these are all “neither susceptible to afflictions nor insusceptible to afflictions” (feiyoulou feiwulou 非有漏非無漏 ).[6]   Zhiyi goes on to say that just these “neither-nor” attributes of a Buddha are the eternally dwelling aggregates and sense-contacts and realms of consciousness of Nirvana, quoting the Mahaparinirvanasutra: “By extinguishing impermanent material form, the permanent material form is attained—and the same goes for the other aggregates.”  This is another distinct feature of Buddhahood: this double-negation form of transcending the dichotomy, so that each remains present but both are now subject to the “who is who?” inconceivability, allows us to characterize these neither-nor beings as “Permanent” (and Blissful, Self and Pure).  We are further told that, in contrast to the external appearance, internal nature and material components (相，性，體)  of all other sentient beings, the Buddha has the Buddha-nature as conditioning cause as his appearance, the Buddha-nature as revealing cause as his nature, the Buddha-nature as cause proper as his material.  What are these?  In Zhiyi’s usage, these are all, respectively, all the (karmic) activities of sentient beings of the nine realms, all the (deluded) cognitions of the nine realms, and all the (suffering) material existences of the nine realms—in other words, all sentient existence without exception, and all of its environments.  These are, in the other direction, also identified with the three bodies of the Buddha: the Nirmānakāya, the Samboghakāya, and the Dharmakāya, respectively.   The Buddha’s threefold body is omnipresent, and includes all the suffering bodies and deluded minds of all sentient beings.

This gives a lot of information about Buddhahood, and exactly how it is different from every other state, whether conditioned or unconditioned or both.  But putting it in these terms again lands us in the realm of the “conceivable”: Buddhahood is presented to us definitively different from all these other states—and must needs be, if it is to be defined, conceived, at all.   We have an impasse here: Buddhahood is conceived here precisely the state in which all is inconceivable in the above sense.  It is identified as the state in which nothing is definitively identifiable.  The inconceivability of characteristics that can never apply definitively or exclusively to any one being is applied definitively and exclusively to Buddhahood.  All further attempts to resolve this will simply lead us back through meta-levels of the same circles.   It is for this reason that to reach the “contemplation of the Inconceivable” Zhiyi here introduces the role of the mind: after laying out these distinctions, Zhiyi again asserts that these are all “created by the mind,” which is demonstrated in the very act of walking us through them, asking us to imagine each in turn.  Since all things are empty of inherent characteristics, the defining contrasting characteristics attributed to them come from the provisional positing in which our own minds are engaged: any definitive identity that is attributable to them is due to the mental act of so identifying them, and this act of identification, of naming, is done by our deluded minds, looking for conceivable definitions by setting up contrasts.  We have witnessed this going on in our minds as we have read Zhiyi’s detailed descriptions and contrasts and differentiations, recreating them in our own minds.  We have literally been witnessing this mind of ours “creating” all these contents.

After pointing out that all of these are created by the mind in this way, Zhiyi makes a further claim: that all are “inherently included 具 in the mind” that does this successive creation–indeed in any single thought (nian念) doing this construction at any time, even for a moment.  Importantly, this term nian designates a unit of time and also a unit of experience: a single moment of mentation.  Zhiyi’s thinking here is clarified by his remarks elsewhere in the Mohezhiguan about the three terms for mental function xin 心, yi 意 and shi 識 (SK: citta, manas, vijnana; in English, perhaps mind, thought and consciousness), in the section on the “Samadhi of Enlightened Awareness of Thought (jueyisanmei 覺意三昧)” also in the context of the creation of all dharmas by the mind, more specifically by yi 意, a term that he uses here as roughly equivalent to nian:

Exhausting the source of all dharmas, all are created (zao) by thought. Thus we take thought as the starting point of the description.   Mind (citta, xin 心) refers to the awareness that arises when confronted with an object, whereby it differs from insentient objects like trees and stones.  Thought (manas, yi 意) refers to subsequent mental states‘ calculating and comparative measuring [of objects].  Consciousness (shi 識) refers to completed clear and distinct knowledge [of specific things].  To separate these three phases in this way, however, is to plummet into inverted views of the thinking mind—how could it be called Enlightened Awareness [of thoughts]?  Enlightened Awareness means to comprehend that mind neither contains nor does not contain thought and consciousness, thought neither contains nor does not contain mind and consciousness, and consciousness neither contains nor does not contain mind and thought.[7]

