Karma the Field, Consciousness the Seed
The sixth ground's work is to look at dependent arising, and it looks three times. First as agriculture — a field, a seed, water, and a sprout coming up. Then as a set of definitions, term by term, down to what grief and weeping actually are. And then a third time, in a sentence that relocates the whole thing.
The Field
The agricultural image is sustained for six clauses before the links take over, and every part of the farm has an owner-less quality about it — nothing here is being deliberately cultivated by anyone.
復作是念：『凡夫無智，執著於我，常求有、無，不正思惟，起於妄行，行於邪道；罪行、福行、不動行，積集增長，於諸行中植心種子，有漏有取，復起後有生及老死。所謂：業為田，識為種，無明闇覆，愛水為潤，我慢溉灌，見網增長，生名色芽，名色增長生五根，諸根相對生觸，觸對生受，受後希求生愛，愛增長生取，取增長生有；有生已，於諸趣中起五蘊身，名生；生已衰變為老，終歿為死。於老死時，生諸熱惱；因熱惱故，憂愁悲歎，眾苦皆集。此因緣故，集無有集者，任運而滅亦無滅者。』菩薩如是隨順觀察緣起之相。
And they think further: 'Ordinary beings, being without wisdom, cling to a self and constantly seek existence and non-existence; thinking wrongly, they give rise to false formations and walk upon wrong paths — meritorious formations, demeritorious formations, and imperturbable formations, accumulated and increased, planting seeds of mind within those formations, with outflows and with grasping, and so giving rise once more to birth and to old age and death in a further existence. That is to say: karma is the field, consciousness is the seed, ignorance is the covering darkness, craving is the water that moistens, conceit is the flood that irrigates, and the net of views makes it grow. The sprout of name-and-form is born; name-and-form increases and produces the five faculties; the faculties meeting their objects produce contact; contact upon meeting produces feeling; after feeling comes longing, which produces craving; craving increases and produces grasping; grasping increases and produces becoming. And becoming having arisen, a body of five aggregates arises within the destinies, and that is called birth; having been born it declines and alters, and that is old age; and coming to its end, that is death. At the time of old age and death every scalding torment arises; and because of that torment come grief and sorrow, weeping and lament, and all sufferings are gathered together. By these causes and conditions there is a gathering, and yet there is no gatherer; and their ceasing of themselves has no one who ceases either.' Thus does the bodhisattva contemplate, in accord, the characteristics of dependent arising.
集無有集者，任運而滅亦無滅者 — there is a gathering, and yet no gatherer; and their ceasing of themselves has no one who ceases either. The clause is placed at the end of the farming image on purpose. A field implies a farmer, and the whole extended simile has just described sowing, watering, irrigating, and a crop coming up — and then the sūtra removes the one thing the image most strongly implies. The process runs 任運, of its own momentum.
Note what occupies the positions in the simile. The seed is consciousness and the field is karma, but the water is craving and the irrigation is conceit — that is, the things that make the crop grow are precisely the afflictions. Nothing in this agriculture is neutral husbandry; every input is something the practitioner has been working to remove since the second ground.
Term by Term, and Then the Mind
The second pass drops all imagery and defines each link. Its most unusual stretch is at the end, where grief, lament, pain, sorrow and torment are given physical and behavioral definitions rather than doctrinal ones. Then the third pass, which is one of the sūtra's most consequential sentences.
