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Birth and Buddha Are Not Two – The Third Gatha
According to the theory of “no-birth, no-separation between Buddha and living beings,” Buddha and living beings are not separate: “without living beings, there can be no Buddha,” just as the lotus cannot bloom without the mud. All things arise from conditions (earth, water, fire, wind, plants, animals…), and the Buddha also contains living beings, suffering, and afflictions that have been transformed. Happiness, enlightenment, and insight are all impermanent and require continued practice by “using suffering, afflictions, and ignorance as the very materials to build enlightenment,” just as the World-Honored One continued to practice walking meditation, sitting meditation, and mindfulness of breathing. When we breathe gently and sit in stillness, “the Buddha breathes with our lungs, sits with our spine,” and there is no longer any boundary between self and others, transcending all dualities.
The Alaya Consciousness (store consciousness) preserves and maintains the seeds of karma, the five sense faculties (eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body), and the physical form. It manifests in two main ways:
- Appropriation – receiving and maintaining the seeds;
- Locality – “emplacement,” the place where body and mind exist.
The entire process of transformation in the Alaya Consciousness is “inconceivable” (asamviditaka), beyond the capacity of words and thought, wondrous like the way children absorb the French language from their environment.