This is what Zhiyi means by “inherent entailment”: it is the relation of “neither sameness nor difference” between any putatively different (or same!) entities, characteristics, aspects, phases of anything.  X inherently entails Y when “Y is neither present nor absent in X,” just as these distinct temporal phases of mental activity neither have each other within themselves nor lack each other within themselves.   This conclusion about all possible determinations is reached through a reductio ad absurdum arguments derived from Madhyamaka thought, as applied to the Three Forms of Dependence. In the above citation, it is applied to Diachronic Succession of three phases of thought, the arising of one of which depends upon the prior occurrence of the other, for it is in the meditator’s contemplation of his own mind that this weird situation is to some extent directly observable: the present phase is experienced as present only because of its contrast to the past and future phases, but this contrast must itself occur in the present, which means the other phases must be in some sense available in the present to serve as comparisons.  Yet the three phases cannot be identically present, because then there would be no contrast either.  They can neither be within nor not within each other—what Zhiyi calls their mutual “entailment.”  Bare awareness (phase 1) is succeeded by groping comparative attention (phase 2) which is succeeded by conclusive identifications (phase 3).  And yet awareness must be gropingly compared and attended to and conclusively identified as awareness to be experienced as such; groping comparative attention must be an object of awareness and also identified to be experienced as groping attention; and conclusive identification must itself be an object of awareness and groping comparative attention to be identified as such. The presence of each state requires all three to be present, and yet they must be different from one another to be present at all.  Logically, the prior state cannot coexist within the latter state that arises from it, for that would mean no arising has occurred at all.  Phase 1 cannot be “inside” phase 2.   But neither can phase 1 be “outside” of phase 2, with no overlap or point of contact, for then it would be unable to act as its cause: phase 2 cannot be arising in dependence on something which is not there.  Attempts to evade this blunt paradox of an inconceivable “neither within nor without” with something more concretely conceivable, by specifying that phase 1 exists partially within phase 2, or only in a part of phase 2, or that only the “disposition” of phase 2 exists in phase 1, or only at the interface between the two, or arises from some third thing which is not phase 1 but is left behind by phase 1, can easily be seen to simply kick the can down the road and create the same problem at the newly specified level, as Zhiyi explores in exhaustive detail in the “Pofabian 破法遍” section of the Mohezhiguan.   Does this third thing, whatever it may be, coexist or not coexist with the other two?  Does the disposition for the first phase exist or not exist in first phase?   Neither is possible, according to this line of thought.   The same applies, mutatis mutandis, for the other two forms of Provisional Positing: the dependence relation that is necessary for the appearance of any posit is shown to be impossible if the relata are either the same or different.

Finally, after telling us that the mind creates all these determinate contents, and then that it “inherently entails” them,  Zhiyi goes further: he says that “just the mind is all dharmas, and all dharmas are the mind.”  (秖心是一切法。一切法是心)    We thus have a progression of three forms here, just as we did in the three forms of Provisional Positing: first mind creates, then mind entails, finally mind is all dharmas.  To some extent we can collate these two triads: X acts as external cause leading to Y, X as cause always having some form within (and not within) it such that Y is itself a diachronically transformed new form of X which continues to have Y within (and not within) it, and finally X is Y and Y is X.    Crucially, here too we have a progression from the relatively easily grasped to the more outlandishly paradoxical, where a further thinking-through of each step leads to the revelation that it also entails the next: succession in time turns out to imply a relation of conditioning of the latter by the prior, then one-way conditioning turns out to imply a mutual conditioning, then this mutual conditioning turns out to imply mutual entailment as being neither within nor not-within each other, and finally this turns out to be the very meaning of mutual identity of the two terms precisely in and as their mutual contrast.

