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4 The Treasure Store Treatise Chapter Two: The Essential Purity of Transcendence and Subtlety
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Two: Essential Purity of Transcendence & Subtlety 193 4 The Treasure Store Treatise Chapter Two: The Essential Purity of Transcendence and Subtlety The first chapter of the Treasure Store Treatise ends with a quotation from the Vimalak%rti-s^tra, proclaiming the purity of a buddha-land to be a function of the purity of one’s own mind. Coming as it does after the literary excursions into the arcane cosmological labyrinth of the first chapter, this short quotation acts as an effective transition to the more classically Mah∂y∂nist concerns of chapter 2. It also introduces one of the major themes of this chapter: that the Way lies not in any particular practice but rather in purity of mind and that this purity of mind is no more and no less than the absence of deluded or discursive thought (wang-hsiang , nien-lü ). “Only when one is free of deluded thought is the Way of transcendence and subtlety revealed” (146b14). Since freedom from discursive mental activity—a state sometimes referred to as “no-mind” (wu-hsin )—is itself the Tao, all words and teachings, insofar as they are products of discrimination, necessarily fall short of the mark. The second chapter repeatedly insists that truth is, in the end, ineffable and that all teachings are merely contingent or expedient means: “Visible things are like shadows, audible things like echoes. Only through shadows and echoes can things be signified, yet this never succeeds in capturing reality. Therefore, the finger is not the moon, and words are not the Way. When the Way is attained, words are forgotten, [just as] the finger is forgotten as soon as the moon is seen” (146b27–c1). As all teachings are mere up#ya, ultimately “verbal explanations are entirely unnecessary, including those pertaining to transcendence and subtlety [i.e., the Treasure Store Treatise itself]” (147a22). The Treasure Store Treatise repeatedly warns of the perils of attachment to language and of 193 194 Treasure Store Treatise the dangers of hypostatizing the absolute and rendering it an object of striving: “In seeking the dharma, there is nothing to be sought. Therefore, one should not harbor desire for the nameless unwrought substance” (146a22–23). And again: “Those who foolishly believe there is something to be grasped or rejected, something to be cultivated or attained, will not enter into true reality” (146b10–12). Deluded thought is precisely that which is attached to existence or nonexistence, and thus the sage does not seek even to “cut off delusion” (pu tuan wang , 156a21). Ignorance is the mind indulging in distinctions, including the distinction between delusion and illumination. “Nothought ” or “no-mind” is precisely the mind that is free from all such judgments. The mind of the sage regards all things as “uniform” (p’ingteng ) and grasps the “nonduality” (pu-erh ) of opposing terms. The chapter concludes with a lengthy discussion of “attributes” (hsiang ) and “nonattributes” (wu-hsiang ), which are subject to a M∂dhyamika-style deconstruction. While the influence of M∂dhyamika dialectic, particularly as mediated through Chinese exegetical works such as the Chao lun, is in ample evidence, the Treasure Store Treatise does not shy away from literary invocations of the absolute—the truth that is beyond all dualities. A variety of rubrics come into play, including “supreme principle” (chihli ), “wondrous principle” (miao-li ), “true one” (chen-i ), “true reality” (chen-shih ), “apex of truth” (chen-chi ), “apex of reality” (shih-chi ), “the Great Way” (ta-tao ), and so on. The Treasure Store Treatise never clearly distinguishes these terms one from the other, presumably because they stand for that which brooks no distinctions. Nevertheless, much of the treatise reads as an ode to the virtues of this something about which nothing can be said. The themes mentioned above are all typical of eighth-century works that have come to be associated with the nascent Ch’an movement. The emphasis on the ineffability of the absolute and the contingent nature of all teachings, the fact that many of the terms used to designate the absolute are of Taoist provenance, and the assertion that the way of the sage lies in the eradication of deluded conceptualization show the intellectual affinity of the Treasure Store Treatise with texts associated with the Northern School and Ox Head traditions. What makes this chapter unique, however, is the fact that much of the discussion is structured around the juxtaposition of two terms: “transcendence” (li ) and “subtlety” (wei ). This terminological [34.203.221.104] Project...