佛子！此菩薩摩訶薩復作是念：『於第一義諦不了故名：無明，所作業果是行，行依止初心是識，與識共生四取蘊為名色，名色增長為六處，根、境、識三事和合是觸，觸共生有受，於受染著是愛，愛增長是取，取所起有漏業為有，從業起蘊為生，蘊熟為老，蘊壞為死；死時離別，愚迷貪戀，心胸煩悶為愁，涕泗諮嗟為歎，在五根為苦，在意地為憂，憂苦轉多為惱。如是但有苦樹增長，無我、無我所，無作、無受者。』復作是念：『若有作者，則有作事；若無作者，亦無作事，第一義中俱不可得。』
Child of the Buddha! This bodhisattva mahāsattva further thinks thus: 'Not comprehending the truth of ultimate meaning is called ignorance; the fruit of the deeds so done is formations; the first mind upon which formations rest is consciousness; the four appropriated aggregates arising together with consciousness are name-and-form; the increase of name-and-form is the six sense-fields; the coming together of the three — faculty, object, and consciousness — is contact; what arises together with contact is feeling; defiled attachment to feeling is craving; the increase of craving is grasping; the deeds with outflows that grasping gives rise to are becoming; the aggregates arising from those deeds are birth; the ripening of the aggregates is old age; the breaking up of the aggregates is death. At the time of death there is separation and parting, and out of foolish delusion and greedy longing the breast is stifled with distress — that is grief; the tears and the sighing are lament; in the five faculties it is pain; in the ground of the intellect it is sorrow; and sorrow and pain grown greater are torment. Thus there is only the growth of a tree of suffering — no self, nothing belonging to a self, no doer, and no one who undergoes.' And they think further: 'If there were a doer, there would be a deed done; if there is no doer, there is no deed done either — and in the ultimate meaning neither of them can be found.'
佛子！此菩薩摩訶薩復作是念：『三界所有，唯是一心。如來於此分別演說十二有支，皆依一心，如是而立。何以故？隨事貪欲與心共生，心是識，事是行，於行迷惑是無明，與無明及心共生是名色，名色增長是六處，六處三分合為觸，觸共生是受，受無厭足是愛，愛攝不捨是取，彼諸有支生是有，有所起名：生，生熟為老，老壞為死。』
Child of the Buddha! This bodhisattva mahāsattva further thinks thus: 'All that is in the three realms is mind alone. The Tathāgata, upon this, discriminates and expounds the twelve links of existence, and all of them rest upon the one mind and are established thus. And why? Because greed and desire toward a thing arise together with the mind: the mind is consciousness and the thing is formation; confusion about formations is ignorance; what arises together with ignorance and with mind is name-and-form; the increase of name-and-form is the six sense-fields; the joining of the six sense-fields in their three parts is contact; what arises together with contact is feeling; feeling that is never satisfied is craving; craving that holds on and will not let go is grasping; the arising of those links of existence is becoming; what becoming gives rise to is called birth; the ripening of birth is old age; and the breaking down of old age is death.'
心胸煩悶為愁，涕泗諮嗟為歎 — the breast stifled with distress is grief; the tears and the sighing are lament. In the middle of a technical exposition the sūtra stops to say what these words mean in a body. Grief is a sensation in the chest; lament is crying and sighing aloud; pain is in the five faculties and sorrow in the intellect. Having removed the self from the account, the text is careful not to remove the suffering with it.
三界所有，唯是一心 — all that is in the three realms is mind alone. This single line became one of the most consequential sentences in East Asian Buddhism, and it is worth noting how modestly it functions here. It is not offered as a metaphysical thesis to be defended but as the answer to a question about arrangement: why do the twelve links hold together at all? Because they are not twelve separate things happening in a world, but twelve aspects of one thing, and the sūtra immediately demonstrates this by re-deriving all twelve from a single moment of desire arising with mind.
Compare the three passes. The first found no gatherer; the second found no doer and no one who undergoes; the third finds that there was never more than one mind for any of it to happen in. Each removes something the previous account still left standing, and the ground is called Direct Presence because at its end there is nothing intervening between the seeing and what is seen.
Part 441 Complete
This continues Abhimukhī, the sixth of the Ten Grounds. Chapter 26 continues in Part 442 as the sūtra takes each of the twelve links apart again and gives it two functions — ignorance both bewilders beings about their object and serves as the cause from which formations arise; formations both produce a future result and give rise to consciousness — and so on down the chain, each link doing one thing to the being who has it and another to the link that follows.