But here this is not merely presented as a logical exercise; the point of the present contemplation is to observe this directly in meditation practice, which is meant to provide something more than this dry “ neither/nor” conceptual apophasis.  The point is not to lead to an abstract impasse of conceivability that leaves us with a blankness prohibiting all characteristics, with nowhere to go.  Rather, Tiantai practice is an exercise in an even more concrete apprehension of this realm of the inconceivable.  What is it like to experience all things, but to experience them as neither same nor different from one another? What it is like to experience the world as a Buddha does?  It turns out to be a quite concrete phenomenological experience, available at all times as already always going on in every moment of mental activity: it is just what is already happening in each moment of sentience of every sentient being, and can be observed as such, once any such moment is observed closely enough.   This is why the second form of provisionality and dependence, diachronic succession, is especially highlighted here, for this is the one that is most evidently operative in the ordinary stream of impermanent conscious experiences.   We have imagined each of these various states in succession, one following and replacing another, an instance of the Provisional Positing of Diachronic Succession.  In doing so, we have been defining them according to these contrasts, the Provisional Positing of Mutual Contrast.  What will be revealed here is that these are also readable as the Provisional Positing of Construction Through Causes: the moment is not made what it is only through its dependence on othernesses that preceded and succeeded it, or only through its conceptual contrast to the othernesses that negate it, but also through its constitution by othernesses that compose it, that are the elements of which it is made, and which can be perceived to be alternate names for itself, as in the case of a pillar and its constituent particles, or water and ice.  Water and ice initially appear to be mutually external: we define the ice floating in the water as the solid bits contrasted to the watery bits all around it, or preceding and succeeding it when frozen and melted.   But the ice will turn out to be made entirely of what seemed to oppose it, surround it, define it through their contrast: it is itself made of water, and always has been.   It is its own definitional externality and opposite.  It is not necessary to melt the ice into the water here, as in the “analytic emptiness” 析空of the Two Vehicles.  It can be seen to be water, its own opposite, right now, solid as it is: a skilled observer, a Buddha or meditator, can see the marks of water right here in the marks of the ice, just as a fortune teller, to use Zhiyi’s own metaphor, is allegedly able to see the characteristics of the future in the present character of a person’s face.  What are these characteristics?  Those borne by the very defining contrast between the two, which carries the marks of both.  The apprehension of the solidity of the ice is dependent on the apprehension of its not being the liquidity of the water that surrounds it.  The apprehension of either is the apprehension of both.   The same goes for the distinction between this moment of experience and all the opposed moments that precede and succeed it, the objects from which it distinguishes itself, the contrasting realities that it recognizes as not itself.   These contrasts have to also occur at a time when both of the contrasted elements to be defined are present for comparison.  This means X and non-X must be in some sense copresent in a single moment of experiencing something as X, even if this is precisely what is obscured by experiencing it as X.  Just as the fortune teller is allegedly able to sees the characteristics of a person’s future right there in the character of her present face, the Buddha sees all the characteristics of future Buddhahood when he looks at the present characteristics of any sentient being, indeed at any moment of sentience, which is why, in the Lotus Sutra, he gives the assurance of future Buddahood to everyone he meets.  All those attributes of Buddahhood are actually and observably there, though unseen in usual experience; they can be seen by a skilled observer, in this case by a Buddha.  That is what a Buddha is: someone who sees not merely the potential but the actual characteristics and activities of Buddhahood in everyone he meets.

We are asked first to have faith in the Buddha’s word about this, and then given a meditation procedure for coming to see it for ourselves, in which we are to endeavor to have this Enlightened Awareness of each thought as “inherently entailing” and further as “identical to” all these non-apparent future and past and contrasted and opposite states.   How?   Zhiyi compares the relation between the momentary thought and all its contents, all the phenomena it apprehends and defines itself against, to the relation of any process (i.e., any impermanent “thing”) to the aspects or phases of its arising, abiding, changing and perishing.  This provides an immediate and intuitive model for the key Tiantai notion of full identity-as-difference, full difference-as-identity: it is presented as a question of what philosophers of perception nowadays sometimes call “aspect change.”  What we regard as “the changing thing” can also be regarded as “the phases of change,” and vice versa.   The changing thing is neither prior to nor posterior to its changes, nor are the changes prior or posterior to the changing thing.   As Zhiyi remarks, if either were prior to the other, and therefore independent of the other, it would mean that the changes did not alter the thing, that the changing thing from beginning to end involved no undergoing of change, which is impossible.   For if the changing thing were prior to its arising and perishing, it would not be affected by the arising and perishing and thus would be arise; but if the arising and perishing were prior to the changing thing, if the changing thing were a separate product of the phases of its transformation, if the changes produced a process which was other than the changes, these changes would not be the changes that changed the changing thing and we would have to then look at another set of changes to find out whether the changing thing had undergone the change that constitutes it—and the same question would then be applied again there.   “The changing thing” is just another name for “the change undergone by the thing,” and vice versa.   They name the same referent.   The key line states this explicitly: 秖物論相遷，秖相遷論物.  This means, “It is just the thing that we describe as the passing of these aspects, it is just the passing of the aspects that we describe as the thing.”[8]    Analogously, “one momentary mental event” (the experiencer contrasted to the experience) and “its entire experienced world” (its experiences, including all it imagines or conceives) are two names for the same thing, two alternate descriptions of the same event.  They are fully identical and fully reversible, being only two synonyms for the same thing, two senses of one referent. But the two senses are themselves synonyms, like the equilaterality and equiangularity of a triangle.   It is not only that every equilateral triangle is also equiangular; to be equilateral is necessarily to be also describable in this alternate way, i.e., as equiangular.  The alterity is built in to what it is, necessarily.  A moment of experience is necessarily alternately describable as the experiencing and the experienced.  It is not merely that the experiencer possesses or includes or produces his experiences, or vice versa.   Nor can we say that “there is only experiencing, and no experienced,” or “there is only the experienced, and no experiencing.”    Rather, both are unmistakably present and unmistakably distinct, for they are determinately posited by their very difference from one another.   But they are at the same time, right before us, impossible to disentangle, even in their distinctness.   Both must be present, and they must be different from each other to be there at all, but which is which?

