Sunday, January 3rd, 1982

CLASS at Wisdom's Goldenrod, Hector, NY

with Anthony Damiani (AD)

January 3, 1982

BUDDHISM; BODHICITTA

TOPIC: Buddhism

SUBJECT: Bodhicitta

SUBSUBJECT: Four Schools

CONTENTS:

Bodhicitta is a reflex in the human heart of the Dharmakaya

Revulsion is not the same as bodhicitta

Gotra same as bodhicitta

Differences in four schools' use of the term 'bodhicitta', need all of them to get full picture

Four schools' (and Logicians') perspectives on bodhicitta

Correlating schools and levels of cosmos

BOOKS READ FROM OR REFERENCED:

• D.T. Suzuki, Outlines of Mahayana Buddhism

• Arya Maitreya, Aryasanga, The Sublime Science of the Great Vehicle to Salvation, Being a Manual of Buddhist Monism, tr. E. Obermiller

RETYPED AND REFORMATTED by IT 2021

NOTES:

• RETYPED PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT (hence V10). From 1982 0103-06R16.PDF. THERE ARE NO AUDIO CASSETTE TAPES EXTANT.

• All spelling, punctuation and capitalization errors have been corrected, all numbers spelled out.

• A) = Anthony Damiani.

• We are missing the last page/pages of this partial transcript.

1982 01/03 at Wisdom's Goldenrod

Buddhism; Bodhicitta

[File 1982 0103-06R16.PDF Begins]

1/3/82

Buddhism--Bodhicitta

References, 1) Suzuki, Outlines of Mahayana

2) The Sublime Science, Maitreya

1) The bodhicitta is a reflex in the human heart of the Dharmakaya. In other words it is a reflection in the human heart of the Intellectual Principle. The bodhicitta is an expression of the Dharmakaya, although finitely and fragmentarily realized in us. Is the bodhicitta an emanation, an illusion, or an actual split-off fraction of the Intellectual Principle that will become manifest in the human body?

Nagarjuna states that it is free from determination, not included in the five skandhas, the twelve ayatanas, or the eighteen dhatus. It is universal, self-essence, transcendental…highest essence. It creates the individual means of salvation. It is incorporeal and is the source of all virtues. It forever remains free from birth and death.

He seems to be speaking of the virtues of the soul. Suzuki states that the bodhicitta is a reflex in the human heart of the Dharmakaya. He does not then go on to clearly explain the distinction between this individual essence and the Dharmakaya.

We can see this distinction clearly in Plotinus. He speaks of the soul in the Intellectual Principle that remains steadfast, and then from that soul a light is emanated. This light is what gets incarnated, it is not identical with the Intellectual Principle. Its source is the soul in the I.P. [Intellectual Principle] but it is not the same as the I.P.

A common usage of the term bodhicitta is in reference to what is called the revulsion. It is felt that this correlation is incorrect. Revulsion is not the same as the bodhicitta. Revulsion is when a person goes through an inner psychological change from attending to external events to looking inward. It is a reversal, a conversion called the jewel, the turning point. They say it is the means by which one attains enlightenment. It is the manas in the moment of inner reversal. We would comment by saying that the manas is the way you will know the conversion, it is not the power effecting the transformation. The description of the manas in this context is the place where this revulsion occurs, not the source of it.

The term gotra is used in the text by Maitreya to depict what seems to be the same idea as the bodhicitta.

We will see how all four schools use the term with slight variations depending on that school's presuppositions.

A) [Anthony Damiani] These four points of view cannot be reduced to one point of view. It will take all four to get the whole picture.

Madhyamika. "The central point of this teaching is the fundamental element of Buddhahood. The essence of the Buddha in a living being represents an eternal immutable element which is identical with the monistic absolute, it is unique and undifferentiated in everything that lives."

A) The one that is in each and every one of us is undifferentiated. The Platonic tradition states that the absolute puts its signature in us. This signature is our unity, our 'one-ness'. The One is represented in every living thing. That representation is the imprimatur or the unity of one's own soul. The unity of the soul is the representation of the One, not the working out of that unity into Buddhahood. Each soul contains the entirety of the Intellectual universe within it. That which gives to each and every being its authentic aseity is the One itself. That giving of its aseity is the one in the thing.

How are we to see this fragment of the divine as getting enlightened? Isn't it always in that state? It seems that what we speak of as the process that it goes through would be that of a removal of defilements, blocks…

A) The vehicles are getting refined in relation to the projection of the soul. Ultimately when all these principles from Saturn down [Note: Symbol for Saturn with an arrow after it in partial. I substitute the arrow with the word 'down'.] reach a total refinement what is produced is a double image of the Intellectual soul.