This is precisely what “identity” between seemingly mutually exclusive things, usually denoted with the copula 即, means in Tiantai contexts.  This undecidable identity of ostensible opposites maintains their opposition at all points, like the two sides of the Mobius strip; there is at every point a back and a front, but each side also turns out to be none other than the other side when tracked fully: they are two but one, one but two.  This is the Inconceivability noticed here, in the specific instance of the relation of everyday thinking, nay perceiving, nay fantasizing consciousness to its thoughts, perceptions and fantasies.  The Inconceivability is the result of simply describing what a moment of experience is like.  The inconceivability, usually the description of Emptiness, is directly present to be experienced in the deluded and conventional fantasizing consciousness and its relation to any conventionally imagined world as such.   Ordinary mental activity, contemplated closely, turns out to always already have been doing what Buddhahood does: always being in a state of multiplicity that is two but one, one but two: the inconceivable modality of “here they are, distinct and particular, but who is who?  which is which?”

 

The great Tang dynasty Tiantai exegete Zhanran clarifies what this amounts to, in his rather different language, in his Jingangpi, explaining what the Avatamsaka Sutra means when it says “There is no difference between one’s own mind, all sentient beings, and Buddhahood.”  The key is the concept of “pervasion” or “omnipresence” (bian 遍). This is the characteristic of “the Nature” 性, which is another name for the Non-Exclusive Middle of the Three Truths.  As we’ve seen, this Middle, as realized through the Emptiness of all three forms of Provisional Positing, is what effects the mutual absorption and mutual entering of all mutually defining pairs of opposites, which in this case is the pair of self and other between our deluded selves and Buddhahood.  In thinking of, thinking up, creating the idea of Buddhahood as we did above through contrast after contrast, this deluded conditioned mind mutually absorbs and mutually enters and mutually entails that Buddhahood, and is further reversibly identical with the Buddhahood it has imagined.    Zhanran speaks of this nature of the deluded mind and of the Buddha, the reversible Middle between them, as what “omnnipresently creates, omnipresently transforms, omnipresently includes” everything.   But omnipresence, as he clarifies, itself already actually implies also inclusive entailment, when fully thought through: if there were anything that this Middle, this Nature, did not include, that thing would be outside of it, and it therefore would not be truly omnipresent.   If the pervading entity which is everywhere present were different from, outside of, the things “in” which it was present, or which were present “in” it, it would not be true omnipresence—it would have an inside and an outside.  Therefore whatever it includes must be included at its every locus.  It cannot be divided into mutually external parts.  It is, he says, “like space, having no insides or outsides.” [9]  Therefore it is not only present where both delusion and Buddhahood are present, but both delusion and Buddhahood must be present wherever it is.  The same applies for all possible conditioned states without exception—the 3000 worlds present at every locus.

There is another thing, besides this Nature, the Middle, which has this characteristic of having no inside or outside: the deluded mind.  Hence Zhanran says, “The mind of each and every sentient being mind is all-pervasive, as is the nature of each; the mind of each includes all, as does the nature, omnipresent like space.”   心遍性遍，心具性具，猶如虛空。 There is a contrast here between the mind and the nature; they are not synonyms, but rather an opposed pair.   In one sense, it is just in being restricted as opposed to the omnipresence of the nature that the mind has the same logical omnipresence as any other Empty Provisional Positing of Mutual Contrast.  But in another sense, the deluded mind is unique: its omnipresence can be directly observed at all times, albeit in a highly distorted form.   When the true nature of the mind is seen, it is recognized as the true nature of all things, the Non-exclusive Middle of the Three Truths, and thus pervades and includes all things.  But even before that happens, even in its natural state, the mind in particular has the peculiar phenomenological property of appearing to itself as pervading and including all its contents.   The deluded mind pervades and includes, as the Nature does, but it does so in a specifically distorted way, forefronting some elements and backgrounding others, through attachment to some portion of its contents as the self and some other parts as other.   This just means that mind in its delusion, to itself, can be observed to have no outside (whatever registers as outside to it is ipso facto, as recognized, inside it) and no inside either (no single stable content is always there).   Tiantai practice is to see this omnipresence and all-inclusion of the mind for what it is, its real nature, thereby correcting its distortion—but in this case, that means just confirming its original prejudice about itself (its omnipresence and all-inclusion) but in a surprising way that undermines its original sense (in this way, it is just like what happens at the theoretical level to the sravakas in the Lotus Sutra: they truly are “voice-hearers” and “worthy of offerings”—but in ways beyond the wildest imagination of what they took those epithets to mean originally).    This is done by contemplating this deluded mind’s inherent inclusion of the Buddhaood it is itself imagining, of the imagined Buddha mind that sees my mind as Buddhahood.   Hence Zhanran continues:

 

 

….Once we understand this omnipresence of the nature, we recognize that the fruition of Buddhahood includes the nature of the causes of Buddahood [i.e., the contrasting states of non-Buddhahood, both of that Buddha’s own past and all the unenlightened actions and thoughts of sentient beings who have not yet become Buddhas] of both that Buddha himself and all others, and that my own [deluded] mind includes all the virtues of the fruition of Buddhahood of all Buddhas. From the position of this fruition, when a Buddha contemplates all of this with the Buddha-wisdom and the Buddha-eye, he sees everywhere only Buddhahood and no deluded sentient beings.  While still in the position of the causes of Buddhahood, as a deluded sentient being, if we contemplate with the ultimate wisdom and the ultimate eye, our vision fuses completely with this viewpoint, so that for us too all sentient beings are seen to be Buddhahood, and there is no separate Buddha besides: outside of deluded sentient beings there is no other Buddha. Conversely, when sentient beings take all this up as mediated by attachment to self, there is no Buddha anywhere, only deluded sentient beings.  But if even a beginner is able to have faith in the teachings and aspire to their principle, for him too there are no deluded sentient beings anywhere, only Buddhahood. In terms of negation, there are neither sentient beings nor Buddhas.  In terms of affirmative disclosure, the differences of cause and effect, sentient beings and Buddhas, are all distinctly present…Thus when any single Buddha achieves the Way, everything in the entire Dharma-realm without exception is instantly this Buddha’s non-dual self-and-environment.  This is true for a single Buddha, and all the more so for all Buddhas.  Sentient beings are naturally of themselves existing within the self-and-environment of the Buddha, and yet when these beings encounter differences of suffering and bliss, rising and falling, they in every case deludedly imagine it to be undergone by merely their own body and environment.  Their defilement and purity are thus as we see, formed and destroyed on account of this.[10]

 

Whatever misadventure or perverse thought occurs in your deluded experience is also something going on in and as the life of the Buddha, seen by him non-dually as his own inalienable essential self—and yet even the Buddha is just something dreamed up in one’s own deluded mind by piling conditioned contrast upon conditioned contrast.  What makes the inconceivability of Buddhahood not merely contrasted to conceivability, as in the first section discussed above (and thus itself ultimately merely conceivable, conditioned, suffering) is the mutual inclusion effected by the function of the Middle, the Mobius strip of distinction and mutual inclusion between any two opposites defined by their mutual exclusivity.  In this case, the two opposites are my own deluded mind and the enlightened Buddha, defined by their complete difference from one another.  When I think about the Buddha whom I am not, delineating the characteristics of Buddhahood explicitly in contrast to myself, as the unconditioned that is wholly unlike my state of conditionality, as the inconceivable as against my state of conceivability, as the experiencer of the world qua “who? what?” as opposed to my attachment to specifically attributable identities, it is precisely this contrast, this mutual exclusion, that discloses our identity to one another.  To think through what it is to be my crappy conditioned suffering self is to imagine, via these constitutive contrasts, the idea of a Buddha, which is to imagine myself to be viewed by that Buddha as a Buddha.  A Buddha is a being who views me simultaneously as ambiguously all of the following progressively stacked determinations: 1) a suffering impermanent conditioned being, 2) already Nirvanic and free of suffering in my Empty nature, 3) suffering from my attachment to the conditioned dichotomy between these two, 4) compassionately encompassing both of these two and manifesting as both so as to liberate beings from the suffering of the dichotomy, and 5) the Permanence, Bliss, Selfhood and Purity of “Who is who?” which thereby sees all of these–seer and seen, liberator and sufferer– simultaneously and ambiguously as his own ambiguous self.  Every thought I think and every move I make exemplifies all five of these, and the Buddhahood sees all as synonymous.  He sees me as not merely a part or an expression or an aspect of Buddhahood, but also as synonym for Buddhahood, one of the infinite alternate names for the unnameable-nameable, the inconceivable-conceivable sometimes called Buddhahood.  I am to be experienced as not merely my unsavory present self but also all the contrasted pasts and futures and elements and othernesses that I am not.  The point is to show that the mind that produces these various viewpoints is itself intersubsumptive with all these (deluded, thinkable) thoughts, including the wholly conditioned and ignorant and conceivable notion of Buddha as other who views in terms only of the inconceivable “who? what?” perspective,  and with the viewpoints it produces: it is viewed by its own thought as much as it views its own thought.  In viewing itself as viewed by the view that views it as absolute, and as intersubsuming all other perspectives, it experiences this same absolute “who?” with respect to its own experience.   My viewing of the Buddha that my mind produces is the Buddha viewing me, produced by his own mind, for my mind produces the thought of the Buddha thinking of other sentient beings, including me, producing them with his mind as I produce him producing them with mine.