A) There is the soul in the Intellectual P. [Principle] and this is eternally what it is. It sends out a 'part' of itself. This part must go through a course of evolution where ultimately it reaches a stage of refinement and development so that it can become a vehicle, an image or a double of that soul.

The historical Buddha is not the soul in the Intellectual Principle but it is a vehicle capable of reflecting or being a mouthpiece for that soul.

A) This 'part' of the soul that is emanated is what inhabits the vehicles and is the subject of those vehicles. The subject will accompany the vehicles in the process of refinement until there is a total termination of those processes. In other words until his self-initiative has reached a point where it is matured and acts in accordance with the Intellectual Principle.

The residue of the life experiences must be left behind in something… Nature?

We would say that if you wanted to keep an individual 'storage' within that realm of nature you would have to bring in the heart atom. The bodhicitta could be seen as the same as the heart atom.

One school will say that everything a person experiences is an unfoldment of what is contained germinally in that emanation of the soul. Another will say it is the depository or the receptacle for all the experiences that it goes through in the cosmos. We would like to show how both are true.

The bodhicitta is the whole thread from the Dharmakaya to the physical body, the Nirmanakaya. The Madhyamikas begin their description at the highest level.

In reading the text there seems to be a distinction between how they describe the bodhicitta and how Anthony is describing it. For them it is spoken of as immutable and eternal, for A. [Anthony] it evolves.

The Madhyamikas have two levels of the b.c. [bodhicitta]. One is immutable and the other is like the emanation that Anthony is speaking of. They call them the absolute and the relative bodhicitta. Yogacara. There are two varieties, one with an alaya, and one without.

The first school speaks of the storehouse consciousness as having a governing force, called the gotra.

A) If this principle, the gotra, rules over the transcendental knowledge which will become available to the saint, they are not speaking of the bodhicitta, but something in the Intellectual soul which is determining the course of the bodhicitta. The idea of the storehouse consciousness seems closer to the notion of the b.c. as that which is going through modifications and is retaining and unfolding that which is within it.

When we say that the b.c. is a fragment coming from the I.P. we mean that this germ contains within it all seeds of future development, that is both the subject and the object. The bodhicitta stands transcendental to the subject-object relationship.

Logicians. "The gotra is a force governing the internal basis of cognition, the function is the same as the other school."

This school also speaks of it in terms of a guiding principle but in terms of the mental body rather than the alaya, which is prior to the mental body they speak of. The internal basis of cognition = categories and substance, or form and matter.

The productive imagination + pure perception = a principle unit in the bodhicitta. It is in the process of separation into subject and object that one side becomes the sense manifold and the other the conception by which you understand it.

Both of the schools say that the gotra functions in two ways.

1) as fundamental -- existing in every being from the onset.

2) as that which undergoes the process of development.

A) What he is saying is that there are two aspects of the soul. One called the pure force = a substantial notion. And another active = that portion which it gives forth from itself. If you follow the second one, it is that which will split up to become the subject and object.

"This metamorphosis is produced by the agency of the gotra. It is the force bringing about the transformation of the internal basis of cognition and the storehouse consciousness of the older school into the elements of Buddhahood."

A) Everything is coming from within you. Everything you perceive is a conglomeration, a combination and permutation of all the ingredients contained in you in the bodhicitta.

Vaibhashikas. "The gotra is that element which forms the essential nature of the saint. Among the psychical elements there are three main ones. 1. Absence of desire 2. absence of enmity 3. absence of infatuation. These are the three principle roots of virtue."

A) It seems they are speaking about the excellences in the soul and the way they are going to be transmitted through the b.c. and be revealed in the saint. They wont speak much about the b.c. because it is too subjective a notion for a school that is concerned with objective reality.

Sautrantika. "Admits the existence of a special force governing the element of consciousness, which translates to bija. It belongs to the pure forces and gives origination to the pure transcendental wisdom at the time of enlightenment."

It represents the gotra of the saint and is said to reside with the individual from the outset. For them the force can be annihilated which would make the attainment of enlightenment impossible.

They do hold a subjectivity that evolves through the elements. The bodhicitta is similar to what they call the thread soul, that which holds the continuum together. It is one of the fourteen forces.

A) If you think of what we have done in Plotinus where we have these three pure Hypostases, think of the way they exist in Nature and the way the cosmos and the individual in that cosmos takes place…all on the objective side. Now, if you take any one of those principles for instance…if you take the planetary spheres and the bodies of those spheres, that can be equated to the Vaibhashika school. Then if you expand that and include the reason principles which are combined to produce the embodied powers of the soul, you have the Sautrantika school. If you wanted to bring in the Yogacara. . .

[File 1982 0103-06R16.PDF Ends. We are missing the rest.]