So in a sense I produce the Buddha and the Buddha produces me.  Myself-producing-Buddha-and-world and Buddha-producing-myself-and-world and world-producing-myself-and-Buddha are here inevitable involuntary by-products of simply being a conditioned being, which precisely as such, in identifying anything at all, in assuming an identity opposed to another identity, is always engaged in “producing” its negations, and the negations of those negations. When a sentient being thinks of a Buddha, he thinks of the Buddha seeing himself and all other sentient beings, and every moment of their sentient experience including this one, as his own thought.  Thinking of a buddha thinking of me and all other sentient beings each thinking of a buddha and of all other sentient beings, each irresistibly flowing out in all directions into all that is other to itself due to their very nature as limited to themselves, is both the Buddha thinking of me and me thinking of the Buddha—but it is also all sentient beings, indeed every moment of sentient experience, experiencing every other moment of sentient experience.  My purposefully taking up the intention to think of a Buddha is a deluded desire that overflows into what it does not intend, because like all entities it is essentially also what it is not.   My intending the buddha intending me and all other sentient beings is also the buddha and all other sentient beings intending me and each other.     Right now I am not a Buddha.  By practicing certain Buddhist practices, I will become a Buddha someday.  But even right now, the core of my practice is to simply to see clearly “my deluded self qua deluded.”  This itself is a way of making manifest “enlightened Buddha as opposed to my deluded self”—and in the Mohezhiguan section outlined above, we are asked to explicitly think of this being in detail, and of this opposition, this distinction from myself.  In doing so, however, I come to recognize that contemplating “my deluded self as opposed to a Buddha” and contemplating “an enlightened Buddha as opposed to my deluded self” are one and the same contemplation seen from two opposite sides: in both cases, I am engaging the thought of “my deluded self and an enlightened Buddha, defined through their mutual contrast.”   In this copresence, I am learning that the way the Buddha sees this contrast is to recognize my deluded self as a non-dual aspect of his own being, in the precise modality of “which is which?”   This body and mind which I am may continue to be deluded and evil, in which case there will definitely be unpleasant consequences for this body and mind.  But from the Buddha’s point of view, which I am now also experiencing as I contemplate my own delusion in contrast, those deluded and evil acts of this body and mind are non-dual aspects of his own self and environment, simultaneously evil deeds that harm others and myself, and upayas that liberate others and myself, and finally, directly the Permanent, Blissful Selfhood and Purity of his own eternal Buddhahood, which pervade everything and entail everything.  My stupidity itself, as he sees it, is what is omnipresently creating, omnipresently transforming, and omnipresently including all other entities.   Zhanran mentions two practices here: I can either see this with wisdom, through philosophical comprehension and meditation, or simply accept it in faith, thinking the thought of the Buddha the seeing me as a Buddha.  Then there are no sentient beings, only Buddhahood, which likewise means there is no separate Buddha outside of all sentient beings.  Even if I were (per impossibile) to remain evil forever, I would still be this Buddha, which I experience by experiencing the Buddha (in my imaginative faith, or in my rational wisdom) who experiences me as such: just by thinking about the Buddha.  But Tiantai accepts the claim of the Lotus Sutra that I will in fact myself “be” a Buddha someday—yet when that happens, what it will mean is that I will no longer see definitely myself as the one who has become a Buddha: casting my Buddha-eye over all that exists, I will see it all in the modality of “which is which?” –who is the liberator, who is the liberated?   I will see every other sentient being as an equally viable answer to this question, an equally likely candidate for the one who is the one being the Buddha and seeing everyone else as Buddhas right now.

A Buddha is a conditioned sentient being who has gone on to realize the nature of his own conditionality, and of conditionality as such, as something that intersubsumes with unconditionality, and thence with all other conditioned entities, in a relation of compassion.   The existence of this being is stipulated not as the source of the world, but as a necessarily thinkable thought in negative response to a negative response to the world—a very low bar indeed.  So we have a maximal imaginative engagement with all forms of possible difference, and then—punchline!—the collapsing of all of them into their presence, first as created manifestly and then as inherently included even when not manifested through such creation—in and as the present moment of experience.   To see our own mental activity this way is to see it as a Buddha sees it—that is, to see it as experiencing what it is like to be a Buddha.   That means, again, to be experiencing all these diverse contents, in all their contrasted identities, but without the categories of sameness or difference: there are me and you, there are demons and buddhas, there are sufferings and joys, but which is which, who is who?   That is what a Buddha is, that is who a Buddha is.   To put it in the form of a Chan-like gongan: “Q: What is Buddha?   Who is Buddha?   A: ‘What’ is Buddha.  ‘Who’ is Buddha.”   As the Chan cliché claims, it is indeed the one asking the question that is the answer to the question: this mind is itself Buddha—but who is that one.  That one is who?

[1] T9.7a.

[2] T46.62a ff.

[3] This is to be kept in mind when considering Zhiyi’s application of his metaphors for this identity.   In the Jinguangmingjing xuanyi, for example, in making his most outlandish claims about the “identity” between negatives like suffering, delusion, and karma on the one hand, and the ultimate realization of Buddhahood on the other, he has this to say: “The Mahaparinirvana Sutra says, ‘Ignorance and attachment are two: what lies in the Middle between them is called the Buddha-nature.’  What lies in the Middle between them is the path of suffering.  When we here name Suffering as itself the Buddha-Nature, naming the body of birth-and-death as precisely the Dharma-Body, it is just as if one were to refer to ice as water 如指氷為水爾.   … When we name Delusion as itself Prajna-Wisdom, it is just like referring to firewood as fire 如指薪為火爾.   …   We say all unwholesome Karmic deeds are the attributes of Liberation, just as one might refer to entanglement as release 如指縛為脫爾.   We must understand that in themselves these Three Paths are Permanent, Blissful, Selfhood and Purity, and thus they are none other than the Three Virtues of Nirvana [i.e., Dharma-body, wisdom and liberation].”  大經云。無明與愛是二中間名為佛性。中間即是苦道。名為佛性者。名生死身為法身。如指氷為水爾。煩惱道者。謂無明愛取名此為般若者。如指薪為火爾。業道者。謂行有乃至五無間。皆解脫相者。如指縛為脫爾。當知三道體之即真常樂我淨。與三德無二無別。(T39.2c) The metaphors used here for this identity become progressively more counterintuitive and even outrageous: it’s relatively easy to see how ice, being made of water, can be called a form of water, a bit more puzzling to say fire “is” the firewood it arises from and destroys, and completely bizarre to say entanglement “is” release from this entanglement.   But these illustrate, respectively, the three forms of Provisional Positing just discussed: the identity entailed by 1) Construction Through Causes (ice and water, where the ice is made of water, with which it is surrounded and into which it may melt), 2) the Provisional Positing of Diachronic Succession (firewood and fire, where one is the necessary condition of the other that succeeds it), and the Provisional Positing of Mutual Contrast (entanglement and liberation, which are defined precisely by their mutual exclusivity).    Since, as we’ve seen, determinacy as such is seen as ambiguous, as determinacy-indeterminacy, each determination is merely virtual, and is equally readable as any other virtual entity, each of these must be read as entailing all three.  A thing’s relation to its own constituent elements is thus just like its relation to its own constitutive contrasts, so that mutual exclusivity is just like mutual inclusion, and vice versa—in both cases fully different and fully identical, in the manner of the two sides of a Mobius strip: everywhere opposed in one sense, everywhere mutually inclusive in another sense, where these two different “senses” are also in one sense opposed and in another sense mutually inclusive, and so ad infinitum.  This means we are always able to legitimately refer to the very thing, as it is now, as the other–not merely as something that changes into the other at a different time, or presently being liable (“having the disposition”) to change into the other under the right conditions, or being merely coextensive but distinct aspects, or of being merely mutually dependent dispositions to change into one another under the right conditions.  All of these are indeed so (they are indeed distinct coextensive aspects, they do indeed change into one another at different times, they do indeed depend on one another, they do indeed presently possess the ability to change into one another), but the point of Zhiyi’s emphatic equations is to show that in being so, the two opposites are also simultaneously simply referable as each other in the present and without qualification—and that this is a preferable way of describing the case in some (advanced) instances (i.e., in the Perfect Teaching redescriptions of things like transformations of state and possession of unmanifest nature observed and registered in the Tripitaka, Shared and Separate teachings).

[4] Mohezhiguan, T46.51c ff.   一觀心是不可思議境者.  此境難說。先明思議境。令不思議境易顯。思議法者。小乘亦說心生一切法。謂六道因果三界輪環。若去凡欣聖則棄下上出灰身滅智。乃是有作四諦。蓋思議法也。大乘亦明心生一切法。謂十法界也。若觀心是有有善有惡。惡則三品三途因果也。善則三品脩羅人天因果。觀此六品無常生滅。能觀之心亦念念不住。又能觀所觀悉是緣生。緣生即空。並是二乘因果法也。若觀此空有墮落二邊沈空滯有。而起大慈悲入假化物。實無身假作身。實無空假說空。而化導之。即菩薩因果法也。觀此法能度所度。皆是中道實相之法。畢竟清淨。誰善誰惡。誰有誰無。誰度誰不度。一切法悉如是。是佛因果法也。

 

[5] 此之十法邐迆淺深皆從心出。雖是大乘無量四諦所攝。猶是思議之境. 非今止觀所觀也.

 

[6] The distinction between bodhisattvas and Buddhas is especially relevant here.  This is itself an important clarification about what Buddhas are: just like bodhisattvas, they differ from the Two Vehicles in being not insusceptible to afflictions, but also differ from the six realms of samsara in that they are also not susceptible to afflictions.  Bodhisattvas and Buddhas are both defined by their contrast to and negation of the dichotomy between susceptibility and insusceptibility to afflictions; the only difference between them is that this is phrased in the former case in terms of a double affirmation, and in the latter of a double negation.  What then is the defining contrastive difference between these two, bodhisattvas and Buddhas, in spite of this shared overcoming of the dichotomy? It follows the contours laid out in the “Conceivable” section above.  The bodhisattvas overcome this dichotomy by including both of the two sides, though each of the two is still what it is: susceptibility is susceptibility, insusceptibility is insusceptibility, but the bodhisattva himself participates in both, as we saw above.  He is susceptible to afflictions in that he subjects himself to them in his compassionate transformations to liberate sentient beings; he is unsusceptible to them in that he does this willingly and deliberately, as a salvific device, with full consciousness, following along with the delusions of sentient beings and allowing himself to be affected by them while also standing aloof in his knowledge of the truth that these delusions are ultimately unreal and cannot ultimately harm him.  These two aspects, though inseparable in the bodhisattvas practices, are themselves perfectly distinct qua aspects.  The bodhisattva embodies the Middle (the “exclusive Middle,” in technical Tiantai language) that enables, participates in and encompasses both the extreme of Emptiness (accommodating the Two Vehicles) and the extreme of conditioned existence (accommodating the six realms of samsara), thus remaining himself a third thing unrestricted to either, something beyond both extremes.   The double negative replaces the double affirmative in the case of a Buddha.  This is because a Buddha, in contrast, overcomes this dichotomy by negating the definite identity of both alternatives, even as identifiably distinct “aspects”: susceptibility itself is not definitively susceptibility, insusceptibility itself is not definitively insusceptibility: neither the participation in the Emptiness of the Two Vehicles nor in the conditioned existence of the six realms of samsara is simply what it seems to be simpliciter, neither of the two is identifiable without also revealing itself to be just as much the opposite extreme.  We are in the realm of the “who? which?” discussed above: given the mutually determinative provisional positing of mutual contrast, which is susceptibility, which is insusceptibility?  This also means that the Buddha’s position is not something above and beyond the two extremes: inasmuch as the two extremes are defined in contrast to the Middle, we have another provisional positing through mutual contrast, and here again the identities ipso facto get shuffled into each other.  The two extremes and the mediating middle are all identifiable as themselves only to the extent that they are equally identifiable as the other two members of this triad.  This is the “non-exclusive Middle, and it tells us what we should understand by Zhiyi’s use of the term “inconceivable”: not definable as one as opposed to the other, since every conception of a determination reverses into the opposite determination in contrast to which it was originally determined.

[7] T46.14b.  窮諸法源皆由意造。故以意為言端。 對境覺知異乎木石名為心。次心籌量 名為意。了了別知名為識。如是分別墮心想見倒中。豈名為覺。覺者。了知心中非有 意亦非不有意。心中非有識亦非不有識。意中非有心亦非不有心。意中非有識。亦非 不有識。識中非有意亦非不有意。識中非有心亦非不有心。心意識非一故立三名。非 三故說一性。若知名非名則性亦非性。非名故不三非性故不一。非三故不散非一故不 合。不合故不空不散故不有。非有故不常非空故不斷。若不見常斷終不見一異。若觀 意者則攝心識。一切法亦爾。

 

[8] My translation.  Swanson’s translation (p. 816) possibly obscures this point, without entirely losing it: “It is just that things are said to change by passing through these aspects, and these aspects are said to occur to things.”

[9] Zhanran, Jingang’pi. T46.784b.

 

[10] T46.784c.  一一有情心遍性遍。心具性具猶如虛空。彼彼無礙彼彼各遍。身土因果無所增減。。。。我心彼彼眾生一一剎那。無不與彼遮那果德身心依正。自他互融互入齊等。我及眾生皆有此性故名佛性。其性遍造遍變遍攝。…。了性遍已則識佛果具自他之因性。我心具諸佛之果德。果上以佛眼佛智觀之。則唯佛無生。因中若實慧實眼冥符。亦全生是佛無別果佛。故、生外無佛。眾生以我執取之。即無佛唯生。初心能信教仰理亦無生唯佛。亡之則無生無佛。照之則因果昭然。…  故一佛成道法界無非此佛之依正。一佛既爾諸佛咸然。眾生自於佛依正中。而生殊見苦藥升沉。一一皆計為己身土。淨穢宛然成壞斯在。